I have a few ideas on the economy.  Some of them work; most of them require work.  In whatever case, I posit them here, and defend my points.

The single most important thing that must be done right now is the end of all current spending and income taxing.  For too long, the elected have been spending lots of our money on stuff they don't need and we really don't need.  Don't get me wrong, we've heard some good ideas, but few of them get a review by the taxpayers until the money's gone and the kids get back from the arcade wondering why we won't give them more.  That needs to end now.

The next thing that needs to happen is the firing of all the employees of the federal and state governments that are not elected.  Now why do I say that?  Considering I'm registered to vote in all but 49 of the states, I shouldn't be advocating such a sweeping idea, right?  One wrinkle:  several of the states have exhausted their money and begged the federal government for more.  One good way to end all that is to send everyone home.  I figure, if they're unemployed, they'll understand this mess all the more.  But I'm not looking to punish the state; I'm looking to revitalize the economy.  You might wonder how that works; stay tuned, you've only got the outer frame of the puzzle to see.

Third, and maybe the weirdest, is that the gun laws need to be repealed NOW.  Here's the part where I start talking about the Second Amendment:  this most sacred amendment to the Constitution has nothing to do with rights.  It does, however, have everything, and I'll repeat with capitalization, EVERYTHING, to do with limiting the scope of government.  Having just sent home all the employees and busted up their piggy banks, I'm sure they won't miss these laws.  Besides, when the rest of my plan gets unveiled, you'll see why.

Fourth, and probably most ingenious, is the repeal of all the other laws.  Now I say this knowing how many of you have been pulled over by the cops, so you'll be doubly happy to see them go home.  Rest assured, this is something you won't miss.  Really.  Just saying.  The by-product of this, and maybe the most important, is that once the goods and services that are currently criminal are no longer so (I'm looking at you pot and prostitution, heroin and abortion, guns and gay marriage), the increase in monies accrued by the People will lead to increased personal spending and saving by the People in whatever form of currency the People choose to use.

Fifth, close all the military installations worldwide and end this asinine War on Ennui.  Sorry, I meant Depression.  Wait, I know it's a noun that is barely even a noun.  Um, I got it!  Terror!  End the War on Terror.  Most of the guys would have been sent home with the first of these steps, so does it really matter?  Consider the money (when we get it back) that would be saved (for more appropriate investment) when the troops (educated and skilled to do a lot of other jobs) come home (to revitalize the economy and end the worry and stress of their families) to America (where we all live anyway) and become the revitalized middle (and upper) class.

Now, I know some of you are thinking about how screwed you'll be if this all happens.  If it actually happens (and it will, believe me), you'd do well to be prepared for it.  If it does NOT happen, now would be a good time to prepare for it to happen anyway, because if THIS doesn't happen, SOMETHING WAY WORSE WILL.  I'm not talking about terrorists or smallpox or black helicopters.  I'm talking about what happens when the lights go out, the hospitals close, the cops go on strike (um, not sure that's a bad thing, but focus), the water starts running brown, and the cars crash into each other because nobody's there to monitor the lights.  It's time to do what you gotta do, because sooner or later, something worse will come your way.

Soapbox vacated.  Start writing your hate mail now.  In the words of Ayn Rand's character John Galt, "You have nothing to offer us.  We do not need you."

In the last couple hours, I've read and deleted four emails from the "other" major networking site, stating that I've violated their terms of service.  A further review of their terms tells me that I did, in one bright and glaring way:  I'm not a student.

If you have a Facebook account, and you're not a student, consider just dumping them.  It's not like you need a real reason to dump them; they are not interested in having you on their beloved f*cking site.

Just thought I'd share that with you.

I wrote a blog post yesterday.  Some of you may have read it.  Others of you may have read the lift on my page at FaceBook.  Whichever you read, you read the repetition of the line, "I think I quit."  Some of you have asked what exactly that means, others of you have voiced concerns about my well-being.  (Heather, while your concern is greatly appreciated, you should know that I'm planning on living forever and bugging a certain someone you know and love.)  After reading it while listening to a song commonly associated with slitting your wrists (I won't say which one), I thought that some of the things I said can be read as a precursor to a suicide note.  This is not the case; I'm just pissy is all.

