Thank you for your time and interest in my interest, and hope to write more for you soon.

a230a405d0734a37953107dd563d6577 

On to a real post.

Upon looking at some news out of the San Francisco Bay Area, I am thinking that this is a move for more of a police state. There was a huge police shoot out on I-580 in Oakland, to the shooting death of a prospective Google employee, I think these are going to be the perfect ammo (pun intended), for an all out gun ban, either in the Bay Area, or throughout California. I really love the people that I affectionately call "stupids." They may not have any mental incapacitates, they could be completely capable of logical thought. It's usually tied completely to their inability to act like a normal human being. They go through life acting as though they only have use of their lizard brain, and choose not to utilize their logical abilities. It is these people who ruin our way of life. They are the reason that our governmental overlords feel as though they need to enforce the "Nanny State." I, personally, blame the stupids of every community for killing off our rights, and annihilating our personal freedoms. The stupids can't raise their children, the government can! The stupids can't keep their lives in order, the government can! You get the point.

I could call them idiots, but they aren't. They are perfectly capable of handling every aspect of their daily lives on their own. It really isn't physically difficult, nor is it rocket science. It's something that people have been doing for thousands of years. But it's this sort of stupidity that has opened up the hole for the government to feel as though it needs to be filled. A hole that entitles the government to take you as their ward. Congratulations, people. You are now the equivalent of a fucking child.

So, what now? It's a hell of a lot harder to back out of the garage, now that you've driven through it, and into the neighbor's pool. How do we fix the mess that we and our parents have gotten us into? We could blame our grandparent's generation, as well. It's their fault that they allowed for the largest government grab bag with "The New Deal." It really has been, since then, that we have spiralled downward into a big government necessity. Before that, the government was actually fearful of sticking their tentacles into their constituent's daily lives. After Franklin Delano Roosevelt tore-ass into the New Deal, and all of it's splendor, and gave us Social Security (and a fucking number to go with it), so-on, and so-forth, it essentially made it okay for the government to regulate every aspect of a given person's daily life. That opened the hole for Lyndon Baines Johnson and Medicaid, and now Barack Obama's Socialized Medical System (whatever it's going to be called).

I'm not completely opposed to social programs. I'm not against all government assistance. I am against the government believing that they can stick in their tentacles, once they agree to assist you. Once Obama's Medical System comes into fruition, do you honestly believe you can continue to eat your Big Macs and fries? Yeah, right. Your Chicken Mc Nuggets are out, too. Why do you think they are trying to kill your sodium intake, as we speak?

I believe that dwelling in the past leaves us there, but not remembering it causes us to relive it. It's all quite simple, really. If we think in ways of constant progression, forgetting all of our accomplishments and losses that got us to this point, we are more than likely going to continue in a constant, downward spiral towards somewhere we have been before. That can be actually and metaphorically. Maybe, even metaphysically.

And that, my friends, brings us to where we are. Currently, we are told about change, and how things are changing, and how to change things that need to be, etc. I really don't mean to be political, but I think that this is a perfect example of spiraling towards where we have already been. In the past fifteen to twenty years of life in the United States, we have lost many of our "inalienable rights." Maybe lost is the wrong word. They aren't completely gone, just gravely whittled away.

Along with our tattered rights, we are constantly inundated by key words, like "change." It wasn't just Obama who has these. Bush did, too. The current issue is more of a look towards the days of the German Worker's Party, Socialist Nazi Germany, the USSR, Stalin's rhetoric, bread lines, and all the other great things that come with an ill directed socialist society.

Don't kid yourselves, kids. We are always days away from becoming a completely Socialist society. Good bad, or otherwise, I honestly believe that Obama is a good guy, who is smart, with a good heart, that is in the right place. I, however do not agree with his policies. I disagree with those policies even more when I think about what is possible in the future. Look at it this way, Obama could create the Great Socialist Utopia, complete with socialized medicine, food, shelter, breadlines, the whole nine yards. He could be so great that we repeal the twenty-second amendment, and he could serve longer than FDR, maybe until death. Then the Catholics could canonize him and the world is better off. Here lies the issue, who comes after him? Someone as great, or someone with ill intentions. Someone who could take this Socialist Utopia and turn it into something closely mirroring George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

What then? Our fucking rights were completely obliterated to create the utopia that you all wanted. There's no protesting. The first amendment was repealed after you guys got your fucking Fairness Doctrine. You have no right to assemble, no freedom of speech. You'd be lucky if you make it through all of this with a freedom of religion. I really wouldn't doubt us moving toward a Chinese style of state, where you are not allowed to express your religious freedoms. Another possibility would be that after all of the Muslim extremism, people may be afraid to practice religion outside of their own houses, out of fear of being ridiculed our blown-the-fuck-up. All of this is possible, even with the first amendment's statement of no official state religion.

