Marmot Monday

Marmot Monday

Sunday Quote

"Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit."

FDR's inaugural speech. More applicable than ever, 75 years later. Lifted from the quite readable Dr. Housing Bubble.

Ares

Marmot Monday

Sorry, been a bit slack in the marmot department lately.

Ares

Autumn In Decatur

Arguably Atlanta's best season

Oskar Blues' Ten Fidy Imperial Stout, on tap at The Brick Store.

A Little Hesse

Now there are times when a whole generation is caught......between two ages, two modes of life, with the consequence that it loses all power to understand itself and has no standards, no security, no simple acquiescence.

Herman Hesse Steppenwolf

Yea, what he said.

Ares

New Headline

Economy So Bad Half of All U.S. Households Are Below Median Income Level. Obama Promises to Fix Within First 100 Days.

Okay, maybe The Onion has already done that one. I don't know. It's along the lines of their "Earth's Continued Rotation Plunges Half the Planet Into Darkness" entry.

Ares

Separated At Birth

Is it just me or does that moronic, self-proclaimed skin head that wanted to lop off a bunch of heads look like a cast member of Sesame Street? (Note to self: Must get Photoshop.)

Ares

So. Much fuss is made by the Rs about the Obama tax plan, and they say it would have 45% of the tax base paying no taxes. While, as a taxpayer, I like to believe that my fellow Americans are pulling that wagon with me, I know that all of them are not.

For those earning too little, I bear no ill will. Since I was raised by a single mom working pink collar jobs, I know what its like to be in a family headed by a hard worker who just doesn’t earn enough.

For those earning too much, however, I would like a little change. I am not naïve enough to believe that there will ever be an employee of the I.R.S. savvy and well-equipped enough to find all the myriad tax shelters and refuges of the very wealthy.

And yes, I know that the very wealthy pay a large, large portion of the taxes already in this country. But, and I quote W. here, quoting John F. Kennedy “to whom much is given, much is expected.” (Interesting side note: he has used that quote at least four times in the last year or so; in announcing his intention in early 2007 to reauthorize PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, in remarks in honor of World AIDS Day last November, in a BBC interview in February 2008, and in a USAID speech in July 2008. Does he know he’s quoting a Democrat? Does he care?)

So, when I turned on my television the other night for little mindless viewing, I was amused to see Ari Fleischer (yes, the one who left the Bush administration a while back) singing the party song about that 45% who will not pay taxes under an Obama presidency.

And it got me to thinking (always a bad sign, but bear with me).

Let’s flip that, shall we? What that really tells me is that 45% of our working folks earn SO LITTLE that they should not be taxed. Nearly one half of Americans, working jobs, who earn so little that they should not be taxed. And its contrary to all we are taught as Americans—that if you work hard, play by the rules, and do the right thing, you will get ahead.

None of this changes my mind about who I will vote for Tuesday week. But it does remind me how very lucky I am—I have a roof over my head, heat in my house, and (too much, really) food to eat. I am lucky to live where I live, at the time I live, and to have the freedoms and abilities I have. I am happy to do my part, and for those who might take advantage or try to get over, well, that’s for them to live with.

Athena

Marmot Monday

Marmot Monday

Marmot Monday

Get Well P.J.

Disturbing news was just received at the A&A Global Operations Center. Seems P.J. O'Rourke, Ares favorite and writer I'd most like to be, has been diagnosed with cancer. Those that are familiar with P.J.'s work will probably say "what took so long". From his own literary mouth....

I looked death in the face. All right, I didn't. I glimpsed him in a crowd. I've been diagnosed with cancer, of a very treatable kind. I'm told I have a 95% chance of survival. Come to think of it -- as a drinking, smoking, saturated-fat hound -- my chance of survival has been improved by cancer.

I still cursed God, as we all do when we get bad news and pain. Not even the most faith-impaired among us shouts: "Damn quantum mechanics!" "Damn organic chemistry!" "Damn chaos and coincidence!"

I have, of all the inglorious things, a malignant hemorrhoid. What color bracelet does one wear for that? And where does one wear it? And what slogan is apropos? Perhaps that slogan can be sewn in needlepoint around the ruffle on a cover for my embarrassing little doughnut buttocks pillow.

