Happy Birthday

“They say it’s your birthday.  Happy birthday to you.”

Today is my birthday.  Happy birthday to me.  I am now the ripe old age of 24.  Half way to my mid-life crisis.  Isn’t that exciting?

So, what did I get for my birthday?  Well, I’ve received money from people and I got candy and a DVD boxset from my lovely lady.  I also got brownies at field school to go along with a mother fucking sunburn.  Yay!  I never thought I burned until it happened to me the other day.  Today, it came hard.  My ears and face are a nice rosey red.  It’s awesome…and painful.  Just how I wanted to spend my night.  Still, I got to start digging today and found my first artifacts, so it’s all worth it.

So, right now, I’m gonna throw on my birthday song by my lovely Beatles.  I’ll rock out for a bit.  I’ll then go hang out in bed, with the rest of my b-day cake and watch some Bullsh!t.

More posts to come…I promise…hopefully.

1.6 I Me Mine

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here.  Have I been too busy?  Maybe.  Actually, no.  Have I had nothing to really say?  That’s more like it.  There has been a lot to talk about in the news and everywhere else, but I just haven’t posted about it.

So, does that mean I have something big to say now?  Well, not really.  I’ve just decided to put something up on here.

What am I going to talk about?  Well, I think I’ll write a little about what I want to do with myself.  Yes, it’s not that interesting, but it’s a post, nonetheless.

So, what is it exactly that I want to do with myself?  Well, there’s a lot of things, really.  The main thing I want to do is study the Maya.  Study them, know them, understand them and share them with everyone.  I want to promote them.  Why would I want to do such a thing?  I feel they are one of the most under appreciated civilizations in the world.  We always hear about the Egyptians and those in Mesopotamia, as well as all the East Asian civilizations and the Incas and Aztecs in South America, as being the great civilizations of the world.  I think the Maya should be mentioned in the same breath as the Egyptians in terms of the greatest civilization in history.  Why do I think this?  The Maya developed things never thought of in history before, the idea of zero.  The Maya built amazing temples that would rival those of the great Giza pyramids.  They created one of the most accurate calendars ever made.  They had riches beyond belief.  They had amazing traditions and rituals.

Why do we not hear and know as much about the Maya as we do other civilizations?  The very reason is religion.  The Spanish, in their quest of colonization and spreading religion, destroyed the majority of Mayan written records that were done on “paper.”  All things that could be burned that had any recording of Mayan history was destroyed.  We only have a few things that were not completely destroyed by the Spanish.  We do still have written “hieroglyphs” all over Mayan territory, but they do not completely cover the history that these books would help supplement or even completely cover.

Any way that I can help to understand and know more about the Maya, and, in turn, inform others about them, I want to do.  I want to do it with a passion.  This is all what I want to do with myself.

1.5 Money (That’s What I Want)

So, watched The Constant Gardener the other night.  It is definitely an interesting movie, that’s for sure.  I thought it was well filmed and the acting was superb.  If you haven’t seen it, it’s more or less about the death of a British activist in Africa, killed by a major pharmaceutical company after she makes a report on how their testing of a drug is killing their test subjects.  The story follows the husband trying to track down how his wife was murdered, along with several others in her group.  So, more or less about how major companies will do anything, including killing, if something unfavourable comes up that will hurt profits.

So, all this got me thinking in regards of major corporations and profit margins.  I, personally, work for a somewhat large Canadian corporation.  I have seen the effects of the profit margin, in terms of less hours for me so that they can make budget, aka make the most money.  Money is the key ingredient for every company.  Some barely get by, while others dominate and rack in loads of dough.  There really isn’t much difference between the two.  Both want to make as much as they can and turn a profit.  It’s just the large ones make more profit, usually by any means necessary.  We tend to allow these actions to persist, as long as us consumers get what we want for as cheaply as we can.  This is why the likes of Wal-Mart thrive in our society, cheap products.  Some companies offer necessities in life.  Some companies bully their way around to eliminate the competition in this area.  This is why major oil companies and pharmaceutical companies thrive.  A select few control the majority of such necessities.  These companies can charge almost what they want, although there are usually regulatory institutions to keep things in line.  Still, the control of much is controlled by few.

