I ain't doing very good at remembering to post here. :(

Well, see, there was this alien spaceship. Yeah, that's it, an alien spaceship. And I was kidnapped and held for experimentation for two years until I convinced them to let me go and bring me home. I promise, that's what happened.

Seriously, I have no cool story to explain the two year absence. I did not go climb Everest or take a long sabbatical. Nothing has changed much in my life...same house, same dogs, etc. The last few (dozen) times I got on LJ, LJ was having problems (kind of like tonight...so that never changes much either), wouldn't let me log in, or it would lose my posts, or something like that. So slowly I just quit checking in and it stopped being part of my daily habit.

Also, I got in to taking more photos of the gymnastics team at one of the local high schools, and its easier to post hundreds of photos at a time to Facebook than it is here on LJ. So my LJ habit was largely replaced by a FB habit. In fact, some of you reading this over here also read my wall over there :)

I'm working on making this part of the habit again.

Wow, I haven't been here in a bit over two years. Look at the dust bunnies and cobwebs in this place!!

Another person was killed by a New York Subway today. How much longer are we going to tolerate these senseless killings just to satisfy America's immoral love with subway cars! BAN SUBWAYS NOW!! Or at the very least, we need a 5-day "cooling off" period and a mental evaluation in between the purchase of a subway ticket and the person being allowed to actually step on the platform!

People don't kill people, subways do!!

Good thing New York has all those strict gun laws. Otherwise you'd have situations where a wingnut sets up a trap for firemen and policemen. Oh...wait...

I guess Piers Morgan is unaware of the fact that prior to Newtown earlier this month, the two deadliest mass shootings were in Great Britain and Germany. You know, where those strict gun laws prevent things like that.

Its interesting to look at the gun sale sites now. Its almost funny how gun sellers are as willing to take advantage of a bad event to fuck over gun buyers almost as much as a bunch of Democrats hell-bent on overturning the 2nd Amendment.

(I just posted this on my Facebook wall. I'm posting this here also because I know at least two of you on my friends list who will find this interesting. The next paragraph is me talking. The list is what was presented in the other forum.)

I saw this list posted in another forum. A couple of these don't give enough information to verify, but I just finished checking all the ones with enough info, and they are indeed factual. This is my response to several recent comments that civilians carrying guns have never stopped mass shooting incidents.

• A 1997 high school shooting in Pearl, Miss., was halted by the school's vice principal after he retrieved the Colt .45 he kept in his truck.
• A 1998 middle school shooting ended when a man living next door heard gunfire and apprehended the shooter with his shotgun.
• A 2002 terrorist attack at an Israeli school was quickly stopped by an armed teacher and a school guard.
• A 2002 law school shooting in Grundy, Va., came to an abrupt conclusion when students carrying firearms confronted the shooter.
• A 2007 mall shooting in Ogden, Utah, ended when an armed off-duty police officer intervened.
• A 2009 workplace shooting in Houston, Texas, was halted by two coworkers who carried concealed handguns.
• A 2012 church shooting in Aurora, Colo., was stopped by a member of the congregation carrying a gun.
• At the recent mall shooting in Portland, Ore., the gunman took his own life minutes after being confronted by a shopper carrying a concealed weapon.
• 2500 times last year alone legal gun owners stopped violent crime when confronted with it long before any police assistance arrived.

Why couldn't Newt Gingrich be that candid and intelligent during his run for President.

This year, I am most thankful that I don't have to spend the next four years saying the words "President Romney" in conversation.

I hope Bobby Jindal is for real, and not just trying to talk the talk. It would be nice if my preferred party could be the party of the people again, instead of the party of no and the party of fucking stupid like it has been for the last 12 years.

Knock it off with the conspiracy theories already. Its not a scheme to keep Petraeus quiet about Benghazi, or to punish him, etc etc. Having an affair when one is in the intelligence community or has a security clearance is an *extreme* no-no, and usually results in the immediate loss of one's security clearances as well as one's job. And it certainly didn't help his cause that he was sending her sensitive information without authorization in clear (unencrypted) text email over an insecure channel.

Its time to send in the Marines. With orders to "shoot to kill". Its also time to immediately halt *ALL* aid to these foreign countries for not protecting our embassies. And finally, boot their sorry-ass embassies out of our country.

Considering that the most economically prosperous 8 year period in American history was during the term of Democrat Bill Clinton, and the second worst period in US economic history was entered during the term of Republican George W. Bush, Romney would be better off keeping his mouth shut instead of criticizing the Democrat platform. Especially when, if one examines their records closely, Clinton was actually far more fiscally conservative than Bush, and Clinton left office with a budget surplus. I'd also like to ask Romney why, if Republican policies are so darned good, were George W. Bush and Dick Cheney not speaking at the RNC? Or even George H.W. Bush.

