Aleatory automobile
The Peugeot 505 I bought for $1950 is a true adventure I felt a bit bad about buying anything French, but then I figured I was simply liberating the car from the clutches of the America-haters. Like a French woman, though, the Peugeot presents a different personality every day. Some days everything works, she smiles and hums and pleases me without my having to ask. Other days the turn signals don't work, the ABS light comes on, the cooling system overheats and the transmission seems on the verge of dropping out of the car every other second. But exerting my male mastery has so far kept her obedient, even submissive. I've learned a lot about her moods. I bring her presents, like octane booster, a tire gauge, a funnel for filling fluids. I'm sure she's going to dump me in the middle of nowhere some day, but it's been worth it so far, for those glorious sunny days when fourth gear kicks in and she zooms past everything on the highway, smooth and cool as a summer breeze. Not bad for an old gal. I wonder if it's true that French women get better as they get older. I'll have to find out! I actually found some Peugeot sites on the web, like this mailing list directory and this list of links. Could this be the start of a harem of seductive beauties from many different lands? I'm still on the lookout for an early '70s MG Midget. And I'd love an Alfa, a Lancia, an old three-cylinder Saab. Ah, so many cars, so little time and money!

More fiction
Browsing through Lou Salome's "Nietzsche", (University of Illinois Press, 1988) what should I find but ten aphorisms for writers:

Toward the Teaching of Style
1. Of prime necessity is life: a style should live.
2. Style should be suited to the specific person with whom you wish to communicate. (The law of mutual relation.)
3. First, one must determine precisely, "what-and-what do I wish to say and present," before you may write. Writing must be mimicry.
4. Since the writer lacks many of the speaker's means, he must in general have for his model a very expressive kind of presentation; of necessity, the written copy will appear much paler.
5. The richness of life reveals itself through a richness of gestures. One must learn to feel everything - the length and retarding of sentences, interpunctuations, the choice of words, the pausing, the sequence of arguments - like gestures.
6. Be careful with periods! Only those people who also have long duration of breath while speaking are entitled to periods. With most people, the period is a matter of affectation.
7. Style ought to prove that one believes in an idea; not only thinks it but also feels it.
8. The more abstract a truth which one wishes to teach, the more one must first entice the senses.
9. Strategy on the part of the good writer of prose consists of choosing his means for stepping close to poetry but never stepping into it.
10. It is not good manners or clever to deprive one's readers of the most obvious objections. It is very good manners and very clever to leave it to one's reader alone to pronounce the ultimate quintessence of our wisdom.

That old Friedrich Wilhelm! He sure does set the mind a-thinking. Numbers 8 and 9 are beautifully clear and compelling, but insanely difficult to practice.

Governmentium
Just in case anyone missed Frontpagemag.com today, it has a link to a religious site that, nonetheless, offers this. As a government worker, I can testify to the scientific truth of the author's observation of governmentium, proven through many controlled experiments, all too easily reproduced in any environment on God's green earth.

Soldier of the Legion

Marshall S. Thomas has written a spectacular story which I bought and read. It's impossible not to get caught up in the action. At the end he keeps the reader in delicious suspense, agog for the sequel, which I am assured by the author is written and ready to be sent to the publisher. I can give no higher recommendation than to say that I haven't read science fiction for decades, weary of pedestrian plots and outlandish characters meant to shock as much as entertain. Legion is different. Read it.

I woke up this morning and I had myself a blog
Oh, yeah, I woke up this morning and I had myself a blo-og
The future's uncertain and the end is always - Pog??

OK so there's no good rhyme. As the proud owner of a 1987 Peugeot 505 STX, though, I think I'm justified in saying that this life takes you places you never thought you'd go. I was going to buy a brand new Kia, for the warranty. But I didn't see chaining myself to a six-year payment plan to pay ten thousand dollars for a chintzy Korean car that will be worth three thousand dollars in four years, when I'll still have six thousand dollars to pay on it. SO I went for the six-cylinder, automatic transmission, power sunroof, air-conditioned rugged if irredeemably Frankish Peugeot. Drives like a dream, it does, although those suspicious "clunks" coming from the automatic transmission should have given a wise man pause. But wise men tell no tales. No, that's dead men. Well, actually, that could apply to both, one by definition, one by prudence. Time for more coffee...

