You Don’t Prom at School House Rock

2007-02-18

Do you want to know why?
Because it’s a frickin’ noun!

One of my biggest pet peeves is the decline of the English language and grammar in general. No, this isn’t a diatribe about foreigners in our country; I’m totally blaming Hollywood and the internet.

I believe it was during John Hughes movie “Pretty in Pink” or “Sixteen Candles” or anyone of his teenage angst laden 80’s movies when Molly Ringwald first uttered the phrase, “But what about Prom?” that started the decline. Maybe it was “Ferris Bueller’s Weird Science Breakfast Vacation in the Great Outdoors with Uncle Buck that was Some Kind of Wonderful Having a Baby with Curly Sue.” Your choice, the 80’s all kind of ran together there for a while.

But back to my pet peeve at hand.
The Prom people, for god sake it’s one syllable. Use it. It’s a noun, and even in its verb state, promenade you still need a preposition. To promenade. Every spring walk down a corridor at the mall, or as teenagers will say next, “You want to mall with me?” Where in the English language does the misuse of a noun automatically make it a verb? I do stop and correct them. I don’t care. Especially my friend’s kids, they know better then to try and pull that one in my presence.

I grew up watching Saturday cartoons like the rest of the world. Well, only till one o’clock and you knew it was all over, since SOOOOUUUUULLL Train came on. Needless to say, multiple times during the commercial breaks, we were inundated with the clever little ditties, from Schoolhouse Rock, that you can still hum or sing along with today. C’mon you know them…

Conjunction Junction, What’s your function?

Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, got some adverbs here.Come on down to Lolly’s, get the adverbs here!You’re going to need, If you write or read,Or even think about it.

Oh, I put a dime in the drugstore record machine.
Oldies goldies started playing if you know what I mean.
I heard Chubby Checker, he was doin’ the twist
And the Beatles and the Monkees, it goes like this!
I put a dime in the drugstore record machine.

Well every person you can know (The Beatles and the Monkees, Chubby Checker)
And every place that you can go (Like a neighborhood or a store)
And anything that you can show (Like a dime or a record machine)
You know they’re nouns.

A noun’s a special kind of word,
It’s any name you ever heard,
I find it quite interesting,
A noun’s a person, place, or thing.

Anyway, if you want to relive all and sing to yourself, go to http://www.schoolhouserock.tv/index.html

But my point is, it’s now leaking over into commercials. I saw a new one the other day for Mop & Glow. Our beleaguered housewife is lamenting to Broom and Dustpan that they are not doing the job as expected. Ok, first off, they can’t reply back, so pretty much a one sided argument, and Brooms don’t sweep floors, People sweep floors. But she says Broom and Dustpan as if they were Moose and Squirrel.

There have been several news stories lately where they have actually thought about changing what is acceptable writing since the advent of IM’s and text messaging. One theory is to allow phonetic spelling as opposed to just learning the correct way. I know some school districts do this in primary education. The thought process is, learn to spell it how it sounds, then teach them the correct way later. Que? The English language is difficult enough, without having to learn it twice.

Other languages are easier to learn, you only have to remember if the words are male or female. We’ve neutralized the gender in English, and instead came up with a whole bunch of rules to study and remember. But, we do stretch this out throughout our education process, so as hard as it is it should be accomplished by your senior year. Foreigners that come to our country are doing it a hell of a lot faster in an ESL class at night school. They are so happy to be in our country; they will learn the language and pay for the privilege.
Get one text message or IM from a teenager, and U hav3 2 figur out wt thy r sayng bc pos. ❤
WTF? OMFG – see I can do it too. I was reading one conversation the other day between my friend’s son online on his profile and a girl. Not one word was spelled correctly. Trueley.

I had to learn to understand regional dialect though. Years back I lived in North Carolina, and my friend was going to the University of NC. Hah, now the other thing I see creeping into our language is the foreign way of saying that, which is becoming acceptable in an abridged sort of way. I could have typed , When I lived in North Carolina, my friend was going to University. Sorry, it’s still a noun and you physically can’t University.

Now, at the UNC she was taking an English class. In the textbook, they actually recognized and taught that southerners did not conjugate the verb “to be.” You remember this simple rule; I am, You are, He, She, It is and so on.

When I lived there; We be leanin’ was the catchphrase. Which I think translated to: We are relaxing. I don’t know, but it was on bumper stickers everywhere. But there was a lot of I be, You be, He be, She be Leanin’ going on and shit. Yep, don’t forget to add that phrase to the end of every sentence.
On a side note, when I used to sing in choir at church, our director taught us the game ‘between the sheets’. Open your hymnal and add the phrase at the end of the song title. Loads of fun, try it sometime.

I can sit here and joke about what is acceptable anymore, but we have to have standards. I’m all for being an individual, but at least let’s speak the same language. I think they should bring back Schoolhouse Rock and I am ready to start a petition. After all folks, Knowledge is Power!

I originally wrote this back in 2007, two years before the game came out. My guess I inspired it, though it pissed the Muslims off.

It is widely known that religion will kill you. And in the course of human events..it has. More people have died, since the advent of consciousness, in the name of {Insert your Deity here} than anything else.

