A Thought About Ron Paul

I like Ron Paul. I really support his position and he’s got my vote, if he’ll just stay in until the election. I don’t care that he may not win. I’m voting my conscience, and I hope every other American does the same.

However, I was thinking this morning about his position. He wants to dismantle a huge portion of our government. Pretty much the paramilitary elements that came into being by executive order this century.

Let’s pretend for a moment that he might actually get elected. He does have the authority to abolish these agencies without congressional approval, since most of these agencies were established by executive order in the first place. But what do we think is going to happen when 15 million highly-trained, well-armed, and authoritarian-minded former Federal employees suddenly find themselves unemployed? Do we think that the thugs at the ATF, FBI, and DEA are going to just hand in their guns and say “well, it was a fun ride while it lasted”? Do we think they are going to voluntarily submit to unemployment and obscurity when previously they enjoyed immunity from prosecution, a badge to intimidate people, and a license to kill? Not to mention those fat government benefits.

Certainly a percentage of them are good people who will do the right thing. But how many won’t? And what exactly would they do?

February - The Hungry Month

Some of my hens have taken to sitting in an old horse trough in the barn. The trough is about 4’ up mounted on a wall. I put some straw in it for them. It’s mostly just one breed of bird who are better fliers and more agile than the other breeds. This morning when I let them out of the hen house they made a beeline through the snow towards the barn and two of them got in a little squabble for the nest. They finally worked out some sort of hen-like bargain and when I checked on them, they were both sitting in the nest. I walked over and gave one of them a little rub on her wattles. She’s got the slightest touch of frostbite there on one of the spikes. Poor thing. She clucked at me, a soothing sound and then a minute later when I returned to them, both hens were standing up. I could see two fresh and very warm eggs there. I took them and carried them back to the house.

An egg that fresh is warm to the touch, about like body temperature on a person. It’s also slightly sticky. In ten minutes or so it will dry to the point where it just feels like handling an egg and the sticky feel is gone. I’ve taken fresh eggs and brought them immediately inside and cooked them, but I can’t tell a noticeable difference in flavor between a five minute old egg and a two day old egg, so long as it’s one of mine. I can tell the difference between a fresh and not fresh egg if it came from elsewhere.

Yesterday I started the hens on a mix of milled grains and soybean mash. The soy is for the protein. It’s expensive. I guess one of these days I need to go take some measurements and see, based on food calculations, how much money it’s costing me per egg. I’ve got all the numbers required, I just need to come up with the proper equation.

Last night, about midnight, the coyotes came howling down from the back pasture. They were up on the hill a bit, their yapping echoing down from the treeline and making it sound like they were a lot closer than they were. It was very loud. Had it not been so late and so cold, I would have ventured outside to take a shot at them and see if I can’t reduce the coyote population. This morning when I went out to the henhouse, there were fresh coyote tracks all around in the snow where they’d prowled. That’s maybe fifty yards from the house. With the ice buildup, the door on the henhouse doesn’t close properly. There’s about an inch gap down at the bottom. Not enough for a coyote to stick his head in, and hopefully all the hens left in there know better than to stick their heads out.

The Disfunctional Ones

Another Saturday and I’m back working on this gig again. Every week I’ve watched as this trend unfolds itself: something goes wrong, the faction at fault gets blamed and crucified. Each time a problem occurs, the entire process grinds to a halt so that everyone can bitch at the other side for awhile and lay blame. They smear it on pretty thick. Only here’s the kicker … this week it will be one faction, and then the next week it will be the other faction and the roles reverse!

These people make this a bad place to work. They can complain about the industry and management if they want, but they are doing this to themselves. I’m so glad I no longer work in an office.

Shamelessly Stolen

Enough of That

Last night we got a call from a neighbor, who informed us that the lunar eclipse was happening. Oh yeah, I mumbled, that's tonight. So we rushed the boys out onto the porch to see it because we don't want to deprive their little selves of an experience.

Keep in mind that it is 4 degrees here and there's a foot and a half of snow-ice on the ground. Add that to a howling wind, and they weren't really into the whole eclipse thing. Even Jared took a glimpse and said "can I go back in now?"

Well, maybe in three years when it happens again it'll be warmer. After all, it wasn't even a total eclipse here in the frozen north. It was just sort of a blurry red. I wasn't too impressed.

