Sunday, January 04, 2004 ¶ 10:14 PM 10:22 pm Almost bed time, I hope I can get some sleep after sleeping in to noon today. I’ve been playing Delta Force on line all night, wasting more time. Tomorrow I work, starting at 6:30 am, which means I must be up around 5:30. Copper, my Bobtail feline, is on my desk as I write, wanting fed no doubt. He knows that sometimes on the weekends I will give him the good stuff twice in a day instead of just once when I get home from work. He’s hoping today will be one of those double up days. Rusty, my other feline brat, is laying on the sofa snoozing. I heard a comment on TV today that if you watch an animal closely you can learn a lot. I definitely agree. I watch my cats and try to interact with them at times on their level and study their reactions. I’ve learned many things; one of the most confusing is that they seem to be convinced that even though I am bigger and stronger, they are smarter. Most cat owners would quickly agree, but few would question why. How can a cat really think for a moment that it is smarter than a person? How can they fail to see the superiority of human intelligence? I know I’m smarter than they are, and yet I could never convince them of that. I’m serious; I think there is a clue here that shouldn’t be missed. If a cat can somehow believe it is so intelligent, fooling itself, then couldn’t we be similarly fooling ourselves about some other greater intelligence in our life? I’m not talking about God, I’m talking about something we interact with daily that directly affects us, yet we can not see its intelligence. Society itself, maybe? Posted by: Joe ¶ 6:09 PM 6:10 pm I just updated this blog template to show the Fifthnail image. I'm working on a web site that I hope will be a voice for oppressed "criminals." I'm not sticking up for their crimes; I'm sticking up for the human being inside, and trying to get people to see that punishing a scapegoat does only creates more vicitms, mostly innocent ones. I believe—I know—there are no bad people in this world, just people who do bad things. I was one once. I was ignorant. Now I know better, and the only reason I do is because I am not a bad person at heart. I care about people, and my only solace is in knowing that if I had understood how I was hurting my victim I would not have done it. Our society needs to understand this. You take any criminal, even the worst, and underneath all the crappy thinking is a battered and tortured heart that cares. I've lived and loved these people, murderers, rapists, child molesters, you name it. Every one of them is a human and a victim of their own messed up thinking. Every one of them is capable of remorse. Even if most hide from their remorse by denying it, or by burying it in the rage they feel toward society for denying their existence as a worthwhile human being. And now instead of confirming their existence society is denying it in the worst way yet. By requiring them to register, and directly implying that they are not valuable human beings, but instead they are monsters that must be watched closely and tolerated only because some long dead person wrote (for some long forgotten reason) that they have rights. How soon we forget that the Fathers of this country were criminals, even sex offenders by today’s standards. Study your history people; it’s all there waiting to be repeated. Posted by: Joe ¶ 1:38 PM Slept in late today. I need to start being a little more motivated. I waste too much time sleeping on the weekends. I would like to be more social, but I'm always afraid people I meet are going to be offended when they find out about my past. It's particularily hard for me to meet women, since they are most likely to be offended. So, I end up staying home a lot. Posted by: Joe It begins ¶ 1:50 AM Just found out that a five year old girl went missing from Chisholm MN on June 14, 2003 (this year). I did not even know until today that this happened. So, I tried to figure out what I was doing that day, since I'm always afraid of getting accused when something like this happens. According to my Quicken entries that was the day that I went to watch a couple of my co-workers jump out of an airplane (tandem jumps). I had purchased a package of depends (adult diapers) as a joke, and some 8mm tapes for my camcorder that morning. I also Went shopping that day at Cashwise and bought over a $100 worth of food, (a major grocery shopping trip) but when I checked my file for these receipts to see what time I was at Cash Wise (the grocery store) I discovered the receipts were missing. Makes me wonder. I'm going to have to look for them some more. You might say that finding out about the girl missing is the proverbial last straw. Because of all the other recent incidents in the news lately, especially regarding missing people and the resulting intensification of the persecution of sex offenders, I've decided to start this blog as a sort of check and balance of where I am. This is for my own safety. I figure it is just a matter of time before I am falsely accused of some crime or another. I already had the police at my door telling me some women down town were waving my picture around (that they printed from the internet) accusing me of harassing them for a date (a part of town I’ve never been to and women I never heard of, but the police acted as if they knew it was me). The visit was very intimidating and not friendly. I was "warned" that I was being watched as a known sex offender. The visit made me consult an attorney for advice; he told me there was nothing I could do unless charges were filed. I feel like a southern black man, just wondering when the lynch mob is going to show at my door accusing me of raping a white girl. Today (yesterday actually, right now it is 1:23 am Sunday) I stayed home mostly, played Delta Force on-line and dinked around. I went to Hornbaucker’s and bought a few groceries and some B-day cards for some friends (Dave and Dee). I got a call from my boss at 4:40. He wanted to tell me about a new technology he'd been playing around with that could make several of the projects I've been involved with simpler to implement (MS ISA). I had a chef salad for lunch and cheese and summer sausage later for a snack in leu of dinner. Posted by: Joe