Archive of entries posted on May 2004

Zelda; Drive-Thru commandments

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Well, as I predicted in my last update I was not able to do anything on the site for the last few days. Well, that is not exactly true, I could have done stuff on the site but I chose not to. When your options are sleep before working all day or staying awake to write something that no one reads the choice seems pretty simple. Most of the time anyway.

What is thankful/unfortunate about the few days of the absence of the bosses is that nothing really strange or catastrophic happened. That is good for me as far as their opinion of me, but bad for trying to think of entertaining little things to write. I have so little on my mind that I just might have to show a little nipple to make this one interesting.

•

Before I get into anything else, I must mention that we are having a problem with our little puppy “Zelda”. She was fine when I left for work this morning, running, playing, barking and otherwise just annoying the hell out of me. Sometime after that something happened. (Once again to note that the previous sentence is one of the worst ever written.) Just before I was to come home for lunch, my wife showed up at the store to say that there was something wrong with one of little Zelda’s hind legs and that she was not able to walk. What could possibly have happened to her (the dog) in that span of only a couple of hours remains a mystery.

I should mention that Zelda has never really quite been a ‘normal’ dog. She has what we call a “Roach Back” instead of being flat. She constantly looks like she really needs to just stretch her back out but never does, whether that is due to inability, pain or other we just don’t know. Possibly as a result of whatever the issue is with her back, lower back specifically, she has always walked with a bit of a limp. I had always assumed that this was probably due to an unusual birth that left her with a broken bone that just didn’t heal correctly. With this new problem she is having I am beginning to think that possibly it is something worse.

I am not going to go into speculation about what the particular malady could be as it is just to soon to do so. After all I do remember a time not so long ago when I could not really stand or walk and it just turned out to be a cervical strain. What is to say that she just didn’t do a little doggy version of a sprained ankle? She appears to be getting better as the day progresses, yet she is also on drugs, well aspirin if you really can count that. Being that she is a dog she probably doesn’t have any concept that the pain has gone away because of medicine, so she probably thinks that she is getting better also. I sure do hope that it is just something minor, it is amazing how attached one can become to a pet in only a few months time.

• Now for a drive-thru story.

I have certainly watched enough shows on the history channel to know that the drive-thru came into being for the purpose of making fast food even faster. One of the shows that I saw was saying that the goal of a drive-thru was to go from the order to the car leaving with the food in 90 seconds. I think that 90 seconds might be a bit hopeful, but certainly three or four minutes should be possible, right? Nope.

There is only one fast food joint here in town, well only one place to get food fast through a drive-thru. It is a Burger King, and while I don’t really like the food there so much that I would eat it if I had any real options, I do eat it once or twice a week. The drive-thru experience usually does only take a couple of minutes, though often times we don’t have quite what it was that we had ordered. If you lived where I live you would understand that the simple fact that we got the food from there at all is enough incentive not to bitch.

I have always assumed that the worst case scenario at a drive-thru would be that someone ordered a burger that was not yet cooked, and that would result in having to wait the two minutes or so that it takes to get one done. Boy was I ever wrong.

On Saturday I worked another split shift, while that left me with a three hour lunch break, I still wanted to be home within ten minutes or so in case the people left to run the store needed to call me. I decided that I would grab a burger from the drive-thru, unless there were more than two cars there in which case I was going to just buy a sandwich at a convenience store. It turned out that there were only two cars at the drive-thru so I figured the experience to be about six minutes at most. In some alternate universe it may have even happened that way, it sure as hell didn’t here.

I have come up with a short set of “Drive-Thru Commandements” based on my experience on Saturday. I will list those here while bitching about my particular experience.

Thou Shalt Not Exit Thy Vehicle

The second car up from me had to wait for a minute or so while the one at the window (which I was not able to see in my earlier two car assessment) was waiting for their food. During this period of time you could clearly see that the woman was talking on a cell phone. Once the car that was in front of her had left, she pulled forward. About thirty seconds after she had arrived at the window I saw her put her cell phone down on the seat. Then she got out of her truck. My first thought was that maybe her window would not roll down, we have all been there, right?

