Seen the Geiko commercial featuring the “Little Piggy Who Cried ‘Wee!’ All the Way Home”?
One word: bacon.
*sigh* No Time for the Really Important Things
I really wish I had time to fit this into my Fall schedule. Really I do…
*heh*
Misplaced Attentions
Doug Wilson reminds us what we get when we place our attentions on the wrong things and listen to the wrong people:
We do not look to the modernists for anything but stainless steel despair. Bigger, faster, shinier! And we do not look to the pomos* for anything but bootless confusions. When you finally get that quorum of clowns, you are going to have a circus. What did you expect?
*”pomos” are, of course, postmodernists, that gaggle of geese to whom meaning is “just semantics“. *gag-spit*
It’s Not “Casey at the Bat” But It’s Something…
What it lacks in rhythm and rhyme–simple craftsmanship–the original is well known for, it makes up for–somewhat–in content:
The Challenge
Mel has issued a challenge: post a photo of oneself in “early morning glory”as it were. While I’m not fond of breaking cameras (ask at the license bureau about their camera), I decided to go ahead and risk the webcam in my lil toy notebook.
Note the hat and shades. (Need protection from early morning sun through front window.) Note also the primary reason to get up in the a.m. *heh*
There. Happy now, Mel? 😉
Cognitive Dissonance
I’m baffled by self-described libertarians who defend the idea of a “culture center” celebrating jihad’s most visible victory being installed a few hundred feet from round Zero in NYC. The “Cordoba House” (and doesn’t the very name say it all?) would be a celebration of everything libertarian thought supposedly despises: a hate cult that has for a millennium and a half expanded by means of violent imposition of its philosophy, offering only death, slavery, rape and pillage to those who refuse to submit to its hate cult.
But then, in my experience of the breed, most self-described libertarians are just wimpy crybabies anyway, concerned only when they see such tyranny attempt to impose itself on them. Watching a hate cult begin its campaign to impose itself on others is just fine and dandy by them. Every tyrannical cult in history has depended on people who say, “I am not my brother’s keeper.”
Once More Unto the Breach
The bane of having read voraciously since an early age: bad writing stands out like a sore thumb. Now, don’t take that as an assertion that I can readily emulate good writing. No, I’m simply critical of others’ bad writing. *heh*
What spurred me to comment once again? Raymond Khoury. I picked up his first novel at the library yesterday while I was there checking my email and performing other “essential” connectivity tasks (because service had not yet been restored here at twc central). What a waste of time. Cardboard cutouts for characters, straight from central casting–no surprise since Khoury apparently cut his teeth on television production–combined with stock “footage” of scenes from all the really boring cops shows that’ve come down the pike are bad enough, but his presentation is worse.
Example: a car chase (near New York City’s Central Park, no less), complete with driving through a chain link fence and vacant lot (where?!?) and this little gem of stupidity:
“Reilly jinked the Chrysler through a chicane-like cluster of cars and trucks… “
OK, setting aside the Irish Catholic “cop” (OK, in order to make him BIGGER, Khoury’s “promoted” the cop to FBI agent *feh*) as the primary in a novel about a stolen Vatican artifact *sigh*, what’s with “chicane-like cluster of cars and trucks”? Really stupid. Better, if one is going to have the boring car chase at all, would be “through a chicane of cars and trucks”. Much better imagery, much tighter reading. (Assuming the subliterate boobs reading the book were to know what a chicane is. Or how to use a dictionary to find out.)
But everything in the first 70 pages of this book has persuaded me that this is as good as it gets. The best is pedestrian stock “footage” from bad cop shows. This is one of those rare books I have no desire or motivation whatsoever to read to its predictably boring conclusion.
I suppose it’s a truism for a reason, but the good writers just don’t write fast enough. *heh* And writers like Khoury (and Dan Brown, for that matter–a few of the worst-wasted hours of my life were forcing myself to finish a Dan Brown best-seller) flourish–and even make best seller lists–because their readers are subliterate boobs who would’t recognize good writing if someone slapped them between the eyes with it. OK, OK, I’d not recognize good writing if it were presented to me in that fashion either, but you get my intent, eh? 🙂
Thankful for Small Blessings
*heh*
Cable internet down. Our backup dialup connection died for lack of support a year ago. What to do?
Called cable “service” to report the outage. Was put on the list for a repair call… one week and a day from now. *WTF?!?* Escalated the call to a supervisor, voiced my observation that a week and a day was completely unacceptable. Put on hold. “The techs are rolling now.”
Still…
Sitting outside the county public library sucking at the thin pipe it offers, I’m grateful for small blessings. My Wonder Woman really needed to check on some grad work status, and I have my internet addiction to feed, so even a thin pipe on a shaky wireless connection is a blessing.
Observations About Islam I
“The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.”–Winston Churchill
Rethinking the Privileges of Our Ruling Aristocracy
In light of the massive disruption caused by Emperor 00 every time His Majesty *gag* invades his subjects’ cities, perhaps it’s time to reconsider the privileges we allow our ruling aristocracy, eh? As Jerry Pournelle puts it,
One would think that if the President is so afraid of the people that he will not allow ordinary citizens to drive on the streets while he is traveling from his hotel to a commandeered golf course helipad, perhaps he ought to stay in the White House guarded by mercenaries?
…Is it time to rethink just what privileges our ruling aristocracy automatically have?
And it’s not, of course, just the ruling aristocracy but their thugs who need to have their wings clipped as well. Consider the recent Blagojevitch “conviction” for “lying to federal agents”–the same thing the feds got Martha Stewart for when they had no case against her for so-called “insider trading”.
“Anyone who cooperates with federal officials in any way including exchange of pleasantries is betting five years that they are not out to get him. The proper way to treat these agents is with silence. Saying anything to them including the time of day or comments on the weather is a needless danger.”
Note that I’m not defending Blagojevitch. He’s a politician *spit* so of course he’s guilty of far, far worse than lying to federal thugs. It’s just that federal thugs are a far, far worse scourge upon society than petty scum like Blagojevitch.