Now, I don't care what form of political belief you subscribe to, but I find it inconceivable that these two clowns, who I have referred to as Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber, are the best that America can do.
As someone else once said, if you want to disprove evolution, just compare George Washington and George W. Bush.
And if you think I was favoring Mad John the Bombing Clown McCain over Barack "I saw the first season of 24 and know America is ready for a black President" Obama, then, please, feel free to mentally transpose Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber in the initial paragraph of this post. Trust me, I won't bitch. For me, really, it's a coin toss as to which is worse, it's like asking, "Do I use the straight razor on my left wrist first, or my right wrist?"
We're looking at a choice between a socialist big government true believer and a socialist big government true believer. And here I thought G-dubs and Al Gore's 2004 throwdown was as low as America could go! See Marx on Hegel, under the heading "History Repeating: Tragedy and Farce."
Inconceivable!
(You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. )
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Everything I need to know, I learned from John Prine
"I ain't a-hurting nobody, I ain't a-hurting no one."
Funny How Things Change
I could be wrong, you know.
There’s plenty of things I don’t understand about this world. Nietzche said that if you stared long into the abyss, the abyss stares long into you at the same time. Of course, in one of my favorite movies, Blazing Saddles, someone quoted Nietzche to the effect that what does not kill us makes us stronger, and the response to that was, “Blow it out your ass, Howard.”
I like movies. I think a movie can be just as legitimately an art form as a fine novel, or a lovely song, or even a sonnet or an ode to a Grecian urn. Of course, there’s plenty of junk movies out there, to go along with junk books, songs, sonnets and odes. (I think Ode to Billy Joe would be one of the latter, but I haven’t seen it in years and years, since the mind of man remembereth not.)
Maybe one of the reasons I like movies is that I’ve watched a bunch of ‘em. Back when I was a kid growing up in Texas, in the Reagan years, I had a yen for what you might call fine cheese. By gum I liked movies where the evil Godless Communists took it in the neck at the hands of the right thinking forces of freedom. Now some of them were so bad that even I couldn’t really enjoy them. One of those “so bad” movies was Red Scorpion with Dolph Lundgren, which I even remember now only because, as it turns out, Jack Abramoff was involved in the production. (We should have figgered him for a no count sumbitch on the basis of that movie alone, but that’s neither here nor there.)
Anyway, I think that the two movies I’ve got stuck in my mind now are pretty good. At least, they made an impression on me, and I remembered them fondly, enough so that I bought them when they came out on DVD, just to have. These movies are Red Dawn and The Beast, or perhaps The Beast of War. We seem to be living in strange times, because those movies resonate with me lately in ways that are, umm, diametrically opposite to the way they used to.
Red Dawn was widely dismissed as a crackpot fantasy when it came out, because it was about a Soviet invasion of the United States. A quick precis of the film runs like this: Godless commies invade America, a few high school kids E&E (escape and evade) their way up into the Colorado mountains and begin a resistance movement, using their high school mascot as their code name. Go Wolverines! Written by Kevin Reynolds and John Milius, and directed by Milius, Red Dawn featured names that would later go on to, arguably, bigger and better things, names like Patrick Swayze, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson (who looked yummilicious in her tattered cammies and is arguably responsible for some of my fetishes to this very day) and Charlie Sheen, and some fine vintage performances by skilled hands Ron O’Neal, Powers Boothe, Harry Dean Stanton and Ben Johnson.
Let’s face it, you just don’t see Ben Johnson and Superfly working together just every day, do you?
Milius managed to push all the right buttons with this film. An opening scene shows a bumper sticker saying “You’ll take my gun when you pry it from my cold dead fingers” and immediately after, a Soviet paratrooper is, in fact, prying a gun from the cold dead fingers of its owner. The Cuban colonel in charge of the operation has his men go to the gun dealers and collect their 4473s to get a record of who’s been buying guns. Liberals, it is fair to say, just hated this movie, despite how yummilicious Lea Thompson looked in her tattered cammies.
The Wolverines set up their operation, up in the mountains, and enjoy some successes against the Soviet occupiers, including some lifted closely from then-current events in Afghanistan (which will tie into the second film’s discussion, below).
The scene that sticks in my mind, though, comes when one of their own has turned against the Wolverines (appropriately enough, the mayor’s son), and they find out that he’s swallowed a tracking device. They execute the mayor’s son and one of the Soviet troops who’d survived only to be captured.
Matt Eckert (Charlie Sheen): What's the difference, Jed?
Robert ( C Thomas Howell): I'll do it.
Matt Eckert: Shut up, Robert!
[to Jed]
Matt Eckert: *Tell me what's the difference between us and them!*
Jed Eckert (Patrick Swayze): Because WE LIVE HERE!
Because we live here. That’s enough reason to kill an intruder in your country. He’s an intruder in your country. Protecting your home is one of the oldest, and best, reasons to fight.
Because we live here.
I actually had a dream about this scene. I dream a lot, I’ve got enough Irish in me to be all dreamy and lyrical sometimes, and mostly I don’t remember my dreams too well, but I remember this dream, because it was just about that scene, except it wasn’t Matt and Robert and Jed talking. It was Ahmad and Suleiman and Ali. And it wasn’t a captured Soviet invader, and a turncoat American, that they were talking about executing, it was a captured American invader, and a turncoat Iraqi.
Because we live here. Reason enough, ain’t it? When you boil it all down? Now I’m not talking about some wetback from Chapultepec looking to wash dishes and cut lawns and send his money home to Mama and Papa and the family, I’m talking about foreign invaders on your soil, foreign soldiers who are in your country to fix it.
Somehow these days I just see Red Dawn through whole different eyes.
