The Cave of the Winds

Shiny Happy People (Can Go Screw Themselves)

2009-08-11T10:21:00.000-07:00

In the utterly lifeless vodka-induced coma that I call a night life I have recently taken to watching all of those movies I have missed since I was three-years-old ‘til now… I like to think of it as a three and a half year journey… It’s really more of a sleep… Until hopefully this country starts to remember vaguely that sanity was what we were at least shooting for…

So I’ve been watching crappy old movies, reading old books, basically sort of following Christopher Reeves’ character in “Somewhere in Time” (his best movie in my opinion, if you haven’t seen it) in hopes of escaping back to another time by surrounding myself with that era, simply convincing myself I’m there, I guess…

One of the things that is very evident when you look back just a relatively little ways is how bent on perfection we have become, and more importantly, how contemptible and intolerant we have become with imperfection…

Just look at the teeth and the tits of a mediocre female star today… perfectly surgically whitened, perfectly perky at age 45 respectively; and those are the *mediocre* stars… The only yellow you will ever see is yellow that was put there to be “gritty”…

Never mind that white teeth are actually a color that in the past were only fake teeth, because as any dentists will tell you, there are three or four shades of teeth naturally, and none of them are white… Just keep whitening and sanding those buggers down until the Osmond family is envious…

And I really *really* miss real ta-ta’s… You look at old movies and see them all over the place… They are almost all unique… none of them are perfect... They were often small enough to rival man-boobs making Vladimir Putin seem "stacked"... they were less than flawless, and that’s what made them so awesome… because each woman looked unique, it was part of the fun… the excitement…even the disappointment… but dammit, it made a man anxious as hell…

Now you see spheres so perfect that you could calibrate a sexton with them…Even on 50 year-old mothers of five over and over, and anyone at all can have them…Surgically altered, nipped and tucked into just what the owner wanted them to be… No fun… No secret… No surprise… Perfection… blah…

Perfectly toned bodies too… just everywhere…even the ugly actors have them… You look back at the studliest of studs in the 1940’s and see what they looked like when that shirt came off… Most of you would call them flabby, out-of-shape, weaklings using the retarded standards of today, I call them real… worn by people who were more interested in living a life than in three hours with a personal trainer…

Many of you call this progress… you ‘d even call it evolution, (which Darwin would punch you in the stomach over) Designer people, perfection for everyone… I call it a human nightmare… The selling of the human soul for a sweet set of pectorals…

You can be as tone as you want; you can faun over your human perfection eternally if you like… The painful truth is that Carey Grant is still more interesting than you ever will be… and his life was worth more than yours will ever be… because John Wayne earned that flab… because Gene Wilder didn’t need to do shirtless scenes, because Jane Russel was way hotter than Marilyn Monroe ever was, and all you earned was a free month at the gym for paying for nine in advance…

I am sorry, but it’s true... and you can’t change that with a racket ball paddle…

The Green Ages Part 1: What the Prius and the i-House Tell Us About Sophisticated Society

2009-05-23T14:35:00.000-07:00

The obsession with green cars… Let me first say that I have been a fan of moving away from fossil fuel since I was a child… You see, just about everyone was, so I’m hardly all that original… I am also on top of the waiting list for a Chevy Volt…I got in early, because I didn’t need Al Gore to tell me what to do…I simply remember the things I remembered as a child… I am reconsidering though as it comes closer to reality…

The nineteen seventies gave people good reason to be searching for these cars… We watched while the major oil producing countries rose to prominence and we started to realize just how batshit crazy many of these places were… They played games with fuel sales, robbed us blind, cut off supplies on a whim… It was nuts… We also had Japanese cars coming to market that were cheaper, more reliable, and more efficient selling big…

Back then the US decided these Japanese cars were just way too cheap, so the government taxed them ridiculously high… The idea was that US cars would sell well due to the tax, but US car makers instead used the price hike as an excuse to raise their prices….So instead of reclaiming the US market, prices simply went up, then Unions came in for their share of the increase and there was no going back…

But back to the point, that being that we had green cars… Most of us did, the late seventies and nineteen eighties were filled with them… I traveled from ’75 to ’78 in the back of a green ’74 Pinto hatchback, so I remember it well, as it may be responsible for a spinal deformity… Seemingly every family had one, eventually parents used them as their children’s first cars as we all decided they were kinda crappy… They became an object of disdain, a go-cart, a piece of crap that we put a stereo in and gave to our kids, who promptly drove them into the ground.

Parents who worked hard for their money found it increasingly hard to justify buying these cars for themselves… They worked hard, sought quality, they didn’t want cars that barely made it up a hill and couldn’t even hold their families…

The lesson was learned though…or so I thought… crap is crap… in order to move forward, we had to improve the whole experience, people don’t want crap… People are right to feel that way… Yet now we rush back towards crap at gunpoint, that gun being “climate change”… That’s right... entire generations who fear the change of climate on Earth so much when it’s packaged right that they rush backwards in the evolution of society to get away from it…As if we didn’t know about climate change millennia ago…

How about the home?

The past two decades were a boon to home ownership, I know people (tons of them in fact) who thought it was sensible to own a 3000 square foot home near the water with marble counter tops, hardwood floors, vaulted ceilings, multiple fireplaces , and a three car garage before they were out of college… These are the people the government rushes to play the violin for at our expense now… They will be keeping their homes… Thanks to us…

‘Talk about undermining Darwin…

Still, now they drive a Prius, so all is good… and they feel that it’s time for homes to come of age… The future is now! “We are the ones we were waiting for”…or so I hear…

So, to boldly march into the Green Ages with our heads held high to avoid the noxious carbon emissions, billionaire Warren Buffet along with cutting edge group of denizens of crazy science fiction types have created the perfect home of the future… Thank science for them!

My mother voted for Jimmy Carter... She was not alone… People were tired of Gerald Ford’s stagnancy, they were sick of the same old thing…they wanted change…
Carter claimed that by the end of the 80’s people would be living in glass domes, surrounded by their own modernity in a Jetsonsesque sci-fi world…

Oops…!

He did however preside over a housing revolution… New homes were made with fewer materials; these homes would use less of everything. They used less space, because the square footage could be achieved with thinner materials, they would use less water, because the pipes were smaller. They used less heat because they were made of more efficient materials; they used less electricity because the major power sucking appliances were simply smaller… They could be mass produced, built in a factory and moved to any site in the country…

Ladies and gentlemen; I give you the home of the future 1977:

But hold on to your carbon footprint people…This baby’s already sold! Obviously, looking at this photo, it was bought by someone who cares about their carbon footprint, as I am pretty sure that small economical Mazda truck contains a revolutionary “rotary engine”!

They even envisioned such super-efficient housing being the core of whole new communities, communities of the future, communities made-up of people with conscience about the Earth, who cared about their footprint on this world…. Just better people….

This, my friends is the beginning of the super-culture… “Jetson World”, if you will….:

The communal living we were waiting for… Yummy!

A joke!? Not if you love the planet it isn’t….! For a mere $122,460.00 (US Funds, which I believe is 9.35 Euros), plus land and utilities of course… Warren Buffet, man of the future, would like you to buy a home at the corner of Conscience and Science Avenue:

No, I am not kidding, this is all the rage in the Green Ages....

The “i-House” …I’m sure there’s an iPod fitting somewhere in here…

Beautiful, isn’t she!? I say “she” because such marvels of engineering throughout history have always, with awe and respect, been referred to as “she”, it seems…

Yes Warren certainly is the epitome of the evolved man… and a billionaire, but that’s irrelevant because I’m sure sales have nothing to do with this…

He sees a world where housing like this is the standard and alternative energy, wind in his case (and no, that wasn’t a hot air joke, though it should have been in retrospect) will power this home of the future… He has invested billions to achieve such seemingly unattainable goals for us and for our grandchildren…

…What a guy!

I believe that the photo below actually literally covers the fundamental requirements that Mr. Buffet has established as ‘future living’:

I wonder if this guy knows that he has been the cutting edge of humanity and science for decades?

So, through a highly technical composite process, here’s an advanced artists’ rendering of the future, that we have literally changed the entire world economy to achieve…:

…And here is a similar rendition of the exact same thing only thirty-five years ago:

What!? …You’re afraid that you’ll be making a mistake? You think maybe that getting in on the ground floor of green thinking is not what they want you to believe? How could you possibly think such a thing when pseudo-intellectual pop-culture, the monarchs and elites of our time fully support this innovative choice of lifestyle!?

I mean… when have they ever mocked mobile home dwellers driving piece of crap cars in the past?

…Okay …well…*this* time, it’s different… I'm sure...

See, progress and regress are two different things. We want so desperately to think we are building the future, that we forget that progress is an uncompromising quality… You don’t give things up when you progress…You find a way to make what you want and what is best the same…

Running out of water? ...Find a way to desalinate faster... Running out of power producers? use nuclear power.... Running out of room? Find more room and make it just as good... It is the manifest of progress to everything that progresses... We are one of those things...

The green movement are the religious zealots of the twenty-first century, they believe that the only way forward is to throw ourselves back…It’s what happened when we decided in the nineties to give people who were high during the sixties, seventies, and eighties the keys… They don’t know what they are doing, because they don’t remember what they don’t know, they don’t have a clue that this has already all failed miserably…

In the meantime, the rich weasels like GE and Buffet will continue to manipulate the common people like you and I with “ideas”, because you need to need things, or they don’t get the money they want… If nuclear power runs your house, you don’t need their wind turbines. If we drill here for oil, you may not need a new car until they are dead and gone...and where’s the profit for them in that!?

‘Wanting To Believe’ is a Paradox

2009-05-20T12:05:00.000-07:00

‘Wanting To Believe’ is a Paradox...

...It is... You cannot ‘want’ to believe... You either do or you don’t. Willfully fooling yourself is in fact not possible, it is called “lying”, but when it’s in the context of our own ‘beliefs’ most of us somehow justify that as okay because it’s personal...

Well...It’s not okay anymore, not if you care about the world around you, and the entirely wrong direction that the western world has chosen under the control of the extremes of left and right... With left clearly leading the way...

People who are trying to convince themselves that they believe something that they don’t are doing themselves and their world a great disservice... They allow the extremes to dictate their lives; because they see them as the ideal, as what they ought to be, but aren’t... this is wrong, they are nothing more than you... You are simply trying to convince yourself that it’s not true, while they take advantage of that struggle to offer concrete answers that don't exists for anyone...

I postulate, and you may not care for it, but tough, that most Western Christians and Jews of all stripes are in fact Agnostics, who want to believe they are not... Further, I believe that most Agnostics are Atheists that want to believe that they are hedging their bets by sitting on the fence...

The problem is that by not just admitting it, you allow yourselves to be controlled by extremists at either end... Even the best of open-minded people that I know or am familiar with allow this to happen to them...

Please understand; I believe in religious freedom to extremes... I respect a person’s sincere religion absolutely... I think it has done *very* good things for humanity... without it, I possibly wouldn’t be able to write this now...

I also believe that most of the atheist movement is nothing more than a different form of zealotry... Dawkins and Bill Maher are nothing more than Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson in a different robe... They are regressing us, *not* progressing us, they all damage us...

But both disingenuous religion or anti-religion are cowardly... and it’s false... Wanting to believe something makes faith moot, it serves no purpose if you don’t believe it totally... This is why disillusionment is expanding at light speed... Because so many of us don’t *really* believe what we believe...

...Still not pissed off? Then how about this:

Bill Maher is more of a Christian than the Christians he ridicules...

Like a protester that beats a soldier with a "peace" sign, Bill Maher gives away what amounts to an immature intellect lashing out at that which he so desperately wants... His physical acts of ridicule are nothing more than a manifestation of him begging god to show himself...

A true atheist has no reason to ridicule, we are comfortable in that he / she / them / it is not there, and that each can come to this conclusion on their own...No need to prove anything more because faith can only be faith... Mr. Maher still battles with his own deep-seated acceptance in a god so much, that he feels he must challenge that god to flush him out... That is zealotry, and a depth of belief far beyond the simple and personal disbelief in dieties from the outset... Bill Maher is a religious zealot...

The major problem in either extreme is that when we ‘want to believe’ we run to join the choir as soon as they start singing to reinforce the denial... In this way zealots get power... It’s how organized religion and organized anti-religion got such a choke hold on masses of people who are not zealots... They play on our desire to believe... They do so by convincing us that they are true believers, the very things we wish we were...

Stop wishing... face yourselves, and you will find that zealots like Bill Maher leave a bad taste in your mouth , that they are unnecessary... You will find that you can respect what others believe and still sincerely believe what you do, because you don’t need to compete for belief anymore... You know what you think and you *really* believe it... You will live and die as your own person... Whatever that person *actually* is, rather than what you *want* it to be or are afraid not to be...

Most importantly, you will stop jumping to the extremes when the thunder starts... You will stop running for solace in the arms of those who have convinced you that they are the true believers...

We can all deal with the complicated issues of where we are and where we should go, comfortable in ourselves and manipulated by less, not trying to be anything but that which we are, whatever that may be...

...God and I had an amicable separation many years ago after a long rocky relationship... We sat down and we agreed that we were not mutually beneficial; in fact, we were hurting each other... We mused over the good times, and the bad times, we discussed our differences and goals, and we shook hands, agreed to disagree, decided to just be friends, and parted company...

...This all may make you think "He sounds more like an Agnostic to me"... but this is just a literary device to describe the bridge from Agnosticism to Atheism for me...

We got through many tough times together, and the truth is, I like the guy... I see the good he does... I believe that the true belief in him serves many individuals well; I believe even that the organized belief in him has served humanity better than any other form of organization despite the bad... I don’t believe he should die, I don’t mind him being everywhere, and I accept anyone who accepts him as fact... He is a good man, you’re right to cherish him...

But if you are a fair weather friend then you are doing him a disservice, because he cannot count on you when it matters... And if you claim a belief in him and yet your actions and motivations betray that then you are in reality no friend to him at all...

Wanting to believe is the same thing as not believing... The only difference is that when you want to believe, you leave those who honestly do feel like you actually do out in the cold, and you embrace those who would manipulate you with open arms...

Torture

2009-05-15T11:12:00.000-07:00

We are arguing to define if, in quantifiable legal terms, waterboarding someone is equal to all other forms of torture...

If it is the one-and-only "torture" then this means that tying someone down and giving them a medically supervised swirly is *equivalent* to vivisecting a human being.... That is the live dissection of a human being... In the eyes of primarily left wingers, but many moderates and conservatives as well...

They have said it is without any hesitation....without any degrees, without any pause....

You see, torture was defined the way it was to describe things like vivisection, burning people with branding irons against their will, beating people with brass knuckles, cutting off their genitalia while they watch...

To define the two *exactly* the same means that, in legal terms, many college fraternities, high school students, cheer leading squads, every pilot trainer in the armed services, special forces trainers, cub scouts, girl scouts, and bored stoned hippies are guilty of the legal equivalent of the willful vivisection of a human being...

How is it that a sane populous can say something like this...?

It's simple really...

A "sane" populous, can't...

Of Star Trek, Star Wars, and Me Being Ill and Having Time to Write this Drivel

2009-05-06T23:17:00.000-07:00

Repost (since the movie's coming out,and I'm lazy)

Star Trek has influenced a lot of naïve people. Having worked in the software programming industry within the space industry I have close contact with a lot of these people, who I by-and-large like by-the-way… But they are naïve, because though many of them don’t like to admit it, they let Star Trek shape their political philosophy I think… They see Gene Roddenberry’s vision of utopia and it translates to them as relatively unflawed, but it is flawed, it is horribly flawed if you really look at it…

I was a Star Wars kid, it shaped a big part of my fantasy world as a kid, and I’m glad it was that rather than Star Trek… Don’t get me wrong, though I’m nothing like a “Trekkie”, I really like Star Trek, enough to say that “Deep Space 9” and “Voyager” blow dogs definitively…

They are different enough to not see my comparison to some though, as one of them (Star Wars) is a simplistic story of a galaxy in a state of chaos with clearly delimited ‘goods’ and ‘evils’, and the other (Star Trek) is a more complicated vision of a galaxy in order with most of the conflicts being waged in the realm of science, diplomacy, and exploration…

The latter sounds noble enough, what could be more utopian than a galaxy devoid of money, a galaxy of order, a galaxy of scientific advancement and a society with room for everyone to fit into a place, and a uniform for that place…? In fact it sounds a bit familiar to me…

…It sounds a bit like….THE EMPIRE!

And more than a little bit like the socialist dream-come-true…

...That’s right; Star Treks “good guys” are actually a lot like Star Wars’ “bad guys”! Accept it! Look at the multitude of evidence… How many starships, star bases, and away teams have we seen literally for decades? Now as I recall the old Enterprise had a crew of over 400 people, on the newer Enterprise I believe it was 1100 or so… In all that time and in this utopian haven of equality, how many people in that 1100 on board that giant ship mattered at all? What like seven or eight…right? Sounds like what? CUBA!!!! That’s right 1100 people all *supposedly* equal, and yet less than ten of them ever mattered in all that time…

That’s 1090 ‘Red shirts’ just waiting to be stricken down by a being made of pure energy (starts humming that old ‘Information Society’ song)… And by-the-way “red shirts” hmmm isn’t that interesting? I wonder why they’d be red shirts…. Perhaps because they are mere cogs in the machinery of a Marxist cabal? A Red Army marching just as the minions of "people’s liberators" into Stalingrad to their eminent death… Sort of like those faceless clones that The Empire sent into certain death at the hands of large teddy bears with spears…

Speaking of Ewoks, what do think the “Federation” would have felt about them? In the countless episodes involving the “Prime Directive” did you ever even see them “observing” a land ruled by care bears sans the belly tattoo…? …Something even close? No, because the Federation had no need or use for them, much as the Empire….

