Tell me, we gotta go to Kashmir to find 18 year-old heroines? Awesome:
A teenage girl says she killed a militant with his own gun after insurgents attacked their home in Indian-administered Kashmir.
"I thought I should try the bold act of encountering militants before dying."
She had an image in her mind from the movies, to do something bold, grab an AK-47 from the hands of the men who were beating her parents, and start emptying the damn gun until she couldn't hold it level anymore. Four hours later: Dead militia men. Living parents.
In fact, I'm sick of most of them wherever they think they need to be in order to bring some sort of "otherness" to a man's sport; baseball, basketball, soccer.
I'm watching a man's sport because I'm interested in men. And their sport. How they play it, what their team stats are, how well they faked out the defender, and maybe how exquisite and graceful they look as they dive for the long pass, or even how deliciously funny the huddle can appear. I don't need farookin' wymyn's perspective, insight or to even see their faces, much less hear their voice. Move! Get off of my TV! Get out of my face! Ack!
I wanna hear a man's voice, a man's thoughts, and a man's perspective. If I want to hear a woman yammer I can turn the volume back up in my own brain. Nothing makes me madder than to see some woman come up to the losing coach, humiliated team member or other guy and start asking how it feels. "It feels like losing, ya stupid bint. It feels like crap and I wanna put my fist through a wall right now, okay?" Man, I'd love to see that dialogue.
Who thought it was a good idea to put estrogen on the field of battle? I mean except as an incentive, you know, a catalyst of chesty cheerleaders. They selflessly serve to incite the inevitable jostling for supremacy among the males; all quite feral and necessary for ramping up the testosterone.
It's just that men and their sports, men behaving in a manly, disciplined yet aggressive way, are fantastic eye-candy and good for the female er. . . state of mind. Another woman standing in front of them just pegs our pissy mood meter all the way over to instinctive jealousy. Get that beeyatch outta my way!
Women sportscasters. They're ruining football for me.
Well, you guys fessed up about your pining for the redheads, I may as well cop to B&J's Karmel Sutra. It's all there: chocolate, vanilla, chocolate chunks and caramel.
And politics.
Here, dear reader, is my ask: forgive me in my weakness. I felt I could overlook the ice cream juggernaut its little sideline into the gay marriage debate. After all, I wasn't going to buy any Hubby Hubby ice cream. I conveniently set aside and justified the little dalliances with politics they engaged in because I chose to not fully inform myself. I weakly succumbed to the siren call of round molecules of sweet, frozen cream and silky, outrageous caramel. Oh, it was a delight!
Until I went to their website pages showing where their charity foundation spends its money:
Community Activism. Community Activism. Immigration Activism. Community Activism. Homeless Activism. Community Associations. Affordable Housing Activism.
They've proudly laid it out by fiscal quarters for the last twelve years. It's not all bad, there are some-- a few-- grants going to tangible projects. But the grant from last June, 2008, was for the following:
Private Health Insurance Must Go! Coalition New York, NY $1,000 New York City Health Care Teach-In, June 2008 PHIMGC is a direct-action coalition of two dozen New York organizations working to secure health care as a human right; to end the health care crisis in the U.S.; and to establish a federal law that guarantees the highest quality, comprehensive health care to all U.S. residents through a national single-payer health insurance plan. Funding was provided in support of a New York City teach-in focusing on the state of the health care crisis in the U.S.
And another grant in 2007:
Massachusetts Campaign for Single Payer Health-Care (Mass-Care) Boston, MA $10,000 Mass-Care is a state-wide network working to develop policies that will lead to the adoption of a comprehensive, effective and efficient health insurance program for Massachusetts. Massachusetts recently passed a law to provide health insurance coverage to about 500,000 residents who lack it. The program relies on a complex system of incentives and penalties and raises concerns that it will prove to be inefficient and inequitable. Funding was provided to enable Mass-Care to actively monitor program implementation to document shortcomings and develop achievable policy alternatives.
