"A Socialist is only a Communist without a gun."
Rodger, the Real King of France (as quoted by)
--Dolly
Friday September 26, 2008...
Observation #765 ::.
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Friday September 26, 2008...
You Have GOT to See This ::.
A PIKTCHER PERFECT ILLUSTRATION of the sympathetic magic, cargo-cult -- borrowin' Alger's scorn quotes, here -- "science" behind the anthr'p'genic global warmin' hoax. Titter.
Gabrielle Francesca East (Dolly) | | |
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Friday September 26, 2008...
Please! Do NOT ::.
TRY TO TELL ME how much more stable Macs are than Wintel PCs. I may have to hurt you. You obviously don't have a fluttering clue. Don't ASK me how I know that; just trust me: I do.
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Friday September 26, 2008...
So Barry Wants to Dodge ::.
DEMOCRAT RESPONSIBILITY and make it an American problem. Except America didn't cause the problem. Democrats in Washington did. And no matter what happens, they should not be allowed to ONCE AGAIN dodge a reckoning because fixing what they broke is so immediately urgent. Hold their feet to the fire -- the electoral fire -- and don' let them squirm out from under until there is accountability for the miscreants in Congress who caused the damned problem in the first place.
And remember: government isn't the solution; government is the problem.
Like Glenn Beck said Thursday, we need protection FROM the government.
True dat.
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Friday September 26, 2008...
Morning Drive ::.
SITTING IN FOR regular host Brian Thomas on the WKRC Morning show Thursday, Kevin Gordon managed to sound as though he'd gotten his hands on some bad arugula or something with ergotrate in it -- sputtering like a wet hen about how McCain looks like a luser for suspending his campaign and rushing back to Washington, while Barry stays out on the hustings, saying, "If you need me, I'll be there."
Well, that makes it obvious, Barry. We don't need you. Stay out there in the sticks while the adults take care of business.
Gordon tried to make the analogy that, when a crisis strikes a business, the CEO doesn't give the staff the day off and go into work himself. The analogy sucks and still manages to miss the point all at once. Quite an accomplishment for wrong-headedness.
The point a lot of people seem to be trying to make is the one Barry's made: a CEO or the President of a country should be able to multi-task. He should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. He should be able to -- oh, I don't know -- play a round of golf at his Kennebunkport compound and attend to the response to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait at the same time.
If only the press got that point all the time, instead of only when their chosen Potemkin candidate asserts it.
But, then again, not so much.
Actually, what a chief executive should do is chief execute. Which mostly consists of delegating -- You: go here, do this. You: go there, do that. Control freaks need not apply. He should also be able to keep from being thrown off his game by his opponent's moves. Barry seems to have a problem with that.
But even less so...
It should be pointed out that, faux Great Seals and airplane seat antimassacars notwithstanding, no matter how badly Barry wants to believe it (and wants us to believe it as well), neither candidate is President yet.
What Barry wants to get away with is voting "present" and still looking presidential. As Rush says, "Obama acted like a poseur."
Um... problem?
Yes, Dolly.
Can't vote "present" if he's not.
Well, sure he can, if he's allowed to get away with it. Just as he's been allowed to get away with assuming the trappings of office before -- in some cases -- he was even nominated.
But about McCain. Some people complain that this is lame and a loser move. He shouldn't have shut down his campaign.
People, that's a Democrat trick. They're the ones who campaign non-stop, who spend more time trying to get elected or re-elected than they do actually doing their jobs. They're the ones who start campaigning for the Presidency after having served 140-odd days in the Senate (and promising to serve out a full term).
I suspect that McCain (or his team) realize that the voters are focused on the financial meltdown and might think it inappropriate -- frivolous, even -- for candidates to continue campaigning for the duration of this emergency. They might even see a desire to keep campaigning as a species of sleight of hand, attempting to distract from the culpability of the party(ies) in question. One might start asking questions why the former executives of Fanny and Freddie are in the Obama campaign and why Obama himself realized more money faster than anyone else in the Senate in the form of campaign donations -- almost as though it were planned that way. Meantime, McCain manages to both look like a leader and, by stepping off the national stage for a moment, self-effacing -- not self-aggrandizing -- when the future of the Republic seems to be in peril.
