Rant

Sometimes I wonder about people and how ignorant they are or choose to be. I’ve written before on my opinions of liberals. Truth is, there are conservatives who are ignorant, too. Though they tend to be based more on logic and sound thinking than on emotion, which is where most liberals make their homes.

I work with a couple of liberals and it never stops amazing me (God save me because they still say things that surprise me) when they say stupid things. It’s not that I think they are stupid. These are people who, when not discussing politics or world affairs, are smart people with good problem solving skills. Start mentioning Republicans, though, and they revert to their “no-logic” training.

Last Friday, an American citizen had his head cut off in Saudi Arabia. I knew the terrorist SOB’s had kidnapped him and threatened to do it. I saw on foxnews.com that he’d been beheaded. I mentioned it to the folks working around me. Tokia, my neighbor at work, mentioned how hurt the family must be at this point and I agreed. Then she mentioned about the anger they must be feeling. I agreed. Then she said “They are going to be so mad at President Bush and blaming him. I can understand that.” Huh?

I should be used to this line of “thinking.” It never occurred to her to blame the damn monsters who did this to someone who had never done anything to them. It was President Bush’s fault. Knowing she only blamed him because he wasn’t a Democrat, I asked her “Did you blame President Clinton for the Oklahoma City Bombing and the people who died there? Why would you blame President Bush for this?” Her response was classic in its ability to make no sense. “Well, they caught the people responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing.” Huh? What the heck does that mean? By that same logic, President Bush is responsible for the WTC attack in 2001 until we catch Osama Bin Laden. Of course, I know what you’re thinking. “That doesn’t make any sense!” You’re right. It doesn’t. We didn’t blame President Clinton for the 18 airmen who died in the Khobar towers in 1996, the sailors who died on the USS Cole in 2000, or the Rangers and DF who died in Somalia. We didn’t blame President Reagan for the 220+ Marines who died in Beirut in 1983.

Now conservatives did try to blame most of the ills of the 1990s on President Clinton but I don’t recall them claiming he was responsible for anyone’s death. That leap of non-logic seems reserved for liberals.

It’s simple. The man who cut off the American’s head is responsible. We should find him and kill him (the Saudis claim they already did, for whatever that is worth).

Wheeeee! (ok that sounds gay)

I’m going to King’s Island tomorrow. For those not from the area, King’s Island is a great amusement park. Check out the web site here.

I’m so pumped about this. My friend Angela told me she was taking most of the week off because she was a tad burned out from last week (she’s a youth pastor and was also running Vacation Bible School last week). When she told me that, I thought King’s Island would be a great place to blow off some steam.

Now, because I’m a contractor at my company (no benefits) any time I take off is time I don’t get paid for. I don’t get vacation days. So I switched shifts and get off work tomorrow at 4 PM. We’ll get to PKI by 5 PM, in time to get in for the discounted evening rate. And then we’ll ride rides until we puke (if we’re lucky).

I am SO amped up for this. I love roller coasters and the other rides they have. My faves are Delirium, Drop Zone and Faceoff.

We’re gonna have so much fun tomorrow. And at some point after it gets dark, the have a fireworks show, too. I’m sure Angela will love that.

Amusement Parks rock.

Hot Air

Courtesy of Mike Adams, though I've changed some of it a bit. It's my blog after all.

“A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him, ‘Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.’ The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, ‘You’re in a hot air balloon approximately 30 feet above a ground elevation of 2346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.’

She rolled her eyes and said, ‘You must be a Libertarian.’

‘I am,’ replied the man. ‘How did you know?’

‘Well,’ answered the balloonist, ‘everything you have told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to do with your information, and I’m still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help to me.’

The man smiled and said, ‘You must be a Liberal.’

‘I am,’ replied the balloonist. ‘How did you know?’

‘Well,’ said the man, ‘you don’t know where you are or where you are going. You’ve risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise that you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You’re in exactly the same position you were in before we met but, somehow, it’s my fault.’”

Reds Sign New Pitcher

I wrote this 3 years ago while Jim Bowden was GM of the Reds and Bob Boone was manager. These two were so darn full of themselves and the Reds had a history of signing anyone w/ a working arm to pitch for them. So I decided to have some fun with it. Hope you enjoy:

From ESPN:

Today the Reds announced the signing of Harley Parker. Parker will be sent to AAA for a few starts but will be called up soon, Reds GM Jim Bowden reports.

