AtomoxetineHCl's Xanga

Who's Tired?

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 22:18:58 GMT

Who's tired of hearing about Shawn Hornbeck and Ben Ownby? I am. Thank you.

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Thu, 17 Aug 2006 08:58:49 GMT

So it's been awhile since I've decided to add a new entry. First things first... I want to thank everyone who has helped me here and there,especially during the power outage and the coincidental car problems (bad alternator) that happened immediately there after, you people know who you are and I love you all to pieces. Additionally, I also want to thank you people for tolerating my poor broke ass during the past year that I wasn't working as much as I would have liked to and seemed to never have any money because as we all know, no-one likes a mooch. Sadly it took almost a year of having things a little harder than I would have liked to realize that I have the most amazing friends and aquaintenances that anyone could ask for. Thank all of you people for being so awesome.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

Sun, 12 Mar 2006 08:23:47 GMT

I've noticed a few things (some of you have already heard about them) that just make me wonder. For any of those who have been on any kind of online dating service you'll know what I'm talking about. Anyone ever catch in people's profiles, usually in the 'What do you look for?' section, that people say they look for honesty. Now think about it. Why is this even an answer? I thought this was a given, but apparently it isn't. Apparently girls (and guys) have to tell you they want an honest partner as if there would be anyone on this planet who would want the contrary. How many times has anyone, instead of "honest", heard: "I want a girl who will steal all my cash, spend it on drugs, wreck my car, and sleep with my best friend when she's done" ? Another one is "spontaneous". Albeit this one may count as less of a given, as there may in fact be people who spend every night at home watching Matlock, CSI and/or assorted MTV reruns looking for the same in someone else (and if you are one of these people then it might be perfectly acceptable to quietly overdose on your prescription medication). For the rest of us, take more people like this binge drinking with you. (it's cheaper then mental health)

Ok... done with my ranting. For those of you who've seen me lately know that I'm driving a 1987 (86?) Reliant K. I am devoting my entire spring break to fixing my Geo Tracker, because I won't miss driving a car that you can hear from two city blocks away with 20y/o factory dry-rotted speakers that squeals when you start it, leaks oil/ coolant, and almost had it's backdoor fall off until it rusted shut (thank god!) Anywho, I'm done feeling inspired now...

Sunday, January 08, 2006

Sun, 08 Jan 2006 13:37:49 GMT

I didn't think I'd actually be able to come up with some New Years Resolutions, but I believe I've found a couple. First off, I will not be so hard on myself. If someone thinks I'm boring then f*** 'em. This year I'm going to worry less of what people think of me and focus more on being myself. Additionally, I'm going to try and strengthen the friends I have. For the love of God I may actually clean my room and keep it that way! I might even try to lose weight, though I'm not for certain if I'll be able to pull this one off, but it doesn't hurt to try. I might even try to go to church more. I've totally been slacking off on the finding a new parish thing. I could cut down on my Red Bull consumption, but caffeine withdrawal's a bitch. Lastly, this year I'm going to be happy, even if it kills me.

Saturday, December 17, 2005

Sat, 17 Dec 2005 01:01:00 GMT

Anyone ever been subjected to hearing someone mush about how so in love they are that you almost feel the insatiable need to reach over and hit them, and not like the slap in the back of the head kind of slap, but more of a striking blow with a bowling pin or maybe a tire iron because you are so tired of hearing their gushy stories about how they shared their first soda with each other on this day three months ago or how they held hands for the first time at 3:17pm on this day some time ago. Whatever it is, it's annoying, but not because we're just negative people; we're simply just jealous. Hearing about someone else's love stories sucks and sucks even worse when we're not experiencing such 'magic' ourselves.

I love it when I get on this topic and someone says "Well doesn't so and so like you?" Although it might be true, but what if you're afraid. What if you're afraid of commitment. More so, what if you're afraid of commitment, not because it would meaning having to be stuck with one girl but because you worry that you are such a mental headcase that you almost feel absolutely positive that by trying to pursue a relationship that you inviting certain calamity. Worse still you might be worrying that the possessive jealous streak you have is lying dormant waiting for you to unnecessarily take it out on someone who truly doesn't deserve it. Even worse yet! What if you're afraid that when you do find what you're looking for you jump on it like a damn desparate fool who is then labeled into someone's "to be avoided" category. What if you've grown so cynical that trying to put any effort into something isn't worth it because it will never last anyways.

