The Catholic Church Needs To Change With The Times

... said some activists priests in France, 1787, Germany, 1937 and America and Europe today. "It's high time we made changes! The Jacobins Nazis Social Justice Warriors have the right idea!"

If we go that route, we'll need to stay fluid. Dig what happened to Meghan Murphy.

On Thursday, an ardent Canadian feminist who has supported the #MeToo movement but has opposed a bill that would encode gender identity and gender expression into Canadian law furiously revealed that Twitter wouldn't let her say that men are not women.

Meghan Murphy, who founded the feminist blog and podcast Feminist Current in 2012, had tweeted in October, “Men aren’t women tho,” and “How are transwomen not men? What is the difference between men and transwomen?”

On Thursday, Murphy revealed on Twitter that she had been notified by Twitter that her language in the tweet had violated their rules against hateful conduct.

That's kind of the problem with chasing the modern zeitgeist, isn't it? It's a moving target. Compared with the solid architecture of 2000 years of accumulated genius codified in the Catholic Catechism, it's a bit of a lightweight.

Say we want to properly embrace the LGBT crowd. Just how do we do it? Do we embrace the Obama '08 version? Gays are cool, but marriage is only between a man and a woman. Do we go for the Obama '12 version? Gay marriage is cool, but only women are women. Or do we go with Obama '18? Men can become full women and vice versa.

Embracing the latter two will mean substantial rewrites of the Bible, starting with Genesis. "Be fruitful and multiply" was ... what, a suggestion? A bit of poetry? Apocryphal?

How about the Catechism itself where we acknowledge the supremacy of science over theology? I guess we need to dump that as evolutionary biology, heck, biology itself needs to be jettisoned.

Lately, I've heard plenty of progressive Catholics, including several within the Pope's inner circle, make noises about changing with the times. In essence, they're choosing Kamala Harris and Corey 'Spartacus' Booker over St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine.

Yeah, I don't think I'm pulling the trigger on that trade.

Aquinas and Augustine for Harris and Booker? Even the Browns wouldn't make that deal.

Mature Women Should Read Children's Stories

Tired of politics and non-fiction brainiac books, I've gone back to listening to children's books from around 1900. This time, I found the complete set of Oz books, read by Sean Murphy, for less than a dollar on Audible. That was a no-brainer, so I bought it and listened to The Wizard of Oz on the flight from San Diego to Providence on Tuesday. I tried to get into The Marvelous Land Of Oz on the return flight, but I gave up very early in the book.

I can't tell if it was the writing or the reader, but I was distinctly underwhelmed. It could not hold a candle to the Edith Nesbitt books I listened to a while back. First off, Sean just doesn't work as a storyteller for children. He tries hard, perhaps too hard, but he just doesn't have the warmth and ... love, is it? ... you need for the job. Sean's got a bit of the gay voice lilt* which doesn't help. Instead of being immersed in the story, you wonder about Sean. It was like having a flute play the saxophone line in a jazz piece. The voice artist worked hard, but it wasn't right.

Since the performance moved slowly and words were simple, I was able to imagine reading the prose as he went along to separate the performance from the story. What I really wondered was how it would sound if a woman read it.

My mom was (and still is) a great mom. She read me lots and lots of stories when I was a child. As I was sick a great deal of the time, she had lots and lots of chances to do so. She would even do a very nice, British accent when she read things like Peter Rabbit. There was so much love and warmth in her reading! That's certainly why I associate children's books with happiness.

It's got to be a woman reading the book. My Air Force pilot dad, who was away much of time, would tell me stories that he made up, but he didn't read to me and that was probably a good thing. His masculine voice and firm diction worked for his farm-based stories, but it would have been completely out of place elsewhere. Children's books need a woman reader or the spell is broken.

Just now, I'm walking through the Audible versions of Oz, trying the sample excerpts to find a good one. Meh. There are lots and lots read by young women, but they don't seem to work, either. You need that rich, mature, woman's voice. You need a mom's voice.

A first edition.

* - I despise identity politics with a passion, but I would argue that there are vocal characteristics to certain groups. Men and women have different voices, blacks and whites have different voices and, sometimes, gays and straights have different voices. It's not that it carries with it a personal judgment, it's that some voices don't work for some things. For example, a black simply must be the voice artist for a reading of Uncle Remus or the whole thing can be dismissed out of hand.

Not San Diego

No, it's Rhode Island during the first snowstorm of the season. It was very pretty.

Cheezburger of the Day

Sadly, we have kids and friends' kids who are exactly like this.

Worrying About Nuclear Global And Warming War

... or something like that.

The Pope, who I as a rabid papist am inclined to support, said in a recent interview that he's worried about global warming climate change* and nuclear war. Whatever. I guess he's opposed to Mr. Mobutu wanting reliable electricity in his African hospital when his wife needs a c-section. Global Warming, you see, is caused by third-world people wanting to do away with filth, starvation and disease, the elimination of which will require the use of energy which spews CO2 into the air.

Oh well. Where Papa Frankie came up with nuclear war, I'm sure I don't know. I think his talking points from the progressives are a bit out of date.

Meanwhile, birthrates in Japan, Europe and America are below replacement, which means Muslims are an ever-increasing percentage of global population. Traditional families, the source of civilization, have been decimated in Europe and America as we pursue pleasure. Porn is completely destabilizing sexual relationships all over the world. I guess those aren't a big deal as they don't involve "global" issues, only the problems of normal people.

I have a dream. Someday, our elite will have something in common with regular, everyday Joes and Janes.

Ha! What a hopeless romantic.

I'd also like a unicorn.

* - Poor Pope Francis is behind the times. He doesn't realize that we've moved on to Climate Change.

It's Over When You Surrender

... like the Brits have done to the Muslims.

A Pakistani Christian woman’s appeal to Britain for asylum has been denied because her arrival in the country may stir civil unrest, HuffPost UK has been told.

Asia Bibi, a Christian farm labourer, was released from prison in Pakistan on Wednesday after being acquitted of blasphemy. She had spent eight years on death row after an argument with a group of Muslim women in June 2009.

The Supreme Court of Pakistan overturned Bibi’s 2010 conviction for “insulting the prophet Mohammed” last week, saying the case against her was based on flimsy evidence.

But her acquittal sparked violent protests led by Islamic religious hardliners, and the government has now agreed to try to stop her leaving the country.

That sounds a lot like the numerous American universities that have surrendered to the mob veto of ANTIFA and social justice warriors in all manner of things.

How hard is it to grow a new spine once yours has eroded away?

