Author Archives: Shadowtwin

Comedy Central; Pictures

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Well it turns out that Flux over at Blackchampagne had a link to my site in his blog today. The good news is that it did make me have quite a spike in site traffic, the bad news is that there was not much worth reading on my post. Whether there is ever anything worth reading here could be debated till the end of time, so I won’t go there. It is the thought that counts.

I awoke this morning (I am using the term ‘morning’ very loosely here) and flipped on my television to find out that some jack-ass had taken comedy central off the air. There had been ads running on Comedy Central all week that said that Dish Network was going to quit carrying the channel, but I just assumed that was a ploy to get a bunch of people to call Dish Network and say “I want my Comedy Central!”. Well if that was the case I guess not enough people called, or Dish Network just didn’t seem to care, since it is certainly gone now. Other networks that were ripped from the lineup include Mtv, Vh1, Nickelodeon and a bunch of others. To put it bluntly, my “top 50” package is now more of a “top 35” due to this.

Wy wife called to ask if the stations were really gone, and I assured her that yup, we’re fucked. But, at least we still have our CBS affiliate, as they have removed CBS from the lineup in many major markets including New York and Los Angeles. So it could be worse, I guess.

Once home from work I really wanted to go see just what the whole fuss was about, and I found it in heaps. I went to Yahoo News and did a search for ‘Viacom’ (who own the stations in question) and found at least a dozen stories there that had been added within the last three hours. Every on of them was about Viacom and Echostar’s (the company that owns dish network) dispute. I read about ten of them, starting with the earliest post. It just sickened me. The following quotes are taken from this article

Viacom officials said EchoStar was fighting over what amounted to 6 cents more per customer per month.

I am not sure which side is telling a version of the story that is closer to the truth, but if I just take viacom’s claim and Dish Network’s claim and average them it still comes out to being an increase of like 30 cents. 30 cents for all of those channels on a monthly basis, a penny a day, hell I would pay that in a heartbeat if it would get Comedy Central back on.

I can certainly see where each side is coming from after having read all of the articles though. Viacom is constantly stressing the pennies per person per day thing, while Echostar is talking about Hundreds of millions of dollars over the next four years. I am pretty sure that they are using the exact same number but it sure seems a lot bigger when you say hundreds of millions of dollars. Don’t get me wrong, I bet that if everyone that subscribed to Dish Network would send my six cents per month I could easily retire and buy that new Ferrari Enzo I have had my eyes on.

I had been siding with Echostar on this, thinking that Viacom was really trying to be a mean old bully and beat us up for our milk money, then I saw this particular quote;

EchoStar said it planned to give $1 monthly credits to customers who lose CBS programming, and another $1 for those who subscribe to additional Viacom channels. Besides CBS, media conglomerate Viacom also owns MTV and the Paramount movie studio.

So what they are telling me is that I am going to get a dollar a month credit for losing 15 channels? One dollar off of my $34.98 bill for losing 15 channels? I mean what the fuck? There are probably a lot more than 15 channels, those are just the ones that are on the list we look through daily, and that is only one dollar? I am starting to think that both sides may just be mean old bullies trying to steal my milk money.

What burns me worst of all about this whole situation is that I only signed up for Dish Network for two reasons. The first reason was that it was about three dollars a month cheaper than my local cable, the second was that they had Comedy Central. Now what am I to do? If they do not bring back Comedy Central I may well just go back to local cable since I could then get high speed internet access in a package deal with the cable and save myself a bit of cash. In case you had not yet noticed, this whole thing just really has me pissed off.

I got yet another email today, that is like two in two days. I don’t know how I am going to deal with this constant barrage of email… Seriously, though, this one was from an old friend who was wanting to know if I had any pictures on the site since his wife has never seen myself or my wife. I feel quite obligated to throw a couple of pictures up here because, well, I don’t really know why. So here are a couple of pictures. As always click on them for a full size pic.

Here is one of me playing guitar. This picture is a bit dated, but I really don’t look that much different now, unless you want to count that strange third arm that recently grew out of my forehead. The problem is that while I am usually quite photogenic, that requires that I be near a camera while someone is clicking it, and for some reason that is something that I really try to avoid.

Here is yet another rather dated photo of me, maybe three or four years old. I am standing in front of the grand canyon if you were not able to guess. I really actually hate this picture because it makes me look like I have one of those little Fu-man-shu moustache type things. I am pretty sure that I hadn’t shaved that day, but still.

Here is one of my wife and myself at the wedding ceremony. For some reason the camera has made the color of my flesh look a lot more red than it actually is, but it did the same thing to the Pastor. This may have been one of the photos taken with the cheap disposable cameras that we left on all of the guests tables, I am not really sure. It certainly does look like I have been holding my breath for about three minutes though. This was the best photo I could find that really showed how beautiful my wife’s dress was. Of course you need to look at the full size shot to see that.

Well, that should be enough photos to sate you all for roughly the rest of your natural lives. I had never actually seen these shots side by side before, and I think that I really look just about the same in all of them. Sure I have more gray hair now than I did in the photos, but with just a bit of selective plucking or some “just for men gel” I could probably take a photo in a similar pose and be able to fool people into thinking that they were taken at the same time. If I am ever reduced to that, though, it will probably be at about the same time as I buy a convertible and start cruising for women twenty years my junior. Since I am quite happily married, and I really think that it would be sick and wrong to look for dates at a gradeschool, I will let that thought go for now, and hopefully the rest of my life.

Now on a side note. If any of you are reading this after having linked through from blackchampagne yesterday, I would really like to know your thoughts, good or bad, about my little site thing. What, if anything you like, what, if anything you hate kind of thing. I do enjoy email.

Odd news; Warlock

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Before I start to go into something else, I want to mention that when I read my update from yesterday I noticed that I had left out a detail I really wanted to include in my bitching about the movie ‘Signs’. The particular detail was about the fact that water is toxic to the aliens. The part that I forgot to mention was humidity -you know, the amount of water in the air-, so depending on what particular month the story supposedly happened there should have been enough moisture in the air to kill them on the spot. Then there is the issue with rain…but it is going way beyond what the small time/scale of the movie was going for, so we will assume that they just never thought it would rain. But, enough about that.

In other developements, I found that I have a site reader that I did not know I had. This person sent me an email with a request. Despite the request I am not going to quit doing these updates ;), The request was for more doggy pictures and stories, and the story of how I ended up two ‘vicious pit bulls’ is one that I think could be entertaining, or at least informative, so I will go into that below.

There is a very odd and short news thing that I have to put here today;

SYDNEY (Reuters) – An Australian handyman admitted he was stupid to shoot himself in the head with a nail gun in a misguided prank that left him with a nail lodged in his brain.Brad Shorten, a father of three from Victoria state, was enjoying a few beers with friends after working on his house when they began joking about industrial accidents.

Shorten, 33, picked up a nail gun that he thought was empty, pointed it at his head and pulled the trigger.

He later said he had turned off the gun’s compressor and taken out its nail cartridge but did not realize there was still enough pressure in the gun to fire a nail.

