Traveling is the suxxor!

By lex, on May 4th, 2007

I had a strange dream last night, something perhaps I ate: I was in some class of catacomb, in Italy, like and I found a tunnel branching off into the darkness whose contours I felt strangely compelled to explore. At the very end of the tunnel the walls about me closed in on every side until finally there was only room to crawl on my hands and knees. I felt something beneath my hands, dry and brittle. Aiming my flashlight down I was suddenly startled to see a human skeleton, face forward in the darkness of tunnel, reaching out with a grasping hand. In front of that grasping hand was yet another skeleton, shrinking up against the back wall, away from the larger man’s grasp.

As befits a great nation

By lex, on May 1st, 2007

It is proof once again that all politics is personal, and when it’s personal that no opportunity for low pettiness should be passed up in favor of any sense of institutional gravitas or decency: The US Congressional leadership – elected leaders of our highest branch of legislative government – plans what is in effect a work stoppage in order to delay delivering a critical piece of legislation that must in any case be reworked in order to fund the troops that they themselves committed to the field of battle.

Exceptionalism

By lex, on April 22nd, 2007

The comment thread attaching to this post * grew rather more warm than we are accustomed to. It’s to be expected I suppose, even if the title of the post hadn’t been a touch ironic – perhaps a touch too lightly ironic it seems.

There are probably few things quite so off-putting to the world outside our borders than that innate sense of “American Exceptionalism” with which we face the outside world. It is a notion which is both ancient (by our standards, anyway) and culturally embedded. As others have remarked, it is not enough for us to think of ourselves as a “great country,” we must also be “the best.” Nor is it sufficient that our form of democracy is good, it must also be the most authentic – or, considering how much we moan over our own political class – it must at least be immune to outside criticism.

Raining in San Diego

Mon – January 3, 2005

 

Well, we’re back from our trip east – five days in Virginia celebrating the holiday, then down to West Palm Beach for a few days about New Year’s. Now home, at that most melancholy time of the year – I think people tend to feel a bit hung-over right now. I know I do: The holidays are over, and the work has not yet begun.

I imagine that somewhere in some alternate reality plane, the MasterCard elves have taken the baton over from Santa’s crewe, and are totting up the season’s excesses with grim satisfaction. Soon their ledgers will be complete, and the nasty-gram will be winging its way to our mailbox. We’ll work ’til April to pay taxes, and then after that we can work to pay for Christmas.

And it’s raining in San Diego.

Another way that cats are not like dogs

By lex, on April 25th, 2007

Is that a dog, no matter how abused and mistreated, would not hide in the darkness under your bed like a blackhearted thief in the night, waiting for your alarm clock to go off at 0615, and then, just as you blearily reach out from under the warm and enclosing embrace of the covers to silence the aforementioned alarm, leap up with malice aforethought to bite and scratch at the proximal/medial axis of your exposed triceps. Before dashing away to the door only to pause and look back at you with that “you’ve been PWNED!!!” expression.

The freak.

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A weekend at the horse park

By lex, on April 22nd, 2007

So, this weekend was spent down at the Del Mar Show Park, a place whose horrors virtues I have spoken of heretofore. We are much advanced from our days in Pony Jumpers, having advanced to Novice Hunter Equitation Over Fences (Green Eq Over, for the cognoscenti).

One month of equestrian lessons: $400
Transport to the show park and grooming: $110
Show fees and registration: $350

A couple of gaily-colored placing ribbons for your youngest daughter? Mere strips of cotton cloth?

Just about $900 dollars, actually.

*sigh*

Why couldn’t she have played soccer?

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An angel winging towards Valhalla

By lex, on April 22nd, 2007

You’ll hear a lot in the next couple of weeks or so about how and why Blue Angel #6 went down yesterday at Beaufort. Most of it will be raw conjecture, not worth the pixels used to frame the text. Somebody has a good idea what happened, but he – or they – won’t be talking to the press. They’ll have an investigation to do, and they’ll do it the right way – out of the glare of the public view – in order to find out how the next mishap might be prevented. A board will be convened, gather evidence, weigh and sift conclusions and publish their results – privately.

Forward Deployed Plane Pr0n

By lex, on April 19th, 2007

Carrier Air Wing Five over Mount Fuji. Including a shining example of an ultra-tactical paint scheme from the SSHWFGD (super sh!t hot world famous golden dragons) of VFA-192 – really the class of the organization, unless things have very much changed in the intervening years.

Romance in the 21st Century

By lex, on Sun – December 19, 2004

So there we were at home this afternoon. Just the Hobbit and me. SNO is down at school, preparing for his last final exam of the semester. The Biscuit is off to Del Mar, surfing with her friends. The Kat is taking a riding lesson down at the horse park. No one is expected home for over an hour. No guests are anticipated. The phone isn’t ringing.

Nothing’s on TV.

We are not exhausted and frazzled at the end of a long day of typical domestic trial and tribulation. No one has been sent to bed wailing her discontent. It is the middle of the afternoon, our biorhythmic cycles are banging away at peak capacity and we have the house entirely to ourselves.

This happens so rarely, we are at first unsure what to do. The Hobbit walks casually up to me, and fingering the buttons on her blouse, leans in breathlessly. She says…

“Want to go to the gym?”

And so of course, we do.

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Physics lessons from a poly-sci major

By lex, on April 13th, 2007

NASCAR fan Max asked for a physics lesson on curvilinear path dive bombing for those who don’t wear horn-rimmed glasses. Which is a fair request, except for the fact that he, you know: Asked of it from me.

This is like getting a second opinion on your upcoming brain surgery from the local barber: He probably has an opinion to go along with his glancing familiarity with the issue at hand, but you don’t necessarily want to bet your life on it, one way or the other.

Anyway, here goes.