Chasing home is when you feel out of place, and wish to find out where you stand in the world. It also means insecurity, and you are constantly trying to find a way to be accepted among those that make you insecure, OR finding the strength to realize that those people don't matter and you have already found your place in the world because you shouldn't have to change who you are to be accepted by other insecure people who's opinions aren't worth anything. Chasing home is when you feel lonely, and are looking for any bit of matter or energy to fill that void. Chasing home is when you're lost and are struggling to search for the place you feel most comfortable, OR adapting to this new environment and creating a home. Chasing home is becoming happy. Because if you aren't happy where you are, you aren't home.
   

    Gun control, a topic we have all heard of, even me living in Canada. It is such a big topic, there is questionable statements from both sides, pro-guns, or anti-guns? I'll start off by saying this, America has one of the highest percentage of firearm crimes per year in the entire world. approximately 8,775 firearm homicides occur each year in America, as opposed to countries such as UK averaging around 290. What is the cause of this? Is it due to the fact that the right to bare firearms exists in America, or is it due to the areas in which prohibition of firearms are being carried out?
    It is a fact that in a lot of areas in America such as Chicago where gun control is being implemented, that murder rates have increased drastically. So what does gun control do? I personally, would be anti-guns, IF there was a way to eliminate all of the guns, but unfortunately we live in the real world, and you can't just snap your fingers and expect all the guns to disappear, they still exist. It won't slow down murder rates, because ultimately people kill because they have the will to, all guns do is make it easier. And yes a gun may be a valuable tool to have in your household if you ever face a life threatening situation, but really, how can you feel safe in an area infested with guns? There are approximately 89 guns for every 100 Americans, that is a disturbing number. Anybody can get their hands on them, child molesters, psychopathic necrophiliacs, homicidal maniacs, you name it.
    I personally think America just has a very violent culture, a lot of citizens complain about other countries' violent cultures, when America is very similar. You could relate other corrupt governments' army deployment into their streets to slaughter their citizens to America's police and their culture of abuse as opposed to them actually trying to help the community. You could relate public executions such as stoning in other countries to gun fanatics in America using self defense to justify murder, and getting away with it. As much as I may not like guns in America, I also am not a big fan of a lot of anti-gun arguments. Guns are not just the problem. You can't blame guns, an inanimate object for the majority of violence in the country, when America has been involved in war for 214 years and has only been at peace for 21 years.
    So why is it that America has the highest incarceration rate in the entire world, and an active gun control party, yet its firearm crime rate is still so high? I don't have the answer, but I am concerned, I am not going to lean to one side, I have to ask questions, because it is a problem for the American people. And Canada being America's neighbours, we will be affected somehow. I see it more like how drug addicts are incarcerated rather than rehabilitated. We take away guns, yet they are still available, and murder rates increase. We need to focus more on how the society is functioning than guns in itself, that is just being closed minded to the problem.
    I know a popular argument by gun nuts (yes gun nuts, although I wouldn't label all pro gun people gun nuts) is that Hitler once said, "To control a society you must disarm its citizens." In that they need their guns to protect themselves from the government. Do you really think your little p-shooters are gonna stand up to an entire military with tanks and extremely dangerous explosives? I'll just say this, if the government really wants to get you, they'll just turn the water off. You don't need some little guns to win that fight, you have to have a will to fight.
    Obama is anti-guns, yet the Obama administration openly admitted to funding and arming FSA terrorists in Syria which are murdering Syrian citizens every day. Also 70 million+ dollars have been recently given to Israel in military aid, which is currently occupying and implementing genocide upon the Palestinian people, but that is another topic. Guns are a problem in America, pro-guns and anti-guns. We need to find a real solution, because simply saying no guns, or saying yes guns, isn't helping this problem.

