Check this out. The US, China, Japan, India and South Korea have signed a treaty that pretty much undermines Kyto to reduce air pollution, but this "treaty" is completely unenforceable.

I was just talking about this subject with Fantastic Bastard and we both agreed on the importance of world-wide standards when it comes to air pollution (FB works with the EPA). But we're essentially talking about a global effort and global law that must be enforced by a global body. But there is no global government to enforce such global regulations and don't even mention the two letters that you're thinking about because that organization is worse than the mafia.

So what are we going to do as the Third World is coming into its industrial revolution, using the shitty shit that we are selling them, the materials and tools that are forty years old.

Things are bad and they're getting worse. The US needs to lead the world by enforcing itself stringently and then holding other countries to those standards. But this will never happen so long as corporations hold the reign of our government.

Before you sign me off as a liberal here, let me remind you that Teddy Roosevelt was the first conservationist and that taking care of your environment is not pussy or weak; it's just smart living.

I got a visit from Fantastic Bastard this week and he is on a mission. See, he is a collector of all things related to spirits and their social ingestion. He procured this new drinking game called What the F*ck? which is based on a group of people answering A/B questions like:

If you were a prisoner on a pirate ship and had the choice, would you:
A. Become the ship's sex slave
B. Escape and swim 7 miles to the nearest island

The book came with two books but FB is positive this will not do. So, he is compiling questions for a third book.

If you would be so inclined, and should the naughty inspiration strike you, please send your question with an A/B answer and a drink designation (between 1 and 4 based on how hard it would be to guess another person's answer) to boyswearpants@joshuaminton.com and I will make sure he gets them.

Feel free to be as vulgar as you like--it is a drinking game after all and the questions should be aimed at embarassing people in front of both loved ones and strangers.

Thanks in advance for helping out with this project. We'll even publish a free copy to this blog once we get it completed.

Sorry I haven't been posting too much but I've been cracking ass to get this blog transitioned over to the new site and to finish up Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

I always approach reading a Harry Potter book in a two-pronged way. I buy the hard back book as well as the audio CDs. This way, I can take advantage of time in the car to keep reading.

I'm saying it right now, that the Jim Dale performances on the audio CDs are the truly best way to experience reading the Harry Potter books. This guy is the best reader out there hands down (and I was a huge fan of Frank Muller before his motorcycle accident robbed us of a great voice actor).

If you've never read a Harry Potter book, if you think it's just kids stuff, then you need to drop your ego and run out and get these CDs from the library.

YOU WILL NOT BE SORRY.

More to come when I get the last 200 pages read...

Dave Greten's post today rehashes the same old Charlie Rangel line that the NY Times and Left-Wing haters of any military action whatsoever have been dishing out since the invasion of Iraq back in '03.

Why aren't we on the homefront sacrificing more, doing more besides putting the magnetic bumper stickers on our cars?

Well, I actually receive news about troop morale from troops still in the field. My stepbrother just got back from Iraq and his unit was hit only a week after his return. Good people he knew died and he made it out. My father served during Reagan-era peace time, building the infrastructure that allowed us to reign victorious in Desert Storm and the only thing these gentlemen feel is regret that they could not have done more. Notice I didn't say that other American citizens could have done more, but that they couldn't have done more. This is the primary difference between the true soldier and the citizen who protests under the (to use a cliche) blanket of freedom that the soldier provides. It's about personal initiative and responsibility rather than finger pointing and pessimism.

This is a volunteer army and this is also not World War II, despite what Bill Maher and the Dave Gretens of the world would like us to believe. All the rubber we save won't amount to a lick of spit--our army needs Intel computer chips! This is a volunteer army of highly trained and specialized soldiers, many of whom would wipe the floor with most of the liberal intelligentsia in terms of both tactical and technical prowess. This is not a war of attrition and throwing more bodies at the front lines will do nothing to gain us victory.

A draft will not help this country because, quite frankly, most people that haven't already signed up for the military are not fit to serve in the military in terms of attitude, skill sets or talents.

So, please, those of you on the left, stop trying to drive a wedge between the soldier and the citizen and the soldier and their government--it won't happen. The American citizen, like the American soldier, is far wiser than the liberal intelligentsia of this country would like to believe.

If you guys really want to make a statement, follow the lead of Norman Morrison--I guarantee you that setting yourself on fire with a big sign that says "Stop the Killing" will at least earn you a blog entry on Boys Wear Pants Dot Com and a two second mention on the nightly news.

Other than that, who cares about your civilian outrage that cries for peace when we are being attacked daily from both inside and outside of our borders? Wise up before you lose the game for everyone, or was that your intentions from the start?

