Friday, March 07, 2014

“If you’re going through hell, keep going.” Winston Churchill

Rand Paul Speech At CPAC

Rand Paul's speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, here.

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Thursday, March 06, 2014

Some Dust Bunnies Are Prettier Than Others

That's elitist, and that is a good thing.

This is an elite dust bunny.

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Wednesday, March 05, 2014

Booth Tarkington's "Penrod"

“Penrod” was a childhood role model of mine. Booth Tarkington’s Penrod, that is, who lived in Indiana some time after the horse died, but before the stable was turned into a garage. Penrod was a boy after my own heart, or perhaps the other way around.

There is no finer exposition on American boyhood -nor any funnier- than “The Great Tar Fight”, which took up a couple chapters in Tarkington’s book “Penrod”. It is well worth the time to read. I read it many times as a boy, and as a man it still holds up as wonderful American literature about boyhood. Every 11 or twelve year old boy should read “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, “Penrod”, and “Penrod and Sam”.

I would add, as was added to my own reading list, anything by Ernest Thompson Seton, founder of the Boy Scouts of America. Most especially “Rolf in the Woods” and “Two Little Savages”, both of which would in their day have been categorized as “morally instructive novels for adolescent youth”. Rather than beat boys over the head with “Thou shalts” and “Thou shalt nots” Seton let lessons flow by osmosis from his pen to his young readers.

Penrod was perhaps more subversive than Seton’s characters, but still moral, and very much a boy in an un-PC day. The next generation would be the better for having read all those books.

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Rather Like The Saudi Religous Police...

...who forced girls back into a burning school because they weren't wearing veils.

Except this was Minnesota.

Others have commented "Tar and Feathers." Works for me.

Americans used to be known world wide for disobeying the rules. What happened? What happened to turn us into zombie drones?

TSA aside, of course.

The adult zombie drones were too inflexible to consider modifying the plan in the face of contact with the enemy: -5 degrees, -25 wind chill, a student in a wet swim suit.

Obeying the plan was more important than saving the children. Which was the purpose of the plan.

That's an adult Zombie. A whole pack of them screaming down the street with rotting flesh hanging from their teeth. Or standing in the parking lot with a soaking wet 14 year old in -25 wind chill, chanting "Obey the rules! Obey the rules! Obey! Obey! Obey!"

The war against totalitarian Islamists may have come just in time. A lot of young Americans have learned that while discipline is important, it is independent thinking, initiative, and aggressiveness which get the job done when you make contact with the enemy. I'll bet a teacher who had served a couple tours in Iraq or Afghanistan would have gotten that kid inside.

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