Category Archives: social

Car; Diablo; Barber; Baby story

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Well, I skipped yet another post yesterday. No real reason for it, I just didn’t write anything. Sure there were external factors that controlled it, such as wasting my time in numerous ways, but as writing anything here is not really productive in any way it is hard for me to gauge which action would have been more productive.

I actually got off of work early yesterday, (well, I got of at noon, which is when I am supposed to get off, but it rarely ever happens) and after also just picking up my pay, I decided that I may as well go get the oil changed in my car. I did not know until I got to the oil change place that it had not been done in fourteen months, but that is another story. Anyway, after an hour, and dropping $105 dollars, I walked out of the local grease ‘n go joint with fresh oil and a flushed cooling system. It kind of made me grit my teeth to have to pay for them to do it, but I just did.

There was a time, say a year ago or so, when the thought of simply letting someone else change the oil in my car was laughable. I kind of let go of that foolish notion about the time that it cost the same or more to do it myself. That really only started to happen when someone decided that you couldn’t just dump used motor oil on the ground anymore, which requires that you haul your used motor oil to a place that has the facilities to recycle it, and you have to pay them. So, if you don’t buy the oil on sale (or if you buy a really shitty brand, the type that I wouldn’t even put into my neighbor’s lawn mower) you are out ten bucks for the oil, say five for the filter, then three bucks to dispose of the oil, add on the gas to drive the oil to the nearest recycling center and you are at about twenty bucks; that is assuming that you have all of the necessary tools to do it in the first place. When you can get it done at a shop for 25, without getting your hands dirty, and with the airing the tires and vacuuming and the such, I just no longer see the reason to do it myself.

The cooling system flush, on the other hand, was something that I really hated to pay for and wish that I had done myself. I believe that the manufacturers recommend that you get it done every 50,000 miles, though I could be wrong on that. The truth is that it doesn’t really matter all that much how many miles are on the car when you do it. If you have a car with 300,000 miles on it, and the water in the radiator is still clear, well, green Kool-Aid colored, but without a lot of rust or gunk in it, then you don’t need to get it done. My car has 105,000 miles on it, and it has never been done, so I went ahead and let them do it. I don’t know how they can charge you 60 dollars to do it with a clear conscience. I figured they would drag out some big extragavent device that would send little robots with scrub brushes into the motor to clean it out, but no, they did it just like I have always done it. Only they did have a machine that took out the human effort. All you have to do is run clean water through the engine and radiator. The way I have always accomplished that is to drain the radiator completely, then hook my radiator hoses to clean pans of water and let the engine run for ten or fifteen minutes, pumping the clean water in through one hose and the dirty out through the other. No real science to it, it sucks the water in clean and pushes it out dirty, when the engine is clean the water is pushed out clean. After that I would just use a sprayer nozzle to blow all of the gunk out of the radiator. Total time, about 25 minutes, depending on how dirty the engine is. The same amount of time it took them to do it, but for only the cost of water, Not the sixty bucks they charged.

• The other thing that happened yesterday that directly contributed to my not getting around to doing an update was Diablo. I hadn’t played the game since the last time I mentioned it here. I was worried that my on-line players may be getting near the termination date, so I logged them all on to make sure it wouldn’t happen. Then I noticed that I had a Paladin that was just starting act 2 in normal, I hadn’t played in so long… What could 30 minutes hurt, or so I thought. Radament was gone in ten minutes or so, so why not go get the cube? Of course since the map doesn’t save in on-line play, I also wanted to get the waypoints for the other two staff quests. About thirty minutes into it I had the cube, so why not just run and get the staff, I never have any problem with the worm pit (or whatever they call it). I don’t remember them having those lightning beetles in there before, but anyway, I mowed right through it. Might as well go ahead and complete the staff quest, only one item left. I found the temple, got all the waypoints along the way, and got the headpiece. I then stopped, since the rest of that act can be done as a stand alone. It only took me about forty-five minutes…in my mind…In the real world it had somehow just consumed almost three hours of time. That damn Diablo time warp is a very strange thing. I bet there are physicists out there that wish they could explain how it works and harnass the power…

• As for today, well nothing happened of note. I got up in the morning and went down to the barber. I have been in desperate need of a haircut for a couple of months. The barber shop was, of course, closed, so I came back home and jumped into the shower. –That is something that I have always thought was a bit odd. If you go to a barber they prefer that you have dry hair for the cut, while if you go to a salon they prefer that your hair be wet. I don’t have any idea why that is, but it is.–When I got out of the shower and looked in the mirror, my bangs were hanging to my bottom lip. That is way longer than I have had my hair for about a decade, so I took matters into my own hands. I have never used scissors on my own hair, at least unless there was a big wad of chewing gum involved, so I was a bit apprehensive. It turns out that it is not that difficult to cut two inches off of one’s own bangs, at least if they are long enough that cutting two inches off of them still leaves the hair pretty damn long. No one at work noticed, and it kept my hair out of my eyes, so it will do until I can find the barber shop open. Though I am now developing a theory that he hides when he sees me coming. He is the only game in town, and charges a flat fee for all haircuts. It usually takes him three times as long to cut my hair as the other guys that go in, so I can see why. Fear not, I have developed a new strategy. The barber shop has windows on only two sides of it. I normally approach from the main road, where he can see me coming. If I just use some of the back streets to get behind the shop, park in the alley and crawl past the one window to reach the front door I will be in! Though that seems like a hell of a lot of work and planning to go through just to get an eight dollar haircut that looks like an eight dollar haircut…

• Now a quick story about the least intelligent mother in Florence:

Have you ever seen those wide, white stripes that are painted on the ground next to stoplights? Sure you have. Do you know what they are for? Sure you do. They are cross-walks. Those are the places that are designated for pedestrians to cross busy streets. Now I am not sure how the laws work in all states, but in the state where I took my drivers test, “Pedestrians have the right of way in all cross-walks, marked or un-marked”. I take that to mean that you can cross the street anywhere you want to, and you will have the right of way, as it should be, but use some discression for your child’s sake.

