On Healing Wings: I know not how I may seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with.
—Plato
Monday, March 19, 2012
Sunday, March 18, 2012
AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and Quotes
AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and Quotes: "If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me."
-- Psalm 139
Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me."
-- Psalm 139
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Thursday, March 15, 2012
AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and Quotes
AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and Quotes: "Build a man a fire and you warm him for a day. Set a man on fire and he shall be warm the rest of his life." [Via commenter "twolaneflash"]
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Jesse's Caf�Am�ricain
Jesse's Caf�Am�ricain: Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Bonus Army and Business Plot
Another bear raid.
As a reminder this is the big 'triple witching' option expiration for stocks this week. The miners are fair game.
As you may recall, there was a significant amount of civil unrest in 1932, which was a presidential election year.
The Bonus Army of WW I veterans occupied Washington until they were forcibly dispersed by the US military led by Douglas MacArthur. The veterans had been encouraged in their peaceful occupation by Smedley Butler, Major General of the US Marine Corp.
Butler later testified in 1934 that he had been approached by several powerful industrialists who asked him to bring the Bonus Army back to Washington and take the government by force of numbers from then President Franklin Roosevelt, in a scheme that was known as The Business Plot.
This reminds me of the co-opting of the Tea Party, which started as a protest against TARP and the bank bailouts, by today's monied interests.
Fortunately our modern day Herbert Hoover is not so much the liquidationist as his business friendly predecessor.
Obama understands the need for bread, and Wall Street supplies the circuses.
But if history rhymes once again, this could be a long, hot summer.
Another bear raid.
As a reminder this is the big 'triple witching' option expiration for stocks this week. The miners are fair game.
As you may recall, there was a significant amount of civil unrest in 1932, which was a presidential election year.
The Bonus Army of WW I veterans occupied Washington until they were forcibly dispersed by the US military led by Douglas MacArthur. The veterans had been encouraged in their peaceful occupation by Smedley Butler, Major General of the US Marine Corp.
Butler later testified in 1934 that he had been approached by several powerful industrialists who asked him to bring the Bonus Army back to Washington and take the government by force of numbers from then President Franklin Roosevelt, in a scheme that was known as The Business Plot.
This reminds me of the co-opting of the Tea Party, which started as a protest against TARP and the bank bailouts, by today's monied interests.
Fortunately our modern day Herbert Hoover is not so much the liquidationist as his business friendly predecessor.
Obama understands the need for bread, and Wall Street supplies the circuses.
But if history rhymes once again, this could be a long, hot summer.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Reflejos
Reflejos: "Disturb us, O Lord when we are too well-pleased with ourselves when our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little, because we sailed too close to the shore. Disturb us, O Lord when with the abundance of things we possess, we have lost our thirst for the water of life when, having fallen in love with time, we have ceased to dream of eternity and in our efforts to build a new earth, we have allowed our vision of Heaven to grow dim. Stir us, O Lord to dare more boldly, to venture into wider seas where storms show Thy mastery, where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars. In the name of Him who pushed back the horizons of our hopes and invited the brave to follow. Amen."
Desmond TuTu
Desmond TuTu
AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and Quotes
AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and Quotes: Burt Prelutsky's "Just sayin'..."
"I really am sick and tired of hearing Mitch McConnell referring to “Our friends on the other side of the aisle.”
Harry Reid is not your friend. Charles Schumer, Patrick Leahy and Dick Durbin, are not your friends. What’s more, Barbara Boxer, Patty Murray and Dianne Feinstein, are not going to the prom with you. Get over it."
"I really am sick and tired of hearing Mitch McConnell referring to “Our friends on the other side of the aisle.”
Harry Reid is not your friend. Charles Schumer, Patrick Leahy and Dick Durbin, are not your friends. What’s more, Barbara Boxer, Patty Murray and Dianne Feinstein, are not going to the prom with you. Get over it."
AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and Quotes
AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and Quotes: The Blood Price of Afghanistan
The alleged attack on Afghans by an American soldier in Kandahar, where 91 soldiers have been murdered last year alone,
is already receiving the full outrage treatment. Any outrage over the deaths of those 91 soldiers in the province will be completely absent. There will be no mention of how many of them died because the Obama Administration decided that the lives of Afghan civilians counted for more than the lives of soldiers. No talk of what it is like to walk past houses with gunmen dressed in civilian clothing inside and if you are fired at from those houses, your orders are to retreat. -- Sultan Knish a blog by Daniel Greenfield
The alleged attack on Afghans by an American soldier in Kandahar, where 91 soldiers have been murdered last year alone,
is already receiving the full outrage treatment. Any outrage over the deaths of those 91 soldiers in the province will be completely absent. There will be no mention of how many of them died because the Obama Administration decided that the lives of Afghan civilians counted for more than the lives of soldiers. No talk of what it is like to walk past houses with gunmen dressed in civilian clothing inside and if you are fired at from those houses, your orders are to retreat. -- Sultan Knish a blog by Daniel Greenfield
Sunday, March 11, 2012
AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and Quotes
AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and Quotes: The Left has enjoyed easy victory by peddling their nonsense to the moderates I mentioned above — the charitable, kind-hearted, hardworking moderates. Who are suckers. Because those suckers cannot tell the widow apart from the town drunk, and make no effort or achievement toward understanding there are people walking around determined to live off of the sweat of others. People who think only idiots work hard. And why shouldn’t those town-drunks think such a thing, if their lives have been devoted to suckering the sucker moderates — and it has always worked?
Saturday, March 10, 2012
On Healing Wings
On Healing Wings: I cannot believe — and I say this with all the emphasis of which I am capable — that there can ever be any good excuse for refusing to face the evidence in favour of something unwelcome. It is not by delusion, however exalted, that mankind can prosper, but only by unswerving courage in the pursuit of truth.
—Bertrand Russell
—Bertrand Russell
Let us pray | Power Line
Let us pray | Power Line: On Wednesday, White House officials summoned dozens of leaders of nonprofit organizations that strongly back the health law to help them coordinate plans for a prayer vigil, press conferences and other events outside the court when justices hear arguments for three days beginning March 26.
I see that according to the New York Times (link: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/09/us/politics/white-house-works-to-shape-debate-over-health-law.html?_r=3&ref=todayspaper ) that “On Wednesday, White House officials summoned dozens of leaders of nonprofit organizations that strongly back the health law to help them coordinate plans for a prayer vigil, press conferences and other events outside the court when justices hear arguments for three days beginning March 26.” Hmmmm. Remember, of course, that is White House officials and not the President.
