The World From Monday Morning

Happy New Year, true believers. For the record, my New Years was pretty crappy. I stayed at home with a cold, having had no good parties to go to. About the only ones I smooched were my cats. Geh.

First up, I have a bit of kudos for the "Bad Attitude Boutique" in the Hawthorne area of Portland. They put up with our shit admirably. While on a trip down to the legendary Powell's Books, we took time to troll around shops in what is what I guess to be a slightly toned down version of Seattle's Capitol Hill. Down near the Arby's we came across a shop with the unlikely name of "Bad Attitude Boutique". It was a goth apparel store, filled with renaissance attire and pseudo-bondage gear. Two people were working that day, one was a guy probably no older than myself, and the other was a woman who was probably in her thirties or forties.

The chick ruled.

A couple of memorable quotes sprung from her lips. One was, when told she should have silvery-white lip-stick for the sixties look, she commented, "Yeah, but this isn't really a sixties store. It's more of an 80s butt-rock store, but don't tell the goths that." As well as the ever popular, "These thigh high stockings stay up even during sex. I know. I've tried it." While that falls under the catagory "more than we need to know", she still deserves a "You go girl."

The guy working was pretty cool too. He tolerated our references to SNL's "Goth Talk" skit, and the snickering of my cohorts at some of the more outrageous goods they had. Overall, good customer service in the face of adversity.

In other news, I have a bit of a follow up that I failed to include in an earlier rant. The people who wanted their daughter's child born after she was dead pulled a bit of a fast one on the people at the Today Show. Seems they got to go on there and argue their side for 10 or 15 minutes. And it wasn't until the end that the guy admitted, much to the surprise of the folks that run the show, that the last, and final, attempt at getting a surrogate mother to bear the child had failed. There'd been a miscarriage, and that's all she wrote. No post-mortum babies, folks. Nice of the parents to be so open and forward about the whole ordeal.

Also on my shit list this week: the Catholic Church in Boston. Seems that priests who married after retirement have been getting dicked out of their retirement program. They're apparently even more cross because of the fact that priests who had been caught doing stuff like molesting children are still getting their pension. That's right. You can diddle with 6 year old boys, but you can't marry a woman. Now, this ain't an "all Catholic churches" thing, so don't go railing against the Catholic Church. It's just Boston's little corner of the Catholic Church. What a bunch of cocks.

On the topic of clergy, I'm going to have make a small "what the hell?" about the Universal Life Church. Like many other people in the so-called "internet community", I went to the Universal Life Church Web site, went to the online ordination, and became a minister. That simple. While I did it as a joke at first, in retrospect I can see some uses for it, and I may even try to do something positive with my ordainment. Not sure what, yet, but I'd like to do something. What I've noticed as I've gotten a bit deeper into the ULC is that some people take it really seriously. I mean really seriously. In both the ULC's text book, and on at least one site in the ULC Webring, some of the ministers have gone so far as to wear the collars so commonly associated with the Catholic Church.

Huh?

I mean, sure. I think it's great that something like the ULC exists. Ecstatic. I think it fulfills a necessary role. I'd like to perform some weddings or whatever with my ordination. But I'm not going to delude myself into believing that my ordination is anything more than something that I obtained through an internet submission form. There's no way you're going to get my fat ass in a little uniform for it. And on top of which, I think that were I to wear said uniform, it would be a mockery to those people who have put in time and devotion to get where they are in religion.

One final note before I get off my soapbox: I am not "nice". I'm sorry if some of you have deluded yourselves, but that's just how it is. I bring this up because last week, going to lunch with some people I didn't really know, a girl in the group had to run off and do something at a different place than where we were eating, and asked me to make sure that the others didn't leave before she showed up. Her reasons for asking me: I was the "nicest one there." How the hell did I end up being the nice one? I bust my ass off trying to develop a mean-selfish-bastard persona, and people just tear it down with shit like that. For the record, to all those people who think I'm "nice": Fuck you, your goat, the horse you rode in on, and your uncle's girlfriend's monkey.

Nice. Feh.

Well, missed writing this up yesterday. Blame it on the snow, I guess. Little known fact: snow is an amazing aerobic workout, much to my pudgy chagrin. 2 hours walking in the snow uphill is not all it's cracked up to be. I think if I didn't have to act chipper to piss off my dad, I'd probably be hating it.

Well, today's rant was going to be about an acquaintence of mine who just shafted me. But, I decided I'd stick with my trend of not devoting good sized rants to specific individuals who know where I live. Besides, that's petty even for me.

Instead, since I haven't been following the news too much recently, I'll pull out one of my charming little muses.

A couple years ago, whilst in the midst of my romantic entanglement with the infamous DC Chick, I came up with a rather insidious idea. It was the Christmas season, and I'd been combing through alt.sex.trent_reznor for messages to forward to DC Chick (she didn't get that particular newsgroup on her ISP. Go figure.), and a thought occured to me. It was a very nasty thought:

A Nine Inch Nails Christmas special.

Yule tide fun with the king of angst! I mean, this has serious marketting potential! Imagine, if you will, Trent sitting by the fire with the band, a cup of nog in hand, singing angst-ridden Christmas ballads. Verses may be something like:

Under the mistletoe
When you let me go
Ornaments of glass
You dumped my scrawny ass

Okay, I admit, it's a little rough. But it's a definite beginning! Or, better yet:

Nine Inch Nails' "A Christmas Carol"!

