Immolation Station IV

Last night was the 4th and so we took the small-fry to a friend’s home where they apparently have a huge bird problem. When know this from the wide array of “bird scaring devices” that were being set off all over the place. The boys had a blast!

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Updates – Strange Days.

I’ve been mulling over even mentioning this, however someone reminded me that I sort of asked for this junk to happen by getting involved. The problem with me is, If I see someone in trouble, if I see a crime being committed or somebody doing stuff they simply should not be. I have a tenancy of getting involved. There are people out there who don’t want me involved, they don’t want you involved.  So they attack people like me to frighten and drive away. I’ve seen some evidence of this happening, especially lately.

I cannot keep quiet about this stuff, because if you keep quiet, it gets worse, if you keep quiet, they win. The people who are doing this are bullies and if you allow bullies to win even a little bit they become bigger bullies. We all lose when that happens. You – me  - everybody.

Last week I went to the regular Scientology protest in Downtown Clearwater. Clearwater is a special place to Scientology, it’s a place they make a majority of their income and even in these tough economic times (I believe) they are making a profit in Clearwater. Things to remember about Scientology, it’s not about religion or freedom to them, it’s all about the money.

Protests in Clearwater are boring for the most part. We don’t have people running out and randomly assaulting protesters like in other places. We don’t seem to have the viscously rude bull baiters   (bull baiting is a Scientology skill where they make people sit around and insult each other. It’s startling when you first see it, then when you find out that they actually go to school to LEARN how to insult people it’s kind of sad.)

Last week was different. We had (what I believe) were at least four “operations” running against the protesters. I’ll describe a couple of them.  We had anomalous cars with Scientology bumper stickers slowly cruising around, there were several people walking by who stopped, pulled expensive SLR type cameras out and  made a big deal about photographing the protesters. A couple of bikini clad girls alternately rode bikes and strolled past the protest – like five times. It was all noticeable and rather unusual.

And the one which really burns me up, towards the end the protesters were camped out at Cort and Ft Harrison, this is the main drag to the beaches and there is always lots of traffic on weekends. I observed a car pull in across the street from us, a small boy of no more than nine or ten got out.  He started walking towards us, then turned around and got back into the car. He did this several times until finally “mom,” the driver of the car got out and fairly pushes the kid across the street. He came over to us and started talking about porn site he visits, all they while recording us on his cell phone.

That’s just too much! I mean, you have got to be freaking kidding me!

This could all be a coincidence. The kid, the bikini girls and the other things I didn’t mention might all be just random occurrences, but I don’t belive so. Because another thing happed much closer to home.

I had an incident from one of my co-workers. He’s a fellow we hired some years ago, a pretty smart guy to  tell the truth. A bit reckless, but he knows his stuff.

I tend to keep work separate from the protest thing (other than I’ve made my employers aware of it.) I don’t as a rule bring it up unless other people do first (which they do from time to time.)

This guy has always seemed a bit, I don’t know; odd to me. He seems to know his stuff but there are strange gaps in his knowledge. Like he seemed unaware of a lot of popular “geek” culture that several of my collages and I enjoy.

He’s also constantly trying to sell something, you can hear it the way he pitches his voice. He brags about how good at selling he is. He also regularity comes into my office to tell me about some new hacking tool or whatever. I’m polite to him, but really – I’m not into breaking into computer systems.

The other day, he walked by my office and said in a loud voice “How’s project Titstorm going?”

“Titstorm” was some thing regarding an on line. protest against  Australian Government web pages.  I’d heard about it but I was not otherwise involved. I tend to shy away from illegal activity as a rule. (Duh!)

Well I approached this gentleman and  asked “why do you think I wold have anything to do with that?”

He said, “because you run proxy servers in your office!”

“I certainty do not” I said. (which is absoulutly true.)

He said “you are blatantly lying - you always do that!”

The conversation went downhill from there. We were in front of our immediate supervisor who eventually put a stop tot he whole thing. I spoke to the supervisor about this and how upsetting that line of questioning was to me. You see, among other things I do computer security work and accusing me of such a thing is like asking a police officer how his bank holdup went last night.

