A Dream Like Mine

I am without internet today, so I’ve wandered out in the cold to find an open access point. Have a Happy New Year, everyone! I love you, and my life is better for having you in it.

All right, 2011, I’m ready. Come at me, bro.

marleymarley:

I have an opinion about reblogging someone else’s post to only tear down whatever concept or message was initially being conveyed:

If you need to be negative, that is absolutely fine. The consequence will always be that you hurt the person’s feelings. I don’t care who you are, what the subject is - if you reblog something of mine which I put up with my heart behind it and with a message that made me feel good at the time - if you decide that what I posted wasn’t good enough, was wrong, was stupid - so much so that you need to reblog it and make a general statement that throws everything I’ve said in the toilet -

You’ve hijacked my post.

If that’s your intention, if that is what you wanted to do - if you wanted to say to me to my face and in front of my 900+ followers that what I said was ridiculous - fantastic. Thank you.

If that wasn’t your intention - well - ask yourself if you really needed to do that in the first place.

You’re wrong.

azspot:

Let’s Hear It for the Unappreciated Heroes of 2010

Under-Appreciated Person One: Bradley Manning. While we were all fixated on Julian Assange, the story of the young American soldier who actually leaked the classified documents passed almost unnoticed. If Manning was mentioned at all, it was as to be described an impetuous, angry kid who downloaded the documents onto a CD and leaked them as a result of a “grudge” or “tantrum.”

Here’s what really happened. Manning signed up when he was just 18 believing him would be protecting and defending his country and the cause of freedom. He soon found himself sent to Iraq, where he was ordered to round up and hand over Iraqi civilians to America’s new Iraqi allies, who he could see were then torturing them with electrical drills and other implements. The only “crime” committed by many of these people was to write “scholarly critiques” of the occupation or the new people in charge. He knew torture was a crime under US, Iraqi and international law, so he went to his military supervisor and explained what was going on. He was told to shut up and get back to herding up Iraqis.

Manning had to choose between being complicit in these atrocities, or not. At the age of 21, he made a brave choice — to put human rights before his own interests. He found the classified military documents revealing the US was covering up the deaths of 15,000 Iraqis and had a de facto policy of allowing the Iraqis they had installed in power to carry out torture — and he decided he had a moral obligation to show them to the American people. To prevent the major crime of torturing and murdering innocents, he committed the minor crime of leaking the evidence. He has spent the last seven months in solitary confinement — a punishment that causes many prisoners to go mad and which the US National Commission on Prisons called “torturous.” He is expected to be sentenced to 80 years in jail at least. The people who allowed torture have faced no punishment at all.

I am, however, a mutant. I have a mutation that causes hemachromatosis in 3-8% of the population that has it. That just causes me to have too much iron in my blood. It can be dealt with relatively easily. Just bleed more.

It’s a lame superpower, but oh well. Anybody know if I can apply for the X-Men on line?

So, if you ever want to know what it’s like to literally shit bricks, ask your barista for barium sulfate in your mochaccino.