Ten thousand dollars to help bureaucrats figure out what was wrong with their plan? Shirley, you're joking!
Go peruse their website, if for no other reason than to educate yourself about the myriad ways in which communities "organize" themselves. And yeah, ACORN is in there in a few places. It's a Leftist, illiberal playground of social engineering.
Hey B&J are free to make ice cream and make good money from doing so. But I think I have rediscovered my strength and my moral backbone in my fight against the transient pleasures of the flesh. I'm not a food activist, nor am I on a boycott bandwagon, but when someone wants to proudly flaunt their politics along with their reckless disregard for my health with their calorie-laden confections, I'm thinking it's a small little step in the right direction to put down the spoon and back away from the ice cream.
Damn if Dogette hasn't just changed.the.blogging.world all by herself. Well, she has called upon the Flying Monkeys to help. So you'd better just get with the program.
Dogette has had enough of the whole, "too good to blog on the weekend bullshit" and the adjunct, "too busy to comment," crap.
Did you think she was kidding? Oh no. Not she.
She's now cracking the evil whip on Beh-Bey Island and denying access to anyone who didn't comment on her posts this weekend. That's right. Leaving y'all out in the cold, cold, BlogNight to forever refresh your sitemeter and scan YouTube searches for "weird, funny shit" keywords hoping to find something blogworthy. She'll hear you knocking, but you'll be left to wonder what the rest of us are all laughing about.
Nyah. You've got 34 minutes to repent, peeps, and gain entrance into the bliss that is Beh-Bey Island, 'cause Dogette is likely running on Eastern Standard Time and doesn't give a good GotDamn about the rest of the time zones.
I work in the biggest establishment of an adult beverage discount store in the entire area where I live. People drive in from two to three hours' away just to stock up. So, I've pretty much assumed that sooner or later, I'd meet just about everyone I know, or anyone I've ever worked with, at some point.
Former bosses, co-workers, and most any Episcopalian I ever knew (heh) have all walked through the doors, and that doesn't include the ones that didn't discover me there. Naturally, I would discuss various of these or anyone else with the J.R.
"Do you remember So-and-so?
"No. . ."
Now, a couple of days ago, a good former boss and ally that I worked with/for in the construction insurance business came through my line, but I did not recognize her. Our work relationship was awesome, but brief. I remembered her as a valiant and smart professional with a pure heart and pure joy for life. She saw my name tag, stopped, and looked me square in the eyes and said my name with that sort of recognition that you hope is. . . good?
I returned the look and it was so, so wonderful to see those eyes, that smile, and feel her strength and goodness wash over me. She embraced me and gave me a sweet peck on the check that was full of love and friendship. "God's got you everywhere, girl!" she laughed. I was so warmed by her brief visit, after having hit a wall of emotion the day before, that I knew she was still a gift in my life. Just wonderful, even after ten years of not seeing each other.
That evening I told the J.R. my latest do-you-know-who-I-saw-today? story:
"I couldn't believe it, Lisa Lowrey came through my line today!"
"Who?" he says.
Now I worked with Lisa for all of 4 months, and the J.R. had only met her once.
"I worked with her at CIS," I proffer.
"Oh yeah. The redhead!"
See what I mean? Not only was she all those nice and meaningful things I said about her, she was memorable in a way that really mattered to a guy: red hair.
It's why, on occasion, I've been a decided red-head. Sometimes a girl has got to go with the marketable attributes that don't involve physical disfigurement or surgery. For under $10 a woman can transform the very way she is perceived simply by enlisting the help of Miss Clairol. Blonde works well in low doses in the workplace; a bit of youth and light to the crown has a positive effect when done properly and demurely. But poor Brunettes just have an uphill battle on every front. Sure, it's the classic "Mary Ann or Ginger?" dilemma for some guys. But consider Ann Margaret, Vanessa Redgrave, Maureen O'Hara, Renee Russo. Epic beauties all; indelible in the male imagination.
