Category Archives: social

Independence day

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I took a couple of days off, as you may or may not have noticed. No real reason for it, just didn’t feel like writing anything for the last couple of days. I suppose this is just a warm up period for next week, when I will be on vacation. I suppose I will likely write something down during our five days in Las Vegas, but I really doubt that I will try to upload anything, as there is a connection fee and per-minute surcharge from every major hotel on the strip, and we will be on the strip. There is also the matter that typing on the keyboard of a laptop computer really makes my wrists hurt, so I never do it for long, but that really won’t matter with the internet impossibility.

• Yesterday was the fourth day of July. That might not hold a lot of weight in most countries, hell even in the USA, but it is our symbolic day of freedom. I was really happy to wake up th is morning and find that there were no terrorist acts on the US soil. The threat of terroristic attacks has been on high for a long time now and what better day could the terrorists choose than our symbolic day of freedom?

Thankfully, the day has come and passed. In addition to no terrorist attacks, there were no firework related fatalities (at least none that I found on a news search). So that is a double wahoo for the day. There was an unfortunate spike in the “drunk driver’s” arrested over the weekend, but that is to be expected since 1) Every sober man knows that they shouldn’t drive on this weekend, and 2) every cop knows that same exact thing.

Locally, the fireworks display this year was by far the best they have done in the ten years that I have been living here. Normally the display will last a few short minutes, so by the time you hear the sound of the first, you are outside to see the light of the last, or so it seems. This year there were actual fireworks. Probably a twenty minute display. I had not seen so many since I was very young and living in Oregon. The only SNAFU to prove that it really is florence was the fact that after the big finale of the fireworks, after everyone waits ten seconds or so to make sure, one single one went up in the air popped, and fizzled out in green. So instead of the “grand finale”, we had the fizzle of green.

• I had rather a humorous conversation with my mother the other day. It seems that she can remember the celebrations of independence day, but she can’t really remember the injuries that I (and so I assume my brothers) sustained on that day. When dad and mom were together, so that would be until I was about six-seven years old, there was always a bucket of cold water nearby when we started to light our snakes and sparklers and the such. Snakes and sparklers are pretty lame though, so we started bending the sparklers and trying to see if we could make two or three headed snakes. I don’t remember exactly what happened, or exactly how, but I do remember that one of the sparklers got twisted to another sparkler and we lit it at both ends. This was the second time that I had gotten horrible burns on my fingers from one of them, the first being youthful idiocy as I just grabbed the wrong end. Are other families that different? Did I grow up in the only family where horrible burns were a part of the celebration?

Work stress; brief politics; brothels get approval stamps

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Today was one of the worst days I have had at work in recent memory. I had not even actually gotten around to looking at the normal things that I needed to check before I was being demeaned, bitched at, and otherwise told that I was the shit that gets scraped off of the bare feet of malnourished children in third-world countries…Basically, at least.

This was all related to the great shelf tagging adventure, of course. As I have written in the past, I was not going to do anything that was going to lose the store money, I think I may have been a tad dishonest with that statement though. I knowingly did things that were going to cost the store money, just very small amounts. Say there are three different types of La Victoria salsa, one is priced 1.89, one 2.39 and one 2.49 (due to being received at different times), the new tags all read 2.29, so I change them all to that price. That is losing us, on a case of 12, 2.40 on the most expensive one, 1.20 on the middle one, but is also gaining us 4.80 on the lowest priced one. The net of that would be 1.20 profit over leaving them all at their current price. I am not completely stupid after all.

There were a couple of cases when I did make notable changes in price for a store loss. Those were done mostly for simplicity on items that we did not have much of. One particular instance was a little jar of mayonaise, we had three on the shelf, the new price was 30 cents lower than the old price, but getting the new price into the register with all the other changes would save me a lot of time in the long run. An intentional 90 cent loss, knowing that the product would cost us less in the future, knowing that it would save me the time it would take to change the price later, it is 90 cents FFS.

Another instance of my failure was in the cake mix area. I did not change a single price with the cake mixes or frostings while we did the change, the reason was that we never buy them except when they are on a really big discount. So I left all of the prices the same and started hanging up special signs in front of the new shelf tags that had vastly higher prices –But– (there always is a but, isn’t there) I did not realize that they had made price changes in the actual cash register to some of those items, this means that the price I saw on the tag and the price it scans at do not match. Okay that seems a little fuzzy, even to me, so I will explain.

The POS (point of sale) software that we have in the backroom sets the prices and prints the tags for all of the items that we have on the shelf. The price of an item can be changed on the register itself, but you will not have a tag for the item, and the price will revert back to the previous backroom price if it ever goes on sale; i.e. The tag for Betty Crocker White cake says 1.59 on the tag, that is the price in the backroom, if you change it to 1.29 at the register it will remain 1.29 until it goes on sale. Once it goes on sale a file will be made in the backroom to transfer the sale price to the register, when the sale file is removed it will go back to the backroom/tag price.

Blah, I am boring myself as I type this, so I am sure the reading of it is probably not going all that well either. Let us never speak of this again…until tomorrow.

• I have been quite curious about the Fahrenheit 9/11 movie, even wanted to go see it, but I think I have changed my mind. Everything that I have read, from every blog I can think of, says that there is no information in it that has not been in the political blogosphere for a very long time. Damn me for not watching cable news and, therefore, thinking that Bush Dubya is the steely-eyed, strong-handed leader that he would want you to believe. I voted for this jack-ass, but I kind of lost faith in him when he was doing his best to read a book for pre-schoolers when the 9/11 attacks happened -mind you, he wasn’t doing it very well.-

I suppose that was all part of his strategery for the war on terror. Pretend to be an illiterate fool, then prove everyone wrong by actually being an illiterate fool…Well played.

