Marco Rubio, the last, worst hope of the GOP

There are a lot of polarizing figures in this campaign season,  the general wisdom is that the wackos like Trump, Carson, or Fiorina, will weed themselves out and we'll end up with a more centrist seeming candidate who unites the base behind.

I don't know how much we are going to see that this time around, let's look at the "sane" options this year:

JEB! Has been doing everything in exactly the worst way possible, and the fact that his dad used to run  the CIA will be the only thing keeping him from getting murdered by his billionaire donors.

John Kasich, well, no one knows who is is or really cares, he is perhaps the most boring person in the race and the one thing he did to stand out was to advocate for a government agency devoted to pushing Christianity into areas like the Middle East or China, which was so astoundingly unconstitutional that even the wingnuts in his party distanced themselves from it, the base of course didn't like it because it was increasing the size of government, but other than that he has stayed quiet and unexceptional.

Chris Christie basically wants to be a mobster, may actually devour his enemies, also hugged Obama once and is thus forever tainted.

That leaves Marco Rubio, the subject of this writing, Rubio, man I don't know what his deal is, at first glance he is an ideal candidate, appealing to minorities but his Cuban decent means he is from a group that is palatable to most of the racists in his party, he is by far the best looking of the candidates, and if he really tries, he can even seem charming. He also holds the required views, against gun control, gay marriage, and abortion, for killing Muslims and spending money on the military, claims to hate Washington. Additionally he attends both evangelical and Catholic churches, and has been emphasizing his history of being a Morman, so he has a religious angle he could work too, though he is doing it in the dumbest way imaginable.

However...

He isn't polling great, and doesn't seem interested in turning that around, here is an example of how devoted he is to touring, spoiler for those who don't click the link: He really isn't.
That would be fine, and even could be turned into a pro for him if he was doing something else like participating in the Senate, but he seems to miss more votes than he attends these days, and makes very little effort to stand out when he does. Outside of debate appearances and a few, very few compared to other candidates, appearances in Iowa recently, he is not spending a lot of effort on the campaign.

Pictured: Effort

My theory is that he never expected to be here and doesn't know what to do, see, he has been a protege of JEB! And I think that when JEB! announced, he decided to run, not to compete, but to raise recognition in an effort to get a VP slot when JEB! was crowned, so he didn't do things like prepare a comprehensive strategy in the early states, or get a top shelf team that could do that for him.

But then it turns out JEB! is completely incompetent at campaigning, it took a while, but by this point it has been conclusively proven, I don't know if it is because he doesn't actually want to be president, or if he is just that bad at it, but I am leaning towards the latter option, yes, despite any logic or sanity, it turns out that W. is the smart brother.

That leaves Rubio as the establishment darling, but he isn't ready and I don't think he will be, I know that if Reince Priebus has his way, Rubio gets the nom, but I don't see it happening at this point without shenanigans to remove Trump from the equation, and that might destroy the Republican party, which I would shed no tears over so really we win either way.

Rubio is pretty incompetent himself, someone who was really serious or skilled would have seen JEB!'s decline and jumped ahead of it, courting his donors and hiring staff away from him, as well as setting themselves up as the high energy option and thanking their lucky stars that Trump is in the race to play the villain so they can retain their nice guy charm, but if this primary season is characterized by anything it is by the incompetence of virtually all parties involved.

Basically I hate all these people and their ongoing downfall brings warmth and light into my heart during this cold, dark winter season.

just stuff in my life.

I miss role playing, but my work schedule doesn't really accommodate a regular day, I think I might try to do a play by Skype or email type game at some point soon. Maybe it will inspire me to be more productive or something, though I guess a regular sleep schedule might help with that too.

I dunno, I am out of inspiration today and don't have the energy to be outraged at the moment, screw it, going to bed.

Oh, I guess if anyone cares, Zena is recovering well, coughing much less, still sleeping most of the day but is much more alert than she has been, has a follow up doctors appointment tomorrow, well, today anyway to confirm it.

Oh, I am developing yet another toothache, nothing major yet but the one remaining tooth I possess with a hole in it has gained an uncomfortable temperature sensitivity over the last couple weeks, fortunately the New Year is approaching and my insurance will be able to cover what will hopefully just be a filling, I have an appointment next week.

That's it, that's all I got.

Tamir Rice

On November 22nd  of last year, a police officer shot and killed Tamir Rice less than two seconds after getting out of his cruiser.

Today a grand jury declined to indict him or his partner for the murder.

This despite the video that clearly shows the shooting, this despite the fact that Rice had nothing other than a toy gun and didn't have a chance to either make a threatening move or to put his hands up, this despite the fact that even if it was a real gun, Ohio is an open carry state so having it wouldn't have been illegal.
I wonder if the NRA is going to make a comment about how a civil liberty was being ignored? Actually I don't, they won't.

The so called prosecutor on the case worked more as a defense for the murderer and, just like with so many other cases, influenced the jury at every stage of the process to return a non-indictment verdict.

Remember, when a grand jury convenes, they aren't judging guilt, it isn't a full trial, they are simply judging if there is enough cause to justify going to trial. And for any other killer in America not wearing a badge there certainly would have been, or possibly if the victim had a skin color other than brown there might have been.

But he didn't, and the public seems to increasingly feel that having a badge means open season on minorities, and that this is both expected and acceptable. The entire legal system is built around letting the authorities get away with whatever they feel like doing, from petty theft to murder, as long as they do it to the underclasses

And of course, it is another example of the nations love affair with guns and how it ties into the entire racism/classism/toxic masculinity mess. Tamir Rice would probably be alive today if that cop didn't have a firearm, Tamir Rice would probably be alive today if he was white, Tamir Rice would probably be alive today if that cop didn't think he needed to use his gun to feel like a man, if he wasn't such a coward he could have assessed the situation before firing, if he wasn't such a racist he wouldn't have fired at all.

And people crawl out of the woodwork to defend him, "It's a hard job!" they wail, "You need to make split second decisions." they argue, "That boy shouldn't have been there anyway!" the snivel, the cowards, the racists, the spineless shitheels saying the same mindless drivel every time one of those charged with our protection commits murder. They are worthy of less respect than the out and out white supremacists who celebrate that another one of "them" won't grow up, at least the white supremacist isn't hiding his ideology behind some facade of caring, at least he isn't pretending the victims are worthy of consideration. And make no mistake, the apologists believe very little different than the overt racists, they just know they will be condemned if they say it, so they keep their dog-whistles out and eye their partners who don't hide their views with envy as they justify another killing.

The police don't deserve their guns, and increasingly they don't deserve our respect, yeah it's a hard job, and nobody forced you to take it, but you did, so perhaps you should attempt to actually do the fucking thing right? Yeah you have to make snap decisions, but here's the thing, your snap decisions have to do with how you protect the public, not how you protect yourself, if you think a twelve year old needs to be gunned down in the street almost before you get out of the car, then perhaps you don't have the courage to do the job after all, if you aren't willing to risk your life to prevent the needless death of a civilian, then you don't deserve the badge. We are less safe with you on the force, leave the force, go into nearly any other job as along as it doesn't involve you being in power and having a weapon.

In the past I have tried to avoid generalizing when I complain about cops, but I am not doing that today, the cops do not deserve it, yes, of course there are good people on the force, and yes there are many, perhaps a majority, of non-racist power mad cowards as well, but you know what? As long as they refuse to rein in the excesses of their profession, as long as they cover up crimes their brothers in blue commit, or stay silent when they see violations of law or policy, they are as complicit as the scum who shot Tamir Rice over a year ago, and they don't deserve their badges either.

Justice is for everybody, or it is for nobody.

There is no justice for Tamir Rice.

The Expanse

I think I this whole winter break and Zena being sick has really damaged my sleep routine. I rely on her schedule to keep me on something approaching a human schedule myself, and since that has been thrown off everything is out of whack. Hence me posting at five AM when my body finally decides to tell me that it is tired as hell.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I have been watching a lot of television, along with the usual suspects I started watching The Expanse, and I recommend everyone check it out, I have only seen a couple episodes as yet, but so far it looks like a smart, well budgeted, tense, sci-fi thriller/horror/drama. And it is on SyFy which I didn't think was capable of throwing enough of a budget at a show to make it look good, or of getting decent actors and writers to do anything, but I guess Christmas is the time of miracles or something.

