Never been much of a joiner...

I've never been much of a joiner in my life. Closest thing I've ever come to a real, honest-to-gosh team is either my driver's ed class or the 3 jobs I've had. I'm one of those guys who prefers to hang with my back to the wall at the far edge of the crowd and just watch.

Today marks 60 days until the midterm elections. Thus, all support given to any political candidate is strictly prohibited, even in print or on the internet. Voicing your opinion favoring one candidate over another is considered the same as a campaign contribution, and in order to make the electoral process more fair, those two *expletives* John McCain and Russ Feingold authored a bill to prevent such horrible exercizing of one's rights. A majority of both houses of Congress voted to pass this bill. Then President George Bush Jr. signed this bill into law. Then 5 Supreme Court Justices upheld this law.

According to McCain-Feingold, exercizing my God/Nature/Other-given right to say whatever I damn well please on a blog of my creation is illegal. If I post anything indicating a preference for one candidate over another, I'm a criminal.

Well screw that.

I'm here to tell you I prefer Libertarians over Republicans, and Republicans over Democrats. I'd rather see Mark Green elected governer of my benighted state than see Jim Doyle remain in office. I'd rather see John Gard take his place than Steve Kagen, the retarded looking Nancy Nusbaum, or that spineless whiner Jamie Wall.

It is my absolute, inalienable, un-infringeable right to say that, and I will NOT brook any interference in my exercise of that right.

And furthermore, I believe anyone involved in the passage and upholding of the McCain-Feingold finance reform bill should be convicted of treason, and summarily hung within 48 hours of the prouncement of guilt.

It's my right to say that as well.

So yeah, I've never been a joiner. But today, I join ranks with the other bloggers who stand in defiance of tyranny - those souls calling themselves the McCain-Feingold Insurrection.

To those who would act in total contradiction of +200 years of Constitutional protections on human rights, y'all can take your McCain-Feingold bill, shove it where the sun doesn't shine, and set fire to it.

Random Reflections Pt6

16.A meditation on rights and privileges.Rights are something you’re born with. They are inalienable. You have them from the moment you have brain waves until the moment your soul leaves your body. They can be restricted, but they can’t be taken away. I have the inalienable, God/Nature/Other given right to do whatever I want, as long as I don’t hurt anyone. You can restrict that, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have that right.

Privileges, by their very definition, can be given and taken. I have the privilege to stay out until certain times of the night. That privilege is granted by my parents, who “rule” the household I live in. That privilege can be revoked.Rights and privileges are not the same thing. Rights cannot be taken from you, they can only be oppressed. Privileges can be granted and revoked at whim.

EVERY human being on the entire planet has the right to free speech, a jury trial, keep and bear arms, be safe from unreasonable search and seizure. Those are RIGHTS. They cannot be taken from you, they can only be oppressed. Either they apply to every man, woman, and child, or they apply to no one, and not being tortured when convenient is a privilege that can be revoked. Yes, this is America-centric. Our founding fathers described and enumerated in the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution what HUMAN rights were. Rights aren’t divisible into “American” and “Other” categories. They apply to every member of the human race.

People don’t understand the difference between rights and privileges any more, and that’s one of the reasons we have the problems we do.

17.Country music is straying from its “my wife left me, I’ll drink some beer and kick my dog” stereotype. I’m noticing a lot more pop and rock type country songs these days than I used to. Sure, there’ll always be the Garth Brooks and Toby Keiths of the genre, but I’m seeing a lot of pop-rock music coming out of the country charts. Meanwhile, rock seems to be splitting from its excess-and-grunge days. Seems to be going in one of two directions – either zany punk-type rock or dark, death and gloom oriented music with a standard rock edge. Obviously this is the stuff that’s selling, but I’d hate to see rock undergo the transformation rap did way back when. They went from really voice-oriented standard rock fare to oily, mumbled tales of crime.

18.Paramount fired Tom Cruise. This is what happens when you go flat barking bugnuts. All the attention surrounding him recently has been the result of his personality, (or change in personality) rather than his talent. This guy is one of the greatest actors in Hollywood right now, and he’s currently unemployed (though not destitute) simply because he made (whether consciously or not) his image his job, instead of acting.

People who capitalize on their image rather than talent irritate me. Are we to think that some music exec actually found Paris Hilton to be a good singer, and didn’t just greenlight her album because she’s popular? Show of hands here folks, who’s heard her music and thinks she’s going to spend the next 30 years singing? Or acting? Can anyone honestly see her, on-stage, at age 50? Of course not. She’s spent the last 5 or so years promoting her vacuous personality rather than any talent she might possess, and all this does is show the American people are stupid for making her popular and she’s got fantastic marketing skills.

That’s what’s wrong with the entertainment industry right now – there are too few people who have the skill and stick-to-it-iveness to remain in the game for the long haul. If they’re not committed to doing it until at least 50, they’re not worth the time or money.

19. (REPOSTED) If ANYONE voted for any kind of restrictions on free speech they are a traitor. If ANYONE voted for any restrictions on the manufacture, import, availability, or ability to carry any kind of weapon anywhere, they are a traitor. If ANYONE voted to hold anyone in this country in prison without bail, notification of the charges against them, without access to an attorney, without medical care, without notification of the public or even their relatives, they are a traitor. If ANYONE voted to establish special courts for the prosecution of a "special class" of crimes, not under the supervision of the US justice system, they are a traitor. If ANYONE voted to restrict the movement of individuals through this country, they are a traitor.

ANYONE who authorizes or voted for the spending of money on anything not listed in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution is a criminal. ANYONE who voted or authorized the use of military force prior to a declaration of war by Congress is a criminal. ANYONE who authorizes or voted for the funding of an army for more than 2 years is a criminal. ANYONE who authorizes or voted for a federal tax other than a capitation tax is a criminal.

These are incontrovertible facts. Any public official who cast a vote (or supported through financing or legislation) as described in the first paragraph at any time is in clear violation of the Bill Of Rights, and as such is a traitor. Any public official who cast a vote (or supported through financing or legislation) as described in the second paragraph at any time is in clear violation of the Constitution, and is a felon.

20. It makes no sense to restrict possession of anything. Those you would mistrust with something are just as bad without it being illegal. Prohibition or laws regarding the prevention of anything make as much sense as trying to cut down on drunk driving by restricting the sale of alcohol to teetotalers. Or cutting down on speeding by lowering the speed limit. This is a fundamental truth of life that no one seems to get – Bad People are still going to be Bad, no matter how much you control Good People. The laws are written for the bad, the good already carry the law in their hearts. Anything beyond natural law is a restriction of essential, rightful liberty.

There's A Chipmunk Over There

I recently celebrated a birthday. My birthday day rocked. My birthday night...not so much. Two, count 'em two completely unrelated events that kept us up until the wee hours of the morning.

To understand part of the story, you have to know something of the geography of our house. My bedroom resides all the way down on the right end. I sleep next to an outside wall, on the other side of which there's a garden, a tree, birdbath, window wells, all the stuff you normally find in a side yard. The inside of our house, with the the exception of both ends where there are bedrooms, is open concept. The living room is open to the kitchen and dining room, and takes up the middle third of the front of the house.

Whew. Now that that's out of the way.

Last night I heard bump from outside my bedroom window. Sounds like someone tripped over the short garden fence or a window well cover. I think "squirrel" and forget about it. This is about 11:40, maybe. Around 12:25, I hear footsteps outside my room (I figure it's a parent), and then something from the main body of the house, it sounds like someone's trying to rattle our patio door against the block in the track, or maybe pry open a window. My curiousity piqued, I get out of bed, consider and then discard the idea of taking a knife with me (it was a weird noise, ok?), and stumble out into the hall.

My mom's out in the hall, looking confused. She got up AFTER the rattle (who's footsteps were those?) and thinks there might be someone in the house. One person hearing something suspicious is understandable - houses settle. Two people hearing it is not coincidence. This coupled with the sound like someone tripping outside my window (I explained this to her) leads me to believe we have either a home invader or a prowler on the premises. I go back to my room, briefly consider the advantages of a carbine against a pistol, and retrieve my 9mm from under my bed. Suitably armed, I return to the hallway, tell my mom to wake my dad, and watch the darkened rest of the house from the back of the hall. It's cold in the house, I'm wearing only athletic shorts, my heart sounds like a dang jackhammer, and I'm wondering how fast someone can get down the hall from the kitchen and if I'll get enough time to put a round in the chamber, aim, and find it within myself to fire.

My dad gets up, takes my gun and does a walkthrough of the house, turning lights on and examining the outdoors as he goes. All the doors and windows are locked, no signs of entry. That's good. From there he checks the basement, retrieves my freaked-out brother from his basement bedroom, and once we've made sure the house is secure, we all return our various weapons to their places of origin, and go back to bed, my brother choosing to sleep upstairs in his old bed in my room.

It's now about 12:45, and the fun is just beginning.

