General – Page 44 – The Daily Brief

I Got the Gardening Bug

25. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: General, Pajama Game

Growing up, my dad always had a vegetable garden. In fact, he always had a large vegetable garden. We had very few store-bought vegetables because Dad grew so many in the garden and canned them that we had enough some years to last more than just one winter. Unfortunately, though not at the time, I was not allowed in the garden because I might mess it up. I therefore didn’t get lessons on how to weed, the proper way to hoe a planted garden, how to thin plants, etc. I didn’t care either because I always figured I would just buy it from the store.

Now after years of buying from the store, I realize that my parents were right. Fruits and vegetables are better home grown. Now I am starting my own garden. So far, it’s really small, and really more of a test run to see if I can actually grow one. The small area I have chosen for my garden spot only has a small area fit for growing currently. The previous owners had put a bunch of wood chips down in the area to use for a play area for their kids. I haven’t managed to get a full half of the chips out of the area yet, so I only have about 1/3 of the area available.

I sat down back in January and decided what I wanted to plant. I finally settled on lettuce, spinach, broccoli, turnip greens, green peas, carrots, snap beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini and yellow crookneck squash, eggplant, bell pepper, cayenne, jalapeno peppers, watermelon, and cantaloupe. Of those already planted, I only managed to get 4 pea plants up, a handful of turnip greens, a handful of lettuce, a couple of handfuls of carrots, and I’m not sure that any of the spinach has come up. I also put out some strawberry plants that still look as dead as when I pulled them out of the bag. I started the tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers indoors, and aside from what Notch decided to munch on, I have almost all of them to come up and look real good. I could probably put them out this weekend, but I am going to leave them outside in the containers over this week to harden them before transplanting.

Now flowers are another matter entirely. Mittens, the stray cat we adopted, has decided that every place I have put potting soil is a toilet. Now fortunately, she isn’t doing any “real business” in them, but still she’s digging. Bad kitty. I suppose I am going to be forced to put netting (like vinyl chicken wire) over all my flowers and pots until she takes her business back to the leaves. But I digress. I didn’t have good luck with flowers last year. I can only blame myself as I didn’t keep them weeded, watered, and fertilized as I should have. I will put some of the blame on the software engineering course I took as I had absolutely no free time during that term and it was spring term. This year, I will have the time to do proper weeding and watering. Then I will see if I do truly have what my mom calls “Susie’s green thumb” referring to my paternal grandmother who could grow anything anywhere.

Iran Hostage Crisis Redoux

23. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Fun With Islam, General, Iran, Rant, War

Not a good feeling about all this. Will the British let themselves be played for 444 days, like we were, after the Teheran embassy was overrun? Are we prepared for another long series of staged demonstrations and photo ops, fruitless diplomatic wrangling, a ceaseless media circus, yellow ribbons around the old oak tree, and an assortment of clueless do-gooders making their way to Teheran on their knees, and making sure their good side is to the camera? Five will get you ten, George Galloway already has his bag packed.

So, is this a calculated move from the highest levels in response to the alleged defection/kidnapping of a top Iranian military man a couple of a weeks ago, or just some ambitious and impulsive underling taking a chance and seeing how far he can go?

How far will the Iranians go? How far will the British go? Will Ahmedinajad still be admitted to the US on his way to address the UN? How many of the UN members will break out the old knee-pads and kneel down before him, metaphorically speaking.

Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets, please. I have a feeling it is going to get kinda interesting.

(Also posted at Blogger News Network… and corrected)

The Writers Life Waltz: Con Brio

21. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Domestic, General

I’ve come up for air this week, because I need to sit down and read a stack of books as tall as my bedside lamp table, and take copious notes in preparation for revising and expanding my first draft of “Adelsverein – Volume One”… or as a reader called it “Barsetshire with cypress trees”. Yes, I have taken everyone’s advice and broken it into a trilogy…since I was about a third of a way into my Sooper-Dooper Detailed Chapter Outline and had clocked over 105,000 words. I believe that in the mystery-writing biz that sort of happening is called “a clue”.

Otherwise it would take me the rest of the year, and result in a paperback book about the thickness of a concrete block. The first part stands alone as a ripping good yarn anyway, but I have salted it with enough foreshadowing to leave everyone hungry for Volume Two (The Civil War years). The stack of books for that part is another pile almost as tall as the bedside table, but the stack for Volume Three (the open-range cattle-ranching and Indian War years) is only about a foot tall, most of it taken up by a single book which I scored at the library sale for a mere pittance. It’s a massive compendium of first-hand accounts taken down from members of the Old Time Trail Drivers’ Association… pure gold for my purposes, but I am getting ahead of myself. (Oh, and the reason for the odd historical essays… I just find odd tidbits in all these books which I find kind of fascinating. Especially if some of them are not well-known at all. I write about stuff that interests me at the moment, ‘kay?)

I also needed to get cracking on marketing “Adelsverein” to agents and publishers, because it doesn’t look like “Truckee’s Trail” is going to go very far with them. It’s a ripping good yarn and I am not giving up on it, but I’m not holding my breath either. The feedback that I have gotten so far from the two agents who have read it is that marketing it to a publisher is a chore they don’t want to take on, for various reasons. It’s not quite a Western, not the sort of historical that really sells, the major romantic relationship is between two people happily married to each other; not an easy book to categorize, and that’s why it’s a hard sell. There is no word from the publisher who got it in January to review, but if they decline it, I’ll put it up to Tor Books… and by the end of the year I’ll go back to the POD publisher who did my memoir if they pass on it. It will be published, one way or another. I’ve put too much work into it, and the people who have read it have liked it too much to just stick it away in my desk drawer and forget about it. Frankly, I have enough stuff in that drawer already… and “Truckee” is just too damn good to drop. “Adelsverein” is more marketable, as it contains near-operatic levels of passion, murder, adventure, war, stolen children and Dire Revenge.

