Ok the reason I have not posted in a while is because the last two post I have typed out have both been deleted by my F***ing web browser. I was writting about eugenics and maybe if I get the insperation back I will write the post out again.

Hitch's Wisdom for the Day

I haven't read this whole interview, but I found this at the New Criterion blog. One more reason why I want to have Hitch's babies.

Far too much work is done to make children feel their world is safe and reassuring. That's a tremendous waste of time for teachers, who should be spending time teaching poetry, history and science. For Valentine's Day at school, my youngest daughter, who is 12, sends a Valentine and gets one. When I was a kid, it was a day of extreme anxiety and tension, as it can only be and should be. One: Will you get a Valentine at all? Second, will you know who it is from? Because it would mean someone had or hadn't made an effort, and yours had already been sent. These anxieties are important. They prepare you for life. She gets a Valentine from the entire class. They might as well e-mail one from the headmaster to everyone.

I am Harry Potter

The new Harry Potter book is ... well the best so far. I was going to do updates as I read the book, you know to give it a live blogger feel, and so I could also give you my random thoughts on where I think the plot should go. However I obviously did not do that. I sat down at 9:00 am today thinking I would read only a chapter of two, and I read the whole thing. Luckily I didn't have to go to work today.

I am Harry Potter that, I think, should be the name of this book. For it's painting of high school student's hormones and "hookings up" (a term that Rowling uses) is eeriely like a book published late last year by Tom Wolfe. It is more innocent that his, of course, and it lacks the rut rut rut rut rut rut rut rut rut of that wonderful book. What it does have is a woman's touch. Rowling shows just how stupid men can be when they want revenge, and just how self-desructive women are when they are un-happily in love (you should know who I am talking about if you have read any of the previous ones). Of course she is not the first to do this, but she does make a needed addition to literature. And one I think that Jane Austin (the greatest of all novelists (Tolstoy & Dostoevsky are not novelists in the strictest sense (to back me up on this point see Tolstoy's Notes on War & Peace))) missed viz. Wizards. I am not suggesting that Emma should have ended with Emma Killing Lord Voldamort, but I think it would have been more interesting if she had. And than Chimmers might have read the book and not just watched Clueless.

I am off topic again. I was goint to only write about Harry Potter (I have had a few Gin on the Gins). This is the best so far, Rowling has become more than the competant writer that she was in the first few books, the lighthearted suff is more enjoyable than the usual Ron-jinxing-himself-stuff, and the acctual big plot twist is (for lack of a better word) sad. This follows in the tradition of the previous two, and end with a somber mode (Some one dies). On this toopic my sister said "I just want one of them to have a happy ending, I'm getting sick of them having some one die and then just ending" To which I respond, "well it is a good thing that this people have the good sense to die in June, a week before school ends". Joke as I might however this ending is just down right painful. After all Rowling really does kill of a beloved character, and if you have been reading the books it will be hard to be ramain unaffected. On the other hand the book has one of the best abstinence jokes ever. Also, to be enjoyed by all TACers is the new teacher at Hogwarts; he should bring back memories good old Dr. Hartman.

[Disclaimer: I bring this up because I consider every thing that is true to human life worth repeating, and I will never (I hope) turn my nose up to some one just because her name is Rowling and not Tolstoy or Dostoevsky.] I do not wish to add too somber of a tone, and if you don't want to read a long quote just ignore this, but this hit home for me.

A little tufty-haired man in plain black robes had got to his feet and stood in front of [his] body. Harry could not hear what he was saying. Odd words floated back to them over the hundereds of heads. "Nobility of spirit" ... "intellectual contribution" ... "greatness of heart" ... It did not mean very much. It had little to do with [him] as Harry had known him. ... And then, without warning, it swept over him, the dreadful truth, more completely and undeniably than it had until now. [He] was dead, gone. ... He clutched the cold locket in his hand so tightly it hurt, but he could not prevent hot tears spilling from his eyes.

SAVE JOEY!!!

Everyone, Joey's very existence is under attack. We must do what ever we can for him, in fraternity and solidarity. Oh, and while we're at it, we should try to save Katie.

Is Dan Crazy? Vol I

I think it is a little more than coincidence that the three best periodicals around have the same cover template. They all have a bar (either dark of off white coloured) on which the name of the magizine is printed, and than underneth they have all the articles listed on a coloured background. I am talking of course of The New Criterion, Commentary, and First Things. I bring this up because, as I am sure you know gentle reader, that the coloured background on these magazines changes from moth to month. Or as the Commentary advertisment says pithely the journals are "highly variegated". Further, I have noticed that I only willingly buy these magazines when the cover is a pleasing colour. (I say willingly because I make myself (whether I like it or not) buy First Things every month.) When the cover is a friendly yellow, or a deep blue, or a happy green I mearily plop down my $4.50 (or $7.5o for the New Criterion (which I think is too expensive)) for the issue. However if the cover is a boring blue, green, red, or brown I never buy them. No matter how good the articles are, or could be. for example I never bought the issue of Commentary with Norman Podhoretz' article on WWIV because the cover was dark (ie. boring) green. This month's Commentary, however, is yellow, and is therefore some of the best spent $4.50 in my life, and I haven't even gotten to Terry Teachout's article. Does this make me crazy? Well this and about a dozen other things. But at least I'll never buy an issue of Forgein Affairs. Even though I will read it every month.

