A PLACE CALLED HELL

Often times we hear stories of corruption within our correctional system. When attempting to put things in perspective we rationalize by thinking "deadly criminals usually inspire this sort of thing." Often in these cases it's our nature is to turn our backs because somehow two wrongs will create a right.

In the process of turning our backs to many painful realities we also manage to miss out on horrid truths and events, some that will go on for lengthy periods of time if allowed. One such truth is the story of the Dozier School for boys AKA the Florida School for Boys. For those not familiar, this is the reform school where very recently the University of South Florida uncovered the graves of 55 students.

The school was opened for over 100 years and throughout is history, rather than reform the youth in the state of Florida, it often forced it into a struggle for survival. The school was a den of verbal, physical, and sexual abuse. Often times this abuse would lead to death. A very real truth about this place is the fact that during the dark period of segregation, the biggest level of discrimination was aimed not at blacks, but at orphans.

There was equality in the school, in relation to punishment. Students would be subjected to lashings with thick leather belts, usually in a building referred to as the "White House." These lashings would leave students bloody, frightened and in deep pain, the kind of pain that never goes away. The students at Dozier were often there for offenses that were not always criminal in nature, calling into question the legality of many of the stays.

What exactly did this school do for the youth of Florida? Beyond the abuse, which is well documented, did it foster greater understanding of societal norms? No, this school created a greater sense of darkness, loss, and desperation in children that often came form abusive homes, when they actually had homes.

The exhumation of bodies by the University of South Florida was a huge revelation of the abuse, remains were found with blunt force trauma to the head, among other horrible revelations. This are not things that can in any way be undone, but they can be prevented from ever happening again. This particular story has been circulating for over eight years now, you may ask why not sooner. The fact is that the survivors of these tragedies that are now coming forward have been carrying their scars for too many years, more than humanly bearable.

As a society we owe it to these brave survivors, to the fallen, and to the irreversibly scarred, to speak about this in terms of helping create change. Let's ban together and stop it from happening again. The upcoming documentary "Boys School" will delve deep into the stories of the survivors, as a way to illustrate the hurt left behind by a school that was supposed to help reform youth, not twist it and destroy it.

ARE WE TOO SENSITIVE?

It seems to me as though political correctness has gone beyond the necessary spot. The fact of the matter is we as a society have become frightened of speaking our minds, being taken out of context, and suddenly going through an unnecessary backlash. To be honest, I think it's bullshit that we live in constant fear of that. Let's be real for a minute, it's not correct to be judgmental or racist but to limit your vocabulary on the basis of how fearful you are that someone may be offended by words like nut, or semen is ridiculous. I say be intelligent in your positions, learn to properly back your arguments, and to hell with tepid talk.

WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW WILL PISS YOU OFF

I have heard this "what you don't know won't hurt you" shit too often. I have to say that's a crap thing to tell a person. Knowledge, for good or bad really is power. When you withhold truth from an individual you will never favor them. People have a serious need to know and understand truth. If you are in a relationship that particular saying is serious bullshit.

I'm not an advocate of secrets nor am I an advocate of convenient truth. Not saying something that another person should no is total crap. I hate that secret crap, I guess I had to ride a soapbox for a few sentences before stating that the truth will set you free!

WHY SOCIAL MEDIA IS THE TRUE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE

There are billions of people on this earth, each with a different opinion. Social media outlets, our Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, and other mediums are our collective voice. We have a way to express our  likes, dislikes, and opinions. No one man, nor any legislative body can speak for us collectively. Yes we face a lot of things with social media that we did not normally have to worry about.

We face identity theft, we face stalkers, but really we face danger every day so social media is no different. With social media we make friends, business connections, we discover new interests and sometimes we discover our true weakness. Social media connects us with family that we otherwise would not be connected with.

Social media has accomplished what no other advent ever could, it has homogenized the world. We all have one thing that can link us together no matter how far apart geography can put us.

WHERE THE REAL POWER HIDES

The definition of power usually reads like "the ability to do something or act in a particular way, esp. as a faculty or quality." There's physical power, power in terms of persuasion but the question is really " Where does power come from?" I personally think that real power lies in our sub conscious. I'm not trying to be some sort of inspiration, but I do whole heartedly believe that we hold the key to our own success. 

