Garden of Lost Tanks

Thus.In the Kuwaiti desert near Al Jahrah.

More at the site below; fascinating.

From Yann Arthus-Bertrand

11 or better on 1d20 to save for "excessive media exposure"...

If you know or care nothing about Dungeons and Dragons, stop now.

Otherwise, you might want to wander over here and read this little take on Tundra Barbie's "autobiography" (if by "autobiography" you mean "dictated by me to someone who could write"...).

Best graf: "Plus, on every single page she bemoans her 8 INT build and blames her horrible playing on everyone else! It's her fault for putting all her stat points into Charisma!"

Quick read, good funny. Plus, you actually get to see the words "Sarah Palin" without something adjacent to them that that makes you want to throw up a little in the back of your mouth.

Cleats up

Saturday we had a nice break in the weather, so Little Girl, Big Man and I went to our little Portsmouth Park to have a kickabout. Let's say that Missy has the enthusiasm but not the technique quite down. But given her style, I suspect that she's well on the way to becoming a savagely brutal outside back or an all-in mixed martial arts fighter.

I'm not sure which one frightens me less...

Good night

Bad evening.

Mojo is sick, and even tho I've been trying to take most of the childcare she overdid herself at work this afternoon and was shot by dinnertime. I had several crises blow up at work, didn't get out on time, Mojo had to pick up the kids, who were tetchy and fussy. Thank god for Thai Ginger! At least I could get some hella good Pad Thai instead of fish sticks and mac-and-cheese (the Stearman-orange out-of-the-box Kraft variety, mind you - the tykes refuse anything remotely natural or wholesome). Frigging wireless goddam printer kept kludging up, going offline. Pissed me off, partially at Mojo, who insisted on the thing and then bought it at damn Staples. Fecking barsteward. I'd like to drop-kick the thing into the street.Then little girl wouldn't go to sleep, and had to have her toys replaced in the toybox and her little head gently laid on the pillow twenty minutes after bedtime with a stern admonition that Nine Thirty Is Too Late For Baby Girls To Be Up.

Then the Boy had some sort of emotional hissy about sleeping with his mom - it's Mom-and-Peeper Tuesday. Finally got him in bed with her and asleep after a twenty minute gabfest. That child is the King of First-Grade Drama.

So I had the house alone to myself. Tidied up a little, did the dishes, and got around to cooking the cabbage rolls I'd been meaning to for the past couple of nights. Mmmm. Some for the fridge for tomorrow, the others to freeze for cold December nights. Finally a moment here in front of the laptop, to record just another weekday evening, another in a seemingly endless string of them. Get up, kids to school and daycare, work, home to pickup kids, dinner, playtime/computer/TV time, bedtime.Wash, rinse, repeat.

I wonder if George Clooney's life is like this?

Oh - and I should note for the record that little man and I played a cutthroat game of Microarmor...which he won. Yes, the former infantryman with twenty-some years in was waxed by a six-and-a-half-year-old with the emotional range of an operatic diva.Jesus wept.

OK, I'm ready for tomorrow already...

Shameless

OK: here's the deal.

I have no shame - I grew up in Chicago, where logrolling, deal-making and backscratching are a Way of Life. And I have someone I want you to consider helping. No, I have someone I want to flat-out try and push you into helping.

Her name is Maia, and her wonderful blog (which is bookmarked on this page) is Une Envie de Sel.Right now she's in the running for what sounds like a delightful trip to the City of Light. What she needs is for you and I to go over to the Yves St. Laurent website and vote for her.

I could tell you about what a brillantly artistic person she is, about her adorable little family and her precociously magical daughter QQ. But, what the hell. In the spirit of the great Mare Daley, we have a saying about participatory democracy: don't ask me about the gawddam issues, just vote early and vote often.So - why are we still standing here talking? Let's get over there and vote. Hizzonor would tell you: dose tickets ain't gonna win demselves.

Bomben los!

As I was writing a comment to the preceding post on marriage and the state, a phrase returned to me from what may have to be one of the most wonderfully written sex scenes I've ever encountered for pure Bulwar-Lyttonesque delight.

The scene is set in the 1940's and takes place in the office of some sort of Allied military satrap. His secretary, who sees him as a skyhook to greater things, is trying to get his, shall we say, attention? She finally pins him down and makes it clear to him that she has other things in mind than increased War Production. Thus:

"'Take me!' she murmured, her lips burning against his ear, 'Oh, God, take me, use me, overwhelm me! Make me yours, ravage me, dominate me, devastate me!"

