Category Archives: social

Police; Meta blogging; taxes in DC

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Yeah, it has been a while. I would like to spout out various excuses, but I can’t seem to do it. The act of simply posting a new update on this site takes me a lot of time and that is time spent without reward. It turns out that I don’t have nearly as much to say as I thought I did when I began this little venture. Who knew?

I did look into the possibility of going to a Movable Type format a couple of months ago, but I didn’t really like the features on the free version, and if the paid version is not better than the free version by one thousand times, there is no way I am going to pay for it.

The key features of movable type appear to be its auto-archive and cgi based feedback system. Of course since I never get any feedback, and don’t care enough about my old posts to take the time to make them searchable (or click-able for that matter) I really doubt that anyone who reads this page would. The free version that I tried allowed you to set a font, and that was about the extent of its features. Not for me.

With my posts becoming less and less frequent, however, I have decided that I am (for sure this time) going to keep a running front page, which I will update whenever the hell I feel like it, and save it to disk weekly. The difference between that and what I have been doing since I started the page is small, in theory, but larger in practice. Now I am going to type some shit down here, and upload it immediately to the web page. I will also probably quit trying to archive my older posts with description of contents.

The official “Weekly Post” will be made every Sunday, small quips will be added on a daily basis, in theory. That is all going to start this Sunday, be warned. I am not sure how it is going to work out but it has to be better than my current schedule.

• Have you ever been driving down a sleepy little street that doesn’t have such luxuries as stoplights, only to nearly crash into the side of a police car? I have, happened today as a matter of fact. I was on the major street (that being the one without stop signs) merrily driving home to lunch, when, out of nowhere, a police cruiser pulled into the street ahead of me. I had to lock up the brakes to keep from hitting his car, and I guess he knew he did bad since he just waved and smiled, as opposed to stopping me for reckless driving. So it is all good, I guess.

Here is the question: If I had actually plowed into him, would I have gotten a fair trial? I was obeying every law of traffic, going the requisite 25mph, looking at the crossroads as I went. Some cop drives through a stop sign (no siren, not going very fast) and makes me have to lock up the brakes to keep from T-boning him. He is obviously at fault, but would I actually be able to plead my case? I have no doubt in my mind that if I had hit him he would have said that I was speeding and driving recklessly (which I wasn’t, else I would have hit him), yet, he was the one that drove right past a posted stop sign. The cop would have been the one that broke the law (traffic law), but you don’t really get a trial by jury on traffic offenses. I would have likely been cited for reckless endangerment, careless driving and possibly other offenses.

What really, really, really pisses me off about the whole situation is that I really wanted to go down and report him to the police. Thing is that you can’t do that in a town as small as mine, else you will be on the local police shit list for the next…well, until the end of time, really.

Humorous aside to the story is that had I actually been speeding he would have T-boned me when he drove through a posted stop sign. I bet you can name your price when the cop T-bones you.

On a similar note, I have believed all of my life that it is possible to do a “citizen’s arrest” on anyone (including police) if they break the law. That (what I am going to call an urban legend) says that if you notice a police car that is breaking traffic laws (with the red and blues off), you can flash your headlights to pull him over, detain him, force him to call another officer and cite him for his folly. I still believe that this is the law, but if you try it, good luck on driving to work tomorrow. Those so-called “stupid cops” have really good memories.

• One other random thought. There are several fundamentals of American society, one of which is “no taxation without representation”, that’s a darn good ideal. Why, though, do the residents of Washington D.C. have to pay taxes? Washington D.C. has no senators, no presence in the house of representatives, yet they pay taxes. Where is their representation? Just curious.

Antenna-jacked!; The homeless Vs. High school graduates

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Yeah I know it has been a while since I slapped anything up around here. I will attribute that to the whole supply/demand logic, of course no one demands it, so I don’t supply it. I wonder if that would work the other way around?

• So, my wife got antenna jacked today. It is sort of like a car jacking, only with no violence, and she still has the car. It is sort of like stealing your car stereo, only she still has the stereo. Some dubious person ripped off her car antenna and nothing else…How sad is that?

I do understand that this is all traumatic and the such, but come on, it is a car antenna. It is not like there is a huge black market of car antenna dealers (is there?). I just googled it up and there are thousands of stores that are selling the car antenna in question. The car antenna black market had better be a heck of a lot cheaper than the going rates (I found one for $17 with a cursory search), which aren’t that high in the first place.

Perhaps it was a guy ripping off antennas to try to get his daily fix. Maybe he can sell them for five bucks each at a junkyard, still, that would take a lot of antennas (antennae?). I don’t know how much drugs cost, as I have never used them, but when I used to buy marijuana for a friend named Einnod (way back in the nineties) it would take about $35 to get 1/8th of an ounce of marijuana, and I don’t imagine the prices are going down. And that eighth of an ounce had better be an actual eighth Dammit! I ain’t paying $35 for a 3.2 gram bag! Quit pinching you Son-of-a-Bitch! An eighth is 3.5 grams! Sure I’ll smoke the first one with you, but I want the whole bag! Don’t make me kill you! I got a wood chipper that has your name on it, you cheating S.O.B.! So I have heard, having, of course, no personal knowledge of anything related to drugs. (as an aside, if you happen to be hiking in the hills of the beautiful state of Oregon, and you happen upon a skull, could you go ahead and bury it? Odds are that it wasn’t the guy that I killed That Oregon weather has a habit of unearthing things that you pray will never surface.)

• You know what is really sad, relating to the drugs? Your average junkie on the street can likely convert grams to ounces in his head, while your average High School Senior probably couldn’t (and if he could that would be the first sign of addiction). The junkie can’t read or write, but he damn well knows that there are 16 ounces in a pound and 3.5 grams in an ounce. The junkie probably also know exactly how many ounces of liquid are in a quart since he has limited income [stolen antennas mostly], he must know wheter a quart is larger or smaller than a liter (the quart being smaller by 1.6 ounces), whether a “40” is a good value based on price…I think that your average drunken, homeless person might have better math skills than your average high school graduate… I am basing this completely on conjecture, I have never met a real junkie, most of the people I know have at least made it to higher education (you know, junior high), but them junkies know from weights and measures.

