Voting

Can we vote ourselves out of this?  Ann Barnhardt says that particular Elvis has left the building, at least for economics.

I don’t know.  Maybe slogging in the grease pits ad trying to get people who are devoted to making things better will win out.  Maybe no matter how many troops we send out of the trenches over the top, they are bound to get mowed down by the leftists.  Conservatives have left the culture totally in the hands of the left wing all through Western Civilization; movies, TV, art, song, literature, journalism, education, you name it.  While conservatives abandoned the fight there to concentrate on being a leg of the three legged stool of the GOP (social conservatives, small government fiscal conservatives, and strong national defense), the left has used the culture to mold the next generation to be liberal Democrats.  They watch Democrats snap up new Americans, who are overwhelmingly conservative, and have no counterpart.  William F. Buckley and Andrew Breitbart are dead, and no one fills that vacuum.  They let country club establishment Republicans use their votes with little result to show for it.  When same sex marriage referenda first came on the ballots, the public voted against them by large margins. The left charged the pickets in the culture war and made things more even, though not near winning as they have done in Britain, where a Romney type “conservative” is causing more damage to the society than a wild beast of a liberal.

I forget who said it, maybe Machiavelli, that he’d rather have a handful of troubadours than a large group of princes.  Relying on the vote alone will fail.  The vote crowns a victory; it does not precede it or cause it.  As long as conservatives keep trying to seat princes and not hire troubadours, they’re sunk.  Outside of that, I have no idea what’s needed.  I’m an idiot.

Filed under: observations, politics

Titanic

Titanic is being re-released for MAX.  This is supposed to be a wonderful thing, like a moon landing or such.  I sat through this monster when it first came out to my utter disappointment, and cannot see where people can be thrilled to sit in a dark room full of strangers for a boring lust story once again.  I expected an action movie along the lines of the Poseidon Adventure.  The old black & white Titanic was better.

Oh, women are supposed to be excited.  They figure the men won’t be suckered a second time.  I don’t see where this is such a great romantic movie, either.  This couple comes on board only to have some douche hit on her like a ton of bricks, and the fiancé, who rightfully gets upset, is the bad guy, while the player is the good guy, and the woman who’s in such a hurry to have a cruise hook-up with some random dude, the women are supposed to identify with her?  Now how often is a man who openly philanders with some random chick, under the nose of his fiancé, sympathetically played?  I usually see him made out to be a dog.  This is more fodder for shock TV than a movie.

Let’s review Casablanca to see how far we’ve come.  Rick is going along, trying to run a bar in a Nazi occupied Moslem colony.  Then the women with whom he had an affair in Paris shows up.  Of all the gin joints in the world, she walks into mine.  Is he thrilled to possibly have one more chance to “hit it” with his former friend with benefits?  He’s shattered.  She broke it off, now she’s here.

But then she makes her revelations.  She thought her husband was dead, and therefore had no reason to not take up with Rick.  But once she learned he was alive but injured, she broke it off instantly and went to him.  Rick, to his credit, understands and hands the all-important letters of transit to her for her and her husband to flee safely.  There was no way he was going to flee to America with her, and no way he was going to let her stay without her husband.

Besides the appeal to our better natures, you have all the tension and conflict you need for a movie to span time and become a classic, instead of a dated period piece.

Filed under: observations

Books

Not much blogging to do since I’ve been mired in books as of late.  Oscar Wilde’s The Soul of Man under Socialism was a nutty read, but it is Oscar Wilde.  G.K. Chesterton has had me busy as of late.  His The Man Who Knew Too Much was a fun read, and Orthodoxy was great for seeing him lampoon a lot in it.  Heretics is a more dry read, but it’s coming along.  I don’t know anyone who’s more of a quote factory than he.

No, I’m not solely ripping free books from Gutenburg onto my e-reader.  I do buy books, still.  Photographs for the Tsar is amazing.  Real color photos of Old Mother Russia, pre-communist.  Not colorized, actual color!  The coffee table book no one else has.  Fathers Know Best by Jimmy Akin turned into a very quick read.  I killed a third of it tonight.

Filed under: observations

Teachers

We all know that only Catholic priests are molesters, and all of them do so.  Such conduct never happens in public schools.  And it’s all men, 100%.  They are the diseased gender; women are blameless.

