NOVATOWNHALL

You know the old adage about how when you’re a kid you think the greatest thing in the world is chocolate, and then you become an adult and discover sex which shows how limited your “world” used to be, but then you discover single-malt scotch and the Zeitgeist of it all suddenly becomes clear?

Well a similar thing happened to me recently when Brian Withnell revealed my puerile infatuation with the AK-47 is just that.

Yes, I have discovered what true manliness is all about:

You need to watch through to the end, around 4:36 in, for the really good part. In terms of home perimeter defense, a handgun is nice, but there is something better out there.

Thank you for the life-lesson, Brian.

Another blogger passed on this weekend, as reported by Eric, longtime blog friend, virtual drinking buddy and Tom Waits brother in arms. This blogger, Winston Rand, I did not know, but if he was a friend of Eric’s I am sure he would have been a friend of mine.

It highlights the fact the blogosphere opens a new element of history and memorialization, that a public diary or collection of essays can stand as one’s monument, one’s epitaph or eulogy.

When the Acidman died a couple years ago, this fact really hit home with me. I read Rob Smith’s blog regularly, but not carefully enough to know he had any serious health issues, so his sudden death (in the midst of blogging, if I recall correctly) was a shock. Right up until the end he was writing cogent, biting, personal essays. He had done this for a long time, and, per his wishes, his blog has remained online as family members have been recycling his posts (because there are so many gosh darn good ones), so that his son will have a place to go to learn about his dad. Click here to follow his last week.

Acidman’s traffic is on average still higher than ours at NVTH, which says something, since we are roughly seven guys who are still generally alive and writing.

It evokes the question of what sort of legacy each of us is leaving on our respective blogs. If I fall dead on the keyboard tonight I would not be overly concerned with the NVTH sitemeter stats two years on, but I wonder if all this written material I’ve left would tell the accurate story for my kids and potential grandkids. They’d definitely be able to glean the fact that “Grampa was angry,” but what else?

As I approach 50, as the years pile up, dropping dead on the keyboard is no longer a distant possibility but a growing likelihood. I hope not soon, but certainly more likely with each passing year. Taking the long view I have to wonder if the legacy here is all I would want to leave.

…Well, sort of.  I’m not back in The States yet, but thanks to a gracious new roommate with a laptop and Internet connection, I’m back on the blog.  Sure beats waiting in line for a community computer.

So, this past year or so has gone by quick for me.  A summary:

-Few months of train-up in miserable Camp Shelby, Mississippi.

-Got sent to Kuwait, of all places.

-Nothing ever happens in Kuwait.  Sat around doing security missions for almost 8 months.

-Asked for and finally received a transfer (hence the new roommate).

-Got to Baghdad about 5 weeks ago.

I’ve been assigned to a CAV unit, and we run short escort missions around the city.  I don’t think I can go into much more detail than that, but I will say I miss Infantry work.

Hope everyone is well.  I’ll probably be throwing in my two cents on some old news while I try to catch up on what’s been going on locally back home.

There won’t be any ”Rantings of a Drunken Vet” while I’m here.  If I had any fans of that…sorry.  Write your Senator and  Congressman, and tell them to change the drinking policy over here.  That was a joke.  Well, sort of.

So what happened to the Poof Guy?

Hope you are ok, dude. It is always scary in this realm of obscured identities that someone could fall off the grid for one reason or another and no one would ever know.

I can think of a million reasons you would no longer be participating on this blog, and that is fine. But I am worried. You have my e-mail address; please let me know if you are still kicking butt in Ann Arbor, biatch (The General’s first post here - oh my how time flies).

Yes, I am back, ready to kick more booty and take even yet more names.

Here’s what happened: Late Wednesday night, an automatic “Windows Update” of XP Professional kicked in while I was not looking, and rebooted my Toshiba A210 laptop. My computer automatically rebooted, and after that, the wireless adapter would not work.

I rebooted our wireless router, rebooted the computer, and still got zero connectivity. Up until this point, the Toshiba had been flawless since I bought it late last year.

Losing the wireless adapter would have been a huge problem because it is the only convenient way I can get online at home, and being forced to blog solely via my ethernet connection at work would have certainly reduced my participation here to little-old-lady levels, to say the least. I rarely begin to blog before 11:00 pm.

But the solution was a simple one, which I hold out as one which all of us poor stooges locked into Microsoft operating systems should be intimately aware of.

The trick is to bring your computer back to the previous “working” configuration.

On the Toshiba, this means right at startup (when you are presented with the option of pressing F2 for BIOS configuration) press F8, and choose “last known good configuration.” This will reverse the nefarious Windows update and bring your computer back to a working state. I had to move my “NETGEAR” home network back the top of the stack of “available wireless networks” and was back in business.

