Stonises in the Wind

So I went to the Drudge Report tonight, and was almost immediately sidetracked by an ad for a movie about cats. I watched the hour long presentation, which spent the lion's share of its time demonizing cats for killing other animals. Seriously.
I have never understood the hatred of cats that is so prevalent in society. These animals are not agressive. They kill other, smaller, animals. Animals that we used to realize were pests. Animals that eat our food and chew up all manner of other things, carry disease and destroy property.
I don't care if you like cats; they serve a purpose. Leave them alone. They won't attack you or your children. They will kill pests. We live with the rats and the mice and the squirrels and the rabbits. We make this mess. The cats are just there to clean up.
I've had to set and clean up mouse traps. That's really not fun: you never know when you're going to break a finger or contract a disease from the the lifeless squashed carcass that you now have to dispose of. Cats love killing. It is fun for them. What could be more perfect? It's almost as if someone set it up that way.*
What really drives me crazy is no one seems to have this figured out. You've got people who want to treat every cat like it's their personal pet, and then people who want to treat every cat like it just relieved itself in their luggage.
Which brings me to my next subject. I finally got back to Drudge, and I see a series of articles about some "cop" in Chicago claiming that gun laws are racist. I agree; gun laws are racist. In the city, where guns are illegal, only criminals have them and thus, the law-abiding people live in fear. How hard is that to figure out?
Then I read a story about some kid who was attacked by eight other kids at midnight, while he was going home. Besides the horrific nature of this event, what stuck in my mind was this: people were up in arms that the cops would be so useless as to allow this to happen. It's your neighborhood. You stop it. If you think the cops could, assuming that they even wanted to, stop crime in your neighborhood or any one else's, you are insane.
Then I read the Texas Speaker of the House didn't show up to sign a heroic bill to stop the TSA. He said that the bill was an "ill-advised publicity stunt." Making a stand for Constitutional Government is a publicity stunt? Joe Straus, you disgust me. Crawl back into whatever hole you came out of, and let someone with a sense of, if nothing else, shame replace you.
In conclusion I'd like to say... STOP TRYING TO CONTROL EVERYTHING! Let cats be cats, and guns go to whomever buys them. Let people move freely between states... with their clothes on. Let companies fail... and let them be founded. Let people drive home without being harassed by some fat, glorified tax-collector with a gun. Let people buy what they want, not what you think they should. Let people listen to what they want and read what they want and say what they want. In, short: Take care of your business, and stay out of everyone else's.

* Of course that's folly. We all know that everything is just a long string of coincidences, one rolling into the next.

When I was in high school, a teacher sued a couple students for defamation of character because of something the kids put on the internet. I found this absolutely ridiculous ten years ago and I am of the same mind today. As a teacher you should understand that your students are not all going to like you. They are kids. They are going to say mean things about you. If your psyche is too fragile to handle the attacks of petty pubescent teenagers, then you are in the wrong field.
Not too long ago I read a story about a teacher who got fired for writing some critical statements about students in a blog. I don't know if she's a good teacher, but I do know I'm sick of the world stopping every time someone gets their feelings hurt. I do think that teachers, being professionals, should be held to a higher standard than their students. However, someone went out of his or her way to find this blog and then associate the unnamed students with their descriptions. And it's not like she was just making fun of them. She was simply recounting her students own actions in what I'm sure was a therapeutic outlet. Because if you have to deal with those little brats, you need some way to cope. Besides, I don't really understand how describing what someone else does can be that offensive. It sounds like a problem with the student to me. That being said, I certainly had teachers that I knew didn't like me. I didn't go crying to the principal and try to get them fired. I continued living my life.

Love is not some magical force. We love what we choose to love. This is especially true in relationships, but it carries over into most everything. I like black coffee. I know it's bitter and I like that. I don't like bitter, but I'd rather taste the bitter than hide it with cream and sugar because everyone drinks coffee with a bunch of junk in it. I know very few people who drink their coffee black, but the whole time I was growing up I watched my dad drink black coffee. To me, its a measure of manliness and maturity and I make a point to flaunt my black coffee habits.
When I was a kid, I put ketchup on everything. Now I barely use it. I consider it a childish taste. I now love mustard; I used to avoid it like the plague, but again, I saw dad put it on everything. I'm sure there's more going on here than a desire to appear grown-up, but I'm also sure that it was and is a factor in my tastes.
Movies and books these days are fond of portraying all love as fated. That's ridiculous. I love stuff; not a lot of stuff, but there are a few items that mean a lot to me. I love a lot of music. I love reading and singing and quiet. I can't turn them all off at will, but I can control them. They're not all benevolent, and any love, save love for our Creator, can outgrow its place.

While we do have internet in Iraq, it's a precious commodity for most of us. I don't like spending a lot of time hogging resources; at the same time, I usually take my time writing posts. Worse, there's no real privacy and I am paranoid that someone is reading and judging me with every word I write. Finally, I have felt pressured to write something exceptional given my current circumstances and I haven't come up with any material to meet my standards. So, now I'm throwing standards out the window and doing my best to ignore the disquiet that grips me whenever I'm here, just long enough to explain why I haven't written anything. And now you know.