Marks-a-lot

I want you to take a moment to consider a dollar amount. I want you to stop yourself and think about what this amount could and does mean to you. The amount I want you to consider is $2,000. What would you do with $2,000?

It's less than our mortgage payment, taxes included. It would buy five of the classes I teach. It would buy two pairs of Christian Louboutin shoes, maybe three. It's more than the monthly amount earned for a family of four living above the poverty line in the United States. It's more than the monthly salary a new teacher received in Montana in 2002-2003.

Here's the really astounding part: With $2,000, you could change the lives of thousands of people in Africa, South America, Central America and Asia by building potable water wells. Through organizations like The Water Project you could literally provide safe drinking water, therefore less disease, therefore less death, for thousands of people. According to the strictest numbers, you could give 100 people access to potable water for 15 years. What happens if we change it a bit and say that the $2,000 is a monthly expenditure? it adds up to 12,000 people a year, each continuing for 15 years. As that number grows, the ripples would be astounding. It would take very little time for the number to have rippled into the millions, perhaps even billions. All from $2,000, initially and $24,000 annually. Imagine the ripples you could create with that amount of money. Imagine.

Did you know that over 27,000,000 people are enslaved in the world today? Did you also know that the number of people enslaved on the earth today is larger than it has ever been? Not all slaves are children, but the majority seem to be since children are unable to care for themselves. There are sex slaves and there are workers slaves, though the two are often combined. One thing all enslaved people have in common is their vulnerability to forces that seek to profit from their degradation. Yet, you could buy 40 enslaved children in Haiti with $2,000. That equals 480 children a year you could liberate from a life of rape, work, disease, and malnutrition. Children. Imagine the childhood you could restore with that gift. Imagine.

Have you considered what $2,000 means to you?

This is what it means to me: Between my insurance company and my copays, we pay $2000 a month on prescriptions for me. That's $24,000 a year. Three fourths of that amount is spent on one medication. It happens to be the one that keeps me alive, but it is only 90 mg a month of fluid. That's 0.003174656575462237 of an ounce. Let's say you wanted to spend that amount on Chanel No. 5 perfume, instead: you could buy 5 ounces of it with $2,000. That's just short of half a can of Coke! (I may be really off in my calculations. I am, ahem, not that good at that math stuff.) Admittedly, I don't know how drug prices are calculated and where the true cost lies, but I do know that there are reasons why some drugs remain exorbitant and others do not: demand. My example is perhaps not the best example because the drug I take is very rarely used and the problem I take it for is rarer, still. However, it is an indication of what it means to live the life of a woman in the United States with the benefit of medical insurance. Honestly, it seems... distorted, bloated and not at all based in the reality faced by most people in the world. I simply would not have survived as long as I have if I had been born in a third world country, or in this country without health insurance. I, like you, am literally measured by the amount I can pay for the care I receive.

I am left, finally, to ask: why do I deserve to live when others do not?

It must truly be admitted that if we do not see our actions as purposeful and meaningful to others as much as they are to ourselves, we lose all perspective and all consciousness in the idea of otherness and individuality. If we do not acknowledge our place in the system of poverty, hatred, and a valueless driven life, we do not acknowledge our place on the earth. It isn't enough for us to shake our heads in disgust at what others do to cause suffering; how can it be? Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. Yes! Act only in a way that you consciously choose to make true and real. Act only in a way that does not allow for slavery in your name or in the name of your lower price, your freer choice. It must be so. That is the only way to be worthy of the lives we are privileged to lead. You choose! You decide! You act in a way that is conscious of others!

Now ask yourself: Do you deserve your life? Does your life, in all of its daily functions, its lesser and its greater moments, cause or alleviate suffering? It is not enough to allow others to do the work for us; to acknowledge that the organizations who fight these things exist and are therefore acting in our stead. It cannot be enough when the problem exists at all. It's easy enough to understand that if we support companies who employ slave labor then we support slavery. When we grab a Hershey's bar at the convenience store or a Reese's peanut butter cup out of the vending machine, we are eating off of the backs of slaves. We endorse the idea that cheap chocolate is a better outcome for all of us than paying more for chocolate, or anything else. We decide that our palates, our taste buds, are more important than the suffering of others. How can this be? How have we gotten here so willfully and yet so ignorantly?

Priorities.

We'd rather have 500 channels of satellite TV than use that money to fight rampant slavery. We'd rather have 30 pairs of shoes than spend that money to build wells for people who get their water from a swamp. We'd rather have a perfectly manicured lawn than spend that money on education, in our own damn country! We'd rather shop at Walmart than spend more to shop at Costco, where employees are treated like human beings worthy of respect and the bottom line is, amazingly, secondary to the health of the company and employees themselves. We'd rather we didn't have to think about how the cocoa for our cheap chocolate bar was obtained. We'd rather unthinkingly go through life allowing others to do the moral heavy lifting for us.

We don't want to bother. And the sad part is: we don't have to be bothered. We can continue to go about our lives as if nothing we do truly matters to anyone but us and ours. That absence of conflict in our lives has been brought to us by the people who do stand up and fight for the rights of others. Those people are the ones who have given you the choice to be oblivious, the choice to be selfish. Do you deserve it? No. There is no such thing as a deserving selfish act because there is no such thing as an act that exists on its own. Whether you choose to use more water to keep your non-native grass alive than a person in Africa uses all year, or whether you choose to live as well as you can but only insofar as it doesn't inconvenience you, you are choosing to act in a way that has consequences to others. All others. The only truly selfish act you are allowed is the act of existence; everything else is a gift. Be sentimental: treasure it.


For, we are the makers of ripples.




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Dick Cheney is evil

I just tried scribefire after having so many problems with blogger. I wrote an entire post which then magically erased itself. Have I mentioned how much I despise blogging software? If I write a post in Word, the spacings get all screwy. Yet, I am sure to lose at least part of each post I write when I write it on blogger. Yes, I am whining. I'm sick, I'm allowed to whine.

