Hey Kids, welcome me to the scene. I'm also available at Ranting for a Better Today, should I be pissed about something relating to liberties, rights, people, society, etc., you're most likely to find it there. On the same sort of hand (or maybe that other one over there), you'll probably find general thoughts and wordiness here. Well, wordiness everywhere I go, but it's really unavoidable.

So my thoughts lately have been concerning friendship. It comes, it goes. To some people, you're the best kind of friend, you're "Best Friends" when you're there. When your face isn't in theirs, you disappear into the background, and they forget the person you are and why they loved to be around you so much in the first place. Others, like myself, are lazy. Once you're gone, you're for sure not out of mind, but it just takes awhile for these kinds to message to say hello. And once they do say hello, they expect you to respond, and don't usually try to contact again until they receive some kind of correspondence. Lazy, I know. To some people, once a person moves away, you're just not friends. You don't talk, email, message, anything. They don't think about their old friends often, nor do they look to see "what they're up to," and you really don't ever hear from them again. Because, I've noticed, oftentimes the people who don't check up on you now and then are the ones you wouldn't really check up on either. I guess the bad part about this kind of friendship is when one person is the next type I'm about to describe, and when one person is the type I just described.

Finally, the last kind kind of friend I'm thinking about right now is the actual "best friend." This is the person that you could probably not talk to for a couple of months, but when you finally have a conversation, it's not super different. They understand busyness and laziness. At the end of the day, they just like you, and sure they miss you and feel sad when you don't talk a whole lot, but they're really your friend. When you reach this point -- the point where no matter how long it's been you've still got a good friend to talk to about mostly anything -- that's when you're pretty much family. And you know how family is. Family is when it doesn't matter how long you don't speak to someone -- your mother, for example -- because that person is still your relative--still your mom. You could not talk to your mother for 10 years, and it doesn't change the fact that you came out of her womb however many odd (or even, but they're probably odd regardless) years ago.

I guess I've just been thinking about all the friends I had in high school. All of my friends fall into one of those categories. Sadly, the ones I still talk to are few and far between. Really, mostly just 2. I'm glad I have friends here in college that I can talk to and everything. I did get lucky for one thing. I have one friend that has crept across the boundaries and entered "family" territory. I've known her since I was 9, and ever since (despite her being 8 months older than me), I've kinda felt like big sister in a way to her. I know we grow a little more apart each semester we're in school, but I always just remind myself that she's pretty much my sister, and that when I see her again, we won't be so different and unfriends that we won't talk. I hope she'll always stay my friend in her mind, because she'll always be a friend to me.

As for new friends, I notice that other people make friends a lot faster than me. And along the way I frustrate myself. I want so badly to be close to people. I realize that relationships are a huge part of what makes the human condition good, so having connections is important to me. So I get upset at myself when I'm not best friends with people.

It takes time, is all.

MySpace: No place for Atheists? | Secular Student Alliance

MySpace: No place for Atheists? | Secular Student Alliance: "MySpace Deletes Largest Atheist Group in the World.

Cleveland, OH.— Social networking site, MySpace.com, panders to religious intolerants by deleting atheist users, groups and content.

Early this month, MySpace again deleted the Atheist and Agnostic Group (35,000 members). This deletion, due largely to complaints from people who find atheism offensive, marks the second time MySpace has cancelled the group since November 2007.

What’s unique in this case is that the Atheist and Agnostic Group was the largest collection of organized atheists in the world. The group had its own Wikipedia entry, and in April won the Excellence in Humanist Communication Award (2007) from the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard University and the Secular Student Alliance.

“MySpace refuses to undelete the group, although it never violated any terms of service,” said Bryan Pesta, Ph.D., the group’s moderator. “When the largest Christian group was hacked, MySpace’s Founder, Tom Anderson, personally restored the group, and promised to protect it from future deletions.”

“It is an outrage if Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and the world’s largest social networking site tolerate discrimination against atheists and agnostics-- and if this situation goes unresolved I’ll have little choice but to believe they do," said Greg Epstein, humanist chaplain of Harvard University.

Yes...why don't we take away everyone's freedom of speech while we're at it? Another reason to hate MySpace, methinks. I'd bet money that if any other religious group started complaining about too much Christianity on MySpace, it would be ignored, and rightly so. Some people need realize that they can't have it both ways. Religious freedom and the freedom of speech is the first, and often the most overlooked of all the amendments.