This is why we can't have nice things

My thoughts on vaccines and the people who decry them are generally well known. But since I should put something on here that I haven't simply copied and pasted from my Facebook, here it goes.

In short: If you choose not to get vaccinated for any reason other than allergy or immune system compromise you deserve to get polio and are complicit in the deaths of those who cannot get vaccinated. Go get yourself a grim reaper robe, champ.

In long: There has always been a minority contingent of people opposed to vaccines. In the early days of the practice this was perfectly understandable and even necessary as vaccines were not nearly as safe or effective as they are now. People had to perform a cost-benefit-risk analysis when it came to deciding if they should be immunized. More than 100 years ago this involved some actual risk as the possibility of infection, allergic reaction, or just simply having the vaccine fail to protect you were decent possibilities in an age when food safety consisted of "less formaldehyde in the milk means we have to pay those filthy Irish farmers more!" some MD's still considered blood letting to be a viable option for the Spanish Flu and chiropractors thought they could cure asthma by twisting your neck in a way that would make Jason Bourne jealous and give Jean Claude van Damme a hard on (Wait... they still do this? Oops!).

    However, today the effectiveness and safety of vaccines is unparalleled. Until recently, diseases like Polio had all but been eradicated within the United States while cases of measles, mumps, rubella, pertussis (whooping cough), and a variety of other commonly vaccinated against illnesses had become so rare that getting them netted you a personalized spot in the CDC's MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report), which is kind of the Rolling Stone of disease control and prevention, only with less boobs and more awful infections and injuries.

   Vaccines are not just crucial to individual health, they are crucial to the health of large populations. Remember how I said that Polio had all but been eliminated? Well, thanks to people failing to get vaccinated it's coming back (http://tinyurl.com/l8z3jql   http://tinyurl.com/mov3zz). For an explanation as to why immunizations work to keep the greater good safe I suggest this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPcC4oGB_o8   It demonstrates herd immunity using gummi bears and takes a little over 2 minutes so even the most ADD of you can handle it. Plus it uses bright colors and relatively small words.

    Not only is Polio coming back, but everybody's other favorite old school disease, the mumps, is also making a solid comeback, and not all of it can be attributed to filthy hipsters trying to ironically contract an illness no one hears about anymore. http://tinyurl.com/m7b8b2v

   "But wait!" You mewl while flapping your arms about ineffectually, "We didn't get vaccinated a hundred years ago! My grandfather never got vaccinated and he lived to be 100 years old and never took a sick day!" 

   Your grandfather also lived in a time when going from New York to Paris in a metal tube powered by explosions was the sort of thing Jules Vern would have laughed at as being too outlandish. He lived at a time when men were men, hard work was valued and the average life expectancy was around 60 years so you better get crackin' or you'll be dead of old age before you know it! (http://tinyurl.com/cskr7sl). He lived at a time when widespread epidemics were confined to a few of the really nasty bugs, took months upon months to spread and and infant mortality percentages from illness and injury were anywhere from the mid-teens to high twenties (http://tinyurl.com/kjeqbnb). The fact that your grandfather made it out of childhood while you whine about getting a flu shot is a testament to the kind of man you'll never be.

   Citing the past as an excuse for your present failings is just about the worst thing you can do. The Americans of a century ago didn't spit in the face of progress, they embraced that shit. When Orville Wright decided he was sick and tired of those feathered fucks soaring through the wild blue yonder he didn't just shrug it off and say "Eh, it's too hard to understand how flight works," he built a machine and took the fight to those smug bastards. And did we stop there? Fuck no! In the same amount of time it takes to make a $2000 bottle of scotch we went from a kerosene powered bird harasser to stabbing the moon with our flag just so it knows who owns it! And because that's not enough we went back so many times we got bored and decided to play golf (http://tinyurl.com/k4xlog7) and go 4-wheeling (http://tinyurl.com/l9vckn8).

