Humanity's Top 10 Bucket List...Now Where's David Letterman

Coming back from vacation is always a bittersweet phenomenon for me. It’s concurrently depressing and a relief. I’m always longing to be back in the middle of the trip, without a care in the world, yet itching to get everything that’s piled up in my absence taken care of. So Saturday morning turned into a bit of a roller-coaster ride, as I disembarked from a seven day cruise through Mexico aboard The Norwegian Star—my ocean liner of a home away from home—and made my way to LAX.

I won’t lie. I struggled with giving up my Blackberry for eight glorious days. But I also reveled in ditching said Crackberry in the stateroom safe. I both loved and hated not keeping any sort of schedule. I was delighted, yet insecure about being able to sleep in past 5 a.m. (the first few mornings, upon waking au natural et sans alarm, I panicked, thinking I had somehow slept through my alarm and was now disastrously late).

But mostly, I have arrived back in the states with a simmering sense of guilt about being in the social position to receive such an opportunity—to be waited on, hand and foot. My time in Mexico was exhilarating, but concerning as well. It’s just not fair that some of us get to jet-set around, while others toil to make our journeys memorable without ever coming close to affording similar luxury for themselves.

I’ve gotten some flack for believing in an American Dream, but I just can’t help it. Even though I walked through the streets of Mazatlan’s slums and saw the injustice of the de facto global caste system, I can’t stop myself from feeling that the situation can change if we just keep pushing. That sounds simplistic maybe, but that it’s the only way to keep myself from collapsing into depression and cynicism about it all.

I suppose it comes down to what might be one of the corniest, albeit spot on, sayings in sports, “You’ll miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Look at it this way: We can't afford to sit on the sidelines contemplating whether or not to act. So I’m going to keep taking shots until I fall down dead on the field, and I hope you will too. The world is so far from perfect that it’s overwhelming to let yourself think about it for more than a minute. But the world has one thing that keeps me going and that’s the future. We can’t change the past, but we can use its lessons in our every present moment to influence the future and make sure we build the human experience into something better.

Isn’t that the American Dream? The belief that tomorrow will be better than today? And that we must have at least some control over building “our better”? To boot, I’ll leave you with a few other musings on the subject by thought-provokers extraordinaire, who most certainly can put these things more eloquently than I.


“THE WORLD IS A DANGEROUS PLACE TO LIVE; NOT BECAUSE OF THE PEOPLE WHO ARE EVIL, BUT BECAUSE OF THE PEOPLE WHO DON'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT.” (ALBERT EINSTEIN)


“DON'T BUNT. AIM OUT OF THE BALLPARK.” (DAVID OGILVY)
"GREAT SPIRITS HAVE ALWAYS FOUND VIOLENT OPPOSITION FROM MEDIOCRITIES. THE LATTER CANNOT UNDERSTAND IT WHEN A MAN DOES NOT THOUGHTLESSLY SUBMIT TO HEREDITARY PREJUDICES BUT HONESTLY AND COURAGEOUSLY USES HIS INTELLIGENCE." (ALBERT EINSTEIN)


“CYNIC: ONE WHO NOT ONLY READS BITTER LESSONS FROM THE PAST, BUT WHO IS PREMATURELY DISAPPOINTED WITH THE FUTURE.” (UNKNOWN SOURCE)

"WHAT GOOD IS A MAN WHO WON'T TAKE A STAND? WHAT GOOD IS A CYNIC WITH NO BETTER PLAN? YES, I BELIEVE THERE'S A BETTER WAY." (BEN HARPER)

Heck, I like this one so much, I'll put the video below. If you've got three minutes and 45 seconds to spare, you should watch!!!



…and although I love Mr. Harper, my personal favorite is saved for last (obviously not least!)

“NOBODY CAN GO BACK AND START A NEW BEGINNING, BUT ANYONE CAN START TODAY AND MAKE A NEW ENDING.” (MARY ROBINSON)
Bottom line: Start dreaming. And dream big. But here’s the catch—you have to actually act on those dreams in order to manifest "our better" into reality. Otherwise, we’ll end up a bunch of cynical complainers in worse trouble than we’ve ever imagined.

