Defense and the Zero Sum Game
Current mood: stressed

This week saw a few red-letter moments in history: a Pizza Hut driver in Des Moines shoots a guy trying to rob him; a 12-year-old boy sees his mother getting attacked and knifes the guy (to death). I’m sure there are more, but I want to focus on these.

It looks to me like someone came to his senses. Maybe it was the kid, maybe it was the driver, I don’t know. Maybe I don’t care. I’m looking around me and seeing that people making more money than either of these guys is looking for an excuse to waste a bunch of time calling their actions into some kind of question. And since it’s slightly harder, we’ll start with the Pizza Hut driver.

At 38 years old, a man knows himself and what is right and wrong with him (if he’s paying attention). According to the papers, this driver passed a bunch of background checks and got a permit to carry a gun. And in the face of two robbers that thought they were Bonnie and Clyde, he responded to a threat of deadly force in kind. I’ve never been shot before, apart from a paintball that hit awfully close to home (and I didn’t put a lot into playing after that day), but those who have been shot have told me that it sucks, in ways I can’t even begin to imagine.

According to Wikipedia’s article entitled "Ballistic trauma," "As a rule, all gunshot wounds are medical emergencies which require immediate hospital treatment." These friends of mine ask me what it would take to get me to draw my weapon; the only answer I can give is "something pretty serious." There’s a reason for that. Guns are used to kill people. They are the equalizer of force that effectively ends all discussions, leaving no option but violence.

Some dumbasses would say these words in such a fashion as to indicate that violence is a bad thing. But some words Gordon Gekko* said bring the point into focus: "It’s not a question of enough, pal. It’s a Zero Sum game - somebody wins, somebody loses. Money itself isn’t lost or made, it’s simply transferred - from one perception to another. Like magic." A Zero Sum Game. Gunfights have a single lingering outcome, one with clear winners and clear losers (sometimes more than one apiece). Good, or bad, the consequences are the same. Die today or die of old age, having outrun a bullet, you’re going to die and you can’t stop it. Guns don’t change that much, save only the dates.

So let’s give a hand to you, delivery guy. Pizza Hut will probably fire you for violating their "give-them-what-they-want-

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Micro-Note about Kosovo
Current mood: giddy

I was a paper carrier in high school.  I was kinda loser-ish and didn't really know what things like motivation or taxes were.  I just knew that I wanted to do nothing and stay at home, but that's not important right now.  Here's what is:  my senior year, American-made bombs fell on Serbian targets and troops took to the landscape to aid in the liberation of the Kosovar Albanians.  Three American soldiers were taken prisoner that year, released only after Jesse Jackson went to their aid (yeah, Jesse Jackson sprung three GI's from captivity--so much for the "what good is he to anybody?" argument, but I digress).  For about a month, the only headline bigger than Kosovo was Columbine, but in that time I learned a very important lesson about the Clinton foreign policy:  it only worked once, in Kosovo.

Here we are, about nine years removed from those events, and I finally see the pay-off:  Kosovo is declaring freedom and independence from Serbia.  I couldn't be happier.  Added to the ranks of Washington and Franklin are a bunch of Kosovar people whose names we'll never learn, but their labors secured for their people a liberty from the oppression of Serbia.  This blogger hopes that in this newfound freedom, they remember those lessons, hold tight the memory of all who gave their lives to see this day come, and move forward with a common strength of identity and individuality.

And never beat your swords back into plowshares, Kosovo...who says you can't have one of each?  You're independent now!  Grab your popcorn money and get dressed up!  This is cause for celebration!

Like we Iowegians say, "Our liberites we prize and our rights we will maintain."  We sometimes add to those ten words this two-word phrase: "HELL YEAH!"

Soapbox vacated.  Mahalo.
 

Currently listening : Testify By P.O.D. Release date: 24 January, 2006

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The Breakdown of Gay Marriage, part 1
Current mood: annoyed

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."  -text of the Ninth Amendment

To bring you to a full understanding of the meaning of the words in this text, I once again return you to the Breakdown, wherein we use the Webster's Dictionary to define every single word in a text to understand what the hell the guy was trying to say in the first place.

ENUMERATION is the act of ascertaining the number of a thing or specifying things one after another.

DISPARAGE is a verb which means to lower in rank or reputation, to degrade, or to depreciate by indirect means.

If you can't figure out the other words yourself, you're just not trying hard enough.  Most of the difficulty is relieved in removing the dangling pronouns and moving some of the phrases and clauses enough to make it sound like modern English.  So I'll try...

"The counting and specifying of certain rights in the Constitution shall not be construed to deny or degrade other rights retained by the people."

