Journey To Darkness

What is it with me and electronics? Things were moving along just swimmingly with my home PC. I have had it for shy of three years, along with a 17” LCD monitor. Over the last few weeks I noticed a faint difference in the screen…almost a micro pulse or isolated flutter. It was hit and miss and started about the time I received my new glasses (see a prior post for that enlightening read). I chalked it up to the adjustment period for the bifocals. Well, apparently no. Last night I flipped on the monitor and found the lower ¾ of the screen very distorted and grainy. Let’s restart! That will fix everything. It always does! Um, no. The sign of insanity is repeating the same action and expecting different results. So, I restarted a couple more times. No. Crap. I hooked it up to my laptop to discover the same. Sigh. Crap. Now cursing under my breath I reconnected everything to the main PC and started the “User Support Journey To Hell” trek through the monitor Web site. Cursing now above breath level. As the search for a new monitor began, the display continued to get more difficult to view. I finally gave up and powered it off, only to witness a pretty nebula-like sparkle then darkness (insert funeral dirge here).

Please Help Me Understand

I am disgusted. Over the last couple of days I have been hearing and reading about the hunter who shot and killed a natural wonder. In recent years there have been stories of a unique bear roaming with polar bears in the Canadian arctic. Well, it was proven two weeks ago when a big-game trophy hunter brought him down. The bear was genetically proven to be a hybrid cross of a polar bear and grizzly bear – the only known one of its kind in the wild. By overcoming numerous odds of population demographics, breeding season overlap and territorial regions, two bears of different species found each other to create this offspring of biodiversity. The animal should have been cherished, studied, photographed and allowed to grow old as the one-of-a-kind it was. So instead, we allow this asshole to buy the right to hunt it for $45,000. The picture of the murdered bear surrounded by the smug looking hunting party sickens me. All I can picture is this magnificent animal mounted in some threatening position in the hunter’s den/study/billiards room. Surrounded by his other ethno- and ego-centristic buddies, he recounts the day he brought down the mighty beast, all the while sipping a Dewar’s on the rocks. I just don’t get it. I am not a vegetarian. I know hunting happens. I know much of it has a purpose for population control. I get all of that. What I don't understand is the rationale to wipe out the one and only in the name of sport. I am typically not a violent person, but I believe a good mauling is in order for this heathen of a man.