I have an arch-enemy

Its name? Gravity.

This bastard child of Sir Isaac Newton has put a hit out on me. I just survived it second major attack on me in as many months. It doesn't work alone though. It's hirelings? Stairs.

(This is what I see every time I go out my door)

Yes, Stairs. Those seemingly innocent implements of ascension. Hah. They'd love you to think of them like that. Did you know that in Britain alone, over one thousand people die every year from falling down stairs? That's just one small island with 60,000,000 people. If you multiply that statistic against the nearly 7 billion people on earth(each and everyone suffering under the tyranny of gravity)you end up with over 115,000 deaths caused by stairs alone. Every Year.

As someone litteraly surrounded by stairs, I see what they want. I climb hundreds, even thousands of steps each week, and I've learned their secret desire. Not to be climbed, as they've led us to believe, but to climb. All over our piled corpses.

But they don't work alone do they? Not really alone, they're working for that bastard, Gravity. He's got them as much in his grip, as he does us. Can you imagine a use for stairs if there were no gravity? They'd look pretty damned silly, wouldn't they?

Wait...

What if Gravity isn't the antagonist is this drama? What if I am? I'm a big guy, but I walk miles a day, climb the aforementioned thousands of steps. I bounce around like someone half my size. Hell, I'm probably in better shape than half the people half my size. What if I've somehow slipped loose the bonds gravity has placed on me? Gravity can't let this go. What if everyone followed my example? There'd be nothing but magnetism to hold things together. Everything and everybody would just go floating off. What would the stairs do?

Damn, I've got to go think about this.

No, I did not hit my head when I tripped. βeta, out.

Crackpottery

I must apologize in advance for the quality of this post. No reason, really, just felt like apologizing. There's nothing actually wrong with the post. I swear. Don't you believe me? WHY WON'T YOU BELIEVE ME?!?!?!

It came to my attention today that I have, through my apparently grandiloquent, and loquacious use of perfectly cromulent words, somehow obsfucated my profundity to certain personages. I feel I must apologize for this, but alas, I will not. Damn, thesauri rock:P

I'm so silly. That, or my mind has finally slipped the bounds of reality due to my ever worsening insomnia. Three and one half hours sleep last night. Woo. But seriously people. Sleep deprivation is purple jega trees floating on the quicksilver ocean.

(This is what you get when you image search for purple jega trees. It comes from myspace.cn, and thankfully, turning "strict safesearch" on makes it go away. I love the internets)

Enough of that, and onto the crackpottery. Where you, my loyal, and non-existent, readers get not one but two crackpot ideas for the price of just one post.

Disclaimer: if you steal these ideas and somehow make them work commercially. I will give you a hug:)

(oh, don't be that way. It's funny, in a really horrible kinda way. besides, you should see the way I run. Huh, guess there was a reason to apologize for this post after all. Sorry for shouting at you earlier. But really, compared to purple boi, this kid looks normal. Maybe I should be apologizing for the first picture.)

First off, Zeppelins. I know there are other crackpots out there working the zeppelin angle, these people have it wrong though. They're trying to sell it as a luxury for the rich, or even as an alternative to the airplane. This is beyond foolish. The airline industry is far too entrenched to be routed by something as crazy as a zeppelin(now, trains. That's the airline killer), and the rich have better things to spend their money on. You really want to sell this shit? Target the poor. Poor people are stupid and they'll buy anything, they'd be rich if they weren't & didn't. Zeppelins shouldn't replace the airplane, they should replace the car. Gasoline is hovering somewhere around $2,000 a tank(damned inflation), and anyone with half a brain should be living within walking or cycling distance of work & shopping. This leaves the car only useful for mid range travel, and penile substitues(and really, if you had a small penis. What would you rather drive around? Some over-priced gas guzzler, or a giant phloating phallus?).

(Stolen shamelessly from Nick Scipio's WTF friday, who he stole it from is his business)

So, price these suckers at about $20,000 for a four seater. That includes the docking pole with motorized lift. People are lazy after all, and a fifty foot long cigar isn't likely to fit in your garage. And utility hookups. Yes, utility hookups. You don't want this thing to just sit there when you're not using it, hell no. Put it to use, install lightweight solar panels on the top so it can make it's own hydrogen when it's not helping to power your home. I'd also like the propellors to reverse into wind turbines while not in use. Now, I sure as hell don't trust you idiots to drive one of these. So, everything will be computer controlled. Too complicated, you say? Not really. Every Mini-Zep(I must be tired, I'm already starting to think up bad marketing names)will network with each other. Think of it as cloud computing in the clouds(sorry, had to get that one out). More air ships equal a more complicated flight path, but they also equal more computing power to handle the situation.

(just some pretty clouds)
(What? You expect some clever tagline everytime?)

The idea of cloud computing touches on my second crackpot idea. Somehow, we've fooled the masses into buying our micro-hindenburgs(not as catchy as mini-zeps, but I like it), and everyone has a thirty foot tall mast sticking up in their backyard. Sure, the kids are using them to jump into the pool, and onto the trampoline, but what real use do they have? Plenty.

