Category: The Voices in My Head

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A Teensy-Tiny Piece of History

Back in 1959, in observance of Alaska’s new statehood (1958), the Southern Baptist Convention sponsored an evangelistic effort, partnering with existing SBC churches in Alaska. My dad obtained sponsorship from the baptist church in Seward, Alaska, along with its partnering churches in the lower 48, and spent a month as part of evangelistic meetings, clinics on church music and church education, and in personal evangelism.

I have copies of letters between him and the sponsoring church, copies of various agendas for meetings, and a very special “cookbook” compiled by students of Shishmaref Day School, Shishmaref, Alaska.It’s a little ~4”x5” typewritten booklet with a hand lettered cover that includes such “recipes” (descriptions of preparation, no amounts given; kinda like my “Not a recipe” recipes I post here now and then *heh* like

Eskimo Ice Cream

  • grate reindeer tallow into small pieces
  • Add seal oil slowly while beating with hand
  • After some seal oil has been used, then add a little water while whipping
  • Continue adding seal oil and water until white and fluffy
  • Some berries can be added to it

It might be difficult to come by reindeer tallow and seal oil, here in America’s Third World County™, but it’d certainly be “keto friendly.” 🙂

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Quora Is. . . a Real Mixed Bag

Unlike Q/A fora that focus on one topic or are strictly information-seeking-and-sharing boards, Quora features just about any question anyone can come up with, which means it’s a site that has just about everything from serious questioners with folks making serious attempts to answer such questions to trolls baiting others and then “flinging monkey poo” at anyone who attempts a serious answer, to those like the dumbass who asked the following question:

“What’s one song that always gives you the feels?”

Anyone who uses the term “the feels” deserves no response other than raucous mocking. It’s a vague, stupid nonsense term that only self-made idiots would even contemplate (if contemplate they could) using. The Urban Dictionary (though that should be in “scare quotes” *heh*) tries to describe the term thusly:

“A word used to describe something that is intensely emotional on a level somewhere between you feeling empty and you on the floor in a ball weeping uncontrollably.”

In other words, it’s a term so broad and vague as to be meaningless, and yet this questioner wants to know,

“”What’s one song that always evokes vague, undefined, essentially meaningless emotions in you ranging from ennui to agony?”

#gagamaggot

OTOH, the stupidity of gargantuan proportions the question represents nevertheless did not prevent my mind from fleeing to a momentary wish that I could somehow know the tune Kipling had running through his head as he composed “The Last Chantey.”

Continue reading “Quora Is. . . a Real Mixed Bag”

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For the Polls Tomorrow. . .

Do NOT encourage everyone you meet/know to vote! The Founders were justly leery of too much democracy (which is why they designed the Constitution to create a representative republic with some democratic elements). Always remember Third World County™’s corollary to Santayana’s Axiom:

“In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance”

ONLY encourage those who are well-informed and who have a rational bent to vote. Actively discourage the ignorant, misinformed, DISinformed, and notably brainwashed from voting. Their influence is uniformly negative, no matter their unthinking, uncritical, ignorant political bent.

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From the Bard to the Beegees*. . .

Whenever someone says something like, “It’s just an argument about terms/meanings/definitions/semantics” I want to dope slap ’em. “Now there abide these three: phonemes, syntax and semantics; and the greatest of these is semantics.”

Meanings of words (terms, whatever) is the very POINT of language. Clarifying and making terms as nailed down and unambiguous, as full of MEANING, as possible is not something that is “just” anything. Without such, any interlocution is just “Sound and fury, signifying nothing,” or at least nothing useful.1

*From the Bard to the Beegees:

Polonius: What do you read, my lord?
Hamlet: Words, words, words.
Polonius: What is the matter, my lord?
Hamlet: Between who?
Polonius: I mean, the matter that you read.

*heh*

Beegees: It’s only words,and words are all I have to take your heart away.

1Ah, reminds one of most contemporary “music,” the babblings of Mass MEdia Hivemind Podpeople, and Academia Nut Fruitcakes, doesn’t it?

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The Federal Government Has NO “Rights”

I am so very tired of unthinking people parroting lies from tyrannical statists concerning the “rights” of the federal government.The federal government has no rights. It has specific duties and responsibilities denoted in the Constitution, all aimed at protecting the rights of citizens from infringement. The People also allow the Constitution to empower the federal government with powers derived from themselves to effect the protection of the rights of the People from infringement.

