So, I wrote this out once already, but when I tried to post it, the server went down. I tried that "recover post" thing and that didn't work, so now I'm writing as close as I can remember to the first thing, but that makes me think, so it might be longer or shorter, depending on how my brain works it over, and that's a lot of commas for one sentence, don't you think?
While I sat waiting for some kind of response from Blogger Support last night (turns out I'm not the only one who had that problem, and they eventually did fix the problem sometime this morning), I took the time to look at some other blogs by hitting that "Next Blog" button at the top right of the blog. I got to see what other people did with their blogs and my God, what a motley crew this ship called Bloggerdom has. I saw a blog that had essentially random things, like self-written "patriotic" poetry, pictures, and just random words at times. Then there was a blog that was all about, I shit you not, ink cartridges for printers, keeping you up-to-date on news and availability. There was one about the life of a guy in American Samoa who is either one hell of a stalker or is really a bit too serious about this one girl. But I did notice a trend, something that I've seen in just about every blog I've ever actually looked at: the entries were short, maybe a couple of 5 sentence paragraphs, and that was it. I have no problem with this, it's just not who I am. In my blog, I vent. I just write and write and type and type for pages at a time because it helps me relieve some pressure in my skull, resolving some issues and giving me a better insight into my own way of thinking about that issue, and sometimes seeing the other side of it. I just prattle on, I pontificate on a focused idea (usually) and let out everything that I want to about it. I like to use pontificate, but if anyone can think of a word that sounds as cool and means to go on and on in a one-sided statement about something, please let me know.
Of course, in non-binary world, I am anything but a pontificator. I enjoy a conversation that is balanced, giving both sides an opportunity to voice their ideas. In fact, it's possible that I am slightly passive, allowing someone to speak for a while without interrupting them, generally because that gives me a better opportunity to form a good counterpoint because they are giving me loads of info to work. I like to think of it like fencing in a way, letting the other person try to sway me to their side all the while I'm looking for the weakness in their technique that I strike on at the right moment (Don't worry, Dwainker, I only do this with people I don't really like. There are some certain Annoying people who jump to mind). I am also of the opinion that I should not push my opinions and beliefs on other people. This has bothered me since childhood when, in church, the preacher would talk about Jesus sending forth his disciples to spread the word. Why should I impose my beliefs on another person? What right do I have? (Teaching aside, of course. For me, teaching is more about informing students about certain ideas and seeing if they can then find that stuff on their own, teaching skills and how to apply those skills instead of just straight "the book says this, this is precisely what it means, no, Johnny, that's not what the book says, so you're wrong") So, generally, I don't talk about my thoughts on politics, war, religion, the military, patriotism, and/or business.
Today, however, I must rant on, well, essentially all of the above. First, a little backstory. Throughout the day, I saw stuff about a chopper crash in Iraq. When I first saw something about it, there were six dead and the cause of the commercial helicopter's crash was unknown. Around 6:45 or so, I saw on Yahoo the headline "Iraqi Militants Down Chopper, Shoot Survivor." I checked it out and found out that they downed the chopper with a rocket, went to the wreckage, found a survivor, told him to walk away, then shot him in the back. That caused something inside me to snap just a bit. Now, like I said, I don't pontificate about this stuff very often, but this just had to be addressed. I know that the "war" was wrong and that we really should never have gotten involved. I mean, what are we doing there, other than getting beat up occasionally by these insurgents (or should I use militants, or rebels, or scourge, or traitors, or confederates? It's all the same thing: the other guys). Innocent people are dying on both sides, be it businessmen or women and children. No, there were better ways of doing this. In fact, there are three solutions.
