don't worry

Well, it's the end of the semester, and after a little inspiration, I have this final thing to say. I estimate nobody will ever see this, though I'm not worried about that.


If, on the off chance you do see this, I have some words of wisdom for you.
"

Mary Schmich Chicago Tribune

Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of '97... wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be IT. The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now. Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded. But trust me, in 20 years you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are NOT as fat as you imagine. Don't worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday. Do one thing every day that scares you. Sing. Don't be reckless with other people's hearts, don't put up with people who are reckless with yours. Floss. Don't waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself. Remember compliments you receive, forget the insults; if you succeed in doing this, tell me how. Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements. Stretch. Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don't. Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees, you'll miss them when they're gone. Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't, maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't, maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself, either. Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else's. Enjoy your body, use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it's the greatest instrument you'll ever own. Dance. Even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room. Read the directions, even if you don't follow them. Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly. Get to know your parents, you never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings; they are your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future. Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography in lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young. Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard; live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel. Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old, and when you do you'll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders. Respect your elders. Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund, maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one might run out. Don't mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will look 85. Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth. But trust me on the sunscreen.

"

http://youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI

Shell

So, I was informed in person that people were curious about my comments about how I go about avoiding Shell. Well, it's simple. It's something I care about and something I pay attention to, and that's really all you have to do.

Since you were curious I'm going to assume that you care about this issue, next, you have to pay attention. I buy from Shell as little as possible, because to be honest, I just don't like them. mostly due to them price gouging.

So first, read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Dutch_Shell
yeah, it's wiki, deal with it. it's good information on Shell as a whole.

reading this, you need to pay attention to every line
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_Oil_Company#Subsidiaries
"Aera Energy LLC is a joint venture with Mobil Oil operating in California." is at the bottom of the page, Mobil, a part of the famous Exxon-Mobil, is partnered with Shell, well gee, there's two of the biggest oil companies working together. Still not a monopoly....Though the page even has a section about Shabazi, small world eh?

If you wanna know who owns what, a google search along the lines of "*station name* owned by" usually comes up with answers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermajor
here, you'll find a listing of the "supermajor" oil corporations. Curiously enough, the number matches up to the number of media corporations.

Shell doesn't explicitly own Texaco, but has something like a 56% investment in it, which IMO, is close enough.

if you go through all the links, you'll probably be depressed in finding that most of the "supermajor" oil companies own half of each other and are all working together.

oh well, we've still got our anti-trust laws right?


....right?

accountability goes all around, or it doesn't go at all

So, this will be my last post here I suppose, because I'm tired of being held accountable by being flamed by assholes who could correct me? but no, they scream and shout and insult me instead of simply saying why and how I'm wrong. I'm OK with being told I'm wrong and being corrected, but I'm not OK with somebody being a jackass.

And since I can be held accountable for anything I post(by responding to my posts), and other people can't be held accountable(by me responding to them), there is no place for civil discussion, learning and growing in the blog world. There is apparently only room for flaming and rudeness, and quite frankly, I can get that elsewhere.

So, unless something changes, this is my last post, and in a short amount of time, this blog will no longer exist. Go hold somebody else to the wall with your double barrels of ass-hattery, I have neither the time nor the desire to entertain you.

to you who can only copy paste

Well, apparently I got a rebuttal from somebody regarding the fact that there is racism towards whites. Of course, they didn't address the subject, I suppose justifying "reverse racism" because there is still racism against minorities. Well, if racism justifies racism, then I suppose it should be a free-for-all on racism!

Wait...that doesn't sound like a good solution. In any case, apparently this person lacks their own opinions as their rebuttal to me was just a copy-paste from a news article from some other site. But hey, I can work with that.
http://www2.ohchr.org./english/bodies/ratification/2.htm#reservations
This website contains a list of every country that had a provision or problem with the treaty upon signing. The list is alphabetical, and it's easy to note that the US is not the only country, looking at the list, from first to third world nations took exception to clauses in the treaty. I saw a number of them mention Article 4 or Article 22.

