Archive for the ‘Obama’ tag

Wake Up America!

First off, I tagged a few people on Facebook on this note, I don’t want to offend anyone, but if you’re going to be a fan or supporter of McCain 08 I’d love to share my opinion with you… but only if you want to listen. Do what you want, I’m really not trying to force anything down your throat.

I honestly don’t understand people sometimes. How, after 8 years of our country going down the drain can people look at the two presidential candidates and choose to not change anything. One candidate talks about issues while the alternative just talks about the opposition. One provides concrete ideas for change and the other doesn’t offer anything different then what we have now. The policies that John McCain puts forth are the exact policies that we have right now, so how could anything be different when he’s in office? I can honesty say that I can’t begin to fathom how an informed citizen could cast a vote for McCain/Palin. If someone can give me a good solid reason I’d love to hear it.
A friend of mine said something a few years ago and at first I didn’t agree, but now a few years later I can really see the wisdom in it. He said that the Republican party (then my party of choice, I now claim no party affiliation) holds people, especially conservative christians, hostage with issues like abortion and gay marriage. He said that there are many, many people out there that vote based on those issues and those alone. He’s completely right, there are many people who look at Barack Obama’s stance on abortion and immediately count him out. People even take into consideration issues like prayer in school, that have been dead for decades, and cast their vote accordingly. It’s time to really look at the problems in our country and look at what it will take to fix them. Abortion isn’t ever going to be illegal, if you don’t support it then help out programs that give young mothers another way out. Gay marriage is about equality not personal beliefs. No one wants to change your bible they just want to be able to have hospital rights for their loved ones. America is a democracy and it’s policies will never match your beliefs or dogma, it wasn’t built as a Christian nation it was built on the idea of freedom of religion and that means compromise. Not compromise of your beliefs but compromise in the rules we all have to live by.

If you have looked at John McCain’s record on the economy, on health care and foreign relations and still think he would make a better leader then ok. At least look at the issues though, and also look at how he is conducting his campaign, the following video sums it up.

Alright, no more politics for a while.
Everything is good down here, I’m busy with work and school. I have a couple of cool projects I’m working on so I should have some good video to show in the near future.
David Hildreth

A good week off

It rained a bit last week… as a matter of fact we had quite the little storm on thursday. Even with a house full of people you could hear the wind whip around our place in Tempe. The rain was coming down in sheets and there was even hail for a short time. I don’t usually do much weather photography… none really, but living here has made me want to start (the above photo is not mine, it’s from flickr). Even though my car windows were down the whole time the storm was pretty cool, that is until I got to work the next morning. Downtown was a mess, getting from the 10 over past Thomas took 20 minutes longer than usual, none of the traffic signals worked and the roads were a maze of toppled trees and power polls. Then when I got to work not only was our SAN down (a non storm related issue) so I couldn’t get any work done but we also didn’t have any internet. I found myself reading the paper until someone finally found me a project I could work on. It’s very frustrating to know there is work to be done and not be able to do it, and then to not have interwebs to pass the time… not cool.

During my week off from school I was able to get out of work for a day and drive up to the Grand Canyon with a good friend. We drove through Sedona on the way up and I can’t even being to tell you how awesome that was. In all honestly we should have just stopped and chilled in Sedona for the day, but my travel companion had never seen The Grandest of Canyons so we ventured on. Sedona is like another state, it’s not hot, it’s not dry or desolate. It’s beautiful and green, there’s a river and the temperature is tolerable. I really want to get back up there soon, it’s a very expensive little town so it’l just be a simple day trip, but there is a part of me that wants so badly to jump into a river. It’s simply been too long since I at least scoffed at the opportunity to do so. Later the trip hit a sour note when I found out that my friend didn’t know where Idaho was on the map. After a few texts to ChaCha she got the picture but I don’t think I’ll let her live it down any time soon.

I’m sure by now you’ve all heard who McCain picked to be his VP. It’s never been more appairent that he would rather win an election then effectivly govern.
That’s about all I can stomach to say about it… I’ll just let John Stewart take over.

If you didn’t catch Obama’s speech I suggest catching up. I’m interested to see how the Republicans react at their convention.

In other completely unrelated and slightly random news I told someone special this week flat out “I want to be with you.” She said something about being light headed… I think that’s a good thing.
Time will tell.

David Hildreth

Everyone’s favorite Hussein

So… anyone on Facebook recently might have noticed something different about my name. I’ve decided to take a different middle name for the time being. I know what you’re thinking… “but David, you can’t do that!?” Well, I just did.
It’s amazing the sort of stigma a name can have, I got three or four different messages from friends literally within twenty minutes of changing my name. While that’s quite nerdy, it’s also alarming to think of how people’s thoughts can be manipulated by simply using the “H word”. A friend asked if I had become Muslim, another if I hated America and my roommate said that I should probably move out if I was going to blow anything up.
All the comments were jokes, but there is something wrong with our wold view if one of the most common names on the planet gives us nothing but terrible thoughts.
So until further notice, on the internet, I’ll be DHH. If you do a simple Facebook search you’ll see I’m not the only one. There is a certain person in the spotlight who was blessed with this name and if I can do anything to help remove the stigma associated with it I’m in.

A friend and I finished work on a local commercial last week, it’s for a sister station of The EDGE, and turned out pretty good if I do say so myself. If you don’t know who MC Magic is then you’re probably not the target demo of this spot. It’s slated to air on MTV Tr3s… which I only recently found out existed.

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There is an interesting story about how I came to work on this spot, but that is for another day. Some people who read this may not think it’s an interesting story as much as they think it’s an aggravating one :|

I saw a few movies since I posted last. The first is The Bicycle Thief, a classic Italian film that focuses on how a small action can impact someone in ways one can only imagine. It’s age shows but there is a very powerful plot in there if you’re ok with classic cinema. Another is Hearts and Minds, it’s a documentary on Vietnam… sort of a 70s version of Fahrenheit 911, only much better. It does have a bias but I didn’t find it heavy handed, a lot of the material in there applies to today just as it did then. It does a good job of reminding people how the Vietnam War started and that colonialism is just as terrible as it ever was. The last is Rattle and Hum, an amazing rockumentary (yes, it’s a word) about U2′s Joshua Tree tour. I loved Coldplay: Live 2003 and it definitely owes a lot to this film. It follows U2 around the US and has stunning performances from two different concerts. Both, interestingly enough, are in places I’ve been: Denver’s old McNichols Area and Tempe’s Sun Devil Stadium. OK, maybe that’s not interesting but I thought it was cool.
I highly recommend all three films, the first two are in the Criterion Collection and the third runs on MHD quite a bit.

I’m out for now, take it easy
David Hussein Hildreth

P.S. Tomorrow I will have lived in Arizona 2 years.

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