Here We Go Again.....

  Okay, this is going to probably be a rambling tangent, but here goes.

  I'm going to talk a little about the horrifying acts that have been dominating the news media recently, The Oregon Mall Shootings, the Connecticut tradgedy, etc, because,   honestly, what can we possibly say about it.

  It's horrifying, hell words don't begin to describe how awful this is...

  I won't however fall into the trap of "We have to do something about this problem!" which seems to have become rampant over watercoolers on talking head shows, and in the news media.

  Why don't we "Have To Do Something?".


  Because, we've done everything we can, we've restricted guns, hell, the areas of these incidents were in fact "gun free" zones.  
  Gun laws are nearly as plentiful as the tax code, and do little if anything to dissuade someone bat shit crazy enough to do something like this.

  Remember the College shootings?   Gun free zone, in fact, you'd get arrested in most of those places even if you had a license to carry concealed, or like a lot of college kids, you were military on the GI bill, and had spent time in a warzone already, sorry, we don't trust you here... You might have been trusted with the protection of our nation, but we sure as hell don't trust you to protect yourself.

  How about the Dark Knight Colorado theater shooting?   yep, no guns there, either...

  So will letting folks carry guns in these places, will that save lives?  

  Well, do you remember the Oregon Mall shooting a little while back?   Yeah, I know it was bumped from media coverage by the Connecticut shootings, but it still happened. (This is sarcasm, directed at major media outlets, you know, the ones who decide what we are supposed to know or think?)

  Remember how that happened?

  Let me solve that for you, I just now googled Oregon Mall Shooting and clicked News and simply opened the first handful of pages I found...
Oregon mall shooting victims described as 'caring,' having 'zest for life' - CNN.com
  Lots of stuff on the victims, and a link with everyone's twitters from inside, of course all of the attention faded as the other shooting dominated,
  I get it, I really do, after all, it's news and a higher body count, young kids at a school, versus a mall shooting, it's obvious why one story would be tops.
  And no, I don't think the media (alright, some may actually care, but as a group) really gives a shit, it's news, it sells, nothing more.

  What about;
Oregon Mall Shooter Jacob Roberts Quit Job, Was Going to Hawaii - ABC News

In the days before he stole a semiautomatic weapon and stormed into an Oregon shopping mall, killing two people in a shooting spree, Jacob Roberts quit his job, sold his belongings and began to seem "numb" to those closest to him.
Roberts' ex-girlfriend, Hannah Patricia Sansburn, 20, told ABC News today that the man who donned a hockey mask and opened fire on Christmas shoppers was typically happy and liked to joke around, but abruptly changed in the week before the shooting.
Roberts unleashed a murderous volley of gunfire on the second floor of the Clackamas Town Center on Tuesday while wearing the mask and black clothing, and carrying an AR-15 semiautomatic weapon and "several" magazines full of ammunition. He ended his barrage by walking down to the first floor of the mall and committing suicide.

The bold and underlined emphasis is mine, as it is the article that seems to explain what the soundbites are confirming, Okay He stole a semiautomatic weapon (and AR)...     I'd like to understand how he did,  but so much for that helping the call for laws on restricting the purchase of... well, that's an old argument on gun control,
  And like is so often reported, he ends his barrage by committing suicide.


   And of course, we also have the New York Times,
 In Oregon Mall Shooting, a Lower Toll, Including Gunman Jacob Tyler Roberts - NYTimes.com

Law enforcement officials here expressed a kind of bleak gratitude on Wednesday that a masked 22-year-old gunman armed with a semiautomatic rifle and extra magazines of ammunition did not kill or wound more people in an attack at a suburban mall filled with holiday shoppers on Tuesday afternoon.

  Okay, lots more information in this post, about the kid who did the shooting, but this paragraph really summed it up.    There was a lot of exposition, and now I know (because the NYTimes tells me so) that he stole the gun from a friend, and with loaded magazines, and no apparent history of mental illness, friends, former girlfriend, family, etc, all stating that he was really a nice guy...

  You know, the official, we don't understand what happened reasons.

  Okay, no one saw it coming....   But you can't really prevent it then can you?  

  I mean, your simply hanging out in the mall and this happens, it's like we are all just waiting to be victims in this life sometimes isn't it?


  End of story right?

