My Personal Anthem

Guttermouth - Pee in the Shower
YouTube is generally the easiest way to put music on the site, but sometimes you end up with really dumb videos just because you like the song. This may be one of those cases.

happy birthday to me

I turn 25 today. Birthdays have never been a very big deal to me. Ok some are cool, 16,18 and 21 come to mind, but generally I couldn't care less about birthdays. Everyone has one, it's nothing special, if someone didn't have a birthday, that would be something unique. At the same time it's a little depressing. Just like every birthday before it I woke up alone with no idea where my life is heading. Or worse yet it's not heading anywhere, my engine is running there's air in the tires but my transmission is shot, I try to get in gear and things just grind, I don't even care if its a forward gear anymore, reversing back to college would be better than sitting in neutral. I'm attempting to get into the dating world, that's also been depressing. I met one girl, she was insane. I met another she was a bit odd sorta attractive but I blew it with her once her psycho but more attractive friend flew into view, only to find out she had a boyfriend. Oh there's also tall crazy somewhat of an alky girl I know but I never even really attempted at that. There's also the cute redhead who works way to much and I never get to see, I'm Irish so I've got a soft spot for reds. Then theres the very quiet girl, I need to call her because there's no way she's going to take the initiative to call me, she's either more shy or just more awkward than I am. I'd like to say that she's cool but I've just never gotten her to say enough words to know either way. And then their is the depressing fact that I'm on this depressing journey because I found the one I've been looking for, I found her and she was everything I could ask for and more, she was perfect with one death-blow of a problem, she's not available. So happy birthday to me.

Oh seeing as that was an entirely uplifting piece I should point out that life's not all bad, when I walked to my truck this morning there were balloons tied to it. Still not sure who did that. I've got three cards, both sets of grandparents (yes I have all four) and my aunt's handmade card, and I got a call at midnight last night from my sister so she could be the first to say happy birthday. Then at work today I get three more cards and some co-workers want to take me to lunch but they won't tell me where and they don't want my best friend to come because they don't think he would appreciate it. Admittedly they have a bit skewed idea of what he would and would not appreciate but I'm still very confused. Tonight I'm going to see my parents, so yeah I have an amazing family, I work in the greatest office ever and really things are pretty decent. But if I'm still working here and still single next year I will go absolutely insane. So again happy birthday to me. And here's a song by The Vandals called Happy birthday to me.

A Jogging Flower

Ummmm... yeah its a sea lilly, its not really a plant, but no one thought it could run.
Seriously go here and watch this little video.

NNOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My favorite fictional accounts receivable supervisor was murdered. The great Herbert Kornfeld will be missed.

a lady

UPDATE: Due to the speed of the modern world this is over. Oh well, like I say down below, we're totally different anyway it probably wouldn't have worked out. No big deal, I'd rather get shot down before I get my hopes too high. I suppose I could just delete this post as its irrelevant now.

Normally I hold off on writing anything about romantic interests until there is some reason to thing that the interest is mutual. But I'm in a good mood so I'm goin with it. Theres a girl that I like and I'm not entirely sure why. We couldn't be more different. She's super-christian, hates evolution, conservative, and she's probably a republican but shes a nice person and she's very cute. There aren't many nice people that are available in this town so why not? This is obviously tied into my recent fling with the old flame to end all old flames, ever since that escapade I've been looking for some companionship, I've been single for a very very long time. I had pretty well given up on chasing women, I always got rejected eventually anyway so I just stopped trying. But that fling I mention gave me new hope, it gave me some much needed confidence to get back in the game, plus it reminded me of what I was missing. So why am I interested in someone 5 years younger than me She's 20 I turn 25 this week, that is ideologically my polar opposite? I don't know. She is pretty damn cute, thats obviously a big factor, I could easily be accused of thinking with something other than my brain. But I'm not stupid, I don't get interested in someone based solely on appearance, shes also a sweetheart. And maybe thats enough. I'll keep the world informed, although I'd be surprised if the world cares.

I'll get to world affairs later. Did anything big happen? Some horses ran in a circle and two guy beat each other up. I saw both minutes of the derby, I don't know who won the fight.

The Bar Scene

I'm not much of a fan of bars in general. Not because I'm against drinking, far from it, but standing around listening to bad music, shouting to friends who can't hear you while paying way to much for a beer is generally not my idea of a good time. If there is a concert going on then it fun, it's still the same problems but at least there is mosh pitting, and if EPD is playing I get free beer. But a friend convinced me to go out. It was actually fairly cheap because a friend was buying most of my drinks in exchange for doing some work on his car. So were havin a good time and I start bullshittin' with some girl, cute face but not great looking, but she seemed fun. We somehow ended up in an Epic Thumb War, which is about the only war I condone. So I'm making small talk with her and her friend when suddenly another friend of hers flew into the scene, she was quite attractive and was in no uncertain terms hitting on me. Not I'm not a particularly attractive man, plus at the time I wasn't a particularly sober man so when an attractive college student begins hitting on me, well lets just say I am susceptible to flattery. Now I wish I had stuck with the first girl, she was cool and upon sober reflection didn't seem nearly as insane as the girl hitting on me. Oh another not so minor reason that I wish I had continued to hit on the first girl instead of the girl hitting on me, the second girls boyfriend was there, and wanted to start hitting on me. This jacked little military dude came outta no where and shoved me against the fence (we were outside) and was ready to fight. I'm not a fighter, I got in a fight once in elementary school, I lost, thats my fighting history. Luckily we had mutual friends and they pulled him back and calmed him down. All his friend apologized and said, yeah he does that. I wish I could say that I would never associate with people like that but the truth is I do have one friends who had a tendency to try to solve his problems with his fists. I was glad he wasn't there because him and little military guy would have been a brutal fight and I vastly prefer avoiding fights and police and whatnot. Somewhere in that whole thing all three girls left. In one quick shove I went from walking out of the bar with three girls, to walking out with a bunch of dudes, definite downgrade. So where did we go after the bar? To guy-who-wanted-to-fight-me's place. He was typical former athlete turned military now off to college guy. Huge ego, large muscles but not so great with that ever important muscle that hides in your skull. Been put on a pedestal his whole life because he could play sports and some day soon he'll hit the real world and no one will care how fast he can run the 200. Basically he was a douche bag but I didn't feel like hoofing it back to my place so I hung out till my ride was leaving too.

