Cerebral Misfire--The Blogosphere's Mental Assault and Battery

Grief

2009-12-10T18:13:00.003-06:00

It was only one hour ago
It was all so different then
Nothing yet has really sunk in
Looks like it always did
This flesh and bone
is just the way that we are tied in
But there's no one home
I grieve...... for you
You leave....... me
So hard to move on
Still loving what's gone
They say life carries on
Carries on and on and on and on

The news that truly shocks
is the empty, empty page
While the final rattle rocks
it's empty, empty cage
and I can't handle this
I grieve....... for you
You leave....... me
Let it out and move on
Missing what's gone
They say life carries on
They say life carries on and on and on

Life carries on in the people I meet
In everyone that's out on the street
In all the dogs and cats
In the flies and rats
In the rot and the rust
In the ashes and the dust
Life carries on and on and on and on
Life carries on and on and on
Life carries on and on and on and on
Life carries on and on and on
Just the car that we ride in
The home we reside in
The face that we hide in
The way we are tied in
As life carries on and on and on and on
Life carries on and on and on

Did I dream this belief
or did I believe this dream?
Now I will find relief
I grieve

Peter Gabriel–“I Grieve”

There comes a point where one can think about the loved one and not break down crying. The wound is not as raw anymore. One can talk about the person and share memories without completely losing it. Food starts to taste again. Not taste good, just taste. One becomes a bit more focused in the here and now, instead of wallowing in the regrets of the past, as well as the happy times that will never be again. Colors seem a little more bright. One starts to take some pleasure in the simple joys of life again.

Much like any other injury, there are scars. They aren’t well healed. Something on televison might trigger a memory of a conversation that was once had. A family picture cuts to the heart of one’s memory, triggering a flood of mental images that crash down like tidal waves. Smells are the worst for me, having a somewhat sensitive nose. A smell can trigger memories like almost nothing else can. And when they do, the scabs are ripped right off the wound, and the pain is as fresh as the day it was inflicted.

It’s a little less agonizing, though. It recedes a bit more quickly; each time fading more quickly than the last.

The emptiness is still there, though one doesn’t seem to think about it nearly as much as what one did before. One can somewhat imagine that a an amputee feels something similar; a phantom pain from something should be there, but isn’t.

Time heals all wounds, I suppose. It's slow, though, moving at the Lord's pace, and not our own. Somebody told me recently that God is seldom on time, but he's never late....

ACES HIGH

2009-12-07T17:17:00.002-06:00

More fun with lyrics. I started to look closely at the band Iron Maiden when I saw a show on the Military Channel that chronicled the top ten fighter planes of all time. Somewhere on the list was the British Spitfire. They had some guy on there who was singing the praises of the thing. He talked very knowledgably about its rate of climb, its manueverability, its speed, durability, armament, etc. At the end of the segment, it showed the guy's name: Bruce Dickinson. Odd, I thought. There's a metal singer named that. I never listened to the band, but knew from reading guitar stuff a little about the band. Not my cup of tea at the time, but somethig that got filed away amongst all the other useless trivia that occupies my brain.

It turned out that it was indeed the same Bruce Dickinson, leather-lunged singer for Iron Maiden. He's a pilot, and he owns a Spitfire. How cool is that? I give you the lyrics to ACES HIGH, a snapshot in metal of the Battle of Britain:

There goes the siren that warns of the air raid
Then comes the sound of the guns sending flak
Out for the scramble we've got to get airborne
Got to get up for the coming attack.

Jump in the cockpit and start up the engines
Remove all the wheelblocks there's no time to waste
Gathering speed as we head down the runway
Gotta get airborne before it's too late.

Running, scrambling, flying
Rolling, turning, diving, going in again
Run, live to fly, fly to live, do or die
Run, live to fly, fly to live. Aces high.

Move in to fire at the mainstream of bombers
Let off a sharp burst and then turn away
Roll over, spin round and come in behind them
Move to their blindsides and firing again.

Bandits at 8 O'clock move in behind us
Ten ME-109's out of the sun
Ascending and turning our Spitfires to face them
Heading straight for them I press down my guns

Rolling, turning, diving
Rolling, turning, diving, going in again
Run, live to fly, fly to live, do or die
Run, live to fly, fly to live, Aces high.

Wasted Years--The Song

2009-11-17T10:43:00.003-06:00

This is great song that I just discovered. It's only been out about 25 years or so. Better late than never, I suppose. The chorus is especially poignant to me, since I've certainly spent more years than I care to count searching for the lost ones. It's a particular fallacy of mine.

This is from the band Iron Maiden, which I admit I'd not given much thought to until recently when I saw a concert of theirs on late one night. Trying to find good music these days is kind of like trying to find a unicorn. As a result, I'm digging back into the 70's and 80's for artistic inspiration and something to listen to. Modern heavy metal sounds awful to me, with dropped tuning on the guitars and singers who sound much like Cookie Monster. I hate it. I'm finding more and more people turning to the older stuff, and I find myself turning with them. And not just to heavey metal. I spent a happy hour a few nights ago playing along to the Bryan Adams album RECKLESS. I shamelessly learned the guitar parts to Bon Jovi's "Dead or Alive" recently as well. I remember fondly the 1980's....

At any rate, this band is worth listening to, especially if you're a fan of bands like Rush, which incorporate cerebral lyrics and virtuostic instrumentals. Not everybody's cup of tea, mind you, but I dig it.

Here's the lyrics to the song, written by Adrian Smith. This is off the album SOMEWHERE IN TIME. Smith is one of the bands' three guitarists (how cool is it to have 3 guitars?). The song kicks off with a classical-sounding riff in E minor, then goes into a nicely overdriven guitar part. Worth a listen to, should you have the chance. The lead singer has been described as a human air-raid siren, and I don't know that I disagree. The guy has tremendous range, and somewhat of an oepratic quailty to his voice with a lot of vibrato. I digress, however.

[(Smith) 5:06]

From the coast of gold, across the seven seas
I'm travellin' on, far and wide
But now it seems, I'm just a stranger to myself
And all the things I sometimes do, it isn't me but
someone else

I close my eyes, and think of home
Another city goes by in the night
Ain't it funny how it is, you never miss it 'til it's
gone away
And my heart is lying there and will be 'til my
dying day

[Chorus:]
So understand
Don't waste your time always searching for
those wasted years
Face up... make your stand
And realise you're living in the golden years

Too much time on my hands, I got you on my mind
Can't ease this pain, so easily
When you can't find the words to say it's hard to
make it through another day
And it makes me wanna cry and throw my
hands up to the sky

[Chorus:]

Yeah. It's like that.

Unbridled Science

2009-07-15T12:00:00.003-06:00

Here's an article from Michelle Malkin's site about Obama's new science czar.

In a vaccum, perhaps this outlook on humanity as a ecological problem that needs control might make sense. The problem is that no aspect of our existence on this Earth can be taken in a vaccum. Whether it is our politics, our marital relationships, our business dealings, or anything else that we do on Earth, everything we do leaves us accountable. To our fellow human beings, and most importantly, to God.

A government without accountability to a higher power is tyranny, pure and simple. Science unchecked by morality, or goverened by a warped morality, is evil. Ask the victims of the Holocaust on that one.

A government that would institute a man with these sorts of beliefs as the overseer of scientific progress in this country is immoral. Pure and simple. This focus on global warming and other "green" bunk is simply a front to advance the agenda of a totalitarian, socialist, morally corrupt facet of society.

This health care plan that Obama is pushing? The state will decide who gets care and who doesn't. And with a science czar like this to help determine who is fit to live and reproduce, have you any doubts about where a political conservative is going to end up on an organ transplant list? Probably pretty low as a recipient.

But as a forced donor?

I'm just saying.....

The Journey and the War

2009-06-11T10:46:00.002-06:00

As a preface to this post, let me say that my bible study group just kicked off a study on spiritual warfare, which is a really interesting topic, in an EXORCIST sort of way. The basic premise is that if you believe in God, then the converse also has to be true. There is a Devil, and it’s a malevolent being that is pretty powerful here on Earth. This entity’s job is to take down as many souls as he can by making their lives miserable, breaking their faith in God. There's an active war between the two entities, with mankind right on the front lines.

OK, that sets the stage nicely for the next four days.

DAY ONE

Last Thursday, I was in court in a different jurisdiction as a special prosecutor. On the way back to town, I received a telephone call from my sister. My dad was in the hospital. They weren’t sure what was wrong, but he was too weak to move. Somewhere in the middle of a canyon, the call drops. I hate cell phones as a general principle, but they are handy when they work. I went overboard and ended up with an Iphone. Very nice, very convenient. The GPS is handy for navigationally challenged people such as myself.

Anyway, the situation sounded bad. The flight schedule was such that I wasn’t going to be able to get out until fairly late the next day. That seemed unacceptable.

I was scared, worried, etc. Things didn’t sound good, and his condition has deteriorated from a back injury, as well as Parkinson’s, diabetes, and a heart condition. Smoking doesn’t help any of it, either. Also, he’s still grieving for my Mom, whom we lost less than a year ago.

It seemed like the best solution was to take off driving. I cleared stuff up as best as I could at work, and hit the road around 5:00.

I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in about a month. I can run ok on no sleep for awhile, but everything has its limits. I have no idea why I can’t sleep, other than insomnia kicks on big-time with me if I’m under stress, and there’s been a lot of that. A couple of hours into the trip, I realized that driving straight through simply wasn’t going to be an option. I was too darn tired. I had driven about 31/2 hours that day already traveling for work. I decided to strike out for the Metroplex, since I have friends in the area. It’s about ½ of the trip home, so that seemed like a good option. I could get a bit of sleep and get rolling early the next morning.

DAY TWO

My body apparently decided that sleep could no longer be avoided, and I crashed hard. So hard that I slept through the alarm, and woke up around 10:00 the next day, which is about the time that I planned on being at my destination.

In the scramble to get out of town, my cell phone went swimming in a glass of water. Since Iphones aren’t naturally aquatic, this was a disaster. No cell phone, which is somewhat essential to keeping up with what’s going on the world. “Angry,” is not an adequate description of the emotions that I was feeling at the time. Were gamma radiation present, I would have gained 500 pounds and 3 feet in height, turned green, and smashed the hell out of everything around me. So those of you in the Metroplex got off light.

I make it into town finally in late afternoon. Dad is diagnosed with a hiatal hernia, and they’ve done some fixing on it during the test. He’s able to get some food down, which was a big part of the problem, and was getting stronger. He was still having problems from the back injury, which included atrophy in the leg muscles on that side. His weight was down slightly below 130 pounds, which is pretty light for my dad. He needed to lose a bit, but not that much, and not in that manner. We have a good visit in the hospital. He decided that he needed to get some intensive rehabilitation to get stronger, and thought he probably needed to go to a rehab/nursing home for awhile.

That was heartbreaking news. He didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want him there. I felt guilty as hell for not being able to take him in or be there to help him myself. I made the offer to have him move in with me, which I’d do without hesitation. But he didn’t want that, to say the least.

His mood was improving, though. He was looking at it in the right way. He was planning on using the time to build himself back up to where he could go back to work and home again. That’s a healthy step and a healthy attitude.

Late that night I head to the old house. It had been vacant a day or two, and it was dark and foreboding when I arrived well after midnight. Once I got in the house, I felt like I had stepped into a horror movie. I killed no less that five scorpions within the first few minutes. They were active and feisty, which is not the way I prefer my scorpions. However, they were no match for the old trusty 3-wood, which is as fine a scorpion killing device as I’ve ever seen.

I then had to clean the nasty little buggers up. While trying to vacuum their smashed, chitinous little bodies up, the vacuum cleaner decided it would be great fun to bog up on one, and spit it in the air directly at my face.

This is not funny. At all. I am deathly afraid of those things, having had a pair of them in my sleeping bag on a camping trip. I’m all about sharing sleeping bags under the proper circumstances, but definitely not with arachnids. After stomping the corpse into its component atoms and using words I didn’t think I actually knew, I re-holstered my little Model 60 .357, and set about trying to find a defib kit. I think the revolver was called for when zombie scorpions take to the skies to attack. That crap is terrifying.

Once the adrenaline had finally dumped, the major organs were functioning again, and all the corpses disposed of, I finally got to bed around 2am. The only scorpion free room appears to be my mom’s room, which is unchanged since she died. I camp down there for the night, with an odd sense of peace.

DAY THREE

Nobody in town sells replacement Iphones. They’ll only do it with a 2 year contract extension, which I already signed a few months ago. No amount of cajoling or legal threats gets me anything else. They’ll sell me a Blackberry, but the data plan is different from what I had (read: more expensive).

Dad’s decided that he’s feeling well enough to smoke again. The suggestion that he’s feeling better because he isn’t smoking isn’t met with enthusiasm. The cigarette, as expected, makes him a bit sicker.

After much waffling, I get a Gophone from the local Wal Mart. I also found affordable pistol ammo, which is a good thing as well. The SIM card from the Iphone seems to work, especially after I finished drying it off. Sometime around 8 that night, I have cell phone service once again.

No scorpions are found in the house that night. Prayer and pesticide have done their work, apparently. Prayer from me, and Dad says they sprayed the house earlier that week, which must have stirred all the critters up.

DAY FOUR

I helped to move Dad into the rehab home around lunchtime. I can’t bear to call it a nursing home. I ran him over there from the hospital, having gotten there around 8:00 that morning. He’s looking better, gained a little weight back, and seems to have a positive attitude about the whole thing, which is good. Based on that, I decided that I needed to get back north for work the next day. I’m looking at 9 hours of solid driving. I figured that if I stock up on protein bars, diet Dr. Pepper and water, I can make it quite a ways before having to stop. This is not counting bathroom breaks, of course. I plan to get to the house no later than 11:00pm, which is quite acceptable. I hit the road around 1:00pm.

All is going according to plan, when the tire blows. I am on the middle of the new loop around Austin, basically in the middle of nowhere. Traffic is moving at a minimum of 80 on that thing, and there’s not much room on the side of the road to change the tire. To top it off, these tires are less than a month old.

Several years ago, I had a cousin killed while changing a tire on the side of I-35. So I’m again a bit nervous. I wait for breaks in the traffic to loosen lug nuts, put the jack under the car, etc. It’s a slow process, because I stop when there’s traffic whizzing by three feet from my head. If I’m going to get run over, I want to see it coming.

After awhile, it’s absolutely ridiculous. Traffic is heavy. There’s a point where my faith in humanity is shaken. A few people wave as they sail by at 80mph. Again, I offer up a small prayer to get me out of this and back to my son alive.

I’m in the middle of popping a lug nut off as a prelude to jacking up the car, when a voice asks me if I need any help. It scares the thunder out of me. I never heard the car pull up. Apparently, the guy went past, pulled over, and backed up. He’s a tall, older guy in a Ford pickup. I tell him much appreciated, and ask if he has a hydraulic jack. I hate the little weenie jacks that most cars come equipped with these days. When I had a truck, I made sure to have a good solid floor jack in it.

He says no, and asks if I was nervous about the traffic. I admitted that I was. He asks where I’m heading, and offers to stand guard while I change the tire. This is exactly what I need. I get the tire off, get the little doughnut on, and get everything back on. The guy asks if I’m intending to drive on through. He says there’s a tire place fairly close, and offers to pilot me in. He does. I’m now off the main road, and at least into town. Before he leaves, I give him my business card, and tell him to look me up if I can return the favor if he or his family are in the Panhandle. He asks if I have a church home where I’m from. This is a neat moment. I remember my prayer on the side of the road.

However, they don’t have my size tires at this Wal Mart. Discount Tires, where my set came from, is not open on Sunday. There’s an NTB on I-35 that I limp to. Almost three hours after the blowout, I’m on the road again, $127 dollars poorer, but happy to be rolling.

I make it home around 1:00am. I am worn out, sick of protein bars, tires, the highway, and swearing never to touch another Diet Dr. Pepper, but feeling pretty good, all things considered. A lot of obstacles were thrown in my path, but the trip seemed to have the desired effect of helping my dad a bit, physically and emotionally. Therein lies the glory.

An Open Prayer For Mom

2009-05-13T16:00:00.001-06:00

I didn’t write this on Mother’s Day. I should have. Truth be told, I just couldn’t make myself.

This is the first Mother’s Day without Mom. It’s not the same, and the day has a bittersweet tang to it that doesn’t make it something that seems worth celebrating, despite the fact there are other mothers around who deserve the holiday. Holidays are personal, and with her gone, my personal connection to it seems somewhat muted.

I miss you, Mom. I miss my number one fan. I regret the times that I shut you out, knowing that you just wanted to touch a part of my life, and to have that connection with me. I regret holding a grudge against you for so many years due to the drinking. Nobody is perfect. I was holding you to a standard that is impossible for anyone to meet. I regret moving away in the midst of your illness, in the mistaken, arrogant belief that it would help my marriage. I regret not being there for Dad, when I know that your main focus as you were dying was to make sure that he’s taken care of. I regret being such a selfish jerk, and not making more time with you in your final years.

I can’t tell you all this now, but I hope that somehow, God lets you see in my heart, and lets you see how much I love you, and how much I miss you. Now, more than ever. I can’t tell you how much I want to know that you’re ok, that you’re free of all the misery and pain this sorry world of ours has to offer us. I feel just like a little boy who has lost his mother, instead of an adult who ought to be handling this better.

Lord, take care of her up there. She had her faults, but loving her children certainly wasn’t one of them. I just pray that we’re all reunited one day again, and that she doesn’t hold my faults and failures against me.

Happy belated Mother’s Day, we all miss you.

All That We Can Do

2009-04-23T17:19:00.003-06:00

Sometimes, you do all that you can do. And it isn't enough to stop the evil from happening.

A suspect beat his baby’s momma within an inch of her life. He was stopped by a witness who came to her rescue with a shovel. The police were unable to arrest the suspect when they found him, much later. They didn’t get there when the assault was happening, and the Defendant didn’t appear to be an immediate threat of continuing domestic violence when they made contact. That’s one of the deals about arresting people. It has to be done within the scope of the law, and the law said it couldn’t be done. Any conviction obtained if that arrest had gone down would be thrown out, and the suspect free to do it again.

A warrant for his arrest was filed. That’s all that could be done. The rest depends on the suspect getting arrested. Hopefully, an officer will see him on the street and make the arrest. Maybe a traffic stop ends up with the suspect getting flagged because the warrant shows up in the computer. Maybe he’s caught in the act of another crime. Maybe he dies of a drug overdose, or is killed by one of his buddies in a drug crazed fit of rage. Maybe a detective gets lucky and finds him after a diligent search.

Maybe the Defendant slips under the radar altogether.

The same suspect this weekend broke into a house where his baby momma had taken refuge with a nice couple. She made it out the window and lived.

Her rescuers didn’t. They were murdered. Horribly. They were in their 20's. Their life extinguished because they chose to love their neighbor, and shelter a domestic violence victim.

It’s sad, and senseless. But the fault does not lie with law enforcement. They did all they could, all the law allowed them to do. It wasn’t enough.

Dad

2009-03-19T17:15:00.001-06:00

It's been awhile since I posted. I was inspired by the incomparable Brigid to write a bit about my Dad.

I remember my first golf tournament. I was scared to death, no real clue about what I was going to do out there, or how to do it. I remember thinking that I was out of my league, out of my mind for being there, and just flat out of my element.

The tournament was out of town. My dad was self-employed at that time, so he could pretty much do as he pleased. He never missed a single sporting event that I participated in that I can recall.

Golf is a pretty solitary sport. Even though you are competing against others, you are really competing more against yourself. You are fighting your swing, trying to make it do what you want it to do. It's easy to get discouraged, to feel alone and helpless out there when your ball shanks off somewhere, and you have no one to blame but yourself.

Sounds terrible, doesn't it? I wonder what the heck I actually see in this stupid game? What the heck does that say about me? Anyway, I digress.

Somewhere about the fifth hole, I picked up on the fact that somebody was watching me. I couldn't quite figure out who, or where they were. This was different than being watched by the guys I was playing with. There was somebody out there looking specifically at ME, and I didn't know where they were.

Somewhere about the 9th hole, I caught a glimpse of somebody about 75 yards away, watching from behind a tree. They were taking great pains to keep out of sight. Not in a weird way, just trying to be unobtrusive.

I knew it was my dad. Even though I couldn't see him, I recognized his silhouette. I was even more certain when I saw the faint puff of bluish smoke form his ever-present cigarette.

He was there for the rest of the tournament. I did horribly, but I played better after I knew he was there.

He was watching me, offering support in a different sort of way. He knew that I was out there alone, and he knew that I had to be. He knew that he couldn't help me, but he wanted to be there just the same.

He never told me he was there. When my round ended, he headed home. He even pretended that he wasn't there. And to this day, I haven't told him I knew. I think he does know, though. It's a Dad thing.

It wasn't the last time he was out there, clandestinely.

Every thing I've ever done, I knew that Dad was somewhere behind me, offering quiet support and strength. He knew I had to do it alone, but wanted me to know that he was back there, ready to do what he could to help. He also knew that failure taught more than success, and that I had to take hard knocks just like everybody else.