The other movie I wanted to talk about today is called The Beast of War. It was a pretty small drama, about a Soviet tank during the invasion of Afghanistan. During operations, the tank gets cut off from the rest of its unit, and takes a wrong turn, and is being stalked by the mujahadin. Directed by Kevin Reynolds (there’s that name again) from a play by William Mastrosimone, The Beast of War features George Dzundza at his scenery chewing best, a very young Jason Patric, Stephen Baldwin and Stephen Bauer. Interestingly enough, it was filmed in Israel.
Quick precis of the film: the cut off tank is being stalked by the mujahadin, and the tank commander, played by Dzundza, slowly flips his lid. He executes one of the tankers, an Afghan who manages to combine being a good Communist with being a good Muslim, and then abandons his tank driver, played by Jason Patric, for protesting the murder. Patric asks for mercy from the mujahadin, who take him prisoner. Eventually, he helps the mujahadin to destroy the tank, and is then rescued by a Soviet helicopter.
Dzundza is superb in this film. You can regard him as a madman or simply as a desperate military leader, and be none too far off in either case. When his character, Daskal, was eight years old, he’d fought against the Nazis in defense of Stalingrad, earning the nickname Tank Boy, since his comrades would tie a rope around his waist and lower him onto Nazi tanks, to place Molotov cocktails under turrets and cannon.
Patric too is quite good in The Beast of War. He plays Koverchenko, a sensitive intellectual who is nonetheless a fairly good soldier, and who believes in the rightness of what they’re doing. The Soviets had invaded Afghanistan, after all, to combat Muslim extremism, to bring, if not exactly democracy, but modernity and civil rights for women and stability to the country. Yeah, you probably see where I’m going with this one. Koverchenko is appalled by the brutality displayed by Daskal.
Daskal gets most of the good lines. He’s a tanker, all the way through, and it’s obvious that he loves his tank. When a Soviet helicopter spots the tank and offers them a ride home, Daskal refuses. “Get back in the tank,” he says. They ask him why. “Because I said to.” They say that they’re going home. He says, “Yeah. In the tank.” The troops ask why they can’t take the helicopter. “Because we’re tankers.” After the tank is crippled, he says, “Out of commission, become a pillbox. Out of ammo, become a bunker. Out of time, become heroes.” He's talking about blowing themselves up.
It is the tension between Koverchenko and Daskal, obviously, that fuels the movie. Initially, Koverchenko respects and fears Daskal for his efficiency and military skills, and for his history in fighting for their homeland, but eventually he is forced to ask, “How is it that we’re the Nazis this time, sir? How is that?”
I carry no brief for the late and unlamented Soviet Union. Stalin was a butcher, but the Nazis DID invade the Soviet Union, and the Soviets suffered on a scale that I, as an American, find almost literally incomprehensible. I saw the burial mounds outside of Kiev, just great heaping hills where they’d put the bodies. I had bad dreams about it for a long time. The battle for Stalingrad made Kiev look like a picnic. The Soviet Union did monstrous things, both within and without its borders, but the change from Tank Boy, fighting in defense of his homeland, to Daskal the crazed invader, is a change that I am worried about.
I’m not saying that the U.S. military is the Nazi party, or the SS, or even the Wehrmacht. I served four years of good, faithful and honorable service in the United States Marine Corps, and remain proud of the service I gave, and glad I gave it, to this day. But like I say, there are things I don’t understand. I don’t understand how our Department of Defense is involved in dang near every country, everywhere in the world. I was proud of my country when I served, which, thank God, was during peacetime. I thought we stood for cornball shit like Truth, Justice and the American Way.
Later on, I lived and worked in Kazakhstan for a few years. I met some former Soviet troops, including some who’d served in Afghanistan. They were just guys now, you know. Drivers, salesmen, computer techs. They’d done their time, got out, and moved on. They’d been proud of their country when they served. They thought that the Soviet Union stood for cornball shit like Truth, and Justice, and the Soviet Way.
Like I say, there’s a lot of things I don’t understand.
A while back, I found an article that William F. Buckley had written in the 1950s, talking about how, to defeat the Soviet Union, we had to become somewhat sovietized ourselves. We had to have a strong, standing military, we had to have a strong executive, we had to sacrifice some of our liberties, in order to remain free. We did those things, and we outlasted the Soviet Union. Sometimes I think back on Red Dawn, though, and wonder if it might not have been better if we hadn’t made those sacrifices, and that it might not have been better if the Soviet Union had invaded us, and we’d gone up into the hills, and potted Soviets at long range with deer rifles, and fought and beat them the American way. During World War Two, the Japanese thought about invading the United States, and concluded that 200 million or so cowboys hiding behind every cactus with a deer rifle would put a crimp into their plans. Sometimes I think we looked long into the abyss, and the abyss, she looked long into us right back. Sometimes I think we learned all the wrong lessons from the Soviet Union.
Now all things old are new again. We’re the ones invading, err, liberating, Afghanistan, and Iraq, from the forces of Mussulman reaction, we’re the ones putting in quota systems to ensure equitable female representation in the parliament, we’re the ones bombing a desolate country, we’re the ones using helicopter gunships and unmanned aerial vehicles with Hellfire missiles against villagers with jezails and Short Magazine Lee Enfields and Kalashnikovs, scenes that boiled our blood in Rambo III. But the mujahadin aren’t freedom fighters any more, they’re terrorists.
And sometimes I wonder, how is it that we’re the Soviets this time? How is that, sir?
NOTE: I wrote this three or four years ago. There's not that much I'd change, come to think of it.
There’s plenty of things I don’t understand about this world. Nietzche said that if you stared long into the abyss, the abyss stares long into you at the same time. Of course, in one of my favorite movies, Blazing Saddles, someone quoted Nietzche to the effect that what does not kill us makes us stronger, and the response to that was, “Blow it out your ass, Howard.”
