Category: Uncategorized

So, we got our first robot this week. If you think marriage was in trouble thanks to homosexual nuptuals, well, Western civilization hasn’t seen anything yet. This fat, oversized frisbee does a better job of vaccuuming a room than I’d expected; if it isn’t necessarily up to female expectations of housecleanliness, well, neither am I.

A little bit of preparation goes a long way, and even if it has a tough time with the larger dust bunnies – which in all fairness should more rightly be designated mutant dust hares on steroids – as Space Bunny pointed out, the ease of letting Roomba do her little robot dance means that they’re less likely to build up in the first place.

Even if it didn’t work, the entertainment value is surprisingly high, especially if you factor in the inclusion of an increasingly alarmed 95-pound Ridgeback among the spectators. But it does work, and I’m now eagerly anticipating the inevitable introduction of Moppa, a Roomba companion with soap-and-water functionality.

We actually have a household robot. How cool is that!

I can’t believe I haven’t commented on this yet. Probably because the boys have been talking of nothing else for the last two weeks. And speaking of the only NFL quarterback more overrated than Donovan McNabb, is there anything better to have come out of this offseason than the Ron Mexico saga? I think not.

I’m putting Ron Mexico on my Vikings jersey this year to go with my funky new Vikings socks. I’m logging on to every stupid web site as Ron Mexico from now on. I may write my next novel as “Ron Mexico”. I’m changing my name, Space Bunny’s name and my dog’s name to Ron Mexico, Ronda Mexico and Ronaldinho Mexico.

Ron Mexico is cool, and by cool, I mean totally sweet!

Man, oh man, the boys in the MFL are going to beat this one into the ground until a little man in China turns to his wife and says: “What is that geyser? And who is Ron Mexico?” I CANNOT wait!

Ron Mexico. Oh, where is Phil Hartman when you need him? YES!

Regular readers may recall my theory that while Rush Limbaugh was right about Donovan McNabb of the Philadelphia Eagles being overrated, he was wrong as to why. It’s not possible for McNabb to be overrated simply because he’s black, since Daunte Culpepper of the Vikings is STILL underrated despite his monster season last year.

Yes, the Eagles beat the Vikings in the playoffs, but consider what would have happened had the defenses been reversed.

I argued then that the real reason is that players, especially quarterbacks, from the NFC East are always overrated, because that’s the division that the New York and Washington media follow. As proof of this concept, I offer Don Banks’ Sports Illustrated column on team-by-team needs.

One guess as to which division pops up first….

Remember how I mentioned that you can usually tell what Ms Michelle Malkin is going to write about ahead of time? Well, I happened to read her column for the first time in months and I was simply shocked to see her come out strongly against forcing oral sex on handicapped schoolgirls. Be sure to tune in next week when she takes ferocious stands against gassing Jews and stealing candy from babies.

But like most neoconservatives, MSM doesn’t actually have anything to say on the issue. She simply recounts a specific example of what is not exactly a new problem – bad things happen in public schools – without ever coming within a gun-free zone’s range of the logical conclusion recommended by the estimable Fred Reed, namely, free the kids, raze the architectural monstrosities and issue hunting licenses on educators.

Never fear. In about fifteen years, we can expect this ever-timely faux conservative to discover the hot new phenomenon of homeschooling.

German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the strict defender of Catholic orthodoxy for the past 23 years, was elected Pope on Tuesday despite a widespread assumption he was too old and divisive to win election.

He took the name Benedict XVI, a cardinal announced to crowds in St. Peter’s Square after white smoke from the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel chimney and the pealing of bells from St. Peter’s Basilica announced that a new pope had been chosen….

Ratzinger’s stern leadership of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the modern successor to the Inquisition, delighted conservative Catholics but upset moderates and other Christians whose churches he described as deficient.

And his three most powerful weapons are…

GY reminded me that I was remiss in failing to personally thank those who sent me their corrections on the PDB collection of short stories. He is correct, my excuse, as you may recall, is that I still don’t have access to any emails prior to April, so right now I don’t have those corrections nor do I know who sent them. If you previously sent me an email with corrections, please resend it as I did not finish applying all of them before the little incident with the keyboard.

The OC and I have currently embarked on a project that may be of some interest to those of you who enjoy our fiction. It’s too soon to say much about it, except that any pro-level graphic designers who are willing to volunteer their services should fire me an email. (TimF, I need you to email me anyhow about the 3D stuff – I don’t have your contact info.) This is a low-budget experiment, so the only recompense will be glory, a modicum of exposure and a spot at the head of the line when the budget does allow for art.

The Mexican Foreign Secretary says the United States and Mexico will be integrated in the future, and took issue with the Minutemen Project. Mexico’s Foreign Secretary told a group of Texas-Pan American students he envisions a day when Mexico and the United States are “integrated.”

I know the many Republicans here – even those who are not the Three Monkeys variety – don’t like to hear this, but there’s no question that George Bush will eventually be proven to have been far more worthy of impeachment than Bill Clinton ever was.

The signs are all there. You just have to be willing to look at them. The President’s unwillingness to defend the southern border has nothing to do with economic growth or being pro-immigration and everything to do with the end of America in its current incarnation.

Even the LA Times recognizes legacy media bias in explaining the failure of Air America and left-wing talk radio:

• Entertainment value. The top conservative hosts put on snazzy, frequently humorous shows. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, observes: “The parody, the asides, the self-effacing humor, the bluster are all part of the packaging that makes the political message palatable.” Besides, the triumph of political correctness on the left makes it hard for on-air liberals to lighten things up without offending anyone.