Thou Shalt Have Thy Coin Ready

When the woman got out of her truck she proceeded to spend about two minutes digging through the pockets of her pants, handing the cashier a bill or a coin each time she found one. There seemed to be bills and coins in every pocket of the pants. Must be some new-fangled accounting system or something, yet if you are gonna do it, do it right. Maybe One dollars bills in the front right pocket, fives in the front left pocket, tens in the rear right, twenties in the rear left, and use your imagination for larger denominations.

Thou Shalt Not Order So Much Food As To Confuse Astrophysicists

The woman was alone, driving in a mini truck (I think it was a Chevy S-10), yet she got enough food for an army. The drink count was five, as they came out one at a time they were easy to count, especially since she then had to get into the truck to secure each drink, one by one. After the drinks came the food, four bags total, four big bags.

Thou Shalt Pull Forward To Check Thy Order When Others Are Waiting

While holding her receipt in her hand (the receipt was longer than many a college thesis), she proceeded to go through each bag, one by one, and place a mark through each item on her receipt. When she had completed the fourth bag I saw her holding the receipt to the cashier, I am sure that she was saying something like, “Well, I didn’t get this one”.

Thou Shalt Dispute Orders INSIDE The Establishment

The woman then handed back all four bags of food and the receipt to the window person. Thankfully the drinks must not have been in question as they did not go back. There must have been some sort of an audit going on inside the building but we will never know. About three minutes later the window opened, once again, and four bags of food were again provided. Again the woman went through them item by item.

Thou Shalt Leave The Pick-Up Window Immediately On Completion Of Transaction

The woman then got back into her truck, thankfully. Yet instead of driving away she picked her cell phone back up and dialed a number. This particular sequence only took thirty seconds or so, but it pissed me off more than the rest of it combined. If you are buying food for half a dozen people you really should go ahead and go into the place. Especially if you are going to get out of your car and stand there for over eight minutes disputing the order and looking for cash.

Thou Shalt Put A Stone Through The Skull Of Any Person Who Has Broken All Of These Commandments

I will admit that I did not put a stone through her skull, but I had no stone you see…If I would have had a stone I would likely be making this update from prison. I do not know why anyone would try to make such a large order through a drive-thru. It would be one thing if you were doing all value meals or something (which was not the case here for sure), why would you try to order all of that crap, then continue to break all of these commandments?

Just as a ‘for instance’, the guy that was in front of me had his cash ready, paid the girl and threw the bag on the seat. Total time at the pick-up window, about 12 seconds. My transaction was even faster since I told them to keep the extra penny. If I had been in posesession of a Penny Gun like they created over there at MythBusters (they were trying to see what velocity a penny would have to reach to penetrate human flesh/skulls), I may be in prison also.

That is about enough for today. Take the “Drive-Thru Commandments” to heart or you may be the first victim.

Router issues; Awana=White supremacy?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Could it be about White Supremacy?

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

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

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

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

Richard Simmons arrested

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AP Photo/Tina Fineberg

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Meta blogging; Ozzfest

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I spent some time today screwing around with the layout of my page. I came up with a couple of things that I kind of liked, but nothing that I was sure enough about to commit it to the internet. The thing is that without any advertising logos to put on here it just seems foolish for me to have it divided as it is, when there is so little information in the left column. I like the things that I do have over there, but on the occasions where I actually write a bit there is just a lot of dead space over there. Conversely, when I removed the left column the daily text stretched so far that it became difficult to keep the eyes on the correct line. That led to me reducing the size of the table, leaving about 40% of the screen as just background.

Once again I realize why I just ripped off this layout instead of coming up with something of my own.

