Jeb, you are an idiot. And it doesn’t say much for the Florida legislators either. I speak of the “Stand Your Ground” law signed recently by Florida governor Jeb Bush (yes, President Shrub’s brother) which in a nutshell means that it is legal for anyone can shoot to kill in self-defense anywhere, home or not, without trying to flee.

Guess who pushed it… yep, the gun lobbyist. Now I have no problem with gun ownership or using guns in hunting (though I still don’t get why you need an fully automatic, empty-my-clip-in-one-trigger-pull rifle for hunting… have the deer suddenly started caring AK-47′s?), but I am leery of making it legal for people to start shooting in public. Yes, I know the law doesn’t just cover guns, but knives don’t kill people ten feet away and they are easier to aim.

Yes, protect yourself, but not by giving out a “licence to kill”.

What I see happening in the not too distant future….
A boy and his parents as well as a few innocent by-standers being killed because a man mistook a little kid’s water gun as a pistol.
Racial killings because “that person of color was threatening my safety”, even though he was unarmed.
More people getting killed over petty arguments.
More police persons being shot by citizens “utilizing legal deadly force”.
A bank robbery ending in massive bloodshed that could have been avoided.

And this in a state that is the retirement capitol of the world. Yes, let’s give great-grandpa, who has failing vision, an unsteady hand, and is paranoid about the kids in his lawn, a gun and let him loose in public.

Remember this law is from the same people who are against women’s choice in abortion. I guess it is okay to kill after the baby has been born.

Email this post

Ooooo, I am mad. Mad with a capital M as My foot wants to kick some idiots’ collective asses up to their collective necks. Why you ask? Let us go back to last night…

Last night I was listening to a daily radio program that I usually catch when I’m driving at night. The host is very insightful and informed and is patient in allowing other’s to express their views even when they do not match his own. On his show last night he had a female minister. I have nothing against female ministers, in fact I wish there were more of them, but this woman just plain irked me. What irked me was her views on homosexuality and relationships. Now I know the church looks down on homosexuality as a sin, but this woman was going extreme. Her main point was that there is no degrees, you were either straight or gay. She went so far as to say that one encounter with someone of the same gender makes you totally homosexual, regardless of the relationships before and after. In her world there were no bisexuals (she claim they were just deluding themselves) or those who experiment, you are 100% gay. This woman missed the entire point of homosexuality…. it is not who you slept with, but what gender you prefer, what gender you have feelings for. I know the host was sitting on his hands the whole time trying not to strangle her. Ans she has the gall to blame STD’s and AIDS on homosexuals. Then she said something that put her on the death list of all incarcerated males… all men in jail are gay because you know what happens behind bars. Please do not equate homosexuality with prison rape. Luckily I had to leave the car at that point.

Later a news program interviewed this guy (I didn’t catch his name) who said the welfare is full of unwed parents and that to insure child welfare we should scrap the current system in place and pressure the parents to marry. My jaw dropped to the floor. I was luck I was at a stop light when I heard it or I would have been in an accident. The guy had the misguided notion that if the parents were married that all the financial problems would just evaporate. Then he said that we should persuade people not to get married and have children until they are financially able, in his words own a house, have a good paying job, have plenty of money in savings, and have lots of assets. In other words, if you are poor don’t have children or get married. And he said that parents should stay married regardless of the home situation and the relationship. When the interviewer ask him if that includes abusive homes, he said YES! Then in the next breath he talks about the sanctity of marriage. When asked about single well to do parents, the guy just shrugged if off by saying there weren’t any that you can’t afford to raise a child on your own. I can’t believe this guy wants people to stay in abusive relationship and ignores child abuse. What happens to the family if the parents suddenly fall on hard times (which is easy to do these days)… take away their kids until they are solvent again? It was lucky that the interviewer quickly ended the interview.

Then came news about the bankruptcy reform and why more and more politicians are against it. It seems that the bill proposed actually helps big business and wealthy persons to hide more of their assets from creditors, while decreasing what smaller companies and less wealthy people can keep. The senator interviewed was amazed that the two houses would even considered the bill and he said that he pities anyone who is poor getting a fair chance at starting again since everything they own will be seized. He said companies like Enron would keep almost everything they own and creditors would get almost nothing. Are the current administration and legislators trying to widen the gap between the have’s and the have-nots?

