A Chicken Is Not Pillage

She Nailed It!

I have been dying inside waiting to announce this.  Now it is official.  My Sister-in-Law rocks the Sweet Pea Universe.

Congratulations to Amanda Morton!  Is that some kinda artwork or what!?!

Happy Mount St. Helen's Day

I'm surprised that I remember that day every year.  Never forget, and wut wut!  It's most likely just the strong association of that event and the other eruption of graduating high school in a small Montana town.  Maybe it's the lingering trauma of the horrible experience.

No.  I found the whole thing fascinating, from beginning to end.  It was horrible in it's own way, but even that got filtered through a 17 year old male reality.  'Wow, a mountain blew up.  This planet is AmAzing, and dangerous.  I hope no one was hurt.' 

Other things have consumed my thoughts and deep feelings much more than a volcano that blew 32 years ago.  I've documented most of it elsewhere, to where even I don't care to look for it.  I don't remember most of those dates.  I have a hard time remembering what year the great Yellowstone fires happened in.  Yet, I remember May 18th every year.  That's the day a mountain blew up, and spread ash as far as Minneapolis. 

Maybe I remember it because I live on the edge of the world's largest Super volcano.  Could be ...

 

For People That I Love

Underneath the Sycamore.

Mean

For probably the first time ever, I wish another to DIAF.

A Terrific Way To Spend an Hour

It's doubtful that anyone who will read this here hasn't already been informed, but ...

You really need to be listening to Kevin Hamm's podcast, PoliticktickBOOM!  I've just listened to the last two episodes, and they're terrific.  The host is engaging, the guests are informed and enjoyable.  This is a worthwhile expenditure of your ear time.

Relevant To My Interests In Jethro Tull

It seems there is another Jethro Tull album to be had.  (That link is to a Metafilter post.  If you're not a member, you should be.)   The post reads a little like very good marketing, but the comments show that I'm not alone in saying that this is relevant to my interests.  There are many more links there at Mefi then I could provide here.

I loved Thick as  Brick.  It was everything my younger me needed; well, that and most other recording efforts of Ian Anderson.   It was angry, full of images, it relied heavily on pace, with discordant rhythm, and most of all, it was just.  It's what I needed to hear when I needed to hear it.  I've gotten a whole lot older, and so has the album.  But the memory remains.

I still have the vinyl, with 16 page newspaper, a far cry from mint condition.  I likely wouldn't sell it, even if I cared to.  I also know full well that the new album will not be what that one was. Ian Anderson has come 30 years in resolving his daddy issues.  We all have.  Still, I'm looking forward to the music.  If Ian Anderson can still feel the need to create, then I guess I'm not that old after all.

The End Of A Good Run

After 6+ years of being the 'go to' site for must have content, BTJunkie has voluntarily closed up shop.  It's hard to disagree with their reasoning, in that the current environment doesn't accept that sharing is caring.  It is, however, saddening that all online content may end up as Google compensated and approved.  Expect other torrent sites to go dark in the next few days as well.

I don't hold any ill will towards BTJunkie.  They did the right thing.  But it's next to impossible to not hold a grudge against western societies that ignore simple facts.  With the prevalence of mobile devices and cloud computing distribution there is no possible manner in which the current business model for content distribution works.  At middlin' we're giving away a potentially profitable business sector to the east.  At best, we're leeching every damned dollar from anything ever created ever.   At worst, we are willing to destroy the Internet to protect Disney's profits.  That little movie they did about Hercules, or the one which dealt with Miles Standish and Pocahontas?  Protected, effectively, into perpetuity.  That little thing they did a buncha years back called "The Song of the South"?   It is a true piece of Americana, American history, and we won't see it again because a piece that is considered racist will not be allowed to tarnish that Disney brand.

The worst attack against sharing was not the "Megauploads" arrest or even possibly the incident with The Pirate Bay.  SOPA and PIPA changed the rules.  The U.S.of A. threatened to break the Internet, and that should be no laughing matter to anyone.  Kudos to the folk who called in; kudos to the Republicans who voted to kill these awful bills.  They certainly didn't do it to favor anything other than the left being smeared by their own Hollywood supporters.  Politics is grand ...

This is what SOPA and PIPA would have done.