Michael Jackson and Gay Marriage

As the case against Michael Jackson gets more and more watertight, his defenders are backed into a corner. If all they had against them was a 45-year-old man sleeping in the same bed with preteen boys unrelated to him, they would still be in serious trouble. Who else, famous or not, could survive such confessed behavior? What other sane man, in this day and age, would do such a thing without thinking, "Hey, wait a minute, this could get me into real trouble"? Aren't we forced to think perhaps there was a little arrogance behind it, not just innocence? Isn't it highly probable Jackson was not thinking, "Isn't this beautiful and aren't I innocent and harmless and childlike", but "Hey, this would get most men my age in trouble, but I'm Michael Jackson. They can't touch me!" Since now letters have come out with damaging details about what was really going on in that bed, aren't his defenders now forced back into the "what's wrong with it, it's all done in the name of love?" defense? And screaming "racism!!" of course, which has already started. And which is palpably absurd when you realize that MJ has spent his whole life fleeing from blackness as he has from adulthood. The MJ Trial which looms ahead of us could have as many resonances as the OJ Trial did in the Nineties. One hopes the justice system comes off looking better. If the defense does try to defend Jackson's conduct on the grounds that even though it is illegal, it shouldn't be, we may be in for a wild ride. If homosexual conduct can go from being a ticket to jail to being a requirement for a marriage license, though, who knows what a California jury might come up with in the the way of "empathetic nullification"? The case for gay marriage stresses that homosexual attraction is love, a love just as real and just as worthy of protection by the state as heterosexual attraction. Well, then, why not the love of a 45-year old billionaire for a 12-year-old dying of cancer? Drawing the line at a particular age, as the state does with statutory rape laws, would have to be exposed as prejudiced, rigid and harsh. After all, don't laws allow underage heterosexuals to get married, with parental consent? Well, didn't MJ's kiddy victims have their parents' approval, for whatever reasons? I smell quagmire.

Gee, maybe there really are some actual men left in Britain!

From the Guardian:

Dear Mr President,

Today you arrive in my country for the first state visit by an American president for many decades, and I bid you welcome.

You will find yourself assailed on every hand by some pretty pretentious characters collectively known as the British left. They traditionally believe they have a monopoly on morality and that your recent actions preclude you from the club. You opposed and destroyed the world's most blood-encrusted dictator. This is quite unforgivable.

I beg you to take no notice. The British left intermittently erupts like a pustule upon the buttock of a rather good country. Seventy years ago it opposed mobilisation against Adolf Hitler and worshipped the other genocide, Josef Stalin.

It has marched for Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Andropov. It has slobbered over Ceausescu and Mugabe. It has demonstrated against everything and everyone American for a century. Broadly speaking, it hates your country first, mine second.

Eleven years ago something dreadful happened. Maggie was ousted, Ronald retired, the Berlin wall fell and Gorby abolished communism. All the left's idols fell and its demons retired. For a decade there was nothing really to hate. But thank the Lord for his limitless mercy. Now they can applaud Saddam, Bin Laden, Kim Jong-Il... and hate a God-fearing Texan. So hallelujah and have a good time.
Frederick Forsyth
Novelist

America as Israel

Natan Sharansky has connected Zionism and America-bashing in a particularly convincing column in Commentary (via RealClearPolitics).

No candy today, kids

Gee, what do you know? Al Qaeda attacks Arabs too! But the secretary of the "Organization of the Islamic Conference" said the attacks in Riyadh on the living quarters of foreign workers from Lebanon, Egypt, Sudan and other Arab countries "harmed the image of Muslims and Islam. " Right. Image for whom? The American Street? You guys blew that so long ago it isn't funny. So for whom are these apologists for murderers performing now? Better get those Bush t-shirts while you can!!

