Calling for the resignation of Officer Justin Barrett

So another Boston Police Officer decided to comment on the controversy regarding Professor Gates. In an Email that he sent he called Gates a "banana-eating jungle monkey" and said "He has indeed transcended back to a bumbling jungle monkey." from http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090730/ts_alt_afp/usracismarrestuniversitypolice.

This is not acceptable!! I think that the officer that said these things, Officer Justin Barrett, needs to be fired immediately. He was suspended pending a hearing but he better be terminated. His views are not acceptable, especially as a police officer. What sort of justice can this racist be giving to African-Americans he comes into contact with. He is a bigot, ignorant and obviously not capable of being a fair and impartial officer.

FIRE HIM NOW Boston! And SHAME on YOU Officer Justin Barrett!

Is a longer and healthier old age leading to unemployment?

So I was reading this article on msnbc http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32089674/ns/business-personal_finance and I got to thinking, should people who don't have a very rare and particularized skill and have enough money to retire be made to retire?

The article states that many people choose to continue working for several reasons after they retire and obviously if they need the money they should be allowed to but what about those who can? Are they not helping to keep someone else unemployed?

Here is my rationale. Person of retirement age X is most probably not in an entry-level position and so maybe a new person won't start off at their level but if someone in the company, say Q who is at entry-level is promoted then unemployed person Y could apply for and possible get Q's job. Thus, creating one less unemployed person.

If a mass number of X's decided to just volunteer their time to non-profit organizations and left their paying jobs, then Q's could move up the ladder in their jobs, make more money which would put more money back into the economy. More than likey X's aren't spending that much money on consumer products and stuff for kids because they don't need them and don't have young kids anymore. So Q is putting more money back into the economy.

Then we have Y, who didn't have a job and was maybe living off the state. They then have a job and so aren't taking money from the state and they are putting back into the economy with their new job.

This cycle has the potential to be really really effective. I am starting to think that maybe retired people who are just working because they have nothing better to do should think about how their actions may be affecting others who are coming up and want to work.

Dating in the Dark- Second week

I wrote about last nights episode here: http://afilmreviewaday.blogspot.com/2009/07/dating-in-dark-second-week.html.

This is a new blog I started which talks primarily about tv shows and films.

Suspicious Police Report: Gates Racial Controversy

This is getting interestinger and interesteringer...as Alice in Wonderland would say.

The racist (I don't care if he taught classes on racial profiling) police officer that arrested Professor Gates wrote in his police report that Ms. Whalen, the lady who called the police regarding the possible break-in, stated that she saw 2 black men with backpacks breaking in to the house BUT Ms. Whalen through her attorney states that "she never said anything at all about race."

OMG, how crazy is that if the Police Officer is caught lying. He is definetly a racist and should get fired, especially if he is lying about what he report in the report as well, how could anyone trust him again??

My information came from this news article: http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/07/27/gates.arrest/index.html

Another day, another night but always you!

So I was thinking of this song tonight and singing it, most probably I've got the words wrong as I inevitably do when I sing songs.

Sad news, someone died today whilst body surfing at the beach. the waves are getting as high as 20 ft and they crashed his body into rocks. I'm not going to tell my mum that story. Not that I swim near rocks but its kinda sketch in the ocean these days. Last week I had a bit of a scare, well kinda but not really. I was body surfing as per usual and was really skimming and coming in fast and far when I realized that the waves and the board which acted like a buoy had taken me really far out into the ocean. Now I wsan't scared cos I wasn't too far past some other people, and I can swim really well. But I couldn't touch the ocean floor and as I was trying to swim back to shore all that was happening wsa that I was going further out to sea.

So of course, there was a little pause in my heart at this point. The undercurrent of the ocean kept keeping me far back. So I decided to get aggressive and let go of the board and really swim hard. Still nada, then the next thing I know I see a lifeguard blowing a whistle and running into the ocean. I'm looking around as I am treading water and can't see anyone panicking or drowning. It was at this point that I ride another wave into shore and I am able to swim in more.

