Monday, December 31, 2012

Goodbye 2012

The last moments of 2012 are finally ticking down to the end.  I have to to say, all in all, this was not the greatest year I can remember.  Lots of hate and discontent.  Unresolved issues will continue into the new year.  Broken hearts will stay broken.

Disappointments in the making yet to come are forgotten in these last few moments.  Future events will take care of themselves.  For the next 15 minutes, I will exist the here and now, soon to be that was then and this is when we begin again.

Begin again?  Does something magical happen that we experience a new beginning on the first day of the next year?  ............... Not really I guess.  Yet we still place significance on this night as we  pass from one year to the next. We have chosen  this date to purge the mistakes, sadness, and empty moments of our previous 365 days and replace them with hope for happier moments to come.  The empty moments yet to be are free and clear of guilt or misplaced angst.  The new year is full of nothing but hope and fear.  Only getting on with it will fulfill either.  Yet for at least a few minutes in between last year and the next, we can be happy, pleased, and generally satisfied.    We made it.


Happy New Year !!!

Monday, December 24, 2012

Christmas in Maine

I was breaking up a dead fall branch and jamming it into the next brush pile I planned on burning.  I saw Joe my neighbor coming out of his multi-car shed there next door.  I waved the stick I was working on at him and shouted, "Merry Christmas Joe".

Joe looked up.  He mumbled something like he always does.  Louder this time, "I can't hear you Joe",  I waved the stick at him again and shouted "Merry Christmas".

Joe stopped and looked up at the sky.  Loud enough this time for me to hear,  "Supposed to snow tonight."  He turned around and walked back into his multi-car shed.

Ya'll have nice low key holiday season, ya hear?  We always keep it low key here in Maine.

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Evil Needs No Why

A sick feeling came over me last week as I watched the initial reports about the school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut.  A similar wave of nausea I remember having when I watched the second plane hit the second tower back on 9/11.  Each evil incident unique in how it played out, yet both made me feel helpless and useless in the face of the absolute insanity and needless waste of innocent lives.  Only this time I have not tried to understand why.  Evil needs no why.  Evil just needs to figure out how.  And the perfect vessel for Evil is insanity.

I have stopped trying to understand the reasoning, the objectives, the point low life's use initiate such ghastly acts.  I have also stopped trying to find convenient labels that might offer excuses as to why these losers do what they do.  At some point, their reasons mean nothing once they enact their twisted perspectives into real action.  They stop being human and become something else.  Something evil inside a human vessel.  Any shred of humanity is gone once they have drawn down on their targets.  Any hope of saving them from themselves or saving us from them is gone as soon as their insane perspective becomes physical action.  Then it is time to clean up after them.

As a parent myself, I cannot fathom the depths of grief the parents of the 20 children killed are feeling right now.  I feel somewhat guilty that I hope I never do know those depths.  I do understand the need to find something to blame besides the perpetrator.  And because firearms were used, they become the convenient "other evil" in this scenario.  Unfortunately focusing all the attention on guns does nothing to address the core problem.  The core problem of mental illness.  For too long this country has been focused on controlling the tools of violence and not focusing on the user of those tools.  We are a reactive society, not a proactive one.

Maybe in addition to cleaning up some gun issues, maybe our leaders will also give mental illness and the damage it causes the attention it deserves.  We do that even half assed successfully and I imagine it will have a more positive impact than trying to control the stupid number of guns in this country.

This perspective from a mother of another troubled youth.

Later..................................
____________________________

Image "The Grief Knot"  from The Hungry Tiger and Wikipedia

Friday, December 14, 2012

Bonehead Alert

12/12/12 was a couple of days ago.  All day long, everyone was making a big deal of it.  Buying lottery tickets based on it.  Somehow betting on the horses also came up.  All over the place, folks ascribed some kind of magical celestial significance to this date.

The Zodiac, planet alignments and orientations were discussed with straight faces.  Sagittarius rising and the moon is on your side conversations. Yeah, many folks got fired up for 12/12/12.  I went through 12/12/12 positive it was just another day on the planet like all the rest.

I was in the kitchen about to sit down to some supper of leftovers, beer, and a yogurt for dessert.  On the Tube, Brian Williams was running through the latest 12/12 wackiness his lackeys had dug up for his daily "lighter news" piece.  I looked at my wife and declared, 'What a bunch of boneheads.  Nothin special about 12/12/12."

My darling wife looked up from her plateful of just barely left over left overs and stared at me.  Her fork had stopped midway on its way from her plate to her mouth.  A twinkle came to her eye.  Yet she said nothing.

