The Original 7 Deadly Sins + 3, Part VII - Pride

http://www.peripheralperceptions.org/2012/05/01/p-is-for-pride/

Finally!!  We saved the best for last, right?  Oh...no....wait...I forgot I told you +3...and those are still yet to be discovered....at least by you, anyway.  But, of the original 7, they say?  This be the baddest of  all.

So what about it?  What is the absolute definition of the word?  Vanity and pride are often used synonymously, but are by no means the same thing.  And is all pride a bad thing??  Nooo...no, if you're proud of the way your car looks after you detailed it for 5 hours, that's not a pride to be worried about.  If you're proud of how well your kids are doing in school, that's not really the pride we mean here.  It's when arrogance enters into your pride, that's when the problems begin.

If you're proud of the way your kids are doing in school, great.  If your kids are better than everyone else's kids, you're in need of a good head pop.  If you have pride in your country, that's ok...it's when you think you're the world power, and no one is able to take you, that's when your pride needs to be brought down a peg or 1000.

The thing to remember here is that #1 can become #100 in no time at all.  You may be the S*** of computer graphics this week, but next week there might be 1000 more just like you, and ten of those will have you beat by a mile.

Everything you do changes when arrogance enters the picture, you notice that?  When you first win the football championship, you can't hardly believe you finally did it, and you're grateful to those in your team...that you worked together, and your work paid off.  The next year, it was no surprise, we did it last year.  Then you start bragging the next year.  Then it gets old.  Then others get tired of your boasting...then people start rooting for the underdog; they almost secretly start wishing you'd lose so they don't have to put up with your attitude the rest of the year.

It all comes around, trust that.  Those who think they're irreplaceable, get replaced.  Those who're making $100,000 this year get fired the next.  Those with homes get foreclosed and are staying at the homeless shelter the year following.  And the number one biggest country in everything gets brought low when they start thinking there's no better.  We Americans are, all in all, arrogant and ignorant when we talk about ourselves.  We are some of the more guilty of all when it comes to national pride. Fame is fleeting.  Money isn't everything, and usually ends up costing you more than it helps.  Friends are fair-weathered.  We often make the mistake of thinking that quantity beats out quality, this is a real issue in today's age.  Also, holding on to your glory days is a sin all in itself.  It's hard to move on or to improve yourself, if you keep re-iterating how great you once were.

As for vanity, well, you can be proud without being vain...so that creates a bigger gap between the two words.  There can be vanity involved, sure, when we talk about your haughty pride, but vanity isn't the same thing, not by a mile, and most certainly barely covers even a quarter of pride's definition.

Humility, the exact opposite of pride, or, rather, the lack thereof, is where pride...at least the SINFUL type, enters in.  Going back to the pride in your children thing, if you say "I'm so proud of Johnny, but he couldn't have gotten to where he is without Ms. Shalin as a teacher"; you give some credit to others, therefore don't suffer from the destructive type of pride.  It's when Ms. Shalin is incidental and had no part in how well Johnny did that your pride may very well be your downfall.

Remember America, no matter how well you've done, there's always someone out there that does it better.  We may not know it as yet, but you can bet that someone's out there.  If you're good at something, someone has you beat...someplace.  If you have gorgous hair, someone has more of it with more shine.  And if you're adamant about how great you are, then watch out, because someone, albeit full of humility and graciousness, may just opt to best you, in order to bring you back down to earth with the rest of us earthworms.

The Original 7 Deadly Sins + 3, Part VI - Wrath

http://s579.photobucket.com/user/george1138/media/sin/wrath_5.jpg.html

Two more Original Sins to cover kiddies, and it's just now getting pretty good, huh?  I'm tempted to start over, just for job security....but naw, I wouldna wanna do that sorta thingy.

