Where is Grant?

Wow...where did I leave him? In front of a crowd I think. Might be time to bring back the talking dog, he seems to get me going...

17 now?

12 killed today over the accidental burning of a book.

In other news, 0 killed in years of "American Taliban" rallies and protests.

Edited at 10pm:

Stolen premise or two

Because I owe a chapter of S&S and I don't have it ready yet, I decided to do the next best thing, steal J.R. Wagner's idea.  I am linking him though, so that makes it okay.
That post deals with rejection, and how getting those letters can make a writer better, or even more hungry. This is true, and part of writing has always been finding the people who like what you write. Sometimes a book is rejected because the editor had a bad day...
Many of the authors listed in the post over at the blog linked are millionaires now, after all the rejection, and many of them, when submitting work under their own names, would never be rejected again. I venture to say, however, had Mr. King submitted "from a Buick Eight" under an assumed name, it would still be languishing in his trunk...sometimes the editors need to grow a set of...thingies...and reject the lesser stories of the big names, freeing up printing space and time for the next big name.

As more of a poet than a prose dude, I know the sting of the rejection letter, very few publishers want poetry from new poets. I don't worry about that anymore, I just keep writing them, filling notebooks and journals and memory sticks. Someday, maybe, my kids will get the stuff published, or, maybe my grand-kids. Then again, maybe it'll all be tossed out when I finally leave this place, around 2055 or so!

Sure, it's all relative

Burning a Koran, because it has been defaced, is a legitimate reason to kill people, right?

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2012/02/23/Afghan-soldier-kills-2-US-soldiers/UPI-66781330001572/

Right?  C'mon, all you people who have called the Tea Party groups the "American Taliban", post a comment here defending yourselves. Be sure to link to all the articles where Christians have killed people because someone offended them. Please...link to all the people the Tea Party groups have killed, maimed, raped...to all the stories of burned cars and buildings.

What? Can't find them? Keep looking, remember, they are the "American Taliban", they are as dangerous, or even more-so, than the real taliban...right? Right? RIGHT?

Tired and cranky

But now that the number of people who rely directly or indirectly on the government for subsistence outnumber those of us who do not, that war may be lost. Some of us will continue to fight, but why would those who rely on government? Apathy kills freedom, I wish I had saved the text of that speech, the one I gave in 1986 in a public speaking class in college (self serving, I must admit, it was student senate election day and I was running), but the sentiment still rings true.

Those who can’t be bothered to vote, who can’t be bothered to be involved, have destroyed this once great nation. And the political class has loved every minute of it. Who, over the age of forty, or even thirty, can even imagine an America where the a second son of a failed President would even be considered to hold the office? An America where the wife of an impeached President was almost elected? An America where the choice for President is made by the political elite and the media, not the voters?

Life will go on for us, those who work hard to succeed. Some will continue to rise above the middle, others will get by, and still more will find it easier to simply take what is earned by others. The two former classes will shrink, the latter will grow, and eventually, in a hundred, two hundred years, it will all come crashing down. The climate will have nothing to do with it, we’ll start to kill each other for food because no one will remember how to work for it.

They were wrong, sort of

So some idiots in Afghanistan tried to dispose of defaced Korans by bagging and burning. Detainees were using the books to send jihadist messages to one another, so the Americans decided to dispose of the defaced books, the method of disposal over there being burning of almost everything. The only mistake they made was not enlisting Muslim soldiers to do the deed:

Muslims are advised to wrap a worn and unusable copy of the Koran in cloth and to bury it in such a way that people do not walk over the place where the Koran is buried. That would be considered disrespectful.
The other option is to wrap the Koran and place it in a moving body of water, with some jurists advising that the Koran be tied to an object so that it sinks.
Where these two options are not available, some scholars do argue that Muslims can burn a Koran.

And now it is time to move on from this, apologies have been made.  Will there be apologies from the Muslim community for the deaths that are going to happen in the next day or two over this?

