Using Protection

Many thanks to Derek for pointing this picture out to me.


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Some People's Kids.

Just published a new post on the other blog about a guy running an anti-military/anti-soldier website who openly cheers the death of soldiers in Iraq. It's really a political subject, so slide on over to the politics blog if you want to know more.

Ode to Günther.

I can't believe I haven't made a post about my man Günther until now. Honestly, I haven't been saving this topic for a rainy day.. it shockingly has slipped my mind to write about one of my hero's.

Much like Ron Jeremy, Günther is a guy I can look up to. For those of you not familiar with this living legend, he is a 29 year old singer from Sweden and his aspirations are to "change the world's look at the sexual way of thinking", among other things. Even though his mullet is Business in the front, Party in the Back, this guy manages to pull chicks. Hot ones. And he gets naked with them.

Looking at the man, you can obviously see why he's so confident.



You'd be doing yourself a disservice if you don't go to his website and watch his video. It explains everything perfectly.

Günther, your existence on this planet brings great inspiration to my life. If you can land hot chicks with your 80's hair, 70's glasses, and who knows what era mustache, I know that I should not give up hope. And for this, I salute you.

In the States, we call this a pretty good night.

For the first time in it's history, Norway has convicted a woman on charges she raped a man. Yeah, it seems sort of weird, but it's even sillier when you get the details. You'd think maybe the guy was sodomized or something?

No.

The guy passed out on a sofa at a party, and woke up a few hours later to find the woman giving him a blowjob. In Norway, it's considered rape if you engage in sexual acts with anyone who is unconcious, thus the charge. Who gets mad when they get unsolicited head? That's just crazytalk. Even more mindboggling, is what would cause a guy to report free hummer to the police?

I need my Euro friends to explain this to me.

Forward

Forward. That's Wisconsin's state motto.

It should be: Because we do crazy shit. I'm sure you've all heard of the nutbag who froze his mother and collected her social security checks. The funny (or sad) part, is that he would've gotten away with it had it not been for a confrontation with a neighbor over an unrelated matter.

I live in Texas these days, and when you don't live in the state you grew up you tend to show some state pride whenever you can, or at least I do anyway. I'm always talking up the cheese, microbrews, UW football, etc. Hell, I even laugh at my friends when their football team gets beat by the Packers.. and I've never been a Packer fan in my life. So I'm always showing my Wisconsin Pride whenever I have the chance, but it's hard to keep up the fight when you've got people doing stupid stuff.

You've got the freezer guy, the cow-molester, Dahmer, Ed Gein, and the list goes on.

I know every state his it's share of weirdos. Down here in Texas the specialty is baby killing apparently. It just sucks when people read a story about some fruitcake and say "Hey.. aren't you from Wisconsin? You related to this guy?"

The non-update, update.

No updates on the blog tonight. Spent the night cleaning the house, helping Derek with his blog, and setting up my dsl connection (I just got dsl today).

More updates tomorrow, both on this blog and the politics blog.

Tonight's topics

Tonight's topics on the other blog:

Social Security.

Death Penalty.

Feel free to check it out. Or not.

I've heard this one before.

Emperor Benedict XVI told some German pilgrims today that he "prayed to God that he wouldn't be elected Pope".

Sure buddy, I've heard that one before, and it went something like this: "Once this threat has been abated, I will lay down these special powers granted to me". Does anyone out there actually believe he didn't want to be elected? If he didn't want the job, why didn't he resign once the vote was completed, thus giving the Cardinals time to select another candidate?

Jacko Drama

I guess two of Jacko's lawyers don't get along all that well and they had a falling out, which was captured on camera. One of them got the ax last friday. I'm hoping he writes a tell-all book in a few years. I'm sure it would be a good read.


fired dude on the left


I'm going to be sad when this trial ends. It's better than 2 seasons of Days of our Lives combined.

Oh so close..

We almost got him. No, not Osama.. who knows where that fruit loop is, the one I was referring to was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Apparently an informant within Zarqawi's organization tipped the U.S. off to a meeting that was supposed to go down. We had our checkpoints set up, UAV's in the air, and so forth. A truck pulled u-turn and tried to leave the area. When we finally caught the vehicle it contained Zarqawi's laptop, but Iraq's #1 fugitive bailed out below an overpass and fled to a safe house. After it was all sorted out he was no where to be found.