My friend the computer genius will set up a website especially for my books and help me market them through other means… which I will probably do anyway, even if I do manage to get somewhere with an agent and/or a mainline publisher. On the bright side, I just received an email from an agent who wants to take a look at the first couple of chapters of “Truckee”… could the third one be the charm? And I got another email from another agent who said she is intrigued by “Adelsverein” but is absolutely swamped in too much work to give it full attention… but if I haven’t found representation by July, she’ll be happy to take a look.

My writer friend on the West Coast counsels a spirit of Zen detachment and patience. Which I want now, dammit!

Comancheria: The Meusebach Treaty

19. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: General, History, Old West, Pajama Game

(earlier parts, here, here, here and here )

But first, before they were welcomed to Ketumsee’s main camp, the interpreter Lorenzo de Rozas told Meusebach’s party that as a demonstration of their good faith and confidence, they should empty all their firearms, firing them into the ground, or into the air.
For the forty men of Meusebach’s peace venture, it was a pivotal moment, for they were far beyond the safe frontier, and surrounded by what was estimated to be five or six thousand Comanche, the acknowledged warlords of the Southern plains. They had assembled on a hillside near Ketumsee’s encampment on the San Saba, mounted on their best horses, in all their finery and carrying their weapons, on either side of a flag on a tall staff; warriors on the right, women and children on the left. It was a splendid and heart-stopping sight. In the event of Meusebach having entirely miscalculated the Comanche’s desire for a peace treaty there would be no aid, no cavalry pounding to their rescue. About the only thing that would be a certain guarantee in that event… would be that every one of them would die, in as agonizing a manner as the most creative sadist could devise.

Meusebach quietly ordered all his men to empty their firearms. And in response, the Comanche warriors who carried firearms also emptied theirs. Chief Ketumsee and his senior chiefs came forward to greet them with handshakes and with elaborate ceremony; Meusebach and his party were conducted into the village. They were invited to stay within the Comanche encampment, in their skin lodges, but on the excuse of finding better pasture for their horses, Meusebach graciously declined. They set up their own camp, but might as well have not bothered, because almost all of Ketumsee’s tribe came to visit over the next day or so; men, women, children and all, and mostly on horseback As one of the German visitors later wrote “Horses play an important role in the life of the Comanches… when there is a scarcity of food, horses furnish a supply of meat…from early youth both sexes are taught to ride… we saw children who had been nursed by their mothers until their third year, leave their mothers’ breast, jump on a horse and light a cigarette…”

Dear Quiznos

18. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: General, Media Matters Not

I’m hereby boycotting you until you stop marring my Sunday Nights on Sci Fi with that stupid giggling woman who wants more meat. Her voice is annoying enough, but that bordering on insanity giggle? Look, she’s creepier than the Burger King.

I do prefer your sammiches to Subway’s, but I’m serious, lose the bimbo.

The Top Ten Signs That You’re Being Stalked By A Leprechaun

17. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Fun and Games, General, General Nonsense, The Funny

(More e-mail fun, for St. Patrick’s Day)

Generic-looking green van parked across the street with Notre Dame bumper sticker.

Every time you turn around the pitter-pattering stops and that green fire hydrant seems to have gotten a little closer.

Green lipstick marks on the butt of your Dockers.

You’re being followed by a large woman with a sultry voice and a dying career. (Oops! That’s a sign you’re being stalked by Chaka Khan.)

You don’t recall owning an anatomically correct lawn gnome.

Card delivered with the bouquet of 4-leaf clovers reads, “I bet you’re magically delicious!”

When you come home from work, the potatoes are missing from the cupboard and your parrot is singing “Danny Boy.”

Prank caller has a really corny Irish accent, and Richard Gere has an airtight alibi.

Those tiny green hairs on your toilet seat.

Sultry voice from shower soap dish asks, “Is that your shillelagh, or are you just happy to see me?”

Pink hearts, yellow moons, blue diamonds scratched on your car at knee-level, and Ross Perot is nowhere to be found.

Them little green pellets in the litter box ain’t M&M’s, Chester.

Every day this week you’ve noticed the same buckle shoes dangling just above the floor in the stall next to you.

Stories

16. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: General, Media Matters Not, Pajama Game, That's Entertainment!, World

I am not one of those given to assume that just because a lot of people like something, then it must be good; after all, Debbie Boone’s warbling of “You Light Up My Life” was on top of American Top Forty for what seemed like most of the decade in the late 70s, although that damned song sucked with sufficient force to draw in small planets. Everyone that I knew ran gagging and heaving when it came on the radio, but obviously a lot of people somewhere liked it enough to keep it there, week after week after week. A lot of people read “The DaVinci Code”, deriving amusement and satisfaction thereby, and some take pleasure in Adam Sandler movies or Barbara Cartland romances… no, popularity of something does not guarantee quality, and I often have the feeling that the tastemakers of popular culture are often quite miffed — contemptuous, even — when they pronounce an unfavorable judgment upon an item of mass entertainment which turns out to be wildly, wildly popular anyway.

“300” looks to be one of those wildly popular things, for which the intellectual great and good have no explanation. This amuses me very much, because I think I do. As I wrote last week “the story of the Spartans at Thermopylae is one of those stories which has kept a grip on us in the West for nearly three thousand years… Courage, honor, duty, clear-eyed self-sacrifice in a cause, for the lives of those you hold dear, for your city or your country… those are values that hold, that define who we are and what we stand for.”