He bombed her like Schweinfurt."

Now that's entertainment.

Marry me, darling!

I just came across another one of these damn news items about some sort of gay marriage/domestic partnership proposal that the voters in Washington State got to decide on last week.I'm really quite sick of this entire matter; with all the other things bedeviling our nation and our world, this bizarre obsession that certain groups - obviously, mostly religious groups - have about ensuring that never, ever, not ever will two men or two women be able to call each other "the little woman" or "my hubby", ever.

Never.

Frankly, their religious obsession is their own business, and in the confines of their own home or where-ever it is that they do their religious business they are free to let their inner whack run free.Transfer your ownership of your daughter to her new hubby - don't forget the full disclosure and the extended warranty, dad. Do the "covenant marriage" thing, swear your woman to obedience and whatever, guy. Let your inner Jesus Freak hang waaaay out, man.

Just stop using my damn tax dollars to do it.

Look. What legitimate interest does the state - any state, Oregon, the United States - have in who moves in with whom?

It has a legitimate interest in the enforcement of legal contracts.

It has a legitimate interest in the prevention of preventable physical ailments that could result in a burden to the State as the caregiver of last resort.

It has a legitimate interest in the protection of legal minors and those unable to legally consent to the use of their property, including their bodies.And that's it.

When one homo puts his weenie into another homo Baby Jesus may cry. Or not - Baby Jesus and I don't talk much anymore. But that's not the State's problem. When one lesbian gives another lesbian crotch hickies, it may send Allah into a fucking heavenly tailspin. Or not - Allah and I don't even exchange Ramadan cards. But that's NOT the State's problem. When two women, a man and their pastor jump into a big, sweaty dogpile, it may offend everyone who thinks about it. But it's NOT THE STATE'S EFFING PROBLEM.

Laws that can't be enforced, aren't enforced or are unenforceable, ARE a problem. They help make the State look weak and foolish, and waste resources best applied elsewhere. That's why things like Prohibition and the "War on Drugs" are so foolish. That's why most sane people stopped agitating for sodomy laws and other bedroom legislation.

The state has no real business deciding what is or isn't a "marriage". "Marriage" is a loaded, theological term, anyway. I don't want my state deciding who can and can't "marry", or who is capable of "performing" a "marriage".

The state's interest in domestic partnerships is, and should be, limited to the legal and governmental aspects of them. Who pays taxes on what. Who are the parties to a mortgage, a contract, who owes who child support?

The state has not legitimate interest in who wants to knock boots with whom outside ensuring that some degree of consanguinity is preserved(although honestly? If some 60-year-old mother wants to "marry" her 40-year-old son, my only thought would be "Skweechy!" She's not going to be bearing his acephalic kid, so the only real objection is on the bounds of good taste. And when you start legislating good taste, well...)and that all the parties involved are able to legally consent to the arrangement.

So, for Ashtaroth's sake, people, let's take the axe of sanity to this tree and its rotten fruit.

There need be only one form of domestic contract needed in the legal sense: a "domestic contract". All parties need to be consenting adults. All parties need to be no closer than the third degree (second for the Appalachian states, let's not throw out tradition recklessly). You stop in to the registrar, you sign the document, pay your fifteen bucks, and, hey, la, you're an officially registered "domestic partnership". You get taxed that way, you can legally sign contracts for each other, you are immunized against your partner(s) testimony, you have visitation rights, your kids are yours until or if you break the contract. Then you see a lawyer about support, alimony...etc.

No, you can't "marry" your minor kid. No, you can't "marry" a goat. You want to "marry" both those hot college boys downstairs?Chocks away, Romeo! (or Juliet!) - knock yourself out...just make sure you know who's name(s) is/are on the lease, and who gets the ottoman and the "Runaway Bride" DVD when you break up.

But let's stop this idiotic argument about something the state has no business deciding, anyway.

Sweetgeezmarie, what a frigging goatrope. It took me, what, 200 words? to solve this problem. Th'fuck IS wrong with you people?

Quo vadis?

Armistice Day is past, the late-year holidays yet to come.

Little girl hasn't got her new glasses yet; that'll be a post for later in the month.

I still haven't much to say about the economic and political foolishness in our capital; the same fools are doing the same fooling they were a year ago.

