What are you basing your life upon?

  The Gun Violence, Gun Control, Abortion and generally, how one is supposed to live, and why doesn't the government do something to fix it  --  has come up again. All those questions, debates and solutions circle around seemingly going no where. So I see no need to expound on any of them, as soon as you said 'the government should' you have left the playing field.

  Everything that should be better can be if everyone steps up and does the correct important things in their life and with their family and friends and to all strangers they meet. If I don't get high on drugs nor alcohol, then drunk driving won't happen. There already is law, but it is behavior that makes the best things happen, not law. Most law is punitive, some faceless fellow is going to punish you and you should be afraid. That doesn't motivate me, anyone else out there deciding that they will be good because they will be punished? No, most people are in denial, it will never happen to me, goes their thoughts.

   I wonder if any of us have looked deeply into why we do what we do, your life is patterned on a tale of success and goodness, isn't it? When you turn on the television to see Law and Order, you find the criminals hiding, lying and lawyering up. Yeah, then for a bit more drama, you have the 'good' guys cheating on their loves, the job, the rules and in general only a little bit better than the accused.  But watching the actors never registers as unacceptable behavior, someone is killed during a story, then you see the same actor in another story very much alive - you now, in your mind, think being killed isn't real. Don't teach bad behavior, teach and sell only good behavior. I am sure I have never had the romances illustrated on entertainment, really.

Go get them, Grasshopper.

   I will always go back to the fact that I am responsible for my behavior - the wonderful and the totally stupid - it all belongs to me. Do not make the same fool action that hurt the universe again. Don't repeat errors, make different ones but doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome never works there is science and engineering proofs if you care to look them over. There are people that blame the LEFT, the RIGHT, the NRA, the government and all kinds of places to lay blame for all that seems to be wrong and go wrong. Like making my shot, I am the one on the weapon and I am the only one responsible for where the bullet strikes and what happens when it does. Many may care, or very few, and the media may make a lot out of it, nor not, I will always remain the person responsible no matter what anyone says. It will never be the few semi auto rifles that hurt people, out of the millions used responsibly daily. It would be the shooter's fault.

   If you watch enough, for some reason you think you aren't living up to your mental model, making love to hundreds of beautiful women(?) only in the lives of the LOST. You wouldn't even know their names.

Might as well give up... so I did, going in circles has only a limited life...

  The Gun Violence debate is posed by the other side as a problem with the guns, access and danger... but the problem is Cain killed Abel with a rock. David killed Goliath with a stone. And current culture believes more in Road Rage than good manners. Entitlement, I have a right to be rude, crude and lewd... or so I think they think. Have a quiet conversation about the power of words with the intelligent ones, about how easy it is not to use vulgarity, profanity and obscenity. It is likely they are all telling you to take from the forbidden fruit - you won't die.  As justification for their poor choices and why I should be accepting of it - that is unacceptable. Go away!

   So we are now engaged in a conversation, a debate, a rude shouting down match between the forces of good and evil, the left and the right the up and the down. Boring, nothing new, nor better will come from it. Well, you will take care of your portion of the conversation and the conflict, and I will take care of mine and I firmly resolve that I won't kill any children because they haven't gained their maturity. Also, I know they have much more to bring to brighten our world. I also resolve to resist stupidity as I constantly run into it. There is a lot of fantasy in the media, and fairy tales have been my favorites for years and years... but I never dreamed nor aspired to be the Prince, I was more the bookworm in the stacks. I took bat, ball, glove and a good book to Little League... notice I didn't play much after that.

   Lovely wargame I was playing, I picked the name Ajax, and went about gaining experience and points learning the rules and meeting folks from far away online. But I started noticing empty castles, where players had stopped and now the castles were raided, looted and burned - no human life left inside. The computer machine age will miss human beings one day. No poetry, unfortunately I see the children I teach in Sunday school are already lost to poetry, as they sink deeper into their digital distraction device. If I were a betting man, I would say we (the tech savy civilized world) have no way to resist our end.

