Religious Litmus Test

Time for some sweeping generalizations.

Seems to me Islam won't be happy until everyone is Muslim. Once that is accomplished then the fight between the different sects can rage on until the one true sect is determined.

Seems to me Christians won't be happy until everyone is Christian. Once that is accomplished then the fight between the different sects can rage on until the one true sect is determined.

Seems to me the Jews don't give a flying fuck if you're Jewish or not. I've never once had a Jew try to convert me or even try to convince me that they had the superior religion. As long as you don't stand in the way of them practicing their religion as they see fit, everything is kosher. Try to force their hand and they'll drop kick you to the curb. It's like the Incredible Hulk vs. the League of Self Righteous Assholes.

No offense meant to Muslims and Christians that don't fit the profile, but the company you keep is tarnishing your reputation.

Turning a Prophet

In replies to a recent post, the Swede Transvestite suggested that I have a messianic complex. Considering the vlog of my recent dream and other dreams I have had and the visions I claim are sent to me from divine sources I would suggest that this simply is not true. I have a Moses Complex.

Heed the words of the prophet. Try not to touch any tentacles.

NSFW: Dreamscape

NSFW for so-called profanities. The idea of a 'bad' word is stupid.

Watch as I walk you through last night's dream. It is worth it to stick this one out to the end.

Bye-Bye Gabbly

I got rid of the Gabbly chat. I gave it a fair go, but it was more annoying than functional. After several weeks of trial, I'm sure no one will miss it.

Coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee.

Buzzz!

I just drank a triple espresso. Normally this isn't something I would do before work since the crap in the lunch room can't keep pace. But this is the Friday after pay day, which means it's the machine shop potluck day. So I made a large caraffe full of espresso to share with everyone. That's about seven doubles. There should be enough for me to keep from crashing later.

Dream Home

Every so often I like to look at various houses on the market around the country using realtor.com. I'll put in the criteria that I feel is important for that particular day and sort the results by number of photos.

There is one room that can make or break a house for me. All other rooms I can see my way to accept design flaws or elements that I just plain don't like. But if I don't like the kitchen, I don't like the house.

For me, the kitchen needs to be big. It should have lots of counter space, plenty of cupboard space, an island, and preferably an open bar that allows communication with an adjoining dining room or rec room. All my life, the kitchen has been the center of events. In farm homes, everything centers around the kitchen. At every party I have attended since my earliest memories (back in those single digit age times) there has always been a group of people standing around the kitchen talking. The kitchen is where it's at.

But most houses have terrible, tiny kitchens. I can't seem to find urban dwellings with nice kitchens until I hit the $1 million range. I guess city folk don't cook unless they're rich enough to eat out every night.

I wanted to share this with everyone. More importantly, I want X, my un-running mate and architect, to rant and froth his understanding of this phenomenon.

Multiple Universes, Energized Space, and Thou, Whistling in the Darkness

Here is a quick and easy way to feed your brain today. It made my synapses all tingly. Go watch this video of physicist Lawrence Krauss.

I invited a group of cosmologists, experimentalists, theorists, and particle physicists and cosmologists. Stephen Hawking came; we had three Nobel laureates, Gerard 'tHooft, David Gross, Frank Wilczek; well-known cosmologists and physicists such as Jim Peebles at Princeton, Alan Guth at MIT, Kip Thorne at Caltech, Lisa Randall at Harvard; experimentalists, such as Barry Barish of LIGO, the gravitational wave observatory; we had observational cosmologists, people looking at the cosmic microwave background; we had Maria Spiropulu from CERN, who's working on the Large Hadron Collider — which a decade ago people wouldn't have thought it was a probe of gravity, but now due to recent work in the possibility of extra dimensions it might be.

From The Energy of Empty Space That Isn't Zero.

A Spanner Deviantly

Here's to old Uncle Albert! He lived a life that spanned three centuries. I now have most of his old tools. Today, using some down time at work, I bead blasted a few old wrenches. The gnarliest was a double ended spanner of 13/16 and 7/8 ends. The thing looks like it was salvaged from a wrecked pirate ship. Someone commented that they've seen tools salvaged from a shop fire that didn't look half as nasty.