It sucks that we didn't get him, but it's a major win in that we got his laptop. A guy always on the run does his work from a laptop and hopefully it'll provide some clues and helpful information. In a lot of ways it's more important that we catch this guy before Osama. Osama is the leader of his group and calls the shots, but he doesn't don a mask and saw people's heads off like Zarqawi does.

From a Certain Point of View

The new blog is up and running. It's not going to have many links to other content, unless I'm quoting a source. I'm going to try and keep it clean and smooth with my posts and and reader comments only.

http://fromacertainpointofview.blogspot.com/

Hiding in public.

I've got my politics blog up and running with a few topics posted. I know that most of my viewship won't care, but I know that a few will be interested in reading it. All in due time my friends. The blog is up and running, it will be published to the public, but I'm not ready to give out the link yet. I'm still fine tuning it.

Sunday. Blah.

Another weekend down the drain. I didn't get much accomplished this weekend, save for a load of laundry. I had my kids again, and when I have them I try to just hang out with them and watch movies or play with toys. I'm trying to get as much of that in as I can since they will be leaving for Germany soon. After the kids leave I'll try to get the house cleaned up and another load of laundry done before bed, but we'll see what happens.

I think I'm going to start a seperate political blog and give commentary on various political news items I find. A lot of people run away from politics like it's the plague. I relish it.

In the meantime, I thought I'd share a couple stories I found. At least my weekend hasn't been as bad as others.

1. Man goes skydiving. Man hits plane on the way down. Man gets legs severed by the airplane.

2. Martha's back in the news. Officials are investigating whether or not a party she attended violated her house arrest. Apparently she gets 48 hours each week to take care of personal business, shop for food, doctor appts, and to conduct official work as it relates to her company. Most people on house arrest get like 8-12 a week to take care of stuff. Martha gets two whole days. Unbelievable.

3. John McGivney's car wouldn't start. So he shot it. 5 times.

Nap time and Skywalker limbs

Found an interesting story today.

Scientists have successfully reduced the metabolic rate of mice by 90%, thus creating a forced hibernation. Go read the story if you want to know the scientific details, but the article mainly discusses the potential human gains this could bring. If the method proves reliable, you could potentially save the life of a human by putting them in hibernation if they had cancer, serious injury, surgeries, etc.

My initial thought when reading the story was the advantages hibernation may have for space travel. If I recall correctly, it takes about 2 years to reach Mars, and you could alternate hibernation for the astronauts, thereby reducing the physical and mental stress that space travel can create.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In an incredible lapse of judgment, I forgot to bookmark an article I saw a few days ago... But thanks to the wonderful world of google, I was able to find it again.

Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is the Pentagon's research division and is in control of pretty much any scientific project the military wants to make a reality. Currently they are working on a project called Prosthesis 2007 , which is the hope for a "neutrally controlled artificial limb" in a nutshell, they are ordering up a Luke Skywalker arm, that can be controlled by your brain, will look like a real arm, and is sensitive enough so that you could write in long hand and pick up raisins. Scientists in general have been successful in transferring brain signals to a mechanical arm to control movement. This project basically takes it a step further. They want a real arm replacement, and they want it in 4 years. DARPA officials will admit that the time table is ambitious, and some real hurdles must be cleared in order for the project to work, but they believe it can be accomplished.

I hope that DARPA pulls this off, it would go down as one of our greatest achievements yet. Creating Luke Skywalker limbs for people maimed in accidents, war, and birth defects would be a tremendous boost to our society.

No such thing as a free lunch.

I've never been one to criticize things in life that are free or given to me without having to work for them, but just a little complaint for the folks at blogspot.

While trying to respond to a comment, I received this message:

Down for Maintenance

Blogger is temporarily unavailable due to a planned maintenance.

This downtime will last three hours from 4PM-7PM (PST).

As I said, I'm not one to complain much, but does anyone feel this is a bad time of the day to be doing scheduled maintenance? Don't most people get home from work and blog about things they've thought about all day, or is that just me?