Trent Reznor as Ebenezer Scrooge, visited by three ghosts to learn the true meaning of Christmas! We could have Tim Burton direct it, and the Bad Attitude Boutique could supply the goth/fetish-wear! It's a sound business idea! You know it would sell!

Now we just need Trent to go along with it... Hmmmm....

First up for today, what the fuck is up with this whole Paula Jones case. I mean really, we couldn't get Ronald Reagan's wrinkled, senile ass into court during the Iran-Contra affair because people felt that he shouldn't be called upon to answer for things he did while in office, but they're going to drag Clinton's ass into court because he allegedly abused his governerial powers and propositioned some skanky woman who worked for him in Arkansas?

What I really fucking love is the morality we see in this and similar cases. If you know someone, and they become famous, you can claim you were sexually harrassed. That's right! There was the whole shtick with the black guy in the Supreme Court. These women don't say shit for years, and then suddenly this person becomes a powerful figure and they think, "Hey. I can make a shitload of money off of this."

All I can say about Paula Jones is: If Clinton was really using State Troopers to bring him weekly pussy, do you really think he'd pick someone as nasty as Paula Jones?

Next up: Rap music. I got this humor mail today, and it listed it as an oxymoron. Though I realize the whole thing was meant in jest, it does represent a trend I've been seeing for several years now. People just don't seem to view rap as being a valid form of musical expression.

Get off your high horses people.

I mean really. It comes down to you not liking it, therefore you don't want to dignify it by calling it music. The absolute most extreme case I know of is a friend I've known since high school. He's extremely pseudo-intellectual-avant-garde. Drives me up the fucking wall. He hates most modern music, preferring classical music, 70s disco, and "experimental" music, which involves such things as random notes on a keyboard, when not just banging on it. Rap just wouldn't make it into his book. And he's such an absolute twat about the matter. Music is about self-expression through sound. That's all. Whether other people like it is a matter of taste, but otherwise that's all you need to call it music. Really.

Getting towards the end of my shit list, this weekend I was waiting at the bus stop, and the bus pulled up. Since my stop is the first one on the route, the driver will sometimes take a few minutes to update the signs telling where it's going. In this case she did that, and then also went to wake up a bum who'd fallen asleep on the bus.

The guy copped a serious attitude. First he was pissed that she touched him. Then he was pissed because he "missed his stop". So then as he's standing waiting for her to let him out of the bus, he told her she'd better be careful, because he was a "Master". I got ready to jump out of the way, since the driver was black, this bum was white, and I really didn't want to get hit by flying derelict.

As it turned out, he went on to explain that he meant "Master of Tae Kwon Do and all that shit". He proceeded to tell her that she didn't matter because she was just a bus driver, and that he and his friends would be coming after her.

First off, as this guy was stepping off the bus, he reeked of alcohol. At four in the afternoon, this is a pretty impressive feat. I'd be impressed if he was master of his own bladder, let alone a martial art. Next up, he was obviously a bum. Any attempt for him to claim otherwise is just absolute bullshit. I just couldn't believe the balls on this guy. I guess this just reaffirmed my believe that the average homeless person is fucking worthless. I'm getting really tired of homeless people acting as though they deserve some sort of special treatment. And don't tell me that no one is offering jobs. Lots of fast food restaurants are looking for people. All depends on how far you're willing to stoop to get honest work. The latest thing that grates on me is the Real Change. Actually, this isn't a recent thing. I just thought to bitch about it too at this moment.

The deal is that homeless people can now sell the "Real Change", the homeless people's own newspaper. It's like a buck or two for something about the size of "The Watchtower", about homeless issues. It's supposed to be making homeless people self sufficient without having to beg. Personally all it seems like is that homeless people are begging just as much, except they're willing to give you a crappy newspaper in exchange for your money.

My rabid theory for this week is to kill all stupid people. That's right. I've got a good delimiter in mind already. You play the macarena music. Anyone who starts dancing, you shoot. End of fucking problem.

Boy have I got a load of shit to spew today.

First up on my roster, I'm taking a dance class. It's kind of funny how things like social dancing mirror society so well.

• Men are in control
• Men don't always know what they're doing, so women have no choice but to make the best of a bad situation

Heh. To be fair though, there were a few... unattractive girl-girl couples that had come to the class together. Not that I'm trying to imply a stereotype or anything. I'm just stating the facts. You can draw your own conclusion. Dance class is kind of weird. I suppose I've become so anti-social that the act of dancing with strangers strikes me as kind of odd. There's a certain kind of intimacy to dancing that is not always obvious that I feel implies a lot of trust on the part of the two people. Either that or I'm just delutional. You make the call.

Next up: drugs! Was watching this MTV special on drugs. It was kind of funny watching Kurt Loder hedge around the fact that they were endorsing drug legalization, without actually saying it. Kudos to them for... taking a stand?

The whole drug thing kind of gets on my nerves. Not that I really use drugs. Like any good college drop-out, I've smoked pot and done 'shrooms, but it's not really a part of my life anymore. But I can understand the rationale. Let's review the facts.

