The Daily Diversion Archive For September, 2001

Friday September 29, 2001

I'm just sittin' here, waiting my assignment from Mecawilson as part of project "Assghanistan." I figured I could give him a hand. I sure do want to kick a bit of ass after 9/11. This should just about do the trick.

The Onion has a bunch of really funny stuff on the aftermath of the attacks of 9/11. The part about the terrorists being disappointed to find them selves in hell was a hoot.

Word has it that there are US and British special force units on the ground in Taliban-country. God help anyone who stumbles into these recon units. Really.

I have a big weekend coming up. Sarah and I are going to go look at a house on Saturday and have a chat with our new Realtor. We'll probably set some target dates to hit and we'll also tender an offer for the house on the hill. Sunday, I'm planning on watching the Vikes get their asses kicked by the Bucs while playing Landslide with my old pal Illya. It was the thought of getting him a copy of that old game that brought up the memory of the Baker-Finch Ravine War. But unlike how we used to play it in the old days, these days, beer will be involved.

I'd also like to give a shout out to our garbage guys. You guys rock. I'm serious, these guys haven't given us one speck of a problem since we got the big trash bins. They just grab the stuff and off it goes. You guys are the greatest.

Yep, nothing but fluff today. I'm working with thin-clients at work today and it's kind of fun putting knowledge to good use that I learned via using Linux. Seeya Monday.

Thursday September 27, 2001

Someone blew a bugle, and now we're all in retreat.

Would you believe ANOTHER house is for sale in our neighborhood. This time it's the house adjacent to the park on the other side of the street. We also have it on conjecture, but we're pretty sure that the old lady down the block on our side has either passed away or has gone into a home. There's been people there every weekend now for the past 3 weeks moving stuff out of the house in a minipickup. They usually leave a mess on their front lawn while they're between trips, but they usually clean it up when they leave for the day. I give that house a couple of weeks before it is in the market as well. Grrr....

We've decided to offer on the house on the hill. I'll go no further in describing it. I let you know it is much bigger, on the side of a hill, in a somewhat quieter neighborhood and not in Minneapolis. It breaks my heart to leave my city, but there aren't very many nice, large houses in Minneapolis in neighborhoods we can afford with the quiet we need. What a pisser.

I'm also less than enthused by the features of the house on the hill, but things can be changed, right? It's more the stuff that's missing than the stuff that's there.

More tomorrow.

Wednesday September 26, 2001

...Continuing yesterday's story:

The war was now raging. It seemed that almost every day some atrocity was performed by either side. Rocks were dumped into each other's fort. Trash was dumped in the forts. Various skirmishes erupted in the middle parts of the ravine, and occasional raids kept everyone on their toes. Everyone, that is, who could come out and play on any given day.

We had spies, too. I had an early morning paper route through that area. I can't remember if I had the route during the time of the wars, but I know I always regarded that certain street with suspicion whenever I was there. I used my paper route for reconnaissance and reported what I saw back to Tom.

The other side employed agents. Mike lived across from the Baker's place, but he didn't care much for Bill. I guess if you grow up next door to someone, you either like or hate them. Anyway, Mike told us that Bill was a jerk and that he wanted to join our side. We thought it was a great score. We really didn't consider too seriously that Mike might be an Baker agent.

We were going to plan a big offensive in the late summer, so we busied ourselves watching the Baker fort and gathering rocks and such. I believe a couple of us even walked through downtown to the bridge across the river, crossed it, and tried to buy bottle rockets. Wisconsin was across the river and they were legal there. No surprise that we failed, they did have age restrictions on who could buy fireworks.

We all learned an important lesson about this time: It's handy to have a big brother. Bill Baker's older brother Max was of age. Not only was he taking part in the raids on our fort, he was going across the river regularly to stock up the Baker side with bottle rockets, firecrackers and other artillery. I guess by default, we learned that age laws were also a bunch of shit. It doesn't matter how old you are if you can find someone old enough to be your dealer/supplier/pusher. One thing was for sure, we had a weapons gap. I think I even used that term after hearing it on the T.V. referring to our missile strength.

Mike was part of our plan. He knew the Baker fort well. We didn't really ask why, we just assumed that since they were neighbors, he must have saw them or even helped them build it. He also knew the surrounding areas and since he wasn't suspected of being on our side, he was also able to walk around their part of the ravine without suspicion. He showed us on our maps where their ammo dumps (rock piles) were. He told us where to hit their fort to make it break. He had truly worked his way into our plans in a big way.

The day of the major offensive, everyone showed up except for Mike. We all thought it odd, but we all thought he was kind of flaky anyway. We had what we wanted, it was time to move. There may have been ten of us. We walked pretty unconcernedly through the ravine until we got within sight of the Baker fort. We then crouched down and moved slowly to not be seen. We all had parents or relatives who hunted or were in the Army, and most of us had been in Cub Scouts so we were at least familiar with how to walk carefully so's not to spook our prey. We also all had black or camo clothes on. I think Ben also had a stick of black goo to put on his face, but nobody else wanted any. Anyway, when we were in position, we were happy to see that there were people in the fort. We could hear people talking inside. We sent Tom's brother up close to see if he could hear what they were talking about.

Frank got close, but couldn't make anything out. Our plan was to announce our intent and to demand surrender. We had hoped our superior numbers would scare them into surrendering. Tom called out to them, and we were surprised to see them get out of their fort. They were holding their hands up, but something wasn't right. Their pockets were full of rocks.

Bill was the first one to break ranks and start hurling rocks. We were ready for their trick and we all opened up. I got hit in the leg, but it was from a different angle. What the...oh NO!

