Paranoid? Me? Did THEY tell you that?

I am not really a paranoid, at least not in the sense that a professional headshrinker would use the term.

I mean, assuming that i remember Psych 101 correctly, from back at the dawn of time, there are three main diagnostic criteria for clinical paranoia:

1. Delusions of Grandeur: Ummm, not me, i am just some random John Q. Asshole who writes a blog to amuse himself and maybe anyone else who stumbles on it... Hell, i am even too lazy to check whether my dimly remembered diagnostic criteria for paranoia is right. In the general scheme of things, i know that i am not hugely important, except to myself, and my friends and family.
2. Delusions of Reference: I am not, in general convinced people are talking about me... Hell, i sometimes fail to notice when people actually ARE talking about me.
3. Delusions of Persecution: This one is a little harder to deny. While I am quite aware that THEY are not out to get me, and that THEY pretty much don't really exist... I am security conscious and I own several guns. I have a carry permit and don't like going places where through law or rules i am not allowed to use it.

The reason for this is simple, though the odds of getting caught in the middle of a shooting spree are probably similar to those of any given individual winning a lotto jackpot, when they DO happen, it seems to happen most often in places where law abiding types are not allowed to be able to shoot back.

I am not the sort to pay my tax on people who don't understand math. But when facing similar odds of losing it all, i want an ace up my sleeve.

Nope, THEY are not out to get me, but i do want to reduce my odds of being collateral damage.

Anyway, a professional would probably not see me as paranoid... but a shit pot of amateurs do. And it isn't just because of the "gun thing."

I have, in the past, been accused of being a crackpot conspiracy theorist. Not because i am one mind you, but because it is a convenient label for someone who sees a greater threat to this nation coming from the erosion of civil liberties than i do from Islamic terrorists.

Fuck the god-monster of Abraham and all the assholes it inspires. And this includes the "good guys" of the bunch who are nice and friendly and tolerant... but do nothing to stand up to the psychos in their midst... Until the psycho commits an atrocity or three, then they weren't a "real Jew/Christian/Muslim" according to the moderate god botherers of the matching sect.

And it is the psycho god botherers who are driving the reductions in civil liberties. Because the psycho religionists who get into the positions as shot callers in one country give order to do shit that gives the shot calling psychos of other religions and nations the excuse to retaliate.

Sometimes these retaliations come in the form of terrorism.

Terrorism is the excuse du jour for the further erosion of our civil liberties.

This is not due to a conspiracy, despite what i have been accused of believing... This is because religious extremists across several nations got into positions of power. And these fuckers can't get along, so they kill CIVILIANS in each others ranks, because they can get to each other.

Which of course keeps most of us civilians scared enough to fail to notice how OUR religious whackjob shot callers are power mad motherfuckers.

So freedom of speech gets whittled away at, as does freedom of assembly, and forget about freedom FROM religion.

And freedom from unwarranted search and seizure has been pretty much fucked, as has the right to privacy that was inherent in it.

The bastards are wiping their asses with my bill of rights... some few of them out of powerlust. But mostly out of fear. This is NOT a conspiracy... the scheme is too fucking stupid to be part of a successful conspiracy. Because rights stolen help the NEXT motherfuckers in power just as much. And Obama's vote on FISA tells me it will not be getting any better under him. And unlike the current assholes, he wants to disarm the citizenry in general not just the poor folk.

There are no conspiracies that matter... just a long line of fuckups.

At least there is some small hope for privacy... If i ever have to cross national borders with my laptop again, i will be using that software from a live cd, with my HD backed up at home and freshly scrubbed before i set out. Not because i have done anything wrong, not because i have something to hide... because it is none of their thrice damned business what i do with my machine.

Blasphemy!

Wil Wheaton is pissed off. And i can't really blame him. Some movies should probably not be remade. But the thing is... Is Rocky Horror one of them? I mean yeah, it eMpTy V, so they are likely to fuck it up, but that doesn't mean it can't be done right.

Oh, but all remakes suck anyway right? The original is always better. Of course, in the case of John Carpenter's "The Thing" the remake is more of a classic than the original, but hey, this is John Carpenter we're talkin' about... Even if I actually did prefer Rob Zombie's version of "Halloween"...

**ducks the various heavy, sharp and occasionally flaming objects thrown my way**

No! Really! Rob Zombie's version actually tries to examine what can turn a kid into a monster, a mix of bullying abuse, and perhaps screwed up genetics. Carpenter's version only provided an "explanation" tying Michael to a Celtic death god called "Samhain" (and pronounced as Sam Hane).

Problem being, the Celts never worshipped such a Deity. Samhain (pronounced Sow-ain) is a harvest festival, the final of the year, and a night when the land of living and dead are closer than usual, thus a good time to celebrate friends and family who passed on before you.

Zombie skips the supernatural explanation, Michael Myers is just a big, tough, crazy, homicidal son of a bitch, who really loves his little sister.

Isn't that enough?

Remakes don't automatically suck, even when the source material is widely and properly considered classic.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show, probably can be remade in a way that would work. One way may be to play it straight.

Well "straight" may not be the right word, but deadpan. Dump the music, have some maniac like Warren Ellis redo the script. Keep the story, but present it as a sci-fi/horror thriller with both homo and hetero-erotic overtones.

Make it serious and creepy on the surface, with almost subliminal references to the original thrown in.

Heh... Who am I kidding? I am probably the only person in the world who would like that...

Yeah, eMpTy V is likely to screw RHPS up badly... but hell, it just might regenerate interest in the original.

