Hatred

It's just past 3am in the morning. I really should be asleep. But I can't sleep. My chest hurts and my stomach is churning. It was the same last night when I stayed up til 3:30am reading something that disturbed me so profoundly that even as I lie in bed I could not close my eyes. My mind would not cease.

I have devoted a short rant here and there at the 'Reverend' Fred Phelps Baptist Church' in Topeka Kansas. He is the patriarch of a large brood of hateful children/lawyers best known for picketing at the funerals of famous gays and more recently, dead U.S. servicemen and women. His trademarks are the brightly colored "God hates Fags", "God Hates America" and "Thank God for IED's" signs.

His actions so outraged veterans that the Patriot Guard Riders were formed. They are motorcycle enthusiasts, many veterans, who show up (if invited) to funerals targeted by Phelps. They gun their engines to drown out the Phelps clan and hold up large American flags to obstruct the view of the hateful signs.

Recently the Phelps clan was forced to make a hasty retreat when a large crown turned hostile. They were ushered away in a van to the taunts of the crowd, a window broke from some object thrown at the van. You can watch the video here.

In reading about the story at Fark.com I scrolled through the comments section. The reactions ranged from the logical "Ignore him, its what he wants" to the "Someone should kick the crap out of these asshats" to the defenders of free speech "He isn't breaking the letter of the law and the Bill of Rights specifically protects unpopular speech". The debate is heated, and like most Internet discussion, it did nothing to change the facts of the event. Just as I was about to click away I saw a post:

If you want to learn about what a psycho Fred Phelps is, and how horribly abusive he has been to his family (who constitute his entire "Church"), read Addicted to Hate, a journalist's account of life growing up with Phelps, based on the testimonial of two of his estranged kids.

The whole thing is online.

It will send chills up your spine.

The man is Satan incarnate.

I clicked the link and spent the next few hours falling into the dark pit that is the story of this mans life. I want you to read it. It's long. I know that I try to keep things pretty light. I enjoy talking about gadgets and travel intermixed with humor and occasional witty observations. Not this time. This is a journey into the Heart of Darkness. Into the life of a deranged and abusive man of god. How he came to be and how he twisted his faith. How he created his own world with himself at its center and how he abused his wife, his children, his community, the legal profession and the name of the civil rights movement all in the pursuit of his sick, hurtful, greedy desires. My words cannot begin to describe how fucked up this man is and what he has done to his own family and to those around him.

I tend to fall pretty strongly into the "Rule of Law" camp. Several states have tried to create laws that are targeted directly at Phelps group and the ACLU has filed several suits challenging the constitutionality of these laws. The part of my brain that lets me walk upright understands that you can't just make up a law because you don't the message of a particular group. A lot of whites didn't like the message of Martin Luther King. To paraphrase Voltaire:

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"

But I ask you, would our founding fathers have considered the words and actions of Fred Phelps even remotely defensible? If, in the time of Lincoln, a proto-Phelps had stood at a street corner as the assassinated president's funeral procession passed and held up a sign that said "Thank God for John Wilkes Booth!" Would his message have been very vigorously defended? I doubt it. In fact I suspect that such a man would have been roundly thrashed for such a horrid breach of common decency. But we have become somewhat immune in our modern age to outrageous displays in public. And in many ways it is better that way.

But there is another part of the brain, the primitive little lizard part. It is a part that many pretend doesn't exist. When man reflects of the barbarity of War, when he thinks about it he sees its futility. he understands that violence is not the answer. But it isn't the higher brain that makes war. It is that lower, baser part. And pretending it isn't there doesn't make it go away. I understand and accept that it exists. I believe in civility and acting civilized, but I know that we as a species are not even close to civilized.

And what if he showed up and the funeral of a friends kid, killed in Iraq? A kid I saw grow up? What if he protested daily at the small shop where our surrogate daughter Lindsey works? What if they showed up at my parents funeral? I do not think that I could 'just ignore them'. And despite all the pleading of the higher brain functions I think that I would be sorely tempted to strike out at these brainwashed morons. Their twisted bible-hate is enough to make even me ignore my upbringing and my moral code. And that says a lot.

He who lives by the sword....

