Category: Things that make you say hmmm?

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Bad Dreams

Usually, I sleep the sleep of the dead.

If I have dreams, they’re most often of a highly erotic nature or if I’ve been playing a little too much Xbox then my dreams are… shall we say all about the violence.

Sometimes the sex and violence combine into a disturbingly satisfying, purely visceral fantasy that satisfies my inner primitives blood lust.

These dreams can’t be considered by any stretch of the imagination to be bad. They’re my own private world and while some of the scenes and imagery may appear in the pages of a story or book that I may be writing… They’re not likely to ever become reality.

The dream last night… In fact the one that woke me at 5AM was of a completely different kind.

Images 1

In this nightmare I was being forced out of my home so that a Locust kind of person could move in. I was still going to have to pay the mortgage and I wasn’t being allowed to take any of my really good stuff.

This person and their family were standing at the door to the house with a cop and pointing at objects like my computer, watch, furniture, etc and keeping all the best stuff. But they and the cop were making me take other stuff. Many of the things I was being allowed to take weren’t even things that were in my house (Nor would they be).

All the items I could take were broken in some way.

The cop was pointing his gun at me the whole time.

In the dream I considered taking the gun from him and making he & these other people leave my home. But when I looked outside, there were police cars and police 100 deep on my lawn. There was no way to win, and I couldn’t see going out in a blaze of glory over stuff.

Toward the end of the dream the Locust was screaming at me in broken English that I couldn’t leave the broken stuff in the trash cans. I had to take it all with me or be arrested. Problem was that these people wouldn’t let me have my car, motorcycle or my truck. They grudgingly let me have my bicycle only after one really fat member of the Locust family sat on it, bending the frame and the front rim.

When I made it clear it was impossible for me to carry everything in one trip. All the police put their coffee down and aimed their guns at me.

That’s when I woke up…

That’s why I’ve been up since 5, and why you’re reading this insanity.

My Brother will no doubt have a field day with this one. He’d say something like this is a reflection of my thoughts on California (Kalifornia, the way he spells it). He may be correct. I think this may be a reflection of my thoughts on where this country as a whole is headed.

This nightmare may have been triggered by an article my Brother sent me.

In the article, a 13 year old boy and a 43 year old adult were arrested. Believe me, In Southern California this is nothing new. What was interesting is what they were arrested for…

The 13 year old was supposedly sitting on a roof with a rifle. As it turns out the “Rifle” was a BB gun. Other “Weapons” recovered were a replica 9mm pistol and an inert M136 AT4 “LAW” anti-tank weapon.

So lets step through this again.

A 13 year old with a BB gun

Living in a house where theres a REPLICA 9MM pistol

And an INERT anti-tank weapon.

Hummmm….

replica

noun

1.reproduction, model, copy, imitation, facsimile, carbon copy (informal)It was a replica, for display only.

inert

adjective

1. inactive, still, motionless, dead, passive, slack, static, dormant,
lifeless, leaden, immobile,inanimate, unresponsive, unmoving,
quiescent, torpid, unreactive, slumberous 
Nope… The definitions of these words hasn’t changed…. I figured I’d check god knows I miss memos all the time…

So what laws were broken? What justified the arrest of the 43 year old adult and sending the 13 year old to juvenile hall?

Hell, when I was growing up I had an INERT artillery shell from the ship my Father served on, I used it as a door stop…

I suppose that NOW I’d be arrested for having something that had no powder in it, no primer, and which I had NO capacity to fire since the gun that fired this shell was mounted on the deck of a ship.

The article says “suspicion of possession of a stolen weapon and possession of illegal weapons.” The BB gun isn’t illegal, nor is a replica 9mm.

Which leaves the inert anti-tank weapon and begs the following question;

If you have no ammunition, and no capacity to obtain ammunition for a weapon, is it still a weapon?

 

 


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What I do when I’m really bored…

I’ve been signed onto the National Do Not Call list for a while now.

Telephone ch

in general I dislike people and am a disagreeable person so I’m doing telemarketers a favor!

I honestly can’t see that being on that list has done me any good at all.

I think that having the phone number unlisted was a far more effective solution. But like an idiot I believed that the do not call list would be all that I needed and therefore stopped paying Verzion the additional fees to keep the phone number unlisted.

Once the phone number was listed… there was no going back.

As a rather strange aside…

When I told the Verizon representative that I wanted to make the change allowing my phone number to be listed… They were obligated to tell me that my number wouldn’t appear in the phone book until the next printing. I clearly remember processing what the representative said… then my brain rebooted!

It was one of those moments when you wonder just how stupid people are. For Verizons script to have included this bit of nonsense they must have had people calling them asking why their phone number hadn’t magically appeared in the printed phone book!