I'm all for creative types getting paid; a lot if they do good work.  But the demand that a CEO of a megacorp makes his bonus, just rankles me when I can see a clear path to future profit and they can't.  Pack people into noisy sweaty theaters,  with $10 popcorn, screaming babies and a burning urge to see a movie again.  Make people buy big CD's or purchase overpriced snippets online.  Or ... allow people to purchase content with a distribution model that allows people the access they think they should have.   When I was kid, I was willing to pay to see Star Wars about 12 times, though I saw it many more.  The money was small because most of those were matinees, and one didn't have the opportunity to see these things at home or on a mobile.  That world is not this world.  I've purchased Star Wars on DVD,  Now I can watch it with whomever I wish, whenever I wish.  If the DVD goes bad, I should have the right to say that I've bought that content and it's mine.    The law doesn't work quite that way, but it should.

Torrent sites could have been an extremely profitable manner for Hollywood or the music industry to control and profit from content.  Instead, we're going to beat this dead horse until it's MORE dead.  Via con Dios, BTJunkie.

 

Will We Be Allowed To Breathe?

I didn't go dark this Wednesday.  Instead, I offer a clear 'violation' of what could become law.

 

A Few Thoughts On The NFL and Distractions

Time has been limited for me. That's probably an understatement.  I have had little (awake) free time and I've chosen to spend it with my many greatest loves, my wife, my animals and NFL Football.  Reviewing my last post, and inspired by comments therein, and an email or many over the years, I would just like to throw a few thoughts out.

There are those who deride football as being a waste of concern.  There are those who think the undo influence exerted by players is a net bad for society.  There are those who believe that fostering certain ideas are politically bad due to the awful tie between dogma and leadership.  It's not that I think any of those people to be wrong, per se.  I just don't really care.

See, I love NFL football.  I have watched the sport since I was 5 years old, and to this day my admiration for it and study of it has not waned one bit.  Anyone is welcome to suggest that it manipulates my emotions based on  lizard brain stimulus.  Fine.  I get that.  So what?  Most of the functions that give people joy are the very same.  Sex, strenuous activity, drugs, competition at any level, seeing friends succeed just as the disappointment of seeing them fail, religion, music, dancing, hobbies, political advocacy.  All manipulate the emotions  in the same manner that football does for me, if not to same intensity.

I don't like religion mixed with my football.  I like politics mixed even less.  The problem with Tebow is that folk think they have to mix them both with a guy who really has no say in the direction of either.  He's a football player and that's what he can control.  Right now, he's thrilling me to no end.  He plays good football.  If people in the Flathead want to idolize him, really, so what?  People believe what they want to believe. There is no forcing them to idolize what is healthier for 'mankind'.  There is no fostering of behavior that we see as worse than what has come before.  Tim Tebow can speak to these folk and make no difference to their thinking at all.  Yet we'd rather he not do it?  Why?

It is an insistence, a nagging reminder of a well wornout canard.  The underlying axiom is that football is a grand distraction from 'bigger things'.  To which I can only respond that no, it's a distraction from 'different things'.  We are human beings, each one running a unique mental program of unimaginable complexity.  Our stimuli are unique, our moral codes very personal and our interests well varied - even among singular individuals.  What's common is that we all have stimuli and interests which inform our moral codes.  What else is common is that we all have distractions.  Those can only be seen as bad if we have a society pre-convinced that many personal values should be universal, and that distractions from those values is a net harm.  Fine.  I accept that and simply submit that distractions are necessary activity for the human animal.  Some are destructive to the host and society.  Some are shared activity among like stimulated folk.  It shouldn't be a mystery that I come down in the camp of the latter.

To bring this back to Tebow, part of this post is in reaction to Pete Talbot's comment below.  I don't highlight that to insult it, but rather to applaud it.  Pete made a very clear distinction between Tebow the Player and Tim the Evangelical fostering bad behavior among others who foster bad behavior.  I appreciate that distinction a great deal, because it feels very natural to me.  I don't care about Tim the Evangelical save that I agree with Pete about bad behavior from those folk.  Craig Moore responded in defense and Pete has accepted the challenge.  The interchange is fine, enjoyable even.  It peaks my interest.  That's because they're discussing politics and a moral code in critique of the stimulus of religion.  That's not a stimulus I'm personally invested in, and politics/religion are deep interests of mine.  What they're not talking about is how lame my personal distraction is.  What they're not talking about is a quarterback.  My quarterback.