“My mates and I were talking about construction site accidents and taking your eye out with a nail gun, and I foolishly put the gun to my head and pulled the trigger,” Shorten told the Sunday Herald Sun newspaper.

“I did a very stupid thing,” he said.

The bizarre mishap left him with a 1.25-inch nail counter-sunk through his skull just behind his temple.

Royal Melbourne Hospital neurosurgeons removed the nail in a delicate four-hour operation even though Shorten, who was expected to make a full recovery, had offered to take the nail out with a pair of pliers.

Isn’t it funny that they were joking about this exact thing when some jack ass decides that holding a nail gun to his head and pulling the trigger would be a good idea? I think he should be put to death (or at the very least castrated) to keep his idiot gene from passing to another generation. I am all about protecting the children after all…

Puppies!

You know, some people think that canines are no longer ‘puppies’ when they hit the fifty pound mark, but I know the truth, as long as you have control over them they are still puppies. Sure one of my puppies has eclipsed the 50 pound mark and ran with it, but he is well behaved and as such Is still my ‘pup’, well technically that is my wife’s pup, but the idea stays the same. A well controlled dog, regardless of size, will always be your puppy.

Here is the story of how we got our first dog;

When my wife and I moved from a studio apartment to the house that we are now buying, we thought that (well she thought really) that a dog would be a good addition to the non-existent back yard. We kicked the idea around for at least a month, maybe six weeks, before we decided to go ahead and get a dog. Once the decision was made that we were going to get a dog, we went to an animal shelter in the Mesa/Phoenix area to try to find one. We chose to go to the shelter to find a pet for the simple fact that if they are not adopted they will be put to death sleep. It seemed more logical to us to take a pick of the dogs in the pound than to pay someone for a pure-bred.

We walked all up and down the aisles at this place. I was hoping to find a small dog and I am not sure what my wife was looking for. She ended up picking out this guy, who we named ‘Warlock’. He was the only dog in the entire place that was not barking or jumping, he was just laying there in his cell waiting for someone to let him out. He did drag my ass when I was trying to lead him to the car, but once there he just jumped into the back seat and layed down to sleep for the duration of the roughly one hour trip home. Once home, I broke out my cheap-ass digital camera and took the above shot of him (which really doesn’t do him justice).

We were initially worried that he would mess in the house, but that never happened. He has never made a poop or a pee inside the house, though he did once vomit, but he licked it up before we could clean it up.

He was not only house-trained, but he was also quick to learn commamds like ‘sit, stay, lay down, shake, My wife actually has him trained so that he will do a certain trick depending on how many fingers she is holding up. I think those are some damn good results from a dog that was on the “half price” rack at the pound. (at our pound they go on the ‘half price rack’ the day before they are to be executed euthanised).

The story of how we got Zelda will come sometime in the next few days, but, for now you should just appreciate your pets and thank the random fluxuations of time and space that they are still in your home.

Diablo; Signs

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I would like to go into a bit of detail about my neck again today, but let’s be honest, I am absolutely sick of writing about it, and you are no doubt sick of reading about it. Instead I will just say that you should assume that it is in the same condition as it was the previous update if I do not mention it. That way, hopefully, I won’t write about it again until the injury is healed…Don’t quote me on that.

I stayed up late last night playing DiabloII:LOD, several months ago that was a very common thing for me to do, but now it seems almost like my world has gone in a big circle. I started playing DiabloII after I had bought it for my wife as a birthday gift. I played single player for at least a year or more before the ‘purity’ of on-line play pulled me in. By the time LOD came out, I bought two copies of it, one for desktop, one for laptop. I played the game so much and had gotten so much gear muled that I never played a character that was not *helped* by my other characters. This became rather boring after a while, and I just resigned myself to just using a sorc, baba and zon for magic find, and that was all I played for the last few months of my Diablo career.

While waiting for Blizzard to get around to releasing the patch (that was like two years in the making), I split my time between everquest and a diablo mod that was really pretty cool. In the process of doing that, my on-line characters mostly expired. Out of a total of 32 characters, only four of them remained, one high level sorceress, and three mules, though not the mules with the elite gear. None of my friends were playing online anymore as they had moved on to the everquest for the PS2 or World of Warcraft, this made levelling a new character difficult. So what did I do? I started an off-line character so that I could adjust the difficulty to help me gain experience between act bosses.

It had been so long since I had played a character through from the beginning that I was a bit surprised at how difficult it was. Not that there was really any threat of my death in the first act, just that the monsters were all a lot tougher than I remembered them. Keep in mind that this was the first time in probably at least two years that I had been playing a character without hand-me-down gear to help him out. When Andariel (boss of act 1) died and dropped a magic mace I was overjoyed. I used that weapon for the majority of act 2.

That led me to thinking about just how different this was than my recent play style. I never picked up anything that was just magical unless it was an elite item, now I was picking up every magic item I saw and saying please,please,please as I identified it. It is a lot more fun this way, but if I were to start a character on-line again the temptation to trickle some gear down from my mules would overcome me (probably about the time I had to fight Duriel, since I always have a problem with him), and that would take away the anticipation and joy of seeing an item drop then seeing it is actually a useful item.

What is it about DiabloII that has this effect on me and so many others? In just a quick look around what passes for an office at my house I can see Morrowind, Alone In the Dark 3,Arthurs Knights 2, Atlantis: the lost tales, Egypt Tomb of the Pharaoh, I could go on. I haven’t spent more than an hour or two playing any one of those games( never even installed a couple for that matter), yet I am still consumed by DiabloII. The only logical answer is; Blizzard put subliminal messages in the game cinematics that make you want to play it more.

As long as I am in the mood to write about Diablo, I may as well throw a theory out here regarding ebay. In lots of articles over at DiabloII.net people have criticised Blizzard for not taking a firm stance against people who sell game items for real money. I don’t really care either way, if someone is dumb enough to pay actual money for a string of binary code that can only be used in an on-line game, the deserve what they get. A theory that I have had in my mind for a while, though, is that the Blizzard employees actually sell gear over ebay to cover the costs of maintaining battle.net without having to charge the players. The reason that I really love that theory is that it would mean that people who don’t play often enough to find the really good stuff (that is part-time players), and those with more money than brains, would be paying for the dedicated fans who devote ten hours a day to it without ever dropping a cent. This is also the reason that it can’t possibly be true, it would make me far too happy if that was the reality.

I woke up early this morning and was not able to get back to sleep, so I decided to watch a DVD. I found one under the end table called Signs and popped it in. Before I go into detail below, let me just say that there was a BlockBuster sticker on the front of the case that said “Previously Viewed $14.95”, and I think that BlockBuster is just assuming that whoever rented it was actually able to view it.

If you have never seen the movie and plan to, I am gonna spoil it all here, so don’t read it.

The trailers for this movie, as well as the description on the box, say that this is a movie about one family’s experience dealing with crop circles and extraterrestrials. That is true, to a point. The villains in this movie could have been pigeons, frogs hell even day-glow ping-pong balls and it would not have made a difference to the plot. Here is the entire plot in a sentence; Man loses faith in God, things happen to make man believe again. That is the entire movie.