So here's my plan: Some of the friends I met in Mexico encouraged me to make a personal “bucket list,” which you can check out by clicking here or on the Bucket List tab on my home page. But I decided the World needed a bucket list too and I can’t make it alone. I’m taking ideas at: starnsbailey@gmail.com. Please write in and use your BIG VOICE--use it or lose it people! Then stay tuned for the reveal of the "TOP 10 THINGS HUMANITY NEEDS TO DO THIS CENTURY…IN ORDER TO MAKE IT TO THE NEXT ONE" (And what you can do to help) on Saturday, November 1.

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do: How to break up with Wall Street and Still Be Friends

photo credit: missraconteur.wordpress.com/

It’s safe to say America’s love affair with Wall Street has come to a tumultuous and dramatic end. We tried to make it work, we really did. But our trust, placed with good intentions, was broken too many times in pursuit of greater prosperity. A break-up was inevitable, really, when you think about it. Wall Street has selfishly put its own needs before ours for years now, in what could be arguably deemed an abusive relationship. The veritable collision course was set as we continued to indulge in blissful ignorance over the frivolity of $300,000 homes we couldn’t afford and spending far beyond our means in spite of the wolf criers’ warnings.
I suppose we hoped, rather than believed, as they say, that a fancy new car (but it gets better gas mileage, which will save us money!) and this seasons’ latest “it purse” (but I’m pumping money into the economy!) would fix everything.

They didn’t.

And now, we’re left picking up pieces of the shit that hit the fan—all while hoping to God that the fan itself won’t come crashing down on top of us in the process. It’s messy and painful. The only thing easy about it is jumping to the conclusion that this is all Wall Street’s fault.

It’s not.

The signs of an imbalanced relationship were there and yet we continually cuddled up with our credit cards when Wall Street “worked late.” We went on lavish vacations, bought homes and cars we shouldn’t have, got manis and pedis and massages and cashmere and Jordans and iPods and a whole bunch of crap we don’t need and won’t want in a few months time.

To be fair, not all of us were ridiculously imprudent. Those of us who couldn’t afford any of the afore-mentioned, superficial ego-boosters even when times were good, are now navigating through even more dire straights. It’s not that we can’t afford to buy as much gas as we used to, it’s that we can’t afford to buy any at all. We work two jobs just to get into Section 8 housing with plumbing that’s never worked and neighbors who are either crack dealers, prostitutes or both. We eat ramen noodles and McDonald’s dollar menu delicacies and pray to God our children stay out of enough trouble to finish school. Sometimes when we feel like hoping against all hope, we dream that they will get a basketball scholarship and be able to go college—but that kind of optimism is too dangerous to indulge in on a regular basis. Or at least that’s how it feels when the cards are so decidedly stacked against you and only the most determined souls are able to make it out of poverty’s vicious cycle and get any of the trickle coming from our country's top-down economic system.

The “haves” and the “have nots” now have several things in common. One: We are all scared out of our minds because even the best jobs, with the biggest financial brokers, are no longer secure. Two: We have little to no savings to deal with losing our jobs. Three: We all got screwed by Wall Street’s reckless behavior and we all have to live with the reality that in order to save ourselves, we have to save theirs as well.

Talk about hard to stomach.

Americans, as concerned as we are about a recession that was perilously close to developing into a second Great Depression and that will still reach almost every single one of us, are more concerned with the injustice that comes in “bailing out” the bad guy. It just doesn’t still well with our sense of fairness at all. Wall street screwed us over and now we have to be the bigger person—which, P.S. still sucks regardless of knowing you are being the bigger person.

So take a deep breath America and suck it all up. This won’t be fun, easy or pretty. But that, my friends and foes, is the great thing about Americans. When it really comes down to it, and we know we’ve run out of options, we know how to gut it out. Or at least we used to—maybe we need to sit down and have a reality check with grandma and grandpa about what it took to get through the Great Depression and World War II. And maybe we’ll find a silver lining in the lesson this will teach us about how habits and living out the values we’ve been pretending to live out.

