Screw Tibet

I have been watching the hypocrisy that is the Olympic Torch protests and shaking my head a lot. The kicker came last week when the torch came to San Francisco and the city did something right for once and changed the route at the last moment. Protesters had a hissy-fit for the rest of the week because they were denied something or other and that San Francisco played into the Chinese propaganda machine.

Screw them and the horse they rode in on.

Here's my problem. Less than ten days before most of those same people who were out there protesting Chinese oppression were in the streets protesting the war in Iraq and demanding the U.S. withdraw. Six years ago the people of Iraq (the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south) were also living under the exact same oppression that the folks in Tibet live under today. Sanctions had not worked, innocent Iraqis were being tortured, raped and murdered and President Bush wanted to believe that Saddam's ties to international terrorists made him a threat to the National Security of the United States...so he invaded Iraq. He invaded Iraq and freed the oppressed people of Iraq from the Baath Party and Saddam Hussein. No, there weren't any WMDs and Iraq's over-all threat to the U.S. will be the subject of debate for the rest of the century but that honest fact is that Bush did a good thing. Any true American recognizes this. Now Iraq isn't going to turn into Omaha, Nebraska. Not ever. Whatever it does turn into it will be much different than what the White House had envisioned but there is a chance to establish a true democracy in the Middle East and this makes our continued presence in Iraq paramount to allow the new government to take flight.

Yet these people protested this fact. They protested against liberty.

During the second faze of Iraq, when the insurgency started, the protesters in San Francisco marched in support. This in spite of the fact that the insurgency was targeting educators, doctors and intellectuals which in other countries always draws a huge outcry; yet the SF protesters marched in support of the insurgents. Then last week they march in opposition to China for doing the exact same thing that their Iraqi Insurgent heroes continue to do. What is it that the protesters believe? Why is oppression and murder okay when committed in Iraq by our enemies but not okay when committed by China? What am I missing here? Alright, I'm not actually missing anything. These people are so socially and politically inbred that they are intellectually dead. No person who's intellectually living thinks that pulling out of Iraq is a smart idea. They may not like the war but they understand the bigger picture.

Let us examine the history of these morons. It underlines their hypocrisy.

Remember when most of these folks started marching in the streets? It was during the Vietnam war. We were fighting to keep the Communist North from taking over the South. All that Communism was coming from both the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China and it was spreading into Laos and Cambodia. It wasn't being spread by a willing population but by brutal tactics. For some reason the college kids thought that this was okay, I suggest this because they would often march carrying posters of Chairman Mao. For some reason the U.S. was the bad guy in the war and we needed to get the hell out of there so that those poor Vietnamese folks could determine their own future. So eventually we did just that. Let me underline what the anti-war toads were saying:

"What ever communist countries do in Asia it's fine by us!"

This should include, if I follow the logic, the way China deals with Tibet. We were fighting the way China does business in SE Asia, that was the god damned point. So you cannot turn around and feel bad because of Chinese oppression in Tibet. Those protesters of the 1960s sealed Tibet's fate.

Either America is in the liberation business or it is not. You can't have it both ways. If you want us out of Iraq then Tibet has to suck on it too. Seriously, what are the grand plans to get China to leave Tibet? Sanctions? China makes everything and has enough backdoor deals to get the stuff it doesn't make. Maybe a strongly worded letter from the UN? Oh, do please try that one, I love to watch Chinese people laugh. China isn't going anywhere, Taiwan is talking about re-establishing relations and the US is in debt up to it's eyeballs to China.

Why should China listen to us anyway. If you're not willing to send guys with guns to free Tibet then they've got nothing to loose.

Grow up.

My Brilliant Plan To Reform Washington - Green Friendly!

Our founding Fathers had figured it out; put the nation's capital in the middle of a swamp and it will deter folks from getting too comfortable in the seats and corridors of power. It worked for about 100 years too and the few career politicians were so slimy that they belonged in a swamp.

The problem is that the founding fathers didn't anticipate air conditioning.

So today, Washington D.C., instead of being filled with poisonous snakes, mosquitoes and toads is now overrun with even lower forms of life. There seems to be no way to dislodge them either.

Thus I have devised a plan:

Outlaw AC within Washington D.C. and mandate that no lawmaker take a vacation between June and October.

It's so simple, we can simply turn up the heat on these people and make them go away. Not just lawmakers will succumb to the heat either; lobbyists and career upper government management types will wilt in the heat and leave DC for cooler climate. Think of the energy the East Coast will save as well. I'm not sure of the exact ratio but removing one career politician from Washington D.C. is like putting 10,000 Americans back to work.

I don't know why I have to think of this stuff. Get on this you people.

I Want Clinton To Take It To The Convention

Don't quit, Hillary.

No way.

The Democratic Party needs a good dose of DEMOCRACY for once. The choice is not clear and there should be a debate and maybe even a full on fist-fight on the floor of the convention. That's the way it used to be and it's refreshing to see it looming once again because the Party needs to decide what it is to become and what direction it will go in the future. The first President Clinton moved the party away from is weak, leftist ties and moved it towards the center and this allowed it to become a realistic option in 2006 to replace a screwed-up Republican Party in the Congress. Democrats elected in 2006 were not far-left freakazoids but (YIKES!) fiscally responsible, level headed thinking types. These were not Howard Dean/Nancy Pelosi flakes but serious roots for a productive and respectable Democratic Party of the future. Obama represents a giant step backwards to the policies and philosophies that brought the party down and turned it into a bad joke. To force Hillary out of a race that is clearly not settled shows a darker side of the Democratic Party that for some reason the party leadership can't understand how much this turns the average American off. Fair is Fair.

Then again, if the Democratic Party was at all interested in fairness they would have counted Florida and Michigan primaries. Instead the Party decided to - PUNISH - the voters in those states for making the choice to move up their primary elections so that they would have a say in the choice of candidates for the White House. PUNISHED. PUNISHED for exercising their right to vote and when they damn well please to.

What a wonderful message to America: "Fuck you, it's our way or the highway".

That is the message to Floridians and Michigan voters, if you otherwise you are a fool. Speaking of fools, all of this can be laid at the feet of Howard Dean, the Democratic Party Chair, a man who is in the wrong position at the wrong time and is undermining the Party's forward progress with every decision he makes. The downward spiral will speed up with an early Hillary departure as Americans would then focus on Obama, who is a troubled candidate in so many ways.

This process should be taken to the convention floor where a genuine debate might actually take place. I think that this would be a bright moment in US history as the democratic process gets a full workout for the first time in a great while in the United States.

Point Lobos, Because I Can

Wednesday found me with four hours to kill on the Big Sur coast. I was in a great mood because I had just had my breaks done and I'm now mobile again. My Marine Science class had intended to go on a field trip but it was rained out half way through so we scheduled a make-up session and I chose to tag along with the PM class so I could have Thursday off all together. This meant linking up with them at Garapada Beach at 6:30pm and since my last class wrapped up at noon I had to figure out how to kill all of that time. I have no money so shopping was out and I needed to begin a new fitness regime so I headed down to Point Lobos.

Since 2001, I haven't been on that side of the hill. Carmel is my home but it sure ain't my town any more. Driving through the city I silently grieved for my home town that has lost it's way. The building of over-sized homes in Carmel is an obscenity and I'm glad I don't live in a place where such vile tackiness is allowed. I drove past my boyhood home and the folks there are keeping te place in great shape. I then headed down Pacific Coast Highway 1 to Point Lobos. Since I'm a broke college student I parked on the highway and walked into the park for free and first went to the east side of Whaler's Cove. The place has been overgrown with young Monterey Pine which were planted by the state to replace the ones killed by the Pitch Canker pandemic that wiped out thousands of pine trees. I made the shoreline and I began my transformation back into the spiritual creature that I keep hidden from the world and spent time photographing rock formations as the ocean hissed it's ancient song to me in the background.

