Some things are just too painful
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I had occasion to spend the afternoon today in the municipal court in the small town where I grew up. I get so wrapped up in the stupidity and irresponsibility of some of my clients that I forget that, as criminals go, they are not the least sophisticated criminals out there. Sitting in that courtroom, listening to those people was one of the most painful experiences I've had in a long time. As near as I can tell, none of the individuals I saw appear to have been creative enough or intelligent enough to be funny. It was just pathetic.

Mostly I just wanted to scream. Or slap people up side the head and tell them to shut the hell up. Generally, the more you try to explain to a judge the stupider you sound, and these folks did not need any help sounding stupider. I saw one woman who was charged with criminal trespass. Apparently she was waiting for a ride and wouldn't leave a fast food restaurant, so the cops were called. And I was sitting there wondering how obnoxious you would have to be to get kicked out of a fast food restaurant while waiting for a ride when I heard her tell the judge she didn't remember the address of the place she was staying this week and that her husband had kicked her out of the house over some drugs.

Then there was the guy that failed to turn himself into the county jail to do his weekend 48 hour sentence on a DUI charge, who when asked why he didn't show up told the judge he had "personal reasons." He was, of course, incensed when the judge suggested he was something of a risk to show up for his next court appearance.

The only bright spot was that I know the prosecutor and had a chance to talk to him for a couple of minutes. He was one of the elders in the church when I was growing up. He was also the one who introduced me to Kahlil Gibran. Strange that I should remember that in the midst of all the stupidity around me.

**********

OK, now that I've re-read what I've written, I think it sounds mean-spirited. I didn't mean it that way. I really am not making fun of these folks. And it was painful to watch, sad in a way I really can't describe. I'm not sure why it is important to me to be clear on that, but for some reason it is. Perhaps I am so used to being cynical that I don't feel confident of my ability to communicate anything else. Or perhaps that I'm afraid it won't ring true.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Monday, February 23 2004 08:25:54 PM

More Stuff
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The Blog upgrade seems to have worked OK. So I've got just a few odds and ends that have been rattling around in my head that I want to get out.

I'm not a particulary superstitious person in most respects. Friday the 13th doesn't bother me. I don't mind black cats. I don't pay particular attention to cracks in the sidewalk. I only avoid walking under ladders if there is someone or something that could fall on me. I do, however, have one superstition concerning computers that really annoys me, but I find myself falling back on it in spite of my best intentions.

When I connect to the internet, I watch the icons in the system tray that show packet movement up and downstream. Back in the days when I had a 28.8 modem and downloading anything was a real chore, I started watching the icons because sometimes the download would sort of freeze for no reason I could fathom. On a 28.8 modem download, any delay meant a significant portion of your life was being wasted. Although I am not a big Microsoft fan, I discovered that sometimes when the download froze, if I chanted "Bill Gates, Bill Gates, Bill Gates," the download would resume. (yes, I know it was just coincidence, but, much to the chagrin of my rational self, I still find myself chanting if the little lights stop blinking...)

I hadn't really thought about it, but the Head Rat noticed last night that I've been at this particular blog for a year now (or will have been later this week). I guess that's something of a milestone, although there were a couple of incarnations of Ratlands that I had up for a couple of weeks using other software in other places. Still, it has been about a year and frankly, that is longer than I thought I would stick with it.

Actually, I didn't think I would need to stick with it that long. My original intent was to use Ratlands as a forum for sorting out some of my ideas and beliefs, especially political ideas. In some respects, the process has been more successful than I had hoped. In others, I am still working on it. In any case, it is cheaper than therapy, so I'll probably be at it for quite a while.

One strange coincidence; when I was walking through the building at work the other night I noticed that one of the clients looks an awful lot like the skinhead leader that kept getting the crap kicked out of him in the movie Formula 51.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Sunday, February 22 2004 10:46:06 PM

Maintenance
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What an ugly week. I started whining last week about not having any time. I should know better. It's like the rule I have about never saying, "it can't get any worse," because it always does. We've just had one of those weeks from hell where I ran around like crazy all week and never really got anything done. The crowning glory was getting called into work last night at 8:30 for a minor medical emergency that mushroomed into a dozen other things. By the time I got home, wound down a bit and headed for bed it was 4:00 a.m.

