A Decade of Mercy

I'm about to head to bed and by the time I wake up, this little dude's odometer will have turned, and he'll be in double digits.

Sure, my youngest hitting the decade mark makes me feel older than any of my own birthdays could. But the important -- and mind-blowing -- thing is that this one has made it this far in pretty good health and spirits. Sure, there've been more hospitalizations for him than the rest of my little family combined (more than double, actually) -- but none have been truly worrisome, really they've mostly been expensive annoyances. (for the skinny on this, if you're new to the saga, click here)

We don't owe this to his own strength and perseverance (which he has in spades), to the care of his wonderful mother, his passable father, his supportive siblings (who are really his most devoted caretakers when it counts), the grandparents and extended family who are always ready to drop everything and help, his two excellent doctors, or anything else merely human.

It's the mercy and care of Our Lord, who by His providence has given him better health, greater strength, and better kidney function than anyone could've expected. But this covenant child, recipient of the promise of God is seeing His God's hand at work in his life. He, more than many his age, can see that (in the words of Thomas Watson) "We are kept alive by a wonderful-working Providence. Providence makes our clothes to warm us, and our food to nourish us. We are fed every day out of the alms-basket of God's providence. That we are in health, that we have an estate, is not by our diligence—but God's providence."

So tonight we celebrated the anniversary of his birth. We celebrated the time we've had with him, and the time we look forward to. But most of all, consciously or not, we celebrated the Triune God's care for him.

Gracious Lord, I thank you for our little Arnold, and beg Your continued care for his health as I plead for You to draw him to a saving knowledge of You.

And son? Happy birthday, and Lord willing, many happy returns.

. . .I turned out to be the man she loved…To this day I don't know exactly what she loved about me and that's because I don't have to know. She just does. It was the entire menu of myself. She ordered all of it.

- Charles Baxter

New Year's Wishes and whatnot

To start off the New Year, I tried to come up with something to say about resolutions or goals or Happy New Year, and honestly couldn't come up with anything.

And then I made the mistake of reading Neil Gaiman's blog post yesterday*, everything he said there is good, but this resonated with me the most:

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

.
So, let's just go with that...what he said. And I hope your 2012 is at least as good as, if not better than, 2011 was.



* just kidding, reading Gaiman is almost never a mistake

Happy Birthday, Samwise! (or...Man, I Need to Tweak my Camera Settings)

In Commemoration of Samwise's 12th Birthday, I took a stab at a Popcorn Cake.

I think he liked the looks of it:

TLoML described the cake as a popcorn ball mixed with trail mix. Frodo said it was like a movie theater's concession's stand after an earthquake. Both I think were compliments. :) Pretty tasty, actually, and fairly easy. "Sticky", "gooey" and "a giant mess" begin to describe the process of making it.

After that, we gave him his new Nook (yes, my boys are e-book readers now...*sigh*). This is mostly him being excited, and a little bit of him being a giant ham.

yeah, yeah, yeah, the pictures are lousy. I know, I know.

Happy Independence Day!

A New Favorite Election Day Quotation

haven't read this one since high school (will be starting it Monday again), so it's not a big surprise that I didn't have this one queued up for today/other Election Days.

The most interesting incident Tuesday morning was my walking to a building on Thirty-fourth Street to enter a booth and push levers on a voting machine. I have never understood why anybody passes up that bargain. It doesn't cost a cent, and for that couple of minutes, you're the star of the show, with top billing. It's the only way that really counts for you to say I'm it, I'm the one that decides what's going to happen and who's going to make it happen. It's the only time I really feel important and know I have a right to. Wonderful. Sometimes the feeling lasts all the way home if somebody doesn't bump me.

- Archie Goodwin

Happy Birthday, Archie

On Oct 23 in Chillicothe, Ohio, Archie Goodwin entered this world--no doubt with a smile for the pretty nurses--and American detective literature was never the same.

I'm toasting him in one of the ways I think he'd appreciate most--by raising a glass of milk in his honor.

Who was Archie? Archie summed up his life thusly:

Born in Ohio. Public high school, pretty good at geometry and football, graduated with honor but no honors. Went to college two weeks, decided it was childish, came to New York and got a job guarding a pier, shot and killed two men and was fired, was recommended to Nero Wolfe for a chore he wanted done, did it, was offered a full-time job by Mr. Wolfe, took it, still have it." (Fourth of July Picnic)

Long may he keep it. Just what was he employed by Wolfe to do? In The Black Mountain he answers the statement, "I thought you was a private eye" with:

I don't like the way you say it, but I am. Also I am an accountant, an amanuensis, and a cocklebur. Eight to five you never heard the word amanuensis and you never saw a cocklebur.

In The Red Box, he says

I know pretty well what my field is. Aside from my primary function as the thorn in the seat of Wolfe's chair to keep him from going to sleep and waking up only for meals, I'm chiefly cut out for two things: to jump and grab something before the other guy can get his paws on it, and to collect pieces of the puzzle for Wolfe to work on.