So here we are at Wrath...another one o' my all time favorite Deadly Sins, of the Original Seven that is.  Why, should be pretty damned obvious.  You see, There's an awful lot wrong with our America of the...what's the official term for this decade?  I didn't know the one for the last one either, I just called it OhOh's, and hoped I was close.  Oh well, you get the idea, right?  Anyway, I'm a bit wrathful as it is.  Add  to that the 100+ things wrong I've already dreamed up in this blog, the DHS war I'm in the middle of, stir in a dash o' Jacque Karlson and her puppet husband Morten, sprinkle in my continued (and probably semi-permanent) unemployment issues, a rather large order of Mock-President Obama, ObamaCare, War, my stress levels over homelessness, animal abuse, greed, corruption, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., OMG!!!!  How is there any UN-wrathful stuff left to enjoy?  Where did all the good times go, HUH????

All you gotta do is watch the news or follow your Twitter feed for 3-5 minutes, and your fists ball up, your blood vessels burst, and the smoke begins rolling out of your ears.  Next thing you're fuming over your choice in wallpaper for your kitchen last month, and you begin ripping it off of the walls with a vengeance.  It's all you can do, when your wife comes in and screams "What in the HELL are you DOING?", to not throw a barrage of pans in her general direction...and all because you just don't understand what's going on anymore.  Welcome to the American Nightmare of 2014 and the years to come my friend, and join the club.  In case you've yet to notice, there's an awful lot of currently wrathful Americans out there right now...and I'm afraid it's only gonna get worse.

Ya, we're in a bad spot, a rock in a hard place, if'n you will, about to jump off the cliff into a place that sports a year 'round balmy 400-500 degree temperature increase over what we have currently, all because we're just plain pissed off...about EVERYTHING...shoulds't the tale be true.  But really, I gotta wonder, is it really wrathful if it's JUST wrath...should there be such a thing?  Don't we have a right to be truly angry about this stuff?  I really don't know about that one, America.  I'm not sure I'll ever know.  You see a lot of examples of JUST anger in the scriptures; and not just Christianity, in all religions.  And God wreaks wrathful havoc a lot, it would seem, should you read up on it.  Is it the JUST kind of wrath if it's God's wrath?  Who knows.

I'm afraid I'm just not too sure about anything concerning not only the true definition of Wrath, or if it comes in leaded and unleaded flavors or not.  All I know is that it can't be good.  Wrath, in and of itself causes quite a few heart attacks and strokes, should it be over-dosed on, as for us human types anyway; so it can't be too just, at least not for us anyway.  Again, who can say.

All I really CAN say is, that as we get more and more upset, nothing else seems to matter much, and it carries out and rolls down into small things that we really shouldn't be bothered about; it consumes us, as well as everything that happens in our daily lives, and believe me when I say that it most certainly isn't a good thing.  Left to its own devices, wrath can grow into big kids like murder, or settle into lower lying chunks like depression, self suicide and mutilation.  Be mad about the shape of our country and the people that destroy it daily, sure...just don't get wrathful about it if you can help it, OK?  Try something new, like, oh, DOING SOMETHING ABOUT THE THINGS WE GET MAD ABOUT...either that, or invest in as many hobbies as you can to take your minds off of those problems.  I rarely recommend the 2nd part of that suggestion, however, only because that sort of behavior seems to more promote the "spectator" effect in us, where we just ignore what's going on and hope it doesn't affect us in the process.  I hate to say it though, there doesn't seem to be a hole we can possibly dig that's deep enough to hide our heads into anymore, America, just about EVERYTHING affects us anymore.  Believe me, I get that.

You want to avoid wrath, for no other reason, that it will destroy you, all those around you, as well as everyone you associate with, and no one knows that better than me.  You know what I used to do?  I used to smile whenever I got mad....and that always tends to make the mad-maker mad instead of you.  I remember I used to get kind of a perverse satisfaction out of that.  I think I'm going to bring back that solution where I'm concerned.

One more Original Deadly Sin to go.  See ya soon y'all.  :D

http://wp.patheos.com/community/jesuscreed/files/2011/03/Wrath.jpg

The Original 7 Deadly Sins + 3, Part V - Lust

http://dantecyberman.deviantart.com/art/Seven-deadly-sins-442680725

Hey kids!!  On we go again, eh?