Just some random thoughts

I have been sucked into the political blogs of late, I know I should stay away, but I am an addict. For some reason the hypocrisy of it all amazes me. Take for instance the release of private documents from a right wing group versus the release of documents from what is supposed to be a non-partisan group. Heartland institute pushes for many right wing causes, about 25% of their money (privately donated) goes to fighting the global warming fraud. East Anglica University is supposed to be a college that does scientific stuff without bias and with public money. Emails from both are illegally obtained. One because the public entity is fighting a completely legal freedom of information request and deleting stuff as they do so, the other because someone wanted to smear HI. I can say that because those are the facts. One of the documents from the HI dump has been proven to be fake while NONE of the CRU documents have been. Hypocrisy enough right there, but it gets better.
Some may notice that one of the blogs that was linked on my side bar is no longer there. This is because Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs has become a hypocritical lefty.
In 2003 the blog was fun to read, then it went anti-Christian and pro global warming. For a short while dissent was allowed, but then the posters became more leftist than the owner and the whole place went to the crapper. In 2009 Charles clearly stated many times that linking to the stolen CRU documents would be cause for banning and explained why many times. This past weekend he not only allowed the linking of the stolen Heartland documents, he top-posted them!
I don't really care about the ideology of it all, I think that both sets are now out there, might as well read them...but...with the understanding that the CRU emails have all been authenticated, the HI documents have not, and one, the one that the left is crowing over, is clearly faked!
I guess I am calling again for intellectual honesty, although I know I will never see it on that site. But I do see it from many of my lefty friends, so that is good!

No Comment

New Jersey lowers flags to half mast today for Drug addled talented woman, equating her with Soldiers killed in action.

Left wing media loves the idea.

Honors no longer are honors when used too often, and for the wrong reasons.

See the list of Nobel Peace Prize winners for proof of this theory.

Told ya so

And those of us on the right hand side of the political spectrum warned about this, over, and over, and over, and over: Government telling us what we can feed our kids, forcing our kids to eat what someone else determined they should eat AND THEN CHARGING FOR IT!

Are you freaking kidding me?

Chapter 13

This is another chapter/part/installment of a collaboration with the soon-to-be-renowned author J.R. Wagner . His parts, found below mine can also be found at the link. More on his forthcoming book Exiled, book one of The Never Chronicles, can be found here. My parts are going to be mostly raw and unedited, unless I find a little extra time.

Demo is fun!

Sometimes I find a job, or get hired for one, where I get to demolish things. When I do, I keep an eye out for fun things. Today, in West Chester, we tore down a block garage. I was eyeing up a pair of nice strap hinges, but the owner wants to re-use the darn gates! The old brick pavers are great, I might end up with about 6o square feet of usable brick! Then, in one of the block, I found this:

And when I researched I discovered that this is a 1956 beer can from Philly!  It is rusty and in pretty bad shape, but considering it was in a block wall for 56 years it looks pretty good. Now, is it worth anything? I did not find the Parti Quiz can on Ebay, but, some of the other cans are going for over $50!  I am sure mine is worth about a quarter...
Then, when digging, I spied this:

According to this research, this bottle was made between 1890 and 1910 because the seam does not run all the way to the top! It might be a little older, but not much...I know from experience that this bottle is only worth what the person in front of me is willing to pay for it. Usually nothing!

But is is pretty and I like it, which is all that counts sometimes, it is going on my desk!

The Searcher and The Sentinel Chapter 12

The Church, Healthcare, and the Constitution

I have to get into this, it is one of those things that boils my blood. This whole contraception + Catholics + ObamaCare + Insurance companies + Progressives is simply wrong. All of it. Wrong.
Let's start with healthcare, real healthcare, not insurance and who pays and who doesn't, let's start with where the first doctors came from...the church. The hospitals? Church. Orphanages? Church. Insane Asylums? Church. Poor Houses? Church.
See a pattern here folks? All of the charitable aspects of human lives have started in the church. Well, to be honest, they start with the human but are more manifest in the church than anywhere else.
And by "Church" I mean faith organizations, I am not singling out any one.
Okay...back to healthcare. What is it? Is it the ability to go to a doctor? To go to a doctor for free? To get every drug known and unknown? Or as it is in America, is it insurance?
Look, I see healthcare as going to a doctor and getting well when we are sick. Many see healthcare as someone else paying for me to go to the doctor whenever I want for whatever reason. And for some reason they see this as a fundamental human right...really, some people see having a trained specialist look at your hang-nail as a human right. Or a cancer doctor to look at your smoke infested lungs, for free, as a right.

No, this is not a right, not even close. Another post for another time though, this is about President Obama trying to force a religion to change, to ignore certain tenets. You can circle around it all you want, but this is what is being forced on Religious employers, either change or be fined.

If I ran a religious organization I would simply fold up my tent. There are many ways to help our fellow man, and if the federal government continues to intrude, that help will shrink...AND THAT IS WHAT THEY WANT.