The Malibu Fire

... is dropping ash in San Diego, ~150 miles away. Check out the film on the top of our birdbath.

Meanwhile, wife kitteh was absolutely murdered by her allergies yesterday. We suspected smoke from the fires and this confirmed it.

If it's throwing ash down here, it's huge up there. God bless the firefighters and the victims of the blaze. Here in San Diego, we managed to escape 2018 without a major fire, but that will come in time. They always do.

The Manual Doesn't Lie

Usually.

I spent a little time today trying to figure out why I hadn't been able to set the shutter speed when I took my night sky photos a few days ago. The manual said to turn the front dial to adjust the speed. I didn't see a front dial, so I kept turning the back one and nothing happened.

It turns out there's a small front dial on the, err, well, front of the camera. Duhhh. I spun the dial and the shutter speed changed.

No worries, I discovered the other morning that the night sky where I live is not too bad and I might even start with some moon photos just to get the hang of it.

That is, now that I know the front dial is in the front.

You Don't Know What It's Like To Be ... (Blank)

I can't stand that argument. It drives me crazy. It's illogical and marks deep ingratitude. It's ugly and divisive. Until this morning, I couldn't think of the logical fallacy in it. It seemed impervious to debate as whatever you said could be countered with yet more characteristics the left associates with oppression.

I know a blind fellow at work. He's a scientist. I've worked with him on making our web applications more accessible to screen readers. If you've never used a screen reader, it's amazing what it does and what it requires on the part of the consumer. The thing starts at the topmost element in the Document Object Model (DOM) of the web page and reads it to you. Hitting the tab key moves you to the next element. I think ctrl-tab takes you back to the previous one.

Pictures and input elements like forms must have alt text associated with them so the screen reader can tell the blind person what it is. Without it, they can't fill out forms and don't know what the picture is showing to the rest of us.

To use a screen reader, you have to keep a mental map of the web page in your head. Imagine memorizing the map of the DC subway system. And the NY subway system. And the Chicago El and the LA bus system and on and on and on. Each website has a different map and the blind person is picturing the DOM in their heads as they walk through it with the tab key.

Meanwhile, the rest of us just zip around with the mouse and click on funny lolcat memes.

Whenever I hear arguments like, "You don't know what it's like to be black!" or "You don't know what it's like to be a woman!" I want to reply, "You don't know what it's like to be blind!" The obvious reply would be, "Yeah, well, you don't know what it's like to be a blind, black woman!"

That's not the way the thing works, though, is it? The blind dude doesn't live in a world of blind people where he might have some advantages because of his skin color or sex. He lives in the whole world and has to compete with all of us for jobs, respect, social status and mates. It doesn't matter to the blind guy that he doesn't know what it's like to be a black, blind guy because his disadvantage is orders of magnitude worse than skin color or sex, if those even carry with them disadvantages at all, which is debatable.

In fact, if he met a black, blind woman, they'd immediately have a close kinship born of having to learn how to live in the world of the sighted. They'd be able to have deep conversations about screen readers, crosswalk voices and how to set up a bedroom so you don't fall over everything. Heck, they might even fall in love because they finally met someone who understood them.

Meanwhile, in the world of the grievance culture, most of us are sighted, healthy, reasonably attractive and enjoy the fruits of our ancestors' hard work and ingenuity. Life's pretty easy, all things considered. Certainly too easy to walk around telling each other that we don't know what it's like to be an Eskimo lesbian.

Oh yeah? Well, you don't know what it's like to be a short, one-eyed, one-handed, transgendered, lactose-intolerant, vegan pirate!

A First Try At Night Sky Photography

Was both rewarding and frustrating at the same time.

Wife kitteh, who was being a good sport, and I went out to dinner last night and then drove out to Sunrise Highway in the Laguna Mountains so I could play with my Fujifilm X-T10 camera and try to get some night sky photos. The night was moonless and clear and the place has very little light pollution, so everything was set for some good photos.

I spent some time in the afternoon trying to set up the camera properly. I put it in manual mode, set the ISO at 4000 and tried to learn how to manually set the shutter speed. I was able to figure out everything but that last part. No matter what I did, the thing stayed at 1.5 seconds instead of the recommended 15-30 seconds.

Lesson: Don't try reading the manual in the car at night. If you're doing that, you're doing things wrong. However, wife kitteh came home very hungry, so setup time with the camera was cut a bit short as noms were required sooner than expected.

Lesson: Set up all your gear ahead of time and take some shots, even if it's in the middle of the day. I had planned to look through the manual during my lunch break and work through the settings, but, as usual, the workday had other plans and I never got to it. Hence, I was working out the settings at the last minute before we left.

Lesson: If you're in the mindset that the first two or three times you try something new you're going to make a total hash of it, it's all good. I had no expectations other than figuring out what I had done wrong the next day, which is today. When you learn new things, you asymptotically approach competence as you keep trying.

In the end, I was actually happy with a couple of the shots, however they managed to sneak their way into my camera in spite of my best efforts at ignorance. In the end, it was very cold up there and I was a bit unhappy with my inability to set the shutter speed, so I took some shots in random directions to use as teaching aids today. I came away with some nice full sky shots and one or two horizon ones. They're not professional grade, but they look like I meant to do them.

I left these quite large, so I think they're worth a click. In fact, you'll need to click on them to see them properly. In thumbnail mode on the blog, they look like black rectangles. Enlarged, they look like black rectangles with tiny, white dots, which, I'm sure you'll agree, is much better. Enjoy.

On Assignment

Tonight, I'm heading up to the Mount Laguna area to try to take some Milky Way photos. More on that tomorrow.

The Least Important Election Of Our Lifetimes

... was yesterday.

Important stuff

The only thing of significance that was at stake was the restoration of democracy through the continued remaking of the Federal court system. President Trump has done an outstanding job nominating judges who will interpret the law rather than make it. The high profile cases of gay marriage and abortion took the issue out of the hands of the people and handed it to 5 Ivy League creeps in black robes which is the opposite of democracy. We won yesterday. Hooray for us!

Not on the table

The big issues of marriage, debt and sovereignty weren't going to be determined by yesterday's elections because neither side cares about them at all.

The Democrats have become Nazis without ambition. They're fixated on identity groups, particularly racial. For all that, blacks remain an idea to them, not real people with real problems. And the real problem there remains what it has been for decades - the destruction of marriage. No one, black or white, red or blue, was talking about it. We talked a lot about race, but we didn't talk about reality.

We have full employment and peace and we're still blowing through over a trillion dollars of borrowing a year. That's not just unsustainable, that's insane. Republican or Democrat, it doesn't matter. There are no adults in the room when it comes to money so it hardly mattered which way things went.

