It started out innocently enough. I was asked to go to the store because we were low on shampoo. No biggie. Quick errand. I’ll be back in time for the start of the baseball game. My mistake was listening to my girl when she asked me to go to COSTCO with her .
The second I entered the behemoth warehouse, I was overcome by the allure of wall-to-wall gigantic flat screen Hi-Def TVs showing exotic tropical waterfalls. Some in 3-D. Ooh! I noticed a sign that said if you buy the home theater sound system package, you can get a 65” flat screen HDTV for only $850 more. What a bargain. So I added an LG 65″ Class 3D 1080p 120Hz LED HDTV with 4 Pairs of 3D Glasses to my flatbed cart.
As I was lugging my cart towards the shampoo aisle, I couldn’t help but notice the festive Christmas tree display. An 8-ft Pre-Lit Clear Mixed Country Artificial Pine Christmas Tree complete with 800 Clear Dura-Lit Mini-lights for $20 off! Think how much I will save by buying it now before the holiday season. Plus, I’d be doing my part to save the world’s endangered commercial tree farms. So I wedged the tree in between the TV and the sound system and continued on my merry way.
I almost made it to the shampoo aisle when I noticed a commotion to my left. There was this fruit juicer demonstration, where the pitchman was transforming what looked to be kiwi fruit, bananas and Lego blocks into a delicious fruit smoothie in seconds. Wow! But this wasn’t just any juicer. This was the Vitamix 5200 Ultimate Juicer & Blender, on sale TODAY ONLY for just $649.99. I know what you’re thinking – isn’t that a bit steep for a juicer? Not when I tell you that it comes with a lifetime warranty on everything but the blade and the motor, and they even throw in a juicer recipe DVD. So, I added it to the cart.
And what’s better after a vigorous workout than a cold beer? That’s why I also had to get the Wine Enthusiast N’FINITY 340-bottle Multi-temp Glass Door Wine Cellar – a must have for only $2,999.99. Okay, I admit I don’t drink wine – or beer for that matter – but I’m fairly sure it could easily double as a fruit/vegetable crisper, which I will have plenty of, now that I bought the Vitamix 5200 juicer machine.
As I lugged my growing series of flatbed carts through the store, I happened upon the garden center display. I have to tell you that all-weather wrought iron patio set with collapsible umbrella looked so summery. But I was not about to succumb to that temptation – not when I already owned two other patio sets from previous trips to Costco. No, I realized that a much wiser investment would be the Easy Grow 8′ x 8′ Greenhouse with double doors and three vents for just $1,299.99. I actually had never thought about taking up horticulture until precisely that instant. But then I realized: what a wonderful hobby to do with my girl when we retire 11 years from now. She will respect that I am planning ahead. Into the cart it went.
I’m not sure how long this buying contagion lasted. It was all a bit of a blur. One incredible bargain after another: a two-in-one gas-powered tiller-mulcher (for that exquisitely thatched lawn). Then there was the twelve-month supply of Huggies disposable diapers. I know my kid is all grown up. But the savings were too great to pass up.
I kept adding more items to more flatbed carts. It wasn’t until I got out of the store and noticed I had somehow also managed to purchase a Dayton brand Solid Wood Casket with an off-white, full-velvet interior and gold-plated swing bar handles that I suspected I might have gone a bit overboard. Okay, so I’d gone completely out of control. But I figured a casket might actually come in quite handy in the very near future, because, with everything I’d bought today, for sure my girl was going to kill me.
Shopping at Costco can be a dangerous adventure for any male. As I sit here, writing about my reckless Costco buying binge, I have this nagging feeling that despite everything I bought, I still forgot something. For the life of me, I can’t think of what it might be….
Oh, damn. Shampoo. Shes definitely gonna Kill me now.
“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” -John Fitzgerald Kennedy
“I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, ‘Mother, what was war?'” -Eve Merriam
This is one of the most touching poems you will read about the anguish any soldier or person inflicts upon himself when in war, when he causes the death of another. Being as I was Iraq/Somalia and Kosovo as a US Army Special Forces soldier this was a reality and a fear that we all held. I remember vividly like it was yesterday seeing a soldier blown to pieces 20 yds from me.
I pray everyday I will never have to embrace this kind of horror again, but I stood ready as we trained to. I know a lot of men and woman who have had to…
Once, I heard a non-hustler say, “I can’t live on the money my company pays me.” This person felt his company owed him enough money to meet the standard of living he had set for himself.
