Hey, where all de white Gordo's at?

At Ohio, dat's where.  <--- That's how John Kerry thinks Ohioans speak.

Random things follow:

Haven't been updating because I've been relocating DTManor from North Carolina to Ohio.  Hurricanes were too easy so I thought I'd try blizzards and tornadoes for a while.

Posting will still be a tad light because I'm doing a project out of state for the next seven weeks (or so) and am only home on weekends for that time period.

Today is the first birthday of my baby boy... so far I've managed to not break him or anything.  Whew!  He's pretty damned good looking too, just like his old man.

Cutest baby ever.  To all the fine ladies out there, take these pictures as evidence of my superior genes.  I make good lookin' babies!  To all y'all other parents out there, sorry your kid isn't as good looking as mine.  But don't feel too badly about it... only one person can have the awesomest baby ever.  It just happens to be me.  I'm sure your kids are just fine in their own ways.  By the way, if you happen to be at the Sears in the mall in Northwood, Ohio, be sure to look for my baby boy on the walls.  He's a model.  He's also been sleeping through the night since he was two months old.  Not to brag, or anything.

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Anyway, yeah, back in Ohio.  I'm still missing NC, even carolina-style barbecue, and I'm actually nostalgic for hurricanes.  Like many other challenges in life, they were a test... am I prepared for this 2-5 days of bad weather, and ready to take on all possibilities like power outages, evacuations, runs on bread, milk, and eggs at the local supermarkets?  So far, here.... well, let's just wait and see how a real winter goes.  But I do plan to meet it with a big snow blower, so we'll see who makes who whose bitch.

Or something like that.

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I saw some Amish people last week.

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Someone, probably young punks, burned down the shelter house here in my small town, tonight.  Can't have anything nice.  Find them and if underage flog the parents in the public square, I sez.  It isn't fair to punish the dog because it was never potty trained correctly as a puppy.  Then give the parents a free hand to straighten out their kids.  Pain is a powerful motivator, I've been told and/or read about in books.

Coincidentally, a train may have hit a car at one of the local crossings tonight, as well.  The train has been stopped for hours, now, and I saw the flashing lights of emergency vehicles.  The train is visible out the picture window of the house I just bought as I type this.

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Any volunteers to go under my house and pull networking cable?  Anyone?

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My car had problems recently, but they got traced to corroded battery cables and was fixed.  Whew.

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Just ordered a 61" HDTV on amazon.com.  Woohoo, no state tax and free shipping!  Suck it, brick and mortar!  I crawled the internet for customer reviews of the model TV, and all were favorable.  I hope it doesn't suck.  Can't send it back unless it is broken...

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So now I need new bookshelves.  I'm very much missing my Wall of Power.  All my games are boxed up, *sob*.  Anyone know any good finishing carpenters in the NW Ohio area that won't charge me a ton for labor?

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Well, I've got dawn patrol in the morning, so time to go nod off to some Futurama.  He sleeps through the night, but he's still up between 7:00 and 7:30am.  Not bad for the fact he's usually asleep by 9pm, but still.  I've never been a morning person.  I'm dreading the next time change.

Crocodile Hunter, RIP.

Steve Irwin died today while filming a documentary when he was stung by a stingray and the barb punctured his heart.  He was 44 years old, and is survived by a wife and two kids.

This saddens me.  I wasn't a rabid groupie, but I was looking forward to seeing him rassle crocodiles at 80 years old.

When asked for comment about death-by-getting stabbed in the heart by a stingray, Nathan Explosion from the band Dethclock had this to say:

"Metal."

Metal, indeed.

Rest in peace, Crocodile Hunter.  My condolences to the family.

You, Sir, are No Winston Churchill.

I wonder what it was like to follow world politics in the late 1930's.  

I wonder how it felt to see Hitler appeased left and right in the name of "peace in our time."

I wonder how frustrated Winston Churchill got to not only have his warnings about German aggression ignored, but to be publicly ridiculed for them.

I wonder if the appeasers ever felt guilt for the positions they had taken.   I wonder what they thought of the Holocaust.

I wonder what it will be like this time when the enemy isn't wearing a uniform or flying a banner and fights exclusively from within civilian ranks.  And relishes attacking soft targets like civilian centers.

I wonder what it will be like this time when the real war wont even start until they have a working nuclear weapons program.

