I Resolve

2010 was one of those years. A lot really can’t be said for it.

Looking back at my blog posts for the year, you might wonder what was going on. Frankly, I am too. Not nearly as many posts as previous years. Kinda makes me wonder what I really accomplished last year.

I’m not really going to try to wonder why though.

I’m just going to start out the New Year fresh, with a positive outlook and happy for the life-changing miracle that God gave to my wife and I last year.

My daughter.

We’re currently in our final trimester, due April 7 – and totally ecstatic about our bundle of joy arriving healthy and ready to take on the world.

It’s definitely going to be life-changing. We’re both excited --- and scared and nervous too – but mostly excited about being parents. It’s something we’ve wanted for a long time.

We know we won’t be perfect parents. Nobody is. But we both already love this little girl more than words can say and are going to do our best to provide her everything she will ever need.

With that in mind, I’m going to start of the year with some resolutions.

I think technically you’re supposed to make New Year’s resolutions the first day of the new year, but I don’t think I’m really breaking any rules by making them a few days late.

So, here goes, in no particular order:

• I resolve to be the best daddy I can be – and be there for my little girl when she needs me and more
•  I resolve to be the best husband I can be – and be there for my wife when she needs me and more
• I resolve to lead a more healthy lifestyle – to eat better, to exercise, and to take care of myself better
• There is a big sub-resolution to this: I resolve to lose weight...
• I resolve to kick soft drinks
• I resolve to watch our money more tightly, not to eat out so much (but there will be special occasions when I will want to take my wife out), and not buy stuff that we don’t need. No more sudden impulse DVDs will be the big one.
• I resolve to spend more time with my wife – and focus on my family time more than time on anything else
• I resolve to stop bringing work home all the time and to not have that be the focus of all my spare time
• I resolve to stop getting on Facebook so much and to limit my time on it during my spare time
• I resolve to keep this blog updated more as time allows. I have a feeling a lot of posts will be made this year about my daughter.
• And I resolve to not stress so much over stupid things

We’ll see how I do.

Mouths Open, Brains On Standby

Two posts ago I said I was going to work on one called "A Tale of Two Idiots."

At the time, I had in mind to talk about Mark Sanford's current real life soap opera - and Obama's crazy health care proposal and socialist tendencies. But there's been some interesting things transpire in the last week and a half or so that a title change to "A Tale of Three Idiots" doesn't really have as good of a literary ring.

In question are the following cast of characters: Mark Sanford, Joe Wilson, and Kayne West.

They're not exactly a group that you would imagine would play cards together late at night over a bottle of scotch and cigars. I can't quite picture them all hanging out at a ball game together either.

They're just not what you would call "birds of a feather."

One thing they do have in common though is that they have each found themselves in the spotlight lately for not being able to control their mouths.

First off, let's talk about Sanford.

This guy has been shooting himself in the foot since (re)setting foot in Argentina in June to meet up with his mistress. It started off with his bizarre press conference when he revealed his affair. From there it went to disclosing more sordid details about his affair. He goes on to talk about his "soul mate." Then as people start to ask for his resignation, he gets defensive.

He must think that we're going to let this slide.

Well guess what Mark? It's time to resign. Your colleagues have tried to explain to you why this is going to severely impact your ability to govern over the final 15 months of your term. Just do it. Just resign. Stop back talking everyone. Stop running your mouth. Stop trying to justify your own stubbornness and why it's best to keep you around. Just let us move forward with Andre.

Should Sanford had disclosed all that he has? We expect our leaders to be honest and forthcoming with us. Which he ultimately was -- to an extreme, mind you. But to continue to serve as a distraction when you should have realized that you're continuing to serve as a distraction is irresponsible.

We look for leaders. Leadership calls for responsibility and honesty. Sanford's sort of a mixed bag on that.

Next up, Joe Wilson.

Joe is one of those guys who speaks his mind. Ordinarily, that hasn't been in such a controversial way as what happened last week when he yelled "You lie!" in the middle of Obama's address to the full Congress. He's a die-hard Conservative who I admire very much. I'm a big Joe Wilson fan.

Bad place to say that though, Joe.

