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Not that Bob

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Not that Bob

  1. I go back to my thought that we will have to have an enormous shift in our American "ethos", if that is the correct word, our absolutism regarding "freedom". Land of the free. Home of the brave. All that shit. 1) Remove all the guns? Too late even if we tried. Can you imagine the "revolution" if the government came to everyone's door and started collecting guns? That horse is already out of the barn. I think it would be logistically impossible. If possible, it would take generations. 2) Stricter gun laws. We can't/don't enforce the one's we have now. Experience says laws don't do it. Do we put the seller in prison? A licensed seller who has passed all the tests and shown himself to be a good hobbyist? We have a drummer on this board who might take offense. 3) Keep guns out of the hands of crazy people. See my original post. It is difficult to impossible to 100% accurately diagnose a crazy person, and some crazy people come in and out of their illness. At what point do we say "Okay man, you've been psychotic three times and three's the limit. We gave you two chances, but no mas. Here's your straight jacket". Or, "Fuck man! We missed that one! He killed people on his first psychotic episode! Oops!". Crazy people are an invisible group, in most cases. If not invisible, at least very difficult to see. And if we see them with 100% accuracy, at what point do we take away their freedom? Where is that line? Who gets to determine that line? Who gets the responsibility for enforcing that line? 4) In the deep dark recesses of my past, I spent 5 years working at "mental asylums", or "looney bins", or the "nut hut", whatever. They are not as horrible as the horror movies would have you believe, especially with the advent of more refined antipsychotic medications. Not as bad as you think, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to live out my life in one. I sure as hell wouldn't want my precious family member to live out their life in one. I sure as hell wouldn't want to be the one who made the decision to sentence a fellow human being to live out their life in one. Even if we spent half the national economy making mental hospitals into "resorts", I wouldn't want to live my life out in one. "Sir, here is your room at the Hilton on Waikiki Beach. Your dinner will be served at 6PM. You will not be allowed to leave the premises. Ever." As I said above, this will take an enormous change in the fundamental beliefs we have about society, about the worth, and the price of freedom. Is my freedom from the anxiety of worrying about mass murderers equivalent to the freedom of a mentally ill person? If we can make that decision, where do we draw the lines? The intricacies of such legislation would dwarf the tax codes in complexity. To quote the great philosophers Mick and Keef, "It's a Bitch".
  2. We fight about guns and cops but ignore the elephant in the room. The only way to stop this, or at least slow it down, is to incarcerate people who we don't want to incarcerate. We don't want to lock up our sons who we love. We took them to soccer games. Helped them with homework. Taught them to sing The Eyes of Texas. They were the joy of our lives, but at about age 19-23, if they are predisposed, we start to see the signs of mental illness. "Not my beautiful boy!" we tell ourselves. If we can get them into treatment they may improve..."See, I told you he is a good boy", but the treatment, likely medication, causes side effects. He loses the "high" his cycles gave him. He can't get a boner. He stops the medication and probably all treatment. We can't stand the thought of locking him up...for a long time...possibly years...maybe forever. We Americans, seemingly, would rather see mass shootings than face the thought that some people cannot tolerate the freedom that we hold so dear. We can't stand the thought that we might have to do that to another person. Do we have that right? Do we have the right not to? If we had forced treatment and restriction of freedom, these people would be alive. Those kids in Uvalde would be alive. But do we have that right? It is an unanswerable question. We see the warning signs, again and again, but we can't stand to restrict their freedom, possibly forever. We will have to fundamentally change the ethos of this country if we are going to stop this. I don't think that we can. I don't know that we should.
  3. You broke my mother's hip. You monster!!
  4. Humble brag
  5. Tell her it's probably the nekkid pictures of her sister that you have been waiting on.
  6. Fred Flintstone used his feet to stop his car. He didn't need no pussy assed brakes.
  7. Not to minimize your feelings, but what you are missing is poor health until an early death. Keep it up. Good work man! Very good work.
  8. I love this team.
  9. I happen to believe that God is "all powerful", but that does not mean that God controls our behavior. God has given us many examples and "suggestions" as to what behaviors will be best, for ourselves and for all others. However, God does not force us to follow those suggestions. If we were forced, God would be nothing but a slave driver, a bully making us do what He wants rather than what we want. God, if He forced us into behavior, would essentially be a rapist. God is not a rapist. We are instructed, but we are allowed to follow our own path. God wants us to follow the right path (the path of righteousness), but He will not force us to take that path. God wants willing followers, not slaves.