The real puzzlers are two small double ended spanners. I measured the span and checked our charts to see what it might be. It was certainly not U.S. Standard or SI (metric). Someone suggested that it might be the old British Standard Whitworth. So we got out the machinists handbook since none of us knew what the old Whitworth measures were. Turns out the heads, the only part I was concerned with for my project, are the same as U.S. Standard so that wasn't it either. I do have a double spanner that is clearly marked 11/32 on one end and 13/32 on the other. Nobody in the shop, not even the old school machinists who often wow me with their machining lore, was aware that nuts and bolts of that size were ever in use. But these two little wrenches still defied all classification. Even allowing for broad tolerances, their sizing did not make sense with any known standard. One had the number 721 stamped into it. The other had the number 23 (and it was certainly NOT a metric 23 on either end) and the word "BUHL" stamped on it.

I'm going to take a few more of old Uncle Albert's deviant spanners into work for clean up and see if I can't piece this puzzle together.

AWPC

Overheard:

Just fuck off for a second!

In a world where I thought I had heard every use of the word fuck, a young woman has surprised me. I am forever in her debt.

Visions, Dreams, and Tyr

It's hard to get decent footage of yourself while walking.

Misinterpreted Headline

Once again I saw a headline and the image conjured was very different from the content of the story.

Georgia pledges to crush rebels.

I imagined a bunch of Southern blacks headed up by a deep breathing James Earl Jones trying to round up guys in white sheets with Confederate flag bumper stickers on their X-Wings. Someone please make this into a Star Wars fan film.

Good Night

I just wanted to say... oh, to hell with it.

AWPC

One of the operators had forced a ring that was too small for her onto her finger last night. She came into work with the ring still on and finger still swelling around it. She asked maintenance if there was any way we could get the ring off for her. We suggested cutting through the band with a diamond dremel bit.

Her: Do you think you can do that without hurting me?
Jake: My doctorate is in divinity, not medicine.

The operation was a success! We used a dremel, a wire cutter, and a needle nose pliars. In addition, the ring is completely salvagable by any jeweler. I don't have a degree for that either.

Professional transvestitism

With this article, I am starting to piece together why X likes New Zealand so much.

A male lawyer who appeared in a New Zealand court dressed in an ankle-length skirt, lace stockings and a diamond brooch said Tuesday he was protesting against a male bias in the country's justice system...

"It wouldn't have happened if I hadn't seen the gung-ho attitude in this case. The more this goes on and the deeper the cover-up gets, the frocks will get prettier," he said.

From transvestite lawyers to sheep and velcro gloves, the Kiwis have got what he wants.

Common Ground

Finally, feminists and fundamentalist Muslims have found something they agree on. They both find women parading around in swimsuits and high heels offensive to their senses. But fundamentalist Indonesian Muslims have done something that fundamentalist American feminists only wish they could do. Group files complaint against Miss Indonesia.

Left vs. Right Dog Fight

Jake gets in on the game with a little help from his friends.

Art on the Rampage

Two die in inflatable sculpture tragedy. Make certain to watch the video.

I will not laugh about death. It's not like this was a Darwin incident or anything. I just wish I could keep a straight face while reading that headline. The interview clips from the scene don't help, either.

The Return of the Son of Video Blogging 2

Still working out how best to video blog. I think you'll find this one a major improvement over the previous.

Spin

Don't watch it. You don't want to know. Old news. You'll only regret it.

Sistani calls for end to violence

I didn't see this one coming.

Iraq's most prominent Shia cleric, Ali al-Sistani, has called for an end to sectarian "hatred and violence". The grand ayatollah said the violence would only prolong the presence of US forces in the country.

I don't know anyone who didn't see this one coming.

But the US military admitted on Thursday the massive security clampdown that followed the killing of al-Qaeda leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had achieved only a "slight downtick" in violence.

