Who Are You? What Do You Want? Where Are You Going? Whom Do You Serve – And Whom Do You Trust?!
I do believe we’re witnessing the downfall of Western Civilization.
And yes, I will watch it again. Are you kidding? Shatner? Young dancers a la` Dean Martin’s Gold Diggers? Over the top flamboyant gay men as contestants for Shatner to dance with and mock out? Naval Aviators? (Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say it.) How can you not love this show?
Seriously, that’s entertainment.
Disclaimer: Yes, I know, I’m weird, we’ve established that haven’t we? Move along.
The elk was probably eating fermented apples in a garden and had become inebriated, Caiman said.
Elk can weigh as much as 500 kilos (1,100 lb) and personnel at the school described the erratic male as “completely mad.”
“The children are really scared,” the receptionist at the school near Molndal in southern Sweden told the Gothenburg Post.
Caiman said police had contacted hunters and that if the elk did not calm down, it could be shot.
And somewhere Rocky is laughing his furry butt off.
(More from my so far unpublished epic of the emigrant trail)
Some weeks later, when the Montgomery and Townsend wagons were still a little short of Kanesville, the Ugly Grey threw a shoe, and lost it in the deep mud. It had rained all morning, but now the clouds were breaking up into innocent fluffy white clumps scattered across a clear and pale sky. The two wagons had been much inconvenienced by rain, since it made the road a swampy, muddy morass, and brought the river far enough up to cover the trunks of trees on the riverbank. Francis and Allen Montgomery waded knee-deep in churned muck, and they were forced to the expedient of keeping dry firewood in the wagon, so that it would burn well enough in the evenings for Elizabeth and Sarah to cook a meal over it.John dismounted immediately, almost the minute that Ugly Grey began to favor his left rear leg, but there was no finding the missing shoe in the mud, not with the way other wagon wheels and other hoofed draft animals had turned it over and over again. Allen and Francis halted the wagons, while he did a quick search. The driver of a heavy horse-team dray wagon coming the other way saw them by the side of the road, and called out.
“What kind of trouble are you having, friend?”
“My horse lost a shoe… How far are we from Kanesville? Can you recommend us to a blacksmith there?” On the clear horizon ahead of them hung a hazy smear of wood smoke, too large for a single farmstead.
“Not far… three, four miles… That where you’re bound?”
“For today… we mean to join an emigrant company there, for California. Did you just come from there? Do you know where they are camped?”
“Out west of town, in a grove of trees by the river, waiting for the river to go down,” Replied the drayman, slapping his reins, “And there’s a good few blacksmiths there… but there’s a man with a little forge set up half-a-mile back, if you ain’t keen on walking all the way to Kanesville.”
“Thank you, for your good words,” John tipped his hat, and told Allen and Francis, “Heard that? I’ll stop at this roadside forge, and catch up with you at the campsite.”
Okay, tune out O’Reilly and just mostly watch Kirsten Powers, a woman who single-handedly may be saving the image of the Democratic Party. Her and Malkin have some of the best debating going on these days. And really, how sad is that when you think about it? Go watch Malkin completely drop her perfect persona and say “balls.”
I think we need a photoshop contest.
Photoshop this caption:
MICHELLE MALKIN ATE MY BALLS!
A little new school, a little old school. Completely sophmoric. So…Tuesday.
I was a huge fan of Matt Groening back when I was a kid. His Akbar ‘n’ Jeff strips were published in Chicago’s Underground Weekly Reader as I was coming of age and entering college. We’d see who was playing where and then we’d find Akbar ‘n’ Jeff and then later, his weird rabbit people. There was some funny stuff back then.
Allahpundit’s got a clip from last week’s Simpsons. Apparently Matt and I have grown in different directions. Nothing like one of your once favorite shows taking your service and spitting on it.
