Octopodial Chrome

Well, I’d the rottenest Thanksgiving thus far. My brother Thomas was on the East Coast celebrating with his new wife (which is right and proper—but I miss them both nonetheless). I’m recovering from surgery and in no small amount of pain. My brothers spent the day playing Halo 2 on an XBox, despite a plethora of board and card games we could have played together, enjoying one another’s company. I had to work the day after Thanksgiving, which has normally been a holiday. And one of my brothers decided to harangue me with his imbecilic and thoroughly ignorant economic theories (worthy of a Kerry voter, not of anyone with an IQ above room temperature) throughout dinner, rather than discussing pleasant subjects.

On the plus side, the turkey was excellent. My mother brined it this year, an excellent and commendable idea. And I did manage to do a decent job of carving the bird, which was gratifying. Other than that, it was a thoroughly miserable day: the most enjoyable thing I did all day was take a nap after dinner.

Some guys got together and built a throne out of AOL CDs. I want one!

Dinesh D'Souza wrote a great article about why he loves America; worth reading, all you lefty sorts.

A priest I know forwarded this report from the Hebrew Press. It appears to have come from a Jewish blog, so one doubts that it is Greek or Orthodox fabrication. The story does note that there are different deaths for Mr. Kanidis.

In an act of unlimited devotion and dedication,to the bitter end, an elderly teacher insisted on remaining with his students. He protected them, bandaged their wounds, and with his death,saved their lives.

Children who escaped from the school told of how they owed their lived to elderly Yanis(Ivan)Kanidis, age 74—a man of Greek origin who worked as a gym teacher at the school. He was among the hundreds of teachers, students and parents taken hostage last week when Chechen rebels invaded the large school.

On Thursday, in what was an unusual humanitarian move in the midst of the horror, the terrorists agreed to allow a group of women and babies to leave the building. The commander of the terrorist squad, saw Kanidis—a sickly elderly man [ed: one wonders at how these bastards can show some mercy towards infants and the elderly, but not to children—but then their so-called prophet married a little girl, as they admit]—and offered to allow him to walk free as well.

But Kanidis refused. I will stay with my students till the end, the teacher insisted.

Whatever you say, said the terrorist, dismissing him with a wave of the hand.

He was just like Janus Korzchak, who accompanied his pupils to Auschwitz, said one of the students who was saved.

Like Korzchak, Kanidis didn't just accompany his students, he guarded their lives. On Friday, when the children began to lose consciousness from the stuffy air and their thirst, Yanis went to the terrorists. You have to give them something to drink, at least to the smallest children, he insisted angrily. One of the terrorists hit him with the butt of his rifle, but the teacher continued to yell: How dare you!? You claim you are people of the Kafkaz region,but here in the Kafkaz even a dog wouldn't turn down the request of an old man!

His efforts bore fruit. The terrorist allowed the teacher to wet one of the bibs of the children and pass it around to dampen the mouths of the little ones who were choking from thirst. The hostages who escaped told how the teacher repeatedly risked his own life in order to save the children. He moved explosive devices that the terrorists had placed near the young students, and tried to prevent them from detonating others.

When the first bomb exploded next to the windows of the school, parents and children began to run out. The terrorists, trying to prevent their escape, threw a grenade at them. The elderly teacher ran to the grenade to prevent it from exploding on the children. One of the terrorists shot at the teacher to try to stop him and Yanis was wounded in the shoulder—but didn't give up.

With the last of his strength, he continued to run, jumped on the grenade, covering it with his body.

The grenade exploded, and the body of the teacher absorbed the explosion, protecting the children around him from injury.

If true, it’s quite a tale.

A CNN article about a wealthy man who worked as a janitor in retirement and left a large sum to a university mention one Oseola McCarty, of Hattiesburg, Miss.: a washerwoman who donated $150,000 to The University of Southern Mississippi. Now that’s a story worth reading: a little old lady spends her life scrimping and saving, and then in 1995 she gave 60% of her accumulated wealth to a school regarding which she noted, they used to not let coloured people go out there, but now they do, and I think they should have it. I don’t believe that I could be so forgiving.

Anyway, this old woman never learnt to drive a car and only purchased an air conditioner at about the time of her gift—and despite the attention she got back in ’95, she never seemed to really take much note of all the fuss. A remarkable story; I encourage the reader to peruse the entire site. She passed away in 1999.

