A Day In The Life... Of A Hobo

Its Been A Long Time, My Good Compadres

2008-09-11T02:18:00.000-07:00

Well, I haven't posted to this blog in a while. Got a lot to catch up on. As you guys probably know by now, we tried to revive STFU Radio, but its probably dead for good now. Oh well, we had a good run.

Up to this point I have been trying to make money working in computer repair without much avail. Over the summer I was working a little as a jujitsu instructor for about $40 per week, but now thats pretty much over. I make a lot when I get computer repair work, the only problem is that it never comes. Doesn't help that I'm beginning to lose my motivation to put out fliers. Also doesn't help that there is now a lock on the steering wheel of the car I've been driving. No car means I can't do house calls which means I am royally fucked for the computer repair work. On top of all that my parents have been cracking down on me paying for my car insurance, which I have closed my bank accounts to pay for and now I have $2.50 to my name and STILL don't have it all payed off. And as long as I don't have money, the lock stays on the steering wheel. A bit of a catch 22, wouldn't you say?

As all of this was happening, my friend Mike was very disheartened by his job and the amount of money he is spending on gas to get there. So, we decided to go hardcore job searching, which isn't hard, considering all of the other employees are going off to college. Blockbuster only had two CSR people left, and realize that is less employees than they have managers. It hasn't looked this easy to get a job in a very long time. Out of the ten or so applications we picked up, I have put in two so far - one at Blockbuster and one at Smart And Final. They both look like they need new employees desperately and I can get either of them easily. I'm thinking I'll go with Smart And Final since their starting wage is $8.70 per hour and there is way more opportunity for raises and advancement, but I'll take whatever I can get. Strangely enough it seems that Smart And Final is so eager for new workers they don't even plan to have a formal interview with me. The manager looked at my application, told me to go take a drug test, and call him on Friday. He said that as soon as the drug test results got in he could begin my training. So I've landed that job... without an interview somehow.

Mike didn't fare so well however. The first day we were pros, met managers and got applications like champs. The second day I was a pro, and Mike, well, Mike smoked a ton of weed in the car. That manager at Smart And Final told me we needed to take drug tests, which was fine with me. Then I went out and told the currently high Mike about this. He was quite angry with himself, especially after I pointed out that he had endured living hell to clear out his system for drug tests the previous night by taking a ton of expired Niacin. So we went and took the drug tests and I had the novelty of witnessing Mike take his while high. I have not seen him so ticked off in many years, and I also have not laughed so hard in at least that amount of time.

The plan right now is for Mike and I to land some decent jobs and move out with another, more financially stable friend, who recently got kicked out of her house. We are hoping that the friend can cover a lot of the initial cost, with us contributing our first paychecks, and we can finally get our feet off the ground. It will be a little complicated at first, with me lacking a car, but I am no stranger to public transportation.

One of the more complicated parts of this is the fact that I have a total $2.50 to my name right now. I ended up emptying my bank account to pay my parents for car insurance, and its still not all the way payed off. There is a moral to be learned from this story: never go crazy over a woman. For those of you wondering what I'm talking about, let me tell you where a metric fuckton of my money went. The Doc is human, despite what you may have heard, and as such is prone to falling in love, also known as making a complete fool of himself. There was a girl that I met shortly after my stint in program. This girl and I became very very good friends, and one could even go as far as to say that she pulled me out of all the shit I was going through mentally after I got out. Oh yeah, and she lives across the country from me. So eventually I went to visit her... out of my own bank account. If you weren't aware, plane tickets cost a shit load. There goes fat chunk of my money number one. So long story short we ended up dating. Second moral of the story: long distance relationships don't work. Time goes by for a bit and two factors arise. 1) She gets bored with me, and 2) many of the qualities of my personality she once found endearing have apparently become more annoying, shall we say. So we start arguing quite a bit, until eventually I buy plane ticket number two to try to salvage my relationship. My other fat chunk of money gone. So on this trip I get dumped. On the plus side I did get to see Washington DC, and let me tell you, if you have to get dumped on the phone, be standing next to the Jefferson Memorial, because you CANNOT get pissed off or depressed. So another 300 some odd dollars down the drain, though DC made the trip not completely in vain. And now, said girl treats me like complete shit and in a way, I want nothing to do with her. Add all the money I spent on her, add on my insurance payments, and hello debt. I know, I'm an idiot, but let my failure serve as a guide to others. Guys, never EVER spend excessive amounts of money on a girl, it will ruin you.

STFU Radio is back!

2008-04-15T16:00:00.000-07:00

After a long long time, STFU Radio has finally returned. Some of you may remember the great show STFU Radio, hosted by Dr. Locke Z2A and many others, which discontinued in July, right before I became homeless. We are now back and making new episodes. Our new episode can be downloaded here and the username and password to download are both stfuradiodownload. Our site is still down, but for the moment the site is http://www.myspace.com/stfuradio. Hopefully our old site will be up and addressed to stfuradio.org by tomorrow. Check it out and prepare for epic leetness.

Al Qaeda Videos

2008-03-19T22:44:00.000-07:00

Throughout this whole "war on terror", supposedly Al Qaeda has released videos denouncing the United States and justifying their cause. Most everyone out there has dismissed them as crazy radicals and think that their videos are just a bunch of crazy junk. At first I thought this as well, but over time I got to thinking. What could drive these people to take their own lives for their cause? If it was so evil how could it be that so many willingly give their lives for it? Can every member of a huge military force really be so evil?

I remember a couple years back there was another video released by Al Qaeda. This one featured an American who had joined Al Qaeda named Adam Gadahn (known as Azzam The American in some videos). The full video was not shown on CNN, but there were something like three short clips shown. One of these clips was Gadahn saying something like "I've seen the cities bombed by America, I've helped carry the dying from the wreckage". That was the only thing he said before the clip was cut off, but it was just enough to perk my interest. I wondered what these people knew that made them willing to die for their cause that I did not know. And what could possibly drive an American, one of us, to join their cause. So I went to the all knowing internet to find some of these videos. The first time I did this I suspiciously couldn't find any of them. Not a trace. After a few times doing this over a period of months, still coming up empty, I began to wonder why the news stations managed to obtain these and know about them as soon as they were released, but I had never met someone who had actually seen them, and I could not find them for the life of me. All of Al Qaeda's supposed "web presence" seemed to not exist at all. The news told us of Al Qaeda web sites and such, but it appeared that they did not exist. It was extremely suspicious.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not some conspiracy theorist who thinks the government arranged so that we couldn't find these videos. That wouldn't even be feasibly possible, so most of all I was just confused. Now today I read on a news website that Al Qaeda was releasing a new video soon. In the comments under the article, someone asked the exact same questions I had been asking myself. Why does ABC know about this video before it is put out, while 99.9% or more of Americans will never see the video? How can these cause such commotion and then disappear off the face of the earth almost immediately? So today I set out to find the videos yet again. This time instead of searching keywords, I decided to search the question that was running through my head. Surely someone else must have asked it at some point. Sure enough, I found a blog on the website Guerrilla News Network that proposed the same kinds of questions I was asking. The comments on this blog lead me to the videos I had sought after. The link I followed went to http://almagribi.blogspot.com/. This website, on blogspot no less, is mostly in Arabic (which I unfortunately don't understand), and has a bunch of Al Qaeda videos. Jackpot. Only one of the posts was in English, from September of 2005, called "Invitation To Islam". It features Adam Gadahn, the man who started this search of mine, speaking to the west in English about Islam. I recommend downloading and watching it. Solely so you can hear words from the mouths of the so called "terrorists", instead of hearing about them from their enemies, if for no other reason.

After watching this video I am convinced that there is very little difference between the two sides of this so called "war". Gadahn would criticize the United States, Christianity, and the west for certain very legitimate things, and then turn around and say that when Islam did the same things is was ok. It pointed out the hypocrisy of the United States government in criticizing religion and fighters and governments in the middle east, but it did not allow any props for Islam either. The American way was legitimately presented as bad, but at the same time Al Qaeda's way was exactly the same. The religious beliefs and intolerance of the militant Muslims and the right wight American Christians that have perpetrated this war are almost identical, with simply two different labels and skin colors. Both are nearly equally as crazy, with the US being slightly more crazy. The Muslim militants at least have the reasoning that they are defending their homeland. We've been raping their homeland for decades. Our leaders are exactly the same as Al Qaeda. If you want to see terrorists you can look to the middle east, or you can look at the white house and congress. They are both equally condemnable.

If anyone knows where I can find the video containing the clip that started my search, it would be extremely appreciated if it was posted as a comment to this blog. I know there will be people who read this who will refuse to watch any of these videos, because they think it is supporting the terrorists or whatever, to these people I say stop running from information. Knowledge cannot make you worse.