So the local fundies in Virginia wanted to get their message out to kids and parents in the public school system. But the bad people running the schools said "We shouldn't be promoting religion or politics" Fundies threaten to sue. School relents and lets flyers go home with kids. Now fundies are unhappy that pagans are using the system. Suck it fundies, you made the bed, you lie in it.

This is why we have separation of church and state people.

Hi Def violence and punk gypsies

Last night I caught V for Vendetta at the Dale's. Ed had downloaded the movie onto his X-Box 360 and I must say that it looked freakin gorgeous. Super clear. HD is the future there is no doubt. The only real downside is that the 360's hard drive is only 20 gigs or so. Downloading a hi-def film means you have to delete most of your demos and videos to make room.

After the movie Ed introduced us to Gogol Bordello a 'Gypsy Punk' group who's 'Start wearing purple' just rocks. You find yourself yelling the lyrics like a drunk Kossack half way through. They're infectious. They do to hungarian music what Floggin Molley did to Irish ballads. Tons of energy. I highly recommend you take a listen.

Snap Preview

I'm playing with a keen new Web 2.0 technology on the sight. It's called Snap preview. Basically, when you mouse over a link, a tiny preview of the linked website pops up. You can click the link as normal if you wish. Let me know what you think about it.

Efficiency

So according to Yahoo news, there is a brand spankin new poster that shows the '26 faces of global terrorism'. Sweet. This is a handy thing, a good thing. It even tells you about how you can get up to 25 million dollars for helping to prevent terrorist attacks or bring Osama to justice. Damn! That's a lot better than a 20k bonus for signing up with the Army to get blown up in Iraq and I can just sit on my ass. I'll take me some of that action! The news article even showed this thumbnail:

Check it out, stacks of money! Getting paid to fight evil? It's a no brainer. A click of the picture brings a slightly larger thumbnail. Hmmm, not much detail. I can't really tell one evil blob from another. Back to the article. Let's see, the State Department seems to be behind this. Lets check them out. Hmmm, nothing on the front page. Lets check the press room. Hey secretary Rice hosts 29th annual Kennedy Center honors dinner. I wonder if she'll grace us with a piano recital? Ok, this must be covered by the Department of Homeland Security. You know, the guys who's did such a great job in New Orleans and have made the airports safe from toothpaste. Lets check them out. Huh, nothing on the homepage or in the press or media sections. It's almost like they don't really want to let us know who these bad guys are.

Look, I'm not naive. John Q. Public isn't going to capture these guys. These guys aren't in the US most likely. But would it kill these guys to put up a pdf file?

Marching...

On Saturday Rossana and I drove downtown and joined an anti-war march. It's my second protest ever (the first being in New Orleans when the city decided to tear down structurally sound public housing).

I found out about it through an email. I keep a gmail account that I use for signing on line petitions etc. The descision to go was somewhat impulsive. The event was sponsored by the local AFL-CIO. When we got to the outskirts of the city there were long lines of cars. There are never lines of cars on Saturdays and my heart swelled with pride in my native city. That is, until I saw that the vast majority of these people were going to some kind of sporting event. Par for the course really. Bread and Circuses is what keeps the citizens happy.

We met up in front of the Crown Plaza Hotel. There were, I don't know...maybe 5-600 people. We were handed a flyer with the chants we would be saying. Make shift drums made from plastic drums kept up a steady rhythem. There was a squad of young folk decked out in black and balaclavas or scarves to hide their faces. These were the agitators. Among them were several people with arm bands with a red cross to indicate they were 'medics' in the event of..well unpleasentness. The crowd was a mix of the college hippie types and long time peaceniks. There were a few 'Veterans for Peace' members from the Vietnam era most likely. But there were also high school aged kids. There were Moms. Faces you wouldn't expect. And of course the Union folks.

The march began on time and headed out down St Clair. We were flanked by several police cars that acted like sheep dogs, hearding us to the right whenever we took up too much of the road. A city ambulance followed behind. It was an upbeat crowd. These were not angry people, or at least they did not act hostile, except for the black clad agitators who occasionally rushed at SUV drivers just to scare them. Way to make yourselves look like assholes, guys. The march took two turns and ended up in front of the Federal building. Rossana and I carried a banner the length of the march whch was difficult because it was a) large and b) not well made. It was cold and despite the urging to the megaphone wearing chant leaders I never really screamed our chants. Its not that I disagreed with them, but I guess I was overcome by a bit of shyness. Plus there was the fact that there just weren't a lot of people in that part of Cleveland that day. Drivers would holk their horns and wave in support. People waved from office building windows. But the masses were near the stadium waiting to be entertained by our modern day gladiators. The local news showed up, which is something, but it was Fox news so I can only imaginbe how the march was portryed at 10pm "Filthy hippies run rampant in city! Terrorist sympathisers cause mayhem!".