Once I'd seen enough at this location I turned and went south on a trail the bisects the park at it's widest point and too me into the beautiful Forest. It has begun to bloom so in the mid-afternoon light the forest glowed green with highlights of purple wildflowers. I could hear cars speeding past the park a hundred yards away and I felt sorry for those people because this place is so amazing and they were missing it. At the mid-point of this trail I encountered a dead Monterey Pine that was still standing tall, it's branches weathered and bare. I stopped for a second to really think about what I was looking at; this was a tree that sprang to life about 120 years ago and had seen many changes. Even though it was all but dead it wouldn't surrender to gravity, at least not now and stood there defiant in the forest daring God to knock it down. It made me think about if I had been alive 120 years ago, how would I have defined myself in the world? Who would I have been back then? Would I be so different? I mulled over these questions for the rest of the hike until I made it to the south shore of Point Lobos. I never answered those questions either, I just didn't have a clue.

I worked my way along the shore photographing rock formations. Ansel Adams and Edward Weston photographed many of the same places 60 years ago and I already know that I will return soon with black & white film to duplicate some of their work. I stopped at the tide pools and lost myself for a while inside of the mini-worlds offered in each one. Tiny fish, Hermit Crabs and larger crabs seemed to lounge around as they waited for the sea to return. Then it was time to head south so I walked the mile back to my truck and drove down to Garapada. When I arrived the sun had begun to drop making a quarter of the horizon vanish into a bright, shimmering light. The wind was cold and I bundled up. I went down to the beach to shoot pictures in advance and then decided to get back to my truck because it was freezing. Once I returned to the road I looked out and saw the spout of a whale about 500 yards off shore. I grabbed my binoculars and saw the giant tail disappear into the water. So I decided that I would sit in the bed of my truck and count whales until the gang showed up and that's exactly what I did.

I counted 28 Gray Whales. Just a great way to kill an hour and a half if you ask me.

I love it here.

Science...Who Knew?

I'm now heading into my seventh week of school and it turns out that Marine Science is my strong suit. I mean, it's a great class and I'm doing great with the subject. I mean today we looked at rocks but not they're not just rocks they're Igneous, Lithogenous or Biogenous rocks. Holy crap, those were three words that weren't in my vocabulary let alone being able to tell you about them.

It seems I've found my major.

Monterey is Disneyland for Marine Scientists of every stripe, I'm going to be one of them.

I'm still writing my book and all but Marine Science looks like something I can make a difference in. It seems that most scientists are so focused on their specialty that they have little knowledge of other things. Subjects such as local history and folklore would give scientists of every discipline an advantage in their studies. I can bring that to Geology and study of the Marine environment.

This is going to be fun.

So I Watched "Outfoxed" In My Communication Class...

I'm taking Communications at my local Junior College and it's a cool class. I figure that since I'm writing a book and I'm thinking about doing something with film or TV I should get a serious background and I'm learning a lot of new stuff that I didn't know before. So today we watched about an hour of "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism", the intention being to show the influence of Fox News upon the cable news industry. You can tell from the title that it's not a favorable portrait of Fox News but the film is flawed in many ways. In the end the hypocrisy of the story telling overwhelms a very important message about the sad state of what passes for journalism today.

To be fair and balanced (he he) I should tell you that I don't like Fox News over all. I like Sheppard Smith and I will watch Bill O'Reily once in a while depending on what story he's covering because the guy can be entertaining and even right about certain issues. Beyond that I find that Fox News gives me mental diarrhea. Working in a Motel with the TV on for eight hours has given me a front row seat and since I'm a news junkie I have one of the three cable news outlets on at any time (unless LOST, Smallville or The Office is on) and I have seen everything that passes for Cable News at one time or another. Fox's morning show, 'Fox & Friends" is so vapid that it actually sucks IQ points from my brain. The hosts are the stupidest humans in North America and I didn't think anyone could beat the Today Show in that department. I picture the office manager for Fox & Friends deciding to stalk the supply cabinet with the kind of paste they use in Kindergarten because the Hosts are prone to eating glue. Gerraldo Rivera? What can I say? Fox News and Gerraldo are a match made in Heaven. Fox News is my main source of missing college kids, murdered housewives and scary news stories. So "Outfoxed" should have made my day, but it didn't.

The problem with the movie is that all the source material comes from Left-Wing and FAR-LEFT organizations and even thought the film starts off well it quickly slides into an unfocused mess. At about the half-hour mark the film loses it's focus on journalism and heads into political issues. Fox has never tried to hide their point of view, they're like a Right-Wing Pravda and there's no point in emphasising the obvious. Yet the director cannot help himself and it quickly becomes a shrill, anti-Bush, anti-Republican, anti-Christian rant. From here there is a sad, intellectual blindness that hurts the film's credibility. The prime example is an on-air confrontation between Fox's Bill O'Reily and an anti-war activist named Jeremy Glick, who was using the fact that his father had been killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center to give himself legitimacy. O'Reily has a patriotic hissy-fit and everything that comes out of Glick's mouth just tick's him off even more. O'Reily kills the interview and they have security escort Glick from the studio. Not Bill's best day. The problem is that the documentary tries to say that O'Reily then misstated what Glick had said on the broadcast. They dispute O'Reily's claim that Glick claimed that Bush (George HW Bush) was to blame for the attacks of 9/11 and imply that Glick hadn't even implied this. Yet when you check the transcripts that is EXACTLY what he implied:

Glick:...is that in - six months before the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan, starting in the Carter administration and escalating while Bush's father was head of the CIA, we recruited hundred thousand radical mujahadeens to combat a democratic government in Afghanistan, the Turaki government.

Later:

Glick: Why would I want to brutalize and further punish the people in Afghanistan...

O'Reily: Who killed your father!

Glick:...didn't kill my father.

O'Reily: Sure they did. The Al Qaeda people were trained there.

Glick: The Al Qaeda people? What about the Afghan people?

O'Reily: See, I'm more angry about it than you are!

Glick: So what about George Bush?

O'Reily: What about George Bush? He had nothing to do with it.

Glick: The director - senior as director of CIA.

O'Reily: He had nothing to do with it.

Glick: So the people that trained a hundred thousand Mujahadeen who were...

Later:

O'Reily: As respect - as respect - in respect for your father, who was a Port Authority worker, a fine American, who got killed unnecessarily by barbarians...

Glick: By radical extremists who were trained by this government...

**I'll comment on this at the bottom**

The film shows this exchange in it's entirety and yet the film then tries to tell you that he (Glick) didn't say what he said. This is sad and a telling commentary about the true power of Fox News.

