Militia Training 2007

Last Friday I went out with a bunch of guys that like guns- The way Cindy Sheehan loves attention. Seriously.

We went out into the Arizona desert and found a big hill to shoot against. There were silencers, large caliber scoped rifles with the bi-pod mount in front so you can shoot without your arm getting tired. One of the guns even had a bayonet! The main guy even had this crazy explosive called tannerite. According to him, it was developed as a training aid for snipers. Apparently it can be difficult to tell if you hit your target when the target is thousands of feet away. With the tannerite, when they hit the target, it would go BOOM! It's supposedly quite stable and will not explode if a pistol round hits it, only high-powered rifle rounds. It was really fun! To the side you can see how it launched a big blue barrel. The picture shows the barrel at about half-way up! I felt a little bit under-armed with my 9mm pistol and my two 22 caliber rifles.

I learned a couple of things while shootin' with the men. 1) we should have just invaded Russia during the cold war and 2) we should just invade China right now! Why do I say these controversial things? 1) The gun guy bought a bunch of Russian ammo over the Internet and only about half of it worked. If we would have invaded Russia, their soldiers would have been too busy trying to find a shell that would fire to really fight back. It's really disconcerting to pull the trigger and only hear a click. 2) He had a Chinese assault rifle. It weighed about 80 pounds and was impossible to hit anything. Our soldiers could just walk up to the Chinese lines and demand surrender while the Chinese soldiers tried vainly to aim that lead brick to shoot back.

So Memorial Day I took the little boys out to the same spot for a little target practice. I know, I know, we're extremely careful. My boys have been drilled since birth about the basic safety rules of guns. (Treat every gun as if it's loaded, never point a gun at someone, if one of your friends wants to show you his dad's gun, come home immediately!) I firmly believe that if you refuse to allow your boys to learn to use guns responsibly and to respect them, you're living dangerously. Boys are interested in guns and it's a lot safer to allow them to investigate them under close adult supervision than sneaking around with their friends.

Anyway, we had a great time. The boys needed my help supporting the weight of the rifles, but they were able to hit a few cans and boxes. We took turns, so that only one person was shooting at a time and the others stayed safely behind the shooting line.




Here's a flowering cactus that we saw on the drive. I liked the contrast of the delicate beauty of the bloom against the drab cruelty of the cactus and surroundings.

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A Big Change

Well, I keep hoping that I'm going to find a lot of time to blog. But it's not happening- I just keep getting busier. So- I've made a decision. I am not going to blog as I have in the past. The title of this blog (as you can easily see) is A Humble Opinion. To me that implies that a certain amount of opinion should be shared. However, the overwhelming majority of my readers are people who don't really care about reading opinion pieces. They just want to see pictures of my kids and hear about what we're doing. So, that's what I'm going to do! Low on opinion, high on feel-good family info. That should be much simpler to write and I should be able to do it much more often!

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The Truth about 4/29

You've all heard the official story about the bridge collapse in California. You know, the one where a gas tanker truck exploded after an accident. The resulting fire weakened the steel in an overpass, which caused it to collapse. At least that's the Official Story. Remember what Rosie O'Donnell taught us when referring to 9/11- "I do believe that it was the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel."

Fortunately, there are those out there who can expose the TRUTH.

I found this (tongue-in-cheek) website that EXPOSES THE TRUTH.

Some of the funniest lines:

• The “crash” occured at 3:45 a.m. — when, suspiciously, there are no witnesses.

• Meanwhile Oakland firefighters … arrived with two engines at 3:55 a.m., just 14 minutes after the collision…. almost as if their response had been planned. They worked quickly to seal off the area from all civilians, then claimed that the entire freightliner had been conveniently vaporized and “No sign of the truck remains at the scene.”

• Mosqueda family friend Rev. Oliver Escalante claims that “If he walked away, it’s only because the Lord was with him”, which also strains the limits of credibility. If the Lord was with him, wouldn’t he have avoided the crash altogether?

• The section of the bridge appears to have fallen straight down, exactly as it would have from demolition charges.

Oh, and Rosie- Maybe you should do some research before mouthing off.

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Work Japanese

I just left the employ of a Japanese-owned company. There were good and bad things about working for a Japanese-owned company. One of the bad things was that the Japanese employees were consistently unhappy and dour, and man, were they chain smokers. I think those poor addicts spent 10 minutes out of every hour, rain or shine, puffing away.

I was never asked to go to Japan for business. Although I would really like to vacation there, and there are a lot of things that that I would love to experience in Japan, I'm really glad that I didn't have to go for business. This was such a blessing for me. My buddy, who also recently found new employment, has posted about one of his trips to corporate Japan. This will explain why I never wanted to go. You should read the whole thing, but I'm going to reproduce a lot of it here. This may explain the attitude of the Japanese employees.

The men are dressed in the same light two-tone green jackets identified as their uniform, and is only to be warn at work. All wear glasses that magnify the redness in their eyes that obviously comes from suffering for the company. Long messy hair and dirty pants tell me they are here for only one reason. To suffer just like their boss does. The men are expected to stay until their manager leaves. The manager is expected to stay until his manager leaves. He is expected to stay until his manager leaves, and he does not leave until 8pm because he too is suffering for the company.

I heard a lot about this attitude. The workers were expected to be at work until their boss left. They did not work, necessarily, but they had to be there. Going home to their families was not a priority. In fact, the older executives often travelled with a young attractive female. I assumed she was some sort of assistant. But, no, she was the mistress. And everyone knew it. Apparently the wife is expected to look the other way.

The women her are machines. They are all to look the same in their uniforms, which are not to be worn to or from work, but only at work. They are to act like machines, which sit and do work. Machines don’t talk to anyone, they don’t look at anyone, they don’t read e-mails from friends, and they do not talk on the phone. They sit at their desk and work. If they get tired, they sit at their computer and close their eyes while they hold their head up with one hand hold the mouse with the other. This is ok, because they are at their desk, and appear to be working and suffering like the rest...

I have heard that in Japan if you have a boyfriend or girlfriend, you don’t talk about your relationships. Only gossip about others. If a woman does have a boyfriend, she may get fired from her job. The reasoning behind this, is because she will eventually get married, have babies, and have to quit her job to raise her family like every Japanese woman should, (not all do however).

The Japanese women at my job were definitely treated poorly. They were not viewed as important 'team members,' but as objects to be ordered around.

I make a pit stop at the restrooms and try not to touch anything while in there. The toilets are really urinals embedded in the ground. This is typical Japanese. You really do have to squat to do your thing, the toilet paper is really wax paper on a 4” roll. And watch your wallet so it does not fall in either. The urinals are typical American urinals. No paper towels or rolls to dry your hands, so you use your handkerchief you are to carry with you everywhere for a number of reasons, one of which, to dry your hands.

Speaking of getting attention, every now and then, when I entered the restroom, there would be a tiny old Japanese lady hunched over wearing a dirty pink outfit, yellow rubber gloves holding a bucket and scrubbing brush, cleaning like she is suffering just like the office workers. She is just part of the restroom and no one pays any attention to her and you just go about your business.

Pretty funny, isn't it! I can't imagine having to squat like that with the little lady mopping all around me. Talk about performance anxiety.

So, the next time you're frustrated at work, take a deep breath and remember: it could be worse.

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