On writing a blog... consistently.

This mostly stinks because finding time to write anything without constant interruption is hard.
The only real mostly uninterrupted time I have is at night, which is also the hardest time to write since my brain gets tired before my body...well not recently but often.
Working for others may bring satisfaction and money but leaves little time to pursue your own goals.
Mine is to write. mine is to tell the stories bouncing around in my head before they get defeaning or bounce out of steam and just roll around at the base of my skull.
Today I am constrained by the need of my Mother to go do things imp[important to her. Now I must squeeeeeeze in 30 minutes of walking before joining in the rat race again.
I will be back to express my deep thoughts and emotions this afternoon instead of ranting on at peeps on Facebook instead.

On the Movie Shooting and guns and the media and why Rush is a uninformed idiot

Actually the title probably says it all.

We are so not informed of much by our media (conservative and liberal) the one thing all of them have in common is that after a near presentation of the facts they rely on speculation and opinion rather than reason or research. They quote statistics like that is all the proof anyone needs without saying or revealing much about anything other than what their take is on something.

The result was seen today.

A PHD level medical student went out at midnight with homemade gas grenades, 3 to 4 firearms and body armor and gasmask and riot helmet and walked into a movei theater unchallenged and began pulling the trigger.

Apparently he didn't aim very much.

He did hit several people and kill and wounded them.

The theater was full- capacity would be over 100 people I suspect. As I remember Knoxville theaters seat 200-240 people in the larger houses. The walls are thick but not always made of stuff firmer than cinder block.

Is he a trained terrorist. Unlikely

Is he a deranged Comic book fan? Unlikely

Is he a deluded video game player? Unlikely

What he was according to what has been released so far was a Neuro-science major who was dropping out of school. He apparently was planning to go out with a lot of violence having booby trapped his apartment. He had to be pretty smart to have been able to get into a doctrate program.

Is this about anything other than a random act of violence? yes.
But it will be blamed on the liberals, video games, batman, bane, Obama, the NRA, comic books, junk food, hate crimes and probably Newt Gingrich (isn't it always about Newt?).

The truth is that we will never really know what it was about or why he chose what he did.

I Know from what I have seen is this.

The Media needs to stick to the facts.

The NYC Police Commissioner should keep his mouth shut until his PR people tell him it is safe to open it.

People need to remember that there are always other motives than the ones the press and politicians would have us believe them to be.

Holmes (the suspected shooter) showed us that very few of us watch people closely or take notice of odd behavior. He walked up to the theater, bought a ticket, then propped open an exit (that should have been monitored by the theater) to go get his weapons. This had to take some time.

The questions I would be asking would be:

What movie did he buy a ticket to?

Had he been at the theater before?

Why wasn't there a policeman at the theater?

Why did no one pick up on what had to be some odd acquisitions for a neuroscience major?
Where was out esteemed homeland security? They are supposed to be watch dogging for this exact kind of activity.
I mean this guy built at least 2 grenades, multiple bomb like devices, bought an odd assortment of weaponry for a private individual to own. Bought a bullet proof vest/flack jacket. neck and crotch armor, gas mask and riot helmet. If that did not raise alarm bells who else is out there buying explosives, weapons and armor?

I would describe this as an unholy mess that Homeland Security better step up and handle.
but probably won't.

Let me say this also. It is pointless to blame this on the NRA. They won't do anything but dig in deeper (if that is possible) and they aren't to blame other than the insane political agenda that SOME of them are pursuing. Guns don't Kill people, people using guns kill people. (get it straight).

As to the Victims of this HATE crime. (because that is the only thing I can accept that caused this- hatred of something by the Shooter.) There is no words of comfort I can say except that the human part of me wished that Holmes had not surrendered and been killed while being captured.
As a Christian, I must forgive hime for what he has done, but it will be very very hard to do so.

Which brings me to our buddy Rush.
Rush Limbuagh says so pretty stupid things. You would think that he might google them first before uttering them.
If he had bothered to goggle Bane for instance before going out and drawing a line between Bane and Bain (Romney's company) then he would know that Bane is a fictional creation of DC Comics for the Knightfall story line and was created in 1993 long before the current movie. Bane is also South American.
Bane is also about the lamest Super-villain DC Comics ever came up with.
Yes, he is almost as lame as the boney guy who "killed" Superman.
The new Bane looks more promising but the Original Bane was a 80 lb weakling transformed into a hulking behemoth by ODing on a drug derived from a jungle plant.