Another time, a non-hustler said to me, “No one paid for my college, so I didn’t get to go.” This non-hustler took no responsibility for making his own way through college, believing it was his parents’ obligation to foot the bill. Like most non-hustlers, these two had a strong sense of entitlement.
Hustlers, on the other hand, know no one owes them anything. They believe they can have anything they desire by doing the work necessary to obtain it, whether it’s a material possession or something more important, such as a meaningful relationship, personal growth and a contribution to their communities. Because they don’t feel entitled, hustlers do the work.
Because hustlers do not feel a sense of entitlement, they don’t wait around for someone to pay them what they’re worth. Hustlers don’t resent their bosses or companies for not paying them more. Instead, they make their contribution, take on responsibility and hold themselves accountable for producing greater results.
For truly great success, you must know what it is you need to do. No one else can show you…
The non-hustler becomes resentful if he doesn’t receive more money. He gets angry and stews, looking around for others to validate his conviction that he is owed something.
Hustlers don’t feel that anything they lack is something they’re due. They don’t believe it’s anyone else’s responsibility to educate them. They don’t miss the trust funds they were never given. Hustlers don’t blame any past deprivation for their current circumstances. To the hustler, the lack of something he desires is simply fuel for his passion to go out and get it.
No one owes you anything—not your parents, your government, your school system, your society, your employer. Believing this will liberate you from the prison of entitlement and empower you to act on your own behalf.
If you want to be successful, you must observe this one important rule: Let no one ever tell you what your paycheck should be.
If someone has to tell you what your goals are, then the only goals you’ll have are someone else’s.
If someone has to tell you what your major responsibilities are, then you aren’t doing enough to be as successful as you could be.
If someone has to remind you what you need to do, you’re likely failing yourself.
If someone has to tell you what to do, then you’re squandering the gift of being human and wasting your initiative, resourcefulness, creativity and determination.
If you work for someone else, develop your own goals and define what success means beyond what your company needs you to do. Seek out new responsibilities, take it upon yourself to find out what needs to be done and do it. Be so proactive that no one will ever dare tell you what to do. Do all these things and you will soon find yourself in a leadership role.
If you want to be an entrepreneur, own your own company and do your own thing, there won’t be anyone there to tell you what to do. Until you develop the ability to do what is necessary without being told, you aren’t ready to strike out on your own. Until you are willing to do what must be done—even when you absolutely don’t want to do it—you’ll never reach the level of success of which you are capable.
Would you like to know the secret to success? It’s taking 100 percent responsibility for everything you experience in your life. This includes the level of your achievements, the results you produce, the quality of your relationships, the state of your health and physical fitness, your income, your debts, your feelings—everything! This is not easy to do.
In fact, most of us have been conditioned to blame something outside ourselves for the parts of our lives we don’t like. We tend to blame our parents, our bosses, our friends, our co-workers, our clients, our spouses, the weather, the economy, our astrological charts, our poor finances—anyone or anything on which we can pin the blame. We never want to look at where the real problem lies: ourselves.
If you want to create the life of your dreams, then you must take 100 percent responsibility for your life as it is right now. That means giving up all your excuses, all your victim stories, all the reasons why you can’t do something and why you haven’t done something up until now and all your need to blame outside circumstances. You have to give them all up…forever.
You must take the position that you have always had the power to make it different, to get it right, to produce the desired results. For whatever reason (ignorance, lack of awareness, fear, needing to be right, needing to feel safe) you have chosen not to exercise that power. Who knows why? It really doesn’t matter. The past is the past. All that matters now is that from this point forward you will choose—that’s right, it’s a choice—to act as if (that’s all that’s required: to act as if) you are 100 percent responsible for everything that does or does not happen to you
If something doesn’t turn out as planned, you will ask yourself “How did I create that? What thoughts did I have to bring this about? What were my beliefs? What did I say or not say? What did I do or not do to create that result? How did I get the other person to act that way? What do I need to do differently next time to get the result I want?”
Here’s an exercise to help you do that. Answer each question as honestly as you can:
What is a difficult or troubling situation in your life?
How are you creating it or allowing it to happen?
What are you pretending not to know?
What is the payoff for keeping things the way they are?
What would you rather be experiencing?
What actions will you take to create that?
By what date will you take that action?
It’s easy to blame someone or something else for the disappointments you face in life. But by owning every aspect of your life, you are simply recognizing that the power to create the life you’ve dreamed of has been yours all along.