So today I've just been hanging around the house. I took the time to watch three football matches and since then I've been upgrading software. I finally got around to installing the new Firefox browser I wrote about earlier, along with the new release of Thunderbird. I really liked the old version of Firefox (called Firebird) and I definitely like the new version. The download manager is kind of cool. I like it well enough that I've included the logo in the side bar. I'm also getting ready to upgrade to Blog8.03beta, but I thought I would finish the housekeeping before I did it.

While I was fiddling with the template I went ahead and added The Smedley Log to the sidebar. I've been meaning to do it for a while. The Smedley Log is a product of the author who maintains the Multiple Streams site and the blog has gotten consistently good enough that I check it for a new entry every time I get on the internet. Although I try not to, I tend to lapse into cynicism, despair and ranting from time to time. Probably because I'm old, tired, jaded, self-absorbed and generally not as nice a person as I would like to be. On the other hand, the author of the Smedley Log appears not to be any of those things -- one of the truly nice guys out there. That comes across in the blog as well as his essays and poetry.

I've also removed the Front Line Voices link in the sidebar. It's not that I've changed my mind about our presence in Iraq, it's that the site doesn't seem to get updated regularly. I try not to link to anything that is posted more irregularly than my own site. (The exception would be Eject!Eject!Eject! but you don't go there to read Bill Whittle's random comments, you go there for the essays.)

Well, now that I've been tinkering most of the evening, in an apparent affirmation of my self-assessment above, the Head Rat is suggesting that it would be in my best interest to spend as much quality time with her this evening as I have with my computer. She's probably right. She generally is, about these things, so I guess the Blog software update will wait til tomorrow.

 

by Cziltang 
Posted: Saturday, February 21 2004 08:34:39 PM

Is it sweeps week, or what?
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Since I seem to have a few minutes tonight, I guess I'll mention this:

I almost never get a chance to watch the network national news (not that I would anyway, but that's because I generally prefer comedy that's supposed to be comedy to comedy that's supposed to earth-shakingly serious). I happened to be in an eating establishment this evening during said news and caught the "news story" about Congress being outraged by "indecent" material on TV.

I lamented last week about not having seen the "Great Breast Escape" during the Super Bowl. Well, friends and neighbors, that situation has been remedied by the kind folks at ABC news. In the course of telling the story about Congress being outraged (and when have we ever heard of politicians being outraged in an election year) ABC managed to show the offending footage 4 or 5 times (albeit with a strategically placed video scramble, but I got the point).

Gosh Sparky, I sure am glad that the network news people don't have to stoop to titillating their audience (sorry, I just couldn't help myself) to drive up ratings.

Apparently my sense of humor is further outside the mainstream than I thought. While watching the footage of Congress being outraged, I saw a Congresswoman (Ms. Bono, maybe? I didn't really catch the name) being especially outraged to find out that Janet Jackson has a new album coming out. She went as far as to suggest that "IT" (get this) was a publicity stunt designed to sell records (gasp!).

Well, I'm glad Congress has finally caught up to the rest of us (even those of us who didn't see "IT" live). Of course it was a publicity stunt. (And, I might add, as publicity stunts go, it will probably sell more records for Janet than her brother's stunt of getting arrested for allegedly sleeping with little boys will for him. Michael should probably fire his publicist and hire Janet's.)

So I'm sitting in this eatery waiting for my dinner, laughing out loud at the Congresswoman being Outraged and all the conversations in the joint stopped. I looked around and everyone was staring at me like I had grown a second head or something. Given my generally paranoid outlook on life, and my desire to be invisible in public and never draw attention to myself (since I never know when I'm going to run into a family member of someone I sent to prison who remembers me not so fondly), I made a tactical decision to make it a carry-out order.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Wednesday, February 11 2004 08:23:10 PM

And I thought I had problems...
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I had a couple of good nights last week where I actually got some writing done. Since then, I've kind of been feeling sorry for myself. <whine>There is so much going on at work. It seems I get up, go to work, come home, eat, go to bed, get up and do it all over again. I guess I'm spoiled, but I start getting real cranky if I don't have a little time to just sit and think.</whine>

I should be used to it by now. I've been in corrections for 24 years as of this month. The heavy workload goes in cycles. We will have a particularly difficult group of clients who can't get along with each other or anyone else, who have especially bad addictions issues, who have serious mental health issues and the workload goes up. I spend most of my time going around putting out fires (figuratively speaking, although I have dealt with one arson and several trash can fires in my career) and trying to calm things down so the line staff can do their jobs. And that's nothing special. All the administrators do it. Clients who are bordering on being out of control respond better to people that (they perceive) have the power to make their problems go away. (Sort of the same principle as asking to speak to the manager of a restaurant when the food and/or service is bad.) We are just in one of those cycles where I'm doing a lot of that.