Fear. This is how the government has enslaved us and has kept us that way. It is only going to get worse, my friends. We can preach about the internet and how it frees us, but lets be honest. How many heads of government (including the United States) have been given what equates to an Internet Kill-switch? Oh, do you slaves want to speak out against me/us? The internet is shut off for a later determined amount of time.

Piracy. Another nifty meaningless keyword that our governments like to throw around. Vice President Joe Biden equated internet piracy to a smash and grab. Though I am against piracy, and I do see it as theft, I have a hard time drawing the same lines that he has. With internet piracy, there is no vandalism. He's making it sound like it's a fucking hold up, and people are shot, and real destruction and physical damage is occurring. Is he fucking retarded? Do our government officials actually hear themselves, as the falsehoods pour out of their mouths, like diarrhea?

One thing I can thank him for is my taste in music. Thanks to him, I am a fan of Black Sabbath and some other heavier bands from the late sixties and early seventies. I am pretty vehemently opposed to Country music, which my mom is fond of telling me that I get from him. I can remember sitting in our garage listening to KZAP, out of Sacramento, and watching his work on his International Scout or his Chevrolet pickup. If I can thank him for anything besides my existence, I can thank him for that portion of my musical taste.

I have other tastes in music that I remember him not being into. Depeche Mode was a band that he distasted. In fact, he called it "fag music." He really disliked it, and I think that I may have enjoyed irritating him with my musical taste. It's kind of like getting an early start to my teen years at the age of five.

Other things that I remember him having issue with were my love for modern technology and a thirst for the written word. He hated that I could sit for hours and read the same set of books over and over again. I could also sit for hours and type away at my small computer toy (I can't remember for the life of me which one it was). I think that all of this was quite alien to him. Sports were another bone of contention. I fucking hated baseball. I honestly don't think that hate is a strong enough word for my feelings towards that sport. It is lame and fucking boring to play. The best part of it all was I had ADD, and I wasn't diagnosed with it until much later. My parents (in their infinite wisdom) decided to enroll me in a fucking T-ball team, at the age of six, with fucking ADD, and hating the fucking sport. Oh, yeah. I went really far. Right field and last at bat was all there ever was for little Raymond. Pure fucking genius, parents. I can't put that on my mother, really. She only wanted to get me out and help me to make more friends than those that lived in my neighborhood. But, lets be honest, it was fucking Knights Landing, California. I already knew everyone on that T-ball team. I wasn't gaining anything socially, and I wasn't making any new friends.

Fast-forward a couple of years, one destroyed marriage and Chevrolet Cavalier later, we ended up in Woodland, California. It isn't a large city by any means, but it was leaps and bounds in size compared to KL.

One of life's oddities that I often think about is the fact that he stuck around with court and visitation for less than a year before he disappeared. Less than a year, that's a pretty good sized fraction of an eight year old's lifespan. I often wish that I could have been in my little sister's shoes. She was four years old during this tumultuous time. She vaguely remembers anything of all of this. For more than eighty percent of her childhood, she had our papa. He's basically all she knows. I wish I had that form of innocence.

I can't really complain, though. For the time I had wish my biological father, I wouldn't trade anything. I wouldn't really be the person I am. It may not have been a fucking bed of roses, but in all reality, it was abusive and uncomfortable, but not pure hell.

In some of my more normal thought patterns, I have been remembering odd instances of my upbringing. Things such as growing up in a one-horse town (who's horse was shot a hundred years prior), and the existence therein. Knight's Landing, California is a very small (possibly eight or nine hundred people) community in northern Yolo County. It's size and history are really quite meaningless in this short story.

