FlamingText

The Price of Freedom is Eternal Vigilance

The Enemies of Freedom are massing across the border, drawn to Canada by socialized medicine, gay marriage and lax marijuana laws. They stand poised at our doorstep like travelling salesmen peddling TERROR, they are knock knock knocking at that door with an ever-growing fervor, and any moment they will just barge right in and start unpacking their suitcases of DESTRUCTION in the very living room of Liberty. Like all true Americans you want to stand and fight, as the courageous Minutemen did over two centuries ago, fight against the onslaught of tyranny, but you are sleepy, oh so sleepy...

How will you remain alert in the long, still hours of calm before the impending conflagration? How?

For the best in over-the-counter counterterrorism, trust safe, legal caffeine to help keep you working hard and fighting for freedom. Caffeine: Your ally in the War against EVIL.

Conscience-Driven

The House held holding hearings Tuesday to discuss the effects of new laws passed in several states that require

taxi drivers, bus drivers and other transportation professionals to deliver passengers to their requested destinations regardless of the drivers' personal moral or spiritual objections.

  The House Transportation Committee heard from speakers on both sides of this contentious issue today, including a testimonial from Cicero, Illinois bus driver Lowell Vaughn, whose story prompted a statewide furor when he refused to drop off commuter Ben Bontrager at his workplace, PanGenTech, after overhearing a conversation where he told a fellow passenger that he worked in the research department there.

  "I think he was trying to impress the lady sitting next to him, but I wasn't impressed, I was horrified. I know about the stem cell research they're doing at PanGenTech, and that goes against my beliefs. It's murder, plain and simple."

  Over Bontrager's protests, Vaughn refused to stop the bus, instead proceeding on for an additional ten blocks before allowing Bontrager to exit.

  "I would've gone farther, but other passengers started stacking up behind him, and I had to do my job. He was standing there pitching a fit the whole time, but I wasn't about to let his religious intolerance stop me from doing what had to be done."

  Vaughn considers himself a devout Christian, and feels that the government should not force him to transport people to destinations that his religion considers "wicked." He says laws like those passed in Illinois make it impossible for a person with deep moral convictions concerning stem cell research to be a bus driver.

  Lawmakers heard another perspective from Chicago resident Tomas Rodriguez, who filed a complaint with the Chicago Department of Consumer Services after a taxi driver refused service to him upon learning that his destination was the popular Dance Club Secrets, widely known as a gay bar. The driver, Ali Ihsan Abdul Ghani of Chicago Yellow Cab, "castigated" and "humiliated" Rodriguez for asking to go to "that place where the men dance with other men," Rodriguez told the committee.

"I felt judged and discriminated against." said Rodriguez. "Since when does a cab driver get to tell me how to live? Why couldn't he just do his job?"

"Who died and left him pope?", Rodriguez then asked, rhetorically.

  Illinois is one of several states to pass similar measures recently in response to cases where drivers have refused service to passengers for reasons of conscience. In other states, laws have been drafted to guarantee that transportation workers can not be fired or prosecuted for refusal to transport passengers on moral or religious grounds.

The issue has become a hot-button issue in the ongoing Culture Wars , with support divided along party lines. Chairman of the House Transportation Committee, South Carolina Republican Don Conrad, began his hearing by saying that those who work in the field of transportation should not be forced to choose between their jobs and their beliefs.

  "Nobody, regardless of their position, should be required to violate his or her conscience by dropping a passenger off on the doorstep of an establishment where he has reason to believe that the passenger might engage in action that the driver deems wrong. The government should never force anyone to choose between his business or his beliefs."

  Jill Gordiosky, Executive Director of Planned Parenthood of Tennessee, was an outspoken critic of the "conscience laws" proposed by legislators like Conrad. She said that due to the rise of such incidents in her own state, some counsellors have been advising female clients to wear "decoy" wedding rings if they intend to take a bus to one of the two Tennessee Planned Parenthood locations.

