Season's Greetings, Dear Readers!
As hard as it is to believe, 2015 is almost over but, thankfully, there is still time to post one final missive from yours truly before the champagne corks pop and the fat midget in the diaper makes his appearance to announce the arrival of a bouncing baby New Year. So let us take a moment to reflect, shall we, and to consider the year that was.
Or maybe not. Last year didn't really trip my trigger, if you get my drift. Too much ISIS. Too much Obama ignoring ISIS. Too much of so much that was depressing, and ignorant, and needless. Worse still, the forecast indicates that we are caught right dab in the center of a national malaise depression (see what I did there?) and conditions are likely to remain emotionally murky and intellectually overcast for the foreseeable future. "But Steve" you remark, "surely something out there puts the lead in your pencil, so to speak - isn't there anything good going on?" Well, come to think of it, there is, and it's all about...
A world renowned and unimaginably wealthy rodent that owns a virtual city state in central Florida, named, of course, Speedy Gonzales. No, that's not right. Speedy is currently unemployed and is laying low in Mexico after losing his job as a drug courier for the Zetas cartel. Seems that since we no longer patrol the boarder, the Zetas could get by with hiring Speedy's old sidekick, Slow Poke Rodriguez, but I digress. NO, the rodent I am talking about is one M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E (and you know that I sang those letters as I typed them!), and let me tell you, business is good for that particular rat. And I should know, since I just got back from a five day family vacation at Disney World, during which time the family stayed in a Disney Economy (HA!) Resort and utilized the Disney Meal Plan while "hopping" from one to another of the various parks. After investing enough money to buy a junky used car or feeding a family of Ugandans for a decade, I thought I would give my personal report on the events of the week, with the further intent of putting the past year into some kind of perspective. Make sense? Ready? Well, damn, just come along anyway. I'm almost done. I promise.
The Bradys and Disney have a history, you know. Starting from the very first visit when a three year old Jonathan saw Mickey for the first time (on a float in a parade) and immediately started yelling "hey Mickey, over here, it's me.... JONATHAN!" Thousands of other children were yelling "look, it's Mickey!" and my son was yelling "Mickey, hey look, it's ME!" Even as a toddler Jonathan sensed that he had found something of a spiritual home at the happiest place on Earth, and he expected the guest of honor to recognize that fact. Seems reasonable to me. Actually, Jonathan still has an emotional attachment to Disney that would put most primary school kids to shame. Which is one of the things that I love most about him. Aside from being an amazingly bright and perceptive man, Jonathan has depth. He has a heart every bit as big and overwhelming as Obama's ego, and he has incredibly, awesomely, amazingly, and thankfully kept the lion's share of his boyhood sweetness and sincerity right through his teenage years and straight into manhood. His heart, his compassion, and his depth of character are a sight of which I rejoice to behold. I hope that Beauty and the Beast remain forever as not only a favorite movie of his (no, really), but also as an illustration of how he always seems to see the inner value and beauty of people and experiences. Disney magic, thy name is Jonathan.
But the story does not stop here. Shannon, in her own way, is a Disney princess of the highest order. It was actually amusing to see my very mature and adult daughter become literally star struck in the presence of Cinderella. Or actually, in the presence of the young woman Disney Corp. hired to wear the Cinderella costume and stand smiling for 30 minute increments during her work shift. But the real identity of the character didn't matter to the real princess in attendance, nor should it. Shannon sensed the presence of royalty and it touched her, just as the Fairy Godmother's magic wand touched the story book character of Cinderella, and in both cases a transformation of sorts occurred. Shannon unfortunately did not morph into an elegantly dressed and handsomely equipped young socialite, but she did transform, just for a second, and only for the eyes previously anointed with fairy dust, into the achingly beautiful little girl of a few years back who loved Cinderella above all other princesses, and who shined with such grace and intelligence and beauty and charm and abounding love of life that she could, with a glance of her eyes and a quick smile, absolutely melt the heart of that adoring and breathless man who had the unimaginable good fortune of being her daddy. Shannon was born a princess, somehow, and her regal nature somehow turned a "meet and greet" into a brief glimpse of all that is right in the world. I, your humble servant, bear witness.