"We felt with Reitsma, Reith, Acevedo and Davis in the rotation, we needed a little bit more experience than Dessens could provide," said Bowden. "

Parker, nicknamed "Doc," last pitched in the majors in 1901. "Don Gullett and I were looking at some old pictures and drawings of him," said manager Bob Boone, "and thought that with a few mechanical changes, we could have something really good here. I've been trying to get Jim to look at this guy for a while. I felt at the beginning of spring training that we might need a player at least 100 years old."

When asked where Parker had been for the past 100 years, Bowden replied, "In a coffin...or Hell. I'm not sure."

When pressed for more specific answers, Bowden explained that a demon seance was held to bring back the spirits of Cy Young and Walter Johnson to pitch for the Reds. "We've had a lot of luck in bringing back pitchers and position players who everyone else has given up on and getting good production out of them," said Bowden, citing Eric Davis, Ron Gant, Pete Schourek, Mark Wholers among others. "But everyone else is starting to mine that same kind of talent. So to stay a step ahead we decided to do something that hadn't been done in a while."

So what happened to Johnson and Young and how did the Reds get Parker instead? An unnamed source reported that upon hearing who was calling, both Johnson and Young asked who they would be playing for. When told it was Bob Boone, they replied "Having accepted Jesus Christ as our savior in our later years, we are under the impression that you can't make us go to hell." Reportedly Bowden then asked them if there were any pitchers there who would be willing to play for Boone and they gave him Parker's name.

After leaving numerous messages with an afterlife answering service, Parker finally called back and plans were set in motion.

Parker's lone major league appearance was a 9 inning complete game, giving
up 21 runs and 26 hits.

When reminded he had signed a dead pitcher with a 21.00 ERA, Bowden replied, "He can go deep into the game for us. And he can pitch as long as he wants. It's not like he's going to need arm surgery anytime soon. And maybe he can teach our young pitchers to tough it out."

"And his nickname is Doc so he must knows something about that medical stuff. It's not like Kremchek can misdiagnose a dead guy."

"Plus, when the young pitchers complain about job security and being pushed too hard, he can just remind them that it is better than being poked in the a** with a trident everyday for eternity."

Rob Bell may disagree, though.

Commando

I was up in central Ohio for National Guard duty over the weekend. Saturday was a slow, boring day but Sunday was pretty busy as we had an exercise. But Saturday night a group of us went out.

I was rooming w/ a guy named John. He’s a good guy though there are certainly issues we don’t see eye to eye on. Chris came over to the room and they wanted to grab some beer and drink in the room before we went out. So they grabbed their $ and walked to the local BP. About 10 minutes later they came back with no beer. I asked what happened and the lady behind the counter wouldn’t sell either of them beer.

You see, John is 26 but looks about 16 and he didn’t have his ID so the clerk wasn’t selling him beer. And she wouldn’t sell Chris his beer because she thought he’d give it to John. So they came back, got their IDs and went back to the BP and got their beer.

Once everyone else showed up, a group of us went over to BW3’s for some wings and to watch the Reds get beat by the Indians (I didn’t hear the end of this since all the guys in my unit are Indians fans). While up there, there was a bachelorette party going on. And it had some *hot* girls.

Well, Chris had plenty of beer in him and was turning into dork mode and was trying to get their attention. Eventually, he had to send the bride to be a shot of tequila. So a few of them came over and hung out w/ us for a bit. A couple of the guys told the girls that John was a stripper. Another thing to know is that while John has this cute looking thing going for him, he’ll be the first to admit he has no game at all. He gets super nervous around women, until he has some beer. Then he’s invincible, as you’ll soon see. Well, they got John to go back over to their group. John was close to drunk and the girls were hot so who wouldn’t?

I went back to talking to the guys and looked over just in time to see him dropping his pants in the middle of their party, take off his boxers and then, butt as bare as when he was born, pull his pants back up. Right in the middle of BW3s. He went commando the rest of the night.

The next day we were talking about it at the unit and he said “You know what the best part of that was? I’d worn those boxers for about 5 straight days.”

Ignorance

It drives me nuts. I don’t mind when other people have different opinions or beliefs. What drives me nuts is when those beliefs are knee-jerk reactions. My co-worker who sits near me is a good woman. But she’s passionately liberal. I think a good part of it is she is black. Blacks vote overwhelmingly democratic. They just do. And they hate Bush. But ask a black person why they hate Bush. Or why they vote democrat and you'll hear a mismash of unorganized thought and emotion.

