What it is, what some folks are doing, what it means to you, and what you can do.

Politics powered by money virtually guarantees us that the people with the cash are the people with the power.  Thanks to whoever this dude is for laying it down on national TV.  Couldn’t have said it better myself.

The first spaceman says, “The dominant life forms on the Earth planet have developed satellite-based weapons.”
The second alien, who looks exactly like the first, asks, “Are they an emerging intelligence?”
The first spaceman says, “I don’t think so…They have them aimed at themselves.”

Great joke, but not mine.  Original post was here

All prophets are false.

We’ll probably never be free of soothsayers, future-tellers, prophets, forecasters, or oracles who’s only point in existence is to suck the last dollar out of your wallet, and pin your last hope on their every word.

Why?  Because you uneducated, back-woods, Bachmann loving ass-hats are too intellectually invested in your backward religion and race hating bullshit to let the next generation figure out morality for themselves.  We’re staring down the barrel of yet another generation of sheep being led by wolves.

Another generation of uneducated, misled, and just plain ignorant Americans is on the rise.  And you fuckers let it happen.  We all let it happen, and the entire world will suffer for it in blood and agony just as we have a thousand times before.

How many more “witches” do we have to burn?  How many more “heretics” need to be “cleansed”?  How many “infidels” have die to appease your god?  When do we get to STOP killing each other over children’s bed time stories and LIES?

I implore you!

What fucking year does it have to be before we can get past our fear of the “afterlife” and get back to our CURRENT LIFE.

Occupy should take a lesson from the Tea Party “movement”.  When you give the steering wheel to one of the political parties, you give up all credibility and direction.  More importantly, I think you’ll find the news stories go from using words like “organic” to words like “staged” pretty quickly.

Keep the Democratic party OUT of the Occupy movement.  Trust me on this one.

I have a small Winchester “ParFive knife” I carry all the time, I took it from my pocket and flipped it open and we started a staring contest.

I’m not sure if he expected me to drop my wallet and run away, or maybe his flight-or-fight response took a second to kick in, but we froze there for a good while before he headed off toward the back of the parking lot at a slow jog.

Not interested in sticking around to see if he had friends or another weapon hidden wherever he was heading, I got in the car and got the hell out of there.  I called the cops once I was comfortably back on the road.

The words I keep hearing from friends are “you did the right thing” or “you handled the situation well”.  But none of that is true, I just got lucky.  He wasn’t as motivated to hurt me as he could have been.  He didn’t have a gun.  He didn’t have another “robber” with him.  He didn’t try to use that knife.  The more I think about it, the more lucky I feel.

With all of  the senseless killing over just about anything (or nothing at all), there is literally no reason that I am still alive.  I am convinced that if I had been a woman, or an old man, or just not holding a knife at that moment, things could have, probably would have gone much differently.

So now we get to the meat of the matter.  I have a concealed weapons permit and own a collection of firearms that allow me to carry just about anywhere, generally I choose not to.  Once in a while, the girlfriend and I will conceal guns and head out for dinner, or maybe a short shopping trip.  But, truth be told – we’re not expecting any trouble at the local Publix.  We carry because we can, not because we’re planning to need to.

A concealed firearm brings with it a huge amount of responsibility.  As a firearms instructor once said to me “there’s a lawyer attached to every bullet”.  More importantly, there could be a life attached to each one as well.

Would last night have gone any differently if I had a gun instead of a knife?  Probably not.  But what happens next time?  What happens if the parking lot is full of people?  What if there are kids getting into mom’s minivan behind the thief, do you trust your aim and endanger the lives of innocents?

I’m actually pretty upset with myself this morning. I had ZERO situational awareness. I had NO IDEA if someone was standing behind me, how many friends he may have had hiding out nearby, which direction he came from, or where he was headed after he ran off.

I was depositing a check at the ATM, not making a withdrawal.  I just keep thinking about 3 dollars and 30 cents. That’s how much cash I had on me. That’s what my life would have been worth to this guy. 3 one-dollar bills and 3 dimes.

No patches, no gum, no supplemental medication and no sissy half-assed-attempt quitting device.  I did what many call “Cold Turkey“.  I think the best way to quit smoking is to STOP BUYING cigarettes and STOP SMOKING them.

