Thank You

Today is July 4, 2009. America is 233 years old and we are celebrating the anniversary of Her birth, so I would like to pause for a moment, between the tragedies and crises of the day to say a profound and heart-felt Thank You to the members of our past and present Military.

Thank you for understanding that there is something bigger than yourselves.

Thank you for doing what most of us cannot or would not...your sacrifice of time and physical abilities in the service of protecting our country.

Thank you for the fact that I, as a woman, can get an education, can drive, can have control over my daily life.

Thank you for defending our shores from hungry tyrants that would see us, as Americans and Westerners, on our knees in submission.

Thank you for ignoring the peaceniks and haters who would denigrate your service. We who are grateful see their ignominious behavior and are embarrassed for them.

Thank you for keeping America the "Home of the Free and the Brave," for you surely rank among them.

The Chinese have an interesting curse...."May you live in interesting times..." It seems that we do. Evidently we are poised on the brink of history, watching as it rolls over us, times that seem to challenge the very foundations of what liberty means to each and every one of us. Are we so soft and bloated and apathetic that we will allow the destruction of such a beacon of light in the dark and ugly world? Only time will tell, but for now, our nation is safe because of your sacrifice.

Sleep well, brothers and sisters in arms, I fear we will need your courage again in the not so distant future.

I Am a Virtual Shoe Whore

Since this is a blog with the word "confession" in the name, I'm going to do a little confessing. I am a virtual shoe whore.

I'm a shoe whore in real life too, but in virtual reality (aka, Second Life) you can have shoes that are impossible to have in the real world, because they would never hold your weight. They are 10 inch, spike heeled, ethereal works of primage that set my heart aflutter with a mere picture, let alone the real thing. Behold the Stiletto Moody shoe.

In virtual terms, Stiletto Moody is the Manolo Blahnik of Second Life shoes. Her shoes are walking works of art. As I write this, her rabid fans are waiting with bated breath and itchy fingers on the mouse for her sim's grand re-opening and several new styles. I can't wait. I intend to be the proud owner of at least one pair in each style. I'm quivering with anticipation.

Yes, Stiletto Moody shoes are probably the most expensive shoes in Second Life (her *Bare* styles with sculpted feet run L2300 per pair and L8k for a color set), but they are also the most technically advanced as well. They come with beautifully sculpted feet and toes, have tons of skin color and toenail color options, as well as prim toe rings, and they also come with a little prim bag that allows you to save the settings from one pair to another, and believe me, that's convenient! Second Life skins have such a broad range of texture colors, so it's very difficult, especially if you tend to wear different colored skins (as I do), to color one pair, let alone half a dozen. The little back up bag is great for storing your settings and recalling them at the click of a mouse, instead of spending a half hour trying to match your skin color every time you put a pair on. The new styles will also be featuring alot more toenail colors, as well as tattoos for your feet! Sounds very cool and I just can't wait to play with those menus!

I must also mention another shoe creator. She has the most amazing coloring system in her newest style of shoe, the Wow. 2408 Alexeev has worked her little virtual fingers to the bone and come up with a hud for her sculpted foot shoes that uses textures instead of a monochrome sculpted foot, using the standard SL coloring system. The difference in using textures on the sculpted foot, as opposed to the system that all the other creators use is that the foot does not become a chalky, yucky color in different sim lights. The textured foot never changes color, and 2408 has done her homework in matching pretty much any skin that comes down the road. Her shoes come with 2 huds, one for pastel tones, and one for other skin tones. You wear the hud that matches your skin the closest, then there are about 100 different shades to choose from...you select the one that comes closest to your skin. The shoes themselves are nice, but not quite as hot as the Stiletto Moodys, though I think this lady is still in her educational evolution (still learning to sculpt), so I think the appearance of her shoes will continue to develop. I have high hopes....

The King is Dead...Long Live the King

Michael Jackson is dead.

