It is happening more and more.  A store gets robbed.  The clerk complies with the robbers’s demands.  Despite that and despite being masked, the criminal scum bag shoots or stabs the clerk anyway.  Then there is the violent home invasion, where the homeowners are robbed THEN killed. Not so much in Florida, it’s easier for the citizens to arm themselves here, but still goes on a lot in other states.

Perhaps it’s the economy.  Perhaps it’s a function of a generation of poor being raised in daycare, not making the connection with their parents & families. That defined the human social environment since we came down from the trees.  Over saturation of violence by media. I don’t know, and for that matter I don’t care. I am results orientated and innocent people are being injured and killed by sadistic sacks-O-shit.

While some people want to make guns illegal.  Chanting “Peace, love joy granola! We will sing kumbiya when we get those bad guns out of the hands of people.”  (Tell that to the 3 gal friends I lost to knife attacks).

Hey don’t get me wrong.  I would love to live in a world where there is no violence.  No one is ever murdered or raped.  Everyone has enough and the idea of committing robbery or violence is unheard of.

Reality check. That’s not the world we live in.  
Reality check.  Dis-arming the law abiding citizens will not put a scratch in violent crime.  In fact, it has been shown that when citizens are dis-armed violent crime rises.
Reality check.  Humans did not get to the top of the food chain by being sweet. Just look at our history.

To get the society the rabid anti gun folks want, we would need to sterilize all those who are violent.  Genetic or not, violence is heredity.  With 6 billion people on the planet, we as a species can afford to be selective.  If violence is no longer a desired trait, then get it out of the gene pool. Until then, I will keep going to the shooting range.  I may even get a dog, (which has to hate criminals and love cats).

 

I had house guests this week.  Don & Janice.  It was a blur of cooking, conversation and shopping trips. I coupled that with feeding & caring for my neighbor's cat while he is away. We also stopped at Gwen’s house to pick up her computer to fix it.

Don installed a World of Warcraft trial on my computer and helped me play my Dwarf Paladin (named HolyHaggis) up to level 4.  I must say, I am not impressed.  I have played RPG games face to face with people. I enjoy a good game that has a good story line, but this just didn't deem itself worthy of my time and effort.  I prefer second life.  It's free and I get to experience concerts, creations and people from all over the world (free translator with 15 languages).  World of Warcraft seems to be a slug fest with skills & points (yawn). Like I haven't done that before, and if I really want to, I can go to a combat areas in Second Life and play for free with an avatar of my creation, unlike any other in the game.

Thanksgiving day was an excursion to Bush Gardens.  Usually, I like taking in a theme park on Thanksgiving day because there are less kids & crowds there.  This year there seemed to be a lot more children running around than usual.  It was also cool, getting very cold late in the afternoon.

Black Friday was spent at the local flea market for some shopping.

Today (Saturday) Don & Janice left for their trek Northward, while I begin laundry & clean up. I stopped off at Gwen’s house to drop off her computer.  We replaced the Hard Drive and reinstalled the Operating System.

I put some software & drivers on her computer and headed for home.  I have a lot of laundry to get done.  Gwen gave me some bread and apple pie as ransom for her computer’s safe return.

Wata week.

Ah yes, company for the holidays.  It’s one of the treats of living in Florida.  This Thanksgiving Don and his lady friend, Janice are down from NY for a visit.  Hence my not blogging as much as usual.

I usually drag my hapless visitors to various tourist traps, wearing out even the most hardy of northerners.  This time it’s more relaxing.  A lot of conversation while I get to show off my cooking skills. (Hey I didn’t get this way by being a lousy cook).

Then there is of course my OCD.  A source of amusement for those that don’t share the quirks and idiosyncracies of this neuroses.

Today, we will head over to the AAA to pick up tickets to Bush Gardens for tomorrow. I like the theme parks during the holidays.  Less crowds and while I like to cook, I don’t like cooking holiday dinners.  So we can hit a buffet on the way back.

I hope to bring them to the USA flea market for black Friday.  Don is more the power shopper than Janice or I so I hope they will enjoy it.

Normally I would say it’s a good time to bottom feed, but this time, I don’t know,

It amazes me how folks act in mass.  When housing prices are ridiculously high, folks want to buy.  I had an offer to go halves with someone on property at it’s peak a couple of years ago.  A down payment split by us both, while the property is used as a vacation rental to cover the mortgage for the next 20 years.

