Personal Musings category archive

Nothing shakes my faith more than the antics of those who loudly anoint themselves the “faithful.”

It occurs to me that one of the principle drivers of economic inequality over the past 40 years has been the shift to financing education with student loans, which harness students to a life of debt and debt to finance debt, sucking their earnings into the coffers of the masters of the universe for most of the rest of their economic lives.

Any Scotch is better than every anything else.

And, to quote an old co-worker of mine,

if God hae wanted to hae water in it, He’d hae put water in it.

Happy Saturday Night.

Miles Groth searches for the secret garden.

A great deal has been written about the behavior of boys and men, but little has been said about the experience of being male. Boys may be understandably inarticulate about what they are going through, but men’s silence about their inner lives (except for the poets) is another matter.

Frankly, I wasn’t aware that I had an inner life.

I have a code in de dose.

Looking for something to listen to as I lay on my back too wiped out even to achieve Enlightenment with Slackware (I’m preparing a podcast on E17), I finally visited LibriVox; I had heard of the site, but not visited it.

It is the Project Gutenberg of audio books. (Oh, yes, Gutenberg also has audiobooks. They work with Librivox, among others.)

I listened to part of this last night; it started slow, but then picked up nicely. (I’m a mystery buff. Not suspense. Not adventure. Mystery, which ideally opens with the body on the library floor and closes with the Great Detective explaining the solution in that same library.)

Check out LibriVox. And if you have never visited Project Gutenberg, now is the time.

Is Lady Gaga the P. T. Barnum of our time?

We stumbled over this a couple of weeks ago. It airs on our cable provider on Sundays, eight hours of a pot-potpourri of songs, shorts, excerpts, and the like. One of the items this week included Nat “King” Cole and Ella Fitzgerald in a duet.

It airs on one of the “public access” channels (channel 47 on Virginia Beach’s Cox Cable), so it’s not listed in the “listings” on the cable company’s DVR–the listing provides no information about what’s on the three “public access” channels.

Those channels are normally a rather boring collection of local miscellany, but the Classic Arts Showcase is a fascinating variety of excellent viewing and listening.

Follow the link to find out where you can view it in your area.

I did. Several.

Susan can attest to that.

I know this lady. She is a good and caring person and a good Democrat.

Really, nothing more needs to be said.

My mother died of Alzheimer’s.

My ex noticed it years before anyone else (whatever complaints I may have, my ex is a damned good nurse). It was progressing slowly until my father had a heart attack and died a week later.

My father was so wrapped up in caring for my mother that, I am certain, he delayed calling for help so as not to worry or distress her. When he passed, she started to fail more quickly.

This seems be a parallel.

Alzheimer’s is not a nice way to go.

I have watched it.

I know.

Please say a prayer for Mayor Meyera and for her family who supports her.

They must walk into a tunnel that has but one end.

Have you ever wondered why there were no black folks in Mayberry? In North Carolina? In the South?

I cannot think of a pretty answer.

I understand that something important is happening today. And yesterday.

The election’s signed and sealed. Now the politics continue.

Notre Dame got beat so badly in the Orange Bowl that the band wanted to leave at the end of the third quarter.

Also, commercials are getting dumber (yeah, I didn’t think it was possible either). Compared to Verizon’s welcome-to-the-Matrix Droid ads, Speedy Alka-Seltzer was blankety-blank War and Peace and M&Ms in the swimming pool was the bleedin’ Bolshoi.

It’s most amazing how often “be a man” translates into “do something stupid.”

Kansas City played a large role in the growth of the blues, so I wonder whether their company name is not a coincidence.

Three years later, HollenWolff LLC, a company Stoehr started with two partners, has launched its first product: mechanical cuff links that use ball bearings to secure and release the halves.

It is ironic that the biggest argument against Christianity is the conduct of those who most loudly proclaim their own Christian-ness.

Matthew 6:5.

If the embed doesn’t work, click here.

I wonder how many persons are waiting to see what happens today hoping to get out of Christmas shopping?

I’m so old I can remember when television networks had new Christmas specials every year.

I do enjoy the schmaltzy Christmas pop songs of my youth, but if I never hear “Little Drummer Boy” again, it will be about 10,000 times too late.

It was 70 Fahrenheits on the first day of December, a temperature which, when I was growing up in these parts, would have been inconceivable (50 maybe, on an unseasonably warm day), but it clearly can have nothing to do with global heating.

Move along now, nothing to see here.

If you are unwilling to identify yourself, I’m unwilling to answer the phone.