I suggest the next step is to find out how to turn off automatic Windows updates, and will post that whenever I figure it out. Whatever Microsoft purportedly assayed to accomplish with their forced update, I am going to bravely declare I will live without. Which I would love to be able to say about their whole company someday. But for now the lesson is, beware the automatic Windows update.

Man was it hot in Sterling today.

I’m no stranger to heat at all, having lived in southwest Florida for ten years in an era when I could not always afford a vehicle with air conditioning. Yes, I am that old and yes I was that poor in my 20s. Summers in Florida driving with your windows open is manly business, and there was more than one summer when my work was construction and my drive home was in a non-air conditioned car.

But today was a complete ass-kicker, unlike any I’ve experienced in recent memory. I had to do the lawn, which is about a 2.5 hour exercise with the edging and trimming included. Unfortunately, my basic laziness was in full force this morning and I did not manage to break out the equipment until about 11:00 am. The “temperature” was only showing at 94 degrees, and there were numerous areas of shade in the yard, so I thought I could tear through the job with no problems. But the humidity and “heat index” were at another level altogether.

So as much as I like to tell people that 47 is not really so old thanks to modern science and I still get carded in 7-11 by cashiers from the other side of the world, I must admit that mowing the lawn on days like today is no country for 47-year old men.

Within roughly 15 minutes of embarking onto the front lawn (do that first, so if you die in the process at least the neighborhood standards will be maintained) my head started to burn and I had to breathe a LOT. So I mowed a stretch, then went inside for a cold drink and a chance to let the breathing slow down.

By the time I got to the back yard, which was around noon, the overall sensation could best be described as stinging from the inside out. Luckily, portions of the yard were still shaded, so I could strategize by doing a circuit in the sun and circuit in the shade, then the occasional break in the house for a cool down. The internal temperature continued to build, though, because during my circuits in the sunny portions, when I had to stop and empty the catcher for the obligatory stop in the sun, the heat-and-sweating sensation got so intense there were brief periods of chills. This, I would tend to think, is not a good thing.

Eventually, I managed to get the front and back yards both done, and by the end my ears felt like they were chimneys, almost burning. Needless to say, I spent some time in the house cooling down before moving one step further.

I also did a number of errands throughout the day, and the overriding characteristic was brief moments in the sun (or hopping into the car) were like a shot to the head.

Now it is 1:00 am, and I still have the burning sensation in my ears. It’s the heat combined with humidity. This has been one hot damn day in Sterling.

Tomorrow is supposed to hit 98 degrees, and we will be at the Steve Winwood - Tom Petty concert. I will try to send some Twitter updates from the concert on how that is going and how everyone is surviving the heat.

We just finished a nice visit to a somewhat rural area of North Carolina to see relatives. Some reflections:

Item 1 -

Maybe not Digital Camel-level material … but evocative. Click on image to get a better look (it’s a big file but worth getting the full effect).

Item 2 -

I got to operate my brother in law’s riding lawnmower to “help” with the yard work, for which I was unduly adulated … but let me tell you, riding a pretty quick tractor around a multi-acre lot was a sheer brer rabbit/briar patch scenario. It’s practically like running a dirt track race or the Baja 500, in my book. My own private tractor pull. A total blast. The only way he could have topped that would be to have me help fire an AK-47.

Item 3 -

You will not believe this, but between Fredericksburg, VA and northeastern North Carolina lie huge sections of our nation where our fellow Americans apparently have not gotten the memo about “jobs Americans won’t do.” These misguided folks are roughly 100% of the work force in lots of restaurants, stores and other businesses. Imagine a fast food place where every employee speaks English. Crazy, I know. Apparently the armies of illegal workers have not discovered these areas and employers are paying the price. Someone needs to notify the White House of this travesty.

Item 4 -

Speaking of retail, guess how much this item cost?

“I don’t know, Joe” you are probably saying, “$10.00? $30.00?”

No, my friend, this bottle of Oak Leaf cabernet, purchased at the Goldsboro Wal Mart, was competitively priced at … $2.97! And no, I did not leave any zeros off that figure. So now you are thinking, “that must be one skanky wine.”

But in fact, I hereby pronounce it … DRINKABLE! Oh yes, boy howdy is it drinkable and then some! Anyone who would deem it unacceptable is - well, I’m glad I couldn’t afford to have YOUR palate. It’s a perfectly nice wine, bottled in California, and I sampled a good bit of it. It does not have a pretentious “year” indicated, but for me that simply makes it easier to evaluate: Cabernet; $2.97 - two pieces of information, just enough to make a decision.

