El Gringoqueño

I’ve come to the conclusion that the Operating System is irrelevant, that the base that allows a computer to be useful no longer can or will be a primary focus.  I arrived at this conclusion after having Laura’s computer completely die.  Lately, she’s been using her old Windows 98 machine while I figure out what I’m going to do.  

Yesterday I set up X windows for her under Cygwin on Windows 98 so she would have access to her Linux desktop on the terminal server. 

X -query 192.168.1.3

and voilá there’s her desktop as if she’d never left it.  I thought it was cool, but I started wondering, why would she need that?  She’s got her OpenOffice under Windows 98, she’s got her jabber instant messenger client.  She uses Firefox which doesn’t care what it runs on.  She doesn’t use Gimp very often, but it’s there too.  I can even install Inkscape if she should desire it.  In short, I can’t think of, and neither can she, a single reason to use her Linux desktop.  All the infrastructure stuff runs on the Linux server: the webserver, database server, filesharing server, access controls, filters, and whatnot.  The email is accessed via IMAP so you can use webmail, or Outlook, or Thunderbird, or Outlook Express, or Evolution, or Kmail.  Anything you can dream up and it’s all synchronized.  It all works seamlessly with Windows or Linux or Macintosh.  All her documents and images are completely divorced from whatever lies beneath, normally ready to strike and swallow up your precious data.  Call it a reinforced hull so you don’t end up being fish food.

For myself, I am happy with my Linux environment.  I do not like Windows XP or any of its ilk.  It’s a personal choice, not an indictment on which is inherently better.  You may like XP.  I may like Linux.  Both seem to run Free Software just fine, and make the issue mostly about personal taste or comfort.  For example, I like the way my apps behave in Linux.  I like my kpovmodeler front-end to Povray.  I like Quanta for some webwork.  I like vim for programming and webwork.  I like GIMP for graphics work.  I like xmms as my music player.  I use K3B as my dvd/cd burner (I love it).  I use Scribus for desktop publishing.  But I guess for me the ONLY killer app is the bash shell… which once again is available as part of Cygwin, so I guess it’s a non-issue.

You see?  It doesn’t matter anymore and I like it that way.

The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
– H.L. Mencken

Jesus said, "Dude, relax.  It’s not about all this, even though it is.  Look, it’s hard to explain, but you gotta lose yourself to find yourself.  You’ve gotta give up your salvation to get it.  But you know that it shouldn’t be your aim, and believe me I can tell.  I’ve got this omniscience thing going on.  Do you run up and help the homeless guy because he’s ‘Jesus’?  I get that a lot, and I’m all like, ‘Dude, you’ve got eyes, right?  He’s not me.’  No, I’m right here.  He is a child of mine, though, and I’d appreciate it if you’d help him out but not for me, though.  No no.  It’d be great if you could help him out for him.  Know what I’m sayin’?  It’s kinda like that for most things.  I’m not all into this mysticism thing.  Dad put the universe together to be internally consistent.  It doesn’t violate any rules.  Stuff doesn’t just magically happen.  There’s a process. Dad’s big on process.  In fact, he got a little carried away with process, and that’s why he sent me.  Had to get back in touch with humanity. 

Anyway, where was I?  Oh, yeah, Fear.  Fear is probably the toughest thing I’ve ever had to deal with, both what I experienced, and what I observed in all of you.  Fear is just the worst.  It binds up your hearts in ways that you couldn’t imagine.  You see, I don’t want you to live like that.  Fear really just makes me sad.  It’s really hard for me to see people wanting so bad to save themselves that they forget to love, forget to put themselves out there for others.  All they want to do is connect to me, worship me, all the while hitting each other with that book.  I’ve got mixed feelings about that book, btw.  It’s not like I don’t get into it, but I understand the limitation that people have trying to describe life-changing events, changes in direction that come with a profound, transforming, life-altering, some say mystical revelation.  I understand that it’s tough to put it down on paper, so I empathize.  But some of it is just so wrong.  All that stuff about retribution and fire and brimstone - water to wine (I mean, geez, it was there all along, but they had to do the whole, Oh look Jesus turned water to wine.  It was really embarrassing. Yikes).

