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Just so all y’all Democrats understand …
“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.”
Gen. Geo. Washington
Just so all y’all Democrats understand … I am not a Republican, nor am I a Libertarian. I merely find them fractionally less obnoxious than a lefty who is educated beyond their intelligence. I delight in the mess academics have made of the Universities. Lefties have this unwarranted smug sense of superiority that really needs to be slapped out of them.
But as for overall damage to the country, the greatest damage was caused by Republicans who should have known better. Abraham Lincoln took the States out of the United States, and Theodore Rosevelt made moot the Constitutional ban on Federal land ownership.
And the Supreme Court, which is NOT a Constitutionally mandated, has happily gone on with the political rape of the individual States, favoring Federales Rex while ignoring the limits on Federal Power in the 10th Amendment.
And not to ignore libertarians (with a small L) who claim isolationism is true Constitutionalism? You don’t know much about American history, do you. Tripoli was a long, long way from the US by sailing ship.
All y’all piss me off frequently, most ‘specially when you step ill-informed into the political fray, and the only happiness I get in the political arena is that the vast majority of you will live to regret your support of your pet political party. Shadenfreude is the new buzzword. I kind of like it. It means taking delight in the misery of others. And I have it for who have little or no understanding of how hard the founders tried to avoid the very morass we are in now. There is no solution for this tragedy. Revolution just brings more misery. We have squandered our inheiratance for low level intellectualism.
A Messiah from either the left or right will shortly arise, and most of you will slavishly follow him. But unless you are in the right party, at the right time, at best, you will bepolyezniy idiots, and stand in long lines on toilet paper Fridays. And as always, the first thing a despot will do will kill the intellectuals. Not that they are true intellectuals, but rather have become super indoctrinated simpletons.
Gawd I wish I would still be alive and mobile then the balloon goes up.
*sigh!*
Augie Doggie
I was one of the transporters of Aggie (as we called him then). He had all the characteristics of an abused dog. If your police department or sheriff is in need of a trained ‘sniffer’, please consider these people.
I don’t often receive the after stories of my charges for the brief hour or so that they are in my care. It really brightens my day when I do get one of those rare reports.
Mz Muze Takes the Midnight Special
I just brought BNSF M-BAKBAR into the Barstow receiving yard, and dismounted from my engine with a sense of a job well-done when I saw her perched, expressionless on my monitor, her chubby legs tucked under her shopworn skirt, and her hands laying modestly on her lap. She was the very picture of relaxed collectedness. Men know that pose. The boom was just about to be lowered squarely on my head.
“Do you want to talk about this?”
“About what?” I said as blandly as I could.
“You know. It. Her. That.”
“The locomotive?” I tried again.
“Do I have to spell it out for you?”
Scrambling for an excuse, I settled for; “Oh! That! It is just an interactive sim. A computer simulation. Nothing serious.”
“You are more serious about your dammed computer game than you are about me!”
“It isn’t a computer game. It is a simulation.” I huffed.
“Whatever.” she huffed back.
“Besides, you haven’t been much help to me, lately.” I shot back, defensively.
“You’ve hardly touched me since you brought that into our life.”
“I have never touched you. You are a fantasy in my head.” I reminded her.
“You know how I like the way you caress the keyboard. You know. The way you caress the keyboard when you are playing with your … sim …” she said sadly. “We were so happy once. What happened to us? You don’t hardly go into your social sites anymore. I don’t even get to enjoy your interaction there. What comments you do make on your friends posts is so banal you would have been more respectful if you just ignored their posts. I looked back and it has been a month since you truly wrote. What happened to your commitment to that?”
I tried to mollify her with: “Look. The sim is just a new thing that takes time to learn. In time, things will return to what they were before. Trust me!”
“Trust you!? After seeing that satisfied smirk on your face, you want me to trust you now? My faith in you is gone.” She hissed.
I tried to reason with her, “I don’t see why you are getting overheated on this. It is just a computer game!”
“So you admit it isn’t a sim, but rather a stupid game? And you chose this stupid game over me? I’m leaving. I’ll be at mother’s when you come back to your senses.”
“Do you even have a mother?” I said to myself.
“I heard that, #$%!!. You could have had it all, and you picked your stupid game. See you later, loser!”
I sort of felt bad, but the nagging thought that earlier I had set out that cut of cars in the Yermo yard and used way more moves than was necessary. I should have dropped the train on the main, and just took the set outs on the head end into the yard, and then backed down the siding next to it for the pick-ups, then pushed on back to put them on the head end of the train. Maybe I’ll test that idea in single-player mode before taking that turn again.
I heard a door slam shut somewhere off in the corner of my mind.
Winter commeth
Night falls on this first blast of winter in my adopted home. A deep chill seeps through the tightly shuttered windows, and the wind sings a moaning song around the front door. I sit in a sudden winter lethargy so comfortless that even the seed catalogues cannot ease, and finally, winters melancholia settles in. If only it was unexpected.
Melly Clismas!
Christmas Eve dawns brightly this morning. What little commentary I can find on this day is fluff, hardly worth reading. It seems that most of the media do not observe the holiday, but that doesn’t stop them from commenting authoritively about it. Endlessly
Not all people in the world buy the illuminated Santa Clauses and decorate fir trees. Some actually do treat it as a special day. But you wouldn’t know that from the media accounts.
