Guns

Guns scare the fuck out of me. I see the point of them, to an extent. I love game, and hunting is the best way to get it in the US. But I didn't grow up around them. I had a friend in England who had an air rifle, and we would shoot targets on a rock in his back garden, but that was the extent of my exposure to guns until moving to Louisiana at 15.

While there, a friend of my brother's waved his mother's .45 (I think it was) around in our faces to show off one day. It wasn't until later that the incident really worried me, because that's when I found out that statistically, that's how most of the kids killed by guns die.

And the idea of becoming a statistic sickens me. I have goals, and plans, and stories to write and experiences to. . .experience, and I don't want some little twat to take that all away from me.

I'm not saying that guns need to be banned. That's not going to solve anything. But in the light of the recent horrific events in Colorado, I feel like both sides of the argument are missing the point. On the one side, you've got the people who are pro gun, who are saying that if someone had been armed in the threatre, then the loss of life wouldn't have been as high. The trouble with that argument is that Colorado has some pretty liberal (in the sense of lax, not in the sense of what conservatives think liberals want) gun laws. There was nothing to prevent any one of the people watching the movie from taking a gun with them, and unless you're going to make it compulsory to carry a gun, there's no way to make sure an innocent bystander will be armed.

On the other side, you've got people complaining about the root causes of gun violence in this country being poverty and income inequality, which is why the US has a higher level of gun violence than any other western society. Now, I agree with this to an extent, but if you think about the mass murders in this country, they don't have anything to do with that. Columbine, Virginia Tech, Fort Hood, and now Aurora, none of the gunmen have been from impoverished backgrounds.

The problem is, no one is willing to have an open conversation about guns in this country. If you are pro gun, understand me when I say I DO NOT want to take away your right to bear arms. I just want there to be some system in place to keep a bit better track of who has what. And if you're anti gun, understand that you'll never get rid of guns in this country, and you shouldn't have to if people are willing to be responsible and sensible about owning the damned things.

K, rant over. But one last statement. Part of civilization is being able to have a civil conversation about things that affect all of us. Let's start trying that again.

Debates.

Ah, politics. I haven't written about it for quote a while. But this is probably a good week for it, what with some of the things going on in the news, and things going on in my life. Political things, because I'm not ready to write about the other bollocks yet. First, the debate between Sharron Angle and Harry Reid a couple nights ago. Now, I've never pretended to be impartial. I'm not. I think Sharron Angle would be as big a mistake as Sarah Palin. Having said that, the debate was boring. Both of them trotted out the same points I've heard before. I read an article claiming that their debate could decide the election here in Nevada cos its so close. I walked away thinking that nothing was decided. She dodged questions, made the same false claims she's already made in attack ads. But I heard from people I work with that she destroyed him. she had him like a rabbit in headlights. He was flustered and unable to answer. She answered all the questions well. She was a freight train.

I think we must have been watching different debates, cos that wasn't what I saw. And when I said I thought that he have the better answers, it's because I'm biased. well, yes, I am biased. But if I had my way, I'd be able to vote for a real progressive, instead of someone who has done too much to appease an obstructionist minority in the past couple years. Politics should have some element of bipartisanship, but not when you bend over backwards to work with someone, and they continue to trip you. Anyway.

The point is, I can admit that I'm biased. But when I call out someone else, someone who is of a, shall we say, Libertarian streak, and say that they have some sort of bias, they look at me like I just called them a rapist or something. People don't seem to understand that objectivity in politics has become almost as rare as honesty these days. And if I call someone out for bias, then I'm just being a liberal elitist, whereas they're being an objective observer if they do the same to me.

My boss doesn't do this. He has a hell of a time, because most of us that work under him are liberal leaning, pro-Democrat, and he's much more conservative. We give him grief about it all the time, ask him if he wants to go to see Harry Reid give a speech, or if he watched the Daily Show last night, and so on. He takes it all with a grumble. But after the Angle/Reid debate, he actually had the same conclusions that I did. He didn't see it as anyone beating the other person, and he thought they were both rehashing old points. His ability to see the same debate as I did, rather than the debate he wanted based on his political leanings, gives me hope that maybe the divide in this country can be overcome. Hope, but I'm not holding my breath.

