They Will Rise Again From the Tundra

Image Attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eurleif/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

There are too many stimuli and no way to unhook from the Delivery System.  Every thirty seconds or so, TweetDeck chirps and notifies me that some Twitter entity or another has posted something to the web.  Facebook is running and constantly updating itself with video, status updates, and one friend who is rebuking me for becoming part of the background noise.  He doesn’t know that I’ve downloaded the Twitter plug-in that updates my Facebook status whenever I write a tweet, nor does he know that Brief, my Firefox RSS reader, keeps flashing feed updates at me for no good reason.  If I am constantly disseminating information, it is, perhaps, only as a form of purgation lest I suffer neuronal overload and slip into a vegetative state.

I can’t help it.  Neither can most of us who’ve fallen victim.  That we will suffer enlarged … 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