What I think we all can learn from Joe's case, in particular, is that people should be able to and should question their leaders. They should be able to and should question policies and the logic behind them, whether it is a policy that is being proposed or already in effect. But you should realize there is a time and place for doing and sometimes you need to step back and think about that....And you shouldn't just blindly vote, support, or go with what is being handed to you without thinking it through.

Yes, calling the president a liar in such a locale as the the halls of Congress, in a forum such as a public address by the president to the fully assembled bodies of Congress is in bad form. No matter your personal opinion of the president (or any leader you have issues with), you should respect the fact that they are the president.

I respect the fact that Obama is the president. I respect the man. I may not like him, but like and respect are two different things and more people need to learn to differentiate between the two. With the President, in particular, you need to at show respect for the man and the position in which they sit.

Instead this whole Joe Wilson thing is turning into a political circus. Just like what Sanford has done by opening his mouth continually.

But, Joe, to throw yourself in he spotlight ... the negative spotlight, with no warning... have you been reading from Sanford's 101 Points For Personal Destruction?

Were Wilson's actions disrespectful? Yes. Was he wrong for voicing his opinion? Maybe, maybe not. But he did apologize to the President. And that should be case closed on it.

Leave it alone. The man doesn't need to be punished any more. He doesn't need to be censured. All that is is a political ploy by the Democrats to shame a man. I'm sure he feels ashamed enough as it is.

Honestly, I don't see anything wrong with people having an opinion. Everyone has them. Everyone is entitled to them.

But people really need to think before suddenly voicing their opinion in a manner or forum which is inappropriate and will hurt themselves and the cause which they represent.

Which leads us to offender No. 3 - Kanye West.

What Kanye did by taking the stage Sunday night during the Video Music Awards, interrupting Taylor Swift's acceptance speech, and belittling her work in front of the entire world was just complete and utterly disrespectful, shameful, and wrong.

Miss Swift is a young lady who was worked hard to accomplish what she has at a young age. This was her very first VMA -- awarded by an organization that has been so focused on hip hop, trash, and sleeze in recent years, who instead, on an amazingly positive note, decide to award it to a wholesome country artist. That alone says a lot.

This was her moment. And he took it away from her. That shows a complete lack of manners and respect for other artists.

Some in the internet discussion boards since the incident have called it racist. Whether it was racially motivated or not, Kanye should be ashamed of himself.

So what's up with all the bad behavior? Well, I can see how each could potentially think that they have nobody to be accountable to but themselves. And without the accountability I guess they think it's better to ask forgiveness than permission to act out of the ordinary.

In each case, though, there is a line of accountability. Wilson and Sanford to their supporters, the people who put them in office, and the entire constituency of South Carolina; West to the fans that look up to him, for whatever bizarre reason they do, and see him a a role model.

People in these types of positions are supposed to be role models. So what do we do with our role models? Do we discipline them?

We definitely should hold them accountable.

More and more political officers and leaders in South Carolina are calling for Sanford's resignation and trying to hold him accountable. Will he resign? Who's to know...

Should the House censure Joe Wilson? That is an obviously political move by the Democrats to put their finger down on the other side of aisle more and more. Is that really censureship or censorship? He's already apologized to the president. Now they want him to issue a public apology on the floor of the house.....Will he? Who's the know...

Should MTV let Kanye get away with his actions? Personally, I think they could take better steps to control the accessibility of the stage during events like that. Again, he's entitled to his opinion. But to opine in the manner he did, he probably would have been better off to sit in his seat and yell to the presenters "You lie!" Would he? Who's to know...

I admit my ideal outcome in each of these cases isn't consistent. But while the circumstances and back story in all three cases are different, the actions are very similar in nature.

All of these are just examples of why people sometimes just need to keep their mouths shut. Is it worth the trouble to cause trouble though? Really?

I guess it's just a case of people opening their mouths with their brains on standby.

Is, Was, Thinks, Feels, Wonders, And Possibly Even Says

I realized today that I've let certain things go a little too far....

By that I mean, especially, Facebook. Somewhat, blogging. But mostly Facebook.

