The color of infinity inside an empty glass

So Joe Paterno's dead. Various people on my Facebook list are mourning him, sharing picture of Joe in heaven.

Ha.

I don't "get" college sports. Never have. Truthfully, though, I don't get much in the way of "professional" sports either. Especially when the supermillionaire players and the supermillionaire owners start arguing again. Then I really don't get it.

But that's neither here nor there. I never followed the Nittany Lions and I never will.

But what I DID follow was last year's child abuse scandal in U Penn. And this is what I got... Joe Paterno stood back and let other parent's little boys get sexually harassed by a monster. And, in my eyes, that kind of makes him a bit of a monster too. To sit back and allow it and ignore it... perhaps he talked to the administration, but the child abuser stayed on and Joe Paterno stayed quiet.

I'm sorry if you're a U Penn fan. I'm sorry if you WANT to remember the best of this guy. He may have been a decent coach, but at the end, he didn't have the decency to protect little boys from a monster. And I just choose not to believe that there really isn't a place in heaven for those that can ignore that kind of violence.

You all knew I was going to take a swing at this, right?

When I was at the July fourth party and blueslives (I think) mentioned Palin had quit I was shocked. I've had some chance to read up on it and get a little bit more information and I'm still.. OK not shocked, but confused.

The primary question is "Why?" Why would Sarah Palin quit? There's a great number of people trying to figure out the answer, and I won't get into most of the theories, but the short answer is.. nobody really knows. Because it came out of nowhere.

I'll say this.. you haven't heard the last of Sarah Palin. For one, I don't think she'd allow it. I think the limelight is far too important to her to truly give it up entirely.

But... let's take a moment to say our goodbyes to Sarah Palin's political career, because I would say it's over. I think she'll RUN for office a few times.. as I said, you haven't heard the last of Sarah Palin, but I doubt you'll ever see her in office again.

The problem with Sarah Palin.. is Sarah Palin.

She can dish out the criticism, but as far as taking it.. any perceived attacks on her or her family are immediately met with all guns blazing. This denotes a lack of a certain level of maturity. There are going to be some situations when you can go out with all guns blazing, but every perceived insult?

Palin also doesn't seem to be very good at understanding the consequences of certain actions. Without any doubt, she thrust her family into the spotlight. Sarah, when you bring your family up onto the stage so we can all sit there and see you in your "natural element" holding baby Trig and whatever.. this is thrusting your family into the spotlight. And the spotlight, as you've hopefully learned now, is a harsh mistress and shows your weaknesses as well as the politicized perceived strengths.

When you politicize your family, that means it's open season on your family. That it's OK to trot out Todd being a member of the AIP and make jokes at Bristol and Levi's expense (especially since you, yourself, guaranteed that actually made news at all by getting personally involved.)

Without a doubt, Sarah Palin has SOME minor political talents, but it's arguable that they're enough to seriously make her a good choice for any political role. What she did in Alaska, the Success she saw there was due to her going after her own party there and working hand in hand with the Democrats to take on Big Oil. Then after things fell apart in November and she'd been used for months to be McCain's attack dog, she came back to Alaska, having said things about Obama pal'ing around with terrorists and "Real Americans" and she found she'd lost her political friends. She's gotten very little done since coming back to office and has been swamped with ethics charges, which she feels were frankly silly.

In other words.. she didn't have the political know-how to go back to her old job and do it effectively after her run as VP. She didn't know how to soothe angry nerves and bring her coalition back and, as a result, she became a Lame Duck.

Palin prides herself as someone who is different from 'all those Washington insiders' and she prides herself on being a Susie Soccer Mom, which definitely works for some of her voters, but maybe doesn't work so well with her peers. Regardless of whatever she prides herself as, if she's unable to work with her peers.. whether that be the Alaska Legislature, the US congress, or the government as a whole (for when she does run for president), she won't be an effective leader.

That is, to some extent, you NEED to work like a Washington Insider to do the job effectively. If you can't, you become moot, useless, a lame duck, a dead fish. Whatever metaphor you want to use.

