Love is Greater (Always)

April 17, 2007 by gpstevens.

In light of the recent massacre at Virginia Tech University I wanted to send out my thoughts and prayers for the victims and their family and friends. It seems that day after day and year after year we hear about these things or read about them in the paper and it’s almost trivia. Hey did you hear about this or did you read about that? Whats the new scoop on Anna Nicole or what about this scandal or that, and somehow it all gets lumped into this big wad we call “The News.” It’s just another story, a picture in the paper, something to talk about over dinner or a beer at the bar or club. Water cooler talk I think they call it now. Just something to talk about with strangers when you don’t really want to talk to that person at all. How cold we have become.

Do we really feel their pain? Do we really feel the tragedy in our hearts? Do we really stop to think that on one Monday morning and afternoon literally thousands of lives have been changed as the result of one lone killers actions? As of now we have 33 people dead including the shooter, over 20 people wounded. Right now as it stands we have at least 50 people shot. Now how many wives, husbands, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, friends and various other relatives have been affected? Just using simple math that translates into the thousands.

I guess all I want to say is this.

None of us ever really know when the s**t is gonna hit the fan. In America we seem to take life and liberty and freedom so for granted. Then one day everything we loved so much is gone, sometimes it’s gone within minutes if not seconds. Yesterday a bunch of college kids went to class. In a couple of days they will be lowering alot of kids into the ground. They will never come home again. The school year for them is over. They will never get that dream job. They will never be what they wanted to be. They will never see mom and dad again. And mom and dad will have to live with the memory of seeing their child not outlive them.

What can we do about this? Not much. The best we can do is love our friends, treat them with respect. Love our children and our family and never let a day go buy without doing something or saying something that lets them know we love them. “Love thy neighbor as you love thyself” Jesus said. The country is in pain tonight and eventually the wounds will heal over time but let us not dismiss the pain of today. Today we were wounded but not killed, we will live on to fight another day, but in the meantime let’s pause and think and remember that sometimes when a loved one walks out the door to do what we consider their everyday routine, we may never see them again. Every good-bye could be our last.

May God bless and comfort those victims of the Virginia Tech Massacre and to all my friends, family, and everyone else, I love you.

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Can we bury her yet?

February 16, 2007 by gpstevens.

 

I’m truly amazed at the media, and the celebrities that dominate the news. I thought I’d seen it all when a former baseball player died and their was a family fight over whether to cut off his head and freeze it or just bury the man. Well that story has ended and Ted Williams’ head is now in cryogenic freeze. Now poor Anna Nicole Smith’s body is sitting in a cooler in Florida waiting for the rich people to and the courts to decide who has the right to bury her and where she will be buried.

Apparently the American people love this crap because the ratings go up with every mention of her name. Now I find the story interesting, and I would like to know how she died but for crying out loud can we at least bury her? It’s been 9 days already, can we bury her yet??

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March of the Penguins

February 8, 2007 by gpstevens.

I just watched one of the most moving films/documetaries of my life. It’s a film called March of the Penguins. It is particularly about the Emporer Penguins that mainly live and breed in Antarctica. I first want to preface my remarks here by saying that I highly recommend everyone watch this film. It is stunning in its sheer beauty of photography, but quite refreshingly, the story outshines its pictures.

There is no way I can ruin this movie for you if you haven’t seen it but I want to give a little background to it before I actually comment on what it means to me. The movie chronicles the life style and the breeding cycle of the Emporer Penguin. They live and breed in the most harsh envioronment on the planet earth. They walk for a little less than twenty days, almost if not more than seventy miles to the place where each one of them was born and have been born for thousands of years. The average tempreture there is around 80 degrees below zero with winds of over 100 miles per hour. They meet, mate and breed and endure 8 months of winter that exists nowhere on this earth. Once the mother produces the egg, she passes the egg onto the father for protection from the cold while she returns to the sea to feed. The father will guard the egg and go without food for over four months. The mother will walk the seventy miles or so to get food for herself and her egg. She has now walked 140 miles, basically starving, to get food for her young. Meanwhile the father will stand starving protecting the life of the newborn chick for another month while he himself is starving. During this time many of the eggs and or chicks will not survive. In fact some fathers themselves will not survive. The mothers meanwhile having made it back to the sea risk death themselves from the predators in the water that are hungry too.

The mothers who survive the second journey and have now filled their bellies with food must now make the 70 mile journey a third time. Upon their return, both parents help and nurture the chick until it can thrive outside the protective cover of their parents feet and stomachs.

During the next several months the sea ice begins to melt and both parents take turns returning to the sea feeding and caring for the newborn chick until finally the chicks can make it on their own. Finally, the parents return to the sea leaving their chicks behind for the last time never to see them again for 4 years. The chicks meanwhile will stand at waters edge for another month until finally, they jump into the water never to return to the breeding ground for four years.

There are many stories in nature that are similar to this but this one stands out for so many reasons. In an age where we have suicide bombers and parents that throw their children into garbage cans or do the most unspeakable things to their kids, here is a story of great love, dedication and sacrifice. Watching this film helped me remember that the hand of God reaches all creatures great and small. Somehow in His infinate wisdom he has given us an example of perfect love that even a child can understand. Maybe if more of us could watch this film, perhaps we would love our children more than we do, and the world would be a better place. 

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The TV gods are smarter than us.

February 4, 2007 by gpstevens.

