Change came in disguise of revelation, set his soul on fire

I see this truck every morning as I walk to my office:



The picture is really unnecessary since you can't make out what the words say anyway, but I have a camera phone and by Jove I'm going to use it.

The window sticker reads:
Pro-God
Pro-gun
Pro-life
Anti-Obama

It's fitting because I heard that the Obama slays unborn fetuses by shooting their mothers with his collection of banned assault rifles that he wants to keep for himself but nobody else, and then he and his wife toast each other with baby's blood as part of a Satanic ritual they perform in the Oval Office every six days.

Stinkin' Obama.

Ain't no tellin' when I'm down for a jack move

This = Hilarious

Beyond the point of ever turning back

And you guys thought I was a supporter:

Keep on rockin' in the free world

Forget McCain and Palin. Forget Obama and Biden. I'm voting for this guy!

I've been here, I've been there

Reasons why the Republican Party thinks Sarah Palin is more qualified than me when it comes to foreign policy experience:

- She can see Russia from Alaska if she wants to.


Reasons why I am also qualified to be Vice President if lame crap like that counts:

- I knew where LIbya was on a map at pub trivia the other night.
- Sometimes I eat sandwiches with Swiss cheese on them.
- I like red Swedish fish the best, but have eaten all the different colors.
- I love me some German chocolate cake.
- I spent a day in Tijuana when I was seventeen.
- A gay "Hungarian" hit on me once.

What went wrong walking tightrope high over moral ground

Friend 1: I was watching Bush's War on Sunday and fell asleep. When I woke up, my cat was sitting on my computer because it was warm.

Me: I just finished watching that on Sunday. Why are you looking so surprised?

Friend 1: Well, you're usually not the one I talk about politics with, he is. You're usually the one who talks about boobs with me.

Me: No, that's me and him.

Friend 2: Actually, that's pretty much you and everybody you talk to.


It's funny because it's true.

I need a hero

It's election time again! I wish I could really be excited about it, but I can't (it's not like we can get rid of our retarded president this time). In fact, with election day coming up I've been constantly reminded of how much I dislike politicians. The focus always seems to be on what the opponent did or didn't do rather than what a good job the candidate in the ad will do if elected. I get tired of mud-slinging rather quickly, and there are actually some offices that I may not vote for either candidate simply because that's all they've been doing. That'll learn 'em.

Mud-slinging has gotten to be too popular in advertising as well. I find it interesting when a company will advertise about how bad another company's product is rather than come up with something creative to illustrate how good their own is. It always leaves me with the feeling that they must not have anything good to say about their own product when they do that.

Last night I saw a Subway commercial that talked about how much fat was in McDonald's food and I was slightly puzzled. For one thing, I don't even consider these two restaurants to be direct competitors. I guess they're both vying for our lunch dollars, but it really depends on what someone is in the mood for. If someone's not in the mood for a sandwich they aren't going to eat at Subway regardless of whether or not they get a crappy hamburger at McDonald's. Secondly, I thought I told Jared from Subway to go away. Obviously he didn't listen.

Mama, he's crazy and he scares me

Someone needs to buy this t-shirt and send it to our president.

Abraham Lincoln was a good old man

Have you ever wanted to get in the mind of Abraham Lincoln? Well, I've stumbled across his blog so you can click here to learn some of the innermost thoughts of our 16th president.

I should have been listening to every word you said

I went to see An Inconvenient Truth yesterday. If you haven't heard about it, it's Al Gore's documentary on global warming. I think that everybody ought to see this movie, regardless of political affiliations. Of course that's not going to happen, conservatives are going to see that it's Al Gore's movie and immediately dismiss it as rubbish. That's too bad, because it could actually open up some eyes about the state our world is in right now, and the direction we seem to be heading. I like to believe that it's not too late to make some changes, but it will be if we don't start acting soon.