As one of "the people,"  I count and specify certain rights in the Constitution, but I shall not deny or degrade other rights retained by other people.  I can live with that, and so can you.  For starters, I retain and assert (at my leisure) my right to maintain my continued "staying alive."  Any person who attempts to assert their right to kill me will have to remember that while a right to kill me might be assertable, my undeniable and "undegradeable" (not actually in the dictionary) right to stay alive is violated by that act.

For you Christians out there that called the movie "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" a good movie, I'll remind you of a line of the Witch's dialogue that may sound familiar to you.  When the Witch came to Aslan and told him that all traitors belong to her (referring to Edmund), Peter drew his sword to stop her.  Her words, and I'm quoting, were, "Do you think mere force will deny me my right?"  When you heard that line, you shoulda gone out and got that tattooed on your arms, engraved into your "Army of the Lord Dog Tags" and plastered across your walls in posters and wrote it on T-shirts.

In the crudest language available to me, I will state that gay people want to marry each other.  They have retained that right, and just because it's not enumerated in the Constitution doesn't mean it should be denied or degraded by the likes of Pat Robertson in the private sector, or Willard M. Romney (as he attempted to do in his capacity as the Governor of Massachusetts), or any other person, myself included.

I'll pull it apart and tell you all, because SOMEBODY's gotta say it, what the big deal is.  Gay people want the same recognition of their couple-ship that straight people get; Christians feel it necessary to protect their "holy" unions, but want to leave it to the government because they don't want to do it themselves because that would look like "unholy" gay-bashing; and Christians in government want to get re-elected, regardless of the consequences, so they sell out their oaths to the Constitution in order to pacify the shrinking majority of Christians willing to scream until their lungs burn that gay people are going to Hell for sinning against God and that God won't forgive gay people just because they're gay.  Of course if it becomes law, gay people who marry will be found to have violated the law and get thrown in prison if they refuse to repent of their sins, I mean, renounce their marriage and apologize for having offended all the Christians that defend marriage.

I'm doing lunch with Dad soon, so I'll get back to this, but you know where to find me...but don't for one second think I've vacated the soapbox.

Currently listening : Master of Styles By The Urge Release date: 21 April, 1998

11:59 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

To the morons who need another 9-11
Current mood: cranky

As a mean-spirited child, I would respond to people who called me names by hitting them.  I thought it was wrong to be punished for this, but I learned later in life that sticks and stones don't break my bones (you can probably imagine how name-calling affects me), meaning that hate doesn't justify hurt.  Recently Ron Paul reminded the world that the Middle East hates us because we're there, and some of you have construed that to mean that Dr. Paul was "blaming America for 9/11."  There are some mean-spirited children who will simply never grow up.

Three things must be made plain now:
1) Just because they hate us doesn't mean they get to kill us;
2) Just because we made them hate us doesn't mean we're to blame for 9/11; and
3) THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A CONNECTION BETWEEN IRAQ AND 9/11!

President Bush keeps saying that we're better off with our troops fighting the "terrorists" over there so that we don't have to fight them here.  Bullshit.  There are two ways we can fix our terror problem:  we can either direct Israel to remove their gloves; or we can close international military bases and bring ALL our troops home, watch our economy soar with increased productivity, and evolve beyond the internal-combustion engine as our primary form of transportation of people and cargo.  A nation must stand up and decide that its bravest, strongest, proudest and best need to be preserved for the purpose of bettering our nation, not wasted in a gratuitous betrayal of reason for war profiteering.  President Bush calls himself the Decider; his only good decision will be to resign.  Now.

And when the so-called terrorists "follow us home," like hapless puppies stalking us for scraps from our table, they'll meet a populace that is armed to the teeth.  Three hundred million Americans stand ready to receive these people, a well-regulated militia with strength in numbers, knowledge of the terrain, and an operational superiority that won't beg for a fifteen-minute coffee break or hesitate to engage when our families are threatened, when our neighborhoods are targeted, when our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor are on the line.  They'd consider themselves lucky to be facing 150,000 poorly armed, poorly paid, poorly motivated, don't-speak-the-language, don't-know-the-terrain, hostage-mercenary soldiers commanded by a traitor, sent into a war zone for no reason other than Bush's unconstitutional fiat.  The President will notice that as his illusion of control goes the way of his actual control, the People will be wholly responsible for their liberty, thanking each other for their collective bravery, thanking everyone...except George W. Bush.

