Top 5 songs I am most likely to be caught jamming out to in my car

#5 Doobie Brothers- What a fool believes


#4 Peter Gabriel- In your eyes


#3 The Cars- Just what I needed


#2 Phil Collins- In the air tonight


#1 Don Henley- The boys of summer

Don Henley - Boys Of Summer by jpdc11

I liked you better

I liked you better naive,
during those rebellious years when we tried to distance ourselves from everything our parents represented.
We would stop the machine. We would change the pattern.

I liked you better when you had stars in your eyes.
We plotted our futures with such enthusiasm that we would change the world.
We explored abandoned buildings looking for something worth keeping from a place long forgotten.
We found beauty in what had been left behind, because we were left behind.

I liked you better when your wore your heart on your sleeve,
before the years of hurt piled on like bricks on a crooked foundation creating a viewpoint distorted.
We had no questions about what we believed. We knew.

I liked you better when you were real.
We did not pretend that we were okay, but wore our wounds like a badge of honor.
We had survived. We were not giving up easily. We were not going down without a fight.

Japan's Triple Threat

I have to admit, when I first heard about the earthquake in Japan, I didn't really pay much attention. I figured, this is Japan. If anyone can survive a quake, it's Japan. They're prepared. And I went along with my normal day totally calloused to the reality of the destruction.

The next time I turned on the news, maybe a day later, and heard about the tsunami. Even the word brings up sick feelings of the devastation of the Christmas 2004 tsunami that hit Indonesia. But again, I thought, Japan will survive. Indonesia is a poor country with poor citizens and poor construction. Japan is a modern day natioin with state-of-the-art arcitecture. Surely man's best can survive nature.

I was totally unprepared for the slew of images and video that have now surfaced showing the level of devastation. Reports that half a town, 9,000 people, are still missing in one area. An email from Aticus describing the scene in Tokyo, and how scarce daily necessities are now becoming. And now, nuclear threat. I'm not even quite sure what that means. I'm 27 years old and when Chernobyl occurred I was sheltered from the existance of it. I had a vague understanding of it taking place, but I had to google it to see what exactly happened. What did it mean then? What does it mean now?

I want to help, but how? Can donating money help the most effectively? It cannot put lives back together. It does not help undo the damage done. Nothing can. It feels so fruitless, like spitting into the ocean. Afterall, Japan is not a poor country. It is not a lack of resources that caused this. It was the perfect storm.