Friday, April 27, 2007

Dirty Peeper and the Girls Next Door

There are some captions that write themselves. Somehow "Dirty Peeper and The Girls Next Door" just had to be said.
Cute, hunh? If he wasn't almost four I'd say that the Peep had some sort of Betty-and-Veronica thing going on. But he is. So he doesn't.


Notice who's wearing all the mire and who's the fastidious little mama's treasure?

Note to my son: sometimes girls like it when you get down and dirty. You won't care about this now. But come the day...you'll thank me for this.

Friday Fiction Blogging

For this springtime Friday, one of my personal favorites in the military science-fiction category: Robert Frezza.

Not sure what happened to this guy. He cranked out five novels in seven years but hasn't been heard from since the middle '90s. Three of the five are among what I consider - as insanely voracious consumer of popular fiction, retired soldier as well as science-fiction geek - among the best of the genre.

It's all there: complex, well-thought-out plots; rich characters with tangled motives, hopes and fears; and above all - lush, captivating prose.

As a stylist I defy anyone to equal the - you'd pretty much have to call her - "doyenne" of military SF, Lois M. Bujold. Her Miles Vorkosigan series is perhaps unmatched in depth and fecundity of imagination. David Drake may bring more of the reek of blood and cordite to your bedside table; S.M. Stirling may have a grander scope (although also rings a bell for sheer creepiness - a lot of his stuff has some truly twisted sexual kinks buried inside).
But Frezza can bring it - and he gets right to the heart of what makes it well that war is so terrible, else we should too fond of it. His political setting (a senescent Japanese Empire, whose colonial possessions are run - increasingly poorly - by zaibatsu) is fully realized, his concepts of future warmaking are logical and have a dramatic effect on the course of the novels, and most of all his ability to draw his characters as real people, with real problems, real wishes, real illusions...well, that's a real novelist, in my book. His Anton Vereschagin, Hanna Bruwer and Danny Meagher are as fully realized as any of the fictional people you met in school: Hamlet, Lizzy Bennett, Ramona Quimby...

The plots - not to give away anything - are straightforward: a "corporation" planet, Suid Afrika, is in rebellion against its corporate masters. Lt. Colonel Vereschagin and the 35th Infantry (Rifle) are dispatched to set things upright again. Like any good book, the fun is in the details. Afrikaner politics, imperial overstretch, G.I. cynicism, love, death...it's all there, and written with the effort of someone who clearly loves his characters and wants you to read their story.
I have to be honest and say that the quality falls off a bit with "Cain's Land" - the truth is that the series logically ended with the second novel "Fire In A Faraway Place". But once you've journeyed with the Imps and the Afrikaners, the cowboys and the Sects to Ashcroft, Novy Sibr and Suid Afrika, it's hard not to go along for the last ride.
Give him a try. It can be hard, teaching a pig to whistle. But the tune is worth the effort...

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

The lost weekend

Something about being up before dawn...

I love the quiet of the early mornng hours, before even the dawn chorus has begun to tune, when dawn is no more than a perceptible lightening in the eastern sky.

It gives me time to slow down and stop and think. I write these things, or read the news, or just sit and let my mind go where it listeth.

The past weekend was good for us. We began Friday evening (like a good Muslim, I will start the weekend on Friday after sundown) at Merlo field watching U.P. women play the Canadian national team. Our friends J and B, both enthusiastic and soccer players - I almost wrote "enthusiastic soccer players" until it struck me that not only is that a loathsome cliche' but two of their most attractive characteristics are their enthusiasm and their love of adventure in everything from skiing to soccer - were there to make the event more fun. The Canadians won 1-nil with both teams having good chances in front of goal.

The odd thing about this game; the thing that hit me as I was working up in Longview, Washington yesterday, is that as a game it was just average; a little ragged, with lots of errant passing and more than a few mix-ups between players. But as part of a campaign, it wasn't exactly a good thing for Canada. I mean, the Canadians are one of two teams from North America going to the Women's World Cup in China this fall. Their draw in Group C isn't an easy one: the Matildas have come a long way from the days when they were best known for taking their clothes off and the delightfully named Black Queens of Ghana play a tough, hard-tackling West African style of footy.

The thing about Friday's game is that here was a small women's college team against the best of Canada. Something like watching the Cambridge University eleven play Newcastle United. The college players are good...but...but...the internationals should have played them off the field!!! UP outshot only 11-8? 1-nil? WTF?!?

