Some people justify it with "freedom", some with "style". But freedom and style won't counter bad luck. I give you the hazard I impacted with during this morning's commute: the common pigeon!

Little skyrats were either doing mating flights or fighting under the rail bridge before Bird Ave (heh heh..he said "bird!") and at least one dove right as I passed under while doing just over 70 while southbound on 280. I ducked but not enough. Not sure what happened to the bird as I didn't see him in the rearview and still needed to get to work on time.

If I'd had a skid lid or beanie the impact woulda pulled it off or over, and definitely would have lost sunglasses and gotten an eyeful of feathers and pigeon toes. Which would have made continuing to maintain control next to impossible. As I was wearing a full face helmet with visor mostly down, the only consequences are a little bit of sore neck, an amusing story and some helmet cleaning to do while picking out feathers.

Crashing for fashion and style sucks and no one wants to be damaged or dead because of something embarrassing. Wear the right gear!

Drinkin' the Apple Kool-Aid..

so I took a big ol' over-$300 swig of Steve Jobs' special juice. My new 32 GB 3gS iPhone should arrive today or tomorrow. I even bough a solar-powered battery charger/belt holster for it.

Kumbaya!

The biggest problem with the kumbaya, don't-call-it-socialist-even-though-it-is "universal health care" plans coming through our monoparty government isn't the waste, fraud, expense and upcoming debt (government has NEVER in 200 years run any big project well -except for maybe the Manhattan Project- why do people think it can do so now?) but the opening it gives the Federal Bureaucracy to control the everyday activities of average Americans.

As there are already certain "risky" activities that private insurance companies refuse to provide coverage for, what happens when this "universal" system is in place? Employers will have no obligation to offer an alternative, so most people won't be able to afford an alternative after increases in tax burden are deployed.

Which means, instead of trying to make things "illegal" and having to follow rule of law and Constitutional process, bureaucrats in power simply have to add an unpopular or dangerous (to politicians) activity to the "no coverage" list. Ride a motorcycle, lose your (perhaps your family's too?) coverage. Drive a "gas guzzler" or classic hot rod, nixed coverage. Visit the rifle range or have a firearm in your home? No care for you!

The massive debt, financial waste and strangulation of the economy will be the least frightening fallout of the universal control..err..health plan.Slippery slope argument maybe, but looking to historical precedent, government has ALWAYS extended and expanded on any powers ever given to it, to the detriment of the people and the country. It's a sure bet as death and taxes.

Remember the definition of insanity is given as doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result. Giving government an option for unprecedented power and control and not expecting them to utilize it, is insane.

Time for those who enabled Prop 8 to take responsibility

Time for some deep soul-searching for California's "Gay Rights" movement. Prop 8 passed, making it a fucking *law* who can and can't get married. It's not a religion. It's not about "hatin' str8". It's the kind of thing that has nothing to do with what Government's job is, and everything to do with what happens when Government becomes Big Brother/Nanny State and has to decide "what's best for you". It's legislation, acts of Humans and not of Gods or Nature.

And it's time for the Gay/Homosexual Rights Movement to own up to enabling the situation that allowed such an egregious abuse of power to occur. To them who are "surprised" that California is taking legal interest in what goes on in their bedrooms, I say to them: "What the hell did you expect?"

When you go around attacking the first and second amendment and banning/controlling them wherever possible, that eventually government goes after the rest of the "lifestyle" choices as well. When you go around promoting the idea that Government needs to "help" everyone, "support" them, and "keep them safe", you're telling them to control your lives. Which is great until your "life" is an inconvenience to the Smooth Orderly Running of The State.

The Homosexual Rights movement allowed itself to be hijacked to support marxist and extreme left wing candidacies, allowed itself to be promoted with ridiculous hedonistic parades and events, which did nothing at all to promote their movement in a positive light. The 'gays" flocked to support every democrat and socialist, got Hollywood swinging their way, fought down free speech by creating "hate speech" laws that could be activated based solely on whether someone was "offended" or not, joined into any anti-law enforcement or "anti-violence" (read: anti-gun ownership) rally and cause they could find. Any candidate who supported even larger grabs of power, increased gerrymandering of congressional districts, higher taxes, abuse of eminent domain-didn't matter at all as long as they were "pro gay".

