Applied Indifference

It’s April 28th.

There are no leaves on the trees.   The trees that normally blossom in the first week or two of April have just started to blossom now (actually, they started during the little hot flash at the beginning of the week).   It’s been cold and wet.

I’d go as far as to say that we’re a good 2 to 3 weeks behind.   Which means that harvest time is going to be delayed, which means produce prices are going up.

None of which would be a problem if we would get some of that damnable global warming the leftoids keep promising us.

Tags: Politics, Randomness by Brian Corbino
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I get the editorial cartoons of the day dropped in my inbox every morning.   It serves to get my blood moving by pissing me off.

But today, they just make me sad.   Sad that they are either too stupid, too blinkered, or too uninformed to speak about the subject they introduce.   And that subject today is gun control in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre.

Stuart Carlson.   Right - the ownership of guns is to blame.   Your lack of understanding is appalling.

Pat Oliphant.   Sure.     You’d have to be crazy to want one of these shiny death-machines, right?   After all, the only reason people buy guns is to indiscriminately slaughter people you think are out to get you.

Dan Wasserman.   Uh-huh.   So now that you’ve told us that racial profiling of airline passengers is unacceptable, you want mental profiling of gun buyers.   News flash, asshole - Cho was never adjudicated to be mentally incompetent.   Or would you like to give up the Patriot act you so despise as an infringement of liberties for a new Mental Measurement Act to determine who’s nuts and who’s not?

Don Wright.   This guy is the king of assholes.   His hatred of so-called “neoconservatives” is so overwhelming that it’s hard to read most of his work without becoming physically ill.   But this is just beyond the pale.   Do you really believe that all Americans are so vicious that we’re a finger-pull away from self-destruction?

I heard these nanny-state idiots advocating for more gun control while the bodies of the fallen were still warm.   That they would so callously start on pursuing their agenda that quickly was sickening.   That they are so naive as to believe their orthodoxy is touching.   Face the facts, people.   You still cannot grasp the concept that a lone nut can change the course of history.

Perhaps it is their child-like worldview.   They are not incapable of understanding the concept.   They are just terrified because they know that they are powerless to prevent the next lone nut.     And to them, the obvious solution is to take away the means that the most recent nut used.

Until the next nut comes along, and has a new way to kill a bunch of people.   Then we start all over again, thinking we can keep someone who is hell-bent on destruction from doing any harm.

Tags: Society by Brian Corbino
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Look, I can hate on the mainstream drive-by media with the best of them.   But I’m sick to death of people beating up NBC for showing the now-deceased Cho Seung-Hui video.

People worried that there will be copycats, worried that other would-be mass murderers will try to do the same thing.   Why?   If you’re going to start worrying about what’s going to set off a psycho, you may as well get rid of static too.

Look.   It’s really simple.   There wasn’t a video released of Klebold and Harris that set Cho off.   He just went nuts.   Crazy people are going to do crazy shit, and there’s no way to predict or prevent it.   I see no reason to hold the nominally sane population hostage to the fear that something on TV might make another psycho flip out and start shooting.   Since you can’t stop it from happening, the best you can hope for is that there’s somebody sane nearby to put him down when he does flip out.

I am tired of having to alter my life to keep the shallow end of the gene pool well-stocked.

Tags: Society by Brian Corbino
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Not a particularly good one, but one I want to get out of my brain before it dies of loneliness.

I’m not normally one to believe in the paranormal, spiritual, or religious trappings of this life.   But what if I’m wrong?   What if there is such a thing as a soul, and it plays some part in human behavior?

What would happen if someone were to be born with no soul?   How would they act?   How would they relate to all the other sentient beings in their midst?   Would they have anything that we even recognize as morals?

So far, it’s the only thing I can come up with to explain away things like Harris & Klebold, Cho Seung-Hui, Timothy McVeigh.

The idea of killing a couple dozen people isn’t something that ever occurs to most people.   Why is that?   It could be some learned behavior that, I dunno, just doesn’t sink on for some people.   It could be some genetic flaw where the “don’t kill critters what look like you” doesn’t get enabled.   It could be that they have no soul to regulate them.

Of course, I’m STILL stuck at “I don’t know”.   And all I have is an inherently unprovable theory.   Maybe I’ll be able to pause my think-box long enough to get some sleep.

Tags: Society by Brian Corbino
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Yeah, I’ve got the Virginia Tech thing on the brain still.   Doesn’t everybody?   At some level, I think all humans analyze things trying to answer the Great Questions: How and Why.