Do you all not see this? The 'progressives' want government to run everything, every aspect of our lives, and they are willing to trample on basic human rights to do so.

Churches have been helping people forever and will continue to do so, cheaper and better than any government agency.  And progressives hate that.

sometimes I am embarrassed to be human

http://www.dailylocal.com/articles/2012/02/09/news/doc4f33f2d65833d708233154.txt

Abandoned dog, beat up and left to die, just like the one who now sleeps in my bed, all 85 pounds of him.  Why are some people so freaking shitty?

Shameless promotion

I am going to have to start really frequenting other blogs so people will come here and then go to J.R. Wagner's site. From there, of course, one will have to continue on to the real website of the soon to be published novel Exiled. From there, one would of course have to hit up his store because all the proceeds go to a really good cause, getting teens to read! Then, don't forget to pre-order the book at Barnes and Noble.

I am going to be featuring quotes from J.R. Wagner over the next 110 days as we approach the publication date. These quotes may or may not have anything to do with writing, and they may actually mean nothing to anyone, but, no one reads here, I am doing this for the Exiled and J.R. Wagner Google searchers. The more mentions J.R. Wagner gets, the better chance those looking for YA lit. will find him!

Random J.R. Wagner quote:
"How do you move these effing things?" When working on a virtual cork-board with me for our serial The Searcher and the Sentinel.

Lies are fun

"State universities still trying to recover from deep cuts last year would have their public funding slashed even further under a budget plan unveiled Tuesday, leading some institutions to warn of a choice between maintaining buildings and offering academic programs students need to graduate."

So, the only classes that would be cut, if the school chose to maintain a building, is one a student needed to graduate. Not:
340 Folklore in Society (3) Survey of basic American folklore genres. Emphasis on folklore as process, tradition, and as an element of culture


346 Sociology of Gender (3) Analysis and evaluation of sociological research on sex roles. PREREQ: SOC 200.


335 Ethical Issues in Mass Media (3) This course investigates ethical issues in the mass media and shows how newspapers and television, in particular, shape American perceptions of political and economic power and help establish public standards of morality. Special emphasis will be placed on journalistic issues such as freedom of expression, invasion of privacy, censorship, the protection of sources, stereotyping, libel law, objective vs. subjective points of view, and the debate over professional codes of ethics. PREREQ: JRN 225 or equivalent.


LOL on that last one!


308 The Sin of Success (3) An investigation of the rise of democratic capitalism in America from Biblical influences in colonial times to the beginnings of the merchant class and the fall of modern "big business." A study of the entrepreneur and the "robber baron," the success ethic, and morality in the large corporation through history, economics, and literature


The above classes are in the West Chester University Catalog. I submit to my four or five readers that choosing between those courses, and many more, and maintaining a building wouldn't be very hard. That said, perhaps all sports should be cut...save tons of money there.

today

Today was a good day. Odd, that, because I was at a funeral. But when taking part in the letting go I tend to remember the things to which I hold on. I get to ponder on why such a wonderful woman picked up and moved a thousand miles to take on an insane proposition. I get to look at my life and know that those whose pride and respect I need do indeed respect me. I get to watch those I love help those they love. And I get to grow.

Pearls Before Swine great story line

I do not create the following comic, Stephan Pastis does. I did not pay for the following four strips, but I am not trying to take credit for them. I think the message is wonderfully brave, and just wanted to pass it along to some who might not read Pearls, although I can't understand why anyone could go a day without it!










So hit the link above, go to the blog of pearls, and find a way to keep following the strip!

Another job done

 Techo-Bloc Victorien permeable pavers, Autumn Red. Pea gravel leveling base and sweepings.

Techo-Bloc Rocka Step, 4 foot,  Riviera. Decent product, easily chips though.

Local stone, found onsite, dry-stack (this is an 18 inch wall, most buried).

Fun Job!

wow

This platform is driving me nuts tonight, this week, actually. Couldn't post my chapter of The Searcher and The Sentinel so it is over at J.R. Wagner's blog.  (can we say link whoring?) LOL, no worries, that blog is much better than this one, he actually writes stuff, interviews people and loads pictures and things!

I do pictures too, they are coming in about ten minutes. For now, go to his blog and read chapter 10, that way he has to write chapter 11 and I can send him chapter 12 that I wrote today instead of sleeping.