Good one
Never thought I'd say this in my days of fanatic military-hating during Vietnam, but I now do understand and appreciate everything the US soldiers are doing over there in Iraq. As usual, Mark Steyn says it best:

In our time, mass slaughter occurs only in places where the West refuses to act - in the Sudan or North Korea - or acts only under the contemptible and corrupting rules of UN "peacekeeping", as at Srebrenica. In Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere, technological advantage changes the moral calculus: it makes war the least worst option, the moral choice. At the 11th hour of the 11th day, we should remember those who died in the Great War, but recognise that it could never be "the war to end all wars" and never should.

Huh?
Here it is 12:30 in the morning Wednesday after the polls have closed in Kentucky and Mississippi - OK, they're on Central Time and Tallahassee's on Eastern Time - and I can't get anyone to admit that Haley Barbour has actually won the MS governor's race. Not CNN, not ABC, not even Fox, which isn't as conservative as it's portrayed. It's weird. It's like Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Hey, you don't think he's hiding out in the PBS studio in Tallahassee, do you?? Nah. The Dems gave up on KY pretty early, and they were ecstatic about the black beating the Jew in Philly, but do you think they had any idea that George W and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz might have helped Haley Barbour become Governor of Mississippi? When neither Clinton nor McAuliffe nor Dean nor, God help us, Kucinich, can go south of the Mason-Dixon line at the risk of their political lives and those that they're trying to help? The Dems better consider if they can win the 2004 presidential race with Philadelphia and Vermont. 'Cause that's all they've got.

Gasp!
Looks like the San Francisco Chronicle actually has a (gulp!) conservative writing for it! This guy Adam Sparks actually quotes Rush - in a Frisco paper!! Gee, maybe the Bay Area does like to be on the cutting edge! His take on the apparent shift to Republicanism in California could have come right out of the pages of the National Review. Or maybe Reason. It's becoming clear to me that Arnold is not just any old Republican. He may steal all the lifestyle issues from the Dems, leaving them with hardscrabble Hillary- and Nader-style neo-Puritanism. That doesn't win elections. The true right wing - from Buchanan to Pat Robertson - won't like it one bit, but that's also OK with me. Welcome to the rational world of Adam Sparks, Frisco!

Laser hellos
Looks like laser weapons are going to happen, and not that far in the future. Now if they can get them to the point where they can stop an RPG in mid-flight, before the soldier even knows one's been fired, and he can wear it on his helmet without knowing it's there, we've got something.

Pour (de)courager les autres
IF this proves to be true, Khalid not-so-chic should be publicly executed, with as much mercy shown as he showed to Daniel Pearl. Several recent stories have rattled on about how Al Qaeda members have been killed or captured because of information given by Khalid. Perhaps now we see why he's been so cooperative. He's trying to weasel out of the electric chair. I don't care how much information he's given us, he still needs to die as publicly as possible, with his death connected directly to Daniel Pearl's. There will be other hostages taken in this war. The hostage takers need to have a lot to think about before they resolve to kill any more Americans.

Loud Austrians
Interesting article about the German reaction to Schwarzenegger's victory:

"simple remedies from loud Austrians who enthrall the masses"

Case in point
Why do I bother to blog, when articles like this say what I was meaning to say, but better? Well, maybe they don't get every nuance of meaning. Well, maybe actually they just reinforce the importance of me writing to clarify and expand on what they are saying. Hey, that's why I blog! So I had to add a lavalicious comment:

The fact that Arnold didn't have to go through a primary may have allowed us a look beneath the ossified structures of politics as usual to see what's percolating down there. We didn't have to wait for the every-four-years programmed volcano to erupt. The recall exposed the tectonic forces deep underground. To carry the metaphor to ridiculous lengths, two possibilities emerge: 1) the pressure has been relieved and the next primary season will reinforce the existing order or 2) the rift in the rocky shield has loosed a demon from far within the earth that will change everything forever. I know which one I hope it is.