The US in particular notes that much of the treaty runs counter to free speech and freedom of assembly, things that, even though I'm not a minority, I enjoy greatly. And I don't take lightly to any external organization, be them an evil dictatorship or a well meaning NGO, trying to stifle my speech.

http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/d_icerd.htm
the above is a link to the full text of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Section 4 in particular seeks to make illegal and jail any and all persons who disseminate or make "propaganda" based on the racial superiority of any one race. Offenze as these things may be, this runs counter to freedom of speech. Freely expressed opinions prevent radicals like these from feeling vindicated, and quickly allow for people who do not agree and people who know better to shoot them down.

Now, before you blindly reply to this with another copy-paste, kindly do some research on what the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination actually wants, and look at why countries take issue with it.

Also, I'm glad you retracted your words, since the "white club" you call "law enforcement" is very much populated by non whites. So, before you call me out on what you perceive as "racism", perhaps you should take a look at your own bigotry.

Edward James Olmos

Likly due to stress, I've had a few breakouts of acne recently, and it reminded me of a comment I heard towards a person asking for help on what to do about their acne. The comment, went something along the lines of "you don't want to look like Edward James Olmos do you?" And, Edwards J Olmos being one of my favorite actors, I thought to myself: "huh, do I want to have smooth, baby-bottom skin...or look like a famous actor?"

Well, given the choice, I think I'd rather look like a famous actor. Personally, I think what's great about EJO the most is that he shows that you don't have to have pretty soft skin and look like you're 20 when you're 45. He shows that what counts is being a good actor, and he's played everything from an evil dictator to a space commander.

The interesting thing to note is, I never realized this guy was some kind of Spanish. You can't hear it in his voice, he never really looked it IMO, and his name doesn't particularly give away any sort of ancestry. He doesn't advertize it or flaunt it as far as I know. And he doesn't stick to particularly spanish/latin american films, so I dunno, thought that was kinda neat.

"politically correct"

Some things are bull and it's not worth calling them on it. Some things are bull and they are worth being called out. And today on Cesar Chavez day, I'd like to take this time to call out the bullshit that "multiculturalism" has become. So, we know what multiculturalism is, in general, it's respect for other people and their cultures, "other" being those that are different from YOU. Or at least...that's what multiculturalism is supposed to be about.

But here at CSUMB, that's not what it's about. Not even close. And it's sad really, for a school that is supposed to have multiculturalism as a founding principle of it's design. But then, it's not really CSUMB's fault, because what they're doing is really the same as dozens of other places have been doing for the last decade and a half or so. It's really just a problem that has been integrated into multiculturalism so much, that people barely realize it's a problem.

There are all kinds of different people in the world, asian, indian, middle eastern, black, brown, red, and yeah, that accounts for everyone. Oh...wait, there's still "white" people. It's kinda sad, saying "white people", like there's some kind of grand consesnsus between white people the world over on what they're like. Europe is banding together like never before, and there's still several dozen languages and cultures there.

But this is the problem with multiculturalism, the flaw that has become part of the system. White people are not seen as another group of people with a culture and a presense to be respected right along with the rest, it's seen as the color white is seen, boring, basic, bland, and empty. Descendants of native americans often complain about their "lost" or "destroyed" heritages that they're trying to get back. Blacks often try to create some kind of quasi-africanism and mexicans celebrate the fact that they're not from America.

But white people are constantly told they don't have a culture, and if they do, it's a "bad" one because it's about consumerisim, or capitalisim, or oppression, or racisim. I have met almost half a dozen people(read: PEOPLE, not all are white) who'd side with me to start a "white unity" club on campus, or something to that degree. And I know what you're first thought is: "ZOMG!!! WHITE POWER NAZI RACIST KKK!!!!11" And I know why you thought that too, because that's what multiculturalism has taught you to think. And I wonder, of you reading this, how many of you are white?

