There has been a lot of great pro-atheist/secular press lately. Among the good news is a recent study showing a vast increase in the number of people calling themselves non-religious, and the decreasing numbers calling themselves religious. While I am heartened by this news and proud that the admitted non-religious now make up the third largest religious demographic, something in this report raised my eyebrow.

While virtually every single religion has lost ground, one group, the evangelicals, are gaining ground. Evangelicals encompass the so called “charismatic” churches. In your face, door-to-door evangelism to spread the viral meme that religion has become. This is the Rockin’ for Jesus crowd. These are the people waving their hands in the air while listening to bad 80s rock about fairy tales. The people that hold up signs about god killing soldiers because we don’t stone homosexuals; these are evangelicals.

So while the religion is very slowly getting smaller, (and thank god for that, ha!), it’s becoming bolder and more dangerous; concentrated idiocy.

As a people, we should be proud. It’s about time we’re able to say, out loud, that we don’t believe in this nonsense and that it just doesn’t make any sense. I believe it’s likely that the numbers of atheists have been up around 10% for some time and that people were simply afraid or too embarrassed to say anything openly. It speaks highly of us and our country’s development that this barrier is slowly lifting and that atheism is finally expanding.

Of course, the United States is still way behind much of Europe when it comes to accepting non-believers as equals. There are plenty of people in this country that have admitted they’d rather live next to a Muslim than an atheist, as completely idiotic as that is and despite the fact no atheists have ever bombed a government building or flown planes into sky-scrapers. There are likely even more people that are proud as some idiot redneck at a prize pumpkin competition that we lag behind Europe in this area.

The problem is, that the more evangelical we become as a country, the father behind we fall in the maths and sciences. Europe is making major headway into the physical sciences and is quickly beginning to upstage us. Japan is famously technologically advanced and is essentially always on the bleeding edge. All this technology has it’s roots in the educational system, science and academia.

Not surprisingly, evangelicals aren’t really fond of academia and learning. Evangelicals aren’t interested in anything other than, as they would likely put it, “The Word.” Unfortunately for us, however, the Word doesn’t keep the power on or put satellites in orbit or anything that’s actually useful. We are essentially losing our place as the leader of the free world because these backwards bumpkins, and those that enable them (I’m looking at you, Catholics and Lutherans), breed like rabbits. While they’re breeding, they make sure to breed in a healthy lack of respect for anyone that disagrees with their fanciful little worldview.

As I watch and read news and reports on the internet, I fear that the worst is yet to come. The fact that the most progressive president in history will still not endorse gay marriage because of idiotic religious objections to a private matter indicates just how far we have to go. The more we push out the envelope to making sure we are properly represented, which we simply are not, the more these backwards people push back, and they outnumber us. As we become more of a political force, you can bet that the full political power of the churches, who have never failed to butt into politics despite that tax-exempt status, will be brought to bear on us. The attacks will become more personal. <edited by user request> People like EvilTomte will feel the need to defend these idiots out of some misguided attempt at fairness. In doing so they will only risk endangering their own rights in their countries. The religious are not interest in fair, they are interested in following their religion first and foremost.

From my perspective, it has become the most important issue in my life, save my family’s safety. With the recent assaults on non-Christians becoming a much more prominent I have found it necessary to cut ties with my Christian friends, after realizing they will put their inane mythology ahead of my rights. It doesn’t matter that I’m not gay, had I been so, every single one of my close friends would have voted to take away my right to marry and I find that unconscionable. I consider it a matter of self-protection for myself and my family that I no longer associate with these people, in addition to being the only real action I can directly take against the planned erosion of my rights.

So the next few years, maybe the next couple decades, could be very interesting and will get darker before the next enlightenment hits us. The Dark Ages followed the fall of Rome, when neediness and a lack of education caused people to fall on old mythologies to make themselves feel better about their horrible lives and low standard of living. Religion has always preyed on those that need their lives to mean something, especially if that life is a hard one. The irony is that religion represses scientific advancement thus ensuring people’s lives remain hard: it’s a self-propagating system.

