Windows - that explains it!

Yes, I know this particular strip was published several years ago, but I think it's funny.

Now I can't be annoyed if someone thinks I'm a racist because of the color of my skin???

Becky C., who usually has spot on analysis for politics and the like, really makes a heinous statement in Boss Clinton and the Racial Gambit:

Blacks, like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson ... assume there is racism, until proven otherwise. And there is certainly a very valid reason for their assumption, and the fact that a lot of whites are irritated by the attitude proves it. (Emphasis mine)

Now let me get this straight, Becky. If Al Sharpton assumes I am a racist due to the color of my skin, and I feel this assumption is unfair, and feel the slightest bit peeved by it, my annoyance at this proves that I am a racist? What else could we prove through this method?

Am I proven to be a misogynist because I dislike when women think I am a misogynist because I am the proud owner of a penis? Or could we prove Rev. Sharpton a racist by my assuming he hates white people because he's black, then having him express dismay at me for making a racist assumption?

No, the only things the above would prove is I am annoyed when people assume I am racist, dislike when women assume I am misogynistic, and Al Sharpton would become dismayed for assuming he's racist.

I have proven though, Becky needs a beginning course in logic.

Alone, for real

I truly am alone now.

I have felt  isolated  for most of my life.

Yesterday, my father called and asked for my help. He asked me to leave work early, and come help with the kids. My mother already had been at the hospital with Mothra for 24 hours when he had called. He couldn't be with her; there is no way to safely bring a near 3 year old with bronchitis into a hospital room with a 6 month old with pneumonia.

Hell, most of the time,  I  isolated myself.

I have always despised social situations.

I haven't been writing this blog for you to know the gravity of this request. My parents, as a rule, don't ask me for help. They certainly don't ask me to leave work early to profer my help. Yet that's what happened yesterday.

At parties,  I  am all too happy to stand on the side and watch others have fun.

I, up until now, have had only the perception of alone.

My parents have been the only two people in my life in whom I trust enough to share my emotional troubles. My friends are emotionally stunted, and have problems of their own. I am their rock, not the other way 'round. I fear breaking them if add my issues to theirs.

I have never actually been alone.

My penchant for  vicariously living  may be why I take to the parenting thing so easily.

My parents are getting old. They are less capable, both physically and mentally of taking care of two kids than they think, and than I thought. I will soon, be unable to unburden my demons onto my parents, lest they break. That day may be sooner than I think, and is likely sooner than I hope.

I will be alone soon.

Godzilla & Mothra are both sick. Godzilla has bronchitis, and Mothra is in the hospital with pneumonia. This is God's way of saying, "D-Rock, you thought you were powerless before... wait 'til you see this." Kids shouldn't be allowed to be sick. It's just wrong.

For those of you without kids: imagine you just got as a gift: a top of the line BluRay player, complete with Bose surround sound system and 40" plasma screen. Now after, using the best of your new system's capabilities for a few months, suddenly the only thing will play is BioDome. In mono. And the disc has scratches on it. And you think the person who gave you all this cool stuff is going to take it away because you took lousy care of it, but you know you took great care of it, including using fiber optics instead of regular cable, cleaning the dust off everyday, and turning it off at night at a decent hour. Okay, so you didn't clean the dust of every day, but that wouldn't make it break, would it? It's not like you took a hammer to it or dropped it in a swimming pool. But this is a precision instrument. Maybe a little dust could hamper performance. So you call up that techie friend of yours, Doc. Doc looks at your setup and says, "looks like you've got a little Pauly Shore infection." He pulls out a screwdriver. Well, you're pretty sure it's a screwdriver, but you've never seen one like this before. He turns one of the screws on the sound system a half a turn clockwise, and the stereo sound returns. He hands you the screwdriver and tells you to turn one screw a quarter turn clockwise twice a day for the next ten days, and everything will be fine. After that, what's left of the screwdriver will be useless, so don't try to use it anymore, but don't use it any less than that either.

Doc never asked if your stuff got dusted every day, if you used cable, or what time you shut it off each day. This all seemed very normal to him, like Pauly Shore is on every new TV in world once in a while.

How my Ron Paul convert converted me to Ron Paul.