Ooh, ooh, new idea. Let’s put the junkies in charge of the department of weights and measures. No one knows the conversions better than them. I guess the only down side would be when they start to sniff the fumes at the gas pump, then run away with the gallon of their new, best fix. Yeah, okay, that idea sucked. That would be akin to making Dubya preznit, oh wait…

Women dies so religious zealots can convince themselves they aren’t having sex; Brother Dan photo

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Strange thing, when I end up throwing something up over here it is usually when I have no intention of doing it. That is exactly what is happening today. I have absolutely zero first hand knowledge of the issues at hand, but I am an American, therefore I have a pretty strong opinion about it. If you don’t agree with me you are simply wrong.

This first link was stolen directly from The Washington Monthly, where the blogger (Kevin) opined that not vaccinating women against a virus for which there is a vaccine “left him speechless”. I then went to read the article that he had linked to. My panties got all bunched up over this one.

The article, in short terms, says that about half of all women in the U.S., between the ages of 18 and 22, have this HPV thing which can lead to cervical cancer. There is now a vaccine that can make you immune to it. Religious groups in the U.S. are staunchly opposed to the vaccine since that will give women license to have sex before they are married. While the site also notes that most of the cases of HPV clear up on their own having no lasting effects, some do result in cancer. If it is in your power to prevent the spread of a potentially fatal condition, shouldn’t you do it?

I really don’t have anything against religious crackpots, but when they decide that the best way to prevent disease is through abstinence I gotta make an exception. The core values of westernized religion seem to be pretty good; If you do good you will be rewarded in heaven, if you do bad you will be punished. Those are pretty sound values (with the exception of being rewarded or punished after death) that a lot of kids today lack. But, when GOD decides to invent a vaccine that can save hundreds of lives, the religious folks want to back out.

Honestly, if you are actually religious don’t you have to believe that every new invention is the work of God? If God invents a vaccine that can save lives, you should use it, right? Or do you question God’s will and let hundreds or thousands of people die? I guess I better leave that question for the religious crackpots to answer.

For some reason when I searched for ‘abstinence only’, after I had read the previous story, the number one link was to a post at DazeReader.com, a site that I do visit from time to time. I figured what the hell and went to look at the post regarding the subject, which turned out to only be a link to a different site.

The site is called AbstinenceOnly.org, and is possibly the most humorous website I have seen in years. Yet, it is informative. You can learn how to do oral, anal, gay, group and vaginal sex while still being abstinent. It turns out that as long as there is underwear between you/your member and the female it is not actually sex. Same for any other form of sex, as long as there is underwear in the way it is not sex. Bodily fluids may be exchanged, but there was never sex of any sort (not even letting a big woman in a blue dress go down on you). Where was this website when I was sixteen, trying to tell my girlfriend that anal sex didn’t really count against her virginity?

On a (possibly) more serious note. I really think that if it is possible to vaccinate women against the cervical cancer that comes from touching dirty men’s junk, we really should give the vaccine to all women in the U.S. (the entire world in my opinion, since most of the deaths occur in developing countries, Africa, for instance). There are plenty of other S.T.D.’s out there that we can not cure, A.I.D.S. is only one of them.

I am sure that in a perfect, Christian, world there would be no sex unless you were married, but that doesn’t translate well into the 2005 world where everyone is fucking everyone. Don’t those religious types understand that the more they condemn something the more the people want it? It is not brain surgery, you can make a few mistakes, but don’t let people die for your archaic, pseudo cause.

I have never put any photos on my site that weren’t either myself, my wife, or our animals. This is going to be the exception. Here you see a photo of one or my brothers, doing his best to look like Kid Rock, while he holds his son D.J.. I dunno if I will get many more chances to see either of them before D.J. starts stealing cars and being a neighborhood menace. There might be a precedent for my thinking the small child will go that way….

Dog torture; Mind melting puzzle

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• I mentioned in my last post that I had bought a bark control system for my dogs that seemed to be working pretty well, which is true. I also mentioned that the guy on the phone suggested that I remove the battery from the collar from time to time so that the animals didn’t learn that it was the collar that was shocking them, which is totally false.

I know enough about electronics to know that it is possible to make a very small battery do very big things. Through the use of a capacitor , the charge in the collar is able to deliever a much larger shock than the 6 volt battery ever could (of course that is just talking about voltage, which is only potential energy, not even addressing the ampere [which is the measure of flow of electrical energy. The latter of which is a more acurate measure of how much electrical energy is needed to actually kill you]).

The aforementioned capcitor is a battery in and of itself. It holds the electrical charge, but at often higher levels than the battery which provides the power. That is the basis of most electronic equipment in use today, not to mention why the cover on the back of your television says that you should never open the set, it really could be fatal. I can’t find any specifics on capacitors (mostly since I am trying to find vague references to fatalaty rates due to idiotic handling of such), but there has to be a reason why a somtething as small as a watch battery can be fatal.

I spoke to a friend on the phone trying to research this and found that the basic reason that the capacitor delivers more power is that it is ready to use. A battery gets its power from a chemical reaction that can only deliver so much energy per second, what the capacitor does is to suck that power out of the battery, over time, and release it in a single blast. So, while the device might still only have six volts of potential energy it is able to release it far more quickly, which can produce far more amperage, which actually hurts in the case of the dog collar.

What I completely forgot to take into account was the fact that the capacitor can hold its charge for a very long time (which is why your television says you should never take the back off of it). It is entirely possible that an electrical system that hasn’t had power for days or weeks will still have power in the capacitors. Poor puppy.

Getting back to the collar itself. The neighbors that live behind us have been in the process of moving out for the last couple of weekends, of course the dogs don’t like anyone that comes near the fence unanounced, so they bark like killers. My wife suggested that I put the collar onto the younger puppy, Zelda, but that I take the battery out first so that she wouldn’t get shocked. It really did seem like a pretty good idea at the time, but then again I think my brain might have been AWOL.

Zelda, as is usual, didn’t even set foot outside once the collar was around her neck. She came in and took up the better part of the underside of my desk. She was not barking, but she was panting pretty heavily from all the running around and barking. I heard the little collar make a beep (which is the only saving grace of the device) to let me know that she had just been shocked, even though she had not barked and the battery was sitting on the desk next to me. It seems that the collar (which is activated by vibration) can not differentiate between panting and barking.

