The Little Guy

Last Sunday my girlfriend and I were driving around Oceanside, California trying to find a restaurant to eat at. As usual, even for a Sunday, there was a 45 minute wait to get into Red Lobster, one of my rare treats that I do eat at occasionally. So we decided to get into the wilds and try to find a place we'd never been to before. I find that small, quiet, unknown greasy spoons tend to be my favorite place to eat when I can find them. There is a diner in San Diego that has been around now for over 50 years called Rudfords that stays open 24 hours a day that I love to eat at any time of the day. In Escondido there is a place called the Metaphor Cafe that I love to eat. It's kind of a diner/coffeehouse/pool hall all in one that I found by accident, just looking for a place to eat in places you wouldn't expect. On this particular Sunday, we weren't in such luck. We drove around for an hour and a half and couldn't find anything that wasn't either expensive or inviting or that wasn't a franchise or some sort of cheap imitation of a franchise. We did find a Brazillian steakhouse, but it seemed too expensive and there were a gaggle of people waiting outside. I didn't feel like fighting people and I didn't feel like going to Denny's, although I love that particular eating establishment, too. Along the way we found plenty of franchises being built. I seem to find fewer and fewer of the older, more original places being bought out by La Salsa, TOGO, Cold Stone, Rubio's, etc. I'd rather eat at Rudford's, the Metaphor Cafe or a good taco shop any time than give my money over to a bunch of money-grubbing franchises. I was rather dismayed by this sudden realization, that all the good, old-time restaurants were going under and the only way to stay alive is to sell out to survive. The people who are hurting are the small, single businesses. Who's going to go to Cate's Creamery when they can go to Cold Stone or Baskin Robbin's and get the 31 flavors they've known for years? Part of the problem is that I'd say a good degree of the time you don't know when to trust the unknown restaurants. There are occasions where I eat at a new one and I'm ready to put up a sign outside that says "Don't Eat Here." But I'd still rather give to the small business owner if I can. Case in point: coffeehouses. I've covered this elsewhere on this site. Starbucks is a great place for coffee, not ambience. I've never had bad service at a Starbucks and the coffee is always good. And, since Starbucks is taking over the world, they are everywhere. I can find one just about anywhere in the world that I've been, with the exception of Villa Ridge, MO, but that's ok. I have a coffeemaker for that one. I love Starbucks, but I hate what it represents: global greed. However, on their side, they do make damn good coffee. I'll admit, most of the small business owners who own coffeehouses do not know how to make coffee. It's not good and it's usually overpriced, too. At least at Starbucks there is a level of quality that is achieved every time I go. Overall, the idea here is that there aren't any good places anymore that aren't being run out of town by these big corporations. What Jim Goad says is right. We're fighting a battle of class here and slowly but surely, the middle class is going away, even if it does take years. In California, I don't know how people pay for this lifestyle. I know that I've grown rather numb to it all. It costs lots of $$$ to do anything anymore. The other night it was $19 for my girlfriend and I to go to a movie at the mall. That is outrageous. Looking at apartments, they are almost all between $900-1000 a month just for a one bedroom. Gas is overpriced. Everyone wants you to pay more for things you have to have. It's all becoming way too expensive. I want to move out to the boonies, even if there isn't a Starbucks down the street or you have to drive an hour to get to the nearest movie theater. I'll rent movies, drink coffee at home and make my own food from the hometown grocery store. This is all after my two year stint left in the Navy, of course.

Seychelles

Recently things have been extremely boring here on the ship. The only thing that we want to do is go home. We've been underway now for almost 6 months away from our friends and family. It's getting lonely and tiring out here.
I haven't updated this page in a while because there isn't much to add to it. Being in the Navy, there isn't much going on when you are underway on a ship. We did go to an island off the east coast of Africa called Seychelles that was supposed to be some sort of tourist attraction. Of course, to get there we had to go fight our way through a monsoon and then when we did get there, it wasn't anything special. If you are going to book a vacation, do not go to Seychelles. It's not that great. We are currently enroute to Singapore to do the ship turnover with the Oldendorf crew and then I'm finally done with sea duty for good. I will be attending college starting August, although I haven't signed up just yet. I have contacted them by email, but it's hard to sign up for college when you are floating in the middle of the ocean. The only things to do out here is watch movies and write. I'm just waiting to get back to San Diego where things are normal. I can't wait to go to a coffee house, get Mexican food and spend time with my girlfriend.

