Further Clarification of the clarification about dying

Make a living will!

I want to be King of Vietnam!

One day a few years ago, my freind Phong and I were both lamenting the shitty economy, the sad state of things generally, and how far the dollar doesn't go. Phong said that if he and I went to Vietnam, his homeland, that we could live like kings. "Save one paycheck Scott; just one paycheck. And we could live like kings in Vietnam for years."
I am going to either take the bus to work, bike to work on sunny days, or get a scooter. This gas price thing totally sucks. I just put $40 of gas in my van and that will last until Monday. 160 f'ing dollars a month for gas? I know our European bro's have been doing the 5 dollar shuffle for a while now but I'm an American damnit all!
So boyscouts can you name the top 3 oil producing nations?

1: Saudi Arabia clocks in at 8,711,00 a day
2: United States of America (What the fuck? I thought we didn't produce anything?) 8,054,000
3: Russia at 7,286,000

As you can see the reality is that the US is still a gigantic producer of oil. Of course we consume about 16,000,000 barrels a day so we end up importing 50%. The EU on the other hand produces a combined output of approx. 6,810,000 for all EU natioins.

The sad fact is that we have done nothing to prepare for this crap. Portland is far better off than most big cities. It has some pretty decent public transport.

We should be at $4.00 per gallon pretty soon, like with two years. So the idea of living tens of miles away from your place of work pretty much is rediculous.

Another Triumph for Television

As if to bolster my view that TV is to intellectual persuits what driving a 10 inch steel pike through your head is to the desire to have a good time, we have another great TV show for the ages.

Mansquito. Thats Man-skee-toe, like a man mixed with a mosquito. The tagline says it all "First they hunted for a cure, next they hunted a creature."

I could saw my own head off and still be able to write better movie material than this shit. Terry Shaivo could write better material than this shit. A Pumpkin could write better material.

So here is my story idea for the Sci-Fi channel: (copyright Scott Gregg 2005)

Shesnake: Hotty turns into a snake and terrorizes NYC.

Demonspeed: Street racing devil dudes vs. non devil dudes with Shesnake in cameo.

Reality Bites: About a reality TV that is posessed and attacks the people appearing on the show by causing them to mysterously explode..from within!

Numerator: Evil slime creature turns people into numbers.

Denominator: Pre-sequal to Numerator, same plot different day. Turn rubber suit inside out to get new monster.

Lost in Galactica: Billy Mummy is lost in the old set of Battle Star Galactic. Dr Smith, now totally CGI, helps him by being stupid.

Invasion of the plant snatchers: In this rehash the aliens take over unsuspecting plants and turn them into human beings.

Hurray for democracy!

We are selling Pakistan F-16s. The country that has threatened the democratic nation of India. The nation that is a dictatorship. The nation that is unstable and may wind up in civil war. The nation that bankrolled the Taliban. The nation that has sold nuclear weapons technology. But hey that doesn't matter since we are sowing the seeds of democracy. Oh wait, I just checked the bag and it isn't democracy seed, but fertilizer that we are spreading.

Review of all 3 Lord of the Rings Movies

This is the best trilogy ever made, edging out the original Star Wars trilogy by just a little bit. Outstanding storyline, solid characters, a world crafted so well that I am not sure how anyone could improve on it.
So you might ask what parts of the movie blow chunks? Well it is too weepy, and the humor is too forced. The only member of the fellowship to die is Boromir. And the only one of the major good guys to die in the film is King Theodan.
I think that all the crappy Middle Earth style movies along with the crappy lord of the rings animated movie really lowered my expectations about these films. I remember seeing publicity shots in 1999 and thinking "this is going to suck." Because nobody ever makes these films well.
Jackson has done a great job and the Return of the King definitely deserved the Best Picture award.
So the trilogy gets a 10.

Clarification of my position on dying

In my earlier blog I rambled on in a very semi-coherent way about Terri Shaivo etc. So here is some clarification.

I believe that life begins before conception, about 4 billion years before conception, and ends when your bodily processes stop.