I made references to my workplace, my friends, my "drinking copious amounts of alcoholic beverages" and my "fussing."  These, along with several statements (that will, for purpose of brevity, be omitted here) can lead some to conclude that I have made some kind of drastic decision to treat a case of mere dandruff.  Though I do occasionally feel tempted to smash someone's head on my counter at work, I will just say that things are not always as "black-and-white" as I'd like for them to be, and that I need to develop my ability to see gray.  Until then, I'm going to limit the depths of my rantings to simply telling people that Ditka reigns supreme and that beer is still good for you.

And, just by way of side notation, I goofed up the words to the hymn I added at the end of yesterday's blog.  For accurate lyrics, check the pre-blog post on September 10th, 2006.  And yes, I meant it when I said that O.J. did it again.

In the words of Thomas Jefferson, "I never had an opinion in politics or religion which I was afraid to own. A costive reserve on these subjects might have procured me more esteem from some people, but less from myself."

I think I quit.  I think I'm tired of contributing my considerable brainpower to the public discourse.  I think I'll be happy working at the grocery store forever, just so long as my boss is happy to have me doing the work I do.  I think I'll enjoy the TV dinner selection at break time, sleeping through the best moments of my friends' lives, getting paid more than some of my teenager friends, and drinking copious amounts of alcoholic beverages to make my laborious life livable.  And to that end, I think, just for the sake of being able to maintain some semblance of sanity and cohesion in my life, I quit.

I am part of a crew at work of six guys.  We are, for the most part, polarized in different directions about nearly everything.  We agree on some of the core stuff, like drinking is fun, O.J. did it again, and my favorite team won't make it to the Super Bowl again this year (DA BEARS!).  We disagree on things like welfare, Iraq, the economy, the upcoming civil war, the supremacy of Mike Ditka, how much the Hawkeyes suck just because they do, and the role of government in my decision-making processes.  Somehow, we make it work, while getting our work done, and we still (mostly) tolerate each other.  So when one of them went on vacation last week, we kinda slumped into a funk for a bit, waiting impatiently for his triumphant return, to bounce our ideas off his newly-tanned noggin.

I hate to disappoint him, but I think I quit.  I'm going to make my workplace a much more livable environment by not participating in the political discussions that make overnights so interesting.  And I think I quit because while he was gone, another one of the guys figured out why I'm so angry.  He didn't mean to psychoanalyze me, but he hit it on the head when he suggested that my problem with other people having my money stems from a history of being "punched in the face by the iron fist so much that you wouldn't recognize the silver palm if you were staring at it."

So I think I've decided to quit.  I can't keep putting up excuses for the dissolution of welfare, the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq and the elimination of the emergency bureaus and committees of the government, the unconstitutional taxation of the people, the robbery of the Federal Reserve Bank, the gang-type warfare of locking up and torturing people at Guantanamo Bay, and the supremacy of Mike Ditka.  I know why I do it now, and it seems like hypocrisy to claim that I'm angry on behalf of the guys that work with no end in sight to keep welfarts fed, couched, and addicted to Springer, when my real reason is because I'm an overgrown fussing little boy with a daddy issue.

I'm right, but that's not the point.  The point is that I think I quit.

If you are able to form some sort of back-and-forth from my rantings today, then you should feel the freedom to write me some hate mail.  I offer you, by way of normality in my blog, one of the hymns we sang at St. Mary's, one that I posted in my blog on a previous anniversary of 9/11, one that is still near and dear to my heart.

"All that we have and all that we offer comes from a heart both frightened and free.  Take what we give now, and give what we need, all done in His name."

Mahalo.

This week saw a few red-letter moments in history: a Pizza Hut driver in Des Moines shoots a guy trying to rob him; a 12-year-old boy sees his mother getting attacked and knifes the guy (to death). I’m sure there are more, but I want to focus on these.

It looks to me like someone came to his senses. Maybe it was the kid, maybe it was the driver, I don’t know. Maybe I don’t care. I’m looking around me and seeing that people making more money than either of these guys is looking for an excuse to waste a bunch of time calling their actions into some kind of question. And since it’s slightly harder, we’ll start with the Pizza Hut driver.

At 38 years old, a man knows himself and what is right and wrong with him (if he’s paying attention). According to the papers, this driver passed a bunch of background checks and got a permit to carry a gun. And in the face of two robbers that thought they were Bonnie and Clyde, he responded to a threat of deadly force in kind. I’ve never been shot before, apart from a paintball that hit awfully close to home (and I didn’t put a lot into playing after that day), but those who have been shot have told me that it sucks, in ways I can’t even begin to imagine.