To the morons who need another 9/11, I offer you the following:  go to Iraq.  The place is crawling with terrorists who destroy buildings; I'll offer you a prayer that you are safe while you carelessly get the thing for which you wish (it's the least I can do for you; it was the most I could do for the real victims of the real 9/11).  Show your faces in the place where President Bush still squanders our pride, our youth, and our treasure, and see if they hate us because we're free.  Go to the Vietnam of a new generation and see what happens when Bush's war begets a new blend of politics and religion, pitting "free" men against "terrorists," "free" worshippers against a predominantly Muslim people.  Men who will obey a warmonger will die as such; our fighting men deserve better.  As for what you morons deserve...

Soapbox vacated.  Start writing your hate mail now.  In the words of the late, great, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, "We are turning into a nation of whimpering slaves to Fear — fear of war, fear of poverty, fear of random terrorism, fear of getting down-sized or fired because of the plunging economy, fear of getting evicted for bad debts, or suddenly getting locked up in a military detention camp on vague charges of being a Terrorist sympathizer." ("Extreme behavior in Aspen," Feb. 03, 2003)

Currently listening : Civil War By Guns n’ roses

8:35 PM - 3 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Maybe Someday
Current mood: blank

A few loose ends keep slapping in the wind, so I sometimes have to play them out in my head to know what to do (and, in many cases more importantly, what NOT to do) in order to keep them from detonating.  So here goes.

1.  "The Perfect Crime #2" by the Decemberists, from The Crane Wife.  It is a song about a Robin Hood-type robbery that has some gunfire in it.
2.  "River and Me" by Tim McGraw, from Let it Go.  Now, who among us hasn't had a stepparent that deserves to die?  My dad's third wife still gives me nightmares, even though I haven't lived with her since about ten years ago.  But the song itself is about a premeditated murder dressed up to look like an accident.
3.  "Trapeze" by Patty Griffin, from Children Running Through.  It's a sweet, sad, sappy little song about a woman who kills herself, which serves to remind us all that life sucks sometimes, and our only escape from heartache is suicide.

What is the point, anyway?  Okay, here it is:  in the last three months, I've parted company with some people, some of whom are very intelligent and possess fine qualities (at least, I hope they do).  Most of them work on South Duff, the little block I call home.  In working at Borders, for the six months that I did, I learned nothing new.  I know that some people are backstabbing snakes, which I already knew.  I know that big companies can fire someone just because it's time to pay them more and Big Company don't want to, but I already knew that.  I know that appeals processes at the corporate level are subject only to how long the HR people want to wait before they start ignoring the peons, but I already knew that.  I even knew that low people in high places will lie to get what they want, but I guess I should have known I was going to get the confluence of these things thrown at me sooner or later.  I thought my days of working for usurpers were done.  I shoulda kept running.

It only serves to drive home something I already knew:  between freedom and slavery, I always pick freedom.  I'm not calling work slavery; work is work.  It's a command from God's apostle (ref. 2 Thessalonians 3:10), one that is still preached in churches to this day, alongside other good doctrines, like personal responsibility and driving safely (and some doctrines that are not so good, like gay-bashing and hating Marilyn Manson).  Freedom is a state of mind, or as my JROTC sergeant would call it, "attitude."  (SMSgt. Manley, if you're reading this, I want to right now personally thank you for being awesome.  You da man.)  Freedom is what you get when you combine the vision for a better life and the ambition to make it happen, as well as the forward thinking to reduce the potholes in the road as you move along.  Slavery is what you get when you stick your head into old patterns of servitude and blindly pledge yourself to the same old grind every day, very stupidly tellng yourself that things will become better someday if you just keep your head down and don't make people think that you are actually using your brain.

I had a job I liked.  I liked working in a bookstore, on my own block, surrounded by food and music and life.  Sure I went home tired every day, but that was to be expected.  The money was good and the people were decent (-ish).  I thought I'd always work there.  I thought I'd never stop working there, and enjoy a life lived in making money and enriching the culture of South Duff.  But it happens all the time, or so they keep telling me, that after a while your workplace starts to look like your personality.  After all, the people who work in a place are the personality that keeps the customers coming back on a regular basis.  And these people had some idea that I was not the kind of person they wanted working for them.

What kind is that?  Hard-working?  Dilligent?  Eager learner?  Affable?  Helps customers?  Smart?  Knowledgable?

Free.

I'm not saying I didn't do as I was told.  I did.  I was thanked for doing as I was told.  Customers thanked me for all I did for them, which in many cases was the "above and beyond" category of doing things.  I'm not saying I didn't do things the way the company wanted them done.  I'm still trying to work out some of the muscle memory I developed while working there, as it impedes in my ability to do some of the functions of my new job.  Most of those things worked well, and I still think like a Borders employee (which kinda pisses me off, but oh well, like the old man says, "Go with what works").  But companies like this have a tendency to wear off the things about a person that make them unsuitable to the job, rather than making variety the spice of the character.  I was, in short, fired for being different.