Oh and Matt? I stopped watching The Simpsons about four years ago. Random trashing of the status quo just quit being funny. But it’s kind of sad that you’ve become another one of the folks that believes those of us in uniform are stupid and ignorant. I know a LOT of folks in uniform who STILL find you funny. Hmmm…
Okay, there are a few rules I live by that I normally don’t break. One of them is to always always always make a full backup before I make any changes to a website. Especially someone else’s website.
This morning I realized that I hadn’t really upgraded the site with the latest version of WordPress and had simply mananged to dump all of the files into a sub-directory. I was in a hurry and I just downloaded the recommended minimum files from WordPress’ easy to follow instructions. Sigh. Those of you who tried to log on this morning saw the result of that. I overwrote an apparently important file and trashed the site. Oh the files were still here and everything else survived just fine, I just made it impossible to see any of it.
The other rule I broke was that I didn’t leave myself any time to fix stuff after I made changes. I knew I had to leave the house at Oh My God it’s Early and I still made the changes.
I’m an idiot. Many apologies to all of you here at TDB and I can guarantee you it will never happen again.
I’m not saying I’ll never make another mistake, I’ll just never again subject you all to my own wishful thinking.
Thanks to Paul from DangerWest for cleaning up today’s mess. I owe that man a more beers than I can count.
And may I say, “Oh Wow.” to the latest version of WordPress. This is very nice. WYSIWYG. I like WYSIWIG.
If you had told me that a bunch of singing slugs acting as a Greek Chorus could have made me laugh as hard as that, I would have thought you were nuts. Then again, it is Aardman, the same folks who blessed us with Wallace and Grommit. Do NOT dis Wallace and Grommit. You will be smitten. They are sacred in our house. Silly is a state of grace.
This movie takes silly seriously. If you and your family don’t laugh your ass off, you’re dead.
I KNOW Roger Ebert panned it. Whenever I hear Roger Ebert I think, “Yes, the man who wrote, Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens for Russ Meyers. I’m paying attention to his opinion because…?”
You know, once you have control of your database, fixing annoying little crap is EASY.
I want to send out much love and gratitude to our hosts at Cyberwurx. They’re a royal pain in the ass when it comes to making sure that you are who you say you are (a very good thing for a host) but once they’ve got verification, they’re golden when it comes to helping out.
I still have a lot of work to do but at least the comments are back up and running.
It’s going to be annoying again as I had to re-activate the Spaminator until I get some of the upgrades taken care of. There is NO way I’m going to leave us open with no spam protection.
Upgrades are still coming. But now I can back everything up before I do it.
Also.
We’re down to just a few regular writers again. Some of our crew have gone off on their own and good on them. We wish them the best. That means we have room for additional writers. Drop Sgt Mom a line and we’ll see about getting you an account.
Tim
Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep,
Its own appointed limits keep.
Oh hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!
Eternal Father, lend Thy grace To
those with wings who fly thro’ space,
Thro wind and storm, thro’ sun and rain,
Oh bring them safely home again.
Oh Father, hear an humble prayer,
For those in peril in the air!
Oh Trinity of love and pow’r,
Our brethren shield in danger’s hour,
From rock and tempest, fire and foe,
Protect them where so e’er they go.
Thus evermore shall rise to Thee
Glad hymns of praise from land and sea!
Summer has been mild here in South Texas, and so has the fall been: unnaturally so, for today it was into the 90ies, which made it necessary to turn on the air conditioning one more time. Usually it can be done without sometime in late September, or early October; the heat breaks and it is cool at night. It has been so mild, that the leaves on the trees are just beginning to fall; we haven’t had that prolonged cold snap that briskly reminds them that they need to be letting go and moving on, chop-chop. I trimmed one of the grapevines in front a couple of weeks ago… and the poor innocent thing is putting out new leaves already, under the delusion that winter has come and gone.