Now flash back to Star Wars-ville, not only did The Rebellion violate the “Prime Directive” at will, they used the talents of these evil little fuzzy bastards to defeat the mightiest power in the galaxy! Then partied with them! Now that’s freedom…

And lastly is individualism… In Star Trek you always had this upper echelon of their hierarchy doing battle as a team, overcoming the baddie-of-the-day using teamwork and collective efforts for the greater good…

In Star Wars on the other hand, you had the individual, the hero. The galaxy itself is saved through the magnanimous efforts of a single person making individual decisions and through several individuals simultaneously acting independently to achieve the outcome: Luke in the Death Star trench, Han Solo re-thinking his choice to leave, Obi wan battling Darth Vader, Princess Leia strangling Jabba the Hut in a scene that I’m pretty sure caused my testicles to descend… Even the robots were individuals, acting on their own to achieve great things…

So what is my point….?

Feck... I don’t know…

…Oh wait, I remember now…

… My point is that too many people sort of silently took Star Trek to heart as some brilliant depiction of what Utopia will look like, and use that as a marker in their heads as to where we as a society need to go.

They see us as needing to be gentile while hopping around through space, they see us as needing leave “lesser cultures” alone, they see us as using science more than senses, they see us operating as a collective entity achieving only within the realms that are predefined to us, they see no individual as uncategorized, they see leaders as people who are processed to be such, they see wealth and the desire to attain it as an inherent evil and then try and replace it with promiscuous green women and eventually “holodecks “ to give the people something to look-forward to…

I hope they understand though, that in the zeal to create this predefined super-culture, odds are almost certain that they will end up in a red shirt, being sodomized to death by a plasma monster with no one ever really even knowing their names…

(Porkins totally rules, by-the-way)

*And no, I’m not going to go get a life… Until crack is legalized anyway…

My America 2009

2009-05-05T15:44:00.000-07:00

I live in a country where by law and by policy, I can be denied opportunity for no-other reason than the color of my skin...

That is my America in 2009...

I live in a country where people call it "sophisticated" to choose their friends based on their ethnicity...

I live in a country where a woman is asked her opinion and then destroyed in public by men who would have you believe that they are victims of something... Because it wasn’t the answer they wanted to hear from her...

That is my America in 2009...

I live in a country where the difference between an insult and a thought crime is nothing more than the skin pigments of those involved...

That is my America in 2009...

I live in a country where the will of the people is secondary to the opinion of a judge....

I live in a country where entertainers who are paid to lie for a living are believed more than people who fought and suffered for the rights of others....

That is my America in 2009...

I live in a country where people who believe in no god try to forcibly convert those who do through humiliation and intimidation.... Yet hold themselves up as higher beings...

That is my America in 2009...

I live in a country that honestly believes that the Earth changing is something new and disastrous that will be the end of all we know...

I live in a country where 1 out of every 3 children believe that the Earth is going to die in their lifetime because some rich old man convinced their teachers that it was so...

I live in a country where people who earn their own way are given no choice but to give the government 5 months of every year of their lives or go to jail; yet those that never even try get nearly every day free as a bird to want more...

That is my America in 2009...

I live in a country where gay men embrace a leader that hugs tyrants that murder gay men as a matter of philosophy in his country....

That is my America in 2009...

I live in a country where the party of the KKK claims to be the party of unity... Where even today clansmen hold the highest seats...

I live in a country where people who want to clean the "human trash" from society's blood line are held up as visionaries by our leaders...

That is my America in 2009...

I live in a country where raping one color of woman is legally worse than raping another color of woman....

That is my America in 2009...

Why Everyone, Especially Gay and Lesbian, Should Be Against Gay Marriage .

2009-04-27T21:26:00.000-07:00

One of the mantra of Gay / Bi / Lesbian rights movements for the ages I have been an adult has been a cross-issue, simple and bold set of catch phrases: “Keep Your Laws Off Of My Body” was one that was used in tandem use with pro-choice as well as the gay community since the early 1990’s.

Another simple phrase “Keep the Government out of My Bedroom” and myriad variants are still widely used as battle cries of the gay and lesbian “movement”…

The idea behind these statements is simple: The government has neither right nor jurisdiction in my love life… It is simple, effective, and 100% true…

Now I don’t know what kind of people are giving the marching orders these days, but they seem to have a selective memory of what the gay and lesbian arguments that I grew up with ever were… The argument was that the government had no right nor mandate to tell me what was wrong or right in whom I choose to sleep with… It was none of their business…

You know what… you were right… I thought so then, and I think so now…

‘Pity that the gay and lesbian community at large no longer believe it….

Because in this zeal to make your mark on marriage, in this rush to get new laws passed for the sake of feeling good, or whatever it is… you are now, and have been, betraying the very principles for which you should be standing…

You are inviting government at its biggest and most intrusive right into your bedroom…. You’re demanding that government take you under its albatross wing and confine the definitions of your love, of who you are legally allowed to “do” and not “do” to legal definitions in the custody and care of the mighty government…

You are allowing the government to tell you how to love… That is not what I ever believed your movement was all about, yet you are fighting for it, intimidating people for it, and ruining people over it…

Were you the movement I admired at one time, you would reverse course on this issue, because you were right the first time… The problem is NOT that the government doesn’t regulate gay marriage; the problem is that government regulates ANY marriage…

It is the bastardization of a religious bond for purposes of governmental advantage and power that you should be fighting… Marriage in any form is a bond founded in faith, and recognized by the faithful or the not so faithful in a cynical manner… It should never have come to regulation by a government, because it is NOT the mandate of government to tell you how to feel…That is social engineering, not government…

There is a growing belief that gay marriage is merely a tool with which the church will be controlled, that by redefining marriage you are then in a position to revoke churches of their tax free status because their narrow definition of marriage is non-compliant with standards.

If this is so, then the gay and lesbian community is being used as a shoe-horn for another movement’s bidding…. Is that what we want this to all come down to? Even I as an atheist hate that idea in more ways than I can name, but again, it is the manipulation of who an individual chooses to sleep with that becomes a government tool and a regulation forever more…

So if you are truly the movement of choice, if you are indeed a community that believes that love is all we need, if you are anything like the movement I once admired strong enough to shed my blood for, then turn this around…

Take the energy, take the momentum and use it to OPEN the definition of love and commitment to anyone who feels it for each other… Stop trying to push the government into our bedroom, and help to get the bastards OUT of it… You don't need a license to commit to someone, you only need love...

Marriage is a matter between those whom you love, and the faith in which you choose to state that bond forever...

Let love decide who you love...Isn't that what we all want to believe?

The Nature of the Left Wing

2009-04-18T13:59:00.000-07:00

First off:

I spent a good part of my life in the furthest reaches of the left; it was where I spent my days and my nights for more years than I can remember… I reached into the furthest extents of the street activist lifestyle at times and even maintain connections to the extremist ends of these genera of life today…

It is not lightly that I go into some rather overly bold statements of left wing dogma… I do it often knowing that I was part of the very thing that I criticize so heavily… I do it knowing that many people that I love and respect are a part of this movement, and I do knowing full well that it many of the scars I have on my body were born of my defense of the left, and what I believed was the best thing I could do…

I, like a relative handful of people, only saw what it was really about, only realized that what I was serving was wrong when I was forced to think for myself, when I had no choice but to face my own meanings, and my own faults; when I had to face me, when I had to take responsibility for my own actions and my own ultimate fate…

Had I never been put in such a position, I would still be the half grown human that I was then, a person directed by simple ideologies to do anything that the group at large prescribed for me, and accepting that that was what I was about…

There is no room for the individual in the left, only tiers of greatness that all in this pseudo cast system are trying to achieve…

So when I rant about the nature of the left, I do not do it without any experience in it…. I know it intimately, at its lowest, most fundamental levels…

I am a committed atheist; I am pro-choice based on the idea that only evolution of the individual can resolve such matters, no matter how heinous they are… I hold those beliefs very certainly, but I acknowledge that they are my beliefs alone…

So now the actual writing part…

To begin with let me just say: To the left, the truth is irrelevant, it is of no consequence, no god is going to punish you, your conscience is clean about it because your causes are more important, and as long as you never own up to the lie, you will never be held to account for it…period…. This is a well known secret that you don’t say out loud, but that is a part of every committed leftist’s belief system. It is perception that matters, not truth….

This is all a part of the graying of morality, the notion that the “truth” is simply perception, and that since the enemy (yes, enemy) is driven by ‘insane’ notions like a god is watching them, they are justified in any lie that serves the greater good… This is coupled with a seminal belief that in a thousand years, whatever they say now will be meaningless, buried, and forgotten to history…

When you argue with committed left wingers, you are arguing with people to whom simple “truths” do not exist, they are a fantasy, they are “absolutism”, a law that they needn’t comply with, but that people of faith feel they must… Simple truth is sooooo 1950……

All that they have to achieve is to hurt you, to demean you, they don’t have to answer anything at all, they need only to keep questioning, as long as you are questioning everything, you never have to answer anything….

You can hide this process by casting yourself or your ilk as ‘thoughtful’ or ‘complex’ or ‘sophisticated’, you can cover this belligerence up quite easily by implying that “it’s not that simple”, it works for any subject…

The simple truth about abortion for instance, is that every single left winger who has had one, or who is strongly in favor of them knows damn well that it is a horrible thing that they are doing… But they can simply hide it under the guise of ‘complexity’ because the truth about the goal of the abortion issue is that it is a whip…

It is an issue used to condition people to hate others, and even its ardent believers know that down deep but have buried it in so much hatred that they will never in their lives acknowledge the simple truth of the matter; because the real goal isn’t to resolve the debate, it is to defeat the people that they believe are enemies in general…

Bigotry is another issue to which the left live a life of lies. The election of President Obama is the perfect manifestation of bigotry. It is the “soft bigotry” that President Bush alluded to years ago on a massive scale…
During the past election I offered money on five sites for anyone who could offer two-to- three complete paragraphs as to why Barack Obama deserved to be president. The only rules were that his physical appearance and his rival candidate could not be referenced as reasons. Two of these sites were Barack Obama fan sites, two others were general purpose left wing zeal sites, and one was just a random fan site for a Fox News Channel show.

The general left wing sites removed my request within a day, the two sites that were Obama specific had nothing to say except that I was contemptible to offer such a thing, and the one Fox fan site had one taker who never actually wrote a word, but was courteous enough to give me the info to send them the money…

This is because the left has created its biggest direct lie so far in electing our current president that they have to date… They are so viscous now because they are hiding something that they can never admit to, and yet they are constantly afraid that they will be challenged on…

The people that voted Obama into office did not do so because he was smarter, or better, or more experienced, or a better diplomat, or had policies that they agreed with; they did it because he was black and because Scarlett Johansen and Steven Colbert thought he was cool… That was the extent of their reasoning, and they know it… They made a decision based on the color of a man’s skin, and they are so afraid of that becoming obvious that they must fire all of their guns around the clock to try and prevent people from confronting that fact…

Garofalo and the many like her *has* to cast republicans as racists, because they must be discredited before some begin to question just why it is that we have this man in office…Just what made *this* guy the one we had to elect… ? As his façade begins to crumble, and our nation begins to pay the price for not carefully considering our leaders, the left must keep its pretty hate machine in full cycle…

Fox News must be discredited, Tea Parties must become hate rallies, the right must become maniacs, they *must*…. Because otherwise the left may have to own up to the biggest single act of human bigotry ever committed within the confines of the western world… Their racially driven choice for President of the Untied States of America…

They might have to face their own bigoted choices, their own out of control divisions of people into segregated “protected” groups… The fact that it is the left wing that is an entity that cannot exist without racism, that can’t exist in this world without hate, division, victimization, it is their bread and butter, and it will be war before they will give it up…

They would have to face themselves, and when they do that, they may start to think for themselves, and if they think for themselves, the entire left wing movement would crumble….

The More Things Change...

2009-04-11T22:47:00.002-07:00

…The more they stay the same…

...It’s been done to death by all sides and all political zealots, I am sick of it too; compare the leader you don’t like to Hitler… Well I’m doing it again, but bear with me… It is not the Hitler we look back upon to which I am comparing our current leadership ... I don’t think there is any comparison when you look back… For one thing, we know a lot about National Socialism (Nazis) now, that no one, not even the Germans, not even members of the National Socialist movement knew at the time, if they ever knew at all… So we cannot compare what we don’t know now, to what we do know about then, but only now…

Instead my comparison is to the man that was beloved by the Europeans; the man who was Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year”… The man that the social elite here in America embraced as the future of the whole world, the savior of the western world at a time of panic, the architect of the future, the bringer of Utopia with science as his tool… That is the Hitler that came to power, and that is to whom I compare our President Obama and more importantly, his absolute one-party rule, he is nothing without a party that bolsters his every move...

The Hijacking of Science:

The Chancellor of Germany under the National Socialist Workers Party was driven by science and embraced the progressive science of the time, it was called Eugenics, and it was the science of social engineering for the betterment of mankind as a whole. It translated to genetic purification... It was a worldwide movement, embraced by the sophisticated enlightened people of every country. It was the science that would be used to save the world society from destroying itself.

With a mandate to save the world from itself and a whole slew of devout believers in this science in influential places, and the surety that the world was at stake, people sought leaders who would address the problems with zeal. They embraced a leader who was willing to identify and address the problem… That is what they got…

There were many who called the science junk, including one Albert Einstein, but with a compelling twist on this science of the time, it was easy enough to reclassify these deniers as a part of the problem themselves; again, including one Albert Einstein, of course he was not known at the time, just another buzzkill that was interfering with scientific progress, he was a Jew, after all, of course he wouldn’t believe in a science that classified him as pollution in the blood of humanity…

Our leader has invoked Global Warming (“Climate Change”) as a threat to humanity beyond all others; one which we must fight to survive through, and one that we must take the most drastic actions to fight. He plans entire industries be commandeered and retooled to fight the government’s battle to save the planet at all costs. People must be compelled into complying by law if they do not volunteer…

Thousands of reputable scientists have argued that Global Warming is junk science, a political tool, an outright lie, a mutation of legitimate science to serve another purpose; they are dismissed as conservatives or heretics by-and-large.

Removing People Who Are Deemed ‘Liabilities’ from Society:

In Germany it became policy to clean society of liabilities. Defining who the liabilities were was all that was needed to get people on-board. Then they could be systematically purged, saving money for the state…

In several states today, including my own, it is or will soon be a viable legal practice for insurance companies to pay to put people to sleep rather than incur the heavy liabilities of funding their fight to stay alive. Already in America, insurance companies are offering people painless murder with full coverage, but refusing to pay for their fight to live

We are offering them a pleasant death, and then taking away the means to fight dying, meaning that either way, we see them being dead as the best financial choice for the insurance system. Incidentally, President Obama has sought to take ownership of Insurance companies on behalf of the people, and has done so…so now these insurance companies are in fact a part of the state… And thus the state sponsors the extermination of particular human lives as a reasonable method of saving money...

This is happening now....

The Seizure of Financial Institutions:

With post war Germany (WWI, that is) a financial collapse occurred, German currency was worthless, inflation beyond anything one can imagine. The Chancellor of Germany took control of all financial institution on behalf of the people in order to better structure the economic recovery of Germany. It worked and gave the government ultimate control over all of the economic actions within the state.

The ability to direct all financial resources directly from the state gave the state abilities to build any industry,. And infrastructure that they felt they needed without question.

Our government has taken majority ownership of the major financial institutions in our country under the pretext that they could save them. That ownership is permanent. They have been deemed “too big to fail” and heretofore can be directed by the state on ‘behalf of the people’.

Nationalizing the People:

In Germany, you worked for Germany; for the common goal and for a future that would eventually mean peace on Earth and the orderly regulation of mankind. Virtually every citizen of Germany was an employee of the state. It gave German citizens guaranteed jobs, pulled them out of poverty, kept them busy with the goals of the state, and gave them a purpose they could believe in. People went from poverty to building bridges, building machinery, building dams and other power plants, ships, planes, roads, infrastructure…

They were building Germany ‘Version 2.0’ …Building a future, building Utopia… They prospered equally as citizens of the state and they worked to keep the state strong…

A state owned company called Volkswagen was churning out a car called the “Beetle”; it was revolutionary, reliable, efficient, cheap to make, cheap to own; Hitler endorsed it as the people’s car, a symbol of the success of Germany’s industry.
They were content …. The Chancellor was the hero of the working man… Germany prospered like no others, and the complete control of that prosperity was in the hands of the state…

Our current government is spending trillions of dollars that it has to print without any financial backing, just to pay for social programs and creating government jobs on a scale that no republic has ever seen. They intend to supply enough government jobs to give everyone who lost a job or will soon need one a new one with the state.These jobs will be in building bridges, and roads, infrastructure, a new grid, wind farms and other power plants.