Learn from everyone; seek out good advice; model yourself on those you admire—but let no one tell you how much you are worth. Write your own paycheck
When I travel I usually wear Armani or Ralph Lauren suits. Its just the way I want to look in case I meet Anne Hathaway in her Catwoman Suit…. ahhh Anne in the words of Marlon Brando ” I could have been a contenda”
But before I start I do have one question for my Tex-Mex Cowboy fans. If you saw Jerry Jones and Rick Perry sinking boat with only you to help …what kind of sandwich would you make ?????
I digress…back to the issue.
I am constantly perplexed every time I go to Texas by the Texas Trifecta: cowboy hat, big belt buckle, cowboy boots. I mean, on one hand I get it. I lived in Texas. Big belt buckles are shiny, almost hypnotically so. Cowboy hats can apparently hold 10 gallons of water. And, boots? Well, let’s just say “tennis-shoe scootin’ boogie” wouldn’t sound the same. Moreover, I understand that it’s fun to play dress-up, and also that if you are a farmer/rancher, this is the uniform. What I don’t get is why I see dudes (it’s almost always dudes) in compact cars wearing cowboy hats. I’m pretty sure most are either on their way to school or a white-collar office job. I also see people dressed like this at the grocery store, for no apparent reason. So, what’s up with the get-up?
You know how when you’re at the store, and you see a guy wearing a certain kind of athletic shoes and track pants or whatever, and you know that dude probably runs marathons or at least wants people to think he does? That is what Texan men are doing when they wear the get-up to H-E-B. It’s like a mating signal that’s not just a mating signal, because it’s also for dudes, and everybody knows there are no gays in Texas, most of all Texans, who now inexplicably support gay marriage.
The get-up says: I am a Texan, and I dare you to argue with me on point with the big-assed hat while I pass you going 55 mph in the right lane. It works well for picking up ladies at the honky-tonk, , but it also works for helping Texans maintain their connection to the Texas heritage while they are driving what I believe is the emasculating import scooter-car or participating in horribly shameful activities like buying food, or anything that isn’t roping cattle out on the range or wherever it is cattle get roped.
Of course, driving a sensible sedan or buying tomatoes isn’t actually going to make your balls fall off, but here in Texas, they seem to care less about facts and more about things that are not facts.
Fundamentally, it’s about the performance of a particular kind of Texanity, like most fashion choices associated with particular groups or cliques. But it’s also important to remember, and I think most do, that most of these kinds of fashion performances are rooted in practicality — those little cotton athletic shorts that popular teenaged girls have in fifty colors got started because they’re easy to wear when you’re cheer-leading and to mix-and-match with team colors.
Interestingly, however, the Texas get-up is one of the few fashion endeavors learned in childhood and adolescence that Texans continue to wear throughout their lives. Eventually, most people grow, literally or figuratively, out of their wide-legged Jnco’s or neon leg-warmers. Again, this is because there’s an actual reason cowboys wear cowboy gear. (Notably different from Cowboy gear, which you wear unless you want to get your ass kicked because Jesus, God, Cowboys, all live in Texas ….when are you going to get it together people?). I mean they even made a show about Cowboy Fans. Its called the ‘Walking Dead’
In Texas–scratch that, in America, and I think France also because those people are a little weird about things–the romanticize of the cowboy begins practically at birth, and Texas is one of the few places left on earth where you might actually grow up to be a cowboy or meet one regularly.
Therefore, it’s acceptable to dress like a 6-year-old in Halloween garb even if you are 60 and gunning your Geo Storm down I-35 to pick up milk. Maybe, just maybe, someone will think you’re a real cowboy and reward you with sex or beer.
Also good on you for correctly and enthusiastically using the phrase “get-up”! Welcome to Texas! Next, try integrating into your vocabulary another sartorial descriptor, “drawrrn,” which is what Texans wear for underpants.)
I’m just afraid that if I say “I miss New York” while I am down here for a day someone is going to smash my car windows and steal the radio.
When I was in L.A. at Fox Studios I was reminded of one thing. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame anybody for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents or the Government for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise anybody for experiencing poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have been poor, and I agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticized only by fools.
What I feared most for myself was not poverty, but failure.
Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what makes up failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere ten years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. A series of exceptionally short-lived relationships had imploded, and I was jobless, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern the U.S without being homeless. The fears that my parents had for me, and that I had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.
Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be since represented a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope and not a reality.
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.
Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.
Now you might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and the fount of all invention and innovation. In it’s arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
One of the greatest formative experiences of my life was living in Germany Though I was in the Military I volunteered my time by working at the African research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters.
There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.
Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to speak against their governments. Visitors to our offices included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had left.
I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was then, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him back to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.
And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just had to give him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.