When someone or something comes into the picture that will upset the balance of your business, many companies will do whatever means necessary to restore this balance.  It is well documented, but not necessarily well known, that Prozac is a harmful drug, and may make people who are on it into more of a danger than before using the drug.  Testing done by the creator of the drug, lead by Eli Lilly, showed serious side effects, and turned some people into someone aggressive, hostile and murderous/suicidal.  Of course, being a part of a major pharmaceutical company, many of these results were not reported so that the drug could be on its way to pharmacy shelves sooner to make money faster.  Deceit used to their advantage, as they really had no one to really check up on them.  The FDA just took their word and let it through.  You can’t always trust the big guys.

Now, I’m not saying that all major companies are evil, deceitful, killing monsters, but I would say that the majority of them are.  It’s just hard to find the ones that are truthful.  These companies remind a lot of the mob: anything to make a buck.  Anywhere, anyway, anyhow.

1.4 All Together Now

Tonight was the Oscars.  I saw Al Gore on there, with Leo DiCaprio.  Seeing Al Gore and knowing everything behind what he’s doing really got me thinking, the world could definitely be a better place if we all went green.  It’s not really that much more expensive to live green.  It may actually be a lot cheaper to do so.  By doing things differently, we can save the Earth, save ourselves and save money.  I know there is a ton of criticizm on Al Gore’s ideas and views.  Still, I think he is a visionary.

Thinking about Al Gore gets me thinking about the movie The Corporation, which I can say is one of the most influential movies I have ever seen.   If you’ve never seen it, you must.  It tells about how corporations have changed, and pretty much ruined, society as a whole.  Anyway, the corelation between Al Gore and this movie, to me, is remarkable.  The general corporation has a big effect on our world.  It produces immense amounts of polutants, harms our world in many other ways, and squeezes every last buck it can.

Anyway, what I’m getting to is that every person needs to stand up against things that they feel are wrong.  Al Gore is doing this, the people involved in the movie did this.  It all has to start somewhere, so why not you?

1.3 Don’t Bother Me

The idea of the isolation of a person has always been interesting to me.  People isolate themselves all the time.  People are isolated all the time, as well.  Why do we do such things to ourselves or others?  Some people become depressed or hate the world around them and isolate themselves.  Some people are sent to jail or exiled and end up isolated.

I will admit that I do isolating myself some time.  I once did it because I was quite depressed, but now I do it as a sense of relaxing and enjoying different things.  Things such as music or writing or thoughts in my mind are enjoyed.  Some times I isolate myself just to get away from the world.  It’s a little piece of “heaven” to me.  It’s a time where there’s nothing that can go wrong any where.  Isolation can be nice.  Still, I’d rather have people around me than be isolated the rest of my life.

1.2 Maxwell’s Silver Hammer

The reading week break is upon me all ready.  This year seems to be just flying by.  It’s only like a month and a half of classes left.  I cannot believe it.  Soon this year will be over.

Now, to my real post.  Tonight I was playing a game and I got to talking with this lady from Texas.  We talked about a lot of different things.  One of the scarier things we talked about was the future of this world and the wars we will all be fighting in.  Things have been ugly in the Middle East for many years now.  It looks like things are only going to get worse there.  You have the whole Iraq thing, plus Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, etc. all in uncertainty.  Some of them have nuclear capabilities.  They also have the ability to use this technology for any reason necessary.  With the growing tension between several of these countries, plus pressure from the United States on several of these countries, things look to eventual come to a head and explode.  Still, this is only the beginning of what may come to be.  There’s still China and Korea who pose a threat to the United States, and therefore the world (as we’re supposed to believe).  Both posess nuclear capabilities plus long range balistic missles, which supposedly can hit the west coast of the US.  This is definitely not good news for the world.  China’s mission, as a country, is to control the world.  So, it’s only inevitable that something happens soon by them.  We may all be in a fight for our livelyhood, for our freedom, and our lives sooner than you may think.

1.1 You Never Give Me Your Money

I recently realized that I haven’t posted anything for a while. I do know that I do not have that many people who read this. Still, I feel like I should write something on a regular basis.

