And there it was. The central point linking the two. For, to an average lesbian, men don’t exist in a sexual sense. And while there may actually be “man hating lesbians” out there who hate men for the myriad of things that men have done to them and other women throughout history the actual stereotypical “man hating lesbian” doesn’t really exist.

Lesbian and atheists do something far worse than actively hate those who have arrayed themselves (whether biologically or philosophically) on the other side of the fence from them. They ignore them, or ignore their beliefs (which amounts to the same thing). Apropos of the quote by I. Shah: “Man: Kick him – he’ll forgive you. Flatter him – he may or may not see through you. But ignore him and he’ll hate you forever.”

I’ve often marveled at the volume and venom of the religious fundamentalist…but now I understand more about where their great hatred comes from, it comes from being ignored. No, they themselves are not ignored, it’s impossible to do so with all their hopping up and down and foaming at the mouth behavior. But their beliefs are. Not even the majority of mainstream religions people take the beliefs of the fundamentalists seriously and that’s GOTTA hurt, deep down inside.

(Footnote: Heaven and hell can’t exist for a number of reasons, the first is thermodynamic – they imply states of permanent stasis and that’s impossible – the entropy of a macroscopic system never decreases [it always increases] – the universe is a closed system. Sooner or later, the lights will go out in heaven. The second reason is philosophic; whether considering the alleged eternal pleasure of heaven or the alleged eternal pain of hell you’re forced to consider time and perspective. No matter how pleasurable a thing is, over time, it becomes boring and non-pleasurable. The thrill wears off as it were, the blush is off the rose, etc. The same holds true for pain – no matter how painful a thing is, over time, it becomes boring and non-painful. Maintaining an eternal state of either would either result in them becoming boring [so no longer a carrot or a stick respectively] or in the subject experiencing either to loose their self awareness -i.e. going mad [so, again, no longer a carrot and no longer a stick].

Like the protagonist in the movie Brazil – they stop torturing him when he loses his mind because more torture would be meaningless – he’s “gone” – the same holds true on the opposite extreme of endless pleasure, you’d have to stop being pleasured because, at some point, you’d be “gone”.)

I was floored when I read this excerpt from an article on the Guardian website:

“I am convinced,” Obama said, “that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the epicenter of the violent extremism practiced by al-Qaida. It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak. This is no idle danger; no hypothetical threat.”

Sorry Mr. President – you’re sadly mistaken. The “epicenter” from which said violent extremism springs isn’t central Asia – it’s Saudi Arabia. For that is the country that the vast majority of the 9/11 terrorists came from, that is the home of not only their religion (Islam) but also of the homicidal sect of it which they practice (Wahhabism). It’s Saudi Arabia that represses the rights of women (they can’t drive a car legally there, let alone vote). It’s Saudi Arabia that funneled Billions of dollars to the Taliban in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. It’s Saudi Arabia, and specifically the family of Saud itself which frantically exports religious extremism abroad in order to avoid those particular chickens coming home to roost.

Not that Pakistan itself is free from blame. It was far far easier to fob off education to Saudi funded schools in it’s remoter provinces than it was for the state to provide a reasonable (and preferably secular) education. It was safe when the fanatics of their own making targeted Hindu’s and Buddhists in Kashmir or India proper – but now, it’s their turn and they are rightfully scared. Like Dr. Frankenstein they have to contend with a monster of their own making (or colluded in making). Something which will possibly cost them more lives, more treasure and quite possibly – control of their own country and it’s nuclear arsenal.

And does anyone seriously think that a collection of people who think that atmospheric condensation is a myth (for the Koran says Allah makes the rain fall, therefore science is lying about how it happens) will hesitate for a millisecond to kill millions of non-believers? It was a fairly rational collection of American politicians during World War 2 who choose to drop the bomb on Japan…what happens when religious loonies who love to blow THEMSELVES up get a hold of one? Bye-Bye New Delhi, Bye-Bye Mumbai, Bye-Bye Tel Aviv, Bye-Bye New York? Washington D.C.? L.A.? (capitals of India, Bollywood culture, Israel, U.S. finance, the United States and American popular culture respectively). All classified as sources of “evil” by people who kill the victims of rape for disgracing their families by being forced to have sex against their will. Cities defined as “evil” by men who deny girls the right to even go to school. Men who consider music and dancing, theatre and the arts, hell – even ancient archeological remains are considered evil by these lunatics!