Every day of my working week, I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.
In every War, very day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or support power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard, and read.
And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International and in the Military than I had ever known before.
Amnesty mobilizes thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.
Unlike any other creäture on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places.
Of course, this is a power, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathize.
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to stay comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know. They can claim the President is the reason their lives are a failure, never seeing the collective reason why we are sliding into a rabbit hole for the fault lies not in the stars but in ourselves.
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the willfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.
If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped change. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
What is more, those who choose not to empathise, enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we colluded with it, through our own apathy.
One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
My travels in the military allowed me see the wonders if the universe. Whether in Germany or Spain …whether in Korea or China whether in Montana or in NYC you see the best that people have to offer. How wonderful it is though that no one has to wait a single moment to make the world a better place.
Imagine if all the men and women who gave so much of themselves to this country didn’t have to be Homeless. Last year it was reported close to 250 thousand men and women who served were homeless.
Imagine if we didn’t have to hear about stories a 5 year old child who was dying and the insurance company refused to pay anymore for his medicine because they said “It cost to much”. Or the Golden Gate which was closed down because of repairs that cost to much.
In 20 yrs will we be traveling on worse roads Will water be clean …will China be the leading manufacturer of Solar panel and will we be traded for another hostage with companies American and foreign, that in many cases wish us anything but good?
The answers to these questions depends on a great many things I lived in Europe for 5 yrs The infrastructure compared to ours. We’re moving along in the equivalent of a Ford Pinto with bridges rotting and falling down, while other nations, our competitors in the global economy, are building efficient, high-speed, high-performance platforms to power their 21st-century
We used to be smarter than this but Washington all but gave up thinking. America’s infrastructure, education and people, once the finest in the world, has been neglected for decades. We’ve become stupid about this.
Much of the nation’s rail is approaching the tail end of its useful life. If you’ve flown anywhere recently, you know what a nightmare that can be. To the extent that we have any all, , often doing more harm than good as it serves the interests of politicians who are crazy for pork and not the real needs of the American public.
You can’t thrive as a nation while New Orléans is drowning, and Detroit is being beaten into oblivion decade after decade, and a bridge in Minneapolis is collapsing into the Mississippi River, and cities in upstate New York and the Rust Belt are rotting from lack of employment opportunities, and so on.
Imagine, instead, an America with rebuilt, healthy, dynamic metropolitan areas, and gleaming new port facilities, and networks of high-speed rail, an America with electric vehicles and a smart grid and energy generated by the power of the sun and wind and water and the ocean’s waves. Imagine if the children of today’s toddlers had access to world-class public schools all across the nation and a higher education system that is both first-rate and affordable.
Imagine if we set out seriously to do all this.
I have one last hope for everybody, The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for President.
So today, I wish you nothing better than similar friendships. Unless you meet them Facebook friends are not real friends nor following Movie Stars will make you part of their lives. Its like saying going to church makes you religious or standing in your garage makes you a car. Tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:
“As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.”
Contingency plans are unnecessary. I am not making plans for failure because I am not planning to fail . Diamond mentally is very simple . Contingency PLANS ARE UNNECESSARY . You CANNOT LET ANYBODY STEAL YOUR DREAM . YOU ARE IN A BATTLE . AND THEY WANT TO STEAL IT ..they want to keep you where you are at. You have got to be willing to fight.
You need to remember , If you want to be understood by 2 % of the nation You will be misunderstood by the 98% . Some of you are already eliminated because you are worried by what other people think
But you see to be part of the 2 % you need to step out of the comfort zone, the decision has to be made that you are a diamond.
YOU wont look back , let up slow up or back away . Your past is forgotten , Your present is focused , Your future is secure . You are finished and done with low living sidewalk people , cheap excises and dwarf goals . You no longer need preeminence, position , promotion , promised or popularity . You don’t have to be praised regarded or awarded. You died to the self centered ego driven limp lifestyle . You live by faith , learn by submitting , labor by love , lead by example . Your dream is developed, Your decision is definite , your decision and desire determined, your pace is fast and set , your road is narrow , your way is tough. Your purpose is clear
YOU cannot be brought compromised detoured lured away , turned back deluded ,delayed or denied .You will not flinch in the face of sacrifice ; hesitate in the presence of the adversary; negotiate at the table of failure ; ponder in the pool of popularity or meander in the maze of mediocrity.
You wont give up , shut up, let up, till you stayed up , paid up and stood up .
