Made my annual trip to the tax preparer after work tonight. I ended up a victim of Urban Sprawl, as the business had moved way the heck out to the northwest (where the buffalo still roam and men are men, I trust). I had their directions with me, but as I followed the road eastward, (apparently) past all development, and found myself surrounded by gravel pits, I figured I must have gone the wrong way (I often get turned around, reading maps. I think I have an internal compass, but I also have an internal distorting magnet). So I turned back west, and that was no better. Finally I broke down and used my cell phone to call them (costs me money, since mine is designed for emergencies only. Which this was), and the lady explained that I’d been right the first time. I’d just lost confidence.

There’s a lesson here, I suppose. Something about putting your hand to the plow and not looking back, or Lot’s wife, or something. You can be wrong because you went the wrong way, or you can be wrong because you went the right way, but insufficiently.

In my heart, though, I believe that if I’d stubbornly kept on east on my first try, the space-time continuum would have spiraled, the earth’s crust would have shifted, and my goal would have turned out to be west after all.

Have a good weekend.

I’ll be short tonight, I’m afraid. I have a dentist appointment coming up (God bless a dentist who schedules evening hours!), with all the gladness and merriment inherent therein.

By way of The View From the Foothills, here’s a neat little utility to clean up your computer desktop.

Today is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. Although he’s one of the great heroes of my life, I’ve gotten into the habit of arguing against him in recent years. For instance, I consider his constitutional argument extremely weak.

And yet…

And yet, he operated from a transcendent vision of America. He truly believed that this country was the laboratory of the future, that a better world was being created in these states. Nothing, he believed, should be permitted to destroy what was being done here. Slavery was a double threat, first because it made a mockery of the American vision, and second, because it was a political threat to national unity and purpose. Abolitionists derided him as a weakling because he wasn’t prepared to go straight in and get it abolished. He preferred a gradual, peaceful approach. That approach became impossible, and so he made the fateful decision to go to war to preserve the Union.

He himself was the living embodiment of the American dream. He’d been born in a dirt-floored cabin, to people who many considered only marginally human. He’d taken the opportunities this country gave him and used them to rise to the highest office in the land. He believed that everyone should have the same opportunities, and he never wavered from that commitment. In the end he died for it.

I’ve been to his birthplace, one childhood home, New Salem, his Springfield home, the White House, Ford’s Theatre and his tomb. I can’t get free of the man, and I don’t want to.

Things are looking better and brighter now. I’m not referring to the weather forecast, which calls for a cold snap over the weekend, but to my personal psychological climate. Yesterday’s storms have largely passed. You want to know more? Well, if you insist…



The first thing that got me down yesterday was Romney’s withdrawal speech at CPAC. I wasn’t enamored of him as a candidate, but he seemed to me the best of the field. I think my dislike for McCain, like that of many conservatives, is mostly feelings-based. He bugs me, and I’m pretty sure I’d bug him if he knew me. I suspect that whenever he finds an excuse to give the Christian Right a wedgie, he goes away from the finished task with a warm feeling of having made the country a better place.

That said, I’m really tired of the people who call into radio shows and bark that McCain’s a liberal and they’d rather see Clinton or Obama in the White House. You have to live in a very bizarre alternate reality, it seems to me, to say that. I’d rather hire a guy who does his job well and cares about the welfare of my business, but gives me a hard time now and then, than hire a guy who’s polite and empathetic and keeps giving the stock away.

I like hyperbole as a satiric technique. I’ve been a big fan of Ann Coulter’s until recently. But some people seem to be taking their own hyperbole seriously.

If I wanted to be a member of the Silly Party, I’d register as a Democrat. Continue reading Thursday post-mortem →

Sorry I can’t do a proper post tonight. I’m having a rather bad day (nothing terrible or life-threatening, just a pile of aggravations that ganged up on me all at once), and I’ll spend the evening putting out little fires. Metaphorically, of course.

I’m feeling low tonight. I think I may be suffering from chicken soup fatigue. And the whole thing’s frustrating. All winter I’ve been trying to get on a workout regimen, using my Nordic Track, and every time I get to where I’m starting to feel the benefits, I come down with another cold. And by the time I’ve recovered I’m back to square one.

Also I suppose I’m feeling guilty because I won’t be attending the Minnesota caucuses tonight. I’m staying away out of principle, you understand. The caucus system is a transparent attempt by The Man to disenfranchise the Avoidant-American community, and I refuse to prop up such an unjust system.

I’ve been listening to talk radio, too, and the calls have convinced me that both of the Republican frontrunners are probably Communist moles. Possibly alien pod people.

Anyway, if you haven’t checked Joe Carter’s Evangelical Outpost today, he has a great post on the true story of Galileo and the Inquisition. It’s not what they told you on the Discovery Channel. The reality was a lot more complicated, and Galileo wasn’t any martyr to science.

He’d have probably caucused, too. The sellout.