Apology and Explanation

I've been a bad, bad blogger.

The First Rule of Blogging is, after all, Thou Must Above All Have New Content and I've done two things here in September and October; diddly and squat.

Oh, don't get me wrong; I - as in the real I, the IRL I, the person who lives behind this page - have done a pantsload; worked (a lot!), parented and husbanded, watersealed the deck, painted the front steps and the front fence, realized that I suck massively as a gutter-and-downspout contractor...watched, and written a gajillion words about, soccer, played games, shot at the Trackers' archery range, read to my daughter, wrestled with my son over videogames, tried to figure out what the fuck is wrong with the Ranger pickup...talked with my sister about our mother, now frail and fading in her lonely post-Master Chief old folks home...

But I haven't been here. And there's a couple of reasons for that.

One is that I've just been crazy busy in real life.

The other is that my laptop at home died.

It died hard, I gotta say. First the screen started to go, then the hard drive, finally the whole thing just wouldn't start. It was an ex-laptop, it had ceased to be, it had kicked the bucket, shuffled off its mortal coil, rung down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible.

But that means I have to blog on the machine at work.

Which kinda sucks.

Because either I have to do this on work time - which my boss disapproves of - or I have to stay late at work, which I disapprove of.

And, frankly, given the state of financial play at the Fire Direction Center...it's unlikely that I will be getting a new machine anytime soon.

So.

I promise to be better at blogging. I wish I could say I had a backlog of posts in me; I don't. The only thing I had this week that I thought of posting was a comment regarding a female friend that watched the second Clinton-Trump debate. I asked her if she'd learned anything she didn't already know or hadn't guessed, and she replied that she was tremendously impressed with Clinton's poise and intelligence and now felt like she could vote FOR her instead of against the tangerine-hued shitgibbon.

I commented that it seemed like Hillary had grabbed her by the pussy, then.

She stuck out her tongue at me.

Anyway...I'll try and get something new up this week. I think it's time for another "The Army I Knew", wherein a certain young lady doesn't get her diamond earrings...

Mortar Maggots

It has been easily ten years since I hung 'em up, but there is something about seeing pictures like this...

...in the news feed that jolts me upright in my chair like an electric shock and fills me with the hot, strong rage to stride roaring across the sand:

"What the fucking kind of oiled-up sodomistic cathouse romper room group-grope do you call this fucketty-fucking clusterfuck? Have you fucking people ever heard of goddamn sandbags, or did you use them all up for camel condoms, you spastic, grabastic dripping strings of rabid fennec drool? Have you ever fired a mortar before? Do you know which end of the fucking cannon the fucking round goes in or did that intelligence roll down your momma's leg with the rest of your attractive qualities? Well, I want to see some sand flying and some guns dug in and some ammo tarped and that all better happen in about three-tenths of a fucking picosecond or by Allah if there's a fucking farm and home store within this pestilential grid square a bunch of people whose seat of consciousness resides in their goddamn fourth point of contact are looking at a painfully intimate encounter with a cattle prod."

I mean, sure; I know that the average Saudi troop unit is as worthless as a tampon in a typhoon. But there's knowing things and knowing them, and this sort of rank incompetence trip-wires the slave-chains of some old habits and instincts that, while deeply buried, still remain.

Fuckin' worthless Saudis.

Out of the mouths

My kid used the word "worshed" the other day and I realized that I have several peculiar verbal tics. That's one of them.

For the English word to describe what you do with dirty clothes I say "Did you put your socks in the worsh?"

I don't know why I do this. I don't call folding money "corsh" or a mixture of meat and potatoes "horsh". It's just how I pronounce the word wash, and I don't remember why the hell I do it.

Now that I have had to actually think about it I'm embarassed by it and have consciously tried to amend my speech to the correct pronunciation, "wash".

Now that I think of it, I realize that I've picked up a couple of these odd verbal tics.

I use the word "arsed" in the sense of "worked up over" or "bothered to"; "It isn't something I got arsed enough about to get done...". This is a Britishism, and I suspect I picked it up from listening/reading about English soccer.

When I'm exasperated about something I will often say "Jesus wept!" as a way of saying "What a ridiculous fuck-up!" I do know wherte I got this; from reading that the two words are the shortest verse in the Bible. I liked that, and somehow it found its way into my speech.

If someone tells me something obvious, or something that I have already agreed to, I will often reply "There you go." (or if in rough company "There you fucking go."). This was my old drill sergeant SSG Layne's reaction to anything he agreed with (spoken, by the way, in his very distinctive Caribbean accent with the accent on the first word: "Dere you fokkin' go!") and it has stuck with me.