"What?"  I was seriously clueless.

She set down her fork on her plate.  She continued to look at me.  A more amused look began to creep from the corners of her mouth and move up to her eyes.

Again, "What?"  Sirens inside began to warm up.  I might be clueless, but years of seeing that look on my lovely wife's face meant she was about to drop the hammer on someone.  And I was the only someone in the room.  I thought hard.  What was I missing, what had I screwed up?.....oh no, I was in need of an clue and there was not a one sitting in the waiting room with their hand raised..  I was about to panic..............................Oh Shit!  Realization was quite the rush.

 The sheepish grin of a bonehead caught in the act of being extremely stupid was all I could muster at first.  I had no words to smooth it over.  Might as well suck it up and take it like the dimwitted guy I was.

"Uh, well I guess 12/12/12 means something after all............. Happy Anniversary Babe."

My sweet wife smiled, "Nothin important huh?"  She picked up her fork and continued feeding her face.

Celebration of our 32nd anniversary was over, and I almost missed it..............once again.  I know I scored no points this time.  I do not deserve any.  But at least I was not reminded I had missed our anniversary a week after the fact.  That's when points, serious points and possibly some skin gets shaved off.

Later..................................

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Anonymous is Outta Here

Well.  I appear to have pissed off someone somewhere.  And this someone somewhere I have pissed off has the internet ability to unleash the teeming spam hordes onto my blog.  Every day, I delete many comments that are written in Cyrillic, Spanish, Italian, and really really bad English. ............. Sigh.

When the spam hordes first stormed my gates in appreciable numbers some years back, the blogger spam filter caught 90% of them.  That has changed.  The mob under the evil leader "Anonymous" have slithered their way past the Google guards, under the blog fence and have taken to kickin over all the furniture around the pool.

I can deal with the spam that Google rounds up for me.  The comments that have made it onto the blog however are another story.  And as much as I would like to continue letting anyone comment, I guess it is time I put a security guard at the door.  As of as soon as I remember how, I am going to stop allowing  "Anonymous" to comment on the BoZone anymore.  Seems I can't trust that guy.   Yeah he is usually angry, but when he starts talking gibberish and totally off topic - I mean what does porn have to do with gun rights?  Regardless, "Anonymous", you are outta here.  Sorry dude or dudette or maybe dude-bot.

And I apologize to any of you regulars if this screws you up.  But spending time dealing with comments that have no other purpose than to disrupt is not even on my radar of pleasant things to do.

Later.....................................


Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Reduction to the Absurd


I read this term as part of Supreme Court Justice Scalia's legal argument that equates murder and sodomy.  He responded to a college students question about this view.

Said Scalia - "It's a form of argument that I thought you would have known, which is called the 'reduction to the absurd, .....If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?" 

The term and the use of it in terms of Gay issues caught my interest.  Because a Supreme Court Justice was using this as support for his legal take on sodomy, I thought I better check up on what I thought Reduction of the Absurd was.  I had been rudely taught the lesson by my English teacher when I participated in the Debate team for a brief moment or two back in high school.  So I googled it.  

Wiki folks had this:

"form of argument which seeks to demonstrate that a statement is true by showing that a false, untenable, or absurd result"

It was as I remembered it.  I had been participating in a debate practice and had made some outlandish claim with no evidence to back it up.  Teach hit me hard in Latin with  "Reductio ad absurdum".  He was a snobbish know it all.  But to be fair to him, he was one of the best teachers I ever had.  He demanded my best.  He would not let me be lazy.

So here is Supreme Justice Scalia using this fallacious argument to support some of his views on things legal.

And Scalia is supposed to be one of our go to "wise men" we rely on to keep our laws fair and balanced?  He must have fallen back on this argument back in 2000 when he and his robed cronies gave the Presidency to Bush ll.  It was most certainly an absurd decision.

Later.......................................

Sunday, December 09, 2012

They're Gonna Take Away Our Guns

So I am not a real macho guy I guess.  I would be if I cared more about guns, ammo, and making sure no one was going to take them away from me.  But I don't care about guns one way or the other.  I think the fuss and dust stirred up by either side of the issue just helps to make this grand land of ours that much more interesting.   Own a gun.  Don't own a gun.  I could not care less.  Apparently though this gun issue ranks just below making it to Heaven and only slightly above keeping those damn homersexualls in their place by God.

