I’ve been spending way too much time lately playing Buggle at the Casual Collective website. It’s essentially a competitive chain-reaction game.
It takes a couple of tries to get the hang of it, but once you do, you’ll find it an entertaining diversion. It’s sort of like combative Tetris, jujitsu Tic-Tac-Toe, or Connect Four mixed with Laser Tag.
Just get a free account and try it.
I went out drinking with some Conservatives the other night. All the men were circumspect in their support for the War in Iraq. The women were more gung-ho in their desire to see American troops visit exotic locales and shoot stuff.
It’s easier to advocate shooting when it’s not your ass being shot at.
Happiness is having your wife sew on a new button to an old pair of trousers.
Who would have thought that Gone With the Wind was an anti-war novel?
“All wars are sacred,” he [Rhett Butler] said. “To those who have to fight them. If the people who started wars didn’t make them sacred, who would be foolish enough to,fight? But, no matter what rallying cries the orators give to the idiots who fight, no matter what noble purposes they assign to wars, there is never but one reason for a war. And that is money. All wars are in reality money squabbles, But so few people ever realize it. Their ears are too full of bugles and drums and fine words from stay-at-home orators. Sometimes the rallying cry is ‘Save the Tomb of Christ from the Heathen!’ Sometimes it’s ‘Down with Popery!’and sometimes ‘Liberty!’ and sometimes ‘Cotto, Slavery and States’ Right!’ ”
-Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind, ChapterXII
But it is Scarlett O’Hara who hits the nail on the head with her naive reaction against jingoism:
When first she looked at the crowd, Scarlett’s heart had thump- thumped with the unaccustomed excitement of being at a party, but as she half-comprehendingly saw the high-hearted look on the faces about her, her joy began to evaporate. Every woman present was blazing with an emotion she did not feel. It bewildered and depressed her. Somehow, the ball did not seem so pretty nor the girls so dashing, and the white heat of devotion to the Cause that was still shining on every face seemed–why, it just seemed silly!
In a sudden flash of self-knowledge that made her mouth pop open with astonishment, she realized that she did not share with these women their fierce pride, their desire to sacrifice themselves and everything they had for the Cause. Before horror made her think: “No–no! I mustn’t think such things! They’re wrong–sinful,” she knew the Cause meant nothing at all to her and that she was bored with hearing other people talk about it with that fanatic look in their eyes. The Cause didn’t seem sacred to her. The war didn’t seem to be a holy affair, but a nuisance that killed men senselessly and cost money and made luxuries hard to get. She saw that she was tired of the endless knitting and the endless bandage rolling and lint picking that roughened the cuticle of her nails. And oh, she was so tired of the hospital! Tired and bored and nauseated with the sickening gangrene smells and the endless moaning, frightened by the look that coming death gave to sunken faces.
She looked furtively around her, as the treacherous, blasphemous thoughts rushed through her mind, fearful that someone might find them written clearly upon her face. Oh, why couldn’t she feel like those other women! They were whole hearted and sincere in their devotion to the Cause. They really meant everything they said and did. And if anyone should ever suspect that she– No, no one must ever know! She must go on making a pretense of enthusiasm and pride in the Cause which she could not feel, acting out her part of the widow of a Confederate officer who bears her grief bravely, whose heart is in the grave, who feels that her husband’s death meant nothing if it aided the Cause to triumph.
Oh, why was she different, apart from these loving women? She could never love anything or anyone so selflessly as they did. What a lonely feeling it was–and she had never been lonely either in body or spirit before. At first she tried to stifle the thoughts, but the hard self-honesty that lay at the base of her nature would not permit it. And so, while the bazaar went on, while she and Melanie waited on the customers who came to their booth, her mind was busily working, trying to justify herself to herself–a task which she seldom found difficult.
The other women were simply silly and hysterical with their talk of patriotism and the Cause, and the men were almost as bad with their talk of vital issues and States’ Rights. She, Scarlett O’Hara Hamilton, alone had good hard-headed Irish sense. She wasn’t going to make a fool out of herself about the Cause, but neither was she going to make a fool out of herself by admitting her true feelings. She was hard-headed enough to be practical about the situation, and no one would ever know how she felt. How surprised the bazaar would be if they knew what she really was thinking! How shocked if she suddenly climbed on the bandstand and declared that she thought the war ought to stop, so everybody could go home and tend to their cotton and there could be parties and beaux again and plenty of pale green dresses.
op. cit., Chapter IX
Here’s a couple of items from the Internet that deserve mention:
Sleep well, kiddies.
The poor, even while employed and receiving public assistance, have a hard time making ends meet in New York City, according to this article in the New York Times.
This makes me wonder why they don’t move,. If moving is too great an expense, shouldn’t the city help them move? Given the high cost of living in this city, wouldn’t it be wise for many families to cut their losses and try to start afresh in parts of the country where the cost of living is lower?
Such behaviour would also help those poor that decide to stay. As the pool of low-skilled labor decreases, the market should respond by bidding up the wages of those that remain, and thereby making them less poor.
New York needs to export it’s poor, for their own good and the City’s.