Anyway, it got me thinking about the following. Some of this comes from the movie, some of it is just me, but I'm not going to go to the trouble to distinguish that as I ramble on here. If you really want to know, go see the movie ;-)

One of the major things to think about is the exponential increase in the number of people living on our planet. The number has reached approximately 6.5 billion, nearly triple what it was 50 years ago. Along with that comes an increasing demand for natural resources, some of which are renewable, others of which are not. The scary part about that is that once the non-renewable ones are gone, they're gone for good (I know I've said it before, but it warrants mentioning again). I mentioned a few days ago that people generally try to push the limits of what they can get away with, and that seems to be exactly what we're doing with our dependence on such things (i.e. oil). As the world population continues to grow exponentially, these resources are going to be used exponentially. Especially given the fact that many third world countries are starting to become more developed. The thing about exponential growth is that it will double with each passing time period. As E. O. Wilson points out in his book Consilience, that means that the "day" before we run out of a resource we will still have half of it left. If people aren't thinking about this sort of thing, then they won't spring into action until it's too late.

The frustrating thing is that the technology for alternative energy sources is out there. Why isn't there more of a push for solar energy these days? Take a place like Las Vegas for example. When I first moved here I was told that the only difference in the seasons are that you either get sunny and hot, or sunny and cold. It's always sunny! If that doesn't sound like a good place to start implementing solar panels, I don't know what does. I know that it's expensive to equip a home with solar panels. I think it's around $10,000, and that extra cost might be enough to prevent a lot of people from being able to afford a home. But what about the casinos? There's more money funneling through those places than a guy like me can even fathom. And in each one's quest to be the biggest/newest/best they keep bringing in more and more fancy stuff. The money it would take to place solar panels on the rooftops of those would be a mere drop in the bucket compared to what they spend on other furnishings.

I won't even get into all the problems with the accelerated extinction rates of species here, but believe me, things are dying off. The problem with that is, nobody seems to care, unless it's something that's going to affect mankind. If you're one of these types of people just stop and think about this: How much would it cost to build machines that can provide all the services that nature already does for free in the event that the things that do them start dropping off the face of the earth? We in the United States are the worst in the world when it comes to thinking about this stuff. Our consumption of the world's resources far exceeds our proportion of the world's populations. One would think since we have been a world leader in many things for so long, that we would be when it comes to the environment as well. It's no secret that our automobile industry is lagging behind those of other nations when it comes to automobile emissions. Gore talks about how California has just recently passed legislation to require automobiles to have lower emissions over the next decade or so. The state has since been sued by the automobile industry claiming that it's too hard for them to meet those restrictions in such little time. The irony with that is other countries are already there. Why should it take the manufacturers in the U.S. a full decade to get where these other countries (including China) are today? Is that really an unrealistic expectation? It makes no sense to me. Maybe we just need some different people in charge, starting with our president (have I mentioned how much I hate the current one?).

Speaking of presidents, it kind of all boils down to politics. I don't understand why, but somewhere along the line 'environmentalist' became a dirty word. The point this movie brings up is that it really shouldn't be a partisan issue. After all, we're all stuck here on the same planet with no real option of going elsewhere (despite what Stephen Hawking has recently said about colonizing the moon). You'd think we'd all want it to last as long as possible.

The thing that people always talk about when it comes to conservation related topics is that it will ruin the economy if we don't let people do what they've always done. I understand that it would be a big deal if that happened, but people tend to be fairly resilient, and if someone loses a job because one technology becomes obsolete, they are generally able to get training to do something else instead. Who knows, maybe it could be one of the new jobs that the new technology is bound to be offering up. All in all, I think the 'it will ruin the economy' argument is pretty weak. The thing that ought to strike people the most is that if the earth is gone, the economy is going to be the least of our concerns.