Anyway, so here I am early Sunday morning, coffee cup full of fresh brew in hand,  and sitting in front the computer catching up on all the stupidity I may have missed out on the new politics forum since yesterday at this time.  Well lookee there, a new poll:

"Should Photo ID be Required Before Buying Ammunition"

I open the thread up and it is a yes or no vote poll.  I skip the vote because I really just do not care.  I hit the comments.  After all the comments are what make this so much fun.

I sift through the typical responses from the limp wristed liberals and the bad ass hunting is my life don't fuck with me or I'll shoot your sorry ass wingers.  And then I notice someone has suddenly brought the UN into the question.  Seems this guy, who reloads his own ammo and owns more guns than he can shoot in a month, and must be 8 feet tall with a package he has no need to over compensate for, well this guy, this dedicated packin Winger tells us and I paraphrase:

"I was readin somewhere before the election about how the UN is gonna take away our guns and Obama is going to let them do it.  Not sure what it was called.  Heard a lot about it before the election, but nothing since.  But for sure the UN is gonna go after our guns and why do we even have a Constitution if the UN can take away our guns?"

An image from South Park immediately filled my head.  Jimbo and his gay compadre, Ned.  So from now on, whenever I read a comment from this guy, unfortunately anything he writes will forever conjure up Jimbo in my head.

At least my Sunday is starting off with some hilarity.

Later............

Friday, December 07, 2012

Becoming a Dirty Ole Man in a Good Mood

So I have decided to take a new track.  Stop being so pissy.  Retire from the angry ole white guy club.  Easy to think about, fantasize about and dwell on the possibility.  Yeah, the dream comes easy, the Reality does not.  Execution is always the rub.  How do I go from months of peaking anger over the absolutely insane political and social stupidity brewing just outside my corner of Maine to the moment when I become one with my universe..........  to that point where nothing matters?

Hmm.....

Maybe it is my inability to think outside the box created for me at birth.  Possibly it is a genetic or gender thing.  But try as I might, I find it difficult to come up a similar number of options I had in front of me oh say 40 years ago when I was younger and number. Back when I was clueless and feeling overwhelmed I ended up picking the path of least resistance, which entailed picking a direction, any direction and putting one foot in front of the other.  Worked for me back then.  Got me to where I am today.

The road ahead has fewer forks.  Less variation in the curve.  And yet I find the difficulty in choosing a fork as tough now as it seemed back then and back when.  I have tasted one way to go.  There was some satisfaction I will admit being cantankerous and generally grumpy.  But the mood did not last.  I flat out just don't like being an angry old white guy.

So which fork is the one?  Which path is left that might give me some peace and maybe a smidgen of grace?

......Hmm.

I guess the only alternative to being an angry ole white guy is to work hard at being a dirty ole man in a good mood.  After all, enjoying the sights beats the Hell out of bitchin about there being no lights.  Watch out Ladies.

.....................Um..........Where was I?

Later Gator.................................

Monday, December 03, 2012

Monday Notes

Well I guess Life is back to being the idyllic existence it was prior to the election season.  A white woman across the pond is pregnant.  We can now rest easy knowing the great white monarchy will continue to thrive for at least another generation or two.    Halla - flippin -lou -yah.  Nobody holds onto stupid traditions like white folk.

Congress it seems is back to business as usual.  That is they are once more proving they were hired to do nothing but feed us lip service.  And the Right Wing continues to lead out for this totally useless excuse for a branch of our government.

The tragedy of a Pro athlete dying as the result of a murder/suicide was quickly picked up and turned political by the anti-gun crowd.  Bob Costas even used his sports bully pulpit to editorialize about how much we need gun control now. His claim was  KC linebacker Jovan Belcher and his girlfriend would still be alive had we better gun control laws.

First of all Bob......I hope I can call you Bob because you do not deserve my respect enough to call you Mr Costas.....Anyway Bob, I like my sports on the tube to be politics free.  And even before the bodies have cooled, you immediately turn it from a tragedy to a moment of political opportunism.  Pound sand Bob.  And I mean that literally.

I went to the Dump today.   Played chicken with a crusty old fart pulling up in his plow truck behind me in line at the hopper.  As I stepped toward his rushing plow truck to give me and my truck some space, he had to hit his brakes and screech to a halt about 6 inches from my leg.  We looked hard at each other.  I smiled.  I won this round and he knew it.

Yeah Life seems to be returning to something resembling normal again.  Crusty old farts are again butting heads over stupid encounters instead of politics.  Women are getting pregnant.  And Bob Costas is back to his semi regular op/ed moments of stupidity.  Even better, the Sun's out bright and even warm.  Must be 45'F out there.  T shirt weather..........

Life is beautiful............Later ...........................