Stop Spending Money You Don't Have

2008-02-29T16:01:00.001-08:00

"Planning for the future is like going fishing in a dry gulch; nothing ever works out as you wanted, so give up all your schemes and ambitions" - Gyalse Rinpoche

I'll start this article with that quote. It is one of the two quotes I've heard in my life that speak the most true. It also has quite a bit to do with a situation a friend of mine is in at this point. Both him and I received our drivers licenses this past week. Neither of us have cars, but both of us are looking at prospective cars to buy. There is a key difference in the type of cars we are looking at though. I'm looking at something like this, an old Mazda RX7, generally around $1500 used on craigslist, but not a bad car by any means. He is looking at the 2008 Mustang GT, base price $27,260. Note that he is going to have to spend his own money on this. Oh, and he only makes $12 per hour, and he only has about $100 saved up at any given time. So of course when he calls me up and is telling me this idea, my response is "are you fucking crazy?". Then he starts telling me his plan to be able to pay for it. It was something like "blah blah blah, car loan, blah blah blah". Now lets go back to that quote I had. Planning for the future is very bad. I have learned through my experiences that no matter how much planning you do, the system will always be there to fuck you. This guy doesn't even has his own place yet, but somehow he thinks he can get one while making fat car payments. Not to mention he won't even be able to afford these car payments, and if he is he will have no room left for if something goes unexpectedly wrong in his life.

Sadly enough this kind of thing isn't isolated to my friend. Everywhere I look I see both younger people and older people that can't manage money at all. I remember I saw a commercial once a while back that showed this guy with a big house, a nice car, in a perfect neighborhood, with two kids and everything. He was going around showing this stuff he had, and then at the end he says "how do I manage it you ask? I'm in debt up to my eyeballs". When I saw that I almost fell over cause it hit the nail right on the head. The whole country doesn't seem to get the fact that you can't spend money that you don't have. It looks to me like everyone is living beyond their means nowadays. Now that you can get a loan for everything, I (who for the record, has very little money) have a higher net worth than a ton of people with nice cars and nice houses. How whacked is that? It use to be that being in debt was one of the worst things that you could do, now its the norm.

Now individuals can go screw themselves over all they want with their debt, doesn't hurt me, just annoys the hell out of me. However when those individuals start running my government and screwing me over, we have a problem. We've got two major parties. The Democrats admit that they'll over spend on a ton of shit, and they do. The Republicans say they won't over spend, and they over spend worse than the Democrats. Then we've got the few Libertarians in the corner saying "hey! people! you're fucking stupid!" and no one listens to them. So then we go on a giant shit fest where the entire nation is several trillion dollars in debt and we borrow all of our money from China and continue to get more in debt while ignoring the fact that we are in debt. Oh joy, so now China has a choke hold on us and we are just kind of screwed all over because no one knows how to say to no to more programs and departments.

People need to wake up and stop spending out their asses for every damn thing they mildly want. You don't need a hella nice car which is going to rapidly lose its value, you don't need a hella nice house, you don't need that huge plasma tv. Stop living beyond your means. Some people call me cheap, some people call me fiscally conservative, but I think I just have common sense.

Now if you'll excuse me, I must go off and brood about how fucked up the world is going to be by the time I'm 50.

The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread

2008-02-21T22:53:00.000-08:00

This post is useful to the 日本語を話せる人 out there. For those of you that are not 日本語を話せる人, it means "person who can speak Japanese". For those of you that don't know, I am semi-trilingual. I speak fluent English and profanity, in addition to decent Japanese. Note that I said speak. I can speak and understand fairly well, but read? Not so well. For those of you that don't speak Japanese, there are three character systems. These are hiragana, an alphabet of syllables, katakana, another alphabet of syllables but only for words acquired from the west, and kanji, those wonderful pictographs. Now I have studied Japanese for the past three years. This year I wasn't able to take it since I started school late but I still practice as much as I can. I have a friend, named Erina, who I met when I visited Japan who lives near Hiroshima and doesn't speak a word of English. I exchange emails with her and that is how I get a bunch of my practice.

Now recall that I have only taken three years of Japanese classes. I know hiragana and katakana completely, as they are not hard to learn at all. The kanji however are a different story. While there are only around 46 characters in each of the syllable alphabets, there are thousands of kanji characters. After three years of studying you can only barely scratch the surface of that. I'm not saying I don't understand any kanji, and I do know many of the more common ones, but I usually have to look up about 3/4 of the kanji I read. Some of you may pose the question as to why I wouldn't just ask Erina to send me emails in only hiragana and katakana (as all kanji characters can be written out in hiragana). I have thought about this before, but overall this is a really bad idea, considering that there are no spaces or capitalization in written Japanese, and very little punctuation. Reading all hiragana/katakana would be like reading the previous sentence as "ihavethoughtabouthisbeforebutoverallthisisareallybadideaconsi
deringthattherearenospacesor..." well you get the idea. Pain in the ass, no? So I find that its actually easier to just look up all the kanji I see on this website. This is easier, but it is still a pain in the ass.

And then you also have to take into account that while I can say most things that I want to just from my head, my vocabulary is not all encompassing. There are many words that I still do not know. So for those words I have perfected the art of flipping through a dictionary extremely fast (its faster to flip through a dictionary than it is to translate it on the internet). As you can imagine, this is also a pain in the ass.

Lucky for me I have the great lord StumbleUpon. Today I clicked "Stumble!" just waiting to see what was in store for me. What I found solves both of my little problems. It is the most convenient dictionary ever... RIKAICHAN! Rikaichan is a plugin for Firefox that allows me to put my mouse over a Japanese word and have it pop up a little thing telling me the hiragana reading for said kanji and the English translation for said word. AH! じんせいはやさしいになった！ Whoops... got a little carried away there. Life just became much easier. Japanese language students rejoice, our prayers to the atheist god have been answered!

If You Support The Death Penalty, Shoot Yourself

2008-02-12T22:08:00.000-08:00

On the good olde blog today I thought that I might touch on the issue of our hypocrisy pertaining to murder. I probably will offend some people with this article, but I don't care, I just tell it like it is.

A little while ago there was a man in Texas who witnessed his neighbor's house being robbed named Joe Horn. He called 911 and told the operator what was happening. But this man decided that he couldn't stand idly by as his neighbor's house was being robbed... despite the fact that he barely knew this neighbor. So he told the 911 operator that he could not stand by as this horrible act was occurring, and then went out with his shot gun to take matters into his own hands. The next things that I heard as I listened to the recording of this 911 call was two gun shots.

This is the recording of the 911 call:

What I heard on this recording was a man who was just itching to kill. When he called up the operator he had already resolved to go out and shoot the robbers. He sat there spewing his higher moral self deception about how he couldn't let something like this happen and then he went off to kill these guys, thinking that he wouldn't be held accountable for a double murder. Now we can just dismiss this guy as a crazy, but as I listened to the radio program that was covering this take calls, it shocked me at how many people said that they supported this guy and many said they wished that he was their own neighbor. Forget the fact that robbery is NEVER punished with the death penalty, the callers into this program believed whole heartedly that someone robbing a vacant house should die. All of these people find it perfectly acceptable to kill someone over a few possessions. Two men's lives were sold for maybe say $300 of possessions. So all of these people are basically saying that human life is worth only about 150 bucks a piece. And of course they cover this up with their own sense of justice.
Apparently the method of bringing someone to justice can be as evil and unjust as they want as long as it hurts the criminal.

Joe Horn has been described by his lawyer as a normal family man who was doing his duty as a citizen. However one of the robbers, Diego Ortiz, was a family man as well. He now has a widow and a fatherless child. Is it any less wrong for his family to be robbed of their husband and father than it would be for the family of someone who wasn't a robber to be robbed of their's?

This example is just the tip of an ice burg that is a plague in our society. One thing that I have noticed and hate about society above all is the level of hypocrisy and double standards we embody. Another prime example of this problem that is much more ingrained into our society is our military. On one hand we denounce murder, however if the murder is performed in a uniform we celebrate it. We have no problem ordering killing to advance our own government agendas. We all rally behind our military in an effort to destroy a given enemy. Our soldiers are decorated as heroes after they have killed many, while our death row inmates rot in their cells awaiting their final day. We have tons of soldiers and veterans that have killed more people than many of our death row inmates who live among us. A soldier is nothing but a government hit man. The soldier is payed (albeit not near as much as a professional hit man) to obey orders. They are trained and ordered to kill. Perhaps comedian Bill Hicks put it best when he said “and they talk about the honor of the army... excuse me but aren't y'all really just a bunch of hired killers!?”. This enormous double standard doesn't stop here though. Even if you believe that a soldier has a get out of jail free card for killing, that doesn't explain why we describe enemy soldiers as killers while honoring our own. Take for instance the September 11th attacks. An enemy soldier flew a plane into a building and killed thousands of his enemy's citizens. If one of our soldiers gave his life to take out tons of our perceived enemy we would shower him with honor and glory. However when it is done to us we call the perpetrator a mass murderer. Does this make us all a bunch of two faced crazies? Of course it does.

A while back the Scott Peterson trial was going on and when he was convicted someone I knew cheered for his death sentence. I turned to her and said “bloodthirsty much?”. She turned to me somewhat confused and I explained to her that by wishing his death she was no better than him. The reaction of cheering for someone's killing is an animal mindset. It is too sad that this reaction was not exclusive to this person. When we an execution occurs we revert to an animal mindset wanting to spread death.

The nature of the death penalty in and of itself is a huge hypocrisy. The logic behind the death penalty is this: killing is bad, so when someone kills, we will kill them. I don't know of any other crime that is committed as a punishment for the crime. We decide something is wrong and against the law, and we punish it by doing it ourselves. This is entirely contradictory. If people really believe that killing is wrong, and should be punished by killing, then everyone involved in an execution should commit suicide promptly afterwards.

