watch this amazing footage shot in Honolulu on August 14, 1945. Greatest generation was also the coolest generation and they didn’t even know it.
Maybe that is one of the main reasons they were so cool.

VJ Day, Honolulu Hawaii, August 14, 1945 from Richard Sullivan on Vimeo.

It has been one of those weeks already; and by already it is only Tuesday morning.
I am in the middle of my dieting process and all I want is HomeSlice pizza. Scratch that, all I want is food. Any food would do at this point. My little girls Teddy Grahams looked amazing this morning. I mentioned this to someone, that I thought allot about food now. They’re response was “why? oh no why do you do that to yourself?” Um, it is not like I choose cognitively to do it. I would say this is like an addiction and I am trying to get clean.
I feel sorry for all the addicts out there is Internets land, I do.

So for all of us addicts, me and my  food, you and your whatever is ailing you, drugs, sex or rock-n-roll. I am going to have George Harrison pray over us with this little song that will set the mood.

Also this week: News I already knew about & a Healthcare bill I am interested in and want to know more about sans spin from either party.

We have this controversy now with the uber rightwing republicans, who tend to be most of my audience.

Obama! Obama! Just the mention of his name and noses curl, shivers of cold and tingles go down some of your spines.
Meh, lets try it on me.  Obama! When I say it I don’t think “Oh my God I have got to get out of here!” anymore than I did when Bush was at the helm. However, SS Clinton needs to get on the horn with Benjamin Netanyahu and make sure he knows we love them Jew Boys. No matter how dumb it is that they are jacking with the Middle East peace process from Obama’s perspective. We love you ‘Gods Chosen peeps’ and we would love to think that we are also ‘chosen peeps” by association! Please smile on us as we criticize you!

There were pro-Palestinian rallies in Austin Last week. Almost didn’t make the news. An Israeli band played and people threw things like rocks and insults. WTF! I am sorry, This is my town, you don’t throw rocks. Insults; fine especially if your music sucked! Of cores it didn’t suck but it is cool for you to have that opinion! I mean everyone knows Klezmer Jew rock kicks butt! The church neighbor shouts insults every Sunday morning just about.

It is all fun and games till someone gets an eye put out I am telling you.

(Hand in the air like I don’t want to hear your rebuttal … but of cores I do.
Here is one of the bands from Jerusalem ISRAEL that just played SXSW. Orphaned Land (my dad does this thing when you can tell he is not sold on something, he stretches out the skin between his nose and the top of his lip and says ”Interesting”.. can you see me doing that right now?)

The phone lines are open comment away.
Ok first caller…

maybe in 20/20 hindsight she should have went with this dress more often.

so i am so glad this is all over. Zach we can take down the banners now the quiet protest is over.

now i am have to worry about the Christmas tree and getting it up before the family comes for Thankschristmasing. i have like 20 other things i want to get done between know and then too i need to wash the house and the fence and stain and seal the fence. Get the Honda out of the garage and into the shop to get fixed and tagged and rolling. and get the Mini back, maybe buy a used Saab and give the Tank back to its owner and get Gus into the garage for an oil change and the lights on the house and i have 20 days to do all this in. OK it might not all get done. First things first. i wanna get something done to the fence. this week. Hear that babe? ok and i wanna stop drinking soda. except when i NEED it.

CHEERS!  and dont grieve to much, my dear republican friends, nothing is ever gonna really change, that is just the way it is somethings never change, (insert bruce hornsby piano riff) and it dont matter if we have a black man or an old man a chick, or a chick with a gun on the run in the big house we are supposed to pray for them just the same.

You know that serenity prayer? “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him Forever in the next.
Amen. –Reinhold Niebuhr

Remember that? Or maybe I just get more random prayer request emails thank you because it is supposed that my karma is as pure and honest as smooth and creamy processed cheese. Any way I was thinking about that to day, no the whole deal about living one day at a time and all that non-sense, but “the accept what I can’t change” and “courage to change things that are well with in my control”. And really in life that is more what I need than anything. I am afraid to the most retarded most insignificant things. We need to spray the house for ants and spiders and that has me freaking out. I don’t want the baby to breathe anything that will harm her, but want to not have a spider bite her. what to do ? what to do?

I feel so scattered some times and so hyper stressed I have been looking at was to better focus and calm my nerves. I thought about smoking but then there’s the smell and cancer yeah yeah. Some hippie at work suggested Pot but then there is the smell and the cops and the cost and the jail time and yeah it is just not worth it. I pray for the serenity but I feel as if I am George Costanza’s father yelling “SERENITY NOW” and it is not working. The question is; is there a time when I can pray for something having little or no faith and that be OK? I can’t find where it is. Faith is the key ingredient and if you are low on faith you are s-o-l. This feeling makes me think what is the use? I am a rat, in a cage, a hamster on my wheel, a dog on the track chasing the ever elusive rabbit, around and around.
And though I know I know that I know I really do have a hope (and not just the Brand that is ever so popular by Barak Obama’s t-shirts.) I wish I could turn my hope into faith. I need to turn my futures trading into cold hard coin.

Thanks to gmail chat i can keep in constant contact with my defector friends who have left the bowels of hell for more temperate or oceanic climate-ry. this morning with Phillip:

me: hey friend how are you this morning?

