Have you ever had one of those “what the hell are they thinking” moments? Well, I had one a few minutes ago when I read about the “10 Commandments for Drivers” released by the Vatican. It was sort of appalling to think that with all the power and influence the Roman Catholic Church can bring to a problem, such as world peace maybe, it chose to bring from on high the commandments for drivers. What a waste. What a joke.

Then I thought maybe it was one of those internet jokes, you know, the ones you get in an email? But this was on MSNBC and then the Vatican website. This was a not a joke after all, they were serious and then it was “what the hell” all over again.

You know, if they released it as a communiqué for the priests and bishops I could understand it, good sermon fodder, but to say they are commandments is a bit much and more than a little ridiculous. If this is the direction the Vatican is taking, narrow views of the world at large, there may need to be an early change of leadership. Do you think that PJP II would ever have let something like this be released? Not a chance. He would have known how these “commandments” would have played out. After all, Pope John Paul II was a savvy leader with an eye on the realistic.

Ok, but what about these commandments themselves, you ask. Are they really that bad? Could we actually learn something? Well, let’s take a look and see:

1. You shall not kill.

Wait a second… haven’t I heard this one before? Sure, that’s the sixth commandment, or the fifth commandment if you are Catholic or Lutheran or some such. In any case I call it a foul; you can’t repeat commandments, that just makes everything confusing. How would you like to be in a debate about the commandments and have it devolve into an argument about is “Thou shalt not murder” the same thing as “You shall not kill” in the drivers ten commandments. Absurd and let’s say this does not belong here. How about “You should keep two hands on the steering wheel at all times, and check for tire wear once a month.” That may not be a commandment, but it is a pretty good suggestion.

2. The road shall be for you a means of communion between people and not of mortal harm.

Now this may not be a commandment, but certainly could be a suggestion I can get into, literally. Think about it, a cot, a road and two people communing on it for the world to see. Now for convenience sake, you could you your car for such a communion and that would be ok too. And of course there is no mortal harm in such a communion so that is redundant. The only problem I see is that if you are catholic you can’t use contraceptives so I hope the church will help raise all the children that arrive because of the churches suggestion of communion between people.

(BTW, the Vatican just approved of gay sex. Maybe this is a more open minded document then first thought.)

3. Courtesy, uprightness and prudence will help you deal with unforeseen events.

Is this a commandment? Where is the fire? Where is the certainty of hell? Where is old world ferver? Nah. Seem more like a mild suggestion.

4. Be charitable and help your neighbor in need, especially victims of accidents.

I thought charity was a tenet of the RCC. Why are we repeating something we should already know? I know that when speaking you tell the people what you are going to tell them, then you tell them and finally you tell them what you told them, but that is for speaking. Again, should we be repeating ourselves? Maybe they (the RCC) think we didn’t get it the first time. Yeah that has to be it.

5. Cars shall not be for you an expression of power and domination, and an occasion of sin.

Now that is more like it; power, domination, and sin are finally evoked making this the strongest of all the suggestions! But really guys, why do you have to ruin all the fun? I want to get in my car, get a super-sized chocolate shake, drive at about 95 mph to Las Vegas where I can pick up a pro from the curb for $50 bucks and take her into a casino where we will imbibe alcohol, eat rich food, smoke fat cigars, pull a few handles, roll a few dice, play a few hands, then go upstairs and fornicate and afterwards drive back home and maim a few people while yelling at them it was all their fault. Oh well, guess I will have to burn in hell anyway.

6. Charitably convince the young and not so young not to drive when they are not in a fitting condition to do so.

Huh? I thought we did the charity thing already. Wait a second… you mean take the keys away from those that are too drunk to know better… I get it. Did you get that one from your local bar tender or did you happen to see one of the thousands of commercials that say the same thing… especially those from the breweries and distilleries. I see the connection, they (the breweries et. al.) don’t want you to die because then you will drink more and the church doesn’t want to you die so you will tithe more. Got it.

7. Support the families of accident victims.

I think we have done the charity thing to death by now… we get it.