   Of course for every Louis Pasteur there is a John R. Brinkley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._Brinkley) and that's why I have to address the vaccines and Autism "controversy." Why do I put the quotation marks around the word "controversy?" Because it isn't one. Because the one study that was used to start that scare has been discredited so hard that the author lost his license to practice medicine and was criminally charged (http://tinyurl.com/m29kq94). Because that's what should happen when you craft a fake study with the intent to defraud people and end up causing a world-wide health crises that continues to this day. So why do people still think vaccines cause Autism? For the same reason that people think aspartame causes cancer, GMO food is bad for you, and homeopathy is real. A basic misunderstanding of science and statistics coupled with a media that knows how to get customers inflamed in an attempt to drive ratings. And it's not helped when Americans are so poorly trained on what a "credible source" is that we take potentially life ending advice from a woman primarily known for showing her tits for money and some dude famous for a role in which he literally talked out of his ass (http://tinyurl.com/kbe8p, http://tinyurl.com/q7dj452, http://tinyurl.com/hxamy). Since that's a lot of shit to tackle I'll just go for the low-hanging fruit; correlation vs. causation.

Correlation is used to described two events that change together but do not cause the change to occur. Causation is used to describe two events that depend upon each other for change. Yes I know it's more complex than that, blah blah blah. Anyway, two correlating events would be ice cream sales and temperature. As the temperature increases, so too do ice cream sales. That makes sense, right? Now what if I told you that it was getting hotter because people were buying ice cream? You'd look at me like I had a dick growing out of my forehead. No rational human being could assume that simply because those two things increased and decreased together that they would be causing the change in the other... right? ...Guys?

I'll just leave this here... http://tinyurl.com/l9qy9oq

Causation is pretty much what it sounds like, one event causes the other. A good example of that would be ingesting alcohol and becoming intoxicated. There is a direct and provable link between the two. What if I suggested there wasn't? That those two things just happen at the same time but aren't causative? What's that? Why, yes, that is a dick on my forehead! A simple misunderstanding of words and their meanings is actively causing the deaths of thousands of human beings each year. Think of that the next time you hear someone dismiss an argument by saying, "It's just semantics!" In fact, if we had all just been thinking in the first place we wouldn't be here now.



[By the way, the Jason Bourne Chiropractor comparison is courtesy of an Irish comic by the name of Dara O'Briain and his routine is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. Check it out!]

Dissappointed? Sure. Surprised? Hell no.

So, this happened: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/al-qaeda-force-captures-fallujah-amid-rise-in-violence-in-iraq/2014/01/03/8abaeb2a-74aa-11e3-8def-a33011492df2_story.html

and

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/world/middle_east/battles-intensify-for-control-of-fallujah/2014/01/04/5ef4d3a8-9166-4037-af56-4ed6822a8609_video.html

   Apparently al Qaeda has taken back Fallujah in every real sense of the word; national flags torn down and replaced, no ISF, IA, or IP's anywhere to be found (no real change there), large scale firefights,  it's like someone got into their flux capacitor enabled blue Bongo truck (or maybe it's a maroon Opel?) and went back in time to 2004.

And you know what? Fuck 'em, they can have it. I don't know anyone who deployed to Iraq because they genuinely wanted to help the Iraqi people and give them freedom. Save that shit for interviews with people who have more stars on their collar or stripes on their sleeves than brains. And you know what? They don't believe it either. Speaking for myself, at no point in either of my deployments did I shoulder on my 60 pound med bag on top of another 60 pounds worth of armor, ammo, water, and other assorted gear to wander around the 100+ degree night and splash oh-so-playfully in a canal whose express purpose was less "irrigation" and more "open air feces conveyance," while getting shot at and hoping like hell that the piece of concrete I'm kneeling on isn't camouflaging an IED because I wanted the Iraqi people to be able to get a 10 piece extra crispy on the way home from the local al Walmart.