Had I been the leader of the free world, I likely would have tried to make the world perceive me as a strong leader, a leader who was the voice of the people. But, then, I am not the President and that means that I don’t really need any scapegoats…Enough said…

• I saw a very brief mention of some country deciding that it needed to go ahead and put quality stamps on their brothels. I am not going to try to look the story up again since the fact that the countries that do have brothels almost invariably have less sex crimes than in the U.S.. I say almost invariably only because I do not have statistics for every country on earth and I don’t want to be telling lies.

Prostitution is called the “oldest profession” for a damn good reason, it is. Imagine 20,000 years ago, when man was first starting to hunt, make fire, become human as we know it. Man comes back with the bounty of his kill, woman tries to find something to trade for it, man would rather have a few seconds with woman than anything that she offers, woman puts up a red torch to let the clan know that her naughty parts are for sale to the man with the most meat (in trade, not the pants). Woman gets the best cuts in exchange for laying on her back and taking it.

Could it have happened differently? Yes. Is it likely? No.

Males have known, all through the ages, that females possess that which they are searching for. Not just the fact that the female has an ‘inny’ while the male has an ‘outy’, no it is deeper than that. The woman can have offspring, while the male can not. Of course no one in the days 20,000 years ago knew about impregnation, but that is not the point. I bet the woman’s crotch has been for sale longer than the most ancient artifacts prove.

I really think that it is a liberation of sorts to have the woman charge the man for sexual services. It is ‘prostitution’, but it is also of her own choice. That is executing total control of your own body, if you want to use the control of your own body for the sake of financial gain, it is at your own risk.

I really think that the only reason the Greeks started having anal sex with their young men was to circumvent the strangle-hold that prostitution had on their society. Had there been more reasonably priced hookers we might think of some of the Greek rulers as marketing genius.

Prostitution works to help stop sex crimes, prostitution also helps to stop the spread of disease (in coutries where it is regulated). Do we, as Americans, only look down on it since it seems so easy as a solution? Do we want to do everything in the most difficult way possible?

Time will tell.

Howard Stern held to different standards of decency than senators; Harry Potter

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Skipped yesterday’s post, blah blah, no one noticed, blah blah, no reason why, blah blah.

The truth is that I spent a bit of time first emailing a couple of people that I had not in some time, second, I was getting prepared for this years Vegas Vacation by playing a bit of video poker on Pogo.com. I suppose neither of those things should be more important than what I am doing here, but wait, I am doing this site for my own enjoyment, so if I would enjoy doing something else more..Doesn’t that mean that I was obligated to not write anything here? I would have enjoyed it far less than the video poker, that would have made it seem like, well, work to do a post yesterday. That was never my intention.

• One quick thing from the news that is just irritating me. So the vice president says Fuck Off on the Senate floor, albeit after the session had ended, isn’t that wrong on at least some level?

I have defended Howard Stern, even though I do not like him and never listen to his show, on at least a couple of occasions. Here are the ones that I could quickly find; Exhibit A, Exhibit B I am sure that I defended him on at least one other occasion, but as I do not maintain my archives as well as I should I just can’t seem to find it. I have always defended Howard Stern’s freedom of speech based on the fact that no one actually Had to listen to what he was saying. If you don’t like what any person is saying on the radio you can certainly change the station or turn it off completely (which pretty much summarizes how I tolerate Rush Limbaugh). The only people who don’t seem to understand that logic are the stuffy, by-the-book people that we throw into congress (which means old, white men for the most part, that is why Limbaugh can get away with calling Black people cancer, his peers seem to all agree). Those are the only people that seem to find Howard Stern so offensive that they listen to it long enough to figure out why they are offended by it, then take action by getting the FCC involved.

Howard Stern’s show never uses the “F-word”, or it is at least bleeped if they do, and he is catering to a voluntary audience. No one that is listening to the Howard Stern Show actually HAS to be listening to it, while in the case of Cheney saying, “Fuck Off” on the Senate floor, everyone that was there heard it whether they wanted to or not. These are the same people that are trying to get Howard Stern taken off the air for using such offensive words as Vagina, Penis, Clitoris and Orgasm. If Stern were ever to drop the F-Word on a radio show he would simply be gone, there would be no explaining, he would just be gone.

I assume that there must be a pretty harsh consequence for using such a word on the floor of the Senate then, right?

Pressed whether he condones the use of such language in the Senate, Frist pointed out that the chamber was not in session at the time, “so I am not going to condone, I am not going to overly criticize the language that people in the — the language that people use to express themselves.”

Well if that isn’t proof that democracy seems to be far more lenient on those in power I don’t know what is. Not even a, “Hey, by the way, try not to curse on the Senate floor”. No, no, just a defense that he was basically angry. Lots of people get angry, lots of people don’t tell other people to “fuck off” in the face of a lot of media and other witnesses. How far would that anger have had to escalate before they thought he did something wrong? Yes, he ripped the heart out of a child and ate it in front of the reporters, but he was in a bad mood so he shan’t be punished.

I say again, Hell in a hand-basket.