Superdelegate Schmelegate

In another example of how politicians are warping the democratic process … there is a concept of “superdelegate” in the convention process. Both Hillary and Obama have made calls for these superdelegates to jump in and vote for them.

What exactly is a superdelegate? A normal delegate has been elected and appointed by those members of a political party to go sit at the convention and endorse a particular candidate. If Hillary gets more delegates than Obama, she will then win her party’s nomination. However a superdelegate is someone who sits at the convention and has a vote as well, though they were never elected and appointed by the members of the party. They represent special interests and former office holders. They also make up 1/5^th of the Democratic National Convention. What these politicians are essentially doing is asking these non-representative voters at the convention to override the will of the people and vote for them.

The Conspiracy Unveiled

Imagine that you’ve come across discussions of a fringe conspiracy for some time now. You’ve always dismissed it as the ravings of paranoid conspiracy theorists, of radical nuts, of isolated survivalist crazies. Because you’re fascinated by such things, you’ve continued to read about this fringe conspiracy and educated yourself somewhat on the topic. But you never believed in it. Then one day, you suddenly find yourself in a room surrounded by 6,000+ other human beings whom you thought were somewhat rational, and you are all listening to a man who then reveals the conspiracy to you and invites you to take part. Now you suddenly realize that it is real.

A couple of days ago I was at a technology conference in Seattle and I heard just such a thing. A man, billed as a futurist, came up on the stage and explained to us how technology will be such a part of our lives that we won’t even notice it. In this glowing vision of the future, as he explained to us, corporations will use it to track our purchases. Consumer items will be intimately familiar with our everyday lives through intelligence granted them by the computer chips implanted inside. Medical facilities will know all about us and be able to alert us of services we need before we even know that we have a problem. Law enforcement will be able to track our movements in order to keep us safe. Wars will be fought with robots so that people don’t need to be hurt. He painted a very rosy picture of what I consider to be a bleak and Orwellian future. The worst part, however, came at the end when he divided the future population into two halves: winners and losers. The winners will be the ones who can adapt and embrace his vision of the future, while the losers will be the ones whose jobs technology has rendered useless and who failed to learn new skills. Then he flattered this large gathering of computer engineers, software developers, and technologists of all stripes. He told us we should not worry about this future because we are among the winners. The efforts of the technological intelligentsia would be rewarded as they craft this future.

Now normally this could be dismissed as just the ramblings of a creative man, and however brilliant he may be that does not mean his vision will come to pass. However, what chilled me to the bone was that when he neatly divided the future world population in twain in terms of winners and losers, the audience cheered. Loudly. The applause lifted the roof and went on and on.

I have always felt disassociated from my coworkers. I am a simple agrarian at heart, and I do not embrace technology beyond simple means which serve to help me communicate. They are people who, as a whole, embrace technology and have incorporated it into every aspect of their lives. It provides their family and personal entertainment, it directs their living habits and their professional lives. And while I have always felt somewhat apart from their number, this was the very first time I had ever feared them. They opened up the floor for questions, and my heart was full of them but I sat on my hands and did not reveal what I felt. I wanted to ask, “What happens to privacy and liberty? What happens to the losers? What happens to those who wish to opt out of your Orwellian future? Are they sent to the death camps? Are they shuffled off to the gas chambers in a clean and sanitized manner?”

His vision is not particularly new. It was revealed to Germans in 1939, and apparently they applauded as well. Only now technology has given these dreamers a new capacity to catalogue and control populations. Bread and circuses have turned into Starbucks and Xbox. The mensch can be confined to the crumbling inner cities until the will has arisen to properly deal with them. Pax Technologica can march unimpeded into a new 1,000 year reign.  

The entire rest of the week took on a sinister note for me. I see subterfuge now everywhere I turn. Life is incredibly more frightening for me now. While this speaker was unveiling his vision of the future and my comrades were applauding like good little monkeys, a technological bourgeois, service people moved among us handing out sodas or lattes. A group of armed security men stood at the doorways in nice suits, presumably to protect us from the blood-maddened mobs of losers who would storm the building and tear us apart if they knew of our plan. And that fate would be well deserved.

I feel soiled now by my efforts in industry. I’m helping to march us toward that vision and when tomorrow comes and the losers are dealt with, I will be complicit in the crime. I no longer know what to do and my plan to serve two masters for awhile longer has been drawn into sharp contrast. I feel like a man who starts walking astride a narrow trickle of a stream and then finds that it turns into a wide river. At some point soon, I will be forced to reveal which side I intend to stand on.