I like movies. I think a movie can be just as legitimately an art form as a fine novel, or a lovely song, or even a sonnet or an ode to a Grecian urn. Of course, there’s plenty of junk movies out there, to go along with junk books, songs, sonnets and odes. (I think Ode to Billy Joe would be one of the latter, but I haven’t seen it in years and years, since the mind of man remembereth not.)
Maybe one of the reasons I like movies is that I’ve watched a bunch of ‘em. Back when I was a kid growing up in Texas, in the Reagan years, I had a yen for what you might call fine cheese. By gum I liked movies where the evil Godless Communists took it in the neck at the hands of the right thinking forces of freedom. Now some of them were so bad that even I couldn’t really enjoy them. One of those “so bad” movies was Red Scorpion with Dolph Lundgren, which I even remember now only because, as it turns out, Jack Abramoff was involved in the production. (We should have figgered him for a no count sumbitch on the basis of that movie alone, but that’s neither here nor there.)
Anyway, I think that the two movies I’ve got stuck in my mind now are pretty good. At least, they made an impression on me, and I remembered them fondly, enough so that I bought them when they came out on DVD, just to have. These movies are Red Dawn and The Beast, or perhaps The Beast of War. We seem to be living in strange times, because those movies resonate with me lately in ways that are, umm, diametrically opposite to the way they used to.
Red Dawn was widely dismissed as a crackpot fantasy when it came out, because it was about a Soviet invasion of the United States. A quick precis of the film runs like this: Godless commies invade America, a few high school kids E&E (escape and evade) their way up into the Colorado mountains and begin a resistance movement, using their high school mascot as their code name. Go Wolverines! Written by Kevin Reynolds and John Milius, and directed by Milius, Red Dawn featured names that would later go on to, arguably, bigger and better things, names like Patrick Swayze, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson (who looked yummilicious in her tattered cammies and is arguably responsible for some of my fetishes to this very day) and Charlie Sheen, and some fine vintage performances by skilled hands Ron O’Neal, Powers Boothe, Harry Dean Stanton and Ben Johnson.
Let’s face it, you just don’t see Ben Johnson and Superfly working together just every day, do you?
Milius managed to push all the right buttons with this film. An opening scene shows a bumper sticker saying “You’ll take my gun when you pry it from my cold dead fingers” and immediately after, a Soviet paratrooper is, in fact, prying a gun from the cold dead fingers of its owner. The Cuban colonel in charge of the operation has his men go to the gun dealers and collect their 4473s to get a record of who’s been buying guns. Liberals, it is fair to say, just hated this movie, despite how yummilicious Lea Thompson looked in her tattered cammies.
The Wolverines set up their operation, up in the mountains, and enjoy some successes against the Soviet occupiers, including some lifted closely from then-current events in Afghanistan (which will tie into the second film’s discussion, below).
The scene that sticks in my mind, though, comes when one of their own has turned against the Wolverines (appropriately enough, the mayor’s son), and they find out that he’s swallowed a tracking device. They execute the mayor’s son and one of the Soviet troops who’d survived only to be captured.
Matt Eckert (Charlie Sheen): What's the difference, Jed?
Robert ( C Thomas Howell): I'll do it.
Matt Eckert: Shut up, Robert!
[to Jed]
Matt Eckert: *Tell me what's the difference between us and them!*
Jed Eckert (Patrick Swayze): Because WE LIVE HERE!
Because we live here. That’s enough reason to kill an intruder in your country. He’s an intruder in your country. Protecting your home is one of the oldest, and best, reasons to fight.
Because we live here.
I actually had a dream about this scene. I dream a lot, I’ve got enough Irish in me to be all dreamy and lyrical sometimes, and mostly I don’t remember my dreams too well, but I remember this dream, because it was just about that scene, except it wasn’t Matt and Robert and Jed talking. It was Ahmad and Suleiman and Ali. And it wasn’t a captured Soviet invader, and a turncoat American, that they were talking about executing, it was a captured American invader, and a turncoat Iraqi.
Because we live here. Reason enough, ain’t it? When you boil it all down? Now I’m not talking about some wetback from Chapultepec looking to wash dishes and cut lawns and send his money home to Mama and Papa and the family, I’m talking about foreign invaders on your soil, foreign soldiers who are in your country to fix it.
Somehow these days I just see Red Dawn through whole different eyes.
The other movie I wanted to talk about today is called The Beast of War. It was a pretty small drama, about a Soviet tank during the invasion of Afghanistan. During operations, the tank gets cut off from the rest of its unit, and takes a wrong turn, and is being stalked by the mujahadin. Directed by Kevin Reynolds (there’s that name again) from a play by William Mastrosimone, The Beast of War features George Dzundza at his scenery chewing best, a very young Jason Patric, Stephen Baldwin and Stephen Bauer. Interestingly enough, it was filmed in Israel.
Quick precis of the film: the cut off tank is being stalked by the mujahadin, and the tank commander, played by Dzundza, slowly flips his lid. He executes one of the tankers, an Afghan who manages to combine being a good Communist with being a good Muslim, and then abandons his tank driver, played by Jason Patric, for protesting the murder. Patric asks for mercy from the mujahadin, who take him prisoner. Eventually, he helps the mujahadin to destroy the tank, and is then rescued by a Soviet helicopter.
Dzundza is superb in this film. You can regard him as a madman or simply as a desperate military leader, and be none too far off in either case. When his character, Daskal, was eight years old, he’d fought against the Nazis in defense of Stalingrad, earning the nickname Tank Boy, since his comrades would tie a rope around his waist and lower him onto Nazi tanks, to place Molotov cocktails under turrets and cannon.
