destroy the spineless, show me it's real....

Having a holiday where we honor those who serve our country, alive or dead, is the least we can do. Every time Veterans Day comes around I think of my father. As a veteran of WWII he had quiet, yet strong opinions about it all. He never talked to us kids about it and he didn't say much more to my mother about it. What he did say, though, spoke volumes.
When I was 4 we lived a 2-minute walk from Lafayette Street, a street where a lot of parades would take place....and my father avoided them like the plague. When my mom asked him why he refused to attend parades, he said that when he saw the POW's marching all he could see was the men who never made it home. He couldn't bring himself to watch the living march when he saw so many men lose their lives. It…

I wanted to test the video function on my new phone and ended up with this. I learned two things from this:
1) My Boston accent is painfully apparent.
2) I really do have a tendency to ramble.
There, my vlog cherry has been officially popped.

 

A 6-year old boy was suspended from school for having a camping tool.  Really....go read about it here.

 

Suddenly, 6-year old boys are being suspended and facing 45 days in reform school for BRINGING A CAMPING TOOL TO SCHOOL.  

 

ARE THEY SERIOUS???

 

It was one of those tools that function as a fork, spoon or knife.  He was exciting about joining the Cub Scouts and decided to bring it to school to eat lunch with.  Anyone with half a brain in their head could see the logic in this.  When my kid got his first light saber the first thing he asked me was whether he could bring it to school or not.  So why is this situation a big fucking deal with the school?  Because apparently, last year a third grader was expelled from…

Once again, my extended family confirms why I've excluded them from my life all these years.  (Reasons why I can't stand these people can be found here and here.)  The sector of fuck-ups I wish to reference today are my mother's sisters.  It's been a long time since these women got under my skin, but I've officially had it up to my eyeballs.  I was rejected pretty much because I was born.  Plain and simple?  Not so much.  It took one venomous bitch and five idiots so willing to believe her to set this into motion.  It's time I turned the fucking tides.

I've deciding I'm writing one single letter, publicly addressing everything.  The rumors, the infighting, the years of bitterness.....I'm fucking done with these people.  I'm going to have my say, tuck them back into the…

I've come to the conclusion that as much as I would like to leave those high school insecurities behind, they find a way to rear their ugly heads every once in a while.

Nothing of note happened, really.  I was playing games on Facebook, where I have all of my real life childhood/high school friends.  Sometimes I look at their status updates and for whatever reason I am whisked back to the days of never quite fitting in.  Don't get me wrong, I had friends.  I'm actually still close to a few of them.  However, I still get these feelings of inadequacy when I see their updates.  I suppose an easy lateral would be that it's a direct reflection of how I feel today.  Their lives appear to be in control, with jobs, money, good looks and such, where mine is a day-to-day struggle with money, health problems and no job.…