Thought for the day

I don’t know how the circle of life works in Mark Trail.

If you need a job to work out your aggression

I just spent a couple hours loading, moving, unloading, WAILING ON WITH A ROCK HAMMER BABY!!!! to chip off old mortar, and stacking a bunch more old bricks. You get to hit stuff, break stuff, throw stuff, and wind up with a tidy stack of bricks to make you feel successful. I think everyone should have a big pile of old bricks to work on.

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Quote of the “Everyone already knows this one”

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

–C.S. Lewis

This quote brought to you via a discussion I was having with my boss over whether we would want Google or the Feds to be supreme overlords. Lewis answered this one for me… but I had to google it to get the exact wording…

A sign of intelligence is knowing how dumb you are

“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”

— Abraham Lincoln (or Mark Twain, or Ben Franklin, or King Solomon, depending on who you ask)

I just had to make use of that–it’s even better with the internet, because if you don’t even leave a comment, they’ll never know you were there to even start thinking you’re a fool!

Riches

“I’m just a common man,” I once
heard someone loudly say,
“I’m poor, I’m old! I work too hard!
What good’s another day?”
Then he walked across his carpet
to his new color T.V.
Lit another big cigar —
and cursed his poverty.

I know another man who in
a simple house resides,
delvers mail throughout the day
and works a farm besides.
Then runs home to his family,
to sing, to feel their touch —
“Oh Lord,” he cries, “I’m special!
You’ve given me so much!”

(A poem my mother and uncle used in my grandpa’s funeral, a poem that grandpa had found in the 1960’s. He was the country mailman, and grew pinto beans and various grains on his 80 acres in his spare time, living in the same house since 1956 when they moved out from Kansas. I will leave it to you to decide which man in the poem was my grandpa.)

I’m going down to my Grandpa’s house today

This is a very fitting song.

I think that I’ll attempt to run my puppy around like I did two weeks ago when went down to see my grandpa, and maybe shoot a few pop cans with his .22’s, and have rootbeer float, like we always did when he was still here.

Be my mom’s chauffeur for the funeral arrangements, bot otherwise do a wake of my own.

And if you haven’t seen Waking Ned Devine, you aren’t quite able to get into my head when it comes to funerals. It’s what we all watched when my dad died, and it’s what’s going through my head right now. There really isn’t any richer man than one who dies in his easy chair with the TV on.

Fill to me the parting glass…

Of all the money that here I spent, I spent it in good company
And of all the harm that here I’ve done, alas was done to none but me
And all I’ve done for want of wit, to memory now I can’t recall
So fill to me the parting glass. Goodnight and joy be with you all.

Oh, if I had money enough to spend and leisure time to sit awhile
There’s a fair young man in this town that sorely has my heart beguiled
His rosy cheeks and lovely lips, alone he has my heart in thrall
So fill to me the parting glass. Goodnight and joy be with you all.

Of all the comrades that here I’ve had, they’re sorry for my going away,
And of all the sweethearts that here I had, they wish me one more day to stay,
But since it falls unto my lot that I should rise and you should not,
I will gently rise and softly call. Goodnight and joy be with you all.

That’s the truth.

This song reminds me of something

Something… like, I don’t know, modern life.

Freeland – We Want Your Soul

The message also reminds me of Cake’s “Comfort Eagle.”

Added: This kinda ties in with Tam’s great post this morning about political parties. Whether or not people realize it, they do “Sell their soul” to the R or the D and then never use their brain again, whether or not the party flavor of choice is still the one they signed up for.

Dreams

All the time while a kid is growing up, they’re constantly told “nothing is impossible,” and “follow your dreams.”  So many of us wind up in daily routine, going to work, eating supper, going to bed… lather rinse repeat.  You know what?  I decided that there’s no reason why I can’t take care of one big item on my bucket list.

That’s right.

There’s nothing–absolutely nothing–stopping me from eating an entire package of orange tic-tacs in one mouthful.

 

Another seen on the side of the road

A lady in a little Asian car, broke down, being helped by a man who was driving a EVIL HALLIBURTON OIL COMPANY!!!!!!!!! truck.

Not a single liberal in a hybrid to be found…

Your Netflix recommendation of the day

As evidenced by this morning’s music, we watched the Ken Burns documentary “Horatio’s Drive: America’s First Road Trip,” detailing the trip taken by Horatio Nelson Jackson in 1903. Using photos taken by Jackson along the way, and the (very eloquent and humorous) letters he wrote to his wife, the show takes you through the trials and tribulations he took to get from San Francisco to New York at a time when most Americans never traveled more than 50 miles from home. It is a very well done program–Mr. Burns hardly had to do anything to spruce it up for television, as the letters and photos are quite entertaining on their own. Jackson had quite an optimistic and witty outlook on life, which you would have had to have had to undertake such an adventure, basically on a whim and a $50 dollar bet.

