TOP HEADLINE: HUMANS HATE THE WORLD

Every morning I wake up, walk to the computer and read the same 5 websites. Drudgereport.com, cnn.com, espn.com, freep.com and hotmail.com (my e-mail).

I don't know why I start my day off this way. Sometimes when I read the headlines on cnn.com or drudgereport.com my heart sinks and I lose all the morning energy I had just five minutes prior to reading these sites. Can the world really be this much of a mess? Has it always been this much of a mess but now we report on it more efficiently? This world has so much for all of us to embrace yet we kill each other and destroy the planet while doing so. Power, money and greed seem to have made their way across the globe and now it's a self-centered fight to the finish.

The people who seem to have a more enlightened view of life, and the world as a whole, are being shackled. Shackled by what I don't know. Fear? Or maybe having a better understanding of life makes you meeker during the battles being fought by society on a daily basis. Maybe there's an idea that no matter what one person says or does, the world's problems will never be remedied. Or maybe they aren't supposed to be "fixed."

I always liked the idea of there being a balance to life. But only when "balance" means even. If we could all just be on an even scale of understanding, acceptance and love. But we aren't. I'm afraid that anymore "balance" represents half the world being "up" and the other half being "down." No one should be born into either of these halves. It's not fair to anyone on either side.

Here are today's top headlines:

A car bomb in London is defused.
Five soldiers die in Baghdad
Wildfire evacuees return to view scorched homes
Friends saw cheerleaders SUV hit truck
80,000 hit by South Asia monsoon floods
Harry Potter star nervous at first kiss

Uh, do any of these feel out of place? I may have to save my celebrity-obsession rant for another day...

I'D LIKE TO GIVE YOU A COMPLIMENT BUT WHAT'S THE POINT?

I just finished reading the news websites I peruse each morning. It seems like it is the most depressing thing I can do to start each day. I would like to blame our news organizations for only reporting the bad events in the world but that is hard to do when there are so many bad events to report.

I don't understand any of it really. I just finished a story about a mother who offered her seven year old daughter to a man for sex. Apparently she really needed the money. I don't get it. How does someone come to do something like that? How bad is their life? How messed up is their brain? This woman had four other children as well.

I try to wrap my brain around events like this. I try to think about all the horrible things that must have happened to this woman in her life to allow herself to think this was acceptable. But in the end I can't justify it. Not even remotely. I feel sorry for her and her children. It's hard for me to crave the strictest justice and at the same time it's hard for me not to. I'd rather it just never happened.

And this is just one example of the host of crazy things that go on all over the world. Deep down I keep telling myself to remember all the beautiful things in life but it seems that the ugly things are always more impactful.

Why is it that I can receive 100 compliments in a day for a job well done and feel good about it. But if someone says, "you did an amazing job, the only thing I would have changed was to move the picture up a bit higher" it totally wipes out their compliment as well as the 100 others? Negatives seem to outweigh positives. I wish I could change that.