We live in a world where we can keep a deadman alive almost indeffinitely. Terry Shaivo would have died the day her heart stopped if it had not been for amazing medical efforts. Listening to neurosurgens describe how the brain heals or does not heal it is clear to me now that Mrs Shaivo is brain dead. Her Cerebral Cortext is no longer present because it has atrophied away over the last 15 years. She wakes up, and goes to sleep since the brainstem is still alive. But nothing is above that. Her eyes may be active and respond to light etc, but there is nowhere for the signals to go after that. She can hear but there is nothing left to process the signals into anything meaningful.

So is our technology standing in the way of a death that should have happened years ago? No. The truth is that, though we use technology to lengthen lives, the quality of life is what truely matters and clearly in this case there is no life for Terry Shaivo. Her brain died years ago. But if we are not standing in the way of her dying then what are we doing? In my opinion we are simply doing what we are supposed to do, argue about life and death.

It is not good enough to simply claim to be a defender of life, the circumstances around that life count. We struggle to make life matter, last, and to pass life on. But we must also admit that we cannot stop God from taking us back to the dust when he chooses, in the manner he chooses. I do not believe that you can war against God to keep yourself alive anymore than you can war against God to end a life. When you go you go. And from a Christian standpoint, earthly life, though precious, is only a brief begining on a long long road. What is the right-to-life goon squad affraid of for Terry Shaivo? It would be nice to think that she already dwells in paradise, it's just that her broken body is still around on earth.

Death is just another part of existance. In the middleages and on into our own time Jews were called "Christ Killers" but wasn't the death of Jesus Christ for told? He new that he had to die. If you are Christian you have to believe that the Jews in those days, along with Rome, were acting out their part in the drama. God is in charge. It doesn't mean that we have no free will to choose. Our choices mean life last long or short. But even if I decide, on th spur of the moment, to jump off the top of the US Bank tower, that doesn't mean that my life and death is in my own hands. God is in charge.

In the end you are left with a sense that life and death is beyond anyones control. God will take Terry Shaivo away when it is her time. Not a moment before.

Jesus said that nothing we do here on Earth can add a moment to our lifespan. God is in charge. We struggle, do our best, fight death, save lives, but He is always in charge.

Mandate Shmandate

Scott's Poll-Crunch has a new number.
The Mandate Number. This number is based on Presidential poll numbers from Presidents that did infact have demonstratable mandates to do stuff. Like Frank Roosevelt.

The Mandate Bar is set at 70% approval

If a President wants to go on TV and tout a mandate from the American electorate he better have poll numbers like this. If not then all that talk is hot air only.

Using this number Bush had a mandate from Sept. 11th 2001 until about Christmas time of that year. After that his numbers plummeted to 43% in 2003 and have not really recovered. Clinton's outgoing poll numbers had Clinton at 65% approval after impeachment.

Bush Approval

I looked at 4 polls today.
CBS News: app: 43 dis:48 notsure:9 polled: 737
Pew Research: app: 45 dis:46 notsure:9 polled: 1500
Gallup/USA Today: app: 52 dis: notsure:4 44 polled: ?
Newsweek app:45 dis 48 notsure:7 polled: 1010
Time Mag: app:52 dis: 43 notsure:4 polled: 1000

Scott Poll-Crunch:
Approval: 47.4 Disapproval: 45.8 Not Sure:6.6

ROBOTS AND I ROBOT

Review of Robots:
I liked the film, it had good characters, predictable plot, no twists, nothing unexpected. However, like Shark Tales, Nemo, and Monsters Inc. it was entertaining. Is it Lord of the Rings? No. it did have an overt moral message that was beyond lovey dovey, and for that alone I give it a 7.

I Robot: For crying out loud people! Can't anyone do a good rendition of an Asimov story? Asimov is to sci-fi what Talkien is to middle earthlings. So much of what we take forgranted in that genre was layed down by Asimov. The Robot books, the Galactic Empire books, and the Foundatioin series is as rich and amazing as any fiction every written. So we have a hodge podge movie, slap-together from concepts layed out in Caves of Steel. But the robots end up being cartoonlike, the humans too stupid.

