Tao’s 2 Cents

As of today I am officially in the black. I paid off the last of my school loans and have exactly $0 credit card debt. It’s a nice feeling let me tell you. I imagine it will especially nice when my next pay check rolls in and I know that I get to keep it all.

I feel lucky to have been able to do get rid of everything so quickly. I know that I didn’t have an excessive amount of debt, but that’s because I’ve always been wary about accruing it in the first place. Part of it is just my personality. I don’t like owing anyone anything.

That same eagerness to pay people back sometimes comes back to annoy me though. I guess when I pay people back quickly it makes them think that I don’t mind doing them favors. So those same people begin asking me for more favors, not necessarily money mind you, but favors nonetheless. I don’t mind doing them at first, but a lot of times it becomes habit for them and I start to feel used.

Inevitably I resist and they say, “but I’d do it for you” to which I think, “yes, but I wouldn’t ask you to do that for me in the first place”. I hardly ever ask anyone for favors except maybe my parents (I love you guys) because I don’t like owing anyone and I just like doing things for myself. I guess I just don’t like people owing me anything either, especially since most people don’t feel the same way about indebtedness as I do.

Now I’m sure Obama has some skeletons in the closet, but Hillary has a cemetery.

Continue reading this post to watch Part 2.

When I look around me I see a lot of people chasing things that will never make them happy. I imagine there are many more like me who can see that the dreams the powers that be teach us to chase are hollow. Whether it be only a piercing ray of truth slipping through the cracks or an undercurrent of suspicion always there but never coming into focus.

It’s easy to understand how uncomfortable the process of realization is if someone is to acknowledge that they have spent so much time and energy on an illusion. The urge to block those rays and suppress those truths is made all the easier with the diversions provided by the ones profiting off the willing labor supplied chasing the carrot at the end of the stick. Yet even those profiting are chasing unfulfillment…

I don’t actually read USA Today, but I found this just browsing around on ThinkProgress today. It’s a full-page ad that Amnesty International placed in the paper. I think the picture is phenomenal.

The purpose of the ad is to commemorate the one year anniversary of the Military Comissions Act, which essentially removed the right of habeas corpus. The bill was passed under the guise of “protecting us from terrorism”. In reality they’re just eroding the protections that many people have fought and died for…