Ugly, But Effective...Redux

2009-03-02T11:12:00.003-06:00

I’ve always liked the nice sports cars. I think it would be an absolute blast to run around in a Ferrari every day. It would turn heads, look spiffy, and probably attract a lot of attention from law enforcement, car thieves, and people who like to drag their keys down the side of somebody else’s nice, new car. So that’s why I don’t drive one. Never mind the fact that a cheap new Ferrari is probably north of $180,000 or so.

Even though it’s nice to have a flashy sports car, it’s not really all that practical. You can barely get a sack of groceries in one, much less a car seat and two passengers. It’s lousy in bad weather, which this part of Texas tends to have. Rear-wheel drive vehicles don’t do well in ice, for the most part. You can’t go to Home Depot and load lumber in the back of one. You can’t pull a trailer with one. It’s utility is actually rather low, in that light. Which is why I drive something a bit more practical.

I’ve noticed the same thing about my personal defense weapon. Sure, I love to shoot a nice 1911 .45. The triggers are great, the design is actually rather pleasing to the eye, and it’s about the most accurate handgun platform that I’ve had the pleasure of shooting.

But what weapon am I choosing to rely on to defend my life, and that of my family in the direst of circumstances? I’ve carried a nice 1911, but it wasn’t really comfortable to me. I like Sigs, but there’s not really a big caliber Sig Sauer that is concealed carry friendly. Sure, you can hide one under a coat, but I can hide a shotgun under a coat if I really wanted to.

I keep coming back to a Glock, time and time again. The Glock subcompacts are proving best compromise of an easy to carry, easy to conceal weapon with large capacity, big bore stopping power, durability, reliability, and easy maintenance.

I’ve been going with the Glock 27, by and large. It fits in a pocket holster, belt holster on the cold jacket days, or in an ankle holster when I really have to hide one. .40 caliber is nothing to sneeze at, and ten rounds of it in a relatively tiny pistol is nice. I am not the biggest proponent of the .40, mind you. I think it’s somewhat snappy in recoil.

Shooters all have their personal preference. And I have always liked .45 automatic as my caliber of choice. It’s big. It’s accurate. And its recoil characteristics are fairly pleasant, even as large a bullet as it fires. It’s just hard to find a small .45 that conceals well.

It appears my small .45 has arrived. The Glock 36 is just about a quarter inch longer than the 27. It’s thinner, since it has a single-stack magazine. The frame is actually a bit thinner than a normal Glock as well. People griped about how fat the grip of a Glock tends to be, and how blocky they are. Well, Glock decided to listen. Best of all, it’s a .45 automatic. A REAL .45 automatic, unlike the .45 GAP Crap that Glock has inflicted on the shooting public in the past. It holds 6 rounds of happy .45, with one in the chamber. That’s the equal of most small 1911's.

It appears to do what Glocks do best, which is put bullets downrange with a minimum of fuss and bother. It’s small enough to conceal in the same manner as the 27, which is nice. Though the slightly longer grip makes pocket carry impossible with some types of pants, it still manages to conceal nicely. It fits in all the other Glock holsters that I have, which is a good thing.

It’s not a nice-looking weapon. Nobody can say that it’s as pleasing to the eye as a 1911 or Browning Hi-Power. It’s not as point-friendly as a Sig Sauer, but it does point the best of any Glock I’ve ever picked up. It doesn’t have the great triggers the aforementioned pistols have, but it’s got the exact same trigger as every other factory-spec Glock on the market.

And it works. I don’t worry about scratching it up, because it wasn’t pretty to begin with. I don’t worry about it functioning when it needs to, because that’s what Glocks are known for. I don’t worry about the thing not hitting to point of aim, because it will hit whatever I’m aimed at. If the round misses, it’s nobody’s fault but mine. The sights aren’t going to get out of whack.

It fulfills the purpose of a weapon, which is a tool just like a screwdriver, hammer, or tire iron. It helps to keep me and mine secure. In the end, that’s all that matters. It’s not a Ferrari. It's a pickup, and not one of those fancy, nice ones with satellite radio and leather seats that cost more than the truck itself. It's a plain old truck that goes on down the road with monotonous reliability. Not pretty to look at, but it works.

That's The Kind of Dad I Want To Be

2009-02-26T09:22:00.002-06:00

Brigid gives a moving tribute to her dad.

There's some great writers out in the blogosphere, but this lady has a gift like none other.

The Mouth of Madness

2009-02-25T18:29:00.002-06:00

Having today observed a very mentally ill person, I can well imagine why people used to think they were demonically possessed.

This person chanted in an indecipherable tongue. The look in his eyes was absolutely chilling. This person could (and I believe would) have killed anybody he might have laid his hands upon. He stood there smeared in his own blood, and resisted multiple people who were trying to get him under control. At one point, he lifted up four people who were on top of him. His strength was almost supernatural. We’ve all heard about the strength of crazy people. I’m here to tell you it’s real. There was no recognition of where he was, or what he was doing. There was no hint that he had a shred of humanity left. Think Hannibal Lecter looked evil in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS? This was far, far worse.

When he was finally subdued, things changed. You could suddenly see the humanity back in his eyes. There was no recognition of why he was suddenly being restrained by a bunch of big people, or why there was Taser darts sticking in him. It was like the madness had suddenly passed, leaving a suddenly normal person in a horrible situation that he could not understand. Maybe that priest in the EXORCIST could have saved Linda Blair a whole lot of agony had he simply shot her with a Taser a few times. I can just hear the demon screeching, “Don’t tase me, Bro!!!”

Very, very odd indeed. I don't mind saying this guy scared me on some sort of primal level. There's a difference between being scared of something for a good reason, and a visceral fear of something that you don't understand, yet you know when you see it that it's very, very bad. There persists a line of thought that madness is a demonic possession of some sort. I’m not prepared to rule it out.

TOLERANCE OR DIE

2009-02-17T18:13:00.002-06:00

There was a great story on the news last night. Well, it wasn't really great. It was awful, actually. A man beheaded his wife because she was seeking divorce.

One thing our local forgot to mention was that the killer was a Muslim (though it wasn't a huge leap to arrive at that conclusion, based on the guy's name), as was his wife. It also failed to mention that the guy ran a television network called BRIDGES TV, which is about polishing up the image of Muslims to mainstream America.

Here's a link to Glenn Beck's monologue on the story, which I heard today traveling far into the wastelands of the panhandle for a court hearing. This was more information than what the network news was willing to give out.

I'm not drawing any conclusions here. I'm just throwing it out there for the reader's consideration.

The War Comes Home

2009-02-02T17:19:00.005-06:00

It was late at night when the demons came. They attacked in the darkest hours of the early morning, at that time when the human body is at its lowest ebb. When the insomniac suffers under the most intense, painful, part of the condition, yearning for the blessed relief of sleep, yet completely unable to achieve it. When one can actually feel the body dying a little from the strain.

The demons started their attack off quietly. They nibbled away at the walls built to hold them at bay. They were quiet, insidious. They moved stealthily until they overwhelmed the defenses. And then they hit with full demonic fury. Fighting them required more effort than was humanly possible.

I'm not talking about pointy-horned, fire-breathing clawed, physical demons. I'm not seeing things here. I'm not crazy enough to think they are real, in the sense that one could actually see, feel, or hear them. The ones that I'm talking about are worse. These are the ones that are personal. I believe that everyone has them.

You know what I'm talking about. They probably hit you a little differently. They're the ones that tell me that I'm not worth anything. That I'm a horrible attorney, a horrible father, a lousy husband. I'm not nearly as smart as I think I am. That I'm a sorry excuse for a son, moving away from my immediate family when they needed me the most. That I'm talentless, classless, and pretty much useless. That I'm now out of shape, old, and good for nothing. That my health is going downhill, and there's no good years left in me. That I've done horrible wrongs to those who loved me. That this sorry state was the best my life had to offer, and it was more than I deserved.

They whisper to me that my marriage is doomed to failure. That I'm going to be penniless and good for nothing for the rest of my life. I'll never get ahead. That I'm raising my son wrong. That I'm standing in church, playing guitar as the biggest hypocrite in the place. That the place would turn on me in an instant if they knew what I had done. That I have no business being there.

Yes, I struggle with self-worth. Every day. The devil hits you where you live, where it hurts the absolute most. And those demons had me right where they wanted me, in the wee hours. At the point where doctors tell us people pass away the most often. Three o'clock a.m. had just struck, and there I was. Lying in bed alone, I could hear the sound of a far away train. Wracked with guilt, with sadness, with shame. With all the pain and all the weight of the world on my shoulders, I sat alone in the darkness. I have never been able to say that I felt the darkness before. But I did that night. It was cold, but I could feel within it something that burned with hate.

I've been laid low in the past year, about as low as a person could get, so I thought. I didn't think it could actually get any worse.

I was wrong.

I have never felt worse. I'm not sure if I ever could. This was utter, hopeless despair.

I almost didn't hear the little footsteps coming down the hall. Under siege as I was, I almost didn't hear the quiet, cloth-padded feet. It didn't really register until I heard the door open, and that small, wonderful voice say, "Daddy?"

He came in, rubbing sleep out of his eyes, and dragging his little pillow behind him. He held his arms out for me to pick him up. The minute his head hit my shoulder, he dropped fast asleep in that wonderful, miraculous way that only small children can manage. Blissful, restful slumber. The kind that only comes from the knowledge that he is safe, warm, and loved. The kind that indicated he had no idea of the terrible battle that was being waged in my heart and mind.

I felt a peace settle in, as though a great weight had lifted off my chest. I knew at that moment that everything was going to be all right. I knew that better days lay ahead, and that I was worthy and loved, especially in the eyes of one little boy.

I have heard about spiritual warfare. I don't think I ever understood it until that very moment. It's real. There was a war going on that night. There was a crisis of faith and purpose that I cannot even describe. There are powerful weapons at the enemy's disposal, that work on the places where a person is the most vulnerable. And it had me on the ropes, absolutely.

But there's a power at work that's far greater than anything that can be brought to bear against us. It can be subtle, but there's no mistaking how truly powerful it is. It is absolute power. It is the power that shaped the world. It is the power that sent a being that we don't fully understand to make the ultimate sacrifice for mankind. It is the power that allowed an infant to save his father from an ancient evil that had all but crushed his spirit that night. I don't think the timing of my little boy was the least bit coincidental.

I slept peacefully for the rest of the night, the demons utterly defeated and destroyed by the love of a small boy in Cars pajamas, and the power that sent him there.

Oh, That Worked Out Well....

2009-01-27T17:40:00.002-06:00

Yeah. Good times will be had by all when Gitmo closes. Check this out. Morons. What did they think would happen? Why can't people understand the way to fight people like this is to hurt them until they don't want to fight anymore?

And Mr. Wonderful decided to give his first television interview to an Arab television network.

We're sending a message to the terrorists, all right. It's something along the lines of: "Go ahead and have your way with us." When's he going to just break out the white flag?

I still blame the Republicans. Mostly for putting McCain on the ticket to begin with. Barney Fife would have been a better choice.

Bring on 2012 and Sarah Palin.

Deport Handy Manny

2009-01-22T17:46:00.003-06:00

If you don't have kids, chances are you haven't had to watch Handy Manny. This is a good thing.

I have, unfortunately. Handy Manny is a computer generated cartoon. He has little animated bilingual, intterracial tools, and everybody in his town of Sheetrock Hills speaks English with random Spanish words thrown in at odd points. Everybody is deep into the Hispanic culture. The main woman on the show owns a hardware store. All the white male people are stupid. Everybody is helpless to do anything, until our little Hispanic hero shows up to perform manual labor and make everything ok.

We never hear about his immigration status, do we? Is he illegal? Here on an expired visa? What's the deal?

I want to write and direct an episode for this show. I'd like to show a slightly different perspective on undocumented workers than what this show gives us. One that's based on living in a border state, and performing a job in law enforcement. Because about half of the cases I deal with are perpetrated by illegal aliens. A majority of the insurance defense cases I worked were illegal aliens suing after a car accident. Our health care problem is driven in no small part to illegal aliens jamming our ER's up because they know they have to be treated, whether they pay or not.

I'd like to show Manny consoling a nice family whose son has been hit by an undocumented worker driving DWI with no insurance, who's drunk off his butt on firewater, has no driver's license, and no way to ever compensate them for the loss of their youngest son. One that maybe shows the aftermath of Kelly getting robbed at knifepoint when she leaves the store. Or where all the friendly tools are stolen and sold at a pawn shop. Or one where we see Manny's gang tattoos and hear how wonderful La Eme or MS-13 had been for him. Or where Mr. Lopard's car is stolen and cut up for spare parts. Or we find Abuelito selling dope that his relatives who sneak across the border brought up to him.

Handy Manny shows you lovely little things the Hispanic culture has brought into America. The music is by Los Lobos and Carlos Santana. Wilmer Valderrama from THAT 70'S SHOW voices Handy Manny. Yeah. That guy. The man whose major claim to fame is that he dated Lindsay Lohan and turned her gay. Thanks, buddy.

You want Hispanic culture? Let me do a show about some of the poor girls whose lives have been ruined by their father because he's been sexually abusing them since the age of 5, because that's what happens down in deep Mexico. That's a cultural thing down there. Illegals account for the MAJORITY of the child sexual assault cases that we work.

Let's see a Hispanic riot at the school because they can't afford an English as a Second Language program, and because they won't print the textbooks in Spanish. Let's see a school shut down because the majority of the children in it are illegal, and can't pass Bush's no child left untested program if you gave them the answers. Let's show the hospital closing because they are going broke treating people who can't and won't pay with no insurance. Let's show the taxpayers in Sheetrock Hills having to pay for it.

My episode would end with the Border Patrol showing up to deport Abuelito, or running a security checkpoint on the edge of town. We'd see all the little brown people running for the hedges, as fast as their little stubby legs could carry them.

You'd learn a new Hispanic phrase. "Pinche! La Migra!"

I'm not saying that all Hispanics are bad. Far from it. I'm saying illegal immigration is bad. I'm saying bringing a morally bankrupt, corrupt culture into ours and expect us to like it, that's bad. I welcome anybody who comes here legally. I welcome the influx of anybody's culture who comes here the right way. Keep in mind these poor people who sneak here for a better life bring the crap that is Mexico here with them. They're escaping that cesspool for a reason. Other than the beach resorts, the place sucks. It's a third-world country. Yet they end up here, and want to bring their culture and language with them. They want us to assimilate their culture. If they want that culture, stay there. Don't drag us down to their level.

Every person sneaking across the border is a criminal once they reach the other side. They start off breaking the law. Why do we want more lawbreakers here?

The Conquerer

2009-01-22T17:44:00.001-06:00

I just love watching my son enjoy the world. Everything is so exciting and new to him. I took him to my parents’ house this weekend. Just him and me alone. It was great. We had a wonderful time. He met some cows, and a couple of donkeys, and saw a few nice deer. Yeah, the season’s over, so maybe next year....

I introduced him to the absolutely fascinating sport of throwing rocks into water. He did this nonstop for about an hour, and every rock thrown was pure magic for him. He laughed delightedly at each splash, and really got into finding the perfect throwing rock for each throw out of the millions of rocks that were laying around. There’s an art to it, you know. You can’t just throw any rock.

He played for at least an hour in a dried up stock tank. For you Yankees, a stock tank is a man made pond where the critters drink. We’re in severe drought stage in South Texas, the worst since the 1950's, so the almanacs say.

It was a whole world for him, better than any stupid McDonald’s playscape ever thought about being. It was Mount Everest, K-9, El Capitan, and the Alps all rolled into one. Without any prompting from Dad, he searched around and found a suitable stick, which immediately was used to squash bugs with, and also acted as a combination lightsaber, broadsword, and general poking device. He climbed high atop a pile of dirt that served a retaining wall, and waved his mighty sword, daring any and all challengers to bring it on. He was Alexander, Ghengis Khan, and Ceasar all rolled into one.

It’s amazing to me how boys operate. This is a kid that has seen no violent movies in his two years. He doesn’t get to watch much television. Yet a stick is instantly a weapon to him. Tell me that’s not hard wired into males and I’ll call utter bullcrap.

It was one of the most magical days that I’ll ever experience. I thanked God right then for the chance to share this time with him, and for all the wonderful things he’s brought into my life.

"The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living..."

2009-01-21T18:32:00.001-06:00

There’s a tendency in mankind to imagine that He(we) is the be-all end all. We’re the coolest, the most enlightened, the boldest, the best, the smartest, etc. For example, this new administration is touting itself as the most moral, responsible, so much better than the last, etc.

Fine. Maybe that’s true. Maybe not. Taking that attitude completely blinds folks to the painful truth that no matter how good it actually is, it’s still not perfect. It might look nice and shiny, but there’s a dark interior. And it’s not only on our society, but ourselves as well. Are you following this one?

Let me explain a bit better. How much better do we perceive ourselves than the Roman Empire? We’re so far advanced, right? How much better did the Romans think they were compared to the Greeks, the Middle Eastern cultures running around, the Druids, etc.? They were the top of the heap, so they thought. They figured it just didn’t get any better than what they had.

Pretty shortsighted, isn’t it? Through the passage of time, we see the faults. We see the shortsightedness. We see the debauchery, the insanity, etc. At least, those of us who actually learn something from history do. And we’re all blind to our own faults, for the most part.

Man’s perspective on the whole universe is a bit shortsighted, honestly. We fall into the trap of thinking that we’re the best, the brightest, can’t get any better, etc. (Lots of etcs., in the post, I’m noticing. Oh well. You weren’t expecting Shakespeare, were you?)

We ignore our own faults, and have no idea of how bad we actually are until we see somebody that is better than ourselves in some area. Whether it be our personal relationships, our golf game, the way we treat our dog, etc. We’re not perfect by any stretch of the imagination.

What will a future society see when they look back on us? What flaws will they notice? What Achilles’ Heel will jump out at them as being what did this society in? We probably can’t even imagine it. What flaws does someone outside our own skins see in us that we can’t see ourselves?

No matter how good any of us think we actually are, there’s room for improvement. No matter how advanced we find ourselves in whatever area we choose to examine, there’s a greater perspective that we are unaware of, and a complete inability to appreciate how low we actually are.

Only time will tell, I suppose. But it’s something to think about.

Wow. I’ve got to lay off the C.S. Lewis.....

Mulder? Scully? A Little Help, Here.

2009-01-12T17:39:00.001-06:00

I’ve noticed that my socks keep missing. Except that it’s only one sock. I have no rational explanation for this. I know that I put two socks in the laundry pile. I even know that I put two socks into the wash at the same time. Yet somewhere between the washer and dryer, one sock vanishes.

One sock vanishing in and of itself would not be a problem. The problem is that eventually the wayward sock will find its way home. And that messes with my mind. Given its fragile state, my mind is not a good thing to mess with.

There are explanations for all this. It could be that one of the machines eats the sock for a short period of time, then regurgitates it later, optimally timed to jack with my tiny little mind. There could be small elves in the house that take one sock and hide it, for the same reason. The little bastards also mess with my ballpoint pens, and from time to time steal one of the remotes for the tv or dvd player. If I manage to catch one, I will both prove the existence of malevolent supernatural beings, and create a moral dilemma for whatever taxidermist I take it to in order to have it stuffed.

A friend of mine once postulated that dimensional rifts appear around object from time to time, throwing that object into a parallel dimension. At what is probably only an instant in the parallel universe, several days or weeks might pass in ours. Then the dimensional rift will re-open, throwing the object back into our world, often at a slightly different point than where the object originally fell through the portal. This theory makes a lot of sense.

I have ruled out human error by a simple experiment. I have been throwing the orphan socks into a bucket. Every once in awhile, I add socks and check to see whether or not one of the new socks matches up with what I already have in the bucket. One night, I went through the bucket and sorted socks by type and color, getting the ones that were close together, and then matching them from there. On the first night, no matches. I then hid the bucket in the fireplace.

The very next night, without any additions on my part, I removed the bucket from its hiding spot in the fireplace and repeated the process. There were three matches. One match was for a set of socks that has been orphaned for at least a year.

This is not natural.

Bye, Bye, 2008, You Bag of Crap, You....

2009-01-07T18:17:00.002-06:00

I have to say that 2008 was pretty much the worst year of my life. So far, anyway. General unhappiness reigned.

So yeah, 2008 sucked. CS Lewis’s book THE PROBLEM OF PAIN has helped a bit. He’s pretty phenomenal at putting a decent spin on this sort of thing. It’s been fairly easy for me to wonder why in the world this stuff seems to be happening to me. So why has God just abandoned me? Why wouldn’t he help me through all of this? Why no magic want to fix the problems???

