Joey’s Crappy Day

The other day I was thinking about war and how terrible and stupid it is. I was wondering why we fight wars. Doesn’t everyone think they are terrible and stupid? Obviously not or we would not fight them. I think there must be some part of my brain that is missing, the part that allows me to understand war.

And who are the most blood thirsty killers in all the world? Why, Americans of course. We go around imposing our will on everyone with little regard for the people we are imposing on. We expect everyone to do things we think they ought to be done and we can’t understand it when people don’t see us the way we see ourselves (as the liberators of the world).

We seem to be dead set on turning Iraq into a little America, a bastion of truth, justice, and the “American Way.” But where is the justice for the Iraqi people? Don’t they have a right to decide on a government for themselves, just as we had that right 230 years ago? Why is an American puppet government okay for them?

Back to the war thing. General Robert E. Lee said, “It is well that war is so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it.” I think the General could see that even though in his day war was still a terrible thing, that one day war would become not so terrible and in fact all to easy. I think that is where we are now as Americas. The true horrors of war are known only to the realitively few troops in the field. And we continue to try to find ways to make even those troops obsolete.

There is an old Star Trek episode called “A Taste of Armageddon.” In it, two planets fight a war with computers. After each battle the casualities are counted and citizens are chosen by the computer to be disintegrated as if the attack were real. At first I thought this was an absurd concept, but as technology advances and war becomes easier, it no longer seems so absurd. It represents the ultimate in ease of war, a goal we seem destined to achieve.

So what is the point of this whole post? I don’t know. I just wanted to write down some thoughts I had on war and human nature. I keep thinking that I want to understand this war part of the brain. I am human so I must have it, even if it is buried deep inside me. But what do I do to explore it? Why do I want to understand something that is so terrible?

I just found out that goatse.cx has been taken down because the registrar for that domain (cx) does not like the content. The goatse.cx site is the whole reason people hate the internet and the whole reason I love it so much. It has been the bastion of smutiness and general tastelessness on the internet for years.

But never fear, you can still go to goat.cx and take in all the goodness of goatse.cx. Enjoy!

Lots of stuff going on since my last post. First, we had a line of storms move through last night. As per usual, the strong stuff missed Hermitage, but somehow my apartment complex managed to have a 9 hour power outage. I read a lot and enjoyed the peacefulness. Then I tried to sleep without much success. I just laid on my couch sweating and wondering when the power would come back on. At about 5am I decided I’d had enough and I got up and took a shower. While in the bathroom I decided that maybe I should start having a “no power” day every week or two. It would be a day where I turned off the TV, computer, radio, etc. It sounds good now, but I’ll probably never get around to doing it.

Second, most of my bills are still not paid, and there’s a possibility that I am a wanted man in Wyoming because I still haven’t paid my ticket and it’s past the court date. But not to worry, I will pay my bills today.

Third… I never did hear from Michael Moore. I suppose he’s too busy gloating and posing for pictures in Time magazine to make time for the little people like yours truly.

Finally, I used the new hard drive I bought as an excuse to buy a new motherboard, processor, and RAM. I got an Athlon 64 2800+ processor, and Abit KV8 mainboard, and two sticks of 512MB PC3200 DIMMS. One of my friends told me that I’ll be the first person he knows with a 64bit processor. Too bad I don’t have any 64bit software.

I have a bunch of bills due about right now. I have the money to pay them, but for some reason I’m just not doing it. I’m hoping that if I write about it I will get motivated to do something. I feel like I need another vacation.

I bought a new hard disk for my computer, but it is giving me a lot of trouble. First it wouldn’t format. Then when I did get it formated, it started hanging randomly causing me to have to reboot. Then I got it running and transfered some files, but they are all corrupted. Then I discovered that there are new Windows drivers that I need to install so I download them. Then the new drivers won’t install for some odd reason. And it still seems to be hanging at random whenever I try to access it.

So now I am trying to figure out what the problem is. I do not think the drive is defective because I scanned it and it had no bad sectors. I have it installed correctly or else it wouldn’t work at all. SO it could be one of three things: a defective atapi.sys file (which is the aforementioned update that won’t install), a defective controller card (which I bought for $9 when the going rate for SATA controllers seems to be more like $55), or defective drivers for the controller card (which I installed off the CD then updated from the manufacturer’s website). It could also be the fact that I have the controller card in the next to last PCI slot, but since the manual didn’t mention it needing to be in the first slot, I doubt this is the problem.

Since the need for this additional storage is not immediate, I’m not really sure what I am going to do to fix this. Idealy I would like to get a good copy of the atapi.sys driver, but that may not be in the cards for me. What I really want to do it get a new motherboard (with SATA built in). I’ve been pricing them and there are some good ones out there for a decent price. The only problem with that is the new RAM and processor I would have to buy to go along with it. Ah, who knows.. I’ll think about it later.

Here us the text of an email I sent to Michael Moore after watching his movie Fahrenheit 9/11:

After seeing Fahrenheit 9/11, I thought that I should take some kind of action. I thought about it all day, but could not think of anything suitable. The main thing I had trouble with is that your movie only shows the corruption in the Bush administration. But we all know that the corruption in Washington is spread equally between the two ruling parties. Struggling with this, I decided to visit your website and see what suggestions you might have for actions I can take. Your first suggestion is that I register 10 people to vote. Well that’s all fine and dandy, but who are we supposed to vote for? I mean, I’ve already decided that both main parties are corrupt and the fringe parties are either too extreme or unable to field viable candidates or both.

I suppose what I am really saying is that I cannot vote for Bush or Kerry and any vote I may cast for another candidate will have little effect. I want real change. I want my government back from the lobbyists and party elites. I am not a leader though, and so few people see things as I do. My goal seems unattainable.

What are your thoughts? Any suggestions?

Joseph Bales
Hermitage, TN

Today, I got nothin’…

I just like saying the word hooker.. or hookers. Cheap hookers. I think it is funny when other people say it as well. I must go to sleep now. I might actually go somewhere tomorrow. If I can pull myself out of the house. Anyway, that is all for today.

Welcome to my new website. If you are viewing this then you probably know who I am. There will be more things to come in the coming weeks and months as I get a feel for this site and what I am going to use it for. Check back often to see what is changing.