Do some research Mr. President, our “ally” Saudi Arabia is our own worst enemy. If not in the state itself then in the things that come forth from it. And that’s not just the religious extremists and the money to buy them things that go boom. That’s also the black gold flowing from it’s wells. And we, we ourselves are also to blame for our slavish devotion to cheap oil – we could have designed cities and suburbs with walk able neighborhoods, decent mass transit and thriving urban centers…but NO, the America dream became the exurban nightmare of driving 35 miles to work and 20 miles to the grocery store so you could have the illusion that you lived in a your own castle on the hill, with immigrant peasants toiling in the fields and the modern version of the Russian serf. What a joke.

So we send our troops halfway around the world to prop up a corrupt kleptocrat, to shoot at religious loonies that are funded every time we stop at the Quickymart to fill up our monstrous gas powered carriages that take us to our faux-castles in our faux-empire. Well, as the Soviets discovered and the American government will learn…Afghanistan isn’t called “the graveyard of empires” for nothing.

This is quite a surprise for never in all my life have I been made aware of a more stupendously incompetent collection of halfwits and total failures as the teachers that comprise the Milwaukee Public School system. She should be congratulated for reaching such academic heights having labored to get there under the most onerous of burdens. I’m surprised they didn’t manage to prevent her from reaching her goal. They are exceptionally good at destroying the scholastic performance of even the most intelligent and determined of students.

In my personal experience they do more to harm than good. They are failures and they are toxic to the education of ANY student of ANY race, gender, ethnicity or socioeconomic class. It wasn’t until I was pulled out of that system and placed at a private school that I encountered teachers with real ability. And even then, they weren’t all that and a biscuit but they were heads and shoulders above the miasmatic sewage overflow which stalks the classrooms of MPS in the garb of educators.

So, “BRAVA!” to you young lady – you are truly exceptional.

life is pretty fantastic right now, (the mrs. shaved her head – meow! it’s sexy…happy am i at this fact). work is slow which means that it’s relatively under control – and the rose bushes are blooming and…and…um…let’s see – ah yes. went to see the latest berserk at the alchemist theatre…hmmmm…the concept of which was the creation of a new act 5 for “King Lear”…i.e. 1-4 was synopsized and then the writers/companies/actors came up with act 5….

first – the bad: i don’t usually like productions of these sorts – the “let’s jam it all in -creation /set design / lines in 24/48/72 hours and see what happens!” / “won’t that be fun!?” – not really, what it usually is 9 times out of 10 is bad improv. actors laughing at the humor of their own warn out and exhausted selves dropping lines and stumbling through the act…oh…tee hee…how funny…tee hee…

and the first redo of act 5 was like that….the second redo was astronomically better – it was the characters’ psychoanalyzed – it was creative, funny, insightful and enjoyable to watch. there were moments where i wanted to pee myself it was that funny. the third redo was also good – a sort-of pissed-off political/poetic riff on the relevance of shakespeare then (400 years ago) and now…and it was pretty cool. the force of the acting during the third retelling was outstanding.

but yeah, i’m starting to see the words which indicate that it was all rushed and thrown together as a big warning sign that i should seek entertainment elsewhere. i’m just saying.

hifi still has great coffee and the alchemist theatre still rocks the casba.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/03/24/escaped.convicts/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

So these three brothers…whom I presume from their geographic locale and gun ownership are all card carrying NRA types…got held hostage, tied up and robbed…a robbery that included the theft OF THEIR GUNS…I’ll say that again – “THEIR GUNS WERE STOLEN” – so, tell me again – we’re all supposed to have guns to protect ourselves? Really? Bang up job that time I see. Real safe and secure. Protected all right – protected right into the hands of three hard core criminals – bravo!

And they live in a state where conceal-carry is legal – no help there either. Guess if three guys jump you your gun is about as useful as a freaking pop tart. Keep in mind, the perps had NO guns before robbing NRA Larry, Moe and Curly….now, they do.

