Just so you know...

That was the second-best job interview I've ever had; I blew it out of the box, and I am dead certain I got hired. THAT said, however, they told me that the position I'm applying for doesn't start up until like late April - early May, so I won't officially hear until then.

Which is fine.

The reason I am so certain that I got in, was because towards the end of the SECOND interview they gave me yesterday, Don - the dude doing the interview - told me that despite my experience in other areas, I didn't have enough mechanical engineering experience documented for them to give me a line leader job, so I'd have to work up from a Tech II.

...So, yeah, things went well.

Danielle is staying with us tonight, but Sunday night should be clear, I hope? I really, honestly, am trying to deal with the time issue to get some time to help you out, kitten; I truly am. 

To give you an idea how chaotic things are around ehre right now, though, I haven't played Guild Wars in over two weeks. So, no guarantees. I AM trying, hon, I really am, and I do apologize; you deserve better than this.

Shamelessly Stolen From Lilliput and Sharia (That Whole "Which One's False" Thing, And Stuff.)

Which of the following is NOT true about me?

I participated in the longest airborne mission in history.

 

 1

I have been to Red Square.

 

 0

I can - and do - eat habanero peppers raw.

 

 0

I can set off a metal detector buck naked.

 

 0

I am an expert hypnotist.

 

 1

I once got kissed - with tongue - by the actress that played Winnie on The Wonder Years.

 

 2

I've fallen 300 feet onto a concrete runway and walked away totally uninjured.

 

 2

I have Russian and British jump wings.

 

 1

I can shoot Expert with 6 different weapons.

 

 0

I once made every workstation on an ITT Tech campus show the "All your base" video simultaneously.

 

 0

So, take a guess. 9 are true, one is false.

Some of you know me better than others, but I'll bet you have a tough time picking it out, anyway.


[*Edited to add: clearly some of y'all aren't getting the point of this game. I haven't told you yet which one is false. You're supposed to vote in the poll for the one you THINK is false. Until the votes are in, I'm keeping my mouth shut, so the only way you're ever gonna know which one isn't true is if you vote.*]

Why And How FOX Hates Science Fiction

Well, because they can.

That's simple enough, hey?

But seriously, ok, here's what happens when a TV exec doesn't like a particular show.

The show gets put in the Friday Night Death Slot. It gets pre-empted for other stuff. They play the episodes out of order. There are breaks of as long as 3 weeks between episodes.

Then, after a few - less, often, than ten - episodes, the network announces that the show is cancelled due to lack of audience interest, and *poof* gone forever.

Right.

Fox is possibly the worst offender, here, but this is conduct all the networks are guilty of; they buy interesting shows with creative, new ideas, try everything in their power to keep people from watching them, and then cancel them.

Now, this is a new phenomenon. In The Olden Days, (read: the 1980's and prior,) when a show got cancelled it was because NO-ONE WATCHED IT. Thus, no other network would pick up a cancelled show for new episodes, because no-one was watching it anyway. But today, shows get cancelled on the slimmest of justifications - shows that would find a glad home in, for example, the Sci-Fi network, and yet BECAUSE THEY WERE CANCELLED, they can't - and then they simply vanish, never to be seen again.

Let's talk about an example of this.

FOX aired a great show a few years ago called "Firefly." It was written and directed by Joss Whedon, who was responsible for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel; surely, that's a recommendation, right? It has cowboys in space, horrible bad guys, conflicted good guys, comedy, drama, romance, combat, the whole bag. Screams - just SCREAMS - SCiFI!!! (Note that this is not exclusive to Sci-Fi, but an AWFUL LOT of the cancelled-too-early shows are SF in nature.)

Right. So, first it goes into the FNDS; then the episode swapping and pre-emptions begin; then FOX declares it a failure and cancels it. Now, after a cancellation like that, you'd think that another network, seeing that the show would appeal to their core demographic - I'M LOOKING AT YOU, SCI-FI - would leap at the opportunity to grab up the show and start up new episodes again, but instead, no. There are two reasons for this; one is that SCI-FI execs apparently think to themselves "Gee, it got cancelled, it must suck then." This, despite the fact that the audience was strong enough to get a full-fledged, theatrical movie released over two years after the series' cancellation. The other is that, in many cases, FOX - or whatever network cancelled it if it wasn't FOX - refuses to sell the rights to the show, even after eliminating it.

Now, obviously, FOX is not the only network to do this, but the thing is that of the major networks, FOX has the most willingness to buy Sci-Fi shows, so the majority of them show up there, prior to their inevitable cancellation.