My training is complete

My powers grow stronger by the day.

If you do a google search for:

images pope benedict xvi sith emperor you will find that I am #5 on the list.

Emperor Benedict XVI I am #3

That's enough gloating for now. I'm going to go balance some rocks while doing a handstand. More to come later.

There is a great disturbance in the force.

As I'm sure you're aware of by now, Supreme Chancellor Joseph Ratzinger has been elected as the 265th Pope, and has taken the Sith name Emperor Benedict XVI.

Chancellor Ratzinger


Emperor Benedict XVI


Photo Credit: Scurvydog.com


This has got to be a real kick in the pants for some Catholics, particularly those in Africa and Latin America. Any hope they had that it would be "their turn" has vanished for the time being. Also any Catholic women that were hoping for a more progressive leader will have to wait this one out. Supreme Chancellor Ratzinger, Dean of the College of Cardinals (as he was known before taking his Sith name) is known as a conservative who has denounced the thought of radical changes within the church and has lead a crackdown against wayward priests around the world.

His election should speak volumes to the catholic faithful around the world. Those that you entrust to make the right decisions around the world have decided now is not the time for change. Hopefully they all can cope with that, or find a religion that better suits them.

Like a fat kid needs cake, like Jacko needs a sick boy, like a priest needs... well, nevermind

I need it!

Today I was on a scheduled break from work, standing outside with some coworkers when I heard sirens in the distance. Quickly the sound of the sirens got closer, and louder and seemed to multiply when all of a sudden a Maroon colored Chevy Suburban rounded the corner, screeching it's tires and accelerating hard followed by 2 police cars.

The Chase was on. Soon, more police cars were rounding the corner, followed by unmarked cars, all trying to catch up to the truck. At last count, I saw 10 police cars chasing one person. I have no idea what the guy in the Suburban did, but I'm pretty sure he ended up having a bad day.

From start to finish the whole scene lasted about 10 seconds, but I've been thinking about it all day. I miss the days when I was in the squad car, running people down. I worked on a pretty quiet military installation, but I did take part in a couple memorable pursuits. Today was one of those days where a situation makes me re-evaluate things in my life, making me wonder if I'm on the right career path.

Get Well Tom

While surfing the net, I came across Tom Snyder's website. For those who are not familiar, Tom is a TV and radio personality who has been on the airwaves since 1955. He was born in Milwaukee, WI and has held many gigs throughout his career. Tom was the first radio personality that I listened to with any interest, and I'd regularly tune in to his broadcast when I was in High School while doing homework.

On April 15th, Tom made the announcement that he had been diagnosed with a form of leukemia. Fortunately for him, his doctors say it's not much to worry about and that his disease is fully treatable. Who knows with doctors though.

Anyway, I miss hearing Tom on the radio. He always seemed like a pretty good guy, giving both sides of a story and seemed to have a good amount of common sense. I hope he get's better soon.

Still need a job?

Today I found out that the National Security Agency is opening up a new location in San Antonio, Texas. They'll be hiring about 1,500 people. So if you've got what it takes, go here to apply.

Government jobs usually pay pretty well, and can lead to other sucesses in life. How so? Well, most people have no idea what the NSA really does, so when you're talking to that hot chick you just met at the bar and she asks what you do and who you work for, you can say "I work for the NSA" and when she stares back at you with a blank face, you just say "I'm kinda like Jack Bauer on 24". It'll get you laid. Trust me.

And you think you have it rough here??

Found this article while browsing the web today. Saudi police officers busted up a "gay wedding" with about 100 people in attendence.

Gay couples in the U.S. get ridiculed, protested, and have marriage licenses issued and sometimes revoked. In Saudi Arabia you get prison terms and lashings.

The men, who were caught "dancing and behaving like women" were tried and convicted without the luxury of defense attorneys and were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 6 months to 2 years in jail, with a total of 14,200 lashings handed out as punishment. Four were jailed for 2 years with a sentence of 2,000 lashings each. (Bride and bride's maids?)

Since I'm not gay, I'll admit it's hard for me to relate to the plight that they go through. But I've got to ask.. Would you prefer it our way or their way? That's what I thought.