I wonder what it will be like to actually try to close our porous borders, and screen hundreds of thousands of cargo containers.  I hope the cost of that particular lesson isn't too high.  And I hope I'm upwind of it.

I wonder what it will take before people wake up.  9/11 was insufficient.

I wonder if there will be any satisfaction in "I told you so."

I wonder if Churchill felt gratified, if even for a moment.

Adios, Illusion of Freedom.  I'll miss you.

Allow me to preface the following incoherent rant with a few definitions of how I see things, so you can put the rest into a context.  I see myself as somewhere around conservative libertarian.  I'm close to full libertarian, but I like the idea of a collective to pave streets, run fire departments, etc.  I might be truly conservative, because I believe the Constitution of the United States should be the limiting factor of what government should be worrying about, legislation-wise.  A lot of religious baggage usually gets attached to conservatism, though, so I am reflexively loath to claim to be it fully.

Without pulling official definitions, I see libertarianism as a complete lack of governmental interference, and conservatism as an adherence to what it states in the Constitution, and no more.

And I see progressive liberalism as an affront to everything I hold sacred, especially liberty and freedom.  Here's why.

This train of thought began for me when this morning I read the Fark headline, City planners, awakened from some drug-induced stupor, begin to limit increase in number of McMansions / starter castles.

The resulting comment thread contained, at the times, scores of comments from different people, all in the vein of...

Funny.  Generalizations, assumptions, and generally being a jerkoff.

Funny.  Elitism over anyplace in the country that isn't on the east or west coast.  Everybody in the middle must be poor idiots.

and of course when someone talks back to the liberal horde:

And there's the rub... this person feels like he has some ownership of his neighbor's land.

Some level headed person had this to say:

As of this writing, that comment has yet to be addressed.

So what does this have to do with liberalism being the opposite of freedom?   I know, at first glance what I just said seems to be contradictory to itself.  But the jerks quoted above consider themselves to be classic liberals.  They think they have this hatred for so-called McManshions because it hurts the little people who can't keep up with the successful capitalist robber-barons of the world, so laws need to be passed to keep them from "hurting" the little people and building their new houses in older neighborhoods.

These people want to restrict freedom.

Liberals also believe in political correctness.  For example, we all heard a while back when Brokeback Mountain didn't win an Oscar that it was because middle America was still too homophobic.  They lamented a lack of homosexual awareness, as if somehow someone in America had not been exposed to Will and Grace (Known as "Sodomite and Slutty Zionist" in Arab lands...) or Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.  To me that implies they think there should be more forced awareness of these things.  I know that I've been through several MANDATORY "awareness/tolerance" meetings through my life, in order to get me thinking the Correct Way.  Environmental propaganda all through grade school, sexual harassment training in the military, ethnic/religious/everything-else tolerance training at every company I've worked.  Everyone is telling me the proper way to think.  This isn't freedom.

In my opinion, people don't need better awareness of homosexuality if they think the idea of two men having sex is gross.  They already have too much awareness of homosexuality at that point.

In my opinion, people don't need better awareness of ghetto culture if they notice that ghetto culture is a crime ridden, drug addled cesspool.  And of course it's incorrect to suggest there's anything wrong with that.  It's a black thing, and I just can't understand.

In my opinion, government supported universal healthcare is a gun to the head of everyone paying for their neighbor's health problems due to their smoking habits.  Trust me... when health care becomes a public responsibility, notice how peoples' behavior will become legislated.  See: McDonalds lawsuits, tobacco company lawsuits.  It's already begun, and I HAVE heard Medicare/Medicaid quoted as a reason taxpayers should be concerned with lifestyle choices.  This isn't freedom.  It's also a classic liberal campaign platform.

In my opinion, political correctness and forced "sensitivity" to this or that is a gag in our mouths, and the same in spirit as a Stalinist reeducation camp.

So.  As of right this second I probably won't be jailed for my opinions, but with the new liberal, progressive "ethnic intimidations" laws, it is a distinct possibility.  That's your progressive liberty and freedom, right there.  So ban those houses.  They totally ruin the view from your tea nook.

Jesus Needs GPS.

I have an acquaintance that is male, my age, and a born again Christian. One of the hard-core born again Christians that listens exclusively to Christian rock music, wears the "Got Jesus?" t-shirt, and has a bible verse on his telephone answering machine message.  He told me that he had a "wild youth," but when he was 17 he was at a rock concert and in the pot smoke haze above the stage he saw an image of Jesus who told him to clean himself up.

