Someone great once said...

"I've tried reading between the lines but all I usually see is paper." I'm kidding, I thought that quote up as an intro to this portion of the fence. Don't get me wrong, I'm not taking credit for it. I'm rather certain that someone has said that before...and probably received the same glare that your screen currently is.

I have noticed that, increasingly, folks will believe what they want. This is, sometimes, even after having been shown the science, math or the facts.

Just so there's no confusion, what I'm saying above is that my acknowledgement of this trend has increased, I'm not saying that folks are doing this more often then in the past. That said, I'm certain that explanation will undoubtedly be left out should anyone want to accuse me of attacking them, but I felt I needed to clarify.

Some of the easiest examples of this can be found in song lyrics...ok...old song lyrics. (...get off my lawn...) I doubt that anyone will ever be able to convince me that Ann Wilson wasn't a frustrated banker in the song "Alone". Clearly other folks have taken a different meaning, but this is where I've placed my flag...in sand...just in case. (heenahh heenahh) (inside joke) (the problem with putting my narration within parenthesis is that if I try and do the "winky face" at the end it looks like I have a double chin. ;))

Allow me give you another example. I can't tell you how many people have told me that "Every Breath You Take" by The Police is one of the most romantic songs they have ever heard. That its going to be the song they dance to at their wedding...etc. I'm not kidding...here's proof:


However as Sting has stated several times he wrote this while going through divorce with his first wife and...well I'll let him explain:


It's easy to see things through our own colored, cracked glasses and come to a conclusion without seeing all the facets. It's even easier to have someone tell you what your decision should be so that you feel that you don't have any responsibility should your wedding song turn out to, in fact, be about a stalker. (...remember that creepy server at the reception?)

We need to be able to see things from multiple angles to get a clearer perception of the effects they will have. We also need to be certain that we spell angle correctly because angel completely changes the meaning of the sentence. That kinda typo could draw us into a situation where the California baseball team began making our decisions. Alternately, in the biblical sense, lots a folks could begin begetting things and possibly each other.

The point I'm running in circles around and not getting to is that everyone has their own perspective and their own agenda. Their agenda will likely taint there perspective. (taint...lol) Therefore, we need to draw our decisions from multiple sources, IMO. Without the full picture, the puzzle will take much longer to build.

Clearly the person that named the "Chornaya River" in Crimea should have talked to a few other folks first. That could have become the number one place in the world to have an argument! Think of the tourist dollars!?! You could have had Justin Timberlake cut the ribbon!

In America, we have a very important decision to make coming up here shortly. There are several places where you can educate yourself on what is going on..what is fact....what is fiction. Here are a few of the podcasts I listen to weekly that you might find helpful:

KCRW's Left, Right & Center
NPR Politics Podcast
Meet The Press
Face The Nation
BBC News WTF America?!?

It's important to cut through the clamor and noise...the pomp and circumvention. We are dangerously close to launching another Kaiser Wilhelm II on the world. We can't afford to have a President that my cat can beat in chess. My cat would simply bat at his king, knocking it over and there's nothing to be done about it...well maybe you amendment folks could...but I don't know.

I'll leave you with another of my favorite Sting quotes from the song "DE DO DO DO, DE DA DA DA" from 1980's "Zenyatta Mondatta":

Poets priests and politicians 

Have words to thank for their positions

Words that scream for your submission

And no-one's jamming their transmission

As my brother is fond of saying, "Pass your time with porpoise!"

...come to think of it, I don't know what that means. Is he saying that we should swim more? Is he a big Douglas Adams fan? (No that was dolphins) Is he saying we should be sleeping with the fishes?!?

...OMG...MY BROTHER WANTS ME DEAD!

Squirrel! Mace! Get the pizza and meet me under the bed!

@GlenEwing
GE