Our adventureous adventure.

Last week, Amy and I bought a 25-foot travel trailer. The plan was to take the thing to Arkansas for Christmas, packing bed, pillow, whisky, and even the cats. We’ve spent every spare minute over the last 5 days getting the thing set-up and tested in our back yard.

So, today is the day we begin. We’d planned to be on the road by now, but unfortunately our adventure started before it began.

Whilst turning the trailer around in our yard, I managed to get the bugger stuck in the mud created during the last two days of rain. It took an hour and a half, plus an interstitial trip to Walmart for hydraulic jacks, but we freed the truck. For dramatic effect, I am covered in mud from head to toe. Fortunately for me, the intrepid Mr. Shiver is on the way to assist with the realignment and subsequent removal of the trailer with his newer (and more suited for off-roading) truck. Hopefully this will be the easy part. The hard part will be me being stuck in Arkansas for Christmas.

Calling Things What They Are

The War on Terror.
The War Against Militant Islam.
The Current Struggle in the Middle East.

We didn’t start this war, so I don’t think it fair that we should name it. These names shift the focus away from the aggressors, and may make the implication that this is “our” war. It is not.

The battles in which we are currently engaged are responses to the Jihad declared against us. I do not think that the correct term for “retaliation to Jihad” is “crusade,” no matter how easy it may be to so name it. I propose that we call this conflict by the same name that our enemies call it; the Jihad. Doing so shifts ownership of the blame for this whole affair back to the Jihadis that started it.

Redactor’s Law of Multitasking

1. Any device that was designed to perform more than two functions will not perform any of those functions well, and will almost invariably perform all of the functions it was designed to do very poorly indeed.
2. A device may be used or adapted to perform an unlimited number of functions, provided that:
   • It was not designed to perform more than two different functions.
   • The adapted functionality comes as a shock or surprise to the device’s original inventor.

An Open Letter,

To the old-timer who sat in front of me during the Vox Angelica performance in Huntsville last Friday night. For the purpose of his identification, this gentleman was tall, wore a yellow sweater-vest, his glasses were on a lanyard, he has a daughter called “Summer,” and was talking to a couple who seemed to be in town from Alaska. During the intermission, he spoke with another gentleman who seemed to be French. He looked and comported himself like a common socialist academic.

Dear Sir,

Thank you for your tutelage. Were it not for your excellent commentary, both during the performance and intermission, my wife and I would have had the poor taste to enjoy the performance. The trouble is that neither of us normally ingest very much choral music of the sort performed that night. In fact, the only reason we had attended in the first place was that one of the performers is a colleague of my wife.

We were noticeably confused, through our lack of education and refinement, by what sounded to us to be an excellent presentation of Modern English carols. We did not even understand, in our ignorance, that we were supposed to execrate the concept of the Modern English carol. Now that we have been exposed to them, we may condemn them with our noses held high! Though they sounded quite nice, we were not fooled!

We also were not fooled by the enjoyment portrayed by the performers. They are performers after all, and their seeming satisfaction with a job well-done was no doubt some sort of subtle subplot designed to draw attention away from that fetid heap of a concert.

When the performance was over, we though it was not a second too soon. We, like you, were wroth with the audience for having the pluck to applaud, let alone stand. However, on the matter of the standing ovation, I pointed out to my wife that it was more likely a function of being able to get out of those horrid pews than to show any affection to the performers.

My wife and I had never attended a Vox Angelica performance before. With any luck, we shall seek you out at next year’s performance as well, so as to continue the lesson of putting one’s head up one’s arse in public settings that you taught so well this time around.

Sincerely,

The Editor

The holiday season is upon us.

I made my annual trip to the mall today. In fact I made it to both malls in Huntsville. I don’t need to execrate the mall for being a miserable place. It usually is, but sometimes it has a novel aspect.

Today, I purchased a paltry present for my pretty partner. It was exactly what I was looking for, and it appeared to be the last one available in town. I then proceeded to pound the pavement but a few steps to the gift wrapping establishment, hastily molded in the middle of the mall. Much to my surprise, the place was manned entirely by professional hockey players from the local club. I’d like to thank a Mr. Monkman of the Huntsville Havoc for doing a fine job. My wife’s gift is wrapped well enough, and even if it does look like a hockey player wrapped it, it looks exactly as bad as if I’d done it myself. Now, of course, it has the benefit of coming with an entertaining story.