I'm working on a geology post and the decisive battle for November, but what about the short term?

So...any suggestions from the audience? What would YOU like me to talk about?

Muffled drum

As I sat peacefully at my desk this morning, rolling soil worms and blogreading I came across this agonizing post over at Ranger Against War.

And it occured to me what I was trying to reach for in my preceding post about war and remembrance and soldiers and our nation.

And it was simply this; "One death is tragedy, a million deaths are statistics."

We are bundled into uniforms that make us look alike, we are herded into aircraft or onto ships in anonymous masses, we go to work, or fight, or die, in the faceless, nameless, mechanized machine that is modern war. We're even zipped into identical plastic bags and shipped home - or those bits of us that are left - in identical coffins, or wrapped in identical gowns that drape over the insulted bodies and the missing limbs or twisted guts.

But then we're on our own. Or to our families, our husbands or wives. To those who love us, or try to, as time and tide ravage what war left behind.

And it occurred to me that this day, and the days like it, are part of the problem instead of part of the solution.

We just perpetuate the anonymity, with our parades and uniformed marchers and wreaths at mute stone that covers a faceless "unknown" whose very facelessness distances his suffering from those of us still suffering. In our public mass mourning we celebrate as much as mourn.

So perhaps the...best...way to spend this day is beside someone; someone you know, someone you love, perhaps a stranger dying alone...who has been beaten with the iron rod of the God of War.

Or, perhaps even more important, someone whose life has been twisted by a war they were too young, or too old, to fight; a soldier's widow, a father who buried his son, a child too young to understand why daddy or mommy never came home. Among the cruellest victims of war are it's oldest, and youngest.

And to reflect that each one, every one, every single man or woman who has looked into this abyss is a tragedy. Not a statistic. And mourn them as you would they mourn you; for yourself, wounded unto death and going into the vasty Dark as we all do, alone.

And grieve.Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W.H. Auden

The guns below

I was watching Aston Villa's truly comical demolition of Bolton Wanderers last Saturday, when I noticed something odd about Villa's rather unpleasant "claret" (read: venous blood red) and sky-blue uniforms.

A small red rosette-thing on the front of the shirt.

I had noticed something similar on the shirts of the teams meeting at Stamford Bridge that day;...the same little rose.

And I remembered that it wasn't a rose.

It was a poppy.

Today we here in the U.S. will do our usual half-assed little remembrance of the end of the Great War. The day just doesn't seem to mean much to us; we call it "Veteran's Day", denaturing even the very name of the occasion into a sort of generic WinCo-label title, as if showing by our contrariness our indifference to the symbolism of the day and what it meant.

When you look for the difference between the "two nations separated by a common language" you can't really look much further than here.

In Great Britain the sports teams wear these little flowers, public officials and policemen, ordinary citizens, for weeks leading up to the two minutes of silence that fall on the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year. Bells will toll, soldiers and children march to the memorials and graves and lay their flowers down for the wind to riffle and carry off, silent messages to the dead men swallowed up by the unspeakable great dying.

Here we will wonder why the mail didn't come, and tsk with irritation that the bank and the passport office are closed.

I think I've said everything I need to say about the facile and meaningless "respect" we idly toss at uniforms without trying to understand what those uniforms mean. Instead let me quote the words of a man who believes in a hope and an eternity I do not:

"You all are thanking these men and women for doing things they wish they had never done.
You are thanking them for seeing things they wish they had never seen.
You are blessing them with a hell they wish they had never been part of."

We never seem to learn, do we? That "there never was a good war, or a bad peace."

Let us hope that some day we will.

Random Images from Around the Internets...and More...

I am a sort of beady-eyed packrat of the Internets, scampering about with my whiskery nose all a-twitch finding images I like; some pretty, some odd, others awful, but shiny and glittery to my rodent mind and dragging them into my midden of a folder on the laptop. Every so often I paw through them, muttering "Preciousssss...my preciousss."

I figured it was time to dump out the picture folder and give you a look.

Let's start with this one: it's a hat.



Well. Shit.I knew we'd overlooked something in the pre-Cana counseling. How do we explain Mom's execution to the kids..?

Ah.Very few actresses - very few women, I daresay - managed the insouciant charm of Audrey Hepburn.