The cycles aren't regular. It will be bad for a while (or maybe a long while) then things will lighten up for a while, then we are back at it again. I'm convinced it isn't random. I believe that if I could collect enough data about the types of clients, types of personalities, types of problems and staff performance, I think I could predict when we are going to get one of these bad periods. The problem is that I wouldn't begin to know where to start collecting data. Then there is the additional problem of how to maintain a database. And there is always the issue of how to quantify staff behavior (and the related issue of whether staff behavior is causal or reactionary to the client behavior). This all begs the question of how I would find time to do all of it. It's probably just an intellectual conceit of mine anyway and I'm not sure knowing we are in for a rough time would be a good thing. There is always the issue of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So anyway, I was just settling down for a nice round of self-pity when I ran across this article in The Register. As bad as my day may have been, at least my TV hasn't blown up.

(by the way, if you are going to check out The Register, take a chance and introduce yourself to the Bastard Operator from Hell in this week's BOFH and the Coffee Machine.)

by Cziltang 
Posted: Wednesday, February 11 2004 08:17:04 PM

New Stuff
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Mozilla has released a new version of the browser I'm currently using, now called FireFox. I read about it in The Register today. They also released the 0.5 version of Thunderbird, the e-mail and newsgroup client I'm using. I really like both of them because 1) they are free, 2) they are not Microsoft, and 3) I just like playing around with stuff like this. Firebird (now Firefox) only gave me trouble on one financial web site I visit regularly and only because the pop-up blocker was working too well. Once I told it to allow pop-ups from that site, everything was fine. The new version is supposed to have a built-in download manager. I've tried some other non-Microsoft e-mail clients, but Thunderbird allows monitoring multiple e-mail accounts like Outlook Express, unlike some of the alternatives.

I guess what I'm saying is that if you like tinkering with stuff like this, I will probably recommend both of them as soon as I get a chance to try the new versions. The Mozilla servers are getting hammered tonight, so I probably won't get a chance to download them until later in the week.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Monday, February 09 2004 08:51:54 PM

Life of Leisure
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Apparently I am soon going to be able to quit my full time job and devote myself to writing this nonsense full time. It appears that one of my long lost relatives has been working for Shell Oil in Nigeria and has died, leaving me exactly $20 million dollars.

Actually, I was beginning to think there was something wrong with me. I surf the odd corners of the web. I visit bizarre web sites. But I had never gotten a Nigerian 419 scam e-mail until a couple of days ago. Now I have joined the big leagues!

I intended to write a bit Friday night, but Rat Jr. put her car in a ditch after spinning nearly 180 degrees at a stop sign on a slope on the ice. When I got there, the front wheel was hanging over a culvert in mid air and a rear wheel was 2 feet off the ground. Two hours, one policeman and one tow truck later she was home and dry and none the worse for wear, except for the whining about how she blew most of her check on the tow truck. This is her first winter to do a lot of driving on the ice.

I was watching the German Bundesliga this morning and heard Allen Hopkins refer to the recent Super Bowl as "Super Bowl 34C". I don't know if that was original, but it was certainly better than my "Great Breast Escape."

I guess that's about it for now. I've been too busy working on some projects for work to really think about anything else, so I'm going to go take a mental vacation and watch the English Premier League match that comes on in a couple of minutes.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Sunday, February 08 2004 12:51:45 PM

Culturally disadvantaged
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I don't read paper newspapers any more. I used to subscribe, but I got tired of the hassle and expense and with the internet, there is so much more available, so much faster, and in so much more detail that I finally gave up. The problem is that I tend to focus on legislative issues this time of year and I have my bookmarks set to the legislature sections of the on-line sources I check regularly. While that is good for me when I'm concentrating on monitoring the legislature, it is a rather narrow focus.

I've also mentioned (here for example) that I don't watch American football. I realize that is near heresy in America, but I just can't deal with the format. The game itself is fine, I just can't stand the packaging. Anyway, I didn't watch the Super Bowl.

(I will pause here for the gasps of disbelief to subside.)

