A big ask
You know, it is a huge thing we’re asking of the Middle East and Afghanistan. We’re asking them to catch up to, like, 400 years of Western cultural shift. Overnight.
We’re demanding they instantly accept attitudes toward self-government and religion that it took us hundreds of years and a few nasty wars to reach.
We’re asking them to adopt attitudes about women we’ve only reached in the last forty years and attitudes to homosexuality we’ve only realized in the last twenty.
And some of the stuff we’re pushing on them has to look pretty unattractive. They could be forgiven for thinking free speech and a secular society inevitably results in our current style of slutty, trashy popular culture. (I don’t think it is inevitable. I think it took a relentless campaign to eradicate shame to make that happen).
It’s not exactly sympathy. But I think we asking for a huge leap from…excitable people. I’ll be astonished if the Arab Spring ends well. Or soon.
April 12, 2011 — 9:49 pm
Comments: 23
Hello, I’m new!
Be grateful my blog is in black and white; this little dude is not five minutes old and is still a bit messy. It’s coming to something when you can’t walk to the store without stuff giving birth in front of you.
Yes, it’s lambing time! That magical time of year when all the fields around are full of mamas and babies and I fob you off with cute lamb pictures because I’ve been lolling around in a lawnchair all day soaking up rays instead of sitting at the computer drawing pictures of politicians who piss me off.
I took this video over the weekend, standing in the back yard looking over the field. For some reason (possibly having to do with sheepdogs) the flock only comes to our end of the field at dusk, so the video is a little dark and blurry. These two are maybe three days old; they’ve only just learned they can hop — though “hop” doesn’t really do it justice. We call it a sproing.
These little dudes aren’t entirely in control of the sproing yet, but they LIKE it.
SQUEEEEE!
April 11, 2011 — 10:23 pm
Comments: 21
President SooperGenius
Cleek the peecture for veedio. I slung this together in a real hurry trying to get it out last night, and then YouTube let me down. So it’s not brilliant (a soundtrack would’ve perked it up considerably), but the video clip needs to be out there in as many forms as possible.
The AP originally reported this, then thought better of it and tried to airbrush it away: Obama advising a man with ten kids who is worried about gas prices that what he really needs is a new car.
For those of you who aren’t politically inclined — and by way of explaining why I didn’t spend today turning that video into something awesome — here’s one minute and forty seconds of my chickens walking around pecking stuff. Seriously, that’s all there is to it. I spent my whole day sprawled over a lawn chair in the sunshine with a glass of iced tea watching them walk around and peck stuff.
Try it. It’s hypnotic.
April 8, 2011 — 8:52 pm
Comments: 43
Ugh.
Looks like we’re hung. And not in a good way.
It’s 1am here, so I’ll have to work it out tomorrow. Sorry.
I’m not having much luck with video lately, am I?
— 12:11 am
Comments: 17
Hey, nice wolverine
So this one day, one of my co-workers comes in wearing this huge, godawful ugly wig — forget matching her hair color, it didn’t seem to match her species. And my boss leaned over to me and said, “Ah. I see Christine has come to work with a wolverine on her head today.”
That’s how I always think of Trump — that guy with the wolverine on his head.
I share my vision with you. You’re welcome.
That’s all I know about him — rich, wolverine on head — so I don’t really have an opinion on a Trump presidential run. I’ll make a couple of predictions, though.
First, they’re going to call this “the most important election of our lives.” That’s an easy call; they always do. And it’s almost always true.
Second, the gosh-darned importance of this election will be cited as the reason Sarah Palin really shouldn’t run, there’s a dear (but somehow won’t be a factor with Donald Trump’s little vanity project).
April 6, 2011 — 10:06 pm
Comments: 27
Big dumb boy
Wow. Lindsey Graham is a hard man to caricature. Turns out, if you exaggerate any of his features, the result looks less like him. Fundamentally, everything about the guy is squish.
So I just made him shiiiiiiny.
Dear future visitors to this post: Lindsey Graham has said that free speech should have limitations.
Dear Republicans of South Carolina: DO BETTER NEXT TIME. KTHXBAI.
Though, if I’m reading it right, “next time” is 2014? Oof!