You must fight when others faint , go where others wont , give till you drop, teach and work till the task is finished . and when YOU lie exhausted on the playing field of the dreamers . The diamond club of winners wont have any trouble recognizing YOU as one of their own
I always had this crush on this woman from High School and when I saw her again 30 years later, the memories washed over me again.
She was a beautiful woman and I was content to have a silent crush on her But Like all the fella’s of the day … I wanted to date her in HS. But looking back at some old pictures of myself trying to date the ladies… I was going to have difficulty. The kids were scared …women were scared In fact all of NY was. Here I was in the beginning of my quest.
Obviously it would be a massive MASSIVE quest …Here is what I mean
Now I needed to get in shape, to get strong, because no one was gonna date the fat kid … I almost failed but I wasn’t going to give up the dream I wasn’t going to quit
But here I am at on my rehearsal date . Obviously I still needed a lot of work
Here I am not having discovered a razor yet nor read the book “how to pick up women” My dream of meeting her was far off. Fantasy Island far off
Here I am out of college living in NYC. Still a sounding like Steve Corell 40 Yr old virgin Was there any Hope for me?
But I was brave I continued to push forward but a blind date with this woman scared the hell out of me…you got to be careful about who you pick up in a bar and what bars you go to meet them in NYC. I almost didn’t survive
Then a miracle I became smooth…. suave…The women loved me …I had my choice …people thought I made a deal with the devil…no …just with MensWarehouse
I was hanging out with great people …I was excited as you can see below …I was going to take all my friends …my dream was close. I was off to the Races !!!!
I was ready for the show… I knew what I believed in and what I wanted
But here is what happened when I saw her walking up to me . I lost all my courage
Here is what happened when I saw her for the first time . I was the red M&M
…Oh well I went back to training.She left me .. I am the Lord of the Idiots … Thank God the above was only a dream or was it !!!!.
I was tweeting the other day – you know, on Twitter…. What, you are not familiar with Twitter? How about Facebook? No? Does “the Internet” ring a bell? Okay, in case you’re still living in that cave in Northern Afghanistan (or are my elderly mother) and you’re still not familiar with Twitter, it’s this web site where you can tell the world what you’re doing – so long as you can do it in 140 characters or less. But, and this is key, your message must be of interest to absolutely NOBODY but yourself.
It is such an incredible improvement over previous ways of communicating online. Instead of having to pound out long, detailed emails, now you can post easy-to-skim “tweets” as Twitter posts are called. Oh sure, some people say that most tweets are just a complete narcissistic waste of time. But I could not disagree more. Heck, just this morning, I learned the following very timely and helpful information at my Twitter home page from lots of people, a couple of whom I think I might have actually heard of:
Margy tweeted: chilling at Ted’s drinking beers with Don, King, and Craig. Good times. Hope Bernice doesn’t show up. Such a slut.
Carrie: Made a tasty casserole for dinner! The secret is extra Tuna Helper.
Marilyn: I’m not dancing because I have diarrhea.
Scot: Off to the upper Haight to replace the tongue ring I broke on the plane. (I am not making this one up, I swear.)
Mick: They are serving F11 in the snackateria! (I wonder if F11 is anything like Soylent Green.)
See how useful Twitter can be? Hard to imagine how we ever survived without it, I know. The great thing about Twitter is that because of its 140 character limit, it forces you to communicate with concise precision, like my buddy Scot did in the example above. No wasted chatter about how he broke his tongue ring on a plane or whether he is also going to buy a new bong while he is in Haight Ashbury. No, just the core “need-to-know” facts.
And not being known for my brevity, at first tweeting was a real challenge for me. Here are a couple of my very first unsuccessful tweets:
But I think I have, with practice, found out how to get to the point in 140 characters or less. Now I tweet all the time. Which got me to thinking (oh no, there he goes again – thinking – this can’t be good), what a wonderful learning tool Twitter could be for kids today. If your kids are like mine, they have roughly the attention span and metabolism of a Meercat on a diet of Mountain Dew and espresso shots. It’s no wonder the great classics bore them – they’re so full of… well, words.
So I was thinking, wouldn’t it be great if kids could read a condensed Twitterized version of the great speeches and important texts from history. Imagine savoring the classics in roughly the time it takes to burp. Just think how much more excited our kids would be to learn.
So I took the liberty of condensing some of the great speeches, historical treatises and literary classics into convenient tweet-size packages. Here is a small sampling of what could someday become Classic Tweets:
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: He loves her. She loves him. Parents just don’t understand. She fakes her death. He didn’t get the memo. He kills himself. She kills herself. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, blah blah blah… The end.