When I was little we had a cat named "Possum", and ever since all cats (when speaking to the cat) are "possum", as in "Who's da sweet fluffly li'l possum?" (said in babytalk voice while rubbing cat's chin).

The cats don't seem to care one way or the other but, then, cats should all be named whatever the sound of a can of cat food opening sounds like.

So. Those are my verbal tics, oddities, and peculiarities. I have no idea why this suddenly occurred to me, but there it is. Embarrassing, perhaps, but better than running around a comic convention in nekomimi ears, so there's that.

Do you have any of these odd little verbal tics, and, if so, what are they?

New Dream

You're going to have to excuse me, but I've drunk the better part of an entire bottle of Momokawa Pearl tonight and watched another Disney princess flick and I fear I am not completely responsible for what follows.

Regardless of how much you may imbibe, the inescapable reality is that when you have kiddos under 12 (and an outlet to electronic entertainment) you will perforce watch a freaking great bolus of kidvid.

This will range from truly entertaining in it's own right ("Avatar", or "Korra") to sort-of-bleh to downright eye-searingly awful.

If there is a hell, it will consist of being forced to view repeated showings of fucking "Santa Buddies" or, worse, "Soccer Dog: European Cup". a horrible nightmare which made me want to both laugh hysterically and pound my head against the wall over and over again.

Oh, God, the fucking horror of Soccer Dog: European Cup. I could weep.

Seriously.

But this week has been truly special for kidVid; the cable Disney channel has been showing "princess" movies 24-7, and I have a six-and-a-half-year-old daughter, and so you know what that means.

Tonight's offering was Cinderella 3: A Twist in Time, the second direct-to-video Cindy "sequel".

And y'know what; I almost hate to say this but...it wasn't horrible.

For one thing, it actually had a laugh with some of the ridiculous premises of the original.

There's one point where the Prince - who actually gets to be a person, a real guy, in this one, as opposed to a stuffed dummy who represents "love and marriage" - is enjoying a bout of fencing with his dad. King Dad - and Charming - get some good lines;

King: You think there's only one woman in the whole kingdom who wears a size four and half?

Charming: It's all I have to go on here.

One of the "ugly stepsisters" got a chance to step out of the caricature and become more of a person and a rather endearing one, too. I actually ended up with a certain amount of affection for Anastasia Tremaine.

Girl's got some feet. I like a gal with some sturdy, real-womanly sort of feet. We can't all be size four-and-a-halfs, y'know. She's sweet, and sort of lumpy, and gauche, and I like that in a woman. Hell, I AM that.

Anyway, the writers and voice-actors do a nice bit of work with her, Cindy, and the Prince.

Of course, Lady Tremaine is her usual terrible self and the flick is all the better for it. She's delightful to watch as a sort of black hole of badness, a singularity of pure self-absorbed evil. Such a darling, really, she just needs a couple of minions and a fortress of doom. I'd take her dancing just to see when she'd try and put the poison in my shandy.

And, yeah, there's the fucking mice, but the film actually goofs with the mice; Charming gets some face time with them and then proceeds to tell Dad that the "talking mice" have told him that his real inamorata is about to be sent off to the antipodes or where-ever.

You can imagine King Dad's reaction; imagine your reaction.

Yeah, that's it. Well played, Disney.

Plus Cindy gets to grow out of the slipper a bit.

In fact, the saving grace of the thing is that it actually gets a sort of humanity out of all the most cardboard characters of the original Cinderella cartoon; Cindy gets to be a little cutting and a little clever, Charming gets to be kind of offhand and, well, charming, and even the damn anthropomorphic animals are tolerable for a change.

The point of this post is that for all that these damn direct-to-video Disney sequels get a lot of stick, I actually had to watch this one and it wasn't genuinely painful; truth told, it was rather sweet, a bit clever, a trifle snarky, and even had some truly pleasurable moments.

Seining gold nuggets from the filthiest stream, perhaps, but, still...I ended up liking Disney's Cinderella and her paint-and-ink pals better after this one than the original.

And that is, perhaps, not something to be idly dismissed, I think.

But this may be more than the maunderings of a more-than-tipsy Friday evening.

We will see what the cold light of the morning brings.

If you gaze into your navel long enough...

...you'll end up trying to figure out what your own blog posts look like using some sort of goofy word-cloud app.

For example, here's the results from shoving all my posts from February 2012 into the meatgrinder:

Here's November...

And December.

One thing it did show me; I have GOT to clean up my mouth. Do you have any idea how many times the work "fuck" shows up in this blog?

Oh.