See the comments in article
s
Friday, March 09, 2012
Mme Scherzo - Some notes on fasting
Mme Scherzo - Some notes on fasting
Fasting must be undertaken willingly and not by compulsion. God doesn’t need our fasting. We don’t fast as a kind of personal punishment for our sins. We cannot pay God back for sins but we can only confess them to Him to receive forgiveness. Fasting with a willing spirit and not just with an attitude of fulfilling a religious obligation means that we keep the purposes of fasting always before us which is to develop self control and to remember God and His Kingdom. That way we fast not only in what we eat but also in how much we eat. Fasting is simplicity of eating. We leave the table not with loaded stomachs. Being a little hungry during the day becomes a constant reminder of God, of our dependence on Him, and of the fact that the Lord alone can give us “food that lasts for eternal life” (Jn 6:27). In fasting and prayer, he reveals Himself to us as our true food and drink.
(Source: home.wavecable.com)
Fasting must be undertaken willingly and not by compulsion. God doesn’t need our fasting. We don’t fast as a kind of personal punishment for our sins. We cannot pay God back for sins but we can only confess them to Him to receive forgiveness. Fasting with a willing spirit and not just with an attitude of fulfilling a religious obligation means that we keep the purposes of fasting always before us which is to develop self control and to remember God and His Kingdom. That way we fast not only in what we eat but also in how much we eat. Fasting is simplicity of eating. We leave the table not with loaded stomachs. Being a little hungry during the day becomes a constant reminder of God, of our dependence on Him, and of the fact that the Lord alone can give us “food that lasts for eternal life” (Jn 6:27). In fasting and prayer, he reveals Himself to us as our true food and drink.
(Source: home.wavecable.com)
Monday, March 05, 2012
tumblr_ltdis53K8n1qbogplo1_1280.png (PNG Image, 582�נ485 pixels)
tumblr_ltdis53K8n1qbogplo1_1280.png (PNG Image, 582�נ485 pixels): http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_ltdis53K8n1qbogplo1_1280.png?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1331058654&Signature=Mu8565PcHW3xg4M6sDSlliYbptc=
http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_ltdis53K8n1qbogplo1_1280.png?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1331058654&Signature=Mu8565PcHW3xg4M6sDSlliYbptc=
http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_ltdis53K8n1qbogplo1_1280.png?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1331058654&Signature=Mu8565PcHW3xg4M6sDSlliYbptc=
Sunday, March 04, 2012
Saturday, March 03, 2012
Friday, March 02, 2012
TOC 2012: Clay Johnson, "Is SEO Killing America?" - YouTube
TOC 2012: Clay Johnson, "Is SEO Killing America?" - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhFSxycMJCA&feature=youtu.be
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhFSxycMJCA&feature=youtu.be
AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and Quotes
AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and Quotes: Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.
Thursday, March 01, 2012
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Reflejos
Reflejos: "We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile."
—
Hilaire Belloc, The Barbarians
—
Hilaire Belloc, The Barbarians
Side-Lines: February 2012 Archives
Side-Lines: February 2012 Archives
"It is now time for Western Christians and non-Christians alike ..."
to acknowledge that men such as Alexis de Tocqueville were correct
and various concepts such as free expression, freedom of association, and other hallowed concepts of Western civilization simply do not translate outside of Western Christian culture. What was once theoretical is now empirical thanks to more than sixty years of evidence that strongly suggests that human liberty is simply not compatible with non-Christian, non-Western culture. -- Vox Popoli: The chickens begin to roost
"It is now time for Western Christians and non-Christians alike ..."
to acknowledge that men such as Alexis de Tocqueville were correct
and various concepts such as free expression, freedom of association, and other hallowed concepts of Western civilization simply do not translate outside of Western Christian culture. What was once theoretical is now empirical thanks to more than sixty years of evidence that strongly suggests that human liberty is simply not compatible with non-Christian, non-Western culture. -- Vox Popoli: The chickens begin to roost
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Mme Scherzo
Mme Scherzo:
" Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of a man at twice its natural size.
Virginia Woolf,
" Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of a man at twice its natural size.
Virginia Woolf,
Monday, February 20, 2012
Sore-Throated Sonnets of Regurgitated Reasoning | Whenever Richard Cory went down town, We people on...
Sore-Throated Sonnets of Regurgitated Reasoning | Whenever Richard Cory went down town, We people on...:
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich – yes, richer than a king –
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
-by Edwin Arlington Robinson
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich – yes, richer than a king –
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
-by Edwin Arlington Robinson
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Inspirational Adversity Quotes, Sayings about Problems and Hardship
Inspirational Adversity Quotes, Sayings about Problems and Hardship:
My strength is made perfect in weakness. ~II Corinthians
My strength is made perfect in weakness. ~II Corinthians
Strength quotes
Strength quotes:
“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.”
“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.”
Strength quotes
Strength quotes:
“Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. Love still stands when all else has fallen.”
“Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. Love still stands when all else has fallen.”
William Black on Financial Fraud | EconTalk | Library of Economics and Liberty
William Black on Financial Fraud | EconTalk | Library of Economics and Liberty
Really important report on banking fraud
Really important report on banking fraud
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Monday, February 13, 2012
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Light Is More Important Than The Lantern - Poem by Nizar Qabbani
Light Is More Important Than The Lantern - Poem by Nizar Qabbani:
Light Is More Important Than The Lantern by Nizar Qabbani
Light is more important than the lantern,
The poem more important than the notebook,
And the kiss more important than the lips.
My letters to you
Are greater and more important than both of us.
The are the only documents
Where people will discover
Your beauty
And my madness.
Light Is More Important Than The Lantern by Nizar Qabbani
Light is more important than the lantern,
The poem more important than the notebook,
And the kiss more important than the lips.
My letters to you
Are greater and more important than both of us.
The are the only documents
Where people will discover
Your beauty
And my madness.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Reflejos
Reflejos: Ernest Tubb & His Texas Troubadours:
Waltz Across Texas, 1965
http://myjambox.tumblr.com/post/12803478447/ernest-tubb-waltz-across-texas
Waltz Across Texas, 1965
http://myjambox.tumblr.com/post/12803478447/ernest-tubb-waltz-across-texas
Thursday, February 09, 2012
On Healing Wings
On Healing Wings: "For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; Nor has He hidden His face from Him; But when He cried to Him, He heard."
—Psalm 22:24
—Psalm 22:24
On Healing Wings
On Healing Wings:
" Men are undoubtedly more in danger from prosperity than from adversity, for when matters go smoothly, they flatter themselves, and are intoxicated by their success."
—John Calvin
" Men are undoubtedly more in danger from prosperity than from adversity, for when matters go smoothly, they flatter themselves, and are intoxicated by their success."
—John Calvin
Sunday, February 05, 2012
Mme Scherzo - The phrase, “Defining deviancy downward, ” has...