As Fox News rose in rating's prominence the competing cable news channels and even the network news agencies took notice. When I say they took notice, what I mean is that they began to freak out. CNN, once the most reliable news source in the world, has now become a sad, cowering shadow of it's former self. No longer news-driven, CNN now frames it's news into packaged stories just as Fox News does and they populate the morning with pleasant talking heads who seem to be gunning for Fox's reign of vapidness. Or is it vapidity? Anyway, CNN is like a sinking aircraft carrier, you hate to see it go but you cannot help but watch. I should state that CNN' downfall stems from other factors as well: relocating from Atlanta to New York and the sale by Ted Turner, who's maverick outlook on life was reflected by his news network. CNN is competing with MSNBC in the race to see which one can become the Liberal answer to Fox News. MSNBC's actions are probably less forgivable than CNN's because of it's lineage to NBC News, and there was a time when NBC was the best television news for about twenty years. MSNBC is a mess. They have decided to directly counter Fox News' flagship shows with alternative programming. Keith Olbermann runs opposite Bill O'Reily and just like O'Reily there is very little credibly news and a lot of opinion. So for that hour there is no real news discussed on two of the three cable news networks. MSNBC does have Chris Matthews, who's been around the track enough that you can get information from him that you can't get elsewhere.

The problem is that instead of being quality news outlets, CNN and MSNBC are trying to play Rupert Murdoch's game and we viewers are the ones who are losing out. Because Fox News's format is profitable the other cable news networks ( specifically the corporations that own them) are losing their grip on credibility from all of their drooling as they chase Fox's money train. The greatest evil today is that news agencies (papers, TV and radio) are owned by companies that do not understand news and need to make higher profits. While it is possible to get rich with a news organization you (if you are smart) have to live with about an 8% to 12% profit margin. Those margins give regular companies a heart attack, so when some corporation buys a news organization and they look at the books they immediately try to figure out how to boost that margin to 19% to 25% (or more). So they first start to cut positions and consolidate the newsroom. The first thing to go are the foreign correspondents. In the 1960s and 1970s viewers then could count on reliable coverage from just about anywhere in the world. ABC, CBS and NBC all had foreign correspondents all over the globe. They were invaluable because they lived in the countries that they covered and we able to offer perspective and insight that is lost today. The next to be cut are editors and with them go little things like common sense and rational thinking. Stories today just aren't as well sourced as they once were and this has eroded credibility with the public as increasingly stories run my major network and cable news outlets are proven to be wrong. The Internet today features dozens of blogs that do nothing but correct news stories and the bi product of this is that the public has begun to turn to blogs to get their news.

This is all due to Fox News and it's business model: Political one-sidedness+ sensational stories+sleazy stories+ loudmouth pundits = $$$. Who cares if any of it is correct of even true?

"It's not a lie if you believe it" George Costanza, Seinfeld.

**

Mr.Glick is confused, as many Americans are about who the Mujahadeen were. More specifically he is clueless as to who the CIA trained.

The CIA trained Afghan refugees in camps along the Pakistan/Afghan border. Foreign fighters were usually on their own and this included the Arabs. Osama bin Laden had been contacted by a third party and asked if he desired assistance from the CIA and he said no and for two reasons: 1. He felt that this was a Muslim cause and the west should but out and 2. He hated the United States even back then. So Glick's assertion that the CIA trained the men who would later make up Al Qaeda is false.

The Taraki government was not democratically elected. He came to power in a Communist coup. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan as his government began to fail. Glicks assertion that we had over-thrown a lawful government in Afghanistan is false. Worse, he overlooks the mass-murder of civilians by Soviet forces during their occupation.

George H W Bush was director of the CIA from 1976 to 1977. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979. It wouldn't be until 1981 that the CIA would get serious about training the Mujaheddin.

Once again Glick is wrong.

Al Qaeda is a sophisticated organization run by very smart men. Their capabilities are matched only by their sense of dramatic irony. The fact that their pilots all trained in the United States speaks to both.

Junior College 22 Years Later

The last time I walked out of a classroom at the Junior College it was 1986 and I had finished Music Theory. I got a "B".

I was not a serious student when I was a teenager, the only reason that I'd even sign up was so that my mother's medical insurance would cover me. I took Arabic and did well in that class but my college transcript is a wasteland of drops and incompletes. Then my family situation changed and I was forced into working full time. Working full time meant that I no longer paid attention to the semesters and time of year so by the time I'd think about registering for a class it was too late. Time went on and I just settled into my life.

Then last December I was goofing around on the Net and went to the local JC's website and looked at the classes and schedules. I then registered and then signed up for three classes: Spanish 1A, Introduction to Communications and Marine Science. This week I went back to school for the first time and it has been fun and not the stressful encounter that I thought it was going to be. The teachers are all really great at what they do and I can already fumble around greeting people and asking them where they are from and where they live in Spanish. The biggest suprise has been Marine Science because it is shaping up to be the most fun of all three classes, this to the point of maybe making Marine Science my major. The teacher is really into his subject and interested in his students which makes for a positive environment.

The coolest thing about this turn at education is that there isn't the social pressure that I felt when I was a kid. I don't know anybody here now and I'm older than 95% of the students and thus I am free from the soap opera that underscored school in my youth. You know, worrying about how cool people think I am, worrying about looking lame in front of women and just the whole post-Highschool social pecking order that I'm no longer involved in. The saddest thing about the local junior college (or any local JC) is that you will have students who try to maintain their highschool's social climate. It's sad because they still act like it's highschool and they disrupt classrooms as they insist on talking durring lectures and they take their show to the student common areas where they perpetuate their immature behavior. I paid for my enrollment with my VISA card. I wonder how the hell they paid for their classes?

Anyway, I am a free man. A Grown up. I'm going to school to work for my future.

It feels good

The Bullwinkle Question

There has been a serious push to draft Bullwinkle into the 2008 Presidential race. I understand to felling behind it, the ugliness of the Democratic race and the snore fest that is the Republican Party, but is Bullwinkle really the answer?

Bullwinkle has always been a hack and the only reason he’s anywhere today is because he’s ridden Rocky the Squirrel’s coat tails. During his college days at Wattsamatta U, Bullwinkle spent most of his time in his mohair jacket partying and going to football games. He has never addressed the rumor of joining Skull & Bones even to this day. Worse, there are rumors that while in Indonesia, Bullwinkle J. Moose attended a madrassa and that the “J” of his middle name stands for “Jihad”. It is no surprise that Bullwinkle would team up with one Rocket J. Squirrel; perhaps they met at the same radical mosque.

Supporters point to Bullwinkle’s success in fighting Pottsylvanian terrorist Boris Badenov as his chief qualification to lead the United States in its war on terror. However, documents made public under the Freedom of Information act show that Bullwinkle’s success was largely due to Badenov’s incompetence and not any tactical or strategic prowess on Mr. Moose’s part. Some charge that the whole conflict between Bullwinkle and Boris Badenov was staged and funded by Israel’s Mossad as a “False Flag” operation. Whatever the truth may be one fact remains, Bullwinkle’s anti-Pottsylvanian operations cost the American taxpayer untold amounts of money. These days Bullwinkle can’t seem to make a speech without mentioning Badenov and this is yet another sign that there is no THERE there. If you take away Boris Badenov from Bullwinkle’s past and what do you really have?

Yet people seem to be attracted to his populist ideals. Me, I see his folksy charm for what it is: Buffoonery. Go ahead, draft Bullwinkle if you must but don’t expence me to get on board with this one.

Oh, and if he says anything about pulling a rabbit out of his hat? RUN!

The Bullwinkle Question

There has been a serious push to draft Bullwinkle into the 2008 Presidential race. I understand to felling behind it, the ugliness of the Democratic race and the snore fest that is the Republican Party, but is Bullwinkle really the answer?

Bullwinkle has always been a hack and the only reason he’s anywhere today is because he’s ridden Rocky the Squirrel’s coat tails. During his college days at Wattsamatta U, Bullwinkle spent most of his time in his mohair jacket partying and going to football games. He has never addressed the rumor of joining Skull & Bones even to this day. Worse, there are rumors that while in Indonesia, Bullwinkle J. Moose attended a madrassa and that the “J” of his middle name stands for “Jihad”. It is no surprise that Bullwinkle would team up with one Rocket J. Squirrel; perhaps they met at the same radical mosque.