Sure, there was talk down at the street level of the war about "winning hearts and minds," but no one took that seriously. Come on, we may have been filthy, uneducated enlisted men, but even the cannon fodder knows that giving some guy a generator and case of JP8 tainted water after blowing up his house, shop, friends houses, and car is a lot like giving your wife gas station flowers and half a box of chocolates as an apology after she catches you defiling her sister and best friend at the same time... in your shared bed... with all of her co-workers watching. Its so half-assed its worse than no apology at all.

No, I didn't leave the comforts of America and spend two, 7 month all expenses paid vacations in the largest cat box around because I wanted to give the Iraqis freedom, or because I wanted "fight the terrorists in Iraq so they don't come to America," or because I believed it was making the world or my nation safer. I did it because I was ordered to, and that's what you do after you sign on the dotted line and raise your hand. I did it because I wasn't about to let a platoon of men that I had grown to love (and hate) like my own family go without me, because I didn't trust anyone else to take care of them, and I wouldn't want to go with anyone else. And I doubt I was alone in that.

Its an old cliche` that you don't fight for a flag or a country, you fight for the man next to you. And just because its a cliche` doesn't mean it isn't true. That Iraq has become a bloody shit hole and all of the gains made by the men and women who fought and bled there are being lost doesn't come as a surprise. Hell, even the most boot Marine around in 2005 thought it would all go to hell when the US left. And that's coming from someone whose capabilities are trusted so little that he's required to have dummy cords on his other dummy cords and has to inform a superior when he goes to the head. 

The sting of having fought in a war that was initiated by lies, managed by fools, and paid for with the blood of our nations youth doesn't lessen much with time, but it becomes more bearable. Seeing the ground we fought for retaken by the enemy just freshens the feeling. It also brings up anger, disbelief, and at least a little bit of betrayal considering the governments treatment of veterans lately, but if this development is going to spawn anything other than a few more drunken nights of "no shit, there I was..." war stories, then it should be action. Action to educate, remember, and prevent things like the Iraq war from happening again.

OIF and OEF has created an incredible segment of American society. We now have hundreds of thousands of young men and women who are more educated, informed, and trained than generations of American warfighters that came before them. We have a generation that has the means to achieve great things in life and the drive to do so. The battles in Fallujah, Ramadi, Nasiriyah, Baghdad, Kandahar, Bagram, Sangin, and Gardez weren't fought by the meek. They were fought by the very finest our nation has to offer. And the fight isn't over yet.

As it stands many of our fellow vets are homeless, jobless, suffering the physical and mental pains of war, behind bars or headed there soon. We have elected officials who seem to want to forget the Iraq war, the actions that lead to it, and the consequences that came as a result. I find it hard to watch senators screech and flap their arms on TV in an effort to get American troops sent in to Syria or Libya, it would seem that the McCain's of the senate and house have forgotten what it's like to have fought in a needless war. Perhaps they need a reminder.

Perhaps they need to see the men and women who have fought in Iraq or Afghanistan leading from the front in local, regional, and national politics, challenging the embarrassment our national legislature has become. Perhaps they need to see modern day veterans creating organizations that not only help their fellow warriors in need, but bolster our collective voices. Perhaps they need to see vets as something other than a talking point or line item, or political weapon, and instead see them as the most powerful force for potential change in our nation that is out there. Perhaps they need to see that while most of America is willing to sweep this whole bloody mess under the rug and pretend it didn't happen, her veterans, the men and women who agreed to be the pointed tip of our nations spear with no questions asked, are not willing to "go gentle into that good night."

Losing Fallujah and Ramadi hurts. But losing our memory of how we got there will be lethal.

Yut, err, kill. Blah, blah, blah.

Hunting 2.0

It's that special time of year in Wisconsin. A 10 day stretch that means more to most than quite literally anything else in the world. Packers? Hah! Birth of a child? Psh. Bo-oring! Death of a loved one? They can wait!

Yes, it is indeed, deer hunting season in Wisconsin.

But here's the thing. I'm unimpressed. Using equipment that was created over the years at the cost of billions of dollars that is so high tech that some of the items actually use goddamn a satellite is just not sporting. The deer can't even attempt to mount a defense against that! You might as well just buy some venison, take it to the range and have a go at it. It would essentially be the same thing.