Heh. (Rubs his head after the fashion of an embarrassed anime character) Would it help if I mentioned that "mother" is only half a word in the U.S. Army?

Oh, and a huge hat tip to the Geek With Curves, who found this goofy word-cloud site. Thanks, Amy; +8 charisma for ya, gal!

Loquiris Latinae?

Ubi bene, ibi patria (~Pacuvius: "Where one is happy, there is one's homeland.")

I just went to the edit page of New Blogger^TM to tweak a post and noticed that my last titles are in Latin, or at least dog-Latin, which is all I can really manage in that speech.

Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appelant (~Tacitus: "They made a solitude (wasteland) and called it peace.")

When I was a mere slip of a college lad, all shining morning face and that, I took a course in the language from a rabbi (seriously!) who had an odd sort of rabbinical humor and was probably a fairly good instructor but who for all his gifts couldn't overcome my sloth and inattention. Plus the irregular verbs were almost as bad as German.

Cito enim arescit lacrima, praesertim in alienis malis (~ Cicero: "Tears dry quickly, especially when they are for others' misfortunes.")

But I did pick up a lifelong fondness for little Latin tags, both for the combination of brevity and meaning as much as for the delight in showing off my erudition.

Aliena nobis, nostra plus aliis placent (~ Publilius Syrus: "We like other people's (things) the best; others like ours.")

One of my favorite military writers, Robert Frezza, created a fictional colonial infantry battalion (of a supposed Japanese interstellar empire, of all things...) whose commander liked to style his officers as possessing "Roman virtue and samurai discipline", and for effect proceeded to scour all literature for the more unusual and interesting of them.

I've always suspected that he invented the very best, but that's part of the fun - since hardly anyone speaks it, Latin is the perfect tool for creating hoary wisdom out of modern cloth.

Nemo ante mortem beatus (~ Ovid: "Call no one happy before his death.")

My enduring problem is that my Latin grammar is, well, about as good as you'd expect for someone who flunked sophomore year Latin. So I tend to mangle conjugations and tenses.

Vae victis! (~Livy: "Woe to the conquered!")

The other thing is, of course, that not many other people share my enthusiasm, so, where once I might have been reading some news item about the doings of, say, Dick Cheney, and made the comment...

Vestigia terrent (~Horatius: "The footprints frighten me.")

...and the listener versed in the same tradition would have immediately understood that in two words I was referring to the story about the fox commenting on the implications of seeing footprints leading to but not from the lion's den and, thus, observing that the doings of the Dark Lord of the Sith revealed him as an unprincipled man and a danger to our Republic, the same is not true today.

So, sadly, I'm afraid all my fondness for these little tags does is, again, to reveal my own talent for elliptical self-amusement, self-satisfaction, and a despicable fondness for useless knowledge. And after all these years, too. Sigh. Our skies may change but not ourselves.

But! I refuse to repine! After all,

Non scholae sed vitae discimus (~Seneca: "We do not learn for school, but for life.")

Ah, well. Acta est fabula. Plaudite!

I have an attitude problem

And every so often it shows.

A "Facebook friend" (who is a very smart and passionate woman, BTW, who I would be happy to befriend more traditionally if she lived closer than 200 miles to Portland) posted a link to something called "Free Love Day".

This hootchie is described in the link as

"...a day to promote awareness of suicide and depression, as well as to advocate a LIFESTYLE of unconditional love. On April 25th, put a heart on your wrist to signify that you will wear your heart on your sleeve and observe a LIFESTYLE of love. ASK SOMEONE HOW THEY'RE DOING. TELL PEOPLE YOU LOVE THEM AND DO IT. Nobody should have to feel so bad about themselves that they take their own life, so let's give them a reason not to! Let's change the world on April 25th!"

Well, okay then.

Anyway, the conversation from there went like this:ME: I'd prefer to draw crosshairs over the foreheads of the Koch brothers. 7.62mm national match corrected-for-drop-and-windage attitude adjustment, gentlemen. I'm here for your tax breaks.

I like to think I change the world in my own special way...
7 hours ago · LikeHER: You do John.
7 hours ago · LikeME: THEN I'd draw a heart on my wrist.
7 hours ago · Like · 1 person

I can't believe that some people think I'm not a sensitive guy just because when someone asks me what I would feel taking the life of another human being and I reply "Recoil".

Despicable Me

There was once a time when the early morning hours were mine alone.

Mojo and the Peep are sleepers. They love their sleep, they crave it, they cherish it like a rare, delightful treasure, and whenever possible they indulge themselves by drowsing on into the late forenoon. And that was always fine with me.
I could get up early and make coffee, savor the rich scent and the dark, earthy taste in silence. I could read, or exercise, or go on-line. It was my private world before the rest of the family got out of bed.

