“Brace yourself,” they said, “winter is coming”. Continue reading “Sunday Snapshots: Snow Day”
Sunday Snapshots: Snow Day
Castles Crumble Before The Storm
We built our castles in the air;
high above all else, they towered in the sky.
Monday Morning Grievance: Dangerous Drivers
It’s Monday and I haven’t had my coffee.
“Wait!” I hear you cry, “Didn’t you write about idiotic drivers a few weeks ago? Are you too lazy to come up with new material? Have you run dry so soon?”
Fair questions, Dear Reader, but I see a distinction between an idiot driver and a dangerous driver.
The idiotic driver has the ability to change, given proper instruction and negative reinforcement motivation.
A dangerous driver, on the other hand, should quite literally not be allowed to possess a license.
Consider this experience:
I was driving to the store the other day to pick up lunch and some medication for a splitting headache most likely brought on by a sugar high and the subsequent crash (I regret nothing) when I noticed a car driving erratically.
By erratically, I mean the car was driving such that the white line dividing two lanes of traffic flowing in the same direction perfectly bisected the vehicle.
OK, that may have been a bit technical, but I couldn’t think of a way to describe it that wouldn’t result in confusion and/or the wrong image in one’s mind.
Is everyone clear? Any questions to this point?
All right then, moving on.
Not only was this car blocking two lanes of traffic, it was also traveling approximately thirty miles per hour under the speed limit; remember: this is on a busy thoroughfare.
Fun fact: as of 1 January, it is illegal in our state to impede the flow of traffic, even if one is impeding traffic by going the actual, posted speed limit.
Yes, one can be fined for obeying the law if everyone around you is breaking it. I can only imagine what this driver would face.
Anyway, where was I?
Oh yes, the car.
The driver finally turned off the road; unfortunately, he appeared headed toward the same restaurant I wished to patronize.
He entered the nearest entrance, once again taking up both lanes – in this case the enter lane and the exit/turn lane, nearly hitting another patron’s car head-on.
Since he was going even slower than before, I went to the second entrance and approached the order kiosk thingy. As I placed my order, said driver pulled around me and nearly took off my front fender as he merged into the drive-through lane and stopped at the window.
I heard this over the intercom:
This car just pulled up.
[indistinct chatter]
I don’t know they just pulled up to my window. What should I do? What do I tell them? I haven’t been trained for this!
As I pulled forward – making sure to keep a safe distance between myself and the other driver – the car moved away from the pick-up window and into one of those spaces usually reserved for customers whose orders take a bit longer to prepare.
You know, you’re at the window and they’ve got to wait for fresh fries or chicken or something so they ask you to pull forward and someone will bring your order out momentarily.
Anyway, the driver parked in one of those spots with the same dexterity he showed on the open road, managing to get both drivers’-side tires up on a curb approximately six inches high and slamming his fender into the front curbing.
If this is how he always drives, the suspension on that vehicle is probably ruined. Either that, or he keeps a mechanic on retainer.
A woman of an age somewhere between thirty and one hundred emerged from the car and s l o w l y made her way across the parking lot, making sure to stop in front of those cars waiting to exit the lot and get on with their afternoons.
Having just picked up my order and glad the car was no longer a menace to me, I pulled into a space away from the other driver to examine my order – this particular chain has a nasty habit of forgetting the sides of a meal; once, they even forgot half my order! Anyway, this time I was missing necessary condiments for my meal, so I was obliged to go in the store.
The woman had placed a take-out order and was departing as I picked up my missing items.
Now on the alert, I waited until they left. In my rear view mirror, I saw the car back up all the way to the building – narrowly missing two cars in the drive-thru lane – and exit the parking lot in the same manner in which he arrived: taking up both lanes.
He exited onto a side street; one of those with one lane in each direction and a turn lane. He took all three lanes to make a right-hand turn (the lane nearest him) and proceeded down the road exactly as before.
Half the car in the right-hand lane, half the car in the turn lane, and entirely a menace to those around him.
If I ever get this bad, please do the right thing and hide my keys from me. I mean, I have a hard enough time keeping track of them as it is right now; by that point in my life, it should be a simple task indeed.