Furthermore, I am a logical, sensible, pragmatic Republican, and my diagnosis came just weeks after Teddy Kennedy's. That he should have cancer of the brain, and I should have cancer of the ass ... well, I'll say a rosary for him and hope he has a laugh at me. After all, what would I do, ask God for a more dignified cancer? Pancreatic? Liver? Lung?

You can read the rest of it here. Surely P.J. is laughing loudly at the irony. God speed and best wishes for a rapid recovery. Hope you're back on your ass in no time.

Ares

Athena PS: my darling friend Annie, a 23-year survivor of colon cancer (who was given a 20% chance of surviving, by the way) would say PJ needs a brown ribbon. If he had been so lucky as to be diagnosed with colon cancer, she would have dubbed him an honorary member of the Semi-Colon Society. She's a real punster, that one, as well as a gem of a human being.

bailout, shmailout

So, this week's prize for best manipulation of the political machine goes to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Goodness knows the last word is far, far off in the entire Wall Street debacle, but I'm here to talk about my personal favorite snapshot of the moment. All the geniuses we've sent to Washington to serve in our nation's Congress have apparently not figured out one of the basic rules of legislative sausage-making: don't call a vote if you don't think you can win.

Yesterday the $700 billion bailout bill was called for a vote, and while we're all shocked--SHOCKED!!!--that the vote failed to pass, what is more shocking is who did NOT vote for it.

The President and Vice President reportedly worked the phones furiously, attempting to persuade Republican legislators to vote for the bill. When all was said and done, Speaker Pelosi delivered the votes she promised. However, the Republicans failed to deliver, and 2/3 of the House Republicans voted against the bill.

As a side note, the President's approval rating is 27%, which only reinforces why the bill lost despite the frantic politicking.

Now, Congress is currently controlled by the Democrats, though narrowly, so this could be called their loss. But this match still goes to the Speaker. She brought the votes she promised.

I make no predictions about how this fiasco will end, but I am proud to see that John Boehner, a mighty, mighty jerk, got beat by a girl.

PS: this is a much more succinct description of my question about the whole nasty mess.

Athena

Ares Postscript: Constitutional scholar and Ares & Athena favorite Larry Sabato says in his experience Rasmussen tends to have the most accurately reflected polling data. Rasmussen puts congressional approval ratings at 9%! Holy Margin of Error, Batman.

Marmot Monday

Another Name for Atlanta

I think Atlanta is a Latin word that means "metropolis full of f****** morons". Why, you ask? Gasoline. For those not local, Hurricane Ike disrupted gasoline supplies to the southeast because of refinery shutdowns. Mind you, the effects of the hurricane on supplies took a few days to make themselves known. Then, quite suddenly, the media noticed there was a supply disruption and gleefully reported on it every chance they got. Using tried and true phrases like "worry about" and "fears of..." they created a feedback loop. Fear about shortages are now making the shortages worse, which allows for a wider display of shortages by the media. (I'm looking at you AJC/WSB/WXIA/Fox5.) Now panicked people are sucking stations dry. My local QT usually gets a tanker delivery every day or two. Saturday they had 5 and were empty by 3 pm. There are confirmed reports of people convoying behind gasoline tanker trucks then mobbing the destination. Deep thinkers are even dialing 911 to ask where there is gas. Anybody seen my copy of The Road Warrior?

Ares

Rafael, Someone You Should Know

A little bit of injustice has settled in our midst. Not the grand "fightin the man" kind of injustice, but rather a miscarriage of honor. For those uninitiated, Rafael Peralta, USMC, threw himself on a grenade during the battle for Falluja back in 2004. Other service members have since been awarded the Medal of Honor for the same actions since. A final ruling was issued last week and the recommendation for the Medal of Honor was downgraded. Some are saying it's because Rafael was an illegal immigrant, others are saying the medal was downgraded because he was already wounded. What nobody questions is that Rafael loved his adopted country and the Corps with a fullness most of us cannot fathom. The true issue here is that Rafael loved the men he was with so much that he couldn't bear the thought of them being hurt when he could do something about it. So he took very deliberate action that resulted in his own death, and allowed every one of his team mates to survive. If you've ever served in a capacity where you place your life in other people's hands and they place theirs in yours its the kind of commitment that brings hardened, grown men to tears. The least we can do is accord such commitment a place of honor, which is where you come in. Sign the petition. It costs nothing and you won't get on somebody's mailing list. This is one of those times it's easy to do the right thing.

God speed Sergeant. "Day is done, gone the sun...."