The Declaration of Independence & the US Constitution (they’re pretty much the same thing): King George is a jerk. We’re so done. We declare ourselves free. We hold these truths to be self-evident: All white males with property are equal. Oh yeah, WE’RE NUMBER ONE!Click here to check out our latest amendments.
Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech: 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation blacks are still not free. Wouldn’t it be great if they finally were? Gosh it’s hot in DC today. Anybody have a fan?
The Gettysburg Address: Four score and seven years ago we became a new country. This Civil War sucks. Let’s pull together, boys, and win one for equality – or at least for the Gipper.
Cicero’s famous oration in support of Julius Caesar in the Roman Senate (which originally went on for three hours): Aebuti impudentiae, quam tum in vi facienda cessit audaciae. Verum et illud considerati hominis esse putavit. Specto imago femina cum toga sexius, clickus ici
Neil Armstrong’s famous first words on the moon speech: That’s one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind…. Hey Houston, check out this view! It‘s totally mind-blowing man. I can see Russia from here.
Churchill’s Blood, toil, tears, and sweat Speech Before Parliament: We’re in the middle of a mother of a fight. Hitler is one bad-ass dude. Gotta stop him. I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat, oh, and some really fine Cuban cigars – anybody?
Book of Genesis: In the beginning, God created light, dark, rocks, trees, dinosaurs, cows, pigs, birds and man – all in six days. Day seven: serious snooze time. Hey, don’t eat that apple. Men – they never listen. Okay, here comes the smiting.
I have proposed this idea to the good folks at Twitter and am waiting to hear back. I even have a name for this new product idea: “Twitter’s Speeches & Historically Important Texts” or “Shit Twits” for short.
Imagine how much funner learning would be if you read just a few tweets? Think about how quickly our kids could learn if we tossed out those boring 500-page textbooks and replaced them with Twitterized versions. With just a few short tweets, kids could learn about the Fall of Troy, Genghis Khan, World War II, and whether the Magna Carta was Magna-tized, not to mention the identity of Lindsay Lohan’s current rehab facility.
I myself have freed up eons of hours that I can now spend on more important tasks – like writing more tweets. Here is one I am working on now: “I totally think Parmesan Goldfish are way better than Cheez-its or Cheetos. Only losers eat Cheetos unless you’re talking about the crunchy Cheetos. They’re not bad.” This post was really long before I tweeterized it.
Aeschylus
“He who learns must suffer. Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, and against our will, comes wisdom by the awful grace of God.”
While single and even married I did all the cooking, laundry,food shopping. I paid all the bills. I would wake up every morning and make sure that my family had breakfast on the table ready for them before they got up. My mom made me learn how to cook,clean, sew and bake. She wanted me not to be dependent on any woman. My Dad embedded in me the idea that to be violent toward women is a reflection on my own weakness. Even while being in the Military and seeing the horrific things that men can to to each other in the name of “honor” I never had the urge to take out that horror on a woman
The reason we took notice of 30-year-old Reeva Steenkamp’s death among so many others killed every day is the shocking news that the man charged with killing her, her boyfriend, is none other than Oscar Pistorius, the athlete known as “Blade Runner,” a double amputee whose Olympic feats on prosthetic carbon fiber legs made him an international superstar.
But given what has been credibly written about him personally, Oscar Pistorius was transfixed by the dark side of the moon.
There is no question that many societies are finally becoming fed up with the much-too-common practice of attacking, raping and killing women that goes on in all corners of the world.
The perpetrators of these crimes are cowards, using superior physical force to intimidate or exert power. We have come to know some of their victims.
Remember Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl targeted by the Taliban because she proclaimed that every girl has a right to an education. She has survived and vowed to continue her struggle despite the Taliban’s promise they will try to kill her. The contrast in courage could not be starker.
Then there is Nirbhaya, the New Delhi university student who was gang raped in a bus. She died of her horrific injuries, but her assault moved India and the entire world so deeply that her legacy has fueled the battle to stop this violence.
Earlier this month, in a case gruesomely reminiscent of Nirbhaya, 17-year-old Anene Booysen was raped, killed, mutilated and left for dead, in the South African city of Capetown.
. According to U.N. statistics, one in three women will experience violence in her lifetime, including beating, rape or assault, making such violence a more prevalent problem than AIDS, malaria or any other disease. It means 1 billion women alive at this moment will become part of that statistic, .
The problem has deep roots and far-reaching ramifications. Women have endured the use of rape as a weapon of war, and domestic violence as a tool of control at home.
