We did it.

Ohio did not f#ck it up this time.

Facial Experiment

A few weeks ago I decided to try a new look. With the upcoming Steampunk Convention I wanted to try a more old style beard. So for the first time in god knows how long I shaved part of my chin.

The results weren't bad, but I didn't like the overall effect. But before I started to grow it all back I took a few pics for posterity. What do you think?

Looking at the source...

It's been interesting to hear McCain and Palin go after Obama for his 'association' with Bill Ayers. There seems to be a constant back and forth about how much Obama associated with  "terrorist" Ayers.

The answer seems to be that he had very little to do with Ayers. Not that this fact will stop the more excitable members of the conservative base from frothing about the 'sekrit muzlim and his terrist buddies'.

But who is Bill Ayers? It's off to wikipedia! Go there now and learn.

While the accuracy and neutrality of wikipedia  is sometimes called into question I learned a lot about this fascinating man that I didn't previously know (and that isn't even mentioned in the media).

What  strikes me is that Ayers has always had, and still has a strong drive to provide quality education. He is a teacher. In the 60's he was motivated by his conscience to  do something about the Vietnam War. Part of that action was planting bombs.  His girlfriend was killed in a bomb making accident.  He considered himself a "little c communist" but insisted that he wasn't a terrorist: 

. "The reason we weren't terrorists is because we did not commit random acts of terror against people. Terrorism was what was being practiced in the countryside of Vietnam by the United States."

I'm not sure I would give him a total pass on the terrorism charge. Bombs cause fear, even when they don't specifically target people directly. The IRA would plant bombs and then call the police so they could clear and area, but they are generally agreed to be a terrorist group.  What Ayers did was take his struggle to stop an illegal, unjust and brutal war too far. He did some stupid shit.  Pundits and spinmiesters today are 'quoting' Ayers saying "wishes he could have bombed more" though it seems pretty clear that what he actually said was that 'we' (meaning all Americans) could have done more to try and stop the Vietnam War. 

Like many people in the world Ayers has contrasting elements. He is not a caricature. I urge you to do a little reading on the matter. As always there are layers. Things are not quite black and white. 

What seems pretty clear is that Obama is no protege' of Ayers. They aren't pals. They share no political agenda. But if we're going to start judging people by the company they keep, I would look at the people a certain 72 year old politician pals around with; starting with a guy who lied to get the war he wanted, allowed prisoners to be tortured in secret prisons, engaged in warrantless wiretaps, attempted to suspend habeus corpus,  presided over the biggest increase in government and the worst financial disaster on the past 70 years. 

THAT'S the kind of guy you should be distancing yourself from. Too bad he was your president.

A bit of fun...

My mum just emailed this to me. Enjoy.

A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote, mountainous pasture in Montana when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a cloud of dust towards him.
The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, RayBan sunglasses and a YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, 'If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?'

Bud looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, 'Sure, why not?'

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Singular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location, which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.

The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany.

Within seconds, he receives an e-mail on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with e-mail on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.
Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP Laser Jet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says, 'You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.'
'That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,' says Bud.

He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amusedly as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then Bud says to the young man, 'Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?'

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, 'Okay, why not?'

'You're a Congressman for the U.S. Government,' says Bud.

'Wow! That's correct,' says the yuppie, 'but how did you guess that?'

'No guessing required,' answered the cowboy. 'You showed up here, even though nobody called you. You want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. Then you tried to show me how much smarter you are than me. And you don't know a darn thing about cows...this is a herd of sheep.

'Now give me back my dog.'

They eat their own...

If you've never heard of the late William F. Buckley you should poke around the internets or youtube to see examples of the mans writing and style. He was a noted conservative and if there's one thing you can say about the man it's that he was intelligent, very well spoken and had a great style. He had a rapier wit. I am not a devotee of his, nor do I think I would agree with him on many points but you have to admit its sometimes fun to see him work. Listen to him and you realize that todays talking heads and GOP surrogates are like a pack of howler monkeys.

His son Christopher, who also has a great deal of style, hell the man wears a fedora, has written a column for the National Review (a conservative magazine founded by his father) for some time but when he stated on his personal blog that he was going to vote for Obama his 'friends' turned on him like school of pihranna. Apparently his views were much sought after, until he made a choice that went against conservative dogma. He offered his resignation, which was quickly accepted. Quoting Ronal Reagan he said "I didn't leave the Republican party, it left me."

The last few weeks have seen lots of Republicans trying to distance themselves from McCain ( or rather George Bush). I don't blame them. Their party is being shot in the foot over and over by McCain. The biggest wound being the choice of Sarah Palin. Many undecided and a number of moderate Republicans are going over to Obama.

