Just Because I Did...

Created by Oatmeal

Just so everyone knows, my baited ambush met with success. I posted a big dramatic thing complete with back-of-wrist-to-forehead overacting about how I was simply going to explode if anyone tried anything to stir up shit; I got an outpouring of support and onnnnnneeeee single, lonely individual who tried to... stir up shit. Welcome to the ban list, Berleigh. I hope you enjoy your stay. It may be quite lengthy; I am not known for reversing them once instituted. Thanks, all, for the support. Everything I said in both the more public and the more private posts relating to my personal situation and my attitude and feelings towards my friends was and is 100% true; I trust you won't be offended that I SLIGHTLY exaggerated my desperation at the online drama in an effort to smoke out its source. Such minor contretemps are hopefully now finished with for the foreseeable future. Thank you for participating in my little demonstration of "how to prove a troll, a troll."

And for a somewhat more select list...

...than my earlier article, because all of you have at least some familiarity with the matter to which I was referring or to my own situation.

So let's combine the two; for those of you not overly invested in my personal affairs, I will be brief and try to avoid dragging you into matters you don't care about.

A few weeks ago, my general feelings of cautious optimism about my immediate situation were shattered when someone tried to sabotage me.

A person unknown to me mass-messaged several of my family and friends, from a pseudonymous facebook account, alleging that I had committed every crime under the sun and then some, and calling me a fairly limited but awfully repetitive series of unpleasant names.

Of course, I was then deluged with messages from those family members and friends, questioning me as to either my well-being and the sanity of the messenger, or as to the truth of the allegations, dependent on the willingness of the individual to believe random messages from total strangers over their own personal experiences with me.

Annoying.

I have since determined who this individual is.

This person's harassment campaign is stepping up; they are really making an effort to make life difficult for me.

They are doing so armed with any wild-eyed accusation my ex-wife can hand them.

As such, I am working on getting myself a lawyer.

In a brighter note, I have been raised to full time already, after having been on the payroll less than three months. This is great, both in terms of income and in terms of my future prospects at Giant_Retail_Chain_00, but it is a serious and inconvenient schedule adjustment.

So.

These two factors, along with some things I am quite sure none of you would be sufficiently interested to read if I typed them out, are causing me an enormous amount of stress on all levels, emotional, physical, and financial.

So please understand the intent of my previous post.

You guys are the ones that I think are really important; the people who, for me, are either close enough to me personally that I care about you and what you think, or people whose ideas are sufficiently well-thought out and presented that I would get that muscle under my eye going "bing!" again if I couldn't read your posts, even if I don't always (or even often) comment.

...And yes, I am aware that NONE of you ALWAYS agrees with the things you write; I write not to gain the approbation of my audience, but simply to present my thoughts on things - and in practice, I find writing things down tends to clarify my thought processes, and make my own thoughts more clear not only to you, but to me as well.

This is a place and an outlet that I desperately need.

But if it becomes a haven for drama that I am unable to avoid, I will offer each one of you some contact information - that is, those who don't already have it - and quietly move along.

I love you guys.

I used that phrase in my other post, somewhat more loosely.

SV, Jesi, Ben, Retro, WOTN: you guys have never been all that PERSONALLY close to me, but I have the utmost respect, on every level, for your thinking and your ideas, even when I disagree.

I hope that one day I will get to know you all better.

Eby and CJ: you guys are an awesome couple, and while neither of you tends towards the kind of essayist writings that the above people do, I like you both tremendously and read your exploits with delight and frequent laughter.

Suzanne, you and I have spent a lot of time talking, discussing, consoling, and advising each other, though less lately. I hope that resumes; and for the record, you guys simply could not find a better person to have as a friend. Lily is a gem, and has a first-class brain on the occasions that she decides to really go to work on something.

Lee and Janet; what can I say? I've been reading Lee's blog for years, and though we're not twined around each other like roots from neighboring trees, I'd like to think that we're buddies, at least.

The pancakes thought so, anyway.

And who argues with pancakes?

One of these days we will figure out a way for us to join you two at a Chiefs game, and then a way to drag you to a Vikings game.

There is literally no-one on this site whose views I respect more than Lee's, even when I disagree.

Seriously, dude, call me one of these days real soon.

Crystal, you and I often fight like cats and dogs - which I admit is usually my fault - but I am very aware of how hard a road you've walked, and as I am finding my own feet on similarly sharp cobblestones, it only increases my respect for your perseverance.

...Even if sometimes I wonder what the heck you just said, lol.

Jeanette...

For those of you who don't know her, jeanette is, literally, my best friend in the world. I have known her for years and years; she knows more about me than anyone. (Although Ros is catching up fast.) She has stood by me through thick and thin, through real-life issues and has proven herself as my friend a million times over.

You guys would be honored to be her friends, even though she doesn't talk much. (You can get her to talk if you pester her enough, though.)

And Ros.

Kelli is my heart, and she is the one person who I always go to when things really go to shit.

And then she tells me to stop fucking up and get on with it.

She also arm-twists me into posting a lot of articles that most likely would not otherwise see the light of day.

I don't think I've ever laughed harder in all my life than I did while writing my article about Harry Potter fans - and then reading her reply that all my mockery was basically dead on.