What’s Annoying You Today?
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Copper or Fondue ?
Seven years ago today, Krystal and I married (each other, in case that needed clarification).
Copper is the tradition gift for one’s seventh anniversary. But while I am (mostly) tradition, Krystal (most definitely) is not. She gave me:
Yes, it’s a 2012 penny, and this is what she said:
I looked for a new penny on purpose because I knew you’d look at it and say something like “Pennies haven’t been made of copper since 1982; that’s why I collect pennies before 1982 for squishing“.
Well, thanks to you, I already know all of that. I just gave you the penny to see if you’d say it. Muwahahahahaha
We didn’t exchange actual gifts this year, but we did go to our normal anniversary restaurant: The Melting Pot.
As it’s a bit pricey for our normal budget, this is a once-a-year, save-all-year event. We first went to the Melting Pot for our second anniversary, and we missed last year due to finances as Krystal was out of work, making this our Fifth Fondue-versary. We’ve never been disappointed.
Our server for the evening was Emily, who just so happened to be a first-year high school history teacher! As we arrived early in the evening, the restaurant was not yet busy so Krystal and I were able to spend some time giving her tips for surviving the first year.
But now, on to the good stuff.
The Menu
Cheese Course
Bourbon Bacon Cheddar – cheddar cheese, lager beer, mustard powder, garlic, bacon, Worcestershire, and a splash of bourbon.
Dippers included white & brown bread, carrots, tomatoes, and green apples.
Salad Course
Krystal ordered the Caesar Salad – Romaine lettuce, Parmesan cheese, croutons, Parmesan-crusted pine nuts, Caesar dressing.
I had the House Salad – Iceberg lettuce, cheddar cheese, tomatoes, croutons, and a thinly sliced egg tossed with tangy house dressing.
I didn’t take a picture of the salads.
Main Course
We chose the bourguigonne fondue, a European-style fondue in canola oil that came with tempura and sesame batters.
We chose two different plates to mix and match our tastes:
The French Quarter – Cajun-spice-crusted filet mignon, chicken breast, and Pacific white shrimp along with andouille sausage.
I liked the chicken, but the sausage was only so-so. Growing up near authentic German & Polish delicatessens ruined me in that regard.
The Pacific Rim – Teriyaki- marinated sirloin, honey orange duck breast, more Pacific white shrimp, and chicken potstickers.
Krystal had the shrimp as I find it disgusting.
The duck is best, especially with an orange-cranberry-teriyaki glaze.
The plates also came with vegetables, including mushrooms, broccoli, and potatoes. The stuffed mushrooms once can make are second only to the duck.
Dessert
Around this time the manager came over to our table with an anniversary card from the Melting Pot staff. Such a nice touch!
We saw a new-to-us chocolate on the menu: tiramisu – espresso mousse & ladyfingers blended in creamy milk chocolate. It tasted just like tiramisu should.
As we also had a gift card, we decided to splurge a little more and get an “enhanced” dipper plate with out dessert. In addition to the usual bits of pound cake, blondies, and brownies and the slices of strawberries, bananas, and pineapple and whole marshmallows, we also received a large slice of rich chocolate-caramel cheesecake, two cream puffs, and rolled gaufrettes (a potato-flour wafer).
Worth every penny.
But Wait, There’s More!
A few weeks ago I received an email with a voucher good for a take-home box of hand-dipped chocolate covered strawberries.
They survived the two-hour-plus trip home and tasted delicious.
Until next year, Melting Pot . . .
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Je reste Charlie
January 7, 2015 | Paris, France | 11:30 Local Time
Saïd and Chérif Kouachi force their way into the offices of satiricalweekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo, murdering in cold blood Stephane Charbonnier, Jean Cabut, Bernard Verlhac, Georges Wolinski, Bernard Maris, Philippe Honore, Michel Renaud, Elsa Cayat, Ahmed Merabet, Frédéric Boisseau, Franck Brinsolaro, & Mustapha Ourrad for no other reason than Charlie Hebdo’s publication of images of Muhammad.
photo courtesy ITVNews & itv.com
Yes, it is true these images were considered irreverent.
