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Name: Shane
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Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Who's to Blame?

The following quotes were taken from MSNBC.com's article: Ex-FEMA chief slams ‘dysfunctional’ Louisiana

I saw excerpts from the hearing before the House Select Hurricane Katrina Committee on the news today and have to say that I think former FEMA chief Michael Brown raised some good points. Actually, some are the same exact points I’ve brought up with family and friends and have even blogged about, but haven’t found time to transfer to Blogger yet.

Those points are:

- The National Guard are under the command of STATE officials until they get called up … so why weren’t they utilized properly from the state level to begin with?

Those are not FEMA roles. FEMA doesn’t evacuate communities. FEMA does not do law enforcement. FEMA does not do communications.

- Alabama and Mississippi didn’t have much trouble with relief and utilizing their National Guardsmen.

My biggest mistake was not recognizing by Saturday that Louisiana was dysfunctional …

- Why did New Orleans Mayor Nagin and Louisiana Governor Blanco wait 12 hours after they were strongly advised by the director of the Federal National Hurricane Center, Max Mayfield, to issue a MANDATORY evacuation?

I very strongly personally regret that I was unable to persuade Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin to sit down, get over their differences, and work together. I just couldn’t pull that off.

- People need to take more responsibility and quit relying on the Government to hold their hands and make the tough decisions for them.

Americans themselves must play a more active role in preparing for natural disasters and not expect more from the government than it can deliver.

- Why is he the focus of the blame when it’s obvious that there was dysfunction and failure on all levels?

I’ve overseen over 150 presidentially declared disasters. I know what I’m doing, and I think I do a pretty darn good job of it.

Okay, I’m not defending Mr. Brown, but I think everyone needs to quit being so myopic and see the bigger picture here.

First, you can’t blame one man for everyone’s failings. Not the President, not Mr. Brown, not Mayor Nagin, not Governor Blanco, and not even “the Devil.

Secondly, would things have gone any better if someone else were the chief of FEMA at the time of Katrina? We’ll never know, but I doubt it. All I know is that I’m glad I sure as hell wasn’t in charge at that time.

Lastly, it was a huge fucking natural disaster! What’d you expect?

Honestly, I think Michael Brown was doing his job. I doubt he was sitting around in his underwear watching the media coverage and thinking, “Glad I’m not those poor sons-of-bitches!

He said himself, “I’ve overseen over 150 presidentially declared disasters. I know what I’m doing, and I think I do a pretty darn good job of it.

So I think I can afford to extend to him the benefit of my doubts and at least give him credit for being on the job and doing his job. The only thing is, I can’t say he did his best job this time around.

But I don’t think Mayor Nagin or Governor Blanco did either.

Committee Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., cautioned against too narrowly assigning blame.

At the end of the day, I suspect that we’ll find that government at all levels failed the people of Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama and the Gulf Coast,” said Davis.

So where does the blame lie?

Personally, I think it lies on the people (including Mayor Nagin) of the great city of New Orleans. If everyone would have taken more initiative and done more themselves and quit waiting for someone else to take the necessary steps for them, a lot of the tragedy could have been avoided. I doubt most people caught in the aftermath can HONESTLY say they did everything possible.

Brown, himself, said the lack of an effective evacuation of New Orleans before the storm was “the tipping point for all the other things that went wrong.

I mean … if a huge, menacing Category 5 hurricane don’t get your ass moving … nothing will.

Apparently they don’t call it “The Big Easy” for nothing.



***An aside to the Democrats that boycotted the hearing***

Get your crying, whiny asses back to work. You guys need to quit scratching your heads and wondering how George W. Bush got re-elected and wondering why everyone is so stupid and realize that the fault lies within YOU! Yeah, believe it or not, YOU could actually be the problem.

Posted by: Shane Posted at: 9:49 PM Comments 0 comment(s)

I miss her?

I just found that I had four missed calls. The first three were “Unavailable” and the last one was “Shahirah,” so I’m guessing that all four were hers.

I always feel bad for her when I miss her calls, but what’s so weird is that … this time I think I feel bad for myself as well. I think for the first time in a very long time that I feel I actually miss her.

I mean, what else could it be if I regret missing her calls and not just because I feel guilty or sorry for her?

Great! I actually miss her.

-sigh-

Why can’t you control what you feel?

Maybe it’s best then that I missed them because apparently the more we talk and the cuter she is … the more I miss her.

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Posted by: Shane Posted at: 4:46 PM Comments 0 comment(s)

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Long Time ...

It's been a long time since I've updated this online journal of mine, but I have heaps of entries to add.