While Obama remains out there on the bus to Further
Right, Barry. No, I don't think this is a mistake on McCain's part. If you have any doubts, look at the reactions of the Democrats. They're calling it a political stunt. That means they're afraid it's going to work. It's tactically and strategically brilliant, both in conception and execution. First, McCain got the first shot off. Doesn't matter whose idea it was, McCain was first into the public eye with announcements about it. Leaving Barry to flop around like a fish out of water, going, "Well, it was my idea, but I was too busy to execute, and my people couldn't make contact in time, and anyway, I'm not sure ..." And blah-blah-blah. The man is flailing. McCain got inside his OODA loop. Second, campaigns -- political or military -- are not so much about how well you do out of the gate, at the turns or in the stretch, but how you do at the finish. How many campaigns do you think have been lost near the end because the troops were fatiqued, worn out, low morale? I dunno either, but I can almost guarantee you that none have been won with the troops in that condition when the enemy/opposition was in good condition, well-fed and -rested, with high morale. So McCain has given his troops a short stand-down. Get a shower, shit, shave, and a shoe-shine. Rest. Grab some sack time. Re-assess plans and progress. Take advantage of the opportunity to make logistical moves and set up for the final push. Meantime, Obama's crew is out there flailing around at nothing, while the potential audience is focused on ... Washington. Where McCain is and Obama isn't. Except that Obama is in Washington, meeting with Dubya. Tryin' to get the glory without doing the work. Yeah, but he had to be dragged there, kicking and screaming. You think the voters aren't going to notice that? And Friday night, he's going to be standing alone on an empty stage at the University of Mississippi. Trying to make points. Looking like the poseur he is. ... Friday September 26, 2008... I SAY -- AND HAVE said since long before he was the VeepNom -- that Joe Biden is simply the Stupidest Man In the Senate (SMIS). Open mouth, engage foot. ... Friday September 26, 2008... ... Thursday September 25, 2008... ... Thursday September 25, 2008... THE-RADIO-and-strangle-the-speaker moment (brought to you retrospectively) came during the Glenn Beck radio show when a caller asserted, "Capitalism is on trial here, and it's losing badly." Not that groupthink is any proof, but Og thinks so, too.
... Thursday September 25, 2008... ABOUT DATA AND -- scorn quotes -- "adjusting" same. Why? Perhaps because otherwise the results shown don't agree with your preconceptions? Perhaps because otherwise the data gathered are useless to your purpose? But... doesn't the need to "adjust" the data vitiate your purpose? John Goetz has a great post up explaining like a sausage factory just how James Hansen (he who is proclaimed the leading expert on Global Warming) arrives at his numbers. And people wonder why, the more some people look at the data, the more skeptical they come of the claims of the warmistas. ... Thursday September 25, 2008... WHO APPEAR TO MISUNDERSTAND market realities. Wednesday, Glenn Reynolds posts a note from a reader: ...with a link to Amazon and a page offering a Newsweek subscription ($205.00 cover price) for $20.00. Without comment on the quality of the product and its worth -- and the possible motive that implies for the discount offering, this is quite clever and snarky and sounds a lot like bog-stupid leftist twitterings you hear every day. Since, in this case, the snark is aimed at a palpably left-wing publication... Don't sugar-coat it, Alger, it's a red front rag. Fine. Whatever. First, the cover price of a magazine is what you pay the news dealer. It has to, in aggregate, pay for the distribution network. A subscription is send directly from the printer to the end user -- cutting out, as they say, the middlemen. Second, (and I can't believe I have to keep hammering this), it misses the point about advertiser-supported media. The consumers of the media content are not the customers. The customers of the publisher are the advertisers. The product is the readership. The content is the bait by which the publisher acquires the readership to sell to the advertisers. The deep discounts magazines can offer for subscription represents the far, far lower cost of acquisition. Third, even were this not about media, the snark assumes that the discounted price still allows for a profit. It may not. Some times, this kind of an offering is what's called cutting your losses. As in, all of that unsold inventory sitting in warehouses imposes costs of its own. Get it sold. And in media, anything short of giving it away eliminates the sink hole for money and