Instead of Peter Jackson rehashing King Kong he could be in preproduction on the Foundation Series. Instead we are left with Will Smith acting just like Will Smith and robots acting like cartoons.

I Robot gets a 5

Life

There have been three cases in the past couple of weeks that fortell a future of ethical and personal dilemas regarding life and when it ends. The cases involve people making decisions for human beings that cannot speak for themselves. And they are a biproduct of technology and our inability to know absolute right and wrong.
In the firsts case was a 5 month old baby who was born with a birth defect that made life impossible without a ventilator. In Texas a hospital may turn the ventilator off if it deams such life sustaining measure futile. The mother of the baby did not want the ventilator turned off but the courts sided with the hospital and the babys life was terminated by the actions of the hospital despite the wishes of the babys parents.
The second case is far more famous. That of Teri Shaivo. In this case the courts have decided that 15 years of vegitablehood is enough and now the woman should die.
These cases present an ethical, moral, as well as legal dilema. In both cases human beings are being gotten rid of when their continued existance becomes too problematic for their sustainers to put up with. I am not saying that Mr. Shaivo does not love his wife. In his view there is no hope. He may verywell be right.
In my opinion, and that is all it is, there is no moral argument you can make to kill either human. Shaivo cannot tell us if she is in pain or not. The 5 month old could not do this either. Any argument in favor of killing these to people, and that is what we are talking about, is non-ethical. You could not scentance a murderer to death by starvation, but that is the fate, by court order, that awaits Shaivo. Of course she is brain dead and has no cortex left to experience this or anything else.
In both cases the parents do not want the human to be allowed to die. This is the parental perogative. It is a hardwired response set down by millions of years of evolution. However if there was one shred of legal documentation to support the woman's wish not to be sustained in her condition I would support her dying. But not by starvation. Yet there is no document. Only a conversation retold by her husband.
The moral absolutists have raided this drama and will use it as a toothing stone to get more conservative judges, never mind that the ones who are siding with Mr. Shaivo have been Bush and Regan appointees.
The Shaivo case is replayed over and over again in hundreds of thousands of families every year. As anyone who has dealt with the wasting away of a family member knows, death though instant, takes its own sweet time to happen. That is why so many Americans want Congress and the lifer goon-squad to stay out of this. In my father's case we could have opted for more blood transfusions. This may have postponed his death a week or so, or perhaps not. We made a collective decision not to ask for another one. Not that it was even presented as an option. These cases usually play themselves out with more or less the acceptance of death on all sides.
The third case seems oceans apart from the first two. It the case of Apachey Company in Iraq and a nightime shooting incident that left two parents dead and their children orphaned. In a war zone people get killed. We rationalize the deaths of civilians as part of the terrible cost of war. Instead of calling it what it is, murder. Family is trying to beat it home before curfew and runs into an American patrol. Patrol opens fire on car and people die, kids scream, wounds ooze blood. The soldiers that killed the couple and orphaned an entire family were back on patrol the next night. They are supposed to put the hell of war "in a box". Well all these guys are gonig to come home with very evil boxes that will have to be opened at some point. Somehow I doubt that most will have the aid of counseling when those boxes open up and the screams of orphaned children come out. Conservatives who are carrying signs for Shaivo turn a blind eye to this bloody mess. The majority of Americans don't seem to give a damn about all the terrorists we are creating. "I want to kill all the Americans and drink their blood." Said the 14 yearold daughter of the killed parents.
We are all lousy at determining when people should die. That is why most religions tell us not to kill.