We have two birds. A parrot lives in front of the patio door in our kitchen. A 900 year old finch resides in a cage on a chest in front of the living room window.

At about 12:50, we hear the parrot freaking out. My mom and my dad get up to comfort him, and me and my brother follow.The parrot appears to be fine. My brother looks over by the finch and utters those infamous words "There's a chipmunk over there."

Yeah. The absolute LAST thing you want to hear at 1 in the morning.

This critter ain't a chipmunk. It's about the size of a rat, with a flat bushy tail as long as itself, big black bug eyes, and an angelic face, sort of like a squirrel/chipmunk/possum cross. Everyone's since commented that it looks like something out of Australia. He's sitting on the finch's cage. At our slightest movement, he transfers himself about 3 feet over and 3 feet up to the top of a potted plant. We grab towels, a spatula, and a laundry bucket and head into the living room. He jumps another few feet into the air, and proceeds to do upside-down hand-over-hand along the curtain rod, then runs the length of the curtain back to the plant he came from. By this time we've shoved towels under all the doors in the house, opened the front door, and are considering plans to remove the offending house-guest.

Using a long piece of wood, my brother pushes the plant-box over to the now open front door. From there, my dad, shielding himself with the laundry bucket, chases the animal down the tree with the spatula, and out into the yard.

We all got to bed around 1:30.The happenings with the animal are all funny in retrospect (The phrase "There's a chipmunk over there" will be a punchline for years to come, and we've got several photos of the furry guest that are quite cute) but at the time it was most aggravating.

Our theory is someone tried to break in, and then while we were clearing the house, we woke up the critter that had been come in (unknown to the rest of us) earlier in the day and had been napping under the couch. We know the 2 events were not connected because the noises we heard that we attribute to a human were A)Outside and B)Not capable of being made by a critter of the small four-legged variety.

This is just great - this is the second time in a year that someone's tried to break in.

Random Reflections Pt5

11.I’m going to come across sounding like an evil, racist young cuss and I don’t care.

In another life, I sold cellphones. Without fail, once a day, we got several Latino persons or families in the store, either looking to pay off their bill (Sprint will let you buy what amounts to a gift card, and once a month you present this card to someone like me, we punch a few buttons on the register, you hand me cash enough to cover your bill, and voila! you’re paid up for another month) or buy a cellphone. And also without fail, at least one person per day had absolutely no command of the English language. I’m not talking about poor grammar or a thick accent – I mean they SPOKE NO ENGLISH. They’d go up to each person in the store and say “Spanish?” If you said no, they’d try every other employee. If you said yes, or I’ll try, you spent the next 4 hours working out a cellphone deal caveman style.

Here’s the thing though – never once did I see one of these people have anything less than a $150 dollar cash deposit on their phone. They bought phones with a minimum $30 per month contract (usually $50+, to tell the truth) and a load of taxes, activation fees, and sundry expenses. Not counting the price of the phone, buying and activating a cellphone is EXPENSIVE. And they bought decent cellphones. Middle of the road, not crap phones, not top of the line phones, but solid, reasonably performing phones. And they paid in cash.

I remember this one transaction vividly, this family of Latinos come in, a husband, wife, older daughter and two to five kids between the ages of fifteen and five, and ALL of them have cellphones clipped to their belts or waistbands. Every single one of them. None of them spoke any English while they were there, and the husband understood barely enough to indicate which one of my inquiries (buy a phone, pay a bill, etc) was correct. He paid me nearly $250 in twenty dollar bills to cover his phone bill for the month.

Now maybe I’m just dense, but how does someone who speaks not a lick of English get enough cash to pay for a four or five hundred dollar cellphone package outright, and then keep coming back each month to pay a (usually) hundred and fifty dollar bill in cash? How? I wanna know – I want that job!

12.The benighted governor of my fair state recently proposed and passed two laws benefiting military veterans. One allowed veterans or their families to cancel their cellphone coverage at any time without monetary penalty. For the rest of us, that penalty after an average of one week is around $200. The second measure allows veterans and their families to attend any state university for no or little cost. What the hell, over?

We’ll pick these apart one by one. The first law is directly screwing with a private company, an act of government specifically targeting certain companies to give government employees better business than everyone else. Government legislating business practices, not to make them more fair (which is in itself a travesty) but to get their own employees better treatment…what…how…I’m speechless.

The second law may or may not be worse than the first. It’s of greater monetary value, but it doesn’t screw with private companies for selfish reasons. No one knows how we’re going to pay for the education of every “taker” vet and their family in the state. Even the governor admits he’s flying by the seat of his pants, though in far more eloquent and duplicitous terms. He’s taking money from every other person in this state to give government employees better treatment than anyone else gets.

Not that I’m complaining that everyone else doesn’t get this treatment. No one should get a free or partially free ride on anything, for anything, to anywhere. There’s no faster way to bankrupt something than to start offering free stuff to everyone and their brother’s cousin.

No, what I’m complaining about is interference in private companies’ business for the benefit of only certain people, and sticking you and me with the bill for someone else’s expensive education, based only on who they choose to associate with. This is tyranny. This is the creation of a new “landed” class of people, a fostering of the “Us Vs Them” mentality that’s going through society. Government has NO right to determine who gets special treatment, better perks, hell, they don’t have the right determining who gets average treatment or ANY perks.

13.9mm is a perfectly acceptable defensive caliber. I don’t want to get shot with it. Anything over a pellet gun is a perfectly acceptable defensive caliber, but only if you use decent hollowpoints, and can hit your target multiple times. If someone could build a reliable semi-automatic handgun that held 25-30 rounds of .22LR or .22MAG, I’d think long and hard about carrying it. Capacity is to a gun what endurance is to a runner. When it’s on, you want to stay in the game as long as possible. That said, .44AMP will put a guy on his back faster than .17HMR. Doesn’t mean we should all carry Automags though, it means we should puzzle and puzzle till our puzzlers are sore about what we want in a gun. I want rounds at least a third of an inch wide, and a lot of them, and I want them to come out of the gun as fast as I can pull the trigger. Make your own decision about what you want to shoot defensively.

14.More on clothes. Kohl’s department store has a pair of pants the tag of which proudly proclaims “Two legged pants.” Even amputees wear two legged pants, they just pin one leg up. Would pants with one leg be called a pant? Has anyone ever see three legged pants? I fail to see where having the same number of legs to your pants as everyone else is a selling point.
Why do socks come in Ziploc bags advertised as “easily resealable?” Does anyone buy a bag of socks, put them in the closet, and remove a pair and then reseal as necessary?

15.Some people are going to accuse me of being disrespectful after reading this one. I’m not. I’m just fed up with this public official adoration stuff. Just about any death is a tragedy. Being on the government dole does not elevate your death to a national crisis.

A firefighter died in my city a few days ago. He wasn’t doing anything particularly heroic at the time (carrying infants out of a burning building, giving mouth-to-mouth to a cat, that sort of thing), he was just walking through a flaming house, spraying water. He fell through the floor and rescue crews were unable to retrieve him. This is bad. His surviving family has my condolences. He is not, however, any more important than anyone else who dies in this town, at the rate of five or six a day.

He was on the front page of every local newspaper for, well, since he died. That’s been about a week. Today was his funeral, and boy, was it a doozy. Televised on four channels. Cameras dedicated to his wife and son. Coverage of the funeral from the first car pulling up to the last swing of the incense burner. THEN, he gets driven through the city by about half the police force. The city’s rented several super-duper hook-and-ladder trucks and set them up two-by-two along the route, with huge custom flags hanging from each. I bet the coffin doesn’t go more than three feet without passing under at least two flags. Firefighters from New York, that he DIDN’T even know, have been flown in for the event.

This guy was just a man. Just folk as Capt. Reynolds says. He ate, drank, slept, shopped, put his pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of us. But Suzy Q. Public doesn’t get laid to rest with all the pomp and splendor that a firefighter or police officer does, because she’s not paid by the government.

Our firefighter didn’t NOT know that his job was dangerous. He accepted, of his own volition and without coercion, a job that paid him well in exchange for going into places the rest of us would rather flee. He was paid well to do dangerous stuff and try and outrun the numbers. The numbers caught up to him, as he was perfectly aware that they might.

Yes, his death is a tragedy, but there is positively no need for the city to blow several thousand of yours and my dollars (probably tens or hundreds of thousands, to tell the truth) to make sure that his coffin is protected from sun during its trip to the graveyard by flags hung from outrageously expensive rented firetrucks, or that there are men he didn’t know from New “Remind us incessantly of 9/11” York there to be visible at his funeral.

Let the man rest in peace.