• Early in this century, alcohol, which has strong ties to a number of cultures and has probably the largest population using it, was made illegal. This resulted in organized crime gaining wealth and power through the illegal smuggling of alcohol over the border.
• Prohibition was repealed, and the organized crime syndicates slowly began to fade in power as their big source of income was gone.
• Prohibition advocates then target stuff like marijuana and cocaine, having lost in the end with alcohol.
• Now, I will confess, there wasn't as big of an immediate surge in violence after marijuana and cocaine were banned as there was when alcohol became illegal. That has one simple explanation: Who really did pot and coke in 1945? It was a vice of the wealthy, and that was about it. They didn't have a high demand in the general public until at least the 60s and 70s. And then came the drug cartels.
• So, now there's all this drug violence going on, and people don't think that legalizing drugs will diminish the problem.

You know, I just love to hear stuff like that last. I just love to hear my tax dollars get shit on and flushed down the toilet. History repeats itself peope! That's why they teach it in school! We're supposed to learn from our mistakes, you dolts! I have no problem with drugs going from a banned substance to a regulated substance. Make it legal, sell it 7-Eleven, and tax the shit out of it. Sounds like a marketing solution right there. Not only will we not be spending as much money sending the US army counter-drug guys into Columbia to cack of drug lords and having DEA agents trolling about, but we'll be bringing in money. What's that you say? People will die because drugs are bad for you? Well fuck, that's already going on, people! Except if you make it legal, there won't be as big a market for the drugs, and you want have 6 year old kids getting caught in the crossfire of a drug war. Dennis Leary was right! We don't need less drugs, we need more drugs. We need more drugs given to the right people. Natural selection! Bottom of the fucking food chain. Some dolt smokes crack and dies? Good. Get the twat out of the gene pool.

Next up: Genetic engineering. This isn't so much of a rant as just a repetition of something a friend of mine pointed out this weekend that I thoguht deserved attention. We were talking about animal breeding. Particularly show animals like cats and dogs: breeding taken to the point of stupidity. Look at a cat like the Persian. What a fucking ugly cat. Cat breeding seems to like taking features to the extreme, so now we have Persians who have an absolutely flat face. They can't be born normally, because their heads are so fucked up. You have to pull the cats out with a C-section. They can't feed normally when young because they suffocate if they try to nurse off their mother, so you have to hand feed them with eye-droppers. They can't feed normally when they're grown. You have to pile their food up so they don't suffocate in their own kitty dish. In short, these animals would die in the wild. Persians aren't the only ones. Look at the Siamese. Used to be that Siamese looked kinda cool. Had a slightly elongated face with a squarish jaw that made it look like some relative of a tiger or other wild cat. Not any more. These things don't even look like cats, people. They look like the fusion of a rat and a shark. They've bred the cats so that they have an amazingly elongated and pointed face that just looks plain ugly. Or collies. Everyone remembers Lassie. Lassie was a smart dog. "Lassie, go lead us to where Billy fell down the well!" Not anymore. Collies are being bred to have narrow little heads with a long pointed snout. Unfortunately, there's no longer much room for a brain in those skulls. Oops. Now Lassie can't figure out anything with more than one word.

And they want to genetically engineer humans? They can't even do it right with animals, and they want to do it with humans? What kind of fucked up scheme is this. When I first heard about them engineering frogs without heads, I had no fucking clue what they were thinking. Were they bored or something? Now that I know what it was for, all I can think of is, "You know they didn't get that one on the first try." I'm just waiting for the human babies who are so fucked up they suffocate when they try to nurse.

The senate recently tried to pass a bill that would indirectly make chicks cool. However, President Clinton vetoed it, once again asserting that chicks suck. Me and Bill, baby. Bitches, man.

Welcome to another Monday morning, and I've got a full plate of shit to dish out. First up: I once heard a man say that he doesn't believe in God, but he fears him. I believe in God, but I fear Martha Stewart. This woman is flat evil. There is no way anyone could be that detail oriented, and not be leage in with the devil. I generally consider Marilyn Manson to be about as sinister and evil as Gargamel, but he's a fucking smurf compared to Martha Stewart. Run while you still can!

Next on my shit list is a bomb at an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama. Now here's typical southern logic for you: We value human life, so why don't we blow shit up and kill off duty cops! Yeah! Sounds like a good fucking idea! You dolts.

Monica Lewinsky: Is it just me or does this woman look like a total slut? I mean, I look at her and think, "This woman was the cheerleader who fucked the football team." Really, people, what kind of person offers to testify that, "I had sex with the president!"? Unless she gets a book deal out of this, her whole life is ruined. Who would hire this bitch?

Next up on my shitlist, and this is a big one, is people who go into fast food restaurants with some sort of high expectations.

I was at the McDonald's in downtown Seattle last week, which, being smack dab in the middle of downtown, is always busy. If you come in at 7 in the morning, you might avoid the rush, but otherwise you are screwed. I went about 11 AM, and so there was a decent amount of business, but not remotely as bad as it would be at noon. The line I was in took a bit of time to get moving. After a minute or two I noticed that it was due to two things:

• The guy at the very front of the line had a big order.
• The woman running the register was obviously being trained, and did not seem to be the most fluent of English speakers.

Now, I personally didn't give a rats ass about a bit of a wait because I went in to this whole situation prepared with the knowledge that I could be waiting a while to get my healthy batch of snuggets. But behind me in line were two women, one of whom was an old white woman, whom I shall name Bitch One, and the other was a fat black woman about my age, who will be Bitch Two. And they were just all bent out of shape. Bitch One complained about how there was always a big line, and Bitch Two commented about how rude they always were.