And then I read this about a Canadian having all sorts of problems trying to cross the border to the U.S. in order to get to a meeting. I am flabergasted at how asinine we have become over our fear of terrorism. I am dismayed that the people in power are so paranoid (and/or drunk with power) that they do what they did to this guy.

Sometimes I wonder if we are heading full throttle into a fascist state.

And it didn’t help matters this morning when I heard a senator make the statement on teaching evolution that there are many people in government that are more than willing to increase the wars in the Middle East, spread Christian zealotry through out the world, and bring about the Apocalypse using American politics and power.

I’m expecting God to start throwing some lightening bolts at a few people pretty soon.

Email this post

There is an interesting article over at Intuitive Systems about blogging and work, specifically blogging about work. The article raises some questions and gives a few answers on the limits that you can go with your blogging and just how far your employer can go.

I personally rarely blog about work. I may mention something general about the issues that concern all IT professionals… something along the lines about users, or software, or programming hassles, I never get into any specifics. It is my opinion that each blog entry should be tempered with a little respect for your employer and stay away from anything that could be detrimental to the company.

Take for example: talking about how hard a time you are having solving a programming problem is okay if you don’t get too specific, whereas talking about how crappy the product your company produces is going over the line. If you get the urge to blog about your work, think about it a good long time before you write the entry then edit the entry with a scrutiny of a microbiologist before posting it.

Another example: the company asks you not to blog about work specifics is reasonable and expected. What is over the line is the company telling you that you cannot blog. As you have to respect the company’s expectations of productivity and competition, the company also has to respect your right to express your opinion in a public forum when it doesn’t concern them.

Now here is a sticky point, what if the company is going something grossly wrong or illegal. Well, your first inclination should be to report it to authorities and bypass the blog. The authorities will not listen and the only venue left is the blog? You better damn well have some proof to backup your allegations before you blog about it.

The bottom line is to use just plain ol’ common sense.

Respect your employer and the employer must respect you.

And that “I pay you, I own you” philosophy by some companies that Dave Taylor mentions in the article is a bunch of crap. While on the clock, you are their bitch, but when you are off work you are your own person. We abolished slavery some time ago. That doesn’t mean you should lie about the employer or disrespect it but that does mean that the employer does not run your private life.

I hope that muddled the issue a bit for you.

Email this post

This song by Stephen Stills from his Buffalo Springfield days came on the radio this afternoon and it is very apt for our times with all of the governmental erosion of our rights and the threat of terrorism. This song was based on a Sunset Strip mob scene that involved an incident of police brutality against a group of hippies. The song morphed later into a statement against the Vietnam war, the Kent State shootings, and the assassination of Martin Luther King. I am surprised that no contemporary artist has not made a cover of the song since 9/11.

It gives one pause to think that the United States may have come full circle to the Vietnam war era with the Iraq war.

What do you think?

Email this post

This is not really a political rant per se, more of a promised response to a comment I left on a post featured at A New York Escorts Confessions. I’m not ranting against the post (since Alexa is posing the site on its educational values and not its political rantings), but the site linked in the post called Fuck The South (sorry for the language). Now this site could be just created all in fun and parody, or it could be how the author really feels… I don’t know. I do know that the site lumps everyone south of Wyoming together as one group and makes some very generalized statements about us.

First of all, being a Georgia boy born and bred and still living here, I see two Souths, the traditional South made up mostly of the southern states east of Texas and the other South that is more traditionally clumped together as part of the West. Usually when you think of the South, you bring to mind the old cotton fields, mansions, slavery, green farmlands surrounded by trees, features more prevalent east of Texas.

Now to the site. “We should have let them go when they wanted to leave….” , we didn’t all want to succeed, in Georgia it was a bitter issue that pit brother against brother — literally. “Fighting for the right to keep slaves…”, if I remember my history correctly, the succession was more about States rights over Federal rights. Slavery was already on its way out of Georgia before the succession. “How about this for arrogant: the South is the Real America….”, we just barely consider ourselves part of the rest of the country, basically we just like to left to our own devices and we sometimes feel like we aren’t even part of America much less feel like the real America.