We’re all tired of the war in Iraq. It’s not about Oil, or WMD, or taking Saddam out. It’s about Israel and who supports her. I say her as Judaism is passed down through the mother’s side, and well, being that Moses got lost for 40 years in the desert…anyway…we’ll stick with my theory, my blog.

Is there a good answer at this point in time? No. No matter what Dubya comes up with, no matter what your party affiliation, it’s a no win situation. We’re screwed, blued and tattooed.

Or what any Trekker knows as the Kobayashi Maru. (Yep, I grew up on Star Trek) For those of you not familiar with the term, I will convey the meaning for you from Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan quotes. Thank you IMDB.com and for some trivia Lt. Saavik was played by the young Kirstie Alley way (weigh?)before she needed Jenny Craig.

So basically my point is, we need some Original Thinking to get out of this mess. Now I’m not talking about changing politics -that’s another game show for another day and for all intense purposes, this is the best country to live in IMHO.

All my WWRSD has to do with is, creating a universal belief system. Think about it in these terms courtesy DBW. We’re all climbing the same mountain, but taking different paths.

It was supposed to be a solo journey. Somewhere along the way we all started arguing whose path was best, or right, or if you were an extremist Muslim, take the shortcut after booby trapping the other paths and go collect your virgins. The point that was lost was it was all an uphill climb to begin with, we stumble and fall along the way, to reach the zenith. So let’s take a shot at globally agreeing that we all need to get to the top of the mountain, and here’s my way.

My vision for this would have to incorporate Physical Skill, Knowledge, Luck, Talent and of course a Lightening & Elimination Round. The Winner of said competition gets to decide which belief system we follow and is recognized as the Grand Poobah of all and picks the proverbial path to follow. Now, this isn’t a game to be played overnight, that would be irresponsible and we need television coverage and someone to fill the Amish in. Damn, this is getting complicated. Anyway, it will eventually get down to a playoff like the NFL and this being the age that it is by the time I have this posted I’m sure there will be a fantasy draft for your favorite religions. Oooh, I got the Quakers!!

To make it interesting you have to turn over the questions to the people who have no beliefs, since they won’t care who wins anyway. We’ll call them our Impartial Jury. This will be made up of the Agnostics and Atheists. The Judges will be the Unitarians, since they really don’t care what you believe as long as you believe in something.

Now as tension and tempers rise, we will need an outlet for our aggression. That’s where we keep the extremists who will never accept world order or peace. We will refer to them as “Acceptable Losses.” Now don’t get all high and mighty here, that’s a term used by our own Government so deal with it. However, they will have a choice before termination to accept the potential winner or die for their personal beliefs now. Whatever. It’s really just for suspense – we all know they won’t accept the answer; we’ll just get creative in their demise during the commercial break.

Now I’m still fleshing this out, so bear with me. See the entire Catholic regime could be eliminated right off the bat with ” I’ll take Sex Secrets at the Vatican for 200″ and for those who get through that unscathed we’ll turn to the musical portion of our contest. First up we have the Mormon Tabernacle Choir against the Women of the Wailing Wall. Do you see where I am going with this? Note to self, put a call out to Simon Cowels agent and Ryan Seacrest for availability.

Ok, it’s a little insane right now and sounds more like a treatment for the Studio Execs over at Fox, but you have to admit, it does have some merit and would bring our men and women home from overseas. No muss no fuss, just at the end we all agree on one thing.

Sure it’s been done before, thanks to Henry VIII and his need for the church to recognize his divorce. Since they wouldn’t play it his way, he just made his own religion, hence the COE. But he failed to take it global, so now they are just another contender.

Now I’m not real sure if the actual figure heads are going to have to get down and dirty. Somehow watching the Pope go one on one with the Archbishop of Canterbury could bring some comic relief if we had them in a dance off, or maybe a quick round of Texas Hold ‘em, where the purses run high from all those stashed offertory plates and tithing.

I’m open to some positive ideas and challenges to work this all out. It’s all about Peace and Purpose folks. Peace in our lives and Purpose in our soul. The true meaning of life. But let’s give our generations to come an ideal life, where we don’t keep sending our loved ones to die for a three thousand year old battle. In the mean time, I’ll get this thought out there, and see what the bookies in Vegas say. 😉

World Peace

I’m reading the news online, and quite frankly my head is spinning with topics to blog about.

First we have the French who finally, “gasp” acknowledge they are rude, as tourism numbers are down another 1%. Their solution, I kid you not, is to learn how to be as rude as they are, to fit in. They even have an ad campaign going on at http://www.cestsoparis.com – yeah, I don’t think they’ll get my money anytime soon regardless of the countryside.

Then we have major atrocities that are against children. You start with good news, two boys recovered and found and the asshole in custody who kidnapped them. One for the good guys. But then I find other articles on the NC man who decapitated his daughter, and the mother who poisoned her breast milk with cocaine and wait, not at trial yet, “allegedly” killed her 5 month old daughter.

Yes, I know the system eventually works, judicial and prison, but let’s change some laws. Death penalty? I’m all for it. But stop the nine appeals process.