So, you take that (and all the other stuff) and you get a pretty damn good week. The Princess is expected to wed in the coming year, so this was likely our last big travel experience as the "Bradys." Considering that we four have experienced tens of thousands of air miles as we traipsed across three continents together, the thought that this trip was a concluding act, as it were, put me into something of a contemplative mood. Life has been far sweeter and more meaningful than I could have ever hoped or imagined, and I am giving myself full reign to shed a tear or twenty to recall the moments that have made my life worthwhile, and to disdain, just for a moment, the idea that anything should ever change. Indeed they may not. Jonathan shall ever be that free spirit and Shannon will ever be my princess. The center will hold. Mickey and I will see to that.
So, I guess 2015 wasn't so bad. Never mind what I said at the beginning. Happy New Year.
Sunday, December 27, 2015
Sunday, November 22, 2015
Greetings All!
I am sure that each and every none of you in my vast assemblage of fans have both asphyxiated and decomposed as you waited patiently for my latest blog post. My sympathies to the families and to those bullied into cleaning up the remains. The stains can be removed. The odor, not so much. But such are the risks one assumes when one hitches ones wagon to a blog star, and you can't say I didn't warn you. I TOLD you that I was irresponsible, as well as incoherent, so you should never have come here actually expecting anything. I'm sure I don't, and if I am not getting anything out of the deal, well, there you are.
But I digress. I was planning on actually writing something as close to intelligent and timely as my feeble talents would allow, and I started off by talking about stinking, filthy, rotting corpses. Which, come to think of it, is not all that far from my real topic - Islamic terrorism. I chose this delightful area of inquiry for two reasons. First of all, it's all over the news and I have been thinking about it for a long, long time now. And two, someone asked me tonight over the phone about my opinion of the Paris attacks. My first (and only) reaction was that they sucked, but this my adopted mom we are talking about here, and Brenda ain't into cussing, so I just waved her off with a noncommittal statement about "we can probably expect to see more of those kinds of things in the future" and changed the subject. But that bothers me. I do have an opinion, I suppose. I absolutely SHOULD have an opinion, and everybody else should have one too, because this stuff is not going away. I don't know where the ax will fall, but fall it will, someplace in America, and a lot of innocent people will die. People will cry, politicians will maneuver to not waste the crisis, and, more than likely, nothing intelligent, proportionate, warranted, and effective will result. This is because we really don't know, or don't want to know, who and what we are dealing with when it comes to Islamic warfare. I'm not going to use the word terror anymore because it really doesn't fit, and it never has. Bush called it a war on terror only because he didn't want to hurt people's feelings, or lose political clout, or worse, piss off the Saudis (although they are perhaps the venomous roots of the entire problem). So I won't call it terror. I will call it war. Just like the good old boys over in the caliphate do. Just like the worldwide Ummah does. Just like the Koran does. Just like the Prophet did, bless his little heart. (Note, observant reader, that I have just arguably blasphemed the Prophet, which in the "moderate" Muslim nations would get me killed via judicial action, while in the caliphate it would just be a matter of a jumpsuit, a camera, a psychopath or twenty, and a (hopefully) sharp knife).
But again, I, well, you know. So, as I was saying about the Islamic war we now find ourselves in, the score seems, surprisingly, to be currently favoring the bad guys. For those wondering, I see the Islamists as bad, evil actually, on a par with Treblinka guards and Coach K. But how could WE, the US of A, be losing against the "jv" team? Are they not contained? Are not the vast, vast majority of Muslims as appalled as we are by this hijacking of the religion of peace? In a word, la. That means no in Arabic. Islam is, as countless observers throughout history (up to and including Adolf Hitler, and he should know) have noted, a warrior religion. Just read the book. Find a Koran and spend 15 minutes. Go anywhere. Pick a page at random. See how long it takes you to find something about "unbelievers" and Allah's displeasure with them. If you find an enlightened surah, likely written (actually, supposedly, dictated by Muhammad since he was illiterate) early in the Prophet's career, it might even sound civil (for the seventh century anyway), but it will clearly distinguish between them and us. That seems to be the fundamental issue in the Koran; what to do about US. We, the unbelievers, the apostates, the object of Allah's wrath - what should the good Muslim DO about us?