So, in an attempt to bring the challenge back to deer hunting, offer up some life changing perspective, and give those mouth breathers who give hunting speeches in Comm 101 classes everywhere something new to talk about, I've instituted the B.A.M.B.I (Bomb Assisted Mammal and Bravery Inciter) program.

The premise is simple; take a selection of deer and using classical conditioning, train them to run full speed in the direction of gun fire. Outfit the deer with a special suicide vest that contains impact sensors and is bullet resistant. The first shot from the hunter arms the device and sends the animal charging toward the shooter. An additional shot is needed in a precise kill zone (an area with no armor) to bring the animal down and deactivate the device. A pulled shot that hits the vest will simply detonate the deer. A complete miss dispenses some type of treat for the deer and disarms the vest.

And there you have it! Actual difficulty, and a sporting chance for the deer are reintroduced. Bragging rights are increased, stories made interesting, the deer population controlled, and simply by adding some napalm and seasoning to the vests any deer that do detonate can be donated, already cooked to perfection, to the local food bank! You're welcome, Wisconsin. You're welcome

It's complicated

I'm a little bit complicated. So I'll try to sum myself up for anyone who reads this blog and doesn't personally know me:

- I like guns, I want all of them, and believe the ownership of such is a right. I also think there are some people who shouldn't have them. I also realize that disarming the legally abiding populace only results in people who are easier to victimize.

- I don't care if two dudes get married, or two women, or a man and a woman, or a woman and a Ferris wheel ( http://tinyurl.com/ldxzl5m ). I'm pretty sure the "sanctity of marriage" ended sometime between Frank Sinatra's third wife and Britney Spears 55 hour Las Vegas marriage.

- I want the Government to spend less of my money and when they spend it, to do so in a fiscally responsible manner.

- I wholeheartedly believe in free access to healthcare for all. Do I have a plan for it? Shit, no. If I had a workable plan for that I wouldn't be putting dick jokes on a free blog, would I?

- It is very likely that I don't care what you think, and never will, but I'll let you prattle on anyway.

- I think religion is far more damaging to humanity than it is helping, but I try not to be an asshole about it. Even Mother Teresa lost her faith  but didn't get all pretentious about it.

- I personally despise people who don't wash their hands after going to the bathroom.

- I demand facts, studies, and verifiable proof.

- I don't think that old men in Washington D.C. have a right to tell anyone what to do with their uterus.

- I once stuck my fingers inside the anus of a pig. On purpose. And the US Navy paid for it. You're welcome.

- I'm socially liberal, fiscally conservative, mentally flexible, and physically attractive.

-That previous line has a bit of an exaggeration in it.

All in all, I have a wide range of opinions and thoughts on a wide range of subjects. Some contradictory, some complimentary, some simply profane. I always enjoy spirited discussion and am willing to change my position if verifiable facts are presented. But if you're stupid, I will let you know. I consider it to be a public service.

Motorcycle Badasses

Now, I'm the first to admit that I can't math. In fact, I feel actual anger at the idea of fractions and calculators make me feel uncomfortable. So perhaps that's the reason why I can't understand these equations:

Day trader (or grocery store cashier, or professor, or janitor, or IT guy, etc) + loud motorcycle + leather pants - helmet * PBR/Friday= Biker gang badass?

Is a two-wheeled method of transportation what turns Bill Lumbergh into Jason Statham? Well, it can't be that, because if that was true Lance Armstrong would be a lot more intimidating and hippie fights would be worth watching.

So it must be the engine? Hmmm... No it can't just be the engine, because I don't think anyone in the history of the world has been impressed or frightened by the owner of a Honda Accord and that engine is far larger than that of a motorcycle.

So maybe it's both assets, combined together? Well, two negatives don't make a positive, so the idea that the motorcycle is what makes you badass is out.