I digress. I feel like I’m channeling Andy Rooney… Hey Ghost Hunters, exorcism on aisle 8…

Since registering on the Do Not Call system, I’ve seen absolutely no change in the volume of junk phone calls. What I have noticed is that most of the calls originate in India. There is even one persistent caller that is calling from a cell phone registered in India. Really? A Cell phone?

When I’m slightly bored I’ll go to the trouble of doing a reverse look up of these phone numbers…

(Hey, you can only masturbate just so many times in a day before it gets boring… Ok, THAT never gets boring… there’s always another melon or mango to violate…)

On the reverse lookup lists you find that a lot of people have very nasty things to say about the people calling from these phone numbers. Even more often people have nastier things to say about each other in addition to commenting on the marital status of the parents of the person making the call in the first place.

Some people answer these calls with air horns, whistles, screaming tirades, obscenities, or there’s one guy in MN that answers with the recorded sounds of sex.

Uhh… Somehow I don’t think that would make the calls less frequent. I rather think that the calls couldn’t come in because the switching station couldn’t handle the volume.

“We’re sorry, all circuits are busy please try your call again later“.

The guy in MN does get to have an uninterrupted nap, at least until the circuits clear.

My solution is a fax machine. Coincidentally that’s how I know who’s called and what I use to look up their phone numbers when the fruit drawer in my fridge is empty.

The calls start at 7:30 AM and continue until about 9:00 PM

These fall into a few general catergories.

Telemarketing

Scams

and

Bill Collectors.

The bill collectors are really funny.  Sometimes when I’m really bored I’ll answer the phone. Their first question aggressively stated is “WHO ARE YOU?” My response is “Dude, you called me? don’t you know who you were trying to reach?” Inevitably they demand my social security number, I demand their credit card number.

“You’ve called StudMuffins R US This is Adam and you’l be billed $9.95 for the first 5 minutes of our sex chat. We’ll bill you $6.95 every 3 minutes thereafter. So what are you wearing?“

This usually messes the caller up. They try to recover but they’re a lot more contrite about it.

During one of these calls I discovered that a young lady in San Diego was scamming a ton of stores. She’d open credit cards max them out and then move on to the next store or cell phone company. She apparently pulled a phone number out of the air for all of the applications… that number was mine. To further complicate matters, her name is similar to mine. With those two data points, a lot of collection agencies call me thinking I know the bitch. I don’t… but I do know another bitch that really deserves to be hounded, and I’m sorely tempted to give the collection agencies her number.

Nationwide,  bad debt is being sold to all kinds of low life, scum bag collection agencies. So about every 3 months a whole new flood of phone calls hits my poor fax machine because these collection agencies are trying to collect on debts that are deader than Tutankhamen.

Sterile latex surgical gloves

Most of these agencies are in India and I honestly think that they’ve been scammed.

I’d like to shake the hand of the Scum bag bill collector that thought to sell un-collectable debt to India. I’d of course wear a glove while shaking his hand… I mean you really don’t want to get any of that kind of scum on you!

Think about it, American debt collectors have a pile of un-collectable bad debt. They in turn sell it to an Indian collection agency for a couple grand and then the Indians try to recoup their investment. It’s elegant and turns bad accounts into cash… Unless you’re the company in India. Go Capitalism!

Which brings us to the scammers and they are inexorably linked to the Telemarketers.

“Hello I’m calling on behalf of the one legged, limp wristed blond African fund, our records show that you donated to our worthy cause last year and we wanted to know if you were interested in contributing this year.”

“What? You didn’t want to donate money to the one legged, limp wristed blond African fund? Oh you meant to donate to the Republican party? Certainly I can correct this problem for you. I’m so sorry for the inconvenience. I just need the credit card number that you originally used. OF course I’ll wait. Ok now let me enter the number… Ooops, I’m sorry that card number isn’t on file perhaps you used another card? Of course I’ll wait, you take your time.“

These folks are beyond scum. They prey on little old ladies from Pasadena. You just DON’T rip off old people… I’ve made the suggestion that a very special place hell be created for people that do. Tele-evangelists are included in this group.

Satan is running a focus group right now… (There were a bunch of engineers who were very bad people. They’re sitting in with the focus group… Hey it’s a twofer for Satan, and Hell for the engineers!)

Exps12223 TH10101C68A

If I’m unlucky enough to get a call from one of these people and figure ’em out early enough, I’ll start having imaginary sex and talk dirty to my imaginary partner or melon whichever is handier…

About the time I’m saying “Ohh baby, lick the head, SUCK IT yeah, yeah, let me see your hole, you like that? Daddys got more for you. I’m gonna rip you open and eat you up, Ohhh baby you’re a little cold, this will warm you up!”

