Your GPS. Friend or Foe?

This was a conversation that came up a while ago and I'm seeing it gaining momentum as time goes on.

The GPS in your car is a danger to you.

Yes it seems that people love to steal the GPS and the Garage Door Opener from cars. They use the GPS to find your house (since most people program in their home address and label it as home) and the Garage Door Opener to get in.

"Uh-Oh! This is a problem" most people think when they read this. And most places that report this problem give the solution of either selecting your home address as a local landmark that you can get home from, or by setting your home address and calling it something else in the address list.

In the first example you'd set either a serious local landmark like the local grocery store you shop at, or the post office or you'd select something amusing (again that you know how to get home from) like the local police station or a local gay bar.

But a number of people are not thinking this through. When I first heard about this and we talked about it, it very quickly occurred to us that it really does not work.

Now you see, while it amuses me to think about setting "home" as "Discount Dan's Used Dildo Emporium and Coffee Shop" and imagining the looks on the faces of the criminals as they pull into the parking lot, and I am a believer in not making it easy for criminals...But there is a problem. A pretty big one.

Trying to be cute for the crooks and trying to make it harder for them does not work. By law we are required to make it easy for them. Now I know what some are going to think. "What law exists that requires us to make it easy for crooks? I'm calling shenanigans on this! No law would ever be written to make it easy for crooks! What next? You're going to say that legally we must leave out front doors unlocked? You're stupid!"

Hell a few already said that to me.

But yes there is a law that makes it easy for a crook to bypass the Used Dildo/Coffee Shop and go straight to your house. Look in the glove box. By law, you are required to keep your registration with the vehicle. And unless you've recently moved, this contains your current address. And then there is your proof of insurance which in many cases ALSO has your current address.

Not so stupid now am I?

In reality, yes the GPS and the Garage Door Opener are stolen. But the GPS is not used. Normally they break into your car, steal the GPS and sell it for a quick buck at the pawn shop, then use the address off of the stolen registration along with the stolen Garage Door Opener to find and break into your house. Your GPS was likely not involved in the crime unless the criminal didn't already have one of his own.

And I can see how people may think that this is how they were found. The GPS is obvious since it is usually stored on the window. The Garage Door Opener is obvious since well you no longer have it and have to get the spare or have to park the car, go inside and open it from the switch inside.

But the registration? That's just one more slip of paper out of god knows how many littering your glove box. And even if you keep a clean glove box, it's still one scrummy piece of paper that you may not even give the slightest notice until you get pulled over for something and are asked for it and find out that it is not there anymore.

So I say pick your poison. Set your GPS for home or set it to the Dildo Shop. It's not going to make much of a difference either way. If you really want to be safe, do not leave your garage door opener in your car or at least keep it hidden from view and do the same for the GPS.

Guilt Trips.

I've already covered my thoughts on "Slacktivism" on Facebook and other social media.

It's all in here so I don't need to repeat myself if you are interested in re-reading it or if you are new here, read it for the first time.

The new trend in Facebook and other Social Media is to guilt trip us into being slacktivists. Yes folks, you get shit like "There is this problem and it really sucks ass and so I'm going to go on about it at length. Well not really since I just hit the share button because I'm a mindless sheep mentally stroking myself to feel better about the fact that I can't be arsed to do anything constructive about it. And I am going to guilt *YOU* into hitting the share button like a mindless sheep by saying that only my real friends will share it too."

Now before people who actually *DO* something and also post these messages start ripping into me...Think about this for a second. *IF* you actually do something about about the problem that you are posting about YOU ARE NOT THE PEOPLE I'M BITCHING ABOUT.

But look at that last bit. "only my real friends will share it too." That's the part that I'm complaining about here.

What are we saying when we post that. Think about this for a second. Either we are saying that I don't know who my real friends are and thus this metric will tell me who my friends are, or we are saying that only people that agree with me can be my close friends.

Really? In either case we seem to be saying that to be considered a friend, I have to fucking agree with everything you say. Folks, it doesn't work that way. My mother and I do not see eye-to-eye on all topics and she still loves me. My wife and I while are politically compatible have our differences and she still loves me.

Yeah, yeah, God only knows why...ha ha ha. Moving along.

But that's the way the world works folks. We are not cookie cutter, carbon copies of each other. We have things that we have in common with our friends, we have our differences. That's what makes having friends exciting. The differences.

I like guns. I like owning guns, I feel that any responsible adult should own them if they so choose and that they have the right to teach their children how to grow up to be responsible gun owners and let them decide if they want to own them. I have a friend who doesn't.

Guess what we DON'T talk about. Give you a hint. It rhymes with Nuns and it starts with a "G".

So when I see the "I don't eat meat and I know that the people who aren't my friends will not share the horror stories of what happens in the slaughter houses" posts the first thought is "Really, just because I choose to eat meat I'm not your friend? Damn, one less person on my Facebook page." Or the "President should be impeached because he did something I didn't like and only my real friends will share this" post. That one gets me thinking "So...just because I understand that impeachment proceedings are only if the President commits a criminal act (and not an unpopular one) you are going to disown me? Well that's one less card on my Christmas Card list. Saves printer ink."

So before we go posting the "only my real friends will share it too." crap, think about what you are saying for a minute before hitting submit. Are you REALLY so shallow that you only want people who are carbon copy clones of yourself? Or are you going to like your friends for doing all the things that have earned that place in your heart that you have reserved for friends regardless of whether or not they agree with you on absolutely everything?

Only my real...(check all that apply)
[] - Friends
[] - People I know
[] - Mortal eneimies
[] - Kid I paid $5 to rake my leaves

...will...(check all that apply)
[] - share this
[] - ignore this
[] - laugh at it
[] - report me to the thought police for being a dangerous free-thinking type

Other than Mrs. Kennedy, how was Dallas?

Now that I'm awake again and have calmed down enough to sit and tell the tale that was promises, I shall.

Yesterday since I was no longer able to go to my folks house for the weekend I figured that today (Friday) would be a better time than Monday to get the registration fixed on the car.

I take the car to Agape Auto and found them to be an absolutely winderful service center. They knew the history of the car from the previous owners (our good friends who sold us the car) and transferred it to our new account so they and I could know what has been done and what is due to be done to keep the car in running prime. They inspected the car and it almost passed. It needed a few marker lights replaced.

I could have done it myself but then I'd have needed to go back to them to let them look to verify that they were replaced before getting my inspection sticker...or I could let them do it for a reasonable fee and they could let me walk out with the sticker in hand.

I let them do the work and they worked the price down to the $100 that I had on hand to pay for the inspection and the work. They didn't need to to that but damn that was a nice thing to do and that's the sort of thing that will have me coming back to them for the upcoming tune up and fuel system cleaning.

Oh and they remembered our friends by name and by the cars they have. Anyone who sees their customers as people and treats them that way instead of as bipedal sacks of money is up there in my book.

That was the bright spot of my day.

Inspection sticker, title, registration and proof of insurance in hand, off I toddle to the Motor Vehicle Administration (DMV in other states...Maryland has to be different and “special” I guess) to register my vehicle.

Long ass wait in line for the vehicle services window to call my number. But three chapters of my book later my number is called and I go up and hand the clerk my paperwork. They can't run it because of an insurance violation.