Now, Prop 8 shows up and they're "surprised"? Try to turn it into a hate issue of "religion" (and only Christianity, since all other world religions are tolerant of homosexuality)? Prop 8 is not a religious edict. It's government. The same government they worked to empower, that no longer has a use for them. The free speech they worked to overturn is now their voice that is silenced. The guns they removed would have been the arms that allowed them to protect themselves from repression. Any support from "the people" ruined because no one wants to admit association to the Castro Street freak shows and the @ssless pants wearing leather clowns.

Now Government doesn't need them anymore. Government remembers how useful the GR movement was in toppling and suppressing their opposition, and cannot chance allowing that "weapon" to fall into the "wrong hands". Government needed a newer, stronger and more malleable weapon, and found it. It has a larger base among the Latino/Illegal/Raza population-which isn't a huge fan of "teh gay". They're meaner, more violent, easier to control and more likely to be surviving off the State and therefore owe the food in their bellies to Government.

The Homosexual Rights movement: you were the biggest Useful Idiots ever. You suppressed the Constitution to fit your narrow focus, and now you're under the bus with the rest of us. Gay marriage should never have been an issue,it should have been common sense, just another fact of life. It would have greatly reduced the culture of infidelity and created stability and reduced health care drain. But in your Gavin Newsom, who thought as a Mayor he was beyond the Law (a West Coast Bloomberg) spectaculalrly demonstrated that the procedures and rule of law were secondary to ideology and sex, which frightened and angered many of your would-be friends and supporters. Like the League of Nations created the situation that engendered WWII, your own political actions created Prop 8.

You should have looked around and saw where the hate was coming from: the churches you feared were often part of "sanctuary city" programs for illegals (another Bloomberg activity) and not the everyday Californian. You did "protests" where you claimed any news report of terrorists was "propaganda to create fear" yet any rumor of "anti-gay" was always immutable truth that launched your intimidation squads. You should have joined us to reduce government waste and taxes, for truth in media, and fought for the right to self defense, not only against thugs but Government interference. Common, "boring" protests instead of flaming drag queens and public fellatio (don't see the "straight" folks doing huge rallies about that, do ya?) and used all that Hollywood and art school money to support candidates that were honest and fair, regardless of party. Writing letters and studying the issues and lots of boring, non-drama, non flashy grass roots activity *against* the Socialist Ideals and Nanny State.

Maybe someday soon, what's left of the Gay Rights movement will realize their mistake, or will they keep buying into the hype as the current Administration marginalizes more and more?

My apologies to fair-minded groups like the Pink Pistols who understood that the First and Second Amendments are the ones that *ALL* other freedoms rest upon. As well as old-school, "true" liberals who are coming out of the Santa Cruz hills and seeing what they supported going terribly wrong- realizing that you can't expect government to allow people to live their lives as they see fit when you empower government to control choices and freedoms you don't support.

flexibility of Language

new word for today: revegetate

got an area with flora that's been trampled to death? Don't replant, "revegetate"!

Brought to you by San Jose Parks and Rec, and the local Water District.

the Worst movie in recent history?

I watched the worst move the other day. It should have been awesome. It had guns, explosions, big stars, and the ever-delicious Angelina Jolie in a brief bit of nekkid hawtness. But, it still managed to suck so bad, I felt I needed a brain enema afterwards.

The Movie: "Wanted". It's as if Fight Club and The Matrix met in a bar, got drunk, and nine months later Wanted was born and adopted by a family of wolves.

Take the whiny, angsty, loser voice over of Ed Norton's character in Fight Club. You know, the guy who can't get his shit together, is a total weiner, even though he has no obligations other than to his own narcissism, complains he's trapped in life until he finds out he can be a violent sadist and damage people for fun.