has the additional up side of increasing circulation -- i.e., more product to sell. ... Thursday September 25, 2008... MCCAIN NOMINATES John Bolton to be Secretary of State. Wow! Roll that around in your mind for awhile. What makes you think Bolton'd take the job. How could he not? Probably couldn't. I bet the Foggy Bottom crowd would neuter him within a week. Dunno. He's fought them successfully before. I suspect he's a tad tougher than gentle academician Rice. Hell, I bet his moustache -- everybody calls it Regis -- is tougher than Condi. Gabrielle Francesca East (Dolly) | | | ... Thursday September 25, 2008... IS OUT AND Ol' Remus has some words for you. Of particular noteworthiness are his lead item on the financial raveup and the final "fictional" vignette -- this week relating the tale of two engineers and how they got their degrees. Note: Due to the editorial policy of The Woodpile Report, this link will remain relevant for only a week. Get 'em while they're hot. ... Thursday September 25, 2008... ... Wednesday September 24, 2008... ... Wednesday September 24, 2008... ... Wednesday September 24, 2008... WITH HIS TALE of FDR's TV address to the nation after the stock market crash in 1929 demonstrates a Democrat teaching technique. Call it the tutelary fable. ... Wednesday September 24, 2008... GO AFTER CARBON DIOXIDE which we all exhale. EPA won't remove rocket fuel from water (CBS News.) Of course, that the EPA found no "meaningful opportunity for health risk reduction for persons served by public-water systems" in mandating a cleanup level does not sit well with nor stop CBS from panic-mongering, while the notion that the EPA can, will, and should regulate CO2 emissions is just hunky-dory with them. ... Wednesday September 24, 2008... FOR THOSE DOWN TIMES when the fanatic warmistas are getting to you with their incessant moonbattery. The other side of the climate change argument. ... Wednesday September 24, 2008... IT OCCURS TO ME THAT those who deride the skeptics appear to be arguing an appeal to authority. The data -- they say -- is conclusive. What data? Why, the data reported by prominent and notable warmistas! (Of course.) Meanwhile, it seems the more one examines the data, the more skeptical one becomes. Which means -- exactly...? No lesson derived. Just an observation. ... Wednesday September 24, 2008... HOW MUCH SARAH PALIN looks like Mariska Hargitay from certain angles? ... Wednesday September 24, 2008... TO WHICH THE ANSWERS seem so obvious as to make you wonder, "Was that a trick question?" But, no. It's all real. ... Wednesday September 24, 2008... THE ELITIST CHARGE doesn't really pink leftists nearly as much as ... oh, say, the liberal one. Leftists like to think they are members of some elect group. And, when you complain that they are elitists, they hear, "Oh, those elite snobs! They look down on us little people." The greatest lie of all may be, "Oh, what a beautiful baby!" After all, what distinguishing marks does an infant have? They're all undifferentiated doughy masses. Cute, perhaps. But beauty -- with its implication of outstanding quality? Perhaps not. But it's a harmless lie. It allows the parents of the little maggot to preen. After all, the qualities of the child must spring from the parents. Mustn't they? They bask in the reflected glory of their beautiful child. Just so goes the elitist charge. The defendant is allowed -- most probably without reason -- to think himself a member of some unspecified elite. This unearned approbation strokes his ego. And, being a leftist, he does not grasp the delta between the earned and the unearned. Thus, he thinks himself a worthier person than he really is for the hypocritical praise of him. He thinks. Now, this is corrosive of the body politic in this wise. Yes, elitists believe that the world is better run by elites. The reason this is not so is that elite individuals are no more or less prone to wearing blinders than the ordinary run of the mill. An elitist must, in his own good opinion of himself, believe that there can be no let on his powers of action. After all, if the very reason his enjoys his power to rule over others is his elite nature, then should not that nature be given full rein? If "ordinary" folk accept this, how much less will be their striving to excell? More: what is really afoot here is not so much the rule by elites as the rule by the state. If you are superior to the common man, why then should you not make his every decision? Why should you not dictate the drugs he may take for health or enjoyment, the contracts he may make, the associations he may have, the books he may read or write, the images he may make or see, the opinions he may hear or express, the amount of water he uses to flush his toilet, the fuel he may use to warm his home, the size