  I mean, the police reports, the media reports, that's all of it...   And of course, everyone moved onto a (admittedly) larger tragedy...

  But the guy randomly kills two people, then kills himself...    He had multiple 30 round magazines for an AR, so we are talking hundreds of rounds here...

  Yeah, I'll be the first to admit that people who do this are not sane, and I really shouldn't be surprised that there is no sane explanation to his actions, but I did find this blurp on the MSN website as a side to the (Wrap up?) coverage.
   It was dealing more with the "gun control debates" that have followed the shootings.
Nick Meli, who had a concealed weapon, thought about shooting Oregon mall killer

As gun control debates rage after the Newtown tragedy, new details about last week’s Oregon mall shooting are heating up the argument. It turns out the murderer was not the only one with a gun. Shopper Nick Meli was legally armed, and, while the killer’s rifle jammed, had the maniac in his sights. He did NOT pull the trigger, however, for fear of injuring a bystander behind the shooter. The killer then retreated and took his own life. So what does this prove? Did a concealed carrier end the rampage? Or show the limits of armed civilians fearful of injuring one another in emergencies? 

Stop...

  Go back and read it again.

     Never mind, because I tracked down the origin from the story, the only local coverage that included this little tidbit.
Clackamas man, armed, confronts mall shooter | kgw.com Portland

PORTLAND -- Nick Meli is emotionally drained.  The 22-year-old was at Clackamas Town Center with a friend and her baby when a masked man opened fire.
"I heard three shots and turned and looked at Casey and said, 'are you serious?,'" he said.
The friend and baby hit the floor.  Meli, who has a concealed carry permit, positioned himself behind a pillar.
"He was working on his rifle," said Meli.  "He kept pulling the charging handle and hitting the side."
The break in gunfire allowed Meli to pull out his own gun, but he never took his eyes off the shooter.
"As I was going down to pull, I saw someone in the back of the Charlotte move, and I knew if I fired and missed, I could hit them," he said.
Meli took cover inside a nearby store.  He never pulled the trigger.  He stands by that decision.
"I'm not beating myself up cause I didn't shoot him," said Meli.  "I know after he saw me, I think the last shot he fired was the one he used on himself."
The gunman was dead, but not before taking two innocent lives with him and taking the innocence of everyone else.
"I don't ever want to see anyone that way ever," said Meli.  "It just bothers me."

Okay...

  Decide for yourself if this guy was instrumental in stopping a killing spree or simply a witness to the events.   As I've said, you can't put reason into an insane mind, so we'll never know...


  But this post is about the media coverage primarily, and I'm curious why this was so under reported.

  Just, think about it...

  In the weeks and months to come, the "gun control" debate will get highly politicized (maintaining that no actual facts will be discussed) and any national "talk" on these matters will primarily be thinly disguised attempts at further removing any civil liberties that this country has left.

  From the TSA, to Drunk Driving checkpoints, each little liberty we give up; Protesting the wars?  First your unamerican, then your a dissident, then your aiding the enemy (What the fuck, so I guess the first amendment only counts if your agreeing with what your told huh?).
  What about sobriety checkpoints and random TSA sexual assaults?
  Well, that whole unreasonable searching is okay, if we can prevent one person from driving drunk.   After all, that's what the government is for, protecting us from ourselves, right?
  A sobriety checkpoint?   Really, Psshftt, hell, most folks don't even remember what the Fourth Amendment was, so just harass the hell out of them until they comply with MA AUTHORITA!

  And what the hell is wrong with getting rid of the second amendment, it's only around so that people can shoot bunnies with AK-47s after all, right?

  Next time you hear the debates, listen for things like sporting uses, and collectors, and any number of other uses combined with "Our Children" and statistics that are best dubious
Statistics are a way of quantifying something that should not be.

  After all, Statistically deciding the number of homosexuals that might live in an area, or how prone an african american may be to end up in jail are nothing more than shallow ways of trying to enforce either a biased opinion or influence your own opinion.

  Why do we have these rights, ALL OF THEM...   Why are they being debated for their constitutionality when it's pretty clear from the wording of the constitution that they are not granted or made more or less legal by any government at all...

  They are inherent.

   The second amendment you can debate to the heavens fall, but it's there, and it's a moot point...

  Why?   So that you can defend yourself against crazy insane batshit people if you have to...
  But even that isn't what it seems to be intended to have been included for...