They will be hired by the state to build America “Version 2.0” …Building a future, building Utopia… They are told that they will prosper equally and they will be making America stronger…

The state, and the President personally, has taken a controlling position in a company called GM that has been working for years on a car called the “Volt”; It is revolutionary, reliable, efficient, cheap by comparison to make, will be cheap to own… Our government is sponsoring incentives for people to buy them, with our money; a government owned company offering a government approved car, with government provided incentives.

Nationalizing the Youth:

This should say it all …

The Search for Utopia:

It’s was the goal of Germany, it was the plan of Hitler, a non-smoking left-wing, vegetarian artist who felt that the powers that be and their greed was not the way to create a human paradise… They had a plan, they had the infrastructure, and they had entire models of the new paradise, of “Earth Version 2.0”.

They acquired the money to do it by controlling the financial sector; they acquired the machinery to create it by making the German worker work for the state, and by becoming the ultimate owners of the German industrial sector…

The National Socialist Workers Party of twentieth century Germany were heralded as the one government in the world that was willing to pay the price to create a better future… They had the envy of the world; Adolf Hitler was the most admired leader that walked the Earth, his charisma, his vision, his will… All over the world movies were made about him, magazine covers littered with flattering images of him, women adored him, the social elites and the pseudo-intellectuals adored him. To this very day they describe the euphoria that he inspired in the German people…

He was the one they were waiting for….

We are nowhere even close to being the first society to go all-out in a search for Utopia, for perfection in the world… We are but one among a history cluttered with them…

The one common element you will find in those societies that searched for a perfect society without regard for some simple realities such as the will of free minded people is that they all ended up being raped and slaughtered in the streets by those who they considered to be “lesser people”; they were frequently all but erased from the history of mankind altogether leaving no progress, no Utopia, not even a significant advance in the search let alone much more than a grease spot on the highway of humanity…

“…The search for perfection is all very well… but to look for heaven, is to live here in hell…”
-Sting (when he was a bit more sane...)

Goldfrapp - Utopia:

...Despite all of this, it is not that I think we are Nazi Germany, nor that I think Obama is Hitler...It is that we are putting the same societal machinery in place, and there is only way that it will be used once it is... Once you have the zeal, the junk science, the machinery, and the idea, and the means to spread the ideas in-place, you are almost there, but you are not the perfect society just yet...

...In order to be that, once all the structural obstacles are overcome, you are left with one last problem that must always be dealt with....

...the people that didn't want your Utopia, and the people who don't fit into your Utopian design...

...What you do with them will decide what you yourself are as a society, and what your fate will likely be... and thus far, it does not not look good for us...

The Old Man and the Chair

2008-11-30T19:23:00.000-08:00

It’s almost ubiquitous in every city and every country on every continent around this entire world. You have one in your life, perhaps you don’t even realize it, but you do… Perhaps you are it, but I doubt it, because if you are chances are you don’t have the patience or desire to read the rantings of some ‘blogger’ online…

But perhaps you are, and if so, this is my tip-of-the-hat to you, whether you want it or not, and you probably don’t… To the rest, you have this man in your life… He’s a lump, just sitting there, maybe watching television, maybe doing something else distracting, consuming, just diverting himself from the day-to-day things that you hold dear…

You have probably come to avoid him a bit, wrote him off as grumpy, or disinterested, bitter or uncaring. You have probably ceased to include him in ‘the loop’ on family and social dramas in life, you probably just assume you know what he’ll say, you probably assume that it will not be helpful… Whatever you think you know about this man, you are incorrect…

I am not suggesting that you are incorrect, I am *telling* you that you are incorrect…

If you choose to ignore that bit, then there is no point in reading any more of this, you are already closed-off to it, and it will do no good… That person, that curmudgeon, that mean old grump; he feels every single thing you do. The pain that you refuse to bear, the feelings that you share freely; the loneliness that you believe is yours alone; the insecurities that hold you down; the desperations that you wonder if you’ll live through; the desire for it to all just end…

Every-single thing that you hold as your most formative human emotion is also felt by that grumpy old couch potato… Again, if you doubt this, then don’t bother going on, you have opted to blind yourself and there’s no point in trying to communicate with the willfully blind and deaf…

It’s one of the common secrets that all men of sincerity come-to-know about each other; It is the unspoken communication of men who are not salesmen or actors, but who really feel, and who really think… from poets to presidents… from warriors to furriers… Not men of vanity or opportunism, but men of dignity and men of tolerance… It is an unwavering truth that men do not discuss, even amongst themselves, even though it is the very sacrifice of one’s life that is the context of this language. It may seem an unpleasant manifestation, and you may not understand, nor may this statement compel you to give more of a rat’s-ass than you already do…

Men of this type watch the other men of this type go down all of their lives; watch them give-up, watch them die… and rarely is a word said that addresses the true nature of the man’s life or the reality of his demise; It is too ugly, too depressing, too bleak to address the simple truth of the old man in the chair, why he is there, and how it will undoubtedly end…

So you want to know what is going on in that head. In that seemingly utterly inactive and sloth-ridden mind of his, do you?

He is afraid, afraid of a million things… He fears that his life is less-than-nothing… He wonders what you haven’t told him, what your mother and sister know that he does not… He wonders why it must be that he must relinquish control of his days in the home he is supposed to be at peace in to the wants and needs of others whom had no hand in creating this sanctuary (as it where)… He wonders if he is just something that must be dealt with until his passing, where those around him will fight over the wealth he has left behind… He wonders this because he has seen it happen over and over again, and he has no reason to really believe it is any different here…

He wonders why it is that he is expected to go out to a cold garage to try and get some alone time where he can concentrate, but the others never have to leave the comfort of a warm home to pursue their interests… He is wondering why, if you love him, you will not understand that he is unable to get his head cleared enough to be the human being he wants to be… He wonders what the difference between love and love of a good provider is… He thinks that he could be any man that pays the bills; inside he knows he is right about that, and it hurts him, every moment, it hurts him badly… He wishes it could all get past these daily control issues, so that he and you, or they, could be what he always wanted it to be, he knows it never will… That can make a man grumpy...

He wishes his opinion about life and philosophy mattered more to you, but he knows it doesn’t… He wonders what the battle is, but he knows that the battle is just getting through this…

He quietly understands that there is no pot of gold at the end of this journey, but that there is only death, and the feelings that will be his last on this earth, and a part of him quietly longs for it…

I was lucky enough to get a brief taste of the life of the common man before my father lost his life… I watched him battle for years, never for himself, he was done already, he was finished with it all, but he fought for those around him, he fought to live for others, just to be there and to do what he could for them… He did this without a thought for himself, a circumstance that might make one grumpy at times...

On a cold Christmas Eve I was given the greatest gift I have ever received in my life… I was given a few minutes with my doped-up, and dying father in a hospital room at the end of his battle… I got the chance to tell him that I knew… I got to tell him that I finally got a taste of what he had been sitting there lifeless in that chair over…I got a few minutes while he lay there to tell him that I finally understood why… I got to tell him that now I knew and that my life would go-on knowing this all… More than anything else, I got a chance to tell him that which he needed to hear, that he longed to hear, that no-one that claimed to care for him would tell him; leaving the job to his youngest, and only son… I told him that I was just starting my life, and that I wanted him to be there for it… I told him it finally made sense to me, and I needed him…

But I also told him that I knew he had to go, that I knew that he was done and that he was there still fighting every minute for years and years now simply because no one had given him permission to die… And so I to this old grump, to this miserable man, this old man in the chair, this one true hero of my personal life… I granted permission to die…

And the next day, after years of battle, he died…

I was given a gift though, I was able to give him that, and was able to tell him why, and to tell him that it was okay now…

Most don’t get that chance in life, and most will simply write-off the grumpy man in the chair, many of you will quietly be thankful when he is gone… When you do so, you do a disservice to humanity though, by not looking beyond your own nose into the soul of a person who is quietly letting go of their lives for you…

That is the truest beauty and tragedy of the life of man…

Learning What Mean Is

2008-11-24T12:57:00.000-08:00

…Suburban Oak Ridge, Tennessee in 1976. Now this might conjure-up images and feelings like some scenes from ‘Deliverance’ or might paint imagery of a life revolving around Pontiac Firebirds and Lynard Skynard music, but I see it, and remember it, as a comforting, relaxed, and esoteric place and, for me at least it seemed like a small English town in a lot of ways, I wish I could explain better why, but the layout and the town itself just lent that impression to me, hard to conclude why a child gets an impression like that…

It was a place where the last vestige of the classical North American life that so many insist is all but lost was still in-full-swing… You could still walk the city streets window shopping for Christmas presents and you could trust virtually anyone in common social situations. It is only in retrospect as a cynical adult that I even consider the racial politics of the time, only looking back through a now jaded lens do I think it could have been a redneck haven of ‘Middle America’… It was nothing of the sort at the time, and if my mind were not biased by a judgmental and manipulative society, I would insist that it probably is nothing-of-the-sort today… At the time, for me, it was a place of good conscience, and a place of good people with likewise motivations; as good as anywhere in this world.

I remember the Fireflies, by the millions, filling the twilight sky with clouds of patchy yellow/green light that I have not seen since, and doubt that I ever will. I remember our rented house on the edge of the woods, the last in a row of a standard era suburban residential, but grander than the others, a sort of colonial white thing in my memories, though one wonders if it would be so grand to me today; As a boy of five years, it was only missing Scarlett O’Hara.

The forest provided my young life with more of this amusement than I could possibly remember in its entirety. I remember the groups of rabbits, so many of them, but they only came out in the very early morning, when no one was awake, and you had to silently make your way to a back window or the corner of the house to see them busily foraging about the yard. One brief noise and they were gone in a near instant, and would not be returning for at least a day.

I recall the variety, they looked nothing like the groups of similar wild rabbits that are commonplace in many parts of the world; these were of every color and variety I could think of, but they were all together… Brown, white, black, calico, all sorts of colors and patterns… I remember my favorite; all black but for a short white cotton ball for a tail. I can close my eyes and still see it among it’s friends, looking as if it had just jumped out of the pages of a children’s’ book. As a child who knew no better I recall wishing I could capture it, as if it would have made some great and loyal pet…

Just such a fate briefly befell one Boxing Turtle that strayed out of the woods into our backyard. I named him “Rocky” (a popular figure from a current movie of the time) as he was a boxing turtle after all, and mom said I could keep him. Naturally elated, I proceeded to try and make him the best home I could, which obviously involved blankets and pillows and bowls of nice clean water. All this, while hardly natural I suppose, was a dream come-true for any living creature though, I mean who doesn’t want blankets and pillows and sparkling clean water? Alas Rocky began ailing and just wasn’t the turtle I had once met anymore, so he had to go back to the woods, I morosely wished him goodbye and prayed for him to make a full recovery from the paradise I had imposed upon him, as he sauntered back to the woods from whence he came, I’m just sure he was saying “Thank you …thank you… thank you!” all-the-way (and not addressing the statements to me)…

Those woods were a source of wonder for me; human reality has a way of destroying those illusions though, turning a land of wonder into a hazard or even an eye sore, or a source of frustration and even fear.

I think her name was Tracy, and as well as I can remember she lived in the home behind ours leaving our backyards conjoined and our meetings with her frequent… I was a boy of five; I would guess she was around 10 or so. I grew up moving from place-to-place with my father’s work, he was usually off travelling somewhere for government business of which I had little clue at the time. My mother and my three older sisters were my family, leaving a lone boy and youngest child very much to himself in every-day matters; I don’t think I spent more than thirty seconds in a bathroom until I was twenty-one.

Tracy was a slender, black, pony-tailed girl of my older sisters’ age range. Normal in every way as near as I could figure, but by all accounts rather mean… I suspect she was spoiled, and carried a sizable chip on her shoulder, as I don’t recall a time playing in our yard with my sisters that she didn’t share angry words with them… Somehow a part of me liked her though… Perhaps simply misguided trust from relying so much on my own sisters, I may simply have found it hard not to trust girls older than myself, as I had always sort of blindly trusted my sisters too…

I was alone, in fact that was what I can best be described as throughout my entire childhood life… Mom had three daughters to attend to, and had my parents’ not wanted to have a son, I doubt she’d have ever wanted the four kids she had, The first two were the ones she wanted, the other two were just a symbol of what she felt she had to do, I think, and I think we both knew that most of our lives. So I was let out of the pen to my own devices frequently when Mom was wanting ‘a break’, and that is how I must be today… In charge of the pen, or out of the pen, or I go nuts. Though it is a liberating feeling most of the time, it leaves one exposed and vulnerable to others…

Tracy was just standing out there in the yard, not looking intimidating as far as I can recall, she was just there… Mom let me out and the sisters were away at school, and so it was just she and I really, just going about our own business…

I recall her asking me to follow her, I cannot remember her giving me any incentive to do so, but I think she did, or that her demeanor simply seemed so playful that I assumed that there was fun to be had. She wasn’t mean, and wasn’t in her usual rather angry state it seemed… I guess I took it as a peace offering, as I said, I was a bit blindly trusting of my sisters and tended to transfer that trust to those who reminded me of my sisters.

…And so I followed, and we ran, and it seemed exciting to me, running through the thick Tennessee woods that had been such a source of wonder for me with a newly found friend, what could be better than that? We ran and ran and ran through the dense and barely discernible trails and eventually just off into the forest far from any trails at all. I can tell you I was happy, I felt that this mean and bratty girl who seemed so hostile to our family, now seemed pleasant, befriending, and fun-loving and had let me be a part of it, I remember this feeling very clearly as we ran through undergrowth beyond and places I had ever been before, just happily following and happy to be there, and convinced that we were all wrong about her, that her mean mask had dropped and the kind and fun-loving true self had emerged.

We continued to a large boulder, deep into the woods and downhill considerably. It was a pretty area to me, nothing I had seen before here, and so dense that there were no trails and no visible ways out that even hinted at a direction back… We stopped…

I remember taking-in the whole scene, so beautiful and green and filled with obstacles and cubby holes and just lush greenness everywhere. I was pleased with the chosen location; my exploration needs were fully satisfied. The large rock caught my attention as it rose from the forest floor and so I approached it carefully. So impressed and intrigued was I with it, and what secrets it might have, that I barely noticed Tracy start slowly walking the opposite direction from my back then dart away at full speed once I had strayed a little bit from her side.

It was only at this moment that I realized what was happening, though five years old, the scene was apparent to me, the intent quite clear and obvious, perhaps I knew because of all the somewhat mean pranks my siblings had played on me, as siblings do, though not in a situation like this. And she was gone from all view so fast that there was absolutely no way of catching up with her or even just extrapolating the path in which she left, maybe just a rough direction, maybe indeed, but I hadn’t memorized the path down, as few people following someone at speed really do…

I strained and tried to understand what had just happened… A mild disbelief for a moment or two, then a resignation to my situation…

…Why?

The thing about children left alone is, we don’t quite understand our limits like many others do… I’m not saying we are anything better, or superior, or even calmer, just that we don’t quite ‘get’ how something is as hard as others will tell you it is… This has been a point of frustration in my life, but it has also been a tremendous asset at times, even if I don’t acknowledge it when it is…

So I understand what happened, and have what I assume to be fair assumptions about why, but there I still am, and this person who I briefly chose to trust has tried do something that she must have understood could have easily been the death of me, most of us understand the implications of tricking a 5 year-old child into going into the deep woods then abandoning them there, so I doubt the picture needs any more painting…

But I don’t think she realized that I was a child often left to his own devices, and that if I had the sense to panic and be lost, as any well trained five-year-old might, I might well have just been a lost little boy who never showed up again as it would seem she wished… And so, though distraught, I picked my best guess at the way home, and damn the trails, I just made my own…

Several cuts and bruises later I came out of the forest very near the edge of my home, just in time to see her cleaning the twigs and brush and dirt from her clothes about fifty feet to my right and nonchalantly head towards her house.

She must have heard the rustling and looked back to me, I recall she said “How did you get back so fast?” but I don’t remember my reply, or if I even had one….

I don’t think I even told my mother about the event though I did tell her about it some years later… I think that I feared that I had done something wrong, well stupid anyway, and that I would face consequences that I’d rather avoid…

I never really considered the actual gravity what she tried to do to me that day, though I think the effect has been a permanent one for me, and I hope for her as well… She was a child of some derangement and I guess I pity that more than anything else… There are people in this world, for which trust is something to exploit from a very early age, I am thankful every day of my life that that is not me…

…So what was my point in all of this?

…Well, that is up to you, I suppose

Should The Left Thank George W. Bush For Doing What They Wouldn't?

