I've Been Compromised

For the third time in two years my credit card has been compromised. Someone in France is having a good time on my dime. That means for five days I'm without a credit card. It also means I have to change my credit card info with a dozen on-line vendors. This weekend I wanted to start reading a $3.99 book on my Kindle and I also wanted to order a new cell phone case. What a drag, it's like I've ceased to exist in the land of cyber-credit while I await my new plastic make-a-wish card. I have another back up card, but I don't want to use it for two days and then have to keep track of that account. I hope I'm getting free miles for all these phantom purchases. That's the least Capital One can do to make up for my loss of economic activity this weekend.

Project Jetway

I've picked out my three looks for Italy in May!

Summer Of Bo

The sun has moved just enough for Bo to get his one foot of sunshine.

The Hunger Games Needs To Lose Some Weight

Since Hollywood seems unable to make a movie devoid of burp-n-fart humor, anything with a plot at all will be greeted as a blockbuster.

I read The Hunger Games and found it tolerable, but not good enough to make me pursue the other parts of the trilogy that were sitting in my Kindle. Basically I considered it silly. Maybe because it was written on a sixth grade level (graduate school for those in the government system) the book seemed kind of flat. It lacked the character, background and plot development I usually complain about.

I actually found the movie much better than the book. The movie created the atmosphere that supported the story. The main problem was that, as usual, Hollywood sanitized the characters. It's like real people make us too uncomfortable; we have to give them the "palm beach look" while they are living in apocalyptic squalor. Believe me, I lived in District 12 and the people there didn't look like MTV. Jennifer Lawrence was too old and too fit for her character. She did a good job as the heroine, but she didn't bring the emotional wallop of her performance in Winters Bone. Her partner in the games seemed more like her little brother than a serious romantic contender.

The movie did begin to drag in the last hour. Twenty minutes of scenery and dramatic pauses could have been cut or better yet, devoted to character development. Obviously you can bet on a body count of at least 23 participants; nevertheless the gore was handled tastefully.

I give it four stars. With all the schlock that comes out of Hollywood, anything that doesn't send you reaching for the barf-bag, running for the fire-exit, or feeling you need a bath gets two stars. Hollywood has trouble with apocalyptic movies these days. They seem to mirror reality. It reminds me of the way Hollywood used Elvis to transform romantic movies.

Latest Reads

I started the biography of Bonhoeffer, but after a hundred pages I gave up. It was just too detailed for me. It seems I'm more partial to memoirs than all inclusive academic biographies. CP managed to finish it with a good degree of skimming.




Right now I,m reading "Lost In Shangri-La". It's about people stranded after a plane crash in New Guinea during WW II. It seems to be a great book so far and it has great reviews, the question I have is this: how did it get on the shelf at my local branch library.

"Salvation On Sand Mountain" is one kick-ass book. It's the true account of a reporter who started to investigate a snake-handling preacher's attempt to murder his wife with a rattlesnake. After covering the trial the reporter became a member of the Church Of Jesus Christ With Signs Following. We are talking Winters Bone on crack here. It was amazing to find out what an eclectic bunch of Scots-Irish Pentecostals still exist in Appalachia.

Maybe it's my decreasing attention span but I can't read tedious books by authors like Jean Auel and Ayn Rand. I don't know if I'm ready for the Young Adult section (I thought The Hunger Games was silly). I need books that aren't too academic, books that move along. I can't take an author that needs 500 words to describe a fern.

He Had the Right to Remain Silent...But Not the Ability

It appears that's it's time to take the mic away from Dr. James Dobson. What the heck was he thinking? Perhaps his inhibitory neurotransmitters are decreasing with age. As humans age the mind reverts to a more juvenile thought process, where right and wrong and black and white become monolithic and not tempered with good judgment. It's like three year old Ben being in the doctor's waiting room and blurting out "Dad, that lady's fat". Technically, he is right, it is true, but that uninhibited three year old mind can cause a parent a lot of anxiety. It's like the day on the rifle range when I ran into the husband of Ben's second grade teacher, my first reaction to him saying "you're Ben's father" was the thought "On no, what did Ben say now." It wasn't that bad, his wife said that he often sang Rush parody songs in class. At least a child can be excused for the occasional faux pas because they have no guile. Dr. Dobson's remark had guile.

"[He said,] 'I want to tell you that I've gotten to know Karen [Santorum] and she is just lovely. She set aside two professional careers to raise these seven children. She would make a fabulous first lady role model. And Newt Gingrich's wife, she was a mistress for eight years."

As my own inhibitory transmitters decline I compensate with a five-second-delay and a plethora of apologies. The only thing Dr. Dobson forgot to add was "bless her heart." He also forgot to apologize. In his childish reasoning, an apology wasn't necessary. After all, it was true.

What About Restrepo?

Another sentinel event in our national decline has slipped below the radar while the country mourns Whitney Houston. American soldiers were disarmed when Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta went to Afghanistan to kiss Hamid Karzai's ass.

We have now made the transition to complete Banana Republic. When the Secretary of State can't stand before the troops without worrying about someone taking a shot at him I think it's time to reexamine the mission. It is just another example how this fascist administration views the military. They consider the military as a bunch of useful crazies. Why not have Panetta just show up in the Pope-Mobile? The odds of a soldier going postal are as great as being hit by space-junk. The image of this bureaucrat being afraid of the troops speaks louder than any sound-bite.