F

U

C

K

!!

My first thought is that they STILL haven't cleared my CCU debt from the system. I have to go back and tell a few mini-tales before I can get back to the main part of the story so please bear with me.

In 1999 I had an old piece of shit car that died in the middle of no-damn-where. I mean totally fucking died to the point where only Chip Foose's “A-Team” on the show “Overhaulin'” could save it.

And the '71 Dodge Polara is hardly a car worthy of that treatment.

So I called a salvage yard to pick it up. They promised that they handle everything including de-registering the plates with the MVA. “Full Service” they called themselves...”Ass raping cockstains” I call them for what they must have done was to either keep the plates for their own uses or just sent them off to be recycled with other aluminum for the money. And since I still had 18 months on my registration AND terminated my insurance the day after the car went tits-up...well I started incurring a $150 per uninsured day penalty. Thankfully the penalty maxes out at $5,000 here in Maryland or I'd REALLY be fucked. That's 545 days (roughly) and would have been in the ballpark of $81,750 if they didn't cap it at a number that could be paid off eventually.

So years later I move back into Maryland and I register a van since Kier's station wagon died. I do the “Transfer Plates” option since we still had almost the full two years on the plates (they'll only give you back the money on the completely unused year). I go to a fast title place as opposed to the MVA and they transfer the plates.

Unbeknownst to me, it didn't go through after I left and I was driving an unregistered vehicle and I was pulled over for it. The officer nailed my for driving an unregistered vehicle, driving an uninsured vehicle (I had insurance but while USAA considers a vehicle insured regardless of registration status, Maryland considers a vehicle insured if the car has valid registration), and illegally using another vehicle's plates.

Damn! I am so fucked as that could kill my license. Thankfully the prosecutor offered me a plea bargain. If I plead guilty to driving an uninsured vehicle and pay a reasonable $60 fine, they would put it on a stet docket and send me on my way.

A stet docket means that they'll keep the case open but inactive for one year. If I don't do anything that naughty again they'll chuck the case in the bin and it never plagues me again. If had done that again during the year, it gets reactivated and I get the book thrown at me.

Naturally I kept my nose VERY clean. I didn't even get so much as a parking ticket that year.

Once that was taken care of I went to the MVA that had the Central Collection Unit and set up a payment plan to clear my debt. They were reasonable. They only demanded $1,000 up front and set my payments at $145 per month. Once done I could register vehicles again.

I paid that off and when I went to get the 30-day plates for the car they flagged me as not having cleared that debt. An hour of arguing with CCU and the MVA (who could not seem to be able to communicate to clear my fucking record) and finally I was able to plate the car and start using it.

Back to the story at hand. If you'll recall I was sitting there with another insurance violation. They transfer my number to the Insurance Compliance window and again I wait. While waiting I call my insurance company to verify that there was no gap in my coverage. None was found so I'm thinking that this is the fucking CCU bullshit all over again.

If only I could have been so lucky.

Another rewind of my life if you'll permit me. Two years ago that van blew the heads. It was given to us for free so it didn't really owe us any money. I'd have been upset but my sister-in-law sold us her station wagon to be used as a second car. I did the same thing. I got 30-day plates and started getting the vehicle repaired to pass inspection. The poor thing had fucked up suspension parts and needed an alignment and new front breaks and rotors but was otherwise in good condition. I let the garage fix it. I go and register the car and I'm flagged for an insurance violation (sound familiar?) I call USAA and they they assure me that there was no coverage lapse. In fact I had uninsured the van three days after I turned in the plates. After the $5,000 I was not about to make the same mistake again.

Maryland on the other hand showed a one-day lapse in coverage. A 24-hour window where I had no insurance with USAA and had it back again.

What. The. Fuck?

Fine! Whatever! I'll have USAA fax in a FR-19 form proving that I am covered and that I have ALWAYS been covered. They get the fax and tell us that it will take 10 days to clear my record.

What. The. Fuck?!?

They inform us that this is a glitch in the system and that they have a huge fucking backlog because this is happening to all new registrations on the state of Maryland. Well if this is a glitch and you goddamn know about it then why are you punishing me by not allowing me to drive my only car for 10 business days until you get off your lazy asses and fix your fuck-up?

Dejected I leave the MVA and go to bed. Working nights I have to either go to bed when I get home in the morning or go to bed no later than 4pm in order to get the sleep I need to work that night.

Kier on the other hand does not give up. She moves Heaven and Earth and manages to get a state legislator involved. That person saw our plight and straightened those jammy cocksuckers at the MVA out and got my record cleared and started an investigation as to what the fuck the monkeys at the MVA are doing or more to the point why they aren't doing anything to fix the problem.

Kier takes the papers back to the fast title place and they look the other way and let her sign the papers for me. Station Wagon is registered.

Back to the story at hand. I had to tell that story since it is very relevant to the story at hand. Why is it?

BECAUSE IT IS THE SAME FUCKING PROBLEM!

Yes in two years they still have the glitch. In fact the person in Insurance Compliance, by her own admission said that “It's a glitch in the system sir. Every new vehicle registration gets flagged.”

Mom, you might want to keep that in mind when you go and renew the cars. You might get lucky and not get flagged or they fix the problem...but you might get nailed.

So back and forth, back and forth and just before they close (this is now four and a half hours of pissed off customers with the same problem and nasty, rude, and totally unhelpful people) I finally walk out of there after being awake for 27 hours, low blood sugar, and I could feel the rage burning over my skin. My skin felt rather like what I'd imagine fire flowing over it would feel if I were like Johnny Storm of the Fantastic Four (Human Torch) for hours.

I finally cooled off and calmed down and ate some dinner and went to bed.

One final note. On the way home I was pulled over by a Police Officer. It seems that the insurance violation takes a couple of hours to clear out of the system and I was flagged by the plate scanner. Thankfully having the proof of insurance, the new registration and the time-stamped and dated receipt meant that I could go without so much as a warning or a waggled finger pointed at me...

But did I really need the insult added to the injury?

As Ron White says "You can't cure stupid"

I could not help but be amused by this article that's been getting a lot of press lately.

There is the woman who tried to hire a hitman to find her husband and shuffle loose his mortal coil. They need to add another charge on top of 'conspiracy to commit murder' but sadly 'conspiracy to be a complete brain-dead moron' is not an actionable offense.

This woman was trying to buy a hit for $5,000. Yes, a paltry five grand and her husband would go home to Jesus just like the contents of my fridge after Irene took out the power for a fucking week.

The article states that she was arrested in an 2011 Audi Convertible. Audi only has a few convertible models for this year...

• TT Roadster - $41,300
• A5 Cabriolet - $42,600
• TTS Roadster - $$50,000
• S5 Cabriolet - $59,000 
• R8 Spyder - $127,700

Now even at the cheapest you're looking at just shy of $42k's worth of car. No hitman is going to look at that and think "Yeah, I'll give her a discount". They are going to look the mark over and say "Flash car, must have money, should try for as much money as I can go for".

After all, the hitman is risking his own life and/or freedom if he gets caught. They are not going to sell their life cheaply.

And yes I do know that there have been people who have asked $5,000 (and less in some cases) for their services, but odds are that the person doing the hiring was in a clapped out Chevy Nova or something. Not something that screams "I have money so I can be an entitled douchebag and you unwashed masses should be glad I am willing to share the planet with you."

