Probably NSFW...Or bigots. Have a happy Thanksgiving.

Sometimes I'm in awe of the fact I have actually live this long. I'm fairly certain there are those I know who feel the same because, let's face it, I shouldn't be here. I've pushed the limits on pretty much everything life has to offer, some legal, others not so much. I do know this: Had I been among the early settlers in America I would have been hung or kicked out of anywhere I ended up.  Which is a lot like the world I'm living in today. Honestly, a lot of problems that have plagued me could have been cut off before they began if I'd only been as honest as I wanted to be way back when. Once upon a time I asked someone to marry me, the reasons surrounding the marriage aren't important, not anymore, but I was determined to tell this person the truth about my life before we actually agreed to be married. I started to, but she refused to hear anything, saying 'God didn't care, neither did she'...Which sounds good in theory but in reality ...

This world is overburden with religions and wannabe 'Messiahs'...We tend to look to the past to find these spiritual leaders because it's too damn hard to prove or disprove anything or any one who lived thousands of years ago and we're told to simply believe, to take the whole 'Savior' thing on 'Faith'. This 'Faith' has led humanity into war after war, every obscenity against mankind has usually been done in the name of 'Religion'. We have these mass volumes of 'Scriptures' or 'Holy Writ' to guide us and only a small percentage of believers ever really read these words, they surround themselves with others who believe like themselves and they let them do the reading, and interpretations to their 'Leaders' and the result... ...We continue to strike out against those who don't believe, we attack with words and fists and anger and hate and we call it 'God's Love'. Bottom line: We don't need ...

It's become a cliche. When we're young we do a lot of crazy, stupid and, often, dangerous things...From drugs to all things sexual, there are rarely any boundaries to the young, but if we're lucky enough to survive and maybe have children so many of us try to forget those days and become the opposite of who and what we were and try to steer the next generation of us away from our mistakes. Which usually only pushes them into the arms of our errors. My mistakes literally fill file cabinets with report after report about incidents where I've pushed the law to the limits, sometimes actually stepping over that line and finding myself in front of a judge that really wanted to make an example of me, wanted to toss me into a cell and toss away the key. That's how I learned about the files about me. The lawyers brought them in and stacked them on their desk in three piles as I was escorted into another room to wait while they argued my future...For hours. This was the...

Truth is a difficult subject to quantify. It's different for everyone and is so often covered up by one to pacify, to change, because it's considered 'Wrong' or 'Selfish' or 'Misguided'...A noble idea that eventually ends up being painful for everyone involved. Way back in the dark ages of high school I had a teacher by the name of Vi W., and we butted heads on almost every thing. I don't know why but we just didn't get along...Until a few years later when we ran into each other in college. She'd gone back and I was just starting and it was a whole new ball game. We were on a different level and she, maybe I, was different. This time I listened. This time she was able to get into my head and she gave me a whole lot of good advice but the best, the one which stuck with me over the years was trite, old fashioned and turned out to be the most important as life began to chip away at me day by day: To thy own self be true.  I didn't pay ...

(Continued) later

When we're children we're taught to believe in pretty much anything...Santa Clause, The Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy and from the beginning of our understanding we're taught that America is the land of opportunity, a place where we live in a democracy and that we're the good guys, the people who came to this country and 'Conquered' it...Conquer doesn't really paint the complete picture because the first immigrants to settle on the East Coast accepted the help of the original settlers, the Native Americans, and within 40 years afterward, after they taught them how to survive the harsh winters, how to plant crops and all the other things they needed to live in this new world, they began their systematic elimination of the very people who'd saved them. In a couple of hundred years, after the American Revolution, the French-Indian war and the Civil War, an unnamed journalist waxed poetic about America's 'Manifest Destiny' and the leaders like ...