There is no such thing as a "boneless chicken wing." Wings have bones.

Without bones, they are merely wing-shaped chicken fingers.

So, you know, you're not fooling anybody.

Here's your link. Read it.

Now. Real simple, folks. Think about it for half a moment. It's the government. If they have power to give you money for something, then they have the power to not give you money for something as well. Whoever's in power then has the ability to move funds around at will, depending on what they, the majority party, believe.

People forget this. Because people have short attention spans. They don't understand that if your party's in charge and you give government the power to do things that you agree with–well, surprise, surprise–nobody's in charge forever. The opposition moves in and then they can fuck with things using the power you originally gave government for what you see as a Good Thing.

The only solution–the only solution–is not to give government that power in the first place. If they don't have the power, they can't abuse it. If they do have the power, they will abuse it. Basically if you see government abuse the power that you, assuming you're old enough to vote, helped them get and/or retain for any motive, good or ill, and you act surprised and/or shocked when something like this happens…then you're a fucking moron. And I wish you would never, ever vote again. Sorry. End of story.

If you really want to donate to a grant program, make it a private one or set up your own. Or, you know, burn the money. I'd rather see your money in ashes than used as an incentive for people to not go into the study of evolution. We've got enough stupidity in the world without the feds funding more of it.

Found via Slashdot.

Rox of Spaz-House points out that today is Uncle Ray's birthday. The majority of my short fiction I owe to him and this book. There are few things I can say about writing with certainty that I think are universal, and one of them is this: I haven't met the writer who I think couldn't benefit from Ray's wisdom in Zen in the Art.

This shmoe wishes him all the best. I owe him much.

So Engadget has talked about their first PCs. I actually used a machine before the PC…when I was eight, I trained on an IBM Displaywriter. The Displaywriter was a $14,000 word processor. And by word processor, I mean that's all it did. You had a green screen and you had the ginormous eight-inch diskettes (if I remember correctly…I still have a couple around here somewhere).

I grew up blue, so of course we had an original PC. Then we were amazed when there was actually a 10MB hard drive included. Ten megabytes…Jesus, who could ever need that much space? Then I used to work on the first luggable PC IBM made, the Portable PC. It was basically a PC with a handle on it. Seriously. It came with a tiny amber monochrome screen and two diskette drives. I don't think it had a hard drive, but I can't remember exactly.

I think in there somewhere I worked on a PC Jr. That was the biggest piece of crap I've ever had the misfortune to work with. I still refer to it as the Tonka Toy of PCs. My neighbor who had a Timex PC, one with keys so small you needed a toothpick and a magnifying glass to work it–that was more impressive than the PC Jr.

The majority of my novel's first and second drafts were done on a Portable PS/2 Model 8573, a slightly more luggable luggable. It too had an amber screen–but larger–with a fold-down detachable keyboard, a fold-out diskette drive and a hard drive. I used an external monitor with it and wrote the novel on the kitchen table of the apartment I shared with my girlfriend at the time.

I'm still amazed that I walk around today with my iPod and my MDA and I've got more computing power just on my freaking belt that I would have thought possible back in those days.

By my desk at work, I keep a PC diskette drive. Whenever I feel like I'm losing perspective, I take it in one hand and my laptop in the other–and I heft them both for a weight comparison. I do this just to keep my head on straight.

Here's the article from Reason you should read. Do that and come back.

Okay.

I've downloaded a PDF of the Cato Institute's take on "being terrorized" and why it sucks and isn't as bad as all that. I have not had a chance to read it yet, it's on the stack. However, I'm compelled to respond to this article.

First up, I agree that there's a lot more terror being spread around than there are terrorist acts actually happening. Now, why is this? Is this because the government is actually that good at preventing acts of terror? I have my doubts. While I'm sure there actually are a number of events that have been prevented by proaction, you'll forgive this borderline anarchist his suspicions. After all, government's number one goal is to self-perpetuate. And if that means making Mencken's hobgoblins jump about and dance, so be it. If that means taking bills meant for defense and porking the living shit out of them in order to benefit themselves, so be it. If that means the folks in Congress being able to act decisively on giving themselves raises and that's about it, then so be it.

So just because I'm a cynical bastard, that doesn't make me wrong.