It’s all about stories, and our human need for stories; stories about other people, stories that explain, that make things clear for us, that inspire us to great deeds, to set an example or spell out a warning. We need stories nearly as much as we need oxygen. And we will have them, bright and sparkling and new, or worn to paper thinness in the re-telling. We will have stories that have grown, and been embellished by many narrators, with heroes and minor heroes and splendid set-piece scenes, and side-narratives, like one of those sea-creatures that collects ornaments to stick onto its’ shell any which way, or a bower-bird collecting many brilliant scraps and laying them out in intricate patterns. A longing to hear such stories must be as innate in us, as it is to those creatures, for our earliest epic, that of Gilgamesh may be traced back to the beginnings of agriculture, and towns, and the taming of animals, and the making of a written language. It may go back even farther yet, but there is really no way to know for sure what those stories were, although I am sure the anthropologists are giving it the good old college try.

Our values are transmitted in the stories that we go back to, over and over. A long time ago, I read this book, which recommended, rather in the manner of the old Victorians, that children be given improving books to read, that their minds be exercised by good examples. I was initially rather amused… and then I went over the reading list in the back. I realized just then how many of those books the author cited I had read myself… and how many quiet demonstrations of honesty, courage, ethical behavior, loyalty to family, friends and community, of doing the hard right as opposed to the easy wrong had been tidily incorporated into such books as the Little House books, or Caddie Woodlawn, or “All of a Kind Family”, or Johnny Tremain. We imbibe all these values from stories… and lest we think that these sorts of moral lessons are obscure and tangled things, best suited for a long theoretical discussion of the life-boat dilemma in some touchy-feely ethics seminar, the author (or someone that he quoted – it’s been a long time since I re-read the book) brought up the old black and white movie “A Night to Remember”… the movie account of the sinking of the Titanic. The whole story of the unsinkable ship is laid out, based on research, and with the aid (at the time it was filmed) with many still-living survivors; running full-tilt into an ice-field, hitting an iceberg…loading the relatively few lifeboats while the band plays, and the ships engineers keep the lights and power going, of husbands putting their wives and children into the boats and stepping back to leave more room, knowing that the ship is doomed… of steerage passengers taking matters into their own hands and finding their way up to the boat deck, and deck-hands trying to launch the very last boat as the seawater rises to their knees. Twice a hundred stories, and at the end of it one has a pretty good idea of who has behaved well and honorably… and who has not.

Stories. We need them, and we’ll keep coming back to them. And to the best ones, we will come back again and again.

No Rosie, His Actions Rob Him of His Humanity

16. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: General

Go read this article over at NewsBusters.

Can anyone explain to me how anyone could give Khalid Sheik Mohammed the benifit of the doubt while assuming that your own country tortured the man into confessing?

How much self-loathing does that take?

And if it’s not self-loathing, then what the hell is it?

Seriously, I’m asking, because I simply don’t understand it.

Job Descriptions in the Real World

15. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Fun and Games, General, sarcasm, World

(From one of those e-mail lists going the rounds)

A programmer is someone who solves a problem you didn’t know you had in a way you don’t understand.

A consultant is someone who takes the watch off your wrist and tells you the time.

A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain. (Mark Twain)

An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he
predicted yesterday didn’t happen today.

A statistician is someone who is good with numbers but lacks the
personality to be an accountant.

An actuary is someone who brings a fake bomb on a plane, because that
decreases the chances that there will be another bomb on the plane.
(Laurence J. Peter)

A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat
which isn’t there.(Charles R. Darwin)

A topologist is a man who doesn’t know the difference between a coffee cup and a doughnut.

A lawyer is a person who writes a 10,000 word document and calls it a
“brief.”

A psychologist is a man who watches everyone else when a beautiful girl enters the room.

A professor is one who talks in someone else’s sleep.

A schoolteacher is a disillusioned woman who used to think she liked
children.

A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you will look forward to the trip.

Prison Break

13. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: General

Is it just me or does the Mahone character on Prison Break look like Alan Colmes?

MICROSOFT – THE EVIL EMPIRE

11. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: General, My Head Hurts, Rant

I spent a couple of hours this afternoon trying to reactivate Windows XP on Red Haired Girl’s Mac. It ran fine when I installed it, but because it is on a differant machine than what it was originally installed on, it went dark after a period of time. Because I did not set it up with capability to access the Internet, a phone installation was required – just as well because I knew that explanations would be required about the entirely different hardware footprint. According to Microsoft, the purpose of requiring activation is to prevent “casual copying”, and that the minor inconvenience will actually save consumers money through the prevention of piracy.

Well, the truth is a bit more complicated. According to the customer service rep and his supervisor (Bill Gates was unable to come to the phone), their policy is not to activate preinstalled versions of Windows, regardless of the circumstances. I asked him what would happen if I had fried a motherboard (which requires activation), to which he replied that it would be a warranty issue with Gateway. I asked what if the warranty is expired, he told me that, in that scenario, the license dies with the computer.

The issue is supposed to come down to one license, one computer. I can live with that. All they needed to do was give me a 45 digit number (really – 45 digits) and RHG would be playing Nancy friggin’ Drew and I would be happy, but nooooo. They want a war, and that’s what they are going to get. The first thing I am going to do is carve up the computer that the software was originally installed on and send it to Bill Gates with a signed affadavit attesting to the fact that it is no longer in service. Any other ideas would be appreciated.

