ashlily

I love you for asking what I think and for supporting this movement!!

I feel like there are so many things that I want to say I can't even think where to get started. I have supported this movement since years and years before it ever got started. I was thrilled in September of 2001 when people stopped buying things, until the worst president we have ever had said it was "American" and "patriotic" to be idiot consumers, and to my horror people believed him. I have felt like this had to happen for well over a decade, but suddenly and all at once I can actually SEE my hidden majority be turned into flesh on the streets of every city with a pulse in this country!!!

Please GOD let this not stop. I will be so disheartened if this doesn't succeed. I am SO tired of the media giving everything Occupy related a negative slant no matter what. They talk about it, but not with any conviction or with anything but extreme caution and distrust. When 7,000 people marched to the Port of Oakland in a General Strike that is the first in the city's history since 1934, I was proud and amazed to be alive during such a historic time. I WORK at the Port of Oakland. It is my job to take the intermodal containers from the port on rail cars to make trains to leave the West Oakland Railyard. I am a freight conductor for Union Pacific and I am pleased as Hell to announce that we shut down the Port of Oakland completely from within and without (with the help of the Longshorman's Union) and Union Pacific as well as AmTrak and BNSF railways were all shut down for up to 16 hours. That made more of an impression on business and on the 1% than we yet know. They are so scared of us that they can't even reveal their true attitudes about it publicly or through their outright control of our media. The only way we see their true face and their real reaction is in the actions of the Oakland Police, who will stop at nothing to start riots and spread discontent to weaken the demonstrators resolve.

I know for a fact, because I have personal connections among the people who have been there, that the police instigated the two tear gas attacks they have perpetrated so far. In both cases they trapped the protesters in a confined area BEFORE telling them this was an "illegal assembly," which really is meaningless because this is exactly what the U.S. Constitution protects when it guarantees freedom of assembly...but I digress...after trapping the protesters and declaring the assembly illegal they gave them no route of escape as they tear gassed them repeatedly and with clear malicious intent. Scott Olson was not hit by accident. The police are shown in multiple camera phone shots taking aim and beaning him in the head. This is a travesty of justice. This is the very definition of police brutality. Why would anyone in America accept this from any police officer anywhere? Are we that apathetic?! Clearly there are a large number of us who are not, and I can only say I pray the numbers keep growing. I have said it for years, and I will continue to say it until it is no longer true: WE WILL NOT HAVE CHANGE IN THIS COUNTRY UNTIL WE RISE UP AND TAKE TO THE STREETS TO DEMAND WHAT IS OURS!!!

Oh, and to that guy above, I WILL FUCKING BRING THIS TOPIC HERE!!! What the fuck, dude? This is America and I will fight and kill and die for the right to say whatever the fuck I want. Can you deal with that? If not then you are in the wrong country. This is about free speech. I will NOT be threatened by anyone trying to take that away from me. That WILL be met with violence. I pick my battles wisely and this is one I am going to win. We will be back 10,000 strong until it makes an impression no one will forget...and if they bring an army to take us down, 20,000 will come the next day. It is ON.

You may want to check out Noro's page and contact her. She went to the rally in Oakland after the police riot.

HELL YESSS!!!!!!! I am in full support of your good political taste!!

I want to talk about occupying Wall Street. I want to talk about what you think gets hot, hot girls to pose naked on the internet. I want to talk about who you think you are and why you're so special, because personally I think you are and I want more ammunition to blast your opponents away...if you have any. Good luck on your master's recital, and that is awesome.

It is a big question!

I have never been afraid of the unknown, in particular, as ridiculous as it may be to say so. What truly scares me the most is the feeling that I might spend all my time here on Earth without doing anything of real worth or note. Even worse is not knowing if what I may have done could have long term positive consequences. I love the movie Dr. Strangelove (and all Kubrick's works, just about), but the way it ends is actually exactly how I DON'T want to go out!! I don't want to die doing something negative like riding a bomb to my own, and everyone else's doom. I love that you listen to NPR though, and I thought that was a really great day to be listening to the radio when they played various songs that were the ones people would like to go out to.

I guess that, right of the bat, the one that seems fitting to me would be The End, by the Doors (for brevity I would prefer the Radio Edited Version though, so I could have more time lost in thought afterward to be ready for the world to end). That song ends with a whimper and not a bang, which is much like how I imagine the real end of the world will be...if there is one. I am not convinced I think there will be one though. If you are a fan of physics, I would have to say that I believe in the theory that the world is just between big bangs now. I think that eventually we will just have the universe collapse in again and it will start over. I am not a proponent of the whole heat death theory of continuous expansion. It just doesn't seem right to me that there is not enough mass in quarks or enough dark matter to bring us back together eventually. The hopeful thing about that is the fact that we would still be in the beginning of the cycle of bangs if that is true.

As to what about death actually frightens me, I think it would have to be exactly what Hamlet said: "For in that sleep of death, what dreams might come?" I fear that for all things this brief flowering of life is all there is. I am not convinced that there is an afterlife to look forward to, but it is true that what we are is matter and energy that has always been, so there is certainly immortality in that. It is not the unknown that scares me, but that I might not really ever KNOW what life is, while I have it, and that afterward there might be no consciousness to appreciate what I had. What dreams may come? I may be trapped in eternal nightmare or else I might be lost without any recourse to my previous form at all. All I can say is that I hope there is some semblance of consciousness in the time after death, if just so that we can all know what we were in the scheme of things. I think Mellon has some real points. I think it is worth generating the legitimate concern for what might come after. I am not a highly superstitious person, but it seems to me that the value of religion is that it raises concern about the afterlife for the purpose of encouraging us to do our best here with the time we have. If you know you have done all you can, then the grand finale hardly matters. You will inevitably have the audience on your side.

I just recently got audible.com for my phone and have been listening to Alan Watts "You're it!", he describes the essence of life and death as being compared to the wave of an ocean, or for that matter almost any dichotomy can be looked at this way, from quantum physics to any metaphysical analogy. That the expression of the crest and trough are expressions of the whole system. You can't have one without the other. So being and non being are essential parts of the whole. You can't have life without death and knowing without the unknown. It's up to you and I how we use the moment we have. To live however you choose, awake or not, ultimately either is an expression of the universe.

canvas bags, its all about canvas bags

Take your canvas bags to the supermarket!

My thoughts exactly!

Honestly, we're all deranged to some extent. People rejoice in the killing of that which they fear; the problem is that they don't understand how things work, so they fear the wrong things. Bin Laden is like a scapegoatan Azazael that we can send off into the wilderness with all our sins on its back, in hope of peace. Nobody is thinking about how his mother feels about this (if she is still alive).

The trick as practitioners is not simply to notice how others are deranged, and criticize them for it, because generally they don't listen. The real potential in seeing this is to use it as a tool to look within our own hearts to see where our derangement lies, and to try to use the opportunity to break free of it.

And mine do as well

You sing opera? That's fucking awesome. I love going to the opera and am really, really excited about the upcoming season for the Cincinnati Opera.

Yea it should be pretty good from what I hear!

You neither have control, nor do not have control. We think that control is changing things as they happen, but that's not so. We don't have that sort of control. But we do have some degree of influence over how we respond to what happens. It is there that the struggle between suffering and joy occurs.

The only control we have is how we respond to a situation. Happiness is a choice. There can be joy in the darkest of times. The point is not to fear the inevitable dark which is actually light.

Thanks so much!

Too late for birthday wishes I am, but just watched the video: thank you, education IS fun it

It's an OK city, this coming form someone who was born and raised here. But I'm glad you had fun