The shining beacon of freedom and justice. The torchbearer of liberty and the hope to live free. A nation of laws, governed by a body for the people, by the people, and of the people.
A nation forged in the fires of its liberation and whose freedom has been secured through its centuries by the blood of its best and bravest.
Its scientists and engineers cured more diseases than any other nation, reached the moon before any others, and plumbed the depths of the atom.
She defeated communism, Nazism, Imperialism, and even fought brother against brother to end slavery.
A country whose fire is fueled by the hard work, sacrifice, ingenuity, and ambition of its people.
Kind of hard to reconcile all that with what we see on the news every day, isn't it?
The laws are hardly applied equally to everyone. The federal government has repeatedly demonstrated a disregard for the Constitution and has worked itself into a frenzy trying to seize control of as many institutions and industries as it can. The media blatantly shills for those in power whose agenda they agree with and a willfully ignorant populace accepts it. Just to name a very few outrages.
If we want to hold onto this great Republic our forerunners built for us, we must fight tooth and nail for it. We face entrenched power brokers, a hostile media, elected 'representatives' hell bent on ruling us as subjects, and an apathetic, largely ignorant electorate.
There is no consolation prize. This is the last redoubt of freedom in the world and the hope of the free world rests on our shoulders.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Poetry Corner: Recessional
Recessional
God of our fathers, known of old--
Lord of our far-flung battle line--
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine--
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget--lest we forget!
The tumult and the shouting dies--
The Captains and the Kings depart--
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget--lest we forget!
Far-called our navies melt away--
On dune and headland sinks the fire--
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget--lest we forget!
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe--
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law--
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget--lest we forget!
For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard--
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding calls not Thee to guard.
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!
Amen.
God of our fathers, known of old--
Lord of our far-flung battle line--
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine--
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget--lest we forget!
The tumult and the shouting dies--
The Captains and the Kings depart--
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget--lest we forget!
Far-called our navies melt away--
On dune and headland sinks the fire--
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget--lest we forget!
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe--
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law--
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget--lest we forget!
For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard--
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding calls not Thee to guard.
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!
Amen.
By: Rudyard Kipling
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
You go ahead, I'll watch
The wifey and I recently gave a very good friend a pistol in .380 for her birthday. Skip ahead a few days and the Irate family is gathered around the table playing a friendly game of cards (for the record, our definition of friendly excludes violence and nothing else) when I get to fiddling. I finish my turn, go get the range bag and start digging for ammo. Not because of the card game. Wanted to find some .380 to give to our friend.
First box o'bullets to get dug up was 9mm FMJ. I set it down to take my turn, and went to pick it back up, noticed something amusing. On the bottom of the box is a list potential uses for this particular ammo. It included thin skinned game such as white tailed dear...and boar. Lemme rephrase that, BOAR.
Snickering quietly (loudly snorting), I pulled out one of the boxes of .380 FMJ and guess what, it said the same thing.
Now, far be it from me to say that you can't hunt boar with with a tiny little pistol round, but I will say you probably shouldn't.
For reference, THIS is a boar.
Hey, if you got the stones, and good life insurance, you go right ahead. Me, I'll stick to using rifles. Really big rifles. Occasionally rifled shotguns.
EDIT: That's not me in the picture.
First box o'bullets to get dug up was 9mm FMJ. I set it down to take my turn, and went to pick it back up, noticed something amusing. On the bottom of the box is a list potential uses for this particular ammo. It included thin skinned game such as white tailed dear...and boar. Lemme rephrase that, BOAR.
Snickering quietly (loudly snorting), I pulled out one of the boxes of .380 FMJ and guess what, it said the same thing.
Now, far be it from me to say that you can't hunt boar with with a tiny little pistol round, but I will say you probably shouldn't.
For reference, THIS is a boar.
Hey, if you got the stones, and good life insurance, you go right ahead. Me, I'll stick to using rifles. Really big rifles. Occasionally rifled shotguns.
EDIT: That's not me in the picture.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Change you can believe in!
No, I'm not going Obama bashing, I leave that to Mr. Biden (rim shot!).
This here, is how I will improve government upon my conquering of the world, for we the little folk.