Against Fearful Odds: 300

11. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Domestic, General, History, Media Matters Not, Pajama Game, War

To all men living on this Earth, death cometh soon or late. And how can man die better than by facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers and the Temples of his Gods?”
— Macaulay, Lays of Ancient Rome

So Blondie and I were intrigued by several different premises – intrigued enough to actually go and see the movie 300 on opening weekend; she because it starred Gerard Butler and several acres of well-oiled, well-built male hunkiness, and me because – well, it sounded interestingly unlike the usual Hollywood bucket o’krep poured out for the plebeians. For a start, no car chases, or machine gun fire, and most definitely not a remake of a TV show which wasn’t that good to start with, or a movie which should have been left alone. Neither one of us had ever read the wildly popular “graphic novel” it was based on. (Do I have to call them graphic novels? I always slip and call them comic books, it’s the same way I call “mobile home developments” “trailer parks” and it’s a movie, dammit, not a film.) Blondie hated the movie version of Sin City BTW, and I would like to serve notice right here and now that I would usually avoid movies which incorporate buckets of splattered gore, and collections of human grotesqueries – but the story of the Spartans at Thermopylae is one of those stories which has kept a grip on us in the West for nearly three thousand years. Every forlorn last stand, against overwhelming odds has harked back to the King of Sparta and his picked band, standing in a narrow pass. And that many of those so choosing would have known of it— like Travis at the Alamo— testifies to the enduring power of their story.

Through the rise and fall of Greece itself, and the Romes that followed it, into the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and into this century, the story of Leonidas and his stalwart few resonates – as much as the righteous and politically correct would have it not so. (like this reviewer. Note to Mr. Smith; Bite me. Sincerely, Sgt. Mom). Courage, honor, duty, clear-eyed self-sacrifice in a cause, for the lives of those you hold dear, for your city or your country – those are values that hold, that define who we are and what we stand for. To have them set out unapologetically in a movie like this is as jolting as a triple-latte with a shot of brandy, after a diet of nothing but mineral water. Some years ago, I lamented that Hollywood just couldn’t bring themselves to make a movie about the war we are in. (here) Perhaps this may be the closest that they can bring themselves to do it, without running the risk of having the gentlemen from CAIR parked in the outer office.

This is not one of those movies where you go for authenticity about Greece, Sparta and the Persian empire. I can just imagine scholars of the classical world hyperventilating and gibbering incoherently for the next decade on that topic. Ancient Sparta was not anything like a democracy as we know it, Spartan women probably wore a few more clothes and took no part in public life, Greek warriors in battle wore little more than a leather Speedo and a flowing cloak, I very much doubt that anyone has ever been able to use a rhinoceros as a war-beast – and Xerxes probably wasn’t a 7-foot tall mulatto with a lot of body piercings. Some of the dialog clunks a bit, though. I can tell, because I was mentally re-writing it. All that is beside the point.

Because it is not just the story by itself; there was the look of it, the whole visual spectacle. The word that kept coming up in my mind, over and over was “painterly”. That the story of 300 was created by some who is an artist was obvious in the very first frame. Every scene was set up as if it were a painting or a classical frieze, a vase-painting; all of it harking back to something that an artistically literate person would recognize. The flow of a cloak, the jut of a bearded chin, the fall of golden sunset on a craggy mountain pass, the way a man holds a spear and shield – all of it evocative and visually rich in a way that doesn’t happen much in movies. Without having read the book, I can’t say if the movie version was true to Frank Miller vision , but it definitely made for an arresting look. We did notice some little grace notes that seem to be quotes from other movies; the fields of wheat from Gladiator, Xerxes’ monumental throne looked the one from the Elizabeth Taylor vehicle in Cleopatra and the assorted war-beasts from Lord of the Rings. (Also Blondie was bugged throughout the movie as to where she had seen the actor who played Dilius – he was in Lord of the Rings, also. She could have asked me, of course!)

All in all… ticket price and time well-spent, especially for Frank Miller fan. There are also some bonuses for the straight women and gay male demographic as well. It seems to be going over very well in flyover country, too.

ALMOST SPRING

10. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: General, Home Front

The temperature here in central Illinois reached 60 degrees today with a forecast of seventy next week. I have the smoker ready for that first brisket, the tires on all of the bicylcles aired up, and the oil changed in the riding mower. Tomorrow I need to fire up the chain saw to make firewood of all the tree limbs that I lost during the ice storm just 3 1/2 weeks ago. Oh, and the robins are back in full force and the bald eagles which, owing to their fish diet, are not all that tasty :-), are heading back north.

My favorite time of year.

More Things That Make You Go Hmmmmm….

09. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: European Disunion, General, My Head Hurts, Politics, World

Interesting trip report, from a regular contributor at “Cold Fury”. Anyone else whose traveled overseas lately have input?

Courtesy of Rantburg

American Idol 2007 (Top 12)

08. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: General, That's Entertainment!

Sometimes I have absolutely no faith in the American people. None. Zip. Zilch.

This is one of those times.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s okay, just ignore me.

If you do…please feel free to vent.

Comancheria: The Separate Peace

08. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: General, History, Old West, Pajama Game

That there would ever be any sort of peace between the Comanche people, the horse-lords of the Southern Plains, and the settlers who steadily encroached upon the lands which they had always considered their own particular stamping grounds in 19th century Texas verges on the fantastical. That it lasted for longer than about a week must be accounted a miracle of Biblical proportions; but there was indeed such a treaty, negotiated and signed about mid-way through the bitter, brutal fifty-year long guerrilla war between the Tribes, and a group of settlers newly arrived in Texas.

The need for a little patch of peace became a matter of urgency upon the arrival of nearly 7,000 German immigrants under the sponsorship and auspices of the Mainzer Adelsverein, or as it was formally known; The Society for The Protection of German Immigrants in Texas, in a brief space of years after 1844. The Verein, as it was called in Texas, was formed by a group of high-born and socially conscious German noblemen, who conceived the notion of establishing a colony of German farmers and craftsmen in Texas. Their motivations were a combination of altruism, and calculation. This settlement plan would generously assist farmers and small craftsmen who were being displaced by the dwindling availability of farm land, and by increasing mechanization. But it would also establish a large, homogenous and German-oriented colony in the then-independent Texas nation, from which they hoped to profit materially and perhaps politically.