    You have probably already come to a revelation that human beings have transmogrified into a vile, ignorant species, and the thought is already lingering somewhere in your cranium. But I want to elaborate on it. Because it is a problem, more so than we could imagine. We are becoming a violent, ignorant society, we are slowly deteriorating as humans, and let me explain why.
    If we look through history, there are obvious flaws in human nature that disregarded the rights of certain types of humans, and made huge impacts among those people, caused unimaginable pain and suffering, but the problem is that a lot of those flaws are still existent in our society as a whole. 520 years ago Europeans sailed to South America and discovered the Indigenous people, 520 years later and it has caused a 95% decrease in the population due to genocide. 520 years later, and governments that are controlling the same land, are funding a 21st century genocide (Israel's occupation of Palestine and the FSA's terrorism in Syria). 520 years later and America has the highest incarceration rate in the entire world, which I would call slavery.
    520 years later and humans have become so violent that it isn't even recognized as that much of a problem as those that existed 520+ years ago. The internet is filled with videos and pictures of heinous crimes, murder, rape, torture, abuse etc. and even sick individuals on the other side of the screen to dehumanize the victims. It is disgusting. Years later and countries are invading and slaughtering the people within the county they are invading just to obtain a natural resource, or to send a message of superiority.
    People's lives are being lost at the hands of another person's greed, not fathoming the fact that when they die all of the "wealth" they acquired in their lie of a life is gone, they cannot do anything with it, and all that they left behind in the world was a sad message of how dysfunctional we are as humans. We are still executing people in the name of "justice", when we look back in history and see the same thing being committed and think "humans were such savages." when we still are doing the same things.
    We have proven to ourselves through time that the White male has always been the most dominant, and that women, more commonly non-White women have been at the bottom of the threshold of society. And we have also proven to ourselves that those same sick values exist today. Women in the west are being made into sexual commodities as if that is all they are worth. And sure women are beautiful of course and I can always appreciate a beautiful woman, but I do not treat them as if that is all they are worth. Men, and teenage boys I can tell from experience treat and judge women so terribly because they simply don't live up to the standards of what THEY want in a woman. Woman get raped and dominant males have the audacity to implement their patriarchal thoughts and say that "she was wearing revealing clothes." so much that even women are acquiring those same patriarchal standards.
    In the teenage society I can tell you from experience, that a lot of females demonize each other with patriarchal views, call each other "sluts", "whores", and other degrading terms over the most pointless things. Judge each other so often that it leads to depression, insecurity, suicide etc. And it is not all women but it is popular among teenage culture nowadays. That is like a person mocking the individuals within their ethnicity in the same ways the people that oppressed them did. Hypocritical, and a sad paradigm of how we are losing our sense of humanity, and constantly separating, and separating each other.
    We constantly separate each other, unaware of the impact it has on us as a people, it creates conflict, which creates circumstances among innocent people in which they face oppression, whether they be struggling to pay the bills, wrongly convicted and incarcerated, or staring in the face of a locked and loaded automatic firearm. That is all at the hands of individuals wanting more, fabricating excuses to separate them from other human beings, being SO unhappy with their beliefs that they can't be content with the fact other people think differently than them. If you disagree with someone, the last thing you should allow to come of that is another conflict. Because you have come to the point where you can't change their opinion, it may be immoral, and may be unfortunate to hear, but why allow another conflict to spawn from it? Doesn't that just contradict your reason for trying making them see straight?
    We use things such as religion, race, ethnicity, nationality etc to make someone believe as if they are less of a human than them, or make someone else believe that. We have forced religion against colonized people and say that their beliefs are all lies and that believing in their faith is the only way to live, while they are simultaneously raping, stealing from, and murdering those people. Which is a sick, loathsome contradiction that has become too popular and "justified". We use the very same thing we say gives us the morals to be righteous human beings as a tool to "justify" acts of ignorance that defies everything we claim to stand for.
    I do not adhere to a religion, but you have probably noticed I have said "we" in reference to humans, because we are all one people, no matter how corny that may sound to you. Of course we have different cultures and we should acknowledge that because culture is an important part of us as people, culture makes us who we are and we should always appreciate that. But to see each other as if we are a different species because of our origins, or skin colour, not aware that our origin is ultimately all the same, the Earth is one big chunk of land, with different sections of environmental norms, which is the only reason to our physical differences in the first place.
    We can't even acknowledge the fact that skin colour doesn't affect the mentations that one contains. We can't even acknowledge that just because you fall out of a pussy x amount of miles in a different direction than someone else that that does not make you any more worthy of existence than them, because in the end we all die. There are most likely even scientists out there that think like that. We have become such ignorant, and violent people, we are killing ourselves off. We are killing our environment without any care that that will ultimately lead to such a big problem for us it will seem nearly impossible to resolve, and in turn, we will die.
    Violence is so accepted, confused, misconstrued, and applauded in our society as a whole. Some people care more about the next sports draft than human rights that are being violated to the highest extent every single day.
    In conclusion don't see this as one big judgement or rant on human beings, because with every evil there exists good. But it is sad, it haunts me, it haunts those that face the worst conditions of it every day, it is the doppelganger of every bit of good in the world, it affects all of us, because ultimately we will reach such a state of deterioration, and a destroyed Earth that we won't be fighting for the next spot in line at a fast food joint, we'll be fighting for water. It is an undeniable problem, it is right in front of us every single day, don't allow anybody to sugarcoat it, it is bigger than anything we could ever imagine, I can't even explain it in the most realistic way because I'm fortunately not one of those having to face the worst conditions of it, and I'm blessed for everything I have, but it still affects me in having to see how large and detrimental the effect is on us. I still have to live knowing innocent, hard working, loving people have to face such extremities because of the violent and ignorant culture we have created and become a part of. The least I can do is live in opposition to this evil and ignorant standard, and never allow those that do to determine how I think and stir my thoughts into becoming one of them. That is the last thing I want to leave behind in the world.
    We can't ignore the this problem, it is too large and detrimental.

