It's a cosmopolitan today. In case you were
curious.
• 2 tablespoons of
Vodka
• 1½ tablespoons of
Cointreau (Triple sec)
• 1½ tablespoons of
Cranberry juice
• 2 teaspoons of freshly
squeezed lime juice
• crushed ice
• twist of lime
Combine the Vodka, Cointreau,
cranberry juice, lime juice and crushed ice in a cocktail shaker. Gently shake
and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a twist of
lime.
Yeah, I know it's a chick
drink. But it tastes rilly-rilly
good.
So sue
me.
Oh, and another thing? Two
tablespoons of
vodka?
Cha!
Sweeten
to
taste.
--------------
Rilly-rilly.
When
I was 15, I was not selected for the team that got to pick the Cool Things to
Say. I'm not really sure I know how the members of that particular team got
picked, but I know that everyone knew who they were - The Cool Things to Say
Team (CTST) could pick a word like "grunch," and in a week's time, everyone,
EVERYONE! would be saying "grunch," in time "grunchier," and finally even
"grunchiest."
By the time the Cool
Thing to Say got around to me (or by the time I picked up on it), it'd be almost
over. I'd be just working "grunch" into my vocabulary at the exact moment that
"grunchiest" went out of style. I was a trailing-edge adopter of the popular
culture:
"Yeah," I would say, in my
chambray shirt, bell-bottomed corduroys and chukka boots, nodding my head up
and down to try and get something going, "there were a grunch-load of people at
the concert last night. Yeah?"
But
of reciprocal head-nodding, there would be few, or none. It would have been so,
like, fifteen minutes ago. And the CTST would sigh, and roll their eyes and
exchange knowing glances. I could have tried to start my own cool thing to say,
but I'm pretty sure it would have flamed out. Eventually I gave up on that
particular game. I decided to speak, like, you know, English. The American
variant. Mostly.
But there were some
kids in our youth group at church that were charter members of the CTST. And I
noticed one night that "rilly-rilly" had become the grunchiest modifier
available.
"Yeah, we went, you know,
to the movies last night and had a rilly-rilly good
time."
"Rilly?"
"Rilly-rilly."
And
so it is with some sense of déja vû that I attempt to shepherd my 13
year old daughter through the rocks and shoals of incipient adolescence, secure
in the knowledge that there is nothing all that new under the sun, secure in the
knowledge that she absolutely
knows that I have
no
idea what she's going
through.
Rilly.
------------
Dude,
I so love it that iBlog allows me to write things like, "déja vû,"
with all those
accentsgrave,
etc. I rilly-rilly do.
I have a Mac.
I am a Mac guy. I rilly-rilly am. (Forgive me. I swear I'll stop soon.
Rilly.)
But I so love my computer. We
so had the
WYSIWG
thing before you ever figured out what we were talking
about.
Oh, you may say that a WINTEL
machine gives you every bit of the capability at half of the price. You may say
that there is far more software designed for the WINTEL mafia than ever finds
its way over to the Mac. I will tell you that this may be true, it may be
rational, it may make good business sense. I will tell you that you are
essentially soulless in the computer world. And that plus, if the software is
rilly-rilly good? We'll eventually get it for the Mac
OS.
I work with WINTEL machines day
in and day out. I am forced to. And I can make them sing, I can make them
laugh. I can make them cry.
But they
are mere tools, mechanical, uninspired. And I don't enjoy a moment of
it.
The Mac? I can make the Mac sing.
But the thing I rilly-rilly like is that the Mac sings back to
me.
For a married man? Using a Mac
feels a bit like
cheating.
Just to show that, you know,
I'm not, like, an enthusiast. Or
anything.
Rilly.
-----------------
Bouncing
around a bit.
Dunno about you, but I
get the distinct impression that Spec. Charles A. Graner , Jr, US Army (Reserve),
is well and truly forked.
But it's
important (to me) for you to understand that I believe that his acts, in
themselves, are not really all that horrible. Oh, they're stupid, and ignoble,
and cruel and bullying.