When we arrived at the federal building there was a small stage and a woman was playing a guitar and singing what I imagine are traditional pro-union songs. There were several short speaches, most were not great or impassioned. Only three were of interest, one by a Union chapter leader from S Carolina who spoke clearly and with feeling and got the crowd worked up. The next was a union organizer from Argentina who talked about how America 'helping'countries has led to widespread problems in South America and elsewhere. The third was an Iraqi workers organizer. I can tell he was passionate about his work and had hope for his country, but his grasp of English was poor and thus it did not convey that passion very clearly. The only non-union type was the wife of a National Guardsmen who was there because her hurband had been called up to serve in Iraq again. She read a speech he had intended to give about how he is proud to serve his country and he is happy to help others in need, but he questioned the justification and logic that led the U.S. into this quagmire.

That says a lot really. He knows its a clusterfuck, he knows the danger, he knows it's based on (at best) faulty logic (or as I call them 'lies'). But he'd going back to do what he can.

The march broke up after that. There were several workshops planned at the hotel later that night and Cindy Shehan was scheduled to speak the next day, but my back was killing me and I had done what I set out to do. I was not too disapointed, this is Cleveland after all. The march was well organized and executed. It was peaceful and the police were calm and non-confrontational. When I got home I looked through the various other flyers we had been handed at the march. There's another protest in January, this time in D.C. That's where the action is. That's the big show. I'm thinking of going if we don't have any shows. Anyone interrested?

Inconvenient

For the past year or so I have been enjoying the very inexpensive, quasi-legal and deliciously DRM-free service of allofmp3.com and their imusic purchasing and download application alltunes. But our friends at the RIAA and government have been putting the screws to my Russian friends and figured out that if they can't kill the company, then make it impossible for them to get money. As of a month or two ago Visa and Mastercard pulled processing from Allofmp3. The two choices left were Diners Club (with its fun fun $95 fee per year, no THANK you) or a card called JRF which is available to residents of, like five states. Things were looking dark, and just when I had located a stash of Polish punk music I wanted.

But wait! There is an answer! An overcomplicated and confusing answer. First, go to xrost.biz and sign up for an account. xrost is a kind of cashless receipt generating system in use in Europe in place of cash. Whatever, it's not important. Next, you will need to go to clickandbuy.com and register a credit card with them. Once you've set up the account, go back to xrost, fund their weird cashless card with money from clickandbuy.com You will get a serial number and a pin. Surf back to allofmp3 and give them the serial number and pin and Blammo! You're back in business. Fire up alltunes and your balance will show up there. Now, wasn't that simple? Well, no. But it works. Enjoy!

Child's Play

When I was a wee lad, we didn't have any of these fancy game consoles. There were no X-Boxen and PS360's or WEEEEEEEE systems. We used to go out in the yard and throw acorns at each other. That's what we did for fun.

Of course, I never had to spend several weeks in a childrens hospital with nothing to do. Sadly, a lot of kids do. This is where a very cool charity called Child's Play comes in. Founded by the clever mirth-mongers at Penny-Arcade in responce to the accusation that gamers contribute nothing to society the Childs Play charity provides games, books and other diversions to sick tots around the world. 100% of your donation goes to the kids. And the great part is that thanks to Amazon.com you don't have to guess what these childrens hospitals need, wish lists have already been drawn up. You can donate to a hospital of your choice of simply donate via PayPal.

Go ahead and bring some joy to a sick kid. I know you're good people.

I hate them...

The very clever monkeys over at Kropserkel provided some of the costumes for this spoof piece. These are some very talented monkeys. Which is why I hate them. I mean it. If these guys die in a fiery place crash I got dibs on EVERYTHING!

Calls for cthulu

This is some funny-ass Elder god shit.

Strange facinations...