Maybe someday I'll stop hurting about this.  Maybe someday I'll be able to trust people like them again.  Maybe someday something good will come of all this.  Maybe someday, but not today.  All I can do is say what I know, and I know that these people will lie and cheat to get what they want, until someone stops them.  And I have enough wolves to fight, so this will have to be someone else's thing.

And to all the people I don't call friend anymore:  At least I never lied about what I am; selfish, petty, not always exercising the best common sense, having my moments, some good and most not.  But I didn't lie.  I left that to you.  So go get better acquainted with the horse you rode in on.  Fuck you.

Start writing your hate mail now.  In the words of actor/comedian/songwriter Thomas Paine, "He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself."

Currently listening : Chapter V By Staind Release date: 09 August, 2005

11:53 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

It Starts Tonight (not for light reading)
Current mood: pissed off

I suppose I should start with an introduction.  My ambivalence toward compromise rose from my charred remains when I was in the eighth grade.  I had this issue, more like a problem, with clipping my nails in front of people on the bus.  Yes, it is gross, and yes, I have stopped, and no, I don't wish to talk about that.  I will say this:  one day a girl on the bus approached me and said, "If you don't stop that, I will kill you.  Literally."  My only reply was this:  "Do it, bitch."  She never bugged me again.

I have learned that a threat means nothing without appealing to the fear of the person you're threatening.  Having no children of my own, having an emotional connection matrix that is useless (for the purpose of me seeing another person's point of view), having no real sense of obligation to make people comfortable, and having no conscience with which to feel bad about any of it, I suppose threats really don't mean much to me.  Having said all that, I must tell all my readership this:  I'm on a mission from God, one which specifically has me helping smaller, weaker people pushing their fears aside and standing tall, living a life of freedom, of justice.  And I laugh at all those signs I saw at all those schools I attended, the ones that say "safe zone" on them.  You can't make children unafraid of the future until you make them strong enough to stand up for themselves.

"Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God."  The fifth chapter of the Apostle Paul's letter to the Ephesian church includes this simple phrase, with a complicated set of instructions that is, in every fashion, easier said than done.  I have never really recognized the authority of anybody in my life (my obedience to God has been, at many moments, shaky), but I try.  One way I do this is to tell my friends that this is my mission:  to help make "collective victim identity" a thing of the past, beginning with ending the fearmongering that makes it possible, as well as the fear to which it appeals.  One can hardly forget Paul's words to Timothy about the Lord's opinion of a spirit of fear (ref. 2 Timothy 1:7).

And in a bit of history that just a little more modern (none of my grandparents were alive in 1923), a thing I thought I'd post here.  I don't normally put links in my blog (aside from word definitions, quote sources and political parties), but here's one for the ages to come, from the ages past:
http://californiaccw.org/files/sf-chronicle-article.htm
Read it, grasshopper.  You'll see the reference later.  And now, the lesson...

We can all thank Jim Crow for holding down the black man (and, later, the Hispanic, the Asian, and anybody else that isn't white), but don't everyone thank him all at once--everyone should get a turn to bitchslap the bastards that made our fine American heritage one of slavery, injustice, and torture.  History will never forget (and never let me forget) that some of the worst injustices among peoples occur when you disarm and forcibly relocate any people for any reason.  Most drug laws that now exist (marijuana, cocaine, heroin) can find their roots in the desire to usurp the rights of the people to use recreational drugs for the purpose of easing their perception of their lot in life (after all, perception equals reality), and the racism found in these laws is incongruent with any actual threat to public safety, though the legislators passing these laws are just picking on people who are not like them.  Marijuana was criminalized in the 1930's so that Mexicans would either have to go back to Mexico to smoke pot, lest they find themselves in jail (one guy was given 25 years for possessing a single roach).  Cocaine, which was used recreationally by a lot of people (who drinks Coca-Cola?), was criminalized for the purpose of beating down the poor people, who freebased it into crack.  And because decent-paying jobs didn't normally get offered to black people, the poor people in question were predominantly black.

Now, I'm all for "just say no," but putting people behind bars for using, having, selling drugs?  These substances, by themselves, create no possible danger to public safety.  In fact, their status as "controlled substances" has given rise to black markets, multiple generations of prison culture, and other criminal activities which fund these acts and lead to corruption among elected officials and officers of the public trust.

Jim Crow is also responsible for large-scale disarmament of black people, particularly when Klansmen were in the practice of lynching blacks and burning crosses on their lawns.  This is an important thing to recognize, as blacks largely vote for Democrats, whose liberal policies have led to unprecedented infringement upon the rights of gun purchasers, gun owners and gun users; perhaps it will be regarded as an historical irony that a large number of blacks in America made their political bed with politicians who simultaneously abused their ancestors and usurp their collective civil right to defend themselves individually.

