Obscure Abstractions

Pan flounder in an asiago sweet cream sauce. (Feat: Orange bell pepper)

2011-02-02T19:58:00.000-08:00

I made this tonight, and it is EPIC. So I share. Be mindful that because of the way I cook, the only real fixed amounts are the amounts I know. I approximate heavily when I cook, always adjusting on the fly. If you're good enough in the kitchen, you'll be able to approximate to your own tastes. Enjoi.

Ingredients:
Heavy cream, around 1.5 to 2 cups.
Moscato d'asti white sparkling wine.
A bay leaf
around 3/4 cup chopped/diced asiago cheese.
2 egg yolks
1.25 lbs of flounder fillet
3/4 of an orange bell pepper, diced finely.
1 small shallot - minced
1 tbsp of garlic, give or take.
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
2 tbsp butter

Equipment:
12" frying pan.
small sauce pot
electric blender
wire whisk
spatula
knife
cutting board

you

Starting things off early, get a small pot warm and put the heavy cream into it along with a double-sized pad of butter, around 2 tbsp worth. The butter is your timer, so keep an eye on it. Add the bay leaf, watching for the butter to finish melting. Once it's done melting, add your asiago cheese and start stirring slowly until the cheese is melted into the cream and butter. Lower the heat at this time, adding two egg yolks and whisking, this will help it thicken. Add a few cranks on the pepper and some coarse sea salt to taste. Now let it get happy. This will take around 20 minutes of semi-regular stirring over low to medium low heat. Use this time like I did and do the prep work you procrastinated on earlier.

Get your flounder ready once the sauce is happily simmered. You should be seeing it thicken up by now. From here, you want to put some EVOO in a large (mine's 12") frying pan over medium heat. Add your orange bell pepper once the oil shimmers and let it start to wilt in the olive oil. Once it's started to get soft, or after you get bored (around 4 minutes), throw in the shallot and garlic, and keep agitating the mixture until the garlic is very aromatic and the shallot is browned up. Stop and pull out your blender if you haven't already, and pour the mixture into the blender. Blend until smooth.

Once your mixture is smoothed out, get it back in the pan. Add the flounder atop it, and crank the heat to just below medium, letting the mixture brown up under the flounder. Now, resist the urge to mess with your meat and let the flounder cook through to just over halfway. Flip your fillets once they start to become opaque on the top. Sear them, and place them aside on a plate. Be careful, they'll try to fall apart on you.

Deglaze your pan with the white wine and let it simmer for a minute while you fish the bay leaf out of your white cream sauce. Now, add the sauce to the pan, and either whisk, or combine using the spatula. Either way, you should end up with a fair and lightly oranged mixture. Add the fish back to this mixture, turning your heat down another notch, but keeping it just above medium-low. You'll want to simmer the fish for a few minutes in the sauce to finish the cooking. This keeps the fish from drying out.

Poke the fish with a spatula to check to see if it flakes, and to check to see if it's cooked through. Once both qualifiers are met, choose the person you don't like and set that fillet on their plate. The rest goes to whomever.

A few notes:

Moscato D'asti is a sweet wine that's a great dessert wine, and an awesome table wine. It's bubbly, but it's not so bubbly that it's relegated to special occasions.

I served this with butter roasted purple potatos and asparigus, and mixed some of the asiago cheese in with the butter for the cooking process. Roasted the potatoes first at 325 for a good twenty minutes before adding the asparagus and cranking the heat up to 400 for fifteen minutes.

For dessert, I served a chocolate coffee mousse, which was fun, albeit whipping the mousse up was time consuming. I need more practice with the hand mixer and my mousse recipes.

Type the name of a command and press enter to execute it, or help for assistance.

Mindsets- part two of the cross-section.

2010-10-22T00:07:00.000-07:00

I posted a cross-section of events, and would like to clarify that the cross-section is not an average day. It's a time-compression of a week, a month, the events within that time period. Certain things like the incident involving the bench warrant almost never happen, and it's more representative of the major events that occur every once and a while, hence it's out of place in the locational progress of the cross-section. That's not to say it's unheard of for a unit to be rocking and rolling all day like that, it's just rare. Recently, though, at one unit, in a week, there were a large number of incidences that classify as major incidences. The week started with a stabbing, led into a number of Offender Protection Investigations - allegations that the janitors on two wings were extorting sexual favors from offenders - saw yet another stabbing, a few suicide attempts, and reached its peak of scary when a mental health offender managed to kick a steel mental-health door open with his bare feet and tearing 1/8'th inch steel sheet like it was paper. Nobody was injured, thank God. All through this, the building schedule was maintained. Nobody stayed late, and all scheduled events occurred, albeit late in some cases.

So what the cross section actually represents is an average of the selected events and an average of how they are often handled. By policy or not by policy, seemingly wrong or right, they all need not apply. What happens in an incident is often fluid, and always shaped by the culture of the prison system. Strip searches are informal punishment, homemade alcohol is destroyed if it's found in a common area, two fighting 'inmates' are merely told to stop, and an 'inmate' who attacks a 'boss' always bleeds. What is right or wrong in there? Policy stands behind each example in many ways, but not in all circumstances.

I like to call the prison surreal. It is altered from an outsider's perception of reality. Men and monsters act so similar, and yet so differently. The same man who's the best worker you've encountered is the man who killed five people in a bloody rage 20 years ago. The man who just jumped on an officer, who's tattoos cover his entire body, embezzled a quarter million from his own company. You never really know, and the only thing you can expect is that things will not go as expected. The situations you encounter as a correctional officer are often highly irregular, so far as an individual's normal day goes. I offer some perspective now:

Polunsky Unit - January 2010 - five offenders find God and try to escape from prison after evening church services. They were stopped by a shotgun, but were not killed. Stand behind that shotgun for a minute, if you would please; now point it at those five men and pull the trigger. Did you remember to chamber a round? Take off the safety? Yell at the men to stop? Ask yourself, now, what does it feel like to kill somebody? Shoot again; you need to shoot again! you are what stands between these five men and freedom. Can you hear the AR-15s of the pickets above you, popping, cracking as they join your barrage? Four shells are yours, 36 lead pellets. Drop that empty pump action, it's worthless now. Draw your revolver. Are they still moving? Does it matter anymore? Do you keep shooting? Answer quickly, answer honestly, lives and jobs hang in the balance. Can you answer? Is it heroic? Stop. Now. Stand alongside yourself. Take away that adrenaline and the smell of gunpowder. Look at the men; five unarmed men, not moving. Did you kill them? Did you hope? That they lived or died? These are hard questions if taken seriously. Can you answer them?

Any Unit - Any Given Day- 30 offenders approach a wing door, returning from chow. Pat searching them is routine. The offender standing in the middle of the hallway isn't. Offenders walk to the sides of the hallway so there's always room for staff to transit by the quiet lines of offenders. I hope you feel up to this, because you have to correct this offender's behavior. Approach him. He's bigger than you, doesn't matter how big you are. Tell him to get out of the middle of the hallway. He doesn't want to. Ask him for his ID card. He won't give it up. Worried yet? Look around, who has your back? One officer two corridors and barricades away. What bout the 20 offenders in the hallway? Concerned yet? Where's the cellblock picket officer? 3 row, along with the other wing officers. Do you let the big offender go? Do you let the disrespect stand? Answer now, there's no time for contemplation. Don't back down now, a test of intent is needed. Order the offender to the wall. Can you muster a commanding voice? Tell him to submit to a strip searc, by policy he cannot refuse. Does he comply? What if he doesn't? Can you summon additional staff? Will your supervisor stand behind you and lock the offender up for refusing to submit to a strip search? Is all this worth it to keep a guy out of the middle of the hallway? Think fast, time wasted here means more problems on your wing as offenders go into the wing from the chow hall with alcohol from the dishroom and stolen food off the serving line. Is this one more important than any of that? Is any of it important? Why? Think fast! There's no right answer, but you do need to answer.