Let's examine the other elements: PBR consumed on Fridays doesn't make you a hard SOB, it just makes you old or cheap (in Wisconsin), or a hipster (in the other 49 states), and gives you diarrhea (all of humanity).

Not wearing a helmet? Lance Armstrong wears a helmet (and we know what kind of a badass he is), but then again so did the dude who shot bin Laden in the face, so it would seem like a helmet isn't a good indicator of badassery (a term originally coined to describe Sean Connery).

So what does that leave us with? Leather pants. After some terrible research spent googling "leather pants" and "badass", and the required scrubbing of my eyes with bleach I have come to the conclusion that leather pants, at least when worn by aging, fat, white, network admins is NOT what turns Mid-life Crisis Mike into MadDawg Mike of the Central WI Motorized Bicycle Killer Klub.

So is it possible that the end result of "Biker gang badass" is incorrect? Is it possible that at the end of the day you're just some asshole without anything exciting in his life that tries to get over the crushing despair of a wife who resents him, kids who despise him, and a double mortgage by accelerating real fast from stop signs on your Harley (that your wife didn't want you to buy, you rebel, you.) ? Are you hoping the hearing damage from your exhaust pipes will drown out the nagging suspicion that Dave from accounting is banging your wife and the fact that your son laughs at you when you tell him to do his homework?

Now, none of this is to say that there aren't badasses who ride motorcycles, but if I had to hazard a guess, I'd probably say that if you were a bad motherf_cker after you bought a motorcycle, you were probably a bad motherf_cker before you ever bought it. Chuck Norris doesn't punch freedom into the hearts of terrorists because he bought a headband and some nunchucks. Those are just extra.

So what was the point of all this? Well, aside from the homework I am desperately trying to avoid doing, I hate the ungodly screaming of assholes on motorcycles as they accelerate away from the stop sign by my house. And since the City PD won't let me hunt them for sport all I can do is bitch about it on Facebook.

'Merica!

Choices, choices

It's flu shot season and there is no reason not to get vaccinated. You can even get the needle-free, nasal version of the vaccine if you are either a child, or have the mental faculties of a child. Or... you can get this: 

http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/11/health/miracle-marathoner-carlos/index.html?hpt=hp_bn13

Up to you.

Home Security

Apparently people will simply buy signs and stickers that read "This Home Protected by (INSERT COMPANY NAME) SECURITY" instead of actually securing their home, which seems a little silly to me. After all, if you're not actually going to fork out the scratch for a security system and are just making fact-less claims in order to scare away potential burglars, then the sky's the limit isn't it? Why not get more creative?

"This Home Is Protected By Bee's and Hand Grenades... Which One Am I Joking About? Details Inside!" would be a far better sign (spoiler: it's actually bee's *with* hand grenades).

"CAUTION: The Resident Of This House Sleeps In The Nude, Isn't Very Picky And Responds To Intrusion With Confused Eroticism" is another one that would certainly give me pause were I a ne'er-do-well looking to steal someones TV and not be molested by its owner. On the other hand it might attract the kind of burglar that makes other criminals feel a bit uneasy about and avoid in the lunch room at Poor Impulse Control High School.

"Unauthorized Entrance To This Home Guarantees A Trip To Guantanamo Bay And One Complimentary Water Boarding!" seems to strike the right tone between "terrifying jingoistic torture" and "free Caribbean vacation," but might make it awkward when Homeland Security refuses to transport your captured thief to Cuba in a timely manner and you end up baptizing them with freedom in your own home. Remember to put down towels or you might lose your deposit!

Or perhaps a picture is more fitting? After all, they are worth a thousand words, and fitting that many words onto a sticker isn't particularly cost effective. A simple 4x6 sticker with a picture of yourself doing the Silence of The Lambs dance (http://tinyurl.com/6q37a7v skip to 0:53) or dressed as a clown (literally any clown, from It to Krusty The Clown will be more than sufficient) should let the potential trespasser know that he's more than welcome to come in, but if it doesn't want the hose again, it puts the lotion on its skin.

At any rate, get creative and have fun!