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Still here? Eh. Your
nickel.
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You
know, customarily I send links home to myself from the office, things I note of
interest that don't quite make the cut for a full-blown blog entry. Those get
folded in on many a Friday Musings. But I haven't been to the office, have I?
Been on leave, this past week. For the good of the
service.
And I haven't a damned thing
to show for it, truth be told. Including links sent hither from work. Which is
exactly the way I wanted my first week of leave to
go.
Oh, that's not entirely true: I
do have a rather disreputable goatee in the works. It has ret more gray in it
than a friend could hope for. If one didn't know better, one could conclude that
your humble scribe is rapidly reaching a state of advanced decrepitude.
Best part about being on leave?
Asking of one's spouse: "Is today Friday?" Oh, yeah.
And! I went bass fishing not once
but twice with the local rabble. Had a pretty good time too, despite the fact
that my bass fishing skills (never anything to write home about) do not appear
to have grown stronger over the intervening years since last I wet a line. If
anything, the reverse is possibly true, although it's difficult to be
mathematically certain: In bass fishing, at least, there is no number smaller
than zero.
Did shoot some skeet
though with Son Number One and the Kat, earlier in the week. I can still get
even with a clay pigeon, given half a chance and the sun over my shoulder. The
Kat was introduced to the sport of bloodless gunnery by a single shot, open
choked .410, the recoil of which sadly proved a bit too much for her slender
frame to bear in actual execution. She is such a very strong personality, has
such a presence that it is sometimes possible to forget that she's just a wee,
bitty thing, nobbut a slip, a whippoorwill, a mere wisp at eleven years of age.
Too, she reacted strongly to my firearms safety speech, one I have used over the
years for everyone who has never before handled a
firearm:
"This is a weapon. It was
made to kill: that is its purpose and that is what it wants to do. If it is not
to kill, then that will only be because we actively prevent it from doing so.
We will never deliberately point it
at anything or anyone we do not want to actually shoot. We will never, through
carelessness, allow it to point at
anyone.
It has a safety, designed to
prevent it from firing accidentally. Since the safety is mechanical, we must
always assume that the safety has failed, that it is useless. Nevertheless, we
will use the safety up until the moment we have decided to shoot - we just won't
trust it.
The weapon is always
loaded, until we have proven that it is not. The instant it leaves our hands, it
is loaded again, until we prove that it is not. The instant it is returned to us
again, although we have had it in our sight for the entire time, it has become
loaded again, until we prove that it is
not.
We must never for an instant
forget what the weapon was made for, and what it wants to
do."
Which I'll grant you is a bit
dramatic, but we've been taking folks on shooting trips of one kind or another
since we were not much more than rabble ourselves, and so far, we have not had
any serious incidents. And we'd very much like to keep it that way, thank you
very much.
She took a couple of
shots, rubbed her shoulder and said, "Maybe next year, when I'm
bigger."
That works for
me.
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Oh,
and I've been working on a site redesign. I hope to be done soon, and spring it
fully formed upon an amazed world. Here's a small screen shot of what the
redesign will look like (and the pic links to a larger shot):
Cleaner I think. The present design has just gotten
clunky with age, and I've finally got some time to do some work on it. Love to
hear your thoughts. The customer is always right, and all that
jazz.-------------Oh.
Lileks again
:"I know the 90s
don’t matter at all; I know that nothing we believed in the 90s has any
relevance, but you might want to heed a fellow named Osama who declared war on
the West, and cited the sanctions against Iraq as one of his causus belli. Let
us assume then that the Iraq campaign had never taken place. By now either the
sanctions that so inflamed Osama’s sensibilities would still be in place,
or they would have been removed due to international pressure. Saddam would
still be in power, free to spend the Oil-for-Food money as he pleased, lavishing
stipends on Palestinian suicide bombers, building up his own weapons programs
without fear of international interference, having weekly meetings with Zarkawi.
(Who would have been something other than a terrorist, of course. A
chiropractor, perhaps. Or a botanist.) The situation in Lebanon would be
unchanged; Libya would be happily pursuing its own agenda. And we would be
safer?Yes! Because the
Arab world would not be enraged by our removal of Saddam and imposition of
representational government, and we could get back to the real work of combating
terrorism by addressing the root causes. You know, tyranny and lack of
representational government. But this assumes that Newsweek et al wouldn’t
have run with the Gitmo detainee stories. This assumes that Osama would be
mollified by the lifting of the sanctions, an assumption so naive it makes the
statue in the Lincoln Memorial weep on your behalf. This assumes that the London
bombers’ mention of Afghanistan was just a rhetorical device, and they
really have no fellow-feeling for the Taliban and their recent troubles. This
assumes that all that stuff about the tragedy of Andalusia was just boilerplate,
and they really aren’t animated by the loss of Muslim
Spain.One of the
curious facts about the enemy: they may time their bombings down to the second,
but their clocks count off the centuries.
They did not bomb
London because there is insufficient transparency in Congress about the Gitmo
detainees; they bombed London because it is part of the Zionist-Crusader
Conspiracy run by the sons of monkeys and pigs, who must submit or
die.Any
questions?"Do go read the whole
thing. Go for the screed, stay for the
music.--------I
was actually called on the lake yesterday whilst fishing by an assistant-to-be
at my gaining command (i.e., next job site):
Sorry to bother you on leave, but
there was going to be this wonderful meeting next week, and just everyone was
coming (there would be admirals!) and it had all to do with the new program that
everyone is talking about, and he just wanted to know if I wouldn't mind coming
in?What, and shave my goatee?
That kid is going to need some
re-training. Commanders, these
days!---------Speaking
of young officers, I think I mentioned that SNO came back after a month away at
the uttermost part of the world. Well, the east coast anyway. Norfolk, Virginia,
Kings Bay, Georgia and Camp Lejuene, NC. When he walked in the door in his
summer whites and dropped his sea bag off, the Hobbit came running down the
stairs and threw her arms around him and wept, which surprised both SNO and
myself a little (it had only been a month), but maybe not as much as you might
think. But he came back bubbling with enthusiasm and with stories of his own to
tell and it was all that I could do to sit on my hands and keep my mouth shut
and let the words tumble out of him. I wanted to pitch in and add my own to what
he was weaving, but every time I started to open my mouth to speak, I got a
stern look of warning from the Hobbit, who as much as telepathically
communicated to me, "Not now - this is his story, and his time." He got to fly
and allowed as how that was the Best Thing Ever. And I nodded, because I
remember how it felt. I got
it.He's changing, becoming
every day a bit more of a man, and I'm all the more proud through every day to
know him. At dinner that night, he told stories of the young Marines he met in
training, some his age, some already wounded and spoke of them thoughtfully.
There was the 19 year old lance corporal instructing at the MOUT (military
operations in urban terrain) facility that had caught the better part of an IED
to the right side of his face in Al Anbar, and was now teaching other young men
with one less eye than he'd been born with, and scar tissue on a skin almost too
smooth to regularly shave. "Kids my age," he said in wonder and
appreciation.I think he got it too.
---------More
on Rhythms as the mood hits me. I know where it's
going now, but getting it there is proving a sore trial. Your kind comments are
appreciated, and we are of course, dedicated to customer service here at
Chéz Lex. It's just that it's maybe just a little harder than it actually looks
.And you and I, and
talked of poetry.I said, "A
line will take us hours
maybe;Yet if it does not seem
a moment's thought,Our
stitching and unstitching has been
naught. - W.B
Yeats, from "Adam's
Curse"---------So,
I guess that's it. Short, but stupid. Thanks for bearing with, and hopefully
your faith will be rewarded in the not too distant.
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