Atheism and secular society is entering the feisty teenager stage as it begins to understand it’s just as important and even more valid than these ancient mythologies. The old-school, all-controlling, oppressive religions are heading into their death throes… well, hopefully, anyway. The two are bound to butt heads directly and it wouldn’t surprise me if it did so physically. Perhaps when these archaic religions stop seeing their belief as a reason to wage war on other beliefs, I’ll be more like to associate with them. Until then I’ll remain wary of religion and its motives and will be sure to keep them at a safe distance.

Related posts:

1. You Do Have a Right to Remain Silent
2. Time for a Change
3. Today is the Day!

You hear a lot about free speech lately. Usually it’s someone complaining about some business or some person infringing on their right to exercise that free speech. Something I’ve noted about most of these complaints has always bugged me. Allow me to quote the actual First Amendment so we all start at the same place:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The important part of this that people seem to miss is the word congress. The First amendment protecting the right to free speech applies to protecting people from their government which is, in fact, the point of the entire constitution. For some reason, however, people take this to mean that they can say whatever they want, whenever they want.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Private business can restrict what is said by its employees. If I don’t like what you’re saying, I can tell you to shut up without infringing on your right. Newspapers and print can refuse to print something because they don’t like what you have to say without infringing on your rights at all. Where it gets tricky is television and radio, since they use airwaves that are legally owned by the public and the government. But as long as the speech is not being suppressed by the government or using the power of the government, it is completely legal to tell you to shut your pie hole.

In the same vein, I hear the same thing about religion. The same rules apply, as long as the government isn’t making rules establishing religion (or, as I read it, restricting or promoting it), it isn’t a violation of your rights. So when I tell you to take your mythological BS out of my public arena, I’m not violating your rights, you’re violating mine when you gang up and force government sponsored religion on me.

The First amendment… all of it… places a restriction on the Federal Government, period. So stop complaining about losing your rights when someone on the internet refuses to publish your rant or comment. The right to be a troll is not protected. You do have a right to remain silent… and it would just be awesome if you used it.

Related posts:

1. Darkest Before the Dawn
2. Time for a Change
3. Failure IS an Option

Over the last few months, the concept of “bailing out” failing businesses and industries has become pervasive. First it’s the banks failing due to their own greed and an excess of government intervention in the lending process. Next is the auto industry staggering under its own weight and failure to innovate. Most recently it’s the newspapers, finally falling prey to the inevitable death of the old media from the unstoppable pressure of the internet. The concept of the bailout is not a new one. For decades we’ve been sustaining, in what essentially is a long term bailout, the entire farming industry.

The problem with bailouts, however is that they are simply not American.

The entire concept of the American economy is based on our particular sort of economic Darwinism/Spencerism; the free-market economy. The economic powerhouse we became was because those businesses that dominated the landscape were the strongest; the most fit. They had to learn hard way. They had to create innovative… and sometimes unpleasant… methods of succeeding and taking and keeping the customer from going to the competition.

This approach to business has its roots in the very mindset of the people that made this country. They were the sort of people that struck out and tried to do things their way. They stuck their necks out and they knew they would either succeed or, sometimes quite literally, perish. Big gains meant great risk and bold action.

It’s not enough that people take these big risks. If every time someone tried something new they were successful it would sort of take the boldness and bravery out of the act. No one would ever really learn anything and bad ideas would flourish as well as good ones. It was just as important to the success of this country that some of the things people tried failed as it is that some succeeded and, of course, a heck of a lot more people failed than succeeded.

Failure teaches us the valuable lesson that it’s time to change what we’re doing. It is the impetus for gene mutation in this country’s economic DNA. Every time one business fails it teaches another business how *not* to run their business. Each failure is a lesson we can all benefit from.

There is a reason farmers are failing. We’re no longer an agrarian society and the primary business and product of our country is no longer food. We cannot expect to make a living fashioning stone spear-tips, either. Old businesses die out as the product they produce becomes less important or unnecessary. What is the point in supporting an archaic way of doing the food production of this country aside from nostalgia? Is our money truly best spent on nostalgia?

There is a reason the newspapers are failing. This is the digital age where news is updated by the minute, not by the day or the week. Periodicals and newspapers produce a product that is, by today’s standards, old news. If I grab a newspaper directly from the “presses,” it’s already a few hours old. Why people are worried about this backwards industry failing is just beside me. I don’t get my information from cave paintings, nor does the family gather around the radio to listen to serials. Technology moves ever forward and those that don’t change are left behind. This is a long time coming and I’ll personally be glad when everyone gets the news online.

