Book review, of sorts.

" The Heart is a Lonely Hunter"

Not sure how to take this book...I liked it, yes, and I enjoyed it. The characters, though, were almost more than I could take. This is a feature I find consistently in novels about the South, that somehow the people portrayed are a little beyond even what I can imagine finding in a book. I suppose if I had ever lived in the North, I would be able to say the same. But I haven't, so it's the 'darkies' and the 'preacher man' and the 'aspiring actress' that I just don't recognize from my own world. Other than that, an awesome story. Very visual, yet sparse?

Fruit flies like a banana.

With four glorious days in a row here, I've had the windows open and the a/c off in great comfort. I'm loving it! I was ready for the season to change this year, instead of dreading the end of warm days and sunshine. Maybe this fall (I know, it doesn't really start until tomorrow) is easier because it has shifted in gradually, instead of staying in the 80s until one fateful October night when a hard freeze kills all the kids in the swimming pool.

Response to Stine

My patriotism, sir, is not confined to a single date. I will admit, though, that my heart swells with love for the Federal Government on Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Years Day, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (observed), President's Day, Memorial Day, and the Fourth of July. I've got to get on here and post, though, about my last couple days. A fun debate, a beautiful funeral, an 83mph trip out I-66...oh yeah.

Desist radio silence.

Yeah, yeah. I've been bragging to everyone about how I was going to keep up with blogging this year, and I haven't done it. Well, it isn't my fault this time. Everything was going great and I was all geared up to finish the yearbook--more of a priority than blogging right now--and I was within sight of the end, when Joe got a garrison billet that took the computer away from me for nearly three weeks!!! My own poor lappie is dying the slow, agonized death that Dells die, so I was bereft of life, liberty, and internet access for that whole time. This prevented my doing anything of particular use, except for cleaning the house some more, making Christmas presents, and writing many letters to friends and family at OCS, at BASIC, in jail, on Cowboy Ranches, or wherever else my friends and family happen to be.

Now, I've got the computer back, I've got my groove on, and it's time to work on the yearbook. I'll be back when it's done, I promise! I hope to have a solid readership again before I start going really interesting places...

Two months!

Cool. In the meantime, I'm mastering this beast that is internet surveys--500 Delta miles and 3,000 Hilton points later, I'm feeling good about myself. Now, if we ever had time to travel....

National Review

The rest of Joe's birthday present came today, and I proceeded to spend a solid hour and a half reading it nearly cover to cover (I haven't quite reached the back page). This cartoon came from a back issue, and I'm using it (hopefully not illegally) without the proper permissions. Maybe they'll forgive me because the post as a whole is a rousing endorsement for the publication.

I love the National Review. It's nice and round in it's conservatism, generally unapologetic about things like being Catholic and calling homosexuality wrong, and it devoted almost five complete pages to an article on the crumbling Anglican Church, and how its renaissance is taking place in Africa. Down there (shock! gasp!) people are really going strong for orthodox, no-holds-barred, go-back-to-confession types of Catholicism, and the Catholic Lite church is no different. Highly conservative bishops from many African dioceses evidently met on their own, a month before the deci-annual Lambeth Conference, to discuss the alarming trends of Paganism in the older (read = European) sectors of their denomination.

At Lambeth, nothing more substantive than "dialog" was on the menu, whereas the African church leaders were driving hard for a plan to create a new Anglican denomination, to properly house all those fringe parishes that have been splitting left and right, only to find themselves in a magesterial limbo. The article is quite informative, and I recommend that you find yourself a copy of the magazine and read it for yourself. If you live in any large city, or in California, it'll probably be in the "foreign language" section.

backstory

Snug the Cat (or, Snug the Amazing Incredible Warrior Cat) is, at the moment of this writing, on the back porch dining on my houseplant. Despite his recently-dramatic living arrangement alterations, he seems to have become a well adjusted house pet. His time is largely spent asleep, either in the bathtub or in the bedroom window. Today he got his first confirmed kill (a fly)!

Snug the Cat

Ladies and Gentlemen.......the dangling modifier.

"GRANITE CITY, Ill. — Police and FBI agents captured an ex-convict suspected of killing eight people in two states as he smoked a cigarette outside of a southwestern Illinois bar Tuesday night."

Zulu.....zulu.....zulu....

It is, yes, still weird to say “my husband.” In fact, I continue to word my sentences on purpose to not have to say “my husband,” because it still seems so strange. Pretentious, almost. Sniff. I have a husband. Ha!