 

 

I am like most people. I like TV. There is something on TV for everybody. Whatever you

like you can find on TV. You got news, weather, sports, movies, music, even shop on

TV. From the History channel to Animal Planet, you get it all provided you have

cable. But there’s something suspicious going on with TV. In this blog I’m going to

point out a few things that will change the way you watch TV forever. Here we go.

First: Ever notice how when your watching TV and a commercial comes on you grab the

remote to see whats on the other channels only to find that, Hey! They’re in

commercial too!  Why is that? The television networks know that most people have a

very short attention span. They know we are going to grab the remote and surf the

channels, so they schedule almost all commercial breaks at the same time so that

you will somehow see an advertisement from one of their sponsors no matter what

channel you go to. Often times the same types of commercials come on at the same

times to capture a specific audience. Thats why you never see a commercial for

Viagra during the cartoons. Conversely you never see a commercial for Co-Co Puffs

during American Idol. Why is that?  Maybe a bowl of cereal would be really good

during American Idol but the TV gods don’t think so. A box of cereal costs around

$4.00 but a new Chevy truck costs around 30 grand. Kids don’t have any money to buy

a truck but you do. So lets advertise the truck to you and Capn Crunch to the broke

ass kids. Do I have your attention yet?

Second: The gender gap. OK, so your watching TV, a commercial comes on, you start

surfing channels and you see more commercials, but you wonder whats on that channel

anyway. Well, what kind of commercial is on? I’m willing to go out on a limb and

say that if you see more than one commercial about feminine hygeine products, there

is a pretty good chance that there is no sports on that network right now.

Conversely, if you see a commercial about “Built Ford Tough”, followed by a Bud

Light commercial, it’s a pretty sure bet that the Oprah Winfrey show is not on that

network right now. You see the TV gods know who’s watching what, and when. But what

about when men and women are watching the same show you might ask? Well the TV gods

have that figured out as well. The harsh reality is, we live in a male dominated

society. Almost every major network is run by men. One exception is the Lifetime

channel. Since these networks are owned and run by mostly men they do things from a

male point of view. So while you and your signifigant other are watching American

Idol, you will see all the girlie commercials for women, but the women will be

really sexy so the guys will pay attention. Think about it. You never see a fat

broad talking about tampons on TV at ANY time. Who the hell wants to see that? That

would make even a fat kid spit out his Co-Co Puffs. One the other hand the

commercials about Viagra and Cialis all have relatively good-looking guys in decent

shape in them. So the women see those commercials and think, hmmmm, he wouldn’t

need Viagra if I got my hands (or mouth) on him. But if you put a big fat

pot-bellied guy on TV talking about he needs Viagra, when he hasn’t even seen his

penis in the last 15 years, we all go running from the room screaming in horror, or

pissing our pants in laughter. Who the hell would want to buy Viagra after seeing

that? As a side note. How come in all the fast food commercials there are never any

fat people in the resturaunt. Everyone stuffing a whopper in their face is in great

shape. When I go to a fast food joint I always see some kid that should have been

on a diet since kindergarten. He or she is usaully accompanied by his very large

parents, but they all have diet Cokes’. You see the TV gods know that if they

showed you fat people eating at Wendy’s you won’t go there out of fear that you’ll

wind up like those fat bastards you saw on TV. Which brings me to another thought.

Why is it in almost every diet commercial they keep showing us food? Well the TV

gods have that figured out too. First they know that 25% of the American public is

over weight, so we all need to go on a diet right? But if we all got skinny we

wouldn’t need those diet foods anymore, and thus their sales would drop. But we

can’t have that. Sooooooooo…, they shows us that delicious food because they know

we won’t eat just one diet meal but two, or three. But we feel better about eating

that low fat crap. Instead of saying I had a Wendy’s triple with the works I can

say I ate 6 or 7 low fat veggie burgers and 3 diet pepsi’s because im dieting.

Please! So the next time you see a fast food commercial look around at the people

in them and think of what they are trying to tell you about who eats that crap.

Third:The Mind Job. This might be a little hard to follow so read carefully. There

is an annoying commercial on TV about a product called HeadON. “HeadOn, applied

directly to the forehead.” “HeadOn, applied directly to the forehead.” “HeadOn,

applied directly to the forehead.” That commercial is one of the most annoying

commercials known to mankind, and the TV gods knew it. They knew that people would

get sick of it. Especially when they used to run it 2 times in a row. So now they

have a commercial about the same product only with a twist now. First you get the

“HeadOn, applied directly to the forehead.”, but then a person walks on the screen

and starts saying it in anger like he or she hates the commercial but loves the

product. And therin lies the trick. The original commercial used to say “HeadOn,

applied directly to the forehead.” 3 times. Now the new one you hear “HeadOn,

applied directly to the forehead.” 4 times. But you feel better about it now

because they like you, hate the commercial too, but oops!!! Now you can’t get that

slogan out of your head, so to speak. Moreover, now they put in a testimonial so

now you think, hey, thats probably a good product. You like it now because someone

“allegedly” feels the same way you do. But the only thing you really have in common

with that person is that you both hate that commercial. This is classic reverse

psychology. The TV gods made you hate something first and then like it second so

you think you made an informed decision.

So the next time you walk into a store, stop and think before you buy something.

When you look at a product on the shelf do you see the commercial in your mind? Are

you buying it because you think it’s a good product or are the TV gods messing with

your head? “HeadOn, applied directly to the forehead.”

Scary aint it?

 

–
To err is human. To really screw things up requires a computer.

Greg Stevens

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