To be fair to the movie I guess I should do a bit more detail about that. The main character (mel gibson) is a man of the cloth. His wife dies in a car accident which makes him question his faith, he turns in the cloth (this happened before the point where the movie starts). As the movie progressess he begins to think that his faith helps to save his son not once, but twice. He then believes that his son has asthma only because there would be a point where poison gas would be sprayed in his face, but God had made it so that he couldn’t breathe at the time. He then believes that what he used to think were his wife’s non-sensical dying words were actually a vision of the future, telling him what to say to his brother six months later when faced with a dilemma.

Okay, I am gonna take a few deep breaths and try to collect my thoughts since it does get even LESS logical.

There are a lot of things in the movie that are inconsistent or just don’t make a damn bit of sense. The first in my mind is why would the aliens decide to try to invade the earth when water is toxic to them. Wouldn’t they have noticed in their cursory exploration that we live on a planet that is more water than land? Wouldn’t they have seen that every dwelling in the entire world -regardless of wealth- had water in it? Attacking would be like trying to dig a paperclip out of a huge bowl of razors, are these beings, that have already mastered interstellar flight, really that stupid?

There is also the issue of the aliens and their ability, or lack thereof, to open doors. In one scene there is an alien that is not able to escape from a pantry which has a couch against the door, in another scene you hear them break out windows to get into a house, then find a disused coal chute (which would surely have been sealed off when the house went to a more modern climate control system) and somehow break through that. Even in the basement where two grown men had done the pole-under-the-doorknob trick and were also leaning against the door, the aliens nearly broke through. This was necessary to build tension, sure, but it was just not consistent.

Then there is the dead wife. So she was hit by a truck and pinned against a tree. In the scene you can see at least three ambulances and a dozen firemen and EMS workers. They just left her there until Mel got there. Great. The movie explained this away saying that the woman should be dead but that she hadn’t died…Well that is when one is supposed to use medical knowledge to keep them not dead, isn’t it? I am sure that letting her bleed internally for however long it took for Mel to get there was probably why she died, but I guess that was what the movie was going for. I think that what you are supposed to believe is that their combined faith had kept her alive long enough to talk to him one more time, so she could could say “swing away”.

My wife said that she has never even made it thirty minutes into this film, and I am actually kind of surprised that I did. I just kept looking at the timer on the DVD player and thinking, something has got to happen soon, and it never did. This is one of the worst movies that I have ever actually sat through, but I did sit through it, so that is something. I just sat through it waiting for something to happen, and then it was over, and then I was pissed off that I had just wasted over an hour and a half of my life watching a movie that you could see at vacation bible school. But don’t take my word for it, the Cap Alert guy gave it what I would say is the best review of his that I have ever seen.

Hoping to see how the movie was reviewed by people other than ultra religious kooks, I went to Rotten Tomatoes and found that it actually has a 78% positive review. Did those people watch the same movie as I did? 78% is like a C+ right? The movie I saw doesn’t even deserve a letter, or if I had to give it one it would be a ‘Q’ or an ‘S’ for Quit or Stop. But it doesn’t even stop there, I went and checked Ebert’s review and he is blowing more sunshine up your ass. The last two paragraphs of his review aren’t too far off the mark though;

Instead of flashy special effects, Shyamalan creates his world out of everyday objects. A baby monitor that picks up inexplicable sounds. Bo’s habit of leaving unfinished glasses of water everywhere. Morgan’s bright idea that caps made out of aluminum foil will protect their brains from alien waves. Hess’ use of a shiny kitchen knife, not as a weapon, but as a mirror. The worst attack in the film is Morgan’s asthma attack, and his father tries to talk him through it, in a scene that sets the entire movie aside and is only about itself.
At the end of the film, I had to smile, recognizing how Shyamalan has essentially ditched a payoff. He knows, as we all sense, that payoffs have grown boring. The mechanical resolution of a movie’s problems is something we sit through at the end, but it’s the setup and the buildup that keep our attention. “Signs” is all buildup. It’s still building when it’s over.

The problem is that I could not find anything better (worse for the movie) to put here from anyone with a reputation. I guess I may be the only one in the whole world that hated the movie and I am okay with that. It just goes to show that there is a damn good reason why I rarely watch any movies other than comedies.

Crosby; pain

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I did only work for four hours today, but they were the wrong four. The pain that I feel in my neck has now spread to the point that I always have a head-ache and a lower back ache at the same time. That is because I can only even attempt to sleep in a few postitions, when I try anything else the pain is just death. I have to turn over while I sleep, first because my neck starts to hurt if I stay in one position too long, second because my back does also.

If I have ever bitched about anyone elses’ pain, then I think that this is my retribution, but, I don’t think that I have ever done that. The fact that my neck now seems to be the least of my problems does concern me though. It seems like the problems with my neck are working themselves out just fine, but I still end up with a throbbing head-ache, and my lower back has been in pain for two or three days -that is directly related to not being able to move around a lot in my sleep-.

I really can not emphasize ehough just how much Pain I am feeling right now, and even if I could I am not sure that anyone would really believe it. In fact, I am going to just stop typing now and go and lay down.

It is Saturday, March 06, 2004

Well, in case you didn’t notice, I did not do an update yesterday. I found the beginning of it here, and decided to just leave it as is, since today’s will be more of the same. I certainly wish that I had something more profound to write about than all the pain that I am feeling, unfortunately the dice have not rolled as such and I don’t like to just sit at home and bitch about how much pain I am in -well, I guess I do, but when you are reading it you do have the liberty of being able to just skip past it-.

Last night I slept like something that sleeps for a really long time without ever waking up from pain. That is the way that I guess a lot of humans sleep, I am just not one of them. Even before I had the injury in my neck I often would wake up with pain in my back and be forced to pop it a bit before being able to get back to sleep. Last night I slept for at least ten hours, and I did not wake up even once, I was just that exhausted. Upon waking I stayed in bed and let myself drift in and out of sleep for a couple more hours, just happy that I was not feeling any pain in my neck or head.

I got up to take a shower at about 11:30 and found that I had a bit of lower back pain but my head and neck were holding up pretty well. Since I didn’t have to be to work until 2:00, I just layed there in bed and watched some mindless dribble on t.v. I ate a couple of cheeseburgers also.

I didn’t take any Ibuprofen to work with me, sicne I was feeling so good, that turned out to be a big mistake. The thing is that I can lay or sit for just about any length of time without having any problems. When I am both standing and moving around (especially if I am moving around with things in my hands) the pain starts to come back. I thought that it was possible that this would not be the case today, since I just felt so wonderful when I did go in to work.

The first two and a half hours or so really did go quite good, I was not feeling any pain in my neck at all, only a bit of lower back pain. At about the three hour point my neck was hurting again, and then came the head-ache. I did not have any Ibuprofen with me, so I asked the boss for whatever pain killer they had available. The only thing that they had were these 81mg aspirin pills. I read the back of the bottle and it said that you should take 8 every four hours or 12 every six hours, not to exceed 48 pills in 24 hours. I really thought that they must have the numbers backwards on that, I mean really 12 pills, I took six of them, and they did nothing.