Give you
that.
But on the carefully
calibrated and gradated scale of evil, they're nothing more than the usual,
pedestrian, dreadful cruelty that our species is all too often heir to. Take for
example the puffy-faced, mullet-headed idiot from New Jersey who thought it would be a
laugh riot to shine his laser pointer into the cockpit of Teterborough-bound
airliners. And then try to blame it on his fourteen-year old daughter.
Three hundred million people. Even
if you're only talking one-tenth of one percent, you're still talking a lot
of idiots .
Yeah, OK - that
was unfair, that last bit. I'll admit it. But it
was
funny. I think.
But back to the topic
at hand: Put it this way - The kind of crimes that Graner was convicted of
today, and for which he will soon be punished? They would probably not have even
earned him an end-of-year bonus in the Saddam regime. Far less a promotion. No,
that would have been business as normal.
Try to use some imagination. Show
some personal growth. Novice.
But I
think that Spec. Graner is almost certainly about to go into the big house and
do the long yard. And on a cosmic scale of justice, I think that will be richly
justified. Not because his acts (in themselves) were so awful. But because the
results of his actions led almost certainly fed the murder machine. And for
that, I hope he goes down for the count, and rooms with a big guy named "Bubba."
Who thinks he's kind of cute, with his face pressed down there in the
pillow.
And yeah, I know I shouldn't
wish that. I know that's awful, and cruel and ignoble. But Graner was cruel on a
small scale because he thought he could be. And because of who we are we
admitted that to the world, and showed them pictures, and there's probably a
definable number of good kids from Iowa, or Texas or California who won't be
coming home now because Graner thought it would be OK to be cruel on a small
scale. Because he thought he could get away with
it.
Halifax said that we don't hang
men for stealing horses. We hang men so that horses may not be
stolen.
I'm OK with
that.
-------------------
Speaking
of justice, I rather think that it's been done
here.
Now you have to go there, and read
the whole
thing.
Sorry.
--------------------
Not
really.
--------------------
Oh,
yeah.
I got going last night on the
separation thing because I've been reading a book by Ewan McGregor and Charley
Boorman, entitled "Long Way Round ." McGregor of course, is a
well-known Scottish actor who starred in
"Trainspotting," and is more broadly known as Obi-wan
Kenobi in the Star Wars prequels . Boorman, so far as I can tell, is
famous because his father made the beautifully lush but flawed
"Excalibur."
The
book itself was given to me for Christmas by my nephew, who, like me, owns a
BMW R1150GS motorcycle. (Which, by the way, is
a rilly-rilly great ride.) The story involves the authors' driving their BMW
bikes across Europe, through Asia, and down and across North America. A 20,000
mile cross country adventure. Around the world on two wheels.
I so looked forward to reading
it.
But for dramatic effect, they
both had to wank about missing their families, and separation, and all that gas.
For three months!
So yeah, I found
myself a little off-put. And started to write about it, and got all maudlin and
had to let it
go.
But.
McGregor
had to chip in on page 233 about his time spent in a Mongolian ger with all the
Quaintly Different People Who Really are Just Like
Us:
"... We all want the
same things; the world isn't that big of a place. I lay in my ger thinking that
if the likes of President Bush, who might even struggle to find Mongolia on a
map, had spent some time finding out what was happening outside their countries,
they would recognize what all people of all nationalities and religions have in
common, instead of focusing on the differences, and maybe the world wouldn't be
in such a mess."
Silly old President
Bush. Focusing on all those differences.
Some people of different
nationalities build jet liners. Other people crash them into buildings. Why on
earth should we focus on
that?
Wooly-headed
twit.
Ruined the book for me. Now
I'll struggle to finish.
And it would
have been so simple to not even bring it up.
Meh.
--------------
But!
As far as empty-headed idiots of the British Empire go,
he is far from the top of the
list!
It's so stupid you almost have
to laugh. I mean, how did they elect
that
guy?
--------------
Well,
I hope you all have a rilly-rilly great weekend.
Lex out.
Posted @
06:10 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