Not only did she get shocked by the collar for no damn reason, on top of that she was having weird shivers whenever I touched her for the next couple of hours. She seemed to be thinking that it was me that gave her the shock and not the collar. She actually went in and stayed with my wife for the remainder of the night, she was afraid of me. I am pretty sure that was not the purpose of the collar when I bought it. She didn’t bark the rest of the night though.

I know that I have previously mentioned that I tested the collar on myself before ever putting it onto one of the dogs, but seeing the way she acted after getting zapped for no damn reason, I am beginning to think that the electrical collar might not be a good idea. It works extremely well when the dog actually barks, which they know they shouldn’t be doing in the first place, but, when it shocked her when she was laying at my feet, she had no idea what she had done wrong. I guess that is why the guy said that they should only wear the collar when “something that you know is going to make them bark” is about to happen.

When the people at P.E.T.A. find out that I am using this device on my dogs, however, I may have to change my story…or not… Once Zelda starts making the house payments she will be free to do to me as she wishes. Of course she won’t be able to treat me in an inhumane manner since humans are also a part of the Animal Kingdom, albeit the most vicious, vindictive, hatefull part…

• The friend that I was on the phone with sent me a couple of complex math questions, neither of which I even tried to figure out. One other thing that he sent me was this image:

All you have to do is count how many men you see in the image, then do the same once the top half of the image makes the switch. I don’t want to divulge just how long I have spent trying to figure out where that extra guy comes from, or where he goes, but I must say that this is one that has been teasing my brain for a long time. I have tried counting heads, feet, hell even noses (at his suggestion) only to find that the number is simply never the same in the second frame. I can clearly see where they are cutting some of the feet in half, but they don’t result in more or less little figures. I can see where they cut some heads in half, but they don’t result in more or less little figures. I can clearly see where the extra guy appears when the panels change, but I can’t figure out how in the hell the creator made it so. Well, I guess, there it is…proof of God…I haven’t found the answer, therefore it was a magical, mystical, omnipotent being that created the unsolvable puzzle…That, or it will take me a few days…

Come on GOD, bring it!

It seems to me that I should have really pissed of P.E.T.A. and the Catholic Church by this point, if not I am not doing my duty.

If I was into raping prepubescent boys I might be able to plug (pun intended) the church a couple more times, but having sex with children just seems wrong, no matter how much rich entertainers disagree. I do wonder though why Michael Jackson was not even considered when the papal vote went down. Sure he isn’t a Cardinal, but, he has had sex with more children than the rest of the nominees combined, isn’t that the benchmark?

Now, to piss people off for the sake of pissing them off (so you don’t think I am discriminating), Star Trek sucks! Star Wars sucks! If you don’t understand why they suck you have probably never had a job, but are always looking. Your hair-style has been the same for at least twenty years. Your only “real relationship” is with an online partner (who is probably a fat, ugly man that outweighs you. Unless, of course, you are the fat, ugly man trying to hook in that little hottie chick who happens to be a fan of either series, in which case you are hooking up with a smaller man who thinks he is hooking up with that elusive star trek/wars hottie…That hottie does not exist…)

I wanna piss more people off but I am out of ideas…

Leaving your car running; Games

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First off today is a bitch about gas prices. Not a traditional bitch about them either, we all know that the price is too damn high so there is not point in ranting on that subject. What I want to bitch about are some of the most wastefull people on all of the planet: The people who leave their cars running while they go into a convenience store to “pick up a few things”.

The biggest argument that the people who do this have is that it takes more gas to start the vehicle than it does to leave it running for five minutes while they are in the store. This has been debunked so many times that I am not even going to look for one of the thousands of reports that did the debunking. I am also not going to go into people leaving the car running for a few seconds because they forgot to grab a letter that they wanted to mail, that is something that we have likely all done at least once and it only take a few seconds. The people that I am going to rant about all seem to fit a certain demographic, and I see it far too often.

If there is a vehicle left running in the parking lot of the local convenience store, I am going to guess that at least 90% of the time (and I have no evidence whatsoever to back this up, only my own personal experience) it is either going to be a diesel truck or a really old car/truck. I notice it, and it sticks out in my mind, because it is always the vehicle with the most horrid exhaust fumes that gets left running.

I am sure it is possible that some people leave smaller cars running when they go into convenience stores, say to keep the AC on so that their child or pet doesn’t get extremely hot, or to keep the heater running when it is really cold. I don’t even think that that is all that wastefull. I can understand the practice when viewed in a very specific light. That light just never seems to be the one I am viewing when I see the vehicles that are running in the parking lot.

The vehicles that people leave running in the parking lot are usually older cars, like from the ’70’s, that are lucky to get 8 or 10 miles to the gallon in the first place. They are usually junked-out, shitty cars that shouldn’t be on the road in the first place. These cars (which I call them for lack of a more descriptive term) would not be legal to drive in several states, most metropolitan areas, regardless of state, and anywhere where they make vehicles undergo emissions tests before they are registered. They are likely driven by people who have more fingers than teeth (depending on their prowess at woodworking), and should be taken off of the road both for the foul smell that they emit as well as the horrible fuel economy.

I am being a bit hypocritical here as I did once own a 1963 Ford Galaxy, however, it had been impecably restored. Even with its 352 engine and an automatic transmission it got better gas mileage than the vehicles I am calling into question. There is a pretty big difference between a fully restored ’69 Camaro and a ’73 Chevy Truck that has had no work on it except bondo: One works as well as it did the day it rolled out of the factory, the other works occasionally, usually billowing black smoke as it goes.

This whole rambling and pointless story is due to the fact that I pulled into the Circle K pparking lot last Thursday and noticed that the gas price was currently at $2.33 a gallon. There was a newer Diesel truck sitting in the lot with the engine running, as well as a ’70’s Chevy truck also idling there. I was annoyed by that. I was far more annoyed when I went into the store and saw the two drivers (trust me they were the ones; they were both dirty and smelled really bad) trying to chat up the cashier. It is just so aggravating!