Patric too is quite good in The Beast of War. He plays Koverchenko, a sensitive intellectual who is nonetheless a fairly good soldier, and who believes in the rightness of what they’re doing. The Soviets had invaded Afghanistan, after all, to combat Muslim extremism, to bring, if not exactly democracy, but modernity and civil rights for women and stability to the country. Yeah, you probably see where I’m going with this one. Koverchenko is appalled by the brutality displayed by Daskal.
Daskal gets most of the good lines. He’s a tanker, all the way through, and it’s obvious that he loves his tank. When a Soviet helicopter spots the tank and offers them a ride home, Daskal refuses. “Get back in the tank,” he says. They ask him why. “Because I said to.” They say that they’re going home. He says, “Yeah. In the tank.” The troops ask why they can’t take the helicopter. “Because we’re tankers.” After the tank is crippled, he says, “Out of commission, become a pillbox. Out of ammo, become a bunker. Out of time, become heroes.” He's talking about blowing themselves up.
It is the tension between Koverchenko and Daskal, obviously, that fuels the movie. Initially, Koverchenko respects and fears Daskal for his efficiency and military skills, and for his history in fighting for their homeland, but eventually he is forced to ask, “How is it that we’re the Nazis this time, sir? How is that?”
I carry no brief for the late and unlamented Soviet Union. Stalin was a butcher, but the Nazis DID invade the Soviet Union, and the Soviets suffered on a scale that I, as an American, find almost literally incomprehensible. I saw the burial mounds outside of Kiev, just great heaping hills where they’d put the bodies. I had bad dreams about it for a long time. The battle for Stalingrad made Kiev look like a picnic. The Soviet Union did monstrous things, both within and without its borders, but the change from Tank Boy, fighting in defense of his homeland, to Daskal the crazed invader, is a change that I am worried about.
I’m not saying that the U.S. military is the Nazi party, or the SS, or even the Wehrmacht. I served four years of good, faithful and honorable service in the United States Marine Corps, and remain proud of the service I gave, and glad I gave it, to this day. But like I say, there are things I don’t understand. I don’t understand how our Department of Defense is involved in dang near every country, everywhere in the world. I was proud of my country when I served, which, thank God, was during peacetime. I thought we stood for cornball shit like Truth, Justice and the American Way.
Later on, I lived and worked in Kazakhstan for a few years. I met some former Soviet troops, including some who’d served in Afghanistan. They were just guys now, you know. Drivers, salesmen, computer techs. They’d done their time, got out, and moved on. They’d been proud of their country when they served. They thought that the Soviet Union stood for cornball shit like Truth, and Justice, and the Soviet Way.
Like I say, there’s a lot of things I don’t understand.
A while back, I found an article that William F. Buckley had written in the 1950s, talking about how, to defeat the Soviet Union, we had to become somewhat sovietized ourselves. We had to have a strong, standing military, we had to have a strong executive, we had to sacrifice some of our liberties, in order to remain free. We did those things, and we outlasted the Soviet Union. Sometimes I think back on Red Dawn, though, and wonder if it might not have been better if we hadn’t made those sacrifices, and that it might not have been better if the Soviet Union had invaded us, and we’d gone up into the hills, and potted Soviets at long range with deer rifles, and fought and beat them the American way. During World War Two, the Japanese thought about invading the United States, and concluded that 200 million or so cowboys hiding behind every cactus with a deer rifle would put a crimp into their plans. Sometimes I think we looked long into the abyss, and the abyss, she looked long into us right back. Sometimes I think we learned all the wrong lessons from the Soviet Union.
Now all things old are new again. We’re the ones invading, err, liberating, Afghanistan, and Iraq, from the forces of Mussulman reaction, we’re the ones putting in quota systems to ensure equitable female representation in the parliament, we’re the ones bombing a desolate country, we’re the ones using helicopter gunships and unmanned aerial vehicles with Hellfire missiles against villagers with jezails and Short Magazine Lee Enfields and Kalashnikovs, scenes that boiled our blood in Rambo III. But the mujahadin aren’t freedom fighters any more, they’re terrorists.
And sometimes I wonder, how is it that we’re the Soviets this time? How is that, sir?
NOTE: I wrote this three or four years ago. There's not that much I'd change, come to think of it.
Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife: A Kipling Interlude
I ain't got any words to say about this: to my mind, it speaks for itself.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
Rudyard Kipling
AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
Rudyard Kipling
AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
Joe the Plumber? Joe the UNLICENSED Plumber?
Where have I heard something like that before?
Oh yeah.
Little flick by some Brit. "Brazil" I think it was called.
Nothing to see here folks. Move along.
Late breaking update: Umm, Tuttle was HVAC, not plumbing. Still, a guy with a wrench, and no license.
Oh yeah.
Little flick by some Brit. "Brazil" I think it was called.
Nothing to see here folks. Move along.
Late breaking update: Umm, Tuttle was HVAC, not plumbing. Still, a guy with a wrench, and no license.
In times of crisis . . .
I could be wrong about this, but it seems to me that in times of crisis, you have to cling to what you believe in.
Like, say, a philosophy of limited government. I heard the Decider blathering on recently about how no one is happy with, you know, having the government assume control of the commanding heights of the economy, but it was a time of crisis.
Like, say, the Constitution of these here United States. Ordinarily, we at least pay lip service to quaint anachronisms like the "Bill of Rights." (You know, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, thus, part of the Constitution, thus, the supreme law of the land.) But, because some people out there don't like us---and thus, we are in a time of crisis----we need to put them aside. Just, you know, temporarily.