The War

Mostly the only thing to report is that we've gone to war with Iraq back at the end of March. Here on the ship we were a little bit excited to do it because at first we were in the Red Sea and we got to launch Tomahawk Land Attack Cruise Missiles at Iraq. I'll just say that it is a profound experience to see one of these things get launched from the forward part of a Navy ship. The missile shoots straight up (vertical launch) and then heads in the direction of the target. After the initial launch, it was in the air about an hour and a half before striking somewhere in Iraq, my guess being Baghdad. Watching it go off is just completely surreal. I've never been on the ship when we actually did something of this nature, and my guess is that most of the other people haven't been either. When it launched, it was like a release for all the anger that these countries put on our shoulders as Americans. We live in freedom and hope for a better world. These Arab countries that are against us are nothing but hate mongers and dictators who have a country that lives in fear of them. Personally, I'm glad we went to war. I'm glad we are doing what we are doing. And for all the people out there who are against military action, get a cause. I think some of these people use this whole anti-war thing as an identity issue, focusing on making waves and getting some sort of a name for themselves instead of the real cause. I've been to these third world countries and I've seen poverty. I've seen how Arabs are. I've been around them enough to know what they are like. I've been to Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.

Deployed

[I was actually deployed during this time.]

A lot has happened since November. At the end of November I went on leave back to Missouri. At the end of December I had my cousin come out to San Diego for a week. In the middle of January I went on deployment to the Arabian Gulf to fight the global war on terrorism. I thought I'd update the site a little since I have been busy. There isn't much updating to do here on the news section, but there is a lot of updating elsewhere on the site.

Mazatlan, Mexico

Recently the ship went to Mazatlan, Mexico for a liberty port. It was my first time in Mexico, and I must say that I was not impressed. I thought the port was supposed to be some sort of tourist spot, even though in my 24 years on this planet I had never heard of it. Upon first examination of Mexico, it's a true trash pit. Within five minutes of being on land I realized that it was a very indigent country/city and was not very well taken care of. However, I only seen about 3 active bums my whole time there. The city stinks and everything is dusty and worn down.
The significant factor about Mexico that I particularly didn't like was the fact that every where you went someone wanted to badger you into buying something or purchasing their services. I'm the type that is mature enough to make a conscious decision on my own whether or not to buy something. I guess that's part of the advertising age.
"If you are in advertising, kill yourself." - Bill Hicks
While I was in Mexico, I finally finished a book that I had wanted to finish for a while called Shit Magnet by Jim goad. I put it down somewhere near the middle where he had been ranting for a few trees about how the whole situation got very bad between him and his girlfriend and he eventually ended up hitting her because, apparently she had hit him first. There was a lot of relentless banter about how she provoked it and how they were both guilty in this case. He wasn't saying he didn't hit her, but he was saying that she should have been punished along with him. If you go by what Jim says, one begins to realize how screwed up the relationship really was between him and his girlfriend and his ex wife. Not that it was any one persons fault, but that all parties were guilty. The one thing that I do respect about Jim is that he doesn't whitewash anything and he doesn't try to make it seem like he wasn't guilty.
The latter half of the book goes into the prison system and how an intelligent person would probably go insane in such a place of chaos. I read that and actually it opened my eyes up to a lot of things about prison that I never knew about. It kind of makes you think, is a man who hits a woman a couple of times really deserving of 3 years in prison? Jim said that he had been hit before and beat up, and no matter how bad it was, it was nothing compared to living in prison and I honestly believe that. Before reading this book I had a rather harsh view on criminals, thinking they should actually have more punishment. But when one looks at the prison system and what one has to endure for little more than giving a girl a black eye that probably went away after a week, you begin to see how lopsided it all is and how it doesn't really make sense in the eye for an eye meaning. Not that I think people shouldn't be punished. I think there is a problem with the prison system, and any idiot can see that. Just like most human endeavors, it's not perfect and wasn't meant to be. See, to me, prison is a deterrent. It's not supposed to be a place to rehabilitate criminals; it's supposed to be that dark scary place that no one wants to go, thus reducing crime. The problem with that theory is that it's like most everything else in life; you don't know what the hell it is until you actually do it. I'm sure had Jim known what prison was like he wouldn't have done this at all. I know he doesn't think it was worth the time. I know the argument is still up in the air as to whether or not the prison system is effective, and I'd say that most of the time it's not really that rehabilitative, especially to people who go there for any length of time. The last chapter is about death, which I found to be particularly engaging. It's not exactly a depressing thing, although that topic tends to warrant some emotions from that realm. It was more a chapter about living life before you die. Today is a gift...