Called "the King of Pop" in his day, Michael Jackson has reached his ignoble end. Most of us knew it was coming, but like a train wreck, we couldn't look away. It's hard not to be ambivalent about his tragic demise, because on one hand, MJ had a huge influence on the popular culture of his day, not to mention his musical genius that leaves us with a huge body of work, spanning close to 40 years, and on the other hand, his life in the past 10 years was a freak show worthy of the heyday of Barnum and Bailey. I grew up with Michael Jackson. He's a year older than me, and I remember my love for the Jackson Five and their cutest member at the ripe old age of 12. I wanted to have his babies.....*sigh*

Both his life and the tragic quality of his death are certainly reminiscent of other mega-stars of their day....Elvis Presley coming to my mind almost immediately. Both stars were the "it" pop stars of their time and both wore the mantle of "king" of rock and roll and pop respectively. Elvis died of a legally obtained drug overdose, and as I write this, the autopsy on Jackson is underway and will probably reveal a toxic cocktail of drugs in his body as well. Which begs the question, in my mind...when did people in these men's lives stop saying "no" to them? At what level of celebrity, or wealth, do people begin to abrogate their obligation to keep someone from killing themselves with excess?


Celebrities of the recent and not so recent past...all died of drug overdoses administered by supposed doctors, whose first vow is to "do no harm." Heath Ledger, Anna Nicole Smith, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis and now Michael Jackson. The list is larger, of course, but it would do no good to list them here. All huge celebrities in their times and all fabulously wealthy. When do the hangers on and their families and the people who allegedly love them take the bull by the horns and intervene? Can someone who hasn't heard the word "no" in 20 years actually change? Do these people become so self centered, that, like actual kings, their merest desire is fulfilled instantly without thought for the possible consequences? Do the enablers surrounding these people think so much of their golden goose that they would allow it to kill itself? Evidently so.

When I heard of Michael Jackson's demise, my first thoughts were..."I wonder how long it's going to be before the report comes out that he died from a drug overdose?" Not long. Within hours, there was a report on the web (the UK Sun) that his personal physician administered a dose of the drug, Demerol, several hours prior to the emergency 911 call to his home. Fancy that. Funny, the same thing happened to both Anna Nicole and Elvis. Their personal physicians enabled their deaths....

It's truly a shame that talents like this live fast and die early, but it's a further shame that their deaths are hastened by the people who are supposed to have their best interests at heart, and who, firstly, take a vow to "do no harm."

The Legacy of Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter has a legacy, all right, but it's not the golden legacy he had in mind. His presidency has already been judged a colossal failure by historians, and if he has a conscience at all, the man shouldn't be able to sleep at night knowing that his actions as president, over 30 years ago, will ultimately lead to the deaths of millions of innocents.

How, you say?

Well, his refusal to help the Shah of Iran keep his throne, back in the 70's, started a low grade war that has raged for the last 30 years. Instead of supporting the Shah, Mr. Carter decided to turn the country over to what he thought was a coalition of harmless clerics.....religious men like himself, who, he thought, would rule Iran with a gentle hand. In actuality, he turned the country over to a bunch of apocalyptic, religious nuts who executed what was left of the ruling class of Iran and then proceeded to humiliate Carter by taking over the US Embassy, holding 400 or so Americans hostage, and not agreeing to free them until the moment Ronald Reagan took office. This is when America became the Great Satan.

Yes, the Shah had his problems as a leader, and he was a king, so his word was law, but what Carter didn't know, or ignored at the time, is that the Shah was eaten up with what would become terminal cancer, and when he died, his Western educated son would have become king. The key phrase there, dear readers, is Western educated. Iran would, today, be an American ally if Carter had kept his little fingers out of their affairs. Instead, Carter let the Shah fall because he "didn't like the guy." How about that for a reason for changing history? I don't like you, so I'm going to help the religious nuts take your country. Of course, the Mullahs had him fooled and his eyes were not fully opened until his political humiliation at their hands, and by then it was too late.

Now, we are poised on the lip of the abyss that Carter created. These Mullahs are ok with sacrificing half the population of their country (they'll all be martyrs and get their 72 virgins, so who cares?) so that they can bring forth the 13th Imam (aka, the Hidden Imam) by lobbing a nuke at the Israelis in an attempt to "wipe them off the map." The subsequent chaos, according to their religious teachings, will bring out the Hidden Imam and bring on the new Caliphate.

Thanks, Mr. Carter, for all your wonderful work, and I hope the fact that millions of innocent Iranians and Israelis will soon be sacrificing their lives for your foolishness will give you more than a few sleepless nights in the future. Lord knows, millions of victims of your "legacy" will be having a more permanent dirt nap once the Iranians get a nuclear device or two under their robes.