The Constitution also specifically limits the federal government in specific ways (ways most often dishonored in the breach1 nowadays) to forbid it power to infringe on individuals’ rights. One of those limits, noted in the Second amendment, is getting a lot of lying press from the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind, recently. All of the lies being told by the Hivemind are in service to the goals of tyrannical statists who are in favor of removing the People’s final check on a tyrannical government, as well as robbing individuals of an effective means to project their right of self-defense against any bad actors (including government bad actors, at all levels).

Just keep in mind that the Hivemind isnow, has been, and will continue to lie about so-called “gun control.” The truth about “gun control” is quite different in many ways than the Hivemind presents, but one critical way is that we, the People, are meant to be a check on tyranny instituted by government. The Founders viewed ALL of the People, save government officials, as part of the militia meant to protect against government infringement of individual rights. That alone would end “gun control” talk, if truth were told both about the primary purpose the Framers added the Second Amendment and the “long train of abuses” of individual rights that have been and continue to be perpetrated by the federal government against citizens.

1

Apologies to The Bard for mangling his words. The original “more honor’d in the breach” referred to breaking with bad custom. Instead, I refer to the dishonorable behavior of the federal government in ignoring its constitutionally-specified duties and exceeding its constitutionally limited powers.

Horatio:
What does this mean, my lord?

Hamlet:
The King doth wake to-night and takes his rouse,
Keeps wassail, and the swagg’ring up-spring reels;
And as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,
The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge.
Is it a custom?

Hamlet:
Ay, marry, is’t,
But to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honor’d in the breach than the observance,

Hamlet Act 1, scene 4, 7–16

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It’s the Little Things #8,492

#sigh

*heh*

OK, now that that is out of my system. . .

Some of the absolutely stupid things some writers do baffle me, but at least I have found a way to be amused by them.

Recent “Dan Brown wannabe” book where the writer apparently felt even less desire to get anything right about any of his premises than Brown typically does went Brown even further by finding… unique ways to misuse plain English ( for example, misused “infallible” when groping for “unflappable”), have an “expert pilot” grab the “steering column”. . . on a helicopter whose propellers were making enough noise to keep the writer from thinking, “Maybe I ought to do my homework on helicopters before making a fool of myself in print.”

Hilarious.

Another? How about a fun-filled romp through a zombie apocalypse book filled with things like super-competent, manly-man hero filling up a late-model vehicle with gas and then “topping it off” after the pump clicks off. “Manly-men” know that can harm the vehicle’s evap system, cause the vehicle to run poorly, and even lead to hard starting or failure to start. In today’s world, it’s an easy fix (though sometimes complicated) to repair an evap system. . . IF one can narrow down the part or parts damaged by topping off, and costs can range from $10-$200, depending on several factors. In a zombie apocalypse scenario, having to repair the evap system on one’s go-to vehicle is sub-optimal.

But that’s OK, cos the book was chock full of this kind of stupid stuff, so reading it as a farce (OK, OK, skimming it, cos it wasn’t really worth reading *heh*) was. . . OK.

The problem with all these hilariously stupid books–not bad or “suckitudinous” books, just stupidly executed–is that the errors of logic, fact, grammar, punctuation, and usage they embody are just reinforced in whatever uncritical readers glom onto them. *sigh* There were once literate editorial staffs at tradpub houses to correct some of these problems, but even there, the quality of literacy in tradpub editorial staffs has waned.

Oh, well. At least I can laugh at and mock such things, and such amusement is worth something as the world generally goes to hell in a handbasket.

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Asked and Answered. Move on.

I wear a scanable medalert bracelet with online med info that includes my allergies. Listed FIRST under “allergies” is my serious adverse reaction to being asked the same question more than once. When asked the same question a second (or third or. . . ) time, I tend to answer, “Asked and answered,” and let ’em look it up. I have no patience with lazy, arrogant, insulting asshats with nothing better to do than waste my time.

I answer cops the same way when asked the same question more than once: “Asked and answered. Move on.” (Last time I did so it was the local chief of police. He had illegitimately stopped me for a traffic infraction I had not committed. I don’t take their crap. I declined his offer of a ticket and moved him along. Seriously. Coincidentally, he resigned two weeks later. . . Yeh, seriously.)

I am too old to take crap from anyone. Period.

Forget “civil disobedience.” Such disrespectful behavior from people who think of themselves as authorities calls for less than civil disobedience. Outright disrespect returned for disrespect from people who are NOT one’s “betters.”

But maybe that’s just me. And maybe I should work on that. . . but I doubt I will.