The Republicans had the legislature for two years and couldn't bring themselves to build the wall. Instead, we got children being separated from their parents, caravans of light infantry heading for the border and a whole lot of hoo-hah about ICE and sanctuary cities. No one really cares to allow Americans to define what it means to be an American, that's a job the legislature wants foreigners to do by migrating at will.

End result

So in terms of significant changes for the nation, the only big deal was the courts and we won that one, handily. We'll have another two years of good Federal judges being confirmed. If Ruth Bader Ginsburg goes to that Big Abortion Mill in the Ground Sky, the two squishy (R) chicks - Murkowski and Collins - can do whatever it is they do instead of standing up for normal Americans during the resultant Supreme Court nomination cage match and it won't matter. I'll take that, considering it's all that was offered.

For now, fiscal responsibility at the Federal level is as dead as this yellowjacket.

How To Make Voting More Rewarding

I voted today and while waiting in the long line of Handmaid's Tale cosplay characters, crossdressers and furries (this is California, you know), I came up with some ideas to improve things.

NEVER

Add a selection to the ballot, up at the top, called NEVER. If you pick that, you don't need to show up any more, it will vote NO on all ballot measures on your behalf from there on out.

Wife kitteh is voting no on everything because she wants the idiots in the legislature to do their jobs. I'm voting no as a kind of parlor game, like hiding Easter eggs from 3-year-olds. How long will it take them to find the obvious solutions? Whee! What fun!

Clickbait Polls

We need to have questions on the ballot like, "Who's your favorite Monkee?" or "Are the Doors the most overrated band of all time?" That would be cool.

By the way, the Doors question would have two responses:

• YES
• I'm high on weed right now

Asking for Help

Jokingly, I tweeted out that I hadn't been following along and had no idea how to vote. I asked for suggestions. Here was my favorite response.

pic.twitter.com/UpnbgC8SdM

— Christine Johnson (@CatholicMomVA) November 6, 2018

Living In The Past

While I was at the general's funeral last week, I spoke with one of his grandchildren who worked with a tribal government that shall remain nameless. She was trying to help them find new sources of revenue, including tourism. She told me that simple tasks were difficult because skilled personnel were so thin on the ground within the tribe. For example, she had great difficulty getting them to give her an invoice for some work they had done. It wasn't that they were being stubborn, it's that they weren't used to doing such things.

We discussed our different experiences with American Indians on reservations. She confirmed what I had long suspected, that most of the talented and motivated young people left the reservation and never came back. The reservation just didn't have anything to offer.

What is the point of clinging to the Old Ways? It's pretty clear that the Old Ways aren't paying off any more. Hanging out on the reservations in New Mexico is a pretty depressing experience. The available jobs are not exciting at all. Casino work must be the best they have to offer and even that isn't breeding a new generation of intellectual and artistic leaders. It all seemed so very confining to me. It's as if the reservations were a prison, physically, mentally and psychically.

Then there's the ferocious problems of substance abuse on the reservations. Why not get loaded when there's not much else to do?

What happens when your reason for existence has vanished into the past?

A Happy Photo

I promise I'll contribute to the acrimony and yelling on the Internet again in the near future. Today, I came across this photo in my gallery and it brought a smile to my face. It's deliciousness in a pre-nom state. I thought it might make you smile, too. Enjoy.

Evictions And The Homeless

Once upon a time, I bought a house so I could scrape the lot and build a custom home on it. The house came with renters, at least one of which was a self-wounding drug addict. It was as sad a story as you can imagine and a sobering reminder of why illegal drugs are illegal. It was a woman who had fled her mother and her husband to run into the arms of drugs. I met both of them, who were desperate to save her. I pray that they eventually did, but having seen that story play out before, I wouldn't bet on it.

In the four months before we bulldozed the place, the renters stayed. We got a total of one month's rent out of them. They knew they didn't have to keep a relationship with us and they were going to have to leave anyway. Their credit ratings and our references for future rentals meant nothing to them, so they simply occupied the house. This being California, there wasn't much we could do. The eviction process is prolonged and expensive for a landlord. In the end, we decided to remain friendly and just let them know when the place was going to be demolished. They left a couple of days in advance of that.

Had they wished, they could have stayed a few more months and thrown a huge wrench in our schedule. If someone lives in your house and claims it as their residence with no other place to go, they are considered tenants in California with all the rights thereof. That means you need to go through the full eviction process to get them out. When you read stories of adults living with their parents and wonder why the parents don't just kick them out of the house, that's part of the reason why.

An eviction process takes months. Just getting to the point where you can file papers is a month. Imagine what it would be like to live under the same roof with someone, particularly one of your children, who knows you dislike them so much that you'd throw them out in the street. If they're desperate and/or addicts, things could get really dicey. If you're elderly, fearing for your safety would be natural and sane.

That's something to consider when you let Junior move back in with you.

Red By A Pixel 3

There are too many things going on right now in Real Life™ to allow for decent blogging, despite lots of topics. Yesterday, we had a bit of a family crisis, so I didn't have the time to knock out anything at all. Today, the best I can offer is a photo from my brand-new Pixel 3.

I really like the phone. It's a ton faster than my Galaxy S7 was, which, after the most recent update, we struggling to navigate using Google Maps. Twitter was a horror of slothfulness. The new Pixel 3 is greased lightning.

The camera, which is supposed to be the biggest selling point of the phone, doesn't disappoint. I took some outstanding family photos yesterday, but I don't want to share those here. This morning, I shot some bougainvillea flowers outside my office. Here's a section of one of those photos. I love the way the veins on the flowers leap out at you. I left it large, so it might be worth a click. Enjoy!

God Save Us From Feminist Control Freaks

This morning, while drinking my coffee and perusing Twitter, I came across the Jordan Peterson video linked below. In it, a closed-minded feminist interrogates the good professor and, predictably, gets massacred. It was all good fun. Two things jumped out at me.

First was the aforementioned closed-mindedness. The woman is younger, has read less, experienced less and achieved less. Even if you disagree with Jordan, you might take the interview as a chance to learn something. When she launches at him with some pre-programmed feminist talking point and he dunks on her like LeBron against a high school team, she doesn't stop to inspect her thoughts and ask follow-ups that any curious person interviewing a genius might, were she trying to learn. Instead she's trying to score off him. Sigh.

The second, and more important point, was the notion of the tyrannical coercion of equality-of-outcome feminism. Part of the discussion was about grade-school teachers. Only about 15% of them are men. The feminist said we needed more men as teachers so the numbers would be closer to equal.

