Oh, yes: The Cap'n and a diet
coke. We're re-exploring our proletarian roots.
Well, it's been two weeks and I'm only half-way
through my two objectives for the vacation: The one was to relax (mission
accomplished). The other was to clear out sufficient space in our three car
garage to park an actual car. I've made absolute zero progress along these
lines, and we're very near now to a moment of finger pointing and recrimination.
It's sad that it has come to this. It's quite possible of course that my stated
intention to park
my
car in the space provided has leached all motivation from other interested
persons of the household - I'll give you
that.
Well, I have accomplished a
little more than just that. I've gotten a good two weeks of facial hair, such as
it is. This is the author as he sees himself. This
is how the world sees him.
Had
a bad dream last night - first I could actually recall after in a month of
Sundays: I was on the surface of a pewter sea atop some sort of floating chair,
strapped in good and tight, too. Quite content, entirely alone. Alarmed at a
wave which suddenly emerged from my right side - even more alarmed to see that
it contained my lovely bride, who was suddenly pulled under by the wave as it
broke up. I tried to bail out of the chair, to reach down to her as she was
pulled under by some dark, invisible force, but the chair's floatation device
kept me at the surface, while the straps kept me held firmly to the chair. A
dream, a
dream,
wake up
now!, I WILL WAKE UP! And I did, and rolled
over and gave her a hug as she slept, and didn't let go 'til
sunrise.
I'm lucky that way - I can
always rescue myself from a bad dream, as soon as I see it going south. Which is
probably why I so rarely have them - why bother? the subconscious mind will ask.
He'll just shut us down before we get to the truly awful parts. And I will, too.
That's a promise.
And before anybody
offers, I don't need a Freudian analysis on that. Anybody's guess whether that's
still in there for the final
draft...
------------
I
believe I mentioned that SNO was home: He's a natural born leader. Just check this
out , with his happy
siblings.
Well, yes. We're still
working on focus. But
still.
-------------
And
while you're probably not as curious as I am about the search words people use
on the Free Find box at the top right, there, I was
intrigued:
That was for people searching within the blog.
People coming in from the outside (google, etc) found my little slice of the pie
thusly:
It's interesting to find that Navy PRT was the most
common search term. And somehow instructive that "rectal probing" is right there
in the top twenty.
Sheesh! You could
build a million bridges, but tell one tale about getting turned out for
Navy, and suddenly you're a proctology expert.
--------------
Well,
the Duke's leaving the game . No way around it really, the
whole "sell your house for a $700,000 premium to a guy that gets his living from
the Congressional committee you rank on" leaves you... vulnerable, in so many
ways.
Pity, though. He'd done great
things once. We have a saying in naval aviation: You're only as good as your
last landing. It means that it doesn't matter what you did once - what matters
is what you're doing now. The Duke should have remembered that. Way I read it,
he'll be lucky to avoid the big house. The Navy's only fighter ace from
Vietnam.
It's
gilding the lily I know to link to a Mudville Gazette post . Greyhawk is the
blog-father of all milbloggers, and if your path has dropped you off at my door,
then it's dead solid certain that you've been by his house first. Unless of
course, you came here looking for a rectal probing. In which case you probably
missed out on this. And you're not going to want to miss
out on it, is my guess.
He also links
to a Jeff Jarvis post that seems fairly
straightforward - has to do with a dispute between a Knight-Ridder journalist,
one Mark Yost, who thinks his colleagues are being a bit too negative on the
Iraq spin (perish the thought!) and Steve Lovelady, the editor of the Columbia
Journalism Review Daily, (and no doubt a champion of free speech rights) who
thinks that prolly Yost ought to lose his job for enunciating such a heterodox
point of view. Jarvis offers both Yost and Lovelady a forum to debate the issue:
Lovelady, after firing off three increasingly hysterical and vituperative
emails, eventually declines. This is what passes for deep thought, at the CJR
Daily, I suppose.
For even more fun,
take some time and dig into the comments field. There are some folks "over
there" (not all of them soldiers) who have their own viewpoints of the work
being done by the Fourth Estate.
There
are a couple of mutually reinforcing things in play here: One is that the new
media has enabled people to network in discovering biases which might have
previously been less apparent. The second is that the old media is rallying
around the barricades trying to both deny that there is or ever was an
identifiable world view to their coverage of, well, the world while
simultaneously trying to silence their critics with what can only be described
as infantile argumentation.
This is a real
shame, because as the players on all sides move defensively towards their
ego-affirming bases, the tendency will be to drive people towards media outlets
(of whatever provenance) that tend only to reinforce their preconceptions. This
kind of balkanization can only serve to increase the divisiveness of the
national debate, shedding a great deal more heat than
light.
I think it'd be cool if everyone
tried to tell the factual story in the front page, and save the editorialization
for the Op-Ed section. But that's just
me.
---------------
I'm
so tempted - Chris Hitchens (you may have
heard me mention him before ) is just south, in La Jolla for
a book signing. I heard him on air yesterday on NPR on the way home from an
early morning round of golf at NAS MCAS Miramar (score: 81,
with 3x three puts -
arghh!)
hyping his new book - except that the word "hyping" doesn't remotely do justice
to the man's evident erudition on and admiration for the subject of Thomas Jefferson. Hitchens spoke at length about
the duality of Jefferson, the renaissance man who authored the first modern
democracy while himself keeping human beings in bondage. From Hitchen's point of
view, the American Civil War (also known as "The War of Northern Aggression")
was Jefferson's "gift" to the following generation, especially in that he
allowed the "peculiar institution" to expand westward into the Louisiana
purchase, thereby assuring a political stalemate on the
subject.
The NPR interviewer clearly
hadn't done his homework (or maybe just wanted to watch the sparks fly) because
he asked Hitchens (paraphrasing): "What do you think Jefferson the revolutionary
would have thought about the US fighting in Iraq
against
the revolutionaries?"
At this, I could
only grin wolfishly, and awaited the response: "You must be joking - the US is
fighting against forces of Saddamist revanchism, essentially nostalgaics of the
former regime, itself one of the most odious governments known to modernity, and
also fighting those who would look to re-install a 14th century caliphate! The
revolutionaries in Iraq are the democratically elected government and the
security forces trying to protect the Iraqi people from terrorist
tyranny!"
In answer to the actual
question, "What would Jefferson think?" Hitchens was a little more guarded:
"Hard to know, really. I do know that Jefferson believed that the American
democratic model
was
for export."
Plus he has that accent -
you know the one, the educated English accent which makes you just want to start
talking like Madonna. Except that you have too much self-respect.
Which is why I so want to go. Between
Hitchens, Mark Steyn and James Lileks, there are three folks I'd almost undergo
a rectal probing just to chat with for a bit. Except for the fact that, as much
as I'm given to fawing in pixels, I just don't do it in person.
Publicly.
So, no. Probably
not.
But I'm perversely satisfied that,
probably for the first and last times ever, Hitchens, Steyn and Lileks will be
forever linked with the words "rectal probing" on my blog. Prolly be the number
one return on that, I should
think.
----------------
My
grateful appreciation, by the by, to whomever it was that put those kind
donations in the tip jar, t'other day. Very kind indeed. I'll try to earn
it.
----------------
Well,
then. That's it. Off you go!
And have a
great weekend!
Posted @
06:41 PM
|
Posted in
""
|
Sendit
|
Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." - John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Ceasar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friederich Nietzsche