Happy Birthday to Operatin Iraqi Freedom

I have not beat up on Fox News since it's actions are so pathetically blatent that they speak for themselves but on this two year aniversary I will make an exception.
FN, the modernday holder of the Hurst prize for yellow journalism, was one of the biggest drum beaters for the war and the lame coverage. They had reporters embedded everywhere. As the 1st ID marched into Iraq, Fox would regularly trumpet the potential WMD sites that were being encountered. After a few months they too gave up on that line. Fox also liked to make things out to be pretty good in Iraq and all the gloom and doom was a product of liberal bais. They had this reporter give broadcasts from infront of these fountains, I guess to make things look like Disneyland.
And guys like O'Reilly, who I saw in person at the Rose Garden, were going around talking about how things weren't that bad and that things were "winding down". He actually used those very words the night I heard him speak. In the morning after that bit of spin, the UN headquarters was blown up and they were pulled out.
So where are the beating drums now? Looking at the Fox News.com site there is nothing marking two long years of bloody fighting in Iraq. If I were and American, and I am, I would find it insulting if a network didn't bother to acknowledge that fact.

So happy birthday Iraqi Freedom.
Happy birthday to the 1,696 families of those killed fighting on "our side"
Happy birthday to the 17,000+ families of those who were fighting on "the other side"
Happy birthday to the millions of refugees, the brutalised, the shell shocked, the depressed
Happy birthday to all the congressmen who never went to Iraq after sending others to fight and die
Happy birthday to Bush for spending 20 minutes in an Iraqi airport with a turkeyleg in his hand.
Happy birthday to all the pundits who lied to us
Happy birthday to all the terrorists that flooded into Iraq after we flooded in.
Happy birthday to all the Americans still dumb enough to think that this war was justified.
And happy birthday to all the American taxpayers who willing spent 160 billion of their own dollars to topple one man and create anarchy. But don't ask them to spend money on national health.

The Past

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Blindness

I am tired of blind people. I am not refering to those who lack the ability to see clearly with their eyes. I am talking about people who, through their actions, cause harm, and sorrow to spread. They open their mouths and speak unkindness, their words are daggers, they cannot love for they do not know love when they see it. Their blindness to others causes them to find nothing in the world worth a smile. So they collapse inwardly, boiling in their own disolving bodies. Braking down like soup thats been cooked too long, canned in a pretty package, then consumed only to taste bland, brackish, uninteresting. They cling to every evil word and deed done to them, even if compounding the wrong in their own heads until the evil is vast and unbareable to behold. They use up what little feeling they have on anger, and fear. They are a sad lot.
I find myself hoping that someday they will have the scales wiped from their eyes. I hope they will see. But they will not see. They will go on in blindness until their lives are spent, wasted on twisting on their cross that they themselves have made; and then pass away to lie cold beneath untened brass name plates, in unvisited graveyards. And as the cold November rains come and soak the brittle leave that cake those forgotten tombs, what of all that wated effort to keep the wound alive? Are they off in some celestial plane weeping for that loss? Are they sitting amoungst each other, all piled ontop of by their countless fellows, prattling on about how wreched things are? Each being oblivious to the pain and feelings of the other. Or are they silent bones resting next to the silent bones of those who smiled at life, even when losing it by the hands of those who are blind.

TV Ratings

As I hardly ever watch network or cable TV I cannot actually rate the overall system. Judging only by the few snippits I do see, I would say that TV is a worthless time waster. I mainly use my TV to watch movies on either VHS or DVD. Today I had a moment and decided, what the heck lets see whats on the tube. First there is the bewildering number of channels and no easy way to know what is playing when. As I scanned the scrolling listing I saw, Matlock, and Cosby, Murder She Wrote, and CNN, MSNBC, FOX NEWS, there were about 20 sports channels, and a host of movie channels showing current hits like All About Eve, and The Sting. I know TV production is expensive and time consuming but for crying out loud can't anyone produce a new series that doesn't include ignorant morons eating worms? I have heard lots of good things about the new Battlestar Galactic series. Pardon me while I stab a pencil into my forhead.
Channel surfing isn't even fun anymore since 90% of daytime and nightime programming are commercials. Here is a sample of what you surf through:
Exercise equipment
Exercise rutines
Fat reduction pills
Food preperation systems
Sexual enhancer pills
Hits from the 60's
So based on the aggregate of my limited TV time I give TV a 1. What a colossal waste of life to allow a minute of it to be spent looking at network/cable/satelite TV. I think that survivor is actually a very good program for the people who watch TV. It is perfect for the human who flushes his or her life down the shitter that is modern TV.