In case you are really bad at picking up on fore-shadowing, there was an incident that happened to me today that directly relates to this all. You see there are only two stoplights in this whole town. Neither of them is ever very busy. Cars will usually stop for anyone crossing the street on North Main St., which is the historic part of town, regardless of whether there is a cross walk nearby. The thing that one must consider, especially one pushing a baby carriage, is that if you are pushing your baby across the street, behind a huge SUV, and only the SUV’s length from the cross walk. The driver, that is turning left, not being able to see past the SUV, is not going to see you pushing your baby across the street only 10 or 12 feet from the cross walk.

Follow me here. I had full view of the sidewalk on the other side of the street, there was no one on it. I had full view of the cars in front of me and no one turned down the street I was going to go down. There was no indication that there would be anything but clear pavement there. I made the turn and had to lock up the brakes when I saw an obese woman pushing her kid out from behind that SUV. Honestly, in the entire time I have been driving I have never seen anything like that. That was more like the scenario that they put on the driver’s education videos. Why didn’t she walk the additional ten or twelve feet to get to the cross walk? Why didn’t she wait until there were no cars coming? Why did she give me the finger after I locked up my brakes to keep from hitting her and her child, without even honking my horn?

I was not going fast enough at the time to kill anyone, at least I don’t think I was, but had I hit her and the little stroller, I would likely be going to jail for manslaughter. Not because I was drunk, not because I wasn’t paying attention, not because I was talking on the phone, but because this little fat mom pushed her baby into traffic only a few steps away from an intersection. Though I don’t suppose she got fat by walking all the way to the intersections.

I must note that had she not flipped me off, I would not be writing about this now. I must also note that had she not been wandering into traffic behind an SUV I would have seen her before I rounded the corner. I must also note that if it had not been be (or another responsible driver) rounding that corner (someone in an SUV on the cell phone, for instance) this would likely have a vastly different outcome.

Now the question. Would you risk the life of your child to save yourself taking three steps?

Stupid Bitch.

Testing viruses; Bullshit news story

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Not a lot to talk about today. It was local election day. Yet they held an entire election for thse single purpose of electing a new mayor. That seemed like a monumental waste of taxpayer money to me. Sure all of the people that they staff during the voting are volunteers, but to print out all of the ballots and to rent (I assume) all of the equipment that they use for the vote is really just depressing. If they were only going to have a single thing on the ballot, couldn’t they have instead just got us all in an auditorium for two minutes and then just done a quick show of hands? It certainly would have been infinitely easier, but that would have made the ballot pretty public as opposed to ‘secret’. Why can’t they work out an internet voting thing that runs by your social security number? You log in with the number and some personal information, make a quick vote and log out. Faster, easier better all around. If you are concerned about the possibility of cheating, keep in mind that the person who gave me a ballot didn’t even check my ID, and I didn’t give her my full name, I just said ‘B,U,R’ to get her to the correct page, after that I could have picked from quite a few different names. At least with the internet idea I would have to know someones social, as well as having other information about them. Pointless speculating though.

• This is just something that I have been a tad curios about for the last few days. Let’s say that you are a budding programmer, you aren’t able to get the job that you really want and so you decide to go ahead and code a malicious virus. How do you test that? Sure you have now written the ultimate malicious program and all, but if there were typos it wouldn’t work, right? Do you have to run the thing on your own machine first to make sure that it infects the boot sector just how you had planned? How about one of the viruses that spreads through email, do you just go ahead and send it to your friends and family and make sure that it goes to their friends? Just a curious thought.

• Now for possibly the least believable news story of all time! That is of course not counting all of the stuff that you see in things like the ‘Enquirer’ and ‘Sun’. This one, I think, is trying to be serious and quite matter-of-fact. It is also complete and total bullshit.

Graphic, Violent Images Can Curb Kids’ Aggression. Now that is a hell of a headline. That is also a headline that is going to take a hell of a convincing argument to back up. I must mention that the headline itself seems out of context considering what the story talks about but still it is a damn bold headline. For the sake of brevity I will just quote a single paragraph from the story, then add my spin.

After looking at those pictures, participants showed signs that they would be “less likely to solve interpersonal conflict in a violent way,” study author Dr. Edward E. Cornwell, III told Reuters Health.

That quote was in referrence to having 9-17 year olds look at images of people in the emergency room after having been shot, stabbed or otherwise mutilated. It is much like when I had to watch all of the videos in driver’s education about people getting in horrible car crashes and then going to the emergency room. Sure I drove better for about a day, then it was back to the insane way that a teenager will drive. Perhaps that few seconds of clarity can change a life or two, but when the majority of them are going to go back home and play some game like ‘Hitman’ or ‘Grand theft auto’, where there appear to be no consequences for violence, I find it difficult to believe that they will actually change their tendencies based on a photo. For the most part when teens reach their mid-twenties they begin to understand that they are adults and that is when they decide to start being actual citizens. It doesn’t require any horrible images, it just requires one too many times of waking up in a pool of your own vomit in the back of your neighbor’s station wagon. This is, of course, my opinion on the matter and without any substantial proof to back it up. Does that differ in some way from the article I am talking about? I don’t think so.

To put a different light on the same idea, let us say that we start showing horny teen-aged boys porno videos. Sure they are going to be less likely to have sex in the very immediate future (like the next ten minutes), but then they will begin to crave it. I suppose that it is a little bit different but I can’t really see how. Show them people being killed and they won’t kill, show them people having sex and they won’t have sex. I don’t think either of those ideas are sound enough to even try to do a comprehensive study on.