A better solution and I always thought it was best expressed at the end of one of my favorite stories, The Princess Bride was when Wesley was confronting Prince Humperdink, but since he was still mostly dead, he stalled for time, but the dialog was this:

Prince Humperdinck: First things first, to the death.
Westley: No. To the pain.
Prince Humperdinck: I don’t think I’m quite familiar with that phrase.
Westley: I’ll explain and I’ll use small words so that you’ll be sure to understand, you warthog faced buffoon.
Prince Humperdinck: That may be the first time in my life a man has dared insult me.
Westley: It won’t be the last. To the pain means the first thing you will lose will be your feet below the ankles. Then your hands at the wrists. Next your nose.
Prince Humperdinck: And then my tongue I suppose, I killed you too quickly the last time. A mistake I don’t mean to duplicate tonight.
Westley: I wasn’t finished. The next thing you will lose will be your left eye followed by your right.
Prince Humperdinck: And then my ears, I understand let’s get on with it.
Westley: WRONG. Your ears you keep and I’ll tell you why. So that every shriek of every child at seeing your hideousness will be yours to cherish. Every babe that weeps at your approach, every woman who cries out, “Dear God! What is that thing,” will echo in your perfect ears. That is what to the pain means. It means I leave you in anguish, wallowing in freakish misery forever.

You gotta love Goldman, if you haven’t read him, you are missing a lot.

You see, I don’t think these people, and I use the term loosely, have any remorse for their actions. I think they weigh their options, that

1) they actually think they never will be caught, or

2) they go to prison so at least they have a roof over their heads and 3 squares a day.

I say, the Muslims have it right..or the bible..An eye for an eye. You kill your baby? You get a hysterectomy, and lose the ability to ever have a child again.

You molest a child or rape someone? If you are a man, say goodbye to your hands and we castrate the hell out of you. We’ll leave you with desire, but no way to appease it. Who’s sorry now?

When I was a nanny, I used to tell the girls after an infraction they would apologize. I’d tell them, “Don’t say you are sorry, just don’t do it again.” I forgive once, but don’t repeat the transgression, or you prove that you aren’t sorry.

We are too forgiving as a society. Yes we all have our inalienable rights, but if you abuse those rights, then you lose them. It’s funny, how if you live by the Bible, God gave Moses 15 (crash) 10 Commandments (Sorry but I love History of the World) to follow. Pretty simple ones too. All spelled out, small words so everyone can follow. Only we can take those ten and have to have a Supreme Court and millions and millions of interpretations to find loopholes and a gaggle of lawyers, to bypass them. The law is one area that shouldn’t be gray. Look at murder convictions…1st Degree, 2nd Degree, Voluntary, Involuntary…tell that to the victim who is lying dead in the grave..What do you think? What? You can’t answer? You’re dead? How did you die? So shall that be their sentence. Can we get forensics on this? Feel any remorse now for your actions?

See, your victim didn’t know your plans, so their death came as a shock. You, get to hear your fate, and wonder when it is coming. You know what it will be, just not when.  If you appeal -it’s just gonna happen that much faster. Eventually, society will learn to play nice. This will work with white collar crimes too. Sure my ideas need some work, I haven’t quite fleshed it all out yet, but on the whole, if one understands that prison is no longer an option, and immediate accountability is at hand, you may just think twice before hurting someone for their behavior that you find offensive. Well, except for the French. We’ll leave them to their own company.

C’est la Vie.

Note I originally posted this on 1.13.07 so no you aren’t having case of deja vu if you have followed me over from Blogger or Myspace or Shoutpost.

No Man Is An Island

2007-02-28

I remember singing this song in fourth grade chorus. Essentially the words of the song have stuck with me since then. I was a very enlightened child in retrospect. I haven’t sung the song since then but I’ve remembered the words ever since.

No man is an island, No man stands alone,

Each man’s joy, is joy to me, Each man’s grief is my own.

We need one another, So I will defend

Each man as my brother, Each man as my friend.

I believe it was during the 1975-1976 school year, the bicentennial celebration was approaching, hence all the patriotic songs. I remember we also sang;

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

As many times as I have been to New York, I’ve never had the opportunity to visit the Statue of Liberty, but I know these are the words engraved on the plaque at her base.

But these were the tenets and ideals this country has always embraced. It’s what we do, and I laugh when I read people railing against Illegals in this country. Please. Unless you are 100% Native American, your racism is showing.

Just because your ancestors came over here in a boat, doesn’t mean the invitation doesn’t stand. Look at how many different refugees risk their lives to get here. On our southern shores the rule has always been if you come by sea and make it to land, you get to stay. It’s why so many boat people are captured and returned to their home ports. These are people, who are just as equal as the rest of us, except they still believe in the “American Dream.” They also will do the piss poor jobs none of us will. Don’t blame them for getting jobs illegally. Blame the employer who is hiring them to avoid paying federal wage taxes. These people are not working for free. They are doing gainful employment and not given the opportunity to pay taxes and contribute to social security, which is why the decision was made to allow these people to collect some benefits. However, Corporate America should make up the deficit, or at least the ones who are caught..right Walmart?

