I have a variety of interests that include search marketing, graphic & website design, writing/blogging, photography, the paranormal, politics and animal advocacy. You’ll find me discussing those subjects and more on Twitter. Follow me, won’t you?
I am an optimistic cynic. I hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. I believe that the vast majority of people have the potential to be good, but that life pursuits and greed often bury the good underneath mountains of pain, blind ambition and regret.
I am fascinated by the paranormal, but tend to believe most suspected paranormal activity can be explained logically if one is willing to consider and eliminate all other possible sources first. My experiences as a child taught me there’s more to our existence than what can be seen with our eyes. Energy never ceases to exist, it merely changes form.
I don’t pretend to know what happens to our spirits/souls once they no longer inhabit these frail & fallible shells. No one has the answers to those questions. And I emphatically reject the opinions of anyone who claims to with even a modicum of certainty. Should I ever achieve financial independence, a great deal of my free time will be dedicated to paranormal investigation.
I am also an animal advocate, but don’t mistake that for fanaticism or bat shit craziness. Dousing a woman wearing a fur coat in blood does not promote animal welfare – it merely encourages rational, logical people to dismiss your cause and its message, even if only to distance themselves from your particular brand of bonkers. When you call attention to yourself, you draw attention away from the cause you supposedly support. Cogent and rational arguments backed up by verifiable facts are the only weapons required to affect real change.
Animals don’t care about expensive houses, lavish vacations, corporate ladders or shiny cars. Ambition, self-interest and greed will never cloud their judgment or serve as their motivation. They hold no grudges. They don’t keep score. They have no concept of malice or revenge or jealousy. They’re the best of what humans could be, if not for arrogance, avarice, xenophobia and fear.
When it comes to me, what you see is what you get. My positions on issues, my understanding of right & wrong and my opinions don’t change based on my audience or circumstance. Mercilessness and selfishness are bad. Compassion and empathy are good. Saving lives is always better for the soul than taking them.
Here are a few basic examples that will help to illustrate some of my core beliefs and points of view:
- Nothing screams dimwittedness like protests of allegedly unconstitutional acts by those who cannot even spell Constitution.
- If an entire legal team is required to defend an assertion that an “interrogation technique” isn’t torture, it IS torture.
- The notion that “Fascism“, “Socialism” and “Communism” are synonymous smacks of foolishness.
- Tea party supporters are woefully misguided puppets of avarice who can’t stop yelling long enough to realize they’re being used in a radical right wing crusade orchestrated by the wealthiest individuals & corporations in the world – the very powers that seek to limit the rights, power and influence of individuals in what remains of American democracy.
Learn to separate the stories filtered through the ideological spin machine from the truth. Propaganda is for simpletons. Don’t be one. Regardless of how unwilling you are to accept them, documented factual events of history are not open to individual interpretation. You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts. Truth is truth. Facts are facts. Acknowledge them. Learn from them. Evolve. Progress.
Insanity: doing the same thing, over and over again, and expecting different results. ~ Albert Einstein.
Social progress is more important than blind allegiance to ideology, political party or theology. Compassion takes precedence over profit and people are more important than corporate interests. I am a progressive, but don’t mistake that for political party affiliation.
The answers to our greatest challenges have never and will never come from the ideological cesspool of partisan politics. Practical, constructive solutions are always somewhere in the middle of ideological extremes. Progress depends on incorporating the best ideas, no matter which side of the political aisle they come from.