Anyway, so you’ve got these people who are fearful hitting each other with this book like that’s going to solve something.  Then you’ve got these other people who are afraid to speak my name for fear of being labeled ‘one of them.’  I empathize with that too.  Humans like to bottle up these magnificent soaring attributes of faith, love, devotion, and service into valuable commodities that they can own and keep away from others, thereby increasing their perceived value (I picked that up in a business class I took a while back).  So you hoard your little trinkets hoping upon hope that they will appreciate and then you’ll have something of value that your neighbor might not have.  Of course the root of all this is that you’re afraid that your future isn’t secure, that your faith might not be the right one, that you’re on the wrong path.  By increasing the quantity of like-minded individuals in your little "group" you increase your value.  I like to call it Amway Christianity. 

Sigh, Dad and I got a good laugh out of that one, but I digress. 

So we pre-package up all this magnificent stuff into these little bundles.  Let’s call them words and symbols… or better yet, let’s call them gangs.  Yeah, I like that.  So you’ve got this quasi-believer, somebody who’d fallen away from the faith.  Let’s call him an agnostic.  He just feels uncomfortable about all these gang symbols.  He’s doesn’t want to get gunned down in enemy territory, so he uses safe words like "mojo" or my personal fav "may good thoughts be with you."  Jesus! (can I say that?) just say I’ll pray for you, it’s not gonna kill you, and anyway that’s what good thoughts are.  Sigh, no really it’s all good. 

I don’t care what color you wear, or what you call prayer, good thoughts, or mojo.  I know what you intend, and what’s more important, I hear ya, dude.  Don’t matter what you call yourself, whether you don’t like Jesus freaks (actually that’s our team name for a little basketball league we put together up here… really does a number on the opposition) ’cause you’re afraid or whether you don’t like gays and hippies because you’re afraid, because they are subverting society and the sanctity of marriage.  I know, and it’s okay.  But I’ve got to say it just one more time in the hopes that it will sink in.  I made you all (look, if it makes you feel better that you just sprang into existence, that is perfectly okay with me as long as you’re not afraid).  Better a courageous agnostic than a craven Christian, I always say.  But you know I’m always rooting for that craven soul, that lost, fearful, small little mustard seed.  I keep saying, grow little seed, grow.  Encompass the world.  Show me what you can do.  When you screw up - and you will - I don’t go all retribution like.  I keep hoping upon hope that you’ll put it together and make the shot.

And finally, I don’t fear that you’ll fail.  You will.  I know that each life lived is an opportunity.  It’s your chance to grow that mustard seed of a spirit you have.  Whatever you do with it is your choice, but I’d like to see you really come alive out there. 

Hey, this has gone on longer than I intended. Sorry about that.   What do we do, you ask?   Okay, here it is, but don’t tell anyone you got this from me.  We’re big on the whole "figuring it out yourself thing" around here.  Chalk it up to Dad’s whole "process is important" thing.  Whatever. 

Whatever light you have that you use on yourself is wasted.  Whatever gift you have that you don’t share with others to help them out is wasted.  There’s this cool little story that I heard a bit back.  In hell (which doesn’t actually exist, but after hearing this, we’re thinking about putting one in just to see if this would actually happen), inhabitants stand with their hands tied to a six foot spoon over a pit of food.  The inhabitants are in a perpetual state of hunger because they can’t feed themselves.  In heaven (and this is the part I love) it’s the same deal, except no one goes hungry.  Everybody feeds each other with their spoons.  I don’t know if it’s because they’re less dumb or less selfish.  I suspect the latter.   That’s it.  That’s all there is. 

Peace out."

 

Olaia is just the funniest character.  She has a hilarious sense of humor.  This morning she came into the bedroom complete with melodramatic booming voice wearing a Spider-Man glove.