The other fun bit of politics was that I got to see Bill Clinton speak last week. If you get a chance, go see him talk. I'd have rather it not been a rally for Reid, because I'd have like to hear him give a real speech rather than something directed at a bunch of hardcore Democrats, but he's a great speaker. That's how politicians should be able to present themselves and their ideas. Whether you like the guy or not, go see him speak. And if you don't like him, why not? Cos he got head? Why do you give a shit. It's got nothing to do with that, and everything to do with the fact you don't like his policies. Attack someone for their policies, debate them based on their policies, and here's a novel idea. . .talk about their actual policies, rather than some made up crap that when you're given a chance to prove your attack in a debate, you can actually prove instead of commenting that you'd love to have the chance to prove it, and then completely failing to do so. Yes, that was a jab at Sharron Angle.

Well, that's politics for now. I'll probably be back to the woe is me bollocks next blog, because October's been a very strange month. I'll be glad to move on from it, to tell the truth. But that's for another time.

Mappage.

Today, I bought my first Nautical Chart. Actually, I bought it a couple of days ago online, but it arrived today. It's of the Oregon Coast, from Yaquina (oh, those crazy Oregon names) Head to Columbia River. The measurements are in fathoms, degrees, minutes and seconds, and if I hadn't run out of pins I'd have put it up on my bedroom wall tonight.

It's much more fun to look at the chart than read the news online. More bullshit from politicians. The Republicans want to cut the deficit and taxes. The Democrats want to cut taxes for some, but don't want to vote on it because they're already winning. Christine O'Donnell wants people to stop masturbating (from now on, if I say I'm going home to disappoint O'Donnell, you know what I'm saying. Yeah you do.) Don't Ask Don't tell isn't being repealed. Lindsay Lohan's in jail. Blockbuster filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Whereas when I look at the chart, with its underwater pipelines marked, and low tide levels shown, and names of places I know almost scribbled on as an afterthought (after all, they're on land, and who cares about the land?), I can forget about most of the crap that's being dealt to us by the people we elected, and the people we pay to report on the people we elected.

I've been having a really productive month so far. I talked about motivation last post, and again it's pretty much all I want to talk about now. Yes, I'm quite political, and I talk about it, but I'm just not all that fond of writing about it at the moment. I want to write Book II in the trilogy, and find out how Brokes and the rest of them are going to get to where I'm sending them. I want to write the screenplay for Taras, and find out if Jake and Brett are going to be friends at the end of everything I'm putting them through. I've got ideas for short stories, and different genres to dabble in. I don't want to write about the Democrats inability to organize their party, and I don't want to write about the Republicans ability to organize their party around no platform. It just pisses me off, and there's enough going on to piss me off without putting that into my writing as well. Will I write about politics again? Probably, it's too fascinatingly frustrating for me to stay away from, but for now I need to work on things for myself. Gods know that the bloody politicians aren't working on things for me.

So if all the crap is getting you down, do what I've done. Find something you like. Focus on that, instead of the ratings battles, or the career politicians. Keep a picture of it on your desktop, or bedroom wall, or office cubicle partition. I've got my boat, and now I've got a nautical map to imagine plotting a course across.

Just got to learn to read the bloody thing properly. And plot a course. . .

Stars

I've always been fascinated by the stars. I remember trying to learn some of the constellations when I was younger, and only got as far as the plough (the big dipper to you in the US) and Orion. I can usually find the North Star, and sometimes the Pleiades, but that's about it. IF pressed, I'll give any number of excuses, from I didn't have a telescope while growing up, to I moved to the US and the star patterns are different here, as to why I don't know more constellations. That's actually almost a valid excuse. The North Star, living in Vegas, is much closer to the horizon than it is in England. Everything shifts as you move further north or south.

