I agree with maybe that Glenn Beck at times seems like a marmoset monkey on WAY to much espresso, but as Ace of Spades and others have pointed out, there is very little, if anything, in what he says that is factually indefensible. He has ideas on what to do about it. What say the readers of this august blog? In this request I hope to hear from a certain Kevin Connors and maybe even Sgt. Stryker himself (unless he has become a “contractor” for you know who).

Radar

I grew up in the thrall of the Kennedy mystique. I remember clearly when it was announced in class when JFK was killed, and when not so many years later that RFK was Killed. History has questioned whether either of these martyrs deserved the accolades. Now the same scrutiny is placed on Ted Kennedy.

Shortly put, I believe that his reckoning with regard to a certain boiler room girl has his entire life been a motivating factor, and that it is now between him and God. I also think that it is proper to respect the fact that few people in our nation’s leadership have lost so many that were close to them. I personally temper my memories of Mary Jo, Robert Bork, and the almost unbelievably dishonest flaming of Gerald Ford when he pardoned Nixon (…Are there two standards of justice…?) with the almost obsessive desire to meet the conservatives somewhere in between. So fine, I will go along with Winston Churchill’s advice; embalm him, cremate him, and then bury him to make sure he is dead. But deep down I will feel sorry for the fact that the events of his life inexorably led him to both the good and the bad behavior that defined it.

Radar

It’s been awhile and thanks to either the continued good grace of Sgt. Mom or a lack of website maintenance, I am still able to log on. I have so much to say, but for now I present the mantra for now and the next three years.

OBAMA LIED, CAPITALISM DIED.

Radar

Kevin Connors wrote a post a few years back extolling the virtues of radioparadise.com and I’ve been hooked ever since. Sure, Bill plays some tracks that leave you wondering WTF, but it’s more than balanced by the old but great ones, and the new little jewels that could only happen with a healthy indie recording industry.

For the most part Real Wife and Red Haired Girl try to ignore the fact that I have it playing through at least two computers pretty much non-stop, although they pretty much dislike the entire play list (they LOVE American Idol – ’nuff said).

Anyway, RP recently played a song – Dance The Night Away – by the Mavericks. I couldn’t get it out of my head, so I went looking for it and found this video on last.fm. The wife and daughter HATE it. I think it’s awesome – you be the judge.

This past weekend I was letting Red Haired Girl know that I was not happy that she could not find time in her busy social schedule to do the chores that we had asked her to do. After listening to various and sundry excuses such as “some of the clothes in the washing machine AREN’T EVEN MINE or, it’s not MY fault that the stupid dog got the gum from my jacket” (which was left in the kitchen where the allegedly stupid dog is fenced in our absence), etc., I erupted in exasperation, telling her that I expect those kinds of excuses from the President of the United States, not from a fifteen year old.

That sound you hear is me banging my head on the table.

OK class, this one will take a bit of effort, but I promise you will be justly rewarded. First read this, and the update here, from Iowahawk and vote in the comments whether either Kelsey Grammer or David Hyde Pierce should do a monologue, to be widely televised, of course.

Appetizer: “Even Peggy Noonan — the Grand Dame of Gipperism — has succumbed to Obama’s undeniable conservative charms. Just last month I listened to her wax poetic about the Adonis of Chicago between chukkers at the Newport Club polo tournament final. “Why Peggy, you old dowager,” I quipped, “I believe you just had an orgasm.”

For the past couple of years I’ve been logging about 55-60 hour work weeks and it has been getting to me. Last night when I finally logged off the VPN a half hour into the Big Game, I kind of freaked out because I could actually not remember what I had accomplished on Saturday. I checked my home computer email logs and doc files – nothing. Then I remembered that Saturday was spent in the office all day. Pathetic. Maybe it is my age (going on 55), but I remember working even more hours back in the early eighties designing automotive test electronics and loving it. Maybe it the stress of knowing that you do what you do because you have a wife and daughter that absolutely need you employed with insurance, combined with psychotic management that, in their relative youth, cannot comprehend that some people would rather not rise all the way to the top – instead just be enormously competent two or three levels down. In the past year, in a town of less than 3,000 people, our company has shed more than 500 manufacturing and probably 150 engineering/admin jobs (hable Espanol or Cantonese?). I think we are down to around a hundred souls from what was, ten years ago, about sixteen hundred.