It has made me think, though, that maybe I should start printing out little labels, maybe business card size, that say something like, “Thank you for leaving your engine running. Your wasteful nature has already killed over a thousand Americans in Iraq. Their only job was to secure the oil fields so that you could leave your car running all day long. I am sure that the dead soldiers (and their families) appreciate your wasteful nature.”

•Online games!

Due to a missing html tag several paragraphs of this post were not visible on initial posting.

My online gaming had been confined to pogo.com for quite some time (not counting diablo II). Then, Flux, of Blackchampagne.com sent me a link.

The link that he was trying to plug was the BMX Ghost game. I tried that one, even got some of the boards done, but hated it. This screen shot is from a completely different game, the name of the game is ‘Chuck’. You just throw around this guy, and he moves as he should, your movements being requisite, and it makes him fly all over the place. Three of the four events you are literally just throwing around a little crash test dummy, the fourth (second in order of play) actually can use skill. The photo that you see here shows you the exact place the you have to have the mouse cursor to get the “Incredible shot”, which will follow. The smaller mountain in the background (just below the ‘x’, is the important spot).

It must be noted that you can do three shots in exactly the same place and get three completely different results. The body doesn’t ever fly the same way twice, sometimes the head will strike first like a javelin, other times the entire torso will hit making the shot count as far less accurate. Still, it is a heck of a good time.

The rest of the ‘Chuck’ game is pretty much hit and miss. You want to let go of the “spacebar” while you are still moving the mouse left to right, if you let go too late you fall short, if you hold on too long you fall short. The distance is seems to be related directly to how fast the mouse is moving when you let go of the spacebar, so make sure you don’t run out of mousepad before you huck chuck.

The angle of the throw is also quite important in the first event. I have found that if I hold chuck with his feet barely touching the floor and move the mouse up about an inch while travelling to the right I am able to get the longest throws. This does make him bounce off of the ceiling occasionally, but that doesn’t slow him down nearly as much as repeated bounces on the floor. The third event you have to land him as close as possible to a flag which is easily reachable in a single throw. You can try to high arc him or do a soft throw, but it seems easier to just throw him pretty hard and bounce off the tree that is twelve meters past the flag. The tree slows progress quite a bit so the rebound isn’t quite as you would expect but it still has yielded me more throws within one meter of the flag than any other approach. Who would have ever thought that throwing around corpses would be so hard?

The fourth event you have to collect all the stars on the screen in three throws. I have never gotten all of them. I think my best is 40(I think there are 48 total), so I am not gonna comment on that one.

The leaderboard for the game shows a few people who have scored over a million points, while the rest of the leaders are in the 900,000 range. My best so far has been just over 400,000, so I really suck at the game. The thing is that on this one I don’t care that I suck. It is just so much fun to pretend that you are throwing around Dubya -or insert any person of your choosing- that it more than makes up for my ineptitude.

If pretending that you are throwing around the leader of the free world makes you uneasy, just remember that there are leaders, from many countries, that have died from much less than a little intellectual competition. Bring it on. Of course, Dubya might be the only leader that would consider the game intellectual in the first place…

Feedback; Terri Schiavo; Dinner

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The screwy work schedule went about as predicted in the last post. However, it was my wife’s birthday yesterday, so even though I was off work at a very reasonable hour I was not able to post. Her parents, her brother, and her brother’s significant other took us out to dinner. More on that later.

•I got an actual email! An email based on the content of the website, praising the site, and most of all completely unsolicited! I will quote it in its entirety, suppressing the name of course:

I like your site! I have spent much of my work day trying to read as much as I can. I really enjoyed Meeting Arthur Witles! Can’t wait to read more!
Keep up the great work!

I know that my wife played a role in getting the web address to this person, but still, isn’t it this type of simple praise that keeps me typing away? Well, of course it is, else I might have just skipped out on posting tonight. I do appreciate any feedback, as I am sure anyone with their own webpage does, but it seems that few people ever actually take the time to send an email whether they agree/disagree with what you are saying. In my case I know that I usually just never send emails to websites assuming that they will never be read, responded to, or taken seriously. If that is what is keeping you from emailing me, I can assure you that I read all the email, respond to all of the email, and take all praise in stride. I do assume that any criticism is coming from completely whacked out psycopaths (if you think my opinions are wrong then you are obviously clinically insane), but I answer them as well.

There was a bit of a mistake in that last paragrah. When I said that I read and respond to all emails I forgot to mention that I don’t really read the ones that come in with subject lines that read like V|I|A|G|R|A.

(A lengthy phone call from a friend ended the post here yesterday. I am going to continue it today on the same page, if I can get back aboard the train that my thoughts were riding yesterday).

•The wife’s birthday was on Wednesday and her parents had arranged for us all to go out to dinner. We just went to the place we always go to, only this time we, or I really, opted for the outdoor seating since it was a pretty warm evening, not to mention that it put us in the section of our favorite server. The food was excellent and a good time was had by all.

At the start of the dinner, I asked the waiter to bring me a beer, but to put it onto a separate ticket. I was not entirely sure who was going to be paying for the meal or how it might be split up, so I didn’t want anyone else to have to pay for my beer, when the beer is four dollars a pop. When it came time to pay I looked at the check while everyone else was talking and decided to pay for it myself, both everyone’s meals and my beer tab (as the meals added up to about sixty dollars, which was just what I had gotten paid to install a couple of sinks in one of the rentals that my boss owns). I asked my brother-in-law if he would cover the tip if I paid for the meal, and while he offered to split the meal many times, he finally agreed. I did force him to tip a full 20% (which seems excessive to a lot of people, but you must understand that servers in the state of Arizona get paid less than minimum wage and have to claim that they were tipped at least 10% by every customer, lots of people don’t tip even 10% which really screws the server over. When I get good service the tip is always 20%).

The thing that I found funny about this was that then the parents-in-law offered to pay for the meal. I remember a Father’s Day meal that I had planned to pay for, but when I returned to my seat from the restroom, they had a calculator out to figure out who owed what (which was why I bought the beer separate this time, makes those calculations easier). This time I didn’t decide I was going to pay for it until right at the last minute, and, as I found out later, my wife’s parents really did want to pay for it -both because it was their daughter’s birthday and to thank me for fixing their pc several weeks ago. Oh well, I decided to use the money I had made on the side to pay for the meal and I feel pretty good about it. There will be many other opportunities for someone else to snatch the check away from me in the future.