  10. "...what does prayer accomplish? For one thing, if we have learned to listen while we pray, we can be reminded of things we would probably not be thinking of otherwise. Prayer can remind us to be grateful. Prayers of thanks for the food we eat remind us not to take it for granted. They serve not only to remind us of people going hungry, but of the miracle that occurs when seeds and soil, rain and sun combine to produce our daily sustenance. They remind us of the chain of people involved in producing, processing, packaging and distributing the food that ends up on our tables...Without these prescribed blessings, it might not occur to me to be grateful for all of those things. I might have to wait until I encountered a blind man or a cripple, and then my gratitude would be mixed with a large dose of pity...Gratitude does not come naturally to most people." Rabbi Harold Kushner
  11. HeHateMe et al. Talk about lard chips.
  12. A kid asked his guitar teacher, "Sir. Will you please tab Rumble for me?" The teacher replied, "Son, you cannot tab rage".
  13. Ba Bum Bum Ba Bum Ba Bum Bum Ba Bum Repeat
  14. As I recall, Ecology Action over on I35 (about 7th or 8th, don't remember exactly), had a similar sort it yourself deal. I liked the system, and it seemed like some good was actually being done. Only problem was that the volunteers were pretty sanctimonious, sort of like the old underground record store employees. Definitely too cool for a mere customer like me.
  15. My grandfather was in France with Pershing. Grandmother said "He loved that man. He would have followed him anywhere". When I was about 10 or 12 Granddad took my finger and placed it in an indention on his forehead. It was as if an inch long cigar shaped rod had burned an indention in his skull. I had never noticed it before. He said, "That's where a piece of shrapnel got me". That is all he ever said about his time in France. I wish I had asked him to talk more, but I didn't know enough at that age to understand that I had let a huge piece of world history get away from me. I got this much...a cut and paste email from my mother when I asked her where her Dad was in France. Email from mother dated 9/12/14, just a few months before she died. Mostly in France;the first time I went to Europe I rode the train and recognized some of the places he had talked about like Meuse Argonne and Chateux Thierry, They are just little villages now under his commanding officer who at that time was a lesser general but was transferred to WWI and became a full General don't know how many stars he had but he was commander in chief during WWI ,His name was Pershing My dad and his men were transferred with him, Dad lied about his age so he could join the army, made himself older then he was. He went with the detachment from Brenham, He greatly admired both the commander from Brenham (whose name excapes me) and General Pershing ,both were father-figures to him because he never knew his own father. His mother told the three boys that their father had been shot in a baroom brawl He later found out that this was untrue from his brother John,who found out through the Masons. You came from noble stock !!! mom
  16. I don't believe any post said that any technique would solve the problem 100%. It is obvious that it will be incremental, and no one can know if it is too late regardless of the efforts. However, efforts...moving forward..."doing better" is what sets us apart from the apes. To be human is to try to move forward. Fail. Get up and dust off. Try again. You know, "The Man in the Arena".
  17. Lots of the bottles had the original bottling plant city of origin stamped on the bottom. It was fun to get a bottle from a distant plant.
  18. I'm old enough to remember when there were no plastic bottles. Everything was returned, washed and reused. Kids would collect empty bottles and take them to the store to collect the 3 cent deposit. You could save up enough to buy a Sears guitar, or a cheap charm for your girlfriend's charm bracelet . I remember that "No deposit. No return" became a selling point. Bastards put us kids out of business! Moms would put the empty milk bottles on the porch for the milkman to take to the factory for reuse when they picked up their day's delivery. I remember Dad storing cases of Pearl bottles until time to make another trip to the bottler and load up for the next party. Yeah, Pearl. He was classy like that.
  19. I think a case could be made that these are the three most beautiful women in the history of ever. Striking, to me, is that Sophia Lauren is so far superior to the other two. The other two are world class. Sophia is out of this world.
  20. Recycling food containers is something I wonder about. The water I use to rinse out the container, at what point am I doing more damage by excessive water use than is gained by recycling a mayonnaise jar? You hit on electric vehicles. It bugs me that people talk about electric vehicles as if they were charged by inexhaustible pixie dust. Power plants use resources and are messy. What's the balance?
  21. In fairness, it's tough to write a good cancer joke. I got this far: A priest a rabbi and a pathologist walk into a bar... I'm drawing a blank after that.
  22. More like The Hall of Shame.
  23. Doc prescribed various ED medications for me post surgery. I think it's mostly to make sure the pecker gets adequate blood supply to heal, not so much for intercourse. It's been over 10 years and I don't remember all the minutiae. I'm an old, I wasn't getting that much poon anyway. I know that sounds like the worst thing in the world, and I would prefer it to be otherwise, but in a way it's a relief to not be obsessed.
  24. Beer! Beer! For old Austin High! Bring on the whisky! Bring on the Rye! We never stumble! We never fall! We sober up on Wood alcohol!
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