Reflections On Firearms

This post wasn't planned. Someone somewhere rebutted Point Something-Or-Other, saying restrictions on weapons lower crime. Here's the rebuttal of that rebuttal:
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The story begins on Halloween 2005. Well, actually, before that. Stephen has always been a rather bad person. He started off with theft and moved up to assault and animal abuse so heinous he got tossed in jail for 1.5 years. He ran a woman off the road and held her at gunpoint for nearly a day at one point. Around the time I was born, he was convicted of rape and sentenced to a very long stay in the county pen. While in prison, he writes threatening letters to his wife, claiming he's going to do some thing horrific when he gets out. In early 2005, it was determined through DNA evidence that he hadn't committed the crime after all. He is released, an innocent yet evil man. Once out of prison, Stephen buys handcuffs, leg irons, and illegally (because of his status as a felon) procures a rifle.

Enter Tereasa, a 25 year old photographer, who has, on at least one occaision, photographed Stephen's family salvage yard.~Halloween 2005, Stephen calls Tereasa's business, and using a fake name, requests that she (her specifically) take some more photos of the salvage yard. She shows up, snaps a few photos, and vanishes into thin air.Several days later, her burned and dismembered body is found in a pit in the salvage yard, her car and personal effects are found there too. DNA matches from pools of blood found around the property and in the car show a mix of his and her blood. Poor girl was a fighter. We'd be less one evil SOB and plus a young woman today if she'd been allowed to carry a gun. But on to the rest of the story. Stephen is arrested, held for murder. All seems as well as can be expected.

In February, Stephen's nephew Brendan (16yo)steps forward with new information. On Halloween afternoon, he'd come home from school, and heard screaming emenating from Stephen's house (the whole clan lives together in trailers), from a distance of one hundred yards. He walked to Stephen's house, knocked between screams, and was promptly informed by his blood-drenched uncle that he was raping and torturing Tereasa, and did he want to help? The nephew joined in the "games." Later that evening, they decided to kill her. They strangled her. She would not die. They cut her throat. She would not die. Finally they shot her with aforementioned blackmarket rifle. She died. They cut up her body, burned and buried it, and kept mementos of the incident.
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Teresa Halbach wasn't killed because Stephen Avery had a gun. She was killed because SHE did NOT have one.

You see, every year, nearly 800,000 Americans use a gun to defend themselves. They don't dramatically down the dastardly villain in every instance, else we'd be seeing an explosive growth in the undertaker business. Nope, just the presence of a gun in the hand is sufficient +90% of the time to scare away the criminal. That 800,000 number, where does it come from? Well, that's the LOWEST number reached among 9 national surveys by such groups as the Los Angeles Times and the Gallup organization. The higher numbers reached into the lower millions. And a good many of those criminals doing the threatening were armed, so the whole "If you're both armed, you're screwed" position is patently false.

Guns do not equal crime. A paucity of guns in civilian hands equals crime. Florida enacted their state-wide concealed carry law around the time I was born, and their homicide has dropped by at least 10% for the last 13 years (for a total overal of 21%), while the US homicide rate has climbed 12%. What's happened in the gun free utopia of Washington D.C.? It's been voted the murder capitol of the country for at least six of those years, and the city was just recently declared a "crime emergency." In fact, according to FBI crime statistics, you're more likely to be a victim of violent crime (by 26%) in a state where concealed carry is restricted than in a state where it is not. 49% more likely to be murdered. 58% more likely to be robbed. And 15% more likely to be a victim of an Aggravated Assault.

Meanwhile, our neighbors across the pond (in what one former UK citizen calls the "Benighted Kingdom") are experiencing skyrocketing crime rates despite the fact that all but a teeny tiny minority own anything more powerful than an airsoft pistol, and their Knife Amnesty programs have become a joke among American GUN CONTROL advocates. I believe it was a spokesperson for Handgun Control Inc that said "What's next? Pointy stick control?"

All of this talk of crime ignores, momentarily, the real reason behind the enumeration of the HUMAN (note I didn't say "American," but "HUMAN") right to keep and bear arms of military significance in the United States Constitution. The founders had just fought a long and bloody war against their fellow citizens and a handful of hired mercenaries, using privately owned rifles that were the military equivalent of those given to their enemies. They had seen government go tyrannical (tyranny then being small fry to what we have now), and knew the only way for a citizenry to reclaim lost freedom was at the point of a gun. They wrote the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution because they knew that guns in the hands of governments and criminals only meant dead innocents, and they knew we needed a cut-and-dried, in-writing guarantee of the ability to fight back.

They were right, about that dead innocents thing. In the 20th century, millions of innocent people (the estimates range from 20 to 120) were killed by their own government in genocides, ethnic cleansings, political attacks, what have you. In every example - EVERY EXAMPLE - these killings were preceded by absolute and total Victim Disarmament. Not in a handful of examples, not a few examples, not some of the examples, but every bloody time a Chinese political dissident knelt by a ditch, every time a Jew was gassed to death, every time a Russian was shipped to Siberia, every time an Armenian dropped dead on a forced march, they had been disarmed first.

That is the legacy of victim disarmament, your so-called "Gun Control." That is what happens.

Every. Single. Time.

But those people are so long dead, in countries so far away.

Very well. We have more recent examples. Tell me you'd rather I was in a gun-free house when that person came through my front door while I was home alone. Tell me you'd rather I'd been beaten to death in that parking lot rather than see a gun in my hand.

None of those incidents involved me dying though, obviously not, otherwise I wouldn't be telling you this. Tell Teresa Halbach then. Come, tell her to her face that given the choice and opportunity, you'd take a gun from her as Avery approached her car for that last time as she drove away from his trailer. Tell her to her face you'd rather see her tortured and raped for hours before being given a bloody, ugly death that was at an end to her suffering than see her armed. You can't. Because she's dead. Because she was killed, brutally. Because she didn't have a gun.

So, come tell me, to my face, what you want to tell Teresa. And stay out of arm's reach, because if you do say that to my face, I will hurt you.

Random Reflections Pt4

6.DON’T trust anyone who says they’re the good guys. The good guys won’t need to tell you they’re the good guys, you’ll know them, respect them, and they’ll sense that respect. The bad guys always have to pretend to be the good guys in order to get anywhere. NO ONE portrays themselves or views themselves as evil. They’re always doing the best they can, just getting by, doing what they can, making the best out of it, trying to help the most people…yadda yadda yadda… And maybe, they aren’t the truly bad guys. Maybe they’re only a little rotten. But once they’re thought of as the good guys…the real bad guys have free reign, and since they’re still living off the credit their predecessors have built up…well, you’re gonna have a hard time convincing anyone what right and wrong are.

7.There are few things more beautiful than a summer day. A cloudless sky so blue it can hurt your eyes, the sound of the leaves being rustled by the same gentle, cool breeze that’s playing off your face, the way the sunlight filters through the swaying leaves and makes yellow patterns on the green grass, the particular slant of the light between 4:30 and 7:00pm. The smell of a grill, the sound of people talking a few houses down…

It’s almost beat by a snowfall at night, the way the snow sparkles in front of a porchlight, the soft clumping rustle the only interruption of absolute silence as it hits the foot or so of fluffy white already on the ground, purplish white of the sky against the black trees, the way the wind doesn’t feel too cold while watching the scene from your front porch. Then you wake up in the morning to a misty white slate sky, snow piled four inches thick along every branch and twig and horizontal surface it can find. Days like I just described are pure scenic heaven. They cannot be photographed, they cannot be described accurately, and more’s the pity that you can only live each unique one once.

8.I hate being unarmed. Absolutely hate it. If I leave my knife in another pair of pants, the fact that I am unarmed sticks in the back of my mind until I have it in my pocket again. This may be disagreeable to some people. They may think I’m paranoid. Well let me tell you something friend, that’s just too damn bad.

When you’ve stood in a cold parkinglot at 10pm and heard some foul mouthed punk say the immortal line “What’re you staring at?” as he starts walking towards you, then you can talk. When you’ve been the only one home during a home invasion, then you can talk. Most people are never placed in situations where they want/need a gun – ever – in their entire lives. I was placed in two, within a year of each other. When you can say the same, THEN we can talk about how my wishing for something other than a glorified razor blade conflicts with your vision of the perfect society. THEN we can talk about how my life means less than your dream of reality.

9.Pop-culture clothing continues to weird me out. Especially the kind designed for the female of the species. What’s up with short pants? Not shorts. Not pants. Short pants, the bottom-hem of which are about five inches above the shoes. Are their ankles too warm? Are they expecting a sudden flood? Where did they get the idea that this is fashionable? Guys don’t tend to look at girls’ feet, so showing off more skin down there makes no sense. And jackets that have short torsos, but long sleeves. *scratches head* Huh? The lack of material negates the need for the extra warmth of the jacket. And writing across the backside. I never thought of myself as much of a puritan, but that’s just…wrong. Is that where they want me to look first? During my favorite part of my life, when I was a third key at Sam Goody, I witnessed the most outrageous example of nonsensical/explicit clothing for girls – a young teen wearing a short skirt and a Martha-Stewart-In-Prison style knit shawl, with no shirt on underneath. I’m still speechless. Her parents should’ve had their heads slammed in a refrigerator door for hours.

