… Americans received word that the Japanese had surrendered. I don’t usually mark government anniversaries, especially military ones. But I received an email from a friend, a Marine whose family has been through multi-generational hell serving a country that … well, I’ll just let him tell it in his own words, without editing or embellishment. The man he honors is known as “LD, Jr.” some of you knew my Grandfather, most of you did not he was a ‘card’ – a little stumped up man of 5’4″ smoking his pipe he drove too fast, too close to people’s bumpers (maybe…
Month: August 2011
Hardyville Tales by Claire Wolfe “Like A Prairie Home Companion … with grenades!” — Michael W. Dean, filmmaker and gadfly See below for two ways to order. ONCE UPON A TIME … … there was a town called Hardyville. Truth to tell, it wasn’t much of a place. The nearest freeway passed about 200 miles away — and kept right on passing. It didn’t have a single sign of what people in the real world might have called civilization or culture. It was just one dusty intersection with one lone stoplight, a few encircling residential streets, a fair number of…
Many hat tips today. To S, C^2 and Matt, another. Have you noticed that companies you deal with online increasingly force you to place symbols, capitals, and numbers in your passwords — under the illusion that their nannying guarantees a password stronger than any you could possibly invent for yourself? In its own inimitable style XKCD notes the folly of that. Another bank closes. But not for the usual post-crash reason. Nope. Just the usual governmental reason. “A right to be forgotten”? There’s an interesting concept. Could it really interfere with the right to free speech? More village self-defense. But…
Over the weekend — between Friday’s S&P downgrade and Monday’s 630-point oopsie on the Dow — I had a couple of conversations with world-watching friends. They went like this: FRIEND: Hang onto your carbine and check your dried lentils. Here it comes! ME: Yeah. Uh huh. Well. Maybe. “It,” of course, is the financial apocalypse. The long-fabled, eagerly dreaded financial apocalypse. The Big Event that’s finally going to implode the established systems and either a) allow freedom to arise phoenix-like from the ashes or b) bring about Zombie War III, from which only the hardest and most savage will ever…
Had a little excitement around Ye Olde Town the other day. When I arrived at the post office, a cop car with lights flashing sat in a nearby bank parking lot. No, not a bank robbery. As I headed up the steps to the P.O., a woman just ahead turned and in a most accusatory way demanded, “Did you leave a little boy in your car?” What? Do I look like somebody who totes toddlers around? Me and this silver hair? “Um … no. Why?” “Well,” she said with a glint that you really had to see to understand, “somebody…
“Three deputies equals one SWAT team.” A memory from reader ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ (a former LEO) of a moment at the dawn of the “bad new days” of total militarization. Russian villagers defend their town. (Tip o’ hat to Matt, another.) A thorough history of “The Nixon Shock: How Nixon stopped backing the dollar with gold and changed global finance, a 40-year-old decision that still echoes in Greece, Ireland, and the U.S.” And a perfect example of how sloppily the most momentous decisions get made by Our Masters. AntiSec. Revenge of the nerds. Raising a fist to death in the Warsaw Ghetto.…
From wonderful radio host Brian Wilson comes the photo of the day: In case you’re city folk and can’t tell by the hose what that truck is actually for … oh well, you can guess. Hint: it ain’t milk. Woulda been even better had it said the “Bush-Obama” stimulus package. Or maybe even just “government.”
The Advisor heats up. New from Jake MacGregor this week: chapters 22 through 24. Start here and navigate forward if you’re already up to speed. Start with chapter one if you’re new to the adventure — and be prepared for a ride.
“We intend to walk into Lansing after the summer break and ask the Republicans who have been so eagerly screwing us, ‘who’s next?’ If we cannot earn their respect we will do what we have always done; hit it with a flashlight until we gain compliance.” That’s a Michigan cop speaking (H/T to Ellendra). Or rather emailing. And what a perfect example of a joke that isn’t funny. Yes, after being caught, John Barnes, president of the Warren Police Officer’s Association, claimed he was just joking when he threatened to bash legislative heads. Then — if his original statement didn’t…