According to Wikipedia’s article entitled "Ballistic trauma," "As a rule, all gunshot wounds are medical emergencies which require immediate hospital treatment." These friends of mine ask me what it would take to get me to draw my weapon; the only answer I can give is "something pretty serious." There’s a reason for that. Guns are used to kill people. They are the equalizer of force that effectively ends all discussions, leaving no option but violence.

Some dumbasses would say these words in such a fashion as to indicate that violence is a bad thing. But some words Gordon Gekko* said bring the point into focus: "It’s not a question of enough, pal. It’s a Zero Sum game - somebody wins, somebody loses. Money itself isn’t lost or made, it’s simply transferred - from one perception to another. Like magic." A Zero Sum Game. Gunfights have a single lingering outcome, one with clear winners and clear losers (sometimes more than one apiece). Good, or bad, the consequences are the same. Die today or die of old age, having outrun a bullet, you’re going to die and you can’t stop it. Guns don’t change that much, save only the dates.

So let’s give a hand to you, delivery guy. Pizza Hut will probably fire you for violating their "give-them-what-they-want-

I was a paper carrier in high school.  I was kinda loser-ish and didn't really know what things like motivation or taxes were.  I just knew that I wanted to do nothing and stay at home, but that's not important right now.  Here's what is:  my senior year, American-made bombs fell on Serbian targets and troops took to the landscape to aid in the liberation of the Kosovar Albanians.  Three American soldiers were taken prisoner that year, released only after Jesse Jackson went to their aid (yeah, Jesse Jackson sprung three GI's from captivity--so much for the "what good is he to anybody?" argument, but I digress).  For about a month, the only headline bigger than Kosovo was Columbine, but in that time I learned a very important lesson about the Clinton foreign policy:  it only worked once, in Kosovo.

Here we are, about nine years removed from those events, and I finally see the pay-off:  Kosovo is declaring freedom and independence from Serbia.  I couldn't be happier.  Added to the ranks of Washington and Franklin are a bunch of Kosovar people whose names we'll never learn, but their labors secured for their people a liberty from the oppression of Serbia.  This blogger hopes that in this newfound freedom, they remember those lessons, hold tight the memory of all who gave their lives to see this day come, and move forward with a common strength of identity and individuality.

And never beat your swords back into plowshares, Kosovo...who says you can't have one of each?  You're independent now!  Grab your popcorn money and get dressed up!  This is cause for celebration!

Like we Iowegians say, "Our liberites we prize and our rights we will maintain."  We sometimes add to those ten words this two-word phrase: "HELL YEAH!"

Soapbox vacated.  Mahalo.
 

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."  -text of the Ninth Amendment

To bring you to a full understanding of the meaning of the words in this text, I once again return you to the Breakdown, wherein we use the Webster's Dictionary to define every single word in a text to understand what the hell the guy was trying to say in the first place.

ENUMERATION is the act of ascertaining the number of a thing or specifying things one after another.

DISPARAGE is a verb which means to lower in rank or reputation, to degrade, or to depreciate by indirect means.

If you can't figure out the other words yourself, you're just not trying hard enough.  Most of the difficulty is relieved in removing the dangling pronouns and moving some of the phrases and clauses enough to make it sound like modern English.  So I'll try...

"The counting and specifying of certain rights in the Constitution shall not be construed to deny or degrade other rights retained by the people."

As one of "the people,"  I count and specify certain rights in the Constitution, but I shall not deny or degrade other rights retained by other people.  I can live with that, and so can you.  For starters, I retain and assert (at my leisure) my right to maintain my continued "staying alive."  Any person who attempts to assert their right to kill me will have to remember that while a right to kill me might be assertable, my undeniable and "undegradeable" (not actually in the dictionary) right to stay alive is violated by that act.

For you Christians out there that called the movie "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" a good movie, I'll remind you of a line of the Witch's dialogue that may sound familiar to you.  When the Witch came to Aslan and told him that all traitors belong to her (referring to Edmund), Peter drew his sword to stop her.  Her words, and I'm quoting, were, "Do you think mere force will deny me my right?"  When you heard that line, you shoulda gone out and got that tattooed on your arms, engraved into your "Army of the Lord Dog Tags" and plastered across your walls in posters and wrote it on T-shirts.