Changing Times etc.

I remember when I was a little kid and sick. My Mom would take me to Dr Chapel. We would wait in the waiting room with the other sick kids and their moms.
Reading the Newsweek article on the overworked mothers I was disgusted yet again to see such a total lack of connection to reality. Today when I took Trudy to the doctor for the second time this week, the place was packed with fathers and their kids. The only women in the picture were the doctors and nurses. It is such a cliche about how tough woman have it in America. The truth is that families have it tough. The men are just as stressed out as the women. They are far more connected to the raising of their children than their fathers ever were. My dad loved me but he never changed a diaper. He never took time off work to take care of a sick kid.
I actually relish taking care of my kids. They can be a pain in the neck and in lowwer regions, but that is the way it is. If people want to bitch about their children they should not have had them. And another fact is that women today have it much the same as the women of the past. My great grandmother worked 8 hours a day in bakery 6 days a week, and worked 4 hours each night in a laundry. All while raising 13 kids, and taking care of her husband who had his right arm shot off. So if women are complaining about taking their kids to daycare, and soccer, and cooking dinner in a microwave, and putting the laundry in an automated machine...well I am sure, some where in heaven there is playing the worlds smallest violin.

Another knife in the back of working Americans

"Those who can pay their bills should pay their bills. That's the American way," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.

He was speaking about the restricting of bankruptcy protection to the working families of this nation. His hypocrasy is matched only by his in human cruelty. How has his party handled their own budget? By borrowing from the Chinese.

Another anti-Christian piece of legislation created by the anti-Christ Republicans

When I came to you naked you did not cloth me.
When I came to you hungry you offered me no food
When I was sick you offered me no comfort
When I was in prison you did not visit me

Republican response: Stop hanging around here you trouble-making jew boy. Who do you think you are..God? Say you look a bit like one of those ragheads, lets send you to Guantanimo, better yet let the Syrians have at you. All this property sharing and communal living makes us sick. You're probably a commi. And stop telling us what we have to do. We can decide what holy words to quote and wich ones to ignore. We're rich, and you don't have a place to rest your head. Why should we listen to a homeless freak like you. Your just a deadbeat. Your dad offered you a good career in carpentry and you skipped town on him and hung out with beggers, fishermen, and a whore. We can decide who gets to go to heaven and who should be sent to hell. We can decide who lives and who dies. You'll never amount to anything you pathetic jew boy.

Jesus: That wich you do not do to the least of my brothers you have not done to me. The judgment you have crafted and passed down on others will be the judgment that awaits you. Go to Hell.

Monty Pythons complete boxed DVD set

And now for something completely the same. I busted a gut again and again. This set is awsome. Lots of little things to amuse and inform, mainly amuse. Python rules! It rules because of its combination of intellectual prowess and total lack of seriousness. Compared with any modern day comedy Python still ranks #1 in topical hillarity. Much of its situation would still be beyond the pale on mainstream American TV. Only the Simpsons comes close to laughs at the expense of the holiest of holys. Python is so good and so ubiquitous that you can't really compare it to anything that has come after it. Since everything, from Second City, to SNL, to Mad TV, all trace their family tree back to Python.
Who else can reash the same skit, originally done in 1969, in 1999 and still get laughs?
"What I object to is all this sex on the teli..I mean...I keep falling off."