2008-11-08T17:13:00.000-08:00

I think back a mere fifteen years, when the left had the world given to them on a silver platter and were given the “full-ahead” signal for “change”, we all did it, whether we want to argue that now or not…

What with the longest conflict of the modern world, “The Cold War” all but over, dozens of new countries clambering for freedom and “The Wall” fallen at the feet of those who lived for generations within its confines, we all exhaled in the largest sigh of relief that the earth has ever known, which I suspect was the largest single deposit of carbon monoxide ever expelled into the atmosphere by mankind…

So the left, the center, and even the right (without really saying out loud), looked at the left and said “You wanted Utopia guys, this is the best chance we’ve had in a long time… go for it”, and we gave them the keys…

We let the presidency go to a man who was different, inexperienced, cool even, by presidential standards anyway, we handed the UN our collective American Express card, we kept the purse strings in the hands of conservatives, but we also knew that now was the time of advancement, progress, and they too were eager to dish out the “change”…

We decided to move forward with making ideological idols of the eighties into political figures for the nineties, the Jesse Jacksons assumed the role of demigod, Nelson Mandela assumed the role of president of the land that once oppressed him, and we filled the whole of the political offices of this land with aging idealists with an axe to grind. Because it seemed like a good time to let them grind a bit…

We commissioned rule books with which we would re-determine how you hired a person, or who you gave a contract to, we spent billions writing rule books about who you can call what, and we adjusted the role of the courts of the land to enforce those ideals rather than the ones written two-hundred years ago by “lesser people”…

We relished in entertainment, fawning over the evils of government even while we allowed passage of some of the worst legislation ever to pass anywhere in the free world, The Federal Telecommunications Act, or as I like to call it: “The currency with which the democratic party officially bought Hollywood”, an act so horrible that its own writers tried and failed to get its enactment stopped years later.

We all felt it was so okay, the future was here, the PC and the internet were turning us all into the stuff of our own futuristic dreams, the walls were gone, the microchip economy was never going to stop, though totally based on speculation, we decided that because this was such a ‘brave new world’ that the same rules that applied to America of the 1920’s didn’t apply now…

We ditched all those micro-cars from the eighties, because in LA, those forward-thinking purveyors of all-things ethical were driving these “SUV’s” that were super-comfy and would save our precious medicated children in the event of a head-on collision with a Sherman Tank…

This was what the 'progressive vision' was when the rubber-met-the-road, when they were given carte blanch, this was it… And we all jumped right into it, save for Ed Begley, whose career went into the toilet at the same time coincidentally… We would live like a United Colors of Benetton ad in an asexual dreamland where we were all alternative hackers and millionaires with a conscience… We would bow beneath the flag of earth and we would teach the savages to respect and love us, and trade-in their AK-47’s for Nerf guns and pillows…

So when we gave the dreamers the keys to the mansion what we discovered is that once all the preaching was done and we needed action, they didn’t have a clue… Corporations doctored their numbers creating untold “paper wealth’ while they lived like Nero, sans the harp skills. Mayors were getting caught smoking crack with whores a couple blocks from the Whitehouse while in that very Oval Office the most powerful man in the world was chubby-chasing at press conferences, making deals that sold the very soul of America to the Chinese, getting blown under his desk and wanking over sinks during state dinners...

We learned that it was more important to drive tanks through Christian zealot’s living rooms than it was to send a single tank to save half a million people in those countries no one in Hollywood cared to sponsor… In some ways, “paper tiger” was an overestimation… We decided that suing was god, and the lawyer, it’s prophet. We sued everything, and always for money, never for “change”…

Al Gore himself sat piously and watched his wife mandate stickers and TV ratings while the environments that he helped strip mine seemed like less of a problem than Twisted Sister’s song lyrics…

Bush clearly intended to be a reinvention of “The Educational President”; in fact if you try really hard to think back through all the events since, you will probably remember that… He was going to shrink the military (Rumsfeld’s job) since the need was less, and most of his plans were related to educational reform like the fellow Texan LBJ before him as Bush had done while Governor of Texas… He was also actually a very good compromiser, and if you took any part in the *original* stem cell debate (before Hollywood got it’s utterly corkyesque hands on it), you’d probably agree…

So I don’t need to tell you all what happened; our financial centers and military centers were attacked by Islamic zealots in a way so horrible that not even many of the people who were there believe it happened some can’t accept it seven years later, biological terror unleashed, random snipers taking out shoppers every night, wars waged, speculative economies collapsing, corporations lying to stock holders, epic hurricanes, monumental tsunami’s, almost like every bad long predicted event was hitting us at the same time, that was his first few years.

...That we made it through intact was really surprising; just ask Archduke Ferdinand’s ghost how much less can destroy entire nations, forever…

Only in the wake of all that misery, in the wake of massive tsunamis both figurative, social, and literal this president manages to be the most hounded one in the history of the presidency, yet where are we now, and I mean where are we really, not according to your mood this morning?

This president who has been treaded on in the worst ways possible by the left has overseen the real-life invocation of more of the left-wing’s most hallowed desires than any president that promised them has ever done in the history of the nation.

LED lights have become common place, televisions and monitors have become exponentially more efficient than those of only a decade ago, fuel consumption by the US has remained the same level as it was a decade ago even before the oil crisis, after an unhindered escalation throughout the twentieth century, Cadillac Escalades and Ford Explorers are starting to pop-up on used car lots for 100.00 bucks a pop while GM retools its entire industry juggernaut for the first full paradigm shift in auto making since the Model T was mass-produced…

The incandescent bulb is being phased-out; the nuclear spine of this nation is finally being reconsidered after 30 years of ignorance. Wind farms actually exists, transparent solar panels are being used that can replace the siding on a skyscraper. Cars that emit water instead of exhaust are actually here, and not just in Johnny Quest cartoons. The hybrid car is everywhere, in fact a little inefficient for our current tastes; water desalinization of sea water is here, plants that do this 24/7 can be built now, offering hope for even the worst of drought stricken area a possible future. There is a profitable recycling empire in the country...

On and on this list could go…

All of this before the oil crunch, all of this before the democrats took over two-thirds of the government, and our economy mysteriously became unstable, all of this before any sane person even knows if Global Warming™ is anything but massive silliness a’la “Y2K” and Heaven’s Gate…

Yes the left wing is a strange beast, give them control to do their best, and they preside over the institutionalized violation of their own ethics on a scale that will not be fully accounted for decades from now…

…But put a swaggering, religious, right-wing, Texan cowboy in office at a time of near disaster for a teetering democracy, and he presides over the biggest environmental revolution of the modern age, and most certainly of those activists’ lifetimes, making many of the left’s wet dreams come to life…

Go figure….

Homework

2008-10-07T23:39:00.001-07:00

Isn’t it odd how we just accept things without any real questioning? Remember the promise of cable / subscription television, and its entire reason for being? It was commercial free television…That was why you paid for it, to cover the money that would otherwise be made by advertising. Yet now it runs more commercials than the old airwaves way, and yet charges more for you to get it than ever. Strange that so few ever question this…

...In this same vein is homework. It’s become such an institution that no one seems to be able to imagine life without it. Yet the whole reason for ever going to school in the first place was so that children could *learn* there. Indeed it is the most expensive system in the history of the world with the single-purpose of being a place to learn. That’s why we made the school system, and that is the idea behind a classroom and “instructors”.

When school was OVER, you went to your life, that’s why school has an END time and you leave. Homework was never meant to be, and is an unhealthy encroachment into kids already crazy lives. Do any students even do work at the trillions of dollars worth of institutions created for that sole purpose? Or do they simply listen to unchecked ‘lectures’ and watch PBS TV programs or participate in debates based on opinions (which are not the realm of schools)? Who said it was okay for schools to take over your nights as well? That was not supposed to be, yet no one seems to argue it seriously.

I personally don’t even think schools are worth much these days, but I also don’t claim to be right about that. All I really have to do is look at an average “school” kid versus an average “home-schooled” kid and it becomes so ridiculously clear what a miserable failure they (public schools) are….

I feel they aren’t really even schools anymore; they are simply a way to ditch your kids... Expensive daycare, justified by self-righteous people who don’t *really* give a fuck-diddly-do-da what their kids are going through or learning (though they may want to think or look like they do). And homework was blindly accepted because it was a way of further disowning responsibility for them when they are home.

I chose not to have kids (so far at any rate), one of the biggest reasons was I would *never* want to subject another human to a system like our schools. But that’s my personal choice, based on what I went through and what I’ve seen since. The attitude that so many teachers have (and are proud of) is that they are “forming young minds”. Does anyone but me find this more than a little scary?

They were never hired to “form minds”, no one wanted them to dictate the thoughts of our kids; we wanted them to TEACH our kids. 2 + 10, France is in Europe, World War II, and such….. No one wants them to tell them what to think or believe, at least no one who’s sane and respects their kids…. But that is what we have now, and again “homework” is doled out by teachers who are too busy “forming” our kid’s thoughts to TEACH them stuff, so they are told to go do it themselves, when they are supposed to be working on other aspects of their lives.

Yeah I’m ranting and yeah I know there is good and bad about it. But for all the ‘gray’ we have created we have to have black and white to get there. So no matter what our social justifications are, the fact is our kids are under enough pressure and fire about school, as messed up as that is...

...Do we have to force them into dragging it home with them every night of their childhood as well?

Of Sex and Stuffed Hash Browns (Alternate Title: Make War, Not Love... Please...)

2008-10-07T23:32:00.000-07:00

Adult themes... Not that bad, but now you're warned....

I’m so sick of sex I could vomit…. I don’t want to be, but come-on already…

No not personally, as I am quite fond of it for myself, but I’m sick of everyone else’s and their insistence that everyone should give a crap about it… I flirt, it’s fun and it amuses me, I will until I'm dead because like Smurfs, I like fun-stuff, but that’s for fun kids... The sexuality-obsessed however seem to usually use it as a replacement for wit, or cleverness, and even more so as some sort of ‘declaration of non-lameness’, unwittingly making themselves infinitely more lame in-the-process…

There was a quote I’ve loved since I was a kid from “Sid and Nancy” (a movie about stuff and junk): “Sex is boring ugly hippie shit” so very true in a way, I mean it’s exciting for the people (or person, or sheep in my case) *when their doing it sure, but really, when even an attractive girl tells me about her sex life in detail, though I may act like it’s great, I really cannot help but wonder why it is I’m supposed to care… In fact I’m actually wondering how incredibly dull a person must be that in a world filled with trillions of subjects and unlimited possibility, they cannot get beyond a subject for which there really is nothing new to say since Caligula’s reign ended…

Indeed let me break this to you: sex is not edgy, it is not ‘verbotten’ it is not ‘taboo’, it’s not ‘forbidden fruit’… It’s what monkeys and Abe Vigoda do to kill a few minutes when their hormones kick-in… This is why it’s only a fun subject when you throw in a gerbil or a dolphin, or The Elephant Man’s skeleton; because even at its hottest, even at its wackiest, even at it most adventurous and wild, it’s boring and it’s simple, and only interesting in the most... uninteresting of ways…

I tell you this because you need to know, because everyone puts-up the front that it’s great, when actually thinking “wow… I’m really supposed to *actually* care ....aren’t I?”

With ‘MILF’s and ‘Cougars’ being a hot new trend (new as in about ten years now), it has in fact reached a new level of yawn… I work with several of these people, and socialize with them as well, what is sadder than what they are in-general is that they think they are 'youngified’ by turning whoreish at forty-five years old… They think they have opened their minds, they think they have reached some new level of open-mindedness when in-fact all they’ve really managed to do is make sex a little more gross for the rest of us…Even the sexy ones, who are usually a lot more sexy before they “reawakened”, when they were more interested in other things,

...because when they were like that they were more interesting, and interesting my friends, is sexy as all-hell…

You have a limited window in life in which you can establish a genuine credibility as a rebel and/or 'naughty'. If you had a kid at fifteen, then another at eighteen, raised them to their teens, and then decided to go back and pickup where you left off, then:

1.) You are not alone, in fact you’re a drop in the chum bucket

2.) You cannot do it ...no matter what you might *think* you have done…

Accepting this will in-fact make you sexier as you can work with what you *do* have, rather than what you think you have… Age can be sexy, age is kinda sexy to me....but denial of age is NEVER sexy...

...Now you can say I’m ‘not a man’... you can say ‘I’m crazy’ ....you can say ‘you’ve done one too many lines, and that goat has been dead for fifteen minutes’... god knows you wouldn't be the first... But right now their is a little stirring in your belly that is either that Spam and Peanut Butter sandwhich coming back to haunt you, or is that little part of you that knows I am telling the truth...

Viagra and, as the always insightful Dennis Miller calls them, ‘boner pills’ have taken what little was left of cool in sex and beat it silly, yes I guess there was a pun there, sorry… Now what we have is a bunch of women who were supposed to be getting old like good grandmothers out prowling for young men to score with that they should be baking cookies for, and those young men able to simply pop a “Love Tic-Tac” as I call them, and get a woody whether he actually thinks the ‘sexy senior’ is good looking or attractive in any way or not…

In this the once thrilling act of random sexual intercourse gets converted into an affront to evolution, a Freudian nightrmare whos meaning doesn't much transcend the act of a woman trying to be unattainably young, and a boy who is, in the recesses of his mind, simply trying to please his mommy...

And though it may feel good for them for one –to-ten minutes of heaven, it does nothing at all for me to hear about it over my stuffed hash browns and eggs after a night of frolic… In fact, if I think about it for a moment, and god-forbid, picture it, they will become *your* stuffed hash browns and eggs, if you know what I mean…

Iraq: My Two Cents (and some Canadian coins I've been trying to get rid of)

2008-10-07T23:30:00.000-07:00

...Some theory here, some fact, and some feelings… all is a bit unrefined...I would ask that either you read-it-through, or just not bother at all, I'm not going to dignify Wikipedia defenses, or HuffPo article references with an answer (well, a nice or polite one anyway) =D

What Exactly is it That You Hate About Iraq?

I’ll start this by saying that I do not share the popular view that it is a badly run war or that it is / was a mistake… What is the example of a well-run war that wasn’t done to conquer? I believe it is a noble and necessary fight that we are fighting because someone had to, and historically we are usually that somebody (which I for one am proud to say)….
So here are some thoughts, some we could argue until morning (they are obviously loose theory I think), and some that you could not convince me of without getting me high, drunk, and laid by Wonder Woman first…

Is it that there were no WMD’s?

Well according to the Geneva Convention mustard gas is a WMD (which was an inspiration for the term in the first place), just not the ones you were hoping for. They have collected hundreds of mustard gas shells so far and exhumed bodies of countless whole families who had been gassed in Iraq over the years… To hell with why they were there, or attempted equivocations, the fact is that they were there…

But of course you want juicy nukes and plagues; they are way sexier than silly old gasses and chances are you'll allow yourself to redefine WMD's to suit this desire... Not much anyone can do about that if you want to...

During the weeks leading up to the actual invasion there were numerous reports of large amounts of suspicious equipment being rushed over the border to Syria (which was Iraq’s Baath ‘sister state’, and in fact many in that region felt were the same country, as it was the west that divided them up in-the-first-place). Do you not find it a bit odd that Syria then mysteriously comes up with a nuclear weapons program that was almost entirely unknown until Israel bombed it? Are you excluding even the possibility there? ...Why so?

So far as biological weapons (because mustard gas may not be 'biological' enough for you); we had a nationwide anthrax killing spree in our country directly following 9/11; A structured, wide-spread attack...

Seven years later with all the track-able evidence in the world, we cannot find the actual source of that anthrax in the United States with unlimited resources. It could be produced and maintained 2 miles from the police station and we wouldn’t have found it, so how can any human being honestly say there was none in Iraq? It could be in a shoe in a closet in Baghdad fifty feet from the ‘green zone’ right now, and no one would know it…

I'm not saying that they were there, I am however saying you've got to be skewed against reality to insist that they were never there... And frankly I think Mossad, British intelligence, the former KGB, and almost every intelligence apparatus in the world are a bit more knowledgable than 'Code Pink', that even our own government now says otherwise is a political appeasment, because in the end, with the same intelligence, we'd be right to do it again, and idiots not to...

Is it that it’s an Endless War™ or an ‘Occupation’?

2003 – 2008 is less time than we spent enforcing the 'No Fly Zone' in the 1990’s UN centered operations, yet in 2003 it was already being labeled a ‘quagmire’ by John Kerry after only a few weeks. In fact before the fall of Baghdad occured...

I hear that ‘it’s taken longer than WWII' used as an example. Well, That’s because everyone leveled entire cities and A-Bombed places without regard for the people in WWII; we did it because we had virtually no choice at the time, now we do, should we do that in Iraq as well to speed-it-up? Is that what you want, just level the place indiscriminately so we don't have to be there too long? …Really? Have you considered the amounts of dead innocents in something like that?

Since we are mentioning WWII; how about those occupations? You think four years is a long occupation? How about our still active occupations of Germany, Italy, Korea and Japan to name a few? Occupations have helped the chaos like the post World War I world from happening again; they are nations choosing to help other nations to a place where they can stand on their own without becoming the wreck that post WWI Germany was, and without taking them over. Hitler’s rise to power was born in a post war country with no hope that had been punished into oblivion by its neighbors; had we occupied it, it probably would not have happened, we don’t want that again do we?

Is it the 4000 dead US soldiers?