Supporters point to Bullwinkle’s success in fighting Pottsylvanian terrorist Boris Badenov as his chief qualification to lead the United States in its war on terror. However, documents made public under the Freedom of Information act show that Bullwinkle’s success was largely due to Badenov’s incompetence and not any tactical or strategic prowess on Mr. Moose’s part. Some charge that the whole conflict between Bullwinkle and Boris Badenov was staged and funded by Israel’s Mossad as a “False Flag” operation. Whatever the truth may be one fact remains, Bullwinkle’s anti-Pottsylvanian operations cost the American taxpayer untold amounts of money. These days Bullwinkle can’t seem to make a speech without mentioning Badenov and this is yet another sign that there is no THERE there. If you take away Boris Badenov from Bullwinkle’s past and what do you really have?

Yet people seem to be attracted to his populist ideals. Me, I see his folksy charm for what it is: Buffoonery. Go ahead, draft Bullwinkle if you must but don’t expect me to get on board with this one.

Oh, and if he says anything about pulling a rabbit out of his hat? RUN!

Movies I’d Like To See.

The 300 To Yuma - Famed outlaw Ben Wade is captured by the law in Bisbee. Rancher Dan Evans is tasked to take Wade to the train in Yuma. When they get there they find the city under attack by Spartans and then the Rancher and the outlaw pool their resources to save the city and defeat the Greek invaders.

The Bourne Superbad Ultimatum – Jason Bourne is brought out of hiding by two bumbling teenagers who are trying to by booze for a party that they’ve been invited to. Bourne agrees to help them get laid but then is forced into action by two inept cops who are part of a secret CIA project called Operation Blackbriar. The people Bourne doesn’t kill get laid. Matt Damon stars.

Spiderman vs. Zodiac – The webslinger’s crime fighting abilities are called into question when the Zodiac comes to town and starts murdering people. Super-strength and the ability to walk up the sides of buildings prove useless as the Zodiac’s body-count increases. The Zodiac taunts police and Spiderman by writing letters to the Daily Bugle where Peter Parker works. Further confusion is spurred by the Bugle’s new cartoonist, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, who is kidnapped by the Zodiac because he mistakes him for Toby McGuire.

Sicko Hostel 2 – Two attractive young women are lured into a nightmare of torture and disfigurement. Turns out it’s just the county hospital. The real horror begins when the get the bill and their insurance refuses to cover it.

Rambo Driving Miss Daisy - Tormented Vietnam veteran John Rambo takes what he hopes will be a quiet job driving around a cantankerous old woman. Little does he know but her scheming grandchildren are planning to kill her and take her fortune. They didn’t count on Rambo being in the mix. Rated R for violence and incoherent mumbling.

23 Dresses – Catherine Heigel is a perpetual Bride’s maid who is stalked by a madman (played by Jim Carrey) who is obsessed by the number 23.

Harry Potter and the Black Snake Moan – Harry is forced to chain Hermione to a radiator in a secluded corner of Hogwarts when he discovers that she is under a spell cast by Lord Voldemort. Harry has to find a way to break the spell while resisting Hermione’s sexual advances.

Grindhouse Atonement – 13 year old fledgling writer Briony Tallis and her family live in an enormous mansion in the English countryside. She has a crush on the housekeeper’s son, Robbie Turner, but he only has eyes for her older sister Cecilia. When the two finally fall for each other, Briony accuses Robbie of a horrible crime. Robbie is forced to join the Army. There he meets Bruce Willis who becomes the young man’s mentor. After his leg is blown off, Robbie has it replaced with a machine gun. After the war, Robbie and Bruce Willis return to England to clear his name and even the score. After Robbie kills Briony in a hail of bullets he learns that Cecilia has been kidnapped by Kurt Russell and they are now driving fast across the English countryside. Robbie and Bruce Willis steal a motorcycle and take off after them.

My New Hero

John Hockenberry is my new hero for pulling up the skirt of NBC and MSNBC:

http://http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/guest/22004/

Don't forget to click the link to the original story at the bottom.

When Did People Go This Soft?

Man, just when I think that I can't be any more disappointed with my fellow man reality pulls up her skirt just a little higher and grosses me out.

We just came through a nasty Pacific storm, 7 or 8 inches of rain and up to 70mph winds made the Monterey Peninsula a semi-war zone. The wind knocked down Pine trees and they knocked out power. This was the case throughout Northern California and PG&E said that it was a record for lines down. In California we can count on these kinds of storms every three to five years, usually El Nino (El Ninyo) induced and usually in March when our rainy season kicks in. As far as storms go it was a big deal but not up there on the all-time list. I came to work last Thursday about three hours before the storm died and I wasn't expecting too much in the way of business because of the harsh travel conditions. I was honestly surprised to get a small number of guests who lived on the peninsula but we without electricity. Now over the next four days we would get more but in those cases those people had been in the dark for three or four days and that's different. No this first night the power had only been out five hours.

Five freakin' hours...

The one that got me was a lady who had an address that was maybe five houses down from the house I grew up in. She had bought the home about six years ago. I checked her in politely but my blood boiled silently inside of me. I couldn't believe that I surrendered my home to someone like this, the longest we went without power was three or four days and it was no big deal because we had a fireplace. Right now I live in a mobile home that has no heat and a leaky roof (oh yeah, baby, I get to replace a whole segment of rooftop all by my lonesome) and this person couldn't bear to spend one night in the dark in a well-made tract home in a great neighborhood. Hey lady, I will trade you right now, straight up. Unreal.
Then the next part I will add just to understand what is sticking in my craw (whatever that is), these people live in homes that average $1.5 million or more and they ALL asked if we had a "Local's Discount", which we do not. I don't get a local's discount at the Dentist or when I got to get new breaks for my truck, so the insult was just that much greater. My God, people, it wasn't like Hurricane Katrina, where you had dead bodies floating down the street and roving gangs of looters. You people chose to live in a nifty place, nifty because it's near the ocean and has all kinds of trees everywhere you look. Guess what, Sherlock? Some of the most terrifying storms you will ever see come off of the Pacific Ocean and they knock over those nifty trees. Guess what? If we get a shitload of rain the Earth starts to slide, and that means that highways could be closed for months. The longest Highway One was closed was 18 months. The Central Coast is not a place for wimps and the soft-hearted because it is a very unforgiving place. It's how we weed out the undesirables, just as they do in Texas, Oklahoma, the Gulf States and Alaska where you can get serious weather. Your character isn't judged by how much money you blew on your house but on how you roll with the punches and deal with the little stuff. Your power being out for a few days is little stuff.

Dumb Luck Shouldn’t Be Our Counter-Terrorism Strategy

Every once in a while you will hear someone say “There hasn’t been a successful terrorist attack inside of the United States since 9/11/2001” or words to that affect. Usually it’s in defense of the Bush administration and their spastic counter-terror (CT) policies in both foreign and domestic application. Guess what? That has as much to do with Al Qaeda (and other terror groups) and their in ability to mount an organized strike within the US as it does with anything the government has done to stop them. First off, to be fair, Al Qaeda fucked up by attacking the US before it had firmly established outposts in the South Pacific, North Africa, Central and South America in which to train and stage future attacks. They assumed that either the US wouldn’t attack Afghanistan or that America would suffer the same fate that the Soviets did in that God forsaken land. No, I don’t know why. Okay, I sort of do; ideologues tend to over-estimate their own abilities and under-estimate their enemy’s will and prowess. Usama bin Laden is a snob who thinks that his crap emits no odor, a typical rich kid turned revolutionary to which we should be thankful because had he and his crew been smart they could have seriously checkmated the United States.