  The more I think about it, read federalist papers, and study history... I think the second amendment was included as the back bone to their other freedoms,   The highest of course is the first amendment, but without the second, you can and will be silenced at the whim of a ruling party...

  Our rights are violated every day in a thousand small paper cuts to our individual liberty...

  (Yeah, I kinda like that line...   And no, it's mine, you can't have it.   Edit; Okay, it's not that great, so use it if you wanna.)


  But I'm off on a tangent (naturally) so let's get back to the media and what they hath wroth.


  They are calling this a reason for more restrictions on rights...
  Connecticut has the 4th most restrictive gun laws in the country, and your required to get a purchase permit, a carry permit (both open and concealed), A partial assault weapons ban, plus registration on pre ban weapons, a state database of registry for all sales, public AND private sales, which have to be registered, and of course you cant be guilty of any of the following;

• Criminal possession of a narcotic substance; 
• Criminally negligent homicide;
• Assault in the third degree;
• Reckless endangerment in the first degree;
• Unlawful restraint in the second degree;
• Riot in the first degree;
• Stalking in the second degree;
• Has not been convicted as a delinquent for the commission of a serious juvenile offense;
• Has not been discharged from custody within the preceding twenty years after having been found not guilty of a crime by reason of mental disease or defect;
• Is not subject to a restraining or protective order issued by a court in a case involving the use, attempted use or threatened use of physical force against another person;
• Is not subject to a firearms seizure order issued for posing a risk of personal injury to self or others after a hearing; or
• Is not prohibited from possessing a firearm for having been adjudicated as a mentally incompetent under federal law.

  So...

  Connecticut is practically the poster child for gun safety and has far greater restrictions than those states in the south where your supposedly given a gun, Hell, In Texas your required to own a gun to claim residency there...(Okay, maybe that last line was bullshit, but it wouldn't be hard to believe, would it?)

   So, how much of your liberty do you want to give up to be safe...   

   

  Post a facebook post and say the wrong thing and you can be imprisoned, after all, the first amendment must have some limitations, right?

  Want a gun because your afraid you might be a victim of a violent crime?   Nah, we are gonna make it too expensive or too many hoops to jump thru, you know... to make you safer.   And if someone does break into your home or mug you in the streets, just give the cops a call... they'll come along to take any information.. well, if your still alive.

  Don't like having your junk groped by the TSA?   Too bad...   

  It's for your own safety...

  Hell, They can't prevent crime in fucking PRISON, so how the hell can they prevent it anywhere else?

  They can't...  All they can do is clean up afterwards...

  But occasionally a bystander can make a difference, the examples are out there, and not just limited to the Oregon Mall shooting, but occur every day.

  But you'll have to search if you wanna find em...

  They don't get reported for some reason...

  You can decide why for yourself....

  So what can we do?  Us, not our loving parental/nanny elected hand wringing figureheads. but the every day person, how do we prevent this?

  Fact;

  The laws able to prevent this don't exist in any place but a police state.

  And even that is suspect...

  The shooter in connecticut shot his mother FOUR TIMES IN THE HEAD, then took her guns and went to the school, it's still not clear, nor will it probably ever be, what his motivation was.

  

  You can't prevent crazy...   In many ways, I think the more we try and prevent it, the more we cause it.

  Everything from simple ignorance, to not understanding the warning signs (face it most folks are so self centered in life, they can't get their faces out of their I phones long enough to avoid walking into traffic some times.  People text each other because they are too fucking lazy to walk into the next room in their home,)

  What causes this?

  Human nature?

  Tell you what, you want to prevent this, want to prevent another tragedy that may happen in the future, then log off the computer, close the laptop, put the fucking smart phone in your pocket, then walk into the next room, and give your significant other, your family, your parents, or your children, your sibling, a huge hug and tell them that you love them.

  When's the last time you did that?

  Take the phone back out of your pocket but this time use it (Yes!  I know!   You can do this, they have the ability!) and DIAL A LOVED ONE'S PHONE NUMBER...   actually use your voice, do not text, do not IM/PM, or any of that other shit...  TALK to them, if you can't physically be there, and simply tell them that you were thinking of them and ask if they are okay.

  TELL them that you love them, and hope their doing okay.

  If someone would have taken a moment to stop and talk to any of these shooters years ago, or even every now an again, and let them know that they mattered, that they were loved....