I've heard it said before that in our lifetime we only use something like 5% of our full capacity. I think it's fair to say we hold the key to our real power. We can really achieve what we want, if we chose to do so. I don't think we should impose limitations on ourselves, it's too easy to fall prey to the idea that we can't move forward beyond a certain point. I think one good thing about today's world is the fact that so many people look beyond a normal day to day existence. 

I think we are living a new and exciting time in terms of recognizing our own potential as individuals. Hopefully what we are learning now won't be some passing trend that will recycle itself twenty years from now. 

THE POLITICS OF LIFE

Politics is a nasty word with controversial connotations. When you think politics you think democrat vs. republican and extreme positions colliding. Politics is also a word applicable to life. It's amazing how people with ego driven agendas employ politics. Politics are a nasty business whether you make money off them or not.

I have found myself situations where politics rule and very often they make me smile. To me politics are the lowest common denominator in life. People use politics as a way to stand above and over others, it's almost like politics are a way to point a finger that spews salt into open wounds. I hate politics and more than hate tapioca pudding, and I really hate tapioca pudding.

In short this entry is my rant against a nasty practice and behavior. I hate politics but it seems like politics are necessary in this life, like the ying to the yang, good to evil, some sort of bullshit like that. In short it's my way of saying fuck politics.

WHY AM I STILL UP?

It's late and I am still up writing, I really have to question my sanity. I have a meeting in the morning and need to be sharp but I am so interested in other things at the moment. I wonder if night brings about hubris and makes people feel invincible. I am tired, I am thirsty, I know what my day will bring tomorrow but I just don't feel like letting that get to me. I am thinking of so many things and so many things I am thinking of make such little sense, even to me.

An hour ago I was thinking of what it must have been like to be David Sarnoff back when he was delivering flowers to the may mistresses of Marconi out in New York. Then I think back to previous hours and how thrilled I was with the latest installment of the HBO drama Newsroom and how cool it is that Jeff Daniels will likely have an iconic role to define his outstanding career. Here I am, it's late as fuck and I am still writing, and yet I don't know why.

This blog is such a medium for expression, often times I express raw emotion without any real attention to accuracy and I wonder how many mistakes I have made in the process of creating volume. I don't give a shit about what people think of my mistakes because this is my forum and yet I want reactions, I want to push buttons and get people talking. Yes I know what I'm saying because I read and read carefully but often times I write recklessly because I am fully invested. I look forward to numbers, ideas, reactions and I love when I have the opportunity to prove assholes wrong.

I am not really into political correctness, in fact I challenge that ridiculous and hypocritical norm which we enforce because honestly it's nothing more than fear, a blanket for the cowardly. It's late and I am opening up to perfect strangers because I am secure in my own feelings and opinions, I will agree, disagree, and stand up when it's necessary. I will attack people not for the sake of the attack but simply because I live in reality. It's late, I'm tired and open, and I will say whatever the hell I want to say.

THE MORE SOCIAL MEDIA GROWS THE MORE THE WORLD SHRINKS

As I look back over the last 12 years since I became a card carrying member of the previous century I must say I am surprised at how the world has shrunk. It seems that as technology and ways to connect with people grew it became a lot easier to know other parts of the world without real effort. The world became smaller and today it's as common to talk to someone in South Africa or Indonesia as it is the person next door. Social Media my dear friend you are one tricky whore for sure.

I don't subscribe to the ideas behind big brother simply because I refuse to live in fear. If someone wants to know about me they will know about me. When I look at my Facebook, Twitter, and Google I realize that Social Media is the kind of advent that was thought of in literary works such as 1984, Brave New World, and We. The familiarity with strangers that was thought of as something radical and impossible is normal today. A heightened and sometimes frightening level of communication that gives us unparalleled access into one another's lives is the norm.

The world is as small as it looks on television only now we don't really need to look at it in physical terms. Today we kill distance with the left click of the trusty mouse. I remember when computers were something of a luxury. Today a cell phone with net access, a laptop in a WiFi hotspot, and a social media account are all a necessity. Yes Social Media is growing and the world is shrinking, especially when you consider that a person's Social Media feeds can take them to places that they never expected.

The fact is that if you don't meet a person online you are not normal. If you don't make friends with someone that lives 8,000 miles away from you then you are considered socially awkward. A person's popularity and charisma is now defined as their "clout" and ability to land friends or followers. While this planet has an estimate of nearly 7 billion inhabitants it's not unreal to think that we are all connected in some six degrees of Kevin Bacon Social Media way.

