November 22, 2007
Give Thanks
For all the blessings in your life.
Posted by: Gary at 07:50 AM | Comments (14) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
November 21, 2007
Pickens calls Kerry out
T. Boone Pickens called Kerry out at an American Spectator dinner, pledging to pay $1 million if Kerry could prove any statement made by the Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth was untrue. Kerry responded by saying he could do it and to pay the money to a paralyzed veterans organization. The good folks at OpinionJournal reproduced the Pickens reply here. Pickens called on Kerry to pledge to contribute $1 million to the Medal of Honor Foundation if Kerry failed to disprove any of the Swift Boat assertions. Before paying anything, Pickens asked Kerry to produce the journal he kept during his time in Vietnam as well his complete military records from 1971-1978, and copies of all movies and tapes made during Kerry's service. No one is holding their breath.
Posted by: LMC at 03:06 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
OOOOOOH, Those Skwoowy Weecusants!
The crack(ed) young staff over at Patum Peperium broke into the holiday porto a bit early this year and have concocted a piece of Mayflower Madness guaranteed to displace your drumstick. Clicky on over and scroll down to the first part first.
(Rumor has it that yours truly makes a cameo later on, but I deny any knowledge thereof. Besides, they assured me there was absolutely no shnapps in that cider.)Posted by: Robert at 02:51 PM | Comments (13) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Holiday Netflix Recommendations
Okay, so it's probably too late to throw these in your queue and get them for this weekend, but there's always the old fashioned video rental store you can stop at on the way home (ehem...unless you're already home - Robbo).
But my favorite Conservative movie site, Libertas, posted the "Top Five Conservative Thanksgiving films" and I had to repost his comments regarding Ang Lee's "The Ice Storm" (yes, that Ang Lee). So how can the guy who brought you the controversial "Brokeback Mountain" make a conservative-themed film? Hey, he also made the 1995 version of "Sense and Sensibility" (which I also recommend). But back to "The Ice Storm". Set in Southwestern CT in the early 1970's, the film is actually a pretty damning look at the irresponsibility of the "free love" hippies who eventually sold out and became the establishment. Starring such well-known actors as Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, Katie Holmes and
(Deep breath…) Okay, this is how it worked: In the 1960’s the best fed, best housed, most ungrateful and spoiled generation ever didn’t want a bunch of non-white non-Christians in Vietnam to share the freedoms they enjoyed… So, they turned on their parents, turned on their country, ignored the noble civil rights movement, and became the hippie generation whose legacy is AIDS, drug abuse, and unwed mothers. The hippies told us they were protesting the war on moral grounds and yet the protests stopped when the draft did. Hmm? So, as the war raged on, the hippies became yuppies, embraced materialism in excess of anything their bourgeois parents ever imagined, moved to the suburbs, and clung to their self-destructive free-love-entitlement lifestyle at the expense of their kids. (Exhale.) And The Ice Storm is a damning indictment of that generation, that thankfully uses Thanksgiving somewhere along the way allowing me the pretense to get the above off my chest.Couldn't have stated it any better myself. "LET'S MAKE THAT REVIEW NICE AND SUCCINCT" YIPS from Steve-O: "Couldn't make it any better myself?" I could: Sigourney Weaver. With a bullwhip.
Any questions?
Posted by: Gary at 11:33 AM | Comments (16) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
They'll Do It Every Time
I have to get going on what the five year old still calls the "liebs" this weekend.
Temperature today when I'm too hung up with other things to do it? 70. Forecast temperature Friday when I will be able to do it? Mid 40's. Oh, well, could be worse. Could be raining. UPDATE: Gary spots the quote. I didn't bother flagging it because I figured it would be a bit of a gimme. However, thinking of the movie again reminded me of the very lovely and talented Terri Garr:
I hope that if Gary ever does a 70's Babe Crush series, Inga vill get her roll in zee hay.