It seems that paying for the dinner was observed by the gods of monetary karma. The next day I bought a lottery scratch ticket, something I do maybe once a month or so usually and purely for entertainment; I really don’t consider it my retirement plan. The ticket I bought was of the three-dollar variety, going by the name of Slingo(on the occasions when I do buy scratch tickets I usually always buy the two or three dollar ones since there is so much more to scratch off, some like crossword puzzles, some like bingo, it takes you a few minutes of anticipation before you eventually lose your money). I scratched that ticket off a little bit at a time while I was reading web sites, it was a twenty dollar winner. Soon after scratching the ticket I realized that I had forgotten to buy cancer sticks while I was out earlier, so I took that scratch ticket and another ticket that I have had laying around for months and went to a different store than where I bought the initial ticket. I tucked the twenty bucks from the ticket into my pocket, but used the three dollars from the other ticket to buy yet another Slingo ticket. Which turned out to be a ten dollar winner. It seems that the gods of monetary karma really did want me to split that dinner bill with someone since they gave me back half of the money the next day. At any rate, it sure was nice to scratch off two tickets and end up with actual cash. Usually I just end up saying “well there went three bucks”.

•The aforementioned lengthy phone call, the one that cut yesterday’s post so short, was with a friend that I talk to kind of infrequently, yet who is the closest of all of my friends. What made the call go so lengthy was our discussion of the Terri Schiavo fiasco.

I had my mind made up on this a long time ago. The woman had been immobile and virtually brain dead for a decade. Let her die for God’s sake. I know that I wouldn’t want to be kept alive in that state, and certainly not to be paraded around as a political wedge tool. Of course the only person in the entire universe that knew of her actual wishes died when she did. The whole issue just seems such a non issue to me that I couldn’t understand why any rational human being could oppose letting her die. Then my friend brought up a few issues (a couple of which I don’t want to get into) that I had never actually thought about.

The first issue is that maybe she never told either her husband or her parents anything about what she would want if she became so horribly disabled. I can see that as a possibility. Then each side invents conversations where her will was spoken when it never actually was. While I see that as a possibility, I still think that it would be more humane to let her die than to fight about the legalities of it, especially since her conditon hadn’t improved in a decade.

The second issue is one that is extremely complex, far too complex for me to try to delve into, but I will just scratch at the surface. My friend’s contention is that the brain damage had completely wiped out any memory of her former self; that she was alive without knowing that she had ever been an active, walking, talking, functioning person. She is alive, she is not in pain, she has no memory of a “better time” in her life, this is her reality. This could all be completely true, the only way that you will ever know is to end up in the condition that she was in. Perhaps you really do have a mind like a newborn child where everything seems so new and wonderfull, unfortunately you will only know this once you get to the state she was in and at that point you no longer have the capacity to make a decision about your life or death.

The third issue is about moving on. My friend’s assertion is that since she wasn’t in pain it was doing no harm to keep her alive. Her husband had finally given up hope and started to move on with his life, while her parents had not yet made that decision. Again, this is a pretty deep philosophical issue, but, on the surface it is a selfish issue on both sides. If the husband has truly come to terms with the fact that his wife is never going to get better, that she is going to be in this state until her life is taken by some process of aging, why doesn’t he stand by her side and let her live? On that same note, if her parents have reached that same conclusion, why not just stand by her side and let her die? In the case of the parents I am sure that the reason they want her to live is simply love; they love their daughter unconditionally and want her to be there as long as possible (regardless of mental or physical capacity). In the case of the husband I am pretty sure that the reason he wants to let her die is out of mercy; he knew her when she was a vivacious young lady with a thirst for life and simply can’t stand to see her like this. The husband was able to make the decision to just let her go, the parents can’t. Does that make either of them right or wrong? If so, who should be the judge of that?

The fourth issue is where my mind started to itch a little bit. Have you ever read a “living will”? I have, my mother made one when she saw her mother slowly dying in a hospital room, and gave copies of it to all three of her sons. While I am sure that there are no surviving copies of that sheet of paper, I am pretty sure that we will all remember exactly what it said. One of the lines in it read, roughly, “In the case of serious injury affecting brain or nervous system function no extraordinary means should be used to prolong my life.” That line is saying, in effect, that if she is ever in a coma and not able to live on her own that she doesn’t want a bunch of machines hooked up to her to keep her alive. But, should a little tube that gives you food and water be considered extraordinary means?

I am currently not sure just how to judge this one. Making a person starve to death/die of thirst over a 13 day period seems inhumane, but, keeping that person alive for a decade without any sort of cognizant existance seems wrong also.

Politics

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Well, today I am going to talk about politics. I am telling you now that you would be better off to not read what I am about to write, then again I might surprise myself. Still, I am gonna vent a few views that may be unpopular, so really, don’t read this.

I have been reading The Washington Monthly for quite a while, hell since its inception really, since I used to read it back when it was CalPundit. I know that it is a blog that is written by a liberal, so there are always liberal points made during the presentation of a story, I expect this. I think Mr. Drum does do a pretty good job of presenting the actual facts before trying to spin it though, that is what I find admirable about that blog. While I read his blog daily, I also vist several conservative blogs on a weekly basis, just to see what is going on on the far, far, far right bank of center. Without exception, the right end blogs present less actual facts and more commentary, but I like to read them anyway just enough to know where both sides stand.

I have always considered myself a liberal; I support gay marriage, abortion rights, and many other concerns that are purely liberal. I don’t think that it is anyone’s business who marries whom, beyond that, I really don’t think that marriage is a sacred covenant with GOD, it is a sacred covenant with your spouse, regardless of gender. Men should have absolutely no say in the abortion argument; when you can reproduce asexually, or give birth yourself, then you can have a say. I am also a bit to the left on many of the financial issues that affect me directly, Social Security for instance. It is at just about that point that I want out of the left.

I guess I am kind of conservative on some of the issues as well. I really don’t want a socialist economy, or socialized healthcare for that matter. While it is true that most of the rich were born rich, some have actually gotten rich by hard work and determination. In my opinion it would be wrong for them to literally pay for every good or service that the poor receive. Yet, at the same time, I really don’t think that we should allow the poor to become homeless and die on the street.