It only took a couple of weeks

After the death of Pope John Paul II, it seems you couldn't find a bad word written about him, the Catholic Church, or the Cardinals. Well, it appears it only took a couple of weeks and now the media is poised to start piling on, with Knight-Ridder batting leadoff with a story titled "Vatican history reveals bloody, corrupt battles for church power".

The history of the conclave is something that I've found pretty interesting, and I've wanted to read more stories like that one, but it's been hard to find good material since the Pope died. If you google it, you mostly get stories about John Paul's health, death, and the child molestation scandals. I might have to take a trip to the local bookstore to see if I can find anything.

Can I get your e-mail address?

I found an interesting article revealing that President Bush doesn't e-mail and Bill Clinton only sent 2 emails while in office. I guess I never really put much thought into it, but Bush's response makes sense: "I don't want you reading my personal stuff".

Pretty much anything the President does while in office, even if he isn't in the office becomes a matter of public record. Pissed because the twins had a drunken orgy? If you fire off a nasty e-mail, I'll be able to get a copy, courtesy of FOIA in a couple of years.

It seems sort of sad that the President (Bush or anyone else) can't take advantage of the latest technolgies without having to worry about people trying to get a copy of every email he sends. I'm sure we've all gotten a few emails we don't care to share with others. I don't really see a way to rectify the situation either. If you sent up a private account that won't be archived, somebody will eventually abuse it (Think: Richard Nixon's Whitehouse tapes).

I personally find it difficult to function without email these days. I have friends spread out around the world, and it's about the only way I stay in touch with them. Of course, I'm not the President either. I would imagine he just picks up the phone after his secretary has the other person on the line.

Anyway, I found that tidbit sort of interesting.

Have you seen my finger?

Wendy's has doubled the reward for information leading to the owner of the finger tip found in it's chilli. If you happen to know anybody who has recently lost a finger tip, and they manage to match the DNA profile, you could receive $100,000 from Wendy's. At least their not offering food vouchers!

Time to concede defeat?

It appears as though Digitalicat will pass me in the hit-counter standings very shortly. I may have to post an obituary...

Here are two must reads while I look for some other crap to blog about:

1. A truely inspirational story about a chicken named Mike that survived a beheading. Yes, I said survived. With no head.

2. A South African Chimp who smokes. Poor Charlie can't kick the habit.

**BLOG UPDATE 04/16/05** I realized today that I don't need to concede defeat. When I changed they style of my hit counter, it restarted my tally! WOOOHOOO!

Back at it again

I took a day off from blogging, but I feel the need to write something to remain consistent. At the same time, I'm fighting the urge to write something political. It has never been my intention to run a politically driven blog. I will say this though. More proof that our foreign policies are working, in regards to the promotion of democracy. It remains to be seen however, if our policies are hurting us in other ways. It's too early to tell.

On a side note, I just ran blogger's spell-check before publishing this post. It is interesting that blog and blogging are considered misspelled words by blogspot.

Minutemen

No, it's not a club for 70 year old men that Viagra isn't working for.

These are the "armed vigilantes" that are voluntarily patrolling the Arizona-Mexico border, on the lookout for illegal aliens crossing over to the United States.

What isn't being reported as heavily, is that the only people that are armed are the people that have legally obtained gun permits in Arizona. Also, they are not vigilantes. They are not taking the law into their own hands, nor are they passing judgment or sentence against the people they catch. Supposedly, they have been successful in catching a few border jumpers, and when they do catch one, the U.S. Border Patrol is notified so that they can come and take custody of the detained immigrant.

Although I support the Minutemen in concept, I'm not in favor of their work as a national or regional policy. If I were the President, I would have the understaffed Border Patrol operate in urban areas, and I would direct the U.S. Army to patrol the rural areas. The Army is a force that has a mandate to protect us against our enemies, foreign and domestic. Illegal immigrants are enemies of this country. They drain resources from our state and national budgets, and they do not aspire to be productive members of an American society. Their only wish is to make money and send it back home to family, or worse, traffic drugs to the U.S. I don't have a problem with someone trying to earn money for their family, but they need to come the legal way. The U.S. Army already rotates units in and out of the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California. Instead of sending units there for annual training, they should send the units to border to conduct their training, where they will get real world experience running the same training missions they currently do in California.