Posted by: Robert at 11:20 AM | Comments (16) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
So, Who's Gonna Spank Me?
Myspace Happy Birthday Comments & Graphics
Posted by: Robert at 08:56 AM | Comments (20) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
November 20, 2007
This just might be the coolest thing I've ever read
Eight foot long sea scorpions. One word: Awesome!
Eurypterids, or ancient sea scorpions, are believed to be the extinct aquatic ancestors of today's scorpions and possibly all arachnids, a class of joint-legged, invertebrate animals, including spiders, scorpions, mites and ticks. Braddy said the fossil was from a Jaekelopterus Rhenaniae, a kind of scorpion that lived only in Germany for about 10 million years, about 400 million years ago. He said some geologists believe that gigantic sea scorpions evolved due to higher levels of oxygen in the atmosphere in the past. Others suspect they evolved in an "arms race" alongside their likely prey, fish that had armor on their outer bodies. Braddy said the sea scorpions also were cannibals that fought and ate one other, so it helped to be as big as they could be. "The competition between this scorpion and its prey was probably like a nuclear standoff, an effort to have the biggest weapon," he said. "Hundreds of millions of years ago, these sea scorpions had the upper hand over vertebrates — backboned animals like ourselves."Remind me to refrain from wedgieing a scientist tomorrow in honor of this.
Posted by: Steve-O at 09:39 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Help Me, Kermit! You're My Only Hope!
File this one in the "Oh, Fer Chrissakes" category.
The good news: the original Sesame Street episodes are being rereleased. The bad news?Just don’t bring the children. According to an earnest warning on Volumes 1 and 2, “Sesame Street: Old School” is adults-only: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.” Say what? At a recent all-ages home screening, a hush fell over the room. “What did they do to us?” asked one Gen-X mother of two, finally. The show rolled, and the sweet trauma came flooding back. What they did to us was hard-core. Man, was that scene rough. The masonry on the dingy brownstone at 123 Sesame Street, where the closeted Ernie and Bert shared a dismal basement apartment, was deteriorating. Cookie Monster was on a fast track to diabetes. Oscar’s depression was untreated. Prozacky Elmo didn’t exist. Nothing in the children’s entertainment of today, candy-colored animation hopped up on computer tricks, can prepare young or old for this frightening glimpse of simpler times. Back then — as on the very first episode, which aired on PBS Nov. 10, 1969 — a pretty, lonely girl like Sally might find herself befriended by an older male stranger who held her hand and took her home. Granted, Gordon just wanted Sally to meet his wife and have some milk and cookies, but . . . well, he could have wanted anything. As it was, he fed her milk and cookies. The milk looks dangerously whole. Live-action cows also charge the 1969 screen — cows eating common grass, not grain improved with hormones. Cows are milked by plain old farmers, who use their unsanitary hands and fill one bucket at a time. Elsewhere, two brothers risk concussion while whaling on each other with allergenic feather pillows. Overweight layabouts, lacking touch-screen iPods and headphones, jockey for airtime with their deafening transistor radios. And one of those radios plays a late-’60s news report — something about a “senior American official” and “two billion in credit over the next five years” — that conjures a bleak economic climate, with war debt and stagflation in the offing. The old “Sesame Street” is not for the faint of heart, and certainly not for softies born since 1998, when the chipper “Elmo’s World” started. Anyone who considers bull markets normal, extracurricular activities sacrosanct and New York a tidy, governable place — well, the original “Sesame Street” might hurt your feelings. I asked Carol-Lynn Parente, the executive producer of “Sesame Street,” how exactly the first episodes were unsuitable for toddlers in 2007. She told me about Alistair Cookie and the parody “Monsterpiece Theater.” Alistair Cookie, played by Cookie Monster, used to appear with a pipe, which he later gobbled. According to Parente, “That modeled the wrong behavior” — smoking, eating pipes — “so we reshot