We may not be living in the age of big brother but perhaps we are living in the age of second cousin. Yes it's true, this is in fact a very small world and it gets smaller every day.

FRIEND ME! FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER! @ricacevedo

THE FALSE NATURE OF REALITY

I am sure you are looking for a significant picture of some sort but frankly this entry does not call for it. I was also feeling in an odd mood so I went to the fishbowl. In the kind of world we are living in we love to emphasize the concept of reality but I wonder if any of us really know what it is.

Reality defined correctly is somehting that did, or will more than likely take place at some point in some specific way. We cannot dictate reality, change it once it has happened and on top of that we cannot mask it to reveal what we wish. So then  why does reality have a false nature? Reality is one of those things that we love to try to mask because sometimes it's too fucking complicated.

I am a person that has suffered from that very syndrome of just wondering how I can make a situation from what it is to what I wish. I have realized that wanting things acertain way and actually having them that way are two wholly different things. In truth the world is too complicated for everything to align correctly.There are times when we "make it happen" but the truth of the matter is that those are few and far in between.

When we make those choices that we think are the right ones it turns out that we really are just doing one more thing that we are not truly sure of. It does not matter what we think or how strongly we feel because the truth and reality of one situation do not  really ever match the actual truth and reality we are faced with.

IF IT'S A NATURAL PROCESS WHY FEAR IT?

When you are confronted with your own mortality fear and that uncertainty of what's next really start to set in. Often times people either become reckless beyond human levels or they simply retreat into some sort of shell where everything is far too dangerous to attempt. The bottom line is that when death makes any sort of appearance for tea life becomes a whole new ball game.

I am fascinated by the duality in the reactions of people to death. Some people seem to embrace it and others fear it so that they never seem prepared. I guess that when life ends none of us are ready to understand that or deal with it unless we have seen a full century of time. The fact is that death is an impossible to explain part of life for just about everyone.

I wonder if people ever really think about the scientific explanation which to me sounds basic and extremely simple. When it's your time in life it's your time, its a natural process in most cases. If you think about it even when it's a situation where it was not expected there is something to be said for environmental cause. If you are in the wrong place at the wrong time among other reasons.

I am personally not a death monger interested in when or where my time may come. I don't question mortality daily and I certainly do not look for ways in which to learn about the intricacies of mortality. The bottom life is that life is life and death is the last part of it and that is something we should not fight or fear.

THE EXTREME TRUTH CAN BE DANGEROUS

So I am writing this blog not to subscribe to theory or to make any sort of plea on behalf of any individual. I first became of Julian Assange around 2010 when a red notice for Assange was made public and he became a worldwide menace. I thought Assange was a sort of creepy cool dude. To me Assange was the perfect antihero character hair and all. I started looking up information on the guy and I must say I was impressed.

Assange was labeled as an "information terrorist" by Newt Gingrich and became a popular subject in terms of execution and assassination talk from extreme conservatives. I mean let's face it when the brilliant Sarah Palin states that a man should be pursued with the same urgency as Taliban leaders it means you made it.

The big question is simple when it comes to Assange. Why has he elicited such ire? If you take a look at his site there seems to be an enormous amount of information basically exposing corruption on a world wide scale. I am not one to say what is fact or what is fiction but I do keep an open mind. So why is the guy with the funky hair the enemy?

Assange has made it his mission to release information that the public did not have any access to in matters of national and worldwide security. Why is this important to us? I think that maybe it's a service of sorts to take a good fraction of the population away from the "information" provided by biassed, profit driven media, special interest groups, and politicians that want the "best" for the population.

I am not interested in conspiracy theories simply because I believe that theories without any real base ultimately create small pockets of chaos. Now getting back to Assange I don't think that he would be considered public enemy number one if he was not hitting some seriously sour notes. The fact is that things are being exposed and as a result the man doing it is considered a terrorist.

How about we stop using the word terrorist and call it as we see it. There is a person using his knowledge, contacts and abilities to try and educate people when it comes to matters that individuals in power want to keep secret. We are living in a world where those leaders we elect do not work for us but rather for themselves and sometimes against us depending on the region. Is Assange really the enemy for trying to expose extreme truth?