Look, when things are easy, things are, well, easy. Easy times don't test your beliefs. Hard times test your beliefs. When things are easy, you can just go merrily along, and not worry too much about your beliefs, because your beliefs aren't being tested. It's when everything goes tits-up, it's when things get hard, that you have to cling to what you really, no I mean really really, believe in.
Do you believe in free markets? Well then, believe in them, and when things go bad, keep right on believing in them. If you believe in free markets, when the FIRE sector of the economy goes into the toilet, you keep right on believing that free markets are the way to resolve the issue. Look, if that mass of sliced and diced, securitized and monetized aggregated mortgages is suddenly revealed to be so much sound and fury, signifying nothing, then the way to resolve the issue is to let the markets find the natural price. If that price is a lot less than we've been pretending it is, then we've been wrong about the price. The only true price is a price something will sell at.
Do you believe in the Constitution? Well then, believe in the Constitution. Separation of powers, strictly enumerated things the government can do, and courtesy of the 9th and 10th amendments, a long and unenumerated list of things the government can not do. If you believe in, say, freedom of speech, or double jeopardy, or the requirement of probable cause before issuance of a search warrant, or wiretapping, or things like that, then you have to believe that those things are true, even in a crisis.
Saying that you believe in the Constitution, except when it's inconvenient, such as in a time of crisis, is saying that you believe in the Constitution not at all, because it is in crisis that we reveal ourselves.
Let me analogize. I spent four years in the United States Marine Corps. I was not a grunt (i.e., combat arms, i.e., infantry, armor or artillery) and I served during peacetime. I was proud to be a Marine, I was an heir to a long history of general Marine ass-kicking-ness, I took the job I had to do seriously. But no one ever handed me an M16A2 and said, "Hey there, Teuful, there's bad people coming and we need you to delay their advance while we reposition for a counterattack. And by the way, this is a one-way ticket." I talked the talk, but I never had to walk the walk. Now, in a time of crisis, would I have saluted smartly, done a quick function check on my rifle, and held the line? Would I have dropped my rifle and headed for the hills like a spotted-ass ape? Would I have held fast to my beliefs? Or would I have thrown them over like so much "well that was then and this is now" po-mo rationalization?
I'll be honest: I don't know.
I think--I like to think, I prefer to think, I do, in point of fact, think---that I would have done a quick function check of my rifle, said a prayer, and held the line. But I could be wrong about that. I didn't face that kind of "time of crisis" during my service.
Let's say you believe in marriage as a covenant between two people and God, that marriage is a unification of two halves into one whole, and that you will cleave only unto your spouse, for better or for worse, through good times or bad, until death do you part. But then, you start arguing with the Old Lady/Old Man, and harsh words are spoken, and then the Cute Chick/Hot Stud you work with, or see in the course and scope of your daily life, throws you a wink and a nod. (And as we all know, a wink is as good as a nudge, eh wot?) Well, you know, it's a time of crisis . . . .
Like, say, a philosophy of limited government. I heard the Decider blathering on recently about how no one is happy with, you know, having the government assume control of the commanding heights of the economy, but it was a time of crisis.
Like, say, the Constitution of these here United States. Ordinarily, we at least pay lip service to quaint anachronisms like the "Bill of Rights." (You know, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, thus, part of the Constitution, thus, the supreme law of the land.) But, because some people out there don't like us---and thus, we are in a time of crisis----we need to put them aside. Just, you know, temporarily.
Look, when things are easy, things are, well, easy. Easy times don't test your beliefs. Hard times test your beliefs. When things are easy, you can just go merrily along, and not worry too much about your beliefs, because your beliefs aren't being tested. It's when everything goes tits-up, it's when things get hard, that you have to cling to what you really, no I mean really really, believe in.
Do you believe in free markets? Well then, believe in them, and when things go bad, keep right on believing in them. If you believe in free markets, when the FIRE sector of the economy goes into the toilet, you keep right on believing that free markets are the way to resolve the issue. Look, if that mass of sliced and diced, securitized and monetized aggregated mortgages is suddenly revealed to be so much sound and fury, signifying nothing, then the way to resolve the issue is to let the markets find the natural price. If that price is a lot less than we've been pretending it is, then we've been wrong about the price. The only true price is a price something will sell at.
Do you believe in the Constitution? Well then, believe in the Constitution. Separation of powers, strictly enumerated things the government can do, and courtesy of the 9th and 10th amendments, a long and unenumerated list of things the government can not do. If you believe in, say, freedom of speech, or double jeopardy, or the requirement of probable cause before issuance of a search warrant, or wiretapping, or things like that, then you have to believe that those things are true, even in a crisis.
Saying that you believe in the Constitution, except when it's inconvenient, such as in a time of crisis, is saying that you believe in the Constitution not at all, because it is in crisis that we reveal ourselves.
Let me analogize. I spent four years in the United States Marine Corps. I was not a grunt (i.e., combat arms, i.e., infantry, armor or artillery) and I served during peacetime. I was proud to be a Marine, I was an heir to a long history of general Marine ass-kicking-ness, I took the job I had to do seriously. But no one ever handed me an M16A2 and said, "Hey there, Teuful, there's bad people coming and we need you to delay their advance while we reposition for a counterattack. And by the way, this is a one-way ticket." I talked the talk, but I never had to walk the walk. Now, in a time of crisis, would I have saluted smartly, done a quick function check on my rifle, and held the line? Would I have dropped my rifle and headed for the hills like a spotted-ass ape? Would I have held fast to my beliefs? Or would I have thrown them over like so much "well that was then and this is now" po-mo rationalization?
I'll be honest: I don't know.
I think--I like to think, I prefer to think, I do, in point of fact, think---that I would have done a quick function check of my rifle, said a prayer, and held the line. But I could be wrong about that. I didn't face that kind of "time of crisis" during my service.
