You'll Find No Answers Here.

The TSA

2010-11-16T19:29:00.000-08:00

Airport security has come to my attention again. I don't really fly, having a love for driving and not a lot of places to go on my income currently. However, as your typical freedom loving American, I tend to take notice when liberties are taken away from citizens. This guy refused to go through the machine that basically shows you naked. Now he may have his life ruined via fines or more because he felt a right to privacy.
Feeling safer or violated?

The fact that we're still going through this after eight years is ridiculous. Consider Penn Jillettes experience, of Penn and Teller Fame, and now a three year olds horrible airport experience. In both instances people are getting touched without consent. Asinine is the kindest of words for the guiders of policy for our airport security. Especially when all of these problems have been solved for years. Just ask Israel.

Words fail me.

Update:
Apparently you can't trust the pilots either.

Nor do you get to fly and have diabetes, because, you know, living to the end of the flight with your pump isn't ok.

The FDA and Caffeine Drinks

2010-11-16T19:09:00.000-08:00

So,because people act stupid the FDA thinks it can babysit us? If the products are not harmful in and of themselves, then this is stupid. I rarely drink, and on the occasions that I do, I don't drink these, so there's no self interest here other than having another regulation on me. Also, it's not likely to stop the practice of caffeine and alcohol, as liquors mixed with red bull, for example, are very popular. It's just setting it back a step and driving it underground. A genius plan to be sure.

One of many articles on this.

What breaking the law may look like.

Inevtible Plutocracy with Economic Factors?

2010-11-08T11:48:00.000-08:00

While our total economy has skyrocketed, the average household income has not increased with any significance over the past 20 years. Reference here and here

You may note that one of those is a liberal link and the other is conservative. They both indicate a median of 38k from roughly that past 20-30 years. With this lack of growth for most people the ones with wealth have received substantially more power in our society. Which in turns makes it easy for the politically minded to get elected. De Facto Plutocracy follows. Fun times.

This is Why Liberals Think Conservatives are Idiots.

2010-11-08T11:45:00.001-08:00

Conservatives in AZ have likened a city curbside recycling program to socialism.

AZ Central article.

This combined with the totalitarian stance against immigration in AZ conservative circles make it difficult for any kind of compromise in our government.

This is my blog

2010-09-20T00:11:00.003-07:00

And I won't post if I want to.

Down 40lbs since May, yeah me. Woot.

It's my birdayz, I think I'll go purchase and consume a cake. Because that's how I roll.

Totally Verklempt Right Now.

2010-08-23T18:03:00.000-07:00

Danny & Annie from StoryCorps on Vimeo.

Awesomeness from The Guild

2010-08-20T00:22:00.000-07:00

A Healthy Recipe

2010-06-02T15:10:00.000-07:00

Recently I've been trying to eat better, so that I'm not fat anymore. So far it's working, but that first week sucked. Mostly because I wasn't cooking food, I was just heating to edibility. Now that I'm a few weeks in I've started actually making meals and spicing things up. This is one of my favorites so far. Adapted from several recipes online.

Stuffed Bell Peppers
Originally uploaded by Bobsome

Ingredients

* 6 green, red, orange or yellow bell peppers
* Sea Salt to taste
* 1 lb of ground turkey
* 6 cups of cooked brown wholegrain rice(roughly 3 cups uncooked)
* 1 roma sized tomato, chopped
* 1 tbsp chopped fresh oregano or 1 tsp of dried oregano
* Fresh ground pepper to taste
* 1 tsp garlic powder
* 1 tsp onion power

Method

1. Cook rice! Depending on how you do it takes anywhere from 30min to an hour. Use your favorite method to get standard fluffy rice.

2 Bring a large pot of water to a boil over high heat. Meanwhile, cut top off peppers just under the stem, leaving as much "bowl" as possible. Remove seeds and take dice the leftover pepper 'lids' minus stems and set aside. Add several generous pinches of salt to boiling water, then add peppers and boil, using a spoon to keep peppers completely submerged, until brilliant green (or red if red peppers, etc) and their flesh slightly softened, about 3 minutes. Drain, set aside to cool.

2 Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Mix raw turkey, chopped tomatoes, diced peppers, garlic and onion powders, pepper and sea salt in a bowl.

3 Arrange peppers cut side up in a baking dish, then stuff peppers with 1/2 cup filling and 1 cup cooked rice, mix inside pepper or a small prep bowl. Add 1/4 cup of water to the baking dish. Place in oven and bake for 40-50 minutes (or longer, depending on how big the peppers are that you are stuffing), until the internal temperature of the stuffed pepper is 150-160°F.

