R. Scott McCoy's Blog, page 2

Poor Shaming

Bashing the poor has become a popular pastime in the last few years. This surprises and saddens me.
For the purpose of full disclosure, I’m neither proud nor ashamed of my past. It happened and I’ve moved on, but my experiences are relevant to this discussion. Much more relevant than the most of the talking heads on the Fox News network, since they are from at least middle class backgrounds and most were even better off than that. The further complicate matters, the concept of what being poor means seems to be frozen in time and that time seems to be the fifties.
While my parents were married, we lived on a small piece of land in the country in northern Minnesota. While my dad had a good job as an electrician for a natural gas pipeline, he couldn’t afford to build even a modest house on the land, so they poured a cement slab and bought a singlewide trailer. Later, we were able to upgrade to a doublewide trailer. When I was eleven, my parents divorced and my sister and I chose to live with my mother. It was only when we acquired a new single wide trailer and had to move to a trailer court that I realized that not only had we been poor before, but we had just slipped even further down the line. For the majority of the next seven years, we hovered below the government-defined poverty line for the years 1978-1984. Just as a reminder, the country was in a serious recession and gas shortage just to spice things ups. Being poor sucks regardless of how the economy is doing, but it sucks worse during a recession.
The Right has elevated Reagan to near deity status, yet Reagan did not call poor people leaches, or lazy. He didn’t poor shame. He did start a few programs to help the poor to include giving away cheese and butter on a monthly basis. I can still remember the taste of that cheese that came in 10-pound blocks. We occasionally ran short of food at the end of the month and I do know what it means to be hungry, and I will always be grateful for that cheese.
When my mom realized just how bad it was going to be, it was the summer before my twelfth birthday. She came to my sister and I and asked us if we thought she should sign up for welfare and food stamps. She warned us that if we didn’t we would be in for some hard times. I thought about it very seriously and said that as long as I could find some kind of job, I didn’t want to go on welfare. She agreed and decided not to go on the dole. I started working part time at age twelve. It was illegal and the money was under the table, but I worked and we got by, but we did sign up for free school lunches.
While Reagan didn’t feel the need to poor shame, the schools decided to differentiate the color of the meal tickets. They had devised the meal ticket system to speed up the line by not wanting to take cash. Instead, family bought the tickets and the staff punched it ten times and then you bought a new one. The regular tickets were blue, but the free meal program tickets were pink. I think the school system was afraid that we would try to sell the meal tickets so we could by drugs and alcohol.
There was a recent article published on the Heritage Foundation website, authored by Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield, both of whom work for The Heritage Foundation and are allegedly experts on poverty, while seemingly never having experienced it. For those of you that don’t know, The Heritage Foundation is a right wing think tank that provides position papers and attempt to shape policy. There are both left and right wing think tanks. I am highly suspect of any position put forth from think tanks on either side.
I had a few different jobs while I was in the Army. One of them I had in the Reserve was Psychological Operations. Our job was to develop and deploy propaganda among other things, and these “think tanks” are propaganda machines.
Also for those that don’t know me, I have always been fiscally conservative and socially liberal, but my meter does fall slightly right from center. I’m strong on defense but not a saber rattler and think we need to rely on our military less than we have since 9/11. I prefer smaller government and less bureaucracy but I do believe in a social safety net. That may sound like a natural conflict, but I think it can be done. I also believe in programs that assist people in improving their financial situation and most of all, making sure that all children, regardless of what class they are born into, are given the same opportunities and in some case that takes level setting. We need to quit looking at fellow Americans as adversaries and start looking at start focusing on making our entire nation strong. The main thesis of the article that you can read here, is that poor people have a lot of stuff that most ignorant, better off people think are luxuries, and that poor people today are far better off than poor people from the 1950’s and currently the US definition of “poor” is much different that the rest of the worlds definition. There are a lot of graphs, but the first one lists all of the amenities that are considered luxuries and it starts with a refrigerator. Fox news staff were uniformly shocked that 99.9% of the unwashed masses of poor owned a refrigerator. If you’re one of the middle and upper class that visualizes Oliver Twist asking for more porridge or perhaps Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp character, you are deluded. Poor does not mean homeless.
I will agree that a poor person in the US is better off than a poor person in Somalia. I’ll also buy into the idea that the poor in 2014 are better off than the poor of the Great Depression. But while I agree that things have got better over time, poor is still poor and the measuring stick they are using in this article is ignorant.
As an example, let’s go back to the shock over refrigerator ownership. In 1978, when my family was below the poverty level, which was approximately $7,000 a year, we were able to secure a loan for a single wide trailer and pay trailer park lot monthly rental. In 1978, all trailers came with a fridge, a stove and a washer and dryer. There were times when we didn’t have anything to put into the fridge or cook on the stove, but we had them. Most apartments, even in poor neighborhoods have similar appliances. When rich people hear that, they are aghast, likely because they envision their $10,000 plus stainless steel walk in refrigerator with built in water, ice and wine dispensers. What most regular people have is in fact a classic plastic fridge that retails (when not on sale) for about $350. A used fridge can go for $50. Even back in 1978, if for some reason our single wide trailer didn’t come with a fridge, we could have picked up a used one back then for $25 dollars, and boy did we feel like we were rolling in cash because we didn’t have to salt our pork or cut a block of ice from the lake to keep our free government cheese and butter from spoiling. People in Somalia may see it as a luxury, but they don’t have access to thrift shops and yard sales where cast off items from upper classes like fridges are common and don’t retain their retail value, but do continue to work for many years.
Anyone that doesn’t know that is so disconnected from the average American let alone poor Americans that they have more in common with warlords in Somalia than their fellow citizens. The current poverty line for a four-person family is $24,000 dollars a year. A lot of other items on the list of luxuries I’ve already covered as being included when you buy a trailer or you can pick up for very little cash. The energy usage survey bureau didn’t ask if they had all new appliances, they just measured the fact that they were using energy. Number five on this luxury list is air conditioning. Back in 1978, AC was not included as standard equipment in trailers, but it is today, and again, the wealthy visualize central air and the entire dwelling at a cool 68 degrees, while the reality for most is a used window unit that helps but is just not the same. Cellular phones and cable television are in the top twenty and once again we have issues with scale. Fox showed one person that had an iPhone, but the energy usage survey asked if they had a phone. You can get a cheap phone included with a two-year contract for less than $40 a month. It’s a phone the wealthy wouldn’t be caught dead using in public so they can’t envision anything else when they hear cell phone. Also, the energy usage survey doesn’t say that all 4 family members have them, though that is what the poor shamers are assuming. An old school land line phone service cost about the same as a cheap cell, and most poor people no longer have them, especially if they need to move around for work, but a home phone is not listed as a luxury item. It would be seen even by the wealthy as a necessity, just like having a roof over their head is not listed as a luxury, but it is being called out that way due to a complete lack of understanding of how the poor live day by day. 