Unfortunately, their organizational skills and economic resources were not anywhere near equal to their ambitions; ambitions which in turn were only equaled by their astonishing naivety about the frontier. Their first commissioner in Texas was well-intentioned, well-born, and utterly clueless: every scammer, con-man and shady land-speculator west of the Mississippi must have seen Prince Karl of Solms-Braunfels coming for a considerable distance. In a remarkably short time, Prince Karl effortlessly managed to piss-off most of the elected officials of the independent State of Texas, spend money as if it were water, burden the Verein with the Fisher-Miller Grant, (a large and almost useless tract of land smack-dab in the middle of Comanche territory), and amuse (or appall) practically everyone with whom he came in contact. Among the most risible of his personal peculiarities was the fact that he traveled in state with a large and specialized entourage, including a personal chef and two valets to help him on with his trousers of a morning. This went over with the rough denizens of the frontier about as well as could be expected.
More »

Once Bitten Twice Shy

07. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Domestic, General, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine...

Blondie’s insurance company rep confirms; her little car is totaled. Last rites will be performed by the insurance company sometime this week, and we will bury a little box with a damaged tail light in it, this weekend. The insurance rep told her that she was amazed that Blondie walked away from the crash with nothing other than bruises. Being a professional connoisseur of auto wreckage, she told Blondie that the degree to which the Mitsubishi was smashed usually meant that people in it were either injured or dead. So, Blondie is still quite shaken, and insists that quote “ It will be a nipple-y day in hell before I get behind the wheel of a compact car again!” unquote. The rental is a Jeep Cherokee; her next vehicle will be something similar in the sport-utility line. Bigger, anyway. And sitting farther off the ground

She was off to classes driving it this morning, driving the rental car; she plans to ask the rep if they will pay for another three or four days, to give her time over spring break to line up a replacement car.

The bruises are spectacular, by the way. Dark technicolor purple, with some red streaks.

One of Those Days

05. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, My Head Hurts, Veteran's Affairs

So, this is one of those calls that you don’t want to hear on the answering machine, first thing after coming back after being dragged around the neighborhood by the dogs; a kind-of-upset voice from one’s only and dearly-beloved child saying

“Mom…I’m OK… I was run into by a truck and the car is totaled… I’m at 35 and Theo Malone, can you come and get me?”

There may be crappier ways to start a Monday. Frankly, I can’t think of any of them at the moment. Cpl/Sgt. Blondie is ok, but rather interestingly bruised. She is loaded up on painkillers, and her poor little Mitsubishi is in the SAPD impound lot; the concensus from the investigating officer, the EMT, the tow-truck driver and the FD response unit is that it is indeed, totaled.

It was only a light pick-up truck that hit her, after a very complicated series of events best left to the insurance people to sort out. She had the presence of mind to gather up most valuable items from it— including her textbooks from the trunk (which the tow-truck driver had to pry open for her).

She was waiting far me by the side of the road, with everything from the car loaded into a plastic tub, and a very nice and understanding SAPD patrolman (Yay, SAPD… where gallantry is not yet dead!) waiting with her, who gave me a lecture about having a cellphone of my own, since the accident had set up the most awful slow-down of traffic. I swear, I could have walked that last mile faster.

She is OK for now, but will probably feel like heck in the morning, especially when she starts to thread the maze of claims and adjustments, never mind the bruises. We plan to hold last rites for the Mitsubishi, and bury a portion of it in the garden sometime this week.

In about 500 years, someone doing an archeological dig in my garden is going to go nuts.

An Open Letter to CPAC Sponsors and Organizers Regarding Ann Coulter

05. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: General

by James Joyner.

Conservatism treats humans as they are, as moral creatures possessing rational minds and capable of discerning right from wrong. There comes a time when we must speak out in the defense of the conservative movement, and make a stand for political civility. This is one of those times.

Ann Coulter used to serve the movement well. She was telegenic, intelligent, and witty. She was also fearless: saying provocative things to inspire deeper thought and cutting through the haze of competing information has its uses. But Coulter’s fearlessness has become an addiction to shock value. She draws attention to herself, rather than placing the spotlight on conservative ideas.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2006, Coulter referred to Iranians as “ragheads.” She is one of the most prominent women in the conservative movement; for her to employ such reckless language reinforces the stereotype that conservatives are racists.

At CPAC 2007 Coulter decided to turn up the volume by referring to John Edwards, a former U.S. Senator and current Presidential candidate, as a “faggot.” Such offensive language–and the cavalier attitude that lies behind it–is intolerable to us. It may be tolerated on liberal websites but not at the nation’s premier conservative gathering.

The legendary conservative thinker Richard Weaver wrote a book entitled Ideas Have Consequences. Rush Limbaugh has said again and again that “words mean things.” Both phrases apply to Coulter’s awful remarks.

Coulter’s vicious word choice tells the world she care little about the feelings of a large group that often feels marginalized and despised. Her word choice forces conservatives to waste time defending themselves against charges of homophobia rather than advancing conservative ideas.

Within a day of Coulter’s remark John Edwards sent out a fundraising email that used Coulter’s words to raise money for his faltering campaign. She is helping those she claims to oppose. How does that advance any of the causes we hold dear?

Denouncing Coulter is not enough. After her “raghead” remark in 2006 she took some heat. Yet she did not grow and learn. We should have been more forceful. This year she used a gay slur. What is next? If Senator Barack Obama is the de facto Democratic Presidential nominee next year will Coulter feel free to use a racial slur? How does that help conservatism?