Each pepper is 1 serving(about 340 calories), and 6 will feed you for a day(on my diet). You may want to add a tsp of flax or udo's oil to help with your required fats.

Steam heats up.

2009-12-03T20:21:00.000-08:00

So, Today I received a second email from steam giving me the step by step instructions on how to retrieve my gift purchase and get it installed. While happy about this, I wonder what happened in the 12 hours between my vitriolic response and the 2nd email that suddenly made this possible :P.

Anyway, ghostbusters downloading now!

Why Steam Sucks.

2009-12-02T23:25:00.000-08:00

So, I bought 2 games from steam this past week. One for my brother, and one for myself. They were having a sale so it was a pretty good deal. I did both of these transactions on the same purchase, not realizing they would both gift to my brothers account. Mistake made, no big deal, I'll just contact support.

A week later I get this:
Hello Bob,

Thank you for contacting Steam Support.

These purchases should have been separated into two transactions.

Subscriptions cannot be moved off on an account directly. You would have to repurchase the game for yourself and then we would refund you for your mistaken purchase. Please observe the following limitations:

- we cannot extend the sale price. you will have to make this exchange at full price.
- you would have to get a refund for the whole cart which means your friend would also have his l4d revoked as well.

Please let us know what you would like to do or if you have any additional questions.

So, I can either forget about it, get a full refund(thus taking away my brothers game) and buy both games at full price separately or just buy my game at full price again.

I left them with a less than polite rejoinder.

Sickness, down with the

2009-12-01T16:33:00.001-08:00

OAH OH OH

A virus has found the key to me
Turning out bits like a factory
Tickling hte time till I cease to be
Fleshy gobbets start to clump like brie

Slowly I become a tomb
Ancient code do I exhume
Burst spores in a violent plume
Feel softly the bits go boom

Yarr, it be a virus life for me
Floating on through eternity
Found no home that does want me
But it means that I be free!
Harr, it be a virus life for me

#Delerium? More like GENIUSERIUM!

On Politics

2009-09-30T14:56:00.000-07:00

Found this on fark: Clicky for full thread

Via DamnYankees

One of the best reader comments I've ever read, relayed via andrew Sullivan:

Your obvious shock and dismay at the sheer angry ignorance of the health care teabaggers reiterates my largest problem with your rosy immigrant's view of America. You have often underestimated just how poisonously dangerous the American populist right is.

I don't blame you. You came to America after the rise of Reagan. Most of your life in America, you have lived under different Republican presidents who placated these folks with platitudes and campaign rhetoric. The one period when the populist right didn't feel they had a fellow traveler in charge was when Bill Clinton was elected (thanks to the reactionaries splitting their votes). You remember, no doubt, the level of crazy Clinton had to defuse and dodge, and this was a man who had the advantage of being a Southern bubba who has dealt which such people all his life.

For most of your time in America, this insanity has been muted by the success of conservative politics. Since you live in Washington, you probably saw daily the face of the successful conservative political establishment that milked the populist right, and by milking them kept their bitterness at a manageable level. That safety valve was stuffed up by George Bush's failed presidency.

So now, these people are facing their worst fears; actual change.

A political and demographic re-alignment is happening before their eyes, and they are reaching back into their old bag of tricks of intimidation, violence, and apocalyptic fearmongering. You are British, Andrew. You love this country, and we love you for it. But you didn't grow up around these folks, and you don't realize what a permanent and potent part of the American political landscape they are.

They have always been with us, the people who believed in manifest destiny, who delighted in the slaughter of this land's original inhabitants, who cheered a nation into a civil war to support an economic system of slavery that didn't even benefit them. They are the people who bashed the unions and cheered on the anti-sedition laws, who joined the Pinkertons and the No Nothing Party, who beat up Catholic immigrants and occasionally torched the black part of town. They rode through the Southern pine forests at night, they banned non-European immigration, they burned John Rockefeller Jr. in effigy for proposing the Grand Tetons National Park.

These are the folks who drove Teddy Roosevelt out of the Republican Party and called his cousin Franklin a communist, shut their town's borders to the Okies and played the protectionist card right up til Pearl Harbor, when they suddenly had a new foreign enemy to hate. They are with us, the John Birchers, the anti-flouride and black helicopter nuts, the squirrly commie-hating hysterics who always loved the loyalty oath, the forced confession, the auto-de-fe. Those who await with baited breath the race war, the nuclear holocaust, the cultural jihad, the second coming, they make up much more of America then you would care to think.