In Vietnam 10 years of war yielded 50 – 60,000 U.S. dead. It is horrendous, and horrible by any standard. 5,000+ dead American’s a year if you average it out. Good people, liberators, kids with little choice, who went in and paid horribly for the belief that freeing people from tyranny is a noble cause, the noblest cause in fact.

When this horror became too much to handle for a certain loud cross-section of our country, and the price deemed too steep, we simply up-and-left. We were overwhelmed with political permutations of peace and love instead of war, so we just left…

Three million poets, doctors, writers, philosophers, artists, scientists, teachers, musicians, lawyers, activists, dreamers, lovers, children, and mothers were slaughtered for being the wrong kind of people when our influence and strength and sacrifice left that area… three million lives were snuffed out in an unimaginable river of blood to satisfy people to whom the major complaint was a lack of peace in a war in which the US never lost a single major battle…

If you are telling me that three million dead innocent people don’t count because they weren’t us, then I don’t know what to tell you about your view on the value of human life…

I work frequently with the military, I have seen the effects and tragedies from Iraq, and yet cannot fathom the loss of those 4000+ families, and friends, and lovers. I don’t pretend to know how badly that hurts; I’d be a fool to attempt it…

America’s military has the unique distinction of being the only major military ever that has spent almost all of its fighting ability, history, and capacity to liberate others at times when it was doing just fine for itself.

Not to expand its empire, not to rape, plunder, and pillage, not to oppress classes of people, not for money… We liberate, and that is what makes our pride in our military different than anything that has ever come before it in the entire history of the human being…

In Iraq twenty-five million people were oppressed in tyranny, treated as cattle, and property of a state to be disposed of in whatever fitting way that a handful of madmen chose.

Those 4000 people died in the name of the single best hope there has ever been on Earth for a free humanity, they have done more for civil rights, women’s rights, religious freedom, and the general progress of mankind than you have or I have, or likely ever will… Many did so before they were old enough to drink a beer legally...

Twenty five million people trying to figure for the first time out just what the hell “free” is… That is beautiful beyond words…

As a captain in the US Navy told me only a few days ago: “No one hates war more than a soldier…” I believe it…If you don't then maybe it's time for you to think about it, or better yet, enlist...

You can say it’s about oil, but you’re wrong, and it's provable, you can say it’s revenge, and you are wrong again, and you know it...

You can say that it is needless and not worth it, and I would say to you that unless you misunderstand what humanity is, twenty-five million poets, writers, actors, scientists, musicians, teachers, farmers, ditch diggers, cooks, truck drivers, nurses, and ‘undecideds’ is *always* worth it…

Always...

It's my opinion, take it or leave it...

A Personal Message to the 'Eugenics Club'

2008-10-07T23:29:00.000-07:00

Okay, I’ll keep this short…

I was born in late 1970, and as long as I have been alive, through the 80’s and the 90’s and beyond, we have been predicting that the ‘Baby-Boomers’ were going to live longer than any generation, and were going to be older in larger numbers than any generation of human-beings before…

We have been predicting since my childhood that this was going to bankrupt Social Security, Medicare would break, social programs would become unfeasible, and that health care would be strained to it’s very limits, and would expand exponentially…

This has been known as long as I have been alive on this earth…

So please…PLEASE shut-the-hell up about how fat people, smokers, and meat eaters are driving-up health care… You're naive and you're driven by social superiority, we get it...They are doing no such thing, and you are an idiot if you honestly believe that because some attractive eugenicist says it on television or NPR…

Yes, you are an idiot, a complete idiot, period… I'm sorry but it's true...

People wanting to live forever, that is what the damned problem is… We’ve known this for generations, but can’t just say that because we all secretly know that living forever is the goal for any living thing from dung-beetles, to you and me…

So if you are such a bent and accusatory type of person that has such a problem understanding fundamental things without finding a group to hate and point your crooked fingers at, take a long breath, and do the only honorable thing a person of your caliber can do…

Just like Himmler eventually did…

…There, I can sleep now…

After I go get a Quarter Pounder and some Marlboros....

=D

A Salute to the 'Whopper-Floppers' of the World

2008-10-07T23:28:00.001-07:00

I would personally like to salute that fifteen year-old girl at the MacDonald’s I go to at lunch. I’ve been going there occasionally for about a year now, and there she is. Pretty, big blue lovely eyes, dark hair, skinny as a rail, and pretty much looking a bit like she’d rather be somewhere else…

In my circles are a lot of teenagers and young people, it’s a coincidence of going to shows, clubs, and having a night life undeterred by the normal lives that those who chose family over mindless fun… (Okay, I'm a stalker already).... What I notice is something that is not new by any means but that has become more and more pronounced here in the US: The unbridled sense of self-entitlement of the majority of our kids, and young adults…

We have become so centered on cliquish snobbery these days that you rarely see a young person willing to do such things as work at MacDonald’s or Wal-Mart. It’s not good enough for them, they are better than that… They all have the same dream of postponing adulthood to go to an activist college then become a lawyer, an advertising executive, or a director; something that is okay to be according to pop-culture, something that their favorite TV star would be willing to play.

None have a will for the 'lesser class' acts of working a drive-up window, or saying hello to shoppers for money, in fact they usually prefer to not make a dime at all when confronted with the choice, and mom and dad don’t want a lesser child, so they oblige this…

I talk frequently with a young friend who bemoans the 'horrible job market', the lack of anything that pays a ‘living wage’ (don’t ask me where he got that term, but he sure loves it), he cannot abide this 'horrible economy' that makes it impossible for him to find a job in I.T. or a job at a law-firm… His ‘allowance’ doesn’t afford him the things I have, the things I do, he is desperate, just not willing to work for it if it means lowering himself to the scummy levels (that I had to)…

Yet tell him that ‘Wendy’s’ is hiring full-time and he will give you a look of disbelief… Tell him that if he goes to the orchards a few miles away, he will make 16.00 per hour for picking fruit, and he’ll tell you that it’s an ‘immigrant job’ and is beneath him, or he’d be taking away that income from some poor Mexican that really needs it…

He has no skills, he has paid no dues, he has spent years getting things for virtually nothing, and now finds himself convinced that college and being American means he should have to accept nothing as insultingly low as the same things that many of us have fought and strived and paid and bled for in the crappiest conditions and with the crappiest paychecks…

...Yeah I do what I love now, yeah I make good money now, yeah I have every toy I want now, but there were a hell of a lot of golden arches along the path, and without them I 'd have never made it...

So I congratulate that lovely little teenager at MacDonald’s who probably hates being there, and probably doesn’t get a lot of money, and probably doesn’t get much respect from her friends and family…

Because she has mine, and one day, she will have hers as well...

We Are a Bunch of Pu**ies… And It Will Kill Us... (language warning...DUH!)

2008-10-07T23:25:00.001-07:00

My language is intentionally crude in places, so this is a warning I guess...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I hate the word ‘pussies’ it’s so “football player circa 1986”, but it seems to be the most fitting word for what I wish to say that I can think of, perhaps exactly because of it’s crudeness…

You‘ve all heard the same things I have, I don’t claim any deeper perceptions about these things; We are not the people our great grandparents were…. This is for better and worse of course, but it’s the “worse” that is starting to make me worry… You hear leathery old people who did great things for the world talk of such things all-the-time, from going into space in rickety fighter planes (they did it, technically they should retroactively be awarded the “X-prize”….), to liberating Europe from tyranny, paving the difficult path that we are still traveling down, that will hopefully one-day result in real freedom for every human being on this planet. They did that, not us, and not our parents, we have done none of it, and the reasons are pretty clear…

....We are pussies…..

We could not *possibly* send men to the moon in the same manner that the World War II generation did. No way…. The risks those people took were more than what we think we could justify, we still cry at night over astronauts that died twenty years ago, like what they did was a waste or something…. We think everything should be so safe, that we lack the spines to repeat the same thing that people did half a century ago with not even the technology that we put into trash bags today…..

.....We are pussies…..

Did you realize that the lunar landing craft that Aldrin and Armstrong traveled through space in, and landed on *the fucking moon* in, had walls akin to thick aluminum foil, that you could poke your finger through? Is that crazy???? It’s true! And for the record, no…., it’s not crazy….

.....unless you’re a pussy…..

It’s this bizarre little thing that they knew better than us, called “humanity”. To us it’s justification for taking little blue and yellow pills the rest of our lives, for them it was reason enough to forfeit your life… And they did, and we wouldn’t (you can guess why).

We could never win World War II today. Rebellious college kids would be wearing “Hug a Nazi” shirts, and we would be too wrapped-up in “understanding” these bastards… There would be international lawsuits halting D-Day indefinitely while environmental impact statements were conducted on Utah Beach to gauge the effect it will have on the local rodent populations… Sounds like a silly exaggeration, but both you and I also know that it’s completely true and even worse than that…. (of course the New York Times would have published it on the front page on June 5th anyway...incompetent fuckheads.....)

I see what we are doing to space and it honestly kind of sickens me. Yes we are learning so much about everything space-wise, M-theory, black holes are everywhere (and sort of a good thing), hundreds of new planet systems found already.... more than we can imagine, more than anyone could imagine. All of that is good, I am a huge fan of it, except this one little thing called “humanity”

(you know, the actual reason any of this space shit ever mattered at all?)

It’s great that we are finding new worlds, its fantastic, and I love it. But then I look at what they want to do with all that knowledge for the next hundred years… More machines, more knowledge, for more machines, no one needing to leave the safety of their comfy couch (or Earth) to do it… Is this really brilliant? Well, maybe….

.....If you’re a pussy….

Maybe science has turned into a sort of religion, where the sweet discipline of denying yourself of things is “good”. If that is true, or getting that way, then umm science can go fuck itself, I want to *touch* those other planets… And yeah, it’s worth dying for… But it isn’t going to happen, because in the end,

.....we are pussies…..

The first “Earthling” that another world’s population meets will be a robot of one-sort-or-another. This has pretty much been decided already (by pussies). It will cleverly try to tell *whatever it might find* about "its makers"… So basically we meet no one, we see nothing, and we say nothing. I would ask you to reverse the situation, so we basically have some stuff saying some stuff, about what, who knows, but it may be them bragging about this great “car” thing they just invented… If it is a society far beyond our own, why the fuck would they even care, we might be the backwards mountain people of galactic civilization, who the hell cares....?

(When all is said and done, they simply wouldn't really)

In fact we end up looking a bit like those relatives that only show-up when you have more money than they do. Sending a cheap machine off to do what we don’t feel was important enough to do ourselves, and just assuming that they would care because….ummmm…well I guess because we are just *that* important (in our opinions anyway)…..

I love space…. I can honestly say I always have. Dad worked on Apollo 11 himself, a fact I always loved; and while I do appreciate all the science and mathematicians doing what they have done, at some point, you guys need to just piss-off and let people with a sense of the poetry of “humanity” take over….Because…though I love you guys, and I mean it….

.....You are a bunch of pussies…..

So.... Why do I think is this going to be the death of us?

Ever heard of Constantine? or maybe Constantinople? Or maybe the Byzantines? They aren't a *great* example, but a fair illustration, I think. This was the social evolution of the Roman Empire. Though certainly not sweethearts by our standards, they were without a doubt a "kinder/ gentler" version of the rather bloodthirsty Roman Empire before them.

They had reached a cultural crescendo.... No longer the ruthless pagans of centuries past, and they were happy, and great artists, and scientists, and scholars, and culturally savvy, and all... Pretty much certain of their cultural superiority and sophistication, and pretty helpful of the "lesser" people around them.... Too damned bad that they had their heads up their asses....

Thing is..... We are *nothing* unless the world around you is just as good (equality is a nice thing in many ways). If you are still in the middle of a snake pit, you really don't want to be the cute little bunny... (*cough* Hippies *cough*). All the culture and sophistication did little when the "savages" came calling...

...Imagine now having to explain with your now floor-bound entrails how you being so lofty, caring, and well-schooled has prevented you (and your entire civilization) from a bloody death, that has erased everything you ever achieved from history.....

*Sigh* , and all because the poor Byzantines were a bunch of pussies.....

...There are uncountable examples of this through time. People you have never heard of, who were ages ahead of the rest of the world, erased without a mark left.....

...I am a pussy, in many many ways..... I don't want to be a dead pussy for no good-reason however, but that is our fate if we stop taking insane chances within our society and beyond it (especially the latter)... If we let machines do everything while we explore our cultural magnificence, we are as good as dead already, and it's just a matter of lingering a bit before it comes....

...We are *still* monkeys a for a while guys, god or no god, we are a work-in-progress, accept it, or be a pussy, and lose it all....

I’d Rather Be a Nail than a Hammer

2008-10-07T23:23:00.001-07:00

...It's a cute little take on a song by Simon and Garfunkel, a song I was repeatedly subjected to whilst living with a group of gay hippies out in the middle of nowhere… Good friends and I love them to this day, but with all due respect, their taste in music bordered on the kind of thing that I always imagined must have driven the first person to drink Drano… Some nights I was actually excited to hear Def Leppard or Extreme as it at least wasn’t this crap…

...Both they for loving that song, and Simon and Garfunkel for writing that song are an interesting contradiction… People of passivity, people of peace, yet they’d rather be the hammer than the nail… I somehow cannot see Gandhi thinking this, somehow I believe a true person of the type of peaceful intent would rather be anything other than the hammer, in fact, given the choice, I am fairly convinced that Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi would have chosen to be the nail... a tough nail... sure, but a nail none-the-less…

I’m not blind to the assertive society we live in; I’ve read the books that claim that you should do what you like because in a thousand years no one will care… I’ve watched the PBS self-help seminars that boldly proclaim that you have to be the important one in every-single social interaction in your life in-order to be happy… I’ve seen and read all that; and I have done so with an open mind, eager to learn and be inspired… But what they have taught me instead, what I have taken to heart and simply cannot fool myself out of realizing, is that the people who believe this are creeps…

Not only are they creeps, but they are short-sighted creeps (I dare say that mentally they are not much to write home about either). They want be a hammer, not a nail, they want to be the thing that does the driving, not the thing that holds the stuff together. In fact they ALL want to be the hammer, and they haven't detected any flaw in that idea, that if the hammer is the only thing there is to be, then the hammer has made itself useless...

Not me though, I’m not buying the hypercompetitive display of assclownsmanship… I see the hammers everywhere, only rarely do I see the nails, though it’s nice when I do… The hammers are running around with the positive look, the assertive posture, the straight back, and the unamused face, like a good tool really… They crawl in every crack of society bashing against each other locked in a game of hot hammer-on-hammer action, because there are no nails around to pound on…

What do we do in a world full of hammers but no nails? What do we do in a civilization where everyone wants to be the asserter rather than the asserted-upon? What do we do when we live in a society where everyone insists that they be in-charge, that they be on-top? That they be the hammers, the pushers, and everyone else be the nails, yet when no one is willing to be a nail, because no one appreciates what the nail is? What do we get when even the people emblematic of peace and unity would rather be the hammer than the nail?

Let me tell you what we get….

We get a bunch of usless tools who want to nail everything…

(I'll bet no one will get the metaphors...It's late.... maybe it just seemed better when I was typing it... maybe I should have taken that nitrous-hit after-all... 'night people...)

To Always Question Everything is to Never Face Anything

2008-10-07T23:20:00.001-07:00

Questioning things has gone too far... (how's that for a giddy simplistic intro?)

...My generation, a generation or two before me and all the generations after have been told all our lives that we should question: question authority, question where we came from, question that which we are, and question where we are going. Question everything… always…

But what was left out of that seemingly noble philosophy is the little part about finding answers.

I’m a big fan of not taking anyone’s word on things, I believe in looking for answers, and that the only way to know something is to go find out about it yourself. However I just as anyone else, need to sometimes accept an answer and just move along...I question things all-the-time; I am a product of what seems to be an 'Era of the Question' however, and just as guilty as anyone...

Accepting answers is something few seem to want to do anymore… The problem is that a question is a pointless endeavor if you don’t seek an answer, or are unwilling to accept an answer. So to tell a child to ask questions, but not reinforce to them that the answer is the goal of the question is to leave that child with only half the point, which is what we have now, generation upon generation that knows to question everything, but has no need, use, or requirement of an answer…

I called this ‘The Era of the Question’ earlier, and so it is… What distinguishes that from say an ‘Era of Enlightenment’ or something like that is the complete complacency in finding an answer to anything or caring about an answer at all… We question everything all-the-time. The idea of a question itself has been perverted into a method of looking open-minded by people who feel that questioning makes them smart, that they win by proxy by questioning, then questioning again, when in fact it is not only not sophisticated, it is dumb as rocks, and the weakest, easiest, and laziest thing you can do, unless you are willing to get the answer.

Any idiot can question any thing...

When you live for the question but disregard the search for an answer, you make the question itself the only resolve you have (which is in itself a lack of resolve). This is why things are so easy to equivocate, easy to dismiss, easy to ignore, easy to gray things out, because the question was the only goal we had in mind…

An example of this: Why punish a child who has been bad? How? Spank them? who says that works? Who are they to say that works? Ground them? why would that work?