It fell to me (because I volunteered .. because nobody else would do it) to scan and catalog about 1000 photos from various sources taken in the office and plant floor over the past thirty years. At first it was fun; all the guys back then looked like John Holmes wannabees and all the women had big hair. But it got to me by the time the project was finished. We are now all ghosts, some of us actually dead, others just old. I see many of the old ones regularly – as I said its a small town – and even those who were once close friends somehow make me feel as though I betrayed them because I am still there and they are not.

Now we have these asshats that seem to have a problem paying their own taxes telling me that I’ve got to fork over to pay for rubbers, community organizers, and whatever socialist item is on The One’s list of chits that he owes. Okay, but at the same time it is the group of, what – 40% of the population that doesn’t even pay taxes (not counting Democrat politicians; they get Extra Special treatment) – that will be the recipients of my largesse?

My fallback plan was to work at home, maybe even 55-60 hours a week, blogging for Pajamas Media. That is not looking very good (not that it ever did – I can only write well when it is technical and/or dry).

Fuck it, it don’t mean nothin’. I think I need a vacation.

My first three years of school (after kindergarten in an old one room building affectionately known as the chicken coop) were at St. Mary’s in Fulton NY. I absolutely hated it. Nothing against the religion, or my parents, but it I recall it to be a terribly traumatic experience. I never could connect with the nuns – the exemplar memory being the time I walked the twelve blocks to first grade circa 1960 (uphill as I recall) in a drenching rain, wearing an old rain slick three sizes too small. My legs got wet – very wet. Sister Mary Lawrence (yes, I’m going to name names here) accused me of deliberately jumping in rain puddles. On one level I am thinking “Lady, it’s f***ing raining out there like a b****, I am cold and wet, and you are f***ing laying this s*** on me?”. On another level (the one that manifested that day) I am beginning to cry, denying that I frolicked or did ANYTHING that would mock the seriousness of the religious predicament that was unfolding more and more each day, and was unique to me as a Catholic (the protestant – or as I understood them to be at the time – public kids seemed oblivious to any of what was really going on).

Over the years I have often expressed that the Catholic school experience was not something to recommend. Invariably the response was “Oh, you must have gone to a Catholic school back ‘in the day’ when nuns did all of the teaching – things are a lot different now”. I’ve also talked to many who recalled an altogether different experience; one that they regret that their children and grandchildren could have never benefit from.

I was in L.A. on 9/11, and on the first flight out, when flights started, my seatmate was a distinguished doctor from Fulton NY who was four years ahead of me at St. Mary’s. He went all the way through the local system, and attributed it to his success. Over the years I started thinking about that, and began to more often remember Sr. Mary Patrice (second grade). She was really OK for a nun. I actually saw some of her hair once – a “call-every-other-second-grade-kid-you-know-moment”. Then I graduated second grade (and completed First Communion – by now I’m really getting in deep), had a not too bad summer, and started third grade with – Sr. Mary Lawrence. Here we go again. By the way, I failed to mention earlier that Mother Superior, I truly believe, made the mold that Sr. Mary Lawrence was cast from. When Sr. Mary Lawrence was done with you, you went to Mother Superior to ensure that you “got your head right”. (I use those quotes because I didn’t really understand the dynamic until, years later, I saw Cool Hand Luke)

My general conclusion is that it probably was me and not them. I’ve noticed as an adult that certain executive officers that I’ve encountered professionally over the years have also put me in the same frame of mind. Substitute the Catechism for Sarbanes Oxley, a nun’s habit for a $2,000 black suit, eternal damnation for unemployment at an unemployable age and you get the picture. Anyway, I digress.

Real Wife asked me last week if I wanted to participate in a community trivia challenge type of fundraiser. It works like this – you recruit about 20 – 30 teams of eight people who sit in a cafegymatorium and compete in about a dozen ten question trivia rounds. I said sure.