Now, it's time to move on to my favorite of all the deadly sins, Lust.  Lust, as defined, is simply an intense desire for something.  Or someone.  However, Lust, unbeknownst to most, is not only a sin of the flesh, other things can be lusted after as well, such as power, money or fame.  Well hey, no shortage of lust around these parts then, eh?

Just for something a little different., though, I just thought...since it's obvious that we all believe that lusting after one another is the biggest side of lust, that I'd do just a little digging into what might just be causing this little overdose into one of the more deadly of our sins.

Our number of porno-style magazines we herald as being our biggest most widely purchased mags?  Around 42 well-known ones.  Human trafficking is horrendous in our country...as well as with Americans traveling to other countries.  The average age of women in the U.S. to enter prostitution?  13.  Men?  12.  Video and Internet porn and prostitution are among the largest money-making professions online.  Gee, maybe that's it, right?  As for the ages we're introduced to sex, well, for most, there isn't a number anymore.

As for lusting after power, you know we can't be beat.  Money?  Ask Greed and Gluttony if they're not getting enough to feed on in our country; you should get a goodly chuckle.  Fame?  Illegal or not, you know us Americans just LOVE the spotlight.

I dunno about you all, but I fear for the safety of every new generation more and more with every passing decade.  Humans are getting more and more destructive, more lustful every year.  It's not dog eat dog anymore, it's dog consume, boil, hang, electrocute burn, and stomp-on dog these days.  It's no good anymore to just ruin others or bring them down, we have to utterly destroy them too, or its just no fun anymore.

Wow.  I can just SMELL that fire and brimstone mixing with my burning flesh....Mmmmm....YUMMY.

Well, really though, I feel this is just one of those sins that we can make fun of; in only just a little, just to shake off that doomy feeling, huh?

Since men are the worst offenders of Lust, just for fun, here's a little test you're more than welcome to take if you really want to know if you are, indeed, a lustful individual.

1.  If, late at night, as you start thinking about your neighbor's wife, your best friend's girlfriend, or Jesse's girl, do you:

a.  Burn yourself at the stake for even thinking such thoughts, or
b.  Molest yourself anyway.  You might have said no, but you knew you wanted it...

2.  Your dog is:

a.  Your best friend, or
b.  Your last resort

3.  The number of sexual partners you've taken part with since the beginning of time is:

a.  1 or
b.  2 or more.

4.  The perfect music for seducing my partner is:

a.  Glenn Miller or
b.  Nine Inch Nails

5.  I would describe an orgasm as:

a.  The frooits of the Deveel, or
b.  The most incredible thing or feeling that I have ever experienced.

6.  The best position I've ever held at any job was:

a.  The sitting up-right position as an Accountant for Microsoft, or
b.  The 69 position as Office Gigolo for Accounttemps

7.  Your children should be allowed to date at age:

a.  51 (After you're dead)
b.  15 (As long as they practice safe sex)

8.  Select the line that best describes how you feel about sex:

a.  I have to know a person well and date them for a couple years before I can have intercourse with them, or
b.  I have to know a person can breath before I can have intercourse with them.

9,  When I was younger, I strived to:

a.  Know every verse of the bible, or
b.  Masturbate to images of all my female relatives and neighbors who even looked in my direction or with every item in the house that was soft, furry or warm and fuzzy.

10.  When I'm downtown on my lunch hour I:

a.  Drool over the amount of meat and veggies in my Subway sandwich, or
b.  Drool down the blouse of every women within 5 feet of me showing cleavage as they walk by.

If you answered 5 or more questions with the letter "b", you are a sick twisted pervert who shouldn't be allowed to roam free in public anymore.  You should immediately turn yourself in to the nearest office for sexual predator processing.

If you answered 3-4 questions with the letter "b", you are in serious trouble my friend.  I would suggest hooking up with a sinfully plain/ugly therapist on the double before you burn in Hell.

If you answered 1-2 questions with the letter "b", you haven't gone too far as yet, but you can bet it wouldn't take a gorgeous or sexy member of the opposite sex long to take you where obviously desire to tread.

