Scum of the Earth....

So, I will start by saying I rarely pay attention to gossip blogs or their authors but today I was forced to take notice.
Perez Hilton finally said something that I can't seem to get over being irate about. I have a niece and nephew who grew up without a dad. My nephew was three when my brother died and I held him through the memorial service.

I held him while he screamed over and over "I want my daddy" he sobbed so hard his little body trembled in
my arms. I had to walk outside with him twice. This was March 17,1992 and I remember every painful second of that day like it was yesterday. The pain of the child in my arms was one of the most excruciating things I have ever witnessed. It made my own pain seem almost small in comparison. My eyes are blurred with tears now as I write recalling it.

Michael Jackson's children today are walking thru one of the most painful of life's experiences the loss of someone who gave them life. That loss is one of the most profound ones they will ever know and because they are so young they will bear the burden of that loss much longer than the rest of usually have to.

Most of us have had or will have our fathers live to see us graduate high school and college, get married,bear children of our own. These poor children, like my niece and nephew, will not have that blessing. They will grow up without their father's love,guidance,and support. They will grow up with the same hollow void that I have watched my niece and nephew grow up with.A void that can and will never be filled for them.

I cannot imagine if someone had referred to my nephew's display of grief and loss as a "show" what I may have done to that person. The punch in the eye Perez Hilton got recently I can assure you would pale in comparison. Paris Jackson wanted the world to know how much she loved her father and how wonderful he had been just as my nephew wanted the world to know he wanted his daddy back. They have a right to express their pain however they choose.

Michael's kids deserve empathy and our prayers. The road ahead of them is a long and painful one. As someone who has seen this first hand and spent most of my life trying to fill the space my brother left behind my prayers go out to his siblings. As someone who has watched her mother bury a son, I pray for his mother, Katherine.

Perez Hilton, you are quite possibly the poorest excuse for a gay man I have ever had the displeasure of encountering in all my life. You seem to have been born without the basic sensitivity your gay brothers and sisters all have. You have chosen to take a stab at the child of a man who fought tirelessly for your rights and fought on countless levels for AIDS causes worldwide. This, a disease that has taken the lives of some of the most incredible gay people the world has ever known.

Shame on you for being arrogant enough to think that you have the right to judge someone who's shoes you have never walked in. Shame on you for you lack of judgement and tact. Mostly shame on you for your failure today...not just your failure as a member of the media but for your failure as a human being.

I hope that the world and the celebrities who have given you their support in the past take notice of this. It is yet further proof or your lack of discretion. You will resort to attacking the innocent children of a celebrity if it suits you and you have shown over the years that no one exempt.

I am a very big supporter of the first amendment in fact it is my chosen field of practice for my law career. There is a basic law that all the world's most respected journalists adhere to. People like Edward R. Murrow, Mike Wallace etc. These "real' journalists know that sometimes just because you can say whatever you would like doesn't mean that you should!


This is his comment from twitter...
"Nooooo!!!!!!! Those kids should not be putting on a show right now. So wrong. They should not be speaking or on stage. So horrible."
It is on his page but I refuse to promote him by linking it.

Hipsters...

So I was at a club filled with sweaty young hipsters the other night and it prompted the question....Do these people bathe? I got mostly answers in the negative but then,Mike B. came in to enlighten me. According to Mike's amazing rationale there are 2 kinds of hipsters. The first being the "Real Hipsters" and they do not bathe. The second being the "Blow Dried Hipsters" who spend insane amounts of money to look like they don't bathe but in reality they shower daily. The things you learn at nightclubs..LMFAO

http://www.latfh.com/

Why ask Why?

Sometimes when things become clear to us we are no better off than before. "Why" is a question we don't always want the answer to or rather we want it until we have it and then wish we had never asked. How many times in my life have I asked why someone hurt or betrayed me only to find that the answer was simply that I didn't matter to them?
The answer is so profoundly hurtful it benefits no one. I would rather hear that I caused them some harm, even imagined harm, and they hurt or betrayed me out of spite. To do such things out of apathy destroys our faith in humanity.
We can all relate to doing something out of spite or vindication. It is a palatable but not pleasant concept but the mind does not recoil from it. There is nothing more cold and inhumane to face than that people we have loved do the most heinous things sometimes with no motivation other than that they simply don't care.
How do you trust anyone if you find that those you have loved the most and been the kindest to have only pretended to care for you to the same degree? How do you discern who is true and not just "working an angle" of some kind? How do you ever allow yourself to be vulnerable with anyone?How do you love openly and honestly?
Love is not something you can do half way or with conditions. It is something that must be done with an open mind and an open heart. In the world we live in now I wonder how people find the courage to take such a risk with something of such value? I feel like I have started to guard my heart with an armed firing squad. I hate that feeling.
I miss my openness but I, like most, have been hurt many times. Often it was perpetrated by those closest to me and I feel myself shutting down. Maybe the first step to preserving who I was before the damage is this moment.
I am acknowledging the hurt and choosing not to let it cripple me. I vow to make a concerted effort to learn from the heartbreaks and betrayals of friends and lovers but not allow them to destroy my spirit. I will not torture myself by asking why from now on. I am resolved to do my best to let go of what wreckage there is and take each new person at face value hoping my past has taught me something that will mean fewer heartbreaks in the future. Knowing why is the booby prize...