those scenes without the pipe, and then we dropped the parody altogether.” Which brought Parente to a feature of “Sesame Street” that had not been reconstructed: the chronically mood-disordered Oscar the Grouch. On the first episode, Oscar seems irredeemably miserable — hypersensitive, sarcastic, misanthropic. (Bert, too, is described as grouchy; none of the characters, in fact, is especially sunshiney except maybe Ernie, who also seems slow.) “We might not be able to create a character like Oscar now,” she said. Snuffleupagus is visible only to Big Bird; since 1985, all the characters can see him, as Big Bird’s old protestations that he was not hallucinating came to seem a little creepy, not to mention somewhat strained. As for Cookie Monster, he can be seen in the old-school episodes in his former inglorious incarnation: a blue, googly-eyed cookievore with a signature gobble (“om nom nom nom”). Originally designed by Jim Henson for use in commercials for General Foods International and Frito-Lay, Cookie Monster was never a righteous figure. His controversial conversion to a more diverse diet wouldn’t come until 2005, and in the early seasons he comes across a Child’s First Addict.Read it and weep. And I suppose the Child Protective Services Nazi van will be 'round Orgle Manor shortly, since I routinely use "om nom nom nom" when snacking on Llama-ette tummies.
Posted by: Robert at 01:46 PM | Comments (13) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Gratuitous Musickal Observation
The local classical station is doing a little Thanksgiving Week marathon in which it is playing, in reverse order, the top ninety classickal musick requests as voted over the past couple weeks by its listeners.
According to the plan, the single most popular piece will be played on Thanksgiving evening. Of course, the station hasn't put up the playlist yet, as that would spoil the surprise. Me? I've got a baaaaaaad feeling that Numero Uno is going to be none other than Pachelbel's Canon in D. It's not that I actually hate the piece. Rayther, I hate the fact that so many people love it so far beyond its musickal worth. To me, the piece is, well, really rayther uninteresting. And I'm in good company, too: The great Peter Schickele, creator of P.D.Q. Bach and as confirmed a musickal egalitarian who ever lived, regularly apes everything the Canon's oversaturation of classical radio stands for:Mr. Schickele's latest Telarc recording, for example, is a sendup of classical radio called "WTWP" (Wall to Wall Pachelbel). But "serious" music stations' pop banter, fractured compositions, easy-listening music ambitions and quests for ratings already match Mr. Schickele's parody. (Here are WTWP's programming restrictions: a work can't be over 11 minutes long. No vocal music during office hours. Nothing written after 1912 except for "Bolero," "Appalachian Spring" and the Gershwin Preludes for Piano. And everything has to be in a major key until after 11 P.M.) "We play the music you don't mind hearing," runs WTWP's slogan. But we don't really need WTWP; just tune in to your local equivalent to hear the jocular way in which all sound is treated as a bit of a put-on.Unlike the NYTimes, I'm not saying you have to go all twelve-tonal in your listening or get all enthusiastic over what passes for 20th Century musick. But, for example, I'd much rather listen to the awesome chaconnes put out by Pachelbel's contemporaries and near contemporaries such as Rameau, Purcell, Bach and Handel. Speaking of musickal cannons (ha!), I recently tossed Battle of Britain into my Netflix queue again. Ever since then, I've had the Ace High March running through my mind. These here intertubes being what they are, of course somebody has posted it on YouTube. Here ya go: I'm toying with the idea of letting the eldest Llama-ette watch it with me this time around. What do you think? The history is actually pretty good and the violence isn't as bad as all that. UPDATE: Oh, speaking of Michael Caine films, I recently watched the 1969 original of The Italian Job, in which he starred. I've not much to say about the film, with the single exception of the fact that the last thing I ever expected to encounter in life was a movie starring both Noel Coward and Benny Hill. I mean, what are the odds?
Posted by: Robert at 10:53 AM | Comments (24) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
The Ol' Fred Jugger-flop?