Want to see how bad it is? *deep breath*

Tru Calling: Fox, 26 filmed / 25 aired (October 2003 - March 2005.)
Point Pleasant: Fox, 13 filmed / 8 aired (January - March 2005.)
Firefly: Fox, cancelled after 14 filmed / 11 aired. (September 2002 - August 2003.) Followed by a feature film, Serenity.
Dark Angel: Fox, cancelled at the end of season 2. (2000-2002.)
The Lone Gunmen: Fox, 13 episodes (March - June 2001.)
Fastlane: Fox, 22 episodes (2002-2003.)
John Doe: Fox, 21 episodes (2002-2003.)
Wonderfalls: Fox, 13 episodes (March - December 2004.)
Jonny Zero: Fox, 13 filmed / 8 aired (January - March 2005.)
Killer Instinct: Fox, 13 filmed / 9 aired (September - December 2005.)
Justice: Fox, 13 filmed / 12 aired (August - December 2006.) (But not officially cancelled until MAY OF THE FOLLOWING YEAR.)
Standoff: Fox, 18 filmed and aired (September 2006 - July 2007.)
Vanished: Fox, 13 filmed / 9 aired (August - November 2006.)
The Wedding Bells: Fox, 7 filmed / 5 aired (March - April 2007.)
Brimstone: Fox, 13 filmed and aired (October 1998 - February 1999.)
V.R.5: Fox, 13 filmed / 10 aired (March - May 1995.)
Drive: Fox, 6 filmed / 4 aired (April 2007.)

And then, similar adventures off the FOX network:

Surface: NBC, 15 filmed and aired (September 2005 - February 2006.)
Threshold: CBS, 13 filmed / 9 aired (February - September 2006.)
Invasion: ABC, 22 filmed and aired (September 2005 - May 2006.)
Odyssey 5: SHO, 20 filmed / 14 aired (June - October 2002.)
Crusade: TNT, 13 filmed and aired (June - September 1999.) Note that the Sci-Fi Channel DID in fact attempt to pick up this spin-off of the successful Babylon 5, but was unable to afford it.

Right. I guess what I'm getting at is that there oughta be a law saying that any broadcaster that cancels a show forfeits rights to SUBSEQUENTLY PRODUCED CONTENT, and retains only ownership and distribution rights for the originally aired episodes; this would allow other stations to pick up and run with shows that, like Firefly, have a great audience, but just need a new home.

FOX: Get your heads out of your fourth points of contact, for God's sake, and stop buying Sci-Fi shows, since you clearly have no intention of actually airing any of them.

A Tiny Little History Lesson.

I had written about half of a blog post about one of the United States' great men, a gentleman named Audie Murphy, when it was obliterated by a slip of my finger onto the windows key at the same time as pressing something else that caused Opera to close this window, delete the text, and open something else that I was totally uninterested in and in fact swore at.

Just so you know.

So this might seem a bit clipped.

Every so often, in conversation with American military personnel, current or retired, Mr. Murphy's name gets mentioned, and I realize that as most people aren't military, and some of you are dirty furriners and therefore cannot be expected to know the names of the great men of other nations, I felt like sharing.

Audie Murphy was born June 20th, 1925, to a pair of poor sharecroppers in Kingston, Texas. After his father abandoned the family in 1936, he fed his mother and 11 siblings by virtue of his great skill with a rifle.

That notwithstanding, he was physically a very small man; at 5'5", when he attempted to enlist in the Marines following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, he was turned down because the Marines didn't think he would be able to do the job.

Having no time for such silliness, Mr. Murphy falsified his papers to appear 18, and signed up for the Army. He participated in the liberation of Italy, and earned several decorations as well as promotion to sergeant.

But it was in 1944 that he began to make his presence known. During the invasion of France, Mr. Murphy destroyed a German machine gun nest singlehandedly, and then turned the weapon on several nearby German positions, earning himself the Distinguished Service Medal, the U.S.' second-highest award for valor.

Within weeks, he had earned battlefield promotion to Second Lieutenant, as well as two Silver Star medals (The U.S.' third highest award for valor.) In actions around Holtzwihr, he fought single-handedly for over an hour using the .50 caliber machine gun from an abandoned and burning tank destroyer to hold off German forces until sufficient American troops had moved up to allow Mr. Murphy to organize a counterattack which drove the Germans away from Holtzwihr.

That engagement earned Mr. Murphy the Medal Of Honor - often misnamed the "Congressional" Medal of Honor - the United States' highest military award.

In all, Mr. Murphy accumulated 33 U.S. medals, five from France, and one from Belgium. At the time of his return from Europe, having reached his full growth, he was 5'7" tall, and weighed 145 pounds.