At about 7:00 my head was throbbing to the point that I was able to count the “lubs” and “dubs”, by some stroke of luck my wife came in for something and I asked her to bring me some Ibuprofen, which she did. I gobbled down one more of those pills than I was supposed to (800mg) and it did not start to kick in until well after I had gotten home. The funny thing is that after all the aspirin, Ibuprofen and about 5 beers, my head-ache is now gone and I am finally starting to feel the pain in my neck again…

There is one news item that I simply have to put down here, I don’t know why, maybe the insanity is finally starting to kick in and I will be using my shoe for a telephone by the end of the week. Anyway, the headline is “David Crosby arrested on gun, drug charges in NY” and you can find the story Here

The 62-year-old musician, who rose to fame with the Byrds and later Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in the late 1960s and 1970s, was charged with criminal possession of a weapon and unlawful drug possession, said Manhattan District Attorney spokeswoman Barbara Thompson.

As you can certainly tell by the photo, this man is a hardened criminal. He is one of the guys that are out there “banging” to protect his “hood”.. At his age I think that any drug he does should be considered ‘medicinal’ and the most likely reason that he has a gun is just in case the pressure/pain of his life becomes overwhelming and he just wants to end it all. He looks far more like Santa Claus than a musician and I bet he has arthritis and other such maladies that he is not able to take care of with over-the-counter pills. Would you hold your wallet/purse any tighter if you saw him board a plane?

The story goes on to say this;

Crosby later gained notoriety when he donated sperm to fellow rocker Melissa Etheridge so she and her lesbian partner could have a baby through artificial insemination.

Now I have nothing against homosexuals, but Egads man, what are they expecting the child to look like? It is probably possible that there could be two sets of genes that would result in a child less attrictive than that particular pairing but you would really have to look for them.

At any rate, I really don’t think that Crosby was going to try to take over any embassies in New York, and it is funny (to me) that this is getting any press coverage at all. There are far more important things going on in the world than a rocker 30 years passed his prime getting arrested for possesion of miniscule amounts of marijuana, and a firearm.

If John Lennon had realized that his life was in danger, so long after he was out of the public eye, he may have carried a firearm, and as such he may be alive today. Let us not fault persons who live in situations that only they can understand.

Lingering pain…

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I worked for only four hours today, and even in that limited time my neck and head were just throbbing. I was not able to take the muscle relaxant pill that would have taken away from the pain, so I just had to suck it up. Once back at home I was able to drop a few Motrin, that took a bit of the pain away, then I started to consume some liquid courage (beer, to the layman) and that seemed to ease the pain a bit also. I have to be at work again in roughly 13 hours, and I am not at all happy about it, but I must do my normal daily activities if I am ever to be healed. The only question, in my mind, is that they said that I may need to get a ‘head and neck MRI’ if the pain persisted. The pain has persisted, but I am doing my best to work through it, while if I did have a herniated disc in my neck it would probably require surgery, if it is not a herniated disc, it will only require time to heal.

Since it still hurts like you would not believe, I will not talk about it any more. I will say, though, that I used to think that it really hurt to get a piercing (ear or nipple) and I have since realized that the pain of a piercing, even in the nipple, is not even a quarter of the pain that I have in the base of my skull currently.

To elaborate on that last paragraph, I had a piercing in my nipple that was ripped out. My nipple is still in two pieces to look at, but even that does/did not hurt as much as this pain in my neck does now (the pain that I felt when the ring was actually ripped from my nipple was close, but no cigar).

On to other things.

I have been watching the ‘Survivor All-Stars’ all season. I am really happy to see them fight like dogs from the start, but when they start throwing in crap about their mother, or sexual abuse, I am not on board with that. I have nothing against the people who decide to “vote themselves”, but it certainly makes for a boring show. If you know half-way through the show who is not going to be there the next show what is the incentive to watch the final half?

In the original ‘survivor’ I could have expected those kinds of antics, but in the all-star version every damn one of them should know what they are in for. If you want to play ‘four-square’, a new square just opened up somewhere between survivor and reality. If you don’t want to play, then thank you and go home, you don’t have the weight to carry the game. The demeanor of any man/woman/child is certainly going to change when the reward goes from just living to a million dollars.

I have a diatribe that I really want to put here, but, it is late and I do need to get up tomorrow, so you should just wait for it.

Perhaps tomorrow I will be more in the mood to chat.

More pain

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I went back to work today, and I was not at all happy about it. I thought that it wouldn’t be too bad, they are aware that I am in no condition to do anything strenuous, and did not ask it of me. I just had no idea how difficult it would be to stand up for that long. Since I first had the injury on Saturday I don’t think I have stood up for more than ten minutes at a time. I had to work from noon to eight today, and that is a hell of a lot more than ten minutes.

I took my muscle-relaxant pills and lots of ibuprofin to work with me, as well as the neck brace, just in case. I really didn’t want to have to use the muscle relaxants, and I didn’t, not that I didn’t have to, just that I didn’t. I am sure it would have been a lot easier if I had taken one, but I have only been taking them while I sleep so far and I was a bit worried about what may happen if I were to take one when I needed to be alert. I did take 1800 milligrams of Ibuprofin over those eight hours, but it was hardly enough, as my head was throbbing the whole time.

The way it works is when my neck has been in pain for a while, say half an hour or so, the pain slowly makes its way into my head, by the time that happens it will take another half an hour or so for the Ibuprofin to kick in. Had I taken one of the muscle relaxants the pain would never have gotten to become a head-ache ( I dont think anyway ) and it would have been good, but I might also have appeared to be slobbering drunk for all I know.

I would really have liked to work my way back in there slowly, not start right off with a full day, but the boss had an appointment that would have required rescheduling if I was not able to work that shift, and honestly I really need the hours, it is not like I am independently wealthy. It looks like I will only be working around four hours on Thursday and Friday and hopefully by Saturday I will feel well enough that an eight hour shift doesn’t feel like about three hours longer than eternity. Time will tell.

I am sure this all makes for absolutely riveting reading, or not. It is like I once told Flux over at BlackChampagne, I often feel compelled to write, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that what I write will be compelling.

There is absolutely nothing in the news that I find worth adding my comments to today, well at least not in this arena. I also have nothing else to type about so this will be a short one.

I have decided on something else to put on my sidebar though. It is gonna be a song, one that was not really popular like ever, but one that I absolutely loved for one reason or another. I am not going to link to mp3.com with them since I am sure you know a better way to get it if you really want it 😉 , but I will try to find someplace where you can at least get a sample of the song.

That is all for today.

Pain; News; FTP

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Well, I didn’t do an update yesterday. The most significant reason for that was that the pain that I thought was subsiding on Sunday came back in full-force on Monday. I am trying not to take the prescribed muscle realaxants, but I have had to take four or five over the last few days. I am not sure if it is actually an issue of building up a tolerence (as I often claim, fearing that if I need to use the pills when I am older and in desperate need they will not help me) or if it is simply a matter of pride. If it is, in fact, a matter of pride then I have to say that I have swallowed that pride, in a convenient pill form, happily a few times.