I know that I have told the story of how I ended up in Arizona before, but since I can’t find a reference to it (since I never got around to updating my archives), I will just do the quick version here: I left Oregon while I was in a bit of trouble with the law. The belongings that I had with me all fit into a small, overnight bag (which consisted mostly of cassette tapes), I moved down to live with my mother, I actually had to borrow clothes from her when I got a job, six days after I got here, since all I had were shorts and tanktops. I lived with my Mother once I arrived here for about a couple of months. At that point she was moving back to Oregon and I needed to find a place to live. I lived in a cramped studio apartment for the next seven years. I used empty soup cans for drinking glasses and bowls, I was sleeping on a “super single” mattress that was acquired from the trailer court where mom lived, beyond that the only furniture was a small (smaller than loveseat size) couch that was made of wood and naughyde. It was miserable.

Beyond the fact that I didn’t have the money to buy anything, I also had a court judgement against me that was in excess of $10,000, and an outstanding warrant for my arrest in the state of Oregon. I think that the term destitute would be a fair assessment of my situation at the time. I had nothing, and what little I had was being paid to try to clear up the financial problems (which were not of my causing) and the legal problems (which were totally my fault).

Kind of as an aside, You would be amazed at just how many uses you can get out of the average milk crate. They are modular, after all, you can use them as bedside tables, coffee tables, end tables, kitchen tables, footstools, entertainment centers (just for holding the components, trust me), magazine racks, file cabinets, I really could go on and on… Milk crates were my furniture for a lot of years.

It was from that humble beginning (using the term beginning a bit loosely, since I was 20 at the time) that I worked my way to where I am at today. I do mean worked. Most of my relatives didn’t know where I was (which was intentional, since I did owe money to the courts and creditors, and they have an uncanny ability to find debtors…The mob probably wishes that they had that type of efficiency), not that any of them were independently wealthy in the first place, and even if they were they likely wouldn’t have offered to help me out. It seems that some families really care about a strong family tree, while other families don’t give a shit until someone dies (the latter of which is describing me, but when the family members that died are the one that threw you out of your childhood home so he could sell it, followed by the one that didn’t give you the small inheritance you were due [so she could buy a new truck], what would you do?)

Some of those facts are disputed to this day. Unfortunately, the only things that I was ever able to see were the actual, factual documents relating to it. I was not able to hear the spin that whatever relative wanted to put on it. Perhaps I am a bad person for basing my opinion on absolute fact without first listening to spin? I guess I am proving myself liberal again, or at least I thought.

The Washington Monthly website is mostly viewed by liberals. While I side with them on most arguments, I at least check the alternatives first. I made the horrible mistake of reading the ‘comments’ on one of the posts today. It turns out that a lot of the liberal people are just as whacked out as the people on the right. I will say that at least the left-leaning sites usually have a comments section, while most on the right don’t, but I will have to add to that that most of the people who are commenting are getting their news (political anyway) only from that one source. Having biased information is probably worse than having no information, here I must cite the reelection of Dubya; with no information the public would have despised him, with liberal information he didn’t seem so bad. Of course, with conservative information, he was the second coming of Jesus.

I have struggled, really struggled, to pay off my debts and get a meager amount of money into the stock market. I now own my own mortgage (home), and providing I don’t miss any payments it will be mine in the year 2032 (though that number is a bit high since I am paying an extra 6 dollars a month towards the principal, which will actually shave a few years off of the loan).

My stock market investment has absolutely no gurantee. I could lose it al in a second. If I were to invest that money into an IRA I would have some protection, but I have lived under a bridge and, as such, I don’t like the thought of my money being tied up until I retire. This is perhaps naive and foolish, but, if you have ever spent a cold October night sleeping under a bridge in Oregon, you would probably agree that quick access to your money is a good thing. Which actually screws me out of the tax loopholes that the rich use, but, what are you gonna do?

The other thing that is really pissing me off is that the really poor people (like I was not long ago) are claiming that there are no jobs available. I worked at a number of minumum wage jobs for the first 5 years of my adult life. The jobs are there. One of them (when I saw a whole bunch of people applying), I told them I would work one shift for free, if they liked my performance they could hire me, if not I would walk away. I worked the one shift for free. Guess who got the job. Like I mentioned earlier, it was only six days after I got here that I had a job, while mom’s boyfriend had been out of work for months. Could it somehow be related to determination? Maybe the one that really, really wants to have a job gets the job?

Unemployment only requires that you tell them that you looked for a job, while some released convicts have to get a manager to sign to say that they applied for a job and were not hired. Let’s institute my plan: If you are out of work you can only draw unemployment for the first four weeks, then you go four weeks without it. Now you get two more weeks of unemployment, followed by two weeks without it. Then it is done, forever. Get a job or die.

When questioning my wife and then my mother and then her boyfriend, I found that none of us has really ever been out of work for more than two weeks in our adult lives, While I see girls in the town I live in banging out a kid every 9 months and living better than I do. I think it has gone far from a liberal/conservative issue, this is a moral issue. The poor are poor, the rich are rich, but why does the middle end up paying for the upbringing of the poors’ small children?

Mandatory Birth control would be something that I could get behind. Sure, it would never happen since the republicans are in power, but, come on. The wealthy have far fewer children than the poor. Is that due to better education? Is that due to the socioeconomic climate? Is that due to more prophylactics? Maybe all. The thing is that the really poor don’t look at the grand scheme of things, they hardly look two weeks down the road. Another child? well that is just downright fun! So, there go my tax dollars (being middle class) as the rich and the poor battle it out to see just who is less wrong.

I am not happy with the way I am going here, so I am gonna call it a night. As always, the email address is directly below.

Garfield; Dog in heat; Social security

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Normally I wouldn’t waste my time bashing a comic strip. Particularly not Garfield, since I really don’t ever read the comic. But, while in my daily surfing routine (internet that is), I happened to see a link to the latest Garfield comic, so I decided to check it out. It wasn’t even slightly humorous.

Just for fun I decided to take a peek at all of the Garfield comics from the month of January to see if there was anything there worth reading/viewing. Unfortunately, Flux’s bitch about Garfield, on BlackChampagne.com was 100% accurate: The comic strip isn’t even trying any more.