Take the wacked out physics in the Matrix-where computer rules are bent so that impossible moves can be accomplished-bullets made to do weird things, reality is practically meaningless, and where a "hacker" who rips music tracks from illegal downloads while in a mind numbing day job finds out the whole world is a conspiracy and that he is special.."The One"..who can do things only a select few ever could.

Now, crush these together. Take a complete loser, who has no obligations or family to support, stuck in a job he's too cowardly to leave, with a bitchy slut girlfriend who's constantly banging his "best friend" who walks all over him. Remember there's the voice over to accompany this loser-ism. Have an over-mascara'ed Jolie sidle up to him and then get into a gunfight with some other guy. Have loserboy run, where Jolie slides into him sideways with a Dodge Viper at high speed-with the door open, that somehow scoops him in unharmed and doesn't break his ankles off. Have this chase scene where Jolie bounces the Viper off the side of a bus to make a tight corner....

Follow as our intrepid loser learns his father was a super-hit man with incredible speed and skills. Find out he worked for an ancient assassins guild...started by weavers FFS! Now of all the trades that needed or had the base skills to create an arm of killers, cloth makers would be right there at the bottom with manure shovelers. We're not talking caravan traders or drug smugglers here. Or even silk traders. The ever awesome Morgan Freeman gets the stinker role of being the current leader of this guild. Interpreting the "binary" codes from the Loom Of Fate (no kidding-a weaving loom that randomly screws up so the mistakes are "interpreted" and "fate chooses" who is next to die) he takes the kid in and proceeds to have him beaten sensless as "training" so he can take out the man who supposedly killed his father-I'm sure you can see where this is going.

So we learn that bullets can be shot in curves around buildings and rooms "because if no one told you bullets only went straight" we'd have faith and make em do impossible stuff. We get a BS story that Jolie's character tells (or was told to make her compliant-why are women assassins always so easily manipulated in movies?) of how not killing a Loom target allowed her daddy to get killed while she watched. We learn "superloser" can have a 400BPM heart rate and that his whiny panic attacks all this time were really his superpowers kicking in (shoot the wings off of flies, grasshopper!)

So the carnage goes on, they send him on a "revenge" hit to take out his daddy's murder, they kill an entire trainload of innocents by derailing it down some immensely deep chasm, only to find out as assassinnerd shoots his target that...

****SpOILER ALERT*** (I acccidentally left out the P..then thought maybe it was a freudian slip)

the target was his daddy all along! and that he'd found out Freeman's character was deliberately inserting target names for his own profit...gee, didn't see that coming from a killer cult based on thread weavers...or from dozens of other "I am your father" cliche movies...

More craziness ensues, with a garbage truck full of explosive rats (yes, terrorist suicide bomber rats!) gunfights killing everyone around (a lot like rescuing Morpheus from the office building) some more angsty whiny voice over, and some ridiculous long range, curving, multi-stage magic bullet shots...done in reverse...like at the opening of this turd movie.

I was warned to avoid it...but I disregarded the warnings for some big guns and a glimpse of Jolie's bare derriere...even her curves weren't worth the horror. What's the matter, isn't Brad bringing home enough to pay for the babies? Does your agent really hate you? Or is that why your character committed suicide in the end was because you read the script?

Don't make my mistake. You've been warned...avoid this turkey unless they make a MST3K episode out of it...no, not even then. Avoid the horror that is "Wanted"

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0493464/

Porkulus?

just about anyone who's worked hard to get ahead in this country, as well as anyone who understands recent political history and basic math, is pissed about this trillion (how many f*ckin' zeros is that?!) "stimulus" bill. Pork city. And people bitched about the cost of Mars missions, Iraq war, etc-this is bigger than *all* the money ever spent on NASA in history! Add the previous "bailout" money and you can throw in the entire War On Terror and some of Vietnam too!

But we can't even give back the money people earned in CA, we've got "I.O.U."s for our state tax returns. This new bill, stinks of payola to the organizations and regimes that helped with creating the current Administration.

Take a look if you dare. But be warned, there's so much pork in here your arteries may clog:

http://www.afa.net/pdfs/porkandpayoffs.pdf