There was a time when my friends and I would spend hours on the *cough* Internet... or really a dial-up computer to Clemson-area bulletin boards. The one I distinctly remember was called the Mechanics Garage. I always envisioned these being run out of dark basements, something like the Warlock in the latest Die Hard movie had. Some nerdy dude, with a sinister laugh, doling out Castle Wolfenstein knock-offs, the newest freeware version of Duke Nukem or Barney the Dinosaur plug-ins for Doom. It would take four or five hours to download a 1 Meg file. Such was the life of a computer game geek in the early 1990s.

Then there was Gopher and FTP. Brand-spanking new ways to download even more crappy games and waste more time.

Phase 3 was discovering interactive bulletin boards. I heard about this one called ISCA and decided to check it out. I ended up spending the better part of six years on it before it folded in the early 2000s. At one point, you could get on there and talk to any one of more than 1,000 people. The last time I logged in, there may have been 25 people online.

Along came the World Wide Web. This was cool. When we could get it to work. On the dialup accees to the Engineering VAX, we could run this program called Lynx and read all kinds of cool stuff from around the world. I cited a Department of Defense paper on Hezbollah that I found online in a paper for my Political Terrorism class once and my instructor asked me, "What's this? WWW? How did you access this?"

Then the levee broke. Graphical web browsing. You would hear that someone had gone in and put something called Mosaic on the the third computer over on the fifth desk in the second floor computer lab; or on the fifth computer from the door in the library lab. Massively cool stuff. Trying to get the same stuff on the computer in the apartment was another thing. Dial in to the VAX, start Winsock, initiate your TCP-IP stack, start up a SLIRP connection - I may be missing a step.... and I'm taking a long time to get to the point of this post, so to wrap this paragraph up - I've discovered that my newest computer toy has given me a totally new outlet and new outlook.

A friend of mine from church wrote an interesting article on Facebook a few weeks ago that was published in one of the local weeklies. It was on how she has started to think in terms of status updates.

What's your status?

I am thinking that .... I am going to sleep.... I am frustrated about... I'm wondering when someone is going to...

Ok, yeah. I've started doing that pretty frequently lately. I will see, hear, or experience something that I will then react to with a "that would make for an interesting status update or an interesting blog."

Now I know people who are on Facebook that could care less about getting on it more than once every couple weeks. I know people who spend several combined hours on it throughout the day. Left to boredom, I could probably spend the better part of at least several continuous hours on it.

I have the potential to spend a lot of time on it since I keep up a few Facebook pages for our college -- post photos, update events on them,etc. But I'm usually content for a few minutes on it to skim first thing in the morning, on my lunch break and once I get home from work. Then probably at least a little time at night.

So, again, I'm constantly going over in my mind "What would be a status update that would be funny, or interesting -- what could I say to make people laugh? what could I say to get a reaction out of a particular person?"

I got a Blackberry a few weeks ago that has Internet access. I realize that could potentially be a bad thing. I'm already checking Facebook on it when I get bored waiting on a prescription or pumping gas, situations where there is no real risk of death involved.

Today I was driving down one of our busiest thoroughfares in G-vegas when I noticed a local bank had, programmed into their big LCD along the roadside, a screen that said "Say no to TARP". My first thought was "Awesome! Gotta mention something about that in my Facebook status."

So I reached for my phone -- and then I realized: No, this is bad. I'm reaching for my phone to update my Facebook status while I'm driving. Not good. On various fronts.

I immediately put the phone back. Although once I got to where I was going I broke the phone back out and keyed in a new status before I had the chance to forget to do it.

Not that anyone really cares about what I think about the bailout or about opposition to TARP from an actual bank.

So despite the fact that I may not always be in a position to update my Facebook status, it appears that it's become a new outlet for my creativity to unload at random times.

I probably need to get a new hobby to keep my mind off of letting people know that my mind is on Facebook rather than on going to bed. Maybe I can talk my wife into letting us get a dog. Good luck to me on that though.

Oh, I just forgot. I've got an Atari 2600 emulator in the living room. Maybe if I start spending more time on that, I'll forgot about getting on Facebook so much and letting the world know that I just got a new high score on River Raid. Who knows.

Fighting the Fight

It didn't really hit me until I was on my way into work today.

I knew it was coming up, but in the rush of work and other things, I didn't realize that the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks was today until someone on the radio station I was listening to mentioned it.

