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Medal of Honor

Today the President of the United States honored a hero.

On January 25, 2008, Staff Sergeant Robert James Miller (3rd Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group, US Army) and his squad of 24 US and Afghan soldiers were clearing out an insurgent base in Kunar Province, when they were ambushed by over one hundred and fifty Taliban fighters. Miller ordered his men to fall back, while he charged the enemy, drawing their fire, and was killed. For his sacrifice, he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, becoming the 3,471st member of the armed forces to earn the award since its creation in 1861.

Honor him, for few are so worthy of walking in the fields of Elysium.

Freedom of Speech

A lot is said about the freedom of speech. Personally, I'm a big fan of it. Unlike others, I recognize that there is a dark side to freedom of speech. Freedom of speech must be applied to all, or it has meaning for none. Unfortunately, that means that it also protects idiots like the Phelps klan out in Kansas. Oh, you know them, they're the church that goes around protesting at funerals of soldiers, because they believe their deaths are a punishment from god because the US tolerates homosexuality, or some crap like that. I'm sorry, I know I should be more objective, but I have this allergic reaction to raving lunatics that makes me want to pretend they're zombies and go Left 4 Dead on them.

Which actually brings me to my point.



I think pretty much everyone agrees that these people are well deserving of a beat down. Freedom of Speech does not mean freedom from consequence. The father who sued the Phelps klan and won is one way of dishing out some consequence to them, but I think most of us would like a more... aggressive type of consequence to happen to them.

Unfortunately, these tools are just going to keep spouting their hate speech until someone takes a bat upside their head. So the next time these idiots are out and about, why don't we all get together, and beat the everloving crap out of these assholes? Anyone asks, we all just say Marilyn Manson made us do it. It worked at Columbine, right?

What, you don't like me encouraging people to commit acts of violence against douchebags filled with hate? But this is freedom of speech, isn't it?

Ok, so maybe that was out of line. But don't tell me you all weren't thinking the exact same thing. So how about something a little more legal? Fred Phelps, the leader of the Phelps klan, who lives in Topeka, Kansas, does not have an unlisted phone number. His home phone number is listed as (785)267-3615. His son, Fred Phelps Jr., who is also a member of the 'church', lives at 3600 SW Holly Ln., Topeka, KS 66604-2553, and his phone number is (785)272-4135. Link to the search I did below.
http://www.whitepages.com/search/Replay?lower=1&search_id=73051330149262216472

Go exercise some freedom of speech.

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The Job Search

It is the most difficult, time consuming, and humiliating thing that people are allowed to do to one another in public without breaking public decency laws.

I'm talking, of course, about job hunting.

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Think about it. The frantic scurrying from one business to the next, bearing resumes and filling out the same information over and over again, having to explain everything time and time again, using up all that time and energy. And for what? For the hope that, if the person doing the hiring happens to like how you spun your work experience, you can get an interview.

Which brings us to the humiliating part.

If you're like me, when you get called for the interview, you're excited, because you actually have a chance at a job. Then you remember that the interview process is not unlike choosing a class president in high school. There's some speaking involved, but it boils down to looks and popularity, especially with anything where you'll be dealing with the public.

And, if you're like me, you'll start remembering how you never did get picked for any of those things. And then you start getting nervous, and trying to figure out what to do to make the best impression so you can get the job. Should I go with shirt and tie? Is that too formal? Would a polo shirt and jeans be too informal? What about colors, would green or blue be better? Black? Maybe white? Then you remember that the interview is still four days off.

Day of the interview comes up, and you get dressed, and head to the location. Do you show up half an hour early, or does that seem desperate? What about fifteen minutes? Should you come in right on time? Or what about five minutes early?

Then the interview itself. How much do I say so that I highlight my experience, without bragging or sounding like I'm exaggerating? How do I gloss over my shortcomings without sending up red flags? Should I be honest, or more tactful? Should I ask questions, or would that make me look uncooperative? But does not asking questions make me look uninterested? Should I lean back in the chair, and look relaxed, or does that make me look unconcerned? Should I lean forward, or does that make me look too eager? Sit up straight, or does that make me look nervous?

