Though it should be covered due to the four stories posted on Sunday. I've been working on my uncle's truck to get the clutch fixed, which is done but now I have to stick the drive shaft back into the transmission. Comical momentary thought, ever notice in the movies when they cut someone's brake line for their car it's a rubber hose? Brake lines are metal tubes, not hoses, and there's four of them. You'd think someone would speak up and say "Uh director dude, that's not the brake line," but I guess not. Just goes to show how few Hollywood writers have actually worked on their car, fucking pussies.

Ever wonder when you hear the evangelicals speaking from their pulpits they almost always quote the Old Testament? Here's why:

Matthew 25:31-46

When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.

Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?

Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

Can't really spread a message of hate with Christians running around thinking "If this person were Jesus, how would I treat him" now can you? So here's what you should do if these assholes are out protesting at a gay person's funeral or some other dispicable act holding up their signs which say "God hates fags," copy and pasted the following into your word processor and then print it out. After you print it out, go down to the protest site and just read it, or memorize it, or make your own variation.

Hi guys, I'd like to chat with you for a second. I want to read a passage from the Bible if that's ok with you. From the Book of Matthew, chapter 25, verses 31-46.

When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.

Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?

Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
------------------------

Now guys, I ask you one simple question, is this how you would treat Jesus? Would you be out picketing him with signs that read "God hates you?" Would you be at the foot of the cross with signs that say "He's burning in hell?" Are these things you would do to Christ? If not, well, too late, you just did.

I'd do this myself but I live in a pretty liberal town so it's difficult to find that kind of stupidity here. I also don't ask you to do this for me, but for the families of the people these assholes hurt by staging their protests. Remember, they have a right to spew whatever bullshit they want, but you also have the right to talk back, make use of it and shut them up with their own beliefs. Oh and take a Bible with you just in case they think you're lying.

I'm adding a new tag to cover a new section I want to add. It has to do with last night's MMOG post, game ideas. I've been designing video games since Mortal Kombat originally came out. My friend Adrian and I completely designed a new Mortal Kombat entry, we had new characters, new moves, new fatalities, the whole works. We even wrote a letter to Sega who told us to get in contact with Midway who we then sent our rough draft. We never got a letter back from Midway, but it was nice getting one from Sega at least. It actually started before that with something completely unrelated. When I was six we moved to Knoxville and had to go apartment hunting. Each place gave you this little pamphlet which had an image of the layout of the apartment, I loved these things for some reason and ended up designing house and apartment floor plans.

So I'll be posting some game ideas from time to time, mostly for me so I have a place to keep them, but I'll also post them in hope that someone in the industry will find them and actually use them. I don't care about royalties, I just want to see them come to life so I can play them.

New tag = "game design"

Original eh?

This is a great write up of a recent games conference for MMOGs, specifically the last panel which was more like a rant. The moderator of the rant, Gordon Walton, had this to say about balance in MMOGs, “This whole balance thing is a retarded idea. Balance is a theory. There’s fun in the imbalance quite often. There’s gameplay and fun in the inbalance.” This is such a true statement it's not even funny, I know of one MMO which became shitty at launch because of last minute balances that fucked up alot of fun that was had in beta.

The MMO I'm refering to is the only MMO I've ever played, Planetside. Planetside had an ingenius idea, an MMO First Person Shooter with some RPG elements thrown in. In beta it was awesome, the weapons were huge and powerful and you killed a shitload of people. You had to team up in squads just so you could find a ride to the battle, atleast at first until you could get your own ride. Due to this battles were huge and by huge I mean thousands of people in one battle alone. Imagine that, imagine Unreal Tournament with thousands of people, half of them defending a fort, the other half laying siege. The most exhilerating thing was getting into the dropship and dropping inside a base right on top of it with your squad and being completely surrounded blowing people away on the drop down. It was straight out of Starship Troopers and you could play for hours.

