for Steven...

Rainbow In The Dark

Dio

When there's lightning, you know it always brings me down
'Cause it's free and I see that it's me
Who's lost and never found
I cry out for magic, I feel it dancing in the light
It was cold, I lost my hold
To the shadows of the night

No sign of the morning coming
You've been left on your own
Like a rainbow in the dark
A rainbow in the dark

Do your demons, do they ever let you go?
When you've tried, do they hide, deep inside
Is it someone that you know
You're just a picture, your're an image caught in time
We're a lie, you and I
We're words without a rhyme

There's no sign of the morning coming
You've been left on your own
Like a rainbow in the dark
Just a rainbow in the dark, yeah

When I see lightning, you know it always brings me down
'Cause it's free and I see that it's me
Who's lost and never found
Feel the magic, I feel it floating in the air
But it's fear, and you'll hear
It calling you beware

Look out
There's no sight of the morning coming
There's no sight of the day
You've been left on your own
Like a rainbow
Like a rainbow in the dark, yeah
You're a rainbow in the dark
Just a rainbow in the dark
No sign of the morning
You're a rainbow in the dark...

Leadership

This is not what it seems...

A person believes they are right because of what other people tell him/her. I believe most people can think for themselves and understand truth. Most of us have listened to crap and swallowed it whole. This doesn't mean we are idiots, it just means we trusted the wrong people.

Who will help you? Can it be the same people who just fucked you over for the last 40 years? Can it be a person or a party who gave up on you because your work was meaningless or too expensive? This is sadness beyond redemption.

Leadership in the US has been corrupted to its very core. When I questioned my Civics teacher in HS about the effect lobbying had on this subject he told me that the "checks and balances" written into the Constitution would take care of it. This was in 1973 and I watched in amazement how lobbying became synonymous with bribery and nobody cared.

This is what we are.

Nuance

This is Japan in the 1930s.

This was a culture in conflict with itself.




This is the US now.

This is a culture in conflict with itself.


Shall we look at the flip-side?

Japan:

US:

Both of these countries love their military and at the same time they love their leisure.

One country helped foster a world war, the other wages war all over the world.

I am going to quote a paragraph from a book (Total War, Calvocoressi & Wint) written in 1972. I am going to substitute the word Japan with US. 

The prime evil of the US was certainly the ascendancy of the military. This led, in time of war, to the Supreme Command (the president and his NSC)  conducting the war as a state secret from the civilian parts of the US administration. Whatever else may be said of such a system, it proved to be most incompetent militarily. Thus US militarism held within it the seeds of its own defeat. It was unable to organize US society so that in modern warfare it could compete with the powers which were organized to be more flexible.


This correlation is more acute than anything Hitler did.

Friday

The best day of the week.

It's great day to try.

Spot Light

Memories are in short supply,
Given that we can still get by.
Hurt is what you feel when you hate,
It makes you feel, makes you sedate.

Love will be your savior,
Not god, not your personal favor.

Look around and see,
Why we suffer and why we feel.
Who do you believe yourself to be,
A mirror with a permanent seal.

My scars are eternal,
My scars are mine.
Your love floats as mine...
questing for something we will never find.

Be Happy, Motherfuckers

I am reminded of something I read once. I took this to heart because I was thrilled by cowboy movies when I was young.

The Ten Fucking Commandments of Cowboys

1. The Cowboy must never shoot first, hit a smaller man, or take unfair advantage.
2. He must never go back on his word, or a trust confided in him.
3. He must always tell the truth.
4. He must be gentle with children, the elderly, and animals.
5. He must not advocate or possess racially or religiously intolerant ideas.
6. He must help people in distress.
7. He must be a good worker.
8. He must keep himself clean in thought, speech, action, and personal habits.
9. He must respect women, parents, and his nation's laws.
10. The Cowboy is a patriot.

We have so fucked up our world that these words are meaningless.

All of them...

Sometimes

The view is not always the same from the other side.

I understand heritage, family, and religion.

Sometimes, these things are wrong.

Sometimes we are wrong.