Jim Crow held the black man's head underwater, leaving him uneducated to raise it, unarmed to stop it, and unaware that it was wrong.  And just when you thought it was just the black man, the Hispanic man, and the Asian man who bore the yoke of gun-control oppression, you now have the Mental Defective.

I guess I was pushed around in school.  I don't remember, I was stoned most of the time.  But a lot of boys have ADD these days, and girls will be girls, with the growing up, growing out, and "mean girl thing" making their lives miserable during their most formative years, leading to years of therapy, possible hospitalization and observation, and everyone's favorite pastime:  MEDICATION!  Thanks to the slave-masters in Congress (really, Ron Paul was the only dissenter), persons designated mentally defective will be prohibited from owning guns.  It's seconds away from being codified into public and federal law, and it must not happen.  If it does happen, it must be fought with every resource available to every free thinking person; otherwise, someday the act of thinking freely will get you locked up and medicated, meaning unarmed, meaning SLAVE.  Just so my meaning isn't lost on you, free-thinkers will become slaves unless they fight.  I have a problem with living on my knees, so there it is.

I was making idle chatter with a friend tonight who kept interrupting me, insisting that we should agree to disagree, and that her "smile and nod" routine was her final comment.  But before she shut me up, I started telling her this thing my old man used to tell me.  Back in the 1930's, Adolf Hitler's government of Germany went about the process of sterilizing persons that would, by today's standards, be labeled "mentally defective."  As forward-thinking free people, we would call that practice barbaric (it is).  But Dad went on to tell me that in the 1920's, the federal government went about the process of sterilizing persons labeled mentally defective.  That's right, the American government sterilized Americans.  Against their will.  If "Pillow Angel" didn't make you ill, this might.

[But I'm willing to bet you'd see how a hysterectomy for a girl who can't stand up for herself is okay.  Hell, they oughtta just amputate her legs, since she won't be walking anywhere, right?  I'm willing to bet you'd see how disarming "retards" is okay.  They're just gonna kill indiscriminately and not care, right?  It's in their nature!  They're fucked in the head!  Let's hope they kill themselves before they kill anybody else, right?!?!]

Soapbox vacated.  Start writing your hate mail now.  In the words of former President John Adams, "Consenting to slavery is a sacrilegious breach of trust, as offensive in the sight of God as it is derogatory from our own honor or interest of happiness."  Said Aesop, "Better to starve free than be a fat slave."  And in the words of Robert Heinlein, "When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives."

Or, in the words of "Serenity" character Malcolm Reynolds, "There's a lot of fine ways to die. I ain't waiting for the Alliance to choose mine."

Currently listening : The Sufferer & the Witness By Rise Against Release date: 10 July, 2006

10:38 PM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Sissy La-La! (not for light reading)
Current mood: annoyed

I got into a fight one time in grade school.  Okay, more than one, but this is my blog and I'll tell you about the fights as they become relevant to other stuff.  All I know is that it started with me meeting a kid on my way to CCD at St. Mary's and ended with him picking me up by my ankles and dropping me on my head.  I started it, don't get me wrong, but it ended with me hurting and him not really caring.

The point?  When someone starts a fight with you, end it.  Walk away if you can, but most of the time you won't have any choice save fighting.  And if you have to actually fight in a fight, win.  Just win.

And now, the beef.  So our favorite Communist, Nancy Pelosi, made sure to tell all the people of the free world that "there's a new Congress in town." New York's Chuck Schumer told us that "the rubber stamp days are over."  The people voted these people into a position of almost unlimited power to end the war in Iraq, and they did so for that particular purpose.  We've seen an increase in the minimum wage, we've seen Pelosi bitch about her plane size, and we've seen more American (insert noun here:  fighting people, soldiers, warriors, voters, brothers, sisters, dads, moms, football coaches, English teachers, friends) die in Iraq.

And a rabbit trail:  the other night I was at Perkins with a friend of mine and the lady that seated us told me I looked like a friend of hers.  Then she told me that her friend had been killed in Iraq recently.  This is just one occasion in which I've been told something like that (I got a haircut for my best friend's wedding last week), and there have been more in the last few weeks.  But I digress.

The Demo-Commie Congress has had a chance to do all the stuff they wanted to do and a chance to do what the voters wanted them to do.  The stuff they want to do, like overfund welfare and kick in my door and steal my guns, will happen at some point in the near future, because they're getting around to it.  The stuff they were voted into office to do, like hold the President accountable for his political screw-ups and ending the Iraq war...is another story.

