Month: June 2005

The Songstress hosts this week’s Carnival of the Recipes

Yeh, I’m late getting a link up. *sigh* Couldn’t read the darn thing! Must be the Microsoft-friendly “collapsable outlines” thing.

Oh. well. It reads as an RSS feed just fine. Fine by me. Just the text, ma’am.

Great recipes, though and a great job plugging other folks’ blogs for content other than just this week’s recipes. Good on the Songstress! Too many recipes to mention, but I have to mention one. Really (well, besides my own absolutely fantastic Chicken Santa Fe. heh. Indeed–are you listening, Puppy Blender? Flattery! Flattery! Gee, you’d think the guy’d pay attention or something… 🙂

Oh, that’s right, THE recipe to mention:

Pineapple Spotted Dick with Toffee Sauce, over at Morning Coffee & Afternoon Tea. You really have to check that one out! No, I mean you have to. Really. Report back in comments for 10 points of your final grade in this course.

heh.

Indeed.

[Note: “heh” and “indeed” have been appropriated by The Puppy Blender as “signature expressions” even though I have been using them since before he was outa diapers [ed.—that was, of course, before The Puppy Blender was making the world unsafe for puppies]. Yielding to the tide, I am simply using them as often as possible, now, in hopes that The Puppy Blender will mistake such use for “the sincerest form of flattery” and commit the biggest boo-boo of his Bogospheric Career… give a nod to the gnat buzzing in his ear. heh. Indeed. ]

Donna’s Cell Phone question is number 5. Come on, folks! You can do better than that!

No, not my cell phone, Donna’s cell phone…

Founders and Framers to current feds: MYOB*

United States Constitution
Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

This is an issue that has disturbed me for years. The ever-expanding grasp of government—especially the Federal Government—in assuming powers not even remotely within the scope of the Constitution is something that the electorate seems perfectly willing to allow (or in many cases, encourage, as long as the feds use those powers in ways that fit the agenda of some).

Indeed, it is the mark of statist socialism that control of the individual by the state (for ends that meet the desires of the statists in power) is a Very Good Thing, regardless of what some musty old piece of paper may actually say.

And that is why allowing statists of any stripe to wield power is a very bad thing. It results in situations like the ACLU strongarming school districts into eliminating invocations at graduations (“Don’t do it or we’ll institute a very expensive Establishment Clause suit—which the Feds will pay for on our end” etc.). It results in tax laws that reward those who spend their money where the statists want money spent… and pays unproductive members of society for their votes to keep the statists in power.

And it results in courts, including a SCOTUS, that will impose a Federal law where the Constitution gives the Federal government no power, such as in the case where the SCOTUS issued a fiat this week essentially nullifying the laws of Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington concerning the private cultivation of and personal medical use of marijuana.

SIDEBAR: This post is not an argument for marijuana use, so don’t twist my words into a support for getting high.

The Framers—and the State Legislatures that ratified the Constitution with its first ten amendments understood clearly and unequivocally what James Madison articulated; that

“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”

Our current Federal Government—in all branches and at all levels—just does not see it that way. And so we have this abortion of a ruling—a 6-3 ruling, at that!—illegitimately inserting the Federal Government into purely State matters… and there’s no “tea party” in Washington D.C. to echo the response of those who would make Declaration to a despot in earlier times that

…when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Nah. Who cares, right?

The Tenth Amendment, along with the First and Second Amendments, was once seen as a bulwark against a Federal Government acreting undue power and becoming despotic. But these “guarantees” are only as good as the citizenry allows them to be.

“In Germany, they first came for the communists and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics. I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak up.”–Martin Niemöller

I’m not ready to join some wacko cult or rebel “militia.” But I do recognize that the Founders and Framers of our nation “[threw] off such Government” and “provide[d] new Guards for their future security” over fewer abuses than Americans just consider a normal way of life today.

Free? Ask Martha. (Just scroll down a ways.)

*MYOB=Mind Your Own Business

Yeh, read the Lileks piece, but read the C.S. Lewis piece he invokes, too…

Lileks’ Screedblog today is a classic rant against the neutering of the American man.

“The world will not be better because men wear their suspenders backwards The day I ask French fashion consultants to help me dream is the day I start drinking so much coffee I never fall asleep. To paraphrase Bart Simpson: Can’t sleep. Clowns will dress me.”

That is a mere taste, a crumb from the table.
Go. Eat. Now, while the food’s hot.

And after the h’orderves, here’s the main course:

C.S. Lewis’ Men Without Chests.