…It’s an endless circle of ‘whys’… And we as a society are trapped in it… So trapped that we are stuck in what, in my profession, we call an “Infinite Loop”. This is when you ask a question in programming loops but never successfully make a point of resolution to exit that loop…

It’s a rough analogy, but a good one I think… We question because we know that it’s a good thing to do, but we question everything so much that the questions never end, so actions are frequently never taken…

To take actions one must be willing to act based on answers to questions, otherwise you either jump into the void without a clue why, or you end-up standing on the edge of it never taking the actions you need to take...

...And that is where we stand today: our kids question everything, our parents question everything, our politicians question everything, our teachers question everything, our poets question everything, our philosophers question everything, our media questions everything, our activists question everything…

So busily are we questioning everything, that no one has time or will to accept an answer and act on it…

Never questioning anything is an awful way to live, but to always question everything is the same thing as never facing anything…

ManBearPig's Guide to Frightening Away Missionaries

2008-10-07T23:14:00.000-07:00

** this is a humor article, post, blogy-thing, or whatever it is, only, there are no good points, deep thoughts or other here... if you don't take it that way, then don't bother kiddies **

- ManBearPig's Guide to Frightening Away Missionaries - This isn't about God or angels, or even monkeys (not even the cute ones)... It's about survival, and you need to be prepared.... This threat has terrorized the the civilized world for millenia now, and the time has come to fight! Here are some useful strategies and tactics for success:

Interdiction: Getting them before they get you

Prevention is the key to success here, and loud satanic music is the weapon of choice. Remember it’s you or it’s them! There have been many tried and true tactics for this maneuver throughout the ages from the Ancient Greeks who used to beat loudly on the recently-demised-bodies of bisexual elk with pottery to ward off hungry missionaries; to the Cambodian “set-the-house-on-fire-and-scream” technique that saved many a soul in the far-east I can tell you… (Both can be tremendously effective when executed properly, but can be disastrous when poor planning is a factor).

I myself firmly believe, as do many skilled Jehovah-Dodgers, that Glen Danzig was born for the sole-purpose of creating the proper environment for success at these bleak times….While some prefer old-school Misfits music for the job, I find that it can have an adverse reaction under certain circumstances. If the 'acquired targets' are what we in “The Industry” call “Savers”, This action may well reinforce their resolve and embolden them to come to “your faith’s aid” with even more fervor and ambition. You are warned.

Still some others prefer Danzig III for the job, but I find that certain harmonics tend to disorient the target and make them erratic and unpredictable, all the harder to control the situation in these instances and the results can be ugly… Make sure to check for wind-age and telemetry before attempting a “Number 3”.

I prefer a small, but effective, dosage of Danzig II Lucifuge administered in 73.5 dB bursts while “the package” is between 30 – 46 meters distance. Using an initial attack of “Tired of being Alive” at about 27 seconds into the track, and firing suppressing rounds of “I’m the Wolf” if at 46+ meters. Do not attempt to fire your volley on speakers with larger than 10” woofers or you risk losing the proper frequency range for maximum effectiveness and dispersal, accuracy is critical!

If they close in below the 27 meter mark you will need to *immediately* escalate to 72 seconds into “Long Way Back from Hell” at approximately 85 dB in sustained suppressive fire. Do not even flinch or the price you pay will be beyond measure. Success depends on courage my friends. Be brave….

Porch Adornments: “God's Minefield”

This is a controversial subject in “The Trade” as we call it…, and more than one veteran Pamphlet-Burner has fallen victim to underestimating the infiltrators. You can never, I repeat NEVER, assume that your attacker will be of a particular denomination, or will retreat in the face of another.

We’ve all heard the horror stories of the master-dodgers, craftsmen of the highest order even, that became complacent, over-confident that the numerous glowing plastic Virgin Mary’s placed strategically around the porch area would hold-off the most driven of assailer, only to discover (the hard way) that their Catholicism-only strategy would not protect them from the evil that lurked through the neighborhood on 10-Speed bicycles….It’s never pretty when it happens. Where was your god then, I ask you!? Take nothing for granted!

To succeed with this strategy will take the full-breadth of your “99 Cent Store” purchasing abilities. Yes Virgin Marys will help, but they are only one part of a muti-pronged defense strategy that you must employ to ensure success.

You will need Virgins’, Jesus’, Menorahs, Halloween decorations, granite busts of Charles Darwin and Buddha, empty condom wrappers, and *at least one* of those battery-operated singing fish that you hang on your wall, and perhaps even an old toilet to truly win with this strategy. They should be placed within 10 - 12 meters of your front door and need to be facing symmetrically at no more than a 22 degree angle of incident to get maximum cross-dogmatic protection.

A well-placed goat-skin can do wonders in this situation. A long-haired mountain goat skin can provide significant Pagan protection on large surface areas. DO NOT use sheepskin though. These are zealots dammit! It is possible that they used to use sheepskins for condoms, and they fear them not!

There are no guarantees here, but you knew that when you signed-up for this…

Faking Rebirth: The One-Up Approach aka“My God is bigger than your God...”

This is a skill that only the best-of-the-best can truly pull off. You will need to be a master of your craft to even attempt such a bold technique. This is a close-quarters defensive-to-offensive reversal tactic that should not be weighed lightly. To be able to successfully achieve the desired outcome the “perpetrators” will have to be AT YOUR DOOR. Consider the risks my friends, for they are great…..

Okay, so you’ve weighed the risks and you are going to try this, proceed with courage, there is no turning-back. You must completely and utterly convince these people that you are NOT ONLY of a different religion, but that yours is better and they really ought to join you…….

…I told you it was risky…….

Do NOT over-play your hand when attempting this move! You don’t *really* want them to join “your religion”, and they are missionaries, so you *know* they are easily led… Use cautious-distance here. You only want to convince them that you will be dragged behind a panda bear through thumbtacks and gasoline while Streisand show tunes play on an iPod covered with buzzard-puss, before you would want to join them.

If you should succeed, you are among “The Craft’s” finest…. Good luck to you…

The Subtle Approach: A Well Placed "Jesus H. Christ"

A staple of the novice Jesus-Runners, this tactic has withstood the test of time and is a classic that has won many victories through the years. The strategy is simple. They caught you at the door; there is no turning back the clock. You have to think, and it has to be quick, but you have no plan in-place for such an event. The danger is great, but you cannot avoid that now..., verbal communication is inevitable.

Embrace it…. Yes you heard me… Let them talk, feign interest and even take the pamphlets if you must, you aren’t going to get away without scars, but maybe you will keep your life. Wait at least two minutes and forty seconds then simply turn your head back into your house (away from them) and yell in your raspiest voice “Jesus H Christ, Timmy, get your fucking hands out of the fish tank before I chop them off you little bastard!”

...Timing and delivery are critical here, and you must spittle a little when you yell it. This single succession of words has been researched and tested in laboratories by scientists in the finest institutions in the world for decades. No substitutions will work. Even changing “Timmy” to “Tommy” or even just “Tim” could have dramatic negative effects on the situation, and may even cause you to want to read those brochures they gave you.

It is recommended that you rehearse this scenario a minimum of fifteen times per week in order to ensure proper delivery and saliva dispersal…

More to come! (not really)

Next week we add two new tactics to add to your arsenal:

~ The "Busy" Act: Appropriate Placement of the Astroglide Bottle

~ The Direct Approach: "Hell...?.. You Just Knocked on Hell's Door, Son....!"

The Brave New World

2008-10-07T23:10:00.000-07:00

I grew up as an idealist of all stripes. Like many in all of the recent generations in the US, I got my idealism through pop-culture, songs of utopia, peace, and what a great place this world *should* be… Books that filled our minds with evils of war, the plagues of industrial society, the insanity of “Mutually Assured Destruction”. Cartoon movies like “Watership Down” that were meant to traumatize you with a cold slap of what happens when societies face extermination. M.A.S.H,where we all dived into such a great group of characters that we accepted the overall message without question, like a pill with a lovely chocolate coating…

Yeah, I bought it all, and I still buy a lot of it, it worked, even on people like me who despise manipulation of this sort. What is remarkable though is what kind of society this type of upbringing has created, which is why I am taking a jab at Huxley in the title. Because this book plays a role in the very creation of the ‘brave new world’ that Aldous was warning against.

In fact all of these deeply penetrating intellectual arguments, from Aldous Huxley to Rachel Carson, Stanley Kubrick to George Clooney, John Lennon to Eddie Vedder have in fact acted as the motivation for the very creation of these fictional societal settings. They were in fact the epitome of a self-fulfilling prophecy, inspiring generation after generation to try and heal one problem whilst creating a new dilemma with the solution.

It’s as if we as a world have become so convinced that we are headed towards the plot lines of these visions of the future that we simply cannot imagine *not* living them out. A moth to the flame of sorts, we lack our own ideas about the coming world, so we filled in the blanks with the flames that we saw in a Cameron film, or Star Trek episode, or read about in Huxley or Asimov.

We’ve got the warning sign confused with a road map and we are heading right off the embankment with a big cheesy ignorant grin on our faces thinking we are too smart to drive off a cliff the whole way down, convinced that it can’t really be happening…

A little of it is social arrogance, something things like 9/11 really tamed for a lot of us, myself included. I call it “Hidden Gun Syndrome”; well I do now anyway… It’s the disbelief many of us felt as those Neanderthals used our own peaceful civilization against us, and that we *really* couldn’t stop them.

Many of us, I’m sure many of you as well, thought in the back of your heads while it was happening something like “but, we are the perfect society, we are the epitome of massive firepower, we are the world’s military… This can’t be happening; didn’t we have big guns hidden in those towers, disguised by the CIA as gargoyles to blow them out of the sky? Doesn’t our government constantly hide in the shadows with giant mechanized super weapons?”

In my opinion this is what “deniers” are, no matter what particular thing they are denying, be it Jewish Holocaust, 9/11, JFK etc… They are just so certain that this amazing machine that controls the world exists, that they cannot fathom things like this just happening without some sort of Aurich Goldfinger with an esoteric plan being involved, and some sort of conspiracy with the ‘good guys’ to make it happen, because we are just too good for it to happen otherwise. In the end it’s conceit in some ways.

We think we *should* be so great that we fail to realize that we aren’t. We are *so certain* that we should be cloning ourselves and that old age shouldn’t happen, that we see no other way to live, and no other goal to achieve. We see ourselves as so enlightened and open minded that we simply think it’s impossible that we aren’t…

I am hearing a lot about assisted suicide lately, and it’s quite a tough subject, as I myself have every intention of taking my motorcycle straight into Puget Sound if my alternatives are those that my father faced, but what gets me is that suicide is now a “recommended medical procedure”, and is deemed so for matters of financial expedience. This rings of a philosophy that is as old as the Roman calendar and as recent as the eugenics movement that inspired a whole political party in the 1920’s.

I don’t know how many of you have seen an old movie called “Logan’s Run” but at the center of that movie’s main conflict is a society where at age thirty you were deemed unproductive to society, and were extracted from said society in a spectacle that was both efficient and entertaining (Hence ‘Logan’ choosing to run).

With a good number of the upper echelons of world society now emphasizing man as an overpopulated species that is literally killing the earth (and hence everyone around them), and a full fifth or more of the population under population control measures, as well as medical procedure designed to terminate those that are burdensome from the world, and all of that being fully accepted and endorsed; how many steps do you think we are to this seeming more reasonable?

It used to be Science Fiction at its most absurd, but then so did Galileo’s take on the solar system.

One thing for certain in my mind, is that rolling back society is an irrational fear, there is no going back, that is what progress is supposed to be. We have power problems, then we overcome them with more, we have water problems then we overcome those too, population problems, we solve them by getting enough for everyone, and then some…

We shouldn’t look to holding back, fatalistically halting progress, stopping breeding, controlling who lives and who dies, harvesting others so that we can live longer; we look to getting more, that is the drive of the human being, and as locust-like as you may want to imply that it is, it’s why we are where we are today, and it’s why you are here at all, which is not a bad place, for a bunch of monkeys…

Another thing I can say for sure about this brave new world:

There is nothing brave in copying someone else’s ideas for lack of your own…

And there is nothing new about trying to remove those you find unworthy of life from society…

Santa Anna Attacks! Mexican Army Re-equipped With A Clue.

2008-10-07T23:07:00.000-07:00

Did you know that we were invaded last Sunday? Yup, sure were, and US Forces were captured too…

Link-a-majig

In the stunning realization of the nightmarish fears painted by the Nobel Prize-winning movie ‘Red Dawn’, someone, who may or may not be distantly related to Poncho Villa, decided to lead his troops across the border and into Arizona in what could only be called “the most coordinated attack the Mexican Army has performed since they all were equipped with maps…”.

In their brave storming of an Arizona reservation they managed to capture an undoubtedly racist and evil caballero for water boarding….Well if they had water anyway…maybe sand boarding, or given the corruption of drug cartels in the Mexican military, maybe a snowboarding….

Either way, after facing down the pale-face they soon realized, by listening closely to the seemingly structured series of groans and grunts coming out of the pasty interloper’s mouth that many have come to know as “words”, that they were in fact in Arizona, and he in fact was a US border agent, which should have been obvious by the Pepsi machines and Drum Circles that I can only imagine were nearby.

Upon realizing this error, and I’m sure contemplating the fact that this indeed was not an insidious trap laid by the crazy northerners, they moved back the way they came with the speed of Santa Anna’s favorite horse on amphetamine.

Word is that upon their departure the US Border agent that they nearly scuttled inquired “Why not use your GPS…?”

...Whereupon the squad leader of the resourceful Mexican Military shouted back:
“Gadgets? …We don’t need no stinking gadgets….”

….When asked, Santa Anna’s wooden leg had no comment.

...Of Pots and Kettles

2008-10-07T23:06:00.000-07:00

...Isn’t it funny with the oil crisis and the election, along with the growing scientific evidence of just how erroneous the Global Warming crowd was after all, and after a decade long crusade that encompassed political attempts to restructure whole civilizations, it’s all-of-sudden a near non-issue?

It was the immanent and irreversible death of the entire world, but where is it now? I see the left clamoring in what looks to me like a pre-riot belligerence still, but now it’s over a presidential candidate, and all of a sudden the certain destruction of the world is not even a prominent talking point… It’s almost as if they are afraid of looking a bit...well...crazy…

In fact, it looks a little bit like they are using the election as a palm frond with which they intend to sort of sweep away the trail of carbon footprints that would otherwise give-away the path leading right to them…

So much for the death of the world, but who wants to be associated with a failed religion, and just like that guy you are dating that used to be in Heaven’s Gate and doesn’t want you to find out; so goes the left into “never happened mode”... All very much like they did when they realized in the early nineties that Ronald Reagan was actually the greatest peacemaker of their lives, and so they had to throw away their posters of him with a forked tongue and a missile in his hands while he ate a bowl full of delicious Palestinian children…

It sucks to be wrong, but it blows to not be brave enough to admit it…

The shock though, even to me, the “anitcrat”, is the absolute lack of even a scruple or two in transitions from one self righteous dogmatic protest-o-fest to another…

Two years ago, if you doubted Global Warming you were an uneducated twit who doesn’t get the threat, who sits in oblivion on his huge carbon ass and lets the world go to hell out of shear ignorance while cleaning his shotgun in anticipation of the minorities he was going to hunt down with his favorite bloodhound “Roscoe” and make into chili and man-jerky… Worshiping your silly god of narrow-mindedness and unenlightenment...

…Now, oddly enough, you are the exact same thing if you don’t vote for the darker guy who makes the ‘purdy-words’ that the same people are fawning over in an oddly religious way…

I am sensing a pattern…

Okay, I was "sensing a pattern" in third grade, now I just think they are zealots, who are really just lashing out at anything that reminds them of daddy, or what they think daddy was anyway… It seems they will use absolutely any excuse to justify their hissy-fits… I don’t think they *really* care if people die…I honestly don’t anymore, though I used to.... As long as they can invoke them as martyrs, or victims of their own short-sided ignorance… It’s all worth it…

That’s a harsh statement, I know, especially with all this peace stuff the left is defined by. But you don’t have to look very far back to see what the peace movement has buried in their trail up the mountain of power. Tens of millions dead from preventable Malaria, millions dead in the wake of the war in Viet Nam, millions more left to die out of the political fear that the peace movement has created that holds our leaders hostage and impotent when they are needed most…

…And here it is again, stronger than ever before. This idea that the cause célèbre is the only way... This venom that they spray in the eyes of the unbelievers... The idea that only the uneducated could possibly be strongly opposed to their ways…

Pol Pot had theories about education, and though the left would argue that is the opposite of what they are, I say it is exactly the same… Self-righteous, self-appointed deification of causes in which common sense has no particular role to play… The very things they accuse those who oppose them of…

In fact without it, Pol Pot (or 'Potty', that’s what his friends call him) would have never stood a chance…

...."Pots and Kettles" ...get it now?...Word-play people...fecking brilliant... also, when I think about me I touch myself...

