I can't really speak to this

 

I don't know why people like picking on those things. When I lived in Louisville back in the 90s, I recall a news story from my old stomping grounds in Columbus.   Apparently some vandals tore down one of the Big Boy statues, dismembered it, and then drove around the city putting its parts in different locations. 

Now, I'm not one to make light of breaking the law or people engaging in property damage.  But I admit, that one made me giggle.  Still, I've never understood the glee people have in dissing on the Big Boy mascot, apart from the obvious. 

Orwell never went this far

The headline alone says it all:

Some states are trying to make sex binary?   You've got to be kidding me.  Go back twenty years and say that and you'd be met with blank stares from everyone in the room.  This shows the speed with which we're sinking and sinking fast.    

It's all about power and the removal of the Christian Western tradition.  Pick almost anything assumed to be true, and throw it on its head. It can be as ludicrous as you want.  Right now, go through the Mental Health industry.  Because despite statistics to the contrary, we're convinced the MHI is infallible and can do no wrong and solve all of our problems.  If it says C-A-T spells dog, then by golly it's true.  The press will approve this message.

At the end of the day, this is telling us that O'Brien was holding up five fingers.  Because four fingers is really five.  The MHI says so, the press affirms it, and you had best get with the act or else.  When your society has reached that level, it's no longer case of when will it collapse, but when did it collapse. 

UPDATE:  In keeping with the press as the machine of lies and exploitation, I was shown this.  It's about a young person dragged into the madness of post-gender reality, and who has died.  Before the death, there was a fight. in school  In the 'oppressed is always good and can do no wrong/oppressor is always evil and can do no right' template, there is not even an attempt to ask who might have started it.  Transgender = oppressed = always good = can do no wrong.   That's all we need to know. 

But the part that gets me is that the media has been trying to squeeze what exploitation it can from this, with the usual activists and lawyers jumping on board.  Yet the only thing we know about the death at this point is from the preliminary autopsy here:

The latest police statement says preliminary autopsy information indicates that the teenager "did not die as a result of trauma".

So the only thing that has been said is that the death was possibly not due to trauma.  It reminds me of that ABC story that shocked the world and then was swept under the carpet. You know.  The one involving Matthew Shepard that admitted one of the men accused of killing him was, in fact, part of the LGBTQ community.  That is, it wasn't a "hate crime."  Yet it was the main impetus for ramrodding the - then - controversial notion of 'hate crimes' and 'hate speech' into our social order.  

I wonder what really happened with this poor youngster swept up in our modem age of expedient insanity.  I doubt we'll ever know.  I do know that our media is now to the point of literally letting us know it is promoting BS and lies and doesn't even care.  At least it could have left the part about it possibly not being due to the trauma out of the story.  That it knows it can put it right there in front of us, and then proceed to push the agenda based on BS, shows where we've gotten to, and just how crazy things have become. 

Friday frivolity: A strange interlude

As I ponder a dream I had last night.  I was in a large open field, in which apparently some of it was our own personal garden.  It was this time of year, a grey cloudy day, and I was pulling up old dead plants and vines.  A couple of my sons were there, though not all.  I don't recall which ones, nor do I think it was made clear in the dream.  I just know they weren't all there.  As I was pulling up some old, brown vines I mentioned to them that I still needed to remove the hyacinths.  

The hyacinths?  Hyacinths?  Why them?  I'm sure I've seen some in my life, but never have we tired to grow them or even have them in the house that I'm aware of.  I don't even know if we could.  I'm not a big flower person.  I know the basics and the famous ones.  For instance, I can tell a rose from a dandelion or a carnation. But I'm no floral expert.  So why hyacinths?  Why not roses, or violets, or even tomato plants? What is the significance?  

The only thing I can think is that we watched the old DVD version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats last night for pizza night. Not the horrific nightmare movie that came out on the eve of Covid.  It was the delightful filmed version of the Broadway phenomenon that was released in the late 1990s.  My third son, as physically strong and outgoing as he is, has a soft spot for musicals, including musical theater.  Phantom of the Opera is one of his favorites.   He also loves Cats.  So last night, with three of the brothers available (the other one is in play practice this week for a local theater production of Miracle on 34th Street), we decided to watch that for his sake.  He's had some pretty rough weeks at his workplace, and we thought that might cheer him up. 

While we were watching, we were talking (as we often do over things we've seen before) about Webber's success with this production. One of the biggest Broadway hits of the century, displaced only by his next musical Phantom of the Opera.  We said Webber had a knack for taking some pretty obscure sources and making them work, such as a musical based on Eliot's work Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.  We said it's easy in hindsight, but how does one make such a book of poetry into a smash hit musical?  Then my oldest son quipped that sure Webber  made this one work, but did he ever try a musical based on The Waste Land? 

I wonder.  Could that be the connection?  That's the best I can come up with. Dreams are weird they say, but I've never read much into them.  Nonetheless, it did strike me as random.

There was nothing else yesterday?

Hey Google, certainly there was something or someone worth featuring yesterday, March 15, for your little Google doodle:

I'll be honest, I've never had Filipino Adobo.  I'm sure it's a fine dish.  But are we certain that was the best we could come up with to represent the date, given all of the humans, events and accomplishments of the last few thousand years?  

This was an actual show when I was young

Which explains a lot.  I don't know why this showed up on one of my Facebook pages.  I did watch it some, tripped out though it was.  Even as a kid I got the strange feeling that there was some hidden meaning behind parts of the writing.  

They filmed some of the intro in Cincinnati, though it wasn't Kings Island.  Kings Island didn't open until 1972 (the Brady Bunch actually filmed a special episode around its opening).  Nonetheless, as a kid who must have seen it in reruns, I assumed King Island, which was a connection in my mind. 

