It's rare that a song grabs me by the throat and leaves a crater on the surface of my heart.  Since 2002 I've listened and grown with the band Staind.  I even had my 5 minutes to speak with front man Aaron Lewis.  Recently I was listening to some of Aaron's live country concerts and I heard this song called "What hurts the most".  I get chills when I hear Aaron belt this song out.  The pain, the hurt, the anxiety of not knowing, the doubt of one's self, every single emotion fills my body when I hear this song.  That in a nutshell should be music.  That connection between the artist and the listener.

When I went and saw Aaron perform his solo show in 2007 I got goosebumps sitting front row.  That's when you know you were put on earth to perform-- When  you devote time away from your family to share your talent with the world.  That's what makes music a beautiful thing.  Even the angry music.

I mention this intro to music  because Rolling Stone made a decision to post the face of a terrorist on the cover of their magazine.  Judging a book by its cover, I'd say thats a pretty poor choice for the cover.  Doesn't matter what they say about the dude, they're paying him attention.  In their industry any attention(or publicity) is good publicity.  Ordinarily I wouldn't have an opinion about this.  I didn't have a knee jerk reaction to the Zimmerman case either.  It usually takes someone to ask me my opinion before I blurt it out.

Since Music is a large part of my life I just found it odd to that Rolling Stone went the route they went.  Why glorify a terrorist?  Makes no sense.  Collectively Boston has recovered but its been another hurdle for the country to try and hop over.  That's the scary part to this country.  As soon as something happens it hits this venue called the internet.  Turns people against each other-- simply because the lack of personal responsibility just isn't there.  That's what worries me the most.  Kids today are being taught that there's not always a consequence for one's words.

Another alarming trend is what is dubbed news.  Very rarely is any of it pleasant-- well as far as mainstream news goes.  I have to dive into local town news papers, educational news outlets, and then the Huffington posts weird news section to get any sort of rounded news.  When I worked at 7-Eleven I always wondered why people made it a part of their daily routine to go get the paper.  There's still a handful of people who haven't jumped to the internet for news, but again doesn't matter what format it is I would wonder why anyone would wanna read about how many people were shot in Chicago.  Additionally the only other news dealt out by Chicago news outlets is corruption in government, or economical woes.

This shouldn't be "News" to anyone.  I actually applaud the small town news sources who go out and cover whats actually happening in the town.  THAT is news.  From what I can tell, news outlets are only into ratings because ratings earns sponsors and sponsors make the news station money and then everyone's happy.  It all makes some sense but its kind of morbid that many readers/viewers wanna know about the bad stuff that happened.  It kinda goes back to the whole concept of folks wanna see fights at hockey games, car wrecks at Nascar races, etc etc..

At the end of the day we all individually can make the choice of how to stay informed.  I have to also mention that the huffington post also has a good news section.  I also tend to enjoy that section too because there's more to life than doom and gloom-esq news.

I wish I had news to include in this entry-- Maybe then it would serve more of a purpose; however I tend to enjoy giving commentary.  I'm always going to be fascinated at why people prefer to see negative stories over positive ones.  It really is a vicious cycle. If no one watched the bad news they'd be provoked to change what they choose to air.  And yes, news is political.  There are people who instruct other people on what stories can air and what stories cannot air.  If you choose not to believe that then troll along.


It's possible someday that I'll make the news; I just hope its in a better light.  Lombard, which is the town I grew up in, does a decent job with putting out a weekly newspaper.  They tell readers what's going on around town. They let people of the town speak their mind via "The Speak out" and they give recognition to those in the community who earn it.  I know Lombard is just a freckle in comparison to the rest of the world, but being a suburb of the 3rd largest city in the country they still keep a small town feel specifically to the paper.  As far as living there it definitely stinks of suburbia.  The irony is sometimes distances makes that stink smell like roses.

I've inadvertently spent time not focusing on the news/global events because I've been trying to just survive.  From my experience, people who have time to go lobby for things or protest things aren't out working a job.  I've touched on this before back when Occupy was a huge deal-- and I'm not telling people what they should and shouldn't do.  All I am saying is must be nice to be able to not work and go play protestor.  Granted there are probably a lot of protestors who are poor and on limited resources, but they're doing that by choice.  Plus this is generation doesn't have the attention span to properly protest.  Lots of tunnel vision.  On the other side of that coin life isn't worth living if you don't have something more than a job to go to.

Take care of yourselves and each other.