I'm In Over My Head

silver-steel cold
merciless metal manacles
strip the flesh from this soul
in its death throes

Eternal woes
For a being without Place

Person in Exile
Confined to a Way
That is more than wrong

The Way. Somehow.
Becoming
Affront

Insult to a Plan
Disregard for talent
In spite of skill
Our hero is doomed
to clean stables forever.

bound with tethers unseen
and unknown
so tight
every wriggle leaves a scar

Read more...

check this out:
BBC Article on Recent Stem Cell Breakthrough
I'm not sure how long the link will be active so i'm also posting the article itself (from the journal Cell):takahashi_et_al_Cell_2007.pdf

For those of you who haven't been following the stem cell shitstorm, stem cells are more than just a way for evil liberal democrats to kill unborn babies, they are to the human body what those 2x6 legos were to building lego things, they can become literally any kind of cell in the body. And if you haven't spent the last 5 years developing an appreciation for what that might mean, let me explain: people who need organ transplants could now get them without a dangerous wait or the risk of rejecting the transplant. People with cancer in dangerous and inoperable places (excluding the brain) can have the organs removed and replaced with non-cancerous tissues, people with spinal cord damage could (theoretically) have new nerve cells made and inserted into their spinal cord to recover mobility and sensation. The applications for fighting disease are nearly endless, the human body is now a literal machine, with a parts list and an inventory and an order form for replacement parts.

Now, if you are an incorrigible drunk, and you have enough money, and you don't drink to kill yourself slowly, you no longer have to worry about cirrhosis of the liver, same goes for smokers and their lungs, same goes for adrenaline junkies and their vulnerable body parts (although you do have to live long enough after your crippling accident to grow a replacement organ and get the operation). Arthritis will be a thing of the past for the rich, small penises will no longer exist if you have enough money. Late-stage victims of Hansen's Disease (leprosy) will be able to recover completely, victims of retinosa pigmentosa will be able to see again (same for any blind person not blind because of a congenital "defect" - and those will someday be able to see too)

This is huge. I don't think I can repeat myself enough. I predict that within ten years of this technology's transition to the business sector, every single American hospital will have an organ farm where patients can have replacement organs grown, every minor to major-sized city in the US will have a full-spectrum organ bank where the rich will keep spares of their organs on hand (or as good as spares - probably flash-frozen masses of cells ready to grow into organs) and humanitarian/philanthropic orgranizations will be developing antigen-free organs for donation to the needy poor.

EDIT: some grammatical changes, some flow changes

... i would do this:
Odiyan Buddhist Retreat

Hope for Burma?

For those of you not aware, there is a country in Southeast Asia, called Myanmar by the men there who have the guns right now, but known as Burma before the brutal, inhumane military dictators currently in power seized the country in 1962. The military junta has held power illegally for more than 17 years as the National League for Democracy (democratic opposition party) won a landslide victory in the 1990 multi-party elections. Let me repeat myself: the government in this country is ruling against the will of the people.

The military junta is also directly responsible for the internal displacement of millions of its own citizens (e.g. making its own citizens into refugees in their own country) and the brutalization of many of those people. The junta has been indicted for using rape as weapon in this political struggle.

Finally, there is a group of people who are willing to stand up to the evil in this place. These buddhist monks make my heart sing for joy, risking their own saftey and their own lives for the powerless victims of brutality. And now the regime is threatening the monks with violence.

There is so much much more to be said about this subject but I simply don't have the words. I ask anyone and everyone to get involved for the fight against tryanny here.

For more information, follow these links:
CIA Factbook on Burma
Free Burma (grassroots movement to bring democracy to Burma)
follow the links to the page appropriate for you, i can tell you the US Campaign for Burma is very informative
Wikipedia Article on Burma
A central site for information on Burma and the recent democratic movement there
The BBC's central source of info on Burma

EDIT: added new links

what is standing in the way of my dreams? what are my dreams?
For a while, I thought my dream was to travel. I wanted to see the world. And not from the lens of a tourist - from the perspective of a resident. So what would I need? A visa for wherever I wanted to live, a working visa, preferably. Actually, I would need a working visa. I would also like to know a little more about the process, being completely ignorant is a little unnerving. And a job because I can't be a total vagrant - student loans and all. I suppose I could try to defer them too although I personally suspect it is a little late for that, but even if it weren't I don't want to put them off any longer than I have to. I can't explain it, but having that kind of thing hanging over my head is more distracting than any other commitment I have had that I can recall. But the biggest thing (apart from my cowardice)? I don't want to go alone. I've been alone for a very long time in many different places and I know that, at least for me, being alone trumps anything else. It is the only thing on my mind, the only thing I can think of, the only thing I can think about. And it makes every place the same. No matter how beautiful a building is, how breathtaking a sunset is, they are hollow without someone there to share them. And they are all the same without someone to share it.
Point of note: I actually don't really know what it would be like to share something like that with someone else, all of my traveling companions to date have been friends of convenience and there was no real bond - certainly not anything that lasts 'till now. I desperately want to find someone who would like to do this kind of thing with me. Guy or girl, doesn't really matter to me, I need guy friends and I need a girl friend. The only real downside to a girl-friend abroad is the possibility of getting pregnant or having to worry about her safety. The downside to a guy friend is that I... I can't even explain it except that I want something that can't happen and even if it can, it wouldn't be right and it would be empty and a let-down in the end as well. Why can't I meet people who want to be around me? I used to think there was something seriously wrong with me based on that observation, I probably wasn't far off (still am not far off). And I still don't know what to do about it. I can tell you I've stopped dreaming about ways I can fix myself and I've tried to learn how to accept myself and still integrate with people so that I don't have to be alone constantly. It hasn't worked. I just don't know what to do. I don't know where to go, I don't know what to say or how to dress or anything. I just know that I am sick and tired of trying to do this whole thing by myself. I am sick and tired of investing myself in people and seeing no return, or finding out they are simply too dumb to even have the capacity to return the favor. I am "sick of it all"