Alright, let's have a bit of a reality check here. Fast food employees typically don't make much more than minimum wage while working a really high stress job. They don't get tips. They have jack shit for incentive towards being nice to fifty bajillion customers a day who are total assholes about the service they get when they go and order a 99 cent Whopper. Most restaurants try and encourage politeness among their employees, in part because many corporate owned restaurants send in undercover agents to see what kind of service the general public receives at their restaurants. I shit you not.

But really, this isn't what pissed me off about this particular visit. No... what pissed me off is that after I placed my order, and they collected my money, I stepped to the side so that the black woman behind me could place her order while the guy training the new employee got my order together. So, Bitch Two orders an All-American Meal, and the employee rings it up, and then holds off on collecting the money until the guy training her to make sure she did it right. Meanwhile the customer is just holding out her money. So the guy training comes over, drops off my food, and goes to check the order that was just rung up. He thinks it looks okay, so he says to go ahead and collect the money. Bitch Two pipes up, "It's about time! I've been holding my money out all this time," while Bitch One proclaims, "We've obviously got a real dummy here."

It took every ounce of self control I had to not just fly off the handle. I picked up my food, and in a very strained tone I managed to say, "She's new here. Give her a break." Bitch One didn't react, and I was having too much trouble controlling my reaction to try and say anything more. I was so fucking pissed off, I almost forgot my drink.

Do people somehow believe that the world revolves around them?! I mean, I see this kind of shit all the time. I see it on the bus, in fast food restaurants, grocery stores, whatever. People who just fly off the handle for little to no reason, just because they can't get exactly what they want. The minimum wage employee was a little surly while you ordered your 2 burgers and 2 fries for 2 bucks. The bus was two minutes late. They won't let you take your 30 items through the express registers at the grocery store.

Get a fucking clue, people.

On the topic of stupid, selfish people, I feel obliged to bring up something going on down in the glorious city of Kent. Seems there has been a good deal of effort to get block scheduling going at the four high schools in the Kent School District. It's a borderline conspiracy. Parents and staff have either done research on how well block scheduling, and have realized that it just doesn't work. Block scheduling, as I understand it, involves longer class periods, with classes occuring on everyother day rather than every day. The theory is that it gives teachers more time to cover material, time for kids to do the homework in class, etc. What it really results in is that kids aren't receiving instruction on a daily basis, and can't maintain interest for the longer class periods, and hence don't do as well. This is especially evident in subjects such as math and music. The studies done on other schools who have tried this program have indicated either that it fails, or that the schools who performed the studies fudged the results heavily and had to retract their reported success. Only one school of the four, Kentridge (KR for short), held out on implementing block scheduling, and now the school board is trying to pressure KR into implementing it on the excuse that kids who have to transfer to other schools in order to take a particular class are having trouble with KR being the odd man out on the block scheduling. Here's a list of some of the bullshit these administrators are doing:

• The school board has to hold any meetings in which they make official decisions regarding the fate of schools in a public forum. However, they've formed a special subcommittee consisting of parents and teachers, who will make the decisions for whether or not to establish block scheduling, who do not need to have their meeting in a public forum.
• Many administrators have been knowingly distributing the results of the fudged results, even after those against it have handed out the documents that demonstrated that the results had been fudged.
• The parents involved in this who support block scheduling are without a fucking clue. They've been told that it's good, and they are absolutely unwilling to change their mind about the topic. They are not even willing to read the arguments against it. There is nothing more reassuring than seeing adults effectively doing the same thing as covering their ears and proclaiming, "LALALA! I CAN'T HEAR YOU! LALALA!" It's amazing how stupid people can be so well gulled. The evidence handed out at these meetings, sometimes even by the administrators, do not support the belief that most parents and students like block scheduling, or that block scheduling is a more effective way of scheduling classes. And still the parents are adamant. I think my particular favorite is the totally unedited poll of students and parents, in which 70% of students and parents who actually gave a response regarding block scheduling said that they didn't like it. One student, who I think must be a long lost brother of mine, proclaimed that whoever thought that block scheduling was a good idea was obviously smoking crack, and that they should be taken out and publicly stoned for it. But the administrators hold up the survey, say, "This proves that most people like it," and everyone believes them.
• A reporter with the South King County Journal (the local paper for the Kent area) ran an article a few years back bashing block scheduling, and was promptly fired. The current education reporter is having to be careful about what she writes lest she lose her job as well. What does that say to you?

The saddest thing about all this is that the people who are lying about all this are supposed to be looking out for the welfare of the children in their district, but they aren't! They are lying and covering their asses in order to get this "great system" in place so that they can say, "Look what I accomplished, give me a promotion!" And they get a promotion in some other school district. No sense of accountability. Why? Because there aren't any tests outside of the SAT to determine how the school is doing. Why aren't there? Because those could show that the school board is fucking up, and the school board wouldn't want that. It sickens me that this kind of bullshit goes on. I swear to god, that if I decide I'm going to have a family, I'm either going to try and find a reasonable school district, or I'm fucking emigrating. This is just too fucking absurd. I want to live in a small fucking commune filled with people who actually use their fucking brains, and never have to deal with the gibbering hoards of morons who dwell outside our boundries.

Good morning, campers. Time to start another fun filled week. And here comes the gripes.

First up, that teacher. Okay, let me get this straight. She banged a thirteen year old student, bore his child, got caught, got a 7 year suspended sentence, spent some time in therapy, got out for one month, and tried to run off with her now 14 year old lover.

Is that fucked up or what? But wait, there's more!!! Think about this juicy little tidbit. If this had been a 30 year old man, with a 13 year old girl, they would have crucified him and sent him to jail for a very long time. Not for a woman, though. Nope. Here ya go. Here's a second chance. Feh.

