From the get-go, this roof-raiser was going about as brilliantly as it possibly could. But today? First came that totally surprising $330 from A. Then I collected the snail. OMG. D. — a honey of a guy — sent a package containing a Kershaw pocket knife, a letter with one of the most roller-coastery personal stories I’ve read in many a year, and two portraits of Ben Franklin. Whoa. I never knew old Ben was so handsome! Nearly there, nearly there … The next envelope shattered the glass at the top of the thermometer. I can only say, “Thank you,…
17 CommentsLiving Freedom Posts
And that “is not open for discussion.” Orwell in Ferguson.
9 CommentsYeah, I know this actually came out last spring. But in this iteration of the news they keep using the word “startling.” Somebody is actually startled by this??? It’s rather like being startled by the sun rising in the east. A chancre turning out to be syphilitic. Or a politician lying. Still the study (early draft here) could be worth sharing with your “vote-to-make-a-difference” friends. Full study due out this fall, so we’re not months behind the news here; we’re months ahead of the next round of shock! Dismay! And we must DO SOMETHING about this! (H/T MtK)
6 CommentsI am (really) still cogitating on the topic I started the other day on defining ourselves. Comments (particularly from Ellendra and Paul Bonneau) have got my brain headed off in a different direction and I’ll simply have to wait and see if I can chase after it and catch it long enough to get something coherent down on pixels. Meantime, here are some links, some related to that topic (though not always in an obvious way), some not at all. The end of neighbors. Or, this being a Canadian article, “The End of Neighbours.” The loss of neighborliness is a)…
3 CommentsAfter a day of record-setting heat and several weeks of that unfamiliar element, sunshine, today dawned gray. The sky is a solid, featureless mass. For hours, thunder has rumbled near-constantly off in the distance. No lightning visible. No dramatic boomers. Just a perpetual drumroll, first from the southwest, then from the northeast. Ceaseless. Its full day outside but the house lights are on, pallid, greenish, and barely seeming to illuminate anything. No mere human-generated watts and volts can penetrate the preternatural gloom. On goes the perpetual rolling of the sky, moving closer now. I get an inkling of why primitive…
6 CommentsA time or two I’ve heard about somebody’s suicide and secretly thought they did the right thing, saving themselves or their families years of living hell. Other times, suicide has seemed like a rational, or at least a reasonable, choice after a life well-lived but now winding down. But Robin Williams? Robin Williams??? Of course he had demons. He laid them out before the world. But he also had such energy, empathy, manic joy, delight in a world whose every sound and action seemed to pass through him as if he were a human translator of all things wacky and…
11 CommentsDoes it strike anybody else that these “enchanted” (or enhanced) versions of everyday objects are mostly annoying, infantilizing, or both? (Do like the luggage tracker, though!) Wow. Lawnorder. Protect and serve. A pair of cop parents collude to kill their daughter’s boyfriend — immediately after meeting him. (H/T MtK) Oh panic! Oh hysteria! Oh, Fox how could such an idiotic article have made it past your BS filters? Somebody, somewhere, sometime might carry a gun into a bank. Which would be deadly! Catastrophic! And cause firefights to mow down innocents! (Never mind that we don’t have a single fact to…
22 CommentsFriend of mine went to his high school reunion this summer. In school he was the uber-geek, the undisputed smartest kid in his class — which you can imagine didn’t sit well with some. Even now you can tell he learned his social graces by dint of hard work, and he’d rather eat worms than suffer fools.
But he’s gone on to be a successful international businessman and he wanted to see how his old friends are faring. He had some good times at the reunion, but was startled — and hurt — that a lot of people treated him just as they had when they were all raw kids. Same jokes. Same attitudes. Same view of him even though he’d changed enormously and led a fascinating life.
Well, maybe that’s just reunions. Some go to see how everyone has grown. Others haven’t grown at all and just want to relive their glory days — glory days in which they felt safely superior to smart but awkward geeks like my friend.
Maybe high schools are just dysfunctional families writ large.
14 CommentsToday totally sucked. Today was totally blessed. That’s not as eloquent as, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” But that line’s already taken.
Some of what follows is pretty personal. Don’t click on the more link if you hate that stuff.
37 CommentsJPFO is now auctioning off autographed books by Larry Correia and Michael Z. Williamson. The authors kindly donated a limited number of their novels. So go get ’em before they’re gone. Aaron Zelman’s Battle of Athens commemorative shotgun is still up for bids for the next four days, too.
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