Monthly Archives: July 2011

Am I the only one that has noticed that every PBS history special asserts that the indigenous people of whichever ancient civilization is on display were really more progressive toward women than Westerners could ever fathom? At this point, I’m starting to think that the only civilization to hate and oppress women is the one that has managed to liberate them to the point of irrelevance.

Just sayin’.

…and turn to page 173. Near the bottom you will see a reference made to a certain Hyacinth Girl, April Gavaza, and her consistently brilliant commentary, as noted for posterity by Mark Steyn.

Oh crap. My mom’s going to kill me. I promised her no more swearing, and I’m pretty sure she’s going to count “jackass” as a swear word. That’s right, at 34 I still get a gentle talking-to about my potty mouth. My father cringes and my mother tells me that I’m too smart to swear, and now my trash mouth is preserved for all time in Mark Steyn’s latest, After America.

A lot more people read Steyn than read my blog, although the quality of work is comparable. I guess he’s just prettier than me.

After returning from the CrossFit Games last night — Annie Thorisdottir! Kristan Clever, the cutest thing in board shorts! — I started reading After America. It’s very, very good, kids. I managed to get through the prologue before I fell asleep on the couch. (Not the book’s fault; it was well after midnight before I even got home.) I’m looking forward to snuggling up with it this evening after I chase the iguana back into her cage and do the dishes. (What a charmed life I lead.)

Being the lit nerd snob I am, Steyn appeals to me because he manages to elevate political/social commentary to something more, and he begins the prologue with lines from Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. (I have a beat up but quite old copy of that on my bookshelf. While this has no bearing on, well, anything, I like mentioning it because I got it for 10¢ at a library fire sale. Ok, that last bit isn’t true, but I like calling it a “library fire sale.” It sounds so Third Reich. It was actually just a charity used book sale.) I let out a little squeal of excitement when I opened the book and saw Byron’s words staring at me. (Don’t words stare at you?) So you could say it begins on a high note.

And if I know Steyn, (I don’t want to brag), it only gets better. I’ll keep you updated on my progress through the book.

How 18th century.

While I’m all for having children at a young age, this is a bit excessive. Now, if these kids were married, if he had a job, if they weren’t living with their parents, if they had a home… Basically, if these kids were able to offer their child anything more than a life on the dole, I’d be fine with it.

There are so many things wrong with this story, I’m not sure where to begin. 150 years ago, people started families at 15 out of necessity. In 2011… well, that’s not a family dynamic our predecessors would recognize.

I’ve heard David Beckham is quite the bad boy. What? you ask. Has he cheated on that wonderfully dressed, be-Birkined skeletal sourpuss Posh? Well, no. Not that we know of. He’s a bad influence for having four kids. Some over-population nags are pissy about Becks and Posh’s burgeoning brood. Now Becks says he wants another one. And I like those Beckhams more and more every time they open their mouths. I know they’re just pretty faces, but they seem to be slyly interesting.

There’s more there. I can sense it.

Anyway, keep up the good work.

Can we be done with McCain already? This is the McCain Arizonans know and know better than to love. He screws the people who (reluctantly) put him in office every single chance he gets. I think he enjoys it. I think this is what he lives for, honestly.

Arizona, you have got to stop voting for him just because you know his name. Get rid of this jackass already. He hates you. He despises you. He thinks you and your kind are illiterate hillbillies who have no choice but to vote for him. He wages dirty campaigns and has a whole lot of money and establishment behind him. We can either wait him out (he is about 100 years old, you know) or we can gently suggest that he start his retirement sooner rather than later.

He obviously doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about anyway. Being called a hobbit is a compliment — they were loyal, steadfast, honest, true, the only creatures in Middle Earth with the moral fibre and mental tenacity to save the world from pure evil. I doubt McCain could stand up to Mordor. What am I thinking? He’d have joined up with the “winning” side long before Sauron ever became a threat. He’d be Saruman’s bitch.

Baby, you got no idea how deep my LotR flows. If given enough time, I’ll come up with a Sindarin pejorative to describe McCain. I gots my notes.

Thanks to everyone who has donated so far. I appreciate it more than words can express. I’ve been house-hunting since I got back from AZ and already exhausted. Bleh.

But thank you, kids. You’re the best.

No, this isn’t a picture of Obama’s most trusted advisor. This is a picture of the birthday present I gave my little girl last Friday that was confiscated by the TSA this afternoon. Why? Because it had more than 2 oz of fluid. And because my 7 year old — who had dissolved into tears at this point, pleading “But my mommy and daddy gave that to me for my birthday!” — is so obviously a terrorist. I wasn’t with her; she was coming home from an extended birthday stay at her nana’s, so I couldn’t rip these guys a new asshole.

I know, I know — they’re just “doing their jobs,” but so were the Nazis. I kid, I kid! The TSA is hardly the Third Reich, but the mentality of “just doing our jobs” is what gets us into trouble so often as a species. When are we going to start profiling already? We know whom it is we seek — why not capitalize on that? Being so terrified of offending a certain, protected subset of society is not exactly a winning solution to the problem of modern terrorism. Not every bearded Muslim is a terrorist for Pete’s sake, but it seems like 9 times out of 10, the terrorist is a Muslim, and not an adorable, precocious, cheeky, and endearingly sentimental little girl. She does have brown eyes, though, so I know that if we were profiling, that might count against her.

