ih8censorship's Xanga

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:30:12 GMT

I remember when I was a kid (well a younger kid ) in school , about 5th grade or so we were allowed to have water at our desks in case we got thirsty. Most kids had water bottles, most of them the fancy bike water bottles. I had an old army canteen. I thought it was cool so I used it. Still do think it's cool. I got picked on though, mostly because kids are mean and pick out whoever isn't going with the rest of the herd and give them a hard time. I didnt care too much though. Anyway, that's not what this post is about haha. This post is about the commercialization of the army surplus (style) canteen, and the fact that they are now being sold as fashion accessories. Don't believe me? Check this out http://www.uscanteen.com/catalog.html . I really do hope it takes off like wildfire. Not because I want to be able to feel normal carrying a canteen around with me (as we know, I ditched normal on a back road many years ago. At this point he's probably wandering around northern Wisconsin looking for his iphone or something, hopefully I never meet him again.) I hope it becomes a fad that takes off because then I will be able to point back and say how I wasn't weird, I was just ahead of my time. Like the Sega Dreamcast.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 06:52:44 GMT

Today I went to an "open carry tea party". The main point of which being that many people want to be able to carry concealed handguns here in Wisconsin, but we are forbidden by law. However, there is no law against carrying a pistol openly in public. Also, a side point of the tea party was focused on the direction the country is turning and what we the people can do about it. Several politicians spoke, and all in all it was a good day and I can't think of much else that could have made it a better afternoon for me. I also have a few specific things I'd like to bring up about it, and I have sorted them into topics for your convenience

You sure seem comfortable for being around something you say is so dangerous.
For a while someone I know and I were talking with someone who was against people carrying guns in public, and had many signs with (flawed, or otherwise misleading) statistics on them. He seemed very comfortable, considering he was around what he considered a public health hazard. We discussed several things with him, and he didn't seem like he even knew what certain firearm laws are or the fact that if the current laws are obeyed and enforced it is much better than banning or otherwise restricting the possession or even use in a worst case scenario of various sorts of firearms used in non-recreation applications.

The protester brought up the fact that his son has mental issues, and bought guns online. The man said that his son should never have been able to do that. I replied with a question. I asked him if he ever bought a gun online or even knew what it took. He did not, and I explained to him that to do it legally you have to do it through at least one gun dealer, and 2 in the case of interstate trade. He didn't know that, and didn't say if his son bought them legally or illegally. In reality though where I live, buying a firearm online is legally no different than going into a store and buying one. It can be cheaper and you have a wider selection, but that's about the only reason anyone would choose buying a gun over the internet versus actually handling it before buying it.

Anyway, I noticed one of the signs said something on the order of "10 kids die every day because of guns" and I asked one of the protester women what the definition of "kid" was. Being not a complete idiot, I know that "kid" means anyone up to 18 years old. So I was basically setting a tarp. She "shhed" me and told me she was listening to the speaker, I insisted on talking about it, (just like I insisted on talking to the zealot who said I was going to hell last year haha) she "shhed" me again and handed me a piece of her propaganda. Being the fair person that I am, I've been reading through it. I've found a lot of information that is simply flawed statistics. However, there is one part they use to try to discredit what the gun owning, Second Amendment supporting person thinks. Reading that, it actually is counter productive for them because it cites U.S. vs Miller (1939) (which I think is actually irrelevant to their cause, you can read about it here ) which they say protects the right to keep and bear arms "only if the arms in question are those that would be useful as part of a citizen militia" . So yes, thank you anti-gun protesting lady for distributing propaganda which tells me that any battle rifles, landmines, grenade launchers, f-16's and any other combat weapon I may or may not own is protected by the constitution of the United States of America.

It also said that the only US supreme court ruling in history that focused on the second amendment was in 1939. This is false, D.C. vs Heller (2008) focused around the second amendment, and whether or not it means that the citizens of the united states have the individual RIGHT to keep and bear arms. It was ruled that the people do, 5-4. Perhaps if these people quit living by their fears , they would come out of their caves and not print such blatantly false and misleading propaganda. Though when they try to tell the truth it doesn't work out for them, as I discussed in the previous paragraphs. haha.

Anti gun protesters and politicians really need to wake up and quit living in fear and running to their flawed statistics and not giving any credibility at all to the legitimate use of firearms for non-recreational activities.

Protests, Police, and the Media
Some of you may remember how last year around this time I went to St. Paul and Minneapolis with a friend to take a look around the outside of the Republican National Convention and whatever chaos may have arose, as well as seeing Rage Against the Machine later on that evening, and then whatever chaos arose after that. After today, my views on how these three elements tend to mingle have really been eye opening, as well as cementing the views I had from last year as well.

