Category: The Voices in My Head

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Semi-Random Thoughts

This A.M., during our M-Th-F “carpool”, my Wonder Woman and I had one of those “partner telepathy” things that have become more and more frequent over the years. Windshield just looked dewy, not frosted, so I just flipped the wipers for a one-wipe. Nope. “Hmm, looks like it’s a little frosty. I may have to rename today.” Pause. “Maybe I’ll call it ‘Robert'”.

“Funny,” she said, “I thought I’d say ‘Jack’ but then thought ‘Robert’ myself.”

Married long enough yet?

I’ve taken to putting a water-soluble dietary fiber powder in my coffee. No discernible difference in taste or texture, but I do have a rather moving experience several hours later… 😉 Maybe I should also have some jalapeño ice cream with it?

What’s the deal with The Zero? Trying out a new comedy routine or an IQ test for Republicans? “So here’s the deal: you give me $1.2 Trillion in tax hikes and I give you bupkis. Pretty good deal, eh? *wink-wink-nudge-nudge*”

If Repugnican’ts were to get brain transplants (so they can qualify as real Republicans) they’d all voice their severe disapproval of his proposals and then abstain from votes on The Zero’s them and let the Dhimmicraps OWN the resultant disasters. “See? we didn’t stand in the way of The Zero getting what he wanted, while we voiced our disapproval with abstentions. It’s not OUR mess. It’s all on The Zero and his cronies. It’s THEIR policies that have created what we have and you can blame them, not us. So there. Nanny-nanny-boo-boo.”

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One Final Appeal

One last appeal to anyone who may be considering a “protest” vote today: Bill Whittle’s “Falling on Principle”

Consider carefully who and what you vote for today, from local races all the way to DC.

Here in America’s Third World County™, polling places were open at 6:00 this morning, and parking places at our polling place were thin on the ground. All the voting “booths” were filled when we walked in, but there was almost no waiting (apart from having our drivers licenses scanned and signing the electronic “register”), because people were, for the most part, voting quickly and getting back on the road to work.

Yep. No Odumbo bumper stickers on the cars outside at all, at all.

I know a number of Ron Paul die-hards America’s Third World County™ who were planning on sitting this one out, but the sheer weight of Makers here in the county as opposed to Takers (many of whom around here cannot legally vote anyway, since they’re illegals*) means that I’ll be hugely surprised if Dhimmicraps receive more than 10% of this county’s votes this year. Seriously.

Would that this county were a microcosm of the rest of the country, third world infrastructure and jury-rigging tightwaddery and all…

In a more perfect world, Frank J. Flemming’s views of government–which are more in line with the goals the Founders had in mind (as the Constitution and the Federalist Papers, the Anti-Federalist Papers, et al point to) than those any politician now on the stage declares–his views would hold a strong majority of the electorate, but in our real world, we must fight the fight we have.

If you want to vote against statism, make your vote count. Yeh, the Republicans on your ballot are still very likely drawn from the shallow end of the pseudo-conservative swamp that has, for the most part, given us wannabe elite country club Repugnican’ts since the G.H.W. Bush camp’s slaying of the Reagan revolution lion, but driving toward a cliff at 75mph still gives us more room for maneuver and time to salvage something than driving toward a cliff at the Dhimmicrappic Party’s current 120mph.

Throwing some bubblegum at the vehicle’s tires by casting a protest vote just isn’t going to help anything, and saying, in whatever principled fashion, “All the candidates from the two major parties are scoundrels, so I’ll not vote for any of ’em. Let the country get what it deserves. Maybe when it all crashes down, we can resurrect something worthwhile from the ashes,” is just a libertarian/liberal embrace of the socialist Cloward-Pivens principle that Obama and his ilk have instituted with a vengeance.

Seriously. A “principled” protest vote is nothing more or less than an attempt to do the same ruinous things Obama and his co-conspirators, fellow travelers, cronies and useful idiots have spent the last (nearly) four years doing: burn the house down in a belief that YOUR views will emerge from the ashes.

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A Break from Politics–One Shot

So, Lee Child’s “Jack Reacher” character is coming to the big screen. Sort of. In One Shot (trailer below), Tom Cruise is inexplicably cast as Jack Reacher. WTF?!?

No, seriously: WTF?!?

The Character, as established by Child in–I think–17 novels is 6’5″, 250 pounds of phlegmatic, unstoppable force. I can think of exactly NO “negotiation” (read, “Reacher utterly destroys the bad guys in hand-to-hand, or head-to-face-butt”) scene in any of the books that a guy Tom Cruise’s size could survive, let alone wreak the havoc the Reacher character does.