Surprisingly, this is not a hard question to answer. It's right there in the book. And it's not any of that namby pamby love your neighbor drivel, like Jesus used to preach. Allah has a simple plan for us infidels and you don't have to go any further that surah 9 (Al Tawbah "The Repentance"), and verse 5. This is commonly referred to as "The Verse of the Sword" and seems to fit into today's news EVENTS better than the often repeated (but never fully studied) "there is no compulsion in religion" verse that is always a part of our news PROGRAMS.
So, what is the Verse of the Sword? Well, it goes (partly) something like this:
But when the forbidden months are past,
Then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them.
And seize them. and beleaguer them,
And lie in wait for them,
In every stratagem of war.
You might wonder what the forbidden months are. Supposedly, the Prophet always warned his various desert enemies that it was either his way or the highway, and he gave them four months to think it over. A four month jihad waiting period as it were. So everybody gets a temporary pass; trouble is, ours is apparently expired. So it's "game on" and go directly to the good stuff - the fighting, slaying, seizing, and beleaguering, stuff. I don't have the wherewithal (or the education) to actually give a full account of the proper hermeneutics of the last revelation, but I did learn a couple of things. First off, the Koran is not chronological. The chapters are organized by length, not subject or date. Surahs 8 and 9 are some of the oldest. and that makes a difference because verses in the Koran can be abrogated, that is, annulled or overruled, by later verses. So if two verses contradict, you go with the one given last in order to decide the issue. Surah 8 is a lot of fun, with the entire chapter devoted on the proper way to distribute "booty" captured during wartime (no really) and with particular emphasis on who got what after the Battle of Badr, when the Prophet and his trusty friends kicked the living poop out of a larger army of infidels and had a lot of booty (literally and figuratively) to pass around. Some believe that 8 and 9 are one long surah, so it gives the context of the Verse of the Sword pretty clearly. Allah is talking real swords, and real dead people, and real slaves taken from the survivors. This is not contextually limited to the seventh century, no hint that this is some limited instruction for a particular time and place (like even the most militant verses in the Old Testament); this is an everlasting rule, happily and intentionally followed by our Islamist friends today. The Verse of the Sword still applies.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I must add that the Verse of the Sword offers an exception to the killing and seizing injunction, but only one, and that is conversion to Islam. So if you do not want to grow a beard or go styling in a burka, the exception is not very helpful. But it does exist, so there.
To conclude, if by some strange coincidence someone has actually read this far, the situation that we find ourselves in is that we are at war. Not a geographical war, and not a war against a overstimulated central nervous system, but a real war with people who are our sworn enemies. It might improve our chances of winning the game if we admit that we are indeed playing.
But that's just me.
I am sure that each and every none of you in my vast assemblage of fans have both asphyxiated and decomposed as you waited patiently for my latest blog post. My sympathies to the families and to those bullied into cleaning up the remains. The stains can be removed. The odor, not so much. But such are the risks one assumes when one hitches ones wagon to a blog star, and you can't say I didn't warn you. I TOLD you that I was irresponsible, as well as incoherent, so you should never have come here actually expecting anything. I'm sure I don't, and if I am not getting anything out of the deal, well, there you are.
But I digress. I was planning on actually writing something as close to intelligent and timely as my feeble talents would allow, and I started off by talking about stinking, filthy, rotting corpses. Which, come to think of it, is not all that far from my real topic - Islamic terrorism. I chose this delightful area of inquiry for two reasons. First of all, it's all over the news and I have been thinking about it for a long, long time now. And two, someone asked me tonight over the phone about my opinion of the Paris attacks. My first (and only) reaction was that they sucked, but this my adopted mom we are talking about here, and Brenda ain't into cussing, so I just waved her off with a noncommittal statement about "we can probably expect to see more of those kinds of things in the future" and changed the subject. But that bothers me. I do have an opinion, I suppose. I absolutely SHOULD have an opinion, and everybody else should have one too, because this stuff is not going away. I don't know where the ax will fall, but fall it will, someplace in America, and a lot of innocent people will die. People will cry, politicians will maneuver to not waste the crisis, and, more than likely, nothing intelligent, proportionate, warranted, and effective will result. This is because we really don't know, or don't want to know, who and what we are dealing with when it comes to Islamic warfare. I'm not going to use the word terror anymore because it really doesn't fit, and it never has. Bush called it a war on terror only because he didn't want to hurt people's feelings, or lose political clout, or worse, piss off the Saudis (although they are perhaps the venomous roots of the entire problem). So I won't call it terror. I will call it war. Just like the good old boys over in the caliphate do. Just like the worldwide Ummah does. Just like the Koran does. Just like the Prophet did, bless his little heart. (Note, observant reader, that I have just arguably blasphemed the Prophet, which in the "moderate" Muslim nations would get me killed via judicial action, while in the caliphate it would just be a matter of a jumpsuit, a camera, a psychopath or twenty, and a (hopefully) sharp knife).