In the crudest language available to me, I will state that gay people want to marry each other.  They have retained that right, and just because it's not enumerated in the Constitution doesn't mean it should be denied or degraded by the likes of Pat Robertson in the private sector, or Willard M. Romney (as he attempted to do in his capacity as the Governor of Massachusetts), or any other person, myself included.

I'll pull it apart and tell you all, because SOMEBODY's gotta say it, what the big deal is.  Gay people want the same recognition of their couple-ship that straight people get; Christians feel it necessary to protect their "holy" unions, but want to leave it to the government because they don't want to do it themselves because that would look like "unholy" gay-bashing; and Christians in government want to get re-elected, regardless of the consequences, so they sell out their oaths to the Constitution in order to pacify the shrinking majority of Christians willing to scream until their lungs burn that gay people are going to Hell for sinning against God and that God won't forgive gay people just because they're gay.  Of course if it becomes law, gay people who marry will be found to have violated the law and get thrown in prison if they refuse to repent of their sins, I mean, renounce their marriage and apologize for having offended all the Christians that defend marriage.

I'm doing lunch with Dad soon, so I'll get back to this, but you know where to find me...but don't for one second think I've vacated the soapbox.

As a mean-spirited child, I would respond to people who called me names by hitting them.  I thought it was wrong to be punished for this, but I learned later in life that sticks and stones don't break my bones (you can probably imagine how name-calling affects me), meaning that hate doesn't justify hurt.  Recently Ron Paul reminded the world that the Middle East hates us because we're there, and some of you have construed that to mean that Dr. Paul was "blaming America for 9/11."  There are some mean-spirited children who will simply never grow up.

Three things must be made plain now:
1) Just because they hate us doesn't mean they get to kill us;
2) Just because we made them hate us doesn't mean we're to blame for 9/11; and
3) THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A CONNECTION BETWEEN IRAQ AND 9/11!

President Bush keeps saying that we're better off with our troops fighting the "terrorists" over there so that we don't have to fight them here.  Bullshit.  There are two ways we can fix our terror problem:  we can either direct Israel to remove their gloves; or we can close international military bases and bring ALL our troops home, watch our economy soar with increased productivity, and evolve beyond the internal-combustion engine as our primary form of transportation of people and cargo.  A nation must stand up and decide that its bravest, strongest, proudest and best need to be preserved for the purpose of bettering our nation, not wasted in a gratuitous betrayal of reason for war profiteering.  President Bush calls himself the Decider; his only good decision will be to resign.  Now.

And when the so-called terrorists "follow us home," like hapless puppies stalking us for scraps from our table, they'll meet a populace that is armed to the teeth.  Three hundred million Americans stand ready to receive these people, a well-regulated militia with strength in numbers, knowledge of the terrain, and an operational superiority that won't beg for a fifteen-minute coffee break or hesitate to engage when our families are threatened, when our neighborhoods are targeted, when our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor are on the line.  They'd consider themselves lucky to be facing 150,000 poorly armed, poorly paid, poorly motivated, don't-speak-the-language, don't-know-the-terrain, hostage-mercenary soldiers commanded by a traitor, sent into a war zone for no reason other than Bush's unconstitutional fiat.  The President will notice that as his illusion of control goes the way of his actual control, the People will be wholly responsible for their liberty, thanking each other for their collective bravery, thanking everyone...except George W. Bush.

To the morons who need another 9/11, I offer you the following:  go to Iraq.  The place is crawling with terrorists who destroy buildings; I'll offer you a prayer that you are safe while you carelessly get the thing for which you wish (it's the least I can do for you; it was the most I could do for the real victims of the real 9/11).  Show your faces in the place where President Bush still squanders our pride, our youth, and our treasure, and see if they hate us because we're free.  Go to the Vietnam of a new generation and see what happens when Bush's war begets a new blend of politics and religion, pitting "free" men against "terrorists," "free" worshippers against a predominantly Muslim people.  Men who will obey a warmonger will die as such; our fighting men deserve better.  As for what you morons deserve...

Soapbox vacated.  Start writing your hate mail now.  In the words of the late, great, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, "We are turning into a nation of whimpering slaves to Fear — fear of war, fear of poverty, fear of random terrorism, fear of getting down-sized or fired because of the plunging economy, fear of getting evicted for bad debts, or suddenly getting locked up in a military detention camp on vague charges of being a Terrorist sympathizer." ("Extreme behavior in Aspen," Feb. 03, 2003)

A few loose ends keep slapping in the wind, so I sometimes have to play them out in my head to know what to do (and, in many cases more importantly, what NOT to do) in order to keep them from detonating.  So here goes.