Every guy thinks he wants a red-headed gal, but it takes a McClintock of a man to abide peacefully with one:
So, a question for the men: Like Charlie Brown, do you still remember the little red-haired girl with a wistful sigh?
The NEA conference call transcript presented to me a neologism that I'd not encountered before: ask, presented as a noun.
W.T.F.?
"My ask is . . ."
I don't know where to start with all that is wrong with turning the simplest and most forthright human expression of need into a noun.
My first thought was the biblical words of Jesus' exhortation to his disciples, "You have not because you ask not," which I guess the "have nots" have adopted as the sum total of what it means to follow Jesus: ask for stuff.
To ask is to pray, to entreat the favor or help of another. It implies a bit of humility and perhaps even a relationship. Turning ask into a noun just seems to me a false ploy to remove oneself from the humility of supplicant into a mere applicant. I'm just thinking out loud here, but that pretty much sums up the entirety of what is wrong with mandated charity: it turns humble supplication into entitled application.
If you've ever worked in a good charity organization, you know the mindset is to lift up the supplicant and not humiliate them in their need. That's all well and good, but it's all part of the soft landing that eventually undermines its own intention.
Being in need sucks, folks. It sucks big time. Asking for help is painful, needing help is humiliating and receiving it is humbling. Why do people need to be shielded from that most intrinsic part of life? As though we've arrived on this earth, alone and of our own doing, never to be demeaned by needing the personal care of or accountability to another?
The State of Obama envisions a world of equality that cheats humanity of the things that make it humane. It's a gray and administrative office of oversight that seeks to control, not console; to mandate but never measure; to disburse, but never impart.
My plea, prayer, and supplication? Life. Liberty. The Pursuit of Happiness.
But for today, let me just state for the record that the next male customer in line at my store that hatefully throws his money down on the scanner, or the belt, or in some other way makes me reach for it instead of placing it in my outstretched hand, that cocksucking, bilge-swallowing piece of shit will be flensed, then keelhauled, then lashed to the bowsprit where the wind will blow the foul stench of his rotting flesh before the ship, so that others may be warned that Joan of Argghh! be master and commander of her own vessel, brooking no show of disrespect to her person or station. As on some vile Reaver vessel, his putrescent corpse thus proudly displayed will serve as a stern rebuke and aspersion unto others of his sub-human species that there be a reckonin' for such as he.
I tell my more charming customers that while they may be at the game or the beach or otherwise engaged in frivolities aided by my Pantheon of Apothecary Spirits, I shall attend to my "high" calling: keeping the populace properly hydrated and libated. Don't ye dare consider a smile, ye skurvy dog! Alcohol used to be the purview of the priestess. Not a far stretch for a pirate, either.
Avast. Away with all of ye. I'll be enjoying a bit o' grog and a fine cigar soon and I don't want to be pestered with yer yammerin' flap-jawed observations on the meaning of a pirate's friggin' life. Go get yer own, bilge-rats.
And it's about time. Any large company providing services or goods to the public will hire mystery-shoppers to assure that standards are being maintained. They are looking for a certain set of practices and accountability that provide value to their consumers.
As taxpayers, we have no one to blame but ourselves if we have not, until now, discovered this valuable method of establishing a government program's effectiveness. We've left it to a long-trusted third party that has now proven itself as corrupt as the wolves it pretends to be sheltering the flock from. Indeed, hard to tell the watch-dogs from the wolves any more.
As for what the MSM can see, well, it sees what it is looking for. In the most benign assessment of any individual journalist, there is no malicious intent, no far-flung conspiracy. And in that, it is no different than any of us. Far be it from me to defend the criminal voter fraud or seemingly tacit racketeering of ACORN, but if we put ourselves in the MSM's shoes, we would be looking for the likely many stories of good deeds and heartwarming effectiveness because we would be inherently sold out to the do-gooderism of our imagined bridges to equality and the redistributive ethic.
