Free State Observer

subtitle: The Great Moosehunt of Aught Eight

New Hampshire is known for its crusty conservatives (now being increasingly outnumbered by leftie emigrants from Taxachusetts), fall foliage, beautiful lakes… and moose. Moose Xing roadsigns are ubiquitous around the state, and the further north you go, the more likely you are to see one of the more dramatic “Brake for Moose; It Could Save Your Life” signs. Local radio stations remind listeners to watch out for “rutting” moose at this time of year; apparently they’re even more likely to charge in front of your car when they’re horny. I had a very New Hampshire moment when the token “dumb blonde” on the local rock radio station morning show stated “You see something charging you; you shoot it.”

Dang it, I’ve lived in New Hampshire 3 1/2 years now and the closest I’ve come to a moose is watching the opening credits of Northern Exposure (how pathetic, to move from the San Francisco Bay Area to a small city in New Hampshire, and then sit at home watching videos about a guy from New York who moves to a tiny town in Alaska… but I digress). This year, I vowed, would be the year I see a moose! And if you want to maximize your chances of seeing/being charged by/totalling your car on a moose, there’s only one place to go: the Kangamangus Highway.

The Kancamagus Scenic Byway (Rt. 112) is a 28 mile road through the heart of the White Mountains that climbs to nearly 3000 ft. The highway stretches from Conway, New Hampshire to North Woodstock. It is designated a National Forest Scenic Byway, and is one of only two such roads in Northern New England. The Kancamagus Highway may be one of the most scenic routes in New Hampshire.

I set off bright and early… oh alright, it was more like noon… for parts northward. It was a grey, drizzly day, which I actually enjoyed; it really brought out the England in New England. After about an hour of driving it started pouring, but it was too late to turn back at that point. Moose or bust!

When I got to the town of North Woodstock, which features such cultural offerings as bear tours, moose tours and miniature golf, I stopped off at McDonald’s to use the restroom. That far north, even McDonald’s has a fireplace. As luck would have it, they were giving away free samples from the new “McCafe”, so I scored a free mocha. Yes, that’s right: McDonald’s is now selling foofy espresso drinks. The apocalypse is pretty fuckin’ nigh.

I got onto the Kangamangus Highway, headed east into the White Mountains and the lair of the fabled
Alces alces. Not wanting to be hurried and potentially miss Bullwinkle’s brethren lurking in the breathtakingly beautiful fall foliage, I drove slowly, pulling over to let speeders pass. I passed rushing rivers, numerous parks, campgrounds and hiking trailheads, rolling hills so tightly knit with multi-colored deciduous trees it looked more like a rose garden than a forest… but no moose. Argh!!!

When I came upon an apple farmer (orcher?) selling his wares by the side of the road, I pulled over to check out the merchandise. He offered me a cup full of cider as sweet as candy, and gave me a free apple, which I felt almost guilty for accepting (or perhaps that was the idea… since I proceeded to buy some cider and apples). I asked the elderly gentleman, who had an accent that I’m sure would have enunciated the famous New Hampshire slogan “You can’t get there from here” perfectly if it had somehow fit into the conversation, if he’d seen any moose. He replied that he only sees them about once a year, which disappointed me. He also opined that they’re very stupid creatures and believe they are the dominant species. After observing the U.S. stock market this week, I’m inclined to side with the moose.

Ah well, maybe next year I’ll spy my first wild moose; until then, I’ll still have Mort.

1 Comment

I have loved Bond (, James Bond), movies all my life. I love the exotic locales in which the stories take place; Bond’s supreme self-confidence, skill, knowledge of a million subjects, fluency in a thousand languages, cool head under pressure, horrible puns, outrageous car chases, bleeding edge gadgets, deadly aim and ultimate success against every megalomaniacal bad guy. Yes, many of the scenarios are laughable, but that’s part of the fun; I laugh my arse off while watching these movies. But watching a Bond flick recently, it suddenly occurred to me that I actually ought to HATE Bond, the ultimate nationalist tool.

Bond uses all his skills and determination, lays his life on the line a thousand times, for what? “For Queen and country”. “For England”. He is the world’s most dangerous (and destructive, judging by the way he totals his ever-so-expensive taxpayer-funded cars) lapdog. “M” tells him to fetch X, in obscure nation Y, and he does so. He unflinchingly murders anyone who gets in his way.

