Shocker

I have not made an official claim but,

I am the father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby. Yes it's true.

Once the DNA tests are done and I am awarded custody of the child I will do whatever is necessary to liquidate the 550 million dollars. I will give some away to close friends, some to charity, and the rest will be used to buy a casino in Vegas. I can then play all the poker I want and you all can come visit me. No I don't think there is anything wrong with raising a child in Vegas. We will open up a memorial tribute to her mother and make even more money!!!

Don't you love capitalism?

V Day

I'm late on V day...but when I have been early or on time for anything really???

I have a myraid of thoughts & ideas about Valentines day but it can all be summed up by a quote from a friend. "If you really love someone, then every day is Valentines day."

So all my faithful & nonfaithful readers in web land. Do you really love someone? Are you treating them like it's valentines day?

Interesting Story

I have wanted to tell anyone this story and not had a platform or audience so here we go...

I was chatting with a black co-worker who has an amazing story. He played football in Oklahoma back in the 50ies or 60ies. Up until then there were all black & all white schools. A black sports team would play other black teams and not teams from white schools. Well he was in high school at the time they reversed this rule. His school's team was playing their first game against a white school's team. They were ahead by a touchdown but in the last quarter the officials made so many bogus calls against them & labored them with penalties that the white team was able to score repeatedly and win the game.

My co-worker's name is Bernard. Bernard was telling me he was just a kid and when you are a kid you don't care about color or racism or any of those issues. All kids care about is playing, winning and having fun. It is when we get older and lose our innocence we realize why life is unfair and how people look at each other unfairly. As Bernard got older the loss bothered him.

Bernard is currently in his late 60ies. He walked to a nearby bank on lunch to get money and ran into one of the footbally players from the white school that his team played against in that game. They recognized each other and began chatting. The white guy made the comment that Bernard's team should have fairly won that game had the officials made honest calls & not been prejudiced against the black team. As Bernad told me this I could see him fighting to hold back tears welling in his eyes.

I like Bernard's story. It is a real experience, it reveals unjustice & prejudice society has held, and it also allows for redemption in the end. Even though there are many stories of horrible things white people have done against blacks it doesn't mean all white people are horrible. Bernard's white high school football teammate wasn't and was able to see the unjustice that was going on. He couldn't undo what happened but he could agree with Bernard about what happened. It seems like precious little but his comments meant the world to Bernard.

There is more to creating healthy interracial relations then stories with happy endings & the ability of both races to agree about injustice. There will need to be much discussion and willingess to honestly address our beliefs & ideas about ourselves, biases, and others. I believe most of the important changes won't occur there. The most important change occures at heart level. It occurs when we embrace the innocence of children, longing only to laugh, play, and have fun with our neighbors.

Saw Jane Elliot

Jane Elliot spoke at Metro for one of their black history events. Jane Elliot is an internationally known teacher, lecturer, diversity trainer, and activist. In response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. over thirty years ago, Jane Elliott devised the controversial and startling, "Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes" exercise. This well known exercise labels participants as inferior or superior based solely up on the color of their eyes and exposes them to the experience of being a minority.

Who doesn't remember watching movies about this in elementary school? I did & the Aurora public schools showed those movies but I know not everyone has heard of Jane Elliot. I met a 22 yr old the other day who didn't know who Madonna was...now I'm just showing my age and making I'm getting old remarks...anyway.

I was excited to hear what Jane Elliot would say about racism, biogotry, and prejudice but ended up pretty disappointed. Jane Elliot is an a staunch activist and not much of a thinker or speaker per say. She recommends books & other speakers but when it came down to her presentation she didn't have too much to say about racism, biogotry, and prejudice. She has modified her exercises to fit a public speaking event and has some great points but she didn't spend any time talking about how prejudice comes about, why some people see it and some people don't, or how to start a discussing prejudice with neighbors & society as a whole (for some reason that is what I was expecting or wanted to hear).

As I walked away I was thinking about the strengths of Jane Elliot's presentation. She blatantly identifies incorrect & inacurate preceptions of others & society and she calls it what it is. She doesn't pull any punches and encourages people to take action. Society needs to hear that message and be reprimanded when it lacks action or the ability to identify inacurate preceptions. Society also needs to hear about what causes prejudice and why some people can't see it or identify it. Having healthy interracial & intercultural relations hinge on our ability to defeat prejudice & racism but also repair broken and strained race relations. As a society we need both! Some times I'm worried as it seems like the latter option is seldom discussed or addressed as frequently as the first.

Procrastination

I have procrastinated updating my blog to blogger's new system for the last couple weeks. While all this was going on I had plenty of ideas & topics to write about but because I put off updating my blog I couldn't log in & write about anything. Now that I have access...I feel like all those ideas & topics are old news and maybe I shouldn't share them.

Until I get motivated to write about them...let us all reflect on Microfiber socks.

In our country it is just a matter of time before someone would think about it & market them! I'm not complaining. Not the most original invention but it ranks up there with silk boxers.

Ice box City

So for those of you who are out of state Denver has become the new mecca of cold weather. Forget Minnesota, Milkwaukee, Canda...it's now Denver with snow every weekend! Fly in to DIA & bring your sled, snowmobile, & skies!

We have had snow for the last 7 weeks. It hasn't snowed like this in Denver since the early 80's!

It is kind of funny watching all the out of stater's shiver with frost in their eyebrows asking us to clarify the statement "If you don't like the weather just wait 5 minutes". They then sarcastically exclaim "I've been waiting 7 weeks".

Two words - Ice ruts. I have never seen them on side streets. Even a month after the first two storms there are side streets with ice ruts that run the full length of a block. Most of the ruts are so deep you don't have to steer & you can hear ice scraping the bottom of the car. Every now and then I get out to make sure my oil pan & muffler are still intact...okay it's not bad enough for me to really check for my oil pan & muffler but you get the picture.

Many neighborhoods not only have a ton of ice but there are still huge piles of snow everywhere. Every now and then I see a front end loader with a dump truck or two along some streets. For a while snow was getting piled in parks but spring sports are supposed to start soon and since the tempature has yet to get above 30 degrees most days the snow hasn't melted.

If it were up to me...we would sell it to some state that hasn't had snow & wants some. Arizona, New Mexico...maybe some states that normally have snow this time of year like Wisconsin. I was having breakfast with a friend who recently moved back to Wisconsin because she missed snow during the winter time. I told her she should have waited a year to move.

I don't mind snow & cold weather but almost two solid months of freezing weather & snow are getting on my nerves! I am a cold weather pansy. I could never be an eskimo although at some point I would like to live in an igloo for a couple days...just a couple days!