Did you hear about Dick Cheney and the suggestion that Navy Seals be used as bait to give us an excuse to invade Iran? I can't imagine how betrayed the soldiers and soldiers' families who voted for these "people" must have felt when they heard this story. It takes a special brand of evil to consider using soldiers as bait just so that we can get what we want, not because it will do some good. This is the sort of thing that gives the 9/11 conspiracy nuts more fodder and the sort of thing that makes us all that much more distrustful of our country. The fact that this kind of evil is allowed to prosper, is allowed to make decisions for us is abominable. This is the kind of evil that doesn't masquerade behind a benign countenance; it is the kind of evil that lays it bare and then laughs at anyone who objects. It is this totalitarian thinking, this idea that we can do whatever we wish simply because no one will be there to stop us that has caused such a serious rift between reality and politics in this country. Who is watching the watchmen?

And yet, what has the highest ranking democrat done about any of it? Nothing. First, Nancy Pelosi states that impeachment is "off the table" for Bush. Then she says she's willing to entertain it, but doggone it! there just isn't time before he leaves office. Now she has stated through a spokesperson that she will not decide on the contempt citation for Karl Rove until September. What in the name of all things good and true is she waiting for? If I were a conspiracy nut I might be inclined to believe that Pelosi is a highly successful republican plant. I am left to wonder if she is nothing more than a power player who, like Dick Cheney, cares for nothing other than her own power and her own gratuitous fortune. One thing I do know for sure: she has misled people when she claimed to be a democrat.

What do politicians think will happen if we continue on this road to extreme gaps in earning? Do they really think the people will not rise up and revolt against their lack of opportunity? Do they really not know that the soaring crime rates are exactly that? I don't get it, I really don't. How can so many people be so divorced from reality and so cut off from the common person that they think people will quietly starve to death, or die of kidney failure on the street, or die in a random shooting? Did you know that if you're homeless and you're in renal failure, if it takes you more than a few days to die they kick you out of the charity hospital? You only get so long for your final death throes before you are either kicked back to the street or put in a medicare nursing home. And spare me the, oh, but they chose to be homeless! rhetoric. No one chooses to be homeless. When you were a kid did you think, I want to grow up to be a homeless crack addict! Of course not. No matter the road that brought you to homelessness, being homeless or begging on the street is not a happy place to be.

Yet, we do nothing. We sit back in our comfortable homes, paying $350 a month for air conditioning and $200 a month to water our pristine lawns full of non-native flowers and we shake our heads at the evil of it all while sipping our iced tea. If you don't think you have as much responsibility in this whole ridiculous situation we're in, think again. You, me, everyone in this country who is capable of speaking out has the duty to stop this shit. Now. Stop the reign of terror brought about by the Bush administration. Bring back checks and balances to government. Stop the devaluation of life as a basic necessity, not a luxury! You realize that, don't you? Life is now a luxury. Can't afford to feed/house/care for yourself? Sucks to be you. Dick Cheney, Nancy Pelosi, George Bush, even you Barack Obama, you can all do those things. What about us?

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Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!

Happy birthday, Suz!


In so many ways, you've shown me the meaning of friendship and what it means to support someone, in good times and bad.



Picture credit, *snerk*

Stumble It!

Yes we can

Yesterday afternoon we had a platform meeting for Obama in our teensy home. We managed to squeeze about 32 people in, with standing room only. I was blown away by the thoughtful and passionate discussion and with the ideas that came from the meeting. I've gone back and forth over whether to post the platform I eventually wrote from the meeting here; ultimately, I think it is a useful thing to do. My one regret was the lack of time in this process. We needed to make our issues heard but we didn't have time to actually write the platform as a group. I only hope I did those remarkable people justice in what I have written.

The campaign asked if there was anything that stood out or stories that I wanted to share. This is what I told them:

We had very strong opinions expressed by articulate and intelligent people. One man told us about working full time and yet no having health insurance. Another told us of her experience in the educational system in another state and the extreme inequity of it in comparison to the education in Texas. I spoke about disability and the idea that we are not equal if equality is not enforced. My husband spoke about being an atheist and being excluded from moral consideration based on the majority's view of faith.

The greatest thing, though, was the palpable excitement over the ability to talk to and listen to people who share your dream for a better nation. We pledged to get together again, independent of the campaign, and explore these issues and other issues in more depth. It was wonderful to see such engagement on the faces of all involved and such a willingness to accept the words of others as valid and worthy of consideration. I don't know why, but we had a truly wonderful group of people.

The platform:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

With these words, we do act, believe and inspire a nation of citizens, as individuals and as a collected people. The foundation of an undeniable equality for all people is the most basic statement of issue we can choose to recognize. The nature of equality being one of action rather than rhetoric, we have chosen these issues to particularly endorse as necessary for equality to be realized:

1. Environmental concerns. Without a stable and sustainable environment we lose the necessity of all other issues, individually and collectively. As reason driven beings we are called by duty to act as considered participants in the use and protection of nature. Just as you do not build a home on shifting sand, you cannot build a nation on a dying world. If we seek a better future by the work we do today, we must first ensure that a future is possible. It is of vital importance that our actions as humans do not take more from our environment than they give; for this reason, our responsibility in the daily quest for equality is one that must recognize that equality cannot be reached if there is not a place for it to reside.

2. 1. Healthcare as a right, not a privilege. When we endorse the idea in our first declaration of intent that all people are guaranteed life through the very nature of life itself, we assert that life must involve action. Life is not static: we cannot stand still, we cannot go backwards, we cannot go sideways. Forward motion inheres itself to life and is not separable from the mechanism and definition of life itself. Because of that progression, people biologically degrade and require intervention to progress until the final limit of their existence. Holding it true that all people are the rightful owners of their own biological life, we must allow people to pursue that life with all access to equality. If you provide some of the people with access to healthcare but not all of the people, you are enforcing the idea that only some people are deserving of the fundamental necessity of intervention against pain and treatable disease. If healthcare exists but only for the people who arbitrarily possess more opportunity of access to it, the principle and the practicality of equality cannot exist.

3. Veterans’ affairs. When we ask others to protect us we give them the proxy to our liberty. Doing so imposes a huge burden on the entrusted person and it forces us to recognize that burden with all amelioration of harm done in the name of our liberty. We ask the people who serve in our military to carry an impossible burden when we ask them to carry it alone. If we do not ask that the burden be carried only temporarily and with equal access to the benefit of our proxy, we are asking our soldiers to subvert their equality. We have the profound responsibility to morally and physically pay for the ability to hand off the protection of our liberty to others. The way we have treated the people who serve in our military is shameful. We must take up the burden they have carried when they return from service and we must make sure their equality is enforced when they are not here to ensure it themselves. It is profoundly humbling to know that another person would die for your safety, for your comfort, for your equality; it is because of that knowledge that we owe every veteran, every serving soldier, and every military family member the debt of care, safety and dignity. Without them, there is no Us, there is no society. Without the enforcement of their equality in all things, we cease to recognize equality in its most basic function: the necessity of a shared burden.
   