Tell me again…guns protect my home how?

and we’ve hit the first wall made from the bricks of reality. which is – maximum extraction has been reached by the oil producing nations – demand can now only go up so far before prices shoot through the roof as supply can’t match it anymore…so, prices spiral up – followed by economic collapse, prices spiral down due to demand destruction – systems ramp up again, rinse and repeat.

obviously there are rays of sunshine from the alt.energy folks but really, right now, there’s nothing that’s going to replace the festival of oil consumption we’ve enjoyed up until now.

not that the oil companies aren’t going to squeeze every last drop of the black gold from shale, sand and whatever other tar-ooze they find first before they focus on trying to figure out what to do afterwards…which right now pretty much amounts to a massive internal dislocation of people and resources.

california and the desert south west will be (and are) our cannery in the coal mine. too many people live there – too many for the land around it to support. but, naturally, up to now that’s not a problem because we can fly, ship, truck or train in enough water/food for them…but that won’t be the case for much longer.

which will result in the same thing that happened to native american populations there (and points south) that built beyond nature’s carrying capacity…it wasn’t pretty then and i don’t think it will be pretty now soon either.

and the point is – if something looks too good to be true it probably is or, put another way – did all those folks think that paradise didn’t have a price tag?

here endeth the lesson.

their central valley will become the new dustbowl and their farmers will be out of business…all that’s left for them to do is slaughter their cattle, cut down their orchards for firewood and call it a day.

frankly, i have little sympathy – california is a pipe dream and a distorted magnification of the american dream to ludicrous and unsustainable proportions – a fantasy land built on a ponzie scheme of credit and selling your house to the next group of suckers that move into your neighborhood. california has grown beyond it’s carrying capacity and it has, subsequently, broken it’s ability to feed itself and export food to others. tough luck.

it’s always been billed as paradise and guess what: to a fly – so is a pitcher plant. but in this case the pitcher plant lured in an enormous amount of flies before it snapped shut. if a little cold weather is the only price i have to pay for knowing that the food on my table can be made 2 miles from my backdoor – i’ll take it. california might be finding out how expensive food is when it has to be trucked in from 100′s or 1000′s of miles away…think alaska and a dozen eggs at 10 bucks a throw and you get the idea.

polyamory can be such a drag at times.

anyway…work has calmed down for the moment…my vm datacenter is doing something weird with the occasional virtual server saying it’s offline via ipcheck but it’s not (i can even ping it and junk)….so that’s weird…may be a nic or cable problem with the fiber considering how badly the fiber was run.

violin is still progressing slowly…coming along…not playing any tunes yet…and that’s it…for now :^)

the factors that make up a network or server deployment disaster are as follows: piss poor planning – no project plan, little or no documentation to follow, no fallback or rollback option; multiple interdependant systems run by (or sometimes NOT run by) different business units or companies or departments or whatever – all of whom will play the “not my baby” game when things go wrong; tie that to a lack of support for systems, my favorite being a system/application that HAD support, but that support lapsed and now all the parties involved with that system/application blame each other for not renewing support; the gung-ho overpaid contractor…he (or she) flies out, changes their system, changes your systems and then – working or not – flies out again. (in the defence of the contractor on this pooch-screwing exercise she went above and beyond to help but still ran out of dodge while the chips were still falling); coworkers who may benefit if you fail – backstabbing, sabotaging, or just plain passive-agressive not-helpful…gotta say there was little of that, most of my coworkers pitched in – but some seemed to wait until the whiff of blame began to waft in their direction before they volunteered to pitch in; complete the picture with outdated database software with no onsite dba to support it – and finally no trainwreck would be complete without a nagging adminstrator at another site wondering when HIS stuff is going to be taken care of…stuff that a) isn’t broken and b) is all set to go the minute the disaster is rectified.

add to that a frazzled network administrator on no sleep and puking due to stress and you have all the components for grade-a clusterfuck.

thankfully there was a patient customer, peers that bent over backwards to help, an offsite support dood who knew he was in over his head too but who gave whatever assistance he could and a contractor who did far more than she had to…all of which, along with clever little-old me, worked together to pull things out in the end.

but part of me will never forget the roaring silence from some quarters…specifically those who must have had documentation and/or known some of the missing configuration information that was only teased out through insane digging and some serious research on the part of myself and my team…grrrr…welcome to politics in a large company. the worm will turn and i’ll get my own back.

having to forgo all sunday plans…shit…wow…still aware and functional…just don’t ask me to translate a physics paper from german to english or direct a light opera…man…up to four more hours to go…and that’s the BEST case scenario….then i’m back in at 6:00 AM to turn the soap server back on this coming monday – then i’m off the rest of the day with just the dentist and violin to look forward to.