8. Bring guilty motorists and their victims together, at the appropriate time, so that they can undergo the liberating experience of forgiveness.

If they are guilty why not bring them together with the police and we can get that liberating feeling as we see then sentenced to life in prison. They will say they are sorry and ask for forgiveness at sentencing and you will forgive them as they are lowered into the ground after they complete their life sentence. All very healthy.

9. On the road, protect the more vulnerable party.

I think I need cliff-notes for this one… is this a call for martyrdom? So I should risk my life for someone less protected? I don’t get it. I guess everyone loves a martyr, well, everyone but my family and friends.

10. Feel responsible toward others.

This smacks of the charity thing again… Let’s not go there. But how about this… be responsible for yourself first. Be a safe driver and a good example on the road. Then you will help others to be good drivers too. But then again, this is just a suggestion since breaking none of these suggestions is a sin, really, what’s the point?

The point? Well, the world is getting a good laugh from it all and it is excellent blogging material. So, as Jay Leno prepares his monologue for tonight you can damn well bet there will be at least a couple jokes about this. So, I guess you could say the point is world wide laughter at the RCC’s expense.

Paris Hilton, a celebrity because she is a celebrity, has now found the darker side of the fame she so longs for. You see, the more visible you are the more the public will be watching, and because they are watching you will not be afforded any leniency in the actions and responsibilities you have.

For whatever the reason Judge Sauer in the Paris Hilton case specifically wrote “No Home Detention”, “No Electronic Monitoring” and a host of other restrictions on Paris’s sentencing. He was specific and to the point. When Sheriff Lee Boca decide that Paris had had enough jail time and let her go (against specific orders of the Judge) everyone found out that you do not mess with a Judge’s rulings. Upshot, Paris is once again in la Bastille. In this case fame and the public eye have been cast upon this case and no quarter can be cut for the rich, whiny heiress.

The funny thing is if she were less famous she would be out by now because of the ludicrous 10% program the sheriff has. (And people wonder why crime is up, it’s because jail is no longer a deterrent.) But there she is and I do not feel any sympathy for her now. In fact I have to laugh when she whines for her Mommy or cries as she realizes she has done this to herself and has no one to blame but herself. Her public identity has become her worst enemy to the sheer delight of most of the public.

I have to admit I am glad to see she is back in jail, it goes a long way in assuring me and maybe even the public at large that the rich and famous can’t openly flaunt their celebrity by getting away with everything. It is an equalizer that says we can go to jail just like Paris Hilton and there is comfort in that. OK, it is a cold comfort, but at least we are all in this world together.

Then there is the reason to let Paris out… turns out she is in the medical ward of the jail because her “serious medical conditions” (read parishatesjailidous) means she would not do well to being general population. Thus it is costing 10 times as much to house her than the average inmate. But seriously so what? The point is she is in jail and that is her sentence. This is what the Judge wanted and let’s all be honest, what most of the public wanted too.

Finally there are the desperate calls she makes from jail. She calls friends, she calls Barbra Walters, she probably tries to call for delivery. In any case the news get hold of these stories and we hear now that she has found god. Sure it is true that many inmates find god in prison, but do you really think after a few days Paris is so beaten down that the only place she can look is up to god? I find it hard to believe and again chuckle at the desperate nature of the stories. She is trying so hard to put a “nice” spin on it imprisonment that she is playing the god card… what a laugh.

So for now we watch the saga that is “Whiny Rich Girl Goes to Prison” and enjoy the comedy of it all because before long she will be out and of course there will be a party upon her release. Then she can get on and charge $100k per club opening and go back to being the rich little bitch we all know she is.

Someone sit on her dog, will you?

Does anyone feel that the marketing coming out of Apple is highly “Anti Windows User” lately? I think Apple’s marketing department has gone to the dark side and instead of targeting Microsoft and the Windows Operating Systems they are instead ridiculing Windows users, laughing at 95% of the market.

I think Apple is saying, if you want to be hip, in the in crowd and not scoffed at because you use “Windows anything” you have to uses our products. So what Apple is saying is if you use Windows or “Microsoft anything” you are a fat nerd and don’t know what you are doing. They are saying only your Mac using associates are cool, and you are certainly not.

