Well, I finally did it.

I don't look like Grizzly Adams any more.

Here's a little "before and after":


On a related note, can you tell I've got 50% of this guy's DNA?

Tenets of Kipism

I really need to get around to starting my own religion. I've been an ordained minister for 6 years now, and I haven't even bothered to order a copy of my formal ordination certificate from the ULC. I think I'm going to do that as soon as I have money again.

The First Church of Kipism has a lot of laws. And Kipism is inextricably linked to the way the land should be governed, sort of like Islam except weirder.

Laws of Kipism, second draft:

1. We believe that nobody is allowed to be a hypocrite except for Followers of Kipism.
2. We are not opposed to consuming any substance that exists in nature or can be created by natural processes or artificial facsimiles of natural processes (i.e. fermentation). This means that we're OK with alcohol, marijuana, mushrooms, etc., but we don't allow cocaine (though plain coca leaves would be fine) or heroin (but opium is A-OK) or methamphetamines.
3. We accept the word of medical doctors as law, therefore substances that are prohibited under rule 2 are OK if a doctor prescribes them. Even a Mexican "doctor."
4. We believe that all Kipists should be able to make a pilgrimage whenever they want. But we don't specify to where. So if a Kipist wants 2 weeks off to make a pilgrimage to Vegas, you have to let him go. And pay him for it. It's the Law.
5. We believe that old people should be kept in special facilities commonly known as "nursing homes." If a Kipist is ever in a position to do so, he should lobby for the universal imprisonment care of old people.
6. We believe that abortion is wrong. We believe that the death penalty should be used more often and applied to a wider variety of offenses. We don't care if you think these things are contradictory.
7. We believe that punishment should be cumulative, and exponential. If you jaywalk, you get a ticket. If you jaywalk and park illegally in the same week, you go to jail for a month. If you jaywalk and park illegally and litter all in the same month, you must die.
8. We believe cleanliness is next to godliness, so we're allowed to shower as often as we want and take as long as we want to do so. We also believe that not using antiperspirant is a mortal sin.
9. We don't believe in vacuuming. A perfect vacuum doesn't exist in nature, even in outer space, so man should not seek to create one in his home. But we believe it's OK for non-Kipists to vacuum.
10. We also don't believe in ironing, though we haven't thought of a good excuse for that one yet.
11. We believe that the High Priest of Kipism can make up new laws whenever he wants. This is the most important Law of Kipism.

My stepsister is destroying society.

She's not the only one, but she's definitely part of the problem.

Because she never spanks her son.

And he NEEDS it. Regularly. He needs to have a big red hand-shaped mark put on his ass every time he disobeys her, until he learns to follow orders and keep his annoying little mouth shut. Every time he cries about not getting his way on some piddly issue (which is WAY too often), I want to smack him. My thinking is, if he's going to cry anyway, make it for something worthwhile.

Not spanking kids is the worst idea ever to come out of the 60s. Worse than "free love," worse even than paisley.

Think about it on a different scale. The result of not spanking your kids is a smaller-scale version of what would have happened if we hadn't attacked Afghanistan after 9/11, but had instead sent them a strongly-worded letter of disapproval. If we had sent Hitler a box of chocolates and a note that said "please stop attacking our allies. It makes us sad."

It just doesn't work.

Not spanking kids is a clear-cut example of the snowball effect. The child learns he can get away with murder at home, so he assumes the same rules (or lack thereof) apply in the real world, and he ends up in jail blaming society as a whole for his personal failings. The only way to prevent this is to nip it in the bud.

Furthermore, I believe that failure to spank breeds liberals (which is almost synonymous with saying it breeds criminals, but worse).

I've said it before and I'll say it again: The entire world would have been better off if California had slid into the ocean in 1946, just before Dr. Spock published his first book. My only consolation is that Benjamin Spock is definitely burning in hell right now.

Another way to improve sports.

The Super Bowl shouldn't be a football game.

Seriously. Keep the regular season and the playoffs the same, but the Super Bowl should be a totally different sport.
Chosen randomly the day of game.

Sure, it will take a lot of work to retrofit every football stadium to be able to host 80 different sports, but it would be worth it.

One year, you'll have the Bills and the Redskins playing baseball.
The next year, it's the Broncos and the Falcons playing soccer.
The next year, the stadium will be converted into a huge mini-golf course.
Perhaps we'll have the Dolphins and Da Bears play ice hockey.
At least once, the teams will have to race go-karts against each other.
My favorite option would be for each team to choose one player as its champion for a one-on-one fight.

