And now some words from Sue....

I wanted to put in my own two sense in some of the topics that Eric wrote about and add some of my own.

1. I agree with the fact that techno is cooler than I once thought. We sit and listen to it at night a lot now while we are doing homework or I am studying and Eric is playing on the computer. It usually keeps us awake for a long time. It makes you want to dance and jump around. :) Thanks again to Paul, Sue, Sebastian, and Ernesto for introducing us to good techno on the web and on their discs. The DJ's at the club we went to were ok, but our friends said that they have heard better. I am still a newbie to it.

2. Most of what Eric said about organized religion, I agree with. Living down here in super Baptist land has made me long for the North. I long for more liberal people or even just a simple democrat. There are some towns down here where the white people have scared all of the black people from their town, the preachers own the town and make the rules, and the preachers even sit at the place where the people vote and tell them how to vote! How ludicrous is that? I have spoken to some locals about this and a girl I know was convincing my friend not to buy a summer home in this one town (I won't mention names) because of all of the above reasons. I think that since we have moved down here that I have definitely surpassed Eric in being cynical. I am so against organized religion, particularly the Christian groups. One of my BIG pet peeves are super religious people that believe they are the only ones that are right because they are closed minded and then they try to push their religion on me and others. I have really seen this down here. In one of my classes in a fairly good sized, public university, a student spoke out in class when we were talking about how to care for AIDS patients and what he said really shocked me. The teacher asked what we need to do for a pretend patient in a case study from our book that happened to mention that this patient was homosexual and this "boy" (not a man) said really loud that he should not be gay. My mouth dropped! Luckily the teacher changed topics because the class would have gotten into a big debate. The really sad thing is that a good portion of the class agreed with him. I do not want any of these people to be nurses. They can't say things like this about patients when they are really working! Even a friend of mine that I thought I knew said that she agreed with him. She said that her God doesn't create gay people. OK. Of course not too long ago a Baptist preacher in Birmingham wrote on his churches sign that AIDS is a punishment for gay people. He said on camera that God told him to write this. I thought, hmmm, he must be schizophrenic with hallucinations and voices. I wanted to drive down their and ask him why lesbians don't get AIDS, why heterosexual people get AIDS. I wanted to tell him to go to Africa and tell the millions of women, men, and children that die every year from AIDS even though they are all heterosexual. I am curious what his reply would be. In a liberal state people would not say these things out loud. Isn't a big message in the bible that one should not judge, less he should be judged? It is not anyone's job to judge anyone for what they live by as long as they are not hurting anyone. If these people believed in a God they would leave this to their God. Is my cynicism coming across? My thought is that most of the super religious freaks are very boring and don't live life they way they should. Live your life to the fullest and experience everything you can since you only live once! Anyway I will move on since I could write all day about this.

3. I want to say that I disagree greatly with our current president and I hope for the good of our country that he is not re-elected. He keeps throwing bait to the people and they are blinded by his evilness. He began this war without support and so many US soldiers have died so far and many more will follow, he has not done anything to help our economy even though he claims he did, he is vocally discriminating against a group of Americans by denying homosexuals marriage, he is using 9/11 for his re-election even though he has not helped terrorism one bit, he has no regard for the environment, he is a big business tycoon that is in it for greed and power, he has overspent the federal budget without money allocated for medicare and health even though tons of baby boomers are going to need healthcare very soon, he is only president because of who his daddy is, and he banned stem cell research because he is so dumb that he probably doesn't even know what he is talking about. Since when did Bush become a Priest since all he does lately is preach to us and make laws that are bible friendly. What more can I say. I am such a democrat, but I am so anti-Bush.

4. The main point is that I can not get out of the state of Alabama soon enough. Need to go north! I am hoping that we will leave in a year or two. Ohio is looking pretty damn good compared to this place. A state that screws themselves by voting down a tax increase even though the state is poor is a pretty slow one. Being in nursing I feel bad for all of the people that will be kicked out of nursing homes and assisted living because there is no money for medicaid which is state funding. I also feel bad for the kids since education is also feeling the ax. When kids have to buy their own books and classroom supplies, that is pretty bad.