let it go
no more holding on
what will i let go of
the restraint
the object i should restrain myself from
he makes my mind melt
he makes my heart dance
he is my dream
but is he a man
he is a note
but is he a symphony
he is a kiss
but is he a romance
his fingers touch my skin
i am on fire
burning from within
dying to tell him to stop
living to have him touch me again
he found the sweetness
that is bitter in the end
will it all just fade away
he smiles sweetly
that razorblade smile
i beg to be cut
and bleed out lust
or maybe its love and
i lie to myself
maybe its a moment
let it pass
leave me burning
the pain reminds me
of music
dark,haunting
that melody
his song
my song
the opus
of the soul
two dischordant notes
find harmony
balance
beauty
in an ugly world
paint a masterpiece
change the course
of life
leave a mark
a ripple in the
universe
that echos
through eternity
she is idealistic
he is realistic
opposites attract
and sometimes repel
will they
time will tell
its the start
shall we dance
or end before we begin
least resistance
or greatest
the choice is his
i can't bear to make
him leave...

The winds of change....

So many of you are at least vaguely aware of my political history but for those who are not I will give a little bit of the backstory.
At 16 years old in Delaware Ohio I was still an idealogical girl who dared to believe that one voice in a nation so vast could have an impact on the entire poitical process. I would find just 2 short years later that this was the truth.
I campaigned for Bill Clinton before I was old enough to vote and participated in the largest political youth movement since the 60's. We registered 60,000 18-24 year olds for that election and I saw my candidate take the Presidency for the second time.
I had participated in process that instilled in me my faith in my country and my pride as an American.
I worked for Senator Kerry's campaign to raise the very necessary funds for the state of New Mexico which desprately needed the help. It was to be in vain!
Just 4 years after Clinton had taken his leave I would stand before a tv watching election results and feeling all the faith and pride slip away. They were replaced with despondence and shame.I had inteded to enter the once great field of law but in the first four years of the Bush administration I saw the law which I repsected and revered reduced to mere books on a shlef. A literary history of the cases that had set the precedent for how this once great nation had upheld its contsitution.
I watched the very fabric of the country that I had loved and been so secure within ripped at the seams. I had lost the sense of safety that being an amercian had once represented.More than anything I lost the most fundamental thing that being an american had given me and all americans...I lost hope!
With this 2008 election I have to confess to deliberately keeping myself in the dark about most of the details. I had also made a decision not to raise money or campaign, I had been disillusioned by the 2 prior elections to say the least. As the economy continued to spiral downward and I watched friends and colleagues and even many members of my family slip into financial crisis I had to turn my attention to politics again.
I am not a hater of all things McCain there are issues on which he and I agreed(Palin definitely excluded). However, I felt the long journey ahead for whomever was to be the next president would be a very trying one and I did not feel confident a very geriatric candidate was a good choice for the job. I started to study Barack Obama because despite the popular opinion that the color of his skin had something to do with his capacity to run the country;I personally prefer to judge all people on the content of their character.
From the struggles of his youth to his long road to the Democratic candidacy I really began to look at him as a man from beginnings as humble as mine with an equal amount of struggle strife to that of most Americans. I started to see him as someone who had indeed walked a mile in our shoes and could with compassion and empathy begin to rebuild our country with our support.
I now see him as a charismatic and inspiring leader who I hope will fill the very big shoes that i have imagined he will. He has inspired me. He has renewed my faith in my country not just because of his character but in one regard because of the color of his skin. That America elected by a landslide an African-American candidate is profound. It is the first time I have witnessed this country moving forward toward progress in a very long time.
I am sure that there are many people who thought they would not live to see such a day come. One such person is my friend Gary Avnet. Gary began his foray into civil rights activism on public record in the 60's but his story begins long before.
Gary was born to Jewish parents who were both first generation in this country. Their parents had passed through Ellis island.
He grew up in New York in a mixed heritage neighborhood where for the most part everyone got along. There was no bigotry and all the neighborhood's diverse children played together and grew up together.