Been tagged by Nancy for the bibliophile’s meme…

Yeh, I didn’t pay close enough attention. Let’s see… Oh yeh, “Book Tag” or something… Nancy and her tagger call it (very creatively–heck, they’re writers, for heaven’s sake!) “Meme! Pick Meme!” Just the image I’ve had as this one passed me by and passed me by again…

🙂

OK, here’s the thing. I’ll follow the rules, but I’m going to take a sidestep on this thing, a kinda Ozarkian line dance thingy. Rules:

How many books do I own?

Latest book purchased:

Last book read:

5 Books that mean a lot to me:

5 new “victims”

ADDITION:

Take the top name/link off the list below. Add your blog (with an embedded link) to the bottom of the list and paste the blognames/links into your post.

I found in the “Childhood Meme-ory Lane” thing that the linking helped me follow the tagline. I really enjoyed (and still and enjoying as it continues to spread) following that one. I think following this one may well lead me to some new books I will want to read and this will make following it easier.

So, here’s my answer to the above.

1. Mitchieville
2. The Glamazon Shoe Diaries
3. regurgitation
4. Soliloquy… one writer’s thoughts
5. third world county

How many books do I own?

Oh, man. A couple of thousand? Most are shuffled in and out of boxes, in various bookshelves, on tables, floors, nightstands, and hidden in various nooks and crannies. Many more, of course, have shuffled through my hands over the years. A friend and I once considered pooling our libraries and starting a used books store (back when I had even more books), but neither of us could bear to “cull” enough from our own shelves to make it happen, so…

Latest Book Purchased

An eBook (also available in print) by P.N. Elrod, Siege Perilous. Interesting conclusion (?) to his ethical vampire series. A light, entertaining read. Though well-written, probably a “read once” though well worth the $4 eBook price.

Last Book Read

The Man Who Knew Too Much, G.K. Chesterton. I’d actually looked for this from time to time in various libraries and bookstores. Have it as an etext from Gutenberg.org, now.

5 Books that mean a lot to me

• The two-volume dictionary set that I used to use (still do) for backup reading when I had devoured what was available. Dictionaries are good reads! The plots and characterizations are a little thin, but lotsa good words.
• The Bible. Where else can one find such a wealth and variety of reading? Cracking good stories. Villains, heroes, an ever-present God. Evil battling good. Failure become triumph. Mystery, romance, poetry, history, philosophy, law… Always fresh, always challenging. Just spare me some of the recent lame “translations,” please.
• The O.E.D. I used to spend literally hours and hours reading this work when I had access to a library that had it in its collection. What an engrossing tale of the development of the English language one can find in its pages! Wonderful reading!
• The Lord of the Rings I first read this more than 40 years ago. Reread it enough thereafter to wear out my first copies of the trilogy. I’m not a LOTR “fan” so much as I am a Tolkien “fan,” I suppose. His epic view and, well, bardic sensiblities are simply wonderful.
• Macbeth Yeh, not a “book” except in the sense that one talks of a play as a “book.” Actually, my two different “Collected Works of Shakespeare” might be a better statement of favs/mean-a-lots. But Macbeth is my fav of all the plays. I love mangling Act IV, scene 2, lines 91-92… (though some versions list the lines as 85-86).

Of course, I don’t know how I can not mention Departmental Ditties and Barrackroom Ballads (Kipling) or The Encyclopedia of Philospohy or Gargantua and Pantagruel (Rabelais) or, or, or…

Too many really good reads. Too, too many.

Now, who am I gonna tag… hmmm…

• Kris, at Anywhere But Here, cos I just know she has sooooo much spare time on her hands. LOL
• Rich at The English Guy. I mean, this is one interesting guy. I wanna know what he reads.
• Diane of Diane’s Stuff cos I'[ve already had some hints of what might make her reading list and I want more. 🙂
• Christine of Morning Coffee & Afternoon Tea. I know about Christine’s tastes in movies, chocolate, tea and coffee. How about books?
• Dan Riehl of Riehl World View, cos he’s tagged me twice and blown off a couple. ‘Bout time he ponied up— Big. 🙂

There ya bes. My list of favs/mean-a-lot-to-mes is terrible. To get it “right” I’d have to limit it to a hundred or so, and the priority ranking would never be the same from one moment to the next. Where’s Twain, today? Henlein? Aeschylus? Pournelle? (Strategy of Technology —written with Stefan Possony and Francis Xavier Kane is a must read for folks who want a poly-sci-techno grasp of the 70 Years’ War with the Soviet Union… and its aftermath.)

