You know it's time to flush when...

- you've got too much crap in the bowl.
- you've put too much toilet paper in the bowl.
- your job sucks so much that you'd almost convince yourself to swim in your own feces rather than get up and go to work again.

My workplace sucks. My job is not hard, although "they" try their hardest to make it seem very tough and very difficult. I swear that this workplace sucks so bad that while I do not want to do it, it is so badly managed that it makes me mad enough that I think that I should try to change it so that it can be somewhat tolerable enough to get through the next six months while I finish school.

I reiterate that this is not a hard job. Sit down, drive for an hour or two, take a 10-15 minute break, then repeat three or four times a day, 5 to 6 times a week until you've sold your soul to the transit gods so they can convince you that this is what your life should amount to. This job is almost brainless enough to ensnare even the most intelligent of people into stopping and thinking that maybe this might amount to enough of something that one might be able to convince themselves that they are happy enough to commit to a long term relationship with this mindless, empty way of life, transporting the germ infested, malcontented, misfigured and imbalanced purveyors of the discounted fifty cent rate or the downtown employee pass that is given out to those with actual jobs downtown or to those with nothing better to do than to get a free ride from "home" to the mall to downtown to "home" and around and around and around again.

These men, women, and children that are the holders of the discounted fifty cent rate or the downtown employee pass are not those of whom I speak. Those are merely people who have chose to spend the remainder of their lives leaching and sucking an already poor system dry, until it can not give them that which they desire, and then they move on, in one way or another.

The "they" which I speak of are those men and women that are servants to the transit gods, which through bureaucracy and tedious avoidance of accountability, manage to make an perfectly sound idea perfectly wasteful and redundant, but at least it's a cheap redundancy, for the sake of the customers, anyhow.

The "they" which I speak of are mostly comprised of power mongers, perfectly good middle managers who wish to provide for their families and make nothing better of themselves than to appease employees, only to create and destroy amongst each other so that nothing is done equally, and well wishing comfort seekers that get caught up in the mix.

The point of this rambled mess? It's getting awfully close to time to flush again, and move on to find another toilet in another stall in another mall in another city that slightly becomes appeasing to the sense of comfort, kindness, love and happiness. At least appeasing enough to think that I might be able to spend another part of my life wondering if this is truly all life is about.

One nation, under God.

Okay okay everybody, here's the waiver for t0days post. I drive people around and pick up random thoughts from them, and this one was actually half-decent, and I expounded upon it in my head, and considering the time of year and the current political status of the U.S., this is what I came up with for the post of the day.

I heard this kid, average kid, with mother, going to some function where the kid had to know the Pledge of Allegiance. This is the first time in a very long time I've really heard this statement of belief and allegiance for a very long time, and have kept up vaguely with the random people trying to fight to take out the "under God" phrase from it. NO, this is not my space to say whether or not it should or shouldn't be there, I'm not God, nor am I a supreme court judge and I don't want to have to think about the complexities of how it affects some poor 8 year old child through the eyes of their over-powering 30 or 40 something parents.

I was just thinking about what the statement really means. This is something we, well at least I, never thought about in elementary school, I was far too concerned with chasing around all the pretty girls, wondering what they had hid under their fancy skirts that was supposed to be so fascinating.

Anyway, back to what the pledge is supposed to mean. Without any prior knowledge to where it originated, or for what purpose school children were told to memorize and repeat it every morning without common knowledge of what it truly meant, I can't speculate that it is McCarthy-ism spreading mindlessly without someone to stop it.

Now, I'm not against patriotism, as long as it's not called the Patriot Act, I'm ok with it, patriotism is reasonably harmless. You need to believe that our country knows what these national symbols of freedom and justice mean. Right? RIGHT! I honestly believe that nobody quite understands what the Pledge of Allegiance is really all about, they just mindlessly go about their day, having forgot about what it is or what it means long since junior high or high school, when they stopped repeating it on a daily basis, out of sight, out of mind. Even I am guilty of this.

This is where my post really begins now. I'll post this just so we all understand what I'm talking about.

The Pledge of Allegiance:
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Take a moment to examine what this statement of faith and honor really says about us as a nation. Really think about it.

The first thing that comes to me is that this was created in a time where there was so many people that were not "americanized" or and had to be "naturalized", much like the LEGAL immigrants have to do today, really understand that there are 50 individual and completely separate (which I came upon an awakening recently that any state could secede if they chose) states in which coexist in a harmonious nation of hundreds of millions of people.