So when a hitman offers offers 5g's to off your husband...didn't that scream "TRAP"?

There are no coupons, there are no "Free Twatwaffle Tuesdays", there is no kill one get the other at half price.

Any hitman (real hitmen) would look at the car and the offer of the "Limited Edition 2011 Harley Davidson Motorcycle" and would make the opening offer at $50k and likely negotiate down as low as $35k if the person was good at bargaining.

Oh well, you can't fix stupid.

Found something interesting about "The Flannel Shirted One", one George "I can't leave my own movies the fuck alone" Lucas.


This is from Lucas' statement pp.482-490 of a document bearing the title The Berne Convention: Hearings Before the Subcomittee on Patents, Copyrights and Trademarks of the Committee on the Judiciary United States Senate. One Hundreth Congress. Second session on s.1301 and s.1971. February 18 and March 3, 1988.


As some one who is pissed off at Greedo shooting first and all the planed changes he's talking about making in the Blu-Ray re-release of Star Wars...I have to address this. My comments are in blue.

"My name is George Lucas. I am a writer, director, and producer of motion pictures and Chairman of the Board of Lucasfilm Ltd., a multi-faceted entertainment corporation.

I am not here today as a writer-director, or as a producer, or as the chairman of a corporation. I've come as a citizen of what I believe to be a great society that is in need of a moral anchor to help define and protect its intellectual and cultural heritage. It is not being protected.

This from a man who can't leave his own movies alone without picking at them like a 5-year-old with an itchy scab.

The destruction of our film heritage, which is the focus of concern today, is only the tip of the iceberg. American law does not protect our painters, sculptors, recording artists, authors, or filmmakers from having their lifework distorted, and their reputation ruined. If something is not done now to clearly state the moral rights of artists, current and future technologies will alter, mutilate, and destroy for future generations the subtle human truths and highest human feeling that talented individuals within our society have created.

And what about the talented people who have had their work cut out of the films? What about the modelers that have had their carefully painstakenly done scenes replaced by some CGI simply because you have a hard on for whomp-rats and wanted them scurrying around Mos Eisley. 

A copyright is held in trust by its owner until it ultimately reverts to public domain. American works of art belong to the American public; they are part of our cultural history.

And yet you seem hell bent for leather to change our cultural history every time a new technology comes about. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_changes_in_Star_Wars_re-releases#Blu-ray_edition

One change that has already been confirmed for the Blu-ray release is the replacement of the Yoda puppet in The Phantom Menace with a CGI model.[13] Lucasfilm also confirmed that Darth Vader now shouts "No" when he saves Luke from Emperor Palpatine's Force lightning attack in Return of the Jedi.[14]

Yeah, and what about the talents of Frank Oz? What about his performance of Yoda that you're replacing with CGI? What did Frank do? Cut you off one morning? Parked in your space? Farted in your general direction? Took a shit on your corn flakes? What did he do to piss you off so much that you decided to delete him from the movie?

And are you going to stop there? Why not delete him out of Empire and Jedi while you're at it? 

People who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are barbarians, and if the laws of the United States continue to condone this behavior, history will surely classify us as a barbaric society. The preservation of our cultural heritage may not seem to be as politically sensitive an issue as "when life begins" or "when it should be appropriately terminated," but it is important because it goes to the heart of what sets mankind apart. Creative expression is at the core of our humanness. Art is a distinctly human endeavor. We must have respect for it if we are to have any respect for the human race.

You know, I get it that these are his films and this is his intellectual property. But with Star Wars helping him achieve a net worth of $3.2 Billion (That's Billion with a "B" boys and girls)...one has to wonder the source.

These current defacements are just the beginning. Today, engineers with their computers can add color to black-and-white movies, change the soundtrack, speed up the pace, and add or subtract material to the philosophical tastes of the copyright holder.

Hrm...Pot, Kettle...black?

Tommorrow, more advanced technology will be able to replace actors with "fresher faces," or alter dialogue and change the movement of the actor's lips to match.

This is from the guy who replaced Sebastian Shaw's Jedi-ghost with Hayden Christensen's when we had the scene at the end of "Jedi". Let's go back to the bit where people and their hard work is defaced. What about the acting of Mr. Shaw. You on one hand say that the work of all the talented people needs to be preserved and on the other hand wipe him out of the picture. What's next? Taking him completely out of the movie and replacing him with Hayden in scene where Luke pulls his mask off?

It will soon be possible to create a new "original" negative with whatever changes or alterations the copyright holder of the moment desires. The copyright holders, so far, have not been completely diligent in preserving the original negatives of films they control. In order to reconstruct old negatives, many archivists have had to go to Eastern bloc countries where American films have been better preserved.

Funny, Lucas can't seem to be able to pull the original negatives out of his ass for "A New Hope".

In the future it will become even easier for old negatives to become lost and be "replaced" by new altered negatives. This would be a great loss to our society. Our cultural history must not be allowed to be rewritten.

Yeah...show me any retailer, online or brick and mortar, that has a copy of the original, unedited versions of the original trilogy. Since the old VHS tapes are degrading to the point of not being worth it, the only way I can see the original copy is to find someone who has the old Laserdisk version on ebay and then try to find a working laserdisk player.


And frankly those are harder to find than a fart in a jacuzzi.

There is nothing to stop American films, records, books, and paintings from being sold to a foreign entity or egotistical gangsters and having them change our cultural heritage to suit their personal taste.

Hell! For that matter there is nothing stopping YOU either.

I accuse the companies and groups, who say that American law is sufficient, of misleading the Congress and the People for their own economic self-interest.

I accuse the corporations, who oppose the moral rights of the artist, of being dishonest and insensitive to American cultural heritage and of being interested only in their quarterly bottom line, and not in the long-term interest of the Nation.

The public's interest is ultimately dominant over all other interests. And the proof of that is that even a copyright law only permits the creators and their estate a limited amount of time to enjoy the economic fruits of that work.

And how many people have been screaming about the "Greedo shooting first" edit that you have violently ignored? There are hundreds of T-shirts, web sites, forums, and letter writing campaigns all complaining about it and you do the whole "Talk to the hand" bit to them.


Let me expand on that a little bit. In the original, Han Solo was a scoundrel. A smuggler that only really looked out for number one. Himself. He was as much a part of the culture in Mos Eisley of "A retched hive of scum and villainy". Him shooting Greedo to save his own ass was the beginning of his story. through out the trilogy you get to see Han evolve into someone who starts looking at the bigger picture and starts letting in people he cares about. Leia certainly as a love interest, but Lando, Luke and others as his circle of friends. And he stops reacting and looking out for himself and actively joins the rebellion and leads a team that was crucial in the destruction of the second Death Star.


Making Greedo shoot first takes that away from Han and his development from scum to hero of the Alliance.


Not to mention having Greedo miss at that range made him look like he had to be a cock-eyed, half stoned twit that shouldn't be allowed anything more dangerous than a marshmallow.


Seriously watch it! There is no way you can miss THAT badly at that range. Anyone who has held a gun knows this. If you don't like or own guns...do this. Take your fingers and make a gun with them. Sit across a small table from someone, look them in the eyes and "point" the "gun" at them without aiming. Now look down. Are you pointing at their chest or are you pointing one foot over and one foot to the left of their left shoulder?


