I am somewhat brain-dead tonight. This is the perfect time to start a new entry. I am compelled to feed my loyal followers with wit, wisdom and sincerity. Unfortunately, I'm a bit witless, and if you read my last post you know I'm short on wisdom too. But I'm chock full of sincerity. So read on loyal fans, read on.

Four score and seven years ago...
Well actually four score and seven years ago, on October 30, 1922, the Fascists Party marched on Rome and Benito Mussolini became prime minister of Italy. To top off the wonder of "four score and seven years ago," on December 29, 1922, the "Treaty on the Creation of the USSR" was approved and The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics became a reality.

Fascism, according to the American Heritage dictionary, is defined as "A philosophy or system of government that is marked by stringent social and economic control, a strong, centralized government usually headed by a dictator, and often a policy of belligerent nationalism."
Socialism, according to the book "Marx for Beginners" is defined as an "economic, social and political doctrine which expresses the struggle for the equal distribution of wealth by eliminating private property and the exploitative ruling class. In practice, such a distribution of wealth is achieved by social ownership of the means of production, exchange and diffusion."

Do either of these sound suspiciously like a new direction of hope and change...?

I think it fitting to borrow from our 16th president who mourned the loss of Americans at a great battlefield. After all, we now find ourselves again mourning the loss of Americans, and our own country is again becoming the battlefield. Only now it is the president himself working to bring about the destruction of this "Shining City on a Hill" as he seems to ally himself far more closely with those rulers of 1922 than he does the great and honorable Mr. Lincoln.

I've browsed a few blogs and I just can't seem to wrap my head around why people do this. Does anyone actually believe their opinions matter to the world at large? Granted, here I sit at the keys putting my own thoughts down. But for me this is a journal entry. And my earlier entries have just been for fun and the entertainment of my limited friends and family.

Today I searched for a particular insurance company, looking for corporate info to get an idea of who they are. Near the top of the first results page is a connection to a blog, much like mine, but filled with insurance agent's licensing test questions. The owner of the blog had his journal entries set in the right hand margin as he advertised his connection with this company. I assume he is an agent and uses his account to help others prepare for their tests. But his short article, with his thoughts on life, politics, home, etc. was so poorly written that I find it hard to believe he could even pass a test, much less persuade anyone to buy life insurance. But his blog looked professional with a nice layout and obviously good advertising by Google.

Not wishing to pick on an individual, let me just say that this is all too common in cyberspace. Companies like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and others provide this wonderful online facility where everyone has a chance to "pen" their deepest thoughts for posterity. We can rant, giggle, joke, philosophize, and generally just think out loud (sort-of) and have it saved for all time, bouncing through servers and mirror sites around the globe. I myself have made folks from as far away as England and Australia laugh at my jokes and funny pictures. But for me the question becomes: Should we expect our words to receive credibility, simply because we have "published" them?

Consider the entertainment industry, filled with actors and musicians. They inspire us with their portrayals and their voices. They tickle us with fantasy. They make us envious of their lifestyles. Then they presume to tell us how to think, both politically and religiously. And we grant them full authority as experts, seemingly just because they are famous. I know none of them personally, so I cannot say for sure that they are all mindless and stupid. But since I know none of them personally, I also cannot say they are geniuses, experts in fields like environmental science, religion, world politics, world hunger, medical science, and the list goes on. And yet, merely because they can sing or act, we swoon as they testify before congress, pretending to speak for us.

My son, at six years old, discovered a website called addictinggames.com. It has fun games like Kitty-Cannon and various race-car games. But then he found this really incredible game that taught him, with animated graphic reality, knee replacement surgery. In this game you start with a normal looking leg. You then select instruments from an array and proceed to open the skin and perform surgery. All the steps are spelled out (I only assume accurately) with parts labeled and surgical instruments available, and everything explained and ready. I was amazed to watch my six-year-old open a knee, cut and remove bad cartilage, clean and prep the area, then assemble the replacement parts in the right order before closing the wound and sewing the stitches. I was amazed....

Would you allow my son to perform this surgery on your knee? Or would you prefer someone who actually studied and practiced in the real world, perhaps under the supervision of an experienced and credentialed senior doctor?

Would you fawn over the opinions of an entertainer simply because he or she is "somebody" or would you rather consider life and all its delicacies by pursuing truth? And if you cannot find the truth by yourself, who is better qualified to direct you? Do you really want to put your faith (literally) in the hands of someone who chose a career pursuing the artificial?