I'm always optimistic about America. We're a naturally rich and beautiful place. Every generation we renew ourselves with a watering of immigrants committed to the American dream, immigrants like you. But please, Andrew, do not for a second underestimate the price in blood and tears we've always paid here for progress.

I voted for Obama with my fingers crossed, because I knew that as the populist right lost power, they would become more extreme, more concentrated, and more violent. As to dismissing them as only a quarter or so of America, please remember that it only took a quarter or so of Americans to actively support the Confederacy.

Time

2009-09-16T14:10:00.001-07:00

Got nothing to say. When I do it'll be here, flung into the digital void.

Do Want

2009-07-26T07:31:00.000-07:00

A Dash of Religion

2009-07-07T23:25:00.000-07:00

http://jakeholla.blogspot.com/ is a guy I don't get to hang out with nearly as much as I'd like. Way cool guy. In the times I have hung with Jake and in following his blog and Facebook, I've always appreciated that while his religion is core to him and something he fervently believes in, I've notice that he never forces his beliefs on others or gets preachy. I think others of religious bent could learn a lot from this young man on the concept of live and let live.

I'm sure at some point I'll post something more extensive on my own spiritual beliefs or the lack thereof, but that's for another time. I will say that the phrase "I'm a Christian" had become damn near a red flag of "run away from this person" until meeting Jake and some of his Liberty crew. Always before when meeting a "Christian" it had been why I'm bad, or going to hell, or something judgmental. What Christianity is supposed to be is embodied in these guys, and if you're a follower, I recommend checking out their place.

On the way to the white party

2009-07-06T13:50:00.001-07:00

Quote from Russell Brand going to P Diddy's White Party
"What I'm hoping will be a lot of women in white bikinis and stuff, what will be ostentatious displays of gratuitous sexism, and like which I ideologically disapprove of but practically leer at."

Dreaming and Sadness

2009-07-02T23:01:00.000-07:00

My brother made spaghetti today. After consuming I made nappings. Then the strange began. I somehow got to this club/theater/department store, after having been invited by a cousin. My brother and I start by watching a film and ordering beers. Then somehow I meet a girl, and then a couple more, and we all have fun a good time is had. At the end of the night(where there is now daylight coming in the front doors) the girl who I hit it off most with and I go into the parking lot together. The lot is snowy and iced for some reason. She's worried her truck won't start, so I help and get it started, and offer reasons it may be doing this. Out of the corner of my eye I notice a guy with a gas can kinda following me. I walk over to my car to follow the truck(we're going to do more fun stuff together at a place that's open)and the guy follows me. Suddenly he's pouring reeking gasoline on the ground around my car and starts in on about how I invited people into the club/movie/store like some sort of bigshot, when I realize I hadn't paid my bill and exclaim as such. Then the guy is all nice and I wake up. I was sad, because it means the nice girl I met wasn't real at all, and I'll never find a place as cool as that club/movie/store was.

I think it was all just because I was cold while napping(no blanket), lonely(the girl) and needed to walk the dog(the urgency to go pay the bill).

My subconsciousness made me lonelier :(

Amusing

2009-07-01T00:08:00.000-07:00

Just watched "The Ramen Girl" with Brittany Murphy. Not the most remarkable movie, but I found it cute and humorous. I recommend watching it just to see the ramen of infinite sadness.

I want to fly to Japan just to eat the ramen.

A Story

2009-06-27T14:27:00.000-07:00

There once was a man that could unhook in time. He never did this for there was no need. Then there came to be a danger to all men. Plans were made and the man dropped out of time to help mankind stop the danger. Back he would go, and set in motion the steps to prevent the danger from mattering. The man thought, and planned for more time to perfect the steps, and to change himself to allow for more time to perfect the steps. So he unhooked from time, and was when he needed to be. Time waxed and waned as it does, and when it mattered, the man that could unhook from time had become a dragon, and released the steps into the world. The steps became rain, and washed across mankind, changing him for the better so as not be affected by the danger. The changes didn't not stop there however. No-one who went through the change could stay upset over being changed, for they understood that it was good. However, the changes went too far in a direction opposite of the changes the unhooked dragon-man had done to himself to cause the perfection steps. Then the dragon had to flee, for this perfect rain kills dragons.

More painting

2009-06-26T17:47:00.000-07:00

More of my painting. Been sick so not much done. I've learned to do the background 1st! lol. Also, need to thin the paint and redo the eyes, very chunky and poor right now. Same with whats there on the hand.

