JESUS JESUS JESUS!!!

I have to wonder, does everyone have a goofy relative, who is ridiculously religious and judgemental, between the ages of 50 and 80? A few days ago I picked up the phone at my parents house, something I rarely do now because my friends all call my cell phone, and I guess I haven't learned my lesson that answering my parents phone just ends up getting me into conversations with people I really would rather not be talking to.

"HI THERE" came the voice that made me cringe... my great aunt, my grandfather's sister. Aunt Bernice calling to talk to my mom about something that I'm sure even my mother would rather not talk about based on the stern condemning look she gives me when I tell Bernie that 'yes, mom is home'. But of course, it's never quite that simple for me to just hand the phone off to my mother, I have to put up with the third degree and the intrusive questions designed to pick apart my life in such a way to make me realize the 'error of my ways' and how I should be 'doing more good deeds in the eyes of God' or some such useless crap.

Oh, sure, it starts out nicely enough. "So, have you been helping out at the farm?" and of course I say yes, even though I do mostly my own thing there with my cars I work on, her reply, almost always, nearly verbatim, goes like this: "that's so wonderful, you know God loves hard work and when you help your family at the farm bla bla bla". Everything revolves around religion with her, absolutely everything. Notice carefully, that I said "RELIGION" and not spirituality, and if you do not follow what I mean when I say that, refer to my 1/23/03 Post "Spirituality v.s. Religious.

She claims christianity, but continually falls into her Catholic upbringing, like some sort of hellish trap that drags her down every time. Christianity believes in accepting Jesus into your heart, and that is the way into heaven according to them. Good deeds and all of that is just Roman Catholic rhetorich, is it a bad thing? Not usually, except when someone uses said language to condemn other persons.

Inevitably, if she is telling a story, it HAS to have some reference to how Jesus pointed her in the right direction, or how in the most ridiculous instances, He saved her life. One day she was going on and on about how she was driving down the icy road and suddenly she lost control, and she yelled out "JESUS JESUS JESUS" and her car magically started going straight, as though the 'hand of God' saved her life. I really had to bite my tongue to keep from going off on her about this statement. First off, she never drives more than about 30 miles an hour anyway, so even if she spun into the ditch, she would have had no chance of dying anyway, or even getting hurt. Secondly, by her reasoning, I suppose if I was driving down the road and I announced, "SATAN SATAN SATAN" my car would spin out of control while exploding into a massive fireball and off a cliff.

Her 'goodbye' on the phone is always "Jesus loves you and I love you." Someday perhaps I will beat her to the punch with a really deep voice "SATAN IS WATCHING YOU" and laugh hysterically before hanging up. I'm certain this will bring about 500 hail marys and who knows how much time in church praying for my soul.

I am a christian, in case any of you don't know me well. But condescending conversations such as those I have with my great aunt always bring out the worst thoughts in me, is it because the devil has control of my soul? Nah, it just means that I have very little room for people who are judgemental using religion as a basis for thier scales of right and wrong.

UPDATE ABOUT TERRORISM

Shoe Bomber Sentenced, Judge Makes Strong Points

This is a must read, first seeing what Richard Reid says is truly chilling and astounding as to how ignorant terrorists truly are. He states that the United States has killed "2 million children in Iraq", he says this repeatedly, yet, when did this happen? Where is this evidence of mass youth genocide committed by America?

Secondly, the judge refuting everything the man says and explaining full and well to Reid what the sentencing was about, and what Reid truly is... you have to read it, it's amazing.

Birds Of Prey!!!

I have always been partial to birds of prey, a great deal of admiration when I see them flying above or setting on a lonely telephone pole overlooking thier area. There is something majestic and free about them, they are basically atop thier food chain, other than man that is, but man does not eat birds of prey. Sadly enough, for a long time 'chicken hawks' (what farmers even to this day call falcons of any type) were shot on site because they would prey on chickens and other fowl that farmers would be raising.

When I was about 12 years old, my sister found a baby sparrow hawk on our driveway in the early spring, hardly any feathers, it was difficult to tell that it was a falcon of any type, except when you looked at it's eyes and beak, it had those incredible piercing eyes and the tell tale curved down pointy beak that birds of prey have. I raised the bird for the next 6 months or so in our little wooden shed beside our house, on raw hamburger. I put a small two way mirror over a hole in the wall so I could watch him/her, because if you would go inside it would sit there and just stare at you. One day though I went in and found the hawk taking a bath in it's water dish, it was so cute, but it immediately jumped up and shook the water off and took it's normal defensive pose staring at me.