Christine, I love you and the maple leaf gals. But lemme tell you - you bring the same weak shit against Norway and you get handed your long, tall, goal-scoring athletic ASS.



Today's Photo Quiz: what is the object to the left.

Hint: The Peeper made it in daycare. It's not vegetable and it's not mineral.

Anyway, we did lots of yard work and we're almost done repainting the living room this cool "Cafe'" color from Devine - it's so lush we're finding that we don't want to hang anything on the walls, so lots of prints and photos are going in storage. I'll try and post some pictures of it in a bit

Oh no! Look out! Crowds run screaming When Peepers attack! (Open the link for exceptionally fine Blue Oyster Cult "Go Go Godzilla" video)

The Peep had fun, too, helping us around the house, as well as buying yet another toy truck...he sure is cute. But watch out for those flailing elbows.
Well, time to go to work. Mojo's at her meeting, Peep's at daycare and I have a mountain to climb. Gotta leave the chair empty and the computer alone and go struggle for the legal tender.

Bye!

Panama

This is the mother of all storm drains. It runs down the centre of the main street than goes from the public road, all the way through what used to be Rodman Naval Station, Howard Air Force Base, Ft. Kobbe and down past Venado Drop Zone to the little Panamanian town of Venado.

Here in a tropical rainstorm some time in 1986 one of my soldiers, Specialist Black, a frustrated hellion and professional-grade nut, lost his shorts and much of his skin when the suddenly-raging waters of the drain flushed him into a conduit at the end of the trench that dumped him scraped and naked in the swamp near Kobbe Beach.

Why?

He was "drain-surfing" - riding the wild rain-runoff whitewater in the drainage ditch on his foam plastic sleeping map.

Yeah, I know. It didn't make sense to me, either.

The last twenty months of my active Army career were spent in Fort Kobbe, on the Pacific side of the Isthmus of Panama.

This post, part of the still-immense infrastructure built to support and defend the Panama Canal, was part of a then-huge U.S. military installation that included Howard, Rodman and the U.S. Marine Barracks whose name, frankly, I forget.

The entire farrago was set like a jewel in the crown of the former Canal Zone that included the bases across the canal on the Panama City side: Fort Clayton (Army), Albrook Air Station (Air Force) and the former U.S. facilities in the Balboa neighborhood. By my time the "Canal Zone" was an official fiction, Albrook was almost deserted and the Balboa area had been turned over to the Panamanian government, which housed the widely disliked DENI (Departmento National de Investigacion), the Panamanian "FBI" which was really their secret police.

When I recall that time it was one of what I've heard described as being the epitome of the Chinese written word for "crisis" as two characters; "danger" and "opportunity". The political situation was desperately chancy.

The then-caudillo, Manuel Noriega, was widely disliked and was suspected of having played a hand in the convenient air-crash death of his predecessor, Omar Torrijos (a popular hero for his role in negotiating the return of the Canal to Panamanian control).

Meanwhile the rest of Central America was in flames. I'm not sure how well you remember the second Reagan term, but it was a rogue's delight, with Salvadorian death squads running wild, Ollie North running guns to the Iranians in return for cash for the scummy Contra guerillas fighting the brown Reds in Nicaragua, the ugly
political infighting in Honduras and Guatemala, where the "legitimate" governments turned their soldiers loose on "unreliable elements", mostly poor indios unhappy with generations of grinding poverty at the hands of "los dorados", the Golden Ones, the still-ruling descendants of the Spanish younger sons who had taken everything from them four hundred and fifty years before and left them only God and scraps of land to choke a living from.

The sad part of this story is that for a single twenty-something soldier living in Panama, it was a pretty sweet deal.

I had no clue what all the political struggles were about.

I had no bills to pay that my monthly pay voucher didn't cover, I was foolish, and strong, and having an adventure doing and seeing things that most of my peers were utterly ignorant of.

Like Balboa, I gazed on the vast Pacific from a peak in Darien; climbed the snowy hillsides of Bolivia, and slept in the fever jungle near the mouth of the Rio Chagres. The sun was warm, the beer was cold, the women round and bronze and transient.

In short, I was a young man in a place where and a time when it was good to be a young man.

And now I think back on the time, and the place, and I wonder that it ever could have been so.