Still, over the years, the MSM would have us believe that one story is representative of all stories, thus reducing every heartbreaking hard-luck story to a caricature of The Problem, every corrupt businessman to a two-dimensional avatar of evil. So, in this mindset the MSM can naturally act as though attacking ACORN is to attack the good things they may have accomplished or the grand ideals they espouse. (I don't know of any, but am willing to learn of them, and applaud them on individual and well-rounded merit.)
What are the American people looking for and who will show it to them? That's the Great Divide in our modern age. It's all one and the same thing with political figures; however much we think we know them, we are all projecting what we want to see onto them. It's what makes us cringe when another, Not of Our Grouplet, projects their agenda into our own aspirations: we want to own the Narrative. The Story is where the power lies, and the powerful will lie to own it. The Presidency is for puppets with small aspirations.
It's been heartwarming to see some young idealists upset the apple cart and kick sand in the eye of Sauron, but without the power of Breitbart's media machine, Murdoch's Fox News, and the networking of the blogosphere it might have faded into oblivion. Even so, ACORN is small potatoes in the larger scheme of The Narrative.
It's time for the next rung on the ladder to be mystery-shopped: The MSM. That's why I was hoping to see secretly taped footage of Giles and O'Keefe trying to convince some city editor of the hypocrisy of a "community organization" working actively to promulgate further erosion of values and livability in his town. Because after decades of watching the way my own local media outlets report the news, I have valid grounds to suspect there is money going into a Narrative of race-baiting and class-mongering that needs to be mystery-shopped.
I'm guessing the Pimp-daddy costume will be big this year for Halloween as all the Pirate costumes have all been snapped up by the government.
Maybe it's time to dress up as a Patriot and shop the Truth to as many as are looking for it.
My older sister's husband is part of a very talented group, Martha's Finest, that has been garnering some acclaim amongst their peers for their smooth intonations and stylings. There's a very good video of them on that link. My BIL is the guy in glasses, singing the tag for the close of the song.
I have a great memory of driving through the hills of Lookout Mountain, Tennesse, seated with my sister and her then-boyfriend, singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic. His voice is one of my most favorites ever, deep and soulful. His family and friends have an annual "hunker down" with gospel quartet and country music around a big campfire, which I was able to attend once and join in. Just a small taste of musical heaven! His daughter, my niece, married a fine musician, too, so the music has grown between new families and gatherings. It makes the world go 'round and life worth living.
So. Sing Off! called, and they answered. Warning: This is a Barbershop Quartet group. They perform for charity events and fun and compete for the sheer fun of singing in harmony. If you know nothing about Barbershoppers, know this: in numbers greater than one, they will spontaneously begin singing, anytime, anywhere. It is in their DNA or something. Oh, and they didn't have to travel far from home to find that photo op scenery!
Anyway, NBC Casting contacted them, asking them to show up for auditions in Atlanta today. They weren't sure if they could make it happen, but it seems like it's a go for them.
I doubt that Barbershop as a genre is likely to win, but it is definitely All-American and will certainly add a nice contrast to many other acappella offerings.
Drunk with power or cognac, whatev, short of stature, and not above embarrassing themselves anymore. No matter that two young people have brought down ACORN, the only thing they can do is holler, "Obama is the best president, evah!"
The delicious events of the past few days make me wonder, and hope, that Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe also have footage of attempts to sell their investigative story to the State Run Media.
Wouldn't that be the cherry on top of such a fine serving?
There are many good people, good writers out there in the blogosphere doing what they can today to make sure some crass political parasite does not steal the somber reflection that is due to those lost on 9/11. Of all the bloggers and pundits however, Gerard stands head and shoulders above and his perspective and poetry, his mastery and discipline of craft all serve him, and his readers, well.