• I am likely about the last person in the entire world to get into the Harry Potter craze. I think that I am doing it more out of curiosity than actual desire, but I am still enjoying the experience. Today, for instance, I read about the last two-thirds of the second book in the morning, then watched the dvd starting at about noon. This is the only time I have watched a movie within ten years or so of having read the book, so I was able to see a lot of the changes that were made when the book went from print to the big screen. I am not sure whether or not that is a good thing.

The books (at least the two that I have read) are children’s books, one wouldn’t expect them to have any major twists in the plot or the target audience just would not be able to follow. The first book was so predictable that I knew the outcome within about the first fifty pages. The second book actually had me tossing around a couple of ideas in my head as to how it would turn out. Neither of which turned out to be accurate. So that was good, I didn’t know the ending in the first chapter -well, I knew Harry was going to defeat whatever it was, I just didn’t know what it was, or who it was-. The movie was pretty faithful to the book, there were a lot of changes that were obviously made due to time constraints, but the plot went about the same. I could sit here and nit-pick about a bunch of stuff that they changed from the book to the movie, but most of it was for the better. Even as simple as the storyline was, it is hard to fit everything into a couple of hours.

My biggest bitch about the book was that there was a diary with the inscription T. M. Riddle on it. About half way through the book it actually spelled out all three names (which it showed on the diary in the movie, but only for a second), and since the last name was riddle, and the name was so weird, I looked at the name for about three minutes until I finally found the anagram. The anagram was revealed later in both the movie and the book. I had taken half of the fun out of reading the rest of the book at that point, but I went ahead anyway, just to finish it. As I said, it is just a brief glimpse in the movie and one would likely not be able to figure it out from that alone.

The movie version did clean up some of Rowling’s sloppy work. The last fifty or so pages of the book I was reading on in WTF mode. Things didn’t fit, things got garbled, there was talk of a rooster…The end of that book just kind of sounded like she was trying to pound it out to meet a deadline so she could get a paycheck. The movie cleaned up a lot of her rough edges, while still leaving major holes in the fabric. I don’t think it will get better in future episodes, but I have been wrong before.

I think there will eventually be two camps on this subject, one that adores the books, the other adoring the films. From what I have seen in the first two books and films, Hollywood makes it seem much more logical than the books. I certainly hope that the next book will prove me wrong, but Rowlings endings just seem to suck. You see it coming, it comes, and you are left to wait for the next book.

All that being said, it is still more enjoyable to read those books than to read this site, you FREAK.

Deadly Rooms of Death; Politics

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So yesterday brought about another late day at work, thus nothing new posted here. As usual I was not aware that it was going to be a late day until halfway through my shift. Since that is normally the case I guess it would be a bit senseless to bitch about it. After all, I have been working there for damn near ten years, if I were that annoyed by it I would surely have found a different job by now, right?

As for the day at work today, it sucked and I hated it, thanks for asking. Not that it really sucked, or that I really hated it, but that I spent the extra hours at work last night using a scraper to remove excess was and dirt build-up from the edges of some of the tiles on the aisles that get a lot of traffic. I was pretty impressed with how good they looked, so was the boss, as she suggested that I spend a bit more time today working on it. Problem there is that I have a huge blister on me knee from having spent a good couple of hours kneeling on it during the process yesterday (as well as sliding on it, as it was quicker than actually standing up and taking a step to get to the next tile) so I was in pretty serious pain while I continued the process today. I understand that work is meant to be work, and that it is often uncomfortable, but man that hurt. I tried to be smart and use the other knee while I was doing it today, this lead to the denim on the blistered knee getting stretched really tight over it, which hurt more than actually kneeling on it, but that is all over now. On to the animal porn!

• I don’t know why, but I have taken to playing that silly little Deadly Rooms of Death game again of late. The reason that I stopped playing it originally was that when I got the new computer I didn’t bother to swap my player file from the old machine. I thought it may be fun to play through the first few levels again, see how easy they were in comparison to the level that I was at now. That was all true and such, but I got stuck on exactly the same damn boards for exactly the same reason. The drod forums were down at the time so I couldn’t even get a hint as to what I was doing wrong, that mixture of frustration and anger is not what one is looking for when they try to play a game then, is it? Since having recently started playing again I have managed to defeat all of the boards that I had been having problems with on the old machine, but still can’t seem to make it all the way through the 8th level. I know that I can do it, so I guess maybe a more accurate statement is that I don’t have the patience to do it. All of the monsters in the game act in very predictable ways, so you know what every action will result in, yet, in haste, it is easy to overlook some of the consequences to a certain action. When tar is involved it is easy to overlook a lot of the consequences. The way the tar, in particular, acts makes you need to take at least a few seconds to think about your next move, else you could block your escape, box yourself in, or end up with a tar baby in a position to kill you.

The problems that I am having with the tar are easily overcome if I just think for a few seconds before I slash, but where is the fun in that? I guess the fun may be in actually conquering the boards, I wouldn’t know. Honestly, I know that I could beat each of the boards if I were to take my time and think through each move, yet that seems really tedious at times. If I wanted to spend that kind of time on a game I would just find my copy of Pandora’s Box and give it another go.

I suppose I really shouldn’t bitch about freeware though. I didn’t pay for the opportunity to play it, and I enjoyed it, at times. Not to mention there seem to be legions of followers of the DROD game. I suppose that means that there are legions of people with a hell of a lot more patience than me. Hmmm, who knew.

• The last couple of days have been littered with all sorts of news. The problem with the so-called news is that it has all been about the 9/11 commision’s ruling that Saddam Hussein, and therefore Iraq, were not in any way involved with the attacks on 9/11. This is SO not news. That is exactly what everyone in the free world, with the exception of the current U.S. administration, has been saying since long before Bush was able to start a war with Iraq; A war based totally on the absolute lies that he and his administration fed to the American public.