The only item that shocked me on the list, as something that we didn’t have and I still don’t have, was a Jacuzzi. Allegedly, 0.6% of poverty level families had one. They must live in California and once again, there is no indication that they bought it new. I did a quick Craigslist search and found one in my area for $75 dollars in good condition needing a new circuit board. With the repair, I’ve got clean 6 person Jacuzzi for $150. I may finally fulfill this dream, but even if I made only $24,000 a year, I could swing $150 for a Jacuzzi if that was really important to me.
The other conditions that don’t show up in this type of survey are how people that make near or below the poverty level survive. People in rural America do a lot of hunting, fishing and even trapping to save money. When I worked for under the table wages as a minor, I worked in a restaurant and got at least one complimentary meal each shift. It wasn’t a lot, but even at 20 hours a week, that $3 dollars an hour went a log way toward making ends meet. It meant I went hungry less and didn’t have to make shoes out of old tires.
Later in the article they make a lot of hay about people not starving to death. These numbers are being used as an excuse to cut the food stamp and free lunch programs and the people making those arguments are completely missing the fact that these poor people are not starving to death because…wait for it…they have FOOD STAMPS AND FREE LUNCH PROGRAMS!! How dare the poor not be starving to death! These bastards are trying to pull a fast one over on the rest of us. They aren’t even sweating their asses off in rat infested hovels. Instead, they are only mildly perspiring in rat infested hovels thanks to that used window AC unit. Sheer luxury! And they’re laughing their way to the food banks, those TV watching, clothes washing, cell phone owning bastards! It’s all a scam!!
No, it’s not a scam. Are there are some people manipulating the system and benefiting unfairly? Yes, and they’re called criminals. Feel free to find and punish them. I was considered poor for the first twenty-three years of my life, including the four I spent in the army. I broke above the poverty level in 1990 and I’ve never looked back. Are there people that are generationally still trapped in poverty? Yes there are, but I’ve been closer to it than these experts, and I never met anyone that was happy about it or worked at staying poor just to screw over the rest of the “hard working tax payers”. If you listen to this crap on TV and believe it, then it’s time you started thinking for yourselves and quit listening to talking head idiots that are exaggerating and misquoting flawed data to further the agenda of their chosen political party, or worse, spreading bullshit just for the sake of ratings. It’s time to wake the fuck up and think for your selves, because even if there were a huge conspiracy to live off the teat of hard working taxpayers, cutting those peoples benefits will hurt their children more than it hurts them.
Unless you’ve grown up poor, it’s hard to understand the challenges associated. I’ve also seen a lot of articles lately about white privilege. While I don’t disagree with the reality of white privilege, there are some false assumptions. The biggest is that poor white people can benefit from this privilege. America is not supposed to have a class system and if you’re middle class or higher and a decent person, you may not have any negative feelings for people in the lower income brackets, but if you’re honest with yourself, you likely have deeply embedded biases and prejudices.
I don’t share details of my personal life with everyone I meet. I’m not shamed or proud of it, it simply is. When the topic does come up, there is a very common response to finding out I was poor white trailer trash. Few say that out loud, but when you read earlier that I spent the early years of my life living in a trailer, what did the voice inside your head whisper to you? When I talked about getting free cheese and butter and free lunches, what images popped into your head?
Like the Irish at the end of the19th and beginning of the 20thcentury, once they lost their accent and if they changed their name, they were just one more white European. They could blend in with people that still hated the Irish and were able to hide their ancestry if they so chose. No one that looks at me today either at home or at work could tell what my economic background was, so I can now blend and take full advantage of white privilege. The difficult part for the poor, regardless of race, is escaping. Even in my northern Minnesota town, which was as far from the “hood”as you can get, I grew up around the roughest and most at risk kids. Drugs and crime were prevalent and there was a lot of peer pressure to conform to those behaviors. That pressure came in slightly rougher forms like bullying, which seems less severe in retrospect but at eleven felt very real and scary. The trailer court I live in was called Hillcrest Manor. Not sure why they feel the need to name them that way. I called it the place hope goes to die. Being poor in America regardless of where you live has always and will always feel hopeless. That lack of hope for the future expresses itself in many ways, usually though the use of tobacco and alcohol at a minimum, and often in more extreme way, causing a cycle of failure and frustrations that can’t help but imprint the children living in that environment. When a poor kid ends up in jail or working a manual labor job, no one is surprised. It’s expected, but why? Poor does not equal stupid. Gifted children are born into all economic levels. Opportunity and access do vary a great deal, but even if it was equal, the other factors that the poor deal with including poor nutrition put their gifted children at a disadvantage.
I consider myself extremely fortunate and lucky. I spent years five though eleven in the country and with two wonderful friends. They were brothers and their father was a doctor. We were close in age. The older brother knew when he was six that he would one day be a lawyer. It never occurred to him that he would be unable to achieve his goal. I had no idea what I was going to be and had no idea even then how I would achieve a goal once I had one, but that optimism and that healthy and positive example stuck with me though my formative years. Had I spent those years at Hillcrest Manor, I hate to think where I would be today. The luck of the draw genetically also helped, because despite having a learning disability that effects my ability to learn languages (including higher level math like calculus), I was blessed with a genius IQ. The Army then gave me the missing piece to the puzzle, which was the confidence to believe in myself. The Army also tested me, reinforcing what I would never be good at but allowing me the opportunity to discover areas where I excelled.
I don’t think there is any greater gift a person can get in the early years of their life than to come to grips with what limitations they have and gain the confidence not to focus on those gaps but to develop their strengths. But clearly, I am one of the exceptions. I know of a few others, people that have made it and escaped their past, but as I stated earlier, Hillcrest Manor is not the “hood”. Its gravity was easier to pull away from than other environments where the poor are concentrated and Minnesota is one of the most literate states in the country. My success is not miraculous, just not predictable, and that’s the problem. Our country needs to re-evaluate our priorities and start changing the bias we have that allows most of the country to write off children based on the circumstance they were born into. For strictly selfish reasons in order to compete with the rest of the world, we need to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to achieve as much as they can, or we risk being trapped in this cycle of poor shaming and perpetuating a culture that refuses to change the state that so many people spend time complaining about. Instead of whining about people on food stamps having the nerve to actually own a refrigerator, we need to close the gap between the classes by providing equal primary education, ensuring that all children have a healthy diet and access to positive role models and invest in the future of our country. Telling the poor to “suck it up” and to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” is not a strategy or a solution.
Finally, while I can understand the desire to find some scapegoat group of people to blame all of our woes on, our nations poor are not it. Trying to make them villains only succeeds in making those people look like a giant douchebags.
  

