Hello Again!
Yeah, I know, how many times have I said I'm back again and will start posting regularly.
This blogging thing is much like weight loss, it takes a lot of mental discipline to do it right which is to say do it consistently well.
Anywho, all I can say is I'm back and intend to blog daily or close to that for the foreseeable future.
Given that my last installment of this column was November 18, 2008, I'd say we have a lot of catching up to do so here goes the Mother Of All Random Musings.
New Year's Day 2009
We spent New Year's Day sick at home watching on television the Rose Parade occurring in our hometown of Pasadena, CA. Following that we watched a lot of football, but mainly the Rose Bowl which again this year featured a USC team hell-bent on proving it belonged in the national championship picture looked for respect at the expense of an over-matched Big Ten Conference Champion (well, in 2007 it was the Big Ten Runner-Up Illinois).
Fight On!
Well, my USC Trojans won another Rose Bowl this year, their third in a row and third in four years following their loss to Texas in the 2006 BCS Championship held at the Rose Bowl.
This followed USC's winning another Pac-10 Conference Championship, this time without sharing it with another co-champion as they did the year before with Arizona State.
Without the University of Oregon at Eugine blowing out Oregon State University at Corvallis in Corvallis the last game of the regular season for both and at a venue where OSU upset USC earlier in the season in USC's 2008 installment of their yearly let-down game against an inferior opponent which keeps them out of the BCS National Championship they would actually have been in that game against either Florida or Oklahoma and would have no doubt beaten whomever they faced.
The game was 31-7 at halftime against an over-matched Penn State team which finished their regular season like USC at 11-1 and like USC would have been in the BCS National Championship game were it not for a let-down game against Iowa late in the season.
USC spent most of the second half celebrating on the sideline which allowed a well-coached Penn St. team to make the final score a respectable 38-24 which game was not as close as that score might lead one to believe.
The final BCS standings put 13-1 Florida at #1 and 13-0 Utah at #2 and 12-1 USC at #3.
A few weeks later, that game's offensive MVP, USC junior quarterback Mark Sanchez opted to not come back for his senior year as he will graduate in May of this year and could be the second quarterback picked in the draft whereas if he returned for his final year of eligibility he would be competing in the draft with Florida's 2007 Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow and Oklahoma's 2008 Heisman Trophy winner Sam Bradford and Texas' Colt McCoy.
Jury Duty Follow-up
That jury duty thing I mentioned last time didn't work out.
The prosecution nuked me while the defense wanted me to stay.
The Machiavellian reasons for this seeming illogicality are due to my feeling that active gang membership should be illegal and that active gang members are untermensch and that I would have no qualms with a policy wherein active gang members were ground up and used for fertilizer on public highway landscaped right-of-ways (although I didn't exactly phrase it that dimly).
During the questioning phase for prospective jurors this bigoted and close-minded attitude of mine came to light as well as the fact I know more about gangs, particularly the Mexican Mafia, than most folks (that's because I have a close friend who is a corrections officer who shares with me a lot of what the Corrections Department teaches him).
The prosecution seems to have taken a dim view of this as their case was heavily dependent upon prosecution witnesses who were gang members in or out of incarceration who had copped pleas to get their sentences reduced or were even active gang members or their affiliates who were not facing incarceration.
It appears they feared I would doubt or down-right disbelieve any such testimony for which I don't blame them although they needn't have feared such as the defendant, Abiel Ayala was and is as guilty as sin as was clearly apparent by his visage and behavior in court.
I was ready to convict him for just looking the way he did, to wit, a slouchy, punky piece of human excrement and the living embodiment of the expression "untermensch".
They should execute folks for just looking that way, regardless of ethnicity of course.
Mr. Ayala looked all the part of a Neanderthal, replete with hairy, protruding eyebrows and a simple yet feral face that belied a man not on trial for singing too loud in church.
Given he committed his crime of murdering a fellow member of the Nipomo 13 gang while tweaking and not under orders from above he stands a good chance of being murdered after he begins his sentence which otherwise might be up to 52 years.
However, he may have begun to try to earn a reprieve by showing his willingness to stupidly make trouble and thus give those higher up in the Mexican Mafia gang structure a reason to keep him alive by way of his attacking an alleged child molester in court the morning of and right before his sentencing. Read all about it here.
Frak Me!
For those of you who don't know it the "re-imagined" Battlestar Galactica is making its final season final run with this next Friday night at 10 P.M. debuting the third episode of the second half of the fourth season of the third run of the concept; follow me?
The interruption in this season was caused by the recent writer's strike.
Thus far this second half of the final season has been typically dreary and wonderfully intense as we have come to expect from this epic television series.
With the declaration that this will be the final season of the series I'm glad they are going to end it on a high note while it is still at its peak but I'm nonetheless bummed to see this happen as I am going to terribly miss this show, one of my favorite television series of all time.
The powers that be are going to create at least one spin-off television series. However, I fear that will be a step down from the current series although I have hope I will be wrong. This next show is tentatively entitled "Caprica" and will cover the events prior to those covered in the current series.
What the Frell?!
We finally got around to finishing the entirety of another science fiction vice we share, Farscape. This vice takes the form of a serious addiction much like our relationship with BSG.
We both are now seriously bummed at having no more episodes to watch together and with the completion of watching the subsequent mini-series The Peacekeeper Wars we are now hoping the franchise reemerges in either mini-series form again and/or big screeen form and/or webisode form. We hope the execs at Sci-Fi Channel have the mivoks to get something going along these lines.
It's The Stupid Economy
All this talk about this no longer being a recession but a depression and that we have a long way to go down makes my butt pucker.
I wish these fracking/frelling talking heads would just shut the frack/frell up and stop psyching folks up any further into a tizzy than they already are.
