Blacksheep Speaks

Teen Angst

....and the saga continues. My oldest, a recent high school graduate just doing time till college starts in the fall, has one job interview coming up. She applied at two places. Something tells me she doesn't really want a job.

Her younger sister, the household genius (who actually DOES attend a school for young geniuses) is getting all prettied up to go job hunting. She plans to apply, all right. At every fast food joint in town. 150+ IQ and her highest aspiration is to be qualified to say....."You want fries with that?"

Here's hoping they aren't paying attention. These last couple entries would make me REALLY popular around here:)

Teen Terrors

I wonder how many of my readers have teenagers. In October of this year, I will have not one teenager, but four. I plan to have a breakdown at that time. To add insult to injury, they are ALL girls, currently ages 18, 17, 13, and 12. In October, when my adorable little 12 year old angel grows fangs and claws, definiteely.....breakdown.

In case you're wondering, this morning has been a real charmer, between the "summer job hunt blues" and the "PMS Prominade".

Just thought I'd share.

Assisted Suicide

One of our local newspapers runs an online reader survey every weekday. A recent poll asked whether or not it was okay for doctors to help terminally ill patients commit suicide. The poll results were disturbing. A full thirty percent of people who answered said that in this case, assisted suicide is acceptable.

When did it become okay for doctors to play God? Killing someone deliberately is still murder.

Suicide

A man I went to school with recently committed suicide. I can't even begin to understand what would be so bad that a person couldn't go on with life. Actually, it wasn' t exactly recent....we are talking last year, here. I bring it up now because I happened across a memorial page dedicated to this guy on the web. I didn't read the whole page or stay there long. I didn't really know the guy that well. But I did notice that there were over a hundred people listed as "good friends" there.

I scanned the entries, and the one thing I noticed over and over again was people wishing this guy was still around to give them advice. I know this is gonna sound heartless, but People, PLEASE. This guy put a gun to his head. He didn't have all the answers.

Still, lots of nice things were said by these 100 plus people. Maybe if the guy had been told these things when he could still hear them, he'd still be alive. Who knows.

Pulaski Peril

I live in Arkansas, in the Ozark foothills. Life is quiet and without the stress you find in a city or suburb. Instead of falling to sleep to the sound of traffic, I fall asleep to the sound of whippoorwills. I chose this life for a reason. However, every now and then I am dragged kicking and screaming back to the reality of the "big city", and evry time I am, I kiss the ground when I get home. You see, Arkansas has a deep, dark secret: They somehow manage to feed every driver in our capitol city loco weed.

You think I'm kidding? Our capitol city is Little Rock, located in Pulaski county in the center of the state. The phenomina is uncanny.....a nice, peaceful drive right up until you see the Pulaski County line, at which point you are instantly in a life or death struggle to avoid the crazies. It's like they imported all the drivers from St. Louis.

silvermelody.com is FINALLY for sale!

SILVERMELODY.COM! DON'T MISS OUT!

Having trouble finding a domain name people will visit? A web address MUST be memorable to attract people to your website, but these days it's pretty hard to find a decent .com, .net or .us domain available. Domains are often referred to as "internet real estate", and for good reason. These days, many people are turning to the secondary marketplace to buy short, memorable domain names. This is your chance to own just such a domain.

We use a broker to handle the legal stuff. This protects both the buyer and the seller, and registration and the transaction fees are both free to the buyer. Clicking on the above domain name will take you to it's sale page. From there, you can register your bid for the domain.

Responsibility

I see a dangerous trend taking place in our country today. It seems that, whether through a mass need to justify ourselves, or through the portrayal of all people as "victims of society", we have ceased taking responsibility for our own actions. Everything seems to be someone else's fault; never our own. Lawsuits run rampant these days, clogging our already overworked judicial system with people seeking damages from other people or corporations for something they themselves could have prevented from happening had they bothered to use a little common sense. I am not talking about criminal cases here. I am talking about Mr. Joe Average suing his neighbor/neighborhood deli/local convienience store/whatever over some fool thing he had the ability to avoid.