Holy s**tholes, Buffalo Bob!  Stop the presses!  I guess we’ll never see these stories on the front page, above the fold, in every newspaper box across the country.  Oh, well; can’t let the truth get in the way of a perfectly honest lie.

Filed under: liberal games, observations, religion

Death

There is something about liberals and their infatuation with death.  Back when the U.S.A. had a more Christian ethos, I thought some form of nationalized health care would be a good idea, since I figured it would follow the same care lines of private medicine.  Now with the amoral relativistics in charge, both in the socially liberal Democrat party and now via the socially liberal component of the Tea Party and Old Guard in the GOP, I wouldn’t want either one to run the system.  I’d rather have the damn thing run by nuns and brothers like in the olden times.  Here’s Old Kenyan, who never saw a baby he didn’t want dead, advocating the withholding of medical treatment from a viable old person:

Then you have Tom Daschle’s plan on rationing health care.  Rationing means one may not get the care that one needs.  And when I say one, remember that these liberals don’t mean any of them, especially they who make this policy.  It always is you.  Same as imams who urge suicide bombers but never strap on a bomb vest themselves.

Now you first have a group of Oxford medical ethicists who say killing newborns is no different than abortion.  Right on the heels of that comes news of a mobile euthanasia team of medical experts who will be tasked top roam the Netherlands’ countryside looking for unfit to live people to euthanize.  Whether they want or not.  Kind of a modern version of the old Action T4 program:

T4

 

from a pure, secular humanist view, since we are all nothing but meat puppets and glorified animals who simply cease to exist once we die, and once dead we forget we ever existed since memory and thinking die with us, what’s to say this is bad?  In such a mindset, the National Socialists were simply too far ahead of their own time.  To those of us who still cling to the dusty old Bible in one hand while we clutch our guns with the other, this is a horror.  If this what Europe “advanced” toward, it can and will keep advancing toward extinction, and in that light, good riddance.  If they would’ve kept a good and healthy faith in Jesus it might’ve gone better for them, but oh, well.

Filed under: observations, politics

Toilet Paper

How many people have been killed since the U.S. Army burned some Korans that had notes written in them that were passed around as communication between Al Qaeda members?  In Pakistan, the Koran is being flushed down the toilet, page by page, every day, and yet there is no outcry or revenge killing.  And sometimes whole Korans end up in the sewer somehow.  Well, there is one “holy” man who picks these from the fecal muck whenever the sewer ditch is drained, washes them off, and keeps them around his house.  Pakistan obviously has no residential codes or neighborhood covenants preventing a public nuisance, nor a board of health with any enforcing abilities.  How would you like to be this guy’s neighbor?  If I put my trash cans out more than 24 hours before Garbage Pickup Time, and if I let my lawn grow over six inches tall, it’s Fine Time.  Anyway, the Koranic mess is made from paper that does not bio-degrade (rot, in the language of my youth), hence the build-up.

But if Bibles get found in Afghanistan, not only are they confiscated, but they are burned!

And so it goes, …

Filed under: liberal games, observations

The Existential

As you can see, I’ve not maintained this blog as of late, and the last few posts have been more like spinning the wheels on a car you’ve put into cold storage to prevent tire rot.  I make posts that consistently get no comments, so I’ve taken to commenting on higher traffic blogs.  And a lot of times there, my brown marble becomes the last in the series, leaving me to wonder if I was the conversation killer.

I don’t blog out of a need to express myself as an exercise in itself as much as a need to convey, to impart, to pass on and make useful, the gift of intellect, natural curiosity, and the desire of turning data into knowledge, knowledge into wisdom, then doing what a dandelion does and scatter the seeds into the air and hope the exercise results in benefit down the line.  It’s not meant in an arrogant know it all way, but a vo-tech teacher can see his students go on to work their trade, an RCIA instructor sees his people get baptized into the Faith on Easter Vigil.  I’ve lived, I’ve learned, I’ve studied along the way.  To sit on it if there’s something that can be useful to someone trying to figure something out, well there.  That’s putting your lamp under a basket.  Everyone in the link fest to the right has given me something.  I would like to think I can do the same for someone else.