But now I have another early riser; Little Miss is seldom asleep past six and often awake before five. She's never noisy or fretful. She comes stumping out, her little legs determined as her eyes are still full of sleep. She wants to be cuddled, and happily crawls up in my arms and curls onto my lap.So I feel like a real heel resenting the loss of my private mornings.

But I do; as sweet and quiet as she is, the girl won't be ignored or put by; any attempt to park her on the couch or in front of the television results in a monumental sulk, and this girl is an expert sulker; once you've hit the "sulk" button it's nearly impossible to reset - she will fuss and fume for a good hour or so.And even the semi-silence of her immediate snuggling is transient. Soon she is fully awake and wants to play, or use the computer. And I'm reminded of the old saying about playing catch with a dog; you will tire of it long before the dog does. So with Barbies or ponies or LEGOs. There are only so many scenarios the girl can invent, and we usually run through them all inside of five minutes or so. After that the only variable is how durable my patience is; the eventual consuption of it is never in doubt.
So I feel like even more of a lout; I love my little girl and all she wants to do is share my time. But I resent, somewhere ranging from mildly to bitterly, the loss; like a miserly old curmudgeon, I am ungracious about dividing the early hours of the day with this child who loves and depends on me. God, how despicable can I be?

I suspect that this says something truly unflattering about me, and in my better moments I try and staple a smiling face over my bad attitude. But then comes the thumping of the little feet down the morning hallway and my smile fades like the stars in the sunrise.

"Base slave, thy words are blunt, and so art thou."

Once again I have injured a friend with the file-edge of my tongue.

I know I'm not a particularly kindly or gentle person. Much of my amiability is pure sloth; I seldom despise anyone violently enough to work up the energy to harry and insult them. I don't admire this in myself, and when I remember I try and force myself to assemble enough humanity to pass for sympathetic, but it has a way of seeping out when I don't watch for it. My sensibility - in the Austinite meaning of the term - is very poorly developed. So I can be quite the rude jerk when I'm not paying attention.

And it doesn't help that I spent a great deal of my early middle adulthood in company of soldiers, where physical, emotional, psychological, sexual, and sartorial abuse is considered by many a combined art form, entertainment, and source of profound hilarity. We're talking the sort of give-and-take that placed little if anything off limits, from the morality, intelligence, honor, and personal hygiene of the principals to the chastity of their mothers, wives, and girlfriends...if it could be questioned, it was.

I also have very little personal reticence. I don't consider my own habits, hygiene, manners, mores, or ideas particularly sacred, or even particularly delicate. I will discuss the most appalling things without hesitation. I consider the observation "That's about the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard" a valid criticism if the statement in question has a chance of being in fact the stupidest fucking thing the listener has ever heard, and expect to be informed as such if I'm ever stupid enough to say something of the sort.

This is neither an admirable nor a civil trait.

I try and do my best to dress nicely and use a fork, to measure my words and speak judiciously, but the Yahoo in all of this comes out at the most inopportune moments and, often, leaves wounded feelings behind.

Some time ago, for example, I said something to a woman I will call Millicent. She and her husband adopted a little Chinese girl not much older than Missy and returned from China about the same time we did. They are of a similar background, taste, and general inclination as Mojo. Millicent even blogged for a bit, and their little family would turn up here from time to time, when we would socialize with them. They're good people, and I like and respect them.

But I had a knack, a positive gift for offending her. I said some things that fell under the heading of "affectionate abuse" for me but were genuine insults to her at one time and had apologized for them. But at some point last year I said something that she considered unforgivable - mortally insulting - and has since broken off all contact with my entire family because of what I said.

So my little girl misses out on another little girl who might be a wonderful playmate and friend, and my wife loses touch with a woman who was a friend of her own, and all because of something I did or said.

And the truly shaming thing is...I have absolutely no fucking idea what it was I said.

It is a bad thing when I say something so vilely insulting to someone that they irrupt any contact with my entire family rather than risk encountering me, even at a remove.

But it is an even worse thing when I don't even remember the incident or the insult or even that is WAS an insult.

Plainly, I need to work on my social skills.

And in the meantime I have, again, thoughtlessly hurt someone I like and whose company I enjoy. I cannot unsay those hard words; I wish I could. All I can do is beg pardon.

And try and sharpen the blunt edge of my wit against making the same mistakes again and again.

God, I can be a fucking idiot when I try."Convey him hence and on our longboat's side
Strike off his head."