Having written the previous, I went on to spend a lot of time looking for a few songs that I remember fondly, with hopes of updating my side bar. It turns out that the first three I thought of were absolute shit, and the one that I ended up placing there was not far behind. I guess that is why every generation hates the music that their parents listened to, considering that I can hardly listen to most of the hair band shit that I used to listen to. The one saving grace of my generation is that we have Megadeth and Metallica to listen to in a pinch. I don’t mean the horrible soap-opera-esque crap that they started putting out in the mid-late ’90s, I mean the real Metallica and the real Megadeth.

I am sure that every generation makes a stand like this at some point. Trying to defend the music that they grew up listening to against the new bands that are coming out. The thing that makes me think that some of the power bands that I was listening to when I was sixteen, Metallica, Megadeth and Pantera specifically, are better than the bands of today is the fact that they are being played on the radio in rotation with the new Metal. Perhaps that is just in the area I live, but the fact is that they are still being played, more than twenty years later. The only other songs that get that kind of air-play are oldies.

As I approach 30, I realize that I am no longer the kid that used to bang his head while listening to the old metal bands, but when I see kids half my age wearing ‘Master of Puppets’ t-shirts, I realize that some of the kids are still listening to it.

I had the opportunity to go to OzzFest last summer, thanks to my wife having an amazing job where she won V.I.P. tickets to the event. The one thing about that experience that really surprised me was the sheer number of old metal t-shirts I saw. I felt like I was damn near the oldest person there, but lots of the kids were wearing Metallica, Megadeth, Pantera, Anthrax, Slayer t-shirts, regardless of the fact that they weren’t even alive while those bands were in their prime.

I sure hope that by the time I reach say 50 I will quit trying to defend all of the metal that I listened to when I was a teen, but the sad truth is that there is just nothing coming out today that is as heavy and even tries to tell a story. Thunderous guitar riffs are pretty easy to come up with, the hard part is making something that will last. You can have the heaviest riff known to man, then have someone just scream, “keep on rollin’, rollin’, rollin’,” over the top of it and it will be absolute garbage. Put that next to the riffs in a song such as Metallica’s “Master of Puppets”, which is basically an anti-drug campaign, but it tells a story and it sticks. I am sure you can see the difference. If you can’t then I am old.

• The aforementioned OZZFEST was by far the best show that I have ever seen. There were so many bands there that I could not possibly list them all. The ones that played the main stage, though, were Chevelle, Disturbed, Korn, Marilyn Manson and, of course, OZZY. We wandered around the festival for a good five hours or so before they actually opened the entrances to the main stage. I was able to see a couple of bands, like Voivod, on the second stage that I had always wanted to see. There was another band on the second stage called MotoGrater that I mention only so you will know the name.

I don’t remember the exact date that the show was, but it was in the middle of the summer, in Arizona. Temperatures outside that day were over 110 degrees, which led to us using our V.I.P. passes frequently to get to the only area with a misting system, and the V.I.P. restrooms, which were the only air-conditioned place in the whole venue. It was there, the bathroom, that I met the guys from MotoGrater as they were trying to wash off the silly make-up that they put on before they do a show. An hour or so later, I met the bassist for Korn in the same restroom. Keep in mind that it is tough to try to talk to someone while they are pissing in the urinal next to you, let alone ask for an autograph. I briefly thought about shaking his hand, as we were walking away, but considering that neither of us had stopped at the sink to wash our hands, I thought better of it. And NO, I didn’t look at his Johnson. I stared at the wall just like I always do. I did ask him if he was in the band ‘Korn’ and he said that he was. Then he asked me who was on stage, I told him who it was (though I can’t remember at this point), and he disappeared through a door marked “NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL BEYOND THIS POINT”. I didn’t try to follow.

I was absolutely blown away by Marilyn Manson. I do not care for their music, but won’t turn it off if it is on the radio, it is just the kind of thing that I don’t actively hate, or like. His (their) theatrics really stole the show. To the point that I was a bit disappointed when I finally got to see Ozzy (for the first time in my life). Manson certainly took care to stage a show that would shock and entertain you for his full set. The rest of the bands, Ozzy included, just did their songs. I will give ozzy a bit of lee-way on this one, since he is no spring chicken, but the other bands, like Korn, couldn’t they have done something other than just play their songs?

