Far South of I-10

I just finished off the last of the barbados rum while watching southpark. The cartoon that looks so stupid and unprofessional is one of the few bastions of liberal western thought. Defending free speech instead of sticking heads in the sand is what the media should be in the lead doing. Instead it's left to a cut-out construction paper cartoon to carry the torch and hopefully help save our freedoms. Political correctness has most likely killed western civilization. It starts with veiled threats..."you must respect our religion". Then in some places, people are killed for making a movi e that 'disrespects' islam. Then the slippery slope that the gun nuts and the abortion nuts are always so worried about takes hold and soon we'll be forced to write pbuh after the word mohammed. My feeling after reading the essay below by dan simmons about the future, was that most people feel that the united states can't lose, we can half-heartedly wage war and allow th...

Mark Steyn has great column r eprising the world's history with Iran. I read that I and I feel despair, since most of the country seems to suffer from Bush Derangement syndrome, and all problems are seen to be caused by Bush. Iran and the islamist is a problem from the '70's that could have been nipped in the bud, but there's not much we can do now: A nyone who spends half an hour looking at Iranian foreign policy over the last 27 years sees five things: contempt for the most basic international conventions; long-reach extraterritoriality; effective promotion of radical Pan-Islamism; a willingness to go the extra mile for Jew-killing (unlike, say, Osama); an all-but-total synchronization between rhetoric and action. Yet the Europeans remain in denial. Iran was supposedly the Middle Eastern state they could work with. And the chancellors and foreign ministers jetted in to court the mullahs so assiduously that they’re reluctant to give up on the strategy just because ...

A chilling short story/article from science fiction writer Dan Simmons. Go read it all, it's worth the time. I stopped. What had he called it? Category Error. Making the problem unsolvable through your inability – or fear – of defining it correctly. The Time Traveler was smiling at me from the shadows. It was a small, thin, cold smile – holding no humor in it, I was sure -- but still a smile of sorts. It seemed more sad than gloating as my sudden silence stretched on. “What do you know about Syracuse?” he asked suddenly. I blinked again. “Syracuse, New York?” I said at last. He shook his head slowly. “Thucydides’ Syracuse,” he said softly. “Syracuse circa 415 B.C. The Syracuse ...

I spoke with my father a couple of days ago, we traded howyadoin's for a while, then got sidetracked talking about the bayou that runs through Moreauville where my dad's from. How it was just a few feet deep when he was young, and they dredged a channel sometime back in the 30's which made it the deep canal it is today, instead of a low lazy bayou. My dad also mentioned that that was where his cousin Gene drowned (who I'd never heard of 'till that moment) . That when they were boys, on hot summer days they'd climb inside an old tractor tire and roll down the banks of the bayou, faster and faster until they hit the berm right at the edge of the water. The tire would then stop and fall over before diving into the bayou. They could then jump in the water, staying in the shallow end, for swimming or bathing. One day, they were rolling down the bank in the tire, taking turns, each rolling down the bank at breakneck speeds, then rolling it up the hill for then next ...

What the heck is going on today? Is the moon aligned outside the seventh house, and my jupiter/mars alignment is out? I gave a presentation to clients that turned pretty antagonistic, which led to me answering questions poorly and stumbling through the last half of the presentation. bleh. I make it back to my office where more strife ensues with coworkers, double bleh. I get home and my wife and mother-in-law are fighting. What can I say to that, just bleh! of course. And I open a bottle of conch y toro merlot, with the goal of drinking my way to the state of oblivion. (is oblivion north of nebraska? those middle america states north of I-10 confuse me) yeah, sure, not the best way to deal with problems, I'm sure Gin and tonic will stain my teeth less...but it's all I have on hand.