She also doesn't say much on here, in part because she's not nearly as political as I am, and in further part because she has a tendency to get so worked up over the things that she DOES get excited about that she can't make coherent arguments because she just wants to slap the hell out of the offending douchebag. (Usually Obama in recent times.)

She makes me happy.

I love you guys.

This is a very tough time for me, personally.

Whether or not you guys realized it, each of you in your own way has helped me survive, and press on.

Never think, for a second, that I don't recognize and appreciate it, or that I would let you guys slip without trying my damnedest to stay in touch.

And if any of you ever need me, I will be there.

Any time, world-wide, day or night.

I will bring ammo and beer. Providing the pigs to roast is on you.

Neutral Ground

I know that some of you to whom this article is available will have no clue what I'm going on about. Congratulations! You're not involved in what I'm going to talk about, and can totally ignore this.

I want to discuss in passing some things that have been brought to my attention over the last few days.

I say "in passing," because I am not involved, don't know the details, and don't want to.

I also say "in passing," because, not knowing any of the details, and not desiring for anyone to fill me in, I am not directing this at, or to, any specific person or group; I don't know who's wrong, don't want to find out, and frankly don't give a fuck.

I have a few contacts; more than some, less than others.

It is inevitable, in any such arrangement, that some will dislike, or even hate, others.

Which is their right.

But the explosions of drama that I have witnessed on several of my friends' pages in recent days WILL NOT occur here.

I want to be perfectly clear, so there is no possibility whatsoever of misunderstanding.

Right now, I am having some personal, non-internet related difficulties. Those of you who know me well enough to care already know more details than they were likely interested in, and the rest have no real need to know.

But suffice to say that I have enough drama in my life right now that honestly I couldn't give a FLYING FUCK what goes on between my contacts, so long as they are friendly and well-behaved with ME.

I love you guys. Several of you have proven yourselves true friends; some of you know me from outside multiply; some of you have known me - both on here and personally - for literally years. Some of you are newer in my constellation of friends, but present because I like you. Some of you I've been lucky enough to meet in real life after meeting you on here. You guys are a treasure trove of differing views, differing personalities, and wildly differing lifestyles. All of you are my friends, to one degree or another, and I value you all immensely.

On my site, whatever the situation that exists here, you get along. Argue about politics, call all the names you want about politics or any news I report or article I write, fine.

Discussion of relevant topics can be as no-holds-barred as it needs to be; in that regard my page has always been a free-fire zone.

But personal, non-topical, unrelated drama spillover from events and discussions outside my page is unwelcome here, now and always.

I am having a tough time personally, guys.

Many of you are near and dear to me.

So please understand the gravity of what I am going to say here.

If there is a drama explosion of the magnitude of the ones I have seen over the last three nights on my page, there will be two levels of response.

The first level is that I will ban each and every participant. Full blocks; no warning, no repeal.

If anyone then complains to me about my cataclysmic unfairness in doing so, I WILL FOLD MY FUCKING TENT AND LEAVE.

I have kept this blog going, sometimes with minor hiatuses for various reasons, but pretty steadily overall, for the better part of six years. It has at various times been a forum for me to simply rant and complain; a home for my political essays, whose quality both of writing and thought I leave up to your judgment; a place for me to tell about positive things in my life; a social home for me on the web.

That last fits best, I guess; Multiply has been very good to me indeed, and I find myself more comfortable here by far than among the endless farmville posts on Facebook or the meaningless status updates on Myspace.

And I am telling you, one and all, here and now, that my personal life is too demanding right now for me to get dragged into this bullshit by the inevitable gravitational field that seems to surround such things.

I have real-life issues that require my attention; I cannot spare any for shit that, frankly, all and sundry should have outgrown around the time that people graduated high school.

I really don't want to have to make that decision.

So, I am asking.

Please.

If you guys value my presence on Multiply as anything worth keeping, please behave on my page. I am not involved; do not want to be involved; do not want to have the reasons I should be involved explained to me in personal messages; do not want an uncategorical enumeration of some other user's flaws, either in private or public; I want nothing whatsoever to do with this.

Thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts on the subject.

Also, This.

Common Sense, How The Fuck Does It Work?

This is a good question, since there seems to be precious little of it around these days.

So, in this long and rambling article, I will attempt to apply some to an issue which has had much blather and little serious discussion over the last few weeks: the mosque at Ground Zero.

But first, I want to begin by discussing a technique used by many hypnotists as a means of changing their subjects' views.

Whoa, gear change, right?

I promise, all will be made clear.

In the branch of hypnosis known as neuro-linguistic programming, NLP for short, there's a technique known as "reframing." Reframing is a method of altering the terms of the discussion in such a way that the subject is steered inexorably towards logic chains that contradict their previously held views.

In therapy, this is used to help patients overcome, for example, negative self-image problems. By altering the terms upon which someone defines the outcome of a situation, you alter their perception of that situation - and when that altered perception conflicts with their previously-held convictions, why, you have a marvelous lever with which to move their thoughts into healthier channels.

