The Rusted Musket

Lets pretend you’ve gone out to dinner, enjoyed a fantastic meal with service to match, paid the bill, and now its time to leave a tip. Here’s my thought on this hypothetical situation.

What’s a couple extra bucks in the grand scheme of an evening? Probably not much, maybe a soda or two, but to a waitress or waiter, it’s much more. So go on, add a couple extra bucks above normal for those that serve you, the amount is meaningless, but very meaningful to them…

I guess it is inevitable that I write about this since it has been such a big issue the last few months. At first I didn’t say anything because accidents happen and it seemed to be getting taken care of (I’m talking the first couple weeks here). But now, now it has been months with massive amounts of oil spilled and damage to the ecosystem that will take years to repair.

Who is to blame here? You, me, Obama, BP, Transocean? Maybe a bit of all. You and me for demanding greater and greater amounts of oil for lower prices and forcing corners to be cut. Obama for really dropping the ball on a federal response. I’m a big proponent of small government, but even if the government is small they would still dedicate resources and time to fix issues like this, which have far reaching effects. Obama was instead dragging his feet and not acknowledging this as a real problem. Was it politics? Stupidity? Bad advisors? Who knows… Maybe he just didn’t care. I just don’t get why he didn’t accept help from other countries that have the equipment and experience in cleaning up oil spills….

BP is so easy to blame in this since they were operating the rig. At first I would have defended them because accidents do happen and it isn’t always someone’s fault (thus the term accident). They also seemed to be taking responsibility and trying to fix the mess. But now, this has gone on for way to long. I understand that it isn’t simple to just patch it up, but come on, a company that brings in billions of dollars takes three months to plug a oil well? Where was the planning for worst case scenario?

I don’t really care whose fault it is at this point. Why? Because it was most surely a accident and probably not a case of negligence. The issue at hand is the poor response, particularly by the Feds.

I like how the Germans do the drunk driving thing, a serious punishment for a serious crime. You get caught once, just once, in a totally blitzed state of being while operating an automobile and your driving days are done until court appearance, license revoked, say goodbye to that privilege you inconsiderate shmuck. It boggles my mind how a person can get inebriated, drive away, maybe cause a life ending accident or not (11,700 alcohol related driving deaths in 2008) and think “as long as I didn‘t hurt anyone” it’s okay. In Wisconsin, it isn’t until you’ve been caught drunk driving for the fourth time that you get served with a felony. I ask, why not the first?!

Look at it this way, driving drunk kills almost as many people as gun related homicides. Its just common sense to bust drunks who don’t kill anyone the same way we’d bust a guy shooting into a crowd that doesn’t kill anyone. A guy shooting into a crowd doesn’t get another chance, why should the drunks…

I love Star Wars so I find this pretty hilarious!

As a student of the Western Empire there’s a natural infinity I have for individualism, especially the rugged kind; and Indiana Jones fedora’s. A problem occurs however when I try to combine this individualism with my life in Christ. For they are in fact, incompatible. As much as I love rugged individualism I have to admit, Christ doesn’t talk about it, rather, he talks about membership.

Did you know that membership is a uniquely Christian word, one that Christian’s made up to best explain what was going on? Member, in the Greek, means organ, and this membership is what the Christian is called to, not solitary individualism, or collectivism I might add. We are not just another “specimen of some kind of things as X and Y and Z,” we are a body, where the parts are not interchangeable and also dependent on the other. Lewis explains it as if each person is almost a species in himself. He continues by using a metaphor of family, “The mother is not simply a different person from the daughter; she is a different kind of person. The grownup brother is not simply one unit in the class of children; he is a separate estate of the realm. The father and grandfather are almost as different as the cat and the dog. If you subtract any one member, you have not simply reduced the family in number; you have inflicted an injury on its structure. It’s unity is a unity of unlikes, almost of incommensurables.” ¹ (incommensurable means almost impossible to measure or compare)

Unity compels us, and is compelling to us. As a boy I had my mom read the Wind in the Willows again and again, not because the pictures were awesome, which of course they were, rather, the Rat, Mole, and Badger working together “in harmonious union, which we know intuitively to be our true refuge both from solitude and from the collective” ² made me feel good. Of course, as a boy I couldn’t have articulated myself like Lewis did, but the seemingly incompatible group that conquers insurmountable odds in Wind in the Willows resonated within my little chest. Just like the Star Wars crew, or the Lord of the Rings party would as I grew older. All of these seemingly incompatible groups that conquer insurmountable odds pointing to what could only be fully fleshed out in Christian membership.