4. People with disabilities require and are entitled to equal access in society. All people possess the inherent biological equality that exists in the nature of a human being. However, all people also possess differences in abilities that require nuanced movement in respect to our individuality. If you accept that human equality is based solely on membership in the human species, you must accept that any difference does not degrade that equality. Further, if a significant portion of your society is unable to access the public mechanisms of society, those people are practically and ideologically segregated and cannot call themselves full members of society. Equal access to all things public is a fundamental right declared in our democracy. Just as we do not force African Americans to have separate access to public spaces, services and opportunities, we should not force people with disabilities to segregate themselves according to ability. Yet, the only way a citizen of the United States can force compliance of access on public enterprise is to hire legal representation and sue the noncompliant entity. The burden of access cannot fall on the people who do not possess access in the first place. It is in the equality of access that we are endowed with our citizenship in this country. Without that access we are spoken of as equal, but not equal in actuality. We are not equal when people who share our inherent biological equality cannot participate in society; equality is enforced by the necessity of access for all people, regardless of ability.

5. Balanced budget. Our society is based on the arbitrary and inherently valueless idea of monetary equivalence. With the recognition that our value extends before, during, and after value has been accorded to an idea of value through money, we must also acknowledge that the monetary trust we afford our government should not be taken from us with a lack of accountability. It is for this reason that we require our government to conduct the business of society, the thing that requires monetary value, in a way that does not put undue burden on the citizens of our country. When a budget is overextended and lopsided in nature we cannot possibly enforce equality for those who are forced to accept less than the people who benefit from unnecessary and valueless excess. The very nature of equality demands balance in all things and this must remain true for our ideas, both practical and lofty. Without balance in the business of government and the trust fund of the people, equality will degrade until it is measured solely by the idea and not the actuality.

6. Cessation of borrowing from Social Security. It is necessary in society that, while all people are equal, some people will garner less in the way of monetary value than others. Humans possess different abilities which cause them to need and provide different services in society. It is also a fundamental component of equality that all people, no matter their ability have access to a dignified existence. It is for that reason that Social Security is necessary for people who have not or are unable to provide themselves with enough money to live once they are no longer able to contribute to society by working. We accept this as true and necessary just as we accept that our government is pledged to protect our interests. Our interests are not served when the government abuses our trust by taking the money we pay toward a better dignity in society for every citizen and uses it to further something that is not related to that trust. You do not put your money in a trust with the expectation that the money will be used against your consent. Furthermore, the acknowledgment of a lack of intent to pay back the forcefully borrowed money violates our trust so profoundly that it imposes a false dichotomy of us versus them on the relationship of citizen to government. Whenever we are forced into the role of prisoner of circumstances due to our government’s misdeeds we are unable to pursue or even acknowledge equality.

7. Education is a necessity. When we choose to live in society, we choose that society to protect our interests and the interests of our neighbors. If society does nothing more than protect our physical interests, or protect the property we are holding at that moment, society will fail. It is the duty of our government to protect the entirety of our interests and to do that in the best way available. When our government enforces a lack of equity in educational standards it is furthering the cycle of discontent and lack of opportunity that creates problems for every citizen in society. Education, the thing that allows us to function as the considered beings we are, is necessary in its equality of access. We cannot know that we possess the ability to read if we do not know what reading means. Accordingly, we cannot know that we possess the ability to live productively and harmoniously in society if we do not know how to learn and progress. The cycle of generational poverty has caused an enormous gap in educational resources that must be bridged for society to prosper. When we are judged as a society based on the success of our citizens, the deficit of educational standards will define our entire society. As adults possessed of educational gifts, it is our duty to insure the success of our future generations through our own hard won success. Our equality in education translates our equality in society and the world. Without it, we are equal without the ability to recognize it, act on it and believe it.

8. Election reform. It is vitally necessary that a society acts in the best interest and through the voice of the people in that society. Society, after all, is the thing we become when we stand unified with others. We cannot possibly be unified or represented by a society that does not allow us to choose the direction and leadership of our collective interest. When the very few and arbitrarily lucky possess more of a voice in the way a society is chosen and acted out, equality does not exist. It is imperative that we find ways to enforce the idea that all people have the right to be heard and all votes count. It is for this reason that election reform must commence and must be the enforcement of the idea that we are all equal in our right to the direction and leadership of society.

9. Foreign affairs. When we were attacked on September 11^th we saw two very important things: the pain of betrayal on the most basic level and the sublimity of support on the largest level. We saw horror in the name of an unknown and unworkable idea first, then we saw the true nature of our recognized compassion and equality in the tears, outstretched hands and inclusiveness of the rest of the world. We saw German football (soccer) players crying so hard they could not take to the field of play. We saw London punk rockers laying flowers down next to a peer of the realm. We saw the shock and recognition of the world community for the horror we were experiencing. It was in that moment, that unlikely and horrible opportunity, that we could have created and enforced so much good in the world. Unfortunately, we chose the exact opposite path into destruction and continual, repetitive horror. It is for this reason that we must, terribly must, employ diplomacy and reason in our relations with other countries. We must recognize the sovereignty of other nations as equal to our own and we must recognize that war is only a solution in the most extreme, tyrannical situations. If we protect our borders why should we storm the borders of others? We must go forward with the recognition that all people are equal and deserve to pursue their own happiness in their own way as long as it does not infringe on the liberty of others. We have done the exact opposite of that in the Middle East and it must stop, now, before the equality we subvert is our own. We must renew our commitment to the world at large by renewing our commitment to the International Court, the United Nations, and our endorsement of the Geneva Conventions. Greater men and women than us have gone before and laid down our duty to equality of treatment and responsibility; it is our current duty to recognize that gift.