The most amazing thing of all, that you almost can’t wrap your mind around, is that the program points out that about 40 years earlier settlers were dying of dysentery on the Oregon Trail, and about 60 years later astronauts were walking on the moon. 100 years are nothing in human history, but what a leap we made. Almost makes me look past the politics of Now to want to see the Gene Roddenberry future of Tomorrow.

Oh, and Jackson’s dog, a goggle-wearing pit bull named Bud, survives the journey just fine, so you know it’s a happy ending. You should watch it if you get the chance.

Seen on the road

I had a theory, long since disproven but still with a grain of truth buried in the middle of it, that those people who put the long string of stick figure representations of their family on the back window of their car were mormons.  Now I recognize that there are some circumstances where my rush to judgment is incorrect, but there are certain variables that greatly increase my odds of being correct.

For example I would be willing to very my next paycheck on my theory being true on this one: I saw a Suburban (strike one) with a string of the aforementioned stick figures going halfway across the back window (strike two) and a Boise State sticker on the bumper (strike three).  If those people aren’t Mormons, I’ll eat my mustache.

Things I’ve started to not care about

I’m not sure about anyone else, but there are quite a few things out there nowadays that seem like used to be big deals but no longer are worth my time to worry about. For example, a year ago I used to be very interested firearm industry news, and all the “cool new guns” that were coming out. A few too many “COOLEST POLYMER PISTOL EVAR” posts, and now when I see a blogger talking about say, the M&P line (to pick one that has been hit VERY strongly in the gunblogoshpere lately), more often than not it’s “Mark as read.” There’s only so many times I can read about modular backstraps before it becomes uninteresting. A while back Tam talked about “generic GUN“; I’ve hit that plateau. For plastic fantastics, I like my XD, it’s a nice little pistol, has yet to fail to go bang when I pull the trigger, but I’d be just as happy with the aforementioned M&P, or a Glock. I don’t care about the brand any more. Oh, and the same thing goes for AR’s, hunting rifles, and most shotguns (though I have to admit that the KSG still has some novelty power on me), not to mention that classic argument, caliber wars.

Next thing I have realized it doesn’t matter if I hold an opinion or not is, of course, ELECTION 2012!!!!. While there are still maybe a few factors that could revive my interest (VP’s), I really just don’t care if Mitt Romney bullied his dog and strapped a gay guy to the roof of his family station wagon. I don’t care about the latest group Oby is pandering to while actively throwing under the bus.

Along with that, another thing I don’t care about is ANYTHING IN THE NEWS EVER. From the latest stupid scheme that would never work Denver has for stealing our water, to the high school girl’s softball scores, to Yet Another Global Warming Will Kill Us All editorial, none of it is interesting, none of it is realistic, and all of it is pointless. The news media has completely let their credibility go down the drain, with the result that even with an article that might be mildly interesting, any person with half a brain (admittedly, that number is probably smaller than you’d think) actively scoffs at the errors and fear mongering.

Another thing that has been causing me to click the “Mark as read” button anymore is pretty much anything that has to do with gun control, including good people fighting for our rights. I’m glad that there are people out there doing it, but when it comes right down to it, I really believe that the culture has turned the corner when it comes to guns. When there are multiple shows on mainstream cable tv with people making, shooting, and competing with guns, when the only sector of the economy booming (no pun intended) is gun-related companies, when concealed weapons permits are flying through the roof, there is not a blessed thing that anti-rights cultists can do to stop it. Good luck getting any compliance at all with a gun registry! Good luck trying to start some sort of widespread ban! Good luck doing anything besides looking like sad pandas!  It is to the point now where the only people who are paying attention to them is, well, us, gun nuts making fun of them.

So there you go.  Maybe I’d get more out of life if I cared more about these things, but I’m pretty well convinced that I’m better off ignoring them and going out to weed the garden.

Anything out there that you’ve stopped caring about?

Link and thought of the day

From Jake at Curses Foiled Again, who talks about something called the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Affect, where a person won’t believe a word from a news article covering a subject they know something about, but then they turn the page and go right along with the next article.  It’s something that I’ve wondered about for a long long time, in the context of scietific studies.  To pick a couple subjects that I have a small interest in, why is it that a person who would be called a “climate change denier” by the mainstream because they refuse to follow along with the narrative be able to read a study on finch beaks and believe wholeheartedly in Darwinian evolution?

Anyway, go and read Jake’s post and think about what you’ve been told, what and who you believe, and why.