The irony is that his supreme cluelessness is repeatedly pointed out to him, in movie after movie, by the bad guys and the beautiful-women-who-love-him-and-die. In Goldeneye, the dishy villain Alec Trevelyan refers to him as “Her Majesty’s loyal terrier” and speculates on what Bond’s funeral will be like: “a small memorial service, with only Moneypenny and a few tearful restaurateurs in attendance”. Yep, that sounds about right. He has nothing to show for his life but dozens upon dozens of corpses, and some really nice tuxes.

We never even get an inkling of Bond’s own political views in the films (I haven’t read the books). Does he side with the Conservatives or Labour? He doesn’t care. He is the posterboy of successful government brainwashing.

Another random observation from Goldeneye: the bad guy aspires to lofty heights of horribleness in retaliation for some geopolitical event that occurred decades earlier which resulted in the death of his parents. Americans today should keep in mind that every random Afghani or Iraqi who is killed can potentially inspire another 911-caliber terrorist somewhere down the line. Hate is a powerful motivator, and there’s no surer way to inspire someone’s lifelong hatred than to kill someone he loves.

James Bond is perfectly comparable to “the Operative” in the movie Serenity. But in that film, the message to viewers is exactly the opposite. The Operative isn’t the good guy; he’s the *bad* guy. At the end of the film, when he’s had the veil of government brainwashing removed from his eyes, to his credit, he walks away from his former life of murderous whoredom for the pimp-daddy Alliance.

Of course, Serenity didn’t get a sequel, while Bond lives on, decade after decade. The pretty face playing the movie role changes periodically, but the Big-Brother-Knows-Best message remains the same.

Damn it, Bond… “why can’t you just be a good boy and die?”

1 Comment

It’s primary day in New Hampshire. In towns all over the state, starry-eyed Free State Project early movers are standing at polling places (and from the looks of the sky, will soon be standing in a thundershower), holding signs, bright smiles plastered firmly to their faces, asking that their fellow New Hampshire residents choose THEM (or one of their friends) to be their elected representatives instead of those other guys who want to be their elected representatives. With very few exceptions, they’re all running as Republicans. Because, as we all know, the Republican Party stands for limited government.

What’s wrong with this picture?

I’m reminded of the excellent, if controversial, cartoon entitled No More Kings by the talented anarchist comic Dale Everett, creator of Anarchy In Your Head. A play on the popular Tolkien Lord of the Rings series, it shows Ron Paul holding out his hand, stating “Give me the ring, Frodo! With its power, I can lead the forces of liberty to victory.” I believe Everett’s goal was not to put down Ron Paul or his legions of fans; by all indications, if there is an incorruptible human being in American politics today, he’s the one. It was to show that the way to dismantle a corrupt and immoral system is not to attempt to put yourself in charge of it, confident that you will run it ever so much better than your neighbor (who, of course, is thinking the exact same thing).

Meanwhile, many hard-working political activists were shocked (SHOCKED!) when the Manchester Board of Aldermen used legal chicanery to refuse to put the spending cap for which they’d worked so hard gathering petition signatures on the November ballot. See the ridleo here.

Open your eyes. Freedom doesn’t come from an elected official (even if that elected official is your friend). It doesn’t come from a political party. It doesn’t come from any of the options printed on your ballot. It certainly doesn’t come from any piece of paper detailing the specifics of how a group of strangers can dispose of your property without your permission.

Thoreau had it right 150 years ago. “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”

6 Comments

Jobs. Can’t live with ‘em; can’t live without ‘em.

This morning I was pondering the fact that I’m a 21st century slave. At least 1.5 out of every 10 hours I work goes to the Government. And this is a comparatively low number by current U.S. standards, because I took the time to relocate to the Free State of New Hampshire, which has neither sales nor income tax, and I currently own no property. I’ve been thinking a lot about buying some property; but then I think it would just be an enormous anchor around my neck, because I’d be forced to work to pay the taxes I’d be charged for daring to enter the ranks of the landed gentry. So I don’t know. I was singing the Grizzly Adams theme song to myself this morning; living in a shack in the woods with bears and crotchety gold-miners for companions definitely has appeal.