First, no more Ivy Leaguers trying to run the economy and write the federal budget. Instead, the only people eligible will be housewives from lower middle income families. This will have many benefits, the best of which will be listening to one tell a whining Congress weasel that he already spent his allowance and he'll just have to make due. Also, it might help bridge the gap between the elitists running the show and the common folk.
Second, a limit on the length of any piece of legislation. If it can't fit on a single page of standard size printer paper in size 10 font, it's too long.
Hand in hand with the previous, a council of dunces will be appointed. Membership will consist of twelve high school graduates with no further education. They will review all pieces of legislation to have successfully passed through both houses. If they cannot understand it, or even if there is doubt, it either goes back to committee, or dies. This will have the added benefit of highlighting the failure of the public education system.
This has been an announcement of the Irate Army.
Join the Happy Throngs!
This here, is how I will improve government upon my conquering of the world, for we the little folk.
First, no more Ivy Leaguers trying to run the economy and write the federal budget. Instead, the only people eligible will be housewives from lower middle income families. This will have many benefits, the best of which will be listening to one tell a whining Congress weasel that he already spent his allowance and he'll just have to make due. Also, it might help bridge the gap between the elitists running the show and the common folk.
Second, a limit on the length of any piece of legislation. If it can't fit on a single page of standard size printer paper in size 10 font, it's too long.
Hand in hand with the previous, a council of dunces will be appointed. Membership will consist of twelve high school graduates with no further education. They will review all pieces of legislation to have successfully passed through both houses. If they cannot understand it, or even if there is doubt, it either goes back to committee, or dies. This will have the added benefit of highlighting the failure of the public education system.
This has been an announcement of the Irate Army.
Join the Happy Throngs!
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Grumbling and muttering
Haven't blogged in a while, obviously. I'm sure whatever small readership I developed is now gone. Oh well, my fault.
The reason I have not been writing is, amusingly, that I have been. I set out some time ago to write a book and then have it published. Hardly the first time I've taken to writing a lengthy story, but this time I had a plan that would, hopefully, avoid wrangling with a publisher and editor. Such wrangling is outside my skill set and the reason I've never had anything published. I'm just not very good at revising my own work, especially when I make a mistake in continuity.
But this time, I had a plan! Before the first word of the first chapter was ever committed to a Word document, I had written detailed biographies of each and every character of importance, I even had a list of tertiary characters at what was important about them. I had an outline that was just under twelve thousand words in length (for reference: most books are around one hundred thousand). I had detailed notes about every spaceship involved, its history, crew roster, armaments, performance, and quirks. Every planet and polity (obviously a sci-fi) was detailed down to the demographics, who was in power, political structure, and laws. All the technological and cultural changes in humanity was carefully plotted along a detailed timeline.
Truly, a masterpiece was about to unfold. Only...I noticed as the story unfolded that it was kind of stilted, seemingly disjointed. The plot twists hardly seemed like twists at all, more like inevitable outcomes of the string of events. I shrugged that off and plowed ahead, promising myself that my live-in editor (the Wifey) and I would fix it easily in the first revision. The continued until I had over sixty thousand of the planned hundred and twenty. Despite knowing what was to happen next, with the assistance of my handy outline, I could not seem to get the story from point A to point B (or point H to I in this case) in a manner that seemed both logical and to flow pleasingly.
The problem, obvious in retrospect, was that by arranging so many details ahead of time, I had severely limited my options when writing. Worse, it just wasn't any fun, which tends to stifle my creativity. If I wanted a character to do something that might seem counter-indicated, like leap up from cover and run screaming towards the badguys, I told myself that it didn't fit the bio, no matter how much my mental picture of the character said that was exactly what he would do. Looking back over what I had, I can't imagine any way to make it even remotely readable without a complete rewrite.
So I gave up on writing for a few weeks. Thought about at least posting on the blog, couldn't get motivated to do it. Heck, I even had a hard time getting my essays done on time for my homework. I seem unusually prone to writer's block when frustrated.
Well, about a week ago I had a conversation with some old friends of mine, who both happened to be published authors and among my favorites at that. They gave me a few tips, most of which centered around being less of an anal retentive obsessive compulsive. Shocking that.