What is odd now is to come across stuff like the website picture gallery, which is where I found the contemporary pictures of my old post.

The coatis on the grass outside the old post housing units really brought home the difference between the then and the now. The lights are dimmer now, the jungle a little bit closer. The streets where our deuce-and-a-halfs once bellowed and whined, where I lost the middle wheel off the HQ-52 GAMA Goat and the hustle and busy-ness of our military world made traffic an adventure look a lot slower, and a lot quieter than the ones I knew.

The present owners are presumably Panamanian, living and working in the City across the Puente de los Americas. I hope they love the big, airy tropical houses with their broad overhanging eaves. I hope they appreciate the storm-galleons that rise white with rain over the Gulf of Panama. I hope they get off the bus beside the extravagant cuna grass seedheads and marvel as I did at the wildfires that limn the hilltops to the north during the dry season.

I hope they stop and listen to the wild screeching flocks of parrots that fly around the tall palms in the evening, or watch the spiralling of the bats around the streetlights at night.

I hope they are foolish, and strong, and love the place I once passed through when I was young and the world seemed young, too.

Friday, April 20, 2007

Le Sacker du Print 'Em

Pretty, hunh?


Wow.


Went out into the unaccustomed sunshine this morning and there were our dogwood and cherry trees in wild abandon, blooming like they had no idea that all the other flowering trees were SO over the whole blossom thing.

Portland doesn't have many days like this, but when we do they sure are fun.


So from the street the Little House sure looks nice. I wish we could look this pretty all year, but in late fall things can get grim. We need to get some cool hardscaping. We've got a contractor coming this Saturday. Maybe he'll like out ideas. Hope so. I'm getting too old and fat to keep kicking contractor's asses.

We've been busy doing all sorts of home improvement stuff, too, in sort-of recognition of the season. This one is my favorite. We call it "The Door to Nowhere". The old exterior cellar door which has been sitting in the basement since before we owned the place gets a cleaning and becomes the new clothing rack in the bathroom. Note the lovely heated towel rack to the left, a Portland winter must. Mildew on the towels - such a faux pas!


Stinky, too.


Must dash - Portland Pilots women vs. Canada this evening. Ah, Christine Sinclair; you woman, you titan, you goddess! I fall down and worship the water that fills your cleat marks...

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Everything I needed to know about Iraq I learned on "Go, Diego, Go!" (or) Bobos in Paradise

I’ve been posting about war and politics, well, pretty much since I started doing the blog thing last summer. I had to look back through my own archive to check. There it was: July 22, 2006 – actually, it was the sixth post out of what (I had to check this, too) is now one hundred and six entries. “Saturday Morning, 4am.” A rumination on Iraq and our involvement there, which concluded with my attempt at wit: "I am SO fucked!".

And they talk about Faulkner and Joyce. Honestly…

I thought about this again yesterday as I posted to the gang over at Intel Dump this treasure: “But I'm also not stupid enough to believe that we're gonna produce anything worth the blood and treasure we're spilling in the Fertile Crescent. I don't see the point in kacking a Sunni Saddam to end up with a Shiite Saddam. So I'm a WASFer: We Are So Fucked.”

And at that point I realized that I have just plain reached a dead end and so have you, Dear Reader, and the ugly, soul-destroying fact is that we both know it.

Because if in nine months – one and a half Friedman Units – the terms of the discussion about this sad, benighted war have managed to go only from the first person singular to the first person plural…then we have caught sight of our own tail. We’re done. Our arm is in the mangle and we fully realize that we can’t reach the “off” switch.

So what does this have to do with “Go, Diego, Go!” you say?


Let me explain.

For those of you not (or not yet) cognoscenti of quality children’s entertainment, I will first introduce our hero. Diego is a hyperkinetic little guy whose job is described as “animal rescuer”. He is handsome in a cartoony sort of way (unlike his cousin Dora, whose frighteningly immense head always reminds me of a watermelon with eyes or a blimp in a wig), athletic and good and kind. He is a sort of grade-school D’Artagnan, swashing – okay, swinging - his buckle through the rain forest with his furry Planchet, Baby Jaguar. He is always busy getting various incompetent animals out of trouble; I was amazed at the frequency with which animals get stuck in, trapped on or under and endangered by natural objects. Why, you’d suspect they were animal actors who actually lived in Venice Beach and only went into the jungle to shoot a “Diego” episode, only to find the jungle has no safety rails. Curious, really…

Sorry. The Peeper luuurves him some Diego, se we both get to see a lot of Diego and his crew setting about getting other critters out of trouble. They do this using their wits, and cooperating with each other. And they always have to keep an eye open for the Bobo Brothers.