There are a multitude of reasons the Banks are failing. Simplistically speaking it boils down to just a few. First, the government forced the banks to give out loans to people that would normally fail a credit worthiness test. It should come as no small shock these people are defaulting. Second, while banks were forced to give out a certain percentage of these loans, some institutions embraced the sub-standard mortgages with gusto and gave them out left and right; plain old-fashioned institutional greed. Lastly, if you work for $12/hour and your wife works part time and you have two kids, you cannot afford a $300,000 home; good old fashioned personal greed and a lack of common sense. Yeah, it’s worth several trillion dollars to save people and companies from being greedy. Or, how about this, we just let them fail and let smarter banks and credit unions benefit from the absence of these idiotic financial giants.

The Motor Industry is also failing from a myriad of issues, the largest of which is a failure to realize that giant, gas-guzzling, expensive to manufacture vehicles are not the wave of the future. In addition, giants like GM are finally beginning to understand that having 58 different brands isn’t always a benefit. This industry is notoriously slow to “get the hint,” and this sluggishness to react to the market is no small part of problems they have recently been faced with. If they go under someone will fill the gap. This is the absolute purest form of free-market survival of the fittest. If they’re failing, they’re not fit.

The dead horse I’m swinging at here is that when we take time and (vast sums of) money to prop these sorts of businesses back up, we are celebrating and enabling failure. By selecting these types of businesses or industries we are breeding the very failed portions of their economic DNA into all the businesses that descend from them. Not only is letting these businesses and industries fail an option, but it is the more preferable option in the long term. By suffering the small… and sometimes seemingly large… failures now, we save ourselves weaknesses in the economy down the road and build a better and more fit economic base.

So, after years of research and snide comments from school counselors and advisors, I can assert with certainty: not only is failure an option, it’s the best option!

Related posts:

1. You Do Have a Right to Remain Silent
2. Social Inevitability
3. Time for a Change

Like most of the geeky internet folk, I tuned in to watch the Family Guy episode last Sunday night. Like a lot of folks, I suspect, I was initially teased in by the reuniting of the Star Trek: The Next Generation cast that FG’s creator, Seth MacFarlane, was teasing to bring in viewers. I’m a big FG fan and don’t need much of a “hook” to get me to watch. The ST:TNG gag was more than enough. I went in expecting a decently amusing show.

What I got was freakin’ sweet.

The Star Trek business was just a hook, and was little more than an amusing side story with some killer cameos. The real story of the episode titled “Not All Dogs Go To Heaven” is about the outing of Brian as an atheist and his de-conversion of Meg. Most folks, I assume, figured Brian was at best an agnostic. He never really spoke openly about his faith, but MacFarlane is a relatively outspoken atheist and Brian seems, for most things, as the true voice of the creator (in more ways than one, har har).

But there was no doubt about it after Sunday’s episode. Brian explicitly outed himself. The town’s ensuing reaction is pretty much what most of us have had to deal with, just magnified through the comic lens. It commented on the fact that most Christians would rather actually have a person be a terrorist than an atheist, despite the fact that atheists don’t fly planes into buildings or burn compounds filled with children. I find it terrifying that, according to more than a few polls, people would apparently rather live next to a murdering psychopath instead of someone that doesn’t believe in a fairy tale like they do.

At any rate, the story traces Meg as she tries to convert Brian to Christianity. Meg is initially brainwashed by her own neediness, a lack of inquisitiveness and a good used-car style sales pitch… like most believers. By the power of Kirk Cameron, she becomes the absolute worst of the worst: a born-again Christian. During the family’s discussion of this and her blathering idiocy, Brian outs himself to the family. The family decries his belief (“we believe in god in this house”) and Meg takes it upon herself to “save” Brian. When Brian rejects her attempts, Meg outs him to the entire community and the town and all its businesses shun and ridicule him.

More importantly for the purposes of typical Family Guy humor, the town cuts him off from his “dear booze.” After a night of the DTs and a resigned sigh, Brian decides to lie to Meg about converting, and pretends to be a Christian to get his drink on. As she welcomes him “into the flock,” she invites him to a good, old-fashioned book burnin’! What could be more charmingly christian?! As Brian watches while religion does what it does best, repress knowledge, he has a crisis of conscience and reverts back to what he knows is right. As he turns “back to the light,” he takes Meg with him after a brief soliloquy on the virtues of fairness, tolerance and knowledge.