Anyway, I’ve had some interesting experiences since quitting and none of them are mentioned in any list of what is supposed to happen.  And additionally, the great stuff that was promised to me hasn’t shown up yet…

Dreams

My dreaming has become more vivid and frequent than I can ever remember it being in the past.  I’ve been told that this is a common side-effect of the quit smoking drug Chantix, but didn’t expect it from quitting on my own.  Makes me wonder if the dreaming is an effect of quitting, but the drug enhances it?

Allergies

Another interesting side-effect is allergies to pollen and weed and such, which before only flared up for a few days in the spring, now are a consistent source of sneezing and coughing.  Perhaps the smoking was suppressing my natural allergies, or more likely suppressing my body’s natural reaction to the allergens.

Stronger sense of smell

This was a big promise on the list that hasn’t come to realization.  And it’s one that aggravates me a little, since it would be a welcome enhancement.  I’ve detected no change in my ability to smell anything except the presence of cigarette smoke.  Since I no longer smoke, I can smell that a mile away.  Otherwise, my sense of smell is unaffected.

Whitening of the teeth

Another empty promise.  I’m using the whitening mouth wash, and the whitening toothpaste, and I have yet to see any difference.  There’s no way I’m quitting coffee too.

The big promise

The really big pluses of quitting don’t show up until you’ve been smoke free for a year or more: Lessened chance of stroke, coronary heart disease and heart attack, improved lung function, decreased occurrences of cough, shortness of breath and so on.  But I’ll get there, and I really hope I pick up that super sense of smell along the way, and some pearly’er whites would be appreciated too…

Apparently, there is a big outcry over this JC Penny video that shows a the famous red bikini scene from Fast Times at Ridgemont High.  Here’s the video ad.

Interestingly enough, no one is complaining about a little “sexism” from the other side.  In this video by AT&T, a husband comes home with news about upgrading the family’s cell phone data plan and is berated and emasculated by his OWN wife who says (seriously, I’m not making this up):

“My mother was right, I should have married John Paul.”

This kind of male emasculation has been everywhere in ads for literally decades, and you cry over a bikini scene in a men’s clothing commercial?

Maybe it’s time for a little perspective angry moms?  Must be lonely way up there on that horse.

“Pussification of America!” That’s SO ORIGINAL!

Wait seems like I’ve heard that somewhere before…

Oh yeah.  That’s because I blogged it like 4 years ago.  It’s the number one search term resulting in hits to my blog.  It’s been the number one search term since I posted it back in 2009. “Maybe I should trademark it”. Nice… Yeah, you should. You and the 25 people before you who said it. LOL.

The REALLY funny part about the video?  He refrences Carlos Mencia.  You know, that comedian consistently accused of stealing other people’s jokes.  Now that is some funny shit.

The poverty level for a family of 4 in the United States is just a hair over 22 thousand dollars.  The average income for a US family is just a touch over $46,000.  The “upper class” or “rich” are the top 1% of earners in the US.  They have an average income of $380,000 per year. But there’s more to the story…

The average U.S. household is home to 2.54 people, so factoring in the actual size of your household produces a more realistic estimate of how much income it takes to live like the wealthiest 5% of Americans. For a family of four, nationwide, that’s $490,000.

These are facts.  But facts are useless without a little perspective, so check this out:

43.6 million Americans living in poverty in 2009.

The average US income, or “middle class” has a yearly paycheck that is roughly double the poverty level (22,000 x 2 is 44,000).

The rich have a paycheck that is almost 11 times larger than the folks in the “middle class”.  The difference between the rich and the poor is an astounding 22 times larger.

So I charted this out in Excel (each box is 22000 more than the one before it), just to get a feeling of how the distribution looks.  Have a look at that screen shot, and I think you’ll get my point.  Basically, to be truly “middle class” you’d have to make somewhere in the neighborhood of $250,000.  But only one in 50 households makes that kind of money, and then you have to factor out the ones who are over the $490,000 rich line.  That leaves a VERY few.

The truth is:  There is no middle class.  There is rich and poor and very, very few people living in between.

You are not middle class.  You may be at the top of the poor class, but that’s like being the thinnest fat guy.