CO's are more likely to encounter scenarios like the second one described than the first. Surreal is feeling alone amongst 100 people that you know and probably talk with. Did I forget to mention that? Work on a unit long enough and you will get to know the offenders. You will learn their lives, their habits, their dreams and strives, and no matter how well you keep your life secret, they will know yours. Would that cloud your judgement? Imagine, then, being alone amongst them. A gray uniform in a sea of white. Will one of those offenders jump in to help you? It's a possibility. Don't count on it, though, no matter how well you know those offenders.

In the end, law enforcement and corrections is all questions; a day of a thousand questions that have no right answers, but do have wrong ones. You get better at answering as time goes along, but lessons are learned the hard way. The big inmate in the middle of the hallway might be getting ready to shank somebody, or he could be a deaf janitor. While dealing with him, 2 gallons of alcohol might make it onto your wing, and a brawl erupts in your dayroom later due to that. If you stop one of the worst case scenarios, or if you stopped neither, did you do your job right? I'll leave it at that, and up to you.

A cross section of a prison.

2010-10-21T21:53:00.000-07:00

I want to make it clear that what is to follow is not the average day in a prison.

Macroscopically the schedule of a prison is: Wake up call for breakfast chow at 1:30 AM. Chow begins at 2:15 AM and runs for an hour. After chow is complete, there's 4 AM count, and at around 5:30 AM offenders are staged for vocation and work turn-out. Work turnout runs solidly past 6 AM, and occurs as First Shift officers are taking over. 7 AM count comes and goes, and medium custody showers before lunch chow occurs at 9:45 AM. Lunch chow ends an hour and a half later, and outside rec is called for, as well as church services on certain days. Things calm down for an hour or so, and then 12:30 PM count begins. 1:30 PM, should count clear, sees workers turning back in and the beginning of workers turning out for second shift. Second Shift officers take over at 2 PM, and turn out workers for the next hour. At 3:15 PM, education lets out, and at 3:30 PM count time again. 4:30 sees the beginning of evening chow, as well as the beginnings of building showers. By 6:30 chow should be done, as should showers, and recreation is called for. 7 PM is count time, with a recreation house-call at 8-8:30 PM, and another count at 9 PM. Workers turn in at 9:45, and third shift turns out at 10, while Third Shift officers are taking over. After that it's rack time, lights out at 10:30 PM and count at 11:30 PM, then the day begins anew.

From the outside, looking at that schedule, it would seem the prison would work like a Swiss watch, beautifully intricate and delicately precise. Truth be told, a prison runs more like a $2 timekeeper from walmart; it gets the job done accurately and with little fanfare, but how it does it is neither pretty, nor delicate.

-- 12:30 AM -- A block -- Suicide attempt.
"A wing" as it's called, is the lockup block. It is arranged differently than other blocks. It's two stories tall and has fewer cells per row. Aggressive offenders are housed here. Some cells have an inner and outer door used to isolate the offenders inside - Normally those doors stay open. Tonight, at 12:30 AM, an offender has decided to try to hang himself. He made an ordeal of it, and the wing lit up with calls for the wing officer. The offender was ordered to stop, and incident command system (ICS) was activated. Within a minute, three responding officers, the third shift lieutenant and a video camera operator arrive to intervene and document. The offender is successfully talked down, but initially refuses to submit to restraints so they can move him to a psych observation cell. It takes 30 minutes to convince him. Secured in the cell, ICS is deactivated.

-- 02:15 AM -- B&C corridor - Fire
While putting up offenders after breakfast chow, the C1 block officer notices an outlit sparking and flaming up in one of the empty wing cells. ICS is activated and maintainance is called. The fire geos out when the circuit breaker pops, and ICS is deactivated.

-- 06:00 AM -- D&E corridor - Confrontation
A worker from B1 wing cuts across the hallway to talk to an offender on E1 wing. Ordered to go around and get back in line, he refuses. The offender becomes belligerent and verbally abusive. The officer orders the offender to submit to a strip search, and the offender complies. No contraband is found during the search, and the offender is allowed to go. The issue is considered to be informally resolved.

-- 08:00 AM -- Infirmary Corridor - panic button pushed
The Psychological Services panic button is pushed, initiating a rapid response from the south searcher's desk officer and the pill-line officer. A tense situation with a mental health offender and a psychiatrist has arisen and defused itself in less than 30 seconds. The offender is restrained and moved to an observation cell in the infirmary. ICS is not activated.

-- 1 0:00 AM -- South Chow Hall - fight
During chow, an offender throws a plastic cup at another offender. A fight breaks out. Officers working the chow hall deploy chemical agents. ICS is activated. Additional staff, a supervisor and a video camera operator arrive as the two offenders are being restrained, and one after the other, they are escorted, on camera, to the infirmary for a post use of force/fight physical evaluation, and then to the lockup wing to await a hearing for the disciplinary infraction of fighting without a weapon. ICS is deactivated.

-- 11:30 AM -- Turnout Corridor - contraband found.
While pat searching offenders turning out for the kitchen, an officer finds on one offender: 2 pornographic pictures, 3 tobacco cigarettes and 3 marijuana cigarettes. ICS is activated, and the offender is restrained. A supervisor and video camera operator arrive, and on camera the offender is escorted to A wing. Office of the Inspector General is notified and takes possession of the evidence. ICS is deactivated.

-- 12:00 PM -- D1 Wing - forced move.
An offender refuses to respond to a bench warrant. ICS is activated and use of force is authorized to get the offender out of the cell and out to the waiting law enforcement transport. A five-man move team readies, putting on protective equipment. The offender is read a statement of intent to use force by the shift captain, and fifteen minutes later, after continuing to refuse to go, he is sprayed with OC pepper spray. He is left there for 15 minutes, then asked again if he will move. He refuses once more, and the five man team moves into position. He is sprayed again as the team opens the door, quickly moving in and restraining the offender. He is carried out of the cell and placed on a waiting gurney, and wheeled out of the unit to a waiting transport vehicle, and then forcibly placed in that transport vehicle. Once the door is closed, and the transport is on the way, ICS is deactivated.

-- 04:00 PM -- F&G Corridor - discrepancy in count.
F2 wing count and recount do not initially match. The initial number has been called in to central searcher's desk, and a second recount is done to verify one of the two numbers. The second number is verified, and the correction is called in, creating a panic as the new number indicates 1 offender is missing. Using turnout rosters, housing rosters, the wing count sheet, and the unit count sheet, the missing offender is identified, and the search begins. He is found shortly thereafter in the shower, having been overlooked when the north hall officer counted the work group he was part of that had been stuck in the shower through count. Count clears late.

-- 07:15 PM -- H&J corridor - Alcohol found.
While counting the H2 wing dayroom the wing officer finds a bloated bottle filled with an orange liquid. Removing the cap and smelling it, the officer determines it to be homemade alcohol. It is confiscated and destroyed. A search is done for more, but none is found. H2 wing is medium custody.