These Mac/PC commercials are about as pejorative as I seen against any one group. Oddly, they are slamming the group they are hoping to attract. Has the campaign really seen favorable sales for Apple? It is not really showing in the stock, but then again the market is fickle and I would assume any upward trend at this point is due to the iPod market lock.

Also Apple is playing off of old fears about Windows platforms. In one commercial they mention the “blue screen of death” the old fatal error. Don’t know about you, but I have not seen a BSOD for about 6 years. Or another double slam at MS, a wmp.dll error. PC does not seem to know what it refers to (implying MS does not know what is wrong with itself while everyone cool does) and Mac has his chuckle. If you know Windows at all you know that they are referring to Windows Media Player and are laughing because Mac has iTunes (like iTunes is not a bigger pain in the butt) and thus give an implied nod to the iPod that it manages. Oh yeah, Zune can be called an MS failure by now, so more jabs at Microsoft.

Yet for as good as Macs are, why are they not the pervasive computers on the planet? Think about this for a moment… simple… they are not as good as PC’s and Apple is too greedy to spite it face.

The browser wars are over. The CPU speed races are over and for all intents and purposes the interface race has come to an end as well. In the intervening time if all things are equal and Apple really is a better platform it would have taken over the market by now simply because it was better. It hasn’t because it isn’t. In fact the one market where Mac’s used to dominate, the professional graphics field, they are loosing share daily because PC’s can do the same thing as Mac but faster and cheaper. There are not usability issues like there were 10 years ago, at this point the only differences are merely mechanical and name. For most people the name of the computer is not an issue in favor or against going with a particular machine, it’s can that computer get the job done better, faster and for less money. Well, PC’s win, Macs loose, it was ever thus.

Several other things to remember… Macs lock up just like PC’s, but when they lock up they do not give a reason (is that good?) where as PC’s inform the user where the potential problem may be. Ever try to fix a Mac? I hope you never do, it is not a fun job. For that matter fixing a PC is not fun either but the ability to fix it is more readily available to the user if you want to take the time and fix it yourself. Sounds good to me, and hey, that handy error message is right there to tell me where to start. Hey Mac, can you fix yourself? Think not.

One other area Mac likes to claim superiority in the area of virus protection. I have to laugh at this every time I hear it because there are Mac viruses, you just don’t hear about them as often. Why, because Apple is protected by the shear dumb luck of NOT being the most pervasive operating system in the world. Let me ask you, if you were going to write a world changing virus would you target it towards a Mac? No way, there are not enough of them, so why waste time. If, on the other hand, Apple did become the #1 operating system don’t you think there would be more Apple viruses, exploits, and Trojans? You can bet there would be and if that happened today the computer using world would be turned on its head as all the exploits happen rapidly. The internet would be mayhem for several years and Macs would be crashing left and right. PC will then have the last laugh as they have been attacked for years and know how to deal with it. So much so that Microsoft’s update system is so all encompassing that MS can update everyone in a few days if they have to, and have. You think that Apple could handle that if the roles were reversed today? Not a chance.

So here we are, a nation of nerdy PC users, feeling ridiculed and slapped every time we see one of those Mac/PC commercials. And every time we see one it instills an attitude of “Why would I want to be associated with a stuck up, arrogant, hallow, emotionless, boring, smartass company like Apple?”

Personally I think that Apple should really ramp it up and just come out and say it; if you are a PC user you are a nerdy, stupid, twerp and will never be as good as Apple users. Just come right out and say it won’t yah? Then as all your sales to new Apple users’ drops to zero you will be gone in two years as all your investors pull funding and sell shares because you insulted 95% of the market. On the day Apple files chapter 13 and Microsoft comes in and eats you up, spitting little Apples seeds like the iPod division as a subsidiary of MS, and tosses the Apple core operating system away, I will laugh all day long because you did it to yourself and were too arrogant to see it.

Nerds like modesty and accurate facts, but I guess ego blinded Apple’s marketing department. Bye bye.