This has been truly the year of butterflies; they are everywhere, about the puddles and in the late afternoon a whole fair of them orbits the almond verbena. I have two, the size of small trees now, and the ends of the branches are hung with tiny white bracts that smell amazingly sweet on still air…is this fall, now, or is it already spring? We have two gardening seasons in Texas, and this is one of them. My favorite, as it happens. For the next six months, the weather will be lovely and mild— there may be a freeze or two, after Christmas, but nothing much to worry over, and in the meantime, there are butterflies. There are the little brown snout-somethings, but now we have monarchs, great lovely tiger-striped things and more than I have ever seen before, orbiting the buddleia bushes as if they can’t bear to tear themselves away, while the snout-somethings monopolize the verbena.
The sadness that we are supposed to feel in autumn for the end of all green and lovely things is focused this year on the street behind the neighborhood where I live. Stahl Road was a narrow strip of blacktop, a single lane in either direction, which for the longest time seems to have been no direction at all. There were empty fields on either side and deep grassy verges, and the backside of other developments. A couple of churches, the elementary school which is our polling place, and the high school which Blondie would have gone to if I hadn’t packed her off to the tender academic care of the scholar nuns of St. Francis, the site of a pumping station and water tower, a cluster of gas stations and little businesses at the intersections, and Ernie the Veggie Guy, selling produce off the end of his pick-up under the shade of a tree at the corner… not much traffic and all of that easily accommodated by a narrow back road, shaded with a double row of trees. But then one cross road was cut through all the way to the highway, and a couple of other developments went in, and the development we live in was extended all the way to Stahl Road, and an exit road cut through to it, and the traffic has been all too much for that poor little back-road. The City decreed months ago that Stahl Road was to be widened, but our rejoicing was mixed. The project would eliminate that place at the intersection of Stahl and O’Connor that accumulated a puddle of water the size of Lake Superior every time it rained… but it would cost us the trees that lined the roadway for most of it.
The trees would have to go; no two ways about it. Not enough space between them to accommodate two lanes-plus-center-turning lane, no way around that. And the trees were not the sort that people chain themselves to, or institute lawsuits about. They were not very well grown, or attractive trees, to be baldly truthful… not oaks or cypress or redwood, even, or very well grown or cunningly planted…just the usual sort of Texas trash-tree that sprouts wherever hedges have been, in a neat line along the verge, and making valiant attempts to meet in the center over the road and shading the sidewalk. They weren’t much but they were there and familiar most importantly, provided shade against the sun. This is a commodity rare and treasured in what is essentially a desert.
This week, the city crew came and worked their way along, felling every one of them, chopping the trunks into sections and methodically feeding the branches into a chipper. Another crew, with a small bulldozer, followed in their wake, grubbing up the roots and leveling the mounds on which the trees grew, and now it looks quite terribly bare and raw… and new. Another crew has been staging great piles of conduit; a second has been ripping up the sidewalks which had been previously built, and a third, relocating the utility poles to a position giving wider room to the new and wider roadway. The backsides of all those houses which were sheltered by the trees must be feeling their nakedness most particularly this week. It’s all going very fast, as these things happen in San Antonio, and our fear is that at some point all this work will stop and be held in stasis for a three or four years. The road looks so terrible without those trees, poor things that they were. I hardly know my own turn-in, without the row of spindly and yet valiant trees to guide me, after dark. All this week, Blondie and I have been thinking of this song, whenever we drove along this road:
“All the Birds in the forest they bitterly weep
Saying “where shall we shelter or where shall we sleep?”
For the Oak and the Ash they all cutten down
And the walls of Bonny Portmore are all down to the ground”
No, it wasn’t much of a forest, but we were used to it, and now it has been all cut down to the ground. Perhaps they will plant new, when they are done with it all… something sturdy, and fast-growing, and maybe as rich scented as the almond verbena trees.
No matter where you are, what your doing or how you feel about the Marine Corps: Happy Birthday nonetheless
The following will be read to the command on the 10th of November, 1921, and hereafter on the 10th of November of every year. Should the order not be received by the 10th of November, 1921, it will be read upon receipt.