We seem to hold the belief that we are the ones capable of deciding who should live and who should die. We decide who's life bears value and who's life we should cast away. When the death of someone can save us $300, we will gladly support their death, as shown by the case of the man in Texas. We hold that our own sense of justice is superior to all other's. We may decide who is worthy of living and dying, but those who we deem as unworthy of living do not have the same luxury. In reality our lives are worth no more than those inmates sitting on death row. If one human can decide that another must die, the one that has been condemned to die has the same right.

There is a Buddhist concept that states that we are all alike. When you realize this then war and violence are impossible, because to attack another human being you might as well be attacking your own brother. When one realizes that their victim has a father, a mother, siblings, and perhaps even some children, just like you or I, would it be so easy to take their lives? When we think about enemy soldiers, whatever the word for them may be in the current day and age, “terrorists” at this point in time, the imagery we conjure into our heads is of cold blooded killers. We do not realize that these “cold blooded killers” could easily be the same people who may nurture and raise a small child or care for their mother in her old age. The same applies to our death row inmates. We do not think about the crying mother or sister of the inmate when they are executed, we only think about harming the criminal. If the families of the executed held the same power as the judges and courts there would be a blood bath as never witnessed before as they allowed those who allowed them to feel pain to feel their pain.

Here is another little news clip about Joe Horn if you are interested:

Update On Life: Job Offer, Black Belt Exam, and an Enlightening Moment

2008-02-03T12:36:00.001-08:00

Today it feels like a huge stress has been lifted off me. Three main things have been making me stress lately. These being, my lack of a job, my lack of halfway decent grades, my upcoming black belt exam, and where I stand with this one girl. That last one isn't important and I won't go into any detail on that one (Aww, but Doctor! We want to know!).

I now have some security in getting a job. I am not working in the moment, but last weekend I was offered a job fixing computers. I will start working in a week or two. The job pays a whopping $20 per hour, plus a commission on appointments made from fliers I put out. Thats much better than my minimum wage at Gamestop. With that kind of money I could not only afford to live, but I could live fairly comfortably. When I was working sales I was thinking that I'd get a low wage job and get a bunch of room mates and have my own place but really no money left over. But with this... who needs room mates? I could afford an apartment on my own. What I'm probably going to end up doing is renting out a room in a house in the area, it would be much cheaper than renting an apartment, only around $500-600 per month. The future looks full of promise.

As for the black belt exam, for those of you that haven't read the article right after I was released from program, I've been a practitioner of Hawaiian Jujitsu for 9 years. I took the black belt exam several months back and failed because I wasn't aggressive enough. After several months of continued practice, and practicing just about non stop this past week, I took the exam again yesterday, and my aggressiveness was worlds away from where it was when I first took the exam. Two of the instructors that tested me on my first exam tested me on this exam, so they saw the difference. I passed, so I'm now a black belt and it feels like I have had a huge burden lifted.

I've also been stressed to a lesser extent about my grades. I have had a major case of senioritis this year and have basically done jack in school. I have been accepted to two colleges that I had to send my semester grades in and get C- grades or better on all of my classes to be still eligible to attend. I fully expected to be getting at least two Ds on my semester grades. To my amazement I recieved two As and the rest of my grades were Cs... just enough to still be eligible, good deal. I don't know how I managed that one... I mean I know I'm a straight up genius, but still...

On the way home from my black belt exam yesterday, my Sensei decided that I needed to listen to a speaker named Tony Robbins (if my memory serves). He had told me this before and I was less than thrilled at the prospect. From what I gathered this Tony Robinson was a Christian inspirational speaker, and thats not exactly my thing, at all. But he put the cd in the player and we started listening. I was actually kind of intrigued by what I heard. The cd was called "Achieving Your Ultimate Goal", and it made the assertion that we work towards and achieve our goals in life solely for the purpose of being happy, no God references what so ever. Once we have achieved these goals we experience a temporary moment of happiness. He talked about how as a society we have been conditioned to only be happy after something has happened to make us happy, while happiness was really just a natural state of being.

I have noticed since program that I have not been as relaxed or happy since I got out as I had been before I went. When I listened to this guy, he echoed what I've been thinking for a few months, but then went into how to change it. I realized that part of this problem is that I've been setting goals to get out on my own, but not enjoying the process. Before I went to program I did everything laid back and enjoyed the process more than I enjoyed the results, I need to start doing that again.

Ron Paul: Finally A Glimmer Of Hope For This Country

2008-01-24T16:27:00.000-08:00

Up until this point I have not mentioned politics on this blog, but if anyone has been pissed off by the way America has been run, its me. I have watched as our country has claimed to be free, while imposing on the sovereignty of other nations and on the rights of its own citizens in the name of “security”. I have watched as we claim to have a separation between church and state, yet we have the words “under God” in our pledge of allegiance and politicians such as Mike Huckabee claim we should change the constitution to reflect the Bible. In this supposedly “free” nation I was taken away suddenly in handcuffs and held for two months against my will, and those who objected were voiceless. The same thing happens every day to others and no one notices. We hold people for being “terrorists” and torture them without any repercussions, not noticing that these “terrorists” are simply soldiers for another side, no different from ours. The hypocrisy of this nation and those who run it has astounded me. I have not seen a politician I have liked in a very long time. Those that stand for what I stand for try to pussyfoot around the issues, while those that stand strong in their beliefs all seem to be total whack jobs. The candidate I was for in 2004 for president was simply the choice of who I hated less.

2008 is an exciting (and frustrating) year for me though. I have finally found a politician I like. Congressman Dr. Ron Paul from Texas is a less well known candidate that is a refreshing change from our current politicians. When Ron Paul speaks, he doesn't play on our nationalism or patriotism (like the neocons), or use scare tactics about terrorism (again, like the neocons), or say anything he thinks will make everyone like him (like Hillary Clinton). Instead he is straight forward with what the problems in this nation are and how he will address them, and completely consistent in what he says. He is very different from the other republican candidates (he use to be a Libertarian in fact). He has been saying the same things for a very long time. I saw a video recently that showed Ron Paul in 1988, and then again in 2004, and he was saying exactly the same stuff. His consistency is a refreshing change in the era of people like George W. Bush, who was elected promising a non interventionist foreign policy and then went and started a war, John McCain, who voted against the Bush tax cuts but now is saying that he will work to make them permanent, and Hillary Clinton, who voted for the Iraq War but now tries to look like she is both against it and for it at the same time in an effort to please everyone.

Ron Paul is all about taking the government out of our lives and follows the constitution very strictly, never voting for anything unconstitutional. He wants to get rid of the IRS, Federal Reserve, and Federal Income Tax, as well as several other unnecessary government departments. He voted against the Patriot Act and Iraq War and has stayed consistent to that ever since. He is fine with gay marriage, because it is not the government's place to regulate marriage. He believes in a non interventionist foreign policy and would pull our troops out of Iraq and the rest of the world very quickly. He is against interfering in the affairs of other countries, but believes we should trade freely with all countries. He has never voted to raise taxes or congress's pay or the power of the executive branch. The government that governs best is the government that governs least, and the only candidate that is true to this is Ron Paul.

Right now the IRS takes tons of money out of our paychecks every year and we all assume that it is a necessary sacrifice. We need to pay for schools, roads, welfare, and so much more, right? Wrong, the federal income tax doesn't pay for any of those things. In fact, the vast majority of it goes to the pockets of the Federal Reserve, which is in fact no more federal than Federal Express. The Federal Reserve is actually a private bank. Your hard earned money simply goes to line the pockets of a few rich bankers. Everything else the government does is paid for by other taxes such as the gasoline tax and sales tax. Think of all the money people would save not giving a chunk of their pay to the federal government. Welfare would be needed much less. More information about the IRS and Federal Reserve (and why we don't need them and they are unconstitutional) can be found in an excellent documentary, America: Freedom To Fascism, which can be viewed at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1656880303867390173. Ron Paul would get rid of this unlawful tax as soon as he is elected.

For some reason Ron Paul has been almost universally ignored by the media, and for this reason people believe that he cannot win the Republican nomination or presidential election. Fox news has even tried to make his strict following of the constitution a laughable subject at debates and kept him out of the debate at the New Hampshire primary, despite having come solidly in the middle in the Iowa caucus. In Iowa, Ron Paul beat Rudy Giuliani, yet afterwards everyone was talking about Giuliani and no one was talking about Paul. As I watched the TV I was yelling “I swear! I must be taking crazy pills!”. The same kind of thing happened with the Nevada caucus. Ron Paul came in 2nd place in Nevada, yet the media mentioned him little, if at all. Again, I questioned my sanity. Despite being ignored by many of the biggest voices in America, Ron Paul is a very strong contender for the Republican nomination. When people hear Ron Paul they recognize that he speaks the truth next to all of the deceit perpetrated by the vast majority of other politicians.

However I can only tell you so much, hear the words of the man himself:

You can visit Ron Paul's website at http://www.ronpaul2008.com/ to find out a bit more about him. Register republican and vote for Ron Paul in your state's primary. He is the only candidate worthy of your support.