Now you know I’m not a conservative but even though I’m not, I still hate liberal thought. It’s void of rational thought and is based in feelings and emotion. I’ve sat down with my black friends at lunch and explored their political beliefs with them. Truth is, they are more conservative in their beliefs(or even Libertarian) than they are liberal. Conservatives hold deeper religious beliefs than liberals and the black community is overwhelmingly Christian. Blacks are also largely pro-life. They are also pro-school choice. Those two positions are in direct conflict with whom the democrats rely on for votes: pro-abortion groups and the teacher’s unions. So why do they vote for Democrats? Because they always have.

Why are so many people unwilling to explore their own beliefs and challenge them. I LOVE being challenged on my beliefs. I believe it’s one of the many reasons I get along so well with my father. We challenge each other. We have many similar views(taxes, abortion, military) and a few very different ones (war on drugs, mainly). But we challenge each other. And while we may end up disagreeing, we respect each other still because we are willing to have our views challenged and we’ll change them when a compelling case is made.

The reason this whole topic came up is a discussion I was just involved in with two women here at work. They both talked down about the Reagan years but spoke wistfully of the Clinton years when jobs and wealth were so plentiful. Well, they were BOTH prosperous times. Why so wistful for the Clinton years? 2 reasons:

1. Media coverage. In Bernard Goldberg’s book Bias he shows how much more the media covered homelessness and greed during the Reagan years than the Clinton years. Despite the fact that there really wasn’t much change. But the 80’s were a decade of greed and the 90’s were a decade of prosperity. It’s all in presentation.

2. A liberal would rather get kicked in the nuts or punched in the boobs(not sure if I have a good alternate for the female side here) than to admit anyone not liberal did something good. Seriously, try it sometime. Now, many conservatives can be the same way but I know I have no problem complimenting Clinton on certain issues (welfare reform etc) when it is warranted.

So what are your thoughts? I’d love to hear them. Remember…I like having my beliefs challenged. Click on the comments link and let me know what you think.

Strawberry Addendum

I forgot to note. There was a picture of our team on page B4 of Sunday’s Dayton Daily News. I haven’t found it online, though. But I did find some pics from the Strawberry Festival website and there is a link to them on the right hand side of this page w/ the other links. Just use the username and password provided to see them.

Guts

There’s a town called Troy nearby and every year they have a Strawberry Festival. It’s a big thing and they have about 250,000 people visit over a 3 or 4 day period. Part of the festival is the volleyball tournament.

I’ve been playing competitively for a bit over a year and a half now and love it. This was my first try at a tournament. I’d gotten a good team together. I figured we were one of the top 2 teams there. I got 2 of my best friends, Paul and Jesse. Since it was a co-ed league we needed 3 girls. So we added Maggie (Paul’s girlfriend), and Ashley and Maria, 2 girls who’d be playing for the local comm. college. I was pretty happy with our team. The only drawback, is that Ashley and Maria weren’t used to playing with the rest of us since we’d only played with them once or twice. There’s something to be said about being familiar w/ your teammates. But they were good and I knew we’d get it down.

Now, I thought we were one of the top 2 teams until Saturday morning when I got there. I saw Chuck had put a team together (one of the smartest players I’ve played w/ and against) along with some other teams with players I’d seen before. There were a lot of good teams playing in our tournament. Out of 9 teams, only 1 really didn’t belong.

It started off with what is called pool play. The 9 teams were divided into 2 groups and each played on 2 separate nets. We were in the 5 team pool so we were to play the other 4 teams. Once all the teams were done w/ the pool play, the teams would be seeded according to their records and the tournament would start. We were 2-2 (5-4 overall) in pool play. I wasn’t unhappy with it given that we started off horribly in our first match, getting swept in 2.

The tournament finally started around 4:30 PM I think. We’d spent the whole day playing in the hot sun so we were already feeling a bit spent. That and while it was called a sand tournament, it was more of a “sand” tournament. Instead of expensive good sand, they got cheap concrete sand. It’s pretty darn coarse. I had the best sand socks you can buy (Vincere) and my feet still ended up getting torn up.