Now, what the hell is a republic, I know that Rome was supposedly one of the great republics, but what the hell does that mean? History Central defines it "as (a) form of government based on a constitution, in which decisions are made by elected or appointed officials in a democratic manner." So we've got 50 states that vote democratically for their government. Great, sounds wonderful.

"one nation, under God" The highly questioned phrase brought to the supreme court. I didn't even know, for it was well before my time, but the phrase "under God" wasn't placed in the pledge until after WWII, one of the slight changes brought to this nation as a result of that world war, along with social security, which is pretty much disappearing, just as the phrase might, from our collective conscience. Even just by itself, the notion of 50 states, (roughly) 3143 counties within those 50 states, and hundreds of millions of people within those counties. That, to me is pretty astonishing that we are actually a largely peaceful (for the most part) nation within the nation itself, at least for the last 140 or so years since the Civil War of the 1860's. Sure there have been national uproars and localized riots, but no actual large scale civil fighting beyond those.

"indivisible," Anyone paying attention to the news in France over the last two to three months can understand the impact of this word in the phrase and understand that we really do have somewhere that we can express views like I have here, and be ridiculed as well as pat on the back, and still understand that neighbors, while maybe loud, annoying, and in the eyes of all neighbors around them (Pretty Pretty Princess...hehehe) can understand that indivisible here means that we can disagree on something and still understand that we are all different and still need to be treated like humans nonetheless.


"with liberty and justice for all." Here is where it gets really thick. I mean put the galoshes, hip waders, and waterproof scuba suit (for lack of remembering the proper term) on, it is getting really deep in here on this one. With bureaucracy in full bloom in Washington D.C., liberty and justice become not only tangible in some forms, but ways to tout power and lift one-self to a higher level of being. This is both good and bad, and those of us who have gotten to this point in this rant probably have the mental wherewithal to figure out what I mean.

Overall what does this whole pledge thing mean to 8 year old kids though? Really - What do they understand when they repeat this until they go completely numb with the phrase and no longer care to find it's true meanings and forget what they were saying it for in the first place? Isn't this just basically called adulthood nowadays anyway?

Hmm..Hearing this 8-9-10 year old kid repeat and repeat this pledge until he remembered it, probably because the school he goes to no longer has the 'old ways' any longer and has since phased out the morning ritual that I remember the Pledge of Allegiance to be, made me think about what this country was really made to be by the Founding Forefathers, an idealistic nation set forth to be leaders, makers of new, and intelligent men and women, equal in rights, justices, and freedoms. I fear what the machine in Washington makes of that dream everyday.

Is that healthy? I dunno.

I believe in a God (creator) that understands the souls and hearts of man and tries to help them make the best decision by leading them to the knowledge in which they need to find that process. This God doesn't make decisions for us, nor is he an idol for which to tout that any idea is better than another, for if he deems it so, it should be obvious that it is or isn't. He gave us a written guideline, and what that includes is fought about amongst the ideas of many great men and women, but nonetheless, there are basic fundamentals about love we should all live by, and I believe it is stated here:

"Love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud, it is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs, love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth, it always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres, love never fails; and now these three remain: faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these three is love."

Love never fails. If this were applied (within the context of the above statement) within the government of today, I think a lot of things could change, and for the better, but I think that we have to start with something to believe in, not only faith in a creator, but that this land of ours needs to have some to create a healthy directive of forward movement, I'm not lobbying for a church-state by any means. I dislike the idea of being a papal-type state even more than the staunchest catholic-church hater. There needs to be freedom of choice, free of any influence, but with a guidance that shows that we are vigilant of our responsibility as a leader-type nation. The prying and separating everything in our minds to their own separate cubby-holes that has become Politically Correctness needs to go the way of the dinosaur, buried and forgotten about until some idiot digs it up and thinks it's the next revolution again.

Long and possibly too long for perhaps even the most patient reader, this is my blog for the day, possibly even the rest of the weekend. I'm tired, I think I'll go lay down now.

Look what I picked up outta the dumpster..

Yeah this isn't much better than the recycled paper that you wrote your last english assignment on that you copied off the web that you really don't remember what the topic was. If you can make any sense of the last sentence, you probably are already seeing what this whole thing is about. I'll be posting here to get crap off my mind so I don't attack people who really don't care otherwise what I say, so I'll attack much more random people with it. Feel free to have fun of your own. This is mine, so please don't rain on my garbage, get some of your own.