Today's Chuck Norris Fact:
Chuck Norris grinds his coffee with his teeth and boils the water with his own rage.
(I don't know if I'll ever get tired of these...they always make me laugh.)
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First things first...check THIS out. I wish I'd had one of these when I was a kid. You know, one way that you can always tell you're getting older is how much more you realize the toys of today are SO much more awesome than anything that you had to play with as a child.
Except my Star Rider toy. THAT was the coolest toy I ever owned.
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Life has been crazy the last few days. Heidi and I have been wondering, for over a year and a half, when things will start to slow down a bit and return to normal. I'm starting to realize that this pace of life, with so much happening, IS normal.
The GREAT news is, Heidi is pregnant. She took her test yesterday morning at around 5:30, woke me up to tell me (even at that hour, I was thrilled to hear the news), and we both spent yesterday with big, permanent grins. We told our parents and grandparents last night, and the kids tonight, since we had them all together again for dinner. Everyone is happy, especially Heidi and me.
I didn't feel well at all today, but I had security reports to work on for a customer and regular work stuff to do, as well as bill payments to make and so forth.
I'm going to be getting more security work, which makes me very happy. I'll be giving a presentation to the management of several different departments of the State of Colorado, and possibly even the CIO for the state, on August 17th. The presentation will cover security incident handling and forensics, and I'm thrilled!! I have an opportunity to shine, to really contribute the best way I can.
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More news on Heidi's assault case: the detective who was trying to get an arrest warrant for Heidi's attacker screwed up the paperwork and failed to get Heidi's doctor's signature on the medical forms. The hearing for the warrant was today, apparently, and because of this snafu, no warrant was issued. It sounds as though it will take perhaps another week to get everything in order and go back to the judge to get the arrest warrant.
My faith in our justice system, already terribly thin, is certainly not thickening up as a result of this. It's like I've been saying...train cops to write tickets, and emphasize the need to write tickets, and that's what they'll do well. And there are so many people who wonder why people like me who refuse to leave it merely to the police and the justice system, and fight for the right to protect themselves and handle their own affairs.
If Aurora PD screws this one up, it will be two black marks for them in my book within just a few weeks. You may already have heard the story about the Oklahoma sex offender who was allowed to volunteer at Aurora's KidSpree event a few weeks ago. The sex offender then promptly lured a young boy away and sexually assaulted him. The Aurora police sound like they're about as competent at catching criminals and solving crimes as Boulder's police department is. Go figure.
Between JonBenet, Heidi's assault, the Aarone Thompson case (another doozy down in Aurora), and other assorted problems I've seen with Denver metro area police departments, it sounds to me like the Denver metro area is actually one of the nation's safest metropolitan areas...if you're an active criminal.
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A study released today claims that curry (the spice) can help prevent colon cancer. My first thought was, "well, since it's like Drano for your colon anyway, that makes perfect sense." I know it cleans me out better than just about anything else on the planet.
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OU went from wonderful possibilities to another season of turmoil. Just when we thought we were going to start back on the road to greatness, we get another kick in the teeth. For those of you who haven't heard yet, OU's starting quarterback Rhett Bomar was dismissed from the team today for violating NCAA rules. Apparently, Rhett worked a bit for Big Red Sports and Imports in Norman, a place any OU alum of the last 30 or so years knows quite well. The trouble with this was that Big Red paid Rhett (and OU offensive lineman J.D. Quinn) for more time than they actually worked. This was no accounting error; they were paid for 40-hour weeks when they only worked about 5-6 hours a week. Oops.
I'm not angry about this, mostly just disappointed. Another stupid kid who puts himself ahead of his team is certainly nothing new in sports at any level, and certainly not in NCAA Division I college football. It just always hurts to see it happen, because everyone who follows OU could feel that this season was going to be a good one, certainly much better than last year. Of course, it still could be, but OU is essentially right back where they were last fall, when they had no returning starter and three quarterbacks fighting for the starting spot. Right now, OU had no returning starter and three quarterbacks fighting for the starting spot. Sigh.........we had some good luck a few years back, but since January of 2005, OU's luck has been nothing but bad.
Please, Lord, cut us a break this year. Make it a good one again.
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I took a couple of political tests the other night. You know, the kind you take to tell you where on the political scale you lie? These two tests were similar and judged you in similar ways, using a two-axis measurement. The X axis represented your views on economic issues, completely-deregulated/free-market vs. totally-regulated/socialist-communist. The Y axis measured your views on social issues, the more traditional liberal/progressive/permissive vs. conservative/authoritarian. I expected to be much more conservative than I came out; I actually was only slightly conservative each way, but much, much closer to the middle than I expected. If each axis were numbered 1 to 10, with 10 being the most conservative end, I actually came out on each scale, IN BOTH TESTS, with a 6.