What if other men don't want to do it? What if 15% is the number because that's all we've got in the way of men desiring to be teachers? Why is it anyone else's business to push more men to be teachers or more women to be plumbers? Why do the feminists' OCD about ratios overrule an individual's goals and dreams? My response would have been, "Who are you to tell these men what they should be doing? Bug off, you control freak."

Anyway, here's the video. It's super long. I converted it to MP3 and listened to about 40 minutes on my commute this morning until I got tired of it and turned it off. Jordan was great, as usual, but she became tiresome and as much fun as it is to listen to Jordan rip someone to shreds, it gets old after a while.

Anchor Babies And Trump

Many moons ago*, when my first son was born, the maternity ward where he entered the world was full of illegal aliens having anchor babies. More than half of the ward were illegals and the place was relatively close to capacity. It was shocking. Before that, I'd had no idea how prevalent that was. That was more than 20 years ago, so who knows what the situation is like today for hospitals within 100 miles of the border.

When President Trump said he was going to put an end to that, it made me pretty happy. Those families were clearly gaming the system and openly trying to take benefits from Americans. Yeah, I'm happy to be full of love for mamas and babies, but that sort of cheating is too much to take.

* - I use the Native American term of speech in case Elizabeth Warren is reading this.

Notes From A West Virginia Drive Through

Late last week, I spent a day driving through parts of West Virginia. Starting from Winchester, Virginia, I drove across to the mines near Grafton, down to Elkins along the Blue Ridge Mountains and then back across the mountains into Virginia.

West Virginia might be the strangest state I have ever visited. What struck me the most was the wild variations in houses. You'd drive by a couple that were in good shape and then you'd see one or two that were complete disasters.

Ones like the lower photo were common enough. They looked like no one could possibly live there, but then there would be a vehicle parked outside. One of them had a quarter of its roof caved in, like a tree fell on it and the residents never repaired it.

I tried to puzzle out what had happened. The only thing that made sense was that the derelict houses were markers of opiate or alcohol addictions. They must have been in good shape at one time, but over the years, they had been allowed to decay. You'd do that if you were continually spaced out on dope or booze.

I stopped by a couple of general stores, too. There were no Walmarts or Home Depots along my path, so the locals used general stores to get hunting, fishing and hardware supplies. There was typically a diner included. The customers smoked and chewed and looked pretty weathered. I decided, in my total ignorance of the place, that West Virginia was the "Why not?" state. It's a rough place that has suffered economically lately, particularly under Obama. Life expectancies might not be that high, so why not smoke, chew, drink or whatever? It's not like life has a whole lot of sophisticated pleasures for you.

Coming back into Virginia, I stopped for gas at a suburban strip mall about 45 minutes in from the West Virginia border. There was a row of Tesla charging stations, many with cars attached. The contrast in wealth was shocking. It was like a completely different planet.

Apology: Sorry for the poor photo quality. I took these through the windows of the car as I drove. I'm a fan of derelict houses and boats, but I always feel awkward getting out of the car for a photo.

I'm A Psychic Shingles Separatist

... because people with psychic shingles (PS) should be kept as far away as possible from the rest of us so we can relax and live a normal life should have their own homeland.

Megyn Kelly said something or another about dressing up as Aretha Franklin for Halloween. On Halloween, it's fun to wear a costume representing someone you love and respect, unless dressing as a creature that devours human flesh is your bag.  I'm pretty sure Megyn was putting Aretha in the former category, but I could be wrong.

Upon hearing that Megyn was suggesting that non-blacks dress in costume as a black for Halloween, people with psychic shingles do what they always do, which is react in spasms of outrage and fury. You see, psychic shingles is just like normal shingles. It makes it incredibly painful to come in contact with anything. In the case of normal shingles, that's something physical. In the case of psychic shingles, that's anything which you can turn into an outrage.

When I saw people suffering from PS on Twitter screeching about how IT WAS NEVER OK for a non-black to dress as a black for Halloween or any other time for that matter, I didn't feel sympathy for their position, I felt like I wanted to take steps to never interact with any of these crazies ever again. That's when I came up with the idea for PS Separatism or PSS.

I'd be perfectly happy to give up a state, say, California or Oregon, and hand it over to the PSS folks. Since CA and OR are already full of PSS sufferers, it would make the transition into a new country easier.

Just think of it. All of the diversity studies teachers and students, all of the ANITFA goons, all of the white nationalists could have their own country. Which would resemble some level of Dante's Inferno, but, hey, they live like that now anyway, so what's the big deal? The rest of us could go back to letting our kids dress as whatever they wanted on Halloween while we watch spooky movies on TV and drink rum and cokes while handing out ever-increasing amounts of candy to the little rodents who came to our doors to trick or treat.

Sigh. That would be heaven.

The famous painting, Jesus with the Trick-or-Treaters. The little girl closest to Jesus is actually a Polish chick in blackface dressed as Aretha Franklin. The young man on the right is an Angolan dude in whiteface dressed as Tom Sawyer.

Somewhere in PSSland, the residents are having group aneurysms.

A General's Funeral

I was in DC for the past few days to represent the family for the burial of an old friend. He'd been a general in the Army and was laid to rest at Arlington. I know I've been to Arlington before as I spent 7 years of my childhood in Virginia, but I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like this.

In the photo below, note the riderless horse. The horse follows that caisson carrying the flag-draped casket, symbolizing the general's trusty steed, from back in the days when generals rode horses.

It was beautiful, in a traditional way. Thank God for the military where traditions live on.

West Virginia Stream

My best photos from yesterday's drive through West Virginia are locked on my Nikon Coolpix's memory card which can be read by the camera, but not by my laptop. I could get them off the camera, but it uses an old school USB cable which I don't have with me, so I'll have to share them when I get back home. Oh well.

In the meantime, here's a stream that I thought was worth a shot. Enjoy!

More Religion, Less Compassion

... is what I'm seeing in regards to the illegal immigrant invasion force making its way through Mexico right now. There was a tweet I was going to use to illustrate this, but it was deleted. Fortunately, the faith community of the progressives is very strong, so it took me less than 5 minutes to find a replacement. Here you go.

Unfortunately, tired, poor, huddled masses only referred to white people. #MigrantCaravan #Immigration pic.twitter.com/FBzF6QkhT4

— Dean Snyder (@DeanSnyder1) October 25, 2018

Race paranoia trumps compassion for compassion for American workers.

In the old days, progressives cared deeply for the working poor and unemployed, low-skilled Americans. Now, with a couple of battalions of migrant workers on the way who will drive down the wages of said Americans, the working poor are discarded in favor of the holiness that comes from racial diversity or whatever you want to call the cult of racialism these days.