Perhaps if there were more shows that showed the actual results from your decision to kill, like the shows on A&E that show the one time killer spending his life in prison for a few furious seconds that he would really like to have back. That would probably be a better premise to use than showing horrible photos. Or how about having the parents of the person that he killed being let alone with him in a room, with a board, with a nail in it, while he is tied up, and they have an hour of ‘No questions asked’ interrogation. The parents would not be prosecuted if he somehow died. That might slow it down.

I don’t like where I am going with this and I have even deleted a few parapraphs that I thought were a bit too harsh. I hope you were able to see my actual point, whether you saw the point or not, my email address is below and I welcome your comments.

Collection agency; News; Gay marriage

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I was thinking that when I got home from work today I would go ahead and finish off cleaning up the chaos that is the ‘computer room’. Instead, I got a letter in the mail from a collection agency regarding a long distance company that I have not had for several months. I did a quick check of my banking register to find that yes the amount in question was 103.53, and the check for it had been written and mailed forever and a day ago. I don’t keep my bank statements anymore so I had to get online to find the particular check (706 in this case) to make sure that it had been cashed. The company had cashed the check a couple of weeks ago, then turned me over to a collection agency without even sending me one of those demanding ‘final notice’ type letters. So, I called the collection agency to give them the information about the check, the date it was cashed and an offer to get a copy of the check emailed to them. She asked me to hold for a moment, I assume she was calling the referring company at that point, then came back on and said that the processing time for payments can sometimes be longer than expected, but noted that if I call her back in a week we can see if the problem has resolved itself.

I know that companies make this type of error frequently, I do not really hate them for it as it is just a clerical error that is usually quite easy to fix. What can their defense possibly be when you produce a copy of the check that they cashed? The thing that I find irritating is that she would not say that, yes, the company had cashed the check weeks ago and it was an error on their part to turn the bill over to collection. So will my credit report now show that I left the bill unpaid long enough for it to be turned over to a collection agency, while the reality is that the bill had long been paid? If that turns out to be the case I will likely be more than irritated, hostile perhaps. And honestly if they thought that I had not paid them, why not one of those lame courtesy calls that could have cleared it all up when I explained to them that they had cashed the check? I am not entirely sure if companies moving their call centers to foriegn countries is really working out all that well in that respect.

Hopefully this situation will not escalate to the point where I have to get the Attorney General involved. That may seem far fetched, but my wife had to do exactly that to get her cell phone company to finally admit that they had cashed her check. We still don’t know whose account they posted that payment to, but it certainly wasn’t hers and it took government intervention to get the matter cleared up. Now That is customer service.

• I haven’t posted many news items here lately since the only thing there seems to be to post is about prison abuse. Today, however, I found a few things that I am going to comment on, not because they are newsworthy but because they are humorous, except one.

I usually just read the headlines from Yahoo News, and the little story that they have there, if the story interests me I will go to a major news site and search for the subject. This has worked pretty well for me in the past, it seems that I may have been getting a lot of bogus information though.

The first instance can be found Here. It is in regards to drugs being used by participants in the Olympics. But read this quote:

Greene said Monday he stands behind the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency rule that can bar an athlete from competing in the Athens Olympics without a positive drug test. On Sunday, Jones said she would go to court if USADA held her out because of the rule.

I read that paragraph several times to make sure that I was seeing it as it appeared and not omitting any words. You see the thing is that most athletes get banned from the sport because they test positive for drugs. So is that saying that we actually require our Olympians to use drugs? If that is the case then perhaps the athletes in question should just smoke a joint and get re-tested.

This one is pretty good also. It is an article about states that are run by republicans raising taxes. And at quite an alarming rate:

Ohi o. Spending in the Buckeye state has risen 71% during the past decade, when Republicans have controlled both the governor’s office and the legislature. To fund this spending, Republican Gov. Bob Taft, backed by the GOP legislature, has increased the sales tax by 20%, upped the gasoline tax by two cents a gallon and increased numerous small business fees.

Wow. The sales tax here just went up by 2/10ths of a percent (city tax) and I found that a bit irritating. Imagine if someone suddenly upped your sales tax by 20%! That would likely be the start of a revolt. I think that what they mean is that if the tax there was 10% previously it is now 12%, yet since the tax itself is measured in percentage it makes it look like it would have gone from 10% to 30%. Perhaps they could have elaborated on that just a bit to let you know exactly what they were trying to say?

I have said it since day one, I don’t proofread. It may be a fault but it is all mine. I really think that a site as popular as Yahoo News should go ahead and do a bit of proofreading.

• Here is a news item that is just plain depressing. Dubya has decided to start attacking gay marriage again. Could there be a worse time for him to do it? Actually I guess the question should be could there be a better time for him to do it. A quote from the article:

Noting that he had called on Congress some time ago to pass a constitutional amendment banning such marriages, Bush said “the need for that amendment is still urgent, and I renew that call today.”

Hmmm. Makes me wonder why this is suddenly ‘urgent’. Maybe he actually has advisors that read the latest popularity surveys for him and let him know that he doesn’t have much time left in office? Imagine if they do get that legislation pushed through. In they eyes of all but the most hardcore right-wing supporters, the legacy of Dubya will be failing to finish the job that his daddy started and pushing western society back a few decades by making homosexuality illegal. How can anyone have a set of beliefs that are just so idiotic and be in control of the most powerful country on earth?

Well I guess that is about enough for today. Check back tomorrow for more of my cheery, happy writing.

Oral sex as birth control

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I got off of work late today and had every intention of not doing a post. Then I happened upon an article that just has so many tangents that one could write about that I simply can not resist putting in my two cents. This may not be the best subject for me to tackle but I am going to give it a go anyway.

The article in question is Oral sex lessons to cut rates of teenage pregnancy . It is a very short read, but such a fascinating subject. There are many other positives to teens engaging in oral sex, yet saving their ‘virginity’ for their life partner. It slows or stops the spread of AIDS (in their demographic) for instance. I can always trust that Flux over at BlackChampagne will have written something whenever I try to get into any sex discussion, and you will see that again, I was not disappointed I always enjoy reading the stuff that he writes regarding sex, as he has a way of making it more humorous than it should ever be, take the first line from his bit about the subject for instance, he says, “A study of the infection rates of swallowing fellatio-ers shows that none of them have reported HIV from their tasty non-dairy treat indulgence.”