The Bobos are described on Diego’s website as a “pair of wild, mischievous spider monkeys…always causing trouble, setting traps, upsetting nests, breaking dams, or bringing down mudslides.”

Now it’s important to understand that the Bobos aren’t truly evil. They’re just greedy, and stupid, and like most greedy, stupid people and animals they don’t think about much other than what they want to slake their immediate needs. So when Diego and BJ are trying to, say, cross a river, the Bobos will take their boat. And their rope. And the bridge, if they can get it. They don’t mean to cause harm, but they are only thinking about their own, immediate desires.
Okay? Now, for the past six years and more we here in the U.S. have been ruled by a government composed of Republican partisans of one man, George W. Bush, who is very likely the ideologically simple minded brother of another man, Richard Cheney. Together they have been our national leadership through perhaps the most dramatic six years since 1941. And in pursuit of their goals, we have seen countries attacked, invaded and occupied in a war that goes on today, is going on the very moment you are reading this.

Somewhere; in a side street in Baghdad, down a dusty road outside Baquoba, near a deserted house on the road to Damascus a young man is lying face-down in the dirt. The muscles in his legs are still twitching as the brain that refuses to realize its’ body is dying tries to keep running, to keep living for just one more moment.

Somewhere in the low hills of Diyala province a ten-year old boy is staring at the ripped end of his leg where a moment ago his foot had felt the solid thump of boot on ball that he will never feel again. Somewhere in a hot, tired building in Tal Afar a little crowd tries to push a shrieking woman outside so they can wind the violated corpse of her husband or son in a dirty sheet to carry him to the hole where they can put him and the rest of her life in the dry sandy soil that blows across the plains of ancient Babylon.

None of this matters. Not the grieving parents, not the dead men and women, not the relentless ruin and merciless hatred that have made these dead, these sorrows. Because the people who are running this war – Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney and their ilk – have no intention of doing anything to change it or stop it. For them, to leave, to stop, is to lose. Unless they can do this in a way that gets them what they want. The way they want it.

This is Bobo logic. And Bobo logic doesn’t yield to reason, for the very simple fact is that is has no basis in fact. Bobos don’t know, or care, why they take your rope, your boat, your youth or your life. They simply do, because they’re Bobos and that’s what they do.

Sure, they may offer you something glib. But that’s just to make you feel a little less cheated. They are going to do what they want to do and nothing that you can do will change that.

Except. Diego and his friends know that to stop them, Animal Rescuers need to say, "Freeze, Bobos!" You don’t argue with them. You don’t debate them, or try to understand them, or compromise with them. You simply have to say:

“Freeze, Bobos!”

And they will.

But go watch the news. Go read the newspaper. We are all afraid to tell the Bobos to freeze. Afraid they will call us cowards. Afraid they will blame us for “losing”. Afraid they will release their bobo legion of vituperative, impassioned droogs and we will be savaged for our “fear” and “weakness” for looking away from the awful, endless, insoluble smash before us.
In January, 2009, the Bobos will have to go back to their bobo land of wealth and insouciance, and a new leadership will have to try and figure out how to get us out of the mess the Bobos have created. If they can.

I’ve tried to make the point that we’re in trouble; again, and again, and again. And again. But from the lack of comments, Dear Reader, I suspect that, like Diego, you have had other things on your mind, other animals to rescue. Or perhaps you have just given up. Or perhaps you have nothing to add. But I've realized that between now and 2009, there’s no more for me to say. I've said all I have to say. Nothing I say will change anything. Nothing I say will help. I'm done.
I still like to write, and so I’ll have more to say here, on other things and other ideas, both for my own introspection and for any those of you who want to read it.