Anyway, that's all I got for now, morning!

Words, complaining about words.

I don't have a ton of inspiration today, so I am going to complain instead.

Zena likes to have some form of audio on when she goes to bed, I require nearly absolute silence to sleep but I usually go to bed some hours after her so it isn't a problem for me to turn it off when I climb in, her noise ranges from movie soundtracks, to actual movies, to audiobooks, it is the latter that I wish to complain about tonight.

Zena has a love for terrible mysteries featuring a curiously financially independent and nosy female protagonist who lives in a small town with an inordinate amount of murderous folks living there, good for at least one body per novel. Usually I don't mind these that much, but tonight's offering is particularly abrasive, I speak of the Aunt Dimity series by Nancy Atherton. Apparently Aunt Dimity is a ghost who communicates through a journal held by her niece? And together they solve crime. Pretty sure this is also the plot to the short lived 90s TV series Ghost Writer as well and it would be a pretty decent premise except for the fact that the crimes are unbearably banal it seems.

The current one includes a wealthy dead recluse, but it is quite clear that he died of natural causes and is not the subject of the investigation. So far most of the attention is given to a wishing well, and the fact that it is really rainy, this is a big deal in England apparently, where excitement is hard to come by I guess, as I write this a major piece of drama is revealed when one character is mad at another because... they didn't buy something at a rummage sale? It is not really clear.

The word tweed is used several times, and every time a new character is introduced, or a character we have seen before is seen again, at least a paragraph is devoted to excruciating details of the clothing.

The woman reading the audio book has perhaps the worst English accent I have ever heard.

I don't think anything interesting is going to happen in this story, I must go to bed to protect my sanity before I have to listen to another description of a lunch break.

Oh, and before anyone thinks I am criticizing Zena's taste in books, I totally am, but she acknowledges they are terrible and likes them anyway, also doesn't mind my complaints as long as I am funny about it, I like some pretty trashy stuff too, so I really don't deserve the high ground here either.

Cooking: Cioppino

Cioppino is an Alaskan seafood stew, for whatever reason my family got into the habit of having it around the winter holiday, and I have continued with my own variation on it, it makes enough for six people or so, but like many stews it does get better left over as the flavors blend. Cioppino is a fun dish, it  looks really fancy and stuff, but it really requires very little effort and no challenging techniques.

You will need:

2 14.5oz cans of stewed tomatos
1 bottle clam juice, I forget the size, it's like 8oz I think
1 cup red wine, remember if you wouldn't drink it, don't cook with it, but you don't need to spend a lot either.
3 cups beef broth, I wouldn't recommend using a bouillon mix for this, too much salt in those and the recipe is salty enough.
2 cans spicy V8 or other vegetable juice
1 onion, chopped
4-5 cloves garlic, chopped
1 large red bell pepper, chopped, you can use green here, but I like the red better.
1 large dungeoness crab or 1lb canned crab meat, get the actual crab if you can, the canned stuff is of indifferent quality.
1 lb cod or other white fish of you choice, I have made this with tilapia, cod, and various others, basically white and flaky is what you are looking for.
1 pound clams or mussels in shell, you can use canned again, but I like having the fresh ones, also the shells please me for some reason
1/2 pound bay scallops, the little ones.
1/2 pound of them little shrimps


Prepare your ingredients, open cans, chop vegetables, ready your fish.

For your shellfish, they often will have sand in them, a thorough rinse helps, but if you can leave them in a large bowl of water for twenty minutes it will extract a great deal of grit as the critters breath it out. Dump the water and rinse.

Extract the meat from your crab, if you can have your seafood department person clean it for you, otherwise pry the shell off and using fingers and running water, remove the yucky stuff, basically you want to be seeing white or at worst, slightly yellow flesh, nothing green! I don't bother with nutcrackers and those weird little picks, use kitchen shears, they can crack shells and they can cut them, make sure you have a towel nearby as the crab will leak.

Cut the fish into smaller than bite size chunks.

In your largest pot soften the onion in your choice of cooking fat, I use butter for preference, but if you use olive oil the recipe becomes paleo, which is relevant for my household. Have patience here, use low to medium heat you need the onions to do the majority of their softening at this stage because this stew doesn't cook for hours like many others do.

Add the garlic and the pepper, give them a couple minutes as well, stirring a bit.

Apply all the liquid ingredients and the tomatoes, cover and allow to come to a boil.

Add the fish and clams, cover again and cook on low for fifteen minutes or so.

Add the crab, cook for ten minutes

Add the shrimp and scallops, cook for five to ten minutes.

Done!

Timing like this is due to rawness mostly, you want the fish to be at the falling apart at a touch phase, so it goes in first, you want to not poison yourself with undercooked shellfish, so the clams go in early too. The crab should already be cooked if you bought it at the usual grocery store, if you bought a live one you will need to boil it first. It gets a little less time, but still long enough to blend with everything else.
I like tasting shrimp, and the tiny ones get really tough if they are in for too long. The scallops are delicate and you want to actually taste them too, so they only get a little time.

The recipe keeps pretty reliably for up to a week in the fridge, but don't tempt fate and wait longer.

There are several cioppino mixes you can find in the seafood and frozen food sections of the supermarket, shun these, they are basically bags of salt and nothing else, they will have no complexity of flavors and are generally terrible. Similarly I have found little to like about cioppino served in restaurants as well, they just aren't right, and if you are gonna invest in a recipe, do it right.

It is an investment too, you don't need to buy the most expensive fish in the world, but if you are buying fresh fish for this, you should expect to spend fifty bucks or so on ingredients, it's totally worth it once in a while though.

Christmas thoughts.

Due to assorted reasons, we had a sort of piecemeal Christmas this year that we celebrated on the Eve, with Zena being sick and thus unable to travel, and Tara still recovering from surgery and with a child who is walking now, things were a bit less organized than we are traditionally used to, I managed to cook though so that was nice, made cioppino, which is a seafood stew, the recipe for which I shall share with you later, also I made two kinds of cookies and experimented with salt and pepper shrimp, which turned out quite nice.

...

I feel I should make it clear that the shrimp had nothing to do with the cookies.

Today was not without sad news though, as I discovered a poll that shows the majority of Americans don't think Die Hard is a Christmas movie, the majority of Americans are terribly wrong and should be ashamed, Die Hard is the best Christmas movie save for, maybe, The Muppet Christmas Carol, which to me sets the standard for how that story should be told.
I assume most respondents to the survey had forgotten the original Die Hard and were instead thinking of one of the more modern entries into the series, and in the spirit of the season I forgive them for their ignorance, though I do not forgive the film makers for the modern entries into the series, only coal for them, I am sure Santa will back me up on this.

On the whole I don't care for most Christmas movies, but I make exceptions for those ones, I guess I can appreciate the sentiment in most of them, but I never picked up a major association between movies and enjoying Christmas, so the connection just isn't really there for me.

But enough about what I don't like, time for bed and to hope for a freak snowstorm, Merry Christmas everyone, even if you don't celebrate it, it is now the date of the holiday so I hope it goes well for you anyway.

Be good to each other, Merry Christmas.

Schlonged!

TRUMP

So he's awful, on that we can all agree, his presence encourages the literal worst parts of society into thinking their opinions are worth anything and he brings down the level of discourse by his mere presence, he isn't alone in this, but he is by far the most visible example of the increasingly marginalized and delusional far right clawing for relevancy. He would be hilarious if he wasn't literally advocating genocidal policies, and if America was ever going to go the way of Nazi Germany, it will do so if he gets elected.

And yet, his massive incompetence is actually funny sometimes.

You may be aware that Trump had a rally recently, or maybe not, he has something like four of the damn things a week, this one was special though, this one included the line "She was favored to win and she got schlonged, she lost."

This naturally got a reaction, and his response was basically to deny he said anything controversial, dirty, or sexist at all, saying that it was a "commonly used political term" he is wrong on basically every part of that sentence, schlonged has been used in a political context perhaps nine times that we have records of, and that is being generous, in most of those examples in the link, it is quite clear what the user of the word is intending to say.

First off, schlonged isn't a word, schlong is though, it's of Yiddish origin, and it means penis folks, it has no verb form but I suspect you can draw your own conclusions here, and in context it is a bit worse, he was referring to her defeat in the 2008 Democratic primary at the hands(schlong?) of Barack Obama.