We must have been double crossed! They had guys behind us in the ravine. Our expeditionary force was now going to have to fight our way home. A couple of minutes of mad, raging war passed and to our surprise, we hadn't had anyone get badly hurt. I think we'd all been hit, but nobody was bleeding.

We hadn't been told to fall back, so we kept pressing our attack on the fort with a couple of guys in back keeping the Baker's ravine force at bay. Frank had been pretty close to the fort when the fun started, and he also had lugged a hammer along. He had moved up next to their fort in the chaos and was now using it to beat the boards off the side. Most of the Baker group were throwing from the back yard of Bill's house, just beyond the fort. Frank had pulled about 3 boards off the back of the fort when something stung me in the leg.

OW!

One of the most creepy guys in the Baker group was a new kid to the neighborhood named Joe Boyd. Joe was tall and probably a year or two older than we were. Joe hadn't been around long so nobody really knew him. There had been a rumor that he had beaten a kid up where he came from, or perhaps he had beaten a kid up here that went to a different elementary school. No matter, really. We feared he was crazy. Well, we were right.

After my leg started to sting, I looked down for a bee or something. It felt like someone jabbed a pencil into my leg, but I couldn't see anything there. I looked up and saw what had happened.

That bastard Joe Boyd had brought his BB gun to the fight. Someone yelled BB gun, and we all hunkered down. Now all the rock throwing was at Joe. I found I wasn't the only one hit. Frank had taken one in the forehead and it had left a little, red mark. He was back near us now and wanted to go home. Tom wanted one more volley, but we all decided it was time to go. We waited until Joe had fired again, and we all jumped up and ran. We couldn't return through the ravine due to the guys waiting down there. We found out that they were big kids that Bill had asked to help him out. We ended up running through a couple of backyards and finally, out to the street.

We walked home, half of us with stinging skin, half of us spoiling for a return fight with our BB guns. I think those of us who had been hit had no more fight left in us for the day and perhaps for the rest of the war. School was coming up and we'd end up facing these guys on the playground, anyway.

There would be no counter attack. Ben had been hit in the nuts (we figured Joe had been aiming there, the weirdo), and his mom had found out somehow. She had somehow gotten a hold of Joe's parents and suddenly there was all kinds of hell to pay. None of our guys got in too much trouble. I think Ben had the good sense to frame it in the "we were just walking in the ravine" way, not the "we were attacking their fort because we're at war" way. I think Tom's parents had heard the real story and had grounded Tom for a week, but the rest of us pretty much got to go about our business. We didn't hang at Tom's fort much after that. Not for any particular reason, more probably because the summer was ending and there were all kinds of baseball games to play at the field.

As fast as Joe Boyd had appeared, he disappeared. We don't know what happened to him. Nobody even had any guess other than his folks had moved away.

I learned a lot from that summer.

Here's a creepy link for you.

Tuesday September 25, 2001

When I was a kid, we didn't really have gangs. I hung out with a group of kids from the extended neighborhood, but there really wasn't a formal order. We played baseball in the summer, football in the fall, and boot hockey or ice hockey in the winter. We also fought wars in the ravines.

The town I grew up in was a river valley town. It was built on the side of a hill and that made for tough going on a bicycle with only one gear. No matter, we just rode the long way to not get tired. Anyway, a feature of river valleys are tributaries that flow down the banks of the bluffs. The river was nice and slow at my town, but the banks were still very steep in places. There were ravines and steep areas all over the north side of town.

At the head of one of these ravines, Bill Baker (the names have been changed to protect the unaware) and his group of friends lived on a fairly long street that dead-ended at nearly the head of the biggest ravine around. Naturally, they played in the ravine just like we did. On retrospect, this probably wasn't the safest nor healthiest place to play, but it hasn't hurt us much to date--hopefully. Bill had a group of about 5 friends and they built a fort in his back yard. Bill's back yard just happened to look out onto a part of the ravine. The fort seemed to be a claim to that end of the ravine.

About a block further down the ravine lived Tom Finch. His dad had built him a real fort. It was probably about 10' by 10' and it had a ladder that could reach the roof with. It also had a trap door in the bottom to jump down into the edge of the ravine. The cool part about this fort was that it was on the edge of the Finch's property and that two of it's sides were supported on poles and actually dangling into the ravine. This was how you could jump down the trap door and into the ravine. Pretty cool, really.

This could be thought of as Tom's claim to the ravine. We'd hang out at Tom's and plan marches through the ravine. The ravine itself was probably 1/2 mile long at least. It was crossed by two fills--areas where there used to be bridges, now filled-in. One of the fills was right next to Tom's place. The other one was at the far end of the ravine, about halfway to downtown.

The upper part of the ravine was a great place to tromp around in. It was too steep for bicycles, so we would hike, climb trees, dig for bones (people used to throw their trash into the ravines), and pretty much do kid stuff and get dirty.

Until one day, everything changed.

I don't know who started to fight between the Tom's group and Bill's group, but it served to be catalyst for a series of escalated skirmishes that only ended when someone went a bit too far.

The details of the fight that kicked all this drama off are sketchy. Apparently, Tom was hiking with some friends (I wasn't there), and stumbled into Bill's group. Bill's group told Tom's group to get lost. Shouting, shoving and fisticuffs ensued. Nothing was proven, no-one was there, but all of a sudden, it was war.

It was during the summer, so we didn't have the benefit of working out our differences on the playground at school. Since it was war, everyone in the neighborhood was forced to choose sides. Even though I lived closer to Bill, I was really good friends with Tom. I chose Tom's side as did most of my pals.

Well, if they wanted war, then war the should have. We started planning missions and plotting sabotage operations against the Baker gang. We stopped playing baseball at the school (it was kitty-corner from Tom's place) and started planning our operations. Eventually, we had mapped out the ravine and planned an operation to knock down the Baker gang's fort. Their fort was just a pile of wood nailed together so we thought it wouldn't be all that hard.