I'll admit it. I had no hope to convert Frau or The Captain to being Ron Paul supporters. I was simply happy to have a ride and company. I have been a supporting the Libertarian Party so long, I have grown accustomed to both being marginalized (politically) by nearly everyone, and losing, both in the races, and in discussions. Frau, however not only jumped on Dr. Paul's bandwagon, she wants to drive. We are participating in a letter-writing campaign to Iowa voters, and she is the reason I think I can handwrite 300 letters before Christmas. She is the reason I will be attending my first Ron Paul meetup this Monday. Her excitement has created excitement in me. Gone are the days of Freedom as an intellectual concept. After years of supporting the entire Libertarian Party as a mental exercise, Frau has turned this into something real. I thank you, Frau. Dr. Paul thanks you. And while they
don't know it yet, the American people thank you.

............pation!

With the exception of the day Mothra arrived at our house, this has been the most exciting day of the year. I got to meet the man himself, Dr. Ronald Earnest Paul, the next President of the United States of America. I saw some of the crazy people that you hear about from Dr. Paul's detractors- the 9/11 truthers, the I hate everyone who doesn't look like me anti-immigration people, and of course, the computer geeks. But (and sorry to disappoint), the vast majority of the people I met fell into the category of "normal." I saw: old, young, white, black, Asian, Hispanic, gay, straight, Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians (and lots of libertarians), anarchists, families, single people, extroverts, introverts (harder to find than the extroverts, though), and nearly every other category that you could think of to put people in. Who is this man who can bring all there seemingly disparate people together? Ron Paul. His message? Freedom. http://www.RonPaul2008.com

Sometimes you can be surprised

This flag is in front of a door to a Baptist Church. Just found that interesting

Antici.................

I am here in Philly, staying at Frau's parents' house. (Sorry I don't have a clever nickname for you yet, Frau.) Frau and her husband are not Ron Paul supporters yet, but I am working on that. I can't sleep. I am experiencing the same feeling I did when I first went to Disney World, or the one I still feel every Christmas Eve. Later today I am going to meet one of my heroes. This is akin to meeting Superman. I promise not to tug on his cape. I just hope to get some sleep before then.

Godzilla

Godzilla is my nephew, and as is the case with all the other names on my blog, Godzilla is not his real name. Simply, I am extremely paranoid that someone will find out who I am and start stalking me and my family. This assumes that anyone will ever read what I write, and that assumption seems ludicrous to me.

Eventually, I will break down, and faithful readers of this blog may one day know my address. I know one of the keys to good writing is being specific, and my being paranoid to the point of not be able to talk about anything I care about is definitely at odds with that. I may even post a picture or two of someone I've actually met one day. So, to help the confused reader, I start with this post a series of cast biographies.


Godzilla's pretty amazing, and I want to be him when I grow up. I want to live with the knowledge that if I jump from the seventh step of the stairs, someone will catch me, and if no one catches me, someone will come make me feel better. (Both regular occurrences, except we're lucky if it's only the seventh step.) I want to have heroes again. He thinks I can scare away monsters, and because he thinks it, it's true. He thinks his grandmother knows the lyrics to every song ever written, and his grandfather is the funniest person on the planet.

I fear his sometimes excessive television watching has stunted his imagination, and its use as a babysitting tool started at way too early an age for him. As I have stated previously, I am not home as often as I would like to be, and I have very little control over this. Also, Sunday is for football. This is a tradition he will understand soon enough. Most of his television watching comes under Lost Sheep's (his mother) watch, but those are issues that I'd rather not discuss right now (For Lost Sheep's sake, not for mine).

He lives in a house with Mothra (his sister), Pollyanna (his grandmother), Cuddly Porcupine (his grandfather), and myself. His grandparents are currently his legal guardians. I gave him the moniker Godzilla because he's two, and he's good at it.

Captain Godzilla

Godzilla is dressed as a pirate right now and will soon wander the streets with Lost Sheep and Pollyanna begging for candy. He will probably be done begging before I get home. This disappoints me. His costume came with a long hair (a la Jack Sparrow) attached to the hat. This is unfortunate, because Godzilla is 2, and can't grow facial hair worth a damn-- the poor lad looks like a girl.