Let's say you believe in marriage as a covenant between two people and God, that marriage is a unification of two halves into one whole, and that you will cleave only unto your spouse, for better or for worse, through good times or bad, until death do you part. But then, you start arguing with the Old Lady/Old Man, and harsh words are spoken, and then the Cute Chick/Hot Stud you work with, or see in the course and scope of your daily life, throws you a wink and a nod. (And as we all know, a wink is as good as a nudge, eh wot?) Well, you know, it's a time of crisis . . . .
Amidst the snark
Got a brother-man in pain right now, medevaced to Hamburg with five kidney stones. I talked with him on a spotty connection and he told me some icky-ooky stories. I don't want me no kidney stone, nosirree!
Friday, October 17, 2008
Lew Rockwell on the MSM
"The normal range of opinion is from Pravda to Izvestia."
Rockwell asks, "Are the Media Hurting Obama?"
Rockwell asks, "Are the Media Hurting Obama?"
Everything I need to know, I learned from Solzhenytsin
The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.
Everything I need to know, I learned from Gen. Mattis
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet."
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Primer popping, enhanced by FastFire
As you may know, I am probably an inveterate gun-swapper. I'd like to think that I've mostly gotten past the point of thinking each new toy is going to be "tha best evah" but, well, who knows.
Today I ventured out to the shooting range on the West Side of town (should I call this the West Side Story? No, probably not), to put some rounds through a 9mm, and a .45.
The 9mm is a Smith and Wesson, from their "gun of the month" phase of things. It's one of the first metal framed Smith autopistols I've owned, the other one is the bigger and heavier version of this one. The 9iq (9mm In Question, pronounced "Nick" of course) is a S&W 6944. If you're all hep to 3d Gen S&W terminology, you probably know what that means, or can, at least, make a stab at breaking it out. Most people AREN'T hep to S&W terminology, so I'll spare you the google-fu.
The 6944 is a double action only (DAO) version of the S&W "minigun." The minigun (which ain't, when all is said and done, all that mini, btw) was originally released in the 2d Gen of S&W autopistols, and was a bobbed version of the main line "59" derivatives. (The 659 was the big stainless steel version, the 459 was, I think, the big alloy version, etc.) It's a twelve shot 9mm. Note: the S&W DAO pistols "halfway pre-cock" the trigger, so repeat strikes on a dud primer are out.
I was shooting offhand, unsupported, at 7 yards. Not a real long way, but pretty decent groupings---especially since I was switching from left hand to right hand after each shot. I used a mix of Wolf and Magtech 9mm ball ammo (115 grains in both cases).
Verdict? This is a decent little pistol. Recoil is mild, the trigger ain't bad at all (somewhat short and heavy compared to a Beretta 92D I'd picked up earlier), and while it's not tiny, it's significantly smaller than the 5946 that is its big brother. With a double stack magazine, it is a little fat through the butt.
The other pistol I shot was a Glock "21/30." Thanks the the miracles of polymers, by the time I got it the butt had already been trimmed from the full size "21" butt to use the shorter, ten round, magazines from the Glock 30 (hence the name). It's got about an inch more barrel than the smaller Glock 30, "and I'm the only kid on the block."
I've shot the 21/30 before, and like it. I prep the trigger---taking up the slack, and then letting it break, and when I do things right, it is a pretty dang accurate little popper. The new thing today was that I'd put a Burris FastFire on it. I was inspired by the use of red dot optics on fighting rifles/carbines in our current Mesopotamian adventure. Actually, I'd liked the idea of red dot optics for a long time, I just never got off my ass and put one on a pistol until now.
The FastFire is a virtual dead ringer for other small reflex sights---Trijicon makes one, and the progenitor was the J-Point and then the Docter Optik sight. It is small and lightweight, although it DOES bulk up the pistol some.
Since it's a red dot sight, I tried to focus on the target, and then move the dot over the target. Yowee and shazam!
I only ran fifty rounds through it---forty rounds of Magtech .45 ACP ball, and ten rounds of Winchester ball. At first I alternated left hand and right hand, then said, "Let's pretend I'm really a lefty." (No cracks, please!) I stuck to the left hand, using a modified Weaver stance---left arm only slightly bent, right hand pulling back with right fingers wrapped around left hand. I put ten rounds into a single chewed out hole. Oh it was bigger than "one round of hardball" but not by all that much.
Now, the way it's set up at present, the FastFire attaches to a mounting plate which is attached to a dovetail blank which goes where the rear sight used to be. That means it rides at least 1/4" higher than it would it the slide was milled to accept the FastFire directly. I want to shoot this setup some more, but the initial results were very gratifying.
Reflex sights? There may be something to the idea after all!
At the same time, now I think I need to try out a laser sight
Today I ventured out to the shooting range on the West Side of town (should I call this the West Side Story? No, probably not), to put some rounds through a 9mm, and a .45.
The 9mm is a Smith and Wesson, from their "gun of the month" phase of things. It's one of the first metal framed Smith autopistols I've owned, the other one is the bigger and heavier version of this one. The 9iq (9mm In Question, pronounced "Nick" of course) is a S&W 6944. If you're all hep to 3d Gen S&W terminology, you probably know what that means, or can, at least, make a stab at breaking it out. Most people AREN'T hep to S&W terminology, so I'll spare you the google-fu.
The 6944 is a double action only (DAO) version of the S&W "minigun." The minigun (which ain't, when all is said and done, all that mini, btw) was originally released in the 2d Gen of S&W autopistols, and was a bobbed version of the main line "59" derivatives. (The 659 was the big stainless steel version, the 459 was, I think, the big alloy version, etc.) It's a twelve shot 9mm. Note: the S&W DAO pistols "halfway pre-cock" the trigger, so repeat strikes on a dud primer are out.