Odds are you're closer to their chest than Greedo was.

There are those who say American law is sufficient. That's an outrage! It's not sufficient! If it were sufficient, why would I be here? Why would John Houston have been so studiously ignored when he protested the colorization of "The Maltese Falcon?" Why are films cut up and butchered?

I don't know why you were there back then but you need to lose the brain-eating flannel and go back there again.

Attention should be paid to this question of our soul, and not simply to accounting procedures. Attention should be paid to the interest of those who are yet unborn, who should be able to see this generation as it saw itself, and the past generation as it saw itself.

That's a telling point there. My step-children do not know what Mos Eisley looked like to me the first time I saw it and likely never will. To my kids Greedo shot first and think I'm daft for being pissed about it. And when the children of my friends now born get to see Star Wars, they'll yet another new movie and wonder what we're talking about the past DVD release.

I hope you have the courage to lead America in acknowledging the importance of American art to the human race, and accord the proper protection for the creators of that art--as it is accorded them in much of the rest of the world communities."

And I hope you Lucas will one day have the courage to look back at this statement THAT YOU MADE and reflect on what you have done to a major milestone in Geek Culture.

Bert and Ernie - The reprisals

I swear, my last post hasn't even been up long enough for the pixels to dry and some jackhole decides to rip into me. Doesn't even have the courage to do it publicly either. And no it's not this Rob chap I've talked about before.

Nope some anonymous dweeb decides to rip into me about being against "outing" Bert and Ernie. Says that I am homophobic, intolerant, and just not a nice person to the LGBT community.

Well Mr. or Mrs. "Person with obviously made up and throwaway email account name", let me address your concerns.

My Homophobia. There is a person who is gay. This man is a brother to me in all but blood. To my wife and I, this man is family. There is nothing we wouldn't do for him if it is within our power so to do. We love him that much. When we hang out, he frequently slips in to "Gay" mode (he is not one who trips "Gaydar" normally) and I will get into the silliness of the moment and join him in acting gay. I frequently disturb my wife by acting gayer than he does. Hell I disturb him and he's the gay one.

Also my wife and I own a pair of "It's ok to be Takei" t-shirts which fundraise for George Takei's favorite Gay Rights charities.

I've even gone as far as to reevaluate my opinion of Lady Gaga. I am still not fond of her songs (apart from Poker Face which is quite catchy in a techno-esq kind of way) and I think that her videos and her stage presence is a little over the top for me...but I can not fault her stance on Gay Rights and I do like the message contained in her "Born this Way" song.

So homophobic is something I'm not.

Intolerant? Get a grip. See the section of homophobia above. I also have a step-daughter who is white and is currently dating a nice black man. They're likely to get married when she gets out of college they're that close. I expect to be corrupting their mixed-blood child when they get around to making me a grandparent. The only thing I am intolerant of is people like you who decide to get up in my face (well as close to it as you can come over the safety of the internet) and call me names for no goddamn reason.

And I am not intolerant or objecting to the concept of having a gay couple on Sesame Street. After seeing what they did about death, I welcome them trying to cover the whole "I have daddies or two mommies" bit. I'd love to see them treat a gay couple as if they were just plain normal folk because they ARE plain normal folk.

Not a nice person? Well that's debatable. When my ire is raised, I can be a mean and vindictive person. I can think of all sorts of things to do to a person that is quite mean and nasty yet still being in the confines of the law. I love posting pictures of douchebag parkers in my facebook. I love posting asshole customers on Customers Suck's website (Check them out and look for Mongo). I'll, in a face to face encounter. even resort to verbally destroying you for my amusement.

So I can be nasty. I can be "Whipping puppies with live rattlesnakes" mean and cruel.

Send me another email from your REAL address and let's see who walks away and who is a quivering puddle of neurotic piss left to fester and rot on the floor.

Bert and Ernie

There is this petition going around about how Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street should come out of the closet and get married.

I'm of two opinions on the matter.

Part of me says "Why?" After all, growing up Bert and Ernie were just two characters who shared an apartment and bickered with each other, largely due to the two radically personalities. Growing up I never put any thought into it as to why they were living together. I just took it as written and laughed at their antics and learned the lessons they taught.

Largely that you can be of two differing personalities and still get along.

But as an adult, now I can think of these things and look at the two of them with another, less innocent eye and I can see where that it is rather odd. Even as simple roommates to share the rent...both of them in the same bedroom is a bit odd. But again there is the flip side that you never see anything resembling affection. Friendship certainly (if not I think Bert would have long since killed Ernie) but not affection like what you'd see in a couple. Not to mention that while Bert as a character seems mature enough to be in a relationship, Ernie seems too immature, too childlike to be in a relationship of that level, homosexual or otherwise.

So again that pert of my brain says "Why bother? Why not just let them continue being what they appear to be on the surface...friends. After all most of the Muppet characters are superficial, surface level personalities that were created to be that way in order to teach a lesson or two."


But there is the other side of my personality. The side that remembers how they dealt with the death of an actor on the show. They did not gloss over Mr. Hooper's death. They didn't replace him, they didn't say "Oh he retired and is living in Florida" or any of that bullshit. They made us kids look death square in the eyes and realize that this is what happens at the other end of our allotted span of years and that it is as much a part of life as seeing a baby born.

Much of my philosophy about death got its start with Mr. Hooper. That early on in my life I understood that death is the end of our existence here on Earth save for the fond memories of those we leave behind.

Or Linda. There was a deaf woman who was striving to exist in the world of the hearing. A woman with an obvious disability who was still as much a part of the Street's life as Gordon and the rest of them. Again my perceptions of the disabled came from seeing that just because they have something malfunctioning doesn't mean that they are different from the rest of us in their wants, desires, and ambitions in life.

Hell in South Africa where HIV is prevalent, they have a Muppet that is HIV positive. Granted this is a little silly, but you have to give credit where credit is due for the attempt at showing that an HIV infected person is not some evil plague carrier that much be killed with fire (or at the very least...shunned).

So the other side of my personality says that having Bert and Ernie coming out and revealing that they are partners would not be that bad of a thing. That it would help children understand that homosexuality is not the collection of baby-buggering bastards that the religious right (which is often neither) make them out to be.

Funny thing about blogging. As one collects one's thoughts, often times another possibility comes to mind.

My new honest opinion is that they need to keep Bert and Ernie as they are. What they ought to do is to get a homosexual couple to "move in" to the Street and have an adopted child or a child that is biologically the offspring of one half of the couple. That way you can have the whole "I have two Mom's or two Dad's and I'm as loved as if I had one of each" thing going there.

Some may think I'm putting too much thought into it. But in my defense...the people who originated this petition must have done so as well.

Which of us is more disturbed? I'll leave that to the rest of ya.

Octo-Mom

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This is amusing

Want a chuckle? Go back and look over my blog from the beginning. Not my posts, but starting from [this blog link] and working forward he has systmatically gone through my posts and made comments.

This person was a friend of mine and a member of our Firefly Universe, pen and paper Role Playing sessions (using GURPS 4^th Edition Rules). But as our time together wore on it became plain to see that our  views on politics and how the world at large should work are very much at odds.

