Just some late night venting

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.

[shouting] You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell,

[shouting] 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it:

[screaming at the top of his lungs] "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

I know it's cliche, but that speech from Network really does apply to alot of things in life. Anyone of you reading this right now probably have lost count at the things that have caused you to say "DAMN IT TO HELL". We're living in bad times right now. Another war is on the horizon, the cost of gasoline will continue to rise, the cost of living continues to cripple those of us in the middle class. The list goes on and on and on.

One thing that pissed me off this week was the fact that The Freedom Tower is going to be built. If you watched Penn & Teller's episode of Bullshit this week on Ground Zero you got a pretty good idea of everything that has gone wrong post 9-11. It's a god awful design and the fact that it's going up is a testament to greed and corruption and add to that it sends a message that we American's are a bunch of wimps.

Zacarias Moussaoui got denied his wish to become a martyr when the jury came back recomending Life in Prison. Personally I'm for the death pentaly but it's painfully clear that this guy is a patsy and the feds were hoping they could put him to death so symbolically we could put 9/11 to rest since we'll never catch that Bin Laden fellow. The way I see it, as I grow older I will always few The Freedom Tower as a huge eye sore in this city's skyline. If I and other New Yorker's had to choose between that and nothing we would choose nothing. We'd rather have the open sky over Lower Manhattan then this sanitized piece of crap that is going to go up.

I don't know why I'm writing about this. I know no one gives a shit either way about it. Coast to Coast is doing open lines tonight and George Noory is letting people vent their feelings. While I'm not venting my real problem right now, this has sort of lifted a weight off of me. I mean I know with me when it came to post 9/11 life I took a left when I should have taken a right on my road of life and now I'm feeling the consequences.

I'm honestly contemplating going back to school, I mean what's another $10 grand on my student loan debts. But it's like I feel if I did that it would be all for nothing as much like the last two years it would be a waste of my time. I often wonder about the future and what it holds for me and everyone I know and right now I can honestly say I see nothing but darkness. It's like the song No Leaf Clover by Metallica goes "The light at the end of your tunnel is just a frieght train coming your way".

These feelings of dread are something that just won't go away and when I see the world and how it's being run around me it's no wonder I have no hope for the future.

Can you honestly say that you do?