One of the points of CPAC is the opportunity it gives college students to meet other young conservatives and learn from our leaders. Unlike on their campuses—where they often feel alone—at CPAC they know they are part of a vibrant political movement. What example is set when one highlight of the conference is finding out what shocking phrase will emerge from Ann Coulter’s mouth? How can we teach young conservatives to fight for their principles with civility and respect when Ann Coulter is allowed to address the conference? Coulter’s invective is a sign of weak thinking and unprincipled politicking.

CPAC sponsors, the Age of Ann has passed. We, the undersigned, request that CPAC speaking invitations no longer be extended to Ann Coulter. Her words and attitude simply do too much damage.

As usual, someone out there says it better than I do. I can get behind this one, and James has a lot of other bloggers who feel the same way.

I’m not ready to go with the label conservative, because in a lot of ways, I’m much more libertarian or downright liberal, but many of the conservative issues like “less government is a good thing” is exactly where my head is at.

This Sucks

04. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: General, Home Front

When Real Wife and I set up housekeeping 15 years ago, one of the needed items was a vacuum cleaner. By happenstance, we received some sort of free promotional offer, contingent on sitting through a sales pitch for a Majestic Filter Queen. For those not in the know, this was considered at that time to be the epitome of suck. Real Wife (then Real Fiancée ) simply had to have one. Having a few beers during the presentation, the only thing that stood out about the ordeal was that the motor spun at 10,000 RPM – impressive in its own right (if true) and clearly deserving of a Tim’s Tool Time Binford Tool endorsement. That is, the only thing that jumped out until he told us the price. Fifteen hundred dollars – 1992 dollars. Real Wife (Fiancée) gave me The Look, and we were the proud owners of a vacuum that cost a mere $700 less than my first brand new car (although said car, a ’72 Plymouth Cricket aka Hillman Avenger, had a redline of only about 5,000 RPM).

Well, it died last week (the Filter Queen – the Cricket died in 1977, victim of Lucas electricals and a Stromberg carb), or at least the motor did (teardown analysis found a loose nut and flat washer – catastrophic at aforesaid 10,000 RPM). Real Wife was ready to move on anyway; tank-type machines are not compatible with two story homes. We compared a number of models at epinion.com, and thought that one of the Bissell models, at around $150, seemed a reasonable blend of price vs. performance, so RW headed to the local Sears. On schedule, The Call came. You know the one – when he/she tell you that this really credible (in this case a former schoolteacher) sales person has these magic beans… In this case the magic beans were … a Dyson DC17 Animal. Triple cyclonic action, no need for HEPA filters or bags, etc. And only a third the cost of the Majestic. I quickly calculated that the price of having a negative opinion about this would be required active participation in future vacuuming activities, so I told her that it was her decision.

A couple of hours later she returned home, albeit with a somewhat disappointed look. It turns out that The Animal was not in stock. The old bait and switch – they sold her a DC14 telescopic instead. One of the ugliest damn things I’ve ever seen. Yellow and gray, with a faux business-end-of-a-NASA-air-tunnel look to it. But can it ever suck. We ran it over carpet that was vacuumed with the Filter Queen just prior to its demise and, unless the cats and dogs lost most of their fur since then (they look OK) the old Filter Queen wasn’t cutting it. I was so impressed that I almost asked to take it for a spin, but caught myself with the sudden thought that this could set an unfavorable precedent. Regarding the latter statement and before the hoards show up on the comment board with the digital version of pitchforks and a rope, I offer the following. RW has never come within even a passing consideration of reading a manual for a phone, computer, or other similar device. Same dynamic – once you start you own it. One of the dynamics that establishes the balance required for lasting marriages. My other defense for seeming to be a, well yes, chauvinist pig is that (except for flowers), if its outside its mine. Mowing, downed trees, snow removal, dead animal removal (the need has arisen), pest insurgencies, and landscape improvements – all are mine.

So, I’ve got a ’92 Filter Queen, all it needs is a motor. Any offers?

AN Art Linkletter Interlude

04. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Fun and Games, General, Home Front, The Funny

I received an email from an aunt whom I’ve not seen since my Dad’s funeral in 1978, but who recently discovered email and the viral distribution of jokes and stories. The most recent message was titled “Funny Things Kids Say to Their Grandparents”. Having brought Red Haired Girl home at nearly forty years of age, I can personally attest that it is not always the grandparents who get the good zingers about age. Anyway, here are some of the choice ones.

A little girl was diligently pounding away on her grandfather’s word
processor. She told him she was writing a story. “What’s it about?” he
asked.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I can’t read.”

——————————————————————–

My young grandson called the other day to wish me Happy Birthday He
asked me how old I was, and I told him, “62.”

He was quiet for a moment, and then he asked, “Did you start at 1?”

Roller Skating and Internet Radio

04. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Domestic, General, Good God, Politics, Rant

The Copyright and Royalty Board, part of the Library of Congress, has announced copyright license fee increases that, if not struck down, will put many of the more innovative Internet music streaming (read radio) sites out of business. According to Bill Goldsmith at radioparadise.com, the royalty payments will amount to 125% of their revenue. I don’t think this is hyperbole based on what I read on the Radio and Internet Newsletter site.

Who benefits? All the usual fat cats. Who gets screwed? Well that would be all the smaller indy bands and labels, those of us who appreciate their work, and, of course those of us who are sick to their stomachs of the crap that passes for commercial radio broadcasting these days.

All of this is at the instigation of the RIAA of course – the same folks who, flummoxing around because their business model was caught totally unawares by the advent of digital music (boy, who could have seen that one coming 20 odd years ago at the introduction of CDs and then again, in the last decade, when Al Gore invented the Internet), have resorted to litigation against grandmothers because little Jimmy discovered file sharing. As a trade association I think they are doing a piss poor job. I had a conversation a while back with the third generation proprietor of a small local roller skating rink. What a resource to have. You can drop off the kiddies for good clean fun, knowing that Bonnie is watching out for them – a gem of a local institution. Bonnie told me that she didn’t know how much longer it would make economic sense to stay open – one of her single largest expenses is paying RIAA royalties.