Ares

Fall

Welcome to Autumn. I can't find gas for my car, the stock market is melting down, there's a clown's theater of an election going on, and all I can think is "Damn the weather sure is nice". Here's to that first robin of Autumn.

Ares

Marmot Monday

Marmot Monday

Why We Fight

Unfunded

So this week brings word of yet more pension fund failures. This installment is brought to you by Cobb Our-S***-Doesn't-Stink County, Georgia, and the state of Nevada. (Okay, Nevada hasn't tanked yet but there's nothing to check its demise.) Let's be clear, these are not failures of the market. These are failures of the people that manage these funds. There's a four word term I want everyone to practice repeating: Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. Get familiar because they're going to write your checks one day. For some reason public sector fund failure doesn't bother me as much a private sector one. After all, there's only so much you can do with government financing. But when a big fat company like United Airlines simply doesn't make its fund payments, causing it to fail, and then goes running to bankruptcy and passes off it's fund to PBGC, that's criminal with malice and aforethought. Bonus round: The United CEO got $37 million in stock and bonuses upon the company's emergence from bankruptcy.

PBGC's increasing load piggybacks nicely with the US Government going into the mortgage business. (Aside note: My understanding, and I could be wrong, of the Freddie/Fannie failure is that it wasn't their bad loans but their inability to continue packaging and reselling their debts. Some guy named Ponzi first came up with that idea.) Dovetailing with this theme congress is setting up to see who can give the biggest handout to the domestic auto industry. Because we really need subsidized Tahoes and F-250's. Behold, the era of small government is upon us. To those that argue for the privatization of social security I say what's the point? Athena, where was it you read a few years ago where someone described the US Government as the world's largest insurance company with guns?

The terrain is changing beneath our feet. Without much in the way of public consent and little in the way of discourse the fundamentals we've counted as solid are being renegotiated. Thirty years from now, when the academics and pundits sit down to write histories of the days we're living now, we are going to be excoriated for hubris. In the mean time, mom better get to work on a Plan B.

Ares

Feelin a Little Fred

Fall must be on the way because I'm starting to dig into existentialism again. It gets as regular as the leaves turning with me. The pause that finally comes with the break in the weather allows a pullback and some meta inspection. The only possible explanation for digging into Nietzsche in early September is that I'm trying to will a change in the weather.

Anymore I'm finding a bit of fascination with the concept of the Ubermensch. The whole idea got hijacked by Adolf and twisted around by a bazillion amateur thinkers thereafter. Fred wanted humanity to redefine itself upward outside the constricts of the church and without resorting to nihilism. The industrial revolution, and the resulting shrinking of the world that occurred with the telegraph/telephone and steam engine, drove a lot of people out of eons of spiritual comfort zones and into a low grade mania. Fred saw where this was heading, nihilism and war, and tried to call a flag on the play. He called the first 50 years of Europe's 20^th century from the cheap seats. But he was just a philosopher, and a dense one at that. They paid as much attention to philosophers then as they do now.

What does any of this have to do with anything? Not sure, but I think all of this is my own personal flight from idiocy. A little too much time among my fellow man, and a viewing or two of Idiocracy, and I start digging into the deep thinkers so I can tell myself I'm not like “them”. Athena and I have a rhetorical question we've been asking each other for years: What's the prize for being smart? Okay, maybe her and I aren't that smart, but there's some blatant self-awareness at work. What's the reward? Anymore I see some virtue in being a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal. The further you seem to get from vice, habit, routine, and entertainment the more intractably complex things appear. Fred could have used a beer and some Cartoon Network. Might not have thunk himself to death. (Or visited the hooker that gave him the clap that eventually killed him. In the context of that I always thought it would have been deliciously ironic to put All to Human on his gravestone.) Taking a bit of my own advice I think I'll crack a Sam & see if Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends is on.

Ares

Marmot Monday

Marmot Monday

Marmot Monday

Couch

I know this picture has made the rounds, but I still laugh every time I see it. The good news is that the army has new camouflage. The bad news is that it only works if we invade grandma's house.