Third World Countries Still Don't Understand The Importance Of Being Rich

Unctad's latest report says aid should be used to make poorer economies more productive and boost wealth creation...

"If countries do not invest in infrastructure, they are not going to sow the seeds for growth and development in future."

Almost none of them have a PSP, an iPod, or even a Razr. A lucky few have SUVs but not the almighty status symbol of a Hummer.

I can't help but laugh at any article about world poverty that talks about GDP, paradigm shifts, and wealth creation.

"There are 600 million people in these countries. They have to develop and we have to help them. It's a moral, ethical, economic and political issue... Poverty reduction needs wealth creation."

Of course I have a better solution because I am an ego maniac running for top office and writing a blog. Abolish wealth to obliterate poverty. They are talking about some people having more money than other people. If you're really concerned about that, do away with money and the problem is solved.

People hate simple answers.

70 Years of Anarchy

Because I am always referencing the Spanish Anarchists;

70 Years ago this week, General Franco launched his attack on the Spanish Republic, backed by Hitler, Mussolini and, tacitly, by the US and other Western powers.

This intro story to the events of the Spanish Revolution only mentions the anarcho-syndicalists three times, but it is still a good read for those wanting to understand more of what happened.

The Jake perspective in short form:

Fascists took over in Spain, Western democracies didn't aid the resistance because the workers' power/anti-big business ideas of the anarcho-syndicalist revolutionaries scared them, this emboldened fascists in Italy and Germany who did aid the coup, resulting in WWII.

So if you're against Anarchism, you're a friend of Hitler.

Ethanol: Long Time Coming

According to the The Christian Science Monitor, ethanol is now a boom industry.

The ethanol industry "is growing much more rapidly than anybody expected," says Dan Basse, president of AgResource, an agricultural research and forecasting firm in Chicago. "It's a gold rush mentality."

Growing more rapidly than anybody expected? I remember during the farm crisis of the Reagan era farmers sitting around small town cafes wondering why it was taking so long for ethanol to take off as a fuel. It was to be their savior from the falling prices of their commodities and liberate Americans from foreign oil dependence bringing it home to the bread basket states. Instead ethanol was the subject of faked scientific scandals showing how it wasn't really that great, would make your car explode, and cause your testicles to shrivel up and fall off. Then when the family farms were devastated and swallowed up by giant agri-corps, ethanol infrastructure was established, every family had a gas guzzling SUV in the drive, and Americans were starting to scream bloody-freakin-murder-the-oil-exec about fuel prices, the auto industry smiles and pretends ethanol was their idea all along.

Glad to see two decades of farmers trying to cram the benefits of ethanol down people's throats is finally paying off. Just don't call it a gold rush.

Bats Day in the Fun Park

Every year a bunch of Goths, Punks, and other shady characters dressed in black descend upon Disneyland for what has become Bats Day in the Fun Park. For you spooky folks out there, book now for this year's Bats Day happening August 18, 19, and 20. It's so much fun that they can't even contain it to one day! One of these years I am going to go to this. I've never been to Disneyland but I know that Disney World is loads of fun. And Goth watching is one of my favorite hobbies.

Cello Rock!

I love Rasputina. What's not to love about two cellists and a drummer performing rock? While not a great capture of the performance, this was still cool to see.

Muslim Porn: CIA Psychological Warfare?

The title of this piece is very misleading. The author comments on the CIA topic once and doesn't back it up with any data. He does give extremely graphic and well researched details on what takes place, who is starring in it, and where to find it. He also says;

Whether they are viewed as nominal Muslims, cultural Muslims, bad Muslims or non-Muslims, the women who appear in these pornographic productions are presented as Arab and Persian Muslims. This is what makes them appealing. This is what makes them arousing. They are rarely ravished by Arab men, and never by Persian men. They are violated and desecrated by non-Muslim men, white and black, who are mainly nominal Jews or Christians. In adult films, black men and women never have sex together. While Jewish men and white men are free to have sex with whom they please, black men can only serve white women and black women can only be served by white men. Clearly, the purpose of porn is to divide the black man and the black woman. In the case of Muslims, the motivation is the same. The objective of Arab and Persian porn is to wage war against Muslim women, to defile them, degrade them, and discard them, to objectify them for political purposes and to assault the honor of Islam. It is thus the collective obligation of all Muslims to pressure the producers, ordering them to shut down their sites and stop producing such porn. If they fail to comply, they should be subjected to a class-action suit coordinated by Islamic associations throughout the world on charges of religious defamation.