Mme Scherzo - The phrase, “Defining deviancy downward, ” has...
The phrase, “Defining deviancy downward, ” has always left me unsettled.
Isn’t deviancy a downward spiral from proper behavior, anyway?
More correctly, deviancy has been redefined upward, and with Sisyphean effort on the part of intellectuals, the press, and entertainment culture of the west, deviancy has not only been pushed up the hill against howling protest, but has been exalted to the highest pinnacle and placed upon an altar to be worshiped.
It is the new secular religion, which is actually the oldest religion of humanity. - the religion of Satan, of Cain, of Sodom and Gomorrah, of Baal and Beelzebub, of Molech and Mohammed.
It is the opiate of the mass media.
The First Person in the unholy trinity of Me, Myself and I.
It is the Religion of Tolerance.
Mme Scherzo
The phrase, “Defining deviancy downward, ” has always left me unsettled.
Isn’t deviancy a downward spiral from proper behavior, anyway?
More correctly, deviancy has been redefined upward, and with Sisyphean effort on the part of intellectuals, the press, and entertainment culture of the west, deviancy has not only been pushed up the hill against howling protest, but has been exalted to the highest pinnacle and placed upon an altar to be worshiped.
It is the new secular religion, which is actually the oldest religion of humanity. - the religion of Satan, of Cain, of Sodom and Gomorrah, of Baal and Beelzebub, of Molech and Mohammed.
It is the opiate of the mass media.
The First Person in the unholy trinity of Me, Myself and I.
It is the Religion of Tolerance.
Mme Scherzo
Saturday, February 04, 2012
Mme Scherzo - Conf�teor Deo omnipot�nti et vobis, fratres, quia...
Mme Scherzo - Conf�teor Deo omnipot�nti et vobis, fratres, quia...
Confíteor Deo omnipoténti et vobis, fratres,
quia peccávi nimis cogitatióne, verbo, ópere et omissióne:
mea culpa, mea culpa, mea máxima culpa.
Ideo precor beátam Maríam semper Vírginem,
omnes Angelos et Sanctos, et vos, fratres,
oráre pro me ad Dóminum Deum nostrum.
English translation:
I confess to almighty God
and to you, my brothers and sisters,
that I have greatly sinned,
in my thoughts and in my words,
in what I have done and in what I have failed to do,
through my fault, through my own fault,
through my own most grievous fault;
therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin,
all the Angels and Saints,
and you, my brothers and sisters,
to pray for me to the Lord our God.
For you who believe that there is a reality called White Privilege, and that only whites can be racists, I urge you to think through to the ends of such beliefs, and see how people, perpetually infantilized as victims of racism, never able to achieve their full status as grown men and women, never able to fulfill their life’s goals are actually robbed of their humanity by this belief, because they aren’t held to the same standards of behavior.
If only one group of people is responsible for the misery of everyone else, then those people are never responsible for their own actions, for their own failures, and will handily find anyone whiter, richer, more educated than themselves to blame.
If you must learn one thing about this doctrine it is this. It is completely at odds with Catholic, Protestant and Jewish teaching.
Group identification robs a man of his identity, of who he is as a creation of God, unique from others, while still being like them, under God.
When you say, in the comfort of your universities, where reality has only theories, that only white people can be racists, that only whites are privileged, you are stoking the fires of Hell against yourselves, and everyone else.
Do we need another holocaust to remind us that Jew-hatred was based upon this same satanic teaching? 6 million Jews died in the quest for a Jew-free world, and yet, all that Jew-hatred ended up costing the Germans and the rest of the world far more lives than the Jews they wished to eliminate.
Racism, as it has been redefined, is a meaningless term used to invoke rage and anger, and to shut down any form of debate and analysis of social policies.
Hatred, on the other hand, is as old as time. And that is something that divides us all, down to a brother, a sister, a mother and father. It is color blind.
The teaching of Christ is this: All those who are in Him, are neither male, nor female, nor slave nor free, nor Jew nor Gentile, but equals.
And that is what I believe.
Confíteor Deo omnipoténti et vobis, fratres,
quia peccávi nimis cogitatióne, verbo, ópere et omissióne:
mea culpa, mea culpa, mea máxima culpa.
Ideo precor beátam Maríam semper Vírginem,
omnes Angelos et Sanctos, et vos, fratres,
oráre pro me ad Dóminum Deum nostrum.
English translation:
I confess to almighty God
and to you, my brothers and sisters,
that I have greatly sinned,
in my thoughts and in my words,
in what I have done and in what I have failed to do,
through my fault, through my own fault,
through my own most grievous fault;
therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin,
all the Angels and Saints,
and you, my brothers and sisters,
to pray for me to the Lord our God.
For you who believe that there is a reality called White Privilege, and that only whites can be racists, I urge you to think through to the ends of such beliefs, and see how people, perpetually infantilized as victims of racism, never able to achieve their full status as grown men and women, never able to fulfill their life’s goals are actually robbed of their humanity by this belief, because they aren’t held to the same standards of behavior.
If only one group of people is responsible for the misery of everyone else, then those people are never responsible for their own actions, for their own failures, and will handily find anyone whiter, richer, more educated than themselves to blame.
If you must learn one thing about this doctrine it is this. It is completely at odds with Catholic, Protestant and Jewish teaching.
Group identification robs a man of his identity, of who he is as a creation of God, unique from others, while still being like them, under God.
When you say, in the comfort of your universities, where reality has only theories, that only white people can be racists, that only whites are privileged, you are stoking the fires of Hell against yourselves, and everyone else.
Do we need another holocaust to remind us that Jew-hatred was based upon this same satanic teaching? 6 million Jews died in the quest for a Jew-free world, and yet, all that Jew-hatred ended up costing the Germans and the rest of the world far more lives than the Jews they wished to eliminate.
Racism, as it has been redefined, is a meaningless term used to invoke rage and anger, and to shut down any form of debate and analysis of social policies.
Hatred, on the other hand, is as old as time. And that is something that divides us all, down to a brother, a sister, a mother and father. It is color blind.
The teaching of Christ is this: All those who are in Him, are neither male, nor female, nor slave nor free, nor Jew nor Gentile, but equals.
And that is what I believe.
Friday, February 03, 2012
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Quote | Goodmorning & Goodnight - Page 10
Quote | Goodmorning & Goodnight - Page 10: “Everyone has a secret they haven’t shared. Everyone has a past no one’s heard about. Everyone has talents that people don’t notice. Everyone has weaknesses hidden inside. Everyone has a story left untold, so never start judging someone thinking you know them back to front. Because the truth is, you probably don’t.”