When he was 8 years old he went to visit a childhood friend of his mother's in New Fork VA. Here he got his first taste of racism. He had to use the men's room and just as he proceeded to enter the door marked with a male placard he was seized by a man who said " Hey boy you can't go in there this bathroom is for Niggers, you go to the white men's bathroom." Gary had no clue what the man was referring to having never heard such a word before but did as he was told.
Gary eventually attended high school in the city and sat voluntarily next to the sole african-american boy in his math class not realizing until much later that people in the north in the 60's just hid their racism under sugar cookie smiles.
After graduating in 1963 he was to attend Columbia University's school of pharmacy on national scholarship in the fall. Gary had gone to visit family in California for the summer and in middle August 1963 when he flew home to prepare for the fall semester at school he reconnected with old friends. They had started to discuss going to Washington DC to participate in protests there and show solidarity to blacks in the south.
It was the time of Bull Conner. There was lynching and people being attacked by dogs for something as simple as wanting to eat at a lunch table. The nightly news was heavy with the stories of violence and hatred toward African -Americans. So in late August Gary and his friends met in the village and boarded the buses that would carry them to the Capital!
As they drove they began to spot picket signs protesting their journey. They were told there were enough state troopers to protect the buses but they were pelted with rocks repeatedly and one window was broken by a bullet.
When they arrived everyone scattered blacks and whites mixed and united and began to move as one unit with a common goal. "It was a great feeling" Gary says now when reflecting on the day!
When he and his friends arrived the speeches were just starting and he inched as close to the Lincoln Monument as he could get. When he could go no further Gary recalls that he "was too short to see and I found a tree and asked someone to give me a boost so I could climb to a better vantage point". He was about 150 feet from the podium. The sweltering heat took hold and many people fainted making him grateful for his seat above the crowd.
Harry Belafonte, and Adam Clayton Powell spoke and Gary intently listened as the moment approached for Dr. King to speak. Gary like all the others sat speechless and enrapt as one of the greatest Civil rights leaders in history imparted wisdom and words of hope and inspiration. "I witnessed and unprecedented spectacle" Avnet says today.
After the speeches when the crowd began to disperse Gary decided to cool off in the reflection pool. He and his group had a prearranged meeting time to be back at their bus. They all made it and took the long ride home. He recalls returning at approximately midnight and going to a local bar to reflect on the events of their day and they were hopeful that it would have an impact.
A short time later he would find that Dr King, the charismatic and sincere leader of the movement Gary had dedicated himself to had been shot down way before his time. It was a devasting blow to both he and all the other pepople who had believed in Dr King's dream of progress for our nation.
In the wake of this two Jewish kids who were acquaintances of Gary's were killed in Mississippi while there to protest. Gary himself had been part of a similar protest in the south. These were rare for Jewish kids due to the risk this often put them in with the often equally anti-Semitic racists. It became another event that stripped him of his idealistic goals to help rid our country of racial injustice.
Gary went on to Columbia and joined both the SDS or Students for a Democratic Society and the SNC aka Student non-violent Coordinating Committee . Both organizations were formed because many students were frustrated with the University administration's policies regarding civil rights protests.
While attending a demonstration at the presidents office Avnet recalls "things got out of hand" between law enforcement and the protesters. He spent the night in custody and has carried an arrest record since that night. He graduated June 5th, 1968 and after attended a party with his girlfriend returned home to find that his candidate,the late Bobby Kennedy, had been shot to death. This was a crushing blow to his reserve and started a long road fraught with disappointment with regard to our nation's progress and his efforts to help the country move forward.
This current election has been the most significant one of Gary Avnet's life for many reasons but first and foremost it is because he has lived to see his efforts bring the progress we are now experienceing and will hope fully continue. He has gotten back the abilty to use the word hope with regard to the state of out country and our lives as Americans.
I asked him how he felt and I thought it would be best to allow him to express it in his own vernacular. The following is his answer.