Next up, what is up with this recent woman who got the death penalty? I only know snippets about the case. Something involving murder with a pickaxe. Sure, sounds like she deserves the death penalty. But, get this, she found Christ and became born again. So people thought she should be pardoned and not be executed.

Slow down. Now, if this same prisoner had found enlightenment through the teachings of Buddha, or Mohammed, or whatever, do you think people would think she should be pardoned? Probably not. So do you know how much I think you should get for miraculously finding Christ on death row? Dick.

Hey true believers! Since yesterday was a holiday, I didn't come in to work, and hence didn't have time to bitch about the world around me on Monday. So here's the world from Tuesday.

First up: Valentine's Day sucks. 'Nuff said.

Next up: Alcholics suck. 'Nuff said.

Third on my shit list is that word has reached my ear that law makers are trying to pass a bill that would make musicians personally accountable for things done by people who listen to their music.

File this shit under "Coffee at McDonald's".

I mean, really people, what ever happened to accountability for your own fucking actions. Why does everyone want to blame the woes of society on everyone but themselves. I mean, this kind of logic pisses me off. "Billy, a manic depressive, is in the honors program at his college. He's really stressed out, and gets no support from either of his seperated, alcoholic parents. In fact, all they have for him is scorn because he's not quite living up to their expectations. So Billy kills himself. Police investigate it, and decide that his suicide was due to him playing role playing games and listening to Nine Inch Nails. Trent Reznor is going to be personally held accountable for this death."

Get a clue, people. If anything, music is just a reflection of social woes, not the cause. Stop pointing fingers at other people just to shift blame away from yourselves, you dolts. I should think America would have gotten its fill of witch hunts a couple centuries ago.

Sorry for the delay. Was really busy yesterday. This week, alcoholics still suck. Also, does anyone else find it fucked up that a lawyer is trying to impeach a president who has 70+% approval rating, and is currently bringing us to the verge of war with Iraq, all for getting a blow job from slutty intern?

In other news, Christians are scaring me in a major way. Seriously. I found out recently that it's illegal to practice astrology in many states. Is that fucked up or what? I mean, this totally shits on the notion of freedom of religion that we put in the Bill of Rights 200 years ago. One big shit. Sure, you have freedom of religion. If you're Christian.

I mean really. I may be wrong, but as I recall the Catholic Church didn't have to give up wine during Prohibition, but there are limitations on peyote for Native American religious purposes last time I heard. What's up with that shit? Australia looks pretty fucking nice right now.

Seriously folks, this kind of shit pisses me off. This country was originally founded under the belief that people have certain inalienable rights, most importantly the ability to say what they want to say and believe what they want to believe. This right is being slowly wheedled down by a variety of special interest groups, most notable and notorious among them being the so-called "religious right". (Which is neither religious, nor right. Discuss.) This is a democracy, not a theocracy or oligarchy. The theory is that each person has a say about how this country is run, not some small group of narrow minded twats. It's people like this that made America look so appealing 200+ years ago. Shit like this makes living alone on my own fucking little island look so appealling. Maybe I'll camp out in the Gallapagos Islands and help marine iguanas get from the water to the land in a safer manner. It would be a lot more productive than being beat down by conservative special interest groups.

Wow, busy week. Don't know how much I'll actually get through. First up: Gun control. This is such a prickly subject. I mean, on the one hand, I can understand the early founders of America wanting to protect their rights to defend themselves and what not. But really, they had muskets, and not fucking Tek-9s! I was watching this show on the Discovery channel a week or so ago, about guns in America, and it seriously weirded me out. After some nutcase sprayed an elementary school yard with bullets in Stockton, California, the state of California passed a law banning a number of automatic weapons, including the Tek 9. So what do the manufacturers of the Tek 9 do? They put out another gun, with a slightly different name, and a slightly different interior, and squeeze past the law. Sure, it's essentially the same fucking gun, but they got it past. Then some other nutcase goes psycho with that model of gun in an office building, using bullets that shred their victims as it goes through them.

Delightful, eh? At least the company made the bullets had enough conscience to take them off the market. But really, gun owners have a right to have those special weapons because they just ain't safe anymore.

Seriously, folks, I don't understand the need for a gun. I work in downtown Seattle, and don't live to far away from there. I'm often in the city at all hours of the night, and not once have I felt the need for a gun. People generally don't fuck with me when I'm walking along, and I don't have anything worth stealing. Besides which, I don't trust myself with a gun. Really. I'm a pudgy 20-something who builds Web sites for a living, not fucking Rambo. I have no made delusions that if I have a gun I will suddenly be free of any possible harm. Feh.

The worst thing I hate about guns is that this is part of the "Bill of Rights". Those first ten amendments to the Constitution that are supposed to insure our rights. As much as I hate it, I must admit: If some group could levy enough support to get that ammendment officially repealed, what would come next.

Rock and a hard place, folks.

Sorry for the lack of rant yesterday. I just got a sort of promotion, and I was busy settling in to my new spot.

Not having had anything that really torqued me this past week, I'll go off on one of my big pet peeves:

People who think that role playing games are bad for you.

I suppose I covered this lightly a few weeks ago, but recently it's managed to get my goat, so I thought I'd rant about it.