The pain has been subsiding a bit over the days though. I am now only in pain when I am standing, bending down or laying down. That means that as long as I am sitting I am not in pain, well in less pain anyway. The pain is still here as I again sit typing, but the pain is centralized to just the lower portion of my neck. When I stand the pain tends to spread and make my head and fingers start to throb, as is the same when I try to bend down. I have gotten pretty good at controlling my breathing to take deep breaths when my head begins to pound, and this makes that sensation go away pretty quickly, but feeling that pain for even one second is at least 3/4 of a second longer than I would like to feel it.

Laying down is a bit tricky also. The instructions given to me on the release form from the hospital say that I should lay on my back with a small pillow on each side of my head to keep my neck in line. The inherent problem with that is my neck is in the most pain when I lay flat on my back. That would be sort of like telling someone with a broken leg that instead of a cast, he should just hit the fracture with a big mallet every ten minutes or so. Just not going to happen. Anyway, if I lay on my right side one pillow is too much, where as if I lay on my left side I need two. Either way my neck still hurts, but while laying on my left side it seems to hurt a bit less. I have to move while I sleep though, as, if I lay in one position much longer than an hour my back begins to hurt. Yeah, cry me a river, I know. This will pass and I will look back on this and think that it didn’t really hurt that bad, then I will probably scoff at other people who think that something like this hurts, but I hope not.

This is the first day since the injury that I have actually felt able to do most of the things that I normally do. I mean that I am able to get up and move around, pick things up off of the floor, beat the dogs when necessary. The only time I really feel the pain is, well, not really clear. I went to the bathroom earlier and as I turned to sit it just hit me and a few seconds later it was gone. I had been standing opening my mail when the phone rang, I reached for the phone and it hit me. I am beginning to think that there may really be a god and that he is punishing me for my atheist ways, that or the human body is a very complex system that can not be understood or explained.

But enough about my pain in the neck.

There is a weird news story today that I just absolutely love, on a lot of levels. It is quite a short little story, so I will simply quote it all here;

WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) – For a 73-year-old Canadian man, 20 months in a smoke-free jail looked just too long, so instead he took 24 months in a prison where he can smoke cigarettes.
Angelo Foti was sentenced to 20 months for shooting and wounding a man in his backyard who was trying to repossess a snowmobile sold to Foti’s son, the Winnipeg Free Press reported Tuesday.

In court Monday, Angelo Foti was agitated when he realized the sentence would mean he would be in a provincial jail, where smoking is banned, the newspaper said.

Foti’s lawyer pleaded for a 24-month sentence instead, which means the man will go to a federal prison, where smoking is allowed.

In accepting the longer term, Foti, a dedicated pack-a-day man, ignored the wishes of this family.

“Dad, they’re just cigarettes — give them up. Quit smoking: you’ll be healthier,” his son Angelo Jr. said in court. “Just take the 20 months.”

I just love that story. The guy is 73 years old FFS, he is not likely to change his day to day behavior just since he is in jail. He has likely smoked since he was ten or twelve years old -since they only really started to care about the age restrictions on tobacco within the last decade or so. He just wants his smokes. The amazing part is that he is that old and still smoking. At his age, and being a smoker, either term 20 or 24 months could be a death sentence. He chooses to defy all logic by taking a longer sentence so that he can kill himself just a bit more.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a smoker myself, and I would love nothing more than to be able to quit. Being locked in a cell in a local jail for twenty months would likely be the spur that I needed to achieve that end. Perhaps I am just not seeing his point of view.

Now, why the hell is he in jail anyway? The article clearly states that “Angelo Foti was sentenced to 20 months for shooting and wounding a man in his backyard.” it does go on to explain that the man was trying to repossess a snowmobile, but it was not in Angelo’s name. I think that if someone is in your yard, trying to take a snowmobile -whether it is yours, your son’s, or even the neighbor’s bastard son’s step-sister’s, he is taking it from your private property-, he is fair game.

That article doesn’t mention whether the person announced that they were ‘repossessing’ the snowmobile, nor do I think it really matters. If that guy shows up in my back yard, he is gonna get shot again. And, knowing that I am going to go to jail for protecting my property I may just shoot to kill, as opposed to shooting to injure. -I do know that the story is out of Canada, but I thought that our judicial systems were pretty similar….Until now-

FTP Clients

When I began doing these updates I had no FTP client. I searched through download.com to find one. I was quite worried about having to put the username and password for the ftp server into a program that I was not sure about. There are literally thousands of these programs out there, and you don’t know which one/ones may be malicious. At first I took the high road and picked one of the most popular ones, which had a free trial period and some pretty cool features. Also if you lie about whether or not you are a student you can get a bare bones version of it for free. That program is at this website WS_FTP PRO LE

I did not pay any attention to how long was left on my trial period of that, since I am on like day 1,226 of my thirty day trial on other programs, but that one just quit working on the 30th day. I was forced to go back and try to find a freeware ftp client.

Here is the information for any of you who really need a freeware ftp client. I downloaded and installed more than a dozen freeware ftp clients, more than 90% of them had some sort of tracking software bundled in the installation files. This one client is the only one I found that does not freeze a windows 98 system AND does not have any tracking software (to my knowledge, none that I have been able to find anyway). It also has a very small file size. You can find it Right here. It takes a few minutes to get used to the interface, but that is a lot better than actually having to pay for an ftp client.

I am currently using this ftp client, if I find a better one I will let you know.

Neck injury; The most adorable dog photo ever

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Well, you know how one day you are at work and something bad happens and you think to yourself – or say aloud- this is the worst day of my life? I know I have sure said that a few times in my day but I can most definitely proclaim without a bit of doubt that when I said that yesterday, that statement was true, and likely will remain the pinnacle of shitty days in my life for a very long time. At this point you must be wondering what could possibly have been so bad about it, so I will tell the tale below.

The day started out just as every day, I awoke and took a leisurely stroll around the perimeter of my estate, my two faithful dogs by my side. A songbird flew from a branch of the the old pine tree near the stream, it landed on my shoulder and sang as I caressed its gentle feathers…Then the alarm clock went off and I woke up and fought my way past the dogs to the bathroom. I started the shower, shaved really quick and jumped in. After I had finished rinsing my hair, as I was reaching to turn off the water, someone hit me square at the base of my skull with a very heavy object.

It took a few seconds for the initial sharp pain to subside. I had either blacked out briefly, or the pain had just forced my legs out from under me, either way, I was on one knee in the bottom of the tub by the time I had a chance to look around. I didn’t see the guy with the bat, so he must be really quick, or maybe he was never there, that depends on how one feels about conspiracy theories I guess. The pain was still throbbing in my neck, right at the base of my skull, but I continued my normal routine confident that it would shortly go away. It didn’t.

I staggered naked into the bedroom, thinking that maybe if I could lay down for a minute it would go away. The truth was that the very second my head touched the pillow the pain quadrupled. I sat up and said to my wife, “I need to go to the hospital”. She looked at me for a second, I guess not quite sure if I was joking. We have been together for seven years, and in that time I have never even been to see a doctor, hell, I have only been in the hospital twice, once when I was born and once when I had third degree burns, when I was two. She must have been able to see that I was serious, as she immediately began to get dressed, and called my work to tell them that she was taking me to the emergency room.

