Tag: Maryland

Ted Nugent compares half the country to ‘rabid coyotes’ who should be shot

Ted Nugent is an example of someone who should not have access to firearms

Rock musician and accused draft dodger Ted Nugent thinks a lot of Americans are like rabid coyotes who should be shot on contact.

From CNN:

Nugent, a musician and National Rifle Association board member, made the remarks during a seemingly casual — yet fiery — interview with InfoWars host Alex Jones. During the interview, Jones — a right-wing conspiracy theorist — said he wanted to know why liberals hate America and “love communism.”

“Don’t ask why,” Nugent said. “Just know that evil, dishonesty and scam artists have always been around and that right now they’re liberal, they’re Democrat, they’re RINOs, they’re Hollywood, they’re fake news, they’re media, they’re academia, and they’re half of our government, at least.”

“So come to that realization,” he continued. “There are rabid coyotes running around, you don’t wait till you see one to go get your gun, keep your gun handy. And every time you see one, shoot one.”

The National Rifle Association. People place this logo on their vehicles so thieves know who’s house to rob if and when they want a gun.

I guess now we know why Ted Nugent is a National Rifle Association (NRA) board member. He clearly has a lot going on upstairs and is a living example of someone who is fully embracing the Second Amendment lifestyle.

To me, Ted Nugent sounds even crazier than Joss Whedon. To me, Ted Nugent is an example of someone who should not have access to firearms.

It’s times like this I feel sorry for the sane and intelligent people on the other side of the gun debate who feel strongly that as an American, they have a Constitutional right to own a firearm for their own protection. NRA board member Ted Nugent do people like this a real disservice.

My opinion on guns is fairly simple: in a perfect world, nobody would have access to a gun. We would live in a country free of guns. The problem is, we don’t live in a perfect world. We have more guns in this country than we have people.

This problem has been a long time in the making. Gun manufacturers have churned out guns by the millions for decades. We couldn’t ban guns even if we wanted to. There are simply too many already in circulation. Because of that, I think everyone should be able to arm themselves for their own protection.

If the law allowed it, I’d carry one of these everywhere I went.

Under normal circumstances, I don’t need a gun to protect myself, unless the person wishing to do me harm has a gun. By law here in the state of Maryland, I’m not allowed to carry a gun for my protection. Here in Maryland, if someone with a firearm wishes to visit violence upon me, I must wait for the proper law enforcement authorities to come to my defense. I’d rather not be subjected to a system like that, but what can I do about it, move up to Pennsylvania where carry laws are a lot more relaxed?

I think I’d rather be shot in the face with a bullet dipped in full-blown AIDS than live in Pennsylvania. I think I speak for a lot of Marylanders when I say that.

A comic book convention I can see from my house

Is the Four State Comic-Con a comic book convention or a cosplay convention?

The 2018 Four State Comic-Con is this weekend, March 24-25. It’s taking place at Hager Hall, a venue I can see from my house. Seriously, if I stand in my driveway and look towards the east, I can see the top of it over the trees. Google Maps says it’s an 11-minute walk from my house. I’m I planning on attending?

Probably not.

Programming wise, it doesn’t look like it has a lot to offer. The published guest list includes:

  • Miko Hughes
  • Rikki Simons
  • Fred “The Hammer” Williamson
  • Al Snow
  • Ken Hunt
  • Josh Knaub
  • Intraventus
  • Sayakat Cosplay
  • Sharon Rose
  • Megami Cupcake
  • Kayley Marie
  • Ghostbusters Tri-State Division
  • Ron Wilson

Minor celebrities, most I’ve never heard of and professional cosplayers. I have nothing against cosplayers. I like cosplayers. I’m just not sure they should be the main draw for something billed as a comic book convention.

Most of the guests have nothing to do with comic books.

There will be vendors selling things, some comic book related, but not many. More than a few seem to be craft vendors selling things that may or may not appeal to comic book fans.

The convention costs $17.55 for a two-day pass or $12.38 for a Saturday or Sunday only pass. If the prices seem weird, it seems you can only buy the tickets online and they are passing on the credit card fees to the consumer. From what I can gather from looking at their website, tickets cannot be purchased at the door on the day of the event, but that must be wrong.

The prices seem very high for what it has to offer, which in my eyes, is really nothing substantial.

Washington DC’s Awesome Con March 30 – April 1, 2018

If I wasn’t already planning on attending Awesome Con next week in nearby Washington DC, I’d probably give the 2018 Four State Comic-Con more consideration. Again, it’s a comic book convention, albeit seemingly in name only, that I can see from my house. It seems a shame a giant nerd like me isn’t going.