10. The return to science. There has been a push in recent years to conflate faith with science in education and in public policy; this agenda is one of exclusion and is divorced from the natural world as we are able to understand it. While faith is a wonderful thing and a thing we must be allowed, it cannot be a thing that is forced on others. The very nature of faith is one that must be gotten to through a leap, not a shove. The community of scientists in the United States is strong, varied and purposeful in their willingness to work toward an equality of biology. It is through science itself that we have the understanding of that biological equality and it must be supported as a thing itself. We don’t think of a “dark age” as possessing any elucidation in science; rather, we think of it as a time when people adhere to an idea over reality and force others to adhere to it as well. We cannot know what another person’s understanding of an idea truly is; we can only know what our biological capabilities guarantee. Ideas are arbitrary in practicality and can only be recognized as fact when they are scientifically verified. It is for that reason that science must prosper for our understanding and treatment of our biological lives and equality to continue.
    

Edited to add:

I think we need to emphasize:
1.More & better funding/oversight on public transportation (good for the environment & energy conservation): national rail service, coordination of urban public transportation intrastate.
2.A BALANCED approach to the Middle East, one that accentuates a solid two state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, where Israel exists in security & peace in pre-1967 borders, & the Palestinians have a viable, healthy state wherein BOTH Hezbollah & Hamas agree to recognize Israel's
right to exist & disarm their organizations & work w/ the Palestinian government as partners, not adversaries. Where corruption & hoarding of oil profits are rooted out in ALL Middle Eastern countries, so that the people benefit from the wealth instead of oligarchies & Western oil companies. And that the U.S. use diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy in dealing w/ Iran. We withdraw from Iraq.
3.A Health Care plan based on the Congressional Health Care Plan as proposed by Sen. Obama.

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Stumble It!

Spandau Sounds*

If I believed in psychic phenomenon I'd be looking into the futures market. Why? I made this video two nights ago; the next morning new documents were released to the ACLU that supported what I stated in the video. Creepy.

I had a funny experience yesterday afternoon: I was driving to the pharmacy in an enormous SUV (rental) when a man in a Jeep darted in front of me and almost caused an accident. I instinctively honked at him, which he apparently didn't like. He sort of swerved a little bit toward me as I passed him, then got into the turn lane behind me and turned into the pharmacy parking lot. As I pulled into the handicapped spot at the front of the store, he pulled into a spot down the row. My usual exit the car routine goes something like this: 1. Take off seatbelt, 2. Put purse over head and arm (cross ways over chest), 3. put my arm through my crutch and grip the handle, 4. open the door and either swing my legs out or step out, one leg at a time (depending on strength that day), 5. pull crutch through the car after me. Imagine my doing all of this while being blocked from view by a large car door; you wouldn't see the crutch at all. So, as I was getting out of the car I saw the man from the Jeep walking purposely toward me, with a nasty look on his face. On his way toward me he had to navigate a column that necessitated some deviation from a straight path. If the man went in front of the column, he was coming toward me; if he went behind, he was going toward the store. Just as he was going in front of the column toward me I shut the door of the car and he clearly saw the crutch. He literally did a circle around the column and kept walking, acting as if he had never intended to come near me! It was freaking hilarious. I almost wish he had started yelling at me before I shut the door just so I could have seen his reaction when confronted with the gimp aid. That would have been priceless!

I've noticed this sort of attitude before; this attitude of gentleness toward people who are clearly disabled. What's odd is that I tend to see either that or the exact opposite. It's as if we inspire such strong emotions in people that they are incapable of reacting to us in a moderate way. While I was in the bathroom at Red Lobster the other day two women came in; one went into a stall and the other stood by the sink. They were talking up a storm about their different aches, pains and ailments, complaining away their time in the potty. As I exited the stall the woman by the sink literally stopped talking mid sentence and looked at me like she wanted to hit me. It was such an odd reaction and one I don't understand, still. Was it my age? Was it the crutch? Did she have instant guilt for complaining about minor aches and pains when a young woman with a crutch (i.e. a more unfortunate person) was listening? It's hard to say. I have an Obama sticker on my crutch but her angle in reference to the sticker made it impossible for her to see. It was just so odd.

It's natural for many of us to want to be sweeter to people whom we view as less fortunate than ourselves, just as it is natural for others to want to be mean to people they view as inferior to them. We know that, it isn't particularly revelatory. I simply find it odd that there tend to be only two categories that necessitate action toward people with disabilities: unfortunate or inferior. It's very similar to the kind of thinking that leads to or is engendered by extreme racism. I am not saying that is what is happening with these people; I am saying that the instantaneous nature of the emotion is one that has to come from long and fiercely held generalizations. Where do those generalizations come from?

Philosophy has many subcategories that people tend to specialize in and focus on in their studies and writing. Ethics is one of those categories, as is epistemology. Epistemology is, generally speaking, the search for the meaning of truth, or how we Know. There are several different theories for how truth is established and how we Know, of course; philosophers must always disagree or think up new ways to torture students. Some think truth cannot be established, others think it is established through the necessity of it, while others think it is established through coherence. While I tend to agree with a mishmash of theories (the McQuillan theory of Pragmacorrespondence?), William James's theory of truth is one I think serves us well when discussing the reasons for the broad generalizations people make whenever they are confronted with something new. James's theory is that there is no such thing as absolute, static truth; truth is simply what is true in pragmatic terms at the moment of its use. In other words, truth exists to apply itself to the general, not as a macro idea or fact that applies always, regardless of the particular.

I think James hit on something quite interesting with this idea of pragmatism being the true (!) focus of knowledge. Think of it this way: if we were constantly forced to reevaluate every new thing we see, hear, taste, touch, smell or do we'd never progress beyond a baby's ability to process life. If we had to do that much work constantly, we would never get anything related to the utility of life accomplished! For example: when you go to a party where you don't know anyone, it requires far more work than if you were at a party where you do know everyone. You've already assigned belief and meaning and truth to the people you know and you only need to change those things when something new about that person is established. But when you are in a new situation with new things you are forced to find belief, meaning and truth for each thing. That's a hard process! Luckily, we've already established some larger generalizations that can be applied in general terms to the new things we're experiencing. If you see a person reading a book in the corner at the party and you know that everyone you've ever met who is that bookish is also quite shy, you make the unconscious generalization that the bookish person in the corner is shy. If you're wrong, it's an easy fix and it's something you are not required to discover on your own. People will act as they act, regardless of what we think; it is up to them to show us who they are and up to us to change our generalizations on the fly.