Thoughts on the Manson Family, 40 Years Later

It's been 40 years since the Manson Family murders in 1969. For those of you out there who are too young to remember, Charles Manson, the self-styled guru and leader of a gang of then teens and twenty somethings, led his followers (some say exhorted them) to commit horriffic crimes in his name, i.e., the Tate-LaBianca murders, whereby the victims were not only killed, but their bodies mutilated (Sharon Tate's unborn child was viciously pulled from her dying body) and the walls of the homes scrawled with their blood.

After they were apprehended and during the trial, the members of the "Family" etched swastikas into their forheads, sang and shouted at witnesses, and in general gave the impression that they were above mortal law.

Now, forty years later, some of the Family members are asking to be released. I say why?

Take Leslie Van Houten for example....by all accounts she has been a model prisoner during her 40 years in prison, helping other inmates to adjust, reading books for the sight impaired, earning 2 college degrees, etc., but does this mean she should be released? Originally, she and her co-conspirators were given the death penalty, but their sentences were commuted to life when California banned the death chamber. To me, such a commutation means life, without parole. Surely the very viciousness of her crime demands her continued incarceration. She, of all the followers, had the best upbringing....upper middle class, a sound moral underpinning, and all of the potential for a wonderful life that goes with such a childhood. She could have been anything at all....professional or otherwise. Yet, she chose to follow the LSD drenched ravings of a sociopath and participate in murders so heinous that they will surely go down in the annals of crime history, and she had knowledge, through Pat Krenwinkel, of the Tate murders the previous night, which would have sent most moral, thinking people screaming for the door. Instead, she goes out the next night, knowing murder would be committed and participates in the murders.

And now, 40 years later, she thinks she should be paroled. Sorry, but life is life. Would she be a danger to society if released? I doubt it. I believe that she is aware of what she did and is truly remorseful, but does this mean she should be released? I say no. Sometimes what you do at 19 CAN and DOES have lifelong consequences. The Tate family is without their sibling and although he's a possible child molester himself, Sharon Tate's husband at the time, lost his son. The LaBianca family is without their parents and has been for 40 years now...why should any of them be released?

Gotta give Manson props on this one....he knows he'll never be released and hasn't bothered to show up for parole hearings in years. Given his life before the murders in 1969, prison was the only home he had known anyway and the place where he was most familiar....

Abortion...Is It A Passe Issue?

I'm inclined to say yes.

Roe V. Wade was ratified by the Supreme Court when I was 13 years old. I am now 48, which means it has been the law of the land that abortion is legal in all 50 states for 35 years, and unless the makeup of the present Supreme Court is radically changed in the next 4 years, I don't see it being overturned by the McCain/Palin republican ticket if they are elected.

Personally, I'm very pro-choice and I believe that abortion, though it should never be used as a means of birth control (even though we know it is), should be safe, sane, legal and available to any woman who feels like she wants to have one, and I have believed for years that the Republicans need to get off of it as an election issue, because in my mind, it's passe, and only gives the Democrat attack dogs a reason to beat the public over the head with their paranoia that the Big Bad Republicans are gonna snatch their god given right to end a pregnancy.

So far, in talking to Democrat Obamanoids, all I've heard is that McCain wants to overturn Roe V. Wade.....so what? People in hell want ice water, too, and I doubt very seriously that in the first 4 years of a McCain administration that either McCain or Palin would waste much time trying to reverse Roe v. Wade. Let's face it...it's really not high up on the list of things they will need to confront in the Oval Office, and unless 2 or 3 of the more liberal members of the court retire (which I doubt, unless one of 'em dies in office, the libs on the SCOTUS will hang onto their seats until a fellow liberal becomes president), which I don't see happening. I can see Ruth Bader Ginsburg now (in my imagination, of course), hanging onto her seat until she is a desiccated skeleton with a gavel in her hand. They can time their retirements according to who's in the white house, unless they die in office, and I don't think any of them are on their death beds at the moment, or in the next 4 years.

If all that keeps anybody from voting Republican is abortion and the identity/minority game, then you're not too smart, but of course the abortion meme has turned into a giant bludgeon for the left, so they're not going to be giving it up any time soon, which is really kind of a shame. I benefited from Roe v. Wade, and I refuse to be a hypocrite in my old age because I don't have to worry about unplanned pregnancies anymore, but I still vote Republican because I believe that our sovereign country needs to be defended and protected, and I despise the leftist, socialist political agenda that would see us on our knees both politically and economically.