But again, I, well, you know. So, as I was saying about the Islamic war we now find ourselves in, the score seems, surprisingly, to be currently favoring the bad guys. For those wondering, I see the Islamists as bad, evil actually, on a par with Treblinka guards and Coach K. But how could WE, the US of A, be losing against the "jv" team? Are they not contained? Are not the vast, vast majority of Muslims as appalled as we are by this hijacking of the religion of peace? In a word, la. That means no in Arabic. Islam is, as countless observers throughout history (up to and including Adolf Hitler, and he should know) have noted, a warrior religion. Just read the book. Find a Koran and spend 15 minutes. Go anywhere. Pick a page at random. See how long it takes you to find something about "unbelievers" and Allah's displeasure with them. If you find an enlightened surah, likely written (actually, supposedly, dictated by Muhammad since he was illiterate) early in the Prophet's career, it might even sound civil (for the seventh century anyway), but it will clearly distinguish between them and us. That seems to be the fundamental issue in the Koran; what to do about US. We, the unbelievers, the apostates, the object of Allah's wrath - what should the good Muslim DO about us?
Surprisingly, this is not a hard question to answer. It's right there in the book. And it's not any of that namby pamby love your neighbor drivel, like Jesus used to preach. Allah has a simple plan for us infidels and you don't have to go any further that surah 9 (Al Tawbah "The Repentance"), and verse 5. This is commonly referred to as "The Verse of the Sword" and seems to fit into today's news EVENTS better than the often repeated (but never fully studied) "there is no compulsion in religion" verse that is always a part of our news PROGRAMS.
So, what is the Verse of the Sword? Well, it goes (partly) something like this:
But when the forbidden months are past,
Then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them.
And seize them. and beleaguer them,
And lie in wait for them,
In every stratagem of war.
You might wonder what the forbidden months are. Supposedly, the Prophet always warned his various desert enemies that it was either his way or the highway, and he gave them four months to think it over. A four month jihad waiting period as it were. So everybody gets a temporary pass; trouble is, ours is apparently expired. So it's "game on" and go directly to the good stuff - the fighting, slaying, seizing, and beleaguering, stuff. I don't have the wherewithal (or the education) to actually give a full account of the proper hermeneutics of the last revelation, but I did learn a couple of things. First off, the Koran is not chronological. The chapters are organized by length, not subject or date. Surahs 8 and 9 are some of the oldest. and that makes a difference because verses in the Koran can be abrogated, that is, annulled or overruled, by later verses. So if two verses contradict, you go with the one given last in order to decide the issue. Surah 8 is a lot of fun, with the entire chapter devoted on the proper way to distribute "booty" captured during wartime (no really) and with particular emphasis on who got what after the Battle of Badr, when the Prophet and his trusty friends kicked the living poop out of a larger army of infidels and had a lot of booty (literally and figuratively) to pass around. Some believe that 8 and 9 are one long surah, so it gives the context of the Verse of the Sword pretty clearly. Allah is talking real swords, and real dead people, and real slaves taken from the survivors. This is not contextually limited to the seventh century, no hint that this is some limited instruction for a particular time and place (like even the most militant verses in the Old Testament); this is an everlasting rule, happily and intentionally followed by our Islamist friends today. The Verse of the Sword still applies.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I must add that the Verse of the Sword offers an exception to the killing and seizing injunction, but only one, and that is conversion to Islam. So if you do not want to grow a beard or go styling in a burka, the exception is not very helpful. But it does exist, so there.
To conclude, if by some strange coincidence someone has actually read this far, the situation that we find ourselves in is that we are at war. Not a geographical war, and not a war against a overstimulated central nervous system, but a real war with people who are our sworn enemies. It might improve our chances of winning the game if we admit that we are indeed playing.
