News From The Nerdery

It is hard for me to sit down to write lately.  It has literally been hell for me.  I want to write so much, but Ifear that once i start, I will just ramble for thousands of words.  You don’t want that.  You want me to be succint and to the point.  Therefore, I am going to address my current thoughts quickly and not try to express anything through a clever metaphor.

I.  Blagogate

This recent development is meant to shock me?  I am actually shocked though.  How can a Chicago/Daley Machine Politician be dumb enough to get caught?  Seriously, ”Pay-For-Play” Politics has always been practiced and will always be practiced.  However, if one of the main thugs of your machine gets taken down, get paranoid.  Rezko is going to start rolling on all sorts of people to reduce his sentence.  He singled out Blagojevich first because Blago appears to not be playing with a full deck of cards in the first place.  Additionally, why not admit that you talked to Blago if you are Obama?  What does it hurt?  Say, “Our staffs discussed who we would like to see as the replacement and when it became clear of an intention by the Governor to profit off of the nomination, we cut off all ties.”  That’s not hard.  Now, you’re administration starts out with scandal.  This whole thing smells of a Leftist Illuminati that is infiltrating the State of Illinois and branching out into the country at large.  More to come, I’m sure.

II.  Auto Industry Bailout

Let’s just call this what it is, United Auto Workers Bailout.  Let me first commend the union.  By hamstringing the industry to meet your standards for working, you have killed it.  I hope you guys have fun freezing your asses off in Michigan while cars keep being assembled at non-union plants in the South.  Is there something in the water in the Southern United States that doesn’t put up with Communist bullshit like unions?  I know that unions do exist in the South, but you don’t see them wield the crippling effect.  Somewhere along the line, a weak manager started looking at their labor force as more than capital expenses.  You want higher wages?  We are going to make the process robotic.  Have fun getting another job.  I hope that by the time I want to buy my next car, I can buy the Chevy Silverado Hybrid that I want.  I’m not going to hold my breath though.  Bush and Paulson will kick their problem down the road though.  I soon see the following as a very real reality:  I want a new car, I apply for the loan for said car, but the loan won’t be given by the now Government owned lender unless I agree to get a car from a certain list of approved cars now made by Government backed manufacturers.  Isn’t the free market system awesome?

III.  Heisman Winner

You got to go with Tebow.  He just finds the way to win.  Bradford and McCoy are great QBs and have both done spectacularly, but if I am coaching a team, I want Tebow as my Field General.  He’s a winner.  I’d like the Big XII to name their own QB of the year also.

IV.  Consumerism

I got a little heat for being so negative about the power that the internet can provide to an individual.  It is the way that I can reach out and share what would usually be totally pointless thoughts bouncing around in my head with the people who actually stop to read them.  In this light, I still stand by my statements.  The Industrial Revolution’s culmination in the PC has done more to cripple the spirit of the Rugged Individualism than anything else in the world.  We went from a society where you grow your vegetables in a garden, can them, and use them for a year to grocery stores and ice-boxes to now, being able to order your groceries online.  You want proof, look at the soaring numbers of obesity.  We don’t have to get off our asses and do hard work for the most part, and you better believe our slip is showing to a couple of sleeping super powers that are ready and starting to pounce.

V.  Who Are You?

Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate.  This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished.  However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition.  The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous.  Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it’s my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V. 

VI.  Snow In Texas

Climate is a changing thing by it’s nature.  If it wasn’t, the Farmer’s Almanac would always be right.  Guess what Al Gore, there is this large round burning thing in the sky called a Sun.  This star happens to operate on a cycle of variation for its intensity.  The time periods of “Global Warming” were actually part of the observed 11 year cycle of higher solar intensity.  Now, we are on the trough swing of that curve and it’s cold enough to snow in Texas before Winter even begins.  Climate will change.  You can’t infuse Carbon Dioxide back into the Earth’s crust with a huge syringe.  This is just a money making scheme for you and it’s time somebody said so.  Al Gore is the champion of the environmental movement.  You don’t need me to point out that he still travels around to his speaking engagements in a private jet or that he has a largely inefficient house when it comes to energy consumption.  However, when he begins to speak about mitigating for pollution (i.e. paying someone to offset pollution with a “Green Credit”), you may be surprised to know that the largerst bank set up to do this in the US has Al Gore as its majority shareholder.  Champion or Charlatan?  I leave that to you.

VII.  The Scammies

Nominations for the Grammies were announced and the Punch Brothers weren’t nominated for anything.  This is really a huge knock against the music industry for me because the Punch Brother’s 2008 album Punch was possibly the masterpiece of the year.  This is Chris Thile’s (formerly of Nickel Creek) new chamber music played by exceptional bluegrass picker type of style with a forty minute suite in four movements entitled “The Blind Leaving The Blind.”  This is really a gem of originality, and Lil’ Wayne is going to be what gets celebrated.