Here's another good one.

"Christians in modernity are highly conscious of their declining social status as the power and prestige of the church declines. Their rage increasingly fuels religious ethnocentrism in the West." @CC_brittain on 'white-rage' and the #MigrantCaravan https://t.co/KOZyKbmgfx pic.twitter.com/YDkdrPUrDB

— ABC Religion&Ethics (@ABCReligion) October 25, 2018

Appropriately, it's on some kind of religious analysis site.

Meanwhile, the United States is just about the least racist country in the world.

From this WaPo article.

So the preening on the part of the diversity-mad progs is nothing but angels dancing on the heads of pins while the economics of illegal immigration spells hardship and poverty for unskilled Americans.

Oh well. No price is too high to pay for the salvation that comes from multiculturalism.

It's Like A Hugh Grant Movie

I'm flying to DC for the funeral of my father's best friend today. In the security line, I ran into a woman who was flying back east to meet her high school sweetheart from 50 years ago.

They're both widowed, so he used his skills from a career in Naval Intelligence to track her down. 500 emails and a ton of phone calls later, they're going to meet for the first time in 50 years.

Is that the sweetest thing you've heard in a long time or what?

Yes, She Felt The Pea

The poor thing looks so uncomfortable!

What Will You Do With Your Free Time

... when the migrants arrive to take your place?

For Republicans and their business donors, these are replacement workers, who will accept half or a quarter of your pay if you're an unskilled worker. Benefits? Ha! No need for those, either.

For Democrats, they are replacement voters who won't demand self-governance and who will happily cede their power to the morally superior elite who will dishonestly promise to take care of them.

In either case, our work here is done.

Me, I'm going to develop new recipes for beans and rice. #WINNING

Diversity Is Evil

Diversity of thought, that is.

Pressed for time today, so this will be succinct.

Rod Dreher posted a letter the other day from my bishop's "Listening Tour" wherein Bishop McElroy has visited a couple of churches in his diocese to allow the unwashed masses to speak with him about the Church's abuse scandal. The first one turned into a riot as people blew up at him and since then, the events have been scripted like a straight jacket.

It was clear from the onset that the listening session was not a listening session but rather a controlled public relations tour. Tables were set up with about 8 per table and a facilitator. The facilitator was tasked to jot down one question from the table to ask the Bishop. A moderator who held the microphone to the facilitator’s mouth, ready to pull it away if need be, walked from table to table so we could ask our question. Most people complied with this arrangement which didn’t give the laity any chance to tell the Bishop what they thought or what they thought should be done as it was staged as a Q&A where we ask then listen.

A few more data points.

• Advertising for the Gosnell movie was repeatedly blocked by Facebook.
• Conservative Twitter accounts get blocked or banned with regularity. The latest one was Gay Patriot.
• All of the late night comics have the exact same political and social views.
• YouTube regular demonetizes Prager University videos.

I could go on, but you get the picture. If you don't hew the orthodox line with regards to politics and society, you will be silenced. The elites don't need nor want to hear your views.

This makes sense if you see it as a religious conflict. Your views aren't just wrong in their eyes, they're evil because they're wrong. You can't argue with them because they're not going to listen to you and they will do their best to make sure that others don't hear your evil opinions. Gaia forbid that your heresies might spread! They must evangelize their views and suppress yours to spread love, compassion and acceptance across the country. You represent hate, greed and bigotry.

Even to the elites in the Catholic Church, you are evil. Shut up.

Now, NPC memes are being deleted and banned from Twitter.

Gosnell Movie Review

I ought to get a ton of hits on this one as no one in the mainstream media is reviewing the film and therein lies one of the biggest horrors of the movie.

If you don't know the story, Kermit Gosnell was an abortionist operating in Philly. For decades, he ran a filthy, illegal, chop shop where he killed hundreds of babies and at least one woman as well. Like the Muslim rape gangs in England, he was able to escape punishment for many years because the authorities refused to police him the way they police the rest of us. Because of the nature of his business - abortion - Kermit Gosnell was left to wreak havoc with the full knowledge of the government and press.

The movie tells the tale deftly, which is unusual for "Christian" movies. Gosnell isn't really a Christian movie, it's much more of a crime drama and has extensive courtroom scenes. The acting is first-rate and the script, written by my man Andrew Klavan, packs a punch. And punches there are.

I can't recall the last movie that hit me so hard, emotionally. It's not maudlin and it doesn't try to jerk tears, but the story can't help but do it. There were several aspects of the thing that were mind-blowing, but, in the interest of not giving away too much and space on this blog, I'll focus on one.

Part of the horror of the movie is the sickening realization of how much the MSM lies to us. I'm staunchly pro-life and I was shocked at how much I had ingested from the popular culture about the pro-choice position, which is orthodoxy for the MSM. Internally, I had reduced abortion to a set of logical arguments. This movie rips the veil of indirection and clinical detachment off and forces you to look at the reality of abortion, even those performed in clean, professional establishments.

That's gut-wrenching in the way, if not the scale, of the Germans forced to tour the camps after WW II ended. In our hearts, we know something horrible is happening, but, with the conscious help of the MSM, we've been able to build walls of opacity between our minds and reality.

Gosnell tears down those walls and gives us a clear look at what really happens in abortion clinics. Powerful, powerful stuff. No wonder the MSM and the progressives have tried to suppress the movie.

Go see it.

Dirty Dishes

... from last weekend's men's retreat. It's my job to clean them.

This is only marginally worse than what my house looks like when wife kitteh is gone. Which she is right now. She's working them women's retreat weekend.

Oddly enough, I do the dishes about half the time at home, but when she's gone, the place falls to ruin in no time at all.

Elizabeth Warren Joins The Editorial Staff Of Der Sturmer

When you think about it, Elizabeth Warren has spent years telling us all a family story made from whole cloth to stir up racial paranoia for political gain so she and her cronies can accumulate more power in the central government and control an ever greater portion of our lives.

Hmm. Does that sound familiar?

If you've spent your time more wisely than those who watch Elizabeth Warren interviews and don't know the story, here it is.

Her mom and dad got engaged. Allegedly, mom was part Cherokee and part Delaware. His parents, being white racists from Oklahoma, forbade the marriage and so her parents had to hit the trail. Now we come to find out, via a DNA test, that Liz is, at best, 6 generations removed from any Indian blood. It could be as many as 10 generations.

Since the test can't determine which side the genes came from, it's a coin toss for her mom having any Indian heritage at all. Assuming she wins the toss and the DNA comes from the closest possible ancestor, it was her mother's great-great-great-grandprogenitor*.