Work handled the thing to my satisfaction, but I’m a bit disturbed about the larger aspects of the issue.

I don’t know if my colleague is a member of Scientology and frankly I don’t give a flaying damn. He urged us to buy products from Sunbelt Software once (a Scientology company,) but otherwise he has not attempted to bring his personal crapola to work. (until now.) The fact that he’s running scans on me is troublesome, the idea that ‘somebody’ at work has  been putting pressure on my bosses has been in the back of my mind, but I don’t like to be paranoid.

So anyway, here is how it’s going to work.  I’m not doing anything illegal. If somebody think s I am, that’s their problem – not mine. Take it to the authorities.  Stop playing little kids games.

As for Scientology.  your reputations(s) proceed you.  If you get me fired from my job, I’ll get a nice vacation where I can document and ‘publish’ the bulls&%t you people pull, not just on me, on everyone around this community since the mid 1970s. Then I’ll get a better job. You get me arrested on some bogus crap, I’ll let my record speak for me. You try to mess with my reputation? People will know what you are up to, lots of people. My reputation is for me to create, not for you idiots to mess around with. You create your own flaps.

You’d better worry about your own reputation for a change.

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Weekend

Weekends flash by these days, seems you blink and they are gone.

Did a good fighter practice on Saturday last week, a good number of people showed up and I was bruised and tired by the end of it (a good time was had by all!)

Did Mother’s day stuff Sunday, I made Deb a nice gluten enriched waffle breakfast. She gets that kind of stuff very seldom these days since I’m breakfast guy. Next we went car shopping, our ten+ year old Rav4 got rear ended a week or so ago and we had to replace it. Deb was the only person in it and thank providence that she was not badly hurt (so far as we know, she’s still sore.)

We looked at a few light trucks and vans, then settled on a white Honda Odyssey. It’s bigger, has some miles but at least it’s paid for. It’s also in very good shape. We took it home Monday. E’ is thrilled because it  has a TV, non working because of the DTV conversion, but I suspect I can tinker with it and get  some use out of it. The doors freak me out, it has two van type side doors that open automatically. I thought electric windows were a luxury!

This weekend was quiet. I did a bit of yard work, we cleaned house and I went to the Anon protest in Clearwater. I rode my bike as apposed to driving. It’s all of three and a half miles so, why not?

Nothing much was going on, the Anons were sitting around – all three of them! It’s gotten very hot around these parts and nothing much is going on in the Clearwater area. The numbers are up some months, down others.  I spent some time chatting with one of the Clearwater PD guys and we looked at a bunch of Scientology literature.

Nothing much else is going on. E’ made honer roll at school and he looks to be on track to graduate.  Operation “Burger flip” is still rolling slowly along and I need to get back onto the submission train. Mr. PH and i have another writing challenge, “A totalitarian dystopia that uses social networking tools to control population” was the theme as I recall. This dovetails  nicely into a concept I’ve been mulling over  - based on the doggerel ”they make the trains run on time.”

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Gaaa!

Deb’s been out of town for a couple of days so it’s just been E’, myself and that bunch of pets hanging around the humble hut. Mable the wonder dog managed to escape for a while and led E’ on a merry chase around the ‘hood.”

Summer is here! I just wanted to point that out! It was in the sticky – high 80s yesterday and it’s supposed to be like this for a few days.

I’m amazed at all of the gluten free stuff I’m finding now. It used to be that GF product were rare and hard to come by. Nowadays the local grocery has an entire isle of GF products. Mmmmm!

Oh and for those of you who came by via Ms  MBs Facebook page.  Be welcome!  Sit down and take a load off. I always like visitors and you would be amazed at the people who come by here!

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An aside

I need to catch up, for some strange reason I have not been too interested in posting. I’m too busy at work and it seems I’m too busy at home most of the time. Also I have a few “entities” who have chosen to follow me around. My first impulse is to ignore them, but ignoring requires that I post as normal. It’s a mistake for them to do this, someday they will realize this I think.