Hell, the news got me checking online for the local cast... Alas, the info shown is for the theater that closed a couple of years ago.

Plastic surgery disasters, where the surgery went well.

Well, this has me seething. A teen girl being interviewed on The View because the year before she went under the knife. And those shitheels on her left are supporting this decision.

The breast reduction i can almost understand, a 15 year old girl with a DD cups and a small frame is probably going to end up with back problems unless she hits one hell of a growth spurt. But that isn't why she did this.

She got the breast reduction because she was often in trouble at school for "creating a disturbance."

Newsflash, SHE was not causing the disturbance, horndogs and bluenoses were causing the disturbance. The kid was just existing.

But i can understand it. I would rather fix the actual source of disruption with a clue by four, but, hell it is her body, and she had parental support.

The LIPOSUCTION on the other hand enrages me. A tiny amount of fat was sucked out of her belly because it seemed unlikely she would grow out of it... Fuck, what little fat she had on her belly was the sort i find attractive in an adult woman. She was definitely no where near obese, or even anything passing for overweight. she just didn't fit the ideal drummed into her, and what the hell, she was already mutilating her tits anyway to get teachers and other kids off her case.

The girl was starting to eat less and less to try to get rid of her tiny belly and make if flat. This is something that can be a major fucking issue, potentially deadly if not treated properly in fact.

Proper treatment is psychological, or at worst psychiatric... NOT surgical, not when she is unlikely to be finished growing especially.

I don't necessarily have a problem with plastic surgery. If you have a limb cut off and saved, it was a plastic surgeon who reattached it, if your nose was broken, a plastic surgeon may have been involved in setting it. Car accident? Assault? Psycho Ex setting you on fire?

All handled in the aftermath by plastic surgeons.

It's the assholes who cut on both men and women to make them fit into some cookie cutter "ideal" of artificial beauty who piss me off.

I have scars on my body that likely could have been avoided with the help of a plastic surgeon, likely many could still be removed. I'm keeping my scars though, because they serve to remind me of times i screwed up, or was jacked up by someone else's screw up.

I am also keeping my gut until or unless i work it off myself as a reminder of my imperfect will. I am going bald and will continue doing so because transplants would ruin my tattoos, my scalp already itches, and i don't like the sound of "Irreversible sexual side effects."

Besides, as anyone who has seen how i dress can attest, i am not good at vanity...

But fashion is a whole other rant.

Well, this sucks...

last night i was faced with insomnia, to the point that i am not convinced i got more than 10 minutes of sleep in sequence, total sleep likely less than 1 hour. This was on very little caffeine intake.

Around 9 am i finally felt ready to fall asleep... about 1/2 hour after getting to work.

Since sleeping at work is Not A Good Thing... this led to a level of caffeine consumption that would make Warren Ellis blanch.

It has finally kicked in. 2 hours before i need to start thinking of getting some sleep before going into work tomorrow.

**sigh** So the cycle will likely repeat tomorrow... but at least the week end is coming next, a chance to work back to a semi normal schedule.

Or maybe i will get really lucky (for a given value of luck) and repeat the cycle i went through in the spring of '92... when i went for a 2 week period with at best an aggregate of 28 hours of sleep.

Lets put my current situation this way:

Created by OnePlusYou - Free Dating Sites

It doesn't show it, but i actually went well past the end of the scale.

(tip o'the pin to AG for being how i found the test)

**Spit-take**

OK... right before i started writing this i took a peek at the current AdSense/Google ads on the side over there...

Denis Leary

Love Quotes

Bible Puzzles

Fear of the Dark

Bible Study

Right, with the "asshole" rant, the Denis Leary link makes sense, with my "murder in the dark" posts, the fear of the Dark link makes sense... but WHERE THE HELL did the love quotes and Bible stuff come from?

I mean yeah, i mention Judeo-Christian religions.... in the same post that brought the Denis Leary ads no less... but the love quotes?

Methinks the webspider over at Googleland is smoking something interesting.

And i thought computers on drugs was a Warren Ellis thing, who knew it could really happen?

Books, books, books...

Tor.com is now live, and for the rest of the weeks is giving away free books, the same ones you would have been receiving if you had signed up for the email list in the months leading up to them going live, but still. I had missed a few weeks worth myself, including Scalzi's Old Man's War, which i am shocked to have not heard of and read years ago.

Free shit is nearly by definition good shit.

And this shit is good even when you have to pay for it. But for this week you don't, the downloads are free in non-encrypted formats.

But wait! There's more!

It is also a collective blog and a source for (free) short stories.

Also, John Scalzi inflicts on the net one of the greatest horrors i have seen... an LOL Shark.

As a special bonus... all of the comments i have read so far have been entirely civil, even when in disagreement.

Of course, when the trolls DO show up... well, Teresa Nielsen Hayden is one of the bull goose loonies running the site, Patrick Nielsen Hayden being the other, both of whome have shown talent in dealing with trolls... Teresa especially, she invented the technique of disemvowelling.

Am I too subtle?

Stumbled on a Blog post elsewhere, i responded, dritpping with sarcasm.

The OP seems to have agreed with me fully.

Basically he suggested using a form of torture, waterboarding, to force the idiot who locked down San Francisco's network to divulge passwords.

My sarcastic response was to skip waterboarding and torture him in a way that would leave marks. Else, follow rule of law... The OP seems to like the way i think... **sigh**

Yup, the MFHeadcase there is the same one here.