I live in Pennsylvania, where they just approved a local casino to be built. I guess so we don’t have to make that two hour drive to Atlantic City. The state also wants to take some of the proceeds and offset some of the educational woes by offering the revenues to school districts to reduce tax burdens. But only if your school district is in one of the not so wealthy districts across PA. Since I pay about 25% in school taxes on my home yearly, Chester County won’t benefit.

On today’s local news, the casino is having a hard time staffing the lower paying jobs. Did I mention the casino is located in Chester, right outside of Philadelphia, where the average home goes for about 15-30k dollars? When I worked for a bank and I had to travel there, it was behind secured fencing and security was tight. If you needed drugs or guns though, just spin around, you’d have a dozen offers. They are trying to revitalize the area by adding gambling and horse racing. That’s right, get the people with gambling addictions to come, they won’t be able to help themselves and we need the revenue.

I know they have tried to make the city over, but placing a casino in the middle of this town to draw tourist in is essentially the same idea of putting a salt lick in your back yard to shoot deer. However, the reasons they are finding is the pay is too low, the applicants can’t start when they need them, etc. The racial makeup of the city as of the 2000 census was 18.94% White, 75.70% African American, 0.20% Native American, 0.61% Asian, 0.01% Pacific Islander, 3.03% from other races, and 1.51% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 5.39% of the population.

The median income for a household in the city was $25,703, and the median income for a family was $30,336. Males had a median income of $29,528 versus $23,705 for females. The per capita income for the city was $13,052. About 22.8% of families and 27.2% of the population were below the poverty line, including 36.9% of those under age 18 and 21.8% of those age 65 or over.

They can’t find people willing to work? I bet if you asked an “illegal” they would jump at the chance. It’s Harrah’s Casino on the Waterfront. I just checked the job listings. Twenty-three different positions, ranging from Slot attendant to Human Resources. Of course, you do have to have a high school or GED equivalent and pass a hair follicle drug test. Aside from that, the one reason they were chosen, they knew they could draw off the local population and provide jobs to lower income families. I don’t think, to quote Cousin Eddie’s wife, is that they are “holding out for a management position.”

But what is the solution that has been up for debate? Let’s build a big old wall on our borders, the US is closed. Obama voted for it. But wait, hmmm…the only way to get that wall built we’ll use the illegals to build it, then trick them into going back to their side for some Quality Assurance and lock them out. Don’t worry about them sneaking in, I’m sure our fellow NRA Gun Toting I- have- a- right- to- own- a –gun- Americans will patrol the borders for free.

Are these the same Americans who want the right to bear arms, but only if they don’t have to use them as the intent was conceived? It was to form a militia. Americans had to defend themselves from the natives, when essentially we were the illegals. Many a pow wow went on, discussing these foreigners. Ingrates. We teach them to survive, and the repayment is Wounded Knee.

To quote a famous editor about the incident in 1890; “The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries, we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies future safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past.”

That was written by L. Frank Baum who later wrote the Wizard of Oz. But in the case of wiping out 152 Lakota Indians, Medals of Honor were disbursed in 1891. A little over a hundred years later, we invade Iraq to stop ethnic cleansing and Saddam is tried and hung for the murder of 148 Iraqi Shiites. If he had only claimed four more, we would have given him a medal.

You can’t have it both ways folks. Our government isn’t perfect nor will it ever be. Since we knocked out the Indians, and have them confined to a few reservations in the West, our cowboy spirit has extended globally. We want or need something; we live by reputation alone and open up a can of whoop ass on them. But what happens when that reputation isn’t enough to protect us anymore? September 11^th is what happens. Then the government scrambles to enact the Patriot Act because no cowboy wants to be caught again with their chaps down.

So we are subjected to the government having the ability to see what we see, search our belongings if we want to travel, and we give up our “civil rights” because we don’t know if the person beside us wants to kill us or not. Of course, it’s not you, and you resent having the government looking over your shoulder. But it certainly is plenty of other someone’s, as the Timothy McVeigh’s have proved, and how do you know it isn’t your neighbor and what goes on behind closed doors?

Necessary evil? If you were under public scrutiny as an elected official, how would you recommend our government to handle things any differently and remain a democracy? Bring our troops home, and place them around our borders? Lock everyone out, place sanctions against everyone else and we become self-sufficient? Better get those noodles crackin’ with some inventive ideas if we can’t get along with the rest of the world and closing shop and going to rely strictly on our resources.

I don’t see us dismantling the lady in the harbor anytime soon, with a big old Return to Sender and leave her on France’s shores.

You can rail all you want against the current state of affairs. But look at the big picture, how many times do you grow tired of trying just to keep the people in your family happy? Everyone wants something different and looking to you for an answer. You’re pulled in every direction, and what do you end up saying? Do you give in and let the children have their own way, or do you react as a parent should and set the rules and boundaries that have to be obeyed regardless if they like it or not, but peace must reign whether they think it is fair or not.