There are clubs for Mexicans and they're not racist clubs. There are clubs for blacks and those aren't racist clubs. Heck, I know whites can join at least one of the black clubs on campus. So why is a white club that would do essentially the same thing, respect others, talk about sterotypes and all that, be inherantly thought of as "racist"? Well, I believe the quote given to me by a friend, from the administration here on campus sums it up pretty well: "we don't celebrate white-people holidays."

This is of course, in reference to why we have Cesar Chavez day off but not President's Day. Great as Abe Lincoln or George Waashington may have been, famous as they still are today, they are white people. And celebrating anything white-related is against multiculturalism, and thus, bad, and since you are celebrating something of white people, you must be like white people, and therefore: racist.

This friend's girlfriend told me of how some students tried to start a club like I mentioned above, something just like the other cultural clubs do, the only difference: it was started by white people and about respecting cultures. There was over a month in hearings and trials alone. The school simply would not approve it and their arguments were the expected ones, that, in short, whites are bad.

The University of Delaware had a program that when you signed up for the school it read in short: "all whites are inherantly racist, if you wish to correct this problem, the school will provide services to help." lolwut? Yeah, this university actually said, right in it's cirriculum, what is now a founding priniciple of "multiculturalisim", that all whites are racist and bad. After several years, the school changed it(rather recently I might add), but the ideology remains. How can this be "multiculturalism", when a significant cultural and ethnic group is being racistly discriminated against?

In short, it's not, and it hasn't been for a long time. "Multiculturalism" has become "anti-whiteism", an ideology that all non-white cultures are to be celebrated, not for any particular reason, but simply because they're not white. Which is why I call upon you, whomever you are, if you're reading this, and I don't care what race, ethnicity or culture you are part of, to just stop for a moment and say to yourself: "when I'm respecting other people, am I really including everyone in that?"

I'm not asking for special treatment, I'm asking for you to take a look at the system and really look to see if when they say: "We respect all cultures." that any culture and it's people who desire respect in that system, are given it. Regardless of their skin color, and that people aren't inherantly seen as racist because of something they have no control over. It's not "fair play", it's not "revenge" and if it is, then really take a look at who the racist is. If you think it's fair for whites to be disrespected or treated pooly based on the actions of people with the same skin color in the past, then yeah, the only real racist is the one in your mirror.

And now....

So, it's been a while I suppose, not that enough people read this to really notice, but anyway, I have a good subject for my thoughts...

So, today I'd like to take a moment to talk to you about 'net neutrality. Which is short for Internet Neutrality. It's a bit of regulation that's trying to go through congress at the moment. I'm sure most of you don't know what it is, so here's the short story.

You pay somebody, be it a school, Verizon, AT&T or Earthlink or AOL to access the internet. You ave given a maximum amount of speed(bandwidth) to go to whatever website you want, read what you want, play games over the net like WoW, or whatever. You are paying, essentially, for a certain size pipe, the bigger the pipe, the more speed you have on the net.

However, several companies aren't happy making billions of dollars from this situation. They're apparently come to the conclusion that bloggers like you and me, need to pay for the pipe on our end. If we don't pay, then the service provider can limit or block access to our page. It would in short mean that we would have to pay every company that does this a fee, likly about the same amount the average person pays for the average internet connection.

Basically, what the change is, is that instead of the user who wants to surf the net paying for a certain amount of access, the pages they are trying to access would have to pay the company in order to get accessed. And as all of us bloggers are aware, there are a lot of people, if not most of the people with websites, who depend on people being able to freely access their page. Whether it be for reading a blog or fan-page of their fav baseball player.

This is a move that is completly unaceptable and should not be permitted, legally enforced if it must. Companies provided internet access for years without this kind of setup, and the only reason they are doing it now is TO MAKE MORE MONEY. Owners and presidents of these companies take home more in a year than most people do in a lifetime. Capitalisim is great and all, but capitalism comes second to freedom. The internet is a place of freedom.