Which brings me to where I am now. About ten thousand words (Already?!) into a book that, as yet, lacks so much as an outline. At least a written one, I have a bare bones one in my head, but I'm not, apparently, allowed to commit it to any media until I've reached a certain point in the story. It's kind of funny, but has been amazingly effective. I feel almost like a passive observer as the outline as steadily transformed into something far more readable and exponentially more interesting than it would have been had I committed to it before I started letting the characters interact in my head.
The best part, is the solution to a problem I've had in writing even before my obsessive planning got out of hand. Despite my best efforts, I've never successfully injected humor into any story I've written. This goes back to the first time I wrote one back in grade school. The problem is trying to put humor into a story. It don't work that way, Cleetus. It has to already be there, all the author should have to do at that point is simply bring it to light. The characters, at least some, must have senses of humor and the circumstances simply have to give them something to laugh at every now and then. My current story has thus far been, at various points, both hilarious and spine tingling and it all flows logically. Sure, most of the humor is of the dark and/or gallows variety, but some will no doubt be labeled sophmoric. That's fine with me, I know first hand just what people's sense of humor will do in bad situations and I think I'm pretty close.
So, got that all off my chest and an entire blog post written, hopefully the first of more to come.
Time will tell...
The reason I have not been writing is, amusingly, that I have been. I set out some time ago to write a book and then have it published. Hardly the first time I've taken to writing a lengthy story, but this time I had a plan that would, hopefully, avoid wrangling with a publisher and editor. Such wrangling is outside my skill set and the reason I've never had anything published. I'm just not very good at revising my own work, especially when I make a mistake in continuity.
But this time, I had a plan! Before the first word of the first chapter was ever committed to a Word document, I had written detailed biographies of each and every character of importance, I even had a list of tertiary characters at what was important about them. I had an outline that was just under twelve thousand words in length (for reference: most books are around one hundred thousand). I had detailed notes about every spaceship involved, its history, crew roster, armaments, performance, and quirks. Every planet and polity (obviously a sci-fi) was detailed down to the demographics, who was in power, political structure, and laws. All the technological and cultural changes in humanity was carefully plotted along a detailed timeline.
Truly, a masterpiece was about to unfold. Only...I noticed as the story unfolded that it was kind of stilted, seemingly disjointed. The plot twists hardly seemed like twists at all, more like inevitable outcomes of the string of events. I shrugged that off and plowed ahead, promising myself that my live-in editor (the Wifey) and I would fix it easily in the first revision. The continued until I had over sixty thousand of the planned hundred and twenty. Despite knowing what was to happen next, with the assistance of my handy outline, I could not seem to get the story from point A to point B (or point H to I in this case) in a manner that seemed both logical and to flow pleasingly.
The problem, obvious in retrospect, was that by arranging so many details ahead of time, I had severely limited my options when writing. Worse, it just wasn't any fun, which tends to stifle my creativity. If I wanted a character to do something that might seem counter-indicated, like leap up from cover and run screaming towards the badguys, I told myself that it didn't fit the bio, no matter how much my mental picture of the character said that was exactly what he would do. Looking back over what I had, I can't imagine any way to make it even remotely readable without a complete rewrite.
So I gave up on writing for a few weeks. Thought about at least posting on the blog, couldn't get motivated to do it. Heck, I even had a hard time getting my essays done on time for my homework. I seem unusually prone to writer's block when frustrated.
Well, about a week ago I had a conversation with some old friends of mine, who both happened to be published authors and among my favorites at that. They gave me a few tips, most of which centered around being less of an anal retentive obsessive compulsive. Shocking that.
Which brings me to where I am now. About ten thousand words (Already?!) into a book that, as yet, lacks so much as an outline. At least a written one, I have a bare bones one in my head, but I'm not, apparently, allowed to commit it to any media until I've reached a certain point in the story. It's kind of funny, but has been amazingly effective. I feel almost like a passive observer as the outline as steadily transformed into something far more readable and exponentially more interesting than it would have been had I committed to it before I started letting the characters interact in my head.