  Who knows....

  I know It might be just my liberal hippiness bleeding out (Yeah, I swing both ways... POLITICALLY, you fucking pervert, argh, always the perv, you are...)   But don't be such a stoic "they should know how I feel" idiot.

  WORDS MATTER...

  So, since you didn't listen to me before, close the fucking page, log off, or simply back away, close the laptop, Ipad, notebook, smartphone, and do what I told you.

  Maybe one of you will prevent a person from going down that dark path and while you may never know it, you may actually make a difference in a life...

  And if you don't do it... 

  Well, I hope you end up trapped in an elevator for a couple of hours with someone suffering from irritable bowel syndrome who just ate a spicy burrito and washed it down with buttermilk.

  And if your still here, and it's you that needs to hear that voice, 

  I hope you get a phone call, I honestly do...

        before it's too late.

  SeerSavant...

  

  A wasted vote...

 Okay, so the 2012 election has come and gone, and once again, we were faced with the ultimate choice of....

      This idiot....
  What has he done for us... Lets see, he's a democrat, and we all know that democrats stand for civil liberties, equality and big government....
  Well, after the NDAA, I guess the civil liberties part is something that is more lip service than actual practice...  Equality... well I guess you could say that eventually we will all end up equally unemployed.
  Which leaves... big government...  A new war heating up, our troops pulled out of Iraq, yeah, um wait... why are they headed to Afghanistan?, but that's ending next year... and then i guess they'll be headed to Libya or Iran....
  And of course OBAMACARE....   Thanks for spreading coverage to everyone equally, but spending as little as possible, so that everyone gets equally shitty health coverage...

  But there was an alternative, right?
    We also had this idiot,...

   All right, an alternative!
  I mean this guy wouldn't take on something so huge and inefficient as a government run health care... wait, I forgot, Obamacare was based on his state level template...  hmmm.
  But he's a republican, so that means small government, fiscally conservative leading...   And yet, the debates seemed (as usual) to consist of the two of them trying to promise to outspend each other on medicare, the military, cough, buying our votes, cough cough...
 
  But I have to make a choice, right?
  I have to choose between the two...
  Right?

  Okay, let's dispense with the bullshit and simply face the facts...   There isn't very much difference between the two parties, or their two "leaders" anymore, republicans and democrats have become more alike than different for the last few decades to the point where I really can't tell the difference.
  Fiscal conservatives, spending like it's going out of style,
  Civil liberties, tossed to one side or the other in the name of national security.
 
  So how do they differ?   Abortion?   Gay Marriage?  Taxes?

  I don't see the first two as having any place in public debate, unless you finally admit to the Government having control over your body and your behavior, and yet, it's a main sticking point.
 
  The third?
  Do we tax the wealthy and depress job growth,  or do we give corporate welfare a free reign?(remember, when it's folks who can't find a job, it's either a voting blocks right, or it's a shameful blight on our society.    Yet bailing out private multibillion dollar screw ups is somehow less shameful?  Forget demonizing a single mom on welfare, howzabout the white collar million dollar tax brackets who get bonuses for a job that the government had to bail out of bankruptcy...)

  But the devils in the details, and they are so politicized that it's hard to really know which version of the lie to swallow.

  And yes, I know, cutting spending more than we make would be fiscally responsible,  or not increasing spending each year, cutting back by half of that increase and claiming it's a cut, or any of the other bullshit tricks to make it seem like they are doing anything but spending our money like a college kid with his first credit card.

  But lets ignore the obvious problems with both candidates, and follow up with the usual voting criteria.

  Which one is gonna screw up the least?


  Yep, once again, we have to choose between the lesser of evils...

  But, what other choice do I have...
  Not voting?
 
  At this point in the election cycle, you will hear about third party candidates...    Yeah, but they never get elected.
  Well, of course not, dummy, because nobody votes for them.

  This is the point I normally flip a coin and go, yep, that one...   Which is a manner of selection that is only partially more enjoyable than enduring a 30 minute, clamp my cramped body over a toilet, oh dear GOD why the hell did I buy Taco Bell again??? interlude of chemical warfare with anyone who might drift in the direct vicinity of the bathroom.
  Or is it Biological warfare?

  Who cares.

  Anyway, third party votes are a wasted vote...  

  But on a lark, lets just see what this doomed campaign is saying.