It was a typical day in the life of an intrepid software consultant. I had a deadline on testing an interface, and knew I had until 5:00PM to finish it, because my customer’s database was being taken offline for a refresh then. On second glance at the email I received two days ago about the refresh, I noticed it said 5:00PM GMT. Probably an error, I thought, but better safe than sorry, so I checked with my customer. No, actually, it really WAS 5:00PM GMT, meaning I didn’t have until the end of the day to finish the interface, I had an hour. And the programmer working on the interface with me is notoriously slow and incompetent, so it was guaranteed not to work (it didn’t). Good times.

Later in the afternoon, the lead developer on a project I’ve been managing for several months, which will either go live in a blaze of glory, or kill me, within the next ten days, finally figured out why we were getting random error messages in the database instance which approximately 25 people located throughout the U.S. were looking at today via a web conference in preparation for user acceptance testing, which begins Monday morning (that’s morning in EUROPE, I might add). Turns out, the virtual desktop that I and my coworkers have to use to access the customer’s database instances was misconfigured, and everything we thought we were uploading to the QA instance was actually being routed back to, and overwriting, the DEV instance. Now, neither instance is working. Good times.

Meanwhile, I was gleefully informed that I may be sent to work in Taxachusetts for the next 5 months. Not even sure whether to be happy or sad about that, since the alternative is to be sent to Florida for the rest of the year.

We had a company meeting today, so the office was abnormally crowded and I was forced to park far from the building. There was a rain shower late in the afternoon, and the parking lot, which has lousy drainage, turned into a lake. This phenomenon happens so frequently, we actually have a name for the lake. Upon leaving the office, thinking I would outwit Mother Nature and the Nashua Public Works department, I skirted the lake by walking along a grassy bank above a creek that runs by my office in order to get to my car. There’s a wooden fence in between the grassy bank and the parking lot which is about crotch high on me. No worries, I thought, I can straddle that thing. Oh woe… woe!

Was it the fact that I’ve been working 50-hour weeks for a month (not to mention driving from town to town turning in ballot access petitions for the LPNH) and have a sickly whiny cat who hasn’t let me have an unbroken night’s sleep in weeks, leaving me exhausted and brain-dead? The slick grass from the rain? The Lords of Kobol deciding it was time for a pride-crushing smackdown, because I actually had a small smile on my face in anticipation of the weekend ahead (the parts that don’t involve working, I mean)? Who knows. But my second leg didn’t quite make it over the fence, and I wound up face down in the wet parking lot. My palms were bleeding, my best jeans were torn… but all I could think was “Ohgodohgodohgod don’t let my laptop be broken” and “I have to get to the drycleaners before they close to pick up the trousers I need for next week’s business trip”. Such devotion to the money-grubbing cause! I really need to rethink my priorities. :-\

After lumbering to my feet and indulging in a little toddler-esque faux crying (no tears, just noise), I realized I didn’t know where my car keys were. I was quite sure I hadn’t left them on my desk, but they were no longer in my hand, or anywhere in sight. I spent a few minutes circling confusedly, and after checking underneath my car several times, finally noticed that they were indeed under the car; right under the MIDDLE of the car. I already had a mysterious white substance which I have a sneaking suspicion is goose-shit embedded in the flesh of my bleeding palm, and was now faced with the necessity of lying face down on the wet pavement while wearing a cute peach-colored cashmere cardigan for only the second time in order to reach my keys. Necessity being the mother of invention, I broke a branch off a shrub and used it as a primitive tool to drag my keys out without having to actually lie down. Sweater saved! Trousers fetched! Now I just need to plug in my laptop and see if it’s still functional. Seeing as how I’m flying to my client’s office the day after tomorrow, and every bit of information for the project is on it, I’m thinking I may need it.