The operation was started on a weeknight. Since we didn't have school and it was not a big issue to be out for the whole day, we launched our attack. It started with all of us searching around for as many rocks to throw as we could find. We then hiked across the ravine and over the area behind the Baker's. There it was, about 5' high and about 7' wide next to a big woodpile. Since it was in their back yard, they wouldn't have that many rocks to throw. Cool.

The demo squad--the biggest guys--went over to the fort and tried to push it over on the off chance it was just wood propped up to look like a fort. No such luck. We then tried to sneak in to see if there were any battle plans or other things to steal. I was able to get in, but there wasn't any light, so it was tough to see. Finally, the expeditionary force decided bombardment was the answer. We found some fieldstones and, in pairs, tossed them onto the fort. It never budged. We pelted it with rocks for about 15 minutes and then we decided that we'd done enough (hardly any) damage. We left.

We were all high on adrenaline when we returned back to Tom's fort. We sat around and talked about how we saw dust fly off the roof when the big rocks hit it. We must have stayed there for about three hours. Suddenly there was a loud noise out side. Someone had thrown a rock against the side of the fort! SNEAK ATTACK!

We still had a bunch of rocks in the fort and a big window to throw them out of. We located them on the other side of a mound about 50' away. We assumed our battle stations and returned fire. Then, the unthinkable...

FFFFFFFFFFT... BANG!

They had bottle rockets.

They also had some way of aiming them, so the first one exploded in the fort. The 2 kids inside, Tom and his brother Frank, ran out the door. I was on the roof wailing rocks as hard and as fast as I could. THUP...OW! I hit someone. I found out quickly that the art was in the timing. I couldn't hit them when they were hiding unless I threw the rock way high in the air mortar style. Very inaccurate, but good for getting them to dance around back there. Once I got them moving, I was almost fast enough to throw another rock at the moving targets I could see.

"Cover us," Tom yelled just before bellowing "CHARGE!"

I don't think the other group was ready for that. They all bolted in the face of Tom, Frank, Ben and John. The Finch charge had saved the day.

The chargers chased them across "our" boundary--the side of the hill beneath the fort. Ben was left to be a sentry, and the chargers returned up the hill. We were all really tired. We sat around sweating for a while. Ben returned to the fort about 1/2 hour later saying he hadn't seen them at all. We all decided that tomorrow another blow for justice should be struck and we retired to our houses.

Monday September 24, 2001

Yet another big weekend of work on the house. We finally created a master plan for storage. The Grand Plan for Storage Prior to Our Move involved cleaning out and cleaning cold storage (a room in the basement), moving all the already-packed boxes into it, and then picking up the packing thread we had already started. The thread had become somewhat lost in the major-league clutter in the house. The house is now in somewhat better order and we're back to the packing game. It's nice to be back on track.

I'd say we're about two weeks to the market. With any luck at all.

I was cruising through the most excellent Google Image Database and stumbled upon one of funniest things I've seen in weeks. There's a site out there that makes those stick-figure supermodels look like what everyone hopes they will look like in 5 years. It's quite funny and it's the coolest thing recently that hasn't been linked to kottke.org, memepool.com, or metafilter.com. Well, I gotta go pack some more.

Friday September 21, 2001

I, like most folks, watched the President's speech last night. It was masterfully written, concise, clear and, dare I say it, Presidential. Most of you know that I'm no apologist for Dubya, but I would have to give him credit for making the right speech at the right time last night. I don't like to pick on the sitting President. It feels wrong to me. I may mention it once in a while, but for the most part, the President is the head of the country--our (sorta) elected figurehead. Taking cheap shots just doesn't seem right. Tempting, but not right.

This isn't saying that I'm suddenly pro-Dubya, I'm just a whole lot less anti-Dubya than I used to be.

My wife and I have talked about "homeland defense" before. Before Y2K, it involved silly talk about getting a gun and a big dog. Events transpired that ended us up with both. We didn't need either for our defense, however, it's nice to know they're both there. As for the our homeland defense, my wife and I have some pretty strong opinions on the subject. Yes, we should do more about the threats from bio and chemical attacks. No, neither of us think that surviving a wide-spread attack from weapons of mass destruction would be all that great. An effort should be made, however, to have an action plan in place so that our local rescue/hospital/health professionals have some inkling of what to do in the event of some kind of terrible event. So here's hoping that there will be ample stocks of vaccines, gas masks and various othersuch before too long.

To return to 9/11 for just a bit, there's been a couple of things that have gotten to me. The priest getting killed giving last rights to a firefighter, the thought of kids not getting picked up at day-care that afternoon, the struggle of the passengers on the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania and the spouses of anyone who was able to call out from the planes/buildings before they crashed. Terrible stuff.

Of course, there are always nutjobs around. There seems to be a small, vocal portion of this society that thinks blaming the victim is a good thing. I'm talking about the people who have been saying that we somehow deserved the events of 9/11 because of our foreign policies, previous actions, inequalities, and/or our lack of attendance to conferences. What a bunch of shit. We, meaning the whole flippin' world, are the victims. I read someplace on the net that these pigs that flew the jetliners aren't really Islamic Terrorists, Islamafascists, Bin Ladenites or whatever. They're nihilists. They don't believe in anything except that they thought that they were better than the things they wanted to destroy. Islam was just a bridge to a creed as crazy as that. Interesting theory.

Thursday September 20, 2001

Cripes.

It's Thursday already.

Another 5 trash bins hauled away this morning, and now, new construction going on in the house. The move project is gathering steam. Only it might not happen.