The first match of the tournament was something else. They won the first game, we won the 2nd. Then came the third game. We started off terribly. We were down 11-1 and 14-3. We called a timeout and huddled. I kept telling them that we can come back and win this game and we’d be talking about it for weeks. No one ever comes back from a score like that. We started some runs. 6 points here, another 6 there. There was another team there that we knew well and had played with and against many times. We could hear them rooting for us during our comeback.

And come back we did. We tied it at 20-20 and I let out this loud yell that everyone thought was funny. I didn’t care. The game was to be played to 21 but you have to win by two. So I knew it was now a 2 point game. Sure, I am biased but I’ll put my team up against anyone’s in a 2 point game. We’d been dominating for about 17 straight points. Paul and Jesse, our middle hitters were killing the other team. They didn’t have an answer for them. Maggie, our setter, was setting perfect every single time. And Ashley and Maria and I were passing nails, digging everything and adding in some hits of our own. It was great. Suddenly, we didn’t feel THAT tired. Now, it was 20-20. A brand new game to 2. And we took the next 2 points. 22-20 we win and crushed the spirit of the other team. I yelled out again. It was a great little celebration. I really did feel for the other team. They were a group of nice people and good players and it really had to have been crushing to lose like that. I’d rather be blown out than to have a big lead and still lose in the deciding game.

Well the euphoria wore off quick when the tournament organizer told me we were playing the next game. We could have a 10-15 minute break. Our next game was against the top team from our pool. They were undefeated to this point. When we’d played them, they beat us in 2-1 in 3 very tight games. They weren’t a dominating team but they dug everything, didn’t beat themselves and played smart. We played them to 3 games as well. All of them extremely tight but we beat them, too!

Our next game was against a team that most of my team was friends w/ already. Paul and Jesse’s brother Ben was on this team, too. They beat us, barely, the first game and we won the second. This had a weakness we wanted to exploit. It wasn’t physical or talent related. It was mental. If we jumped out on them by about 5 or 6 points, there were about 2 or 3 members of that team who would have gotten out of their game and more or less given up. We were in a perfect position to break them…

We didn’t. They jumped out on us and the outcome of the 3rd game was never really in doubt.

We had bad luck on a couple items:

#1. The coin toss. I lost the coin toss before the 3rd game and the other team got to choose which side they wanted. They chose wisely. We were looking into the sun, right at the net level. I could hardly see half the balls coming across the net and I know the rest of my team had the same problem.

#2. We’d done nothing but play ball for 9 straight games over about 2 1/2 hours. We were spent. We just ran out of energy. While it seemed every other team got a break in between games before we played them, we got 10 minutes between each game. That just wasn’t enough.

Another thing that didn’t go well was a couple of players, one in particular, live on trash talk. To the point it gets REALLY irritating. I get really protective of my team and if someone is trash talking, I take it as a personal attack on my teammates. Most of the time I can take it fine. But my team had given too much and worked too hard to get where we were. What could have been a fun, but very competitive game between two teams of friends, left our team not terribly happy about shaking hands w/ the other team afterwards.

But that’s in the past now and the important thing is how well we played and the guts this team showed. I was really proud to have been on their team. We played 18 games of volleyball, almost all closely contested, in the hot sun in about 12 hours. Our record was 4-3 (10-8) and we never gave up. I was sunburned, exhausted and sore…but proud.

On the map

In the short time I’ve been blogging, I’ve had visitors from the US (duh), Canada (semi-duh), England (cool), France (cool) and Brazil (I know who this is). That’s 3 continents already. I expected 1 (North America), requested the other from a friend in Brazil (South America) but am not sure who has visited from England and France. If you’re out there, say hi in the comments section and let me know how you found me. I’m really curious.

Fondly, the Nightdog
(A special prize to anyone w/out the initials HMM who can tell me where that is from)

Fatherhood and Violence

Let me add this disclaimer right here. There may be some topics and words in this posting that might be offensive or disgusting. Read at your own risk…

I’ve come to the conclusion that when/if I get married and have kids, if one of them is a daughter, I will be the world’s best or worst dad. I doubt I’ll fall somewhere in-between.

I was at BW3’s last night meeting my friends Joe and Heather. For those of you not familiar w/them, they are popular sports bars in the mid-west. Now, many nights, this is also a popular teeny-bopper hangout.