This theory and practice does get a little tricky when we add in things like hate, anger and closed mindedness. If you were raised to believe that all Asians will cheat you when dealing with them financially, you will make the assumption that the Asian man at the pharmacy is taking something from you that he has no right to take. You assumed something from a generalization you believe is based on truth. But that is not a generalization that works. Even if you had experienced an Asian person cheating you, the cheating had nothing to do with the man's race and everything to do with his character. We might say that a person who belongs to the North American Cheater's Club would be someone who will cheat us because they have demonstrated a willingness to do that by their behavior. Behavior is the key in these things; people may look like they behave (clothes, makeup, hygiene), but those things necessitate behavior. When we generalize correctly, we make assumptions about people based on what we know about others like them. What do we know about the Asian cheater? We know that he is a man, he is Asian, and he cheated. The cheater’s gender and race have nothing to do with the act of cheating; the cheating is what we have to understand the person. In other words, do you know more about a person by looking at them or by seeing them act? Clearly, actions are the only indications of a person’s character and the only way we can know who they are.** Accordingly, if your only experience with people in wheelchairs has been that they are cranky and have huge chips on their shoulders, you will generalize that behavior for all wheelers because it is backed up by the assumption that people in chairs might have a harder life than people who are able to ambulate without assistance. There are good reasons behind these generalizations and these particular assumptions translate to all the knowledge you require until you have a new experience with a wheeler that changes your necessary knowledge. That is the nature of this fluid idea of truth; we change our understanding and beliefs when it is pragmatically necessary.***

This is all very idealistic, but it does work well for us in practical terms. The challenge will always be, though, how to know when a change in generalization is necessary and which generalizations are nothing more than prejudices. You will hear people say things like, "I Jewed them down to a lower price," about bargaining for a better deal. That is the phrasing for an improper generalization. While there may be some Jews who are parsimonious, ascribing that characteristic to such a large group of people is not something that will ever work on pragmatic grounds. If you make that large of a generalization you are bound to be in a constant state of confusion or anxiety because you are constantly having to either refuse to acknowledge that your idea is wrong (which requires more work than accepting that your idea is faulty and moving on) or you will have to constantly be reevaluating the idea.**** If the constant reevaluation is happening, you've missed the pragmatic utility of generalizations entirely! While it seems like the Jewish generalization and the disability generalization are the same, they are quite different. The cranky behavior of the wheeler has two things backing up the generalization: the experience you've had with a cranky wheeler and the knowledge you have that ambulation usually makes life easier. The Jewish assumption has only one thing behind it and that is your experience with one person without any kind of reason behind the experience itself. While the wheeler may not be cranky because he or she is in a chair (and really, being in a chair can be a good thing, too), the generalization does have some soundness to it in relation to how we understand the nature of our existence. What is there about the Jewish person and parsimony that makes sense? Is there any utility in the action itself? No, of course not. There isn't a practical reason for the assumption that all Jews are parsimonious, though there might be more of a practical reason behind the assumption that all wheelers are cranky. The more practical nature of the wheeler assumption does not, however, absolve us of guilt if we keep the generalization once we know it is not valid. That is why prejudice, or a belief we want to be true no matter if it is true or not, are so detrimental to our epistemological understanding. With every generalization comes the necessity of the acknowledgment of our fallibility as humans. Quite simply, we can always be wrong in everything we think we know.

Let me give you one more example: If you live in the United States and you drive a car, and you live in a state that allows people to pump their own gas, chances are good that you've pumped gas into a car on more than one occasion. If you're driving around in an unfamiliar area of town and you notice you need gas, the process for getting the gas will be known to you already and would not necessitate new knowledge on your part. Even if you find that the gas station you chose has a slightly different process for getting gas, your generalizations about pumping gas are ultimately still true; you've simply added a new element to what you already understood. If, however, we change the way we fuel our cars you will have to learn a new way of doing it and the old generalizations must be discarded; they will no longer be pragmatically true.

What does this wordy discussion of truth have to do with the reactions people have to the disabled? Simple! People react the way they do because the experiences they've had and the truth of those particulars fuel their generalizations about the disabled. It's harder to attach blame when that is the case because we're not talking about something like race or even culture; we're talking about a very specific way of life that is particularly different for every disabled person, but generally the same for every all disabled people. The generality is the limitation we have that able bodied people do not. Yet, everyone has limitations; that is the thing, the knowledge of limitations, that allows for the somewhat appropriate generalization about people who are more limited than you. If I were to think about it (not that I do that sort of thing) I would probably find that I have made some assumptions about what it is like to live life in a wheelchair and about the people who do that. My generalizations might be closer to particular truth than an able bodied person's generalizations, but they are no less fluid. The amount of change needed does not alter the necessity of the fluidity of the generalization or the generalization itself; all it does is give me a head start on truth.

Another reason able bodied people react to us in strong ways much of the time is partially due to the fact that we are a minority of people whose differences are imposed on others. Five able bodied people standing in a group discussing dogs are just standing there discussing dogs. If there is one black person in the group the situation does not change; the race of of the participants is irrelevant to the negotiation of the conversation. If, on the other hand, one of those people is disabled the negotiation does change. If they are deaf, for example, they either need to face the person speaking to read their lips, or someone needs to translate with ASL, or the person speaking must use both ASL and spoken language. The difference doesn't make the disabled person inferior to the others, nor does it make the situation harder or less valuable. The difference is only the imposed limits on others in the situation, not just the person with the disability. Again, that isn't a bad thing, it's just a necessity. Unfortunately, some able bodied people do attach value to these things and assume that a person who can't do the things they do in the same way is lacking in something. That is not an appropriate generalization because it forces the particular to be general. While the deaf person in the dog discussion can't hear as everyone else can, they can still have as much participation in the discussion as everyone else; it is simply a difference in the way it is communicated. It is the same with walking versus wheeling; the movement necessary to get to a different spot is accomplished in different ways but it is accomplished. Any generalization of lesser value is one that has nothing to do with the actuality and everything to do with a forced version of reality. It simply does not correspond to truth.

We need to be thoughtful and aware of our generalizations for them to work for us instead of against us; I do realize this is easier said than done. Generalizations can turn into steadfast beliefs if we are lazy or if we think we benefit from a truth that is not supported by correspondence. When you allow for belief to correspond to truth, it must actually correspond to truth; if we allow for such a thing, we also must acknowledge that the truth we think we know is still understood in human (fallible) terms. Even if you think you Know, doubt will always creep in. We are, after all, human. Generally speaking.


