Dung Beetle Dad: [Pushing ball of dung] Do we have to bring this crap? I’m there’s have crap where we’re going!

Dung Beetle Mom: [Offended] Uh! This was a gift from my mother.

— Ice Age:  The Meltdown

While packing for an overnight trip today, I included a change of clothes, my shaving kit, my laptop, my tablet, and chargers for a few things.  It all fit in a small knapsack.

The rest of the family filled the trunk of Irish Woman’s car.  I’m not sure what the purpose of it all could be, but apparently they couldn’t live without it.

Overpacking seems to be a common human habit, even with our everyday carry.  How many of us wake up one morning and realize that between carry gun, reloads, cell phone, multiples of knives, flashlight, and whatever else seemed like a good idea at  the time, we’re carrying more crap than Batman.  I choose my laptop bags specifically because they are too small for me to carry around more stuff than I absolutely need.  Otherwise I eventually end up with more stuff in my laptop bag than I used to carry in my rucksack.

Simplifying makes life easier.  Cutting down on the layers of cruft that build up over time gives us more resources to enjoy that life.

Sure does help knowing when and where you’re gonna be hit, sir. — Heartbreak Ridge

One of the traps I find myself falling into is practicing for cut and dry scenarios.  The bad guy is always going to look like a bad guy.  I will always have situational awareness to the point where I know who is and who isn’t a bad guy.  All ‘surprises’ are predictable.  The target zone on the bad guy is easily recognized.

But it’s probably not going to be like that.  If I ever have to defend myself or the family, I’ll probably know the aggressor by his or her actions, but will I know which of the people around us are uninterested parties, which are associates of the aggressor who aren’t going to get involved, and which are more than willing to become part of the problem?  Will I even know about all of the people around me?

We can’t train or practice for every scenario.  We can prepare for the most probable situations, but we must guard against practicing in “God Mode”.  We can’t all afford force-on-force training, but having a buddy throw a dud round in our magazine or set up a shooting stage that we don’t know about beforehand is better than stationary cardboard with big bright targets pasted to them.

What do you all do to improve your training and keep it from becoming predictable?

What we need right now is a clear message to the people of this country. This message must be read in every newspaper, heard on every radio, seen on every television… I want *everyone* to *remember*, why they *need* us! — V For Vendetta

I’m refraining from watching the President and his staff take a victory lap around the cable news networks tonight.  To be honest, I don’t have the time or energy.  Everything that this administration has done has been a ‘crisis’, including the healthcare legislation and its implementation.  Every issue must be taken care of RIGHT NOW! because it’s IMPORTANT and our betters are JUST LOOKING OUT FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE!.  Anyone who stands in their way or even asks what all the rush is about is branded as unfeeling, unthinking, and unhelpful.  When things go wrong, we are told that it’s insignificant or someone else’s fault.  Any change, whether it’s what was promised or not, is touted as the best thing that could ever happen, with kudos all around to the administration’s allies.

The ACA is a horrible law, passed in the middle of the night.  It has been implemented with one eye on the polls and one hand on the panic button.  Rather than making healthcare and the healthcare industry better, it has allowed millions of leaches to suck just a little more blood from the host.*  No-one is saving a dime on healthcare.  This program isn’t going to add one doctor to the already overstressed system, but it’s adding a whole bunch of people who think that once they have a piece of paper that says they are covered, then they magically can get treatment.

Welfare, and Obamacare is nothing but the old welfare pig with a new shade of lipstick, should be for only the truly poor and it should be temporary.  Obamacare does nothing but create a new class of people who will permanently suckle at the sow’s teat, while the rest of us get to feed her our life’s blood.

So, forgive me if I spare myself the experience of the President and his ilk talking about what an accomplishment it is to get  7 million people to create credentials on a web site and look at the programs it (sometimes) offers.  We haven’t been told for sure how many of them actually bought something, and of those, how many have paid a penny to pay for their newfound public largesse.

Honestly, I’m too tired from getting off my ass for the last quarter century and making sure that my family has food, clothing, shelter, and health insurance to give a damn right now.

*I know that’s judgemental and harsh, but let me make this clear:  If you signed up for the expanded Medicaid program or accepted a subsidy for your Obamacare insurance policy, you are a leach on the ass of the American people.  You should be ashamed of yourself.    If my saying that offends or insults you, too bad.  Leave.

Look I probably should have told you this before but you see… well… insanity runs in my family… It practically gallops. — Arsenic and Old Lace

For a huge portion of my life, I lived with the certainty that I, and by extension my family, was as screwed up as a football bat and everyone else lived perfectly normal lives.  One of the ways that I know I’ve matured is that I’ve come to realize that everyone’s messed up, and nobody had the Ward and June Cleaver experience.  Everyone has their drama, their setbacks, their weird family quirks.  Most of them are just quirks, some are dangerous pathologies.  But we all have them.  Knowing that your family isn’t as strange as you think they are will allow you to realize that you are not as strange as you think.  In fact, it’s the people who are perfectly normal that are bizarre.

There are two kinds of people – Greeks, and everyone else who wish they was Greek.  — My Big Fat Greek Wedding

We are a nation of proud immigrants and their descendants.  Each wave of new Americans brings with it people who love their home country, but love their new home as well.  They add their skills, their values, and their strength to the melange that is “American”.  We are founded on British and French Enlightenment values, but that steel has been tempered with the best that the rest of the world has to offer.  We lose out when we insist that immigrants forget their origins, but they lose out when they refuse to take on what our country has to offer them.