Clothing for guys is nearly as strange. Jeans that have been worn out already. Doesn’t that mean you have to buy pants more often? How is that a good thing? When the knees of my jeans wear out, I go looking for another pair. Pastel-plaid cotton shorts – who buys these abominations? You look like you don’t know which way your gate swings if you wear pastel plaid anything as a guy. And now the “Writing on the fundament” style shorts have made their way into the men’s department. Sometimes I want to go blind. And those “ghetto” styles (yes, you know what I’m talking about, and I’m no, I’m not being racist) that think wearing sixteen sizes above yours is fashionable. Where does nine extra yards of fabric hanging off you get fun? And lest y’all think I’m unfairly criticizing women’s dress, here’s a guy example: A young, urban-dressed youth walking through Shopko, the only thing holding up his size 96XXXXL pants being the death grip he had on his crotch. I don’t want to see that. He should’ve had something ELSE slammed in a refrigerator door for his stupidity.

10.Fredrick Douglass’s memoirs were recently reprinted. The modern edition has footnotes explaining the meaning of words like “exculpate,” “arraign,” and “curried.” Granted, they talked mighty strange back in the day, but how is it that a book written by an ex-slave who never attended school should require translation to us, more than 100 years of free public school down the pike?

Random Reflections Pt3

1.There’s a topic I’ve been hesitant to broach because of its sensitive and rather uh, volatile nature. However, a recent on-the-job experience has convinced me of the necessity of discussing it.

It is now time to talk about children.

Specifically, those ill-behaved lawn-apes that seem to show up everywhere there is a congregation of more than five people. I can forgive a lot from a critter the size of a football that only recently discovered what daylight looked like, really I can. Any irritation at that age is perfectly normal, that’s hardwired into them – annoy any nearby person until they get fed or removed from whatever mess they’ve created.

What I cannot brook, however, is extending the age of stupidity all the way up to five, six, seven, eight years old. Sensible, controlled, adult people should not have insensible, uncontrollable, little people running around rampant underfoot while these sensible adult people are trying to conduct business. While screaming nonsensical gibberish (despite having a passable command of the English language) while running may seem like a bonus to the weasels in question, the rest of us find it highly offensive.

Listen up: Having kids is not a novelty. It’s not a status symbol. It’s not a rite of passage, it’s not a fashion statement, it’s not an entry into a popularity contest. It’s the greatest responsibility the vast majority of us can entertain thoughts of possessing, and if you have no intention of bearing that responsibility with anything other than the gravest sense of honor possible, then for God’s sake DON’T HAVE KIDS. Yes, it IS that simple. For all practical intents and purposes, they are your property for 18 years. If you’re not going to keep them fed, watered, washed, waxed, covered, and under your control until they’re capable of exercising some control of their own (which you could teach to them if you took six seconds out of your Survivor marathon), don’t come crying to me and mine when popular culture raises them and you don’t particularly care for the results. I’m too busy dealing with the adult world to worry about your little monsters, unless and until they become big monsters and intrude into MY life with none of the control you didn’t teach them.

It’s not THAT hard to teach small children not to behave like savages at the bookstore, grocery store, any public place. The rest of us don’t find that behavior cute, and we dread what kind of whirlwind that’ll reap down the road. So either do your job or stop dabbling in matters of which you know nothing.

2.My former best friend has been converted into more of an acquaintance because he’s gotten hooked on alcohol. While I don’t know the depth and extent to which this hook is embedded in him, I do know that it has brought with it many of the ugly consequences that are the known and foreseeable results of imbibing to excess. I just wish I had the strength of will and the coldness of heart to shake the hand of the friend that is encouraging this behavior, and then beat him to the point where someone needs to pull me off. It might not do squat, but it’d make me feel dang good.

It's ironic, but not only do kids my age believe themselves to be invincible due to their youth, they believe themselves to be wise and worldly at least 3-5 years older than they truly are. I need two hands and possibly a foot to count off all the people who I’ve known who have done truly stupid things with addicting substances. Some have pulled back from that brink. Some have not. That is a cliff’s edge on which you do NOT want to play Twister.

None of us had the fortune to be born immortal. More’s the pity.

3.Do not trust any organization that has some derivation of the feminine gender in the title. Do not trust any law that has the words “Children,” “Free,” “Equal” or some mutation of the quoted in the title, or that intends to appeal to the patriotism of the reader. These two categories have done and have the capacity to do untold damage to the freedom of the American people. I bring before you the examples of the UN Convention On The Rights Of The Child - which would ban home schooling, and would make spanking a federal offense (the treaty is stalled in Congress) – and Mothers Against Drunk Driving – mandatory sobriety checkpoints, anyone?

4.I work across the street from the biggest mall in the city, and once a week I run over there during my lunch break. So I’m standing at the entrance, looking at the huge building across the way – where I work – and I realize, we’re nothing. I mean, humanity is so dang small compared to the world we’re barely more substantial than dust motes. We’re tiny in comparison with the world, the universe, everything. And yet the tiny buildings and cars and people we surround ourselves with mean everything to us, despite the fact that they and we could disappear in an eyeblink and everything else would go on without so much as a hiccup. The things perspective will make you think about. We’re ants, crawling around on the skin of something we don’t even think about, surrounded by bright blue sky, and we’ll never know anything else. We don’t even stop to think like that, usually.

5.There’s a saying I’ve grown up with – “Pick the rock you want to die on.” It means pick the cause or belief for which will stand your ground and from which you will not retreat under any circumstance, and then draw your line in the stand. You’ve gotta pick carefully though. You don’t get a last-minute do-over when you things don’t go your way. Be sure of where and for what you make your stand, and then do NOT budge.At the same time, don’t be stupid about something that means a lot to you – NOW. You can get yourself in a world of hurt picking something moronic as the rock you want to die on, and it’ll come back and bite you when you least expect it. And remember, the point is not to die on, but to defend that rock. Be crafty, be cunning, be a master of strategic retreat, but make sure you can live with your chosen stand, the things you have to do to defend it, and the consequences that follow.

A few things first

Gun Stuff

I picked up a Beretta CX4 Storm around the 4th of July. Absolutely phenomenal rifle. I don't have a single bad thing to say about it other than I prefer post-and-notch Russian sights to post-and-circle American sights. It feels like a .22. Yeah, there's more recoil than with a .22, but there's something about the feel and sound that make it seem like I'm shooting my uncle's Marlin. And accurate... All 21 rds on a paper plate at 25 yards, standing, and all except 2 or three in a group small enough to cover with a measuring cup. My dad gets the same groups at 50 yards(showing up your son with his own rifle is a mean thing to do!) and got 1 out of 4 in a 3 inch bullseye at 100 yards, despite the fact that the only thing we've ever taken out to 100 is a borrow CETME that we could barely shoot for the recoil. I love this gun. That it takes the same magazines as my 92FS is a bonus too. Now I need to find a small pistol to keep in the drawer of the desk I'll get when my brother moves out of my room. Oh and, I found a Smith 1076 at Gander Mountain...too many guns, so little time and money...

I feel dirty

I don't know if I'll be able to do it, or live with myself if I did it, but there's a Democrat running Congress 'round here named Steve Kagen and from what I've heard, I like him alot more than his so-called "Conservative" opponent, John Gard. I'm sending a letter off to Kagen tomorrow asking him what he thinks of assault weapons, the draft, and McCain-Feingold. Gard will get a similar letter. I'm guessing Kagen will go the default Democrat postition (GUNS ARE BAD! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!), in which case I'll vote for Gard just because he's the lesser evil. But it'd be dang cool if Kagen were a cut above the rest of his communistic party. On second thought, maybe not, I'd never be able to show my face online again. I'll keep y'all posted.

V For Vendetta

Watched V For Vendetta last Sunday. Good movie, definitely the most faithful adaptation of a comic book that I've seen (though I've not see too many comic-movies). It did miss some rather major details though - V was not portrayed as the terrorist that he was in the book, nor did Evey become V when he died. Hugo Weaving is a fantastic actor - he was tasked with conveying a character without a face, and he did so nearly perfectly, carrying an otherwise average movie. Natalie Portman did a passable job, but she got some real bad lines to read. Her transformation from average citizen to hardened rebel was handled moderately well. The movie dragged through the 3rd quarter, but not terribly so.The only major complaint I had with the movie was the ending. It was far to upbeat. We were left with the feeling that England was going to back to bunny rabits and sunshine because a bunch of people wore Guy Fawkes masks and watched the demolition of Parliment. I know they had to leave this part out, but they shouldn't have: The only reason things were going to change was because V had poisoned, choked, stabbed or otherwise eliminated everyone who opposed him.Besides that, it was a good movie. I was expecting an action/special effects extravaganza, and was pleasantly surprised at the amount of character development and plot.