Our border problems are real, and they won't get any better until a new strategy is tried.

Stand Your Ground

Stand Your Ground, that's the name of the lastest bill to come out of Florida's Legislature. You may have read about it, or heard someone whining about it on tv. In a nutshell, it's a bill that will allow people in Florida to defend themselves with lethal force if they are put in a life threatening situation.

Critics are claiming that Florida will be turned into the wild west, with racially motivated killings and it'll promote deadly escalations of arguements. Some people just don't get it I guess. The whole point of the bill is to prevent violent arguements. How many people will you go off on, in a road-raged fit, if you know they might shoot you if they feel threatened? The people that are aggressively violent are already shooting people and threatening other people's lives... they are not waiting for a bill to legalize it. This bill was introduced to help protect you against these sort of people.

Go here for more information on the new bill.

Things that make me laugh

I'll admit I have a weird sense of humor about some things, and stuff like this makes me laugh: Episode III, A lost Hope. It's a spoof video of the next Star Wars movie. It won't really be all the funny if you're not already a Star Wars fan to some degree. Hope it makes you laugh too!

Hand over your money

It's stories like these that frustrate me to levels I can't even describe.

It's been reported on Yahoo News that the median net worth of black Americans is less than 10 percent of whites.

This, obviously, is a problem. And it really doesn't matter what color appears first or second in that sentence. In the land of the free, brave, and equally protected, we should do everything we can to give everyone in this country the same chances to succeed. The part that really burns me though, is the National Urban League's solution to this problem: 1. Raise the minimum wage and 2. More help for blacks to purchase homes and start businesses.

This idea is so silly that it makes it hard for me to type logical sentences, but let's try to break it down some:

Raising the minimum wage. Somebody needs to enlighten me on how this helps people accumulate wealth. Minimum wage laws were enacted to ensure a basic subsistence level of pay, to ensure that people were not being unfairly taken advantage of by employers. They were not designed, nor will they ever fulfill a person's dream of becoming financially independent. It is simply not possible for people to get wealthy working for minimum wage, nor will increasing it help any. Increasing minimum wage leads to increases in price for the products and services that you purchase, thus nobody wins-not even the person who had their wage increased.

More help to purchase homes. Initially this sounds like a really good idea. Houses usually accumulate equity, making owning a home a sound idea. But who's going to pay for this "help"? Well, of course everybody would pay, in the form of higher taxes so that more (and bigger) grants could be given out. Why not let me keep my money, so I can try to purchase my own home? By the way, how many lenders do you think will approve me with my new, higher, minimum wage? How many of your friends were successful in securing financing while getting paid minimum wage?

More help to start a business. Another great idea, on the surface. Once again, you have to look deeper. I'm not going to copy and paste my "where's this money coming from" complaint again. It's the same complaint listed in the last paragraph. The same basic problem still applies. There are also a whole new set of things the Urban League obviously failed to consider. According to the Dept. Of Labor, "The Census Bureau reports that 76 percent of all small businesses operating in 1992 were still open in 1996." Well, what that really means is that 24% of the businesses are no longer open. They failed. So let's be clear on something here. The Urban League wants us to provide more funding to a program that statistically shows us that 1 out of every 4 people that gets a grant will be wasting money. I'm not even going to get into the issues of self-discipline, the tremendous financial burden placed on someone when they open a small business, and the legal expenses required to make sure you're in compliance with all the labor and business laws currently on the books. Where is this money supposed to come from? Oh yeah, you're getting paid minimum wage! Does that mean we shouldn't promote small businesses, the bread and butter of America's economy? No, not at all. But we shouldn't increase the funding when the answer lies elsewhere.