  You can hunt the major media outlets, and with good search skills, you'll be deluged with one or two very short articles about how this or that third party cannot possibly get elected.

  But wait....   This is the internet....    And it's not just for porn anymore (at least not until the swelling goes down), you can actually look up relevant material!

  Isn't technology amazing?


  So I find this guy.

  Um... okay, who the hell is Gary Johnson?
  Two term Governor, okay, veto record, okay, libertarian....

  Oh man, I simply cannot vote for those assholes that always used to camp out at the entrance to the DMV when i was a kid and bitch and moan and tell me the sky is falling because of new world order fiat economy...
  It's bad enough I have to wait for half the month for DMV to take notice.    I purposely shut my brain off in my preparation for visiting here, why the hell should I turn it on for the political equivalent of a free E-Meter reading from the local cult of Scientology every time I wanna go shopping...

  But I do my thing, I browse a little, looking at youtube links, bunches of ads (isn't it ironic that you have to wait five seconds to skip a Obamney add so that you can watch a Johnson Ad on youtube?) and debating on simply searching for a Gif collection video or the lastest Epic Rap battle of History, when you recognize the screen capture of one of the libertarian labeled video and there, I SHIT YOU NOT, is Penn...  You know, Penn and Teller?
  Wait?   Is he on a news show?

  Okay, I welcome my new crack addiction, libertarian guests on everything from CNN to FOX to online interview web channels, to clips from all manner of media.

  The weird part is, a libertarian is not a libertarian, unless he's... well, you have Anarcho Captialists, Classic Liberalism,  Civil Libertarians, Fiscal, Geo, and even Neolibertarianism, and the list goes on...

  Okay, this got too complicated.   Found a cliff notes version and read up on the main versions...

  Much in the way that the "christian" label encompasses everything from Mormon to Baptist to Roman Catholic, all of which differ in many ways, but fall under the same banner, it seems that Libertarians also seem to encompass a wild and varied variety of fruits nuts and vegetables....
  But which one am I?

  Okay, so as far as I can gather, If I'm in a bad mood, Anarcho Capitalist tends to float my boat, but for the most part, I fall under the heading of Classic Liberalism...   Sort of...

  Okay, so the various labels really mean nothing, except as a sort of self identifying, err, label.

  Who the hell is this Johnson guy, I mean, I know who Ron Paul is, hell, I was praying that his grass roots efforts would force a brokered convention and put many of the issues he brings up to the table...

  Yeah...    When the "anointed" candidate can pick and choose who gets to vote in the convention, it's pretty much a hearty "fuck you" to almost half of the republican base, so I guess it's no wonder why so many of the die hard republicans either voted for third party, wrote in Ron Paul, or simply abstained from voting the presidential ticket...
  Congratulations Romney, the nomination was so important that you couldn't hear another viewpoint from Ron Paul supporters that you managed to alienate enough of your OWN BASE to ensure that you would loose the election....

  There should be some kind of political Darwin award to give you....


  Ahem,

  So I start watching the videos of Johnson speaking at colleges, answering questions and dressing, well, jeans, a casual jacket, and a black tee shirt with a peace symbol on the chest...
  Yeah...  It's either obvious, or the guy really sees that as his public image...

  But hell, if I vote for a guy like that, and yes, I found myself agreeing on damn near everything he stumped, Legalized Weed/cutting the war on drugs, ending the wars overseas and bringing our troops home instead of simply shuffling them to another war zone, taking gay marriage, abortion, and all the other issues that rightfully belong with a person and their loved ones or doctor and NOT in the public forum of political debate.
  For example, if Marriage is a constitutionally protected form, than why the hell shouldn't gay or lesbian couples have the same protected rights as everyone, well, they should.
  Why is the government in the process of dictating what is a very personal and often very traumatic choice between a woman and her doctor.
  What business is it of government to make these kinds of choices...

  Well, he said it isn't...

  And I yelled at my computer,  "Fucking A, none of their damned business."

  Which brought a nervous barking attack from my suddenly awakened dog who gave me a stern look and left the room.

  But not before she farted, and I had to walk away for a half hour...

  But I'm tangenting....


  I'm not sure about the Fair Tax idea, it sounds good, but there is a lot of things that I'd have to research to make up my mind, but even so...

  I saw a REAL alternative to Romney and Obama...

