Dear Abby

What do you do with those people in your life that you just can't get rid of? I'm talking about those people who you try to tell yourself you don't want around, but you get excited when they're about to come. For some of you it's a girl, or a guy, you have some intimate feelings for, and others it's someone that's just so much fun to hang out with; it just so happens that every other time you go out, you end up in jail or running from the cops. Reading those words over, I've had an epiphany. Well, maybe not quite an epiphany, but I did have a minor "connection-spark". I used to be that, "get-in-trouble-with" guy. Is that why I have one of these in my life? Well, I learned early on that everything is just naturally my fault, thanks Steve, so I think I can honestly say, Yes. But anyways, these people are like chocolate cake to a fat person on a diet. They're a cold beer to an alcoholic in the summer, a thong bikini to a nymphomaniac at the beach with his Cub Scout Troop. You want them around for some reason or another but try to distance yourself when they're not. But really, what do you do? Your head says one thing, your body another. Then you try and justify it, either way, and come up with reasons that support why you might have made an overreaction. Thus leading you away from your decision to separate, or stay close. I'll try and eschew over-complicating this blog, a problem I am always faced with, and leave it at that.

Can you tell me why?

I don't understand this phenomenon. This might seem...prejudiced, but let me assure you it's not. This is an observation I've made and shared with others who have recounted similar experiences. This might happen with people other than Puerto Ricans, but they're the only ones whom I've experienced doing this. They always deny being of a race. Even more accurately, they say their race is Puerto Rican. This always aggravates me for one simple reason. Puerto Rican is not a race, it's a nationality. So if I call you black, and you say, "no, I'm Puerto Rican", that's just a response to a comment that was not made. Now, if I called you American and your response was " no I'm Puerto Rican", then ok, that works. The same goes for the white PR's. I was talking to my friend's, sister's friends, who are young, and we approached this subject. One of them got upset so i quickly apologized and dropped it. But why would you get upset at being called white? Why would one deny being black, when you're so obviously a black man? Are you ashamed? The girls claimed that they didn't want to be "classified". But isn't calling yourself a PR classifying yourself? And just for the sake of argument, yes, there are Black Puerto Ricans and White Puerto Ricans just as there are Black and White Africans, and people of all colors in all Asian countries. I feel like this is how prejudices are started. People are too good for colors. "I'm not black, I'm PR, I'm too good to be black". "I'm not white, I'm PR, I'm not one of those racist SOB's". You really want to get past color, accept what you are and accept it has nothing to do with how you're raised and how you act, and you'll accept that same thing in other people. Just because you're white doesn't make you a racist, just cus you're black doesn't make you a theif, just cus you're red doesn't make you an alcoholic, just cus you're yellow doesn't make you a communist, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Stop lying to yourself, and more importantly, stop trying to lie to the rest of us.

Marijuana Debate

In 10,000 years, not one person has died from marijuana use. The addiction to pot is a mental one, unlike that to alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine and many other substances that could be classified as drugs if our government were so inclined to classify them as such. Its withdrawal cannot kill you, unlike alcohol. It does not lead to other drugs, like anti-marijuana pundits will tell you. And it has many practical uses in life whether it's medicinal or in making products like paper, textiles and oil products. What is it about marijuana that scares our country so? The real problem is that our law makers are influenced by drug and prison companies. Our country has gone from "for and by the people" to "for and by the corporations". It is assinine that one can get a prescription for oxycodon, which is more addictive than heroin, and not marijuana. It is absurd that numerous people are arrested every day for smoking marijuana, an action that hurts no one, and police who murder innocent people, i.e. Shawn King, are allowed to roam freely. Every person I know, including police officers, believe that marijuana should be, if not legal, at least decriminalized. Our economy is in a scary place, one that is approaching that of the Great Depression. That was a time when we were in the midst of another prohibition, one on alcohol. One way for us to stimulate our economy was to take the money out of the black market, and put it on main street. Why are we so proud as to think this wouldn't work this time? How many of you out there smoke weed? Wouldn't you buy it from the gas station if it were available? Wouldn't that make for increased tax revenues? Would you smoke more weed just because it's more readily available? I know that when I was in High School, it was easier to get weed than alcohol. If it were legal, wouldn't that make it harder for minors to get? Wouldn't that end the drug crimes associated with weed? Wouldn't our government save the money it spends every year on incarcerating marijuana related criminals? It seems to me that this is an obvious solution, but our government is too obtuse when it comes to this matter. Our politicians receive too much money from the big companies who don't want to lose their funding. Phizer is afraid that if marijuana is legalized, all theses drugs they spend millions on developing to fight aids, glaucoma, nausea, etc., will no longer be needed. These private companies that run these prisons are afraid they will no longer have over population and won't receive the $50,000 a year per inmate that they currently receive. We, as a country, really need to reconsider some of our positions and determine if those laws we made decades ago were actually for our best interest, or the best interest of the owners of these large corporations.

The beginning! Of the end?

I'm good and sick of these damn commercial banks. I'm at Russel's, and of course he's awoken to get pissed off. It's not Harm, of whom we'll speak some other time, it's shitty-ass Bank Of America. But the name doesn't really matter. BOA, Wachovia, Sun Trust...They're all the same crook, just different colors. It took me a while to get to this state of hatred, but I think that, if anyone is actually reading this, you're an avid bank-hater as well.

When I was young I thought banks were some kind of great institution that just payed you to keep your money in their vault. "Just give your money to us and we'll take care of you". The problem with that statement is that it's as if it John Gotti is saying it sounding like Mother Teresa. They start you off with the overdraft fees. The first time I overdrafted, they were nice enough to waive the fee and I though they were so nice. I told myself that that would be the last time, "I'm gonna keep track of my expenses" I said...well, I think we all know that didn't happen. After that, I wasn't much too surprised when I saw those $35 credits to my account, but they really started to piss me off pretty soon. It all started while I was with shit Wachovia. See, what had happened was...I'll just break down the dollars and cents. I had...say... 20 bucks in my account. I made one transaction for $3, then one for $8, $2.50, then one last one for $21. Well wouldn't ya know it, they don't post transactions the way they came in, they do the biggest one first, and that way on down. Which means...well, lets do the math: 20-21= -1, -1-8=-9, -9-3=-12, -12-2.50=-14.50. But that's not the end of it, of course, that's 4 overdraft fees at $35 a piece. So, by going over 14.50 I now owed $150+ to WatchOverYa. And, even though I really only made one transaction to go over my limit, they stuck me with 4 of them. I'm starting to get long-winded so let me go on to my other problem with these douches.

How is it legal for them to hold your money? This is what Russel was so pissed with this morning. You deposit a check, they take the money out of the check-writer's account right away, but they don't put it into your account for 3-7 days. You might not know how banks work, but they invest the money they have taken from you, so instead of you being able to take your money out, or pay bills, they hold on to it and collect the interest while you're stuck, in many cases, without any money. They try to say shit like, "we're verifying the funds", but why in the hell take it out of the first account in the first place if that's the case. This is becoming quite the rant so I'll leave it at that, for now, but something really needs to be done about these crooks. Don't forget that these are the same douche bags who made it so we don't have money to put in there in the first place. You know, the wall street assholes. Bank Of America=Banc Of America. Same assholes.