We all need to take a deep breath and just get a grip. The sky may be cloudy but it's not falling (yet).
President Obama
We now have our 44th President and it isn't Clinton 44 as I was sure was going to be the case and as perhaps should have been the case had the American people not been so gullible but what is, is and I accept it.
Of late I pray to God every day that He motivates Obama to make as many of the correct choices as possible and causes Obama's advisor's to give him as much good advice as he can get and that he follows it as often as possible.
We can't expect perfection but I just want our guy to make fewer and lesser mistakes than our rivals and enemies and successfully lead us the next four or eight years and that He keep Obama safe from assassination, especially by a white guy(s).
Pole Shift 2008
Well the paranoidiac pseudo-intellectual/anti-intellectual ideologically-demagoguish conspiracy theory whack-job political hack polarization field has shifted back to the cultural Right with my poor, sweet Conservative friends and acquaintances now beginning to make complete asses out of themselves suggesting and believing every sort of malevolent, seditious, illegal motive or action imaginable and even unimaginable.
The latest one is that Obama never actually took the oath swearing on the Lincoln Bible but they don't offer proof or explain how such an important book was taken out of the Library of Congress and under close supervision used in the swearing in and returned to the Library and yet nobody saw it happen or if they did they are all a part of the conspiracy.
This is of course married to and rooted in the oldest conspiracy allegation about Obama which is that he is a closet Muslim replete with belt bomb hanging in his White House closet waiting to be used at appointed time.
Of course, this is a complete pole (political polarization) field reversal/shift from the previous eight years when Dubya was variously dumb as mud with Dick Cheney as Puppet Master and Power Behind The Throne or Dubya was dumb like a fox and behind 9/11 so he could justify stomping all over the Constitution and leading us into Iraq so we could take all their oil as if we needed it nearly that badly (actually the Europeans and Indians and Chinese do).
And of course before that it was eight years of hearing about how many people Bubba had murdered or shagged and how he dodged the draft and it was Whitewater ad infinitum ad nauseum. Oh, and lest I forget, there was all the talk about how real or not his marriage to Hilary was and questions about his having a sex addition and Hilary being bisexual or Lesbian.
The amazing thing is it is always the same sorts of personalities that promulgate this stuff and the same sorts of personalities that buy into this stuff.
All these people are actually very much alike and in the same group in reality when it comes to what actually counts and unfortunately these people regardless of political alignment are anti-intellectual extremist nit-wit ding-dongs.
I'm in the Tucson Show (Sort of)
Well, okay, I'm actually not.
My large Sikhote-Alin meteorite is now safely in the hands of Geoffrey Notkin of Aerolite Meteorites in Tucson, AZ.
He and I have entered into a contractural agreement wherein he will display it and otherwise promote it in the course of selling it for me in return for a reasonable percentage.
Not only will it be on display at his noteworthy location at the Tucson Show but he will promote it on his blog and website and perhaps elsewhere as opportunity provides.
When we talked about it yesterday right after he had received it and gotten it out of the box, he was very impressed with it and said it was one of the largest nicest one's he'd come across in a while and was very pleased to be able to handle it for me.
Given that Sikhote's are his specialty and fave and that he's such a nice guy, not to mention such a reputable dealer with great connections I'm so very pleased to be working with him on this matter.
K&K Earthwerks News
Our business and particularly our Ebay Store, K&K Earthwerks, continues to grow in spite of the current economic distress.
Given this is the quiet time of the year for us with no shows to speak of I am pleased to say that Ebay is keeping us going almost single-handedly and continues to pick up momentum as we expand our Ebay Store inventory.
Surpringingly, foreign sales are almost what I'd call brisk.
We have now shipped to Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal. Netherlands, Malta, Hungary, Russia, Japan, Taiwan, and probably some more I'm not thinking of at the moment.
Much of our business also comes from repeat customers, especially some of the foreign customers, particularly a nice Japanese woman named Kazue.
About Those Missing "Bloggings"
Yeah, I know I never posted blog entries about the 2008 Placerville and Lancaster shows.
I have them in the queue ready to go when I've finished with them and when that happens I'll post them on the dates they covered.
When that happens I'll announce it on this blog and provide links to those blog postings.
And Last But Not Least!
Things have changed with me.
I'm talking about change that is not self-perceived or even delusional but the real deal.
My walk with God is getting healthier and stronger all the time and I don't remember when I last felt this way or if I even ever did but I don't care because I'm alive now and I'm living better all the time.
I feel I've really finally gotten my head wrapped around what the hell happened to me since high school as well as to my family during the same period.
I fear I have to have one more heavy talk with my family before I can let it all go and move on but at least I feel the onion is almost completely peeled and my anger is completely gone.
The anger was directed at myself and at loved ones for being just like me: flawed human beings with Old Sin Natures.
It's this realization that has helped me forgive and move on because I failed God just as monumentally as they and I surely want forgiveness and how can I hope to gain that from God if I won't show the same to others for being no worse than I?
Another thing that has helped me forgive is the fact I feel more love in my heart for my family (or at least particular members) than I have ever felt before and that in spite of our differences that I mostly expect will never be fully reconciled but now it doesn't matter with me and I'm okay with it.
Life is too ephemeral to hold onto poison and pain and variously holding onto and running away from both of those things is the explanation of what the hell happened to my family over the past 15-20 years.
I need to start living again for the first time in my life since I was a child and encourage the rest of my family to join me out in the light and if they don't accept the offer then I need to accept that and still love them and be available to them if they ever ask for a helping hand out into that light and life.
If not then I won't judge or hate them but I surely won't follow them anymore into that place.
I'm going to focus on taking care of my business and if by finding the path God has established for my life I can help them find their's then maybe this story will have a happy ending after all.
Kimmer
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