This is something that Laura and my brother have been waiting for all their lives.

Bush receives Speedo

Trinity of Ideas: 7.09.05

Idea the First. Has any one seen the Philadelphia Story? (If not, you ought to. It is Lost In Translation good) There is a line where Jimmey Stuart is listening to Katherin Hepburn talking about his book of short stories. Stuart, who considered Hepburn to be an idiot; at least up until this point in the movie , says

You have unexpected depth!

I love that line. It says so much about the pretentions of the artistic and educated. Also it is just like the French officer in War & Peace who has to call Peirre a Frenchman, because any one who is magnanimous has to be French. So any the artist (played by Stuart) thinks that only fellow Greenwich Village artists can understand his stories.


Idea the Second. Where is every one else? In that last few weeks I must have posted 10,000 words, and you slackers just sit on your laurals. I need more things to read. Right now I am getting bored of KLo, Derb, and JPod. Even McKeown has gone Blog Lite. (If you know who KLo, Derb, and JPod are CHEERS.)

Idea the Third. At the Institute we are doing this paper. Well I'll just let you read this. This paper was Top Secret, and what happend. We opened today's paper and saw the F***ing Rockey Mountain News had a F***ing article about it. So we are going to delay the release a little longer. That and I think that I might end up getting some real credit for all my work on this paper.

However, if you are not interested in where your tax dollars are going, fine don't care. But if the Tax Payers Bill Of Rights goes down in Colorado, then its over, the F***ing Libs have won. We might as well all go on welfare and start calling Ted Kennedy a Catholic Politican. One that note, does any one know how to get a hold of Buyrne? We have an election (the biggest one in 05, sorry Cali) to win in Colorado

Orange Blossom Special

I have no idea why, but for some reason Johnny Cash always remindes me of my alma mater. I have only gotten into his music in the last eight to nine months, but I always associate his Ring Of Fire with a son of Abraham that I knew at the school; because he introduced me to all the punk covers of this great song. Also I associate the name Sue with a son of Ferrier at the school, this time because of a strange converstation I happened to be eavesdropping on.

I bring this up because I just saw a documentary about him on PBS. There where a lot of interviews with old country musicans. However they couldn't talk about why he is relevent to our generation, and indeed I cannot blame them how could they understand it? But his recordings of Hurt, Personal Jesus, Desperado, & Give My Love to Rose (all from the album When the Man Comes Around (the title song is still the best on the whole album)) will mean something more to my generation than they will to any other generation. (I try never to talk for my generation, but I an pretty familiar with it, after all I loved South Park, Garbage, and even (I hang my head in shame) Smash Mouth (I even whent to a concert by both bands).) His Hurt expresses so much more about the the human condition than Trent Reznor ever could. It expresses the existentail angst on the generation that has be decimated (more than decimated (which means one in ten)) by our parent's predilection for birth control and abortion.

Back to myself for a moment, I think I found out why I associate Cash with TAC. The song Sunday Morning Coming' Down! Granted, Cash did not write it. I think that more so than any other song it gets at the essence of that angst (different angst from the one above) of the hung-over TACer who has to go down to trhe commons for breakfast or lunch after all the sins he (or she) had commited the night before. Here are the lyrics,

Well, I woke up Sunday morning
With no way to hold my head that didn't hurt.
And the beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad,
So I had one more for dessert.
Then I fumbled in my closet through my clothes
And found my cleanest dirty shirt.
Then I washed my face and combed my hair
And stumbled down the stairs to meet the day.

I'd smoked my mind the night before
With cigarettes and songs I'd been picking.
But I lit my first and watched a small kid
Playing with a can that he was kicking.
Then I walked across the street
And caught the Sunday smell of someone frying chicken.
And Lord, it took me back to something that I'd lost
Somewhere, somehow along the way.

On a Sunday morning sidewalk,I'm wishing, Lord, that I was stoned.
'Cause there's something in a Sunday
That makes a body feel alone.
And there's nothing short a' dying
That's half as lonesome as the sound
Of the sleeping city sidewalk
And Sunday morning coming down.

In the park I saw a daddy
With a laughing little girl that he was swinging.
And I stopped beside a Sunday schoo
lAnd listened to the songs they were singing.
Then I headed down the street,
And somewhere far away a lonely bell was ringing,
And it echoed through the canyon
Like the disappearing dreams of yesterday.