1. Nuke the whole fucking region. Yeah, that's right, I went there. I don't like the n-word anymore than you, but we have it and if there's a region that's just crying to have it dropped on them, it's the big ol' Middle East. Nuke the Iraqis, the Saudis, the Iranians, and even the Israelis. You know, they might be considered our allies, but what have they done in the past 50 years other than cause trouble in that area? Hell, they shouldn't have even been put there in the first place. Seriously, did somebody in the UN go, "Look, the Nazis fucked you over pretty well by displacing you and making you live in shit, so we're going to fuck over the Palestinians and displace them and make them live in shit. Enjoy the holy land. Send me a postcard?" What the hell? What right did they have? It's not like the UN kicked the Jews out of the land o' milk and honey, why do they have the right to put 'em back there. If God really wanted them to be there, why couldn't He do it Himself and save a bunch of trouble? You know, if America wants to play "The World's Policeman," it should learn that a good cop knows what to keep his nose out of. So, yeah, nuke 'em and we'll drill in Alaska for a while. Hell, if that's the trade-off to get rid of that billion year migrane in the Middle East, that's a fucking great deal. (Yeah, I know I just said there were innocent people there, but I'm getting past the point of caring about them. I know it's coming, that moment when they start turning kids into walking bombs like in Vietnam)
2. One very good, very dedicated sniper could take care of piss-ants like Saddam and his boys. Yeah, sure, it might cause chaos in the area, which may lead you back to option 1, but something else might come out of it, too. The masses might just get their act together. You know, this all comes back to an essential lesson my parents taught me: if they bought me a car, I would be less likely to value it than if I bought and paid for the car myself. That holds true for democracy as well. If we give the Iraqis democracy, are we really giving them democracy or forcing it down their throats? Are they going to value it, or just elect to end up in the same spot they were in before? Now, if you send some good CIA covert operations people in who will teach some of the population about what democracy can offer them, get some converts, and then start building an underground movement, then you have progress. You train these Iraqis to become resistance soldiers, preparing for one moment to strike, but they need to work out a lot of stuff on their own. Make them feed themselves, arm themselves (for the love of God, don't arm them because that always bites us in the ass), and fight for themselves. Then, when that happens, have your sniper pop off some heads and have the resistance rise up and take democracy for themselves. They're going to value it far more than if we just come in and say, "Okay, here's democracy, but we're going to keep a "peacekeeping" force here in the meantime." (Note: I know that method 2 has been used before, but not properly. In an effort to keep Iran from falling to communism [Ha! If only...], the US armed and trained a bunch of resistance people to fight for themselves. The problem: they were religious extremists who had no interest in anything other than making their religion the focus of the government. Congrats, you now have a highly extremist Muslim nation on your hands thanks to good ol' Uncle Sam. The list goes beyond Iran, too, and in all cases, it was because the people fighting were not converted to the "democratic" frame of mind, just the anti-commie frame of mind).
3. Just leave 'em to their own devices. Fuck 'em. Leave the Middle East completely and let it implode. The Israelis are prepared, some nations are afraid of the Jews, and others are chomping at the bit to bite off a chunk of kosher ass and see if they can handle it. Let 'em. We'll drill in Alaska, come in in a few years, clean up the mess, and have a shitload of oil and new stars for the American flag. Rock on.
So, yeah, those are my three options. There are tons more, but those have been tried and failed before.
You know, the main thing that irks me about the crash was not that they did that, but what they did with the survivor. Here's a guy who has just survived a horrible event, is the only one left alive, is probably injured, and they do this to him: tell him to walk away and he's probably thinking that these guys are at least decent to spare his life like this. Hope probably entered his mind just as the first bullet hit his back. You know, in my life, I've heard the phrase "Who wants to be the last man to die in Vietnam?" several times, but that's not what I ask. I wonder what his last thought was. "I'll never see home again?" "Aw, hell, what luck?" "Momma?" That's what troubles me most about this poor Bulgarian guy, who had a life outside of Iraq. What the fuck, man? This is barbaric. You don't tell a man to walk away and then shoot him. That's just plain fucking evil. If Allah is supposed to be a just god, I know he wouldn't frown upon that. You have the decency to tell a man you're going to kill him or just do it instantly, don't give him a glimmer of hope then cap him. No, that's it, man. Either fuckin' nuke 'em or just leave 'em to their own devices. I don't give a shit anymore.
Thursday, April 21, 2005
Time ain't on my side.
Yeah, so, I haven't posted for several days now. It's not because I've abandoned the blog like I originally figured I would after a few days (actually, blogging can be quite theraputic). It's really been a lack of time. Yeah, I know, I usually make time, but lately the time that I make to blog has been used for other things, like work. So now I am making time, cutting in to that precious time of the night I like to reserve for sleep.