Then they fucked it up by listening to the whiners. The whiners complained the shotgun was too powerful at close range, HELLO IT'S A FUCKING SHOTGUN, so they nerfed it and made it pretty much useless. Then the whiners complained about one of the battlesuits being too powerful because it mowed down infantry too well with it's dual cycling chain guns, do I even need to comment on how stupid that is to whine about not being able to stand up to a mech with dual chain guns completely alone? Imagine if the Taliban came to the US to complain to our military, "Hey, you guys have certain weapons one of our guys can't face off equally against, nerf them please." I blame the stupid RPG players who were expecting more dice rolling. Then they destroyed the whole squad feeling, one of the great things about the game was that you had to meet people so you could be of use and get to the fight, like in a real military but oh no, this wasn't good for the loners, no they had to ruin it by bitching and convincing the devs to keep a sky launch function which allowed them to drop from base to anywhere on the planet. Hey again, you want a quick fight and don't want to have to travel to a fight and get your team strategy together, great, go play fucking Unreal Tournament.

Ultimately I stopped playing after a few months, the changes were too many and too shitty. They started out with the best aspects of an FPS and an RPG and within three months flipped it and adopted the worst aspects. So here are the truths I've noticed that you need to make a great and fun MMOFPS.

First up, all weapons will be as powerful as they should be. If there's a battle suit with two chainguns it had better act like it and it had better take an entire squad to take it down, not one fucker with a few grenades. Likewise, a shotgun should be great for close range action, and by great I mean if I shoot you in the fucking head with one shot from it, you're fucking dead, end of story. Instead of making completely balanced weapons, make imbalanced weapons and imbalanced combat areas! Make weapons like they are in the real world, each one is better for a specific purpose! The battle field shotgun was designed for trench warfare, you make it across, jump in the German trench, and start unloading in a very narrow area getting maximum kill effect, that is how it should be! Likewise that shotgun should be practically worthless in an open field because you're picked off by the guy with an assault rifle before you can get close enough to use it. That is how you balance weapons, you give them a purpose. Yes I know some people just love a particular type of gun, but make them deal with it or specialize in the area where their gun is most effective.

Second, no ring of fucking fire! Yes I know that's supposed to give weaker players, in other words RPG players, a chance but how can they get better if they're coddled? If my reticule is center on a dude I don't want to see my bullets fly past him entirely, period. I had better miss my shot because my mouse slipped. Now a reticule that gets larger because it's simulating kickback, that's fine, I have no problem with that, that's legit and forces people to fire in bursts rather than full auto like the real world, something like in the Battlefield games. However again, that doesn't mean my first shot should miss entirely due to a ring of fire. If you're going to be an MMOFPS, then be an MMOFPS, let the RPG kiddies get used to it or quit, we don't need them.

Third, make squad combat necessary. If the weapons are done right this shouldn't be much of an issue because going off on your own would quickly become a suicide mission unless you're doing some deep in enemy territory type shit, as it should be. There's no such thing as Rambo in real life, it's cool for a stand alone FPS, but in an MMO that's supposed to simulate huge battles across a huge planet, Rambo just doesn't cut it, sorry. Now if dude wants to get his own vehicle and drive off on his own, fine, who cares, but don't facilitate him by giving him a way to jump right into combat. I say this because it becomes almost impossible to get a squad together when there's no one in base because they've all just teleported to battle. Also vehicles become practically useless except for the heavy battle vehicles. Support vehicles get left in the dust though, this shouldn't be the case! Remember that awesome tactic I mentioned about Planetside where you'd drop into a base from the air? The only people you saw using it by the time the first expansion came out were vets from the beta who were still around because all the n00bs just warped straight to the fight. Remember this, squad tactics make cool tactics, zerging is not cool.

