What a wonderful world?

I remember when you had to get up to change the channel & drop nickels yes nickels in a pay phone if you were out of the house to make a phone call. Cigarettes were .19 cents a pack, gas was .15 a gallon. Good pay was 100$ a week l a bomb shelter because any day Cuba was supposed to be killing everyone in Florida over what I don't know. We practiced in school everyday...we were the duck and cover generation. We didn't have any metal detectors in my schools, and nobody ever got shot. Maybe it was that foot long paddle in the principals office that kept the school safe, who knows.

You could take a bath without having to answer your cell phone, you could drive without talking on the phone. Oh yeah, thats when the speed limit on the interstate was 75 miles an hour. You were actually able to go grocery shopping without having to talk on the phone. There were no computers so people wrote letters to one another.

People used to socialize at church on sundays, or at the local bowling alley or lodges and clubs. Now we socialize over the internet. With faceless humans and call the words we see flash across the screen, our friends. You can go weeks, months and years without ever leaving your house and seeing another human being. You can buy food online, clothes cigarettes, liquor, sex, whatever you want. Who needs an office, we telecommute.

So I wonder, when we get sick or when we die, who's coming to the hospital to say hi? Hmm, better have a laptop if you get sick. Maybe there will be funerals where people skype in and give condolences to the few humans you actually knew face to face. Of course as time goes on, we will probably be able to connect ourselves via a USB type hookup and won't even have to go to the Doctor.

I grew up without computers, cellphones, cable tv, music being blasted into my ears 24 hours a day and on and on. Guess what, it was a pretty cool world back then. People were thinner, because we didn't all sit on our butts all day long on the computer. Houses were cleaner and there was less violence. Which makes me wonder. Is the electronic lifestyle of non face to face communication desensitizing us so much, that we no longer see humans as people..because the people who are now real to us, have no shape or form they are just words. with an avatar?

On the passing of Michael Jackson

When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices.
When you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
Buddhist Saying

The memorial service was today. So we say goodbye to the eternal child at heart, Michael Jackson. Why does it seem that even in death, the service was a show for fans? Don't get me wrong, I loved MJ too, for a lonnnggg time. Since the first time I saw the cute little kid on television, when I too was a child. I marveled and yes was slightly jealous because a kid younger than me had so much talent and was going to rake in the dough. I was also happy that like me, this kid, came from nothing but poverty. I was excited that a kid was getting the chance to make it out of poverty. He gave me hope that I could escape poverty as well.

Over the years, like everyone else, I was thrilled and excited when MJ was going to appear on television. You always knew it was going to be a hell of a show. Electric is a word that comes to mind when I think of him performing.

We never thought about what was going on behind the show. Just assumed everything was awesome for this guy. How could it not be? He had it all or so we thought. Of course most of us will never know if he had it all, it certainly appears now, that he didn't. I wonder in reality, if we really knew what it was like to be a star of such magnitude, if we would in change places with him. Thinking about the reality of his life, I think now I would not want his life.

As time went on, and MJ started to change his face, we made fun of him, called him a freak. Nutcase, whack-job, whackojacko...remember? The headlines were all over the place on the tabloids as well as "reputable" publications. MJ was gay, MJ was crazy, MJ wanted to be white and the final one...MJ was a pedophile.

I remember watching the news at the time, certainly seemed plausible, no woman of substance in his life, messed up childhood..one of abuse, maybe he turned to little boys. Besides, why would they haul him into court if he was innocent? I remember the history of the Salem witch trials. One could say the same of that era. Why would that have happened back then? Well we know now, was a mob mentality of mass hysteria persecuting out of fear. Fear of those different, fear of those not like the rest of us GET EM.

Now that he is dead, nobody is talking about how we as a society treated this man. We are sweeping it under the rug. Now we all "love him". Where was the love when he was alive? There seemed for the last 15 years or so to be more judging and condemning than loving. We made fun of him because he was strange. Well he was strange, but not strange in the way we made him to be. Webster defines strange as:
-being definitely out of the ordinary and unexpected
-not known before
-foreign
Michael was definitely strange by those standards. We as a society drove him to be strange by different standards. I certainly can Identify about wanting to seclude myself from ridicule and bullying, many of us can. Even after he was acquitted of the child molestation charges, did we believe that.? Now the headlines stated he paid his way out, bought himself the acquittal. We never even gave him the rights that he was entitled to, being innocent until found guilty, he was never found guilty.

Imagine how it must have been for him. Everybody wanted (and wants) a piece of him. I can't blame the man for having children the way he did. He made his own family that he could trust. It must have been horrible to live in a world where you never knew what the true motives of those around you are. How can we as a society criticize him for who he became, when we have not walked in his shoes. We even made fun of his Neverland. Since he couldn't go out in public and have a life, he built his own little world. And we ruined that for him too, defiled it with accusations by people after more money. Money he had, and money he gave, and gave and gave, but to charity, not "payoffs". He never went back to Neverland once the police rummaged through his private refuge.

Can we fault this man? I for one can't. He did what he had to do to survive, just like we all do. Michael was definitely out of the ordinary and unexpected. An unexpected blessing for many years. We took and took from this man and only gave back in death. Just a little too late.