I do not like to talk about politics, I do not feel that I am informed enough to do so. There are, however, some things that are just so obviously lies or ‘mis-truths’ that it doesn’t even take a three-year-old’s intellect to discern the truth. As is the case here. Much like the following quote, which I gleaned from Reuters (I think) where Bush tries to clear this all up:

“This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al-Qaida,” Bush said. “We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. For example, Iraqi intelligence officers met with (Osama) bin Laden, the head of al-Qaida, in the Sudan. There’s numerous contacts between the two.”

Now isn’t that kind of the polar opposite of what he was saying to get us all drummed up to go into a war with Iraq?

To use the logic in Bush’s statement, wouldn’t it be true that the U.S. was also pretty directly involved in the 9/11 attacks? We did supply arms to Bin Laden in the eighties. Certainly giving them weapons would be worse than a hand-shake somewhere in the middle of Sudan, right?

To follow that same train of logic, everyone that has ever spoken to Bush must also be 100% behind the invasion of Iraq. If that is not the case then even his (Bush’s) latest cop-out isn’t going to hold any water. How ignorant can one be and actually make it into the oval office? Ask Dubya.

That is why I do not like to write about politics. I am too inclined to NOT believe what I see on tv. I am not very good at being an American since I like to form my own opinions as opposed to having them spoon-fed to me…Or, at the very least, put into the ‘mad cow burger’ that I am eating, while the government turns a blind eye.

Abortion

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So I didn’t post anything yesterday, yet that shouldn’t have been much of a surprise since I barely banged one out on sunday, and even then forgot to change my side-bar posts. It is not as if there is any real good reason why I just suddenly skip them, just sometimes I do not feel like it. That is a liberty that I have since there is absolutely no reason for me to do this site. There is no monetary obligation, no moral consciousness that I am overlooking if I skip. This site is purely for my amusement. As evidenced by my readership being in the very low single digits.

That all could be content driven of course, but as I have no content how will I ever know?

I have been reading a lot of news over the last few days. I must be doing something while I am not actively typing this out, right? And porn does grow tiresome after about so long, how many naked people must one see before they begin to understand that the shape of the vagina is always gonna be pretty much the same? The answer, in my case, is 1,364,771,122.5 (one of the photos had both sets of genitals).

But, the news, yeah there has been a hell of a lot of the stuff in the news over the last couple of days. A couple of articles got my ears perked, but not to the point that I actually wanted to cut and paste anything to discuss it in much detail. However I did find it pretty disappointing that Dubya is standing firm on the position that stem cell research is wrong.

I understand that Dubya was brought up about as far right as you can get, but the thought that one of his mentors, Ronald Reagan, died from one of the very dieseases that they are trying to use the stem-cell research to find a cure for is just a bit odd to me. His quote that “Life is a creation of God, not a commodity to be exploited by man”, I found particularly disturbing. If he believes that whole-heartedly, doesn’t that mean that the very Vice-President that he chose should be dead? Were it not for a quadruple bypass in 1988 Cheney would be dead now. At what point, in the twisted little mind of Dubya, does medical science become playing God? It seems that he is fine with it as long as it is used for prolonging life, but what about basic things like vaccines?

I bring up the vaccine thing only because that is where it get really easy to start hammering at the very religious, right-wing folks. A vaccine is something that is used to stop the spread of a deadly virus, yet, by biblical definition, the virus was created by GOD, doesn’t that mean that using a vaccine is playing GOD? If you are so sure of your faith, why don’t you go ahead and let your children die from diseases that could easily be cured by vaccines? Or, perhaps GOD will intervene and save your child. The virus is every bit as much alive as a fetus in the womb of a human in early pregnancy. There is no thought only rapid growth. In the case of the virus it will continue to grow until something stops it or the host dies, where the pregnant woman could carry the embryo to term and be rid of it. Any person who tries to argue that abortion is wrong should have to sign papers that explicitly forbid them to have any medical treatment for any life-form that occurs inside them. Say the person happens to get a cut and the cut becomes infected, the infection will spread without the intervention of either 1) GOD, or 2) Simple rubbing alcohol, yet that person should be made to not use the alcohol and see which way it goes. I mean to use alcohol to kill the infection would be “playing GOD”.

The way science and religion mix with the very religious, though, makes this a tough point to argue. In the infinite wisdom of the church, they have decided that GOD somehow meant that humans were a lot more important than any other form of life when he “Created man in his own image”. I am not a bilical scholar, nor am I inclined to believe that if there were a GOD he would favor one particular species. If the biblical GOD does exist, shouldn’t that mean that all life is precious, and further that if you swat a fly you are breaking one of the commandments that Moses was all in a rant about?

I am not inclined to read any book that is two-thousand years old, which has been re-written as many times by scribes, and take it as factual evidence that someone actually created every living being. Nor am I likely to further believe that preferential treatment should fall on the ones that were made in his likeness. If there truly is a GOD (by the defintion Christians) then every living being will go to heaven or hell. Does that mean that humans are necessarily better than the ants that we step on while walking on the sidewalk? Does that mean that there will be good cockroaches in heaven, while the bad ones go to hell? Then what about the viruses that were created by GOD, but ultimately destroyed by mankind, do they go to heaven or hell? The virus simply feeds off of the land that it is given (a human body), and populates until it eventually over-populates and can no longer feed, then (on that body) the virus is extinct. Is that any different than what the humans are doing to the earth, or is it a microscopic view of what is to become of us?