Where were you that morning?

My wife and I were in the car on our way to work, listening to the radio when one of the DJs announced that an commercial airliner had just struck a tower of the World Trade Center. We listened as they were reporting what was coming over their wire.

Nobody knew what was going on - even when I got into work a few minutes later.

You would think at a TV station where people are supposed to be on top of things that someone would know what was going on. But things were happening so fast.

We watched as the second plane struck the second tower; as reports and video came in of a plane hitting the Pentagon; of another plane crashing in a field in Pennsylvania; and then as the Towers collapsed.

All you can think is "My God. All those people."

Throughout the morning false reports of bombs were flooding the national airwaves; phone lines and cell systems in New York and DC were overwhelmed.

When I heard of a suspected bomb at the State Department, my first thought was "Where's Tim?"

A good friend of mine who works (in Argentina right now) for the State Department was working in DC at the time. I hit the phone and started dialing. I kept trying to reach him all day. "Gotta find out if Tim's OK."

I finally talked to his wife around lunchtime and she said he was OK and that they were both at home, safe. Thank God. That was one of the biggest weights ever lifted off my chest when I heard her say that.

In our newsroom, you could see the reactions -- how people felt -- on their faces. But we had a job to do also. We did our job. We reported on how this tragedy was affecting our area of the country, our counties, our towns, our schools, our churches, and families --- how shocked, hurt, and angry we were.

All those emotions compounded on top of each other -- after the tears and holding your loved ones, watching the same footage over and over, you can't help but feel numb.

I felt that way for days afterwards.

They say each generation has one day that will define them. Some have more. For my parents' generation it was the day JFK was assassinated. I would venture to guess that the day we first set foot on the moon was one also.

For years, I thought that Jan. 28, 1986 would be the one that defined my generation - when the Challenger exploded. I know it had a tremendous impact on my life. I still don't like to watch that video.

Sept. 11 was defining moment in history - not only for the the youth of this generation, but for every American and the entire world.

We saw more flags, more patriotism, more support for one another, and probably the largest outpouring of sympathy and community that this country had probably seen since the attack on Pearl Harbor. I wish that all that would have continued on as strong even to now. But alot of the flags have since become faded or torn or put up in a closet; many of the yellow ribbons have been taken down or lost.

A few weeks later my wife and I were at a NASCAR race. Halfway through the race, they just stopped it.

Over the loudspeakers, the announcers say that it is being reported that our military forces have begun a bombing campaign in Afghanistan. You wouldn't believe the volume of cheers, applause, and screaming of "USA, USA" that was going on. Then President Bush came over the monitors and loudspeaker as he addressed the nation. And afterwards, more cheers, applause, and screaming of "USA, USA".

I will never forget Sept. 11, 2001. It still hurts us though. Some people don't want the hurt to remain. Different people remember and honor in different ways.

I noticed a few quotes in an article on FoxNews this morning that kind of struck me.

• "We've kept it alive, and perhaps kept it alive too long," said Charles Wolf, whose wife, Katherine, was killed at the World Trade Center. "How many times do you reopen the wounds?"
• "The remembrances have to continue; for how long, I can't say," said Barbara Minervino of Middletown, N.J., whose husband, Louis, died in the towers.

A former supervisor of mine has a daughter who watched from a nearby office tower as the World Trade Center burned, people jumped from windows 100 stories up, and the buildings collapased. It had such an impact on her that she went into counseling afterwards.

I know people and have friends that have fought in the desert of Iraq. I have never heard them question why we are there or what their mission was. Our mission is clear: Protect our way of life. Protect those who can't protect themselves. Foster Democracy in nations that have never known such freedoms.

I stand behind each and every one of our men and women in uniform. I support them; I love them; and I want them to come home. But at the same time, I know they are there for a purpose.

We can second guess our government all we want. That is our right. We can say that McCain will be a better president for this reason or Obama will be a better president for that reason. That is our right.

They can call George Bush every name in the book for all I care. They can complain about our military and our intelligence community's methods and tactics all they want. People can sit back and bitch about the Patriot Act all they want.

We can say that the War on Terror was justified -- that our actions in Afghanistan and Iraq have been worth it. You won't ever catch me saying they have not been. We can speak out against it. That is our right.