I don't know about you, but there's not been a whole lot passed down from my grandparents, much less three generations farther back up the tree. I've heard a few stories about my maternal great-grandmother, but that's it. Absolutely zero going back any farther.

On my dad's side, one of his sisters did an extensive genealogy, but even that only goes back 5 generations. It's simply impossible that Elizabeth Warren's father's family could have sensed anything other than a predilection to produce race-crazed children. There's no way they thought she was even vaguely Cherokee because she wasn't.

So now we have a sitting US senator lying to whip up racial fears and most of the news media supporting it. No, that's not a problem. Not at all.

The new Nuremberg Race Laws Chart.

* - Here in California, we don't use cis-normative terms like grandmother and grandfather.

Real Oppression Is The Kind You Can't Escape

We hear a lot about privilege and oppression these days, but how many people are really oppressed? If your boss mistreats you because he's a racist, a sexist or a homophobe, you can always get another job. Not all bosses are like that and if you make an effort, you can eventually find somewhere to work that isn't so unpleasant.

How about if you're a really short man? What if you're 5' 2" tall? Girls like taller men, so you're at an extreme disadvantage while dating. What if you're a really tall woman, like 6' 3"? Guys like shorter girls. Wherever you go, you can't get away from your height, it follows you relentlessly.

What if you have an IQ of 80 or less or a severe learning disability? Where do you go to get a college degree? Nowhere, that's where. Your mental acuity goes where you go. You can't escape it.

The people of East Germany couldn't go somewhere less oppressive, either. Guard towers, barbed wire, walls and machine guns made sure of that. Even the people of Cuba were less oppressed than the East Germans. There was no escape from their fate.

What if our standard classifications of the population are all wrong? What if skin color, sex and sexual orientation are two or three orders of magnitude less important than things like health, attractiveness, intelligence and a strong will?

Maybe we're discussing the wrong things.

At work, there's a fellow who's blind. He works on a computer most of the day. My team had to make sure our sites were accessible to him, so we tried out a screen reader. Good God, what a chore to use! Talk about oppressive! You had to keep a map of each site in your head, like a decision tree as you tabbed through the thing. No matter where the guy goes, too, he's still blind.

Even The Nazis Wouldn't Have Considered Elizabeth Warren An Indian

When it comes to racial classification, I always turn to those race-obsessed, highly-educated, scientific socialists, the Nazis. Germany was a first-world country with a literate populace and top-notch schools including some of the best philosophers of their era. Well, until a bunch of them bailed out to escape der Führer, but, hey, they left behind a strong foundation of knowledge. Especially when it came to race.

Elizabeth Warren, heap-big Cherokee*, is parading around her DNA tests which the slavering MSM is claiming proves her to be an Indian. Hold on one sixty-fourth of a moon there, squaw. The Nazis would disagree.

Sadly, Elizabeth Warren still isn't an American Indian, even under this schema.

If I read this chart from the Nuremberg Race laws correctly, it only goes back three generations. Fauxcahontas' DNA tests say that at best, she would have to go back six generations to find an Indian and that might have been a Shawnee, with whom the Cherokee didn't always see eye-to-eye, to put it mildly.

Assuming this was an 8 1/2 x 11 (2.75 horizontal inches per ancestor dot) chart, made for handing out to members of the Volk, curious to see if they should start packing their bags for the camps, then a chart with a similar font size would have been about 15' by 12' in order to include the layer at which Elizabeth Warren would have been considered an Indian. The Nazis could have handed those out as linoleum patterns as they would have been larger than the average room in a German house.

As the progressives these days are basically Nazis without ambition, if she wins the presidency, we could very well see racial-classification-as-flooring sold at Home Depot. After all, when fascists take power, every big business wants to cozy up to the rulers.

Bonus Tidbit: On the lower end, Warren could be as little as 1/1024th redskin. A Nuremberg racial chart at that level would cover three quarters of a football field.

* - The Cherokees disagree and are telling her, "Beat it, paleface. You're not one of us." Then again, what do the Cherokee know about being Cherokee anyway?

San Diego Sailboats

I shot this one today while waiting for an appointment to start. I left the image a big large, so it could be worth a click.

Enjoy!

Jambalaya For 120

With a lot of loving help from my friends, I made Jambalaya for 120 men last night. It's quite different cooking for a crowd like that. I thought we had it all worked out, but there was one thing that surprised me.

Stirring a huge pot of Jambalaya is impossible. We could turn it over a little bit, but really stirring it after we added the rice couldn't be done. Once the rice began to swell, you could forget about doing much of anything with it.

If It's Good Enough For Shakespeare, It's Good Enough For Luca Pacioli

Luca is the dude what came up with double entry bookkeeping.

I'm working a men's retreat this weekend so I'm having to blog from my phone. These are just some thoughts I had after yesterday's post on evolution and sexual relationships.

We all know that Shakespeare is evil. He is a dead, white man. That's why we need to stop reading his works and take down pictures and statues of him. Why stop there? Why not extend that to other disciplines?

Luca Pacioli developed the foundational concepts of accounting in the year 1494. I would bet there wasn't a whole lot of social justice in 1494. In fact, it's a good bet that Luca was a member of the oppressor class. He needs to go. And so do his works.

I suggest that from now on accounting classes that derive anything from his works have all of their content removed. Students should create their own accounting systems from scratch to make sure it isn't tainted by white supremacy.

If we're going to do this thing, let's do it right.

Enrolling Baboons In Diversity Studies

... is what we should have done hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Or maybe bonobos. Or is it chimpanzees? I forget which one is our closest genetic relative.

I heard a sermon from our priest the other Sunday that perfectly encapsulated the elite, modern way of thinking about sexual relationships from the past. In the old days, you see, women had no power and were considered the property of men. They had no choice in marriage, either. Or so it's claimed.

The former is true, but the latter depended on the location and era. As I recall, in England in the Middle Ages, women could choose who they married, provided they weren't constrained by the political necessities of royalty where marriage bound treaties. In any case, what did you expect from a species evolving from creatures not known for getting positive, formal consent before proceeding along the path of behaviors that led to mating?

Evolutionary biology, which was a science last time I checked and therefore is governed by objective reality and logical thought, has concluded that in order to fulfill their biological imperative to propagate their genetic code through time, males will want to mate with as many females as possible. That's just the way it is. To get control of this impulse, marriage was created to give males pride of ownership and a desire to associate themselves with particular women and children.

Baboons don't do this, you see. Men do. Now. But not always, if evolution is to be believed.