Random Reflections Pt2

1.I don't mean anything harmful by this, I mean no insult to anyone, all the usual caveats and addendums apply, blah blah infinite blah...why is everyone overweight these days? We're not in the middle ages anymore, obesity is not a sign of prosperity and good breeding potential. And I'm not talking about 5 to 10 pounds overweight here...I'm talking about, like, Jabba The Hutt, and dressed like Gap beach models, which is nearly blinding to anyone who looks for more than 3 seconds in their direction. How does one let oneself get that large? Everyone has a mirror across from their shower...I can't believe they'd get out soaking wet and say "Hm, not bad." I mean seriously here folks, do they not notice it at 20 pounds overweight? 30? 50? It's not like you wake up one morning looking like that, there are various stages of transition and by the time you're the size of a small European sedan, you've had plenty of time to see it coming. The time to stop is not when you're begging Dr. Phil or Geraldo to reverse your mistakes FOR YOU and pay for your stomach stapling, it's when you stop dead in your tracks and momentum wants to take various parts of your anatomy forward. Better yet, don't start! And the hormones and glandular imbalance excuse holds no water - the number of people who can actually contribute obesity to diagnosable medical conditions is a fraction of a percent. That statistically tiny minority has my deepest sympathies...everyone else...don't complain about society's standards of attractiveness just because you've chosen NOT to live up to them. Lose your three spare tires and your family of chins and then come back and talk to me about how unhealthy it is for models and actors and actresses and musicians to be so thin.

I'm not a health freak. I eat alright, moderate my fat and sugar intake, run a mile every day and lift weights, but I feel dang near anorexic when I walk through the mall.

2.Why is it that most rap music is about crime? With the exception of a statistically nonexistant minority, they ALL make their careers rapping about various felonies - murder, the selling of women, and drug trafficking. And then, hypocritically, a majority of them refer to God reverentially on their CDs, support groups like the Million Mom March, and whine that the police harass them. Well dang folks, I'm fresh out out of sympathy here - if'n I was in the field of law enforcement and some local critter was proclaiming from the youth's boomboxes about his prowess in drive-bys, I'd cast more than a significant glance or two in his direction. And don't try and sell me on this poor, ghetto lifestyle - you're either downtrodden and living hand-to-mouth or you're living high on the hog, JUST LIKE YOU RAP. Pick one and stick with it.

3.My brother attended court to pay his fireworks ticket today. A hit-and-runner who capped a mailbox was up before us, was ordered to pay $1 plus replace the mailbox. My brother got nearly $200 in fines. What the hell, over? Let us consider for a moment the act of reckless driving and property damage, weighed against celebrating our country's birth ten days before the anniversary, in the manner in which the founding fathers told us they preferred - behavior that harms absolutely no one except, possibly, the perpetrators. The judge said to check out the hospital burn unit that it's "filled with people injured by fireworks. You could've hurt yourself or others." Nazzo fast there Clarence Darrow, the town newspaper reported 3 fireworks burn cases total for the summer, discounting of course, the terminally moronic man who torched his car by lighting a pack of sparklers while driving and setting them in a blanket on his lap. Go get yourself a new shtick with which to threaten and intimidate, this one's limp as a wet rag.

4.When did making effigies of public figures and mutilating said effigies (in public no less!) in protest go out of vogue. Nothing expresses your displeasure with your Congresscritter faster than hanging a statue of him from a lamp-pole or nailing his likeness to the Liberty Tree. Funny, but our country was freest when this was a common occurance.

5.Bush wants to take command of the national guard during emergencies (guess who gets to define emergency) without the consent of the governers of the called-upon's state. This was one of the grievances in the Declaration Of Independence:"He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power." Now I don't know about you, but I remember Katrina survivors disarmed at gunpoint, tossed from their homes, and put into veritable pits of degredation and crime like the Superdome...at the behest of the federal government and out-of-state guard units, and the thought of having fifty states worth of guard units roaming over the countryside during a disaster makes the hair on my arms stand on end. This is the very definition of Bad Idea.

Random Reflections

1.The "Life begins at holding hands" crowd was protesting in front my place of work a few days ago. They descended on the street corners surrounding one of the biggest intersections in town and started setting up signs.

About fifty signs. All bearing the most digusting pictures of abortion aftermath ever photographed. Huge signs too - 4 by 5, or thereabouts. Mixed in amongst the broken, dismembered corpse photos were apparently stock photographs of something resembling a fish in a bubble, floating in a rainbow. Given the whole theme of the shindig, I'm guessing this was probably a picture of a fetus, designed to inspire some feeling of awe, beauty, or protection. I guess I'm a heathen, it looked like a fish.

Weaving in amongst the cars were the proprietors themselves, thrusting literature into car windows, which predictably open because of the high temperatures. The black and white, massive block appearances of these missives appeared to match with the signs the more literate of the crew were holding in front of the pizza parlor across the way, specifically "What is worse, a nation who's ruler kills his citizens, or a nation that kills its children?" Took me a couple of minutes to figure out they were protesting the Invasion Of Iraq AND abortion all at the same time. Multitaskers.

Ahem.

Before you think me a callous individual, uncaring as to the fate of the our littlest citizesn, let me assure you that I am already more or less in their camp. Abortion when performed after the development of brainwaves is taking a life. Plain and simple. There is no magical line of division between three seconds before "Out" and "Out" where a fetus becomes A Human. Sorry, there just isn't. It follows therefore, that ending a life should only be done under the most extenuating of circumstances, specifically a clear and present danger to the life of the mother, if she so chooses. Any doctor who concludes that fear of belly scars or rolls of excess skin constitutes a threat to the mother's health (as has been done in the past) should be stripped of his license. It is my opinion that anyone who uses abortion as a form of contraception should be "fixed" like a stray dog. Sorry, you blew it. On the other hand, the federal government's powers and money spending abilities are specifically enumerated in Article 1 Section 8 of the United States Constitution and defining life and when it is taken is nowhere found within. This is a state and local matter.

I am, by nature, a very political person. It's ok to believe strongly in something. Really, it is. But when your entire argument consists of nothing but emotional appeals, you don't have an argument. You have an opinion. When the only way you can convey your message is to disgust early morning shoppers with graphic footage, I don't respect you, no matter how firmly I'm in your court. At that point, you deserve NO ONE'S respect.

I could make arguments about the final destination of gun control by showing pictures of naked Jews marching into the showers, or hacked of Rwandans, or women being raped in Darfur. I don't. I make my points with logic, with reason, with something other than hysterical screaming. This is called intelligence. It's called courtesy. Potentially scaring small children with dismembered bodies is not a way to get your point across. The saying "You will catch more flies with honey than with vinegar" has some merit.

What kind of sicko takes the time to find 20 photos of dismembered babies, put them together on a disk, take them to Kinkos and say "4 by 5s of the regular dismemberment, and three 5 by 6s of the ones with the face gouged out"? Do they really think they grossing people out is going to win them converts? Or are they frantically massaging their egos, in the hope that they can pat themselves on the back at the end of the day and say "We did it" and then go to bed and sleep the sleep of the saved.

On a related note, all these protestors seemed to be of a type. The majority were overweight middle-aged women in dresses, each with about fifteen kids in tow. And none of them had come within a country mile of basic body/appearance maintenence. Maybe it's a religious thing.

2.A friend of mine is friends with the former sheriff of Manitowoc. This sheriff put a (now) killer named Steven Avery behind bars for 18 years. When Avery got out in 2004, the Sheriff started stashing guns around his house. His wife asked him "what for?" He replied "in case Steven ever sets foot on our property." His wife asked him "Would you shoot him?" He replied, without any hesitation, or appearance of nervousness or grandstanding "Twice in the chest and once in the head" (this is called the Mozambique Drill). Not "I'd think about it" or "I'd call the police" or "Yes." Steven Avery and his nephen Brenden Dassey tortured a photographer to death in 2005.

3.A man wearing nothing but a black ski mask and running shoes has been flashing women in my area. He's done this 40 times. Apparently he stalks them, waits until they're home along, then disrobes and sets up a chair in front of their living room window. If he doesn't get the desired effect (screaming, running from the room, other signs of shock) he breaks into their house and does things he should not do. I would like to see him break into that sheriff's house. Or for funnier effect, I'd like to see him chased down the street in just his mask and shoes by an irate, screaming husband, brandishing a massive pair of garden shears.

4.When Best Buy repairs a notebook computer, it should not shut off when you lift it.

5.Shoplifiting is an afront to God.

6.During apparthied, it was mandated by law that blacks be paid a higher minimum wage than whites. I find this humorous, given that Chicago just upped their minimum wage to $10 per hour.

Back Once More

Back Once More

The anonymous place I was blogging from is no longer accessible. Given my fear of McCain-Feingold, I stopped posting for a while. However, with the advent of my laptop going wireless here, I've decided I'd rather get the midnight knock for doing something the majority of the public approves of rather than something they don't. Don't know how often I'll be logging in, but it'll be occasionally.

Dates to remember

I think...May 20th, June 22nd.

Employment

Given than Radioshack needed a 2key manager more than they needed me, I've been cut in hours to the point where the boss said "You might want to think about quitting." Gander Mtn is hiring - that'd be awesome.