But it is our responsibility to remember the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001 and the families and victims. It is our responsibility as Americans to make sure that never happens again. It is the cross we have to bear.

We need this country to be secure. We need to keep the future our of country and of our children in mind at all times. We need to continue to fight to preserve our way of life.

A wise Vulcan once said, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."

Your may think, "Well I need a 47-inch wide screen TV, or I need a gas guzzling SUV or a pair of $150 pair of shoes. I need to go out tonight, dress like a skank, and party with my friends. I need to go yell at a referee and act like an obnoxious ass at a little league game." You don't really NEED to do any of that. It's your right as an American to do any of that; and that right is being protected by men and women in dark holes of the Pentagon, on the streets of Baghdad, in the warden's office at Guantanamo Bay, and in the mountains of Afghanistan.

If it keeps my family safe - if it keeps my friends safe - if it prevents my neices and nephews from growing up in a world where they worry about planes falling out of the sky to hurt them, then I don't care the lengths that our government has to go to in order to keep this country safe.

One of my all time favorite quotes was on the very last episode of Jericho: "That is the responsbility we've got here... Because that's how things get better and people stay free."

So let's go forward, remembering those who died on Sept. 11; remembering and honoring those who have died for us in the line of duty since then; remembering and honoring where we were, what we've learned and how we've grown; learning from our mistakes; and continuing to fight the fight that needs to be fought.

To Vote or Not to Vote

I hadn't planned on voting today in the primary.

There were 14 people running in primaries today for county level positions in Greenville County. Our local U.S. House district had three candidates on the Democratic side and two on the Republican.

There were four positions on my Republican primary ballot -- county sheriff, state senator, U.S. House representative, and U.S. senator. I voted for all four incumbents -- I personally know two of them. Aside from the fact that I honestly know my one puny vote doesn't really mean squat when it comes down to the final numbers and I don't totally agree with everything they've done, I feel both of them have done pretty good jobs and wanted to show them my support, so I voted Bob Inglis for U.S. House and Lindsey Graham for U.S. Senate.

I didn't know hardly anything about the incumbents' challengers -- or any of the people running for our county council (although my county council district did not have anyone on the ballot today anyway).

I know that I myself am to blame to a large degree for my own ignorance of those candidates' platforms. I haven't really taken the time this election cycle to research them - which is something each voter is obligated to do.

Can ignorance really be bliss? When it comes to who we put in public office, I don't think so.

Frankly, I also put a great deal of blame on the candidates themselves, the media, and the party leaders for not getting adequate information out to the public.

The daily newspaper I used to work for several years ago would always make it a point to do side-by-side profiles of all the candidates, whether for city council or U.S. Senate, on the local ballots. I can remember several times putting those together. We did that because we felt it was our responsibility to our readers.

Both the local Democratic party and Republican party in the primary county that newspaper served are very active and make it a point to support all of their candidates and educate the local voters through a variety of methods.

Having moved to Greenville County a little less than three years ago and not really knowing any of the local players, it's a different ball-game now. I really feel out of the loop.

From what I've seen, the Greenville County parties and the major local daily have a lot to learn about educating the public.

I've been a political junkie pretty much since I got into college.

From being in the Clemson University College Republicans; to volunteering on Lindsey Graham's first congressional campaign; to writing a weekly point-counterpoint column against a very tree-hugging, liberal fellow reporter; to actively working on getting a good friend elected to Congress (including long sweaty days of driving through five counties, digging holes and putting up 8' x 4' campaign sides and even carrying campaign materials to rallies that he wasn't able to attend), I've gotten to work with and know some people who are now in some pretty powerful positions.

But that's just me.... then there's the general public.

There are a lot of people that don't know a thing about the people who are deciding trash pickup fees or property zoning issues -and in turn don't feel right about going out to the polls and making an uniformed decision.

Admittedly, that was my pseudo-dilemma today.

Registered voters have at least made the conscious decision at some point that voting is somewhat important to them. If you are registered to vote, there is no excuse for you not to - unless you have an emergency come up that prevents you from getting to the polls.

I had to tell myself that today on my way home. I know I would have been guilt-tripping myself until November unless I voted today in the primary.