On a Sunday morning sidewalk,
I'm wishing, Lord, that I was stoned.
'Cause there's something in a Sunday
That makes a body feel alone.
And there's nothing short a' dying
That's half as lonesome as the sound
Of the sleeping city sidewalk
And Sunday morning coming down.

229 Years Old, But With the Wisdom of the Ages

Out side there is constant noise from all the fireworks going off. No town knows who to celebrate the fourth like North Denver. However I have noticed how laid back it is getting in the hood now that yuppies are moving and taking over like a viracious angry hord of goths. On this fourth I would like to share a post I just read on a blog. It comes from a Belgian social and fiscal conservative blog. The author makes a point, and it is one I have never heared before (even at my alma mater), that America grew out of the medieval political systems. I have always argued, and indeed so has every one else, that America grew out of Locke, and even (shame on us if it is true) Hobbes. The author argues, however, that America ows more to Thomas Aquinas than to Locke. But now I am off topic, the point is that this essay is a wonderful birthday card to our country from a wise and understaning European (and I highly recommend that you spend time perusing the other post on the blog).

Tunak: Tunak: Tunak

I did promise to my self that I would stop blogging two times a day. I will not keep that promise today. Why? Because I saw this on the corner.

TUNAK [Jonah Goldberg]

If you want to know how NRO can keep up the blistering pace it does, you'll need to download this. Click on one of the "download mirrors" links and you'll hear the music (and see the video) we have blasting in the backround at NRO 24/7.

And than this posted two hours later.

TUNAK CONT'D [Tunak Sub-Commander Alpha 4-7]
Seriously, you gotta download tunak man. It's all about tunak. Download it. Do it now. There's no way my plan for global domination will ever come to fruition if you don't download the tunak mind-reprogramming software. Oh, dang, did I say that last sentence outloud?

I don't know if tunak means as much to you as it does to me, but I hold a special place in my heart for it, and the tunak man. (I think he's hot!)

The Left CAN Make Intellectual Arguments!

I always hear that there is no longer an intellectual debate in the public square. What happens, so the conventional wisdom goes, is that the conservatives make well reasoned arguments, and then the liberals lose their tempers and start throwing insults around. For instance you'll offten hear liberals saying things like, "A Republican has never one an honest days work" or "Republicans are just white Christians". So it was with great pleasure that I stumbled unto the National Orginization for Women's web site amd saw a well thought out intellectual argument. No almarist propaganda on their web site. Just well documented facts and indisputable conclusions.

Theologian: Christian: Man For His Times

"I pray for the defeat of my counrty, for I think that is the only possibility of praying for all the suffering that my counrty has caused in the world." Dietrich Bonhoeffer: September 1941.

I am reading the mammoth sized biography of Dietrich Bonoeffer by his close friend Eberhard Bethge. Bonoeffer was the Theologian who took part in the plot to kill Hitler and was then hung buy the Gestapo. His biography is a profound, moving and inspiring story. It paints a picture of a Germany that we so often forget existed. He belonged to a happy family, and moved in the upper social circles of religious, cultural, and political Berlin. His family and all of his friends where anti-Hitler from the begining. Thus, many of his childhood friends had been making plans to depose or kill Hitler from 1/31/33 on. Many of those same friends also faced their deaths at the hands of the Gestapo for their actions. In fact in the book there is a list of Bonhoeffers friends, and brothers in-law, and the reader cannot help but notice that so many of them died in 1945.

Bethge, the author, again and again makes a distinction between Germany (and the German people), and Hitler (and the Nazis). These two where never the same. The whole book is a testement to how wrong the theses of books like Hitler's Willing Executioners are. More than that the true nature of Germany during the war stands as an indictment to the west. Churchill never made the distinction; he only called for victory. This had very negative affect on the oppositon inside of Germany, and forced the war to be prolonged until its inevitable end. The combatent death toll alone from such a policy of the west is unacceptable. Then if you consider that without such a policy Hitler would not be in power by 1941 (which means no Russian war and no Final Solution). It is somewhat understandible that Churchill would not want to see such a distinction, but how is it we still don't make the distinction? 60 years later we still consider, at least in American pop culture, that to be a German in the 30's was to be a national socialist. One of the best stories in the biography is about a pastor who would chastize the nazis during his sermon, and wow to the S.A. member who wore his brown shirt in church! Well sometime in 38, over a year before the war and three years before the Final Solution, the Gestapo arrested this pastor and beat him to death. What I want to illustrate with this story is that in our modern world we need modern saints (a point made offten by the late great pope), and this pastor and Bonhoeffer are such saints. Granted they where protastant, but still Unam Sanctum, Catolicum. What is more, these saints need a modern hagiography, and Bethge's Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography is a step in that direction.