In this past summer, several properties on our side of the street have changed hands. Then, this fall, everyone wanted to move. Presently there are 4 For Sale signs on our block. One has already sold, yet the sign persists. Of the other three, one was just bought by speculators about a month ago and is now on the market again. By the way, it's priced way too high. The woman up the block who runs a day-care in her house who was the last person we expected to leave, has put her house up for sale as well. She's using a no-name realtor and she's asking easily 25Gs too much for her place. That's a drag because these houses will languish on the market for quite a while. Perhaps they're not in a hurry to sell, but I doubt that very much.

The fourth house, our friends' place, is priced less than these other two, and is far more appealing. I hope they get what they want for it. The problem is that it looks that there's an exodus going on on our block. It's frustrating to have put this much effort into prepping the house to sell and then being beaten to the market by these other three places.

I'm not surprised it happened, though. People in our neighborhoods who've been owning there for at least 5 years have doubled their money on their house. Second mortgages notwithstanding, everyone in our neighborhood is, essentially, getting a major cash settlement for moving out. Unfortunately, the only way to see the big dough is to leave. Property values being what they are (lagging), it's impossible to get an equity loan because the tax values of the properties in our area are so low. My taxable value is a little more than half what similar houses in my neighborhood are selling for. Since I can't see the cash via an equity loan, I'm just going to have to cash out and move elsewhere. I don't want to, but now is the time.

In other topics, nice virus there, Nimby, Namby, Nimbly, Namby-pamby freakin' morons. I spent most of yesterday doing battle with the most virulent virus to date. This thing spreads in a number of ways, which, by the way, I've always wondered why they hadn't already taken advantage of. It spreads via network shares to regular machines, via corrupted webservers, via this and that. It pretty much sucks. I spent the lion's share of the day yesterday trying desperately to check the flow of this flood. Our network was slowing to a crawl on a day that I had to transfer a ton of files. I updated virus profiles and browsers for pretty much the whole day to the exclusion of getting anything worthwhile done. When the bean-counters tally up the impact of these virus things, I hope they pin the cost directly on running Microsoft products. Specifically, Outlook, Outlook Express, and IIS. Talk about exploitable holes to drive virtual trucks through. I found to my amusement today that there doesn't seem to be any way to turn off the "preview pane" in Outlook Express. Nifty. That's one of the vectors of this last virus. Previewed email messages trigger the script that infects the host machine. Nice. New! Fun! Annoying!!!

Outlook express just lost a customer. I once recommended it because it was simple. No longer. It seems that when ever I let down my guard and start to like a Microsoft product, some idiot thing like this happens which can be laid directly at the feet of Microsoft's holey, buggy, eminently exploitable code.

It's funny, too. M$ keeps saying, "If the IIS server is fully patched with all the service packs and various hotfixes, the worm should not propagate. Fine. Wonderful. I was packed at home, but there were a couple of machines here at work that apparently weren't. Hey Mr. Gates, how about closing some of these major holes before introducing the next version, eh? Thanks.

Monday September 17, 2001

We did a bunch of work on the house this weekend. It wasn't much fun, but that's not really the point, is it? Our work was largely of the purging variety--we dropped off about 30 paint cans at the hazardous waste dropoff site, we tore up the nasty carpet on the floor of the porch, and we dropped off about 8 boxes of books at a bookstore. We also filled another couple of trash bins. It's been a tremendously productive weekend.

We even found the time to go out on Saturday night. We went to a local German beer hall. The Gasthauf Zur Gemutlecheit or something like that. It's just over the river in Northeast. It specializes in German food (duh) and German beer (yum) and it's quite an experience. There are wandering accordion players, beer hall chants and other strange drinking rituals.

We passed the boot--a 2 liter glass shaped like a boot and full of beer. The trick about passing the boot is that you can't let it touch the table (1 drink penalty), you have to pluck the glass with your finger when you're done drinking (1 drink penalty if you don't) and you have to drink a sip everytime it comes around. Since it's boot shaped, as it gets empty, it's tough to drink out of without getting splashed. By the way, if you do get splashed, you get to drink again. Drinking games are weird.

Anyway, the food was heavy like a block of lead might be heavy. It was very good and the beer was even better. In addition to the boot, I had a glass of some German Dopplebock and a glass of Hefeweisen. I really like both types of beer. It was a fun time, but my head hurt on Sunday morning. I guess I'm not 25 anymore. Nuts.

It seems that Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell think they know why the events of 9/11 happened to us. It was not the act of a bunch of martyr-mad wackos, it was not Osama Bin Satan, nor was it just a bunch of goons trying to make us all have a bad day. No, it's been widely reported that they think the people to blame for this atrocity are the gays.

That's right.

Apparently we've pissed The Big G off so much with our pandering to gays, feminists and liberals, that we've turned him into a malicious being with a really sick sense of fair play. So upset is God with us, Pat and Jerry say, that he caused a bunch of wacked loonies to hijack not one but four airliners full of innocent people and crash them into various non flying, rather hard objects with the intent on killing even more innocent people.

If this had happened in Birmingham, Alabama, would they be saying this shit?

I doubt it.

So, apparently to these men, making God out to be a being so far out of humankind's comprehension that projecting the type of acts a 3-year-old throwing a temper tantrum would be capable of is just what the doctor ordered to explain this catastrophe. God did it because he was mad at us.

Forget going after Osama Bin Laden. Let's bomb these two assholes.

Of course, the web has not taken this lying down. Being the web is the last bastion of all the crazy kooks who think Pat and Jerry are full of shit, there are bunches of sites full of vituperative verbal retribution against these two charlatans.