  "They also tell them it might also be a good idea to get off one stop early. There's a liquor store a block up -- a lot of our clients act like they're going into the liquor store until the bus pulls away. That way, if they have to come back, say, three days later, and they get the same bus driver, they'll be able to keep their appointment."

"I know it sounds silly," she said, "but it works, and it isn't technically illegal. Yet."

Note: none of this really happened.

Holding Out For a Hero

   I'm going to be quite busy for the next month or so and I'm beginning to stress a little with the volume of things I've said I'll do. I seem to have overcommitted myself, promising myself out to a lot of worthy causes (read: mostly things that pay me little to nothing) because sometimes I have a hard time saying no. I would like to pretend that this is because I am such a diehard altruist but to be completely honest there's more to it than that.

  Part of it is that all these people are asking me to play music and I've had a longstanding policy of playing in front of people as often as I possibly can. A few days ago I found myself wondering where this policy came from and and after thinking about it for a while I realized that I once read a piece of advice from a very successful musician that said, in effect, "Take every gig you can get. If you wait till you're ready you'll never be ready."

This advice appears to have made a strong impression on me.

  But then I thought about it some more and it occurred to me that this axiom might very well have originated with an interview I once read with none other than Ted Nugent. And of course, once I realized that, I found myself saying
"Ted Nugent? I'm taking advice from Ted Nugent? I am a complete idiot!"

  The other reason I sometimes have a hard time turning down these requests, I suspect, is because I secretly enjoy envisioning myself in the role of savior. I like to feel that I'm swooping down to the rescue and saving the day. Not so much a Christ complex as a Batman complex. I mean, loaves and fishes and water into wine and whatnot are cool, but retractable grappling hooks are way cooler.

  Normally when I start to get this feeling that I'm in way over my head it makes me want to hide in my room and take long naps in the hopes that when I wake up it will all have gone away somehow. Which, as it turns out, doesn't work. And is also, I'd like to point out, very un-Batman-like behavior: Batman never took naps.

So there you have it: My role models are apparently Batman and Ted Nugent. It's a wonder I can dress myself.

Sucker Punch

  Harry Houdini trained his entire life to develop the muscular control that enabled him to perform his famous escapes. He could expand his wrists and ankles so that restraints and shackles that seemed to fit tightly when fastened would provide him enough wiggle room to effect his famous escapes once his muscles were relaxed. Such was his amazing breath control that he could remain underwater for minutes at a time, and he once was submerged in an airtight bronze coffin for an hour and thirty minutes. And of course, for most of his career his act featured a segment where he invited any member from the audience to punch him in the abdomen, which he had strengthened to such a degree that he was able to take the blow without any apparent discomfort.

  Like all good stage tricks, there was an unseen component to this last stunt, although in this case it was a good bit simpler than a false-bottomed box or a hidden lockpick: Before he did the punch-in-the-stomach routine, he had to flex his abdominal muscles in preparation. So when McGill University boxing student J. Gordon Whitehead walked up to him after a show in Montreal and sucker-punched him repeatedly while he lay reclined on his couch, it hurt a good bit more than he was used to. Which might be why he ignored the pain from his appendicitis, resulting in the peritonitis that killed him two weeks later on Halloween of 1926.

  Sucker punches are like that. Maybe you could shrug it off without batting an eye if you saw it coming. It's the element of surprise that gets you...

I always think of the Houdini story when I get one of these stomach aches.

To All the Women I Know Who Worry That They Will Become Crazy Cat Ladies

Are you this far gone? No, you are not.

Celebrity Shark Attack!

(My browser goes to the MSN site by default, treating me to "items of interest" like the following. I especially like the personalized touch of "My MSN.")

10 Reasons Why All Your Co-workers Hate You:
Seriously. All of them. We've even broken it out into a pie chart for you. Guess what the biggest slice is. Go on, guess. That big, purple slice? The one that says "63%"?