My problem with publishing them is that I write them offline in Microsoft Word with intentions of transferring them to Blogger, but once I spend an hour or so writing an entry ... I just don't want to do anything else with it! At least not for a while.

I just got done writing another one, but once again I'm too tired to proofread it and transfer it from Word. Plus, I'm still miserable with a cold (or flu?).

Anyway, I've been asked to update this several times by one of a few people who have the privilege of letting me bore them to death with my ramblings. Someone who must be a very sick masochist.

-heh heh-

Kidding!

She's not all that sick. Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

Even though I planned on updating with the entry I just wrote, an explanation of why I'm slow to update will have to suffice.

So yeah, consider this updated.

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Posted by: Shane Posted at: 12:02 AM Comments 0 comment(s)

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Still Conflicted

I woke up this morning at 6 a.m. feeling absolutely miserable. I couldn’t breathe through my nose and my mouth was like the Sahara … but drier!

-sigh-

Then after getting up to blow my nose a bazillion times, when I tried to lay back down, it just kept running … so I got up and started cleaning.

It was so bad that while I was walking about, mucus would just drip out of my nose without warning! If that wasn’t bad enough, I think I had a fever because it felt like you could fry an egg on my face.

Anyway, I did spend all day going through clothes and separating what I wanted from what I didn’t. I put a lot of the ones I wanted but don’t plan on wearing any time soon into Space Bags and then put them into a Rubbermaid container to store in the basement.

I’m still not done!

I have to buy more Space Bags and maybe another container.

I didn’t realize how much clothes I actually do have.

Now that I went through the boxes, I’m shocked at how much I have! I have way more t-shirts and boxers than any one man should have! I’m like a t-shirt freak or something. I also found that I had some really nice dress shirts that I totally forgot about.

The sad thing is, 95% of the clothes I packed away still had the tags on them. Maybe I should hold a big garage sale.

I know I probably have over $1,000 in just t-shirts and boxers … mostly t-shirts though. Well, maybe not quite that much, but pretty close. If I threw in the other shirts, sweaters, sweatshirts, and blue jeans … then I definitely know I’m way over a $1,000.

Anyway, I realize I need to stop buying so many t-shirts. Probably along with CDs and DVDs. Well, I only buy DVDs that I know I’ll watch more than once.

Most of my DVDs are actually Television Series. Like I have all of “the Simpsons,” “Futurama,” “Family Guy,” “South Park,” “Millennium,” “Northern Exposure,” and “Seinfeld” seasons available. I also have the first season of "Scrubs" and I'd like to get "Malcolm in the Middle" and "Arrested Development." I really love those shows! Especially "Northern Exposure!" I miss it so much! It was unlike any other show.

I think I have all the major Disney cartoons available too.

I also have several Jim Carey and Mel Brooks movies. I’m still looking for “Robin Hood: Men in Tights” on DVD.

Not only did I clean and go through boxes of clothes, but I did laundry too. I did my regular laundry and hung out my clothes and then had to wash a lot of the clothes (ones without tags still attached) before I put them into storage.

No wonder today seemed so damn long!

On a completely different subject, Shahirah called me today … several times.

The first time she called, I couldn’t answer because I had left my phone on the other side of the wall of boxes I created. I managed to get to it the second time, but I think she hung up as I answered.

She called back a third time and we got to talk for about three minutes before the call was dropped. She was getting something to eat at this café around the corner, which she has told me before sucks, at like almost midnight!

I think it’s funny though. She ate from there a while ago and she told me, “I don’t know what I was thinking. The food always sucks. I don’t know why I thought this time would be any different.” Then she’s eating from there again!

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What a dork. A cute dork, but a dork none-the-less.

It’s when she does things like that, that I remember why I felt the way I did.

Anyway, after the call was dropped, I clipped my phone to me and put in my headset just in case she called while I was hanging out some clothes. Did she call when I was prepared?

No!

She waited until I forgot where I put the phone!

I got to the phone and she hung up before I could answer. Then she called right back and said something like, “I see! I have to call two or more times to get you to answer.

She said she just called to tell me that she didn’t hang up on me when the call was dropped, which I already figured. We talked for a few minutes and she was being cute and dorky again.

I don’t know what it was, but there was just something about her attitude that was really … cute.

She asked where my Mom was and I told her that she went to Bar Harbor, Maine last week and was supposed to go to Nova Scotia, but they screwed up the reservations. Damn Canadians! So they ended up going to Niagara Falls … again!