I just don't get it. Somehow we deserved this fate? We asked for our Twin Towers to be taken out by terrorists just because we were tolerant? We deserved the wrath of God because we practiced the Golden Rule? I was already of the opinion that T.V. God was the thing that would cause this society, this country to fall into the toilet, but this soon? This soon after a national--no, international tragedy? Whatever could these two goofballs have been thinking? Certainly, to have sided with terrorists immediately after such a heinous act as this would have meant their DEATH in other, less Christian countries.

I will forgive them their dickhead comment. I will forgive them their obvious hatred of some of the nicest people you're likely to meet. I will not forget their stupid and inappropriate comments in our nation's time of healing.

Thursday September 15, 2001

I feel bad about not surfing the internet with diligence to find the best sites for you to see unedited pictures and feeds of video of this tragedy. I wish I could point to various places and be Johnny-On-The-Spot. Unfortunately, I have a job, and I can't do this 24-7. There are other places to get feeds and links.

About a year ago, I ground my axe to a point and ranted about how the internet was becoming as closed and commercial as our roads. My point is that it was very easy to get around from site to site as long as these people had something to sell you. The people who were generating content were off in the hinterlands not being linked to anything and therefore, hard to find. I think this rant was largely aimed at pay-for-placement practices all search engines were using at the time.

Google was the notable exception to this and it remains so today. At least to a large extent. It was gratifying to see the pay for placement crowd wither and die on the vine. It was not so gratifying to see the consolidation into big Enormocorps like MSN and Yahoo, but I guess only the strong (wealthy) survive. My point here is that I would like to be able to provide you with quality links on this site, but the fact is, it's very hard to go looking for these good sites. The ones on my links page took me an awful long time to assemble.

I got a good night's sleep last night. My nose left me alone for the whole night for the first time in about a month. I didn't need to get up for any reason, and I forgot to set the alarm. The result was about 9 hours of uninterrupted sleep. I felt much better this morning than I have since I got back from vacation. Then I turned on the T.V.

No new, fresh hells have been created, and it seems that life is starting to move back into normalcy. The air will be full of planes again, there may be sports on T.V. to watch this weekend, and I might get my package from Amazon soon. I must say, I didn't realize how much mail went via air these days. It's rather disturbing that the disruption of flights within the U.S. has effectively shut off the flow of mail to our mailbox. We got one flyer from a local company yesterday. This, compared with the full box we get every day on a normal day. I wouldn't have guessed that junk mail traveled via air, but I'm betting most mail that goes farther that Chicago from here is just piggybacked on airliners.

I was reading the stories about the FDNY and NYPD officers who were killed when the buildings collapsed. It's stunning to believe that 3 companies and all the special rescue teams are missing. It's unbelievable. It's simply outrageous.

The past few days I've been pretty much a ravening lunatic about killing those responsible. I believe we as a nation should still exterminate these pests at our earliest convenience. However, I'm fully in agreement that we should take our time to fish out all these bastards. Another thing I think we should do is declare war and sell war bonds. That would cure the financing problems we may have in launching a full-scale, world-wide hunt for these pricks. It also would let us destroy them and not worry about a little "collateral damage." You don't worry about such things in a war. If militant yahoos can declare "holy war" on the U.S.A., then the U.S.A. should declare secular, or "unholy war" on the bastard fucking terrorists.

Okay, it looks like I'm still pretty mad about this whole thing. I will be for a long time. I urge everyone to act responsibly during this crisis. Don't go throwing rocks at mosques. Don't try doing a drive-by on the local Muslim community center. Don't get in your jacked-up pickup truck and wave the flag in front of either of these kinds of places. Don't yell obscenities out your car window at women wearing veils or men wearing beards. It's low, cheap and only shows that you're an ignorant asshole with no class. You may be mad, but be mad at the ones who are trying to kill you. Muslims here deserve the benefit of the doubt.

Another thing, don't go panic hoarding gasoline and food. Everything will be fine. Take a chill pill, a couple of hits off the bong, or a nice stiff drink and relax. Settle down. We're not wanting for anything yet, except vengeance. Those of you who are holding stocks, don't go panic selling. Not all that much has changed in the financial world in the past week. There's even reason to believe that this event may even boost the economy somewhat. Just sit tight. Everything's gonna be fine. Life will be different, but for most of us, it won't be all that different.

Wednesday September 12, 2001

For once, I don't know what to write about. I could write about how tragic the loss of life in New York is. I could write about how a monument to wealth creation has been taken away from the entire world, I could write about the fleeting nature of human life. I think I'll write about how terrorists are the scum of the earth.

Terrorism, the act of instilling terror in the hearts of the intended population, works because societies of all kinds have social laws and customs. These laws and customs make a society what it is, be it a nation of heroic warriors, agrarian farmers, or just a group of stoners at the mall. All groups have their mores and customs, and all groups have rules that can not be broken. Breaking these key rules, threatens to undermine the society that laid them down. Terrorism is the act of breaking these key rules to achieve some sort of end.

Killing someone, in most societies, is OK on some level. In the U.S., these levels are largely defined by the laws of each state. If I catch someone in my house that wants to do me harm, I'm within my rights to kill that person. Some states see it as their right to execute criminals guilty of certain heinous acts. Only in the criminal element is killing seen as a means to an end. By this definition, all terrorists are criminals.

To be effective, terrorists must be able to instill fear in the everyday person. They must deprive everyone of something that they are fearful of losing. This is easiest done by threatening a citizen's sense of security. I think we can say, "Mission Accomplished" to the pigs who flew the airliners into the World Trade Center buildings. After all, it doesn't take a great leap of imagination to see yourself in New York City either to work or to visit. It doesn't stretch the imagination a bit to imagine yourself visiting the World Trade Center, or conducting some business there. It certainly doesn't tax the imagination to imagine yourself flying in a commercial airliner. In one broad smear of feces, these pigs have taken the thoughtless execution of these acts away from all of us. We will never again be able to visit or do business in the World Trade Center. Few of us will ever be able to board an airliner without thinking of September 11, 2001. To be able to do business where we like, fly where we like and visit what we like is a benefit of this particular society that's come under attack.