You see, if evolution is correct, then humans had to go from indiscriminate spreaders of seed to modern, male feminists in steps. It didn't happen all at once. Our priest, who talked mockingly of societies that saw women as male property, was just making fun of a necessary intermediate step in getting to modern soy boys.

Therein lies the problem. If we saw the past through the lens of science, evolutionary biology to be precise, then we'd hate our ancestors a good deal less. They were making their way along a tortuous and uncertain path from baboons to Social Justice Warriors. Science would suggest that we would not transform from brutal primates to SJWs instantly, there would be steps.

Ah, but science is a product of white, male, Enlightenment thinking! That's wrong, you see. We've thrown that out and now know that progressive, post-modernism is the only right way to think. With progressive post-modernism, we can indulge in magical thought and condemn our predecessors for not having had the wisdom to behave like gender studies graduates from 2018, the hopelessly ignorant bigots!

So preach on, good Padre! Make all the fun you want of those swine from the past. It's OK to hate them because there's no need for logical thought or objective reality. Those are things of the past and are only useful to religious zealots like Catholics.

...

Uh oh.

Of course, had baboons instantly evolved into male feminists, they'd have stopped breeding and none of us would be here today.
Oh well, that would have been a small price to pay for moral superiority, don't you think?

Never Shop For Food When You're Hungry!

... or you might go crazy like I did. Check out my shopping cart from Tuesday. Note that there are only two of us at home.

MOAR MEAT!

In all seriousness, I went to Food 4 Less, my favorite grocery store and a hangout for the homeless that live along the San Diego River, and bought about 15 pounds of meat to make Louisiana Brown Stock. That turned out well, but throwing away that much boiled meat as detritus from the operation bothers me. I'm going to see if I can turn it into a meat spread for sandwiches.

Unquestioned Catholic Incompetence

I'm involved in Cursillo, a Catholic movement that causes you to sing a lot, cook good food and drink at a pub on Friday nights.

Well, there's more to it than that, but those are the parts that jump out at me.I mean, some Cursillistas work in the prisons, others help the homeless and some work with the mentally ill, but really, it's all about going to the pub. Oh, and we pray and read and try live more Christian lives, too. Whatever.

In any case, there are times where we offer up things for which we'd like the group to pray. Invariably, someone will ask us to pray for our children who have left the faith. Up until now, it didn't occur to me that this was anything unusual. It happens to a lot of us. The modern, secular world is a jealous god and will do its best to take believers of other faiths for its own.

I pride myself at having some amount of understanding of sales and marketing, but I never applied it to this problem.

How in the world could an organization manage to lose customers when:

• They enter as willing buyers of your product,
• They have coaches at their houses urging them to buy your product,
• You have multiple, winning sales pitches for your product and
• There are plenty of testimonials and recommendations for your product in their community?

In other words, our kids spend 8, 12 and sometimes 16 years in Catholic education and come out the other end as ... agnostics, atheists or fallen-away Catholics. Just how terrible at your job would you have to be to produce that given all of those advantages?

Not to worry, though. The US Council of Catholic Bishops is on the job. Don't question them, either. They're bishops, don't you know.

Here's our idiot, Bishop McElroy, giving a secular, political speech for open borders while the laity of his diocese mourn their children leaving the Church after 8-16 years of almost daily instruction in the bishop's schools.

That's some serious incompetence right there.

Norwegian Advertising

... would be more effective than what I'm seeing from some progressives on Twitter.

I'm not sure what that is selling*, but if it makes me like the fat dude with the auto-docking boat, I'll take three of them.

Meanwhile, the progs are writing tweets that start with "Fellow white women..." The tweets urge 'white women' to vote against Trump in the primaries. They read like something from another planet. If they understood anything at all, anything about the vast majority of conservatives in 2018, they'd know that adding any racial identity group in their pitch is pure poison.

On YouTube, you can find dozens of Q&A sessions from talks by Dennis Prager, Ben Shapiro or any of the other conservative luminaries and in the ones about race, the biggest applause lines, by far, are the calls for a color-blind society.

Talk about not knowing your audience!

* - OK, I know what it's selling, but I liked that turn of phrase too much not to use it.

Happy Indigenous Peoples Day!

In celebration, I plan to live like an indigenous person today. That is, I will forgo all dental care and force my wife to tend the children and raise crops while I go romp in the forest with my buddies, hunting for whatever it is I can find in the brown, dead hills of San Diego in October.

I figure I'll come home with a handful of lizards.

No matter, what's important is throwing away Euro-Christian hegemonic thingamabobs and embracing the purity and goodness of indigenous peoples. With that in mind, I will also engage in wars of conquest with my neighbors in the hopes of capturing slaves or at least raiding their houses for goodies.

Since I'm not a total purist, I won't attempt to capture their animals. The dogs next door are horrible creatures and I have no interest in bringing them into my house. Instead, I will put them to the sword. Err, I will put them to the rock lashed to the end of a stick with some vines. If I can find any vines, which I probably can't, given the local vegetation. I guess I'll just have to put them to the rock held in my hand.

Eww. That's pretty gross. Best not to think of that.

Speaking of things not to think of, I've been reading, on and off, this noble tome.

It's quite good. I highly recommend it.

That aside, it points out that the indigenous peoples lacked the ability to build POW camps. That meant taking prisoners was not just a waste of time, but an actual disadvantage due to the manpower required to keep control over the captured enemy warriors.

I'll leave it to your imagination to picture what our cul-de-sac will look like by the end of the day.

Have a great Indigenous Peoples Day! I hope you survive it.

I Believe Some Women

... love, love, LOVE being drama queens, even when it makes no sense at all.

Dig this tweet from Kirsten Powers. Kirsten Powers of USA Today and CNN. The 294,000-followers-on-Twitter Kirsten Powers.

I have a dream—that one day I will be able to say more than two sentences without some conservative man interrupting me and yelling at me and twisting my words.

— Kirsten Powers (@KirstenPowers) October 6, 2018

YOU MEN DON'T ALLOW HER TO SAY MORE THAN TWO SENTENCES! YOU'RE TRYING TO SUPPRESS HER! SHE WILL BE SILENT NO MORE! WHAT DO YOU THINK THIS IS, THE HANDMAID'S TALE?

I don't know if it's possible to be less self-aware. The chick's got gigs at two national media outlets and more Twitter followers than Dayton, Ohio has people and that by a factor of two. Looking it up, she's got more followers than Orlando, Florida has people.

STOP SILENCING HER, YOU MISOGYNISTS!

Well, I guess it just goes to show you how powerful the patriarchy is.

