SUV's are turning up more in the US, say Law Enforcement

The morning started like any other morning for Stan Widicks. He shared breakfast with his wife and three elementary school age children. He chatted with his wife, gave her a kiss and left for work. He didn't expect to be murdered that morning.

"They won't do anything about them." his widowed wife, the 26 year Melody said. "They cut you off, tailgate you and force their way in front of you and the cops just look the other way!". She fell quiet as Jiminey, her youngest began crying again He missed his daddy.

What happened that morning was that like every other morning, the father of three got into his small Miata car and left for work.10 minutes later he was first run off the freeway and then killed when 31 one year old homeschooling mother Misty Chambers lost control of her Hummer while trying to change the DVD for her children. Recordings of the cell phone call she was engaged in provided detail to investigators.Officers that arrived on the scene found the woman cursing at the gravely injured Widicks and blaming him for the accident. Members of both her church and charter district defend her as being a model driver, often ignoring the 6 tickets she has received in the last four months, and the fact that she was driving with a suspended licence.

Hummers are giant trucks designed for use of the US Military. They have exaggerated body's covered in armor,over sized tires used for running over insurgents cars and may times gun ports to allow strafing the enemy from the vault like safety of the vehicle. Civilian versions often feature the same deadly extras that make them so successful on the battlefield.Owners of these killers tend to be middle management with flashy houses in the suburbs and little attention to being good citizens.

Often times the civilian versions fall into the hands of unskilled drivers and other "Soccer Moms" as they are known. These women tend to have never held down any form of employment, bray loudly about their responsibilities of raising children and act with an outlandish sense of entitlement to owning these barely toned down killing machines. Joe Staunch, a Sargent in the local police department puts it this way, " They've got the cash, or did until the housing crash, to own these beasts. Nobody NEEDS a Hummer, they were made for the battlefield, not downtown America. But here are no laws to regulate who gets their hands on these things,and no laws that require any sort of training before heading out into traffic. Until the laws change, people are going to die every day as a result."

Joe had to cut sort the interview as he was called to the scene of another fatal accident, that involved an Escalade. "They're just as bad, but nobody wants to say so." He looked depressed at the thought of having to tell another young mother about the loss of a family member.

Having a Hummer, or other form of "SUV" (the civilian term for these over-sized military trucks) means you are 100% more likely to be involved in an accident with one. Police have found that the more SUV's that make their way out onto the road, the more fatal accidents they cause. But still, no one is doing anything about it. People talk about the dangers, but nothing gets done.

Lillie Sharecropper lost her husband two years ago, and she hasn't rested since.Lille has formed a non-profit organization to speak out against the dangers of allowing SUV's into the community. At a recent town hall meeting she stood in front of the crowd, offering facts, figures and finally photos of her own husband's fatal accident caused at the hands of a drunk driver in an SUV. At this meeting, she was heckled and interrupted repeatedly by a group of Soccer moms who came only to upset the meeting. They have every right to do so, as there are no laws that prevent them from harrassing and upsetting others.Many times these types band together after meeting at ballet studios and Tae Kwan Do studios, where their own children struggle for identity against numbingly average talents of other children much like themselves.

"She doesn't know what she's talking about. Idiots like her husband don't know how to drive and its their own fault if they get hit by an SUV. They don't seem to understand how hard it is to get a group of kids to all their appointments on time when the appointments get rescheduled all the time. They don't even know how to drive while using a cell phone and burping a baby! An SUV is the only car that I can drive to haul around 4 kids at a time!"

Lillie counters at one point with, "I guess you've never seen a station wagon?" Only jeers answered her direct and honest question. "It's the attitudes that have to change. The general public just doesn't understand how dangerous these things really are. Anyone can walk into a dealership and leave with a military grade piece of equipment designed only for killing people. Nobody NEEDS a vehicle designed for killing people. They may need transportation, but allowing them to run wild with these types of vehicles is wrong. What's it going to take before there are laws to protect us? Maybe one of the Bush daughters being killed by an SUV?"

Melvin Davies has owned trucks all his life. He even owns and restores old military vehicles. His collection numbers around 30 of various kinds of trucks, personal carriers and jeeps. His attention to detail and his carefully use of the vehicles is being threatened by the new wave of SUV owners.

"I didn't really notice when they started calling them SUV's, they were always just jeeps to me and my friends. First the jeeps got called SUV's, then the old Panel Wagons and Suburban type trucks started getting called SUV's. All of a sudden they were everywhere, and the prices to own and maintain them went through the roof. " Melvin added. " I don't understand why all of a sudden everybody got one. It's not like they have a lot of uses, and if you aren't careful with them, somebody can get hurt or killed." He glanced at the TV, which was showing yet another death caused by the gleaming war machines on a local street.

