In the spring of 2013, I bought a house for $10,000. Foreclosed. Leaking. Full of rot. You can imagine it caused many adventures. You’ve already heard some of them. But today I have the story of a single wall. A simple wall, that’s it. Not even a particularly large or long wall. Not a fancy wall. Not a complicated wall. Not even a particularly attractive wall. Not a special wall in any way. Just a wall that it took four years of hard work to find amid all the bizarrities of the home I dubbed Ye Olde Wreck. Here is…
Month: August 2017
This morning I started a thread in the public portion of Claire’s Cabal about civil war; will we or won’t we? The thread starter is a New Yorker article, silly with the standard urban-left assumptions that somehow everything began with Obama and might end with Trump. But within it are a number of astute (or at least thought-provoking) quotes from smarter people. And naturally Cabalistas have added their own usual thought-provoking observations. Go read. Comment over there if you can. There will probably never be “civil war” in the U.S. — just as there was no civil war way back…
Three commercial announcements, actually (though the third isn’t strictly commercial because there’s no money involved). 1. David Hardy’s new book: a must-read Once in a long, long while you’ll hear about a book and realize instantly, based on subject and author alone, that such a book really, really needed writing. (If you’re a writer, you might even think to yourself, “Damn, why didn’t I get that idea first?”) In this case, attorney and noted gun-rights activist David Hardy got the sad-but-brilliant concept. He wrote I’m from the Government and I’m Here to Kill You, which is now available for pre-order…
I felt such a wave of relief when The Wandering Monk wrapped up Phase II of this summer’s Great Foundation and Screen Porch Project on Thursday. We’re done, we’re done! Cross that project off the list! Then the wave crashed as I remembered it’s now my turn: caulk, prime, paint, shingle, install screens, trim, then … oh, it just goes on. The Monk will be back for other (though smaller) projects in a few weeks and all through the fall. Meanwhile, my break will be filled with work. Phase II was enormously more fun than Phase I (all that hard,…
“Embrace a post-digital ethos.” I borrowed that phrase from a poster at Claire’s Cabal. The phrase came up in the midst of a wistful discussion about the need to create just enough of an online profile to reassure potential employers while also scrubbing (or avoiding in the first place) a profile that surrenders too much privacy. Participants lamented the increasing need to create a sanitized public facade. One said that while leaving the ‘Net was out of the question, backing away from ‘Net life was imperative. We’ve talked about this before. Many of us are in love with — married…
And so is David Codrea. And David Hardy. They beat up on the poo widdle defenseless U.S. government: “Plaintiff has represented himself in FOIA litigation previously, see Hardy v. DOJ, No. 98-27 (D. Az.), and is currently representing other plaintiffs in separate FOIA litigation against ATF pending before this Court, see Codrea v. ATF, No. 15-988-BAH (D.D.C.). Plaintiff would be barred from recovering fees had he represented himself in this case, see Nat’l Sec. Counselors v. CIA, 811 F.3d 22, 28 (D.C. Cir. 2016), so he retained attorneys Stephen Stamboulieh and Alan Beck. Mr. Stamboulieh submitted a declaration in support…
Since I haven’t done any icons to show you lately, reader T.L. sent me these. Other than her shockingly poor trigger discipline, I might like these Marys: T.L. says the second one is from a movie called Deadly Code, which is about entire ethnic groups exiled by the Soviet Union, whose members were driven to become gangsters. I don’t know the film, but some of its lines are pretty intriguing. Grandfather Kuzya: [leading ceremony] By our ancestors, free hunters, and warriors, by the great Northern Forests, by the river Lena … we pray to you. Blessed Mary, Mother of God,…