There is no other way for someone to take the phrase, and the fact that he absolutely refuses to back down on this is pretty hilarious, it could be easily passed off, he doesn't work from a script when he does his rallies, so he could just say he was in the moment and used the wrong word, but no, he turns it into an attack on PC culture, which of course his base eats right up, but the thing is, he already has the hearts and minds of the horrible people in this country, he could choose not to make a misogynistic attack on a female opponent in favor of trying to sound at least a little appealing to moderate conservatives, or hell even Democrats who are disillusioned with Hillary, it would be easy too!
"Hillary Clinton does not want to be president because she cares about this country, she wants it because she feels like it is her turn, she was favored to win in 2008 but Obama beat her out of nowhere, and she has spent eight years plotting to get back in the race we don't need another Clinton in the White House". There, you've painted her as a manipulative politician out for herself, and then you can turn to attack the Clintons on any number of issues. And it wouldn't even be a complete lie!

But he doesn't do that, instead he gets mired down in dick jokes, intentional or otherwise, and further alienates the women in the base.

It both annoys me and gladdens me that the GOP candidates are showing a combination of evil and ineptitude that would make a classic James Bond villain feel like they have a pile of relatives, there is something about the fanatical mindset, and make no mistake, these are fanatics, that seems to eliminate the idea that rational thought is actually an asset, which makes sense, rational thinking would mean they'd have to look at the policies they advocate and realize they are uniformly terrible and no one likes them. In the past those advocating this stuff weren't true believers, merely pandering to them, so they were capable of tailoring their message and keeping their racism and misogyny to dog whistle levels that they could semi-plausibly deny if called on it.

They can't do that anymore and even if Trump doesn't secure the nomination, the damage is done, any of the pack of imitators, cronies, and psychopaths who get the nomination will be completely unable to win in the general due to the damage they had to do to themselves to even get in the race, it is terrible, sad, and glorious and the Republican party will burn as it deserves come the new year.

Towers, by Karl Fischer

I've talked about Karl's writing before when I wrote about his as yet unpublished novel Grave Digging in Dreamland. Short recap: I enjoyed it.

That book is still unpublished, however Karl has written a new story and that has been published by Eraserhead Press, personally I feel they are doing him and themselves a disservice by ignoring the book, but I am not a publisher so whatever.

Towers is the new story, a novella is the correct term I think, it's pretty short.

I could actually tell you what I think about it too I guess, I enjoyed it! I bought it a week or two ago and read it, then have been thinking about how to write about it since then. Essentially it is a love story set in a pretty awful future where humanity lives in cyclopean, nuclear armed Towers as a defense against rampaging giant monsters which assault humans constantly for reasons that remain unclear.

Lots of stuff is unclear in the story really, and that is kind of the point I think, like I said it is a love story where two people are trying to find each other and be damned to everything else. If they don't care about the whys and the wherefores, why should we? Nasty, inexplicable shit happens to the protagonist, and he has no idea what is going on either, but it is clear that at least some of the characters do, there is a logic and organization to the things that happen in the story, it's just that no one cares or bothers to explain anything to the reader or the protagonist, so you get a real sense of confusion and isolation.

This would actually annoy me to no end in a longer story, at some point stuff needs to start making sense to me, I tend to stop caring eventually when the author has no interest in explaining themselves or at least giving me hope that something other than relentless horror will happen to someone. But for a short form like this it works quite nicely, keep things tense until the end.

The end does sort of happen kind of suddenly and out of nowhere I thought, I am not sure if that is actually true though or if I just wanted to read about giant monsters for a while longer.

Towers can be bought on Amazon in either print or Kindle format and you should get it if you like weird love stories.

Speaking of weird stuff, I don't usually like bizarro fiction, admittedly I don't read a ton of it but I have dipped into the genre a time or two and often I find the plots incomprehensible and the authors more interested in either being as gross as possible or telling us in great detail about their incredibly specific fetishes rather than actually having a narrative, it's nice to not have to deal with any of that here too, I do have to warn people that gross stuff, and sex stuff, including non-consensual stuff, does indeed happen in the story, so if that isn't for you then, I am sorry, but it really isn't the entire thing.

Another one of those days

Not sleeping that great at the moment, I blame Zena as she has a persistent flu and is uncomfortable pretty much one hundred percent of the time.

Visited my brother earlier out in Salem, he's in decent spirits and the visit went pretty well.

That is... pretty much all I got, I was gonna write about this story a friend of mine wrote and got published, but since I am having difficulty putting sentences together I will wait until I am rested to talk about that, next time!

The Cove

Murder is a major problem in the big cities, but under the radar, a small town in Maine becomes the most dangerous place to live, with literally dozens of murders a year and a population of only three thousand, yes Cabot Cove is surprisingly deadly. But why?

The murders are all explained, petty theft, jealousy, or inheritance issues usually, but many of them do have one link: Famous novelist J.B. Fletcher lives in town and involves herself in the investigations regularly, finding motive and evidence where the police can't.

Or does she?

That's what Special Agent Hank Masters of the FBI wants to know, he thinks there is a pattern to the murders, possibly even a group behind them, he suspects a cult, and suspects Fletcher knows more than she is letting on.

Tiffany Starling wants to know too, the heiress recently lost her brother Samuel under suspicious circumstances in Cabot Cove, and she wants to know how J.B. uncovered a drug habit of his that even his sister didn't know about for a motive,

Lifetime Heritage Insurance is interested as well, they have payed out millions in policies over the last few years and are fed up with it, sending the husband and wife team of Ed and Lilly MacMillian to see if they can discover if the stories hold up with the evidence.

Once in town, these people will discover a plot going deeper than they ever thought possible, what is the connection between these murders? Who are the Nieces and Nephews? What is the connection between Cabot Cove and a small town on the Massachusetts coast whose inhabitants were all arrested for bootlegging in the 1920s?

And finally, can they survive once the monstrous truth becomes known?

Talking bout the Democrats.

The latest debate happened today, this time with the Democrats, I had to work and honestly, they aren't nearly as entertaining or terrifying so I haven't been watching these ones much, I have however read some recaps and watched a few highlights and it is so reassuring to actually watch people talk about issues with each other and not sound like they are planning literal genocide. The level of discourse is elevated, is what I am saying.

The debate was between Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O'Ma- haha yeah it was between Hillary and Bernie and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Now I fully expect Hillary to secure the nomination, even though Bernie is my personal pick. Clinton is a really good politician, and that is actually something that helps kind of a lot when you want a job in politics, but so is Sanders really, and he's got a crapton of experience too. Hillary's big weakness I think is that she isn't much of an orator, I never feel inspired when I listen to her speeches, more than that I never really feel like she is inspired when she talks, there is this sense of calculated control whenever she speaks that doesn't help her speak with feeling. There are good reasons for this, she, more than any candidate in history, has to be excruciatingly careful when she speaks to avoid being taken out of context, and she has been learning that since 1992, I don't think she can turn it off and I don't really care if she does or not, but I can see why people don't get inspired.
Sanders on the other hand very much does sound like he is invested in what he is saying, sometimes to the point of sounding like a crazy grandpa, he's no Obama, but pretty much no one is, and he has more charisma than the entire Republican field put together even so.

The DNC has pretty clearly decided that Hillary should be the nominee, we've seen that with the news coverage all but ignoring him during the post debate coverage as well as on the campaign trail, as well as earlier this week when the DNC flagrantly attempted to shut him out of some pretty important resources on a quite flimsy pretext, they quickly reversed position when the public got word of it, and that whole ordeal is what might be turning me around on him, like I said, I don't think he is gonna win, but I am not as certain right now as I was two days ago.attendance at rallies, and petition signing still doesn't equate to voting, but enough people put in enough effort to make a national organization sit up and take notice, and that ain't nothing.

I do not subscribe to the idea that a politician must hold the same opinion throughout their entire career, the term "flip-flopper"  as an insult baffles me, of course someone can and should change their mind on important topics as new information comes to light, as Clinton did on the gay marriage issue, this actually encourages me, however it is clear that Sanders has been holding views I agree with for a lot longer than Clinton has, and you have to ask yourself, "why did she wait so long to change?" I don't feel like her changing is a weakness, but the fact that Sanders had the right opinion for so much longer says something about either her willingness to accept new information or her willingness to ignore new information until it is politically advantageous. And that sort of makes the difference to me.