The Media tends to cause trouble wherever they may be. Not directly, but through their mere presence and the fact that they are typically exploited to further the agenda of whoever is protesting, and in the cases of the far left (at least in this country) this leads to stuff like people throwing bricks through windows and other extreme behavior on the basis of extreme behavior is what makes it onto the news.

Police tend to cause trouble because their presence is typically overboard in these situations, as well as making people uneasy. Also, certain sorts of people make bad police because of the fact that they lack a thing they were supposed to have learned called "discretion" and some of them just plain seem to enjoy being an ego maniac. Not that they are all that way, I mean I've met some really nice police. It just depends. In peaceful protests (regardless of what you may have heard, a group of people can assemble and talk politics while carrying loaded guns without anyone dieing. At least here in America.) their presence draws the media in, which we've already discussed is a problem.

Media Bias
What Bias? :-O No, I'm kidding. I know they are biased. Seeing it first hand today really made me mad. I have a friend who was there, she has 5 kids who were there as well, she was carrying a gun on her leg and she was interviewed by a news crew. They tried to bait her into saying something like "its all Obama's fault" or anything else to make her look ignorant. She just told the truth and how she felt. She didn't make it on the news however, except for a very small sound bite..

The 1 protester that was there most of the time (most of them left after the initial news crew video taping, hence the reason media causes problems) got A LOT more airtime on the news than anyone who was supporting the causes the tea party was for, and he was interviewed for less time than my friend was, and all he really did was puke up slogans. There are still people who cant figure out why there are some of us who think the mainstream media has a bias. I know even Fox News isn't unbiased (I believe that honor goes to The Onion) but they do a much better job than ABC does for sure.

My back and my pistol made it on the news! I'm glad they got me from my best side.

I'm about done...
...living my life the way I have been for far too long. Life is too short to waste it on things that don't matter. In the past month a good friend of mine has died in a car accident and a young person I know had a heart attack. Today I invited quite a few people who didn't come for what I saw as unimportant reasons. In reality I'm sure a lot of it was fear based, though some of them did have legitimate excuses for why they couldn't make it.

One thing I did agree with the protester guy about (there were only 2 there that I knew of 1 guy and 1 woman... haha) is that he made a point of saying at least he wasn't sitting on his couch watching football this afternoon like a bunch of his friends that had the same mindset. I needless to say told him I agreed with him on that, and I knew a lot of people who think like I do on the gun issues who were also doing mundane things like watching football.

Anyway, I'm going to start asking myself what actually matters. My life is too precious to spend "watching football" when I could be doing something that would make better use of my life. Not to say I won't have fun, I'll have a lot of that too. I'm just not going to push aside things that really matter so i can do something that i have no control over and that probably wont matter in another week. Catch my drift? I think I have a good start on this already for quite a while now actually, woo hoo!

What actually matters? A persons soul and where it goes, the people in my life in general and how I treat others, living my life right, what I do to make my country a decent place while I'm here, and for those that are here after I'm gone. Anything else is just icing on the cake of my life.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 02:36:43 GMT

I'm going to deviate from the norm here (well lately anyway there hasn't been much about my life on here as I'm boring) and talk about my weekend. A few of you know that I have some friends who happen to have a band ( Lightswitch for anyone who doesn't know them) and they invited me to be a roadie for their trip to play in Schuamburg, Illinois (suburb of Chicago) for a music festival. Here's some stuff that happened in more or less chronological order:

1. Sleeping on someone on the way. We knew we wouldnt get much sleep before morning so we had to try to sleep in the van. I pretty much put a pillow on someone and went to sleep for a couple hours haha.

2. Showing up at the wrong hotel, and wondering why we couldn't get in.

3. Beach balls. We inflated soo many beach balls. It was most definately worth it when they were all bouncing around in the crowd though!

4. Me running away from Security. None of us had our "artist" passes yet because we were in a hurry to get set up and we didnt realize we needed to have special passes already. What happened was before the general public was allowed in, I was in an area where the bands and other vip's eat lunch and stuff and I asked a security guard if i would be allowed up there during the show to take pictures. he said not without a pass, and that he had to remove me from the building as i had no pass and it was before the general public was allowed in. I tried to reason with him a little, it didnt work and I was being escourted out of the building. He got distracted though by some other people, I went for the stairs. He was fat so there was no way he could have caught me. Anyway long story short me and the other roadie went and got the passes we and the band needed to go where we needed to go. It was good he didnt get me out of the building, because otherwise it would have been a long walk to the artists sign in area from where i would have gotten kicked out of the building.