The problem with ferver

By now, you have probably heard that Redstate.com has banned Ron Paul Supporters from posting on their site. If you haven't, here's a little taste of the rationale of the ban:

Effective immediately, new users may *not* shill for Ron Paul in any way shape, form or fashion. Not in comments, not in diaries, nada. If your account is less than 6 months old, you can talk about something else, you can participate in the other threads and be your zany libertarian self all you want, but you cannot pimp Ron Paul. Those with accounts more than six months old may proceed as normal.

Now, I could offer a long-winded explanation for *why* this new policy is being instituted, but I'm guessing that most of you can probably guess. Unless you lack the self-awareness to understand just how annoying, time-consuming, and bandwidth-wasting responding to the same idiotic arguments from a bunch of liberals pretending to be Republicans can be. Which, judging by your comment history, you really don't understand, so allow me to offer an alternate explanation: we are a bunch of fascists and we're upset that you've discovered where we keep the black helicopters, so we're silencing you in an attempt to keep you from warning the rest of your brethren so we can round you all up and send you to re-education camps all at once.

Level of annoyance this causes to the Ron Paul campaign proper (scale of 0-10): 0. This is great free publicity and may even get Dr. Paul a few mentions in "real" news.


Level of perceived annoyance this causes for Ron Paul supporters who can't do much more than copy and paste "RON PAUL 2008" 100 times in a single response: 10. "OMG! The Man's trying to keep us down! They don't want us to be heard!"

Level of actual annoyance this causes for Ron Paul supporters who can't do much more than copy and paste "RON PAUL 2008" 100 times in a single response: 0.5. Relax, chemically imbalanced Ron Paul supporters, nearly the whole rest of the internet is still open and ready to business with you.

Level of annoyance to Ron Paul supporters who seem normal: 8. Now there is a mess to be cleaned up, chemically imbalanced Ron Paul supporters to calm down, and our own morale to pick back up.

Level of annoyance this causes for Redstate.com: 6.84. Evan though Redstate thinks it has solved their problem. Their plight is not yet over. Several times over the last hour I've gotten slow responses from their site, and I predict no fewer than 3,000 emails from angry Ron Paul supporters being angry and 25 from loyal readers of their site being grateful. Not to mention all the extra page views from being dugg or blogged about by The NY Times. That should add a little to the "time-wasting," and "bandwidth-wasting" those poor folks there have to put up with.

I don't need to ask for directions, we're not lost

So now this is a political blog. Tomorrow I may go back to writing about the rugrats who live in my house, fast food, or whining about my job. If I were a more prolific writer, or at least had a longer attention span, I might split my writings into multiple blogs for various topics. But I'm not, and I don't, so I won't. So I'm lost without a topic. I won't be able to keep readers interested, because no one will know upon what topic I will pontificate from day to day. Oh well.

Deal with it.

Schadenfreude

I wouldn't go so far as to kill him, but if Dane Cook's head exploded tomorrow, I probably would experience great joy

I don't want it, really.

I am now making my annual decree:

I do not want any gifts for Christmas!

Or my birthday. Or Easter, Hanukkah, St. Valentine's Day or any other holiday you think requires gift giving. You do not have a clue about my tastes, and I have enough crap.

Now that's out of the way, here are the exceptions:

1. You are under the age of 13. If you have not yet seen the 13th anniversary of your birth, I will accept any and all gifts you wish to give me, and treasure them forever. I still have all the rocks Godzilla picked up when we went walking around the neighborhood.
2. Artwork. But only if you created it, or if it has been appraised for $10,000 (USD) or more in the last six months. If you created it, please limit yourself to one (1) piece of art per gift-giving event, unless you are a good artist. You will know if you are not a good artist when you see your ugly crap in my garbage cans come New Year's. If rule 1 applies, you will not know if you are not a good artist until after you turn 13.
3. Money. If Rule 1 applies, do not give me money. I'll feel bad when I spend it.
4. You. Spend time with me. If you care enough to give me a gift, I probably like you, and will appreciate your time more than any material gift. Also falling into this category is sending me a heartfelt letter or email, or just giving a call and telling me why you like me.