Update On Life: My Quest To Attain A New Job And Van

2008-01-23T20:09:00.000-08:00

Those that have been following this blog know I got laid off from Gamestop fairly recently. Recent times have been hectic, as the end of the school semester is now upon me. During the past week or two I have been massively cramming in work to get it in before the semester ends. Semester ends Friday, finals started today. I am very relieved that finals have started because now I have no more work to get in until the new semester starts. Tests I can handle easily, its getting all the classwork and homework done that gives me a headache. Due to this I have had to devote much of my time to school in the recent past, which means I have to try to manage my time very well to search for a job and do the online writing I've been doing.

As far as the writing goes, I have come to the conclusion that this blog will earn me much more than triond will, so the majority of what I write is going to be going on here. I still have not earned much from the ads on this blog, but I am starting to get the hang of it. I am wondering though why my Adsense reports say that I have earned no money for the past 3 days, even though there are numerous page views and a few ad clicks. That somewhat annoys me. Actually, thats an understatement, it annoys the hell out of me.

My friend Mitch (known as TRU and Freshy McDizzle on STFU Radio) and I have been throwing around the idea of starting STFU Radio up again, but this time around putting ads on the site, and allowing people to listen through a flash player on the site itself. I'm not sure how many readers are aware of the no longer running show STFU Radio. The url for our website (www.stfuradio.org) now goes to this blog because the server that hosted the website is now down and sitting at my friend's house. There is a myspace for the show that you all can look at at http://www.myspace.com/stfuradio. Unfortunately all of the mp3 links no longer work, and I will see what I can do about restoring them in the near future. STFU Radio was a podcast show I did up until I became homeless, and since then STFU Radio has been pushed aside as I have had other things that I've been having to handle in my life (being homeless, being in program, working as much as possible, etc).

My search for another job is made difficult by the fact that it is not long after the holiday season. Most places are trying to get rid of people rather than hiring new people, and this greatly screws job seekers. I have found a few places that are hiring though and I have put in applications at three stores in the mall for sales: Pottery Barn Kids, Origins, and Brookstone. I am planning to go check up on these jobs tomorrow and put in an application at Godiva as a stocker. So far Origins has seemed the most eager to hire out of all of them, while I think Pottery Barn Kids took down its now hiring sign. Wish me luck with landing one (or two if I'm feeling up to it) of these jobs in the near future.

As far as the quest for a van goes, I have enough money to buy a van at this point, but the problem is that I only have enough money for the van. If I were to buy a van at this point I would have nothing left over. The van is definitely out of the question until I land a new job. I also found out that a guy who lives around the block from me makes a living selling VW buses. Unfortunately for me he sells them for $3500, which is way out of my price range. So that bus just sits in front of his house tormenting me every time I pass... damn.

5 Linux Exclusive Programs I Cannot Do Without

2008-01-21T17:04:00.000-08:00

One issue that many people who try out Linux coming from Windows face is that they can do the vast majority of the things they want to do on both Linux and Windows, but there is one or two things that they can do on Windows, the most noticeable issue being playing Windows exclusive games, whereas everything they can do on Linux they are capable of doing on Windows. In short, there are really very few “killer apps” that are Linux, or at least *nix, exclusive. It is true that the majority of Linux applications are open source, and due to this open source nature programs can be easily ported between operating systems. There is also the fact that developers want their programs to reach the largest audience that they can, and the majority of computer users use Windows. These two factors have greatly contributed to the majority of Linux programs being also available on Windows and Mac OS. Now I am not saying that program portability is a bad thing at all, but it does make Linux a less attractive operating system to the prospective user. I have dual booted Windows and Linux for a large portion of the time I have been a Linux user and use to be faced with this issue until I began using Windows exclusively again. Once I started using Windows exclusively again however, I noticed there were quite a few applications that I had used in Linux that I could not use in Windows and felt very crippled without under Windows and ended up going back to using Linux for most of my computing. So without further ado, I present you the five Linux applications I cannot do without.

Beryl
The killer app that propelled Linux into popularity as a server operating system was Apache. The killer app that will propel Linux into popularity as a desktop operating system will be Beryl. Beryl is a program that provides 3D effects for your desktop. People ogle at effects in Windows Vista and Mac OS X, but if only they knew about Beryl. The effects on Beryl put Windows Vista and Mac OS X to shame. Beryl provides a plethora of 3D effects, including, but not limited to: multiple desktops arranged on a rotating cube, window transparency, wobbling windows, windows and menus exploding when you open or close them, snow and rain effect, and more. These are a select few of the numerous effects that Beryl makes available to your desktop. Your jaw will drop seeing Beryl at work, it is far more impressive than any 3D effects on any other operating system today. However I can only describe so much, but to truly grasp how amazing Beryl is you must see for yourself.

Beryl in action:

Package Management – Apt/RPM/Portage
One of the programs that creates a ton of convenience is package management. There are several forms of package management that are available depending on which Linux distribution you are using. The most popular programs are Apt (for Debian and its derivatives), RPM (originally created for Redhat, but now supported by many more), and Portage (used in Gentoo and derivatives). The level of convenience that these programs provide is second to none. With Apt, when I need a new program I can simply search it up in Synaptic, check off the programs I want to install, and it installs them for me quickly and completely for free. It handles all of the dependencies for me so I don't need to worry about having the necessary libraries before installing. Everything you need is in an easily accessible central location and you can install as much of it as you want with no limit or cost to you.

Amarok
Amarok is a media player with scope that is unrivaled by anything else I've seen. The sheer amount of things that this player can do will amaze you. I originally found it when I was looking for something to take the place of iTunes on Linux, but what I found far surpassed iTunes. Amarok does everything short of your dishes for you. With a fresh install you can get the lyrics of a song as you play it and get the album cover for it, as well as pull up information about the artist from wikipedia in the sidebar. You can search and buy music off of magnatune.com with it, much like you can buy music off of the iTunes store in iTunes. If you have a last.fm account (which is free to make), you can also get last.fm streams right through Amarok and listen to them. And these are just some of the biggest features that stand out. In addition to the built in functions that Amarok can perform, there are numerous user made scripts that allow it to do additional things for you. A few notable scripts are Autotorrent, which allows you to download the entire album that a song is on off of bittorrent, Etree, which scans your collection for artists that have free live concerts available at the Live Music Archive on www.archive.org, Ultimate-Guitar, which searches for guitar tabs for a given song, and RecordRadio, which records the streaming radio you listen to and rips songs to your music collection. These scripts are just the tip of the iceberg. There are tons more available and more being made all the time. For more of these scripts, check out http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/Scripts. Since Amarok is open source, anyone who can code can make a script for it.

giFT
giFT is a p2p client originally made for the (not used much) OpenFT p2p network. Luckily for the joys of open source, it has been extended beyond just the OpenFT network. Now there are plugins for it to use Gnutella (the network Limewire, Shareaza, Bearshare, and Frostwire use), FastTrack (the network Kazaa uses), Ares Galaxy, Turtle F2F, OpenNap (open source version of Napster protocol), eDonkey, and Soulseek. With all of these networks available to you, giFT provides access to more files than any other file sharing software. Anything you will find on Limewire, you will find on giFT, anything you will find on Kazaa, you will find on giFT, anything you will find on just about any network out there, you will find on giFT. And unlike programs such as Limewire and Kazaa, there is none of that extra adware and spyware that is installed in the background.

GiFT itself is a back end program, and there are several other front ends developed for it with various GUI tools. Two popular ones are Apollon and gifToxic for X, but there is also a front end that uses ncurses on command line called giftcurs, which I have used on older computers that I didn't use X much on. Giftcurs can be very nice when you want giFT to take up very little of your computer's resources, which I welcomed very much after having Frostwire take my computer to its knees a couple times.

GiFT is not quite *nix exclusive, but I have included on here because *nix is the only official platform it is developed for. The source code will also compile on Windows and there are guides out there that will tell you how to compile it, but there is not installer or binary that is made for Windows by the developer. Since giFT is open source however, another developer has released a front end for it on Windows known as KCeasy. KCeasy only has support for Gnutella, Ares, and OpenFT though, so it does not offer nearly as many files as are available on the *nix version.

yt2mp3
I have mentioned yt2mp3 on this blog previously, and more information about it can be found at http://hobosareleet.blogspot.com/2008/01/ripping-audio-from-youtube-and.html. It is a useful tool for downloading music in place of p2p programs. With yt2mp3 you can download music by ripping it off of youtube videos without any risk of the RIAA or MPAA coming to rape you. This can be done on Windows, but yt2mp3 makes it nice and simple with a single GUI program. Yt2mp3 will not be found in your package management utility, but it can be downloaded at http://code.google.com/p/yt2mp3/.

Making Money On The Internet

2008-01-11T23:17:00.000-08:00

So today was a slightly bad day. I both got rejected from this job I've been trying to get for the past couple weeks and five minutes later got laid off from my current job. This will make moving out of my parent's place that much harder. So I've started the quest for a new job today and have another idea. I read an article about mixed martial arts in the newspaper today and remembered a friend telling me about the money you can make in MMA. Note that I have been a practitioner of Dan Zan Ryu Jujitsu for the past nine years. So I could almost definitely do decently well in MMA. Tomorrow I'm thinking I'll ask my sensei if he thinks that me getting into MMA would be a good idea, and if he says yes then I have a new little income source from amateur MMA.