• Fragmentation of the potential audience. Political consultant Dick Morris explains: “Large percentages of liberals are black and Hispanic, and they now have their own specialized entertainment radio outlets, which they aren’t likely to leave for liberal talk radio.” The potential audience for Air America or similar ventures is thus pretty small — white liberals, basically. And they’ve already got NPR.

• Liberal bias in the old media. That’s what birthed talk radio in the first place. People turn to it to help right the imbalance. Political scientist William Mayer, writing in the Public Interest, recently observed that liberals don’t need talk radio because they’ve got the big three networks, most national and local daily newspapers and NPR.

Unable to prosper in the medium, liberals have taken to denouncing talk radio as a threat to democracy. Liberal political columnist Hendrik Hertzberg, writing in the New Yorker, is typically venomous. Conservative talk radio represents “vicious, untreated political sewage” and “niche entertainment for the spiritually unattractive,” Hertzberg sneers.

If some liberals had their way, Congress would regulate political talk radio out of existence. Their logic is that scrapping Air America would be no loss if it also meant getting Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Bennett off the air.

It’s the third reason that is the most important one, of course, and is also what’s driving non-radio media phenomenons such as WorldNetDaily and the blogosphere. And, like the good fascists they are, American liberals will continue to try to ban that which they cannot control.

Will the last straight white man to leave the Democratic Party please turn out the lights….

Pan-Galactic illustrates the reluctance of the Southern man to hit back:

She punched him the face.

He took it. I’d seen him fight. I knew he knew it was coming, and he could’ve blocked it, dodged it, or simply beaten her senseless before she even threw it… but he didn’t. He just took it.

“Look… calm down. I don’t fight girls. It ain’t right.”

She punched him in the face again, then started cussing him. She said everything you can imagine. She even started calling him a coward, too scared to fight a girl.

“Don’t hit me again. I’ve already told you, I don’t fight girls. It ain’t right.”

Red faced and seething now… she punches him again, and then she cusses him, and his family.

“You need to go home. That’s three times you’ve hit me. You ain’t gonna do it again.”

Perhaps because I was raised in the worker’s paradise of Minnesota, I’ve never understood this Southern reluctance to unleash physical force on women. How is a girl or a woman supposed to learn to control her tongue if no one is going to administer the correction that is often so desperately called for? I’ve just never had a big problem with allowing someone of either sex to experience the reasonable consequences of their actions.

In the dojo, of course, this gentlemanly behavior isn’t possible, given that the whole point of the training is to teach one to react prior to thinking. If you’re reacting to a flash of movement or the glimpse of an open window, the thought of your target’s sex isn’t going to enter into the picture until afterwards.

Outside the dojo, I’ve only hit a woman once. I’d been arguing with this psycho at a college party, a girl I later learned actually ended up in the loony bin, when she leaned forward and bit me in the chest. It was almost summer, I wasn’t wearing a shirt, and she actually bit through the skin on both sides; I could feel her teeth meet.

I was in an odd position, because I’d just been turning away to get away from her when she lunged, so my right hand was across my body and under her jaw. I threw a backhand uppercut as I rotated my body back to the right, and she literally flew up, up and away. She was laying there about five feet away, stunned, as everyone whirled around to unleash their righteously indignant wrath on a despicable girl-beater.

Of course, as soon as they saw my bleeding chest, their disapprobation immediately shifted from me to her. Some of her friends helped her exit the premises in disgrace while I endured rabies jokes and having my wound washed out with vodka. I’ve been smacked around rather thoroughly on plenty of occasions, had bones broken and been KO’d, but I’ve never experienced sharper pain than that psycho’s bite. It hurt for three days.

I’m no Southern gentleman. My only regret is that I didn’t go with my left instead of the backhand.

JR assumes a portion of the blame:

I really enjoyed your piece on men…let me suggest also that along with the absent fathers, many mothers can and did contribute to their son’s stay into boyhood. I was one of them.

As a single parent I often told my son “not to fight back” in school if at all possible. Knowing the insane policy of the school to expel both victim and bully. I brought him up to not like guns, and I wish I would have taken him to a firing range to learn how to use one. One day, when he was around 10, I saw a neighborhood black kid (who was around 15) kicking my son in the side, while his best friend stood by and watched.(we are white) That day I was awakened to reality and told him, inside of murder, go ahead and fight back with all full fury, damn the schools. IT was a little late, but better late than never.

Thank goodness my son loved sports and learned many “manly” examples from teammates and coaches.

It’s a man’s world, you guys built it, most of the time woman just take care of it.(now, I’m not putting us down, just thinking of a bell curve) I grew up in the 60’s with all the woman”s revolution crap, and I played drums for a living in bands, and lugged around a lot of heavy equipment until one day, I looked at the size of the forceps on the guys and said, “here, I’ll carry the microphones and carry my set, but I’m not lugging those huge 4560’s JBL speakers anymore.” No one said a word….

I still believe that men and woman can be equal in intelligence, but I’m always telling my x-Navy Seal husband, who never believes me, that if HE would just call when we have a complaint about something, it would get taken care of…..it’s the pitch of the voice, it’s the respect of sheer force…it’s mother nature…and to ignore it is stupid. I wish I could convince him of all the trouble I have to go through when all it would take would be one phone call from him.

Men are needed as parents. Period.

I suppose there’s something to the idea that you can’t have a mama’s boy without a mama. But then, JR was raising the boy as a single parent. There are plenty of men who have abdicated their responsibility to be a role model, in which case the mother is acting as a virtual single parent.