I didn’t actually think that I was going to go into a ‘ripping on GOD’ mode today, but the other thing that I thougt I would mention was the Supreme Court’s ruling about the “Pledge of Allegiance”. Funny thing how time can change one’s perspective…

When this story broke, what a year and a half ago, I was thinking that yes, the separation of church and state should certainly make this one a slam-dunk. Everyone and their sister knows (at this point) that the words “under God” were added to the original pledge in the fifties. Should have been a simple victory to get the ‘under God’ words ruled as unconstitutional. (in any other administration, maybe)

What really steams me about the Supreme Court’s decision is that they threw out the case on a technicality. Every court that heard the case, prior to them, had made a ruling, thus it landed in the highest court in the country. The fact that the justices of the “Supreme Court” don’t have the cajones to handle this one really pisses me off. I honestly don’t care whether the words stay in the allegiance or not, I just wish that they would have stepped up to say that either yes or no it could be there. The result of their action is that we are going to be hearing/reading about this same damn thing in another few years when the actual custodial provider for the child gets before the “Supreme Court”, since there is no way that any State-Level judge is going to overturn the ruling.

Not that I particularly care for the particular line “Under God”, but I do feel that it was a pretty useful one. I suppose the other options would be, “one nation, under the statue of liberty, with liberty and justice for all.” See, that one seems redundant. How about this one, “one nation, under the sky, with liberty and justice for all.” Not much power to that one. How about, “one nation, under Oderus Urungas, with liberty and justice for all.” Probably not enough Gwar fans out there to appreciate that one…

Wait, I have it. To summarize the entire US population, while still being faithful to the original pledge, it must be, “One nation, under the golden arches, with liberty and McDonald’s for all”. Enough said.

Reagan

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So the day of mourning for former president Reagan is upon us. I am trying to mourn, yet my mourning capacity is being overwhelmed by other, more important, things. For instance, our country (the U.S.) is currently engaged in a so-called war that less than half of our people are behind and judging by the support by other countries I would think that the “vast majority” of other countries are opposed to it as well.

Could there be any connection between the untimely death of former president Reagan, and the timely use of the death to show that our country can display National sympathy? Heck no, I mean that would be like using national power to try to shift the world view of our country, right? That would be dirty, under-handed and exactly what I think the current administration is trying to do.

Had it been George Bush Sr. that died there would have been a lot of sympathy for ‘dubya’ but there wouldn’t have been anything beyond the sympathy one would extend to anyone who had lost a family member. Had it been the death of say Clinton, that would have been quickly swept under the carpet. The fact that it was Reagan has somehow made it into world news, to the point that it is in top stories on international yahoo sites.

Why?

When it comes to the question of ‘why’, there are precious few undisputable facts. Reagan was a president of the U.S.A., that is an undisputable fact. Everything that happened while he was in office is certainly disputable, and there are various liberal sites that try to argue that to this day. Reagan is often attributed with the fall of communism and the Berlin Wall, whether he had anything to do with either result is not a fact so much as it is a faith.

The Socioeconomic climate under Reagan was far different than any of his predecessors. The U.S. had a booming economy (which Reagan can not be given credit for, as the economy usually runs a few years behind the legislature), Russia was fast running out of both money and support for communism, computer technology was approaching the absolute bubble that burst early in the new millenium, the time was simply right.

Now I am going to go into complete and total speculation. Would Communist Russia have ended without Reagan ever having served in the oval office? Yes. Would the Berlin Wall have ever fallen had he not been in office? Yes. It is no coincidence that the technology boom (which did start in the eighties) made people all over the world see that they, too, could have things…Be the lord of their own homes and the such. While I am sure that the U.S.S.R. never gave them that information, I am equally as sure that photos and stories got back to them.

Reagan was a president, also he was a recent president. I think that this quote, gleaned from the internet, is pretty accurate:

Many presidential scholars say presidents need to be out of office at least 30 years for historians to make an honest assessment of how their achievements hold up. Some glittering records tarnish, while other stained presidencies acquire luster.

That is about all I have in me as far as talking about Reagan, yet I have nothing else on my list for bitching today so I will end this.

Tomorrow will bring even less interesting reading.

washer & dryer; Reagan

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This week reverted back to the non-post on wednesday, I would have let the fact be known on Tuesday had I known it anytime before about 4p.m. on Wednesday. Sorry for any inconvenience.

I have recently realized that there are only two types of people in the U.S.. Yes, I have broken down every single race, denomination and class into exactly two groups. Those two groups are 1) People who own matched washer/dryer sets, and 2) People who do their laundry at a central facility in an apartment complex, or, worse yet, have to take their laundry to some laundromat in a really bad area of town where fear of life becomes more important than the quality of cleaning. Now, this second group of people (like me) are the ones that are happy to find a used washer or dryer at a favorable price, brand names be damned! Having your own machines makes it an experience that is not quite so intolerable, as the machine is just running in the background while you are doing your normal routine. No special trip to the laundromat, no changing in dollars for quarters, no having to question why the one guy has seven garbage bags filled with bloody towels, etc..

I do understand that in some apartment complexes, and particularly in condos, they really don’t want you to have the machines. That is likely the reason that most apartments/condos do not even provide a hook-up for the devices. I understand also that the space in an apartment is pretty cramped but they have full washer/dryer stack things that are made to fit in the space of a small closet and have all of the features of normal machines, though not the same capacity. Imagine that your options were to do a few small loads of laundry a week, or drag it all down to the public laundry at the end of the week, I know which option I would choose, but, as previously stated, many apartments/condos do not have proper ventilation for the dryer.