“Cause we(the north)(sic)… founded this country…”, I hate to burst your bubble but Georgia was one of the original thirteen colonies and a few of the founding fathers came from here and/or represented us. “Second Amendment giving you the right to keep your assault weapons…”, yes, we have a lot of gun owners here in Georgia, but you’ll be hard pressed to find one that thinks the constitution allows a person to keep assault weapons. We use our guns to hunt.. for food! (I was raised on the philosophy of your eat what you kill.)

” All those Federal taxes you love to hate? It all comes from us and goes to you…”, yes, we do get more than we pay in NOW. Remember Jimmy Carter? Just because we voted for him overwhelmingly for president twice, when Carter lost the re-election to Reagan (where was the North then?), Georgia was punished severely for its support of Carter by being excluded from Federal money and having many of the programs it did have cut severely. Even after voting Republican for the next two elections, Georgia was still being punished. Then in 1992 we help elect a Democrat. So now we get one penny more than we pay in to the Federal government, but since we are one of the poorest states we don’t pay in that much either.

Morality. Georgia actually is grouped in the states with the lowest divorce rates (.38% of the population) in the country as of the latest available numbers. While the murder rate is high in comparison to many other states, Georgia is one of the states that is showing the most improvement in reducing the rate. We are not perfect and we don’t pretend to be any more moral than the rest of the country. Yes, there is still a rampant number of homophobes in this state and they tend to panic at the first mention of homosexuals, which explains that amendment that is already being challenged.

No, the South is not perfect. It is as flawed as the rest of the country and it tends to vote and reflect the rest of the country. We are as varied as the North. No, I’m not happy that Shrub won, and I’m not happy that amendment defining marriage passed, but I did my part to fight it and in the next four years I see many more of my fellow Georgians marching with me.

And I really hate people who generalize.

Email this post

I was watching An Extremely Goofy Movie (no, not Waterworld, the name of the movie is An Extremely Goofy Movie) with my son last night when this unease settled over me, the same one that happened when I saw A Goofy Movie and watched Goof Troop. Yes, I watch a lot of Disney Channel with my kids.

What caused the unease? The fact that Goofy has a kid. I can live with the fact that Goofy can hold down a job, raise a kid, and live a fairly normal life, he is just goofy and clumsy, not stupid. But for Goofy to have a child, and it is his child, not adopted as some have suggested, he first has to get married. Yes, I know that there is someone out there for everyone and it just boggles the mind that Goofy managed to find his mate. And then he had to have sex with his wife to produce Max. Goofy having sex? There are probably a few Disney animators that have drawn this scenario in great detail, but it still just boggles the mind.

Now there have been Disney shorts in the past in which there was a Mrs. Goofy and Max was called Goofy, Jr., and the show and subsequent movies are based on those shorts.

What is even more disturbing is that in the second movie, Goofy finds a new girlfriend! Okay, Goofy seems to have a dual personality in that he can be hip (in a disco way) and can be suave, and what woman can resist a charming, sweet, lovable, and goofy guy.

Then it hit me. Why wouldn’t Goofy be married and have a kid, it would be against the laws of nature for it not to happen.

On the issue of Max’s mom not being in the series and movies, it is hinted at, with both Goofy and Max giving these heart rending looks, that she has died shortly before the beginning of the series.

Then there is Kim Possible. Exactly who is this show aimed at? Yes, my daughter and my son get a kick out of the show as well as I do, all for different reasons. My son likes Ron and Rufus, my daughter associates with Kim, I get the humor and the pop culture references. That is not the problem, okay it is not a problem just an observation. If you have ever seen the show you know what I am talking about. Kim, her mom, Shego, Bonnie (yes, that is the Belle everyone likes from the soap Days of Our Lives), Monique, the whole cheerleader squad… they are an adolescent boy’s dream girls, not your usual Disney girls renderings.

And now my daughter dresses like Kim. But then it had to happen some day, my little girl in her pink frilly dresses and little bonnets has grown up to more contemporary style of clothing.

Maybe I am just lamenting the fact that my children are no longer babies… and that now they both want to play football.