In this case, the more information I get, the farther away the answers seem.   I don’t know why I should be seeking answers.   Maybe I’m trying to figure out if that’s me over there with the gun in my hand.   Although no matter what state of mind I get to, it just never occurs to me that I ought to just kill a bunch of random people.   In the case of Cho Seung-Hui, “How” evades me.   Not “How” did he kill people, that’s immediately obvious to the casual observer.   “How” did he become so totally fucked up?   What kind of event triggers this reaction?   Is there any way to prevent it?

I’m completely dumbfounded by the whole thing.   I watched the excerpt of the tape Cho sent to NBC.   It was like a mockery of a bad poetry slam.   It sounded like this kid drank concentrated hate for breakfast, and shit depression at lunch time.     But by all available evidence, he didn’t have a thing wrong in his life.   At least, nothing wrong that he didn’t impose upon himself.   And so “Why” eludes my grasp as well.

When I was younger, I thought that there was no thing that I could not come to understand if I only studied and analyzed it enough.   The older I get, the more things I realize simply are not understandable by a standard mind.

All I want is to understand.   And the only answer that seems to be left is “I don’t know.”

Tags: Society by Brian Corbino
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Some moron (I won’t link to because I want to save you the trouble, but he’s linked at the PJM page in the previous post) has actually started “asking questions” about the shootings.

Yeah, just like the “Loose Change” assholes are “just asking questions” about 9/11.

You’d figure that if some nujtob was going to come up with elaborate explanations for how it couldn’t have gone down the way we were told it did he’d at least bother to get SOME of the facts straight.

Like the fact that no news report ever indicated that the shooter was “new to the country”. Or that the shootings took place over a two hour period. Sure, they reported a two hour gap between the first shootings and the final rampage, but in all, it seems it was all over in a few minutes.

How about his inability to believe that someone couldn’t fire a pistol with any level of precision without paramilitary training. I guess this knob’s never even SEEN a gun, much less fired one. And his intimation about the time to empty and reload an automatic pistol? Another dead giveaway he knows precisely dick about firearms.

So you keep on asking your questions “Steve”. And we’ll keep on laughing at you. But please, when you finally get sick of your delusions and decide to shoot your way back out to the real world, save us the trouble, and start with yourself.

Tags: Society by Brian Corbino
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You’ve already heard about the shootings at Virginia Tech yesterday.     It was in all the papers.

I cannot come up with a word sufficient to describe this.   Evil seems too glamorous a word to describe someone who goes on a killing spree with such methodical precision and lack of emotion.   Disturbed brings to mind the whack-jobs like Manson.   Tragic would imply that this was a moral failing of some kind, and there’s no evidence that there was ever a moral struggle for this killer.

It’s quite obvious that the kid was broken.   I mean, that’s a big fat duh.   But what interests me is the answer to the questions “why” and “how”.   Of course, since he blew his own brains out, we’ll never truly know either.   And I can’t begin to speculate.

But there’s obviously a switch inside every head, and when it’s flipped, the brain just goes “ok, time to kill.”   Why is that switch there?   What is its purpose?   How does it get flipped?

Why?

It always comes back to Why.

And the answer is always the same.

I don’t know.

Tags: Society by Brian Corbino
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Especially in my basement. Thankfully, we had the sense to put the boxes (most of them, anyway) up on boards in the basement on the chance that this very thing happened. I’m operating under the assumption that plywood is not absorbent. We’ll upgrade to pallets tomorrow.

The Shop-Vac is your friend. I have a little 5 gallon job, and lemme tell ya, that was a good purchase. 25 gallons hauled out, and it’s still coming up. Up. As in through the floor. Ugh.

I’m getting water from above AND below.

I don’t wanna buy a house any more.

Tags: House by Brian Corbino
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The Democrats, being the vote-whores that they are, want to restrict the Internet again. For The Children.

I have two questions:

1 - What part of “Congress Shall make no Law” do you morons not understand??

2 - How do they intend to enforce this on all the nations that AREN’T the United States?

Want to keep your kids “safe” from porn? KEEP THEM OFF THE FUCKING INTERNET!

Tags: Computers, Politics, Society, Technology by Brian Corbino
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And tonight’s performance is Exhibit A.

He’s entirely too inconsistent on a night-to-night basis to trust.   I cringe every time he comes in to relieve.   Because it seems (and this could just be selective memory afflicting me in my old age) that he blows more games than he doesn’t.

And the last thing you want in a relief pitcher is to give up four runs in the bottom of the eigth.

Joe, if you want to go all the way this season, CUT FARNSWORTH.

Tags: Baseball by Brian Corbino
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