It’s gorgeous.

And based on the internet over the last couple of days, it hit home. Atheists, like myself, are by-in-large pleased. Some that don’t even really like the show like that it so cleanly stated the case and illustrated the ridiculousness of the believer’s view of atheism. Nearly all of us have been told, in some shape or form, that we’re “worse than Hitler.” To have it so plainly stated, and on one of my favorite shows, is a real unexpected treat.

I did a little digging around this morning, an apparently the non-atheists are screaming like a two-year-old in a toy store about how “unfair” this is. They are crushed and offended that this show got “preachy” on them. I think it’s marvelous to watch them have to deal with our point of view for a change. The funniest thing about this is that they complain about the preaching while choosing to follow religions where they show up once a week specifically to listen to preaching.

Some, perish the thought, don’t like the show anymore and may not watch again! Oh noez! I can almost hear a former friend of mine making a similar comment and complaining about how “liberal” the show has become and that he just can’t watch it anymore.” Bon voyage, buddy! That kind of idiocy and this “everyone has to be and think like me” approach is why you’re an ex-friend. I think Family Guy will do just fine without you all. Maybe without you idiots watching we can stop having to care about your frail sensibilities.

Family Guy. You rock.

Related posts:

1. Darkest Before the Dawn
2. Time for a Change
3. What’s in our spam queue? Brian shares his happy.

Like a lot of you, I’m still digesting the final episode to, in my opinion, one of the best science fiction series ever aired: Battlestar Galactica. I’ve watched the series since it’s sex-laden first season and watched it mature from a bow-chicka-wow-wow drama in space to an intense science fiction drama. The acting is superb, the space effects amazing and the story compelling. So now that the Galactica has finally been laid to rest, in an episode that will be talked about quite a bit, I’d wager; what’s next, Sci-Fi?

Nothing currently on air has a candle’s chance in a hurricane of keeping up with Battlestar Galactica, and that even when you figure in the year long break they were forced to take by the writer’s strike and Sci-Fi’s continually stupid scheduling decisions. Stargate SG-1 is well over. Stargate Atlantis is done, after finally succumbing to Deep Space Nine syndrome. You can’t make a spinoff of a series that gets a part of its magic from going different places every week and have that spin off be completely stationary. It was only after they brought in the Defiant that DS9 became interesting, and it was only after they brought in the Daedalus and occasionally made the city take off that Atlantis picked up. But regardless of how it ended, it’s over.

We’re between whatever meth-induced seizure Sci-Fi calls a “season” for Eureka, which I love. It’s quirky, smart, science-y and nicely geeky… but it’s no Battlestar. We’re also between “seasons” for Dr Who, which I’m not overjoyed about, but at least it’s an enjoyable appetizer, but only if there’s a main course coming up.

Aside from those two bright spots, the current slate of programming is amazingly dismal. Moonlight is so god-awful that it makes good television series in the past suck; its awfulness transcends time and space. This series is great for the idiotic teen Twilight crowd, but for more advanced life-forms, like humans and cats and… well, everything with a brain stem… it’s a life changing experience for the worse. I feel sad when I watch it.

Sanctuary makes me think about cutting myself. At first, despite the silliness of Amanda tapping with a British accent, I gave it a chance. I reasoned: “Star Trek: TNG sucked the first two seasons but by the fifth season it was awesome.” Despite all the horror book and movie histories they were trashing, I thought the series might build up into something more enjoyable. So far the only thing building is my nausea. If I have to wait 5 seasons for this to not suck, I’ll be watching it from a padded room.

And, lastly, while I find a great deal of charm in the B-movie line-up on Saturdays and Sundays, the movies are quickly moving from the “so bad it’s good” region into “so bad I feel like eating glass” territory. The most recent offering, Sea Creature, was so horrifyingly bad I felt like immolating myself. I couldn’t even watch it to laugh at it. Sci Fi has also taken lately to running a lot of horror films. Horror is not science fiction. Ginger Snaps does not belong on the a channel calling it self Sci-Fi.