Damn...that got me to thinking...I wish we could quickly change the law so that Clinton could hold another term or two. He'd have this shit fixed within two years. He may fuck half the interns in DC during the same time, but I honestly don't give a damn where he sticks the Presidential Pecker or stores his cigars. My only care is what he, or any of the others, do with that Presidential ink pen.

I need some cheap, meaningless sex.

Did nobody even bother to look over the script for Clint's little drama at the RNC? They could have told him important things. Like, for just one example, how Mitt Romney has a law degree too.

Geez, does the stupidity never end.

Hey, you people at the convention. QUIT WASTING TIME TELLING ME WHAT OBAMA HAS OR HASN'T DONE. TELL ME WHAT *YOUR CANDIDATE* IS GOING TO DO TO MAKE THINGS BETTER. AND BE SPECIFIC, AND NO POLITICAL DOUBLESPEAK.

Leno is right. America gets the government it deserves.

Mexico is at least 90 percent Catholic. It may even be higher. And most Mexicans are devout and faithful believers. So how come Mexico can pass laws legalizing gay marriage but the US has such a hangup about it?

I find it almost amusing that people from his own party are upset with Todd Akin. He's only said out loud what the GOP leadership really thinks. One of their platform planks for at least the last three Presidential elections has been that they favor a Constitutional Amendment that outlaws abortion with no exceptions.

Its easy for men to be anti-abortion.

Okay, so Ecuador granted the little rapist turd asylum. Let's see him actually get there.

One of my banks sent me notice today of a change in their accounts and fee policies that will go in to effect in mid-September. Let me give you but one example. If I go in and hand them a $10 bill and ask for a roll of quarters, which I do on laundry day, they will give me my roll of quarters...and then charge me 13 cents for doing so. And this is on top of a new $7 monthly service fee.

Another of my banks (I use three) sent notice a few weeks ago of fee changes that go in to effect for them at the end of August. They are doing away with all their current accounts, and the cheapest new account, which gives me the EXACT same services that my free account does now and not a thing more, will now cost me $11 a month.

I will be closing both accounts shortly.

I saw a news article about one of Truman's grandsons visiting the memorial in Hiroshima. The article went on to talk about how Japanese still feel like we shouldn't have dropped The Bombs, and we should feel bad about doing so.

I'll consider feeling bad about The Bombs when I hear that Japanese feel bad about Baatan and Nanking, for starters. Until then, not only was Truman right to drop The Bombs, he should have dropped a couple more for the atrocities the Japanese committed. Fuck them.

Okay, I've made it pretty clear that I don't like Mitt Romney. I would vote for Peewee Herman for President before I'd vote for Romney for Trash Collector. But I have to agree with Romney...its time to quit bitching about his being a successful businessman. For starters, being successful is supposed to be the American dream. And the decisions that one makes in business are not necessarily the same ones that one makes as President. You show me someone who makes business decisions based on anything other than how it improves the business as the number one priority, and I'll show you a failed businessman. Its okay to consider how a decision impacts others, but the business MUST be the priority in all decisions. Bain Capital should be a non-issue. The economy should be the issue.

Something amazing has happened. I finally bought the Canon 7D I've been lusting after for so long...but that's not the amazing part. What makes it amazing is this camera is complex enough that I am going to have to **GASP** read the manual **GASP**!!

I learned a couple of interesting facts today.

Back in the early 70s, an American official proposed a health care plan almost identical to what is now called Obamacare. The only real difference was there was no mandate that everyone had to have insurance. Otherwise, its all there. No denials for pre-existing conditions, everyone had to be charged fair rates, etc and so on. The official's name? President Richard M. Nixon...a Republican. The only reason it never got anywhere was because right after he proposed it this little thing called "Watergate" burst on to the news.

Now, flash forward to the late 80s and early 90s. Another fellow came up with this idea for a mandate that everyone has to have insurance, healthy and sick alike. He was the first person to publicly push this idea. Who was he? A member of the House of Representatives, and later Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich...another Republican.

And here's another good one for you I'll toss in with those. I found out about this one a while back, but its still rather interesting. Up until the early 70s, which major party supported 'pro choice' as an important part of its platform? Hint...it wasn't the Democrats.

These are just a few examples. I could go on. I still prefer Republicans in any office that handles money, especially at the local and state level. Democrats have this tendency that they've never met a tax they didn't like. But like it or not, the Republican party has a long and storied history of being before whatever before they were against it.