His MoH Citation reads as follows:

Rank and organization: Second Lieutenant, U.S. Army, Company B 15th Infantry, 3rd Infantry Division.
Place and date: Near Holtzwihr France, 26 January 1945.
Entered service at: Dallas, Texas. Birth: Hunt County, near Kingston, Texas, G.O. No. 65, 9 August 1944.
Citation: Second Lt. Murphy commanded Company B, which was attacked by six tanks and waves of infantry. 2d Lt. Murphy ordered his men to withdraw to a prepared position in a woods, while he remained forward at his command post and continued to give fire directions to the artillery by telephone. Behind him, to his right, one of our tank destroyers received a direct hit and began to burn. Its crew withdrew to the woods. 2d Lt. Murphy continued to direct artillery fire, which killed large numbers of the advancing enemy infantry. With the enemy tanks abreast of his position, 2d Lt. Murphy climbed on the burning tank destroyer, which was in danger of blowing up at any moment, and employed its .50 caliber machine gun against the enemy. He was alone and exposed to German fire from three sides, but his deadly fire killed dozens of Germans and caused their infantry attack to waver. The enemy tanks, losing infantry support, began to fall back. For an hour the Germans tried every available weapon to eliminate 2d Lt. Murphy, but he continued to hold his position and wiped out a squad that was trying to creep up unnoticed on his right flank. Germans reached as close as 10 yards, only to be mowed down by his fire. He received a leg wound, but ignored it and continued his single-handed fight until his ammunition was exhausted. He then made his way back to his company, refused medical attention, and organized the company in a counterattack, which forced the Germans to withdraw. His directing of artillery fire wiped out many of the enemy; he killed or wounded about 50. 2d Lt. Murphy's indomitable courage and his refusal to give an inch of ground saved his company from possible encirclement and destruction, and enabled it to hold the woods which had been the enemy's objective.

Mr. Murphy went on, after the war, to champion veteran's rights, and break the taboo on discussion of combat-related mental disorders, as well as acting in 44 movies - he preferred Westerns - and a moderately successful career as a country-western songwriter. His autobiography, To Hell And Back, should be required reading for U.S. servicemen and women. He died on May 28th, 1971, when the plane he was in crashed.

Audie Murphy was the most highly decorated soldier in U.S. history. He earned the Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service Cross, two Silver Stars, the Legion of Merit, two Bronze Stars, and three Purple Hearts, as well as the French Legion of Honor (Chevalier) and two French Croix du Guerre medals. He is credited with destroying six German tanks, killing over 240 German soldiers, and wounding or capturing many others.

His story, as with so many others, deserves to be told; remembered; and taken as inspiration.

"It's not the size of the b'ar in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the b'ar."

Audie Murphy is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. His grave is the second-most visited, after former President John F. Kennedy. His is one of the only Medal of Honor recipients' gravestones in the cemetery that is not decorated with gold leaf; Mr. Murphy described his service until his dying day as "having done no more than" his duty, and refused any ostentation for his gravestone whatsoever; his gravestone simply lists his awards, in abbreviations. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 1601 Vine St.

Audie Murphy was a lifetime member of the National Riflemen's Association.

He was one of our nation's greatest heroes, and deserves to be remembered.

Today My Own Blog Laziness Bites Me In The Ass.

Right. Now, you've heard me expound on several occasions about the pitiful situation surrounding the "format war," HDTV in general, and the reason consumers aren't buying into it.

But about 2 months ago, I collected a few articles with which I intended to make a prognostication: within 6 months, HD-DVD would bite the big one, and Blu-Ray would rule the roost.

I was being optimistic. Despite the fact that time limitations just never have seemed to let me get around to actually WRITING my blog post about this, events bore out my conclusions nonetheless; Toshiba announced today that HD-DVD is as dead as a dodo bird.

Since there's no need for foretelling, a lot of my blathering can be cut short, so here goes a very compressed version of what I had intended originally to be a much longer post:

First, Sony made the wise though painful choice of including a Blu-Ray player in the PlayStation 3. This is several factors rolled into one.

Toshiba makes - ONLY - a stand-alone box. They have an agreement with Microsoft to make a standalone HD-DVD attachment for the XBOX360, but here's the thing: people tend to NOT buy peripherals that cost as much as the console. They never have, they never will.

Additionally, comes one factor that's holding back HDTV in general: the only place it makes THAT much of a clear, obvious difference in quality - is in gaming. When you're playing a video game, having triple the resolution makes a huge, staggering, immense difference in the quality and realism of what you can see on-screen. When you're watching a movie, not so much. It's better, sure, but is it "Go buy a new TV and spend $800 on it just to see this" good? Not for most people. But in gaming, it sure as hell is.

So, The PlayStation 3. Sony willingly falls on its sword as far as this generation of game consoles is concerned - let there be no mistake, with sales of nearly 6 times as many systems, the Wii from Nintendo is the clear and obvious winner this time around - in exchange for defeating Toshiba.