Ares

Marmot Monday

Living the Cliche

So I finally had a quintessential cliche moment. Thursday I was on the treadmill, three sweaty miles into my five mile run. I was panting like a trout in bass boat and sweating like a fat man in Phoenix when she gets on the treadmill next to mine. We've all seen the type: Betty I'm-just-here-looking-for-a-boyfriend. (I know, this type also exists in the male of the species.) They're easy to spot, with their $200 workout fashion ware and hair done, spending more time looking around the room than at the treadmill readout. This particular Betty had applied about 3 liters of her cologne prior to entering the sweat deck. Her eau d'Phosgene made the air shimmer for ten feet around her. My eyes watered like I'd been tear gassed. I coughed like I'd swallowed a chicken bone. A spike of molten vomit made it as far north as the spot where my tonsils used to be. Compounding the damage was my breathing at double the normal rate due to the aerobic activity. I actually longed for the smell of a Chinese restaurant dumpster in the Georgia sun. The treadmill has a fan, which I quickly engaged. This simply introduced the mustard gas into my respiratory tract at twice the rate. If my alveoli hadn't been enduring the equivalent of a Dutch Oven I'd have offered a few choice words. Instead, I'm forced to resort to this forum. So Betty, consider yourself ridiculed and derided.

Ares

Marmot Monday

Nerd Test

My name is Ozymandias, king of kings...

Told you it was a nerd test. Like I said at the beginning of this blog, we're overeducated. If you don't know who Ozymandias is you can look here.

Ares

Enlarged Stupid

The last thing I want is for this space to be the home of the perpetually indignant. That said, I came across this piece in the Wall Street Journal and couldn't resist a trip to the soap box.

At a time when scores of companies are freezing pensions for their workers, some are quietly converting their pension plans into resources to finance their executives' retirement benefits and pay.

In recent years, companies from Intel Corp. to CenturyTel Inc. collectively have moved hundreds of millions of dollars of obligations for executive benefits into rank-and-file pension plans. This lets companies capture tax breaks intended for pensions of regular workers and use them to pay for executives' supplemental benefits and compensation.

Wow. It's takes a special kind of suspension of reality and belief to convince yourself this won't backfire. Best case scenario: It ends up screwing your company into the ground. Worst case scenario: Crap like this brings down government intervention on a scale not previously envisioned by anyone. Or we could go big picture and look at this in a historical context. The last time corporate America treated it's employees with this kind of contempt was the first quarter of the twentieth century. How did that work out for them?

I finished The Fourth Turning a few weeks ago. Its a bit of a diffuse read, but the very short version of their thesis is that American history moves in waves. About every 80 to 100 years it goes really sideways and gets stretched to the breaking point. Do the math: Revolution & Continental Congress, Civil War, Great Depression, 2000 to ..... One of the big reasons the authors attribute to the above timespan is that everyone that was alive during the previous rupture is dead, so no one remembers how much it sucked. Scary thing about the book is it was written in 1997 and some of their short term predictions have pretty much come to pass. Things like this WSJ fiddling-while-Rome-burns article looks like another log on the coming fire.

Ares

Another Signpost

Local teenagers from the Hey Al Dubat area of Fallujah, Iraq, hang out during the afternoon near a Kentucky Fried Chicken July 16. Since the opening nearly seven months ago, the business has flourished and attracts many customers in the nearby area. (Official Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Chris T. Mann)

Just in case you needed another indicator that it's just about over but the shouting, there's now a KFC in Fallujah of all places. You know, the Fallujah where Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was sawing off heads a few years ago. The Fallujah of Operation Phantom Fury infamy. The Fallujah where they executed, burned and strung up 4 contractors from a bridge, then danced in the streets. Bing West talks about Fallujah's reputation within Iraq in No True Glory. It was a nasty place even by Iraqi standards; their version of New Jersey. A lot of Saddam's thugs were drawn from there. And now they've got original or extra crispy with teenagers hanging around in front. Screw the political benchmarks. When Iraq gets its first indoor mall, compete with teenagers hanging around all day, it's time to bring the boys home.

One final thought. The picture below is from inside the Fallujah KFC.

A friend of mine went to Detroit a few years back looking at medical schools. He told me while he was there he went to a KFC in a really bad, "Oh Shit" part of town. This particular KFC had Plexiglas pass-throughs at the counter because the neighborhood was so bad. So using the KFC metrics, Fallujah is now safer the Detroit was 10 years ago. I'm gonna start selling "US out of Detroit" bumperstickers and declare a quagmire. Then again, calling Detroit a quagmire is redundant.