So I am slightly free-market and slightly conservative. I guess that's true enough, but it's also pretty broad. For example, I am against drug use, abortion, and gay marriage; however, I support drug legalization, I oppose striking down Roe vs. Wade (though I do support some restrictions), and I am not against homosexuality per se. Here's my reasoning on those points:
1. The drug question is a simple one. I believe anyone who likes using drugs is a weakling and should be removed from the human gene pool. However, prohibition has never worked, so we may as well legalize and regulate it, so that we can put less money into the failing War on Drugs and put that money into treatment. Besides, bad people make money selling drugs because our prohibition keeps prices so high; legalize drugs and tax their sale, and the economic case for selling them completely changes. We already place "sin taxes" on cigarettes and booze and the like; why not do the same with those useless drugs?
2. I oppose abortion both on the grounds that a fetus is alive (an argument that would never work with a liberal), but also on the grounds that abortion promotes irresponsibility. If a man or woman can go out and screw anyone they want to screw with no repercussions, no difficult moral choices, no consequences for their actions, what does that say about our society? Besides, with all the available methods of birth control at a person's fingertips these days, it is truly inexcusable to have an unwanted pregnancy that would require abortion. If you can't think that far ahead, you're too stupid to be allowed to breed, anyway.
3. You all know my arguments about homosexuality; personally, I don't agree with it and never will. It is unnatural and serves no useful purpose. I've said many times, take the orgasm out of sex, and heterosexual sex still serves an important purpose; homosexual sex has none. HOWEVER, all that being said, I do not oppose those who wish to perform such acts. That is their choice, and they will ultimately pay for those acts. My main problem with homosexuals is their insistence that I accept their acts as perfectly normal. They insist on this by claiming that I should be forced to recognize their "relationships" are equal to marriage. They insist on this by claiming (without any sort of scientific proof to this point) that homosexuality is genetic and that gays are "born gay" (Colorado has a commercial running right now in favor of the domestic partnership issue coming up for a statewide vote in November, and it makes the same outrageous, currently-unproven claim.) Show me definitive, corroborated scientific proof that homosexuality is something you're born with, rather than merely a lifestyle choice, and then we'll talk.
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I spotted yet another inconsistency in the logic of liberals the other day, and it came up completely by accident, in a discussion of sex offenders. Liberals will tell you to be lenient with sex offenders and not persecute them or force them to register, because they can be rehabilitated and they should be left alone. Well, here's my question, from my own point of view, since I see the acts that sex offenders commit and the acts that homosexuals commit as sexual perversion. Why can sex offenders be cured, but homosexuals can't be? Such a thing would presumably start with both sex offenders and homosexuals in one of two states: a) the "we're genetically predisposed to this" concept for homosexuals, and b) the "it's not their fault, it's their environment" concept for sex offenders. How could one be genetic and the other not be? Both acts stem from the same kinds of sexual desires, just manifested in different ways.
So here's the scenario for you: let's say both are definitively proven to be genetic. Would a sex offender still be considered defective? Would his acts still be considered a crime? What would we do with sex offenders? I mean, we couldn't very well claim that a sex offender is defective but a homosexual isn't. After all, a sex offender's desires to rape, or to molest children, would be his/her natural state, just like a homosexual's. I'd love to see the liberals try to figure that one out.
And what about the reverse scenario, where both are definitively proven to be lifestyle choices influenced by environment? It permits us to believe sex offenders can be rehabilitated, but it completely blows out of the water any idea that homosexuals can't be.
One day, one of the above positions will be proven, and WHOA NELLIE!!
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I'm continuing to practice my mandolin as I can, and I'm digging more and more into bluegrass. I'm even in the process of writing more bluegrass songs, though right now they're all in my head and not yet down on paper.
Mandolin is a very difficult instrument to learn, though, especially for someone with short fingers such as myself. I'm working on the four-finger G chord, and it's killing me! I have to twist my left hand into a very unnatural position to even get my fingers to the correct position, and the sound of the chord when I try to play it is usually terrible. But I'm still working on it as much as I can, and soon I hope it will be relatively natural. The fingering of the G chord is supposed to be the foundation for many other chords you play on a mandolin, so it's very important that I get it.
Once I get some other songs written, I'll post them on here...the words, at least, anyway.
Thanks for reading along.
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