Make no mistake, that was Sony's goal with the PS3. Let me explain.

HDTV is an emergent technology. This means that it's not finalized into its "standardized" form yet; the only people using it to a significant extent are early adopters who buy EVERYTHING new and spiffy; it has not yet broken into the market sufficiently to let mass production cause a major price drop.

But in the next 10 years, HDTV is going to be the standard. No ifs, ands, or buts about it; Hollywood has managed to convince Congress to pass laws mandating digital broadcasting specifically for the purpose of forcing Joe Schmoe to buy an HDTV. YOU WILL HAVE AN HDTV IN THE NEXT FEW YEARS, OR YOU WILL NOT WATCH TV.

So, this is where the markets - and the huge, staggering amounts of money - are going. Sony knows this; so, knowing they were going to have to set the price point so high that sales would be - to put it mildly - disappointing, they stuffed a Blu-Ray player into the PS3. This ultimately is what brought HD-DVD, and the format war, to an end.

You see, gamers outnumber early adopters roughly 100,000 or so to 1. Even recognizing that there are way more poor gamers than rich ones, rich gamers outnumber early adopters about 10 to 1.

Which explains why there are 10.1 million PS3's - complete with movie-compatible Blu-Ray player - on the street - and thus far only 1 million or so Toshiba HD-DVD players. This, of course, doesn't count the sales of standalone Blu-Ray players; that's just the numbers for the PS3.

So, Sony has simply outsold their competitor to the point where the movie companies have to put movies on BR-DVD, because they're actually trying to SELL their product, and Toshiba can't push enough of their product to justify the investment.

Also, there's another factor quietly at play behind the scenes, and if Sony can ever get third-party developers off their butts, PS3 sales are going to take off. That factor is FILE SIZES. As games get more advanced, file size and storage space becomes more important. Graphics files don't compress well; they take up a lot of room. Which means that the more graphically stunning a game is, the more room it takes - storage-wise - to do it. DVD, frankly, has only hit its limit for storage for gaming; for movies it's perfectly adequate. I've certainly never heard anyone complain about how pixilated and boxy their DVD movies look; for movies DVD is fine.

But DVD only goes up to about 10 gigabytes before it simply runs out of space, even with dual-layer writing schemes. Blu-Ray, on the other hand, goes up to 50 gigabytes, or thereabouts; much more capacious. Which allows game developers to really show off, because they have the storage capacity to tell epic storylines.

The XBOX360, it appears, will never possess that capacity, and neither will the Wii. I expect, frankly, the Wii will continue its massive sales numbers, because it has TOTAL backward compatibility, including literally thousands and thousands of downloadable games from literally 5 game systems or so - the NES, SNES, Genesis, TG-16, and N64 titles are all downloadable, while Gamecube games can simply play natively - a tremendous library of games, most of them for very, very low prices. That combined with its already low price point makes the Wii a long-term winner for Nintendo.

But make no mistake, the real winner in this generation is Sony. They've eliminated a competing technology - in the process of which, giving Microsoft a SERIOUS screwing - opened the horizons for game development far beyond what we've seen before, and positioned themselves for, a decade or so down the road, the PlayStation 4, with whatever features it will have.

Now if only these goddamn geniuses could get Hollywood to stop fucking around with the HDMI standards and get one, final, definitive copy protection standard for HDTV, so that I could buy one without being afraid they'd make a decision a week later and render my new TV into a brick.

Just So You Guys Know...

Our President is not what you might call a gifted speaker. But he does understand his own concepts, even if he does a terrible job articulating.

The following is an extract from a recent BBC News interview with the President:

Frei: The Senate yesterday passed a bill outlawing water-boarding. You, I believe, have said that you will veto that bill.

Mr Bush: That's not -

Frei: Does that not send the wrong signal...

Mr Bush: No, look... that's not the reason I'm vetoing the bill. The reason I'm vetoing the bill - first of all, we have said that whatever we do... will be legal. Secondly, they are imposing a set of standards on our intelligence communities in terms of interrogating prisoners that our people will think will be ineffective. And, you know, to the critics, I ask them this: when we, within the law, interrogate and get information that protects ourselves and possibly others in other nations to prevent attacks, which attack would they have hoped that we wouldn't have prevented? And so, the United States will act within the law. We'll make sure professionals have the tools necessary to do their job within the law. Now, I recognise some say that these - terrorists - really aren't that big a threat to the United States anymore. I fully disagree. And I think the president must give his professionals within the law the necessary tools to protect us. So, we're not having a debate not only how you interrogate people. We're having a debate in America on whether or not we ought to be listening' to terrorists making' phone calls in the United States. And the answer is darn right we ought to be.