At any rate, The original article (which, I must note, is a British article) goes on to say,

Encouraging schoolchildren to experiment with oral sex could prove the most effective way of curbing teenage pregnancy rates, a government study has found. Pupils under 16 who were taught to consider other forms of ‘intimacy’ such as oral sex were significantly less likely to engage in full intercourse, it was revealed.

I really think this is quite a wonderful approach to solving an age old problem, though the diseases and teen pregnancy are not really an ‘age old problem’, which is where the U.S. just totally loses touch with reality.

Times have changed a bit since the time when the white-haired guys who are now running the country were in their teens. The old-school idea of preaching abstinence is just not getting us anywhere. The fact that the Republican White House is also trying to keep from offering birth control to teens is worsening the problem. In the minds of the people who are trying to make the abstinence/no birth control thing work we are still in like 1950. Whether the times were really that different when they were in their teens, or whether a simple ‘hand-job’ was what worked to sate their desires is something that that we will never know. What we do know is that teen pregnancy is exploding all over the country, as are the spread of Sexually Transmitted Diseases.

Why is the U.S. the country that still clings to such old taboos about sex? Britain has seen that their teen pregnancy rate has skyrocketed, and are now planning to inform (not teach) children about other means of sexual gratification in order to slow it down. The U.S. is standing pat with the ‘if we keep telling them not to have sex, eventually they will listen’ approach. I don’t know, I think Britain has better odds at success. Perhaps a plan such as theirs could also mean that a girl could lose her virginity when she was really ready to, as opposed to the basic ‘date-rape’ situation that has probably claimed the virginity of more than half of all women.

Another consideration which I had not thought about until just now is that, in the teens, traditional intercourse would not benefit the girl in any way. Leave her scarred for life, sure, but satisfied?? Big NO on that front. Your average male at that age could probably have an orgasm if a pretty girl was walking down the aisle on the school bus. I have never been female and at that age, but I am thinking that it takes a bit more than a second-and-a-half of phallus insertion to reach the ‘pleasure level’.

If informing (not teaching) students about oral sex could slow down the teen pregnancy rate, and thus cut down on our taxes, as there are less bastard children to raise, why not give it the thumbs up? Honestly, even if the thought of ‘oral sex’ sickens you (male or female), would it be worse to mother/father a child that is born with AIDS, or to take the initiative and make sure that there would be no child, if even just to grow up a bit yourself?

I have long been saying that I would rather pay for teen birth control than to pay for the bastard child that will likely be on government assistance until the day he/she dies. The ‘oral sex ed.’ thing seems to be working in Britain, as it has lowered teen prenancy by 20% in test schools. Those are numbers that I can get behind. But then I was a teen-aged boy at one point, and I would have ‘gotten behind’ damn near anything that wiggled.

Meta blogging; Abu Ghraib

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I spent a bit of time on Wednesday, and an hour and a half today, getting finished with the March 2004 archive page . That, of course, required reading through my posts from the month of March which, while time-consuming, was a lot less depressing than I thought it might be. It turns out that it really is better to let what you have written sit there for at least a month before you try to read it and do a short description, as it seems that you are looking at it with fresh eyes. There were a couple of essay type things that I wrote during the month of March that I think were really quite good. There may be some point later when I pick a couple of them out and post a section of ‘stuff I wrote that doesn’t totally suck’ on here, but that would make people quit reading my daily update, which usually does suck, and then just go to the link for the stuff that doesn’t suck. The inherent problem is that I do not know if what I am writing sucks until I read it a lot later than when I write it. In my mind everything I write sucks, only time can clear my mind enough to look at what I have written with a clear perspective and that does not lend itself to making sure that every word I put down is worth the paper keyboard it is written on.

The other thing that I noticed as I was reading through the old posts is that I seem to be getting progressively better at getting my idea down as time goes on. It seems that with each new post I get just a bit better at keeping all of the ideas in my head long enough to put each one down and move on, while in the earliest posts I was trying to type all of them at once and often lost most of them in the process. The result of that was that each paragraph that I had written would look like it was four paragraphs that I had taken a sentence or two from and tried to make into a single, flowing concept. It was shit, honestly. Though I am always my worst critic, I am sure that anyone reading this would really have to agree that my writing in this form has gotten better from when I started. That being said, I still have a long way to go to make entire posts that will hold a reader’s attention and not make me look like the ass that I am. But isn’t that what I signed up for when I started this whole page in the first place?

• I haven’t posted any news here for a while, not for lack of trying. I was hoping to get a bit or two up here today, but it seems that all there is to talk about anymore is the damn Abu Ghraib garbage. Don’t get me wrong, I think that what our people did to those prisoners was inhumane. From the pictures that I have seen, though, it did not seem as there was any physical abuse to the men. It was sick and wrong for anyone to even stage the events for such photos, but it happened, and we (the U.S.) did it to prisoners of war (well I guess there is a loophole so they aren’t actually POW’s, still it was inhumane). If we (the U.S.) can’t understand that the entire world has a microscope on the way we are handling ourselves in the so-called ‘War on Terror’ this is going to get infinitely worse for our brave men and women who are there actually fighting it.

Whether those photos were staged by the U.S. troops who posed in them as ‘trophies’ to take home with them, or if that is the way we treat prisoners on a daily basis seems to be a dead discussion in every nation except ours. Less than half of our country is behind the war in Iraq at this point and I don’t think we have any allies left that would actually send more troops over to help us if it came to that. That whole war has gone completely to hell. I am pretty sure that Dubya doesn’t mind, since it has driven oil prices over forty dollars a barrel, and that is extra profit for him, but now it appears that he is ready to bail out. Just makes me wonder what his reason for bailing out is, the fact that he has a financial windfall with oil prices skyrocketting, or the fact that an american civilian got his head cut off.