I will not go into details on the matter. To put it simply I believe that the Government should work one way, and he believes that it should work a completely different way. 

But the final rift formed shortly after he moved away, when he said something that really got on my last nerve. My wife and I have a few political hot buttons that you really do not want to touch. He pressed it and he pressed it hard. That was the moment that my wife and I decided that compiled with the other bizarre quirks of his personality that he is just not compatable with who we are.  So I went and committed the cardinal sin of (cue dramatic music) un-friending him from Facebook.

Yes I could have done it differently but I was having a really bad day, I had to deal with a bunch of Doctors who were being technophobic buttheads who couldn’t figure out how to create a password with Capital letters, lowercase letters and some numbers.

So here is Rob with his opinions and harping on about something that has been proven to the satisfaction of the legal system (yet he still didn’t buy it) and it just hit my last nerve. So as I mentioned above, I (cue dramatic music) un-friended him from Facebook and I started to violently ignore him.

Well this offended him so much that he decided to systematically go through my posts here in my blog and post comments wherever he felt was fitting. He would post things that were said by me and posted them out of context.

That one amuses me since he is frequently complaining how the liberal media does the same damn thing.

But he would also post comments about things that he disagrees with me about and he’s doing it in such a way that makes me look like a colossal butt head.

So what to do what to do.

I could block him and remove his posts but that plays into one of his comments he made on my blog where he fully expects me to do that. Sort of giving him the morallistic satisfaction of being right.

I could do nothing and just ignore him, but then there are people who may come along later and wonder what the deuce is going on.

Or I could do what Iam doing. Pointing out what he is doing since I’m sure he honestly expects no one to read all the way back to my very first post on my blog. And I’ll even go one step further. I’ll admit that in some cases he is right.

Yes folks, I can be a bit of an asshole some times. Who doesn’t. I’m sure that at some point even Ghandi got really pissed at someone being an unreasoning jackass. I’m reasonably positive that at some point Mother Theresa had some bad PMS and wanted to rip the head off of some twatwaffle. Everyone has moments where they lash out at someone. It may be intentional, it may be a simple knee-jerk reflex when someone drops that last straw onto the camel’s back. We all do it. We may feel bad afterwards, we may not (depending on the situation), but it does happen. And Rob himself is obviously not immune. He from May 20^th of this year to May 28^th, trolled my blog and thought that the proper thing to do was to rip into me.

Let’s see. What about some of my other flaws. Ooh! I’m set in my beliefs. Unless someone can come along and come up with a compelling reason why I’m wrong, I’ll stick to my beliefs. Gee, waitaminit, other people do that as well. Political groups, Churches, Private organizations, the man and woman on the street…you name it they all are pretty well set in their beliefs. Rob is as firm in his beliefs as I am, as other people can be. Where’s the difference?

I have a catchphrase that gets overused. Yes I like commenting about shoving an agave cactus in the anus of people who are unreasoning buttheads. Yes I’ll use “Gorram” from the Firefly TV Series a lot instead o saying “Goddamn”. Yes I call people “Twatwaffles”. Yes I can hold a conversation with my friends using little more than lines from movies and pop culture that fit the situation. You think I’m the only one in the universe that does that? That out of nearly 7 billion semi-evolved simians on this planet, that I am the only one who quotes and paraphrases movies? That out of the population of the gorram planet that I’m the only one who says something that annoys someone else?

I am inconsistant in some of my beliefs. I can say one thing one week and then turn around and say something the next. Is this hypocracy? Possibly. It could also be that I have learned something to change my mind, or simply a dumbass moment where I completely got wrapped up in my rant that I misspoke, not realized it and then said something different. Hey! Guess what? Shit happens. It’s called a “Blonde Moment”, “Senior Moment”, “Brain Fart” or any number of euphimisims for “I @#$%ed up”. Again, I am one example out of nearly 7 billion members of my species. I am certain that I am not the first nor am I likely the last.

I have my flaws. But people know me and know my flaws and are still my friends in spite of them.

So here it is. Mr. Rob , I am not going to block you. I am not going to delete your comments. In fact I welcome your commentary. It amuses me. It amuses me that I have such an impact on your life that you feel that you have to take a week to skulk through my blog looking for a chance to get your little digs in. It amuses that you are doing this on a board where the vast majority of my readers know me personally and a number of them know you. I’ll leave judgement to them.

So feel free to poke at me. I grew up as a nerd in the public school system and I survived. There is little anyone else can do to top that.

I'm going to be a rebel.

I am going to think for myself.

There is a movement afoot to protest Walmart (yet again) by having people NOT shop at Walmart for a day (their 49th anniversary).

I'm not going to join that protest. Why? Because I can think for myself and in my own research I have learned a few things.

1. Telling people to not shop somewhere for a day DOES FUCK ALL!

For those not familiar with British expressions, "Does Fuck All" is roughly the same as "Doesn't do Jack Shit"

You hear about these protests a lot for Gas Stations and their parent companies (or at least their Gas Suppliers). So you declare Wednesdays as "Do Not Buy Gas Day!". You want to know what happens? People will either fill up the Tuesday before so they don't run out, or they look at their gas gauges and decide that they can make it till Thursday. So all the gas that isn't sold on Wednesday is STILL being sold during the week.

What have we done? Not a fucking thing. All you have done is created a statistical anomaly that has no net change in the monthly financial figures. The same amount of gasoline is sold that month and so no one at Exxon, Shell, BP, etc is going to go "HOLY FUCKING SHIT! NO ONE BOUGHT GAS ON WEDNESDAY!!! THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!!!"

If they even SEE the anomaly, they're going to look at it, look at the monthly number, shrug and move on.

This is the same for Walmart. Since they sell groceries at the supercenters, people will either buy their groceries the day before or the day after. Again all you are doing is creating an interesting statistical blip that the average person is not going to see. Sure some local level managers might sweat it for a little while but when they see he weekly totals they're going to shrug and move on.

In fact that may even backfire on the consumers as the management might think "Oh well, Wednesdays are a crap day so I'll bring in less people to run the registers and you'll get to sit in the one open lane with 30 people  with full baskets in front of you and your one item.

2. Walmart is not the culprit in the death of the Mom and Pop stores. Take my specialty here. Computers. Mom and Pop repair shops are folding. Is it because of Walmart? No. It's because of the computer companies making computers so cheap that it's cheaper to buy a new one rather than pay to have it cleaned of the virus. I can get a computer for $300 with a monitor. That same computer costs $300 at HP.com

Same price in both places. So...if Walmart is not dictating the price of that item, how is their fault?

Do you want to know what's killing the Mom and Pop? The consumer is. Yes...YOU. Remember pre-ordering Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows from Amazon so it would be sitting on your doorstep when you got home from work the day it was released?

Or "Damnit! I let the magic smoke out of my camera. I need a new one. Ooh! There's a feller on Ebay that has it for $60 cheaper than I can get it from the stores. It's reconditioned but has the same warranty as a new one. WooHoo! Where's my PayPal password?"

Before the age of the Internet you had to find a store that might carry a product. For example a Bodhrán (Celtic Hand Drum). You would have to look in the Yellow Pages for the local music stores, go to them, have them look up in their supplier's catalogs, maybe have to wait until they call them, check around to a few more stores, and eventually put down a deposit and have them order one with their next shipment.