When Tebow comes in March, I may be right there in my tut-tutting of his tutalage.  But I remember this clearly.  As a good liberal I was morally outraged by the very thought of Tim and his Mom doing an ANTI-abortion commercial during the SUPER BOWL!  I saw it.  You know what?  It wasn't offensive at all.  It's base message was "think of what could happen in the world with the life of this baby."  The thing most on the right miss is that most women going in for an abortion already think about those things.  What get's missed on the left is that Tebow and his mother were advocating a *choice*.  Football gained him the popularity for his pulpit, but he wasn't speaking for the NFL, the NCAA, for fans or for any who love football as football.  If you want to hold to the idea that Tim the Evangelical is a bad person and or bad for society, that's fine.  He's an entertainer, like any other, and how far one goes to condemn him is equally measured by how far one goes to enforce their own moral code.  It doesn't his play on the field, now does it?

Football is a distraction, agreed.  Many employers hate it because it distracts from productivity.  Many persons hate it for personal reasons, such as that they've encountered football players behaving badly.  Many hate it because they find it an abhorrently violent ground acquisition struggle of pointless merit and minimal return to the nature of good.  Many hate it because it is a big money business.   So what?  Many have a difficult time with disagreement, that's what.  That also seems universal to the human animal.  I'm not a big fan of poetry, dramatic readings, interpretive dance, modern pop-music, the Baltimore  Ravens, RAP, poorly written horror, conspiracy theories and stupid people.  These are distractions that clearly don't work for me, but obviously work for others.  The only reason my distractions would cause reaction, and yours would cause reaction with me, is that we disagree.  Tim Tebow appears to be a point, a focus, of great disagreement.  I would submit that disagreement is proof that a distraction actually matters.

Mission Accomplished?

Okay. So. It's over.

Last weekend, my beloved said something in jest that I love her for, and I feel deeply today.  "I like my beer like I like my man, bitter."  I am bitter, and this is one of the biggest reasons.  I began commenting on blogs outside of my good friend's place because I was horrified that we would attack a nation based on shoddy intel and do so blatantly.  I began this blog in part because I wanted a personal forum to rail against the obvious injustice being perpetrated abroad and here at home.  All voices against the great Iraqi adventure fell on truly deaf ears.  We had invaded by the time I started this blog, and little changed for so very long.

I certainly didn't expect anyone to listen to little ol' me.  But I did expect that we would be smarter as a country, full of voters.  Instead, I have been subjected to all kinds of claims that I don't understand or care about international affairs.  I have listened as jackwads, most of which were dead silent 9 years ago when we invaded,  told me that we would never leave Iraq.  I  have not so patiently waited while my betters told me that we would never have less than 50 thousand troops in country and our $50,000,000 bases would never be turned over to the Iraqis.  Not anyone reading this hasn't heard the jokes or seen the cartoons about how we should just 'glass' the entire region.

I guess I'm not so bitter as I am tired.  The assholes who've all told me how wrong my country is will not ever admit how they were wrong in prediction.  The money's already been spent and the lives, 4500+ lives, have already been lost.  But yet, the American Empire marches on.  And those who claim such were wrong before and remain wrong now.  Somehow, I'm certain, this is my fault.  Yeah, I'm pretty bitter, and tired.

I am weakly and wearily happy that our country is turning Iraq over to the Iraqis.  I wish them luck.  I wish our troops a great "Welcome Home".  I want healing to begin.

But, the Iraq war caused more than just death and suffering.  It has polarized the opinions of people more than I can express, and caused a rise in what was already a burgeoning police state here at home.   John McCain thinks that our declaring an end to the Iraq war signals that the terrorists have won.  I'm certain that his buddy LIEberman shares that view.  Strangely, those views appear the most harmless.  What does damage is the fact that Congress has avoided responsibility for the horror they brought, and now blame the guy who actually ended this stuff.  The damage is multiplied because the left seeks desperately to believe the message from the right.  This will not end well.

The authoritarian state grows.  I've been warning about this for 8 years.  Iraq, and the thinking that led to it's invasion, is precisely what gives credence to the crap spewed today.  We needn't worry about invading Iran.  That will happen when the Repulicants take over governance because they keep the super-secret knowledge of what will help us internationally.  We *really* need to worry about that stealth Republican in the White House.  Obama needs to lose and that will make the Iraq war all worth while.

~sigh~

No.  No mission was accomplished here, save enriching Halliburton and Blackwater.

Thank you to the troops who did what they were asked.  Thank you.  I will do whatever I can to help you come to grips with the horrors you've been sold.  I hope for you that life goes on and becomes worthwhile.  (I work in providing materials to higher ed, and that's not a hollow offer I make.)