"That kid had no reason to be in an SUV. He was 16, his parents were rich, and now he's killed a whole family and two of his friends. His family lived in an urban neighborhood and didn't have any reason to own one of these things." Melvin agreed.He seemed disgusted when the report ended with the news that after two other "accidents" with injuries, the criminal was sentanced to 30 hours of public service and nothing more. " They're gonna ruin it for all the folks who work hard and work to safely enjoy their trucks. It makes me kinda sick to see. I hope they don't wanna take away my jeep because this stupid judge's son killed all them folks."

"I've got rights, because this is America and that's why are soldiers are dying overseas for. They are protecting my rights to own an SUV! I've never killed anyone with mine." the short, fatted woman near the door added. Lillie answered back, "Maybe you haven't killed anyone yet, but you will. A friend of mine overheard you at the ballet studio talking about how your first SUV got totaled. You laughed because the other guy got hurt, and bragged that you were getting a bigger one next time....which you did. YOU'RE the exact kind of person who should never be allowed to own an SUV!"

The room erupted into chaos and police had to be brought in to break up the riot. At the end of it, 6 cars in the parking lot had been "Bumped", and SUVer's term for backing into a car hard enough to damage it and then leaving without giving the car's owner their insurance information. As the parking lot cleared of SUV's, most of the other vehicles owners were disappointed to find "Does it have a hemi in it?" and "Hummers don't kill people, economy cars get them killed." stickers stuck all over their cars. "That's just not right." one man said, adding that he hadn't been there attending the meeting, he was the night janitor trying to support his family of five on his second job. A job he needed since his wife had been killed in an "accident" with an SUV.

The next morning, officer Staunch contacted us, after he got of shift, "It was a bad one. There is some sort of weird rivalry between the owners of US and Import SUV's. Nobody wants to talk about it. Two rival SUV owners pulled up next to each other and tried to prove whose was best. A car full of deaf children on their way home from the zoo will never see another Panda as a result!", He stopped for a moment, "I'm sorry, it may be wrong, but things like this happen every day and the public doesn't ever hear about it! I KNOW about Hummers, I learned how to drive one in the military, but if you told me that I would be facing that kind of killing power on the streets of my home town in the USA, I would have laughed at you. We feel helpless, you can chase them in a police cruiser, which is specially designed for pursuit of other criminals, but at the tap of a brake pedal I will never see my own family again. We elect these lawmakers...when are they going to step up and DO something about the problem?"

In the length of time it took you to read these, more people have died at the hands of SUVers. But don't tell the companies that make them about it, they don't care. They don't feel responsible at all for the death and carnage made possible by their SUV's. Maybe they'll feel different when they lose a family member to a rival SUVers uncontrollable rage.

I KNEW IT!

OK, Let's try embedding a video. Never done that before. This one is full of cussing, but its a must see. I just KNEW this was what was going on with roleplaying games and first person shooters:

Ghosts

I've been up a few hours, and ghosts haunt me today. So very many ghosts to contend with.

Ghosts of friends long gone, ghosts of my past. Ghosts of things I've forgotten, ghosts of the charm I once had. Ghosts of people and places. Ghosts of contacts with them. Ghosts of e-mails and phone numbers, ghosts of them all now gone. Ghosts of my hopes and drams,ghosts of what might have been. Ghosts of what now will be, ghosts of how to begin again. Gosts of tomorrow and never. Ghosts of never and forever.

The sky outside weighs heavy with dew. Th sky outside clears slowly to a crystal clear version of the unknown.

What happened to who I was going to be? Shattered in an instant of twsting crushing metal and glass. I suffer still at what I lost, because I now know what it was and how it never came back. It left me not good enough to be who I intended to be.

This time, this year, I work to gather this brokn shards of my life and skills to become....myself.

The soundtrack continues. Its a little louder again.

Bait and Switch Politics

Ever since I can remember (o.k., the mid-70's). I have noticed the American tactic of stupid news stories covering up what's REALLY going on...espicially if what's going on isn't good news. It works like this:

Something goes terribly wrong in a. the economy,b. a war somewhere, c. national issues, d.etc.,small mention of which is made in the US media. Then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere...a HUGE story buries the airwaves for weeks at a time, covering and making everyone think about the "real" issues at hand.