And that's fine by me.  Whatever.

My question is, why doesn't Jesus appear to the terrorist asshole right before he plants a bomb that will blow up a bunch of women, children, and other civilians in some public market?  Are those people not worth Jesus's attention and intervention as much as a stupid stoner kid in Pennsylvania?

I just don't understand it.  Prioritize better, Jesus.

Oh, btw, the person I mentioned in the first paragraph is a general contractor, and he recently got fired from a company because he wouldn't do work in a certain house where, and this is his direct quote, "Those people there are so fat that I can't stand to look at them."  

That's some good Christian values, right there.  I guess those particular people aren't made in God's image.

Freedom for all, as long as they approve.

The running theme I see across the internet is that (all intelligent people know) Republicans are evil neo-cons intent on reducing personal freedoms, possibly through a dictatorial theocracy, and Democrats are freedom and peace-loving regular folk who just want to live their lives.  But tell me - people who fit the following examples... how do you think they vote?

1.  We will hold political rallies, and we will allow people who would protest our politics... from around the corner in a designated Free Speech Zone, out of sight, and surrounded by fences, barbed wire, and armed guards.  For their own protection.

2.  We will do everything in our power to have vehicles that don't meet a certain standard of fuel efficiency, a value we will decide, declared illegal.  Sure people should have a choice, but in some cases personal responsibility should be dictated and legislated.

3.  We will protest and get local governments to pass laws specifically against big stores like Wal-Mart in order to save small businesses.  Sure, the only reason small businesses die is because people want the lower prices at Wal-Mart, but the people don't know what's good for them, anyway, the way we do.  See "legislating personal responsibility," above.

4.  With complete freedom we will put bumper stickers on our cars that proclaim "George Bush is a Fascist and has turned Amerikka into a Fascist Country," and have our heads so far up our own asses that we don't realize that in a true fascist country we would be jailed for owning that bumper sticker.

5.  Our more popular internet voices will secretly agree on and align our opinions in closed, freedom-loving committee, at which time we will blame the other side for making decisions via closed, evil, secret committee.

6.  We know we're better than everyone else. So shut up, stupid.

So.  Who does the above exemplify, and who did they vote for in 2004?

The Most Pathetic Thing I've Seen Today.  Maybe ever.

Not a lot of commentary.... but the usual crew in Hollywood, in support of Crazy Cindy Sheehan, are going to skip a meal in order to show how dedicated they are to really really wanting the war for the liberation of the middle east to end.

A "rolling fast" means that one of the 2700 peeps will not eat for 24 hours, at which time they will "hand off" the fast to the next person who will then not eat for 24 hours.

By my reckoning, the person on the tail end of the list is going to have to skip a couple meals a little over 7 years from now.  Maybe they'll fast 2 at a time and get twice as much protesting done in the same time.

Wow, that's an incredible display of sacrifice and commitment to a principle.

Independence Day, 2006.

America is the best country in the world, in almost every way, and I know I'm lucky to be an American.  And I was happy to observe the anniversary of our signing a big 'ol "GFY" to the King of England and the most powerful military in the world.

But how much liberty do we actually have any more, and how much do you, personally, actually want?  Take this quiz I lifted from Boortz:

 Hopefully it makes some of y'all think.

Socially Acceptable Bigotry.

"Everyone knows" it is OK for progressives to mock southerners.  "Everyone knows" it is acceptable to blame white males for the majority of society's ills.  But one of the last facades is slipping loose from a certain set of the American public: pure, boiling hatred for the military, and those who serve within it.

Here's a few comments from another forum, in response to this article from yahoo news which claims yet another murdering, raping gang of soldiers has been having fun in Iraq. 

Emphasis theirs.

A massive flame war erupted in the thread, with a lot of peoples' masks slipping and their true feelings emerging.  

I'm just going to make a block of quotes because there are so many:

And that's just page 1 of 9.

So, add "Servicemen" to the list of people that it is still OK to mock.  We've gotten rid of minstrel singers and the suggestion that religious fundamentalists perpetrated 9/11... I guess we need new, politically correct demons.  The military will do, mental defectives that they are (It's a good thing that George Bush has created a fascist police state in which saying anything against the government warrants summary execution.  Like I've heard about).

But it sure is strange that nothing has changed since hippies were spitting on returning Vietnam veterans.  That's progressive!