5. Getting to hang out with people the general public usually doesnt . One of the guys from the Family Force 5 crew is actually pretty cool :) So i'm guessing that the others might be too.

6. Barlow Girl and Skillet. Enough said. Though the lead singer of Skillet did claim to be wearing Barlow Girl's underwear...

Other than that it was a pretty awesome time with friends, even though none of us had much time for eating, showering, or sleeping. One can do that any time right Thanks again!

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:57:48 GMT

Why would anyone ever want to live in a garbage dump? Seeing those pictures makes me think about how difficult it is for one culture to understand another. From our perspective, it's extreme poverty and we think no human being should be forced to live like that. From their perspective however, things are totally different. They are there because there is money to be made there. It's just something we cannot understand. I have a friend who often cites a story he was told by people who came back from the Philippines or India someplace, the story basically goes, an evil American company pays workers basically nothing (by American standards that is, by local standards they are actually more fair than we can even realize I'm sure) and people go home at night and live in a garbage dump. Well I think this news story sheds light on this. If they were living in a little shack outside of the dump, they wouldn't have the access to the recyclables which help them to make more money.

This is not to say I'm going to go out and buy a pair of Nike shoes or anything, I would have to be pretty desperate for a pair of shoes to pay that much when they cost so little to make, especially when 9$ shoes probably cost a company the same as Nike paid for a 110$ pair. Also I'm not saying that all of these situations are fair. I know there can be abuse in these sweat shops, I know there are other ethnic , religious, and other factors that come into play. I'm saying we have no idea. I have no idea. The only people who know the reasons they do the things they do are the people themselves. I think that applies even wider than I'm using it here, after all do you know why I do, say, and think the things I do?

Friday, June 19, 2009

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 02:24:03 GMT

Lets have some fun with a statistic! How about this one! Sound's pretty frightening doesn't it? How about when you consider the fact for a moment that only includes firearms which could even be traced. Yes, some firearms cannot be traced. Say if you buy it from a Somalian for a few goats or something. How are you going to trace that? So while "87%" of the guns that were traced point back to purchases in the US, it is most likely actually only a small percentage of the countries which would be represented if they could all be traced. The statistics are then heavily skewed because the weapons being traced are weapons that already have a high probability of coming from the US. Certain weapons could be "guessed" as coming from the US without even tracing them , and placed into the "to trace" bin. and then that is how they get such a high percentage. It's propaganda preparing you to hear an excuse to give up more of your rights. I also know that If i was a warlord/drug dealer etc I would buy as many weapons as possible for as cheap as possible. If you've been gun shopping you'd know they're quite expensive, I think taking a trip to Africa or the middle east would be a much more efficient way to equip an army.

Friday, June 12, 2009

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:57:24 GMT

Do you ever wonder what the people of the UN spend their time doing? I used to think they did things like help out violent unstable countries, and bring bags of rice to starving people. It appears they have better , more important things to do. Like banning plastic shopping bags. They choke animals in the ocean supposedly. Which would be a non issue if we would quit dumping our trash into the ocean. create a landfill, and when its full cover it over with dirt and make a park. One thing I find interesting... assuming they are banned, what is the alternative? Paper of course. Weren't we supposed to use plastic to save trees? I'm sure Al Gore will like us cutting down more trees. Anyway I think the UN even considering this joke is ridiculous and should be grounds for the UN being disbanded. I mean seriously, do you not have anything better to do with the time and money allocated for you?

Obviously, with a name like ih8censorship censorship issues concern me. I realize there is a time and place for it (for example not broadcasting every military plan and troop movement on CNN and for the sake of decency in society) But China takes it to the extreme. Requiring certain software on peoples machines? If Richard Stallman spoke Chinese he would be all over them haha. It's stupid though. They claim its to protect people from porn and dangerous websites. What is dangerous is defined by them, Like for example the bbc and the wikipedia page on tienamen square protests amoung others, including countless bloggers.

What people dont realize is this sort of thing happens everywhere, and people dont realize the government as a whole doesnt want to help people it wants to control them. We're lucky in the USA because the founders just got out of a situation of opression so they did what they could so that it would never happen again. Little by little though it's going back to more of the same, and politicians do whatever they think they can get away with.

I havent done much of a personal blog entry in a while have I . I'm not that interesting I guess, at least not as interesting as current events. What have I been up to? Well after a long period without work i'm currently working like a madman so thats good. I'm still finding time to program, lately i've been using PHP for a project. Still doing construction work! I did have a shot at a programming job though, but it just seemed like a situation where it would have been too much for too little. Anyway time to do other stuff!