Next thing I know the lifeguard is coming over to me and she was like, "Didn't you hear my whistle? You were too far out and in a riptide".

I was like oh no sorry. Inside I was like, eek, that was why I couldn't swim back. I gotta admit I was feeling a lil faint after that experience. Then when another wave took my unawares and crashed me so hard into the water I couldn't breath or get up out of the water I was a little bit more panicky. But then I was fine, the boogie boarding experience is exhilarating. It's electrifyingly exciting and it makes me happy. Not happy enough to drown in the ocean though, so I'm thinking i'm not going to go out so far right now, not when the waves are so high and the current so strong.

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Alot of my good friends are taking the bar next week. I want to wish them all Good Luck and my prayers are ging up for them all to do really well.


So I went to Pinks yesterday with my new friend and coworker. We waited inline for 2 hours, we had gone after one of our school visits (making sure that the school coordinator and the students and volunteers were all doing their things!) I have to be honest the 2 hour wait and $50 parking ticket I got was not worth it. I got a Chilli Cheese Dog, wasn't even the best dog I've had. So I am glad I went and had the experience but don't think I will be going again unless a visiting friend really wants to go.


WATCH THIS VIDEO



I love this video, it made me laugh and cry! I'm kinda embarrassed to admit that but how perfect is this wedding entrance? How comfortable and at ease do yuo have to be to do this? It's totally cute and awesome! What a great couple!

Racism

So I just read this article on cnn, http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/07/21/massachusetts.harvard.professor.arrested/index.html, and it does seem kinda suspicious to me that someone would get arrested for disorderly conduct in a public space when you are actually in your own home.

Pretty much what happened was that Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr, of Harvard returned home from a trip to China to see his front door damaged. He along with his driver banged the door open, a lady passing by called the police (would she have called the police if it were a white man she had seen?)The police came, Gates wasn't happy and being questioned, accused the officer of being a racist and was then arrested!

I can imagine that the (I assume) White officer did was approach Gates accusingly and rudely, and that ia all you need to get anyone's back up. Was the officer racist I don't know. There is an inherent racism in everyone, that is just how society has programmed people, to be suspicious of, look down on and belittle the Black man. Even a person who mentally and psychologically knows that such biases are not right, you can't always erase it from your mind. I guess it just goes to show that no matter how far up the tree you climb, and Iwould say distinguished professor at Harvard is pretty high, you will always encounter these situations.

Boogie boarding is awesome!

So it reached about 102 degrees here in LA. And I have no AC in my apt and my fan seems to be only blowing hot air. I've bought 3 more "High Velocity" fans that sucked ass and all got returned. But I did buy a Holmes twin window fan at Target today for $26.99 and it seems to be working well. I can't get a window ac because my landlords don't let me and a portable AC is like $500, EEEK!

So I got a boogie board, also known as a body board and went boogie boarding/kinda surfing at Santa Monica beach last weekend. Can you say AWESOME three times fast?? Cos that is what I am and that is what boogie boarding was...pretty frigging awesome!!

At one point, I was on top of this huge ass wave and another one came right after it and so I kept skimming closer and closer to the the shoreline. It was frigging cool and amazing. I've decided to go to the beach everyday after work now because I felt so alive and one with the ocean.

It was kinda scary at one point though, this one wave carried me up high and then crashed me down hard into the ocean and the boogie board went flying, but I did have it attahced to my wrist through the strap but it was a little crazy as you aren't sure which way is up for a minute and there was a wicked undercurrent pulling you out into the ocean.


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Ok. So I'm watching a tv show right now called, "Dating in the Dark:- A new show on ABC. Is Love Blind is the premise of the show. Hmm, this should be interesting. I'm typing this as I watch it.