--08:00 PM -- H&J corridor - Shank found.
While pat searching an offender coming on to J2 wing from the rec yard, an officer feels a long, hard object along the offender's inner thigh. The offender pulls away and the officer draws his Carry On Person chemical agent and orders the offender to the ground. ICS is activated and additional staff, a supervisor and a video camera operator arrive. The offender is strip-searched and a metal shank is found taped to his inner thigh. The shank is made from a piece of fence-wire. The offender is restrained and taken to A wing. ICS is deactivated.

-- 09:45 PM -- K block - Alcohol poisoning.
During an ingress an offender is seen to be being assisted out of the dayroom and back to his cell. Later, the offender is found unresponsive and ICS is activated. The offender is brought to medical and woken with smelling salts. He becomes belligerent and is returned to the wing. Non-responsive, ICS is re-activated, and the offender is taken back to the infirmary. He is diagnosed with acute alcohol poisoning and is treated and kept in an observation cell. ICS is deactivated.

Cuil, Electric Cars, and the theory of Bob

2008-08-21T04:21:00.001-07:00

I was playing around with Cuil, the new startup search engine. Considering the subject of startups, I typed in "Tesla Motors WhiteStar" The results were promising, and after clicking around, I ended up stumbling through a series of webpages, culminating in my researching of the various methods of alternative energy on the website popularmechanics.com (Some picks from my list in history.). What I keep seeing popping up in both comments and blog/article text is mentionings of federal regulation, and if you have 4 hours to dive the articles and links, you'll notice the same trend in there.

Right now we can see E85 popping up in the odd place. E85 has emerged as the front runner of alternative fuel technology. Perhaps it'll get us over the hump, but I despise the amount of money the United States Federal Government is putting into it. In one of the articles from above, SynthFuels are mentioned, in comparison to the United States putting into the Ethanol craze. Synthfuel was given millions and millions of dollars up until 2007, even though the technology failed mere years after the oil crisis in the mid-late 70's prompted the subsidies. Government has this track record of providing gobs of green cash to, not just the "green tech of the future" but any tech that looks like it may or may not have a possible promise some unnamed amount of time in the future. It's a simple game, really, wow the right people with the right connectsions, get media cover, hype built up, and you have yourself a subsidy.
It needs to stop.

The United States Government is spending money like crazy. We're in debt to an amount I don't even want to fathom, and we spend billions upon billions of dollars on things that the marketplace should be allowed to decide, such as what fuels our vehicles most effectively. Gas prices were at $4 a gallon. That scared a number of people and sliced SUVs at the ankles, toppling the market-niche-turned-status-symbol. At $3 a gallon, we were getting Tesla Motors, Fiskar Coachbuilding, the Chevy Volt, amongst others, and now, at $4, we're FINALLY seeing the Honda Clarity hydrogen car, and the Equinox Hydrogen concept. Chrysler has said petrolium is out of the long term plans, and Daimler-Benz has sworn off Gasoline by 2015. We're going places, people, and urgency is now appearant. Cafe standards are about to kick in, 35 MPG minimum, and gasoline engines are struggling to get that, especailly in vehicles built to do what SUVs do.

The marketplace, however, would have decided this a long time ago if regulations hadn't forced gasoline engines to evolve to where they are. Of course, we also wouldn't be here if Carter hadn't regulated Gas prices in the 70's, giving americans a proper taste of sky high fuel costs, leaving us the sheltered rich kids now turned out into the crime ridden ghetto at night; but I digress. The problem is with regulation. An unregulated marketplace is a happy marketplace, it can maneuver more effeciently, it's unencumbered with regulations that paint it into corners, and much much more. Right now, government can subsidize a poor technology, give it the abilty to outlast its better and more liked competitor, give it the ability to undercut in price, as was shown by the inexpensive E85 at various gas stations. The real cost is seen in higher taxes that offer diminishing returns as they trickle down through the layers of beaurocracy until finally our $2-$3 put in knocks a buck off each gallon we pay for, if that much. Supposedly that's how it works, but dang if the numbers don't quite add up in my mind. I want to say each individual will knock, per dollar put in, $0.01 - $0.10 off each gallon he/she buys, and the rest is made up of credit that is, in effect, government debt. A dollar can only get stretched so far (Just about any mother of 5 can tell you just how far that dollar can get stretched, ask her, not me.), so why are we subsidizing?

Why don't we stop the subsidies, stop the penalizing of certain sectors of technologies, as well, to make sure that the playing ground is level, and take all the savings in government, pass that on to the citizens, and let the marketplace figure out what it wants to do with the mix of high gas prices and the culmination of technologies that I doubt stunted by the system (read: lack of subsidies) back in the 1990s (My proof? Electric tech was waiting for the new iron oxide batteries A123 is peddling for the Volt, LiION is also relatively new, coming about in the 80s and being perfected by a number of the biggest corporations. Hydrogen and Nanotechnology are seeming to go hand in hand, and both are powered by research grants. Ethanol had no public interest because gas was cheap and Ethanol was expensive in the 90's.) the marketplace is a big boy, it can survive on its own, and a good idea will nearly always push through. And the only thing that can stop that is practices that are mostly illegal in today's generally accepted version of capitalism.

The only thing the government should be doing is enforcing anti-trust laws and keeping monopolies and unfair business practices from occuring, acting as a referee instead of what it's currently doing, guiding the game to an outcome favorable to those in power at the time.

Cudos to Cuil for giving me a good launching point. I'll admit, it's not as refined as google has become, but I remember the days when Google was new, and it was so much fun to input things like "diphallic superstructure" into the google search text box, and generate no results. Googlewhacking, it was called. Two words that come up with absolutely nothing. It's still done to this day, but it's incredibly difficult. Google said its infractructure was still learning, I believe, and now Cuil is asking for the same consideration for their search engine. I like its results, personally, the search engine seems, so far, to think like I do. That's hard to come by. Of course, that's ehnanced by the occasional "input search terms - draw blank" that we share....heck, that's why I'm using the dadgummed thing. But, it learns, I learn...and I have so talked myself into a corner here.

I expect, by now, you've either forgotten about, or are vaguely curious as to the Theory of Bob. I shall enlighten. When I started this post, I figured, given my state of mind, I'd have a hard time closing it, and theory of Bob was my easy out. The theory is that you can utilize a random notion to distract from the fact that you can't sum up an article in a proper conclusion without contriving one from a randomly generated concept. Let me know how it worked.

One is not a hundred.

2008-08-01T21:14:00.000-07:00

Today, it seems, we are so many people. Me, I'm Harsan, Harsan_Ronyo, Harsan.Ronyo; I'm Silent_Fox (well, used to be I could be), Tobias, Tobias DuPree, Tyla, Christopher, and Anon80353429Z on certain websites mum wouldn't want me browsing.

Then came openID, to help bring some simplicity to our online activities. And now I'm all the above, plus http://obscureabstractions.blogger.com/ openid.aol.com/tobiasdupree from AOL, I'm HarsanRonyo from Yahoo (who actually gave me a choice)....and none of these work with all but the highest tier of social websites, and none of my accounts can link into any of my other openID accounts.

It's supposed to make life easier, but what I'm seeing is new account names tied to old accounts that once were compartmentalized. I'm looking at my AIM account suddenly being able to get into Yahoo and do things should it be cracked. I need to up security on accounts from AOL to Vox because of all this.