But like I said, as long as it isn't one of the line of proto-rage zombieson the GOP has to pick from, I don't care who gets it, ideally it's Bernie but if Hill-dawg gets it, that works for me, she'd probably do better in the debates for sure. Being a strong researcher and concise speaker.



That's all I have for tonight, time to go pass out.

JEB!(It connotes excitement)

As you may be aware, I have been following the Republican primary this year, partially because watching a dozen people trip over each other to become Saturday morning cartoon villains is hilarious, and partially because I want to see the end coming and have my last words be "I told you so" as the world burns.

Trump, Cruz, Carson, and the rest of the fringe gets a lot of attention, and rightfully so, we have a literal Nazi, a half melted butter sculpture given line by dark magics, and a sleepy brain surgeon who doesn't really seem to know why he is here, they are pretty interesting, but I feel the ongoing collapse of John Ellis Bush's campaign is worth talking about.

JEB! Has attempted to rebrand himself something like four times time, his campaign, and the SuperPAC backing him has spent about a hundred million dollars on ad buys, he comes from a successful political family and netted a lot of influential endorsements early on, and yet he continues to stumble at every hurdle in the way, from fantastically mishandling questions about the Iraq war, to attempting to make Trump apologize for insulting his wife on national TV, failing and backing down like a loser, then high fiving the man later, it appears his heart just isn't in it.

I personally believe he doesn't actually want to be president, and may just be running because it is expected of him at this point. Now don't be fooled into thinking I have sympathy for him, the Bush family is directly responsible for the deaths of millions as a result of three or four wars, as well as the collapse of the economy, their plunge into disgrace warms my black heart, the campaign will fail, and some very powerful, very rich people will be asking some very pointed questions of the Bush family, and this pleases me.

As ongoing evidence of the campaigns utter incompetence, I present to you a series of images culled from official campaign materials mostly, so remember as you look at these, that this is the stuff somebody trusted with Bush's image looked at and said "yep, that'll do".

The above was posted today, it is both horrible and confusing.

Many shots of JEB! Have that weird blank look on his face.

Why jeb? Indeed, and why is one of his hands black?

If it isn't blank, his face is utterly deranged, note the campaign slogan lifted from a children's cartoon.

I've posted this one before, it is like a nightmare from which there is no awakening.

I included this because I am pretty sure this is what a young Republican looks like today.

NEWSMAX PRIME interviews JEB!

He holds the attention of the crowd so well.

His shirt confounds me, remember someone decided this was a good idea to put on the internet to represent his campaign.

ARE YOU NOT INSPIRED BY PORK?

A well attended event.

Remember, I have dozens of these damn things.

That's all for tonight folks, remember no matter how bad your life is, you aren't JEB! And probably won't have angry billionaires out for your blood because you mishandled a campaign and plunged your family name into ignominy.

Insomnia

I have no interesting thoughts today, only that I wish my insomnia coincided with actually being productive, I should have been in bed like four hours ago, it would be nice if that coincided with a bout of creativity or even motivation to do something more interesting than listlessly looking at crap on the internet.

Oh well, I'll do something more interesting tomorrow night perhaps.

I have a confession to make

I've been avoiding this topic for some time as it seems to be pretty controversial, but I can't keep it in any longer and so I must out myself and use this space to talk about it.

I can't stand Peanuts.

Note the capital letter, I refer of course to Charles M. Schulz's long running comic strip that for some damn reason is held up as the epitome of perfection for comic writers, it doesn't seem to matter what format they write in, anything from fellow syndicated cartoonists, to animators, to web comic and graphic novel writers, it appears anytime you ask them what their largest influence or inspirations are, this piece of bland, unfunny, crap shows up on the list.

I have never laughed at a Peanuts comic, Garfield, freaking Garfield, gets a smile out of me now and again, but not Peanuts.

I will try to write some real arguments here too, Peanuts has been around forever, if by forever you mean since the 1950's, which is a damned long time I will admit, and early strips were pretty groundbreaking for their day and brought stuff like African American characters into comics for the first time, which is to be respected, but I spent a while reading up on a lot of the older comics too, and the key thing is this: they were funny for their day, it is no longer their day, and we actually have real humor now unlike the fake stuff they had to make do with in the fifties.

There are three major themes that an average Peanuts comic can fall into:

1. Charlie Brown is shitty at something and fails, everyone mocks him.
2. Snoopy lives in a fantasy world
3. Lucy is the worst person to ever live.

There is of course, crossover between the three, sometimes Lucy is the person who makes Charlie Brown fail, sometimes it is Snoopy living in his dream world that does so. But after fifty years(the comic has been in reruns since 2000) These "stories" have all been told and retold dozens, hundreds, even thousands of times.

It usually comes off to me as mean spirited, if I wanted to watch a dorky kid get bullied, I'd work in a high school, it doesn't matter how clever the writing is(it usually isn't) if you are using it to just make fun of someone who doesn't deserve it. It celebrates picking on the weak guy, rare are the scenes where Lucy gets a comeuppance, usually the "joke" is that Charlie Brown is terrible, he is terrible and I hate him, but watching bad things happen to blameless people is not my idea of a good time.

And yet, cartoonists of all varieties don't stop masturbating over this strip, I hear shit about "simple lines used effectively" but when your premise is as simple minded as the average Peanuts strip, you don't exactly need to make a production out of the art, and Schulz certainly didn't even try, why should he? It was a daily strip and he needed to get it done fast. I realize that I am not an artist, but I suspect given a small amount of practice I could get in the ballpark of the art style here, and that is saying something.

Personally my theory is no one actually likes Peanuts, they just say they do, Peanuts is the Sonic Youth of comic strips, seemingly influential because everyone says they are, but no one actually wants to listen to them because damn they are actually pretty dull. Don't lie, you haven't listened to Sonic Youth since the 90s, if that, and then only because you heard that Kurt Cobain thought they were hot shit. Then you out an album on and lost interest after two and a half tracks.

I will say this, Peanuts is not as bad as some other comics that mysteriously keep showing up in the papers year after year, I would rather read a hundred instances of Charlie Brown getting punked by a tree than even one Family Circus of any type. And Ziggy may actually be the least funny thing I have ever read, or seen, in any medium including real life. But I don't think "not as bad as this other thing" is really a sterling endorsement, I think that the current generation of comic readers maybe deserve to have something that is actually funny or interesting to read, let's stop punishing them by forcing bland nostalgia fodder on them for once, there has to be someone out there who writes funny stuff that could go in the papers.

Stop hitting kids you idiots!

So, don't beat your kids doesn't, on the surface, seem like it is a controversial opinion, outside of some "Spare the rod, spoil the child" religious types anyway, and who gives a damn what they think. But it totally is!

I keep seeing shit like this

Pop up on my social media feeds, liked and shared by people whose opinions I otherwise respect, these people appear to be functional, rational, nice members  of society yet they insist that this kind of crap was beneficial character building rather than what it actually was, child abuse.

No one thinks they are a bad person, or that they hold bad opinions, but if you think like this folks, you actually do, you have been hurt by being spanked as a kid, you know what damage it did to you? You think it is okay to hit children.

You think it is okay to hit children.

There are circumstances where hitting a child is the appropriate response, perhaps he is about to touch the history eraser button and a swat is the only thing that will keep his hand away and save the universe, perhaps it is the zombie apocalypse and your child has succumbed to the condition like so many others, and you must punch or kick her away from you so that you can lock her in the house and flee to a safe location with an ethnically diverse and mentally unstable group of fellow survivors. Perhaps a gang of madmen have broken into your home and are holding you and your child at gunpoint, they will kill you both unless you punch your six year old in the mouth.

Notice how none of my examples included bad behavior? Or even anything remotely approaching a realistic situation? That is because lying to you, insulting someone, or breaking something, the usual childhood misdemeanors, are not excuses to hit a kid, lecture them, restrict privileges, watch them closer, have a conversation, hug them, do anything except hit them.

There are those who don't equate spanking with hitting, those people are delusional, you are using physical force to assert your dominance over a person who trusts you more than anything else in the world and you are teaching them that that is perfectly normal and okay.