Manson had choreographed marionettes (they were actually people behaving as such) that did things for his entire set. He had a little tiered stage kind of thing that they would climb. It is difficult to describe, but it was an experience. The other bands just played their songs. If you want to hear the song, you have the cd, the sound quality is going to be a lot better, just listen to the damn cd. Marilyn Manson, on the other hand, really sold me the experience. Even though I do not like Marilyn Manson, I would be more likely to buy tickets to his next concert than I would be to buy tickets for the next, say, Korn concert…Even though I like Korn a lot more than I like Manson.

That is about enough for today. Feel free to email me if you agree/disagree, that is why I put the link down there after all.

Song remakes; Tawny Kitaen

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Well today was a really shitty day for me on the work front. Mostly due to having to work a hated ‘split shift’. If you are unfamiliar with the term, that is a shift of eight hours that really screws over your entire day. In my case I worked from nine until noon, then had to go back from three until eight. That doesn not lend itself to actually accomplishing anything other than just work, it sucks basically.

That being said, I was not able to accomplish anything today. Not that I usually do anything on Saturdays anyway, still I can at least blame it on work. It is healthier that way, right? So I just have a few various things to bitch about today. I will jump right to it.

• I bitched in one of my early posts about my disgust of artists remaking songs. Not just any songs, but songs that were over the top hits when they were first released. D.J. Sammy is a horrible offender when it comes to this practice, so horrible in fact that the songs get airplay for about a week and then simply go away. So I won’t bitch too much about him.

So who am I going to bitch about? Jessica Simpson (I was forced to listen to some of her ‘music’ for the sake of adding that link, so I hope you appreciate it). Anyway, this girl who thinks that Chicken is Tuna took it upon herself to remake the wedding favorite “Take My Breath Away”, which was first performed by Berlin, even though they did not write it, but that is quite common for movie soundtracks. So why do I feel the urge to bitch about it? Because she did it horribly!

I have nothing against Jessica Simpson, but I think that someone close to her should have mentioned, at some point, that her singing voice is really not all that great. Were she to weight fifty pounds more than she does there would be no way in hell that she would have a recording contract. Why would she chose to remake a song that is still in circulation on light rock radio stations all over the U.S., and do it so poorly? Sure she likes to sing it in the shower, but isn’t that the reason that god created the shower (then completely forgot to tell the human population about it for 1800+ years)? So that we wouldn’t have to listen to Jessica Simpson singing a song that still stands as one of the great love ballads of all time?

I know that I am a cynical son-of-bitch, but when I heard her “render” that song, And no, I did not mean ‘rendition’, which would imply that it was her own personal spin on how the song should sound. I meant ‘render’ as in what meat-processors do to the carcasses of dead animals, which I think far more accurately describes what she did to that song, I was sickened. That is quite possibly the worst ‘cover tune’ of all time, BAR NONE. Someone please take away her microphone, which is sort-of penis shaped, and give her a penis, which will hopefully keep her mouth full long enough to keep her from singing! Not that I hate Jessica Simpson or anything…

• Well, as long as I am ripping on women and the music industry, I may as well toss out a bitch about Tawny Kitaen. Sorry, I am crutched by a dial-up modem and thusly can not find an official page for her (and why is it that the ‘official page’ for a celebrity or band is always on like page nine?). If you do not know who she is by name, I will just say that Tawny Kitaen is a serious actress that has landed a lot of roles, most notably the role of rolling on the hood of a Jaguar in WhiteSnake’s video for the song “Here I Go Again” (which I also can not find a link to).

If you are like me, that being a child of the ’80’s’, you probably saw that video roughly 11,000,000 times in your youth/pre-adulthood phase. You likely thought that there would be no way that you could land a girl that pretty. It turns out that you were lucky to not ‘land her’, or have that same thing happen conversely.