So that was friday. cinco de mayo was fun too, but the only thing fun about that evening was going for a beer at friend of friends house only to have the guys middle aged neighbors show up in their underwear one had a football helmet on carring a mop, and I can't recall what the others did or didn't have on. It was interesting. So the guys were trying to think of how they could top that. Streaking was mentioned. I wasn't down with that. So then my friend who has seen 300 a few too many times made a tin foil loin cloth, arm and leg guards also of tin foil and grabbed a foam sword that was there. Everyone else headed the the neighbors to say hello and say it was funny, after a few quick laughs our friend in the tin foil comes leaping into the house in all his glory. It was funny. We went to the bar, I wore my sombrero and drank tequila, the bar was lame.

Friday

It's friday, the weather is perfect, I don't have to stop into work tomorrow like I thought I would, I just had a haircut, and I'm free in about two hours. In other words life is good.Ok so I'm still an occasionally depressed overweight underachieving twenty something with no vision for the future a dead end job a mediocre apartment I can't afford a crappy pick-up truck that I only have because it was a gift and I've never had a girlfriend, not a real one anyway. But other than the fact that my life generally sucks things are quite good at the moment. I have essentially zero stress, which is nice. My job is a dead end but it's the greatest place to work ever, ok the money blows but otherwise I work in the coolest office ever. Anyway this wasn't meant to be a personal rant. I was just explaining that today's a good day and so I'm posting some fun stuff. So here's a little something from the onion, one of the greatest websites ever. I love the Onion.

Bush Rejects Iraq Funding Bill

On Tuesday, President Bush vetoed a congressional bill authorizing financing for the war in Iraq contingent on a timetable for troop withdrawal. What do you think?

Ian Stipley,
Duct Cleaner
"I had him all wrong. I applaud him for refusing to fund this ill-conceived, mismanaged war."

Banksy Pics

I told you I'd get some pics.

UPDATE: Now I remember this guy. I knew his style looked really familiar, I did a post on my old local politics blog about this guy a long ass time ago. After this lovely sculpture turned up at disneyland.Have a great weekend everyone!

Banksy

I might have a new personal hero. If I had the artistic skill I would so be a copycat. Banksy is the name of Britain's most famous graffiti artist. He does anti-war anti-corporate anti-establishment pro-freedom graffiti that is so well liked two men were actually arrested for defacing one of his most famous works. Banksy on the other hand, no one knows who he is. or even that its a he, er well maybe someone knows that part. Much of his (I'll stick with that assumption, its better than saying"it") work is graffiti but there are also sculptures, in cast iron according to the web site. There is even a funny anticdote about their lookout being detained by the FBI because "a foreign looking guy" was hanging in front of the unmarked FBI building with a camera. Ok good call on the FBI's part, bad call was not noticing the one ton cast iron half a telephone booth being glued to the ground across the street. Ha. Some of my favorites are the ones on the giant wall. I have no idea where this wall is but it looks like it might be Israel/ Palestine but that is nothing more than a total guess. It's funny how some are very well done artistically, but some of the most powerful are the most basic, a wall that separates people with a dotted line and the scissors symbol.

I wanted to include some photos but they are all much too large to re-post here. I can probably find some later.

I also want to include in its entirety his Manifesto.

An extract from the diary of Lieutenant Colonel Mervin Willett Gonin DSO who was among the first British soldiers to liberate Bergen-Belsen in 1945.

I can give no adequate description of the Horror Camp in which my men and myself were to spend the next month of our lives. It was just a barren wilderness, as bare as a chicken run. Corpses lay everywhere, some in huge piles, sometimes they lay singly or in pairs where they had fallen. It took a little time to get used to seeing men women and children collapse as you walked by them and to restrain oneself from going to their assistance. One had to get used early to the idea that the individual just did not count. One knew that five hundred a day were dying and that five hundred a day were going on dying for weeks before anything we could do would have the slightest effect. It was, however, not easy to watch a child choking to death from diptheria when you knew a tracheotomy and nursing would save it, one saw women drowning in their own vomit because they were too weak to turn over, and men eating worms as they clutched a half loaf of bread purely because they had to eat worms to live and now could scarcely tell the difference. Piles of corpses, naked and obscene, with a woman too weak to stand proping herself against them as she cooked the food we had given her over an open fire; men and women crouching down just anywhere in the open relieving themselves of the dysentary which was scouring their bowels, a woman standing stark naked washing herself with some issue soap in water from a tank in which the remains of a child floated. It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not at all what we men wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don't know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for these internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the post mortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tatooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.

Source: Imperial War museum

F. U. Time Magazine

This is just plain dickish. First I gotta tip the hat to Pharyngula who's opinion on the mater is more relevant than mine. Anyway Time magazine rolled out its 100 who shape our world issue, I'm happy to say that the readers choice Richard Dawkins as being among that crowd. Here's the dickish part, who did they choose to write up his work? Was it a peer in the biology field where Dawkins stands near the pinnacle, no. Was it Sam Harris or one of the other "new" atheists for which Dawkins has gained so much notoriety of late, no. Who did they chose, (to steal PZ's wording because its the only appropriate ones) Michael Fucking Behe.
The intelligent design hack. If you want to see what Michael F. Behe looks like just look up Pseudoscience in your closest encyclopedia, if its not there then I recommend getting a better encyclopedia.