No, I’m not going to outline how. Whose side are you on?

Besides, this is about how the United States has spent a ton of money on Homeland Security but in the key positions (the FBI and CIA) little has changed, not about Al Qaeda.

The first big clue as to things not being right (outside of the invasion of Iraq) came in a June 20, 2005 New York Times article by David Johnson quoting a 15-page letter to three US Senators a lack of detailed understanding of terrorism by past and current FBI counter-terror officials.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/20/politics/20terror.html

Quote:

“In a 15-page letter, the lawyer, Stephen M. Kohn, wrote that the F.B.I.'s top counterterrorism officials said in sworn depositions that they did not know the relationship between Al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah, a South Asia offshoot of the terror network. Nor were they aware of the link between Osama bin Laden and Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a spiritual adviser to Mr. bin Laden with whom he had been associated since the 1980's.”
The article then goes on to explain that in spite of 9/11, the FBI doesn’t see experience in counter terrorism as the top qualification to lead their CT department. This is like an NFL team hiring a head coach that has no experience in football. There had been other stories too, stories about the FBI still being too slow to hire Arab linguists and even firing the ones that they had and stories about how the majority of FBI agents still not having access to the internet (where terrorists like Al Qaeda can be found with a few key-strokes. They’ll even answer your e-mail questions) but not hiring experienced CT professionals is the most telling as to the potential trouble the US can find itself in. 9/11 was as much a failure of the FBI as it was a successful terrorist operation. In-fighting between the FBI’s counter-terror desk (The FBI had both a Counter-Terror desk and a bin Laden desk. They didn’t speak to each other) and the CIA’s “Alec Station” (the special CIA unit tasked with tracking Al Qaeda and bin Laden) left gaps in information that both sides needed to get a clear picture of Al Qaeda’s activities inside of the US. It became a battle of egos as Michael Scheuer and John O’Neil as they argued over petty issues of procedure and jurisdiction. Things only got worse when the White House’s Richard Clark waded into the mix and things were so bad that Al Qaeda could have hijacked 20 planes that morning. It is clear that the FBI is more interested in protecting the status quo of it’s infrastructure than modernizing and retooling to meet the modern terrorist threat. They still see terrorism as a crime instead of an ideology and while terrorist share many common traits as criminals they tend to be better educated and highly driven to succeed.
The CIA is just not up to the task of CT, they are still tooled and structured to fight the Soviet Union. The prime example being the destruction of the video tapes showing interrogation of two Al Qaeda prisoners, the problem isn’t that they were destroyed (that was smart) but that they even recorded them in the first place (or that anybody outside of the prison even knew that the tapes existed). The CIA had such great success in Afghanistan in the 1980s, yet after the Soviets withdrew the CIA also turned away from that country as well as not even thinking to keep track of the various foreign Arab and Moslem fighters who’d come to kill Infidels. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and end of Communist rule in Russia the CIA under the Clinton Administration had turned to Industrial Espionage and using it’s abilities to steal contracts out from under European companies (Airbus for example) and giving US firms the edge during negotiations. The irony here is that the airlines almost went under after 9/11. After the Director of National Intelligence was established by Congress, the CIA’s reaction was predictable, four-year-old-girl-who-can’t-have-a-pony-like, lots of huffing and puffing with a list of excuses for non-performance. Adding insult and injury was the Bush Administration’s Deputy Secretary of State, Dick Armitage, leaking the name of Joe Wilson’s wife to a columnist and then the President himself laying the intelligence failure on Iraq squarely on the back of the CIA. In their defense, the CIA had been re-tasked in 1992 away from Iraq; they stripped the country of all but one American agent who also covered neighboring countries, and left the bulk of intelligence gathering to spy satellites and other technical assets. The Clinton Administration’s National Security Council (NSC) felt that Saddam Hussein made the perfect “Boogie Man” to entice investment in both Black Sea Oil futures and the new massive pipeline that was being built at the time. While technically Hussein was “Contained” he represented a threat to the region’s oil supply due to his unpredictable nature and his admitted WMD stockpile. So bad (worthless) was our intelligence on Iraq, during the initial days of the 2003 invasion US Army units ran head-long into Republican Guard tank divisions that they had no idea were in front of them. Thankfully they were no match for American armor and they were quickly dispatched. Some of this was due to what the CIA felt was a rush into war, they had an entire warehouse of captured Iraqi documents from the first Gulf War that they had never translated and they ere being pushed by both the White House and Congress, the latter rushing the vote to authorize force against Iraq even faster than even Bush had desired. While the Republican Guard targeting information isn’t the CIA’s direct responsibility that incident underscored the extent that we were blind in Iraq and it reflects the black hole that encompassed our knowledge about the strategic goings on of the Baath Party.
I once asked a gentleman who had served with the US Army Special Forces in Vietnam and then as a field agent with the CIA what needed to be done to fix his former employer. He replied without hesitation: “Fire everyone at CIA and close it down”.
The NSA is just overwhelmed and vexed. Tasked with the intercept of foreign communication signals (Telephone, radio, government and military communication), the NSA was trying to keep up with the explosion of international cell phone use before 9/11, but since the attacks the NSA has been strained in it’s mission to keep and eye on the various bad guys around the world while trying to add protocols for the new targets in Central Asia and North and Central Africa. 9/11 even caught the NSA flat-footed although it was the NSA that issued the lone advanced warning of Al Qaeda’s plans to hijack commercial airliners in August of 2001. They just didn’t know where the planes would be hijacked, so the warning was issued through the State Department as a warning for Americans traveling overseas. The revelation of domestic “Wire Tapping” has contributed to their vexed feelings as domestic eavesdropping is not something that the NSA does. Their massive antenna point outwards and to intercept inside of the United States would require a number of logistical steps and a mountain of legal hurdles that the NSA just was not equipped to initiate. Worse, when the story about “Warrentless Wire-Taps” was leaked, the key agency involved, the only agency that had legal permission to eavesdrop within the United States and the agency that leaned on the NSA to fudge the Constitution was never named. This is because the same agency probably leaked the story to the NY Times in the first place. I won’t play games, it’s the FBI is the only agency that can spy inside of the United States but they don’t have the kind of equipment to monitor on the scale that the NSA does, so the NSA was enlisted against their will and then when the FBI found out the size of the NSA’s net they closed up shop and ran to their source at the Times. So the NSA finds its reputation needlessly tarnished because the FBI, once again, didn’t know what it was doing and eavesdropping occurred in a way that didn’t have to happen. Then the FBI points its fickle finger at the NSA and the NSA is left hanging because the NSA just doesn’t discuss what it does or what it doesn’t do outside of secret Congressional hearings – period. The tragedy here is that the NSA is probably the best suited to track terrorists and the NSA is a key player in tracing their various recruiting and financial networks. The problem is that a number of stories in the news have revealed some to the NSA’s capabilities and folks like Al Qaeda went dark. They now use curriers, men with written or oral messages, who travel directly between cells so that no phone calls or e-mails can be intercepted. So even after 9/11, the FBI is still making enemies inside of the intelligence community.
The Director of National Intelligence has just made things even worse; who does the President call in an emergency? In a time when a clear line of communication is needed the Government has chosen to make a complex machine that barely works even more complex still. The 9/11 Commission was the generator of this bad idea, they were hailed as the gold-standard as to what was wrong inside of the intelligence community but they were the third commission to make recommendations for changes in the US intelligence services, the other two were in the 1990s and there have been as many as forty before those. The CIA and the Pentagon have been at each other’s throats since Vietnam and that rivalry has only gotten worse. The Pentagon pushed hard after 9/11 to be given its own intelligence agency, and was rewarded with one in 2002. So the CIA has just engaged in one giant hissy-fit ever since then. To make matter worse for the CIA, the military has been successful in rolling up Al Qaeda, Syrian and Iranian insurgencies between 2006 and 2008. They were able to do this thanks to a number of factors but primary amongst them was good old fashioned detective work. Since the surge of 2007, new Al Qaeda cells are shut down as soon as they appear. Yet this is great if you’re in Iraq, not so great if you’re trying to get out. It is unclear if the Pentagon’s intelligence agency has the ability to see big-picture trends and it’s likely that they don’t share their intelligence with their civilian counterparts. The events of 9/11 were made possible because of loop-holes and sloppy government practices that extended well beyond the DoD and Intelligence services, issues such as expired student visas and the specter of racial profiling that kept airport security from listening to their hunches. None of these problems have been addressed, a few years back the government issued a student visa to Mohamed Atta, the man who had flown the American Airlines 767 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center a few years before.
The United States needs to grow up, we can have a robust counter-terror strategy that is effective and doesn’t violate the Constitution. Just by giving the various agencies that already do exist the recourses to do their jobs (money, equipment and properly trained personnel) Americans could sleep well knowing that they’re as safe as possible.

