After a lot of looking for a good quote this month, I came across this one. It has nothing to do with my original intent with this series, which was and is illuminating the truth to those that would incorrectly claim or believe this country was founded on x-ian principles. Even a cursory search on the subject will quickly lay those claims to rest, and it is quite irritating to continuously hear it said. Anyway…

Having a grumpy teenager in the house, this one resonated with me, and what the hell, this is my sandbox I can build castles and moats, and bomb them with rocks if I want to. The quote, which is only attributed as a Cherokee proverb: 

Indeed.

I was over @ the Bad Astronomy blog hosted by Slate, when I saw off in the sidebar a list of links. One caught my eye and I clicked it with a slight groan. It was titled “Why You Should Stop Believing in Evolution.”

So I was certain to find some half baked creationist nonsense, but was pleasantly surprised. Turned out to be a pretty good lesson and some good points. Heck even the comments weren’t as bad as I thought they would be. I don’t know if this is a sign of people coming around, probably too much to hope for. It is promising.

The link: http://theweek.com/article/index/265653/why-you-should-stop-believing-in-evolution

I am link posting ignorant or something, for some reason I could not copy/paste that link, but it works from here as a copy/paste to the address bar, I just tried it. Nevermind that I have a 50% success rate with posting links that actually work. Is there a link posting class someplace?

EDIT: Okay, now it shows up as a working link. I did nothing to change it. It just works. How the devil does that work?

…is a man with no concience. Recently on a blog I frequent (/waves @ Ryan) the subject matter was along the lines of knowing who and what you are in life, accepting these virtues and owning them. You are what you are, you is what you is, and a can of spinach won’t change that too much. We all have to at some point accept who and what we are and live with the decisions we make and the things we do as a result of those decisions. You cannot spend too much time dwelling on all of the if’s the what’s and the maybe’s. There is too much to get done in life to spend an inordinate amount of time pondering each and every decision we make.

There are of course exceptions.

Let’s just say I know a guy, a family member. I was at one time a fan of this guy, I wanted to see him succeed. I saw in him a lot of what I saw in myself as a younger man. At first. When he joined the Army, I was thrilled to see him off on a life adventure that had the potential for him to make something of himself. He graduated boot camp and we drove all the way to Bumfuck Missouri to bring him home. He was soon stationed at Fort Campbell in Kentucky, where he would periodically need transportation back and forth, which I was happy to provide.

Then the next thing I know he gets drummed out of the service for being a no good slacker drunk. I had the pleasure of picking him up. I asked the Army official I talked to “I thought the service tended to jerk a knot in guys like this and straighten them out?” His reply was “there are some that we just cannot keep working with. At some point we have to let them go.”

He palled around with some of his friends for a while, then soon went to live at grandma’s house. He was given help getting a vehicle, and got a decent job. Not once, or twice, 3 times. Fired from every job he has had, and none of the vehicles were ever paid for. The last one driving grandma into bankruptcy.

The entire time he lived at grandma’s house he never once offered up a dollar for rent, or utilities. He was also quite disrespectful and disruptive to their lives. Showing no respect and doing what he pleased. He for the most part lorded over them with his behavior. They would not confront him or call him out on any of his B.S. just to keep him from going off. Little better than a terrorist.

He was sent to New York at one point to live with his father. He soon conned grandma to send him the money to come back. Apparently ole dad expected a few things from him.

He has fathered I think 2 maybe 3 kids in town, all from different gals, and never able to maintain a relationship with the mothers, or be a father to his kids. He has paid some court ordered child support, which he apparently believes is sufficient to lay claim to being a concerned family man.

He has borrowed money from family members, never paid back. From what I gather though his street cred is good. He will pay his debts to his weed suppliers.

A few years ago I had an out of town job opportunity in my old profession as a commercial diver. I needed help getting the high quantity of harvested shell in the boats (I took two, one to work out of, another to store shell in while on the river) He proved to be absolutely worthless. He was pretty much dead weight in a boat. Which is the last thing you really want in a boat. He did prove useful on the drive home as we needed a driver for truck hauling the shell back to market.

Then a year or so later a plea to help him go to school to get a truck driving job was brought to our attention. Him being a particular family member, that leveraged support from someone quite close to me, I understood that it was important to them that we should help him out. Honestly at this point I really figured our best bet was to cut our losses. I was right. It cost us $6000 bucks on the assumption he would pay it back as he got established. Oh, he graduated, and got his CDL license, but on his first trip driving a company truck he dropped his trailer in St. Louis Missouri, and drove the truck back here to spend the weekend. These days company trucks have GPS on them, a company can ping any of their trucks at any time and know where it is. They found that he had driven their truck 200 miles one way, on their dime, without their permission. He was fired before he delivered his first load. The $6000 bucks? Not one red cent have we seen. You should know this is only what I am aware of with this persons history. I am sure there is a great deal I do not know.