I so want to just leave it at that and go pass out, this post is already ten times longer than I planned, and I am so damned tired.

What are tall towers usually used for? Radio signals. Imagine a hundred million wireless towers talking to each other and any device you want to connect with. Yes any device. Telephone, television, internet, anything. Use the entire radio spectrum by freeing it of any governmental interference. Install intelligent software defined radio routers with a few terabytes of storage on each tower. Set up a brand new internet based on a freenet like de-centralized distributed data share. The internet is now free for everyone, and useless dinosaurs like the cable and telephone industries are returned to the tar pits they spawned from.

Crazy, I know. That's why it's called crackpottery.

I am so fucking tired right now. βeta, out.

Politics

Yes. The dreaded "P" word.

I hate politics. I really hate people who talk about politics. I hate hypocrites too, that doesn't mean I can't be one.

So, of course, I get saddled with a new guy at the office that loves to talk about everything, including politics. I do have to give him credit for waiting all of three days before launching into a rant. It all started simply enough. "Who are you voting for?" he asks. The latest in a series of seemingly endless questions.

It's not as bad as I'm making it out, but I am an Introvert, and have had a semi-private office to myself for a couple years now. Having to go from that, to sharing an office with an Extrovert is not an easy transition. I've got to share this office with him for the indefinite future though. So, I'm trying to make a go of it, it's just that I'm a naturally quiet guy. Well, in person I am, the internet's another matter entirely, as you'll find out from this overly-verbose rambling.

It's near closing time of a long day, and I'm just surfing around, checking the latest posts on reddit. He asks about a page of funny military pics I'm looking at. Did I mention he can see my monitor from his desk? :( So, we chat for a bit, getting around to fishing somehow. I don't fish, haven't since I was a kid. If I want to get drunk and sit in a boat while playing with a phallic symbol, I'll do it in my own damned yard where the chance of drowning is somewhat reduced. Our office is, however, nearly within spitting distance of a newly constructed reservoir. A fairly major reservoir, and one of the few interesting things in this shit-hole town(of course, it's just outside the city limits).

He asks whether the city built it, and I break out laughing(this is a common response from anyone, anywhere, who has ever had to deal with any form of local government). The local government is a joke, the city is not only bankrupt, but in debt up to it's eyeballs. Several factors lead to this, the housing bubble likely being the most influential. Though, I believe that could have been mitigated were it not for the general incompetence of the city leaders. This is a crossroads town, a minor crossroads town at that. We sit equidistant between several larger cities, and are close enough to both Los Angeles and San Diego to have made it a not unconceivable commute. That is, back before gas went through the roof thanks to your oil baron of a president.

So, bang the city explodes, at least that's how it must have seemed to the small minded politicos that claim to run things around here. Small town mentalities, with small town agendas, that just could not, and still can not deal with a population doubling in under a decade. The bubble carried them through a lot, but when it burst, and took the thousands of planned Mc Mansions, and the property tax from they were expecting from them, with it. The city folded like an accordion.

With gasoline at somewhere near a thousand dollars a tank(don't ask me what it really is, I don't drive), this little crossroads town, left with almost no commerce or industry, is now being abandoned in droves(love that word, Droves:). So, what do the geniuses in city hall do? They decide to tax all of our utilities, a move guaranteed to drive off anyone who can afford to leave(if they haven't already left), and punish those too poor to get the hell out. This group mainly consists of the seniors who were already here, and the worst of what came from the cities.

Imagine a wave. This influx, great, beautiful, & powerful. Now imagine that wave crashing, washing away any life that once existed. Leaving behind only flotsam & jetsam. This is my town today, a small town made larger than it could bear, now being crushed under the weight of the scum washed in from the bigger cities, and it's own crumbling infrastructure.

I didn't go into nearly as much detail as this with my new office-mate, even though local politics is always a safe topic in property management. We've all got our horror stories, and everyone loves to complain about it. So, I don't really understand why he had to bring up the national stuff. I know it's that time of year and all, but Politics & Religion should never be brought up at work. This goes triple if you're an anti-american atheist:)

Trying to convey with my facial expression -you know the one, we've all used it before, even though it never works- that I really don't want to talk about this. I answer that I do not plan to vote this year. I do not explain that I wont vote because I don't consider myself an american(because I am not insane).

Mis-construing, or just flat out ignoring, my pained expression. He persists, and I waver by stating that I might have voted for Hillary, had she stayed the front runner. McCainosaur isn't even an option for me, and Obama reminds me too damned much of "The Smiler" from Transmet. That's how I see this contest btw. The Smiler vs The Beast, The Party in Opposition vs The Party Formerly in Opposition. Hell, I keep waiting for someone to assassinate the "Obama Girl" :P

(Imagine a picture of the Vita Severn Memorial here. I would place an actual picture here, but the internets have failed me. I may dig out my old issues for a pic sometime in the future, but don't hold your breath)

My choice of Hillary is based purely on the fact that a clinton cleaned up the last mess left by a bush(no slick willy jokes please), and that a clinton might be able to clean up the latest bush's mess. I tried to explain this, but the clintons are apparently evil communists deserving of our hatred and ridicule.