Your Goddamned Cell Phone

This is not an anti-technology rant, it really isn’t but it is a rant about a piece of technology: The trusty old cell phone. This isn’t about the morons who drive while talking on their Yak-Box nor is it about the people who talk on them during a movie theater and why it’s okay to kill them. Nope, I just want to enlighten you to what a pain in the ass many of you cell phonies are to the rest of society.

I work in a job where I have to answer the phone as part of my dealings with the general public. Today, just as it happens every day, the phone rings and I drop what I’m doing to pick it up. I say ‘Hello” and the person on the other end drops off the line. What has happened is that they’ve lost their cell connection because they are hurtling down the highway at 75mph or they are walking around town and stepped into an artificial canyon created by a couple of tall buildings. This call came while I was in back refilling coffee, which meant that I had to stop in the middle and rush back to the phone. After the line had gone dead I sat there for a moment and it dawned on me that I’ve lost hours of productivity at work and hours more at home in lost football and live TV time thanks to someone who’d called me while on a cell phone and driving or walking around. There is nothing more annoying than dealing with this situation either because you know that they’ll eventually call you back so your life is suspended as you wait for them to get into range of the next cell. Every once in a while, one of these people will get angry at me because of the dropped call, as if I hung up on them instead of rationalizing that their cell phone service is shit.

Here’s an idea: Stop moving!

Yes, that’s correct, pull your car over or sit your ass down when you decide to call someone up. Why? You are the intruder when you place a phone call. The person that you are calling is doing something else so you owe it to them to complete your call in one sitting whatever the reason for your call. Otherwise you become a pest; face facts, there are some of your friends whom you can only reach by voice-mail and the reason is because you have become a pain in the ass. They like you as a person but they don’t talk to you on your crappy cell phone. Cell phones have forever ruined talk radio as well, every day some caller will be in the middle of making an interesting or important conversational point when they vanish from the airwaves. It’s so fucking rude.

Look gang, if you are making a phone call treat it as the most important thing you’ll do all day. Not thinking about where you are or how long you’ll stay connected makes you a selfish puke, you’re telling whoever you’re calling that their time doesn’t matter.

I wish I could bill the phone companies for dropped calls.

Merry Christmas...Seriously.

It's Christmas Eve, 2007. It's quiet here at work so I thought I'd take a second to thank you, whoever you are who stops in to read my ramblings. I hope that I amuse you.

I'm not religious in the standard definition of the word, I'm an Episcopalian but I haven't been to church in years. I worked in a Toy Store for 17 years and I have a jaded view of the holiday season, the only thing that got me through each year was the kids and their amazing sense of wondrous excitement. I suffer from depression during the holidays, mostly because of my small income and the commercialization that reminds me of how much money I don't have. Still, I manage to get through it without ruining it for other people. Which is something that a growing group of assholes really needs to learn how to do. I'm talking about the various anti-Christmas activist-types.

I'm not talking about the Nazis at the ACLU pushing holiday displays off of government property, I'm talking about the dorks who protest everything about Christmas. Who are these people anyway? What could they possibly protest about Christmas? I'm pretty sure that they are simpletons assholes who just hate everyone. Just look at Christmas itself...

The holiday is based around the birth of Jesus Christ, in Christianity it's a distant second to Easter in importance. It's the J-Man's death on the cross that set him apart and not his birth. Some folks argue about the Gospels and how the Nativity is only covered in one of them; others point out that Jesus was born in July and there's all kinds of imagery that's open to debate from being born in a stable to the Star of David. Most all of this hoohaw misses the point of Christmas, which is to take a day and think about your fellow man for a second, lay down your arms for a few hours and help those less fortunate than yourself. Before Jesus, most religious holidays were based on fear and had a terrifying story at their base. The birth of Christ is about the hope of PEACE and a call to love your neighbor.

What kind of piece of human shit would protest that?

That question answered itself.

Anyway, to those of you who don't suck, Merry Christmas!

Defending Ben Affleck

Look, it's not his fault.

Okay, I know that there's an entire industry that has built up like a Silver mine boom camp around making fun of Ben Affleck and putting the guy down. I just want to know why? Seriously, what did Ben Affleck do to warrant the derision that is now heaped upon him whenever he does a new movie project? Did he run over a puppy?

Look, the guy never expected to end up on the "A-List", he just wanted to act in movies and write one here and there. The problem was that his first major efforts were actually very damn good and compounding things was the fact that he's a good looking dude. He was offered a bunch of high paying leading-man parts in what turned out to be crappy movies. You would have done the same thing? No? Bullshit! You expect me to believe that if some Hollywood producer offers you $7million to be in a movie where you play a fighter pilot and make out with a hot actress babe that you are going to tell him no? If so, why are you even reading my blog? Jeez, give me that money and tell whats-her-face to buy birthcontrol because I'm going to give it my all, beeeaaaaytch! Ben just did what any guy with half a brain would have done in his place, so why crusify the man?
It can't be because of his high-profile romances. No way. Come on, they guy dated Gwyneth Paltrow back when she was still hot. Then he got to nail Jennifer Lopez (with the ass that launched a thousand ships) at a time when she was miss hotstuff. Then Jennifer Garner straightened his ass out and he married her. The man is not a dipshit. Plus, who makes fun of a guy for dating the hottest women on the planet anyway? What the hell is wrong with you? Ben should be issued some kind of a plaque or have a statue built or something.

So what's the deal?

Maybe it's because his good friend is Matt Damon and Matt has made different choices with his career and has gone the opposite direction from Ben. At least it depends on how you look at it. Ben seemed to have picked his movie roles based on how much fun the movie was going to be to make while Matt was willing to push himself into different directions. At their core they're both good actors it's just that Ben plays "Dom" to Matt's Joe DiMaggio, that's all. In the long run I think Ben's going to do some more good stuff and eventually folks will start picking on someone else.

Ben's a good guy and he's going to be okay.