And since I haven't had time to watch TV this week, I didn't find out about the Super Bowl halftime goings-on until yesterday after I had posted my entry. Wow. I missed the Great Breast Escape. I feel deprived. My personal and cultural growth may have been stunted. I've been unable to weigh in with timely witty comments. I am the laughingstock of other bloggers. My self esteem and reputation have suffered irreparable harm. Surely I should not have to suffer like this. I want to make sure it never happens again. And, because I don't want anyone else to suffer in the future, I'm contacting my representative to have him introduce a bill in the legislature to make it mandatory for all Kansans to watch the Super Bowl. I think a misdemeanor for the first offense, felony for subsequent offenses, with a referral to the Justice Department upon conviction, for investigation for un-American activities. And in a sub-section of the law, willfully preventing a minor from watching the Super Bowl would be classified as child abuse. Hey, we have to start somewhere building a sense of self-esteem and patriotism in our friends and neighbors and especially in their children, don't we?

Well, no we don't. And although this is even sillier than my Butter Police rant from yesterday, this is the way well-meaning, good-intentioned busy-bodies think: Someone is being harmed, we should do something about it, we can do something about it, let's pass a law. The problem is that a lot of these ideas seem good on the surface. (In reference to the Georgia "no smoking in closed cars with children law) It is hard to argue for children riding around in smoke-filled vehicles. The problems are almost always in the enforcement. Would the 3 inches I used to crack my window when driving and smoking (with or without Rat Jr. in the car) be sufficient for the purposes of the law? (I know it makes the car damn cold in the winter and provides more than enough ventilation to suck the second-hand smoke out of vehicle, but is there a way to measure the amount of second-hand smoke in an open car reaching a passenger?) And at what level would the smoke be considered acceptable? 4 inches, 5 inches? wide open? All windows wide open? What if in an open convertible, the air flow pattern takes the smoke into the passenger's face? At what point do the automobile emissions and diesel smoke blowing in through the open windows become more of a health hazard than the cigarette smoke we are trying to protect Billy and Suzy from in the first place. And you know there are nicotine junkies out there who would, in the dead of winter, crank all the windows open, put Jr. in two parkas, a sleeping bag, and three quilts and just smoke like a chimney anyway. (Putting Jr. in two parkas, a sleeping bag, and three quilts is actually a good idea anyway, as it muffles the little rug rat screams and lets you concentrate on driving. Or so I'm told...)

The point is that we can't protect everyone from everything. Sensible people don't coop their kid up in a car that has enough smoke in it to look like any van from a Cheech and Chong movie. (That, of course, begs the question of whether sensible people smoke in the first place.) But not all people are sensible. The mindset of the people that want to mind my business is built on the idea of human perfectibility. If we just keep working on it, eventually humans will be more considerate, healthier, less violent, etc, etc. etc. These people take their idea of what people should be (which is rather surprisingly often very much like themselves) and try to convince me that I should be like them. And when that doesn't work (did I mention my contrarian streak?) they try to tax, regulate, limit or outlaw the behavior they don't like in an effort to make me a better person.

My problem with this mindset is that 1) I don't necessarily believe I need to be a better person, 2) if I do think I need to be a better person, I usually don't agree with what "they" think being a better person would entail, and 3) I definitely don't believe in the perfectability of humans.

I think that last one is the big one. Let's assume for a moment that making people be "better people" through pressure, threats and legal coercion was a good thing to do. Let's also assume (play along, here) that we could all agree on what "better people" and their behavior would look like. If humanity is not inherently perfectable, then the whole effort to make people be "better" is just an exercise in forcing your preferences and style on me. I wholeheartedly reject that idea. It seems to run counter to the idea of my right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

So, if that means we should put up with the occasional in-bred hick tooling around town, smoking a pack of Lucky Strikes with the windows rolled up and Jim Bob, Jr. in the car, well, that's ok by me. (Don't write nasty mail. I am not in any way, shape, or form trying to imply that all Georgians smoke Luckies...) I think that is a small price to pay for the government staying out of my life, and yours as well.

(Disclaimer: It was a joke. Not all Georgians are in-bred hicks. And yes, I realize there is another slippery-slope argument here that goes the other way: If you are ok with "abusing" (not my first choice of word, but the one "they" would certainly choose for its emotional baggage) children with smoke, is it ok to spank them with your hand? If that's ok, what about with a belt or a hairbrush? If that's ok, what about whipping them with a stick? If that's ok, what about beating them regularly because it's good for them? And so on. And no, I'm not going to tackle that argument tonight)

Truth in Advertising Disclaimer: I have often included notes about my personal involvement in the things I write so my readers can judge the extent to which my personal biases might be involved. So here it is for this story: I am a cigarette, cigar, and pipe-smoking, gun-loving, fat middle-aged white guy. Make of it what you will.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Thursday, February 05 2004 10:46:40 PM

Butter Police
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More snow today, although not as much as predicted, but it has been a mess at work. I've been catching bits and pieces of the news here and there. The Democrats who are left seem to be competing to see who is the best "Not-Bush". Whoever wins should probably use that song about "Not-Bush City Limit" as their campaign theme song. (Oh, wait. That was Nutbush, wasn't it. Sorry about that. Like I mentioned before, I often have a hard time with song lyrics.)