In the mean time, recently I've been looking at making money on the internet. Some of you may have noticed the google ads on the side of the blog now. Every time someone views this blog or clicks the ads, I earn a tiny bit of money. The service that gives me this is Google Adsense. If you have a website you can sign up for this at www.google.com/adsense/. Blogger (the service I use to write this blog) is run by Google and makes integrating ads into your blog especially easy. With a normal website you have to add some code given to you to your html code. With Blogger I can just go into the blog settings and set it up easily from there. I was kind of perplexed as to why Google decided to advertise pubic hair shaving on this blog. Well actually, no I wasn't, it goes back to the shaved eyebrows thing probably. So click the ads on this page, it will make me a little revenue.

The second thing I've done to earn some money with the internet is joining the website triond.com. Triond is a site for writers where you can write various things, submit them to the site, and then they will publish the writing on any of their various sites depending on the content. The writer is paid 50% royalties on what they write. The money is made from ads on the page that your article is placed on. The more views, the more valuable the ads placed on the site are and the more you make per view. You can't earn too much with just a few articles, but if you get a lot of articles on there then you can start earning an ok amount of money. I also found that a great way to increase my page views by a ton is to submit the pages for my articles to Stumbleupon. For those of you that don't know, Stumbleupon is a toolbar in your web browser that can find random pages for you based on your interests and other pages you have liked in the past. It is a great way to lose hours of time to the internet and it is the best friend of an author on the web. When I submitted my article urls to stumbleupon I gained hundreds of views practically over night. My views went up from around 20 on an article to around 350 on an article. Good deal.

My triond page is http://www.triond.com/users/Dr.+Locke+Z2A if you like what you've seen on this blog then definitely check out my triond writing. Also click on the new ads on this blog if you want and tell your friends about this blog and my triond writing. I haven't earned very much at all during the less than a week I've been using these services at this time, but I hope to figure out a bit more about earning with them and get a little extra cash.

Ripping Audio From Youtube and Kottonmouth Kings

2008-01-04T02:06:00.000-08:00

I have found that I am on youtube almost all of the time that I spend on the computer. I don't really watch videos on it though, I just play music videos and do other things as I listen to music. It is slightly inconvenient to find a song on youtube and have to hunt it down on p2p to get an mp3 of it, especially when you listen to obscure indie music like I do that wont show up too much on Limewire. So the other day I decided to figure out a way to rip the audio from youtube to an mp3 and the result is a new favorite way to download music. After a bunch of searching I figured out a couple ways. The way I am currently using is with a small script for Linux that I found. It is called yt2mp3 and has a GUI interface where you simply put in the youtube url of a video and the name you want for the mp3 file. Then you just click a button and it downloads the flv formatted video off of youtube and proceeds to turn the audio from it into an mp3 for you. I have only tested this under Ubuntu 7.10 and it works wonderfully, although the GUI becomes unviewable while the rip is taking place. Also you need to make sure that you have all of the dependencies installed. It says what they are in the readme and they are all in the Ubuntu repositories. When I first ran the program I did not have them all installed and the program still ran, but did not produce an mp3. This script can be found at http://code.google.com/p/yt2mp3/.

I am aware that the majority of computer users however do not use Linux. So instead of telling you that you are just shit out of luck, I'll tell you what you Windows users can do since you don't have this nice sexy script (although I'm sure you could find one if you looked around a bit). This method involves using two programs instead of one but it achieves the same result as yt2mp3; in fact all yt2mp3 really does is automates these steps for you, and these steps will also work under Linux. Note that I have not tried this method as I am on Linux. The two programs you will need are Video DownloadHelper, a Firefox plugin available at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006, and ffmpeg, obtainable at http://www.videohelp.com/tools/ffmpeg. Navigate to the youtube video you want to download in Firefox and the Video DownloadHelper should light up in the tool bar. Click on it and it will allow you to download the youtube video on the page. It will save the video in the flv format to your hard drive. Note that if you want you are able to watch the video in flv format, but you may need another player to play it. VLC (http://www.videolan.org/) is a good example of one such player. Now you are going to open a command line and change the directory you are in to the directory that you put ffmpeg in with the "cd pathname" command, without quotes. Next you run the command "ffmpeg.exe -i video.flv -f mp3 -vn -acodec copy nameofsong.mp3" without the quotes. This final command will rip the video's audio and encode it as an mp3 file.

What inspired me to finally figure out how to do this was my discovery of the band Kottonmouth Kings. I had heard of them when I was in program, but did not listen to them until very recently. When I did listen I discovered how much I had been missing out. They are easily one of the greatest bands I've ever heard. They have a ton of great songs about weed and a ton of great songs with a bunch of meaning to them, whats not to like? They aren't too well known, but they are far better than the vast majority of the popular hip hop out right now. Heres a video of one of their songs:

Also as an after note - minimum wage is $8 in California as of January 1st! I just got a 50 cent raise at Gamestop... happiness.

New Idea: Living In A Van

2007-12-24T01:50:00.000-08:00

So today I came to a realization. I have been waiting too long to move out of my parent's place. I don't make enough money to meet apartment rent right now, and probably wont till I have a second job. However I do make enough money to afford a cheap van. So I have decided to buy a very cheap (around $700) van, take out the back seats, put in a futon and blankets and such, and live in it. I figure after living in the wilderness for 2 months, living in a van in the city can't be half bad. I wont have any rent so all of my money will go to food, gasoline, and propane pretty much. That equates to me saving up a lot of money, so I would be a dude living out of a van, but at the same time I'd sort of be ballin. Once I save up a bit more money I figure I can maybe throw some solar panels (which would cost more than the van itself ironically enough) on my van and start getting a little power. I could use a propane stove to cook and get those huge jugs of water from grocery stores for water. I've also heard about getting a membership to a health club or something like that to shower and brush my teeth and such in the morning, and maybe pump some weights a little bit if I feel like it. Many people seem to think the idea of living in a van is totally out there, but its really nothing in comparison to being in the wilderness for 2 months. I'd have a roof over my head, walls around me, a futon to sleep on, and be saving a bunch of money because the cost of living would be so low. I am wondering why I didn't get this idea sooner. For the next month I'll save up nearly 100% of the money I earn and I hope to be able to afford a van by the end of the month. I will keep you all posted on this little venture of mine.

People Waste Their Lives

2007-11-26T21:43:00.000-08:00

I just thought I'd post something that I wrote back in July. I was signed up for this class about getting into college... which is really stupid considering that its a class about getting into classes. Since they were talking about how to get into UC colleges, and theres no way in hell I am going to a UC, whenever we worked on college essays (which are not needed for any of the CSUs - the colleges I'm trying to get into), I just wrote my own little things. I stumbled across this little writing about how the world wastes their lives away under the guise of "hard work" recently and thought it was kind of cool. Here it is:

The world I come from seems to work far too hard. I look around me and it seems that everyone except my friends and I are ecstatic about going to UC class schools. A prime example of this mentality is my cousin. My cousin has spent all of her life as a straight A student. She will be attending UC Berkeley in the fall, and that was her back up school. All of her high school life she has dedicated to getting into college. She has studied extensively for tests, always done her homework, she has visited universities and interviewed with their administration. She is, in short, the model example of an exemplary student. Unfortunately I fear that her life will become a huge disappointment to her if she continues on this path, due to chasing something that is far over rated. She is not alone by any means, as our society as a whole seems to place too much emphasis on the wrong values. We want hard workers, people who always strive to do their best work. Our children should be the greatest in their schools, people should work hard to achieve goals. I resent this thinking. If you consider it, we go to college to get education, which will in turn give us jobs. If we go to well known and respected colleges then we will get high paying jobs. High paying means that the job will give you more money that you need, so you can afford to spend money on the luxuries in life. With hard work you will get a nice home, a nice car, beautiful women, and a six figure salary. It is all within your reach, all you have to do is work hard. However, these luxuries do not allow for true satisfaction. One may obtain nice, expensive things, but people like that always seek more nice, expensive things. They are never satisfied with what they have. Our emphasis on working very hard is just a testament to the rampant materialism that plagues us. Instead of thinking about how good your GPA is, or if you have a high enough test score, or if you have more community service hours than the next applicant, you should worry about the quality of your life. Do you understand all that you would like to understand? Do you have people that you care about and who care about you? Over all, is your existence happy and fulfilling? The nice car, big house, hot wife, and high salary are not going to fulfill your life. People try to fill a void in their lives with material possessions, but material things cannot fill a void of the mind. One should look for enlightenment in all things rather than a reputable college and a high salary. Some people who hear the story of Buddha wonder how Buddha could give up a life of a prince to live a life of meditation in poverty. Yet I understand his thinking entirely. As a prince, the Buddha saw that his possessions gave him nothing. He was surrounded by material goods, yet he still had a void of the mind. He was smart though, he realized that with all of his material possessions, surely any more would not bring him happiness. Only when he cast away his material possessions did he gain enlightenment. My own parents would like nothing more than for me to go to a high end college and live an upper class life. However I have no desire for an upper class life. I have seen upper class people and they have no substance to their lives. They are shells surrounded by material possessions. They cannot figure out how to fill their mental void and they are stuck like that. No, I have resigned myself to living the life of a poor man. I know that I will own an apartment or lower end house, a mediocre car, and a low income, but these facts do not trouble me. I also know that I will have a life of happiness. I will fill my mental void, not with material objects, but through methods and qualities that are actually fulfilling.