Ares

Marmot Monday

Atlanta Burn

What is it about this town in the summer that drives me under? There's something beyond the retardation-inducing heat, the diesel-tasting air, the nose-burning smell of piss, and the ugliness of graffiti-stained terrain. Maybe it's the collective rush towards idiocy. As usual, when the stupid gets too thick I head for the hills. This time it was literal, with a weekend foray to a cabin outside Blue Ridge. (At right Mrs. Ares ponders the distant hills from the deck of our 48 hour home.)

I call these Band-Aid weekends. Whatever's open in your head gets plastered over for a few days, just enough for it to coagulate. The older I get the less effective these bind-and-patch interludes are on my psyche. My relaxation genes are developing an immunity. The first instinct is to go farther away for longer, but I think that's just hitting the nail harder. Along those lines Mrs. Ares and I watched Into The Wild the other night. That poor kid read too much and worked up the ideal of getting away to the point where it drove him out where he didn't belong. (Reason #845 why I love Mrs. Ares: ½ way through the movie, when he's going on about wanting to get away from it all and go to Alaska, she says to me “He just spent too much time in Atlanta”.) No one in early adulthood should have unlimited access to Kerouac, Thoreau, and any Russian author. In my youth, upon relaying my discovery of Camus to Athena, she remarked to the effect that certain literature should have an age restriction.

I'm not sure what the answer is here. I'm mainly just spouting off at the keyboard because it's late and I can't sleep. Actually, I could sleep but I can't just yet. That's another day's post. As for this day's post, I'll give it and myself a rest.

Ares

Marmot Monday

Carbon Commercials

Commercials cause global warming. (Sorry I meant climate change.) That's according to a deep think pushed on the poor folks in Australia. While I think they were trying to be serious, I can't stop laughing. I have a vision of a hemp-wearing, Birkenstock-shod, tofu-eating, Kucinich-voting, (whoops, sorry Athena) trust-fund hippie, sitting in a yurt, turning off the TV during pauses in Lost. There's no source on the article, but I'm pretty sure it comes from the Department of Making Stuff Up, which is a sub-unit of the Ministry of Pulling Statistics Out of Our Ass. When I consider the current frenzy associated with environmental worship I think of the immortal words of John Candy in Spaceballs:"They've gone to plaid." I've posted it below (about 4:40 on the clip) just to remove the intellectual stink.

Ares

Marmot Monday

I think he's saying "Damn, it's hot!"

Ares

Amen

And "Its Not News, Its CNN"...

Athena

What We Call The News

Brilliant!



Ares

Marmot Monday

Locals Only Post

Whore!

For those from out of town, the whore in question is the one that is currently not a United States Senator. This is so pathetic it defies definition. Vernon actually had himself Photoshopped in with Barack for a campaign flier. This is the political equivalent of telling a girl you're terminally ill so she'll sleep with you. What's next? Vernon in one of those walls at Disneyland where you put your head through the hole so its on Micky Mouse's body? God I wish I had Photoshop.

Ares

Tuesday Word of the Day

Ataraxia: "A pleasure that comes when the mind is at rest." Also, a state characterized by freedom from worry or any other preoccupation.

Something to learn, something to practice.

Ares

Marmot Monday

Fourth

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Two hundred years later it's still one hell of a mission statement.

Ares

Food Suicide

Holy Trans-Fats, Batman! Courtesy of Instapundit, a story about the Luther Burger: A bacon cheeseburger that uses Krispy Kreme donuts for a bun. WOW! Atlanta locals are familiar with the now-defunct Mulligans on the south side of Decatur. Mulligans had the world famous Hamdog, which is a hot dog wrapped in a beef patty and deep fried. The Hamdog takes it's place alongside the deep fried Mars bar and deep fried Twinkie as the Leaving Las Vegas of food. Again, wow.

Ares

Update: Further food research has led me to the Bacon Unwrapped website. This is an instant new favorite in the Ares household. Best quote: "The scent of barbecue permeates the air. And as you walk down the midway, people offer you free pork. Within 5 minutes of passing through the gates, I had a sausage in my hand. I like to imagine this is what heaven might be like".

Marmot Monday

We're All Gonna Die!

I feel a need to call a flag on the play. I came across this steaming pile of an article the other day and laughed out loud. “Midwestern levees are bursting. Polar bears are adrift. Gas prices are skyrocketing. Home values are abysmal. Air fares, college tuition, and healthcare border on unaffordable. Wars without end rage….” Yadda yadda yadda. They forgot killer bees and a new global ice age. The authors go to great lengths to beclown themselves. I have so many literal problems with this piece and conceptual problems with what they’re pushing that I don’t know where to begin.