So we'll see where things go from here for Ms. Palin, but unless she learns a new more mature tune, I doubt you'll ever see Ms. "Quitters take the easy way out but I'm Quitting my job." in any sort office again.

PS I also hope Sarah Palin learns to grow out of this constant victimization of herself by everyone else too. How sad it must be to be Sarah Palin who is constantly misunderstand and mischaracterized by everyone else in Washington: Washington insiders, the main stream media, everyone. People who do the research into what she does, what she says and the consequences of her actions.. no one understands poor victimized Sarah.
Which is why she's going to sue you. :p
Seriously, Sarah, if you can't learn to work with other people, you can't be an effective politician. You simply can't.

I don't really have time to write the three or four journal posts I'm half thinking of writing right now, so in no particular order, things I want to record:

1) Enough with Sanford already! The man seems to be in love and it's heartbreaking to watch, and I get that it's news in a "Train Wreck" sort of way, but this is his personal life. Move on, please.

2) We lost another engineer, Khin. I don't know the details, but he's in the hospitable for the foreseeable future. Needless to say, he also had a bunch of active cases that we have to reassign now. Meh.. this is past bad now.

3) Beginning to feel guilty about the planned family vacation at the end of the month. It couldn't come at a worse time. Not that there *IS* a good time until case loads start decreasing. :p

4) Am beginning to doubt that come August 1st I'm going to be a team lead anymore, don't know what I think about that yet...

5) Talked to company Monday. Potential stuff brewing with my company too. Don't know what the results might be (don't know barely ANYTHING about what happens on August 1st. :p K, I may need to take the laptop with us on vacation so I can keep half an eye on my work email since all of that will, no doubt, start coming out while we're gone.)

6) July 4th Party with spydielives!! *excited* I hear she's got the new Boom Blox too :D

7) I am playing Sims 3 again. Playing Riverview now (Betty Simovitch (will become Betty Newbie) is pretty cute, but where's Bob?) as the Broke Family on Normal Speed. Definitely a challenge, but I swear I WILL get that family out of their trailers and into a nice house... well.. maybe just the kids or grandkids. We'll see.

That's it.

I have to admit I'm really sad that Michael Jackson died. I miss.. the man he seemed to be back in the 80s. Michael Jackson was one of the people I listened to pretty constantly as I grew up. My mother was a big Michael Jackson fan. She owned "Off the Wall", "Thriller" and "Bad". It wasn't until HIStory that the Sheen on Michael rubbed off for her, and for me. That song, "They Don't Care About Us" that still sounds anti-semitic to my ears.. that just turned both of us off at the time.

I mourn Michael Jackson as he was as the King of Pop.. perhaps a little eccentric at times, but not.. what he became before dying, the butt of a long-standing joke, Whacko Jacko.

Back in the 80s, Michael Jackson couldn't do much wrong. He WAS the King of Pop. He was the Elvis Presley of my generation.

I'm tempted to go and see if I can't get Thriller on iTunes Store or something this weekend.

So... Rest in Peace, Michael. You were a.. unique individual to watch as you aged. But I'll always remember you in the Zombie Makeup dancing in the empty lot with your Zombie Minions...

*moonwalks out*

Neither K nor I was affected by the crash.
I drive in everyday from Fairfax to Alexandria and K takes the orange line only *points to icon above*.

We're both fine. No worries. :)

Though what happened WAS really scary, especially as the Metro System was designed for that to never be able to happen. :|

If you aren't up on the news this week, yesterday Dr. George Tiller was fatally shot while attending services in his Lutheran Church in Wichita. I don't know much about Mr. Tiller and, really, this post isn't about him, but I need to vent my utter disgust at this.

No matter where you fall on the pro-choice/pro-life spectrum, murder and violence are never the way to get your point across. Only wackos choose to make a point by hurting someone or killing someone.

This murder reminds me of another murder not that long ago, one I'm a bit more familiar with, the murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian

In 1998, Dr. Slepian, an OB/GYN and a physician from my hometown of Amherst, NY, who lived not so very far from where I grew up, was murdered inside his own home.