A bunch of stuff has happed. We lost one of the cars due to a rear-ending. It was the paid off one and we won’t get much on the settlement. Deb was driving and thank goodness she was OK. The rear-ending was someone else’s fault, but it’s still going to make our insurance go up and we have a new driver coming on line in the family in just a few years. (OMG! it was just yesterday that he was a child – now…)

Other than that, I still have project Burger Flip under way. I’ve got a couple of YouTubes to complete, I need to get more submissions into the pipeline and and Starbuck’s has some really good gluten-free cookies. As I get older it’s clear how things are going, life becomes more complex, time becomes more precious and the most precious commodity of all are the people we meet on the way and the things we experience.

In all of this, for me anyway – life is good!

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Of March and Protests.

I needed a few days to digest this.

About  two years ago I decided to start going to the local Scientology protests in Clearwater Florida. Probably the most important location in Scientology.

At the time I didn’t take them too seriously. I mean people have been protesting Scientology around Clearwater since the 1970s, this new wave would probably not accomplish much. True the current wave was (this time) world-wide in scope. Scientology it seemed finally caught the attention of a whole lot of people who (like me) thought the convoluted hodgepodge of writings fo L. Ron Hubbard were, at best silly, at worst dangerous.

So with my trusty vidieo and still camera(s) I set out to defy the “beast of Clearwater” in it’s native habitat. IN February of 2008 I talked to many of the protesters, got to know them a little (not who they are but “why” they are, I respect that they want to remain anonymous.) I filmed them and I filmed Scientology’s reaction. But mostly I stayed out of their way and kept to myself. The Anons in Clearwater are an interesting bunch. They have evolved into a small but rather passionate group which follows some interesting patterns.

But the real draw was Scientology itself. It’s a brooding presence in Clearwater. In the short term it’s the largest landowner in Downtown Clearwater and people must be in good graces with it if they intend to do business there. Not many do it seems. There are just a couple of franchises in Downtown, most businesses tend to be small mom & pop affairs owned by Scientology members and there is a dwindling number of those. The Flag Service Organisation of Scientology seems to be doing a booming busness although it’s difficult to tell and Scientology tends to mask its real number in favor of hyperbola.

Most of the protests outside of the very first few have been quite calm – almost boring affairs. The Anons would march around, chant slogans form time to time. The Scientology members would scurry away as if even hearing the protesters would corrupt them . They didn’t come out to talk with the protesters and when they encountered some of the street, they acted like no one was there. In sharp contrast were places like New York, Los Angeles and Michigan where people would, on occasion come out and tear up signs or try to “bullbait” protesters into anger. There was a single incident in Clearwater where a random individual confronted protesters, began poking them in the chest and screaming until the CWPD came by to ask him to behave.

It’s been very quiet, until this last one. I went to the protest on Saturday, March 13th. We had some people from Arther Guthry’s auteroge come by. (He was playing in a nearby venue.) Soon after about seven Scientology members showed up and began asking questions, “why are you here,? what do you have against my religion,? Did you know many members of Anonymous will be spending the rest of their lives in prison for terrorism?” and so on. I wandered away and filmed some of the protesters up on Court Street, when we got back there was another surprise.

A film crew claiming to be doing a documentary was setting up. They would not give anyone their credentials but they said they had worked on a number of “true crime” things (I forget which ones and I’m too lazy to plow through the audio.) I didn’t really buy it and I don’t think any of the others did either. I had a nice chat with Film Guy’s assistant who made some noises about wanting to more about what goes on in Clearwater. He was not very convincing, on the one hand he talked about Scientology being a local Clearwater thing, then he would comment about how many buildings they own world-wide. I didn’t try to point out the inconsistency of what he was saying. If they feel it necessary to play games like this and lie, nothing I say will help the situation.