Add to it that now I have a "one account to rule them all" from all these services I used to have just an account with, but my legacy accounts can't be tied into a single "one account to rule them all"; how do I get myself pulled into one "me" like this promised, because I'm starting to get a multi-personality disorder from all the names I have to enter to access all the accounts on this very large internet.

I state again, openID was supposed to be a problem fixer, not a problem causer. If it had redeeming qualities from my perspective, I'd be praising it for what it did. A unified account for internet access? Sign me up! (just not for my banking and money requiring stuff) I'd love to be me regardless of where I was. That's tough! But no, I have to be me, me, me, me, me, me, me, and me, and oh, me, because the system is flawed and won't let me tie to an overriding name, but instead hands me a new one and a new headache.

Up your password security if you have these accounts:

AOL (the link is to their special password change website)
Blogger
Flickr
LiveDoor
LiveJournal
Orange (Telecom, french)
smugmug
technorati
vox
yahoo
wordpress

and for more information go to http://www.openid.net/

Signing off Irate,
Harsan, Tobias, Silent_Fox, Christopher, Anon39387892347025X, Tyla, etc. etc. ad nausium.

Yelling Fire

2008-04-09T14:28:00.000-07:00

A nifty thought occured to me as I lay awake, suffering insomnia last night...or maybe the night before. It's illegal to yell fire to spark panic. Heh, odd thought, but it got me thinking more on concealed carry, hell, even open carry, and the common argument that banning those two things can be equated to the nonexistant (Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969)) ban on yelling fire in a crowded place because it will probably cause panic and hurt people.

The thought begin to fester as I contemplated it. I always thought something was wrong with that argument. I realize now that it is the threat of imminent harm. It's a step beyond argument, using an unstated logical step, you see, you have to shoot someone to cause harm with a gun (unless it's a .25 ACP, then you have to actually beat someone with the thing.), and there's no statistics that show that carrying a gun will cause panic; and concealed carry minimizes that side of the argument nearly completely. By taking the logical step that someone who carries will undoubtedly shoot someone, and then establishing that as the point to argue, the anti-gunners make a persuasive argument, and it's really hard to latch onto what's wrong with the statement, but the fact of the matter is, carrying a gun is not shooting someone.

I've carried before, legally, and nobody is ever the wiser. I live in Texas, and I don't have my permit, so it rides in my backpack, unloaded, or in my car, loaded. If anybody asks, I'm taking it to the range later in the day (Please ask, I always love an excuse to go to the range), Texas legal I call it. I've never generated a panic, because nobody sees it, and in 3 months of carry I've never shot anybody, nor have I ever needed to draw the weapon. I'm not yelling fire in a crowded area, I'm just carrying a weapon inconspicuously and legally.

That's my simple view on this one.

Guns on Campus

2008-02-14T15:58:00.000-08:00

Okay, folks, firing up the ol' word processor. I'm pissed. Every time I hear about this...this....SHIT, I get pissed. Firearms on Campus, they need to happen, they need to happen RIGHT NOW.

http://www.whec.com/article/stories/S347279.shtml?cat=565

15 injured, suspected 4 dead. It was a friggin' suicide run. Just like all of them. Take as many out as possible, before one goes. Now, that's my opinion on it. Here's the facts as I know them:

1. What the man did was illegal. He brought a gun onto a college campus in Illinois, into a classroom. Murders and Assaults aside, the man was breaking the law, yo.

2. The students were abiding by the law. There is no report yet of any students shooting back. Yup, nobody broke the law by bringing a gun on campus.

3. There was no help. No security, that I'm reading of. There was an attempted slaughter, that's what there was. These students, professors, they had NO HELP COMING.

Tell me, dear readers, what is wrong with this picture?

Guns on campuses aren't a problem. They're carried without problems in a number of states at a number of prestigious colleges, Go to Utah, New Hampshire, Vermont, they carry on those college campuses. It's when some dipshit with a dangerously egocentric view and a death wish comes along, that's when it all goes to hell.

If one of the students had been armed, if only one of them had been armed, tell me, how much worse could it have been? She brandishes her gun? He fires back? Hell, he/she gets shot? oooh, here's the big one. He hits a bystander! Yup, that'd make the situation worse..problem is, the fore-drawn conclusion is wrong.

According to Kramer and Kopel (it's a link) Your average Joe is not likely to hit a bystander. In studies across the United States, the plain ol everyday civilians, have a better record than the police, in hitting what they shoot at, and in /not/ hitting bystanders. In Miami, over six years, and 21,000 carry permits, no innocent bystanders were shot. In Missouri, police shot at the wrong guy at an 11% rate, while John Q Public had a 2% rate. In similar studies, and cited in the same paper above, civilians are more likely to apprehend, rebuke, or subdue the criminal (83%), as opposed to the police (68).

Well, with that settled, I guess she must get her gun taken away from her, then, huh, wouldn't be news fit to print if it didn't happen that way, eh? Wrong, again. Gary Kleck found, and documented in his book "Point Blank", that less than 1% of self defense cases, the, uh, estimated 700,000 to 2,000,000 a year, see guns being taken away from the crime victims.
Well, shit...guess he gets shot, then? Nope, again, Kleck, Point Blank, the lowest injury rates in defensive cases were found with those folks who resisted with guns. The second lowest injury rate was not resisting at all.

Well, shitfuck....we've got ourselves a quandry...

If statistics show that your everyday Dick and Jane are more competent than the police, why is it that people are so against concealed carry amongst these college students who only want to defend themselves and others?

It pisses me off that a criminal can break the law, do their business, and leave a mess behind, and yet if a person who is prepared for an incident like that, who trains, who carries a gun, on the off chance that some shit where a weapon is needed /may/ go down, same as a person buckles up on the off-chance that they might get hit by another car, why is it that the person who carries a gun is subject to prosecution and punishment, when the suicidal mass murderer obviously has no deterrent.

Polluting the memories of those who died.

2007-04-24T20:59:00.000-07:00

Well, here I go. I'm about to attract all the ire of the ostriches of the world. I'm about to say something constructive in relationship to a tragedy. God have mercy on my soul. I am about to say this: Why the fuck couldn't the students at VA Tech shoot back?

Guns; it is a simple word, a powerful tool, and a tool that has protected the freedom of ideas and expression for years. Why is it now that they are banned on college campuses? Well, one argument is that they don't stop mass-murderings, they start them. Let's look at a few little known incidences:

Many many years back, five to be precise, in 2002 at the Appallachian Law School in the same state: Virginia, a failing student by the name of Odighizuwa proceded on a murderous rampage with a gun he'd brought onto campus. He killed three and wounded three others. As he was exiting the building, he was confronted by two students of the law school, both brandishing (Scary word, no?) their legally owned weapons at his person. He surrendered. Guns had put a stop to him.

In Pearl, Mississippi, circa 1997, a student by the name of Luke Woodham brought a rifle to school in violation of state law and proceded to open fire on his fellow students, killing his 3 and maiming 7. The principal of the school, a guy by the name of Joel Myrick, sprinted to his truck parked off campus and withdrew a legally owned .45 pistol. As Luke left the school, supposedly to proceed on to the middle school to continue his rampage, Myrik confronted him in the parking lot and held him at gunpoint until the police arrived. For the record, Myrik had broken state law by bringing his pistol onto the school property to stop the rampage.