In real life, “face time,” attempting to do this has resulted in a situation not unlike Charlie Brown trying to get the Christmas Play actors to rehearse their lines, all the while they dance to the piano, leaving him and his megaphone off to the side in obscurity.

Or like the words of the Genesis song Man on the Corner

Anonymous blogging allows me to peel myself off of the ideas and let them stand alone without whatever jinx I bring along from affecting them.  If I am anything, I am practical, so if an action brings no result, I stop it.  My futility has been exercized like a long distance cyclist.  It has the physique of a greyhound.

But recently, both Neanderpundit and Pascal Fervor gave enthusiastic reviews of a simple comment that I fired off.  It’s like Peyton Manning telling you that you pass well, or George Brett saying you have a good swing.  When a pro compliments your content and delivery, you second guess your cipher self analysis.  So let me go have some knowledge casserole and a piece of humble pie, a laxative to speed delivery, and I’ll soon produce a post for your joy and benefit.

Filed under: no wonder I'm fed up, observations

Architecture

The modern Bauhaus box of Gropius and van der Rohe and the banal cement pourings of Le Courbusier are lost on me.  If you want to know what really grabs my interest, it is a place that has actual design.  I don’t know how I got to it, but somewhere I came across La Confiteria Ideal in Argentina.  Look at the photos of this restaurant’s main hall and tell  me it does not floor you:

Now look at this building that used to stand in the center of Pittsburgh (Wabash Station):

that I got from the Shorpy archive.  My God does that give me a thrill.  I thought my favorite pie wedge shaped building in the world was the Flatiron Building (of which I have a poster dominating my dining room), but its continued existence is all that keeps this long lost gem from winning my heart.  Gems like Ebbets Field and League Park have long since been destroyed, but at least Wrigley Field is still with us.

Filed under: observations, tribute

Irritating Phrases

Oxford University came up with a list of their ten most annoying phrases back in 2008.  Go look their for their list.  I have my own.

• not necessarily Say yes when you mean yes and no when you mean no.  Quit being mealy.
• actually No I want it fictitiously.
• networking What a way to completely disinfect a business relationship building opportunity by giving it this name.
• for your convenience No company ever does something for your convenience.  The job of the company is to maximize profit for the shareholder.  If suckering you into a list of fees by giving you a mirage of either control or convenience helps them do this, all’s the better for them.  Whenever you get a rider in your monthly bill outlining changes in your service agreement for your convenience, look behind you to make sure they’re at least putting a dab of lubricant on the tip of their dink before they give it you with a running start.
• with myself No, you’re not going to dinner with Hedda, you, and myself, you’re going with Hedda, you, and me.  Just using a longer word doesn’t make it either right or more cultured.
• keeping it real Acting like a felon does not make you in touch with the downtrodden, especially when they choose to live in a way that downtrods themselves, without society’s help.  Flashing gang signs to the camera when you’re in the middle of a foam filled dance floor of a club you paid a $100 cover charge to get into on holiday doesn’t make you street, or gangsta.  In a more just world it would get you shot, fo’ shizzle, my nizzle.

Filed under: observations

Sunday Remakes

Here’s some songs that I think are just as good as they are by the original artist.  I understand the argument can be made that nothing can match the original, but sometimes someone can add that one spice to make the soup a little more flavorful, nonetheless.

You Really Got Me This is the original by the Kinks.  Van Halen added an extra helping of kick to blow the doors off of the song.  This commercial shows how they took a song with a lot of swagger and turned it into one with brass balls:

A Change is Gonna Come Sam Cooke’s version overflows with heart, as well as melancholy and pained hope.  Seal’s version begins with the same soulful wail, but he punches through the song with a more determined air.  He doesn’t wish for change to come, he tells it that it will:

The Heart of the Matter Don Henley’s version is the version.  But when Henley himself says that India Arie did a better job with his song than he did, he is the one who would know:

Listen to your Heart Roxette simply owns the song.  But DHT makes regret the subject:

C’e Sempre un Motivo Tribute Bands make serious coin from duplicating the acts to whom they’re making tribute.  Adriano Celentano has a pretty snazzy hit here.  The singer of the Celentano tribute band Lui e gli amici del Re is pretty much his twin not only in looks, but in voice and mannerisms.  Here’s his version of this classic (added bonus, two smoking hot dancers):

Filed under: observations