PS: For further schooling on this matter, see Antimedia's post today.

Check out The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert McNamara

I watched this move twice--once for a general impression and twice to take notes.

My general impression is that this documentary is an invaluable piece of American History about an invaluable living resource about the Vietnam War--it's history and why it played out the way it did. McNamara was known by the elite in the press and universities as a real son-of-a-bitch during his tenure as Secretary of Defense (the same way that Rumsfeld is portrayed now in the press) but he came across in the movie as an authentic and emotional human being who happened to be an outright genius in matters of interpersonal relationships. economics, politics and war.

You simply must watch this movie. But until you get around to it, here are my notes:

Lesson 1: Empathize with Your Enemy

He paints Curtis LeMay as a lunatic who wanted to annihilate Cuba completely

Quote from Kruschev at the final crisis of the Cuban Missile Crisis: "We and you ought not pull on the ends of a rope which you have tied the knots of war. Because the more the two of us pull, the tighter the knot will be tied. And then it will be necessary to cut that knot. And what that would mean is not for me to explain to you. I have participated in two wars and know that war ends when it is rolled through cities and villages, everywhere sowing death and destruction; for such is the logic of war. If people do not display wisdom, they will clash like blind moles and then mutual annihilation will commence."

Lesson 2: Rationality will Not Save Us

"The end result of the cold war is this: 'The infallibility of human nature and nuclear weapons will destroy nations.'"

Castro recommended to Kruschev that they used nuclear weapons against the US even though that would have meant the total destruction of Cuba.

Lesson 3: There's Something Beyond One's Self

Lesson 4: Maximize Efficiency

50 square miles of Tokyo (a wooden city) was burned and killed 100,000 civilians in 1 night

Lesson 5: Proportionality Should be a Guideline in War

67 cities were 50-90% destroyed by firebomb before the nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan and this was all done by the command decision of Curtis LeMay

Lemay once said that if the US had lost the war, they would have been prosecuted as war criminals. "What makes it immoral if you lose and not if you win?"

Lesson 6: Get the Data

Lesson 7: Belief and Seeing are Often Both Wrong

President Kennedy picked out the spot he was buried in Arlington a few weeks before he was assassinated

The Vietnamese Communists believed that the US were coming in to replace the French as a colonial power to subjugate the into slavery

The Communists government ended up with exactly the same things the US was offering them before the violence commenced (Independence and Unification)

The Communists had been fighting the Chinese for thousands of years and claimed (in 1995) they were never pawns of the Chinese as the US suspected (and went to war over)

Lesson 8: Be Prepared to Reexamine Your Reasoning

He believes that we should never apply economic, political or military power unilaterally and that if we would have followed this reasoning in Vietnam, we never would have been there fighting (none of our allies supported us)

"If we can’t persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause, we’d better reexamine our reasoning."

Lesson 9: In Order to Do Good, You May Have to Engage in Evil

"How much evil must we do in order to do good?"

"At times you will have to engage in evil, but minimize it."

"War is Cruelty"--General Sherman prior to burning Atlanta to the ground

Lesson 10: Never Say Never

War is the President's responsibility

If Kennedy had lived, he doesn't think that we would have had 500,000 men in Vietnam

Lesson 11: You Can't Change Human Nature

"The Fog of War means that war is so complex that it is beyond the human mind to comprehend all the variables. Our judgment and frame of mind are not adequate and we kill people."

"It isn't because we aren't rational; we are rational. But reason has limits."

TS Elliot quote, "We shall not cease from exploring and at the end of our exploration we will return to where we started and know the place for the first time." This is how McNamara feels today.

Epilogue

[About not speaking out against the war after her was fired by LBJ] "I was damned if I did and damned if I didn't. So I'd rather be damned if I didn't."

...that I love the show The Little House on the Prairie and that I own all eight seasons that are currently out on DVD right now? And that I consider the time that my wife, my son and I sit down to watch as amongst the most rewarding and serene family moments we have in the chaos that is our life right now?

...that I let my dog lick my toes after I get out of the shower. She's always there waiting to do it, so I figure, why not? Who else in the world is willing to lick my toes besides my awesome boxer dog?

...that I think my cat looks like the Luck Dragon from The NeverEnding Story and that sometimes I move his mouth and say, "Atrayu!!!"

...is because it is adding a new level of freedom for women to express themselves, both intellectually and sensually.

Check out Jessika's blog.

There's no dirty pictures there but there are some sexy ones and these have all the more impact because she's got some great ideas and is a great writer (representin' the East Coast, baby!).

And here's Sunshine Coyote, perhaps one the kindest people I've come across on the Internet in my five years of posting (I hard coded a blog for two years before I ever even found out about Blogger).