Dumbass

He's got some time before I decide to support him or not, but so far Obama looks pretty good. But I just caught wind of a stupid error on his part. Stupid not because it will cause any serious harm but because it could have very easily been handled in a way where everyone wins. Here's what happened, a few years ago some guy set up a Barak Obama Myspace page. He was in contact with the campaign folks, even gave them access to edit things. Everything was hunky dorry until recently when his number of "friends" spiked to 160,000, not to shabby. Then the campaign realized that they have an outsider able to speak for a presidential candidate with instant access to as many people as most TV pundits. So they decided they needed to take control. Ok thats totally understandable from the campaigns perspective. The person who created the page understood too and simply wanted to be reimbursed for their efforts, to the tune of $39,000, plus expenses (up to 10K). Now the campaign folks do have a point in that this person had done it on their own as volunteer and shouldn't ask for money after the fact. But seriously this person did you a big favor, they ask for some money, why not? Obama's hardly strapped for cash at the moment with nearly 20 million on hand. A simple thank you for all your help we really appreciate everything you've done, but you can understand why we need to take control, here is $50,000, and thank you again. That would be a whopping one quarter of one hundredth of one percent of your budget. I bet they could have talked him down if they were all that concerned anyway.

Again this is too minor to matter, but seriously why would any campaign manager allow any ill will towards their candidate when it could be solved so easily. If this guy is that big a fan they probably could have just brought him into the campaign, have him as an internet liaison or something. Anyway this has no affect whatsoever on my views of him as a presidential candidate but it does affect my thoughts of the people running his campaign.

Pat Tillman

Rest of the Cartoon.

Hat tip to Crooks and Liars, I love your site.

no more petting zoo's

What would happen if we had another mass extinction, the likes of which have happened several times in the history of the world, the last and most famous being the extinction of the dinosaurs. Now we don't know exactly what caused that extinction, there are several theories, but thats not the point of this so I'm not going to get into that. What I will talk about is what happens after a mass extinction. First off the dominant life forms, the top of the food chain dies, all of it. Then slowly over the next 10 million years or so life moves on and we get back to a similar level of biodiversity and truely dominant life forms. In other words if you happen to be a member of a dominant species, and if your reading this then I'll assume you are, then mass extinction is a bad thing. Mass extinction is when 50-95% of species are killed off.

When we hear of extinction, most of us think of the plight of the rhino, tiger, panda or blue whale. But these sad sagas are only small pieces of the extinction puzzle. The overall numbers are terrifying. Of the 40,168 species that the 10,000 scientists in the World Conservation Union have assessed, one in four mammals, one in eight birds, one in three amphibians, one in three conifers and other gymnosperms are at risk of extinction. The peril faced by other classes of organisms is less thoroughly analysed, but fully 40 per cent of the examined species of planet earth are in danger, including perhaps 51 per cent of reptiles, 52 per cent of insects, and 73 per cent of flowering plants.

Ok for anyone who is willfully ignorant of the interconnectedness of all living creatures the loss of even a single species (think bees) can be devastating. If you don't want to think about all those little critters that you don't really like anyway, then at least think about that last line. 73 per cent of flowering plants could be in peril.

Our technology is impressive, but we cannot survive alone on a barren planet. Although at the rate things are going we might just find out how long we can.

Think about that, the last time there was anything similar to this we need theories like a massive meteorite crashed to earth sending millions of tons of ash into the air, effectively blocking out the sun for years. The irony being their mass extinction could become the fuel for our own mass extinction. I hope people catch that, it wasn't too subtle.

politics of 300

Another movie review, these are way easier than book reviews. Normally I wouldn't bother reviewing a movie like 300, its an action film with no real political connection. Massive carnage is the name of the game here, as well as some very impressive CGI work. Normally I hate CGI but damn, they are getting good at it. Oddly what this film showed is that if you do everything but the people in CGI its more believable than having parts that are real and parts that are fake. Which does make sense, its the sudden change that makes it obvious. Plus using unnatural lighting gives everything an odd glow so that nothing looks exactly real anyway. So why am I reviewing this at all? Well I'm not going to tell anyone to go see it or not. You've seen the previews, if they looked appealing then go watch it because its exactly what you expect, and similarly if watching an hour of slaughter (there is some set up before hand) doesn't interest you then you'll hate this movie, don't watch it. I'm still a simple guy at heart so a good mindless action film can be fun, but there was some overtones that I simple couldn't shake. I just pictured a conservative watching it and loving the nationalistic fervor of the Spartans, never back down, never surrender. Die for Glory. The self-sacrifice in the name of freedom, over and over, the fight is for freedom. They would eat that shit up, thinking that this is a great parallel with the current war and how we need to be like the Spartans, never give up even when facing the most powerful army the world has ever seen. But there was something there that I'm sure a conservative would either miss because of lack of thought, or because of consciously avoiding the thought depending on the intelligence level. The Spartans are fighting to protect their
homes from the most powerful army the world has ever know, the leader of that army thinks himself a god. (or maybe he just thinks he talks to god?) You may see where I am going with this.While far from a perfect parallel, it seems to me that if this is an allegory for the Iraq war then we are not the mighty fearless Spartans, no we are The Persian Empire and Bush is Xerxes. Now that I've made a comment that goes completely against the normal view of this film I will point out that this is based on a comic book (which was loosely based on the historical battle of Thermopylae) in 1998, it is not a movie about this war. But like any war movie it can be seen through the lens of current events easily enough. Actually after reading that wiki entry it might be a more accurate depiction than I realized, at least in terms of the plot development. Even some of the cheesy lines are supposedly real, like when warned that the Persian arrows would be some numerous as to "blot out the sun" the spartan responded, "so much the better, we shall fight in the shade." Although it probably wasn't said in English. Anyway to finish up my political review of the film. It's not supposed to be about the current events but its easy to make that connection if you want. Once you do you can look at it as spurring on nationalism, never surrender in the face of evil. You can say that we are the proud and strong defending freedom if you want. But don't forget that if an Iraqi saw the film they might very well feel the exact same way, that while they might not be the greatest warriors in the world, they have been trained and fighting since birth, they are defending their homes, they are
fighting for their freedom, they are fighting against the most powerful army the world has ever seen, and finally their enemies leader might have a little bit of a god complex.

