I grew up a fan of the WWF and I re-acquired my fondness for wrestling late int eh 1990′s during the WCW/WWF wars. One of the performers for the WWF (now WWE) was former Olympic gold medalist Kurt Angle who played a pompous and crass patriot who embodied everything that you could dispise about an athlete. Selfishness, arrogance, etc, etc.
Kurt had a good “angle” though and played the part well. Still does in fact. One part of his repetoir was talking about his three I’s — three words begining with I that were his guiding principles — of Intensity, Integrity and Intelligence.

You realize that the country currently has it’s own three I’s? These aren’t principles that are guiding us but they are factors in our daily lives:

Inflation – you will not hear the Federal Reserve chairman talking about inflation, nor will you hear the Bush administration talk about how costs have skyrocketed over a short period of time. Everyone knows about gas prices, but real estate prices, durable goods, groceries, insurance premiums, medical care — everything is spiking for the common person. The federal governent is just concerned with the mega-ultra-large corporations in how they deal with this. Corporatiosn are going strong right now while workers wages are stagnent. It’s been almost a decade since minimum wage was increased in the United States and instead of promoting better treatment for employees, the Bush administration has worked vigilently to repeal work laws so corporations can profit and not be stradled by the costs of labor.

Intolerance – you reep what you sow and that is the case with the Dubai Port World deal and George Walker Bush signing off on the deal. Bush made Arab’s into the boogeyman of the 21st century with his rhetoric after 9-11. The propoganda coming out of the White House tied Iraq to 9-11 in order to justify the invasion of Iraq. People were scared and reacted to just that, signing off on the war because those damn Arabs attacked us first! (wwhich is a flat out lie and ignorant assumption by the citizens of the US)

So the Dubai Ports deal comes through and Bush has no problem with it — it’s a furtherment of his pro-big business agenda. Bill Clinton signs off on it and does what he can to help out behind the scenes (as Slick Willie has always been a proponent of Globalization — as is New York Times writer Paul Krugman). Everyone expects a free pass over this as that is how the country has operated since 9-11 (allowing Bush to get whatever he wanted)…

…Until the public learns about the deal.

Everyone cries foul — Republicans and Democrats alike. The Xenophobia of the Arab Boogeyman that Bush’s administration has so well played rears it’s ugly head. An Arab country in charge of US Ports?! An Arab country with ties to 9-11?!?

And yet, Krugman had a good point in a recent article which denounced this intolerance. The United States should be an active player in the global economy and we cannot run scared from a country in the middle east because of the ignorant and arrogant propoganda show that was put out by the Administration to further it’s agenda.

Of course I could go on about intolerance — everyone beign afraid of homosexuals, blacks and whites in the continued racial war of poverty, faux-Christians sullying Christian ideals and justifying hatred, violence and greed in His name, etc…

Isolationism – Go it alone, “with us or against us,” and the country trumping the world in matters of global politics (be it war, peace, treaties, signing off on elected officials in other countries or dispatchign elected officials in others)  The US has become largely islolated with thanks to it’s policies while being depedant and indebted to cheap foreign labor and despot oil suppliers.

I’m watching the Joss Whedon TV Series Firefly on DVD at current… This was after having to plain give up on the Serenity movie after 7 minutes of confusion while watching it. Serenity definitely needs to be watched only by those who have some clue about the Television show and the characters involved.

That being said, I’ve also been trying to grapple with all of the characters and people Nathan Fillion‘s captain Malcom Reynolds reminds me of while I watch.

When you first watch the series and see that it’s a space opera, this is a sarcastic, treacherous scoundrel who is living and flying job-to-job… You think of what any Sci-Fi fan would think and find Reynolds to be Han Solo‘s reincarnations….

But hold the phone, folks… There’s the earth-bound loyalty, no-holds-barred “we gotta get through this situation” type aura to Reynolds as well. He can be witty while relentless, he’s a soldier and a schemer in the same breath… But that loyalty to his crew – however pissed off he is at them or not – reminds me squarely of Tommy Lee Jones portrayal of Deputy Samuel Gerard in The Fugitive and US Marshalls.

Then there is Fillion himself. He’s joked about being given roles time and again to play a man of the cloth but the actor he reminds me most of in his mannerisms is Dennis Quaid — or Captain Tuck Pendelton from Innerspace to be more exact.

Pretty well rounded character if you ask me. Just don’t ask me to comment on “Animal Mother IN Space / Jayne Cobb” played by Adam Baldwin.

Seeign that Revenge fo the SIth is out there right now….

Who were some of the actors that were offered the role of Han Solo in the Original Star Wars before Harrison Ford got the role?

What Virtual Reality ovie of the 1990′s featured two future Best-Actor Oscar winners?

Beside George Tennet, I wonder how many people see the proposed breakup of the CIA as a step backwards instead of a step forward?