She said she wanted to call her for some reason, but that she wouldn’t since she was on vacation. I told her she could call my Mom if she wanted because I’m sure she’d be happy to hear from her, but she said she’d just wait.

I wonder why she wanted to call Mom though.

Anyway, she called back a little bit after that conversation to tell me about her scholarship she received. I guess they finally released the names on the website or something.

She told me that by the time she gets the scholarship money, she’ll be out of college. Then she said, “My last day is November 4th and my graduation isn’t until February. So here’s what I was thinking. If my Mom would let me, I could use the money to come over there.

That shocked me! Not to mention raised some conflicting feelings.

I mean, on one hand, I was thinking, “That’d be awesome!” At the same time though, I was thinking, “But I wish it was THIS time of year … not in December or after.

I just really love this time of year. I don’t know why, but it makes me feel excited, relaxed, optimistic, laid back, hopeful, and romantic (which I’m counting on to counter the extreme lust I’ve been dealing with for the last six months!).

If I were to share any time of year with someone, I’d want to share between September 15th and November 1st. It just seems like an almost magical time of year.

I once heard that the Celts believed that the veil between this world and the Spirit world was at it’s thinnest on Halloween or “All Hallows Eve.” I think they were onto something because I definitely feel closer to the Supernatural this time of year.

I guess they believed it so much that they started the tradition of wearing masks to fool any malicious Spirits that might want to cause mischief or harm. I’m assuming it was probably people with a guilty conscience that wronged someone in Life and was afraid of revenge from beyond the grave that felt they had to hide behind a mask.

I guess that’s where “Trick-or-Treat” gets its tradition of people dressing up in costumes.

I tried to get Shahira to come over two years in a row to participate in our Autumn activities, such as going to pick out pumpkins at the Pumpkin Patch, carving pumpkins, going on hayrides, going to “haunted” places like the Haunted Woods, the Haunted Corn Maze, the Haunted Prison, and numerous other “haunted” places … but it never worked out.

There was always Ramadan to use as an excuse, but maybe it’s important for her to be close to her family during that time. She didn’t even have to use that as an excuse because there’s an even better excuse for her … cold weather!

What is it with Singaporeans wussing out with cold weather? I mean, if I went to Singapore, I wouldn’t wuss out because of the HOT and HUMID weather.

I guess that’s one advantage to living in Ohio. You get to experience nature’s full spectrum. You get both extremes here. In the winter it gets colder than a witch’s tit. How cold is that? Well, I know it’s been like -50°F+ with wind-chill factor. Then come summer, it can get really hot and humid with temperatures steady around a 100ºF.

I do have to admit, however, that the last two summers haven’t been bad at all. I don’t remember one day where I felt miserable. Although, other people I know felt miserable, so maybe it was just me.

In any case, I guess maybe if I was as skinny as Shahira, maybe I couldn’t tolerate the cold either. I mean, she makes Calista Flockhart look curvy. Kidding! She’s not that skinny. She looks a lot better than Calista Flockhart. Plus, she supposedly put on weight last year. I’m not sure, but I think she meant she let her hair grow longer.

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So anyway, I guess my point was, I wish it was this time of year that Shahirah could come if she was coming. I would so love to share this time of year with her. Although, that might not be a good idea since I’m conflicted about how I feel about her. I mean, I think those nighttime hayrides to whatever “haunted” destinations are really romantic. And if the romantic feeling isn’t enough reason to make you want to cuddle up with someone … there’s always the “chill” in the air on October nights, which just makes it even more romantic.

-sigh-

Anyway, when Shahirah told me her idea about using the money to come here, even though part of me was excited at the thought … there was another part that was … hmm … what’s the word I’m looking for … uneasy, hesitant, shocked, stunned, terrified, claustrophobic?

Whatever it was I was feeling, it’s in there somewhere. I think the phrase; “Deer in headlights.” also applies.

I don’t know why a part of me felt that way. I think it’s because I’m confused and I don’t know what I want to feel for her. Or as my Mom or Greg would probably put it, “You know what you feel but want to deny it.

I don’t know, I just don’t know.

Maybe deep down I know I’m still capable of feeling as strongly for her as I once did and it really scares me because I’m afraid of being disappointed again because that disappointment will cause me to feel really hurt, something I don’t want to feel again.

There’s a lot I need to sort out concerning her and how I really feel. I can’t just keep putting it off and hoping I won’t have to figure it out. I need to take the time to really think about it, but I’m too tired (conveniently) to think about it tonight and this entry is long enough, so I’m ending here for now.

Posted by: Shane Posted at: 11:47 PM Comments 0 comment(s)

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