We here at the Llama Butchers have had some fun with the much antipated, oft-delayed and rather frustrating "will he or won't he" Presidential candidacy of Fred Thompson. But the former Senator's campaign seems to be falling victim to a kind of "seemed like a good idea at the time" malaise.
New NH numbers are not encouraging. And some high-profile backers are starting to wonder what the heck happened. As Rear Admiral Josh Painter in "The Hunt for Red October" quipped, "Russians don't take a dump, son, without a plan." Could be Ol' Fred's campaign has.Posted by: Gary at 10:06 AM | Comments (15) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Granny Gets Naked For Footballers
Calendar Girl, indeed. She's 102 years old and decided to, er, tastefully reveal herself to raise money for the local football team. And her name is...wait for it...Nora Hardwick.
Don't worry: The 1905-born great-great grandma is swathed in a filmy petal pink scarf and is strategically positioned behind the beer taps at the Ermine Way pub in town, so it's almost impossible to tell she's standing there in the buff. "They draped a bit of pink cloth around my shoulders, but at my age I just don't have the model body to be taking it all off," she told The Telegraph, a U.K. newspaper. "It was all very tastefully done. You couldn't see any of the bits or anything." Hardwick said the football club asked her to pose in her birthday suit because she's the oldest person in the village. "It's just a bit of fun really," she told the Telegraph.Oh my.
Posted by: Gary at 09:49 AM | Comments (17) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Random Pre-Thanksgiving Commuter Observation
Lawdy mamma, am I glad we are sitting tight in Orgle Manor this year instead of trying to drive or, horibile dictu, fly anywhere. Every time I see somebody on the metro making their way to National or Dulles with an over-stuffed suitcase, I shudder.
Posted by: Robert at 08:54 AM | Comments (14) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
November 19, 2007
I Just Found Kathy The Cake-Eater's Christmas Present
Yes, it's the Jane Austen Action Figure:
Says the copy:
Jane Austen was one of the greatest English novelists in history. Despite a rather sheltered life, she was able to capture the subtleties of human interaction so perfectly that her novels continue to be immensely popular to this day. This 5-1/4" tall, hard vinyl action figure comes with a book (Pride & Prejudice) and a writing desk with removable quill pen.No doubt she can use the quill in hand-to-hand combat against other literary figgahs, notably Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde and Shakespeare, although since even the manufacturers can't help getting in a dig about Miss Austen's "sheltered" life, they really ought to put out a Regency Rakes set including, say, Byron and the Shelleys.
Posted by: Robert at 05:51 PM | Comments (20) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Gratuitous Pre-Birthday Bash Snacking
No doubt our cadre of regular readers has long since programmed its collective blackberry reminder thingies with this information, but a few of you may not yet know that this insane little corner of the blogsphere known as The LLama Butchers will mark its fifth anniversary on Wednesday.
Yes, indeedy. And to celebrate the occasion, we're working on some things in the back about which I'd love to spill the beans, except that I won't a) because I don't want to spoil the surprise and b) because I'm not sure if they'll be ready in time. Just keep checking in to see. In the meantime, however, I can't resist jumping the gun a wee bit with what has become something of a tradition now for me, namely reposting my very first substantive entry evah. Upon rereading, I fancy that it's withstood time pretty well:CRANKY MOVIE GUY - I I have absolutely no proof that the following conversation took place. However, I am morally certain that it did: "Simpkins!" "Yes, Mr. Jackson?" "Simpkins! Mate, we've got to discuss this character treatment of yours." "Er, yes, Mr. Jackson - what about it?" "Right. Look, mate, I told you off to do Gimli, right?" "Yes, Mr. Jackson." "Okay, so who is this Gloin guy? You give me five freekin' pages of dialogue between him and Frodo at Rivendell. I mean, it reads like My Dinner With Andre, right?" "Well, Mr. Jackson, Gloin was Gimli's father. He was also one of the thirteen dwarves who went with Bilbo to reclaim the Lonely Mountain from Smaug in The Hobbit. You know, where Bilbo finds the Ring? His conversation with Frodo is important because it both ties the stories together and also gives the audience an overall vision of the strategic situation east of the Misty Mountains. You'll see, Sir, that Gloin is also the Dwarves' representative at Elrond's council and reports that Black Riders are looking for Bilbo and the Ring."