Quote | Goodmorning & Goodnight - Page 9
Quote | Goodmorning & Goodnight - Page 9: “It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.” ~Mark Twain
Quote | Goodmorning & Goodnight - Page 8
Quote | Goodmorning & Goodnight - Page 8: “It Takes as Much Energy to Wish as it Does to Plan.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt
Quote | Goodmorning & Goodnight - Page 7
Quote | Goodmorning & Goodnight - Page 7: “When we hold each other, in the darkness, it doesn’t make the darkness go away. The bad things are still out there. The nightmares still walking. When we hold each other we feel not safe, but better. “It’s all right” we whisper, “I’m here, I love you.” and we lie: “I’ll never leave you.” For just a moment or two the darkness doesn’t seem so bad.” ~Neil Gaiman
Quote | Goodmorning & Goodnight - Page 6
Quote | Goodmorning & Goodnight - Page 6: “Imagine there is a bank account that credits your account each morning with $86,400. It carries over no balance from day to day. Every evening the bank deletes whatever part of the balance you failed to use during the day. What would you do? Draw out every cent, of course? Each of us has such a bank. Its name is time. Every morning, it credits you with 86,400 seconds. Every night it writes off as lost, whatever of this you have failed to invest to a good purpose. It carries over no balance. It allows no over draft. Each day it opens a new account for you. Each night it burns the remains of the day. If you fail to use the day’s deposits, the loss is yours. There is no drawing against “tomorrow”. You must live in the present on today’s deposits. Invest it so as to get from it the utmost in health, happiness and success. The clock is running. Make the most of today.”
Quote | Goodmorning & Goodnight - Page 5
Quote | Goodmorning & Goodnight - Page 5: “May I see the things in front of me as they are, not as I think them to be.
May I walk the steps ahead of me one at a time, not wondering if there’s a map.
May I say the things that fix things, not break them further apart.
May I do what I need to do, not be distracted by what I can’t.
May I dream of what I hope for, not of what I fear.
May I love you like I love you, not as any other, me.”
May I walk the steps ahead of me one at a time, not wondering if there’s a map.
May I say the things that fix things, not break them further apart.
May I do what I need to do, not be distracted by what I can’t.
May I dream of what I hope for, not of what I fear.
May I love you like I love you, not as any other, me.”
Quote | Goodmorning & Goodnight - Page 4
Quote | Goodmorning & Goodnight - Page 4: “I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.”
~Variation On The Word Sleep by Margret Atwood
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.”
~Variation On The Word Sleep by Margret Atwood
Quote | Goodmorning & Goodnight - Page 4
Quote | Goodmorning & Goodnight - Page 4: “But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.”
~Pablo Neruda
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.”
~Pablo Neruda
Quote | Goodmorning & Goodnight - Page 3
Quote | Goodmorning & Goodnight - Page 3: “I’m not the silly romantic you think. I don’t want the heavens or the shooting stars. I don’t want gemstones or gold. I have those things already. I want…a steady hand. A kind soul. I want to fall asleep, and wake, knowing my heart is safe. I want to love, and be loved.”
shana abe
shana abe
Saturday, January 07, 2012
FORGOTTEN PROPHETS
FORGOTTEN PROPHETS My Dick
It occurs to me that I have not been speaking enough in recent days about my dick. My dick is powerful. It loves oatmeal and has a cholesterol level of 7. My dick is ambidextrous. It can do backflips and can deadlift 115 pounds. It can tell the difference between every type of American southwest elm trees with 100% accuracy. It was once runner up on a Jeopardy! celebrity edition, and shook Alex Trebek's hand. It tastes like a gingerbread man, with a hint of cinnamon. My dick can drive a motorcycle. It once dug a hole through 3 feet of river ice so it could go fishing. It is vegetarian. My dick can type 87 words per minute. It is an expert in Bulgarian pop culture. In a fight with a hammerhead shark, my dick won. People claim that they have seen it breathe fire. It would be on Mount Rushmore, but there wasn't enough room. Everyone respects and is in awe of my dick, especially women and gays. It is the best dick that has ever lived.
It occurs to me that I have not been speaking enough in recent days about my dick. My dick is powerful. It loves oatmeal and has a cholesterol level of 7. My dick is ambidextrous. It can do backflips and can deadlift 115 pounds. It can tell the difference between every type of American southwest elm trees with 100% accuracy. It was once runner up on a Jeopardy! celebrity edition, and shook Alex Trebek's hand. It tastes like a gingerbread man, with a hint of cinnamon. My dick can drive a motorcycle. It once dug a hole through 3 feet of river ice so it could go fishing. It is vegetarian. My dick can type 87 words per minute. It is an expert in Bulgarian pop culture. In a fight with a hammerhead shark, my dick won. People claim that they have seen it breathe fire. It would be on Mount Rushmore, but there wasn't enough room. Everyone respects and is in awe of my dick, especially women and gays. It is the best dick that has ever lived.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Sunday, December 04, 2011
Saturday, December 03, 2011
Mme Scherzo
Mme Scherzo:
Watch your tongue---------Keep silence
For when the reason’s dull, the mind depressed,
He best doth speak who keeps his silence best.
Pedro Calder�n de la Barca, Life is a Dream (via vandegraaff)
Watch your tongue---------Keep silence
For when the reason’s dull, the mind depressed,
He best doth speak who keeps his silence best.
Pedro Calder�n de la Barca, Life is a Dream (via vandegraaff)
Mme Scherzo
Mme Scherzo
Description of ISLAM
“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.
A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.
No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”
Sir Winston Churchill, The River War, 1899 - first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50
Description of ISLAM
“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.
A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.
No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”
Sir Winston Churchill, The River War, 1899 - first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50
Thursday, December 01, 2011
On Healing Wings
On Healing Wings: Does God want us to suffer? What if the answer to that question is ‘yes’?
You see, I don’t think that God particularly wants us to be happy. I think He wants us to love and be loved. He wants us to grow up. You see, we are like children who think that our toys bring us all the happiness there is, and that our nursery is the whole wide world. But something has to drive us out into the world of others, and that thing is suffering. Put simply, pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world. We are like blocks of stone from which the Sculptor carves a form.
The blows of His chisel which hurt us so much are what make us perfect.
—C.S. Lewis, Shadowlands
You see, I don’t think that God particularly wants us to be happy. I think He wants us to love and be loved. He wants us to grow up. You see, we are like children who think that our toys bring us all the happiness there is, and that our nursery is the whole wide world. But something has to drive us out into the world of others, and that thing is suffering. Put simply, pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world. We are like blocks of stone from which the Sculptor carves a form.
The blows of His chisel which hurt us so much are what make us perfect.