Now multiply that by 301,227,000 which is our current estimated population, and know your responsibility is to defend and protect your people as defined by everyone’s wants and needs. Good luck with that. You’re political affiliation is not going to do any better of a job then the last administration or the next.

From John Donne Meditation XVII and I’m sure some of you will at least recognize the closing line but not the meaning;

“All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated…As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness….No man is an island, entire of itself…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Since when did anatomy become a topic for debate? When did librarians become censors? I don’t remember a general election held giving a $35,000 a year employee the right to place their morals on the written word. If anything their position is to be neutral and make sure censorship isn’t happening. This country is still a Democracy not a Monarchy.

So a Newberry Award winning book is falling under fire for the word scrotum. Oh no! What will happen to the rest of civilization as we know it if a 9 to 12 year old reads about a snake bite on a dog’s nut sack? Will an adult have to explain the parts of the body to a child? It’s the least of your worries and at least they are reading.

Just be grateful the author is creating a setting that isn’t brandished with today’s urban vernacular. Would you rather them read: “That old dog Roy, tried teabaggin’ a rattler and got bit instead”?

I’m betting most of these kids have seen the movie Ace Ventura Pet Detective. Yeah it was rated PG 13 and it grossed $72,217,000 (USA) and continues to make $34,000,000 in rentals.

How did the parents explain Ace Ventura getting a blowjob in the opening scenes? I don’t remember one news story of a mass exodus from theaters worldwide or a cry to ban the movie from theaters. Nope, everyone munched their popcorn and laughed along.

Take a listen for a moment to the music your kids listen to and download. Once you get passed the screaming lyrics and rap crap, the last thing you should be worried about is a little scrotum.

But let it be the written word, and all of a sudden the Moral Minority rears its ugly head. What are you trying to protect children from? Wizardry in Harry Potter might lead to children worshiping the Devil if you follow these idiots reasoning. If you take offense to this than yes I am talking to you.

Where in the world did this fear come from? How about teaching your children that the world isn’t to be viewed through rose colored glasses, sometimes the glass isn’t half full, it’s just empty, and every living mammal out there in order to survive must reproduce, and someone has to have a scrotum. Why are you making more out of this then it is?

If you don’t believe me, Bible people, go back to Adam & Eve. Look what happened when an “apple” was made the “Forbidden Fruit”. Eve just couldn’t stay away and took a big old bite and that was our downfall. Humanity was banished from Paradise forever more to be ashamed of nudity.

Yes, once again, I kind of doubt that’s how it went down. But the point is, go ahead and ban the book from school shelves, and all you are going to accomplish is spiking the retail sales of the book, The Higher Power of Lucky. I checked out the premise of the book and it appears to me if anything, it should be praised by the Moralist out there, as Lucky eavesdrops on “anonymous” meetings searching for a “Higher Power” to figure out her life.

But since the word SCROTUM appears on page one, it’s another case of a book being judged by it’s almost cover. It truly isn’t meant to be a shocker. Think about how many times you are out in public and out of the mouth of babes, your kid embarrasses you in line at the supermarket. There you are and your little bundle of joy innocently comments on how big someone’s butt is standing in front of you, just loud enough for the other person to hear. You stammer out an apology, and your child gets a reaction, but does that make you a bad parent and Child Protective Services called in? Do you go to church on Sunday and have your child’s demon’s driven out? No, of course not, that would be overreacting to a situation. The only thing the writer is conveying is that kids hear things, ponder about the ones they don’t understand and repeat it.

I personally remember being about six or seven years old and asking my mother, “I heard you can prick your finger but you can’t finger your prick, is that true?” She didn’t rush me to a bar of soap, she simply said yes, and I let it go. Only later did I learn what a prick was a term for, and realized hey wait a minute..she lied. Hmmph. That would have been another word I could have added to Shitty Hour! If anyone knows my sister, ask her about it. Blame my mother for putting her three kids to bed at 7 pm each night. My sister and I shared a bed, and I would jump up and down, singing my theme song..Its Time For Shitty Hour..and then repeat every bad word or joke I knew, much to my sisters chagrin. Oddly I was never caught, or got in trouble. Always the entertainer….

When it comes to literature, especially this book, I foresee a greater debate. Once everyone gets past page one, and realizes that now a book is on the library shelves and its hinting of a 10 year old listening to a 12 Step Program, a number of which ascribe to a “Higher Power” to figure out her life, then you are going to have the Atheist storming the Supreme Court, because where is the separation of church and state in Public Schools?

The Christians are debating the wrong issue, but it’ll pick up if they don’t let this go now.

It happens. I used to live in West Chester, PA in fact I still consider it my home town. For over eighty years, the 10 Commandments were on a plaque posted near a side entrance of the courthouse. Then a member of “THE FREETHOUGHT SOCIETY” got offended- and this kills me… intimidated by its presence. Way I see it, your thinking isn’t to free if you get scared by words on a plaque. In an even odder twist, Sally Flynn who was oh so offended was a prior Sunday school teacher. Christians are funny, funny like a fucking clown.