Then I found out that the beneficiaries of the charity were children headed for Catholic summer camp. Immediately, I sensed the presence of Sr. Mary Lawrence on one shoulder, and Sr. Mary Patrice on the other. On the one hand, it’s an enjoyable Sunday afternoon which benefits the children. On the other, I might as well be herding them into the cattle cars.

Our team had two no-shows; the high school biology teacher and another teacher who is also the middle school scholastic bowl coach; a fact that was not in our favor. We had Real Wife (a teacher), two other teachers, two affluent farmers and yours truly, a self proclaimed renaissance man with nun love-hate issues.

It was a hoot. The M.C was a young priest who peppered the proceeding with both self deprecating and sharp humor, we had all the popcorn you could eat, and none of it mattered one whit except having fun on a snowy day.

We sucked worse than all but two other teams. As noted above, however, we were short two key members who would have undoubtedly helped our fortunes (damn them). My personal contribution that I am most proud of was knowing that WORM stands for(within the current vernacular of the Catholic church IT group) Write Once Read Many.

It’s fun to get together with friends and neighbors in this sort of format. As a conservative (otherwise introverted) person I highly recommend it as an alternative to say, for example, expecting The One to provide the funds to send the kids to camp.

I really wish I could have hit it off better with Sr. Mary Lawrence. In retrospect, she may have been the factor that got me through boot camp just twelve years later. I’d still like to have seen her hair – I think that I would be psychologically better developed.

It’s a Wii Christmas this year in our house, after having looked at what accessories and games cost, and their really being no particular need or desire for any other toys. A happy/occupied Red Haired Girl and Real Wife, with a nice prime rib roast in the oven, is all I really want.

Believe what you’ve heard, the Wii can cause injuries. While bringing ours in from the shop to wrap (in the midst of a 3/4 inch ice storm), I twisted my knee and apparently have a something-C-L injury. Oh well, I should be, and am, thankful for being on more familiar terms with orthopedic surgeons than with other specialists (orthopods never tell you how much time you have left). Anyway, I got an Indy 500 game that looks pretty cool so there will be some play time (with leg elevated, of course).

Merry Christmas to all of my fellow contributors, our loyal readers, and your families and loved ones.

Radar

What a day Friday was! Real Wife was determined to hit the Walmart Black Friday sale, so we were up at 3:00 a.m., resolved to do our part for the economy. Red Haired Girl had been looking forward for weeks to this important first rite of passage, so off we went. RW has been wanting a Wii since we chaperoned RHG’s middle school graduation party last spring. RHG had already done the math and figured that there were other more important things for her final list, so, much to RW’s chagrine, she was not pushing for that. So, in the spirit of Christmas intrigue, we (RHG and I) have been poo pooing the need for a Wii for a couple of weeks. RW is one of the most selfless people I know, and she has been hiding her disappoint like a real trooper.

To give RHG a sense of Black Friday, I assigned her to stand in line for the Wii’s. She performed admirably, panicking only when told that it had to be paid for at the counter. A quick text message to me got that problem resolved. We are now co-conspiritors anxiously awaiting Real Wife’s Christmas surprise.

Normally we get out of the store early and enjoy a nice leisurely breakfast somewhere, but this year we had another mission. Barely an hour after getting home it was time to meet at the local high school for the charter bus to the state championship (class 3A) game at the University of Illinois stadium in Champaigne. Real Wife and I travelled both as fans and as chaperones for the cheerleading squad – in all we took five buses, with literally hundreds of others driving their own vehicles on the four hour trek.

This is only the second year that our school has played in class 3A (about 500 high school students), having recently merged with two other neighbouring districts. Ironically, the largest bloc in opposition to the merger was comprised of the sports fans who found it beyond the pale that former “enemies” should now be on the same team. In fact, our head coach and assistant coach last met in the playoffs at the 2000 state championship while in class 1A, where our school won handily.