And so let me come back around to my first question. Why do people blog? And further, should their opinions matter merely because they have found a venue to distribute them?

Let me presume to answer:
1. People blog because it makes them feel important. Their opinions are out there for the world to see and now they have contributed to the common good. Perhaps they can even make a difference.
2. No opinion should be elevated above another based merely upon it's level of saturation. This is how the U.S. political parties found their candidates in the last presidential election (talk about your no-win scenario).
3. And now to answer the question smarter readers have already asked: No, my opinions should receive neither more nor less weight than any other blogger's in this post-industrial community of thinkers.

Then again, as I mentioned above, this is just a journal entry. If you like my opinions, thank you. If you disapprove heartily, so what? My voice is one of millions and should be treated as such - no more, no less....

On Using PROTECTION -
It's foolish to think you can convince people to stop doing it.
So why waste time and resources advocating restraint?
Why not simply accept reality?
Teach people how to do it.
Teach the at-risk groups safety and self-control.
Accept that we all have urges and we will feed them.

There are so many forms of protection available today! Use them!
...trigger locks, gun safes, non-lethal rubber bullets...

In the spirit of family togetherness, I thought I'd post an old story I began. It's been living on my site at writing.com for a while now, but no one knows it's there. So here - have a read.

Bathroom Ruminations:
Does bathroom time lend itself to better thinking?
What kind of thinking goes on in a bathroom?
Can I write a masterpiece while in contact with porcelain?

Of course.

THE PROOF
(or "World Domination, Phase One")

Sitting up early one morning, our hero can barely keep his eyes open. "Should have gone to bed sooner," he thought. He had been up late wasting time with the television and forgot his commitment to start his writing career in the morning. Not so different from a hundred other times he had made similar promises. But this time he forgot that the clock was still set from the morning before. When it woke him at five he almost ignored it. But the song was annoying and the radio was out of reach. "Serves me right," he thought. "Guess I'll start some coffee and see what happens."
He didn't really expect to write anything. He was only going to sit there with his mug and satisfy the urge by imagining what he should say. -He didn't expect to write anything. But as he blinked the screen into focus he found himself drawn to the keys. Suddenly he was typing. His fingers flew around the letters; words appearing magically on the display.
The subject of his story? A man (we'll call him Bob for now) in the bathroom with a laptop, privately satisfying a craving- a craving he had suppressed most of his life - the urge to create.
Creating in this manner, by necessity, calls for privacy, but Bob doesn't mind. No one will find his stuff interesting anyway, and he really only wants to please his own critical eye. As long as no one else sees it, he likes his work.
So our sleepy writer works on. He stops for a moment when the coffee stops burping and has a cup. He considers whether to put something mildly profound about "java" in his story, but BOb is working at night, and in the bathroom, so it's not likely that he would be drinking coffee.
"I would drink coffee on the toilet at night" he thinks. But who would believe it. And besides, coffee is over-used in poor fiction. -And this is definitely poor fiction.

Had enough?
Classic literature move over.
(Phase One continues)

We join our sleepy writer an hour later as his deep thoughts are disturbed by a loud braying sound.
"The house is falling! No, wait, that's me..." he said to himself. "Good thing I'm alone."
Unfortunately, the creativity has crept back into whatever orifice had been hiding it. Aparently there is an olfactory connection to his writing ability. And judging from the sound that woke him, there's not enough Lysol in the house to get the masterpiece back on track this morning.
“That’s OK, I’m getting cold anyway” he thinks. “Probably ought to wear something when I do this.” So our hero shuts down the machine and heads back to the kitchen. As he reaches for the pot, intent on one final shot of wake-up, the phone starts to dance.
“Damn it. Who wants me this early on a Saturday?”
And suddenly our happy author realizes: It's not early. And it’s not Saturday... This hits him just as he answers the phone and hears his boss breathing on the other end of the line.
“Uh, ..hello?”
“Do you plan to support yourself with honest labor? Or have you decided to sleep all day and hope for the best from the snob fairy?” Boss man sounds unhappy.
He needs this job, and yet before he can stop himself: “Did you think that up all by yourself, or did your lovely wife say it first?” Then, just to seal the deal: “You remember your wife- short, dumpy, needs a chin wax?”
Silence.
Then...
Short and to the point: “Your last check will be in the mail. Don’t come in for it.”

And so our foolish friend, desperate for a little common sense, begins his new career a little earlier than he intended.