Fourth, there has to be an end game. Yeah slugging it out day after day is fun... for awhile. Then it just becomes old because it doesn't serve a purpose. Thus you have one server which is strictly for continually slugging it out, all the rest have an end game. Using Planetside as an example, you have a set time when you start the next game, say 8PM EST, the game keeps going until one side remains and has taken over the entire planet. Once this happens the game resets and will be a slug it out server until the next time 8PM EST comes around and it resets starting the game over. At the end of the month you have a score card which announces which team won the most revolutions in the month, thus giving them another end game/purpose. Same thing for the year. You also give the winning side a bonus, like a new weapon, character class, vehicle, what have you. Not something that's completely uber but something that's worth fighting for. This also creates a cool way of introducing new content to keep the game fresh. Just keep it in mind, gamers are normal people, they like to fight, if there's a reason to fight, give them one.

Fifth, if you add new areas in an expansion, give them a purpose. Yes, people who have the expansion are going to have an advantage, all the more reason for those who don't have it to get it! Planetside's first expansion introduced caves that had pretty much no purpose so hardly anyone got the expansion, don't make this same mistake! There needs to be a tactical reason for the new areas and a purpose to the end game, otherwise they go unused! The expansion for Planetside had one great quality and that was the Flail, an artillery vehicle which could shoot huge shells from far off and kill lots of people who were clumped together, as artillery should, but then, like the other weapons, they nerfed it and killed any reason to go down into the caves.

So in closing what you need is realism, strategy, and a point, these three things make an MMOFPS fun, if you have the opposite, fantasy, zerging, and pointless, you get an annoying game which becomes boring quickly. Also don't misunderstand what I mean by realism, fantasy is ok when you're dealing with the story and such but it should also be realistic, read the first point to see what I mean. Hopefully someone will see this and make it a reality, Planetside would've been awesome had they followed these three truths. *crosses fingers*

If you came here expecting "Sengoku Jidai" you're no doubt wondering if you're in the same place. Well you are. I'm in the midst of a bunch of personal changes and thought I'd redesign the ole blog as well. The dark green was getting depressing, so much so I loathed stopping by to update it, funny how colors can do that. Anywho some updates.

My uncle, Conceptual Guerilla, is relaunching his site with a new format and he's hired alot of his forum visitors to be authors for it, including me, though I still have no clue what I'm going to talk about. The guys on his forums are extremely smart and know alot, and they each have different interests so every section should be well written and well researched, which is good for his site but for me, ehhh not so much. I'm more of a "do it all" person, which means I have a good basic knowledge on most subjects and can tell you how they all interconnect and work together but I'm no expert when it comes to individual topics. I also like writing on what I see, and that's usually how people behave and how things interconnect. I'm good with systems (thus the new blog subtitle!) so I don't know how I can work that in for CG's site, any suggestions?

On the personal front, I had the conversation I've been waiting to have with the ole man for years, and I'm extremely satisfied. The most important thing was that he admitted he was a fuck up and that I had it hard. The next important thing was finally seeing how much he really doesn't know about me, it was like taking a weight off my shoulders because I no longer feel his gaze on me, it's like he's looking at someone else entirely. It's amazing how that one little feeling fucked with me for over 20 years and I won't say I'm completely better, but my dealings with people in the real world are less stressful and I feel more confident now. I no longer mumble my words when speaking to someone.

Another thing, this is going to sound funny coming from me for those of you who know me, but how you present yourself really does affect how you feel about yourself. I used to have my hair down to the middle of my back but I got it cut short recently so, one, my hair on top would fill out, and two, I can spike it up once it gets longer and fuller. The long hair just had to go, it was no longer a symbol of rebellion but a symbol of depression and not caring enough about myself, the thinning on top didn't help any either.

So big changes all around and I'm still working at it. I've got a number of political/cultural pieces I've been working on for the past two months but haven't finished which I'll probably finish and put up here some time soon. Though I'll probably release one per day.

Without further adieu, welcome to The Node!

What have I been saying for the past 9 months? I've been saying the left needs to get over it's anti-Christ attitude and start pointing out the hypocrisy in the right's policy which they claim to be "Christian" if we want to win over the majority of people in this country. I've been saying that we will continue to lose as long as we're seen as the anti-Christs.

I was right.