Oddly, the day pushes me into special observance too. In a few hours, most of the media will be taking a day off, and the news feeds will scramble for banal content so their pages aren’t blank. Friends on the social sites will go silent. The rumble of traffic on my overburdened country lane will cease. It will be just me and the hiss of the allergy filters in the background, and perhaps the occasional commentary from Kippur da Budgie.
It will be as good of time as any for a little introspection. Perhaps I will write for the next few days.
Good morning!
Trains and Muse Abuse
I was happily playing a computer railroad sim where I was the engineer of a heavy freight. masterly running it over Tehachapi Pass, when I noticed her fidgeting as she sat on top of the monitor. She was still in her shop-worn, too tight sharks tooth skirt, and hideous pink rayon® blouse. And horrors. She was wearing a felt ‘elves’ hat with a huge white tassel ball on the end.
Just when you think she couldn’t possibly commit a worse fashion statement, she ups the ante. She swung her legs over the edge and tried sitting pixie-like, and I averted my eyes until she got her dimpled knees back together.
“Can’t you see I am busy?” I said as I applied a little dynamic breaking to keep the train from running unchecked towards Cable Crossover.
“Busy my …”
“Watch it, Sis. This is a family blog.” I warned.
“… patootie!” she replied sullenly.
“You can take your patootie and …”
She waved her finger in the universal no-no sign, and said, “Your rules, Master Prig. Let keep it to one standard.”
“So what brings your intrusion on my conscience today?” hitting pause on the game. A man cannot run a train and talk to an inquisitive woman at the same time. Both can cause a train wreck. One actually, and one metaphorically.
“Mainly, your lack of a conscience. You need one. Just call me the conscience fairy.” she replied smugly. I could almost see her crowing.
“I admit I am feeling a bit guilt stricken over my lack of discipline.” I went on. “I have been down for a while, now, and I can’t write when my soul is unquiet.”
“How quiet was your soul when you tried to write that pornography short?” She smirked.
“I never finished it. Anyway, it was the product of a dare to write a man-viewed version of Shades of Gray after I panned it on a blogsite. The women there tried to put me up to it. I admitted defeat.”
“How noble of you. Many women like it when they are around men who know what they want, and are forceful in getting it.”
“The women in my life like it when I hit the toilet bowl ten out of ten. But in all honesty, I could not do it as a serious write. I am not very comfortable playing around with the primal instincts of humans. We have ‘em, but we should be trying to overcome them. Anyway, that is my story, and I am sticking with it.”
“That was about the only thing you tried to produce this season. You don’t have a lifetime left to accomplish something worthwhile.” she said, putting on her best Dutch Uncle-ette look.
“Maybe I won’t ever do anything exceptional in my life.” I lamented.
“Well, if we aren’t just bubbling with optimism. Come on! Give me something to work with, here!”
“Sorry. But I am just out of ideas right now.”
“I’m the idea fairy. You are the writer. Write something, and I’ll give you something.”
“I am not so sure you got anything I want!” I retorted.
“You are too high and mighty, hero. You want to be as deep as James Joyce, as heroic as Hemmingway, and as funny as PJ O’Rouke, but you aren’t willing to put the time into it that it takes. You want easy success!” she preached.
“Well, yeah … and your point? Besides, you just said that time is running out for me.”
“I didn’t say it had run out, Mr. Sunshine. I just want you to write something. Come on! Let me show you what I can do for you!”
“Well, for starters …”
“Well, not that! Why not do another ‘It is ok to wish me a Merry Christmas!’ piece?”
“Maybe I will.”
“And maybe you should.”
“And maybe YOU should ….”
“Watch it, Master Prig. You’re stepping out of character. Assuming you ever had any.” she said as she flitted away.
I averted my eyes again …
Midnight oil night tonight.
An almost forgotten voice from ages long past says “I’m sorry”. Causes
A number of H’wood glitterati and many liberals are saying that the SBD shooting was caused by the evil NRA and right-wingers with bad oral hygiene, while the ill-informed rubes on the right are saying that is adherents to a third century religious cult is the cause.
Fools!
Informed people who read the mainstream press KNOW it is global warming that is at the root of it.
===
Geesh, people. Is it possible to put your causes aside during the unfolding of this latest horror?
“We shall not pass this way again”
A Shabbat of rain, hot chocolate and classical music has pulled my mind into light and darkness, along with a vague feeling that I am missing something very important that is passing by. However, my windows into 
the world merely observe soft rains and mists, and an uneasy silence.
A decade ago, a door clanged shut with the finality of a prison door, and an authoritative voice announced in a dream, “We shall not pass by this way again!”.
Time and distance has soften most of my hypnagogic dreams, some now to obscure to notice. But this voice still clearly rings in my thoughts and dreams this day. We shall not pass this way again. In what way shall we not pass again?
Maybe I do not wish to know.
Autumn of Life
Thanksgiving Day dawns like any other day in my tiny corner of paradise. Still, it is a day to stop and consider whether it was just blind damned luck or God’s ample bounty that has made me so smugly comfortable in this Autumn of life …
Actually, I do like having someone to be grateful towards. Science is just too fickle. With science, I know that being struck with a meteor is statistically unlikely in my short lifespan, but my odds of being killed by a conscience deficient miscreant is uncomfortably high.
I think I will go with a kind and loving god to be grateful to, rather than some mindless cosmic cypher. The odds are better.
In any case, may this day of thanksgiving be a good one for you and your family!
Rusty's Armory 