I turned it down.  To me, buying while the price is through the roof makes no sense.  I have said that these prices are just too unnatural to last and I didn’t want to be into anything that will loose value.  I feel the same way with stocks.

Normally, I would say now is a good time to buy property & stock.  Then I look at England in the 80's.  Drowning in foreign debt while industry tanked, causing a depression that lasted decades.  The US is on the same course, the difference being no dole to keep the poor alive. (Can you say ‘future riots’ kids? Sure you can.)

I’m not saying it can’t turn around, but that would require a focused and competent government in Washington. Something else we haven’t seen in decades of corruption, deceit and greed.

Perhaps the Obama administration can inject something into the cesspool of Washington that would clear up the infection.  Perhaps the infection is too far along. We shall see.

Like the rest of America, I am closing my purse, Washington should do the same. This money they are throwing around is not free on SO many levels. Me, I am smart enough to stay out of debt, Washington needs to get itself some ‘Nova Smarts’ too.  It’s not magic, it’s math.

I was trying to be on the road at 8:45, HA! Did you every see a cartoon where the characters have to be someplace and the most insane things happen to them to keep them from reaching their goal? Well, that was my morning.

First the tuxedo cat shows up wanting some breakfast. I stand over her as long as I can, but have to go inside to continue to get ready. Check on her a minute later, she is no where to be seen. There over the now empty bowel is a Muscovy drake, who had just pooped in front of my door. They always poop where a human has to walk.

Chase him away and pour bleach on the present he left me (people wonder why I hate those ducks). Load the car and put the Anti-Christ (my desktop) into the van, doing hop scotch around the duck poop.

Then the Calico cat shows up. I don’t see her too often, so I put out a bowel of food and stand over her. She is more tame than tuxedo and often stops eating to rub me for a pet.

Ok, I am still not ready. When it looks like she is just about finished, in the house I go. I would have run her to the spay clinic, but I will be having company next week and don’t have the time to deal with the recovery of a newly spayed female cat. Well, it’s winter and she should stay un-pregnant for a month or 2. Plenty of time to catch her again.

Then, from inside the house, I hear the all to familiar yowl of a cat in gladiator mode. Tuxedo showed up and decided that Calico, who is hiding under my van, has no business being here. I get in-between them and in cat tell them that behavior is not to be tolerated (no wonder the neighbors think I’m nuts).

Tuxedo walks behind the house. Calico slinks away with a low posture and puffy tail. Gad I hope she comes back. I don’t want her littering the neighborhood.

I drop off the Anti-Christ and tell them I can’t wait for it and just to call me when it’s ready.

FINALLY before anything else can happen, I am on my way to the chiropractor for a badly needed adjustment. My back was so far out of wack this morning, I felt like a pretzel, and the pain! You know it’s bad when your systolic nerve pain wraps down around BOTH legs.

Even he was surprised to see how bad I was. I think this week will be a 3 adjustment week. To top it all off this is my third attempt to post this blog.  Firefox on my laptop kept crashing, so I had to resort to I.E.

Banks are not disclosing what they are doing with their bailout windfalls. Surprise, surprise.  I can tell you what they are doing.  They are cushing their stock holders and bottom feeding on smaller banks. The CEO’s will want their bonuses at the end of the year.

Uh, Did I miss something here!!? These are the same cheats that buried those toxic mortgages, defrauding investors all over the world. If you think they are doing anything moral with this bailout money, I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale, cheap.

Our government is either insanely corrupt or ridiculously stupid (perhaps both).  Any idiot can see that the banks are grinning from ear to ear. (Funnel the money to the consumer
 Yeah, right.  When pigs fly!)

Ford, Chrysler and GM want their bailout too. Perhaps if they made cars we would want to drive aside from expensive, low quality gas guzzlers, they would not find themselves in this predicament.  I sure as hell would not have steered my company they way they did.  Why should I pay for their greed and mistakes? I knew better.

Not a penny to corporations!  Every penny should go to keep the unemployed fed & off the streets! Whether they have reproduced or not!  Enough of this corporate welfare. Time to take care of the real victims!    

Get your brains out of your butts you dopey politicians! 

Bail out the corporations on wall street with NO accountability as to where the money has gone. Dose anyone else see this as a really dumb idea?