--End decree--

Oh, the happy poo

Hours after lamenting my perceived failure on the subject, Godzilla just sat down on the potty and made a big poo last night. No asking, no cajoling, no reminding, no anything. Just wandered on over to his little potty chair and did his business. We made the required big fuss. It was fantastic. I know it's been said thousands of times, but I am continually amazed at the experiences considered joyful when small children are involved.

High brow stories of poo

Godzilla's having some trouble potty training. The little guy will urinate in his potty regularly, with glee even. But the poo, getting him to poo in the potty is very difficult. When I ask him if he has to go he gets this fearful look in his face that makes me want to cry every time I see it. I somehow think this is my fault, and wish I could make it better for him. Pollyanna tells me this not so, setbacks are common, there is no possible way this could be my fault. She is right, of course, but I just worry about damaging him permanently.

Look where you're going

Along with pissing me off on rural highways, other drivers make me want to cut my Achilles tendon on major limited access roads as well. The early part of my trip home takes me on eight and ten lane sections of Interstate 80. It is often slow going during rush hour, the 9 mile stretch I ride taking fifteen to thirty minutes most days. Occasionally, like last Thursday, it takes much longer.

For about four miles, the traffic was stop and go, taking about forty minutes for the normally ten minute or less stretch of road. I sit and wait. I listen to the traffic on the radio. No mention of my section of 80. No mention of 80 at all. I change the station to music. I move up 100 yards. I stop. I sing. I move up 200 yards. I stop. I change the station back to traffic. Still no mention of why I'm waiting. I yell at no one in particular. I change the station back to music. I move 100 yards.

I repeat this process many times before I finally see what is causing the delay. A two car accident, plus a police car with its lights on. The three vehicles take up only only lane, plus the shoulder. And they're ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ROAD.

Yes, that's right folks, the accident that caused me to lose a half hour of my life breathing the lovely exhaust from hundreds of cars was on the other side of a divided highway.

I have no idea why these people want me to hate them.

Absence makes the heart wither

Since I started my current job, I have had plenty of time to contemplate my existence. Between the 9 hours a day at work, and the 3-4 hours commuting, the voices in my head have a captive audience with little distraction more than 12 hours a day (with the exception of when Cuddly Porcupine drives us both to work- then the voices only get 6 or 7 hours). What I usually end up focusing on is how alone I feel. After working 6 hour days a half hour from home, with my days off usually being weekdays, and being unemployed after that, I miss my time with Godzilla. I used to be able to take him to the playground, walk around the neighborhood, or just sit and read with him for hours at a time. And when other people that he loved came around, he still wanted to spend time with me. I did not fall to the side like I have the past few nights. Godzilla and Mothra are the only things worth anything to me. To be ignored by him, like I have, hurts.

I know he is two. He can't possibly know how much this hurts. I put on a brave face and be happy when he is near me, partly because of my perceived responsibility of eliminating sadness from small children's lives, but partly because if I don't, he'll want to be around me even less. I know he loves me, but I am humanly selfish and want him to love me most.

Pick a pace, please

I like to drive very fast, which is unfortunate, because I drive many two-lane roads on my commute to and from work. I often get stuck behind people who have no business driving on any day but Sunday.

I could probably handle the occasional slowpoke if it were not for the four-lane sections (two in each direction) of these same roads. It is this moment where these inconsiderate sloth-loving asses decide to speed up. That's right, the same idiot who does 30mph (in a 55mph) when I have no opportunity to pass him, accelerates to 70 (with the same 55mph limit) when I do have a chance to get in front of him.

So I am left with two choices. I can either push my crappy 4-cylinder 1996 Chevy Malibu to 80 and try to get past this moron before I'm down to one lane, or I can stay put and end up doing 30 when we merge again.

I have no idea why these people want me to hate them.

Next year has never been so far away

...he gets up! My God he might be able to win this after all! But then, thud. Not only does he not get up again, but a few of the other runners step on him on the way to the finish. It is the most excruciating thing you have ever witnessed. I cannot cry, I cannot move. I stand and stare as the EMTs move to rescue him, part of me not caring because it was his own damn fault. Could be worse, though. I could have been a Buffalo Bills' fan in the early nineties.

Oh wait. I was.