First things first. As I write this, I cannot really access my blog. Okay, that's an overstatement; just let me explain. So I sit down at my computer and find out through the Dashboard that someone left me a comment (I figured this out when I saw my blog had been updated today and I knew I sure as hell hadn't done it). So I click on my blog's name and then "View Blog" to see it. The Mozilla circle-thingy goes round and round for a few moments and brings up the new page: the Dashboard. Um, no, I said to View Blog. So I go to my bookmarks and click on Final Jump, and it takes me to the Dashboard. Um, okay. I check lambent mind and that comes up confusingly fine. So I start going through everything my newly-blogging brain can think of: republish the index, republish the whole damn blog, write a new post, check Blogger's status. Nope, nothing did any good: the first three just lead me back to the Dashboard and the last option said there haven't been any problems for a day (I'll bet that was cause for an office party. They probably had a banner made: "NO PROBLEMS TODAY! CHERISH IT WHILE IT LASTS!" Yeah, oddly enough, for reasons beyond my understanding, I sort of see some sort of "The Office" situation with blogger.com's management. Unfortunately, it's the American version of "The Office," since English people running this site would have meant it was spelt bloggre or something like that, maybe with a u thrown in the mix: bloggour). Could it be something wrong with my computer? So, I turn to my other possible browser choice: IE (those dreaded words shall not be spoken here, lest they claim my computer once again). I bring up the browser, which loads oh-so-fast-it-must-be-excited-to-be-let-out-of-the-box-I-left-it-imprisoned-in, and I type in the blog's address. Sure enough, the blog comes up, complete with test message. Arg. IE must have sabotaged my Firefox. Well, I'm not going to let it win. I reinstall Firefox. No good. I uninstall some extensions. Nope. I clear the cookie cache. IE is laughing in my face now. Shit. Okay, maybe there's something I can do with the settings on blogger. I change my publishing address to finaljump1.blah.blah.blah and the blog works there. I change it back to just finaljump and no. I'm not sure if others are having the problem I am, I'm just wondering why the hell I'm having this problem (I figure others aren't having this problem since I am quite sure that the lone visitor to my raving mess of words other than myself must use IE at his school). So, I go to my last resort: sending a message off to blogger.com. It seemed like a simple enough idea, since it's their site and I didn't change a thing on my computer between the last time I accessed the blog this morning and when I tried again about 2.5 hours ago and found myself in this spot. As of 12:16 AM, the only thing I've gotten was an automatic response that has the usual bits (Hi, can't respond to every message personally, but you might be a complete dumbass who didn't check our FAQ and common problems, so I'm going to link you to several just in case you're having that problem, thanks for you patience, like you have a choice). The funny thing is, if you want more help, you actually have to reply to that message in order to get real help. It's a built-in measure to try and keep the dumbasses and the people who don't read the entire message out. I kind of like that, actually. Of course, I'm not holding my breath for a response, either.
So, yeah, I can't access the blog with Firefox. I could have boiled it down to that little message, but I wanted to vent my pain a bit. I was originally going to rant about traffic in my town, which is layed out about as well as a Jackson Pollack painting. Instead, I had plenty of material about blogging. A fair trade-off, perhaps.
The SOTP from last time, as spoiled by my buddy the DWAINKER (yep, the all caps is just for you, pal), was I've Seen All Good People by Yes. Every Yes song that I can think of, save one, has two distinct sections. There's this one, which has the chorus said at the beginning, then a whole part that uses chess as a metaphor (you're a dumbass, that's a metaphor), then goes back to this whole different tempoed part with that chorus. Okay, now, I love the chess metaphor section. It's beat, tempo, instrumentation, lyrics, everything: great. Just something about it. Then there's the other part. I hate it, just can't stand it. I turn it off at that point, either on the radio or on the computer. I have no use for that entire section. It just irks me. Go back to the chess metaphor.
Then there's Roundabout, a great song at the beginning, with the classical guitar. I love that intro. Then it goes into the main part of the song and I'm turned off. It's like a switch. In Yes' songs, I enjoy the intros or first sections, then turn it off.
Except for their comeback song in the 80s, Owner of a Lonely Heart. That one I like pretty much all the way through, except, ironically enough, the guitar intro. Talk about trying to break away from the great classical guitar intro of Roundabout with a horrible, rocking-out electric guitar riff at the beginning of Owner.
There's not much insight to offer on I've Seen. The chess metaphor section is incredibly good, but there's not much to really say about it without putting the lyrics on here, word for word, and analyzing them. Folk(s), I just don't have that kind of time, and you shouldn't either. If you do, go buy an N64 or Xbox and just Conker out.