Both those crazies, by the way, broke the law by killing people, and the kid, Luke, broke the law just by having his gun in a gun free school zone.

The current argument is that guns are a detriment to the free culture that thrives on these campuses. Obviously, this argument has merit insomuch as if I point a gun at you, you are less inclined to think freely about what I don't like. Sadly, this is the image that is conjured up every time the nanny state advocates speak. They talk about guns, brandished on hips, waved about in a frivolous manner, and they speak as if the sky is blood red and bodies lay in the dirt, pouring blood from bullet holes. What a crock of shit. Guns recently have moved away from being a visible accessory. This is due to the miniaturization of weaponry. Guns are small, concealable, and in every state except Illinois and Wisconsin there is available the option of concealed carry (though it is restricted in some states to the rich, but that's another rant.). In many states there is no option for openly carrying a weapon. Hell, here in Texas, people think WE carry guns on our hips. Not a snowball's chance in El Paso, partner. That shit is illegal in Texas. Not to mention county and municipality preemption in numerous other states that don't ban it outright; but I digress. With the carry of weapons, the guns people carry are not used to intimidate or generate fear. They're there and that's it; and in the case of Concealed Carry, they're there and you don't even know it (Go into a Kroger's in Texas and please, tell me who's packing. You can't tell!). These weapons that are carried are there for the sheer purpose of defending others. Legal Concealed Weapons License holders aren't criminals, they're normal people who jump through hoops to get those licenses so they can be prepared should someone like Woodham or Odighizuwa, or more recently, Cho, the kraaaaaaazy Korean, stroll into their lives and try to take that life away.

Changing the culture. A friend of mine wrote a post about the incident. In his post he mentioned the specific culture on campus (He'd know, too, he double majored and spent a good portion of his time on campus), and made mention about the culture of the college campus. The free culture on college campuses is something to be cherished, something I myself admire and wish I could be part of...but they keep telling me I need to pay money to be part of it..., anyhoo, it's a culture of ideas, of peaceful resolution. It's a culture where those who protest do so with signs, catchy chants, and the occasional graffiti. Violence? It's just not thought about. At least, until guns, knives, whatnot, are brought into the equation, right? Hand a person a gun, they suddenly become willing to shoot someone else, a knife makes them stabby stabby stab someone, and a club, well, that makes them willing to beat someone up...except, they carry those big heavy picketing signs, and don't beat people up with them, do they? Culture is independent of the tools available, but instead is the mindset of the person in question. Saying guns will change that, well, that just doesn't add up proper.

Guns are a generally benign tool. They don't kill people by themselves (Takes a murderer to make a gun kill someone.), and they don't change people by contact. Sheer statistics take over here: In a Nation of over 300,000,000 people guns kill 29,573 a year, as of 2001, the latest statistics I could easily find. On the same note, we live in a world where guns are used over 2,000,000 times per year to defend the lives of people like you and me. Two million times vs thirty thousand times.....mmmm...what an overwhelming number in favor of gun control, huh?
Real quick, I want to dissect that 29,573, of that 16,869 are suicides. People who can't go on living and used guns to end their lives. Sad, yes, but unstoppable. Studies show in states where guns are locked up, suicides with other implements are higher than suicides with guns, but the overall rates stay the same. So we're left with . . . carry the two....12,704 deaths, 800 are accidental, the rest are homocides (though, they don't break out legal intervention by cops and citizens.). So, 2 million vs. 12,704. Yes, we have an even stronger argument towards guns being banned...yessirebob we do.

I could go on forever (really, I could), but I think I've made a few points for y'all to think on. Guns aren't the great evil...AMERICA is the great evil....no, actually, not even that, come to think of it. Cho was a great evil, people who murder multiple people are great evils. They are why I, myself carry. Not because I expect to encounter them - Hell, I'll probably never see a mass murderer in my life - but in preparation for an event like that should it happen. Same reason I wear my seatbelt. I've never been in an accident, but that doesn't mean someone couldn't come out of nowhere and cream me side-long at 45 MPH. Just ask yourselves, if this was the college your sister, brother, or even you went to...wouldn't you have wished you or they could fight back?

Activism

2006-03-01T14:05:00.000-08:00

I just called all three of my congresscritters. I have them on my cell phone speed-dial, now. And no, they don't know it. But the amount of time it took to call, gripe about the Patriot Act and inform my senators' staffs that they were not getting my vote next election and inform my rep's staff that he wouldn't if he supported the issue, it took me about 7 minutes. Now that's about two minutes and some odd seconds each call. Is that all that difficult? It's a little bit of time to tell some powerful people that I, along with the rest of the voters, own them. And I can sell them up the river and find someone new to own just as easy as can be. Hell, it's just checking the other box, right?

Now, if this is so easy, so quick, so NOT DIFFICULT, then why the hell doesn't everybody do it? Call 'em during your lunch break, call 'em from a payphone, call 'em at work during your downtime, or just call once ya get home. If calling isn't your cup of tea, it's an email, you don't have to be wordy, just say "You voted for/against X, you're fired/good job." Or "Y is coming up, vote for/against it" and fire it off to your rep. It's not that hard. It's just spending two minutes of your time per elected official. Who doesn't have two minutes?

That's just my two cents.

Ze Killer Toys! Ze Killer Toys! We must protect ze children from Ze Killer Toys!!!!!!!!!111!!!1!!!112213@#@&

2006-01-17T23:51:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the frontlines of the "Kids with Guns" debate. Toy guns. Toy guns that have never been proven to cause violence, toy guns that I played with as a kid, toy guns that, according to liberals, should have made me into a sociopathic killer who puts my neighbor's heads on pikes in my front lawn and eats their children with pan gravy....or something fucked up like that. I dunno, they like to change every two or three years, how can I keep up with that?

Recently a kid was shot at a school in Longwood, Florida, when he pointed a toy gun at an officer. The gun had been painted all black instead of having its required orange tip proudly displayed. I have this to say: "Whoopty-fuckin'-doo."

This kid..this idiotic cretinous excuse for a homo-sapien! DARED to point a gun at another human being, doesn't matter if that gun wasn't real, for I'd have shot him myself so long as it looked like a real fuckin' gun to me....wow, maybe I am a heartless bastard who puts heads on pikes....nah, I'm a survivalist. I don't fuck around with my life. I point my gun away from me, and I don't tease bears....though that doesn't have any bearing (Haha, bear-ing) on the matter, but I'm rambling.

Kids and toys are a natural thing. Kids and toy guns are just as natural. Kids like to pretend they're Antonio Banderas or Pierce Brosnan. They learn good from evil and develop social skills. They learn to stop the robbers and not hurt the other cops. These guns are great props for learning such valuable social skills. Now I'm not saying they'd turn out worse without toy guns, but, you see, toy guns have never made kids into raving psychopathic lunatics. There's a whole three generations of living adults that could attest to that fact.

On a side note, if a kid has a toy gun that shoots bb's or flying disks, or something, you also have a prop to teach your kid about the dangers of real guns. "Bullet comes out this end, bullets hurt people. You don't want to hurt people." At this time if your kid thinks that hurting people isn't wrong, or shows any inclination, now would be a good time to instill fear of consequences into the child. Threatening to beat the tar out of them works, sending them to a mental institute for the criminal minded works, but these are a bit extreme. If in doubt about how extreme you need to be, please consult a child psychiatrist and ask him: "My child thinks it'd be cool to shoot someone, which institute do you recomend?" Because if your child thinks that it would be cool to shoot someone, they need serious help. Professional help. Not hugs and cuddles.