Oh I could also get into the fun of the corrupt old priests who have young girls sent to them and must be called on before laws are passed even thought they are simply relics of a superstitious past that is irrelevant today. I liked that jab at religion, although later on the same person who insulted those superstitious mystics thanked Zeus for sending a storm to wipe out many of the Persian ships. So its not a full on insult against religion, oh well.

The reality is that this is an action movie, its meant for entertainment purposes only and if you want to think about politics there's much better options, some of which I've recently reviewed.

God's Morality

I just hoped over to Planet Atheism for a moment, read half of a review for a book that sounds interesting (scientific look at where god comes from in the brain) then was followed up by two posts about the morality of the bible/ god.

The first was about the story of Abraham and Issac, pretty famous story about a dad who is ordered to kill his son by god and just before he does the deed god jumps out from behind the bushes and says, "just kiddin'" it's the old testament version of Punk'ed but luckily without Ashton Kutcher. Here's one of my favorite bits.

Consider the following: if you had a young child and a god, or an angel, told you, in no uncertain terms, and with no possibility of it being merely a dream or hallucination, to sacrifice — to kill — that child of yours, what would you do?

Theists, here — at least, the more fundamentalist ones, who believe that nothing is important in life except pleasing God — would say that they would kill their child, without hesitation. Because, to them, morality is obeying God, nothing more.

But suppose that it wasn’t God at all, but that you lived under a dictatorship, and it was the cruel dictator General Fang who ordered you to kill your child in front of him, to prove your loyalty to him and to the State. Or else.

What would you do? And, more importantly, what would you think of General Fang’s moral standing?

Theres more and the finish is close to a happy ending but I'd feel bad stealing the guys entire post so if you like that go check it out over at Way Of The Mind.

Ha ok after reading this one I realize that the one I just talked about is a spin off of this one from Atheist Revolution. Over all I'm a big fan of Vjack, but this isn't one of my favorite posts by him, its a bit disjointed, I know its odd criticism coming from the Rambler but thats my opinion and if you didn't want my opinion then what are you doing here? Any way his rant was about the same bible story. So I'm not going to quote it here. This will be funny on PA because there will possible be three posts on the same subject. So had better add something to make it worthwhile.....

I was going to give other examples of things that christians view as great deeds by god that are actually horrible, but I don't know too many bible stories. How about Noah's Ark, every little kids knows this one because its got animals. Kids don't worry about the moral of the story they worry about how they fit 300,000 different types of beetles on the ark along with all the elephants, lions, tigers and bears oh my. Plus they must have had a huge aquarium for all the fresh water fish, oh and if incest is wrong how did everyone come from that one family? So those are the simple problems with the story itself. Then there is the big problem of the morality of commiting a genocide that puts the hitler, stalin, pol-pot, and every other mass murderer to shame. I mean according to the story god kills every living creature on land save for one boat (although I suppose other boats probably survived too). And this is seen as gods mercy for allowing anyone to live. So should we praise hitler for not killing all the jews?

How about David and Goliath. Um actually I don't think this is a moral story so much as guy little guy takes down big guy. If you want to call it a moral to keep going in the face of great odds then fine its a moral story and not a bad one.

Sodom and Gomorrah, its like spring break all year, until some dude decided to rain fire and brimstone on the town. Another act of terrorism we see as being great. Then the one family that gets to leave has the one person who's actually human and turns to see what is happening, so what's her punishment for such an act? She gets turned into a pillar of salt. I'll give him that at least god was still creative in those days. But what kind of message is that to the world? Do as I say or I will destroy entire cities innocents and all, isn't that what Saddam was Hanged for? (I recently learned from a cute English teacher that hung is the wrong word, oh dammit hold back on the inappropriate comment)

Thats all the bible stories I can come up with right now. Two are quite immoral and one's alright, still ends in violence rather than something reasonable but sometimes violence is unavoidable so we can let that slide. So if we include Abraham then the bible is rockin' about a 25% morality rate. But of course that's not the best sample size. others have actually tried to figure out how much of the bible is good or evil, I just don't remember their numbers.

Peace out, and remember no matter what that old book says, genocide is bad.

Jose Padilla, Trial numba 2

Jose Padilla's trial. This is a very important case for the obvious reasons of exposing the conditions of Gitmo, and the status of "enemy combatants." Now I know plenty of like minded folks who are paying attention to this case. So I want to look at this from a little bit different perspective. Lets assume he's guilty. Which is a very real possibility. This is not a nice individual we are talking about here. He's not exactly the innocent victim. As a child of 15 he was convicted of murder, he might really be a terrorist. So again were going to assume he that he's guilty, yup he was planning on detonating a dirty bomb in the middle of Chicago, or some other major city. So we catch this terrorist, chuck his ass into gitmo, torture him or at least put him into some extremely inconsiderate circumstances, total isolation, no lawyers, no visitors, can't even leave his cell without those huge headphones and blacked out goggles. He confesses all the terrible things he was planning, great. Oh except you can't use any of that stuff you found out because you did it in illegal ways. Plus you don't really know that any of his confessions are true so they aren't even useful for the intelligence community. So after a few years you decide to actually give him a trial. But what happens. Most of your evidence get thrown out because it was gathered illegally. You can't put the guy on stand because he'd talk about what you did to him. Oh sure you can probably get him on a lesser charge of something, but if you wanted to take him down you would have been much better off just doing it the legal way in the first place. Unless of course you don't really think he's guilty.

