Dear Republicans (not created by me)

Fuck you. No, I'm not joking. I'm sick of this bullshit.

I'm sick of the way you've corrupted the public discourse. The way you've made it acceptable to hurl any insult you like at public officials. The way you blame us for the current atmosphere of hatred by accusing us of starting it with hating Bush. Like Bush didn't come on the heels of eight years of your tireless efforts to destroy Clinton by any means necessary, like Bush didn't give us good reason to complain. A couple of posters on a website compared Bush to Hitler and you've used it as free license to compare Obama to Hitler 24/7 and I'm sick of your hypocrisy, where it's acceptable to say shit about Obama that you would have had an apoplectic fit (and did) if anything remotely similar had been said about your guys. Keith Olbermann calls Cheney a fascist when he was actually using fascist tactics and you think that gives you the freedom to call Obama a fascist, socialist, Marxist constantly for no reason at all. Fuck you and your bullshit false equivalency.

I'm sick of the way you've made the populace stupid. Around a fifth of your populace thinks the sun orbits the earth, over half think evolution never happened. Your populace actually believe the media has a liberal bias. Not because it has, you have the most conservative media in the free world, but because you've shouted it so loud and so often that you've brainwashed the public into believing it, like the battered wife who parrots her husband's insults. You've got a whole segment of the populace shouting about socialism and fascism and none of them know what the fucking words mean. You've convinced them that fascism is a left-wing thing. You've got them so turned around that some of them actually believe global warming isn't happening. Fuck you.

I'm sick of the way you try to destroy the whole concept of government. You've tricked the people into believing that government can't do anything right, always being careful to exclude the army because you love your bullets and bombs but you've so destroyed the public's ability to reason that they don't even think of interstate highways, the space program, the national parks program, etc. Government is always great when it's doing what you tell it and inevitably corrupt when it isn't. Fuck you.

I'm sick of your rewriting of history. You've bleated so loud and long that Reagan was a great president, that the New Deal didn't work, that cutting taxes increases revenues, that you actually have the people believing this bullshit. And these are the same people who will go on to become teachers and fill their student's heads with this self-same bullshit. Reagan was a mediocre president at best who had the good fortune to be in power when the USSR collapsed under it's own weight and you bastards have turned him into the Second Coming. You've rewritten history so that everything foul and hateful and wrong can be attributed to a Democrat while everything worthwhile is a Republican's glory. Fuck you.

I'm sick of your dragging the center ever further to the right. How many whackjob fringe ideas have you dragged into the mainstream? The aforementioned idea that tax cuts increase revenues, the Laffer Curve, the idea that Welfare harms the poor, the idea that there's rampant fraud in Welfare, the idea that whatever is good for corporations is good for the country. And you push these ideas through your corporate media and you do it so long and loud that they become part of the accepted political landscape and because it is easier to tell a lie than to debunk one, we never get away from this rancid shit. Fuck you.

I'm sick of your casual criminality. Teddy Kennedy, a man who's boots you were not worthy to lick, was just buried and all I've heard from my rightist friends for days is Chappaquiddick, Chappaquiddick, Chappaquiddick. Your fucking golden boy raped the Constitution, mainly because he wanted to; tortured random people (and waterboarding is torture, fuck you too) essentially because he wanted to; spent like a drunken sailor, essentially because he wanted to; invaded a sovereign nation, essentially for the loot and destroyed people's lives, essentially for the evilulz and you bastards are obsessed with a fucking accident a Democrat had decades ago? You don't go on about Laura Bush killing some guy decades ago. Fuck you.

I'm sick of you praising pure evil. You're letting Dick Cheney be the standard-bearer for Republicanism. Dick Cheney, a man so nakedly evil that even his friends call him "Darth"; a man so callous that Lex Luthor would recoil in terror; a man who probably has dismembered hitchhikers in those man-sized safes and kills plants by his mere proximity. Fuck you.

I'm sick of your attempts to tilt the playing field permanently in your favor. Democrats filibustered a few of Bush's most hateful judicial picks and you pricks started screaming about doing away with the filibuster but now you're in the minority, you're filibustering absolutely everything you can and whining when you don't get the chance. You ignored everything the Democrats had to say when you had power and now that you don't, you scream that everyone must be bipartisan. You don't budge a fucking inch on anything but you insist that everyone must compromise to meet you. That's your idea of politics: Don't move an inch, force the other guy to come to the right to meet you and call the result a "compromise". Fuck you.

