First Things First

Summer is here and so is another update of my site.  Before I go on with the new updates, I wanted to mention one thing.  If you missed it, American Bliss was updated on June 21st.  Which might seem like a random date to update.  However, there is a reason.  Can you guess what it is?  Speaking of American Ecstasy, that particular page on the site will hopefully get two new additions soon.  Also this month, the Black and White section of Vista Drive has new photos.  Enjoy the update.

Afterthoughts : Float a Rumor

Going to school one hears a lot of different things on the playground, rumors, stories, and such.  Most of them false, but a few of them have a kernel of truth.  I don't know what it is about human nature but we tend to believe a rumor more often than not.  Maybe it's the mystery of a rumor that draws us into the belief that it is true.

In elementary school I heard a rumor that the entire school was built over a lake... a lake that was a crater made by a meteor.  The rumor on the playground was that the lake was some 400 feet deep, and that the school was built over it.  The school, so it was said, floated on a bunch of huge balloons that were kept inflated by machines on the surface.  A friend even took me by a maintenance room that had a long line of switches.  Those switches were said to be the switches to the motors that kept the balloons inflated.  One move on those switches and the entire school would no longer float.  And, more importantly, the school would sink into the lake.  My friend dared me to pull one of the switches.  Of course I didn't.  I was terrified that the school would sink.

During class my imagination got the better of me, and I imagined this huge meteorite sitting at the bottom of this dark lake.  Somehow I there were said to be fish in this lake.  Blind fish, or those fish that where capable of bio-luminescence.  I imagined them floating a few feet under my seat in class.  I couldn't get over the image of the school floating on huge balloons.  Part of me wanted to swim down there.  Part of me didn't want to get anywhere near the school.  It's funny what a child can imagine.

Of course, logical questions like, "Why was the school built over a lake?," or, "How could this all be possible?," never came to mind.  Logic doesn't enter the picture of so young a child.  I was still young enough to believe everything I was told.  If the school floated on a lake, I believed it.  Now I know the school doesn't float on a lake.  Nevertheless, part of me still wants to know for sure.  I mean, what if it's true?  I know, how silly.

Editorial : Common Senseless

Last week a woman who hit a homeless man with her car, drove on, and left him for dead in her garage, was convicted and sentenced to 50 years in prison for not rendering aide to the person she hit.  It seems to me that everyone has lost their common sense.  The fact that this woman, who was high on drugs, still had the wherewithal to drive home, and hide the fact that she hit this man with her car, is incredible to me.  Drugs not withstanding, it's amazing that she knew not to take him to the hospital because she might be charged with a crime, because she was driving under the influence.  She lost all common sense, like so many others.

Like the idiot that's suing McDonalds because he is a big fat slob.  McDonalds, it would seem, tied him down, and forced fed him Big Macs all day until he became a human whale.  Never did he think to see the nutritional chart that can be found in many McDonalds to see just how many calories he was consuming.  Never did he suspect that eating too much could make him fat.  Never did it dawn on this guy that eating like a pig might turn you into a human pig.  He lost all common sense.

Coffee is hot!  You would think to know not to open a hot cup of coffee by holding it between your legs.  If you smoke now, you should know by now that you might get cancer.  Don't go suing the tobacco companies 30 years from now saying that you didn't know you could get cancer from smoking.  There are commercials running all the time giving you that knowledge.

People today don't ever want to be responsible for anything.  People today think that they are never at fault.  It's always something else, like God, or fate, that is always at fault for their misfortune, and for their stupidity.  We have become a nation of irresponsible litigious fools, and I hate it.  Today no one is every responsible for themselves.

Etcetera : Girls I Had a Crush On: Megan Follows

This is Megan Follows, actress, Canadian, and a girl I once had a crush on.  Years ago I saw a movie on my local PBS station called "Anne of Green Gables."  It stared Megan Follows as the redheaded orphan, Anne Shirley, from the Lucy Maud Montgomery novel "Anne of Green Gables."  Megan was the first actress I caused me to feel something for a character.  I really believed she was Anne Shirley.  In part I fell for Anne, but it was Megan I was seeing.  Since the two went hand in hand I quickly got a crush on not only the character of Anne Shirley, but also a crush on the actress who portrayed her.  I was young, and impressionable, and prone to infatuations.  My love for the character translated into a love for Megan.  I knew she was close to my age, even though the movie aired, here in the states, a couple of years after it first aired on Canadian TV.  Of course, now I know that the character and the actress are not the same.  Still, I thought that Megan was cute, and my mini infatuation continued for a few years.  The movie made me want to read the book, which brought a new found sense of love for reading, which continues to this day.  From that one movie, not only did I love Anne Shirley, the character, Megan, the actress that portrayed Anne, but also the very act of reading.   To this day I do still wish that I met Megan oh so many years ago.  I still like to meet her now.  I think that an actress that can move a child emotionally must be someone very special.  I'd like to thank her for kindling my love of not only movies, but of books, and more importantly, of writing.  Because, if it had not been for that movie, I wouldn't have been moved to read the book it was based on.  If that hadn't happened, I wouldn't have found my love for the written word.  I wish to thank Megan Follows for all those things.  She was not just a boyhood crush, she was a spark that ignited a fire that still burns today.