That little digression aside, I was meaning to explain why washers and dryers can start out as pairs yet end up as singles. The reason for that is pretty simple; the washer just lasts longer than the dryer in about 90% of the pairs. The simple reasoning behind that is that the washer is a big tub that spins with a direct drive, while the dryer is an enormous drum that is belt-driven and relies on little wheels to keep it on course. The wheels on the dryer are likely to give out under a large load, that is, the bearings will begin to disentegrate and the dryer will sound like it is spinning a piece of lumber in it. When that happens, the people who own the matched set of laundry appliances will likely call a repairman. The dryer can be fixed for about Eight dollars retail in parts, anything above that is them being screwed by the manufacturer.

The dryer is the first casualty in most every case. While the dryer could be repaired for less than a week’s worth of quarters at the laundromat, it is very rare that a ‘set owner’ would actually call the man to repair it (since that would cost more than the value of the dryer in many cases) and so another dryer ends up on the street, soon to be picked up by a local “re-seller” of such items. Said ‘re-seller’ will pay the eight bucks for parts, fix the dryer, and then sell it for fifty. Hefty chunk of change for such a quick/easy repair, and having picked the dryer up from the side of the road, he had no investment into the machine.

The fate of the washer then goes into a kind of limbo. Some may sell the washer, some may gift it to a friend or relative in need of that appliance, it is just a bit strange that the washer never seems to hit the side of the road.

I have had to replace the wheels on a few dryers in my time, I don’t think I have ever had matching laundry appliances in that time either. Yet, when the washer starts to leak, I have no idea how to fix it. I am sure there is just a hose that is broken somewhere inside that porcelain machine, where it is I do not know. It is for exactly that reason that we will continue to use a Kenmore dryer once we get the Maytag washer. The old Gibson washer will be pushed to the curb, and likely someone will pick it up and throw a two dollar piece into it, then sell it along with a random dryer for 150 bucks for the set.

This one just goes to prove my point that while technology has advanced, if you do not know the exact type of technology necessary for said operation, you will pay whatever they ask.

• Random Thoughts on Reagan

I found out today that there is going to be a Federal Holiday (day of mourning) for the loss of ex-president Ronald Reagan, who passed away on Saturday. I was not old enough to understand a lot of the things that happened while he was president and I likely remember his successes more than his failures, even with that in mind, what did he really do?

The first thing, the one that comes immediately to my mind is the Iran Contra Scandal. Trading weapons for POW’s may seem like a good thing at the time, but in the end it is just wrong. Reagan introduced a tax cut that went across the board, low, medium, high class, the tax cut affected you immediately. Then he signed legislature to raise the same taxes many times over his presidency. It is not my intention to belittle him, but it is just so easy.

I am pretty liberal, very democratic, and I still think that Reagan was possibly the best negotiator that we have ever had when it comes to foreign policy. Some of his Kooky ideas, site “Star Wars” for example, were a bit over the edge, but he did preside at the time that communism was ending and for that I will respect him. Could the same thing have happened if there had been a different president at the time? I think the more relevant question is could it not have happened with another man in charge.

I suppose we will start calling this “Reagan Friday”. What is to stop the national rememberances from having a “Biggy Tuesday”? Biggy died for “gansta rap” and should be remembered…Where is his monument?

Dogs; Dubya

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The puppy problems persist. Well, I don’t think that the problem really persists so much as the puppy is afraid that it still does and is walking quite carefully on the recently injured appendage. I base this assumption on the fact that when I got home to let the dogs out, after they had been locked up in the arizona room all day (which most canine companions would consider a spacious abode at about 160 square feet…Hell I have stayed in smaller hotel rooms), Zelda was jumping up and licking just like she did before she had the injury. I am sure that she is still not completely healed, but she is certainly doing a heck of a lot better. As I said previously, she still does tread a bit lightly on the leg that has the injury, but now it seems that it is more to make sure she doesn’t hurt the still tender tissues as opposed to the inability of a couple of days ago.

The one really unfortunate side effect of Zelda’s malady has been in the interaction between her and Warlock (the older dog). Warlock has been our dog for a couple of years now, and is a very clingy sort of dog. He is a happy, wagging, in-your-face type of dog all the time. Having had Zelda as a playmate all these months, Warlock has been tiring himself out playing with her rather than being so needy of us (my wife and I). With the injury to Zelda, Warlock is not able to go outside and frolic like he would with Zelda. That has led to him being a bit (saying ‘a bit’ is a real stretch) hyperactive around the house.

Zelda is healing but is still in no condition to go out and play with Warlock in the faux death match type playing that they normally engage in. This leads directly to Warlock not being happy, and whining a lot. I have tried to take him out and do the whole throw a ball thing, but he invariably will just run out to the ball, then stop, then look at me and walk back. I know that he is thinking, “But where’s Zelda”. Of course trying to explain anything to a dog is much like trying to swat flies with a hammer, so I don’t even try. He seems to know that there is something wrong with her, but he is not in a position to understand that her condition requires much rest and no ‘Dog Wars’.

There is also the fact that we do not know what the two of them do once we leave the house. Sure we know that they are locked in that little room, but what happens while they are locked in that little room? They both seem to enjoy each other – as I began to write that line, Zelda just went ballistic on Warlock.-

Zelda is much smaller than Warlock, yet she owns him. Even in her injured state, Zelda just handed him his ass, and he walked away happy that she let him have it. This makes me think that she is certainly getting better but that she knows that she is not totally healed yet. I really must get a video camera before she makes it to 100% healthy, ’cause I bet she is really going to give him a thrashing for picking on her while she was injured.