We’ll just skip the literal issues with the piece and slap the conceptual a bit. Why don’t they just get it over with and plaster WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE! in 68 size font. This is the angle behind just about everything that gets shoved in front of us these days. I’ve been harboring the hypothesis for some time that we’re going to look back a generation from now on the ’00 decade and cringe. No context, no insight, just a big pack of people bouncing from panic to panic. There is no mistaking that we’ve got some large issues in front of us. But this has always been the case and will always be the case. I think a short trip down memory lane is in order to provide some scope. Let’s journey all the way back to the mid 1970’s.

Athena was a precocious pre-teen. I was a paste-eating elementary school nose picker. The price of gas was irrelevant because it was hard to come by. What gas there was had lead in it so it was only a matter of time before it killed you. The president had been self-deposed over criminal doings to get re-elected. The vice president had done a perp walk in ’73. America had just finished laying 58,000 servicemen in the ground over the previous decade. The Khmer Rouge slaughtered upwards of 2 million people (out of 7 million in the country) and nobody lifted a finger. An earthquake in Tangshan, China, killed over 200,000 people in July of 1976. Earlier that year another quake killed 23,000 in Guatemala. Somewhere around 200,000 people died when Typhoon Nina hit China in 1975. Over a 24 hour period in April of 1974 148 tornadoes struck 13 states, killing over 300 people & doing a few billion dollars in damage. Millions of troops were still squared off in Eastern Europe, backed by nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, 30 years after the end of a war that nobody called a quagmire. Speaking of nuclear weapons, tens of thousands of them were poised to launch on warning. (“Guaranteed to end civilization in 30 minutes or less or your money back.”) Over 30,000 troops remained in Korea on war footing over 20 years after the shooting stopped in war that is still officially under way. Curiously, nobody’s called that one a quagmire either. Food shortages were very real, and the world’s three largest countries couldn’t feed themselves through domestic production. Paul Ehrlich was trying to convince us we’d all die via the population bomb. While we were waiting to starve to death we’d freeze to death because the new ice age was galloping towards us. Oh, and the Fed had interest rates in the teens.

Do I need to go on? We look like ass clowns when we quail about the price of airline tickets, professional sports, polar bear peril. Memo to all media: STFU and get back to work. We’ve got things to fix and stuff to build and you’re not helping.

Ares

Vermonted

Mrs. Ares and I went to the Green Mountain State last weekend. Let me start by giving a big-brained shout out to whoever decided Vermont should be known as the Green Mountain State. This is a branding genius on par with calling Georgia the Red Dirt State. All marketing labels aside, it really is a beautiful state.

As I told Athena, it's as though western Washington and Ohio had a kid named Vermont. Mountains, open spaces and water akin to the Pacific Northwest. Old houses and streets like you'd find in the mid-west.

Burlington, where we encamped for the duration, seemed rather overrun with hippies. I'm sure some of that had to do with the proximity of UVM. Still, there was an organic, if I may use the term in this context, sense of hippieness. The kids were a bit funny to my approaching-middle-age outlook. Lots of recreational facial hair, metal in various parts of the face, and lots of tattoos. Mrs. Ares referred to them as 'trust fund hippies'.

We also spent some time at the most-excellent Shelburne Farms. Shelburne is beautiful and probably what I'd like my farm to look like if money was no object.

Mind you, this is just the barn/animal area. We never even made it to the main house or any of the other features of the farm. Anyway, at the farm Mrs. Ares met Arthur, where it was love at first sight.

We may have to find a house with a bigger yard. I think there are cows in our future. Arthur was very good-natured considering he gets poked and pulled at all day by ankle biters that don't know any better. Aside from the hippies and bovines we ate a lot of great cheese, drank a lot of great local brew, and generally soaked in the place. (And for reasons to lengthly to expound upon in this space we didn't go near Ben & Jerry's.) As weekend getaways go we recommend the joint.

Ares

Cave Days

It's been too hot to leave the cave lately.

Sorry, working my way through a bunch of marmot pictures.

Ares

Marmot Monday

I got nothing, just been wanting to throw up this picture for a while.

Ares

Save Ferris?