Here I offer up as evidence three strips which I gleaned from the internet. Their sole purpose to show you that I did indeed subject myself to all of the comics for the month. Well, that and proof that the strip isn’t even trying.



Note how in the first strip there appear to be 3 identical frames, the only change being Jon’s mouth? Then compare the Garfield from the first strip with the one in the third strip, do you think he looks a bit similar as well? Also the Jon from the second strip bears a pretty striking resemblance to the Jon from the third strip, and not just because it is the same guy.

There is toy that both my wife and I remember fondly, it was available in the late ’70’s to early ’80’s, I can not seem to find a link to the toy since I can’t remember the manufacturer, or the name of the toy. It is similar to This. The idea is that you have a background ‘board’ (which is a scene from your favorite show; Scooby doo, the Smurfs, you name it) and then you have decals that you can stick on it. You can make millions of different scenes, but the characters are always going to look exactly the same. When I got the G.I. Joe version of the peel and stick thing, it actually made it so that you could position the arms and legs (since the decals were separate from the torso). Now I am beginning to believe that Jim Davis might have died some time ago, and some jack-ass with an old Garfield peel and stick toy is ruining the strip. At least I wish that I was believing that, unfortunately I seem to be believing that Davis just enjoys the paycheck so much that he quit caring about quality at least 15 years ago.

As luck would have it, I did just find the type of book that I was looking for. All you have to do is do a google search for reusable sticker book. Who would have thought the answer would be so simple. No wonder someone was able to find an old Garfield sticker book and take over the strip.

• In other news, our smaller puppy (Zelda) has been in heat for the last week or so. She has the swollen parts to prove it! Our larger puppy (Warlock) seemed to finally sense this only moments ago, as he mounted up and started humping her. He doesn’t have any balls though, which leaves me a bit curious as to why is even trying to give it a go. Only slightly curious. And he has declined repeated requests to be interviewed about the subject, his stock response has been a simple bark.

• The idea of making Social Security a private fund has been on my mind since it was announced. The reason for that (it being on my mind) is that if it were in private accounts it would be in the stock market and based on an individual’s own decisions. If the Technology Boom that happened in the late ’90s, and the subsequent, catastrophic drop of tech stocks a few years ago, can make any point at all, it is this: Your average investor is really dumb.

Even during the technology boom there were people that were afraid to jump on, knowing that it could come crashing down at any second -which was true. Problem is that those investors watched as the other guys got in on the ground floor and made millions. That made your average investor want to get into the market when it was already terribly overpriced, leaving many the average investor broke; Most of the more intelligent investors would have gotten out long before the average guy tried to get in. Which leads pretty nicely into this piece that I saw on the Washington Monthly today.

I try not to be at all political around here. But the thought of tax breaks for the rich will lead directly to tax hikes for the middle class, and that is something that I find fundamentally wrong. I hate taxes myself (I do have to pay a fair share for my capital gains and dividends every year), possibly more than the very wealthy, but I can not see giving tax breaks to the highest earners when you know it will lead to tax hikes for the low/middle earners. If you follow along that scenario, eventually the low/middle earners will all be in poverty while the uppper class is in luxury. That will always result in a dictatorship.

Isn’t it funny how the U.S. administration seems to be trying to force us back a couple of centuries every time they pass a bill?

Gotta go. I have a brother who is gay. I don’t want this post to get intercep……

The Incredibles; Support our Troops; Evolution Vs. Creationism

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Once again I have taken a week off from posting. Again no real reson why. Laziness would probably be the most realistic reason. Either that or just a lack of anything to write about.

I had intentions of getting something typed out on Sunday, however, the wife and I decided to go see a movie before her free passes expired. The movie that we went to see was The Incredibles, which I had been wanting to see ever since it hit theatres, while she went only grudgingly even with free passes.

The thing that amazed me the most about the movie was the size of the audience. The movie was released on Nov. 5, 2004, we went to see it on jan. 16, 2005, two and a half months after release, to find the theatre at about 85% capacity. It was showing in a pretty small theatre (as most older movies do), and only had three showings that day, so maybe I shouldn’t have been quite that surprised. I honestly thought that there would be my wife, myself and about another three people there, hah. And I really thought that there wouldn’t be any children at all, which I based on parents getting sick of their children’s constant begging to see it within the first month after release. Again I was way off. We were among about four couples that were there, every other group had multiple children. Expecting the audience to be small, we didn’t arrive until just a couple of minutes before showtime, which meant that we were in the second row, staring up for two hours to watch it.

Why are the theatres designed that way in the first place? They could make it a bit wider and add a couple of seats to each upper row, maybe even move all of the upper seating closer to the screen (at the same height of course) and add an extra row in the back. I have never had a problem watching a movie from an aisle seat, and the back row is just about the best view in the house. I guess there are reasons why they have them set up the way they do, I just will never understand them.

How was the movie? It was everything that I had expected (of course I had read a lot of reviews going in), and far better than the wife was expecting. It was certainly the most entertaining cgi film that I have ever seen, of course I have only seen a few of them. The characters in this movie were so much more realistic than what you normally see in animated films. There are many layers to each of them. For the majority of the movie I found myself almost forgetting that they were super-heroes, right up until one of them got mad and used his/her powers in anger. The visual quality was amazing, the story was pretty good (though it seemed to try a bit too hard to be dramatic) and the dialogue really carried it. Simply put, The Incrdibles has set the bar pretty high for cgi films; It’s no longer about cutesy little fish and worn out fart jokes.

• While on the way to the movie, I noticed yet another “support our troops” sticker on the back of a car. I didn’t realize until recently that almost all of those ribbons are actually magnets (I had assumed that they were stickers). Seeing this one had reminded me of the mission that I have undertaken in my local area. The thing about those little decals is that they are supposed to be displayed vertically (at least they are done that way traditionally), yet some people put them on their cars in such a manner that it looks like a Jesus Fish. Normally I wouldn’t get upset about this type of thing, but in light of the war in Iraq being based on the delusions of the religious nut that leads our country, it pisses me off. It makes me think that they put it that way on purpose, which makes me think that they probably voted to reelect Bush. Which is sick, sad and wrong.