This is another of the many changes that could potentially get me to watch sports. Maybe.

I've figured it out.

I finally know why English people are so much more polite than Americans.

It's the tea.

Americans per capita have never consumed as much tea as Brits. We rejected tea in the 18th century.

And I have a theory that there is a compound in tea that influences the part of the brain that motivates good manners.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's the only thing. I know plenty of dickheads who drink tea. But it helps.

My evil gland is inflamed.

I went to the Virginia Beach Central Library today. This is nothing special, I'm a frequent library patron (in the same way that a family of 8 is considered a "frequent supermarket patron." I read a lot.).

But today, an idiot out front asked if I wanted an invitation to a Sierra Club event.

I was dumbfounded. Any organization that stands in the way of unchecked oil drilling and deforestation is automatically an enemy of mine. (Though a bunch of them did splinter off a few years back and form an anti-immigration group. I respect that. In the same way that I respect France for attacking a Greenpeace boat, i.e. I have no respect for them for anything else.)

Fortunately, years of customer "service" experience has allowed me to perfect a tone of voice that implicitly asks "are you high or just stupid?"

So I just arched my eyebrow and said "nooo thank you" in that tone of voice.



I think there needs to be a central abuse database for every wiki and forum on earth. It would maintain a database of IP addresses added by wiki administrators with a description of the IP's abuse, and when someone vandalizes a wiki, the admin there could go to the central abuse database to see if other wiki admins have posted more info, making it easy to justify a permanent ban on a first offense.

I also think that people should have to apply for a license to be allowed on the internet, and three strikes in the central abuse database would be grounds for losing your internet license.

Unlicensed internet use would of course be a capital offense.



I had to get a replacement Social Security card. It required one form and a driver's license. I now realize that it must be increjibly easy to get someone else's Social Security card.

I don't plan to get old enough to collect Social Security. If I do live that long, it will likely be as a cyborg, and I just bet they'll rewrite the Social Security laws to exclude cyborgs.

Which is fine, because I'll just pummel people to death with my titanium fists if they don't give me money. I can't wait to be a cyborg.



So I'm thinking about shaving my beard. Not completely shaving it off, just doing weird things to it. Like shaving words into it. Or making a Hitler goatee. That's a Hitler mustache that continues down the chin and neck in the same narrow stripe. Or maybe just shaving the right side of my face.

This requires further consideration.



My new job starts on the 27th. So much opportunity for mischief. You see, I moved a hundred miles from where I used to live, and nobody down here knows me except my family.

So the people at my new job don't know, for example, that I have good hearing. I could be deaf. I could need a hearing aid...
And an iPod looks a lot like certain hearing enhancement devices I've seen. Just put it in a slightly clunkier box and don't use the stock earbuds, and it could easily pass as a hearing aid.
And when I'm distracted by the music, they'll just think I didn't hear them.

I could come to work with an eyepatch. I'll tell them I lost my eye in a hunting accident or something.
Then one day I'll come in without the patch, and I'll say my eye grew back. Or I'll say someone healed me. I could set this up with a local religious con artist (there are plenty of them), and he'll gain a few dozen followers overnight.

They don't know I don't have voice immodulation. Or Tourette's syndrome. Or... happy feet!



I'm tired of wearing shoes. I mentioned this before, but I think something needs to be done about the shoe menace. Somehow, it became mandatory to wear them in public, and I protest this. I want to start an anti-shoe movement. Fred Flintstone could be our mascot.

I think I'm getting more quotable.

I really am. It's all the writing I'm doing on Wookieepedia. Some examples:

On superweapons: "A blown up planet is a blown up planet. It doesn't much matter which is *more* blown up."

On Emperor Palpatine: "Palpatine is just so evilly evil he secretes evilness from his pores."

On a continuity problem, using only Star Wars expletives: "Grife, this is a pretty nice kriff-up."

On IG-88, a group of four droid assassins with identical brains: "IG-88(s) is/are a/some fascinating (semi-)individual(s)."

On invisible weapons on model starships: "We can't see most of the turbolasers on Star Destroyers either, but then we saw in Episode III that they are internal and fire out of windows. Without proof of their existence, we must have faith. In that way, turbolasers are kind of like God. Also, the smiting. They're both good at that."

To an idiot: "You are stupid to the point of being radioactive, and I feel sorry for anyone who is physically near you because they are becoming dumber from exposure."


See? I'm more quotable than ever.