The Energy Debate

The Energy debate is irrevocably intertwined with the global warming debate. I believe this is a mistake because the Energy debate is already a complex and often misunderstood issue. For simplicity sake, the main issue around global warming is the impact on the planet from the introduction of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. First, I will tackle the global warning issue to get it out of the way since it is the easier debate.
Here are some facts.
1.     The earth’s temperatures have fluctuated over time without humans help, sometimes radically due to solar, meteor and volcanic activity. 2.     Since the start of the industrial revolution, humans have dramatically increased the unnatural amount of gases into the atmosphere that do have a proven impact global temperatures. 3.     Some well meaning climatologists lied and falsified data to make the impact look more severe than they could actually prove (see Climategate and the Hockey Stick Scandal), which had the effect of strengthening the position of people who oppose the human impact to global warming argument. 4.     Even if we eliminated all greenhouse gas creation in the United States (not possible but let’s say it is), we have no control over the two most populace nations, China and India, who are likely to mimic the West’s industrial revolution but on a radically larger scale since more people live in this two countries than all the rest of the world.
Many scientists and laymen have said there is not a Global Warming debate. That it is irrefutable. First of all, no scientist worth their salt would say this, but don’t be confused, I am not a “Denier”, so put down your torches and pitchforks. I do not need to be burned as a heretic and I am not stupid because I don’t passionately nod when one of the chosen speak.
My point with the facts isn’t whether or not man-made Global Warming is real or that it will cause harm to humans and other species. I agree that it will, the only question is how fast will it happen. Some scientists got caught lying because they couldn’t find the evidence that they needed to cause the change they wanted at the speed they wanted it. I understand their concerns. If they told us we had to worry about it but we had 50 years to fix the issue, we would ignore it for 50 years. These are smart people and they also know how irresponsible humans are when there is money involved. There really is a large mass of plastic in the ocean that is bigger than Texas. Do we give a shit? No we do not. Are poisoning our planet? Do we give a shit? Only if it impacts our food or our water, and by “our” I mean mine versus yours. If your water catches on fire in West Virgnia due to fracking, but my water is not and I get my gas cheaper, then fuck you. That is the reality of how people view these issues, if they even bother to think about them. If it were otherwise, then no ones water would be catching on fire.
So they make it seem like it’s the end of the world today, and maybe it is. The problem is getting actionable data on such a complex issue. The way they make it sound, it’s already too late, which is self-defeating. But I would argue that while it isn’t too late to change the impact to our planet since it can always get worse, we will not make enough change to the entire planet from the United States.
The most recent data I could find for CO2 emissions was from 2010. China weighed in at 27% of global sources, while the US came in at 17%. A report from 2005 had both China and the US at 16%. That’s an increase for China of 9% over five years while the US inched up by only 1% over the same duration. India has been pretty steady at around 7%. The thing about India is that they are starting later than China, but there is every reason to believe that they will try to rival China not just in population (they will pass China in 2020), but also in quality of living. This will require energy. How many years before India passes the US in CO2 emissions? My bet is it will happen by 2025, even if the US stays at current levels, India will surpass us and China will be closer to 35%. Since it is a percentage of the whole, the US will go down in percentage even if our emissions stay level (and yes I realize that increasing by only 1% while China moved up by 9% means that the US increased it’s emissions more than that 1% implies).
Are you ready to go to war to prevent China and India from burning more coal? If you believe the planet is truly in peril from green house gases, you damned well better, because those two countries are increasing their release of these gases into the environment and will continue to do so even if the US could stop all of our output of the same gases. Unfortunately we share the same planet, so our good behavior will count for nothing. If you live in a coastal city, I would recommend shopping for land in what is commonly referred to as “Flyover Country”. The land is plentiful and cheaper and will not be submerged in eight feet of water within two decades. Either that or follow the Dutch and start building dikes now.
While we can’t control the rest of the world, we can try to address the environmental and economic issue within our territory and we should. The Energy debate is large and needs to be tackled in segments. The two main portions that are always combined into one argument are Transportation and Energy usage for homes and factories. While there is some cross over that must be considered, these are separate and complex issue.
As I mentioned earlier, our dependence on oil is often spoken of in the same breath as solar, as if solar could reduce our dependence on oil. This is not the case. Our dependence on oil is due to our transportation needs and we may never get to a practical solar powered car but currently no one is even suggesting that as an alternative.
Solar usages within the grid are being discussed to offset the use of coal. We don’t import coal from the Middle East.  We have plenty of coal. Likewise, the pipelines and usage of oil sands have nothing to do with the grid and powering your house and factories.
So let’s take on the grid first and come back to transportation.
The reason coal is still being used for 50% of all the power in the US, is that it is the second cheapest fuel. The cheapest fuel is Nuclear. Nuclear does not release any greenhouse gases into the environment, but there is an environment impact to using Nuclear. The fact the most people never hear is that while there will always be some waste, it can be safely stored. The other piece is the very realistic fear of a radioactive release or a plant going “critical” like in the Ukraine or more recently, Japan. The facts are that there are radically safer plant designs that we can’t install because of the anti nuclear lobbies. What we have are plants that were built in the 70’s with 50’s and 60’s technology. We have learned a lot since then and can build a plant that can be completely drained of water and not have it go “critical”.
But people are afraid of Nuclear, so we are trapped with the old unsafe plants. Crazy huh? We can’t just turn them off because we need the power they produce. We can’t shut down them and the coal or we would have to shut down America.
What else can we use? Natural Gas may be a fossil fuel, but it burns clean and new plants do not contribute to Global Warming. Getting the Natural Gas does cause other environmental harm as previously discussed, so it is not perfect, nor will it last forever.
Coal is dirty but cheap and plentiful so that’s why 50% of our plants burn it.
We do have wind turbines and we need to build more, but wind can’t be relied on as what is called “Base load”. Base load means it has to be there all the time or we need to get used to rolling blackouts while we wait for the wind to blow.
We also have some solar plants. The problem with large scale solar is location. I doubt Arizona would agree to make the entire state one large solar farm. We have no idea what impact to the atmosphere, the weather or the planet there would be having so such a large reflective area that by it’s nature leaks additional heat into the surrounding areas, but let’s pretend there would be no harm and Arizona and or Nevada are all for it. Transmitting the power from there to the rest of the United States is possible, but dramatically expensive and also not without environmental impact. Not to mention that energy is only gained during daylight hours. If we had solar only from a central location “where the sun is”, what do we do about our power needs at night? Batteries? Do we assume we only use half the power generated during the day and the rest can be stored in batteries for over night use?
The creation and disposal of batteries causes a huge environmental impact due to the toxicity of the materials involved and we currently don’t have enough raw materials to even create that many solar panels let alone batteries to power the entire country. It’s a fantasy that if ever pursued could possibly crate new and interesting ways to kill us all besides increased temperatures. There is also some bad news for both batteries and solar manufacturing. Precious and rare metals are used in the manufacturing process and while it might sound obvious that rare metals are…rare, when I hear people debate the need for dramatic increase in the use of solar, they fail to consider that it is not even currently possible. It is possible on a smaller scale for now, but we need additional research and development to come up with new designs that don’t rely on rare earth elements, or our quest for solar power will be short lived.
So far that’s about it for the Grid. I realize that the talking heads make it sounds like a slam-dunk simple problem to solve, but I assure you it is not. Does this mean I think it’s hopeless? No, I don’t, but we need to quit allowing all of the special interest groups so much power in this debate and focus on what is best for the largest special interest group, the American people.
What we need is a realistic but aggressive new Energy Policy. As far as the Grid goes, there are two parts, supply and demand. I’ve discussed supply from a fuel perspective but we need to focus on reducing demand.
We are currently building houses the same way we have for the last hundred years, with small exceptions. Yes we have increased the required insulation rating and that is a good step, but houses are by their design, energy hogs that leak. A house can use natural gas for heat, which confuses the issue even further but the biggest impact across the US is electric consumption. We need to start building houses that take advantage of all sources of heating, cooling and electric generation and they need to be mandated. We have working models already that use geothermic (every house no matter where it is located could benefit from this if we just required foundations to be built with geothermic in mind). We’ve always had solar panels, but now we have solar shingles and solar windows. Even if solar generation by using windows isn’t practical on a large scale, we can certainly reduce the amount of heat windows produce in the summer which then require AC to cool off and take advantage of the limited sun we get in the winter to aid heating.
We also have the ability to put small but effective wind turbines on property where it makes sense. Making sense means having more than ¼ city lot and being in a part of the country where the amount of wind justified the cost of building the turbine.
There are many examples of homes that make more energy that they use and sell back to utilities. If this design were mandated over a reasonable time, say ten years, then all new construction and any exterior remodels could require the new design. Many states already reimburse people who add these features post construction, but the cost is dramatically reduced when it is factored into the original construction. We need to increase the Federal incentives for people to retrofit their homes to reduce demand.
Next, let’s discuss Transportation.
We do have an addiction to oil, but there is no 12-step program. Trucks and SUVs rarely get better than 25 MPG on the highway and do worse in the city, yet despite constant complaints about high gas prices in the US (yes I realize we get it cheap compared to everywhere else it the world), the number of trucks and SUVs seems to be increasing. Sure there are a few token hybrids out there and some very stingy diesel options as well, but most of the vehicles still drink regular gasoline.
Transportation is responsible for 28% of the greenhouse gases introduced into the atmosphere in the US. As I mentioned before, even if we got this number to zero, we have no control over the rest of the world. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, but it can’t be our only reason. The larger reason is that we are too dependent on foreign oil, both economically and strategically. If it is possible to come up with an alternate fuel source for vehicles that we can create domestically, we will be better off while polluting the planet less.
Many of these challenges are the same as the manufacturing of batteries and solar. We simply don’t have the raw materials to build any of the most viable alternatives, which are hybrid and electric vehicles. Additionally, I will remind you if the poisons that are released into the environment during the manufacturing process and disposal for these technologies. I’m sure some of you are thinking about Ethanol from biomass like corn and other sources. Instead of a lengthy debate on the topic, let me ask you one question. If Ethanol were such a viable option, why does the government heavily subsidize it so heavily? And why, if it is such a great option do you see few gas stations in the US that offer it beyond Minnesota and Iowa?
Again, research and development into alternative fuel sources needs to be explored, but the scope for such research needs to be restricted in order to ensure that whatever solution is proposed is workable with readily available materials, minimal environmental impact and that it not require government subsidies to make it financially viable. In the meantime, we need to ramp up MGP levels to ensure that we need less fuel to cover the same distances and make sure oil company special interests don’t retard the aggressive approach we need to become oil free, which is possible within the next twenty years.
To Summarize:
1.     The doom and gloom tactics by Global Warming groups is not only counterproductive but also irrelevant since the only people listening are in the US. It’s not that China and India are necessarily Global Warning deniers as much as they just don’t give a shit. They will drive their country forward to reach their rightful place as world powers and the easiest and cheapest fuels for that transformation are fossil fuels. 2.     The Energy debate is currently scoped wrong and includes arguments for supply and demand that cross-streams between electrical production for home and industrial usage and transportation. If you ever hear someone start by bemoaning our dependence on oil and finish their sentence by looking up at the sun and claiming solar power will fix all our energy problems, kick them in the junk. 3.     We need a new Energy Policy that focuses more on reducing demand and less on converting the supply chain. Yes we need to attempt to make coal emissions cleaner, but the best way to reduce coal emissions is to reduce the demand for electricity in the first place by making homes energy neutral and if possible energy negative. This will require different solutions for different climactic regions. Solar in Arizona will generate more electricity that it does in Minnesota, but the cooling needs are far greater, so we are not just talking about alternative generation at the house level, but also about the design of the homes themselves. 4.     We need to invest in all forms of alternative energy, but we need the most focus on usable models for homes and alternatives for transportation. Passenger cars are the highest CO2 contributor with SUVs as second only because there are many more passenger cars. We also can’t ignore the fact that most material is shipped across the US by long haul trucks that burn diesel. We should consider not just more development of public transportation within cities, but intercontinental transportation by rail, preferably powered off the grid and not by diesel or gas.5.     People that currently live on the coasts should invest in land throughout the Midwest. I hear there are a lot of houses available in Detroit.

Pay Inequity?? In 2014??

If it wasn’t for the thin, high definition TV, I’d be convinced I traveled back in time. News stories about fair pay for women?? Women claiming that pay inequity is good for all women because it’s easier to catch a man if you make less? What is going on here? And why are there politicians coming out with these opinions in 2014? Do the Republicans think that a return to the mythical 50’s is the right direction for this country?
For the sake of full disclosure, I will admit that my opinions have changed over the years. I tell myself that this is mostly due to wisdom, but the reality is that I’ve changed. Some of the change has been for the better and some for the worse, but I’ve changed. My opinion on this topic hasn’t changed. In the 70’s and 80’s in northern Minnesota (that was still socially trapped in the 50’s and 60’s but without the whole free love thing), pay inequality was not a big issue because women weren’t allowed to have the same jobs as men. Let that sink in. 
I knew my mom was having a rough time getting work, but when I worked with her in the same resort, she made more than me. Of course I was a fifteen-year-old bus boy, but my point is that this issue never came up in conversation or through my observation.
My next real job experience was the Army. I was stationed here and there for training and did some Temporary Duty (TDY) in a few other places, but spent most of my time on the East coast. I heard about the issue for the first time out there, where the 80’s were actually the 80’s. It made no sense to me. In the Army, a private got a private’s pay. Gender played no role. We didn’t have a lot of women in uniform, maybe twenty five percent, but I saw female officers and senior NCO’s and they all got paid the exact same as their male counterparts. I was aware that there was a glass ceiling issue for female officers in the General ranks, but that seemed so far away from my reality that I had a hard time caring. Few of anyone except West Point ring knockers made General. Most hit the ceiling at Major or Lieutenant Colonel, regardless of gender. But I digress. My point is that there may have been a lot of inequality or lack of promotion in the Army, but I didn’t see it and my simplistic view was that all E-5 Sergeants with 4 years of service made the exact same thing.
The equality in pay was a cause for my frustration on more than one occasion. As a private in training, I had occasional opportunities to interact with my female equivalents. During this fraternization, I was constantly expected to buy the ladies drinks. The first couple of times, I did so without thought, but then it occurred to me that they were all making exactly the same amount of money I was. I thought about protesting. Simply refusing to be taken advantage of in such an obvious and unfair way. I really did. The problem is that I was under 22 and my primary brain did not get the final vote.
I remember the issue heating up for awhile, and then it seemed to disappear from news coverage. I moved from the Army to hourly jobs while going to college and again, I saw men and women making the exact same hourly rate. After graduating from college, I switched from an hourly job to my first salaried career in the female dominated Long Term Care industry. I was the lowest paid Director on staff by a serious margin. The Administrator was a woman. She was wicked smart, strong and a highly effective leader and made good money.
Then I traveled back in time to a company called NSP. When I got there, most of the power plants were still trapped in the 70’s. It was and still is a heavily male dominated company. There weren’t just Snap On tool calendars on the walls; there were Playboy and Penthouse magazines in the break rooms. That was all cleaned up by 2001, but there were still few opportunities for women. It did occur. The Head of Shared Services is and was one of my favorite people, and she was a tough VP, but she was an exception. I had no way of knowing if women that were in the same jobs as men got paid less or not. I made sure that in my department, were possible, there weren’t any pay inequities. Assuming two people had the same position description and had the same experience, they were hired in at the same pay. Same with raises, people that performed got higher raises.
Clearly, that is not the way most of the country handles their business, or we wouldn’t have the ridiculous statistics that still has women in identical roles making only 77 percent of their male counterparts. It’s the year 2014 and I don’t think that number has significantly changed since I first hear it back in the 1980’s. There’s a term for that. I believe it’s BULLSHIT!
One of the arguments I’ve recently heard is that some men are threatened by women that make equal to or more money than them. This is part of the argument being put forward by some women. That’s not a typo. Women are making this argument.
I’m a Minnesotan and we are not known for bragging. Unlike most of the bullshit stereotypes shown first in the movie Fargo and now the TV series Fargo, that one is accurate. By the way, you can love Fargo, it’s ok, but if you start saying “yaaaa” to me at a convention, I’m going to punch you in the throat.  If you know me, you know that I don’t beat my chest a lot and don’t really care for people that do. I’m going to break that trend and be hypocritical for the sake of proving a point.
I am claiming here and now that my man card can't be seriously challenged by anybody. I have all the manly credentials needed to include the really silly polls that show up on FB to the more serious credentials that are usually not included because they only apply to 1% of the population (that would be veterans of the military). I was rendering safe unexploded ordnance before I turned 21 in the US Army. Back then my balls would clang together when I walked. Luckily I never needed to sneak up on anyone. By the time I was fifteen, I was proficient in all manner of firearms and woodcraft and eventually became an even better tracker than my dad. By the time I was 25, I’d been in enough fights that I no longer dreaded getting my as kicked and would rather wake up in the hospital than take shit from anyone. I’ve had pistols pointed at me, knives pulled on me and my life threatened several times. I am not a badass. I don’t seek out trouble and never have, but this Jackpine Savage doesn’t run, especially now because I’m overweight and out of shape. But my point is still valid.
Why does this matter? Because I’m confident in my masculinity. I don’t shove it in peoples faces precisely because of the C word. Confident, not the other one. I’m here to tell you that if there are any “men” out there that are intimidated because a woman makes more than them, They. Are. PUSSIES. Why would a woman ever be attracted to a man that she had to act meek for fear of intimidating him? Men like that don’t deserve to propagate.
I would LOVE to have my wife make more than I do. I make a good wage, more than I ever thought I would make when I was in the Army, thats for damned sure. If my wife made more than I did, that means that WE would be able to reach more of OUR financial goals. It sure as hell would have made 2012 easier because when I got laid off, I was the only one pulling in a salary. Most married households are two income families. The middle class is only still the middle class because of those two incomes where before, one would do. How could any husband anywhere argue that their wives shouldn’t make as much as they do? It makes no damned sense.
I have two daughters and no sons. If my daughters do the same work, they also deserve the same pay, as does my wife. Their gender is irrelevant in the workplace. If they end up being poor employees, then they should not get high increases. But if they are the best (more likely IMHO), then they should lead whatever department or company they are, and that goes for all women everywhere.
As I said, my opinions on some topics have changed over time, usually because I have been exposed to a new argument or position that opened my eyes and made me think about the topic in a different way. Please, feel free to make any cogent argument here on my Blog or on FB. Who knows, maybe you can even change my mind.

Leaves On The River

<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Courier; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Courier; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} </style> --> <div class="MsoNormal">A river as a metaphor for life is not new. It could be described as a cliché. So be it, because today I feel like a leaf drifting down a river. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">We know there was a beginning and we know there is an end, but we only know about the section we have traveled. Other parts exist only theoretically. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Today I have to put my dog to sleep. That is a kind turn a phrase. It gives us a small comfort and gives us distance from the guilt. Those that have pets know this day will come even as we pick them out as puppies or kittens, but we don’t linger on it nor should we. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">When should it be done? There is a fine balance between keeping them with us as long as possible and letting them go before their pain or complications become more than an animal should bear. Because they would bear it. They'd bear it for us, anything for us. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So despite the pain it causes you, the decision must be made and the act carried out. The act is kinder for animals than people. Until that last ride in the car, they are allowed to be home. Then they are put to sleep with the first injection and their hearts stopped with the second. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">It's April 26^th and I'm writing this in my man cave because I don’t want to cry in front of Ursa more than I have to. It causes her distress and she tries to comfort me. There are two hours before the drive and my daughters are spending time with her.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">We will need to be careful in and out of the car. The bone cancer has made her left leg painful to the touch. Her decline has been rapid, yet she still is so full of love and kisses. Luckily she still has her appetite so we can spoil her with apples and watermelon, her favorite foods. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Ursa is Greek for bear and like the constellation that shows so bright in my northern sky, she is my Ursa Major. She's Labernese, black lab mixed with Bernese mountain dog. Her fur is glossy black with  white spots on her nose, throat and chest. Her rear feet look as it someone ran a brush of white paint at an angle across her toes. Her chest is huge, required to hold a heart that is twice the size of most dogs. Her head is large and heavy and her tail is a solid and always thumping a greeting. There is a v shaped piece missing from her left ear tip, proof that she was a hellion as a puppy. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">It occurred to me this morning that of our three dogs, Ursa is the last to have known my dad. He loved her as much as all of the dogs we’ve had, but didn't care for he constant need to kiss, especially our faces. Perhaps he loved her a little more since despite not liking it, he let her. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Six days from now is the sixth anniversary of his death. I put him down as well, though not as swiftly. For people it's called Hospice, an ever farther removed term that means letting someone die. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">After eleven months of struggle and several complications that included strokes, double bypass surgery and the removal of his colon, he got an obstruction in his small intestine that refused to clear. After my last consultation, I agreed to move him to Hospice. The last thing he said to me was "quit crying, I'm not going anywhere". </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">What happened to him next was pamphlet. I've decided that if textbook can be a word then so can pamphlet, since in hospitals that's what they give you to explain complex or difficult issues. The pamphlet explained that when he was taken off all of his medications, he would have a day of euphoria. He would feel better than he had in months and be convinced that he could go home. The feeling would last a day, no longer, after which he would likely fall into a deep sleep, no injection needed. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I told him all of this before I left. I never saw him awake again. I was at work during his elated state, but all of his remaining friends chose that day to visit, most for the first time since he entered his first hospital. By the time I got there, he was sleeping. I'd seen him sleeping in a hospital bed dozens of times that year, but I'd never seen him so peaceful. On the day he died, I visited him, kissed his forehead and said goodbye. That night I got the call that his pamphlet predicted decline had started and that I should hurry. Before I finished dressing, the second call came. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">His heart stopped, also without an injection. But instead of being at home, surrounded by his loved ones, with his boots on and eating his favorite foods, he spent eleven months being cold, poked, injected, cut on, reduced, humiliated and in a constant state of discomfort that ranged from moderate to agony. All the time we hoped. For hope I did that to and for my father only to end up in the same place as Ursa. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">When my journey on the river stops, I pray that I will be at home. I pray that no one will love me the way I loved my father. Better to be loved as I love Ursa. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>

A Jackpine Savage Abroad

I’ve heard a lot of chatter over the last few years about how people from other nations hate Americans. Or perhaps they hate America, though I’m not sure how you differentiate one from the other. I have no idea how true this is. I have no love for the French, yet my sole opinion is not likely to be enough for the French media to declare that Americans hate France.
In the last decade I’ve done a small amount of business travel. My primary locations have been the UK and India. Perhaps this isn’t a big enough sample size, but I have not felt hated in either country. Quite the contrary, I’ve felt welcomed and have made friends, no French, but a few Brits and Indians. While I’m not particularly fond of any travel, especially when it requires 24 hours of transit, I am glad for the opportunity to see these foreign countries and make new acquaintances.
I’m just a poor country boy from northern Minnesota, but it seems to me that I act the same as most Americans. By that I mean that I treat others as I wish to be treated and try to learn a little about the local culture. Who knows, maybe as soon as I’m out of sight, they spit on the ground and curse the day they laid eyes on me, but I think that would have more to do with my personality than my nationality.
This trip I got to spend a couple days in Bangalore and even got a few minutes one on one with my team members in between other meetings. Then we swung up to Mumbai to meet with an interesting part of the business and I was impressed for a number of reasons. Power is in short supply across much of India, especially in the summer months. Few if any exterior lighting exists in Delhi, Pune, Hyderabad or Bangalore, but Mumbai is different. Skyscrapers are painted in blues, greens and reds. Shops were decorated with string lights of all colors. There is massive construction and new buildings pushing though the desiccated corpses of old neighborhoods.
On my first trip to India a lady at one of the bazars in Delhi told me unsolicited, that all of the whores live in Mumbai. It may be true, but I saw no proof. There were women dressed in western style, and I think that was the basis for the old woman’s judgment. No matter, I doubt I will meet her again so I won’t have to face her judgmental stare.
Next I went to London. It was only my fourth trip, but it already felt like and old friend. I only got to spend a short time with my Britannic coworkers but I made sure I complained about the lack of Diet Dew anywhere on the island. Then I returned home feeling no more hated than normal.
This trip was unusual for the amount of places visited in six days. I made a post of FB about being in Bangalore and being afraid that I would melt. At the time I was dead serious. I remembered my first trip in 2006 when I went to Delhi and felt like I was always seconds away from heatstroke. It was the hottest month and even the short walk from the lobby to the taxi left my shirt soaked through. I’m a Minnesotan. I can handle cold, but not the heat, wet or dry. Some of my FB friends apparently took my remark for a cloaked brag.
“Hey look at me, I’m traveling internationally and you’re not.”
It never even occurred to me. I may have been looking for a little sympathy since I was dreading the heat, but I don’t think of business travel as a positive thing. The only place I ever traveled for a vacation on my own dime internationally was Mexico, and I think I just finished paying for that trip. It was a good time, but it was a vacation. Business travel is the same whether it’s Dallas or Bangalore. I see the airport, the taxi, the inside of the hotel, another taxi, the office building, the taxi again and so on. Rarely is there any time to see anything else and usually, you are too tired to truly appreciate it.
On this trip I woke up at 2 AM on my first night in Bangalore knowing something was very wrong. I spent the next three hours in the bathroom. Mumbai looked interesting and different from other India cities, but that was only from the view of my taxi or hotel window. London on this trip was no different and then I was on yet another 9-hour flight heading home. The weekend I left was shot and the weekend I got back was mostly recovery for sleep and my digestive track. Some people may still yearn for the experience even as I’ve described it, but don’t think it even comes close to resembling a vacation.
I will say that I’m glad for the opportunity regardless of the discomfort and inability to explore the countries I visit. The reason is the people. I go to these places because people from my company work there, either on my team or from another part of the business. I’m fortunate to work for a great company filled with dedicated and intelligent people. Even though I fall on the side of introversion, I enjoy meeting new people and visiting with the people I already know. Whether it’s learning about a new part of the company or a short one on one with my team members, it makes all the discomfort and time away from my family worthwhile.
Some day, I might even be able to swing some vacation time to see the sights up close and not just through a cab window.

The lowdown on Russia and the Crimea

I am not claiming to be an expert on Russia or even of the former Soviet Union. I’ve never liked the word expert since there is no clear definition as to the level of competence or wealth of knowledge a person needs to qualify.  Some people reach a state of recognition in their chosen field where such a declaration seems obvious enough to all concerned that there is no argument, but those people rarely refer to themselves as experts. Usually it is the people the are envious of those established professionals and are attempting to imbue themselves with such recognition to that point in time is not self evident, much to their dissatisfaction.
Russia is not my current field so I’m not placed anywhere on this scale. My chosen field is Security, and I have spent all my adult life in its service starting in the Army and working to a place in upper management responsible for corporate security. Through interest and I dare say aptitude, I transferred to IT Security, finding it more rewarding and discovering that my past experience dealing with questions of Risk Management and creating regulatory compliant programs gave me a unique perspective in the field of IT Security. One shared by few and therefore valuable to whomever employs me.
But Security didn’t start out as my career of choice. When I was young, I wanted to be a stunt man. Unfortunately, I had no desire to live in California and there is precious little work for a stuntman in Bemidji Minnesota, though I made of for that by doing stunts pro bono. Next I thought I would follow in my father’s footsteps, not in practicality but in ambition and become a helicopter pilot in the Army. He’d been an electrician in both the Air Force and Coast Guard, and in the latter was able to test fly the aircraft he repaired. He had time in all manner of fixed wing and even rotary aircraft, but lacking a degree, he was never able to do it full time.
My eyes betrayed me, but in retrospect I’m glad for it, since had they been as perfect as my father’s vision, I would have been forced to face the truth that my poor performance in High School would have served as a backup to sabotage that dream. I joined the Army and that is a long tail and told elsewhere, but the main reason for my service was to escape my hometown and pay with my time for a chance to attend college.
When I hatched this plan at seventeen, it seemed like a fairytale. Four years was a long time and my goal was poorly defined. It was simply put the quest for a degree. The nature of the degree never occurred to me. But as fate would have it, I found myself at the end of my four-year tour and when faced with the choice of re-enlisting, I stuck to my plan and returned to Minnesota in search of the mythical degree. I spent my first two years in school blissfully unaware how I would declare, sure that when the time came, I would be struck by inspiration. And so it happened and I once again had the Army to thank. On active duty, I served as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal technician. That job didn’t exist in the Army Reserve at the time and eventually when it did, wasn’t located in Minnesota. The first job I took was as an Intelligence Analyst. I worked in that capacity one weekend a month and two weeks a year in an OJT status. My region was selected for me and was Eastern Europe. My first contract ended after six years and I became a civilian. I enjoyed being able to grow my hair out and lamented my inability to grow a decent looking beard. It came in black at that time, what little of it there was, and since the hair on my head was blond, people assumed I died one or the other. This isn’t true I just have weird hair.
I was in my second year of college and the pressure was building to choose a major. Luckily Desert Storm intervened and I felt compelled to sign a new eight-year Army Reserve contract. I was still in my heart and mind a soldier and the idea of sitting safely at home while my brothers and sisters were put in harms way was more than I could stand. I signed up with the 13th Psychological Operations Battalion and took the only Interrogator slot in the 19th PSYOP Company. After getting back into the system, I eagerly waited to be deployed, either as an EOD tech again or with my PSYOP unit. Neither happened because despite the fact that Iraqis speak Arabic and we had no Iraqi interrogators, that spoke Iraqi, I couldn’t go because I lacked a language.
The ground war was over in about 100 hours and I never saw a minute of it. Instead, in early 1991, I was sent to the Defense Language Institute to learn Russian. The Soviet Union was still a thing back then, at least for half the time I was at language school. Over Christmas break in died to be replaced by The Commonwealth of Independent States, and you all know how well that did.
But I was not deterred. Oh, quite the opposite. You see, the Soviet Union had been the big bad for all of my life and there was no way that would even change. When I cam back from my year of submersion into the Russian language, graduating in the lower part of the lower third of my class, I forgot about 1 vocabulary word a mile as I drove my Camero back to Minnesota. Of the eight grammatical cases that those twisted Ottoman monks devised to enslave and torture the primitive Russian people, I barely retained Nominative a year after my return.
Armed with the ability to order beer and ask the location of the bathroom, I majored in Russian Area Studies with a minor in Russian Language and Literature. I have the rare distinction of being one of the few people besides Tolstoy to have read War and Peace. It was one whole class and I think I got a B.
I knew my path would be paved in gold. After all, I had a degree designed for Intelligence Analysts for the most important country besides our own in the world and graduated in June 1995. I went home to wait for the job offers to roll in sure I would need to order an unlisted number so that I could get some sleep at night and perhaps a new wheelbarrow to get the mail.
Who could have predicted that for nearly twenty years, no one either in our government or in private industry would give a damn about Russia? No seriously, I want to know who the bastard was and why he/she didn’t tell me. But never mind them, they were in the minority if they existed at all. Most of them shared my view that the government would always be interested in Russia and that private industry would boom. There were billions to be made in this newly formed free market, except there weren’t. A few companies rushed in and were soon after the struggling Russian government seized them and companies lost millions. The US government had other issues in other lands and arrogantly considered the matter of the Soviet Union closed. We had won, and no one that had an opposing viewpoint was taken seriously. There were hundreds of articles and books discussing the shift from a bi polar political landscape to a multi polar model. There were a slew of predictions about the new unstable landscape and some of them even came true, but neither the government nor private industry cared enough about Russia to invest much time and effort into it. Those that did had a huge pool of radically more knowledgeable and experienced people to choose from. It has been this way with few exceptions for over twenty years.
Don’t shed any tears for me, it all worked out for the best. I’m now an executive in the IT security field and not only do I enjoy the work, but it pays the bills.
While I’m not an expert on Russian affairs, I did get an A on my thesis, so suck it. I even paid attention after I graduated and watched Russia and it’s former states change over time and become a Democr….Sorry, I tried to type if but was over taken by a laughing fit. I also realize I’ve made you wait long enough for my in depth analysis of the current situation with Russia and the Annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. So without further ado:
Putin is batshit crazy.
There you have it folks, the former head of the KGB, now perpetual President of Russia (who never had to read War and Peace cover to cover I guarandamntee you) is batshit crazy.
Or if you prefer a more detailed analysis, please read the following response to an FB post where even pacifists were wondering if perhaps militaries had uses after all.

Anyone sane is antiwar, especially soldiers. A soldier hopes their country is right and just in the use of force.
This is a case of a bully using force to take what he wants from a weaker nation. The United States has been the week nation in need of help and the stronger nation offering help.
We have entered into wars for terrible reasons and refused to offer assistance where it was desperately needed. I think we need to offer our assistance in conjunction with NATO. This is not some ambiguous terrorist threat that is hard to describe and debate in terms of borders, but a nation state attacking another nation state.
This could be Putin's Poland. Forget the old domino argument between the USA and USSR that polarized people for or against action in other countries like Vietnam, where the USSR's influence was up for debate, this is a probe from Putin to see how much resistance there will be in his attempt to regain all the former Soviet territories.
Lack of action now from the International community will embolden Putin and endanger former Soviet countries.
There you have it, my opinion about Putin’s motives and the price of doing nothing but watching Russia steal the Crimea from Ukraine. Like that perky little kid on Pokemon Putin’s ‘gotta to catch em all’ or die trying. The question we have to answer for ourselves is do we care? Do we care when a stronger country picks on a weaker country and no one does anything because they are afraid of the consequences? Should we care and if so at what point should we care? Who knows, maybe if we let Putin take Crimea, he’ll go away and leave Ukraine alone. Maybe he won’t do anything else. Throw a few sanctions on him, it’s clear sanctions work, just look at North Korea.
I’ve read a lot of critical stories over the last decade about how the United States is trying to build an Empire. I could go on for several pages about how that is bullshit, but I don’t need to. The United Kingdom was an empire. The Soviet Union was an empire. If the US is really trying to be an empire, we’ve been going about it the wrong way. We sure as hell wouldn’t care what anyone else said in the international arena and we wouldn’t struggle about what to do when any of our interests were threatened. Accusations of Empire are an old chestnut that is trotted out any time we engage in any military action.
But despite being the most incompetent empire of all time, we have engaged in wars that we shouldn’t and our war fighters suffered the most. They join for many reasons, but they depend on our government to use them wisely. Most times that means not using them at all, just making sure they are the best equipped and trained force on the planet. Other times that means using them in such a way that their objectives are clear and achievable. We’re still waiting for the later to occur, but I have hope.
Do we use them against Russia? That’s the wrong question. Is the cause just? That is the right question. Few became and remained a country for many years because other stronger countries wanted us to. Forget the propaganda, the reality is that without help from France and Spain, we wouldn’t have made it. Even with their significant help, we shouldn’t have made it. The revolutionary war is barely covered in public schools. You can learn more about it from the old Schoolhouse Rock programs than in a school today. Unless you get a degree in American History, you aren’t likely to learn much more in college. If we are to believe the hype, it was a slam-dunk. Washington crossed the Delaware River in the winter and kicked some British ass. Done deal. End of story. Oh and it was cold and most of the soldiers didn’t have boots and stuff. Wow, it’s all flooding back. Couldn’t have taken more that a year or two. I saw that Patriot movie and I didn’t see the seasons change more than once or twice and that little girl never aged so the war couldn’t have take that long.
England wanted us to remain as part of their empire but luckily France and Spain lent us a hand. FRANCE, for fuck sakes. We would have lost our ass and been part of the British Empire to this day except for France. How fucked were we? Pretty fucked. There was no reason for anyone to believe that we could actually win our independence from Britain. Technically we didn’t win in that we didn’t concourse them or destroy them, but we did make it too expensive for them to make it worthwhile and they quit. In 1812, Canada almost put an end the American experiment. CANADA!!! We were not quite the super power we would eventually grow into, but we had allies. In WWI, we hesitated far too long but eventually assisted our allies to include England. Most of our bragging rights revolve around WWII and while fighting two wars simultaneously was an impressive feat, we never face the full might of the German Army. Russian had that distinction and they lost millions of people.
Now we’re stronger. It isn’t likely that we need to worry about defending our soil from Canada again any time soon. We might be safe from China and even Russia, despite its proximity to Alaska (insert Palin joke). Other countries aren’t so lucky. We are now the big strong country that is able to assist others. Do we use that military only in retaliation when we are attacked? Does we have to wait until their is another global conflict that directly impacts our bottom line?
There are many dubious excuses for past use of military might. Our liberal elite have ridiculed most of these and they were right to do just that. What though do we do when there is a legitimate need from a country too weak to defend itself from a bully like Putin? Make statements that we can’t be the world’s police? I agree, we can’t. The UN can, it’s kind of in their job description, and we can assist the UN. Action should be debated within a reasonable time and taken by a unified force. We have a part to play in an action deemed justified. Not just by one of the political parties for political gain, but of the free nations of the world, for they are ever mindful of the fact that they could be next.

Marvel Agents of SHIELD

The most recent episode of Marvel Agents of SHIELD was disappointing. The episode in question is entitled: Yes Men and features SIF come to earth to retrieve Amora, a sorceress that has the ability to enslave men with her words and the enslavement is guaranteed if she can touch them. My problem isn’t with the bastardization of Norse mythology or even deviations from the original comic. I’m taking this show as a stand-alone effort and so far I’ve enjoyed it.
My problem with the latest episode is lazy writing. Either it is lazy writing or a crappy premise that they had to write around. No, I take that back, it is still lazy ass writing. It’s lazy because it wasn’t consistent within the confines the show had set up. Forget external consistency, I rarely make those arguments for that way lies madness, especially with all of the remakes and reimaginings going on throughout the land.
I do hold a television show or movie accountable for keeping true to the characters they have set up and consistency in their actions. I’ll even cut them brakes for different seasons and make an exception within a given season if there is sufficient motivation like some life changing event.
There were two huge and one minor inconsistency in this episode that I can’t overlook and they ruined it for me. I’ll give them another chance, but if this is a trend, I’m out.
Warning!! Spoilers Ahead!!
#1.
This is when Ward is out back of the biker bar and Amora lands behind him. Earlier in the episode, they spent time covering two pieces of new information. The first is that they have new updated weapons that disable, not kill that are three times as powerful than their predecessors and even managed to lose the “extra ounce”.  They took these new weapons along with the express purpose of disabling Amora and any man she turned. Would it work on Amora? We never got to find out. The second piece of information was when Sif briefed the entire team on what Amora could do with her voice and her touch. The message? Don’t even let her talk to you but you sure as hell better not let her touch you.
So what does the most lethal and effective agent on the team do when he turns around and sees Amora? He begins a dialogue. His new fangled pistol is pointing right at her and he knew how dangerous she was and he starts chatting her up and of course she walks closer as she talks. Ward is not yet under her spell but lets this Fem Fatale get within touching distance without giving her the old non-lethal double tap. Of course she touches him and that drives the crappy premise forward.
Amora could have just jumped on top of him and touched him before he could react. She is Asgardian after all. But nooooooooo. They have to make one of the strongest and most lethal agent in SHIELD a dumb ass because they are lazy.
#2.
When Fitz is taken over and he lures Sif into the cell with the promise of the fixed collar that is used to prohibit Amora from speaking. Once on, not only is she unable to snare new men but all previously snared men are instantly freed. It is critical for Sif and SHIELD to fix and then affix the collar on Amora. It would be Amora’s #1 priority once she was back on the plane to destroy it completely. She wore it by her own account for six hundred years. She hates it, precious, hates it!!! Fitz knows this yet apparently before he was enslaved, he fixed it. Then after he was taken over he left the fixed and fully functional collar in the cell to lure Sif to her death (though Amora would know that the fall wouldn’t kill Sif). Either Amora herself or Fitz as her devoted new pet would have destroyed the damned thing. Of course if it was destroyed, we couldn’t have our simple episode wrap up. Even if Fitz didn’t destroy it, he could have damaged it. Sif couldn’t fix it, only Fitz could. So why not at least re-brake it and leave it in the cell for Sif? Again, because the only way to free Fitz was to put the collar back on Amora, because apparently Simmons (Fitz’s female science partner) lacked the skill (this could actually be a forth inconsistency).
#3.
The minor inconsistency was the fact that the collar, a device of Asgardian design, was broken by a shotgun blast in the first place. Amora, who is wicked strong, is unable to cause it any damage. But fine, they could have had a scene with Sif and Amora fighting over it and leaving it bent or Sif’s sword could have damaged it if only they had the fight scene earlier between the two. There are probably a dozen better ways to tell the same story and hit the same main points and yet remain consistent to the storyline set forth in the first 14 episodes. Instead, the writers seemed to have phoned this one in, content that two very attractive new women would distract the viewers from the fact of just how bad the episode was. 
So what's your vote? Crappy premise, bad writing or both?
Ok, Nuff Said.

Radically Invasive Projectile

There have been more advancements in the quality and variation of ammunition in the last twenty years than in the entirety of human history. This is true for many types of technology, but fewer have as obvious of a kinetic impact on the minds and bodies of Americans. My beliefs on weapon ownership are my own. My goal is not to sway people and frankly I doubt such a thing is possible. I want only to make my position clear before I get into the details.
I believe strongly in every persons right to own firearms for the purposes of hunting, sport shooting and self-defense. Each pursuit requires different types of weapons and ammunition. If your goal is hobby long range shooting, you will want full metal jacket(FMJ) ammunition made to exacting standards. There are several calibers for this hobby so people have options. For hunting, you may be able to use the same rifle, but odds are a rifle used for long range target shooting is not the best option for hunting, and the ammunition definitely has to be different.
When you’re hitting paper targets for accuracy, a common choice would be match grade 168 grain weight .308 caliber. This has become common so it’s a good choice for target shooters because so many different companies make a version. For deer hunting, .308 is still a good caliber, but you would likely want a slightly lighter weight bullet and definitely one designed to expand on impact.
I meant what I said about not trying to change anyone’s position on weapons. What I will say is that making uneducated posts about the details of weapons and ammunition may actually be counter to whatever point you are trying to make. If there is to be a debate, get off your high condescending horse and at least learn enough about the basics so that you don’t go into a debate intellectually unarmed. Also, while you may wish to eliminate all firearms from the face of the planet, until someone creates a magic wand, they are a reality we need to deal with.
I’ve recently seen arguments from intelligent people claiming that expanding bullets should be outlawed, citing that the Geneva Convention bans them so they must be bad. This logic is flawed and made out of ignorance. In point of fact, it is not the Geneva Convention but the Hague Accord of 1899 (a document the USA abides by but didn’t sign). Expanding bullets were banned in war because of the horrific wounds they cause to the recipients. In war, anyone that follows the rules (mostly UN countries) uses only ball or full metal jacket rounds. A soldier is more likely to survive a wound from a full metal jacket round. If given the option I think most soldiers would prefer to stay with the FMJ rounds because they can shoot the enemy through doors and walls, putting themselves at less risk.
This is because the FMJ round doesn’t expand (much, there is always some distortion upon impact, the thing isn’t magic), so it doesn’t transfer its energy to the target. It punches a hole about the same size entering and exiting. The problem is that the bullet doesn’t magically disappear after it exits the target. It keeps much if its velocity and energy and keeps on going, through wood, sheetrock, or the flesh of another person until the gravity and friction act upon it enough that it comes to rest. This is good news if you’re the target (because it causes less damage to you), but bad news if you are standing behind the target.
Outside of warzones, this is a horrible idea regardless of whether it is a police officer or someone defending themselves. Hollow points and frangible ammunition are designed to do the opposite. They are specifically designed to transfer all their energy to the intended target and not exit the body. No sane person wants to protect themselves and their family at the cost of the family next door or in the case of hunting, wants the animal to suffer.
Quick side not. About twenty years ago, one round that was designed for elk mistakenly got into our hunting ammo can we used for deer. In the dark, I loaded my rifle with deer rounds in the magazine but the loose round I put in the chamber was the “Super Slammer” elk round. I shot a buck at about 250 yards away. It dropped like the strings were cut, which is the reaction I’m used to. You may hate the idea of hunting, but you must agree that if it occurs, the animal should not suffer. I believe this strongly enough that I don’t take risky shots. When I went to field dress the deer, it was still alive. The elk round wasn’t a full metal jacket, but it was designed to bring down a much bigger animal. The exit wound made it look like it had been an FMJ and the deer suffered. My fault and I was sick to my stomach. The deer rounds I used expanded similar to a pistol hollow point and all the deer I ever shot with those rounds died instantly because of the amount of sudden damage. Those bullets exited, but they didn’t go far or have much velocity left. 
I understand the reaction and the desire of rational people to recoil from the idea of causing other people harm. I share this sentiment. I will be happy to die of old age having never killed another human being. However, if I am ever stuck in a situation where my only two choices are to either cause harm to another or die or worse see one of my family die, then I vote for that other person to die instead.
Some people don’t share this belief and they are as incomprehensible to me as I’m sure I am to them. While it’s easy to try to dehumanize or denigrate anyone that has different views than you, I respect pacifist beliefs. I don’t need to agree with them that it is better to die and let their families die than to cause another person harm, I just have to accept that they have the right to their beliefs and it is not ok for me to call them stupid or suggest that they need to be weaned from the gene pool (as a few people on FB did about gun owners).
My belief is that I live in a world and specifically America where people do harm to others without cause or justification. Until that changes, I will do whatever I feel is necessary to protect my family and myself but I will not have any self defense weapon in my house loaded with a round that will punch through multiple walls and cause unintended consequences.
People love quoting statistics about gun owners being a greater threat to themselves than external threats, and I certainly admit that there are plenty of people that own guns that lack wisdom and or the sense to use them responsibly. All I can do is make sure that I’ve taken the steps I need while ensuring that I don’t introduce more risk to my family. Gun safes, training and awareness and the proper ammunition that won’t travel through concrete blocks are just the basics.
The reason for the latest outcry is a new round called the Radically Invasive Projectile, or R.I.P. It is being touted as the last self defense round you’ll ever need. Based on my stance, you may jump to the conclusion that I can’t wait to buy a few boxes. You’d be wrong.


This ammunition is not technically “dum dum” or a hollow point or even traditional frangible ammunition. This is the worst, not the best of both worlds. Not only does it spread out like a frangible round on impact, but it is designed to punch through barriers including sheet rock (not that hard to do), windshield (because shooting at people in cars is so common) sheet metal (much harder to do), cinder blocks (god forbid the person you want to shoot is cowering behind cement) and hints at being able to defeat bullet resistant vests that lack ceramic plates if you read between the lines and boasts 18 inches of penetration. The average body thickness is only 9 ½ inches, so this ammo is designed to kill two inline people, and that is with their current 9mm pistol round. They plan to make larger caliber rounds including a 12 gauge shotgun version. I shudder to think what the penetration through concrete will be for these larger rounds. 
This is a terrible idea just like using war required full metal jacket ammunition for self defense is a terrible idea. The reason is the penetration that they are bragging about. This ammunition is only suitable if you are the only person in range that you care about. So it’s great for a zombie apocalypse or for any sociopath. If I was ever scooped up and dropped on one of those islands you see in the movies where I had to kill every other person to “win”, I’d want this ammo, otherwise, WTF?
I don’t consider this responsible gun ownership or usage and can’t condone it because of the potential for collateral damage. I’m not advocating outlawing it, but some people will. Or more correctly, people will think they are creating a law to ban this type of ammunition and end up banning something else by mistake because they believe themselves so above gun culture that they won’t bother to do the research.  If your plan is to create new laws then you need to educate yourself so you pass a law that causes the least harm when eliminating all harm is not practical. “Dum dum” or hollow point bullets should be mandated, not outlawed, for self defense.  But legislation for one brand or type is foolish because they will just change it slightly to get by the law. An example of this was when San Francisco outlawed Black Talon ammunition. They were so specific in their language, that the company slightly changed their product by removing a coating to the bullet and the law no longer applied.
The best option would be to use language that can’t be misinterpreted. Specify that self-defense ammunition that will punch through the body of the initial target and travel through the neighbor’s house and into someone else is illegal. Ownership of different types of ammunition should not be made illegal, but discharging dangerous ammunition in a self-defense situation should carry a penalty. 


Full metal jacket ammunition has it’s place outside of war, specifically for target practice.  Educating people that get concealed carry permits as to the type of ammunition that is best for self defense just makes sense but isn't currently mandatory. If you want to make new gun laws, quit dreaming about total bans and make recommendations that are possible and would be beneficial to law abiding citizens.