More recently, at some point he took to staying with friends instead of at grandma’s house. During that time circumstances changed, grandpa died, and granny moved in next door with one of her daughters, I am married to the other one, so he could not go back to staying with grandma. He has bounced around here and there, and just a few days ago was pretty much thrown out from where he was living.

I recieved a phone call informing me he would be coming to our house that evening. A fucking sociopath is on his way, great. I was not real happy about this decision to say the least, nor was I part of that decision process, I doubt there would be much more of a story to tell If I had been.

On this person’s best day he is an exact polar opposite to everything I know and hold dear. So when he arrived he wanted to know if I knew the deal, I replied “yes I am aware, and I am not happy about it.” Nothing else was said. He settled into the den and all was well, to a point, save for the part where I am not a happy camper. I knew from minute one this was not going to end well.

Later in the evening, due to our particular circumstances at the moment I had to lie down and get a nap in, so I could get up at midnight and go pick up the wife from work. She gets off at one in the morning and by the time we get back here and settle in I don’t get back to bed till 2 or so. That little nap opportunity between 10 and 12 is important to my well being since I am usually up again by 6 or 7 in the morning. Even then I am running on not enough sleep.

As I laid down, the boys were a little loud, our guest in particular, so I, and admittedly a little ungraciously, called for some quiet so I could get some sleep. Having a couple of boys here, and their friends staying here from time to time, a call for quiet is not outside of my usual routine, and normally no big deal.

Not 10 minutes later there is a lot of door slams, rattling, tromps, knocks and noise, and I am like wtf? I get up to go see what the deal is and our guest is banging around in the kitchen with no consideration at all for my request to some quiet. So, I confronted him. I was like what the hell? I just asked for some peace and quiet and you are in here making all kinds of racket? He came back with he was not trying to be loud. I can tell you he sure as fuck was not trying to be quiet. What he was doing was pissing in the floor in an attempt to mark some territory. When he saw I was going to press the issue his demeanor went to hell real fast, and his true nature showed up in his soulless black eyes. You don’t have to dig very deep to get past the layer with the charming disposition and a nice smile to see what really lies beneath.

We had a war of words. I confronted him with much of the history I have already mentioned. I also told him we needed him here like the Titanic needed an iceburg. His reply was that he did not care at all about any of that stuff, and did not have any respect for me or what I thought, and never would, among other things. It took every bit of strength in me to not strangle him on the spot.

I have never in my life threw the first punch, or instigated any fight I have been in. I have not been in a lot of fights, I would rather talk out the issue, or walk away if that is possible. I do not start physical altercations. I am not however afraid to participate in one. If a guy makes the mistake of starting an altercation with me, I will have a go with a glint in my eye. I actually kind of like knocking assholes unconcious, and it has been a while. You must understand, I have lived the life of a commoner. I have been in many a bar, seen a lot of bullying types, and have avoided for the most part physical fighting. You can’t dodge them all or necessarily find an easy way out. There are moments it is time to defend yourself. When and if it comes to that, I generally like my chances. I am thankful that the few times I had to, I walked away in pretty good shape. A couple of my encounters left my opponents taking a nap. 

Only out of respect for my wife, did I not start a fight in this case. Never in my life have I wanted to so badly put a whuppin on anyone. I even tried to goad him into throwing a punch so I could. Which is not in my normal character, some people have a tendency to get your hackles up, I’ll bet if you take a moment and think on it, you will know in your little part of the world “that” guy I’m talking about. He would not comply. We pretty much stalemated on the issue, I could not make myself hit him without justfiable provocation, and I let it go despite his complete lack of respect in my own damn house. It was close.

He got a ride out of here the next morning, I have not seen him since. Where he slept on the couch in the den… one of my boys found this the next morning. I guess it fell out of his pocket.

I should have known he was packing some kind of weapon. I thought he had just a tad too much confidence the night before. No telling where or how this would have ended had it begun. I’d like to think I could have neutralized him before he could deploy it, but you never know.

It’s been a few days now. I have no regrets about anything I said to this person or my actions. None at all. The whole situation still nags at me though, why in a case where I really feel justified to act and feel as I do, would I still feel like shit over the situation? I really feel bad on the one hand, and on the other I feel like I had no choice to behave as I did. I know in my heart it was high time somebody confronted this guy. Everyone else in the family is like, “don’t say anything” or “don’t do anything, it will make it worse” Why… must I feel like the bad guy for not bowing down to this person’s character?

I do not know. I do know this, one thing that I possess that my guest will never own, and that is a concience. Even having a concience, I will not lose much sleep over a certain persons never ending list of problems. Nor will I make them my own. You can’t help someone who does not have the capacity or the desire to help themselves. You certainly are not going to change the spots on a proven sociopath that gets by in life as a social parasite. No hope for symbiosis with this one. Now I need a moment of meditation, some zen, a happy place to retreat to. There are days I do not care for who I can be, but at the same time I see no way not to be so.

Mak, you gonna tell me I’m a determinist? 😉

That ends this chapter of my soap opera. I sure hope this character does not show up later in the episode.