They're Changing The Language On Us, reposted from elswhere

We start off this time with a reading from the First Amendment, which still states (last time I checked) that:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

What I'd like to focus most on at this moment is that inconvinient "abridging the freedom of speech" portion, and possibly the "peaceably to assemble" bit. We'll get to the recent abomination put forth by the Supreme Court in a few moments.

Within the last eight years, a disturbing trend has taken root, a use of double-speak that has Orwell spinning in his grave so fast we might as well wrap him in wire, set a magnet nearby, and power America forever, and for free. The trend I'm talking about is to call something incredibly horrible by a benign name. For example:Free Speech Zones. Golly, that sounds like a good idea, don't it? I mean, who wouldn't want a place where you could speak as freely as you want?

On the other hand, what exists outside of a free speech zone?

Michael Badnarik continuously talked about these abominations during his 2004 presidential campaign. Free speech zones are, essentially, cordoned off areas where protestors can demonstrate freely, blocks or miles away from cameras and media coverage - precisely where they will not be heard, seen, or noticed.

What good is the right to free speech if you are only allowed to practice it in your home? Do you reallypossess the right to keep and bear arms if you're only allowed to own 60 year old single-shot Liberator pistols? Does the right to publish freely truly exist if you can write as prolifically as you want, but only to people with your last name?

Mr. Badnarik spoke of a high school where he was scheduled to address the students - he was to make his presentation in the auditorium, to the student body. Unfortunately, the auditorium held only about two hundred students (far fewer than the number of students in the school), and it was far enough out of the way that it was hard to find, and poorly lit to boot. So, in the tradition of those old -movie actors who exclaimed "We'll just do the show right here in the barn!" Mr. Badnarik decided to move his equipment to the cafeteria. After all, the whole point of his trip was to address the students...why talk to only five or so when you can reach so many more?

Moving to the cafeteria, he was told, was not possible. Why, he inquired. Because, the auditorium was a free speech zone.

As I watched him recount this story, several months later, the outrage was so fresh in his mind he just about burst an artery. Anywhere he stands, he said, is a free speech zone. The hallway outside the auditorium. The cafeteria. If you are in America, and you are breathing, wherever you are is a FREE SPEECH zone. That is your inalienable, God/Nature/Other given right as a member of the human race. You cannot mark off the boundaries of a "free speech zone" with chainlink and razorwire and jackboots as has been the practice recently - and that's what the "free speech zones" are:Chainlink barriers topped with razor wire. That's what Mr. Badnarik and the Green Party candidate were arrested for crossing, when, during a presidential debate between Boot-On-Your-Neck-Party Candidate One and Boot-On-Your-Neck-Party Candidate Two, they attempted to serve the president with papers requiring him to show his reasoning for keeping third party candidates out of the debate.

So, how does this pertain to the recent Supreme Court abomina...er...decision that further strips us of our constitutional rights and gives police the ability to break into our house with no notice?Wait, there was a recent Supreme Court decision like that? Why hasn't the Mainstream Media picked up on this? This is big news! Why are we hearing 24/7 coverage of every detail of Angelina Jolie's out-of-wedlock birth in Nambia or Kinshasa or some other place calculated to show her "solidarity" with the non-millionaire peoples of the world instead? Why aren't the non-stop commercials for "Hell's Kitchen" being interrupted for the breaking news that the Fourth Amendment has been trashed? And how does this relate to free-speech zones and the cheapening of our language?

I guess I went off on a tangent there. Sorry.

In case you haven't been digging through obscure news-service articles online, or missed the five second blurbs on NPR news, the Supreme Court just rewove thefabric of America, butchered the Fourth Amendment, anddidn't bother to tell anyone.

Again, last time I checked, this is the Fourth Amendment in its entirety:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

In a typical search-and-seizure, the police go to a judge to get a warrant, serve it to the person who's under suspicion, allow them time to verify the warrant is real,and then carry out their Constitutionally-allowed duty of collecting the evidence necessary to continue the criminalinvestigation.

Somewhere in the last half of the last century, right around the time that the drug problem/crisis we've manufactured started to get serious, police started asking for "no-knock" warrants. The reasoning goes thusly: If we don't have the power to kick in someone's door at four in the morning without screaming "Police" at the top of our lungs, the man injecting all those innocent, captive toddlers with drugs against their will is going to flush his nickel-sack down the toilet and boom, there's goes all those dynamic entry bonuses. Something like that.

That drug use was practically non-existant in the early 20th century, despite the fact that any 12 year old could order up a pound of heroin at the local drug store is not something that is discussed in polite conversation. Don't want to offend anyone you see.

Historically, no-knocks have been hard to get. It has something to do with not wanting America to turn into a police state, a concern that seems to be vanishing. Many times, they wind up with people bleeding, a hopped up SWAT team having busted through the front door of the apartment next door to or above or below their intended target, and some poor homeowner is shot coming out of the bedroom with a gun in his hand.

In the late eighties/early nineties, the Supreme Court OfThe United States (referred to hereinafter as SCOTUS) declared that officers serving regular warrants had to announce their presense and wait (at most) ten seconds before beginning the midnight-knock routine so familiar in movies dealing with Nazi Germany. So nice of them - give me a whole ten seconds to get from dead-sleep to my front door before going the whole battering ram/boilingoil/catapult route.

What a bunch of pals. I stuck a few more candy canes inmy Christmas cards that year, I'm here to tell you.

Recently, a group of police (not identified) were sued when they pulled a midnight knock, announced their presense, and then broke in with a battering ram after three seconds. Writing for the majority, the supposedly pro-freedom, pro-constitution, conservative Antonin Scalia said that the outcome would've been the same whether or not the police waited for any sign of acknowledgement of their presense, therefore suppressing the evidence they gathered to "punish" the police department (one of the last deterents of jackbooted action) was too high a price for them to pay for their "preliminary misstep."

Why bother going the no-knock route when you can knock and kick in the door two seconds later?

That if we were to summarily hang the majority of the court that voted for this as is the punishment for treason, we'd be left with a court of near-socialists is not a topic we'll discuss presently.

What is scary is that police officers executing a regular warrant, for, say, bookkeeping records, may now behave in exactly the same manner as a company of Rangers in Kabul.

A company in Virginia that makes solid steel doors reminiscent of those seen on a submarine saw their stock price double the day Bush-appointee Alito broke the 4-4 tie. Could be a connection there...

Doors are really only half the battle. Booby traps, flashbangs, and mid-caliber rifle-fire directed at these bottlenecks by homeowners are the other half. However morally right and laudable mowing down a gaggle of masked men as they break into your house without identification is, shooting at the police with or without justification usually ends with the shootee and/or their family members dying. Ask Sammy Weaver, or David Koresh. Wait, you can't...oh never mind.

So, presently, we have two options if the whole of the police force descends on our patios at three in the morning and kicks in our door without making their identities known, as they have now been empowered to do by a rogue SCOTUS: The first option is to (try to) kill them. Perfectly appropriate and justified. Look up ballistics tables - if it flies faster than 1750fps, you're looking at vest penetration. This is, as Martha Stewart would say, A Good Thing. I should warn you first though, your life-expectancy shrinks to minutes at this point, and as far as I know, no one really wants to make the ultimate statement of freedom followed by a one-way trip to that great theme-park in the sky.

The second option is to let everyone who breaks into your house in the middle of the night have their way with you, your loved ones, and property, in hopes that they don't have thousands of Officer Friendly's behind them, all pointing machine guns at your back. Meanwhile, police departments across the country get the idea that since they don't lose officers to home-invasions, they should try this more often.

This is officially called a "Slippery Slope."

What you don't punish, you subsidize.

What you subsidize, you encourage.

Those are the options.

There is a half-step, something that gives you a reasonable life expectancy while giving the forces of darkness considerable pause. The humble camera, in both digital and video configurations, currently available on cell phones that everyone seems to have (or in hand-held units), is the SWAT team equivalent of Holy Water and garlic for vampires.

BATFE stomps your kitten's head? Smile! You're on candid camera!
FBI "suicides" a guy who misplaced his yellowforms? Get a picture of our couragous police force at work.
Law enforcement trashes your gunstore while you're out of town, torching your safes and leaving food and food containers all over? Won't they be surprised when the photos those hidden video cameras took show up on the internet. In the newspaper. In their church. Taped to the halls of the school their children attend.

We're coming up on a surveillance society presently, and they really hate it when we turn the tables. Watch them crawl for the safety of the shade when the cameras flash and their antics and murders and foibles and thefts turn up as the water-cooler conversation of thousands. It's not great, but those who would do us harm shrink from being exposed as the power-hungry murderers and thieves and pedophiles that they are.