Toxic Masculinity starts pretty early, and this kind of shit feeds right into it, boys learn that physical dominance between family members is accepted and normal, and girls, well, they learn the same thing

I don't expect parents to be perfect, I understand that raising another human being is hard and frustrating, add that to other stresses in life and I get that sometimes a parent feels that corporal punishment is the only way they have to teach a lesson, they are wrong, but I get that it is easy for me to say that looking in from the outside, and hard for them to realize that being in the moment, of course, they are victims of their upbringing too, and probably got hit a time or two as well, so they are also fighting(hopefully) against the ingrained idea that this is normal and appropriate.

But when you start trying to justify it you lose me, it isn't okay, it isn't justifiable, you are perpetuating an idea that goes on to fuck up your child, and every other person your child decides to practice the lessons they learned from you on.

You aren't alright, your parents hitting you didn't teach you respect for others, they taught you that violence gets you what you want, and they taught you that it is okay to physically assault the most vulnerable person in your family.

durf

I feel like my posts are kind of on a downswing of late, I don't know that I am really putting more than the bare minimum of effort into the writing, yeah, it puts something out there and thus fulfills my minimum goal, but I don't think it grabs attention or really inspires discussion or commentary.

This is to be expected I guess, they can't all be gems given the schedule I have set myself and the fact that I actually do other stuff once in a while and thus get tired or don't have time to think about what to write, but I probably need to step it up, though how is problematic.

One thing that seems to work is writing earlier in the day, shockingly, if I put something up that I wrote at, say, nine PM,  it reads a lot better to me than something I shat out at, and let's just take a random example, four fifteen AM ( that may or may not be the current time as of this writing). But that doesn't account for days when there isn't an original thought in my head and all I seem capable of doing is playing Freecell until Zena demands I go to bed. I'm even doing it now! Pretty sure I wrote that last sentence almost verbatim last time I complained about writer's block.

Oh well, it gets the job done I guess, tomorrow I don't have to work, there is a debate to watch and be terrified at, and I will probably have the energy and inspiration to put some effort into the writing.

One way or another, no breaks until I reach one year, today's post was 255 for those keeping score.

The cashier does not want your phone number.

Today I sold beer to a man who, after completing the transaction, seemed very insistent on making sure we knew that he worships Satan, and by that I mean he said "I worship Satan" over and over again until his friend came and guided him away. If he'd opened his mouth before ordering I wouldn't have sold beer to him.

I mention him because, after I had closed my stand and was heading downstairs, I saw him again, this time in the main concourse hassling one of the female Moda Center employees, personal space invading, casual touching, all that kind of thing, another worker had already called security so we hung around until they showed up to make sure he didn't do anything too horrible, and he didn't, the worst result of that interaction was a woman feeling incredibly skeeved out.

I feel bad about the whole thing, I should have caught on to his intoxication levels before selling to him, and I probably should have been more active in interfering with his target later that night, but I didn't, I am non-confrontational and tend to take the easy path in public interactions, it's an issue.

Guys, please stop hitting on women while they are trying to work, they are smiling at you because that is literally their job, you aren't witty, they aren't interested, they won't give you their phone number, and as soon as you leave they will share your attempts with their coworkers and depending on how horrible you are, security will be called, and/or a stand of ten or so workers will spend the rest of the evening laughing at you.

I mean, you shouldn't need a better reason to not hassle someone other than "it's inappropriate" but the above suffice too, if you need another one you are also not making any friends in the line of people behind you who want to get their food and see the concert they paid fifty bucks for, think about them if you can't think about your server's feelings.

I notice stuff like this once every week or two, and I am sure there are a million more interactions like it that I never hear about and the ladies in my stands don't mention because there's no point in mentioning something that happens all the damn time, this depresses me, it also confuses me, does it ever actually work? Who asks for a phone number from a random fast food jockey and actually ends up going on a date with them? Years ago I worked at Arby's in Lloyd Center, we were supposed to offer a side of cheddar "cheese" with each order, I never did it because I am a wuss and afraid of upselling, but one of my female coworkers did it, and I remember specifically one guy responds with "I will if you give me a blowjob" She declined, but holy shit dude, what makes you think that will work? I realize you don't think of women as people, but wouldn't anyone capable of forming sentences realize that their odds are better if they at least appear nice a little bit?

I mean, obviously these folks have varying levels of internalized misogyny or whatever, but it's like rational thought just goes out the window when there is a pretty girl at a counter and they can't run away.

Every time I see it, I find a reason to call the cashier into the back to help with something until the customer goes away, but all I can do is (poorly) address the symptom, it is up to everyone on the other side to stop being creepy or stupid, I realize that I can't have both, but even removing one of those items from the equation has to make some difference.

Climate change

I am burnt out from work today and can't really think too well, so this won't be too coherent but I wanted to talk about climate change a little bit.

It should come as no surprise to anyone reading this that I very much buy the scientific communities warning on climate change. While I do not believe this, or really anything, can wipe out humanity, I do think that I don't want to see a world where we do have to go to great lengths to survive from day to day, and that is the track we are on, Mad Max should not be a role model, and I don't want to live under a giant dome or something. Also mass extinctions are generally something to be avoided if possible.

A veritable shitload of the worlds nations signed an historic accord on climate change in Paris just a short time ago in an effort to change that, the USA has signed on which is great, and so far I haven't even seen any of the Republicans try to convince us that this accord is some secret way to get around American sovereignty or something ridiculous like that. I do fully expect congress to attempt to pass a resolution condemning the accord though.

It remains to be seen whether or not the accord will accomplish anything, nothing in it actually has the force of law or is even enforceable by any means other than self policing by the countries involved, what it does do is make a statement to the world that the powers that be are actually getting serious this time, and this is not actually an irrelevant concept, government preferences do a lot to guide large markets and if the world speaks and tells energy companies that they aren't going to be interested in coal all that much longer, then those energy companies will do two things, first they will get on the horn to their lobbyists and attempt to head the whole deal off, second they will get on the horn to their R and D departments and find out if anyone knows anything about reducing carbon emissions.

Perception drives markets, perhaps more than anything else does, and right now, hopefully, the perception is that old technologies are becoming unwanted, and that clean energy is going to be something that has a wider appeal than just Germany, or a couple American states, it will get stockholder attention.

Of course, this is all predicated on the governments actually doing something themselves, either funding research of their own, offering tax credits or other incentives, and of course, passing laws. So here in the States we might not see a ton of movement on this all that fast, I expect January of 2017 at the earliest honestly, unless Obama decides to break out the Executive Orders again, but I don't know exactly what he can do with that power.

Anyway, I am optimistic, and that is always nice to feel.

Now I go to bed, Muse is playing tomorrow so that should be fun, night!

A train!

I was on my way to work today on the bus, I was soaked as I had been outside for more than five seconds and quite cold, then we have to stop at the train tracks for an actual train, I was bummed, figuring here comes five to ten minutes of  sitting here, but then...

Did you  know that the Oregon Rail Heritage
Foundation maintains and runs an old steam locomotive during the holiday season? I didn't until today, it looks a bit like this:

It was emerging from the haze of rain and a cloud of its own steam, and I don't know why but it really hit me as something kind of amazing, I am not a train guy, but at that moment, in those conditions, seeing that brought a sense of... I don't really want to say awe, but sort of like that, and peace to me that I don't recall being hit with before.



I don't know why it effected me the way it did, and I sort of don't want to think about it too hard either, It was just the right thing for that moment and a moment  of beauty in an otherwise grey and mundane day.




I think I am doing a bad job of explaining this, but seeing it just felt right, and on a day like today, in a time like ours, those moments are worth treasuring.

Writing about writing.

When you run a game store that doesn't have tons of customers, those who do come in like to talk to you, this wasn't a big deal for me usually as I was bored a lot of the time. A surprising number of them wanted to talk to me about the writing they do, this ranged from one guy who had actually written several novels for National Novel Writing Month, to pretty much everybody else, who talked a lot about writing, called themselves writers, but didn't actually write anything.

A while ago an article floated around my Facebook feed with a title something like "Don't feel bad if you don't write" I don't remember the name exactly and can't find it, so this story will have to remain anecdotal. Within it the writer explained how lots of emphasis is put on writing every day, and getting it publicly released and that this is probably not the best way to go about things, and writers shouldn't feel bad if they just don't have it in them to put words in order once in a while. This is true and I don't disagree with it.

