Gnaw

May your Thanksgiving be a celebration of life and loved ones and hope.

First, if you drove a black Lincoln Navigator over the West Seattle bridge in the last couple weeks and cannot for the life of you figure out why EVERYONE was so frikking mad at you, well, here are some clues…  You came up on everyone’s ass like a Titan IVb rocket and then passed-and-cut-them-off (without so much as a turn signal) at 72 frikking miles per hour in a 45 MPH zone.  I was doing 50 at the time.  Your Lincoln Navigator is NOT a sports car and the West Seattle bridge is NOT the Bonneville salt flats a highway/freeway.

Second, if you feed the raccoons in my neighborhood then you are a part of the problem.  I hope to get some of their shit from around the trees in my yard and spread the wealth with you.  Raccoons are not cute, not sweet, not cuddly and are definitely not friendly to people or their yards.  Meanwhile, my Hellfire missiles are at the ready for the next Raccoon Night of Terror.  You’ve been warned.

Third, and this is to the shits who made-off with ALL the black figs (about 17-pounds worth) from a tree that is clearly NOT YOURS, stay on the frikking sidewalk or get your photo/video posted on YouTube.  Yepper, I’ve trained some motion-activated, wireless, IP-addressed cameras on the fruit trees and it is only a matter of time until you give me the video that you so richly deserve.  I would have gladly shared those figs if you had only asked.  Oh, and start picking up your doggy crap!

Fourth, if you are non-gay and a visitor at your friendly, local gay bar do NOT start talking smack like, “I totally HATE the Dixie Chicks and everything that they stand for!”  First, it makes you look like a Benito Mussolini puppet (read:  a fucking fascist).  Second, the Dixie Chicks were totally within their constitutionally-protected rights to speak their mind about the politics of the day (tea party rhetoric, anyone?).  And, finally, I will totally rake you over the constitutional coals and then give you a swirly…in the bathroom of that gay bar (and I won’t be nice about it).  “Hate” is for VD, bleu cheese, 8-track stereos and neo-nazi twits.

EDIT (24 Sept 09):  I don’t care if you don’t like the music made by the Dixie Chicks, or even if you don’t like them (as a band/as people)…you even have the right to HATE them outright.  Just know that words mean things, have consequences, and you have a certain amount of social responsibility in this SOCIETY of ours.  Remember, the operational part of SOCIETY is SOCIAL.  M’kay?

I was going through a few distros (to keep up with how they are doing/what they are doing) when it dawned on me exactly how boring and mundane (and accessible) Linux has become.  Not a one of the distros I have tried in the last five years has required me to manually configure X with any of the following information (this is not to say that some of them weren’t just a wee bit off):

• Video timing chip type and speed (or, for some chips, just the speed and a wild guess about the general chip type)
• Horizontal sync range
• Vertical sync range
• Color depth versus resolution
• Video chip/card (including video RAM)

I find all of this to be highly annoying…  I mean, anybody can just come along and install Linux now, and they don’t have to know a thing about these very important settings and where to enter them.

So, the next time someone tells you how much you have to learn about command lines just to install (much less to actually use) Linux, ask them when they last entered all this info into a text file…  That was the whole point, wasn’t it?  To make Linux accessible to the masses?  It is now accessible, and anyone who says otherwise is not just under-informed, they are willfully so.

Added much, much later…

I’m specifically talking about that info (sync ranges, etc.) for my old, VGA (9-pin video) multisync monitor (Emerson) set for page-white at 640 X 480.  FWIW and all. 

I decided to give the 2.3 release of Gallery2 a go and update my photo album.  The Gallery2 crew have released a solid product with a well-polished Web configuration routine/interface.  My chosen theme has some CSS “issues” on a couple administration screens, and there are 980+ files I need to delete, but those are my own fault.

My hearty congratulations and thanks to the Gallery2 developers for a job nicely done!

I have never understood how the government spending only as much money as it gets in taxes is a bad thing.  Neocon Republican newspeak would have everyone believing that “Tax and Spend” is BAD.

Then, in the very same breath, the Neocons (Gingrich, Cheney, the lot of them) spend 8-years running this country’s financial system into the ground with their BORROW AND SPEND policies (coupled with the laughable “concept” of Trickle-Down Economic).  Go figure?

So, taxing the people and spending the money is BAD…

But, spending the money of future generations (money that doesn’t yet exist) is a totally acceptable way to run things? I’m sorry, but when was the last time that ANY of us real people could get away with running our finances that way?

Tax-and-spend is the way it works.  Tax-and-spend is not some cuss-word, but the way things work best (if they are going to work at all).

Borrow-and-spend is the quickest way to destroy it all (as we are currently seeing in graphic, technicolored reality).

Do these Neocons (all of whom are market liberals (AKA: NeoLiberals)) really think that they can so readily define our reality?  Well, they do, and they have, and I am sickened to have to tell you that a significant number of US citizens really believe this “tax-and-spend” is bad, crapola.  So, I put it to everyone to try it for yourselves…

Yes, try spending money that you don’t have yet, and see if you don’t have to pay it right back (WITH interest)…  How long can you maintain a functioning and sustainable household by only borrowing money to live, not actually just living within the “confines” of a known amount of money that you will get?  What, ten years?  Can you live for ten years totally on BORROWED MONEY?  I’d love to see you try it!

No, the BORROW AND SPEND Republicans would have you believe (and have made over 30% of Americans actually believe it (my mom in Montana, for instance)) that TAX AND SPEND is bad, but BORROW AND SPEND is totally Ok…  This is some sick, sick, sick-headed-and-wrong shit…  People believe it, though…and that is the sickest thing of all.

So, before anyone gets their panties totally wadded-up…  I am NOT the person who believes that Democrats are actually any better — nope — because they are all POLITICIANS, and they are (nearly all of them) NeoLiberals.

Bill Clinton?  NeoLiberal (market liberal)  NAFTA, anyone?

Al Gore?  NeoLiberal.

Nancy Pelosi?  NeoLiberal.

Barbara Boxer?  NeoLiberal.

Newt Gingrich?  NeoLiberal.

Richard M. Nixon?  NeoLiberal (opened up China for TRADE)

George H.W. Bush?  NeoLiberal.

Ronald Reagan?  NeoLiberal.

George W. Bush?  NeoLiberal.

Are you getting all this?  I don’t see any “good guys” in all of this.  I don’t side with the “Democrats” or the “Republicans” in this.  Our country’s economic policies are so heinous (especially since Nixon took away any pretense of even a sniff of gold standing behind the US dollar) that we have become the financial black hole that is dragging down the entire world with the current collapse of our currency.

Fix the US dollar and the “world economy” can right itself (eventually).  Don’t fix the US dollar and every action will merely be another finger in the leaking dike of reality.  It is that simple…our economy isn’t dying, our currency died and is taking the economy (and the world) with it.

The next, big thing will be inflation, because the US dollar isn’t fixed, so all the band-aids (and green ink for printing more dollars) in the world can’t make it buy MORE stuff and still pay the interest for all the BORROWING we’ve already done.

Every US dollar is LOANED into existence WITH INTEREST…how long could such a currency last before it collapses on itself?  We are finding out right now, and I am both angry and sad that our leaders aren’t fixing the REAL problem:  US currency.