This is leaving an increasingly vocal and slightly unhinged group of die hards. The people who still insist the GWB is doing a heckava job. These people just cannot admin that their party and their president could be wrong. EVER.

Me? I've learned that it's wise to know when you are wrong. To be able to admint a mistake and to learn from it. These people? Not so much.

How do you say Trekker in German?

Found this neat video on youtube of a german Sci-Fi convention. I am impressed. Awesome costumes, lots of energy and lots of Jaggermeister. 

I don;t know if this is a typical con over there, but it looks like a lot of fun.

It's time...

After sitting back and watching as little men from little parties bark at each other I have decided that I cannot STAND anymore.

Therefore I have decided to throw my hat into the political arena. And by hat I mean a grenade.

President? BAH!! Steven Pack does not want your puny presidency! Steve Pack will be your

GOD-EMPEROR in '08

Think I'm mad?? Possibly. But click the link above to see how I am already spreading my message.

Things will be different under my all powerful administration. Very different.

The Big One

You may remember there was a bit of a kerfuffle about warrantless wiretapping a while back. Essentially, the government said that they needed to be able to intercept terrorist communications and to do that they needed the help of the phone companies. The phone companies agreed, without FISA court approval and eventually Congress gave them immunity for this breach of the law and public trust.

Nice.

But it was all okay, because we weren't really monitoring all those phone calls. We weren't listening in to people private communications. We were going to look at the HUGE number of calls made to and from the US from "Bad Guy" countries and once we had SOMETHING we would listen in. 

This, strange as it seems, makes a kind of sense. Filter the raw data. Apply some logic to it. And you might just get lucky and track down the bad guys. And George Bush could have actually pushed this through with America firmly behind it if had been A) Smart and B) Honest.  But he isn't and he wasn't. Like everything else he did he tried to cover it up with lies and BS. 

And there's the fact that unchecked surveilance powers is ALWAYS abused. Period. It doesn't matter what the law says or what your mandate or mission profile states. If you give people the power to listen into phone calls, they will. And they did. 

Now the denials begin. And again, some low-level NSA flunkies will get the axe. No one at the top had ANY IDEA this was being done. "We follow the law". Which we've heard before, haven't we?

Supposedly the program did help prevent some IED attacks, which is what it was supposed to do. But how much time was wasted listening to phone sex and monitoring Red Cross workers? I wonder how much dirt was collected on various political and military leaders? 

If you're not furious, you're not paying attention.

Fear not citizen!

Remember, if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide. Sure we placed 53 peaceful anti-death and anti-war protestors on a TERRORIST WATCH LIST, but that doesn't mean we did anything wrong, does it?

My head - It hurts

I used to think that John McCain was just not the right person for the job of President. A lot of pundits seem to agree that he isn't the principled reformer that he once was when he ran for the job last time.

But then I read the Rolling Stone story about him and now I just think he's another incompetent asshole who has somehow failed UP over and over again. Like Bush, but actually worse in some ways.

How can this be??? How do we allow such mediocrity rise to positions of power and authority?  Why are we even considering this man for the Presidency?

I will grant that there are two sides to any story. You can look at a mans actions and see them in different ways. At one point the article takes McCain to task for some of his actions while a POW. I will not pass judgement on a person who is being tortured and just wants the torture to stop. 

But in every other aspect of his life McCain showed himself to be a self-centered asshole. No dicipline, no aptetude, no real skills, always in the shadow of his father. A womaniser, a drinker, a gambler and a lousy pilot. I'll go easy on a guy for drinking and gambling to a degree if he has something else going for him, some skill or ability, but McCain doesn't. He cheated on and then dumped his wife after he got back from Vietnam (she wasn't pretty anymore after a bad car accident). He married a rodeo princes heiress (Hey, she was pretty and loaded) and then continued to be an asshole. It's like the experience of being a POW had zero effect of his bad habits. 

And then he went into politics.

Now you could say that this view of McCain is tainted by the people telling the stories about him but time after time McCain HIMSELF talks about what a douche he was/is. His own biography contains accounts of his ineptitude, failings and lack of qualifications. This guy graduated 4th from the bottom of his class. Any advancement he got was as a result of strings being pulled by his father. This is a fact and not a smear or conjecture.

This guy wasn't good enough to be a pilot, let alone a top gun. Any other person with his record would have been washed out. And yet people, even his opponents are careful to NEVER treat him with disrespect. He is a hero. A valiant warrior. His experiences make him qualified to lead the nation is wars. Really? How?

If you were, say Colin Powell, that might be true. Or even Norman Schwarzkopf.