But that's just me.
Wednesday, August 5, 2015
Greetings Fellow Travelers!
Hello and welcome to my blog! Good of you to stop by! I am sure that we will all have lots of fun together as we laugh and sing and tell funny stories. But wait a minute. All that stuff works better if someone else is around to share it with you. Someone told me that sex was supposed to be like that too, but I don't believe them. Thing is, I really don't expect anybody to be here. Not long anyway. After all, why should you? This is just a cyber version of a bathroom wall and I am just doodling for my own amusement. Why would anyone else bother reading this drivel? I don't claim any particular insight into anything, really, and I am certainly not an authority on anything that matters. All I have is opinions, and there is certainly no shortage of those things out there in the big wide world. You probably have more than you can handle just bouncing around in your head right now. Why make the situation worse?
No, really, why? I am attempting this blog solely as an exercise in self-expression and as a means to work out some of my own personal foibles and demons (hopefully). I have absolutely no confidence that this amalgamation of brain flatulence will be of any interest or benefit to anybody else, but it might be a source of amusement to me, so I am going to give it a shot. If you so desire, pull up a cyber chair and warm your cold cyber feet on the cyber fireplace. If you are female and attractive, feel free to slip into something more comfortable and tell me how "big boned" men have always turned you on. After all, this is my mental playground and I make the rules. Until Barb finds out. So don't tell her. Let's keep it just between us, OK?
So, what do I want to talk about? Who knows? As the underlying purpose here is to help me collect my thoughts and assist me in becoming somewhat less of an intellectual jerk wad (shout out to my daughter for that lovely term), I suppose I will ramble about a variety of things. History. Religion. Philosophy. The Three Stooges. Politics. Underdog and Super Chicken. The possibilities are endless. The potential for reasoned discussion and personal growth are virtually nil. You would probably have a better time watching grass grow. But who knows? I make no promises. I have no expectation that in the unlikely event that someone should actually read this tripe that anybody will find it useful. But it is a safe space, whatever that means. And I promise I will not get too sentimental or go off in tangents so immature and borderline psychotic that one might consider an immediate referral to a mental health hotline or a discreet call to Homeland Security. My first blog posts were simply too emotional to share so I erased them. Thus the prior entries with no text in case you were wondering.
So, there you have it. As I am currently unemployed I should have some time on my hands, so there might just be a second entry sometime in the next calendar year, but don't hold your breath. And don't expect much. It's just me after all. See ya later.
No, really, why? I am attempting this blog solely as an exercise in self-expression and as a means to work out some of my own personal foibles and demons (hopefully). I have absolutely no confidence that this amalgamation of brain flatulence will be of any interest or benefit to anybody else, but it might be a source of amusement to me, so I am going to give it a shot. If you so desire, pull up a cyber chair and warm your cold cyber feet on the cyber fireplace. If you are female and attractive, feel free to slip into something more comfortable and tell me how "big boned" men have always turned you on. After all, this is my mental playground and I make the rules. Until Barb finds out. So don't tell her. Let's keep it just between us, OK?
So, what do I want to talk about? Who knows? As the underlying purpose here is to help me collect my thoughts and assist me in becoming somewhat less of an intellectual jerk wad (shout out to my daughter for that lovely term), I suppose I will ramble about a variety of things. History. Religion. Philosophy. The Three Stooges. Politics. Underdog and Super Chicken. The possibilities are endless. The potential for reasoned discussion and personal growth are virtually nil. You would probably have a better time watching grass grow. But who knows? I make no promises. I have no expectation that in the unlikely event that someone should actually read this tripe that anybody will find it useful. But it is a safe space, whatever that means. And I promise I will not get too sentimental or go off in tangents so immature and borderline psychotic that one might consider an immediate referral to a mental health hotline or a discreet call to Homeland Security. My first blog posts were simply too emotional to share so I erased them. Thus the prior entries with no text in case you were wondering.
So, there you have it. As I am currently unemployed I should have some time on my hands, so there might just be a second entry sometime in the next calendar year, but don't hold your breath. And don't expect much. It's just me after all. See ya later.
Friday, May 15, 2015
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
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