Scars

2008-10-07T23:05:00.001-07:00

I don’t go to the doctor unless I am bleeding to death, or unconscious apparently, or parts are falling off of me. My definition of “Preventive Medicine” is “Prevent-Me-From-Dying-Within-The-Hour-And –I’ll-Be-Fine-Medicine"… That said, you’d think that would mean I didn’t end up there a lot, but you are so wrong… I recall a time after yet another trip to the doctor he, upon reviewing my medical history saying: “If all of the stitches that doctors have put into you fell out at the same time, you’d be nothing but a heap of human parts lying on the floor”…

It’s true, I am a walking scar. I have scars that frequently win the “Scar-Offs” at the bar… I don’t have one big scar; I’ve got a zillion little one’s from over the years. I’ve got saw cuts, gun shots, glass shards, barbed wire, razor blades, disc grinders, car wrecks, cigarette burns,motorcycle wrecks, fists, hoof prints… Lots of them...In short: I will *never* look like Barbie; And in a way, I am proud of them, because they aren’t the ones that still hurt.

I can point at my left hand and say “That’s the day I decided that Carpentry was not for me”, I can point under my arm and say “Never run along a barbed wire fence on uneven ground”, I can point at my face and say “Never let someone sucker punch you near a car windshield”… Lessons learned, there's little better in life then knowing something because you’ve been there…

The scars that are most painful and the scars that still hurt are rarely ever the visible ones. The scars that make everyday rough and the scars that turned Dana Plato from the cute little girl on the top of the world into the dead body of a coke whore are deep and lasting... They don’t loom on our profile, and they aren’t a story that is easy to tell over a beer and a laugh… But they are perhaps the biggest part of who we are that there is…

The scars on our bodies can cause us to have to change in order to get by... I use my left hand just a little tiny bit different than I used to, I’ve met people who use their feet to do what their hands cannot; I know people who use wheels in place of legs, and who use modified silverware to get food past their burn scarred mouths. Though it’s a challenge and a pain, it can be done, and, in time it can be a source amusement and endearing for the person and those that love them.

Still they can change everything forever, from the first kiss that you want with all your being, to the drive-up window at Taco Bell…

The things we hold inside though will change the very nature of our being; the pain of watching a person slip away slowly and irreversibly, the fear of losing the only thing you love, the hatred of someone that has lost your faith; the random unannounced act of aggression that turns a moment of introspection into a nightmare that won’t stop; the words uttered in a moment of malice that will carry through to your very last day; the chance crossing of paths that leaves a person without their lives…

It can be anything, it can be nothing, and yet you will wear it the rest of your life. You will power through your days; you will learn and overcome; you will attend lectures, and you will read books. You will change your life; you will turn all of the tables; you will climb to the top, and you will settle and be happy… When you walk down the streets today, or go shopping, or have your car washed, in every set of eyes that happen to meet yours are scars that you will never know about…

And still when the lights are down or the night is quiet, or the song is just right… or the hand is so soft, or the words are so perfect, it will come back… It will always come back…

Alone means different things to different people: You can be alone in a crowd; you can be alone because no one is in the car next to you; you can be alone at a movie, you can be alone in this world; you can be alone in a perfect relationship…

But in that; inside the heart or mind of every single person that is reading this now, or that might happen across it one day or that might just pass over everything and just read this last little part…

In that pain that I can never understand, I understand… and in that loneliness that I will never know, I know…

My First and Hopefully Last Actual Election 2008 Bloggy Thing

2008-10-07T23:03:00.000-07:00

I follow politics all the time. That is, election or not… War or not, scandal or not… I have followed politics actively since the hostage crisis after the Shah of Iran was deposed when I was eight years-old. I remember the Soviet Christmas invasion of Afghanistan in vivid detail at age nine, and if I thought about it long enough, I could probably give you a pretty damned good guess at how many pores there were in Tip O’Neil’s nose from memory…

I realize that we all become politically active at these times, and I’m not going to even go into the subject of people who all of a sudden are political historians for five months every four years then don’t really give a crap until the next one, because it is a futile argument that no one would be willing to say they were wrong about, or even that they weren’t right about. I personally try to stay clear in times like these because there are no objective opinions at these times, but there are hundreds of millions of strong opinions none-the-less…

I know a lot of us here are political people, it's part of what I like about us, so I just wanted to establish that....

We are in for the worst election of my generation from all indications I see in many ways. There is so much potential for disaster here from riots to pull-outs to economic chaos, that I can’t even begin to describe it. That is no matter how you look at it, or whom you prefer...

I start and end this with a reminder: We all want what we believe is best; it is a matter of what is best that we disagree on.

My take on Obama:

You have a person here who has less political history than the water commissioner in my county. That is not a dig on the man; that is a truth of chronology. If you are already decided about him then you must try and understand that a lot of people really don’t know why, or question why. This is a person who has cast more votes as “present” than he has “yes” or “no” by a ratio that is obscene...

This is a man who spent two decades of his life in a church that professed a disdain for people based on the color of their skin. That is the equivalent of the time you will spend in all of your educational life including some college and even a college degree. That is the length of time that many of you have been alive. A church is a facility in which people gather to be taught their ways in life; this is what a church is. It is a place you go when you are a true believer, for direction on what to believe, and he went there longer than the Olsen Twins have been alive.

That is considerable.

Is he a bad man? Well if he is, then so am I on many levels. I don’t believe he is a bad man, any more so than many others are… But he is not many others; he is many of your choice to lead a nation in a world that is ugly, disoriented, and violent. He will be asked to make decisions about things that can easily cost millions of people their lives; he will have the capability to destroy billions of lives. His nature of judgment counts.

I’m not going into his record anymore and to be honest there isn’t one to go into; that is the problem. I have read his book now, I have listened to his speeches, and I have listened to his proponents. What I find is that few who have already decided to vote for him can tell you much about him. They cannot tell you much about his history, they cannot tell you much about his voting record, they cannot tell you how many times he didn’t vote, they cannot tell you how many times he wasn’t even there when he was required by his job to be there, they cannot point to the numerous pieces of legislation that he created or was even a significant part of, or even a part of at all.
Yet they will vote for him.

So your reasons are your own, and no one can take them away from you, but in matters related to a crazy world, and the single most important figure in that world, it is hard not to wonder just why it is that you can be so determined with the objective reasons all tallied.

Hence many might be worried that the criteria being used is not objective at all. Things like charisma and skin color, and appearance, that are desirable traits to many, but pointless without the rest of the qualities, which are virtually absent if you look at the documented history. It seems to be a completely uneducated choice, by people often claiming a superior education, so people worry.
Despite what countless television hosts might say, our leader is no ‘figure head’, because a figure head cannot irrevocably change the nature of the country and the world, but the President of the United States can, and one wrong decision for the right reasons can erase entire generations from this earth.

So when people are attacking him you should thank them, they want to know the things that you don’t. They have the questions that you don’t. They are angry because you are not, and whether you like that or not. They are doing the right thing, and they are doing their duty as a responsible voter, a duty that you are not, because if you as a voter for him were to care, then the answers would come forth.

My Take on McCain:

I judge you by your past. You do the same to me, we all do the same thing with Obama, and they all did the same thing from George Washington to George W. Bush, and from Jesus Christ to Jerry Lewis we all do it… We do it because we have brains, and we can since we keep track of these things, and we do it because it is where you came from and what you did that you are made-up of today, good and bad.

John McCain may be many flawed things, he attests to that himself and who am I to tell him he is wrong. But he has demonstrated an inner courage, a courage that does not fade with time; that does not come-and-go with popularity ratings; and that does not bend to comply with the pressure of friends. He has faced choices and accepted a burden that I would wager all or nearly all of us at this forum would have chosen differently on.

We can only theorize what we might do, what we think we would do, John McCain will never raise his arms over his head again in his life as a result of his own choice. He was given a free ticket, he was granted the freedom a life of privilege and rank can offer, he could have taken it and still been a hero, but he didn’t because he could not live with his brethren’s suffering while he did not…

You will not find that in even works of fiction very often, and yet he is a real man who did that, and wants to lead us. On that alone he has proven a kind of leadership for which you cannot point to a *single* other president ever having had.

He has repeatedly chosen to risk himself for what he believes is right, he *is* that guy who volunteers to take the beating that no one else has the balls to step-up for.

Is he a perfect conservative? No, no he is not, far from it at times…. Is he a great speaker or a handsome devil? No, no he is not, not particularly anyway, far from it at times…

I made a couple likenesses of McCain recently, they are true:

1.) Obama writes a good book about Obama, McCain will have books written about him after we are dead…

2.) He is perfect for this time in history as he is the incarnate duality of our two previous Roosevelt presidents: He carries a big stick, and he can keep us making millions more if that one breaks…

This is his time in my humblest opinion…

He is the perfect American leader at a time of turmoil; he is the man whose soul has been tested in the hottest fires of hell and he passed when you and I would not. In that he is the perfect
American, the perfect mutt, and a man that neutral people will write books about long after we are all gone from this earth…

I honestly believe that you have to be intentionally blinding yourself if you don’t see this…

That’s it, I was going to go on into McCain’s record at length but it would take pages, and none of that information is hard to find… It’s more a matter of if you care to look….

Say what you want below and flame all you like, it changes nothing… I hope I didn't sound condescending in places, but I probably did, so I apologize...But this will all be over soon, and we will all have to accept whatever happens or risk an even more severe divide going forward…

Happy election-year people; remember, in our own ways we all want what we truly believe is best…

Is College Ruining the Free World?

2008-10-07T22:59:00.001-07:00

See how I phrased that like a question? That is to make it look like I have an open mind about it, but I don’t… And yes, it is ruining the free world.

Now I know lots of you are have at least some higher education going and some degrees under your belt, so don’t take direct offense as I have a little collection myself…But as we have watched the world unfold in modernity, they have become not only a standard for weak minds, but a hindrance to the free mind and the open mind.

So awful are they that they are especially responsible for the creative lethargy that plagues the current western world, the industrial collapse that has become so utterly complete that by the end of my generation there will be no one familiar with something as fundamental as how to make a pipe, unless of course we are talking about a pot pipe, in which case, we could all write a short book.
We are unraveling society by insisting that we all be some gold-plated Docker-wearing cog…

College has nothing at all in this world to do with reality… No matter what your professor may have told you…. Professors have no clue about the real world, or how to succeed at anything… They live in a biosphere with thoughts that mean little outside their own mirror and NPR…

I’ve worked alongside of PHD’s every day for nearly a decade now, and the one thing I have gleaned about doctorates is they must really be good at something that I haven’t seen in that decade at or away from work…

I’ve also learned that a lot of people have law degrees, yet aren’t lawyers, and I kind-of wonder why. Further, I think that the business degree might as well be called a degree in “PowerPoint” and people who possess these degrees think that it gives them some knowledge in something, yet have absolutely no idea how the actual job gets done…

In my field, computer science, I get so sick of what college does to these people, they are by far the least prepared for the actual programming world, trained in almost the exact opposite of any useful disciplines, that I dare say that they have kedoodled their own futures away… Indeed you’re going to find that college paradigm programming is useful in one place….college…

Meanwhile if I need someone to actually do the damned job, I usually find better developers unemployed and covered in axle-grease in the nerdy book section of a local bookshop, because they are vastly better, and actually know something that applies to things outside a college campus…

I am also thoroughly convinced that college teaches people to cheat almost rampantly… It is almost obscene in-fact how many people who are so very lofty about their educations are also the ones who have a propensity to cheat and spend massive effort on making the cheat look valid…

(I am of course judging from personal experience not broad statistics)

Is it the test environment that does this to them? Or that they didn’t learn the right things so they learned to look like they did? Is there some class that tells them to? I don’t know, but it’s irritating to watch someone with a “Master’s” degree pay people under the table to handle the job that they were hired to do…

They are probably hiring that guy with the axle-grease on him in the bookstore…. The one who knows how to "get 'er done"...

We need industrious people, not office politicians... And industrious people are forged in dirty fields, and sweaty factories, and smelly pastures, and in run-down garages all over this country, and in kitchens and and yards throughout the same...

If we over-value nearly meaningless education in favor of the lessons of a well scraped knuckle, or blistered and calloused hand provide, then we are book-smart and dead-weight, and just waiting to fade into utter mediocrity...

Geeks and Soldiers

2008-10-07T22:57:00.000-07:00

So I do my work at a military facility down in parts I can’t really talk too much about, in an office building much like any you might work in, only surrounded by military operations facilities and the like, and tucked-away in the woods…

We have our ‘smoking lounge’ as-it-were outside among the trees that we all have to go to keep it all in one-place and I made a trip down there before my end-of-day routines … I was standing there just smoking a Marlboro and watching a squirrel busily knocking food out of the trees then going down and gathering the harvest in small bunches and taking it back to its newly established winter home...

Eventually a group of soldiers came by with their energy drinks and sandwiches and cigarettes to have a pre-shift break before an undoubtedly tedious evening’s duty…

They sat at the picnic table in our wall-less wooden shelter, they were tough looking guys, all with the casual stride and posture of a person that indicated an underlying disciplined lifestyle, a posture you get used to around these parts… All were dressed casually as it is a sunny, pleasant day here on Hood Canal today…

I leaned against the over-built wooden pillars that hold the shelter up and kept my varmint observations going, not interested in much more than this brave squirrel that was routinely chasing off other critters three times its size with a confident charge straight at them…

I then overheard some phrases I remembered from a long time ago, and a tone of voice that I remember fondly from discussions with a nerdy friend back in my awkward high school days. We frequently cut class just to go sit in the big empty lecture hall and talk about things that matter to awkward geeky kids: riches, corporate monopolies we would lead, Star Wars, you know..the fundamentals…

They were talking of video games and consoles and the latest Star Wars game that they all had had more than a little experience with, but they went even farther. Now I have an almost obscenely intimate knowledge into the Star Wars world; I could even describe to you exactly what alloys and electronics are involved in the making of as well as which fictional companies made R2-D2 and all of his kind.. I wanted to interject when I heard a misstatement, but was enjoying my overhearing too much, so I bravely held-back…

They were speaking of X-Wings and Y-Wings and the purpose of each in a militaristic sense, then the TIE fighters and the fact that TIE stood for Twin Ion Engine… One of them mused over the fact that we actually do have ion engines now in some of our spacecraft, and indeed we do, my company makes them. One put–forth the fact that ours were really slow, and that in the time of Star Wars they had centuries more time to develop theirs so it was unfair to compare them…

I could have closed my eyes and heard myself and my only friend Bill talking busily about the exact same thing, in almost the exact same terms, and with the *exact * same sense of fascination…
Then I was pulled back for a moment and realized: This are just boys turning into men before me, these are imaginative and creative kids with as much a claim to geek-ness as I have…

But in that same bit of childish beauty, these are young men who we ship to the most hate-filled parts of the world with armor and guns; young men who have done more to build world peace in their short lives than I have in twice that time; young men who bleed and die in battle to save children when in many ways they are but a few breaths from childhood themselves; young men who have been trained to kill from gun-to-gun and from hand-to-hand… These boys can kill and die, that is a big part of their jobs...

Our soldiers are young men with dreams, and hopes, and imaginations far beyond our galaxy, young men often more obsessed with chasing Star Destroyers than they are in chasing skirts… I work with these people every single day, yet sometimes it’s easy to let that camouflage and that loaded rifle convince you that they are something else…

I had to pause for a moment because I realized just how beautiful it was that in this geeky little observation of a table full of relative kids, with Mountain Dews and sandwiches from one of the worst cafeterias on the Earth... I had seen a future that I am hopeful of…

ATTENTION: People of Earth, a Ten Year Moratorium on 'LOL' is Now Commencing...

2008-07-14T22:08:00.000-07:00

(original posted April 11, 2008 at The Activity Pit)

I’m afraid that the time has come for me to exert my powers as Overlord of all humanity, and Emperor of Earth…

I didn’t want to have to do this, but I really don’t think I have any choice at this point…Effective immediately there will be a ten year moratorium on lol…

Why?….

Because frankly I don’t think many of you are actually lol–ing… in fact I’m pretty sure many aren’t rofl-ing either, and a stand against this blatant fabrication of lol must be taken…

I know some of you do lol, I lol all the time, Yes, I’ve been a loller too friends; and I will miss it just as much as you… But some elements amongst us have simply been lolling too much, and for all the wrong reasons and they must be stopped…...

Some have witnessed five or six lol’s per paragraph… ‘Sounds crazy, I know, but it’s true and this must be dealt with immediately…...

Some lol so much and even rofl and lol in the same line, in fact a few, very few, have even lol’d while rofl-ing only to climax to the often deadly roflmfao…

It’s true…

I think you can understand why this must be done now…

So get it out of your systems..., for this is the last lol you may ever get to rofl….

Thank you, you may return to work now….

The Idiots’ Guide to World War III

2008-07-07T23:12:00.000-07:00

* This is a rant, and speculation, treat it as such... The Russian hostilities obviously add to it, but aren't a part of it... It's probably flawed, it's late...

Some of it is historical extrapolation, I'd like to hear what you think.... I meant it to be much longer, but heh we all have things to do... So hopefully it's complete...

It is very possible that we are in the mixed beginnings of World War III, not the war Hollywood told was coming for the past fifty or so years, just let those images go. We are in a world-war that like all other world wars is based on a core philosophical argument.

(These are generalizations of course, but in-essence true characterizations)

World War I: The world asserting that Monarchs and Monarchies will not govern the future.

Word War II: The world asserting that Militarism and the Military will not govern the future.

