aubreyturner.org

I saw a circular in today’s paper with one of my pet peeves in huge type (it was a full page ad).  I can’t stand it when people use the contraction “it’s” (it is) when they really intend to use the possessive “its”.  Unfortunately, many people don’t seem to realize when they’re doing it.

Some other pet peeves are using “your” for “you’re” and “then” for “than”.

Just did my taxes.  I have to pay an extra $250 (it would have been worse except for some stock losses) in addition to the extortionately large sum that had already been stolen from my paychecks (I won’t reveal the exact amount, but it’s a five-digit number), so I’m going to be in a poor mood for a while.  I don’t want to hear any crap from Democrats about tax cuts right now.  I’ll be inclined to ram my fist down their throats.

A Lewisville man got himself killed in a road-rage incident that he apparently started by repeately ramming another vehicle:

“It started as an apparent road rage incident,” Officer Burson said. “A man told us he was stopped at a red light at Dallas Drive and Teasley Lane. He said the Jeep showed up in the next lane and sped off toward the interstate. He was in the right lane and moved to the left lane and got in behind the Jeep so he could enter the interstate. The Jeep driver slammed on his brakes, and he took evasive action to avoid colliding. The other driver said he wound up in front of the Jeep.”

The Jeep driver sped up and rammed his car repeatedly on the interstate, the other driver told police.

“He took the exit by Tia’s [Tex-Mex restaurant] and the Jeep rammed him with enough force that their bumpers locked up,” Officer Burson said. “He was trying to brake, and the Jeep was pushing him. He accelerated and broke loose.”

The vehicles moved southbound on the service road in front of the Black-Eyed Pea restaurant, the officer said.

“He felt that the Jeep was ready to ram him again. He slammed on his brakes. The Jeep tried to sideswipe him, missed, and went into the ditch The Jeep went airborne and hit Frenchy’s van head-on,” Officer Burson said.

For those not from the Denton area, Frenchy’s is a local lawn service company which uses big orange vans.  They frequently leave the vans in various parking lots across town as advertisements.

This news is not very comforting:

Severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, has prompted officials in Asian countries to enforce little-used quarantine laws, close schools and impose new health screenings on travelers. Closer to home, health experts suspect a second case of SARS has been identified in Collin County.

The first case was diagnosed about 12 days ago, and the other came to the health department’s attention on Friday. In the first case, the infected man recently traveled to Hong Kong, and is believed to have brought SARS home. The second case is a mystery.

“We know that there is no known link with the first man,” said county spokesperson Leigh Hornsby.

There is little danger to the public, because both infected men are quarantined in their own homes.

“These persons are in their homes, they’re wearing masks, they’re not venturing out into the public,” Hornsby said. “If there’s any type of venturing out, it’s to see their physician. Their family members who don’t live within the household aren’t even visiting them. So there are so many precautions that are being taken at this point.”

Later on, the article points out that it is now believed that the virus can live for several hours on surfaces (like doorknobs and elevator buttons).  That’s just great—now I’m going to be paranoid about touching anything.

I also find it interesting that they haven’t found any link between the two people who are infected.  It makes me wonder if there isn’t someone else out there who doesn’t know he or she has it and is spreading it around.  It’s a little worrysome, because Collin County adjoins Denton County on the east, and many people who live in Collin County work in Dallas and the surrounding areas.

Over the years I’ve felt a great deal of frustration at the goings-on of our government.  I paid many thousands of dollars a year in taxes, yet it often seemed that my voice was not being represented.  In fact, my viewpoint was often the subject of ridicule among the chattering classes who felt that they knew better than me how to spend my money and run my life.  I know that many other people also feel this way, as evidenced by the explosion of talk radio and libertarian and conservative weblogs.

But despite my anger at being ignored and marginalized, I never lashed out at anyone or became violent, and neither did my fellow travellers on this road.  At our hearts, we’re law-abiding and orderly folk and would prefer to live without making a lot of waves (which, not so coincidentally, is why we fight so hard against what we consider to be bad legislation).

Why am I bringing this up?  Well, the anti-war crowd seems to be very frustrated at losing the debate over this war.  Rather than suck it up and work through legitimate channels, they are engaging in destructive and violent behavior (exactly the kind of thing they accuse us of at every chance they get). 

What really ticks me off about this crowd is that the rest of us are having to pay for their tantrums through our taxes (and insurance).  Worse still are those college students who are wasting our money by walking out and disrupting classes.  If I’m going to be forced to pay for their damn education, then they can at least do me the courtesy of being grateful for that education by taking advantage of the chance they’ve been given.  If they’re so unhappy with America, then they can give up their slot to someone else who deserves it.  After all, why take money from someone you hate?

I want some of what the Iraqi government people are smoking.  Whatever it is, it must be some damn good stuff, if they think we’ll believe crap like this…

Iraq’s foreign minister said if coalition troops keep fighting, “they will burn in the desert.”

“America and Britain have no choice but to surrender and withdraw,” Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said Monday. “They will not leave our land safe and sound if they continue to be stubborn in their aggression. We will confront them with all we have … No one will be safe.”

It must be nice to have your own personal reality distortion field.

Better now, though I was going through withdrawal symptoms there for a while, since the *$%^#@$ cable modem went down around 6:00 and just came back up.  Argh!

No, I’m not referring to the addlepated “peace” protesters, but that foul fowl know as the grackle.  I spent a significant amount of time outside yesterday cleaning up the yard and mowing.  I have a bad habit of ignoring the back yard area during the winter, so I had a lot of leaves and junk built up back there.  As I was bagging the leaves (which was no mean feat, given the winds we had yesterday), I didn’t give much thought to the fact that I was standing under a big tree.  Or at least I didn’t until I noticed something odd on my jacket.  One of those filthy little buggers up in the tree had dropped a little gift for me.

Let’s just say that I was less than thrilled.  It’s lucky (for the bird, anyway), that Denton has this pesky little ordinance about discharging firearms in the city limit, or that bird would have been reduced to a fine red mist and a cloud of feathers floating on the wind.  I briefly contemplated a silent attack using my high-powered assault slingshot, but my temper cooled before doing anything rash.

I saw this article at Rachel Lucas’s site last night, but my internet access went down before I had a chance to write about it myself.

I have zero sympathy and zero tolerance for anyone who accosts a member of our armed services or anyone related to them.  It’s not “speech”, it’s not “dissent”, and it’s damn sure not patriotic.  The actions of these subhuman vermin are anti-American and dispicable, verging on traitorous.

I just hope that I never see anyone try this in front of me.

Emperor Misha has his own take on this.

I am being frustrated by cable modem outages.  You don’t realize how much you use it until it doesn’t work.  The system has been going down randomly for the past few days, usually in the evenings. 

But I experienced a power-related cable modem outage this morning.  We had a very short power outage this morning (just one or two seconds).  Whenever the power takes a hit, I have to force a DHCP lease renewal before my internet connection will work again.  Since my router and cable modem are protected by my UPS, it makes me suspect that Charter doesn’t have a backup power supply on their headend.