The American dream is about life, liberty and the pursuit. But it’s also about guts, determination and loyalty to the greater good. We seem to have forgotten about those three in the midst of our personal prosperity and constant success. Sometimes you’ve got to get knocked down and feel a little pain to regain your motivation to be who you truly are. This is such a moment and there’s only one thing to do-well actually there’s three. 1) Get over ourselves. 2) Grin and bear it. 3) Demand a change in the system so we don't get fooled twice.

God, You’ve got to love a break up.

I'm So Over It...Has The House Voted Yet?

photo credit: Rick Wilking/AP
I'll give Sarah Palin credit--she appealed to her base and she didn't bomb. That being said, I also got exactly what I expected from her in terms of dodged questions, unsubstantiated maverick references, knocks on Joe Biden's "experience" (which is, quite ironically, a shorter experience than John McCain's) and absolutely no sign of her being qualified to be Vice-President of the United States of America.

One of the pundits on CNN made a compelling point that I haven't been able to get over. When you think of the Vice-President taking on the fate of the world in the event of a global crisis and the demise of the President, would Sarah Palin be your choice to make the ultimate choice? Is average Joe-sick-pack qualified to make that choice? No. There is a reason we entrust only very few with this task--it's a big freakin' deal and not everybody is capable of making a prudent choice for humankind. Nice as she seems, genuine as she seems, she has in no way demonstrated a sufficient understanding of the world, in the "five short weeks" she's been at this, that would warrant that responsibility being placed on her shoulders.

I've also got to give Joe Biden credit. He reigned himself in and had a clean debate. I saw absolutely ZERO instances of gender bias or sexism. It was a clean debate and I'm prodigiously proud of him for that. He respected his opponent and took Palin on as he would have any other politician. He was even able to avoid too many wordy, wonky diatribes on policy (not all, but nobody's perfect I suppose). When he did begin to wander down that sure-fire path to audience boredom, he seemed to check himself and switch back to connecting personally with the audience through his own experience as a single dad, as a parent of a soon-to-be Iraqi soldier or as a former middle-class citizen of America.

I'm re-watching the debate right now, and more and more I am impressed with the vice-presidential candidates' performances over that of their "principals." In terms of substance and in terms of addressing many of the issues that got lost in McCain and Obama's tit for tat, I'd almost go so far as to say that Biden and Palin did a better job of presenting their tickets' ideas than the actual ticket leaders. They certainly listened to the advice commentators, pundits and hopefully their own advisers gave in regards to strategy in this debate and executed it to the best of their abilities.

The one area notably left out of the debate was the financial situation we are in as a nation. That subject absolutely must be addressed in the next presidential debate in great detail. In lieu of Iraq, policy and reform in this area is going to be the trademark of the next presidency. Things have changed. For the first time in a long time, Americans are listing the state of our economy as their number one concern. This is no longer an election about getting out of Iraq--it's about the bill we are stuck with, partially as a result of Iraq, and how the hell we are going to pay it off . It's a no-brainer that the next president will go down in history for how he handles this situation.

I can't believe I'm still saying it, but the race just gets more interesting everyday. I could go on for another hour about the dynamics of the debate and comments made by the candidates, but I haven't much time for that. The House is musing over this so-called bailout bill and how they'll handle the ball the Senate threw back into their court with overwhelming support. Frankly their vote tomorrow trumps anything that went down tonight.

I'll wrap it up, so you and I can get to bed and get a few hours of sleep before the chaos that may ensue once we wake. Bottom line: The fight goes to Biden, but Palin held her own. No knockouts and the never-ending race goes on. 33 days until we pull the lever and punch our chad in what will certainly be the most important presidential election of my life--maybe yours too. McCain, Obama or Mickey Mouse--the point is this: get out there and get involved. Our country is not living up to its potential and the only way we can turn it around is engage with all the intensity we can muster. This little girl knows a thing or two about using her voice and I urge you with every ounce of volume I've got to use yours and tell our leaders what you need with resounding resolve. This land is your land, this land is my land--it's time to take better ownership of it.