Honey Toast

Those of you that have lived through one know that a divorce doesn’t just happen between two people when theirs is a family involved. It happened to us when I was eleven. My mom told me years later that from the moment she asked for a divorce until the day we moved out was around three months. Three months under the same roof with a man that knew I'd chosen to live with my mom. My father was many things during his life. Before he died he was my friend. He grew emotionally and even spiritually more than most people do once they pass forty. The change wasn't easy for him, but he worked at it and for that I'm very proud of him. But this is not a story of the man that I grew to respect and love, this is a story of a man that hadn't yet reached rock bottom. He was not a good father or a good husband, a fact that was a surprise to him. After all, he fulfilled his duties, provided for his family and was faithful, and in his book, those were all the bases. Unfortunately for him, he lived in the later part of the 20th century and not the later part of the 19th. I spent my childhood working hard to become invisible. I got very good at it. Children were meant to be seen, not heard and not often seen. Even before the divorce was a tangible reality, our family was unhappy. Dinnertime was the hardest for me, because I couldn't remain invisible. Nothing I did was right and I was a common target. Starting at age eight, I would imagine building walls of brick in the pattern of Tic-Tac-Toe game so that no one could see in front of them or even to the sides. I would visualize the wall being built, brick by brick and then will it into existence. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. My father called me boy, never Scott, not until I was eighteen and back for a visit from the Army. If he started a sentence with "Boy", it was never good. It meant I was visible and that I'd done something wrong. There were so many rules to remember. I ran through them, adding to the list as new ones were created, usually after I'd done something wrong that he hadn't anticipated. Invisible was better and my room was a refuge. I was out of site and therefore out of mind, and I would spend most evenings playing or daydreaming. I wanted to lie on my bed, but it was against the rules before bedtime and I feared being caught. I used to love when my mom read me stories, but that was for little kids, not ten year olds. As much as I loved the stories, it was better not to get them than to be the subject of another fight. I blocked out most of those three months from notification to moving day. In my memory, it was a long week. Only within the last few years, did some of the memories from that time surface. They rose like abandoned ocean mines, broken loose from their moorings without care for where they floated or what damage they caused. Some came while my father was in the hospital and some came after he died, as if his death freed me to remember. There were fewer than I feared, because while the atmosphere was more tense than usual, one day was painful in the same way as the day before and the day after. We all fell into our routine of agony, with few deviations. One such deviation came at the dinner table. For once I was completely invisible, but I wanted nothing more that to be seen, anything to divert his attention from my mother. The fight had been building for hours. I wished it away. I prayed and wished and devised Faustian bargains in my mind to stop the rage that boiled over in my father. I'd seen them yell and scream and in some ways the worst of all was the silent, cold rage, but that night was different. I didn't hear or perhaps I didn’t want to hear what was said, but they were cruel, hateful words. Words you can't take back but can only apologize for, a thing my father never did. The fight moved from the table to the kitchen, only three feet away in our doublewide trailer. My mom was backed into the corner and my dad was working himself up into frenzy. I'd been in that corner at school, watching a bully getting ready. They always seem to need something. Some trigger in their mind that justified the physical attack. My mom could see it coming too. I saw fear in her eyes that betrayed the rage on her face. I was sitting in my chair, afraid to move."Do it! Hit me, I know you want to!"He raised his fist and I was out of my chair, a steak knife in my hand. He would not hurt her. I swore it. I couldn’t act without a trigger any more than he could, but my trigger was his fist. If he struck her, I swore to god I would shove that knife handle deep into his kidney. I was still invisible and I knew I could do it. Nothing existed but my mother's tears, my father's fist and the knife in my hand. I pictured the blade entering his lower back just above the belt and remembered from a story I’d read that I had to twist the blade to get it back out. God help me, but I wanted him to do it. I wanted to end the screaming and the tears and I wanted to stop being afraid all the time. Something in her posture made him hesitate. The trigger he was waiting for didn’t come from her face or lips. He stormed out of the room and as soon as he was gone, my mother's will collapsed into more tears as she sagged to the floor. Still invisible, I put the knife back on the table and went to my room, unable to comfort her because I didn't think she could handle knowing I'd seen them and afraid she would know what I was so ready to do. I was eleven again, alone and afraid. Time passed with my father sleeping on the couch and me going to school. I played with my best friends and tried to do anything but think. I remember the day he left. It was actually the day we left, but he had to go to work and we would be gone by the time he got back. My sister and I were at the front door. The sun was not up yet but I could see him on the front steps in the false dawn. He was sad. I'd never seen him sad and it looked strange on his face. "I love you kids you know."Then he gave us a hug and walked away. The first time the word love had escaped his mouth and it was divided by two and followed up with his departure. I couldn't watch him leave. I went back inside and waited to go to school among a maze of cardboard boxes. We were going to be late, though I can’t remember why. I’d missed half a day and my mom wasn't sure if lunch would still be served. Most things were packed away and all that was left was bread, butter and honey. She gave me the toasted treat on a paper towel, honey soaking into the fibers. My throat was tight and the bread went down hard. I couldn’t taste the honey. I used to the towel to blow my nose and wipe my eyes. The smell of butter was faint. She dropped me off at Horace May Elementary and I walked through the empty halls to the cafeteria. "Your mom called, so I saved a tray for you. Would you like some chocolate milk?"I nodded and took the tray with a quiet thank you. I’d never seen the place empty before. I ate the fish sticks on automatic pilot, dropped off my tray and went to class. All of the other 6th graders turned to watch me enter and I was sure they knew. Not just about the divorce or moving to a trailer park, but all of it. I'd never felt so visible. I took my seat and the teacher began to speak again. One by one the eyes returned to the front. I opened my book and turned the pages. They stuck to the honey left on my fingers, but the thought of licking them clean repulsed me.

Facebook Prison Blues

I was recently blocked from sending friend requests and then chastised for it on Facebook. This is apparently a routine occurrence based on the feedback I got from my post that pasted at the end of my rant for your enjoyment. For those of you that don’t recognize it, the song is Folsom Prison Blues by the legendary Johnny Cash. I’d like to think if he was still with us that he wouldn’t be offended. What bothers me about being chastised and blocked is the hypocrisy. Facebook is taking the position that users should only send friendship requests to people that they know in the physical world.
I have a personal problem and also a logical objection to this apparently contrary opinion. My personal problem is that I have developed many friendships with people solely through electronic means. People I trust and have done business with and collaborated with yet never met in person. Despite knowing them at this level before I sent them a friend request on FB, I am still in violation of their rules by sending the request, and that is just plain stupid.
My logical objection is that FB puts a limit on friends at 5,000 people. If you have a page, it can be liked by significantly more people, but a users personal page has a limit that is radically higher than anyone could every maintain in the real world.
A British anthropologist named Robin Dunbar proposed that there is a cognitive limit to the number of 250 people with whom any human could maintain stable relationships. Her theory further speculates groups of people fall into three categories equivalent to bands, cultural lineage groups and tribes. The upper limit of tribe ranges between 500-2,500 people. So a maximum number anyone could realistically “know” in the real world is 2,500, yet the FB limit is twice that at 5,000.
I’m not the most extroverted person, but I’d bet that the realistic upper limit is actually around 500 with an average closer to 250. Regardless, not only is the limit dramatically higher but FB acts contradictory by posting friends suggestions directly on the peoples feeds. Worse, they recommend people with few friends in common. I’ve received suggestions for friends with only 1 other friend in common. Now I appreciate FB trying to help me out by suggesting I may know someone that I may want to connect with and yet am apparently too incompetent to find on my own, but in the “Real World” I have less than 250 in my personal and professional circle and I can find them all on my own.
What would be really cool is of they could mine my data, and not just use spyware on my browser to determine what products I’m interested in buying, but real data mining so they could find people that I used to go to school with or served in the Army with back in the day. Now that would be useful and I really know or at one time knew those people so there would be no need to chastise me if those people refused my friend request. Because if I’m completely honest, I haven’t had positive relationships with everyone I’ve ever met.
So why does Facebook go through this dance, especially when despite their instance, neither their customers nor even they themselves believe FB should only be used to communicate with people you already know in the real world? Great question, I can only speculate that it’s to cover their ass. Friend requests are sent and sometimes they are rejected. Some customers will undoubtedly complain. Perhaps they are on FB to only share information and pictures with their closed circle and one of the people in their circle is a little more social so they show up the suggested list of friends FB sends to others.
I think a better solution than FB Prison would be for customers to be able opt out of the whole mess. If they only send and want to receive requests from people they already know well, why would they want to be on a list sent to strangers? This seems like a simple solution, so why didn’t they think of it? Perhaps they did, but that would run contradictory to what Facebook as a company wants, which is people having the most friends they can possibly have. More friends mean more posts. More posts means that they will stay on FB more often which in turn exposes them to more advertising. Even when they get you hooked on games, they design the games in such a way that the players are rewarded for getting more people hooked on those games, hence all of the damned game requests.
You best friend from high school doesn’t care of you play the game he or she is hooked on, but to get a bonus level or some feature unlocked, they are willing to pimp your ass out to FB. If you get hooked in the process so be it.  I get irritated at the requests, but these folks are game junkies and need our help, not our anger. A twelve step Farmville program would come in handy, because I AM NOT GOING TO WATER YOUR FUCKING CROPS WHEN YOU GO ON THAT CRUISE MOM!! Sorry, lost my mind there for a second.
You see, they make money from outside advertisers, but they also charge people to advertise their pages throughout FB. Pay them enough, and even though some people may have no desire to see your writer’s page, they will get a recommendation to like it. If you pay enough, everyone on FB could potentially get your page as a suggestion.
I send out friend requests for a variety of reasons. First, I get a kick out of many of the post. There is a lot of great content out there and I see more of it the more friends I have. True there are repeats and occasionally I get a new friend that ends up being a bigot, but I can un-friend those few exceptions.
If I am likely to see a fellow horror writer at a convention, and especially if a person I already like tells me he or she is “good people”, I’m going to try and friend them. If people are fans of horror I want them to read the stuff I write and also the stuff I publish through my small press. I have a page for Stygian Publications, but without paying FB to advertise, I can only get likes by sending invites to my friends….
By George, I think I got it, or at least another reason why they put people in jail for sending out friend requests. At least I would like to think that they are sophisticated enough to put two and two together, but I’m not able to test my theory. It would be interesting to know if people that had pages they were trying to drive traffic to were put in jail more often that people that only have their personal page.
I would also like to know how many is too many when it comes to sending out friend requests. Does only one person have to click the box saying they don’t know me and that is the reason they are denying my friend request or is does it take ten? If I have ben in jail once, do I have a record? Am I considered a convict? When I am able to send requests again (the block lasted about a week), am I on double secret probation or does the counter reset to zero?
I’m afraid I have only questions and will likely not get them answered. I do know that the punishment is not that severe, just irritating and if FB’s goal was to rehabilitate me, then they failed. I’m back out on the street and they are baiting me with tempting new friends and I am only human. I’m going to send out more requests, it’s only a matter of time.

Posted on FB Oct 30th, 2013:Apparently, this establishment frowns on sending friend requests to people that I don’t have a relationship with in the “Real World”.  I think this is a mixed message since they post a link on my newsfeed suggesting friends. I was put in Facebook Prison and it gave me the blues, so I wrote a song about it called “Facebook Prison Blues” and goes a little something like this,One, two, one two three…I got my bad boy noticeWhile I’m sitting in my den
And I ain't sent a friend request since I don't know when,
I'm stuck in Facebook prison, and time keeps draggin' by
But those people keep a posting and sharing stuff I like
When I was just a baby my mama told me. Son,
Always be a good boy, don't ever play with guns.
But I shot a man in Farmville just to watch him die
When I get those game request, I hang my head and cry..

Soooey!

I bet there's strangers posting some cool new Vader memes
They're probably getting lots of likes and sharing all their dreams.
Well I know I had it coming, I know I can't be free
But those people keep a posting'
And that's what tortures me...

Well if they freed me from this prison,
If that Facebook page was mineI let people meet each other without having to do timeFar from Facebook prison, that's where I want to stay
And I'd let my new friends, post my blues away.....
Copyright, R. Scott McCoy, 2013