That’s the good news, that there is a Wal Mart in North Carolina where you can get a cab that passes the Joe test for less than three bucks. The bad news is I was not thinking clearly enough to buy 50 bottles of it, and I don’t think the Loudoun Wal Mart sells alcohol. (Though I will double check, believe you me).

Item 5 -

Locals report they have lousy beef in that part of North Carolina. Most steaks are only half edible, and ground beef is chock full of unchewable bits. So my relatives buy beef at Sam’s Club which does have some good product. But on the plus side, they do pork real good down there. I imagine this has religious-demographic implications.

Item 6 -

Very, very troubling development: Local radio station 100.7 “The River” has a “best of the 60s and 70s” format. It was sort of cool, to hear stuff like “Reeling in the Years,” “Band on the Run,” “Gold Dust Woman,” “Down on Main Street” while we were driving around on Friday and Saturday. It was far less cool to hear “Reeling in the Years,” “Band on the Run,” “Gold Dust Woman,” “Down on Main Street” while we were driving out on Sunday.

Because we did not have the radio on for very long, this tells me they must have a play list of about 60 or 80 songs, just like all the other crappy radio stations we have nowadays, and just like it was when those songs first came out and played numerous times throughout the day and made me sick of them. We ran through another “60s and 70s” station through Richmond, and for all I know we have twelve of them here in DC now (I only listen to CSPAN radio, sports talk and WTOP, so I would not know).

Typical corporate radio: Take a good thing and run it into the ground. As my wife noted, at least the “new music” stations have to rotate new music into the 60 or 80 on the list.

Item 7 -

There is a “Travelers… something” truck stop just north of Richmond that has the usual quirky assortment of trucker items available in the store: Fighting knives and throwing stars, DVDs, last minute gifts for the kid or wife. And also “Asian Massage” in an upstairs room. I think that’s nice for the truckers, and probably gives this business the necessary advantage to help differentiate them from the competition. They probably did a SWOT analysis and determined that prostitutes would provide that extra marketing umph. Truck stops are seriously in danger of becoming commoditized.

I left yesterday around 4 in the morning for a relaxing vacation.  On the road and headed for Wake Forest to pick-up mama.   Imagine my surprise when we arrived.  Seems that Hilly, the man hater, was doing a stump for the cracker po’ white vote.  Before you could say “Yankees!  Fire!” we were on the road again.  This happened before breakfast and I’m just glad there wasn’t more of a delay.

 Heading to Myrtle you have to go thru Chadbourn-the strawberry capitol.  I couldn’t figure out what all the dust was off in the distance.  Once we got to the single traffic light, we saw what the deal was.  Can you say “strawberry festival?”  We are talking bigtime here.  The dust was from the hotrod riding lawnmowers-and those babies can really cook!  We had outdoor barbaques, classic car show and parade.  Life is good.  The simplistic things of small towns and the south.

 Moving onward without further interruption we made it to Myrtle where we settled in for a cool spring’s night.  The spring “breakers” are gone and the bikers haven’t arrived yet.  Just fishing, catching up on times with old friends (which for the older crowd consists of what ailments, what operations and who died), partaking (embibbing) of the favorite beverage(s), eating and soaking up the rays.

Now if you all are headed down this way, look me up.  Otherwise I will check-in to see the news and update this post with what I’ve caught and how big.  Maybe even some earth-shattering news if they re-open the Sante Fe restaurant.  We’ll see.

Update 5/5 Soaked up some rays. Got extra zzz’s. Went fishing but caught nada. Same with crabs. We went and got ice cream and they make some monster banana splits. Toasted Almond and cheese with crackers. Dinner. Another slow day in paradise. I might do something tomorrow but don’t hold your breath!

Well well well, what in the bushy eyebrows of Satan do we have here in today’s mail:

An AARP card for yours truly! There is so much that is wrong about this I hardly know where to start, but in full awareness of the crew who are most likely to opine here I must begin by acknowledging the utter inappropriateness of this particular piece of mail and the OBVIOUS fact that there is certainly nothing FUNNY about it. About which fact I am confident we are all of the same mind.

I am an exceptionally young 47, and on good nights, when the lighting is just so, and the cashiers are sufficiently culturally remote, I still get carded. SO THERE, YOU BASTARDS.

For one thing, although I have been admittedly proven grumpy way beyond my years since approximately the age of 24, I am in no wise a “grumpy old man.” I am a realist, which entails a certain amount of clarity that the mindlessly youthful have often interpreted as crotchety. I’m as young at heart as they are, although much quicker to strike with my cane. Experience.

For another, I am sure we are all aware that “retired” in my own case is at least 20 years hence because of the utter discombobularity of the whole Social Security scam - thank you very much Franklin D. Roosevelt and every president since - and as long as I am laboring out here like a dog to support the aged lard-asses living off my dime I would expect to be viewed at very least in a different demographic class.