However, it reminded me of those customers I mentioned, as well as the members of a number of web forums dedicated to writing, who probably took the wrong message from the piece entirely. The biggest problem I've seen is that the person gets so caught up in world building that they never actually write a story, world building is cool and I have done it a lot for D and D campaigns and such, but you need to ask yourself "Does my generic fantasy story really need a lovingly crafted map of the entire planet before I actually know what the plot is?" Here's a hint, the answer is virtually never yes, unless you are JRR Tolkien perhaps.

There are also people who think they can make a living selling story ideas, that with no actual story to back it up, they can find someone willing to pay them to write it, now I suppose there are probably some folks out there on the internet willing to pay for a story tailored to their interests, but I suspect they are unwilling to pay in advance and I know that an actual publisher would look at a proposal like that and shake their heads sadly.

I guess my question is for these types, why call yourself a writer if you won't actually write? What is so appealing about giving yourself this label but not doing anything to back it up? You don't have to write all day every day, and you don't have to write for anyone other than yourself if you don't want to, but you do actually have to write something, sometimes, otherwise what is the point? It's not like being a writer gets forced upon you and becomes a job that you do the bare minimum at because you have to, if you don't want to write all you have to do is... don't write. So if you call yourself a writer it must be because you like to write, and therefore why are you avoiding it?

I know I won't get answers here, I don't think I know anyone who has these issues and none of my old customers read my blog anyway, but it was on my mind today for some reason.

Fallout 4

It's been a couple of weeks since I got the game, and I just beat the main story line today so I figured I'd give my thoughts.

It's a lot of fun really, game play is well done and especially at the beginning the story flows really well, giving a sense of urgency and connection that Bethesda's previous entries in the series don't really have, but it does have some problems as well. I'll do a list.

Pro

• The crafting system, if you like the Hearthfire expansion for Skyrim, you will really like the system here, many towns and locations have workbenches from which you can enter workshop mode and scrap local terrain, constructions, or some items for raw materials, which you can then build into homes, furniture, defenses, and shops, it is very deep and a massive time waster. It is pretty unintuitive at first though I'll give it that.
• The modding system, basically an extension of the crafting system with how it uses resource, this relies more on the junk you find laying around out on your adventures though. See a desk fan? Take it! It has screws in it that you need! Take all the duct tape and wonderglue you come across, virtually all mods need it, figuring out the stuff you need and going hunting for it is fun.
  As to modding itself, every weapon and armor has one or more slots that can hold a variety of mods, and you can do anything from strapping a heating coil to your sledgehammer to putting a night vision scope on your laser pistol... or a jet pack on your power armor. Using this feature it is possible to get a lot more life out of stuff you pick up early in the game than you might initially think.
• Combat, specifically outside of VATS, Bethesda seems to have made an effort to make the FPS element of the game a little more bearable than it has been in the past and I appreciate that.
• Dialogue system, instead of selecting a script from a menu of choices, you get a few options that indicate the direction you want the conversation to head, for the most part this works fairly nicely, although I do have to admit the prompts can be a little unclear, such as when I selected what I thought was a request for clarification and ended up having to murder a household.
• Choices, a problem with the previous games in the series, indeed one shared by most RPGs in general, is the good vs evil choices are very rigidly defined and the game goes out of its way to make you feel bad for choosing them, the choices are often between something like "save the kitten" and "Wear the kittens skull as a hat". Not so here, for the most part all the factions you interact with have their ups and downs, and the actions you take are pretty justifiable based on how the game sets up, basically you are from a Vault, as is usual, and your son has been stolen, when you escape the Vault your goal is to get him back. Now with that motivation it makes it understandable when you tell some random settler to fuck off when they ask you to deal with the raiders who are stealing their corn, or when you ally yourself with a faction of questionable morals but enough resources to help you find him.
  It also helps that the choices are rarely so clearcut as the example I gave above. there are shades of grey to be had and arguments that could be made for almost any path you choose, it's a major step up from the artificial freedom of a karma system and obvious good/evil choices.
• Great plot twist near the end, a few of em really, I was genuinely surprised and enjoyed it a lot.
  

Cons

• The story looses its urgency once you get off the rails you are on at the start of the game, it is a huge open world with lots of distractions, and the whole "rescue the family member" thing makes you want to get right to it, but the world keeps throwing major gameplay elements and factions with massive quest chains unrelated to this that sort of detract from the urgency, you have the choice of either attempting to stick with the streamlined story, or missing a large part of the game altogether.
• Similarly the story drags a bit near the end, I ended up allying myself with the Brotherhood of Steel so I can't speak for the rest of the endgame, but it felt like there was a good couple hours of make work quests put in just to pad the game out, which is unnecessary in a game of this size and scope.
• For gods sake people, make aluminum and adhesive more common, my rocket launcher needs three barrels, but after repairing my power armor I am always out.
• It has it's share of bugs, I've watched quest NPCs calmly phase into a pillar where I could not speak to them, or get stuck on corners, VATS melee combat screws up on the regular, and once in a while entire towns have gone hostile on me for no discernible reason, reloading solves the problem just fine thankfully, but it is still pretty annoying, I imagine patches are forthcoming.

I am sure there is more I missed, and more I  could talk about, but that is enough for now, despite the flaws it remains a worthy entry into the series, and now I am going to replay it as a barely sentient lucky oaf.

Work and words.

Man it is almost five in the morning and I haven't come up with anything to write about yet, let's use the old fallback of complaining about work I guess.

My job is basically making sure the rest of the employees at my stand can do theirs, this includes training and being supportive, if some conversations between my cashiers I have overheard can be believed, I am fairly good at it.
It's interesting, you need to be able to talk to people of all ages and levels of work experience, from folks twice my age who are just doing this for something to do, to seventeen year old kids literally on their first day of work ever.

The main thing that strikes me is how utterly stupid some people seem to be, I really don't like being judgmental like that and do my best to give people the benefit of the doubt, but sometimes there is no other possible explanation, like the dude who came back from his break high as balls and assumed I wouldn't notice or smell it, or the girl who decided that she could spend the entire shift in the back on her phone (turns out she couldn't!).

Then there are the people who I am pretty sure have a disability of some sort, or who never learned to read. I am totally cool with working with folks with disabilities, but I really would like to be informed so I can make allowances and not snap at them like any other employee I think is slacking. Over last weekend I had a woman who could not move quickly, and seemed to get paralyzed with fear once the line got long, as it did almost immediately, she also seemed unable to communicate in anything other than an incoherent mumble and was pretty much useless. I felt bad complaining about her and still do, because it seems that the problem was either some form of wicked anxiety issue, or she was drunk as hell, if it is the first problem then I can sympathize, feeling that a bit myself, I mean, perhaps working coffee on a night when you are expected to make like three hundred of them quickly isn't the best place for someone with an issue like that, but if I know what's going on I can at least not make things worse by snapping at her.

Then there are the illiterate, our cash registers are pretty simple, you hit a button and a menu pops up, you select the item from the menu and it is rung up, you take the money. Not exactly rocket science, but to do it quickly you need to be able to scan a list rapidly, and I have had multiple cashiers who seemed unable to do that, more than that they were lost every time somebody ordered something they had never rang in before, but rather than look for it on the menu, they call me over to point it out to them. It's as if they aren't really reading, rather they are remembering what button does what as if it was some game of Memory instead.

Once you get through the learning pains this is actually a fairly effective way of doing the job, as long as you don't mind irritating your stand lead a bit, but it was a major shock to me when I realized it was happening. I have been able to read rapidly and effectively since almost as long as I can remember, I can scan a menu and pick out relevant information quickly, I can read a 400 page book in about three hours, I can even suss out the basics of an unfamiliar user interface fairly quickly, though to be an expert requires more than that obviously, what's more most of my friends and family can do similarly. I know illiteracy is a problem, and a growing one at that, but I haven't encountered it in the wild before and now I am pretty sure I have.

Now there is a distinction between being illiterate, and being functionally illiterate, most people can read at some level or another, for the functionally illiterate, they know the letters, they can read what they need to read to survive(mostly) day to day, but words do not come easy and something like as street sign might take actual concentration to read, these folks aren't stupid by any means, they have been let down by their schooling, and by a society that has been demonizing education for the last three or four decades, when you can read well, you can find so many sources of information, when you can't, you get to rely on what people tell you (you thought I wouldn't bring politics into this? HAH!) it's part of the probably not specifically stated but very real nonetheless plan to keep the lower class supporting the things their betters want them to.

