Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

You'll remember that I have a number of times made the argument that I think it's rather shocking that a school would expel pierced students, since it makes the statement that having piercings is so bad that a person doesn't even deserve an education. Well, quite a few people have forwarded me this story about the US army firing gay linguists, including six that were Arabic translators (who are in desperate need right now). So according to the US army, keeping gays out is more important that protecting the safety of the nation. Nice priorities. Well, when America gets a few more towers knocked over, at least the relatives of those victims will sleep soundly knowing that no “fags” protected them??? Is that what the world is coming to?

Russia has admitted to nuclear theft, including some which is full-on weapons grade (most was just enriched uranium fuel, great for dirty bombs). Odds are it's Chechnyan rebels that have it, but you never know — the last batch of stolen uranium they retrieved showed up in Mafia hands in Italy. So it really could be anywhere… Maybe it's even in your city. I don't say that to scare, but I should point something out. In Florida (hurricane central), something like one in five households follow the Red Cross instructions to have a three-day “grab and dash” pack, so aid in emergencies is drastically strained. I'm not saying build a bomb shelter, but people should know what to do in emergencies and be at least a little prepared.

I do recommend reading Pat Buchanan's column in USA Today as well as his column in the American Conservative. I think we all know that I disagree intensely when it comes to most things, especially religion and immigration policy, but his general common-sense-liberty arguments are very solid. (Although his comment that the US made “great gains” in the war of 1812 shows a profound lack of understanding of certain elements of history — but I do understand that it was at least a war with the intent of directly benefitting America, which I think was his point).

Personally I think America should just start flying the Gadsen flag and walk away from this lunacy.

I'm working on a year-end megapoll that'll generate some very useful demographics about the IAM community — I want to pass the media some good information about us for a change… I do admit that using IAM as a sample set is a little misleading though. Because of IAM's membership/screening process, as well as the main site's philosophies, I think that the user base here is probably smarter and better off in general than other sites. Nothing wrong with that though! Show your best face, right?

BTW, when I do finally post that, I'll also post the full source code to the polling module so anyone who's concerned can see that I'm collecting it in a way that strips identifying information (since it will ask some very personal questions).

While working on that I was going through old polls and old emails (including funmails). The image on the right, a traditional Ganesh tattoo (a very peaceful Hindu tattoo made with Hindi script), was the cover on September 18th, 2001. I received about 90 posts from people telling me that they felt it was inappropriate for me to post such an image “given the horrible attacks that had just occurred”. (Since we all know that 9/11 was committed by the Hindus, right?)

At about that same time I was talking to some biker “affiliates” of mine and they told me they were going to take a break from doing “civilian patrols” of the Claringon nuclear plant (they'd gotten in some trouble for getting spooked and shooting someone's dog) to go bomb the Sikh temple… I tried to explain to them the difference between Sikhs and Muslim radicals, but they didn't understand it. Luckily I think they got drunk enough that they didn't bother.

I was also going through my old polls, and earlier this year I did a poll that said something like “given Canada's support of terrorist nations and large ethic populations, should the US launch a military invasion?”. A full third of respondents took the poll seriously and would support an invasion of some sort… I don't know, but to me that's pretty shocking… Does that mean that the general population can be convinced to do anything?

On a totally separate note, I just realized that I need to add something else to my iam.to-do list — I have been putting off finishing iam.crush for something like a year now. Definitely needs to be done!

"I had a good friend in New York City
He never called me Bocephus just HillBilly 'really'
But he was killed by a man with a switch blade knife
For forty three dollars my friend lost his life
Now this dude's gonna get out in a year or two
'Cause the system don't work for me and you
But a country boy can survive
Country folks can survive"