That woman has had sex with every musician that ever lived. I am still a little unclear on how she had sex with the classical composers, but I have no doubt that she did. Exhuming a body would be a day to day operation with her. Hell, that is kind of how she was living at that point. I do not mean to dog Miss Kitaen for her actions, just to mention that she has had sex with every rock star there ever was. Sure, she started small with a member of the band RATT, long before they ‘made it’, but she kept the taste for ‘Rock Stars’.

The only positive that I can take about looking for information regarding her is that she did eventually go into rehab, break out and start to run amok through our cities. That is the purpose of rehab, right? She eventually did settle down, and, as I read it, is pretty happy now just being a mom.

I have a dollar in my pocket that says she probably really regrets ever doing the “splits on the hood of the Jaguar” thing that made every male that was near puberty hope for her. While that same dollar is saying that she wishes that she hadn’t given herself to anyone who could play an instrument at that same time.

If you are a little groupie whore, what do you expect to happen? History will change when you decide to settle down? Personally, I think it is a great thing that she has found a purpose (raising her children), but I still remember her as the groupie slut that let a nipple slip out while filming a video. Whether I am right or wrong about her past, I am certainly right about her present, best of luck to her in raising a family…Especially when those kids reach puberity, and start to say, “well, you danced naked on the hood of a car,” because what could her comeback possibly be…

That is all for today. Tune in the day after today to see a new post. Please, do not search for the word that means the same as the ‘day after today’ on google, it might skew my stats.

Mac OS X; Deadly Rooms of Death

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It turns out that Flux over there at BlackChampagne (whose site layout I totally ripped off, btw) quoted part of an email that I sent him in his latest post. He linked to my site in the quoting of the email which was completely unexpected. The result of that is that anyone who linked through it would have seen one of my least entertaining posts. Unless those people enjoy reading baseball discussion. But with my current readership countable on one hand, even if the hand was missing a couple of fingers, I will take any publicity I can get. After all, had I known that he would be linking to my site it is not like I would have turned into a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist for a day. I write what I want to write in the way that I want to write it. That may have something to do with the number of readers that I have. Come to think of it, I should write what people want to read in the way that they want to read it. Being that I do not have the skill necessary for that sort of an undertaking, I will just continue to ramble the way I always have.

• There was one thing in the news today that I thought I would never see. Especially since I had made a mention of it in a previous post. I actually mentioned it in passing the day before the link that I posted, where I said; “So when is the last time that you heard about a problem with the security on a macintosh system? Is that a rhetorical question or does the Imac team just handle it a lot better?” Here is today’s headline.

Apple Says OS X Vulnerable to Security Breach
SEATTLE (Reuters) – Apple Computer Inc. (Nasdaq:AAPL – news), long considered to be relatively immune to the security holes and viruses that plague longtime rival Microsoft Corp.’s Windows, said on Friday a security hole in its software leaves users’ computers vulnerable to attack.

Mac, and its legion of enthusiastic users, have long touted the benefits of owning Apple’s Macintosh (news – web sites) personal computer, such as its ease of use and immunity from the computer viruses that plague users of PCs running Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

So it finally happened, right? They finally had a security flaw. Now let’s see if Microsoft jumps onto it as harshly as I speculated on March 11, where I said, in part;

I strongly believe that if a single OS X system anywhere on the face of the earth encountered security issues, Microsoft would be on it like maggots to rotting flesh. Macintosh has been a thorn in the side of Microsoft for decades and the thought of them not attacking mac if even one person ever had security issues is ludicrous. It would be in every Microsoft commercial and ad campaign from here until the end of time. If you are thinking, no, Microsoft would not attack them for something like that, since they have had so many problems of their own…Sober up…

I still believe every word of that. I really am curious to see if Microsoft is going to start doing ads about it. Not in a ‘better than you’ kind of way, but more in a ‘so they have security flaws too, now you are no different than us’ kind of way. Though reading further in the news article I saw one other line that sets the OS x security flaw apart from all of the windows security flaws.