Well, he hasn’t abandoned me. And eventually I came to my senses, or at least had a moment of clarity about it. A lot of this has been the result of my exercising free will. If I hadn’t opted to do certain things, I wouldn’t be suffering. Sure, God could have exerted miracles and pulled me out of it, but I learn best the hard way, unfortunately. It’s the product of a low IQ, I have no doubt. I’ve got to be knocked to my senses sometimes. So he’s let me experience the bad stuff, and used it to his advantage to better me. Sometimes as a parent, you have to allow your kids to do stupid stuff in order to learn better. And sometimes those lessons hurt. It’s kind of like jumping off the house when you were a kid, and discovering the hard way that gravity’s law was not going to be abolished just for you. (What, you never did that? Maybe it WAS just me.)

But I also have a peace about things that I didn’t have before. A lot of it comes with the realization that much of what has happened is now out of my control, if it ever was to begin with. I’m not necessarily asking for what I want to happen to come true. I’m more asking for peace about what is to happen. There’s mention in the bible that man cannot add a single hour to his life by worrying, and that’s true. So the trick is to be at peace with what God has in store. Nothing I can do can affect what anyone thinks or feels about me. Instead, I need to just be at peace with what is to happen, since there’s not a darn thing that I can do about it anyway.

It’s just no fun waiting, sometimes. And it’s relatively easy to want my will to be done, as opposed to his. But my perspective is pretty much narrow compared to his. But the thing that keeps me going is the promise that good things are in store for me down the road.

“I’ve been stumbling through some dark places, but I’m following the plow. I know I’ve tumbled out of your good graces, but it’s all right now....”

Cowboy Blob Again

2008-12-10T17:55:00.002-06:00

Boy, I love winning his captioning contests. It's such fun making stuff up around the photo. I do wish I could do it professionally, though. Is there a field out there where I can make fun of things for a living?

I mean, other than the one I'm in?

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE..LUCAS IS A TARD

2008-12-10T17:52:00.001-06:00

I had the chance to watch THE XFILES–I WANT TO BELIEVE the other night. When the music started up, it got the old familiar feeling. That little anticipation of a cool experience with characters that you know and love. I wanted to know what they’ve been up to the last few years. Where they were now, what they were doing, what their lives had progressed to, etc.

I won’t throw any spoilers out there. It was a good flick, all things considered. But it could have been just as good as a thriller badged under something other than the XFILES.

It was also like seeing Michael Jordan come out of retirement. We hated to see him go, but the return as something a bit less than the miraculous player of old was something that was somewhat less than satisfying. Even though intellectually you knew that it couldn’t be the same as it was, you wanted it to be. You wanted the miracle that beat the odds. You wanted the movie to just rock. It was good, but it didn’t just blow the roof off. So there’s the whole bittersweet thing going on.

What you received was good, but it wasn’t quite as shiny as it used to be. Did they take too many years off between the series and the movie? I’d have to say yes to that. Some of the core audience has gotten older now, and didn’t flock to the theaters to go see it because they couldn’t find a babysitter that weekend. Besides, THE DARK KNIGHT was still running, and if you only have the one shot at the babysitter, what are you going to do?

I’d have to say that it’s worth watching.

Along the same lines, I did watch INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL again.

I’d say that I had very similar feelings. It was great to see my #1 movie idol character back in action. I confess that I completely geeked out the first time the preview ran and I saw him dusting off the fedora. Awesome.

Ford aged well, and he played the character as well as he ever did. I’m still upset that he’s wussed out about not actually shooting a gun in his movies, but at least he carried one. There was good bullwhip fu, which I’m a sucker for.

The movie was well-directed, of course. How could it not be? Absent the stupid monkeys, but we’ll cover that later. Lucas didn’t have the chance to completely ruin it like he did the prequels for his other masterpiece. It moved well. The story was fun.

My spoiler critiques are as follows:

First, nothing Indiana Jones did in this movie made a darn bit of difference. IN allthe other movies, his involvement was critical to what happened. Finding the ark, stealing it away from the nazis, finding the Shankara stones, freeing the kids, finding the Holy Grail and surviving the traps, etc. In this movie, it wouldn’t have made a difference who took the stupid skull back.

Second, we find out he’s whelped a kid. And the kid’s a butthole. Shia Lebouf is pretty much of a punk in this movie. He has some moments, but he’s not fit to fear the fedora. Oh, by the way, the monkey scene was about the stupidest thing I’ve seen in cinema history, absent Wookies doing the Tarzan call. Yeah, I see Lucas’ cornball touch all over that scene. What a tard. Why Spielberg didn’t beat the crap out of him over that one is beyond me.

Third, Marion went and got old lady on us. Indy aged ok, but Marion was annoying. She wasn’t cool like she was when she slugged Harrison in the kisser. Yeah, she matured, but it wasn’t like how Indy matured. But it’s also 27 years later, mind you, so what can they really do in the real world?

Finally, the whole thing about Indy and the OSS was ultra-cool. I’d love to see another spin-off series based on that plot line. You’d need another Indy, but that’s ok. They did it successfully with THE YOUNG INDIANA JONES CHRONICLES. (If anybody wants to buy me all of those on DVD, I won’t stop you, honest.)

Ford could do another one, if he doesn’t break a hip or something in between now and then. If they do, they need to ground it a bit better. The commies made a good villain. He’s got a new sidekick that if allowed to mature, might actually work out well. At least it’s not some midget Chinese spewing pidgin English.

Happy Thanksgiving, Y'all...

2008-11-26T13:14:00.003-06:00

To you and yours, Happy Thanksgiving. Take the time to spend it with your families; those whom you love and love you. That's my definition of family, and I have people in that category that I am not related to by blood, but are closer to me than any consanguinity could possibly make them. They're really all that you've got in this world, and there's nothing on this earth that you should be more thankful for.

Cowboy Blob Again

2008-11-25T11:54:00.002-06:00

He was kind enough to judge me the winner in his photoshop captioning contest again this week. I just love his blog, and not just because I win over there. It's good entertainment.

It's also just pure fun to participate in this contest. I wonder if I can do this professionally anywhere??

Barf Bands

2008-11-25T11:50:00.002-06:00

OK, Kim Du Toit was talking about bands that make you want to plunge your head into a vat of boiling oil. He had five, and I think that I can throw a few onto that heap as well:

1. Supertramp–Any time anything of theirs comes on the radio, it induces intestinal cramps. “The Logical Song” is one of the worst songs ever. The singer makes you want to rip your own eyeballs out with a fork. “Dreamer” can cause spontaneous heart attacks in otherwise normal people, and can shatter windows at even moderate volumes. They should be considered a weapon of mass destruction.

2. Cinderella–The worst hair metal band of all time. The lead singer sounds like he’s gargling a crow. When they introduced the “power ballad” in the 80's, Cinderella laid out a major bag of crap with “Don’t Know What You Got ‘Till It’s Gone,” which has been known to produce spontaneous barfing in otherwise un-inebriated people, and probably caused Skylab to plunge out of orbit.

3. Ratt–Everything that goes for Cinderella goes double for Ratt. Stephen Pearcy, the lead singer, has a voice that can only be emulated by demons in hell.

4. Styx–Some may consider this sacrilege, and I do have a caveat with this one. Anything Dennis Deyoung sang is just godawful. I have to leave the room if “Lady” comes on the radio, or else I’ll try and find a rope to hang myself with. “Come Sail Away” leaves me howling on the floor in paroxysms of agony. “Babe” is just terrible. It’s banned by the Geneva Convention. However, “Renegade”, “Blue Collar Man”, “and “Fooling Yourself” are some of the greatest songs in the rock and roll genre. I’d also add that Tommy Shaw was brilliant in the Damn Yankees. The other songs mentioned nicely offset Shaw's genius. A so-called friend of mine called in the middle of their concert to play "Come Sail Away" at me. If he would have been in front of me, I'd have hit him. That is, if I could have gotten to my feet.

5. Madonna–Never has anyone gone so far with so little talent. “Like A Virgin” sounds like it was cooked up on a Casio keyboard that you could buy at Wal-Mart in the 80's. “Like a Prayer” is pretty much terrible. Her voice sounds much like fingernails on a chalk board. Her popularity is only explainable by the amount of controversy she generates. If you think about it, every album she put out had to be bolstered by some sort of shocking stunt. Whether it was marrying Dennis Rodman, divorcing Guy Ritchie, getting faux-crucified, getting naked, etc., she has to do something shocking to sell. That’s not an artist, that’s a publicity hound.

Random Musings

2008-11-24T17:13:00.003-06:00

Texas Tech got their collective rears handed to them on Saturday, by OU. That's somewhat disappointing. I was really afraid after they beat Texas this would happen. It's somewhat tradition: Tech beats a big team, but can't sustain the momentum for too long. They definitely didn't look like a Top 10 team. They looked like the ugly girl in the Miss America contest: not quite sure how they got there, pretty certain they didn't belong, and everyone else knew they were way out of place.

HELLBOY II is a decent movie. Not a bad follow-up to the first movie, and the visual effects were absolutely incredible. Very much an eye candy film.

I had a Sig 229 converted from DAO to its original DA/SA, and I love it. It was a somewhat disappointing gun as a DAO. The trigger was much too heavy for decent groupings. Now, it's quite nice. It's even smoother than other Sigs I have handled, and I have a feeling it's going to be carried quite a bit. Like starting tomorrow....

Is it not painfully obvious to everyone; even the liberals, that the media is WAAAAY liberal-biased? Is it not also readily apparent that the wacko branch of the Democratic party is out to destroy the conservative point of view in America? Is it not time for conservatives to fight like our way of life is at stake? Because it is.

WORLD WAR Z is a relentlessly entertaining novel, written by no one less than Mel Brooks' son. I'm absolutely digging this book.

I also finished the latest SPENSER novel, called ROUGH WEATHER. A great read, like every Spenser novel. The characters and dialogue are the best in detective fiction, bar none. It's good entertainment.

For you contemporary Christian listeners, if you can get your hands on Rob Attaway's SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL, it's good music all the way around. Check him out at this link. Not to brag, but I've had the pleasure of jamming with this guy. He has a great voice, plays the piano like a fiend, and he's an absolutely phenomenal guitarist. I'm honored to have played on the same stage with this guy, and I hope to do it again. Not to mention that the guy is super nice, funny, and all the way around cool. The only downside: he makes me realize how pathetic a guitarist that I am. Oh well.

For those who don't gravitate towards that type of music: Coheed and Cambria is quite an entertaining band. I've also discovered the genius of Iron Maiden, after catching one of their concerts on TV the other night. Wow. No, they're not Satanic, despite what their song titles might suggest. Listen to it, and make up your own mind.

Wow, Christian music mentioned on the same page as Iron Maiden. How often does that happen??? I need more eclectic dichotomies in my life....

New Link

2008-11-18T17:39:00.002-06:00

Cowboy Blob was kind enough to judge me second place winner in his photo captioning contest. I read his site all the time, so I thought the least I could do was add him in. It's always good entertainment.

Check it out.

Noir

2008-11-18T17:33:00.003-06:00

Flying over Dallas/Ft. Worth, I noticed the residential neighborhoods lit by their security and street lights, appearing almost as oases of light against the encroaching darkness. The lights appeared to be tiny, perfect circles of brightness and warmth, surrounded by the sinister blackness that pushed all the way to their borders. It was almost as if the light was the barrier keeping the darkness at bay. It appeared that if the light were to fail at any moment, the darkness would flow in, like barbarians breaching the gates of an ancient city. Once the protection of the wall had fallen, the inexorable force would swarm the city, destroying everything it touched. The walls of light appeared to be holding, each little security light a tiny barrier.

I can remember night lights as a child. The light pushed back the darkness, leaving a red-tinged warmth in its wake. But in every corner the light didn’t reach, I could feel an almost malevolent cold. Toys assumed nightmarish shapes in the shadow-light. Furniture that appeared harmless in the daylight took on sinister, jagged silhouettes in near darkness. The familiar, friendly world became something scary and cold. The sterile brilliance of a flashlight just illuminated the target area briefly. But when the clean light was switched off, the darkness returned, and the objects that I could only dimly perceived re-assumed their frightening identities. My family still remembers me avoiding the main living room at night, convinced the china hutch became a monster in the dark. And it did, at least to me.

I heard something on the radio today that described darkness as simply a shadow cast by something blocking the light. However, looking at the siege of darkness over the city, it didn’t seem there were any shadows cast. It was the complete absence of light that I was observing. Perhaps there isn’t a technical difference in describing the darkness. Maybe all darkness is simply a shadow cast. But it didn't seem that way to me. It wasn't blocked light that caused the creeping blackness. There was no light to be found.

There is a difference in the darkness that I perceive, and perhaps in the darkness that you perceive as well.

Holy Pilgrimage to Mecca....err, Tulsa

2008-11-11T10:16:00.000-06:00

If some pinko-commie Democrat would have set off a bomb at the Tulsa Fairgrounds Exhibition Hall this past weekend, they would have probably killed at least 40% of the conservative movement in the South in one fell swoop. You laugh, but I had visions of Janet Reno busting through a wall in an APC, torching everything she could see.

My dad and I made the holy pilgrimage to Tulsa, Oklahoma this last weekend, to witness the awesome spectacle of the Wannamaker Gun Show, which purports to be the largest gun show in the world.

I’m a believer. That thing was awesome.

In the past, the largest gun show that I’ve attended was the Dallas Market Hall show, which is held about once a quarter. It’s big. Wannamaker is 11 ACRES worth of gun goodness. It’s phenomenal.

Plus, it does not have the petty little knick-knack crap that fills up some gun shows. This was purely guns and gun-related stuff.

Rightly fearing a Communist President, gun buyers were grabbing AR’s by the truckload. Along with that, all sorts of AR add-ons were being sold. Also upper receivers, lower receivers, etc. Plenty of AK-47's, SKS’s, FN-FAL’s HK-90's, and other evil black rifle goodies were going like hotcakes.

It was a fun trip, to say the least. Tulsa is one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting. It’s very forest-y, and has lots of neat old homes. There’s a river running right through the city. It reminds me a bit of St. Louis and Portland rolled into one. Except there was a fairly low number of whacko liberals. This is still the South, after all. Even if Oklahoma wasn’t a state on the right side in the War of Northern Aggression. We’ll forgive them. They weren’t even a state at that point.

It was good to be out with my Dad. We haven’t spent any time together since my Mom passed away, a fact that tears both of us apart. The ordeal of my Mom’s illness has torn him up, physically and emotionally. He’s lost weight. His Parkinson’s is much worse. His breathing is awful, and he smokes more now than ever, despite the fact that lung cancer is what took his wife and my mother away from us. While I want to enjoy the time with him, it’s somewhat bittersweet, with the knowledge that his health declines each passing day, all because he cannot quit a habit that will kill him. What’s worse, he denies that smoking causes any problems, and gets angry when I ask him not to smoke around me, or in my car.

I guess God equips all of us with our own personal Achilles’ Heel that will cause our undoing. Lord knows I could stand to drop the Dr. Peppers.

It was still good to see him, and spend time with him doing something that we both love. It used to be that golf brought us together, and allowed us to spend time with one another. I’m thankful for the opportunities that I had to spend so much time with him on those occasions.

Aw, Crap.

2008-11-06T14:07:00.003-06:00

Well, this election comes as no surprise to anyone with more brains than a turnip. I voted for McCain to try and keep Obama out. I didn't actually like the guy. I just had to choose the lesser of two evils. We're going to see at least the attempt to institute socialism on a scale unimaginable to our Founding Fathers. I can tell you honestly that I was not going to vote for him until he nominated Sarah Palin. Truthfully, I was hoping McCain would win it and then die, leaving a real conservative at the helm. Okay, that's harsh, but I'm just saying what most of us were probably thinking, even if the rest of us weren't prepared to say it out loud.

Ann Coulter says pretty much what I'm thinking.

Here's the message that I want Republicans to hear, loud and clear: If you're conservative, God-fearing right-wingers, this is your party. Stay here. Be what you are, be proud of what you are, and don't compromise for an instant on what you know in your heart is right. If you're John McCain or his ilk, go somewhere else.

I think McCain lost because he had no enthusiastic base support from the beginning. Conservatives didn't like him, and like it or not, that's the base of the Republican party. That's as it should be.

Diversity in a political party is a load of crap. If we don't have common ideals, goals, and basic ethical and moral harmony, we aren't a party. I don't like to hang out with people who don't share at least the core principles that I believe in. We can differ on some issues, sure. But if we aren't basically alike, we aren't going to be friends. And we sure don't have the unity of purpose that it takes to win elections and foster our beliefs in the world.

We need a conservative party in America. One that is not afraid of what it is, and is in fact proud of it. Here's a good checklist to see if you're conservative or not. More than one point qualifies you as a conservative.

The checklist is as follows. If you: Think the Second Amendment is good, one point. Think socialism is a bad idea, one point. Think abortion is murder, one point. Think high taxes are a bad idea, one point. Think the Constitution is a binding document that spells out black and white what the government cannot do, one point. Think our form of government should be based on the Judeo-Christian ethic and what God ordained, one point. Think even if you don't buy completely all of the stuff this checklist has on it, but believe you should have the right to live free with your beliefs and everybody else should be allowed to do the same under the great structure the Constitution provided: two points.

Pretty easy, isn't it? So if the Republicans aren't going to be conservative, that's fine. We'll go elsewhere. But to dilute conservative principles and ideals just to get elected is madness. I think this election proves it.

The Ballot of Josey Wales

2008-11-03T17:22:00.003-06:00

Clever alliteration, no? You get it: fighting against impossible odds for a lost cause, with only our guns and wits to overcome what appears to be an inevitability. All we lack is a crazy old Indian.....I digress. I was too caught up in my cool title.

I haven't written much. Life has kept me a bit too busy. I also have no internet at home, so I steal time whenever I can. However, I thought that I needed to weigh in on the election.

When I started this blog, it was originally for political stuff. It's turned into my own cathartic ramblings, and I don't think anybody really wants to read that crap anymore. I don't like writing it, honestly. It just helped to get it off my chest. I'm done whining.

Nevertheless, I've been remiss in the original purpose of this blog. Here we are, on the eve of one of the most important elections in our history, and the future looks a bit grim. I haven't done my part to get the conservative side of the story out, and for that I'm sorry. For those of you who haven't voted yet, and are undecided, I'll tell you what my key issues are, and why I voted the way I did. And perhaps that will help. I doubt it, but it's worth a shot.

I voted McCain/Palin. That's out of the way. Here's why:

1. I believe a large government is tyranny de facto, if not de jure. Government does not produce anything on it's own. It is not self-sustaining. It creates no product. It exists only off of what it takes from its subjects. In other words, what it takes from a person in taxes. The bigger it gets, the more taxes it must have to sustain itself. Thus, the less of their hard-earned money its subjects get to keep.

When a government takes money from one group and gives it to another, it is socialism at its best, and communism at its worst. Neither can exist in a society without completely trampling individual freedom.

Obama has said that he wants to spread the wealth around. He wants to bankrupt an American industry. He doesn't think the civil rights movement went far enough in terms of wealth redistribution. That's a communist, folks. His proposed ideas about tax reform will force America into a recession, and hit the middle class harder than ever. In other words, taxes will be raised, the government will expand, and we'll all suffer that much more.

2. If a society does not have the right and the ability to defend itself by owning firearms, then the government can do anything that it wants to its subjects. Weapons in the hands of private citizens simply empowers them, and keeps the government honest. Obama and all the Democrats are against this. Illinois is one of the worst states for so-called gun control. We know what he's about on that issue, his

3. Obama has voted consistently to extend so-called "abortion rights" to include partial-birth abortions, amongst other things. When a person is in favor of killing the unborn, I'm against him. A just, noble society should never condone the slaughter of innocents, no matter what it's disguised as.

4. Obama is weak on national defense. We haven't been hit by terrorists since 9-11-01. There's a reason for that. He's also been wrong about the surge in Iraq, and pretty much everything else regarding our military.

5. I firmly believe Obama is a racist. He sat in the church of Jeremiah Wright for 20 years, and didn't believe in what the man was saying? Wright is a white-hating, America-hating rabble rouser of the first order. Plus, if Obama was part of his congregation, he's not a Christian, no matter what either of them would like to say or think.

6. Obama's political career was launched in the home of William Ayers, one of the most notorious domestic terrorists from the Vietnam era. Once again, people don't associate with folks with whom they have nothing in common. At least, not normal people.

That's all I needed to vote for McCain. Don't get me wrong: I'm not the guy's biggest fan. However, he deserves my respect, and my vote, simply because of his service and captivity during Vietnam. That's my idea of a leader.

I might be the biggest Sarah Palin fan ever, though. She's what we conservatives have been praying for. I have hopes she'll take over if McCain has to step down for some reason. I think she's married, though, and I don't have a chance with her....oh well. She's still my political soulmate....:)

That's my reasons for voting the way I did. If you are undecided, ask yourself where you stand on abortion, on the Second Amendment, on taxes, on the war on terror, and on socialism/communism versus capitalism. Whatever you come up with there should pretty much settle your indecisiveness.

And you protest voters who are going to vote libertarian because you couldn't stand either? If Obama wins, this is going to be partially your fault.