and weight of his personal vehicles, the source and composition of the clothes he wears, the height and paint color of the safety rails that circumvallate his life? And what better venue for these, with its overarching power of law and the initiation of violence, than the state? Folks, some very famous soi disant libertarians have proposed that elites nevertheless have some inherent right to rule, due to their superiority. Robert Heinlein, of all people, famously asked whether it were better to have a nation ruled by those with the knowledge, intelligence, and training to attain advanced scientific degrees than to count the runny noses of the masses. What is on offer, here, is nothing less than a proposal that every aspect of a man's life be ruled by the state. I. Do. Not. Exaggerate. Don't make the mistake of assuming I'm engaged in hyperbole, here. When you step onto the moving sidewalk of elitism, the next junction is statism. And if you want a yardstick to measure the evil of statism, consider this: Statism has killed more people than racism ever even dreamed of. But... what? What else is there? Are we to turn over the momentous decisions of our age to the uneducated, the unwashed, the unconcerned? In most cases, my rejoinder is, "Who elected you God?" That is to say, why are all these things anyone's bailiwick other than the individual(s) directly involved? "Are you just going to let things be decided willy nilly by... just anyone?" You can hear the tone of aghastion in their voices. But think about it. Here you are on the Internet, reading my blog. Surely, you've heard the legend of how the Internet came to be and the logic behind its structure? It's a distributed network of network. The protocols are what I think of as atomized -- that is the control is pushed as far down toward the individual user or network node as is possible. Local control. Local decision making. It models the market. Individuals acting on their own initiative, engaged in their own activities, oriented on their own goals. No central controlling authority. The rules of the game and the operation of the thing are totally transparent. True, above a certain basic level, it requires specialist training to even comprehend the systems involved, let alone influence them. For example, I have often observed that the Domain Name System (DNS) is rocket science. But for the most part, ordinary users can use the thing as they wish for their own purposes. And the thing is, in sum, perhaps the greatest single achievement of humanity to date. Or the market itself. There is a genius, an ultimate democracy in markets. Millions or billions of individuals making billions or trillions of decisions daily. Nobody tells them what to decide, or even determines what the question is -- for the most part. The individual private actions of human beings. And these actions go on with little regard for the interference of the state. Even in the most restrictive communist dictatorship, individuals take their own counsel and their own decisions, and chart their own courses. They just make sure -- or try to, at any rate -- that the state's policemen don't see them doing anything not approved. However, the nations with the greatest, most powerful and robust economies are those with the least interference by governments in the marketplace. Those countries best able to weather the storms of mischance that make landfall on every shore are those where individuals each takes care for himself -- helping friends, family, and neighbors where necessary -- according to prudence, planning, and the needs of the moment. Those countries where statism has the least influence. It is my firm conviction that statism is the greatest evil -- in a general sense -- ever created by mankind, for the harm it does to individuals and through them to nations. And the party pushing statism on us? If you have to ask, you haven't been paying attention. ... Wednesday September 24, 2008... THE WICKED WITCH OF THE LEFT. Support Dana Walsh in her run for Nancy Pelosi's seat in Congress. ... Tuesday September 23, 2008... ... Tuesday September 23, 2008... PIQUING THE BLOGOSPHERE'S interest Monday include Dr. Rusty Shackleford's discovery that, yes, the Obama campaign is playing by Chicago rules and American Thinker's observation that the Left is engaged in a Gramscian Long March through the Institutions, which includes control over the dialectic. Pardon me while I yawn. Not that these things aren't earth-shaking, but that they've been shaking the earth for almost a century, now. Been there, done that, came up with the idea of the commemorative t-shirt. Obama? Well, no. But he's only the latest incarnation of the anima of a political machine that fairly defines corruption and bare-knuckle politics. And the point is this isn't news. Why should