—C.S. Lewis, Shadowlands
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Mme Scherzo - There are three classes of people: those who see,...
Mme Scherzo - There are three classes of people: those who see,...:
There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see.
Leonardo da Vinci
There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see.
Leonardo da Vinci
Mme Scherzo
Mme Scherzo:
Behold your paradise of free sex and love without the constraints of marital bondage!
Fatherless children who have no bonds, no loyalties, no inheritance. They are largely uneducated, violent and poor.
Their own futures are limited by the lack of leadership that they can emulate from a father showing them how to work, provide, build and love.
It is a tragedy. And it is our future destruction.
Our children, born of mothers who are unmarried, unloved, uneducated and poor, will become the class of thugs who eagerly do a tyrant’s bidding.
~Mme Scherzo http://madamescherzo.tumblr.com
Behold your paradise of free sex and love without the constraints of marital bondage!
Fatherless children who have no bonds, no loyalties, no inheritance. They are largely uneducated, violent and poor.
Their own futures are limited by the lack of leadership that they can emulate from a father showing them how to work, provide, build and love.
It is a tragedy. And it is our future destruction.
Our children, born of mothers who are unmarried, unloved, uneducated and poor, will become the class of thugs who eagerly do a tyrant’s bidding.
~Mme Scherzo http://madamescherzo.tumblr.com
Christopher Hitchens: Unspoken Truths | Culture | Vanity Fair
Christopher Hitchens: Unspoken Truths | Culture | Vanity Fair:
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
—T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
—T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”
Saturday, November 26, 2011
On Healing Wings
On Healing Wings: prayer
We do not presume to come to this your table, merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table, but you are the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy.
—Thomas Cramner, Book of Common Prayer
We do not presume to come to this your table, merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table, but you are the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy.
—Thomas Cramner, Book of Common Prayer
Friday, November 25, 2011
Mme Scherzo
Mme Scherzo:
But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7)
But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7)
Thursday, November 24, 2011
On Healing Wings
On Healing Wings
A real Christian is an odd number anyway.
He feels supreme love for one whom he has never seen;
talks familiarly every day to someone he cannot see;
expects to go to heaven on the virtue of another;
empties himself in order to be full;
admits he is wrong so he can be declared right;
goes down in order to get up;
is strongest when he is weakest;
richest when he is poorest;
and happiest when he feels the worst.
He dies so he can live;
forsakes in order to have;
gives away so he can keep;
sees the invisible,
hears the inaudible,
and knows that which passes knowledge.
The man who has met God is not looking for anything; he has found it. He is not searching for light, for upon him the light has already shined. His certainty may seem bigoted, but his assurance is that of one who knows by experience his religion is not hearsay. He is not a copy, not a facsimile. He is an original from the hand of the Holy Spirit.
—A.W. Tozer (1897-1963)
A real Christian is an odd number anyway.
He feels supreme love for one whom he has never seen;
talks familiarly every day to someone he cannot see;
expects to go to heaven on the virtue of another;
empties himself in order to be full;
admits he is wrong so he can be declared right;
goes down in order to get up;
is strongest when he is weakest;
richest when he is poorest;
and happiest when he feels the worst.
He dies so he can live;
forsakes in order to have;
gives away so he can keep;
sees the invisible,
hears the inaudible,
and knows that which passes knowledge.
The man who has met God is not looking for anything; he has found it. He is not searching for light, for upon him the light has already shined. His certainty may seem bigoted, but his assurance is that of one who knows by experience his religion is not hearsay. He is not a copy, not a facsimile. He is an original from the hand of the Holy Spirit.
—A.W. Tozer (1897-1963)
On Healing Wings
On Healing Wings: May I be poor, afflicted, despised and have thy blessing, rather than be successful in enterprise, or have more than my heart can wish, or be admired by my fellow-men, if thereby these things make me forget thee.
May I regard the world as dreams, lies, vanities, vexation of spirit, and desires to depart from it. And may I seek my happiness in thy favour, image, presence, service.
—The Valley of Vision
(Source: cierabgardner)
Via Prone to Wander
May I regard the world as dreams, lies, vanities, vexation of spirit, and desires to depart from it. And may I seek my happiness in thy favour, image, presence, service.
—The Valley of Vision
(Source: cierabgardner)
Via Prone to Wander
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Mme Scherzo
Mme Scherzo: We are born knowing nothing and with much striving we learn but a little; yet all the while we are bound by laws that hearken to no plea of ignorance, and measure out their rewards and punishments with calm indifference. In such a state, humility is the virtue of men, and their only defense; to walk humbly with God, never doubting, whatever befall, that His will is good, and that His law is right.
Mme Scherzo
Mme Scherzo: We are born knowing nothing and with much striving we learn but a little; yet all the while we are bound by laws that hearken to no plea of ignorance, and measure out their rewards and punishments with calm indifference. In such a state, humility is the virtue of men, and their only defense; to walk humbly with God, never doubting, whatever befall, that His will is good, and that His law is right.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
words are my euphoria
words are my euphoria:
"If ever there is tomorrow when we’re not together.. there is something you must always remember, you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we’re apart.. I’ll always be with you."
— Winnie the Pooh
(Source: silenceismyeuphoria)
"If ever there is tomorrow when we’re not together.. there is something you must always remember, you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we’re apart.. I’ll always be with you."
— Winnie the Pooh
(Source: silenceismyeuphoria)
Saturday, November 19, 2011
AMERICAN DIGEST: Comment on Notes on Love and Death
AMERICAN DIGEST: Comment on Notes on Love and Death:
In every government, though terrors reign,
Though tyrant kings, or tyrant laws restrain,
How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure!
In every government, though terrors reign,
Though tyrant kings, or tyrant laws restrain,
How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure!
Notes on Love and Death @ AMERICAN DIGEST
Notes on Love and Death @ AMERICAN DIGEST
"The Politics of life are easy. It's the Poetics that are tough."
I'm still working out what I meant when I wrote that. It'll take me life plus 99 years.
The Poetics of life are much more persistent in their knocking at the door of your inner self than the Politics. Politics have their seasons, but the Poetics are our constant companions, waking and sleeping, thinking and dreaming. In a very real sense, since they run deeper than the Politics, the Poetics are the Politics' power source. But what are the Poetics about? Simply put, they are "like all Greek songs, about love and death."
I've done a dance or two with death over the years. I've found that he's not very graceful and he always wants to lead.
Once, during a long-lost summer, I was the night driver for a hearse at a mortuary. In the wee small hours of the morning, I'd drive the on-duty mortician to pick up a man or a woman's or a child's body from wherever it had become just a body. In the hot California delta night I'd drive the mortician, both of us in Blues Brothers suits, to a hospital basement, a home bedroom, a city morgue, or, one time, to a shabby skid row hotel where the leaking wicker basket holding the suicide had to be held vertically in the creaking ancient elevator for all eight slow floors.