An Art

2009-06-19T14:34:00.001-07:00

Next blog will be a painting. WIP can be tracked on my FB page or here.

Sex!

2009-06-08T23:23:00.000-07:00

Lets start this blog out with a bang! Pun fully Intended ;)

Sex and the politics of sex are much in the news these days. Everyone wants to be in the old limerick, deciding who should do what to whom. I was warped early on on my own mores due to all the books I read, with Heinlein being a huge influence with Stranger in a Strange Land and his Lazarus series. I've always been of the opinion that people should do what they want within the umbrella of personal responsibility and the caveat of do no harm to others.

On Sodomy
It surprises and dismays me that there are still laws on the books against what people do literally twenty-four hours a day in this country(overall of course, not one tireless couple.) What's worse is that politicians are still advocating new repressive laws from time to time. Anything outside marital missionary copulation has busybodies trying to regulate other peoples private lives. How does it affect me or you where someone puts their genitalia with their significant other in the privacy of their own home? I can't see anything wrong with consenting adults getting their jollies off with 3 watermelons and some ball bearings if it doesn't affect anyone adversely.

On Homosexuality
Here's the big hot button of the day, especially in CA with proposition 8(known as prop H8 by the dissenting crowd). To quote Wil Wheaton, “Proposition 8 and the people who support it disgust me. Want to know why? Replace every instance of "same-sex marriage" with "interracial marriage" and see how bigoted and discriminatory it is.“ I really cannot think of anything significant to add to that. What does it matter that two people who love each other and engage in sex happen to be equipped the same? Makes no difference to me, I'm still not affected in any way and they're still not hurting anyone. Hell, from what I understand, homosexual marriage would actually boost our economy, what with increasing rentals and cake buying and such by a significant percentage. Being upset about homosexuality is no different than being upset over interracial couples or marrying outside your class.

On Responsibility
See, what all this boils down to is self responsibility, and your responsibility to others. As a society, we are, I believe, required to do no harm to others and they to us. What that means is I shouldn't take a shotgun to your face, and you'll refrain from swinging that machete at my arm. What it also means is I shall not interfere with your person, as I have no right to do so, until you bring your person unto me. You go fly solo, duo, trio or more in your room with as many partners and toys and toppings as you will, so long as you're being responsible to yourself, and to your partners, and refraining from hurting others, then I have nothing to say.

This also means that others have a responsibility to be sane when accidents happen. I recall a news article from several years back on a couple being charged for indecent exposure to a minor or some such concoction, because a child looked in a bathroom window at a mirror reflecting a mirror reflecting the couple during their relations. Not exactly public sex on a park bench. Of course some helicopter parent whipped up a storm of indignant fury that this couple dared to expose their precious snowflake to such things, never asking why snowflake was looking into other peoples windows. I hope you draw from this that just because you see something, doesn't mean you need to, or even should, act upon it. Maybe a mention of reflection and curtains in this case would have been acceptable. Public displays of affection? Keep on walking. Two girls kissing? I'm walking. Guys making out in a club? Still walking. Second base at the public pool? Yeah, cool it down, not appropriate.

What doesn't hurt you and doesn't hurt me doesn't need to be regulated. Also, it's none of your damned business, so stop voting about it.

“The ethics of sex is a thorny problem. Each of us is forced to grope for a solution he can live with — in the face of a preposterous, unworkable, and evil code of so-called "morals." Most of us know the code is wrong; almost everybody breaks it. But we pay Danegeld by feeling guilty and giving lip service. Willy-nilly, the code rides us, dead and stinking, an albatross around the neck. “
-Stranger in a Strange Land

Gas Station Ramblings (circa winter 07)

2009-06-04T22:50:00.000-07:00

Is there a beginning to us? Should there be? Where is the end of what we are? How does this existence extend our awareness to degrees of which our physical selves are unable(unwilling?)to follow. What is it that makes some need to believe in more than conductive sacks of meat, yet does not allow them to actually believe and take comfort in that selfsame needs ideals? Why do I hurt more, the more I feel? Why does it take happiness for me to feel my pain, for without the happiness, my pain fades into the gray of solitude, which while not happy, is not painful. Mere existence is infringing upon my mortality, I must begin to de-exist or I will de-exist. Flight of macabre fancy have gripped themselves upon my cortex an are causing the descent of my equilibrium. How does one find their counter-agent? What good is it to find a soulmate if they don't agree?