Meanwhile, I legally downloaded some songs for my daughter, and found out that it is nearly impossible to transfer them to any other device. For this we can thank the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, otherwise know as The Act Passed By Congess, Signed Into Law By The President, But Written By The RIAA.

Hey, I’m for law and order, but I am rooting for the guys figuring out how to beat these greedy bastards. Maybe once the RIAA and their lackeys on the U.S. Congress figure out that the only alternative to an equitable fair royalty structure and a reasonable fair use doctrine is widespread free illegal underground distribution, they will get their heads out of their asses.

I encourage our Loyal Readers to bitch to their government representatives and to engage in civil disobedience in this matter (just don’t get caught and if you do, don’t call me).

Ann Coulter

04. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: General

I may never type that name after this post again.

I went off awhile ago about how I thought it was dumb that the actor from Grey’s Anatomy was going to rehab for calling his coworker a faggot. And I even used the word faggot in referring to gay people. I don’t consider it a slur. Other faggots call each other faggot and while I’m not a faggot, I’ve had a lot of faggot friends and I’ve made them a deal, they stop calling me butch boy and breeder and I’ll stop calling them faggots. But seriously, I’ve used the word less and less over the years. Some folks really find it hurtful and I do try to take that into account. Times change. I guess gay guys don’t even call each other faggot anymore. All of our gay friends live somewhere else these days…I’ve been out of touch.

I wrote a couple of years ago that I don’t believe that some on the far right actually believe what they’re saying. Ann Coulter is one of a few people in the media that keeps me from feeling comfortable about calling myself a conservative. I don’t want to be associate with that kind of hate. She’s one of those people who simply want to pick a fight with folks who don’t believe exactly what she believes about the world. She’s the Rosie O’Donnell of the conservatives. I don’t think she believes what she’s saying all that much, I think it’s simply a matter of getting her name in the media to sell her latest book, which keeps her name in the media, so she can write another book… Maybe I’m wrong…maybe she’s the Paris Hilton of the conservatives…I mean seriously, what has she done that’s all that important to society?

Dump Sweet Dump

02. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Air Force, Domestic, General, Home Front, Military, Pajama Game

Some heartburn noted this week in some quarters about the Washington Post story about the treatment and the living conditions of outpatients at Walter Reed Army Hospital, and why the milblogosphere is not having a conniption-fit over that, with many dark hints about how we would be screeching like a cage of howler-monkeys if it had happened under another administration.

Not having a background in medical administration, or any particular knowledge of the set-up at Walter Reed, or even personal knowledge of anyone undergoing treatment there, I’d have to defer involvement in this fracas… except for a comment on the reported decrepitude of the building where many of the out-patients were living. From the description it sounds like, and most probably is, a dump.

All of these might come as a surprise to the dear little civilian writers of the WaPo and it’s ilk, who see the nice, shiny public side of the gold-plated bases, and assume that the rest of the base, post or fort is similarly bright and shiny and new. Au contraire, as they say in France, and ‘twas ever thus: George Washington lived in a house at Valley Forge, but everyone else lived in something considerably less commodious.

The reason that no one in the mil-blogosphere is hyperventilating over that aspect of the story is that most of us have lived in, or did business in worse, during our time in service. Peeling paint, leaking plumbing, sagging floors, corroding pipes, herds of rampant vermin wandering untrammeled in cheap and badly-maintained structures that are two or three decades (or more) past their best-if-used-by date? Been there, done that, got a raft of horror stories of my own.

Let’s see, there was the old high school on Misawa AB, back in the days when it was a sleepy little Security Service base; it was housed in three long sheds which had been stables when Misawa AB was a Japanese Army cavalry post in the late 1930ies. On a hot summer day the place still smelled distinctly of horses. It was slated to be replaced during the Carter Administration, except that Jimmeh passed on the defense spending bill which would have paid for it; another good reason to despise him even before bungling the Iran Embassy hostage crisis. Even the relatively newer facilities on MAB then were no prize: famously the hospital barracks was in such bad shape that a guy once walked into the upstairs shower room and crashed straight through the floor into the downstairs shower room. This was the place where I developed my life-to-date habit of storing all non-refrigerated foodstuffs in sealed jars, since the barracks I lived in then had roaches. Lots and lots of roaches.

The infrastructure on Zaragoza AB wasn’t too awful— this was an Air Force Base, where we do cling to some standards— but the water pipes were so corroded that tap-water on base came out colored orange, about the color and consistency of Tang. People living in base housing spent a lot of money on bottled water.

The infrastructure at the Yongsan Garrison, ROK was not that much better. A couple of decades of living with the expectation of relocating the mission elsewere had left the electrical grid in such shakey condition as to make power-outages a part of the expected routine. The water pipes were so corroded that I earned fame everlasting on the day I walked into the Air Force female dorm bathroom and noticed that the shower-heads emitted a bare trickle. I took out my trusty Swiss-Army knife, unscrewed the shower-head-plate and emptied about a quarter of a cup of crud out of each. This was also the place where some of the Army troops were domiciled in Korean War-era Quonset huts. In the fall, CE had to hold training classes for the dorm managers to teach them how to run the antique kerosene heaters that warmed them… the heaters were so old that the average soldier would never in his or her life laid eyes on artifacts of such antiquity.

The AFRTS station building in Greenland had mice so tame that one of the board operaters tried to train them to sit up and beg for food. A broadcaster friend of mine who was stationed at a Pacific Island Navy base was warming a pan of canned chili in a saucepan, when a huge rat jumped into the hot chili… and jumped out again, and skittered down the hallway of the dorm, leaving little rat-footprints of chili con carne.