It must be my imagination. This can’t possible be what I think it is. Could the columnist actually mentioned it? Is an Apple Safari Browser port to Windows actually something to consider or has Apple and the media gone off the deep end and actually declared “Browser Wars II”?

If so I have bad news for Apple and the Safari Browser on Windows… you lose. Not by a little but by a WHOLE LOT.

So let us see… Apple claims that Safari handles the images better… well if click to finish is the standard, no, this is not true because by my stop watch it fell in behind Firefox by about 10%. Yes, I cleared all caches first, I know how to run this simple tests.

Next claim is that it is faster because it is simpler. This is true, but I don’t want simpler, I want better and simpler in this case is not better. In terms of size it is a modest 8MB and you would think that alone would be enough to speed it up impressively, but when you factor in the windows libraries it has to use, it is not all that much better is at all.

On the other hand it could be said that it is faster because it does away with the 3D interface that all the other browsers use. But when you think about it this does not hold up either because it still has to use the same graphics engine, they just turned off the 3D effects which in this case does not speed up the interface.

Access to the internet is the same. Hey it all has to come through the same port and there is no new technology that is speeding your broadband connection along. Unless you consider the HUGE cache it makes for itself, but then again, all the other browsers do this too and that is nothing new.

Now to flip it a bit. There are things I certainly can’t do without.

You know those borders and 3D borders on windows programs? They are not just for looks you know. They let the user resize the window easily and quickly. Guess what happens when you turn them off? Right, you can’t use the borders to resize. I find this very inconvenient. Mac users are used to the pain in the butt resizing I guess. As a pampered Windows user I like my windows more easily resizable.

Are Macs really easier to use than Windows based computers? Huh, I wonder. Has anyone other than a partial research group actually done a comparison? I mean recently. Seriously.

Then there is the thing that is going to get Safari into a big heap of trouble… Font handling. From cursory comparisons I would say that Safari likes to replace its own font for fonts such as Ariel and TNR (that Times New Roman for the uninitiated). The replacements are both heavier and more compact. (This is not a contradiction, read it as the lines of the letters are wider and the letter squished and squished together.) The combined effect of the font handling is to make them less legible in smaller sizes and awkward in larger sizes. This is the only browser that has this obvious flaw (if Apple considers it a flaw). I compared it to the latest versions of MSIE, NS, FF, and Opera and if I were offering suggestions, it would be NOT to go changing the styles of fonts. If they do not correct this the development community will never endorse Safari. Again, I wonder is Apple would even care.

I am sure there are more things about Safari I would not like if I were to keep using it, but like in all business you got mere seconds to impress me and you, Safari, failed that test miserably. Safari on Windows? It will go the way of the Apple Lisa, just watch.

For the record I use Firefox for my development. Why? Simple, it does what I want it to. As a browser it is simple with enough features to keep me happy. I do not use Netscape because it went the way of the IE and has too much and a cluttered interface. Firefox provides a happy medium for me and thus won my allegiance. 

Did anyone notice that our justice and penal system got totally trounced today? Was funding removed? Nope. Did a new law pass gutting the system? No. Did someone declare marshal law somewhere? Certainly not. It was worse than all of that, Paris Hilton pulled a “Get out of Jail Free” card and is now at home serving her time as any proper heiress should.

So your reaction is “So what did you expect” or “Who cares about the rich brat” or some other nonplused sentiment. If that is all you are feeling you may want to put a little more indignation into your mood, because you should be totally outraged. You should be totally outraged because if you were sent to jail for your misdemeanor charges you could not claim an “unspecified medical ailment” and be sent to a mansion with an ankle bracelet and a personal chef. Because you are not a rich, stuck-up, fashion hog, you would be laughed at and would suffer your “medical condition” in a cold cell like everyone else.

So, we have now proved what has only been suspected and never really proven before; being rich buys you above and around the law. Fame is worth having because it means you get special treatment from the law. Rich and famous means you can do anything you want, hurt as many people you want, endanger whoever you want and as long as you pay off enough people you’re free.