Poll: Fewer See Dems As Religion-Friendly

By WILL LESTER Associated Press Writer

August 30,2005 | WASHINGTON -- Democrats' efforts to improve their image with religious voters after the 2004 presidential election appear to be getting off to a bumpy start.

Fewer people see Democrats as friendly to religion now than felt that way a year ago, according to a poll released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

That number has dropped from 40 percent in August 2004 who thought the Democrats were friendly to religion to 29 percent now.

"The change is seen across all groups," said Scott Keeter, director of survey research for the Pew Research Center, which conducted the poll for the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

After Democrats fared poorly with religious voters in the 2004 election, the Democratic National Committee initiated numerous efforts to strengthen its standing with religious voters.

The DNC hired someone to coordinate religious outreach, encouraged state parties to work more closely with the religious community, and had Chairman Howard Dean meet with clergy and others in the religious community during his travels around the country.

"We're at the beginning," said Democratic spokeswoman Karen Finney, who said religious voters share many of the values of the Democratic Party. "But we know we need to do a better job of talking about our values in a way that people see we share their values."

More than half of those polled, 55 percent, said the Republican Party is friendly to religion.

A majority of political independents, 54 percent, said religious conservatives have too much influence over the GOP. Fewer than half of independents said those who are not religious have too much impact on the Democratic Party.

The poll of 2,000 adults was conducted July 7-17 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

So now that we have 71% of the country, which is dangerously close to the number of Christians in this country (78%), that believe we're hostile to their religious beliefs do you feel empowered? Are you fucking people trying to lose? What exactly do you hope to accomplish by attacking people's religious beliefs? Ask yourselves these questions and get back to those of us who want to show how hypocritical it is for someone to be a Christian and a Republican when you're ready to really take the fight to the fundamentalists.

http://www.thirdframestudios.com/adgame/stripgen/view.php?id=22499

This comic strip generator is great.

I'm tired of war
I'm tired of peace
I'm tired of hypocrisy
I'm tired of clarity
I'm tired of fear
I'm tired of courage
I'm tired of doubt
I'm tired of hope
I'm tired of narcissism
I'm tired of selflessness
I'm tired of lies
I'm tired of truth
I'm tired of hate
I'm tired of love
I'm tired of poverty
I'm tired of wealth
I'm tired of evil
I'm tired of good
I'm tired of ignorance
I'm tired of enlightenment
I'm tired of extremitiy
I'm tired of balance

I'm tired of not being able to say what I feel all in the name of "respect." I'm tired of people who preach free speech only to turn around and stop you from saying what you want to say because it's "rude." I'm tired of people who preach nothing but personal responsibility as if the person doing the damage has no responsibility for the damage they have done. I'm tired of people who preach the opposite and expect the government to do everything for them and protect them from everything. I'm tired of liberals and I'm tired of conservatives. I'm tired of greens and libertarians and independents and communists and anarchists and fascists. I'm tired of fundamentalists, be they Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish, Hindu, or atheist. I'm tired of overly macho straight men and flamboyant gay men/women. I'm tired of preps and goths. I'm tired of trying to impress people. I'm tired of expectation. I'm so FUCKING tired of it all. I'm tired of being angry at stupidity and hypocrisy. I'm tired of pitying the disadvantaged. I'm tired of hating the super wealthy. I'm tired of having my hopes lifted only to be broken. I'm tired of my heart breaking.

The world is one big hypocrisy, the only peace, the only thing that makes sense, the only thing that won't make you rip your hair out is fantasy. The hope that there's something better out there, that eventually all of the confusion, all of the conflict will at some point end. This is the fantasy, this is the thing we all delude ourselves with. Whether you believe it can be found in the afterlife or some future generation of the world, we all believe in this fantasy. We believe it to deal with our own mortality, to believe that our life is not a waste, to believe that we are nothing more than a passing fart on the threads of time. We have very little time and we spend most of it making other people miserable to help alleviate our own pains of knowing that one day we will be dead and that's it.