And I'd like to point out that the government really is doing some silly shit in response to things. After all, that's what government does. A) Something must be done. 2) This is something. III) Therefore, it must be done. So trust me, I know the frustration of being hassled by the TSA.

So let's take this Reason article for what it is. It's trying to give us perspective, which is important. Richard Bach said we either use perspective, or lose perspective–so I'm all in favor.

However. This last line makes me wonder what Ronald Bailey, the author, is playing at.

"We ultimately vanquish terrorism when we refuse to be terrorized."

I see.

You know what this reminds me of? Bullies on buses. Anybody who's ever ridden anywhere on a school bus has gotten picked on in some form or another. Unless you were one of the Beautiful People, then you were respected. Me, I was a freak. Still am, actually. So I was a target. Myself, I remember a field trip (I believe it was a field trip) where a friend and I were being hassled by a guy sitting behind us. Hassled and picked on and poked and all the silly shit that elementary school bullies did.

I was convinced that if we just ignored him, he would go away. After all, they do it for attention, right?

Guess what? He didn't go away. He kept on and kept on and kept on. And I kept telling my friend to just ignore him. Just ignore him.

And after reading this article, I wonder: what he would have done if I had turned around and broken his fucking nose instead of just sitting there and taking it? I bet he would have left me the hell alone. And my friend. And thought twice about the next freak he decided to screw around with.

And yeah, I regret not having done that, in retrospect.

So while I applaud Bailey for trying to give us perspective, that last line makes me wonder: is he trying to say if we ignore the bullies in the seats behind us, they'll just go away? Well, that's all well and good, but in my experience, bullies will do one of two things. They'll either keep doing it, or they'll go do it to someone else. And all the perspective in the world isn't going to make you feel any better if an act of terror makes you a statistic. Do you think people dying thanks to car bombs think, "Well, damn, at least I'm being blown to bits comforted by the notion that there was only a one in 1300 chance of this happening over the course of my lifetime?"

So thanks for the perspective. But let's keep breaking fucking noses, shall we? Because that's how you ultimately vanquish bullies. And the people who use perspective like this to pooh-pooh everything the government's doing are going to be the first ones to start screaming bloody murder and blaming the government for not doing enough when the next bigass attack happens.

This Boing Boing round-up of folks who dig in their spare time is going to need further scrutiny from me later.

It actually tickles my memory in regards to a short story I wrote back when I was still writing nothing but crap.

As opposed to now, where I have flashes of things that are at least readable.

It was called "Subterranean," and it was my attempt, at the time, to ape a bit of Lovecraft. It concerned a guy whose younger brother was stolen by creatures that lived beneath the surface of the earth, and his attempt to rescue the kid.

It makes my flesh crawl just to think about the story–not because I had somehow distilled HPL's ability to mindgrope you at that early age, but because it was rubbish. I find all of that early shit to be abhorrent and it shows my trust for you, my three readers, that I even bring it up now. About the only thing that I look back and find novel at all was the nature of the creatures themselves.

I then later appropriated that, I realize now, for another Lovecraftian idea I had that was also shelved.

It's a bit twisty, otherwise I would post it here. And worth using elsewhere. So.

If I can ever get time, I'll post some sketches I've been doing for two new short projects. But the real world is kicking my arse these days. Send coffee and lots of it. Thanks.

Okay, to close this out…I found out who the "fucking genius" was who came up with how the tickets were handled:

The man himself. So it looks like Tabernacle's off the hook. They were probably doing the best they could given this half-assed will call idea.

Anyway, Tom admitted as such on-stage and advised us that he made us show up with ID and credit cards with everything on will call in order to keep tickets off of eBay. He was cruel only to be kind, in others.

While he's well within his rights to put whatever parameters he wants on attending his show, there are easier ways to achieve that objective that do not involve making your audience stand out in the heat for a fucking hour. Have the purchaser provide names for each of the people he's buying tickets for, have the names on the tickets, and have everybody show up with ID at the door. That would also negate the two tickets per person nonsense. Or at least do two lines: general admission and assigned seats. We were in assigned seats because we're old farts and can't stand up for two hours. But hey, we got to stand up for an hour outside. Good job.

So for anybody showing up for a Tom show, get there really fucking early–even if you're not general admission. He gives a great fucking show, no joke at all. Love him. There's nothing quite like "Goin' Out West" live. But he's no logistics expert.