shhh, don't tell anyone...

Secrets. What odd things like, "don't tell Tracy, but we're all going to the mall later" or "Don't tell the American public, but we stole Nixon's views on communist Cuba, and forced our wrongfully preachy views upon him." They are made up of little things called words, which in secrets can really hurt people's feelings. Or minds. Or countries. Really though, secrets are dangerous things.

I am still reading The dark side of Camelot, which is really just an amazing book. Every page is a new burst of history I didn't know, and now do. Some pages (or should I say most pages), tell of countless secrets. Countless corrupt secrets that would have destroyed the Kennedy campaign. I like them.

Secrets are so scary. I hate it when people talk behind my back about me, but I love doing it to other people. A good piece of gossip can turn my day around, even when I was having a horrible day. The two faces of secrets makes them a true monster. They can entertain, but at the same time they can destroy. They can be wielded as a weapon, one more powerful the sword. You can't regret things when your dead because you don't think. Secrets can destroy anything from friendships to presidential nominations.

The president of the United States of America is supposed to be someone great. Someone who will help the nation, and at the same time help the world. Humans have secrets. Secrets can destroy people. The president is human. Therefore, the president can be destroyed by secrets.

Probably not just JFK.

The question is not does the president have secrets, but do we want to know them.

Conspiracies are catching.

presidents don't wear pants

Everyone loves John F. Kennedy. He was smart, witty, and good looking. He was the perfect president of the united states, standing up to those mean old communists and the Iron Curtain. His entire family was in politics ( his brother bobby, his dad Joe, and his grandpa "honey Fitz" Fitzgerald). When he was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald, the entire nation wept. 30 years latter, they pondered.

I am currently reading the dark side of Camelot, by Seymour Hersh. The book is a biography that shows off the worst sides of JFK. Trust me, they're tons of them. I personally have always thought JFK was the greatest president who lived. He was flawless. But he's actually not. Don't get me wrong, JFK was a great president, who was a war hero, and a great man. He just had many "quirks" that are mostly responsible of his father. Joe Kennedy's life lesson to his son, was to get rich, go into politics, get married, stay married, have as many children as possible, and have as much sex as possible. In the book, Joe, walks right into a family lunch with a random women, and proceeds to walk by his wife, and have intercourse with the woman. JFK respected his father greatly, and if Joe did it, then he should to. JFK would go on to have many affairs with women before and after he married Jackie Kennedy.

When Al Gore lost to George Bush in the 2000 presidential election, everyone of the Democrats was appalled. They had been cheated. In the election of 1960, JFK stole the votes of Chicago from Richard Nixon, because his father was in with the mob, and they forced people at gunpoint to vote Kennedy, or voted themselves as thousands of people who had actually died in World War Two. Chicago was the state that won Kennedy the election.

Though he had his flaws, so did many presidents. JFK was a very nice, polite man his main problem was just that...

He never really wore any pants.

funny 1900s

Recently, Txai has lent me the first two books in the Tintin series, which I have read before, but mainly just looked at the pictures. This time, I looked at the pictures again (along with the words, I am no longer 6) and noticed how horribly stereotypical those books where. It was appalling.

Every single black person in the book was portrayed to be the shade of midnight and ALWAYS, stressing the always, were either servants who were clueless, or crooks and henchmen to the bad guy. The henchmen looked a lot like monkeys who had just been thrown out a tree. It was strange seeing what people who drew described as. I don't know, it might just be me, but i really think it's creepy to make races stereotyped in cartoons. odd.

Indians are again, very stereotyped. They are shown as angry stupid men, who use the words "um" and "How chief" to an extent. I have never actually met a pure native American, but I have a feeling that they don't get tricked into killing each other by residue being flicked at them by a white kid tied to a stake.

Chinese people are the ones that are so badly portrayed, it makes me laugh. They all where fast food employee outfits that I would assume belong to a burger king drive thru attendant rather then a emperor.
Everyone has eyes that are so slanted they couldn't possibly see from them. Oh, and they all smoke truck loads of opium.

When did the world finally realize that not every Chinese person smokes opium?

Looking through eyes that are not your own

It's been a little while since I have read a really good book. One that makes me wish that I could just skip school and not come home to play video games, but just to read. In House Rules, by Jodi Piculut (Author of the renowned novel My Sisters Keeper), a child with Asbergers (which I can't spell for my life) is put on trial for murder. I have not figured out who did it yet. After reading for a while, I went downstairs to have dinner, and all of the sudden, I was looking at food as if I was autistic.