you be surprised? Outraged, perhaps, but not surprised. Of course, you do want to fight them. That's what they're for -- to be defeated. The simplest way to fight this, I think, would be to reply with a drumbeat of our own, starting with the base (bass?) assumption that everything leftists say is a lie, including "a," "an," and "the." The second step is to engage. Somebody with the standing to do so needs to bring Logan Act complaints against Obama and Pelosi. Somebody with the standing to do so needs to bring corruption charges against Chris Dodd, Charles Rangel, Diane Feinstein, Harry Reid, and all the rest of the perfidious officials who enrich themselves and let the country go to Hell and fight them hard enough to make the charges stick. Somebody with the standing to do so needs to fire the ACLU ambulance chasers out of Justice Department and kickstart the investigation of ACORN et al for election fraud (specifically to include MoveOn and PAW). Engagement doesn't -- shouldn't -- stop at the top level. We down at the roots of the turf have parts to play as well. We should not let go unchallenged the nonsensical assertions of the Left. Some bullet points. • Most watermelons wouldn't know a fragile ecosystem if it bit them on the ass. • We don't know the temperature of the planet. That said, it's pretty clear the globe isn't warming. If it were, it wouldn't mean much, and might even be a good thing. If we knew and could demonstrate that the planet were warming, and that it was necessarily a bad thing, we still know little or nothing about the causes -- and no, mankind's contribution is in no way significant. And even if we did know for sure, there's nothing we could do about it. Yes, that's right, kids, even the most rabid warmistas admit that the most draconian, economy-killing "solutions" to the "problem" won't touch the outcome. Anyway, the planet has natural feedback cycles that keep these things within reasonable ranges. Several billion years of life on Earth demonstrate that most clearly. A thirty year trend -- now reversed -- in a hundred-fifty-year record is a blip -- a flyspeck -- and means exactly nothing. Panic merchants on this subject have ulterior motives and are not to be trusted. • Last I'd heard, the need for stem cell research for -- you know -- actual medical advancement was no longer... um... needed. That being so (please check and make sure, now), the only possible reason for supporting stem cell research is that it ties directly to abortion -- all abortion all the time on demand with public subsidies. And none dare call it infanticide. • People. Do. Not. Vote. Against. Their. Own. Economic. Best. Interests. Learn it. Love it. Live it. The arrogance of the claim that they do rests in the assumption that one can discern from a centrally-located ivory tower just exactly what the economic best interests are of any given group or invididual. The twin facts that one cannot see and that it does not matter show at once the genius of free markets and the fundamental failing of centrally-planned command economies: arrogant ignorance coupled with overweening pride in power. Central-planning nostrusms will always eventually fail, bringing greater disaster in their wakes. They can only stave off failure so long as they can gull the unsuspecting and find new suckers to "contribute" to their risky schemes. Once people get wise to the pyramid-scam nature of the thing, it collapses. A house of cards has nothing on this edifice. • If someone can pay the price of something, it's affordable. • Robin Hood stole from the rich. Period. Full stop. Of course he did. That's who had the money. And even if he did give to the poor, that only tainted them with his crime. As Don Henley once famously sang, evil is still evil, in anybody's name. And stealing is evil. You can trust me on this; it's only a half-step removed from murder. • Modern socialists are not Robin Hood, no matter how hard they try to make you believe they are. They are stealing from everyone in order to buy votes. They seek to create a dependency relationship in order to enhance their own power, prestige, and prosperity. If they really cared about people, they'd help them get a job. If you accept government largesse, you are receiving stolen goods. Show a little humility, would you? • If you can keep doing something, it's sustainable. Can. Not "should" or "want to." Can. • What everyone owns, nobody owns. The first "owns" as in "takes possession of" and the second as in "takes responsibility for." The tragedy of the commons is a tragedy of the commons. That is, it is inherent in the concept of manifold ownership. That this needs to be said at this late date speaks more of a tragedy of ignorance than of any economic fact. • The state corrupts. The more powerful the state, the more corrupt the society. This is inescapable truth. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But it should also be understood that power attracts the corruptible. In this, money, power, and sex are inextricably intertwined. The only way to get money out of politics is to get the power out of government. Not military might to defend the realm, or the legitimate legal authority to judge disputes between and among citizens, but the power over the lives of individual citizens. Limits to freedom are always -- always -- lose-lose-lose. There is no honest countervailing example. None. For any case you may care to name in which the so-called "greater good" was or is putatively served, what you do not see is the greater evil also done, and I submit, when weighed in the balance, the ill is always greater than the good. • It is worth noting that 90% or more of what the Federal Government does today is forbidden it by the Constitution. That is to say, the government and those in it refuse to play the game according to the rules. They cheat. If someone who claims to deserve your support cheats in order to maintain his position and privilege, if that person enters elected office with the intent on Day One of violating his oath of office, what makes you think he's going to deliver on the promises he makes to you, promises he made to get your support? No Democrat I've ever heard honestly claimed to want to rein in the out-of-control government. Seriously. I think you can see where I'm headed, here. • The reductio ad absurdam of Affirmative Action delivers us a Barack Obama -- a candidate with an onionskin resume, a character and associations that will not bear naked-eye scrutiny from a thousand yards let alone anything even resembling close, and policy prescriptions that -- when you can nail them down at all -- sound all too much like the dorm room bull session witterings of C and D students who didn't do the reading and are trying to fast-talk their way out of a failing grade. The only things worthwhile in life are those things that have been earned. Leftists, having a poor grasp of the basic facts of economics, seem to have trouble understanding this point, so they confuse handouts and earnings -- unable to come to grips with the difference. • The Great Society destroyed the black family. Ironic, as it wasn't aimed at blacks, but at Appalachian whites. Go figure. More of the Same is the name of one of a chain of university degrees that starts with BS and ends with PhD (Piled Higher and Deeper.) Doing it again only harder won't fix what's broken. • Arms control and general citizen disarmament have never been followed by increases in either liberty and / or public order and safety. Never. The opposite, however, has occurred repeatedly down through history -- armed societies tend to be freer societies, and disarmed societies have often (if not always) descended to tyranny and worse. Do not deceive yourself that we are not on that curve because you can only see what you can see from your seat on a particular data point. • Democrats, liberals, leftists lie. They are not to be trusted. • You have voice, use it. You have a tongue, speak. Cross-posted at Eternity Road ... Tuesday September 23, 2008... ... Monday September 22, 2008... ... Monday September 22, 2008... PROCEEDS APACE, but -- pace Dolly -- I didn't get as far Sunday as I meant to. I made it to the Lowes Matrix and bought my lumber, got it home, and cut the plywood down to manageable sizes, but no more. I only accomplished about a third of what I wanted to. Probably better than I should have, actually. ... Monday September 22, 2008... ENGINE PISTON-DRIVEN prop plane -- a Piper Cub, for example -- dopplering overhead to take me back to a singular moment in time, frozen in amber as it were. Pellucid in memory, but otherwise gone forever. Autumn, 1962. I'm 8 years old, in third grade. I'm in Omaha, Nebraska, living on Woolworth Avenue and matriculated at Loveland Elementary School. The school is built on a ridge, at the corner of Dodge and some side street, the name of which escapes me. Woolworth is two blocks south of Dodge. Our house (my aunt and uncle, where my Mom fostered me while she went through what must have been a nasty divorce) is the last house on Woolworth. The house next door is the corner house and faces the cross street. I have no idea of the distance -- my sense of scale has never been all that good, and it's distorted by the fact that my memories of it are those of a small boy living in a private world -- but it can't have been more than a mile, and probably was/is a good deal less. The school is gone. It was a turn-of-the-century neo-gothic castle, full of smells of wood wax and chalk dust, wet wool and body-warmed yellow raincoats and black, buckled galoshes. A Google Earth search