The best part, is the solution to a problem I've had in writing even before my obsessive planning got out of hand. Despite my best efforts, I've never successfully injected humor into any story I've written. This goes back to the first time I wrote one back in grade school. The problem is trying to put humor into a story. It don't work that way, Cleetus. It has to already be there, all the author should have to do at that point is simply bring it to light. The characters, at least some, must have senses of humor and the circumstances simply have to give them something to laugh at every now and then. My current story has thus far been, at various points, both hilarious and spine tingling and it all flows logically. Sure, most of the humor is of the dark and/or gallows variety, but some will no doubt be labeled sophmoric. That's fine with me, I know first hand just what people's sense of humor will do in bad situations and I think I'm pretty close.
So, got that all off my chest and an entire blog post written, hopefully the first of more to come.
Time will tell...
Monday, October 20, 2008
Lesson learned at Oktoberfest
When wandering around a Bravian themed tourist town in the middle of Oktoberfest, one should not absentmindedly begin whistling Die Fahne Hoch.
More on the whole weekend later, when I catch up on work, housework, and school stuff.
More on the whole weekend later, when I catch up on work, housework, and school stuff.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Universal Sufferage
...And why it's bugging me.
Some people should not be allowed to vote. At bare minimum potential voters should have to pass a civics test. Seriously, if YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW MANY STATES WE HAVE, YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS PARTICIPATING IN THE GOVERNANCE OF THIS COUNTRY! If you don't know what a particular candidate is for and against, you should not be able to vote for them. These ignorant, lazy 'citizens' are the reason every political campaign always ends up looking like a high school popularity contest.
Seriously, how is anyone with two brain cells to rub together going to believe that the people Howard Stern's show interviewed aren't voting for Obama because he's black? They we're completely wrong on his policies and even who he picked for VP, but they're all for him. Or maybe they're just hungry for the sweet draught of Hope'n-Change (TM). They don't know anything that actually matters about what is going on, but they're pulling for Obama. I'm willing to bet there are some pulling for McCain/Palin too, just because his VP is a woman.
Does anyone who actually has any business having an opinion still oppose some additional requirement for suffrage? I don't mean that sarcastically either. Are there any well-informed, critically thinking, and literate people out there, who still want the lazy, the ignorant, and the irrational to be able to vote?
All I want is a written civics test. Some basic stuff like how the electoral college works, what a bicameral legislative is, what powers the executive does and doesn't have (that'd be the big one for most people), and maybe, I dunno, some basic idea of what our country is and who is running it. I know it would be opposed as a literacy test, which are verboten, but I think it's about time we got rid of that rule. To be illiterate in this day and age means you are either A.) an immigrant, in which case following naturalization you can take the test with a proctor reading the questions, or B.) too lazy, too stupid, or too cool to have learned in school, in which case...
...you shouldn't get to vote.
Some people should not be allowed to vote. At bare minimum potential voters should have to pass a civics test. Seriously, if YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW MANY STATES WE HAVE, YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS PARTICIPATING IN THE GOVERNANCE OF THIS COUNTRY! If you don't know what a particular candidate is for and against, you should not be able to vote for them. These ignorant, lazy 'citizens' are the reason every political campaign always ends up looking like a high school popularity contest.
Seriously, how is anyone with two brain cells to rub together going to believe that the people Howard Stern's show interviewed aren't voting for Obama because he's black? They we're completely wrong on his policies and even who he picked for VP, but they're all for him. Or maybe they're just hungry for the sweet draught of Hope'n-Change (TM). They don't know anything that actually matters about what is going on, but they're pulling for Obama. I'm willing to bet there are some pulling for McCain/Palin too, just because his VP is a woman.
Does anyone who actually has any business having an opinion still oppose some additional requirement for suffrage? I don't mean that sarcastically either. Are there any well-informed, critically thinking, and literate people out there, who still want the lazy, the ignorant, and the irrational to be able to vote?
All I want is a written civics test. Some basic stuff like how the electoral college works, what a bicameral legislative is, what powers the executive does and doesn't have (that'd be the big one for most people), and maybe, I dunno, some basic idea of what our country is and who is running it. I know it would be opposed as a literacy test, which are verboten, but I think it's about time we got rid of that rule. To be illiterate in this day and age means you are either A.) an immigrant, in which case following naturalization you can take the test with a proctor reading the questions, or B.) too lazy, too stupid, or too cool to have learned in school, in which case...
...you shouldn't get to vote.
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