The only thing in the middle of the road are yellow stripes and road kill.

Tragedy

2008-10-01T15:36:00.004-06:00

I know that it seems that I've all done lately is post links to others stuff. Well, that's exactly what I've done, now that you mention it.

This piece is far too powerful not to link for you.

How anyone could deliberately harm a baby is beyond me. It brings tears to my eyes even thinking about it. I think about my son, and the overwhelming, indescribable love that I have for him. How could somebody abuse that perfect, innocent trust that he has in this world? How? Why?

My child is the most wonderful thing that's ever happened to me. He's truly a gift from God. My life would be so much poorer without him. He's taught me so much about my life. He's a reason for me to be a better man. He's everything that is good and right in this world. He's happiness and innocence, and a reminder of the time when the world was new, exciting, and wonderful. How can any parent not think that about their children?

This is absolute, pure evil.

Chuck Norris Says So, That's Why

2008-09-17T08:18:00.002-06:00

Who knew the guy could write as well as kill thousands of communists with his feet?

My kind of Hollywood actor.

Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition

2008-09-17T07:54:00.002-06:00

Xavier posts this piece about Obama;s gun control record. Well researched, and it pretty much says it all.

One thing in there really troubled me. If you'll notice, Obama said something to the effect of (and I'm paraphrasing here), "I don't care if it is a fundamental right, the federal government still has the authority to take it away from you."

That ought to bother all of us, gun owners or not. He apparently doesn't understand "fundamental right." That's something that no lawful government is supposed to be able to touch.

There is no clearer indication of what this candidate is about, and what the Democrats want for all of us.

By the way, I noticed that I have posted 301 times on this blog. Geez.

"And Then One Day You'll Find, Ten Years Have Got Behind You..."

2008-09-16T12:34:00.003-06:00

Being around that age myself, this entry really struck home with me.

I think that I have gotten a bit better with age. I darn sure know the mistakes not to make again. I'm wiser, much sadder, but hopeful about the future.

Can this lady write some inspiring prose, or what?

I KNEW IT!!!!

2008-09-14T16:34:00.002-06:00

Eating veggies shrinks the brain.

Explains a lot amongst the tree-hugging, unwashed, bunny-cuddling liberal vegetarian wackos, doesn't it?

I'm off for a hamburger. Double-meat, now that I think about it....

Life and Hope, Part Deux

2008-09-09T16:44:00.001-06:00

Is it just me, or was McCain’s story pretty much inspiring?

Don’t get me wrong: I was just about the most anti-McCain guy you could have ever found. I hate his border stance, I hate McCain-Feingold with a passion, I hate his capitulation to the Dems, etc. I wish Sarah was running as the headliner instead of the warm-up act. But I’ll pull the lever for McCain now, just to put her closer to the White House. But there’s a lot to like about McCain on his own. I don’t want to like him, really I don’t.

But darn it, his life’s story is awe-inspiring. And darn it, you have to respect the guy for doing what he thinks is best, even if it draws the ire and wrath of not only his political enemies, but those who are his political friends. That’s courage. They guy has that in spades, one has to admit. It goes without saying that Obama looks like the poser he is when you stack him up to McCain. As I’ve noted: when Obama had to defend his experience against the second banana, I knew he was screwed.

Think about a person locked inside a North Vietnamese prison for five years. Think about a guy who rejected early release, even though he could have cashed in on his father’s admiralty. Broken arms. Dysentery. Beatings. Pretty much the worst a person could endure, it seems. Tell me Job’s got anything on McCain.

This went on for five years. That absolutely floors me. Tell me Job’s got anything on McCain.

How many times during that five years did he hit the bottom of the pit of despair? How many times did he wonder whether or not God had abandoned him?

He pulled through, by not giving up, by not losing faith. By not giving in.

Look where he is today. Wealthy. Beautiful wife, great kids. A respected, if not beloved national leader. And probably our next President, God willing.

It looks to me like God rewarded him for keeping the faith.

I’d have to say that my life is not exactly ideal, at the moment. But good grief. In comparison, I’ve got not a single problem in the world. I’m not in the Hanoi Hilton. McCain’s story is pretty much a b@$ch slap on the face of my petty problems.

I suppose the lesson here is to keep the faith. No matter how bad the situation seems, where there is life, there is hope. If he can endure being a POW, what can life throw at me that I can’t handle? If he can trust in God enough to get him through all of that, why can’t I?

I’d say that I owe the guy a shot at the top job. God got him this far for a reason.

Life and Hope, Part I

2008-09-05T08:53:00.003-06:00

Read this, if you have a chance.

Wow.

Where there's a life, there is hope. There's a chance for a bright future, for a great person to come into the world and share their potential.

We can deal with those lives that don't live up to their potential.

We cannot afford to deal with the destruction of a life before its potential has ever been realized.

Red Card His Green Card and Send Him Home

2008-09-04T09:17:00.004-06:00

If I see another picture of David Beckham scowling, and hocking some product that he obviously doesn't use or know anything about (Sharpie Markers??? Give me a break. I'm SURE he uses those all the time), I'm going to go postal and start shooting soccer balls. Maybe some that are still attached to soccer players.

Just kidding, but good grief.

Why the scowl? He's making beaucoup off of a sport that most Americans think comes in a distant tenth behind curling in popularity, he's banging the only hot Spice Girl there was, and he's an international jet-setter. I'd think if anybody out there ought to smile, it would be him.

Go, Sarah!

2008-09-04T08:57:00.002-06:00

See the speech?? Wonderful. I think McCain really helped himself with this lady. He's convinced me to pull the lever for him.

Can she handle the presidency? I'd have to say yes, based on her record, and what we saw last night.

Have you noticed that the Demoncrats are attacking her experience? That's a pretty stupid move. She's a VP candidate, and she's got more executive experience than the Demoncrat PRESIDENTIAL candidate. I love it. When the head guy can't successfully defend his record against the second fiddle, they're screwed.

I have hope now. Thank you, Governor Palin.

Weaponology--The Sig 225/P6

2008-08-29T10:38:00.003-06:00

What an awesome little pistol this thing is. It's like a tiny shrunken Sig 220, chambered for 9mm, and holding 8 rounds in the mag. Sig replaced it, sort of, with the 239. The 239 is much more top-heavy, about 1/2 inch shorter, and has a thinner grip frame.

What that amounts to me is a gun that I just didn't like very much. And I like Sigs. The 225 has been out of production for awhile. That's a shame, because all the knowledgable gun folks thought the 225 was the best pistol Sig ever made. It was one of my holy grails of pistols. I'd sort of given up on finding one.

Enter the surplus market for Sig 225's. The German police dumped all their surplus and retired 225's on the US. This is a good thing, because one can score themselves a P6 (German version of the 225) for $300 or under. They vary in condition, from new in the box to 70% condition (as the Blue Book grades such things). This is a good thing as well. It's about half the cost of a 239, and they have equal magazine capacity.

If one isn't scared of a little blueing being rubbed off, these guns are quite a bargain. I'm not. The pistols I've come across that are worn on the outside usually are perfect on the inside. Police and civilians don't usually shoot a gun enough to caue significant wearing, especially on a durable duty pistol like a Sig. Even the severely holster-worn ones that I've seen haven't been shot much, from what I could tell. The barrels appear in good shape, the recoil springs seem solid, and the internals are fine. The triggers seem to work well, though the double action is a bit heavy. The single action is wonderful. While I appreciate beautiful pistols, I also appreciate ugly ones that work well.

The 239 probably has it beat in terms of a smooth double-action, but that's the only place where it does. The 225 just feels right in my hands, better than the 239 ever did. The 225 points better, feels better, and just flat-out makes a better pistol for me. Spare magazine location has been an adventure, but I have two spares, so I'm not really all that short-supplied.

I'd imagine this gun is going to be my main winter carry piece. It's about as thin as a good 1911, about the same dimensions as a 239, and; as noted, just seems to point better for me.

Cheap Sig Sauers. What a deal.

EDITOR'S NOTE:

I shot the little beast this weekend. Not half bad. I put the rounds where they were supposed to go, and I'm not disappointed in the least. However, the Sig 239 recoils much less. That makes perfect sense, since the 225 is much lighter. It's not uncontrollable by any means, it's just a little flippy with hot ammunition. I had two failures to feed. They're explained by either weak mag springs, or me hitting the slide stop up while shooting. I'm leaning towards the latter. The slide stop sits pretty close to my thumb.

A good DA/SA trigger is hard to beat. I can handle it much better than the Glocks, to say the least.

My suspicions were correct. This is going to be a great little carry piece for the wintertime.

On the other hand, I also shot the Sig 229 in 9mm. I can honestly say it's the best-shooting 9mm that I've ever messed with. Nothing better, so far. It's a bit heavier than the 225, but you get so much more control with it. There's nothing like shooting water jugs, and being able to deliberately bounce them in the air with your rounds. I can do that with this pistol.

Just to reassure myself that I do shoot Sigs better than Glocks, I also ran a few rounds through a Glock 17. No comparison. The Sig works much better for me.

It makes me want to trade off every Glock I own.

There's Hope for McCain, After All

2008-08-29T08:46:00.002-06:00

Sarah Palin's the VP pick? Not 100% confirmed yet, but looking good. The Governor of Alaska, no less.

That was a brillant pick in my opinion. She's smart, pretty, tenacious, forthright, mother of a special needs child, and a hell of a campaigner. Plus, she's actually CONSERVATIVE. Hot damn. She's stood up against her own party quite a few times. She doesn't capitulate to the Left.

Traditionally, there's not much that a VP candidate does to boost the ticket. I think history will show this one helped.

I'll actually vote for McCain, now. I think there's a lot of us actual conservatives who feel the same.

Awesome. There's a bit of light at the end of the tunnel. It will be hard for McCain to salvage conservatives after adding the stupid Global Warming plank, but this helped.

Don't think about Geraldine Ferraro, don't think about Geraldine Ferraro.....

I'm Starting to Sound Like a Damned 9 Inch Nails Song...

2008-08-28T16:44:00.001-06:00

Grieving sucks. There’s just no other way to put it. You think you’re over the worst of it. You think the pain is starting to fade. In reality, it’s like a bad tooth. It doesn’t hurt until you poke it a bit.

And you do poke it. You’re cognizant of how bad it hurts when you reach for the telephone to call the person that’s gone, and realize halfway through dialing what you’re doing. You realize it when you see something on the news, and think to yourself, “Gee, I wonder what Mom’s going to have to say about that.” Then you realize you’ll not ever talk to her about the news again.

Colors don’t seem as bright. Food doesn’t really taste good. Nothing seems fun. When that person crosses your mind, you feel a gut-wrenching sadness.

You think about all the things you should have said, should have done, and you feel guilty as hell for not having done them. You regret every harsh word that you ever had with the person. You’d give anything to take all of that back.

But you can’t. And you won’t. Ever.

It’s even worse when you really have no sympathetic ear to turn to. Nobody other than this blog to air out how you really feel.

This is what I get by way of sympathy, from the person who’s supposed to be closer than anyone else in the world to me:

“I really thought you’d get over this quicker, since you’re up here and away from everything that might remind you of her.”

Thanks a whole hell of a lot. Boy, I feel better now. I lost my mother, moron. It’s not like the dog just got run over or something.

It’s amazing. But I think you can actually get a little clarity about things in the midst of a tragedy. If that’s what I can expect as far as warm family support, I’m better off on my own.

This sucks. How much exactly am I supposed to endure, here? Come on, God. Cut me a little slack here, please.

Who Were They, Exactly?

2008-08-11T16:18:00.003-06:00

Hospice told us over and over that people who are dying see people who aren't there for the rest of us. They see and talk to people who have passed on long before. This is quite common.

Is it something in the mind that is just a symptom of the disease and of the mind shutting down? Or is it something else entirely? Why is it so common?

I saw this happen for myself. My mom asked me who all those people standing behind me were. There wasn't anyone else in the room. She proceeded to have a conversation with them. She greeted them warmly, like old friends or missed loved ones, and had a good discussion with them about something. She spoke clearly, and was clearly responding to somebody.

She had been incoherent for a good day, at this point. She couldn't converse with us before this, and didn't converse with us afterwards.

Hospice told us the angels were there. They give comfort to the dying, and let them know that it's OK to let go. Now, Hospice folks know something about this sort of thing. They are people who take care of the dying. This is their profession. They deal with this almost every day. They say that it happens almost 100% of the time.

What do we make of this? I don't have any answers.

I do know that my Mom passed away at 10:30pm. On the dot. That's when she took her last breath. I know that because I was standing there, holding her hand.

Almost 200 miles away, my niece's husband had the strong feeling that somebody had just entered their home. Being a police officer, he was a bit alarmed. He armed himself, and went to investigate quietly. Nobody there. My niece awoke, and started crying. She said she couldn't say why, exacatly. She says she looked at the clock when she awoke. It was exactly 10:30. Her husband confirmed this.

We didn't report Mom's passing to my niece and her husband until the next morning, around 8:00a.m.

One can take away from that what one will.

I do know that I stood outside that night, quite late. The suburban carrying Mom had long since left the house. Everyone had gone home that needed to go, and everyone else in the house stayed asleep. The night was still, and quiet. The stars were out, and the moon hung low in the nortwest sky. I could hear a couple of young coyotes yelping somewhere on the property. That far out, you don't have any light pollution from the cities. You can't hear any traffic, unless a lone car moves down the dirt road over 1/4 of a mile away. You're as isolated as one can possibly be in the modern era. Oddly, I didn't feel alone.

A Eulogy

2008-08-05T18:13:00.002-06:00

Editor's Note:

I went back and fixed this to close to what was actually said. I left some parts in it here that I skipped in the eulogy, simply because everyone there could read her particulars, and the blogosphere doesn't have that luxury. Not that anyone actually cares, but this is my little memorial to her.

"It is truly only at a time like this where we realize how little time we really have on this Earth. Mom would want me to tell all of us here today that we should not let a day go by that we do not tell those whom we love how important they are to us. Our time is too short, and it would have been even if Mom had lived another 50 years.

"It is impossible to encapsulate someone’s life into a short eulogy. This will not even begin to give the audience an idea of her likes and dislikes, her complicated nature, or; most especially, the effect she had on the lives of everyone here today. Carolyn Cooper Miller was born on June 19th, 1937, to Russell and Myrtie Cooper. She is predeceased by her mother and father, as well as her brother James Russell Cooper, and her great-grandchildren Bella and Abbey Lester. She is survived by her husband, Keith Allen Miller, and her sister Jane McDaniel. She is further survived by her daughters Christi Leonhardt and her husband Kenneth, Kelly Lester and her husband Ricky, and her son Kyle Allen Miller and his wife Myrlah. She is also survived by her grandchildren Derrick Russell Lester and his wife Janelle, Kenna Leonhardt, Katie Garcia and her husband Gabe, Jacey Lester, Loni Lester, and Connor Allen Miller. Last but not least, she is survived by her great-grandchild Gabriel Draiden Garcia.

"Mom passed away at home, in the time and place of her own choosing, surrounded by her husband and children. This is exactly the way she chose to live her life.

"This does nothing to tell the audience what sort of person she was. We could and will tell you about her railing against the Catholic Church, Bill Clinton and the Democratic Party. We could tell you about walking into the house and hearing her giving Congress a good tongue-lashing as she watched them on C-Span, Fox News, or CNN. You can take it from all of us that her tongue was sharp and acidic. Could she have but actually gotten a few of those politicians in her presence, that sharp tongue could have taken care of a lot of our country’s current problems before they ever got started. I promise that none of us will ever flip on a news channel without a smile. And we’re going to miss it. Our wife, our mother, our grandmother, our great-grandmother, our friend, is gone from us. We will not have the benefit of her guidance, her wisdom, her arms around us, and most especially, her unconditional love. We’re going to miss that.

"I know that is pure selfishness on our part. We cannot for a moment have wished the suffering that Mom went through on her, even for moment. As much as we still want her and need her, we know that she is free of the awful struggle and pain that she was in the last year of her life. And I cannot for a minute begrudge her the joy she must have felt at begin reunited with Mimi and Granddaddy, Mildred, Jimmy, Hermann, and Marcus.

"I hope that everyone here has someone in their life that is 100% in their corner the way Mom was for all of us. There was no more staunch advocate, more fierce defender, or at times, harshest critic.

"There’s no question in my mind that my mother would have gladly laid her life down for her husband, children or grandchildren, without question or hesitation. That is unconditional love. Through a mother or a wife’s sacrifice and love, we get perhaps a small glimpse of the love that God has for all of us.

"Anyone who knew her knew how much Mom’s family meant to her. If we can get an idea of what her life stood for in just a few words, and if we can take something away from her life, it would be through an understanding of the importance to her of her family and of God. My mother’s life stood for the importance of family, and of a relationship with God. It was what she devoted herself to, and put all of her resources and efforts into. And all of us here today are her legacy.

"We see in our society today the effects of broken families, and the consequences of removing God from our day-to-day lives. We have prisons full of people without a supporting family, and without a relationship to God. Mom regarded family as the direct expression of God’s will on Earth. Family is the unifying force.

"Mom taught us that a family sticks together, no matter how hard it was, no matter how unhappy we might be with each other, A family sticks together, through whatever evils the world throws at them. They stick together emotionally, financially, spiritually, and physically. No matter what, those of us in this family knew, and continue to know, that we can always count on the support of our family. This gives us the strength to venture out and try to make our way in the world. We knew the consequences of failure could never be that terrible, because we always had a home to come back to.

"With the unconditional love comes unconditional forgiveness. Mom taught to us the value of forgiveness, because truly no family can be whole without it. There are times where I’ve been mad enough at my family to disown them. In the heat of the moment, we can end up doing just that. But is the heat of the moment enough to cost the entire relationship? Absolutely not. The Bible teaches us not to let the sun set on our anger, and this is but one reason why. Anything that poisons or destroys a family’s relationship flies in the face of what God wants for us. She’d want me to tell those of you out there to let go of those resentments and anger, before it is too late.

"Mom believed that most of our problems in the world today emerged from a de-emphasis of family and God in a person’s life. She believed it was a mistake to allow anything else to occupy the spaces that God and family should occupy. I think the family relationship is truly what God meant for us to be. I know that every person that I dated, every friend that came over for Sunday dinner, loved what we had as a family. Few of them had it, and all of them wanted what we have as a family. That is proof enough for me this family is the way God meant for families to be. Mom would also want me to tell all of you that if you’re not having a weekly dinner with those who mean the most in this world to you, you’re missing out. Start. You’ll be extremely thankful that you did.

"Do not think for a moment that family means only a blood relationship. It also includes those friends who are family as well. You're all here today because you're a part of Mom's family as well. Thank you."

This is a little closer to what I actually ended up saying, I think. It's still kind of a blur. To say that was the toughest public speaking gig I've ever had is quite an understatement.

Godspeed, mom.

Nobody's Perfect All Of The Time (We Are What We Are)

2008-06-24T09:37:00.002-06:00

That's the title of a Mike and the Mechanics song, off their second album. For you 80's music fans, it's the same album that has THE LIVING YEARS on it, which was their big hit off that album. It might have been their last hit, now that I think about it. That was the lead single, but it didn't make much of a splash. The next single was THE LIVING YEARS, which I'll post those lyrics on here sometime, now that I think about them. A great song.

I’d had some thoughts last week about allowing outside things to define us. It’s pretty easy to allow other people to slap their perceptions on us. It’s a bit tough to avoid taking on the shapes that others want us to wear.

An outsider’s attempt to define us and make us fit that description can be very, very bad. For instance; if you have two people in a relationship, and the other is insecure about something (or a lot of somethings), the insecure one is likely to try and define their partner in terms that make the insecure partner feel better about themselves. In other words, they mercilessly attack the other, running them down, calling them stupid, telling them they’re no good at their job, they’re a lousy father, etc. This is just an example with no basis in reality, of course.

As noted, it’s easy to allow this to define us. It’s especially easy to become vulnerable when the target loves the other person, and craves their respect, their admiration, and their attention. How damaging is it when the one person in the world that one wants love and admiration from suddenly starts cutting them down? It’s absolutely devastating coming from parents or spouses.

When your mother tells you that you’re a lousy son, you start to believe it. When your wife tells you that you’re no good at the career that you’ve chosen or a lousy father, it hits home. You believe it. These people are the closest people in the world to you. You’d not do ANYTHING to deliberately hurt them, so they have to be doing what they’re doing out of the same motivation, right? They’d not try to run you down unless it were true, right?

Wrong. People can be absolutely evil. Even those who should be the closest to you. I guess that's why it hurts so much. You can't be hurt unless your first love. You can't be betrayed unless you first trust.

The real problem here is relying on flawed, damaged, and sinful people. There’s an old maxim that people will always let you down, in some form or fashion, and that’s absolutely true. Whether your friend runs habitually late, fails to return a borrowed tool, etc. People are going to let you down in some form or fashion. It’s just the way things are.

So to allow a flawed human being to define us is pretty darn foolish. When their motivation is simply to run you down to make themselves feel better, it’s actually quite stupid to allow them to get away with their cruelty. It only works if we believe it.

