A Better Article

On Friday's news.
Wow. it takes one disturbed POS to think that murdering random women in Seattle is going to help fix Israeli foreign policy, or anything for that matter.

Disturbing

Seattle has made international news today.

From King 5

Rev. Sanford Brown, Church Council of Greater Seattle Executive Director, expressed shock, grief, and sadness...We pray that there will be an end to violence against Jews all over the world... Seattle is a place of interfaith understanding and cooperation."

The next piece of news I read was this:

From BBC:

Briefing the Security Council on Friday, Mr Egeland said some 600 people had been killed by Israeli action in Lebanon, of which around a third were children."

It's been horrific... There is something fundamentally wrong with the war, where there are more dead children than armed men," Mr Egeland said.

Something was missing in the Rev. Brown's statement: "We pray that there will be an end to violence against Jews all over the world."
Forrealz. I agree.
I also agree there needs to be an end to violence against Muslims all over the world. Or perhaps an end to hate-crimes all over the world. I find it shocking that the Rev. did not perhaps say, "We pray that there will be an end to violence between Jewish and Muslim people around the world," or something to that effect. Was it just the juxtoposition of these two articles that bothered me? Granted, the Rev.'s reaction was about a pretty specific crime. The comment was about international events though. It's the silent jump from local-international problems that leads me to believe that his knee-jerk reaction was tinged with some bias.

It's worrysome to me that his statement reflects a blatant disregard for the fact that the worldwide violence he speaks of is happening on more than one front and between faiths. It also seems to disregard that ALL OF IT, not just that which is committed against one group of people, is resulting in a completely tragic loss of life.

It can also be noted that King5 made sure to get statements from the Jewish community and the Interfaith community, but not the Muslim community.

Update: It should be noted that the news later clarified the shooter's religion. Day-of news reported a witness quoting the shooter saying, "I am Muslim," and then reporters found out he had converted to Christianity. Now King5 states: "His father, an engineer, founded an Islamic center there, but Haq did not often practice the religion, acquaintances said." hm. I guess I gotta check my assumptions too!

Shit

Here's the Seattle Times article on today's ruling.

It really is a sad day. Not only because domestically our government keeps taking steps backwards in civil rights issues, but also because abroad (and domestically, it can be argued-but that's another story) the US is SO WILLING to sacrifice other peoples' lives who are in danger NOW in exchange for a greater peace that might come LATER in some indefinite amount of time...

Love that smile Condolzeeza. What does this non-spasmic peace you are favoring look like? What are we willing to do as a nation to attain it and is it really necessary to condone innocent deaths in the meantime?

Would you be smiling if you were stuck under this rubble and someone told you, "Yeah - we're gonna have to wait on asking those folks to stop trying to kill you. If you live long enough, you might find a more meaningful peace later! Just waaaait for it...."

A Prayer for Gay Marriage

Cross your fingers for tomorrow's supreme court decision, since it has been made apparent to us that logic and reason no longer play a part in the other branches of the government.

Without further ado:

I pray that the Washington State Supreme Court Justices have the wisdom and compassion to affirm the rights of us all by recognizing the marriages of us all, regardless of whether or not we have matching genitalia.

Give them the strength to acknowledge that legal recognition of marriage and marriage rights should not be an un-earned privilege for only those who want to marry their opposite sex partner and that by legally privileging only same-sex couples, we are denying the humanity of our brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, and selves.

Guide them to realize that this decision is not only about the definition of marriage in the eyes of the law, but is also about how much hate our society is willing to allow. Please let it be none.

Amen.

We're all gonna die!

Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, was scary and awesome.
It made me go here: www.undoit.org,
and it reminded me that I need to get on action lists that write to political officials and important policy makers like this: www.environmentaldefense.org.

If you can't muster up sympathy for all the people that will die and be displaced and all the areas that will be flooded, at least feel bad for the polar bear.

How our society is going to muster up enough cojones to have a complete paradigm shift in how we think of our relation to the Earth and affect global policy is a mystery to me. I'm glad Al Gore is doing his part and inspiring others to do theirs. It sure is an uphill battle though - I mean... all those gold bars are at stake!

Masochistic Robots Identify

So I went in for my MRI to check out the soft tissue in my R shoulder. After I was in the tube for awhile I started to imagine that the loud noises the machine was making were robots talking and/or techno music. One of the things it kept saying to me was "DAB DAB DAB DAB DAB DAB DAB...." and then it would change and say "bedeedeedeedeedeedee!" and would be interjected with "blaaargh blaaargh blaaargh."
The low tones and the vibration put me to sleep in a second. While in that state I must have twitched because it ruined one of the images... D'oh!

Follow up with the orthopod was today and he told me, "Nothing's wrong with you! Strenghthen it!" That actually tells me that SOMETHING is wrong with me - even if that something that's wrong is, "Your right shoulder is as weak as a 3 year old child's."

Weak. The orthopod didn't even indentify any of the actions I make with my arm/shoulder that truly cause me pain, which leads me to believe I was, once again, either a non-squeaky wheel patient, or I'm really a total wuss.
So is this one of the main problems of health care in general?? Quality takes time, but doctors are like taxi drivers - they'd rather pick up a bunch of customers and collect their tips than spend a long time trying to give quality service?
hmmph, well I don't know if that's true, but I have experienced that multiple times in my experience as a patient and each time I tell mysef, "be a more assertive, educated patient," but it's so hard to fight the current.

In any case, I will go by his recommendation and try to strengthen it. I will also explore acupuncture and resume my work with my PT and LMT I guess - once I give the insurance company a call and make sure they'll cover me. That's another adventure in and of itself. BLEH.

Being a patient sucks - especially when you're getting smoke blown up your ass.

Well - on the plus side, at least I don't need surgery. The x-ray showed nothing broken and the MRI showed nothing torn. Oddly enough, the injection for the arthogram seemed to reduce my pain by quite a bit. Maybe I was just high of the epinephrine.

Is it the Wizard of Oz?

I'm watching Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and it's more awful than I imagined. I wanted to be able to say I've seen all the movies, but I am only watching this one in the background because it's intolerable. Next up is Wrath of Khan.

Anyway, I really got on here to post to my big brother's angry blog.

For the record

Me and J fighting in the pic below was just a setup. The best part was when J told me to hold M's (The blond one's) hands down so she couldn't catch it. haha. She probably would have killed me if she didn't actually catch it. When I grabbed her arms she was remarkably quick and set herself free yelling in a piercingly high pitched voice, "nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!"

Anyway, an update on my awesome health: I finally went to the Dr. and got a referral to see and orthopedist. I go tomorrow morning and I'm hoping they tell me it's something easily fixable.

Bleh. I have nothing else exciting to report. Summer in Seattle has ruined my ability to be articulate. Oh, I did meet with a city council member staff person in my attempt to boost my civic involvement. The dude was about my age and pretty relaxed. When he asked me serious questions, like about what CR issues I care most about, what I see are the major problems facing POC today, how do I feel about the criminal justice system, my reaction was like,"Wha?? What problems? It's so sunny! Let's go to the beach!"
Oh well. I think he still had a somewhat good impression of me and when I was leaving the building I overheard them talking about me on their way out. heh.

Meh, I am guessing I will meet with them again. I should probably read some news next time to get more fired up. Perhaps I'll read it at the beach...