As I began to try to get dressed, that was when I really began to worry. There are a few things in life that one should not need help doing, especially at 29. Dressing yourself is one of them, and I don’t mean the color-coordination kind of shit, I mean that I was not able to put on my own shirt, she had to button it for me. I gave up all hope in even trying to get my shoes on under my own power and just slid my feet into my flip-flops, and off we went.

The nearest hospital is at least a thirty minute drive from us, and the roads on the way are very bumpy, which is normally not a problem, but when each bump feels like someone ramming an icepick into the base of your skull..Let me just say that it seemed a bit more bumpy than usual. I was forced to remove the head rest from the seat only a couple miles into the trip, since it was pushing at my head, and thus magnifying the bumps in the road. The problem was that without the head rest my body was forcing my neck to do a bobble-head thing, and honestly I don’t know which one hurt worse.

The thirty minute drive took about eleven years. Actually, it probably took about forty minutes due to being stuck behind people who just didn’t seem to know or care that I really wanted medical attention. As it turns out, the hospital was much like the inconsiderate drivers. I was not able to stand when we arrived there (well, I did walk in, so I guess I was capable of doing it, it just hurt so badly when I did it that I was afraid I may feint from the pain) so I just sat down and let my wife take care of getting me on the list.

I must go off topic for a second here to bitch about the list. This isn’t a fucking night club, its a hospital. So you come in with a knife sticking out of your skull, do they put you on the list behind the guy who is here for a tetinus shot after getting a minor cut from a rusty soda can? Now, I know that everyone thinks that THEIR problem requires immediate attention, but come on. By all indications I had a severe spinal or cervial problem, you know the type of thing that usually ends up in you being restrained flat on a board with your head in a collar while they rush you to x-ray. Not the case here, I guess I wasn’t on “The List”.

I sat there patiently. I waited for over an hour, and every second the pain was getting worse. The pain was no longer just in my neck, my head was throbbing, I could feel my pulse in my eyeballs. I was keeping them closed to avoid the triple-vision thing that was happening each time my heart beat, also, I was pushing the palms of my hands hard against my temples to keep my head from exploding. In hindsight, I guess if my head was going to explode it would not have cared if my hands were there, but it helped to ease the pain a bit. If they had not called me back into triage when they did, I may not be here typing this now.

I could barely walk at this point, and again, I mean that the action was fluid, I could do it, it just hurt so bad. Every time my heart beat it was like I could feel it in every single capillary from head to toe. I walked as slowly as I could to try to give me time to breathe between steps. Upon arriving in the little room, the nurse began to ask some questions while the machine was taking my blood pressure. Now that I am thinking back on it, I can not remember some of the questions, I know my eyes were closed the entire time, I remember her asking my weight, and not believing me, then making me get on the scale. I remember barely being able to do that since I could not look down. I remember her telling me to sit back down and be very still. I remember hearing her say to a doctor something about getting me on a bed and stabilized before I had a seizure. I remember my wife crying, and me telling her not to worry I was going to be fine. Then some guy putting something around my neck that took some of the pressure away. Then letting me sit down, on a bed, and the throbbing receding just a bit.

I am going to go off topic again about “The List”. I guess it is pretty clear that I didn’t die, since I am typing this, but I wonder how close I actually came because of sitting out there waiting all that time. My blood pressure, when they finally got me into triage was 180something over 106, that was why they were worried that I was going to have a seizure. Any time that bottom number gets over 100 it is like a stroke looking for a place to happen (which was why I was feeling my hearbeat in every damn extremity). Why this actually happened to me I am not sure, nor did they have an explanation. My best guess is that the pain had driven my body into shock and that if I had not have gotten the pressure taken off of my neck I may have either had a stroke or gone into cardiac arrest. -But the guy in front of me, who needed a tetinus shot after being cut on a rusty soda can is going to be just fine, thank you.-

I sat on the bed there, wearing the collar, for a time while speaking to various other nurses and telling the same story about a dozen times, every one of them asking me to squeeze their hands (which I am assuming was to make sure that I had not lost use of the muscles in my hands, but who knows). Then they carted me off to x-ray.

That was a pretty amazing turn of events, eh? Let the guy sit out there waiting over an hour, then when you decide to see him you see that there is a real possibility that the guy may have a very major problem. So after an hour in the waiting room they got me into triage, and in less than twenty minutes after that I was in x-ray.

Once I returned from the x-rays, there was a guy waiting there with some pain killer. He wanted to inject me with pain killer. I am not big on needles, but I really didn’t want to be injected with the pain killer. My logic was that I do not use any drugs, except nicotine, caffeine and alcohol, and wanted to be able to walk out of the place if they were to release me at the end of the ordeal. The guy went and checked on this with the nurse, who then spoke to me, and we agreed that I could take a percacet in lieu of a debilitating shot. At this point, the man who brought me the percacet took my blood pressure again and it was down to 153/80, which is not really all that great by any stretch, but the fear of seizure was not there anymore. It occurs to me that had they gotten me into the collar to stabilize my neck, oh, say an hour earlier, there might not have been an issue with the blood-pressure?

At any rate, due to the nature of symptoms, combined with the blood-pressure they observed when I first got into triage, they wanted to do a CT Scan. I was in no position to argue, what being hardly able to walk, plus a good lie down seemed like a good thing at this point. The guy said that the scan would last for about twenty minutes, but I swear the second I laid down, the guy said I was done. I vaguely remember whirring noises as I was being pushed through this ..thing.. but I could swear it was nowhere near twenty minutes. -Them percacet pills must be good stuff-

So the good news is that the CT Scan showed that I do indeed have a brain (I have often wondered) and beyond that, my brain is normal. Well, they didn’t ever use the word ‘normal’ so I guess what they were getting at is that my brain did not have any huge clots or hemorrhaging, so I did not have a stroke. In even better news, I did not have a brain tumor – you see I have this recurring dream where I have a tumor in my brain that they must remove, and when the do the surgery I lose the use of my legs- So the problem is not with my brain, or my bones, so I am golden, right?

Not necessarily. My official release papers say that what I have is a ‘cervical strain’, and that I should use prescription ibuprofen and muscle relaxers(if/when necessary). Oh yeah, and wear one of those neck brace donut things. But they ( CT Scan and X-ray Techs )also said that it is possible that what I have is a herniated disc in my neck,(which the x-rays can miss) so if the condition does not improve, or if it worsens, that I should get a referral from my doctor for a head/neck MRI. Why the hell didn’t they just do that sometime in the 4 hours I was in the damn emergency room?

Now I certainly understand why I have this phobia of the hospital. I just can’t figure out what in the hell their agenda is. If I had died in the waiting room, you know when I was so close to having a seizure or stroke, would they not be held accountable since they had not yet seen me? If so, is that what they are going for? So if they are gonna die, let them do it in the waiting room, if they can live for an hour we will go ahead and treat them. Perhaps that was the reason that they did not let me read or sign the liabilty statement until they released me?