Here’s where the story starts. Just walking in, I walked past 2 or 3 “girls” about 16 years old displaying their 4 inches of cleavage in all its glory. Yes, that’s a lot of cleavage. I mentioned to Heather that I would never allow my daughter out in the outfits we saw girls wearing. If the outfit is causing ME to look at the chest of a 14-16 year old, she’s showing WAY too much.

Now another, related, story. And this is where it gets violent and gross. I’m in the National Guard and about a year ago, during a drill weekend, we had a similar discussion. A group of us was having lunch at the chow hall. We had a girl in the group named Danielle. She’s a very good looking girl, about 19, who also works hard (which is the exception, not the rule, in my unit). I noticed she had a mark on her neck and asked her about it. She quickly got embarrassed and we knew then that it was a hickey.

That got the discussion going among the guys but not in the way you might think. My immediate reaction, since she lives at home, is what was her family’s reaction. She said her mom saw it and didn’t like it. I asked what her dad thought and she said he didn’t know. Wise move.

So the men at the table started discussing what we would do if our daughter came home w/ a hickey on her neck. My offering was that I would find the boy and beat him to death…but not quickly. A hickey is like marking your territory. No boy is going to mark territory on my daughter until the night she’s walking down that aisle. Now, I’m not naïve but I certainly don’t expect to have someone leave a visible mark on my daughter.

But my plan, initially, was to murder the guy who did it and let word spread around about what I did and WHY I did it. Then, I don’t have to worry about that problem again. There was another guy in our group named Eric who, while pretty balanced, comes up with some pretty gross and violent ideas most of the time. I loved his idea. He said, if you really wanted to hurt someone but wanted to avoid the murder charge, he had a better idea. You kidnap the offending boy, take him out to a shed and beat him. Beat him horribly. You beat him so bad he craps his pants. Then you beat him some more. You beat him enough that when you offer to stop but ONLY if he eats his own poop, he jumps at the opportunity. Then, once again, you let people know what you did and WHY you did it.

This should do an adequate job of helping your daughter avoid those nasty hickeys. Now, it may also means she never dates until her mid-20’s. But that’s also ok. Now, you only do this IF someone punk marks your daughter that way.

Now, I may feel differently when I actually have a daughter. But you know what’s scary? I’ll be even more protective then when I can see and love her, than I am now, when I can only imagine having a daughter.

Libertarians

I’ve undergone a political transformation over the past 2 years from Conservative to Libertarian. This means my views on a few issues have changed during that time:

1. Republicans and Democrats are not THAT different.
2. George Bush is NOT the man of principle I had hoped.
3. I will not be voting for GW Bush in this election.

There is one issue that I’d thought, and still do think, is the most important issue facing our country over the next 5-10 years(maybe longer) and that’s the “war on terror.” I put it in quotes because I don’t believe it’s just a war on terror but a war on militant Islam as well. It’s a war of cultures. The West versus Islam. Truthfully, there is no room for compromise here. We are at a war w/ a culture that would rather kill us than deal with us.

Now, GW Bush has done a lot of things I didn’t particularly care for:

1. The horrible prescription drug plan.
2. Growth of the government, even after accounting for the war, has been great than it was during the Clinton years.
3. Constantly trying to compromise w/ the Democrats. They routinely badmouth him and call him all sorts of names (see Kennedy, Ted) but he still plays nice with them.

Those are just off the top of my head. But, in spite of those things, I still felt that Bush’s stand on the “war on terror” was worth setting those issues aside and voting for him again.

Until Fallujah. There was an uprising there. And we needed to go in and pound that city. So we sent in the Marines and started doing that. Now, I understand the desire to avoid killing women and children but if the enemy is hiding behind them, so be it. So we are hitting them pretty hard and all of a sudden we come up with a brilliant plan to let one of Saddam’s former generals take charge of an Iraqi security force and take care of things. And we withdraw the Marines.

That convinced me that the politicians, and not the military, are running this war. I believed and, still do, in the Iraq war. But there is no use in fighting it if the moron politicians won’t let us.

That was the last straw. I will be voting Libertarian or Constitution party this year. I’m going to do some research into their candidates because I really know very little about them.

It’s just a darn shame. It’s nice to have a professed Christian in the White House and who really seems to mean it. But if he can’t stand by the principles he professed during the 2000 campaign, then he isn’t the man of principle I thought. And, therefore, won’t be getting my vote.