So you might have to wait a few weeks.

Today you just hit Google.com, click on the "Shopping" link, and search for "Bodhrán" and get dozens of places that you can order one and have it shipped overnight to you.

Who needs a real life music store? Who needs a real life book store? Who needs glass-front stores when the world is your shopping mall?

And I am not judging. I am equally guilty of this. With my iPhone, my first thought when I can't find something at the stores or if I discover a need when I'm somewhere else is to fire up the browser and see if I can find it online.

Walmart is not to blame. It's the fact that with the new technology, the old paradigm of the single-purpose store run by mom-and-pop is not a viable way to survive in this day and age unless you have some way to attract people to the store. Either by having something that you really want to talk to a knowledgeable person about (certain crafts) or is something that is needed that the big box stores do not carry and many people can't wait the 24 hours for it to arrive.

3. Walmart's prices. I'm poor. If it was just me, my salary would have me living comfortably. But I have a wife and I a step daughter and her beau living with us as well as two other step children who come over and eat flipping great amounts of food. That's upwards of 6 people at a meal and I'm the only income.

I can't afford to protest Walmart. Basket vs Basket I'm looking at a savings of $75 by shopping at Walmart than at any other grocery store. Many people in the country at this moment in time with the economy in the toilet are in my boat. One income, possibly vastly reduced than what it once was, supporting a family.

That $75 savings a trip may mean the difference between paying a bill or not paying a bill for a family. That $75 a trip saved over the year may just make Christmas a little more merry.

So with my research I decided that I am not going to be a mindless sheep following the flock. This protest is pointless, will achieve nothing, and is just one more example of the mindless mental masturbation of the slack-tivists out there who thought it up.

Want to help the economy? Let's get off out our asses and pressure our elected officials to stop letting American Companies outsource every-fucking-thing to the third world. Pressure our congress men and women to start putting import taxes on anything that was not made in the borders of the US. To pressure our leaders to try and come up with incentives to bring jobs back to the US.

Sitting on our flabby asses and clicking a link is not going to do a fucking thing for anything or anybody. Clicking that "Join us in our protest to stop clubbing baby seals" link isn't going to stop some assclown with a tire-iron from bashing in the head of a baby seal. Clicking that "people are starving in [insert third world nation]" link is not going to feed one grain of rice to anyone.

You want to do some good? Stop being a slacktivist and actually do something.

How to watch a movie for free over the internet.

Since this question comes up a hell of a lot on Yahoo Answers, I decided that I would post this nice and handy DIY guide for downloading a movie for free over the internet.

1. Find a site that has it for free

2. Click on said link

3. Download the file

4. Wait forever for it do download since the site is swamped by every other cheapskate who wants to see it for free

5. Download a good antivirus/anti-malware program to clean the crap that the file infected your computer with since it wasn't really the movie

6. Either bribe a friend or pay Geeksquad to clean your computer since the virus is too cagey to be caught by the cheapass freebie virus program you downloaded.

7. Find another site that has it for free

8. Click on the link to that site

9. Download the file

10. Curse and download the Bit Torrent client since you either don't have one or have an older version that is not supported any more

11. Wait for another forever for the file since every one downloading it too much of a cheap prick to allow anyone else to tap their bandwidth and so are not actually seeding the file but is instead being a bunch of scrummy leeches

12. Click on the file downloaded

13. Curse because you don't have a compression utility that supports the .rar format

14. Download Winrar and uncompress it.

15. Click on the movie file

16. Go into a murderous rampage and kill a small animal because you don't have a compatible media player.

17. Download the media player suggested by the file’s information text file

18. Click on the movie file again

19. Curse the makers of the internet for a billion generations because while the player supports that format, the movie was encoded in a really obscure and rarely used (except by the prick who recorded the gorram thing) codec

20. Download the codec and install it

21. Click on the fucking movie once more

22. Watch the first 15 minutes of the film

23. Be really annoyed that since it is a geek attracting film that there is a theater of Wolverine wannabes waving their fake claws in front of the camera whooping and hollering in the throws of nerd-gasm.

24. Get pissed off that the quality is not unlike what you’d expect if you were to make a child drink a quad-damage espresso laced with a package of pixy-stixs and then hand them an iPhone to record the movie

25. Start making a vein in your forehead throb because every now and again the theater people who are looking for people recording the film, are causing said people to hide their cameras causing you to miss that scene where Mystique’s nipple slips out

26. Blow chunks when during #25 above, you get to see the state of the theater floor. Gum, half dried soda, soggy popcorn, and Ooh! Used condoms.

27. Give up and pay the Twenty Bucks to go and see the movie in the theaters and get the popcorn/soda combo.

Pearl Harbor Karma bullshit

There is a growing movement afoot that believes that what Japan is going through right now is karmic payback for the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Can you believe that shit?

Let's look at the numbers.

In the attack on Pearl, we lost 2,402 Military Personnel and 57 Civilians.

In the entire Pacific Campaign we lost a total of 17,861 Military Personnel.

In the entirety of WWII (Pacific Campaign and European Theater combined) we lost 416,800 Military Personnel and 1,700 Civilians.

Wow! That's a lot of people dead. Let's see the Japanese losses.

It's hard to count exactly how many they lost to us directly since they were fighting many battles with China and Southeastern Asia, but from what I can determine from the Historical documentaries and websites I can find, in the Pacific Campaign they lost 1,140,570 Military in the Pacific Campaign.

So for every Soldier, Sailor and Marine that they killed at Pearl, they lost 474.8 men in return. For every Soldier, Sailor and Marine that they killed in the Pacific Campaign, they lost 63.8 men.

So we're looking at nearly a 64-to-1 ratio.

Looking at the war in total, they lost 2,120,000 Military and between 500,000 and 1,000,000 civilians.

Crunching those numbers against our losses in the whole war on both fronts, that means that for every American man, woman and child killed in the entirety of the Second World War, they lost between 6.2 and 7.4 of their own.

So Mr. and Mrs. "Japan is finally getting payback for Pearl Harbor", They've already paid for it by the time the war ended. Even if you factor in the belief that many pagans have of "everything being returned times three" they've still paid for it at least twice over.

THIS IS NOT KARMA!

This is simply a tragic occurrence.

And before you go ahead and blather on about how smugly superior you are, think of this. Your fellow Americans when Katrina hit New Orleans decided to loot the shit out of everything. Now I know that someone is going to point out that poor family who were looting some clean clothes and telling their story in front of the news cameras, but did you notice the fuckers stealing the TV's, Gaming Consoles, Computers, and other electronics in the background? Huh? Did you?

Or how about your fellow Americans who decide that when some judge hands down a verdict that is not well received by the community that was wronged by the defendant. Ever wonder why they as "Morally superior Americans" decided that the best thing to do was to riot, loot, and pillage that same community that was wronged in a way that was a thousand times worse than the defendant ever did?

Rodney King got the shit beaten out of him. The community suffered 53 deaths, thousands of injuries, and roughly One Billion dollars in property damage thanks to a six-day riot.

Or how about all the times that the fans after a major win at a sporting event will pour out of the stadiums and start tear-assing through the streets looting, rioting, and carrying on cranky in general.