Take the current lawsuits against the tobacco companies, for example. I smoke. Every single pack of cigarettes I open warns me that these things are dangerous and that I am risking my health. These warnings have been there at least since I started smoking back in 1985. Even before that, a person would have had to have been a hermit not to know that these things are bad for you. If I contract cancer, it's my own damned fault, and I know it. As did every single other person who has turned on a television set in the past 20 years or so. Now, I currently have a choice. I can continue to smoke, knowing it's bad for me...I can quit smoking, which isn't actually as hard as it sounds--having done this before, I can attest that after three days the physical cravings go away and it's all mental.....I can keep smoking and take my chances.....or I can whine and cry and scream that Big Bad Mr. Tobacco Company addicted me against my will. Uh, yeah, right. I know what I am doing, and so do you. 'Nuff said.

Anyway, now we have mass judgements against Big Bad Mr. Tobacco that are a little (*cough*) unreasonable. Most states have already allocated their share to various projects.....very few of which have anything whatsoever to do with helping the so-called "victims" of Big Bad Mr. Tobacco. My state plans to use their booty to repair roads, I believe. So now, when the "victim" is gasping his last breath, we can tell him, "Well....we have no money to actually HELP you, but just LOOK at the beautiful newly paved road upon which your funeral procession will travel!" But I digress.

So....how many of you guys out there are cruising the web on one of those infamous browsers supplied free when you bought your computer? Yeah, me too. Of course, I was really upset about this browser. What I REALLY wanted to do was run out and spend an additional few hundred bucks on more software so I could be here with you today. And it just thrills me to tears that the government and courts have ensured that in the future I may have to do exactly that. Yeah, buddy.

Hey, HERE'S an idea.....how about.....less government interference, and more individuals taking responsibility for their own actions? Wouldn't that be really cool? That way, we have a choice. And think of all the money we will save on lawyer's fees.

"God's gonna GET you for that!"

Vengeful God. A concept that doesn't ring true for so many today. A concept that turns people away from God, and from His Son. "Vengeance is Mine, sayeth the Lord." Those words, taken out of context, have lost so many. Words from the Truest Source, taken out of context and twisted to do the enemy's will. Yes, the words belong to God. And vengeance IS His. The message given by them, however, is a message of love and forgiveness. And instruction. Love and forgiveness, by a God who claims the right to enact vengeance upon all? Seems kind of contradictory, doesn't it? But, as with all misunderstood Biblical quotations, the true message behind it makes sense.

We, as human beings, tend to get angry alot. Act without thinking. There are those who spend their entire lives attempting to "get even" for what they consider to be injustices done to them. Often, these people do more damage to themselves by hating and/or by the repercussions of their attempts to "get even". Too often, these people are "getting even" for things done to them that actually help them, if they knew the whole story behind the incident in question. But, in all situations, we humans have a very limited perspective. We don't know why things happen. Only God can see the whole picture, the puzzle pieces of our collective existances coming together.

Which of us, then, is qualified to exact vengeance? None of us. Only God can see the whole picture. Know when vengeance is justified. And He claims that right. Not so He can actually strike down everyone who does wrong to someone else, but so that we humans will not take it upon ourselves to become a world of vigilantes.

His own Son said "Let He who is without sin cast the first stone." Another set of words saying the same thing. "Vengeance is Mine, sayeth the Lord." But, when the Son of God said it, and the people who were about to put someone to death backed away, what did He do? Did He, who WAS without sin, use that divine right to enact justice on the sinner? No. He forgave her.

The message is one of forgiveness. God's Son's actions, his lesson, are obvious. If someone has wronged you, it is not your place to act. Not unless you have never hurt anyone in your life. Not unless you yourself are without sin. If you cannot find it in your heart to forgive those who wrong you, and to put aside your anger against them...give the problem to the One who can actually solve it, without causing more problems for yourself.

"Vengeance is Mine, sayeth the Lord." Thank God.