“Apple takes security very seriously and works quickly to address potential threats as we learn of them-in this case, before there was any actual risk to our customers,” said Schiller.

That is going to be as opposed to what the quote would have read had it been from Microsoft where it would have read more like this.

“Microsoft takes security very seriously and works quickly to address potential threats as we learn of them-in this case, before there was any actual risk of me losing any money,” said Gates.

Keep in mind that the last quote was me spoofing the Apple quote, not actually anything that anyone named Gates, or anyone affiliated with Microsoft has ever actually said. But wouldn’t be funny if he/they did?

• After making a very brief mention of Deadly Rooms of Death yesterday, I decided that I would go ahead and play it on the new PC. Instead of just transferring game information over from the old machine I decided to play through it again. I don’t know, maybe I thought it would be nostalgic. It went pretty well for the first five levels or so, then I started getting back into the boards that really piss me off. I realize now why I like the game and why I don’t like the game.

The only reason that I like the game is that it is a puzzle game. I do enjoy puzzle games of all sorts. This one adds a bit to the idea of a puzzle game by making the components move in unique ways that add to the puzzle experience. That kind of thing can be appreciated when intelligence alone can solve a problem. When you must be intelligent and lucky it becomes tiresome. Perhaps I am reading into it wrong and every board can be solved with intelligence alone, but the boards that have multiple spawners on them are extremely difficult.

As I think about it I am pretty sure that each board can be solved pretty easily with intelligence alone. The guy who programmed each board probably tested them over and over again to make sure. The thing is that he knew where he wanted to start it and likely tested all of the boards based on that starting position. Most of the boards have three or four different starting positions (if it has only a single entrance) and if you enter on the wrong square it can be impossible to win without exiting the room and re-entering from a different square. That, in my mind, is not really using intelligence to solve a puzzle. If the game were modified to make the entrance squares to the board not count, so that you could move up or down a square (while still on the entrance tiles) and turn to get your sword facing the correct direction, that would definitely improve the game. Usually you are able to just exit the board an re-enter having done all that, but wouldn’t it be easier to figure out which would be the best starting tile and sword direction if you were actually looking at the board at the time?

I guess I really should quit bitching about that game. It seems to me that I have spent more time bitching about it than I have actually playing it. Maybe I should quit playing it too, but it gives me so much bitching material. Catch 22 eh?

That is all for today. Tune in tomorrow when I will feature an expose on self-circumcision, or not.

Randy Johnson; Weird search strings

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There are only a couple of things that are on my mind today, so this will likely be a short one even by my standards. That being said I will get right to it.

• Being an Arizonan, I was just as excited about Randy Johnson’s perfect game as the next guy, even more so in a lot of cases I am sure. Since it was only the 17th perfect game in recorded history it is quite an accomplishment. The fact that Jonhson was able to do it at the age of 40 is mind-boggling. Understanding that he is a major league athlete, and as such will excercise as one, his body can not possibly be in the kind of shape it was ten or twenty years ago. He does deserve all the congratulations that he is getting. Not some two-bit guy like me to criticize it, but I pay for the opportunity to bitch, so bitch I shall.

There are a lot of factors that contribute to pitching a perfect game. First and foremost you need to be a top notch pitcher like, say, Randy Johnson. Second you have to have an umpire that is a bit lenient about the actual strike zone, as a pitch an inch too high/low or too far out/in side could ruin the whole thing. The third thing (in my mind) that has to happen is all on the pitcher, and that is that he has to keep it perfect for three or four innings; if he strikes out 8 over four innings and the other three are routine flyballs and maybe a grounder to first the rest of the guys are going to start to feel the energy. Once those three things have happened it is no longer just about the pitcher, unless he happens to strike out the last fifteen guys, which is unlikely. This is the point where a lot of perfect games become ‘no-hitters’.

Having watched only one perfect game, but seeing many ‘no-hitters’, or perfect until the ninth inning games, I have worked out a theory on how one could pitch the ‘perfect game’.