(1) On November 10, 1775, a Corps of Marines was created by a resolution of Continental Congress. Since that date many thousand men have borne the name “Marine”. In memory of them it is fitting that we who are Marines should commemorate the birthday of our corps by calling to mind the glories of its long and illustrious history.
(2) The record of our corps is one which will bear comparison with that of the most famous military organizations in the world’s history. During 90 of the 146 years of its existence the Marine Corps has been in action against the Nation’s foes. From the Battle of Trenton to the Argonne, Marines have won foremost honors in war, and is the long eras of tranquility at home, generation after generation of Marines have grown gray in war in both hemispheres and in every corner of the seven seas, that our country and its citizens might enjoy peace and security.
(3) In every battle and skirmish since the birth of our corps, Marines have acquitted themselves with the greatest distinction, winning new honors on each occasion until the term “Marine” has come to signify all that is highest in military efficiency and soldierly virtue.
(4) This high name of distinction and soldierly repute we who are Marines today have received from those who preceded us in the corps. With it we have also received from them the eternal spirit which has animated our corps from generation to generation and has been the distinguishing mark of the Marines in every age. So long as that spirit continues to flourish Marines will be found equal to every emergency in the future as they have been in the past, and the men of our Nation will regard us as worthy successors to the long line of illustrious men who have served as “Soldiers of the Sea” since the founding of the Corps.
John A. Lejeune,
Major General Commandant
As you all must have noticed, I’ve let some of the electronic house-keeping around here get WAY behind. Electronic dust bunnies have grown to epic proportions and we’ve got the internet equivalent of rust eating away at our data.
We may have lost the comments database forever. Don’t know yet. I have no way of knowing if the upgrades I’m going to make are going to fix our current problem or nuke all of our data, including our posts, forever. Why not just back it up? Well…that’s very complicated and I don’t understand it entirely, so I’m not going to go there. Let’s just say we can’t under current conditions and leave it at that.
I’m not going to start right away. I need to give all contributors and previous contributors time to go through their posts and back them up. I’m thinking Friday and Saturday should do give us all plenty of time to get whatever they need before I start knocking out walls and putting in kitty trails.
Please shoot me an email when you’re done backing up whatever you want to grab.
Thanks for your understanding.
Somehow the comments database seems to have picked up a bit of a bug. I’ve got most of a three day weekend to work on it.
Your patience is appreciated.
(part two: part one here)
The men of the Bidwell-Bartleson Party, who had— against all advice and counsel— decided to continue on for California had much in common. They were all young, most under the age of thirty. None of them had been into the Far West until this journey, although one of them was a relative by marriage to the Sublette fur-trading family. The Kelsey brothers, Andrew and Benjamin were rough Kentucky backwoodsmen. Two of them had been schoolteachers, but all had grown up on farms, were accustomed to firearms and hunting…and hard work, of which the unknown trail would offer plenty. No less than four of them kept diaries, three of which are still in existence. The diarists themselves narrated a zesty and optimistic tale of their adventures, taking some of the edge off of the desperation that must have been felt as they blundered farther and farther into the trackless wilderness. They set off with nine wagons in the middle of August, following the Bear River towards the Great Salt Lake. They had seen a map which showed two rivers flowing west from this lake, but it seemed that was a mere fantasy on the part of the map-maker. After a week or so, they camped north of the Lake and sent two men to Fort Hall seeking additional supplies and guidance. In both they were disappointed; there were no supplies to be spared from the fort stores, and there was no guide to be hired. The only advice they could get from Fort Hall was not to go too far north, into a bandlands of steep canyons, or too far south into the sandy desert. But away to the west there was a river flowing towards the south-west. That was called then Mary’s or Ogden’s River (now the Humboldt). If they could find and follow it, it would guide them on long way.