 

Now that's just crazy talk

In a coffee shop I’m known to frequent, a guy ordered something and requested it not be microwaved. Going microwave-free is something that Kat and I have decided to do as well, because of the supposed risks from having microwaved food. This was a scrummy-looking dude in a ponytail, but somewhat young. I asked him if he had something against microwaves.

Dude: “Yeah, man. They poison your food.”
Me: “Really? How do you know that?”

Dude: “Yeah, they did this study where they took two houseplants and gave one of them only water that had been microwaved. And you know what? It died, man.”

Me: “I’ve heard that the microwave energy can turn some healthy proteins into actual carcinogens. That’s why we don’t use a microwave.”

Dude: “Yeah? And also the radiation lets in aliens made of negative energy that pollute your body and cause you to do bad things.”

Me: “Well ok then.”

I thought that was an appropriate time to end the conversation.

One-Eared Rico

Last night while walking back from a bar with my two friends, a guy fell in along beside us. His name was Rico and initially it seemed as if a particularly voracious dog had chewed off half of his face, but he explained to me that he had came down with skin cancer and the doctors had to remove all of it. He used to work in construction and spend a lot of time outside when he lived in Florida, he explained. He’s living under a bridge now but happy because God spared him when the doctors thought he would die. So he feels like it was a good trade. Rico explained to me that his mission, as told to him by God, was to talk young people out of suicide and he wanted to make sure I wasn’t thinking about killing myself. I wasn’t, and I thanked him for his concern and wished him luck in his mission. We shook hands and he started to walk away and then stopped, looked back and asked, “Are you sure you’re not thinking about killing yourself?”

My two bar companions had by this point sped away from me rapidly because I am known to chat at length with dope addicts, prostitutes, and homeless people on the street. I find all people fascinating, but none more so than fringe people living on the edge of society. Yet off and on, in the quiet retrospective moments of today, I’ve found my mind wandering back to weird, One-Eared Rico, and asking myself, “what is it about me that a scarred, one-eared homeless guy living under a bridge thinks I ought to be considering suicide?”

The Evening

A Texan, an Irishman, and an Israeli Jew walk into a bar. No, it’s not a joke. So we go in, and as any conversation with me will turn to after a measurable span of time, the conversation turned to politics … particularly gun control.

I think it’s somewhat strange that me, the Texan, and the only one who has not seen firsthand the results of a disarmed society at the mercy of a tyrannical state, would argue against gun control while the others believed there should be some level of gun control enacted by the government against the citizenry.

So I wonder if these folks are a decent representative sample of their countries of origin, or if perhaps this is just the mindset of more people of my generation and professional status and I’m the oddball.

I've moved on, apparently

There are often situations and visual cues that indicate you are no longer in the age bracket which you have previously defined yourself by. I’m still young, by almost all measures, at age 36, but apparently a large part of the world no longer sees me as such. Standing on a street corner waiting for the light to change while smoking my pipe, I suffered through this exchange:

Beautiful young girl: “Wow, your pipe smells great.”

Me: “Why thank you.”

Beautiful young girl: “More men should smoke pipes.”

Me: “Indeed. I couldn’t agree more.”

Beautiful young girl: “Definitely! It reminds me of my grandfather.”

*SIGH* Thanks, hon.

A glimpse into the shadowy underbelly of corporate life

I’m back at this same company again tonight. This 6 week gig is killing me. It’s not that working 1-2 days per week is hard (though since both of those days are 18+ hours long it IS hard) but the sheer awfulness of this place. It’s stressful, everyone obviously despises and distrusts everyone else, and I’m stuck in the middle.

My first day here I was actually in the building during normal working hours to go over the details of what I’d be helping with. I watched as one of the senior executives walked around the division he was responsible for and handed out paycheck stubs. It’s a simple thing that could be handled by a secretary, an intern, or anyone else besides him. The paystubs could be mailed out or put in employee’s mail slots. But no, this guy had to personally go around and hand them out, saying a brief word to everyone as he did so. He’d interrupt them while they were working or in conversations to give them their envelope. I then understood the motive. It was his symbolic gesture showing that “I control your paycheck” to every one of his employees. He was essentially saying, by handing them their payroll stub, that, “I am totally in charge of your income. I am the hand that feeds you.”