*****
For some reason, our national mood seems more ready to mourn than in years past. I do not think that some political grave-robber can successfully wrest our national sorrow and turn it into shame. I don't think he can, but it won't stop him from trying. Please don't let him. Remind everyone you see today, especially those who supported this thief, that you will never forget that there are people who hated us that day, and still do, and that you hope those people are not our fellow citizens.
Further thoughts upon seeing that awful and lovely tribute site yet linked just above, again, in its entirety:
And we're worried about a man yelling, "You lie!" in the Hall of the People? Mr. Wilson sheepishly walked back from his passionate outburst after the first bit of criticism.
May we never walk back our passionate and correct assessment of the day's events on 9/11.
Darkness can't overcome the Light of Truth, and you have to love Andrew Breitbart's newest venture, BigGovernment.com and the brave and brilliant work by young Mr. O'Keefe in getting the devil to overplay his hand. Ever since the day after the election, when I asked the Right, "whatcha got that's gonna beat 'free'?" I have been waiting for something salient and effective. The Tea Parties have been a great groundswell, the pundits and talk radio have been sounding the alarm to some good effect.
Some singular and proud protesters have risen above the noise with clear and precise targeting at their elected cowards-- the young serviceman schooling his "lessers" on faithful oaths, or the young woman [update from Egg, in the comments:Liberty Belle] waving a $20-dollar bill representing her daily part of nationalized health care and demanding her representative take it from her personally, at that moment:
Joe Wilson, in the Hall of The People, speaks for his constituency in the very best show of political decorum and opposition to tyrannical control with two simple words, "You lie!" What better place for political discourse? It's a meeting hall for The People, not a place for kingly pomp and circumstance. Order? Certainly, but the faux outrage of the Left is risible in its irony. Wilson's outburst was much more appropriate than not. That Mr. Wilson backtracks on such a passionate moment tells me that there is likely a reason he doesn't want any further scrutiny from the Left.
Hey, you know who's having absolutely no effect? The Repubican Party and Michael Steele.
So now you have O'Keefe revealing the heart of darkness for what it is: a vile and thoroughly corrupt tool of chaos. And he did it the same way that William Booth did in England's darkest hours of childhood prostitution and depravity: he enlisted his wits and his courage, walked into the lion's lair and bearded him in his own den. The devil's own stepchild, ACORN, and its mewling minions are proving to be people entirely capable of stealing one's liberty through voter fraud, or abetting child prostitution and slavery; it's all the same to them.
And so the sheer and brazen--even calm, accepting!-- evil of it at last begins to turn the promise of "free stuff" into a sour victory in the mouths of the very people who are stuffing themselves with the public weal and wealth.
Did Obama voters say, "yes, we can!" to this? Are their ends so glorious that their means can be so hideous? Will all their free stuff be worth the selling of their souls for a few El Salvadoran girls? What sort of person votes for that?
Friends, do you see a way, a path of purpose in tempting the devil in his own den? Oh, the beauty of such a strategy has been that it works to pull away the frippery and footling vestments of "protocol" and reveals the uglier interior of the agenda.
My only fear is that the Right is shunning the Light as much as the Left. Surely we must sweep the house of demons, but must need fill it with good leaders or suffer the yawning vacuum of relativism in an even stronger iteration. Plainly, pray for the leadership we don't deserve, but desperately need.
And keep looking for men like O'Keefe and Breitbart.
To Hell with health care, what I wanna know from my 24 regular readers is, "what bit you?"
Apparently, there is a show about injuries received from ferocious animal attacks and bites. Carnage, scars, oozing wounds, paralysis. You know the folks who watch it are the same folks who love peeling back a scab just to see if it's healing in there or if it's full of putrescence and bile.
And I know a friend's daughter made the local news with a shark bite on her ankle. Years ago my brother lost some vital shin skin and muscle to a brown recluse spider in Texas, and my sister was temporarily blinded by a scorpion sting when she was a toddler in Corpus Cristi.