For example, if someone doesn't get invited to a theme party that all their friends are invited to, because the host thinks that the theme might offend them, they might believe that they were left out because they are disliked; applying the knowledge that the host was trying to avoid giving offense, the therapist can steer the patient into understanding that that decision was made as a gesture of respect and appreciation, instead of an insult.

Marvelously effective if used correctly.

However, like any technique which is founded on changing the perception of the listener, it is also marvelously easy to use for the wrong reasons.

And here is where we come to the Cordoba Initiative.

See, the liberals have been persistently and forcefully trying to reframe the debate surrounding the mosque two blocks from the former site of the Twin Towers; trying to alter the terms, so that it is not a debate about the calculated, magnificent insult expressed by someone so contemptuous of our value that they would build a monument, mere blocks away from the site of the deaths of thousands of innocent people slaughtered by fanaticism, to the source of that fanaticism itself; instead, it becomes a debate between people passionately believing in freedom of religion and Constitutional protections, versus illiterate, backwards cavemen who are trying to repress something they don't understand.

Thankfully, I am here to destroy that attempt at reframing, and cause the entire tangled mess to collapse upon its silly, misshapen, and ungainly head through vigorous application of the aforementioned common sense.

The first, and most obvious, flaw in this attempt at reframing is that there has been essentially no actual element of religious discrimination in the commentary provided by the Cordoba Initiative's opponents. They have called it an insult, a desecration, a sacrilege, and it is all those things; they have said repeatedly that it SHOULD not be built; but none of them have attempted to claim that the project's backers should be BANNED from building it.

In order to reframe, you dribbling dolts, you have first to provide information that is actually truthful; you cannot simply lie your way to success.

The second flaw in this attempt at reframing, however, is more disturbing; it is that the backers of the mosque appear to be doing everything in their power to thumb their noses at us; making the Cordoba Initiative a far greater insult thanks to their utter and oblivious tone-deafness than it would have been had they simply said something like "we got a great deal on the land and can't afford to build it anywhere else, so please work with us here."

If they had, I suspect that most Americans would still be grumpy about it, but I doubt greatly that we would see 68% of the American people publicly state that they think it shouldn't be built.

Why do I mention that?

Because that's the latest poll number. 68% of the American people think that mosque shouldn't be built.

"Aha!" Cries the left, "You're against it because you hate Islam!"

Then why aren't they picketing and protesting against the other - many - mosques in New York, hmmm?

It is not the religion people are protesting; it is the geography.

The proposed site of the Cordoba House - which will, itself, be discussed in detail shortly - is two blocks from Ground Zero.

"Aha!" Cries the left, "You're using charged language to try to force an emotional response!"

Do you have a better name for a site sanctified by the blood of so many innocent people?

Sanctified. Hallowed. Made holy; a place on which a sacrifice so great was laid that it scarred the people whose children, fathers, sisters, wives, and sons bore it forever, a place in which any disrespect of that sacrifice should not be tolerated - because no matter how great our devotion to toleration of others, as a people and a nation, in our bones we know that some things ought not to BE tolerated.

Building a Hitler Memorial Museum at Auschwitz, for example, or a Shinto shrine in memory of Emperor Hirohito outside of Pearl Harbor. Every people, every race, every nation, has places they consider sacred, for whatever reason, and some of those places have become the greatest battlefields in the world for the sake of protecting them from insult.

Perhaps Japan would like a Manhattan Project Commemorative Monument erected at Hiroshima.

But I doubt it very much.

See, the first question one must ask of the Cordoba Initiative is, "why there?"

Why MUST it be built upon ground that nearly every American sees as sacred? Is it not possible to erect a mosque, a cultural center, whatever they're calling it this week, on the other side of Manhattan, and provide the same "community outreach" its backers claim is its goal, without giving vast and implacable offense to the people whose relatives stained that ground with their blood that day?

Is it truly beyond the bounds of possibility to simply decide that whether or not it CAN be done, it SHOULD NOT be?

Having the legal ability to do something doesn't make it right.

For example, I can in perfect safety, enshrined within my legal right to free speech, walk up to you and call you names, provided I don't swear at you or make accusations constituting slander.

I could say - and I leave it to each of my three readers to decide which of these terms could ACCURATELY be applied to them, if they're honest enough about it - that you are a beer-swilling, apathetic, logically inconsistent, hypocritical, morally degenerate, lecherous, ethically challenged, self-interested, narcissistic, passive-aggressive, unattractive, loud-mouthed, opinionated, shiftless layabout who works no more than necessary and plots overwhelming vengeance for any slight, real or imagined, but rarely has the intestinal fortitude to actually carry it out for fear of the real-world consequences; guess what, that's perfectly legal.

That doesn't make saying it the right thing to do, no matter which (if any) parts apply to the individual to whom I'm speaking.

For the record, and to prove the unflinching nature of my own self-assessment, all those apply equally to me - although I note that that leaves out my many sterling qualities. For example, I am a good tipper.

...Because it pays to have happy servers; they are less likely to do bizarre and disgusting things to your food.

At any rate, the point at which I am rudely groping (and from which, might I add, dodging increasingly energetic slaps,) is simple: just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you SHOULD.