But somewhere along the way, I stopped paying attention to the stars. I took them for granted. The bastards were always there, hanging in the night sky above me, so I didn't have to think about them much. I lost sight of them. I still appreciated them when I remembered to look up. I spent most of my time looking out, staying at my level. I lived in cities, on cruise ships, where ll the bright lights are within a couple degrees. I didn't have to crane my head back to look at different worlds, I could see them behind the twinkling in the distance when I looked out over the Willamette river, or on a different deck drifting above the inky black ocean, or as part of a cluster in the newest, shiniest, most-advertised hotel Vegas has to offer. Street, room, head, night lights became my stars, and I looked to them.

Well, fuck that. I miss looking up. I'm done looking at a hotel tower, room lights giving a poor impression of a close-up night sky. Having lived in Vegas for six years, I think I've come to know what to expect from the stories behind the lights, and not much of interests me any more. We've become a culture of instant gratification, of misplaced self-importance, and that's what each and and every one of those lights has become. When our VIPs have become people with handles rather than names, with no discernible skills other than making the rest of us worship/hate/envy/mimic/mock them, then what is the point in looking up at a building and wondering what the stories are behind the lights? They're all the same. It's a bunch of people who saw The Hangover, or Swingers, or any one of a thousand movies or shows about Las Vegas, and decided that they could reproduce that when they came here.

I don't want to spend my time looking at lights, and wondering the stories behind them, when I can give a pretty good guess about them. I want to have no chance to guess. I want the people behind the lights to be original, have dreams and aspirations and stories and pasts that I cannot begin to guess at. I'm done with clones, with media-inspired plebes. I want to be able to look at the lights of a city or cruise ship or collection of humanity and find intelligent life, rather than having to turn my gaze skywards and hope that somewhere out there it exists.

Because we're doing a damned good job of killing it down here. We need new role-models, new leaders, and new selves. We need to stop using other people's drama as entertainment, and go out there and let the world entertain us. If you stop to think for a moment, the stars up above have a much better sparkle than the ones we fixate on down here.

labels

There are so many labels that we're given throughout our lives, by our friends, our enemies, by ourselves. Even society has jumped on the label-assigning bandwagon, and with much more gusto than a bunch of eight-year-olds calling a kid with his first pair of glasses 'four eyes.' More gusto, but with about as much feeling. And with the same end result. You remember the kids back in school, who were always the ones to come up with the nicknames for everyone? They haven't stopped, they're just pundits and pollsters and politicians these days. And journalists.

Watching the healthcare debate unfold, as a self-labelled socialist, I've had incredibly mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, this country HAS to do something about the status quo. On the other hand, what's happened isn't what should have been done. I'm in the percentage who don't agree with the bill, but before you take that and run with it as me being against the bill, I'm against it because of the evisceration that it suffered at the hands of the GOP. I don't think it was 'liberal,' or 'progressive' enough.

But that's a blog for another day. Labels. The healthcare bill has been given these labels; 'progressive,' 'liberal,' 'socialist,' 'communist,' and possibly my personal favourite, 'apocalyptic.' They should have run with the last one, because that's the secret to winning anything these days in the media. Be the one to give the label first. For example, in the debate about abortion those who believe that abortion should be completely outlawed won an amazing coup by labelling themselves as 'pro-life.' That almost precludes any debate about the issue, doesn't it? How can anyone be against 'pro-life?' Tho other side weren't left with much, even though throughout the rest of the world it's actually access to and regulation of abortions that decreases the number of them (Link 1).

The Right has a habit of getting the good labels first. Whether they're labelling themselves or their opponents, they've done pretty well of it up until now. They called people unpatriotic when they protested against Bush, or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it's much harder to argue against an accusation than beat it in the first place. They started calling Obama and the current administration as a whole Socialist, still a dirty word in this country. If they'd have left it at that, I think they'd be doing much better than they are right now.

But the problem is, they continued to label once all the good ones were used. Yes, I have to use the label 'pro-choice,' I dare not call myself pro-life, even though I am completely in favour of life for everyone even past the point of birth. But I'll begrudgingly accept that label, which is much better than being called a tea-bagger, because all of us filthy progressives know what that meant before it was co-opted by a group of angry people who mistake opinion for fact and bullshit for news. Incidentally I've been called tea-bagger for years because I'm British. At least that's stopped with the tea parties.

And labelling didn't stop with themselves. They've pulled out every label they can possibly think of to denigrate 'the other side.' Fascist, Communist, Nazi, the three politically evil words from the past seventy years have all come out. The problem with these words as labels is that they don't fit even a little bit. They're too recent and too evil. There's no implication there, in the way that pro-life implies the other side is anti-life. Pro-life is clever. Fascist? too overt, although ironically enough check out this list and see how many of these became part of our way of life under the Bush administration (Link 2).

So. I label myself a progressive. A guy I work with heard me say that, and tried to tell me that I'm not a progressive, I'm as conservative as he is. I wouldn't say that's true, and I won't deny that I have a(n incredibly deeply buried) conservative streak, but I still stand by my salf labellation. I am a progressive, because I want progress to be made. I want stem cells to be used to expand our understanding of how we work and how to fix us (I'm still planning on living forever). I want us to progress into space, explore the universe, because I'm sure out there there's another planet just begging us to roll in and show it how to be a better place for us all. I want society to progress, because it's come quite a way but we haven't progressed enough. We never really progressed out of the middle ages with our financial systems, because a disproportionate distribution of wealth was how the landowners and lords kept control over the freedmen and serfs. Now, we're the peasants and the banking industries are the lords.

But again, that's another blog. We need to treat the labels that are being hurled about with the appropriate reactions. If you get called socialist, then take that as you agree with your tax money being used to better the country you live in by providing police, fire, health, and education services. If you're called a progressive, then you're looking and striving for a better future, free of the favourtism and distrust that exists in our society right now. You're not looking for the destruction of America, you're looking for the betterment of it. And to that end, that's why I'm trying to focus on positives rather than negatives. I think everyone should give that a go, and maybe we'll just find a way to make everything work.

Link 1:   http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/12/AR2010031202287.html

Link 2: http://www.rense.com/general37/char.htm

merge

One of the worst things about driving in Las Vegas is the inability most people seem to have with merging. Why this should be, I don't know, but I'm beginning to think if people got the hang of it there wouldn't be so many traffic flow problems on the freeways. The thing I love the most is when people slow down before joining fast-flowing traffic. That's not the point of an on-ramp, people. You're supposed to get up to speed, generally 65 mph (although the always-present construction zones play merry hell with that limit). Instead people slow down, start to get nervous, so when they do actually join the traffic flow they cause it to slow a bit. When this happens several times over a couple of miles, it has a knock on effect and then you're moving as slow as molasses in January.

But then, in defense of these timid drivers, the people they're trying to merge with are generally bastards. They won't necessarily let you in when you signal because that would mean they'd drop back one spot and <gasp> get to where they're going a second or two later than they deserve. The horror! How dare they be a few seconds later than they would have been? How dare they have to drive with an ounce of common decency? I have no problems speeding up and pulling in in front of them if they're trying to block my attempts to merge.

And you know what struck me about that? No, not another car. Driving in Las Vegas is very similar to politics in this country. Everyone's trying to get to their destination, and unfortunately you have to share the road with other people. Sometimes you have to merge, take another road, or if construction's really bad and there's absolutely no traffic flow, you have to find another route. And that's not happening right now. There seems to be an inability from politicians to merge with one another. There's no yield, no give way. If they don't make it through the traffic light then they'll block the intersection. And that's not how a country should be run. It shouldn't be-- it CAN'T be-- my way or the high way, and that's what it seems to be like right now. The traffic is jammed, it's not moving because politicians are so absorbed with their own destination that they don't want to let anyone else merge.

It seems as soon as a politician gets in to office, the first thing they think about it their re-election chance. If they got in to office thanks to a majority of votes from a certain demographic, then they'll do anything to not piss that demographic off. Keeping your elected position is now half the job of being a politician, in the same way that keeping your job is half of having a job. But I keep my job by running shows to the best of my ability, and not doing a completely crap job. They keep their jobs by talking about what they're going to do, and how much the other candidates would suck. If I went around talking about the cues I was going to run, or the contactors I was going to replace instead of doing it, I wouldn't have a job. And while I might disagree with the way some things are done, and people might not like the way I do things, we still all work together to do two shows a night, five nights a week.