There has got to be an easier way to pay off college debt…

1 Comment

One of my legions [cough] of fans asked me recently why I hadn’t blogged in so long. Well, I’ll tell you: I’ve been freakin’ busy! Here are the blog entries that could have been, and maybe still will be if I ever get a round tuit:
* Free State Project litter pickup in Peterborough, wherein I release my inner garbageman and throw out my back
* the LP National Convention in Denver and its aftermath, aka Fear and Loathing in Libertarianland
* my third anniversary in New Hampshire
* PorcFest, featuring free-flowing liquor, low-lying clouds of weed, topless chicks, group sex, live bands, an anarchic caricaturist, and oh yeah, some political stuff
* celebrating the summer solstice in the Free Town of Grafton, getting ready for the now-in-progress Burning Porcupine Festival
* bicycle rally in Keene, wherein I break in my new bike (which deserves a blog entry all by itself)
* FreedomFest in Las Vegas (baby)

We were quite gruntled to be asked out by a charming but nefarious fellow Free Stater who, in an ongoing effort to win my blackened heart, has mercilessly deployed over-the-top flattery, roses, sonnets (OK, that one’s a lie), and romantic sojourns to the peak of Mount Pack Monadnock, Ashuelot Pond Dam, and the Nashua Dartmouth-Hitchcock Emergency Room. So yeah, things are looking up.

Meanwhile, I’ve finally arrived in the fun-filled fantasyland of IT consulting: my client is mad at me for not delivering twice what they asked for in half the time it reasonably takes to develop and deliver it. Meanwhile, I have been drafted to assist on another project that is in itself a full-time job. Both of these are in addition to my regular full-time job. Good times.

Let’s have a song, shall we?

Sandra’s Having Her Brain Out

Sandra’s having her brain out
Sandra’s having her brain out
Sandra’s having her brain out, now
And she feels alright
Like a slot machine
Like a pimple too

You don’t really need a brain, ducky
If you’re a girl
It’s like tonsils
They’re more trouble than they’re worth

Sandra’s having her brain out
Sandra’s having her brain out out out out
Out out
Sandra’s been to nightmare school
Sandra done a collage of nightmares
Slept with a virus and slept with a mule
Now, she works in a shop in a crimpolene hairnet
And she works in a shop in the south
Now she waddles around in a crimpolene hairnet
Tickets grow out of her mouth

Someone’s pulling your leaves off
Someone’s pulling your leaves off
Someone’s pulling your leaves off
Someone’s pulling your leaves off
Pull ‘em off

Sandra’s having her brain out
Brenda’s having her heart washed
Norman’s having his soul dry-cleaned
Sandra’s having her brain out
Brenda’s having her heart washed
Barry’s having his mind replaced

And they feel alright!
Like a naked bulb
Like a living bulb

Bloaty’s having his
Bloaty’s having his
Bloaty’s having his
Bloaty’s having his
Bloaty’s having his newt installed

4 Comments

[Editor's note: our blogger was taken behind the woodshed and bitchslapped for the recent pathetic display of self-pity. This entry has been edited to stick to the topics of freedom-fighting and no more than the usual quantity of whininess.]

[Editor's note: You've also watched Fight Club twice in the past week. You clearly have issues. Now STFU.]

Is it just me, or do the days just keep getting looonger and looooooonger?

Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster it’s almost over. No, not winter; spring.

I don’t know why, but spring tends to be a very bad time of year for me. At the Free State Project’s recent PorcFest, a delightful event full of libertarian activists, reunions with old friends and introductions to new ones, cool bands, guns, topless chicks, and FREE BEER & BAR compliments of Sakal CAI, I attended a presentation on The Law of Attraction, which included various interpretations of the concept and a spirited Q&A session. If you support this theory, then you’ll say I bring my spring fevers on myself. If so, I wonder why? Am I punishing myself for crimes in a past life? Have I been cursed by a resident of Mt. Olympus whose love I rejected? Am I mentally defective? Psychologically crippled? Born under a bad sign? I truly don’t know.

[edited for excessive self-pity and airing of personal dirty laundry]

First, I’m going to retreat into my cave and lick my wounds. This will quite likely involve a certain amount of tear-shedding and ice cream consumption. Then I’m going to do some very serious soul-searching and analyzing and try to get to the bottom of why I’m in this position, determine a course of action, and then take the steps necessary to get myself to a better place (emotionally speaking). This may sound ridiculous, pompous, and/or irrational coming from a self-avowed atheist, but I believe I was “put here”, erm, “landed here”, “evolved here”, for a purpose. I haven’t fulfilled it yet. I aim to.