Mission Still Not Accomplished

May 1, 2003

It's that bitter anniversary again. Four years ago they claimed that, "major combat operations in Iraq have ended." Yeah how'd that work out? I've wish I had some biting retort, I wish I had words that could express the anger of being lied into a war, lies I never for a moment believed, lies I was called un-american for not believing, then rather than ever once admitting a single mistake they simply kept piling more lies on top. Still now after four fucking years they are still telling us they just need a few more months and if we'd just sit down and shut up then we could see how right they are. Well fuck you very much sir, but you've had your time, we've given you a few more months enough times, the answer is known. You failed, your "policy" failed. We don't even know what victory means. The only vague vision anyone has is a pro-America democratic Iraq and the extermination of all terrorists. Unfortunately the first of those two is an oxymoron at this point, a democratic Iraq will not be pro-US because the majority of Iraq is absolutely not pro-US, you can't indiscriminately kill hundreds of thousands of civilians, take away the few rights and privileges they had and expect them to still like you. So we might get a pro-US dictator or an anti-US democracy, or just as likely an anti-US dictatorship, or continued anarchy at the end of a rifle. So what about the extermination of terrorism. uh yeah no. Wars against ideas, lets see war or drugs, war on poverty, war on terror. Batting average for wars against ideas isn't too hot. Because there isn't a bomb in the world that can kill an idea. That's about all I can muster at this point. It barely skims the tip of the iceberg but its a start, be angry, be sad, be vocal, let people know that you care about this war and what its doing to the people of Iraq and the people here. We've been screaming for so long its tough not to get hoarse but we must continue on, there must be an end to this tunnel somewhere.

I just wish I could find a video for the Propagandhi song, War is Peace, because its been running through my head all morning, the opening lines are.

"Four more years of War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength, Slavery's Freedom.
Four more years of May all your interventions be Humanitarian
Four more years of pay-to-play politics, power and influence
Four more years of legalized bribery to serve corporate interests"


On a minor note this is also my 700th post. yippy.

May Day

I never knew that May Day was a socialist holiday. Ok it's a much older holiday than that, like almost all holidays that people have fun at it goes back to an old Pagan holiday, those pagans must have really known how to throw a party. Now as someone with some socialist leaning that sounds interesting, unfortunately something that is so tied into socialism in this country is the Labor movement, now I'm all for power to the workers, yet I am unflinchingly anti-Union. This always sounds weird to people until I explain it, and actually my stance against unions comes from experience, and those same experiences are why I am socialist leaning and absolutely not a socialist. It has some great ideas but its not practical. And Unions are trying to be little socialist microcosms in a sea of capitalism which cannot work. I can't decide if I should go into another of my rants against unions.... hmmm...

Aw fuck it why not? It'll probably be relatively brief. So here we go again, why I am a super liberal semi-socialist that absolutely despises Unions. The most basic reason is the same reason why socialism will never work. People are greedy and lazy, not all obviously but over all most people fall into one of those categories, or both. So in a socialist society or a union you remove the punishment for being lazy, you basically cannot be fired, and you remove the reward for working harder, can't make more money than the lazy guy next to you. I want to bring people closer to equality but not absolute equality because, dammit we are NOT equal. Again some folks work hard, some don't why not allow those willing to work harder enjoy some advantages? Thats the idea of capitalism. But closer to equality in that every single person on earth should have at an absolute minimum, Food, Clean drinkable Water, Housing. Thats the absolute minimum, if that makes me a pinko because I think that since we have the ability to prevent children from starving to death, then we should do it, well then call me a commie and I'll call you a..... never mind. The next step would be education and medical care for everyone in the world. Ok so far I've talked about more equality from the view of raising up those at the very bottom of the bell curve, what about the other end? The super-rich. My question is, does anyone NEED a billion dollars? No. Does anyone deserve a billion dollars, now thats the real question. Does the CEO of Exxon Mobile really work a million times harder than the Malaysian person making sneakers for a dollar a day? I think not. If you work twice as hard sure, you should get twice as much, if your job is particularly critical to the welfare of the community, like a doctor, you should get more. Especially in the case of a doctor because not only are they saving lives but it takes a large amount of skill to be proficient at it. So yes some people deserve more. But would it be so wrong if the world minimum wage was say 10 bucks an hour, and the richest people made $250,000 a year? We are still talking about more than ten times the money, thats not bad. I know I know, how can you create a maximum wage without severely infringing on rights? I don't know. You obviously can't in a pure capitalist society, but then again generally those at the very top, the multi-millionaires, the billionaires, they don't work under true capitalism anyway. Every corporation with money to pay their top people like that are also pay many politicians, they are subsidized by the government in many different ways, so the biggest corporations are somewhat socialist. Kinda ironic that the peak of capitalism becomes socialist.