"Wake me when it's over...." "Sir?" "Look, mate. First, I've already got a bunch of dwarves fighting each other and the elves at the council. It's a very significant moment in my vision." "But Sir, Gloin was the only one there in the book. And nobody fought with anybody else." "F**k the book. Right. And for the tie-in thing, I've already got that covered in the prologue, right? I mean, I'm not paying Cate Winslet all that money for nothing, am I?" "No, Sir." "Right, and this dinner thing at Rivendell. Screw it. Would take ten minutes. How the hell can I find room for that and keep Liv Tyler's "Xena" chase with the Black Riders?" "Well, about that, Sir....." "Right. Now look, mate. LOTR is a very wonderful and meaningful vision of mine, right? So I need you to be realy respectful of that. Now, we have a problem with Gimli." "Sir?" "See, we have these big hunky Men, right? Audience will love 'em. And we got that dude playing Legolas, you know, the one who looks kinda like di Caprio on steroids? They'll be all over him. But Gimli is, well, not really eye-candy. Know what I mean, mate?" "Well, Sir, it's interesting because Tolkien really went out of his way to explore the dwarves in some detail - their origins and so on, and to show how and why they were so different from Elves and Men. There is a lot of source material in The Silmarillion and...." "Simpkins?"
"Sir?"
"I don't give a pair of fetid dingo's kidneys for the Simil-whatever. Audiences don't care. How can I bring my wonderful and meaningful vision of LOTR to the screen in a meaningful and caring way if I can't connect with the audience?" "Well. Sir..." "Shut up. I'll tell you how. The dwarf isn't sexy, right? Can't do anything about that. I mean, dwarves are, well, YOU know..... Anyway. So what we want is something that's going to connect with the audience. Something that makes them think "Oh, that's a dwarf. I know about them. I like them!" So what you need to do is write something into the story that is going to cause that connection. And I've got just the thing for you. (Don't know why I pay these blokes when I have to do all the thinking myself.)" "Yes, Sir?" "Two words: Dwarf tossing." "Sir?" "Dwarf tossing." "Sir?" "Goddamit, mate, are you deaf? Put in something about dwarf tossing, right? Audiences will love that! Kind of a comic relief thing. Maybe when they're running around in that big cave thing. That'll really get them into it - and let them share my wonderful and meaning vision of what LOTR means in terms they can relate to. So you put it in. Got that? Dwarf tossing!" (Sadly) "Yes, Sir." And the rest, as they say, is history.
Posted by: Robert at 01:46 PM | Comments (16) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
That's Not My Church!
Whoa.
If I read this correctly, Binks over at the WebElf Report, long a clearing house for Anglican Communion Implosion Nooz, has decided to give up the fight:The Anglican Church, as a revolutionary thought-experiment, has failed the test of time. Don’t crawl out onto twigs and debris bearing the familiar logos and comfortable fit, nor take on Anglo-Baptist religion from Africa or Australia or wherever: head back down the trunk of the tree and find the true roots. This WebElf has been honoured: I’ve fought for and beside so many of you down the years: as I’ve said before, this site will no longer be a combing of the ruins of Anglican protestantism, except in the occasional news item. Christianity is Not Us, and (officially at least) We’re Not Christianity. The proverbial fat lady has sung: it’s over. Would the last one out please get the lights? BinksHe uses a metaphor about climbing back down the trunk and finding the roots, but it would seem as if swimming for the Rock would be equally a propos. If so, c'mon in, Binks, the water's great!