A quick look ahead at what’s on Sci-Fi’s slate isn’t very encouraging, and the continued slow encroachment of bullshit reality style series like Ghost Hunters makes me very, very worried. The upcoming Caprica prequel to Galactica seems to be more of a plain old fashioned soap opera. We might as well be watching Big Valley re-runs. It’s science fiction, not just fiction and no setting it on another planet doesn’t make it science fiction if you’re telling another vanilla drama.

The only semi-promising news I’ve heard so far is Star Gate Universe. Since the series is still in development, there’s not a whole lot to talk about. Stargate is a great fictional universe and there is a lot of story-telling left to tell. However, I’m worried about two things: 1. the Stargate story hasn’t been told very well as of late and it’s possible the writers have just lost what made the original so great and 2. talk about gearing the new series toward a younger crowd. To be honest, I’m far more worried about the second potential problem. “Younger crowd” invariably means dumber writing and more moody bullshit. I don’t want to see Stargate/Star Trek as performed by emo kids, no matter how cool the effects might be. Hell, Stargate SG1 even made fun of the hipper version of itself concept during one of the Wormhole Extreme episodes.

I’m sure Sci-Fi will throw us a good and interesting mini-series as they usually do. Maybe we’ll get to see Stephenson’s Diamond Age finally make it, though the last rumors of that weren’t promising. But while Tin Man had a certain quirky coolness about it, it didn’t compare to the Dune mini-series, so the current trend is currently towards lower quality rather than better.

I hope the horizon brightens up a bit soon. I do love the idea of a real sci-fi network, especially this day and age where effects are easy to come by letting even independent voices bring great science fiction to the public. For now, though it looks like dark days ahead unless something changes.

Related posts:

1. Bravo, Battlestar Galactica!
2. Wolverine: Operation Not that Bad
3. WTF, Fox?!

Recently, like a lot of geeky type folks, I was warily taking part in the Windows 7 beta. I cleared a 30 GB partition for this on my primary System hard Drive and happily dual booted for a while. After a good while evaluating it, and deciding that I really liked what I was seeing,  I decided to get rid of the Beta and see what other mischief I could get into.

This was about about 8:30 Tuesday Evening and I was presented two basic options at this point:

1. I could resize my Vista partition back to the full drive and find some other way to amuse myself or
2. I could try out a Linux OS.

Not realizing the horrors that await, I decided to see what all the kids were talking about and try out Linux. I went and check out the various versions at distros (which is hip Linux slang for “Distributions” which the rest of the world calls “Versions,”) at DistroWatch and downloaded the latest stable Ubuntu and began.

Let me begin my horror story-critique by telling you all that I began my computing life back on DOS and earlier command based systems. I understand these systems decently well, even though it’s been a while since I’ve used them, and this brings me to my first and largest complaint about Linux in ALL of its distros …

It’s not 1995. Leave the command line for emergencies. I should not have to use a command line terminal to do the most basic of tasks, like driver installation. I update my drivers all the time and like to make sure I’m always using the latest stable drivers I can get my hands on. It seems like every aspect of using and installing Linux needs command line access through a terminal interface. And the commands can’t just be through my regular user, but through the uber-powerful ”Root” user. This adds an extra string to the command or requires that I open terminals or system functions through a different manner than just fucking clicking on them.

It’s 2009, people. I should be able to accomplish the vast, overwhelming majority of system functions with some clicks and a few scattered keystrokes. The only typing I should have to enter are user names and passwords. Until Linux leaves its Unix, command-driven roots behind, they will never be more than the OS for small pre-programmed devices like routers and the like. Windows and Macintosh have both shown that the computer can be used by anyone, all you have to do is know where to click. Linux seems like a step back. And yes, I know Mac was first…. I can give credit where credit is due.

At Any Rate, let’s see how each of the distros I tried fared individually.

Ubuntu
Latest release: 8.10

My First choice. Most popular by hits at Distrowatch.com and there is a great support community. It installed quickly; popped right up at boot.  I dug the look. I set up my normal static IP

address and was online in seconds. Unfortunately, I had to do this every reboot from this point forward since this latest *stable* release doesn’t save static IP Settings… no, I’m not kidding. Online guides I followed to hack my way around this failing resulted in disabling the Ethernet all together. Yes I followed them correctly. The online community is great; very vocal and always willing to come up with a solution that may or may not work.