I'm sick of your corporatism. You dress it up in false populism but anyone with half a brain can see that you're the brought and paid for subsidiary of big business. You keep pushing tax cuts as the answer for absolutely everything, you keep sabotaging every attempt to control the excesses of big business. You genuinely think the world would be a better place if it was a combination of Bill Gibson's dystopian vision of a corporate dominated world and Ayn Rand's bullshit Objectivism, yet another entry in mankind's endless attempts to find a moral justification for naked greed. You've taken the clinically insane spewings of a woman literally to the right of Hitler (pardon my Godwins) and the 1984-like vision of a dystopian author and convinced yourselves that would be a good place to live. Big business is the enemy of the people, always has been. The ideal for the corporate class is to have a small pool of people rich enough to buy their fucking crap and a much larger pool of people so poor and with so few options that they can be used and abused at the corporation's whim. A corporation's objective is not to look after you, it is to make ever-larger profits by any means necessary. You bastards want to reinstate fucking slavery to the corporate class and you've made the public so fucking stupid that they actually swallow the bullshit you're serving up, they actually want to enslave themselves to the corporations that abuse them at every turn. They actually care more about the corporations right to make obscene profits than they care about their child's right to live on a habitable planet. Fuck you.

Fuck you, you scumridden shitehawks, you make me sick. Just fuck off and die.

I don't want to get on a rant here but...

The vast majority of computer owners don't know shit about what's inside the tower. They are perfectly happy that they can memorize their ram and hard drive size. And their idiot friends just nod their head in agreement thinking their their new computer is bad ass. Like those new ads where Microsoft buys someone a computer that's not a Mac. It has to do with price. If you spend more money now, it will save you money in the long run. So most people will buy a $500 computer that will run good for a few months then start to lag. When it fails on them (oh, how it will fail on them), they bitch and moan and take it in to a computer shop, Geek Squad, or a friend who knows more about computers than they do. Computer repair shops would not exist without the pre-manufactured computer companies (Dell, Gateway, etc.) not pushing the capabilities of their machines. If Vista requires only 2GB of ram to function well after initial start up by the consumer, that's all the computer companies will put in the machines. If the for-mentioned companies would max out the ram for that particular mobo or at least put half the maximum in, half of the computer shops out there would be gone. Instead of adding more ram when your computer starts to slow down, max the ram out and you wouldn't have to keep upgrading the computer. Obviously people would still need computer shops to clear out their virus', but that's the fault of Microsoft.

Computer repair should be taught at the High School level, just like shop. If they offer you a class to fix small engines, they can just as easily teach you to install a processor. Instead they teach you how to use it. The more people know about what's inside the computer, the better. These companies would have to start manufacturing better computers, since no one would want a computer that's slow as hell compared to what they could make with some extra cash and a free weekend. Once I'm done building my new computer, I'll never buy a pre-made one again, unless I get a laptop. I have no idea how to fix those.

Of course, that's my opinion. I could be wrong.

In search of the past, concluded

I had this week off from work, so I thought it would be a wonderful time to drive to Leon, Iowa and attempt to find my father. Tuesday morning I woke up early and started on my 8 hour, 460 mile trip. I hopped on Highway 41 south, then jumped on Highway 151 into Iowa. 151 to 30, 30 to I-80, I-80 to I-35, I-35 to 2. Basically to sum that up, south to south west, south west to west, west to south, repeat.

I arrived in Leon around 3:30 pm. found a motel. The town is roughly 1,500 for population. Surprisingly, though, they do not have a McDonalds. They do have a Dairy Queen. I drove past the address I had and there was no car in the driveway. Back to the motel for a few hours until hunger set in. Stop at this steakhouse a mile from the motel. Not a bad place at all. They are, however, a little over zealous by calling themselves Leon's oldest steakhouse. I have a problem with this because they've only been open for a year. If they had competition as a steak house, you wait at least 5 years before you start declaring yourself this and that.

The waitress and I started talking and the conversation turned to my father. She didn't know him, but helped me look in a phone book. The results were disappointing; he wasn't in the phone book. A little defeated, I returned to the motel for the night.

The next morning I filled up the car for the drive home and drove past the address once again. There was a car in the driveway, and anxiety kicked in big time.

Sorry, I have no desire to finish this at this time, processing new information.

Pushing Play, part 2

P90X - Day 43

Its the start of week 7. Chest, shoulders and triceps. This is the last time I'll be doing this disk until week 10, as week 8 is a recovery week and week 9 I'll be doing stuff from the first month again. I think I brought it today because halfway through I had to stop. My arms felt like heavy jello. I'm also going to have to buy a lighter resistance band for the tricep moves. Some moves I can barely do.

I've fallen off the diet program as well. I'm not talking about eating foods I'm not supposed to be eating, because everyone does that. I'm talking about the foods I should be eating as listed in the nutrition book. I haven't lost any weight in 2 weeks. You could argue that I'm gaining muscle weight to match fat loss, but My belly fat hasn't really changed at all. I really need to focus on getting back on that starting today.

On the positive side, I'm noticing more strength and firmness from my muscles. I'm almost halfway home and its making me giddy.

In search of the past

In pursuit of knowing where my family has come from, I've started a family tree. I've gotten as far as my Great-Grandparents on my mom's and step-father's side. Through a discussion with an uncle recently, I found out that my great-great-great grandfather came to this country from Germany at the age of 4, and my grandma's family came from Prussia. That's my mom's side, on my step-father's side, the name Ferguson started in Scotland. Part of that clan set up roots in Ireland, which is a great excuse for getting trashed on St. Patty's day.