I remember I had to put up with a lot of bullshit when I first started RPGs. My parents freaked, thinking that I'd snap and become lost in some delusional fantasy world. I think the ultimate irony of it was that if I was likely to do this, it was due to their dysfunctionality. Years later, after I'd been playing for a while, I'd had some books for AD&D at work, and one of my co-workers asked me what they were. I explained it to him briefly, and he seemed ambivalent about it. Next day though, this guy comes up and accuses me of being a satanist. Apparently he talked to some friends.

This type of shit bothers me. People just spouting off ignorant-ass shit about things they barely understand. I was riding home on the bus a week ago, and got to hear some kid who had a deck of "Magic" cards be accused of having trouble seperating reality from fantasy. A fucking card game.

I mean, why are people so willing to point fingers like this, especially something so innocuous as a game? Witch trials allegedly ended over a century ago! Give it up! Pull your head out of your ass and look at the real world around you. The bit between your ears is supposed to be reserved for something besides buoyancy!

Hey there people. Late again with this one. Ought to start calling this the World from Tuesday Morning. First up on my shit list: The Po-lice.

Was reading about this "hostage situation" that took place in the small city of Auburn at a Seafirst Bank. For those non-Washington types, your best off thinking "white trash". Sure, that's probably a bit inaccurate and inflamatory, but I gotta be me. Okay, so this guy is holding six people hostage in a bank, mostly because he wants the attention before he kills himself. Which he did do in the end. He shot himself in the stomach. That's not my problem though.

My problem is that while this hostage situation was going on, this old man tried to go into the bank to do some business, and would not let the police stop him. So the police peppersprayed him.

...the fuck?

Okay, now I may be a bit unreasonable here, but this is what I envision when I read this: This senile old codger, tottering along, not quite in tune with reality FM, not understanding why the police are trying to stop him when he's trying to take care of some personal business. So he gets peppersprayed. For God's sake, people, the police could have probably fireman carried this guy out of there. Nope, pepperspray. Come on, the guy was probably feeble with age if his mental faculties were that far gone. It's not like he could have put up a fight. Assign one cop to keep an eye on him once you get him in the clear, and you're good to go. Nope, pepperspray.

I really wonder about cops in the greater Seattle area. Last year there was a guy with a rusty fake katana standing out on a corner in downtown Seattle. The cops cordoned off like three or four city blocks for 11 hours, fouling up traffic, all for one guy with a shitty sword. Every so often they'd try shooting him with rubber bullets, and he'd double over, and then stand up again. Eleven hours of this. Or then another of my favorites, that I also got to witness, was a few years back when we had five police cars at the site of one bit of graffitti on the side of a jewelry store. This is like something Arlo Guthrey would sing about. On the bright side, I did get a letter to the editor into the school paper for this one, along with a political cartoon. Woo-hoo.

In other news, there are some serious health concerns out there that aren't being addressed by the FDA. For example, I bought some of those Toaster Streudels a while back. They're like pop tarts, except they actually go bad if you don't refridgerate them. And they have their own little icing packets. So I stuck these things in the freezer, and there they sat for a few weeks before I actually had the time in the morning to have one. I was a little concerned about the icing, though, since I figured that it would probably be frozen solid after all that time in the freezer.

The icing was still soft and malleable!

I was pretty weirded out by it. I expected it to be pretty solid, but instead it had the consistency of squeeze cheese. Am I the only person frightened by this? Granted, I still ate it, but that does not make it any less disturbing. I find most foods that can be found in your grocer's frozen foods section to be frankly alarming. Especially if it's microwavable, like those brown and serve sausages. Now those are scary. In the realm of non-food related health concerns, I sometimes wonder about people who play Quake and its ilk. After I've been playing over the internet for a few hours, I'm usually pretty fogged up and dizzy. I'm starting to wonder if this stuff causes brain damage. Some of the people I see on there give me a good case for it.

Finally, I stumbled across this picture in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, and I was just blown away:

Is it just me, or is that just distrubing?

I was just starting to overcome my hesitance about taking yoga when I came across this. Yeowch! If I ever meet a girl who can do this, I don't know if I'll fall in love or run away in stark terror. I mean, this is a model! I always imagine them as being pretty lazy and decadent, but noooooo. This is just frightening!

Okay... I'm a bit dry for ideas, so I think I'm just going to take something from the news and take it to the inflamatory and unrealistic extreme.

Now, let me get this straight. Boris Yeltsin was out of work for a while due to "illness", and then comes back and disolves the government? What?

I have a bit of a theory on this one. As a member of the Discordian faith, I'm well aware that conspiracies abound. This smells frankly fishy to me.

Another conspiracy potential is that whole thing with the thirteen year old who tricked everyone into going outside of his school by having the fire alarm pulled, and then shooting at people when they all got out there. You know that was a hit. The parent of one of the kids probably pissed off the wrong person, and his or her kid suffered for it.

Speaking of guns and kids, what the fuck is up with that four year old kid who brought a gun to day care. And people wonder why this country is having such a hissy fit about gun control! Agh!

Okay, I'm a couple days late on this week's rant... I've been having a bit of trouble keeping up of late... Most of the stuff that's pissing me off is getting a little stale, and so between that an my recent addiction to Quake 2 I've not had a lot of time or energy to rant. The fact that I was abducted by aliens this weekend.