U.S. Marine 1st Lt. Kathryne B. Schilling coaches a woman as she prepares to shoot a pistol during her training to become a Sister of Ferris, June 4, 2008, Ferris, Iraq. The Sisters of Ferris will inspect women for weapons, suicide vests, large amounts of cash and contraband at entry control points. Schilling is assigned to Combat Logistics Battalion 1, 1st Marine Logistics Group. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Cindy G. Alejandrez

Who knew Bueller had sisters in Iraq? I gotta dig into Wikipedia more often. I need find out who this Ferris character was and how they made it okay for women to have guns in an Arab society. Today its Sisters of Ferris, tomorrow its Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. Wonder how long that burqa's gonna be around once Fatima there gets to take her gun home? Also gotta wonder how many women are gonna say no mas to a male-dominated culture after spending some time around American female warriors? All benchmarks on the road to creating a functional society. By the way, Sister, you're holding that Glock wrong.

Ares

Hell is Other People

Far and away my favorite existentialist quote. Sartre was a pissy, moody whining bitch (who boxed several intellectual weight classes below Simone de Beauvoir), but that single nugget of wisdom redeems him in my eyes.

Nothing like a day of wading neck-deep in your coworkers' neurosis to make you wanna take a mallet to the soft spot on the side of your skill. As I wrote previously in this space, even the a******* in your life have something to teach you. Today I was using my inside voice to yell at the heavens "WHAT IS THIS A****** TEACHING ME!" I felt a bit like George Costanza yelling "SERENITY NOW!", but with my inside voice. Old Siggy Fraud said "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar". I think that translate across into "sometimes an a****** is just an a******".

The detached, internal intellectual that usually won't roll around in the stink posed a question in the midst of bashing my head against ramparts of stupidity. In your late teens and early 20s you crave sex and respect. By your late 20's you crave credibility in your chosen profession. In your 30's you crave competence and recognition of such. Anymore, I crave a Dick Proenneke life, spent in a self-crafted seclusion. A great number of people in my profession spend a large portion of their professional life constructing the Dick Proenneke exit of some fashion. While I acknowledge this very idea is occupying a larger portion of my psyche with the passage of time, I wonder what comes after this. Or will this be the defining obsession henceforth? I don't see an exit or an alternative. As you can tell, it was a long, hot day and the beer isn't doing anything for me.

Ares

Athena Caveat

Slight difference of opinion here at A&A: I happen to like Christa, and especially snarky Jordan.

Sorry to be MIA for so long, but between walking four miles a day (stress management, anyone?) and then catching the world's nastiest summer cold (I felt like an extra from Stephen King's The Stand) I just haven't been feeling the blogging spirit.

Meanwhile, here's one I've been enjoying lately...

Love ya, miss ya, mean it...

Athena

Andromeda Strained

Michael you whore. Mrs. Ares and I just donated three hours of our lives we’ll never get back to a ‘reimagination’ of Michael Crichton’s Andromeda Strain. This thing left no short cut uncut and no cliché undisturbed. And before I forget, here’s a little tip to the producers from Jake Jackass in Snotbubble, Georgia: If you want me to take your scientists seriously then don’t cast the girl that played Kate on Drew Carey as a surgeon. I can’t unthink her decade’s worth of penis jokes and toilet humor.

This thing is poorly designed to play on all your fears. It’s got a little something for everyone. There’s the terrorism angle, the black helicopters tease, the pandemic monster under the bed, the monolithic-omnipotent government and its associated goons, the mother-earth-is-our-god-and-technology-is-evil meme, and finally that soaring X-Files tent that has taught two generations of Americans to distrust government in all its forms. Evil, dark, ubiquitous cabals are the recurrent theme and the parting visual.

The original (book) was a brilliantly conceived story. Crichton had a gift for taking complex, scientifically-laden ideas and presenting them in an accessible and entertaining format. Remember this is the guy that brought us Jurassic Park and was the original father of E.R. Not a single DNA strand of his storytelling craft was evident on this festering piece of crap. Please, to all that have seen the latest incarnation of this production, please check yourselves into detox by at least renting the original movie. Or, if you prefer cold turkey, read the book.

The new version of Andromeda Strain reminded me of the difference between original Star Trek and The Next Generation. The original, for all its cheese, was fairly tightly written. TNG ‘ran home to momma’ in the form of computer generated graphics and special effects. The original story stood perfectly well on its own. Not content to let a classic stand, this new version became a message movie. Next they’re going to remake Congo where the apes that aren’t killed by global warming are going to become mutants that kill all humans.

Ares