You see, Jimi's Blog Faithful, Pelosi and her little monkey friend Hairy Reid (otherwisedly known as the Senate Blind-leading-the-blind-majority Leader), have taken this opportunity, unprecedented in its scope (only because the Chief has had to stop way before this point), and invited the voters to jam it in their collected ass sideways like a run-on sentence with commas (and parenthetical phrases).  It looks like Schumer's found his rubber stamp collection, doesn't it?

If the Democrats fought the President on the war with the same dedication our fighting men and women have fought the Iraqi insurgency, the President would be huddled under his desk clutching a teddy bear and begging for mercy.  His approval ratings would finally just drop into the single-digit percentages and he'd ask Cheney to go on a crippled bird hunt at the Capitol.  There is one wrinkle, though:  Now that Cheney is a grandfather of a bouncing baby boy, he needs to start thinking about the end of this war before his grandson grows a sack (like his mom's partner has) and fight for something he believes in--in short, this kid could find himself standing in Iraq twenty years from now, or maybe Iran, or maybe still hunting for a ninety-year-old Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.  The Republican party finally has all the reason it needs to end this war, and the Democrats have all the power they need to end this war.  It is truly sad that they can't mix it together with some spine.

And just in case you think I forgot accountability, you're in for a treat, because I didn't.  AG Alberto Gonzales is lying through his beautiful teeth and he's not keeping his lies consistent with his assistant, Monica Goodling, and as a result, our nation has Elle Woods without a script and, as usual, a lawyer lying about political manipulation and a justice system run amok by (oh, tell me you didn't see THIS coming) political hacks with no real governing sense and nothing more than an agenda guiding them through the turbulent waters of the future, ready to crush us like the bugs crushed Earth in "Starship Troopers."

Wait, there's more!  Gay people, I got a couple nuggets for you, too!  First, a point about Dick Cheney's daughter and her baby:  the Commonwealth of Virginia refuses to recognize the rights of Mary Cheney's partner as a parent to this child.  If little Dannielynn Smith has two daddies because somebody's law recognizes fathership as a name on a document, then Spanky Cheney has two mommies, one to take him to the emergency room in case the other is at work (as is needed sometimes), and that's just by way of example.  A two-parent home works much more smoothly when the state, which is instituted by God to serve the needs of the people, doesn't gaybash the hell out of a child's parentage.  Second, the bed-wetting Department of Depends (the Pentagon) have forgotten that we're at war and we need every man we can get, even the ones whose sexual orientation is none of their damned business.

I'd like a state that gets the hell out of my bedroom and doesn't care who my partners are.  I'd like a state that goes to war to kill the people responsible for killing Americans, and only the people who kill Americans, and nobody except the people who kill Americans.  I'd like a state that puts the well-being of the children of America ahead of the political ideologies of its employees and a handful of right-wing nutjobs (one fewer, now that Jerry Falwell is dead) who don't hesitate to exercise their right to their own religious preference and claim some kind of divine mandate to suppress our right to everything else, like whom we worship, whom we love, where we shop, what we think, what we are.  And I'd like a state that can be grateful for the opportunity to serve, and shut the hell up about how we live our lives.

My college roommate, Josh, used to make fun of me for having to use the can sitting down, on account of my crutches.  He meant it all in fun and it was received as such.  His favored amusing epithet was "sissy la-la."  And I was more than happy to call him that in exchange, particularly when he called his girlfriend (now his wife) the nickname I called my girlfriend (now my ex):  "The most beautiful and inspirational of all the creatures of God."  Josh, if you're reading, you can have that nickname, you can keep it, and I'll go ahead and call people who refuse to stand up for themselves "Sissy La-La!"

Start writing your hate mail now.  In the words of Nancy Pelosi, "We must remain focused on the greatest threat to the security of the United States, the clear and present danger of terrorism. We know what we must do to protect America, but this Administration is failing to meet the challenge. Democrats have a better way to ensure our homeland security."

And to quote my dad, "BULLSHIT!"

Currently listening : This Type Of Thinking Could Do Us In By Chevelle Release date: 21 September, 2004

11:06 AM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

They pull me right back in (this will piss you off, don't read if you can't take it)!
Current mood: angry

Before I get started, my prayers, thoughts and sympathies to the families of the victims of the combined shootings at Virginia Tech.  And now, time to get started.

"I'm at the end of my ribbon again,
For those who own to apathy.
You had the perfect opportunity,
but pled the Fifth and walked away."
    -from "Make a Move," by Incubus

I keep getting this image in my head, one which was spawned by a little bit of a brainfight I got to doing with a friend of mine.  He asked, "Say there's been a bank robbery and the cops only know that the robber had a gun, a green coat, and a red hat.  They kick your ass, thinking you're the robber, and then they find the guy.  You can't sue because the information they had at the time had them thinking you were the guy."  (Or something like that.)  And my image goes like this...

