They Will Rise Again From the Tundra

Courtesy of goodrob13's photostream. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/goodrob13/3928208574/)

So the Obama administration is presently hemorrhaging classified information courtesy of WikiLeaks, the Bush administration is doing so posthumously, the earth’s crust is hemorrhaging oil, and Tom Vilsack is simply battling an embarrassing case of hemorrhoids after/during the stress of the Shirley Sherrod debacle.  Those are the big stories at the moment, but in true form for a real live Twenty-First Century Narcissist, I’m not really thinking about all that right now.

Something terrible happened on Sunday at Dave & Buster’s… I lost.

In and of itself, losing is not a rarity in my life though I am, in general, more accustomed to winning.  But on Sunday evening, I lost in a big way.  I lost at everything.  Even now, my ego hasn’t restored itself, nor will the chasm be sated or filled by gobbling up Scrabble wins and cheap, trivial victories. … Read more

“The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.” Gen. George S. Patton

I was stumbling around the internet when I happened across the full text of Gen. George Patton’s famous speech to the Third Army.  My memory is a bit fuzzy, but up until about fifteen minutes ago, my only knowledge of this oratory marvel came from anecdotes and the film Patton starring George C. Scott.

In truth, it was nothing I didn’t expect.  Patton crammed enough violent imagery and profanity into that address as humanly possible and spoke with the hyperbolic sense of patriotism one expects from a general in the United States Army.  Don’t misconstrue my words, please.  There isn’t anything wrong with patriotism, and indeed, it is to be commended when applied rationally, but patriotic sentiment was monopolized long ago by a contingent of … Read more

An Iraqi court handed down a sentence today for Muntadhar al-Zeidi, the Iraqi journalist who became instantly famous worldwide for throwing his shoes at then-President George W. Bush back in January. Three years in prison. Three years to sit with his pejorative from that day ringing in his ears: “This is your farewell kiss, you dog! This is from the widows, the orphans, and those who were killed in Iraq.” Al-Zeidi can sit in his cell for all that time knowing that his actions were not lost on his fellow Iraqis nor on the millions of Americans who only wish they’d received a similar opportunity.

It’s been less than two months since Barack Obama took the Oath of Office and formally ended Bush’s eight-year reign of shock and terror. It seems like a distant nightmare now — or it would if we weren’t still quaking from the aftershocks of an … Read more