Covered In Something Other Than Glory Department
So Hillary Clinton is bashing Barack Obama for being cozy with the unrepentant domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers, and Obama is firing back by calling attention to Bill Clinton granting clemency to a couple other domestic terrorists.
I'm amazed at this whole episode. Have the (putative) best and brightest of American politics really sunk so low as to engaging in this kind of tu quoque? These are the front-runners?
I Was NOT Eavesdropping Department
Overheard as I walked to the counter at a local fast-food restaurant:
"And that's why he got punched in the face five times last night!"
I so wished I could have heard the story that led up to that.
Applying For The Position Department
Jonah Goldberg just made my day with this post:
Hillary's got big plans. From the AP , via Drudge:
A reader asks an interesting question:"At this point, we don't have anything punitive that we have proposed," the presidential candidate said in an interview with The Associated Press. "We're providing incentives and tax credits which we think will be very attractive to the vast majority of Americans."
She said she could envision a day when "you have to show proof to your employer that you're insured as a part of the job interview — like when your kid goes to school and has to show proof of vaccination," but said such details would be worked out through negotiations with Congress.I just heard Rush Limbaugh quoting Hillary explaining that her health care proposal could require that you have to provide proof that you have health coverage in order to get a job.Maybe if insurance companies refuse to insure illegal immigrants, the whole issue will just go away?
Isn't Hillary the front-runner in the party that has conniptions if anyone suggests that you should have to provide proof of citizenship in order to get a job?
Isn't she in the party that gets their collective knickers in a gigantic non-discriminatory wad if anyone suggests that you should have to provide proof of identity in order to vote?
I'm the reader with the interesting question; I'm now lobbying for the position of Jonah's Interesting Questions Guy.
Undeniable Truths Department
"The chief achievement of Britney Spears in the last couple years has been to make us all appreciate the depth and substance of Jessica Simpson."
Lifestyles Of The Something Or Other Department
I'm living a dream.
The one where I can't find my pants.
Roy M. Jacobsen
in Just Plain Silly
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Dispatches From A Viking Encampment Department
Last Friday, my son and I went over to the Hjemkomst Festival in Moorhead, MN. Lars Walker was there with a detatchment of the Viking Age Club & Society, doing some demonstrations of Viking Age stuff (naturally). We had to leave before their live steel demonstration, but I did get a couple of snaps.
Here's his pavilion. He was inside at the time, participating in a fashion show. (Lest anyone worry that I've put a dent in his manly image, he was modeling the Viking warrior look, complete with chain mail.)
Here he's interacting with an adoring public.
And here's our hero with my son.
Like I said, I had to leave before they did their live steel demonstration; however, a photographer from the local paper did catch Lars in action here.
Dietary Preferences of Equus Asinus
"Donkeys prefer garbage to gold."
--Heraclitus
Discuss.
Journal Pages Department
For just over a week now, I've been making myself get up earlier to write three pages in my journal. (Blame Julia Cameron.) I'm beginning to rebel a bit (maybe balk is a better word) against these three pages. I'm not questioning the value of the journal writing, just the arbitrary notion if it having to be three pages.
On the other hand, why not three pages? Perhaps there's no other reason than forcing myself into the discipline of just sitting down and coming up with words enough to fill the assignment. Goodness knows it's not as if my inner dialog, my narrator/commentator doesn't constantly spew out enough to fill my journal in the course of a single day.
It makes me kind of wonder about this inner voice. I mean, it's me, or at least a part of me, I think. Why, then, do I sometimes get so fed up with it? Why is it negative when I want to be positive? Why won't it shut up and let me go to sleep when I'm exhausted?
There's the notion that this voice is sometimes not me, but a demonic voice--I'm not sure I'm willing to accept that, but I can't discard it either. I believe that the enemy is capable of influencing our thoughts, but is he able, and does he make it a practice, to mimic our internal dialog? That's not a question I think I can resolve here and now.
It's enough for me to wonder if the "Be still" part of the command "Be still and know that I am God" means that I should also somehow silence the mental chatter. Is that a trick that some people have figured out?
Of course, there had to be a time when I wasn't always chattering inside: before I knew words to chatter with. What was going on inside when I had to words to talk to myself in?
I suppose I could just as well ask what goes on inside my dog Sammy's head. You know that some level of thinking and reasoning is going on, but how do you express it without words? He must somehow think with pictures, smells, sounds and sensations.
And from here my mind leaps to this: Is it a part of what's wrong with our society, that people today are losing the ability to think clearly in words because we've managed to cast doubt on the idea that our words actually mean anything?
"In the beginning was the Word." There is a Word that has real meaning external to any thought that I have or that others have. It may be that our words are only echoes of that one real Word, but the are echoes, and therefore, by definition, the share some of that one real Word's characteristics.
Words mean things, even our sloppy, ghostly, insubstantial words. I believe that some day we'll have a chance to speak words in a language that is more real, solid, and substantial than we can imagine.
(And here I thought I wasn't going to get anywhere with these three pages today.)
What Was The Point Of That? Department
We ordered a few things from Gurney's this spring--Gurney's of the tabloid-sized, multicolored catalog with a dizzying array of squash described in terms that could make a certified squash-hater like me slobber uncontrollably. That catalog will forever be one of the harbingers of spring for me.
Anyway, we had ordered some strawberries, but they ran out of the kind we ordered, and they substituted a different variety. Also, half of the plants they did send somehow started to mold in transit.
So I looked at the packing sheet for a customer service number. There it was, right under another number for orders. Two different numbers, one clearly labeled "Place an order," the other "Customer Service."
I dialed the customer service number, because I wanted customer service. I didn't need to place an order. (Just so we're clear on that.) Customer Service.
The voice that answered said "Thank you for calling Gurney's. To place an order, press 1."