The only way to avoid it, I firmly believe, is to have an internal definition of who and what we are. Only by knowing ourselves are we strong enough to resist what others want to define us as.

The thing I came to realize the other night is that God doesn’t make trash. He’s got some sort of use for every one of us, and has given each of us gifts and talents specific to us, and specific for his purpose. So I’m not Mr. Fix-it around the house. I’ve got a few other things going for me. So I’m absent-minded in some areas. Find me somebody who isn’t. These things don’t make me a bad father, a bad human being, or anything like that. They’re just me. They’re who I am. I probably won’t be able to teach my son to build a kitchen table. I will be able to tell him about the invasion of Normandy in 1944. I’ll be able to tell him stories about General Patton, Miyamoto Mushsashi, or Alexander the Great. I’ll be able to walk him a bit through the history of the Middle East. I’ll be able to show him how to field-strip a 1911 blindfolded. I’ll be able to help him with his homework.

All this follows God’s purpose. I am as I was meant to be.

That’s not to say I don’t have a whole host of problems that need to be fixed. I’ve got things that need working on. But putting me down about them isn’t going to help. What I’ve got to do is allow God to fix those areas that he wants fixed, and use the things that don’t need fixed to his purpose. And I’ve got to allow the same thing to happen for others. They are as God meant them to be, and that’s perfectly ok. I can’t condemn them for it, I can’t fix them because they aren’t really broken. They fit into the grand scheme of things just as I do.

So the thing is, we can’t allow failed, flawed humans to define us. We have to allow God to define us. As noted, he’s perfect. He doesn’t make mistakes. So if we are as we are, it’s purposeful. I’m taking a bit of joy in that realization. It’s boosting my confidence a bit. I KNOW that I’ve got things to offer this world, to a spouse, to my family, my career, and most importantly, to my son. They're good things, too. As was intended.

An Exemplar

2008-06-20T09:49:00.003-06:00

This was given to me on Father's Day. The author is unknown, but it got to me like you wouldn't believe. It was printed on a silk handkerchief, with my little boy's footprints on them.

"Walk a little slower, Daddy,
Said a little child so small
I'm following in your footsteps,
and I don't want to fall.

"Sometimes they're very fast,
Sometimes they're hard to see
So walk a little slower Daddy,
For you are leading me.

"Someday when I'm all grown up,
You're what I want to be,
Then I will have a little child
Who'll want to follow me.

"And I would want to lead just right,
And know that I was true,
So walk a little slower, Daddy,
For I want to follow you."

How could somebody bring a child into this world, and not want to be a better person?

I caught my son imitating me the other day. I was sitting with my chin in my hand, ruminating on something. I look over to see my little boy studying me intently. He was sitting just like I was, with his chin in his hands. When he saw me, he just grinned from ear to ear.

Wow.

For him, I want to be a better person. I want him to be proud of me. I want him to keep imitating me, to find things about me that are worth imitating. I want to set an example that he can then pass on.

What an incredible responsibility we take on when we bring a child into this world. How this is taken so lightly by so many of us out there is beyond me. People shoot out kids like they're getting candy out of a vending machine. The kids are seen as an afterthought, kind of like the wrapper off the candy.

We had a guy escape from one of the courtrooms the other day. His girlfriend was having a baby on the same day that he was about to be sentenced to 20 years for aggravated robbery. He breaks out, then spends the next few days in a hotel with his girlfriend. Her mom brought them food during this ordeal.

Great. They get caught, of course. Now Dad's going away for a minimum of ten years before he's eligible for parole. He'll have an escape charge on top of that, which will not begin to run until his time is discharged for the first offense. Mom is going to be lit up for harboring a fugitive, as is grandmother.

And a baby born three months premature now has no father, and might lose its mother and grandmother as well. Bodes well for its future, doesn't it?

Not to mention that this all sounds like a bad movie of the week off the LIFETIME or OXYGEN channels (Or the Emasculation Network, as I like to refer to them).

I guess if you can't be a shining example to others, be a grim warning.

Tear Down the Walls

2008-06-19T16:45:00.002-06:00

Sometimes the walls have to be torn down, so that something new and better can be built back up again. It’s not an easy process. It’s certainly painful. But pain, I think, should be a sign of weakness leaving the body. I was listening to the story of Marcus Luttrell, a Navy SEAL that survived some pretty horrible stuff over in Afghanistan. After hearing about his training, I can see why he survived. There wasn’t much that the Taliban could throw at him that was any worse than what his training was. Read LONE SURVIVOR, and tell me if these guys aren’t about the toughest human beings on the face of the Earth.

Anyway, I realized that I can either let this pain and agony bear me under, or I can tough through it. It can break me, or I can come out the other side better than what I was going in. That’s what I want to happen. I’m not going to be broken.

When the core of what you are has been attacked, you find yourself awash in a sea of doubt, and that’s where the Enemy’s got you right where he wants you. You’re weak, you’re struggling, and you feel like you’re all alone.

Questions that I’ve found find myself asking are: am I really good at what I do? Have I redeeming qualities and values? Can I hold a decent conversation with another human being without coming off as a complete idiot or condescending jerk? Am I actually a likeable human being? Am I a good father? Am I really that complete a failure at my life?

These are basic things, but so very important. How much of our identity is wrapped up in what we do? Of how others perceive us? We’re often defined by it. I’m a lawyer. That’s a good chunk of identity, or at least it used to be. If I’m not good at that, then am I a failure?

The problem is allowing others to define us. Not everybody’s going to like me. Tough. Not my problem anymore. Don’t like the way I talk? Sorry. Don’t like the way I do things? Your problem, not mine.

God created me the way I am, and he darn sure has a use for me. Just as I am, thank you very much. I can simply do what I can, and the rest is not in my power.

I’ll let God worry about it. A minute spent on worrying is a minute that changed nothing, and I’ll never get back. I WILL survive this, and there’s better things on the horizon. I don’t think God wants anybody to be miserable. I’ll just simply lay it at his feet, and he’ll sort it out as he sees fit.

I’m just thankful to be here, to be a father to a wonderful little boy, thankful to have the mind that I do, the heart that I do, and the personality that I do. I’ll let God do with that what he wills.

So this is painful, but it’s training for something better. It’s not for me to decide how this whole thing is going to come out. It is up to me to be open to God’s plan, and to go with it. I should be his to command.

Couldn't Have Said It Better.....

2008-06-12T16:01:00.003-06:00

I blatantly stole this from Dr. Laura. The book the guy mentions is absolutely great, if you haven't read it. I think every bride should read it, and be prepared to live by it. Every prosepctive husband should read it, and seriously ask themeselves whether or not they believe their bride will live by it. For your reading pleasure:

"Two months ago, I left my wife and children and moved into a condo about a mile from our home. This morning, I was moved to write the following, just to help me vent my frustration over the treatment from my wife that led to this painful and damaging decision, called “For Years:”

For years, you behaved as if it didn’t matter whether I came or went, so I went.

For years, you were unsatisfied with the income I brought in, even though it was way more than enough to allow you to stay home with the children. Now you have less, and you get to go to work.

For years, you behaved as if my touch meant nothing to you. Now, it’s gone.

For years, you never complimented me on the household repairs I made, keeping up the lawn and garden, cleaning and organizing the garage and the hundreds of things I did to keep our home balanced and running. Now, you can do them.

For years, you complained I didn’t do enough housework. Now it’s all yours.

For years, you chose not to attend community and social events that were important to me. Now they’re not an option.

For years, you expected me to read your mind when you were hurt or upset. Never could, never will.

For years, you punished me with your silence. Now you have plenty.

For years, you would not share information about our kids’ schedules, doctor’s appointments and so on. Now some attorneys will help you polish your communication skills.

For years, I chose to love you, protect you, provide for you, confide in you, and have fun with you. Now, I don’t.

For years, you behaved as a long-suffering martyr. Now you can be one.

For years, I chose to raise your son as my own. Now, he’s hurting.

For years, you treated me as the lesser parent. Now I am.

For years, our precious young daughter has watched this debacle. What do you think she’s learned?

For years….

P.S. I bought and read “The Proper Care and Feeding of Marriage” months ago, and asked my wife to read it with me. She laughed.”

(Signed)

Still My Kids’ Dad
in Southern California"

A Small Ray of Sunshine.....

2008-06-05T16:09:00.000-06:00

So I got somewhat of a boost today. It’s small, it’s petty, but I take what I can get these days as far as getting the ego stoked a bit.

I was dealing with some witnesses for a hearing. One case gets sent on its way to the proper authorities at a different office.

Later, the receptionist tells me something to the effect of:

“Hey. They called from the other office. There’s a witness over there that said they talked to somebody over here, but couldn’t remember the name of the guy they dealt with. It had to be you.”

It was. I was trying to figure out how they ID’d me, though.

Me: “Oh yeah. How’d you know it was me?”

Receptionist: “They said it was a real good looking guy in his mid-20's. Nobody else around here fits that description.”

Flattery will get you everywhere.

The Criminal Mind Revisited

2008-06-04T16:44:00.001-06:00

Some time ago, I wondered about the criminal mind. Hellinahandbasket postulated that criminals live strictly in the moment, with no thought as to the ramifications of their actions.

I’d have to say that I agree with that theory, but I have a new one. Whether my new theory below is part of it, or something else entirely, I’ll leave it up to the reader to sort out for themselves.

Now that I’m in the business of prosecuting, I’ve observed the following: 98% of the crimes we prosecute are drug-related in some form or fashion. That might actually be on the low side, now that I think about it.

You’ve got your criminals that possess drugs. They have some sort of drugs for their own use, or to sell it. Then you have the peripheral crimes and criminals. They kill, rob, burgle, and steal to fund their drug habits. They forge checks to buy drugs, and false ID’s to verify their forged checks. Their impulse control and inhibitions are nil, so they lose their tempers and kill somebody over a soft drink, a beer, a perceived slight, or because they think somebody’s coming after their drugs or territory.

Legalization is a fallacy. An addict’s going to do whatever they can for the next fix. Making the stuff available to them like beer is going to do nothing but force them to steal, kill, rob, burgle, etc. They still have to afford it. The mind-melting properties of this stuff make these people unable to function in society, period. You’d simply create another legal industry that would in no way, shape, or form cut down on all the peripheral crimes that go along with it.

Think about it. Legal drinking hasn’t cut down on DWI’s any.

One Day....

2008-06-04T16:08:00.001-06:00

One day, food will start tasting better again.

One day, I’ll not have a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, knowing that I’m going to have to go home at the end of the day to a person who doesn’t seem to really like me, nor respect me.

One day, I’ll be able to sleep a night through, without waking up with my heart racing, my mind going over the million worst-case scenarios that leap out of the shadows of my subconscious when I try and rest.

One day, I’ll quit thinking about all the missed opportunities, the years lost, and the mistakes I’ve made.

One day I’ll not shut my office door to keep my coworkers from seeing my red eyes.

One day I’ll lose the feeling that I’m a dismal failure at my career and family life.

Sometimes hope is all we’ve got.

My Life Is On Fire

2008-06-03T16:42:00.001-06:00

They say the hottest fires forge the best steel. But fire also pretty much devours anything that it touches that isn't steel.

I am not a man of steel.

I haven't posted anything in quite awhile. There's reasons for that, mostly because I no longer have internet at home, and I have to post after-hours at work. That's the main thing. Also, it appears the muse has left me. I haven't been able to produce anything that even closely resembles creative thought in about 9 months, at last count. It's just not in me.

The reason, I suppose, is a good bit of depression. I think I can safely say that I'm at the lowest point that I've been in my life. Even back when I was dealing with an alcoholic parent, life always had the promise of something more, something better. It just doesn't seem thataway these days. Life seems pretty bleak.

To being with, my mom's dying. She's in the last stages of lung cancer. Simply put: this sucks. Those of you out there that have lost a parent know what I'm dealing with. Those that haven't, treasure your time with them. You have no idea how precious that time really is.

So that's bad.

To make matters worse, I'm pretty sure that I have a troubled marriage. I'm not going into a whole lot of detail. This is cathartic, but geez, I don't want everybody to know all my business.

Having done a whole lot of family law, I can understand some divorces. Where a spouse is cheating, beating the other one, etc. I get that. No problems. But where one spouse decides they just don't like you anymore, and treat you like total crap, that I don't get. I don't understand where it went wrong. I don't understand what I did wrong, other than to fall in love with somebody. I guess you can't make somebody love you, no matter what you think or feel.

I know I'm not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination. But I know where I'm lacking, and I'm working to make up those deficiencies. But it doesn't seem to be enough. In other words, this is out of my hands, and I don't like that one tiny bit. I'm going to keep working on being a better person.

If nothing else, I've gotten the most wonderful little baby out of the deal that you could possibly imagine. I'd like to have a passel more of them, some day. Doesn't look like that's going to happen, either.

Anyway, that's really bad.

Then I get to thinking about how possibly God's pretty much washed his hands of me. There's nothing I can do about all of this, so I give it to God. The problem is, he doesn't seem to be really doing much with the problems, either. My studies and faith would indicate otherwise, but it's hard to feel loved by God when your entire world is collapsing around your ears. If he loves me, this is a darn funny way of showing it.

I can see where people lose their faith. I'd be lying if I said that mine hasn't been weakened a bit. It seems like all the prayers are unanswered. That all the hopes and dreams are being crushed. Do the sins of the father have to visit the son?

So that's really, really bad. I don't doubt that God's there. I can even convince myself that he's going to get me through this mess, sometimes. But I think he's letting this happen for some reason, and that I can't understand.

Fire is the great destroyer. But it also burns away imperfections. Fields blossom after being scorched.

I guess the catch is to see whether or not I'm destroyed, or renewed by the fire. Maybe something better is going to arise from these ashes, like a phoenix. Surviving the inferno is going to be the trick.

Waiting In the Weeds

2007-11-21T07:43:00.000-06:00

I’m glad we have poets and such. There are times they say it better than anyone else.

“It’s comin’ on the end of August
Another summer’s promise almost gone
And though I heard a wise man say that every dog will have his day
He never mentioned that these dog days get so long

I don’t know when I realized the dream was over
There was no particular hour, no given day
You know, it didn’t go down in flame
There was no final scene, no frozen frame
I just watched it slowly fade away

And I’ve been waiting in the weeds-waiting for my time to come around again
Hope is floating on the breeze, carrying my soul high up above the ground
I’ve been keeping to myself
Knowing that the seasons are slowly changing you
And though you’re with somebody else-he’ll never love you like I do

I’ve been biding time with crows and sparrows
While peacocks prance and strut upon the stage
If finding love is just a dance-proximity and chance
You will excuse me if I skip the masquerade

And I’ve been waiting in the weeds-waiting for the dust to settle down
Along the back roads running through the fields lying on the outskirts of this lonesome town
And I imagine sunlight in your hair, you’re at the county fair
You’re holding hands and laughing
And now the ferris wheel has stopped-your’e swinging on the top, suspended there with him
And he’s the darling of the chic-the flavor of the week is melting down your pretty summer dress
Baby what a mess you’re making

I’ve been stumbling through some dark places, but I’m following the plough
I know I’ve fallen out of your good graces, but it’s all right now

And I’ve been waiting in the weeds-waiting for the summer rain to fall
Upon the wilds birds scattering the seeds-answering the calling of the tide’s eternal tune
The phases of the moon, the chambers of the heart, the egg and dart
A small gray spider spinning in the dark, in spite of all the times the web is torn apart.”
–Don Henley, Steuart Smith, From the Eagles' LONG ROAD OUT OF EDEN

Yeah. It’s like that.

The Problem Of Pain

2007-08-26T21:56:00.000-06:00

There's one thing that I've noticed about being a father that is simply horrible. It's that I have to watch my child suffer pain. I can think of no worse feeling that I have ever experienced. I hope I never experience anything worse. I've written here before that I would gladly suffer anything to keep my son from pain.

Some of that pain has to happen to him. When we take him for shots, I know intellectually that he is suffering a small amount of pain to avoid greater pain later on down the road. What's a shot compared to the horror of polio? I know this in my own mind, but I can't help but want to strangle the person who is giving him shots. How dare they harm my child?

I can see it in his eyes. He has no understanding of why this is happening to him. All he knows is that he's in pain, it's horrible, and he wants it to stop. The look in his eyes is heartbreaking, because he blames us for causing this pain. We, his parents, who are supposed to protect him at all costs. And we've let him down. He doesn't know that it's for his own good. He doesn't know that it's going to make him better and stronger down the road. All he knows is that it hurts, and we are responsible for it.

It's the same when he bonks his little head, or any of the other myriad disasters that befall little ones. They take their first steps, and they fall. They accidentally grab something hot, and they get burned. Each and every little agony that happens makes them a bit stronger. They learn from it. I realize now as a parent I can't keep him from suffering the little things that life is going to hit him with. I also realize it's a bad idea to shield him from the everyday hurts of life. He can't become a strong person without pain. He can't learn to function in this world without pain. This is how we learn.

Basically, it sucks.

In a conversation with some friends the other day, the age-old question arose once again: if God loves us so much, why do we have to suffer? I can see that question in my son's eyes each time he's hurt. Why me? Why do I have to suffer this?

That's a very valid question, that actually puts the entire existence of God into some doubt. I'd be lying if I said it didn't cross my mind from time to time. Why in world do we suffer, if there's a God up there that can prevent it all from happening to us, if he cared to? Why doesn't he stop this? The hurt human cries out to God in these moments. Why did I have to suffer through the death of a parent, the car crash that paralyzed me, the burning down of my house, losing my job, the war that destroyed my village, the death of my spouse, the cancer, etc. The list goes on and on. Every single one of us has asked that question. And more than a few of us have decided that there can be no God, since if he existed he would not allow his loved ones to suffer so much. After all, what sort of loving Father could allow any harm at all to befall his children? The answer: one that loves them so much that he understands they have to make some pretty horrible mistakes in order to figure things out.

I think God has, in some ways, the same perspective that I have on the pain that my child has to go through. He knows why we're suffering this stuff. We have no idea. Is it possible that some of the evil that befalls us in this world is because we have a lesson to learn? That he's trying to put us where he wants us, in the frame of mind that he wants us in? Is whatever evil we're suffering the spiritual equivalent of a hot pan? We shouldn't have touched it in the first place. But we're damn sure not going to touch it again on purpose, are we?? Does he let us fall, only to learn some sort of lesson from it?

This is certainly a possibility. We can't even come close to fathoming the mind of a being that is mighty enough to create the universe. Our arrogance and pride allow us to think that we can get into his motivations, and get inside his head. We put things in our own framework, thinking that our experience and knowledge are the pinnacle of independent and rational thought in the universe.

If a being is capable of organizing molecules into something as complex as a human being, and capable of organizing a planet to support the life of a human, I know I'm not on the same level of thought. That's pretty humbling. I can't understand at this point anything that he's letting me suffer, any more than my son understands at this point why he's getting a painful shot. One day, he will. But he hasn't matured enough in his understanding of the world to figure that one out yet.

I would have never reached this conclusion without being a parent. Only after reaching this level am I able to even postulate this sort of hypothesis.

That's simply my view on the situation. It's a partial explanation. Nor do I think it's the entire explanation. However, it does explain quite a bit of the suffering that we go through. C.S. Lewis offers more (and much better written, I might add) explanations in his book, THE PROBLEM OF PAIN.

"I'm Moving Through Some Changes..."

2007-08-26T21:52:00.000-06:00

Anybody recognize that song??

There haven't been many posts lately, and for that I apologize. However, when life starts to hit you with weird transitions, it makes it somewhat hard to write. That's sad, because these are the times where I really need to write the most, just to unload and make sense of all the stuff running thorugh my head.

The posts will dry up even further, I'm afraid. At least for awhile. Changes are taking place, and we'll have to see where it all goes from here.

So check back from time to time, I'll post as I can, when I can. Otherwise, it's been a pleasure.

A Legacy

2007-07-26T22:18:00.001-06:00

Since the baby has come into our little world, the oddest things suddenly mean the world to me.

The kid's smile can break your heart. Watching him explore the world is simply the greatest thing I could ever imagine. Seeing him learn how to grab things, move around on his own, enjoy food, etc. It's all so brand-new to him, and all so fascinating. Little things like a blanket are hours of fun to him. At this point, he has no idea that anything bad is out there in the world. I love that, even though I hate the fact that one day he'll learn what a horrible world this can be. I'd give anything to shield him from the pain that's out there, even though I know that would almost be as bad as neglecting him.

Leaving something for him has become important for me. I want so badly to have left him something that he can point to (hopefully with pride) and say, "that's my daddy's, and he gave it to me."

I have no idea why this is so important to me, but it is. I guess I'm lucky that I have some things that I have used and enjoyed, and I hope that he will as well. I hope that some part of me will live on in his memories after I've gone.

I have my books, of course. If they weather the years, I hope that he gets some enjoyment from them.