The Guys
Stephen- says he is a genius, I would say he is cute. Looks 8/10

Seth- says he likes hot girls. Annoying to me. Looks 7/10

Allistair- From England. Nice face, ugly v-neck shirt 8/10 (would be 9 but for clothes)

The Girls
Christina- Annoying. Cue though 8/10

Melanie- Wild hair, fugly glasses that look like mine...eek could be me 6/10

Leni- is a nanny,looks like a nanny and seems nice. 7.5/10

So the men and women meet in a dark room where they can see nothing. Allistair is looking like a pompous ass with his head on the table.

Leni has a good personality and is funny. Stephen seems a smart show-off. Of the three, I'm into none, in the light or the dark so far.

Melanie looks older than 31, I feel whoever she ends up with is going to be a lil disapointed. I'm saying this truly based on what the show is looking for. Do looks really matter? All I have to say is, who is going on these shows?

Stephen is looking like a douche as the show goes on and noone has wanted to spend anytime with Alistair as yet...oops.

SO OMG! Just what I thought would happen, they all made a match with one person and loved the personality of that person and then they saw each other and inevitably the hot person was not interested in the other person.

Matches in the dark were:

Allistair and Melanie: He opened up his heart to her in the dark and she thought he was really hot when she saw him. He said that "she gets him." And he came out and met her. He was worried about the physical but I think he wanted a friend!

Stephen and Leni: ok so they both decided to date in the light! And they kiss!

Seth and Christina: They kissed in the dark! And after she saw him she decided she didn't want a second date! omg, and he wiped tears away as he saw her walk away! Kinda made me feel sad for him!

Thank You ShopDiscover!

I love my Discover card, it is soo cool looking and they have been a great credit card company to have with great customer service and an awesome website. However, I think the most awesome part of having a Discover Card is their ShopDiscover program.

The ShopDiscover program is a list of a bunch of retailers who give you a % back for buying products from their website through the Discovercard website. Alot of times you also get a discount for being a Discovercard member so it is like a win-win situation.

I recently purchased a years subscriptoin to Cosmo magazine (haha, I know, really literary) and got like 10-20% back as reward money on my card. I also bought some stuff from Target.Com and Barnes and Noble, which I wanted to buy anyway. Well after all this, I had alot of money in my discover cashback account and redeemed it for a $120 deposit into my checking account. How Awesome is that??

ShopDiscover has so many different categories to choose from and cashback percentages from 5-20%, I recommend everyone I know to utilize this service if you have a Discover card and if you don't have one yet, get one!! haha. Then take me out to lunch with your rebate! :-)

Oh and btw this post represents entry in the ShopDiscover blog promotion with a chance to win a Discover Gift Card.

Bright as Yellow

I recently joined netflix because I am now on a basic cable package with Time Warner cable. Read 20 channels, with all but 4 being pretty darn crap. The 4 I watch obviously being the big networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX and CW. Haha, and that is 5 so obviously one of them really isn't that good! But I am paying $24.95 for basic cable and internet and so I can't really complain. Netflix is about $8.99 a month for one dvd out at a time and no limit on dvds each month so hopefully this will work out well for me.

They have sent out my first dvd, "Love Finds Andy Hardy" and say I should get in on Monday. I am sure noone who is under 60 has heard of this movie or really knows Mickey Rooney, or maybe knows him best from "National Velvet" with Elizabeth Taylor, but he is a great actor that has starred in some fantastic films. And so I am excited to see this film, there were actually alot of Andy Hardy films made but netflix only has one available to ship which is pretty sad.


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So I went to Oregon for orientation for my job or year in service. It was cool, I met some cool people and of course some uncool people, as is the case when you have a number of human beings in one space.



So this photo is from the last day and consists of me and the girls I hung out with most at the conference. I actually started my job last friday and it was kinda boring as all I did was look at our websites and the national nonprofits website and look at lots of educational and financial documents from our nonprofit. But it was kinda cool because when my coworkers were leaving they were like, "come on Jaimie, you should leave as well." And it was like 3.30pm, I was like oh ok. haha. My boss had previously stated that I could go home whenever I wanted that day cos he knew there wasn't much going on for me. But I hadn't been planning on leaving until 4.00pm.


