Tonite I stay at home, just like all the other nights, except tonite I do something different, something I've wanted to do for many many years now. I write in my journal. I don't know why, but it's such a liberating experience for me, writing my words down and seeing them appear before me as I type. Other journals I've kept have been transcribed onto paper, something that disappears over time as it shrivels up and blows away. But here, perhaps my words will live forever.
I wonder if I'm doomed to end up like Anne Frank, hidden away up in somebody's attic, writing down my thoughts, hopes and dreams while the world goes mad around me. It certainly seems that way now. Ever since the Sept 11th terrorist (or was it?) attack, so many people out there fly flags in a naive display of patriotism. I turn away in disgust knowing what's been done in the name of that flag. I like the flag and what it originally stood for, but regarding what it stands for now, I am filled with nothing but disgust and revulsion. How could this happen that so many americans could be so easily misled? The answer: they're naught but 'sheeple', happily bleating as they're led off to slaughter. The most powerful country on the planet and it's ruled by greedy idiots and populated by stupid idiots. What irony. I hope that someday I will be able to move to a country where intelligence and wisdom are more than something to be despised and feared. I also hope that this country as it stands someday ends up as imperial Rome has. I believe that the U.S. certainly has it's Nero now. I just hope that when Rome burns, it's just the capitol and not the entire country. Perhaps then there will be some hope for this population to learn what it's been misled into, but also some humility as it realizes the crimes that have been commited and the scale of those crimes.
I hope instead that I'm able to escape from this country, perhaps to someplace like Germany, or perhaps even Austria or Czechoslovakia, in Prague. My, I can't believe all I've written here. For a first shot at a journal it's quite verbose.

Well, here we are, my first day of the rest of my life. Funny how the past year has gone, Last year around this time we were all going about our lives waiting for the end of yet another dreary, boring election and then Dickhead stole the presidency. Now the entire world is waiting for Armgeddon. Today liberal americans look over their shoulders, talk in hushed voices in public and generally acknowledge the fact that freedom and democracy are finally and inarguably dead. Dead, dead, dead. Lately I've been posting on the Pravda forum regarding the war in Afghanistan and the loss of freedom in the U.S. At first I felt like I was actually doing something, letting others out there around the world know that many americans really aren't a bunch of brain-dead self-involved shitheels. Now I wonder if the FBI is monitoring the site taking down names for the inevitable rounding up and exile to the American Gulag. So here I sit in my room, cat by my side, waiting to crawl into my lap after I finish typing and go back to my overanxious netsurfing, looking for more info on 'The War' and hoping against hope that freedom will return in this country. Not likely. Bush and his bunch have finally won this battle, but there is a war yet to be waged against the minds of people better educated and far better informed overseas, and that's something I hope they never win. I hope they don't even have a chance in a mild skirmish over there.
How could this happen, anyway? I thought there were supposed to be checks and balances in place to prevent something like this from happening. Our elected representatives and officials and offices were supposed to detect these kinds of things and arrest the evildoers. You would think that when things like Iran-Contra, the Savings and Loan fiasco, Reagen's mediocrity and feeble-mindedness and other things that are so fucking obvious they can't be denied occur that the perpetrators would be rounded up and at the very least put in jail forever and ever without any chance of parole. But nooooooooooo!!!!!! Instead, in this country the bad guys win. And win big. and because of this the rest of the world suffers for it. The rich and ignorant rule and the world suffers for it.
A couple of weeks ago I decided to finally do something about my weight problem, it's not awfully bad, but I wanted to do something about it nonetheless.
So I joined 24 hour Fitness. I also decided, against my better judgement to use the services of a fitness trainer there and so now I go in three times a week and workout with Shermont, a former UW Husky football guy. The past couple of times I've been there I've been giving him some good food for thought and I can see the mental gears clicking as he thinks over what I've said. I'm hoping that when I've finished with it all that I will not only gain back the body I used to have when I bicycled a lot, but perhaps something far better still. That is still up in the air, but we'll see what the outcome is at the end of December. I don't think I'm going to look like Arnold Schwartzwangler, but I should look noticeably better than I do now. I think the real motivating factor was when I saw my new driver's license photo that was taken recently, I think I was around 240 pounds and looking old and fat. Uggggghhhhhhh!!!! I mean, I know I'm 41 years old now, but it doesn't mean I have to look (and feel) like I'm fifty.