The attempt at reframing the debate on the part of so many of our left-wing loudmouths is just that: an attempt to convince by twisting the debate until the original point is lost. This is not, and never was, a debate about religious freedom, First Amendment protections, or the "right" of the Cordoba Initiative to build their mosque wherever they want, because no-one has claimed they legally can't. No-one has tried to prohibit them from doing it; instead, they have sought to shame them into withdrawing.

And the imam Faisal Rauf has proven immune to shame.

Why?

This is a man who is trying to build a monument, he says, to "tolerance," which angers 70% of the people in whose hearts it is supposedly meant to inspire brotherhood; that fact alone should inspire him to, perhaps, put it somewhere else.

There is no shortage of mosques in New York.

Only the geography, and the price in blood paid for its sanctity, makes this location special.

But if "tolerance" and "brotherhood" were in fact the imam's goals, he would relocate elsewhere.

And he's not.

Instead, he has sought the backing of HAMAS, a recognized terrorist organization, which publicly announced their support for it just the other day.

He has traveled across the Middle East, raising funds to build it from the very nations whose children killed the thousands whose blood invest the site with such hallowed gravity, and to add insult to injury, he has done so on the U.S. taxpayer's dime.

Yet no taxpayer funds were released to help rebuild the church which stood equally close since the 1920s, a church leveled when one of the towers fell on it.

Why?

Many of us remember the fervor with which the Democrats demolished President Bush's "faith-based initiatives," once he was out of office.

Where is that anti-establishment fervor when it comes to funding for an Islamic "faith-based initiative," hmmmm?

Where is the sense of moral outrage, the fervent and furious denunciation?

There is none.

Because the Democrats are trying to side with the group they perceive as the victor in the upcoming cultural siege.

See, here in this country, we praise tolerance as though it has merit of its own not predicated upon the value of those things being tolerated.

Chamberlain found out the hard way that when you tolerate the wrong things, things which do not tolerate you, the price for that tolerance may be steep indeed.

We "tolerated" Islam, endlessly, in the wake of 9/11.

Muslims weren't hung in the streets; they weren't kidnapped, tortured, and murdered, as their coreligionists did to our soldiers, journalists, and innocent bystanders on live television.

They weren't even banned from businesses.

So where is their toleration for us?

Where is their much-vaunted religious toleration, when the majority of the people of our nation say to them, "this is unacceptable to us; move it somewhere - anywhere - else."

I wonder why it is that they who constantly demand toleration from others, so carefully avoid extending it to anyone else?

Islam preaches that gays should be killed; that women dressed immodestly should be killed; that unmarried fornicators should be killed; that those who do not believe as they should be killed, converted, or forced to live in servitude.

How can that BE tolerated?

Those who do not tolerate YOU, should not be tolerated.

I wonder what gives Obama the sense that it is simultaneously ok to demand that Prime Minister Netanyahu display "tolerance" by not building homes in the Gaza Strip - on the grounds that it is sacred to the Palestinians - yet deny New Yorkers the right to self-determine in the same way?

Explain it to me.

Why does Obama think that Palestinians deserve concessions not granted to his OWN CITIZENS?

THAT is what this debate is about. Not "rights," but the right thing to do.

Building a mosque at Ground Zero isn't it.

But it has even more significance than even this, yet to be revealed.

See, the very name of the project is part and parcel of the insult - the deliberate insult - that Faisal Rauf is inflicting upon the West, with the calculated support and defense of the politicians of New York and the nation, in defiance of the will of the people.

Cordoba was the site upon which, when Islam conquered Spain in the 700s, a gigantic mosque and "cultural center" was built - upon the site of the slaughter of thousands - as a symbol to the Spaniards that Islam had conquered them.

If this project had taken place under any other name, it could have been shrugged off as callousness alone; Faisal Rauf's tone-deafness to the nation in whose precincts he resides.

But under the name Cordoba House, there is no other way to construe it; the very name itself is a deliberate statement of calculated insult, intended to give us - and the world - the exact impression that it gives: "We win. Your politicians helped us, and continue to do so. You cannot stop us."

Because, you see, this is what truly gives the other team the edge in this little cultural contretemps; they BELIEVE that they are right, and we as a nation should be destroyed; and we BELIEVE that we as a nation should be willing to tolerate anything, under the guise of religious freedom.

There is, and can be, no "toleration" of a knife at your throat, if you hope to live.

They may not articulate it as such, but Joe American sees that.

And they are furious, for those charged with the sacred trust of defending us from foreign invaders, foreign oppressors, are aiding them in their invasion, abetting their oppression.

If Cordoba House were about peace, it would be somewhere else.

And it wouldn't be "Cordoba" anything.

The fact that it is as close to Ground Zero as possible, and named as it is, indicates that Faisal Rauf is not tone-deaf; he knows exactly how angry Americans are about it, and he is thumbing his nose at us, because he knows that our own doctrine of tolerating anything just because it's different bares our throats to the blade.

This mosque is his way of saying so, to the world.

It's legal.

He has the privilege of being allowed to build it if he wants.

But there is nothing, no force on earth, that can make building it "right," in any sense of the word.

And we ought to quit trying to disguise it as anything else but an offense.

Ross sisters - Solid Potato Salad (VHS quality)

Put up with the potato salad song for some really trippy old-school contortionism.

