Twenty years ago I was tasked with cataloging a warehouse of carburetors. It was my first photography job and involved taking clearly identifiable carburetor portraits, matching them with their respective part numbers, and assembling the lot into a homemade scrapbook. Picture a family photo album, Monster Garage style. Like any novice, my results were mixed but generally just shy of acceptable. My employers very grudgingly agreed to pay for a couple of hours of training from a local professional photographer. An already weary, but still impressionable 18 year old, I didn’t know that my life and perception of the world was about to change.

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The most honest communications we encounter in daily life are often not meant for us. Exhibit “A” below is an example. Found in a bin of car parts at a dealership, the unassuming tag traveled all the way from Delaware to bring its message of hope. Against the backdrop of a flailing economy, fraudulent and mismanaged war, and outrageous gas prices, it seems a simple request. I hope the writer got his wish.

As I was growing up, Mom often told me that life is a constant repeat. How often she told me was usually a factor of how much I complained about doing some routine chore. As usual Mom was right. However, not all that comes back around is necessarily bad. My love of writing is one example. Now, I’ve rekindled my interest in learning a "real" computer programming language.

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When George Bush predicted Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee for President, he wasn’t just tipping his hat to her campaign prowess, or her unassailable plans to fix healthcare, Iraq, and any other number of societal ills. He was voicing the hopes of Republicans who share the vision of retaining the executive seat in the White House. One might even say he was trying to conjure her nomination into being. After all, no matter how many lies this administration tells, nor how dangerous the lies are, the sheeple still assemble to graze on the fetid crumbs that lead straight to Bush. If he predicted Mickey Mouse would be the nominee, shares in Disney stock would skyrocket. When most early polls predicted an eventual Clinton smackdown of Obama, many Republicans were ecstatic. Watching the current inter-Democratic bickering must have them buying new underwear by the case.

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I’m finally prepping the Vista lappie for a clean OS install. A Vista disk and 2 Gb stick of RAM are on the way — Woo! Hoo! I’m also trying to optimize and speed the machine up even more. I’ve once again left the Aero interface behind in favor of Vista Basic. Upward of 60 Meg of RAM was immediately released! Let’s see… modified index settings to minimize number of indexed locations, hacked registry to allow more than two simultaneous downloads, turned off Remote Differential Compression, disabled games I don’t play, and I ran disk cleanup.

The screencap below is from Disk Cleanup of my system drive. Notice the amount of space consumed by user and system error reports! This is a first for me. I never considered what happens to error reports, you know… the cryptic messages accompanying those annoying “This program has crashed would you like to send info to Microsoft?” screens. I assumed (incorrectly) that event reports might also be included in that ~ 6 Gb of space so I opened the event log (under “Performance Information and Tools–>Advanced Tools).

Let me say my hat’s off to MS for providing the mother of all information gathering tools. Every electron that moves inside your Windows machine is tagged, tracked, and described here. There’s some really useful information under the Microsoft/Windows section of Applications and Services Logs, including logs that track how long it takes your system to boot and shutdown to the millisecond. You can also learn what applications are slowing those processes down. I’ll continue to clean, strip, and tweak until RAM and Vista disc arrive.

What if they held a primary and no journalists showed up? Think for a second what incredible good could come from a thousand reporters suddenly vanishing. Not just the so-called liberal reporters or the jack-booted pen wielding apologists for the current DOTUS (Decider of the US), but all reporters. When the populace suddenly realized that Barack Obama’s being the first Black to win a presidential caucus is not news (merely historic), they would be forced to find entertainment elsewhere. More importantly, without the press around to interpret every word uttered, every poll taken, and tell us all who we’re voting for, we’d be forced to do the unthinkable.

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Clinton lied
No one died.
Clinton cried…
(insert answer here)

With the electronic ink still settling, major news organizations are calling Iowa for Obama and Huckabee. As arcane as this decrepit method of choosing a president is, I’m starting to feel that buzz. Everyone loves an underdog. Stopping the Clinton juggernaut by such a decisive margin is a victory worth savoring. Regardless of subsequent wins and losses, in some ways this will be the most important win for Obama. Tuck it away my friend. Put it in your pocket like saltines as you prepare for the stormier seas ahead.

I’ve been uncharacteristically withdrawn from the race so far. Tonight will most likely end my arm’s length appraisal of the candidates. It’s time to take an up close and serious look at my choices. More than ever, any winner will be a compromise. In some ways that fact befits a system that has compromised all of our ideals of what the leader of the free world should be. I mean if we truly deserve the government we get, exactly what the hell crime did we commit seven years ago? In any case, I’ll be watching the race more closely now.

Listen up YouTube tyrants, self-appointed “experts”, road rage advocates, haters in general, and other angrier than Hell types! I got a message for you.

You can all go straight to JustRage!

The tagline for this devil’s knockbox of ill will is “the internet anger sponge”. Like a sponge, the website’s demonic, orange-flamed background soaks up readers’ hate-filled invectives and regurgitates equally vituperative comments. The posts range from banal rants about traffic trespasses to accounts of abusive relationships and desperate family situations. The blog format shows comments instantly. No punches are pulled, no language is spared. Comic overtones from juvenile stabs of hyperbolic profanity soon give way to a menacing undercurrent of real anger. To its credit, the site also provides a sensible list of techniques to release that anger. Despite the slightly scoured, raw nerves the vitriolic prose at JustRage leaves you with, it’s undoubtedly saner than blowing away a bunch of strangers on a bus, or in science class. One astute poster named “anonymous” summarizes:

This is what this site is for,so we all don’t go kill.Hello!

Another year begins. At midnight, in a big ole American F*** You! to the Brady Bill, a handful of citizens in my predominantly black neighborhood abused their Constitutional right to bear arms. I think this January 1st set a record; a good fifteen minutes of mostly semiautomatic gunfire. It was notable not only for its duration, but in the sheer volume and variety of calibers used. I imagine the streetlights cast an eerie greenish glow through the pungent clouds of gunpowder. I imagine it only because I wasn’t stupid enough to poke my head outside as the boys in the hood did there best Gaza Strip impression.

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