I don't have time to get into the part of unions that really pisses me off. Huge corporations, with politicians in tow have no trouble keeping the unions, which are just corporations in their own right anyway, out of their way. But the unions need to hang on so they are forced to go after the smaller business. Now you have a very large well financed corporation, the union, taking on a small struggling company and puts them out of business. If the union is a pride of lions roaming the safari then small businesses are gazelle, and the big ones are elephants. The lions don't stand a chance against a strong elephant so they don't bother. They take keep taking down the gazelle's until theres nothing left but elephants, then they starve to death. Along with the rest of the animals that needed to eat. I should have thought that metaphor through better, I coulda come up with something better, but no time at the moment. You get the idea, unions are killing small businesses, like the one that put a roof over my head growing up, our family business was destroyed because the union didn't get their cut. We payed our workers better, they had better health care, they had more vacation, despite all those extra expenses we still were much cheaper than the union shop because we didn't have to pay protection money to the union, also because we only kept people who were willing to work, we worked harder (I say we because I was in the back pounding duct-work from the age of 16) we got payed more. But the organized crime, I mean organized labor didn't like that so they took us to court where you can be deprived of property without a jury and sued us because we didn't hire people that weren't looking for jobs and who were over qualified. We lost the business, the house the cars everything. My father is the single hardest working person I have ever met. He came from nothing and with pure determination he built a reputation as a worker, started a business and it thrived because of his blood sweat and tears. He would go to work before 7 am and came home somewhere between 6 and 8 o'clock most nights, never stopping for lunch. On a good week he'd take Sunday off to do yard work. This went on for years until things were fairly well established and he was eventually able to reap the benefits. Then it was stolen by a few lawyers and a single judge. There was no jury of our peers, it was all just taken away. Our workers had to take lower paying jobs at the union shops, after voting down the union many times at their former place of employment.

Fuck International Workers Day.

More Movie reviews

I recently gave my views on the movie Death of a President. The concept is very good and it makes you think, but with an obviously limited budget its good to have a little imagination while viewing.

So Now I have couple more films to talk about. We'll do the big Hollywood film first.

Blood Diamond. Theres lots of reviews for this film so I'll be brief. Its good, not great but its good film. It felt like they were working too hard to be dramatic in a situation that is already overflowing with drama. A man is stolen from his family and essentially made a slave to the rebel group that is trying to overthrow the government. Another man is selling guns to those rebels in exchange for the diamonds mined by the slaves. Oh then the man who is forced into slaveries son is stolen by the same rebels to train to be a child fighter. And then there is the hot American journalist that shows the arms dealer the wrongs of his ways. Yeah its just too much. I like the message, but it could have cut out several of the sub-plots and probably would have been a better movie. Overall, good movie worth watching, worth renting if you prefer but I can't recommend buying it.

The Road to Guantanamo. Very interesting movie. The main flaw in it that I see has been brought up by critics already. But I'll get to that in a moment. The story is that of three British Muslim's who traveled to Pakistan for a friends wedding. While they were touring Pakistan they decided to go to Afghanistan to try to help those in need there. They eventually realize there is nothing they can do to try to help and so they try to leave and instead get captured by the northern alliance while traveling with Al Qaeda/ Taliban forces. Yeah there is a bit more to the story that I'm leaving out. They get handed over to the Americans and eventually wind up in Guantanamo for two years and after a total of about three years of incarceration they are let go without ever being charged with a crime. Now the flaw, their story is possible but does not seem plausible. The fact is they could be liars, they might have actually gone to be fighters with the Taliban. I don't know, but I wouldn't rule it out. The important thing is that it doesn't matter. They were captured and held without trial in inhumane conditions without a trial for multiple years. Its wrong, if they were enemy soldiers, then give them a trial and send them to jail. No one will be upset by that. What we don't want is people being tortured until they confess and still not giving them a trial. Actually we don't want torture at all, thats the real point. Watch the movie, you can view it online for free I am told but I haven't bothered finding out how.

ugh

Well was quite ill Friday, then Saturday I drove 3 hours into the Catskill mountains for a beer festival, Tap-NY. Yeah wasn't the smartest combo. And actually I'm still not feeling great so this may be even more poorly written than usual. Anyway, obviously wasn't able to fully enjoy the festival, but I wasn't going for the beer. Ok that was a factor but it wasn't the reason I was going. My sister invited me to a beer festival, I went to see her. I was a bit disappointed though when I realized that the most we actually talked was on the 15 minute drive to get breakfast on Sunday morning before we all split off. It's not that I had any pressing issues I needed to talk about, its not like there's any crisis in my life, but I've only got one sister. She lives 5 hours away, we only see each other a few times a year. It's better than when she lived on the west coast, then I only got to see her once a year. But things were a little different then, probably only on my end. I didn't appreciate how great my family really is at that time, I just took them for granted. So I'm trying to be better about that, I'm trying to see the fam more often, especially my sister. We are so similar and yet very different. We are both can be cynical and sarcastic, we're both strong people, but maybe not quite as strong as we pretend to be. Oh I also was the first member of the family to meet my sisters boyfriend. Unfortunately he wasn't feeling well either so it was a little tough to get a feel for him. He seems alright. I'm not all that protective of my sister, yes I am, but she's the older of the two of us, she's tough and she's smart and can pretty well crush most peoples wills without effort. So unless the guy really rubs me the wrong way I figure shes fine, luckily she doesn't pick bad dudes. Hehe, speaking of the dude, many of the people we were at the festival with were his friends from college, so I got a few little pieces of info about him that could absolutely be used against him. I just said that both my sister and I are sarcastic, we got that from my father. He's a great guy, everyone loves him, but he does like making jokes. If he can get a laugh he goes for it even if its at someone elses expense, but he can take a joke. That's just how we are, we rip on each other, be ready for it. Of course if your going to try to date his baby (my sister is his favorite, but thats ok mom likes me more) then he's going to test you. And so when one of the dude's friends tells me a rather insulting nickname its in his best interest not to give me a reason to tell my dad that name. Although it will be hilarious because I'm not going to be able to hold that one in for very long. I'm not sure why I've taken to calling him the dude, I don't like using people's real names on here, but I don't know where the dude came from, hes not a "the dude" at all. No dude would admit to being a Jack Johnson fan. Ok enough about all that, my sisters friends are interesting and so very different than the people I associate with, the main difference being that they actually have ambition, oh and while not all of my friends finished high school, she has a few friends that only have bachelors, most have or are working on advanced degrees. My friends work at subway, her friends have careers. It sucks hanging out with folks like that and realizing that the only difference between myself and her is ambition. She usually gave me credit as the smarter of the two of us, and yet she and her cohorts are off doing big things and I'm stuck in a dead end job with a degree I may never use again. So it goes.