But on the subject of Iraq, and war, and America and the Middle East, I will write no more.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Mostly Nuts

I like to think that, as a blogger, I keep my eye on what's important. Family, home, work, politics, soccer, the Army, religion, liquid soap, friends and relatives, the collected work of Robert Frezza... It's these sorts of things that make life the marvelous cavalcade of change it is. As we pass dreaming through the vales of our lives, each new vista terminating our hopes and dreams in the accession of the new joy or sorrow it reveals, we are challenged to meet these events with all of our spirit, all of our energy, and all of our intellect. As such, I understand the duty of those of us who write for the public to provide an open and honest account of our ideas, beliefs and feelings, to try and write about things that make a difference to others, things that are, well, important.

But suddenly - there's M.C. Nuts.

Is this what the Lake District has come to? Sweet suffering Baby Jesus!

I know my next post was going to be about the Bushies, Iraq and what it means for the rest of us. And I want to and wll get there. But right at the moment all I can think of is that the restless ghost of Beatrix Potter is gonna have somebody's ass for M.C.'s furry Nuts...


Update 4/18 @ 4:30pm: Walternatives and Millicent both had a good observation: what would ol' Bill Wordsworth have thought about the hairy Nutted One?

My thought is: probably a combination of fascinated, appalled and amused.

He was just that kind of guy...

Saturday, April 14, 2007

...and, damn, I could use a stiff shot of milk, too.

Poor Peep. He had a tough evening this past Thursday. We had too much fun and excitement before bedtime, so when it came time for the tub and the jammies and all he pretty much collapsed on himself in a screaming, sobbing heap, a sort of Chernobyl core meltdown in grubby corduroy pants.

He wanted nothing to do with me - I was the Bad Daddy - and even Mojo had a difficult time with him. At one point he was sobbing "You're mean! You're so mean! You're the meanest!" in the middle of the living room floor. (I was mean, BTW, because I wouldn't let him watch his Dora the Explorer video before bedtime...)

Anyway, Mojo finally got him snuggled into his heap of blankets on his floor (this being part of his normal nighttime routine) after I escaped with just a scrap of cursing, he quieted down a bit and just clung to her, all sniffley and damp. I closed the door to his room, and just before I turned away, I heard him say in a perfectly conversational voice:

"I'm in really bad shape."


Even when the house is murder, he's a funny guy, the Peeper.

Goodnight, buddy.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Mad as hell

The CCAA processed two days of international adoption referrals in April.

Two.

Fucking.

Days.

I don't particularly remember what had pissed me off that day back in 1985, but I do remember stalking around Venado drop zone like a cat with my tail caught in a door. I was pissed, and I didn't care who knew it.

That's how I feel right now.

I know, I know...it's their country, we're being granted a favor, the Chinese can do what they want and we should just be grateful. Yadda yadda...

Well, fuck that.

If China wants to close its IA program, close it. Tell us we've pissed our money down a rathole and that's life, too bad, just embrace the suck and go. But if they're going to dangle thousands of hopeful parents on a thread (and don't mention the words "red thread" around the Fire Direction Center these days unless you want to see what a Battalion Three looks like coming out of the top of a man's skull..!) they owe - yes, owe, dammit - at least the expectation of consistency.

And if they can't provide consistency, at least an explanation.

Because if two days of referrals a month is the new black, that's a deal breaker. Two days a month means we get to meet our daughter the same month we qualify for MediCare. Unh-unh. Ain't gonna happen.

And as far as I can see, the adoption agencies have nothng to lose at this point, because at two-days-per-month pretty soon they won't have any clients left for their Chinese IA programs. So they might as well screw their courage to the sticking place and confront the CCAA: what was the deal with April, comrades? Too many round-eyes? Too few "paper-ready" children? Too many potstickers for lunch making those afternoons sleepy and slow? Sunspots? The Fourth Dimension? Wassup, revolutionary brutha???

The state owns the highway, and can set any speed limit they like. But if they want to keep the Mandate of Heaven they need to make sure the people who drive it know whether that "15 mph" sign is the new regular speed limit, a mistake, or just for the construction zone up ahead. Because there's other roads, and if they don't want us to get where we're going in a human time scale, we'll get off this damn goatscrew and try another route.

Okay. That's my April adoption rant.

Next post - I rant about these jackasses.

Friday, April 06, 2007

I am SO going to Hell

So...let's say (and why not) that you have no religion. You're churchless. Agnostic, atheist, godless, heathen, vile apostate...you have no faith. No god. Your devotional intensity has expired. It's an ex-religion. It's pining for the fjords. Get the picture?