I've been alone in the waiting room with my mother when the surgeon, still drying his hands on a towel, walked through the door and said, "I'm sorry, Mrs. Van der Leun, but we just couldn't stop the bleeding."
I've stood in a room high above Central Park West where the only sound was a death rattle in an old man's throat, and told the doctor on the telephone that there was really no reason to send the emergency resuscitation crew for the twelfth time in half as many months. I sat quietly holding the old man's hand for around thirty minutes until his breathing stopped. Then I left that room, told my in-laws he was dead, and watched them mask their expressions of relief.
I've found my name carved into the stone monument at Battery Park that lists those that died at sea during the Second World War. I've found the names of two men I went to high school with carved on the Vietnam wall in Washington.
If I'd managed to keep one address book for my contemporaries since graduating from high school, it would, as they say, be beginning to fill up with dead people and that rate would increase.
I've stood on the Promenade on the Heights and seen two towers fall and reduce thousands of people to ash and dust in what seemed like less time than it has taken you to read to this period.
I have sometimes, I confess, "been half in love with easeful death," but no one living escapes that siren call. The trick there is to lash yourself to the mast of the day, pray, and somehow, through the grace of God, just sail on by.
By now, like many others of my age, I've seen death personally and professionally, retail and wholesale. There really is, when you move with it, nothing to love about the dance of death. The only response is, as Prufrock knew, to see "the eternal Footman hold my coat and snicker, and in short, I was afraid."
So I know something -- not a lot, but something -- about that old Greek theme of death and it scares me about as much as it should scare, I imagine, any man. And, having now briefly been dead, the fear is perhaps less shrill but more persistent; a tempo of a fading drum heard far off, cast back over the horizon but still approaching.
What I know increasingly little about, and what really frightens me, is the other theme of the Greek songs, love. These days it seems that it will take more than a lifetime to figure love out.
Love frightens me because, unlike death, love cannot be understood. Love can only be given, gotten, taken or dropped. Like death, it would seem that, once discovered, there's no end to it -- or, to take Hemingway's point of view, no good end to it since one way or another death will trump love -- in this world at least.
Love is where the Poetics of life collide with the Politics. It's a collision where the possibility having to call in the MedEvac helicopter and the coroner is always present; where wreckage is assured and survival never promised. Falling in love is, as a comedian noted, like buying a puppy. You are purchasing a tragedy.
No, that's not quite right. Say rather you are purchasing a hybrid; a tragicomedy or a comic tragedy, since love always has, for those of us removed from its immediate drama, elements of the ridiculous, slices of the sublime, and not a few moments of boffo laughter at the shambling human animal.
Still, it would be nice if I could understand the nature of love and my absurd role in the love dramas of my life. If the joke, in the end, is on me it would be nice to be able to say that I "get it."
Nice but not, I think, necessary. Even if I never get it, I do know one thing for certain about love, "I wouldn't have missed it for the world."
"The Politics of life are easy. It's the Poetics that are tough."
I'm still working out what I meant when I wrote that. It'll take me life plus 99 years.
The Poetics of life are much more persistent in their knocking at the door of your inner self than the Politics. Politics have their seasons, but the Poetics are our constant companions, waking and sleeping, thinking and dreaming. In a very real sense, since they run deeper than the Politics, the Poetics are the Politics' power source. But what are the Poetics about? Simply put, they are "like all Greek songs, about love and death."
I've done a dance or two with death over the years. I've found that he's not very graceful and he always wants to lead.
Once, during a long-lost summer, I was the night driver for a hearse at a mortuary. In the wee small hours of the morning, I'd drive the on-duty mortician to pick up a man or a woman's or a child's body from wherever it had become just a body. In the hot California delta night I'd drive the mortician, both of us in Blues Brothers suits, to a hospital basement, a home bedroom, a city morgue, or, one time, to a shabby skid row hotel where the leaking wicker basket holding the suicide had to be held vertically in the creaking ancient elevator for all eight slow floors.
I've been alone in the waiting room with my mother when the surgeon, still drying his hands on a towel, walked through the door and said, "I'm sorry, Mrs. Van der Leun, but we just couldn't stop the bleeding."
I've stood in a room high above Central Park West where the only sound was a death rattle in an old man's throat, and told the doctor on the telephone that there was really no reason to send the emergency resuscitation crew for the twelfth time in half as many months. I sat quietly holding the old man's hand for around thirty minutes until his breathing stopped. Then I left that room, told my in-laws he was dead, and watched them mask their expressions of relief.
I've found my name carved into the stone monument at Battery Park that lists those that died at sea during the Second World War. I've found the names of two men I went to high school with carved on the Vietnam wall in Washington.
If I'd managed to keep one address book for my contemporaries since graduating from high school, it would, as they say, be beginning to fill up with dead people and that rate would increase.
I've stood on the Promenade on the Heights and seen two towers fall and reduce thousands of people to ash and dust in what seemed like less time than it has taken you to read to this period.
I have sometimes, I confess, "been half in love with easeful death," but no one living escapes that siren call. The trick there is to lash yourself to the mast of the day, pray, and somehow, through the grace of God, just sail on by.
By now, like many others of my age, I've seen death personally and professionally, retail and wholesale. There really is, when you move with it, nothing to love about the dance of death. The only response is, as Prufrock knew, to see "the eternal Footman hold my coat and snicker, and in short, I was afraid."
So I know something -- not a lot, but something -- about that old Greek theme of death and it scares me about as much as it should scare, I imagine, any man. And, having now briefly been dead, the fear is perhaps less shrill but more persistent; a tempo of a fading drum heard far off, cast back over the horizon but still approaching.
What I know increasingly little about, and what really frightens me, is the other theme of the Greek songs, love. These days it seems that it will take more than a lifetime to figure love out.
Love frightens me because, unlike death, love cannot be understood. Love can only be given, gotten, taken or dropped. Like death, it would seem that, once discovered, there's no end to it -- or, to take Hemingway's point of view, no good end to it since one way or another death will trump love -- in this world at least.
Love is where the Poetics of life collide with the Politics. It's a collision where the possibility having to call in the MedEvac helicopter and the coroner is always present; where wreckage is assured and survival never promised. Falling in love is, as a comedian noted, like buying a puppy. You are purchasing a tragedy.
No, that's not quite right. Say rather you are purchasing a hybrid; a tragicomedy or a comic tragedy, since love always has, for those of us removed from its immediate drama, elements of the ridiculous, slices of the sublime, and not a few moments of boffo laughter at the shambling human animal.