*I admit, sometimes the obscurity of the titles I choose cracks my ass up!

**Appearances are relevant to generalizations only when they involve action.

***Please do not think that this theory legitimizes every generalization. There must be practical necessity involved and it must be based on actuality. If someone is rude to you and you assume it's because they have a little green alien residing in their bottom, you are making an assumption that is utterly divorced from necessity or actuality. If you were to then make the generalization that all rude people have little green aliens in their bottoms you are basing the generalization on something that cannot be true. Generalizations must be knowledge and reality based to constitute truth.

****I recently read Schindler's List, by Thomas Keneally. I can't remember who it was that said it, but one of the high Nazi party members (Goering, maybe?) made a speech in which he admitted that "Aryans" probably knew one Jew who was a "good" Jew. He went on to tell them that they must make no exceptions and be merciless with all Jews because they were all the same at bottom. I would imagine the willingness to admit that there might be some goodness in this thing you have decided is all bad would make your steadfast bias painful. The futility of a generalization that admits flaws is the thing that ultimately dooms tyranny.


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Get your damn priorities straight!

Before I begin let me state unequivocally: I do not in any way support terrorism in any form. I am a huge fan of order in society and in giving up some liberty for the insurance of greater freedoms. But I am also a huge fan of biological equality and for being responsible for what we do alone. Our justifications for our deeds can never, never be based on what someone else has done; that is a coward’s gambit. I am also a big believer in enforcing an idea, not just stating it as fact. (edit) Yeah ok, I'll edit out the naughty language, mom.

Whenever I am in the car I listen to NPR. I listen to it every morning on the way to work and every afternoon on the way home. It has been informative and interesting all these years and I usually come away from the brief NPR sessions with more than I had before I listened to it. This morning was no different but the thing I came away with was outrage. And the thing I can’t believe is that I wasn’t outraged before and there are few people who are outraged still.

We live in a country that no longer holds itself accountable to the Geneva Conventions. I never thought I would write or say or think such a thing, but the truth is inescapable. For those of you who are not familiar with the Geneva Conventions, they are a set of treaties written and ratified on how enemy captives are to be treated by their capturers, among other things. In other words, the Geneva Conventions are there to insure that anyone captured by an enemy in the time of war is entitled to a basic standard of treatment that prohibits things like torture and abuse. The Bush administration is trying to claim that the detainees at Guantanamo are “unlawful enemy combatants” but that notion has been soundly put to rest by the International Court: "There is no intermediate status; nobody in enemy hands can be outside the law." This is in addition to the 4^th Geneva Convention which deals with civilians.

Here we are, in the 21^st century, and we’re torturing people we have captured and are holding them without due process of law. I can get around the habeas corpus objection if they are prisoners of war, but we cannot get beyond basic standards of care. When we allow, endorse and practice torture on people who are in our care, no matter who they are, we are endorsing the very idea that those things are acceptable for everyone. We don’t have the luxury of saying, do as I say, not as I do as a country. We are the country we choose to be and if we choose to ignore that most basic standard of right conduct, we have chosen tyranny. How did this happen?

I’ll tell you how it happened: We are so busy being angry about men sleeping with men and women sleeping with women that we have forgotten that there are some basic issues we have yet to resolve, some basic tenets of the principle of harm that are being violated every minute of every day. We have chosen to care about how people have sex rather than the way we treat other people, as if we can be responsible for the way other people live and not responsible for our own endorsements and lives. If you support the torture of prisoners through your lack of outrage over the fact of its existence and yet you are outraged over people having sex… honestly, I don’t even know what to say to that. What is wrong with you? How do you lay your head on your downy pillow at night knowing that there are people being tortured in your name? Do you honestly care more about other peoples’ sex lives? Where is your sense of perspective?

While you are happily debating whether or not people have the right to love whomever they wish, the world has gone to hell. Have you noticed that the Taliban are making a strong showing in Afghanistan? Did you notice the dire figures being released by a vast majority of scientists that show a crisis in environmental issues? How about the fact that our prisons are overflowing but our education system is underfunded by hundreds of percentage points? Any of those things bother you? Maybe just a teensy bit? Or is it really all about penises and vaginas for you?

Gay men and women marrying and having sex has nothing to do with me and will never affect me. Torture? That affects me as long as I am a citizen of this country. As a citizen, I am subject to the laws of the land as much as anyone else, and if the law states that it is ok to torture people, I could be that person one day. Gay? Nope, not going to happen in this lifetime. Tortured? Could happen tomorrow. Yes, that goes for you, too. Comfy, now?

Even if you believe that every person being held at Guantanamo is guilty, is rightly there, you still have the obligation of outrage on behalf of the ideal your country is supposed to uphold. You still are responsible for the idea that our country is allowed to torture human beings in the name of the citizens of this country. You get to own that. You. Those of you who rail against the terrible things the terrorists have done to their own captives as an excuse to torture them don’t get to have all of that moral indignation. Sorry! You lost that right when you said it was ok for us to do it, but not them. You lost that right when you decided that people who are like you are better and deserve better treatment than people who are like them. We’re not talking about people who have demonstrably harmed people in every instance, here; there are people being held who have done nothing. Yet, that makes little difference when we are trying to find moral justification for our own acts. We are not responsible for what they did; we are only responsible for what we do. That is the fundamental reason we should be taking to the streets and protesting the idea that torturing people under our guard is both vile and utterly anathema to everything we profess to believe in this country. Remember this? “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Where in that brief quote does it say, but only the Americans? Where does it say, but only the ones who think like us?

I am sick to outrage of the idea that people think they believe in equality when all they do shows that belief is unthinkingly empty. We are not asked to coddle murderers or dictators or terrorists; we are asked to treat them as if they are human as they have not themselves done. How can you condemn a person for doing something you are doing to them? Do you not see the problem inherent in that action? As vile as they are and as horrific as their crimes remain, we did not do those things. The proper response to vile acts is not the endorsement of those acts by doing them ourselves!