• In other news, or what passes for it here. Does anyone other that Dubya think that he is going to spend four more years in office? Having read a lot of news sites, then a lot of blog sites, I am not sure that he has a chance. He has pissed off everyone that is remotely liberal, he has pissed off a lot of people that are staunch conservatives, he has pissed off the rest of the free world as well as pissing off the rest of the world who are ruled by dictatorships. Who, if sober and not doing it as the result of a bet gone bad, is going to vote for him? He (Dubya) is trying to compare the ‘War on Terror’ to WWII. While I can understand that he needs to drum up some support for his agenda, I still think that he should go ahead and take the blame for leaving the “War on Terror” behind when he left Afghanistan and started attacking countries with better oil reserves. I would like to blame this on the American people for electing him as President, but as you will recall he was never elected to be the president. Sure he got the presidency through some hundred year old loop-hole, but he was certainly not elected.

I sure hope that if he is re-elected has enough corporate backers to buy him in again, he will look at the world rather than looking at his own bank account. Of course I could site my earlier quote about trying to kill flies with a hammer, since neither will ever happen. This is going a bit too political for me so I will end it here.

• There is one other thing on my mind tonight, but I can’t remember what it is. If I remember by this time tomorrow I will add some info about it, if I don’t you should just cherish this moment.

Router issues; Awana=White supremacy?

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First of all, on the work front my bosses just left town for a few days. This leaves me with a monumentally fucked up schedule until at least Monday. To the extent that I will be working eleven hour days until Sunday. Not like I am scheduled to work them, but that when I am at home for a break of any sort it is rarely more than for ten minutes before I get a call to go back in and deal with a vendor, customer, horrific fire, I never know what they are going to do in the few minutes I am gone. What this means to you is that I may not be able to post anything here during those days, of course it could also lead to me having a bunch of idiot stories that I really want to talk about. Which will be the case? Stay tuned.

• On the home front, I have written several times previously about getting a new computer, but keeping my old one. My plan has worked pretty well, as my wife has rediscovered the game “Age of Empires”. She really seems to enjoy playing that as I am happily typing away or reading news/blogs. It has worked out much as I had hoped. I am still thinking pretty strongly about trying to connect the two PCs through a LAN, as the new pc already has that capability, and a card for the old pc can be acquired for less than twenty bucks. The thing that I am not really sure about is the implementation.

If you are reading this, and you happen to know exactly how to implement such a situation, please Shoot me an email. I understand that there is a device called a “router” that must be used to achieve this, but beyond that I know nothing. I would assume that it would not be that difficult to do, but as I will be trying to make one machine with WIN98 work with one that has WINxp I am sure that it is not going to be a plug-and-play situation. I am equally as sure that I could figure it out with the old ‘guess and check’ method, but as I grow older I find that it save a hell of a lot of time and frustration if you gather some information so that you know what to expect going in.

Having just gone to check on eBay, I realize now that I wouldn’t have any idea what type of router I would need to buy anyway. There are some of them that are eight dollars and some that are a hell of a lot more. I certainly don’t need anything that is wireless, as the two machines are only a couple of feet apart. I also don’t have a cable or DSL connection, so the point of having one that either has or requires that capability is totally out the window. Both of the PCs have working modems and I do have two phone lines, so they can be online at the same time that way. I can not think of any reason why I would try to do anything with a Network card other than just playing a local game or possibly trying to swap some files. Perhaps in the year 2018, when they finally get a reasonably priced alternative to dial-up where I live I will think differently…Ask me in a decade and I will let you know…

• I mentioned, in a post that I can not find, that my parents had us enrolled in this group called AWANA, this was brought about after my Mother told me of finding the old uniform for the club. The group is basically like the Boy Scouts, only instead of teaching you stuff that you can use in real life, you get merits for learning bible verses and songs. I do remember loving it as a child, but my childhood memories are all a bit skewed by the fact that I don’t remember most of it.

I bring this up only because I recently remembered a little song that we used to sing at Vacation Bible School. The song went, and I will quote, “I’m no kin to the Monkey, the monkey’s no kin to me, I don’t know much about my ancestors, but mine didn’t swing from a tree.” I think I may have mentioned that particular song at some point also, supposing that I was being brain-washed against the theory of evolution. Every time I pen/type the lines to it I think that more and more. Yet the last time I thought about that song I was a bit troubled by the last line. The part where it says, “mine didn’t swing from a tree.” I had always envisioned monkeys swinging through the trees, yet as I think about it this time, I am wondering if there could be more devious reasons for the whole song.

Could it be about White Supremacy?

I was thinking about that song today, and thinking about how all of the elderly people that I knew in my youth would casually refer to black people as “porch monkeys” -something that I certainly do NOT do- when I realized that the song in question could have a completely different intent. Could it be that they were making little four-six year old children sing a song about hating black people? I would hope not, but then the line about “swinging from a tree” came into my mind. There were a lot of worthless idiots in the south, and they lynched a lot of decent people based on the color of their skin. The result of that would be someone “swinging from a tree”.

Now I am not sure if that song was trying to teach me that evolution was crap, or if it was trying to teach me to hate people based on the color of their skin. Whichever one is the truth, I hate them for it. The single reason that ethnic biases exist is that the parents and teachers perpetuate it in children. It is a really sick way to try to mold the mind of a child.