shows that the school of that name has moved a few blocks farther away. No doubt the old building was torn down or converted to condos, just as Cincinnati Public Schools is threatening to do with Hyde Park School, where I went two years later, here in Cincinnati. My route to and from Loveland ran along the top of the ridge the school was built on. There was a winding street lined with gigantic oaks and little brick cottages that ran between Dodge and the cross street that intersected Woolworth. That winding street couldn't have been more than two blocks long, and it ended only a block from Woolworth, a block from our house, all of which makes me believe the distance was as I say. My uncle was at that time a Light Colonel in SAC -- the Strategic Air Command. He had flown B-29s in WWII under the command of Curtis Le May and was recruited back in when the Air Force was formed. By '61, I doubt he was a watchstander in the B-52s, but I have no doubt he kept his chops up. There was a steel model of a B-47 on his desk at home -- the kind that vendors give to pilots and commanders in the units that fly their planes. I suspect (though I never got the chance to ask him) that that was his last regular ride. He fed my boyish fascination with everything aerospace. It was in the school library at Loveland that I discovered science fiction -- Robert Heinlein and Andre Norton juveniles and a series about a scientist named Mr. Tycho and some intrepid boy inventors he helped to build a spaceship in their garage. I had models of all of the launch vehicles and missiles currently in the inventory and declassified -- Atlas, Saturn, Redstone, Bomarc, Nike, Ajax (but not the Nike Ajax), Regulus, Snark. And a bunch of airplanes, too. I could identify all of them with a facility that would have made the air wardens proud. I remember one time I was in the front yard of the house on Woolworth (we were just north of the runway at Offut and heard sonic booms all the time), when a B-58 Hustler did a flyby and waggled its wings at me. I was in heaven that day, and remember it to this one.
Apparently, at about the time I was walking home from school -- Tom Sawyer-like kicking leaves, picking up acorns and less-savory pocket litter, watching squirrels and listening to the wind in the oaks -- a Piper Cub flew overhead on the same pattern every day. I would hear it approach, a mosquito whine at first, then getting louder until it was at full roar overhead, then fading away into the distance. It was a sad song. There was a wistful note that said, "I wish you could go where I'm going, see what I'm seeing." And, that autumn, that sound combined with the dusty dry scent of browning oak leaves and the acid of tannin from acorns crushed under the wheels of cars and the big kids' bicycles, into a scent-memory of that halcyon time -- the last real moment of unalloyed bliss I ever knew. Oh, I knew happiness after that; I'm a pretty happy person, my curmudgeonly ways notwithstanding. But forever after that time, all joys were tainted with the knowledge that that time is forever lost to me. All it takes to excite those chemicals in my brain and transport me back to Omaha in the fall of 1962 is the sound of a single-engine plane dopplering overhead, or the scent of dry oak leaves, or any of the markers of that time of boyhood -- the wax they used to polish the school floors, the chalk dust, the cloak room, the library, the Pine Sol my aunt's maid used to mop the tile floors in the house. And I get that bittersweet sense of loss. The cliched line is "You can never go home again." It's true, because home -- as it exists in memory -- no longer exists. Even if the schools and houses and shops and airports remain and are unchanged, somehow, they will never match the memory that makes them special to you. In Casablanca, Bogie tries to persuade Bergman that "We'll always have Paris." Probably so. But you know they both yearned to go back to Paris, the way it was, the way it would remain in green memory for the rest of their lives. Forever out of reach. ... Monday September 22, 2008... ... Sunday September 21, 2008... ... Sunday September 21, 2008... IS DONE EXCEPT for the permanent fastening of the maple windowsill insert. I'm still coating the 3/4" A/C plywood underneath that with eurethane. But I expect I should be able to glue and screw that Sunday. The thing that had been stalling me was how to hold the maple edge rail in place while I was gluing it. The position is quite finicky, as the top edge of the rail must be flush to the top surface of the counter, or the whole thing would look rather shoddy. Ordinarily, you'd build in some kind of a stop to use, or piece the thing together, allowing yourself some slop. But the rail is a one-piece bit of trim, and there is nothing inherent in the design