Happy New Year, All!

 

By lex, on December 31st, 2011

Which the missus and I are celebrating ours at home, the chillens being growed up or nearly so. For those of you such as are going out, watch out for them English, for they’re a hazard on the roads when they’ve a drop taken.

Here at Chez Lex, the year 2011 has had its up and downs, and taken as a whole we will not miss it much, malgre the fact that it has ended on a happier note than it began.

Hopefully that trend will continue, for us and for you.

See you next year.

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At Death’s Door?

         

We tend to believe ourselves to be physical beings with a spiritual core.

But what we really are is spiritual beings with a physical shell.

—Author Unknown

As I have gotten older I have realized that there is no guarantee that we will all grow old. And along the way, starting in high school, I realized that this is but an illusion. That we will all grow old. Although we all expect to grow old.

Holiday update

Posted by December 26, 2006

We are well, and everything is well and all manner of things are well. It may or may not be obvious to either of my readers, but the posts of the last two days were written before we ever left the Left Coast, which probably explains the strange absence of any comment on the untimely death of Mr. James Brown.

Rehabilitation

Posted by lex, on October 15, 2008

Unrepentant former domestic terrorist and current UIC professor Bill Ayres is apparently too proud to ask for forgiveness. Proud like a peacock of course, but also literally proud of what he’d done as a domestic terrorist.  He has, in fact, admitted that the Weathermen “didn’t do enough.” Probably because trying to “do more” resulted three Weathermen blowing themselves up with a nail bomb they’d planned to set at an non-commissioned officer’s club dance in Fort Dix, NJ. Because, you know, that domestic terrorism gig is really trippy until someone gets hurt the wrong people get hurt. And then suddenly it’s not so much fun anymore.

Friday Musings 09/12/08

Poted by lex, on September 12, 2008


We seemed to have crossed some sort of visitor threshold in the last couple of weeks. Traffic rates of 1600-1700 hits per day went over the 2000 mark for several days in a row and have settled in at right about that number during work days.

What does that mean? Nothing really. We’re not taking on an airs or considering leasing office space. Just that you may see some new names in the comments boxes, people whom I ask you to to treat with our customary civility and grace.

Unless they immediately demonstrate themselves to be any of the usual brand of trolls, in which case I ask you to ignore them entirely. Paying them attention only enables their twisted psychopathies. They’ll be popping up making a nuisance of themselves all over the place.

We’ll have to spray.

Newer readers interested in naval aviation stories who have not plumbed the depths of the archives may find this short little story momentarily diverting.

There are five shopping days ’til Christmas

Posted by lex, on December 19, 2006

And I’m a total fricken’ wreck.

I was ahead of the shopping game for exactly two people in my life: The Biscuit wanted a replacement digital camera for the one she’d treated rather shabbily last summer, to put not too fine a point on it, all regardless of the fact that she seemed to take such great pleasure in the having of the original. That came early in the mail, and there was the school formal coming up, and it wouldn’t really have happened – the formal that is – unless it was preserved in perpetuity via the application of digital amber. So I deeded it over early, like, with stern remonstrations that this was in fact The Patriarchal Christmas Gift, and no fair thinking otherwise comes the actual. Knowing full well – as herself no doubt did too – that it was all bluff and thunder.

Some things don’t change

Posted by lex, on September 6, 2008

Some things ought to:

A wounded British soldier home from Afghanistan on sick leave was forced to spend the night in his car after a hotel refused him a room.

Corporal Tomos Stringer was told by staff at Metro Hotel, in Woking, that it was company policy not to accept members of the armed forces as guests. The 24-year-old had traveled to the Surrey town to help with funeral preparations for a friend killed in action.

It was so late that Cpl Stringer, who had broken his wrist jumping off an Army truck as it was attacked, had no choice but to sleep in his tiny, two-door car, arm covered in plaster.

Kipling was here first over a hundred years ago. Absurd in the 21st Century.

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Anchorman

Posted by lex, on September 7, 2008

James Robbins makes your correspondent feel just that little bit better about his own class standing at the Trade School on the Severn:

(There) is no clear relationship between Academy class rank and leadership qualities. For example, Jimmy Carter, the only Naval Academy graduate to serve as president to date, graduated 59th out of a class of 820, so draw your own conclusions. Seventeen class anchors have attained flag rank, and many low-ranking graduates have gone on to brilliant careers. This tracks with the thesis I developed in my book Last in Their Class; the bottom of the class tends to produce a different kind of leader than the top. Those who wind up at the foot are often there by choice. They could do better if they studied, but they would rather trade class ranking for other pursuits. They tend to be the risk takers, the innovators, usually very well liked and in their own way driven. They know how to get into trouble, and more importantly how to get out of it. They also tend to have more than their share of luck.

Also profiled is the legendary “Hoser” “Toeser” Satrapa, F-14 jock of the “no kill like a guns kill” fame, and self-made armorer of the “blow your thumb off with a 20mm cannon and replace it with your big toe” variety.

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How it looks from the outside

Posted by lex, on September 7, 2008

Charming:

Hatred is the most powerful emotion in politics. At present, American liberals are not fighting for an Obama presidency. I suspect that most have only the haziest idea of what it would mean for their country. The slogans that move their hearts and stir their souls are directed against their enemies: Bush, the neo-cons, the religious right.

As a motivating force, hatred knows no equal. As a governing philosophy in a democracy?

Kind of a tough sell.

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Because that turned out so well

Posted by lex, on September 1, 2008

Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has laid down five principles for his country’s future foreign relations:

1. The recognition (*cough*) of international law.
2. A rejection of a unipolar world order.
3. Friendly relations with the rest of the world, subject to certain conditions.
4. The intention to protect its citizens where ever they are found (Sudetenland, anyone?)
5. A recognition of Russia’s “privileged” interests in the near abroad and elsewhere.

As the BBC analysis points out, all of this would have been quite familiar to 19th Century diplomats. Who never dreamt, in their fussier moments, about the bloodbaths they were teeing up for the early 20th Century.

The first time as a tragedy, the second as a farce.

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