tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-214467202024-03-13T12:07:28.521-04:00Vidiot Speak<b>vidiotspeak:</b> vɪdiətspik [vid-ee-uht-speek] -nounThe Vidiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536981176706604870noreply@blogger.comBlogger3785125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21446720.post-19537300286147059622012-02-23T11:29:00.002-05:002012-02-23T11:29:54.565-05:00You still here?<object width="560" height="315"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/1-Sgvq98mjc?version=3&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/1-Sgvq98mjc?version=3&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="560" height="315" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object>The Vidiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536981176706604870noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21446720.post-39241129024366737302011-11-21T14:04:00.006-05:002011-12-14T15:37:29.873-05:00Why I’m (we’re?) not blogging any more.<b>Update:</b> Bill Arnett wanted to share his thoughts on the closing of this blog.<div><br /></div>In the words of Joe Hamilton’s wonderful Carol Burnet theme song…<br /><blockquote>I’m so glad we had this time together,<br />Just to have a laugh, or sing a song.<br />Seems we just get started and before you know it<br />Comes the time we have to say, “So long".</blockquote>I know we didn’t sing all that many songs, though many an excellent tune was posted by my friend Sailor and I occasionally posted lyrics, both original and parodied from time to time.<br /><br />As things do in the cosmos in which we reside that Great Wheel of Life has turned yet again, as it did late last year and again mid year. Unfortunately with each new turn the centrifugal force seemed likely to force insurmountable, undesirable changes upon me. I know that they did on Sailor and the Vidiot as well.<br /><br />These two people have been a pivotable force in my life. I met Sailor on a different website and when I grew weary of the bickering and the troglodytes there I asked Sailor if I might try my hand blogging for this site. After checking with his partners here he gave me a warm welcome and I immediately felt I had a new family, one that did not judge me nor censor me nor ever do anything but offer me their wholehearted support and the friendship, camaraderie, respect, and love that is often found when least expected, but needed the most.<br /><br />The Vidiot is one of the most fascinating people I “know,” and she never ceases to surprise and amaze me with her style, wit, and intelligence. Her take on too many issues to count were so close to those beliefs I hold that she often addressed an issue before me and left me unable to add anything!<br /><br />As to Sailor the bond we had already formed on that other site became cast in stone, irrefutable; I have a new brother from a different mother. Stay in touch my friend. I’m still hoping you can take some vacation time and come out and stay awhile.<br /><br />I did then, at the beginning so long ago, and do now live trapped in a web of never-ending pain and that pain, combined with the obvious inequities now institutionalized in our government fueled a hatred that eventually threatened to consume me entirely, so I stepped back, reassessed, fought through the influence of the many medications I must take, and decided that for the sake of my mind and self-identity I must renounce the hatred building within me or lose my identity completely. I have never before been a man that hated; I dedicated my life to public service, as I saw it, first in the military, then by hunting bail skips professionally for fifteen, returning thousands of accused felons and misdemeanants to court or custody.<br /><br />Then I got clobbered with two Agent Orange cancers from my service in Vietnam. I don’t have the heart to recount the travail of those rampaging sicknesses that nearly killed me and left me with neurological damage which means massive pain 24/7/365.<br /><br />I did also recount much of the story of my Warrior Woman, with whom I fell in love at first site and within the first five minutes of meeting her I told her that she would be mine…oh, yes, she would be mine.<br /><br />It’s almost 39 years later now and oh, yes she is and will always be mine. True love is an amazing gift; it uplifts you, centers you, shows you the joy of life, and yet somehow keeps you grounded in reality at the same time.<br /><br />This, probably more than anything else, brought me back from the precipice over which hatred was threatening to drag me. I am grateful for that, but it took the fire out of my writing and I have become more consumed by further major upcoming surgeries that I know worry my Warrior Woman and our wonderful son (who will be getting his BA in psychology next spring) more than they will say. As “they” say, one day at a time.<br /><br />When I get out from under these new health difficulties and if the blog should happen to still be here and I can ever figure how to log back in directly (the Vidiot is being courteous and sweet enough to post this for me) perhaps I’ll be able to return for second go round.<br /><br />Thank you, Sailor. Thank you, Vidiot. We’ve had much fun together and I love you both. Let’s get together and do this again sometime soon, eh?<br /><br />And a special thanks, too, to all our readers with a special farewell to DanD, which whom I have gone round and round with, but always with a measure of civility and good humor.<br /><br />Farewell for now…my friends.<br /><br /><br />Bill<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; "><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; "><br /></span></div>I haven’t posted since August and I haven’t been back to even check to see if the guys have posted anything. Mostly, because I didn’t want to see that they weren’t as well. It’s the end of an era, at least for me. I’ve been at this since 9/11, the Sailor has been with me almost from the very beginning and has been an amazing blog partner in every way. And Bill was a welcome addition and became a new family member that we fretted over and from whom we accepted wise advice.</span><p class="MsoNormal">Personally, I’ve lost the steam to blog. For The Sailor, he feels like his “sense of outrage became dulled and it started to seem like 'same shit, different day'.” He also pointed out that when “you go read through our archives, we were covering the same issues we started with, it seemed nothing had changed.”</p><p class="MsoNormal">You’d think that with the OWS movement, I’d have even more steam, but no. I don’t live in NYC anymore, (I really really REALLY wish this had all happened while I was still there though.) and my life has gone off onto a different road. I’ve come to realize a few things about blogging, but mostly, it started to feel like I was spitting into the wind. I hadn’t even wanted to address it, or make a last post, until I read <a href="http://petras.lahaine.org/?p=1880">this</a> on Dr. James Petras’s website that so perfectly summed up how I felt:</p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><blockquote>To address an active assembled public meeting, to formulate ideas, programs and propose programs and strategies through political action defines the role of the public intellectual. To sit at a desk in an office, in splendid isolation, sending out five manifestos per minute defines a “desktop militant”. It is a form pseudo-militancy that isolates the word from the deed. Desktop “militancy” is an act of verbal inaction, of inconsequential “activism”, a make-believe revolution of the mind. The exchange of internet communications becomes a political act when it engages in public social movements that challenge power. By necessity that involves risks for the public intellectual: of police assaults in public spaces and economic reprisals in the private sphere. The desktop “activists” risk nothing and accomplish little. The public intellectual links the private discontents of individuals to the social activism of the collectivity. The academic critic comes to a site of action, speaks and returns to their academic office. The public intellectual speaks and sustains a long-term political educational commitment with the social opposition in the public sphere via the internet and in face to face daily encounters.</blockquote><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">I no longer want to be a desktop militant. I’m tired of feeling like I’m contributing and knowing, deep down, that I am not. The blog was necessary for me to get to this point. I am now going to take everything I’ve learned over the years and focus on something more productive. (Hint: I’ve started writing Chapter five)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Once that is accomplished, I will be back, only within a different forum.</p><p class="MsoNormal">My days as a “pseudo militant” are over.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">Huppy the Anarchist lives!</p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4ZnCiBqlDQ2Tgmv9FVr_IbT8kvk3wfolcp6sfFxhDFfoDlLhMBMoZaSjGR2EME7X3ha5qYAgEMM6yeaIG1rEOanspRaRJZzkpFQM65JvfT9VbI4SmB2-MsfXAbxWxaqVNizOj5w/s1600/Untitled-6.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4ZnCiBqlDQ2Tgmv9FVr_IbT8kvk3wfolcp6sfFxhDFfoDlLhMBMoZaSjGR2EME7X3ha5qYAgEMM6yeaIG1rEOanspRaRJZzkpFQM65JvfT9VbI4SmB2-MsfXAbxWxaqVNizOj5w/s400/Untitled-6.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5677554017246192770" style="text-align: left;display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; cursor: pointer; width: 280px; height: 400px; " /></a></p> <!--EndFragment--></div>The Vidiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536981176706604870noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21446720.post-31521883609724456472011-08-20T13:55:00.004-04:002011-08-20T14:11:27.881-04:00Why can't they just be straight up with us?So, I'm surfing around, and I find a youtube that shows that the rain this AM here in St. Louis was hotter than Hades, radioactively speaking.<div>
<br /></div><div><iframe width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/gJCRmaIDCQE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<br /></div><div>
<br /></div><div><blockquote>ALERT!!! 178 X Background Radiation in Saint Louis Rain
<br />
<br />STAY OUT OF THE RAIN!
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<br />This data may be indicative of a RECENT SIGNIFICANT radiological event in Fukushima.
<br />
<br />The reading was taken at approximately <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJCRmaIDCQE&feature=player_embedded#" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-size: 13px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(66, 114, 219); text-decoration: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">10:20</a>am on 8/20/11 in Saint Louis Missouri from a vehicle that had driven approximately 4 miles through the trailing edges of a thunderstorm.
<br />
<br />The sample returned a reading of 1.786 mR/hr, which equates to ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY EIGHT times greater than normal background radiation. This reading is almost 3 times greater than are previous high reading of 62x background radiation.</blockquote></div><div>
<br /></div><div>And what does that mean? Well, I'm not entirely sure, but it does SOUND bad. Having worked in a lab that used a lot of radiation, whenever the geiger counter sounded like that, we panicked. </div><div>
<br /></div><div>I found an explanation somewhere else that may or may not be correct. I'm hoping it's wrong. </div><div><blockquote>2,400CPM = 1 mR/hr
<br />1.78 mR/hr * 2400 CPM = 4272 CPM
<br />
<br />so that would be about 4272 CPM (Counts Per minute)
<br />
<br />anything over 100 CPM is considered Alert Level</blockquote></div><div>
<br /></div><div>Now, it could've been cumulative. Who knows. But jeebus. Why does the news totally not cover this? Don't they give a damn? They live here too! When I go to the <a href="http://www.epa.gov/radnet/radnet-data/index.html">EPA website</a>, there are huge gaps in the data and the spikes are unexplained. There's no context. I don't know if I should be frightened or terrified.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>Like, here's a scary data point for St. Louis:</div><div><blockquote>2011-08-16 12:57:10 132.0000 CPM</blockquote></div><div>Now, keep in mind, anything over 100 is bad. And wouldn't you know it, the data stops on the 17th which means there will probably be no reading for today. The thing always goes down near a storm. </div><div>
<br /></div><div>When you listen to the news, there's nada. When you read the news, nada. Nada, nada, nada. The nada is deafening. Obviously, there's something more going on in Japan for this new wave of radiation to be hitting us. But I guess they want us to be concerned with <a href="http://blog.timesunion.com/capitol/archives/78441/did-you-have-sex-with-rick-perry/">who Perry slept with</a> instead. </div><div>
<br /></div><div>Obviously, we're just cannon fodder, or lab rats. </div><div>
<br /></div><div>I wanna go back to Peru.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>Now!</div>The Vidiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536981176706604870noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21446720.post-2772146929278316362011-08-19T22:25:00.002-04:002011-08-19T22:30:24.448-04:00If you wanna barfWatch <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baya8-agPs4">this</a>:<div><blockquote>Paul Gunter, Beyond Nuclear joins Thom Hartmann. Meanwhile, Japan is not out of the danger zone...in fact the nuclear crisis is getting worse and worse! We've recently learned from Japan that the amount of radiation released was more than 20 times that from the Hiroshima bomb, and now it looks they may be experiencing the early stages of a total China Syndrome meltdown. And is the United States in danger too?</blockquote><div>We're still spiking here in in St. Louis. Teen Vidiot still won't believe me when I say the rain his hot. It was nice being in S. America where I knew the radiation hadn't spread in mass quantities yet.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>Yet.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>Keep tabs on what's going on near where you live <a href="http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2011/04/12/realtime-epa-radnet-japan-nuclear-radiation-monitoring-every-us-city-single-page-16511/">here</a>.</div></div>The Vidiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536981176706604870noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21446720.post-25631497442053979372011-08-18T18:29:00.001-04:002011-08-18T18:31:25.695-04:00Aeeya! This crap makes me nuts!<blockquote><a href="http://www.truth-out.org/goldman-sachs-vp-changed-his-name-now-advances-goldman-lobbying-interests-top-staffer-darrell-issa/1">Excerpt</a>: ThinkProgress has found that a Goldman Sachs vice president changed his name, then quietly went to work for Issa to coordinate his effort to thwart regulations that affect Goldman Sachs’ bottom line.</blockquote><div>
<br /></div><div>Does anybody care?</div><div>Does anybody see</div><div>what I see?</div>The Vidiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536981176706604870noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21446720.post-4421314862887981792011-08-17T10:52:00.003-04:002011-08-17T10:56:57.118-04:00Tobacco Companies SuckBecause Heaven forbid that anybody who smokes should be <a href="http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/08/17/tobacco-firms-sue-us-over-graphic-cigarette-labels/">reminded</a> of what smoking actually does to a human body.<div><blockquote>Four tobacco companies filed a lawsuit against the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over what they say are unconstitutional requirements for warning labels on US cigarette packaging.</blockquote></div><div>I'll tell you right now, the warning labels on the cigarettes in South America are far more explicit. In fact, the labels are so large, they nearly obstruct the brand name of whatever cigarette pack you buy AND they're so graphic, they'll turn your stomach. One pack I saw had an emaciated comatose cancer patient, all yellow skinned and dead looking with a ton of tubes sticking out of his body. Jeebus. </div><div>
<br /></div><div>The companies only put up a stink here because they can. The US government will always be railroaded by corporate interests.
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<br /></div></div>The Vidiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536981176706604870noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21446720.post-45964001824575069792011-08-16T15:39:00.004-04:002011-08-16T16:00:18.495-04:00I'm Baaaack.Actually, I've been back for a few weeks, but I had no idea how many i's needed dotting and t's needed crossing after such a long trip. All sorts of things were spiraling out of control, including my credit rating for some odd reason. All of my bills were automatically paid and I'm not overdue on anything. Yet, my credit rating is in the crapper. Once I know why, you'll know why because I suspect it's something so ridiculous it's laughable.<div><div>
<br /></div><div>The trip itself was pretty amazing. What we did wasn't for everybody though. We spent one month in Quito, Ecuador studying Spanish. We rented an apartment so I got to actually buy the food I've only ever drooled over in the <i>mercados</i> in Latin America. Dr. Vidiot's Spanish really improved, my Spanish only got a little better. But, in my defense, I only had half the hours a day he did. After Ecuador, we made our way south to Cusco, Peru. Yes, I saw Machu Picchu and boy was it something. And we spent a night with an indigenous family on one of the islands of Lake Titicaca. We stayed in hostels for the most part and though the hot water wasn't always reliable (or even existent) it was all pretty cheap. Two months is a long time to be away though and we really missed our dog. </div><div>
<br /></div><div>While there, I ended up sending reports every three or four days to family and friends so they wouldn't worry about us. (Close to half of them were worried we'd be kidnapped. I honestly don't know why. We're just not that interesting.) The reports ended up being pretty lengthy and not half bad to read so I'm going to be self publishing them at some point, just as soon as I can decide if I want to illustrate it with with photos or drawings. </div><div>
<br /></div><div>Politically, back here in the States, I didn't miss much. I mean, the whole debt ceiling thing was going on and I guess I missed Wiener's wiener. Both issues were ridiculous. Whatever was decided about the debt ceiling was a done deal way before it entered the public discourse and well, a wiener is a wiener. I couldn't be bothered with any of it.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>Of course, I returned to the launching of the Republican primary debacle, otherwise known as the "Ignore Ron Paul" road show. WTF is up with that? Jon Stewart's "Ron Paul is the 13th floor of Republican politics" really says it all.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>I shall resume some semblance of regular posting. It seems my blogmates have had busy summers as well. </div><div>
<br /></div><div>It's good to be back... sorta.</div><div>
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<br /></div></div>The Vidiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536981176706604870noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21446720.post-28811926798383231462011-07-06T11:19:00.006-04:002011-07-06T14:49:25.485-04:00Getting settled has been almost as much fun as watching the republican teabaggers going thru……Conniption fits with everyone in the party declaring their candidacy except the janitors at the respective campaign headquarters…but I hear they will be declaring before November.<br /><br />One of the latest to declare is Thaddeus McCotter, a representative of Michigan, that car making state. (I’m not being insulting or facetious here, I like the cars from Michigan.) For the life of me I could not remember ever even hearing of this guy before but he did use all the right buzzwords to satisfy the republican teabaggers.<br /><br />But really, can you just hear him being announced at public or private events: Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States, Thaddeus McCotter. It’d be like Back to the Future ‘cept instead of going back to 1955 McCotter-McFly would be going back to 1855 or 1755 or anywhere in between.<br /><br />One thing though, with a name like that growing up must have been a bitch, what with all the teasing from children with names like Peggy Sue or Jim Bob and all those other common American names.<br /><br />One position he holds is bound to endear him to all lovers of conflict and that is <a href="http://mccotter.house.gov/">obstinate refusal to allow a Palestinian State</a>.<br /><br />It is apparently with a great deal of pride that he introduced a resolution in the House, H.R.2261, last month to the effect of:<blockquote>McCotter Files Legislation re U.N. Acknowledgment of Palestinian “Statehood” 06/22/2011<br /><br />In response to the Palestinian Authority’s lobbying of United Nations Assembly members to legitimize its claim to international status as a "state," U.S. Representative Thaddeus G. McCotter (MI) has introduced H.R.2261, to withhold United States contributions to the United Nations or a United Nations agency if the United Nations or such agency supports the recognition of an independent Palestinian “state.”</blockquote>How typically republican teabagger can you get? Israel has been ignoring UN Resolution 242, which required Israel to return to within its previous borders and allow everyone else to return to their homelands within the formerly drawn borders <b>since 1967</b>, yet the Palestinians are, in McCotter’s opinion, so unworthy of statehood, much less the return of all the farmland seized or returning the Golan Heights to Syria, that he would use that as a pretext to withhold all American contributions to the UN. As if we pay them anyway…well…from time to time we make payments.<br /><br />Oh, well, this is standard operating procedure for republican teabaggers. <br /><br />Hey, I just now remembered that Thaddeus McCotter is a mythical creature who lives in Wonderland where, disguised as a rabbit, he runs around looking at his timepiece exclaiming, “I’m late! I’m late! For a very important date!” Why he is running no one knows although speculation has it that he is married to the Red Queen. He, the Red Queen, had no comment.<br /><br />And as to getting settled in at our new house things are going swimmingly. I’d forgotten the convenience and comfort offered by central heating and air conditioning. This is the first summer in 16 years that I am not suffering extra-terrible chronic pain from the inevitable temperature swings that light up my pain centers like a pin ball machine. Instead I have just my ordinary terrible chronic pain but all-in-all the difference is significantly better.<br /><br />I also have a room all my own where I can place my 2,500+ DVD collection and I can display on the walls of the room several dozens of my 250+ knives from my knife collection. Years ago (it seems like another lifetime) I had over 500+ knives in my collection (I was making real money then) and it pained me to no end when I got hit with my cancers, couldn’t work, and had to watch them go out my door for pennies on the dollar; but hey, ya do what ya gotta do.<br /><br />I love limited edition knives, especially those made by Böker in Solingen, Germany. Some of their damascus steel knives are beautiful beyond my ability describe and are made with some very special military grade steels from WWII Leopard Tank barrels, Mauser machine guns that fired 1800 rounds per minute, and the armor plating from the Tirpitz, a battleship second in size only to the Bismarck, that was sunken in the fjords of Norway. All of these are very limited editions of 250, 500, or 1000 made for worldwide distribution.<br /><br />I have a real predilection for Bowie knives and daggers and I have a wonderful selection of these from around the world. Spain, Germany, Norway, Russia, Sweden, South Africa, Australia, Japan, Argentina, China and American made; all fabulous examples of fine craftsmanship and, most being handmade, no two can ever be identical.<br /><br />And I can display them as I wish! My Warrior Woman did allow me to hang two special limited edition swords and one elegant display of fully functional traditional katana, wakizashi, and tanto in the living room only because they are so gorgeous they enhance the decoration of the room. But my room is ALL mine and I put up a few knives a day so I don’t overtax myself. I’m in no hurry since we own the joint.<br /><br />Since the house already had a very fine alarm system I had my “office” heavily protected with heat, motion, glass breakage, door sensors and few specialty devices I won’t describe here. (I still keep tabs on Tom Cruise though.)<br /><br />So forgive me but I must return to traveling through time and space until I figure out where I am today.<br /><br />Ciao, Bella ámi.Bill Arnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13177388116421409760noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21446720.post-79098777883290212012011-06-22T13:14:00.006-04:002011-06-23T07:14:38.845-04:00I wish I had seen this movie, yet another based upon a story by……Philip K Dick, on the giant screen of a theatre. The movie is titled "The Adjustment Bureau" and stars Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Terence Stamp, and a cast of thousands (being shot in New York perforce means a cast of thousands, if not millions) and it surprised me as no other movie has in a long, long time.<br /><br />Both the trailers and previews seem designed to lead you to the belief that this movie is naught but another Matt Damon action-filled, special effects laden tour de force and I guess by some measures it is. But if that should be all that you draw from this well-told and beautifully shot film I confess that it would somehow sadden me that you missed what I believe to be the point.<br /><br />This is the most riveting love story of the triumph of love over the circumstances of Man, even if those circumstances be guided by an unseen hand, that it has been my pleasure to watch in many a year. I sincerely hope that those powers that decide which films come to be or not will look upon this film as what movies can bring to its viewers and how our lives can be enriched in the short time during which we experience such a treat.<br /><br />Call me a hopeless romantic, I've been called much worse, but it brought to mind my true story of the trials and tribulations and suffering and longing and heartfelt agony through which I lived while my Warrior Woman and I were apart for the two years it took for me to obtain the Fiance's Visa by which she was able to rejoin me and we were able to continue the Great Journey Through Life we had begun on the Philippine Island of Luzon. Oh, how we suffered as the world it seemed kept us apart.<br /><br />During those two years I learned it is indeed possible to survive on Instant Breakfasts, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and the rare treat of a McDonald's hamburger or, my god!, a minuscule sirloin steak; leading a life of complete solitude outside of my work setting as I harbored no desire to surround myself with people whom I recognized would leave my life as leaves from the trees of fall.<br /><br />I also experienced the heartache meted out to me by the government I had served with honor and a country I loved and truly believed welcomed citizens from another land to this great Melting Pot until I spent those two years banging my head up against one obstacle after another as I wrote my congressman, my senators, the members of the Armed Forces Committees in both houses of congress, the State Department and, naively, the President of the United States to get the help I needed to be with my sweetheart. The only real help I received was from the military liaison in the offices of former congressman John Moss, who has a Federal Building bearing his name on the Capitol Mall in Sacramento, California.<br /><br />Like Matt Damon's character in the movie each contact I made, every door I opened, only sank me deeper into the labyrinths of the government that controlled this part of my fate until one day some jackass in the State Department fucked up and actually told me the truth.<br /><br />I had called this insipid bureaucrat to relate that a captain with whom I had worked had applied for and received a Fiance's Visa and was happily wed to his German bride in under ninety days. I demanded to know what the difference was between his case and mine and why I had been forced to wait for almost two years.<br /><br />"Well," the jerkoff said, "Germany is a much more sophisticated, wealthy country with more highly educated citizens on average than the Philippines so the captain's fiance is less likely to become a burden to our welfare systems."<br /><br />My heart broke, and as it began to sink to the floor and through it to places unknown I got mad. Madder than ever before in my life. Rabid mad, killing mad. So mad I was blind with anger, ready to explode, ready to go to Washington, D.C., find that asshole using every iota of the innate skills I possess to find people and beat him to bloody death with my bare hands and a passion to kill I'd never felt before nor since. I feverishly dialed the number to the congressman's military liaison and still suffused with rage I told him what the ass at the State Department had said and screamed in his ear that my fiance and I were being discriminated against not because of who we actually were but for fact that my fiancee was from a poor country! I screamed, I ranted, I hurled more impersonal invective, raged to the skies, and cried my grief at the inequity of it all to that poor man than I ever had before.<br /><br />Bless that man whose name I am chagrined to admit I have forgotten; not a single word of reproach passed his lips, never did he raise his voice nor try to stem the flood of the words of pain I howled. No, he listened. He listened and then told me in a voice so gentle and low and reassuring that finally, yes finally, I had gotten the break I had sought so long. That jackass at the State Department who spilled the truth had provided all the ammunition that the liaison needed to carry the matter directly to the congressman and to get results.<br /><br />And get results he did. Within three weeks my Warrior Woman had the much prayed for visa; two months later (there is a separate story as to why it took that long) my honey and I were reunited, and within the month, wed.<br /><br />Which brings me back to why I wish I had first seen this movie in a theatre. Because there, in the dark lit only by the passing images on that huge screen, there would I be sitting holding hands with my beloved wife of thirty-seven years, my Warrior Woman, she who speeds my heart and quickens my breath and shares with me my dream of growing old by each others side, together forever till death do us part, knowing beyond certainty that elsewhere in the cosmos we shall again be reunited for all eternity.<br /><br />But I digress. If you haven't seen this wonderful film, see it. If you saw it alone see it again with someone you love, someone who swells your heart, makes your pulse race and your heart skip a beat and know that it is not only in the movies that love triumphs over all.<br /><br />It's a great film.<br /><br />Ciao, bella ámi.Bill Arnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13177388116421409760noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21446720.post-20010300833892770522011-06-22T12:41:00.003-04:002011-06-23T07:12:38.234-04:00I ask special dispensation (while the Vidiots are on vacation)……For our readers here to consider, perhaps, my greatest fear. As usual when I am frightened or seek to enlighten I somehow seek solace in the rhymed couplets that still come to me without effort as yet, but which I am perfectly aware will someday desert me and my mind will grow bare. In the meantime I'll just rhyme.<br /><br /><blockquote>Mother Earth Suffers<br /><br />I weep for Mother Earth as I watch the pain she suffers.<br />I weep for Mankind as we refuse to provide the buffers<br />From climate change brought about by we fools<br />From pollution and using poisonous fossil fuels.<br /><br />Mother Earth shudders, She cries out in pain,<br />She sends tornadoes to kill hidden in the rain.<br />Elsewhere she gives her mantle a mighty shake<br />And huge cities can do naught but die in the quake.<br /><br />She rends her surface beneath the seas<br />Sending tidal waves to bring death and disease<br />Destroying coastal cities as Her reminder to Man<br />That He is merely mortal and destroy Him She can.<br /><br />And precious She alive for billions of years<br />Sees Her Death at the hands of Man's fears<br />That could spark the nuclear holocaust<br />Bringing Her the deathly illness She fears most.<br /><br />So now Mother Earth reaches out to Man<br />To warn Him of the destruction She plans<br />Sign after sign She sends to signal us<br />That She can and will end all things if She must.<br /><br />For She knows that She shall always remain<br />And can rebuild Herself again and again<br />As She remakes Herself, strengthens Herself,<br />And renews Herself to prepare for life's health.</blockquote>Bill Arnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13177388116421409760noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21446720.post-58810384744975828642011-06-21T13:54:00.007-04:002011-06-22T12:07:12.738-04:00I believe the 2012 elections will be hailed as the greatest tragi-comedy in American history……And writing of the political scene over the seemingly interminable period of time up to the elections will be even easier than time travel. I mean there are what, about two-thousand and three republican candidates for the teabagger-gop-ers to lay waste to before they even get around to lashing out against Obama with the renewed vigor of a rabid squirrel trying to crack his nuts or the nuts of someone else. It is laughable and thoroughly entertaining to see so many clowns taking themselves so seriously as they try to hold two inapposite positions on almost every issue.<br /><br />I am slightly disappointed, as I'm certain Tina Fey is as well, that Sawah Pawin has not entered the race for the conservative, über righteous religious rightwingers who believe her entirely and without question when she recounts the heroic tale of Paul Revere and his stern, shouted, and megaphoned warnings to the British that they had better not even attempt to take away our arms. Let this edify those insipid liberals who actually believed the contrived claptrap of that flaming liberal Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) when he wrote in part:<blockquote>Listen my children and you shall hear <br />Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, <br />On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; <br />Hardly a man is now alive <br />Who remembers that famous day and year.<br /><br />He said to his friend, "If the British march <br />By land or sea from the town to-night, <br />Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch <br />Of the North Church tower as a signal light,– <br />One if by land, and two if by sea; <br />And I on the opposite shore will be, <br />Ready to ride and spread the alarm <br />Through every Middlesex village and farm, <br />For the country folk to be up and to arm."<br />…<br /><br />You know the rest. In the books you have read <br />How the British Regulars fired and fled,— <br />How the farmers gave them ball for ball, <br />From behind each fence and farmyard wall, <br />Chasing the redcoats down the lane, <br />Then crossing the fields to emerge again <br />Under the trees at the turn of the road, <br />And only pausing to fire and load.<br /><br />So through the night rode Paul Revere; <br />And so through the night went his cry of alarm <br />To every Middlesex village and farm,— <br />A cry of defiance, and not of fear, <br />A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, <br />And a word that shall echo for evermore! <br />For, borne on the night-wind of the Past, <br />Through all our history, to the last, <br />In the hour of darkness and peril and need, <br />The people will waken and listen to hear <br />The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed, <br />And the midnight message of Paul Revere.</blockquote>Now I ask you, who the hell would lend any credence to a twisted tale of a legendary event until it has been subjected to review and correction by a historian of Sawah's standing and obvious all-encompassing knowledge and ability to correctly interpret American History? Just because she might have a different understanding of the words "wadsworth" and "longfellow" doesn't mean that she can't shoot wolves, foxes, and small harmless creatures from the comfort of a low and slow flying aircraft using the high powered rifles that Paul Revere warned the British we would not relinquish until the very last liberal was dead.<br /><br />It is regrettable that old Huckabee and his revisionist comedic rewriting of history to reveal Ronnie Raygun as the true pioneer that discovered America, settled it, expanded it, and wiped out most of the trespassing indigenous populations of Native Americans unable to provide birth certificates and thus prove themselves citizens and landowners won't be running for the nomination. The sheer heroism of Reagan is certain to be revered in comic books everywhere since that medium, also referred to as graphic novels, is the chosen means by which Huckabee has chosen to educate our children, the handicapped, the ill, the infirm, the elderly, and the homeless who perpetuate those lifestyles out of laziness and the desire for America to be a welfare state. Yes sir, he will soon disabuse all the unfortunate and persons in need of the notion that Jesus would do anything whatever to alleviate their plight and aid them in rising out of poverty and into the now perilously-hanging-on-by-the-skin-of-their-teeth "middle class" while simultaneously espousing the destructive policies that are and will continue to ravage that very same middle class.<br /><br />See what I mean when I say republican teabagger-gop-ers are fully able to hold two inapposite positions at the same time?<br /><br />And speaking of time, I'm going time traveling for a while now so I'll undoubtedly see you before you see me again.<br /><br />Ciao, bella ámi.<br /><br />QUERY: What kind of statement or comment does it make regarding Dylan Ratigan in view of the fact that the theme music for his show is a short track of <i>Uriah Heep's</i> 1972 song <b>Easy Living</b>? He may be living easy but the reality that the majority of his viewers probably aren't just strikes me as ironic. Really, moog synthesizers playing the intro to a serious news program?Bill Arnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13177388116421409760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21446720.post-27624765585256031262011-06-20T19:23:00.007-04:002011-06-23T07:26:33.805-04:00I am very much enjoying my newfound ability to travel through time……I find it to be a rather interesting phenomenon. I really had not considered the consequences and not unpleasant side effects of time travel until just the last few days; or where they really the last few days or the first few days or the middle few days? My inquiring mind does not know!<br /><br />I ask myself this piercing, penetrating, pertinent, probing and possibly perfectly pure philosophic quiry as a result of scrolling down the page after having posted a couple of new musings where, to my surprise, I found that the last postings I made were actually in May of this year. Once on the 3rd [my birthday] and again on the 6th [3 millennia after my birthday] leading to the inescapable conclusion that I am, indeed, a time traveler. Some more skeptical people might allege that it is merely the function of huge amounts of various medications combined with the fact that being 100% disabled does make it impossible for me to work and therefore I have no reason to be cognizant of dates, months, years, or time and my place within it as all that is irrelevant to me. Balderdash!<br /><br />I think it's great being lost in time and space. Parking is plentiful, crowds are minimal, shopping a thousand years at a time allows me to take advantage of all those sales others may miss, and this expanded timeframe means I will survive to the ripe old age of five or six hundred thousand years. What could possible be better than that? [Only my Warrior Woman, only my Warrior Woman.] [I am using these different brackets for <i>sotto voce</i> notations as I finally learned to speak (parenthetically) only to find that no one could hear me. No wonder it's a dead language; it wasn't even used on the tablets of the Ten Commandments, not even the Charlton Heston version!]<br /><br />One curiously curious curiosity is that the physical anomalies that led me to this state of ethereal being have resulted in a conditioned response to stress and pain that partly eludes the negative feedback loop, that mean futhermucking Mobias Strip of ever escalating agony and despair. Seemingly my "other" mate for life I needed a brief respite, one I found as I allowed my mind to enjoy the time traveling and learned to enjoy this absence of time from my life. It is actually kind of cool.<br /><br />I most enjoy the return "trips" through the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties and then skipping over the Nineties and the 00 [double oughts], the years when never-ending pain consumed every bit of sanity I thought I had.<br /><br />So, as Sawah Pawin would say, "You betcha!…" it's better to be a time traveler any and every day of the week.<br /><br />I guess I have always possessed this hidden talent as many of my predictions made as off-the-cuff remarks came to be as inexorably as the travel through time itself, especially those made after the election of gwb. The housing market crash, huge corporations claiming poverty and a need for help despite record profits and growth, that the real damage done this country by gwb wouldn't be known until he had been out of office for two years and the bodies had finally floated to the top! It's true! What a hoot! Any other writer here at VidiotSpeak has read some of my statements and predictions that came to fruition, so time travel is really a gas.<br /><br />I encourage all our readers to become time traveling writers writing about their <strike>predilections</strike>…predictions when some of them prove to be true.<br /><br />Lately I've taken to much chuckling and large grins as we watch what I believe is the beginning of the end of the republican party. Grover Norquist out of fashion! No longer a power player in the new amalgam of the GOP and the teabagger party. I laugh and laugh now at the shocking number of rethuglicans violating Reagan's 11th commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of other Republicans, a mantra no longer sung in four part harmony accompanied by John Williams and the London Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra as the teabaggers drag the GOP so far to the right that even the Elders of the party recognize that they are "going too goddamned far" trying to yet again practice Reaganomics, the failed financial model that holds, "If you give the rich tax breaks they will create more jobs…" without qualifying it as, "…but the jobs will be overseas as the rich take their money, factories, and jobs overseas so they can find labor for a dollar-tewnty-two-ninety-five a day, not have to give them healthcare, where there is no OSHA to prevent a corporation from demanding twenty hour-long workdays in deplorable and unsafe conditions and create a permanent lower class here in America as we turn it into a 'service' nation instead of the monster manufacturing country it used to be." Now we're a third rate banana republic without the bananas.<br /><br />It is only through the wonder of time travel that I was able to type the above paragraph. Now I'm gonna go back a few hours today and catch Judge Judy. Time travel! Love it!<br /><br />Robin Williams once said, "Remember…butterflies have wings because they take themselves lightly." I had begun to take the world too seriously, our political system was making me want to puke, so I decided to take myself lightly and really learn to enjoy living outside time as I formerly was prisoner to an artificial reality imposed upon me from without. I like the reality of time-travel as I see and experience it; selfish though it certainly be I'm havin' too much fun to go back and this construct suits me just fine.<br /><br />Ciao, bella ámi!Bill Arnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13177388116421409760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21446720.post-51429298943899736632011-06-19T12:13:00.006-04:002011-06-22T12:14:56.478-04:00I don't know how many readers might remember……the Vidiot and Dr Vidiot's last amazing but bizarre assignment…uh…vacation!…and their daring exploits crossing the then congealed-and-solidified-oil spill spilt in the Gulf of Mexico, which was recounted in some detail by this agent. (Any readers that missed this fascinating tale of their exploits may still enjoy it by searching the archives in, if memory serves, July 2010.) [Actually my memory did not serve, it never even took the order. I had to search feverishly for the search box so I could further search for the material for which I was searching. Got kinda hairy there for a few minutes, or hours, or days. I don't really know as I seem to have lost my ability to be aware of where I am in time and space, but as I do not recall having seen the sunset or sunrise I presume it is still the same day on which I began this post. Bill]<br /><br />Anyway, this year the Vidiot and Dr Vidiot have really outdone themselves in exciting new adventures, surviving a perilous journey from the civilization of New York to the hinterlands of Midwest America where they have quietly carried on their duties as all good super spies and extraordinary citizens do. It seems that the NY subway tunnel system lacked sufficient space for the installing and concealing of the huge banks of Cray supercomputers and the Apple iPads necessary to fulfill their duties or provide sufficient amusement to keep them entertained in between missions…damn!…VACATIONS!<br /><br />They now not only have newly dug digs within which to live but to also hide all the vital equipment they need in the miles and miles of freshly excavated tunnels beneath St Louis, with the added advantage of the broadband antennas they surreptitiously installed within and outside of the St Louis Arch of Fame and Renown using a top secret method allowing them to "paint" the antennas upon the arch to keep them invisible and undetectable by any method known or unknown or known to be unknown to Man.<br /><br />It is through this massive antenna that I am able to monitor and report on their highly confidential communications with the nations top leaders regarding Dr Vidiot's discovery of a technique to force dormant volcanoes to violently erupt after centuries of inactivity which can only be described with a mix of Mandarin Chinese, ancient Mayan, and those little comic cartoons that used to come in all pieces of Bazooka Bubble gum.<br /><br />The first test of this technique last year at the Eyjafjallajökull Volcano [Note: this is the decoded name of the volcano. I can't even begin to spell the encoded name as I lack the 372-character/pictographic/hieroglyphic coding/decoding keyboard required to do so. Bill] was such an explosive success that a second test using the Grimsvötn Volcano under the Vatnajokull Glacier [also decoded names, as difficult as that may be to believe. Bill] was triggered last May. The Russian judge of the results rated this successful test a 9.5 while the judge's English, French, and American counterparts all gave the eruption a perfect 10, and the Spanish judge gave it a 10.5 for the extra difficulty of causing an eruption below a glacier.<br /><br />No one to whom I have spoken has yet given me a satisfactory reason for causing the eruption of long dormant volcanoes. All "they" [Black Ops Agents, CIA Snoops, and their secretaries from whom I get most of my information. Bill] will state for the record is that Dr Vidiot's invention is both vital to national security and certain to be a real crowd pleaser at a World Fair to be hosted at an as yet undisclosed location sometime in the near future. I could not get any kind of firm timeline as apparently the government is having great difficulty evicting former president of vice Dick Cheney from the "undisclosed location" he still considers his home despite finally being out of office and relegated to the Trash Bin of History for his disservice to America and into the Guinness Book of World Records as the Man Most Resembling a Rabid Bulldog.<br /><br />It just positively gives me shivers down me spine, tingling sensations in my outer extremities, a funny little itch right at the exact spot on the scapula where it is impossible to scratch, and a warm, fuzzy feeling of pride to again be associated with this amazing couple: scions of scientific scientists, super-intelligent giants among mental midgets, diminutive denizens, cognitively challenged citizens, disinterested dopers, and other persons of America laboring to survive while true leaders such as the Vidiots continually expand Man's knowledge base, lend newly coined terms to the lexicon of the languages of Man, and giving of their lives and intellect and pioneer spirit to unselfishly share knowledge only they could discover using their proprietary, patented, protected, and perfected techniques to explain the hitherto unexplainable<br /><br />Once again, dear reader, the task of keeping you apprised of the trials, tribulations, and just plain fun had when the Vidiots go on…vacation…has devolved to me. It is a sacred duty calling for little extra effort, negligible sacrifices, and only a meager understanding of the scientific principles or moral implications involved so it is the least I can do and as always you can count on me to do the least I can.<br /><br />To the unordained neophytes, new readers, old readers, young readers, old readers again, and those who have dropped by regularly or irregularly through the years, rest assured that when thoroughly rested I will tirelessly endeavor to keep up with and recount here the true nature of the…vacations…taken by the Vidiots as I, too, envy the high-flying lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. And, frankly, that guy in that beer commercial who's supposedly "the most interesting person alive" is bull do-do, the Vidiots are clearly more interesting, informative, and not encumbered by a scraggly, scruffy grey beard.<br /><br />So, as always, you'll only hear the truth of their exploits here where I, your intrepid reporter, will write of their adventures with an eye toward the truth [This is the same as an "eye" toward a fast approaching city bus or a derailed train. Bill]<br /><br />And if you really believe the Vidiots are in parts unknown, south of several borders and struggling to learn Spanish, well, now you know the truth as reported from their temporary headquarters carved in the ice of the Vatnajokull Glacier a safe distance from the volcanic eruption and hot ashes, directly to me through the St Louis Arch Antenna Base, the supercomputers and Ipads below the city there, and left as a message on my telephone.<br /><br />Yes, we do very important research and development here at VidiotSpeak as well as reporting on political happenings, chicanery, corruption, and the humor that normally accompanies politics, even though it is mostly ironic in nature. Maybe especially when it is ironic. You'll have to be the judge.<br /><br />There will be further updates as I receive them and I am certain that all our readers are cheering for the Vidiots to once again establish new scientifically and painstakingly accurate measurements of man-made events with no apparent purpose other than blowing shit up. Important and fun work indeed!<br /><br />Ciao, bella ámi.Bill Arnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13177388116421409760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21446720.post-78455113581651128562011-06-18T14:16:00.007-04:002011-06-22T12:16:51.158-04:00I've been away for a while, but I'm back now……After a successful mission requiring every bit of my military training, surreptitious black ops, international intrigue, spy craft, and the application of the full power of my mutant brain to accomplish my sacred task: buying the house next door.<br /><br />It's a long and frightening story; not for the faint of heart nor those with nervous disorders, hives, scabies, rabies, winkin' blinkin' or nod. I knew that it would be a difficult task given the given propensities of banks that finance mortgages to not finance mortgages, complicated further by the fact that it was a short sale purchase wherein the former owner walked away from a one zillion dollar mortgage, which I picked up for a song and a dance and only a mere one-third of a zillion dollars. I am sworn to secrecy and shall never reveal what song I sang nor the dance I danced.<br /><br />We were forced to make this move for my enemies, who are legion, had discovered my carefully hidden lair, forcing me to establish a new secret headquarters lair where it would be extremely or impossibly difficult for my enemies to ascertain my whereabouts. It's a clever ploy and although I have never really tried this in the past, my main guard dog, Xanatos (pictured in my responses to comments) assures me that the very fact that it took the neighborhood squirrels almost two days to find the dogs after an exploratory leap to our new fence line bodes well for our future security. The squirrels have been unable to penetrate our comprehensive new alarm system, although I do not know if that is because they are just stupid rats with tails, or that they lack digital dexterity, or that squirrels are genetically inclined to non-curiosity regarding alarm systems.<br /><br />I am happy to be coming in from the cold, which I can do as the regulatory authorities here at VidiotSpeak never sent me a burn notice meaning that they would completely disavow any knowledge of me and/or my activities, which is for the best as I have strange proclivities better not revealed.<br /><br />Another factor in my return is receipt through diplomatic channels an "eyes only" missive that the Vidiot, now on foreign assignment, is having difficulty learning the native language in her country of temporary assignment. I wanted to relay to her the sage advice given me once by a language expert at Langley (that's Langley, Minnesota, not Virginia) that you know you are truly grasping a language when you have a dream and everyone in the dream is speaking the subject language.<br /><br />I remember one of my classmates bursting into class one day excitedly proclaiming that he dreamed the night before and everyone in his dream was speaking French, his assigned language.<br /><br />The instructor, very excited, asked, "That's great! What were they talking about?"<br /><br />The enthusiastic young agent replied, "I don't know! I couldn't understand a fucking word they were saying!"<br /><br />I realize that this may not be the most helpful of information I can relay to the Vidiot and Dr. Vidiot in pursuit of their "vacation," but it has always struck me as amusing at the least and truthful at the most.<br /><br />I will earnestly attempt to continue regular postings as now that my sacred mission, as described above, is no longer sucking all the oxygen from my brain, the political situation, dire as always but not as sheerly overwhelming to my now healthier mind, and the fact that I will face less boredom prompts me to take this action in the hopes of providing edification, pontification, exacerbation, and, as my son says, masturbation, available to the public at large or alternatively the large population.<br /><br />I must sign off now, but I do harbor some small hope that any of the deranged readers I may have had will return to visiting this site often. Newly deranged readers are always welcome and will be accorded respect and subjected to my bizarre sense of wit and writing.<br /><br />Ciao, bella ámi.Bill Arnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13177388116421409760noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21446720.post-62367189877263342452011-05-30T20:22:00.003-04:002011-05-30T20:31:22.431-04:00Bon Voyage!I'm not leaving the blog. BUT, I am leaving the country for a while. Hopefully, I'll be able to post. <div><br /></div><div>It's going to be a helluva trip. I'm terrified and excited, all at the same time. We're going to South America. Dr. Vidiot, after years of working two, sometimes three jobs and going to school full-time, is for the first time ever in his adult life, taking a summer off. A once in a lifetime trip. Of course, the parental units are less than pleased. They have all informed us that should we be kidnapped, there'll be no ransom paid. Oh well.</div><div><br /></div><div>Stay tuned!</div>The Vidiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536981176706604870noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21446720.post-28959597408713746572011-05-25T10:34:00.003-04:002011-05-25T10:57:23.383-04:00Hello from Tornado Land!<div><br /> <p>St. Louis may not have the nightlife and the restaurants that New York does, but hell, nothing beats leaving with the perpetual threat of being sucked up over the rainbow! And according to this one youtube blogger that's been pretty accurate with his predictions, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnfCvNgzAys">we're gonna get something nasty here</a> in the next 24-48 hours. So better post now while I still can. </p><br /> <p>Also, sorry for the light posting... again. </p><br /> <p>What has been occupying my time is getting ready for our summer trip down south, waaaay down south, so Dr. Vidiot can finally get himself fluent in Spanish. Toughest part about that is not the packing or the closing down of the apartment, but finding someone to babysit our dog. Plans A, B and C fell through. I'm now working on D, E and F. E MIGHT come through. I'm hoping it does. Otherwise, no trip. </p><br /> <p>Another thing that's been occupying my time is I've finally gotten through three chapters of the graphic novel I'm working on. Being unemployed really helps with that. (The employment situation in St. Louis for my line of work is, apparently, dismal.) </p><br /> <p>Also, Dr. Vidiot's recent research is sucking up some time because I do the transcribing of his interviews. Right now he's researching violence in schools and the kids he interviews mumble and use all sorts of weird slang, not to mention the sort of bizarre southern accent they have. </p><br /> <p>So, have I been paying attention to politics? Not so much. Had a good laugh over the Dominique Strauss-Kahn nonsense. Honestly, why anyone expects someone in the position of power to behave any other way is beyond me. When you're used to looking at those not in power as things, treating them as such is second nature. <a href="http://petras.lahaine.org/articulo.php?p=1856&more=1&c=1">James Petras</a> has a good spin on it: </p><br /> <blockquote><br /> <p>The attempted rape and sexual abuse of an African cleaning woman by the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK) embodies, in microcosm, the entire historical and contemporary legacy of colonial neo-colonial relations.</p><br /> </blockquote><br /><p>The whole rapture thing kind of cracked me up. I also liked that some folks in Seattle <a href="http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/2011/05/21/photo-rapture-prank-in-wedgewood/">left piles of clothes</a> all over the place to make it look like someone had just been raptured. </p><br /><p>I've also been keeping an I eye the Japan radiation thing. The news has been light, making everyone feel like the crisis is over. It's not and it won't be for decades, if that. </p><br /><p>And do I care that Arnold has a love child or two or three? Oh hell no.</p><br /><p>The next time I post will hopefully be from south of the border. I have my activated and charcoal in one hand and cipro in the other.</p></div>The Vidiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536981176706604870noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21446720.post-80786073850308718522011-05-14T11:33:00.004-04:002011-05-14T12:20:49.600-04:00Whatever your feelings are for Ron Paul...Love him, hate him, whatever, I don't care. What I do care about are gross misrepresentations of anybody's viewpoints. <p>The media are reporting, after <a href="http://snardfarker.ning.com/video/ron-paul-smacks-down-chris?xg_source=activity">this interview</a> of Ron Paul by Chris Matthews, that <a href="http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/05/ron-paul-suggests-basic-freedoms-come-second-to-property-rights/">Ron Paul wouldn't have voted for the Civil Rights Act</a>. The media narrative that they're trying to construct is that Ron Paul is a stealth (or not so stealth) racist. They know full well that the easiest way to discredit anybody these days is to call them a racists or an anti-Semite or some other sort of bigoted fool. </p><p>Paul's real stand on the Civil Rights Act is, judging from what he actually said, that governments are the ones that first implemented policies of segregation and racism. He simply wants to <b>repeal</b> those laws that systematically segregate people on the basis of race, ethnicity, etc., and <b>not codify</b> so-called non-discriminatory laws. He trusts that people will do the right thing and they don't need any laws to tell them to do it. What the media is trying to do is go back in history and say oh well, Ron Paul is advocating a return to our racist past. What Ron Paul is really doing is he's looking towards the future. He <b>knows</b> the world wouldn't return to a racist past. </p><p>Bottom line, the laws that the US government has passed in the form of the Civil Rights Act did little to end segregation and discrimination. And here's where it become complicated.</p><p>Culturally, the American people are not racist. The few who are are irrelevant because racists are generally ostracized by civil society. What is true is that despite whatever laws the government wants to pass or has passed, American apartheid is still very much alive in the United States. Black and other minority groups remain spatially and geographically isolated and, as most sociologists would agree, hyper-segregated from the rest of US society. Hyper-segregation is a term to describe how black and minority groups are segregated -- not just spatially, but culturally, economically, politically, and socially -- from the dominant society. And don't forget, that it's the American government that created laws that segregated and discriminated against people and what Ron Paul understands is that their laws to end their mistakes did not curtail the problem. It was the American people, not the beloved nation state that ended segregation. It wasn't casting votes that ended it, it was the will of black, white and women revolutionaries that took to the streets and demanded government end their racists and discriminatory ways. It was the people that ended it. Not the government. </p><p>Ron Paul gets this and so other critical thinkers like Chomsky and Zinn, et al. They, Chomsky, Paul, et al, advocate the end of government interference, whether it's creating racist laws or laws to ameliorate racist laws, because the American people can handle it from here. The government can go home. </p><p>When we look at the so-called objective nature of government policies, the managing of all our human social institutions, we can see, under closer inspection, that government laws are far from neutral and objective. In fact, under the cloak of objectivity, lies overt racism. In our educational policies, we see eurocentric, white-dominant, <!--StartFragment--><span style="font-family:Georgia, Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">bourgeoisie</span></span> <!--EndFragment--> values that take precedent over values that exist in the many different heterogenous populations and minority groups in the US. We see white-dominant values in our legal system over the values of our hispanic, black, native american and women groups. We see laws of all kinds situated within all our institutions that instill dominant white values that uphold the dominant class at the expense of all other groups. There is nothing objective or neutral about any of our laws. </p><p>These laws support an obvious dominant class in the name of democracy, but democracy is far from what we have. The proof is who commands the dominant institutions and how those laws and ideas and values perpetuated by government economic elites make laws that serve their own interests and legitimate their own power. As its very essence, government cannot pass laws that are against its own self- interest. Its preservation is its first priority; the preservation of the status quo and the preservation of the commanders of the dominant institutions.</p><p>Though Ron Paul's ideas are progressive, they're not perfect, but at least they are a start.</p><p>But those ideas sure as hell don jibe with the media narrative.</p><p>And that's my point. Take him or leave him, I don't care, but at least be honest about what they guy says. </p><p></p><p><br /></p>The Vidiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536981176706604870noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21446720.post-42137673877153285862011-05-06T13:36:00.007-04:002011-05-06T15:11:36.738-04:00I feel the need for a reawakening to shed this country……of all this hatred, bigotry, homophobia, etc., and that's just in politics. Perhaps I was just lucky in my choice of music during my formative years. I think this song, almost revered as a new national anthem by the people with whom I hung out and who hung onto every word of one of the most socially relevant songs ever, now as then.<blockquote>Would you knock a man down if you don't like the cut of his clothes<br /><b>Could you put a man away if you don't want to hear what he knows<br />Well it's happening right here people dying of fear by the droves<br />And I know most of you<br />Either don't believe it's true,<br />Or else you don't know what to do<br />Or maybe I'm singing about you,</b><br />Who knows.<br /><b>It's incredibly sick, you can feel it, as across the land it flows<br />Prejudice is slick when it's a word game, it festers and grows,<br />Move along quick, it furthers one to have somewhere to go<br />You can feel it as it's rumblin'<br />Let emotions keep a tumblin'<br />Then as cities start to crumblin'<br />Mostly empty bellies grumblin'<br />Here we go<br />People see somebody different fear is the first reaction shown<br />Then they think they've got him licked the barbaric hunt begins and they move in slow<br />A human spirit is devoured the remains left to carrion crow<br />I was told that life is change<br />And yet history remains,<br />Does it always stay the same<br />Do we shrug it off and say<br />Only God knows<br />By and by, somebody usually goes down to the ghetto<br />Try and help but they don't know why folks treat them cold<br />And the rich keep getting richer and the rest of us just keep getting old.<br />You see one must have a mission<br />In order to be a good Christian<br />If you don't you will be missing<br />High Mass or the evening show<br />And the well fed masters reap the harvests of the polluted seeds they've sown,<br />Smug and self-righteous they bitch about people they owe,<br />And you can't prove them wrong, they're so God damn sure they know<br />I have seen these things with my very own eyes and defended my battered soul,<br />It must be too tough to die,<br />American propaganda, South African lies<br />Will not force me to take up arms, that's my enemies' pride,<br />Ands I won't fight by his rules that's foolishness besides,<br />His ignorance is gonna do him in and nobody's gonna cry,<br />Because his children they are growing up<br />With bigots and their silver cups<br />They're fed up, they might throw up<br />On you</b></blockquote><br /><br /><b><i>Stephen Stills Word Games</i></b><br /><br />This is once again as close a description of what's happening in America as when this song was released (in this case) in Still's Electric/Acoustic Album of 1975.<br /><br />So I seem to have returned to my senses and lucidness, both of which I celebrate. I really let those assholes get under my skin and I'm more than a bit embarrassed and chagrined that I allowed that to happen.<br /><br />I have never been a hater, and I renounce all hatred again, now. It is a useless emotion, life-draining, quality of life diminishing, bringer of depression and, altogether the wrong reaction to the clowns, buffoons, and carnival barkers that have succeeded in so embarrassing both the teabaggers and the gop that they now see the beginning of their imminent breakdown and abject failure that will leave them the laughingstocks they deserve to be so seen.<br /><br />I see it now in the eyes of the MSM talking heads the contempt for people who stalwartly espouse positions that are absurd. As this contempt grows, as the political actions of the teagagging gopers grow evermore ridiculous in their positions, Americans are waking up, really listening, and everyday more of them are beginning to feel the same sense of contempt and ridicule and they, too, finally have to laugh at the sheer silliness of a silly party run by silly people seeking wildly insane expansions of authority that will never take hold in my America.<br /><br />Ya just have to love your country more than you hate its political rabble and losers, and I do.<br /><br />Love America. Laugh at the loony teabagging-gop-ers and as catching as laughter and the power of satire continue exposing these pitiable people to the public, the louder and further the laughter spreads, the more people of that ilk will stop exposing themselves to ridicule.<br /><br />We're winning this one quite handily and I have to admit, I'd be scared shitless to play poker with President Obama; I'd laugh all the way through a game of horseshoes (I'm only guessing that would be a game in which they might excel, shoes, ass, all the same to them!) with any gop candidate.<br /><br />LOVE AMERICA AND AMERICANS, and save your best belly laughs for people like Ryan, Boehner, Mitchell, Trump,<br />and teabagger-gop-ers in prticular.Bill Arnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13177388116421409760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21446720.post-40609834859976777542011-05-03T14:08:00.003-04:002011-05-03T14:17:07.328-04:00One of the main points upon which Obama is to be congratulated……is his highly dignified decision to NOT place his thumb on his nose, waive his fingers to the crowd, and go, "Neener, neener, neener, your C- Princeton cheerleader can kiss my ass! It takes a real, intelligent man to catch a terrist! Neener, neener, neener!"<br /><br />That is all.<br /><br />Ciao, bella ámi.Bill Arnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13177388116421409760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21446720.post-36759708328832086902011-05-01T23:43:00.005-04:002011-05-02T09:44:23.925-04:00The apex of cynicism<p>When I heard that Osama bin Laden had been killed, I thought the following:</p><p>Oh really? You mean they killed a guy who has been dead for nearly 10 years? That's a trick.</p><p>and</p><p>Why announce it now? Why does it make me so uneasy? What are they prepping us for?</p><p>and finally</p><p>Is this how they're starting off the election year? This is them coming out of the gate at full speed? Seriously?</p><p>So, I have to ask, is there anybody more cynical than I? </p><p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></b><b>Update:</b> They dumped his body into the sea? Really? WTF for? Even Che got multiple pictures take of his body, bits and pieces of him cut off and examined. I mean, hell, that's what's supposed to happen to enemies of the State.</p><p>No, no, no. It there wasn't something hinky before, there is certainly something hinky now. I almost feel like like Obama didn't order the dumping of the body but now has to deal with it. Why go on about proof if you dump your proof into the sea? Did somebody just screw Obama?</p><p>I dunno.</p><p>Listen, all we know is that the US government wants us to think they they killed Osama bin Laden. That's all we know for sure. Everything else is just speculation.</p>The Vidiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536981176706604870noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21446720.post-52195429062967442722011-04-29T10:06:00.009-04:002011-04-29T16:04:56.208-04:00I'm not a birther, but....Seriously. Dudes. That 'long-form birth certificate' is one f-cked up document. And here's why. <div><br /></div><div>I do graphic work, specifically, print production. That means that for the last 15 years, I have dealt with the nitty gritty of digital file creation and printing. Hell, I've even had to make fake 'official' documents that look good printed as part of an overall designed page. It's not rocket science. It only takes a few extra tweaks to make something look good to the average eye. </div><div><br /></div><div>After I heard that folks were saying it was a layered file, I had to see for myself. And lo and behold, it DID have 'layers', or rather, subgroups in a group within a single layer in illustrator. Then I heard the possible explanation for why some random chunks were in the file: that whomever had scanned the damn thing had the OCR (object character recognition) software turned on. And I sort of accepted that initially, but then I thought, wait a minute. If that were the case, wouldn't some of the text be editable? And since it's not, why did they bother to only rasterize the type and not the whole document? </div><div><br /></div><div>Then I saw <a href="http://208.64.37.102/public/obama-birth-cert/obama-birth-cert.mp4">this video</a> by another graphics person who noticed things like under the oddball text, there was tone, which there shouldn't have been had there been OCR issues, among other things, some of which I agree with, some I don't</div><div><br /></div><div>So now I'm trying to wrap my head around how they could've made this document, and here's my theory: it's odd appearance, the page with the herringbone pattern was the paper they printed on from what they want us to think is microfilm. I just don't think it was the original microfilm, or the original microfilm image has been tampered with. </div><div><br /></div><div>If someone gave me a microfilm image and told me to change a lot of the info, I could do it pretty easily. I'd also make sure to use as much as the original artwork as possible so it all looked the same. Trust me, I could do a MUCH better job than this piece of crap. (Though, maybe mine would be too perfect.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Anyway, my point is it's a<a href="http://www.rense.com/general93/rank.htm">bsolutely f-cking clumsy</a>. If they wanted to negate the entire controversy, they could've just opened the PDF in photoshop, flattened the file, and re-saved it as a photoshop PDF with layers turned off, then reopened it in Adobe Acrobat and saved it as an acrobat PDF. THEN, it wouldn't have any of the digital anomalies. Hell, they could've just rasterized the whole damn thing in Illustrator and be done with it.