And then there’s personality. The quirky, birdlike Cruise twitching from one girly-voiced dialog delivery to another is hardly the image of the laconic, phegmatic Reacher portrayed in so many successful novels to date. Absolutely nothing in the trailer, for instance, seems congruent with the Reacher character in the books.

I imagine those who have never read any of the books and have a crush on Pretty Boy Cruise will enjoy the thing, but while I applaud the fact that Lee Child is going to make some big bucks off the thing, I kind of wish he’d played the part of Reacher himself. It’d have been at least a little more believable.

 

 

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Confessions of a Pop Drinker

Yeh, yeh, I drink pop. Soda. Whatever. Not so much as I used to, but I drink the stuff. At least I no longer drink Pepsi, long my preferred cola (never really did develop a taste for Coca-Cola; it always came across as too sweet to me, for one thing). I stopped drinking sugar and corn syrup sweetened pops long ago, and in fact even went off carbonated soft drinks entirely for a while, since artificial sweeteners just didn’t make the grade for me, although I’d partaken of them for some time under a mistaken impression they’d help me control my middle age spread (they didn’t seem to).

A couple of years ago, though, I discovered a cola that’s not only sugar free but tastes better to my palate than my old fav, Pepsi: Continue reading “Confessions of a Pop Drinker”

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Compy Dreams

With the advent of Wintel tablets approaching, the tablet for factor may actually start to appeal to me for doing things other than just media/info-consuming. Sure, I’ve seen–and tried out–some of the office-type productivity app attempts on various tablets, and I’ve shuddered at Garage Band being touted on the iPhad (Garage Band and its ilk are represented as music content creation applications; they are “music content creation” apps as garbage collection–not even disposal–is to yard waste: a way to get the junk collected in one location). *meh* At best such things are kludgy. Of course, no tablet that come w/o included physical keyboards would be worth much to me for anything but media/info-consumption, either.

Yeh: might as well just look for a convertible touch screen notebook for me.

Unless… (and until) voice (and music) recognition advances would allow reasonable data input w/o a keyboard/mouse (or touchpad/screen) combo. Ideally, a wearable computer with a system that allowed projection of a virtual screen (while I continued to wear my prescription lenses) and could reliably translate subvocalized commands/data input into actions/content. Oh, yeh, music recognition capability that’d allow vocal or instrumental input and transcribe music played/sung with reasonable accuracy (as is now only reasonably done via direct midi input, although folks are working on decent transcription from live input). And an OS that allowed me to continue to use a music transcription software that can perfectly read my archives of scores already written. Combined w/decent ear buds and perhaps some motion-sensor gloves or wrist bands, such a system would be pretty much ideal for a portable computer for someone like me.

*sigh* Maybe such a system will be available before I’m too feeble-minded to be able to use it. (Some may say it’s too late for that already. *heh*)

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Details Add Verisimilitude… or Not

In fiction, the less descriptive details detract from creating suspension of disbelief, the less they might drag a reader out of the story to say, “Nuh-uh! No way! Not so!” and so getting the little things right can make a difference in verisimilitude and suspension of disbelief, let alone simple enjoyment of a story well told.

Let me offer a very small example (one of, sadly, more than a few from a book now in hand):

Speaking about an event in Atilla’s life tied to a specific town in Italy in 452 A.D., a learned gentleman intones,

“The town was founded in the first century, so it was already three hundred years old when Atilla arrived.”

Really? Any (and I do mean ANY) literate person knows that the first century A.D. began with year 1 and went through 100 A.D. 452 A.D. was squarely in the middle of the FIFTH century. It would have made sense to have said, “The town was founded in the first century, so it was already FOUR hundred years old when Atilla arrived.”

When a novel that relies heavily on historical citations (and legends tied to history) begins to pile up errors like that, it starts to seriously detract from the story.

No, before you ask, it’s not a book by Dan Brown. It’s not within several orders of magnitude of being THAT bad. In fact, apart from niggling little things like the one noted above, and quite contra a Dan Brown prose atrocity, it’s actually pretty good reading, which is what makes these niggling little problems… problems.

Continue reading “Details Add Verisimilitude… or Not”

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Eureka!

[N.B. Added link to one example–of many, many examples–of behaviors in support of my thesis below. ;-)]

The Zero has been an open book enigma, wrapped in a con man’s smile, covered by a flack industry’s hand-waving distractions and outright lies.

All this stuff we’ve been seeing from The Zero, his fellow travelers and cronies–the gutting of the economy and building of “golden Solyndrachutes” for the Crony Class, the bowing and scraping and (at least metaphorical) bending of knee to all sorts of foreign potentates and outright enemies of the US, the shredding of constitutional guarantees of fundamental human rights, and on and on and on: it’s all about Moochele’s campaign to combat her childhood nemesis. Yep, her childhood obesity is driving all this.