I've had a spider bite on the nape that gave me horrible headaches and neck spasms for a year, and having raised miniature dachshunds, I can attest to more than one doggie bite, but nothing serious. I wonder how common it is for us to find ourselves at the receiving end of the food chain?
So, what bit you? Let's see what sort of feral world we really still live in. Let's say whatever bit you has to be bigger than a virus so that we don't have to include Politicians.
Meet Barnacle Bill. The JR and I found him on the beach this morning and a more macabre sight on a lonely beach you can't imagine. Well, I can't:
Is he not sublime in his ghoulishness? You simply must click the pic to embiggen and enjoy the absurd and somewhat poetic placement of various bi-valve invaders. He's too creepy for words and I can't wait for him to be photoshopped with an eye-patch and bandana and make him the pirate mascot for my blog.
As it was, he did a great job of keeping other beachgoers at a fair distance away from our little encampment of umbrellas and libations. I really, really, wanted to bring him home with me, but he's friggin' heavy and the stupid barnacles would stink up everything. So, we got some great pics and I just knew you'd never forgive me if I didn't share the joy.
Seriously? Dogette could use Barnacle Bill as a lawn ornament . He could stare at her nabes and damage their calm. My happy lil' heart of hearts just wanted to drag this cruller home and ship it to her.
With fair warning, of course.
Speaking of poetry:
This face you got, This here phizzog you carry around, You never picked it out for yourself at all, at all—-did you? This here phizzog—-somebody handed it to you–am I right? Somebody said, “Here’s yours, now go see what you can do with it.” Somebody slipped it to you and it was like a package marked: “No goods exchanged after being taken away”—- This face you got.
From idiots being allowed on the nation's highways, to almost every single CongressRat driving us over the ideological cliff of insanity, why shouldn't we scream with all our might, "STOP!!"?
Passion. I swear, the pussies are gonna rule us all with quiet, "concern," and "dialogues" about our frustrations. Fuck Ted Kennedy's Health Care Bill. You don't like it? What THEY will recommend for you, dear readers, is Joe Kennedy's Mental Health Care Cure for our disquiet and we'll not seem so. . . extreme.
Obama just wants to chat with your kids, why the fuss? Obama just wants to have his own army, why do you care? Obama just wants you to die and get outta his way sooner rather than later, is that so bad? Let's have a reasonable discussion of the facts and not take it all so personally.
Even all those years ago we were bullied into silence and we acquiesced. We accepted that people were just going to afford forgiveness to a man who did not ask for it. We were roundly criticized for "harping on it" and "not letting it go" and being petty. We were then, and still are now, being told to let it go for the "greater good."
A few brave souls dared bumperstickers and nicknames, since bitter mockery was all that was left to people with some idea of the continuing wrong being perpetrated by the silence, the lack of justice. And so it stayed there in the background of our collective conscience-- those of us for whom the conscience had not become an atrophied appendix of the political body.
And for every year since that seemingly politically inconsequential event we have seen the monster grow:
"Every uncorrected error and unrepented sin is, in its own right, a fountain of fresh error and fresh sin flowing on to the end of time." -C. S. Lewis
To allow the legacy of Ted Kennedy's sin to continue unrepented is to allow all the error and sin of narcissistic disregard to grow unabated still. (In this, Obama certainly does seem to be the, "last Kennedy brother." ) Teddy lived almost long enough to prove Lewis right.
It seems to me that we who were silent for so long must no longer be silent. If Mary Jo ever deserved justice, she deserves it from those of us who will not continue in our own error-- that of mute acceptance, lest we seem unbalanced or zealous.
However, it remains to our political atonement that the Left must be made to acknowledge the horror and error of that day before it can even begin to see the horror of what they would further perpetrate their obviously inconvenient constituency.
(photo: BBC Media)
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