Friday, November 04, 2005

Fri, 04 Nov 2005 04:53:56 GMT

So I'm changing my major. No more social work for me. I'll probably change it to something like aerospace engineering or astrophysics. I've always enjoyed building and designing things. I do like helping people, but honestly I just don't feel like dealing with all the stress that comes with it and not to mention with a unique personality, not to mention unique sense of humor, like mine it should have been obvious that it wasn't a good match for me. I guess this also means no more UMSL for me either. Sucks wasting two years worth of social work education, but with grad school I was looking at lots more school anyways and engineering should only take me like three more years. Maybe I could be like Doctor Who. My friend Kim got me hooked on this British scifi show. I could fly around space and time with my own flying craft fixing random problems in the universe with my super technologic toys and gizmos. Maybe I could fly around in a starship and travel to other galaxies. That would be so awesome! Meh, for the mean time I'll have to settle for crunching math and formulas.

People talking about marriages and pregnancies is really strange to me. It kind of makes me realize that I'm truly growing up. I doubt I'll end up married or having kids until I'm 30. People even younger than myself already married and/or pregnant?! Even some girls I've had histories with. It's all much too frightening really.

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Thu, 27 Oct 2005 03:03:42 GMT

Trouble in Wal-Mart's America

By Harold Meyerson

Wednesday, October 26, 2005; Page A19

Is Wal-Mart going wobbly? Over the past couple of weeks, America's largest company -- linchpin of the low-wage, no-benefit economy that is increasingly the norm in America -- has announced some surprising reversals of course. In a series of speeches and interviews, chief executive H. Lee Scott unveiled four initiatives that he clearly hopes will polish the company's increasingly tarnished image.

Wal-Mart, he said, will shift to more environmentally responsible practices -- demanding greater mileage of its truck fleet and better packaging of its products. It will offer more affordable health insurance to its employees, cutting the monthly premium in some cases to just $11. It will monitor the environmental and health and safety practices of its foreign suppliers. And it will lobby for a higher federal minimum wage.

Scott's timing is anything but accidental. The sweatshop conditions in which thousands of employees of Wal-Mart's suppliers routinely work, and the depressive effect that Wal-Mart has on working-class living standards here in the United States, are receiving increasing scrutiny -- enough to impede the company's growth. Wal-Mart's attempts to open stores in the major cities of the Northeast and West Coast have been largely checked by a coalition of fearful and indignant unions, smaller retailers, churches and liberal activists. Wal-Mart's stock is down 13 percent this year. And worse is still to come. In November filmmaker Robert Greenwald will release "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price," a scathing documentation of the company's business practices at home and abroad.

So the leopard realized it was time to change its spots -- up to a point. Only 44 percent of Wal-Mart's nearly 1.3 million U.S. employees are covered under its health insurance plan; indeed, as any state government can attest, many thousands of Wal-Mart employees qualify for and routinely use the Medicaid program for the indigent. Now the company says it will make its insurance more affordable -- though it still comes with a $1,000 annual deductible, a hefty chunk of change considering that the average Wal-Mart employee makes less than $19,000 a year.

Scott's announcement that Wal-Mart wants better environmental and workplace practices from its foreign suppliers raises many more questions than it answers. The reason Wal-Mart has 3,000 factories in China making the products that go on its shelves isn't that U.S. workers can't do the work, of course. It's because China is home to more cheap labor than anyplace else on earth. In 2003 Wal-Mart imported $15 billion worth of goods from China, 11 percent of China's total exports to the United States.