Frei: But, given Guantanamo Bay, given also Abu Ghraib, given renditions, does this not send the wrong signal to the world?

Mr Bush: It should send a signal that America is going to respect law. But, it's gonna take actions necessary to protect ourselves and find information that may protect others. Unless, of course, people say, "Well, there's no threat. They're just making up the threat. These people aren't problematic." But, I don't see how you can say that in Great Britain after people came and, you know, blew up bombs in subways. I suspect the families of those victims are - understand the nature of killers. And, so, what people gotta understand is that we'll make decisions based upon law. We're a nation of law. Take Guantanamo. Look, I'd like it to be empty. On the other hand, there's some people there that need to be tried. And there will be a trial. And they'll have their day in court. Unlike what they did to other people. Now, there's great concern about, you know, and I can understand this. That these people be given rights. The - what - they're not willing' to grant the same rights to others. They'll murder. But, you gotta understand, they're getting rights. And I'm comfortable with the decisions we've made. And I'm comfortable with recognising this is still a dangerous world.

So, there you have it. "...which attack would they have hoped that we wouldn't have prevented?"

Right on.

The MORTGAGE MELTDOWN And Why It's A Bonus For You And Me!

Right.

THE SKY IS FALLING! EVERYBODY PANIC!!

Ok, got that out of your system? Good. Brace yourself; the looming - and I mean looming, as the worst hasn't hit us yet - mortgage "crisis" was engineered from the get-go by the ACLU.

Yeah, I said the American Civil Liberties Union.

Follow along with me, here, and I will explain.

Roll back time to the middle of the 1980's. That ol' way-back machine, working overtime. Groups such as ACORN had drawn the ACLU's interest with accusations of "redlining" - that being the practice of banks of having a line below which a certain loan would simply not be available to a customer because they lacked sufficient income to repay it - on racist grounds. Their argument, disingenuous though it was, went something like this: "Minorities are poor. You don't give loans to people that are poor. Therefore you don't give loans to minorities; therefore you are racist."

Now, in strict point of fact, the banks went out of their way to court minority customers whose income met the standards, precisely because they made great examples of how this wasn't, in fact, true. But nevertheless, the banks were fighting a losing battle; as minorities - despite endless bloviation about it - continue to push for ever greater handouts, and do nothing to actually improve their economic circumstances, the supply of minority buyers capable of meeting the income standards just isn't growing nearly as rapidly as the pool of people unable to afford mortgages.

Now, being the wonderful, shining examples of justice and righteousness that we all know them to be, the ACLU had to get involved. In 1988, they managed to convince some of our drunker, or more gullible, Senators and Congressmen to vote to amend the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act to require banks to collect racial data on buyers. This of course allowed the ACLU to put forth several studies demonstrating the lack of minority home buyers, which - because them darkies, they must be protected 'cuz they can't do it themselves - is inherently racist, because it's only not racist if all black people own houses, or something.

What do I know? I'm white, and rent a one bedroom apartment. Since I haven't done squat to help black people own houses, I'm as racist as they come.

So; given that all banks not lending to poor people hate the black family, and are trying to oppress someone by requiring them to have enough money to actually repay their loans, the ACLU swung into action.

In 1995, the Community Reinvestment Act was amended to require - note that word - banks to "find ways" to loan money for homes to low-income minority families. It required the banks to consider - wait for it - participation in a credit-counseling program - as proof of a family's ability to manage debt burden. And just to give the finger to banks' ability to lend responsibly, the amended CRA allowed "community activists" to hold annual reviews of banks, the results of which could range from denied mergers to direct Department of Justice legal action against the offending, unwilling-to-lend-predatorily bank.

The Fannie Mae Foundation named one bank, complying with the law and cooperating fully with the community activists, as a "paragon of non-discriminatory lending." Can you guess who it was that received this praise?

...Countrywide Financial, which is now bankrupt, and basically took the mortgage market with it when it went, due to mortgage companies' and banks' habit of cross-investing in one another.

Right.

Now, the extent of the danger went basically unremarked for years, because home prices were shooting ever higher - after all, the "relaxed" underwriting standards for home loans meant that you could buy a house that's worth much, much more than you could have afforded if you'd actually have to pay back the loan; thus, prices were allowed to rise far beyond the legitimate value provided by the price system.

But such things never last. As it always happens, the prices eventually reached a point so high that even with some incredibly bizarre loan structures, potential home buyers were simply unable to meet even the minimum payments, on even a minimum house. When that point is reached with any commodity, the price begins to fall, and will continue to drop until it reaches a point at or near the actual "legitimate" value of the commodity - that being translatable ONLY as "the price people are willing to actually pay for it."