On such sketchy advice, they continued westwards; a dry stretch around the north of the lake, until despairing, they turned north and camped at the foot of a mountain range. There was grass and water there, as they would come to know if they had not worked that out already. They traded gunpowder and bullets for some berries from friendly Indians camped nearby. At this point, they may have realized it would be better to send out scouts ahead, and party captain Bartleson and another man named Hopper rode out on a scout to look for Mary’s River. They did not return for some days, during which the party abandoned one wagon and moved gradually westward. They were probably following the tracks left by the two scouts, who did not return until eleven days were passed and they had been despaired of. Owners of two wagons hired Indian guides and went south on their own, covering two days journey, until Bartleson and Hopper returned to the reminder with word they had found a small stream that seemed to lead into the Mary’s River.
They all headed southwards across the desert, southwards again after camping at a place called Rabbit Creek. By mischance, they had missed the headwaters of a creek that emptied into the river they were searching for, and in another couple of days, the team animals began to fail. The Kelsey brothers abandoned their wagons, packing their remaining supplies onto the backs of their mules and saddle horses, and the party continued with increasing desperation, south and west, and to the north-west again, until it became clear that the wagons were a useless, dragging burden. In the middle of September the wagons were abandoned, about where present-day US Highway 40 crosses the Pequop Summit. They made packs for the mules… they tried to make packs for the oxen, who promptly bucked them off again. They set off again, giving much of what they couldn’t take to friendly Indians, and operating mostly by chance at this point, found and followed the Humboldt River. They supplied themselves by hunting and gradually and one by one, killing their draft oxen. Nancy Kelsey, the indomitable wife of Benjamin was reduced to carrying her year-old daughter, herself barefoot… and yet, as one of their comrades recollected later, “she bore the fatigues of the journey with so much heroism, patience and kindness…” She had embarked on the journey, declaring that she would rather endure hardships with her husband, than anxieties over his absence.
Gradually, as historian George Stewart put it, “their journey became one of those starvation marches so common in the history of the West”. They soldiered on through the desert, eventually finding their way over the Sierra at the Sonora Pass, only to be caught in the wilderness canyons at the headwaters of the Stanislaus River. They did not eat well until they reached the lower stretches, the gentle San Joaquin valley where the men— still well supplied with powder and shot— bagged enough deer for a feast. They arrived at a ranch nearby early in November of 1841.
They were the first party of emigrants to arrive overland, although with scarcely more than they wore on their backs, or carried. Among their numbers were included the future first mayor of San Jose, the founder of the city of Stockton, and the founder of Chico, a delegate to the convention that nominated Abraham Lincoln, and two or three who were merely quietly prosperous. The very last living member of the Bidwell-Bartleson Party died in 1903 at the age of 83. Given their hairs-breadth adventures on the emigrant trail, I imagine that he, like most of his comrades would have been pleasantly surprised at having the words “natural causes” or “old age” appear anywhere in their obituaries.
Some of our regulars inform me that they’re still having problems. I’ll be playing with the filters until I find something resembling a balance. I’m not willing to open it too wide because frankly, I LOVE having the more annoying spam auto-nuked outright and I’m guessing the rest of the crew is just as pleased.
Late this afternoon I received this email from the Air Force Personnel Center.
This is to inform you that your Retirement application has been approved.
I have no plans to retire from The Daily Brief.
If nothing else, the next 7 months should be interesting.
I suppose it was inevitable, depsite last week’s assurances to the contrary. I wonder how the active duty troops view this…
…and I’m sorry, I’m having a difficult time expressing any shock or suprise after the past couple of years.
Apparently they already have the House and have 2 seats in the Senate that are still jump balls.
I’m of the, “Well, you wanted it, let’s see what you do with it.” school. Both parties have another two years to start getting this crap right.
I’m also very curious to see if the violence in Iraq lets up. If it does, what exactly does that mean?
As I was driving home tonight I heard “Live and Let Die” as done by Guns ‘n’ Roses.
That may be one of the best rewrites rework of all time.
What’s your favorite?
Please let me know if you have any problems posting or commenting. And by that I mean email me because…obviously if you’re having trouble commenting…
Not that I’ll get to it until much later tonight…I’ve got my monthly appointment with my massage therapist and NOBODY gets in the way of that.
