Satan’s Garden

It’s time once again for my favorite holiday. I’m not sure what hit me about Halloween that simply stirred my blood as a child. It certainly wasn’t the candy and treats. I really didn’t care. Where my younger brother would end up with a stomach ache on day one, that he wouldn’t let go of for the three days his stash would last, I would sometimes have tidbits left over around Christmas. I certainly did enjoy role playing, which extended into a hobby of D&D, Call of Cthulhu, and various other role playing games in my teens and early twenties. (A pleasure I abandoned for some time, until my teen aged boys took an interest in D&D and wanted me to run a campaign for them and their friends.) Not even that was the main draw for me. I think I simply liked having an excuse to scare people.

Probably the most fun I had on any Halloween was the year I was 12, where I certainly had no interest in walking door to door, but instead had our next door neighbor help dress me up as a rather stereotypical movie vampire, complete with white face makeup, cape and slicked down hair. I spent the entire evening hiding behind bushes, up in trees to drop down on unsuspecting munchkins and adults alike, spreading the cape and hissing. I’m pleased to report that I even startled a few adults.

I’ve done my share of Halloween acting for the kids who come to the door every year, but I’m saddened to say that things simply aren’t the same. I can’t work up the energy anymore, when the turnout is so dull.

Let me explain. The Mormons, among other things, have simply ruined the holiday. Theses days they hold Trunk or Treats. A few years ago the concerned parents of the Mormon church out here in the Salt Lake valley (which seems like most of the population), where almost nothing bad ever happens, decided that the safest way to hold the holiday was to gather in the local ward parking lot and have the little tykes be bussed in via their parent’s cars, to walk around from vehicle to vehicle through the parking lot to collect candy from each parked car. If you think that sounds lame, it is. It’s the K-Mart blue light special of Halloween activities.

There still are some hold-outs who go house to house, but the numbers seem to dwindle every year. So it just doesn’t pay to put on a show around here. Hopefully, the rest of America is not following this pathetic trend of laziness dressed in Safety-Nazi attire.

We decorate a little outside the house and do our yearly Jack O’Lantern carving, but we don’t do the kinds of things we used to. I guess the holiday geared around the day where the boundary between the living and the dead is supposed to be the thinnest, fell through that thin barrier and died.

Oh, well. At least I still get to carve up some Jack O’Lanterns.

Rep Pete Stark, (D-California) has become the first congressman to declare that he is atheist. This makes Stark the highest ranking elected official in US history to publicly acknowledge that he doesn’t believe in God, or any other supreme being. Political annalists claim that Stark has little to fear over his proclamation, as California is one of the most, if not the most secular state in the Union. Claims were made by others that such a proclamation just a few years ago, would have been “political suicide”.

Let me see if I have this straight. A congressman declares that he is atheist, that he doesn’t believe in a mysterious, unprovable conjecture with no supporting empirical data of any kind, and this would constitute “political suicide”?

If that doesn’t give a prime example as to the dangers of mixing religion and politics in general, I don’t know what does.

Frankly, I’d rather have a political servant devoid of dangerous delusions and immune to the wiles and wills of any religious organization, than one who firmly believes in the unprovable assertions of any supernatural dogma. Why is it that ignorance and uncritical thinking are given merit in someones personality, anyway?

The facts are simple: there is not a single religion that has been able to prove that their religious beliefs are valid. There is not a single religion that has been able to even provide the tiniest shred of evidence for the existence of their god, or any other god. They depend entirely on faith: belief in spite of lack of evidence or the presence of contrary evidence.

Putting aside all religious questions for the moment, is there anyone who can logically argue that electing individuals who believe things that have no evidence to support the belief, is a good thing? You would think that just a casual glance at the Bush administration would be proof of the dangers of belief without evidence.

As if the thick stream of lies out of Giuliani’s mouth could get an more inane than they have, the Associated Press shares this tidbit:

“If (there’s) something living on another planet and it’s bad and it comes over here, what would you do?” the boy asked.

Giuliani, grin on his face, said it was the first time he’s been asked about an intergalactic attack.

“Of all the things that can happen in this world, we’ll be prepared for that, yes we will. We’ll be prepared for anything that happens,” said Giuliani, who spent the day campaigning in key early voting state.

This reaction says several things…

1. Giuliani is clueless about the nature of space and the technological advancement that would be required for a species to actually reach Earth from another system. If they can get here, we’re at their mercy.
2. Real defense exists in his mind if we only say that “we’re prepared”.
3. Giuliani would rather make a blatant lie, steaming with propaganda, than to actually think for even a moment about a question asked.

None of these are flattering traits, to be certain.

In the meantime, an invading alien force has decided to spare the energy needed for particle and beam weapons and are flinging our own asteroids at the Earth using parasitic rockets, left over from 2,000 year old technology they bought at an intergalactic discount warehouse using expired Betelgeuse food stamps. Rudy is in his yard, prepared to knock the asteroids away with a baseball bat and a thick curtain of Star Wars defense system puffery.