That is exactly why I don’t like to talk politics. I have some pretty strong views, and Dubya is such an easy target. I sure wish I hadn’t voted for him, but I did. So, please, to help clear my conscience, do not vote for him next election. We have seen the FUBAR that the country can become when being backed only by ‘big oil’, and that somehow drives the prices up. I am so sickened by the situation that I am honestly thinking about putting down ‘Reagan’ on my vote, as a write-in.

• Guild Wars

Today is the last day of the E3 trial of the aforementioned game. I played it a bit each day that it was online and it seemed pretty cool. The one thing that I question is whether the local PC crashes that I experienced were based on it downloading ever more data, or if my system just can not run the game. I am leaning towards the game downloading as you play, I have all of the minimums beat by a lot but still get weird freezes when trying to play it. I hope that they get that all worked out when they go to Beta testing, which I am sure they will, and the game could be really cool. Also, having the game already installed on your machine, as opposed to having to download each zone that you enter, would likely make it much easier to play. I am not going to throw out an opinion based on my experience as it would be quite negative, if they do have a beta test for it, though, I am going to jump all over that. It would be extremely cool to see such a game in its infancy working towards a world-wide release. I do suppose they would likely be looking for players who had cable or dsl connections though, yet, at the same time they must be trying to sell it to normal people like me who have neither., My hope is not dead yet…

Childhood prostitution averted

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Have you ever had one of those times when someone says something to you and it sparks a memory of some event in your life that you always thought you would never forget, only to realize that you had basically forgotten about it for at least ten years? I had one of those moments today. I don’t recall exactly what was said that made me remember the event, it had something to do with being followed by a car while on a bicycle. Anyway, for the lack of anything better to post I will recount this story from my past. I really shouldn’t, but has that ever stopped me before?

It all happened over summer vacation either the year before or the year after my freshman year of high school, come to think of it it must have happened before my first year of high school as I recall telling the story to someone in drafting class (which I only took my freshman year, elective class, easy A, what could be so hard about drawing a straight line when they require that you use a ruler?). Anyway, as I think about it that would make me a bit younger than I thought I was. Depending on what month it happened I would either have been thirteen or fourteen, either way still pretty damn young as you will no doubt agree.

I was at the little mall in Roseburg, OR. playing video games and ‘cruising for chicks’ in the sense that I was walking around the mall wearing the torn up jeans (with leopard print spandex under them), Def Leppard t-shirt and wearing a ridiculous hat that I got at the county fair. Mind you this was all status quo in the late eighties, I looked like damn near every other kid there. Because my dad didn’t really understand that the price of video games had gone up since he was a kid it didn’t take long to run out of quarters (on a side note, didn’t you just love Guantlet?). As I recall the last game I played that day was “720”, a game which I really sucked at, but I had to give it a try since it was one of the newer games there at the time.

I made one last round of the mall floor, which was really tiny by todays standards; you could get to any store within a minute from any entrance. Unable to find my one true love, I left through the Montgomery Wards where I had left my bicycle locked up. I unchained the bike and started to push it across the parking lot, as I think back I don’t have any idea why I wasn’t riding it across the parking lot, but that is how it happened. I heard a voice over my shoulder shout, “Hey.” I turned around thinking it was probably mall security wanting to give me a pat down, that was commonplace for kids my age at this mall. I asked what he wanted, and was quite surprised by his response.

“How would you like to make some money?” The guy asked me.

Again, in hindsight I should have thought this was a bit odd, but it was the summer and I had been doing odd jobs for a lot of dad’s friends. It was not uncommon that I would work in a yard for eight or ten hours and get only twenty dollars and a glass of lemonade, which was pretty cheap even way back then. So, being naive, I assumed that one of dad’s friends had told one of their friends, and that he somehow knew what I looked like well enough to pick me out of a dozen identically dressed kids my age at the mall. (that does seem pretty far-fetched, but this is how I remember it). So I asked him, “Doing what?”

I sure wish that I had a recording of what he said. I can remember the words that he spoke in vivid detail, I can remember every nuance of his voice. As I sit here typing I can hear it in my head just as if it were an audio file that I was playing on my computer. I will never forget the tone, and the absolute non-chalance of the way he responded with this quote:

“Well, gettin’ kinky, I guess.”

I said no thanks and got onto the bike, he shouted, in the middle of a parking lot, “I’ve got a hundred dollars for you and it won’t take but a half an hour.” I didn’t respond, just pumped the pedals as fast as I could. In my hurry to get away as fast as possible, I made a mistake that could very well have cost me my life, since you are reading this I guess you already know it didn’t, but I will elaborate anyway. There were two ways to get home from the mall, one was along Garden Valley Boulevard which was always dense with traffic and had a lot of stoplights. The other was much faster with no stoplights, but there was also no traffic, that was the way I chose to go, hoping to get home as fast as possible.

I was riding along stewing in anger about what had happened. I wasn’t frightened, as I recall, just violently angry. It was only about a ten minute ride home (well to the friend’s house where my dad was going to pick me up later that day) and I was about a third of the way there when the same guy pulled up next to me in a yellow Chevy Monza. He was keeping pace with me for a few seconds while I tried to ignore him, then he said, “I have two hundred dollars here.”. I was still not interested and just ignored it, knowing that I was only six minutes from home, and maybe three minutes from a very public street. Thankfully, he fell back. Whcich, again, should have been a tigger since I was on a bicycle and he was in a car, but I didn’t think of it at the time.

I had made it about another minute down the road when I saw the car pull up next to me again. The guy had in his hands a bunch of twenty dollar bills, fanned out, and said, “I have three-hundred dollars here, do you know how to play with yourself?” Even though that was more money than I would make for like a few years, I still declined in the only way I knew how, I yelled NO and kept pumping the pedals. Thankfully, for me, the guy then went past me and I never actually saw him again, though I did see his car again 😉 and that is something that I best not speak of here.