Did anyone else notice the man in charge of the "war" in Iraq quit last week? No...I guess Elliot Spritizer's dick and Brittney's moron sex toy are a GREAT DEAL more important to think about than a person who is in charge of leading a war in an entire miltary arena!

I remember years ago some stupid story was out, and I told everyone else, "What's really important is all the way around the world and we aren't hearing about it.". Back in those days I had a shortwave radio that filled me in on the bombing of Libya and troubles in Beirut that the American media didn't announce. A full two weeks later, both situations "blew up" in the US media.

I really don't believe for a minute there is a free press in the USA. Can all these people working in the field REALLY miss the important facts that badly? For god sakes, even NPR was on the whore banging bandwagon all week long! I really, really don't care about these fluff stories.

What about the war and what about the economy?

It ALL gets down to gas prices right now. My buisiness has fallen apart because people can't afford anything extra when gas costs so much. I can go back and chart my loss of students to increases in gas prices. A few folks have actually confirmed that if the gas used to commute to work costs so much, they have had to pull cash from other things to cover it.

There isn't a single person running for president that has said the phrase, "Gas prices" EVER during this run. I don't give a shit about anything except gas prices. The MORONS who put an oil man into office and then can't believe record profits from oil companies should be beaten senseless. What was the big story then...? Lance Bass is gay? Brittney is married to white trash? There are weapons of mass destruction in a piss ant tiny country that wouldn't be stupid enough to use them against us?

What happened to this country? It began to fall apart with Raygun and his yuppies. We can all see the effect of years of trickledown economics now....guess what...IT DIDN'T WORK! (I used to say that what trickled down to the majority of people smells like the piss it is. )

Oh well, as long as they don't try and take away our guns there is still hope. Did you see that Brittney's manager agreed to stay away from her another month?! (Why don't they prosicute Brit's parents under the Mann Act? They exploited her and transported her across state lines for immoral purposes....making themselves rich.)

Almost There.....

...The Miata is back in one peice again, and it runs.

I took it for a smog, and all the levels tested amazingy low- sort of like it was a brand new car. The shop was surprised at this, as it has 197,000 miles on it. Doing the valve job really seems to help it all. It now runs better, smoother and with more power than I can ever remember.

BUT...it failed the smog test because the computer had no history in it. I guess it cleared when the battery cable was disconnected. This means I have to driv it at least 100 miles to reset the computer, then have it retested.

Damn...I have to DRIVE the car I have been missing so bad for like 8 months? It had half a tank of gas, and I topped it off for like 14 bucks. DAMN...topping the truck (at least twice a week) is no less than 80 dollars a time! Maybe my finanaces can recover now.

Even the clutch feels pretty good at this point Maybe in another class cycle I can get a new clutch for it.I hope so. Geez, I'll be out of my classes then, with only 4 zillion labs to make up.

Wow...only like 25 bucks a week for gas....I ain't used to that at all! It might even get better ileage at this point also. EVERYTHING inside the top half of the engine is cleaned to like new condition. No gobs of oil and crap plugging everything up anymore.

I have to go to work now.....in my CAR.
Wonder if the room will be full tonight............

Cleaning House

I have recently looked at much of my creative output from the last 20 years. Some of it was half-baked and unfinished, some had potential, some was done. Much of it just wasn't where I am anymore to any degree.....so.....

....I have destroyed over 200,000 words of written material this past week. That's about 70 sets of song lyrics, a number of short stories, and one full novel of around 230 pages. Like a garge full of old crap you no longer use, it feels better to be cleaned up and out.

Currently, I have zero desire to write novels or songs. This is weird, as for the fact that for as longas I can remember, I have worked on writing. Wonder where the drive/ interest went to? Perhaps its the fact that there are 80 cazillion novls of littl to zero worth out there, and the numbers say that it would be a waste of time to try and get published. I do have something of an interest in working on some biography type stuff or some historical stuff around aircraft. Oh well, when I get time.

I would actually like to get back to rockets and model aircraft to some extent right now. Guess that starts with cleaning the apartment up and laundry. Hope the Car is back from its final part of being repaired today. 8 miles to the gallon in the truck is still killing me.

30 Years Of......

Its gotten rather annoying that I CAN reflect back on 30 years of anything at all.

I have always carefully gaurded against beng stuck in the "Back then things were better...." type of thinking. BUT, in many ways that seems true.

FEW bands these days sound like they mean it. Its th legacy of letting in crap like "alternative rock". Face it, you should have just admited that "punk" was people who couldn't play anything more than what the three chords allowed. Tha's not groundbreaking, that's pathetic.

Oh well, we've always got Wolfsmother.....