TMI? Only if you’ve got a vivid imagination and some idea of what I look like nekkid. Otherwise, it’s kind of pretty when you think about it.
Thanks.
Me, I’m still favoring Cowboy Blob’s but I’ll openly admit the anti-Windows bias.
The westward movement of Americans rolled west of the Appalachians and hung up for a decade or two on the barrier of the Mississippi-Missouri. It was almost an interior sea-coast, the barrier between the settled lands, and the un-peopled and tree-less desert beyond, populated by wild Indians. To be sure, there were scattered enclaves, as far-distant as the stars in the age of “shanks’ mare” and team animals hitched to wagons, or led in a pack-train: far California, equally distant Oregon, the pueblos of Santa Fe, and Texas. And men in exploring parties, or on trade had ventured out to the ends of the known continent… and by the winter of 1840 there were reports of what had been found. Letters, rumor, common talk among the newspapers, and meeting-places had put the temptation and the possibility in peoples’ minds, to the point where an emigrating society had been formed over that winter. The members had pledged to meet, all suitably outfitted and supplied on the 9th of May, 1841 at a rendezvous twenty miles west of Independence, on the first leg of the Santa Fe Trail, intent for California, although none of them had at the time any clear idea of where to go, in order to get there.
A handful of wagons, two or three at a time straggled into the meeting place, at Sapling Grove, in the early weeks of May, until there were about thirty-five men, which was considered a suitable size of the party. There were, in addition to the men, ten children and five women: three wives, the widowed sister of one of them, and a single unmarried woman, and it would appear that none of them had been into the far West before. They had a vague notion of the latitude of San Francisco Bay, and perhaps were dithering for some days over whether to follow the long- established Santa Fe Trail, or the slight track which wandered off in the direction of the fur-trading post at Fort Laramie and from there on to Oregon. While they were still making up their minds, a small party of Jesuit missionaries led by the legendary Father Pierre De Smet and bound for Ft. Hall, in the Oregon territory arrived. The Jesuits had hired the equally legendary mountain man, Thomas “Broken Hand” Fitzpatrick as their guide, and the California party attached themselves to this party, no doubt with a certain amount of relief. Sufficient to the days’ travel were the evils thereof, and the Jesuits and “Broken Hand” would accompany them for the first thousand miles.
They left on the 12th of May, after electing one John Bartleson as nominal captain… but like the Stephens-Townsend Party of three years later, seemed to have functioned more or less as a company of equals. They moved slowly for the first few days, having gotten word that another wagon and a small party of men was trying to catch up to them; ten days later, they did so. Among the late-comers was Joseph Chiles, who would eventually cross and recross the California trail many times over the following fifteen years. Another three days later, the party was joined by a single elderly horseman, traveling alone, penniless and without weapons, trusting in the protection of the God he served, the Methodist Rev. Joseph Williams. The Reverend Williams had taken it into his head to go forth and minister to the heathen Indians. Arriving at Sapling Grove to find the party already gone, he had ridden alone through the wilderness to join them. Whether this was an act of jaw-dropping naivety, or saintliness is a matter of perspective.
Under the stern direction of Fitzpatrick, the party reached Fort Laramie after 42 days of hard travel. The party traveled in a mixture of conveyances and teams: The Jesuits in four mule-drawn carts and a single small wagon, then eight emigrant wagons drawn by horse and mule teams, then a half-dozen drawn by ox teams. The cracking pace set by the mule carts meant many exhausting hours in harness for the slower oxen, which a single day of rest at Ft. Laramie did nothing to make up for. And supplies were already running short. They hunted for buffalo along the valley of the Sweetwater, and met up with a party of 60 trappers on the Green River, who told them flat-out that it was impossible to take wagons over the mountains and desert and mountains again to California. At that point a small group of seven men packed it in and headed back to Missouri, and all but thirty one men and Mrs. Nancy Kelsey decided to carry on with the trail towards Ft. Hall and Oregon.