I did not want to have these extra things to think about. I did not want to worry about what some pig in a jerkwater hole in the mountains thinks about America when I fly. I'm not going to start obsessing on it, either. The thing about terrorism is that it asks the victims to hurt themselves by being afraid. You can't instill terror in someone who is not afraid.

To conquer fear, some people turn to God, others to science. No remedy is perfect, either will do. I'm not going to do the will of these pigs in my country in my house in the city I chose to live in. I won't do it. What I will do is revise my call for blood from yesterday to this: Uncle Sam, take your time. This dope will try to strike again. Let's look for this pig and his little piggies. Let's trap them planning more piggy fun. Let's catch the piggies red-handed. Let's rub them down in bacon grease. Then let's send them to Allah. I hear he doesn't care much for pigs.

Once again to the people of New York City: We're deeply sorry for the pain you are all feeling. Our thoughts go out to you in this time of great adversity.

To the members of the New York City Fire Department: You are all our heroes. We can only wish to rise to the occasion as you all have. The terrorists attacked you deliberately with the two-building attack and we will not forget it, as I'm sure you won't. Our sadness knows no depths.

To the New York Police Department, EMTs and other public servants: We grieve with you over the loss of your fellow comrades. We are all in your debt.

Here's hoping the investigating agencies solve this one quick.

Tuesday September 12, 2001

BLACK TUESDAY

This day will live in infamy. I'm not the first person who's thought this, but this is a truth. From now on, many things will change.

It will be harder to board an airliner. It will be harder to mail packages. It will be harder to get into public buildings. Security will increase, video cameras will be used and security will be increased across the board. I think people will realize now that security isn't something to be taken for granted.

Terrorism is the last resort of the damned. Whoever is responsible for these attacks can now count the rest of their lifetime in hours. Uncle Sam will find you, you bastards. Not only that, your brilliant attacks may have served your purpose, but it has now solidified opposition to whatever positions the terrorists were pushing for. You will die from the air, and it's far too good a death for you.

Using passenger aircraft full of innocent people for destructive purposes. What purpose did this serve? Every one of the people on board of these 4 doomed planes had family. Everyone of these people has friends. Add all these people up, that's a significant portion of their communities. These people talk with others, and eventually you get a groundswell of people who feel as if they've been personally involved. Add that to all the coverage in the media, and you have a unified population. The U.S. vs. the low-life pigs who were responsible for this attack.

The U.S. will want blood for this. It wouldn't surprise me if attacks started this evening. I'm sure the U.S. armed forces in various agencies have a list of some of the bad guys. In the mood the country's in, I'm sure we wouldn't care if a few innocents got blown away. It would be a small price to pay to get rid of some of the people who think it's OK to kill innocents for their beliefs. We know it's not OK, but we don't care at this red-hot minute.

Terrorism will work to a certain extent in that it will be harder to move freely around the world. However, once the insects responsible for this gutless and cowardly attack, we can all breathe a little easier.

Speaking for my family, our hearts go out to the innocent passengers on the four airliners, the innocent workers in the World Trade Center, and the workers in the Pentagon. Our hearts also go out these peoples' friends and families. We are so sorry for your loss.

To the citizens of New York City: We are terribly sorry for the loss of life in your fair city. The manner in which these people died was horrible. We are also sorry for the loss of your landmark, the World Trade Center. It's a terrible loss and it will not be replaced.

What can be said further? I'm not going to shed tears for people in foreign lands who die from our retaliatory strikes. From what I can see, at least 10,000 people have lost their lives in these events. I think an eye for an eye applies here. Too bad that it's not likely that the people responsible for these attacks don't have something like the World Trade Center for us to destroy. It's not likely, because animals who are capable of flying a jet full of innocents into a building full of innocents, aren't capable of building, nor do they deserve beautiful cities like New York, and beautiful buildings like the World Trade Center. No, animals who are capable of these sorts of things, are too busy killing each other to achieve such lofty heights of society. Calling these people dogs, offends me because my dog wouldn't do this sort of thing. These people are more like slugs, jellyfish, and cockroaches. Animals who are capable of acts such as this are dangerous to the world's society and should be exterminated like the dangerous pests they are.

I'm just sick about this. Anyone who hears of this will be as well.

Monday September 10, 2001

The big trip to donate our junk happened on Saturday. What a pain in the ass. The first place we went to sent us to their downtown location as we had too much stuff for them to handle. Fair enough, we thought and headed downtown to the big Salvation Army drop off center.

We pulled in to their driveway just in time to be informed by the person in charge that they were closing for lunch. He assured us that they'd be open again in an hour and to stop back then. That they were breaking for lunch seemed reasonable, and that it was only going to be an hour seemed reasonable, but to have been referred down there from the first place we stopped and to see them just shutting the gate, and the fact that it was Saturday, well, it just rubbed us both the wrong way. We decided to take our business elsewhere.

Elsewhere was the big Goodwill center on the other side of downtown. When we got there, there was a largish line, but that's usual for a Saturday. When we got inside, the guy doing the unloading was also the guy who was deciding what they would take and what they would refuse. Fine. To say this guy was an asshole should go without saying, but this fellow topped asshole with churlish, and ornery. It seemed he was itching to refuse our stuff. We did have a bunch of stuff, but repeated donations have taught us what these places are looking for and what's trash. We'd filled the pickup truck bed with just the good stuff so he was having a hard time finding stuff to say no to. Out of a whole pickup truck bed full of stuff, the only things he refused were a fluorescent light fixture (a nice under-cabinet type), a knick-knack rack, and a window fan. Not bad. He seemed very disappointed that he couldn't find more stuff to say no to. I think I know why.