Addendum: I’ve had comments and email that spur me to note this link to the Baen Free Library. Folks who like reading sci-fi will find lots to love there. Here’s a snippet from the intro to the place:

Introducing the Baen Free Library
by Eric Flint

Baen Books is now making available — for free — a number of its titles in electronic format. We’re calling it the Baen Free Library. Anyone who wishes can read these titles online — no conditions, no strings attached. (Later we may ask for an extremely simple, name & email only, registration. ) Or, if you prefer, you can download the books in one of several formats. Again, with no conditions or strings attached. (URLs to sites which offer the readers for these format are also listed.)…

You write your own blues song for today. Go ahead. use the standard, all-purpose “Woke up this mornin'” opener.

Not me*. Woke up this morning to a cool, overcast day here in America’s Third World Countyâ„¢. Out and about early. The greens really poppin’. Small town tree-lined-and-shaded (almost “tree-wrapped”) streets. Oaks and elms and maples and willows and pecans and walnuts and magnolias and… green, green grasses of every imaginable variety. My front yard, which is mostly suited to growing rocks and moles, nevertheless green and in need of mowing.

I tell myself it’s too wet.

Look at all the marigolds! And all the other purty flars I cain’t put a name to right now. (Sadly, my dandelion crop was a bit disappointing this year. *sigh*) In our front flar bed. Purty. And that hosta I transplanted from the neighbor’s yard (hey! He asked me to dig it up and take it. Really!) last week is lookin’ real good, too. Even those bulbs of some indeterminate flar from my neighbor’s back yard are shooting out fast. And that lil cypress I planted for Arbor Day I thought was dead? Shoots comin’ up at the base.

Heck, it’s too purty today to work myself to death, even though I have no client work scheduled and yard work beackons.

“It’s too wet to mow,” I repeat…

OTOH, I did pledge to Wonder Woman that I’d finish up Step 1 on the south wall of the living room. My son asked me why I was doing a complicated faux plaster/paint/glaze treatment since I plan to cover the whole wall with a bookcase/entertainment center. The answer, of course, is that I will know what’s behind all that.

You know, maybe that’s another issue to address in pop culture. Few seem to care what’s behind all the flash and sizzle… If it’s purty on the outside, on the part that’s seen then that’s all that seems to count for many.

Another day, maybe. Today’s just too beautiful.

OK, maybe later today…

🙂

*Yeh, I know, I know. The whole post is fulla all kindsa grammatical and spelling “errors”—s’all right. My mom’s (Madam Grammar) not reading this blog. heh

Ran across this at The English Guy‘s place and thought I’d inflict it on both my regular readers…

Top 10 Reasons to Blog

Of course, The English Guy only lists seven of “the” top ten, and since only three of them really apply to me, I decided to help him round out the top ten with six of my own. That way, the top ten come to a nice, even bakers’ dozen…

And my top six are:

• The voices in my head now have somewhere to express themselves.
• All those years reading dictionaries for relaxation. Now I have a place for those words to go.
• What fools these mortals be! Do you know what we’re doing tonight, Pinky?
• I blog for Truth, Justice and The American Way! (Or was that American Pie?) “Up in the air, Junior Spacemen!”
• “The Blog! The Blog! Run for your lives!”
• Oh, and all the nice goodies I recieve from the trick-or-treaters who stop by… yummy.

I know “Anti-Christian Licentious Undead” is a wee contradictory, but what about the modern ACLU is not?

See the interview with a former ACLU lawyer at STOP the ACLU.

Nothing particularly surprising. And that’s the really sad thing: that no evil seems to small for the ACLU. *sigh* Most of the comments are along the lines of

“… what [good] they have done in the past is completely eviscerated by what they do in the present. The ACLU has become a fanatical anti-faith Taliban of American religious secularism.”

Well, uhm, of course. And that “of course” is the truly sad thing about the ACLU.

Rampant grade inflation is just the hangnail on the rotten corpse of higher education

John Watson, who teaches journalism ethics and communications law at American, has noticed another phenomenon: Many students, he says, believe that simply working hard — though not necessarily doing excellent work — entitles them to an A. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a student dispute a grade, not on the basis of in-class performance,” says Watson, “but on the basis of how hard they tried. I appreciate the effort, and it always produces positive results, but not always the exact results the student wants. We all have different levels of talent.”

It’s a concept that many students (and their parents) have a hard time grasping. Working hard, especially the night before a test or a paper due date, does not necessarily produce good grades.