A River's water of thoughts

Lost is coming back tonight.

Watching that preview thingy with the producers they do every season.

I'm fucking giddy right now.

Things have been hectic around here.

I started back to school, house is in worse condition and we are having to get sandbags and caulk up a lot of things. We had a 'flood' inside the house that went past our levy of towels through the kitchen into another room in which we had carpet.

It's been cold, so we had to keep reminding ourselves to leave the ceiling fan on to get rid of the mildew smell. Mom had used the new wet/vac (since the old one, which is bigger, stopped working) to soak up as much as she could.

I keep going in there and spraying the febreeze. We think there is no mold...but the room was being used for storage and all kinds of stuff are about. Even trash. It was my brothers room and before he left for Iraq back in 2007 he didn't clean anything and then the bar got shut down. So all kinds of stuff are in there. We really need to get in there and get rid of stuff.

Then we learned some really bad, horrific really, news. My sister-in-law's mother has recently been diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. Last week she underwent surgery to get the blockage removed and it was revealed that the cancer has spread more than we thought. There are spots on her lungs, her anus was 95% blocked, there is a few tumors on her liver but what was not known was that there was one inside as well that is nearly as big as her liver.

Me and my mother were taking care of my toddler neice while my sister-in-law was with her mom in the hospital.

What compounds all of this is that the mom, whom I've known most of my life, is uninsured. She had gone to the doctor some months previous for constipation. It got the point for where she was needing laxatives daily.

She had been having severe issues such as pain during bowl movements and bleeding when she didn't have pain. This had been happening for the past nine months.

The doctor didn't order any tests or anything and told her she was just constipated and it would go away.

The doctor should have kept in mind that two of her sisters died of cancer and one of her sisters has been on a coloscopy bag for the past twenty years.

So that's what's been happening recently.

How are you guys?

Holding Colleges Accountable: Is Success Measurable?

I kinda agree and I kinda disagree. I agree that for the mass education classes like English comp 101 et al that there should be a comparison between the universities. Especially on what they decide to name it.

When I transfered from my community college to UTSA several of my classes were basically the 'same thing' but under different names. Or I had courses that were split up in different ways, like government and earth history. I still took the same amount of material and time for them but because my professor taught the class in a different way it was different courses. Luckily for me my counselor accepted the courses as is and I didn't have to re-take anything.

So what do you guys think?

Healthcare overhaul could save money and boost jobs, researchers say

I for one think the best way to handle the job/health care issue to quit having employees provide health insurance and instead funnel the money into a public health insurance program. That way we don't have to worry about COBRA, unemployment health insurance, loss of health insurance due to loss of job, differences in cost/benefits due to job position, etc.

What has the republican party done for the country in the past 10-20 years?

So asks Tweety of Todd Harris big time pr guy for the gop and the answer? "Uh...when I write a book on the republican party I will answer your question until then I'm working on getting the republicans elected in 2010."

...

You could just say, "my dog ate my homework" and be given more leeway on an aswer than what you did there.

Like Tweety says, "Youtube is watching."

...Why the hell can't I get cnn or msnbc to embed?

The whole ten minute segment is worth it to watch it, but here is the awesomeness in condensed version.

Is it terrible of me to think "oh my god I wonder what they will show of it on animal planet" when I heard about this?

They gotta show it, right?

Damn, wish I had cable. I guess I will catch it online.

I do not fucking believe my ears. Rudy G. had the audacity to say that during Bush we had no domestic terrorism and during Obama we have one?

What the fuck? Of course we had domestic terrorist attacks during Bush. What about race crimes against Muslims? What about the rise in domestic terrorist groups such as White Power militas?

Fort Hood does not count as a domestic terrorist attack. He was a severely damaged guy, in a job he could not get out, he was not receiving mental health help for listening to returning soldiers nightmares and thoughts and suffering of ptsd, he was about to go to Afghanistan, he could not get out of the military, and he was seduced by a terrorist.

He is not a domestic terrorist in the terms of which Rudy is using them he's just another guy who went postal. He is a statistic in the lone-gunman murder/suicide shootings. Just the same as other mass shooting incidents.

Rudy you are an idiot. The reason why we have 1 in 5 of ex-Gitmos going into terrorism is because they were TORTURED BY US!! AND NOW THEY HATE US!

We need to treat our enemies better than they treat us. We HAVE to take the moral high ground or we accomplish nothing.

You win more flies with honey than vinegar.

Southern Schools Mark Two Majorities

ATLANTA — The South has become the first region in the country where more than half of public school students are poor and more than half are members of minorities, according to a new report.