I think that we were being judged by our vehicle. I have a ratty pickup truck. It's a tool. I use it as such, and because of this, I couldn't give less of a shit how it looks. Others, apparently, don't share my view. My wife was the first person who pointed this out to me back when Freetruck was around. When we pulled in with a bunch of stuff in a ratty old truck, this guy probably figured he'd just send me on through. When all kinds of good stuff came out of the back of the truck, he was disappointed.

Now I shouldn't rip on this guy. He is, after all, working at a Goodwill in the dropoff area. However, I hate petty authority, and this guy was obviously spoiling to use his petty dictatorship's power to make sure we knew who was the boss there. I'm sure it's why he does his job. He bossed the other carriers around like he owned them. I hate that. I really do.

We ended up spoiling his day and getting what we wanted. The stuff he didn't want, fit nicely in one of our trash bins. Post a win for us.

We did a bunch more throwing away last night. We filled the two trash bins we have from the city. The three more we ordered showed up this morning, so the purge will continue pretty much unabated through the weekend. This is a good thing.

We have a big charity run scheduled for Saturday. We will probably fill the bed of my pickup and we may end up making two trips. You may be tempted to ask, "Where did you get all this stuff?" Well, we have accumulated it over 7-odd years of living in this place. There are things left from previous roommates, there's our stuff that we've removed from our parents' places, there's the things I inherited from my dad, there's the things we have left over from when my wife and I maintained separate households, and there's the various things that never got tossed due to the emotional baggage that clings to it. I've faced down most of this, but it really grates on me to have to throw things out that I sweated blood for back when I didn't have any money and less sense. There's the further problem that a lot of the things I'm tossing are things I built/created/made that are now broken. I've not made a complete sweep of these items/artifacts, but most of them are now gone. The only downside to the act of tossing these things is the way I feel after I've tossed them. I don't really feel all that great about it, but rationally it's the best move. I know this, I don't want to move these things, most of these things have suffered infusions of must and mold from the basement, and some other things have become homes for critters at one point or another. Tossit Tossit Tossit. It just makes sense. Too bad I have a hard time convincing my head of this fact.

I rode the bus to work this morning. It's supposed to rain, and I just couldn't rationalize spending $10.00 to park a block and a half away. We need the money too much for this kind of foolishness. Anyway, the driver today seemed to think (like many of these folks do) that the gas/brake combo is a binary operation: it's either all on or all off. I watched as people from my neighborhood nearly fell down the aisle trying to find a seat. I saw white knuckle saves and I saw bashed heads from strapped bags that found their own trajectories as the owners nearly fell. I know the 5 isn't exactly a prize route, but please, don't take it out on the riders.

On the bus this morning, I overheard a young man griping about having to be back in school this fall. Apparently he should have graduated last spring, but he fell a few credits shy. He was lamenting this fact to a woman he obviously knew who was sitting next to me. This young man was all on about the fact that the only reason he came up short of credits was that he sat in jail for a time last school year. He also was adamant that the thing he needed to do the next time he was arrested was to have a handcuff key hidden somewhere on his person. He seemed proud of the fact that he tried to get away from the arresting officers even after he had been handcuffed. He didn't mention what he had been doing to receive this attention, but just the fact that he was resisting arrest probably gave him a week to sit and think about it. That is, if he was so inclined. I assure you he wasn't.

He was making moves on this woman, and that was fine. She was on her way to her job, where she was working until it was time to go to college. She seemed to be all set up in this way. The fellow, said that it was in his plans to go to college, too--and he'd be there if it wasn't for the time he spent not in school. He said that she should look for him come next spring semester.

Now call me a jerk, but this guy shouldn't even be allowed on campus. College is a place of learning, not a place to pick up girls, drink, smoke and do othersuch. Yes, an awful lot of this stuff happens, but the fact of the matter is that higher education is what you make of it. If you took a class that was a complete waste of your time, then you're partially to blame. First, for taking the class. Second, for not trying to get something out of it. This kid had a definite disconnect over the meaning of school. School to him, it seemed, was something to do because he had to. Not because he wanted to. He seemed to think that there would be some advantage to him attending an institute of higher learning. This would be true, if he gave a crap about being there. I could tell just by the way this fellow was dressed that he was all about doing what he wanted just then. He had the pants-way-saggin thing going on with his boxer shorts hanging out at the top, the wife-beater t-shirt on, and--most tellingly--no books or bags of any sort. I find it hard to believe that a person in school who is trying their best and who deems themselves "college-bound" would not be carrying at least a bag with books and notebooks to school. What this young man would do in college is beyond me. I suppose a guy's gotta dream, right?

Wednesday September 5, 2001

Commercial Idiocy, Part II

There's another disgusting commercial out there. If you only watch broadcast TV, you've probably never seen it, but if you have cable, you've probably memorized it by now. It's the commercial for the orange-scented hair remover lotion. Buy a drum of it and get a free robe, right? OK. There's something about hair on a towel that gives me a bad case of the barfs. Man oh man I wish to never see that commercial again. The very act of rubbing partially dissolved hair off a leg makes me queasy. I'm sure women do this daily just about everywhere. If you do, more power to you. However, I just can't look at this particular act without my stomach racing for my throat. Yuck. Freakin' Yuck.

What's worse is that this particular commercial plays during motorcycle races, nazivision shows (that's the History Channel for those of you not in the know...), and sometimes during Law & Order. I just can't avoid it.