    The first year of Zugzwang has been weird. I still don't understand the game or if this is even serious or not. It doesn't make any sense. But I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the first year went terribly, but that's natural. Nobody's is going to prosper completely at the start of anything to do, but I think we're getting the hand of it, more so than at the beginning of the year, blatantly. I think most people think that their goal is to just have the most money and points and everything and only focus on becoming as rich and/or powerful as possible.

    There was a lot of conflict, we are a lot more opposed to one another than we are structured. And that was a problem our first year. A lot of people died, so clearly the government wasn't doing the best job, and neither were the citizens. The whole year was just a repetitive sequence of people blaming each other for different things. We focused more on how we could put the blame on somebody rather than how we could resolve the problem. Although this year was a bit sloppy (and I contributed to this too), I feel the next year, disregarding the inevitability of obstacles, will go much more smooth, and I think it will be interesting. I am ready to learn more about how to progress.

We all know them.. Not technically "psychologists", because from what I can tell psychologists are pretty cool people, but what I'm talking about is people who like to blow EVERYTHING out of proportion, and try to relate it to human nature and our mental state and blah blah blah. They usually claim to be really chill people but ultimately they are just pestering everybody that reaches the range of how far the sound waves from their voice can reach. I honestly just think it is annoying, but we are obligated to make blogs, so why not touch up on this subject. You could just be bored in class, and decide to draw something on your paper, and your teacher could smack a stamp on your head saying "Anti-Christ" with the force of an obese opera singer falling from the Empire State building multiplied by 1 followed by a 0 for every single particle in the universe.

    That was blatantly hyperbole, but if you are someone like what I am just talking about you will most likely blow that out of proportion too and try to find any evidence to have my car repo'd. And you will probably blow THAT out of proportion and you are probably implementing the actions in the previous sentence as we speak, actually you probably already left your computer and aren't even reading this because you're too busy blowing everything out of proportion. Now, there are different kinds of these people, there are those like I just explained that go completely loco at everything, then there are those that don't necessarily go loco, but they will annoy you by trying to give you a "life lesson", saying how they are concerned about you acting as if you are a 5 year old with an ak-47 in its hands, or how it is such a big problem that if they don't annoy you with their reprimand that all the infants in the world will transcend to the edge of the atmosphere and begin to rain over the Earth causing you to implement felo-de-se.

    No, that will not happen, so please, think about the time you are about to waste telling me this. Ever heard of the butterfly effect? What if I get killed in an accident because you decided to waste my time and shift the sequence in which my life will proceed, you very well have a chance of being the reason to my death. Then I will have to ask Jesus to blow that out of proportion for me and give you a taste of your own medicine so you will seize to annoy homo-sapiens around the world. Now, I know a lot of you like to twist words like a speech impediment, so I mine as well say this to end this blog. When I say people that blow stuff out of proportion, I am talking about people that blow stuff out of proportion, can you comprehend what I just said? Shall I place a period in between each word instead of a space so you will read it slower? I am talking about people that blow stuff out of proportion, blatantly there are people out there who do stuff that needs to be explained to them. So hey, why don't you take your talent and focus on those people, because it sure as hell ain't working on everybody else and you're clearly just wasting your time. So please, for the good of mankind, chill out.

    Gracias, muchos gracias, obrigado, merci, shukria, thank you so very much, I really appreciate it. You can test your progression by recollecting and asking yourself if you just got mad I said thank you in 5 different languages and blew it out of proportion and are currently working on a way to have me evicted to teach me a lesson. If so, you have failed, and I have failed also by making a non-convincing blog, but I still encourage you to bury your head in a pack of snow and pinch your triceps until you could hold a 35 pound incense in your mouth and see your muscle. Peace and thanks for reading this whole thing.


P.s. This might have been an intense and pointless blog, but I have had a shitty day, ruined by annoying people. So I took my annoyance out on a blog.

    Thieves In The Night is a song by Blackstar (Mos Def & Talib Kweli), go listen to it if you haven't. I am going to sum up what I think the song is about because it is one of my favorite songs and the lyrics get me every time. The song might be about pro-black, and most likely is since the album is centered around that, but the album is also about being aware of the environment we're in and awareness of self. I think this song is also about conformity and self worth, which is what the blue eye (this is a reference in the song from a novel called The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison in which an African girl in America hates her appearance due to how she is treated because of it and wishes to be White with blue eyes) destroys by giving us a perception to believe. Power & fear is what a lot of people go after.
Power = illusion
Fear = Lack of Knowledge
Hence why they try to educate the awareness of self to deplete fear. "Thieves of the Night" would relate to someone technically being sneaky and undetectable. So who are these thieves? The Media? It could be the media, It gives us an idea of what's acceptable and what isn't within society. And since we believe that the Media represents the majority of our eyes (creating the blue eye) like a thief in the night, making you think that everyone else thinks the same exact thing causing you to conform, when in reality it may not be true, and Mos and Talib could be trying to destroy those illusions with this song, help creating awareness.