Right now, the Fed is fucking things up much worse, by continuing to drop interest rates, which will cause inflation just as in the 70's. Right now, the ACLU - among others - are leading the charge to blame the banks for "taking advantage" of minorities with "predatory lending practices," ALL of which were forced on the banks BY THE ACLU.

Don't blame the banks. Blame our drunkard Congressmen, and the ACLU; the mortgage "crisis" was engineered from the ground up by them as an opportunity to redistribute some wealth.

Will the crisis get worse? Absolutely yes. As long as the Fed can't leave the prime rate alone, it will get worse, and the second - much bigger - wave of mortgage defaults is poised to fall, as homeowners are discovering three facts that are going to make them leap at the chance to screw the banks.

First, so-called "option ARMs" - mortgages in which the buyer can make a minimum payment, but if they do, the principal rises by the remainder of the interest amount - are going to reach a point in the next 1-2 years at which the principals of the majority of these loans have risen so high that the minimum payments are out of the buyer's range as well; they will then have essentially no choice BUT to default, because of fact number two:

Secondly, many home buyers using ARMs and O-ARMs are unable to refinance their loans into more traditional - and repayable - structures, because the combination of rising principal balances and falling home prices means that they owe more than the property value; currently a THIRD of recent home buyers owe more than the property value in principal balances. (39% of the buyers in 2006 have negative equity.) This makes the information in fact number three far more important, namely:

Thirdly, many, many buyers are discovering that the damage to your credit rating from a foreclosure is nowhere near as bad as that from a bankruptcy; walking away from a loan hurts, a lot, but bankruptcy is forever. And that right there guarantees that as the O-ARMs mature, and the principal balances drive the refinance value of the loans far above the property values, more and more buyers are simply going to take the hit and walk away.

What's funny about this is, by causing this mess, the ACLU has hurt their own socialist agenda; as home prices fall, they will become more broadly available to the general public. Not everyone can afford a $180,000 two-bedroom house, but a $55,000 three-bedroom is a lot more reasonable, and more people can buy them. Homeowners tend to be attached to their property - a core Republican value.

It's also created a new trend towards living within one's means - also a core Republican value. And as people learn how to avoid being spendthrifts, they begin to expect totally unreasonable things, like, for instance, that their politicians should act the same way.

Plus, as these Republican values are made more acceptable to the public by the simple fact that they work, it invites curiosity - how much of the rest of what the right-wingers say is true also? And that kind of thinking can only hurt the ACLU; their morally bankrupt ideology only works so long as the people listening possess no critical thinking skills. The first time a hand goes up followed by "And how are you going to PAY for all this?!" they lose.

And they know it; thus their attempts to demonize the banking industry for complying with the law of the land - a law engineered by the ACLU in the name of "equality."

Now you see the truth; the ACLU wants us all to be equally broke, and therefore dependent upon their handouts for sustenance. The right wing, on the other hand, wants you to have a job, a home you own and can pay for, a car you own, and enough money left over to go out and buy stuff for your family, and go eat at a restaurant from time to time.

You know what's really funny? I make way less money than people think; I'm well below the so-called poverty line. But you know what? My family goes out to eat, on my dime, every weekend; we buy DVDs and new books every week; we always have clothes to wear, adequate medical care, a roof over our heads, and arguably from my spare tire, more than enough food on the table for us AND a starving family from Africa.

You know why? Because I don't spend money I don't have. We don't have any credit cards; not one. Both my wife's - and my - student loans are current. We're looking for a second car, for which we plan to pay cash. Our rent, phone, electric, car insurance, and internet bills are not only up to date, but we have credit ahead on everything but the rent. Because I don't spend it if I ain't got it - and I believe firmly in the Army slogan "it's better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it."

And as a result, on a combined "not very much," my wife and I are able to, when necessary, loan money to neighbors in need; go out to eat; buy entertainment; go interesting places - next month we're going to visit with my family in Texas for a week - and do interesting things, because I believe in earning my pay, and work my ass off to get what I want.

I am a right-winger. There's a reason for it. And if you're on the left, you're broke - or living off someone else's dime - and wondering why your Republican factory worker friend always seems to have spending cash, and your liberal buddy who earns $100,000 a year doesn't, you might give that some thought.

The mortgage crisis is a bonus, for me, and people like me; finally, after years of runaway home prices, they may fall back to a level where I might be able to afford a mortgage - and maybe, just maybe, own my own home. But if I can afford it - if I can AFFORD it - it'll be a traditional mortgage, and I will pay it off, and then that house will be MINE, to do with what I choose, and not subject to the whims of the ACLU. Take a look around; as housing prices drop, maybe you can buy one too. And after fixing it up nicely, you can rent it out, and use the rent from that house to pay the mortgage on a second - and you might be surprised how fast you can come into an awful lot of money. This is how the last batch of "nouveau riche" made their money, and the chance has come around to do it again. It's the American dream; grab it if you can. I'm damn sure gonna try.