Once the blood-pressure went down, the pain was just in my neck, that is a kind of pain that I can endure. Mind you, I still have a problem if I try to bend completely down to pick something up off of the floor, but as long as my head stays above my heart I seem to be doing pretty well. I took enough ibuprofen on that first day to kill a goat, as well as a muscle relaxer, on top of the percacet, and I slept pretty well. In the morning the pain was all in my neck, just imagine the ‘crick’ you get in your neck from sleeping funny, then multiply that by about ten and that is the pain that I am feeling even as I write this. Yet, if I lay in the bed to let it heal, my back begins to hurt (and that is something that I have been battling since I was 16 or so), so I must pick my poison. The more I move my neck about, or even just using the muscles to hold it in place, the less the pain becomes as I move. I am certainly hoping for a speedy recovery, but this was certainly the ‘worst day of my life’.

On to happier thoughts. I have not shown any pictures of my beloved dogs here yet, so I will do so now. Keep in mind that they are beloved part of the time, kind of tolerable part of the time, and a nuisance all the rest of the time. They are pretty obedient, especially Warlock, he will do whatever you tell him to. Zelda, on the other hand, is not quite at the same level of obedience. We give her a bit of leeway since she is not fully grown, but she is nearing the time where her puppy antics will result in a swift smack to the snout.

As always, click on the picture for a larger size view.

This is the newer of our two dogs. We named her Zelda. She is quite a good little dog at least like what 30% of the time, the rest of the time is spent chasing her around to take whatever it is that she is chewing on out of her mouth. Sometimes she is chewing on our shoes and the such (as puppies do) other times she will be chewing on electrical cords, whcih puppies don’t really ever do if they want to live to wag another day.

This is our other dog Warlock, he is quite the ham. He will pose for any damn picture any damn where. If he sees that little box in your hands he knows that it is treats, when it turns out to be photos instead he really doesn’t seem to care, just as long as all your attention is focused on him. In the larger photo you can definitely tell that he is expecting a reward… the truth of it is that we were trying to take pictures of Zelda at the time, but I just really like this pose.

Zelda is also just a bit too quick to get a good shot of her. In a few months I am sure that she will calm down a bit so that we can get a few clean shots of her, but as for now we takes ’em like we gets ’em.

Abortion; Columbine

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I had every intention of doing an update yesterday (perhaps I should start calling it a blog?), and had found a few little news things to bitch at, and had even written them up. Then Survivor came on television, and I never got back to it. The thing about the ‘so-called’ reality shows like that is that you feel like you have to watch every minute or you will miss something, which may or may not be true, but they certainly do sucker us in. Why this kind of stuff is being called reality t.v. is still a mystery to me, I mean in reality no one really gets stuck on an island with a bunch of strangers who then have to do immunity and reward challenges. I mean reality t.v. would be like a half an hour of a couple folding clothes in a laundromat wouldn’t it?

As for the idea of doing news, when I began this site I really didn’t think I wanted to do anything like that as it has been done to death on lots of sites. But, those sites do add their own unique spin to the stories that make it a more enjoyable read (in my opinion), and while I am not a pundit on any matter, I do have some pretty strong opinions. Also, this has given me a reason to read a lot of news articles that I likely would not have read otherwise. I am still going to try to shy away from doing much as far as political type news, as I just do not have enough information about the majority of the issues to give myself a sturdy soapbox from which to bitch. If I do start any political bitching it will likely be about issues that every person in the U.S. likely has an opinion on, just to get my opinion out there.

Take this story for instance.

The two sides also argued over language in the bill that defines “unborn child” as “a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb.”
Critics said that under this definition even a fertilized egg would have the same rights as the born, setting the stage for future challenges to abortion rights.

I think that argument is all about semantics, so I don’t really see why there is such fuss over it. But, I am also the type of person to think that logic will always prevail, which is one of my greatest downfalls. Over the course of human history it seems that logic is more likely to be persecuted than to prevail…Ask Galileo about that one…

But those behind the bill noted that identical language was used in a 2000 bill that barred the execution of pregnant women. That bill passed the House 417-0 but didn’t move in the Senate.
The House has also twice before, in 1999 and 2001, passed unborn victims bills, but in both those cases as well the Senate, where abortion rights lawmakers hold greater sway, did not take up the legislation.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., has pledged to bring up the bill soon, but it’s uncertain whether he has the votes to pass it.

Okay, so what I really want to know is how it is possible that any bill can make it through the house unanimously, and not go anywhere in the senate. I understand that in our democratic society we have a series of checks and measures to ensure that any legislation that becomes a law has been scrutinized by the house, senate and oval office. It went through the house unanimously! Why should there be a question on the mind of anyone in the senate whether there would be enough votes to pas it? These are our elected senators, aren’t they like sworn to hear the voice of the people that they represent or something?

The bill also states that an offense does not require proof that the assailant had knowledge that the victim was pregnant. Hart noted that murder is a leading cause of death among pregnant women and in many cases the attack is made with the intention to kill the unborn child.

I actually strongly agree with this part of the article. Being that I am pro-choice I believe that if a woman is carrying the child that she has made the decision to give birth to it. If that unborn child was killed in a purse-snatching I think whoever did it should be put to death. Not that I believe that believe that a fetus is an actual child, but I do believe that once a mother has made a decision to carry the child to term it should be considered much differently than the mother who chooses to abort a fetus. The emotional affect on the mother who was planning to give birth to a child is likely going to be exactly the same as if someone killed her newborn, in that way I think that the puishment should fit the crime.

A story about the massacre at Columbine that I am putting here only because I was so right about it.

In all, Salazar said, the sheriff’s office had at least 15 contacts with the two teens — from dispatch reports to official investigative reports — stemming from six separate incidents. But it made no conclusions about what investigators could have done differently.
The collection of evidence unveiled Thursday included 10,418 separate items — from the murder weapons and the black trenchcoats worn by the killers to bullet fragments and the chairs and tables where people died. A message board put up in a school window the day of the attack still says, in blue Magic Marker: “1 bleeding to death.” There were 13 body bags.

Authorities released two videos, one of the anxious scene in a park near the school the day of the shooting, the other the Harris and Klebold video.

“I don’t care what you say; if you ever touch him again, I will fricking kill you,” a wild-eyed Harris screams on the tape.

Some relatives say such videos were seen by school officials and that nothing was done.

“This raises more questions than it answers,” said Dawn Anna, whose daughter, Lauren Townsend, died at Columbine. “I would disagree that there was no negligence.”

Brooks Brown said he wanted to know what sheriff’s officials did with multiple warnings from his parents about Harris. He was stunned by the failure to execute the search warrant at the Harris home a year before the slayings.

“That’s basically telling me my friends died because of a clerical error,” he said.

I had posted a message on my angelfire web site the day after the Columbine Massacre (which they quickly deleted) that stated that I was pretty damn sure these kids would have been into petty crimes, and been making pipe bombs, possibly even torturing animals for years before this event. I made that statement based solely on my own adolescence and the fact that I had done all of those things. While I never brought myself to the point where I actually murdered anyone, I probably came a lot closer than I like to admit.

