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--