Kirsten Powers as she sees herself.

A World Where The Red Pill Makes Sense

... is not a world I want. Dig this.

Amy Schumer and Emily Ratajkowski leading the protest against Brett Kavanaugh. Senator Heidi Heitkamp putting her career at risk by vowing to vote against him. Women are taking over. It's past due. They won't be stopped. I would advise my fellow men to get out of their way.

— Palmer Report (@PalmerReport) October 4, 2018

As the progs have fallen over themselves, culturally trying to stab a good man to death like he was Julius Caesar in the Curia of Pompey, I've wondered what effect this is having on normal men and women, specifically normal, unmarried men and women.

Bill Palmer, whose tweet I embedded above, is symptomatic of progressive men, Vichy males who wriggle in pleasure as they vie to see which can attack manhood and collaborate with the crazed feminists the fastest. Meanwhile, normal young men are watching this and taking note. The personal is now political, so relationships have become a vicious power struggle and good, accomplished men are being torn to pieces right in front of them.

You'd be an idiot not to take the red pill in a world like that.

In case you didn't know, taking the red pill is where a man approaches sexual relationships in a predatory manner, learning as much as he can about women's vulnerabilities so he can ruthlessly exploit them to gain power and extract as much sex from the relationship as he can. If the feminists are going to fight to the death to ruin Brett Kavanaugh and the leaders of our culture are going to collaborate with them, the red pill is the only sensible choice.

Feminists want a fight and the red pill males are happy to give it to them. So the two sides launch all-out war and the casualties are normal men and women. Love, softness, kindness, protectiveness, nurturing - none of that enters into the vocabulary of either of the combatants. Anyone who tries to suggest that those should be our goals is screamed down by the warriors. It's all about raw power and dominance. Real love isn't about dominance it's about mutual surrender. "Well, screw that! We won't surrender to you any more!" is the war cry from both sides.

So what does a young man or young woman do? Do you try to cling to romantic notions of how to love while everything in the media is screaming at you to join the fight? It must be like trying to avoid enlisting after Pearl Harbor. "What's wrong with you? Didn't you see what the Japs Brett Kavanaugh did to us her? If you don't help the war effort, you're on their side!" Taking the red pill and learning how to exploit the enemy, err, women, just makes sense as good men are destroyed right in front of you.

In all of this, have you seen anyone defending traditional romance? I haven't. Sad. Instead, we get calls for total war from our cultural leaders.

Well, for one generation, at least. After that, things get a bit murky.

This Must Be Post-Modernist Feminism

... because it makes no sense at all in real life.

Can you imagine a high school girl telling her boyfriend that he needs to believe all the other girls in high school? My God, that's like trying to keep the ants away by pouring sugar all around you. Utter suicide, particularly if he's any kind of catch. They'd steal him from her just to prove they could.

Alabama Is Lost To The Democrats

I don't mean the state, I mean the singing group.

Read these lyrics from their hit, Dixieland Delight, with the Kavanaugh accusations in mind.

Rolling down a backwoods Tennessee bighway
One arm on the wheel
Holding my lover with the other
A sweet, soft, Southern thrill
Worked hard all week
Got a little jingle
On a Tennessee Saturday night
Couldn't feel better
I'm together with my dixieland delight
Spend my dollar
Parked in a holler 'neath the mountain moonlight
Holdin' her up tight
Make a little lovin'
A little turtle dovin' on a Mason Dixon night
It's my life
Oh so right
My dixieland delight

It's a song about the natural affection between a man and a woman - his strength and her softness, his passion and her happiness. He works hard for her and she gives his life meaning.

YOU'RE FULL OF HATE IF THAT'S WHAT YOU THINK! HE'S A RAPIST, FULL OF TOXIC MASCULINITY! HE MUST SHUT UP AND BELIEVE ALL WOMEN!

The music video for the song is shown below and I can't even imagine how triggering it is for a Democrat.

• Everyone is white
• Even worse, they are Southern whites
• On Mason Dixon nights, these guys reach for their sheets and nooses, no doubt
• The title is a dead giveaway about their racism
• Everyone is heterosexual
• The women are not in STEM fields and some of them are in farm fields
• The women are wearing dresses and skirts, showing submission to the male patriarchy
• The women's truths are not being heard
• The dozens of women these men have assaulted are not being heard. In fact, they're invisible!
• At 2:04, the man attacks the woman from behind, surprising and overpowering her
• It's a good bet that none of the men have been to sensitivity or diversity training
• The men are driving old trucks, spewing pollution into the air
• Watch it all the way to the end to see the massive carbon footprint of loads of phallocentric old cars (all driven by men, white men)

I could go on and on, but you get the picture. Until the band shows that happiness and love between men and women can only be based on an understanding of the problematic nature of masculinity, the patriarchy and white oppression, Democrats will never be satisfied with the music of Alabama.

Hmm. I could just shorten that to Democrats will never be satisfied with the music of Alabama and be done with it.

On The March

I took the Catican Guards out on maneuvers the other day and got this shot, which I really like. In case you're wondering, Lily, the third Guard, is walking right behind me.

Anyway, I like the curve of the road, the gray-blue of the sky and the feeling that this is infantry on the march.

I left it a bit large, so it might be worth a click. Enjoy!

Mother Teresa, USMC

Growing up, I had the odd health problem or two which prevented me from joining the military. Had I been able to do so, I probably would have gone for the Marines because that seems like the toughest of the lot. I would have wanted something difficult.

As a soul-refresher, I'm listening to Malcolm Muggeridge's book on Mother Teresa, Something Beautiful for God. There is so much to take from it, but I wanted to focus on one thing.

Malcolm asks her what most of us would ask. "What on Earth made you choose a life in the slums of Calcutta? What is drawing other young women to that life?" Her response is the Marine recruit's response. "I wanted to do something difficult and something with purpose." The young women who joined and still join her order wanted the same thing.

For some people, the desire to constantly prove yourself, to continually strive against long odds is a real draw. Crazy, man.

St. Mother Teresa. A seriously tough broad.

I Forgot How To Swim

I've done nothing but diving and snorkeling for so long that I forgot how to swim.

I joined a gym recently and this morning I went to swim laps in their pool. I got in the pool, put on my goggles, put my face in the water and began to swim. Then I breathed.

Note that there was no head action between "put my face in the water" and "breathed." I stopped, stood up and coughed. Then I did it again. It took me a moment to realize what was happening. It was so natural to simply breathe while looking down that the entire swim was awkward and weird. I did a couple of laps and then bailed on that and went and used one of the stationary bikes.

Sigh. What a maroon!