I nearly missed blogging today. The lad turned out to have strep throat, so that’s occupied me a bit. Why does it matter?
I’m trying to blog every single day this month. I joined to be a part of National Blog Posting Month, or NaBloPoMo. The entire premise is that a person writes a blog post every day for 30 days. I think it’s a nifty idea, and I figured I might as well give it a go.
Sadly, I have already failed. I forgot about it entirely since the election and wound up not posting on Sunday. Still, I plan to keep on trucking through it and see if I can finish it out.
Too bad today will be short. It’s already late and I’m burnt out. And here’s hoping I do more this weekend. My wife and I are finally going out for our anniversary and I’m really looking forward to it.
Categories: Blogs · Fry Side
Categories: Blogs · Fry Side
I’m home with my sick boy today. His fever is finally coming down after watching Star Wars (and taking some ibuprofen). Now he’s sitting next to me with a phone book on his lap as a desk to draw maps upon.
It is always a debate as to how much I want to let him see during any movies. With Star Wars, there’s only a few bits I’m not sure a five year old is ready for. Like some burned bodies from a distance, or a severed arm (that looks rather artificial). The kid has seen some gutted birds on our doorstep courtesy of our resident felines. Severe injury is in fact a part of life.
But I guess I see that as simply the aftermath of animal nature. It’s not people deliberately hurting people. Most movies do good work ensuring it’s obviously the bad guys doing those bad things. However, in his mind, that can get blurred. That blurring can also happen between the fiction and reality. I answer a constant stream of questions about what things are ‘in this world’.
I think I may have come to the conclusion that he can see The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. I take some consolation in the fact that though he is watching, the comprehension of it isn’t totally there. Plus he probably ought to know the full story from the movie before kids finally explain to him that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father.
And don’t even get me started on trying to explain the prequels. I don’t want to have to explain that Anakin becomes Darth Vader or even that the newer movies are set in an older time, but seem to also be far more advanced technologically (though definitely not in content or plot).
Also, I really can’t wait for the Clone Wars merchandizing blitz to be over with. It clouds all of the story up since I never saw it and, given what I’ve read, I don’t really want to. I liked the original Clone Wars miniseries that was on Cartoon Network years ago. I may try to dig that up at some point.
Categories: Fry Side · My Kids · My Life · Visual Arts
12 November 2008 · 1 Comment
Really?
The election is over, you can stop with the nonsense. I find it hard to believe, though not impossible, that this person really thinks that the next President is going to create a gestapo in the US. I suppose that seems entirely possible after what has been done in the past eight years.
But let us take a step back. Do the conditions exist to create a Nazi America with Obama as Der Führer?
First, we need to have lost an entire generation to a war to end all wars. From there, as a large, naturally industrious nation, we need to be plunged into a treaty arrangement stripping us of all we work for. As icing for this cake made of something unmentionable, we then need to be churned through a decade-long depression with not only half the populous out of work, but also inflation where our currency value becomes hyperbolic to zero.
Now that we have our cake, we can eat it too! So we will need a people who have a not-too-distant history of being ruled by a tyrant or monarch. When charisma wins over law and order, then we can wind up with a maniac who will be allowed to dissolve any democratic functions of our government and start finding scapegoats everywhere. And finally, to finish the story, we get to be bullied by fear into thinking the smoke from the chimneys of labor camps full of people from the countries we invaded are really just the foreign visitors enjoying some s’mores.
So there we can see our country is perfectly poised to enjoy a National Socialist party.
You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I’m not comparing [Barack Obama] to Adolf Hitler. What I’m saying is there is the potential.
At least Broun will have company since my district was loony enough to re-elect a member of the McCarthy Mouse Club, Michele Bachmann.
Keep reading →
Categories: Civics · Election · Fry Side · Social Studies
November Eleventh holds a strange place in my life.
Two years ago today, my wife and I were married. Twenty-four months and she still hasn’t offed me. Hot dog!
There is also the meaning of Veteran’s Day. Since living in England, the value of it is so very different. I appreciate it more, what a nonsensical and nightmarish time that all must have been for those poor, brave souls lost. It astounds me that there are veterans of that war still alive today. Ninety years since the treaty was signed, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, of 1918, and there is still a small contingent of survivors. Simply amazing and wonderful, and they deserve every possible drop of our respect and gratitude.
And lastly, there is the strange sensation that this day is also marked for my friends. Guys I went to high school with, who I learned to play Dungeons & Dragons with. They’re veterans of a war now.
Growing up, there was always a sense that veterans were old chaps who remember battling in the air, manning mass numbers of ships across the sea, and fighting tooth and nail through Europe and Asia to the rescue of good.
And there were the hidden veterans of Vietnam. It had already been in the history books, tucked in the chapters that still remained after the school year was done. There was a vague sense of guilt surrounding the whole topic, and it was apparently something my parents’ generation knew and felt deeply, but it was lost on their children.