Oh yeah. He also showed up in the Batman & Robin movie as a bad afterthought.

Rush, please sit down and shut up.

Thanks.
And that is Life (as unfortuante as it has been today) according to me.

Why Facebook Kills and other nonsense

The discussions you get into and the people who get upset on Facebook is only rivaled by those who troll the endless labyrinthine tunnels of Internet forums.
Back in the day. 1990's, When forums were new and Binaries were old. I was such a troll. Of course the World wide web had yet to realize that it could be would be anything other than a wet dream inspired by a bunch of Computer Science nerds and Steve Jobs or Al Gore- depends on who you ask. In truth, the WWW was still a bad idea in a bunch of businessy nerd brains who were looking to commercialize what had all the promise and utter dullness that the net offered at the time. The internet was not this beautiful place filled with colorful homepages and websites with pictures and such. It was basically a text driven interface with peoples ideas and opinions- well mostly opinion spread through its scope via the binaries and forums and BBB's that gave the "net" it reality.
Sure we all wanted it to look like the Grid (Tron) but it never has. When I first saw Hackers I laughed my way through the net sequences almost as much as I did through LMM (Lawnmower Man). Hollywood has the most out of touch understanding of how the internet works and for that matter how computers work. I have seen almost no movies or TV where the computers work like they would in real life (until very recently)
Still we have hit the peak of interface with Man's greatest Digital Achievement.
The Facebook post and subsequent discussion forum where we all try really hard to have aweful grammar, spelling, English and look really smart or really stupid.

There we really can expand our social consciousness or drop down into what is fast becoming the Tennessee model of Stupid blindsided stubborn Ignorance that is self inflicted by believing in every backwards anti reason statement issued over the other various posts and webpages across the net.

There I said it.

The net has not expanded people's minds so much as closed them.

What happened to reason and intelligent thought?

They were misquoted and largely misinterpreted by idiots who have ignorant close minded agendas which they will use FB and other venues to ram down every ones throats just so they can sleep at night or say look I told you so.

over and over and over again.

A life less whimsical

If life were more ordinary than it would be easier to get what you are expecting, but then I would have to stop listening to the sage advice of Weird Al. Thus you find the heart of my dilemma ( that and the fact that I can never spell guard right nor guarantee - thank Steve Jobs for autocorrect though).
Life for me should be predictable but is not. My daily plans seldom precede as planned or estimated and are subject to change and more changes that by the time I give up and go to bed nothing went like I figured it would unless I am planning on changing my plans that day.
Sometimes I wonder if it is how my brain works or some cosmic sense of humor on the supreme beings part.
Which brings me back to Scientology.
(yeah I suspect you didn't see this one coming)

Here it is without the benefit of a nutshell: www.whatisscientology.org

and here is a more accurate picture of it: (unless you are Tom Cruise and about to sue Wikipedia again):
Scientology according to Wikipedia

another take on it: Clambaking: Operation Clambake

Mom and I got to talking about it and I quickly realized I had forgotten most of what I knew about the subject of L.Ron Hubbard- other than the detail that his writing was both ponderous and dismal when it got back to the story

In a nutshell, I first met LRH when I read Battlefield Earth the first time (yes I have read it twice).
The book is huge.
The story is not engaging except at rare moments when you can forget the ridiculous character names, the preposterous use of tech and the intergalactic banking practices. (yes the book goes into multi-chapter explanation how banking would be done on a intergalactic level)


So is there anything good about the book (in my opinion)
I found the 11 finger Algebra engaging on a mathematical level.
Some of the character human to alien dynamics are engaging but Hubbard writes them off. The book could be 200-300 pages if you cut all the banking and math out of it.

Anyway I wrote off LRH after Johnny Boy rode off into the sunset with his dog.

A few years later. Dianetics made a major comeback on the Best Sellers lists with a new aggressive advertising campaign. When I made the LRH connection to Dianetics and Scientology I had a good laugh.
LRH in my opinion was a far worse writer than most of the pulp SCi-Fi writers I had read up to that point.
Following the successful resurgence of Dianetics onto the book scene The Church of Scientology then launched re-publishing all of LRH's novels (each one around 1000 pages-it seemed) I remeber them being huge. I even tried to read one- the irony of which now is Xenu.