There are already a handful of security and intelligence agencies int eh United States and a handful of Investigative agencies as well. The 9/11 Commission cited lack of communications/cooperations between agencies as part of the reason 9-11 happened.

So why is it that breaking the CIA into three is supposed to be the way to mend the problem? You have more agencies that need to answer to other agencies and more groups that may or may not share data. It’s taking the wrong approach to finding a solution.

Just like the Department of Homeland Security is giving the Defense Department a day off from defending the United States of America so that they can go ahead and be the Offense Department and take War elsewhere, changing the CIA to three different agencies doesn’t rectify the problem – it just adds bureaucracy so that other groups can focus on other things instead of solving the real problem — the glut of agencies and the lack of coordination with them.

I’m not totally opposed to the dismantling of the CIA but then again? I want to see the FBI and ATF factored into this group. I would think one super agency with divisions for national Investigation and law enforcement as well as international intelligence is going to be more beneficial than adding more groups to an already crowded field of agencies that are only loosely connected… And of course, having one person overseeing those agencies is not going to help cooperation and coordination between them…. It’s just going to add to the mess.

And what are other politicians going to tell you? That dividing and confusing is going to make America safer? That’s hardly a way to protect America… It’s more likely a way to contribute to more trouble – both Political and Geo-political – in the future.

Saturday, letters were published in the St. Petersburg Times trying to justify mistreatment of those detained at the Abu Ghraib prison. They tended to be immature, at best, and evidence of how Americans will see only what they want to see.

One letter writer thinks “I’ll take a leash without any close compared to” being dragged through the streets and hung and burned. Of course, everyone is going to chose humiliation over death, but the letter writer neglects to bring up the sodomy and other mistreatment of prisoners, nor the duration of how long these people were exposed to such treatments. Death over long term humiliation is a tougher choice to make. The fact an exact date hasn’t been put on photos showing also factors in.

Another letter writer also makes the comparison to security personnel being dragged and hung last month and then claims, “how easily people forget.” The problem is, no one forgot that happened. We, as Americans, are supposed to be better than what has been revealed at the Abu Ghraib prison. Can you so easily justify sinking to an unmoral level?

One last letter writer states that last month’s horrid events in Fallujah need to be placed in front of these horrid events in a time line sense. I believe this is to justify the attacks against prisoners as “an eye for an eye”. Well, L. Paul Bremer stated on Friday that he had heard of abuses in Abu Ghraib by American Soldiers beginning in January… January certainly comes before April.

Don’t try to justify what US Soldiers have done in Iraq. We’re supposed to be better than that as a country. If our soldiers and citizens can justify dehumanizing citizens of the world for selfish reasons, than I want to know what happened to the America I grew up in and the land that I love?

There was a movie I rented before I went in for surgery in August — and it’s also a movie I put off watching… And continued to put off watching after someone told me that they had seen it and it made a profound statement to them.

It’s not because the movie made a difference, it’s because other things and such. Pay no heed to my whining, lets go back to the movie that I am talking about, and that is Michael Moore’s Bowling For Columbine which just about everyone has seen or has heard of and has an opinion about.

Part of the reason I put off watching it was because I felt like shit at the time. Won’t go into the rest of it. Moore’s film brought up a statement or two that I totally agree with. One is a statement that a cartoon tried to underline and another is a statement that Marilyn Manson – Home I am no fan of – made to Moore. There were also plenty of other things (Matt Stone’s thoughts about high school – how I only came to realize that a year after I got out of High School… That’s just one example) but these two statements that were made were what sold the movie to me most.

The first statement I will re-convey is Manson’s statement that we are a nation driven by consumption and fear. Our fear drives our consumption and our consumption is what drives our fear. You see a nation that is over-weight and yet you see commercials telling you to drink beer to get laid. Cause – effect. You see commercials telling you how to act and how many teens and young adults are terrorized because they are not the actors with the polished skin in these commercials? How many are driven to buy products slung by these actors in commercials because they think it will help them fit in?

Goes for smoking too — Peer pressure? Sure… Image conscious is peer-pressure to another degree – the desire to fit in. To be cool. To be popular…

The second statement that made the largest effect on me was a statement Manson already made but a Cartoon illustrated best – we are a nation driven by fear. We’re afraid the big black man walking down the street is going to get us. We’re afraid that if we don’t stop the government from taking our money, they will just blow it on crack-whore welfare and pork barrels, we’re afraid that if we don’t bomb the living hell out of a country, they’ll bomb the living hell out of us. The fear drives us, the fear catapults us to acting without thinking, acting in retaliation before there is anything to retaliate about.

Are we a country with an inferiority complex or insecurity complex?