Well, the Song of the Post is pretty random tonight because I'm writing with the radio on, so I don't know what's on the playlist. I'll write about the song after the one that's currently on: Sting and the Police's Message in a Bottle, a good song, but I wanted to add that bit about randomness and the song was already on. So, the Song of the Post today is: wait, I've got something to rant about for a moment. So, the last several times I've heard the Eagles' Lyin' Eyes on the radio, it seemed like it was missing the middle verse, where the cheating woman meets her younger lover (these days I'm seeing it as Gabriel and John from Desperate Housewives, a show I haven't watched in a while. The flavor just kind of died out when it got too soapish, what with the comas and the potential gayness and the like). I'd hear the song on the radio and get busy and not really listen during that section, so it was more likely that I just missed hearing it (additionally, I'm reading this biography on the Eagles and it turns out Henley abso-fucking-lutely hates having songs trimmed down for the radio, so that led further creadence to my thought). But today, I'm driving back to my place and Lyin' Eyes comes on the radio. I'm enjoying it, though I have to yell at this fucker who, when I'm trying to move into an empty lane, moves out from behind me and speeds past right as I'm moving over, causing me to jerk back into my lane. Yet, in the middle of my yell, in the back of my mind, a tiny part of me notices that, indeed, the song does go from "cheatin' part of town" and the chorus to "she gets up and pours herself a strong one." What the hell? No. Don't cut out the part with the boy. That takes a huge chunk out of the meaning of the song. Trust me, I've worked a lesson plan around that chunk. It's vital to the song. Don't cut that. If the word fuck were in there, I'd say cut that. But no, they cut out the middle verse just to take up less time. Those fuckers. Yeah, while writing that, Tiny Dancer by Elton John played, and now they're on commercials, so the SotP is going to wait a few more moments while they pay the bills. I could change the station, but fuck off. I'm the one waiting, not you, who will get this instantly while I cannot see the blog entirely until blogger.com fixes it or tells me what I did wrong. 12:50 AM and counting, by the way.
Alright, the Song of the Post is: "Will you meet me in the middle, will you meet me in the end? / Will you love me just a little, just enough to show you care?"
First things first. As I write this, I cannot really access my blog. Okay, that's an overstatement; just let me explain. So I sit down at my computer and find out through the Dashboard that someone left me a comment (I figured this out when I saw my blog had been updated today and I knew I sure as hell hadn't done it). So I click on my blog's name and then "View Blog" to see it. The Mozilla circle-thingy goes round and round for a few moments and brings up the new page: the Dashboard. Um, no, I said to View Blog. So I go to my bookmarks and click on Final Jump, and it takes me to the Dashboard. Um, okay. I check lambent mind and that comes up confusingly fine. So I start going through everything my newly-blogging brain can think of: republish the index, republish the whole damn blog, write a new post, check Blogger's status. Nope, nothing did any good: the first three just lead me back to the Dashboard and the last option said there haven't been any problems for a day (I'll bet that was cause for an office party. They probably had a banner made: "NO PROBLEMS TODAY! CHERISH IT WHILE IT LASTS!" Yeah, oddly enough, for reasons beyond my understanding, I sort of see some sort of "The Office" situation with blogger.com's management. Unfortunately, it's the American version of "The Office," since English people running this site would have meant it was spelt bloggre or something like that, maybe with a u thrown in the mix: bloggour). Could it be something wrong with my computer? So, I turn to my other possible browser choice: IE (those dreaded words shall not be spoken here, lest they claim my computer once again). I bring up the browser, which loads oh-so-fast-it-must-be-excited-to-be-let-out-of-the-box-I-left-it-imprisoned-in, and I type in the blog's address. Sure enough, the blog comes up, complete with test message. Arg. IE must have sabotaged my Firefox. Well, I'm not going to let it win. I reinstall Firefox. No good. I uninstall some extensions. Nope. I clear the cookie cache. IE is laughing in my face now. Shit. Okay, maybe there's something I can do with the settings on blogger. I change my publishing address to finaljump1.blah.blah.blah and the blog works there. I change it back to just finaljump and no. I'm not sure if others are having the problem I am, I'm just wondering why the hell I'm having this problem (I figure others aren't having this problem since I am quite sure that the lone visitor to my raving mess of words other than myself must use IE at his school). So, I go to my last resort: sending a message off to blogger.com. It seemed like a simple enough idea, since it's their site and I didn't change a thing on my computer between the last time I accessed the blog this morning and when I tried again about 2.5 hours ago and found myself in this spot. As of 12:16 AM, the only thing I've gotten was an automatic response that has the usual bits (Hi, can't respond to every message personally, but you might be a complete dumbass who didn't check our FAQ and common problems, so I'm going to link you to several just in case you're having that problem, thanks for you patience, like you have a choice). The funny thing is, if you want more help, you actually have to reply to that message in order to get real help. It's a built-in measure to try and keep the dumbasses and the people who don't read the entire message out. I kind of like that, actually. Of course, I'm not holding my breath for a response, either.