I received an email today entitled, “The Axis of Idiots.” I won’t go into much detail because I don’t want to make you all sick, but the email states that Edward Kennedy was wrong for showing the pictures of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and asking for an end to that kind of treatment. Who thinks that way? What kind of a person thinks we should measure our actions on the actions of terrorists? Make no mistake, when you justify the continued abuse of prisoners of war based on the principle that what they are doing is worse, or they started it, you are stating that you think the idea of torture and annihilation are super keen, okey dokey for everyone. If you state that they are doing it so you can too, you are saying that what they are doing is right! How is that not evident? How? Can you imagine the outrage in our country if the Abu Ghraib actions had happened to one of our own? Let me guess: it would be ok as long as the person being tortured had already done very bad things; things like torturing another human being. Oh, wait…

You and I and everyone else who lives in this country have a responsibility to make sure our interests as citizens are protected. If you think torturing human beings protects your interests, then I suggest a quick move to Sudan; they are all about one side being right and the other side being disposable. Have a blast. I choose to live in a country that stands for equality, no matter who you are; a country where, no matter how vile your actions, you are still entitled to fundamental rights because the rest of us carry the moral majority for your sorry ass. I choose to live in a country where torture is condemned because it is wrong, not because we didn’t think of it first.

I don’t want to live in a country whose citizens think as the Nazis thought. I don’t want to live in a country whose citizens think as the terrorists think. I don’t want to live among people who believe their biological and ideological rights are more important than those of others. Anyone who would endorse that view is low, vile and acting in a way that endorses tyranny and injustice. Stop it. Stop it now. Stand up for the idea of equality in all things, not just in the easy ones. Stand up for the idea that people, no matter who they are or what they’ve done, are still people. Stand up for the idea that in matching a person’s crime with an equal or worse crime you are endorsing the very idea of the rightness of the crime itself. Stand up, now, before the person being tortured is you and your only redress to law is the empty promise of a once great nation. Stand up before we lose the soul of our most treasured, fundamental belief: equality, responsibility, and the condemnation of any act that infringes upon those ideals. Stand up against the tyranny inherent in terrorist thinking and torture. You never know when the tide will turn from tyranny over them to tyranny over you.

"You've gotta say, "I'm a human being, goddammit! My life has value!"

So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell,

"I'm as mad as hell,

and I'm not going to take this anymore!!"

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Oh, by the way, the soldier in that picture recently overdosed. The consequences of tyranny reach into the depths of our despair.

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I hope this makes sense

Miscellaneous blah blah today.

Sometimes I wonder how it is possible people can think others are ridiculously stupid. Does anyone really believe that these people are who they say they are? Come on... where did they go to promote their agenda? Fox News. It's so obvious they are people who, for whatever reason, are attempting to make Democrats generally and Obama specifically look bad. A group that claims: "This website was founded in the desire to reveal the corruption, misconceptions and distortions of the liberal and biased media who have prohibited the free flow of ideas and truth," has no true interest in the middle ground they claim to occupy. The liberal bias? Who is it that owns the largest chunk of the media on the planet? Here's a hint: it's not Oprah Winfrey. Regardless of their clear agenda, I hope they fall into the dustbin of history sooner rather than later; we don't need more pandering to those who lack the ability to think critically or who think it's funny to cause demonstrable harm to the cause of democracy.

Simon's Cat has a new video and it is the best one, yet! Well, it's the best one until the next one:



I spent a lovely morning trying to get myself to class. These are the times when being ill sucks more than it is irrelevant. I'm clearly sick with something (pneumonia? probably) that is causing all kinds of pleasant effects. When I get sick my body does two things: it fights anticoagulation and the deficits I already possess make themselves really, really known.

Weakness? Oh, I must have forgotten to condition my hair because this brush just won't go through it.
Anxiety? Excuse me while I shake here in the corner.
Dizziness? Wheeeeeeeee! the merry-go-round goes faster! faster!
Fatigue? The sun hitting the horizon means it is time for sleep, right?
Words? What? No, you said what. What? I don't know. Wait, what?

Did you hear about Michael Savage? Disabled Politico blogged about this several days ago and I've been wanting to mention it, but the whole sick issue has been getting in the way. Michael Savage, a man with a PhD, mind you, thinks that autism is a fraud. All those kids need is a strong male hand to tell them to stop being babies and stop acting like idiots. I know I don't need to say much about this as it speaks for itself, but it does make me wonder if Savage has suffered some brain trauma. He's bound to know that no matter what he thinks about autism, this kind of thing is not going to make him any friends and is likely to lose him his job. Whether you agree or not, calling people who are considered disabled (a whole 'nother debate there) frauds is not going to go over so well. There will be people who will say that the world has become too P.C., but that misses the point; the point is that when a thing is medically documented it is not something anyone else gets to pass judgment upon as being "fake." Even if you think people use it as an excuse for bad behavior, you still don't have the right to discredit the entirety of the thing. It's as if people think that the exception proves the problem, when the reality will always be that the reason we even know about the exception is because it is remarkable among sameness. We hear about the abuse far more than we hear about the need because the need exists in a bland, realistic way. The abuse is something that exists in a sensational, look at me! way.

What I am trying to say, rather weakly today, is that I am tired of the abuse of a thing, the exception of a thing being the definition of a thing. We saw this with "welfare mamas" during the first Bush (Sr.) campaign and we see it over and over with everything else. If a cop rapes a man with a broom handle, it suddenly is indicative of all cops. This is seen even more so when we're talking about things like disability or behavior. When someone brags about getting disability for something they don't need, that becomes indicative of people who receive disability. Yet, how many people know that disability payments are extremely hard to get and do not cover basic living expenses? The exception never, never proves the rule.

I've gone off on a bit of a tangent, I know. Autism is not something that is lacking in clear diagnostic guidelines. Autism is not something you can just snap out of with a good smack on the butt every day. Yet again, we have this asshole with a microphone who thinks it is easy because he has never had to deal with it, he's never been intimately acquainted with the thing itself. We all do this, of course. Most of us, however, have the sense to realize that just because our experience is different doesn't mean our experience is right or universal. Hell, I got a whole new understanding of the crushing despair associated with depression when I had that horrible reaction to Trileptal. I'm sick of the conceit so many people have that because they have experienced things differently they know better than others what the truth of the matter, any matter is. The reliance on blind anecdote, or anecdote without examination, is ruining us as a society and it must change.