While we’re on the topic of speech, you do realize if the crowded theater really is on fire, you have every right to shout “FIRE!” in a crowded theater — and, in some places, a legal obligation to do so? Which makes shouting “FIRE!” in a theater you do not believe to be on fire less of a speech issue and more of a fraud issue, as far as I’m concerned. Like saying, “I’m a doctor; let me give you a breast exam” or “will you assassinate my wife for $10,000” aren’t really First Amendment issues.
Sorry for the digression, but that whole “FIRE!” thing gets on my nerves. It’s lazy and sloppy.
April 5, 2011 — 10:35 pm
Comments: 19
Terry Jones has a kind of “faces of meth” thing going, hasn’t he?
Seriously, why was this even reported? Burning a Koran is both stupid and legal in this country, if not as stupid as giving a cracker attention whore nobody preacherman just what he’s begging for. Way to reward bad behavior!
Next thing you know, you got the United Nations, the European Union, Hillary Clinton, Angela Merkel, General Petraeus and who knows who else wringing their hands about it. Oh, way to signal that we think this is a big fucking deal, too.
We don’t. And pretending we do was exactly the wrong thing.
Asking rednecks not to do stupid things is like expecting water to flow up. Does the United Nations think Ray-Ray should buy those sweet-ass alligator boots if he can’t make his truck payment this month? Does Angela Merkel think Darlene should leave her kids in the car while she drops in for a couple of beers at the Lucky Seven?
So why make this bonehead a superstar?
Burning a book had not the slightest interest to an American audience. Even our Muslims didn’t seem all that wadded up about it. The only interested constituency was the excitable, primitive boo-boos in the back of nowhere.
So why does our media choose to serve THAT audience? It’s bizarre.
I have a theory. The MSM can no longer keep things hidden from us, so they’ve gone into the business of revealing things that we all agree would be better hidden.
What do you think? Too paranoid?
April 4, 2011 — 5:14 pm
Comments: 42
April Fool!
Right. Back to normal. If you missed my April 1 abomination, you’ll find it here.
April 1, 2011 — 11:26 am
Comments: 35
Saw the chicken pusher today…
Awwwww…dang it to poop! I made you a movie of the Chicken Man’s chickens, but Pinnacle Studio is barfing it up when I go to render it (I love Pinnacle Studio, but it sure goes on the rag a lot). Now I’m late, late, late and no time to fix it.
Here’s a quick recap.
Went to see our chicken guy today. He had many fine birds, but no bantams. He’ll have some bantams in a couple of weeks, though they’ll be a bit older than I’d like. He doesn’t know what colors; his bantam guy gets ratty when he asks and never gives him the right answer anyway. Sounds like Bantam Guy has issues.
Chicken Man is a heckuva guy, though, and is really trying to make a go of it, so we bought lots of other stuff. Shavings. Corn. A run for the new girls to keep Mapp and Lucia from killing them when they’re small and tempting.
I’m casting around on the chicken forums and looking at local bulletin boards. Lots of people raise these things.
On the way home, we stopped in a little antique shop and got talking with the owners. Chicken people. Turns out Antiques Dude used to be a zookeeper and one of his jobs was killing chickens to feed to the animals. He demonstrated the pull-and-twist method, but really prefers putting an air gun pellet in their heads.
So I learned something!
The End.
March 31, 2011 — 11:05 pm
Comments: 13
Spring!
At long last, Spring. Everywhere we go, the roadsides and hillsides are splattered daffodils. Thousands of them in their several colors, all along the main roads and down tiny country lanes. It’s spectacular.
Thing is, these things don’t grow wild. They spread a bit on their own, but first someone has to plant them, way out along sheep fields in the back end of nowhere.
The government doesn’t do it. Somebody — really, a lot of somebodies, over a lot of years — dropped a few quid, bought a few bulbs and spent an afternoon digging holes. They did the math and worked out that, for a couple of hours and a couple of pounds, they could do something everyone (selves included) would enjoy year after year.
Multiply that by an army, and you’ll have some idea of the show the daffs put on.
The word “community” is much abused in our time. When lefties use it — and they use it a lot — they mostly mean a group of people who share a grievance and band together to demand redress from the government.
No, this is community — this gentle, anonymous gift.
March 29, 2011 — 10:45 pm
Comments: 23