It's amazing to me the way people can twist things and stretch them so far and think nothing of it.  Ted Nugent is talking about the potential stripping away of our right to bear arms and says "If president Obama is re-elected in November, by this time next year, I will either be in jail or dead."  Naturally, people take that as a direct threat against Obama.  They seem to believe that statement was exactly the same as saying "If president Obama is re-elected, I will try to kill him."  No!  What he was saying is that if president Obama is re-elected, he will enact policies that will make The Nuge's current gun ownership illegal, thus landing him in jail or dead.  It blows my mind that people aren't able to grasp this.  I don't think I'm that far above most people intellectually.  But, maybe I am.  Or maybe people just choose to ignore it because they love their hate-filled partisanship.  The funny thing is that these are the same people who bag on people like Glenn Beck for doing the same thing to people on the left.  People are fucking idiots.

My 5 most annoying phrases of the last 5 years:
5. "Fly like a G6"
4. "My haters are my motivators"
3. "I'm sexy and I know it"
2. "YOLO"
1. "I got the moves like Jagger"

Remembering's dangerous.  I find the past such a worrying, anxious place.  "The past tense" I suppose you'd call it.  Ha ha ha.  Memory's so treacherous.  One moment you're lost in a carnival of delights, with poignant childhood aromas, the flashing neon of puberty, all that sentimental candy-floss... The next, it leads you somewhere you don't want to go... Somewhere dark and cold, filled with the damp, ambiguous shapes of things you'd hoped were forgotten.  Memories can be vile, repulsive little brutes.  Like children, I suppose.  Haha.  But can we live without them?  Memories are what our reason is based upon.  If we can't face them, we deny reason itself.  Although, why not?  We aren't contractually tied down to rationality.  There is no sanity clause.  So when you find yourself locked onto an unpleasant train of thought, heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable, remember there's always madness.  Madness is the emergency exit.  You can just step outside, and close the door on all those dreadful things that happened.  You can lock them away... forever.

I don't think the general public realizes how much they can hurt people.  The wrong accusations, be they true or false, can destroy a person's life.  The media takes the story, twists it for ratings, and the public takes it as they see it and they just run with it.

Look at George Zimmerman.  He got into an altercation with a young black man and ended up shooting and killing him.  Now, the media caught wind of this and saw the perfect opportunity to boost their ratings with racial tension.  The viewers saw the story and were immediately convinced that this white guy went out looking for a black guy, chased one down, called him a "coon" before shooting him, and danced around in his blood with a pointy white hood.  Based on the opinions formed within the first few days of the incident, Zimmerman's life is ruined regardless of what the truth of the incident is.  Even if he escapes criminal charges, he's going to have to be in hiding the rest of his life.  He will have to be in hiding because everyone knows he is a racist.  Everyone knows he is violent.  They know he targeted Trayvon for no other reason than he was black.  They know he started the fight that lead to the gunshot.  They know he shot because he wanted to, and not because he felt like he was in danger.

I'm not pretending like race wasn't a factor in the whole thing.  I believe race had a lot to do with it.  I agree that it all could have been avoided had he not left his vehicle in pursuit of the "suspicious" individual.  However, once the altercation started, it's pretty clear that Zimmerman was getting his ass kicked.  Trayvon was not a small person like he appears to be in the pictures of him when he was 12 years old that the news always shows.  He could probably kick my ass, too.  There was some level of self-defense involved.

Anyway, I could go on for days with examples of people twisting and/or ignoring certain details and jumping to conclusions because I read too much Google.  But, my point is that people jumping to these conclusions took a permanent toll on the lives of everyone involved before anyone really knew anything about what happened.  The same thing happened with Casey Anthony.  I don't know for sure if she killed her baby, and neither do you.  But, because she was suspect, and the public thinks they know the truth about everything, she has to live her life in hiding for her own safety.  And what about Michael Jackson?  He was accused of molesting young boys.  Did he actually do it?  We don't really know.  But enough people knew they knew he did that his reputation was crushed.

The moral of the story is, basically, that people need to stop thinking they know everything.  Take a step back and use your brain.  Don't watch a story on CNN and think you know it like you were standing right there when it happened.  Trust me, you're really not that smart.

I think too many people define themselves based on what they don't do.  It's always "I don't drink", "I don't do drugs", "I don't eat meat", "I don't follow a religion", ect.  Personally, I'm not impressed.  I want to know what you DO, not what you don't do.  Not doing things doesn't help other people or further civilization or offer any benefit to me.  It's those focused on doing things that make a difference in the world.