"James O’Malley, I am here to announce that it is time to get up.  And Xiaolin Showdown is starting in a few minutes.  Your presence is requested.  You see my Spider-Man glove?  That’s neat, huh?"

"Haha, you are a funny girl."  She turned a bright shade of red, snickering and bashful.  I love that little girl and her accents.  She does a lot of different voices.  She is a little girl after my own heart.

There is method in the madness that is American politics.  Among all the posturing, partisan rhetoric, back-biting, and power struggles, there are some basic truths that I think have been forgotten through it all.

The US Gubment is broken down into three branches.  The Executive branch executes, that is, enforces laws, makes priorities and sets the tone.  The Legislative branch makes the laws according to the will of the people.  They are a body that represents a cross section of age, class, and culture.  They write the plan so to speak.  The Judicial branch is the final say through it all with the US Constitution and judicial precedent as its authority.

Think of the three branches as the hands on a clock.  The Executive, transient and ever changing with the whim of the people, is the second hand.  The Legislative, more measured less fickle, its movement almost imperceptible, is the ticking of minutes.  The Judiciary, conservative and lumbering is the ever steady indication of hours.

The President can effect change only through executive order or policy insomuch as it doesn’t break any laws.  Executive orders, such as a policy on gays in the military, may be removed with a stroke of one man’s pen.  Policy changes of that type could possibly change every four years.  Gays are in, gays are out.  The President can also decide which laws are important or not.  The business of the Federal Government is such that not all laws are enforceable.  Where are our priorities.  For one President it might be social services.  For another it might be immigration.  They are transient and subject to rapid change.  We have a saying back in Missouri.  If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes.  The same goes for Presidents.

Why is the President such an important figure?  One: there is only one.  Two: in the big scheme of things seconds are important because they are the only thing that happens right now.

The Legislative branch is a slower beast.  If you look close enough at it, you can just barely see its movement.  Like VH-1’s retrospectives of the 70’s etc. you can only see how silly you were given the shift of a decade.  So it is with the Legislative branch.  It is made up of young and old, male and female, different cultures, different socio-economic classes, and political ideologies.  It is hard to get them to cooperate, to find an issue upon which they can all agree.  When they do, you can bet with a reasonable amount of certainty that it is the will of the people. 

And, damnit, I like it that way.  I want my Legislature to be slow, not too efficient, not too unified, not too smart.  I want them to reflect us, and our spirit is pretty constant - at least over the decades.  Change is good, but changing too quickly is disruptive.

The Judiciary has been in the news recently.  Conservatives decry "activist judges" as violating the constitution by forgetting their place as the creeping hours of the day.  I actually agree, but not for the reasons conservatives say.  Conservatives only complain when activist judges are doing things contrary to their wishes.  There are numerous "activist judges" with political and social agendas who run with the conservative posse.  These are the judges who proudly display the Ten Commandments in the courtroom and let religious or cultural values flavor their decisions.  Defendant living in sin?  Well perhaps you will not be looked upon as favorably. 

Frankly, I think most judges do the right thing though.  Teri Shiavo?  Mr. Judge says, "Sorry, doesn’t matter what my personal feelings are on this matter, and for the record, I don’t personally agree with the husband’s decision.  But according to Florida law, upheld by other courts and passed by the Florida legislature, this woman’s fate has already been decided by her legal guardian."  That’s it folks.  There’s no activism there.  I’m just a judge, he would say.  I don’t enforce laws.  I don’t make laws.  But I make sure that when I take that brick and place in in the construction of history it fits and will stand the test of time.  It has to fit with the other bricks.  It has to hold up to the specifications written by the building’s designers.  That’s a lot to do on its own.  I’m not interested in activism.  Leave that to the politicians.  I’m a curator.  I am the slow hand of time, sweeping deliberately ever forward.  You can build on that.  Do we have flaws?  Sure we do.  There where some gaping holes and errors in our decisions throughout the years, some of which took until 1963 to fix, but only because some judges, and I’m not naming names, Taney… ahem, couldn’t stop being activists, beholden to special interests.