I have watched with horror the two previous elections and how they
were stolen by the Bushes... How the people of this country were lied
too , to bring on that horrible war....
So as this election cycle started and there was no incumbent running.
I watched the debates...My first pick for democratic runner for president
was Joe Biden.. After that everyone was the same......
I started to learn a little more about Obama, I was just interested
in how he carried himself... I started reading up on his background
and I guess when the Iowa caucusses were present.. I really took a
deep look into this man.. I did not want Hillary Clinton for many reasons
but, the thought of the First lady president vs the First Black President was
so intriguing to me.... I have been a member of Emily's list for so many
years, so I felt a strong compassion on the women side....
I do not know what day it was, but I started to recollect to my past
and as my closest person in my life was starting to fail and finally left
me, I became more passionate about the upcoming election and'
the implication of what would be good for America...
We needed a president for all the people and did what he said.
Was not afraid to talk to his enemies and Be all inclusive
That's Obama...
So I donated money to different states that would be the pivotal points in
the election for Obama... The day I voted here, I worked a phone
bank for PA and Ohio to get out the vote....
To say the least, I feel this country has so many problems and needs
a good quality President... When you look at his history, family, kids
It brought me back to the Heady days of the 1960s with JFK...
I am proud to be an American again and feel that tyrany has lifted.
We as a country have a long road to HO, till we can be sure of our
way of life.. I believe he will be the man that can lead us out of the
wilderness..
God Bless America
P.S Its very hard to see him as black in reference because this country has
come a long way.. when you look at Obama... He is the American Dream .

On the eve of his inauguration I have to say that I agree with Gary. President Elect Barack Obama is the American Dream and he is definitely my dream for the future of my country and my own progress as an American. So good luck Mr. President and thank you...

Just my 2 cents
N

For my Friends....

December 17th 2008

As another year comes to a close I have been reflecting on a lot of things. This year I think for myself and many people has been a particularly trying one. Between economic loss and what seems like more than average struggle and strife 2008 seems to have been less than easy for a lot of us.
When we have so much on our plates and each day brings more challenges than we have resources to handle its easy to contemplate giving up. Worse still we lose sight of the little blessings we all have that we take for granted during stressful periods.
Most of us to some degree have been effected financially by the state of our economy and for the first time we are starting to realize the true value of the "things' we have accumulated. I am sure many people are as surprised as I am at how little all the material stuff means now that priorities are changing.
None of us are any cooler because of what we drive, what we wear or where we live. None of us has built an ounce of character through the acquisition of "things". With people losing "things" left and right we are forced to look at one another as we are not as we were once perceived. Now stripped of our pretenses, life is giving us a chance to look at ourselves and those around us and take an honest appraisal of who we all are and what really matters to us.
I have learned I don't care about acquiring "things" anymore! I want to acquire success and happiness and both of these as I define them now not as I defined them in the past. I have learned that there is nothing more valuable than family and friends. When I say friends I mean real ones. The ones who have seen you at your most vulnerable and at your lowest and love you anyway. The ones who through thick and thin are always there to tell you the truth and then hug you when it hurts. The ones who you love unconditionally and that feeling is 100 % mutual.
With this being a tough holiday season for many of us I think the most important thing we can do is practice gratitude. Be grateful for your friends and family. Be grateful for a year that made us all come to terms with how shallow we have been for so long. Say thank you that we have a whole new year coming up to use these lessons to become better people. We have a new year to start over and find success and happiness that is real. Somehow I think we may all find the world a much better place soon.
I wish everyone Happy Holidays and a new year filled with what really matters....



A New Year’s Prayer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anonymous

Dear Lord, please give me…
A few friends who understand me and remain my friends;
A work to do which has real value,
without which the world would be the poorer;
A mind unafraid to travel, even though the trail be not blazed;
An understanding heart;
A sense of humor;
Time for quiet, silent meditation;
A feeling of the presence of God;
The patience to wait for the coming of these things,
With the wisdom to recognize them when they come. Amen.

Fair Weather!

December 14th 2008


I am puzzled endlessly at people in LA who despite professing absolute loathing for certain people; continue to treat these people with a sickeningly sweet and fake politeness. I don't get it. If I don't like someone I don't have make a scene but I certainly am not gonna pose for pics smiling like a mannequin and write them sweet little responses to their comments on facebook and myspace.
I guess maybe its because a lot of people here like or dislike people for very shallow reasons. Stuff that in the grand scheme of things really doesn't matter. If you dislike someone enough to spend a lot of time talking shit about them don't you also know professing your unyielding support of them in a public forum and in photos makes you look like an ass?
Why say anything at all? I am always one to believe that tact and grace are important but so is being true to who you are. Always better to be a honest person good or bad than pretend. Particularly if you have made the mistake of being very vocal about your true feelings about the person you are being falsely nice to. It makes those around you who you chose to unload your true feelings on question not only whether you are simply a two-faced shit talker but whether you may actually have a screw loose. Worse still, and I know I have wondered this... whether you are so desperate to be liked by all that you will tolerate someone you can't stand rather than be honest and alone?
So if i interrupt anyone in mid-mud sling no one should wonder why....It's because I saw the pics of you and "them" from last night and your cute little wall post this morning and I just don't wanna hear it!
Just my two cents!!!!