Sorta Haxing The Xbox - TVersity

2007-11-21T18:58:00.000-08:00

One thing that has annoyed me about the Xbox 360 is that, while it can play videos, it can only play WMV files. So I decided to fix that, because when I get a 400 dollar piece of equipment, I can't just leave it the way it is. I looked around a bit and discovered TVersity. It is a media server that runs on your computer, but the special thing about it is that it can convert video formats on the fly. So I have tons of AVI files that wouldn't viewable on my 360 before, that I can now stream to my 360 with TVersity converting the files to WMV as I play them. The downside to this however is that it takes up quite a bit of resources from your computer. When no one is on the computer, the videos run great. When someone is checking their email or browsing the web, the computer is fairly slow, but the videos still run well. When someone was playing a game that didn't take up much from the computer though, the videos would get to points where they stopped and the computer was very slow. Also you unfortunately cannot fast forward or rewind with TVersity. All in all it is pretty sweet though, so you all should check it out. You can get it at tversity.com for free.

Update About Life

2007-11-20T00:20:00.000-08:00

So its been a while since I posted about my life. Figure now would be an ok time to do it. Since my October 22nd post I have been working at Gamestop and making a little money. Unfortunately Gamestop gives really bad hours. I get to work only about 2 days a week at $7.50 an hour. So I make just about nothing. I wont be able to afford my own place ever if I continue at this rate.

Luckily I have a solution for the low hours and wages problem. When I started working at Gamestop, my manager warned me that people didn't get many hours there, and often people worked a second job in addition to Gamestop. This is exactly what I intend to do. If I get a second job then I will be getting some better hours at that job, and hopefully some better pay. So I will have that, and then I'll be working a couple days a week at Gamestop in addition, which adds up to more money as a whole. With a second job I am thinking I would be able to afford my own place. I have been applying to places this past week and I have an interview with a clothing store called Express Mens today.

I have pretty much given up on my plans for moving out into an apartment with two of my friends. One of the friends went from working at Fresh Choice to having no job and at the moment I don't think he has an idea where he might work again. The other one works at Gamestop with me, and it doesn't look like he intends to get a second job. So I've decided to go out and do this on my own. Luckily there is a good tool for this kind of thing known as Craigs List. I was checking out rooms for rent in the town I currently live in, which is unfortunately not exactly the cheapest place to live, and how cheap I actually could live kind of surprised me. I found that I can rent out a room in a house in this town for $500 - $600, about half of the listings had utilities included with that. So I'm thinking that if I get a second job I can maybe bring in $1000 or so in a month. I could get a room for 600, with utilities included, so then I'm down to 400. After that I'll probably spend 100 a month on food, down to 300. I have no car or license, so I don't have to worry about gas or insurance, but I can count on maybe spending around 70 or 80 on public transportation a month, so that is a bargain and I'm down to 220. That leaves $220 or so extra for anything else I might need. If anyone else can think of any necessities, just comment on this post so I can take them into account.

Also I've been thinking about the people I was in rehab with lately, and I just want to give some shouts to them, most of them will be in programs until they are 18. Colton, Kendra, Maggie, Austin, Andre, just to name a few of those that I was closer to, get the hell out of that bitch asap. I'm waiting for you on the outside.

The Great Question

2007-11-17T18:25:00.000-08:00

About a week ago I asked myself a very important question. That being, should I shave my eyebrows off? This idea popped into my head when I was thinking about something I read once. I recalled reading a long time ago that the ancient Egyptians use to shave their eyebrows off during funerals or something like that (don't remember the details but something involved shaving of eyebrows). So I thought, hey, maybe it would be cool to shave off my eyebrows. Provide a nice statement of "fuck you eyebrowed world!" and all that good stuff. I was debating with myself for quite a while whether it would look good or not. I looked for pictures of people without eyebrows on Google images to see how they looked. All of them looked absolutely horrible... but I figured maybe I would be different and kept debating with myself. I went and asked a bunch of my friends about it and put a bulletin on myspace asking people to tell me if they thought it was a good idea or not. The results of that? People that thought it was a good idea: about 3, People that thought it was a bad idea: everyone else. But hey, those three people seemed like some pretty smart guys. Now I'm a man that learns from experience, so I figured it would be best to just go ahead and shave off my eyebrows and then see how it looked. However there was one problem... the chick I'm interested in was in the "bad idea" group. So I decide this idea can wait. I can simply hook up with her, and then a week later shave my eyebrows so it can't hurt me in "the chase". A brilliant solution! Don't think so? Well screw you, you negative thinking bastards. Lucky for me I know people who can think of better ideas than me. One of the people that told me their opinion on whether this was a good idea or bad idea reminded me that there was a wonderful little computer program known as Photoshop that could remove my eyebrows digitally. I decided maybe this man was on to something and took a picture of myself. Here is the picture, notice the presence of nice, full, bushy eyebrows:

Yes... admire that image of sexiness...

But I digress... after a friend of mine messed around with Photoshop for 15 minutes, I looked like this:

So umm... maybe this shaving eyebrows thing was a bad idea.

Of course just because I didn't shave my eyebrows, didn't mean I had to pass up the "glory" of shaving my eyebrows. Since this idea arose on a weekend, that meant that no one would see me until school. So I just went along and put the Photoshopped image as my main myspace picture and posted something along the lines of "check out my decision". So I got two things out of this: the keeping of my eyebrows, and the joy of tricking everyone I know into thinking that I had lost them.

Also one of the reasons I used Photoshop instead of actually shaving was because I didn't want to be this guy:

Why I Love Mr. Male Chauvinist

2007-11-08T17:14:00.000-08:00

The other day I found out something about myself. I've always secretly wanted to be a male chauvinist. I wouldn't have ever imagined this before, mainly because I've always seen male chauvinists as bigots. I have a new view of them now however. Allow me to tell how I came to this conclusion.

So the other day my mom was watching Dr. Phil. We are going to ignore for a moment how much I hate Dr. Phil so I will sum up my hate for him into the statement "he is the new Springer". On this particular episode, Dr. Phil brought some people with "extreme" views onto the show. One of these people was a self professed male chauvinist. This man described all women as dumbasses who spent their time spending men's money and never contributed to society. Now I don't think all women are as he was describing, however listening to him I definitely could think of a bunch of women that fit the description. Less important than what he was saying though was the crowd's reaction to what he was saying. Dr. Phil is a show that is mostly watched by women, and I have no doubt there were some femenazis in that crowd. In fact there was even a femenazi that Dr. Phil brought on as one of his people with "extreme" views. After hearing this chauvinist and seeing the crowd ask him questions, it was totally obvious to me that many in the crowd were seething. Now I must say that if there is one thing I hate more than... well a lot of shit, it is femenazis. See I'm all for women being equal to men and all that, but now that women are equal to men, I would REALLY like the femenazis to shut up and stop complaining about how the world is set against them. The world is not set against women, the world just hates femenazis in particular for being annoying. Now those of you that know me a little probably know that above many things, I love getting people a little ticked. My list of people I like to piss off includes the religious, conservatives, and, of course, femenazis. As I watched this chauvinist speak, my respect for him grew and grew, not because I agreed with his message, but because he has developed such an overwhelmingly efficient way of pissing off femenazis. For that we must commend you Mr. Male Chauvinist, and may we all master your art one day.

Short Bout Of Homelessness and Another Program

2007-10-29T20:03:00.001-07:00

Well I have indeed had an eventful weekend. I smoked some weed for the first time since program on Friday. It was wonderful. Then I got drug tested for the first time since program on Saturday. Just my luck. I swear, if there is a god he REALLY hates my guts. I ended up getting in a big fight with my dad over it and Saturday night I packed my bags and left, sure that if I didn't leave on my own I'd be kicked out again. I figured it was best to leave on my own than to have to grab everything I had in a 5 foot radius. I continued to go to school, so Monday my mom got me from school and said that she wanted to put me in a treatment program. Not like my last one though. My last program was what many would refer to as “Hell”. My last program was a place you were usually brought to by force and then forced to stay at. This program I would apparently still live at home, however I still think that its a horrible idea. True, I would not be made to hike huge distances every day and I would still be able to live a life outside of the place. It is only nine hours a week (three hours a day, three days of the week). These are pluses... over my last program! It should also be noted that in some cases prison would have been a plus over my last program. Not that I'm comparing this new program to prison or anything, I'm just making the point that its not hard at all to be better than my last program. The reason that I don't like this program is because I'm fucking sick of programs as a whole. Whether the program is living Hell or a walk in the park there is one thing that they all share in common. That being that their goal is to brainwash you to conform to the ways of the rest of “mainstream white America”, even though the rest of “mainstream white America” is filled to the brim with bullshit. I sat in on a meeting that they were doing for a little bit and it was the same exact grade A bullshit that I had been fed during the time I was in program. The only difference was that there wasn't the threat of a second program putting the fear of god into the participants. There is no way I'm going to sit through three hour brainwashing sessions three days a week, fuck that. So now I am faced with a few options. Currently I am back at home, so I can either go to this program (not happening), I can try to talk my parents out of it (probably wont work), I can just not show up to it (feasible), or I can leave and live on my own again (kind of don't want to, but feasible). Hopefully my parents wont want to send me to a live away program if I don't go to this thing, but, if they do, I know that if escorts show up again they will not leave my presence alive.