Of course there are a lot of people who don't feel it necessary to vote at all (or even register to vote). Voter dissatisfaction or apathy can be very powerful forces. But there are people in those groups who then turn around and bitch about what's going on when their city council, county council, school board, or their state and federal legislators do something they don't like.

If you don't like what your elected officials are doing, then get off your ass, fill out your registration (you can do it online now) and go to the polls.

I really can't wrap my mind around why people wouldn't want to take advantage of their right to vote.

I've voted in every election that in which I have been able to since turning 18. I've cast most of my votes based on my knowledge of the candidates' platforms. There have been a few instances in which I have voted against someone based on interaction with them. And I have voted for a few Democrats: case and point, in 2006 I voted for incumbent Grady Patterson over Thomas Ravenel in the SC Treasurer's race. We saw how well having Ravenel as treasurer turned out.

They're saying that the turnout in some of our county's precincts today was as low as 10 percent. That is truly pathetic.

We as voters may not always put people in office who in the long run are good for our city, county, state, or country. But we do have that right and responsibility to vote. Voting is the cornerstone of a viable democracy. It is the duty of each and every American citizen to register to vote, educate themselves about the candidates and go press that button on election day. We owe it to the people who fought for us to have that liberty.

So I'm making it a point between now and November to become as knowledgeable about each and every candidate that will be on my ballot as possible.

No One Title Fits This....

So Jericho came to the end of its -second and alleged final- season on CBS last night. My boycott against CBS (see my March 23 post) will continue.

Knowing full well this could be the final episode ever of Jericho, I watched it with nervous excitement having my own ideas of what would happen, seeing the plot unfold, and watching it with a wide range of emotions.

The whole show has had a lot of symbolism and hidden messages in it, from political to historical. It has kept me riveted.

I never expected when Jericho started to be as disappointed with the closure of a television show as I am now because last night's episode exhibited some of the finest television writing I have ever seen. From the ripping off of the Allied States of America patches from the soliders' uniforms showing their protest of the puppet government put in place by a powermongering corporation, to the show of respect for another man's loss of family... and I never thought I'd find myself saying something like this, but ... to the shooting down of two former United States Air Force jets by the Texas Air National Guard.

Throughout the whole episode, I was yelling at the TV. A 33-year-old man was getting misty eyed watching how well the humanity and the patriotism bled through the screen. I was screaming in frustration or hollering in excitement.

That, my friends, is television at it's best.

However, one of the most profound moments in the show came during an exchange between the two heroes, when the one, Jake Green, was asking the other, Hawkins, what was going to come of their actions.

Hawkins replies: "Whatever happens in the next few hours could determine the course of things for years to come. Maybe our history for the next hundred years. That is the responsbility we got here. And if that comes at a terrible cost, then so be it. Because that's the only way that things get better and it's the only way that people stay free."

Imagine these scenes:

• The morning of July 4, 1776, Philadelphia, PA, at the Pennsylvania Statehouse as delegates of the Second Continental Congress assemble to go over the final draft of a document called "The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America"....
• April 12, 1861, in the Charleston, SC harbor, as Confederate batteries are about to open up on Fort Sumter...
• December 7, 1941, in the White House as President Roosevelt receives word of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor...
• August 6, 1945, as crewmembers board the Enola Gay at Tinian Airbase in the Pacific...
• April 16, 1962, as President John F. Kennedy reviews surveillance photos showing Soviet missile batteries on the island nation of Cuba...
• November 22, 1963, as Lyndon Baines Johnson is sworn in as president aboard Air Force One following the assassinaton of President John F. Kennedy...
• August 2, 1990, as President George H. Bush receives word the the Iraqi army has invaded Kuwait...
• November 8, 2000, in the Florida election commission headquarters....
• September 11, 2001, in the Pentagon, aboard Air Force One, or in the FAA headquarters as civilian airliners are used as weapons of terrorism against the United States....

Think about what happened in a few hour time period on each of those days.

Government leaders, military personnel, and ordinary citizens all made decisions and put actions into place that have since affected American history and world history and will continue to for years to come.

