Category: FWIW

While chasing down the rabbit trail that comprises my mental processes, this wild hare jumped out at me.

1. Term limits for politicians: two terms at any one political office, then they must leave and work at a minimum wage job at manual labor, with NO OTHER RESOURCES allowed for a period equal to whatever public office terms they have served, with NO money r benefits or perquisites whatsoever (including welfare or tax refunds or whatever) from ANY government source or any source dealing with any aspect of their former office. This would perhaps tend to focus their attention while in office a bit closer on the effects their policies have on common folk.

2. Every seven years, anyone in so-called “Civil Service” would be required to take two years off under similar circumstances.

3. ALL Civil Service employees and elective offices to have their retirements limited to EXACTLY whatever common folks might have–Social Security and retirement plans individuals have actually paid their own money into.

4. Health care? Whatever they can pay for themselves, either in cash or via self-funded health insurance.

5. Military gets a bye. There’s not a politician or Civil Service employee that’s worth the lowest, faithful grunt. No, not one. Period. Full stop. End of story. Some may be worthwhile, but until they volunteer to literally lay down their lives to defend the Constitution and their fellow citizens, politicians and Civil Service employees aren’t worthy to carry the slop bucket of the lowest-ranking, faithfully serving enlisted man.

It’d be a start.

While I’m in favor of conservation and good natural resource management practices, “Earth Day” just gives me a rash. It’s nothing but an excuse for enviro nazis to celebrate their victories over civilization and pound more lies into the heads of dumbass, self-lobotomized sheeple.

Today, on Earth Day 2011, crank up the lights–and anything else electrical that you can. Burn some meat over some charcoal. Mow your lawn with a 2-cycle mower that spews hydrocarbons. Drive a lot. Turn up the AC. Get a big cigar and blow smoke, preferably in the face of some local greenie. AnNd at the end of the day, build a bonfire of green wood and smoke up the neighborhood.

F’n greenies.

Before I even post the video, I have to note a couple of disclaimers:

1. I think James Joyce was one of the worst fiction writers ever to gain a readership.
2. IMO, This is the most unsingable thing Samuel Barber ever wrote. As music, I dislike it as intensely as I dislike James Joyce’s pretentious bullshit passing as storytelling in his novels*.

Those disclaimers aside, I sang this piece of… whatever it is at the urging of my voice prof about 40 years ago. Afterwards, I bid it a very unfond farewell and pledged to myself that I would forget it had ever been written. Alas, not to be. Recently, it’s been haunting me, perhaps because of the contemporary scene (all I’ll say to that). So, with no further comment, I inflict this thing upon you, gentle reader, if you dare listen to the thing:

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*I’ll admit that Joyce’s poetry, such as it is, is no better or worse than much of 20th Century “poetry”.

*heh*

Although Spring’s officially a week or so away, I decided it was time to change from this desktop background, which looks very like some of the “piney woods” winter roads in America’s Third World County (but is from a “piney woods” road in Norway):

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

to this one:

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Oh, this field, though also looking much like some areas of America’s Third World County, is also from Norway, outside Bergen, where many of my Wonder Woman’s family are from.

(Yes, I have two clocks on my desktop. One is an alarm clock–digital display–and the other a simple analog display. If I could find an analog display I liked with the alarm clock built in, I’d dispense with the digital display entirely, but so far my searches for such a thing have been in vain.)

Over the past 40+ years or so, ever since my ear began being “tuned” more finely to pronunciation of words, via various vocal pedagogy studies, foreign language studies, etc., I have noticed a certain class of persons that has a strange pronunciation pattern. Now, this pattern isn’t a regional accent, but occurs in the same class of persons, widely separated by economic, social and educational status, as well as geography. Yet, they all belong to one class of persons (which I won’t identify, since some asshat would then call me a racist).

Examples of the consistent, idiosyncratic pronunciation of certain words by this group of persons:

• children~chirdren (or almost as often, chiwdren)
• million~miwyon
• killed~kihwed

Since this problem with the “l” or “ll” sound seems to be pervasive within this group, despite geography, education or social and economic status, I have begun to wonder if there might not be some genetically influenced predisposition to an inability to accurately hear and reproduce the “l” and “ll” sounds, as they occur in English, in this group. Certainly I do know persons within this general class who are able to hear and reproduce these sounds accurately and do so, but in my experience (which may, of course, not be a truly representative sample, though gathered over 40+ years and exposure to folks in 46 of the 48 contiguous states), they are not the norm.

Just an idle pondering that pops into my head now and then…

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Note: I did not attempt to reproduce pronunciation markings as would be found in most linguistic studies or most dictionaries, as I’m not quite sure that most folks really understand those markings nowadays, and besides, making sure they reproduced accurately on all platforms on all browsers may be problematic as well. Or not. On both counts. *heh* If you have no problems with common pronunciation guides, please don’t assume I am being condescending.

…that just about the only thing a flock of sheeple can be relied upon to do in unison is to fart nonsense whenever whomever they’ve chosen as their fount of knowledge says to?

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Note: this wasn’t in aid of any particular agenda vis a vis leftist/rightist (or any other -ist) cant, as sheeple are sheeple and have no real politics apart from the mindless bleating (or would that be “blatting”?) they do from their nether regions whenever their chosen idol bids them.

Well, one of the other Celtic patron saints, but Saint Andrew is patron saint of more than just another Celtic group.

No, this post is just to ask how many other folks (besides me, of course) among my wee readership will wear a leek or daffodil today in honor of David, patron saint of Wales.

Takers?

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From a previous year’s St David’s Day post:

“Gwnewch y pethau bychain mewn bywyd”*

“Be joyful, and keep your faith and your creed. *Do the little things [in life] that you have seen me do and heard about. I will walk the path that our fathers have trod before us.”–reputed to be the last words of St David–Dewi Sant– patron saint of Wales (the only Celtic patron saint native to the land of which he is considered patron), is said to have died at age 100 on March 1, anno domini 589.