Now, if my ideas seem to lean towards the overtly radical end of the spectrum, then I say "Guilty as Charged", because you can take my ideas, tone them down to your level, and use them, or pass me off as a nut job, whatever floats your boat, but speaking as a 19 year old survivor of Cypress Fairbanks ISD's Sspecial Education program, I think I know what fucked up kids turn out like. It isn't pretty, nor is what happens to those who overtly challenge them, be it staff or student.
Children need to be taught to not attack their fellow man. This needs to be accomplished by whatever means necissary. My parents did it using the belt, the hand and the public dicipline....the latter was the worst. I didn't turn out perfect, but it kept me from turning into the creatures I went to school with on a regular basis from fifth grade foward. Those kids all were shuffled off into a government run correctional class because their parents couldn't raise them right. I was in there because my doctors decided to put me on drugs for a problem they couldn't diagnose. I no longer trust doctors as a result, but we're getting beside the point.

Child in Longwood, FL, shot by cop, whoopty-fuckin'-doo. The point is, the toy gun didn't cause this kid to end up like this, the toy gun is an inanimate soulless object, and the sooner we figure this out, the sooner we can look at this kid, say "Poor bugger. Oh, well." And motor on. I don't give a fuck if he's barely a few years younger than me. He's a fuckin' suicidal moron and beneath my sense of pity. Yes, you heard me right, fuckin' moron, beneath pity. Now beneath ground, but that's another matter altogether. I feel sorry for the parents, for the cop that shot him, for the kids that were traumatized by the event, but not for the dead bugger who got himself shot when he pointed an apparent deadly weapon at a person with a real deadly weapon. This is classified, in my book, as something between a furtive movement and brandishing a deadly weapon with intent to harm. Self defense. We got that people? It was self, fuckin' defense, and I sure hope we've already established that it doesn't matter if he was a "Kid" or not.

I know I may seem callous to you, I know you may be disgusted by me, but this is how I feel, and I'm obligated to my opinion in the same way as I'm obligated to have an asshole, though I'm not obligated to be one. I'm just sick and tired of "The poor children" being poluted by "The evil guns" I mean, geeze, what a load of shit. A gun is a tool that can be used for good, it can be used for evil, and the 2.5 million good uses it's put to each year drastically outweighs the 30 thousand "Evil uses" each year. Especially when you think: Over half of those are stupid people killing themselves. And then you think: Well, what about this dumb fuck (*Ahem* I mean "Kid") who got himself shot, how many of these are self defense shootings that actually fall under the 2.5 million legitimate uses of guns each year? Well, half are suicides, and many more fall under the 2.5 million legits. the 2.5 million includes incidences where shots aren't fired, where crime is deterred by a gun known to be present, and where a warning shot is fired on top of those self defense shootings. It's really amazing to think, 99% of the 2.5 million legitimate uses of guns didn't involve a single shot being fired from them. Yes, those dangerous, dangerous evil, evil guns.

I think I'm gonna go stick a head on a pike and go to bed. Y'all have fun.

So, umm, who here brought the Petrolium Jelly?

2005-11-14T22:15:00.000-08:00

Well, Once more I've delayed my weekly 4 more months. But hey, when the inspiration strikes, right? Anyways, I want to talk to y'all about this whole 'not voting' thing. Now, I know not voting seems like the perfect solution. You get to know you've stuck it to the man, the man you stuck it to doesn't get reelected, and of course, there's this warm and tingly feeling that you get from washing your hands of the stupid, shitty, fucked up system that we've all grown to know and hate.
Now, if this isn't you, skip down three past the next few lines. If it is you, then listen the fuck up:

VOTE YOU GODAMNED COCK SUCKING MOTHERFUCKERS! VOTE BECAUSE YOUR FUCKING LIVES DEPEND ON IT! VOTE BECAUSE IF YOU DON'T YOU'VE LOST! BY NOT VOTING, GUESS WHAT, YOU FUCKERS SUDDENLY LOSE ALL FUCKING STAKE IN THE FUCKING PROCESS AND WHILE THAT MAY SOUND FUCKING TERRIFFIC AT FIRST YOU LOSE OUT IN THE LONG RUN BECAUSE WHEN THE GODDAMNED DEMMIKRAT YOU DIDN'T VOTE AGAINST GETS INTO OFFICE AND TAKES YOUR FUCKING GUN, AND THE FUCKING GREEN PARTY FUCKER YOU DIDN'T VOTE AGAINST DECIDES YOUR SUV IS TOO MUCH EXCESS FOR THIS WORLD, AND WHEN THE GODDAMNED MOTHERFUCKING LIBERALS DECIDE YOU HAVE TO APOLOGIZE AND PAY 90% FUCKING TAXES SO SOME MOTHERFUCKING LAZY SLOB CAN MOVE HERE FROM MEXICO AND COLLECT SOCIAL SECURITY BECAUSE HE INJURED HIMSELF CLIMBING OVER THE FENCE, THEN YANNO WHAT? YOU'VE GOT NOTHING TO SAY ABOUT IT! YOU DIDN'T VOTE! Voting is what keeps shit like this from happening! Voting is not a way to punish a rogue politician, voting is a way to reinforce the one that you agree with and agrees with you! Punishing the rogue dickhead is just a pleasent consequence of that action! Voting isn't about compramise! It's about taking your ideas and ideals and shoving them down everyone else's throat! THE FUCKING LIBERALS DO IT CONSTANTLY, and it WORKS for them. HELLOOOOO, IS THERE A LIGHTSWITCH IN THAT BRAIN OF YOURS!? CAN IT BE ANY FUCKING MORE OBVIOUS!?!?! IF THE FUCKING LIBERALS AND STATISTS CAN VOTE THEMSELVES IN, THEN WHY CAN'T THE CONSERVATIVES AND LIBERTARIANS VOTE THEMSELVES IN AND THE LIBERALS BACK OUT!? FUCK, WE'RE OVER 51% OF THE POPULATION, AT LEAST, SO WHY ARE WE HAVING SUCH A FUCKING HARD FUCKING TIME!?

You know what I think? I think the problems we have in this country is because people that don't vote turned the reigns of this country over to the people that do vote. I've been reading statistics, yes, scary thought, huh? But seriously, less than 50% of the voters turned out for the presidential election. That's a scary thought if you ponder what it leads to and where it comes from. But you see, not voting isn't the solution, shit you get the same effects if you vote third party, except you actually lend support where it's needed: With the party that you actually believe in.

That's actually quite a profound concept if you think about it. You have a demmikrat that you hate and a repulslikan that you hate, and then there's this third party, who supports you, your ideals, and your values. Now, knowing this, you'd probably love to have this candidate in office..but third parties are votes thrown away, are they not? Well, not really, you see, you agree with this party just like many others like you agree with this party, and many of those others don't know about this party's existance. As such, every vote that gets thrown to the party as they're discovered adds up and as such they eventually get a large enough percentage of votes to get heavy media attention, garnering them even more support. Now they have a fighting chance, and now your lesser of two evils turns into two evils and one good (For you and your like minded voter friends, that is.)