Posted by: Robert at 11:54 AM | Comments (17) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Gratuitous Bachelor Llama Father Weekend Round-Up
I don't know where they picked it up, but here is the latest Llama-ette song craze, belted at the top of their collective lungs at all the more inappropriate times this weekend, especially when we got into the car:
How we (as well as other motorists and pedestrians in the soccer field and Sooper-Giant parking lots) survived remains a mystery. And I noticed this morning that the steering wheel was bent where I had been grasping it. Enjoy!Posted by: Robert at 11:41 AM | Comments (17) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Next Stop: Clifford's Winter Solstice
Reader Hugh left a linky to this post by the Centurion in the Tasty Bits (TM) Mail Sack over the weekend concerning the PCification of Thanksgiving by Clifford the Big Red Dog:
The show we were watching was from an animated series called (I believe) Clifford the Big Red Dog. This particular episode was obviously a repeat of a Thanksgiving show, with the family of characters preparing their Thanksgiving turkey feast and then bringing it over to Grandma’s house for the big family celebration. But, oddly enough, the word Thanksgiving appeared nowhere in the dialogue. Every reference to what should have been Thanksgiving Day was instead Fall Feast Day. The characters all wished each other Happy Fall Feast Day, they talked about their Fall Feast turkey, their Fall Feast pumpkin pie, the first pilgrim’s Fall Feast Day, and they all got dressed up in their finest Fall Feast clothes. Huh? I’ve never heard this anywhere else. I checked with my family and it seems all of my grandchildren’s schools (in Nevada, New Jersey and New Hampshire) still celebrate Thanksgiving Day. Has anybody else heard of Fall Feast Day, or is Clifford the Big Red Dog wielding the cutting edge of yet another secular progressive incursion against cherished American traditions?We long ago sailed out of the waters around Birdwell Island, Vermont (home to Clifford and his owner Emily Elizabeth). I don't recall ever seeing this episode, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least. Clifford was always pretty mushy in a manner typical of the sort of stuff served up by PBSKids. Not quite in the Calliou league maybe, but not all that far behind either. (FWIW, I believe the show was cancelled when John Ritter - who voiced Clifford - suddenly died. So what the Centurion saw was a rerun from several years ago.)
Posted by: Robert at 11:15 AM | Comments (15) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Jesus, Mary, Joseph
The Missus is not ordinarily an especially political person, but she was so aghast at an article she read on her travels this weekend that she felt compelled to show it to me when she got back.
The piece, called "Choosing Us", was written by one Alison Piepmeier and appears in the November '07 issue of some Charlotte, NC fembot paper called Skirt. (It looks as if you have to register to get it on-line.) The sub-heading of the article is "Our abortion was a love story". It is one of the more appalling things I've read in a long, long time. It seems the author and her husband "Walter" have been married five years, are financially successful and perfectly healthy. She gets knocked up (so we are informed) during a quicky fling on the bathroom floor while her brother and girlfriend are in the next room watching tee vee. Of course, it was only after opening the barn doors (as it were) that our plucky heroine started thinking seriously about the topic of horses:I slowly realized that, even though I was spending part of every day trying to will my uterine lining to detach, I did probably want to have kids someday. I was really clear, though, on the fact that "someday" was not now. I thought about all the selfish reasons I wasn't ready for a child - I want to write another book, we might need to move for my job - and wondered whether it was okay for me to decide based on my own desires. Walter had tumultuously mixed feelings; he has children from a previous relationship and didn't think he wanted to be a father again, but he wasn't sure he believed that abortion was an ethical decision. I listened intently to him even as I talked back in my head: "It's not your decision to make! I can't keep being pregnant!" We talked about adoption, but I knew we couldn't do it - we can't even walk by a pet store without getting attached, so I knew if we spent nine months with this being, it would be ours for life. So where did that leave us?There's enough material in that paragraph alone to make this normally placid Llama start spitting seriously. (Apparently the baby would have stood a better shot at survival had it been a cute puppy instead.) But it gets worse. Much worse. I quote the last quarter or so of the article:
