Personal Musings category archive

If Obama can get elected President, dammit, I can stop smoking cigarettes.

Voting is not a right.

It’s a duty.

I get to flip over my girly calendar today.

just came by here tonight.

I need more ghouls. I’ve already eaten four Snickers bars.

So, after five hours, 200 miles, and the usual depressing–depressing because she’s so ill–visit with my mother, I get here, check in, and fire up the computer.

First, Linux tells me that the file system has been rebooted 27 times without a disk check and, dammit, it’s checking the disk whether I want it to of not, so go away for 15 minutes.

Then, I fire up the innertubes, get ready to listen to the news, and the MP3 server at the Best Public Radio Station in the Country ™ tells me that it’s full. Then the Real Audio server tells me the same thing, so I’m stuck with listening to the second best public radio station in the country.

And they’re not going to talk about the Phillies.

Like, for example, this one:

Addendum, after Tuesday’s DL:

I asked him tonight. He said, “Teh Google.”

I just heard the promo for tomorrow’s Fresh Air:

On the next Fresh Air: The making and remaking of presidential candidate John McCain. We talk with Robert Draper about his cover story for The New York Time Magazine, investigating why the McCain campaign hasn’t been able to settle on a central narrative.

(Jumping up and down, raising hand, and shouting, “Oooo! Oooo! Oooo! I know! I know!”)

In order to have a central narrative, one must believe in something over, above, and beyond just winning.

Phillies 10, Rays 2.

Phillies up three games to one.

Godwin’s Law states that

“As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”

A corollary to Godwin’s Law states that

If someone brings up Nazis in any conversation that has been going on too long for one of the parties, it can be used as a fair excuse to end the thread and declare victory for the other side.

Based on Godwin’s Law, the Republicans are toast.

General Powell’s endorsement of Senator Obama fell upon Left Blogistan with a resounding thud, as witness here and here and here, just to pick a few.

Some persons cannot forgive his hack sales job for the Great and Patriotic Glorious War for a Lie. Others think he has become, because of that, irrelevant.

Mithras injects some rationality into the discussion here.

Many years ago I worked for a retired Army bird colonel. I was chatting with him shortly after he lost a particularly bruising bureaucratic battle (he was on the side of the angels, by the way). He said, “I forgot what I learned in the Army. You fight like hell for your position, but, when the decision’s made, you shut up and follow orders.”

General Powell is a General, USA, ret. No doubt he learned the same lesson as Chuck. And no doubt this had a lot to do with his making his presentation at the UN.

I have a separate, unrelated story.

Well, not exactly unrelated, maybe tangentially related.

I used to work for a man–a good and honest man, the second-best boss I have ever had–who had been a very successful Sergeant in the Army, until he suffered an on-the-job (non-combat) injury and had to leave for medical reasons. He had the highest security clearance and knew persons in places the rest of us don’t know are places; indeed, he knew about First Son’s promotion to Sergeant before either First Son or I did.

He and I were standing out back in the designated smoking area chatting as the movement of men and material for the Great and Patriotic Glorious War for a Lie was just beginning.

“[Boss],” I said, “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

He looked at me and said, “Frank, it was going to happen anyway.” And, indeed, the warmongers had set the course for war from the beginning of the Current Federal Administration.

Now, you can argue that General Powell, rather than stage his dog-and-pony show, ought to have resigned, as Mithras argued last night.

And I will not disagree with you.

We cannot know, until and unless General Powell tells us, to what extent he was duped by the warmongers, to what extent he duped himself, or to what extent he he was consciously duplicitous.

How many of us have done something, perhaps something truly vile, by accident, to realize later that we should have done something else?

Persons in powerful positions are persons whose errors may have powerful consequences.

Here is my point: It is not right to dismiss the rest of General Powell’s truly distinguished career because of one powerful error.

Hold him accountable for his mistakes, but also give him credit for his accomplishments.

I cashed in some AmEx rewards points and got myself a toy. It’s a Garmin Nuvi 205.

It’s not that I need a GPS. I actually like maps.

One of my conceits is that, whenever I drive into a state, I’ll stop at the welcome center and get the current official state highway map (Va., Md., Pa., and NJ excepted, because I drive into them frequently).

So this is definitely a toy. And it was already paid for.

I took it for a spin today. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.

No, I don’t leave it in the vehicle.

That’s another word for “underbelly.”

From the Booman, and he’s right on target. He describes the foundations of Republicanism. In all its slimy reality.

McCain has unleashed the dirty, ugly, secret-underbelly of the GOP’s base. It’s the base the enabled center-right rule on Wall Street and in the Capitol. It’s going to be a while before it can make a comeback. This is a total crack-up for one of the two major parties.

Addendum, Later That Same Evening:

Racist bastards.

Silverado is on AMC.

vs. crass acts, over at the Booman’s place.

This one is worth 30 seconds–60 seconds on dial-up–folks (well, maybe I should say “folk,” but that’s neither here nor elsewhere).

It lays out in three column inches the difference between the two campaigns and their adherents.

Addendum, Later That Same Evening:

Balloon Juice has more.

One thing I don’t get is the modern mania for decorating for every holiday. Hallowe’en may be the second to Christmas in terms of what persons do to their houses (though it’s sixth in terms of spending).

I wasn’t going to decorate for Hallowe’en.

But I’m having second thoughts.

Thinking he was being funny, Second Son, whom I’m in the process of disinheriting, brought this . . . this . . . this . . . thing into the house that is so appalling in its appearance and so bone-chilling in its implications that I’m thinking that, if I put it on a frame next to the front step, I won’t have to worry about trick-or-treaters; they’ll just go screaming into the night.

It’s carries such an aura of malevolence that I don’t want to put it here on the front page.

But you can see it (parental advisory) here.

Man, I’m glad I don’t live some place where it gets really cold, like, say, for example, Colorado.

. . . in the posts that got lost when my database went screwy, so I’m mentioning it again.

I didn’t used to be a card-carrying, money-contributing, rabid Democrat.

The Republicans turned me into one.

This country and its ideals are too important to be abandoned to the likes of them.

After working nine straight days, I just had to bag it today and get out of the house for a while.

Now, note, that’s not eight hours a day. In my world, you don’t get paid for lunch or for hanging around surfing the net or for thinking about starting to work; you can bill only for when you are actually working (including, of course, reasonable breaks).

So on the way back from mailing a package, I stopped at Blueberry Hill Resale. When I got divorced, Blueberry Hill was where I re-furnished the house for all but one or two items. I was a frequent visitor for a couple of years, because, frankly, it’s a really neat shop.

How’s business? I asked.

Lousy, she says. Traffic is way off. She started babbling, the same way I babble when I’ve been working at home without talking to an adult for a couple of days. I babbled right back.

She said she’s lucky to get three visitors a day and is afraid she might lose her business. She had to give up the garage across the street that she had rented for years to store large pieces of furniture. She couldn’t afford it anymore.

And, ya’ know what?

Nobody’s going to bail her out.

Just like nobody’s going to bail me out. We’re not rich.

We each have only one house and one car. Not seven or eight of each.

Not important enough for Bernanke to care.

She also said that, if McHack wins the election, she’s just going to pack it in and move back to Finland. “I can’t take four more years of this,” she said.

None of us can take four more years of this.

Never hire a law firm that advertises an 800-number on the telly-vision.