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Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan Murdered

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I'm really ANGRY about the Bhutto killing. These things effect us all, just like evil acts close at home. Just when there seemed some hope about good coming out of the gov't turmoil in Pakistan...

I don't even follow the daily sludge of the news anymore.
The local news and too many "sensationews" outlets like to rub it
in yur face. But I can't keep silent about big events like these in
the world's "boiling points". oOo oOo


oOo But here's my question(s), my dialogue, with myself: oOo

IF people are mostly "good / in good condition" - whole - complete
- then what's broken, corrupt, killed, evil, horrible etc. is
considered the exception and news-worthy... oOo but it doesn't help much,
its overwhelming and depressing, so "knowing about it" tends to make
us worse off.

IF people are mostly "bad / in awful situations" - hurting and
hateful, broken, destructive, maimed, etc. - then the good that
happens is *neglected* as being trivial, irrelevant. Or, is it so
routine, normal and uninteresting? oOo So we only get reports of the bad,
which reinforces our perceptions of horribleness. Thanks again, news
guys.

oOo And, I try to answer myself: oOo

I disagree on both counts: the world around us is basically good, even if WE are messed up and bad-off, and we should have reminders to see and celebrate the way things ARE - the good around us - IN SPITE of ourselves and what other messed up people do/ don't do! WE humans are the ones out of sync with reality: the way life IS!

Instead of wallowing in how bad things are - oOo [ which, as a side
note, is what most media, movies, music, art, literature, self-expression,
entertainment, gaming, etc. does. Or, artists and entertainers try to create
diversions for us, so we can ignore and avoid confronting how bad things are- ] oOo

WE should *conform ourselves* to the way the world is to be, and
stop listening to how bad things are. oOo oOo


That said, we should remain OUTRAGED when evil-- like any of these
killings, hateful, hurtful acts-- is done.

Can we pray- and not seek revenge- but seek to do "something" to
overcome these ways people behave and act, which *ruins* the world
for the rest of us?!

-- -- - - - - - - - - - - -

oOo So from first being angry, now I feel numb, and I grieve. oOo

And I haven't even begun to talk about ours/ yours and my own complicity
with how screwed up life is; or how I, in my own messed-up state,
contributes to the brokenness of the world. oOo oOo

Lord have mercy-- Christmas and it's peace didn't last very long, did it?

Welcome, "Happy New Year"!

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Why I Need a List

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Snow smileys! :)

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Looking for A Wreath!

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What are Your Fave Goodies and Eats for Holidays?

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I Got the Christmas Tree

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Who has Longest or Shortest Commute? Share yours

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GOOD Causes - Bloggers Unite!

This is a great site I discovered this week, while searching for GoOod Things. oOo If you have a blog, no matter how much or little time you put into it, try getting into this initiative!

Their next Event is on 12-17-07: Acts of Kindness oOo oOo oOo

DO an act of kindness — in your work, on the street, for your neighborhood and neighbors, wherever; and then post about it on your blogs, using words, pictures, and/or videos to tell the story. oOo oOo Add a badge to your blog to show your support for the Bloggers Unite movement.

The bloggers unite challenge aims at putting a human face on bloggers who are responsible for so much good in the world. [ well, maybe, but not all that more than any other people. . . oOo ]
The goal is to get active and be a motivator to non-bloggers that volunteering for a charity, donating to a cause, or simply doing something kind for another person has a ripple effect around the world. oOo
: ) ZanyThing GOOD ?! oOo oOo

oOo "Bloggers, Do something good offline" -- this fits right in with my philosophy of connecting the Web to RealLife. oOo

Bloggers Unite is an initiative designed to harness the power of the blogosphere to make the world a better place. By challenging bloggers to blog about a particular social cause on a single day, a single voice can be joined with thousands of others to help make a real positive
difference. oOo oOo

Check out what they're doing:

December 17th 2007 - Acts of Kindness

The Acts of Kindness theme aims at putting a human face on blogging as a force for Good. The goal is to be part of the largest group of bloggers to ever blog about an important cause, all on the same day. . . "Maybe 20,000 bloggers, vloggers, photographers will make a difference." oOo oOo

September 27th 2007 - Bloggers Against Abuse

Blog about putting an end to some sort of Abuse (you decide what kind of abuse to blog about)

July 18th 2007 - Organ Donor Awareness Campaign
Organ donation because is a gift of life. In Australia, more than 1,700 people are waiting for organ transplants. In Latin America, more than 50,000. In Europe and the United States, more than 170,000. In China, more than 2 million. In Africa, there isn't enough organization to really know. Without an organ transplant, these people will die.

Is it Nostalgia Music, or just a Blip on your Screen?

Haeyoung Kim, a classical pianist, took the stage at a hip Manhattan art space before a crowd of twenty- and thirty-somethings, many shaggy-haired and wearing T-shirts and glasses.

oOo The new long-hairs and beat generation. . . ? oOo

But this was no far-out modern classical music scene. Instead, soon the room was filled with electronic beeps and buzzes of a 1980's video game pulsing to a danceable beat, as if Mario were hosting a rave. oOo Not an electronic piano, not a synthesizer, but her instrument of choice: a Nintendo Game Boy. oOo oOo

The performance was part of Blip Festival, [ check out the retro website! ] a four-day celebration of music made with obsolete computers and electronics. So-called "chiptune" or "8-bit" music is building a cult audience among former Atari jockeys. [ Atari-who?? oOo ]

"We are the first generation for whom video games and computers played an important role in our childhood," said Mike Rosenthal, 29, one of Blip Festival's organizers. "Now [the sound of these toys] has taken on meaning, and many of us are at an age where we want to take apart our toys and see what else we can make them do." oOo sort of Re-purposing your childhood. . . oOo

Chiptune includes pop, metal and other styles. The electronic, tinny sound oOo oOo which is not unlike the dinn of today's Brittney wannabees oOo of the first commercial video games has aged enough to feel nostalgic: oOo

The eclectic artist Beck has even released an EP of chiptune remixes. oOo What's next - "Chipmonk" tunes? Aaarrrgh! oOo

The scene is informed by the do-it-yourself ethic of punk rock and hacker culture, oOo read: hacks, not pros,

where everyone Ass-umes that "they" can be a musician or artist, without hard life-long sweat and tears or inborn gifted talent oOo

Favorite "new" instruments include the Commodore 64 and Atari 800, but the most popular chiptune gadget may be the Game Boy, which Nintendo debuted in 1989. These modified thinga-ma-rigs have only a fraction of the computing power of today's average cell phone, but that's part of the appeal. oOo let's bust out the washboards and mouth-organs, too. Everybody needs some kind of personal, grass-roots expression. . . oOo

I guess most subcultures need to rediscover their down-home ways of making noises after they've been marginalized as mere bits and bytes in the mega techno-power commercialized entertainment grid. oOo oOo

It's also about subversion and working within constraints. Great artists have always known a struggle with the grit of available materials to use, versus the ideas to express. "It makes you more creative to work within the tight limitations of the technology," said Jordi Huguet, one half of the Barcelona-based chiptune duo "Yes, Robot".

oOo Let's just not go the route of lowest-common denominator in art and music, where any old crap "you" want to churn out is worthwhile to expose "the rest of us" to. Self-censorship never hurt anyone - it usually spares your reputation, and the rest of us from embarrassing IBS and severely ruptured eyeballs and eardrums. oOo oOo

Ooops maybe I'll keep looking!

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You have new Picture Mail!

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