1.  "The Perfect Crime #2" by the Decemberists, from The Crane Wife.  It is a song about a Robin Hood-type robbery that has some gunfire in it.
2.  "River and Me" by Tim McGraw, from Let it Go.  Now, who among us hasn't had a stepparent that deserves to die?  My dad's third wife still gives me nightmares, even though I haven't lived with her since about ten years ago.  But the song itself is about a premeditated murder dressed up to look like an accident.
3.  "Trapeze" by Patty Griffin, from Children Running Through.  It's a sweet, sad, sappy little song about a woman who kills herself, which serves to remind us all that life sucks sometimes, and our only escape from heartache is suicide.

What is the point, anyway?  Okay, here it is:  in the last three months, I've parted company with some people, some of whom are very intelligent and possess fine qualities (at least, I hope they do).  Most of them work on South Duff, the little block I call home.  In working at Borders, for the six months that I did, I learned nothing new.  I know that some people are backstabbing snakes, which I already knew.  I know that big companies can fire someone just because it's time to pay them more and Big Company don't want to, but I already knew that.  I know that appeals processes at the corporate level are subject only to how long the HR people want to wait before they start ignoring the peons, but I already knew that.  I even knew that low people in high places will lie to get what they want, but I guess I should have known I was going to get the confluence of these things thrown at me sooner or later.  I thought my days of working for usurpers were done.  I shoulda kept running.

It only serves to drive home something I already knew:  between freedom and slavery, I always pick freedom.  I'm not calling work slavery; work is work.  It's a command from God's apostle (ref. 2 Thessalonians 3:10), one that is still preached in churches to this day, alongside other good doctrines, like personal responsibility and driving safely (and some doctrines that are not so good, like gay-bashing and hating Marilyn Manson).  Freedom is a state of mind, or as my JROTC sergeant would call it, "attitude."  (SMSgt. Manley, if you're reading this, I want to right now personally thank you for being awesome.  You da man.)  Freedom is what you get when you combine the vision for a better life and the ambition to make it happen, as well as the forward thinking to reduce the potholes in the road as you move along.  Slavery is what you get when you stick your head into old patterns of servitude and blindly pledge yourself to the same old grind every day, very stupidly tellng yourself that things will become better someday if you just keep your head down and don't make people think that you are actually using your brain.

I had a job I liked.  I liked working in a bookstore, on my own block, surrounded by food and music and life.  Sure I went home tired every day, but that was to be expected.  The money was good and the people were decent (-ish).  I thought I'd always work there.  I thought I'd never stop working there, and enjoy a life lived in making money and enriching the culture of South Duff.  But it happens all the time, or so they keep telling me, that after a while your workplace starts to look like your personality.  After all, the people who work in a place are the personality that keeps the customers coming back on a regular basis.  And these people had some idea that I was not the kind of person they wanted working for them.

What kind is that?  Hard-working?  Dilligent?  Eager learner?  Affable?  Helps customers?  Smart?  Knowledgable?

Free.

I'm not saying I didn't do as I was told.  I did.  I was thanked for doing as I was told.  Customers thanked me for all I did for them, which in many cases was the "above and beyond" category of doing things.  I'm not saying I didn't do things the way the company wanted them done.  I'm still trying to work out some of the muscle memory I developed while working there, as it impedes in my ability to do some of the functions of my new job.  Most of those things worked well, and I still think like a Borders employee (which kinda pisses me off, but oh well, like the old man says, "Go with what works").  But companies like this have a tendency to wear off the things about a person that make them unsuitable to the job, rather than making variety the spice of the character.  I was, in short, fired for being different.

Maybe someday I'll stop hurting about this.  Maybe someday I'll be able to trust people like them again.  Maybe someday something good will come of all this.  Maybe someday, but not today.  All I can do is say what I know, and I know that these people will lie and cheat to get what they want, until someone stops them.  And I have enough wolves to fight, so this will have to be someone else's thing.

And to all the people I don't call friend anymore:  At least I never lied about what I am; selfish, petty, not always exercising the best common sense, having my moments, some good and most not.  But I didn't lie.  I left that to you.  So go get better acquainted with the horse you rode in on.  Fuck you.

Start writing your hate mail now.  In the words of actor/comedian/songwriter Thomas Paine, "He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself."