St. Elmo's Fire...

is a horrible movie. Honestly, it's one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Slightly entertaining but bad.

Psalm 33:6: "By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host."

Women have abortions to not get stretch marks

Or so says our friends at Wisconsin Right to Life. WRTL claims that under the Healthy Wisconsin universal health insurance plan Wisconsin taxpayers would be forced to pay for abortions for any woman including(with my commentary in parenthesis):

• The married woman who isn't sure who the father of her baby is and doesn't want her husband to know she's got a boyfriend. (Evil slutty women... And couldn't that be in order to protect her safety from an abusive husband?)
• The woman who is having her third abortion. (Evil slutty women)
• The woman who doesn't want the inconvenience of a baby to interfere with her career plans. (Evil greedy slutty women)
• The woman who doesn't want to appear in her bikini with stretch marks. (That's just too ridiculous to say something about here)
• Any other Wisconsin woman, for any reason, at any time during pregnancy, for as many times as she would choose to have one, with no restrictions whatsoever.

The last one is laughable because it implies Healthy Wisconsin allows abortions past viability. However since the state still bans abortions past viability (hell the state actually bans all abortions but its an unenforceable law) these abortions wouldn't be covered anyway.

Do they really think most women are so shallow as to have abortions to keep from getting stretch marks? How deluded are these people?

Isaiah 55:6-7: "Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon."

Clearing the way for the oil brigade

"We don't need your hypocrisy
Execute real democracy." -- Serj Tankian

Proverbs 17:17: "A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity."

Big surprise, they're the first to do this

According to WisPolitics, a group of recent UW grads have started the Free Trade Shop. No not the FAIR trade shop, the FREE trade shop. They're doing it to counter the fair trade movement because they claim fair trade is anti-capitalist, etc., etc. Puhleeze.

Most fair trade is not government sanctioned but is conducted by groups who sell goods they bought at a price higher than standard and sell to consumers who are interested in those goods. Consumers buy these goods because for moral and practical reasons (the goods are often higher quality than what people buy in most stores). In other words its simply an example of the "invisible hand" working. People choose to pay a price they feel is reasonable for a type of good they want. Why they do so is irrelevant. There is demand for these types of goods and fair trade groups service them.

One shirt they have indicates that they have a problem with fair trade coffee. The complaint makes no sense if they really believe in the market system. Starbucks had demand for fair trade certified coffee so they provide it. It's not supply and demand that's solely based on the price of the product, it's supply and demand period.

I also find it funny when they say that some people are looking for low cost, high quality goods. If that was totally true, no one would buy their shirts. They would simply be priced out of the market. The whole idea of this store is laughable. I'm not surprised when they say they're the first to start a company over this.

Matthew 6:6: "But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you."

Eric says...

shooting a snake in a tree is a very poor way to get it down. Perhaps using a snake handler would be a better idea. If I find a crying child in a street who won't cooperate, I don't shoot them do I?

Romans 12:13: "Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality."

Too many children

I've been thinking more about the Duggar brood and I become more disturbed the more I think about it. From what I've been reading, the Duggars live in part off charity they receive from local families. I have no problem with charity. I do have a problem with people getting charity that could be better spent in many ways other than subsidizing their baby factory. When a baby is born they stay with the mother for only a few months and then they get a "buddy" meaning an older child who then raises them. In other words they force their teenage children to adopt. Super.

1 Corinthians 11:32: "But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world."

Abortion is Evil

Great title huh? Watch this video. In it the poster asks anti-abortion protestors, some of whom have volunteered about 5 years, are asked what the punishment should be for a woman who chooses to have an illegal abortion. Stunningly only one would accept that a woman who killed her unborn child should receive jail time. Every single protestor says without hesitation that abortion should be illegal but stammer and stumble when asked what the punishment should be for a woman who kills her baby. The conversation with the elderly lady is priceless and show how little abortion foes have thought through the consequences of their plans.

As pointed out in Newsweek, there are two ways of looking at this issues:

1. Abortion is murder and if outlawed, women who get abortions should get some sort of jail time (likely similar to pre-meditated murder).
2. Abortion is not murder and abortion should be legal.

Abortion opponents claim without doubt that abortion is murder. If that's so, why should women get anything less than the punishment for murder? I'll be the first to support rehabilitation and compassion criminals but there's no chance I would support convicting someone for first degree murder and letting them go without some time in a prison or mental institution.

By my estimation, if a pro-lifer supports anything less than a charge of first-degree murder for a woman who gets an illegal abortion they view the life of a fetus as less important than other life. Isn't that the meaning?

Oh readers, what should the punishment be for a woman who get illegal abortions?

Philippians 2:9-11: "Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

His fucking name is Jim Bob

Can't we put these people in prison for SOMETHING? It's the human equivalent of the crazy cat lady.

Isaiah 50:7: "But the Lord GOD helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame."

I emerged in London rain

"...I remember the night we walked along the Seine
Riding on The Metro..."

John 13:34-35: ""A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.""

I think moaning should be involved

I'm apparently doing the moaning meme because the hottest MILF I know, Ms. Mamma, requested I do so. So I am. Don't I just rock? :)

Five people who will be annoyed you tagged them:

No one. The only person I'd send this would be Ms. Mamma and since she already did it I can't send it to anyone. Sorry!

4 things that should go into room 101 and be removed from the face of the earth.

1. Bush (the president)
2. Bush (just guess)
3. Jesus freaks
4. Homophobia (I guess that relates to Jesus freaks)

3 things people do that make you want to shake them violently.

1. Using the word 'gay' in place of the word 'stupid'.
2. Torture
3. Saying that people who don't have health insurance should "just go buy some."

2 things you find yourself moaning about

1. Humidity (I'll second that babe)
2. Politics (Big surprise there)

1 thing the above answers tell you about yourself.

I use too many parenthesis.

RULES
* Link to the original meme at freelancecynic.com so people know what it's all about!
* Be as honest as possible, This is about letting people get to know the real you!
* Try not to insult anyone - unless they really deserve it or are very, very ugly!
* Post these rules at the end of every meme!

Where do you expect us to go...

 when the bombs fall?

2 Corinthians 9:7: "Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."

Update on Vista Metadata Project

For anyone who cares, I just released Alpha Preview 2 of the Vista Metadata Project. Has a few fixes but most of the major bugs are still there. Anyone who knows anything about C++ or is willing to learn and wants to help should contact me!

Psalm 34:8: "Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!"

iTunes is a bad neighbor

My brother got an iPod for graduation and he's been using my computer as his docking station. Since Apple must do everything their own way, that means I needed to install iTunes. While I personally dislike iTunes, it does have the ability to listen to Windows Media files. That was very helpful as it meant I didn't have to rip all my CDs into iTunes separately as I've already done that in Windows Media player. Unfortunately things didn't go as planned.

You see iTunes can't actually play Windows Media files like every media player on the face of the earth, including players for Linux and Mac. No they have to "transcode" (which means convert from one file format to another) Windows Media files to Apple's own M4A format. M4A files take about the same amount of space as a Windows Media file so now my music takes twice as much space as before and Windows Media Player and Windows Search finds two copies for every song. That's annoying.

I don't expect iPods to support Windows Media files. What I do expect is iTunes to keep the transcoded data in a format that doesn't double the size of my media library and hide it so Windows Search and Windows Media Player don't find two copies of every friggin' song. Shame on Apple for being horrible computing neighbors. Computers are tools to improve people's lives, not burdens to make our lives more difficult.

John 1:14: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth."

It's odd how it hurts

Most who know me know that I am a fan of wrestling. While I don't watch as regularly anymore, I do still have a love of the soap opera inside the "squared circle." The beauty of two human beings working together to put together a complex morality play on the fly continues to enrapture me. The butterflies in the pit of my stomach that I feel during a great wrestling match have rarely been matched. I have an immense amount of respect for the people who perform and put their bodies on the line every night to entertain, especially those who are true students of the "game." That's why this hurts.

I woke up today and saw that CNN.com had a link to a story about a bizarre murder involving a pro-wrestler and his family. Curious, I clicked through and read with disbelief the details that many others have read. Chris Benoit over the weekend killed his wife Nancy and 7-year old son Daniel before taking his own life. Both Nancy and Daniel were asphyxiated. Nancy's legs and feet were bound with blood around her head. Chris hung himself using one of his weight machines. Over the day these and other details came out including what could be an important point: anabolic steroids were found inside the house.

Today I have been in shock and my thoughts naturally go to the question of why this tragedy happened but I have to comment on other parts of our society's reaction to this tragedy as well. While only knowing that Benoit and his family had been found dead, the WWE canceled their live Raw show last night and instead aired a tribute show to showcase Benoit's accomplishments and love for his business. Other tributes were featured on the WWE's web site. After more information came out including that Benoit had been the instigator of a double-murder suicide, the WWE subsequently apologized for airing the tribute show, removed all tributes and said that Benoit's name will not be mentioned on programming in the future as a way to begin the healing process. I find this fascinating and saddening.

A tremendous performer is still dead. His family is still dead. Co-workers have said that Benoit was in a paranoid and unstable mental state in the past weeks. Why may we not mourn the passing of a great superstar because an apparent mental illness led him to kill? I feel no better knowing that Chris Benoit will not longer be mentioned. I feel worse as not only does the WWE have little respect for those who have passed too early but they have absolutely no understanding of mental illness or compassion for those afflicted by it.

There have been claims by the WWE that the media sensationalized the Benoit tragedy and jumped to conclusions regarding a connection to steroids. No doubt, the media loves any murder that involves a wife and kids and will report it endlessly. Add in the fact that it involved a celebrity and it's a veritable circle-jerk of media frenzy. They also mention that we need to wait for the toxicology reports to know whether Benoit had any drugs in his system. Even though their has been sensationalism, the WWE's claims in other ways are weak and in many ways sickening.

The WWE states steroids were not the cause of death; that asphyxiation and hanging were the causes of death. What a simplification of the steroid question that is. Not one person has claimed that steroids DIRECTLY caused the death of anyone in this case. The concern is that steroids may have played a role in Benoit's actions. They also claim that because Benoit's actions were deliberate and spread out over a long period that steroids couldn't have been involved. Steroids mental and emotional side-effects are not limited to "'roid rage." Depression and paranoia are two other side-effects of steroid use. When you consider that Benoit was reported as so paranoid by his co-workers in the past few weeks that he claimed that someone was following him and that he ordered his wife not to leave their house for her own safety, the possibility of steroid abuse being a factor in this case seems more likely.

I am tired of the WWE's excuses on wrestler's dying too young as a result of steroid and painkiller abuse. The WWE claims Benoit's last drug test in April was clean. I say bullshit. No one believes that the WWE has legit drug tests and we have one more reason to feel that way. The WWE is killing human beings by encouraging them to gain muscle mass, with little concern for how they do it, pushing them to perform when injured and giving them so many painkillers that addiction can only be expected. In return for giving so much of their lives to the WWE, wrestlers receive no disability benefits, no health insurance and no retirement benefits. To think that a billion dollar company would treat its most valuable assets with such disregard is surprising, to think that these assets are human beings is sickening.

Government needs to step in and regulate a company that for too long has ignored the safety of their workers in order to make a buck. Wrestling will always be dangerous and painful; that can't be avoided. What can be avoided is the continued sacrifice of talented human beings at altar of the dollar.

I will miss Chris Benoit. I can only hope his death will finally be the wake-up call the wrestling industry has needed for far too long.

Galatians 5:16-17: "But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do."

Not everyone hates you

Today I stumbled upon The Association for the Legal Defense of Charles G. Taylor. I find this site pretty funny for two reasons.

First, Charles Taylor has absolutely no need for donations to support his defense. He embezzled millions of dollars from Liberia's treasury during his reign. If Chucky wanted to hire Johnny Cochran he could afford to; he just hasn't. On top of that he received a court appointed attorney (who he fired) and is now asking the court to a hire one of Queen's Counsel, a highly experience lawyer recognized by the British government, a request that the court is considering granting. In short Taylor is (or will be) in fine legal hands.

Second, it's Charles fucking Taylor. This guy is no Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela. He's not even a disputed political prisoner like Leonard Peltier. No, Charles Taylor is a despicable human being. He supported rebels who kidnapped children, sometimes younger than 10, who were forced to become child soldiers. Children were fed large amounts of alcohol and drugs to help them forget about the horrors they were committing so they would continue to fight with little conscience. His soldiers, children and adult, committed numerous crimes against humanity including mass rapes, torture, burning of villages, slaughter of civilians all to provide him with diamonds to fund his other civil war. During his campaign for President of Liberia in 1997, he warned that if they did not elect him he would restart the civil war. This is not a man who people should feel sorry for.

Taylor will get his day in court to unsuccessfully protest his innocence. Fortunately for humanity, he will be convicted on the mountains of evidence that against him. Likely he will spend the rest of his life inside a prison cell in Britain which is where he deserves to be. That there are people who believe he's innocent goes to show you that there's a sucker born every minute.

Luke 6:35-36: "But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful."

Gee that's not misleading...

I figured since I'm starting a blog I might as well try to make a few bucks with it (yeah right). The best way to monetize (ooooooooh) traffic for small web sites is Google's AdSense program. AdSense allows you to add those little ads that you see on a Google search page and in the right column of this here site.  Anytime someone clicks on one of those ads I get a portion of the fee Google charges for the ad. Google doesn't just put a random ad there though. They look at the content of a page and put in an ad that they believe would interest the visitors of that page. And that's how this entry has come about.

It seems that Google thinks my visitors would be interested in sex offender registries. That's somewhat reasonable as my largest entry was about sex offenders. Now I want you to remember that sex offender registry information is available for free from every state and is online. Knowing that this information is free and that state budgets don't exactly have the money to fund this I started wondering and I checked it out. Seems the site is run by an outfit called National Alert Registry. I assume they are a corporation but its unclear as they don't actual add it their name (cuz you know then we might realize they're just a bunch of people making money off of sex offenders) They are registered with the Florida Department of State and are from DeLand, FL. They are a FOR-PROFIT corporation. But that's far from clear from their web site. Like I mentioned before at no time do they indicate that they are a company and in fact they mislead people into thinking they are an official government organization. Here's their "official site":

 

Now doesn't that look official? The seal on the side and the crest on the top ( I think its a crest, I don't know what its called) both make this look like it's part of the federal government. However again this is just some scam outfit from Florida trying to make a buck off of concerned parents who don't know better. National Alert Registry charges $4.95 per month to email you a list of sex offenders who have moved into your area. However all this information is free from your state and in the coming months a national sex offender registry will go online for FREE.

While I disagree with the concept of the sex offender registry, I can see someone feeling this is a useful service. But there is no excuse for these scam artists pretending to be official while making a buck off people's fear and insecurities.

Revelation 22:20: "He who testifies to these things says, "Surely I am coming soon." Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!"

Fond du Lac Late Night Restaurant Competition

My brother and I went to Country Kitchen for a late night meal. While reading our menus Nathan says "there's a mouse over there." I didn't believe him and couldn't find it until he points and says "there, look at the tail." Lo and behold there is a mouse. Later it ran across the floor.

Let it be known that I think mice are cute, however I don't want them in restaurants.

We really, REALLY need some competition in Fond du Lac for late night food.

Ephesians 5:1-2: "Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."

Vista Metadata Project

This would be a project I've been working on. It allows you to add tags to AVI files in Windows Vista. Any help would be appreciated!

Vatican issues 10 Commandments for drivers

So crazies, should we put these in our DMVs or what?

Psalm 136:1-3: "Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever. Give thanks to the God of gods, for his steadfast love endures forever. Give thanks to the Lord of lords, for his steadfast love endures forever...."

Give Back A Smile

CNN.com had a story about a great program called "Give Back A Smile." Created by the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry in 1999, Give Back A Smile matches domestic abuse survivors who suffered damage to their teeth due to their abuse and dentists who donate their time to repair the damage. I never thought of something like this being needed but now that I've heard about this program, it makes perfect sense. Repairing a survivors teeth would not only provide them a self-esteem boost because of the improved appearance but also because they no longer see the results of their abuse every time the look in the mirror.

Check out their web site if you'd like to learn more or make a donation and support their efforts.

Proverbs 13:1: "A wise son hears his father's instruction, but a scoffer does not listen to rebuke."