It annoys the hell out of me hearing these jackasses at programs telling me that I have a problem. I'm your average joe. I drink every so often, I smoke weed every so often. What person my age doesn't!? I don't drink or smoke in excess at all. I'm probably considered “better” by many of “mainstream white America” in comparison to tons of people who haven't been through any of the shit I've been through. There are people who drink and smoke way more often and do many more drugs than I do who have never had the experience of being homeless or spending time in program. These jackasses act like you landed in program because you had a problem. To that I must call bullshit. People spend time in program because they are forced to. Be it by parents or a court or anyone else with power over them. I spent time in program not because I had a problem, but because my parents are fools. I face this second program not because I have a problem, but again because my parents are fools. The only problems drugs have given me is other people's reactions to my usage. I have never experienced any negative effects caused by myself and drugs, but instead all negative effects have come from what other people have done to me because they knew I smoked and drank.

Fuck Rehab, God Hates Me, Che Loves Me

2007-10-22T17:38:00.000-07:00

So I haven't posted to this blog in a good long while. I would seem to have mysteriously disappeared off of the internetz after my last post. That is because the day after my last post I was dragged off to Utah in handcuffs to serve about 2 months in rehab (read: brainwashing prison camp). If there is a God, he fucking hates my guts. First I become a hobo, then my parents have me dragged off to a fucking prison camp, yup, God is butt raping me very hard in the ass.

You may wonder how my parents managed to get me in this situation if they could not find me. At the time of my last post I was wondering what I was going to do about school. As a minor I could not register myself for school. My dad managed to get a hold of me and said that he would register me for school in the morning since I could not register myself. He also said my mom and sisters were out of town, so I could stay the night and he would register me in the morning. I agreed and stayed the night at my parent's house. The next morning I was woken up at 4 AM. There were two huge guys (I later learned that they were former prison guards) standing at my bedroom door. They told me that they were taking me to Utah but I didn't know any details much beyond that. I had the impression that it was a boarding school or something that they were taking me to. I reluctantly agreed to go. We walked out the front door and once we reached the front lawn I said "fuck this!", broke their grip, and began fighting. I was able to hold them off for a while (nine years of jujitsu experience is a very good thing), but eventually they were able to get hand cuffs on me and throw me in the back of the car. Looking back I am very angry that the cops took my knife when I was arrested, because if I had had it then those fuckers would have ended up in the hospital and I'd probably be living my own life in Canada or Mexico right now. So after a long plane trip and car ride I ended up in the little town in the middle of no where called Monticello, Utah. Here they took everything I had on me, which wasn't much since the two huge guys, known as escorts, didn't let me take anything but the clothes on my back pretty much. I was given some different clothes, a tarp, a sleeping bag, 2 bandanas, a food bag, etc. All of the stuff was rolled up into the tarp and put in the back of a truck. Then I took my last crap in a toilet for the next two months and went in the truck. They drove out for three hours into the middle of the wilderness and then I was put with a group of other guys ages 16 and 17 and a few staff. At that point I still didn't know entirely what was going on, but I talked to the other guys and found out about the hell I would be enduring for the next 2 months. Since the escorts had hand cuffed me I was thinking about where the best place to escape would be. When I got to the program I found out that I had missed it, however I started revising my plans based on what I was told by the other guys. On my second day I ran from the program. I tried to follow the path that the car had taken to get to where I was, but was in the end unsuccessful. About 12 hours later I was caught. And so began my 2 months of time in the hell hole known as wilderness rehab. For those unfamiliar with this, as many are, I will explain what this entails. It is kinda like the movie Holes, except instead of digging giant holes, we hiked 10 – 15 miles every day with a 50 – 60 pound pack. By pack, don't think backpack. This pack was a tarp rolled up with all of the stuff we had in it, tied up with string, and with backpack straps tied on to it. After we hiked and got to the new camp we would work on book work, cook one military style kidney of food eventually, and then go to sleep with our tarp set up over us in case it rained, only to do the same exact thing the next day. The first week or two the staff spent their time trying to convince you that you had a problem, until you eventually realized that the best thing to do would be to pretend that you had a problem. For the rest of the time you pretended to work on your imaginary problems to get out of there. The program was normally two months for most people, but 80% of the people that finished the program ended up going to another program. There are a sizable number of people that are going to be shuffled from program to program until the day they turn 18. When one is in program one lives with the fear that they will be one of those people. I was extremely lucky to get in the 20% that were released. I could never have conceived before this program that I could live a lie like I did. For those of you that have read the book 1984, I kind of did what Winston did when he was in the thought police's prison. I let myself think like the staff of the program wanted me to while I was in the program so that I could be in that lucky 20%, and I was able to be my normal self again after all that time once I got out. Seeing as I am posting this right now I'd say I was very successful.

I have probably experienced the three scariest times of my life in the past 3 months. The first was when I was lying on my friend's couch and life seemed totally hopeless and I began thinking about how hopeless my life was turning. At that time I kind of flipped out mentally. The second was when I had broken into my parent's house and the cops came. When the cops found out where I was hiding the door was opened and I had the extremely scary experience of having three guns in my face. The third one was the few days up to me being released from program. At that point it still had not been determined if I was going to a second program or not. What happens is they take you out of the wilderness on a sunday and have you do a kind of family therapy (read: they try to get you to think that you are the only one who has done anything wrong in your family) until Tuesday. From Sunday to Tuesday I was scared shitless that if I said one thing wrong I was going to be sent to another program. The statistic of people who get sent to another program is 80%, but the staff would love for it to be 100%. I sat there as the staff tried to tell my parents that I needed to be sent to a second program and did my best to respond in a way that would get me home. I was flipping out mentally but I was unable to show this fear for fear that it would get me sent to another program. On tuesday on my way back I was flipping out because I didn't have a weapon to kill any escorts that showed up with. My parents brought me back home, but the first few days I was home I was watching my back at every moment in fear that I would be taken off to another place. I was sleeping with a knife under my pillow for maybe a week after I got home. I still have a bit of fear in that sense, but its not a complete overwhelming paranoia like it originally was. I do know that if I do see escorts again I will kill them without a second thought. Anyone who can make a career out of taking someone else's freedom away is a fucked up individual that deserves the worst possible fate.

Before I was sent to this place I could not have imagined in my wildest dreams that such a place existed. Places like that should not exist. Anyone in that business is completely fucked up in the head. I am overwhelmingly glad that I came out of it unbrainwashed. The sad thing is that I would say that most of the guys in programs like that don't have a problem at all, I know I definitely didn't, and most of the people I was in there with didn't. I am now back living with my parents, but I just got a job today at Gamestop (I lost the one I had by being gone for two months), and once I have some steady income I am going to move out. I do not want to live with parents that would kick me out and then kick me while I was down by sending me to program. They have too much power over me. Once I am 18 and they cannot totally fuck me over in every way possible I will feel safe around them, but until then there will always be some fear in the back of my head. I wonder how the hell they could have thought that something like that would make things better. Every day there I just became more and more resentful toward them. When I was homeless I could be forgiving and just continue running my life and still be cool with my parents, but this second transgression is unforgivable. I have lost two months of my life and had to deal with more extreme stress than anyone should ever have to go through.

It should also be noted that I was released on the anniversary of Che's death, which is fucking awesome in every way possible. Che is watching out for me.

To all the staff at WQ, those who work as escorts, and staff at similar programs: fuck you, burn in hell you sick mother fuckers.

Don't Have Sex In My Presence

2007-08-20T22:40:00.001-07:00

So I've encountered an interesting phenomenon during my homelessness. Apparently people can't resist having sex when I'm around. I have had two occasions where friends have been doing the dirty in my presence.

The first occasion I was instrumental in getting my friends laid. I had introduced two of my friends and I told the girl that she should hang out with us when she got off work. My male friend thought that she wasn't interested in him, but I kept telling him she was and that he just had to keep at it. This ended up back firing on me. She ended up sleeping over at his house, as was I, and next thing I know I am on my laptop five feet away and they start going at it. I'm sitting talking to friends online saying "WHAT THE HELL!? WHY ARE THEY DOING THIS NOW!?!?" and they responded with "live stream it over webcam to us.", big help they are. I eventually close my laptop, stand up, sigh loudly, and leave the room. It was quite awkward. I wasn't able to look at either of them the same for a few days afterward.

The second occasion was understandable, but still awkward. When I was staying with another friend I found that her apartment had very thin walls. She lives with her boyfriend and I was sleeping on her couch. Before I get to sleep I heard a bunch of sex induced gasping. That one woke me up right away as I sat on her couch thinking "wow... awkward". I ended up asking her the next day if that was her having sex and I think I embarrassed her quite a bit, especially when I imitated her gasping.

I'll also notice that all of this sex is happening to other people and not me. Why!? I wouldn't mind getting some too once in a while. Why hast my atheist god forsaken me in this way? So the moral of this story is don't have sex in my presence unless there is some for me too. Is that so much to ask?