   When we think another government agency, law, rule or tax is going to fix everything we are lost. How does the FBI, get into defending schools from raiding savages... just because the communications seem so quick? That doesn't mean you have control of anything. I can focus on the front sight, and I don't need optics or electronic enhancements (I just am not going to shoot that far). But I know that the government can't make my shot, only I can. Over and over, I hear Liberty Mutual will fix a flat, and I laugh because thinking only the Xperts and government can handle anything means we should return to a King, a royal lineage.  Don't study History, you might find this human interaction at every level hasn't changed. Personal responsibility, personal action and don't stay on the beach waiting for orders... it is a kill zone.

 

Off to get a haircut...

  And was going to stop and get some Drambuie. And look at how much money is in my accounts, seems the property tax notice arrived at my home. So on post, to the base exchange I go. Sit and wait for the shop to empty a bit, then get up and go looking for the alcohol. I find some interesting furniture, a perfect bench for the porch, some assembly required. So I order it and intend to pick it up after the haircut.
  While I am there I decide to look at the rifles, ugly black ones especially. They have the medium level ARs but then I see a CZ, 805 Bren S1 Carbine, and ask to look at it.  It costs a bit too much, but I like many things about it and see its potential. Talking to the salesman about the price, he said they had to send a different colored one back, seems they didn't think they could sell a six thousand dollar semi-automatic. Not in the exchange for sure.

   On my way out of the exchange I find the alcohol I was looking for, so picked it up. Paying the nice lady at the checkout I wondered when they were going to stop moving all the stuff around, being confusing to us seldom shoppers. She understood, probably heard it before. I did get my haircut, and didn't get my eyebrows trimmed, love the Mentat look.
   In the real world, larger than my little piece of it, the question remains, what are we going to do to stop Gun Violence, and I know as soon as they use that term it is an anti-gun agenda. Not a real search for curing evil, bad manners, disrespect and increasing the love for all mankind... so whatever comes up, won't work. The answers have already been given to the question, but no one likes them.

Monkey see, Monkey do... childhood truths...

  I am sure that sales all know that seeing something produces desires, even if you aren't directly selling a product... They have college courses on that idea. My monkey see, monkey do was my mother telling me that just because someone else did it didn't mean I had to do it... and then she told me how my grandfather had told my grandmother he didn't have to show her how to drive, she had been watching him for a few years already.

   The mind and vision link is amazing, and does make the transfer of knowledge or skills quicker than verbal pictures alone. But having taught a few things in my life, most of them critical survival skills, I learned early on "Do not ever show the wrong way to do anything"  The mind will always use what it saw, no matter how many words were used to say do not to do it that way...  Watching a governor say that our current culture has been corrupted by visual images in media and video games is only partially true. If your favorite actor never got to act again because he died in a motion picture, or if he was wounded and would ever after limp or was missing parts in following performances, the illusions about fighting and combat and death being painless and without cost would fade quickly. But your mind notices that he or she is alive and well next week or the next episode. Real mortality like real morality isn't very forgiving, but fantasy remains a fleeing truth forever.

   So we kill constantly on entertainment media, shooting guns out of hands and capturing the bad guys by smarts is so old Western fables, we want much more blood and lust. But the real people of the old west, would really shoot you if they thought they should. They had higher standards of polite conduct and social interaction. Y'all need to really study Mark Twain's works from his world. And doctors are giving us medications to cure our pains far beyond our ability to observe the patients constantly as their mind is bent, and the side effect lists and warnings become greater for the lawyers to profit from...  but the most troubling thing to me is the lack of faith among the many that really should know better. No God, no creator, no judge, no savior and no reason to be your best always... no reason not to grab all the little monkey sees and wants.