You may just want to skip over this posting. Really. I'm giving you ample warning that it does not involve foreign travel, hot women in corsets of fighting off ninjas. This post is about an obscure 18th century Italian engraver.

Half Price book is a kick ass store. And when we were last there dumping off some old video games and books I picked up a two books dirt cheap. One was 'How to build a Gazeebo' and the other was called 'Piranesi - The Etchings'. I had no idea who Giovanni Battista Piranesi was but one look at the images in the book and I had to have it. Page after page of wonderful etchings of Roman Ruins, Tombs, monuments, temples, theaters and more. The book is in three languages with a short section on Piranesi's life and work in the 1700's. You can cut to the chase and breeze through his wiki page.

Some of his coolest work were his 'prisons'. Massive spaces with soaring vaulted ceilings, chains, raised walkways to nowhere and ancient gears. My biggest regret is that the images in the book are rather small and much of the detail is lost. Luckily a Japansese university has a website where you can zoom into his images and well as see modern photos of some of the places Piranesi drew. What amazed me was the number of locations that I had never heard of or seen before. A great deal of these places must surely have fallen victem to the modern city of Rome but I intend to look into some of the more interresting tombs using the internets. I'm hoping to get a book with larger versions of his work or maybe a few prints but they aren't cheep.

I have no idea why some things grab my attention so suddenly and firmly. I spend two weeks with my nose buried in a book about personal letter written in the Elizibethan era. Facinating stuff which I may have to write about in the future. And now, I must go, I think I hear ninja's in my laundry room.

Run Forrest Run!

They're getting smarter. The turkeys, not us humans. We're still dumb as posts. Apparently a group of wild turkeys, in a last ditch attempt to escape the murderous rampage of the humans, tried to take a train out of Jersey.

Good luck guys, many have tried to get out of Jersey. Most didn't make it...

Slacking towards turkey day

The past few weeks have been...well...we haven't had much to DO. And thats kinda wierd. Last year at this time we were down in Bolixi and New Orleans. It was trip I am glad I made. If you missed it, you can read about it here.

This year we finished up the shows, came home, put everything away and worked on the house. Now most of the big stuff it done and we have....spare tame! It's wierd. There's still a list of stuff that needs to get done (there is always stuff to get done) but its getting shorter and the things that are left I am finding easier to ignore. I need to get work done on my friends website, but I've stressed over his site every time its broken down. I've driven all over gods green acre to find a wifi spot to fire off emergency emails and try to figure out what broke while on the road. Sigh. I'll get back to it tomorrow.

We now have two cats. The Great Cat of Reh (Ray) who is a regular feature in the house. And a female who now lives in the garage. We call her "Little one". Destructo (or Dumas) went missing while we were at Pennsic. Its very likely that Little One is from the same litter as Destructo, they're practically twins. The two cats do not get on well which has turned out home into a french stage comedy. When one cat wants to come in we have to boot the other out their particular door.

Thanks to my friend Grimm I now know how to service my rear brakes AND swap out struts. Grimm had planned on doing his struts too and we managed to get both vehicles into the shop. But in the end all he needed was a couple of rubber washers to completely fix his front end problems. Total cost? $2. Me? I spent about $400 in parts. Next time I want to be the one who spends two bucks.

My rig is pretty much set up the way I want now. I drove up to Detroit last weekend for a LAN party of my friend Monkey's house. I had a great time. There were 20 people crammed into his basement blasting the hell out of each other. It was different from the Ohio LAN crowd. These guys are pretty quiet. Focused. Our local group is far more vocal with their smack talk. And since my FPS skillz are not exactly 'leet' (after all, I do have a life) I need to make up for it by distracting my opponents with taunts and trash talk. At one point, after having been killed for the umteenth time by a guy with the nickname ded_god I threatened to slash his tires, tear his head off and crap down his neck. Now THAT'S sportsmanship.

Meltdown

Yesterday my wife casually mentions that her computer isn't working.

"What's it doing?" I ask.

"Very little".

On booting up a cryptic message flashes on the screen telling me that LSASS.EXE can't initialize and I have to terminate it. Hmmm. Off to google.