In many of those cases, the cost of those decisions was in a particular hardship, political strife, turmoil, or signficiant loss of American lives. These are things that we must be faced to go through from time to time in order to sustain our freedom.

We've lost 4,000 servicemembers in the Iraqi theater in the past five years. We lost more than 58,000 in a more than 10-year period in Vietnam and the jungles of Southeast Asia. Nearly 292,000 American servicemembers died serving their country during our less than four-year involvement in the theaters of World War II.

We've seen that there can be a terrible cost for our actions and for how we respond to different situations - and that cost, whether in the past, present, or future, can or will be hard to deal with and cause tremendous heartache and doubt. But that's how things get better and people stay free.

Good Riddance to 2007

2007 was just one of those years that I'm glad is over.

2007 sucked - big time.

I can't really thing of anything that will cause me to look back fondly at that shitty year, other than:

• We did have some friends that had children in 2007. Obviously, that is a true blessing and we're incredibly happy for them.
• My parents did move down from the frozen tundra of Indiana to now just be 1 1/2 hours up the road in Charlotte.
• My sister found out she was pregnant. They're expecting in February.
• I made some new friends at work.
• My wife and I celebrated our 10-year wedding anniversary.
• Neither of our cars had to have any major work done on them. In past years, we've always managed to have something go seriously wrong with one of our cars.

Still, 2007 pretty much sucked. To top it off, it ended on a heartbreaking, totally shitty note with Clemson losing in overtime, nonetheless, to Auburn at the Peach Bowl. Damn.

I do find myself actually wanting to make some resolutions and stick to them this year. I hearby resolve to:

• Lose 25 pounds this year, start exercising, and stop eating so much junk.
• Spend less time watching TV and more time with my wife
• Make better financial descisions and not be so wasteful by buying crap that we don't need or big meals that we can't afford
• Actually use my vacation time to take my wife on a real vacation
• Start putting together a down payment on a house

So here's to 2008. It can't be any worse than 2007, but let's hope it's a lot better.

Mom! It's Not Right!

ROTFLMAO!!!!

My hat is off to LA. Superior Court Judge Michael T. Sauer for throwing Paris Hilton back in jail!

I shook my head in disgust yesterday when she was released from jail for supposedly having some sort of medical condition. Now to see today that pompous, self-righteous Paris Hilton's bubble burst and she wasn't able to circumvent the justice system is a flicker of hope for those who are tired of seeing celebrities get away with things.

Celebrities need to know that acting like a spoiled brat and thinking they can get away with anything they want is not acceptable. What is especially not acceptable is for the justice sytem not to do something about people defying the law three times. One time should be enough for someone to be arrested and charged for their crime. Allowing her to slide through two warnings and only be arrested on the third is completely unacceptable. People, regardless of their status, should have to face the ultimate consequences for every instance of every crime they commit. There should be no leeway for people who commit crimes.

Of course, there have been countless instances where people of status and celebrity have gotten away with infractions, crimes, and the disrespect of the justice system and/or people of lower socioeconomic status. O.J. Simpson is probably one of the most famous examples of this -- a murderer never convicted of the crime just because he could afford the very best attorneys possible.

I am so tired of celebrities and the status in which popular culture holds them. I am tired of wealthy people as a whole thinking they are better than people who don't have much money, of them holding their nose up in the air, of them showing off their money by buying the expensive cars and houses and throwing it in people's face.

I hope this will be a sign to celebrities and wealthy people that there is justice in this country. Having money may help, but thankfully there are judges like Judge Sauer who will put their foot down against celebrities, socialites, and wealthy people who commit crimes and make sure that the rules do apply to them.

People who commit crimes, regardless of the crime and their own personal status, deserve to serve the maximum sentence applicable under the law. There are many cases in which I feel maximum sentences are too light. But as long as law-abiding citizens have the power to influence the judicial system, we need to make sure that we keep judges like this gentleman in office and push for more stringent laws and criminal justice procedures.

Yes, the criminal justice system in America is drastically underfunded. Yes, our prisons are overcrowded. And I understand that those are two of the major reasons why the justice system as a whole lets people slide sometimes. We need to seriously address those respective areas. But at the same time, we need to address rampant leniency in the justice system.

Enjoy being in jail Paris. You deserve it.