Kick-Ass, Which Kicked Ass

So, we Redboxed Kick-Ass.

If you don't understand that phrase, kindly step forward into the internet generation, you Neanderthal.

At any rate, we finally got a chance to see it, and almost immediately found out what the controversy was all about.

See, there was controversy surrounding this movie.

I will get to it.

OK, spoiler-free, the movie is about a kid who gets tired of seeing petty crimes going unpunished and unopposed by Joe Citizen, and decides to become a "super" hero, in his case by donning a hideous green and yellow wetsuit and going out to...

...Well, get stabbed and then run over by a car.

What, he's a noob.

Of course, once healed, he follows it up by saving a guy from a beating at the hands of three punks, and gets in a great line; one of the punks asks him "What the fuck is wrong with you?" and he responds, "three of you laying into one guy while everyone else watches, and you're asking what's wrong with ME?!"

I will say up front that this movie is quite bloody.

And that's where the controversy comes in.

See, virtually all the actual significant violence, death, or injury in the movie is inflicted by Hit Girl, played by Chloe Moretz.

Hit Girl is around 11.

Chloe Moretz is actually 13.

Which makes the fact that she kills at least 23 people in the movie (this site says 40,) swears a LOT - some things you'd hope a girl that age wouldn't actually know, much less say in a movie - and basically plays a child sociopath trained as an assassin from birth, a little disturbing.

What makes it worse is that the character is fucking awesome.

You really, really don't want to find yourself rooting for a child in those kinds of circumstances, particularly since that child - or the actress, anyway - has to actually know those words and be at least peripherally aware of the violence she's portraying, and some of the stunts could not be reproduced by any amount of green-screening.

To put it in perspective, her previous roles have included 31 episodes as Darby on "My Friends Tigger and Pooh."

Ouch.

But the real deal is that Hit Girl is clearly the true hero of the movie. She saves almost all the "good guys," wipes the floor with the bad guys, and generally, well, kicks ass.

So, is it good or bad? On the good side, well, she wins; evil is punished, with frankly very little help from either the titular wannabe, or any of the significant adults in her life, and on the bad, well...

...I don't think the bullies at a regular school are really prepared for her.

Kick-Ass's comic-loving schlub buddies nail it, I think.

"Hit Girl is fucking awesome!"

"Dude, she's like 11."

"For her? I'll wait! I am so going to save myself for her."

At any rate, gory, bloody, at times very funny, and we're buying it.

So, Here's Some More Opinionated Rambling.

See, there's a curious divide in America, and it's not between the "haves" and "have nots," but between people who are capable of understanding their own situation, and those who aren't.

There's an issue that's making political hay for both sides right now: illegal immigration.

It's a totally simple issue, actually, but politicians want to make it complex, because if it's complex, they can bamboozle a broad swath of the voting public into whatever they want from their agenda because people don't understand it.

So what IS illegal immigration, anyway?

Well, it's where there is a legal process for someone to enter a country, and become a resident, and someone decides not to follow it.

They break the law.

They enter the country illegally, they remain in the country illegally, and they take advantage of the system of that country as far as they can until they get caught.

Now, politicians on one team blather about how state laws are trying to "criminalize" illegal immigrants.

That's actually impossible; see, when you break the law, you are a criminal.

Federal law prohibits entry into the United States other than by the legal, prescribed methods; therefore illegal immigrants are criminals.

So, no law here can "criminalize" them; they are criminals because they're here.

Other politicians are blathering about eliminating the 14th Amendment, which states that a person born in the United States is a citizen of the United States.

This law is used by illegals to gain residency without using the legal channels; they get pregnant, they get close to their delivery time, and they sneak across the border to have their child, knowing that once that has happened, they can't - under current law - be sent home.

This group of politicians are half right, and all wrong.

See, the problem with amending the Constitution is that you cannot then predict what ELSE will get amended.

Yeah, anchor babies are a problem; but repealing the 14th Amendment is not the best way to go about it.

Improving border security is the best way to do it; keep them from sneaking in, and then you don't have to worry about anchor babies.

Convening a Constitutional convention, allowing Congress to change the fundamental, most basic law of our nation's social contract, is a terrible idea. Because there's no way whatsoever to predict what our elected officials would be able to get changed, especially in this era of back-room deals and secret agreements among our politicians.

Guard the border, and do not let them across. That is how to accomplish a solution to the problem.

Then we have the flap over Arizona SB 1070.

Arizona SB 1070 is a state law that echoes federal law.

One hundred percent of what SB 1070 does is to require state law enforcement officers to enforce existing federal immigration laws.

Politicians are screaming about Nazis, and having to show your papers, but federal immigration law makes it a crime - a felony, a deportable offense - to fail to carry your immigration documents and identification on your person AT ALL TIMES if you are an immigrant.

Immigrants are already required by law to do what the Arizona law requires; the federal officers tasked with enforcement are simply not doing their jobs.

Politicians are also screaming about "racial profiling."

The Arizona law not only requests, but requires, that all state law enforcement officers take classes in avoiding that exact thing.

It states that officers can only EVEN CHECK the immigration status of people who have already been detained for something else; in other words, only people who are already suspected of breaking the law in other ways.