My name is Xenodox, and I fully endorse and approve this message.

Late Valentine's Day, And Such

I want you guys to know, this has absolutely been the worst couple of weeks in a long, long time. Every tiny, annoying thing that could go wrong - a baking dish randomly exploding on the stove top and covering the kitchen with broken glass while I'm on the other side of it barefoot, stuff that's been sitting comfortably in a spot for a week suddenly falling (and breaking,) terrible.

I got yelled at four times in one day by four different people at work - thus demonstrating the idea of "too many chiefs, not enough injuns," - and have had, thanks to my employers' randomly setting our line to start an hour earlier during an ice storm, about 9 hours of sleep since Monday.

I got driven off the road into a snowbank by a crazy idiot who thought having a 4x4 meant it was ok to drive 55 (arrive alive) in an ice storm, before the plows came out.

Blah.

My lovely, long-suffering (she lives with ME, come on now) wife Tara has been having an equally shitty week or so, and last night had reached a point where she was tearing up because our son made a noise. Nothing special; he went something like "aoooogargleblah" and she turned red and started leaking.

I offered to put a gasket on her.

I don't think that helped as much as I was hoping it would.

So, today, when I got home from work, and she began listing off all the stuff we had to get done this weekend, I just said:

"No. Fuck no. We're not doing any of that. All shopping and errands will be done Friday. Saturday we're going to Selinsgrove; we're leaving early; we're going to TWO - not ONE, but TWO - restaurants, for lunch and dinner, and in between we're going to walk around the mall for hours until we're hungry. We haven't gone anywhere other than work, Walmart, and the Chinese buffet since we've been in Pennsylvania and I will be dipped in shit if that will continue."

She said, "Just had your fill of it, honey?"

"You're goddamn right."

Now, that, friends and neighbors, is a plan. So, if you were counting on reading my sarcastic commentary on all things this weekend, guess what? You won't. My wife and I are gonna be wandering around a mall, window shopping and pushing the boy around in a stroller. All domestic, and shit. Look at me being Family Guy.

I can think of any number of things I would like to be able to do this weekend. But I'll tell you a secret; I wouldn't want to do ANY of them without Tara. She is the star of my heart, the love of my life, and absolutely without qualification the best thing that's ever, ever happened to me.

So, basically what I guess I'm getting at is, I love my wife. With all my heart.

And anybody that doesn't understand that, well, I feel nothing but profound sadness that your life sucks that much.

The True Threat; Or, How I Plan To Offend Literally... Well, Dozens... Ok, All Three, Of My Readers All At Once!

Let's begin with a simple question:

Why have there been no further major Islamic terror attacks on U.S. soil or property since 9/11?

Despite the blathering of pundits, there's simply no evidence that the resources and personnel of the terror-mongers have been so stretched by U.S. operations in the Middle East, or that Homeland Security has been so wildly effective, as to explain the lack of terrorist operations in the last 7 years.

However, there is clear, plentiful evidence of a massive, global shift in jihadi tactics.

In most European countries, over the last few years, the Islamic population has literally exploded, through a combination of breeding - at a much higher rate, in all cases, than the native population - and by a tidal wave of immigration. The result has been that there are now enormous areas of Europe that are literally under Sharia law, in total defiance of the laws of the host country. France even goes so far as to provide a dynamic map of areas beyond their government's control, to warn off tourists and their own citizens from entering the Islamic zones.

This tactic is being allowed, despite the fact that the collapse of Europe is far more immediately imminent than people seem to think; Islamic citizens vote; they vote far more consistently for single candidates, and single issues, than any other voting group; their numbers are exploding; and the time is not far off when their unity of purpose will allow them to - within the legal framework of the host countries' democracy - vote country after country under the dominion of Sharia law.

You'd think that, having been galvanized by the events of 9/11, that this country in particular would resist such tactics violently; in fact, such is not the case. The United States is suffering a similar undermining from within; and in our case, there is one group which has done - albeit unwittingly - more than any other to aid and assist the cause and tactics of our enemy.

This is where you all get offended.

That group is "feminists."

Now that the majority of you - ok, two - are off to write comments without regard for the rest of the article, my other lonely reader can make himself comfy, and let me lay out my case.

Our national birth rate is dropping, catastrophically. This is true across the board, white, black, asian, hispanic; it does not matter; any "assimilated" citizens are suffering a massive drop in birth rate. (This does not count unassimilated immigrants, specifically those groups who demand the right to keep their native tongue in a foreign land, and amnesty for their illegal brethren; the Muslims are included in this group. More on this later.)

