daverea.com

Normally I don’t blog about dreams. But that’s primarily because I hardly ever remember them, and when I do they’re usually not that interesting. But today (or, more appropriately, earlier this morning) breaks that pattern.

This morning I dreamt that I was hired as a guidance counselor in my old middle school. And that’s about where the normalcy ends. To start, instead of driving to the school, I followed my current morning commute. But somehow I got there – not before being pulled over by a rookie Brighton PD officer who proceeded to write me several tickets for fictional crimes. I think one of them was for “driving without tires”.

By the time I managed to get to the school, I was late for homeroom. As a guidance counselor, I’m still not sure just why I was required to go to homeroom. But the administrators made sure to chastise me about it! They also made sure to give me grief for being “one of those right-leaning, gun-toting, freedom-loving, constitution-pushing Libertarian types”…

After that, I had to attend a seminar on how to teach long division. Again, as a guidance counselor, I’m not really sure why I needed to worry about teaching long division. But it was a moot point, since my alarm went off well before that got started…

I hope all four of my regular readers had a great new year’s celebration. That goes for the rest of you irregular readers too – hope that Immodium kicks in soon! Remember, I’m pullin’ for ya…we’re all in this together!

Kelly and I rang in the new year on Elmwood Avenue, on our way home from seeing Meet the Fockers… We give it a 6/10 for being pretty damn funny but not quite as freakin hillarious as the first one…

I hate to bore you with yet another blogged recap of 2004, so I’ll try to keep this short, and as interesting as I can…

• In 2004, Kelly and I plowed through most of our fourth year together. We started the year a couple that fought a lot, had our ups and downs, and could barely communicate. We ended the year a thousand percent stronger.
• In 2004, an idea that my Dad and I created while sitting around a campfire in 2002 in Ohio turned into a reality.
• I started 2004 in condition white. I am now no longer prey.
• In 2004, we did alpha and liked it.

Now, standing on the doorstep of 2005, the possibilities before me – before all of us – are spread out like a Western New York sunrise. We’ve all got some surprises in store, contrary to any predictions I could make. So I’ll refrain from making any big predictions – except maybe that I’m going to treat myself to one of these shortly after my tax rebate check comes!

Happy new year everyone!

I suppose we’ve got to give them props for English Common Law, but aside from this I’m getting really sick of the stuff I keep seeing come out of Great Britain. I’ve got nothing personally against the fine folks over there, except for the stream of diarhhea that their poor newspapers have to keep reporting.

Ya know guys, I’m really sorry your murder rates are up by hundreds and hundreds of precentage points. Maybe you shouldn’t have let your sorry excuses for law makers ban civilian ownership of guns. Yes, it sucks that you and your families now have to curl up and pray during home invasions – but it’s your own fault that you let your parliament-critters make it illegal to defend yourself during a violent attack in your own home.

Yeah, it is that bad over there. If you’re not living in the UK, be thankful that we in the rest of the world have a half-decent chance of not being sued by our assailants if we defend ourselves.

And now, the latest: They’d like their police officers to be armed. I’m not sure where you guys have been for the last couple hundred years, but as far as I can remember, criminals have damn near always been armed. And they’ve damn near never shown anything but “utter contempt” for human life. So why are you just now waking up to the fact that arming your “protectors” might be a helpful thing when it comes to their ability to fight criminals?

Give your cops guns, damnit. Give them good ones – like, maybe even consider it an investment in their safety. Then give your people back their guns. Because many of us who live in the real world know that cops can’t be everywhere all the time. We understand that they’ve got no real responsibility to protect us – they’re only required to take the report and draw the chalk-lines. And so we take responsibility for our own defense. We take it seriously – and hopefully, after your violent crime rate goes up a few hundred more percentage points, you might too.