LIFE IN THE DESERT

Thursday, August 31, 2006

The Stars and Bars flying over my office in Kuwait 31 August 2006.

posted by MRRWWEST75 @ 3:23 PM  

2 Comments:

  • At 2:54 AM, Blogger nuke gingrich said…

    Ahh yes!
    that ought to turn a few heads.
    heh

     

  • At 4:19 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Well...all you said is true...unfortunately...we do have lower incomes but on the flip side of that we also have a lower cost of living. Fortunately for me, we don't have 900 sq foot apartments here that cost 750K. That is stupid. But it IS probably true that lower incomes can produce poorly educated citizens, and I imagine they are contingent on each other in some sort of cyclical fashion. But, even un-formally-educated people can get pretty good jobs here....if they want one. Problem being-- when you grow up being taken care of by the government, or some other benevolent source, your whole life you basically begin to EXPECT to be taken care of and I think that wipes away your motivation to do better. But that wouldn't be a politically correct notion would it?? Then of course being obese....we do have good food down here..but there is good food in lots of other places too. If you work in the medical field very long you will see that people are obese. In fact MOST of them are obese...and to go along with that is their 2 pack a day smoker COPD--who also EXPECT you to take care of them when they get lung cancer that they could have prevented, heart disease, diabetes and all other sorts of things that make it impossible to treat them because the are actually layers of chronic diseases, not just one. It just grosses you out to see not a person who is obese and trying to make an improvement in their health but to that obese person who has no desire to make a better health situation for themselves...again they just think if I get sick it is McDonalds fault for feeding me 4 Big Macs a week. Biggie size that please. I don't know...it aggravates me to hear that Mississippi is the worst state in the country (next to Arizona of course) but at the same time, alot of that information is true. The old saying is that the truth hurts. I think the best way to fix the way we are seen around the country is to change some of the things that we can change, and admit that some of that stuff is true. Alot of extremely talented and smart people come from Mississippi, no doubt. So fortunately for them they overcame the odds. We all should maximize our potential as they did. Every single one of us should, and we should encourage our kids to learn to maximize their potential as well and not wait for someone else to give you something you can get on your own. And how 'bout raise them if you are going to birth them because if you have a kid you know that a grandparent makes a TERRIBLE parent. There are alot of really great people in Mississippi. Good , hardworking people. Alot of those people support their familes, go to church, don't beat their kids and wives and are, well, just good people. Those people get an bad rap from more educated, uppity, rich people. And, that I don't think is fair. You don't have to be rich to be completely happy, and alot of rich people aren't happy at all. As for the news yeah they don't like us down here because alot of us have firm traditional beliefs that include morals and values--we don't believe that gay marriage is ok, and we don't think it is ok for our little boys to wear a dress to school or share a bathroom with the girls, and the least of which we don't sit around scratching our heads over global warming while we wait for urban temperatures to rise 1 degree over the next 100 years (urban, mind you)-- and generally that makes them think we are a bunch of racist, redneck, illiterate doofuses. And I guarantee if there is going to be a Mississippian on the national news they WILL pick the most toothless, hair covered, nasty, half-drunk, wife-beater looking thing they could drag out of the back-alley dumpster and TRY to have him talk through his dip-spit, snaggle-tooth grin. People expect us to be stupid here so that is what the rest of the country wants to see, and the national fellas are all too happy to provide. I have thought alot about all this lately, as you can probably tell. And my conclusion is this....I honestly believe that if the shoe fits but we don't like the way it looks or feels, we oughta change shoes.

     

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