In Black Orchids, he reacts to an insult:

...her cheap crack about me being a ten-cent Clark Gable, which was ridiculous. He simpers, to begin with, and to end with no once can say I resemble a movie actor, and if they did it would be more apt to be Gary Cooper than Clark Gable.

In case you're wondering if this post was simply an excuse to go through some collections of Archie Goodwin quotations, you wouldn't be totally wrong...he's one of the fictional characters I like spending time with most in this world--he's the literary equivalent of comfort food. So just a couple more great lines I've quoted here before:

I would appreciate it if they would call a halt on all their devoted efforts to find a way to abolish war or eliminate disease or run trains with atoms or extend the span of human life to a couple of centuries, and everybody concentrate for a while on how to wake me up in the morning without my resenting it. It may be that a bevy of beautiful maidens in pure silk yellow very sheer gowns, barefooted, singing "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning" and scattering rose petals over me would do the trick, but I'd have to try it.

I looked at the wall clock. It said two minutes to four. I looked at my wrist watch. It said one minute to four. In spite of the discrepancy it seemed safe to conclude that it would soon be four o'clock.

"Indeed," I said. That was Nero Wolfe's word, and I never used it except in moments of stress, and it severely annoyed me when I caught myself using it, because when I look in a mirror I prefer to see me as is, with no skin grafted from anybody else's hide, even Nero Wolfe's.

Better Luck Next Year

In honor of our 14th anniversary I was going to try to compile some advice, some pearls of wisdom to share for the younger men in my audience.

Alas, it all came out like Sawyer's English lesson for Jin.

I'll try to start earlier on it next year, maybe I'll come up with something worth passing along

Lifting a Pint for Sam

Patriot Samuel Adams was born this day in 1722. Adams was one of the men behind the Boston Tea Party, was a delegate to the Continental Congress 1774-1781, signed the Declaration of Independence, and served as Governor of Massachusetts (1794-1797). When he wasn't showing more political courage, backbone and conviction than every elected person currently in Washington, D. C., he brewed beer. From what I understand, he was a far better politician than a brewer. It's in this connection that most people know about him today (I don't even want to think about how many college freshman know what the Boston Tea Party is...), his name is now attached to a very fine beer (not a great one, mind you), but one worthy of the name.

Thomas Jefferson called him the "Patriarch of Liberty," his cousin John (you may have heard of him) said:

Without the character of Samuel Adams, the true history of the American Revolution can never be written. For fifty years his pen, his tongue, his activity, were constantly exerted for his country without fee or reward.

Here's a few gems of wisdom from his pen:

If Virtue & Knowledge are diffus'd among the People, they will never be enslav'd. This will be their great Security.

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsel or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands of those who feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you. May posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.

The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.

Were the talents and virtues which heaven has bestowed on men given merely to make them more obedient drudges, to be sacrificed to the follies and ambition of a few? Or, were not the noble gifts so equally dispensed with a divine purpose and law, that they should as nearly as possible be equally exerted, and the blessings of Providence be equally enjoyed by all?

A general dissolution of the principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy.... While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.... If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security.

How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!

Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.

If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of Almighty God, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.

It is a very great mistake to imagine that the object of loyalty is the authority and interest of one individual man, however dignified by the applause or enriched by the success of popular actions.

All might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they should.

He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of this country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man.

If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.

Driven from every other corner of the earth, freedom of thought and the right of private judgment in matters of conscience, direct their course to this happy country as their last asylum.

A Point of Personal Privilege, and a Word of Thanks

...come to think of it, isn't pretty much everything here Personal Privilege? hmmm...

Happy Blogg-iversary to Me
Happy Blogg-iversary to Me
Happy Blogg-iversary dear Pax, Amor, et Lepos in Iocando (né White Noise)
Happy Blogg-iversary to Me

Thanks to everyone who reads, comments (not enough), visits, or has done so over the last 8 years. Wouldn't be the same without ya.

Safe from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxyhas a few things to say on the subject of towels.

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in "Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is." (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)

I may not have gone where I intended to go,
but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
- Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams
(1952 - 2001)

What's Towel Day? Wired has a handy article from last year, and another from this year?. Of course, Towelday.org has the best round-up.

^* You'll note Frodo's missing from these photos, he took them having reached the age where he can't really lower himself to get into his dad's goofiness. His own brand of goofiness, on the other hand...

Thoughts on Earth Day

In an effort to conserve energy and resources (my own), here's a few things I thought were worth reading on the topic of Earth Day.

• from Big Government, an alternative commemoration.
  
• from Big Hollywood, environmentally hypocritical Hollywood
  
• my pal critiques Earth Day
  
• thought I had others, but I guess not, should just preserve electrons, I guess.