And then, when the interview is over, they thank you, and send you off, so you can wait a week or more for the results.

Why, oh why must it be this difficult?

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Elves, Dragons, and Electric Guitars

I have to say that, given a choice, I don't listen to any American music any more. Not that I have anything against America. I love it here. But I simply can't stand Country, Pop reminds me of all the most idiotic parts of high school, and I outgrew my rap phase years ago. With a few exceptions, the best music I've heard recently is from European groups like Rhapsody of Fire or Blind Guardian or Nightwish. I crave something more than the basic country line of "My dog died, My Wife left me, and My truck broke down", or the incessant teen pop that is everywhere, or rappers telling me how great life is when you deal drugs and shoot people. I just don't need any of that stuff.

What I want is something to take me out of my own life, and into something better, more exciting, more epic. Which is why groups like Rhapsody of Fire appeal to me. For those of you unfamiliar with Rhapsody of Fire (pretty much all of you, I'd guess), take one part Metallica, back when they were good, one part orchestra, and season with a liberal dose of Lord of the Rings. Stir well, and in short order you have AWESOMENESS!

Seriously, though. Most music coming from America these days is either depressing, enraged, or inane. A Rhapsody of Fire album is more than just a collection of singles made for radio, it is a story, bridging multiple albums, where you can set them up in order on your iPod and just run through the albums in order, and hear the story weaving around you, sweeping you up along with it. You just don't get that from boy bands and slutty pop princesses. You don't find that in the drek that you find in Nashville. You'll never witness that on a gangsta rap album.

When I'm needing music, I can think of little better than to hear tales of elves and dragons, to the melody of an electric guitar.

FML

Sometimes I take a step back, and wonder if I am sane. Then the voices tell me that asking the question proves I'm not insane.

I guess it comes from playing roleplaying games, and how I create my characters. I never simply run through the book and put together a character with some interesting stats. That would work for a simple hack and slash game, but I'm looking for more in a RPG. I dive down, getting inside the character's head, and getting a feel for the complexities of their way of thinking.

But the simple truth is that you can't get into someone's head without them getting into yours.

At times, I'm simply going along with my day, and I find that, without warning, I've slipped into thinking like one of my characters, seeing the world through their eyes, approaching problems as they would, even though there is no such thing as magic in the world, and I definitely don't have a sword at my side. And then I catch myself, and shake away the thoughts, and return to being me.

It is times like that which make me think, why not? Why couldn't I be more than the shy guy in the corner, too oblivious and too scared to make any kind of move on someone he likes without a computer screen in between? Why couldn't I let go the man I was, and become the dashing rogue, the cunning warrior, the witty poet? Why not just burst into song, and sing for a time that existed only in a fantasy game?

And yet, I am trapped in this flabby form, prisoner of my own insecurities. I long to set aside that form, and become the legend I created, a man who has no fear, a man who can act in the face of adversity, and flirt with the lady even as he trades blows and banter with the villain.

But I cannot do that. I cling to sanity, and refuse to offer myself to the blessed oblivion of the imagined. I am a prisoner in a high tower, the windows all unbarred. I could escape if I just slipped out the window, but I know I cannot, because the fall would destroy me. And so I sit at the window, and lust for those things that I know I will never see, the things I could never be, the things that I may never know. I sit there, and it brings me both pleasure and pain, for though looking through the window brings an ache to my heart, if it was shut, I would go mad, trapped with not even a glimmer of hope to sustain me.

The world is a wonderful place, if you're the attractive, the popular, the wealthy, the fearless. But I am just an overweight man, shy, broke, and all too aware of my own failings to be fearless. There are things I would like from this world, but they are closed to me. Soon I'll be twenty-seven, working at a desk, and never even been on a date, to say nothing of anything else. Hell, the only time a girl pays any attention to me is when I go to a strip club. This world is not meant for people like me.