Answer Time. Ok, so given those 3 items, I'm prepared to provide you all the answer to the wealth-gap problem. It can be summed up in this short sentence: Self Policing and Education. Regardless of the color of your skin, most of our problems can be corrected by policing ourselves, and our race. If your kid wants to skip school, kick his or her ass. If they want to perform poorly when they do attend school, kick their ass. If you had a child with a deadbeat spouse, kick his or her ass till they either pay child support or get tossed in jail. If your kid is running with gangs and smoking crack, instead of cracking the books, kick his ass too. If you know someone who has talent, but is wasting their life away on drugs or alcohol, kick their ass till they straighten up too. You can only acquire wealth a handful of ways. Some will be lucky enough to inherit it. Most will have to work hard, practice financial discipline, save, and have career/life goals. You will never become wealthy having the government throw money your way. You will not have learned the life lessons required to maintain that money. You will waste it on needless things.

My suggestion to the Urban League is simple. Police your people. Put their feet to the fire, and make them achieve the things in this country that others have done on their own. Keep your kids in school. Encourage post-high school education. Encourage your single mothers not to have more children out of wedlock. Encourage your fathers to remain committed to the families they helped create. Clean up your neighborhoods. Encouraging people to invest in their own neighborhoods will go along way to solving the problem. Encourage the young dreams of owning a business by showcasing the successful businesses in your neighborhood. These things will fix the problem you care so deeply about. More government welfare programs are not the answer.

Unleash The Hounds!

I'm not entirely sure what made me think about this on the way to work this morning, but my mind wandered to the topic of good versus evil. Evil, in a biblical or spiritual sense. I was thinking that if you were a person that believes in true evil, such as the kind that the devil may produce, then now would be as good a time as any for the devil to make a move. John Paul II has recently died, leaving over a billion people without a spiritual leader. The Catholic Church is at a social crossroads and a lot of key decisions will probably be made in the next 50 years or so. Will the Vatican ever endorse birth control as a means of fighting disease? Will they ever allow their clergymen to marry? Will they ever allow women to hold higher positions within the church? The answer to all of these questions could be yes, depending on who is elected as Pope this month, and in years to come. It strikes me as a fairly important time for church.

Depending on the choices that are made, the Catholic Church could become much stronger, or it could lead to more and more people being disillusioned. I know if I were the devil, the time would be right to cause a lot of chaos and test the resolve of Catholics all over the world. It just makes sense to me. So, if you believe in the Devil, and all things evil, I think I'd be on the lookout for temptation.

Something else that captured my attention on the way to work was Nostradamus. As you all know, his "predictions" can be conveniently misinterpreted to reflect major events in the world. I did a quick google search when I got home for "Nostradamus Predictions +Pope" figuring that I'd get to read "newly decoded messages" , but found mostly references to Pope John Paul I, who died shortly after being elected. Apparently he predicted the man's demise. It seems odd that Nostradamus would predict the reign and death of a Pope that ruled for 34 days, but didn't foresee the first non-Italian Pope in 455 years, who is credited with a number of things, including the acceleration of communism death in eastern Europe.

Google also lead me to another soothsayer, by the name of St. Malachy, who apparently created a list of Pope's from his days until our present time. He supposedly has an 80% accuracy rate, and has predicted that there will only be two Pope's after Pope John Paul II. He predicts the next Pope will be a peace-maker, and will help bring an end to Arab-Israeli hostilities, but will die before his work is completed, and his successor will rule until Armageddon.

So what are we supposed to do about this? Well, most will probably continue to live their lives as they have been, living by whatever standards they set for themselves. But if you are so inclined, I guess you could start watching for signs of the apocalypse.

As for me, I'm not fazed. I have faith in us as humans, that if the need shall ever arise, we will unite and fight whatever battle needs to be waged. We've come close in a couple of world wars, but I don't think our resolve has been tested yet.

Yea though I walk through the valley of death, I will fear no evil. (But I do fear food poisoning!)

Weekend Update

While the Pope was dying and Terri Shiavo was getting creamated, it was a pretty uneventful weekend here. Sunny & warm. I had my kids for the first time in about a month, so my weekend consisted of playing with toys and watching cartoons! The only drawback is that they are used to getting up early for school, and promptly woke me up at 7:oo A.M. both Saturday and Sunday. So, other than some cartoons and toys, the only thing we did was make a trip out to Wal-mart to pick up a couple of things and a quick stop at McDonald's.

A new week has arrived, and it's the first full week of the month, which means I've gotta kick some ass and make some sales to start things off strong.