Now let's look at "Japan the evil collection of heathens". Huh? Look at that. No riots. Grocery stores reduce prices, people are orderly, vending machine owners are giving away free drinks, and everyone is doing their part to help out in what is a horrific situation.

Gee! Not so morally superior anymore are we?

As someone said on a CNN blog...

"Two words: National pride. The people of Japan love their country and do what is best for the nation, unlike the United States where we love our country and do what is best for ourselves."

I think that covers it pretty well.

So if you still think that Japan is suffering this because of Karma over Pearl Harbor, you go and keep thinking that. Your words are making it easier to tell who the fools are.

Yahoo! Answers needs to be shut down.

I'm through playing the game.

What's my beef with Y!A? Simple. They have no structure in place to properly report violations to their Terms of Service and Community Guidelines that in any way shape or form could even begin to be considered "Fair".

Recently I received three violation notices. One of them was someone reporting me for telling them to stop asking the same question over and over ad-infinitum every 30 seconds.At first it was a question about someone who was a little freaked out over Spontaneousness Human Combustion. They wanted people to give examples of how it couldn't happen.

I did...the FIRST time.

Three days. Three days of it popping up every few hours, sometimes every few minutes. I reported it as Spam which is clearly marked on the report page as a violation of Community Guidelines. Nothing. None of her posts were removed and they didn't stop coming in every few hours.

And it's word for freaking word. It's a cut and paste job.

So I post in frustration that they need to stop and that people have answered the question already. That *I* had answered the question.

I got the notice that they pulled my question and deducted 10 points from my account.

The second violation was more of the same. It was someone asking who is getting their tax refund on such and such date. Every 10 minutes. I did the same thing. I reported it and nothing happened. I reported them ALL...nothing happened. I answered to tell them to stop and let people answer the question instead of violating the Community Guidelines and spamming people.

Guess who lost another 10 points and got the finger waggled at? I'll give you a hint. It wasn't the other guy.

This last time REALLY pissed me off. Yet another person freaking out about 2012 and the supposed end of the world.

There are times I almost wish it would end just so I could spend my last moments flipping off the dregs of humanity and telling them what I really think of the pathetic little cock-stains.

I have a cut and paste answer explaining the Mayan Long Count calendar. I've used it several times. This time I got the message from the Y!A thought police saying that I was spamming and thus in violation of the Community Guidelines.

I thought to myself that they have GOT to be kidding. So I contest that one...and lost. It seems that using a cut and paste answer is in violation of some passage hidden in the rules and regulations by some esoteric DaVinci Code like method that only the Illuminati know. Yet the cut and paste questions are not.

And even the ones that I didn't answer and just flat out reported. None of them were EVER pulled.

• What is the best blunt instrument to bash in a cat's skull?
• I just chased down my dog with my car and ran it over. It's still alive. What do I do now?
• What is the best lubricant for anally mastering a 12-year boy?
• That one was on long enough to have had a "Best Answer" selected by the asker when someone stated that Astroglide or other water based lubes were too thin and would cause chaffing.
• Best ways to hack someone's World of Warcraft (or Xbox Live, PS3 or other gaming) account.
• How to hire a hooker and not get nailed by the police.
• What's the best lighting to use to grow pot indoors.

Basically, if it was ever mentioned in the Community Guidelines as being a no-no...I've rarely seen them pulled and certainly none of the ones I've reported.

Or how about the flipside to this. All the questions I wasted my time and effort to give a good and honest answer, only to have the question pulled because someone ELSE reported it.

• How to properly cycle an aquarium
• My car is making a thump-thump-thump noise that's shaking the car.
• Having been through that recently I gave a good answer starting with the simple fix of "Check your tires for a busted belt"
• What is the best gaming PC?
• Why is my cat doing [insert crazy yet normal cat behavior here]?

And many many more. 

There is no rhyme nor reason to what gets pulled and what doesn't. This is why I think it's time for Yahoo! Answers to go the way that Google Answers did. It's time to end the failed experiment called Y!A.

So I say to you that if you are using it, perhaps it's time to stop. Spread the word around. Pass this to your friends and have them pass it to their friends. Let's try to get people to stop using it. Grass roots style. 

Let's see how Yahoo! likes having a service that has been reduced to a haven for the "My 6-year old daughter walked in on me while I was anally raping her kitten to death. How much do you think the therapy bills will be?" questions.

Slacktivism.

I love the English Language. We can invent words at will. Not every language gets to do that unless they get the blessing of at least 5 Popes (or something). Sometimes they're stupid, sometimes they're thinly veiled and politically correct ways to insult others. But sometimes, words like Slacktivism cut right to the heart of something and describe it well.


Slacktivism is a portmanteau of the words "Slacker" and "Activism". And it pretty well covers the meaning of the word within the spelling of the word.


Slacktivism is what you find on Facebook, MySpace, and in about a bazillion spam e-mails that get bounced around the internet. 


It is the process of mental masturbation that people practice when they see a link to something they care about that says click here to stop people from anally violating baby seals (or something).


Sorry folks, but unless there is a Predator Drone ready to be activated by that mouse click to seek out the butt buggering seal rapists and blow their peckers into burger meat...you're just jerking off.


Why do I compare it to masturbation? Because there are many parallels. In both the person is doing a repetitive action with the intended goal of feeling better after it's all over. 


Don't see it? Let me further clarify. You go on the web and you check your Facebook. You see some sad story about how an abused, but still friendly dog was burned by some bad people. This makes you very sad. You want to feel better about the situation so you read further and see "Click here to make a difference". You do so and see "Your profile name has been added to the petition to stop the county from euthanizing this poor poor puppy." You think you've done good and so you feel better.


But what you don't realize is that no one who reads a petition is going to accept the fictitious profile name of "He
_who_teabags_noobs_1138" or "Party_girl_who_puts_out_for_strange_men_while_she's_drunk_off_her_ass_at_clubs_1701" as a valid name on that petition. So the action that was taken did nothing more than what you can accomplish by diddling your naughty bits with the intent of felling good when you orgasm.


The only difference is that (hopefully) the slactivism mouse click didn't require a tissue afterwards.


So is it pointless to do anything on the World Wide Web? Hell no.


There is a website called Ernie's House of Whoop Ass. Don't go there if you are at work or offended by pictures of dubious content. But this is also the guy who does LBEH.org. A charitable organization that gathers up donation of money and frequent flier miles in order to help soldiers get home for the holidays or other important events in their families lives. People who go to that site and actually donate money or the Frequent Flier miles are doing something real. Their actions on the 'net are having a real and measurable impact on the lives of others in a positive way. 


This same guy also helped a badly burned dog. He whipped his readers into a frenzy and they donated the money needed to pay for the operations needed to save this dog's life. This dog lived, was adopted, and now goes around and helps her new owner raise money for animal shelters. Again a positive result brought about by people who really did something.


But some may be thinking "Gee. That's all about money and I don't have much to give". And that's fine. Times are tough. But instead of all the time that they spend in front of a television or in front of a computer, there is a hell of a lot that people could do in that time. There are organizations all over the place that don't need so much in the way of money as they do in manpower. Cleaning up the environment by getting a bunch of people to clear out the garbage clogging up a stream. Taking a bunch of junked components and turning them into functional computers for people who can't afford them. The list is endless. 