2 Comments

PUBLIC NOTICE

State of Emergency

10 Day National Bank Holiday Declared

Starting on June 5, 2008 and lasting through June 15, 2008 all US Citizens, Americans, Foreign Nationals, and Resident Aliens are hereby requested by the authority of We The People of the United States to withdraw all Federal Reserve Bank Notes (U.S. Dollars) from their personal bank for a term no less than ten (10) days. This includes all checking, savings, CDs etc.

Due to the reckless policies of the central bank of the United States, the Federal Reserve, its Chairman and Board of Governors a financial state of emergency exists. Billions of dollars of financial relief afforded to Wall St. because of the sub-prime mortgage market meltdown and the “economic stimulus package” for the American Taxpayer has resulted in hyper-accelerated inflation causing record price indexes for gas, food, energy and the cost of living.

This 10 day bank holiday is designed to strengthen the buying power of the U.S. Dollar by limiting the amount in circulation, therefore reducing inflation. Withdrawing funds reduces their reserves and minimalizes the amount of money the banks can lend, reducing the impact of inflation therefore lowering prices. Please note: Banks can loan out their holdings by a factor of 9. When new funds are deposited, the banks can loan out 9 times the actual deposit.

Americans participating in this national 10 day bank holiday are encouraged, not required, to withhold their federal reserve debt notes (U.S. dollars) outside of banking institutions for as long as possible.

This 10 day bank holiday is also intended to strike the source of the problem by demanding the repealing of the “Federal Reserve Act of 1913″, and likewise demand “lawful money” backed by gold or silver printed by the U.S. Treasury to replace the fiat currency backed by debt printed by the Federal Reserve.

Please note: Banks have limits on cash withdrawals per day to prevent rapid depletion of their cash reserves, stagger withdrawals to achieve desired balances.

Also note: In cases where minimum balances must be maintained individuals must decide to either close their account or maintain the minimum balance to avoid penalties.

This June 5th marks the 75th anniversary of the United States going off the gold standard.
This June 15th marks the 172nd anniversary of the repealing of the charter of the “Bank of the United States” by the 24th Congress.

This 10 day bank holiday is so declared by the authority of
We The People of the United States.

The Free State Observer pledges to participate. Will you?
this june 5th

1 Comment

You know what really burns my butt?
A flame about three feet high.
— Miss Mona, Best Little Whorehouse in Texas

I have a deep, dark confession to make.

I love Dolly Parton.

I know, I know, this totally clashes with the hip kid persona I have tried (and so utterly failed) to cultivate. But seriously, it does clash with my usual musical preferences, which generally hover in the hard rock, new wave, alternative and hip hop genres. I just can’t help myself; even as a kid, when my father’s country music playing on the radio above his handyman workbench in the garage would send me bolting in disgust, I actually kind of liked “Here You Come Again”. I’m happy to say I’ve become much more open-minded about various genres of popular music than I was as a snot-nosed black-T-shirt-wearing teen, and I’ve even added a few country albums to my CD collection over the years. But Dolly is in a class by herself in my heart. Is it her angelic voice, her irresistible giggle, her outrageous wigs, her Jessica Rabbit figure, her incredible song-writing talent (25 #1 hit singles and counting), her wonderfully down-to-earth attitude and willingness to poke fun at herself, that Smoky Mountain accent that takes me back to my years in Tennessee, the happiest of my childhood? It’s all those things, but I think the thing I like about her most of all is the joy she seems to exude. So when I heard she was coming to Boston, I unclenched my tightwad fist, opened my wallet, and shelled out the bucks for a concert ticket.

Despite the fact that it’s a mere 30 miles away, I rarely venture into Boston. Too much traffic, too little parking, WAY too many socialists. But for Dolly, I left work early, snarfed down dinner as quickly as possible, and made the trek to downtown B-town. I parked in the Boston Common Garage, which stays open all night and is quite cheap by Boston parking standards, which is saying very, very little. The Opera House was a pleasant stroll away on the other side of the Common, so I enjoyed the sunset on a spring day, people walking their dogs, a baseball game in progress. I became aware that I was in the theater district when I suddenly noticed I was surrounded by gay men. I mean, it’s not the Castro, but still, I was surprised. I made it to the Opera House without incident *or* getting lost (don’t worry, I more than made up for it on the way home) and a good 20 minutes early. Some of the Dolly T-shirts they were selling were sorely tempting, but I couldn’t bring my cheapskate self to fork over $40 for one.