Which means that the politicians who are trying to reverse the Arizona bill, are supporting rapists, murderers, thieves, drug pushers, human smugglers, vandals, and other various and sundry miscreants.

Because if officers aren't allowed to stop people for breaking the law, then there is no law.

The supporters of illegal immigration are, de facto, saying that they believe that the criminals are more important than the law-abiding citizens.

These same people try to remove the ability of the citizens to defend themselves by violating the Constitutionally-guaranteed right to keep and bear arms, knowing full well that if there is a law against guns, the only people who will have guns are those who ignore the law to begin with.

The supporters of gun control laws are, de facto, saying that they believe that the criminals are more important than the law-abiding citizens.

There are plenty of our politicians - again, often the same ones - who turn the cities under their control into "sanctuaries," places in which the officials in charge of protecting the citizens and upholding the law simply refuse to enforce that law.

They are, de facto, saying that they believe that the criminals are more important than the law-abiding citizens.

There are even more of our politicians who are scheming to return from political exile in triumph, using the indignation of the citizenry against the politicians currently in power as a means of overcoming the indignation of those same citizens against themselves; relying on the citizens to forget that mere years before, they raged against the schemers with frustration just as vast, just as fiery.

Those politicians are potentially committing political suicide, not for themselves, but for our existing system, and they do not know it.

Because when they return to power, and in turn betray their constituents, ignoring their will and needs in favor of a return to what those politicians see as the desired status quo, those constituents will be done with them.

Not even so much as a terror of the alternative will force them to remain.

Because there is another force in American politics, and the "establishment," on both sides of the figurative aisle, is terrified of it.

One side is trying to co-opt it, and the other tries to dismiss it.

But both fear it.

Because they know that no amount of political grandstanding will save their fortunes should that growing force become a legitimate third party.

And all it would take would be for the conservatives in this election to continue to believe that they can conduct business as usual.

This election isn't about illegal immigration. It's not about gay marriage, it's not about anchor babies or crime or the economy.

It is about one thing, and one thing only: are our politicians our servants, as the Founders dictated, or are we theirs?

Our politicians openly and obviously believe, regardless of their associations, that we serve them, and not the reverse.

They believe that criminals, and their rights, are more important than the citizens, and their rights.

They believe that the economy only matters insofar as they can loot it for their own gain.

They vote themselves massive increases in their pay and benefits at a time when millions of their citizens are unemployed, homeless, stricken with poverty, reeling under financial collapse and massive debt thanks to the fiscal policies of those same politicians; they ignore the measures that would actually benefit the citizenry because they believe - truly believe - that the economy cannot, ultimately, collapse.

They believe that the golden goose cannot die, cannot stop laying eggs, and will always provide for them.

They are wrong.

On both sides of the aisle, their policies are leading us towards disaster both fiscal and social.

They cannot see it.

We can.

And they must not be given a chance to make it even worse.

Notice must be served to the Republicans. If they take the Congress in this election, and then abandon their constituents in favor of business as usual, they will have destroyed their own electorate.

And they will have made a force of the Tea Party that they will neither be able to control or stop.

Strictly Opinion, With No Scientific Basis Whatsoever...

...Largely because scientists, while brilliant in their fields, can be fucking retarded in other ways.

Yeah, I said it.

For quite a while now, scientists and statisticians alike (for they are indeed very different, as anyone who's ever requested demographic numbers on anything can tell you,) have been bemoaning the declining birth rate in Western nations.

They've studied, brainstormed, discussed ad nauseam, and still, the conclusion remains the same: across the spectrum of developed nations, the birth rate is declining steadily, and despite many theories, no-one's come up with anything concrete that explains it. (The United States is #124 in the world, and a large portion of its rank is made up of children of ethnic minorities.)

Hold on to that thought.

Recently, studies by other scientists completely unconnected to the folks studying declining birth rates have discovered a startling and (to some,) disturbing trend: girls in Western nations are hitting puberty earlier.

The evidence is incontrovertible; where previously - as recently as the 1990's - the average age for onset of puberty was between 14 and 15, now it is around 12.

This is a change of 3 years in the global average, in less than 20 years; it has dropped IN A SINGLE GENERATION by about 20%.

That's a change of staggering magnitude.

In fact, as many as 10% of Caucasian girls, 15% of Hispanic girls, and 25% of African-descended girls have hit puberty by age seven.

Again, science is stumped.

Theories are advanced, much hypothesizing is done, and there is much wringing of hands in the segments of the scientific community studying this phenomenon; but no concrete reason for this has yet been found.

Don't worry, I am here for that.

See, these two segments of the scientific communities don't talk much.

And that's a problem.

Because if they did, they'd notice that the two are tied together.

Whatever force is in control of our biological processes as a species, be it conscious guidance (God,) or "natural processes," whatever those are in the absence of a designer, nature - make that Nature - responds to stimuli.

For whatever reason, our species, at least in the West, is declining, and that's apparently not in the cards.

So, Nature is reacting, by increasing the years available for females to reproduce.

Also, I might add, doing a bang-up job of making said reproduction more likely; no matter how frank and honest their parents are, there are precious few seven (!) year olds who are emotionally equipped to make informed, rational reproductive decisions.

