August 2008 is the 7th anniversary for my homepage (American Ecstasy/Heaven to Me). It's hard to believe that I started this page so many years ago.  In that time I expanded the site quickly, only to have my reach exceed my grasp.  The last couple of years I've found it harder and harder to update certain parts of the site.  Things have settled down a bit now, and I want to trim some of the parts of the site that I don't update anymore, consolidate other parts that are redundant, and update other parts that have been neglected for a while.

As far as updates, this month's Vista Drive gets updates to the 365 section, and The Vista Observer, as well as Color gallery page 57 and Black and White gallery page 58.
 

In my travels around this city I've come to notice something about nearly everyone I've encountered... they all seem perfectly miserable.  When I run into some business, be it a fast food joint, a store, or the bank, the people there seem to me to be completely miserable.  I'm somewhat miserable at my job, so I can understand where this misery is coming from.  What surprises me is that it seems like no one in this town is not miserable.  And it makes me ask, how did we get to this point?  Society is what it is because WE make it so.  The majority of people can rise up and demand better working conditions, but they don't.  Be it because of fear, or apathy, I don't know.  What I do know is that the other day I went to buy a burger at a local fast food joint and the girl behind the counter acted surly.  I know she didn't mean anything by it, it's a product of her condition.  I'm sure growing up she didn't picture herself taking orders from a bunch of hungry bastards all day long.  Not everyone can be the head of a company, or a movie star, I understand that.  But is it too much to ask to be treated like a human being?  At my two jobs I never get to the point where the misery shows.  I may feel down, but I never show it to the public.  I can't, because that only perpetuates that miserable feeling.  My goal is to stop the misery transfer from me to another person.  I can't speak for anyone else, I can only stop it from stemming from me to someone who comes in contact with me.  It's bad enough that we're all miserable, we don't need to continue to suffer in some sort of perpetual misery motion machine.  Each of us has to make the effort to make the other person feel better.  By that we will all benefit.  A person can change change the world, the chore is doing it one person at a time.  But if that person changes another person, and so on and so on, soon everyone will be touched.  So yes, I get it, we all hate our jobs, we all hate our meaningless love lives, and we hate that we're not rich.  You know what?  If you feel this way, it's time to do something about it.  But really do something, even if you fail.  Especially if you fail.  Better to have something real to be miserable about, like trying and failing at something significant, than to simply be just miserable.