So stop clicking on the links and thinking you're saving the world. Go out and find something real that you can do that actually does something good for the world. 

Holidays and Cultural identity.

I've had it. Recent news articles about how some Jehovah's Witness family got pissy and managed to get Colorado public schools to do away with Valentine's Day and the card exchange. have got me so goddamn furious that I'm considering possible ways to strike back against people like them.

Seriously. You can't say "Merry Christmas" without pissing off dozens of people who scream "Well what about the Jewish Community" or "What about the African-American Community and their Kwanzaa?"

Fuck you in the ass with a broken glass ornament Angel Christmas tree topper.

And I'm not saying that about the Jewish people or the African Americans who celebrate Kwanzaa. This is a country that at one point prided itself on cultural diversity. If they want to celebrate Hanukkah that's fine. Kwanzaa more your speed? Great! Wonderful!

But God Damn it I am going to celebrate Christmas in my house and if you try to take that away from me then we are going to have words. And by we I mean you (the person trying to take my holiday away), me (Hi!), Stretch (my rubber chicken), your urethra and a half-inch Forstner Bit. 

You don't want to know what the rubber chicken has in mind for you. His "hobbies" disturb me and so I don't pry.

The part that gets me so damn rilled up is the fact that I have to listen to "Cultural Diversity" day in and day out. I get it from work. I hear it taught in the schools. I see it talked about on the news. It's everywhere I look. Someone somewhere is bitching about how is they are offended because someone else is oppressing their cultural identity. "How are they doing this?" you may ask.

Apparently by celebrating their own cultural identity.

Yes folks. These people are not offended because someone is trying to stop them from being who they are. These people are getting offended because others are being who they are around them.

So I get tired of it. I get tired of hearing about how the [culture] celebrates [event] by doing [something] and how I'm a bad person for not finding it fascinating. I'll admit that I don't know the first thing about Kwanzaa other than it's an African-American celebration. I'll admit that my understanding about Hanukkah is limited and I still have a hard time figuring out where the Dreidel fits in to the whole equation. I'll admit that it took me 35 years before I knew what Cinco De Mayo was beyond the 5th of May.

But while some of the other cultures and their celebratory habits were of little interest to me, I never once said "Miserable fuckers! Why can't they celebrate what we celebrate in this country?"

And that's what these other people who are complaining have forgotten. This is the Unites States of America and we have a cultural heritage of our own. That we have a cultural identity of our own. And I'll freely admit that it is a hodge-podge of everyone who came here. That some of the traditions that I hold dear are a mixture of just about every other country who has had their people put toes into the sand on our beaches in order to find a better life. 

I get that. 

I think that it is a wonderful thing that others have their cultural things that they celebrate. But if you come into this country then you had better expect that there are going to be people celebrating things that you do not and had better get used to the idea.

You want to come to the US and celebrate your traditions? That's wonderful! Here's a list of all the places that can host a gathering as large as you're expecting and at a reasonable price.

You want to come here and be offended that a tradition that we celebrate happens to fall in the same month as your celebration does and so in your mind must be stopped? Well let me call Stretch over and let's "discuss" it.

Gen-Mod hooplah.

Genetic Modification is something that I stand behind. Why? Because it has the potential for solving a lot of the world's food issues.

For example. Corn has a tendency to be susceptible to fungal infestations. These fungi can ruin acres and acres of crops that are needed as feed for us humans in some way or another. Either directly feeding us, or by feeding the animals raised to be meat for us. So in order to prevent fungal infestations from ruining our crops, the traditional solution is to dump a shit load of man made chemical fungicides that are toxic to the fungi but not (hopefully) to us humans.

Something most of us would prefer not to happen but are either resigned to the fact or are happily unaware of the practice.

So let's say that genetic scientists notice that there is another grain plant that is resistant to this fungus naturally. This plant has a chemical compound running through it that kills off the fungi before it can set in and cause damage. This ability came about naturally and is in a food that we eat on a regular basis. Even "organic" varieties of this plant have this chemical. Totally natural and totally harmless to animals up to and including humans.

So the scientists sequence the plant to identify what genes are responsible for making this compound and insert it into the corn. After many attempts, they finally get the sequencing correct and now we have a variety of corn that is naturally resistant to the fungus and we have achieved that without having to dump a shit-ton of noxious chemicals on tomorrow's cornbread.

What is wrong with that?

This stems from a recent debate with an online friend of mine whom on face posted a petition to force the government to label foods as Gen-Mod. That sounds reasonable and I'm all for it. After all, the options are already out there for chemical and hormone free foods. It's called organic foods. Don't want Pesticide X in your salad? Buy organic. Want Bovine Growth Hormone free steak? Buy organic.

I'm sure that some of these same organic companies will start offering "as nature intended" products as well.

But I couldn't bring myself to join the petition. Why?

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=498168966858&id=16352069036

The title of this post starts off with "Let nature design her own blueprints" and the BIG HONKING sign that says NO GMO'S! Seriously. This is a 393x444 pixel image in screaming bright green.

I can not get behind someone who is saying a complete "no" to genetic modifications. Now when you have all the benefits that could come from this. Plants that do not need pesticides to repel harmful insects without killing off the bees needed to pollinate them. Or plants spliced with drought resistant species that can better dryer climates.

Or my favorite. How about an Algae that produce an oil that can be processed into fuel? This exists and has been tested. It has successfully been used as diesel fuel for automobiles, trucks, boats, trains using diesel-electric power plants, diesel generators...anything that can use diesel in fact. And that's not all! IT has also been converted into Jet Fuel and tested on a commercial aircraft. Yes, this stuff can make fuel that can power a 747 with no modifications to the engine. They took off with the test engine (one was the test engine, the other three were using the standard fuel) burning normal fuel to take off. Once at operating height they powered off the engine, switched the fuel feed to the Bio-Fuel and restarted the engine. Result? Power output was within normal range for that class of engine.

Now I grant you. The article brings up a good point. The Gen-Mod alfalfa in question is modded to be resistant to herbicides. This is so they can spray round-up on the field and kill off everything BUT the alfalfa. So in this case you're not talking about GMO to prevent the use of chemicals, but to increase the use.

To me that's not appealing.

But I still can not get behind the petition of some group who is whipping people into a frenzy over GMO's with an agenda clearly defined by the phrases "Let nature design her own blueprints" and "NO GMO'S"

To me this is akin to all the anti-stem cell research bull crap. Yes it is not cool to abort a fetus to harvest stem cells, but because of that one creepy aspect of SCR, there are bans in this country about harvesting stem-cells  from discarded placental material. You know the hunk of afterbirth that gets incinerated as medical waste? That chunk of material that could be used to save lives that GETS THROWN AWAY! Hell there are still laws about stem cells that are made from taking adult cells and reverting them into a stem cell state.
All because someone got the creepy oompa-loopa vibe over one possible way to harvest them.

That's like trying to ban high school football just because there are 0.13 deaths per 100,000 players per year.

I'm all for Gen-Mod. I'm against anything that makes people want to add more chemicals to foods. I'm all for truth in labeling. I'm against people trying to ban something before the risk vs benefit analysis has been done.