If you answered all the questions in this test with the letter "a", breath a huge sigh of relief, you are saved.  However, I would seriously question yourself as to why you felt the need to take this test at all if you were well convinced of your absolute purity in this matter (??).

That's it for the fun deadly sin today.  See you soon!!  :D

The Orginial 7 Deadly Sins +3, Part IV - Envy

Add cahttp://dantecyberman.deviantart.com/art/Seven-deadly-sins-442680725ption

"Saaaayyyy....that's a really nice computer you got there....Ok, no, I LOVE that computer you got there....dammit, I JUST GOTTA HAVE THAT COMPUTER YOU GOT THERE...Didn't you say you were going on vacation pretty soon?  You wouldn't be taking that computer along for the trip, wouldja?"

Yeah, you guessed it, we're gonna talk about the Deadly Sin of Envy today flokes.  You know what envy entails, dontcha?  See paragraph 1's blatant example, if'n you're not quite sure.

Now, I just gotta say it, we people (yes, and myself in particular) suffer from the essential effects of envy every day.  See, envy, some people believe, is just possession-driven, and just means you wish you had what the Jones's have.  If this were all it meant, and it was a sin we couldn't practice, or we'd suffer dire consequences due to just that part of the definition; capitalism, the driving force of any free-market society, would not exist.  No, in every sense, the true and full meaning of envy, unfortunately also involves the wish to deprive the other of what they have, since they can't have or can't afford to have what the first person has.

Because of the 2nd part of the meaning of the word, I would just have to say that an awful lot of my problems of late have stemmed from this very sin.  That whole ordeal with Jacque Karlson:  one could even go as far as to say that 9/10 of my problems I'm experiencing as of today stem from her envy of everything I had.  A great solid relationship with my pretty, younger wife.  Good friends.  A solid place to live.  Our newly acquired newborn.  A good and faithful following on Twitter, that was fast catching hers.  Mutual good friends on Twitter that she didn't care for me to have, once I had asked her to go.  Which, in turn caused her to try and cost us the baby, our friends, my Twitter friends and following, my place to live, my relationship with my wife...all because we just didn't have room in our very small apartment for 4 adults and a newborn.

Now, try and remember, envy is not only a distinctly different thing than jealousy; it comes in two very different flavors:  Benign and Malicious.  The benign style is the kind that we experience as a democracy and in our capitalistic behavior.  The malicious style, of course, include the wanting of others to suffer as the first suffers...the one who is envious of what we have, the things (and relationships, of course) that cause us to be happy.  They wish to deprive us of those things and people; so that, without those, well, we can be miserable as the first people are; thereby depriving the victims of their happiness.

With the exception of the wonderful relationship and friendship I had with my wife, envy was the better portion of what happened in Jacque's case.  The relationship emotion, of course, was sheer jealousy.  Her relationship with her husband was nothing and in the toilet compared to mine, which would explain why it was the first thing she tried to ruin.

The "grass being greener" on the other side of the fence, that's envy.  Some people are CONSTANTLY in that mode; no matter what they get, or acquire, no matter how many friends and good relationships they have, it doesn't matter....they're in a constant state of envy, and are therefore NEVER happy.  Narcisism also involves envy; generally these people believe others are envious of them, or are always in a state of envy involving others.  This sin serves a needed service with competition, but is deadly with malice at its roots.  Keep a close eye on those who constantly express envy of you, these are the ones likely to be trying to rid you of your happiness....which tends to lead to their twisted happiness.  Right Jacque?  Yeah.

Now, make no mistake, envy and jealousy, they shake hands too, along with other sins of their magnitude and ilk.  And it doesn't take a whole lot to upgrade from envy to jealousy.  If your wife is gorgeous and has great legs, whereas mine is pretty, but just a bit overweight, well, it's possible that I might envy you at first, more than likely in a more benign sense.  However, it wouldn't probably take me long to take the next step up and start flirting with her, should she give me an open door.  Given the proper amount of envy, it might even go to the malice-filled level, taking us into a physical affair; and, because she's SO GOOD at what she does, I might just start discussing how I could get her from you for real.  But, as she says "Oh, I don't wanna lose what I have, this was really all just for fun"....well, then I might just get jealous, which usually means I'm gonna be adding in a little hate and anger into the mix, mostly due to her ability to dismiss my feelings so easily.  Then because she doesn't want me, even though I want her, well, the next best thing might then be to tell her husband about our little afair, just to break them up.  This tends to be where a lot of your sex crimes and possible murders begin to take shape.  Envy can lead to a real bad bunch o' issues, practiced regularly, trust that.