It had different side-segments throughout each episode.  One was the Arabian Nights, and another show featuring who I later learned was Jan Michael Vincent.  I also remember some crude live action/animation skit around Tom Sawyer and the gang. I recall the late Ted Cassidy was Injun Joe, though in cartoon form (its likeness to him was apparent). I think that was actually a different show that was interspersed with the Banana Splits.  We won't discuss the Sour Grapes Bunch. 

Other than that, don't remember much about it, except the continued pesky impression I had that I was missing something behind the jokes.  Anyway, here is the opening theme which I admit was quite catchy, and I can still hum along with it all these years later: 

I have no clue what this means

 

I've seen the initial post eviscerated by more than one tolerant and compassionate Catholic.

I don't know exactly what Mr. Sammons meant about men leading the Church.  It's been a long lament since I became Christian that men hold the 'formal and technical' leadership in various (but not all) Christian traditions.  They sure don't live it, however.  Perhaps that's what he means.  Maybe he means men need to stop leaving church to hit the links and watch the games and making women do everything but lead in name. 

Whatever he meant, whether something common sense, or a secret code for society to revert to the Handmaid's Tale, I don't know.  One thing I do know is that I have absolutely no clue what Alt's response is about.  I get the feeling he thinks it's really one golly gee of a zinger.  Or he maybe he just wrote words because jargon words.  It's anyone's guess I suppose.   

Words fail me

 So apparently this was a thing:

A Harlequin Romance inspired ... wargame?  That's Avalon Hill, the company I've praised many times over the years for its catalogue of wargaming fun and sound historical scholarship to boot.  

But this?  I just can't imagine how this works.  I'd like to think it was a put-on, or meant for the humor.  But it goes to show you something when it comes to remembering the past.  We sometimes remember the best of the past, while looking at and lamenting so much goofy or junk today.  Sometimes it's worth remembering that the goofy junk has always been around.  It's just that good taste and common sense have a way of filtering it out as the years droll on.  You're only in trouble when we begin actively lifting up the junk, and working to eliminate the best of the past. 

Remember when men not showing their groin area to young children was considered a good thing?

Yep.  This strange, bizarre flanking maneuver called 'Drag Queen Story Hour' that is spreading like wildfire around libraries in America is one for the books.  It's basically just 'This is our country now, screw you!' to anyone not on board with the secular Left.

It's done in our public libraries.  Recently a local library tried the same, but there was backlash.  One of my sons was part of organizing the backlash.  The protest was less based on 'you can't do that' as much as it was 'will you allow a pro-life or anti-gay marriage presentation as well?'.   Of course the question was deflected, outrage at intolerance ensued (intolerance being defined as failing to conform to liberal dogmas), and finally the library said they had to cancel due to death threats.

No actual threats were ever posted.  The police insist the threats were legit, and yet the drag queen in question merely moved down the road to a comic book store to give the story hour.  Exactly why someone who's life was endanger was allowed to publicly declare they would be down the street a week later is beyond my understanding of security measures.

But I think this is one of those little diversions that happen in times of war.  In the movie The Guns of Navarone, David Niven plays the wonderfully witty demolition expert Corporal Miller.  At the end of the movie, as they are setting the charges to destroy the fortress, Miller is seen putting some explosives in the crevices of the monster guns they are commissioned to eliminate.  Gregory Peck's character, the leader Captain Mallory, asks what is going on.  Miller explains that the explosives in the guns themselves are more or less a diversion.  The Germans aren't stupid after all.  They'll likely find them.  Of course some German demolition expert might get careless and produce the desired results.  Nonetheless, Miller says his bet is on a different trick he's devised, and proceeds to show Captain Mallery what it is.

I think of that when I consider the modern Left.  Almost every day is a full assault from a dozen different sources against almost anything we took for granted as true a half dozen years ago.  I don't think they put much faith in these things going through.  I mean, showing our groin area to kids is not something they should think will fly.  And yet, they're doing it.  Anyone, no matter how debauched or decadent, is given a microphone, a camera, and a stage.  The purpose, my guess, is a diversion.

Nonetheless, if some fringe lunacy sticks - like the idea that sex and babies are barely related, or that boys and girls don't objectively exists - all the better.  So down the road, there may be nothing come of this.  If it turns out opening a door to sex with children and all sex celebrated, no problem.  My guess is that its main purpose, along with the whole Drag Queen Story Hour fad, is simply to keep the opposition running about, putting out endless fires, and not paying attention to the real clouds gathering on the horizon.

Words fail me

Vincent Price and Alice Cooper in Welcome To My Nightmare, 1975

Sometimes even Halloween can't justify the 70s. 

The most addictively disturbing commercial from the Super Bowl

Troubles with the Internet today

For some reason, everything keeps freezing up.  Don't know why.  I appreciate the visits and the comments.   Hopefully it will be back and running today or tomorrow.  But for now, enjoy this clip from the early days of my blog.  It was one of my boys' favorites, and they loved reciting it.  It's a strange routine, made all the stranger by three teenage girls: 

Shirt sayings I'd like to see

Speaking of songs of my early childhood

Playground in My Mind.  Warning, there's more where this came from!  I remember this from school, early grade school that is. The lazy, hazy days of innocence long gone.  It had to be innocent to get any kind of kick from this bizarre tune.

Worried the Peter Jackson will mess with The Hobbit?

Well my friends, worry no more.  There is nothing, absolutely nothing that he could do to change The Hobbit that would equal this:



I'm really at a loss for words.  I'm sure there is something, somewhere that says A for ingenuity, or effort, or imagination, or something.  But right now I'm still trying to make sense of it all.  I'm thinking it might be a put-on, but still not sure.