The truth is they weren’t afraid of the words but the connotation that somehow their civil rights would be abused if they were dictated to by biblical words. People are afraid of change. Yet everyday of their life, those words sat on a plaque and life went on and nothing changed. That is, until they decided they were offended so someone else should be too. So they got the Civil Liberties Union involved, and for a while they got it covered, but in the end it was over turned and the plaque stayed.

So it goes the same with this children’s story. Your world isn’t going to change because the word scrotum appears on page one. It’s not the decline of life as we know it. Use the C word; Compromise. Let the book stay on the shelves, and kids can check it out and read it. Teacher’s shouldn’t read it aloud to the class, god knows some idiot out there will file a complaint that the teacher is sexually harassing children if they read the book to a class. That’s the other C word. Cash. Uh uh uh.. I know what you were thinking I was going to say.

But parents, if you raise a child, and they don’t know the parts of the body by the time they are of reading age, you aren’t doing your job. Don’t shoot the messenger or the message. Ask yourself what you are afraid of, face your fears and give your kids some coping skills. It’ll do them a world of good.

“Balls” said the Queen to the King, and the King laughed for he had two.

2007-03-10

Mar’s polar ice caps are melting. I was having this conversation last night with a friend of mine, as we love to debate topics. I’m smart, he’s Mensa Smart, but I hold my own but I do listen to his points and ponder them.
We have been debating global warming for a while, as in essence while the Al Gore’s can make a movie with the worst song to win an Oscar, this flag waving and alarmist work is just another way for Hollywood to ride the “We Care But What Color Ribbon Should We Wear?” platform.

To really understand the issue, it is not about whether you believe it’s happening, but knowing how greenhouse gases affect the world.

The greenhouse effect defined is this: The process in which the emission of infrared radiation by an atmosphere warms a planet’s surface. Earth, Venus and Mars all have the greenhouse effect.

If we didn’t have this effect the surface of the earth would be 30 degrees Celsius cooler, or for those of you who need the translation 86 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than it is. Now the argument is with human consumption of fossil fuels we have raised the temperature of the planet and if we continue on the course we are the planet will be x amount of degrees hotter in 2089. Nothing for nothing and as my friend likes to point out, we can’t predict weather correctly eight days out, much less the temperature of earth in 80 years.

Earth’s albedo simplified.

The government however urges us to cut down on our use of fossil fuels, recycle, and I don’t know what we are going to do about the flatulence problem with our cattle. Lord knows the methane produced is making that hole in the ozone exponentially bigger as the 1.2 billion cows have increased atmospheric methane emissions (but truly only as belches, not moon burps) at the rate of one percent a year. Horrors! Someone call India and have them revisit that Sacred Cow issue.

The real problem with so called Global Warming, is what we are going to do about it on an individual level. The president argued that the mandatory limits under the international accord would have resulted in billions of dollars in industry losses and the elimination of nearly 5 million U.S. jobs. While acknowledging the serious threat of global warming, he insisted that the government could do more by spending billions more on research, new technology and tax incentives to promote voluntary reductions than to attempt to impose mandatory targets.
“As president of the United States, charged with safeguarding the welfare of the American people and American workers, I will not commit our nation to an unsound international treaty that will throw millions of our citizens out of work,” Bush declared in a speech delivered at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in suburban Washington in 2002.

The president’s plan in effect would preserve the status quo, allowing the United States to continue emitting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases at roughly the rate it has done for the past decade. But with the promise of $4.6 billion of incentives and tax credits over the next five years for research and to encourage voluntary reductions by utilities and manufacturers.

In 2007 the EU has announced that 27 countries vowed to reduce emissions to 1990 levels using renewable energy such as solar, wind, and water, but won’t recognize nuclear energy. Personally, nuclear energy is the way to go and there will be a day when smaller nuclear generators will be the main source of household power. Other EU countries not as wealthy argue they can’t go to those sources and have to stick with fossil fuels such as coal and oil, which are higher pollutants. They suggested a burden-sharing system whereby nations with more advanced alternative energy programs would go beyond the 20 percent threshold, while others were given more time to hit the target.
In June another meeting will be held for the top eight industrialized nations to agree to deep emission cuts. They are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain, the United States and Russia.

How are these cuts going to be monitored without involving federal regulations, which leads to more government spending? Who ends up paying for it in the end? The taxpayers. It has already been stated as part of the plan for businesses to cut emissions they will be given tax credits. Once again, the businesses get the cut, the consumers pay out the ass to pay for it. Look at how many of your bills you are paying right now include a “fuel surcharge.” You get a double whammy as the cost of the goods have increased from the manufacturer, then to get the product to your store or door fuel surcharges are being imposed. Now if regulations go into effect, they have to be monitored and reported.

Take for example recycling. As a business we are required by the township where our office building resides to have a separate recycling container for cardboard, office paper etc. We even have the separate blue waste containers under our desks. The first year it was mandated we complied and at the end of the year, I receive a letter from the township asking how much paper we placed in the bin in gross tonnage. My thought would be the trash hauler should know that info, as it was never stated we would have to account for what we threw out. So I called the hauler, to get a number that I should place on this report. What it boiled down to in the end, is the townships get funding from the government for complying. Is that funding divided back to the individuals who complied? Do you get a letter at the end of the year at your house, requesting the gross tonnage of recycling you performed so you get a tax cut on your 1040? Of course not. Well maybe in eighty years your descendents will get thirty dollars on their refund for a three year look back period, just like our little friend the telephone excise tax refund this year.

