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Be gone for a week and a bit. Taking the COD out tomorrow. Hate sitting backwards in an
airplane. Really hate someone else landing me aboard ship. Would have thought
I'd be used to it, by now.Would have
been wrong.Last time I was at sea, I
remember one night trudging back to my hooch after a long day at work, after
taps. The ship was dark and quiet, and there was a relaxed finished-ness about
the evening. I was feeling like some kind of modern day warrior monk going back
to his cell after vespers. Brushing and flossing to replace oblations. A naval
monastery perhaps - a place of hard, familiar work. A place full of tired,
contented men returning to their place of rest, the gym gear drying out on
hangars in the passageway. The gentle roll of a living ship underneath you,
griping mildly at the opposing forces which push and pull at her. The sibilant
whisper of the rushing ocean. A quietly hostile presence, lying in wait, knowing
that time is on her side - the sea can afford to be patient. She was here before
you came. She will be here after you are gone. We throw ourselves against the
sea, strive and struggle and strain, and eventually, exhausted, if we're lucky,
she allows us to move on. Not all escape her embrace. And even for those who
leave, the sea itself remains, unimpressed, unperturbed,
eternal.So it is, selah. Try to
leave your mark upon the ocean, and see where it gets
you.--------------The
Abraham Lincoln strike group it is, the heroes of Indonesia. They didn't have a
"normal" deployment. They didn't have a normal training cycle. So we're going
out with them for a bit, to get them a bit of a polish-up. I hope they enjoy
it.--------------So,
Lileks has decided to divorce his screediness from his bleats .
Meh.Now he gets two links, vs only
one. I'm not sure it's fair. There are so many folks out there that don't even
get one link.But, he is Lileks and
so I read this sort of thing and all is
forgiven:-
Three and a half years ago, a guard
kicked a Qur’an. It’s a front page story today. Well, who am I to
question the news judgment of the Post? Obviously it matters. One then must ask:
is flushing worse than kicking? Flushing, after all, requires some amount of
premeditation. One has to decide to flush a book. Kicking a book may be done in
the heat of anger – say, when you’re interviewing someone fighting
for a movement that wanted little girls to stay indoors all their lives dressed
in hot sacks until the merry day when they were married off at 14 to some
middle-aged guy with a nice job in the Remnants of Buddhism Demolition Division.
If the guy might have info on what Al Qaeda was up to next – you know, the
group from which the terro (SORRY!) detainee was plucked a mere five months
after the Twin Towers thundered down, you might be tempted to shed all your
civilized inhibitions and kick
a
book.
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And:
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Don't get me wrong. I want us to do
the right thing. I don't think there should be a policy that permits
interrogators to treat the Qur'an like it was, oh, a Bible discovered in the
Saudi airport customs line. But when it comes to the revelations of these Gitmo
tales, I cannot care as much as they would like me to care. I cannot. Not to say
we should treat the Qur’an with casual disrespect. But if an infidel
touches the book with the wrong hand and people react like a two-year-old whose
peas are touching the mashed potatoes, well, I understand why this matters, but
when measured against the sins of headchoppery and carbombs, it pales to an
evanescent translucence. Odd how the story isn’t about the rules and the
precautions and the spine-cracking efforts to bend over backwards to make sure
infidels get out the tongs when approaching the sacred book of the terrori
– sorry, the detainees -
Sorry,
the murderous gynophobic gay-hating fundamentalist theocratic cultural
imperialists. No, the story is the infinitesimal number of times in which the
rules were breached over the course of years. It’s like doing a story
about Wal-Mart’s employment practices, and following a story about forced
overtime with an expose on expired non-dairy creamers in the breakroom. By
hammering the tale for three weeks the MSM manages to dilute the impact of the
beloved Abu Grabass scandal; pyramidal prisoners, wafting pee – all the
same, all front page news. Of course, it’s all a seamless whole if your
intention is to remind people of the three basic preconceptions of reporting on
a war conducted by anyone whose initials aren’t JFK: the Pentagon lies,
the troops are dullards and brutes, and Nixon is a criminal.
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Don't care what you say. That's
writing.
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Not the kind of issue I do back flips over, but
the again the NRA has my second amendment back. Speaking of the Constitution, is
anyone else concerned that in the name of fighting reefer madness , the Supremes have
essentially agreed that there is nothing in the country that isn't subject to
federal regulation under the interstate commerce clause? Even when the intent is
clearly not to engage in interstate commerce?
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Is there anyone left apart from Justice Thomas who
actually reads the Constitution the way it was written? I've got a professional
reason to ask, having sworn to support and defend it. I'd like to believe it
doesn't mean just what nine people say it does. No matter how
qualified.
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Saw "Star Wars, Return of the Sith" last weekend.
Because I had to, that being the way the interstate commerce clause is now
interpreted.
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No. No, can't back that up. But
still.
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It was... good. Fine. OK. Lots of wonderful
lightsaber duels (I always thought that naval officers should be issued
lightsabers when going ashore, but was always worried that if we had them, we'd
have to parade with them. There'd be no end of arms lopped off at the shoulder
as we went to "carry swords ." So probably it's just as well.
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But I wanted to see it in the theater, because
some movies are like that - you have to see them on the big screen. Anyway, all
of the lightsaber duals went on and on, and the dialogue was wooden. I liked the
way that Lucas left the transition points to the first/fourth episode - even the
sets in ROTS started to look like the 1970's version of the empire towards the
end - small details that you didn't notice changing over the series, had changed
back again. But even though I was happy I saw it, I had no intention of going to
see it again. I saw the original four or five times when it first came out. I'll
see this once.
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One of us has changed, over the
years.
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Some of you liked the plane porn from yesterday.
Check this out . (Quick time movie, took a while
on DSL - dial up users should use their imaginations)
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Got to go. See you in the funny
pages.
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