You see I did not know about Xenu until all these years after reading that first (awful) book- now here I discover that XENU was a major expansion on Scientology and not just a plot device in a biopic Space Opera written by LRH and possibly his church- though they deny all of it.

To the Scientologists LRH has to be a messiah and thus must be without blemish, failure or fault.

To me he was a lousy writer who had no real success until he invented a religion.

Is he a fraud?

No more than Joseph Smith or Brigham Young.

Which is even more of a mouthful- especially since yours truly almost joined that church twice.

yes twice.

the second time I knew it was BS (mostly) but I was lonely and was being tempted by the idea of easy marriage to a beautiful woman- another story for another time.

I didn't because my BS meter was overheating before I could initiate my self-deception.
The bottom line and the point here is thus.

I have a life less ordinary and more whimsical despite people saying that predictability is a good thing
you should look for the unexpected and hope for the impossible but when it comes down to wishing
be more careful since the impossible sometimes is really that.

and that (boys and girls) is life according to me.
Mike

Sometimes I don't know why I even bother

for the truly paranoid

There are people not worth going over to their house and taking their computers and running over the machines repeatedly with their cars so that you can fix their systems and assure them that they don't have a virus...no wait, maybe THAT would be worth it.

So here it is, Malware Monday! The day were the internet will end for a bunch of idiots with computers who don't follow the news, have antivirus on the computers and/or smoke weed (yeah I am blaming Cannabis- get over it- some of you can blame Satan too- I hear he's got a free time slot at 10:30) What is really happening today- that is if you read the news or watch it or listen to it. IS that the FBI is taking down the safety net servers that will remove X amount of idiots who don't read the- well you get the point and didn't do the FREE FIX or have an up to date Antivirus worth spit from having network access.

Is their computers ruined?
No
Can they get back on the Net?
yes.

All they have to do is nuke their OS and reinstall it.
Nuking- i.e. low level formatting the hard drive with remove the threat/infection and reinstalling windows will restore the DNS controls

there did that hurt?

Yes, but only the idiot's egos.


AND THAT is life according to me.

More on the 4th

So I walked for 1.5 miles or 30 minutes or both.
My knees are killing me.
I am old (but not much) and fat (clinically obese but not like those guys you see come waddling into Walmart at 2:30 am because it took them that long to get there instead of 8pm).
I love swedish fish when I write- I am like Ron Burgandy and smack my lips from the alcohol on live tv just before the news...
If only the rest of the media would duke it out like in the old days (which never happened)
I can see those crazy women from Fox Family getting the Spit kicked out of them from the panel on CNN's Situation room. (those *thches are crazy) Anne and Sarah Palin striding around picking off stragglers with their shotguns (NRA flags flying) Charlton Heston singing the Star Spangled Banner while Steve Carrol chases Garry Shandling and Anderson Cooper with a hand grenade. Larry King and his seven ex-wives threatening Rush Limbuagh and that other annoying guy Howard Stern- that's him with a flaming pitchfork.

A real rumble, a brawl yall with Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock as referees.

Man wouldn't that be great?

Who cares about wrong and right, let's see them get up and Fight!
royal rumble


happy fourth of July!

July 4th and a slight chance of patriotism

I would rather see rain this morning than fireworks tonight
I would rather that we take all of the republicans and democrats that annoy us and put them in a last man standing cage fight knowing it will come down to Ann Coulter vs. Stephen Colbert (he would be there) in sudden death overtime. The fight would be epic. But Stephen would win win Ann would fall on her own words thus impaling her smarmy-ness instead of facing the razor sharp veracity of Stephen's wry mockery.

Ahh Cage matches and gladiatorial fist fights.....
the good old days....which never actually existed but make for great movies.


So here we are on the 4th of July. at 8:46 am avoiding the 1.5 30 minute mile walk by blogging about something (No Jerry it will be something when I get back) but now I will go a make my fat cry as my Niece Karen likes to say and think deep thoughts.

until later.

This is Mike according to Mike.