I need to go back to school.

(giggle)

Little bit of silliness. Saw this in the comments over at Newsvine. It was an article about the new "Earth like Planet" and how this gave an atheist new hope for the universe. It was a fun and lighthearted post that slowly went the way all atheist vs theist conversations do, my god is better, no my non-god is better. At least as far as I read it never got nasty just a little bickering. anyway why am I babbling on?

I saw this and laughed so I'm postin' it here. Enjoy.

Thor had a hammer. Jesus had nails.

Score one for Thor.

Thank you Dennis P. McCann

Death Of A President

Watched an interesting movie last night, I guess there's no point delaying the title as its the title of the post. Death of a President. Its the one that caused quite a stir last year as its an obviously fictional account of the assassination of George W. Bush. So how was it?

We first I was shocked to even find it at the local video store. I wasn't looking for anything in particular, Road to Guantanamo was the first thing I spotted that I actually wanted to see. But I just wasn't in the mood for something that depressing and real. So I walked a bit further and saw Blood Diamond. I've heard mixed reviews but it seemed like it would be worth renting at least. So I grabbed that and kept walking, when I spot Death of a President with a sniper on the cover. I immediately grabbed it and looked to see if it was the film I was remembering from a while ago. Its the kind of film that blow-hards love to hate, without even watching. They hear the title and what its about and they flip, it's easy face time for them. Insult something you know nothing about to people who will never see it.

Its a fairly well done movie that was clearly on a tight budget. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who at least partially agrees with my general views. Oh and I will say its not nearly as anti-Bush as the blow-hards would like you to think.

OH this movie also has the distinction of uttering the most terrifying two words in the English language, President Cheney.

WARNING TOO MUCH INFO AHEAD IF YOU PLAN TO WATCH IT STOP HERE!!!!

Basically the movie starts out with how the infamous day started. Bush is flying into Chicago for a speech and is supposed to leave later that same day. Chicago protesters show up in droves and are angry. They break through police lines and cause the presidential limo to have to stop, at which point the Secret Service clears a path and they take off down an alternate path. At this point the S.S. (I wish there was a different acronym so I didn't think of Nazi's every time) is in freak out mode and wants the president to cancel all outdoor activities. Bush wants to shake some hands so they have no choice but to allow it. The protesters are told they have to move back from the area they were given permits to protest at. Fights break out and a few people slip past the police in the mayhem. Soon the President is shaking hands and soon after that shots are fired. The actual assassination is the only part where Bush is played by someone else and his face is not on screen, all the rest is archive footage of the actual Bush. He is rushed to the hospital where he dies some time later. At this point it becomes a search for the killer. There are two possible killers, one is a Muslim man who's clothing had gunshot residue and police found a partial fingerprint match to the crime scene. The police later find that he had attended Al Qaeda training in Afghanistan. At which point he is considered the killer and its part of a terrorist plot despite the fact that no other link can be found to any terrorist organizations. Then another man claims that his father a soldier from gulf war 1 was the killer. The father shot himself and in his suicide note he claims responsibility. The son, a vet from the current gulf war, searches for the truth but no one wants to listen. His brother was killed in the war, and his father became disillusioned with the policies.

In the end they never quite say that it was the former soldier but its fairly obvious. Its just an interesting view of who would do it, was it the "enemy of the state" the Islamic man with terrorist connections? Or was it the bitter American soldier? I thought it was a good movie, not fantastic but good. Worth renting at least.

Thinking Blog Award

Someone reads this dribble that flows out from me fingers, that alone surprises me a bit, so you can imagine my shock when I checked up on my bloggin' buddy Lara at Life: the Ongoing Education and saw that she had nominated me for an award. What the Fuck? Not only does someone read it but they actually like it? That was the real shock, and this wasn't some random idiot, Lara seems quite bright. So anyway I guess I'm nominated for the Thinking Blog Award which seems to be more of a meme than an award but hey thats cool too. I've never been a part of a blog meme before, other than the one I stole about music.

Ok well Huge Huge Thank you to Lara. And now who do I pass this on to? Five Blogs that make me think, I gotta think about that for a minute, I guess thats the idea anyway.


1. Blog 4 Brains, the title is fitting as it will make you think. They only have two contributors but it would seem like many more by the level of thought they put into a wide range of topics. This is the first site I go to (after my own) each morning. I'm not sure I can praise a blog more than saying its the only one I check every time I hit the computer, well the only other way I can is with this award. So that makes it an easy choice for this award. Thank you Justin and Unum for this fantastic site.

2. My Life.... (long title), Ok ffbgirl has been a bit under the weather lately so to be perfectly honest her blog hasn't been terribly thought provoking of late. But she definitely got me thinking as she gave me some great advice as a weight my options for heading back to college. This is probably the hardest decision I've ever faced (my life has been pretty easy) so having a little guidance, even from someone I've never met, is very useful, and it got me thinking far more than anything else I've ever done with this blog, so for that I thank you with this nomination.

3. Daylight Atheism, great mantra, nighttime is for dreaming, daylight is for action. This site likes to challenge atheists, freethinkers, humanists or whatever other title we like to give ourselves into actually doing something. Also pushes for people to to think about the positives of their world views instead of always just pointing out all the negatives of religion. Which is a great philosophy.

4. Unscrewing The Inscrutable, OK this site needs to be looked at by everyone if for no other reason than this Bio.

"Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen."

I love that bio, the rest of the site is always amusing too.