Domestic violence is one of those old traditions that should have died long ago. A 2012 study by UNICEF found most youngsters in India believe wife-beating is justified. But other surveys found the problem knows no national boundaries. The U.N. says about 14,000 Russian women die every year from domestic violence.
In some countries, women are subjected to violence as retaliation for other family members’ or their own perceived offenses in so-called “honor killings.”
In war zones, fighters rape women to humiliate their enemies, to perpetrate “ethnic cleansing” and to force people to leave. An incredible 92% of Liberian women in one study said they had been raped in that country’s war. As you read this, women are being raped in Syria, in the Congo and in other countries where wars rage. After the violation, many of them will be rejected by their families.
Violence against women tends to go hand in hand with lack of equality. It also is a sign of a malfunctioning society. It is a stubborn problem, but one that responds to measures, such as those just approved after a perplexing political battle in the United States.
As the world changes, as countries emerge from poverty and people fight for their rights, we can look to the level of violence against women as one of the gauges of their success. The Arab Human Development Reports of 2002 and 2005 said the low status of women is one of the reasons Arab countries had stagnated, calling the rise of women “a prerequisite for an Arab renaissance.”
Pistorius’ South Africa, a country with a storied history in the fight for racial equality, has a disturbing record of violence against women.
Any country, any society that wants to move forward and earn a place of honor among the nations must make it a priority to teach men from the earliest age that violence against women in any form is unacceptable, and those who hurt or intimidate women should be punished. They are men by gender only.
City Club of Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio
April 5, 1968
This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity, my only event of today, to speak briefly to you about the mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.
It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one – no matter where he lives or what he does – can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours.
Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr’s cause has ever been stilled by an assassin’s bullet.
No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason.
Whenever any American’s life is taken by another American unnecessarily – whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence – whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.
“Among free men,” said Abraham Lincoln, “there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs.”
Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire.
Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.
Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.
For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.
This is the breaking of a man’s spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all.
I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered.
We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this, there are no final answers.
Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.
We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children’s future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.
Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution.
But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.
Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again.
Kennedy recited these lines by Aeschylus on announcing the death of Martin Luther King, Jr.
“He who learns must suffer. Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, and against our will, comes wisdom by the awful grace of God.”
Make your evening together sizzle by leaving trails of red rose petals to a romantic surprise such as a steaming bubble bath, an intimate gift, a romantic dinner for two, or to you–wearing nothing but a ribbon. Whatever your romantic surprise is, be sure to include candles, red wine, soft music, and, of course, more red roses. The evening is sure to be a memorable and enjoyable one!
Have a steamy bubble bath waiting for your love. Scent the water with fragrant rose oil, put softly glowing candles (also rose scented if possible) around the tub, and float rose petals on the top. When your love gets in the tub, slowly lather him or her up with soft soap and thoroughly massage neck, shoulders, chest, and arms. Pause long enough for a kiss or two, and continue your sensuous work. Rinse your love with warm water, and let your passion lead you from there.
Buy one dozen roses. Write intimate messages on tiny sheets of paper, clearly stating what you’d like your love to do to you tonight. Roll the papers up and attach one to each rose stem with ribbon. Hide the roses and dress in something alluring–or nothing at all. When your love walks in the door, tease him or her with a kiss and some affectionate rubbing. But don’t let him or her go too far, because the game is on. Your love must find and read out loud all twelve rose coupons before he or she can cash in for a wonderful evening with you.
Gently remove some petals from some roses and place them about the house, keeping track of how many petals there are. Leave a note on the door for when your love gets home saying that you’ll give them a kiss for every rose petal he or she presents to you. Add that if your love finds all of the petals, then you’ll give him or her whatever is desired.
Write your love a sensual letter that describes what you’d like him or her to do to you (if you need help, you can chose and print a letter from the Secret Love Letter Section). Add a bit of cologne, rose petals, and seal. Put the letter on your love’s pillow. Add more rose petals, and get ready for an intimate night.
Make it an extra hot night. Put red rose petals on the sheets and around your love’s pillow. Get out the oil. Heat it up for a few minutes in hot water. Turn down the lights and turn on the music. Have your love lie down in a bed of roses for an intimate massage that’s followed by kissing and caressing.
Give your love an intimate gift, such as sexy lingerie, a bottle of intimate oil, etc.. Put the gift in a white box and garnish with metallic ribbon, pink or red tissue paper and red rose petals. Wear something alluring and present the gift to your love. Be sure to include the gift in the evening’s fiery fun.