But how does being a bad pilot who crashed three planes before getting shot down make you a great military leader?

Being a POW might make you think twice about mistreating prisoners, but he's compromised on that point so what else has he got? 

I'm sorry. I've gone beyond disagreeing with his policies. Now I just don't like this man. Every day the market drops I recall that he was one of the Keating Five. He's a rich fuck who hobnobbed with other rich fucks for the purpose of making those rich fucks richer by creating financial houses of cards. Awesome. 

How is this man the shining example of 'Family Values' to the socially conservative set? Why is praise heaped upon him?  In the last decade he may have worked on some good legislation. So did a lot of other Senators. It's their job. But in that he's also been a failure. He has one of the lowest attendance record of ANY Senator.

I will concede that Obama has a short track record. But that's better than a long BAD record. Obama being a christian has be concerned. McCain strikes me as not giving much of a crap about god except when it gets him votes. But Palin? She's a believer, and what's worse, she's a stupid believer. She drinks all the cool-aid. 

I've already talked about how he is officially old and a cancer survivor. 

I'm just so sick of the stupid. Can we just try doing it different? Can we try using smart people in Government? They might fail. They might fail badly. It's not like Obama is inheriting a prosperous and peaceful country. He might not be able to fix what has become so badly broken. 

But I'm willing to give him a chance.   How about you?

Hollywood comes to the Ren Faire

Below are a couple of pics of filming at the Michigan Faire. It's been a pretty big thing there. Lots of the local playtrons signed up to be extras. They did a lot of background shots around the fair including one at my friend Alex's & Elizabeths booth. I happened to be visiting when a second unit rolled up with a camera and filmed us "Opening" the shop and "Closing" the shot like we would at the begining and end of the day. Although I don't work at their shop I quickly put on one of their hats and took the part of 'Mike Schumacher, a long time rennie with a drinking problem and a heart of gold, a traveling hat salesman who calls no place his home and who has left a string of broken hearts behind him on the open road.'

Actually I just moved some hats and will likely end up with a lot of other 'B-roll' shots on the cutting room floor.

Dead man walkin'

I'm going to vote for Obama. There are a number of reasons for this and it's possible that you might disagree with them. That's cool.

That leaves McCain or any independent candidate you care to throw away your vote on in some kind of 'protest'.

You might like his policies, or maybe you just dislike him less than Obama. Fine.

But there's very good reason you may want to reconsider that vote for McCain. And it unfortunately has to do with him being a 71 year old cancer survivor. I suppose I am in fact being ageist. I don't want to be. I personally want to be VERY active and mentally sharp when I am Mr. McCains age and beyond. And it appears that John McCain is fairly sharp most of the time.

But most of the time is not what I want from a 72 year old President. I don't want his health to be 'passable'. If you are 71 and are running for president you better be sharp as a tack and able to go up stairs without getting winded. I would prefer it if you can wrestle a bear and recite the Treaty of Tripoli (google it) but I'll take moderately good shape.

A few days ago during the debate I noticed McCain exhibiting a minor facial tick during the debate. It didn't seem too serious but I wondered about it, especially after the many small mistakes he's made in interviews and seeming contradictions from things he's said only a few days earlier. A lot of the liberal blogs rail about him being a 71 year old cancer survivor, but that cancer was melanoma. A skin cancer. He's had several lesions removed, only the last was of any concern. I felt that perhaps they were being a bit alarmist about his health.

But the fact is that McCain only let a handful of reporters LOOK at his 1200 page medical report. They weren't allowed to make copies or take notes.

And then I learned that melonoma is one of the really fucking serious cancers. It can spread almost anywhere in the body and do it agressively. And unlike breast cancer, where the chance of recourance goes down ofter x years, the chances for recourance with melonoma increase.

Several doctors are commenting over at Americablog about this and other things they have seen recently and while a video diagnosis cannot yield any concrete evidence these doctors are VERY concerned and would advise ANY patient they saw exhibiting these symptoms to get to a hospital for a full work up including CT scan for a possible mini-stroke.

I wouldn't fly on an airplane with a pilot 10 years post melanoma who had not been followed/staged/ examined because he might seize and the FAA wouldn't let him fly as far as I know.

Would you?

I am actually concerned now for this guys health. Let's set aside that fact that Sarah Palin is in NO WAY qualified to be President. That's another issue. If McCain gets into the White House he will have access to the best doctors anywhere. But the fact is there is still no CURE for cancer, and treatment is painful and debilitating.

I'm voting for the 47 year old.

I like em big...

So the're a GIANT BALLISTA for sale on ebay. 