I have my guitars. One of which was given to me by my parents, 20 years ago now. I hope that even if he doesn't play it, he can at least look at it and think fondly of me. Maybe he can pass them to his son, one day, if he doesn't get any use from them.

I have my guns, as well as a few in the safe that were given to me by my father. They mean a lot to me, just because of where they came from. A lot of them won't ever be shot. They serve no use at the moment, but I'd never get rid of them. I hope that my son will be able to appreciate them, and think about me every time that he handles one. He'll have some link to his family's past, and I think that's an important thing.

It all pales in importance in comparison to what I feel I need to teach him. That will be the real legacy, even beyond his genetic inheritance. I want him to be a man of God, of compassion, of strength, of character, and honor. I want to be able to carry him past the mistakes I've made. I can only hope and pray that he's a better man than I am, and all I can do is try and sew those seeds within him.

The End....

2007-07-26T22:00:00.000-06:00

....of Harry Potter, that is.

I just finished HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS. All I can say is: wow.

I'll give you no spoilers. I hate people who give away book or movie endings, so I'm not going to be that guy.

I picked up this series several years ago, and I was simply amazed. Ms. Rowling created one of the greatest characters in literary history. Believe the hype; she wouldn't have gotten filthy rich unless she created something worthwhile.

The interesting thing about this series was how it got progressively better. Each book was better than the last. This character was one that the reader felt every inch of pain he felt. We felt his triumphs, and his many sorrows. We saw his petty fits of jealousy, and recognized our own in there. We saw him be a dumb kid, and realized that he was just like we were. This guy was as human as a fantasy wizard could possibly be.

The series was a hero's quest. All quests have to end eventually. All the mysteries had to be solved, all the loose ends had to tie up.

The problem again is how to resolve such a grand story arc. How does one bring something like that to a close without disappointing a legion of fans?

Well, she did it. Have no fear. The talent Ms. Rowling has is almost beyond belief. I almost get angry reading her stuff sometimes, because it's almost too good. NOBODY deserves to be able to write that well, to be able to drag somebody into a fictional work the way she did.

The series ended with a bang. And it ended exactly as it needed to. Simply amazing. Loyalty, love, sadness, life, death, pain, hope, and eternity; it's all there.

You can certainly do yourself a favor if you haven't read these books. They're all out there now. You don't have to wait years between the sequels like the rest of us shmucks. Ignore the movies and just read the books. See the movies much later, after you've had your own vision of what Harry Potter's world is like.

I really hate to see it all end. I'll never be graced with another Harry Potter adventure, and the world is a poorer place because of it. It's a bittersweet feeling I have at the moment.

The Police

2007-07-04T21:12:00.000-06:00

Here's a quick concert review for you. Last week, I was fortunate enough to see one of my musical inspirations in concert. Yes, I saw the Police.

I'm somewhat of an anachronism. My favorite bands pretty much broke up before 1986. Given the fact that two of my favorite bands pretty much hated each other, I'd pretty much written off ever seeing the Eagles or the Police. Age and the almighty dollar mellowed out the Eagles enough they reformed, and I have been lucky enough to see them a few times since 1994's reunion: HELL FREEZES OVER.

I've written before about "Every Breath You Take" being the entire reason for me picking up a guitar. That's one of the greatest guitar licks of all time. "Message in a Bottle" is yet another inspirational lick of pure genius. Alas, I never imagined I'd get the chance to see the band that laid those tracks down.

Well, I guess I can die happy now. Last Wednesday's show was worth every bit of the three hour drive to see them, and the three hour drive back starting at 4:15a.m. to make it to docket call in court the next morning. Painful to be sure. I'm not as able to do that sort of thing as I was in my sleep-deprived youth. Nonetheless: wow. What a show.

Sting still has amazing pipes. He can still hit the screaming high notes, combined with one of the smoothest voices in his natural range that I've ever heard. What really gets me is the guy's 54 years old at this point, and he could easily pass as 20 years younger. He's still athletic as all get out. And he sang his guts out for two solid hours, with almost no break.

Andy Summers is darn near pushing 70. Yet his guitar work has done nothing but improved over the years. I've always felt he was a bit underrated as a guitarist, and that Sting maybe never quite let him play as he is capable of playing. He did some amazing stuff with the Police, but I always had the feeling there was even better stuff he had under his hat. He was one of the first players I ever heard who really used guitar effects in new and different ways.

Stewart Copeland is one of the greatest rock drummers ever. I'd be hard pressed to decide whether he or Neil Peart is the greatest, and I think convincing arguments can be made for both. Stewart may actually get the nod, simply because there's not many drummers out there who can actually claim to have composed an opera. That's worth something.

As a unit, I think they were better than they had any right to be. Almost 30 years of separation did nothing but mature them. They played their songs in new and different arrangements that were a joy to listen to. They were tight, no doubt about it. There were no backup singers, and no synthesizers. Just three guys playing their butts off. Andy covered all the stuff they used to play on keyboards on guitar, and it was brilliant.

The press has had a field day wondering how long they could hold it together. If what we saw on stage that night was genuine, they are going to be at it quite awhile longer. They looked like they were having a blast up there, and that's not easy to fake. I looked back at the Synchronicity video, and they really looked like they were struggling in comparison.

The show was only slightly marred by getting mauled by a drunk chick who sloshed onto our row. There's one in every crowd, I guess. Somebody had fun with her that night, if she managed to stay conscious. Fortunately, she sloshed off somewhere else relatively quickly. I still don't get how people find that sort of thing enjoyable.

I never thought I'd get to see the Police, and I'm pretty blessed to have the opportunity. I've seen some really good concerts in my time, being pretty much a live music junkie. This show topped them all. If you have the chance, I'd say this show is worth your while.

Laying It All On the Line

2007-07-04T20:39:00.000-06:00

So what do you have that you would willingly die for?

I don't think I ever grasped how significant this postulation is. Quite simply: what is it that you would sacrifice it all for?

I think I understand this more now since the birth of my son. When I see him, so innocent and perfect, I know that I would die to protect him. I'd willingly sacrifice my entire existence for him. I'd jump in front of a bus, attack a grizzly bear, whatever. No questions, no hesitation, no remorse. Done.

If I think about harm coming to him, I see red. My heart pounds, and I can hardly stand it. My emotions get the best of me, and it brings a tear to my eye if I think about him suffering any sort of pain.

And it suddenly occurred to me: I would do anything in the world to keep him safe. I would gladly trade places to keep him from suffering any pain. If it was his life or mine, I'd give mine in an instant. It's not something that would require a moment's thought. It's a done deal.

Now I think about soldiers out there, willingly laying down their lives for their country, and our freedom and security. The cynical part of me wonders whether they know what they were getting in to. They willingly sign on for a job that will; in all likelihood, result in their death. Did they really grasp the concept of what it is they are risking, the cynical part of my brain asks.

I think they do. The perception of a hard, cruel killer, who blasts away with no remorse is perhaps the most unfair characterization of the military that the liberal media has ever painted. Sure, they have to kill. But they are just as much targets as shooters. That makes them a willing sacrifice for something they believe in. Something they feel called to do. Indeed, I think the essence of a solider is love.

Love is what calls them to duty, to risk everything for what it is they believe in. If my experience is any indication, there is nothing else in the world that would drive a man to lay down his life. In the end, it's all about love.

Now I picture Christ. What in the world could motivate a person to have the very flesh flayed from his back, to have a crown of thorns stuck into his head, to have nails driven through his bones, pinning him to a cross? We see in the Bible that he knew it was coming. He knew what waited for him. With all the power of Creation at his fingertips, he could have stopped it. He didn't have to go through with it. He could have walked away, and I don't think history could have judged him harshly for it. Our human experience could not fathom willingly taking on that sort of physical agony.

But there was a debt that had to be paid. The sin of humankind had to be washed away. The scales had to be balanced. Humanity couldn't carry that cross. So God took it upon himself. He made a part of himself to come to Earth, and pay that price. Why?

Love. He so loved us that he'd lay it all on the line for us. Like a soldier dying for what he believed and loved in. Like a parent who would gladly die, gladly trade places with a suffering child than to see them in torment.

I understand now. I never did before.

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for another."

Dearth Of Posts

2007-07-04T20:38:00.000-06:00

Not intentional, but I just don't have much time anymore. A baby will do that to you, I guess. I'll post when I can, but it'll be sporadic at best. Such is life. I need to get back into the habit, simply to keep my writing chops honed, though.

Food at Kincaid's

2007-06-02T22:17:00.000-06:00

I grew up with a Dad who likes to try hole-in-the-wall restaurants in weird locations. I've been known to try a few myself, on occasion.

We found one that ought to win some awards. If nothing else, it deserves patronage because it's a small, family-owned business. I'm pretty well sick of chain eateries. I'm boycotting Chili's. Not because the food is bad or anything. It's just the same thing every time, in every city. Have you noticed the pictures are even the same in them? Pay close attention; I kid you not. I am just happy to see a privately owned eatery, and I'll spend my dollars there before I give it to some chain.

Out on Texas Highway 304, there's a little place called Kincaid's Steakhouse. It's in Rosanky, Texas, which is about halfway between Gonzales and Bastrop. It's literally a dot on the map, with nothing on the road but a gas station and a few small shops. From the road, Kincaid's looks like an old, small tin building. It is, in fact. It's the sort of place you'd pass up if you weren't getting a recommendation to go there, or you were somewhat adventurous.

On the inside, you'll find great Western decor, and one of the cleanest, neatest places to eat that I've ever come across. I don't think I observed a single crumb on the floor. The tables were immaculate. It was cheery and well-lit.

And the food, you ask? Cheap and delicious. There's not many places you can get a 12 ounce steak under $15 and not have it taste like tire rubber. Don't ask how I know what tire rubber tastes like. The steak was on a par with a four-star restaurant's beef. The owner informed me she drives every day to a small town butcher shop and picks up fresh steak. I'd say it was worth the trip.

The only downside to the place: no fountain Dr. Pepper. Oh well. Heaven will probably have a fountain Dr. Pepper machine, with Big Red as well when you want a change.

So if you're in the area, stop in. I don't think you'll be disappointed in the least.

Brilliant....

2007-06-01T13:30:00.001-06:00

Check out this from Michelle Malkin.

Pretty much sums up my feelings.

No fence, no security, no money, no Republican Party.

It just might have to be that way, before somebody gets the point.

The Reply to Representative Chet Edwards' Form Email

2007-05-28T23:19:00.001-06:00

Our local reps can't even get their form letters right. Here's my reply to their form reply..

Dear Representative Edwards:

Apparently one of Senator Kennedy's No Child Left Behind students has made it onto your staff, and is busy sending out form emails for you. This staffer is either completely rewriting the English language as we know it, or relying much too heavily on a spell-checking program.

There is an alternative explanation, of course. I do acknowledge the rules of grammatical construction have mutated somewhat in the years since I was taught them. This might be acceptable parlance in Washington these days.

Please note the highlighted grammatical error in your form email. You might have your staffers make a correction, unless this is how those in power are speaking these days. It is becoming apparent to me that the power elite do indeed speak a completely different language than those of us who are ruled by them. This may simply be another example.

Please accept this as a humble suggestion.

Yours in food faith (On the off-chance the Queen's English has been substantially altered),

Kyle*******
Constituent

Chet Edwards Reply wrote:
Dear Neighbor,
Thank you for contacting me about issues important to you. Understanding your views and priorities will help focus my work in Congress.
As your representative in the U.S. House, I am grateful to have the privilege of working for the families and citizens of the 17th District. By working together in food faith, I believe we can continue to ensure that America is strong, safe and free.
Thank you again for your thoughts and concerns. Please let me know if there is ever anything I can do for you.

Sincerely,
Chet Edwards
U.S. Representative
District 17

No commentary necessary, I think.....

Obedience

2007-05-11T22:30:00.000-06:00

I posted awhile back on my inability to figure out why a criminal would commit a crime, when the punishment is so in excess of the reward. The comments section postulates a pretty good theory on this one, and I'd direct you to Hell in a Handbasket for further ruminations on the subject matter. It's a pretty darn good explanation.

I started to wonder about the laws our society has passed to govern behavior, and what good it ultimately all did. We are told by those who purport to govern us these laws are there to protect us from crime. Apparently, a large population of Texans (somewhere over 150,000 at the time of this writing are in prison. This doesn't count the ones locked up in jails.) are incarcerated. Obviously, the laws didn't do squat to prevent these criminals from doing whatever it is they did to get locked up. Why do we seem to think that passing more laws will make us any safer?

I am also of the opinion that a good law has some basis in a moral truth. A law against murder is fine and good, because it reflects an almost universal truth: killing without justification is wrong.

Obedience to a law based on a moral truth is pretty easy. We want to. There is something in our very nature that feels compelled to obey this sort of law, even if there weren't a law on the books to prevent it.

It's harder to obey laws that have no basis in moral truth. Requiring a business owner to hire only union employees does not appear to have any such basis. That sort of law becomes oppressive, because it appears to infringe upon a basic freedom. What business is it of the government's whom one hires to work their business?

A just law has a built in enforcement tool. Call it what you will: conscience, karma, moksha, the Holy Spirit, etc. There's something that most souls will respond to in a just law. There's a need to obey it. It strikes a chord within the soul, and something inside us resonates with the knowledge that we shouldn't do a certain act, or we should do another act. Why? Because it's the right thing to do.

James points out that a dog knows when it's screwed up. It hangs its head before you even begin the butt-chewing. While a dog learns what is right and wrong from its master, we have our souls to guide us. Not that people can't be twisted to confuse what is right and wrong, or that they can't choose to ignore it altogether. Again, there's far too many people in prison to suggest otherwise.

There's a fundamental sense of good and evil in all of us. Otherwise, repentance would never be possible under any circumstances. I've talked to far too many people who reveled in doing some pretty awful things. The ones who have managed to turn away from those things did so because eventually they were able to appreciate that what they were doing was wrong. They were able to be taught, and I don't think a man-made law caused them to have that revelation.

Perhaps the law did manage to open the door to repentance to these people. The point got through there were consequences for disobedience. We all know it's illegal to murder somebody. But recognizing that it's wrong irrespective of what the law says is something else entirely. There was no turning away from the bad stuff until they appreciated on a fundamental level their actions were wrong.

So it seems that obedience to the law because we fear the repercussions of the law is one thing. Obedience to the law because it's RIGHT is something else entirely.

Monumental

2007-05-01T09:15:00.000-06:00

We'll have a Second Amendment case in front of the Supreme Court within a year.

Read this article.

I think it'll be 5-4, with Kennedy being the swing vote as usual. The liberals will say it's not a fundamental right, despite it being in the Bill of Rights, guaranteed to individuals. So this might actually make or break the right to own a gun in America. I've rather enjoyed the obscurity up to this point. Now, they might get to take them away.

From Townhall.com.

Criminal Physics

2007-04-30T22:02:00.000-06:00

Newton told us that every action has an equal, opposite reaction. If we do something, it has some sort of consequence hitting right back at us.

Take crime, for instance. Yes, it's possible to beat the living tar out of your neighbor. The consequence is jail, loss of freedom, loss of certain rights as citizens, etc.

The criminal element doesn't seem to care, much. I'm not sure if there's no actual conceptualization of the consequences, or if the consequences have been weighed carefully, and the risk is less than the reward.

That scares me. If life is so bad that going to jail is preferable to staying out of it, there's such misery in the world that I can't even wrap my mind around it. I just can't imagine life being so rotten that jail seems ok.

At the same time, I cannot imagine thinking that knocking over a convenience store is something that I can get away with. For starters, every major tv network has some sort of show that features stupid criminals getting caught on videotape. They have to get that footage somewhere, morons. There's also no loyalty in the criminal element. They'll sell each other out to keep from getting sent to jail, or on the promise of money. So the odds of getting caught are pretty high.

So why do it? Greed's the short answer, I suppose. It just doesn't seem enough to justify the risk of getting caught. Never mind the morality involved here. I'm presupposing that morals are a foregone conclusion with most of the criminal element. The risk/reward equation is all I'm focusing on here.

I can't afford a Mercedes, so I don't drive one. I can't afford a 5000 square foot home, so I don't live in one. I can't afford Armani suits, so I don't wear them. I couldn't afford spring break trips to Mexico, so I didn't go. I can't afford new cd's, so I don't buy them. In other words, I do without. My life is perfectly ok without those things. It really is. I wouldn't have said so at one point or another in my life, but it's true. Even in the midst of the worst possible stuff envy, it never seemed worth stealing over. Breaking into a house to steal something sure isn't worth it. Every household I know about has enough gun wielders in it to make that idea seem pretty dumb. Does that thought never cross the mind of a burglar? Has he decided that it's worth the risk, despite the risk of lead poisoning?

I can understand being so desperate to feed my child that I'd steal. But I also can't imagine a friend or family member not taking my child in to feed him, if things ever got that bad. Or the church, or distant relatives, or somebody. There's always an alternative, it seems.

I can't figure this one out at all. And I grow more puzzled every time I deal with people like this, which is daily.

Forgiveness

2007-04-29T21:07:00.000-06:00

This is a subject that I struggle with, and honestly don't do very well with. It's hard to make peace with someone who has wronged you. And yet, it's the right thing to do.

Taking any sort of philosophical reasoning for it out of the equation, forgiveness seems to promote self-healing. I've gone a long time winding myself up over slights, real or imagined. The funny thing is, it's hurting nobody but me.

Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately, depending on your point of view), I have not developed psychic powers that enable me to fry people with my mind. It's a good thing, because my negative thoughts would have probably reduced our population down quite a bit. So all these bad thoughts I have towards someone who's made me mad do nothing at all but give me ulcers. If it's not hurting them, and it's not helping me, why do it? When I think back on a couple of particular wrongs I've felt were inflicted on me, my blood pressure boils. My hands get shaky, my breathing gets quick. I can feel my stomach roil. And to what end? The people I'm mad at could care less. I'm not doing anything to help the situation. I'm just taking years off my life. I can't afford to do that anymore.

Best just to let it go. Doing that is a bit much, however. Realizing the futility of the anger is a good first step. It makes it a bit easier, though not much.

I've also learned to let my self-recrimination go a bit, as well. It's hard to move on in your life dwelling on mistakes made in the past. Better still just to move along. Learn from the mistake, but don't bog down thinking about it.

The Bible mentions not letting the sun go down on your anger, and that's some good, practical advice. I'm amazed at how much one's spiritual, physical, and mental health seem to walk hand in hand.

In the meanwhile, my neighbors and their all-night barking dog haven't been telepathically reduced to a smoking pile of ashes. This is a good thing for all concerned.

Somebody in Entertainment Gets It

2007-04-29T21:05:00.000-06:00

From the inestimable Michelle Malkin, a bit about Frank Miller.

WTF???

2007-04-27T08:11:00.000-06:00

From JUDICIAL WATCH, which is a great website:

"Border Patrol Agent Charged With Murder
Caving in to pressure from the Mexican government and relying on testimony of fellow illegal border crossers, prosecutors in one Arizona county have criminally charged a United States Border Patrol agent for shooting an aggressive illegal immigrant in the act of violating federal law.

Border Patrol agent Nicholas Corbett has actually been charged with first-degree murder for the January shooting of the illegal alien who was part of a group apprehended about a 150 yards north of the Mexico-Arizona border between Bisbee and Douglas. Corbett said the Mexican man, Francisco Javier Dominguez, became aggressive and attacked him with rocks after being detained.

Dominguez had illegally crossed into the U.S. with three others—his two brothers and a sister-in-law—who have become the prosecution’s main witnesses. Based on their testimony, Cochise County prosecutors say the shooting was not legally justified because Dominguez did not represent a threat when he was shot.

When the incident happened in mid January, the Mexican government immediately sent the United States a diplomatic note stating its “firm condemnation” and demanded a full investigation. Relatives in Mexico took the streets and demanded the agent involved be punished and brought to justice.

The head of the Arizona Chapter of the National Border Patrol Council says this case is part of a nationwide pattern of politically motivated prosecutions against Border Patrol agents. The theory doesn’t sound terribly far-fetched considering that, earlier this year, two Border Patrol agents went to prison for shooting an admitted Mexican drug smuggler caught bringing in 743 pounds of marijuana near El Paso Texas.

Federal prosecutors actually went into Mexico and offered the drug dealer—who was only shot in the buttocks--immunity to testify against the veteran agents who were subsequently convicted on charges of causing serious bodily injury, assault with a deadly weapon, discharge of a firearm and violating the drug smuggler’s civil rights."

We've lost the will to be a country, if we persecute those who defend us. I think they need to be shooting more of them, personally. It's interesting that Cochise County is where Tombstone is located. That county apparently loves to prosecute those who try to uphold the law, given what happened to the Earps and Doc Holliday after the OK Corral...

Comfortably Numb

2007-04-24T22:01:00.000-06:00

While the rest of the world is applauding the new trends in downloadable music, I have to say that I have some trepidations about the whole thing. It has less to do with the technology and sound quality as it has to do with the imminent demise of the rock album.

