{"id":7107,"date":"2010-08-15T18:01:12","date_gmt":"2010-08-16T00:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ncobrief.com\/index.php\/archives\/another-monday-miscellany\/"},"modified":"2010-08-15T20:29:14","modified_gmt":"2010-08-16T02:29:14","slug":"another-monday-miscellany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ncobrief.com\/index.php\/archives\/another-monday-miscellany\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Monday Miscellany"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am, praise be to certain workaholic habits of mine <em>(the one which goes into hyper-space warp-speed drive when faced with an impending deadline)<\/em> actually able to come up for air today. One large chunk o\u00e2\u20ac\u2122impending deadline all but finished but for the polishing and tweaking, and the other all but finished save for the author getting back to me to answer some questions about her MS. Life is good. And so is that 12-ounce bottle of Shiner Bohemian Black Lager that I have drunk about half of, as a reward to myself. Nice burnt-sugar overtones. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m writing this Sunday evening at about 5:45 PM Sunday, so no need to go all interventionish on me.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, I still have about three other big projects hanging over me \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but the largest are out of the way, so I can come up for air and take note of some of the weirdness around me.<br \/>\nOK, so it looks like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/femail\/article-1302689\/Americas-Next-Top-Model-star-waist-held-mans-hand.html \">America\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s next top model <\/a> . . .  is six foot something and so impossibly thin that a man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hands can span her waist: Which was a charmingly old-fashioned standard of feminine beauty in the 19th century, when it was achieved only by the use of a fierce whale-bone corset and a couple of strong maids, hauling away. Dear god, the girl looks like she is morphing into a praying mantis. So, if this is what the fashion designers want to hang their clothes on, just animate a wire hanger and be done with it, and leave the rest of us alone with our cellulite.<\/p>\n<p>So, the <a href=\" http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/8301-503544_162-20013503-503544.html \">same breed of statist limpd**ks<\/a> that tried to launch the Coffee Party and are trying yet again, with yet an amazingly stupid tee shirt and mug with the logo \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcf*ck tea\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. Apparently that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all you have to do, to get a movement really going. Print up some tee shirts and get your friends in the juice-box mafia (aka whatever has taken the place of JournoList) to push the meme.<br \/>\n<em>Hey, boys and girls, we can put on a show ourselves, around in back in the barn!<\/em> <\/p>\n<p>Apparently, they insist they are trying to bring about a serious discussion of serious issues and<br \/>\nthe something like 54% of citizens who approve and support Tea Party principles should just  . . .  I dunno, sit down and shut up and be ruled over unquestioningly by the new aristos. OK, one more time: strict interpretation of the Constitution, fiscally responsible, free markets.  The Tea Party is a distributed, leaderless insurgency, based on a few core principles, not one person. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know how I can make it any more plain than that. Aside from that, boys and girls, if it looks like bought n\u00e2\u20ac\u2122paid for Astroturf, smells like Astroturf, feels like Astroturf and is being rolled out there by the same ol\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Astroturf purveyors  . . .  then it probably is indeed,  Astroturf. Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hoping that not too many of the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcf*ck tea\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 \u00e2\u20ac\u02dctards don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get stuck with a garage full of un-sellable tee shirts  . . .  oh, f*ck that \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I hope they do.<\/p>\n<p>So, the Mighty O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s approval ratings continue to crater. Time to take another vacation. Look, Mr. Hopey-Changey, coming out with support of a mosque\/community\/center\/arms bunker whatever in the neighborhood of New York\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Ground Zero on one day, then walking back the next \u00e2\u20ac\u201c not a good idea. Indecisive, duplicitous, or just plain old telling-the-audience-what-they-wanna-hear? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not a licensed political professional, or a mind-reader, but you are getting bad advice from someone. Or if you are getting good advice  . . .  oh, f*ck it  . . .  take the bad advice. No one will ever notice. Really. November is a little more than a month and a half away. Kick back, you and the wife and kids take another vay-cay. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all on us, I insist.<br \/>\nYes, freedom of religion in America technically would permit the mosque\/whatever to be built wherever . . .  good taste and a sense of tact would argue that Ground Zero is perhaps a good place. Sorta like a museum of the Confederacy would not be a good fit in downtown Harlem. <em>(But it might give Cholly Rangel a case of the vapors, so it wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be a wasted effort to suggest it.)  <\/em><\/p>\n<p>Ah well \u00e2\u20ac\u201c enough of a rant. Blondie and I went up to Boerne yesterday, and brought back some smoked ribs and BBQ sauce from (I kid you not) a Shell gas station quickie-mart on the corner of Main Street and SH-46, which has a meat counter and a BBQ stand which has the best BBQ around. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s called the Riverside Market. We stopped in for some soft drinks, and it smelled so enticing that we stopped in on our way home from Boerne Market Days and bought some for take out. Remember \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Boerne, Shell Station, on Main Street, and SH-46, just as you cross the river. The place was wall to wall with local people. And the BBQ smelt like the food of the gods.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am, praise be to certain workaholic habits of mine (the one which goes into hyper-space warp-speed drive when faced with an impending deadline) actually able to come up for air today. One large chunk o\u00e2\u20ac\u2122impending deadline all but finished but for the polishing and tweaking, and the other all but finished save for the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,1,31,5,17,13,83,46,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eat-drink-and-be-merry","category-general","category-local","category-media-matters-not","category-politics","category-rant","category-tea-time","category-veterans-affairs","category-working-in-a-salt-mine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncobrief.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncobrief.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncobrief.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncobrief.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncobrief.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ncobrief.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncobrief.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncobrief.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncobrief.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}