On Sunday, the morning of the abortion, Walter and I woke up together. Over coffee at the breakfast table, each of us wrote a letter. Walter had brought me a bunch of yellow daisies, and we each took one. Then we went to the river. Sitting on rocks on the riverbank, on a sunny, cold January morning, I read my letter aloud. "Dear potential person," I said. "Thank you so much for coming along." I started to cry. I wished it well, told it I hoped it found another home, and pulled the blossom off my flower and threw it into the river. Walter cried, too, as he read his letter, explaining why now wasn't the right time for us but inviting this being to come back later if it wanted, and then he tossed his blossom out into the current; yellow petals on the green water. Both our flowers floated away, and I was surprisingly relieved to watch them go. "I hope to God they don't wash back ashore here," Walter said. We burned our letters but kept the flower stems to take home, as a reminder. It was a good ceremony: earth, air, fire, water and words. When we went home, I took the remaining pills, and had a little pain and a lot of bleeding, but it was over pretty quickly, and Walter was there the whole time. In the days and weeks (and now years) since, I felt a little grief, but mostly gratitude. It wasn't just the relief of not being forced to give birth (although that was considerable); it was also what the decision did for our marriage. There are other stories that go along with our abortion - the story of telling my family, of my brothers' conflicted yet supportive reactions. There are the stories of the other women having abortions that day, women whose insurance (like mine) wouldn't cover the procedure. There are the stories of other children these women will later have. There's the story of Walter's lonely couple of hours in the clinic lobby, scanning the faces of the other men waiting for their partners, some crying, some relieved, all totally left out. But the story I most want to tell - and one I have never heard - is of abortion as an intimate part of a couple's life together. Our abortion was a love story. I'd worried that Walter and I were rejecting a gift from the universe. What I discovered, though, was that when we stripped away the distractions of everyday life so that we could make this difficult decision together, it bound us together as surely as if our choice had been different - and as it turns out, that was the gift.Is this woman so incredibly blinded by self-absorption that she hasn't the faintest idea what she's really saying here? That terminating a life for no apparent reason other than their own convenience is a healthy bond for a couple? That the fact that they made the choice together is far more important than what the actual choice was, as if they were deciding on new wallpaper for the front hall? That abortion equals love? I'm sorry, but to me this is just plain evil. Baby, of course, could not be reached for comment.
Posted by: Robert at 10:27 AM | Comments (22) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
November 18, 2007
Insert Nelson Muntz noise here
Remember the Labor Far Left in Britain (and their loyal poodles in the US Donkocratic Party), and how they were salivating at the prospect of dumping Tony Blair, over his Iraq policy as well as his "selling out" of leftist values?
Ha ha.Posted by: Steve-O at 08:27 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
So Much For Good Intentions....
Got myself up bright and early this morning to be in plenty of time to get the Llama-ettes ready to take to St. Loony-Up-The-Cream-Bun-And-Jam, only to suddenly hear concerted braying as I was shaving: according to said braying, a new waterfall had formed in the kitchen.
I quickly went downstairs to discover that the place was a mess - water all over and a very large, dripping bulge in the ceiling. A quick inspection pinpointed the problem - one of the pipes going into the gels' bathtub decided to spring a leak. This is about the fifth time something like this has happened in our seven years at Orgle Manor, and every time the plumber recommends that we trash the whole system and replace it. I'm beginning to think there's something in this. Wonder if my insurance would cover it. @#$(*&(# plumbing. UPDATE: A reader writes, "Tom, what is it with this 'St. Loony-Whatever-it-is'?" Well, you needn't go very far to find the source of most of my stranger references: I've know this sketch for thirty years. Somehow, it's only in the past couple that it's really begun to grow on me.Posted by: Robert at 08:44 AM | Comments (14) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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