Take this example.  This is the opinion and decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Scott v. Sandford case.

The Supreme Court dismissed the suit on jurisdictional grounds. Chief Justice Taney explained that the parties were not citizens of different states because the Constitution did not consider blacks to be citizens. The Chief Justice also added that the Missouri Compromise, which prohibited slavery and involuntary servitude in certain parts of the Louisiana Territory, violated the Fifth Amendment because it deprived slaveowners of their property without the due process of law.

Now that’s activism.  The US Constitution never said blacks weren’t citizens.  That fact is a convenient assumption based on the current values of the day.   He goes further to decide that blacks are not only not citizens, but neither are they people.  They are property, and as such the rights of property owners are protected by the Constitution.  Yikes.  That’s some activism sure enough, activism for slave owners.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."  Eventually slavery as a legal practice with the sanctioning authority of the Judiciary of these United States was abolished.

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

The only problem with the 13th Amendment was that it was not a court decision. Maybe if there had been fewer activist judges in the land during the 19th century, we wouldn’t have had to write this thing. Hello? All men are created equal? These are men. Are they equal? End of story.

But I digress.  The judiciary should not be subject to the whims of current thinking.  They must be of studied character, dispassionate, and moreover taken to, at any time and in any situation, question everything they have ever believed or known.  All assumptions must be abolished and the building reconstructed piece by piece slowly and deliberately, like the slow moving hour hand. 

Or I could be wrong.  I dunno.

Why oh why is the world like this? I was listening to the bizarre account of the two little girls who where stabbed in Illinois. The suspect/culprit is the father of one of the two. How could it be? How could a person become so enraged that they would kill their own child. Obviously the answer is that this person is broken, a broken human, aberrated and twisted by a lifetime of apathy, violence, and despair.

What is it about our society that crafts these wackos? They are works of beautiful twisted art, perfectly shaped from babes to fulfill their seeming lifelong purpose to go out in a blaze of violence and destruction.

Remember the runaway bride? It was so long ago now, and I don’t give a crap what her name was, I don’t even remember much about her particular case. It is lost to me lo these many days. What I do remember of the incident was that I’m sure she was mad at somebody. There was anger, displaced resentment against, I can only imagine, her parents and their relentless pressure for her wedding to be perfect, her husband to be perfect, for her to be perfect. She had been arrested and convicted twice for shoplifting. Her family was wealthy, upstanding, but they’d demoralized her, belittled her, drove her insane with their control, her church’s control, her community’s control. "LEAVE ME ALONE!" She acted out in the only way she didn’t know how. She flailed and writhed to cause them pain in the way that gave her control. I want to hurt them, she screamed to herself. She didn’t care about consequences. She was not thinking. She just wanted to hurt them because it was the only thing that she felt she could do.

Fight or flight. Let’s do both, shall we?

So back to Zion, Illinois. Let’s paint a picture of this guy Mr. Hobbs and his life. He was born into poverty, possibly lower middle class. His parents struggled all their lives. Dad was an abusive type. He worked long hours at a menial job. He resented his lot in life… these damn kids, this damn job, and his meager life of anonymity. So he drank. The alcohol helped him not care. When he’d smack his son around, he didn’t feel a thing. Damn kids, clean up your goddamned room! Pick this shit up! Your mother’s too soft on you. And he’d whack ‘em, whack ‘em good. When he wasn’t hitting his kids he was just gone.

Sooner or later, Jerry started getting into trouble in school. First he’d just pick on those littler than himself. He was the classic troubled bully. As he got older, he got into more and more trouble with the authorities, both school and otherwise. He dropped out of school.

You should be able to figure out the rest from here. When he got into a dispute with anyone or anything, he lost it. He’d start lashing out with whatever was handy. He didn’t care. His rage flooded his senses, brought back his powerlessness. Somewhere deep down he remembered the lessons of his father.