Still, it would be nice if I could understand the nature of love and my absurd role in the love dramas of my life. If the joke, in the end, is on me it would be nice to be able to say that I "get it."
Nice but not, I think, necessary. Even if I never get it, I do know one thing for certain about love, "I wouldn't have missed it for the world."
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Monday, November 14, 2011
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Mme Scherzo - ON SANDUSKY AND THIS NATION OF COWARDS
Mme Scherzo - ON SANDUSKY AND THIS NATION OF COWARDS
ON SANDUSKY AND THIS NATION OF COWARDS
POSTED BY ANN BARNHARDT -
NOVEMBER 8, AD 2011 8:09 PM MST
I read the grand jury report on Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky and couldn’t believe what I was reading. I’m not going to link to it because it is awful. If you want to read it you can find it yourself. It wasn’t the fact that Sandusky was a pedophile that was so shocking. We all know about the horror of pedophilia and that it exists in the world. No, what really shook me were the actions of the people around Sandusky - and two of those people in particular.
One was a 28 year old (at the time) graduate assistant in the Penn State football program. He testified before the grand jury, and the grand jury found him to be “extremely credible”. This grad assistant testified that he literally walked in on Sandusky anally raping a ten year old boy in the Penn State football locker room showers. Right in the middle of the act itself. He even testified that both Sandusky and the child turned and looked at him - in the middle of the rape act.
What did this grad assistant do? He ran away. He ran away from a child in the midst of being raped. The next day he went to Joe Paterno’s house and told Joe Paterno what he saw. In this we have the proof that Joe Paterno KNEW what Sandusky was, and he basically let it slide. For this, Joe Paterno deserves not only to lose his job, but he also deserves to spend some time in prison. Aw, but he’s a kind old man. That may be. But that “kind old man” let a man whom he KNEW to be a child rapist to have the run of his football facility.
What should Joe Paterno have done, you may ask. Well, let’s look to history. Have you ever noticed, or thought it strange, that there is no significant mention of child rapists in the courts or prisons in Western Civilization up until about 100 years ago? Why do you think this is? Is it because sex crimes against children are a recent invention? No. The difference is that up until recently, society was healthy enough that it was able to police itself when necessary. When men were caught, and I mean CAUGHT IN THE ACT, like Sandusky, of raping a child, justice was carried out almost instantaneously. There was no need to involve the courts and humiliate and further traumatize the poor child. The crime was eyewitnessed, and the penalty was an absolute given. And so, the men of the community would discreetly either shoot or hang the pedophile. And it was over. The child could move on, and the men in the community moved on secure in the knowledge that the pedophile would never harm another child, with most of the community remaining unscandalized having known nothing about it, and the pedophile, knowing that he was about to die, was also afforded the mercy of the knowledge and understanding of the urgent need for his repentance and to earnestly beg God’s forgiveness before he died. This was, by far, the best possible outcome for all concerned.
But what do we do today? Apparently, most people do nothing. They are too narcissistic, too greedy, and too cowardly to act, even if it means to save a child who is being raped. Joe Paterno was more concerned with his reputation and Penn State’s reputation, and so he watered down Sandusky’s crime to mere “horseplay” and let it slide. Joe Paterno spent YEARS sitting in meetings, palling around, back-slapping, glad-handing and socializing with a man he KNEW to be a child rapist. The mind reels. And I’ll say it again: Paterno should spend some time in prison, as should anyone who aids and abets a pedophile.
Now back to the grad assistant. He wasn’t alone. There was another instance in exactly the same showers when a janitor walked in on Sandusky orally raping another young boy of about 11 years of age. This janitor was so shaken by the grotesquery of what he had seen, even remarking to his co-workers that it was far worse than the intense combat carnage he saw in Vietnam, that his co-workers thought the man was going to have a heart attack. But again, what did the janitor do upon catching Sandusky? He RAN AWAY. He didn’t try to stop any of it. He just ran.
And this is a microcosm of the problem with our culture and why it is collapsing. There is evil in the world, and up until recently, we Christians had the strength and moral authority to not just confront evil, but to literally run at it in a full battle charge when we came across it. That is what we are supposed to do. Those men should have each rushed Sandusky and then either beat him into unconsciousness or broken his arms and legs, thus immobilizing him. They should have then covered and secured the child, and then called 911. But these men were so cowed by their own self-absorption, with both admitting to have feared for their respective positions at the time, that they literally ran away from a child in the midst of being brutally raped.
This is a sick and yet pristine allegory for what is happening to this culture on a macro scale today. We SEE what those “in power”, like Sandusky, are doing. We keep catching them in flagrante dilecto and are so overcome with fear, so far removed from Christ and His strength, that we do NOTHING. We slink away into the shadows of self-preservation. And more children are slaughtered. And more Mexican civilians are killed. And more money is stolen. And more mosques are built.
And so, to finish out the allegory, I am the person who came around that corner and saw the child being raped, and instead of running away and keeping my job, I bayonet-charged the rapist like a mercenary honey badger. There is no guarantee that I will be successful. My enemies are now simultaneously the Obama regime and the entire muslim death cult.
BUT, can you IMAGINE how those two boys felt when they saw a man there who could save them, and then seeing that man run away? The wound from that might have been worse than the wound from Sandusky himself. Those boys knew Sandusky was a pervert. What must have been hell for them was trying to figure out why the men who COULD have saved them, didn’t. Being abandoned is far, far worse than being violently attacked. You can get your head around being violently attacked - the violent attacker wants something from you. Abandonment simply says, “You’re not worth it.” Even if those men had just stood there and screamed at Sandusky, at least those boys would have known that someone gave a crap about them.
I guess you could say that what I’m doing between my private war against islam and my tax strike is trying to leave a record that someone actually gave a crap.
Sorry to have conceitedly worked myself into the allegory, but the “put yourself in those shoes” lesson about cowardice jumped out at me as being very instructive. Pray for Sandusky’s victims, which as of this writing are now numbered at over twenty boys. There will likely be more, as Sandusky was a stone-cold predator who had plenty of people “throwing blocks” for him.
I’ve no words.
ON SANDUSKY AND THIS NATION OF COWARDS
POSTED BY ANN BARNHARDT -
NOVEMBER 8, AD 2011 8:09 PM MST
I read the grand jury report on Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky and couldn’t believe what I was reading. I’m not going to link to it because it is awful. If you want to read it you can find it yourself. It wasn’t the fact that Sandusky was a pedophile that was so shocking. We all know about the horror of pedophilia and that it exists in the world. No, what really shook me were the actions of the people around Sandusky - and two of those people in particular.