As sure as they’re all down in Florida playing shuffleboard I’ll be up here paying FICA to cover their whiskey and bingo, and I frankly don’t see enough commonality in that relationship for us all to be carrying the same card. Really, it should be two totally separate cards: One, AARP, and the other, AARP Sucker.

Yes, all ego aside, I am going on record as a resister in this particular case. It’s a matter of principle, and some principles are too important to stand aside and watch the corrupt game keep on going. I prefer to fight.

And there is the ego aspect as well.

UPDATE: Yeah, I just replaced the original card with one with the “Authorization Code” whited out, because on second thought I have no idea what this behemoth organization has access to, such as possibly my grocery records. I don’t want those stolen.

Jacob already noted this, and of course it’s the big story of the day in the conservative blogosphere: But for the record, I’ll miss William F. Buckley and I am grateful for all he did for me.

As a college kid in the early 1980s, still trying to figure out what I thought, I religiously read The Nation, The New Republic and National Review, basically unconsciously covering all parts of the political spectrum (New Republic was a middle of the road publication back then). If there was a “truth,” it definitely seemed like it would inhere somewhere within this troika of magazines.

By 1986, National Review had become my philosophical home, in large part because of Bill Buckley’s commentary. At age 25, I became a “conservative” for life. My first vote for a Republican was for George H.W. Bush in 1988. (Then, my first vote against a Republican was for Ross Perot in 1992, but that’s a story for another day).

Apart from his fantastically helpful idiosyncrasy of including in every op-ed column a single word I would need to look up in the dictionary (a mantle since picked up by R. Emmett Tyrrell), and the fact he was right about so many issues back when “conservatism” was by no means assured a place at the table of policy respectability (the Reagan Era was not judged a success until long after the Reagan presidency was over), Bill Buckley’s work ethic was the stuff of legends. He wrote extensive commentary in the magazine on a weekly basis, maintained a nationally syndicated 2-3 times a week column, did the weekly Firing Line television show for a decade or three, and of course wrote all the books and ancillary essays.

He penned op-ed pieces in the limousine on the way to the airport, for crying out loud. It took me an entire weekend to write a 5-page, double-spaced paper at the time.

While trying to overcome laziness and my own wide-ranging stupidity, having WFB as an example of what a human can do was immensely valuable. I never met the guy, but throughout my 20s he was one of my few mentors, at a time I needed all the help I could get.

I didn’t go to Yale. I wasn’t rich. My forebearers - back to the beginning of time, as far as I could tell - were blue collar. I started a family during college and consequently we were not well off. But I never got a whiff from all of WFB’s writings that he was in any way intrinsically different from me. I eventually learned that he was wealthy, but in the miles of column-inches I never read anything that set him apart.

And what a legacy he left! I have a ton of his essays and my stock of NR magazines, but there are gems like the Firing Line interviews with Malcolm Muggeridge discussing Catholicism and other topics - such important cultural artifacts.

The specifics of WFB’s contributions in the ideological arena are not within my range of expertise to discuss, simply because the content was, in essence, the content of the conservative revolution which took place in America from the 1980s on. There are much better informed people out there who can limn out the details of what Bill said and when, and what followed.

(And be sure to dig into the writings over at NRO, where the folks who know are spelling it out.)

But here is one I can do.

Many years ago, I think back in the early 1990s, Bill wrote a column reporting on his and his wife’s struggles to quit smoking. The gist was they both had decided to quit smoking cigarettes, and after some time in the project they - two life-long smokers - were at each others’ throats. They sat down to discuss it, and recognized they could not both go through the ordeal and live in the same house with each other. The physical and mental stress of overcoming the addiction was too much - you could not have two baskets of crazed atoms in close proximity at one time.

So they had to decide - either we both keep smoking or only one of us can quit, if we want to stay together. Bill quit, and Pat resumed smoking and became the stabilizing force while he overcame the addiction to nicotine.

This story had an impression on me, both because I have my own addictive tendencies and because self-sacrifice seems to be such an essential part of life particularly manifested in our most immediate relationships. The decision Bill and Pat Buckley made was one I had never even thought about, but after I read his column I never forgot it. Throw aside all the levels of analysis that could be brought to bear on the question: It’s a pretty stark expression of life - human life, relationship reality - is it not? It makes you think, What would I do? What decision would I and my spouse make to preserve the relationship if it came down to that.

Pat Buckley died in April, 2007. Honestly, back when I read about the poignant story above, I assumed Pat had consigned herself to a much earlier demise to preserve the relationship. But they were only off by ten months. I hate it that Bill Buckley died; I hate it that Pat Buckley died. But I am glad they got almost the full time together. I think God looked kindly on their difficult decision.