So, how does this come back to the cheapening of our language? Language is how we communicate with each other. It is how we express essential information and derive pleasure from human interaction. When you change the practical meaning of words, the truths behind the air that our vocal cords vibrate, you cheapen the language. A Free-Speech Zone should be a desirable place. Its borders should extend from sea to shining sea, as the song goes. But it doesn't. It means chainlink and razorwire and shouting our messages at jackbooted thugs who standby with batons to make sure we don't tip the fences over and exercize our God/Nature/Other given rights over there. The right to keep and bear arms should mean just that - that EVERYONE be armed with militarily effective weapons. It doesn't. It now means we may only own arms deamed appropriate for sporting. Serving a warrant should mean cops showing up at the door with a piece of paper and twiddling their thumbs while you call the police department to verify that they're actually employed by legitimate law enforcement and that the person that signed off on this is really a judge and not the grave-yard shift janitor.

I recently spoke of this to my father. I said it's too bad that too much of government, of human nature comes down to a little evil versus a great evil. We either allow people the freedom to choose to harm themselves with whatever plants they wish, at the price of some addictions and broken homes, or we have no-knock warrants and Waco. Those are the options. We allow people the freedom to defend themselves in their homes or in public, at the price of a hundred dead children 12 and under every year, or we have crime rates like Glasgow and situations like Darfur and Dachau. Those are the options. We give a known murderer a chance to go free or we give the police unlimited authority to abuse our freedom. Those are the options.

The other side knows this, about a little evil versus a great evil. It hopes we don't know. The other side knows what its done. It knows about Nazism. It knows about the trains that ran on time. It knows about the Armenian genocide. It knows about Pol Pot, about political dissidents in China shot in the neck and their families billed for the bullet, it knows about taxes for non-muslims to continue to live and gulags in Siberia and the MOVE firebombing and every other ugly thing done by those who have power over their fellow man. I speak now, not of Communism, or radical Islam, or the United States government. I speak of anyone who controls the power of life and death through the apperatus of the state. And because they know this, they give us promises. They promise not to infringe on our religion or speech. They promise to let us bear militarily effective weapons as a governmental failsafe device. They promise not to break into our houses on a whim, or torture us or secretly arrest us. Whatever country, whatever promise, whatever their intent to do us good, all these are are words. Words. Ink on paper, vibrations of air.

We have all these words protecting us: We have the right to speak freely. We have the right to keep and bear arms. We have the right to be secure in our houses and persons against unreasonable searches and seizures. But these words, they aren't worth a damn anymore. They're changing the language on us. They're changing the country on us. And when all of it, the country, the government, the police, the language, our rights, has been mutated beyond the original intent and design, none of it will matter anymore.

We won't have any options anymore.

More on the death of common sense, respect, ad nauseum...

I posit this scenario: Suppose the kid up the street is having a party on the last real weekend before the 4th Of July. Suppose he wants to light off some bottlerockets, with the blessing and encouragement of EVERY adult on the property. Suppose you find the sound of bottlerockets to be irritating. What do you do?

Walk down and talk to the offending parties about how their arial celebration is disturbing your nap/baby/dog/Lesser Crested Pufferfish? Nah. Stick your head out your back door and yell "SHUT UP!" Wrong again!

Call the alderman, who happens to occupy the slum behind offending persons's property. Now, supposing you were the alderman, what do you do? Walk a hundred and twenty feet to tell your constituents that other constituents are happy for the graduatee, but could you tone down the pyrotechnics? Give them a call with the same message? Again, wrong answer.

Call the cops. Now, supposing you're the person making the calls, and that you have a higher IQ than most garden implements, what do you suppose the logical thing to do is? Yup, send an off-duty cop out, have him tell the enthusiastic partiers to cut the fireworks. Strike four! Two black and whites, and an unmarked show up. They confiscate everything on the driveway AND issue both offenders a COURT SUMMONS and nearly $750 in fines. Now, how much do you suppose the city paid to send four officers in three cars to bust two highschool kids for fireworks, ten days before the FOURTH OF JULY! How much is the court date and judge-time and all the related sh*t that goes into prosecuting them going to cost the city? Were none of these pigs teens at one point in time - that they could shake their heads and say "boys will be boys" and tell them to knock it off? Where'd Barney Fife go?

On the other hand, I got to see precisely the effect of cameras on fuzz. Like vampires and crosses, I tell you, and dang, if that' ain't an apt analogy. It was hi-larious seeing them get uncomfortable - you'd think for guys with a Glock 21 on their hips, they wouldn't be so scared of a camera. Turning away, holding up their arms, closing their eyes...my mom and her digital verified my hypothesis - those in authority DON'T like an audience when they work. Thus, they should have as big an audience as possible. Now, how to disseminate those pictures...

PS I wasn't one of the ones busted.

Back Again

[b]Back Again[/b]

As the title says, I'm back after extended hiatus. I'm trying to figure out how to blog from home so I don't have to take these long breaks.

[b]1000 Rounds[/b]

Bought a thousand rounds of rifle ammunition on Saturday. I'm a regular at the store, so the gun department manager gave me $75 dollars off, what wound up being about $.50 to $1.50 off per box, depending on what sales were applicable. So I've got a big box of the stuff sitting in my basement, and I'm trying to figure out whether or not I should hold 500 rounds in reserve, as a "don't touch except in case of emergency" stash, or not. According to this manager, the price is going to continue to climb. It's sitting at $4.00 per 20 right now, and that's without any sales. Ouch. Might have to switch over to the .223 platforms. Lower recoil, cheaper ammo, military commonality. All good things, but...I hate to quit using my rifle.

[b]Work News[/b]

Found out yesterday or the day before that I'm not the worst performing employee at RadioShack. I had thought I was the bottom of the totem pole for a while, it turns out, I'm the third best earning employee in the store. That's good.

[b]Another date[/b]

So as I don't go forgetting what I want to remember, I'm adding another date to my aforementioned list of dates. April 8th.

Illegal immigra...er, invasion

Illegal immigra...er, invasion

Last time I checked, the English language contained a very descriptive word for what citizens of another country that enter yours illegally, hoist their flags over yours, desecrate your property, and start sending your money back to their home state. That word is not "undocumented workers," it's "invaders." The crime they commit is called invasion, and it is to their benefit that no one in our current government considers it the act of war that it is.

The border dispute is heating up, looks like that's going to be the deciding issue for 2006 elections. What's funny is, no one is addressing the concerns of the American people. The Democrats *hack, spit* are saying they're good citizens (yeah, maybe of Mexico) and that we shouldn't punish them based on their country of origin. The Republicans are offering up a "guest worker program." And EVERY poll I've seen, in either leftist or conservative media, shows that a majority of the American population want these invaders OUT, yesterday.

Gun stuff

Purchased a nice little military surplus rifle a few days ago. Very cool. The main feature is that it takes the same ammunition as my other rifle, but I wouldn't have gotten it (right now) if it hadn't have been $50 off. Now I'm looking at getting two bolt-action military surplus rifles for Buy A Gun Day, otherwise known as April 15th. I really think BAG day should be April 19th, coinciding with Patriot Day, but Kim du Toit (google that name) declared it to be the final day to get in your tax returns, a kind of "finger" to the US government.

Anyway, my new rifle is gunked up with great smelling cosmoline, and I've got to clean that all out before I take it to the range. This gun will be an "others" gun, I'm going to stick with my other rifle, this'll be a loaner to family/friends if things ever go sideways. Ditto the two bolties I'm looking at. All this'll be under three hundred bucks (or thereabouts) and if I hang onto employment long enough, I'll get a CX4 Storm later in the year.

Friends

Managed to call a friend from Sam Goody last night. That was cool, especially since my friend stated he'd been hoping I'd get in contact. Hopefully we'll get a chance to hang out some time. This also gives me hope that I may be able to contact other friends, however unlikely that may be.

Vincent Is Back

Vincent Is Back

Staggered spring breaks played havoc with my schedule, thus the interruption. Posting will resume, though I don't think anyone's watching.

Hired

I have once more found gainful employment. My application got kicked around the RadioShack network, and I wound up interviewing at the store in the mall where I'd worked before. Now, I swore that after Sam Goody, I was done in the mall. No more working there, ever again. But I took this job anyway. The only reason:I hope to see some of my SG friends passing through the mall.

Office Depot called for an interview 2 days after I started. Real cool.

So, I've been learning the ins and outs of working at RadioShack. It's nowhere near as fun as Sam Goody, and I don't think anything ever will be, but it is a paycheck and I'm not flipping burgers or shovelling manure, which is good.

Friends

Went to see a former-coworker's concert a few days ago. I'm awed that someone my age can write a song, put it to music, and then perform it in front of a hundred people. Incredible. Due to the delay in our all receiving letters of recommendation from the former store manager, I've decided to write one for this friend. I believe I am qualified to do so, having been in the management chain.

Speaking of Sam Goody...

Around the beginning of February I received an envelope containing statements that the entire Musicland chain was being auctioned off, and that I should come and bid (LOL). From what I've read recently, it was purchased by (I think) a British company, and 391 stores will remain open(out of the 1400 when I started). Musicland management insists this is a marketting strategy to better serve their core customer group. Musicland's creditors insist Musicland is in debt to the tune of $130 million. Musicland has countered by saying it's only around $120 million.