Above photo: Cosplayer Megami Cupcake

Today is the first day of Spring, but the snow is falling

According to The Fantasy Art of Frazetta calendar, I bought on clearance a month after New Year’s Day, today is the first day of Spring. With that said, it’s been snowing pretty good here in Hagerstown most of the day. And it’s not supposed to stop until tomorrow.

The warlocks and witches that work at the National Weather Service say we might get eleven inches of white death. They put the odds at 1 in 10. Odds?

Do people bet on the weather?

Even though I’m not very healthy right now, I went out and shoveled off the driveway earlier. I just pushed the snow off to the side. It seemed like only an inch or two of snow.

I’m one of those weirdos who like snow. I like the cold and I like snow. I like watching it fall and I even like driving in it. I’m not into skiing or snowboarding. I tried skiing only once and didn’t care for it. The actual skiing was fun, the not being able to stop when I wanted to part was not fun.

I have been blocked by Steve Shives

I’ve joined thousands of other Twitter users and I’ve been blocked by Steve Shives. Who’s Steve Shives? He’s a guy who lives in nearby Sharpsburg, Maryland and maintains a YouTube channel dedicated to social justice, feminism, and atheism.

He’s pretty famous for blocking people on Twitter. Evidently, he has a bot that blocks people based on who else they follow on Twitter.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, block bots are evil, dumb, and I hate them.

YouTuber Steve Shives

Back before Steve was on YouTube, I considered him an e-friend. We both lived here in the Hagerstown area, we both had blogs, and we both shared a dislike for our local newspaper, The Herald-Mail. We were also very similar in our political views until we weren’t.

I was once a fan of Steve’s writing on his blog, Steve Likes to Curse. It was a daily read for me. Although the site is still up, he no longer writes blog posts. That’s too bad. I think he is a good writer. He probably writes scripts for YouTube, but listening to someone’s videos is not the same as reading someone’s written words. And to be honest, I don’t like Steve’s videos.

Here’s a recent video of his:

Steve Shives is such a polarizing figure on YouTube that he is often the subject of other YouTube creators. A good many YouTubers make videos about Steve Shives and the things he says. Some of them are quite funny.

I started having problems with Steve and his opinions even before he left LiveJournal for YouTube. Mostly it had to do with his inconsistency of atheism. Even though he gave the impression he was an atheist, when he and his wife married, they married in a local church. I know this because I saw the photos in The Herald-Mail. What kind of atheist gets married in a church?

That threw up a red flag for me.

And then there was Steve’s defense of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque. Atheist Steve was a vocal defender of building it. What kind of atheist supports building religious structures for any religious group? Here are some of the posts he wrote about the topic seven years ago:

If you can get through the above posts about the Ground Zero Mosque, give the following post a read and look at the inconsistencies. In it, Atheist Steve writes about a local church, the Emmanuel Baptist church spending an estimated $7 million on a new sanctuary and classrooms for a fundamentalist Christian private school.

I also found the title of the above post to be a little silly. How can you call any Christian church misogynist when there’s such a thing as Islam? Islam is the apex predator of misogyny. It’s not even close.

How can an atheist defend an Islamic group building a religious center, but criticize a Christian church for building a new sanctuary and classrooms? Shouldn’t atheists be consistent in standing up against all religious groups?

And that’s when the wheels fell off for me with Steve Shives. He was a pro-Islam, anti-Christian atheist who when it came time to marry the love of his life, got married in a Christian church.

In comparison, when my wife and I got married nearly twenty years ago, we got married in the courthouse, like the honest, consistent atheists that we are.

I’m tired of Summer and the its oppressive heat

I’m tired of Summer. I hate Summer and I wish it would just go away. Summer weather is bad enough in July and August, it’s ridiculously unbearable in October.

From AccuWeather:

Temperatures will be on a dramatic roller coaster ride across the northeastern United States through early week as record-challenging warmth battles cooler autumn air.

An upward then downward swing in high temperatures of 15-20 degrees Fahrenheit will mean residents should not put their fall jackets or long-sleeved shirts too far into their closets.

Warmth surging back into the Northeast will send temperatures soaring from Friday’s highs that were mostly in the 60s to highs in the 70s and lower 80s on Sunday.

A moderate rise in humidity will accompany the warmth, further making the day feel like the calendar has flipped back to summer.

Washington, D.C., Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; New York City and Binghamton, New York; and Burlington, Vermont, are among the communities that will see record highs challenged on Sunday.

In fact, early-morning low temperatures on Sunday were within a few degrees of the day’s typical highs.

I’ve paid my 2017 Summer dues. Summer is over and it’s now Fall. I have no time in my life for Summer’s oppressive heat in the middle of October. I live in Maryland. The middle of October is for watching the leaves change and drinking apple cider. It’s not for combating heat stroke and drinking Gatorade.

Summer sucks and I hate it.