Afghanistan is not worth a single American life. "Three Cups Of Tea" aside, we might as well try to rehabilitate the moon. We have announced the date of our surrender so any further casualties are just Obama's political cannon-fodder.

A soldier went berserk, what a surprise. People go nuts and start shooting every other day right here in the USA. At least he didn't throw a Quran in the shredder. You can't separate war from atrocity, and the more pointless the war the more despair that is fermented.

What about Restrepo and the hundreds of other soldiers who have died since Obama declared Afghanistan the right war. What's the message being sent to our soldiers? Panetta is telling them I think you're so crazy that I can't be around you unless you're disarmed. There are good people dying in that cesspool and our esteemed Secretary of Defense is too afraid of being fragged to meet with them.

This soldier's life is over. He will be tried and convicted and probably spend the greater part of his life in prison. We will pay the families restitution that will probably amount to a fifth of the Afghan economy. We will leave in defeat according to schedule after a few hundred more Americans die. The Russians couldn't win in Afghanistan even after killing a fourth of the population.

After we abandon Afghanistan, as we abandoned the Korengal Valley and Outpost Restrepo, who will remember our soldiers languishing in prison and the V.A. Medical Centers? What a difference between Restrepo and Leon Panetta. Don't worry Leon, you're safer with the soldiers than you are in D.C.

Pat Steps In It Again

Pat has gone off the reservation and come out for the legalization of pot. I kind of agree with him, but sadly the message will be lost because the messenger has a lot of baggage.

Perhaps they should make it a misdemeanor. They can make it like a Virginia speeding ticket, just a thousand dollar fine. This way you wouldn't have to list it on a job application. The money could go to support rehab centers. I agree with Pat that currently the harsh laws just fill up our jails with apprentices to study under career criminals.

Having never taken any illegal substances my experiences consists of dealing with old friends and clientele. I subscribe to the lipid theory of anesthesia. Basically your brain is like a circuit board and taking THC (pot) is like spraying PAM on your mother-board. After smoking pot for a long time the brain becomes saturated with PAM: sort of like a well seasoned wok. I noticed some of my old high school friends were showing signs of being continuously coated with a non-stick spray. These guys gradually have their vocabulary reduced to only two phrases, "Wow" and "Far-Out." I didn't need a study from the Rand Corporation to tell me that pot was reducing people to zombies. We just call them burned-out and walk on.

Currently, a person can become felon for possessing a large quantity of pot. That poor slob may escape jail, but will never get a job, rent an apartment, or have a career. They will enter the realm of job, credit, and housing exploitation. They will be forced to live in a mobile home park which is just like prison grad school. We live in an unforgiving society. Thanks to the cyber-revolution, a person's ability to reinvent themselves is nil. They may pay their debt to society, but society never rips up the note.

Our prisons are full, it's the only growth industry we have. As I heard someone say, we need to "start locking up dangerous people and not people we just don't like." Non-violent felons should have their records expunged after ten years. Today there are over three thousand federal crimes; when I was young there were only six. You can't go out of your house without breaking some law, and if you're really careless you can find yourself in jail.

Why is our nation descending into a drug haze? Perhaps it's because the lack of justice has lead to despair. Pat Robertson has a good message. The problem is the media prefers to focus on the messenger.

Intelligent Design

I know Daddy will have to return to his recliner eventually.

Reproductive Second Amendment Rights

At last a judge in Maryland has declared Maryland's Concealed Carry Law unconstitutional. When I lived in the People's Republic Of Prince George you had to prove to the Lord of the Manor that you had a special need to carry a concealed weapon. You had to petition the local sheriff or county commissioner to grant you permission. The reasons usually had to do with some hazardous occupation; but in reality it was just patronage, bribes and the good-old-boy network that determined who was allowed to carry a handgun. It was quite different from Maine where the state had 21 days to find a reason not to issue you a permit. Basically the Maryland judge has decided that Second Amendment rights were not to be bargained for like melons in the marketplace.

This leads me to my real issue. What the heck are people talking about when they claim "reproductive rights?" Is it the right to boink freely? Is it the right to an abortion anytime? Is it the right to mess with the menstrual cycle? I think it's the right to have somebody else pay for your boink. I actually have a constitutional right to bear arms; does this mean the government should buy me a gun every month and give me free ammo and zombie targets? This is what the morons like Sandra Fluke don't understand; it's not about the boink, it's about subsidizing the boink and cleaning up afterward when it goes wrong. This is how stupid people have become. It's not about contraception, it's about making the responsible people subsidize the horny majority. We have graduate school students that can't manage their finances well enough to afford a condom.

While the whole country is swept up in the fervor of Reproductive Rights, our esteemed Attorney General Eric Holder has said that American citizens can be assassinated without due-process. So much for citizens' rights. Sooner or later Reproductive Rights will include the requirement of having a bureaucrat issue a permit to have a child. Until then, they just give us bread, circuses and condoms.

I might be paranoid, but I think a drone has been following me today.