Oh, I have no picture of her as a fat child, but her psychological derangement is blatantly apparent, and its most likely cause is her own self-image, formed growing up as a fat kid.

And how does this explain The Zero’s (and his fellow travelers, etc.) behaviors? Think about if for a nano-second (that’s about all it takes, of course, to understand so simple a set of minds).

  • That Moochele drags Barry around firmly by the one ball she has let him keep is pretty much a given, taking even a brief glance at their respective public behaviors. One shudders to think what that emasculated quasi-male suffers in private (but then, considering who and what it is, notsomuch with the shuddering, ya know?)
  • That EVERYTHING Barry (and etc.) has done is aimed squarely at enfeebling the US is obvious to anyone with active brain cells numbering greater than that found in the average used Kleenex.
  • That this enfeebling of America has resulted and continues to progressively result in a cancelation of the “super-size” menu plan for Americans is also obvious. Just take a look at that package of bacon you’ve been buying for years. It doesn’t cost a LOT more (in increasingly worthless fiat dollars) now than when the Zero took office, true, but have you stopped to look closely at why that is? Yep. It’s now 12 ounces instead of 16. That package of cookies that’s only a “little more expensive” than in 2009? Yep. Smaller.
  • And as “the little people” have less and less to spend on smaller and smaller portions, Moochele’s dream from her childhood will come to pass. It’s almost biblical in scope. Or Greek god-like in petty, childish arrogance. (Those columns: whose idea were they really? Hmmm?)

And so it goes. Genius! It’s all about slowly weaning Americans from food entirely!

Continue reading “Eureka!”

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I Really Need to Ameliorate My Tinnitus

Sometimes it’s so distracting I mishear background stuff. For example, a TV commercial I heard as,

“Introducing the evil 4G“

The sheer noise level of the tinnitus is really that distracting a times.

I don’t watch much TV. This was while sharing some “being there” time while my Wonder Woman was watching one of the (very, very) few TV shows she watches via our cable subscription.

Evo 4G

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Timeless Wisdom

I don’t know who first said it (and am not even sure where I last saw it *heh*), but this ranks up there with, “Never get involved in a land war in Asia,”* as timeless wisdom:

“A human without at least one sharp pointy thing and the ability to start a fire is just whining hairless ape in most survival situations.”

Yeh, I feel naked without at least two or three “sharp pointy things” on my person at all times, and since I can start a fire with my burning gaze of scorn… *heh*

Continue reading “Timeless Wisdom”

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Those Frustrating Brit Mystery Shows

You know the ones I mean: generally well-acted, pretty darned good (as in superior to most cable fare on US TV) production values, great music and sound, scenery and settings to die for, interesting faces and voices, etc. OTOH, pretty predictable plots, lots of evidence why Britain used to be “GREAT Britain” (with tons of pointers for those who want to emasculate the US as well *sigh* ) and far too much use of “classic” whodunit camera techniques. And what’s with the stupid four-episode “seasons”? That’s pretty crappy, guys. Just sayin’.

So many good things hampered by a few glaring faults. Better than what I can find on cable TV, though.

Still… Positives include Inspector Lewis, the spinoff from the long success of the Inspector Morse books and the series. Sometimes I want to say, “Take Inspector Lewis, PLEASE,” but usually it’s really quite good on the whole. An example: the theme music. Just wonderful stuff, but I could swear one motif in the theme is outright “borrowing” of a Beethoven motif. That in itself is only to the good, of course (heck, I’ve “borrowed” a motif here and there for development into something else, myself), if I am correct (just noticed it–yeh, I’m kinda slow *heh*–and haven’t replayed the section I’m thinking of in my mind’s ear, but it seems so at first thought), but, regardless, that it even evokes such a thought is an indication of the quality of the music.

And that reminds me: it’s probably time for my quarterly refreshment of Beethoven’s oeuvre in my mind’s ear (it used to need refreshment less often for memory replay, but my mind’s ear just ain’t what it used ta be, ya know? :-)). Fortunately, just about every recording of every Beethoven work I’ve been able to lay my hands on is now stored on my Amazon Cloud Drive (as well as available to load en masse onto a pocket-sized mp3 player) and accessible to listen to almost anywhere on multiple devices.

So, thanks to the prod from Inspector Lewis, I’ll be “seeing” the aural landscapes of Beethoven’s mind’s ear a bit more directly over the next couple of weeks’ time. Thanks, Robbie.