Whether the guy went back to the mall and found another adolescent to molest is something that I just do not know. Actually, considering that his car was still in the parking lot of that mall the next night, long after the mall had closed, may point to the fact that he did, or at least tried. When my friends and I were walking home from the roller skating rink the next night, we saw the same yellow chevy monza in the parking lot of the mall, it was the only car there. I grabbed a huge rock from the side of the road and threw it through the windshield. Try to molest me and there are consequences..

Thankfully, I guess, the guy that was pursuing me was only a pediphile. Had he been the type that would rape and torture children, only to toss the bodies over a bridge months later I would have really been fucked. The thing about that whole experience is that it really bolsters my hatred misunderstanding of homosexuals. I do not hate or fear homosexuals, as a matter of fact I have a brother that is homosexual. To my knowledge he has never cruised the local mall looking for barely pubescent boys to take home, if he has done that, my gun will be the first justice to reach him.

Had this been a woman in the same age group as the man was, (of course I remember him as being a geezer, but as I think back on it he had a full head of hair, a mullet actually, and I doubt that he was any older than 35-40 since he didn’t have much grey hair and a really smooth face.) I might not think of it as such a negative experience. Might have expanded my horizons…so to speak…

As I write it, it kind of makes me question what I hated more, the fact that the guy was a pediphile, or the fact that the guy was a Homosexual pediphile. Either way, death would be far too pleasant an option for someone like him. As I previously stated, the non-chalance that he used when he talked of sex made me think that he had done it before and would certainly do it again. I have no doubt in my mind that this guy is now in prison, and probably enjoying the experience, yet as an adult I have to wonder how we can keep freaks like him away from children.

If we had not been in the middle of a city (no matter how small), and had he the inclination to have an orgasm that involved a young boy, I really don’t think that he would have cared if there was life in the body of that boy. I am, of course, speaking from the perspective of someone who is not a pediphile and certainly not a necrophiliac pediphile, I am just saying that I was lucky to be approached by the one that didn’t turn me into part of the new house that they were building.

Pediphiles are one of the most troubling things in the world, in my mind. If you can go to visit a friend and see their child, say 8-12 years old, swimming in a play pool, if you find that erotic you need help. I may not be the most ‘stand up’ citizen in this country, but I certainly do not find it erotic when I see a five-year-old swimming in a pool. If you do fall into the aforesaid demographic, please kill yourself as the lynch mob will be quite unforgiving…

Dogs in the news

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Yesterday’s update was by far the largest one I have done to date. I didn’t think that was going to be the case, as I had no idea what to write about when I began it, that was why I just left the four paragraphs from the previous day on there. As it turns out I had a lot to write about, so much in fact that it bored my wife. I think it was probably because of the subject matter. Also I made reference to airplane parts without really describing what they were, but I figured if you had never built or flown an r.c. plane you likely were going to skip that section anyway.

I fear this update may go even longer since I really don’t have anything to write about today. Nothing in the news is worth posting about, well unless I really wanted to beat the dead horse that is the situation in Iraq and I am so not going there. If you want to know the truth about what the world thinks about the situation in Iraq (as opposed to the US Media blowing sunshine up your ass) just read a paper or website based anywhere except the US. We are pretty much universally hated at this point. Because I like to speculate, and love to look for worst case scenarios, imagine this; The US administration continues to fight in Iraq, despite the whole UN asking us to stand down. The US then invades North Korea, even as the UN advises against it. The UN then eliminates our position in the UN entirely. With us no longer having a say, the rest of the countries decide that we are a major threat and must be eliminated. The UN makes a unanimous decision to invade the US to free the rest of the world from the threat. The majority of our army is still deployed in north Korea and Iraq, so it is no problem for the world’s combined military to land in Canada and begin their attack from there, being as the US/Canadian border is the largest unprotected border in the world. Think about it, what country out there doesn’t have a bone to pick with the US? Our demise would be pretty swift. Hopefully, though, that will be the next video game coming to a store near you and not the truth about what could happen if we continue the path we are on.

• I got an email a few days ago regarding my dogs. I sent an email back in response but, just for fun I am going to post his email here. Unfortunately my exact response to his email is on my old computer and I have no intention of taking the time to plug it back in to quote myself. I remember what I was getting at, so I will write a new response, which may vary vastly from the one I sent him.

No offense intended, but out of curiosity, how do you read this type of article, or the dozens of others like it every year about the latest pit bull mauling/murder, and feel safe with your pets? Blog topic for a pit bull owner, eh?
http://www.thelouisvillechannel.com/news/3243296/detail.html

I mean sure, no one thinks their dogs will ever do that. But then again, that’s what the parents of that little girl thought too, until earlier this week. I’m never relaxed around any dog large enough to possibly do me severe physical harm, and that’s all dogs, not just the types that have been bred for hundreds of generations to be vicious, deadly fighting machines.

I will address his last point first. I know that dogs are basically wolves that have been tamed, and as such they already have it in their genes to kill. When dogs were domesticated, some of them were domesticated a bit less than others, like pit bulls. The thing is that your genes don’t necessarily mean that you are going to be like your ancestors. You are a product of your upbringing, just as a dog is a product of theirs. If you get a puppy and truly love and nurture the dog from birth I bet it is a lot less likely to be vicious than a dog that you buy as a puppy then stick on a ten foot chain in the yard and forget about until the day it either dies or kills.

As far as dogs in general, I am afraid of them also. I am deathly afraid of dogs like rottweilers. Unlike the mixed breed pit-bulls that I own, I have never seen a friendly rottweiler. Those dogs look like killers and are killers. They probably don’t get nearly as much publicity about killing children since any sensible parent would not own one of those dogs if they had children, or vice-versa.