In case you're still reading (doubtful) and want to know more about the movie or what you can do to help do your part, here's a site you can visit:

http://www.climatecrisis.org/

(sorry, but the link icon isn't working correctly and every time I use it, half of my post gets erased)

Now that I'm found I miss being lost

I stole this from my friend's blog, but it's ok because he stole it from someone else anyway. It does pretty much sum up the attitude of people in this country these days:

"If religion was based on scientific evidence, it would be called science and no one would believe it."--Stephen Colbert

Nothing ever comes for free

I filled my car up with gas the other day and it cost me $40. I think it cost about half that when I first bought the car in 2001. My first response was to get upset, but the problem is that I don't really know who I should be upset at, so I've made a list:

• George Bush - It's hard to believe that oil prices would be this high if half of the Middle East wasn't under attack. Furthermore, I just don't like the guy (can you say worst president ever?) so I'll blame him for anything I can.
• The big oil companies - I suspect that they just use any excuse to jack their prices up, with the latest being that OPEC just can't keep up with demand. Of course, maybe this time it's real (see the first item).
• Individual gas station owners - I used to work at a Chevron station, and our gas prices had as much to do with what the guy down the street was charging as they did with what we actually paid per gallon of gas. In other words, the prevailing view seems to be "What's the most that I can charge without losing business to the guy across the street?"
• The auto industry - with all the technology we have today is there really any need to keep coming up with new models that only get 8-15 miles per gallon? Is it really so hard to comprehend that fossil fuels are a non-renewable resource? Once they're gone, they're gone for good, or at least for the next 200 million years or so until the earth can generate some more.
• The American people - would the auto industry be pumping out cars that get bad gas mileage if people would actually quit buying them? My intuition says no. Not only that, but we're an extremely lazy and wasteful society. Is it necessary to drive your H2 around the parking lot at Target 50 times so you can get the closest parking space available? How about to drive a block to the store to pick up a loaf of bread, a container of milk and a stick of butter?

The truth is, we Americans have been spoiled. We're complaining about gas prices being over $3/gallon, but that's still a lot less than what other countries have to pay (excluding those in the Middle East, like Qatar were gas is only $0.49/gallon-thanks Sam). I believe that gas prices were at least this high in Europe when I was still in high school and it cost just over a dollar for a gallon of gas here in the U. S. (that's right, I could fill up my 1977 Chevrolet Caprice Classic for less than what I'm paying now to fill up my Mercury Mystique with its 14 gallon tank). Now it's up to something like $5 or $6 per gallon over there (I could actually look it up, but I'm still just as lazy as ever).

Perhaps this quote from Bill Maher puts it into perspective though "Gas prices are so high, it's enough to make you choke on your $4 latte!" I think that as long as a gallon of gas costs less than a gallon of milk (which happens to be a renewable resource), then we probably ought not to complain. Even though I just did.

Flying Post 9-11

I made it through airport security in record times both when I was leaving town this weekend and when I was flying back. Both times I arrived at the airport about an hour and twenty minutes before my flight, and both times I was sitting at the gate waiting to board within about ten minutes. I wish I knew how to time it better though, especially since on the way back that meant I could have spent another hour with my kids. Of course, I suppose it would work the opposite way if I were to push my luck and I'd end up missing my plane.

As I was undressing to go through the metal detector without setting off any alarms I couldn't help but think that it probably wasn't doing a whole lot to prevent another terrorist attack. In reality, I think that all of these things have been put into place so that everyone will think that the government is doing something. I think the response to Hurricane Katrina has shown otherwise. Don't you think that if there is going to be another major attack that they are going to go with something that we aren't expecting? I know that the levees that broke in New Orleans did so because of the hurricane, but something along those lines is exactly what I would expect the terrorists to try next. Imagine that the levees in New Orleans had been bombed instead, would the results have been any less drastic? I think the death toll would have been about the same, but somehow I think the government would have responded a lot quicker in that scenario.

Unfortunately, I don't know what the answers are, or where exactly the resources ought to be placed. There certainly aren't enough of them to go around to prepare for everything that could possibly be thrown our way. I'm hoping that we won't see another terrorist attack like the one on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, but I'm guessing that Al-Qaida isn't going to stop trying to come up with new ways to get us. I'm just not sure that installing a few extra metal detectors is going to be enough to prevent them from being successful. Hopefully I'm wrong.