Finding The Wall

It's been a while since my third back surgery and more than six years since I pulled off a long-range hike. Mostly because I haven't had the time but I have to admit that the idea of being disabled bugs me and I don't know how hard I can push myself any more. So about three weeks ago I grabbed my camera and my day pack and drove out to Fort Ord and parked up just past the old hospital. I was only planning a two hour field movement in which I was going to hunt down artifacts left over from the Army and photograph them. I'd bought new boots and I wanted to break those in as well, so I head into "The Back Yard", of Fort Ord with no real plan or time frame.

After the first mile I was feeling great and I decide to make a push deep into the old base in order to locate a remote canyon. This canyon had once been the location of a full-size mock-up of a Vietnamese village. The Army used it to train soldiers headed to Vietnam back in the late 1960s and while it is long since gone I've found that the Army always leaves something behind and because it was the Army and not the BLM who tore the place down it's possible to find goodies to photograph. So I'm feeling good, my boots are comfortable and the weather is passable , thus I forge up to the top of the first ridge and follow a game trail down to the road that descends to the bottom of Eucalyptus canyon. Once I reach the road at the bottom I'm just over three miles away from my truck, I take a second to take stock and decide that I feel good and so I boogie down the road to where it intersects with a trail and head off along that. The trail winds along the south-east side of the canyon ridge and heads to a gap where a road cuts across into the last deep canyon of the old base. Once I reach the gap and begin to climb I decide not to take the road and instead I take a trail that climbs up along a small box canyon to "Lookout Road". As I climb this trail I'm looking at this small canyon and I quickly realize that this is the target canyon! Hot dog! I continue up the trail because it gives me a great view of the entire canyon and I take mental notes on how I'm going to search it in the future. I finally get to the top of the canyon and it does look out onto the great canyon below. I stop and take my pack off and eat some breakfast bars I'd stowed inside. I then refill my canteens and take in the view. Then I look at my watch.

Oh shit...

It's 4:30pm, I'm six miles from my truck and I have an hour of daylight left. Oh shit. I am standing in the middle of Mountain Lion central all by my lonesome. Oh shit! Well, okay, I'm not totally screwed because I have my day pack, which means that I have a warm sweater and two flashlights. So I put on the sweater and clip one flashlight to my shoulder strap and put the other in my cargo pocket and I gear up and start the long move back. It took me forty minutes to climb back down to the road at the bottom of the second canyon and reach the road that would take me out. The problem now is that the forty minute/three mile hike had thrashed my legs and feet. My lower body was now a symphony of pain as each muscle group sang out and my right leg was shaking uncontrollably. I could feel blisters on both feet. All this would make the next mile no fun because because I would be climbing a 20% grade the whole way.

Somewhere before I reached the top the sun went down.

At the top I tried to kick it into gear but my legs were just done. I had two miles to go and it was 5:30pm. I just lunged down the road thankful for the darkness because I now looked like Frankenstein's monster as I thudded my way back to my truck. I swept the sides of the road with my second flashlight in order to catch the reflection of eyeballs that might be looking at me. Early on I did manage to catch a large cat in my beam of light but I'm pretty sure that it was a Bobcat and not a Cougar, either way I wasn't going to hang around and get a closer look. It's amazing how your world changes in the dark, especially when you are under stress; everything becomes impossible and every noise becomes a threat. I tried to sing but everything quickly boiled down to "Shit,Shit,Shit,Shit". The few times that I stopped for water I found that I paid for it in new kinds of pain as my muscles locked up. Usually I can daydream to take my mind off of the pain but not this time, I was living each and every moment as they came. I was never so happy as when I saw my truck.

I closed on it and opened the door. I slid off my gear, dumped my canteen out over my head and then sat down behind the wheel. Ahhhhhh! Oh baby, you know what I like. I had found my wall, somewhere out around the seven mile mark and I passed it and discovered a world of pain. When I got home I found that my socks had disintegrated at the toes and I had big blisters on both feet. I ended up removing the nail on my little toe, which actually came off pretty easily. The next day was no fun as I dealt if stiff muscles and foot pain but a few days later I felt great...really great....like a new man kinda great. I picked up 4mph on my exercise bike and I felt better than I had in a long time. The body is a strange thing because the whole way back to my truck I'm cursing myself for being so stupid to even think about hiking that far and now all I can think about is getting back out there and maybe even going farther.

I think I'm brain damaged.

Want To Screw Defense Contractors?

This is a subject near and dear to my heart, it also underlines everything that is wrong with Washington D.C., so bear with me.

I used to be a hobby buyer for a small toy store and I’m also a life-long builder of plastic models. I’ve built almost every plane in the US Air Force inventory, a fleet of battleships, destroyers and aircraft carriers. I’ve mastered 1/35 scale armor and figures and made cool dioramas. I’ve built the Starship Enterprise from A to E, the Millennium Falcon and all of those cool Aurora movie-monster kits. I’ve even done a few dinosaurs.

I love building models. Almost as much as I love blowing them up with firecrackers. That’s another thread.

The most common question that I used to be asked was where are the modern kits? You could find the M1 Abrams and Bradley but only from Tamaya (a Japanese company and very expensive), the UH-60 was only made in 1/48 and 1/72, but not in 1/35. You couldn’t find a 105 Howitzer or 90% of current US military hardware. It was frustrating because I could never get an answer. Eventually new Chinese based model companies started to pick up the slack and I could finally stock Los Angeles-Class submarines, Arleigh Burke destroyers and funky Oshkosh fuel trucks. I even stocked prototypes of the F-23, which was never built.

The thing was that these kits were always more expensive than their Russian counterparts by 15% to 25% and that never made sense to me because the details for a T-72 are a tougher cast than an M1. A modern Destroyer model, which has less clutter on its deck, was more expensive than a WWII battleship, which has all kinds of guns and deck items to detail (thus more plastic). Then, for every modern vehicle introduced model companies would release 7 to 15 new WWII kits. You can buy every variation of the Tiger tank; you can buy Nazi prototypes and even German tanks that only showed up on the battlefield in the last months of the war. The reasons that WWII kits are more popular vary; some of it has to do with the fact that WWII tanks, fighters, bombers and warships are just more interesting as a subject than modern equipment. I’ll never get tired of building B-17s, PT boats and the F4U myself so I understand this. Then there is basic politics, Japanese kids (who dominate the model building world) aren’t as hot on American stuff as they are on WWII German stuff. Some countries even restrict the model industry to only that country’s weapons systems (France), or that a percentage MUST be domestic kits. That’s why Heller makes some great, unique French stuff.

Then I found out the main reason that it’s so damn hard to get modern stuff. It turns out that the reason modern US kits are few and far between is due to Defense contractors demanding a licensing fee from model makers. Not just the primary contractors either, even sub-contractors have gotten into the game. Even if that sub-contractor’s equipment is not represented in the model (the numerous black boxes on an F-22 for example) they still sick their lawyers on the model companies. That slows everything down and drives the price of the kit up. Why would any model company want to produce the new armored cars, for example, when it’s just easier, cheaper and more profitable to roll out yet another sub-type of the Super Tiger from WWII?

This sucks, here’s why…

Who pays for the F-22? Who pays for those little black boxes in the F-22’s avionics bays? WE DO! Yep, John Q Taxpayer owns those F-22s and those little black boxes inside of them. In fact, if it wasn’t for Mr. & Mrs. Taxpayer, the F-22 wouldn’t exist and neither would all of those little black boxes. These defense companies are double-dipping, they are getting paid twice and it’s wrong. I paid for all of those Blackhawks and if I want to buy a 1/35 MH-60 variant I shouldn’t have to reimburse Hughes for a box that nobody could see even if it was part of the kit. In fact, that particular box is classified; if I have to pay Hughes then I want to know how it works and what it does.