My uncle likes pointing out a little seemingly contradictory part in the Bible to make Christians spin their wheels. He says "What does God say to Eve about the tree of knowledge? He says not to eat from it or she will surely die. Now what does Satan/the serpent say? He says she will gain the knowledge of good and evil and become more like God. Eve didn't die did she, so who told the truth?" My uncle says this is a contradiction, and at first you'd think so but now I don't agree, I think both God and Satan are right. We did gain the knowledge of good and evil, and this knowledge has killed us. Not physically but spiritually, it has poisoned our souls, it has made us hollow shells of vileness. You either ignore it living in the fantasy of there being something better out there or you deal with it head on and let it drive you insane, either way your soul is dead. Fucked if you do, fucked if you don't.

This is the curse that our deities and nature have bestowed on us, as well as our gift. We are able to see the beauty of the mundane, we are able to appreciate it now more fully because of our short lives, but we choose not to. We choose not to love and to be rational, we choose to fight, to always struggle, to keep our fantasy of the "perfect world" instead of enjoying the world we live in now.

I'm tired of fantasy, it only brings about destruction.

I read this article on Salon.com awhile ago entitled "Getting Religion" and had kicked it around in my head for a couple of days but soon forgot about it. Since I woke up early this morning I decided to snoop around Salon and remembered the article so I decided to see if there were any letters in response. Sure enough there were, and, thankfully, most of them were against the opinion of the author, save one. Since it's a little late to send a letter to the editor in response to this article I'll just comment on it here, I need an entry for today anyway. So consider this also...

A Letter to the Editor of Salon.com in Response to Francess Kissling's "Getting Religion"

Unlike many of my fellow secularists I am not spiritually bankrupt. While the closest thing to my spiritual beliefs is Buddhism I make no claim on a particular religion, some say I'm an atheist, others an agnostic, and the ignorant claim I'm a right wing Christian covert operative. The latter are the people who are most damaging for the left, as are many other secularists who can't speak of Christianity without becoming egomaniacally elitist that they're some how better than Christians because they don't believe in an invisible man. How would I know? I was one of them.

While I'm still a secularist who believes in the seperation of church and state, over time I've learned that religion has it's place in politics to appeal to people's better nature, as well as their most vile, but the good usually wins out, when it can be heard. The problem is the left refuses to allow the good to be heard. Case in point in response to a female senator's proclamation "What I want to do is get on the floor of the Senate and ask, 'What would Jesus do about the budget? What would Jesus do about poor children? What would Jesus do about healthcare?'" Francess said "What I wanted to respond was that the floor of the U.S. Senate is not the place to invoke Jesus Christ." Her excuse for this is because she doesn't want to offend the Muslims, the Jews, the Buddhists, the atheists, etc. Francess, let me give you some advice, stop worrying about who will be offended, infact, most people don't like political correctness and hate being talked down to and treated as if they're weak. That's what's most condescending for most people.

However Francess you do have a point, but at the sametime you don't. There's a mighty big difference between "What Would Jesus Do" and "Jesus Says To Do", one does not demand that Jesus be listened to and the other does. There's a big difference there. The Senator in question could just as easily add Buddha, Muhammed, Yahweh, etc in place of Jesus or right alongside him, but you ignore this point because "the hair on your neck stood up." Shall I tell you why? Because people like you don't have a problem with every religion, only Christianity. You won't find many "atheists" who will denounce the faiths of Buddhists, Muslims, Taoists, Jews, etc, but they're on Christians like white on rice. "Atheist" or "secularist" is not a proper name for those of you with this problem, "Anti-Christian" is far more fitting, and you make the rest of us look bad.

Imagine if Martin Luther King Jr was alive today and said what he said back in the 50s and 60s, y'all would shit a brick and try to silence him. "No we wouldn't!" The fuck you wouldn't, because there are many of us who say similar things to MLK that you fuckers sneer down at. I've seen Christian Progressives degraded and insulted simply because they're Christian and don't agree with the methods of the Anti-Christians. I've seen secularists who say that we should be understanding of the Christians and use their own beliefs to further our cause get personally attacked by the Anti-Christians. And for what reason? Prejudice and bigotry, reactionary forces created in response to reactionary forces, and the rest of us get caught in the middle.