Yup, that's right, I was abducted by aliens, and that's the topic of this weeks rant: What kind of fucking nerve to this short little black-eyed bastards have to go around to unsuspecting planets, kidnap people, stick whatchamahoozits up their asses, and then fucking tag them like migrating buffalo! I mean, those aliens creep me out in general, but waking up Sunday night with them trying to stick a big probe into my most personal of orafices has significantly lowered my opinion of the bloody bastards.

I mean, here we are, the most highly evolved species of our planet, and we get fucking herded around like cattle by some so-called advanced civilization who thinks we look kinda funny with big probes sticking out of our asses. Well no more, my fellow humans! We can rise up against our oppressors! We cannot allow the beta reticuli to keep our people down any longer! Rise up from where you sit with that anal probe up your ass! Rise up against the little grey skinned creeps! Can I hear ya say "Amen!"?

Oh, and one last thing:

Happy April Fool's Day. Yeah, most of that is crap. That is, the story about me getting abducted by aliens and humans being the most highly evolved race on the planet. ;)

Welcome to Friday morning! I know, I'm late this week... and I'll be screwed next week trying to crank out something Monday morning, but I figure I was gone from work yesterday, so this is almost Monday for me. Sorta.

Anyway, I was with my 7 year old arch-nemisis this last weekend, and as a peace offering I agreed to watch a video of her choice. It turns out that she wanted to watch her "Lone Ranger" video tape. It's not the old TV show, but the cartoon they did in the 80s. The same people did a Tarzan cartoon... and maybe the Fat Albert cartoon.

Anyways, the cartoon was a little funny. Aside from being pretty crappy compared to the animation on today's morning shows, I thought it interesting that the backdrop for this one involved a competition between two railroad companies who were working on the trans-continental railroad. Many of the employees were Chinese immigrants. One of the Chinese immigrants was a positive role model, helped the Lone Ranger and Tonto ferret out a conspiracy in the upper management, and ended up being in charge of the people who were working on the railroad. A couple things struck me as... ironic, I suppose, about this cartoon.

The first is that the Chinese workers were just incredibly Asian looking. In fact, they look uncannily like the poster that the ObaChine restaurant hasn't gotten so much shit about because it was deemed "racist and demeaning". I thought it funny that they would get upset about a vintage poster like that, but not about a cartoon that's being sold to small children.

The second thing was that at the end of the cartoon, the Lone Ranger makes a prophetic statement that "a hundred years from now, Americans will remember the contribution the Chinese made to the building of the transcontinental railroad". My reaction was something was along the lines of, "We do?"

Seriously, I suppose if I think about it I can remember that Chinese and Irish immigrants did a lot of work about did a lot of work on the railroad. When I look at the railroad, I usually don't think about it, though. My thoughts tend to be, "Oh shit! Here comes a train! We're going to miss the beginning of the movie now!"

And seriously, if we're supposed to remember the contributions of the Chinese, they'll have to take a number. I'm too busy remembering the suffering of the Jews and Asian Americans in World War II, the enslavement and subjegation of the blacks through most of American history, the plight of the Serbs, the starving in Ethiopia, and the fact that an African American invented the traffic light, and another found new uses for peanut oil, just to name a few on the list. America places so much emphasis on trying to recognize each race's contributions to the growing of America as well as the suffering of other countries that so much shit gets lost in the haze. Yay for diversity?

In other news, I read in yesterday's paper that despite increased laws and government discouragement of it, there has been a dramatic increase in teen smoking in recent years.

Making it more difficult to obtain makes it more appealing? Especially to rebellious teens? You don't fucking say. God, what kind of morons are making our laws? Makes me remember that I need to register to vote. Heh.

I'll save my marriage rant till Monday. Hasta!

Actually getting it in on Monday. Miracles never cease...

Okay, as promised, this is my marriage rant. This rant comes about because I recently found out that a friend of mine has become engaged to be married.

I guess the part that really alarms me is that it's a girl he knew for a week before she moved in with him, and then they knew each other for a couple months before becoming engaged. I guess they won't actually get married for another year. Still, it's got me a bit alarmed.

I suppose a lot of it stems from the fact that I'm just shy of 23, and he's 31. He's a lot more geared towards marriage than I am. I just can't imagine getting married at this point in my life. I suppose that's a strong statement about my feelings regarding my personal stability. I just don't think I could handle that kind of commitment right now.

Another thing that kind of disturbs me, that didn't occur to me until last night, is that I've been in situations where I've been single for a while, and everything is going so great in a relationship I end up getting so excited I'll think there's way more to it than there is. I suppose that's what really concerns me, I guess. That he's waited so long for someone that he's jumping on the first one that came along. =T Oh, the life a fretter. Not much of a rant, I suppose. More of a brood.

A relatively serious rant for today, as well as a general smart ass comment.

First up is me ranting about Phage Press. I've been brooding on this one for a while, and figured I could maybe purge it by screaming and yelling about it. If you don't give a horse's patoot about role playing games, you may want to skim down a bit until you see mention of the Discovery Channel.

For those of you who aren't in the RPG scene, Phage Press is the very small company that puts out a game called "Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game". It's based off of a series of books by Roger Zelazny, popularly known as the "Amber Chronicles". It's one of my favorite series of books, and hence I'm rather fond of the game.

What my rant is about is how shitty the company manages its product.