When a loaf of bread looks like a banquet, I’ve no right buying tobacco.  — Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

One of the things that always gets under my skin is when I see people with obvious signs of disposable wealth living on the public dime.  If you must ask others to provide the necessities of life, then you have no business having a sumptuous life.  And just to make sure I define my terms here, these things are what I consider the necessities of life:

• Nutritious food and clean water
• Shelter, with the ability to light and heat it
• Air conditioning in the home, although I will argue about this one on occasion
• Basic medical care, and I mean basic
• Seasonally appropriate clothing

The following things are not necessities of life:

• Tattoos, piercings, personal care products beyond basic soap, toothpaste, and shampoo, and cosmetics
• Cable television
• Telephones of any sort
• Internet access
• Clothing beyond necessity in either quantity or quality
• Transportation other than the kind that’s provided by your shoes
• Luxury foods, to include treats, sweets, soda, and alcohol
• Any food prepared in a restaurant
• Entertainment of any kind that costs money
• Anything not listed here, but isn’t listed in the list of necessities

In case you’re wondering who decides what is and what isn’t a necessity of life, that would be me.  If you’re asking me to make sure you don’t fall down dead in the street, then I get a vote in where my money ought to go and for what.

Someone who is on assistance of any kind, with the exception of Social Security or VA benefits, has no business owning a nice car, dressing in anything approaching the latest fashion, having cable TV and high-speed Internet access in their home, or eating out.  What money they do have ought to be used to either improve their ability to support themselves or be used to eliminate at least part of their reliance on the charity of others.

I know a sense of shame in such matters has largely been removed from the American psyche in the 50 years since President Johnson began using forced charity to retain voter blocks for his party, but I don’t have to like it.  On a couple of occasions in my life, the charity of others has put food in my mouth and a roof over my head.  However, the shame of having to depend on others, even as a teenager, was bad enough to make me promise myself that my children would never have to endure it.  If only more people made that promise, we might be in a better position as a society.

Garfield: You talk funny Nash. Where you from?
Nash: Lots of different places.

— Highlander

My accent is a mix-up of Kentucky/Northern Plains/West Coast/Whatever.  A nomadic lifestyle for the first 30 years on the planet has made me a linguistic mishmash.  Girlie Bear and Little Bear, on the other hand, have a pretty thick Kentucky accent.  Boo, who was born here and learned to speak listening to University of Louisville fans argue with University of Kentucky fans about basketball has a full-on twang.  Irish Woman has a bit of a drawl.  That is, of course, until she starts drinking or someone pisses her off.  Then the twang that she has spent decades trying to soften comes out in full force.

How we speak tells the world who we are, where we’re from, and where we’ve been.  They are a roadmap to how we were raised and educated.  Our words and our tone tell the world what we believe and what we know.

Every day above ground is a good day. — Scarface

I had a pretty crappy day today, but I got to come home to my family.  Irish Woman got jerked around a lot by work, but she read Boo his bedtime story tonight.  There are no guarantees that we will be able to repeat these things tomorrow.  Tomorrow is not a promise, it’s just a possibility.  Make sure that the people you love know it.  Not tomorrow, right now.

That book was accidentally destroyed maliciously… — Despicable Me

 

Irish Woman was always THAT aunt.  You know the one.  She gives her nieces and nephews the best presents.  Goldfish.  Glow in the dark ant farms.  Drum sets.  It was all fun and games to her, because she, as a single woman, was immune from retaliation.

And then she met me.

What quickly followed were talking, dancing hula girls.  They were joined by three foot, articulated robots with programmable speech.  To top it all off, someone gave Boo a drum set for Christmas.  Revenge is a gift best served cold, and it is cold at Christmas when annoying toys in their legions have been given to my children by gleeful friends and family.

I have spent the last 10 years slowly and purposefully weeding the most annoying of the toys out of the toyboxes.   Dead batteries have been good criteria for disposal.  So have loose decals or broken plastic.  It seems I spend about 10 months out of the year trying to get rid of the annoying toys so I can have two months of peace.

To all of the aunts and uncles that Irish Woman annoyed all those years, I am very sorry.  Please stop now, before grandchildren come along and the fight moves on to another generation.

I am not going to sit on my ass as the events that affect me unfold to determine the course of my life. I’m going to take a stand. I’m going to defend it. Right or wrong, I’m going to defend it. — Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Primary season for the 2014 elections is well under way.  It’s time to get involved.  If you’re not registered to vote, please remedy that situation.  Learn about the candidates and the issues.  Don’t just study the people who are running for office.  Learn who is supporting them financially.  If you want to know how someone will act after taking the oath of office, look at who is bankrolling them.  You should also learn about any down-ballot referendums.  Go beyond the simple wording and look at how it could be interpreted, folded, spindled, and mutilated.  Anything that lowers the amount of power in government’s hands tends to be good, while the reverse tends to end horribly.

If you have the time, seek out the candidates and causes you support.  Give of your time and talent.  Write letters, make phone calls, talk to your friends and family.  Even if all you can give is a couple of hours to deliver yard signs or reach out to voters, it will make a difference.

And finally, get your butt to the polls, both for the primaries and for the general election.  The more of us who show up, the more the politicians have to listen to us.  When in doubt, I tend to vote against the incumbent.  If they have the advantages that come with already being in office, then they ought to have made a big enough impression before I get to the voting booth, one way or the other.   If you can’t tell the difference between the Democrican or the Republicrat, then consider third party or independent candidates.

Get registered, get educated, and get involved.  The republic you save could be your own.