Are there radical evangelicals who pay lip-service to the Christian belief and are total assholes? Yes there are, but they're a minority, so why is the secular left taking the position of lumping all Christians into the same boat? We're supposed to be the side of understanding but in the case of Christianity we attack it, ignorantly, and wonder why we do so bad at the polls. When is the left going to realize that we are in Christ's image, that every core belief we hold is spawned from our progressive fore fathers who held similar beliefs to Christ? Beliefs like every man's relationship with God is his own and only he can decide what that relationship is, beliefs like "let Ceasar's be Ceasar's and God's be God's" (thus the first seperation of church and state spoken by Christ), beliefs like helping the poor, the sick, the homeless, the weak, where do you think all that shit came from? It came from religion, and not just Christianity, but most religions.

I've been called an enemy of the left because I have no qualms with pointing out the hypocrisy of my fellow leftists, particulary the anti-Christians. They say I must be a right wing operative because I "attack" my allies, apparently they don't see the hypocrisy in the fact that they continually attack and degrade Christian Progressives and the most influential progressive of his day, Jesus Christ. If my sin is defending progressives from bigots in progressive clothing, if this makes me a traitor to the left, I gladly await my stay in hell.

I'd rather be a traitor to this facade than an enabler.

Ya know, a couple years ago you could have heard me saying "The prison system is too soft, we're paying shitloads of tax money to allow these people to eat regularly, sleep, and watch TV all day." However, now that I have an uncle in the prison system and I got a taste of what it's like in there having visited him this past weekend, I have to say, I was wrong... partly.

To be sure, I still say we have far too many people in the prison system, we have the highest percentage of people in prison in the entire world, including China which is supposed to be a more fascist state than the US. Most people in prison are there due to drug related charges, of course that wouldn't be so if drugs were legalized and the government stopped telling us what we can and can't do with our own bodies. When the prisons get full do they release some people with these bullshit charges? Nah, they just build more prisons! There's alot of money to be made off the prison system so it profits alot of people for there to be alot of people in jail, but I digress, that's not the injustice I want to focus on today.

"The prison system is too soft" is not an uncommon argument to hear from hardliners on the right, and some on the left, but ya know, it's bullshit. My uncle is currently in minimum security, remember that because you have to keep in perspective that everything I'm about to say goes on in the supposedly less restrictive level of the prison system. When I arrive at the prison (which only deals with medium security and below) I immediately notice the ten foot or so fence with rows of razor wire on the entire fence, on the bottom it's more like a triangle with three rows on the bottom level, two rows on the next level up, and then evens out at one row per level all the way to the top. It's pretty clear you are not getting anywhere near that fence, and that's if you get over the inner fence which has razor wire on the top third or so of the fence. I later learned that in the eight foot gap between the two fences there's a truck which routinely makes it rounds and sensors buried in the ground. So no digging out and no climbing the fence, you're in there.

I finish my smoke and walk into the prison once the family infront of me walks out and the guard waves me in. I have to empty my pockets and walk through a metal detector. I tell the guy my uncle's name and give my name because you have to be approved to see him before you even go to the prison which took over 3 months to get done. Everything clears so the guy starts inspecting my stuff and tells me I can't take my Zippo in and I'll have to leave it there. I asked him if the unopen pack of smokes is alright and he says yeah and everything else is cool too. Then he takes me into a room, shuts the door, and frisks me, but he could've strip searched me if he wanted to (it's on the form you fill out for visitation rights that they hold the option to). I'm clean so he leads me back out to the lobby where they take my picture for future reference. Then, and this shocked the hell out of me, they have a hand-scanner for taking your hand print. I had to stick my hand in the scanner three times for a proper reading and then I was given a little card with my visitor pin number (more on this later). OK all of the preliminary stuff done so this young black girl, had to be my age, escorts me through a number of secured doors which we have to be buzzed through one at a time. Then she leads me through this picnic area outside and into the prison wing which is a long straight tube with all of the prison dorms attached to either side but the visiting room is right in the front so we didn't see any of the dorms.