As I was leaving the mall, I decided in a moment of weakness to purchase a chocolate malt from two Vermont hippies. This isn’t normally the sort of thing that I’d do, except I really wanted a chocolate malt. You see, in Alabama, it is almost always mild during the month of December. We have the requisite cold-snaps and arctic blasts of course, but mostly the daytime weather is in the upper 60s through much of the state, and the night time lows are normally in the mid 40s. So, it is almost always much too warm to run the furnaces in the mall as high as the people who run the mall think they should. As a consequence, if you’re wearing much more than shorts and a T-shirt, the typical Alabama shopping mall is unbearably hot in December.

Besides really wanting a malt, I was of course armed to the teeth, which I knew would annoy the Vermont hippies if they ever found out. This gave me some sense of satisfaction, but it didn’t last long. They were out of chocolate ice cream. Okay, so vanilla? Sure. It was no matter that there were not less than four ice-cream sellers behind the counter. Nor was it any matter that I was the only customer they’d apparently had all day. When my vanilla malt milk shake arrived ten minutes later, the cup and lid were both dripping with sticky vanilla over-spray. Then these peace loving, environmentally friendly, and socially conscious Vermont hippies charged me $5.37 for $0.50 of dairy, $0.0001 of refined sugar and powdered barley malt, and a $0.02 plastic cup.

After considerable consideration,

I declaim that the purpose of management is to defeat productivity.

A day that lives in infamy.

In a few hours time, December 7th 2006 will fall upon Pearl Harbor. 2471 Americans died in that attack, but America came to life. The Nips visited us with violence, and we returned it with a portion a good deal larger than they could enjoy. The attack was an act of war, and we responded with appropriate righteous fury. We take this time to remember and honor our grandfathers and great grandfathers who were slaughtered that day. We do not look back in mourning of our dead, but in anger at the cowardly act by our enemy.

It is interesting to note that during the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, Hawaii was not a US state, but was a US territory.

We call into contrast the reaction to the attack on the second USS Cole (DDG 67) in Aden, Yemen on October 12, 2000. 17 sailors were killed, and 39 others were injured. America sniffled, whimpered, then lost interest and got bored with the whole affair. President Clinton derided it as an “act of terrorism” when it was, in fact, an act of war. Neither the Clinton administration nor the Bush administration after it did much in the way of vengeance with respect to the Cole and her sailors.

This is emblematic of America’s current turmoil. The followers of the false prophet (may pieces of swine be cast unto him) have declared war on us. The Cole attack was an opening salvo of that war. Six years later, we are having debates about wether or not we are “just” to fight the enemy. Half of the country still believes that they have seen the enemy, and it is we.

Whilst we debate, our real enemies laugh and plot. The glittering monuments to colossal heathenism that laid the plan to destroy the USS Cole escaped a Yemeni prison in February of this year. They are still at large.

Our righteous fury and our desire to face and defeat the enemy have become flaccid with the fusillade of erectile disfunction advertisements in our electronic and print media.

The aphorism that “Old people know stuff” is true. Our grandfathers and great grandfathers knew how to fight. They knew when to fight. It is rumored that the Nips did not invade mainland America because they knew that there would be “a rifle behind every blade of grass.” This implied a skilled and committed man behind the trigger of each rifle.

The followers of the false prophet (may pieces of swine be cast unto him) follow the pattern of destroying the lives of uninvolved people to force political change. Their goal is nothing less than global sharia. If you think the NSA “warrantless wiretap” program is bad, you just wait.

As bad as it is now, I think that we still have time. We are only losing this war because it is boring and we are not interested in admitting that it exists. It is time to come alive. It may be a bad war, but hey, it is the only one we’ve got!

As for my blade of grass, it is currently covered by a 1944 Mosin Nagant M44 Carbine. This is an extremely unattractive piece, of Russian manufacture. It was built by slave labor in the Izhevsk Arsenal. It is powerful, reliable, accurate enough, and currently very cheap in the US market. Very good examples of this piece may be had for as little as $80, and surplus Soviet bloc ammunition for it is ridiculously cheap in bulk at less than 10 cents per round.

To my fellow citizens, I issue the challenge to regain that proud fighting spirit of our forefathers. In 2007, plant a flagpole in your yard. Fly “Old Glory” at the top, fly Gadsden’s Flag below, and let any follower of the false prophet (may pieces of swine be cast upon him) that your blade of grass is covered.

132 is old.

Today marks the 132′rd anniversary of the birth of Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill.

We suggest you mark the occasion with Sir Winston’s usual: a splash of Johnnie Walker in the bottom of a tumbler, add ice, then fill with water. We are told that he preferred the Red labeled version, of which we have a small supply on hand. If you do not, then now is the time.