of the cabinet car boxes that provides a ledge or similar device to stop against and / or register to. It all floats. OK. So align the top edge of the rail to the surface boards after they've been attached. Well, not so easy. First, the way I have it set up, the rail has to be fastened in first. I did it this way to ensure that the rail stays tight up against the front face of the cabinet. This is important because drawer fronts have to align to it, and if it's not firmly in-place and precisely so, that will make lining up the drawer fronts harder -- if not impossible. So I built it so that the rail would be fastened to the front of the cabinets with wood glue and pocket screws. But the pockets screw holes, of necessity, have to be under the top skin board. Which means that the rail has to be fastened on first, then the skin board. And, if the rail's not in the right place, you get crappy joint. I toyed with the idea of fastening the rail to the top skin board. I'd done that with the window seat and it seemed to work OK. But that was a piece that was a third of the length of this counter (it's nearly eight feet long), and this piece is in three parts (Gallia est omnis divisa in partres tres.). For good reason. And the fit of each part requires considerable blunt force. And the parts fit tightly against one another. And it all floats. I couldn't work it out in my head so it wouldn't turn into an unimitigated disaster, trying to handle all the variables, control the pieces, and not make a mess of it. So I discarded that idea. Then it hit me -- I didn't have to use the skin board itself to achieve this alignment. All I had to use was the same material -- the same thickness of board. And it needn't cover the screw holes, all it had to do was provide me a reference guide the full length of the cabient. But it didn't have to be continuous. So I made a whole bunch of blocks out of the same half-inch ply the stop skin is made of, nailed them onto the front rib of the middle honeycomb structure -- flush to the front edge, and spaced in between the pre-drilled pockets for the screws. I used a 5/8" finishing nail, so I could pull the blocks easily after I was done. It worked a pip. I was so excited by this time that I delayed my lunch break, eager to make progress. Greedy for it. When I tested my blood before lunch, I was hypoglycemic. And shaky. Had to take a glucose tablet to make it to lunch. That's not a play for sympathy, but an illustration of how BIG this logjam was for me and how glad I was to finally clear it. The Titebond instructions say to clamp for a half-hour. A half-hour after I finished with the rail, I took the skin boards and started with them. During the construction of the countertop, I had crawled inside the drawer boxes and drilled and countersunk screw holes into blocks glued to the bottom of the top skin boards. These are positioned where, too far from the front edge of the cabinets for me to get a clamp on, I nevertheless felt the need to provide for some clamping action. I laid a bead of Titebond on the tops of the ribs and pounded the boards into place with my trusty rubber mallet. Then I got inside the drawer boxes and drove screws up into the bottoms of those blocks, pulling the whole thing down tight against the ribs. I placed clamps along the front edge of the whole thing and sat back to admire my handiwork. The next thing I should work on is the drawers. But I find myself so eager for fast progress that I may skip ahead to building the bookshelves on the east wall (above the counter just finished) and on the south and west walls around Toni's desk. It's very tempting, as I could get the birch plywood, cut boards, and be sanding tomorrow. Except for your famous inability to estimate time. Yeah. Well. That. ...
| Some Say It's Gaffes ::.
| View of the Port from Columbia Parkway ::.
| Observation #764 ::.
| Wednesday's Reach-Through- ::.
| I Have a Question ::.
| It's Not Only Leftists ::.
"When a 90% discount means your product is overpriced TENFOLD."
| OOOooooo! ::.
| The New Woodpile Report ::.
| Signs of Hurricane Passed ::.
| Observation #763 ::.
| The First Cut's Not the Deepest ::.
| Old Slow Joe ::.
| But They Will By God ::.
| Collected Reinforcement ::.
| On Warmistas vs. the Skeptics ::.
| Has Anybody Else Noticed ::.
| Opie Posts A Pop Quiz ::.
| I Can Tell You Why ::.
| Pour A Bucket of Cold Mop Water on ::.
| Observation #762 ::.
| Lies In The News ::.
| ::.
| Observation #761 ::.
| Cutting ::.
| All it Takes is a Single ::.
| With the Grain ::.
| Still Life ::.
| Countertop ::.
Saturday, all the planets aligned and the final bits of this stage came together in my mind. The construction technique which had been eluding me let me find it. From there, it was a surprisingly easy process to put it all together.
|
IS 