Friday, May 29, 2009

Fri, 29 May 2009 20:56:21 GMT

Statistics can be pretty stupid. Take this one that has to do with the illegal copying of digital media. The amount of money they claim is being lost is astronomical, especially with the current state the global economy seems to be in. I don't know how they can claim they are losing that much money, it's like they assume everyone who downloads a song or album or movie would otherwise be buying that legally. I'd buy something i listened to or watched a lot, but I wouldnt buy something that i just wanted to watch once or listen to an album a couple of times and throw it away. We're talking what, $12 dollars for a music cd, and around 20$ for a new movie release? And I'm supposed to buy them even if I might find out they suck when i get them home? What then? I cant take them back, and second hand stores give you pennies on the dollar. So really it's all greed on the part of the people who conduct these sorts of studies, because of making rediculous assumptions about what would be happening if users werent downloading stuff.

looks like the slumdog kids got new places to live, so that is good. As you remember i was pretty unhappy about the fact that they were getting exploited nike style. I still think it was either a publicity stunt, or just stupidity and greed, but whatever.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Wed, 20 May 2009 21:38:50 GMT

Some people and/or situations just make me sick. This is one of them. Granted they had no legal right to be there, that's fine and dandy. The problem comes with the film makers using them to make a film which they make millions off of, and the people go back to poverty. It wouldn't take much to pay them with a little piece of land of their own and a decent living space of their own and some cash for living a bit. Yet they don't. They can get by cheap. Or perhaps they are using them and their real lives to get at their agenda of exposing poverty in India, which to me is still wrong because that's what they did with the movie, or at least so I was told I haven't seen it, and now I'm glad for that. The whole thing makes me want to add a Nike swoosh to every dvd or poster of slumdog millionaire I ever see. It's the same thing. In fact it's worse, because Nike doesn't act like exploitation bothers them.

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 04:19:08 GMT

I'm kind of annoyed right now. I've been trying to figure out how to do something (well legally anyway, illegally it would be easy) and it shouldn't be near as difficult as it is. That's what I get for living in civilization in a free country I guess.

I'll back up and describe the situation. For a long time I've wanted to spend a rather lengthy amount of time in the wilderness , with just what I could carry in on my back, wits, and training to support me. Ideally I'd fish and hunt and gather wild plants to supplement my food supplies to the point where the ones I brought in were no longer necessary.The problem with this, is to do it legally Id have to wait for the fishing and hunting seasons, and because of that if the fish weren't biting I couldn't just shoot a few squirrels instead on the way back to camp. So that cuts my chances of getting something to eat every day down. I would read a lot of my Bible and explore too. I remember a few years ago I went camping with a couple before they got married, and one of the days I was by myself and I just sort of wandered around the woods and sand dunes along Lake Michegan and read my Bible because I didnt have much else to do. It was really nice.

My second problem comes with packing firearms. I found out that for legal hunting purposes guns are allowed in national forests. That's great. What happens if I come across a wolf pack that thinks I'll make a good dinner or something and all I have is a gun for killing squirrels?... I mean I wouldn't exactly be staying at a campground next to someones RV I'd be out of cell range and even if I weren't the rangers wouldn't find me in time. In Minnesota I could carry a hand gun for protection/hunting as I have a permit for that... but here in Wisconsin there's a huge grey area about the carrying of guns for protection so I'd be stuck again with a small game gun if/when i needed it to shoot something that was trying to eat me or otherwise hurt me. Also the national forests themselves have, in my opinion, idiotic rules about weapons that seem to tend to change now and then from what I've seen.

Why is it so hard to detach from civilization for a while? You'd think in a country that prides itself on being free, that an ambitious, law abiding young man like myself could still go in the woods and stay there for a while. Just kinda live like an old time indian or grizzly adams or something ya know?

Whatever the answer, I'm going to keep trying to figure this out... it sure is frusterating because it shouldnt be this difficult to plan something like this... if it wasnt for all the legal crap I'd pack a bag tomorrow and be in northern wisconsin or minnesota by nightfall. Well maybe friday sometime (again, hypothetically speaking) , I have plans tomorrow.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Sat, 11 Apr 2009 03:51:39 GMT

I was watching some propaganda on ABC tonight, specifically it was the show 20/20 and the episode was entitled "If I Only Had a Gun". Early on in the episode they had talked about testing the effectiveness of an ordinary citizen with a handgun in a crisis situation. Right away I predicted pretty much how the entire episode would go down, and I was correct.