VIII.  Gas Prices

I saw gasoline selling for $1.41 today.  Congratulations on everyone who did buy a fuel efficient car.  You might have done it to be green, or (in my case) because you’re incredibly cheap.  This doesn’t detract from the fact that we can still hold sway over OPEC.  I think the largest determining factor is that the Iraq War is turning into a US victory and that will help our standing with hostile Sheiks.  They see that we cannot be discouraged totally.  The Dems will show their stomachs to be yellow, but America as a whole was established as a nation ready to fight for our standing in the world.  Now all we need is for idiots in Washington to not tax the cheaper gas back to its higher levels so that the average American can realize their purchasing power and maybe, just maybe, help themselves get out of the financial troubles that the Democrats’ Housing debacle has created.

I worked real hard not to make any lame metaphors to explain anything and will close with a statement that has been burning in my chest as of late.  Our way of life is being threatened by a radical Communist movement that has slowly been allowed to seep into our way of thinking.  The Russian people were easy to institute Communism on, they had been ruled for most of their history.  When facing America though, the Left knows that it must move slow to breed the spirit of Rugged Individualism out of us, so that one day the citizens of this nation would cry to Government to provide.  Looks like that time is approaching.  Communism/Socialism isn’t dead.  Wake up!  Be aware!  Let’s not raise another generation of such easy targets.

Good evening, London.  Allow me first to apologize for this interruption.  I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of every day routine- the security of the familiar, the tranquility of repetition.  I enjoy them as much as any bloke.  But in the spirit of commemoration, thereby those important events of the past usually associated with someone’s death or the end of some awful bloody struggle, a celebration of a nice holiday, I thought we could mark this November the 5th, a day that is sadly no longer remembered, by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a little chat.  There are of course those who do not want us to speak.  I suspect even now, orders are being shouted into telephones, and men with guns will soon be on their way.  Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power.  Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth.  And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there?  Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression.  And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission.  How did this happen?  Who’s to blame?  Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.  I know why you did it.  I know you were afraid.  Who wouldn’t be?  War, terror, disease.  There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense.  Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler.  He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.  Last night I sought to end that silence.  Last night I destroyed the Old Bailey, to remind this country of what it has forgotten.  More than four hundred years ago a great citizen wished to embed the fifth of November forever in our memory.  His hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words, they are perspectives.  So if you’ve seen nothing, if the crimes of this government remain unknown to you then I would suggest you allow the fifth of November to pass unmarked.  But if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek, then I ask you to stand beside me one year from tonight, outside the gates of Parliament, and together we shall give them a fifth of November that shall never, ever be forgot.

People should not be afraid of their governments, Governments should be afraid of their people.

I finished a work of fiction last night entitled “The Last Templar”.  I had been eyeing this book for a good while.  I had seen it at Barnes & Noble when it came out in hardback and was intrigued.  I wondered to myself if it was a Dan Brown knock off?  Well, while awaiting a Chocolate-Banana Vivanno at a Starbucks inside a Farm Fresh, I saw the paperback version and indulged in the $6.50 book. 

I have been reading on it off and on for about a month and a half and finished it last night.  The plot was interesting, but predictable.  It generally followed the tone of constant urgency to solve the mystery before the protagonists.  There is a romance sub-plot, a shocking revelation that could bring down Chrisendom, and a hell-bent Vatican official trying to cover it all up.  In the end, the protagonists (and the reader) find out the secret that Templars discovered during their nine years of seclusion under Al-Asqa Mosque in the legendary King Solomon’s Stables, but the evidence of that secret which could destroy the Christian Mythos are destroyed in the end.

It differed from Mr. Brown’s Langdon series by making the female character the brainy protagonist and the male the one dealing with a conflict of faith.  It also has two enemies rather than just a Church bashing book.  While an agent of the Vatican is dispatched by a Cardinal to suppress the secret, there is also a fallen man from academia who has lost all scruples and is unwavering in his wish to bring down the Church.  It was interesting to me that the author chose to also cast an appraising eye over the world of academia.  I liked the fact that not only was the concept of faith without questioning explored, but also questioning without faith.

I think we all question, but faith is what can be a rock in our lives.  Is the story of Jesus Christ partly historic and partly mythical?  As my father would say, “I wasn’t holding the light,”  so I couldn’t tell you.  I, personally, believe in this myth as history.  Do I have proof that everything happened exactly as it is stated in the canonical gospels?  No, but faith is the belief in something that you don’t have proof of.  I think the strongest thing in the gospels are a small figure in history facing down his contemporaries with a philosophy of brotherly love throughout the human race.  A message that the Templars’ last adherants passed to early Scottish Freemasons.  I’m proud to continue in that message of mutual respect and love for the different Semitic Cultures and all mankind really.

Read the book.  It is pretty fast and it will make you think.  I give it a “Decent” in my ledger.