UPDATE - 2007-10-29: Comet 17p/Holmes brightened by over 1 million times its previous magnitude in just 24 hours on Oct. 17th. The first wave of the attack is coming, Rudy! Get your bat ready. (Note for the humor impaired, this is ironic boutade.)

There are times that I wonder just how crazy the world has become. Giving Al Gore the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts on spreading anthropogenic global warming hyperbole, as well as the IPCC itself, is one of those events which simply leaves you shaking your head in confusion. How is this in any way working toward world peace? How is it that Al Gore could ever qualify, considering his past administration’s actions?

Alexander Cockburn does a beautiful job of analyzing the situation in an article at CounterPunch.org painting a picture that Gore would rather forget. It’s lengthy, but well worth the read.

This is an amazing video covering a research group’s efforts with Bonobo apes. The human-like behavior of the Bonobos is striking and to some my be a little eerie. It’s worth a watch, in any case.

The Bonobo video can be found here.

I’ve managed to make my way through forty two years of life without ever visiting a hospital emergency ward. As you have probably guessed, my record has been broken. The cause? The British Infantry of the 18th Century. To be fair, I’m exaggerating, it was but one of their muskets.

Let me back up a little. I have friends with the hobby or business, depending on your point of view, of reinacting the Seven Years War period, known quaintly in the North American theater as the French and Indian War. This group of friends attend various events in proper attire and kit for the period, particular to the cavalry unit they represent and demonstrate various bits of day to day life in the army of the King’s command. I’ve been handling the group’s IT needs for some time now, so attending an actual event, even as tiny as this one was, looked to be a fun way to see the reinacting portion in real life, as a participant no less. Well, not so much a participant, as a jackass in black BDU pants and matching polo shirt, rolling cartridges, inflating target balloons and loading black powder handguns and muskets for demonstrations. This was not your typical reinactment event, it was just a small demo for a town fair in north central Indiana, but it was a chance nonetheless to mix things up in a small and friendly environment and have a nice change of pace to take during my vacation.

One of the duties I took to, was to work on muskets and pistols which did not fire properly and at the least, discharge the load. Mind you, we were not using bullets, just black powder and the cartridge paper wadding, but you don’t want to keep a charge loaded, even if it is just a blank. I was working on one particularly stubborn carbine when the record breaking event occurred. The hammer was giving me a bit of trouble, resisting being cocked like a horse pulling tight on the reigns. I was attempting to pull back the hammer with the two smaller fingers of my right hand, when I decided to rotate my hand and push back with the palm of my hand instead, to work with extra leverage. For those of you who don’t know the moral of this story already, this is where our good soldier, yours truly, really screwed up. This is not the proper thing to do, and my palm promptly slipped.

On a modern firearm, slipping on a hammer like this may hurt you a bit, if you managed to catch the webbing between your thumb and hand in the hammer’s arch of movement. It might sting a little, but you’d be intact. On a flintlock musket, beneath the hammer’s top, is a piece of flint. The flint is used to strike against a metal plate called the frisson, which produces a spark that ignites the powder in a small pan under the hammer, proceeding through a small touch hole into the breach, setting off the final charge in the barrel and launching the bullet. Worst case scenario with a hammer slip would be an accidental discharge, but I hadn’t even opened the frisson to put powder in the pan yet. No, my problem was not with the base issues of fire, but with a rock. You see, flint works in part due to its shape. In a process called napping, which breaks off the rock in sheets, the flint is shaped into a fine edge. A very sharp edge. A razor sharp edge, which primitive man used to make arrow heads, axes and knives. An edge of which a corner thereof cut a beautiful arch across the meat at the base of my thumb, like a surgeon had cut me with a scalpel.

It took but a split second to notice that the tissue was cut well through the skin and into the muscle itself, but had not hit an artery or vein, as the blood loss was minimal. We cleaned it, put gauze on it and taped it up. Nevertheless, it was deep enough to cause concern, so my closest friend in the group and I drove off to the local hospital to get it examined by someone smarter in medicine than us.

There’s not a lot to tell about the event from that point on. I was lectured about my blood pressure, given a tetanus shot, prescribed an anti-biotic and had a sterile version of super glue used on the cut instead of old fashioned stitches. Though from a medical point of view I prefer the glue method, part of me is a little disappointed that the wound won’t show the typical marks of stitches, making it more in line with the period piece which caused the wound. Still, a wound is a wound and like every other wound, will be a faintly discolored reminder of why stupidity hurts.

However, in many ways it can be said that the worst casualty out of this weekend’s adventure was not the cut, but the mental damage. I’ve caught another disease, you see; like motorcycling or sailing. I’ve come to really like black powder muskets and can see one in my near future. Reinacting? I’m not so sure about that, but the smell of burnt powder, the challenge of all the physics involved in every shot and the simple fun of shooting: I’m sure about that. I’m also sure that I’m going to be giving flint a lot more respect than I have up until now.

Note to self: be smarter than the rock.