Work Permits and Alameda

2007-08-18T18:55:00.000-07:00

So its been a while since I've been able to get online and update this blog, but I have now successfully become one with the internets again as I sit on the mall wifi. For the past week I have been working on getting my work permit, and that took much too long. I worked on Monday and then before I could get on the schedule again I had to get a work permit. So Tuesday morning I go and get an application for a work permit from the school district office. I was planning to bring the application into my manager and have him fill it out that day, but I decided to pay a visit to a friend first. That visit was a horrible idea because, from a short visit, it turned into a long drunken visit. My friend had essentially drank beer and Bacardi 151 for breakfast that day, so of course I had to match him. We proceeded to get stupid drunk and then decided that it was a good idea to go around town. Of course, we were not finished with our beer at that time, so we decided that it was a good idea to bring it on the bus with us. Have I mentioned how stupid drunk we were? I'm wondering how we weren't stopped by the police for public drunkenness. Eventually I ended up at the mall that I work at, but I was drunk, my manager was off work, and I didn't have my work permit with me. I totally wasted that day. The day after that I got my work permit into my manager, he filled out what he needed to fill out, and I was about to turn it into the school to get my actual permit when I realized that I didn't know my social security number, which the form required. With a sigh I went to my parent's house to get my passport and social security card. I finally got my social security number at 6:30, however the school office closed around 5. Alas, I had to wait until the next day, Thursday, to turn in the permit application. I was thinking that they could give me the permit right there, however I was disappointed to find out that I had to wait a day. Finally, on Friday, I got my work permit, turned it in to my manager, and got on the schedule for Monday. That whole process took far too long. Being seventeen is a real pain in the ass at times. I now have to make the remainder of my money last two weeks until I get my first paycheck.

Another interesting experience was last night when I stayed with a friend in Alameda. The night that I went up there, my friend's boyfriend and I had to go all the way to Sacramento to pick up his friend, who unfortunately had gotten into a rough spot and been evicted by her land lord and robbed in the same night (and I thought I had it rough...). Another interesting fact is that she was a prostitute, so now I can tell people that I've met a prostitute. Something I had to do before my life ended is now checked off. The person that we picked up and I stayed at my friend's place for the night and in the morning my friend and her boyfriend had to go out for a while. That left the still sleeping hooker and I alone in the apartment. So of course I decided to go get some lunch and check out Alameda until my friend and her boyfriend got back. I went to McDonalds, which I have been eating at too much lately, for lunch and then started walking back to the apartment, checking out the sights along the way. On the way back I saw that there was a beach in Alameda. I figured I still had some time before my friend got back so I went to the beach. Now I must say, if you are in Alameda, California, make sure to go to the beach. It was absolutely gorgeous. I went walking by the water and looking around in this place that I had never been to before. There was a little lake by the water that had lots of ducks in it and it was a damn beautiful scene. I could have sat just watching that all day. After I saw that, I went over to the sandy place, rolled up my pant legs, and waded knee deep into the water. On a hot summer day like today, wading in the water like that is absolutely orgasmic. Its not often that I get away from city sprawl, but I think that just makes it all the more amazing when I do. I definitely have to visit that beach again someday.

My cousin has just moved to Berkeley today to go to the university there. I'll have to give her a call and see if I can meet her tomorrow. She's from a somewhat rural area, so a place like Berkeley might be a bit of a shock to her, and I want to be there soon to make it as shocking as possible for her. I'm a nice guy like that, and of course, like all other nice guys, I'll be sure to write about it in my blog.

New Job, Apartments, Ex Girlfriends, A Visit Home, A Drug Test, and More

2007-08-13T22:23:00.000-07:00

So today I started my new job. It feels very good to be working for some money. The job is quite chill and the people who work there are leet. An interesting thing about this particular stand is that before I had a job there I would bum around at it and talk to the people working there. Now that my job as the stand bum is void, as I now work there, my friend seems to have taken over the position. I had told him that I started working at 10 today and he showed up just to bug me. He didn't have to actually work at the mall that day, he came just for the hell of it to take my former position. I talked to him about getting an apartment and we figured out how much money we can get together for it, and luckily we will probably have enough. I was also trying to get him to leave much of the time, as I didn't want my manager to think that I was a slacker who talks to friends at work all day. Finally he left and then a few hours later when work got really boring he wasn't around to talk to anymore. My friend has horrible timing indeed.

Another interesting thing that happened as I was filling out my new employee information was finding that I had to put an address and phone number. Obviously, due to me being homeless, I don't have an address. I also don't have a phone number because my parents deactivated my phone. I ended up just putting my parent's address and my phone number from before my phone got deactivated, I don't anticipate them mailing anything to me or calling me any time soon though. Hopefully those work out until I can get a permanent address and number.

I also had experiences with people associated with some ex girlfriends of mine. One was of an ex from around a year ago. I went on break at work and saw a girl that looked exactly like her. I'm somewhat wondering if it was her. If she had lost a little weight and I had gotten taller than I thought in the past year then its not so far fetched. However she lives in Portland now, so that couldn't have been her. The other incident was meeting a friend of an ex from a little under two weeks ago. The meeting with the friend wasn't so interesting as the timing of when I got dumped. She dumped me a few days after I became homeless. I'm wondering if those two events are connected at all. Its kind of strange in that she wants to still be friends (read: almost like dating but without the sex).

After work I went home to take that drug test. My dad was at work, but my mom was home and she was quite hostile towards me. My grandma was also visiting my mom at that time and got my mom to let me in for a little visit. I was finally able to see my sisters and play with them for a few minutes. My mom got pretty angry when I loaded up some clothes from my room into my suit case but I got out with them in the end. I really get the impression that my mom wants absolutely nothing to do with me at this point.

Tomorrow I have to go to the school district office, get a workers permit, bring it to my manager, and set up my work schedule for the week. Then I will be needing to go out and look at apartments with my friends. Hopefully I can find a computer again tomorrow to write about that from.

I Saw My Dad

2007-08-12T15:44:00.000-07:00

Friday I went up to my grandma's place. I had originally planned to spend the day with her and then head back to my town of origin (I would say home town but I lack a home so thats not quite accurate) in the evening. I ended up spending the entire weekend with her. I go back Monday morning to start work. We talked a bit about my situation and I told her that, due to my recent arrest, I wanted to lay low for a week or so before seeing my parents so that they would have time to cool off. My grandmother believed that time would not cool the situation down but instead make it worse and convinced me to see my father on Saturday. So we invited my dad to come along with us to the Japanese Festival in Concord where we were also going to meet my aunt, uncle, and cousin. We had a nice time and the situation was more relaxed than a one on one meeting would have been. My grandma was quite dismayed when she found out that my parents still did not want me back, but she has accepted that fact and has been teaching me about cooking and house keeping for when I get an apartment. I hope that when I get an apartment I can have a more friendly, less parent-child type of relationship with my parents.

I have found that I am not so disappointed that my parents still do not want me back. The type of life I am living at the moment is stressful much of the time, but there are some definite perks to it as far as how much freedom and control I have in my life. I'm thinking that if I work long and hard enough and get enough room mates, I can get an apartment and in the end I would be living a more satisfying life than when I was living with my parents. It will be much more difficult, especially when school starts again, but just because a life is difficult does not mean that it is unsatisfying.

One thing that my dad wanted from me that he mentioned before we went to the festival was that he wanted me to take a drug test. At first I was confused as to what the point of that would be since I was arrested when I was high on marijuana and they already know that I have been smoking weed. I then realized that his concern was things like crack and meth, so I will probably take the test after work on Monday. Unfortunately I think my dad got the impression that I was refusing to take the drug test, an impression that I gave through my confusion at first about the test, so he may be slightly ticked at me when I talk to him on Monday.

Tomorrow I will be able to tell you all about my first day of work if I can get ahold of a computer, and, if any of you see me on the street, monetary donations are being accepted, 20's and 50's are preferred.

I'm homeless and it sucks.

2007-08-09T19:49:00.000-07:00

Hey all. I'm homeless. I'm what is known as a couch surfer right now. For those of you that don't know, a couch surfer is someone who goes from friend's house to friend's house sleeping on their couches (or floor).

I suppose that you all want a little bit of background. It has been 11 days since I was kicked out of my parents house. I was kicked out for drinking, smoking, cussing too much, and fucking (funny thing was I wasn't actually fucking, they just think I was). I was kicked out with only the clothes on my back, though I was able to grab my laptop before I left. Later I was able to get my sister to put out some clothes and medicine for me to pick up. After that I was able to get a job, which I start in four days. After that, last night, I decided to break into my house because my family was on vacation in another state. So I got into my house and decided to invite some friends over to celebrate. We broke out the weed and proceeded to get high. That would have been great, except for that my neighbor called the cops. Next thing I know I've been taken out of my house at gun point and arrested. It wasn't all bad though because I met a very nice girl named Patty during the whole experience. She was tagging along with the cop as a requirement for a career she was pursuing and it was nice talking to her while her and I were alone without the cop in the car. So Patty, if you happen to read this, hit me up. Unfortunately in getting arrested I was locked out of the house again and lost everything but the stuff I had on me at the moment (minus the knife that was confiscated). Luckily I had put some clothes in the shed on the side of the house when I broke in, which I got today. So right now all I have is a few bucks and 3 sets of clothes, some of which my friends own. I had the idea to start a blog when I was sitting here on my friend's computer. And there is the past 11 days summed up into a small blog post.

I will keep making posts as things happen in my homeless life, just cause there are people out there who have nothing better to do than follow a hobo's life. Right now my goals are to earn money at my new job, secure an apartment, and see my sisters again.