The game was a barn burner. DuQuoin, a long time football powerhouse from southern Illinois, has a NCAA Division 1 quarterback prospect, and it was easy to see why. We went into the half down 7-0, having survived two of their drives to less than the five yard line. The second half was nail biter, with our home team down by 14-13 with under a minute to play. Our guys scored what would be the winning touchdown with 25 seconds on the game clock, succeeding with a two point conversion to bring the score to 21-14. On second down of DuQuoin’s possession one of our backs intercepted their pass with 14 seconds remaining. Chaos ensued.

All of the buses and most of the fans who drove stopped at the Home Style buffet before leaving Champaign. Despite having called ahead (we paid for team, cheerleader and band members in advance), it was a cluster**** of epic proportions. After waiting in line – outside – for an hour, RW and I decided to just head back to the bus, whereupon we were told that the driver had gone somewhere else to eat – with the bus. Anyway, 2 1/2 hours later we were on the road again. (BTW, if you are ever in Chapaigne I recommend that buffet – they even had steak fillets!).

Our buses were met at the edge of town at around 1:30 a.m. by firetrucks, ambulances, police cars, and anything else they could muster with a siren, as well as half the town. Everyone formed up in a parade and drove around for awhile before calling it a day a little after two o’clock.

Nobody was from Dallas City, LaHarpe, or Carthage that night – they were all from Illini West.

One final thought. While downloading pictures I noted one in particular that really caught my attention. I took it as the clock ran out, with focal point on the team. On a 10 megapixel camera at about 10X zoom, the image clearly captured the expressions of the Du Quoin fans – a mixture of horror, disbelief, and disappointment. They, after all, had travelled just as hard and long a journey. Nonetheless, the sportsmanship of both their team and their fans was first class. In that spirit I would like to congratulate both the Chargers and the Indians for a job well done.

Our team won today, and they play the state championship game next Friday. What a house rocker!! Rewind to three days ago; the story all over town was that Terry Bradshaw (through a complicated connection that includes a former Bengals player originally from our school district) called our quarterback for a 25 minute chat. This reporter can confirm through reliable sources that said conversation happened.

The home defense was limp the entire first half (ending at 16-6) until the opponents were within the 10 yard line, which each time inspired the best running defense I have ever seen. Offensively things were no better – the constant running pressure typical of past games was ineffective.

I am a comparatively cerebral football fan, so while everyone else was freaking out I was wondering why our guys weren’t passing.

The second half favored the visitors with being the receivers of the kick and they got another score (with conversion) to bring the score at the end of the quarter to 23-6. We then finally scored again (now 23-13, fourth quarter, 10 minutes left). Our guys then played the coolest trick I have ever seen – while seeming to be huddling, they suddenly ran toward and short kicked the ball (no setting up of a formation) and recovered the onside kick. At that point there was a crisis behind us when a bleacher plank failed and about 8 feet worth of fans went down about… eight feet. There were no injuries (thank God, everybody was focused on the game). Our QB finally started passing, a consistent skill that had not thus far been apparent (but was today), and they won 27-23, with the final score made with only seconds to go. Our number 4 looked like Bradshaw.

A word of respect for the other team. They played well and fair, and it always moves me to see the pain in the faces of a team that has worked so hard and so long and to leave the field in defeat.

It turns out that Real Wife, related to her position as teacher, is also a kind of associate assistant cheerleader coach. I don’t completely understand her duties other than the fact that we sit with the coach at the fifty yard line at every game. Anyway, we will be riding as chaperones on the bus with the cheerleaders to Champaign. Another irony alert here; there was a time when I would have traded away my little brother (sorry Mike) for such an honor. Now I am thankful for MP3 and noise canceling headphones for the four hour ride. Red Haired Girl informed me that even though the other girls know who I am, I should pretend that we don’t know each other. Whatever.

I want to try something new. I’ll suggest the first line for a joke and you, Dear Readers, finish it. BTW, I am not involved in screening the comments at this site, so I would ask in the spirit of civility that we all show good taste and decency so as not to unnecessarily rile Sgt. Mom. Here we go:

“Barack Obama, Chuck Norris, and Superman walk into a bar…”

If you don’t have a teenager in your life you may not get the premise. In that case, find one and offer him/her $1.00 to explain (or go out and get a teenager – the former is a lot cheaper)