Things I was musing about this evening...

as I was unwinding from a long day.  Yes, there will be a blog in the morning.  No there won't be a new installment of "As The Assisted Living Facility Turns" but I do promise a new one tomorrow.

There were no street lights to illuminate the two lane road that was the last leg of my journey.  But there were lights on at the main gate and someone was there to check my identification and let me in.  35 years ago tonight, I arrived at my very first permanent duty station, Homestead Air Force Base.  No, not another recitation of thank yous, but a reminiscence of a night long ago.

It was after midnight.  I'd driven hundreds of miles since that morning (over 700 miles) and was very tired.  I could have gone to a motel but decided I'd save a few bucks and check into the visitors quarters.  However there was no room at the "inn" so I had to drive back out onto that dark, lonely two-lane road (street lights were added soon afterward) and spend a few hours sleeping at a motel not far away.

I recalled that days and the next few days afterward this morning while driving.  Not to lament choices made long ago, or mistakes.  Not to ponder the roads not travelled or try to gain any insight about how things could have been different.  Just to remember the past, and review my record as I continue to strive to "audit life".  It was an interesting exercise.

***

President Obama is going to nominate former Senator Chuck Hagel to be the next Secretary of Defense.  In 1998, Hagel said of James Hormel, an openly gay man who was named Ambassador to Luxembourg that he was "openly aggressively gay".  Now he's saying his comments back then were "insensitive" and do not reflect his views.

So do they not reflect his views now, since they may derail his nomination, or is he trying to claim they didn't reflect his views back then?  Doesn't really matter, since I don't believe his apology or attempt to try to use his record in total to excuse what he said back then. When you make a derogatory slur you either means it and believe what you're saying, or you're making a joke in really bad taste.  The former is unacceptable and the latter isn't much better.

***

So the NRA wants to train and arm teachers.  Worse yet, they believe their own hype when they say "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."  There is a small grain of truth in that statement, but the real way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to prevent him from getting it.  Gun control isn't perfect at doing that.  But let's suppose for a moment that we pass a new law.  Not to control guns, but to make those who own the 200 million guns out there already, personally responsible for any crimes that are committed with their guns.  If I owned a gun or guns and if someone were to steal them and commit a murder and I'd be going to prison for life along with them, you can bet that my guns would not be easily stolen.  In fact, they wouldn't be stolen at all.  Because I'd either get rid of them, or make sure they weren't accessible by anyone but me.

You have to have a license to fly a plane.  People who didn't have those licenses used planes to kill thousands on 9/11.  You have to have a license to drive a car.  More than 34,000 people were killed by cars in 2009, a year that saw less than 32,000 deaths by guns.  So why is it that you have to have completed training and obtained a license from the state to fly a plane or drive a car, but you can just go to a gun show and buy a gun?

***

So there's a Playboy Club in India that will open early next year.  The "bunnies" who will work there will have a modified bunny outfit.  One that covers their legs, but bares their midriff.  Go figure.

Did that really happen?  I just watched footage of a UPS deliveryman stealing a Fed-Ex box from the doorstep where he'd just delivered another package.

Okay.  More in the morning.