Irrelevant, as Islam prohibits all visual representation of the prophet.
Je suis Charlie
As the world learned of the attacks, the world rallied around Paris.
Americans exclaimed “Je suis Charlie!,”
proclaimed their devotion to the freedom of speech,
and changed their Facebook profile photos . . .
. . . until something else came along.
January 7, 2016 | 5:30 Local Time | 11:30 Paris Time
The date and time are no accident, because I have not forgotten. For the past 365 days I and others like me have made a conscientious effort to protect and promote not just freedom of speech, but all First Amendment rights.
One need only look at the State of the First Amendment to realize we have failed – a full 19% of those surveyed say the First Amendment goes too far.
Let’s get more specific, shall we?
The First Amendment Under Fire
Unsurprisingly, colleges and university made headlines
Some students demanded “safe spaces” from ideas and opinions they find uncomfortable, while others needed “trigger warnings” so they could shut their ears from the possibility of bad memories.
Professors were criticized for thinking critically about those “needs”, as well as gender, Halloween costumes, and cafeteria food.
Speakers were invited – or uninvited – based on the approval of the mob.
I’m going to call Mizzou out by name, where demonstrators against racism and bigotry attempted to restrict freedom of the press by only allowing access to those reporters 100% sympathetic to their cause.
Breaking News
Students are in school to learn how to deal with the real world.
The time for tantrums ended long ago.
From brick-and-mortar to server-and-cloud, we turn to the internet.
While proposals to proposals to the Internet to groups like ISIS might find widespread support, such discussions inevitably turn to banning all forms of “hate speech”, ambiguous a term if ever there was one.
Restricting access to beheading videos is one thing, but Google’s Eric Schmidt has more ambitious ideas.
[Schmidt voiced] the idea of an algorithm that would relentlessly prowl the corridors of the Web searching and eliminating hateful speech — an Orwellian concept of censorship-by-technology that went even further than “1984” author George Orwell imagined. *
And, lest we forget the Presidential candidates:
Donald Trump. Need I say more?
However, other Republican and Democratic candidates have voiced support for a so-called “Silicon Valley Solution”.
And then there’s Bernie Sanders, the Vermont socialist-cum-democrat who’s been most vociferous calling for an increased American democracy. Senator, America is a Democratic Republic, and democracy ends in mob rule. Based on your own logic, should you be elected President Facebook will be the new House, Twitter the new Senate, and BuzzFeed the Supreme Court. In which case, God help us all.
Nevertheless, better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.
American society in general fared no better.
Supporters of the Confederate Flag found themselves more ostracized than usual after Dylan Roof murdered nine people in Charleston, SC.
Colleges, cities, and even the state of South Carolina removed the flag (or versions thereof) from certain premises, and several online retailers took the perfectly acceptable action of discontinuing products featuring the flag.
However others would have the Federal Government restrict the right of American citizens to display the flag in any context.
If surveys are to be believed, 35% of Americans support a Federal statute banning the Confederate flag on license plates. No word on how many support a similar ban on Planned Parenthood tags.
At least President Obama didn’t issue an executive order declaring the flag illegal.
Other cities – like New Orleans – have begun to sanitize history by removing Confederate statues and memorials.
Since we’re on the topic of unpleasant history, here’s Rod Serling:
All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes – all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the Earth into a graveyard. Into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all, their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become the gravediggers. Something to dwell on and to remember, not only in the Twilight Zone but wherever men walk God’s Earth.
Deaths-Head Revisited [emphasis mine]
Oh, and since I’ve mentioned God, let’s talk religion . . .
Opponents of same-sex marriage are *officially* on the naughty list for daring to take a stand against society-determined morality. I mean, if it’s the choice between religion and government, you should always go with the government, right? right?
Remember: it’s possible to dislike an action while still loving the person performing the action. Stop conflating tolerance with acceptance.
Anti-Abortion advocates found themselves censored when a temporary restraining order was issued against the Center for Medical Progress, the group responsible for leaking videotapes alleged to show PP profiting from the sale of aborted fetuses.
