…really!
If you have to ask why, you need to read this (sadly, the old Blogger posts do not seem to have been inmported to Bou’s new blog, but this one’s still accessible).
Early evening
Just chatterboxing. If you don’t wanna hear minutiae about America’s Third World Countyâ„¢, just click on by…
Signing off in a bit, here. My Wonder Woman e-ed me that she has a short day today, cos heavy winds already and a tornado watch has already begun for America’s Third World Countyâ„¢, so I’m making sure my day’s over before we hunker down. I fully expect to see some downed limbs off our sycamores—I had intended to take some down next week, anyway, just hope they don’t take out anything I don’t want gone… *sigh*
Lotsa tunder rumbling through, haven’t seen the lightning yet—a ways off over some hills is my guess. Raining now and wind’s growing pretty wild.
I love a good storm, and we do need rain.
The Boys (Son & Heir’s dogs) are all hunkered down in a sheltered area under the deck. water literally rolls off Leo’s back, and Buttons seems to thrive in rain, no matter how he begs to be let in (he always begs to be let in, rain or shine, cold or hot. It’s just him).
Begged off an easy gig. Meant a few miles travel to do a Linux boot and reset of admin password for a Win2K machine (WHY do people NOT manage their passwords? Guy’s locked out of his machine and all he needs is an admin PW to set things right. Doesn’t have it. AND has lost his Win2K CD… *sigh* He’ll just have to live w/o his computer for now, is all I can say.)
Dig Angel’s New Digs
Another one’s jumped from the Blogger kettle into the WordPress frying pan *heh*. Check out Angel’s new site for Woman Honor Thyself. Leave her a note while you’re there, then hop on back to your own blog and update your blogrolls, eh>
Quick Coffee Tip
If you grind your own beans (or even if, like Christine, you roast your own beans), this lil double-tip might help keep your coffee fresh before you brew it.
You probably already store your roasted beans in an opaque ceramic container. If not, DO IT. Moisture and light are the enemies of your beans’ flavor.
Since you already store your roasted beans in an opaque ceramic container *cough* take the next step: place a desiccant in the container with the beans. Here’s how: if you take nutritional supplements or any of a wide selection of medications in pill or capsule form, there’s probably a neat lil bag of desiccant in the bottle. (If you take nutritional supplements and there’s not a desiccant bag in the bottle, you’re probably taking lowball crap that’s not doing you any good).
Note: there are different kinds of desiccants out there, and some that are packed with electronics or mechanical equipment are not suitable for use in the way I describe below! Take care!
After finishing a bottle of whatever food or medical product has a desiccant bag in it, take the desiccant bag and bake it at about 250°F for 20-30 minutes or so to drive out any moisture it may have soaked up. Place it in your ceramic coffee container with your roasted beans. It’ll absorb at least some of the water in the air inside the sealed container and protect your beans’ flavor.
Add-on tip: an oxygen absorber,different to a desiccant, is a Good Thing, too.
“…but is it art?”
First, a taste of Kipling, then a less-than-vitriolic rant.
When the flush of a new-born sun fell first on Eden’s green and gold,
Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the mould;
And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart,
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, “It’s pretty, but is it Art ?â€
In an age when “expression” is a catchall for so-called “art” and non-speech grunts, groans squeals and inarticulate scribblings, I think Kipling’s Devil asks the right question to start talking about what is so very wrong about “art”—graphic, musical, literary, dramatic, etc.—today and a bit of what that says about our society in general.
In “The Conundrum of the Workshops, Kipling outlined a feel for creative endeavor… and how critics kill creativity. And he had his “Devil” ask the question so asked by critics of kipling’s day—often critics of his poetry—qho sought to belittle efforts of others with creativity the critics usually lacked themselves: It’s pretty, but is it art?
But Kipling’s devil can’t ask that of rap “music” (or much other popular music today) or of defacing of nature with great swaths of fabris and calling it “art” or of “serious” literature (or “serious” music for that matter) or darned near anything from Hollyweird, because almost none of it even passes the “pretty” test. Almost all of it is ugly, base, venal, stupid crap.
Holly Lisle’s disquisition (OK, rant) on How to Write Suckitudinous Fiction is enough to dispense with most pretentiously “artful” literature.
…the quest for good fiction is not the only way. There is … another path. A dark path. And it is a path rich in tradition and esteemed by many. It is the Path of Suckitude.
Not all bad fiction is Suckitudinous. Some of it is simply bad — written by people who are completely tone-deaf to the language, blind to character and motivation, and incompetent with conflict.
