Goodness Gracious, Great Balls Of Fire...

First, it was an unidentified projectile shooting skyward from San Diego, Ca. The news media are tying to placate people's fears by telling us that it was an airplane leaving a contrail. Excuse me, but when do airplanes take off into the sky at such a steep angle?

Now, it's an unidentified streak of fire across the NYC skyline. An astronomer says this, too, is an airplane's contrail. I don't know about this one either, because contrails I've seen stretched halfway across the open sky. This one looks too short to be a contrail.

I think there's a government cover-up as to what these two unidentified flying objects were. Call me nuts, but if we are being visited by extraterrestrials, I'd like to know. If we're being attacked by terrorists, I'd like to know that, too.

*Edit: One of the bloggers I read, who lives near Luke AFB, which is east of the San Diego contrail, took pictures of it and blogged about it. She said the unidentified object came from the west and then went straight up in the air after heading east for a bit, and it kept going straight up. So, no frickin' way that thing was a jet airliner.

**Edit: News story has it that it was a Chinese missile launched from a Chinese submarine.

Life Is Change; Change Is Life

Ever since the election, which had been a referendum on Obama's failed economic policies, my spirits have been slightly uplifted and there is real hope on the horizon. It's going to take a lot of time to fix everything that the Obama administration broke, which they thought was a fix to what they thought was broke in the first place, but really wasn't.

It's going to take time for the economy to recover from Obama's disastrous policies. Jobs are few and far between and nobody's looking to hire anyone in the architecture industry with real-world experience. It's coming up on 2 years now and I'm still trying to find a job in what I went to school for.

However, I had received and invite from my very good friend, to go on down to Virginia for a few days and look for work down there. If I find a job, I'll be moving out of the Empire State - an empire of idiotic politicians that do nothing but tax and spend, and then wonder why the state is bankrupt, especially when the people they want to tax the most are business owners who can't afford these policies.

I'll be leaving most of my family behind, although I do have an older brother who lives in Maryland. I don't talk to him at all, and I probably won't bother to visit him either. You can pick your friends, but you can't pick your family. However, you can choose to ignore the ones that made your life a living hell growing up, and he did just that. I've long since forgiven him, and I would be there in a heartbeat if he was in trouble, but other than that, I'd rather not have to deal with him. He tends to go off on his high-horse and look down on everyone. It also doesn't help him that he's extremely arrogant and can't admit when he's wrong. So you can imagine trying to have a conversation with him, when his mind's already made up about this, that or the other thing. Yeah, not going to go visit him.

So, anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, moving down to Virginia. Isn't it sad that in order for me to exercise my 2nd Amendment rights, I have to move out of one state in the Union into another? Before I make my move, I'm going to have to a tonneau cover installed on my truck so I can pack up all my guns and ammo and bows and arrows and get them all down to Virginia in one trip, and then come back, rent a U-Haul truck with a vehicle trailer and move the rest of my stuff down. Or, if mileage is free, I'll just rent the U-Haul down there and use that instead. It's gonna be a lot of work, but it'll be well worth it in the end. Wish me luck.

Shooting In NYC #7

It was a bad weekend of shootings.

Shooting in the West Village.

Twelve-year-old boy shot in Brooklyn.

Man shot and killed in a Queens deli.

And then there are the armed robberies here and here.

State Of Mind

Okay, I've been mildly depressed lately. It's coming up on almost 2 years now being unemployed. Sure, I spend my days at the archery shop, learning how to fix and tune compound bows, but I don't get paid for it.; I'm an apprentice. My real career was in architecture - drafting and designing, basically. We have a lot of "the boys" come into the shop who are in the construction industry and they tell me that they're hurting as well. Construction and Architecture go hand-in-hand, and if they don't have work, we don't have work, and vice versa. At the shop, I'm actually actively looking for a job or a lead for a job. If anyone can help me, it's the contractors who know people. They tell me that there's just no work out there.

There are Interiors jobs in New York City, but all they are looking to hire are people fresh out of school who'll work for the experience alone - meaning "no pay" internships, or people with far less experience than I have, and pay them peanuts. I can't afford to live on peanuts, especially if it means a one-and-a-half hour commute each way, at the cost of $400 a month in transit fees. That's $400 a month that I don't need to hand over, especially if my taxes are going to skyrocket to 39%, on top of a huge pay cut. I also don't want to be putting in 60 hours a week for shitty pay. Twelve years ago, I suffered a nervous breakdown, which led to heart problems later on in my life. The nervous breakdown came after 5 years of working 70-hour weeks for an employer who didn't appreciate the time and effort I put into getting construction documents issued on time. The heart problems came about 7 years later in the form of Supraventricular Tachycardia, or SVTs for short. The high stress environment that I was immersed in caused a pathway in my heart to go nuts. After the ablation, I had to take it easy, even though I was still doing the occasional all-nighter at my previous job, but it was okay, because my then boss would compensate me by giving me off the next day, paid.

So, back to my depression. My unemployment insurance benefits are slated to run out by mid-November and I don't know if it's going to be extended. The country's in real bad shape and I don't know how it will ever recover from this administration's free-for-all massive spending on a galactic scale, especially when most of our industry has gone overseas. On top of that, this administration seems hell-bent on destroying the fabric of our hard-working society, in order to bring everyone down to the "slacker" level. It seems to me that mediocrity is the standard by which this generation, and future generations, will be measured.

Sometimes, the air about this country feels like a perfect storm is brewing and it's bringing with it an ill wind. But the tides may change after November 2nd and everything will be put right again. I may be depressed, but I still have hope.

In the meantime, I'm still looking for a job in either architecture or archery. If anyone has any leads, please send them my way. I'm willing to relocate. I've got to get of of this godforsaken state anyway.

Shooting in NYC #6

Sad.

The World Has Gone Mad

When you've got a mob on your property threatening to kill you and your family, should you be the one to get arrested for trying to defend yourself and your family with your legally owned firearm? Apparently, in NY, you will be. Who's going to defend your family from the gang when you're in jail? Who's going to defend you from the MS-13 gang members who share the jail with you? It's a sad day when a law-abiding citizen is the one being jailed, rather than those and threatened him and his family with death.

Shooting in NYC #5

Another man dies at the hands of a criminal with an illegally owned gun in NYC.