Words bring freedom more than anything else, more than guns, more than money, free and open communication and education is only possible in a literate society. There is a "herd immunity" aspect to it as well, there are people who for whatever reason, can't and will never be able to read, these people must rely on others to get things like news and suchlike rather than relying on shit like talk radio, if they are surrounded by educated people who are able to get information from a variety of sources, it only helps them get the information they need to make informed decisions as well.

It is the most important tool in revolution as well as the basis of education, the rise in illiteracy in America is yet another pathetic failure of our system on a massive scale.

Read a book.

TRUMP

He seems intent on turning himself into exactly Hitler, it's really strange how he, his staff, and his supporters all seem completely ignorant of history here. Or if they do know it, they seem to be taking that era of history and looking for ideas in all the wrong places, one of his supporters said that Trumps ideas aren't any different from "when we put the  Japanese in camps" as if that was anything other than one of the most shamefully racist actions our government took in the 20th century.

The way these people ignore or rewrite history just boggles my mind. But at the same time it gives me hope, see, the man is a narcissist, he will say anything if the crowd cheers him an he gets more Twitter followers, but those people at the rallies, and those following him on social media, are a very small, if vocal, portion of the population and not representative of the country as a whole.

Trump's need to feed the beast that is his crowd is his undoing, there are too many sound bites of him being horrible out there for him to ever become a palatable candidate in the general election, even to the Republican establishment guys, they are desperately tying to get anyone but Trump in the public eye, but as I've said before, the monster they have created is almost completely out of control, it's terrifying, hilarious, and awesome, and man I hope it stops soon.

See, the thing about people is we are pretty damned stupid as a group, we react pretty predictably as a society when we are scared, we saw this when we interned the Japanese after Pearl Harbor, violating both law and the spirit in which our constitution was written, and we saw it again after 9/11 we don't like to admit it, but Iraq War II had a lot of popular support at the start, and was supported by something like 90% of our elected representatives as well.

The San Bernardino shooting is responsible for Trump's latest surge in popularity, as well as his new escalation in racist screeching. I do fear another 9/11 would ensure his election on the wings of a scared populace looking for a leader who promises to hurt those who hurt us, and Trump has promised to hurt everyone and everything.

He isn't funny anymore though, as hilarious as his statements seem at first, even if he has no chance in the general election barring unlikely circumstances, his followers are energized and quite violent, rhetoric from our candidates is already directly responsible for one mass shooting, and his followers might be capable of a great deal more when they don't get their way.

Basically there is a large and vocal mass of shithead racists out there that I fully expect to get violent before long, and especially if Trump loses the nomination. But there also aren't as many of them as we might fear, and as long as we take care not to give into fear and join them, I think it will be okay.

More on faith.

The most productive thing I did today was to put a turkey in the brine so I can cook it tomorrow.
The most obvious symptom of getting older for me seems to be the inability to recover from all nighters. I can still do them, but it seems to take a couple days now to get over it, rather than one full night of sleep.

I slept through breakfast, watched Seattle completely dominate Minnesota, ate a boxed lunch that was intended for attendees at the event I worked but was left behind and given tome by an employee who didn't want to throw it out, ordered donuts and pizza, and slept off and on.

But I did think a little bit about the even again, and realized I talked some about how I felt like it was a calculated attempt to take advantage of people's faith, but didn't really talk about what that meant to me or even why I cared, not being religious myself.

First, faith means different things to different people, and for me faith and atheism aren't necessarily incompatible. My faith lies more with people and systems rather than with god, spirits, or whatever else a religion might posit. I could try to be superior and say I believe in things that have science backing them, and this is sort of true, but I don't think that is the same as having faith in something, faith, to me, implies trusting without proof, and so I am pretty sure the scientific method doesn't qualify as a belief system really.
And I don't really have any proof that people are worth my faith, not really. Every day in fact there is news of someone fucking things up for others in the worst way and for the worst reasons, murder and mayhem, and possibly worse, the calculated(there's that word again) way others take advantage of that mayhem for their own gain.
Yet despite all that, I still have faith that things will get better, that people in large part are either good or, at worst, neutral, and that the good is continually getting the upper hand over the bad. I feel like that is supported by looking at history, and perhaps even could be argued from an evolutionary perspective, but if I said I had absolute proof of it I would be lying.

In the end, it isn't so different than what others believe when informed by religion, we get there from different angles, but the end result is the same in a lot of ways.

So shit like the event yesterday sort of pushes my buttons, the people who attended came because they wanted to see their faith reinforced, or possibly because they were looking for something to believe in, or maybe even because they really love Christian rock(this is unlikely). But they are there honestly, and having seen the set up, listened to some of the rehearsals, and looked at all the ways the event is set up to remove attendees from as much of their money as possible, hell being involved in that part myself, I just don't see how the organizers and performers are coming from a place of holiness, or, I don't know, charity I guess?

It's a religious circus, but a real circus doesn't lie to you, the games are rigged sure, but they aren't promising you anything more than an amusing night out in return for as much of your money as they can get. This place is promising salvation with its spectacle, and more or less offering it in return for your money. Now I know they aren't literally saying "buy our crap or go to hell" but they don't have to, all they have to do is create an atmosphere where the customer tells that to themselves, it's pretty basic advertising and when used on the religious by someone they view with authority, it's really effective.
I don't look down on the attendees for any of this, they were all very nice to me while I worked, and they are not to be blamed for falling victim to marketing tricks, especially by me, who has spent literally tens of thousands of dollars on cardboard rectangles with an arbitrary value attached to them.

I blame the organizers, and the system that encourages this crap, if they really gave a damn about Jesus they wouldn't be charging a hundred bucks a ticket, pretty sure the man himself had something to say about money in churches, also about public expressions of faith too.

At its heart it is less honest than the Amway events I have worked, and they are basically a cult centered around buying garbage.

That's all I got.

Faith and commercialism.

I mentioned last night that I was working at this Women of Faith thing, that happened today as well and was a fairly grueling experience, I will talk about my day then share some thoughts, jump to the end if you don't want to hear me bragging/complaining about work.

My day started, well, the previous day didn't really end, I was unable to sleep and needed to be at work by six thirty AM, so I pretty much just puttered around all night, stopped at Plaid Pantry for cheap energy drinks to share with selected other who had to be in early as well as the staff at my stands, and arrived at work about twenty minutes early as is my standard practice.

Once there I was informed I was to manage an espresso stand as well as the neighboring Salt and Straw stand; the classy ice cream joint. After the usual flurry of worry about supplies and figuring out where my staff had got to we opened without trouble at eight AM and then did not have more than thirty seconds without a line until about four thirty or so when I was able to close down. We made something in the neighborhood of four hundred fifty lattes, mochas, and iced coffees during that eightish hours, that equates to a little over on per minute, which I feel like is a pretty good speed. Once we really got in the swing of things I had to dial back my participation, having the ice cream stand to keep an eye on too, they "only" sold a couple hundred scoops and required slightly less management.
My job is basically to make sure my CSR's can do theirs with a minimum of interruption, today that meant refilling the water in the espresso machine an making sure I had back up five gallon bottles ready to go when we ran out again(we ran conservatively thirty gallons through that thing today), making sure lids, cups, java jackets, syrups, and so forth were stocked and in easy reach of the CSR's so they did not have to interrupt their flow to pull more out of cupboards, handling every customer complaint(there were few) and last minute, or post last minute change to order(there were many) without interrupting the lineup of cups waiting to be filled. Keep the grinder stocked with beans (we went through perhaps twenty five pounds at my stand. And keeping in communication with the warehouse to make sure anything in danger of running low was restocked before it ran out, we used thirty or forty gallons of milk today, I lost count, and our cooler in the stand only holds about ten, so that was a constant job.
Meanwhile I had to do similar with the ice cream guys, the cups we serve it in stick, so I had to manually separate stacks of cups, they needed a constant supply of water to rinse off ice cream scoops with, and the water at the stand was turned off so I was running with containers back and forth all day. The warehouse ran out of certain flavors of ice cream so when we ran out of those I had to run up to a closed ice cream stand and haul five gallon tubs of ice cream through the crowds to the stand.
Then I also had to make sure my guys all had their legally required breaks, we usually try to send people on breaks during slow periods, but there were none of those today, so basically we all just had to work harder when breaks happened, so I jumped into the mix, I scooped ice cream, ran registers, pulled shots, steamed milk, etc. etc. and I still did not have it as hard as the CSR's who I was managing, at least I got to lean against a wall and take a deep breath now and again, they couldn't and didn't.
Afterwards we all pretty much agreed it was the hardest day at work any of us had experienced, and between the six of us at the stands I had by far the hardest work experience and was also the youngest by a good decade, so we had a pretty good pool of experience to make that judgement.
That's a lot of work for ten bucks or less an hour folks, think of shit like this when you make judgements about service industry workers wanting the minimum wage raised.