While a lot of people are rooting for the pitcher, a lot of people are also rooting against him; The perfect game would be lost if you were not a respected pitcher. No one, save the fans of the team, would want to see an unknown rookie throwing a perfect game, you need to have enough respect in the baseball community that the opposing fans are even on board with you achieving this feat.

This one doesn’t carry much weight considering the Current Standings, but you must be playing a team that is not really all that good to begin with. Johnson was facing a team that had 18 strike-outs against the Brewers (of all teams) a day or two before.

Now the aforementioned team energy needs to come into play. Can you imagine what it would feel like to be the guy who bobbled the ball at second that cost someone a perfect game? I can’t, but I also don’t make a ton of money, thus insuring that I will be in the public eye for all of my life. That is why it is up to the pitcher alone to keep it perfect for three or four innings, long enough for the rest of the guys on the team to get it in gear. Keep in mind that the rest of the guys on the team play 162 games a year while the pitcher plays every, what, fourth game? The guys on the field need to realize that it is happening so that they can wake up just long enough to make it happen. If you think that it is akin to blasphomy to say that, you haven’t seen a lot of ball games. Having attended a few of the games myself, I have seen that a lot of the players (outfielders in particular) sometimes seem to forget that they are playing the game at all. One of the players (for the Reds) that was in the outfield actually took off his shoe and was shaking it out while there was someone up to bat.

Now that we have very good pitching, respect from the fans (even opposing fans), and a really bad team to play against, there is still one more thing that needs to be factored in. That one thing is the guy on the other team that is an asshole for the sake of being an asshole. This is not really a concrete term that should be attached to the guy, but I am going to use it whenever possible. The scenario would go thusly:

The opposing pitcher has a perfect game going.

It is the ninth inning.

Your team is down by two runs.

There is no one on base.

There are already two outs.

You bunt to get on base.

I don’t think that the previous scenario has ever happened, but I bet that it will if it hasn’t.

The only thing that I am intending to say here is that it takes a lot more than a good pitcher to pitch a perfect game. All of the players on a team are involved in it. From the catcher that sends the calls to the pitcher, to the lowly outfielder (who is likely bored in a perfect game), the whole team must come together to help the pitcher achieve greatness. I bet that the pitcher knows this as well and likely will buy them all dinner and drinks after the game.

• The other thing that I wanted to mention is the weird strings that have resulted in people looking at my site through Google.

Two people clicked through on “drod roaches”, that one I can kind of understand since the drod website was (is?) still down, and I had mentioned them previously.

I had one click on “emachines 466is cpu upgrade”, of course when I googled that I am right near the top, but I shouldn’t be. I was bitching about my emachines antiquity, then talking about upgrading to a new system. I guess they do have to just go by what is on the page though, as opposed to what you were thinking/writing.

The third Google search really freaks me out. Someone searched for “tomorrow site:shadowtwin.com”. I am pretty sure that the word ‘tomorrow’ is going to be in a lot of my posts. Why would someone search for that particular word on this site? If I said, “tomorrow, goat porn”. Wouldn’t you search my site for goat porn? Or would you think that I had somehow forgotten to describe the goat porn as “goat porn”? I don’t know, that one just seemed a bit weird to me.

ICQ; Abu Ghraib

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I didn’t have to work late today so there will be an update! Rejoice or find medication depending on how you feel about my little update things.

I spoke yesterday about the local election. Well the election had the highest turn out that we have had in my memory, with over a thousand votes cast. The person that I (and my wife) voted for lost by thirteen votes. Keep that in mind when you are talking about your vote not counting. I bet we could just walk around town and find thirteen people that would have voted for our guy had they known it was going to be that close. I am sure that the same could be said for the other guy as well, though the last position that he ran for was city council and he won that by a lot. It was my thinking that a lot of the people who didn’t show up to vote were going to vote for the guy who lost, but didn’t vote because the guy who won had won his last post in a landslide. I suppose it is like being really drunk and hooking up with a transvestite hooker at last call, you only regret it the next day, and for the rest of your life, or so I’ve heard. Yes, I do believe that was the worst analogy of all time! Daddy always told me if I was going to write really bad analogies I had to be the best.

