Just Bumping Up My Entry Count For The Month

Ultra-Realistic Modern Warfare Game Features Awaiting Orders, Repairing Trucks

It's Not Nice...

We were spending some time with the nephew and his other Aunt yesterday when he asked if we thought 2012 would be the end of the world. He had the same concern in his voice that I felt as a child worrying about the “Population Bomb”. If you’re old enough to remember this pre-global warming hoax, you’ll remember that the author’s of the book were predicting that due to an unchecked expansion of the population there wouldn’t be enough food to sustain us all by the 80's. I think that’s why “Mad Max” was such a scary movie to me as a child. It was my more subdued, better done “2012”.

So as people like to do we started discussing the end of the world, with all the adults assuring Garrin that 2012 was an unlikely date. My wife in particular had a good answer, that I unfortunately can’t remember now. Mine was that I thought our ape slaves would turn on their human masters. Garrin solemnly nodded his head and predicted that “Mother Earth” would be our undoing. He elaborated just enough to lead me to believe he thought there was an actual woman standing on a mountain top ready to smite us all because we replaced her butter with Chiffon margarine. I remember the phrasing because I found it odd. Mother Earth, not Mother Nature. I immediately thought of Earth Goddess or some other Wiccan like term. I wanted to ask him where he had been told about all of this but I’m already known through out both sides of my family as “that conservative nut job, Brian” so I let it go. I thought about it the rest of the night though. It got me angry in the shower as most ideas for my blog do. I could just imagine some aging hippy teacher telling the class that there is a force in the world that makes bad things happen to evil men because they strip mine. That there is an actual yin and yang balance to the world that demands a pound of flesh for every misstep we make. Are there consequences for strip mining? Sure, anyone that grew up in south eastern Ohio in the late sixties and early seventies can tell you those consequences are sulfurous orange streams and erosion issues. I don't think Mother Earth was the one behind it.

So what we have are eco-nut jobs teaching your children a religion. Every liberal eco-nut job I ever met thought that man was the cause of all earth’s problems without every acknowledging that we are also the solution to those problems (the man made ones anyway). If you’ve ever been to “The Wilds” in southeastern Ohio you would be amazed to know that that entire wildlife preserve and research center is sitting where once there was nothing but man made holes for miles and not a tree in site. Mother Earth really didn't have a hand in the reclamation efforts.

The interesting thing to me is that while a lot of the eco-nut jobs will believe in the divinity of nature they are atheists who complain the loudest about separation of church and state. God forbid (pun intended) that creationism should be taught to children. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think creationism should be taught to kids either but I also don’t believe that an angry and wrathful Mother Nature should be taught to kids. Why not just go old school and tell them one day the sun god Apollo will destroy man as revenge for a minor slight by Zeus? It explains global warming as well as anything.

The one true God of Thunder

Valentine Weekend '10

It's been a pretty good weekend. My work schedule is arranged so that I only have to take one day of vacation to get four days off thanks to President's day. Our nephew, Garrin came to spend a few days. I almost got him into model building. We did put a Legos Star Wars model together, that's close. I couldn't believe he didn't want to build a snap kit Corvette to take home at the Rod and Bike show we went to on Saturday. Kids.

The car show was a decent one. It was a little small but they had some nice bikes and cars on display.

Sunday night Lisa and I had a Valentine dinner at the Briarhurst Manor. We saw an episode of Ghosthunters filmed there. I guess it's one of their claims to fame. We didn't get to see any ghosts but the six course meal we had was pretty decent.

The following day we went to Denver and used a gift card for the AMC theater to see the Wolfman. It was just okay. I was surprised by the young age of some of the kids. It's got a well earned R rating for violence.

My favorite part of the weekend was setting up Lisa's Wii. I enjoyed it so much because we finally have a mutual interest in video games. The bowling is a hoot even though Lisa is kicking my butt at it.

It was a long weekend but a good one.

Mark Steyn's Words Of Wisdom

Mark made this brilliant observation about the US -

The Washington Post ran a remarkable headline this week: “Europe Could Use Its Own Tea Party.” Underneath, David Ignatius went through the obligatory metropolitan condescension toward America’s swampdwelling knuckledraggers before acknowledging that the Continent’s problem was that there was no similar populist movement demanding fiscal sanity from the governing class.

He’s right. I’ve been saying for months that the difference between America and Europe is that, when the global economy nosedived, everywhere from Iceland to Bulgaria mobs took to the streets and besieged Parliament demanding to know why government didn’t do more for them. This is the only country in the developed world where a mass movement took to the streets to say we can do just fine if you control-freak statists would just stay the hell out of our lives, and our pockets. You can shove your non-stimulating stimulus, your jobless jobs bill, and your multi-trillion-dollar porkathons. This isn’t karaoke. These guys are singing “I’ll do it my way” for real.

The article is at National Review Online here...

John Mayer

What the hell were you thinking?

Winter Camping

My wife has always hiked 14ers here in Colorado. If you aren't familiar with that local term, a 14er is a mountain that is fourteen thousand feet high. They're the king of the hills kind of. There aren't that many in the US and most of them are here in Colorado.

Lisa used to like to hike them in the winter on snow shoes. Then she met me and I brought her down. Because I have felt guilty for being a drag on her adventures I agreed to go camping in the mountains above Woodland Park this weekend. I like the idea of being cocooned away in a warm cozy tent as the snow gently drifts down through the silent pines. That's the romantic notion anyway. The reality was more like me, freezing my ass off and not sleeping a wink. Sure the campfire was great, it kind of reminded me of my years stationed in Alaska. During the winter months all of my friends and I would have bonfires out behind the base in -30 degree weather. Back then I had the toughness of youth and the aid of a lot of alcohol backing me up. Now not so much.

The campfire did wonders to warm whichever section of my body was pointed at it for the minute, needless to say, I was literally freezing my ass off while my belly was toasty.

The tent was actually pretty toasty until my 45 year old bladder kicked in and I had to slip into the 20 degree night to try and hide from the wind behind a skinny little pine tree. All the fresh cold air must of been too fresh, I don't think I slept more than ten minutes at a stretch for the entire night. Lisa didn't do too much better. And the dog, as insulated as she is must have shared our pain, she whined all night and looked as frazzled as I felt in the morning. As soon as we got home she found a corner and slept the rest of the day.

All in all it was great fun and I'm looking forward to doing it at least once more before the end of winter. If I gained nothing else from it, I really appreciated my bed for the next three nights.

New Month

I've got nothing. I just haven't posted anything this month. I've thought up a lot of wonderful genius entries while restlessly tossing in bed at night or while showering early in the morning. The only problem is none of it sticks.

Right now I'm finding it funny that NBC was offering fried chicken and collared greens in their cafeteria for Black History Month. The only thing missing was watermelon. According to this little blurb it really wasn't a big deal. I'm sure there was no malicious intent there.

Also, I'm irritated that the Commander and Chief of our armed forces doesn't know how to pronounce "Corpsmen". I learned that when I was about 9 years old from my Grandfather who served in World War II. I learned it because of all his stories the ones he told most were the stories of these "crazy unarmed guys" that would pull the wounded soldiers off the battlefield. I think anyone that heroic should at least have their title pronounced correctly. Even as a nine year old boy I understood that. Is it a big deal? Probably not. Am I making a big deal over something just because I don't like Obama? Probably. But it's the little things that matter.