So back to Mars and the polar ice caps melting. If you follow the argument, that burning of fossil fuels contributes to this, who is burning fossil fuels on Mars creating global warming? Do you think the little probe zipping around up there, taking pictures, is emitting enough toxins to bring around the demise of Mar’s polar caps? Or as we now are learning to read Mar’s climate over the last 3 billion years, it is a wet planet that goes through cyclical changes, just like planet earth.

Maybe it’s just my perception, but my guess is that back in the beginning of time and primordial soup, this was one hot planet. Life forms began as scientists are now discovering far below earths surface are bacteria and such from whence all life flows. We already know there have been four major periods of glaciations in the Earth’s past, and we are still in one. An “ice age” is a period of long-term reduction in the temperature of Earth’s climate, resulting in an expansion of the continental ice sheets, polar ice sheets, and mountain glaciers (“glaciation”).

There are multiple factors that contribute to the climate of this planet that are far beyond our control. Position of the continents, variations in earths orbit, variations in the sun’s output, vulcanism and Earths albedo, which is the ratio of the electromagnetic radiation, which either absorbs or reflects the suns energy.

I’m not saying we aren’t contributing to an increase in greenhouse gases, but it isn’t the only cause of our planets ever changing environment. What I am saying is trying to impose federal mandates to control it is just another ruse to increase government spending and taxation. Cut the emissions for health reasons, and place the onus on businesses to comply without any tax breaks. But let’s stop labeling it Global Warming.
THE KYOTO PROTOCOL AS OF 2006- PACT ENDS 2012

I want to buy my own country.

Culled from today’s strange but true headlines on another leading brands site, the tiny war port of Sealand in the North Sea is for sale. Not that Britain recognizes it anymore. Hell, they built it around WWII, abandoned it and then a retired general Paddy “Roy” Bates crowned himself Prince and there you go. Yes, I’m ignoring the obvious humor with his name..too easy. Wait..let me spell that with an English accent..humour.

Maybe I should have prefaced the desire to own my own country. Let’s drift back in time to a simpler GUI when computer games actually ran in a DOS environment and Dell was still a decent computer company…1993.

I’m working for an auto leasing division of a major bank, and my boss of all people, shows me this game and has me load it on my system on 5 1/4″ floppies no less. A little something called Sid Meier’s Civilization. I was hooked. First of all, I didn’t have to deposit any quarters into my CPU, and technically I was getting paid to play in my spare time.

I love computer games. I bought my first “computer” in 1974, before Atari was bouncing a ball back and forth between two white paddles. I had the Magnavox Odyssey. It was a console that connected to your television, and you inserted different cartridges depending on your task, or game. For those who know me personally, yes I believe it is still with the stuff in the blue van. Life took me plenty of places quickly, so it wasn’t again until the late seventies, early eighties that I was able to touch a computer again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=H2EIsnr_cv4

Many a weekend night in the tri-state area, when the band of the week was on break at a local Ground Round, my girlfriends and I would play whatever video games they had in the foyer. My favorites were Moon Patrol and Joust. Man, I loved to make that Ostrich fly and jab my opponent. Thankfully, now if you want you can still find the MAME emulators online and play again. But when I wasn’t working, or playing as a Freshette, I was copying computer code from PC Magazine on an old Tandy. The funny thing about that though, was it never worked. You could type code and compile all the live long day, and you still had to wait for the next month’s issue to come out for all the programming corrections. Yeah, except for ACCESS, I refuse to program anymore. But let’s fast forward from 1983 to 1993.

The objective of Civilization is as follows: Develop a great empire from the ground up or in other words: “…to build a legacy that would stand the test of time”. The game begins in 4000 BC, and the players attempt to expand and develop their empires through the ages until modern and near-future times.

In other words, you load the game, the screen is black except for one tiny square of green grass you are standing on. You moved your Commander with your arrow keys. You have limited intelligence, and to win you have to reach Alpha Centauri. Along the way, you have to forge alliances with at least four other computer generated civilizations, battle with them, and gain knowledge through well placed questions. I was addicted, to say the least. I spent months playing this game whenever I could.

Just when you thought you were gaining ground, and everyone was happy, some illness would strike, or a war would break out. I would find myself pondering how to raise taxes to fund the military without forcing my people into poverty, but protecting them at the same time. To be honest, I remember thinking back then, that this game should be mandatory for every person in the US to play, as everyone is an armchair quarterback when it comes to running this country. Another blog, another day, I’ll describe how I’m a Liberpublicrat.

I never did get to finish the game, as the banks were merging and my location was being moved to Philadelphia. The VP wanted me to go, but I had already turned my resignation in. He accepted it with a sneer and that I was a “Mall Chick, and wouldn’t leave the suburbs.” Whatever dude, I wasn’t into Public Transportation and long commutes and yep, I loveeee shopping.