So, yeah, I can't access the blog with Firefox. I could have boiled it down to that little message, but I wanted to vent my pain a bit. I was originally going to rant about traffic in my town, which is layed out about as well as a Jackson Pollack painting. Instead, I had plenty of material about blogging. A fair trade-off, perhaps.
The SOTP from last time, as spoiled by my buddy the DWAINKER (yep, the all caps is just for you, pal), was I've Seen All Good People by Yes. Every Yes song that I can think of, save one, has two distinct sections. There's this one, which has the chorus said at the beginning, then a whole part that uses chess as a metaphor (you're a dumbass, that's a metaphor), then goes back to this whole different tempoed part with that chorus. Okay, now, I love the chess metaphor section. It's beat, tempo, instrumentation, lyrics, everything: great. Just something about it. Then there's the other part. I hate it, just can't stand it. I turn it off at that point, either on the radio or on the computer. I have no use for that entire section. It just irks me. Go back to the chess metaphor.
Then there's Roundabout, a great song at the beginning, with the classical guitar. I love that intro. Then it goes into the main part of the song and I'm turned off. It's like a switch. In Yes' songs, I enjoy the intros or first sections, then turn it off.
Except for their comeback song in the 80s, Owner of a Lonely Heart. That one I like pretty much all the way through, except, ironically enough, the guitar intro. Talk about trying to break away from the great classical guitar intro of Roundabout with a horrible, rocking-out electric guitar riff at the beginning of Owner.
There's not much insight to offer on I've Seen. The chess metaphor section is incredibly good, but there's not much to really say about it without putting the lyrics on here, word for word, and analyzing them. Folk(s), I just don't have that kind of time, and you shouldn't either. If you do, go buy an N64 or Xbox and just Conker out.
Well, the Song of the Post is pretty random tonight because I'm writing with the radio on, so I don't know what's on the playlist. I'll write about the song after the one that's currently on: Sting and the Police's Message in a Bottle, a good song, but I wanted to add that bit about randomness and the song was already on. So, the Song of the Post today is: wait, I've got something to rant about for a moment. So, the last several times I've heard the Eagles' Lyin' Eyes on the radio, it seemed like it was missing the middle verse, where the cheating woman meets her younger lover (these days I'm seeing it as Gabriel and John from Desperate Housewives, a show I haven't watched in a while. The flavor just kind of died out when it got too soapish, what with the comas and the potential gayness and the like). I'd hear the song on the radio and get busy and not really listen during that section, so it was more likely that I just missed hearing it (additionally, I'm reading this biography on the Eagles and it turns out Henley abso-fucking-lutely hates having songs trimmed down for the radio, so that led further creadence to my thought). But today, I'm driving back to my place and Lyin' Eyes comes on the radio. I'm enjoying it, though I have to yell at this fucker who, when I'm trying to move into an empty lane, moves out from behind me and speeds past right as I'm moving over, causing me to jerk back into my lane. Yet, in the middle of my yell, in the back of my mind, a tiny part of me notices that, indeed, the song does go from "cheatin' part of town" and the chorus to "she gets up and pours herself a strong one." What the hell? No. Don't cut out the part with the boy. That takes a huge chunk out of the meaning of the song. Trust me, I've worked a lesson plan around that chunk. It's vital to the song. Don't cut that. If the word fuck were in there, I'd say cut that. But no, they cut out the middle verse just to take up less time. Those fuckers. Yeah, while writing that, Tiny Dancer by Elton John played, and now they're on commercials, so the SotP is going to wait a few more moments while they pay the bills. I could change the station, but fuck off. I'm the one waiting, not you, who will get this instantly while I cannot see the blog entirely until blogger.com fixes it or tells me what I did wrong. 12:50 AM and counting, by the way.
Alright, the Song of the Post is: "Will you meet me in the middle, will you meet me in the end? / Will you love me just a little, just enough to show you care?"
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