How this NBA lockout is affecting the fans...especially Me?

      As a girl who loves sports, I've always looked forward to the beginning of the NBA season, especially the holidays when they play big games, like the Christmas day game with the Los Angeles Lakers against the Boston Celtics but this year I have nothing to look forward to.

     As I watch reports of the players and owners still in limbo about a deal which would end this lockout I began to wonder why they're being so greedy, none of them are thinking about the fans. Fans who buy their memorabilia, purchase season tickets, attend or watch games, those who devote their hard earn money and valuable time to cheer on their favorite team or player.

     As someone who is a fan and spends my money supporting my favorite team I have started to feel left out, like they don't care. So with the feelings I have started to wonder that if they don't consider the fans then why should we consider them. If the lockout ends today they expect things to go back to normal when it shouldn't, for we have missed games, great plays, good food and heartfelt cheers, because they can't make up their minds.

     So what if we acted like them and decided to not come back when they want us to, to watch international basketball and support our players that had to play overseas because of the lookout. Missing basketball has made me so furious that I've considered boycotting the 2011-2012 season....If we have one!

A Different Angle

       As the Penn State Child Sex Abuse Scandal continues to evolve I can't help but to think why the media and the school is making this all about Coach Joe Paterno. Ever report involves him when it should be about the victims and Sandusky. The media has made it such a frenzy that you forget that Sandusky is even involved in the situation.

       With the recent firing of Paterno the scandal has really taken a different angle placing him in the front for not reporting the alleged 2002 incident to the police however what I don't understand is why McQueary was not fired. He's the person who actually witnessed the incident. With the incident going unreported the question asked is "Why?"

       I think the way in which Joe reported the situation was accurate because he didn't witness it and who's to say that what was actually reported to him is true. I mean McQueary could have had it out for Sandusky...he did end up with his position after the incident. McQueary not reporting the incident when he witnessed it begs to ask "did he really see anything and is he telling the truth?"

Why are we so homo-phobic?

         In a recent conversation with my boyfriend about gay rights, he revealed that he's homo-phobic. I always knew that he didn't feel comfortable when talking about the subject but I never knew he felt this way. Upon learning this I asked him why, he told me 'because they annoy him."

         At first i thought this dude is weird but he's entitled to his own opinion, so I continued by asking him why they annoy him he said "because they're gay and that's not right."

         I asked him what would he do if one of his children turned out to be gay he told me he'd send him or her back to Africa. This completely shocked me because my boyfriend is a Nigerian and in his country people are beaten and sometimes killed for being homosexual or having homosexual tendencies. I also did some research and saw a documentary where an African male was describing what they do to the women who are lesbian. In Africa a women is rape for the belief that raping her will make her not want to be gay.  

         After this conversation and seeing the documentary I began to wonder why we as a society are so homo-phobic, is it because we don't like when someone is different, is it because of our religious beliefs or is it because we fear that we may actually be what we're so against. I mean if we saw it as love and not their body parts would will still hate them cause at the end of it all that's all they're trying to do....love the person they're with regardless of their gender.

McDonald's Beat Down

     After watching the McDonald's Beat Down video I am extremely pissed and disappointed.

      I don't believe the employee should have lost his job and been arrested. I mean when does it become a crime to defend yourself, maybe he shouldn't have used the rod, but what do you do in that situations. I know that if I was in his position I most likely would have found the closest item to me to use in helping to defend myself. 

      A lot of people would say I'm wrong because those are women but they attacked him first. All of this happened because he was simply doing his job of making sure a large bill was not counterfeit. Also at the end of the video the reporter lists his charges and the two female charges but what concerns me is why they(the females) were not charged with. So I ask "were the right actions taken against him for what he did?"

From a victim to a survivor

As a child I thought like a victim now that I am an adult I think as a survivor.

Having my father taken from my life at the young age of eight, I thought as a victim that revenge was the best solution to the situations. I wanted the person who murdered him sentenced to death or far worst, for someone to kill him and watch him die slowly as my father had, but after I recently visited Angola prison my outlook on the death penalty and life imprisonment has changed.

Due to the amazing experience I had at Angola I am able to think as a survivor and see that revenge is not the best decision for it does exactly the same thing that was done to me, takes someone from their family. Seeing and speaking to several prisoners was like talking to the dead, for most of the individuals I spoke to are going to die there. Before going I had a pre-existing conception that prisoners never change and they deserve to rot in the hell they created from the actions they committed. Since I got to talk to several and hear their stories my opinion has changed. One particular gentleman had a great impact on that opinion, he is 47 years old and serving a life sentence for a murder he committed when he was 17 years old. I asked him if he thought being in prison had change the way he looked at life and he told me “no, it’s not prison that has changed him its life.”

I asked him how. He said “because some people been in prison just as long as he has and they’re still acting and doing the things they did when they were out while some changed because they were tired of doing the same thing.”

After thinking about what he said I began to realize that even though we as a society thinks it is retribution to confine an individual to an eight by ten cell with someone telling him when to eat, shower or anything else is the best decision, it is not because no matter what he is still a human being. For a judge and jury to decide what someone’s punishment should be is the same as the murder who decides how his next victim should be killed. We are committed a crime for another crime. So when I think about the young boy who took a father from a young girl and six boys who needed a man in their life, I think he shouldn’t have to spend his life confined because that want change him. He will only change when he’s ready, jail does reform prisoners it just houses them, keeping them from society but it also produces a war zone.

What is this blogging thing all about?

Blogging is driving me insane. At the beginning of ever week I find myself panicking, loss, trying to figure out what to blog about. Sometimes I think “why did Beth have to require me to do this, is it really helping to improve my writing?” I watch the news, read magazines and newspapers only to realize that there is nothing that interesting to me that I would like to blog about, so I decided to blog about how blogging is beginning to driving me insane.

 Blogging is causing me to lose sleep for my mind is racing, thinking about all the possibilities of topics I can write about, however when I put a pen to paper I get writers block which usually ends with me having only written one sentence. I also find myself “feeling lucky” when searching recent news event on Google only to be told that my luck has ran out. The constant reminder that attention span is very short is causing me to pull out my hair for the frustration of receive a bad grade from not blogging. So please if anyone could, will you explain to me what is this blogging thing about?    

The Blues...

At three o’clock in the morning I found myself scratching this out of my head

I had to find a way to write it so that it wasn’t so red

So I put it to some music and this is what BLEED…

As I watch my mom fight the fight that so many lose

I catch myself singing the blues

Trying to figure out how this pain keeps finding its way…

Into our homes,

Into our bones

As I watch her fight to keep tonight’s supper down

I find myself asking God “why so many of us got to suffer”

NOW…

It’s not as if we wished for this

Thing or expects it to seep through

We just find ourselves

Finding it in our sleep

It’s so hard not to weep

 But as we see them suffer we began to REALIZE

That weeping won’t make this MINIMIZE

It only MAGNETIZE

Taking it from something we thought so simple to something BIG                                                       

We find ourselves letting it take our dreams

Cause we’re so busy focusing on what’s so SUPREME

LIFE…right now is our focus

But if we DON’T take the time to let this PROVOKE us

We’ll NEVER find a cure and life will NEVER be so pure

 Cause we’ll find ourselves

LOST in the RAIN

DROWNING in our PAIN

As we watch so many fight the fight only to LOSE

Cause we STEADY singing the same old BLUES

PLEASE Donate to find a CURE!!