*sigh*

.22 Pistol fun, and other gun stuff

A nice little .22 pistol joined our household over spring break. That thing is fun as all get-out. In addition, I got a chance to try my standard-cap pistol magazines at the range. The cheaper, 17rd Eagle magazine has, it appeared, scarred the feed-ramp into compatibility with the low round angle (Basicly, the rounds sat in the magazine at a nearly horizontal angle. When the slide was either pulled or shot back, the empty would eject and the top round would slam into the very edge of the feed ramp.) The Mec-Gar 20rd (which really holds 21) worked like a fork. Pick it up, it'll work every time.

And, I'm proud to admit, my accuracy is way up. A quarter of a pie plate at 10 yards, rapid-fire.

Rifle ammunition is growing more expensive so I haven't been shooting my rifle much, haven't gotten a chance to try out the new stock. I'm looking at picking up 3 really cheap military surplus rifles within the week - instead of the carry gun paid for by my tax return.

It's good to be back

Scary Article

Scary Article

http://www.reason.com/hod/jb022306.shtml Found this at The High Road. The Patriot Act *hack, spit* is being abused and misused even more these days. Went from "terrorism" cases only to drug, smuggling, and money laundering crimes, and it trumps up the charges on those. The water in the bowl is swirling faster and faster these days.

Job Hunt Work

The printer-connected computer at home is down for no apparent reason, so we're using my laptop as a backup. We call it the LEM, after the improvised lifeboat in Apollo 13. Anyway, I printed out a whole bunch of resumes at school today, and I'll drop them off at various places I've applied. Someone's got to hire me one of these days.

Gun Stuff

No cool gun stuff to report. Had a funky partial home invasion on Friday. Someone came into the house while I was home alone (I was in another room, away from the intruder), called out to see if anyone was home, and left. Scary and bizarre, and left me wishing I wasn't on the end of the house that didn't have the guns. I guess this was life free lesson on the value of locking your doors.

Lost

New episode of Lost this week. The 2nd season has been terrific in its own way, but I liked the first season better. I liked watching them peel back the first layer of mystery better than the second and third. IMO, the first season will go down as the best season of television ever.

Applied For More Jobs

Applied For More Jobs

Let's see, 2 different Family Videos, Hollywood Video, Blockbuster, Radio Shack, and I'll have an application in at Barnes&Noble by the end of the week. I really hope one of these places pans out. Definitely did NOT get the Family Video job (and it annoys the heck out of me that AFTER they rejected me (told me they'd filled all their spots), they put up a big APPLY TODAY billboard), doesn't look like Blockbuster or Radio Shack will come through either.

Collapsible Stock

Got and installed my collapsible stock. WOW. What a difference. Before, everyone had to get all cramped up trying to hold my rifle, now it's the proper length and it sits right in your shoulder instead of riding up on your collarbone. Can't wait to shoot it. I hope I'm able to use it more effectively now.

Other Gun Stuff

Found my compact 9mm - the Beretta 9000s. Cocked and locked carry AND it takes 92FS magazines. I don't much like it though, every other gun I've bought has jumped out at me, this one...all guns are good, but its nothing special. The PX4 Storm looks interesting too, like a Commander sized version of my 92FS. I'm planning on picking up a carry sized gun when I get my tax return. Either that or buy a few more magazines and a few thousand rounds and get my rifle situation set up the way I want it.

Shopping

Went looking for jeans and shoes the other day. I swear, manufacturers have declared war on anyone who's not 6 feet tall. It is impossible to find size 28 jeans or size 7 shoes. Maybe I'll try ordering jeans online, from the same company that makes mine.

Concert On Friday

Might go see a Sam Goody coworker's concert on Friday. That'll be fun. I'd really like to keep in touch with my friends.

School stuff

School Stuff

I had kind of thought that my money would buy competence. My OS teacher not only has not planned more than a week ahead (and we just caught up to that mark), but he spends literally the majority of his time talking about how he's "learning with us" and how he doesn't feel too bad about not giving us any help because "you'll have to look stuff up in the real world." I may wind up talking to the department head, or whoever his boss is as soon as I have a real, valid complaint. Oh yeah, and the internet site he's hosting his assignments on doesn't work most of the time. Gotta call the school about that.

Collapsible Stock

I ordered my collapsible rifle stock about a week ago. Hopefully it'll get here today. I look forward to being able to control my rifle more. That should make it much more enjoyable to shoot.

Got to kick the tires on a couple of USPs yesterday, .45s in fullsize and compact. Loved both, but it doesn't make sense for me to buy a 45 that's not a 1911. The CX4 is still on my list to get too, as is some form of compact 9mm, either 9x19 or .380.

Job Hunt

Interviewed at the "stop-and-rob" for about 30 seconds. "Hi, what hours are you looking for, we might call you on Monday." That was the extent of the interview. Here's hoping they call today.

Filled out an online application for Blockbuster. The only store that really cares how I feel when guilty criminals go free - that was a question on the app. Strange. RadioShack has an online app. that I'll fill out today. That'd be another great place to work.

The Real Thing

Watched Bo Bice's new video for "The Real Thing." I really like his music. Sure, he doesn't write his own songs and he is a manufactured popstar, but dang, there isn't a song he does that I wouldn't give a +9 out of 10 to.

Serenity

Bought the movie last night and watched it after dinner. I love this movie. Captain Mal is the most libertarian person on film in the past few years, noble to boot, and Jayne is a laugh a minute. Great movie, I recommend it without reservation. It isn't, but should be, given the label "family film." Everyone should see it.

Work Is Over

Work Is Over
I had the honor of closing the store, alone, for the last time on Saturday night. That sucked. I'm gonna miss this job. I've still got today and Tuesday to help them pack everything up, and then I'm back to looking for work. Gander Mountain and that little "Stop-and-rob" video store figure high on my list.

Fortunately, I got an extension on my homework to allow me to finish at the store.

More than the work, I'll miss the people. I've "lost" several friends to firing/seasonal employment expiring recently, and I'm going to "lose" my current set to the store shutting down. I really want to find a way to stay in touch. My fear is that I may appear weird by trying to remain in contact.

Yes, I know I have a problem letting go.

This next line goes out, not to anyone reading this, but to the people I've known in the course of my work. I hope we meet again. If not, see you in another life.

Gun Stuff
Got my 2 high-caps in the mail a few days ago - that was a happy day. My dad took them out to the range while I was working. Both magazines, one expensive, the other cheap, performed without fault. That's great. Now I need about 20 more.

Vincent Is Back

Vincent Is Back
Took some time off to find my way around some security issues. I still refuse to post from home, which meant creating a fictitious identity somewhere else. Fun. Don't know how regularly I'll be posting, but I'll be here semi regularly.

Work is ending
I got kind of...fired...from my job. Well, put on notice that I would be fired on February 7th. Now rumors are surfacing that the store is closing. I start work as an honest-to-goodness third key and boom, no more work. Even if the store doesn't close, I'm going to beat them to the punch and leave on Feb. 6th. At least I outlasted the Christmas temps. They got fired without warning.

Stuff Starting
24 started again. That's good. Lost started again. That's better than good. School started again, and that's been decent. I'd rather be working. At least some of the classes look to be interesting. One teacher (who I have for 2 classes) is nearly blind and needs to view his screen from 4 inches away with a magnifying glass. The other hasn't planned beyond the first two weeks. This should be interesting.

Gun Stuff
Because of a job I'm scoping out (I affectionately call the location a "Stop and rob," due to the grand total of three employees in a house-sized building (one is the average) and the late hours) I'm tenatively looking more into concealable guns rather than stuff like the P220, AR-15, or the CX4. Sig's got the 232 and the 239 that I like. Not that I'd go about breaking the law...unless I was actually in fear for my life. My Spyderco will fit the bill until then, but I want to be prepared.

Bought 2 high-caps for my Beretta, and I'm looking at a collapsible stock for my rifle. Very cool. Hopefully the mags will function flawlessly (one was really cheap) and I can pick some more up.

Gov. Doyle vetoed a watered-down concealed carry bill. Again. The swine. I still want to see him mugged in an alley. Then put on trial for assisting in that photographer's murder of course.

Music
Both "The Great Divide" and "One Thing Remains" have grown on me, a lot recently. Also, I got Bo Bice's "The Real Thing" for Christmas. Perfect pop-rock music. Absolutely perfect. With the possible exception of "My World" and "Valley Of Angels" there's not a song on there I wouldn't rate at 9 out of 10.

I'm currently looking into picking up Savatage's "Dead Winter Dead" and "Streets - A Rock Opera" CDs. I've downloaded a bunch of their songs and I'm loving the sound. "Believe," "When The Crowds Are Gone," and "Edge Of Thorns" are three of my favorites.