I demand a recount

According to some people, armed with such spurious things as "basic math" (or calculators), birth certificates, and calendars, Daddy's Little Princess turns 8 today. I, armed with paternal near-omniscience, know that it's impossible she's growing up that fast.

Nevertheless, Happy Birthday Sweetie.

Happy Birthday, Buddy

Happy Birthday, Arnold

This ol' ball of dirt has circled the big fiery thing in the sky 6 event-filled times since you first made your appearance. Thanks to you, very little bit of that time has been dull. Frequently funnier, always kinder and sweeter. I have no idea what the next several rotations have in store for you, but trust that you'll meet them with your typical aplomb and cheer.

Looking forward to it.

Thought for Valentine's Day

via Ken Levine:

I would like to offer an explanation for what love really is. It comes from that font of romance -- an episode of TAXI (written by Ken Estin).

Louie is trying to win back his girlfriend, Zena. He asks if she loves him. She says she doesn’t know what love is. He tells her she’s in luck because he does. And he’s the only person alive who can say that. He’s read what everyone else says love is and they’re always wrong. She finally asks him what it is, and Louie says:

"Love is the end of happiness!

The end. Because one day all a guy’s got to do to be happy is to watch the Mets. The next day you gotta have Zena in the room watching the Mets with you. You don’t know why. They’re the same Mets, it’s the same room…but you gotta have Zena there."

Happy Valentine's Day to The Love of My Life, incidentally. Glad you ended happiness for me 14 years ago.

Obligatory End of '09 Post

if you want a little soundtrack for the post, go ahead and get the embed playing below, there's nothing to see there, just to listen.

Anyway, it's time to wrap up this fairly productive year--'tho I just noticed it was nowhere near as productive as I thought when compared to years past. Oh well. I've had fun, I hope you have. I have some plans for next year, and who knows? I just might live up to them :) If I do, I'll let you know what they are (never works out when I announce in advance, that just seems to be the kiss of death). Naturally, any suggestions are welcome.

In particular, I want to thank tusconmom, Micah, TLomL, Steve and the other people kind enough to comment--even those who left their comments for facebook/email/IM. Major thanks need to go to Chris Oates who's done more to promote this thing than I've ever done.

I hope you all had a good year, with a better one to come. God bless.

Darlene Love on Letterman '09

As I've mentioned before, since back in his NBC days, it's just not the holiday season for me without this performance on Letterman's show (which, sadly, I can't catch anymore due to work). Thankfully, we have youtube:

Merry Happy!

I'd hoped to embed a video of Shirley's PC "Silent Night" (from NBC's Community), but alas, I cannot find it, so I'll have to find other ways to annoy my evangelical friends who doubt my salvation because of my attitude towards tomorrow (or whatever).

I do hope that everyone reading this has a good celebration and time with family, whatever justification you use for it.

Oh, speaking of which, you should all read this piece by an atheist, David Harsanyi, "Heathen's Greetings for Christmas"--not the most flattering piece, but well worth the time.

Another link I need to throw out is Stan "The Man" Lee's reading "'Twas the Night Before Christmas". A true classic.

Have a good one, everybody!

Feliĉan naskotagon L. L. Zamenhof

Do hodiaŭ estas la naskotago de la viro kiuj(n) inventis Esperanton. En lia honoro, Mi irus legitan iuj Harry Harrison ia, ŝajne -- lia Rustimuna ŝtalo Rato libroj estas la solaj loko Mi sci* kie ... uzis grave.

Kiu estas ia honto, vere, Mi havis amuzon lern ĝi jam en Mezlernejo -- nur dezir Mi memorita ĝin.

Top 5 Holiday Movies

Something got me thinking the other day about my favorite Christmas/Holiday movies and I figured just for fun, I'd list my Top 5 and ask you, my faithful readers, to speak up and name your own/debate mine. Hit a little roadblock, but still, worth a shot...

1. A Christmas Story, it's just the best, hands down, by far, the best. Funny, heartwarming, there's no way you can't relate to Ralphie/his brother/his parents/friends -- no matter how far we are from the time it's set in.

2. White Christmas, this is my mom's fault, she insists on watching this every year, it's just not Christmastime without this little gem. And hey, at the end of the day, Danny Kaye's funny.

3. Die Hard, "Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho." 'Nuff said.

oh, yeah, and Al's a better movie fat guy than anyone who's donned the Claus uniform

1. Elf, one of three Ferrell movies I can stand/enjoy. Honestly only watched this to kill time one Christmas Eve with TLomL. But Ferrell, Caan, Newhart sold me and had me rolling on the floor. Now that I know who Zooey Deschanel is, I should probably rewatch it just.

5. Uhhhh, this is pathetic, I can't come up with a fifth. The Scrooge flicks are okay at best, It's a Wonderful Life isn't that wonderful...can't think of any others, honestly.