Bear with me on this. The trend now is for people to pay for whatever song they want, and simply download it. They pay only for the song they want. This is all well and good for the consumer in one sense. They only have to pay for the song they want. This was the theory behind 45 rpm singles, way back when. It carried over into cassettes, and later into single cd's.

What's going to happen is that artists will focus more on singles, as opposed to albums. Let's face it: "Another Brick in the Wall Part II" is a catchy tune. However, the genius of the song comes in when you get its context with the rest of THE WALL. The song stands alone, but it's part of a much bigger whole. Same thing with "Eyes of a Stranger" off OPERATION MINDCRIME. Great song, but it's simply the capstone of a cool concept album.

I don't know if today's short-attention spanned obliviots will download a song, then buy the whole album. I think they're more likely just to download a catchy tune, and ignore the rest of the album. They'll remain comfortably numb to the cool stuff that lurks on the rest of the album. If you didn't buy the Van Halen album FAIR WARNING, you didn't catch "Hear About It Later," one of the band's better songs. You'll never hear that one on the radio. You'll also never hear "Bravado" off Rush's ROLL THE BONES. You won't hear "Holy Mother," off Eric Clapton's AUGUST. "Why Worry", off Dire Straits' BROTHERS IN ARMS is one of the best songs ever. I doubt anybody today would buy the whole album. They'd simply download "Money For Nothing", and go on with their lives, never hearing a gem like "Your Latest Trick." That's a loss.

You won't see albums like this in the future, I fear. The artists will pump out catchy singles to sell via the internet, and the albums as a whole might well suffer as a result. Cohesive, unifying songwriting for albums might well die off. I don't think it will vanish altogether. I just don't think an artist will sit down to write concept albums anymore as theri main focus.

That's a darn shame. Imagine life without Styx's "Kilroy Was Here." I shudder to think about it.

"Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto."

St. Anger

2007-04-19T22:31:00.000-06:00

I'm still not sure that I actually picked the right career. I'm a prosecutor now, and it's absolutely true that I enjoy this job more than anything else in the practice of law. I can safely say that I will never go back to private practice again.

However, I still have to deal with liars and the bigger liars that represent them.

Attorneys are, as a breed; scumbags. There are individuals that are ok. But as a whole, this is a reprehensible profession, filled with reprehensible people who think they have to win at all costs. Even if that means telling a flat-out lie to get an acquittal for a client, or screwing over somebody to win.

I don't like this. I don't operate that way, and I get really resentful when it happens to me. Even though I shouldn't. I know what this breed is like, and I make the mistake time after time of letting down my guard. I constantly get fooled into believing they are not all like that. And I'm proven wrong more often than not.

Here's where the hard part of being a follower of Christ comes in. I have to let this sort of thing go, or it will tear me up forever more. It's not in the least bothering the person that did it.

This is where the limits of human flesh come into play. I can't do it. I've got to turn it over to God. And it's hard to turn loose of this anger and resentment. But I have to. I've got to turn the other cheek. And the only way to do that is pass it off to somebody whose kindness, mercy, wisdom, and power far exceed mine. Personally, I'd like to drag this lawyer over carpet tacks and dip him in rubbing alcohol.

So it's in the Almighty's hands at this point. Mine would strangle.

Tomorrow's another day, though. One of my favorite literary characters has two red arrows tattooed on each deltoid, pointing forward. His point in doing that was to remind himself to keep pressing forward, and never look back. That's what has to happen here, as well.

No Further Proof Necessary

2007-04-18T22:38:00.000-06:00

The horrible tragedy that occurred at Virginia Tech underscored a point that I've been making: evil exists. The term "insanity" doesn't even begin to cover the depth of this horror. We have to turn to a much more powerful word to sum this up: evil.

You've only to look at this psycho's rambling manifesto to see pure evil shining from his eyes. It is a glimpse into hell itself. It frightens me to no end.

I cannot fathom what would possess a person to execute 30+ people. I don't think any sane person can.

Listening to his ramblings, it is obvious that he was convinced that he was some sort of hero for doing this. I've noticed that evil has a way of justifying itself. I'm sure this demon never thought he was evil. Indeed, in his twisted mind, this was the act of a noble warrior. What he was fighting, I have no idea. It almost lends some credibility to the assertion that some insanity is demonic possession. Looking into his eyes as the video rolled, I can believe in demons.

What he has managed to do is terrify a nation, and provide additional fodder to the anti-Second Amendment crowd. He linked himself to Jesus, and that's going to also provide ammunition to the anti-deists.

I submit a point: I don't think this soul ever knew Christ, other than a passing acquaintance with a few stories. Neither here nor there; however.

My prayers go out to the families, students, and friends of Virginia Tech. And I pray the rest of the country makes it through as well.

Kiss My Bass

2007-04-16T22:09:00.000-06:00

One of the great things that's happened in the last few months has been the chance that I've had to play music again.

I had a burning desire to play a guitar after hearing Andy Summers' lick on "Every Breath You Take." Some kids hear Eddie Van Halen and have to learn how to play. My initial hook was the Police. Anyways, I ended up playing guitar. I graduated to heavier stuff eventually. However, I still get that little thrill when Andy starts that clean, arpeggiating riff on the radio.

Most of the bands I gravitated towards had great bass players and drummers. The Police, Genesis, and Rush were what I usually listened to growing up. I always sort of liked the bass, but never could afford to pick one up. I had a Fender Stratocaster, and that had to serve me for a long while.

About a year ago, I traded a Glock I absolutely hated for a nice Carvin 5 string bass. I noodled around on it a bit, but was never really serious.

Recently, I volunteered to play with our church band. They needed a bass player, and I happened to have both a pulse and a bass. Easiest audition ever. So I got the job. This is despite no training whatsoever on the bass, mind you. Just a lot of Geddy Lee and Sting's subliminal influence, since I'd never actually messed with bass guitar before.

If you've never played rock with another group of people, you have missed out on one of the most fulfilling experiences a person can have. I wouldn't just limit it to rock. I'd say that jamming with any band, on any sort of music, is almost a mystical experience.

However, I sucked at bass playing. The sense of melody is there, the feel is there. The ear is there. The physical ability wasn't. I wasn't a bad guitarist. But I was a horrible bass player. That was an alien instrument, coming from years of guitar.

One of the great things about playing with this group is that we have a ton of talented musicians there. They are also Christian, which means they haven't acted on the impulse to kill me when I really screw up. Which is often.

There is hope. I think I've improved dramatically with practice and guidance from the other players. I tend to get better at something when thrown in with people who really know what they are doing.

I even think that I've been able to add something to the group. I tend to gravitate towards rock music. There's just something visceral in that sort of music. It draws responses from people like no other type of music.

I'm sorry, but they hymns we grew up with in church suck. I bet church hymns have created more atheists than anything else. Listen to 90% of what's in the Methodist hymnal and you are convinced that God is punishing you for something, or he had nothing to do with this music at all. I don't think most people my age respond well to that sort of music.

However, crank up a distorted guitar, a driving bass, and a pounding drum beat, and there's something that I respond to. I think most people probably do. If you doubt me, go crank up AC/DC's "Shook Me All Night Long," and see if you don't start tapping along to the drum beat. See if Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" doesn't get you humming along. That's stuff that people respond to. "Enter Sandman," doesn't make you pound the steering wheel when it comes on in the car? I bet it does. Quit feeling guilty about it.

There's some darn hard Christian music out there. I had no idea. Some of it's actually quite good. Some of it resembles the South Park episode where Cartman starts a Christian band. (Watch it on Youtube. That's funny; I don't care what church you go to. It's funny because it's absolutely dead-on.)

Anyway, we played a pretty rock-ish set last Sunday, and the response was great. The audience really enjoyed it. Our pastor was ecstatic. He's a Led Zepplin fan, and plays a darn good guitar himself. He's been wanting to hear something like this for quite awhile.

I'm having fun with it. Christian music ain't just for wussies, I'm discovering.

And you so-called Christians who think rock is the devil's music? Kiss my bass. I mean that in the most loving, forgiving sense, of course.

Stupid Gun Stuff

2007-04-15T20:58:00.000-06:00

I pride myself on being fairly safe with firearms. Every once in awhile, I have to be reminded of basic safety things.

One thing that was drilled into my head as a kid was not to shoot rocks. Bad idea. They cause ricochets. Ricochets are a bad thing. I forgot this little lesson, and paid the price.

Easter Sunday, my brother-in-law and I decide we are going to shoot a bit. I had a box of .45's for the occasion, and we set down to doing some shooting. Targets usually aren't a problem, and normally I'll shoot cactus leaves. They make great targets, and you can see a hit immediately.

At any rate, there were a few sacks of concrete laying about, that had gotten wet. Which means they are actually concrete, and not sand anymore. My brother-in-law, who is about as good a gun person as I've ever seen, decided to shoot at a bag of this stuff.

So we did. The USP handled about as well as any pistol could ask. We were making hits from about 40 yards out, pretty much in the center mass.

I had run through about five rounds, when I suddenly felt an extremely hard blow on the left side of my nose. I thought somebody had snuck around to my left side and punched me in the head. My eye teared up. My hand came away wet with blood. I couldn't figure out what had happened. It actually drove me to my knees.

My mind was trying piece this thing together. I was running the whole thing back through my head, trying to make sense of it. It's hard to do after a blow to the head. I remembered hearing something hit the ground next to me. I looked, and a huge chunk of lead was laying there.

That's when it clicked. I had been hit upside the head by a ricochet. The bag was sitting at around a 45 degree angle. The slug hit the concrete, traveled up the bag into the air with most of its velocity spent. The angle was enough to lob it back towards us, and it had hit me as it fell back to earth. The proof was right next to me. I picked the smashed slug up and staggered back into the house.

An inch more and to the left would have put the slug into my eye. It wasn't traveling fast enough to kill me, but it was darn sure fast enough and big enough to have knocked my eye out.

And it hurt. It hit me as hard as a punch, and cut my nose pretty well. It was sore for a week, and the cut took awhile to heal.

So don't shoot rocks or concrete. Ever. You'd have thought I was smart enough not to go along with something like this.

The next mistake came a few rounds later. We had a case of Wolf ammunition. Another bad idea. Basically, a round was overcharged and blew up the cartridge. This completely ended shooting for the day.

I'm happy to report the gun suffered no permanent damage from the event, says the gunsmith. Wolf ammunition is a bad idea, period. If the steel casing doesn't split under pressure, the gunk they pack the bullets in will gum up your barrel, or won't eject properly.

Factory ammunition by a reputable manufacturer is about the only thing I'm ever going to put through a gun again.

The lessons: don't shoot rocks or concrete. Second, use decent factory ammunition. Third, wear shooting glasses. Had that round hit just a bit higher, I'd join the ranks of the disfigured and handicapped. Glasses would have probably saved my eye.

Learn from my stupidity, shooters. I certainly did.

A Longer Absence

2007-04-15T13:38:00.000-06:00

Every once in a awhile, a hiatus from writing is imposed upon me. In this particular case, it's a combination of being way too busy, some healing time, more personal crises, and no motivation whatsoever to write anything. I had some major life crises to deal with. I can't promise that I'm going to be back as faithfully as I was when I first came online, but we'll just see what develops. Especially in light of the new family crisis. More on that in a bit.

As to the content: this blog has always been my personal catharsis. I write for my own sanity. And I think a total of three people actually read this thing, and I think they will forgive me for the layoff, and the content.

The bulk of the layoff has been spending time with our infant son. It's amazing how much you can love something that screams, cries, soils itself, and requires constant attention. I can safely say that I never really imagined I'd enjoy being a father. Now that I'm in it, I am sorry that I waited this long to have a child. Nothing in the world can actually sum this experience up, so I won't even attempt to quantify it. It's sufficient for me to say that I want to spend every waking moment I can with my son, and that's to the detriment of exercise, reading, writing, and pretty much anything else I do on a regular basis.

The new job has occupied quite a bit of time. It's weird, but I think I've finally found something that I like to do which involves the practice of law. I'm a prosecutor now, and I think this is what I was supposed to be doing all along. I have the power to see justice done, and that's a rewarding thing unto itself. That's the subject of an entire week's worth of posting, in and of itself. Suffice to say, I actually have a job that I like going to every morning. I cannot overemphasize this has never happened up until now. I HATED being a lawyer, and I can say that most of the rest of the profession is evil incarnate, after exposure to it.

I think I became sidetracked right out of law school. All I wanted to do was criminal law. That's what I focused on. Somehow or another, I started working out of law school in the civil field. Once you get trapped in a particular field, it's fairly tough to get out of it. You gain experience in one area, and people want to hire you in that area. Thus, I trapped myself. I've written before about selling out to money as opposed to doing something you love, and this has done nothing but re-enforce that particular lesson. I've had a great track record so far in this job, and I daresay I'm actually good at it. I wasn't in the other fields that I've worked in. I think it was simply because I hated what I was doing. No more.

At any rate, a new personal crisis has reared its head. It's something most Americans deal with in their families at some point or another, but now it's here in my family. I speak of course, of the Big C. Cancer. My mother has it. It's inoperable. It's pretty bad.

Those that know my mother are thinking this is not a shock. She has been, and remains, at least a 3 pack per day smoker. That's pretty heavy, especially considering she's nearing 70. It's apparently been a shock to her, which I can well imagine. It's much like looking at your birth certificate, and finding an expiration date. We all know that we're going to die. It's just not something I think one can grasp until something like this comes up.

Along those same lines: we all intellectually know that smoking causes cancer. There's too much evidence to the contrary. Hell, even the tobacco companies will tell you that it does. Again, it's one of those things where you don't think it will actually happen to you, until it happens to you. Even now, my mother and father refuse to accept that smoking did this to them. "Lots of people die from lung cancer that have never smoked," they say. Very true. However, the particular type she has is ONLY caused by smoking. Nothing else. (Well, actually you could drink about 70 gallons of a certain kind of pesticide and theoretically cause it in mice, but I kinda doubt that was the deciding factor in this case.) And all those other people they mention? It might shock them to learn their cancers were probably caused by second-hand smoke.

I don't mean to turn this into a diatribe against smoking. If you want to, more power to you. I am now having pretty serious problems about those who inflict it on others, and scream their rights are being violated when they can't smoke in a restaurant anymore. Poison yourself at home. You don't have the right to kill everyone else around you, though. I am now faced with the possibility that I might develop this disease, and I've never smoked. My parents inflicted it on me, making me ride with the windows closed as they both puffed away, smoking in the house, etc. They so far have refused to accept they have done anything detrimental to my health.

Your outlook on certain things changes a bit when you have a child. At least, mine did. The question: now that we have concrete evidence of what smoking does, should we expose my son to it, just to save hurt feelings?

We have now created a problem in the family. My mother and father refuse to quit smoking. Period. The doctors have told her this will mean any treatment will be ineffective. Guess what that means?

I am downright evil if I expose my infant, innocent son to the smoke. It's real now. We KNOW what the smoking will do, because we now see concrete proof. So I'm not going to expose my child to it any more. I'm not trying to prevent my parents from seeing their grandchild. I love them. I will do whatever is necessary to help in this crisis. I'm unabashedly furious that my parents would do anything to cut short their time on earth with their children and grandchildren. But that doesn't mean I will stay away. I can't stay away. That would be even more wrong. I'm simply going to stay with other relatives while I'm home, and minimize my son's exposure to that which might kill him. I can't imagine a parent doing anything else.

Well, when we moved down the road to the relatives' house for the duration of the visit this weekend, my mother pitched a fit. So did my father, despite my efforts to not make a big deal about it. They see this decision as a slap in their face. It was never intended to be that at all. I feel I cannot dictate what they do in their own home. I can't ask them to stop smoking anymore. That's caused more fights than anything in our history.

The last thing I wanted to do was cause my mother any additional pain during this period, but what else was I to do? What else CAN I do? Am I evil for not staying with my parents when we visit? Is it not more evil to expose an innocent baby; who cannot make decisions or take care of himself, to a smoky house?

I don't know. I know I've made the decision. I've caused trouble that I never meant to cause. I've upset a very ill person and caused more stress, which is the last thing she needed. And I'm made to feel guilty about the decision. So am I right or wrong?

Anyway, that's the reason for the layoff. Sorry for those 3 of you who actually read this stupid thing.

Update on Last Post

2007-01-20T10:37:00.000-06:00

Here you go:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070118-8651.html

This kind of thing scares the heck out of me.

Hugo Chavez has some stiff competition here in the US for establishing a dictatorship, looks like.

We have cameras recording our every public move, chips in our cars that record our speed, acceleration, etc.

George Orwell was a prophet, apparently.

Like Your Opinion Actually MATTERS To The Government

2007-01-14T21:14:00.000-06:00

Whew. Haven't blogged in awhile. Many things keeping me busy, not the least of which is the new arrival. But life is progressing satisfactorily, I must say. Except the looming trouble with the spread of communism. I turn around, and all sorts of things are happening.

As the days go on, I am less and less trustful of the federal government. It appears that neither of the major political parties care anything about what is right for the country: morals, values, ethics, etc.

Example: if George Bush actually gave a crap about security, he'd build a wall on the border.

If John Mccain knew anything or cared anything about the freedoms secured by our Constitution, he would have never authored McCain-Feingold. I could go on.

Now, it appears Congress is attempting to limit the free speech of Christian family advocacy groups. Democrats don't want the clergy talking to their flocks about what goes on in the government. Imagine that.

James Dobson is spearheading a campaign to shut this down. As he pointed out, it simply appears that Congress doesn't want to hear from us. Imagine that. This article also summarizes his position on John McCain: no way. This is a petition actually worth signing.

This measure is against everything our Constitution was written to embody. It scares the heck out of me.

I think our entire way of life in this country is under attack, and will vanish into history unless we are very careful. The American people have all the power, lest we forget. It's time we started using it. Don't vote for a single incumbent. Demand term limits. And create a new third party that is actually conservative, for a change.

Via Drudge Report.

A Credo From the World's Greatest Beach Bum

2006-12-28T16:10:00.000-06:00

As I sit here trying to unpack my library back into the house that we now get to keep, I came across Jimmy Buffet's TALES FROM MARGARITAVILLE. The man is a terrifically talented writer, not to mention awesome musician. He's an idol of mine. I highly recommend reading whatever you can get your hands on that he's written, but the above is a classic.

In the story, "ARE YOU READY FOR FREDDY?" Buffett lays out six lessons of life, taught to him by an old musician on tour. Given the emotional roller coaster that we have been on the last three months with baby, life, job, etc. I had sort of forgotten about these. I shouldn't have. I reprint them here, just so you too can partake of this wisdom. I had promised myself that when I became a lawyer, I was going to get these put on a plaque on my desk. It hasn't happened yet, but I'll get it there eventually. I'm highlighting the ones that I think are of particular importance. Oh what the heck. I actually have to highlight them all, now that I'm reading them again. They're all equally important. Forgive the crudity contained herein, but they're his words, not mine.

Without further ado:

"Lesson One: Never forget--they are always the enemy.

"Lesson Two: Just remember, assholes are born that way, and they usually don't change.

"Lesson Three: You do not want to go to jail.

"Lesson Four: When you start to take this job seriously, you're in trouble.

"Lesson Five: It takes no more time to see the good side of life than it takes to see the bad.

"Lesson Six: If you decide to run with the ball, just count on fumbling and getting the shit knocked out of you a lot, but never forget just how much fun it is to be able to run with the ball."

Words of wisdom, indeed.

Happy Kwaanza--Death to Whitey

2006-12-28T02:44:00.000-06:00

Ann Coulter gives us this piece about the origins of Kwaanza.

Interesting.

Dead Eye

2006-12-28T02:30:00.000-06:00

Porta's Cat has an interesting link to an article about one of the deadliest gunmen to have lived.

D.A. Bryce was truly an amazing man. Sometimes when I think I'm a decent pistol shot, I'll read things like this to get humble again.

It is of interest to note that he was the basis for a character in HOT SPRINGS, by Stephen Hunter.

I hope everyone out there had a Merry Christmas, and will hopefully have a happy New Year's as well.

I'll be posting a bit more once things have settled down, but it's been beyond hectic lately. By the grace of God, we've survived.

More on that as we pick up the pieces and jump into 2007.

The Eternal Debate Over Calibers

2006-12-13T12:57:00.000-06:00

Check out this thread on Handgunforum.net regarding caliber effectiveness, 9mm, .380, and .45.

Bottom line: there's a difference, but not all that much. What it really comes down to is shot placement, in my opinion.

So if you shoot one caliber better than another, use it. You're more likely to make a stopping hit with it.

I mean, really. 9mm's are a bit smaller than .45's, but not all that much. How much REAL difference is it going to make?

Anyway, a fun discussion one way or the other. Gun aficionados are encouraged to join in the fun.

More Theoretical Physics

2006-12-12T09:05:00.000-06:00

Kim Du Toit links a great piece about gravity actually being faster than light. Interesting theory. If true, I guess that means Einstein's theory of relativity is somewhat incorrect, since there is a force in our dimension that can actually travel faster than light.