I've previously written about the budget problems the Kansas legislature is facing this time. It appears a forgone conclusion that they are going to have to raise taxes. In the middle of all that, someone thinks it would be a good idea to spend money to legislate healthier eating habits. OK. That's not quite true. They want to spend money to try to influence us to eat better. I'm just thrilled that we can't find anything better to do with my money that to tell me I'm not eating right. I know I'm not eating right.

This is one of those examples of people who don't have anything better to do trying to spend my money to make me a better person. I resent that. Frankly, I'm reasonably happy with who and what I am, and if at some point I decide I'm not, then I will take, of my own volition, whatever steps I personally feel are appropriate. I do not need someone with no life of their own and whose only hobby is minding other people's business to make those decisions for me. It's sort of like smoking. When I was young, they banned tobacco advertising on TV. Now I am bombarded by anti-tobacco "Public Service" announcements about how bad smoking is and how evil the tobacco companies are (during which I feel obligated to light up, even if I wasn't planning to have another cigarette). Then, someone bans smoking in public buildings. Then, someone bans smoking in private. Surely not, you say? Try Georgia, where they are considering a bill which would make it illegal to smoke in your car if you have a child in the car with you, unless you have the windows rolled down.

So I'm watching these busy-bodies in Topeka drool all over themselves at the thought of spending my money to tell folks to improve their eating habits and it all becomes clear. We start this "Public Service" campaign. It won't take nearly as much, because we've been softened up by years of anti-tobacco propaganda. Then we ban certain kinds of food in cafes and diners because it is bad for you. Then we make it illegal to super-size your fries. Then we make it illegal under any circumstances to feed certain foods to children. Then, using their newly acquired police powers gained under the provisions of the Patriot Act IX, the Butter Police break into your home and arrest you for child abuse because you fed junior a fudgesicle.

OK, its a far-fetched and poorly written example of the "slippery-slope" argument, but even so, it doesn't mean I have to be happy about spending money that needs to go somewhere else on a campaign to make us all better people.

It occurs to me that this is more rant-like than I had intended. Perhaps I'm just cranky because I'm hungry. I guess I'll go downstairs and have a cigarette while I fix myself some hot links smothered in barbecue sauce. While its still legal...

by Cziltang 
Posted: Wednesday, February 04 2004 08:27:36 PM

The Truth, or something like it
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The relationship of political speaking to truth is complex, although not close.

P.J. O'Rourke, (Jan/Feb 2004 issue of Atlantic Monthly)

I got my hands on my father's copy of the Atlantic Monthly the other day (one of the perks of being related to someone with eclectic reading habits). I was pleased to find an article by P.J. O'Rourke entitled "Speaking of the Candidates." It is not, unfortunately, available in the on-line version of the Atlantic. There is available an article by Kenneth M. Pollack called "Spies, Lies and Weapons: What went Wrong?" I've only had time to skim through the article, but it appears to be worth a read. And, if I get a chance tomorrow, I may try to make some comments.

Getting a chance may be a bit of a problem. We've had a lovely weekend here in the Ratlands. Saturday was freezing drizzle. Today was rain, freezing rain, sleet and now snow. The last I saw, the snow is likely to continue all night. Not that this is a blizzard or anything. We probably don't have more than a couple of inches on the ground. The problem is that we only get measurable snow two or three times a year and folks around here don't really learn to drive in it. (This is compounded by the proliferation of SUV's. People just don't seem to understand that while 4 wheel drive will help you go in the snow, it can't do squat to make you stop. Especially if you've been blowing people's doors off at 60 mph on a snow-packed highway. Did I mention that my favorite winter sport is hunting for luxury SUV's with their front end buried in a drift in a ditch?)

Anyway, days like today (and tomorrow is likely to be) cause a number of problems at work, so its likely to be a long one.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Sunday, February 01 2004 11:15:26 PM