It just seems that the problem does not lie in the Magic 8 balls but in ourselves — we’ve become so culturally sensitive that we’ve reduced ourselves to parody. While I’d never advocate a return to the days of lynching and Wild West justice, but we’ve swung so far in the other direction that we’ve become nearly ineffectual as a functioning society. We tie ourselves up in real knots over imagined slights and twisted meanings, unwilling or incapable of addressing the real problems that face us in this post-Cold War era. What would those problems be?

That a certain group of a major world religion want to kill us and will stop at nothing until they do. They often use children to accomplish their aims, but that’s where the profiling bit comes in, separating the little German-Scottish-Ukrainian-Italian girls from the single sweaty man headed out on a one-way ticket transatlantic flight.

Just sayin’.

So, if a blonde blue-eyed Aryan Scandinavian kills dozens of other blonde blue-eyed Aryan Scandinavians, that’s now an “Islamophobic” mass murder? As far as we know, not a single Muslim was among the victims. Islamophobia seems an eccentric perspective to apply to this atrocity, and comes close to making the actual dead mere bit players in their own murder. Yet the Associated Press is on board:

Security Beefed Up At UK Mosques After Norway Massacre.

If a Muslim gunman killed nearly 100 Muslims, would any sane person blame the West? And how is anyone but the madman who pulled the trigger to blame? We are such a self-flagellating bunch of cowards if we are willing to buy this bullsh*t.

(I hope I didn’t sound as if I was implicating Steyn yesterday when I mentioned that he foresees crazy people doing crazy things in acts of “retaliation” or whatever. I didn’t mean it that way, and I shouldn’t be allowed to write when I’m that tired. I can say with certainty that Steyn is no racist/bigot/whatever-phobe. He’s just not.)

Recently I was informed that my job is going away because my gym is closing. This is an all too common story for too many Americans, and I was wondering if I could ask for a little bit of help. The fund D started to get me to the NR cruise will have to be diverted to the “we’ve also been informed that have to move — soon” fund, which sucks.

I hate asking, because I’m nothing if not self-sufficient, and I know how hard it is for you all out there. These are rough times for this country, and I’m going to be dropping a bit in the tip jars of those even lessen fortunate than I. While it’s not the government’s job to tale care of us, it is our job to take care of each other of our free will. I know that Blazing Catfur has a few people listed who need some help too — I don’t have the links because I’m not at my house at the moment.

Thanks guys. Even if you can’t give, I am grateful that you are reading. I’ll work on being less ennui-ed and more consistent.

XOXO

Go John! Stand firm. I’m pleasantly surprised. This president is a petulant child, and as long as the GOP continues to act like the only adults in the room, the truth will win.

At least I really, really hope so.

This is why I am a fan of Dan Simmons. (Aside from the awesomeness of The Terror, of course.) I’m currently reading Simmons’ Ilium, (weird, good, well-written), and I thought of this essay when I heard the news of the shootings in Norway.

In America Alone, Mark Steyn writes of the backlash that will inevitably follow the collapse of Europe’s version of Western culture. I couldn’t help thinking of that as well. This murderous creep can call himself a martyr, whatever, and he can hate the encroachment of aggressive, radicalized Islam and the multiculti squishes that make it possible, but he’s become that which he hates. He’s become the monster he claims to be fighting.

A foul, horrific act birthed in a broken, hate-filled mind visited upon defenseless children and those unprepared and therefore unable to fight back. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? There’s no honor in this behavior, regardless of one’s political goals. This guy is as much a pansy as the jihadis.

And by the way, this guy is not a Christian. I can say that with certainty. If he believes he is, he is mistaken.

This is an important piece by Bruce Bawer. I am frustrated, angry, and sickened by this freak who has caused so much destruction.

As I’m watching FoxNews, I realize how incredibly tired I am of hearing the Tea Party described as “radicalized” and “angry.” The Left has consistently defined the Tea Party movement in language that denotes terrorism, implicitly and unfairly equating advocates of limited government with radicalized Islamists. Michele Bachmann, while having said some wacky things, is hardly the “Howard Dean” of this primary season, as a guest on Harris Faulkner’s show just suggested.

The Left is hellbent on tearing apart any woman who does not kowtow to the abortion-pushing eugenicist-lite feminist industrial complex. How dare a woman betray her sex by advocating the free market and individual responsibility? Women are a demographic which the Left has an vested interest in keeping convinced of its own weakness and thus dependent on the liberal establishment. It will never do to have them thinking for themselves. It might encourage others to do so. The whole house of cards will fall apart if “protected” classes start to believe that they don’t need the “protection” of the same people that are oppressing them.

Regardless, I’m sick of hearing conservatives with a backbone being described as something akin to terrorists. It’s annoying, it’s dishonest, and it’s got to be called out.

Man, DSK is a dog. I’m at a loss as to why so many women have consensual sex with this guy anyway. He doesn’t seem even slightly interested in pretending that he cares about these women, and yet they are throwing themselves at him. When he’s apparently not trying to rape them.

I’m a woman, and I still don’t understand them.