We all know that the counties and districts are gerrymandered to put all the poor into one area and the rich into another because the rich typically vote republican. That then decides how the funding of the schools is distributed because it goes by how much the districts make off taxes and with the districts set up in that way then it perpetuates the class system.

I know that first hand. I grew up in the public school system until my mom pulled me out in sixth grade. I was failing English and getting C's in other classes. Yet in college I was getting A's and B's.

The South, desperate for a well-educated work force that can attract economic development, will face an enormous challenge in tackling on such a broad scale the lower achievement rates among poor and minority students, who score lower than average on tests and drop out more frequently than whites. Four of the 15 states in the report — Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas — now have a majority of both low-income and minority pupils. Only one, Virginia, has neither.

“This is the beginning of a very clear trend that has enormous implications,” said Michael A. Rebell, the executive director of the Campaign for Educational Equity at Teachers College, Columbia University. “When we realize that the majority of graduates of our schools in the long run are going to come from backgrounds with educational deprivation, it makes it imperative that schools be improved.”

And of course with the neo-cons religious nuts in the Texas Education Administration re-writing the textbooks this is NOT going to help matters. We are going to have more students ignorant in many essential categories that colleges require their students to have. A lot of what I learned in school was redacted by what I learned in college.

Especially the history courses.

The public school system is absolutely broken.

If I had kids I would put them in a private school. Even if it was a church one. At least I knew they would be getting an education. Or I might teach them myself. I learned off of this homeschool program...I forgot the name, but it was really good. Way better than what I learned in public school.

I pulled out of the 'conversation' when I realized I crossed a line. I was up all night. I was taking medication and I was upset. I have been in horrible fucking pain for the last twenty hours and I was not thinking straight. I was thinking about how nice it would be to get people's opinion on the news article and to have a philosophical discussion about things.

I know I went about things in the wrong way and was not thinking properly.
( if want to read the rest )
I tried to stop the wankage. Y'all are the ones who continue to push this.

And I DO NOT take kindly to remarks made in my personal journal such as this:

tattoo the words "complete moron" on your forehead, then kill yourself

:)

Whoever you are, since you refused to sign in to make the comment, know that you are one who will not let this go.

So go fuck yourself.

I'm done.

TMI: Why is it that my cramps feel worse than the time I fell out of a tree and nearly broke my back and ribs and was laid in bed for a month?

I swear to god I feel like I'm being stabbed and the bastard is twisting the knife.

This on top of all the other shit I caused today.

If I was a drinker now would be the time to get shit-faced drunk.

It's funny how one instance can totally wreck whatever you once had.

I don't think I'll be able to live down those comments I made. All I wanted was a conversation...and now it turned into a complete wankfest against me.

I'm half-temped to just delete the entire post.

But that will only pour oil on the flames.
( read on if you care to )

This post is in regards to this

Maybe I was in the wrong. Maybe I should have mentioned that I wanted to know why people thought the way they did and if in hypothetical situations this happened instead of that what would they think, would it change the meaning of the outcome and why it would.
( read more if you want )

This is the photography work of Yves Marchand Romain Meffre Photography.

There is a really excellent look into some of Detriots greatest and most beautiful landmark buildings and how they look today.

My favorite was the castle apartment building. It also pisses me off that these great buildings have been left to fall apart.

And that library! It has BOOKS in it! Why didn't they give the books to the poor?!

The Ruins of Detroit

ABC news report has a lot of information about the guy. CNN has video of the bomb squad.

I love this song and the movie, Toys, where it comes from. I think I'm going to raid Hulu tonight and find if they have Toys up, if not then Netflix. I want to see this movie again.

LL Cool J was awesome in it. Robin Williams and Joan Cusack as well.

The drawings are based on the awesome baseball manga Ōkiku Furikabutte (おおきく振りかぶって) otherwise known as: oofuri and its English name is Big Windup. It is published monthly and has a HUGE yaoi following. Read/watch it and you understand why Abe/Mihashi is so canon.

The song, I have no idea. I have a feeling it's based off a Japanese meme or something but I got no clue. Anyone have any ideas?

Do you guys understand any of this?

My head hurts looking at this... Is it even feasible?

Oo...Holy fuck. This is the plan to win in Afghanistan?! http://bit.ly/81IpO1

Disney won't let me embedd it so here is a link to it. http://bit.ly/5rjWwf

I wonder what the fandom will look like.

I got my grades back!

I got triple A's this semester! A 4.0!

FUCK YEAH!

My gpa is now a 3.889.

My first semester I got a B in one course, Brit Lit, and it's holding me back since. lol.

Peeps from the UK what do you think of this?

Is this a big thing that the report against Trafigura by the BBC has dissappeared off the BBC website?