Is it a beautiful day for a romantic picnic? You can make it all the sweeter. Get your picnic packed, being sure to include some red wine or champagne, strawberries, and a couple of glasses. Then take a white sheet, spray with a bit of fragrance and add some rose petals. Carefully roll the sheet up and tie with a red ribbon. Pack separately from the food items. Unroll the sheet when you get to the picnic spot for a sensual meal and some intimate romance for dessert.
Gather the most beautiful roses you can find. You’ll need at least a dozen roses for this scenario. Take the roses and spell out the words, “I love you” on the dash of your love’s car or somewhere else where he or she is sure to see it. This will made a bold statement about your adoration and will reveal just how deep your feelings go.
Are you ready for a hot date? Here’s one sure way to make it all the hotter. Before you pick him or her up, put rose petals on and around your love’s seat. You could even tuck some silky petals in the mirror. Make up a reason why your love need’s to look in the mirror. When the mirror is pulled down, petals will cascade gently down to inspire affection that will last the whole evening. Quite simply, he or she will adore you for this thoughtful and romantic act.
This will take some advance planning and preparation. Grow some roses in your garden–make sure they’re a fragrant variety. When they mature, send your love an envelope full of petals with a short message about how they were grown in your own garden for the one you love. This act of love will speak your heart louder and stronger than any words possibly could.
Buy a beautiful red rose and gently remove most of the petals. On a small strip of paper, write a short romantic sentence about your feelings for your love such as specific reasons why you admire and love him or her. Roll up and wrap a rose petal around the message. Attach the rose to the petal with thin ribbon. Write more messages and repeat for the remainder of petals. Put the messages in a white box on a bed of romantic sheer fabric or heart printed tissue paper. Top with the rose and add a short message, explaining that the rest of the rose petals hold what’s in your heart. Your love will always appreciate this heartfelt and romantic gift and will return to the messages often.
Have a florist send your love 11 roses at a specific time. Show up at the door shortly afterward with the 12th rose. Here’s another version–if you’re going away on a trip. Have a florist deliver 11 roses on the day before you return. When you get home, inspire a romantic evening by presenting the remaining rose.
Give him or her a single different colored rose each week. Place it somewhere where he or she is sure to find it–along with a note attached, explaining what that color of rose means and how it pertains to your heart or your relationship.
Another variation. Give him or her a bouquet of different colored roses and write a romantic message explaining what each rose color in the bouquet means.
The Meaning of Roses
All roses symbolize love, but each rose has a special symbolic meaning. So before you send your love roses, make sure you know what your precious gift is saying to your love’s heart.
Rose Colors
• Red
• Dark Red
• Yellow
• Peach
• Dark Pink
• Light Pink
• White
• Red/Yellow
• Coral or orange
• Deep Burgundy
Other Meanings
• Two roses joined together symbolizes engagement.
• A Red and White Rose together symbolizes Unity.
• A single red rose in bloom says, “I love you!”
• Tearoses symbolize “I’ll always remember you.”
• Rose leaves are a symbol of hope.
• Red rose buds mean pure, beauty, or lovely.
• White rosebuds symbolize innocence or youth.
• A rose in bloom placed over two buds means secrecy.
• No thorns represent a truce or no fighting.
Touch your love’s heart in a way that he or she will never forget. Get a bag of chocolate kisses and one dozen roses. While he or she is away, put a message on the front door that says, “Follow the trail of kisses,” and leave a trail of chocolate kisses to the bathroom. There, attach the roses to the shower head with red ribbon. Include a note that says, “I’ve kissed the ground you walk on, and now I’ve showered you with roses.”
Get a beautiful light colored full rose that has several petals. Carefully write tiny messages of love on each petal, such as: “I need you,” “I love you,” “You’re beautiful,” etc. This act of love is sure to set the mood for a romance.
Or for a more sensual version, write specific things that you’d like to do to your love and would like him or her to do to you. Present the rose along with a bottle of champagne for a sizzling romantic evening.
Cicero’s famous oration in support of Julius Caesar in the Roman Senate (which originally went on for three hours): Aebuti impudentiae, quam tum in vi facienda cessit audaciae. Verum et illud considerati hominis esse putavit. 
Churchill’s Blood, toil, tears, and sweat Speech Before Parliament: We’re in the middle of a mother of a fight. Hitler is one bad-ass dude. Gotta stop him. I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat, oh, and some really fine Cuban cigars – anybody?
Book of Genesis: In the beginning, God created light, dark, rocks, trees, dinosaurs, cows, pigs, birds and man – all in six days. Day seven: serious snooze time. Hey, don’t eat that apple. Men – they never listen. Okay, here comes the smiting.
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