As I wrote in a previous essay, I think that my own generation, the baby boomers, are the most self centered and destructive generation ever born to America. They grew up with perfect, comfortable childhoods and learned nothing but contempt for the very country that has given them the advantages they have in life. There has been no real adversity in my life, I have never suffered on behalf of my country because even though there have been 3 wars in my lifetime, my own life was not touched by these events. They were fought and are being fought abroad by an all volunteer military, and I have not been required to make any sacrifices to my own way of life for these wars, and neither have my generational peers.

Of course, I'm at the tail end of the boomer generation, so I wasn't a 60s radical hippy, and though I was much more liberal in my misspent yoot, I've never been the type to hate my country for a laundry list of historical sins. You cannot rewrite or really repair historical wrongs, and to hold an entire nation of people hostage to the historical grievances of a minority group of people is simply untenable. Yes, I'm sorry that the people who went before me did the Native Americans wrong, and I'm sorry that those who went before me owned slaves, and I'm sorry that the Japanese were interned in camps during the 2nd World War, but that happened before ANY of us (the boomers) was born and it is history. What we can do as a nation is acknowledge that our ancestors did wrong and perhaps apologize, which has been done, over and over, and even a congressional proclamation to blacks apologizing for slavery, and move on. Enough already.

I doubt that there will be any American muslims seeing the inside of a concentration style camp if war were to break out with a muslim country (oops, it did!), so we can safely assume that Americans have learned their lessons from history and that that less than pretty part of our history as a nation is over and will never happen again. Same with slavery and killing Native Americans for sport.

I would like to see both the far left and the far right abandon abortion as an issue as well. Women can only be free if they have full authority over their own reproduction and having abortion available is a necessary function of a free society, whether the religious people like it or not. It is the same with the pill. To me, it is none of your business if you don't believe in birth control and I want to buy the pill from you if you are a pharmacist. Your political and religious beliefs should not be forced on me, and if you don't like dispensing the pill, get another job...one that does not conflict with your beliefs and that you can practice within the bounds of what you believe.

When Does Persistence Turn to Stalking?

When the contact is unwanted.

As most of you who read this blog know, I play a game called Second Life. It is a virtual world in which you can do pretty much anything you do in this world, and then some. It is basically a chat program with a visual element in the form of a physical manifestation of you....you can have a home, a husband/wife, a baby even, and the players pair up and break up at a dizzying rate. The average romantic relationship in Second Life lasts 4 or so weeks, however, a week in Second Life should be measured like dog years, because the nature of the medium accelerates everything and the mind to mind communication allows for rampant emotionalism.

It also can be an incubator for stalkers.....folks who can't take "I don't want to see you anymore" for an answer. Such a situation has befallen me. I met a man in the game, we became "virtual" lovers, the relationship fell apart after about 6 weeks (this happened in late January or early February), and the man involved just won't go away. I wish he would, because what he sees as persistence, I see as stalking.

He got banned from my land and my life after he decided that pursuing me to my private space in the game, without an invitation, was the right thing to do. Fortunately, SL has a "mute" feature where you can turn off all communications with any given "AV" or character, and I muted him in the game, whereupon he decided to start emailing me, outside the game. I used the spam feature of my email to block his address, so he sent emails in his wife's name, which were promptly blocked as well. Now he is posting to my blog in an attempt to get my attention, which, in my opinion, constitutes stalking, since I have made it perfectly clear to him that I want no communication with him on any level or in any venue.

Persistence is a wonderful quality in a person, and all too lacking in our fast paced, very shallow society, where instant gratification is the order of the day, and very few people will follow anything to the bitter end. It also has a down side, and if allowed to run amok, produces a situation like this. I consider myself fortunate that this man cannot show up on my doorstep, as he lives in another state and has physical disabilities, as well as a wife and family, but I wish he would just leave me alone. I will post this in the hope that he will see himself in my words, and finally respect my wishes. If he does not, I will investigate my options with the Authorities, since he has stalked me on the internet and I believe there are laws in place against such things now, since a young woman recently committed suicide after having been harassed online by the overprotective mother of the girl's neighbor, out for a laugh at the expense of an emotionally vulnerable teenager.

This is my last plea to you, Michael (you know who you are)....please, leave me alone, and cease all attempts at communications with me or I will take steps to make sure that you do. Your persistence has turned into stalking and it MUST stop.