VirusHead

In truth there is no such thing in man’s nature as a settled and full resolve either for good or evil, except at the very moment of execution.
~ Nathaniel Hawthorn

New Year’s Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.
~ Mark Twain

In life’s small things be resolute and great
To keep thy muscle trained: knowst thou when Fate
Thy measure takes, or when she’ll say to thee,
“I find thee worthy; do this deed for me?”
~ James Russell Lowell, Epigram

Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.
~ Oscar Wilde

Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.
~ Benjamin Franklin

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I made no resolutions for the New Year. The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me.
~ Anaïs Nin

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
~ T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding”

Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunder-storm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.
~ Thomas Mann

But can one still make resolutions when one is over forty? I live according to twenty-year-old habits.
~ Andre Gide

Still, I do have one resolution. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and Rosei’s post gave me the occasion to put it into words:

I’m resolving to bring more energy and positivity into my life. My natural tendency is to be somewhat critical and melancholy. I’m comfortable with that. However, in the last year or two I have noticed that the anger level is rising, and I’m not comfortable with that. I don’t know how to deal with it, and it wears me down. It’s also pretty useless, since most of the things that anger me are beyond my control to change (except in very small ways…).

I used to be able to bring energy and comfort in with prayer, but that doesn’t really work for me anymore. So I’m adding some affirming messages to my daily meditations – with themes of gratitude, awareness and mindfulness, cosmic connection, energy, self-acceptance, etc. It’s a little Stuart Smalley, but that’s…. o-kay. It’s only a very modest kind of resolution, but it’s one I may be able to keep, unlike a few others that come to mind (smile).

The email said:

40 million people in the world are infected with HIV and that number is rising daily. The majority of these people do not have access to life-saving treatment.

Here is something simple you can do to help fight a problem that affects us all…

Bristol-Myers is donating a dollar to AIDS every time someone goes to their website and moves the match to the candle and lights it.

Please forward this to your friends to spread the word.

It takes one second to raise a dollar.

https://www.lighttounite.org/

(Tip o’ the hat to Aunt Elaine)

However, a few corrections are in order. Obviously you can’t donate to AIDS itself (lol). Nor, despite the wording, are they donating for AIDS treatment. The company is Bristol-Myers Squibb. And they are so overwhelmed by the response, that if there really was a promise to donate a dollar for each lighting of the candle, it is no longer in effect. Although the count is approaching two million, they are only donating $100,000 for AIDS awareness education (in cooperation with the National AIDS fund, in some unstated capacity). Not practical education, not treatment – just a nebulous “awareness.”

Still, better than nothing, I suppose.

Here’s an interesting list from AlterNet – their ten most popular stories of the year. ALterNet is a great resource, although a couple of the stories surprised me.

They also have the top ten most discussed (which leans hard on 9/11), the top ten Iraq myths, the top ten outrageous right-wing comments of 2006, the top ten most popular book reviews, the top ten sex and relationship stories, and my personal favorite – a meta-list of the top ten top-ten lists of 2006.

AlterNet published thousands of articles in 2006 — here are the 10 that readers liked the most.

10. Bush’s Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq’s Oil
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Even as Iraq verges on splintering into a sectarian civil war, four big oil companies are on the verge of locking up its massive, profitable reserves, known to everyone in the petroleum industry as “the prize.”

9. Stephen Colbert: New American Hero
By Don Hazen, AlterNet
When Colbert turned up the heat on Washington’s elite, he revealed the big split between those basking in power and those fighting for change.

8. Where Bush’s Arrogance Has Taken Us
By Jim Hightower, Hightower Lowdown
An illegal war, a long list of eroded rights, and a country run by and for the benefit of corporate campaign donors — all courtesy of the imperial presidency.

7. Lobbying for Armageddon
By Sarah Posner, AlterNet
Some influential evangelical leaders are lobbying for an attack on Iran. But it’s not about geopolitics — it’s about bringing about the End Times.

6. Why Religion Must End
By Laura Sheahen, Beliefnet
A leading atheist says people must embrace rationalism, not faith — or they will never overcome their differences.

5. Tyranny of the Christian Right
By Michelle Goldberg, AlterNet
The largest and most powerful mass movement in the nation — evangelical Christianity — has set out to destroy secular society.

4. Could Bush Be Prosecuted for War Crimes?
by Jan Frel, AlterNet
A Nuremberg chief prosecutor says there is a case for trying Bush for the ’supreme crime against humanity, an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation.’

3. Iraq’s War Porn
By David Swanson, Tomdispatch.com
We believe the war would end if the media showed more images of the human horrors in Iraq, yet we turn away when they’re placed in front of us. Not anymore.

2. Men Who Love Burgers and Loathe Sex
By Susie Bright, HuffingtonPost.com
There’s an unhappy host of young men who seem to have soured on the mating game — but why?

1. Top 10 Signs of the Impending U.S. Police State
by Allan Uthman, Buffalo Beast
From secret detention centers to warrantless wiretapping, Bush and Co. give free rein to their totalitarian impulses.

Check out the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2006, too.

I’ve set up an account at Associated Content (the People’s Media Company). I like the idea of grassroots content production (perhaps even with some payment!).

There is already a well-established database of interesting and fresh information – I found the site by stumbling upon an interview with a JW.

I think I’d probably write on religious topics, politics, academe, viruses, language – the usual. Perhaps it might improve my internal focus. I haven’t submitted any articles yet, but stay tuned for that. I’ll let you know how it goes. Let me know if you have any experience, good or bad, with them. I’m not quite sure how I feel about the terms quite yet, so it’s an experiment for now.

If you’re interested in giving it a whirl, sign up under me – I think I get a referral fee of some sort.

I’ve added a button to the sidebar for my content page, too.

Roy Walter N. Jr

Nov 5, 1935 – Dec 28, 2003

Miss you, Daddy.

Mourning is not forgetting.
It is an undoing.
Every minute tie has to be untied
and something permanent and valuable
recovered and assimilated from the dust.
- Margery Allingham