Most gaming companies make much of their profit by putting out a core rules book, and then a shitload of supplements and pre-written adventures. For something like Amber, that's a difficult idea to invision since the world has already been developed to a good extent by the late Mr. Zelazny. The world of Amber not being their little brain child, they wouldn't be justified in expanding the game much more except into the realms of pure speculation. They put out one supplement quite some time ago called "Shadow Knight" which expanded on the second half of the series of ten books that Zelazny wrote. This made a fair amount of sense since most of the latter books hadn't been written by the time the game came out. From what I've heard from people who have been in the loop far longer, and far closer, than I've been, it took bloody forever for this book to come out. This started something of a precedent, as I'll discuss in a bit.

Outside of those two books, nothing else has really come out as part of the product line. The only other thing that they publish anymore is an increasingly infrequent journal (I hesitate to use the word "periodical") called Amberzine which from what I can tell (I've yet to sink money into it), consists of perpetual reprints of the five or six Amber short stories that Zelazny wrote, ideas for campaigns, Character Diaries, fan fiction, and art. You can also order a French tarot deck that's geared towards Amber.

Other than that there have been a few rumored-to-appear items, and that's it. What kind of rumored to appear items? Well, let's just see:

• Remeber that French tarot deck? There's a translation listed with it on their "catalog". Which doesn't exist. People paid for this years ago, and they still haven't put it out. Several poor shmucks are still waiting patiently for this to come out.
• Another yet-to-be seen product is a supplement about the city of Rebma. Prior to their big gaming convention last year, AmberCon, they said they were finally going to have it out in time for people to get it at the con. Nope. Never happened. But you can pre-order it for only $30!
• Plus there have been books that have appeared in big catalogs with relase date set as "To Be Announced", or the myriad of rumored products that they have yet to do anything about.

What kind of fucking numbskull way to run a business is this? Really! I'm friends with the manager of a local gaming store, and as far as she's concerned, Phage Press has gone out of business. The customers who play the game have no confidence in the company anymore. About all they can depend on is one con after another. That's it.

In their defense, I must admit that the whole company consists of two people who have real jobs and for most intents and purposes this is probably just something they do on the side. Their writers and artists are usually just recruited on a contract basis. So this game probably isn't that high of a priority in a lot of senses of the word.

However!

If you're not going to make it a high priority, don't fucking make grandiose plans as to a long series of products you want to put out for the game, and then fail to live up to your promises. It's bad for business, folks.

On a lighter note, I saw something that frankly disturbed me recently on the Discovery Channel. I don't know what the documentary was about, but from what I got from it by passing by it a few times was that it was something about "Fucked Up Ways Animals Groom Themselves". One time it had a big ass lizard "assuming the position" so that some birds could come along and pick bugs off his underside. The one that freaked me out the most was the one with the ants and the jay.

We flipped to the channel, and there were these ants up on their hind legs, their abdomens thrust between those legs so it could shoot some crap out of their abdomen!

So then we come to find out that it's shooting formic acid at this jay, who is somehow taunting the ants with a little dance. By now my friend and I were fucking riveted to the boob tube. We had to see what was up with this.

Turns out that this whole thing was an elaborate ploy for the jay to remove the feather mites from its feathers. The jay is immune to the formic acid, but the mites aren't, so it doses itself up really good and then scrapes out the dead mites.

I'm at a quandry as to what is more fucked up:

• That ants can squirt formic acid like that.
• That evolution produced a system as fucked up and yet as logical as this is.

Sorry for the delay. Been busy at work. You know the routine.

Had a conversation with someone this weekend about nuclear war. He'd spent a fair amount of time in the military in his day, and is something of a military theory/history buff. So somewhere while we were talking, the topic of nuclear war came up, and I found out something that I'd never considered before.

Nuclear missiles are high maintenance objects. All those electrical components that guide the missile and cause it to explode in the right way have a good chance of breaking down. People have to go in, take the missle off-line, and fix it regularly.

Also, they aren't all that reliable. When we launch a rocket here in the States, if there's even a couple clouds up in the sky we'll postpone launching. And that's when we've had weeks to prepare. Can you imagine having twenty minutes to launch that shit up into the air and hope it makes it there?

In short, nuclear missiles are unreliable. It could just as easily not explode, not launch properly, veer off course drastically, or not even be ready to launch. No wonder we had several thousand of them! We were hoping at least one would make it where it was trying to go! Redefine's military intelligence! I mean, really... I bet that the global powers were more concerned about looking like morons rather than the risk of destroying the earth when they were hesitating about pushing the button. They're just as likely to accomplish nothing more than take out a Bedouin tribe in the middle east as destroy the world. What a military cock up!

In other news: Mother's Day. Mine was weird. Not that I'm a mother, or that my mother was weird, but May 10th was just a weird day for me.

It was my birthday. It was also mother's day. My mother gave me a call to wish me a happy birthday. For most people, ain't no big deal. For me, it was a bit different since this is a person I haven't been in contact with in over 10 years. When you're only 23, that's a long fucking time.

I never realized how much it would change my life to have my mom back in it. After I got over my initial nervousness when I realized who was on the phone, I seemed to do okay, but after I got off the phone I called a friend to tell her about it, and I found my self shaking. Later I was almost in tears.

Even now, a few days later, it's still kind of a funny feeling being able to actively think of having a mom that I can call if I need help. I'd never really thought of her much as my mother when I was in touch with her, so I guess that's why I find it so odd. Guess I only bring this up because I'd hoped that by putting it in words I'd get some perspective on the matter... but I'm still as confused as I was before.

© 2000 Jeremy Zimmerman, unless where noted. All rights reserved. Comments, complaints, death threats, and flaming chickens may be sent to bolthy@bolthy.com.