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So new song for you to love as well. I've loved it since college but just refound it because I am using my desktop because my laptop fell and is now being repaired by Bestbuy, GOD, I hope they are fixing it. I have no FAITH in that company!

But here is the song, "Bright as Yellow" by The Innocence Mission. Very simple lyrics and tune but awesome song!

"Even if I'm shining, even if I'm shining here inside. Even if I'm shouting do you see that I'm wanting, that I want to be so...soo...bright, bright, bright, bright as yellow"

I can't attach the original from youtube because embedding has been disabled, but this is a good cover by someone on youtube!



So anyways, I am off to the beach today with a friend from the orientation.

Yiippppppeeeee.....back together again!!

My friend Erin is coming to LA for her post-bar trip!!! July 31st -August 4th!!

And OMG,I am soooo excited!! It's going to be soo much fun. And Judy is going to join use some of that time because she is going to be in town then as well!

wobbly red...BANG BANG!

My Tv is going or should I say gone? It goes to a wobbly red and then shuts off, it's so annoying and sad and from what I have read online it would cost about $200-300 to fix which is more than I paid for the TV. ARGHH! I mean I don't even get more than 20 channels but still sometimes I like to watch "Everybody Loves Raymond," "King of Queens," and some Court Tv shows! I have to keep banging the Tv like a crazy person!

Also, the n key on my laptop is gone!!! I have to use the onscreen keyboard everytime I need to type it. Talk about frustrating!! I'm going to take my laptop in to Bestbuy tomorrow to get it fixed. Who knows how long that will take. Cos we all know that Bestbuy is anything but a BESTbuy. I hate that store so much but I did buy my laptop there and got a warranty and so it should be free to fix.

So asides from that I've been pretty not busy, haha. I went to the beach again and was jumping some huge waves, which was a bit scary cos the underwater current was really strong and was making it hard to get back to shore. I also saw 2 really hot guys there!! And a really really cute one on the freeway in a BMW sportscar, talk abt hubba hubba.

OMG, so my friend Jennifer talked me into signing up for Eharmony to see what it was like because it was a free weekend. I did it for one day ad quit. I feel so horrible and mean. But this is what happened:

So I sign up and answer all these questions that are supposed to match me with someone who is like perfect compatibility for me. So I do it and I get 9 people who are meant to work well for me. BTW I also said I was in nyc because I wasn't doing it 4 real,but I accepted matches from all over the USA so it evened out. I just wanted to see what happened. So there was one guy whose profile seemed cool, he was a teacher, 30, 5"11 and had some cool answers to his questions. So I did the communication steps with him, there was like 10 steps of q/a's that we had to send back and forth before we could talk. Finally, we get through those after like 4 hours. So i'm pretty excited but I had not seen a pic because I was not a paying member. Though I did have a photo up of myself. Anyways, I then asked the guy if he wanted to exchange photo's. And he sent me a photo!

And let's just say he looked 50 and not my type at all. So now I am stuck, cos I don't want to just stop sending him a message because I don't find him attractive. That is too mean! So I sent some random message back and then decided to cancel the acct. I always knew I wasn't an online dating person and now more than ever!

Some Men are Psychos

This is Cheb Mami, he is an Algerian singer, who collobarated with Sting on 'Desert Rose', he looks pretty normal but he is a crazy psychopath that is going to jail for 5 years, though I think it should have been more like 50!

I read the story on yahoo and it is from Reuters! He tried to force people to give his girlfriend an abortion!!

From http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090703/music_nm/us_france_singer: The court heard that Le Corre lured the woman to Algiers under the pretext of a business trip. One of the other men then slipped a tranquilizer into her orange juice and drove the semi-conscious woman to Mami's villa.

There, the fourth man and two women, who have not been identified, attempted to perform an abortion on the woman, according to the prosecution. The victim's account of the attempt was confirmed by a medical expert. She also said Mami was present during the abortion attempt, which he denies.


What an awful thing for him to try and do!!