I was shooting offhand, unsupported, at 7 yards. Not a real long way, but pretty decent groupings---especially since I was switching from left hand to right hand after each shot. I used a mix of Wolf and Magtech 9mm ball ammo (115 grains in both cases).
Verdict? This is a decent little pistol. Recoil is mild, the trigger ain't bad at all (somewhat short and heavy compared to a Beretta 92D I'd picked up earlier), and while it's not tiny, it's significantly smaller than the 5946 that is its big brother. With a double stack magazine, it is a little fat through the butt.
The other pistol I shot was a Glock "21/30." Thanks the the miracles of polymers, by the time I got it the butt had already been trimmed from the full size "21" butt to use the shorter, ten round, magazines from the Glock 30 (hence the name). It's got about an inch more barrel than the smaller Glock 30, "and I'm the only kid on the block."
I've shot the 21/30 before, and like it. I prep the trigger---taking up the slack, and then letting it break, and when I do things right, it is a pretty dang accurate little popper. The new thing today was that I'd put a Burris FastFire on it. I was inspired by the use of red dot optics on fighting rifles/carbines in our current Mesopotamian adventure. Actually, I'd liked the idea of red dot optics for a long time, I just never got off my ass and put one on a pistol until now.
The FastFire is a virtual dead ringer for other small reflex sights---Trijicon makes one, and the progenitor was the J-Point and then the Docter Optik sight. It is small and lightweight, although it DOES bulk up the pistol some.
Since it's a red dot sight, I tried to focus on the target, and then move the dot over the target. Yowee and shazam!
I only ran fifty rounds through it---forty rounds of Magtech .45 ACP ball, and ten rounds of Winchester ball. At first I alternated left hand and right hand, then said, "Let's pretend I'm really a lefty." (No cracks, please!) I stuck to the left hand, using a modified Weaver stance---left arm only slightly bent, right hand pulling back with right fingers wrapped around left hand. I put ten rounds into a single chewed out hole. Oh it was bigger than "one round of hardball" but not by all that much.
Now, the way it's set up at present, the FastFire attaches to a mounting plate which is attached to a dovetail blank which goes where the rear sight used to be. That means it rides at least 1/4" higher than it would it the slide was milled to accept the FastFire directly. I want to shoot this setup some more, but the initial results were very gratifying.
Reflex sights? There may be something to the idea after all!
At the same time, now I think I need to try out a laser sight
Not quite shoes, not quite mittens . . .
Check these out: Vibram Five Fingers.
As the title of the post says, they're not quite shoes, they're not quite mittens. Naturally, one of my friends dubbed them "shittens." (Note: later on my beloved sibling pointed out that they're more like "shoves" since mittens don't have separated fingers. But "shoves" don't flow like "shittens" do, do it?)
Since I try to be somewhat self-aware, I can freely admit that my interest in these shoes, err, mittens, err . . . these things, probably grew out of my deeply conformist decision to start wearing pants again. Hey, it's tough to find a job where wearing a kilt is a part of the job description! I got a call or two from a pipe band, but the only musical instrument I play is the radio.
Anyway.
There's the good, and the bad, about these shoes. I'll start off with the bad.
They look silly. Remember, this is coming from a guy who wore a skirt for a few years! They look a little too . . . slipperish. While "shoe" or "footwear" is a pretty elastic concept, here in the Greater West we tend to bring certain "social constructs of shoeness" to the table. (OMG, I'm sounding so SO MARXY!) And we expect shoes to completely cover the top of the foot (for men, anyway), and probably to have laces or buckles or something. I have actually thought about a "top cover" for these shoes, to give them at least a "deck shoe" appearance. Sometimes I dare to think really goofy thoughts.
Let's see, what's the other bad part about these puppies?
Well, so far as I can tell, it's just the looks. (Now we see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I'm being repressed!)
Well, I lied. I'm still working out my ability to easily slip into these shoes. The toe pockets require sliding your foot in just right, otherwise you end up with two toes awkwardly squeezed into one toe-pocket. (Can we call them toe-pockets? Or would just "the toe" be better?) If you consider taking ten or fifteen seconds to get the toes aligned just right a drawback, then there are two drawbacks.
Upsides?
They breathe very well. The Vibrams have basically only two components: the Vibram sole and the stretchy nylon-type material. The body of the shoe breathes well, and doesn't build up heat. Foot sweat is a non-issue. When I drove up to Gainesville recently, I wore the Vibrams for the second leg of the trip up, and I'd been wearing my Keene sandals before that. The Keenes were freshly washed and air-dryed, and still my feet got warm and sticky and sweaty after about an hour on the road. Switching to the Vibrams, my feet were cool and dry the whole way up.
Road feel. You get better "road feel" from the Vibrams than you get with almost any other shoe. Let's compare with a "traditional" running shoe, shall we? (Note: what we think of as "traditional" these days is very damn seldom related to any kind of tradition with history behind it, witness "modern traditional" running shoes like those churned out by Nike, Adidas et al. Long dang way from a Chuck Converse, is all I'm saying.) A traditional running shoe will provide lots of support, lots of cushion, lots of orthotic influence. The Vibram takes a completely different tack. If a Nike insulates you from the road, like a mid-1970s Lincoln Town Car, the Vibram is a MG TC. They let you sense it all, the transition from asphalt to concrete to grass to sand.
You can wiggle your toes. Maybe it's only become important to me after seeing Die Hard, but I do a lot of toe wiggling. Side to side, up and down, all kinds of goofy stuff. Essentially, the same kind of hand stretching exercises, only below your knees! Your toes are not pinched together inside a shell with the Vibram, and the nature of the sole allows independent toe movement. Jerry Lee Lewis could play an arpeggio on the piano with his toes, if'n he was wearing Vibrams.