Now this brings me back to present day (editor note: this is still 2007) and the 5,920 square feet for sale. Remarkable enough it has its own national anthem and coinage. It also had a hell of a defense system with radar and armaments. According to the real estate agent (I would love to see the sign) it has eight rooms in each of the two towers, offices, a power generator and a chapel, all with a marvelous sea view. The lure of it all is Autonomy. I’m sure I can get whatever else I need dirt cheap on EBay, they have everything.

But for me, I would be playing the ultimate game of Civilization. I would like to make up my own language just for shits and giggles, something between the African clicking language and the whistling Himalayans’. The idea for the country now is Offshore Banking and a Casino (is there a difference?) but I would go along with that, I do need a local economy to fit into this world.

On a side note I’ve always wanted to eliminate money, and in lieu of that, no one gets paid to play sports, or be a politician. So, if I bought this little country, I could enforce that. But I would love to have a venture, where if you were so inclined, that for a year, you would come and live there, and simulate the game and get a real taste of what Life is all about.

It’s so easy to criticize our government, policies, education, when we are far removed from the pressures of dealing with Third World Countries. By the way, quick quiz..who were the Second World Countries? Ok, hold your Google search, it was the term used for Communist countries but abandoned with the collapse of the Soviet’s regime. In 1952 the term Third World countries came about for anyone not fitting in First World or Second World, though we don’t use the term First World today.

But if I owned Sealand I’d be a Fourth World Country. I think I would have to change the name too, because it sounds like you would only go there to whale watch or save a baby seal. To be honest, I’m not real sure what I would name it, because you have to have a really good name to project the right image. I mean, look at us. United States of America. You know, just hearing our name evokes images of what we have endured to earn that moniker.

The only other country that is just as descriptive to me is The Peoples Republic of China. It may sound good on paper, except for the oppression, high suicide rate and their propensity to kill newborns and steal technology. Then again, everything sounds good in theory, its applying the practical where you get screwed.

Hmmm, so saying that, maybe I’ll save $974,999,947.06 and just buy the game again. Knowing me, I’d probably be bored once I was done decorating the place. So I’ll just say with high hopes, “Tick click clack tic clack toc toc tic.”

I have to admit when it comes to laptops, I’m a bit of a hoarder. I say this, as I just picked up another new one, albeit on sale, to replace my year old laptop. I don’t really know why I am so hard on equipment, but staring at the keyboard on the old laptop I using at them moment, there seems to be a decided lack of a shift and an enter key..I think.

But bless my husband for wanting to tinker with all of them, and tonight I wanted to see what was on this one. Turns out my not so distant past, circa 2007.

I went through the pictures first and my guess is my husband didn’t or I would be answering a lot of questions. He knows what he needs to know of my past, he doesn’t need proof. But on here were pictures of better times, old friends that have passed, and Simon. I still miss that cat.

Simon Pieman, two color eye man.

There are pics on here of the two Anthony’s, one a 5 year old, one a teenager. Lordy they both have grown so much in 5 years. Other pics, private, of long ago fun cyber times..Rhode Island Red, my Quaker “husband” my ex Gordon..and old blogs.

I did say in my last post I would be moving some here. They still haven’t been edited, still the product of writing in my bed at 4 a.m. At least the corresponding pictures that go with them are on this laptop. Uh oh, I just remember why this laptop isn’t working. I better finish the quickly, before anything else pops up to haunt me.

Some days it just doesn’t pay to keep yourself anonymous online. Especially when you’ve been moving your blog all over the place, and forget which login that you used. I thought I had it all figured out, but it took me 3 tries and multiple password resets to get back online.

So without further ado, I’ll just be moving my old blogs over here, get them all situated (I know they are old, but hey, its easier for me to consolidate.) Hopefully WordPress won’t disappear like Shoutpost did, and my only remaining copies are over on Myspace. At the rate of social media sites going by the wayside *points finger at BookFace* don’t get cocky now FB, Myspace use to be the number one site as well.  I want to be able to at least try and keep my years of writing somewhere safe. Otherwise I’ll be forced to self publish, and somehow I find that just a little too sad. I’ve noticed now that I’m downloading a lot of ebooks on my Kindle, that editing seems to have gone by the wayside. I wouldn’t mind, but they have the nerve to charge just as much for an electronic version of books as they do for an actual copy. Plus I need to have a momentary rant here because I’m just fed up with the people pushing children’s books to the top of the NY Times Best Seller List.

 Seriously. The Hunger Games is written for CHILDREN, published by Scholastic Books. You remember them don’t you? Back in my day, it was a 2 page spread, worse then newspaper, that was sent home. For under a dollar you could buy Ramona and Beezus and maybe even a Clifford the Red Dog. To my knowledge they never created a mass buying or movie hysteria. As for the Shades of Grey Series? If I want to get off on poorly written porn, I’ll hang out on Literotica.com. At least there you can send feed back to the writer and rate their work. I’ve written better porn as a joke than what these repressed housewives are feigning over. I just want to bitch slap all of them, since they seem to like a little S&M.

Well rant over. Stay tuned for more in the future.