I tried to install the latest nVidia Linux drivers. I have to tell the program I want the program how I want it to be run first. then I have to essentially leave Linux to a pure command prompt, and type in three excessive commands:

1. to stop some system service called X Server since the driver can’t install with it running
2. to  install the driver
3. restart the X Server

This resulted in a garbled low-res image of a menu that told me my drivers were incorrect and led me in a menu circle of, “This driver doesn’t work, try another. Would you like to use different drivers or use a default?” I tried to default to some pre-installed drivers a version behind, these loaded initially, and after a reboot resulted in another low resolution garbled screen.

At this point (4:30AM) the system became unusable. This led me to go to bed… with a headache. On Wednesday morning I tried…

OpenSUSE
Latest Version 11.1

Never installed. Started to, but then screen went black and stayed black despite me waiting for as long as 30 minutes. The hard drive light flicked occasionally but nothing more. I moved (relatively) quickly to…

Fedora
Latest Version 10

This also never installed, though apparently it’s because it never finishes the partitioning process. I’ll be kind and assume this is because I’m trying to Dual boot with Vista which is known for being a bit picky.

I stopped here, as I found out that the failed Fedora installation screwed up the GRUB boot loader and my computer was no longer booting properly. I rebuilt all of the boot files with the windows bootloader and regions and did what I should have done at 8:30 Tuesday Evening: I expanded my Vista partition and went looking for something else to do.

Three installations, three failures.

Oh, I know what’s next: “There’s something wrong with your hardware,” or “You’re a moron.” No, there isn’t and no I’m not. This is all on hardware I know is in great condition and working perfectly. Heck nearly all of it is new and not so bleeding-edge new that it’s unsupported. It’s just new enough to be good but stable and well supported. It’s all been burned-in and tested and retested when I installed the motherboard.

Let’s not forget that I also use this computer every day without fail and I haven’t had crash on since the new motherboard has been installed, some 3 months ago. I’ve been building and loading PCs since they were little more than a hobby piece.

The one possible issue I see with my hardware, according to the Linux devotees, is that my P45 motherboard chipset could be the culprit. Apparently there are a few issues between P45 and Linux. This board, however, is one of the more widely popular Intel Motherboards and the Linux programmers should be more aware of that. After all, everyone’s most hated OS ever, Windows Vista, works like a charm on it.

It wasn’t all bad. Based on the Ubuntu install and the couple Live CDs I tried at least this much is true:  Linux is impressive looking. It has a very slick look and lots of eye candy, if you want it, without much of a noticeable system slow down, either. Ubuntu loaded like a bullet. Fedora was very fast once it loaded from the LiveCD. It seems secure as heck, especially since you essentially can’t do anything without root access at the terminal. I’ll also be fair here and note that I was trying to dual boot these distros. Not all OSes behave well when it comes to dual booting. It is possible this and this alone is responsible for the problems I ran into, at least with openSUSE and Fedora.

You know, I remember the uproar when Windows Vista’s User Access control was a lot more prominent. Mac even made ads attacking it. Hell I hated it and to this day it’s disabled on this PC. Someone should have given these people Linux. Linux, from what I can see, is the triumph of security over usability. The upside, though is that with the massive amount of effort to accomplish the simplest of functions, it’s pretty hard for the end user to screw it up. Linux is on the cusp of being something really awesome, though. They’ve got the look, and the tech is great behind a bunch of it, now they just need to get someone to tell them that actual people will need to use it and show them what a mouse is.

I’ll take a look at it again in a year or so whenever they get past using the command line to do something as simple as install drivers. As far as my experience goes, however, I took the road less travelled… and based on my experiences; I can now see why no one takes it. It’s a road to a hell. This wasn’t even a new, different hell, but a hell I remember from before 1995.

Related posts:

1. Time & Money Saved. Shawn’s Easy Computer Tips, Part II
2. Perfect Disk 10 Review
3. Douch Bag Test

image ©: SalsolaStock .

“I could only watch in horror as he ran from me and into the middle of the road.”

“There was nothing we could do, she slipped through a hole in the fence and by the time we realized it, the neighbors dog had already gotten to her.”

“We found pieces of him strewn about the lawn.”

_______________________________

My opinion on leashes and the tragedies that could be prevented happens to be as road-rash intensive as several of my other opinions on pet treatment and care.