I could link to the story about how this was built for the discovery chanel for education blah blah baaaaaah. I think what we need to do is focus on the fact that there is a

GIANT BALLISTA for SALE on EBAY.

Yes, it's in England.

Yes, it's 'As is' and will need alittle work.

Yes it's $35,000

But ASIDE from all that its the perfect gift.

For me.

Update: Oh look, here's a wee little one for only $10,00 here in the US.

I'm off to check my couch cushions  for change.

p.s. Make sure you check out the questions to buyer section on the UK site. Hilarious.

What the...?

On a completely different note, SPACEBALLS was quite possibly the worst goddamn movie ever. I have a highly developed sense of humor. I find mirth in both high and low forms of comedy. I appreciate the folksy wit of A Prarie Home Companion AND a good hit to the groin  (someone else's groin of course).

So when I say SPACEBALLS was the biggest turd of a movie I have ever seen I am not exagurating. Rossana walked out of it. I wanted those 90 minutes of life back with interrest. 

So what does Hollywood do? They make an animated series out of it. 

Wow. It just boggles the mind. I watched the trailer, just in case it had some kind of redeaming quality. But no. It's still a turd. An animated turd. I won't even link to it. 

Really Hollywood, this is the best you can do? I hate you.

We're okay (and hope you are too)

This was by far the crappiest weekend by far.

I drove up to Michigan on Friday. Rain. Saturday? Tons of rain. The Michigan Ren site quickly flooded. Why? Because instead of using rock or pea gravel or ANYTHING sensible they use MULCH to somehow fix the flooding. It's a running joke there. It's like "More cowbell". They just keep dropping more mulch. And what does mulch do? It helps retain moisture for garden plants. It is NOT designed to effectively move water.

As a result the ground becomes a soggy mess. It always does when it rains but this was the worst time by far. The drains get clogged with mulch. Streets become almost impassable and everyone is miserable.

The rain was apparently part of the hurricane Ike weather system. And while Sunday dawned with no rain, the remanants of IKE itself were moving East from Chicago. I could see it moving in on my phone, a solid wall of smite.

And yet we stayed open. There were only about 1000 people through the gate, everybody else had some common sense. Then the rain started. And it just kept getting heavier. Our booth isn't one of the highest point of the show, but we do sit on a slight rise which keeps us from flooding, but an hour into the rain the water was running up to the edge of our booth on one side. Merchants were digging drainage trenches and creating impromptu levies. When I went out to grab some food, the kid behind the counter was standing in about 4 inches of water. That seems safe as all hell.

At 3pm or so they finally closed the show. I packed up and went to my car, which was parked on high ground. But it didn't matter where you parked, everything was super saturated. Every inch of ground. I helped push 5 cars out of the mud. I don't want to sound mean, but some of these people just don't know how to drive in mud. They would just gun the engine and dig thenselves into a hole, shoving mud under their car and into their wheel wells. By the time I got to my car I was soaked and encrusted with mud. The Honda performed very well and I got out of the lot without getting stuck. Many others weren't so lucky. There were three tow trucks on site and I wonder if the festival was covering the costs of helping people out. I doubt it. I went to the campground and changed into some dry clothes and basically passed out for a while. But the rains increased and so did the winds. I didn't want to risk being in a tent if some tree gave way so I headed for home.

And I was the LUCKY one.

On sunday 40-60 mph winds hit the Ohio show. It took out trees on the site, knocked over porta johns and actually tore the front of a booth off. Then the power went out. They waited almost an hour to decide to close the show. I got a call with this news and recommended they stay put, but its was pretty miserable there and they wanted to go home. Lindsey and Jesse went to Columbus for dinner and Rossana went straight toward home. But power was out all along I-71 and she discovered well into the trip she almost out of gas. Several phone calls back and forth. I reached Lindsey and made sure she had gas. I told her she might have to get a gas can and bring fuel to Rossana, but then I couldn't reach Rossana and I didn't know where she was on I-71. Then a message, she was forging ahead. Then I couldn't reach her phone at all. Cell phone communication was pretty useless and only added to my stress level. Rossana pressed on and made it to a gas station on fumes.

Friends on site say our booths are still standing but were put under a lot of stress. We need to go out and check them out and make some repairs. One Rennie camper and car was crushed by a tree, killing their dog.

I guess all the rain went North and all the wind were South. In any case it sucked donkey balls all around. Bag End is okay. Some damage to trees and a lot of debris but nothing serious. I hope everybody out there is okay and safe. I grabbed two pics and a little vid.

Here's a short vid. There's a red brick path next to our booth that makes it passable, everyplace else on site is mulch over a foot deep.