I come up for air, and ramble

Later this month I should begin telecommuting. I look forward to it.

Today I am home from work for part of the day to wait for some phone company guy to stop by and hook me up with a 2nd dsl line. Yah, 2 dsl lines. I know, I'm cool and shit.

My plan was to come home and play WoW on company time cause that's just sweet, but, the servers are down for pretty much the entire day so that is shot.

So instead, I put down the crack pipe and blearily look around the internet.

Many things burbling through my brain recently.

To start with, does anybody even read all those political mailers that get sent out? I assume they are filled with twisted truths and straight out lies so I don't bother. Besides, who has the time? I think we got 12 of them one day last week.

I say we just quit electing politicians and institute the draft. Not for the military but for political office. Randomly choose our congressmen and senators and presidents. Assuming we have a few basic guidelines about who is put on the list of people we pick randomly from, I don't see how we can do worse than we are now.

The other day I got in a discussion with my mom about how we punish criminals. I don't know how it started. She has a grandkid now and it sends her thoughts out on strange paths. At one point she said she thought that child molesters should have their dicks cut off so they can never do that again. I disagreed. Don't get me wrong, I despise pedophiles, but cutting off body parts is wrong. We went round and round and finally I asked her, what if the little girl who lives across the street accused me of doing something bad to her and I was convicted and had my tallywhacker chopped off and then it was found out that I was innocent (as I had told everybody all along). Too late for my dick though, isn't it? An apology is hardly sufficient. She agreed that would be bad.

She tried that "What if somebody did something bad to Evangeline (my 1 year old niece, best baby ever)? Wouldn't you want to kill them?"

The answer is Yes, of course. I'd kill them with my bare hands. Beat them to death, lick their splattered blood off my lips and take satisfaction in hearing them beg for their mother as they died. That's personal though.

That's the crux of the matter to me. Death should be personal. It shouldn't be institutionalized. Killing someone should not be a function of the bureaucracy, not a matter of paperwork and filling out forms.

I can't really fault a father who seeks revenge on the killer of his children. I might wish that we could all be zen about it and forgive, but most of us aren't that kind of saint. I can find fault in somebody who kills because they are doing their job. Because they got Form 290.A with box 13 checked.

So that's my answer to those of you that try that shit with me when you hear I am against the death penalty.

The other day while walking the crackmonkey, Doro was telling me about a book she read called The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. O'Brien is a Vietnam vet and he writes about the war in this book. The thing about it is, he tells lies to tell the truth. Something along the lines of, the only way for him to explain what happened to him and many others over there is to make some stuff up. He has to fabricate some things to show the truth.

Doro liked this idea. She has been wondering how to one day tell her nephew about his mother (who passed away when he was a couple of years old). Doro said when she writes about her sister she has to exaggerate her personality in order to get it across.

I think this makes sense. Real life includes an untold number of sensory inputs. There is no way to pass all of that along, no matter what the medium. Every form of art or documenation filters out huge parts of reality. You just can't include it all. Instead you have to accentuate what you do include.

I come up for air, and ramble

Later this month I should begin telecommuting. I look forward to it.

Today I am home from work for part of the day to wait for some phone company guy to stop by and hook me up with a 2nd dsl line. Yah, 2 dsl lines. I know, I'm cool and shit.

My plan was to come home and play WoW on company time cause that's just sweet, but, the servers are down for pretty much the entire day so that is shot.

So instead, I put down the crack pipe and blearily look around the internet.

Many things burbling through my brain recently.

To start with, does anybody even read all those political mailers that get sent out? I assume they are filled with twisted truths and straight out lies so I don't bother. Besides, who has the time? I think we got 12 of them one day last week.

I say we just quit electing politicians and institute the draft. Not for the military but for political office. Randomly choose our congressmen and senators and presidents. Assuming we have a few basic guidelines about who is put on the list of people we pick randomly from, I don't see how we can do worse than we are now.

The other day I got in a discussion with my mom about how we punish criminals. I don't know how it started. She has a grandkid now and it sends her thoughts out on strange paths. At one point she said she thought that child molesters should have their dicks cut off so they can never do that again. I disagreed. Don't get me wrong, I despise pedophiles, but cutting off body parts is wrong. We went round and round and finally I asked her, what if the little girl who lives across the street accused me of doing something bad to her and I was convicted and had my tallywhacker chopped off and then it was found out that I was innocent (as I had told everybody all along). Too late for my dick though, isn't it? An apology is hardly sufficient. She agreed that would be bad.

She tried that "What if somebody did something bad to Evangeline (my 1 year old niece, best baby ever)? Wouldn't you want to kill them?"

The answer is Yes, of course. I'd kill them with my bare hands. Beat them to death, lick their splattered blood off my lips and take satisfaction in hearing them beg for their mother as they died. That's personal though.

That's the crux of the matter to me. Death should be personal. It shouldn't be institutionalized. Killing someone should not be a function of the bureaucracy, not a matter of paperwork and filling out forms.

I can't really fault a father who seeks revenge on the killer of his children. I might wish that we could all be zen about it and forgive, but most of us aren't that kind of saint. I can find fault in somebody who kills because they are doing their job. Because they got Form 290.A with box 13 checked.

So that's my answer to those of you that try that shit with me when you hear I am against the death penalty.

The other day while walking the crackmonkey, Doro was telling me about a book she read called The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. O'Brien is a Vietnam vet and he writes about the war in this book. The thing about it is, he tells lies to tell the truth. Something along the lines of, the only way for him to explain what happened to him and many others over there is to make some stuff up. He has to fabricate some things to show the truth.

Doro liked this idea. She has been wondering how to one day tell her nephew about his mother (who passed away when he was a couple of years old). Doro said when she writes about her sister she has to exaggerate her personality in order to get it across.

I think this makes sense. Real life includes an untold number of sensory inputs. There is no way to pass all of that along, no matter what the medium. Every form of art or documenation filters out huge parts of reality. You just can't include it all. Instead you have to accentuate what you do include.