They may be silly, but I like them. I have worn them a good bit lately, and they really do feel like you're going barefoot. To me, that's a good thing. I'm not sure how much credence to put into the "barefooting movement" in terms of health claims, but I know that these are very comfortable.
I've worn them "just walking around", and driving, and even two times to Memorial Park, where I huffed and puffed around in a three mile circle with a fifty pound pack on my back. Even at the park, while my feet did feel much more "muscle sore" than in the past, there was none of the "bad pain." ("Bad pain" is the pain that doesn't comply with USMC definitions of pain as "the weakness leaving your body" but more along the lines of "dude I broke something.") Walking on rocks was a touch uncomfortable, but that thin sole IS Vibram, so it wasn't nearly as painful as being barefoot. Walking on gravel wasn't painful at all, but kind of "stimulating."
So there you have it.
Shittens.
Despite their unorthodox look, I can enthusiastically recommend the Vibram FiveFingers line of footwear. While not appropriate for a professional environment, I think that they represent a bold new approach to "what footwear is." Plus they represent a way to let your freak flag fly without tattoos or piercings.
So foshizzle.
As the title of the post says, they're not quite shoes, they're not quite mittens. Naturally, one of my friends dubbed them "shittens." (Note: later on my beloved sibling pointed out that they're more like "shoves" since mittens don't have separated fingers. But "shoves" don't flow like "shittens" do, do it?)
Since I try to be somewhat self-aware, I can freely admit that my interest in these shoes, err, mittens, err . . . these things, probably grew out of my deeply conformist decision to start wearing pants again. Hey, it's tough to find a job where wearing a kilt is a part of the job description! I got a call or two from a pipe band, but the only musical instrument I play is the radio.
Anyway.
There's the good, and the bad, about these shoes. I'll start off with the bad.
They look silly. Remember, this is coming from a guy who wore a skirt for a few years! They look a little too . . . slipperish. While "shoe" or "footwear" is a pretty elastic concept, here in the Greater West we tend to bring certain "social constructs of shoeness" to the table. (OMG, I'm sounding so SO MARXY!) And we expect shoes to completely cover the top of the foot (for men, anyway), and probably to have laces or buckles or something. I have actually thought about a "top cover" for these shoes, to give them at least a "deck shoe" appearance. Sometimes I dare to think really goofy thoughts.
Let's see, what's the other bad part about these puppies?
Well, so far as I can tell, it's just the looks. (Now we see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I'm being repressed!)
Well, I lied. I'm still working out my ability to easily slip into these shoes. The toe pockets require sliding your foot in just right, otherwise you end up with two toes awkwardly squeezed into one toe-pocket. (Can we call them toe-pockets? Or would just "the toe" be better?) If you consider taking ten or fifteen seconds to get the toes aligned just right a drawback, then there are two drawbacks.
Upsides?
They breathe very well. The Vibrams have basically only two components: the Vibram sole and the stretchy nylon-type material. The body of the shoe breathes well, and doesn't build up heat. Foot sweat is a non-issue. When I drove up to Gainesville recently, I wore the Vibrams for the second leg of the trip up, and I'd been wearing my Keene sandals before that. The Keenes were freshly washed and air-dryed, and still my feet got warm and sticky and sweaty after about an hour on the road. Switching to the Vibrams, my feet were cool and dry the whole way up.
Road feel. You get better "road feel" from the Vibrams than you get with almost any other shoe. Let's compare with a "traditional" running shoe, shall we? (Note: what we think of as "traditional" these days is very damn seldom related to any kind of tradition with history behind it, witness "modern traditional" running shoes like those churned out by Nike, Adidas et al. Long dang way from a Chuck Converse, is all I'm saying.) A traditional running shoe will provide lots of support, lots of cushion, lots of orthotic influence. The Vibram takes a completely different tack. If a Nike insulates you from the road, like a mid-1970s Lincoln Town Car, the Vibram is a MG TC. They let you sense it all, the transition from asphalt to concrete to grass to sand.
You can wiggle your toes. Maybe it's only become important to me after seeing Die Hard, but I do a lot of toe wiggling. Side to side, up and down, all kinds of goofy stuff. Essentially, the same kind of hand stretching exercises, only below your knees! Your toes are not pinched together inside a shell with the Vibram, and the nature of the sole allows independent toe movement. Jerry Lee Lewis could play an arpeggio on the piano with his toes, if'n he was wearing Vibrams.
They may be silly, but I like them. I have worn them a good bit lately, and they really do feel like you're going barefoot. To me, that's a good thing. I'm not sure how much credence to put into the "barefooting movement" in terms of health claims, but I know that these are very comfortable.
I've worn them "just walking around", and driving, and even two times to Memorial Park, where I huffed and puffed around in a three mile circle with a fifty pound pack on my back. Even at the park, while my feet did feel much more "muscle sore" than in the past, there was none of the "bad pain." ("Bad pain" is the pain that doesn't comply with USMC definitions of pain as "the weakness leaving your body" but more along the lines of "dude I broke something.") Walking on rocks was a touch uncomfortable, but that thin sole IS Vibram, so it wasn't nearly as painful as being barefoot. Walking on gravel wasn't painful at all, but kind of "stimulating."
So there you have it.
Shittens.
Despite their unorthodox look, I can enthusiastically recommend the Vibram FiveFingers line of footwear. While not appropriate for a professional environment, I think that they represent a bold new approach to "what footwear is." Plus they represent a way to let your freak flag fly without tattoos or piercings.
So foshizzle.
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