Now, if you have two evils and one good, who the hell are you gonna vote for? Exactly, suddenly this third party candidate is in office, and you know you effected political change. Sounds like a pipe dream doesn't it. Well, it is if it's just you. But get enough people who believe in your values and ideals and it's not a pipe dream, it's a water main, ready to flush out the system...and I suck, at the metaphor crap but you get my drift, right?

Now, to give an example. There's this thing, it's called the Free State Project. If you're a member of my family, you're probably rolling your eyes and going "Oh, dear God here it comes again", if you're not a member of my family, then listen up. The Free State Project is this group that is trying to take 20,000 people from wherever (And I'm talking 'around the world' type wherever) and move them to the state of New Hampshire in a way designed to effect political change. And yes, I am serious, look, here's their website: Free State Project. Some more statistics I've heard about involve the mass migration of Conservatives down to the south, leaving the northeast to the liberals. This is probably the worst political move the conservatives could make. Seriously. If you leave someone the land, they will rule it, and they will see their tactics as effective and spread. But before they spread they'll change the system in such a way to prohibit it from being retaken by the conservatives and libertarians. Putting it another way, they pull the political lever to 'statist' and then break it off. Right now, there are enough conservatives in the northeast to keep this from happening, and the Free State Project is attempting to show off how these southbound and southern conservatives can help out; not by retreating and living on the defensive, but by charging the statist threat head on and attempting to stop it dead or even turn it back before that lever gets busted permanantly statist.

I probably haven't even scratched the surface of this subject. Hell, I may even come back later and totally rewrite this post because I know it's not exactly Shakespeare. But maybe it'll mean something to enough people who have already a vague idea as to what I'm talking about that come the next election day evening the electorate won't be looking to each other saying: "So, umm, who here brought the Petrolium Jelly?" Because hopefully, this next election day we'll have senators, congressmen and other officials who support our country, and not some group of schmucks that desire to assrape our country.

cops.

2005-07-15T14:04:00.000-07:00

Cops. Short word. Small word. Also a four letter one to quite a few. Hell, I'm pissed off at 'em as much as any for past transgressions as a group. Problem is, I say "as a group". That's actually quite a big problem.
I know what you're going to say, though, cops is cops and cops is bad peoples. But that's where many people are wrong. Bad cops is bad peoples, and good cops...well, they just kind of get lost in politico's shuffle drawer, hidden away so that there's always a scapegoat. Mind you, I'm not saying cops in general are good, either. Cops is cops and individuals is individuals and quite frankly, cops is individuals just the same. Individuals can be good, individuals can be bad.

Okay, no doubt we've all heard about the most recent L.A.P.D. shooting. You know, the one involving little Susie Marie and her father, Jose Raul Pena. If you haven't turn on your TV, the fallout should be in full swing. And if that doesn't work, google the guy's name. And if you're too lazy to do even that, then I'll relate to you my take on what happened: Guy threatens to kill daughter, wifey calls cops, cops arrive, standoff ensues. Guy shoots at cops, some 60 rounds, according to witnesses, cops respond with 90 of their own, making it 150 rounds of 9 mm ammo in total.
Now I know that some of you are shaking your heads, thinking that 'the cops' could have done something different, maybe ducking for cover, or propping themselves up behind a car door, or a sheet of paper or something. But just consider for a moment, you are a sole individual, there with your friends, your acquaintances, and maybe some people you don't know, but know are on your side. Now, you're there, and this guy has been pointing a gun at you and his kid, alternating between the two, for over three hours. Then he decides to shoot. Three volleys, according to the media, are fired at you, and one of the people standing near you takes a bullet. What would YOU do? Remember, YOU are an individual during all this, you're not part of a group, you aren't leading, you aren't following orders. You decide your actions. YOUR individual life is in danger due to a madman.

Now I can't answer for you, but quite frankly, the guy's kid is not my problem. I'd open fire on him to protect myself from injury or death in a heartbeat. And I don't think there would be a jury in the world who would convict me as an individual citizen. So, why are we holding cops to a higher standard? They're individuals, deserving of perfectly equal treatment under the law. If they break those laws, they're individual criminals, if they uphold them, they're upstanding citizens. It's not that difficult, really. What makes people hate cops in general, I think, is the fact that cops, when they fuck up (Wooo, scary bad words there) and do something generally high profile in a bad way, they either end up thrown to the wolves, or they get shuffled to the back room and people pretend they don't know anything about soenso. That right there is why I'm so pissed off at politicians, using good people as political tools. Claiming 'training' or 'self disipline', or some other bullshit, as justification to play cops like cards, irregardless of whether the cop deserves a break, or not.
Cops is individuals, and individuals deserve to be treaded as such. We need to stop with the posterboys, the witchhunts, the political toying. Until we do that, bad cops are going to continue to make a mockery of the system, and good cops are going to continue to pay for acting like human beings.

Where's the justice in this justice system, again?

Statistically Speaking

2005-02-17T08:32:00.000-08:00

Okay, everybody here knows I'm pro-guns, pro-self defense, pro-shoot the bastards. But I'm here to offer some words of encouragement to those who cower in fear of the scary dangerous gun that's gonna cause the destruction of mankind. It ain't gonna happen to you. That's right, you heard correctly. It's not going to happen to you. And statistics back me up. You have a .005% chance of making the violent crime stats in the United States. .005%! Dayum, huh?

That means it's not gonna happen to you, it's not gonna happen to your friends, your family. No, it'll happen to the family 4 streets over who you don't know, so that's okay. It'll happen to the people in the next neighborhood over, who's kid is in your kid's class. It'll happen to the school lunch lady who grumps at the latest changes in the school diet. But it will not happen to you. So rest at ease! And continue to promote gun control, safe in the fact that these other unarmed citizens are getting what is not going to happen to you...but...

It wasn't going to happen to them either. It was a total and complete statistical improbability that it could happen to them. A .005% chance that they would end up a statistic for violent crime. So if it wasn't going to happen to them, and it's not going to happen to you. It sure as hell ain't gonna happen to me. I'm workin' on gettin' something to carry. If ya live in Texas, here's a tip. Antique guns and replicas of those antique guns. But I digress. The thing is, criminals go after the easy targets. The school lunch lady who's a bit on the obese side, the yuppy parents who live four streets over. The minority couple in the next neighborhood who can hardly speak the language. Sure we'll rationalize it. She couldn't run fast enough, they brought it on themselves with their yuppy-mobile beamer. The criminals thought they were badmouthing them in a foreign language, or maybe it's just the neighborhood. Problem is, it still leaves us with that bit of fear in the back of our mouths. If it happened to them, it could happen to me.

My father, great man, love him to death, told me the chances are astronomical that the house would get broken into; and of course, he's right. It is less than a one percent chance that My home would be picked for the next burglary. Hell, I figure I should feel real safe, but I don't. Yeah, the neighborhood is small houses set right close together, there's a cop sittin' along the main stretch in, and of course, the fact that the houses are right up to the road isn't a big plus for a prospective burglar. But it's still a possibility. Just like the chances that a drug operation was operating out of the house and the end of the street were astronomical, guess what, it happened.

Statistically speaking, everybody should be safe, since your chances are so slim. But realistically speaking, somebody has to be part of that slim margin, and if the people who are aren't prepared, then that violent crime could easily turn into murder, or even rape (Yes, even for the men, as horrific as that sounds.)