Dan Rather

Parental Advisory - Blog may contain harsh, but accurate, words

Dan Rather was a prick. He new the length of his Johnson and was unafraid of letting it dangle infront of other journalists. Since so much of American TV news is dominated by tiny peckered, prettyboys, waiting to have their tiny lizards stroked by Bush, and his masturbation machine, the departure of Rather was predictable.
Snapping back at Nixon or Bush Senior is a mark of self respect. Why would you praise a journalist if he/she spends all their career bent over giving head to all the power elite in the nation? I am sure CBS is looking for some dumbshit who looks good on the tube and is well connected in the Washington DC party scene.
Dan Rather is a toughguy and I am sure 60 Minutes will benefit with him back at it full time.
But what will happen when all the geriatrically challenged newsmen go? Who is gonig to replace those towers of "in your face journalism"?
By now there should be a whole host of 30-40 something killer journalists in the 60 minutes line up. Instead we have the one thousand, eighthundred and seventy five year old Wallace, who cut his teeth covering the 2nd Punic War. Or Andy Rooney who traded jibes with Homer while living at Ephesus in 325 BC. Rather was already middleaged when Cronkite was at his prime back in 1968. Remeber Rather getting banged up at the DNC convention? Probably not since we all were infants at the time, or not even born yet.
Modern TV seems to chew through "talent", for lack of a better word, in about as much time as it takes to chew a piece of gum. So who will ever gain the experience required to know what the hell they are talking about, and have what they are talking about be based in reality.
There are loads of conserva-nazis who are staunch believers in their nonsensical dribble. They will belch their narrowminded, non-reality, of otherworldly doggy dodo, until the drugs they're on require them to fix in the bathroom. Oh they will call a spade a spade alright. Mainly because they can't call a black person a nigger and get away with it. Fags, on the other hand, are fair game - for now.
So we are left with who? Wolf Blitzer and the like? For some reason I can't imagine Wolfy baby poking Bushy in the eye with his pointed questions and intellect.

What is up with boats?

I am sure there are lots of people who lack the required brain damage to wish to invest actual, proper, cash into a boat. Verily I am not one of them. Perhaps it was the head injuries as a child, or maybe it is an hereditary illness.
It is clear that not everyone likes boats because not everyone has them. To the person with the dain-bramage almost anykind of water craft is worthy of inspection. From the 16 foot scow to the 88 foot oceangoing tug (large scow) all are fare game for the boat-brain.
Pier99, is like a crack house to a junky, by the time I have spent an hour walking the peir I have a plan all set in my mind about buying a big boat. Of course the plan is not set in the real world. Atleast not yet.
Personally I like big Chris Craft cruisers. The kind that had their keels laid about the same time I decided to get born. There was this neat 1967 CC Cavelier, all laquered up, a giant wooden fix.
When I was a lad of around 20 I wanted to buy a boat big enough to live on. Nowdays that dream is alive and well but the requirments of such a vessal get in the way of me ever being able to afford the Christiansen Motor Yacht of my dreams.
Would me girls like the boat? Well...(rationalizations galore) of course they would.
I would pilot the vessal from Willamette falls, to Astoria, to the Dalles, and learn all sorts of crap about navigation, and other such stuff.
But then I look at all the boats in the marina and note that most look seldom used, and then remember that it is the brain damage that is responsible for all this.

Large Plume of ash seen over Mt St Helens.

I wanted to scoop all the other media on this.

A Discovery

In the days of Port-32, on Quentab VI, when Star Wars figures were Star Wars figures, and John's pool was the ocean on wich the Vader brothers fished, there was a bottle filled with old crap. This bottle contained a miniature canon, pennies, some SW figure parts, etc.

Well low and behold I have found that bottle. For years it contained the pool water from 1979 along with the stuff mentioned. Well the water has finally evaporated. But the stuff is still in it.

Sirach Chapter 9

A work will be praised for the skill of the craftsmen; so a people's leader is proved wise by his words. A babbler is feared in his city, and the man who is reckless in speech will be hated.

M & E

M&E is the best technical service in the history of the universe. M&E proves time and again that no question is too silly, nor lack of knowledge to catastrophic to flumex them. M&E is the best of the best of the best.

What is the point of all this factoidal knowledge

Here is an example of what I mean. There is space in my limited brain that contains "really important" information like this:

Teddy Roosevelt, as a child, suffered from asthma

I am sure that this is important, but couldn't I use that space for other information of a more practical nature?

We all have brains choked with trivialities galore. At the same time it seems like the stuff we really don't want to forget, like what date do we get our business taxes done, gets shoveled off to the brain's basement almost imeadiately.