5 Worst Summer Fashion Don'ts:
#1: Not buying a sporty new Adidas tank top. Click the link! Click it!

Blogging Can Get You Fired!
You're lucky to have a job at all! 12 reasons why you should knock it off & get back to work. Yes, we're talking to you, Dave.

Ben Affleck Attacked by Sharks!
Jen-Ben shrug off rumors of marital problems in wake of hammerhead mauling off Caribbean coral reef.
"I've seen critics that were tougher!", quipped Affleck good-naturedly at a press conference Wednesday.
"Plus, now I can play pirates!"
"We've never been happier," added Garner.

Top Seven Vacation Getaways
Hint: All but two contain the word "Disney."

Is Your Boss Watching You Right Now?
Well, what do you think? Your cubicle faces his office, for crying out loud. Turn around and wave, Dave.

Reduce Your Stress and Increase Your Longevity With Meditation
Studies have shown that stress can shorten your life and increase your chances of all kinds of illnesses, from heart disease to cancer to varicose veins. One technique that's been shown in clinical studies to reduce stress has been known to practitioners in the East for millenia: Meditation. It may look like just sitting there on the floor, but there's more to it than that; Studies have shown that people who meditate for as little as twenty minutes a day are calmer and happier than other people.

You say you don't know your Vipassana from a hole in the ground? Not to worry. It may sound complicated at first, but getting started is as simple as taking a deep breath. Even if you have a hectic, crazy schedule -- and who doesn't these days? -- you can make time for a little higher consciousness in the middle of your busy day. Experts recommend "micro-meditation" for harried workers who need to reduce their stress but can't find the time to sit still for twenty minutes at a stretch. Stopped at a traffic light? Micro-meditate! Stuck on hold? "Om!" Picking the kids up from daycare? Why not contemplate your oneness with the infinite and cultivate detachment from material things while you wait for them in the Explorer? Just turn down the stereo and mute the ringer on your cell phone for thirty seconds, straighten your posture and lower your eyes, take six or seven deep breaths, and clear your mind of all thoughts... there, that wasn't so hard was it?

Voila! Instant stress reduction!

Now snap out of it and get back to work!

A full line of meditation mats and accessories is available from Nike.

Posting delayed because it seemed too frivolous.

  I realize that I haven't posted anything in a while, and according to this page I read about how to have a successful blog that's a bad thing. Successful bloggers post regularly and on a predictable schedule. Also it said that blogs should maintain a consistent tone and not cover wildly divergent subject matter, so for instance writing about killer robots one day and Star Wars the next and politics after that is bad because it confuses these hypothetical "readers" and makes them less likely to come back again and again. Which means lower hit counts, which means you will never be a blog superstar if you keep this up, Mr. Banjo!

  But I looked into it and I discovered that Blog Superstars don't make piles and piles of money and don't get to date movie stars, so I figured screw it. I'll keep doing what I'm doing.
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  I had a four-day weekend over the holiday which is the first thing resembling a vacation I've had in a long time, so naturally on day one I came down with a bad cold that lasted the whole four days and then some. Mostly it consisted of a sore throat and a "productive cough", which is deceptively named because I didn't accomplish a g.d. thing all weekend.

  Yesterday I went to the doctor (for something completely unrelated) and while I was there I figured I'd ask him about the cold-like symptoms. After looking in my ears, down my throat and up my nose, he told me my symptoms were consistent with an allergic reaction to something in the environment.

"Like Gamma Rays?"
"More likely pollen."

  So I asked him if maybe I should be tested for allergies, and he suggested that I should do that when I wasn't presenting any symptoms, so there was less chance of generating a false positive. Which makes sense, except that it means asking an adult male to go to the doctor when he feels perfectly fine, so yeah, that's totally gonna happen.

  Among the other general advice he gave me was to stay hydrated. "Hydrate" is the modern term for "drink a glass of water." A person my weight should hydrate seven times a day. That's a lot of hydrating! Coffee doesn't count. Beer neither. In fact, for every glass I drink of one of those, I'm supposed to hydrate an additional time.

If you need me, I'll be hydrating. Or in the bathroom.