Once in the visiting room they have all these shitty folding tables and uncomfortable chairs set up. The girl I'm with hands a guard in there a piece of paper with my pic and my uncle's pic and the guard tells me to sit at this small table against the wall looking out the window (not much of a view, but better than staring at the wall). This whole process has taken about 15 minutes. I wait for about 30 minutes until my uncle comes in, apparently he was taking a nap so it took him a little while to get up there. It's been over four months since I last saw him and almost two years since we had any physical contact or something not between us with someone listening in so I hug him and we sit down. First I ask for and get the truth about the night he was arrested, which I don't want to get into at this point in time, then I ask him what's it like in the clink. Now understand in all of his letters he's told us how professional everything is and stuff that just sounded a little too easy, well that all went out the window. He said to read his letters and ad "not" infront of all the shit like that.

He says that you catch alot of humiliation and degradation the first few months or so you're in there because the guards don't know you and don't know if you're going to cause any trouble so any chance they get to put a boot in your ass they take it. If you're anything less than polite they'll give you shit. To illustrate what I mean, when we went out for a smoke break once my uncle took a drink outside with him when he wasn't allowed to, the cop called his name and nodded his head back towards the door, my uncle said "Yes sir, sorry sir" and took the drink back inside. Later he told me "Now imagine if I had said no to that guard. First he would insist that I take it back inside and if I still said no he would've beaten me over the head with his baton, then they'd throw me in the box (commonly known as the "hole") for awhile, and give me a year or more of close management." Close management is solitary confinement. All that over a fucking drink. Oh yeah and get this, you'll get six months in the box for horse playing, you only get three months for fighting. So I asked him more, "well other than that what's it like in the dorm?"

There are many dorms going off the long tube which I mentioned before, his is a smaller dorm that holds about 60 people and they all sleep on bunks that have lockers for their stuff. There's no air conditioning. Imagine that, being in a cement box in the south during the middle of summer with no air conditioning. Now also imagine 60 other hot and smelly sweaty guys in there with you, the funk is unimaginable. So what about TV? It's useless, they have the sound jacked all the way up to the point that you can't hear anything even when you're right underneath it. Not to mention the bass is so loud that you feel it through out your entire body and you never get used to it so the TV becomes a tool of psychological torture rather than a break from the situation you're in. You are constantly reminded where you are at all times and you're broken down until there's no hope left in you whatsoever and it's exactly the same every fucking day, what we call "Groundhog's Day." Also remember that this is minimum security prison.

I've never seen a man so happy to have an ultra light menthol cigarette and air conditioning in my life, you know it's bad when you see a man's eyes light up as if he were entering heaven over things we take for granted.

We talked for over four hours when they yelled that it was time to wrap it up. They seperated us into two lines, visitors and prisoners, but before my uncle got in line I asked him "So was it better than Groundhog's Day?" Again his eyes lit up and he gave a simple "yeah" that was heart breaking. I gave him one final wave while they escorted us out back to the door we came in from. Each visitor had to enter their visitor pin number and then place their hand in the scanner for ID verification before they were buzzed through. Once through I picked up my license and went outside to wait for my ride.

Anyone who wants to say that the death penalty is necessary to punish someone is full of shit. I'd like to see them last a month in prison and come back out saying the death penalty is still necessary. However, I also see now why alot of ex-cons are not reformed like they're supposed to be. Prison is a place to learn how to be a hardass with discipline, it's boot camp for criminals and is even refered to as "camp" by many. How can we expect them to come back into society and be decent citizens when we're giving them the training to be better criminals and teaching them that with certain amounts of power you can get away with anything?

Dedicated to both my uncles, the one who's confined to this world and the one who's not.