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This is almost always a friends-only journal. If you wanna be friended, post a comment, and I'll probably let you in!

If you haven't read it yet, you need to read it now.

John McCain: Unsafe in any position.

I'm changing the name of my LiveJournal account to something a bit more... me as I am now.

That is all.

You are JSP. I am JSP.

Current Mood: contemplative

well, sorta.

So the new version of iTunes comes with this new feature called "Genius". You pick a song in your library, and it makes a playlist of similar songs.

How, exactly, "Dirty Little Secret" by the All-American Rejects matches up with Natalie Imbruglia, I'm not entirely sure, but that's less jarring than having Song 11 be "Question" by System of A Down and Song 12 be "Any Way You Want It" by... Journey.

It's odd.

It's more than a feeling.

"That’s the great thing about baseball, you never know what’s going to happen till you get the final out." — Lou Pinella

Cubs Magic Number: 2!

Current Mood: excited

Image from here, sorta, but mostly here. :D

Current Mood: amused

Right now, children like I was and like Michelle Obama was are growing up in a different America. Not an an America where people own seven homes, but where more and more people are losing theirs to foreclosure, and in neighborhoods darkened by blight - encroaching where it had once been pushed back - as their neighbor's homes are foreclosed upon. They're growing up in an America where some who still have them will find it harder to heat their homes this winter. And not just because of the rising cost of fuel, but because their employers - attempting to stay ahead of the rising cost of doing business - have cut full-time employees down to part-time or implemented part-time layoffs in hopes of cutting payrolls.

They live in an America where parents who aren't merely underemployed may be among the growing numbers of the unemployed, and where the employed are increasingly insecure, concerned that the reality of globalization makes it likely their jobs will be shipped overseas. Theirs is an America in which stimulus checks are long since spent and their temporary effects faded, leaving behind the reality that household incomes haven't grown during our so-called economic boom. Despite that, in their America people still spend ever more on on basic necessities like household utilities and groceries; where more and more families rely on food stamps, and where those food stamps buy less and less, leaving a growing number of families facing "food insecurity" - a condition we used to call "hunger."

They aren't likely to fare much better at school, where rising food costs have hit school lunches, leading to more families requesting reduced lunches. And even them, some can only look forward to school lunches four days out of five, as more schools cut back to four-day weeks in an effort to save costs. In their America, grandparents are chipping in on back-to-school bills, to help defray costs. That is, if they can. Some grandparents may be too busy working, as they've put off retirement to deal with falling home values and rising. Some grandparents are facing bankruptcy, due to increasing medical bills.

Theirs is an America where prescription drug costs and health care costs are cutting into stagnant wages, and where people tap into their savings accounts, home equity and credit cards, going into debt to pay for health care. Those 47 million without health insurance, contrary to popular belief, pay $30 billion collectively for health care - and typically get less than they pay for when it comes to the quality of that care.

It's a world away from the America where the rich have gotten richer in the past seven years, but just around the corner from the America where the poor have indeed gotten poorer, and more of them crowd into poverty-stricken neighborhoods - reversing a trend of upward mobility that began in the previous decade and ended around the time this one began. It's light years away from the America where and income of $5 million qualifies as "rich" and $250,000 annually is solidly middle class, but down the street from the America where wages are decades behind prices. And it's nowhere near the America where a CEO can keep a "compensation package" worth over 18$ million, even his company loses $841 million and requires a tax-payer funded bailout. It's light years away from the America where the economy is basically sound, but smack in the middle of an America full of "whiners" squeezed by that same economy, and most say it's getting worse.

http://www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=6899

Current Mood: frustrated

is doing the same thing over and over and over again, expecting to get a different result.

It's difficult to see when my son does it, it's difficult to see when my ex-wife does it, it's really annoying when _I_ do it (and I do it much less often than I used to).

But when I see an actually mentally ill person do it -- who, with the aid of his medications, doctors and friends could STOP doing it -- it makes me very sad.

When that friend starts telling me that I've become untrustworthy, when he insults my wife and when he refuses to stop being verbally abusive to his girlfriend, however, I get pissed. He may mistake that for "not stopping what wasn't working", but it's not. I'm not swift to anger, but I eventually get there.

He said I was his brother. But he lied. A man lets his brother help him, and doesn't drive him away with paranoia and curses.

Let me be clear. Much of this is not personal; I've not culled my friends list for over a year. Some of you, I'm unfriending simply because I haven't said anything to you, or you haven't said anything to me, for a long time -- if ever.

However, I'm pretty sure I know who did what they did. And they know I know. And it's too bad, because I was being pretty much live and let live.

Oh, well.

Current Mood: calm

Ignore if you're not a fan. Except Ix.

The book "The Comeback Season" was written by Jennifer Smith.

In honor of the recent publication of The Comeback Season,

and the amazing season the Cubs are having this year, we're having....

The Comeback Season CONTEST!

1st Prize: 2 tickets to the Cubs vs. Astros game on 9/3/08 at 7:05 at Wrigley Field

2nd Prize: A marked-up copy of The Comeback Season, with notes from the author

3rd Prize: A signed copy of The Comeback Season

There are three ways to win!

1. Let me know that you told at least 10 people about the contest via blog or email

2. Send a photo of you reading the book

3. Send a receipt showing that you bought the book

Send all entries to thecomebackseason (at) gmail (dot) com

Winners will be chosen on August 12th, 2008 by random drawing

(* If you win 1st prize, but don't live in Chicago, you can opt for the Cubs tickets to go to the next person, and you'll get a marked up copy of the book instead, plus another YA book of your choice!)

Good luck, and go Cubs!

The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of "coercive management techniques" for possible use on prisoners, including "sleep deprivation," "prolonged constraint," and "exposure."

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/us/02detain.html?ref=world

or

http://tinyurl.com/5urh5e