Someday if I ever go before a judge and he sentences me, I will say “Sir, I want the same confinement as Paris Hilton. Please send me to a Beverly Hills mansion with all the amenities to serve my time. After all, the system has set precedence. I want Paris Hilton confinement.”

Now once I am there I can call all my friends over to have a party! I can order anything I want to make my “confinement” as carefree as possible. With “Paris” confinement who cares if I really reflect on the crimes I have done or if I feel remorseful, certainly all that is less important than the facial I need right now. Oh, and pass the bonbons please.

On the other hand, it also mean that if for some reason the judge or prosecutors do not like you, your sentence can be worse than expected. Why? Because by giving Paris Hilton her special treatment you have basically scrapped the sentencing guidelines and they (the system) are free to do whatever they want. So now you get pissed off at the judge and call him a self righteous son of a bitch (something he can’t do anything about because Freedom of Speech is a right) and then he sentences you to ten years hard time in a super max prison all over a j-walking ticket. But before Paris Hilton the worst he could do is fine you $35 and court fees of another $64. Gee Paris, thanks for fucking me up royally. Why couldn’t you be an adult and serve your time like everyone else.

You know, my daughter tried to pull the time served routine on me when she was little and grounded. She would get all pouty and glassy-eyed and in her most pathetic voice ask for reprieve. It didn’t work on me, but unfortunately it worked on her mother. So, on the whole I guess we are teaching our young girls a bad set of behaviors; whine enough and you get what you want. Paris Hilton is the epitome of whiny girl appeased.

Maybe there is a better sentence for the likes of Paris Hilton while we are changing the rules. Maybe we can be more creative and have the sentence be done and over with in a couple of minutes rather than days and weeks.  Paris Hilton needs a spanking.

Now all you fetishists go away, same with you B&D folks, I am serious. I think she needs a public spanking with a nice wide paddle. I think it should be televised. I think the public humiliation is exactly what Paris Hilton needs to make her think about how she treats the world. I think that people she doesn’t even know should come up to her on the street and laugh at her for the rest of her life, reminding her of her humiliation. If she changes, people will stop reminding her of her spanking. On the other hand if she doesn’t change, well, she get what she deserves. Either way, since she is so in the public eye, her sentence should be as public.

What do you think, 20 nice hard swats enough?

Finally, the three month odyssey is over and I can sleep again without getting stoned on Meth fumes.

So, how did we accomplish the near seemingly impossible job of convincing these Meth making tenants to finally leave? Did we actually get any help from the apartment management? No. How about help from the local constabulary? Nope, they didn’t help either, well, not directly. So how did we do it? We became the nuisance residents and they finally left.

But not as you may think. We did not party all night or pound on the roof, nor did we take pictures of everyone that went up there or write down license plates. Nope, none of those. What we did was keep calling the cops. And I a sure the cops hated us because of the frequency of the calls. I know we got on their nuisance list, but it was worth it to relieve ourselves of the Meth mongrel upstairs.

We called the cops so often and they came over so often that we had the cops knocking on our Meth enhanced neighbors door so often they must have finally figure that we were on to them and eventually they would get caught. Wisely they moved out!

Now it has been about a week since being exposed to toxic fumes drifting in from the apartment upstairs and I am starting to feel better. I am feeling better enough to start writing again. I would not be surprised to find that there is a correlation between lack of creativity and meth use. So, I seem to be detoxing successfully and hopefully blogging will commence again.

But in the mean time I (and my roomies) will quietly celebrate the fact that some tweakers finally got a clue and have left the building.

An Addendum: In case you were wondering why it was the apartment management took no real steps to help us in our plight against our upstairs meth buddies, consider this: If Las Vegas Police did indeed arrest them for cooking meth the Clark County Health Department would have been along immediately and condemned the apartment. If that happened the management company would have to strip the apartment down to the 2x4’s. Thus, it was more cost effective for the management company for them to take my wrath and threats than to confront the tweakers or aid the police. I wonder what they would have done had I actually filed a million dollar law suit against them.

Damn, one more opportunity missed to get rich off the deep pockets because I had to be level headed.