According to the allmighty googletron LSASS.exe is a common file used by Windows to load account settings and should not be tampered with. However ISASS.exe is a trojan, a worm, a virus that will cause all manner of harm to my wifes computer and will likely herald the birth of the antichrist. Of course, because of the way fonts are displayed in Windows, A lower case 'L' and a capital 'I' look exactly the same. In any case the antivirus installed on her system might have missed something. Time to pull the hard drive. After 10 minutes of concentrated swearing and several cuts I get the drive out and scan it on my system. My antivirus finds 14 evil creatures living on my wifes hard drive. I perform deletions and exorcisms and re-install the drive. Still no boot, but as a bonus its giving me random blue screens of death.

It's off to the windows XP recovery console. Which finally 'repairs' her installation of windows. Except that again, it doesn't. I am forced to do a re-install. I pull the drive and put it back on my system, pull off all my wife's email and other files. Pop it back in her system and start the clean install.

Once its done I find I'm missing all kinds of drivers. I crawl around in my wifes closet to find the Dell drivers disks. Then there's the missing wi-fi drivers that must be downloaded, then a download of Thunderbird, Firefox, Avast Antivirus and an attempt to restore the email.

By the time most of it was over it was 2am. Fun Mcjoyjoy. Today I got her email restored and working again. I almost wish it had been a real hardware failure. Computers are so inexpensive now it's almost cheaper just to chuck one and get another. Wouldn't that be great? Your rig starts to slow down and you decide to get a new one. At the comp-u-mat you select B7 and rub your hands in anticipation. Then the new computer get stuck on that stupid spiral wire thing. You end up smacking the plexiglass front of the machine and trying to shake it for 10 minutes to no avail.

Of course, once you stop your rant the computer magically falls off the wire and you are able to pull it out the bottom and take it home. The old system? You throw it on the compost heap (because in my work computers are biodegradable).

Wow

I've been up to a lot recently, including a ghost hunt at a decommissioned prison and using tools to fix things. But the bigger new is that we won. We fucking won! Control of the House AND the Senate. And just as I was enjoying that sweet savory taste I hear on the radio today the Rumsfeld has "Retired". I haven't read the transcript of his announcement, but if he uses the term "Spend more time with my family" it means he was fired. Fired or quit, I don't care. He's gone. I believe i did a little jig in the NAPA parts store.

It's been said by conservatives that the Democrates don't have a plan, well it's better than the Rebublicans who's plans have all been bad. I am inclined to agree with some of the pundits, that America didn't vote for Democrats so much as vote against the Republicans. Whatever, the glass is half full, the glass is half empty. I don't care so long as the glass has less than 50% Republicans, child predators, thieves, secretly gay homophobes and war profiteers.

I stayed up late to watch the results, but the more I watched, the worse my stomach felt, until I realized that I did the same thing in 2004. I stayed up and the news just kept getting worse. What were those people thinking??? I truly felt in my heart that once the American people got into that voting booth, that they could finally have their say without fear of retribution, that they would soudly regect Bush and his ilk. But they didn't. They still believed the lies. This should have happened two years ago. We might be out of Iraq by now.

And to put some numbers behind that:

We might have not have lost 1,472 U.S. and coalition lives
18,540 fewer coalition casualties
20-100,000 fewer Iraqi casualties/fatalities

Of course this is all speculation. But you know the old saying 'Fighting for peace is like fucking for viginity'. I'm wondering how many more kids are going to pay the ultimate price for this failed venture. How many more 'casualties' before we pull the plug. Remember, being wounded in combat can be anything from breaking your leg to having your arm blown off by an IED. And given the nature of this occupation, there are a LOT more amputations. There are also a lot more head wonds. The incidences of PTSD will be skyrocketing over the next few years. We will start to see a surge in the number of homeless vets.

I love my country and I support the men and women who serve. So I consider it my sworn DUTY to make sure that they aren't needlessly put in harms way. To fail in this is to fail as a person. I meet a lot of people in my job. I likely talk to several thousand people a year person to person. One day some young man or woman is going to buy something from me and hand me their credit card. Only they won't have a hand, or even an arm. It will be a prosthesis. I like to shake the hands of almost all my customers. Am I going to be able to shake this persons appendage, the stump thats left over after a mortar killed his friend and wounded him? Only if I know in my mind that I did what I could to prevent it from ever happening.

Uhgg. I know this isn't written very well. But I get worked up whenever I talk about this. It's off to bed.