Hurry the hell up!

No matter what you're doing, where you are, or who you are, just hurry the hell up, would you? Time is precious. Quit wasting it!

The Day that Disappeared Went Missing

I remember the day very well. Before then, people disappeared or vanished. If they disappeared of their own free will, perhaps they ran away. If it happened by accident, perhaps they were lost. No one disappears anymore. In fact, from May 1, 2001 until today, not one thing has disappeared... anywhere.

Now things "go missing" or are "gone missing".

What happened on May 1, 2001? That was the day that the U.S. news began reporting that Chandra Levy disappeared on the day before: April 30, 2005.

I blame CNN. CNN management and its anti-American American-made-billionaire founder, Ted Turner, are constantly trying to purge their guilt for being Americans by trying to internationalize even their American talking heads.

So instead of saying Levy disappeared, CNN's very American news personalities used the opportunity to show the world how how international they were and reported the disappearance with the British term: gone missing. Of course, the rest of the U.S. press, following blindly rather than actually researching news for themselves, repeated the phrase until you never hear the word disappeared except perhaps in a magic show.

I don't dislike the British or their ways but I have been accused of being narrow minded for my views on this subject. I think that celebrating the differences in culture, race, and religion is the epitomy of tolerance. Before the murder and disappearance of Chandra Levy, we used to celebrate the differences in our cultures rather than trying to blend those differences out. To try to blend those differences away, or to pretend they don't exist - to look at a black man and pretend only to see a man, for instance - is the ultimate in narrow-mindedness.

I am a citizen of The United States of America and am not ashamed to be one and I do not feel like I have to pretend to be something else in order to live with the guilt and shame of living in what was once the most powerful, most highly skilled, and richest nation in the world.

Hopefully, soon (but probably not) I can write a blog article titled "The Day that Went Missing Disappeared."

And I Thought I Was A BlowHard

I was looking at CD's on Amazon today when I saw a review by "A Top 10 Reviewer." Number 8, it turns out.

Do you know how many thousands of reviews you have to write to be the number 1 or number 2 reviewer at Amazon? What do you get if you are number 1?

Do you suppose that number two, Lawrance M. Bernabo, who says that "The basis of a democratic state is reviewing," and has, as of this writing, written 10,664 reviews, is staying up all night writing reviews in hopes of snatching the coveted title away from number one, Harriet Klausner, who started doing freelance reviews after her son was born and who must have completely abandoned her son in order to have time to write 9,601 reviews?

Can anyone possibly own or have used that many items?

And I thought I was lifeless.

Amazon's Top Reviewer List

February 19, 2009 update: Here we are three and a half years later, and Amazon has changed their top reviewer formulas. Now the #1 reviewer has only 500 reviews. Amazon is giving more weight to recent reviews and to helpful reviews. I bet that just really irks Harriet Klausner, now #568 by the new formula, and Lawrence Bernabo, now #14 by the new standard. At least Lawrence beat out that pesky freelancer Harriet Klausner, huh?

There is good news, though. Amazon still reports the standings according to the old formulas as well. and guess who are #1 and #2 still, 3 and a half years on (that's European English for 3 and a half years later). Did you guess Harriet Klausner and Lawrence Bernabo? If you did, you got it right. All this time and thousands upon thousands of reviews later and #1 and #2 have not changed - using the "classic" reviewer standard.

Death & Taxes

I filed my 2004 taxes today – Yes, I am a procrastinator. I filed an extension in April even though the extension was 95% of the work to file the taxes.

So that means the only day worse than today will be the day I die, huh?

I love my government. I love the IRS. *Looking over my shoulder*. I love paying my share of taxes. Too bad I can't pay more.

Continued in BlowHard On Politics...

The Worth of a Child

I heard today about a convicted child molester released this week from prison. He served two years of a twelve year sentence. It seems the prisons are just too crowded to keep child molesters, rapists, and murderers locked up – too full of those real threats to our society: Pot smokers and housewives who bounced checks! (I could have said: Housewives who bounced checks and pot smokers, but I don't know of any women in prison for bouncing pot smokers.)

Another report today is about Tommy Chong (of Cheech & Chong) recently being released from prison after serving 9 months for selling bongs online – not for selling or posessing pot, mind you but for selling glass bottles with rubber hoses attached! And we've all heard the stories of people getting 20 years to as long as life for possession of a couple joints.

In Oklahoma, there is a woman serving 25 years in prison for writing a bad check. Had the woman had a gun and robbed the store and shot the cashier she would have gotten 7 to 10 years.

With criminals like these threatening the well-being and safety of our society (or, more accurately, threatening the bank balances of the rich and powerful) it is no wonder we can't afford to keep minor criminals like child molesters in prison.

Notice the pattern? A crime against the institutions of our society or against the state will get you a long prison sentence. A crime against an individual doesn't count.

From recent experience with the rapist in Colorado, the child stealer and killer in Idaho, and the San Jose, California predator with 36,000 documented molestation incidents, we can expect to hear about this fellow that was released this week having killed a child before summer's out.

A couple sites you should visit from time to time are ThrowAwayTheKey.org and ChildAdvocacy.com - not that it will do much good. It sickens me to live in a society where we will not protect our children and women from the likes of these men.