Corporate life makes me sick. Thorn Valley, here I come.

I'm sick to death of winter

Sounds disgusting ... tastes great

When you let a small child choose what he wants for breakfast, you don't know what you're going to get. This morning I fried up eggs and potatoes and boiled some shrimp for the boys.

Eggs, potatoes, and shrimp. It just doesn't sound good. Yet they seem to love it. And realistically speaking, it's probably very healthy for them. Maybe it'll be a new trend. My boys could be trendsetters.

Scary Tom Cruise

I used to think this guy was just a harmless loony celebrity. After watching this video, I know a little better.

 

http://gawker.com/5002269/the-cruise-indoctrination-video-scientology-tried-to-suppress

 

The Church of Scientology tried to suppress this video. I think they’d initially meant it to only be shown to already-indoctrinated lesser recruits, not the skeptical public. It’s absolutely frightening what these people believe.

 

http://www.holysmoke.org/cos/what-cos.htm

 

Now watch as the Scientologist loonies come out of the woodwork to comment on this post.

Thought Crimes Bill

Under HR1955, it would become illegal to use discuss using violence against the government for any political or religious purpose.

 

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-1955

 

 

McCain's Evil Ways

I really hate McCain. More so than any candidate in recent history. It’s not that he’s anti-liberty and a scumbag, but that he pretends to be something he’s not and then dupes those who want liberty into voting for him. I’m going to devote some time in this blog to enlightening the world on what McCain is doing and has done. But first, let me say don’t believe him. His voting record doesn’t match his “straight-talk”. The McCain-Feingold law which he alleged would reform election laws shut down free speech on the internet, made it easier for corporate interests to get access to politicians while limiting you and I, and has been referred to as “The Incumbent Protection Act”.

Choices

We have few choices left to us. We’re either going to end up with a socialist like Obama, a fascist like Clinton, or a gun-grabbing corporate stooge like McCain. This isn’t the year we stop the downward slide into tyranny, apparently.

Switching to Organic Milk

We try to buy a lot of organic products, but for economic reasons I don't buy organic in the things we consume the most. Like milk for instance. It's much more expensive than regular milk, and as much as the boys drink ... well ... it puts a dent in the wallet.

However tonight I had stopped by the organic store and grabbed another half-gallon of the organic milk I like. It's from a local dairy and still has the cream in it. After dinner the boys saw it in the fridge and I heard them plaintively ask their mother, "Can we have the GOOD milk, please?"

Gah. I feel awful. They can tell the difference and I've been withholding the good stuff from them. Not for any good reason either. We can afford it. Certainly our grocery bill could get higher without us hurting, and it helps out local businesses and farms as well. Plus it's so much healthier for them, and rBGH free.

So until we get a cow, I'm going to try and keep us stocked up in organic milk.

First Chicken Done

I prepped 4 roosters for slaughter but I started with one, not knowing how difficult it would be or how long it would take. In under two hours I had a bird go from squawking at me to stewing in a pot.

I don’t know for sure how much he weighed beforehand, but he dressed out at 2.7 pounds, somewhat of a scrawny guy. He looked pretty big starting out, but as I began plucking, he got smaller and smaller. I couldn’t get the long feathers off his wings to save my life, and they were pretty scrawny to begin with so I just removed his wings altogether. The body feathers came off very easy, though he had these little pinfeathers and hairs everywhere that were a real pain. Opening up the body cavity was a chore too, but only because my knife was too dull. Very poor planning on my part.

I ended up skinning him and dropping him into a pot. There’s probably an hour’s worth of cleaning up the kitchen to do after having a sloppy man drip wet chicken from one end of it to the other, but overall this wasn’t that bad of a task. I didn’t feel bad about killing the guy either. He’s 7-8 months old and got to live a pretty good life, fighting with his buddies and fornicating with the ladies. He enjoyed sunshine and summer and winter both. He lived a much better life than most chickens, and died a swifter end.

Chickens are a big pain in the ass, but ...

The chickens have been driving me insane lately. A lot of work and these young roosters are keeping me up at night worrying about when and how I’m going to butcher all seven of them.

However, they have their moments. I just ate two fried eggs for lunch that were less than 15 minutes old.