The other thing about pit-bulls is that I think they get a really bum wrap. Both of our dogs are identified as ‘pit-bull mix’ which I think is code for ‘we got no idea’ at the local animal shelter. That way when the dog decides to eat your family they can say, “well we did tell you that it was a pit-bull”. That being whether the dog had any pit-bull in it or not. I say this based on the fact that I was trying to find a picture of a ‘pure bred’ pit-bull while trying to see if that was what our new puppy was, that was when I discovered that the pit-bull can look like a labrador, or a dalmation, or a greyhound, while it is in fact a ‘Bull Terrier’, I am not joking on this. The breed ‘pit bull’ is actually a ‘Bull Terrier”. I have found many images that closely resemble both of my mild-manored dogs.

I actually read a lot more about the “Pit Bull” than I had ever known, while I was at that site. It seems that the Pit Bull is getting even worse publicity than what I was thinking, as evidenced by This Report, which I will quote a bit of:

The odds of being struck by lightning are 1 in 600,000 in the USA. Comparatively speaking you are 6 times more likely to be struck by lightning than you are to be killed by a dog of any breed. When you further break down the odds of being attacked and killed by a Pit Bull the odds are in your favor -approximately 1 in 145,000,000. That’s million folks. In contrast, you are 4 times more likely to be killed by a cow in the USA than any breed of dog, much less a Pit Bull.
So why do some dogs attack?

The answer is quite simple really.

• Irresponsible pet owners.

• Irresponsible parents.

• Instigation by the “so called” victims themselves.

Although there are some bad dogs out there these are in the minority and the tendency is to blame the dogs and / or their owners without just cause.

Now, I am not necessarily trying to defend the pit bull, but after educating myslef on the subject I think that it is far more likely that the dogs involved in the vicious, mutilating attacks are of the rottweiler or doberman breed and mixed with the vicious ‘Bull Terrier’ (as a matter of fact, I can not find a single story at the AKC.org where a registered ‘Bull Terrier’ has ever killed anyone.). At the same time I do read/hear the news, and as such I doubt that I would ever have both a baby and a ‘pit bull’ in the house at the same time. I certainly love my dogs, but if there did happen to be an infant in my home the rules may have to change at least long enough to let the infant develop the ability to walk/run in case it did all go bad.

PC; Pat Tillman

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I got the brand new computer today, and, as such, I am still trying to figyre out how everything works.

There were a few issues, which none of you give a damn about, that I have to talk about, for no good reason.

It took a good 45 minutes or so to get my ftp client working correctly. Whether that is related to using a different Operating System, or my own idiocy is something that I am pretty sure will never be clear. I think that it will be the new ‘conspiracy theory’. First, JFK is killed, then Kurt Cobain, and after all of that, my ftp client takes some extra nudging to work…. Sounds like a cover up to me…

• I read what Flux had written over there at BlackChampagne (whose layout I totally ripped off, but that is a whole different story). I am glad to see that he now concedes that ‘Pat Tillman’ may not have been an ‘over-the-top’, gung-ho military guy who just got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time…

There are some issues about his death that just do not click correctly in my mind. First, he died in Afghanastan, not Iraq. Second, he put his life on the line to try to eliminate the terrorism in Afghanastan. He died fighting against the soldiers in a completely different country than described in the web site that I read, and also what most other people likely saw.

Certainly, Pat Tillman does not deserve sainthood, but he does deserve to be remembered far better than those of us who tend to bitch about the military, yet do not have the fortitude to give up a comfortable life to protect the freedom that we hold so dear.

Mom’s PC; Wallpaper; Prison

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Wow, it is May already? I thought it was still April, all day I did, right until I got home, and looked at the little clock on the computer to find out that it wasn’t. Why does time seem to pass so slowly when you are a child, yet just fly by (faster than you can keep track of sometimes) when you are getting dangerously close to your second 29th birthday?

Well anyway, I didn’t post anything yesterday, yet again. This time I was trying to help my mom get a pretty picture for her pc wallpaper. No one sent me any links to the elusive ‘Peagasus and a Unicorn’ image that I spoke about a few days ago, so I tried to download one that I knew was totally filled with tracking software. I did a virus scan before I downloaded that file, as well as running ad aware, then I went ahead and downloaded it. Sure was a hell of a lot of tracking shit with it (39 total files to be exact) but it was all just your average Gator shit that was easily removed. The problem was that the actual photo that came with all that scumware still would not open. After I infected my pc with all that shit to try to make sure I got the image. It sucked, I was disappointed, I moved on.

I did find a relatively nice image for her to use as her wallpaper, keep in mind that she has only ever had a weird “PeoplePc” background which will over-write whatever you set as your wallpaper each time you restart the machine. The image that I sent her, and explained via the phone how to set as wallpaper can be seen here.

You could click on the picture to see it at the 800×600 resolution that it is for her wallpaper, but I really think that it looks way better at this particular size. Compare that image to a silly blue background that simply says “peoplepc” and you might see why she was so happy to have an actual image as her wallpaper.

• So it is not everyday that I come home from work to find my home surrounded by police cars, yet today was one of those days. It was well after dark when I got home, so all I could see was the flashing bars in the distance as I drove towards my house. I was hoping that they were not at my house, but as I grew closer it was pretty obvious that they were. What Really Sucked about the experience is that they had a “K-9” SUV looking thing on one corner (it looked like an ambulance from a distance) and then three cop cars surrounding the un-fenced portion of my house. As I was driving towards the house, my first instinct was that something had happened to my wife (praise the gods that this was not the case because, first, she was not hurt or involved in the madness in any way. Second, the police may have frowned on my speed reaching nearly 60m.p.h. in the three blocks that I had to drive to reach my house (that being in a 25mph zone, and the cops were obviously not interested in my actions).

One of the officers did stare intently as I parked my car and walked towards my gate, fortunately it was one of the officers that I know, by face more so than name, and he knows that I live here, after giving me a scolding about leaving a refrigerator outside for disposal without securing the door.