They are bringing it on themselves. Bitch doesn’t listen to me. She’s a fucked up bitch, telling me what to fucking do.

She screams that she’ll kick him out, or she’ll leave him, or call the police. She used that threat a lot. She used it like a blunt object. I’ll call the fucking police, she screamed.  She doesn’t deserve to be treated this way, she’d say.

Goddamnit… treat HER this way. What about how you’re sucking the life out of me. You - you’re doing this to ME, fuck you, bitch, I don’t give a fuck how you feel you deserve to be treated. You’re a whore and bitch, and - and.

He was cooling down in county lockup. He wasn’t so enraged now. The bruises from his tussle with the cops who responded to the domestic disturbance were starting to throb. Four of them had piled on. They seemed to take pleasure is roughing him up. "Hit a woman, didcha, tough guy. You’re a big fucking tough guy, hittin’ a woman. You hit kids too?" He rubbed his shoulder where they’d wrenched his arm high up on his back in a chicken wing. They’d clubbed him in the kidneys too. Damn, that hurt. He couldn’t sit comfortably. Was he still mad? He hurt, but he’d calmed down. It was out of his hands now. Remorse started to creep in. Damn it, he didn’t mean to lose control. She was just - doin’ it again. A twinge of rage lit off like a spark plug.

He was sentenced to 18 months in state prison. This was the final straw. The judge could see where this was going. This guy needed to know that society was serious and that he’d done wrong. Justice decided that he spend some time outside of the boundaries of society, an adult time out, so to speak.

Jerry, fully intended to change his ways. He thought about it every day. He wrote crudely spelled sentiments to his wife. He loved her and looked forward to turning it around. He saw all the good in his life. It was modest, but they had a little house, a beautiful daughter, and he could always get some work. It’s not like they needed much.

The day came that Jerry had waited for. Here was his big chance to start over, to take control of his life and live it. His wife accepted him with open arms. She’d fallen in love all over again, mostly. Jerry, it seemed, was a new man with a new outlook.

Mother’s Day 2005

"Jerry, don’t worry about it. It’s okay. It’s Mother’s Day. I don’t want to fight about this. I’ll punish her tomorrow. Can’t we just have a special day without yelling?"

"No, she took that money, she’s got to answer for it. I won’t have any daughter of mine growing up a thief."

"Look, can we just drop it?"

Little Laura pranced out the front door with a nahnahnah to greet her friend and scamper off to play. There it was again. His blood began to boil. She’d sassed him. They’d all sassed him, made him feel powerless., revealed his impotence. Nahnahnah, there’s nothing you can do, you stupid son-of-a-bitch with your limp dick and ugly face, they seemed to say. His face twisted up almost unrecognizably and he charged out after her. I’m going to drag her back to the house by her hair if I have to. She’s not going to get away with this. I’m the man around here. She’s the kid. She’s got to listen to me. He flew down onto the path where the two girls were laughing and giggling. "Come here," he yelled. "You’re going home."

"Mom, said I could go out," she retorted.

"I say you can’t, now get over here."

"I’m not coming and you can’t make me. Mom said I could stay out. Leave us alone." and the girls turned to leave.

First he slapped her, then grabbed her hair and threw her down. Her friend had a small pocket knife and stabbed at Jerry to protect her friend. She didn’t know any better. She thought she was protecting her like on TV. A knife?! raged Jerry’s mind. You’d try to stick me with a knife you little bitch. What the fuck kind of parents do you have. And he grabbed her wrist twisting it unnaturally. She yelped in pain as Jerry snatched the knife and stabbed it back at her. Stick me, will you! He slashed and slashed and slashed. His daughter’s horrified face looked to him like contempt. SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!! He silenced her disdain. That’ll teach her.

As soon as it was over, the rage left him and the weight of what he’d done came down. It was only a matter of time, but he was strangely calm. It was all out of his hands now. He was free.