Their further adventures are well-documented, as there were four diarists among them. A fair proportion of them became successful and pillars of their respective communities in later life, although one of them, Talbot Greene later turned out to be an embezzler escaping the authorities. He was pleasant, well-liked and trusted by the others, serving as their doctor, and carried with him to California a large chunk of lead. No one could fathom why he needed quite so much of this commodity; even then, it was considered bad from to pry too much into others’ personal affairs.
(To be continued)
Started with Ender’s Game and then read everything I could get my hands on. For Science Fiction, there are few out there who can weave a tale as well.
And now there’s another reason: Civilization Watch.
There is only one issue in this election that will matter five or ten years from now, and that’s the War on Terror.
And the success of the War on Terror now teeters on the fulcrum of this election.
If control of the House passes into Democratic hands, there are enough withdraw-on-a-timetable Democrats in positions of prominence that it will not only seem to be a victory for our enemies, it will be one.
Unfortunately, the opposite is not the case — if the Republican Party remains in control of both houses of Congress there is no guarantee that the outcome of the present war will be favorable for us or anyone else.
But at least there will be a chance.
I say this as a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government threatens many values that I hold to be important to America’s role as a light among nations.
He lays out a Democrat’s Dilemma better than most.
Via JayTea over at Wizbang.
And yes, I would have linked this even if he hadn’t linked to the PaintShop This One Contest.
I am watching an episode of South Park and I am confused. The Democrats seem to support homosexual activty and the institutional acceptance thereof, and the Republicans totally disavow said homosexual bahavior, yet a lot of the gays in the recent media seem to be Republican. The Dems are jumping all over that, but are we really seeing a human foible that affects both parties?
I learned a couple of months ago that a close colleague had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer that apparently is somewhat advanced. He has been undergoing chemo and radiation therapy in the hopes of reducing the tumor to an operable size. He is a fairly young man in his thirties, and recently married to a wonderful woman with two children. She was previously married and involved, respectively, with two men not particularly stable spousal material.
In order to help with the expenses and reduced disability income, several people at work organized a benefit that RHG, Real wife and I attended last night. The festivities began with a Midwestern hog roast. Loyal Readers may recall that I am a great fan of New England clambakes, but a hog roast comes close (a real Texas barbecue is on my list of things to do). How can you beat a locally slaughtered whole hog cooked over an open fire served with homemade potato salad and baked beans? We then had about an hours worth of live music by a local band composed of forty and fifty something year old rockers. Other musicians of local notoriety shared the stage throughout the night – all very good. Yours truly demurred (all I can really play well is the opening riff of Over the Hills and Far Away). The band then took a break for a couple of hours and hundreds of donated items were auctioned. Loyal Readers may also recall that I am a sucker for auctions, having furnished much of my home at local antique sales. A silent auction was held throughout the evening for numerous other items. Then the band played on until about one a.m.
The person for whom the benefit was held, in cahoots with another colleague, started Hawaiian Shirt Friday a couple of years ago. I think that the original reason was to give our then-clueless management something to be paranoid about, although I cannot confirm that to have been the motivation. In any case, a dedicated group of us wear the most outrageously hideous Hawaiian shirts every Friday, winter included. I have a nice supply of Havana Jack silk shirts purchased at a Kohl’s clearance sale, although many of the guys have found that ebay offers the ugliest. In any case, Hawaiian shirts and leis were the attire of choice for the evening.