After a point I realized the falcon was large enough to be on it's own and that I was going to be unable to raise him/her much further, so I opened the door one day and watched the bird fly out, and up up up. I left the door open and figured that he would come back but he never did... that surprised me. I thought about him probably every day for a couple weeks and then every time I would see a small falcon around I would wonder if it was him, for a couple years after that. I really enjoyed raising him up, I just hope he learned a way to feed himself, I couldn't simulate that at all.

We have bald eagles in Nebraska, along certain rivers, and it's an awesome site to see them flying around, they are truly a majestic bird, when you see one at rest, overlooking it's domain, without fear of anything, it's breathtaking. Other birds give me a little of that same feeling, but not on such a grand scale. I guess I could really sit and watch birds of prey for hours and hours, just going about, doing what they do to survive, there is this trance like state I go into while watching something like that, it's very hard to take myself away at that point.

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Mary Kate And Ashley Jock Strap

Just a short post about something odd. I was walking into Walmart one day and I saw a sign up above the optometry shop, that said "Mary Kate and Ashley Designer Frames" and it had a big smiling picture of the twins cheek to cheek (face cheeks, you crazy perverts).

Now, normally this wouldn't probably get much attention at all, but for one thing... they don't wear glasses!!! How ignorant is that? I understand that Walmart is probably paying each of the girls 5 million or so to use thier likeness on shirts, pants, lunch boxes, and what not, but for crying out loud, where does it end? Will there be Mary Kate and Ashley crossbows at Walmart? Mary Kate and Ashley snow tires? And before you count this all out, let me tell you one thing. About a month later a friend of mine told me that she had seen Mary Kate and Ashley boxer shorts. Hmm, I guess penises pop up in all sorts of wierd places nowadays.

No Comprende?

English needs to be the national language of the United States.

I read recently that certain counties in Florida have voted to make thier 'official language' spanish, a concept that just makes my stomach turn. Now, I'm not racist against hispanics or thier culture and I'm not trying to oppress them by any means, but I feel if you are in this country than by God you better damn well learn to speak English, or you can leave. I don't mind if you speak whatever language you want at home, or teach your kids any language at all you want them to learn, but they need to learn English for a good reason.

This particular topic became apparent to me about 10 years ago or so. I was a young army private, on a bus in Colorado Springs, we were on our way to Ft. Carson, Colorado, and the bus was running on fumes, just about out of gas. So luckily we found a Texaco station, at that time one of a few that we knew accepted government credit cards for refueling. But when we went inside to get that all worked out, the guy at the counter couldn't understand english worth a shit and we spent close to 10 minutes trying to explain where you put the mileage and where you sign the receipt and such before we gave up and took off. We were very lucky to have found another gas station before we ran out of gas, but this incident perfectly illustrates the problems that arise when you don't come up with an official national language, mainly that communication becomes a tricky situation in some instances.

Let's say I was to ask you this question: What is required for anyone to get along with someone else, what is the number one most important necessity to reaching mutual understandings with someone you don't know? Communication, that's what. Certainly I'm a typical American, I never learned another language, it wasn't that I am egotistical or that I hate other cultures, it was just one of those things, for me, in which I always figured I'd have time to learn one later on. Actually I wanted to learn German, I know a little, das blogger ist gut??? Ja? Heh. But I never got around to learning one, something I'm sure I'll regret. As far as why it should be English as our national language, majority rules, when 95% or better of the United States speaks it, that should be enough to see why.

One of the biggest reasons for major areas in our biggest cities that gain the name "China Town" or "Little Havana" etc, is because a lot of the people there have no ability to survive outside of that niche, mainly because they cannot communicate the language. With that you get mistreatment of those people on a grand scale. Who can they complain to if a landlord is ripping them off, or not repairing the property at all? How are they to know what is legal or illegal when they cannot read or understand what they hear on television or the radio? Just for the sake of fairness and equality, requiring citizens to speak English is the best thing to do. And where would you draw the line if individual counties in states were allowed to pick thier own 'official language'? Would we have Dutch speaking areas, German speaking areas, Japanese speaking areas? All official, and all building unseen walls between each other based on the complete inability to communicate with one another, a disaster in the making.

But if everyone speaks English, then you wouldn't have a lot of those problems, and next time, our bus would be able to refuel with relative ease. OH THE JOY!!!

Misled Rodents Is All They Are

Throughout history man has used God as an excuse to exercise oppression on others, justifying the pillaging, raping, burning, and murder of fellow man on the basis of 'fighting wickedness, pushing the will of God!!!'. Whether it be the Christian Crusades of the middle ages or present day Islamic fundamentalists, whenever man turns to God as an excuse to wage war on others, man has lost sight of what is right and just and has fallen deep into a self made illusion to hide his blatant disregard for morality. The saddest part is that those who actually take sword in hand, who commit suicide to kill others, actually believe they are getting to heaven, when all they are really doing is signing a one way ticket to hell.

It would be nice to think that humanity has learned from it's mistakes, that in present day times we realize that God does not condone the act of war against innocence, but in view of the actions of present day Islamic fundamentalists, sadly, that is not the case. What's worse is that people like Osama Bin Laden know very well that they are not doing the will of God. Bin Laden's actual agenda and situation is fairly easy to see.

In the 1980's, the United States trained rebels like Bin Laden and gave them weapons to fight against the invading Soviet Union army. For nearly 10 years they battled, Bin Laden at the time was young, but he had enthusiasm, talent, leadership skills, and money. He became a valuable leader for the rebel forces of Afghanistan, and helped to push the Soviets out of the country. But then he turned his back on his own country, supporting the overthrow of the Afghan government by a group of young radically backwards Islamics called the Taliban. The main core of the Taliban was not even from the country, they were Pakistani refugees, not even wanted in thier own country due to thier outlandish religious and political views.

All Bin Laden knows is fighting and war, he's been at it for more than 20 years. It's not about religion or spirituality or protecting Islam, it's about power and greed. All he knows is fighting, he had the Soviets as enemies, then he had the Afghani warlords as enemies, and when that was all gone, he still HAD to wage war, and what better enemy than the "Great Satan", the United States. It was easy for him to promote this new enemy, given the backwards nature of the Afghan government and the rise in hatred for Israel that coerlates with the more radical and strict the Islamic belief is. So under this fallacy of religion, he was able to brainwash a small army of followers into believing that they were doing the will of God, that it was time for a "Holy War" against the United States.

The learned believers of the Muslim faith know that there is no "Holy War", they know that not by any stretch of the very definition could it be made to justify what happened on 9-11 nor could it be used to excuse those who suicide bomb civilians. In the Quoran it plainly states that armed conflict defending Allah that results in the death of innocents such as women and children shall result in the offender(s) "dying the same death as those they killed a thousand times over in hell." Hmm, someone forgot to tell an awful lot of fundamentalist Islamics this. That is what makes it so sad, they die actually believing they are doing the will of God, when in fact they are doing nothing more than mass murder on the most heinous scale, furthering along the agenda of madmen who have no use for faith or Allah, only for themselves, and the name recognition that goes along with it.

And this is the huge problem, that many people who follow the Islamic faith don't know nearly enough about the faith they follow, so they fall under the spell of a murdering child rapist like Bin Laden. (oh, I forgot to mention that Bin Laden has 6 wives, one is 12 years old, that's child rape folks.) These misled people believe that they must do whatever it takes to 'save Islam from oppression' when in fact they are actually doing the exact opposite, they are furthering along the will of a political and greed driven agenda, to take out every other religion or belief that isn't Islamic, to make Islam the one and only belief on the face of the planet and force everyone to believe in it, and kill off anyone who dare disagrees with them. Why is it that you don't see Osama himself strapped with explosives, if he really believes this so much? That's an easy one, because he knows damn well that his actions aren't based on anything religious, that's why, so killing himself wouldn't be in the name of Allah at all, it would be in the name of greed, and why commit suicide when others will do it for you?

Then you have the media telling which group claims responsibility for bombings and shootings, etc, and always using the Islamic or Muslim reference in doing so. It's time we stop doing that, it's time that they start calling them what they really are. When a suicide bomber blows himself up, tell it like it is. "Today a lunatic strapped explosives to himself and killed himself and murdered three others when he insanely blew himself up near a crowded market." These groups want that 'name recognition', they want to hear that it was the 'islamic jihad' so that others will be stupid enough to start following them. Tell it like that, because that is what it is, it's not based in religion at all, it's based on trying to oppress others, to use fear and hate to force others to succumb to your beliefs, to fall in line with your so called "Holy War".

The sad fact is that there is no holy war at all, just little men like Bin Laden, a man without a country, an unstable lunatic who feeds on the chaos that ensues from misleading others, a child molesting murderer doing anything BUT the will of Allah.

The 3500 Pound Jigsaw Puzzle

A lot of people really enjoy working on jigsaw puzzles, sitting at the table and moving the little tiny cardboard pieces around and making the border and then working thru the middle and finally it's done and 'wow' and then they get to put it back into the box, probably to never be done again.

Then you have Legos, where people usually start out by building the item you see on the front of the box, then inevitably pieces get lost, so people just start building whatever they can with what is left over, sort of a children's Frankensteinian fantasy. Construx and Erector sets are the same way. Interestingly enough, men seem to have more of a fascination with these sorts of toys when they are little than women do.

I guess that is why later on, men enjoy working on cars so much. A car is a gigantic jigsaw puzzle. You take a ton of pieces apart, there is something wrong, you have to find out what it is, oh god, can you do it? You hope so!!! Then when you have found the problem, you fix it, or so you hope, perhaps the problem is not fixed, then the puzzle is harder, you have to replace something else, oh the frustration!!! Oh the joy when you find the actual broken part and repair it. Oh my can you remember how to put your puzzle back together again???

I have a minivan sitting in our shed right now and I'm done with it, for the most part. When we bought it a week before last Saturday, the head was removed from the engine and the block was destroyed by a disintegrated piston. So I removed the block also and dropped another engine in. Now I have it running, and the heater doesn't work!!! OH GOODNESS!!! More puzzle for me!!! (interestingly enough, my reaction to things such as this usually involve a lot more swearing and loud yelling).

So tomorrow, I continue working on my puzzle. People can have thier legos, thier jigsaw puzzles, and what not, I have something much better, when I get done I don't just put it all back in a box, I drive it around and run over elderly women with it!!! (okay, perhaps not, well, maybe the occasional squirrel.)

Hello, Can I Interest You In Some Siding?

Telemarketers have to be some of the most annoying bastards on the face of the planet. Calling at all hours of the day to offer you crap you don't want and only taking no for an answer if you say NO like 5 times (they would call at night too but for the federal communications act that does not allow calls after 9 p.m. local time).

Now, I don't have too bad a problem with the people who call and ask for "Mr. (last name withheld for security purposes)" and mispronounce my last name atrociously *almost no one gets it right the first time*. That way I know immediately to tell them that no, he is not around. What gets me is when they ask for me by my first name, and I think it's actually someone I might give two shits about, and say, 'yah, it's me' and end up dealing with a stupid sales pitch that would get more of my foot in thier ass than thier hands in my wallet.

Now if you think the 'cold sales' type of calls are bad (calls where they are trying to sell you something), the collection type of calls are 10 times worse. To them, there is no such word as 'ethical' and anything they can do, legal or illegal, to try and get to the person they are owed money by, is deemed appropriate and justified, to them of course. If you tell them that the person they are looking for isn't around, they ask when they can talk to them, if you say you don't know, they call back like every 15 freaking minutes looking, until you either blow up at them, which you find doesn't stop them from calling, or you unplug your phone.

Now, i have found a few sure fired ways to end calls like this...

1) Ask them for thier home phone number so you can call them back later on at your 'own convenience'. This will illicite strange replies, especially from the cold callers, usually starting with confused silence... then, when they tell you that it wouldn't be appropriate for you to call them at home, tell them 'NOW YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL' and hang up abruptly. I actually got this one from Seinfeld, but it's quite useful really.

2) Answer the phone, and when they ask for the person, tell them just a moment, set the phone down, and walk away. By rule, in most telemarketing places, they are unable to hang up on someone until a prescribed amount of time has gone by, and in most cases, the person working has never had this happen before so they aren't sure about when they can hang up. It's really quite funny, I've gone back 20 minutes later to find the person still waiting on the line, and I'll say "hi, you still there?" to which they will reply with some sort of common courtesy thinly veiling thier annoyance, then tell them to wait again and repeat. I've never had anyone actually wait another 20 minutes though. If that happens I'm probably going to laugh hysterically at them. It's hard enough not to laugh the first time.

3) Strike up a conversation with the person that has nothing to do whatsoever with thier call. They want to sell you accidental life insurance. Ask them where they last went on vacation, take the phone call into really strange and suspect topic areas. "Have you ever dreamed of living under the ocean?" and so on. If this doesn't seem to work, start getting into risky topics. "I sometimes have sex for money" seems to get people off the phone pretty quick. If it doesn't, then you should probably hang up immediately and NOT answer if they call back.

4) Be totally thrilled about what they are selling, get them totally excited, you are going to buy everything and then some!!! But wait, now start asking really idiotic questions about features that the product in question would never have. I had a guy trying to sell me electric drills one time. I got really excited, he told me all the features and what not, then I started asking about features I wanted. I felt that the drills should have a digital clock and timer, so I could tell what time it is and how quick my holes are being drilled. He would tell me how "that would be an excellent feature, but I'd like to point out that our drills are the most powerful on the market". So I asked if they were available in 'hot pink' color. Of course they were not. After asking about half a dozen or so features that are completely insane and of course not available, I finally tell them I'm not interested and hang up, satisfied in my ability to have broken them down.

5) When you realize it's a telemarketer that has called you, respond with "Oh, I'm sorry, Mr so and so is not in the office today". They should respond with "oh, is this a place of business?" and you answer yes, because telemarketers (well, those who are at least trying to resemble with some itsy bitsy bit of ethics) will respond with "I'm sorry, we didn't realize this was a place of business, we won't be calling back".

6) The ultimate response, to be saved for real emergency situations, is to tell them that 'oh, i'm sorry, mr so and so died', to which you will get a stuttering apology and that they will remove you from all lists they have. Now, a little problem with this one I found out about, if your credit card, telephone carrier, etc, think that you are dead, it is likely you are going to have service/cards/connections cancelled in short order, so you must be most careful with this one.

Hopefully though, with the right combination of the above strategies, you will be able to conquer at least to some extent the vermin that rings thru your phone attempting to get you into the book of the month club. Best of luck!!!

80% Chance Of Your Ass Freezing And Falling Off

7 and 2, small numbers to be sure. High temp today and low temp today. Add windchill, stir vigorously, and watch your ass fall off, that's winter here in Nebraska. There really hasn't been a lot of difference between Nebraska and the North Pole the last week except that we have barbed wire fences. I have been working a lot in this weather, we have a propane fueled blower type heater, uses electricity to turn the blower and propane to heat, but it's tempermental, and won't run all the time, that's fun... turn the heat on and start working on something then 2 minutes later the heat goes out and you have a fan blowing cold air on you haha, FANtastic!!

With the blower working though it's an uneven temperature and it's almost worse sometimes. What I have discovered though is that if I leave the fan off and just start working away in our shed, that I become acclimated to the temperature and I don't really even notice it, that is, until later that night when I come into the house and get into the shower and my feet feel like they are being stung by 40,000 fire ants. I would rather be too hot than too cold, I've never cared for being cold but I have always been able to handle the heat better than 90 percent of people. This cold has been a real drain the past week especially.

There is an old saying however, that states simply, if you don't like the weather here, wait 15 minutes for it to change, and that is very true. About two weeks ago we had a 40 degree shift in temperature over the course of about 4 hours, went from 65 to 25 degrees. But right now I'd take 25. Hell, it was 30 yesterday and that felt downright balmy compared to this 'wait for your words to unfreeze in the spring' weather that we are having now. I went out back today and peed behind the shed, and I had to keep breaking the stream away as it froze to the end of my handy hiking tool!! (Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration, it froze into an upside down icicle.)

There is about a 2 to 3 week stretch each winter where we have weather that is this cold. Then usually during the summer we have a two to three week stretch where it is above 90 degrees, too. And this isn't dry heat mind you, this is stifling 90 percent humidity, clothes melting on your back, sweat rolling down your ass crack heat. But even with that intensity of heat, I'll take that before I'll take 40 degree weather, I am just more into summer temperatures.

To break all this down, the coldest day in winter is usually about 15 below, real air temperature, where as the hottest day in summer is 105 or so. This translates to a difference of 120 degrees (wow, I'm a math wiz, I know, please, no accolades to my geniusness). There aren't a whole lot of places on earth that have this sort of ability, to be the North Pole at one time of year and Death Valley at another time, but interestingly enough I do love it here. I guess when it gets to this time of year, when the days end so early and the landscape is a bleak snow covered black and white sort of picture, I look forward to getting back to the hot days of summer, bike rides, long walks in the early hours of evening, swimming, girls in cute clothes (hey, I'm a guy who will admit certain truths you know hee hee!!).

Will I always be in Nebraska? I gave this a lot of thought the other night, just about staying here, and I realized that by staying it would mean I would never truly experience life anywhere else. Sure, I live life in other places 2 weeks at a time with the Army National Guard, but it's truly not the same. I haven't had to find all new places to eat, to take my clothes for tailoring, to go to movies, to get groceries, etc, etc. I really don't want to be 80 years old and suddenly realize, "GAL DARN MARGE, WE AIN'T NEVER MOVED NOWHERES OUR WHOLE LIVES!!" I don't know where I will go, don't know when, but I am going to be thinking about it. Perhaps I'll put up an entire map of the United States, get drunk, spin around 20 times and throw a dart into the map, and just go there.

But it sure as hell better not be Arkansas, I do not want to live in a place where I go to the dentist and I have twice as many teeth as he does.

Oh, wind is out of the south right now, and temperatures should be in the 40's for tomorrow and the next day. I better get out my swimsuit!!