I am certainly not a racist, but I do admit that I get a bit nervous when I see anyone of a color other than mine dressed in ‘gangsta gear’. I am pretty sure that is just a conditioned response, as I can hold a conversation with the same person without apprehension after a simple hello and hand-shake. The mere fact that I am nervous for the first few seconds just goes to prove that the brain-washing worked, at least a little bit.

Why, then, do schools have mandates about what they teach, while ‘bible schools’ are able to teach bigotry and hatred? What country is this again?

Richard Simmons arrested

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Once again I let Diablo consume a lot of my time yesterday. At least I got the update done before that happened. Today will likely end just the same as yesterday did. I am not really sure why but it seems that when I play diablo I will do it constant for a couple of weeks and then just give up on it for a while. Perhaps it is just playing a level act 1 start to act 5 end that sates my desire, then I can wait for a while before I am in its clutches again. Who knows.

• I absolutely love this story from Reuters. It is short so I will quote the whole thing.

Assault Case Against Fitness Guru Simmons Dropped
PHOENIX (Reuters) – A judge dismissed an assault charge against flamboyant fitness guru Richard Simmons after he and the man he was accused of slapping in the face reached a private settlement, lawyers said on Wednesday.

Terms of the settlement, reached last week between the celebrity trainer and motorcycle sales rep Chris Farney, 23, were not disclosed.

Simmons, 55, famed for his frizzy hair, glittery tank tops and exuberant demeanor, was cited for misdemeanor assault in March at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

Police said the charge stemmed from an altercation that began when Farney, a fellow traveler at the airport, recognized Simmons as he was signing autographs and posing for pictures.

Farney, a burly Harley-Davidson motorcycle salesman who stands more than 6 feet tall and competes in the martial-arts sport of cage fighting, angered Simmons with a remark poking fun at Simmons’ exercise videos.

According to a police report on the incident, Simmons responded by telling Farney: “It’s not nice to make fun of people with issues,” then slapped him across the face.

A Phoenix municipal court judge dismissed the assault case during a pretrial conference last Friday between Simmons’ lawyer, prosecutors, Farney and his attorney, based on a signed statement from Farney that “full satisfaction has been received for the injury inflicted.” That document was filed on Wednesday.

Simmons’ lawyer, James Nesci, said Simmons was “certainly pleased with the outcome. All he really was looking for was a just conclusion. He believes he got it.”

AP Photo/Tina Fineberg

As you can see, this “burly Harley-Davidson motorcycle salesman who stands more than 6 feet tall and competes in the martial-arts sport of cage fighting,” bit off more than he could chew when he pissed off Richard Simmons. Just look at that photo, does that say ‘vicious killer’ or what? We all know that the only reason Simmons is still alive after slapping the guy is that the guy knew that if he didn’t hit back there would be a monetary resolution. That is a sad statement about humanity today but one that is undeniably true. We will do whatever it takes to piss off anyone who is in the public eye and in posession of a decent amount of cash, then cry like a baby when they react. In this case, I am not sure if they would have found Simmons guilty of an assault anyway. He slapped a man twice his size across the face for poking fun at him. That is not really an assault, it is a suicide. The only way a jury would have convicted him would be if the jury had consisted of a bunch of burly homophobes.

The sad truth is that so many of the cases involving celebrities are utter bull-shit that it is hard to pick through them and find the one in a hundred that is real. Take the trial of Kobe Bryant for instance. Did he have sex with that girl, yes. Was it consentual sex? There are only two people in the entire world that know the truth. I personally believe that it was consentual when it happened, then the girl realized that if it was not consentual she would be able to file a civil suit against him and get a boat- load of money. I feel a little bit more strongly about this case (though I am not actively following it) than I do about others because the woman in question turned in the panties that she had been wearing that night, and they had sperm from three separate persons in them. I am not sure if that was allowed to be entered into evidence in the case, also I guess it would be possible to rape a slut, but that really seems to take away from the credibility when she is screaming rape.

Totally on the other side of the spectrum, Mike Tyson was convicted of rape. I am pretty sure that he did it. Beyond that, I am pretty sure that he probably has done it a lot more than just once and has kept the other women quiet through intimidation.

There really has got to be some middle ground. The fact that I truly believe that one of these athletes did actually commit a rape while I believe that the other didn’t makes me believe that everyone else has already formed an opinion also. When the person is accused of the crime it is on the news 24/7 for days or even weeks before the person is actually indicted. By that point nearly everyone has decided whether they think he/she is guilty or innocent. The news usually also releases a bunch of information about both the accused and the victim that is often not admissable in court. With that kind of coverage in the news there is no way that anyone in the public eye could ever get a fair trial. Unless the trial were held in another country.

I suppose the easiest way for athletes/celebrities to avoid this type of situation would be to quit fucking strangers. Of course we all know that is something that will Never happen. So the next logical step would be to assure the silence of anyone you did have sex with; offer them some cash to keep quiet. Yet, that could result in a scandal like Michael Jordan faced, where the woman that he had been paying to silence suddenly upped the amount of money she wanted to maintain silence. Then Jordan had to sue her for extortion and had to drag his own image through the mud. Maybe, then, the answer would be to kill anyone that you have sex with, as a precaution. That seems to be a pretty brutal way to deal with it, but it would solve the problem.

Thank the random fluctuations of time and space that I am not in the public eye, and, therefore, not rich, which leads directly to my ability to keep it in my pants.