These emotions can easily consume us, and cause us pain, in more than one fashion.  I suggest just foregoing this sin, it's really pretty pointless.  I'd prefer not to have most of what you do, believe that, I've come to discover that with more stuff and more money comes a whole lot more issues, and a lot more worry.  I think I'll just stay over here on my side of the fence...it may not be your color of green, and I might have a few more weeds in my lawn, but at least I don't have to spend as much keeping it looking as nice as yours...:D

The Original 7 Deadly Sins + 3, Part III - Gluttony

http://www.deesillustration.com/artwork.asp?item=674&cat=satire

Ahhhh....Back to the Good, the Bad, and the Deadly.  Today's issue?  Good ol' Gluttony.

Notice how alot of these sins tend to shake hands with each other, with a vengeance?  This one, along with sloth and greed, makes for one big one.  A triple threat.  We could call it Slutreed.  Might as well, saves on words and breath.  Believe me, my fingers could use more of a break.

By the way, for those of you who aren't really familiar with the extent of this particular sin, it not only involves what you ingest, it also involves what you withhold from those in need as well.

Being on the lower end of the sheeple scale, I see gluttony at work daily.  What's more, I see waste galore.  Now granted and given, there are reasons for some of this, but you can trace it all back to greed, which is our biggest crime here in our country.  What am I referring to?

Waste.  A 50% subset of gluttony.  Every day I watch so much food get tossed, it makes me ill.  With all the ways we've invented in our country to store and keep food, there's just no excuse for this.  We could not only feed our country with our waste, we could feed all the starving countries of the world as well.

Of course, the fault hardly or completely lies with the companies you work for.  You may have noticed, of late, the propensity for workplaces to not allow you, an employee, to take their food home, food that they're going to throw out anyway, at the end of the day.  In  my days of food service, I was always able to take home free food, no problem.  You always got free meals, if you worked at these places.  Just like every nicety we Americans used to enjoy once upon a time, some money hungry fools ruined things for the rest of us, during the course of time passing.  The late 70's and 80's were decades filled with legal stupidity, when it came to lawsuits, as well as the judges who ruled in favor of them.  I actually knew one couple who spent their entire lives just suing people for various things.  They never worked, they just waited to be awarded the next upcoming judgement they were expecting.  With every stupid lawsuit they awarded money to, it was like a fatal disease...more cropped up to copy the original, or different spins were put on the first, or new ones that were just as ridiculous came out to follow-up.  Pretty soon, litigation was a household word, and suing became a national way of life.

So I would imagine that there was a rash of food poisoning lawsuits that probably caused these food service companies to say "Screw it then!!  No more taking food home that we're gonna toss at the end of the day!  And since you're gonna be buttheads about it, and we have to toss out so much damn good food, well...you can just pay for your damn meals then.  We gotta cover the cost of the food we throw out, as well as pay for those lawsuits you keep winning."  See how the greed just weaves its way through every iota of this scenario?  Wow.

I really love days like Thanksgiving, where we serve up about 12 different plates chock-full of holiday goodness...and after we fill ourselves to over-flowing, we chuck about half of it right into the garbage can.  Now there's both sides of gluttony hard at work.  Happy Thankgiving and Merry Christmas you fat fool-hardy citizens.  Hope you can sleep at night after that crap.  Thank God my family is as disconnected as it is, or I'd have to participate in that hypocratic behavior as well.