  If only he could get elected.

  After all, if the CNN, FOX, MSNBC, and major network anchors all say that a third party cannot win, then why bother...

  Why waste my vote?

  Cute, Gary...   But I don't disagree, I just wonder if it matters to where our country is going?

  Then I began thinking, you know...    I've voted for the lesser of evils, or I've voted against candidates for so long, I don't recall every voting for a candidate.

  Is Gary Johnson perfect, nah.   Read his Reddit AMAs, he's not perfect, but who could be.

  Is he honest?

  I think he might be.    And I'm a guy who sees a politician and immediately things.... whore...

  After all, isn't politics considered the second oldest profession, because it bears such a striking resemblance to the first?


  So, this past week, I wasted my vote.   I threw my vote away,  I voted for someone who could never get elected...

  And yet, I don't feel like that at all.    I feel suprisingly happy about voting for Johnson and Judge Gray.

  Because, in the end, instead of trying to think of how my vote would affect the political landscape, or how it would have a real world effect, for the first time in several decades, I voted for who I thought I could believe in.

  Before I voted, I explained my choice to the wife, (who normally votes republican) and she immediately breathed a sigh of relief and went on a long, and colorful language inflected tirade on how much she dislike Romney, how he was about as much a conservative as my left testicle (I couldn't say what she said, it was much worse), and that after letting her read up a bit on Johnson, she decided to vote for him instead.
  Then a few other members of my family, not all, but a few, who were going to vote either against Romney or against Obama.

  Instead, they voted for Gary Johnson...

  And we all didn't feel that frustrating edge afterwards, that tinge of heavy sadness of being forced to choose between two candidates who were easier to tell apart by their physical appearance than by the content of their campaigns...

  We voted our conscience.

  So, thanks, Gary Johnson, and please, run again in 2016, and thanks also to Ron Paul, for forcing us to pay attention to what is happening to our country and our political system.  

 
  And to all those who voted for the lesser of evils, or voted against a candidate, yeah, mebbe I wasted my vote.   But for the first time in nearly my whole adult life, I'm proud of the fact I voted.

  Because I voted my conscience.

  Seer....

 
 

Mental Masturbation

  We've all done it, and I don't mean what your probably thinking...

  What I mean is the inevitable what if's that plague our conscious mind when we hear of really bad things;
  What would I do if a tsunami hit, what would I do if the electricity stop, what would I do if I happened to come across a zombie?

  Now we all do this, but there are the extremes to either degree, those who blindly ignore even the possibility of anything bad ever happening to them, to those who take it to the far end of the spectrum.

  Most of us are in the middle some where...

  Yes, I'd like to think that I'm getting more and more prepared for the zombie apocalypse, but I have the whole idea of zombies firmly tongue in cheek, as (like many others) consider the idea of a zombie apocalypse  as a metaphor for all the things that could possibly go wrong.
  Some folks call themselves preppers, some survivalists, some are preparing for the zombie apocalypse.

  In essence all are preparing for the economic collapse of our society, as it seems more and more a logical conclusion to the economic shenanigans that have gripped our world.
  A zombie apocalypse of our own making, if you will.
  Others see a solar storm on the horizon, huge bursts of solar radiation, destroying electrical grids with impunity, cars, telephones, gps.  
  All gone in a flash, to hazard a pun.

  But the mindset is more than that, it's about preparing for personal tragedy, about the loss of job and having a store of several months of food so that you don't starve while finding another job.
  Building bunkers in the back yard, but not so much for the fallout from a Fukashima or Chernobyl type event, but more likely for a tornado.
  Back up generators, in case of a terrorist EMP attack, or when the ice storm kills the power for several days.

  There are many degrees of things to prepare for, from the personal tragedy of job loss, or being attacked by a mugger, to the community wide disasters such as a tornado or hurricane, to something like an economic collapse that affects nations, such as the fate that has descended on Greece and her neighbors as well.

  I like the idea of preparing for a zombie apocalypse, why?   It's fun.
  In my youth, it was world war 3, then the whole Y2K nonsense, and this year we have the whole Mayan/Polar shift/planetary alignment/Solar Storm/Economic collapse of western civilization...
  Everyone you look to sees gloom and doom, feels a sense of oncoming dread, and no small amount of being caught up in the tin foil hattery that is so prevalent in today's internet and media.