    The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part Time Indian is a book about a young Native American boy from Texas named Junior, who lives on a reservation and is poor. He has some genetic defects in his brain. And gets bullied a lot for being small and having a lisp. He encounters problems in his life both with his physical problems, social problems and the fact that he is a poor Native American. Reservations in America and Canada are generally the poorest places in the country.

    He is lonely and realizes that the reservations are still implementing their original purpose, to kill of the Native American people, culture, and spirit. He decides he has to get out of there, but he can't just move because he's a kid, so he decides to go to a White school off of the reservation 20 miles from his home. And when he does, a lot of the people on the reservation call him a traitor, his best friend Rowdy doesn't want to be his friend anymore, which causes problems with Junior because they have been friends since birth. But he still goes to the school. I have only read up to the part where he meets a girl named.... Well, I'm not gonna ruin the book for you. But I will say I really like the book, it is humorous, but at the same time contains such a sad, but true reality for Indigenous people in the Americas. That colonialism is still affecting the Indigenous people of the Americas.

    There is no hope on most of the reservations besides the loyalty between the family and community, which is very imperative within Indigenous  peoples. And it is sad, reading it just makes me think so much, about how much of a problem this is. And I can personally relate so much, I was not born on the reservation. but my family on my dad's side has, and the conditions were terrible, it was a dysfunctional family, and all though my father may not have been a good father or husband, I won't entirely blame him, he had a rough life, him and his brother. Just looking at it makes me sad, I could have had memories with my other family, I could still talk to them, but I only keep in contact with my uncle and grandma from that side. And I can see how the conditions of the reservations have played a role in that.

    Drug abuse, physical abuse, these conditions ruin families. Which is one of the most important things in a persons life. It just seems like there was no hope on my dad's side of the family, no family structure, just a gaping hole filled with the absence of hope. And now I live vicariously through them with stilled images and memories, but I accept that. The worst part is knowing I'm not the only one. These conditions still exist and are ruining families, culture, spirit, hope. But I try to maintain my hope with seeing movements such as Idle No More being implemented, Indigenous people aren't just going to let this happen. And all these thoughts I just elaborated on have spawned from this book. It contains so much truth, it is a great book and I suggest anybody reading this to read it, not just for the entertaining story line, but for the message, the perspective of a young Native American dealing with the effects of colonialism.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

    One time, me and my friend Ethan were bored. So we decided to climb onto rooftops of dilapidated apartments. We found this alley way in between 2 of them and there was a corner at the end so we decided to go see if there was an entrance into the building because it looked abandoned. We had to hop a tall black fence and we walked down to the end. When we turned there was just a door that was boarded up and we couldn't open it and the porch to get up to the door had a hole underneath of it so we decided to lift it up to see if we could get in through underneath the building.

    There was nothing though. So we decided to go back. When we got back and were hopping the fence we saw a ladder above the fence that led to the roof, so we decided to climb it. We felt the ladder and realized it was being held by a rope and it was wobbly, but we decided to climb it anyways. When we were about to climb it, a man walked around the corner and right away started talking to us about how we shouldn't be climbing onto the roofs because there were camera's all along the building beside us. He said he got caught for public drinking and had a $10,000 dollar fine.

    He walked away and we said whatever and went to climb it once he left. Once I got to the top of the fence he came back around and said seriously we shouldn't be climbing it and that in December some people from Toronto came to climb onto the roof, got into a shootout with the cops and that the kids from Toronto had propane tanks, the cops shot the propane tanks and blew the whole roof up. He said that they were renovating the dilapidated apartments and were bringing in technology from Toronto and were gonna sell them for a million dollars each.

     He said that there was a Greek guy living in the abandoned building we were trying to get onto and that he had an arsenal of weapons because he worked for the government. The guy left and we were confused. We just thought he was some psycho crackhead. So we waited till he left and were going to climb it again. Once he left we waited for a bit because we were laughing and were confused too. Eventually, right before we were about to climb it, a car pulled up around the corner. It slammed its brakes and a Greek guy walked out of the car, unlocked the gate to the narrow fence, walked down the alleyway, turned the corner where the dead end was and he never came back. It was messed up and to this day I am confused about it. We both walked home after that.