Maintenance of facilities; it’s one of those dull, dull issues that hardly anyone ever pays attention to except those who have to deal directly with it on a daily basis. It’s not one of those sexy military spending issues; it is more of enduring headache, for there is never quite enough money approved for a tenth of local needs. What there is, winds up being spread as thin as a pat of butter on an acre of toast.

Overseas bases, and facilities that are on the verge of being closed generally get last call; and I’d note that politicians and investagative reporters are usually among the first to make a lot of hay when there is money spent on an aging military facility about to be closed.

So call me grimly amused, when they are making hay about money not being spent on an aging military facility.

Just for the heck of it though, the next time I have an appointment at BAMC, here in San Antonio, I’ll snoop around and take a look at what the outpatient troop quarters look like… but the last time I looked, six months ago, they all looked pretty good.

Any recollections of infamously awful troop billets are invited, of course. Misery loves company.

American Idol 2007

28. February 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: General, That's Entertainment!

Wow. There’s only about four people out of the current 20 that I care to listen to.

Randy, Paul and Simon really picked some average singers this year.

Mid-Week Amusement

28. February 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: General, That's Entertainment!

An authoritative compendium of the fifty nuttiest pop-singers of all time. Oh, yeah…The top of the nuttiest pops is pretty well a given, being that guy who started out as a poor young black boy and seems to have finished as a rich old white woman. Madonna is left out, although most of the usual suspects are there… including David Bowie. (who famously forgot most of an entire decade)
And then there is Sting, whose latest musical project is a collection of songs by John Dowland, which I think are an amazingly good concept. Even if you have never heard of John Dowland.

Enjoy, and be amazed and amused!

(unclear pronoun corrected – thanks!)

Therapy Culture

26. February 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Pajama Game

Among one of the small stories that I remember hearing, or reading after the monster tsunami that struck South-East Asia on the day after Christmas several years ago was the one about the clouds of mental-health professionals, breathlessly hurrying in to offer grief and trauma counseling to the understandably traumatized survivors… only to discover that… well, most of them were getting along fine. And if not fine, at least reasonably OK; yes, they were grieving, they were traumatized by all sorts of losses, their lives and livelihoods, their communities and their families had been brutally ripped apart, but a large number of the survivors seemed inclined to be rather stoic about it all. They seemed to be more interested in pulling up their socks, metaphorically speaking, and getting on with it. It appeared that, according to the story, their culture and religion predisposed them to a mind-set that said: the incomprehensible does indeed happen, wheel of life, turn of fate and all that, and when it happens, pull up your socks and get on with it.

The peripatetic grief counselors seemed a little at a loss, that their services were in so little demand in the face of (to them) such obvious need. I was also left wondering if wall-to-wall counseling was somewhat akin to taking a ton of over-the-counter remedies for a case of the flu or a cold. In most cases, you’re gonna get over it, anyway.

When my parents lost their house, lock stock and contents in the Paradise Mountain/Valley Center fire in 2003, Blondie and I were monitoring the whole situation from a distance. This was the house that my parents had built together, after owning the land for nearly twenty-five years previously. It had everything in it that I remember growing up with, from the spiky Danish Moderne teak dining room set, to a complete run of American Heritage magazines, from the days when it was in hard-cover and without advertisements, and every shred of mementoes and furniture inherited from our grandparents and Great-Aunt Nan… everything that had not been diverted to my sister Pip, my brothers and I. My parents were left with two vehicles, the clothes they stood up in, their pets, and a small number of things my mother put into her pockets when she did a final sweep through the house as the fire roared up the hill, or that the firemen grabbed off the walls when the heat of it began exploding the windows inwards.

They were rocked… for about a day. And then they borrowed a camper, and moved right back onto their hill, and began planning to rebuild the house. As my mother philosophically explained many times to us, their friends, and those members of the disaster-relief community offering counseling and therapy, she and my father had gotten off rather lucky in comparison to others. They were retired, and did not have to rebuild a business, they had escaped the fire with their pets and themselves physically unscathed, and they were completely insured. All they had lost were things. And one more thing: they had lived in fire country for many years, and always in the back of their mind was this very possibility. They knew the risks and accepted them willingly. The odds caught up with them, at last but they pulled up their socks and got on with it. I own to being quite proud of my parents for being so stoical about the whole thing… really, it harks back to my current obsession, the 19th Century. I’ve been reading a lot of memoirs, and accounts of fairly shattering events, and yet the people writing them afterwards seem remarkably un-traumatized and quite grounded, following upon events that by twentieth-century mental health practice would have justified a life-time valium prescription and a couple of decades of survivor-support meetings. As I told Mom and Dad about one of the characters I am writing about , “Today, he’d be in therapy for post-traumatic stress… but he’s a Victorian, so he’s only a little haunted.”

I have to admit to a sneaking affection for the Victorians; at once terribly sentimental and operatic in their emotions, but at the same time fully aware that bad things could, and indeed happen fairly often. Husbands buried wives with depressing frequency, also wives burying husbands ditto, and parents buried small children ditto and vice versa; accidents of industry, transportation and war occurred with similarly discouraging frequency. Victorian death rituals are infamous for what we have thought, during the enlightened century just past, to be terribly over-wrought, indulgent and … well, just too morbid. But I do wonder, if maybe they might have been better able to cope, and emerge being able to function after catastrophic tragedies, knowing that the possibility of such experiences was always out there. Sure, there were people back then who were entirely shattered by various traumatic experiences, and self-medication with a variety of interesting substances was not something of recent invention— opiate addiction positively soared among injured Civil War veterans— but still and all, one does wonder.

Discuss among yourselves, if interested!

The Daily Brief