Now, however, the honor is on these young men who are never far removed from my memories of growing up. I don’t know whether to thank them or apologize to them. I doubt that feeling will ever leave me. At the very least we have learned from our collective past and know to give these brave, still living souls our respect and love.
So here are thanks to the ones I know served. Thank you Garren, John, Jon, and David.
Categories: Fry Side · History · My Life · My Wife · Social Studies
Any time I get colored marker on my hands and someone asks me how it happened, I tell them I punched a clown.
Categories: Class Clown · Fry Side
10 November 2008 · 1 Comment
Categories: Blogs · Fry Side
Have you ever mowed your lawn in freezing twilight air under a rising haloed moon?
I have now.
Categories: Fry Side · My Life
My wife:
If you get a mug with your picture on it, I’ll divorce you.
Decisions, decisions…
Categories: Fry Side · My Wife · Quote
McArdle makes an interesting and valid point.
I confess, I didn’t see this coming: California votes yes on Proposition 8. I do think, though, that the success of anti-gay-marriage initiatives reinforces something I strongly believe: the issue was pressed too quickly, and in the wrong venue. Using the courts to establish a right to gay marriage made opponents feel threatened, and railroaded. If socially conservative voters hadn’t felt they needed to protect themselves from activist judges, we wouldn’t be seeing these provisions written into state constitutions. Few of them would probably have bothered to vote out legislators who voted for gay marriage five years from now. But with it on the ballot, in front of them, and worries that judges would make the decision unless they did, they shot it down even in California.
In general, courts are the wrong place to press these sorts of claims. The courts were appropriate for civil rights because blacks were literally denied the right to participate in the legislative democratic process. And on a practical level, they worked becaus a majority of people in the country were more than happy to force civil rights on an unhappy white southern minority. Unfortunately, too many groups have decided that the success of civil rights can be widely applied to circumvent the electorate on issues where there is no public consensus. Now widespread gay marriage seems quite a bit less likely for the near term than it would have been had we attacked the issue legislatively.
That’s not to say I’m not still dead pissed off at its passage.
Categories: Blogs · Civics · Election · Fry Side
Well, despite all the beauty and hope of yesterday, a dark stain remains. The success of Prop 8 in eradicating marriages that rightly belonged to those people who made the vows is proof positive that one minority with a bunch of money can crush the rights of another minority who never meant them any harm.
Can we now pass an amendment divorcing us from Utah?
Categories: Civics · Election · Fry Side
Yes, we can. We elected this man our President because we believe that we can affect change in our lives, in our land, in our history. It’s on us. We can do this. We picked some great people to inspire us. And we can rise above this long, grueling campaign. We will persevere through the hard times still to come. And we will never doubt,
Yes, we can.
Categories: Civics · Election · Fry Side
May I be so bold as to say that McCain’s concession speech was a good one. He said things well, and he was right (except for even bringing up Palin’s name).
But…
The crowd with him? That was his base. They were booing the next President before he even took the oath of office. He wanted those rude, awful people to vote for him. His campaign dug for the grime at the bottom of the barrel, and he got it. In the future, people will deny the fact they voted McCain/Palin.
Categories: Civics · Election · Fry Side
I don’t like how things are called just from exit polls, but here we are. I knew it was going to happen, so I can only smile now.
We did it. We won. We’re getting our country back. I’ve missed it. My children get to grow up in a land where our highest office is run with dignity and respect. They get to grow up where a black man being President is history. I envy them for that. But my son can always say he cast my ballot for Barack Obama.
I want to just weep with joy.
But I can’t yet. I still wait on California. I still wait to know if so many friends of mine get to keep their equal rights…
Categories: Civics · Election · Fry Side
With Obama sitting at a called 207, and the West Coast hasn’t been tallied yet… we can finally feel free again. We get to be intelligent and thoughtful and considerate.
And while this wraps up, I’m getting a little tequila.
Categories: Civics · Election · Fry Side
So my wife turned on the TV so we got started watching some coverage. I, as I am during 95% of my waking life, am plugged into the blogosphere as well as Twitter. As soon as the networks and NPR called Pennsylvania for Obama, every twitterer called the election over. They were right. Hopefully, my prediction will hold.
Categories: Civics · Fry Side
Okay folks, I’m shutting everything down for now. Work is over, I need to get the kids. I am not going to turn on the television or my computer again (except to play a video game) until 8 p.m. Central Time.
Or, y’know, I’ll let the boy watch the results with me. Early exit polls are coming up soon! Actually, I’m so sick of polls; I want results. So I’ll wait. Otherwise, I’ll just be biting my nails for hours on end while my wife keeps nudging me to stop.
My prediction: Obama. By a lot. As in carrying more states than anyone thought possible. Particularly in places where you can register the same day as voting (as you can out here).
Know hope, ladies and gentlemen!
Categories: Civics · Election · Fry Side