I am not really sure what actually happened right outside of my front door tonight. What I do know is that there was a drug sniffing dog involved, the vehicle in question was towed and it took about three hours for it all to come to an end. Now that it is all over I am just thankful that nothing happened to my wife (as I had suspected at first), or my house. But still, man that was a rather frightening experience. If they ( I say they even though I don’t know the number of people or the circumstances) were going to try to make a stand, my front door was only a few feet away, and very securely locked.

Which leads rather nicely into the short discussion of living in a town with so many prisons. The number of free residents in Florence compared to the number of inmates is about 1 person to 3 inmates. While on might think that this would lead to you fearing an escape that is just not the case. Sure, if everyone that was in prison here (in multiple prisons) were able to band together to take over the town we would certainly be fucked. That is something that just could not ever happen, as such we never think about it.

What we do think about is a single prisoner escaping (possibly two or three) and that is no big deal to the residents of our little town. You see the first thought on the mind of the guy who escapes is going to be to get as far away from the prison as fast as possible. There is a Highway between the prison and the town itself. If you happened to be in prison, then broke out, would you be more likely to run into town (and the local police) or try to put some distance between yourself and the prison? Your options are 1)Highway, 2)small town street, you have no weapon, you are wearing prison clothes, which do you choose?

I have been told, though I am not sure if it is true, that the last guy who escaped from prison here in Florence was caught at the Circle K store drinking a beer. If the story is true, he certainly didn’t want the highway to get out, he wanted the shortest possible path to a beer. The fact that I can understand his motive is enough to all but prove that any logical person will run like hell.

Long story short, I feel a lot safer living with all these prisons than I would feel if I was the owner of a liquor store in a place like L.A., at least my assailant will have no weapon and a burning desire to get the hell away as fast as possible.

Politics; Deadly Rooms of Death

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Well as you may have noticed, the real life event that I thought might lead me to bitching did not happen yesterday, sorry. It was such a good subject too, but since it didn’t happen it just makes me think that I am really a cynical son of a bitch. Today I will bitch, regardless of your protests.

There was, I understand, a closed door meeting today between George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the 9/11 commission. As of now I can only find one news story about it, and it does not speak of anything that might have come to light after the meeting. I went to check the Political Animal (which is the new blog spot of the former CalPundit blogger) and he has yet to put in his two cents. I am sure that whatever news you happen to see regarding that meeting is going to say the same thing; The administration didn’t know that there was any possibility of a multi-terrorist attack on American soil. Which is obviously bull-shit. The Clinton administration left them plenty of information regarding terrorist activities in the years leading up to Dubya becoming president. A cursory search for “9 11 warning signs” on google (without the quotes for the search) just got me a few hundred thousand web sites. I read a couple of the older ones and found that, yes, the information was in place, it was simply not acted on.

This is a subject that is far too political for me. I encourage you to check out the Political Animal website if you are looking for more information, he has nothing posted about the interview with the 9/11 commission at the time I am writing this, but in the morning he will likely have whatever is available, and break it down into bite sized pieces.

I think I am gonna totally switch gears. I was flirting with actual content there for a second…

• Deadly Rooms of Death (that cumbersome name) , yet again. I don’t know what it is about these old games that drives people to play them. I know what drives me to play them, but the rest of the people, I got nothing.

The game is, first and foremost, a puzzle game. There is an illusion created that there is some hacking and slashing, but the reality is that you are just doing puzzles. That may be the thing that sours the average ‘First Person Shooter’ player, while it is what lets me look past the really sparse graphics and focus in on the puzzle. Of course, talking about this game right now is like releasing the walkthrough for the old Atari Pitfall, but I must go on.

You would not like this game. It is one of the games that you either Love or Hate, there is no middle ground. It gets progressively harder as the level number raises, but the fact is you are doing a puzzle. It might look like you are actually killing things to clear out the dungeon, but if you don’t do it in the right order it is possible to be stuck to the point where it is impossible. Perhaps I have played way too much Diablo in the last few months and welcome a mental challenge, I don’t know, I just know that those puzzles keep making me try until I find the way to do it ‘just such’ to clear the board. Yet another addiction for me, how many addictions does one have to have before he/she can stop it.

• Mandatory Birth Control

This is an idea that I have been kicking around for a couple of years. I am sure that the idea is not going to go over well with people who are very poor, but those are the exact people I am hoping to get involved in it. If you have a baby, and you can’t afford to raise the child, needing the government’s assistance in the form of WIC, WELFARE and FOOD STAMPS, as well as reduced cost Housing, I think that you should have to take passive birth control measures.

I do not mean to say or imply that there should be government regulations regarding child birth, or who can have children, just that if you do have children you need to have a way to support them. It is very easy to have a child, a lot harder to support that child. If you have no means to support that child, and ask the government to do it for you, it would only seem fair that the government would ask, in return, for you to not have any more children, until the point where you can provide for them on you own. The easiest way to get to that point, in my mind, is passive birth control.

The passive birth control will be the latest birth control implant that women can get. It seems expensive at the start, but think that the cost of raising a child (food and diapers alone will cost more). No more babies while they are on Government Assistance plans. It really doesn’t seem that bad of a deal to me. If they want to have more babies, they just need to get off of the government assistance program, then they can have a baby whenever they want.

Please don’t get me wrong, I am a high-school drop out, yet I pay all my bills with funds that I earn through my own labor. I don’t ask the government for anything (possible exception being to make the man with the most votes be President), I just think that it is wrong that two people, without one job between them, can spit out kids and live as well as I do. The government pays their rent, buys their food, pays their utilities, even gives them gas money to look for work, though they never get the job. It could be different in your area.

So a child that is raised in that environment, do you really think that child is going to go out looking for a job? I think that child is more likely to do what mom and dad did. That is my tax dollars, and your tax dollars, but them, they get money back from the government even though they never paid in a dime…