Forgive me for not wanting to create a better title for this post. I have so many random things to say, so here I go.
First, the hard drive officially died a day after I made my last post. It sounded like when a cat gets stepped on, over and over again, only I think the cat would die before the hard drive. Imagine something spinning 4200 times per second, and pushing on it with a ballpoint pen to make it slow down to zero… over and over again. That’s the sound. I don’t think I lost anything important. All the honeymoon photos were safely backed up, so I’m happy.
The replacement went well; I was able to do it in under an hour. I think that if I really thought about it, I could do it again in about 15 minutes. And now I can keep using my computer. My mom asked me if it was worth risking breaking the computer in order to save it. I think it was, because computers depreciate so quickly. This is a three year old computer. I intend to make it last for a long time.
Now, onto local news. Readers from further south probably have not heard too much about the manhunt going on in New York state for the past five months or so. On Friday night, Ralph “Bucky” Phillips, the man suspected of shooting three state troopers (one fatally) was caught. on Saturday he was brought to Chemung County courthouse, and by golly, I was going to be there to get it on video.
http://www.stargazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=news0311
You can find my video linked on the right side. It’s called “Phillips arraigned in Chemung County court.” As a bonus, I also got to shoot him as he was led into Chemung County Jail.
I did all of this on my day off. I was paid for it (unlike some journalists from other organizations that just showed up gratis). It was good.
And, today is September 11. I really have nothing earth-shattering to say. I only think that it’s a shame that we have not yet caught bin Laden, and I also think that it’s a shame that so many are willing to be so violent in order to achieve their ends.
After five years of the country battling fascist Islam, I have concluded that the Soviets were a much better enemy to have. And not just because we beat (outspent?) them. They didn’t attack us. They may have shot down a few of our spy planes (and, accidentally, a Korean passenger jet), and maybe we waged wars with them without actually fighting them in Korea and Vietnam, but they weren’t attacking our soil and we weren’t attacking theirs.
Arguably, by occupying Iraq, we have given the fascists targets that they don’t have to travel far to fight, but using the ocean as a buffer and our troops as bait doesn’t seem like a strategy with an endgame, especially since outspending doesn’t seem to be a real strategy against these guys.
I still stand by my earlier strategy of arranging a “jihadi conference” to attract a bunch of them to one point, then bombing that place. It would require a certain kind of espionage in order to get it done, but I think it could be done. They could call it operation Coyote (for “Wile E.”) because it seems like it could have come from a 1950’s Looney Toons cartoon.