I am not entirely bitchface McGee about some things. I have all sorts of sympathy for those who have lost a pet due to tragedy, I am not unfamiliar with it. I have all sorts of understanding for those who have lost a pet due to their own mistake as several years ago I did something incredibly stupid that cost me my first pet cockatiel.

She was sitting on my shoulder so perfectly quiet that I had forgotten she was there. I stepped  onto the screened in porch for a moment to talk to Shawn. She was on my shoulder when I opened the back door and stepped outside.

I can tell you that the slow-motion impending horror often shown in movies is exactly what happened to me that split second as I watched her fly higher and higher away from me.  I imagine it is what might happen to those unfortunate pet owners who have witnessed their usually well behaved dogs suddenly veer from the curb into the road, or their cat, or those whom have watched in horror kitty climb over the fence to the neighbors yard who just happened to own a dog that’s been known to mangle. I have been there –but I don’t blame anyone. I know beyond a doubt that it was nobody’s fault but my own.

And I’m going to tell those of you who lose unleashed pets into traffic, backwoods and other places the same thing. You could have prevented tragedy with the smallest investment. You and I both know deep down in the cockles of our little hearts it could have been circumvented with a little time and thought. I could have kept that bird had I not been so righteously idiotic and you could have kept that puppy had you leashed her for her morning walk. You could have kept that cat had you kept him indoors to the best of your ability.

Anger is far, far easier than taking the blame for screwing up. It sucks having to sit down and realize that you’re at fault–I think it would suck far worse however, if we ignored the painful first lesson and repeated our mistake simply for the fact that we don’t want to take responsibility.

Don’t be angry … be responsible. Go out and buy a leash for Muffy McBarkersons right now.  Go out and bring Sir Meowsalot your non-feral cat inside, no matter how much he protests and do your best to keep the little dash-for-the-door at light speed idiot inside. Google dog training, clicker training. You can even Google how to teach your cat to not only learn to wear a harness and leash but take him or her for a walk while wearing it.

I don’t want to hear about how perfectly trained Snagglegrowls is and how he would never dare disobey a heel order–that’s like saying you never expect a kid or another living being to do anything unpredictable ever–animals do shit, shit that doesn’t always make sense. They spook at noises they never used to, they freak out at bikes, they dislike the sound of something or they run off to chase a plastic bag. There’s no fail proof training and no way to be 100% sure your animal will always heed you.

To me the argument about it’s only natural! These animals used to live in the wild all the time is senseless as well as bull.  Sure they did–and we used to eat raw bear entrails and throw crap. Several thousands years of adaptation and civilization has (mostly, we still fling crap but in so many more creative ways) changed us and we’ve taken domesticated animals right along with us. What was right and natural for these animals to do a thousand years ago no longer count. We have tamed them, bred them and created them to be wholly dependent on us, so it’s high time we made sure we take care of them properly. Instinct only goes so far faced with an endless city scape or an endless wooded backyard after months of being fed, pet, and sheltered inside by you.

So stop with the excuses. Stop with the angry noises. Stop with the blame, blaming some one or something else or yourself and stop something horrific from happening by doing such a menial little task as to be almost ridiculous.

Buy a damned leash.  Keep your cat indoors.

Related posts:

1. Pets and People: Sometimes you guys Frikken’ Scare me.
2. Hairball and litter bit treasures.
3. Dog Lovers Beware: Dangerous Toy.

I just wanted to send a quick heads up to those of you still watching and reading us: expect giant hiccups and bumps. We’ve just won a premium theme courtesy of Blog oh Blog and neither Shawn nor myself are experts in theme setting-up-of. (Hurrhurr, tech speak.)

Please be patient with the defaults, repeats, blips, blarps and any bloops and especially the mess of things while we sort everything out.

Just want to thank you guys for sticking with us, too. We really appreciate it! ♥

Related posts:

1. Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes, we turned ourselves around.
2. Braaaaiiiiinnnnsss.
3. We are full of Win?

First, let me preface this by saying I am the least political person on the planet–in fact, ask Shawn. When the discussion of politics comes about I immediately start drooling, my eyes roll back into my head after they turn glassy and if I don’t go into a coma right then and there I twitch off some place politic safe.