More Common People

For those who couldn't quite stomach Shatner, try to swallow some Pulp.

Big Time Operator

I just needed some Dead Milkmen this morning and figured everybody else could do with a dose.

AWPC

Jake: I've always thought that welding was just like brain surgery. One slip and you've screwed the whole thing up.

Electrician: True, but when you're welding you can always weld in some filler and hit it with the surface grinder and nobody knows the difference.

Jake: See? Just like brain surgery.

Pointing and Giggling: Shatner, Jackson, and Folds

Pointing and Giggling: William, Joe, and Ben. Surprisingly awesome. Thanks Jewbacca.

From Freedom To Fascism

Because people hate to read, here's a 15 minute film (promo) on the myth of money, the absence of a law requiring individual income tax, and government/bank plans to track and control everybody. DOOOM!

Fisting the American Dream

Through the haze of the evening I think I have come up with the campaign slogan.

Micro Engines

At work we get the magazine Machine Design. So it was on a break that I saw their article on Replica Engines. They are scale models of actual engines and they RUN! Check out the videos to see and hear them running. I especially like the replica of the 1937 Harley-Davidson Knucklehead. It's amazing something that small can create that rich of a sound.

Synchronicity

Friday, July 7th, my fellow maintenance guy and I were discussing our appreciation for the early Syd Barrett years of Pink Floyd. See Emily Play. Biding My Time. Careful With That Axe, Eugene. We both felt it was truly revolutionary music that fueled acid rock and psychedelic music from its release to the present day. I'm pretty certain I only ever talked about the old Syd Barrett Pink Floyd years one other time, in 1990 if memory serves me right.

So what a wild synchronicity when I read the news last night and learned that Syd Barret passed away on Tuesday, July 11th.

Rocket Go Boom?

Fan's of Ze Frank are probably happy to hear that people will no longer be watching Amanda Congdon's rockets booming daily.

Punk Pit

A while back my boss joked with me that one of the operators was trying to get on maintenance, but they wouldn't take him because they had filled their quota on guys with mohawks and facial piercings when they promoted me.

Turns out they ARE bringing the guy with a mohawk and facial piercings onto maintenance. Cool. Plus there's the guy I currently work with who is a veteran of the punk rock scene. That means three of the eleven guys in the maintenance pit will be punks. Once the new guy is trained, it would be possible to have a maintenance shift staffed entirely by punks!

Wait, that's what I've got now. We're the under-staffed shift but we get the highest production numbers. So what's the difference?

There'd be THREE of us instead of two. We'd rock that much harder!

Leary's Legacy

The individual who sent this story my way surely most have known it would end up on my blog.

Mystic mushrooms spawn magic event: Findings could lead to treatments for addiction, depression.

People who took an illegal drug made from mushrooms reported profound mystical experiences that led to behavior changes lasting for weeks -- all part of an experiment that recalls the psychedelic '60s.

The research done points to the same conclusions and positively tested hypothesis as that done by a young Harvard professor by the name of Dr. Timothy Leary. He also began his psychedelic research with the psilocybe mushrooms. He later switched to LSD due to the substance's ability to be manufactured and accurately measured for reliable dosage. He also thought that it packed a lot more punch.