Email this post

If I Were A Carpenter
by Tim Hardin

If I were a carpenter and you were a lady
Would you marry me anyway, would you have my baby?

What is the deal with people and turn signals? Is it too much to ask that you turn it on when you a going to make a turn. I may be a giant in mental telepathy, but I can’t read minds very well while I an driving. And please please use the tuning lane, the people behind you have would like to continue on their journey and they made that turning lane just so that you wouldn’t have to stall traffic for ten minutes waiting for a chance to turn left.

Crystal Gayle mmmmm, those eyes and that long, long dark hair. Many a night (and day) I would dream about being married to her (yes, married not just sleep with), imagining being lost in those eyes daily and hearing that sweet voice saying my name. She is like the supermodel of country music and probably the only country music star I will listen to unconditionally. Yes, I still have a BIG crush on her.

Robert Redford turns 67 today. I want to look as good as he does now when I get to 57. If I was a woman I’d be drooling over him… which my wife does every time she sees him.

I never realized how sexist this carpenters song is until now. But then I didn’t know that She Bop by Cyndi Lauper was about masturbation until a just recently. Oh yeah, I have this thing for Cyndi too. I don’t care what year it is or what hair color she has, I would marry Cyndi too. She is just so cute and sexy… and I love her voice.

On this day in 1227, the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan died. Khaaaaaaaaaan! I had to do that, my inner Shatness was fighting to get out.

On this day in 1958, the novel by Vladimir Nabokov that made older men (and censors) nervous, Lolita. Hmm, I wonder how many old men where on the movie review board at that time. By the way, the Stanley Kubrick version is very good, I haven’t seen the Adrian Lyne version.

Here’s another picure of Crystal Gayle…

Email this post

I received a comment about the song “Honey” by Bobby Russell which brought up some interesting ideas about the song. The comment by Phil suggest that the song is about Honey’s suicide. Looking over the lyrics I can see how one can derive that conclusion which is also aired by the author of CartoonTomb, Nina Ruzicka, in the entry dated 11 Feb 2003 (scroll down about halfway of the page).

Now back when it was originally release I remember everyone thinking it was about a woman who had some terrible illness that she didn’t tell her husband about and when he came home that day she had suddenly died.

But the suicide angle makes more sense…

I came home unexpectedly
And caught her cryin’ needlessly
In the middle of the day
And it was in the early Spring
When flowers bloom and robins sing
She went away

…except for this particular line…

One day while I was not at home
While she was there and all alone
The angels came

Generally suicide is considered a mortal sin in just about every Christian and Jewish belief so the angels would not have anything to do with Honey’s suicide.

Then there is Bobby Russell’s comments on the song…. he got the idea for the song when he noticed how much a tree in his front yard had grown in four years. That’s it. Nothing more. And since Bobby Russell died in 1992, we may never know if Honey died from illness or suicide.

Unless someone out there knows of an interview Bobby Russell in which he explains the song.

Email this post

I wonder if it is the duty of the Georgia Legislature to make the rest of us in the state look stupid.

To sum up the latest tom-foolery, the Georgia House has passed a bill to prohibit female genital mutilation. Now in itself it is not bad as it was intended to stop the mutilation of young girls which is a rampant problem in Atlanta. The trouble is that they added to the bill piercings making it illegal for adult women who voluntarily have it done, with a punishment of up to 20 years in prison! This bill does not have any such restrictions on male genitalia.

So again we are telling women that they have no control or rights over their own bodies. I guess if you want a sex change from female to male you are out of luck as well. Don’t worry, if the bill becomes law, it will be through out as unconstitutional and we’ll be back at square one again.

What was wrong with just stating that non-consensual genital modification or mutilation is illegal and under sixteen genital modification or mutilation is only allowed for medical purposes. Is it too hard?

I really like the quote from Rep. Bill Heath, R-Bremen, (yeah, one of them backward Republicans the rest don’t associate with) concerning adults who voluntarily have it done…. “What? I’ve never seen such a thing. I, uh, I wouldn’t approve of anyone doing it. I don’t think that’s an appropriate thing to be doing.”

That is your problem Bill, you don’t think.

Email this post