Now, I recently had a conversation in regards to money and our world’s use of it. How do we bridge the gap between the rich or poor? Free trade? Get rid of money? Now, the idea of free trade for everyone, in theory, would be great. Still, the idea of no money for anyone does not work. Any time you have value of any sort placed on objects, you will those that have and those that have not. People will identify resources that are crucial to survival and hoard them. This gives us the people who have. Those that do not have these resources, or those that have not, need to trade to gain these resources. The trade goods may be things that they do not have an abundance of, but need to trade to get a certain resource. This takes from their lot and increases that of those that have. It’s a never ending cycle. Even if resources are spread across the board equally, you’ll have those that will go after resources that others own, most likely by violent means. You just cannot avoid it.

In a perfect world, everyone would have every thing that they would ever need right there in front of them, and no one would need more. Unfortunately, this will never happen. It’s sad but true. Those that are rich want to be richer and they take from the poor.

1.0 Get Back

This past week and a half have been quite eventful.  On Wednesday, the 17th, we had the blizzard of the century, this century at least.  Apparently, it was the worst blizzard in Saskatoon since 1955.  Winds got up to 85 km/h and it snowed anywhere between 10-25 cms.  Either way, it pretty much shut the whole city down for two days.

Late last Saturday, Trista got a call that her grandpa passed away just after midnight.  It was a very unexpected and upsetting time.  We both cried.  Trista’s mom, brother and mom’s boyfriend all came down early Sunday morning, about 5:30am.  We then left Sunday afternoon for Yorkton.  We spent Sunday until Thursday there.  We had a viewing on Tuesday and the funeral on Wednesday.  It was a very emotional time the entire week.  Trista now seems fine.  Things are ok.  It’s all good.

0.9 Happy Dead Year

Well, big news of the year so far is definitely the execution of Saddam Hussien. I would post link to video, but that’s not really necessary. We all know he died, how he died and all that mish-mash. Anyway, with his death comes the (supposed) end of the American fight to finish Saddam and Iraq. Now, the Americans have quite the mess on their hands with Iraq. There’s still fighting, unbelievable amount of deaths, and another shitty government in power. Already, the new government is allowing American companies to come in for the oil. I’m almost surprised they didn’t let this happen sooner. So, it seems one of the final goals of this war, getting oil, is completed. Saddam is gone and oil is plenty. Could the Americans be any happier? Well, besides all the bloodshed and extra troops soon to enter the country. Apparently, Pres. G.W. Bush is/was making a speech on the progress of the Iraqi war tonight. Didn’t bother to listen as I know what he was all ready going to say. Blah blah blah. A whole bunch of misleading words. Lies. Lies. Lies. Well, Mr. Bush, I hope you’re happy with the wonderful country of Iraq you have given to the world. A big shit hole. And, Saddam was right, hell is now Iraq.

0.8 Christmas Isn’t About Santa It’s About Jesus!?

Oh, come let us adore him. Who? Well, apparently it is thought that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is the reason we have Christmas. Then, Santa came along and joined the Christmas party. What most people do not know is that Christmas is really about the Winter Solstice and not about the birth of a boy or an old man who flies around. The Winter Solstice is a pagan celebration on December 22nd that has lasted longer than most people realize. It was celebrated long, long before Jesus, and probably longer than even most of the Old Testament goes back to (how far it apparently goes is another story all together). The reason that Jesus’ birth is celebrated on December 25th would and should be considered a Christian propaganda scheme. If you look at everything the Bible tells you about what leads up to the manger scene, it is impossible for any of it to take place during winter. The most likely time would have been around May. So, how could these so-called great writers of the Bible make such a huge oversight? It’s not them, necessarily, it’s those who have interpreted it. Since the Winter Solstice was a great celebration for the pagans, having Christmas as this time only made sense. The idea behind Christmas was to overshadow the pagan celebration and to try and destroy it. It nearly has. So, why not have Christmas celebrated around May, when it more likely took place? Well, there’s no reason to. There are not major pagan celebrations to overshadow then. Now, from then on, Christmas has always been the reason to celebrate at the end of the year.

It is only recently that Santa has come into the picture, about the last 150 years or so. This, to me, is the pagans getting their revenge on Christianity. It has worked like a charm. Santa has taken over our culture. He is now starting to overshadow Jesus.

Christmas is now a two person party. Everyone is welcomed. Just remember how the party started.