Attendance was, in a word, unbelievable. Fire department occupancy regulations were broken. Former colleagues came from as far as San Diego and North Carolina. Real Wife and I were fortunate in finding a table early with another couple, and there were plenty of other early and pre-teens for RHG to hang out with (thereby precluding the agony of hanging out with Mom and Dad). Real Wife was a little stressed about not being able to have a cigarette given the presence of her students, until I pointed out that the parking lot was a side door away. Given the upcoming auction, we limited our intake to two bottles each of Old Milwaukee Light (the beer of the gods); RHG had sufficient ID to drink Shirley Temples. As is usually the case, the auction brought some outrageous bidding, with a strawberry pie and can of Cool-Whip going for $500. The buyer, a former irreverent (I mean Monty Python irreverent) engineer now working in San Diego, then auctioned it again – offering his face as a target for said pie. Two hundred dollars later the offer was accepted and consummated. For my part, I bought a beautiful set of red-oak mission style end tables crafted by one of our more woodworking-gifted engineers. My friend who has cancer comes from a family of Midwestern dirt track racers (You may be familiar with the Outlaw genre – open cockpit with huge V-8s and lots of wing), so the organizers requested auction items from various NASCAR teams. Almost without exception they responded with t-shirts and hats which, in these parts, are considered uniform of the day. The number 8 is huge in these parts, and it brought the biggest money.
My friend was having a good day as far as the effects of the various therapies, and was therefore able to attend. You will never find a more self-effacing, kind, and true-hearted individual. His wife, when recently asked how she was holding up, replied that he saved her life, and now it was her duty to save his. Before I left, I caught a glimpse of him standing alone, worn and tired, but yet watching lovingly at the hundreds of people who had gathered to help him and his family. It was a moment of indescribable sadness for me, knowing that the odds do not favor him. Nonetheless, I admired him for the fact that he has led his life in such a manner that so many people would come from all over the country to support him. How many of us can lay claim to that?
What have I learned from my friend? Drink milk, be an optimist, listen to what others have to say, be anxious to learn what others would teach you, and finally, be an optimist.
Although I still think the alleged DNC schedule is hilarious, I am somewhat biased and had therefore planned to write a corresponding schedule for the RNC. While I do believe that the Democrats are clueless as to a) geopolitical realities, b) economics (to name two), the Republicans have their share of buffoons and head-up-their-a** ideas (who could forget the bloviating that went on during the Clinton impeachment hearings – I mean, after all, he likely did what they said but it didn’t spell the end of the republic)
Loyal reader Al beat me to the punch with the following comment that was automatically deleted by our spam software. I am told that our technical staff (that would be Timmer) is working on this issue, but in the meantime I think it only fair and appropriate to share Al’s thoughts. Without further ado, here they are (Al, I apologize of the formatting is incorrect – it came to me via email which had added various symbols that I removed – let me know if corrections are in order).
“Followed by the Republican convention, no doubt:
11am: Ringing endorsement of the war by the Young Republicans
Noon: Military recruiters appear; everyone runs for the hills except Bob Dole & GHB
1pm: Recruiters gone; convention back on. Vote to ban gay marriage unanimously approved
2pm: Gay massage & amphetamine break
3pm: Time to construct a manifesto. Go through Democrat manifesto and insert phrase “Only terrorists and their sympathizers would…” before every proposition
4pm: Prize draw in which everyone nominates next country to invade when the economy’s tanking and everyone remembers you still haven’t found Bin Laden. Jamaica wins as it’s close enough to Cuba for core Republicans not to know the difference, but usefully completely unarmed.
5pm: Addendum to draft military spending proposition put forward to define abortion clinics in California as asymmetric acts of war; doctor-killing formally approved
6pm: President Bush appears wearing a scarf as it’s cold outside. Offers this as categorical religious and scientific proof that global warming is a fallacy. Woolly mass baaas (sic) loudly and approves this as policy.
…and so on.
Actually, the Democrat list was funny, but only if you realize that there’s a near-infinite seam of venal, thieving immorality on the other side which means that “fish” and “barrel” doesn’t even begin to describe it.”
Thanks Al.
Reader and fellow mil-blog webmaster Will Donaldson reminded me this week… as of Sgt/Cpl Blondie wouldn’t have done so already… that the USMC ball and anniversary celebrations are this week. More information on all matters USMC at this link!
A USMC ring-tone? Mmmm. OK.