Michael Savage is hardly worth mentioning because he is so obviously an asshole and an idiot. The same is true for the organization I linked first in this post. These people will always be marginal in society because they do not have the best interest of society at heart. But that doesn't mean we can just roll our eyes and walk on past when we see their ridiculous antics. The necessity to stand up and say "no" to them is never going to go away. In a quick search for the reaction to Savage I saw that the autism guide on About hoped that people would not respond to Savage. I had to shake my head at the lack of care that attitude indicates and wonder how on earth someone who professes to have an interest in autism in particular could be so blindly blase. It is in how we deal with the marginalized lunacy that we learn that it is lunacy in the first place. Look at what has happened with the antivaccination canard: too few people spoke up and now it has unleashed an epidemic, and not an internet epidemic, a real epidemic.

Ya know, I am simply lacking the strength to write any more. One final note: Matt Scott didn't win the Espy and that makes me sad. But he did have a great time and he has an incredible attitude about it. We should all endeavor to be more like him.

I'm going to watch The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, now. I watched Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism the night before. Meh, nothing we didn't already know. The funny thing about that documentary was that I was only half way paying attention until I realized that the disguised voice of one of the anonymous interviewees was Keithy. I'd recognize his modulation anywhere. God, I love netflix. Oh, Jon and I tried to see the new Batman movie in the middle of the day on Saturday. Yeah, no. It was sold out for the entire day by 2:00. Has anyone seen it, yet? I'm curious. Wow, for someone who lacked the strength to write anything more, I've sure written more than I wanted to. Wait, what?


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Vote for me, please!

Disaboom is having a blog contest this week. The writer of the most popular blog post wins $1,000. This is a weekly contest for the next few weeks, so I will be begging for help again.

This is how it works: the person who gets the most "I like it!" hits and comments wins. The "I like it!" button is on the top right of the blog post and you do not have to register to "like it" or comment. If you do like my post, I'd appreciate the support here.

Thank yeeeeeeeeew!


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I need a damn hobby

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52% of what?

Disaboom recently commissioned a survey of able bodied people to get their ideas on what life would be like if they were to suddenly become disabled. The results of the poll were very hurtful and disheartening when I first read them, but the more I've thought about it, the more I think they are as they should be. 52% of able bodied people polled responded that they would rather die than live with a disability. I get that.

Getting that might not have been the reaction you would expect from a disabled woman who leads a rich, rewarding life with a disability. I get that, too. I've stated many times since I got sick that I would not want to live in a locked in state, nor would I want to live if my brain registered as dead. But the truth is, I don't know what I would want in that situation. I can't possibly judge such a thing because I lack the understanding of what that thing means. As another member put it, I lack the imagination to project my self into that situation because it doesn't hold any commonality with who I am today. I am what I consider to be whole. Yet, I know that there are other people who see me as less than because of the crutch. I don't really blame them because they, too, lack the imagination to see themselves as a person with a crutch. I think I would rather die than live uneducated and poor, but how would I know I was living a life I didn't like? Clearly, I wouldn't know it.

I think we possess the ability to make moral judgments on actions we have not experienced because all of those judgments stem from the principle of harm: if you violate someone else's liberty then you are violating their basic right to a lack of harm. But there is nothing moral about wanting to live as a person with a disability or not to live that way; it is simply something we do. Chances are good most people would change their minds and find heretofore unknown strength to cope with a new way of life. That's why we say that nobody is really against the disabled. The morality of the issue only comes into the argument when we seek to harm someone else, to take away their liberty. No one is attempting that when they say they'd rather die than be one of us, though.

Understandably, many people with disabilities took this news of the 52% pretty hard. Many took it personally and some took it as a rallying call against able bodied people. I've seen a fair bit of that sort of thing in the disability community, an us versus them attitude, and I think it does us more harm than it does them. We are the ones called upon to force the issue of acceptance, not the people who can't even imagine what our lives are and how we live them. It is our responsibility as people with disabilities to make other people aware of the challenges we face, the limitations they unwittingly put on us. Would you know to help someone if they never made it known themselves? Of course not. That is canoe we're paddling and the one we continually have to attempt to point in the same direction.

It's not that we need able bodied people to understand us intimately. What we need is for people to understand that we know only what we know and to make a judgment based on what someone else knows is beyond our powers of imagination. We've all been hurt, so we know that hurting someone else is not right or good. I don't have to be raped to know that it would hurt like hell and would cause all kinds of anguish, just as someone who is able bodied doesn't need to know that it is wrong to dump someone out of their wheelchair. There is a basic principle of harm in those two actions that we can all understand. What we need to let people slide on is this idea that they have to understand the basic facts of our existence and our limitations without having anything in their own lives to understand them with; they lack the necessary tools of experience. It is for that reason that I think the moral indignation against able bodied people is misplaced. It is unfair to ask people to put themselves in our shoes, wheels or prosthetics and to instantly understand what life is like as a person with a disability.

It's interesting to note that people who have lived with disability their entire lives tend to have a slightly different take on these things than those of us who became disabled later. I think the life long disability might make you more tolerant of the other side because they have no idea what it is like not to be able bodied, just as you have no idea what it's like to be able bodied. It's those of us who came by our disabilities later in life that tend to have a harder time with the attitudes we think we see in the able bodied community. Really, it shouldn't be that way; I remember the fact that disability was simply not present in my life and therefore lacked meaning to me. That doesn't mean I would park in the handicapped spots or act in ways that were harmful to people with disabilities, but I know that imagining my life now would have been impossible. Actually, if you could go back and tell that version of me running up that mountain in Los Angeles that in a few short years I'd be walking with a crutch and parking in the handicapped spot I probably would have been immeasurably depressed. I would have lacked the process necessary to grieve the loss of my current idea of normalcy. And there is nothing wrong with that, just as there is nothing wrong with thinking you'd rather die than live with disability.

I know I am not heroic in any way, just as everyone else who is disabled is not heroic due solely to their disability. I might be heroic in the influence I have over my students and the good I do, but the disability is only that basic existence that lacks moral value. That's it, isn't it? There is nothing morally valuable about being disabled or able bodied, it simply is our existence. When we start to put value on either one of those things, we lose our ability to accept life as it is and we begin to think that our existence is contingent upon our ability to walk or wash ourselves. Those things are the same for all people; we simply must do what we must do and any heroism we find in our lives must surpass those must dos. As I stated in an earlier post, heroism is the bounding beyond normal. Imagination and heroism are fine things, but they are always based on our own reality. And you know what? There's nothing wrong with that.

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Or, that would be the picture credit if crappy blogger were working.

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