The things that I thought would be true about these two teens did turn out to be true. I am sure that anyone who happens upon this site will not really care that I was right about something, nor is that really the reason that I am posting about this particular story. Look at the eyes in that photo. There is something about those eyes, not the expression or anything, just the eyes, that just seems to be not quite human..

A very amusing story that I read after the previous articles. It is quite short, so I will simply quote the whole thing.

BERLIN (Reuters) – A German woman took her male neighbor to court for noise pollution after he repeatedly kept her awake through half the night and had at least one four-hour sex session, a court spokeswoman said Friday.
“Four hours of sex noises. What was I supposed to think? It was nothing but groaning and banging,” the woman told the judge, a Bild newspaper report said.

The woman told Berlin magistrates that her 25-year old neighbor Andreas G. was disturbing the peace by keeping her awake early in the morning.

Andreas said his 26-year old neighbor had complained in the past, calling at five in the afternoon, but that he had not felt obliged to respond. “I can have as much sex as loud as I want then,” he said.

The judge dropped the case on learning that the man had since moved out of the apartment.

I am not entirely sure just what the problem there is. If that man could actually have sex for four hours straight, I would think that his single neighbors would be knocking on his door looking for a little ‘Love you long time’ action. Perhaps the woman was mad after being turned down?

Bitching about the news items has turned out to be a lot more fun than I had ever thought it could be. Sure it takes away from me doing something more productive, but it is likely that if I ever develop a readership they will be more likely to send me an email about something that agree/disagree with. If I don’t have any of that sort of thing on here (the type of thing that one could agree or disagree with) I don’t have much hope of ever getting any feedback.

It occurs to me that this may be the reason why your average ‘blog’ is almost a cookie-cutter type now. People -like me- start with one intention, then in the interest of getting a few people to read the site things start to change. After a while the initial intent of the site must just get lost to the pursuit of readers. Whether or not that is true is yet to be seen (on my site anyway). I will get back to you when I have some evidence one way or the other.

For now I am going to play a bit more on the ClockTower 3 game.

Howard Stern

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Well, it seems that I must break form again, as I saw yet another news item that just riles me up. whether or not anyone is reading this (or ever will) just seems to take a back seat to my desire to bitch about it. It is another issue that I am sure I would not be comfortable talking about with a random stranger on the street, yet somehow comfortable to do here, with an entire world of potential strangers to read it – yet let me say my piece first – Also, how many days in a row does one need to break from before it is the form, and by not breaking form that is breaking form?

I am reading the story through yahoo news, I will put a link to it here, but it will be gone in just a few days, so likely it is a dead link if you are looking at the page. The link.

WASHINGTON – The nation’s largest radio station chain announced Wednesday it was suspending shock jock Howard Stern’s radio show after issuing new rules to limit indecency and address criticism of what airs on TV and radio.
Clear Channel Radio said it suspended broadcast of Stern’s show after assessing the content of his show Tuesday.

“Clear Channel drew a line in the sand today with regard to protecting our listeners from indecent content and Howard Stern’s show blew right through it,” John Hogan, president and CEO of Clear Channel Radio, said in a news release. “It was vulgar, offensive, and insulting, not just to women and African Americans but to anyone with a sense of common decency.”

Yes, and shit smells a bit like shit too, doesn’t it? If you do not live in a third world country, I would think that would really be basic knowledge (the show being vulgar and offensive, I mean). In fact, I think that may actually be what he is going for with his show. I mean look at the guy FFS he is obviously not out to tell a wonderful tale about Winnie the Pooh in the 100 acre wood. He looks to be more of the Sociopath type. Though I do not think he has enough charisma to be that sort of a person, he certainly has gained an audience large enough to believe that he can.

Congress is considering increasing the maximum fine for indecency from $27,500 to $275,000, a move that the Federal Communications Commission endorsed even before the tumult over singer Janet Jackson’s exposed breast during the nationally televised Super Bowl halftime show.
“In the history of broadcast indecency, there have been these moments where it makes headlines,” said Jeremy Lipschultz, a professor of communication at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. “In the short term, broadcasters become much more careful. You’re going to see people playing it safe. The long-term problem is the same one we’ve had, which is it’s very difficult in the end to precisely define what is indecent or not. ”

Under FCC rules and federal law, radio stations and over-the-air television channels cannot air material containing references to sexual and excretory functions between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., when children may be tuning in. The rules do not apply to cable and satellite channels and satellite radio.

So there is proof of ‘Freedom of speech, and expression’ in action. You can say whatever the hell you want to as long as you are absolutely alone at the time. No one can see, or hear, what you are doing or else you might be found to be in violation of FCC terms. I Love this country.

Like everything else in life, you have a choice. If you don’t want to Hear about women wearing g-strings and being provocative. Don’t. I stressed the word hear in the last sentence for the single reason that it is something that was heard. When my little virgin ears learned about sex, it was in about 1980 and I heard it from an eight year old kid at school (which is, I think, where most of us do learn about it). Do we assume that the kids today will simply quit telling stories if they had not seen a VERY UNAPPEALING portion of Janet Jackson’s breast? How did it happen that kids sneaking into dad’s bedroom to look at the playboy magazines has turned into this battle over what is decent to talk about on the radio?

If the point that you are going for is for children to never have sex, you should just go ahead and kill yourself now, that is never going to happen. Children (from any species) realize that they have genitals and a strange desire to do things they had never previously done at exactly the point when their body is able to produce a healthy child. The age at which that is happening is getting smaller and smaller due to medical procedures that can support the infants who would have previously died due to being too small (or the mother that had to have a C-section to make the birth happen).

My wife and myself are 27 and 29 (respectively) and do not desire to have a child for a lot of reasons. She has to see a doctor, with a happy hand, once a year to meet these ends, she makes that sacrifice to keep us from having a child. We are both very stable in work and just not in desire of the kind of responsibility that comes with a child.

The people that actually have the children, though, seem to never spend a second with them and try to blame t.v. and the radio for their shortcomings as parents….Way to make a stand…. Sure he/she (the child) saw something happen on t.v. and as such will never want to live in a t.v., but the odds that he got his idea to actually beat his wife probably came from home, as well as the idea that he wanted to do drugs, smoke, all that kind of stuff.

If you really feel that Howard Stern is the beginning in the descent into the lungs of hell, you really need to get some medication…Also, since it is just a radio show, you could monitor what your children are listening to, but, that would require actually paying attention to your children then, wouldn’t it. I guess that is why people don’t want this stuff on the air, because they collectively just don’t care enough aboout their own children to make sure that they are safe. I know that my parents were with me every damn second (well, sometimes mom had to pee, but beyond that.)

You should blame yourself if your child is a hellion, Howard Stern’s radio show had nothing to do with it. If you believe that his show was a contributing factor, you are in such deep denial that you should be put to death, for the sake of your children.

As an addendum, I really hate Howard Stern, as such I just do not listen to his show. How hard is that?