So I’m kicking back on the couch, watching some show on the boob tube, and this commercial comes on. Looks like Gillette has a new fancy razor that operates on a ball swivel. Apparently it does all of this incredible manly stuff like…shave. I admit I was a slow starter for facial hair. By the time I was 16 I had to maybe shave maybe once a week. Since then I have seen all kinds of gimmicky razors come down the pike.

I remember those old man razors, the all metal housing, twin side shavers that you have to put razor blades in. I saw many of them growing up, but by the time I actually needed to shave both Bic and Gillette had disposable single side razors in plastic housings that did what they were supposed to do. Shave.

Next thing you know they have a new razor, that is twice as good, it has two blades! I admit I used them for a while. You know what they did? Shave.

Now once the twin blade had been established they came out with a 3 blade razor…then a 4 blade razor, because you know, you could never have possibly shaved with a single blade…right?

Now the ball swivel razor. The absolute modern must have tool for following the contours of a manly face. The hot rod of shavers, it puts all the others to shame. It must, according to the manly man voice hawking them be the bestest razor of all time. You know what it does? Shave.

I must be turning into a grumpy, crotchety old geezer. All I see anymore is some new gimmick on the TV commercials. The new must have thingy! The one thing no one can live without! The new uber gadget with onboard spraying devices and flashing lights and happy faces peddling them. You know what they do? Mop.

I have seen some new gadget that looks like a hot plate, that looks pretty neat. It heats the pan, but is cool to the touch. That is a pretty cool detail, but I have a stove that does the same exact job. Do I really need another gadget cluttering up the counter, or collecting dust in the cabinet? …no.

I swear every commercial peddling some new gimmicky item that does the same job as a time proven device that already exists and does the exact same job, is an insult to my intelligence. Especially the commercials that show some inept fool bumbling around with the “old school tool”, whose life would be made so much better with the brand X super impressive thingy! C’mon man.

The new exciting multi bladed solar powered slap chopper! I have a sharp knife and a cutting board…thanks. The super duper teeny blender! I have a time tested blender on the counter, it has made many a margarita and with any luck will make a thousand more. The amazing doo dad that does amazing doo dad stuff! I think I am past the amazing doo dad point in my life. Hell by the time I get the amazing doo dad prepped, plugged in, and selected the proper doo dad setting, I could have handled the problem with a paper towel.

Now there have been some real achievements through the years, Formula 409 is a good cleaner. The scrubbing bubbles thing…not so much, a gimmick. The cheap disposable razor was quite the invention, it works, in its simplest form. Edge shaving gel is by far the best improvement made in the shaving department in the last 30 years. It far surpasses the old school Barbasol stuff, if a new item actually makes a large improvement over the old item I wouldn’t consider it a gimmick. My wife has a non stick meatloaf pan with a drip pan, that thing works great. The microwave may be one of the best gadgets ever. The refrigerator as well. Washers and dryers have improved everyones standard of living. There are things that have made their way into everyone’s homes that do a specific job well.

The gimmick isn’t even something new, it is a gadget that performs the same exact task as an existing tool. It is peddled to the masses as the newest, bestest, must have item…and I suspect since I see so much of this crap, people buy them. As much as I dislike it, the gimmick advertising apparently works. Though I often wonder how well these gimmick items actually work, and do they hold up to normal use? My gut tells me probably not so much. But what the hey, for an additional $4.95 plus handling charges you can get two!

I just wish the next new gadget would be on par with the fridge or the microwave. Instead of the same old crap in a shiny new package. Like a fricken razor on a ball swivel. Maybe if they would put 42 blades in it, and attach that ball swivel razor to a V-8 engine, we would have something interesting? It would be by far the meanest manly razor ever! When they come out with one like this, remember you saw it here first!

Posting for me has been slow of late, busy busy busy. We made another trip to the Frankstown fossil site, I still sorta have hawks around, no lack of things to blog about, just a lack of time to do so. I have my old work boat backed up into the shop now. It needs a new floor and a facelift. I am no longer working out of it, but it will still make a suitable fishing boat. We had a large tree go down a couple of days ago, right behind the house, missed the house by 20 ft, thank goodness. It is still lying there expecting to be dismantled and carted away, of course if there is any good wood left in this old dead tree I will use it for firewood come winter.

Anyway, back to blogging business. Let’s go old school this time, back to the original founding father quotes. This time James Madison on the use of gov’t land for churches.

“”The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.” -1803 letter objecting use of gov. land for churches.

Yes indeed folks, religion, the ultimate tribal ingroup. We are better than everyone else! So much so you are shit beneath our feet. So much so we can do whatever we please, be it murdering you by the thousands, taking your lands, raping your women. Holy wars, inquisitions, genocides, swordtip conversions, witch hunts, wanton murder, may the streets run red with blood because our dog is better than yours!

This is why we have separation of church and state. This is why we need to keep it. Funny how well over 200 years since this quote was made, you can look around the world today and still see these pleasant side effects of religion…

http://freethought.mbdojo.com/foundingfathers.html