Note: While the linked article calls the videotapes “heavily edited to cast Planned Parenthood in an unflattering light”, the full videos were also available, and they didn’t improve PP’s image at all.
And, since many suffer from the delusion that religion and science are incompatible, let’s not forget there are still advocates for the arrest of climate-change deniers based on the awful decision of the Italian courts to convict six seismologists of manslaughter for failing to predict an earthquake.
Oh wait, it was really about the defendants giving “‘inexact, incomplete and contradictory information’ about whether small tremors prior to the April 6 quake should have constituted grounds for a warning”?
How is that different from predicting an earthquake?
All right, I know these articles are from 2014, but the trend is toward charging climate-change deniers with crimes against humanity.
Speaking of intellectual freedom, here’s a friendly reminder that governments in America still try to ban, restrict, and censor books.
Remember:
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. – Evelyn Beatrice Hall [attr. to Voltaire]
The Real Danger to the First Amendment
The real danger to the First Amendment are those willing to suppress First Amendment freedoms in the name of public safety, namely Millennials.
There’s just one problem with that – the first amendment proffers no right to feel safe, no right to not be offended, and certainly no provision to punish people who make unpopular speech . . . In plain language, the first amendment does not give you the right not to be offended or not to be mocked, and the fact that these people are using the first amendment to, in essence, advocate censorship, is one of those perfect ironies that seldom comes along in this life.
– Daniel P. Malito
Moving Forward
It’s obvious there’s more work to be done.
The right to express one’s political, religious, and even literary ideas are under constant attack, and we must remain ever vigilant in our defense of those rights.
Others may have forgotten, but I will not.
Je suis CharlieJe reste Charlie
[I remain Charlie]
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The Swordfish Oracle
8 June 2001
A Conversation between Stanley & Gabriel
S: War? Who are we at war with?
G: Anyone who impinges on America’s freedom. Terrorist states, Stanley. Someone must bring their war to them. They bomb a church, we bomb ten. They hijack a plane, we take out an airport. They execute American tourists, we tactically nuke an entire city. Our job is to make terrorism so horrific that it becomes unthinkable to attack Americans.
S: How can you justify all this?
G: You’re not looking at the big picture, Stan. Here’s a scenario: You have the power to cure all the world’s diseases, but the price for this is that you must kill a single innocent child; could you kill that child, Stanley?
S: No.
G: You disappoint me; it’s the greatest good.
S: Well how about ten innocents?
G: Now you’re getting it, how about a hundred – how about a thousand, not to save the world, but to preserve our way of life?
S: No man has the right to make that decision; you’re no different from any other terrorist.
G: No, you’re wrong, Stanley. Thousands die every day for no reason at all, where’s your bleeding heart for them? You give your twenty dollars to Greenpeace every year thinking you’re changing the world? What countries will harbor terrorists when they realize the consequences of what I’ll do?
11 September 2001
We know what happened.
We saw the reactions.
We live with the results.
Still, we ask:
How far are we willing to go?
6 January 2016
I don’t remember when I first saw Swordfish; I think it was my senior year of high school, which would put it sometime around 2004. I think the movie was taboo in the conservative circles I moved it, not just for the rating but also for its kinds-sorta anti-government message.
Recently, I found it again on Netflix; remembering it as mainly a tecno-drama in which John Travolta shoots massive weaponry and gets away with his scheme to divert $6 billion in government slush money to wage War on Terror [before such a thing existed], I sat down and watched it again.
The conversation stopped me cold. Swordfish came out mere weeks before 9/11. In the aftermath, did we go too far or not far enough? It depends. I wonder what the world would be like if Gore had won Indecision 2000 and not Bush; I honestly think Bush was the right President in 2001, but have second-guessed his re-election in 2004. That may have been a mistake. Dangerous things happen when historians start playing “What-If?”.
Perhaps it’s because Ender’s Game is still fresh in mind, but when I have a free moment, I find myself asking:
How far would I go?
How far should I go?
Thing is, I’m not convinced there’s a right answer.
What do you think?
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Don’t forget to follow me on:
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Running In My Head 