Goofing

Life is Short, so Help Me Out

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Help me out here. There’s an old Lutheran proverb that says, “Life’s too short to have fun” or something like that. Do you remember it or one along the line of life being too short to somethingorother?

All I can think of is . . .

Life’s too short to drink the house wine.

Life’s too short to eat cheap chocolate.

Life’s too short to play the back nine. (That doesn’t make sense, and I’m not a golfer.)

Life’s too short to vote for Democrats.

Life’s too short to keep the yard mowed. (I wish that were true.)

Life’s too short to spend it thinking only about myself.

Life’s too short to avoid the next Andy Griffith marathon.

Life’s too short to avoid prayer.

What do you think? What is life too short for?

Goofing

We zinc to rise again

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I may owe an apology to zinc tablets.

My cold seems considerably better today, which seems like pretty fast work.

Of course, it might be lurking under the surface, masking its symptoms, growing in power and cunning, poised to hit me hard when I’m in Minot for Høstfest next week.

That was why I didn’t give blood today. They had a drive at work, and I was all set to donate my first pint since I showed up anemic last winter. (The doctor says I’m all better now, and doesn’t appear particularly curious about the cause. Seems to regard the whole business as just a human blip, the sort of thing you’d expect a rickety old man’s body to do now and then, for no apparent reason.) But the Red Cross people told me they prefer folks with colds to keep their infections to themselves.

So, I suppose, some stranger will die for lack of A Positive now.

But at least they’ll die without the sniffles.

On the other hand, I would have provided a nice infusion of zinc to balance it out.

The Press

The Anti-McCain Org

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Roger Kimball suggests we–at least John McCain’s people should–ignore The New York Times because of its consistent anti-McCain reporting. He explains:

Here’s how the Times structures its non-stories about John McCain:

1. Prissy introductory sentence or two noting that Mr. McCain has a reputation [read “unearned reputation”] for taking the ethical high road on issues like campaign finance reform.

2. “The-Times-has-learned” sentence intimating some tort or misbehavior.

3. A paragraph or two of exposition that simultaneously reveals that a) Mr. McCain actually didn’t do anything wrong but b) he would have if only the law had been different and besides everyone knows he is guilty in spirit.

Fiction, Reviews

Havana, by Stephen Hunter

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Stephen Hunter’s most popular books are the two series about Earl and Bob Lee Swagger, father and son. It started with Point of Impact, in which he introduced Bob Lee Swagger, a decorated sniper from the Vietnam War whose highway patrolman daddy had been murdered in his childhood. Then Hunter started giving Daddy Earl stories of his own. This creates continuity problems, as Hunter attempts to shoehorn incredible adventures (I suspect he may like Earl as a character even better than Bob Lee) into the short lifespan decreed by the first book. Sometimes continuity breaks down, and a new book contradicts a previous one. Hunter cheerfully admits this fact in the Acknowledgements, but he makes no apologies. Each book, it would appear, exists in its own alternate universe.

Hunter is very canny in writing his thrillers. His politics (or so I heard him say in a radio interview) are libertarian/conservative, but he makes sure to be evenhanded with his heroes and villains. The Swaggers seem to be pretty conservative (they’re certainly NRA members), but the villains of this book are the thuggish police of Batista’s Cuba, and cynical CIA agents.

Havana begins in the year 1953. The CIA is looking for a sniper to assassinate a dangerous revolutionary in Cuba. (Several U.S. corporations and the mob are also concerned.) At the suggestion of a young agent named Walter “Frenchy” Short (whom we know from the novel Hot Springs), they select Marine veteran and Medal of Honor winner Earl Swagger, persuading him to travel to Cuba as a bodyguard for a goatish Arkansas Congressman.

This is Batista’s Havana, a year-round Carnivale for Americans with money to spend, and there’s plenty of opportunity for humor as the upright Earl, a solidly reformed alcoholic and relentlessly faithful husband, observes it all but keeps his distance. Continue reading Havana, by Stephen Hunter →

Authors

Who’s the Smug One?

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Author Anne Lamott doesn’t like McCain-Palin. She even left church the other Sunday over it:

A man and a woman whose values we loathe and despise — lying, rageful and incompetent, so dangerous to children and old people, to innocent people in every part of the world — are being worshiped, exalted by the media, in a position to take a swing at all that is loveliest about this earth and what’s left of our precious freedoms.

When I got home from church, I drank a bunch of water to metabolize the Dove bar and called my Jesuit friend, who I know hates these people, too. I asked, “Don’t you think God finds these smug egomaniacs morally repellent? Recoils from their smugness as from hot flame?”

And he said, “Absolutely. They are everything He or She hates in a Christian.”

Later on, she devotes a paragraph to ridiculing the names of the Palin children. The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto observes that she and her friend appear to be the very “stereotype people on the left typically hold of conservatives, and religious conservatives in particular: smug yet insecure, dogmatic and intolerant and filled with hate and rage. Even Lamott’s descriptions of Palin more aptly describe Lamott in the act of describing Palin!”

Fiction, Reviews

Last Call for Blackford Oakes, by William F. Buckley

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It’s been longer than I thought since I’ve read a Blackford Oakes novel. Stuff has happened in Blackie’s life that I wasn’t aware of, and I fear some of the information I gained in Last Call for Blackford Oakes will take away some of the suspense when I read the ones I’ve missed.

On the other hand, I’ll probably forget.

I wrote a few days back that the late William F. Buckley’s novels are a quiet pleasure for me. The Oakes books are my favorites in that group. It’s nice to read about a spy who knows which side he’s on, and isn’t tortured by doubts about whether democracy or a police state are superior systems. And instead of shadowy puppetmasters in darkened rooms, Oakes’ bosses are the actual, historical people who ran the CIA. A number of other historical figures also make appearances.

Chief among these are the British defector Kim Philby, about whose character Buckley (and Oakes) is/are in no doubt. There is no romance in Buckley’s portrait of Philby.

In this final book of the series, Oakes is a senior agent, something of a legend in the CIA. In the first chapter, in December, 1987, he’s called in to meet with President Ronald Reagan. There are rumors of an attempt to assassinate Soviet Prime Minister Gorbachev, and Reagan wants Oakes to look into it. Continue reading Last Call for Blackford Oakes, by William F. Buckley →

Uncategorized

Fair is fair

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I’ve seen a lot of comments on the blogosphere about Saturday Night Live making a joke about incest in the Palin family.

Tasteless? Yes. A cause for conservative outrage? Not so much.

Hugh Hewitt played the audio of the entire skit last night, and in fact, taken in context, it was a piece that could have been written by clever Republicans (there are a few, I’ve heard). The skit involved an editor sending a group of reporters to Alaska expressly to find dirt on Gov. Palin, and the reporters’ questions (including the incest one) were actually meant as examples of how out of touch the reporters were, how prejudiced against anyone living outside the liberal coasts.

The big laugh was when the editor informed the group that there was no Thai take-out in Alaska, and half of the reporters backed out.

It would be better to get outraged about issues that have some substance. There are plenty of those out there.

Goofing

Coke Blech

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I haven’t tried Coke Blak, so I can’t opine on its flavor. I don’t need to say that I don’t think it is a good idea–first blush–because I haven’t given it a chance to impress me. But this video of Anderson Cooper trying Coke Blak on live TV is worth the click. The clip is too long for my taste, but its fun.