One was a 28 year old (at the time) graduate assistant in the Penn State football program. He testified before the grand jury, and the grand jury found him to be “extremely credible”. This grad assistant testified that he literally walked in on Sandusky anally raping a ten year old boy in the Penn State football locker room showers. Right in the middle of the act itself. He even testified that both Sandusky and the child turned and looked at him - in the middle of the rape act.
What did this grad assistant do? He ran away. He ran away from a child in the midst of being raped. The next day he went to Joe Paterno’s house and told Joe Paterno what he saw. In this we have the proof that Joe Paterno KNEW what Sandusky was, and he basically let it slide. For this, Joe Paterno deserves not only to lose his job, but he also deserves to spend some time in prison. Aw, but he’s a kind old man. That may be. But that “kind old man” let a man whom he KNEW to be a child rapist to have the run of his football facility.
What should Joe Paterno have done, you may ask. Well, let’s look to history. Have you ever noticed, or thought it strange, that there is no significant mention of child rapists in the courts or prisons in Western Civilization up until about 100 years ago? Why do you think this is? Is it because sex crimes against children are a recent invention? No. The difference is that up until recently, society was healthy enough that it was able to police itself when necessary. When men were caught, and I mean CAUGHT IN THE ACT, like Sandusky, of raping a child, justice was carried out almost instantaneously. There was no need to involve the courts and humiliate and further traumatize the poor child. The crime was eyewitnessed, and the penalty was an absolute given. And so, the men of the community would discreetly either shoot or hang the pedophile. And it was over. The child could move on, and the men in the community moved on secure in the knowledge that the pedophile would never harm another child, with most of the community remaining unscandalized having known nothing about it, and the pedophile, knowing that he was about to die, was also afforded the mercy of the knowledge and understanding of the urgent need for his repentance and to earnestly beg God’s forgiveness before he died. This was, by far, the best possible outcome for all concerned.
But what do we do today? Apparently, most people do nothing. They are too narcissistic, too greedy, and too cowardly to act, even if it means to save a child who is being raped. Joe Paterno was more concerned with his reputation and Penn State’s reputation, and so he watered down Sandusky’s crime to mere “horseplay” and let it slide. Joe Paterno spent YEARS sitting in meetings, palling around, back-slapping, glad-handing and socializing with a man he KNEW to be a child rapist. The mind reels. And I’ll say it again: Paterno should spend some time in prison, as should anyone who aids and abets a pedophile.
Now back to the grad assistant. He wasn’t alone. There was another instance in exactly the same showers when a janitor walked in on Sandusky orally raping another young boy of about 11 years of age. This janitor was so shaken by the grotesquery of what he had seen, even remarking to his co-workers that it was far worse than the intense combat carnage he saw in Vietnam, that his co-workers thought the man was going to have a heart attack. But again, what did the janitor do upon catching Sandusky? He RAN AWAY. He didn’t try to stop any of it. He just ran.
And this is a microcosm of the problem with our culture and why it is collapsing. There is evil in the world, and up until recently, we Christians had the strength and moral authority to not just confront evil, but to literally run at it in a full battle charge when we came across it. That is what we are supposed to do. Those men should have each rushed Sandusky and then either beat him into unconsciousness or broken his arms and legs, thus immobilizing him. They should have then covered and secured the child, and then called 911. But these men were so cowed by their own self-absorption, with both admitting to have feared for their respective positions at the time, that they literally ran away from a child in the midst of being brutally raped.
This is a sick and yet pristine allegory for what is happening to this culture on a macro scale today. We SEE what those “in power”, like Sandusky, are doing. We keep catching them in flagrante dilecto and are so overcome with fear, so far removed from Christ and His strength, that we do NOTHING. We slink away into the shadows of self-preservation. And more children are slaughtered. And more Mexican civilians are killed. And more money is stolen. And more mosques are built.
And so, to finish out the allegory, I am the person who came around that corner and saw the child being raped, and instead of running away and keeping my job, I bayonet-charged the rapist like a mercenary honey badger. There is no guarantee that I will be successful. My enemies are now simultaneously the Obama regime and the entire muslim death cult.
BUT, can you IMAGINE how those two boys felt when they saw a man there who could save them, and then seeing that man run away? The wound from that might have been worse than the wound from Sandusky himself. Those boys knew Sandusky was a pervert. What must have been hell for them was trying to figure out why the men who COULD have saved them, didn’t. Being abandoned is far, far worse than being violently attacked. You can get your head around being violently attacked - the violent attacker wants something from you. Abandonment simply says, “You’re not worth it.” Even if those men had just stood there and screamed at Sandusky, at least those boys would have known that someone gave a crap about them.
I guess you could say that what I’m doing between my private war against islam and my tax strike is trying to leave a record that someone actually gave a crap.
Sorry to have conceitedly worked myself into the allegory, but the “put yourself in those shoes” lesson about cowardice jumped out at me as being very instructive. Pray for Sandusky’s victims, which as of this writing are now numbered at over twenty boys. There will likely be more, as Sandusky was a stone-cold predator who had plenty of people “throwing blocks” for him.
I’ve no words.
Reflejos
Reflejos: We are born knowing nothing and with much striving we learn but a little; yet all the while we are bound by laws that hearken to no plea of ignorance, and measure out their rewards and punishments with calm indifference. In such a state, humility is the virtue of men, and their only defense; to walk humbly with God, never doubting, whatever befall, that His will is good, and that His law is right.
Paul Elmer More, Pages from an Oxford Diary
Paul Elmer More, Pages from an Oxford Diary
Mme Scherzo
Mme Scherzo: There was a dawn I remember when
my soul heard something from your soul.
I drank water from your spring
and felt the current take me.
Rumi (via thelittlephilosopher)
poem
my soul heard something from your soul.
I drank water from your spring
and felt the current take me.
Rumi (via thelittlephilosopher)
poem
AMERICAN DIGEST: Comment on On Sunday Morning One Month After Death
AMERICAN DIGEST: Comment on On Sunday Morning One Month After Death: We are born knowing nothing and with much striving we learn
but a little; yet all the while we are bound by laws that
hearken to no plea of ignorance, and measure out their rewards
and punishments with calm indifference. In such a state,
humility is the virtue of men, and their only defense; to walk
humbly with God, never doubting, whatever befall, that His will
is good, and that His law is right.
Paul More, Pages from an Oxford Diary
but a little; yet all the while we are bound by laws that
hearken to no plea of ignorance, and measure out their rewards
and punishments with calm indifference. In such a state,
humility is the virtue of men, and their only defense; to walk
humbly with God, never doubting, whatever befall, that His will
is good, and that His law is right.
Paul More, Pages from an Oxford Diary
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