CNN have an article on crunk—what is it? So far as I can tell, another form of debased amusic for the hypocephalic sub-men who make up an ever-larger percentage of our population.

Every year the RCMP riot squad practise their skill against a local barony’s SCA fighters. This is just way to cool:riot police against armoured fighters. Originally spotted in a link to a web forum.

James S. Robbins writes about the Afghani talwildar (key-holders) who preserved their nation’s treasures through the chaos of Soviet invasion and Taliban theocracy. After a quarter century their task is complete, and they have returned the priceless artifacts they guarded.

Samuel Pepys has the oldest blog in existence. I find this curiously amusing.

One of the signs of getting older is when one is driving in a car, sees a pretty girl and start to ogle…appreciate her personality from afar—only to realise that there’s a baby on the seat next to her. I suppose that this is no big deal in the slums, when it happens at 13, but out here it’s something of a blow when one realises that one has become old enough that one’s contemporaries are old enough to get married and have children.

Well, something even worse happened yesterday. I was in a store, saw a pretty gal, then saw her kid and didn’t even care. I guess I ought to buy a coffin now…

I’ve recently been watching Alias, a television series about a gal in the intel biz. Last night as she and her fellow agent entered a Swedish nightclub, I realised something: everywhere they go, she changes costume—this night it might be one type of dress, tomorrow another and the next day something else entirely—while his disguise always consists of a coat and tie. Now, far be it for me to disdain coat and tie, but doesn’t it seem unfair to us fellows that we do not get a chance to show off in order to attract gals, while they get to show off to attract us? Not that I mind them showing themselves off, of course—but it’d be cool to be able to do the same.

I think I could figure out that. The whole having-a-personality thing is much more difficult…

On Thursday I changed out the oil in my deep fryer and in the process filled up one of my used-oil bottles. This presented me with a bit of a problem: what to do with the foul stuff. It seems wrong to just cast it into the dustbin, and I’ve only so many cast iron kitchen utensils to season.

Someone suggested that I burn it in a lamp, and I’ve recently bid on and won a very nice piece, but a lamp only uses up oil so quickly. Someone else suggested that I make soap from it, and another posted a procedure meant to strip much of the reek from oil. So I tried it, and now have a pie-plate’s worth of new soap curing. I seasoned it with hyssop, ginger, cardamom, clove & cinnamon in the hopes of covering the lard and used-corn-oil smell, decreased though that might have been by the washing procedure (it involves boiling with water, salt and baking soda). I also added a bit of olive oil, but that’s not an offensive smell. They soap-cakes don’t seem to smell like anything other than soap, so it seems to have worked.

Jonah Goldberg sets the record straight on John Ashcroft. A must-read, if only for the real story behind the topless statue cover-up.

Apparently many television stations are refusing to air Saving Private Ryan because they fear the FCC. The Commission refuses to tell them whether or not airing it would be permissible, claiming that it would be censorship if they told them beforehand. As though it weren’t censorship to do it afterwards as well!

Whatever happened to free speech? If you’re a parent who doesn’t wish your kids to see the film, don’t let them. If they see it anyway, well that’s part of growing up. If you’re an adult who doesn’t wish to see it, then don’t.

Twits who whine about being offended by what they choose to view annoy me to no end.

Michael Ledeen writes engagingly on the Theo van Gogh murder. His thesis is that the murderer was a product of a European attitude which is beyond tolerance, a kind of suicidal ignorance of one’s enemies.

Recently found How to Write Unmaintainable Code; it’s an amusing compendium of how not to write code. I’ve a nasty feeling I’ve done some of it, too…

It occurs to me that we on the right are not really all that different from those on the left: for the most part, we want the same things; it’s just that we disagree on how to achieve them. We conservatives want to lift up the poor; we want to ensure that no-one goes to bed hungry; we want health care to be affordable; we want every able student to get a good education—we just believe, based on sound economic principles, that a free market will do a far better and fairer job of ensuring that outcome than will state socialism; those on the left disagree.

We all want to prevent unjust killing: it’s just that those on the left see nothing wrong with slaying infants yet object to executing child rapists or fighting a war against a bloody tyrant. We on the right see things rather reversed.