Now Scott says that Chinese factories should be brought up to U.S. standards. And how amenable is China to that transition? "China actually has very good environmental and safety standards on the books," Beth Keck, Wal-Mart's director of international corporate affairs, assured me last week. Right, and the Soviet constitution under Stalin contained ringing affirmations of civil liberties. Wal-Mart didn't shift production to China because of the communist state's safety standards. On the contrary, Scott and Co. knew full well that workers in China who agitate for better safety standards are commonly arrested and occasionally tortured. Wal-Mart is in China because it's been able to forge a symbiotic relationship between its own dirt-cheap and inherently abusive labor practices and the Chinese government's totalitarian suppression of worker rights. To demand that Wal-Mart's foreign suppliers clean up their act is to demand that Wal-Mart alter its own zealous low-wage culture. Which is why Scott's pledges merit a healthy dose of skepticism.

Of all Scott's commitments, the one that does merit belief is his out-of-the-blue declaration of support for a higher minimum wage. For Wal-Mart is bumping up against a serious problem at least partly of its own making: Because it pitches its products to a disproportionately low-income clientele, its revenue rises and falls with the fortunes of the lower end of the American working class.

And those fortunes these days are anything but bright. The coming crunch in heating oil prices, the decimation of American manufacturing, the steady decline of median family incomes over the past several years, the failure to raise the federal minimum wage since 1997 and the fact that Wal-Mart is setting the pay standards for millions of American workers -- all these are combining to limit the ability of Wal-Mart shoppers to buy as much as they used to. While sales at the Neiman Marcus end of retailing have been doing just fine, the working-class money crunch is taking a real toll in Wal-Mart-land.

Wal-Mart, could, of course, raise its workers' wages, but Scott has dismissed that out of hand. So now it's the feds' responsibility to rescue Wal-Mart from the consequences of the low-wage, low-consumption economy that Wal-Mart, with such fanatical devotion, has created. For, in Wal-Mart's America, it's not clear that even Wal-Mart can thrive.

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Thu, 22 Sep 2005 05:05:52 GMT

Dude school is totally kicking my ass. Actually not really, I just need to learn to get off my duff and get my work done, then it wouldn't be so bad. However, on a great note, one of my books Suburban Nation is an absolutely awesome book and a surprisingly short read about the evils of surburban sprawl. I highly recommend it.

On another note my ex wants to get back with me again, funny... Girl couldn't make time for us to ever see each other if her life depended on it. I've been trying for weeks now to see her and continuously she is either busy or blows me off. Yet, I still remain attached to her. Maybe they'll one day have medication for this. They could call it something like BitchBeGone XR, lol. "Hey Doc, I've got this girl on my mind and I totally need to let it go and move on. What can I do?" "Well son, I'll call in a script for BitchBeGone XR. Just take 50mg twice a day, one in the morning and one at dinner". Ha, that's a bit rough. She ain't so bad, I just wonder how serious she really is when I hear all that "Let's get back together" stuff. God I'm SO gonna hear about this later.

I must say that I actually enjoy my job. Working with drug addicts can be quite interesting, not to mention educational. They may be dope fiends, but they can be good men at heart. I'm done procrastinating. I need to get back to this paper.

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Wed, 07 Sep 2005 06:38:21 GMT

So I went and depressed myself again. Why am I such a neurotic headcase? A month ago I actually thought about hurting myself, though I doubt I'd ever do anything. I've never really been the suicidal type. I'm really looking forward to my session this Friday. I'm hoping to hash out a lot of issues.

On a good note, my laptop is repaired and it's new battery is in the mail plus that t-shirt that I ordered got here too!

Oh, one last thing. My friend Jamie was (last I checked) close to New Orleans when Katrina went down. If anyone has heard from her let me know. I hope she's alright.

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Thu, 25 Aug 2005 18:45:12 GMT

So I started class this week. I have College Algebra (for the second time), Native American Literature, Comp III, Social Psychology, and Social Work Interventions and Strategies (or just Social Work 3100 for short). I'm hoping this semester doesn't kick my ass as I have gotten slammed with papers out the whazoo and readings from hell. I'm sure I'll be fine. I'll just not be going out as much as I used to. Last semester was really a blow off semester. Not now though, now I get to slave my ass off. I have SIX books for ONE class!! Wtf?! Man...