</div><div><br /></div><div><s>And don't get me started on some of the weird info in the document itself. As has been pointed out by more than a few folks, Kenya wasn't called Kenya until 1963, and his father is categorized as African instead of negro which was probably more the custom in 1961, just to point out a few things.</s> I'm just going to leave the info alone. There's too much this and that out there, I don't feel like verifying any of it. </div><div><br /></div><div>But all of this is neither here nor there. The REAL question is "WHY THE HELL ARE THEY DOING THIS?" It's obviously a manufactured document. There's not a doubt in my mind they tampered with it and what's worse, they WANT you to know they tampered with it.</div><div><br /></div><div>But why? Why are they feeding the trolls by even releasing such a thing, unless of course they want to keep the trolls fed and alive, <a href="http://www.prisonplanet.com/is-birther-circus-a-white-house-political-ploy.html">which is obviously the case</a>. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><b>What's going on in the world they don't want us talking about? Oh, I can think of about a dozen things, from the economy to the radiation to the undeclared wars. What is this thing? A huge damned distraction is what this thing is. </b></span></div><div><br /></div><div>What will be the result of all of this? At some point, when it looks like he's going to really go into the crapper because of the birther issue (because this latest release was done in such a way that even folks like myself who considered the birthers ridiculous are now giving the documents a second look and the subject a second thought) he will 'be forced to reveal' some embarrassing truth that he was trying to keep secret that not only proves he's a US citizen through and through, but that the other side is playing 'dirty politics' and can't be trusted to do the right thing ever. (<a href="http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/obamathelovechild.php">Mike Rivero's theory</a> is that Obama's dad wasn't the Kenyan, but that his mother had an affair with some other guy from Chicago and they covered it up for some reason or other. Which would certainly explain how Obama ended up in Chicago after Hawaii, Indonesia and NYC.)</div><div><br /></div><div>So there you have it. This whole birth certificate nonsense is just a manufactured distraction so that any focus on the real issues and the real let-downs and disappointments are not fully discussed or acknowledged. And The Donald? Of course he's in on it. I wouldn't be surprised if he were a paid employee of the Obama campaign.</div><div><br /></div><div>Don't get sucked into this stupidity. Yeah, it's bogus. But there's a reason it's bogus. They WANT it to be bogus. They WANT the controversy. Every second spent discussing the certificate is a second NOT discussing the fact that Obama is warmonger of the highest magnitude. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Update:</b> Let me be clear: I do not necessarily think that the damn thing is a forgery. It's certainly possible that it is. I can see exactly how they did if it IS a forgery. The way that Illustrator is looking at it, I've looked at solid scanned images before and they don't pop up with all those vector boxes. HOWEVER, the point is, again, THEY WANT YOU TO THINK IT'S HINKY. IT'S A DISTRACTION. THAT IS ALL. </div><div><br /></div><div>Focus people, FOCUS!</div>The Vidiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536981176706604870noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21446720.post-84215451125292573872011-04-27T15:32:00.004-04:002011-04-29T13:51:18.764-04:00Stay tuned for the Donald, crowing like the……Cock of the walk while running around like a chicken with its head cutoff. <br /><br />For his next <strike>trick</strike> amusing exposé the Donald will prove that Obama is not black since his highly paid investigators (the ones the Donald claims told him Obama's birth certificate did not exist) have also been unable to ascertain any slightest bit of proof that Obama is, indeed, black.<br /><br />Said the Donald, "The so-called birth certificate of Obama says he is African, not African-American, and it does not claim that he is black. And if he's not black that means he ripped off both Columbia and Harvard Universities by using affirmative action to obtain his education instead of dropping out of high school like most of the Blacks with whom I get along famously well. The Blacks love me."<br /><br />An additional investigation commenced by the Donald's team of crack, highly paid detectives (or high detectives paid with crack; I can never keep that straight) is whether Obama is really a male impersonator from Thailand, more commonly know for its female impersonators, because, after all, the President has never publicly exposed his genitalia while the entire world knows what a dick the Donald is.<br /><br />Stay tuned for these and other interesting developments.<br /><br />Ciao, bella ámi.Bill Arnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13177388116421409760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21446720.post-16229198834771984492011-04-24T00:10:00.000-04:002011-04-24T00:11:37.140-04:00Hoppy Easter!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmsdC24aPaiFBjCacNb0_48-a9S9fcmD-hvi7dQBPkhGVPGGL6_QbMFNw1whgndEHeYJgAht8c18raesNDGs8Mlh5hPZk5pYrsUGtqQtzw0hDPaNrrw_QhGcw5tZppCD_NXJH-/s1600/Easter_1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 218px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmsdC24aPaiFBjCacNb0_48-a9S9fcmD-hvi7dQBPkhGVPGGL6_QbMFNw1whgndEHeYJgAht8c18raesNDGs8Mlh5hPZk5pYrsUGtqQtzw0hDPaNrrw_QhGcw5tZppCD_NXJH-/s320/Easter_1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5598967820411818754" /></a><br />He dyed for your sins.The Sailorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14291047659785847514noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21446720.post-62264919831298228682011-04-22T12:47:00.003-04:002011-04-22T12:49:21.213-04:00A good profile on Ron PaulSomething to <a href="http://www.esquire.com/features/ron-paul-profile-0511">read</a> that ISN'T related to Fukishima, though, I'm sure some folks in politics think his ideas are downright radioactive. <div><blockquote>He is a constant in a changing world, an emissary from an older America. A self-styled constitutional purist, he has for forty years been a voice in the wilderness. But now he has sparked a movement that has put him at the center of the struggle over what kind of country we want to be. But is America ready for his radical vision?</blockquote></div>The Vidiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536981176706604870noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21446720.post-10673214376784093852011-04-22T09:31:00.003-04:002011-04-22T09:58:37.726-04:00I'm so psychoLast night, Teen Vidiot wanted to walk outside, in the rain, to get a coke at the store. Now, I wasn't particularly freaked out because he has a cold and he'd get wet. Or that he had a ton of homework to do and hadn't even started it. (Well, both of those things did freak me out.) BUT, this time, I was <i>more</i> worried about him getting radioactive rain on him. He thinks I'm completely crazy for even thinking about it, let alone worry about it. And maybe I am. I dunno.<div><br /></div><div>For one thing, every time I check <a href="https://cdxnode64.epa.gov/radnet-public/showMap.do">EPA's radnet</a>, the monitoring station for St. Louis mysteriously goes down when it rains. Now, knowing there is a ton of crap in the atmosphere, and that precipitation travels down through that atmosphere, makes me think they take it offline so people can't follow anything. Yesterday, we had a bad storm pass through here, and sure enough, damn radnet went offline. When I checked it during the day, when they finally DID update the info, turns out that during the middle of the storm, the beta gross count rate, which is the one you gotta' watch to make sure it doesn't get above 130 cpm, topped out at 150 cpm. That's not good. Here in the midwest, we're usually 20-40 cpm. 150??!! Nice. Granted, it only was high for about 3 hours, but still. Having elevated levels for any length of time, who knows what it's doing. (I know, how can I even trust their readings anyway. I mean, in all likelihood, the readings could be waaaaay higher ALL the time and they just take the meters offline to 're-calibrate' them.)<div><br /></div><div>Add to that the fact that there is practically <a href="http://www.activistpost.com/2011/04/radiation-exposure-from-fukushima-is.html">NO TALK on the MSM about any radioactive fallout</a> and I'm more than a little concerned. (Seriously, not one word.) </div><div><br /></div><div>Not that we needed any more proof of the fact that MSM is a corporate entity that serves its own interests over those of the public they are supposed to be serving, but seriously,<b> if they really did provide a public service, along with the weather, they'd have "Tonight's radiological forecast" with information about what you need to do to protect yourself. Additionally, they'd be running their own independent testing of the rainwater, tap water and food stuffs and doing in-depth reporting on it.</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Obviously, they don't do any of that so I have resorted to watching <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/dutchsinse">some guy on youtube</a> who DOES bother, with his limited resources (yet, apparently, unlimited time) to parse and research what little information there is from various sources, in the US and abroad. I mean, he could be a complete nut job who barely knows what the outside world looks like and lives in his mother's basement, but the choices are few for real info. </div><div><br /></div><div>And lord knows we don't want to leave me to my own imagination. Or, lordy, no.</div><div><br /></div><div>So, until I hear otherwise, I've upped my vitamin C intake, I dunk my dog's wet paws in baking soda and water before she comes in the house, I scream like a shrill harpy at Dr. and Teen Vidiot, reminding them to take off their wet shoes and not to bring the wet umbrella into the house and I've stopped putting milk in my coffee. </div><div><br /></div><div>Then again, Dr. Vidiot thinks we've ALWAYS been poisoned, things like this have ALWAYS happened, it's just that now, we have more access to information. He makes a pretty solid argument that things haven't changed all that much since March 11th because dozens, if not hundreds, of March 11th-type events have occurred and we were just never informed. </div><div><br /></div><div>It's an argument I ignore, mind you. But it's a solid argument.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div></div>The Vidiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536981176706604870noreply@blogger.com1