Anyway, worth some thought. I've always wondered what the physical mechanism of gravity actually is. We know it's there, we can see it work, but how does it affect things on an atomic level?

@*!hole

2006-12-10T00:07:00.000-06:00

Read this post over at Kim Du Toit's website. Then tell me the Democrats are all about bi-partisanship.

It's war between the parties and ideologies. We seem to have forgotten that. I promise you the Democrats have not.

This one is just honest about it.

Bureaucracy and Politics--The Bane Of Doing The Right Thing

2006-12-09T23:36:00.000-06:00

This is just a random thought that I had earlier, after watching Jack Bauer interrogate somebody on 24, Season Five. One has lots of random thoughts watching Jack Bauer interrogate someone. Usually, they're along the lines of, "thank the lord that's not me he's asking questions of." You have to like the guy's style, though. He gets results.

What keeps our politicians from doing the right thing? Anybody with two brain neurons to rub together can look at our border and know what the right thing to do is. Close it. Build a wall. End of discussion. Why isn't it getting done?

There are a couple of explanations, at least. We won't go into all of them here. One is that politics prevents it from happening. Neither party wants to hack off the Hispanic voters, figuring rightly they'll control the majority of votes in this country in the next ten years. The fact this can be prevented by a nice big wall really torques me, but that's another story altogether. So, politics prevents us from doing the right thing.

Bureaucracy seems to prevent people from doing the right thing on occasion. When they system makes doing the right thing overburdensome, problematic, and just plain painful, things don't get done.

Political correctness seems to get in the way of doing the right thing. When we can't engage in racial profiling to help stop terrorism, we're in trouble. The Swedes aren't bombing our airplanes, so give them a pass. Neither are the Finnish people blowing themselves up to kill infidels. So why is it a big deal when a man wearing Muslim garb, carrying a Koran, and chanting, "Allu Ackbar" pulled out of line at the airport? That doesn't bother me in the least. Sorry if it inconveniences him, but I'll feel safer if every orfice in his body has gotten a fiberoptic camera shoved in it before he gets on my airplane. If enough of his people don't like it, perhaps they'll start pressuring their leaders to knock it off. Maybe it sucks if the search victim isn't of a mind to kill some infidels, but the rest of us will be safer. Sorry, it's just the right thing to do.

So why is doing the right thing so hard? Why are common-sense measures frowned upon? Why has the process become more important than the results?

Just a thought. I'd like to delve further into speculation about things that prevent us from doing the right thing in this world.

It's A Boy!!!

2006-11-28T13:39:00.000-06:00

8 pounds, 8 ounces. 20 1/4 inches long.

Mother and baby are doing fine, except he's as yet unnamed. That's OK. I'll let him pick his own in 5 years or so.....

Posting will be rather sporadic, in light of recent developments.

Wow. What an experience.

He's beautiful and wonderful. What more can I say?

"Nobody Does It Better..."

2006-11-23T03:02:00.000-06:00

I had the great pleasure of watching CASINO ROYALE earlier today. I'm a devoted fan of James Bond, especially the original novels by Ian Fleming. While I have always liked the movies, they pale in comparison to the books. Absolutely nobody has ever gotten the portrayal of Bond correct in the movies, until now. Daniel Craig nails the part, and portrays Bond more like what Ian Fleming had imagined.

Fleming's Bond was a cold-blooded, ruthless killer who had a soft spot for the ladies. Fleming described Bond as a cruel man, resembling Hoagie Carmichael. Fleming's Bond used very few gadgets, prevailing by his wits, his gun, and absolute ruthless determination. The realism in the Fleming novels is palpable. They fairly well sum up the menace of the Cold War. Fleming had no small part in the intelligence game. He served in WWII, as well as having a hand in the Cold War spy game after WWII. When the guy wrote about spies and assassins, he was very believable. That's because Fleming's character was based on men he knew and worked with.

Daniel Craig brings Fleming's gritty realism back to Bond. In the movie, we see Bond on his first assignment as a 00 agent, an elite killer for Britain's MI-6. This Bond is not so smooth or polished as what we've come to expect from Bond. He's arrogant, cold, and calculating. Instead of using some fancy piece of science fiction to dispatch the bad guys, Bond has to get physical in the worst possible ways. There's very few gadgets in this movie. The ones that are there actually exist. Well, almost. There are no watch-lasers. No Lotus Espirits that turn into submarines.

The villain isn't some comic-book character with an island superfortress. Instead, he's an arms dealer who finances terrorists.

Much as Fleming portrayed him, Bond is actually human. He bleeds. He feels pain. He exercises bad judgment. The classic Bond that we've come to know in the movies is suave, debonair, and perfect. This Bond is actually a person. There has been some grief given to the humanization of Bond. I think it's perfect. For one, this is how Fleming portrayed him. Also, I've always found it more exciting for a normal person to overcome extraordinary circumstances through guts and determination. An action movie isn't all that fun unless one actually thinks the character could really be killed. When Bond is tortured in this movie, it's almost too real. The superman isn't nearly as interesting as the normal man doing extraordinary things at risk of life and limb. Bond actually has to spend time in a hospital. Again, this is much closer to what Fleming had in mind with the character. In the novels, Bond goes to the brink of death and insanity many times, and doesn't bounce back all the time.

The first Bond movie was DR. NO, which was made several years after the first novel was written. Though the first movie, the original Bond novel was CASINO ROYALE. Made during the height of the Cold War, the spy craze caught on big time as a result of this movie. Sean Connery shot to stardom portraying Agent 007, and a film icon was born.

Having seen all the Bond flicks several times, I think I can now rate the various Bonds. My criteria is simply this: how close does the movie Bond match up with the character as created by Ian Fleming? My favorite Bonds in order:

1. Daniel Craig. The guy nails it, pure and simple. Bond is a gritty killer, with no frills attached. He likes the finer things in life, sure. But he's not afraid to get physical. He's the embodiment of Fleming's Bond. Nobody has done it better. However, he doesn't look like Bond. Bond was black-haired, Craig's a blonde. But this really is a nitpick. The action sequences are pretty realistic, and Bond takes a beating.

2. Sean Connery. Connery pulls off the ruthless, cruel killer very well, balanced with a guy who likes the finer things in life. FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE is my favorite Connery Bond

3. Pierce Brosnan. A very good Bond, Brosnan had the cold killer thing down pretty well, along with the supreme arrogance that Bond needs. The movies still got a bit cartoonish with the gadgets and action. But the scene in THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH where Bond drops his ex-lover with a close-range shot is exactly what Fleming's Bond would have done. GOLDENEYE is probably the best flick Brosnan did.

4. Timothy Dalton. A good Bond as well, just too suave and debonair. Too many gadgets and cartoonish action sequences. Even in LICENSE TO KILL. THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS is one of my favorite Bond movies.

5. George Lazenby. The Bond nobody remembers, but an excellent portrayal nonetheless. A one-shot Bond, ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE is a pretty good take on the character. Not much gadgetry, and Telly Savalis is one of the best Bond villains ever.

6. Roger Moore. The worst Bond of the bunch, but I think it was the scripts as opposed to the actor. He's a great actor, and he's the first Bond that I remember. I saw MOONRAKER in the theater as a kid. Moore's movies were WAY too cartoonish with the gadgets, villains, and action sequences. There was very little believable about Moore's Bond. However, he did come closer in some movies than in others. Notably THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN and FOR YOUR EYES ONLY. A VIEW TO A KILL is the second worst Bond movie of all time, surpassed only by MOONRAKER. THE SPY WHO LOVED ME is right up there in the awful department. All starring Roger Moore.

To summarize; I'd say that Daniel Craig is the best Bond ever. He's tough, gritty, realistic, and cruel. No metrosexual spies here. This is what Fleming had in mind with the character, and this is a great re-set of the Bond movies. Let's hope this continues.

Words To Live By

2006-11-22T13:53:00.001-06:00

"Eagles may soar, but weasels never get sucked into jet engines."

Source unknown

The Wonderful World Of Quantum Physics

2006-11-21T00:21:00.000-06:00

I read an interesting book this week, The Black Order by James Rollins. It's a good read, dealing with an elite US unit composed of scientist/soldiers. They basically run amok all over the globe, having adventures, irresponsible sex, gunfights, etc. All the stuff that makes for interesting spy fiction.

At any rate, there was some discussion of Heisenberg's Principle of Uncertainty, and a discussion of the hypothetical paradox of Schrodinger's Cat. The meat of the discussion can be found at pages 285-290 of Rollins' book.

Heisenberg's Principle of Uncertainty states that nothing is certain until it is observed. Schrodinger's Cat is an example of it. To summarize, a cat is in an opaque box with a poison contraption that can kill the cat at any given moment. If the box is closed, the cat is both dead and alive. It's in limbo. Only when the box is opened is one state or the other determined.

Subatomic particles apparently behave differently if observed. Observation apparently makes for reality. Electrons are both wave and a particle, until they are observed and measured. At the point of measurement; an electron becomes what it is, forced into its state by the physical act of observation.

So electrons are held in a form of existence where they are both particle and wave. They have the potential to be one or the other, until forced to be something else. In fact, they are both up until the moment something tries to measure it.

If all this is true, is reality determined only by its observation? Does the method of observation determine what reality is? We measure with our yardsticks. But is there something out there measuring the same things, but with better measuring tools than what we have? Does its measuring determine a different reality than ours? Or does this outside thing beyond our understanding actually determine our reality?

Kick that one around awhile. It's making my head hurt.

HAPPY FEET--Liberal Propaganda Part 1,000,000

2006-11-20T15:39:00.000-06:00

This review of Happy Feet, via the Anarchangel.

Oh, brother. Don't take your kids to see this. How ridiculous can you get? Or should I even ask?

On the other hand, the Bond movie appears to be pretty good. I can't wait to see it, though I'm fast running out of time.

This Is Just Wrong

2006-11-16T12:18:00.000-06:00

Horrible, horrible jokes about Paul McCartney and his one-legged wife, courtesy of the Texican Tattler.

Don't you dare laugh. I mean it. Not once.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

That would make one of us. Somebody's got to feel guilty, so it might as well be you.

Ditto T.S.

2006-11-16T03:39:00.000-06:00

Thomas Sowell re-iterated something that I've been saying for awhile.

It's not about voting lockstep with your party, for us conservatives. We seem to hold principle over party cohesion. This is not a bad thing, but it does tend to hurt election chances in a two party system.

That's where the dems are kicking our butts. They'll stick together as Dems, even if everyone isn't under the same tent.

When you've got fake Republicans like John McCain under our umbrella, it makes it pretty hard to get cohesive. It's because the man is a slimeball, and most conservatives hate him. We won't vote for him simply out of party loyalty. We're more principled than that. Again, look at what happened with Perot. Bush Senior hosed us, and we responded by voting for somebody else. It will probably happen again, the way the idiotic Republican party is shaping up.

Speaking of McCain, I had the misfortune to watch him take the US commander in Iraq to task earlier today. The general stated that he really didn't need any more troops in Iraq. He simply wanted to use the troops there with Iraqi counter-insurgents in a more expanded role, which he thought would handle the problems over there more effectively.

McCain, in his supreme arrogance, stated the majority of American people thought differently. Great. I loathe the man with all my heart. He's flat wrong. I think if you talked to most of us, we'd say we'll let the generals fight the war the way they want to. McCain was posturing like the fat toad he is, trying to look like a Presidential candidate. McCain apparently had his brain fried in the prison camp, and learned nothing from Vietnam. Let the military run the war, and keep popular opinion away from military decisions. That cost us Vietnam, lest anyone forget.

If he's the best the Republicans have to offer, I'll vote for somebody else. Party cohesion means nothing if I'm sacrificing my principles. I learned this lesson the hard way regarding my job choice, and I'll err on the side of my conscience from here on out in all things. If that puts me in the minority, so be it.

But Here's What We Get With The Republicans....

2006-11-15T13:30:00.000-06:00

....so I guess we aren't a darn bit better off. What a bunch of morons. This article via Michelle Malkin shows that Mel Martinez, the new "leader" of the GOP, is completely clueless as to what won the Republicans such an overwhelming majority, before now.

No wonder the Republicans got their butts kicked. And it looks like more will be coming down the pike in 2008. They just don't understand. Either that, or they don't care. I'm leaning toward the don't care option, myself. I think Bush has sold us out, and continues to do so. Harriet Myers, raising minimum wage, uncontrolled spending, the border, etc. I could go on awhile on this subject. The bottom line is, the Republican leaders that we are seeing aren't a big improvement over the Democrats.

So 2008 could be the end of the Republican party, quite honestly. I won't vote for Guliani, since he's anti-gun. I won't vote for McCain because he's a slimy communist, anti-gun, and a collaborator, etc. I think quite a few Republicans are in the same shoes as I. We won't sell out ideals just to keep democrats from office. Didn't they learn anything from Ross Perot's candidacy? Conservatives will support a conservative. Papa Bush stabbed us in the back by raising taxes, and it cost him the election. Dole was in the same vein, so Perot looked like somebody who voiced a conservative agenda. He got quite a few votes away from the Republicans, enough to allow Slick Willie into office twice.

It could very well happen again. If so, I think you'll see a mass exodus of Republicans to something else. What that might be, I have no idea. But it might be time to see TR's bull-moose party make a comeback. Or something. Almost anything is better than what we have. I think there's room for it, as Perot and Roosevelt both proved in their day. And I think the Republicans are far too disdainful of the conservatives in this country.

I think it's time to show them what conservatism is all about.

Wonder What You're Getting With The Dems?

2006-11-15T02:40:00.000-06:00

Here's a great example. Via the Drudge Report.

Ain't that special? More, and far worse to come.

Murderin' Wetbacks II

2006-11-14T14:34:00.000-06:00

This post from Michelle Malkin's website, regarding the illegal alien issue.

Pay close attention to the stats on dwi's and illegal immigrants. They can't handle their firewater very well.

I can speak somewhat personally on this one. I was consulted this week on a 4th DWI for an illegal alien. She should be deported, since they won't allow summary executions anymore. It should be mandatory prison time. Instead, she's going to serve six months in the pen, out of an 8 year sentence, which is called "shock probation" in this state. It's not nearly a harsh enough sentence, in my opinion. She didn't kill anybody, but did cause a wreck with injuries.

A few years ago, a very nice young man was killed by a drunk illegal in my hometown. Nobody got deported over that issue either. It happened about 3:00p.m. on a Sunday afternoon. The family was, and remains devastated. The boy that was killed ha d bright future ahead of him. College, a solid church life, etc. What's fair about that? The illegal that survived will never have even a high school education, will never accomplish anything other than consuming more alcohol, and jamming up our prison system.

A year or two before that, a golf buddy of mine was killed by a murdering wetback, who then fled across the border. No arrest has ever been made, though I did get peripherally involved in a case where the Texas Rangers thought they had a line on him. Nothing ever developed out of that one as of yet.

Read this post from Michelle, and tell me it's just about cheap produce.

Logical

2006-11-13T10:42:00.000-06:00

A friend sent me this little missive awhile back. The exact source is unknown.

"If you consider that there has been an average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq theatre of operations during the last 22 months, and a total of 2,112 deaths, that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000 soldiers.

"The firearm death rate in Washington D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000 for the same period. That means that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in the U.S. Capitol, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, than you are in Iraq.

"Conclusion: The U.S. should pull out of Washington."

Makes sense to me. Leave it to the heathens to sack and plunder.

Elton John Hates Us

2006-11-12T14:27:00.001-06:00

That's ok. I guess. Says here that Elton would ban all organized religion, because he thinks it promotes hatred of gays. Courtesy of the Drudge Report.

Well, that's ok, I guess. I'm learning as I get a bit farther along my Christian walk that dealing with idiots like this is simpler than it used to be.

Why's that? Because I'm not going to teach them a darn thing by speaking out against what they're all about. As a Christian, I shouldn't be anti-anything. I should be pro-whatever my deal is.

Elton's misguided, sure. But I've no right to judge him, because he's in the same boat as the rest of us. He's not perfect, he's short of the mark as we all are.

My job, near as I can figure it, is to lead by example. My job is to show God's love by tolerating just about everything. Some days I'm better at it than others. The trick here is to realize that God will take anybody back into the fold, no matter the offenses given in the past. My sins aren't quite the same as Elton's, but that's ok because they're still sins, and just as bad. So who am I to judge the guy?

Now tolerance doesn't mean that I get run over. I can tolerate him not liking my religion. He's not hurting me in the least, and pretty much making a fool of himself. But when he starts actively moving against me and what I believe in, it's a different story. For instance, if he were trying to ban my right practice my faith, or he tried to burn a church down or something weird like that, I figure I have the right to speak out against what he's doing, and resist if necessary. Otherwise, he's just spouting off, and he's not really bothering me at the moment.

This is a pretty funny story, I think. I've said my piece, now I'll go on and forget about it.

But it does say a lot about the vaunted liberal tolerance, now doesn't it??

Blame McCain

2006-11-10T15:42:00.000-06:00

Hugh Hewitt, goddaddy of conservative bloggers, writes in his Town Hall column the Democratic win is probably John McCain's fault. This is a great column, and well worth the read.

I tend to agree. Every traitorous snothead who sides with the Dems on Capitol Hill should be blamed for this.

Why not run them out altogether? Why do we need McCain under the Republican umbrella? Why not boot him out of the party? Why give him our money? That's what I would do, if I were RNC chairman. My message would be simple: we're the conservative party. If you're not conservative, i.e., you don't believe in what the rest of us believe in, you're out. No money from us, and we'll fund whoever comes off as conservative who runs against you in the primaries. No traitors under our roof any more.

I've said it before, Republicans lost because they weren't conservative, and they waffled. The enemy (Demoncrats, radical muslisms, socialists, etc.) won't waffle. They won't show mercy. They won't do anything but commit themselves body and soul to the destruction of conservatism. It's time we all woke up to that fact, strapped on the armor, and went to political war for what we believe in.

Murderin' Wetbacks

2006-11-10T15:26:00.000-06:00

Michelle Malkin posts this disturbing tale of an actress murdered by an illegal alien in New York.

She also points out that many dems won their offices this time out by campaigning hard against illegal immigration, lest someone think this is a renouncement of border enforcement. She also points out that many anit-illegal immigration measures passed resoundingly, even if a dem won in that particular district.

Scary stuff, but don't think for a minute that conservative values are dead and gone. This election might prove it more than what we think.

Thus It Begins...More Bad Things

2006-11-10T14:20:00.000-06:00

An extra-US court seeks to bring charges against Donald Rumsfeld for Abu Grahib "abuses."

This is scary. For one, another country is attempting to charge a US citizen with war crimes. This smacks of the whole one-world government the socialists have been trying to bring about for the last 50 years. It is a direct threat to our sovereignty as a country, and our freedom as citizens of this country. The aim of this is to stifle the United States from acting unilaterally to defend itself, or prosecute the war on terror. Follow the money on this thing, and you'll find Muslim money financing this thing, with socialists being duped into running the show. Oh, and the demonic lawyers have a lot to do with it, too.

Notice the timing? Somewhat suspicious? This wouldn't have gotten steam or press coverage had the democrats gotten their keisters kicked as they should have. The timing is incredible, and not conicidental.

This falls into what I have come to call "assault litigation." A working definition of assault litigation is the use of the judicial system in order to suppress, stifle, or trample Constitutional rights, or an attempt to enrich through blackmail. This probably qualifies under both headings.

Troubled is the head that wears the crown.

Lawyers On The Side Of Satan

2006-11-09T13:51:00.000-06:00

Read this disturbing post from Protein Wisdom. (Hat tip to Michelle Malkin, great blogger that I shamelessly steal stuff from all the time.)

Basically, Muslims are suing journalists who report unfavorable facts about Islam here in America. Sounds like a First Amendment violation to me, don't you think? The problem is, there's a whole lot of people that don't, and a whole religion that doesn't care because it serves their purposes.

This is the problem with too many lawyers floating around out there, and why unchecked litigation is a definite menace to constitutional freedoms. You can't very well justifiably criticize somebody if they can bankrupt you through a lawsuit.

I know, loser pays in a lawsuit most of the time. That's such a fiction, designed by plaintiff's attorneys to make the rest of you think the system is fair. It ain't. In order to determine who wins or loses a lawsuit, you are still going to have to go through two years worth of legal maneuvering, depositions, hearings, before you ever get to trial. And your lawyer will be expecting his $200 an hour minimum every month, or he'll go to the next case and dump you. Personal injury lawyers engage in extortion like this all the time with insurance companies. The enemies of our Constitution will use it to break that document's protections, and silence dissident voices under the guise of religious "persecution."

This is another reason why a Republican win was so important for us: shut down liberal judges who allow this sort of thing to happen. Well, that's in the toilet. So look for suits like this to stand up. At least until the Supremes get ahold of it, and then it will be a 5-4 decision. Maybe, if that bastard Kennedy doesn't waffle to the communist side, as he is wont to do.

Lawyers are a worse menace to the Constitution and our way of life than foreign enemies, I think.