I had not used ICQ for several years, now I find that it is on this new machine. I am not sure why I quit using it, wait, oh, yes, okay, one day it just quit working and they wanted me to download a newer version of it and I just really didn’t want to. All the people that were on my list were people that had found my number through my old website or the Megadeth chat. Not really the type of individuals that I really would like to currently try to hold a conversation with. Unless of course we were trying to recreate the famous Budweiser commercial. To my surprise, my old ICQ number still worked after all of these years. The number is 14479550. If you wonder why I remember that, go ahead and ask why I know that the license plate on my boss’s truck is af410p, or why I know that the van is ‘510lzn’, or why I know the corvette that my dad drove had the plate ‘jng457’ (he died 14 years ago, btw). My first motorcycle had the plate ‘m413432’, which I remember mostly because it was quite similar to my dad’s driver’s license which was ‘1343132’. I don’t know why but I just genarally remember trivial numbers after a single glance. I haven’t yet figured out how to use all the credit card numbers that I have memorized for evil, but when I do, boy god there are going to be a lot of pizzas going to a couple of people that I strongly dislike.

• I checked out the Political Animal website again today and it turns out that there are a lot of stories breaking about the abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison and the possibility that someone other than the few people who were photographed may have been involved…DUH!…If you are doing something that you know is wrong you are not going to pose for photos. If, however, your head of command comes in and says, “I wonder what they would look like in a naked pyramid.” That might make you want to 1) force them to get into a naked pyramid and 2) not be afraid to be photographed while doing it.

I don’t see any other way this could have happened. Of course there is all the requisite double-talk and blatant untruthful information coming from people the higher up you get in the chain of command, but it is all a load of steamy, smelly crap.

I just tried to google up a story about the guy in the fifties (I think) that used a little box to study how far a person would go when being commanded. I was not able to find the story that I was looking for, but it broke down thusly. Someone would apply for and get a job to test a new machine that was meant to cause harm to another human. An anonymous person in a lab coat would tell him to intensify the pain at regular intervals. No one was being hurt, there was just a tape playing of someone screaming in different degrees of pain as the dial got turned ever higher (yet the subject person on the dial did not know that). Most of the people would turn the dial past the point where it said certain injury or death. As I said, I was not able to find an actual article about the machine or the tests that they did, but I think that is quite relevant for the situation in Abu Ghraib. Hell, I think just the fact that I can now spell that without having to go to google must prove something…

I really think that the people who were in charge at that prison knew exactly what was going on, hell, they were probably the photographers. No one would have ever said a word about it had the U.S. media not got a hold of it and started to strangle it. Whether this is good or bad is something that is quite subjective. Does humiliating foriegn soldiers actually make them give up information? Does treating the same soldiers humanely make them less likely to divulge information? The truth about all that happened at Abu Ghraib will never be known, or if it is ever known it will be fifty years from now when the history channel can interview some of those that were involved while they are on their death beds.

I really believe that what we are seeing here is just a microcosm of the totally inept and monumentally fucked-up approach that Dubya adopted when he decided to attack IRAQ. It is like he thought that since his daddy was able to just walk right through Kuwait, he would do the same in IRAQ. The one thing that he totally forgot to factor in was that his daddy really did liberate Kuwait from the evil IRAQ, while he was trying liberate the evil IRAQ from a single guy. Iraq didn’t want to be ‘populated’ by our military, they wanted Saddam and his regime gone and then they would figure something out. Had we left Iraq very shortly after Saddam and his cohorts fled the country, and left Iraq to liberate themselves, we would be in far better shape than wer are now. After all, a forced democrocy is little more than a tyranny with a different name.

Once again this has gone political, I must end this now. I will leave you with a final thought, “Vote Quimby”.

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.