Bowling for Columbine doesn’t offer us solutions to our problems – it just look sat our problems… That itself might be part of the problem… If we have no framework of the alternative to what we know, there is no reason to look at an alternative. Of course, the alternative to owning a gun is to go with out – scratch one. Then there is the idea of having to have a license and knowledge of how to handle a fire arm to own one… The NRA would never go for that (even though the only thing it is doing is making sure gun owners are EDUCATED). Scratch two.

More of the same is the other alternative that comes to mind and hope society changes it’s ways. Ha! Like that will happen? Scratch three. :sad

Well, you find out sooner than later and in this case it’s later instead of sooner.

I’m looking at my logs and everyone was searching Sunday Night for the news of Jonathan Brandis’ death after Brandis was mentioned during the Screen Actors Guild awards to have departed this world last year….

…And everyone ended up coming to der Stonegauge and the ongoing Brandis thread.

What does the word MODERATOR mean? What is it’s definition. Our good friends over at Dictionary.com have it defined as this:

mod·er·a·tor ( P )
n.
One that moderates, as:
One that arbitrates or mediates.
One who presides over a meeting, forum, or debate.
The officer who presides over a synod or general assembly of the Presbyterian Church.
Physics. A substance, such as water or graphite, that is used in a nuclear reactor to decrease the speed of fast neutrons and increase the likelihood of fission.

One who, or that which, moderates, restrains, or pacifies.

The officer who presides over an assembly to preserve order, propose questions, regulate the proceedings, and declare the votes.

That’s just some of the definitions of the word moderator. In esscence, a moderator is supposed to step in and stop things from going to shit. THey are supposed to keep the fighting from happening. They are supposed to keep the balance.

I know this first hand, I administrated on FanHome.com, I moderated there before I administrated and got plenty of first-hand experience.

Why the hell these chat-heads can’t get the fucking clue what it means to moderate is beyond my. They don’t want to step in when one of the chat regulars starts blasting other regulars in the room. They “aren’t your parents” and they think everything should be dealt with in private.

Right, like someone who says “Fuck off, fuck you and don’t send me private messages” is going to deal with problems?

Lack of moderating shows cowardice by anyone on any web site that doesn’t want to be made to look like the bad guy. It’s just a fucking online world, people! You think some nitwit shoudl be allowed to bash the very people you are trying to coax into using your service? What are you, retarded?

This goes for any message board / chat room that you go into. You may tell me that “to go and stifle someone even if he isn’t being the best person in the world is censorship” is also something I believe is complete and utter horseshit. Censorship is when the first ammendment, in a public area, is silenced. To tell someone to restrain themselves in a PRIVATE web site, to step in and shwo someone physically that they are wrong for how they are acting by suspending them or booting them isn’t censorship either – it’s trying to kepe things worthwhile for everyone else.

Cops are supposed to be moderators. Constables of the Peace are supposed to keep crime down, keep the world livable for everyone else… Surely someone can’t complain that they are censoring you if you get arrested for a crime you commit… They broke the law, they infringed on someone else’s life.

Same goes for online chat. Or message board useage. If you break the law or infringe on someone else’s life, someone coming down on you should be expected.

And if moderators don’t have the balls to do it, then they should be canned.

It’s outrageous and ironic that htis is happening with Howard Dean’s campaign. He complains that the beltway boys in Washington won’t step forward and say / do shit against George W. Bush because they don’t want to look like bad guys. It’s the exact same with these nitwits who are overseeing chat. If they won’t step in and do something — why the fuck are they there in the first place? They sure ain’t moderating.

We’re all born into the world and take on a physical life for ourselves. Through the course of our existence on the planet, we live thousands of lives even if we aren’t aware of them.

Different personalities show up at different points and they tend to have a life of their own, for example. The smart ass, the looker, the jock, the know-it-all, the slut, the crybaby, the actor, the liar, the whiner, etc, etc… All these different personality traits alone have lives of their own and you live them as you go from the day you are born to the day of your demise.

It doesn’t stop there.

You live your life – your life changes before you and you tend to adjust to the new conditions. These adjustments change you as a person and it can be said that you start a new life under these new conditions. You strive for a goal in this life, perchance, and when you achieve it – your life changes again and a new goal is set… Or perchance you have something taken away, an injury, a social malignancy? Again, your life changes — you start living a NEW life as you try to come to grips with these new parameters that surround you.

And of course there are social lives. With every single person you interact with, you forge a tie that can be called it’s own life. Only ones that you are close to you tend to create a more intimate life with them (significant others). The catch to the entire thing is that you don’t have to have things in common for this life to be born. You don’t need to be going in the same direction in life… Your connection is a life that the two of you create together. It’s your commitment to that life that could alter your other lives or not.

Lives are all around us – Physical lives, emotional lives, psychological lives and the like… The question to you is, are you willing to see a life through, or will you kill it if it stands in the way of another life? Will you abort a life that doesn’t fit the moment? Or perchance embrace it and see other lives come crashing down because of it?