The Boston Opera House is quite gorgeous; I sat slack-jawed while admiring the ornate fooferah on every inch of the walls and ceiling. I’ve been to a few concerts that were bi-generational, but this may have been the first one I’ve been to that was truly multi-generational. There were quite a lot of elderly people there. And people my age. And hipsters in their twenties. One guy dressed as a cowboy with a red hat, and a lot of women in evening dresses. I wore something pink and mildly cleavage-baring, in honor of the occasion.

Just my luck, a 70-year-old man going stag had the seat next to me and yes, he wanted to chat. Let’s call him “Spencer” (because that was his name). He lived on Beacon Hill and had walked to the show. I made the mistake of asking if it was considered safe to cross the Common after dark, to which he gallantly replied that he would be pleased to escort me back to my car after the show. I didn’t have the heart to wound his pride by pointing out that a senior citizen only slightly taller than myself wouldn’t offer all that much protection, if it came to that. So he became my date for the evening.

Dolly came onstage promptly at 8:00, “looking better than a body’s got a right to” considering she’s in her freakin’ 60’s. During the course of the evening, she performed several of her biggest hits, including “Here You Come Again”, “Jolene”, “I Will Always Love You” (did you know she wrote that song that made Whitney Houston the diva of the decade?), “9 to 5″, “Islands in the Stream”, and many I was unfamiliar with, including a few off her latest album, Backwoods Barbie. I knew she’s a great songwriter, and knew she defies the laws of physics by managing to play guitar with long, painted nails, but I had no idea she can play about 20 gazillion other instruments, some of which I couldn’t even identify. During the course of one show, she played guitar, banjo, slide guitar, piano, whistle/recorder(?), harpsichord(?), tamborine, and I know I’m forgetting a couple. She was also pretty spry for a 60-something who recently injured her back, prancing about the stage in high heels, and her voice sounds as good as ever, despite the fact that she has been performing in public and making records for over 50 YEARS. She actually sang a song she wrote, and recorded, when she was 10 years old! She also talked a lot about her very large, very close Pentecostal hillbilly family. During the song “Coat of Many Colors”, written about a coat her mother sewed for her out of scraps of cloth because they were too poor to buy one at the store, rumor has it that I may actually have shed a few tears, but of course I categorically deny any such accusations.

There was an intermission, after which Dolly came back in an adorable pink cowgirl outfit with a skirt so tight she could barely sit down to play the piano. Everyone in her band got an opportunity to solo during a medley of some of her favorite songs that spanned the decades of the 50’s, the 60’s, and the 70’s. It kind of boggles the mind to realize that she has been working steadily through every phase of modern popular music. And she has no intention of retiring; in fact, she said her wish is to eventually keel over on stage, mid-song, with a big smile on her face.

After the show, I was stuck with my noble escort (I did draw the line at taking his arm when profferred), who not only kept his word by leading me across the Common (although, considering that I was wearing suede sneakers, and recalling how many dogs had been getting walked earlier, I really wish he hadn’t made me walk through the grass), but escorted me *into* the garage and all the way to my car. And then asked me for a ride. WTF?! I didn’t see how I could say no, though, so I dropped him off at the foot of Beacon Hill, nearly getting creamed by a taxi for my efforts.

Apparently, every *single* highway in the state of Massachusetts is currently being worked on at night. My adventure with Spencer slowed me down just enough that the on-ramp I needed for the highway back to New Hampshire was walled off by cops and hazard cones just as I got to it; I was literally the first car to not get on. Then, my meager navigatory skills spent, I wandered aimlessly from highway to highway, somehow winding up in Saugus (mmmm, Saugus), then Newburyport, which I know is nowhere near where I wanted to be because that’s where my boss lives and she has a crappy commute. All in all, it took me at least 2 hours to get home. As God is my witness, I *will* buy a GPS system this year. I hate Massachusetts.

But I love Dolly.

3 Comments