So I decided to set the world right. When I get to work, as well as when I leave, I walk through the parking lot and take the liberty of putting their ribbons on the car properly. I only change the ones that are very obviously meant to look like the Jesus Fish. There are some that are halfway between, but it looks like the people just put them that way so that you could read what was written on it horizontaly, those I let go. I am sure that this really won’t make a damn bit of difference to the world as a whole, but it sure does make me feel better. I did find that there are limitations to my desire to straighten out the ribbons though. For instance, in the parking lot of the movie theatre I saw one that needed to be changed, I left it alone. It is one thing to do this in the tiny little town that I live in, quite another to do it in the Metro-Phoenix area. That is to say that I really don’t think it is something I am prepared to die for.

• On sort of a similar topic, that being delusional religious people, I had a conversation with a guy named Rick the other day about eggs.

All my life I have believed that the question “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” was a pretty obvious gauge of religious belief. That is what the question is about, isn’t it? The way I see it, if you believe that the chicken came first that is saying that the chicken was created by someone/something. While if you believe that the egg came first, that would lend itself to the belief that the egg was the offspring of pre-existing animals that either cross-bred, or two animals of the same species that had a genetically mutated offspring. That would lend itself to the theory of evolution. Much like everything else in life, I never thought that anyone could believe that the question meant anything else (I always seem to think that everyone shares my views, right until they tell me they don’t). Rick, on the other hand, said that it was not anything like that. He said that the question was meant to be retorical, one of those meditiation thoughts along the lines of “If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?”

I have tried to find evidence of my presumption that the question was an argument for or against evolution, but have had no success. If you happen to know how/why this question came about, please shoot me an email, I am really curious about it. Even if you don’t know how/why the question came about, but you have always believed that the fundamental reason for the question was evolution, let me know that also. I am really curious on this one.

That’s about all I have for now. Tune in next time to see photos of the craziest bitch on the net (if Zelda is willing to pose, that is).

Shootout in Florence

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Well, such as is the way of the universe, yesterday’s really short post went on to be within the top ten of my longest posts ever. I would like to attribute that all to my crack writing ability, as well as a good subject to write about, unfortunately, neither of those were actually the case. It seems that I am just a lot better at bitching about past experiences than current ones. I really don’t think that anyone out there is a bit different than me in that respect; it takes you years of thinking about an experience to get it etched into your long term memory.

Whether that experience was good or bad, it ceratinly left a mark on me. Do you remember what you got for your birthday in 1983? If you do, I would certainly like to know why, which is why I put the ’email me’ link on the bottom of the page in the first place.

Now, on to other stuff.

• It turns out that really freaky, weird news can happen right where you live…Even if you live in an extremely small town. I am going to quote the entire article from the Arizona Republic Web Site , as it might not be there tomorrow.

70-year-old dies after 12-hour police standoff in Florence
Liikely died of self-inflicted wound, authorities say
Dec. 14, 2004 02:40 PM:
Schools and several businesses in Florence were shut down Tuesday morning as a 70-year-old man held police at bay in a 12-hour standoff before he was fatally wounded by what appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound, authorities said.

At one point in the standoff, around 12:30 a.m. Tuesday, Robert Schultz allegedly used an AK47-like weapon to fire 50 to 60 rounds at an armored vehicle with SWAT team members from the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office inside, said Cmdr. Jerald Monahan.

Deputies returned fire but it was unclear whether they hit Schultz. None of the deputies was injured.

Schultz barricaded himself after a conflict with his son escalated, authorities said.

The standoff forced the evacuation of a number of homes in an area south of the center of town near the residence on Circle Drive where the conflict took place.

Robert Schultz barricaded himself inside a bus-like RV in his back yard shortly after 8 p.m. Monday night and was pulled out by police shortly after 8 on Tuesday morning.

Following sunrise, police could see Schultz lying down inside the RV from which he fired at the armored vehicle. Police took Schultz into custody and he was flown to Scottsdale Healthcare Osborn, where he died around 11:30 a.m., Monahan said.

Florence High School along with the town’s middle school and elementary school canceled classes.

Florence police Chief Robert Ingulli said a number of students travel through the area where the standoff took place to get to the schools.

“The fear was that they would be in danger if gun fire erupted,” Monahan said.

The Florence Unified School District administrative office, located on the other side of a parking lot behind Schultz’s residence, was shut down along with four main roadways encompassing the evacuated sector of town.

After Schultz barricaded himself inside the RV, Schultz’s wife called 911, Monahan said. She told police that Schultz had a number of weapons inside, and when authorities contacted Schultz on a cellphone, he threatened to harm police, Monahan said.

The Pinal County Sheriff’s Office SWAT team responded and later called in the Chandler Police Department’s SWAT team to provide relief for its deputies.

Now, I do know the guy involved, it is a very small town. While I would like to think that there is some way to keep Assault Rifles out of the little town, I guess this is pretty much proof that anyone, anywhere can gain access to one. While you wouldn’t think that the guy, who is 70 years old would have one, I think this proves that he just might.

My question is, what did his son say to piss him off so much that he was ready to kill the world, or die trying? I suppose they will uncover more of what actually transpired during the standoff as time moves on, but, still, I really think it must have been something ‘earth-shattering’ to send him over the edge.

I really don’t know what happened to make him snap, I am not even sure if I want to know. What I do know is that I don’t want to piss off anyone in the family, or the in-laws for a very long time. Funny how I have become so attached to this life.

I guess that is pretty much normal logic though; Sure you hate your life, but, would you trade it for your death? Me, I have only x amount of years to be on this earth, and I plan to live every damn one of them! As far as going senile when I am seventy, talk to me in forty years…At which point I might bludgeon your children when you are not looking, then snap and start doing really hostile things. Only time will tell.

The most unfortunate part of this whole thing is that there is now a widow, the wife of the guy that died, who has no husband, no guns, no ammunition, but, a laundry list of things to be taken care of. I feel for her far more than I try to feel for him. Imagine being elderly, then having to pay for an unsuspected funeral, though if you have a ‘cache’ of weapons (which inludes an AK-47), I suppose you would be foolish to think that ‘natural causes’ would be the killer…..Yet,I guess the police probably did steal (I mean remove from the home) anything that had a hole in one end of it.

I seem to be a bit too upset about this issue to get involved.