The caller has become either so embarrassed that they’ve hung up or they’ve become a total pervert.

Either way… I win!

I’m not bored for a while and have a new project in the kitchen…

Fruit salad anyone?

 

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The SCAM of Gas Prices or HOW to SCREW the Economy

Gas pump

Oh goody!

Gas prices jumped a nickel over the weekend. This rise happened in spite of the fact that the price per barrel of oil dropped by $1.43.

Hey wait a minute, weren’t we told in the last month that gas prices were going up because of the instant linkage between the barrel price and refined price? Shouldn’t the gas prices FALL as quickly when the barrel price drops?

You’d think that… BUT you’d be wrong!

Now, the gas prices are continuing to rise in anticipation that there will be a supply glitch as the refineries switch from Winter to Summer grades. (WHAT???) I know that supposedly the formulation is different depending on season. I’m not sure that I believe it. I’m more convinced that this is another excuse for the oil industry to drive up prices and increase their profits.

Remember some of the other excuses we’ve heard recently?

Oil prices are going up because of tension with Iran, last year it was tensions with the Iraq, the year before that it was tensions because of Chinas sudden prosperity and their burgeoning oil demand, the year before that it was blah blah, before that blah blady blah.

There’s always some almost plausible reason, if you’re not looking too closely…

Images

The point is, if you really look at it there is NO good reason, no quantitative, no REAL reason for the volatility in oil prices. Each year the prices go up due to some trumped up crisis NEVER returning to their (Pre-crisis) price. Yet somehow each year the oil companies post record profits.

You know that oil is shipped right? So that means orders have to placed at least a month if not two before it’s needed. What happens when oil is delivered to ports but the demand isn’t as high as anticipated? YOU STORE IT!

It makes no sense to turn the ships around or to offload only a portion of the shipment you’ve ordered unless you can sell that partial shipment somewhere else.

We’ve had a remarkably warm Winter in this country this year. That means that fuel use is down, certainly heating oil and probably electric usage.

Why then are fuel costs going up? Didn’t we stockpile the surplus oil?

This shouldn’t be read as me being anti profit. I’m a capitalist through and through, but there is such a thing as Usury rates and there are laws against that kind of exploitation. The oil companies are not a monopoly, but their prices are obviously fixed. It’s time to bring all the oil companies up on anti-trust charges and let THE PEOPLE not Congress sit in judgement. Maybe then we’d see justice done.

Has it occurred to you that $5 or $6 a gallon gasoline is actually good for the Republican party? So is high unemployment caused by high energy prices.

Why? Think about this… There is a long standing history of collusion between the Captains of industry and politicians.

Now think about high energy prices suppressing the economy making the people restless and how that effect could turn the Presidential race and any congressional seats up for grabs in favor of the Republican party.

Once a candidate preferred by industry is elected, the energy prices go down, employment goes up and it looks like the American people “Made the right choice for the country…” when in fact they made the right choice for industry.

Even if the Democratic party carries the day… Industry still profits, and can slowly lower the energy costs, stimulate the economy and wait another 4 years for a chance to put an “Industry Friendly” President in office.

As I’ve said before, I’m not… or rather I wasn’t a big conspiracy kind of guy.

0302 Newt Gingrich super tuesday gas pump vote full 600

Honestly, I think most politicians are too stupid to carry off a conspiracy and they sure as hell couldn’t keep their mouths shut about it. BUT I can’t help wondering if the politicians are puppets of industry.

I could see industry moving behind the scenes. I could see politicians being compartmentalized, each knowing only enough to carry out their assigned job.

I’ve begun to think this way in part because politics makes no sense.

The majority of Americans couldn’t care less about Gay rights, marriage, or what have you. The majority of Americans don’t care that a woman has access to abortion or to birth control. A large portion of America while being people of faith aren’t willing to shove their faith down the throats of others. Yet all these issues are talking points for politicians.

WHY?

We have far more pressing issues that need to be addressed.

The only explanation I can think of for trotting out the same old tired issues again and again is that our government is trying to put on a Roman Circus.

In that context… all the sudden politics makes sense… It’s a “Reality” show!

“This week on real politics, will Rick Santorum insult the transexuals in Ohio and be glitter-bombed? Find out TONITE at 7!“

Makes a lot more sense that way doesn’t it?

When you think about it this way, you kinda have no choice but to get really cynical about the whole process.

For me, the icing on the cake is the volatility in oil pricing.

Which leads to only one conclusion… it doesn’t matter WHO is in office, they’re all the bitches of one industry or another.