   Often asked recently, how did we go from so many more firearms fifty to sixty years ago, to fewer now and more school shootings. One TV show about schools and teachers had a teacher bringing a gun to school taking it out and threatening his students and then firing some blanks... I as a real student would have gotten up gone out of the classroom, to lodge a complaint and not worry about the rest of the day, I would have even gone outside and smoked a cigarette. But the writers wanted you to think the students would have been terrified of the gun - gosh, I was a much tougher kid than that, much. And I was more terrified of pretty girls and being thought of as weak.

   But I am almost sure I am going to be pounded for being so sure that God loves me, than accused of sexual misconduct or planning a bloody act of terror. Where did those strange values come from? And I won't make the evening news, I like shooting, guns and good people. I won't be news worthy...

God knows and the government doesn't yet but...

   Somehow the entire idea that the government will make everything better is suspect. The FBI agents have adulterous affairs, think nothing of it, and are swayed to abuse their power for a political party or against others. And you want to understand how they could have missed preventing the shooting of so many at a public school in Florida. They were busy, likely.

  The idea that the 'we the People' gave up our ability to handle problems is new... it is not historic, rational nor holy. I can affect my life and all those that I interact with, and do take responsibility for my actions. I cannot be responsible for what they think about my actions, thoughts, nor purpose. I must always believe we are all doing the best we can with what we have.

  There are agents of evil, ill will, and destruction trying to change everything to the wrong. I don't spend anytime identifying them, but do run into them from time to time, or I see them from afar and avoid any place they would have power over me. I am at Liberty and choose to remain so.

  My view on all school shootings, is that everyone needs to be responsible for building better people.  Allow, first, adults to carry loaded firearms everywhere. The government was restricted from infringing on their right in the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution. Secondly, enforce the first part of that same amendment - works for the Swiss and Israelis. To be secure in our nation the People must step up and be well regulated as part of the Militia. Train them, arm them use them to defend (free of cost) the schools and libraries.

  Yes, there should be many other things needing done, but that was the start.

Seventy-first year underway....

 Seventy year celebration done yesterday, now I am an old man. In Korea, in the old days, the celebration was when a man made sixty - of course with modern medicine and good health more men were making that mark, so they shifted it to seventy. Practical folks.

    What I marveled at was that all those beautiful young ladies are still beautiful ladies, fifty some years later. How did they do it? Good hearts, strong spirit and joy and laughter?  I met my wife some fifty years ago, married her about three and a half years later after I removed the governments from the plan - one of the reasons I know governments are made of people with fool notions. I was talking to Mister Wong, a Chinese gentleman, that thanks to his family, the communist government and Hong Kong under the British had no papers as a child. He has over the years made himself a paper trail, his name became spelled differently, and he has traveled. Kind of an Asian Obama tale.

   Anyway, fifty years with my wife has been wonderful. Even when she tries to control me from the passenger seat. Means she cares, not that she doesn't trust my judgement.

   

How fragile is reality?

  The great NorthWest is having rain, pouring rivers of it, and winds. And the power goes out as I just finish another battle on the computer and I am looking at a black screen of dead. I can't change my protective shield, which I have been watching wear out the last three hours.

  The vultures will gather once they know, I have gone to find the flash lights, the candles and my wife (also wandering in darkness looking for the same items). How does Puerto Rico manage without power since before the holidays?

  I, fortunately, have a library of books I could read -- and two charged up kindles with unread readings to review. My laptop stays powered on battery, but the cable connection box is waiting on power to push my thoughts away... so I put the headlight upon my brow and open the kindle and go back to Robert the Bruce's time, reading about the Douglas. Good story, glass of milk and cookies.

   Just when you get settled into the story, the lights flicker back on, and the electric hums begin all over the home. Put the candles out, return them and matches and flashlights to their places until the next time. Go back to my computer, turn it on, race at computer speed to find I have been scouted twice and not yet attacked. Impressed with my defences? or is it the 99.8k of mercenary troops? Will never know. They are too strong for most to fight with and they have nothing better to do than crush their enemies and hope their hear the wailing of their women. Not interested in building their power, city and knowledge - figure they aren't people I want to meet in real life.