Or maybe I am not meant for this world? Maybe these characters I create are all simply echoes of past lives, rattling down the hallways of time, and my malcontent festers for the fact that I compare my life to theirs, and see myself wanting.

I wonder if simply ending it all will release me from this cycle of hell, and return me to that cavalcade of voices so that I might begin again, in a form more suited, and be who I was meant to be.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1

And yet, I find myself restrained, fearing that undiscovered country. And I cling desperately to my window, not daring to cast myself out it, but unable to turn away from it. And the pain continues. And I see the entirety of my existence boiling down to a single phrase: FML.

A Mosque at Ground Zero?

I've tried to avoid commenting on the proposed mosque near the former World Trade Center site. I thought that, surely, people would get their heads out of their collective asses, and see the light.

They haven't.

For all conservative nutjobs talk about the greatness of America, they have an annoying tendency to ignore some truths about America when it doesn't suit their dogmatic point of view. Our nation was founded with the idea of religious freedom in mind. An idea that people, regardless of their creed, should be able to practice their religion freely, and not fear the government's intrusion into that practice, so long as they themselves did not break any laws.

The terrorists that attacked us almost nine years ago to the day did so for many reasons. But one of the most common threads you hear the conservatives talk about is that they attacked us because they hate our freedoms. And there is some truth to that. They want to terrorize us, and use fear and hatred to get us to change our ways.

But the freedom to practice your religion, whatever it is, without prejudice is one of those freedoms.

And it isn't like the Islamic group in question doesn't already have a presence in Manhattan. In fact, they are not making a new congregation. THERE IS ALREADY A MOSQUE NOT TWO BLOCKS FROM THE PROPOSED SITE!

Take a walk around Ground Zero. You know what you'll find? Strip clubs, adult video stores, fast food joints, and the like. Real 'hallowed ground' stuff, right?

Some of the families of victims of 9/11 say that moving an existing mosque two blocks closer to Ground Zero is offensive, that it is some banner of victory to the terrorists who attacked us.

I say they are wrong. It is the people who oppose the mosque that are the offensive ones. It is they that are the banner of victory for the terrorists. For if we change who we are in the face of fear and hatred of what happened, haven't the terrorists truly won? We can win every battle overseas, and not have a single attack on our soil, but if we give up who we are, then we have lost. If we do that, then we vindicate the monsters who attacked us. If we do that, we piss on the memories of the people who died that day. If we do that, we are the testament to our failures as a people.

Freedoms are tricky things. If you say you love a freedom, any freedom, then you have to love that freedom even in times you might disagree with it. Would you oppose a Christian church going up there? Or a Jewish synagogue? Or a Hindu temple? Or a Wiccan shrine? If you love the freedoms this country was founded on, and you say No to even a single one of those questions, then you should not oppose the Islamic mosque going there.

It is a simple thing, to sell out someone else's freedoms when you don't like them. But karma is a bitch, and eventually it will come around to be your turn again. How you act now may determine how others act towards you in the future.

Tell the world that we truly are the land of the free, where a man is judged not by his race, his gender, or his creed, but by the acts he himself does. Because if we look at the terrorists, who have said for years that we are the enemies of all Islam, and we paint all Muslims with the same brush, then we are only proving the terrorists right, vindicating their claims that a jihad is warranted against us. But if we put aside our fear for resolve, or hate for understanding, and allow the mosque to be built, then we show the world that the terrorists were WRONG! We will show them that they may destroy our buildings, and they may take our lives, but they will never change who we truly are, that they will never take our freedoms.

Will you stand for what is right, despite your own bias, your own misgivings, your own fear, your own hate? Will you stand for the freedoms you love? Or will you give in to the terrorists, and allow them to steal our very soul?

Who will stand with me?