A bank robbery has just occurred.  Now there are three women, young and frightened (and justifiably so) and wrapped in wool blankets from the back of an ambulance.  The guy behind the counter has been given a pair of scrub pants because he pissed himself as he loaded money into a bag for the robber.  The guard, an old retired guy whose only qualification for the job was being a cop a long time ago, has a heart attack and will be dead before he gets to the hospital.  I keep wondering who is responsible for the mess at hand, when it dawns upon me.  Taxpayer dollars put those ambulances, EMT's and blankets at the disposal of the young women.  Scrub pants are made available to the counter guy because taxpayers bought them.  And the cop?  Well, he was the only one with a gun.  And now he's dead.  Why the hell weren't the other people armed?  Let them whine all they want about how shit-scared they were, but why were they not armed at all?

So here we are, smashed at high speed into a catastrophe at the hands of a madman.  According to the best information at the time, a Chinese guy killed his girlfriend, an RA, and thirty students in a classroom, before blowing his own head off.  An ordinary Monday morning turned upside-down by a guy who (if the other information is accurate) tested the security response of the school by calling in fake bomb threats, slapped on some body armor, shot the hell out of thirty-two people, and killed himself with his own gun.  Now little of this is confirmed, but the best minds in the business, as well as eyewitnesses and police officers (cops and minds rarely meet), say that this guy wordlessly slaughtered unarmed people.  "Just, like, a straight face."  Stone killer.  Stone.  Cold.  Killer.

Reality check, you morons:  these people do exist.  And tightening gun laws won't change their desire to get a gun, nor will it slow their ability to get a gun, nor will it alter their usage once they get a gun.  Laws don't matter to them.  Lives don't matter to them, not even their own.  You can't stop them before they start killing, but that's the same as bad weather, bad drivers and bad food.  You can only react to them.  Why wait and let a legislative body react to it when your head is in the crosshairs right now?  There is only one way to stop a guy from killing you, and that's to kill him first.

Ignorance will get people killed, and gun control is the finest example.  Gun control, though, should be understood as a concept, not as a political issue.  And to help with that, I'm going to use my favorite method.

GUN is, in the context, a weapon which converts a whole bullet into a spent shell casing and a flying lead projectile;
CONTROL is the authority to manage or direct.

"Authority to manage or direct a weapon which converts a whole bullet into a spent shell casing" is the definition of GUN CONTROL, but sounds a lot like what I do when I'm holding my weapon and firing it.  The concept of gun control is the ultimate desire of the government to steal from you your right to acquire (through purchase or inheritance), distribute (as an item of sale or a gift), use (as a sport device or a defensive weapon) and regulate (whether by means of cleaning or by means of "doping," or verifying battlesight) a gun, with the intent of reducing you under absolute despotism.  Sound familiar?  The Left wants to steal your guns and stop you from getting more, and the Right wants to make you think that they are giving you your rights.  The Left is not able, lest you are too weak of mind and will to resist; the Right is not God, and is therefore impotent to give you anything other than that which you've already earned that was stolen from you in the first place.  Where did gun control in America originate?  Two words:  Jim Crow.  You want to see racism to die in America, here's a good starting point.

So there.  Now you know what's up.  And if you don't, well, bite me, because I've explained it to you and you can't plead ignorance (as you're smarter now for reading what I wrote), or the Fifth (which you only have because your buddies daily plead the Second).  You don't have the right to be safe, and you're only alive because nobody has killed you yet.  Wanna stop them?  What are you going to do, wait for the authorities or lock and load?

Start writing your hate mail now.  To quote Woman Against Gun Control:

Gun Control: The theory that a woman found dead in an alley,
raped and strangled with her panty hose,  is somehow morally
superior to a  woman explaining to police how her attacker
got that fatal bullet wound.

Currently listening : Light Grenades By Incubus Release date: 28 November, 2006

5:11 PM - 1 Comments - 1 Kudos - Add Comment

Series Finale
Current mood: satisfied

I have had many favorite television shows in my life, including series of "Star Trek" and single-season shows.  I remember the last episode of all my favorite bygone shows, and keep them in my heart as memorable moments, like the parting of ways with old friends.  Recently, though, I've been thinking a lot about how I spend way too much time on the internet and have decided to stop blogging.

Thank you, Jim's Blog Faithful, for reading, and for paying attention to all my dumbass remarks about a better world and a free country that we can all appreciate and enjoy passing onto another generation, one whose stock I guess I'll never assist in populating.