I love the fact that women of the Western World are now being given an opportunity to share their minds and images of their bodies to a white-male dominated world and are actually getting far more respect for it than if they tried to do this in a corporate environment.

Jessika, Sunshine, and all the other women of the blogosphere--I love you! I don't want to have affairs with you, I don't want talk dirty to you, but I do want to hear from you and no guy will ever refuse a panty shot--I don't care how happily married he is.

Hell, my wife is even goading me into having an online conversation about my parenting skills (I still haven't responded yet) in the hopes that other wives can begin engaging their husbands likewise at home--it truly is a new world we are building here.

So, rock on, Goddesses of Cyberspace. You are loved and appreciated!

Story Link

OK, not all Arabs look alike but what happens when you happen to have the same name as one of the terrorist bombers and a world-wide terrorist alert goes out with your picture wrongly inserted?

...Oh yeah, and you're a 16-year old kid!

He probably aged ten years today.

The hardest apology I ever had to make was the first one I made to my son when he was 13-months old. I was engaged in writing, lost in the zone and he was tugging at my pant leg and whining about something. This went on for about five minutes or so until I finally exploded and yelled at him, “Will you give you me a God Damned minute here?”

I watched it in his eyes. I saw some kind of a death in those baby blues and I could almost feel myself tumble a couple levels inside his little head and heart. My God, what had I done? By the time I was man enough to ask myself this question, he had already hit the tears and it became a big production.

I endured a couple minutes of this wailing and my wife’s scowling (there’s no justifying that to a mother), until finally I put my ego aside, closed the laptop, went over to him, picked him up, hugged him and made sure he was looking into my eyes.

I said, “Buddy, Daddy was wrong to yell and he is very sorry.” He was playing with his matchbox cars two minutes later and everything was alright again.

I became a true man that day. But sometimes I slide back, like we all do.

I’ve been a real prick the last two days and I’m not going to give any more excuses or justifications because that’s what got me in trouble in the first place. I attacked Tony, Wil and Shane without provocation and while the intention behind my attacks might have had a justified point, the whole thing eventually became like the frigging pink spots in The Cat in the Hat until it was all pink snow everywhere.

Well, here comes little Cat Z with his VOOM!

Tony, Wil and Shane—I’m sincerely sorry for calling you guys out. You didn’t deserve that and I hope you’ll accept my apology as sincere, as a man who has put aside his ego and all the bullshit to get down to the puckered up asshole of the matter.

I was a dick. I was wrong. I’m sorry. It’s over.

With that said, I am turning back on the comments from my initial blog post (here) and I have toned down the rhetoric and personal attacks in my manifesto. Hopefully clearing the air here will allow anyone still interested to get past the emotions and address the issue I was trying to bring up (through about three million unnecessary words) about what civic responsibility bloggers that get significant market share of blog traffic have to their audiences in terms of effecting social change.

So, hopefully this squashes all the beef out there and we can all make nice again.

On the plus side, pissing off Tony Pierce led to a 1,100% increase in traffic to Boys Wear Pants Dot Com; but this not something I would recommend for all the kiddies with newbie blogs and egos that bruise easily to go about doing. This whole frigging mess has been like trying to reach down to pull a turd out through your throat.

And I forgive the person who attacked my wife’s intelligence and character, although let it be known that you should never ever fuck with a man’s family online—that shit could make a man in the wrong frame of mind get into some straight up G shit.

And another thing, blog comments should be scrutinized with the most flexible grammatical yardstick. People are bound to misspell shit and get tenses and all that crap wrong when they’re writing in the heat of an emotional moment.

Again, I hope this squashes all this shit and I hope you all keep coming back here. If you want, sign up for my newsletter where I really let loose to a private opt-in audience about shit I can't make public less it come back to bite me on the boo-boo one day (like this did).

Tony, Shane and Wil have the West Coast flava but I’ll be keeping it real in the Heart of it All.

And I was serious about the school of Art thing--it's going to happen. Shit, I might even have these three dudes come out and teach a class someday.

Together we can all change this world for the better by focusing on our relationships and attitudes to those around us. If you asked me a week ago if I would be apologizing to the entire blogosphere for my behavior, I would have told you to stop eating retard-sandwiches. But life is both funny and fucked up sometimes.

Don’t underestimate or cheapen the power of this amazing tool of freedom we have been given to enjoy and speak to each other with. And don't forget that there are human beings on the other end of these virtual connections--treat them with respect when you can (I'm talking to myself here).

That new world is right there and all we have to do is choose to touch it and make it real.

Sincerely,

Josh