Some people blame Leary for the criminalization of psychedelics. It is proposed that his encouraging of individual use outside of a clinical setting (some called it recreational, others called it self medicating) is what lead to the severe scheduling of all psychedelics, halting clinical studies for several decades. Leary's revolt against the supposed scientific professionals seems justified. I know that I have little trust of psychiatrists, medical doctors, or religious leaders. Each has a valuable role in our society. Each should certainly be consulted for advice. But when it comes down to your physical, mental, and spiritual health, the final choices for treatment should belong to the individual. Leary recognized the mechanizations of a system of control and tried to liberate both the patient and the treatment.

My freshman year of college my World Religions professor was a short, jovial man who enjoyed wearing shorts and socks with his sandals. He also happened to be a prominent area minister. As an introduction to our chapter on substance use and the religious experience, he told us how he had taken LSD when it was legal and wished there was something like it he could bring to class for us to all try. It had been a very profound moment for him. Some weeks later I purchased some LSD from a friend. While the experience was not one I would call profound, I would be hard pressed to name a single moment prior to that in which I had experienced such intense joy. One is tempted to call it rapture.

All those who know what I'm talking about, give a wink with your third eye.

Choppers and Customs

Thanks to my old pal BW for passing this one along. It's called the Hyanide. A motorcycle with a tread base for all-terrain travel.

Of course I need to study this design more to determine the possibilities for making a chopper version.



And while trying (without success) to remember his website for a link up, I happened upon this; a do-it-yourself race car. It's a running gear and engine mounted in a block of composite foam that you are supposed to sand and shape to your liking and then lay fiberglass over. Designed by Marijn van der Poll.

Vol du Vin

I had this piece of carry-on luggage from my parents. It was sent with me last fall, stuffed full of frozen beef. Once before my parents had brought it to Portland on the airplane stuffed full of frozen beef. They returned to Minnesota with the same bag stuffed full of Oregon wine. Regardless of what my folks might think, Oregon wine is not just a little superior to Minnesota wines, it is a HUGE difference.

My parents are coming for another visit this summer and want to bring me some fresh beef. We are talkin' about corn fed black angus beef freshly butchered before the trip out. Needless to say, I want a piece of that action. To get it, I needed to ship their suitcase back to them. I figured I owed them a few bottles of wine for the favor.

Nobody had told me you couldn't mail wine via the United States Postal Service. What is this? Pakistan? Iran? This is obviously the work of the kinds of people who eat Freedom Fries. The French help us over-throw the empire on which the Sun never sets and we repay them by saying you can't ship wine. What a bunch of ungrateful bastards we are. The notion I could not mail wine hadn't crossed my mind.

Step back. Why would we not allow alcohol to be mailed? Ah. As one of those individuals who has chosen not to contribute to the ever increasing problem of over-population and movie theater noise pollution, I quite often DON'T think of the children. Obviously plenty of people do. I walked home from the post-office towing a rolling suitcase behind me because I hadn't realized I needed to lie to them about the contents of the bag. There are ways around this silly little restriction. I took the case back to the micro-winery where I had purchased the bottles in the first places. Yes, they could ship it. Yes, just in time since this is the last shipment of the summer due to weather concerns involving shipping. No, not liable for damage. Just fill this out. Thank you and, oh, we can't ship it in that. Only in one of our approved containers. My final destination in this quest of trying to ship mildly alcoholic beverages from one consenting adult to another was UPS. While I despise the carrier on many levels, at least they shipped my package. Of course there was an additional fee since I used a rectangular, box like piece of luggage instead of a box.

(If you are a parent, read the closing marked "A". If you are childless, skip ahead to closing remark "B". Thank you for your cooperation.)

A: Next time I'll have the winery ship the vino and mail the luggage back separately... in a box.

B: If a kid wants alcohol they are going to get it. Worst case scenario the kid can order up a complete home brewing kit that contains everything required to make alcohol. Since it contains no actual alcohol, mostly just garden variety grains and sugar, with a little yeast, it's as easy as mail ordering a home bread kit. And restricting me from easy access to alcohol just makes me irritable. I'm old enough to own guns.

