Hurting is not Flirting

Photo Credit: thedailylove.com

As a young girl when a boy would pick on me on the playground I was told it was just because he liked me.

As a young girl when a boy would hit me on the playground I was told it was just because he liked me.

Photo Credit: facebook.com

Where do we draw the line? If a punch leaves a bruise and a girl goes crying to a nurse, does the excuse that “he must really like you,” make the bruise diminish? Like the size of a bruise or the deepness of a cut shows fondness to a young girl.

The sad truth is that we have taught boys the idea of violence and taunting is a way to show a girl that you like her.

Society has a serious problem in the way that we define masculinity. Young boys are shown that they should hide their emotions and the only manly way to display those suppressed feelings is through violence. Because for some reason acting “feminine” is a worst case scenario.

 

A Deadly Chariot

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The chariot rode throughout the sacred city.
It hoped for the defaulted nation’s pity.

Weapon in hand and courage in tow.
Intentions, one does not know.

Doesn’t matter in the end.
Soon enough the violence begins.

Citizens were not suspected of such crimes.
Now is the end of those times.

One was dead and the rest were hurt.
The nation has not seen the worst.

A child remained sill alive.
His mind was rotted from the inside.

Once again the circle spins.
The nation will go through it again.

Part 1: LAPD Drugs

On a cold and foggy day in down town Los Angeles two cars are parked side by side. Window to window hands exchange different bags. I am not sure what’s inside the bag, but I know it couldn’t be anything good.

I follow these two cars as I watch from above, on top of the bridge that they are under. As they drive away I exit the bridge and pull up behind one car. A flat black Dodge Challenger with red break calipers, and chrome handles. Pinstripes run down the side of the door. A chrome tip muffler extends out from underneath the chassis, it is a sound many cars do not make. We stop at a red light, the Challenger is rumbling so loudly that my mirrors are shaking. The man looks in his side mirrors, I am afraid I have been spotted. His face is tattooed, head shaved, and stretched ears. He looks like a high level thug.

I am no cop, just a person who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I am not one to let something like this go. My name is Jax. I am just an average person. I wear a suit to work every day. I sit in a cubicle from 9-5 Monday-Friday. I live alone with my two dogs, no woman, just a single guy trying to make a living. Witnessing this exchange was not my idea of a Saturday morning, all I wanted was to drive to the beach in peace, but these stupid asses had to go and mess it up.

I see the Challenger turn into a parking lot. I drive passed his tail lights and turn around the corner. I don’t want him to think I am following him. I park along the curb and watch as he goes into the store. He comes out of the Vons with no bags, but he has been in there for almost 45 minutes. I run inside to ask a clerk if he bought anything, she tells me no. She’s an innocent looking girl, blond hair, blue eyes, and infinity symbol tattooed on her wrist. She looks trustworthy and I figured while I was in there I’d ask her for her number. She hands it to me on the back of a receipt. Julia is her name, I didn’t see her as a Julia, but it fits. I told her I would call her later, but that I had business to get back to. She asked me what I was doing, but I said, I’ll have to tell you some other time.

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Another War in the Name of God

Let’s say

That I belonged to a social club that met each week.

Let’s say

That the people in the club believed that it was founded by a guy named, I don’t know, Chuck.

Let’s say

Chuck was a homophobic, misogynistic, genocidal old man who lived in a cloud and had the power to make everything happen.

Lastly, let’s say

That because I belonged to this club, I inherited a hatred of all other social clubs in the area.

Okay, now of course no one would ever join this club. It’s ridiculous. However, if this was your religion, you’d be perfectly fine with it.

The Old Testament, for instance, a book held believed to be true by both Christians and Jews, is one of the most outrageous pieces of literature in Western Culture.

For most of it, God is killing people. He wipes out everyone but Noah and his family in one part, destroys two cities and its inhabitants in another, forces Lot to offer his own daughters to be raped, etc.

However, when the O.T. is lacking in violence, it makes up for it in sheer whimsicality and stupidity. This is the same with all religious texts. There really is no room for a reasonable person to believe in some of the “facts” of Juedo-Christain beliefs (I’m not leaving other religions like Islam out on purpose, its just that these strike a little closer to home).

Religous “Facts”:

1.   Sadly (spoiler alert), Noah of the O.T. died at the young age of 950. The good die young.

2.   Although also in the New Testament, it is possible (and actually turned out quite well) to be swallowed by a giant fish, live in there for a while, and be spat back out.

3.   The universe was created by…well God. There isn’t much else to say about that because books like the O.T. say about that much in regard to the beginning of time (cough-COP OUT-cough).

However, taking what some would call “cheap shots” like this at religion isn’t fair because these things aren’t meant to be taken literally. They’re simply meant to be ignored and the good bits should be cherry picked out when needed.

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The Palistinian Debate

One of my best friend is Jewish, and in his opinion, Palestine should never be a country.

This sentiment is a common one, especially in the Jewish community. But the real question from my point of view is whether creating a separate nation will solve the problems between Israel and the Palestinian nations and whether the US needs to get involved.

“The Obama policy of moral equivalency, which gives equal standing to the grievances of Israelis and Palestinians, including the orchestrators of terrorism, is a dangerous insult. There is no middle ground between our allies and those who seek their destruction,” said Rick Perry.

This is the utter ignorance that is being said at the moment. Perry seems to almost suggest that Palestinians are lesser people than Israelis.

I think that creating a new Palestinian state may in fact be a solution to the ongoing problem, or at least a short-term solution.

I highly doubt that as long as Israelis border Arabic nations, peace can be attained. There was not the foresight required when Israel was created.

According to the Obama administration, the best thing that can be done would be to continue negotiations to achieve peace. I doubt that any long-term peace can be achieved at this point but the worry is that if the US leans to far one way or the other, they will face the wrath of one of the sides.

We don’t need another war or another “conflict”. What we need is to focus on world peace and world hunger and our own economy. This may sound like an answer from a Miss Universe contestant but at this point, I feel that we do not need to be involved.

We can encourage negotiations and discourage violence, but now is the time where we step back and let them work. They have politicians and negotiators just like us, they also do posses common sense.

Hopefully both sides can overcome their historical debates and realize that, for humanity’s sake, the violence and arguments need to end.