In this final post, I'll toss in one quote from Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, the Good Doctor himself, from "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."

"There he goes.  One of God's own prototypes.  Some kind of high-powered mutant not even considered for mass production.  Too weird to live, and too rare to die."

Mahalo.

Currently listening : Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits By Bob Dylan Release date: 01 June, 1999

4:43 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Force (not for light reading)
Current mood: grumpy

Nathan, this one's for you.  After all, you did ask me a stupid question that begged forty-five minutes of discussion, while only having thirty seconds before I got out of your car and went home.

I am blessed beyond measure, but today I will focus this comment on one aspect of my life:  I am the proud owner of an iPod.  Not just any iPod holds court in my pocket, as I was very discriminatory when I selected the 30GB video model.  One of the things I'm able to do with this magnum machine is watch television shows while I'm eating my lunch at work.  Today, I decided to watch a program from NBC News called "War Zone Diary."  Richard Engel, friend of the blog and previously mentioned as having the biggest huevos in the known world, compiled four years' worth of video diary and commentary and created a one-hour summary of his experiences in Iraq as a journalist.  Some of what he described was horrific, while other bits were simply unbelieveable and almost funny.  We as a people are fortunate to have this man reporting among our troops in Iraq, bringing us a point of view that can transcend our poor power to understand the war and the men fighting it.

As an uncivil libertarian, I am more forceful in my understanding of the world than most.  I prefer to air the laundry quickly, forcibly, and strongly; this way, I am able to preclude others from missing the point, I am able to rip corruption's roots from the ground and attack the fertilizer before it makes problems resurface.  Reinventing the wheel is tedious, and I for one prefer not to have to do that whenever possible.  So I'll air one of my favorites, and I'll let you decide what's up.  In my understanding, there are three things President Bush which constitute abuses of power.

First, the President followed the 9/11 attacks with the midnight passage of the Patriot Act.  In a simple sentence, the Patriot Act created a power structure that has the President and his cronies at the top and a lot of people that fall outside this group at the bottom of a long ladder.  This is particularly not good in that the President has no clue what the hell is going on anymore, if he ever did.  Informing on neighbors, roundabout passage of legislation, rampant misuse of fictitious war powers...for all his references to Hitler's Germany and the Third Reich, President Bush is certainly sewing the seeds of a new kind of fascism, one in which few hold power and many wind up dependent upon his dubious good graces to release them from jails without being charged, tried, or convicted, before a sentence is passed.

The second of his big stupids is the Iraq War itself.  Another staple of the uncivil libertarian platform is the nonintervention of other countries in the form of preemptive warfare.  Bush's doctrine of preemption was misused to start a war with a nation not connected to the attacks on Washington and New York, when the doctrine could be replaced with an actual investigation that would put our troops into nations like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan; it would have our military lending physical aid to nations wanting freedom, like Taiwan and Darfur; it would cut off trade with nations that we currently call friends and force hands among the baddest of the bad.  Instead, President Bush wastes our troops in a toilet not worthy of our time or energy, our lives or our taxpayer dollars, our national identity or our morale.  I guess he wouldn't know anything about fighting a losing war, as he was a deserter and a daddy's boy.

The third, and most historically egregious of his sins, is the one best referred to by its actual name:  The Military Commissions Act of 2006.  As the Great Writ is disemboweled like the defendants whom it was intended to protect from rigged trials and summary executions 900 years ago, President Bush has guaranteed that the very next time we get a President dumb enough to start wars with bogus intelligence and stir up paranoia in our streets, separating people as friends and neighbors until we're all so scared that he pushes us all into a grave that our children will never forgive us for digging.

And in case you haven't been paying attention, he's done just that.  Give it time and you'll see him do all of it.

So, Nathan asked me last night what it would take for me to draw on somebody.  Stupid question, I say, but I have an answer.  There are, as always, three standard scenarios that fit that bill.  Simple, yet not seen in a while, are these scenarios, so I'll say as few words as I must.

1.  Force.  Force is the violence directed at me.
2.  Threat of force.  Self-explanatory.
3.  Fraud.  It is force, in its own right, as it involves the destruction of my property by means of using someone else to do it instead.

I've had all three of these happen to me; for whatever reason, however, my bullets are all still in my gun.  Pity.  I want to kill people who steal from me.  I don't like it when people steal from me.  I don't like people who threaten me.  I don't like violence directed at me.

Jim's Blog Faithful, you're all wonderful, and I thank you for reading today.  I want to leave you with some wise words, but the only thing I think to say is this quote from founding father Benjamin Franklin:  "Fart proudly."  Now write your hate mail.


 

Currently listening : Karma and Effect By Seether Release date: 24 May, 2005

2:27 PM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment