Life is pretty good. North Carolina is just dandy, the house is perfectly liveable, I have not one but two jobs (kinda) and a new baby puppo named Rygel! Let me start from the beginning.
  The house is all set up, all the electronics are all together and painting has definately been progressing. I have a video tour of the house which shows off what it's looking like right now. There's more to be done, but it's at the point that if we don't do it immediately, it's totally fine. Upkeep is nuts, I've never had to mow a lawn before (I miss cheap crews of 6!) and we have a big one.
  I spent 3 weeks working with a staffing company. Right at the time I started working there (I did administrative/secretary type stuff) they were in the process of being bought out and a lot of the old office staff quit, resulting in the office being very understaffed and having a lot of confusing new policies. Long story short, they knew I was still looking for another job and I was able to help them out in a time they just needed bodies. For a lot of my 3 weeks I was the only person in the office at all, and I ended up working 60 hour weeks which I got paid for. None of that "Work 60 and get paid for 20" crap. I will continue to stay on their payroll to help them out on an as needed basis, for example, checking new employees in at 6:30 in the morning or helping with weekend paperwork. Long story short, I was there for the three hell weeks that were the perfect storm of old people leaving, all working employees (100 or so) having to come in to refill out paperwork, and the people who will be staying there going to a new manager's conference and having to be gone.
  I then took an AWESOME job at UNCGreensboro in the office of Adult Students. I'm the "Office Manager and Web Designer" which is a fancy word for Program Assistant. The cool thing about this job though is that the director and I are the only full time staff in the office (there's some work study students) and she would like to grow the office, but can't get funding for another person. My Higher Ed background is great for the director because if I do some higher-ed type work, which she made sure to tell me is not part of the job description, it will benefit the office and possibly pave the way for making a new position in the office if a need is demonstrated. Either way, this job is really really ideal for me seeing as it has a large tech and web component, has a lot of organization to it, has room but not demands for programming and professional development, and works with a population that truly appreciates the value of education, something I sorely miss (and have already seen is in abundance here). Oh, and it doesn't hurt that I applied to this job being staggeringly overqualified (required a HS diploma) so I am at the top of the pay scale :). No one else would even interview me since I had no experience, so when I leave here in a few years or so, I'll have years of office experience, more Higher Ed Experience, and IT and web experience (which held me back from getting a job in IT, since I've never worked in an IT specific position, and web developer is in the job title here). I'll be perfectly rounded out and set to get whatever job I want, and until then I'm making plenty to start saving and live comfortably.
  Speakin of liivin comfortably, we got a puppy! His name is Rygel, which in my brain is short for Dominar Rygel the 17th, Dominar of the Hynerian Empire and over 600 billion loyal subjects. Read about his namesake here. He's 100% puppy! His date of birth is June 4 so he's 7 weeks old today. He loves to chew and explore, is still learning his name and to not pee everywhere, and loves a warm person to sleep against. If you're in the area, come see him!
  For the last 6 years, things have been good and bad on and off, but the one thing that stayed the same is that everything changed all th etime. To explain, I moved every 9 months or so in undergrad, changed majors 3 times, went to grad school, moved 3 times, shifted this and that, had my car blow up, changed jobs several times, pretty much had very little sense of normalcy. Now, I have a stable job, a reliable car, a home I will be in for at least 2 years, very comfortable responsibilities, a puppy and everything. I finally feel like this is a place to just put some roots in and enjoy for a while. I know it's not good to be stagnant, but the thought of living in a place and not having "I could paint but I have to unpaint in 8 months" hanging over my head, or "I should set the stereo up so it's easy to tear down in a year" is so nice, I just am so happy to just sit still for a while, to rest. I hope that makes sense, for the first time in many years I feel like I'm taking a true breath.

  I like that Ron Paul vehemently wants to end the war. I don't like that he's anti gun control. I like that Obama is pro stem cells. I don't like that he's anti gay marriage. I like that Kunich is pro net neutrality. I don't like that he's anti death penalty. So who do I want to vote for? John Kerry. Wow, that's dumb, you must be saying. Not only isn't he running, he couldn't win the last time. I saw something back then that made me want to vote for him that apparantly no one else saw and I stand by him to this day. Rather than choose a candidate because their personal opinions align closely with yours, and then expect that candidate to act along their own personal interests resulting in an agenda roughly aligned with your own, John Kerry believed in democracy. It's been a while, if I find the article I'll post a link, but I think on the issue of church and state, John Kerry said something that gave me hope and still does to this day. Essentially, he said "I have this opinion, but my opinion is not what is important, it is the will of the people so even if I disagree with that I will support it if it's what the people want." Think about it people, are we really electing people so that they can pursue their personal agendas? If that's the deal, then more power to Bush and Cheney for this war, they hit the nail on the head. I am looking for a candidate who says "this is my opinion on these issues. Any policies made will reflect national interest and the will of the people to my best ability to gague it, not my personal opinions." I hate the election process, I hate political parties who feed us their own short list of people to select from, and I hate that we're sitting around! At the risk of bringing FBI agents to my door (see you tonight guys) in the olden days of this country the actions of the current government would have resulted in a militia with muskets to storm the white house and revolutionize! Maybe that's what it takes, an army of 1000 citizens to storm the white house and take the government back! Phooey to those people who say voting can change things, we thought we did that by voting a Democratic majority into congress and all they've been able to do is prompt the executive branch to become more absurd with their power wielding (The vice president isn't in the executive branch, the security committe members can't access security information, and checks and balances is a pretty word for executive branch is in charge.) If a militia formed to take back this country and reinstate the constitution with democracy at the forefront of the intent, hand me a musket and make me a soldier with something worthwhile to die for rather than an ill-advised reach into a hornets nest.

"...for the land of the free, and the home of the brave." America is dying, and I believe there is no greater proof than airports. Allow me to explain. Our country, the "land of the free and home of the brave," responds substantially to terrorism and fear by removing personal liberties. We always hear the word freedom used to inspire us to patriotism, but what does it mean? To me, it's the ability to go where I want, do what I want, say what I want, think what I want, believe what I want and do so with as little oversight as possible, so long as I am not interfering with the freedoms of others. At the risk of editorializing (well, nevermind, this is an editorial) I'd like to point out that I've yet to see how Al Quaeda blowing up 50 buildings will stop me from being able to say or think what I want. Actually, the actions of our government in response to Al Quaeda's actions has removed more freedoms that Al Quaeda has (and killed more American citizens in Iraq), and it seems that through relationships with contractors such as Halliburton and KBR that they've profited supremely off of this chain of action, but that's besides the point. The airport is the greatest example of freedoms snatched up in the name of freedom. The plane, a convenience which makes travel easier, used to be just that, a vehicle, but now it has become a symbol and a weapon. Ignoring the fact that cars are also vehicles that can and have been used intentionally (and accidentally) as weapons to end many more lives and damage many buildings is apparantly the business of the policy makers. But, planes are the new symbol so that's where the government is acting. Close your eyes for a second, and think of what freedom means to you. Now, remove the ability to carry anything pointy and metallic. Now, imagine you have to be inspected, scanned, and potentially remove clothes for a government official to use something you paid for through a private company. Now, imagine that you can be arrested for saying the wrong thing, or even making a joke. Now, imagine that any time someone comes up with an idea to make something benign a threat, it gets acted upon with a dramatic overreaction, such as having to take off your shoes (even flip flops) when some dumbass tried to light his shoes on fire, and having to throw out toothpaste and shampoo since someone planned to use liquid explosives. I'm not sure what part of this scenario is resulting in me being more free, or even being the same amount of free, since the government is doing this to protect the freedoms we in theory already had. I'm certainly not sure which part of this is being done by the brave; for being brave we sure respond strongly to a lot of fear. My question is this...how come the billions of other ways to kill people haven't been addressed by the TSA? If somehow stopping bad people from hurting people on planes is going to protect all of our freedoms, why aren't glasses banned, or pens? I've seen "The Godfather," a pair of glasses can quickly be used as a weapon. Also, anything glass can be shattered or broken and then be used as a weapon, why is glass allowed on a plane? I've seen plastic knives, not only is there a very sharp plastic lettuce knife which is sold that can bypass security, but once I tried to cut myself with a plasticware knife given to me in an in-flight meal, and I was able to do so easily with one swipe (get over it, I was trying to see how sharp it was, I'm not into hurting myself). We all know the movie snakes on a plane, and on the last flight I was on a woman snuck a parakeet on the plane in her pocket since she was afraid the flight attendants would take it, and it got out. How easy would it be to bring poisonous or dangerous animals onto a plane, especially since many cold blooded reptiles will hibernate if they get too cold and reanimate once they warm up. The point is, we can't plan for every contingency, and shouldn't have to. Yea, some people blew up planes, but it caused enough of a reaction that no plane full of people would ever let three guys with box cutters take over a plane again, especially if instead of box cutters they had a nail clipper, a lighter, and a can of aftershave. If this is the land of the free and the home of the brave, I'm not afraid of Al-Quaeda bringing planes down on my head and suddenly having every woman I know having to cover their knees when they go outside. I'm afraid of the government hijacking patriotism in order to satisfy personal agendas that give them more power and give me less freedom. Remember, the government bailed out most of the airline industry, and not only are taxes on flights now higher but I still have had a disaster in one way or another on 8 of my last 9 flights, and the government controlled FAA prevents airlines from operating their own better services outside the structure of the existing and defunct airport system. Welcome to the land of the free and the home of the brave.

I'm sure it is no surprise I like to think, so I read this article and it made me think a bit. I believe that to many people, creationism and evolution are pitted against each other in an epic battle for which is absolutely right. I of course am not in the business of telling religious people what to believe, but I think that this antagonism is based on an oversimplification. Both sides are wrong. People believing in creationism think that if evolution is at all right then what they belive is all wrong, so they must fight it, and vice versa. No one should be so bold as to believe that they have a full understanding of how everything in history happened and how everythign works, whether it be a christian reading the bible or a scientist uncovering fossils. No matter what, a christian understands the world from the reading and interpretation of a book written by man, and a scientist understands the world from the examination and interpretation of evidence found based on previous evidence found. Neither one is absolutely correct. I tend to side with science because in the past, scientists have been willing to say, "Yea, we fucked up and had that backwards, let's move on." while some christians in the past have said "Fossil shows world created 4 billion years ago? You faked it or god must have planted it, either way shenanigans." There is no evolution vs. creationism debate, when it's presented it's always presented as "which of these is right and which is wrong," but the real debate is always "who is humble enough to admit they don't know everything." A creationist should be able to say, "Yea, that's compelling evidence, I can't say that's wrong but I still believe in god and creation of the universe so somehow the two must mesh," and a scientist should be able to say "Well, here's all this evidence, but there's no proof god doesn't exist, so I can't be so bold as to say those guys are totally full of shit, since you see none of us were there at the beginning of time to see how it really happened." Am I a hypocrite for being an atheist and saying scientists should tolerate religion? Maybe, even probably, though I think I'm pretty good about letting religious people be and not telling them to believe what I believe.

  Democracy has now failed. The problem with democracy in this country is that we have been too stubborn to adapt to technology. Allow me to explain. To me, Democracy (and in our case, democratic republic) means that the will of the people should influence the direction and policy of the nation. In the past, when the country was founded, the best way to gague public opinion was the vote, since for someone in Florida to have their opinion heard in Washington took 2 weeks on horseback. We got comfortable with this system, and through districting we learned how to manipulate it. Since not everyone could make laws, the republic system made the most sense, your area chooses someone to represent you and trust they'll act in accordance with your will. Now though, the world has changed and so has Democracy. Communication technology allows the will of the people within or outside the limits of districts to be known. Representatives are not chosen based on what they plan to do or how they will represent their people, but on how good of an image they can put on. They say what they need to say to get elected, then they do what they want and stop listening to their constituents. The election process itself has become a game, we refer to it as win or lose instead of selection. The ideal election should not be choosing who is "better" but instead which of the equal options is right at the time. The "loser" of an election simply was not selected, just like the chicken nuggets when you order a Big Mac.
  The party system shows how messed up the system is. The only way to get elected is to have the support of a party, and the party only supports one candidate. What happens if right now the two best candidates for the office are Hillary and Obama? What if more Republicans like Obama but more Democrats like Hillary, so it goes to Hillary and a Republican and the Republican wins? It's a stupid system. The Primaries are basically an election to the head of a mass marketing firm. And it pitts people against each other; I think Mike Gravel is awesome since he's so out of the box, but then he has to go out and bash his co-runners (like Obama, "Who would you bomb Barack?") rather than work together to come up with better policies. Man, I'd love to see Obama/Gravel '08.
  I'd like to see someone who is willing to implement a system to gague public opinion outside of the election. I'd like to see a president (or at least candidate) who is willing to say "I personally think more money should go to defense, but I have listened to the people as best I can and it seems people want money in health care and education, so I will work to make it so." Who knows how that is done, using the polls that exist through the private media companies, by making new polls as best as they can, by working to actually personally read and respond to mail (ok, I know that's not realistic), who knows. Clearly, ABC's polls and their treatment of Ron Paul and Mike Gravel prove private media polls are worthless. Nevertheless, it is clear to me that choosing a president is abotu the same as choosing an American Idol, once they're chosen we don't really pay attention to what they do since you know they have a bunch of projects planned, but no matter what they have to sing pop songs to get to that #1 spot.

  Now that things have cooled off a bit, I'd like to make a commentary about the Virginia Tech tragedy. I don't mourn, since I see death as such a common part of life. In fact, I think it's kind of odd when we spend tons of time mourning over certain deaths when others we simply brush off for whatever reason. Now, this presents two extremes, and I'd like to clearly delineate which of these I am on: rather than saying no one should mourne for anyone, I cannot justify mourning for one group when I didn't mourn for the others, such as the innocent people who on the same day were killed by drunk drivers or the soldiers who were killed in Iraq while there well past their campaign's end date.
  But, given that the world came together for the Virginia Tech tragedy and it has become something we can all relate to, I'd like to point out something which I found despicable. Repeatedly, people used this tragedy to justify personal agendas whether or not they were relevant. Several examples stood out to me.

  Jack Thompson Attacks Video Games I feel this one is excellent since he's already made such an ass of himself, he was so quick to blame video games for violent behavior before learning any facts, facts that proved that the killer owned NO GAMES. A tragedy happens, everyone reacts and asks what the government is going to do in response, and of course the one person advocating a plan of action since the beginning of time immediately says "see, my plan of action is and always was the solution!" Sickening.

  Atheism Is Weak In The Face of Tragedy Ok. First of all, if you didn't notice, PETA, WOW, MADD, Scientology, and a barage of other groups also weren't yapping their mouths, though you don't have a problem with that. As atheists aren't really a group, but instead individuals claiming to not be part of a group (with a few stand out individuals) I don't know who this writer expects to be hearing from. I can think of several reasons Atheists didn't make a scene: 1) Atheists are the least trusted individuals in America and know it, if you were just in a tragedy and someone you didn't trust came up to you and started saying things, I bet you'd be pissed. 2) Atheists have nothing to gain by making a public statement, the best I could see is individuals giving individual condolences to others, no big public statement. 3) In his article, he talks about how it's difficult to bring god into tragedy, but it's apparantly even harder to bring a lack of god into this tragedy. Though he seems to elect Dawkins as the leader of the atheists, I propose a different reason atheists don't respond - we understand that some people just suck and that some things that happen are bad, we don't need to shove it in anyone's face, it sucks and we're sad too but either you're an atheist and are taking condolences in individuals around you or are religious and are taking solace in your faith, neither of which has room for atheists. Just because we understand we're not invited to the party doesn't mean you should call us a loser for not showing up, especially since we know you're gonna throw drinks at us if we do.