Look, if the government wants to get into the investment business, fine.  Set up a company like US investments and loans.  Float all the little folks and small business they can.  Let the big business tank.  Who cares?  It’s not the government’s responsibility to bail out big business.  It is the governments responsibility to protect it’s citizens.  Greedy corporations need to stew in their own juice.

Now the American auto industry wants a hand out.  I have a better idea.  Create a company, say US solar and wind power.  Give first dibbs on all the jobs to the folks put out of work by the bungling US automakers.  We import all out so called ‘American made’ cars from overseas anyway.  Welfare should go to the poor, not corporations.  

Concerned for the out of work employees?  How about using that money to extend that meager unemployment for them?  How about reversing that Regan tax on the unemployment benefits? I can think of many more ways to use that money aside from floating companies that should tank.  It didn’t help the Japanese, what makes anyone think it will go any better here?

What ever happened to companies that can’t cut the mustard going out of business?  Well they have been going overseas for so long I don’t see the point.

Put the money into companies that will get the US energy independent and give those jobs to the displaced workers, not the incompetent, corrupt corporations that have no one but themselves and their gluttonous CEO’s for running themselves into the ditch.

It seems to happen every 4 weeks. This time I thought it was an error with second life. I re-installed the client but the errors kept getting worse and on other applications.  The today it would not boot.  Acted like a boot sector error.  A good thing I got the files off onto the external.  I am getting in the habit of doing that once a month, but I really should do that daily with every file.  Oddly enough the ethernet dose not work on the laptop.  No matter.  I have a LAN hub set up

Tomorrow morning I pick up a friend and drive her to the airport.  Her father died suddenly and her brother’s bought her air fair to attend the services.

Having been through this before I advised her to get a copy of the death certificate. It will come in handy for any financial endeavors (if any) that she may have to go through.  Unfortunately, she seems very content to leave her half brothers to handle all affairs.

I hope that goes well for her.  I haven’t seen these things go well often.

It’s almost as if they all hate me.

Take today for instance.  My brother wanted an I-pod for his birthday which is the 12th of this month.  So I figure I will download the CD’s that he wanted to my I-tunes and upload it to the I-pod that will be his birthday present.  Wrap it all up and have it in the mail today.

It took me all morning to download those CD’s to I-tunes.  Not that there were that many, but the computer seized with extreme regularity, having me to unplug it once every cd, and reload the song it hung on, then continuing the download.

When it finally came time to upload the songs to his I-pod. I plug it into the USB port and get an unknown device error. Sigh. Why dose this not surprise me?

The Microsoft help section said I would need to edit the registry. I really don’t want to tangle with that at the moment.  I have to get this I-pod to my brother by his birthday.

Good thing I have a laptop.  Now I have to load all the CD’s AGAIN.  At least the laptop sees the I-pod (I checked first).  Unfortunately there is no way I will get this done by the time the Post office closed so I will have to go in Monday and do a 2 day ground.

I think it’s time to bring the anti-Christ back into the shop.  I’m thinking it’s time for a new computer, while I retire this thing to the Florida room as a web cam running unit for the lake birds. As Mom would say “That computer of yours is for the birds.”

Amendment 2 was put into the FL constitution.  It defined a marriage as between 1 man and 1 woman.  Of course I voted no, but unfortunately, enough people thought it was their business to vote yes. Those in favor touted their commercials with the marriage amendment protecting the next generation.  Even if legality made a difference in sexual orientation (which is dose not) there are 6 billion people on the planet.  How the hell is domestic partners threatening the next generation?

Marriage to me is a religious institution.  Government has no business getting involved in it at all. Don’t matter whether I agree or not. NOMB.  I really am a TRUE republican.  Not a fascist Christian in republican clothing that defines the GOP today.  Privacy and freedom. The cornerstone of what the GOP was supposed to be all about.  Free enterprise with a moral responsibility to their workers, the company & the people, I recall an old Bugs Bunny cartoon, where Elmer J. Fudd is teaching children just that.  Fighting for someone’s rights despite disagree with them.  
 
My how times and the GOP have changed.  Amazing what happens when a party gets corrupt and bought out like a cheap whore.

It was and will be a toxic environment for republicans for years to come and they have no one but themselves to blame.  Lets see if the dems can do any better, or will they too be seduced by power and money.