Not that anybody with any sense would wanna eat this food anyway.  It's pretty damn obvious that not a one of us has any sense.  Not unlike the medications we take everyday, we're fully aware of  how dangerous a lot of this stuff is, yet we continue to eat it.  Really though, even if we had sense, would we really have a choice, but to eat it?  Aspartame is everywhere.  No other living creature will touch the stuff, yet we ingest it daily.  MSG's are impossible to avoid, yet the number of burgers McD's sells grows by the hundreds of thousands, daily, all over the world.  Genetically altered fruits and vegetables are the norm; we accept it, and chow down like it's goin' outta style.  We've been told (after five or six decades, finally), that flouride is actually bad for our teeth, and that our water is chock-full of it, yet we still drink it.  Doctored meat, various dangerous sugar substitutes (some of which we still aren't quite sure of the dangers of), preservatives, food dyes....the list is ridiculously endless and really scary...and yet we continue to eat, and eat...like we haven't a clue.  Why?  Well kids...we're just greedy, slothful gluttonous fools.  That's why.

Hell in a handbasket.  Someday we'll surely know what it means.  Till tomorrow.

http://www.deesillustration.com/artwork.asp?item=143&cat=satire

The Original 7 Deadly Sins + 3, Part II - Sloth

Ah yes....Sloth.  One o' my personal favorites.  Laziness.  Obesity because of that.  The wasting of one's God-given talents.  Etcetera, etcetera.

Wow, I could go on about this one for a few posts, really.  I just gotta say that, where this check box is concerned, we get a big....fat.....juicy....well-done black check mark here.  If there were EVER a sin we Americans do well, it's Sloth.

The world in itself has become one large slothful offender.  We are most certainly a wasteful and lazy race, with no real hope of changing its ways, of this there is NO doubt.  9 times outta ten, we'd rather pay someone else to do our work for us, rather than do it ourselves.  We'd rather have someone else cook our ,food for us, than cook at home.  We'd much rather just throw something away and buy another one, than try and fix it, give it away to someone who might need it, or shine it up and keep it.  We are the laziest race in the world, that's for sure.

Of the world's population though, America not only takes the cake, it licks the bowl AND the beaters; when we refer to sloth.  Every day new inventions come out that take more and more of the work away from us (as well as our jobs), and you wonder why it is that unemployment is up to 10% or better.  Unreal.  Left in the hands of machines and computers, we won't be much better than the society of Wall-E's imaginings.

The thing I hate, though, is that this particular sin is as contagious as the common cold.  If I'm fired up to do something, and someone comes over and brings a six-pack, and says "Hey buddy....let's just hang out and down a few"...then I start thinking about that in comparison to what I'm about to do, and next thing you know, the beer's in my hand, the TV's on, and I can pretty much scratch this day.  The person I was supposed to be doing that particular thing with gets blown off...the phone rings and I say "Aw screw it...it's just Doug, the guy we were supposed to help de-weed his lawn...voicemail will get it"; and I just qualified for this week's bad neighbor award; as well as probably cost me a a newer just budding friendship with Doug.  Bad news, that slothy stuff.

Sure, it has some upsides; I mean, look at all the cool stuff that would have never been invented, had we not been lazy:  Cars, boats, planes, can openers, microwaves, computers...the list goes on for weeks.  However, there are some inventions that just scream Uber-laziness.  I won't go into examples for this, all you have to do is look around the house to find tons of good examples, then think about how it used to be done to get a feel for it.  Fine, you want a doozie?  The remote control is the ultimate example.  God forbid we should have to get off the couch for anything.  TV's, stereos, car unlockers, alarms and starters, lights, air conditioners...hell, even the remote inventors took remote controls to the borders of lazy with all-in-one and multi-device remotes.  Now we don't even have to MOVE...except to maybe take a shower once in a while and go to work.