  Satan May Be Here! I don't feel like analyzing this, it's just funny that apparantly it's elements of the Devil that caused it.

  I watched the coverage of the incident, and I noticed that on the first day, everyone blamed everyone for everything. Very few facts, tons of conjecture. The second day, everyone pointed fingers at each other's coverage. Finally, on the third day, facts became clear and the videos were released, another media frenzy day. On the fourth day, people used the facts to either confirm their immediate assumptions, or use the lack of facts to somehow prove they were right despite the lack of proof. Jon Stewart criticized Bill O'Rielly's coverage, who criticized Howard Stern's coverage, who criticized Dr. Phil's coverage, who criticized Jon Stewart's coverage! My head is spinning! People, in the days after this tragedy, I heard lots of potential leaps into action, one that notably frightened me: the suggestion of retracting laws allowing resident aliens to own guns. First of all, an in place law in VA prevents individuals who have been involuntarily committed from owning firearms, proving how effective the gun control laws were in helping this case. (BTW, just to be clear, I'm against gun ownership personally, I wish no one had them, but I have to respect people's rights to own them, I think they're harmful but then again so are sodas and glue and cars, I don't like the government telling citizens how to live) Second, the Columbine kids were white male citizens, clearly demographics are not reasons to change laws. There's a good sumamry article for all this here.

  I have been accused of making premature opinions and never changing my views, but conservative presidential candidate Ron Paul made an awesome observation on the reactions to this tragedy. I don't agree with his "more guns less crime" attitude, but I think he's spot on in being cautious of removing citizen's freedoms as a response to one incident. And he says it in a terriffic way, I'm not gonna vote for him but you should listen to him. Benjamin Franklin, who I consider to be one of the greatest Americans in history, profoundly said "Those who would give up a little freedom to get a little security shall soon have neither." The reactionary attitude of people enable the government to take away freedoms, not protect them.
I've said it before, is our being in Iraq or Iran or Afghanistan really stopping us from losing freedoms? Or is it a futile effort to prepare for every contingency when in fact it has resulted in a dramatic step towards a fascist system?

  I understand why people are reacting the way they are to this tragedy; if we can find a single cause, then we can create a prescriptive solution to the cause and prevent this from happening again. But let's be honest, there is no single cause, this kid probably got picked on in school and internalized, was probably pushed to succeed by his parents but when in the real world didn't succeed and became depressed, he probably got ideas for violent imagery from not just video games and movies and song lyrics but also tv (news, this kid grew up during Desert Storm and Kosovo) and newspapers and everything, he probably had early exposure to weapons not just through media but possibly through his parents and just the public (ever see a big neon sign for "gun show?"). Point is, there's no cause, there's a million factors that build the individual and we can either take ALL of them away or none of them away, and I certainly don't think it's worth it to take all of those away for a little security. Statistically, something like that is going to happen every once in a while and it's very sad, but remember, if it never made it to the news then there wouldn't be any glorification or copy cats. He said it himself, he sent those videos to NBC so his message could be heard, and he was damn successful and anyone else who wants to be heard now knows that is a viable method to be heard. I truly believe incidents like that should not make the news because it prevents copy cats, takes real violent images off the television, and because it doesn't allow people to have peace on their own. At the very least, there should be a delay. Additionally, it's irresponsible to promote these stories just to promote a personal agenda. I don't believe this should be a law, I simply think a responsible media would adopt some sense of self-restraint instead of the frenzy attitude that presently exists. It is the fine line between news and tabloid, one that is increasingly disappearing.