That out of the way, let me point out to you this delightful article written by Ms. Luscombe for Time magazine: Why Some Women Hate Sarah Palin.¹

Some stunning highlights from the article for those of you who might miss it:
“..that is never to discount the ability of women to open a robust, committed, well-thought-out vat of hatred for another girl.”

I know. I mean, I sit here all day at my computer so that I can figure out which chick to hate today and then do so with the gusto as well as dedication one can only find in the screeching herds of women during wedding dress sales.

“We savor the discord. We draw it out. We share our contempt with our friends, like a useful stock tip, or really good salsa.”

We do? Oh, yes of course we do, don’t we ladies? That’s what I want to do for the rest of my life; exchange delicious recipes of salsa-hate. I want to make a little hate-club where we meet for little hate-sessions with salsa and these cute little hate-hats. They’re just to die for!

“The hatred women have for Sarah Palin, and others had for Hillary before her, is not necessarily about politics.“

It isn’t? Really?

I love this article. Thank goodness for this article. Without it, I wouldn’t have known how petty and childish we women are. You know, for the longest time, I thought I didn’t like Sarah Palin because she thinks making rape victims pay for their own rape kit is a good idea, or perhaps because she believes that if a woman is raped by a stranger or her uncle, she doesn’t have the right to chose whether or not to have that child. I thought actually, maybe I disliked her, because as a woman with a soft spot for animals, her portraits standing by slaughtered wolves were just a tad alarming, not to mention her stance on wolf-hunting.

But no! That’s not it at all! Thanks to Ms. Luscombe, the truth of why we women really hate Sarah Palin has been revealed to us. Oh, rejoice! it’s because:

• She’s too pretty
• She’s too confident
• She could embarrass us

Man. I am so grateful that someone pointed this out to me, otherwise I would have continued on existing in my little bubble world of shopping, popping out babies, gossiping with the neighbors and spending seven hours a day on my make up.

Certainly, these three things are of the utmost importance. Everything else should be deemed as just shallow feminine pettiness! Ladies, let’s not get side tracked by policies, taxes, pithy things like laws and what not–let’s remain true to the heart of the matter! I mean, did you see the shoes she wore during the debate? Tch.

Oop! Got to go–my womb sense is tingling hate in another direction.

¹It’s come to my attention that this article is supposedly political satire, or might be–I missed the part that was supposed to be, y’know, funny. So my post stands and I’m not going to edit it.

Related posts:

1. Sandpaper goes…Where?!
2. Barefoot and in the kitchen.
3. Aging with grace and style.

If you own a pickup truck and live in Florida, I’ve got bad news for you.

Florida drivers are apparently known around the country for coming in two flavors: blue-haired grannies driving 45 miles on the interstate with the left turn signal on for 20 miles and senseless idiots riding on bumpers at 90 MPH… in the rain… at night. As a long time survivor of the Florida motorways allow me to confirm this in the most certain terms. Pretty much everyone down here drives like a moron, the only difference being some drive way over the speed limit and some way drive under.

However, there is a special brand of douche bag that I have been particularly annoyed with lately: the Florida pickup driver. Apparently before a person can drive a pickup here they are required to have a portion of their brain removed. The portion removed seems to be the one that controls respect for other human beings. Once removed, the Florida Department of Big’Ol Vee-hickles will fill the empty space with a secondary testosterone gland.

They drive as if the other vehicles on the road are somehow inconveniencing them. They weave trucks made for pulling horse trailers in and out of traffic like a sports car. Unfortunately, since that big ass dualie of yours doesn’t exactly turn on a dime, the rest of us have to ride our brakes when you’re around, because you sure as hell won’t look out for anyone else. They have mirrors so large they could be used as part of a solar farm and yet never even glance in them until *after* they’ve merged. For some reason they routinely seem to drag their 12 foot wide asses into the right lane to pass right at the on ramp, and screw the guy trying to merge, Mr. Truck-Owning-Douche-Bag has got to get to church on time!

If you’re sitting at home saying, “I’m not a douche bag and I drive a pickup truck,” only three possible explanations.

1.  You don’t live in Florida
2.  You’re horribly, horribly wrong and are, in fact, a complete douche bag.

I’m sorry. I’ve got the results of your Douche Bag test right here and… I’m afraid it’s bad news.

Related posts:

1. Mel’s Top Ten Ways to Seem like a Douche bag in any Game.
2. Think of the children…
3. Failure IS an Option