One of my memories bring me back to somewhere around nineteen eighty-six or seven. I believe it was one of those "El Nino years." We got an ass load of rain that winter, so much so that the Sacramento River flooded it's banks just east of the draw bridge at County Road 102. I vaguely remember (I was five or six years old) riding in my mom's car to Woodland California to stay with my grandmother. This is just a minuscule flicker that I get on occasion. The part that gets me is, though I can't remember my childhood, I know the event happened. I just question whether or not my memory of the event is correct.

Throughout my later childhood, I always craved my father's pride. I was always mechanically-inclined. I was notorious for disassembling and reassembling toys and (household appliances) to figure out their inner workings. My father's chosen profession was an automotive mechanic. While growing up, it seemed as though "following in his footsteps" was the only way to gain his favor. The junior high school that I attended had no true automotive department to speak of. The Wood shop had a one week small engines section, but I could rebuild two-stroke weed-eaters, lawn mowers, and other small engines in my sleep. The only other real option I had was in the agriculture department, I would just hav to broaden my horizons. Tractors and pump motors weren't really what I was looking for as a profession.

My biggest project in that class was a nineteen thirty-nine Allis-Chalmers tractor. It was a complete fucking rebuild. It included cleaning off decades of neglect, rust, and dirt build up, scrubbing the drivetrain for weeks, prepping this fucking thing for primer and eventual paint. In reality that was nothing. That was the little bitch shit that I probably could have delegated to one of the underlings that I had accumulated at the time. The bitch of it all was the engine. It was locked, and not in some bullshit vapor lock, or even a rusted-to-shit cylinder way that my prize 383 Chrysler was (I'll get to that later). This was a mule dick sort of lock, that really would have been easier to recycle.

In so many ways, I wish I would have put more of my limited concentration resources into that project. Instead, like so many other things, I got drunk, stoned, and fucked it off. In hindsight, my entire high school carrer ended up that way. Thinking back on it, though, I don't believe the drugs and alcohol had that much effect on it. If anything, sometimes the drugs assisted in my work.

A quote I heard years ago (and it rings true) is that if you use LSD once, it changes your life, every other time is purely recreational. There is a lot of truth in that. The one that makes less sense is the old wive's tale that if you take LSD more than 70 times (or whatever number) you are legally insane. Though I believe that if you "burn yourself out" that there is some kind of irreversible damage that can be done, if the number really is seventy, I have been locked in a padded cell long ago. I left all of that behind me long ago, and I honestly don't believe I have any irreparable damage done to my mind or psyche. The only things that might be completely fucked are my lungs and liver. And, maybe my kidneys, as well.

As for anything else I may have promised in writing this short story, I will undoubtedly get to another time.

Okay, I admit it. That last paragraph was full of snarky, asshole-ish goodness and I own that. Take a moment and put yourself in my shoes, then walk around a bit. I honestly do not enjoy learning about which applications are sucking the lives and time out of the people I care about. In turn, I couldn't give a shit less about how they are wasting their time. I do care, however, that they have allowed themselves to be sucked into a constant state of advertiser fodder. And, the fact that some of them may be pumping actual funds into these networks is sickening.

I know, you are probably saying, "Ray, you have a Google Ad strip in your sidebar. You're talking out of both sides of your face." I can see how that may appear to be the case, but the facts are: I have never made a dime from that sidebar ad and you fucks don't click on it so I can make money. I don't care if you do, either. I never planned to make money from it. It has always been more of a "what if." My sites aren't caked with them and they never will be. I want to own every pixel on my sites, and I don't want my readers to be ad fodder.

I guess the point I'm trying to get at is that I want to be Better. That's right, I capitalized Better because it's my new mission statement (if you will). I want to be Better, I want the things I do to get Better, and more than anything I want to do Better for people that I love. So, at the risk of being a total hypocrite, I'm going to drill down on this thought of "Better" and I'll write more on it as I go.

Now I have been guilty of asking questions that would have probably been easily answered by a Google search or reading the given documentation. On the other hand, I have also been the first to say "RTFM." I understand both sides of the argument: sometimes it's easier when others do the work for you, and it is really irritating when you are asked the same question thirty times a day.

Here lies my issue, why is it that we either treat new users like lesser life forms, or take it as a personal assault when someone questions some part of our flavor of choice?

I can relate to telling someone that something is a bad idea. I get that using harsh terms help some people convey urgency. But, do we really need to berate and belittle people who might not be as far in their learning as we are? Does it make you feel bigger than they are, making you somehow more important or higher on the project's food chain? Really, what do you get from it?