This is just sleazy.

Now New Jersey Congressman Andrews has introduced a bill to end this scummy practice:

http://www.hmahobby.com/talking-points.html

It’s not going to save the world, end the war or make healthcare affordable but it IS a quality of life issue. It’s also a chance to set a small wrong back to right again.

Sorry to vent but this is something I’ve followed and feel strongly about.

"Party Girl" by Anna David

Okay, I know what you’re thinking, WTF? Axxman, what are you doing reading a book about some hot Hollywood reporter? Well, everyone in a while I like a good novel that takes me into a different world. Now, the last three books I’ve read were a couple of books by James Joes about Counter-Insurgency and “Blood & Thunder” A Tale of the Old West. In the last five years my life has been consumed by all things United States Army, Counter-Insurgency and Counter-Terrorism. Essentially reading about how good men train to kill other, not so good men and it can be very depressing at times. Now, I like to take a break here and there and one of my favorite ways to break up the military stuff is to tune into G4’s “Attack of the Show”, which is a silly, snarky show that covers video games, computers, technology, movies and other pop-culture stuff. It’s an hour long and a pleasant oasis of non-serious activity. On Wednesdays the do a segment called “In Your Pants” which covers sex and relationship advice and the co-host of this segment is a cool lady by the name of Anna David. She writes columns for a variety of magazines about sex and relationships and she comes across as being wise beyond her years. A wisdom that can only come with mileage. She’s usually dead on with her assessments and has an amazing ability to articulate how a woman feels during certain physical acts as well as how the female mind often perceives the world differently than men. So when I read that she had her first novel come out I made a point to hunt it down and buy it.

I’m glad that I did and I think that you should grab a copy too.

Through her character, Amelia Stone, Anna David slips the reader through those red velvet ropes of Hollywood, beyond the red carpet and into the world of a Gossip Magazine reporter. Using the fictional Amelia, Anna incorporates her biographical accounts into a story of a smart, educated young woman who’s keen and hilarious observations of the Hollywood party scene juxtapose harshly against her failure to realize that she has become a Cocaine addict.

The story starts at a wedding where Amelia’s adventurous nature, fueled by coke, gets her into an encounter in a pool house bathroom and later she finds herself in bed with two men. Definitely a great way to open a book if you ask me. From there we follow Amelia as she works a Movie premier, here Anna shows some skill as a writer because this brief chapter sets the tone and style for her story because buried underneath the humorous observations about certain actors and the catty remarks about skinny actresses it becomes apparent that Amelia is simply biding her time until she can get into the lady’s room and do coke. From there, Amelia ends up at a small party at a Malibu beach house where a game of “Truth or Dare” breaks out.

From there we follow Amelia as she goes to some Rock Star’s house where he insists that she interview him in bed. Shortly afterwards we watch as Amelia is surprised as she’s fired from her job because of her cocaine use. It is here where Anna David’s story-telling shifts into a different gear because this kind of story has been told a zillion times before and she manages to keep it original and true to her character, which is very hard to do even for someone who’s writing from personal experience. To be blunt, Anna does a masterful job of writing from an addict’s perspective as Amelia goes from a good paying job at a magazine, where all she does is go to parties and premiers and next finds herself picking up dog crap from a pet of a high caliber Hollywood exec for $10.00 an hour. Amelia’s coke-fueled rationalizations leave her oblivious to her circumstances as she spends what money she has left on more cocaine.

I can relate to this. I’m an alcoholic and it wasn’t until I’d stopped drinking that I began to realize that the reason my life sucked was due to booze. While I was a drunk this fact escaped me. It never occurred to me that these amazing women in my life kept dumping me because I had a drinking problem.

For the first half of the book, the only reliable man in Amelia Stone’s life is Alex, her coke dealer.

Anyway, from there we see the inevitable crash and Amelia passes out in her own vomit next to a dumpster following an amazingly dangerous encounter that I’ll leave for you to read about; and then it’s off to Re-Hab. Once again, Anna David keeps this story from becoming a cliché fest as she cleans herself up even though they’re all in here. This is due to this being more autobiographical and Anna’s sense of humor and honesty keeps the story above average. Often, writers who stray into re-hab stories either over dramatizes, over emotionalize or over do the whole event. Sure, it’s often a life-changing event for them but too often these stories end up dripping with self-indulgence that Anna manages to skate over in a classy way. You get enough emotion so that you get a good feel for Amelia’s transformation (more of an escape, actually) from coke-head to sober person without being beaten over the head or having our intellect insulted.
Once Amelia’s out of re-hab the story then becomes another challenge as she is hired to write a column about her crazy adventures for a prestigious magazine, crazy adventures she doesn’t plan on having any more in her new and sober life. She learns that the re-invented Amelia Stone can have just as many wild nights sober as the old Amelia Stone did.

“Party Girl” is a darn good book and an excellent first novel from Anna David. It’s a book that people who’ve dreamed about going to Hollywood to “Be a Star” should read. It’s a book that someone who’s smart and at risk should read, maybe you could get it as a gift for them. The narrative about cocaine use is bluntly honest and unglamorous and illustrates how a smart person can find themselves in trouble quickly and not even know it. Anna shows that as an addict, people become unaware of themselves and will rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior in their quest for their next fix. “Party Girl” is also a wonderful look at Hollywood and the people that populate the entertainment industry and the industries that feed of the entertainment industry. People who don’t believe in other dimensions should read this book because Anna illustrates the netherworld of the “Special People” of Hollywood, who move through the night like Vampires and hide in the shadows of the spotlight. There’s an insightful remark Anna makes about watching old TV shows; she becomes depressed because:

“These people were once this town’s big deal. They ate at all the right restaurants, and got invited to all the right parties, and had their names in Variety and were adored, and I’ve never heard of any of them, and now they’re gone and who the hell cares about them today?”

If I were governor, I’d have that written on a giant plaque and put it just below the “Hollywood” sign.

Smart Stuff.

Smart book.

Check it out.

Kinda Blue

October has always been a time when I start to feel a little down. I don't know why. As a dude who loves a good ghost story I should be stoked because the TV and newspapers are full of true ghost stories. Then there's all of the Halloween parties with the slutty outfits that the ladies wear (I use 'Slutty" in a good way) yet I don't seem to get anything out of it like I once did. I think it's because the year's almost over and that means I pissed away another year of my life. At least I have my book which keeps me going but that has been slow because the Army doesn't keep records as well as you'd think that they do. If it were a fiction piece I could have been done already but I need to document and check facts and that just takes time.

So I'm frustrated , I'm frustrated in October. Yay.

Then the holiday season comes and I'm reminded again about how much money I don't make and the number of friends that I have who appreciate Christmas as a time for simply being with the people you love and sharing yourself have thinned out and all that are left are the materialists. As I've aged I tend to embrace the Christian aspect of the Holidays as a time of hope, it makes me feel like a better person and it's much cheaper.

I think that the real issue is that this is going to be my 43rd October and this year is seemed to show up right after April. Time has its way with everyone and I am no exception, I feel like I'm watching my life through the window of a bullet train. WHOOSH! Its not all bad though, I'm losong weight and I have an exercise routine that is helping with that. Things have been quiet at home and stuff seems under control. I'm not even as down as I have been in the past so who knows, maybe this October thing is just a mid-life phase.

I hope.