This lovely graphic is by someone called "Phobs", whose page over at deviantart has some gorgeous and fascinating - and some truly disturbing - stuff in it.This is a part of an image that I believe is meant to represent Poland in the 1940s, but looks to me more like the story of St. Elizabeth of Hungary and the roses. Do you know the story?

Well, St. Elizabeth, then merely Elizabeth of Thuringa, was taking bread to the poor, in contravention of her stern husband's orders. He suspected her secret charity, and had her watched, but could not catch her in the act of largesse. Finally he managed to apprehend her coming from the castle bakery; he halted her, frowning down at her full apron from which the smell of fresh-baked bread emanated like a good deed in a sinful world.

"What have you there, woman?" he rasped. She replied; "I have been in the garden, lord, and I have cut the roses for my chamber."

"Roses!? Let me see them, these...roses...then." he sneered.

So Elizabeth slowly opened her apron...and the roses tumbled out, spilling down her dress and across the paving stones red as, well, as roses; fragrence sweet as love, blooming fresh as life, petals soft as a kiss.

(Wasn't true, mind you; they tell the same story about some saint in Portugal, and as far as we know Elizabeth's husband was all in favor of her charity.)

But it's a wonderful little story, isn't it?

Your National Guard - the Modern Minuteman; Defender of the Homeland, Bulwark of Democracy......circa 1992. Try and find the fire direction chief in the middle of this elite strike force. Ahem.

Yikes.Just...yikes.

Yeah, I know, I haven't forgotten the Rape of Nanking, either. But if you have a moment check these fascinating images of Bakumatsu and Meiji Japan of the 1890s and early 1900s......by enigmatic photog Enami Nobukuni. Intriguing glimpses of a world in some ways as vanished as Knossos or Technoctitlan.

Anybody else love "A Hole Is To Dig"?One of my favorite books from my childhood - a kids book that I actually loved as a kid.


Well, THAT explains a lot...
"Called the “Nice Cup In Bra,” the lingerie consists of a grass-green top that, when removed, conveniently unfurls into a 1.5-meter-long putting mat."When the user sinks a putt into one of the cups, a built-in speaker pumps out a cry of “Nice shot.”I know that Japan is a very different culture and all, and that the Japanese have their own ideals of value, but this is...is...it just makes me glad I don't golf.

Is this cool, or what?Apparently it is, or is going to be, called an "asperatus" cloud, a type of cumulus congestus (I think). Scary looking, neh?

Oh, yah, fail.Yes, I play videogames with my son.

But not "Grand Theft Auto".
Found this one at The Bins.I've been reading this on the can and enjoying Fr. Kelly's advice.

My personal fave was his suggestion on your basic can't-miss method of selecting a bride: "There is much to be said for the wisdom of the man who laid a broom across his threshold; the first four women who entered stepped over it. The fifth picked it up, and he married her."

Father, forgive me, but...WTF???

Ooh. Epic fail.Came across this one sorting out old photo albums.This is from some damn miniature golf place on the Jersey shore about 20 years ago. That's me on the right with She Who Is Always Known As Pre-Mommy. Kind of sad, this being the highlight of the vacations the six of us used to take in that time. The other truly screwy thing is that all three couples (the husband of the woman on the left is taking the snapshot) are now divorced. Bad luck coming in threes? Poor premarital counseling? Men are assholes?

Who knows.

Odd, nonetheless.

Hmmm. I've heard it said that everything is sexier in Paris.Seems to be the case.

Bye, now.

Through the Lens with Little Miss

So...

...young Missy took control of the camera the other night. She took so many pictures that I thought I'd post a selection of her snapshots to let you see how the world looks to our little girl (who, we now know, probably sees most of it as a blur...) when she can make a record of it.

"Here I am. This one is by Daddy, who just took off my shoes and said I had the stinkiest feet of any three-and-a-half-year-old in history. I don't! Smell my feet and see! (Daddy: if you value your life, don't. She does, and it's a horrible miracle that such a sweet little girl can have such stanky dogs.)Here's Mommy being funny.Here's Daddy. He's going to be prey for Miss Lily Kitty in a couple of seconds, see her in the background? Bite Daddy, Lily, hee hee!!!And here's some impressionist images of my living room, starting with my feet again what as NOT stinky! (Daddy: yes they are, sweetie. You should wash them.):


Daddy's dirty shoes.
I hope you enjoyed this look into the world of Little Miss; I sure did.