I don't mean to be mean but that's all I can be is just me.

Last entry's song title: Breathe (2 AM) by Anna Nallick

**If you are easily offended, maybe you should skip today's entry.**

So, I am tired of a lot of things. I wanna vent about a couple of them today:

1. Single income households

2. Starving Children in Africa

The first one is an issue and I don't know if that is because I don't want to work and so I am jealous when other people don't have to. The thing that bugs me about those people is two-fold. One is that, if they have a college degree, then they are wasting it by sitting at home and not working. Just because Johnny Husband makes a buctillion dollars doesn't mean that you should let your mind rot. I think that if you have a degree you should work at least 8 hours a week in your trained area. The other reason I have to vent about these people, mostly women, is because they have this "Guess-who-I'm-better-than-because-I-don't-have-to-work?--You!-attitude". My only response to that goes back to the not working thing: "Guess-who's-not-gonna-sit-in-an-old-folks-home-all-senile-because-they-never-worked-their-brain?--Me!-attitude". Oh, and for the record, gossip is not mental work. I'm not a gossip person. At least I don't think I am. I don't care about it. But anyway. (The reason for this whole rant is the driving to Shannon Park thing everyday. I get so tired of non-working parents who think they are so great because we have chosen this lowly teaching existence. Jerks. Of course, this may all be in my head but I see them talking outside the school when I arrive at SP, and they sound like people I would hate.

The second one is probably more offensive to people. This whole rant started when American Idol decided to raise money for the poor people who live in Africa. Then they played these clips of the poverty in Africa and so on, and so on. Well, it's sad to look at but I am offended that we were exposed to an episode where we were asked to send money to help these poor, starving, children, and oh yeah, if you call now, we might send some of it to the children of our country. This is the thing that stopped me from contributing. I do care about the children who are starving and poor and lack the basic survival things that most of us take for granted. That's not a question. What I don't care for, is how the media tries to paint this really bleak picture of how bad it is elsewhere. I work in a school district, here in the US, where we have kids who come to school starving in the morning (maybe because they are just hungry in the morning, or maybe it's because they haven't eaten since lunch the day before). Why do we have to care so much about other countries impoverished peoples when our own country is full of those who could use a little help?

Is it because people are less tolerant of those people because our country has welfare and people may think it's their own fault that they can't provide for their family. "How do you not have enough to survive? This is America!" These people talk as if being from America is some magical thing. Like it's a fairy tale place where nothing bad could ever happen. It drives me nuts that people think that when I get to work with children who hoard everything you give them because they have been trained to do so because they don't know where the next thing to eat will come from. So tell me why I should send my money across the ocean to help people I will never meet. I would rather donate to the salvation army to help the people who need it in my area more.

I have to close with this thought. It's not mine, so I will share it anonymously. The thought was this: "There is a way to control poverty and starvation in Africa: it's called birth control." The person who said it commented that to say that would be too controversial because it cuts into basic human rights, blah, blah, blah. So? You know what cuts into basic human rights? When I want to watch a show to forget about the reality that I live in, and am forced to deal with the problems of a country that isn't mine.