The primary factor pointed to, overwhelmingly, by scientists, psychologists, and economists, as the cause for our plummeting birth rate is our plummeting marriage rate.

The plummeting marriage rate is variously attributed, depending upon who you ask, to "men's perpetual adolescence," or "the rise in irresponsible behavior among men," or "fear of commitment," or "Peter Pan Syndrome" or a dozen other similar phrases. They all point at men; they are all uttered by feminists.

But asking men why the marriage rate is plummeting is a different story indeed.

In many cases, it is far from irresponsibility that drives men away from marriage; it is, instead, a simple, rational assessment of benefits. Since the sexual "revolution" of the 60's and 70's, driven by feminists, women have become sufficiently "sexually liberated" that the overwhelming majority of men can find willing sex partners without marriage.

As women's options have opened, as they should, those changes have been accompanied by a shift in women's attitudes towards men, which they shouldn't. This shift in attitude is on display in every facet of our society, from the legal system to the sitcoms on television; across the board, men are being blamed for society's woes, even to the point where significant numbers of women are willing to vote for Hillary Clinton, a Communist, and frankly DISASTROUS choice as a potential first female President, simply because she possesses - or so we are expected to believe - a vagina. Any comment against her in a public forum is greeted with vitriol, up to and including accusing anyone who doesn't like Senator Clinton of hating women, and women's issues.

I assure you, my dislike of Senator Clinton stems not from any imagined misogyny on my part, but rather from the facts of her husband's record, her total lack of experience in actually holding a job, her rampant Communism, her total lack of understanding of basic economics, her voting record as a Senator, and the fact that if elected, she will be the first female President, and therefore - rightfully or not - will be held to a higher standard; her failures will set back "women's issues" for decades.

But no matter; the issue is marriage. So, why would a healthy, straight, 24-50 year old male in this country not want to get married?

Well, because feminists have managed to stack the deck in the courts so heavily against men that it poses a staggering legal risk to a man, including the potential for legal consequences against which no defense is allowed, the potential for grievous financial harm lasting for the foreseeable future, and the potential for jail time, loss of children, loss of housing, and loss of means of securing employment, simply on a grudging female cohabitant's SAY-SO.

That's just for starters.

Did you know that a female cohabitant can swear out a complaint, before a judge, against her male partner, claiming only that she "feels threatened," and secure a restraining order requiring the male to immediately vacate his home, even if it's been in his family for five generations, and never be allowed within 1000 feet of it again, even to secure basic belongings like his clothing? Did you also know that the male is not allowed any reply to a restraining order, any opportunity to offer a defense, whatsoever?

Did you know that a female cohabitant, IN a married relationship, can, based solely on her say-so, and without any opportunity for a defense - again - take 50% of a man's possessions, with preferential treatment given to her in the case where - for example, the couple owns two cars; the newer car is likely to reside with the female, regardless of prior ownership or how it was purchased?

Did you know that a male - not a female - can be required to pay child support for children not even genetically his, because "they are accustomed to similar treatment?"

They've pushed it so far that they've basically killed the market for sperm donors, as very few men are stupid enough to provide a donation that can result in, years later, a sight-unseen crushing financial burden that he has no legal recourse but to assume, regardless of his personal financial, or familial, situation.

And in fact, they've made things very simple: for the overwhelming majority of men, marriage is unprofitable. The current state of the law allows women to basically game the legal system to put thumbscrews to men, without any recourse, defense, or chance of reprieve on the part of the male. In fact, the feminist revolution has succeeded beyond their wildest dreams; the male suicide rate, post-divorce, dwarfs that of females. Men are painted into a corner from which they cannot escape, the instant they sign a marriage license; there have been court cases in which community property rules have been applied to men who broke up with their intendeds prior to the wedding, on the strength of the marriage license as a statement of intent.

The result? Marrying, for a male in the United States, in the present day, is an irrational action of significant magnitude, vast risk, and essentially no benefits not available without marriage.

And according to sociologists, it is this more than any other factor which is causing a drop in our birth rate.

The dropping birth rate, which plays directly into the hands of our nation's Islamic fifth columnists; as their birth rates continue to expand, their tactic of developing voting blocs is already beginning to bear fruit.

And as our country's ability to carry on the battle against the fall of Western civilization begins to buckle under the pressure, the feminists will have no-one to thank but themselves, when they are forced into hijab by Sharia law, and repressed far worse than ever has been the case under Western law.

Congratulations, ladies. The culture war is over. You "won." In 25 years, at most, you will be reaping publically the fruits of your misguided endeavors; because you were unable to separate "equality under the law" from "revenge against people long dead, for slights and oppression against people long dead."

I wish you the joy of it.