Now let's say (and, hey, why the hell not) that your have an adorable toddler son, the light of your life, who has heard about Easter candy, Easter baskets, Easter egg hunts, and wants some of this gooey, rich, chocolatey Easter action for himself. And he asks you what the heck this Easter thing all about. What's with the candy, boss?

And...let's say (since we're just being hypothetical, here, right?) that you take a moment to look down into his fresh, bright, innocent face before explaining that it was this day, many, many years ago, that the Holy Bunny took the sins of the world onto His furry head, was crucified, died, and was buried, and on the third day will rise from the grave an Undead Savior, a Zombie of Love, and fly to Heaven scattering candy eggs for all the Good Little Children.

Would it be possible that you would be preparing yourself a Special Seat in Hell's hottest Barcalounger?

Oh yeah.

So I might as well face the fact that I'm sharin' Hell's rumpus room with these guys...

Friday comic blogging



Brooke McEldowney. Note: this man can draw. DAMN can the man draw....
Oh, yeah. He's witty. And funny. All his women are smart, sexy and dangerous. All his men are loveably stalwart and dumb. All his cats are inscrutible. In other words: everything you always wanted in a cartoonist...and more!
And to think that the damn Oregonian still runs Peanuts. Sparky's dead, guys! DEAD. It doesn't get much deader than, y'know, actual dead...

Bible Belting

From driftglass: this was too good not to pass on...
Genesis 31
Now the Bush was more gladhandy than any Shrub of the field which the ROVE God had made. And he said unto the Dowd, Yea, hath the Founders said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

2 And the Dowd said unto the Bush, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden – the Tree of Fascism -- the Founders hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye lose the Nation.

4 And the Bush said unto the Dowd, Nah. Seriously, it’s totally cool:

5 For the Founders didst know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as the Founders, transcending mere rights and due processes, means and ends, and dwelling on the plain of Pure Good fighting Pure Evil.

6 And when the Dowd saw that the raw, unfettered power of the Tree won elections, toppled nations, muzzled the press and kept opposition gagged and terrorized, he took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto the Moderates with him; and they did eat.

7 And the eyes of them all were opened, and they knew that they were filthy, lying fucknozzles; and they spun lies and bigotry and think-tanks and media together, and made themselves a New Reality.

8 And they heard the voice of the Founders walking in the Nation in the heat of the War they had used the fruit of the Tree to manufacture: and Dowd and the Moderates hid themselves from the presence of the Founders by Turning Rush Up Louder.

9 And the Founders called unto the Moderates, and said unto them, What in the Fuck have you done with our Constitution?

10 And the Moderates said, we heard thy voice in the Nation, and since we are naturally nekkid little cowards, we hid ourselves behind the Flag and called the Dirty Hippies nasty names.

11 And the Founders said, Who told thee that thou wast nekkid little cowards? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?

12 And the Moderates, being nekkid little cowards, said, Dowd made us do it! It wasn’t our fault. We’re weak and stupid! There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. We swear to You it wasn’t our faaaaault.

13 And the Founders said unto the Dowd, What is this that thou hast done? And the Dowd said, The Bush beguiled me, and I did eat.

14 And the Founders said unto The Bush, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all Administrations. History shall judge you to have been the Worst President Evah. The Future shall call you Traitor and Failure , and you shall be set below every hack Alderman and corrupt Mayor in the land; upon thy belly shalt thou crawl out of office, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:

15 And We will put enmity between thee and the Goldwater Conservatives, and between thy seed and their seed; they will never vote for another Bush again, and the Bushes will grow crazier and stupider and more of a national embarrassment with each passing generation.

16 Unto the Dowd he said, We will greatly multiply thy sorrow and ruin thy resume; in sorrow thou shalt make a buck; ultimately you shalt wear a Hat of Paper and spend your declining years welcoming hillbillies to WalMart.

17 And unto the Moderates They said, Because thou art nekkid little cowards and hast hearkened unto the voice of liars like the Dowd, and hast eaten of the tree, of which We Very Clearly commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is are you dumbasses; in sorrow shalt thou listen to the Dirty Hippies saying “we told you so”.

18 Shut The Fuck Up with your imbecile opinions is what you will surely do all the days of thy life while other, smarter people clean up your messes or I will lay such a smiting on you;

19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat crow, till thou return unto the dumpster of History; for out of it wast thou taken: for poo thou art, and unto poo shalt thou return.