It's a weird feeling to have, looking through different eyes. The expression is tossed around often, but to actually have a moment where I could understand what these kids are going through was, well, odd. It's like when you dream about your life, but you play the role of someone else.

Trust me, this little experience has not made me think of myself as some sort of sympathetic person, I do feel for those with autism, but really it just made me think about what life would be like black and white. When you have Asbergers, Every question you are asked is very literal, so you answer it likewise. Say I asked a child with Asbergers if he had the time, he would most likely stare at me and say "How could I possibly have control of the time?"

Though a world of literal questions and answers may seem simple, it would probably be very complicated to follow exactly, which is what we would have to do. Who knows, I couldn't handle that world. But obviously some people are forced to.

Rotten punk kids

       I have cleverly deducted why people hate teenagers so much. Why everyone thinks all of us are mean, obnoxious and rude. It is because of the way we are portrayed in books. I'm sure that someone else has already thought about this, but I have a new way of looking at it.
       Say an elderly man is reading a book, about a nice elderly man who reads books about other elderly men. Stay with me. In the book, there are some teenagers who are not that mean, hey are just going through a tough time in there life A.K.A puberty. The man decides that the book was boring and cliche, so he does not like it. In fact, he laments this book. It is the vain of his existence. He goes out for a stroll to clear his head, and he sees some teenagers, just hanging around a street corner. He remembers the book and that teenagers were in it, and boy does he hate that book and everything it talks about (besides elderly men who read about other elderly men, such as himself). He yells "Damn it you punk kids, why do you ruin my life?", and calls the cops.
       I thought about all this, because in a book I just read called someday this pain will all be useful to you, the teenagers are totally awful people, and the main character James can see right through all of there facades and into their horrible inner core. Funnily enough, James is also a teenager and he hates it. Chin up James.
       So now we have seen that the reason people hate teenagers so much, is not because they are bad people. It is because of an overly complex system of ideas and theories that travels through peoples brains and confuses everyone.
       Or we just generally are horrible, rotten, rude, obnoxious, mean, evil, disgusting, menacing, distasteful, degrading to our society people.
       But mine sounds better.

I'm not interested

       Some people go into the woods to discover what they really want to do in life, to find their true passion, if you will. I have found that for me, learning about myself simply requires reading about one of these adventure.
       I am currently reading the book Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer, which is a riveting story in which Chris McCandless A.K.A Aleander Supertramp, walks into the wild and dies, after touching the hearts of all who he hitchhiked. As not too much is known about Chris' death, the story is mostly about what Krakauer learned while talking to those who knew Chris. From what Krakauer describes, it seems that Chris was trying to get interested in life. From this I learned one thing:
       I am not interested in much. The entire story revolves around what Chris was interested in, and I found I was interested in nothing. Well, not nothing, I like baseball, skateboarding, and cooking, but I don't get season tickets, or practice every day, or learn to techniques. I'm just not one who gets amazingly enthusiastic about things. I am a drifter in life. I find little things in life that I like, and then throw them away, like a action figure under the tree on Christmas. And you know what?
     I am perfectly okay with that.

When you're running with scissors, you're bound to fall

I am reading a captivating book called running with scissors by Augusten Burroughs, and though this book is captivating, at most points I find myself repelled by the story line to an extent only thought possible by sleeping on a mound of dead bodies. For instance, at one point in the book, Augusten (the book is a memoir) is just walking home from school, when he opens up his door and low and behold, his mother is having sexual intercourse with another woman. An average day. I feel repelled by this not because that well, it actually happened to him, but because he glances at them and then says "can I borrow five bucks mom?" just the calm composure he keeps disgusts me a little, and I had to put the book down for a day, but I soon realized as repelling as it may be, the book is amazing, so I am back to reading it happily. It seems that every paragraph a new thing comes up, that either disgusts me, or makes me wonder how this boy lived his life so well. One point, Augusten is just sitting around in a doctors house, a doctor who is treating his mom because his mom is declared crazy, and the doctor's daughters just decide to hook each other up to  a shock therapy machine, they fry their brains, yell at Augusten, and then shock their dog to death. I can't bear the thought of this happening to an innocent dog, is just bad. Plain bad. The casualness of which all these events happen, and then the fact that it's a memoir, just repels me. I think I am repelled by it because of how unfamiliar all this is. I myself could never kill my dog, I love her to much. Oh by the way, Augusten's mom is not lesbian. She's married.