Part of being a society is a bit of give and take. Not all give and take-- this may come as a bit of a shock, but I like a decent argument. But when we have political parties fighting tooth and nail against every suggestion given by the opposition, the only thing that's going to do is bugger everyone. If people don't learn to merge then we're going to end up with one hell of an almighty pile-up, and then no one's going to get anywhere cos the road is blocked, and there's a bunch of rubberneckers looking on. And if we can't learn to merge while doing something as everyday and interactive with other people as driving, then what hope do we have of our elected officials leaning to work together?

And use your bloody turn signal. I can't let you merge if I don't know you want to. Go on, move your finger that one inch. . .

Coming Out

That's it. I'm coming out of the closet. I can't live a lie any more. Are you ready? I'm a socialist.

I know some of you had the feeling that I might be, there was something a little 'off' with me, something not acceptable in society. But damn it feels good to get it out and finally confess. It's liberating.

Can someone explain to me why Socialism is such a bad, evil thing? Anyone? I understand why it's hated- the misinformation and propaganda campaigns of the McCarthy/Cold War Era are to blame for that. Equate Socialism with Marxism and Communism and all of a sudden you get people afraid of something they don't even know about. You do know that there is a form of Socialism that exists in this country, right? It's how we have the  Fire Departments that come to your house when it's on fire and do their best to save your possessions, or the Police Department that sit on the highway and pull you over for going too fast. It's how the US has a Military.

I'm a socialist because I don't believe that the Fire Department should be run for profit. If my house is on fire and a big truck full of people trained to put out fires piles out, I don't want to have to run back in the burning building to find a credit card or cheque book before they put out the fire. In fact, read about Marcus Licinius Crassus, a Roman General and Politician. He's ranked as one of the top ten richest historical figures, and part of his wealth was gained by taking advantage of people whose houses were on fire. He'd show up to a burning building, buy it very cheaply, then call up to 500 clients who could put the fire out very quickly. In theory, if we were to have a for-profit fire department we'd pay them based on what, number of fires put out? Anyone see a problem with that?

That's one of the reasons why an unchecked, purely for profit health care system is a bad thing. If you go to the doctor and he actully cures you-- well, he only gets paid for that one visit. But if he just makes you feel better for a certain amount of time and then you have to go back, well then you get billed for as long as the visits keep happening. If you take away the profit motivation then maybe you'll be treated the best way possible, not the best way possible for Business.

Also, Health Care will never be subject to true free market supply and demand for the same reason oil is not really part of the free market. Those are things we can't do without. If I can't fill my car up I can't get to and from work (I can't bike 12 miles in 110 degree weather for two months out of the year, sorry). If I need surgery, I need surgery. I can't get it from someone else because of the way the insurance industry is structured. That's not free market competition, and as such needs some sort of oversight to make sure we, the people, are not taken advantage of and thoroughly reamed in the interest of profit margins and shareholders.

At the end of the day I think I'd much rather live in a Socialist State than in a Corporatism, which is what we live in these days. Politics is all about money- you need it to get elected, you need it to stay elected- it's got very little to do with the will of the people because the will of the people can be bought. When you're able to sink millions of dollars into advertising campaigns and spreading lies (Death Panels? Seriously?), when you lie to the very people who elected you and get them to support a plan that's actually detrimental to them because of those lies, well we don't have Democracy any more.

So call me a Communist if you want. I don't mind, because you're wrong. Call me all the bad names you can think of- Liberal, Commie, Marxist, Fascist, Nazi, whatever you want. Just by calling me those things, doesn't mean that I am a brown shirt wearing, black shirt wearing, red shirt wearing enemy of the state. I'm for the state. I'm socialist!

Incidentally, see why Fascist equals Nazi equals Communist? The shirts clash. Unless you want to wear a rainbow shirt, and that makes you gay. At least nowadays that's more acceptable than being Socialist.