Later the protesters and I left Downtown Clearwater and traveled to the front entrance of Ruth Eckerd Hall. We were met by several Scientology “handlers” who were more or less polite, but insistent on getting people to admit that they were members of this group Anonymous. They could not get it through their heads that Anonymous is not an organisation, people don’t join it, there is (at least from my point of view) no hierarchy and no chain of responsibility. It’s not even a noun, its a verb! I tried to explain this going so far as to ask one of them to look it up in a dictionary.

Well it was interesting to say the least. the handlers clustered around me like BTs (Body Thetans)  shooting questions and avoiding subjects. For example when they would ask why I was standing on this portion of public easement I told them there was a protest going on and I wanted to witness it. This was not sufficient and they wanted to know what the protest was all about. I would start to tell them and they would change the subject. It was all a big game I suppose.

This went on for awhile until their bossman came over. They immediate backed off while the boss (we can call him PM.) laid into me. According to PM, I was a bad person because I was here.  I was invading “his” property and insulting his religion. I was part of Anonymous and therefor responsible for whatever people did under that name.

I was very polite to him, he got more and more rude. He started creeping into my personal space and began staring dead into my eyes, which is a game I play with my children. I matched him and did not back away.

This seemed to piss him off more, here I was a wog, an SP probably and I had my Training Routines  in better than he! How embarrassing for him (especially since I’ve never done the TRs.) I introduced him to someone, “This is (PM) and he’s trying to bullbait me right now.”

Then a strange thing happened. I think he attempted to voodoo-curse me! Just as I was leaving he came up along side of me (now remember I was being icy and polite to him the entire time.) He said “you are a F@#$ing lunatic” in a very loud and forceful voice.

Now with most people I would laugh that off or shoot a cherfull FOAD ! (Freak Off And Die yah!) in their direction. I don’t remember what I said exactly, it was something like “Gee, I hope that makes you feel better!” I knew instantly what he was doing, however. He was not trying to insult me, he was trying to command me. he kept repeating this odd statement, “you are a F@#$ing lunatic.”

Scientology is like a magic religion where people believe they can change their environment by taking certain courses and thinking in specific ways. They do this thing called “postulation” which is a bit like praying, if you want something you picture it and if you are powerful enough (so they believe) it will happen. With people, this postulation is accompanied by commands. When “PM” said you are a f@#$ing lunatic he was trying to command me to to become a lunatic. In other words he wants me to become crazy, I would be less of threat to him if I were and make no mistake. PM is deathly afraid of anyone he cannot control. I’ve seen him confronting people who are no threat to him whatsoever and his body language suggests that he is scared, right down to his ill- fitting shoes. PM in my humble estimation wants me to come to harm. He was, according to his intent and belief system, communicating a threat to me.

I wonder if he understands the ramifications of that? I also wonder about a group that expounds on “sanity,”   at the same time demonstrating how little they understand about acceptable behavior . The irony of this does not escape me.

I feel sorry for them. They can’t see what is going on all around them. They only look inside and cannot see the game as it really is. They lack the insight because they have chosen to stick a bag over their heads and pretend the world is a different place than it is for most people. When I say most people I’m talking about the billions who have never heard of Scientology. Some of them are getting the message. A few (and PM is one of them I’m afraid,) can’t understand and he will either snap out of it or ride this this thing to wherever it is taking him. From my point of view it certainly not to “freedom.”

However: I’m the lunatic from his point of view.

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“I’m not going to do what you and Mom did,” he said.

We were doing homework, my son and I. A paper on inertia for his seventh grade science class. We, or I had been discussing how inertia is like an energy bank for matter. When a particle of matter was moving it stored the energy of its movement until it came into contact with another particle of matter, then the energy transferred,

“What are you not going to do? “ I asked.

“That thing you and Mom did in the pictures!” he said.

“Hu? I said,”what pictures?” (Mom and I never did anything under a camera, the whole idea grosses me out. )

He got down a fat photo album, of our wedding, then opened a page to a photo of me taking the garter from Deb. ”I’ll never do anything like that” he said.

“Sure you won’t “ said I, “I’ll remind you about this someday.”