I'm going to end with this. I'm not an expert. I'm not a dedicated researcher of these subjects. But what I am, I am a private citizen who is looking for a way to exercise his constitutional right to keep and bear arms, and since I will be armed, and (hopefully) at least minimally professient in the usage of the firearm, I will be prepared, just in case that statistical improbability turns out to be more probable than I'd prefer. Can you all say the same?

Mein Papers!!!

2005-02-14T05:17:00.000-08:00

Look, I know I've been quiet for the past few weeks, but this seemed serious enough to bring me back out of my hole of solitude...boy that sounds cheesy. Anyways, there is this bill, getting kicked around congress. From what I can tell, since, of course, I'm lazy and all that, just like every other joe schmuck out there who actually gets to decide who becomes part of the washington leadership, I haven't read it, it involves creating a cookie cutter design for state ID cards.

Okay, great idea, grand idea, you're probably thinking. That'll stick it to the terrorists, have the federal government design the ID cards with intent to...ah, screw the fun wordplay. It's a bad deal! First off it opens us up to a national ID card, with a chip inside it that tells where you are at any given time. Then that opens us up to national checkpoints. National checkpoints to stop terrorists, of course. Then, once the federal government has branched into the ID market, they'll take the gloves off, start up the ol' print works and next thing ya know, you'll have a fuckin' whole book of papers you need just to keep from being seized under suspicion of terrorism. Seriously. You will need travel clearance to be able to travel from state to state. New documents and changed documents will be issued every few weeks/months, and you'll be required to keep up with them. If not, you'll be whisked away to be interrogated to see why you failed to maintain your papers.

Maybe I'm being to...what's the word...unrealistic...no, that's not it, this happened in Germany, the former USSR, Iraq, Iran, Somolia...or maybe you think "Never in America! It's unconstitutional!", Well, yanno, you've got nothing to hide, do you? Besides, regulating traffic throughout the united states is quite constitutional, yes indeedy, the interstate commerce clause tells me so. Or, at least, that's how the EPA got founded. Oops, did I just let that slip?
Okay, so we have the interstate commerce clause pluggin' away here. We have papers that keep us defended from terrorism. Where is the unconstitutionalism? It's not unlawful search and siezure. The gubment ain't searchin' it ain't seizin'. Hmmm...not the first, they aren't preventing you from doing, saying, gathering, or worshiping with the papers, nuh-uh. You still have your guns...so where /are/ they violating you with the papers? I dunno, really, which is why it can happen.

So, uh, write your congressman, tell your senator, and rememember this. You drew the line back at the constitution. Now they're saying to take one step forward each day. Just one step you say, and every day you do that. Now, turn around and see how many miles you, your parents, your grandparents, their parents, their grandparents. See how many steps you have taken over the years. See how many miles you have traveled from the original constitution. You like what you see? No? Well, how about just one more step?..

Racist

2004-10-29T23:53:00.000-07:00

A white man is not welcome in a black neighborhood. It's a known fact. I drove in my old neighborhood a number of years back, shortly after we moved from it. I was 9 or 10. I was afraid, not because I was told to be, mom had never 'conditioned' me to be afraid of the neighborhood. No, it had more to do with the black people there that glared at the white mother and two white children (Boy and girl) who were invading their neighborhood.

Sound's rather racist, doesn't it? No? Why not? They're discriminating against the whites, aren't they? They don't want the whites in their neighborhood, do they? Wow, sounds rather similar to the way blacks were treated in the 60's. They couldn't go into a white neighborhood without being afraid. Now it's the other way around. How is that right?

It can't be me, I am not in any way racist. Seriously. My family is of German background, my stepfather was a black man, my aunt is a black woman, a cousin of mine is a cuban from Miami...That's a pretty diverse family, and I don't shy away from any of them. So don't call me racist here. I'm just telling you what I've seen, and that is 'reverse racism'. It's taught in schools that it's different than 'racism'. It's the minorities discriminating against the majority. Well, fuck, that's racism in my book. What is it in yours?

Eggshells

2004-10-19T04:23:00.000-07:00

I read an interesting book a few months back...can't quite remember the...oh yeah! "The Hidden Persuaders." Or something like that. Good book, good book....talks about the demonization of the parent figure, specifically the father figure by TV shows.. Yes, this book explains how Howdy Doody demonizes the adult male figure in a child's life. It was written back in the fifties. Since I've read this book I've actually seen it occuring in the media, the father is made to look like a dimwit in situations where men naturally thrive. I see women thinking circles around men when it comes to cars, construction and sports. No, nuh-uh, not right, right? Well, maybe a little...but men aren't ding-dongs. I mean, seriously here folks, it's gone from a tidbit of humor to some sort of sadistic brainwashing. Now, getting to the name of this post: "Eggshells" That's how I feel when I'm discussing these sorts of things. I mean, here I am, posting something that's sure to get the femininists all up in arms, when all I'm doing is defending the men in this world who really do know what a carburator is. Now, I may be wrong, but in discussions with liberals, femininists, and mixes of the both, defending something they don't believe in isn't protected speech, it's dangerous bigotry.

Okay, maybe I'm going a bit overboard, but it's how I feel, and that's what counts, right? Well, it is to me. Anyhooo, quite frankly I'm a little sick of my fellow men being beaten down by the women of the media. I'm tired of seeing my own archetype being belittled before my very eyes. Especially since it's been a reported brainwashing tactic since the fifties. Here's to walking on eggshells, peeps!

Christopher.

Shoot the Bastards

2004-10-17T17:26:00.000-07:00

I was watching Worlds Wildest Police videos a few days back and I saw this wonderful little video of a police woman getting the shit beat out of her by some big 'ol black guy. (Note, I am not racist. I have an aunt who is black, and my late stepfather, too, was black, I loved them dearly and wish I'd had more time to spend with my stepdad before he died..) So, what do the passers by do? NOTHING! This woman was nearly killed, and this guy then took off. I don't think he was caught.
Now I know you're wondering what my title is all about. Well, here's the deal: People are scared to shoot the big bad criminal, white, black, indian, hispanic, native american, any of 'em. It scares the crap out of people when they think that they may kill someone. Well, newsflash, you're watching a peace officer get her brains bashed out...and you're worried someone's gonna die!? Yo, dipshit! It's him or her and you're the deciding factor!
Okay, I don't advocate shooting someone for minor crimes...although showing off your gun while they're commiting the crime is usually a deciding factor in if they stop, but seriously here folks, if they're gonna kill someone...just shoot the bastards.

A First Post.

2004-10-13T06:02:00.000-07:00

Yeah, by now ya know I'm horrible with naming things. I'm usually quite creative...seriously! I'm probably not much different from anybody out there, and right now I'm actually a little sensitive about showcasing my views in case I get shot down. But! There's hope in that scenario! "How?", You ask? Quite simple, actually. I get shot down, I rethink my views. I learn, so to speak. Now, just because I get shot down doesn't mean I'll actually change my views, but I'll seriously rethink them, put a little effort into studying the effects of my views. Maybe I'll be able to convince the person shooting me down that their gun is only firing blanks? Then again, if it's live ammo, yeah, the argument'll die, riddled with holes from a dangerously accurate gun. (See, I told you I was creative.)

Anyways, first post jitters are still upon me, so, a little feedback, maybe? Some words of encouragement, as I have given you none...and as this petty little 18 year old puts his name, his nickname, his thoughts and feelings out there...it makes me wonder, as I did when creating the name of this blog (and almost named it after that single thought): "Why are you reading this?"