  But prepping doesn't need to be a soul draining/staving off the end/bad times are a comming, daily watch for the end of the world as we know it.

  Zombies are a metaphor for any and all disasters, from the various warnings about pandemics, to the ease at which a terrorist could launch a missile from a shipping container over our heads and plunge the continent into the dark ages.

  In other words, if you could survive a zombie apocalypse, you could survive anything.

  And it suddenly becomes fun.

  After all, the movies, the constant joking about what you would do, and to return to the title of the post, the constant "mental masturbation" that you can delve into.

  What if zombies invaded our town, how would you react?

  It's not nonsense either, how would you eat, is there enough water, are you protected, if you have to bug out is your vehicle capable of skirting around broken down cars?
  Do you have enough bullets?

  Much of it you could apply to a great many other disasters...

  And honestly, unlike the single minded question/preps of shows like Doomsday Preppers, why not prepare for everything.

  But best of all, you can couch it all in a fantastic scenario.
  So your prepping, your saving, your learning CPR and storing food, and it's somehow fun.

  It's hard to explain.


  Again,
  Back to the Mental Masturbation...

  Sometimes, something happens that borders far too close, and then we see an odd thing happen.
  In Miami a few days ago a man walked naked onto a bridge and attacked a homeless man.
  For 18 minutes he attacked, beat and ate nearly 80 percent of the man's face.

  He ate his face off.

  The officer arrived after several phone calls and approached, he saw what was happening drew his sidearm and shouted at the attacker to stop, eventually shooting him.
  According to news reports, the man turned to face him, growled, then continued to eat his victims face.
  A half a dozen rounds later the man lay dead beside his victim.

  You can imagine the reactions once the story began to get reported.

  Zombie?

  The reactions were shock, horror, and in a very weird way, excitement.

  After all, most have the mental reaction to zombies, garnered from countless movies, myths, and What If's played thru the mind over the years.
  Of the reactions I have seen I have seen three distinct types, with the lines blurred depending on reaction to topics posted on messageboards and forums, discussions around the workplace, and friends who talk about the lastest news.
  From cocaine psychosis to "bad LSD" to haitian voodoo curses, the news is flooded with reports that are mostly conjecture and 'best guesses'.
  On the internet it's even more varied, from drug abuse to government conspiracies.

  Reaction one is the initial and the most common, I think.
  Shock.
  Why is the prevailing question, and endless discussions that can become quite educational on the resultant behavior of drug abuse to the status of mental health issues.
  Reaction two is typical of the anonymity of the internet.
  Humor.
  Although to be honest, sometimes it's easier to laugh at something than to deal with it outright.
 Call it gallows humor at the best, callous disregard for tragedy at worst, and it's really hard to judge based on words on a page.   Sarcasm, anger, humor, all can be misinterpreted, but laughing at something is not always mocking it.
  The third reaction is the one that tends to raise an eyebrow.
   The almost "need" for this to be the beginning of something apocalyptic.
  In this case I see the constant explanations that would tie one tragic event into a larger conspiracy, sometimes even in the face of simpler and more obvious conclusions.

  While no sane person would want to see anything even approaching a zombie apocalypse, there seems to be a need for justification in preparations.

  We look for the truth, and try to understand tragedy, we laugh, because sometimes it the only way to cope with such horrors, and in extreme cases, we want the disaster we prepared for to hurry up and happen.

  That last part is very complex, but also easy to understand.

  Sometimes reality is worse than the stylized zombie apocalypse that we've all watched, laughed at, and fantasized about 'what we would do" in.

  Maybe when faced with the horrors that seemingly normal people are capable of we'd rather see something else at work, be it supernatural, as a zombie virus, or simply to say that drugs are responsible.

  It's easier to put the blame on anything besides the idea that people can be that vicious to each other.

  I dunno... 
  In every disaster that's ever befallen humanity, it's always been outshadowed by man's inhumanity to his fellow man.

  What that means is that no matter the cause of any disaster, it is the potential for otherwise normal people to become savages that you worry about.

  I write my posts without any real planning, so in this case, I have no pithy ending, no witty retort to what I've written, just an open ending frustration with what people are capable of with so little prodding.

  What's the old saying, people are only three missed meals from anarchy?

  If it's really that easy for people to descend into madness...


      hell, i'd rather have zombies...