He was thoughtful for a moment. “ I still won’t do it” he said at last.

‘When you find the right one” I said.  ”you will…”

“So what does inertia do for matter?” I asked.

“It tells matter how far to go” he said. “That’s one of the things I put in my report.”

“Really, “ I said,  “that’s right, where did you get that from?”

“From you “ he said.

“You can’t cite Dad” I said. “for some things…. “

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Why I can’t get over “The Road.”

Cormac McCarthy’s been around for a while but quite frankly, I’ve never read any of his stuff. I was aware of “All the Pretty Horses” but I never read the novel or saw the film (hey! I have a twelve-year -old in the house and that limits us to little more violent than “The Transformers.”)

I picked up a paperback copy of The Road at the grocery store. I literally read the thing in one sitting. Not because it’s short (It really is,) because it’s riveting and I don’t say that very often or lightly.

What is it about?

Ten years before the novel begins, some kind of calamity befalls the Earth. A father and son are homeless.They push their pitiful belongings in a decrepit shopping cart, heading south because they “can’t survive another winter.” The landscape is bleak and gray, ash covers everything and McCarthy reveals in stunningly tight prose that apparently there very little is left alive. The world is wrapped in a gray cold winter that has gone on for the last decade. “Cattle has become extinct” muses the unnamed father as he struggles to protect his son from a very hostile world.

There is little food. What remains is decade old canned goods, nearly depleted.  The pair trudge through cold burned-out husks of cities, long abandoned. There are people around, the most successful are groups of cannibals who  prey on the weak or the careless. They sweep scavengers off the road and force them to march from place to place, serving as mobile larders.  Others are kept precariously alive so that their limbs can be harvested. Fearing this fate, the unnamed protagonist’s wife commits suicide just before the two set out on their journey.  The father,not quite coming to grips with his grief  allows  it to transform into a dogged mission to protect his son.

The prose in the novel is terse and sometimes misspelled. The word “cant” is often used to replace the contraction “can’t.” It’s as if McCarthy is allowing us a peek at an old, moldering journal by someone who is long since dead and gone. In a world that few of his readers can really conceptualize.

This is not an end of the world novel. The world of “The Road” has already ended.  It ended  long before father and son set out to find a better place. Readers are left with the feeling that, despite all the struggle, despite the death of all but a handful of people, the end of all humanity has finally happened and each survivor has to come to grips with their own choices. Then  they must make peace with themselves before their own inevitable end. The father does this by focusing on his son, by creating a world-view that is only about his son’s survival.

This seems to be the subtext of the novel – or at least the part which resonated most strongly.   It’s a book on parenting (strangely enough), the father understanding that his existence is is only about seeing his child to safety. This task is to the exclusion of all else, even morality and ethics. The father is a good man at heart, but he becomes transformed into a ruthless – even cruel person by his task. The unnamed mother’s suicide too is transformed into a sacrifice, so that her husband would not have to protect her as well. It’ an extraordinary  tale of bravery in the face of inevitable and utter disaster. (Of course as a couple of people have pointed out that McCarthy may not have meant for Mom’s suicide to be a heroic act. I’m against suicide as a matter of principle so perhaps I’m mirroring my own feelings in this novel – as the author surely intended!)

If you read this book, do it by candlelight on a cold winters night and keep a window open. The chill you feel will not be from the cold!

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Christmas trip.

Well, I don’t know when I’m going to be able to post this. My Internet connection has been reduced to a 2.4 Mps pipe. We took ‘E and one of his cousins to the great-white north or close enough to count.  Both of them are Florida boys so seeing snow is always a treat.

First we had to fight traffic and lousy weather . We drove straight through after a long stopover at the step-mom’s family spread (this is where we picked up E’s cuz.) Then we drove and drove, it started raining by the time we reached VA and didn’t get out of it until we reached the In-law’s place. We rested up Sunday, the boys ran around in the snow for a while, most of it has melted off, but we might get a couple of inches Monday.