It simply won’t work any other way, a christian Achilles, or replacing name with number…

This is so disturbingly true…. As a IT Professional I usually don’t fix other peoples’ computers. Most of the time they want it for free and I will then forever be tied to their computer… The thing is, I would never ask a doctor to fix me for free, or a carpenter to build a table for just the cost of materials… Its a strange double standard.

My John Marston’s awesome. He wears the Legend of the West outfit, uses dead eye to shoot dudes off horses, and once killed a grizzly with nothing but his bowie knife. His long arm of the law is the double action revolver.

Red Dead Redemption’s redeeming features are sweeping vistas, a good cowboy storyline, dialog that’s never a bore (at least when Marston’s doing the talking), and assorted moments of pure cowboy bliss, such as storming the mansion in Tumbleweed. Also, I just can’t tell you how much fun riding a virtual horse is, that is, until you accidentally shoot it in the back of the head while riding during multiplayer. Honorable mention goes to the audio, I once was playing during a thunderstorm with my surround sound on and couldn’t tell the difference between the thunderclaps in my living room and those outside.

Still, let it be known, in my opinion the games not worth paying full retail. But I suppose if you haven’t much going on this summer it’s not a bad one to pick up.

The things I didn’t like about the game are as follows.

There was a stiffness, a general clunkiness of 3rd person movement that annoyed. All I want to do is walk up the stairs, in between the railings, to the front door, before the rancher’s daughter gets shot darn it. Then there was the default snails pace walk speed which guarantees you’ll never want to walk. And the multiplayer, I just don’t think it’s great. The open roam will see you recycling the same six gang hideouts again and again. I mean, I can only do Pike’s Basin or Fort Mercer so many times. I suppose there is a lot to do if you get a posse going on, like taking on other posse units that are sharing your free roam session, maybe I lack the creativity to exploit that which is actually awesome. The team based games are great, okay, and terrible all at the same time. Some guys rock your socks off and usually have their friends with them, which makes for backing out of games to find a different server an often occurrence because the skill level match maker is on vacation (yes, I had some very rough rounds last night, hence my vitriol).

In conclusion I foresee myself playing Red Dead Redemption for another week or so, enjoying it, and reselling it on Ebay for something respectable before the price starts nosediving towards the thirty dollar mark, which, by the time of this article, hasn’t happened yet. Which goes to show there might still be room in this semi auto world for a six gun man, at least, for a little while longer…

Chicago is well known for its crime; they got the mafia and plenty of gangs and other criminals to boot. But they are also known for very restrictive gun control laws. They are one of two cities to ban handguns (well was one of two, DC’s ban on handguns was struck down), and being in Illinois there is no conceal carry permits available. So basically, if you are a law abiding citizen you are rather restricted on what you can do to defend yourself. You can get a shotgun or rifle and certain types or pistols. But you must be careful, because if you use it you could be the one going to jail and not the criminal.

Anyway, I ran across this article and it is the most compelling evidence I have seen in recent memory that plainly shows that gun control laws don’t work, and innocent citizens get hurt because of the laws. If some of these people had the means and training to defend themselves it might have turned out different.
It is just a scary story, 54 people shot over one weekend in a city of 3 million? Crazyness….

This is kind of old news, but its too interesting to pass up:

How does a person get to this point? I mean its like 6am and this lady is very drunk, driving at the airport… Crazy enough she gets away with barely a scratch despite her car pretty much blowing up…

Freedom of speech isn’t for the faint of heart, nor the timid. It is reserved for those who think for themselves, who depend not on the crafting of thought by others. Some say the Supreme court did, and did not, help the freedom of speech’s cause by giving corporations and special interest groups a free hand concerning the amount of commercials they may make during election cycles. On the surface, yes, the amount of media sway that could potentially be bought by people with ideas I vehemently oppose, does indeed make me uncomfortable. But, the bottom line is that those faceless companies and interest groups aren’t faceless. They are made up of people, real citizens, who have banded together their time, money, and resources in order to get an opinion across.

Just as an individual has the right to say something, so does a group of individuals, my comfort be damned. For freedom of speech isn’t about making making people comfortable, and still less about restricting the flow of commercials during prime time…