The media drives me nuts…

I noticed that a video clip is making the rounds from Youtube
regarding an increase in gun sales recently. The media, of course,
is showing it’s natural fear mongering bias by pointing out that
some people are, to be blunt, pissing their knickers over the fact
that Barack Obama has taking a strong lead in the presidential race
of late and are a afraid that another “gun grabbing liberal” is
about to be the next US president.

That may be so but the media is the problem here. Historically
speaking, gun grabs have only come after someone has gone nuts
and it made national news; Pearl,MS, Colombime,CO. I won’t say
that there isn’t a chance Obama may decide to try his hand at
gun control but right now some of the media are acting like this
is a key issue in the grand scheme of things. Usually gun grabs
are knee jerk crap designed to make soccer moms feel ’safe” instead
of actually deterring crime.

Personally, I have a hunch that more than a few people are buying
guns because right now, things look like crap from a financial
point of view for most of us. And thus some of them are buying
guns to ensure that they have a chance to retain what they have
from people that are desperate and stupid enough to try stealing
food and other essentials from their neighbors.

I won’t say that there are some that aren’t worried that their
rights to own firearms will be trimmed by the next administration.
Every new president poses that possibility. And it would be there
whether it is a “conservative” or a “liberal”. Under the current
(Conservative!) administration we saw a huge blow to our rights
and freedoms thanks to the U.S.A. PATRIOT act and other laws that
came to pass after 9/11/2001.

So if you watch TV news, take it with a huge grain of salt and
try to see through their load of biased crap.

A fine display of hypocrisy

Early this morning I caught a spot on the local TV news out of
Memphis regarding an ongoing problem with their “adult oriented
businesses” (Read: topless bars).

Here are two links to stories on the subject, I’ll add more later
as they become available.

County Calls For Stricter Laws On Strip Clubs

Norm Brewer Commentary: December 5, 2007

Now my complaint here is the hypocrisy involved in it. They
claim they don’t want the strip clubs and related crime problems.
However, they do want the revenue generated from the sales of
beer in the clubs.

Excuse me?! You want money from people, mostly men, sitting
around slurping beer watching women wearing goofy outfits strip
naked but you aren’t prepared to deal with the problems their
drunken behavior causes?!

WTF?

Memphis has always struck me as a city that is highly confused
as to what it wants to be when it grows up. They claim they want
to keep the small town friendliness attitude and retain their
Christian morals and values. Yet at the same time they want to be
a big city on par with L.A. or New York. I’m sorry but it doesn’t work
that way. Whenever you have a big city’s benefits you are going to
have it’s related problems.

With strip clubs those problems will be, by default, prostitution,
drugs, and horny drunks. Which would rather leave you a choice to
make. Refuse to allow such clubs and look for revenue elsewhere or
get your hands dirty and deal with the problems your greed caused.

Manufactured vs handmade (What two little boys taught me)

I don’t know how many people are aware of the little fact

that on weekends I set up a little table in town to make a
few sales and socialize a bit. Most of the time it is more an
excuse to get out of the house for a few hours than an attempt
at selling anything. Sometimes it can be just a quiet boring
day and sometimes it can be a busy profitable one. I’ll admit
that there are times when dealing the public can drive me batty,
there’s always someone that thinks haggling is the fine art of giving
an insult in the attempt to get a better deal. And it also gives
me a chance to see how a lot of people see the world around them.

One Saturday morning a few weeks ago I had my table set
up and was relaxing in my beat up old camper’s chair when
a pair of little boys rolled up on their bikes. We chatted and they
asked questions about the knives and other little oddities I keep
on the table. One of them asked how much for this one little knife…

The look on their faces when I told them fifteen dollars was
both funny and a little irksome. I made it so I know how much
work was involved. They didn’t. That was when it occurred to
me why so many people never do understand why a hand crafted
item cost so much more than the stuff they pick up at Wal-Mart
or some other modern store.

People have gotten used to paying a much smaller price for
their goods without realizing why those goods cost so relatively
little. In a manufacturing plant the items are produced by mass
production, and all of them look and feel pretty much the same.
Hand made items can only be created one at a time and while
you may be able to make two similar items they will still both
be utterly unique.

The other thing is quality, there are high quality mass produced
items but there is also a lot of mass produced junk floating around
the market place as well. I won’t say that there aren’t poorly made
hand made items, there are. When I first started learning to make
knives I made a few stinkers but they are things I keep to remind
myself how to not make a knife. On occasion I’ll still screw one up
but those don’t leave my shop unless it is going to end up being used
to weed the garden.

But I digress…

Most hand crafted items are usually higher quality than a lot of
factory made items. Which is usually better, an apple pie fresh
out of the store freezer or one that was fresh made by a good cook?
(betcha never thought of an apple pie as hand crafted before! lol)

At any rate, my point is that with mass produced items, the
people making them don’t really care that much about an
individual item on the production line, One of humpteen thousand
usually. With a hand made item, the person making it takes
greater care with each item made and more actual time in making it.