Which means that when they are suddenly assaulted by a flood of hormones driving their bodies to change in ways they aren't ready for, emotions they don't know what to do with, and sensations they don't understand but like a WHOLE LOT, they are likely to make, instead, uninformed, irrational, bad, stupid reproductive decisions.

See, Nature doesn't care about our child-rearing environments.

It DOES, however, care for our continued viability as a species, which is primarily represented by our number of surviving offspring.

If we're reproducing successfully, then we are a successful species.

Thus, we are presented by a situation in which our females - the single limiting factor on the number of offspring - enter childbearing age sooner, and remain in it longer.

See, men can impregnate essentially as many women as they can convince to sleep with them; in theory, several per day.

But once a woman gets pregnant, she stays that way until the child is born, thus removing her from the breeding pool until she delivers the child, recovers, and returns to "availability."

Thus, affecting the number of MEN has far lesser effect on the population as a whole.

But affecting WOMEN changes the entire dynamic.

Now, our Western cultural mores are an historical anomaly.

Follow along with me, here; rest assured, I have a point.

In the past, girls were frequently married off, and bearing children, as young as 11 or 12; particularly during periods of greatly reduced population. (As witness, the explosion of population growth that followed the Black Plague.)

The simple, albeit repulsive to Western sensibilities, rule has almost always been, throughout human history: "if there's grass on the field..."

Only since the growth of industrial civilization, and the concomitant advances in medical technology, have women truly gained any measure of equality.

Only since the advent of our recent (~200 years) technological advancement have we, as a species, had the LUXURY of having women as a group able to choose NOT to bear children; our notion that anything under 18 is "underage" is incredibly recent.

Bear also in mind that it is only in the last century that we have seen such massive cultural overspecialization that our children can remain so until they are 18 - and in many cases beyond. In an agrarian culture, based primarily around subsistence farming, every available hand is needed; children begin working from the time they can perform a task at all, because their help is required.

In the world that was, a girl of 14 was typically already a wife and mother.

In the world that is, a girl of 14 is just beginning to learn how to be a woman at all.

But our culture - that tolerant culture that allows adolescent rebellion to carry on into the mid-20's, and makes it illegal for children to be put to work until they are 16 - is about to meet up with a simple fact.

Nature does not care about our cultural sensitivities.

Nature does not care about our preferences, our ideas, or our childrearing plans.

Nature simply demands that we have more kids.

And the results of that have great potential to be harsh indeed on a cultural level for us.

Sex education is a touchy subject, particularly in our political climate; of our two major American political parties, we have one team who wants to inculcate children from birth with knowledge of everything under the sun about sex, thus virtually ensuring that they will have it as soon as possible; and one team whose idea seems to be that if we just tell them not to do it, and then pretend it doesn't exist, it'll go away.

Both ideas seem stupid to me, but I'm crazy, and therefore not to be taken as any sort of authority on this whatsoever. My own plan, for my son, is to wait until he asks me questions, and then answer them as honestly as I can, and hope he doesn't do anything stupid without asking Dad first.

Which I grant is probably as bad an idea as the ones espoused by our political monkeys.

But here's the thing.

Puberty makes girls look different.

Hell, it even makes them SMELL different.

And if we have girls who look, at 11, as mature as the girls we grew up with looked at 16, people will likely see them as older than they really are - and with the experience and maturity (or lack thereof, as the case may be,) to be expected not at their REAL age, but at the age they APPEAR to be.

As a culture, the impact of this cannot be underestimated.

Now, people go to jail for "she looked 18" when she was really 16 - and enthusiastically encouraging her partner to believe she was older, until he annoyed her in some way.

How much worse will that become, if girls can pass for 18, who are 13?

Girls are getting taller earlier; developing sexually mature features earlier; and most importantly, their sexual responses and instincts are turning on earlier, too.

Which means that they will - in their inexperience - be even more enthusiastic in their attempts to grab any reasonably cute guy, and find out what all the fuss among their friends is about.

Because they're not old enough to make rational decisions about sex at that age.

Because our culture teaches them not to be.

Which, ultimately, I guess, is where I'm going with this; as a culture, we have to brace for impact, and start - now - trying to figure out how to deal with it.

I am personally quite certain that both our political parties are wrong about it.

But we might need to rethink sex ed classes altogether; redesign from the ground up.

Because if girls are getting a head start this much earlier - and from the evidence, guys aren't experiencing similar changes - they ARE going to start pursuing older males. A 7-year-old girl who goes into puberty is NOT going to find a 7-year-old boy interested, or even capable, of making out with her.

He might try to wow her with his G.I. Joes, though.

And if we cannot treat the sexes THE SAME, we must begin to acknowledge that while they have equal value, and equal legal status, they are simply DIFFERENT.

For myself, personally, I am delighted that at this point I have a son, with at least a few years of Thomas the Tank Engine and Willy Wonka ahead of him before I need to worry about those questions.

But parents with daughters need to give this some serious thought.

Ten percent by age seven.

Something tells me Chris Hansen is going to be seeing a lot more work over the next few years, because our culture has convinced itself to step away from the practices of the past to such an extent that our children are not capable of adapting to a return to those practices.