We all want a clean environment: no-one wants the air he breathes to be filthy or the water he drinks to be foul. We differ on how far to go, yes. And it seems to me that the Right could care a bit more for nature than we appear to (although how much of that is media trickery is another matter).

None of us argues that we should be cruel to animals or wasteful of resources. We do disagree on what exactly is cruel or wasteful—but we agree in principle.

No-one openly advocates racism. There are many on the Left who advocate racism against whites, but I believe for the most part they are in the minority, just as those on the Right who are racists are in the minority (although there are rather more of the former than the latter).

No-one, Right or Left, wishes women to be legally subservient to me.

Even on the issue of gay marriage (very probably the reason we won the recent election), my own perception is that the vast majority of Americans are willing to live and let live when it comes to homosexuals: very, very few would argue that their lifestyle should be illegal. Most would support some sort of civil union carrying with it many of the rights which civil marriage carries.

We all agree that religious freedom is important. Many on the Right don’t see prayer in school as infringing on that freedom—I happen to disagree—while many on the Left seem to think that religious freedom means never being reminded that anyone has a religion. But thoughtful people on both sides, I think, can come to an agreement on most issues.

It seems to me that our similarities outweigh our differences and that if we could recognise this then tempers needn’t run quite so high, as they recently have amongst the ignorant.

Well, Bush beat Kerry. This is good—as bad as George Bush has been, Kerry would have been far, far, far worse. It was important to defeat him, and so far as presidential elections go it was a pretty decisive victory. Here in Colorado, unfortunately, Democrats took the contested Senate seat as well as both houses of our state legislature.

Worse yet, an alternative-energy amendment to our constitution passed, which will drive up energy prices without any real effect. On the good side, the amendment to destroy our electoral significance died an ignominious death.

Worst of all, an amendment to massively increase tobacco taxes passed with flying colours. The benighted, tyrannical, foolish, despotic, evil voters decided to steal money from smokers, chewers and snuff-takers and use those ill-gotten funds for anti-tobacco propaganda. The worst of it is that the brunt of these punitive measures will be borne by poor folks. I don’t really care that my few tins a year will go up (well, I do, but it doesn’t really hurt me), but the poor slob who smokes a pack a day will end up spending hundreds extra a year to fund a campaign dedicated to opposing him. It’s like Hitler raising taxes on the Jews to fund an anti-Semitic newspaper.

Given that God likes freedom (He gave us free will, after all), and given that it’s a sin to oppose His will, I am certain that every single bastard who voted for the accurséd legislation will spend eternity burning in Hell. I feel sorry for them: their victory in this life will seem as naught compared to their misery in the next. On the other hand, they deserve every lick of flame and every lash of the whip, so I’m not shedding too many tears for them (I have too many faults of my own to regret). They had the chance to do what is right, and they chose the path of iniquity.

At least John Kerry won’t be president. That would have been an absolute disaster, probably worse than the Clinton years (for the stakes are higher now).

I’ve just ordered The Knights Next Door. It looks to be a very interesting read about the SCA and other recreational mediaevalists. I can’t wait for it to arrive.

As I write, things look favourable for Bush, but we’re not out of the woods yet. A Kerry victory would be disastrous for this nation and would doom our efforts to defeat radical Islamism, and yet some 36 million voters (at the current count) support his agenda. The states still up for grabs (as well as the current counts) by the C-SPAN reckoning are: Washington (50-49 Bush); Oregon (43-57 Kerry); Nevada (48-51 Kerry); Colorado (52-47 Bush); New Mexico (51-48 Bush); Minnesota (45-54 Kerry); Iowa (48-51 Kerry); Michigan (48-51 Kerry); Wisconsin (48-51 Kerry); Ohio (52-48 Bush); New Hampshire (49-51 Kerry); and Florida (52-47 Bush) (and Alaska and Hawaii, but there are no results yet from either). That means that by the current reckoning, Bush has 210 dead and 66 possible and Kerry has 188 dead and 60 possible, with another 7 votes going who-knows-where. It’s all very much up in the air: anything can happen. But both Florida and Ohio look in the bag for Bush, which is vital.

I’m worried sick that the electorate have made the wrong decision, but so far it’s too early to tell. I hate democratic government: give me hereditary rule any day of the week. We’d know the next king from the day he was born.