This majorly nasty sin tends to shake hands often with gluttony, so I don't' plan to go into our national weight issues just yet.  I'll let gluttony handle that one.  Let it just be said though, that slothful behavior all by itself will be the death of the world, and if not the world, this country?  We easily have bought into the most shares of this commodity.  I can just see a day where my buddy Doug calls me and says "Hey Chris...the Russians just bombed Chicago!" and I'll probably answer with something like "Yeah, yeah...after this episode of 'The Big Bang Theory', I'll be sure and check that out"...and while the next commercial airs, the Russians are in the process of shooting my dog and over-running my hammock, as well as informing my wife what a juicy sex slave she'll make under our new dictatorship.  Watch out for this America-Friendly sin kids, it's easily the one we can probably count on to bring us down, if all others manage to fail.

http://bitsandpieces.us/2012/11/08/the-5-symptoms-of-laziness/

The Original 7 Deadly Sins + 3, Part I - Greed, Part II

http://www.deviantart.com/art/7-Deadly-Sins-Greed-53211760

Hey.  Watch now, as I forego, once again, telling you about my personal life.  I'm gonna do the best I can, with what I don't have to work with, to continue to do so.

So, it just occured to me, that I haven't done a damn thing on the real "7 Deadly Sins"....just to see if we qualify for some real fire and brimstone action.  I'm sure we do, no doubt, but why don't we just be sure.

Now, I've done a post on greed...you'll find that one on "Day #7 - Greed" in the original 26 days of America's Deadly sins, waaaaaay back in April.  But, you see, I've come across so much more of greed in our lives of late, that I can't help but wanna do yet another post on the subject - if for naught else but to show you just how well we qualify for a check mark in this box.

I've made it known that Government is the greediest of all.  You know it, I know it.  The great teacher of greed.  They in turn allow corporate America to be greedy, which in turn advertises to the lot of us folks how to be greedy too.  It can almost be said that corporate America has FORCED us to be greedier...they've stolen our pensions, our benefits, our hours and our jobs.  Prices of manufacturing vs. prices sold to the public are, quite simply, ridiculous and insulting to our intelligence in their differences.  What companies pay thier employees compared to the bottom line?  Uncalled for, and insulting at best.  IRA's have been accosted, Social Security is almost non-existant and in danger of going the way of everything that was formally run or regulated by some kind of government....privatized.  Now.  After we've been paying in all this time, NOW you wanna privatize it.  Nice.  Yeah, now that it's in danger of being discovered that the government's been dipping their little greedy fingers into it, now you wanna sell it off to private companies so that THEY can get the blame for it not being there.  Sweet...only one problem.  We already have the government dead to rights on this baby, there isn't a single chance we're gonna fall for it being anybody else's fault.  Too late trying to pawn off the blame here.

So we're into coddling everything we own.  "Ain't no one gonna lay another FINGER on what we have Betty, mark my words!"  Hell, I'm guilty too America.  I've had so many things of mine stolen, I don't know how to document it all.  There's no one guiltier than I of hugging my belongings to my chest like they're part of my ribs.  If they were any closer to me, they'd be on the other side of me.

It doesn't stop at physical belongings though...that's the sad part.  Money stays right where we put it, and there's almost nothing, short of a miracle that will bring us to give it to another human, no matter what the circumstances.  Time, something we have almost none of, is hoarded like a precious commodity.  Rather than help someone, we bustle along like we haven't a clue what's happening.  Sympathy, empathy, advice, love in general, friendship, these are words in danger of extinction.  We greedily hold onto these, chained up in our basements, as though our very lives depend on them.  And speaking of living...there's another one. We hold onto life beyond all reasonable expectation.  The way things are for me, these days?  I can't wait to go.  I'm all in favor of the afterlife...it's gotta be better than this.  I hope and pray it is, for all our sakes.

I weep for the state of humanity...especially America's humanity.  I don't see it any more.  If we had our way about it, each of us would own a chunk of land with no one around for 5 miles, and if we could all work at home, and not have to see the real deal everyday?  We'd go for that.  "And while you're at it, throw in some water between our properties too, OK?  Wanna make sure no one shows up unexpectedly for a visit.  I mean, it's practically all water now, we have enough to channel it in."

We used to be good to each other...we used to TRUST one another.  I don't even trust my best friends anymore.  I CERTAINLY don't trust my family...except my dad.  I KNOW where that guy stands, always have.  I most definately don't trust the government.  So what's left?

That string of islands is still sounding pretty good.  :D