Every morning, his alarm clock goes off at 0345. Then again at 0350. Then again at 0400. Also at 0400, my cell phone alarm goes off, and at 0402 his cell phone alarm goes off. At 0405, all three clocks go off together, then my cell phone goes off for a final time at 0415. This is to ensure that he gets to base on time. I’m convinced that this method does nothing more than deprive you of a half hour’s sleep, but enough people are disciples of the “wake up gradually by many alarms” method, that I can’t really knock it in earnest. Besides, my own method didn’t work so well this morning—I turned the darn thing off without even waking up, then slept in until the precise moment when I should have been leaving the house. Still made it to work on time (barely), but it made for a complicated morning. Especially since I’m the one driving the car without decals this week.

A done deal

And the great event having passed with glory, pomp, and circumstance, the princess rode with her knight into the east, decidedly against the trend of history and legend. They reflected with chagrin upon the rank disobedience of their vassals in liberally festooning the chariot with creme de shave and streamers, but bliss soon carried them beyond such considerations. With lightning and thunder preceding their arrival by only moments, the princess and the knight passed with haste from the chariot to the castle, wherein they passed the night in peace and safety. The next morn, the castle gatekeeper inquired anxiously as to where the princess and the knight had been two evenings previous--a date for which he believed they had a reservation. The princess looked aghast at the homely keeper, whilst the knight shook his head in gentle dismay. "Nay, good peasant," said the knight, "for we were married but yestereve. There would be no cause for our presence before then...surely you are mistaken." Thus it happened that the gatekeeper had cause to check his records and correct the mistake, to the great relief of the princess.

Thus endeth chapter one.

Flaking out at D-7 days

A thought. See, because we ingest so many complex food chemicals and steroids every day (usually about 2500 calories' worth per day than we need), the divinely inspired design of our soft palate is gradually deteriorating. For example, the "g" sounded at the end of gerunds (i.e. walking, sneezing, inventing) had been lost so widely across American society that we will soon cease to include it in our written speech. The same has already happened with the dropped "e," as in "shoppe."

This post brought to you by Joe Shirley. Thanks for the idea, man.

Schpeed of lightning

According to all the old people around me, that's how fast life moves. "At the speed of lightning," they say. I'm not entirely convinced myself, considering how I've been waiting for June 21st to get here for about eleven months. Even better than that, I've been waiting for June 6th to get here for like six weeks. What is taking so long???

My sister had me watch Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium last night. It was pretty good. There was a fun line in there about the existence of God as a fact, but it got dimmed a little later by Mr. Magorium's equation of heaven with elysium and shangri la. "I may come back as a bunblebee," he said. And he called God Jehovah. In cases like that, I really can't decide whether I'm glad the athiest accountant character was put down a little (turns out he wasn't really atheist, just practical), or wish that the film had left well enough alone. What does it profit a man to make a good point but drown it in interreligous ambiguity? It's like those "coexist" bumper stickers.

We also watched Alvin and the Chipmunks and Enchanted this week. (I'm feeling very young right about now.) Of the three, I think I like Enchanted best. Any movie in which the Pigeon eats the Roach after they help the princess tidy up the home is a great, great movie.

Prozac is a funny looking word.

I lied. I now have to change my life around to make room for the Marine Corps. No more three weeks of blissful downloading. Instead, I have four days to get ready for work--real work--in the Big Kid world. Does anyone out there read this blog anymore, or is it just an outlet for lonely little me?

Severe Weather Outlook

Wow. Did I really post five months ago...and not once since? Time flies, man.

As I watch the rain pour down, and wait for my maid of honor to show up to a schedule-synching session, and reflect upon the fact that I am now a college graduate, I,well, reflect upon the fact that I am now a college graduate.

"What the hell now?" Say my classmates, many of them. (In those words, too. That was a quote, not a gratuitous use of profanity. An appropriate use of hell, actually, in my mind, if the old adage about idle minds is true. They'd better find something to keep them busy.)

I, on the other hand, have over 50 hours' worth of photography to upload to the school yearbook software, four persons' stuff to manage and repack, three weddings to attend, my wedding to arrange, my country's five hundredth anniversary to plan, a graduation to sing for, my wife to murder, and several very interesting movies to see in wide release.

I'm swamped. But! Look for me during the next three weeks. I'll have all those hours in the computer lab with nothing to do but blog. It might be the last time I'm here, after all.