Well I'm Going Out West Where I Belong

It occurs to me that Jake is going all West Coast. Since moving west I have found myself saying 'dude', 'awesome', and 'totally' quite frequently. I have yet to say, "Totally awesome, dude!" The phrase has started to lurk in my brain, though.

Owning a chopper is totally West Coast. I may have built the bike in Minnesota, but it has west coast style. Fits right in while standing out. And I ride it to work every day in true West Coast chopper culture style. Scooters are prevalent, but I'm fairly certain it is just a fad.

Now we've got a 1972 Super Beetle. Old Volkswagens are about as West Coast as you can get. These freaks with their SUV's out here are posers. The surf bums, beach combers, and hippies have all got old V-Dubs.

Learning to surf will push it all over the edge. While there are tons of surf spots around the globe, surfing is typically West Coast. The major surf meccas are all along the Pacific. Leading the pack are California, Hawaii, and Australia.

Perhaps I am merely adapting to my environment. Maybe I am taking the opportunity to re-invent Jake. Or maybe I am just selling out. Doesn't matter, really. The West Coast in the summer is pretty sweet, dude.

Surf Punks

A co-worker has offered to show me how to surf. One of these weekends we'll load some gear in the truck and head on down to the shore. He's got a friend who is a surfing tutor that he owes a ride to the beach to. I can't wait. It obviously hasn't been a high priority, but I've always wanted to surf. Told him that I doubt I'll become a surf bum since it's hard to strap a board to a chopper. Then I remembered our current car project, the 72 Super Beetle. "See man? Throw a board rack on top and you're already part of the culture." Jake surfing. Who'd a thunk it?

Apparently Oregon surfing only sucks during the summer. If you're brave enough to hit the coast in January when it's about 40F and raining, they have killer storm swells.

Fjord of Lies

Ugly Fish Hat has an eloquent if somewhat lengthy post about human nature. I choked back the urge to skip the essay and actually read the whole thing.

Everything about it is fine until the last paragraph. Not that I agree with the entire post, but that I have no trouble with the stated observations and her interpretations and internalizations of them. I appreciate it when people think things out for themselves. But that last paragraph...

Perhaps we should not ignore our capacity for obedience in our educational system and begin to teach people how to choose better leaders since it is in our nature to look for them. But that, my friends, is a different ball of twine.

I felt it wasn't right to leave a comment about that one paragraph since she specifically states that the statement, for her at the least, is not part of the broader post. But such a statement gets my engines all fired up, so I want to shift into gear and lay down some rubber and smoke.

For starters, I'll ignore the run-on sentence. Blogs should not be held to the fire like more serious literary and journalistic platforms. I would hate for my postings to be picked apart for grammar and semantics. At least a little.

Why would a public education system provided by people who have sought and gained positions of power (elected government) be encouraged to teach people how to choose better leaders? The opposite seems more likely. Teaching people to think is dangerous. Teaching them to answer, sublime.

Personally, I think we would do better to encourage individuals to resist obedience.

You're all individuals!
YES, WE'RE ALL INDIVIDUALS!
You're all different!
YES, WE ARE ALL DIFFERENT!
I'm not.
Shhhh.

If you can't trust yourself, who can you trust?

Thanks for providing a rant platform, Bree. Much appreciated.

Anarchism Update

So it turns out that my old World of Warcraft guild decided they wanted to adopt about five pages worth of rules because nobody bothered to read the two sentences of the original guild charter.

(Guild) is a World of Warcraft Horde guild chartered on the Thunderhorn server on June 7th, 2005.

(Guild) is an experiment in Anarcho-Syndicalist organization.

Don't think too poorly of them. Many officials elected to national office think that when the Bill of Rights says, "Congress shall make no law regarding an establishment of religion," that it actually means that Congress shall make some laws pertaining to such. The confusion is so wide spread that the Supreme Court has even ruled in favor of some laws in the past.