I know he's a generation (or two) older than me, but I thought we had all gotten past hating "The Reds". Doesn't he know it's all about those crazy muslims now-a-days:)

(Please don't blow me up for this)

So, he goes on for about 20 minutes about how clinton, the one with the penis, let the chinese build a naval military base in long beach. It's actualy a shipyard owned by cosco, a chinese shipping company, who according to pat buchanan is just a front for the chinese military. Then he gets into this thing about a the chinese capturing a grounded spy plane and sending it back in a box. Saying that clinton just let this happen when he could have threatened to close the long beach shipyard. A few things don't really work for this argument though. One, bush was president when it happened. Two, the american plane was flying over china illegaly. Three, it had knocked a chinese plane out of the sky, killing it's pilot. Doesn't sound like a very strong argument to me.

I didn't know any of this then, and I'm not likely to bring it up again, but if he presses, I may just have too. I don't want to spend another 20 minutes looking like a deer caught in the headlights. Fucking Politics.

We do have one thing in common though. We both think america would be a lot better off if McFossil would just stroke out already.

Damn, that was a long one. βeta, out.

Knowing how to solder does not make you a terrorist.

First off, I fucking hate the TSA. Americans, a group among which I do not count myself, have a constitutionally granted right to freedom of movement. The fucking TSA are stamping on the neck of that right. I just read this article on how a college student was nearly killed by the TSA. Any time a gun is drawn on you, you are nearly dead. All it takes is a little twitch, and BAM... No more hanging with your friends, no more playing with your pet, no more sex(yes, all three of those can, but probably shouldn't happen con-currently), no more anything. Why? Because you had a fancy name tag with lights on it. That's it, that's all it takes for some fuckwit, moron security agent to snuff out everything you ever were, are, or could become.

OMG!!! I can see wires, it must be a bomb.

Disclaimers: I do not fly. I will never fly, commercially that is. I have ideas about air travel which I will post later, if the fires of righteous indignation do not burn them out of me, or if I don't forget. I do solder. Poorly, mostly thanks to my 30 year old craftsman beast of a soldering gun, that, and my general ineptitude. Anyone wanna send me $80 for a nice, digital, temperature controlled, radio shack piece of shit which will likely fall apart in a year? I will not quote that fucking Ben Franklin quote. I'm sick and tired of hearing it, and seeing that people just don't give a shit.

This article is not what set me off on this little rant. The fact that it seems to be the rule rather than the exception, is what set me off. This, this, this, and dozens of similar items are what set me off. This one in particular got to me, mainly because I just cashed in a coffee can full of change for almost $200. Yes, I'm a cheap-ass, penny-pinching, hyphenated-bastard, but a million in loose change is still a million-fucking-dollars.

This is not a bomb. This is batteries and a fucking thermos.

Security. Oh, how I hate that word. There is no such thing as secure. Period. Unless you are god, and you are not, no matter how highly you think of yourself. There is no way to account for every single contigency, and trying to just makes you look more the fool. This Schneier guy has some pretty good articles about security. I like the one about Real vs Percieved security.

You're only going to get this reference if you watch to many fucking cartoons.

I work property management, and have to deal with "security" every day. For me security is a guy named Robert who drives around a bit, and locks the gates at night. That, and a bunch of cheap ass surveillance cameras around the swimming pools(cameras which rarely get checked, btw). Except, we can't refer to Robert as "security", we have to call him "patrol". Why do we have to call him that? Because our fucking lawyers told us too. See, having a security service appearently makes people feel secure, while having a patrol service only makes them feel patrolled. I know how I want to feel.

Keep it simple, stupid.

I do take basic "security" precautions at home, but I don't go overboard. I understand that I'm only human, and can't control everything.

Go outside, right now. No wait, finish reading this, and go out at night when the sky is clear. Lie on your back, and stare at the sky for ten minutes. Still feel like you can control everything?

My god, it's full of stars.

Take sensible, and resonable precautions. Am I the only one that understands this. Smoke detectors, fire extinguisher, first aid kit, and a modest "security" system (shout out to ZoneMinder) which I built myself, mainly just for the hell of it. I've mentioned this before, but I have way too much free time. I know some of you may think the security system may be overkill, but I do work property management after all, and not everyone likes me(boo hoo). A couple of highly visible cameras to keep a brick out of my window seems reasonable enough to me. Yes, bricks have been thrown through employees' windows before.

Find a problem, implement a simple, convienient solution. Easy, huh? Appearently not if you're the American government.

Harrasing millions of innocent travelers, arresting them, beating them, robbing them, killing them, that's not convienent, that's not reasonable. That's all I'm saying.

Give me convience or give me death. βeta, out.