As for my father, I knew nothing about him. I have been under the impression that I was a bastard, and that has given me some pride. I was happy with that. Some people are ashamed by it, but not me!

A recent trip to my mom's changed all that. I asked her about my father, wanting his name and a little background history between the two. She does one better and pulls out papers from back in the day. Turns out she went to a carnival to meet someone and met Kenneth James Barbee, my father, instead. She chalks this up to a "wild year" and ended up moving in with him to his home state of... Alabama.

Then my mom tells me something I never expected. Her and Ken were married for 3 months. During that period, I was conceived. Luckily for me she divorced him and moved back to Wisconsin to live with her sister, and I was born in this great state. Plan and simple, fuck that backwards state.

So I went from prideful bastard to son of divorced parents. Luckily the FSM was listening, because the next news was even more wonderful. When my mom met Ken at the carnival, he was working there. That's right, my father is a carnie!!! I could have done backflips after hearing that. Everything started fitting into place. Now when I act stupidly, I can blame the Alabama genes I have. I've always hated "Sweet Home Alabama", now I can blame my father for that.

I am the son of a carnie (yay) from Alabama (damn it). I searched his name. I think I've located him in Iowa. My next long weekend I'm thinking about driving down there to see if its him or not. If it is, I think I'll hyper-ventilate. If not, I'll come home and try again to find him.

Pushing play, part 1.

P90X - Day 36

My personality is more impulse than planning. I'll lightly think of something to do, then do it all of a sudden after months of no thought of it at all. Why I'm posting this blog on day 36 instead of day 1 is tribute to that.

I had seen the commercials for the P90X workout series for many moons and kept telling myself that I should buy that. After all, who doesn't want to look like a million bucks after only 90 days? For some reason, however, I kept putting it aside and telling myself that I'll buy it later.

In the month of May, Amanda and I had returned home after setting up an appointment for me to get fitted for my tux. I hopped on the computer, grabbing my wallet out of my jeans pocket, and ordered P90X without a second thought. Now, why did I purchase it so hastily? The answer is quite simple. Once the tux is ordered, I'm stuck with it. Sure, minor alterations can be made, but the general size isn't going anywhere. I had 2 months to lose as much weight as I could. 2 months to look my best 6 months later for pictures that will last for longer than I will live.

Less than a week later it was in my house. In the workout book, there is a section that is not attached to the spine of the book. In it, it lists all these different things you can buy to help with the program: protein bars, recovery formula, yoga blocks, resistance bands, heart rate monitors, etc. There is even a website you can go to to talk to other people just like you who are doing this program. It dawned on me that this program isn't just out there to be out there on the market, this program is the real deal. This is not only a physical change, its a lifestyle change.

A nutrition guide is also included that tells you exactly what to eat every single day of the program. It gives you alternatives and shows you how to eat smarter. Since starting this program, the only "fast food" establishment I have set foot in is Subway, and that doesn't really count. I'm watching what I eat. I stopped drinking soda... for 2 weeks. Quitting cold turkey was harder than I thought. I still drink soda, but way less that I was before. And for a big shocker, I, Matthew James Ferguson, has not had any alcohol since May 9th. Coming from a guy who has had over 80 different kinds of beer, that is big enough news to stop traffic... on the Beltline... during rush hour... on a Friday afternoon... at the start of a 3 day weekend.

As I was looking through the workout book, I get to a section that asks "What can you expect?" The last one is in bold letters: And you can expect to sweat. A lot. I decided to do the stretch exercises the day before I started the program. I was sweating halfway through the DVD. A few other lines stick out in my head, Do your best and forget the rest, Forget "I can't" and say, "I presently struggle with", Don't just kind of do it, and the two words you see just before you start a workout: Bring It.

I started on May 17th and will continue pushing play until August 14th. After that day, I will rest for a little while until I start "Day 1" all over again.

The best job ever.

When it snows in Green Bay before a home game, the Packers organization puts out a call for volunteers to come to the stadium and help shovel snow of the bleachers and walkways. I answered that call in what I would say is the best job I've ever had. ($8/hour)

It started at 9 a.m.. About 300 of us were led through the Mills Fleet Farm gate on the south-west side, into a storage area. There we signed in and grabbed a shovel. We came into the stadium on the South side. Make-shift slides were set up to set the snow on and watch it slide down onto the field, where it was scooped up by machines and taken out through the players tunnel. After we had a section done, we'd pick up the "slide" and moved it North. This happened 3 times until we were finished. Before we started, the put this blue stuff on the snow to help break up the ice. Think salt, but blue. It made everything slushy and got in your shoes and soaked your socks. After we were done, we handed in our shovels and got a slip of paper saying we worked, etc. We had to take those to the ticket window outside to get paid. I got a cool $18.