Author: DhammaSeeker

To everyone who has commented (or may comment in the future) on my previous entry (or on the threads on evthreads or evclub), I humbly extend my most sincere thanks and gratitude.

All alone, or in twos
The ones who really love you
Walk up and down outside the wall
Some hand in hand
Some gathering together in bands
The bleeding hearts and the artists
Make their stand
And when they’ve given you their all
Some stagger and fall, after all it’s not easy
Banging your head against some mad bugger’s Wall.
~ Roger Waters, Pink Floyd, The Wall, Outside the Wall

For those who are curious as to why I decided to step down from a leadership position on evthreads and evclub, and I can’t imagine who would be, I’ll now attempt to cobble together some words that might be sufficient to explain.

I’d been on the ledge for awhile now. All I needed was a little nudge to push me over the edge, and that nudge came this past week. The wheels came off the Evanescence bus, and chaos reigned supreme on the fan message boards since last Friday. I’ve grown weary of the drama; my tolerance to suffer the daft is not what it used to be.

The small windows I had into the underbelly of the music industry removed the illusions I’d created in my own mind about how the music we all love and live to hear is made. Sometimes that process isn’t appealing or nice, and it all came to a head.

When you can no longer see the goal for which you are working, it’s time to change what you’re doing – for the good of all involved. I honestly hope that Amy Lee continues to make music and that it’s appealing to me and at least some segment of the music consumer culture. I hope she and all those who are and have been around her find happiness and peace.

I’ve made some fantastic friends through this gig, and I’ve got no plans on leaving them alone or behind in any sense. They are, in fact, the touchstones that I kept coming back to in my deliberations on whether I should carry on or not.

I’ll end this post with a quote that helped me find clarity in this whole situation. Perhaps it can be of use to some of you either now or at a time uncertain in the future.

Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.
~ Thomas Merton

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility;
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger:
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood.
~ Shakespeare, Henry V (5.3.44-51)

“Surreal” doesn’t even begin to describe it.

fantastic imagery and incongruous juxtaposition of subject matter

holla

MySpace Photo Costs Teacher Education Degree
Teacher Sues For Diploma And Damages

…Teacher in training Stacy Snyder was denied her education degree on the eve of graduation when Millersville University apparently found pictures on her MySpace page “promoting underage drinking.” As a result, the 27-year-old mother of two had her teaching certificate withheld and was granted an English degree instead. In response, Snyder has filed a Federal lawsuit against the Pennsylvania university asking for her education diploma and certificate along with $75,000 in damages.

So what, you’re probably asking yourself, could have been in this picture that was so abhorrent as to make Stacy Snyder unworthy of teaching children? Was she force-feeding a 6-year-old bourbon from a bottle or spiking a middle school dance’s punch? Not even close. The picture in question turned out to be of her at a Halloween party in 2005 dressed as a pirate and drinking an indeterminate liquid “from a plastic ‘Mr. Goodbar’ cup.” But underneath was a caption which read “Drunken Pirate” and that caption apparently lead faculty to assume she was too “unprofessional” to educate young minds. Word was sent to the Millersville administration, and Snyder’s “lifelong dream” of being a teacher ended less than a day before being achieved….

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/offbeat/2007/05/myspace_photo_costs_teacher_ed.html

Seriously. WTF.

Little Rock – Former Governor and current presidential Republican candidate Mike Huckabee issued a statement Thursday afternoon, responding to the arrest of his son, David.

David Huckabee was arrested early Thursday morning at Little Rock National Airport, after police discovered a loaded handgun in his carry-on luggage.

http://www.katv.com/news/stories/0407/418023.html

What a complete and utter idiot.

By ALISA TANG

KABUL, Afghanistan Apr 23, 2007 (AP)— An Army sergeant complained in a rare opinion article that the U.S. flag flew at half-staff last week at the largest U.S. base in Afghanistan for those killed at Virginia Tech but the same honor is not given to fallen U.S. troops here and in Iraq.

In the article issued Monday by the public affairs office at Bagram military base north of Kabul, Sgt. Jim Wilt lamented that his comrades’ deaths have become a mere blip on the TV screen, lacking the “shock factor” to be honored by the Stars and Stripes as the deaths at Virginia Tech were.

“I find it ironic that the flags were flown at half-staff for the young men and women who were killed at VT, yet it is never lowered for the death of a U.S. service member,” Wilt wrote.

He noted that Bagram obeyed President Bush’s order last week that all U.S. flags at federal locations be flown at half-staff through April 22 to honor 32 people killed at Virginia Tech by a 23-year-old student gunman who then killed himself.

“I think it is sad that we do not raise the bases’ flag to half-staff when a member of our own task force dies,” Wilt said.

read more

Irony doesn’t even begin to express it. I take comfort in the fact that an active-duty soldier is expressing sentiments such as this. It gives me hope that the cause is not lost, and that we may yet salvage the republic.