World War III: The world asserting that Religious Zeal and the Religions will not govern the future. (‘*you are here’)

World War IV???: The world asserting that Government Entities and the Governments will not govern the future. (Governments "govern" heh it's late... Socialist / Marxist is what I'm getting at, central control of individuals)

* Then *maybe* a united world at last

Who are the enemies? Well, who were the enemies in WWII? You can say Nazi’s but that wasn’t true. They were the focal point sure, but Japanese weren’t Nazi’s, Italians weren’t Nazis, Vichy French weren’t Nazi’s, Danish, Pols…on and on, they were all people we ended up fighting though as Nazis (essentially), because they were dragged into it, or because they were in alliance with them.

Our enemies are the ones who are doing the dragging, they will drag millions, maybe billions, along with them, and we will sadly have to fight them too. We can’t do anything about that, except hope that they see that they are losing and stop supporting and fighting for the actual enemies, this is true in all human conflict, and Star Trek Utopianism isn’t going to change that.

Islamo-Fascists are *the enemy* (I’ll call them ‘Isfacs' primarily because I’m lazy), but they aren’t the only ones we will have to fight. We will be fighting anyone that is allied to them, *just as everyone has always had to do in conflicts like this*. Isfacs may be the face of our enemy, but in the course of this war many, many others will be wearing their label too. We cannot help this, we cannot change this, and we cannot stop this, it’s not what any of us wants, but there is NO alternative to this.

We are unlike this enemy, particularly in that we have no intention of converting or destroying the Islamic religion, or religion in-general. In WWI we didn’t destroy all monarchs or monarchies; we simply made it clear that they aren’t going to control the world, and stopped them from trying. In WWII we didn’t destroy all militaries or militants; we simply made it clear that they aren’t going to control the world, and stopped them from trying. The same is true today.

Like the other wars it is a war of co-existence versus domination. We (the free people of the world, no matter what ethnicity, religion, or whatever) ALWAYS choose to live side-by-side with different types. Isfacs do not believe this, and have not since day-one. They *must* conquer *all*, that is their directive, and it has been for centuries. While other religions have learned tolerance and have compromised to accommodate the world over centuries, Isfacs have not, and will not.

“There is no god, but god…”, translation: “believe, or die”, that is your choice, and those are the ONLY choices that they believe-in. Millions and millions have died over it, entire civilizations have been erased over it, and more is to come. When we look at Europe today, it becomes obvious what the strategy has been, and where it’s going.

This is NOT a ‘race war’ of any sort, if you are bigot; you are a part of the problem, Isfacs are bigots as well. This is philosophical freedom versus fascism, pure and simple; there is no color in this war on our part. Ethnicities are nothing more than a byproduct of where this plague began, that’s all. Don’t be an idiot about this, an Arab is not an Isfac and an Isfac is not an Arab, it’s all geographic happenstance, we cannot lie to ourselves about that. If the Isfacs see it as a race issue, then that is simply even more illustration of the horror we are facing…

This war was declared ON us (and WAY before 9/11/01), we didn’t ask for or want this, but we don’t have a choice, except to allow ourselves to lose all we have gained as human-beings by submitting to fascist domination. Many people think this is okay, because we still live. I would say we don’t “live” at all…

How do we win something like this? The same way we’ve won before. The Isfacs must be defeated to a point where their directive collapses, and is no longer a part of the Islamic religion. ‘The directive’ is the built-in point of Islam that requires Islam to conquer everything that is NOT Islam; that must end, and it has to be by defeat, or the sense of “manifest destiny” that keeps good Muslim people supporting bad Muslim people to achieve this goal will never end….

How do you do this? You stop the Isfac’s current expansion, and you erase the primitive motivation (e.g. every foot of ground they are currently killing people for, such as in Iraq, Afghanistan, Eastern European nations almost as a whole, Chechnya, The Philippines, Polynesia, and Israel). Once those are free places for certain and for good, we are well-along the way. Every Isfac state must become a government chosen by its people and maintained that way to the current standard of humanity (Iran, Syria, and all the nations that support them), that’s how….

You don’t believe this is a world war? Yeah, it seems most don’t; a sad effect of our times and the mixture of media creating ‘shake-and-bake’ wars, and the misguided idea (that duped me as well for a long-time) that the end of the Cold War meant peace and joy and riches for everyone for a thousand years….

In short we blinded ourselves and that caused this to go this far…

Every world war had a melting point, but only once history looked back. For WWI we say it was the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, WWII we tend to say it was Pearl Harbor, for WWIII I suppose it’s obvious that 9/11 will be the event (maybe). But in all of these cases the fact is that there was a long lead-in of events that were pretty much a pre-war war…

What the Model U.N. Taught Me

2008-06-29T23:21:00.000-07:00

For those of you who don’t know what the Model United Natons is (i.e. you had *some* sort of a life as a child), then let me outline it… It is the lowest of the low rungs on the geek ladder. It is the kids that were not cool enough for Chess Club, and who couldn’t make Drill Team, and even at that, I was lucky to make it in, being the scourge of the scourge of my generation…

It’s like Debate Club, only with a diplomatic veneer attached so that no one expects you to be competent… We travelled from place-to-place to meet-up with other Model UN’ers and to try and… well …emulate the UN by bickering pointlessly for hours and hours… We represented a country each, and tried to act in its interests as best we could in a UN-ish setting, which I still think is kind-of a neat idea…It was an accurate microcosm for sure in that sense, among many others really…

I learned a lot in that short time I was there…

Firstly I learned that no matter how much someone may want you to believe that they are doing something they really want to do, something they believe in, something they were born for, some people are only after a free trip… Much like the UN itself, a lot of people are there under the pretense of progress, when in fact they really are there for nothing other than to be somewhere, at someone else’s expense preferably…

I learned that some people can honestly convince themselves that they are expert and passionate on a subject, just by reading a paragraph or two about it... I remember when Heidi boldly chose to represent the Soviet Union for a session. She was a darling of the Model UN as she was pretty, which works well, and I think she felt she had to live up to a reputation that she knew something about the world, even though she simply didn’t… It was clear to any open eyes that she hadn’t a clue about the Soviet Union, except perhaps what she’d seen in Red Dawn at the drive-in… She read her little bit of preparation consisting of about a page in a Political Science textbook, and she was ready to sign-up…

In those two or three paragraphs she had decided to bag this whole capitalist scene and move to Moscow, post haste…

I always suspected she had something to do with that radiation poisoning of the former spy and author in Britain a few years ago….

I learned that people embrace popularity more than they do common sense. Heather showed me this in her uncanny change between years. The year before, she had been a “large” girl shall we say, fairly big and fairly insecure with herself, though smart as a whip and well thought from head-to-toe. She believed what she said, and she said it all so well, there was a mind and a passion there, truly a rare bird in any school anywhere… Over the summer she had gotten ill and, as an apparently fortunate side-effect, lost a lot of weight, and as a result her popularity soared. Though she was certainly not the homecoming queen (which she should thank god for) she was a hit among at least the geeks, and accepted by all in her new form.

She never made one compelling, well-reasoned, thoughtful or even interesting argument again, though she used the term “like…okay…” uncountable times and got three times the applause it seemed…

I learned that if you get enough people organized together that care, caring is the last thing that they want to do. You go over your thoughts to practice these things, you run through the arguments with your peers and in the process you usually got to express how you felt…

When our merry little band of pseudo-delegates would discuss geo-politics, it all seemed to refreshingly thoughtful… When we’d get to the events though, it was all out the window. No one cared to care anymore…

I recall distinctly that we had the representative of the Nicaraguan Rebels (Contras, if you recall)in our numbers (they had special representation at the time) and that our Contra was a bit smitten with the prep school sponsoring the events Nicaragua representative…Let’s just say that peace was made that day, and leave it at that…

In fact people were altogether so obsessed in how they looked and if their breath was fresh that they all made the most robotically poor speeches that I’d ever heard, but their breath was great…

I learned that I don’t belong in the Model UN… I learned this at that same Catholic School where the Contras and the Nicaraguan government got naughty… I learned it because I was there representing Syria, a role I’d prepared for for months and had my routine down…

To my misfortune in the short-term, however, I’d read a story two days before about Hezbollah and how they are trained there, and were funded by Syria, and how they dress as Israeli soldiers and walked into Israeli schools and just shot every child they saw, I read about twelve year-old Israeli girls kidnapped and made into the most horrid types of sex slaves in Syria, I read about Syria’s inspiration for its political system, based on Nazi Germany, I read about its plans for the future…

…and, well... two great things happened that particular day:

1.) I was in no-uncertain terms told that my bold statements were completely out-of-norm with what the current political situations were in the world, making our whole team look shabby and ill-prepared… I was told I didn’t belong there either… Par for the course...

2.) Syria defended Israel in front of everyone there, a couple thousand people, in a way that I doubt I could ever spontaneously muster the courage to do again … In other words, nations were united… at least in a fifteen year-old way

....I’m still really fucking proud of that day….

(Since I’m sick and can’t ride my bike like I want to, I needed to do some regressive therapy… or I’m going to get cranky…)

Some Thoughts on the Accepted Practice of Haggling

2008-06-11T23:35:00.000-07:00

I know it's a time-honored tradition throughout the world, and particularly prevalent in capitalist economies such as my own, but haggling and the "art" of it (as we hear it is frequently) are, in my mind, a very bad thing in certain situations. Such a situation would be employment. Though it's just fine in car sales and garage sales, in the realm of employment, it is a sign of possible bad things to come...

When I myself am hiring someone for whatever reason whether it be help in my business or for services of any kind really (rather than a product). I don't play that game. It is the first sign of insincerity to me. I look for people who care about what they are doing, people who are inspired, whether they are developers I need for a project, or the guy who cuts my lawn, I don't want Machiavellian 'players' who are out to make money alone. I want people who believe in what they do.

I would choose an inspired high school dropout before I would hire a Harvard business major provided I saw that inspiration in the former. I would pay them more than the graduate as well. Indeed time and history has proven that the person inspired by what they do is worth 10 of the Ivy Leagues standard business players (worth 50 if you ask me)

Haggling is a part of this in that it demonstrates to me what a person's priorities are. I will offer a good price, always, simple economics there (in my opinion). If the client or employee then choose to play a game of 'bluff-and-try-for-more', I know immediately that games are on their mind already at this stage, and that is what I can expect as the relationship continues...

A person who believes in what they are doing (and conversely doing for me) is not thinking like this, making them, in fact, worth more to me (and likely to get more from me one way or another). I don't see one-single valid situation where this isn't the case.You offer fair, or let them offer, if they don't play any games then you got your first very good sign that they are worth it. If they play games, it's at least "strike one" against them.

Business is cynical, and I know that, but it's only that way because we make it that way. To be the best or care to change the world, you need people who aren't going to play games when they could be making your business the best. Even if they are good at playing them, they *will* waste your time and effort (and money, by the way), and probably do so while trying to convince you they are the best, and sadly succeeding at this...

I recently had talks with a client that really stood out to me, I felt they had a purpose and a meaning, and was truly inspired to contribute to that myself. All signs were plus and as always I worked out a mutually good price for the job.I was asked to present it, so I did. They chose to haggle that price with me, and they did, so I lowered mine.

The problem here is that they may feel they got a 'deal', but that's an opportunist's excuse to be content, and a sign of weak intentions and mind to me. So "strike one" has occured, and my inspiration shifts a fair amount. They go from a place with a great goal and purpose, to just another mundane project. It's not a matter of money, it's a matter of inspiration and goals, money is a side detail in the real professional world, not the world car salesmen and lawyers have made. .

I mean the inspired business world when I say "real". The one that always wins because they believe in the mission, frequently these guys change the world (for the better), and every person of purpose and mind wants to be a part of them. The haggling-types, to whom everything is about the deal, never change anything for the better, and can hope to only create the illusion at best...

So they will only get the basics and maybe a bit more (which maybe is fine with them) unless something changes. Not that I want that, I don't at all. I go full-tilt and got a reputation for good things that way, but once the motive of the company becomes one of opportunism, inspiration takes a hit in the chin; this is true with all inspired people I have ever known or heard of...

I want to change the world, I want my days to mean something, you should ask yourself if you do as well. Can you deal-and-bluff your way through life just to be mediocre, and how will that make you feel when it's over?

Despite the toys and wants and snobbery that occupy each day of our lives, on that last one they will mean nothing, and you may find that all you did in life was a lie.

All you have in this world that means a thing is whether in your last few seconds of your life you wear a sincere smile of a life that was "worth it" or not...

Don't haggle it away.....

Headline: Democratic Convention To Be A "Crap-Shoot" ... har har har

2008-06-10T23:37:00.000-07:00

There are things and times when there are just sooo many jokes that one could make, that it's almost pointless to bother...

Democratic activists are preparing to be de-crapped at their convention by "the man", with a new weapon the likes of which only German pornography directors could have dreamed-up... The sonic weapon (referred eloquently to as the "crap cannon") emits a sonic blast that is said to strongly affect the abdominal areas of those for whom the bowel tolls...

...Allowing finally the answer to the long pondered question of what a hippie is filled with...

... and allowing me to add again to the English dictionary my new word: "decrapitation"...

'Brown Note' indeed...

The Story on FNC

....Polish your butt trumpets kids, there will be blood...or something bodily anyway...

...Considering the number of baboons bound to be there, and the surplus of well-know monkey-projectile materials, I think the riot police will have their hands full... and that can be taken in what ever way you prefer...

Bullies

2008-06-07T23:34:00.000-07:00

...Remember when bullies at least had the testicles to *be* bullies, and didn't lie about it? One of the lovely side-effects of a world driven by media contact is that unfortunately social bullies have figured-out that it's not terribly cool to look like you're a bully... And to be an effective jerk, people have to not realize you're a jerk from the get-go, of course...

I have yet to meet a single bully post 1993 that doesn't claim to be a victim rather than the victimizers that they actually are; Not a single one who says they were a bully in school, or is a bully in adult life… It's not as if there are less of them, the contrary from what I have seen, there are inumberably more, droves of them even, more than ever...

They all know that that's bad now, so like an extra-marital affair, or a doctored resume, they just makeup a story that seems believable and throw-in some acceptable catch-phrases and stick to it, no matter what…

They do what is romanticized in the media: claim to be the 'good guy' (i.e. the nerd or the one that was bullied). Now no one is a bad guy, because they all know exactly what to say: "I was quirky" or "I had no friends" or "I was the ugly duckling" or "I was unpopular" and the new classic :"I was a geek" ...such complete bullshit ....yet they ALL use it non-stop…

'Must be nice though, a person can bully and defame without any reason or thought then just run and hide behind a shield of self proclaimed insecurity with no need to feel that maybe they are wrong, or maybe they just aren't all-that thoughtful, just as a true asshat would...

Those who spent their days shunned by their peers do in my opinion bloom with character as a result of it... I think these people know each other almost instantly too.. I know there are several here at The AP, which I think is one of those things that make this place a nice escape for many... Of course I won't name names because like a true bullied-person I can appreciate the hole it leaves in one's shields, and how quickly bullies will try to exploit things like that...

As for the bullies themselves, which are detectable too by-the-way… As a sort-of representative of the truly ugly, truly geeky, truly awkward, and at least the truly unpopular ones, to which I can provide a plethora of physical evidence, if you have the stomach for it (my sister signed my yearbook out of sympathy...) that they bullied myself, other good people, and the misfits of society with impunity, I say to them now:

...You are precisely the same popularity seeking, bullying, and opportunistic jackoffs that you were before you learned how to lie about it… Those who rememebr you still figure out what you are, and now they also know that in this day-and-age, you are not only a bully, but a fraudulent person as well... Which in all-honesty makes you even worse than that Josh kid who kept knocking me over on my tricycle, and that's pretty low...

Amen….

...Bitterly yours, until the day I gasp my last weezing breath...

(Bloggity-blog-blog!)

An Inconvenient Spoof? (It's the best I could come-up with already...)

2008-05-29T23:26:00.000-07:00

Yes people, culture has at last reached its pinnacle; we can stop trying now…

Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli has been commissioned to create an operatic version of Al Gore’s hit science-fiction novel and * I think* 'Break Dancing' instructional video about Global Warming™, "An Inconvenient Truth"...

It is optimistically set to be a part of the 2011 opera season and is sure to be an instant classic amongst Priussexual snobs who like cheese, and not just for eating…

The opera version is bound to heighten awareness of both the certain and immediate doom of the planet, as well as the absolutely divine dancing skills of Michael Flattely in a polar bear outfit while Nick Palance melts swooningly around him…

The anticipation is creating such a feverish response from the environmentalist crowd, that college campuses on the west coast of the United States are already reporting a significant increase in regional temperatures, causing the ice contents of myriad margaritas to melt exposing countless of innocent glasses to an almost certain fate…

Among many expectations pinging around as the world celebrates what is sure to be among our greatest achievments is the long sought answer to the ultimate of ultimate questions: Al Gore: Tenor or Falsetto...?

....Thank you Italy, thank you for saving the world... (though we are still a bit pissed about that whole Fascism thing)

...Sleep well tonight my fellow awareness fans, for all is well now….

AP Story Linky