Nostradamus had nothing on me!
Gee, did I call it or what? The blogosphere is alive with the sound of hoo-hoo hooing. Victory is sweet, sweeter than defeat. And I'm a sworn-in lawyer now too, all ready to go to work bringing in immigrants or keeping them out, whichever pays more. Say, you don't think the Governator needs a lawyer or two? Do they have any in Kali-furnia? Had a great feast with my family yesterday. Escargots and duck and chocolate. That's it, I can die now. There's still champagne, of course. Maybe I'll wait until New Year's to really celebrate.

I've noticed some comment here and there that Arnie means more than just more (R)s in 2004. Perhaps this is the start of a true sea change. Maybe Ventura was the John the Baptist (Isn't Ventura in Kali-furnia?) and the Savior who throws the money-changers out of the temple will be a true barbarian, beholden to no civilized party, who destroys, Samson-like, the pillars of the fossilized two-party structure we've all been voting for like good little lemmings for our whole lives. Er, not me. Haven't voted since Carter didn't carry through with zero-based budgeting. This speculation is not ripe enough for Conundrumization yet. I'll wait until the day before final victory.

Put a fork in him, vater!
A conundrum prediction - Schwarzenegger for Fuhrer! er, Governor! It doesn't look like the LA Times blowing its cover completely, visits from BJ and the support of labor is going to keep Gray-out in power. Is this a major development or what? Imagine if a recall had been possible in 1998 and the Repubs had gone all out to root BJ out of the White House? It wouldn't have worked. But of course Ahnold wouldn't have been running on the replacement ballot. That's a question I haven't seen answered. If (R)nold hadn't been running on the replacement ballot, would support for the recall stand up? Ah, I anticipate. We'll address that tomorrow, probably, after I get sworn in as a supporter of the Florida and Federal Constitutions.

Puzzled
I've been wondering for a while now why in the world Bush has announced his intention to go to the UN to seek some sort of resolution about the reconstruction of Iraq. The answer may have just come to me. Last week, the members of the Arab League, in a move hardly reported at all, accepted the delegate from the new Iraqi "occupation" government to attend a meeting in Cairo. When you think of it, that was a sign of astonishing progress, when everyone from the Guardian to the New York Times to Howard Dean is trying to paint Bush's Iraq after-effort as a "'quagmire" and a "miserable failure". Now maybe going to the UN is a prelude to asking the UN to accept a delegate from the new government to sit in Saddam's government's chair at the General Assembly. What a demonstration that would be to the whole world that things have changed in Baghdad for good and all. Would France and Germany and the other knee-jerk anti-American forces accept such a thing? How could they not, when the Arabs themselves have acknowledged the reality of the new government? At least it wouldn't be a fraud and a preposterous insult to have THIS Iraqi government sit on the Human Rights subcommittee.

Still Waiting
For my bar certification, that is. I assume if there were a problem, Florida would have notified me. Sigh. Maybe next week I'll hear something. New Hampshire hasn't got back to me yet, either. But they will. The good news today is that a whole week has gone by with no US military deaths in Iraq. Still think this is Vietnam, anyone? I can't hear you!? I don't think there was a week without a death in Nam for ten years. Just hope it continues for a while. After this is all over, we'll have quite a cadre of fighters trained in overturning and modernizing Arab and other Islamic cultures. Could come in handy. Darn, I hope I can find the URL to that Berlusconi interview the other day. What a guy! Who would think a European could have an actual brain AND guts! The Qaddafi quote is worth tracking it down. Off I go a-Googling.

Update

Got it. And there's another, more impressionistic piece in the same Spectator. Che uomo!! OK, so they go a bit far: "Balding, beaming, bouncing multi-billionaire"?? Somebody's forgetting he's a reporter, not a novelist. Fizzy dog, indeed.