Part 2

I of course was not too busy to be judgmental, so I shall share some of those judgements now. Women of Faith is at it's heart a cynically calculated capitalist enterprise, designed to take advantage of thousands of people's very real faith and need to belong and strip them of as much money as possible.
It costs at least one hundred dollars to attend, more if you want better seating, a packed lunch, or a VIP ticket, the organization provides a dozen or so vendors providing memorabilia, devotionals, books, videos, and services that you can use to bring faith, love, or whatever the hell you are looking for into your life, indeed it is hard to see how you can have any of those things without purchasing these items. I was personally stationed next to a stand offering to "find your child" it didn't actually appear to be a lost offspring location service, perhaps a program to visualize potential children? Convert them? Could the child be a metaphor? I still have no idea and was unable to ask, but there were DVDs for sale to those who decided to find out.

Speaking of confusing, the name of the event baffled me and still does, Women of Faith, Loved: The Farewell Tour, no where could I find anyone who could tell me what they were saying farewell to, one of my supervisors suggested that maybe it is the farewell tour because God is dead, which is hilarious so I am tentatively going with that.

In the end though I feel like the business my stand did is rally indicative of the priorities of a large portion of the attendees, they paid over a hundred bucks to be there, some of them traveled from all over the country to see these speakers and hear their stories(for some reason) Yet when it comes down to it rather than sit in the arena and listen, hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, chose to wait thirty minutes or more in line to get coffee
I guess I know what their god really is.

Another short post.

Bad night to not have ideas, I need to be up in less than four hours to go serve coffee to hordes of christian women, and I still haven't showered.

The event I am working this weekend is something called Women of Faith, Loved: The Farewell Tour. It is unclear exactly what they are saying farewell to, their website makes no mention I could find about it. Basically it's a bunch of inspirational speeches and faith based music, which you know, isn't exactly my thing. The event started this evening and will continue through the entirety of Saturday, it had the distinction of having the worst performance of Amazing Grace I have ever heard, which saddens me as that is a damn good tune.

I have more thoughts on the calculated process of commercializing faith, but that will need to wait until tomorrow after work and a nap.

Night!

Burn it all down

Today the Senate met, our elected representatives decided to take a day and get some work done, and there was indeed work to do, a budget needed to be talked about and hopefully passed to prevent a shutdown in a week or so, and of course, the shooting in California had gun control legislation on everyone's mind, so our leaders, chosen by the people as the ones with the ability to deal with the nations most pressing issues, decided to.

Defund Planned Parenthood and gut Obamacare.

Yes, faced with on pressing issue that effects the quality of life for thousands of Americans (specifically in that it kills them) as well as another issue that literally effects the entire country and through it, the world, the Republican controlled Senate chose to beat the dead elephant by sending a bill to the President full of riders that would force him to veto it, as he has promised to do. They had a chance to attempt to make a change, but decided a meaningless stand and another round of playing chicken with the health of the nation was a better use of their time.

I am not a fan of accelerationism as an ideology, or a plan for the future, but even I am beginning to wonder if this system deserves to exist. How much good is our goofy brand of pseudo representative democracy really doing anymore, and could something else do an equal or greater amount of good with less of the horrible? If our country collapsed into dozens of bickering feudal states, would the world breath a sigh of relief? At least the local warlord would probably have some interest in actually keeping their people alive, and our current lords and masters clearly don't have the slightest interest themselves.

At least when the local warlord's gang of thugs shoot me down in the street, they wouldn't be lying to my face about how they are protecting society, there's be an honesty in their evil that we currently lack.

I know we are in a period of transition in American politics at the moment, I know the old guard is grimly hanging onto the remnants of their power and watching as the extremists they encouraged destroy all the have worked for, and I applaud that in principle, I know that it will change, is changing, but some days it is pretty hard to stay positive. These people can't die off soon enough. And that is what will really change things, not these people getting murdered or anything, that just makes a martyr and waving the bloody shirt is still a pretty popular tactic, but when the last of those responsible for the shit of the last few decades dies alone, their power broken and legacy cast aside, then and only then will they have gotten what they deserve, and I won't even notice when it happens because they will be too irrelevant to pay attention too.

I look forward to that, but it seems a long way away today.

Shootings and prayer

Every time a shooting happens, articles on gun violence are spread far and wide across the web and traditional media, always with titles like "The gun problem is bigger than people realize". This is incorrect, at this point in history, there is no way to avoid knowing that our problem with gun violence is endemic to our current culture, the only debate is on what to do about it.

Well, I say that but obviously I am wrong, that should be the only debate, but it isn't is it? Virtually no one in politics is arguing about what to do, rather they are arguing over whether or not to do anything at all!

Gun control is an issue where the controversy is almost entirely artificially generated by special interests, it's hard to research, by design, because those same interests managed to ban federal funding for it, but from what we can tell, public support for additional gun control regulations is actually pretty high, including from the vast majority of current gun owners, but, since we allowed the NRA and weapons manufacturers so much influence, they get to set the terms of the debate, not the people.

It's been easy for them, because only the most motivated go to the polls, an the gun rights supporters also by and large support a number of other extreme right issues that mean their small, but rabid, base is all but guaranteed to come out for them.

Of course, there is also the fact that the right to bear arms is a Constitutional right, and by now the Bill of Rights may as well be a holy document for all the odds of getting any change to it, never mind that it was written over two hundred years ago by people who mostly still thought it was cool to own other people, never mind the fact that the country has changed more dramatically than our founders ever thought, even never mind the fact that the Constitution was, by the writers own admission, intended to be a living document, any time gun control comes up, shouts of "shall not be infringed!" come out of the woodwork, and that is basically the end of that.

No, what we get is the usual, "our prayers are with the victims" platitudes, followed by calls to not politicize the tragedy.

Let's talk about prayer for a minute, prayer doesn't do crap for the victims of an attack, it does even less than my stupid blog posts do. And for most people, that is the only thing they can do to help so go nuts.
You know who isn't most people? Our elected representatives. When you see someone you voted for, or who wants your vote in the future, say "My prayers are with the victims", understand that means "I am going to do nothing to stop this from happening again". They are literally telling you they want to be elected to some of the most powerful positions in the country, or the world, but that they are incapable of putting even the tiniest bit of effort into finding solutions for something that kills thousands a year and is entirely preventable.
They are saying your life is worth less than an NRA endorsement, they are saying "My A rating from a special interest group is a higher priority than the lives of my constituents".
They are also telling you that while they think they are capable of leading the country against any enemy or through any trouble, they are incapable of even thinking of ways to keep firearms out of the hands of madmen.
So they pray, put it in Gods hands they say, because that has worked out so well before.

You may have noticed I haven't talked about the shooters that much, this is by intent, and because it no longer matter who, what, or why they do the shooting. It doesn't matter if they are white terrorists, black activists, militant feminist, Iranian spies, or Syrian refugees planted here by ISIS, the fact is they are here, and they got their gun here, and they didn't have to try all that hard to get them. And that stopping them is not a high priority for the powers that be, and really why should it?

Their base is rabid, as I mentioned before, it doesn't matter who commits a shooting or why, so yet another shooting doesn't hurt their support at all even if it is a conservative white guy with and NRA membership and a history of violence. However, when, as it appears to be in this case, the shooting is committed by someone with a foreign sounding name, it allows them to create an enemy to unite behind, which draws people to their banner as it is easier to unite against, than it is to unite for something.
It's a policy which relies on their ever dwindling base for its main support, but that doesn't mean it can't swell temporarily, and that is all they want, and the only thing they will fight for.