Weblog

It's 5:00 AM CST where I am. I'm just waiting around in my good friends', Pete and Oliver, room for morning to come when I can travel back to the great state of Colorado. While they sleep, Oliver has graciously allowed me the use of his computer from where I'm writing this.

I forget how, but the subject of Jimi Hendrix came up as I was talking to my girlfriend yesterday. Jimi Hendrix was, without a doubt, the greatest guitarist who ever lived. As a person, however, he lived a life influenced by LSD and some other freaky stuff. As crazy as that sounds, I'm interested in obtaining one of his CDs.

If you ask anyone who knows Peter what his favourite band is, without a doubt, you will hear Dave Matthews Band. As much as I find their music full of talent, I refuse to buy any of it due to Dave Matthews' support for abortion. That is one issue that just puts my opinion of anyone very low.

Here is where the hypocrisy arrives: if you ask anyone who knows me what my favourite band is, you might hear Delirious? or U2. I greatly admire U2's musical ability as well. I already have several of U2's albums. What's the problem? The problem is that U2 is closely involved with Amnesty International. Amnesty International is a humanitarian group with several admirable goals. However, one of their less-than-admirable goals is the abolition of the death penalty throughout the world. Being someone who believes that the world needs to be tougher (Imagine that: tougher on the death penalty.) in putting murderers to death. However, I still manage to buy U2's music.

My œconomics professor said that he didn't believe in dirty money; people are only responsible for what they directly pay for. Peter says, “I buy the music, not the man.” When I hear things like that, I feel better about myself buying U2's music, but I still can't push myself to buy a DMB album because of their abortion stance. It seems natural to be, but it also seems illogical. I wish that I knew everything, but I don't. This appears to be one of those issues where I just don't know what to do about it.

I use my website to complain too much, but who reads this anyway?

I'm sick of the Pledge Of Allegiance. Why pledge your heart and soul to a godless nation that lets mothers kill children and homosexuals boink?

Anyway, I said all of that to say this: I was thinking of something today. It happens to be the institution where I spent the last seven years of my life: my beloved high school. (It was a middle school too, so don't think that I just failed the tenth grade twice.) As a part of their patriotic “bull honkey” (a term that was coined at that school), all students were required to recite the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the nation for which the Ad. held an unquenchable admiration and was, coincidentally, the most evil institution as far as education. When the idea was popular to remove the words under God from the pledge, the school was ticked to the degree of organising a boycott on Dr. Pepper for leaving the words out of the pledge when it was printed on their can. It's worth noting that Dr. Pepper removed twenty other words from the pledge and left six on the can.

I can only imagine what would happen if the two words were ever removed. I think that I have a pretty good idea. The school would protest by reciting the pledge with the words still in place. Think about this: firstly, if you were so devoted to the idea of standing by a nation, wouldn't you obey the nation's decision if it involved saying the pledge the way that they want to hear it? Secondly, do the words really reflect truth when it's said that the nation is under God? Thirdly, does it really seem right to place our allegiance in a flag? Think about it: it's a frickin' piece of cloth.

I remember how we used to make fun of the Jewish kid in kindergarten for not saying the pledge. Now, I wish that people would have made fun of me. Ignorant fools!

I believe in putting murderers to death. I believe that abortion is murder.

Can you tell where I'm going with this?

With logic like this, it's a miracle that my roommate last semester didn't end up dead. From a third-world country, he seemed to be under the impression that abortion was not only acceptable but helpful: instead of having unwanted, unloved children on the streets without a home, it made perfect sense to just have the children killed. Logically, where does this lead? Why not just kill the unloved and unwanted children now, born or unborn? Peter Singer, a professor at Princeton University, says something along the lines of “Why not? While we're at it, kill elderly, Alzheimer's patients too? But don't eat a harmless chicken”. Once you can convince yourself that killing unborn children is okay, you shouldn't have any trouble telling yourself that infants, children, teenagers and anyone can be killed.

People make the argument that abortion should be legal so that it can be safely administered to people instead of going to back-alley shops where their life is put at risk. Well, if there was a mother that was sadistic enough to murder her child just because her unborn son or daughter is an inconvenience, the mother's health wouldn't be at the top of my priority list. People say that the emotions that drive woman to do such things are difficult to be overcome. I say, so what? When my girlfriend says, “Women are emotional.”, I hear, “Women are irrational.” Let's look at what emotions have done: emotions of hatred killed six million Jews, Roma and handicapped people. Emotions of fear led to the Pearl Harbour attack. Emotions of anger destroyed the World Trade Centre. Emotions of disgust killed one million people in Rwanda in 1994 while emotions of apathy in the rest of the world just let it happen.

Don't believe that people are slaves to their emotions. Rather, we should be in control of them. Instead of letting emotions of fear, hatred and anger control our lives, let our lives control emotions of faith, hope and love. Let hate control your life, and you'll have no excuse. Let your life control your love, and you won't need an excuse.

I can see why downloading music is such a problem for so many people: it sounds good. Music has a way to tamper with our minds and mess with our emotions. Music can make us sad, angry, pensive, euphoric, content or wild. Music can make us think about things to which we might not normally give a second thought. Music can give us an enjoyable feeling that can become addictive to the point of repeating the same track over and over. Music can encourage us during times that otherwise, we might not have gotten through. Music can describe conflict, beauty and depth in ways just like literature can. Music can be a means of expressing a viewpoint and influencing others to see things a certain way. Music can remind us of times in our life that we can look back upon with delight or regret. Most importantly, music makes rock stars rich.