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Avatar – it Might not Suck!

That new Tarzan flick – what’s it called again?

Avatar – now I remember!

Firstly; I know Hollywood really can’t stand James Cameron – at least the working stiffs in Hollywood can’t stand him. “Cameron – he freaking drowns people” they say.

He brings in the bucks though – the bean- counters and the suits like him.

So he did Piranha 2 which had some cute chicks in bikinis, some pretty good cinematography (really!) It didn’t completely suck even as a grade B monster flick, or was it grade C?

He did Terminator which was an awesome low budget Science Fiction flick, Terminator Two which was a pretty good big budget action flick.  He did Aliens which was pretty cool for a grade A Monster flick, then the Abyss, Titanic and a host of others that made da bucks. If he wanted to film Jesus Christ getting whipped until we all feel sick to our stomachs, the suits would let him.

Oops! Someone else already did that (my-bad!)

OK so he wants to do an animated feature that mixes live action with CGI, but seamlessly. He wants monsters as characters but they have to be utterly inhuman and be computer animated, but based on real actors. He wants to, not only scratch design every artifact shown on the screen, he wants to design a whole new camera technology. He wants to do this in 3D, he wants to film actors and have a computer translate them into his monsters in real time. He wants to design a realistic alien biosphere – realistic aliens and all that junk.

And he want a pony!

The suits say “OK, just bring us the bucks!”

So he makes Avatar which is concocted from every Science Fiction book or movie he’s ever heard of. It’s going to be fresh and original….. Hu- what?

The movie is also the most expensive in history – and it’s a Tarzan flick!

Basic Tarzan movie is – white guy gets left with savages, they freak him out for a while, he starts grooving with them. Since he’s a white guy and we “know” he’s better than they are he ultimately out-savages the savages. This is a trope and it’s been done by everyone from ERB (Tarzan – John Carter and all those Pellucidar books.) it’s been done as a Western (Dances With Wolves.) It’s been done in several Japanese novels and   movies (Shogun and “The Bushido Blade”come to mind.)  It’;s been done in countless comic books etc. Basically it’s been done to death.

It was even done n a little movie called “My tasty Frenchman” – but the protagonist gets eaten in the end.

So let’s see if I understand this, Cameron just made a movie that’s the biggest worn out plot evah! The only one that even comes close is “boy meets girl.” And guess what sports fans! Plot for Avatar is;
White guy becomes doe-eyed ten foot tall blue monster on distant planet that humans want to rape. White guy finds that he likes being blue-furry critter, a lot! (big surprise his life sucked anyway.)  He meets naked blue furry, doe-eyed SHE monster and they do the nasty under a rainbow waterfall or something. He finds out that humans are going to strip-mine the whole place and build the biggest WalMArt ever, white guy decides blue furry monsters are people too, even if they don’t have WalMarts and big honking guns. White guy fights back for what it right and just. Only he uses bows and arrows while the humans use their big honking guns.

White guy gets his blue furry ass blown off and wakes up in his human body again. Gets docked for the time he went native.

OK; perhaps Cameron can pull this thing off, the film LOOKS fabulous, what I’ve seen of it (which is darn little.)

I mean, why is it 3D? I have never seen a 3D movie that was really enhanced by the process. Basically, I can’t tell if stuff is 3D unless it’s right in front of me anyway. My eyes are too close together and so are yours. Why do you think marksmen close one of their eyes?

Also, there are a buttload of out of work Science fiction writers out there who would kill to get involved in a flick with a tenth of the budget of Avatar. Can we get some real writers for a change? I’ve seen Hamlet done with no set and almost no props, it was still Hamlet. You can spend a billion dollars to dress up a pig – get ghost writers and do a big  book deal, and it’s still Sarah Pailn.

Avatar might be a very enjoyable story, but so far all they publicists have been saying is “ooooh look at the pretty lights!”

It might not suck, but so far it’s hard to tell! I  hope it doesn’t suck. Then again, I’m too poor to see it in the theaters anyway. Sorry James!

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