If people qualified to sit on the Supreme Court can't understand no law, how could I expect a bunch of video game nerds to understand Anrcho-Syndicalism had they bothered to read the charter. Though when I would use the term around them they were always quick with, "You're fooling yourself. We're living in a dictatorship: a self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes--" and, "Help! Help! I'm being repressed!"

Then I was slain by an elf.

So Very Wrong

Looking at the shot of a sticker riddled van over at Swede Transvestite, I was reminded that I have still not seen this combination of popular stickers.

Somebody out there has to have done it. I wouldn't. Mostly because I don't want any stickers on my otherwise non-descript truck.

NSFW: Ben Franklin

I bet Ben Franklin would be both offended and delighted by this video. What have we got here? One of the Bikini Bandits does a photo shoot to celebrate Ben Franklin's 300th birthday. I knew I had to share this when I saw that Jewbacca had posted several video clips about libraries on his new site. This video talks about libraries as well. And it's about one of the founding fathers, and liberty, and hooters!



I should have spent Independence Day at a strip club. It's what Ben would have wanted. Next year!

AWPC

Me: Hey. You gotta take that flag down from your inspection table.
Guy: What?
Me: Yesterday was Independence Day. Today it's back to being a slave.

End of an Era

For the past year I have been involved in a World of Warcraft guild founded as an experiment in anarchism. For those who aren't familiar with massively multiplayer online games, guilds are groups of people who gather under a name of their choosing for the purpose of enhancing their game play experience. Each guild can determine their own internal dynamics including hierarchies and rules of conduct. I was the first non-leader of the guild which I had started with a small group of friends. Due to the nature of the game dynamics, someone had to be 'in charge'. It wouldn't let me set it up any other way. So I made the best of it and took the title 'Grand Illustrious Masterful Poobah' or GIMP. After a few months when the whole thing hadn't blown up in my face, I handed the experiment over to someone else and took a major back seat.

For some reason I will never understand, the growing guild has started down a path where people feel they need structure and rules. Things had been going fine without them. So I left the guild. I don't need or want rules no matter how well intentioned, but the majority sees no problem with it. I am exercising my natural right of free association and opting to play without a guild.

But I am not upset about the new course. Anarchism as a guiding principle actually worked for a full year! Even amongst people who were not professed anarchists or disagreed with anarchism. For some reason they stuck around, stuck it out, and the game went on just fine. When things needed doing, people stepped up and did them. When people needed to bow out for a while, others stepped up to fill the gaps. It worked! For a YEAR! To me, 50 some odd people who hardly know each other voluntarily working together to accomplish the goals of a game is pretty damn impressive.

Chopper Basics

YouTube didn't seem to play well with my video footage. But there are options. So here is the footage of my chopper via Google. C'mon Everybody!

Independence Day

I have the next four days off thanks to a weekend followed by a national holiday. Everyone around me has been talking about the "Fourth of July". That is what everyone calls it. When did this happen? If I recall, it is actually called "Independence Day". The Fourth of July is just a date on the Gregorian calendar.

I like the idea of an Independence Day. Independence is a great idea. This year marks the 230th anniversary of the day when a bunch of people decided rather than just shooting at and generally trying to sabotage imperial rule, they would sit down and write a long list of reasons why they were doing this and declare a solid goal of independence. The Declaration of Independence laid the ground work for ink on paper being the primary force of the new nation, giving birth to the world's first great bureaucracy. Ever since it has been proven that the pen is truly mightier than the sword, especially when wielded by a politician during a time of national crisis. Just think, America has been doing this for 230 years. When things need doing, the United States knows that the thing to do is gather together a committee and write up a piece of paper that states what is going on, how people feel about it, and what should probably be done about it. They know how to phrase it, debate it, amend it, deliberate on it, vote on it, file it, duplicate it, circulate it, and archive it. It is true that the battle between the colonists and the British had been going on for some years before July 4th, 1776 Gregorian. But from that day forward it was official because it was written down!

Happy Independence Day! Let's all celebrate in the style of our fore-fathers; by getting drunk and blowing shit up. Oh, and don't forget to write about it before hand so it can be official.