Unlike bad fiction, Suckitudinous Fiction takes a dedication to the fine art of sucking that, if pursued with sufficiently rabid fanaticism, can win Pulitzers. (Yes, I think an inordinate number of recent Pulitzer-prize-winning novels suck. Hugely.)
Yeh, Read The Whole Thing…
Some of what Holly Lisle says there can be directly applied to Hollyweird and other purveyors of fecal matter* in place of food for the soul. As for the rest, let me rearticulate: if it ain’t at least pretty and/or well-made, crafted with care and thought and heart, it ain’t art.
Most pop music fails in all of that. Sloppily-written, poorly-performed crap is fit only for sloppy-thinking people with lead-for-ears hearing.
Oh. What am I thinking? I just described most people I know.
If you can discern pitches and keep a steady beat (at the minimum), try this: go to a high school choir concert, listen to one (if you can stomach it) episode of American Idol. Try to count the number of people performing who have good pitch recognition and an ability to stay within an established tonality, who can actually make rythmic sense as well. You will probably not have to use all the fingers of even one hand.
Disheartening.
And that’s just performers. “Songwriters” who write lyrics that are nonsense, tuneheisters who, well, have no sense of musical teleology, arrangers who lack the ability to, well, write and instrumentalists who (apparently) have no idea there are human voices in the mix abound, as well.
Move from amateur venues (where it’s easy to hear why 10 40 crap isn’t heard by consumers for the crap it is) and listen (if you have the ability to actually hear) to top 40 crap for a while. If you can stand it. Some will be good. Scratch that. Very few will be good.
And that’s just accounting for basic musicality—the ability to reproduce harmonious and sensible sounds. What’s worse is the underlying ethos, or rather what the underlying ethos lacks.
Stop the ACLU: a little history lesson
A History Lesson On The ACLU
from Gribbit. See the rest in followup posts at Stop the ACLU.
I researched the Congressional Record dated Wednesday, September 20, 1961. Very important information relating to the ACLU and it’s Communist/Socialist ambitions.
Dr. Fredrick Schwartz, executive director of the International Christian Anticommunism Crusade, “Communist Legal Subversion,” page 75, House Committee on Un-American Activities:
“Any attempt to judge the influence of Communists by their numbers is like trying to determine the validity of the hull of a boat by relating the area of the holes to the area which is sound. One hole can sink a ship. Communism is the theory of the disciplined of few controlling and directing the rest. One person in a sensitive position can control and manipulate thousands of others.”
FBI Director, J. Edger Hoover called Communists, “Masters of Deceit”. He continues, “Fronts probably represent the party’s (communist) most successful tactic in capturing non-Communist support. Like mass agitation and infiltration, fronts espouse the deceptive party line (hence the word “front”), while actually advancing the real party line. In this way the party is able to influence thousands of non-Communists, collecting large sums of money, and reach the minds, pens, and tongues of many high-ranking and distinguished individuals. Moreover, fronts are excellent fields for party recruitment.” The FBI director, people!
And how does this tie into the ACLU? I’m getting to that. The two co-founders of the American Civil Liberties Union are Roger Baldwin and Crystal Eastwood, both confessed socialists. Roger Baldwin was on the record of over 100 Communist front affiliations. In an article that he wrote for “Soviet Russia Today”(September 1934), “When the power of the working class is once achieved, as it has been only in the Soviet Union, I am for maintaining it by any means whatsoever.” He goes on to say, “The class struggle is the central conflict of the world, all others are coincidental.” He also wrote in a book commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Harvard graduating class of 1905 (in 1935), “I seek social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and sole control of those who produce wealth: Communism is the goal.”
Dr. Harry Ward, the first chairman of the ACLU, was linked to over 200 front affiliations of the Communist Party. And was the chairman of one of the largest front organizations in this country, “The American League for Peace and Democracy.” Which was placed on a list of subversive organizations by the Attorney General of The United States on June 1, 1948. Dr. Ward authored two pro-Soviet books, “Soviet Democracy” and “Soviet Spirit”, which garnered him an investigation by the California State Senate Fact Finding Committee on Un-American Activities. The Committee stated on page 246 of their report, “The Communist affiliation of Dr. Harry F. Ward is indicative of the Communist sympathies of the members and sponsors of the ‘Friends of the Soviet Union.'”
Since this history is far reaching, I will continue this subject in tomorrow’s main posting. I don’t wish to overwhelm my readers with too much information. But should you wish to read up on this subject further, you can read the entire Congressional Record for September 20, 1961, by clicking on the title of this [article]. It is rather eye opening.
This was a production of Stop The ACLU Blogburst. If you would like to join us, please email Jay or Gribbit. You will be added to our mailing list and blogroll. Over 180 blogs already on-board