In a city as small as Buffalo was (and possibly as liberal as Buffalo tends to be), the moment crystallized the city. We were horrified, as a whole. No matter what your own personal beliefs were.. to go into a man's house and KILL Him..?

Of course, the crazies came out of the woodwork to 'celebrate' this moment. Even as most of us were reacting in shock and horror at this, a bunch of crazy idiots came from all across America to stage pro-life rallies across Buffalo. So many idiots were there, they spilled into pro-life rallies in Rochester.

To me, the most telling moment about all this.. was two fold.. at the same time as the crazies were coming out of the woodwork to stage their protests and the local pro-life groups BEGGING them to get the hell out before a riot occurred.. the FBI had gotten onto the trail of the murder, James Kopp who had fled to France.

The whole thing, upon memory, was just so surreal. The fact that a man was murdered in his own home for the crime of.. something that was totally legal, that the crazies then came out of the woodwork CELEBRATING the MURDER OF A MAN, and that the murderer himself flew to France to escape justice. Just... seriously seriously Surreal. With more than a bit of a hint of Insanity.

I hope the FBI finds who killed Dr. Tiller. I hope they find him and convict him. And I hope, for the City of Wichita, that this doesn't turn into another call to the Right Wing Anti-Abortion Loons to come to Wichita to stage multiple rallies and otherwise make total asses of themselves. I really do hope so...

This has been bouncing around in my head a bit since K brought it up, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Last week, there was a shooting in a UU Church in.. Tennesse, I believe. Only two people died, but it's generally thought that it was only two people because A) one of the two people jumped in front of the gun to stop others from being hurt and B) they wrestled the guy down to the ground pretty darned fast.

There hasn't been much reporting of it. Certainly not nationally. Locally, it's gotten some.

What's interesting, I think, is that the assailant had a lot of Right-Wing stuff in his home. Bill O' Reilly's books, Ann Coulter's books, stuff like that. And he wrote a four-page long suicide note explaining how he had to do it because of “hatred of the liberal movement” and of “liberals in general, as well as gays.”

This strikes me as ironic.

In an age where people jump to blame TV, Music and Video Games for violence, then I want it known that Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter killed two people in Tennessee two weekends ago. Clearly, the guy was mentally ill. But, and however, Ann Coulter is just as much to blame for this as Marilyn Manson is for the Columbine Shootings. Or Grand Theft Auto III.

Mind you, I don't really blame Ann Coulter. Again, I think the fact was.. he was mentally unstable (again, I ask, though, how do these mentally unstable people keep managing to get guns. Hello?!?!), but... the irony amuses me.

I'll make this one public..

2005 is almost over and it's been a BUSY year... Hurricanes, Scandals, Living Wills, iPod Nanos, Supreme Court Appointments, Space Shuttle Issues, Attacks on the London Underground, A New Pope. Even a Transit Strike!

So...out of curiosity... what stories mattered the most to you? What, in 2005, was most important to you? Which people mattered the most to you?

It's Great To Know (tm) that we (America) don't need any help looking for survivors. At least, we're not inviting Canada to come over and help out.
What. The. Fuck?

Well, fuck, why doesn't someone tell the Red Cross so they can go home too?

*WHACKS Bush with a Fucking Clue by Four of doom*

Please remember this, Republicans. People are offering assitance and we aren't inviting them in. THIS is your candidate's "leadership" in action.

This post goes public.

Want to pass on this link to those of you who watch some of the crap on TV today: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/08/AR2005050801010.html

It's about all the makeover programs out there (Nanny 911, Extreme Makeover, a show called FIX MY HUSBAND! (UGH! UGH! NO! GOD DAMMIT NO! I hope John Grey, whom I dislike, writes them to tell them how fuckin wrong they are!)) just suck and you should learn to click the freakin remote off.

I'll be honest. I'm glad I don't watch TV much anymore (All I watch is the news). For every show with some redeeming social value, there's another program out there that's just completely fucked up.