There's also something else about this commercial: It's the way the woman in the bathrobe seems to be making cuddly-poo with the cheapass "free" bathrobe. It's creepy. I think the advertisers want you to think that she's thinking, "Mmmmm this is the coziest bathrobe eeever...", what I see is "Oh god, how much longer is this take! I can't keep this up for much longer."

We visited the mortgage banker last night. Creepy. There it was: all our financial deeds and misdeeds of the past 10 years laid out in front of some stranger to be looked at, graded, and if it surpassed some kind of star-chamber pre-set mark, we would be granted the ability to pay off a large sum of money for the next 30 years. WHEEEE!

It was almost like going to church. There we were, prostrating ourselves on the altar of money. Making promises, swearing oaths, signing our lives away, mortgaging our first-born etc, etc... I hate situations like this. I don't like asking for money from anyone, and this seems to be the pinnacle of the very act I loathe. Asking a stranger for an obscene amount of money. Worse, the ability to do what we want lies in these strangers' hands. Oh please you men and women in dark robes with big books and long, black candles, if you would only give us these pieces of gold, we would (literally) be forever in your debt. A truly harrowing experience.

Later last night, we went looking at a somewhat suitable neighborhood on the east side of St. Paul. We took a look at Dayton's Bluff--mostly because we have friends who live over there. There were few houses for sale, and the ones that were, were just kinda iffy. Both would have been fine houses, but both seemed to be a bit rich in the pricing. We're not really in the market yet, so we'll just be looking at outsides for the time being.

I think I annoyed my wife by falling in love with the huge, brick mansion on the other side of the street from one of the houses for sale. It was a fabulous palace of a place that had a copula, turrets, and all kinds of brick gymnastics all over the place. It had to be on about 1/2 acre of land in the middle of the city, so you know that this would only be a house worthy of consideration if we managed to somehow make it huge. I bet the house/property combo is at least a cool half mil easy. It's quite the place. I think my wife was annoyed because I shot down one of the houses under consideration because I'd have to look at that place every day. Not a very good reason, to be sure, but there it is. I couldn't bear to look at that mansion and not think that I should be living there--with servants.

Tonight, I fear, will be a festival of cleaning. It will start in cold storage and will probably finish with some light painting and perhaps some other light maintenance. Fun.

Tuesday September 4, 2001

Commercial Idiocy, Part I

Have you seen the commercial that shows nothing but some woman's midriff with her belly-button singing, "I'm coming up"? I don't know what product the commercial is hawking, because I simultaneously hit mute on the remote and look away. This commercial is just flat-out disgusting. Looking at someone's belly-button is of questionable taste anyway, but using a computer to make this erstwhile orifice "sing" has got to be the biggest abuse of processing power ever.

Of course it begs the question, "What's next?" With a small shudder various revolting images pass through my mind's eye. How about a singing asshole that starts the commercial with big lips that shrink gradually through the commercial after the application of 'roid cream? How about singing, dancing toe cheese hawking a new white cheddar powder coated popcorn product? Ugh, the mind boggles.

I try to keep this a PG blog, but it's tending toward R. I hate to pull punches here, but I can see that if I continue this topic further, I'm going to regret it. Suffice to say that they cannot put a bullet through this commercial's tape soon enough for me.

My wife and I threw down a bunch of money at the Home Despot yesterday. Some thoughts: First, it was Labor Day. What the hell was the place doing open? What the hell were we doing there? Second, what the hell were we thinking when we went to a "home improvement" place on a holiday? The place was mobbed, the help was thin and the ones wandering the floor acted as if they had just lost the black eyes of their recent lobotomy. The paint department was staffed intermittently by midriffs and nose-pickers, neither of which seemed to know the meaning of productive work speed. The line was enormous. It took my wife a month (seemingly) to get her gallon of porch floor paint. We couldn't find the respirators, only succeeding in our task by tackling an "associate" at a dead run. It was the third of these warehouse zombies (fast one's t'boot) to whom we had addressed our question and we just about dropped dead of shock (an exhaustion) when we actually found them at the end of his directions.

We finally conceded defeat in our attempt to spend even more money, We rolled to the cashier to be informed that the woman who was on the register ringing up our total wasn't a cashier. Odd. She was ringing us up. I felt like getting her to get a hold of the manager of the store so that she could turn herself in as an imposter, a charlatan, a fraud. "It's OK," I soothed, "We all want to be things we're not..."

When we were on the Cape, everyone there with the possible exception of an ice cream shop in Provincetown, bent over backwards to make sure we were getting what we wanted. I guess this is just the backlash from that. There we were "Tourists" with lots of money. Here we are "residents" to be treated with disdain and contempt.

We also had some fun with the dog yesterday. We received our off-leash dog park permit in the mail while we were away, and so we used our free night (bonus!) as a chance to try out the dog run. Wow, what fun. The dog just loves these things. We went just around sundown, but there were still people there. And to think that people actually thought these parks were a bad idea.

Monday September 3, 2001

Well I can now come clean. I was on vacation last week. I went to Cape Cod, Massachusetts with my wife and her brother's family. We had a great time.

We upgraded our tickets to first class on the way out and got nicely toasted on complimentary wine and beer. Nice. After staying with Sarah's brother for a night, we piled into his two cars and raced off to the Cape. We had all rented a cottage in Truro, and we arrived about an hour after check-in time. From then on it was bliss.

It took quite a while to decompress from traveling, but with the help of my sandals, the beach and a couple of leisurely walks in Provincetown it only was a matter of time.

Sarah and I did some touristy things, but mostly just hung out in the cottage and read. I finished two books, and am quite close to finishing another.

I'll write more tomorrow when I have a bit more inclination.

Friday August 31, 2001

Not much to say today, either.