Why does coffee make my tummy hurt?
Will all the baby crap fit in the MINI, or should we dump it for a RV?
Why don’t I know something about cousin’s baby?
Why am I anxious about mom and dad coming?
Why can we not decide on a first name for peanut?
What did my neighbor kid do to get arrested last nigh?
Were the cop’s jerks?
Do the parents think one of us turned him in?
Why does it make me happy to listen to Cuban music and smoke cigars and drive my old truck slowly.
I am like a fat version of my uncle Jerry who will indulge his senses every once in a while not deny them.

You know that really full day where at its end you feel like you got stuff done? busy as all-get-out but you still manage to sort it all. I had that day today.
Zach and I were out and about early. Once done with work at around 5pm, I went home had a power nap then mowed the yard and washed the car and we got to eat at home. I get sick of always having some idiot teenager cook for me and paying some one to serve it to me. MexiMelt made me pizza and I had a Coco Rico, and watched a PBS special on Pete Seeger. Does that make me a communist? I worked for the greater good of man kind and watched a special about a political activist folk singer (and liked it). I have gone all Che on you. Actually I am thinking of calling the spawn Che wen he arrives. Not legally just as his argentine nick-name.
Good night all. I am going to dig out some of my old Pete Seeger cd’s.

what is it about campaigns? they all seem so fake and superficial at some point. Dating is a campainge to make her like me. Commercials are a campainge to make me buy whatever. my resume is my own campainge to sell my self. meh i am having a monday.

times NPR said that the us service persons death toll has now reached 4,000. It would so suck to be number 3,999 or 4,001. who are you? St Pete asks, oh i am a US army service casualty number 4,001, um yeah you can come in, i guess the part is still rocking for number 4,000. so try not to make a scene we want to “celebrate, celebrate him home, mmmkay.” 17 times in a 45 minuet window of time from my from garage to garage. So unbiased news media tell us what you REALLY think.

a we have this new Green initiative at work. My boss sold his hot rod and bought a hybrid. I have been researching Biodrgadeable, compostable, recyclable cups. You know how hard it is to find one that is in fact stampped with the symbol for each; and that stamp, can we get that done in Soy based ink, in green?

I have been driving my 12 mpg Toyota this past weekend. My mother in-law and Sister in-law were here from California. (doing the Zach goofy “yeah!!!” wild eyed crazy man clap). I figure it costs me like 10 bucks to drive to town and back! Karina’s statement for the weekend, “But i thought you just put gas.” When she is around her mom she doesn’t speak regular English.

Why I am voting for Barack Obama…

Maybe I’m caught up in a swell, and I’m only riding on emotion. Not sure if I care- but I’m all the way on the bandwagon. Yes, I know his policies. And yes, I know Clinton’s. Some of the small differences between their plans I go either way on. What it comes down to is what I believe Obama can do. I don’t think everything is going to change overnight, or even after 4 years- but I get excited and hopeful when I see Obama speak. It gives me the same feeling of hope and change I get when I think about Christians standing up and working toward justice for the poor and oppressed. When I hear the story of the inner city kids, I see it in the same heart for kids I minister to. No- I don’t think Obama is Christ- and maybe I’m a heretic. But I get a similar sense of hope and call in these words.

Here is a section from Obama’s Super Tuesday speech last night. (Transcript found @ NYtimes.com) It’s a little lengthy- but worth it.

“We can do this. But it will not be easy. It will require struggle and it will require sacrifice. There will be setbacks, and we will make mistakes. And that is why we need all the help we can get.

So tonight I want to speak directly to all those Americans who have yet to join this movement but still hunger for change. They know it in their gut. They know we can do better than we’re doing. They know that we can take our politics to a higher level. But they’re afraid. They’ve been taught to be cynical. They’re doubtful that it can be done.

But I’m here to say tonight to all of you who still harbor those doubts, we need you. We need you to stand with us. We need you to work with us. We need you to help us prove that together, ordinary people can still do extraordinary things in the United States of America.

I am blessed to be standing in the city where my own extraordinary journey of service began. You know, just a few miles from here, down on the south side, in the shadow of a shuttered steel plant, it was there that I learned what it takes to make change happen. I was a young organizer then — in fact, there are some folks here who I organized with — a young organizer intent on fighting joblessness and poverty on the south side.

And I still remember one of the very first meetings I put together. We had worked on it for days. We had made phone calls. We had knocked on doors. We had put out fliers. But on that night, nobody showed up. Our volunteers who had worked so hard felt so defeated, they wanted to quit. And to be honest, so did I. But at that moment, I happened to look outside and I saw some young boys tossing stones at a boarded-up apartment building across the street. They were like the boys in so many cities across the country, little boys, but without prospects, without guidance, without hope for the future. And I turned to the volunteers and I asked them, “Before you quit, before you give up, I want you to answer one question: What will happen to those boys if we don’t stand up for them?”

And those volunteers, they looked out that window and they saw those boys and they decided that night to keep going, to keep organizing, keep fighting for better schools, fighting for better jobs, fighting for better health care. And I did too. And slowly but surely, in the weeks and months to come, the community began to change.

You see, the challenges we face will not be solved with one meeting in one night. It will not be resolved on even a Super Duper Tuesday. Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. We are the hope of those boys who have so little, who’ve been told that they cannot have what they dream, that they cannot be what they imagine. Yes, they can.”

NOTE: i stole this post from a guy who is in my line of work. Read his stuff!