I'll start this off by letting you know a bit more about where my opinions of this episode come from.I've been taught gun safety from a very young age (If I saw one I was to leave the area, and I was told that I would die if I even touched one and that my mom and dad would cry, and that I would be taught how to be safe with one when I was older), I paintball when I can (usually parallels can't be drawn between paintball and real gunfights, but I shall make an exception for arguments sake) and in mid March, I took a very detailed defensive handgun course.

The show hit on a few topics, which I shall take on one by one.

Homicidal Ambush Scenario
A bunch of students were in a mock classroom where one of the students was armed with a special gun that shot paint (it wasn't a paintball gun it was a specially modified handgun designed to shoot Simunitions ) and at a random time a mock homicidal maniac came in and shot the teacher and started shooting the mock students with the paint gun and the armed student was supposed to shoot the maniac. Of course in their crappy experiment the best they really did was wounding the attacker a bit and getting killed themselves , but remember this is propaganda after all, and because of my recent defensive handgun carry training I identified several problems with their experiment:
1. The students had no practice to amount to anything near what someone who takes a training class to carry a gun knows they need to do. Examples include point shooting, practice drawing from holster, etc. The same thing police are taught to do.
2. They weren't dressed properly. Their clothing got in the way of getting their gun out of the holster. This again, is another thing that people who legally carry guns for protection know to do, dress for the way the gun is carried.
3. It was an ambush scenario. Ambushes are always dangerous and very tough to get out of. I say this as a paintballer, I could be going through the woods with 3 other guys with our paintball guns out and we could hit an ambush and either find cover and return paint and get the opponets, or we could get hit right away. Ambushes are very tough scenarios.
4. Training, again was lacking. That was my biggest gripe about this segment.
5. The attacker knew to look for someone with a gun, because he knew someone in the room had a gun. The reason people carrying guns legally works as a crime deterrant is the bad guys don't know who has a gun and who does not. So they err on the side of caution, would an attacker go on a rampage like that if he thought for a moment that he just might be walking into a room with 30 guns about to be pointed at his chest and fired? I think not, which is why these rampages happen in places where it is illegal to carry a gun. Duh.
6. The gun may not have fit them well. In a defensive carry class they tell you that you need to find a gun that "fits" you, and they go into detail on what makes a gun fit.

Too many problems with their experiment, but hey what's propaganda without misleading information for the masses anyway?

Also I'd like to point out that these homicidal ambushes seem to miraculously happen in places where it is most likely illegal to carry a gun (even if you have a permit to carry, contrary to popular belif just because someone has a permit to carry a gun it is not a license to kill or even carry a gun anywhere) unless you are a police officer. AKA nursing homes, schools, malls, churches etc. When was the last time you heard of a homicidal maniac shooting up a police station or gun club?

"Gun Show Loophole"
The main gripe against this supposed loophole is that people can buy guns without a background check. A person can buy a car without a drivers license, so what's the problem? Not to say I disagree with background checks totally, I mean they aren't a bad idea. I mostly just dont like the gun registration part of it. There is no reason someone should have to register a gun. Ever. Also they said that statistically guns from gun shows were used in crimes. I don't know how they figure that one while saying at the same time gun show sales are unregulated. I would put money on many guns being used in crime being stolen guns anyway. A good lockbox would prevent a lot of people from stealing guns.

Stuff the producers probably should have had legal action taken against them for.
1. There was "research" done where "unloaded" (a firearm is never be trusted to be unloaded remember) handguns were left in the toy boxes of small children that had just watched a video on gun safety. Then hidden cameras were set up as the adults left the room. The kids played with the guns and such. To me, that's reckless endangerment of children. Guns are not toys, or research props. They are tools. Movies are a borderline case, even then people do get hurt and killed. Nowadays there's no reason for that, with camera trickery and computers, but I felt it should be mentioned anyway.
2. A guy was in a parking lot with a trunk full of guns he had just legally bought at a gun show with no cases. I don't know what state they were in, but if they were here in Wisconsin that would at least be a hefty fine, not to mention walking through the parking lot with an uncased rifle. It's also an incredibly stupid thing to do anyway for various reasons, but I have to remember the people who created the show can't have that much common sense anyway.

A school where most of the kids knew someone that had been shot
This was just stupid. They went to a school in the bad area of some town, and kids told stories about people they knew getting shot. How rediculous. Go to probably 98% of the schools in the country and one would be hard pressed to find anyone who knew anyone that had been shot, except for maybe Uncle Dave who just got back from Iraq. Again, misleading information for the masses.

One thing I can say though, if I were to die in some homicidal maniac's power trip I would much rather be armed than not. Even if I didn't have a chance to get the gun out of my holster or get a single shot off. I also think the world could be a whole lot safer if more people had a gun strapped to themself on a regular basis and were well trained in the use of it.