5. Thomas Paine's Corner, A site to visit if you have some time too read. Always very well thought out, if a bit on the long side. It's not a site that get much comment traffic so if your looking for a lot of back and forth banter your out of luck, but to just sit back and read can be fun too. This was one of the first sites I added to my blog roll and its still one of my favorites. I don't check as often as I would like, well because usually I don't have time and it feels wrong to half-ass read something that was well done.

So thats my five. Hope you like 'em as much as I do. Oh and since I'm now a participant I must follow the rules which are.

The participation rules are simple:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn't fit your blog).

Gay folks in the bible

Ok I'm not exactly a biblical scholar, hehe, not even close. I knew there was a couple bits about how a man shall not lie with another man as he would a woman, I found that one day bored in a hotel room. I was vaguely curious where the conservative anti-gay thing came from. Armed with my basic knowledge of, "if your looking for some good hate, try Leviticus" and I found it. So I knew there was that and I was told there were a couple other parts that could be viewed that way but I never bothered looking them up. So then today I stumbled across this group called Would Jesus Discriminate? that pointed out that there are actual three gay couples in the bible. So I did a quick search, came across Religious Tolerance's site about gays in the bible. We got dudes making out in here, Ok its no porn, not even soft-core but this is not an average friendship which seems like the only way the conservative view would be able to deal with this stuff.

I like this part where they show the various translations some of which are a bit different than the others.

	"...and they kissed one another and wept with one another, until David exceeded." (KJV)
	"...and they kissed one another and wept with one another until David got control of himself." (Amplified Bible)
	"and they sadly shook hands, tears running down their cheeks until David could weep no more." (Living Bible)
	"They kissed each other and wept together until David got control of himself." (Modern Language)
	"They kissed each other and wept aloud together." (New American Bible)
	"Then David and Jonathan kissed each other. They cried together, but David cried the most." (New Century Version)
	"Then they kissed one another and shed tears together, until David's grief was even greater than Jonathan's." (Revised English Bible)
	"...and they kissed one another and wept with one another until David recovered himself." (Revised Standard Version)

Shook hands? Thats funny.

"I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother; you were very dear to me. Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women."

HAHA, hows that work in your fundie world view? They even have an apparently not-quite normal sexual relationship between two eunuchs, not quite normal because eunuch's are guys that were castrated. Kinda hard to get freaky when.... well you get the idea. Silly fundies.

One Nation Under G_d/ Allah

Interesting take on the Israel/Palestine issue. How about a single country, instead of two struggling for power? It sounds like a crazy plan but at the same time it might work better, it would be tough for it to be worse than the current set-up. This idea is better explained by Poetic Remi, which is where I got the idea from. I don't know if this is viable but we need to start thinking outside the box on this. We need a solution and the none of the others I have heard seem viable. In other words, it might be worth a shot.

Creationism

I'm not a scientist. I know a lot more than most people in this country but thats not saying much. But I like the reactions of people who do know what they are talking about when faced with things like Creationism or ID, you know pseudoscience.

From a blogging legend PZ myers of Pharyngula.

Creationism means never having to admit you know nothing, but you still get to pretend to be an expert

Heres a hint.

"The core value of creation science is dishonesty"

Welcome to Hell

I just added a new site to my godless list, this one is called Bligbi, it seems pretty good, then I skim through and what do I come across but a video of Rowan Atkinson's routine Welcome to Hell. I remember finding this funny years ago and am happy to finally be able to see it again. So a big thank you to Bligbi!

Dawkins vs. O'Reilly

If you want to check out the video you can go to RichardDawkins.net or you can go to YouTube. Ok I've only been able to watch the first half at this point, it's under five minutes long but I am at work right now. Dawkins was setting up the classic, "theres thousands of gods you don't believe in, I just believe in one less/ when you realize why you dismiss all the other gods you'll realize why I dismiss yours." But Bill didn't let him finish, he went to the atheist's leap of faith instead. It finishes up with the usual stalin, hitler argument and there isn't time for a proper rebuttal. It was civilized and which is more than I can usually say about Bill. It was simply too short, far far too short to be much good for anyone. you can't have a Religion vs. atheism conversation in 4:40, I mean you can but its pointless. Well thats my take on it.

Holy Shit

I mean that literally. They claim to be holy and they're pieces of shit. There was a massacre in the US so whats that mean, oh yes our old friends the Phelps and their cohorts from the Westboro Baptist Church plan to picket the funerals of those killed at Virginia Tech. Yeah thats fuckin' classy. Now I'm an absolute defender of freedom of speech, theses folks push me pretty damn close to changing my mind, but then I calm down a little. Yes they have the right. I hate to say it but they do. To use a line from someone I work with, Freedom of speech is not nice, its not pleasant, its vile and angry, but it's necessary for a free society. Of course we all have freedom of speech so anyone in the area go ahead and counter protest/ show support for those grieving. I was invited once to counter protest them once but it was three hours away and I had about four hours notice, I wasn't able to go.

Anyway these folks are about as vile as anything I can think of, I'm not sure but the Phelps protests might be worse than the old yelling "Fire!" in a crowded movie theater, but it's legal. And it needs to be. Although many towns have created ordinances saying no protests of any sort at cemeteries which is reasonable. I would still love to be at one of those counter protests, especially in VA, that will be big if this news gets out locally. I liked hearing about the "Hells Angels" showing up for the counter protests. A couple hundred bikers standing in line between the Phelps and the funerals. I gained a lot of respect for the Hells Angels for that one.

Abortion, from the other perspective

This is easily the most compelling story I have ever heard from a man's perspective about abortion. I want to say more but I've got nothing, seriously though this is worth reading. To the point that the author DBB will shortly be added to the blogroll. Again thank you DBB for this passionate story of why you have the views you do.