We've cherished innocence to such a degree that we've enshrined it.

Nature doesn't care about it.

And our attitudes and expectations are about to run face first into that fact.

Brace for impact.

A Nearly Perfect Resignation: A Photo Essay

...Which does not in fact require much in the way of commentary from me. To set the stage, a young lady by the name of Jenny decided to quit her job.

In order to ensure that everyone at her former workplace understood exactly what happened and why, and armed only with a digital camera, a dry-erase board, and a (valid) complaint, she took the following series of 33 pictures, comprising possibly the greatest resignation letter ever mass-emailed to an entire corporate staff simultaneously.

Prepare yourself.

You go, girl.

Yaaaaay! I, Too, Have A Lunatic Stalker!

Ok, bad news first and then good news.

I apparently have developed a stalker of the same ilk as Lee's perennial "friend." One of my soon-to-be officially ex-wife Tara's friends decided that I am a prick, and so they messaged me, Kelli, and all of Kelli's entire family on Facebook to tell everybody what a lying, scheming, backstabbing bastard I am. I have no idea whether their methods will extend to multiply, but it's better to be prepared; proper prior planning prevents piss-poor performance. Besides, some of you are friends with me on FB as well, so you might get to join the love-in just because you're there.

Their plan met with some opposition based in the fact that Kelli was talking to both me AND Tara during our breakup, and thus knows for a fact that everything this person says is totally untrue, and thus the impact of this so far has been, basically, that Kelli and I are both massively pissed off, and gathering evidence to try to take it to the police.

One of my favorite bits...

Well, let me tell you a bit of personal history. I'm not telling you this, by the way, to gain personal sympathy, but to illustrate a point; this all happened years ago.

Back in the day, I was dating - then engaged to - a lovely girl. She was pregnant when I met her, and had been abandoned by the father.

She had a daughter, named Aurora; she and I got more serious and got engaged, and we planned for me to adopt Aurora when we got married. I helped raise her; in every sense but the biological, she was my daughter.

While I was deployed for the pre-Kosovo train-up, Aurora, then 18 months old, got sick; it turned into pneumonia, and she died before I got back from the FTX.

My then-fiancee was understandably distraught, and reacted by basically packing up everything we had that she had any remote claim to and moving away to points unknown two days after I was sent overseas.

You may guess that I was a bit fucked up by this.

You'd be right.

Now, the point of my telling you guys this - since some of you don't know me well enough to really care, nor should you have any good reason to - is that the mysterious harasser has decided to include, in their blathering screeds against my moral character, a rant about how I love to tell people stories about my daughter Aurora, but it's all lies because I never had a daughter.

Technically, this is true; I have only one biological child.

I'm not sure that you can really describe what I feel when I have to tell people - and there aren't many I have told - about Aurora, and why the last week of July (she died on the 25th,) is kinda rough for me, is "love." 

I don't love to tell that story.

But I like it even less when someone who evidently knows some of my personal history through some means decides to spread bullshit stories about me to try to get me in trouble.

So.

The point of this is to tell you in advance that some of you may get messages from this person, whoever they are; please feel free to forward to me any correspondence you receive of this type; I'd love to have it, as we're planning to go to the police and get this person some real-world negative consequences.

There's no use assassinating my personal moral character; I freely admit - to anyone I meet - that I haven't any. But that doesn't make anything this person says true, either.

So if they message you, feel free to go nuts on them; but please pass along anything they send you.

If they don't message you, great! Congratulations, you have managed to avoid being involuntarily dragged into the fucking trailer-park soap opera my ex is trying to turn my life into, and I bless you for your good fortune; I hope it continues unabated.

On to the previously mentioned good news; for those of you who don't know but do care, I am gainfully employed, once again in retail.

You know retail; they never hire full-time; they hire part-time, give you a crazy schedule, and expect you to put in your time as the FNG before they put you on full-time, assuming you don't do anything retarded in the meantime.

Well, they've decided to move me up to full-time before my assessment period is even over.

When I started - I sell electronics - my department's "attachment" rate was 24%; that means that for every major electronic device we sold, we had a 24% chance of making customers take extra stuff with it.

At the end of my first month, it was at 45%.

Other than adding me, there have been no other changes to my department.

At the end of my second month - yesterday - the numbers for July came out; our attachment rate is now 83%.

Other than adding me, there have been no other changes to my department.

Which means that, according to the numbers, I attach 71% of the extras my whole department sells. (83, minus 24, is 59; divided by 83... Yeah, I did that right.)

So management likes me very, very much indeed.

Accordingly, I am getting full-time; getting the schedule I want; getting regular days off, or at least MORE regular (it IS retail...) and *drumroll please* in 4 more months I am eligible to take the exam for supervisor.

So, yeah. Good news.

My stalker told me, in her first message, that I should get a real job.

Workin' on it, there, chief.

I note that they don't mention the fact that my ex hasn't had a job in over 3 years.

*Shrug* When you're pissed off, especially when you're pissed off on someone else's behalf, and appropriating victimhood for all you're worth, only your intended victim's failures and bad judgments count, I suppose.

At any rate, there it is.