There is the speaking about the value of defending Liberty and Justice, and then there is the acting upon it.
For all of those who are acting, or have acted, in the defense of our nation, and all that we stand for,
Thank You.
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Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Veterans Day - 2008
Signal, Sygnet, and Sigil - Veterans Day
There is the speaking about the value of defending Liberty and Justice, and then there is the acting upon it.
For all of those who are acting, or have acted, in the defense of our nation, and all that we stand for,
Thank You.
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There is the speaking about the value of defending Liberty and Justice, and then there is the acting upon it.
For all of those who are acting, or have acted, in the defense of our nation, and all that we stand for,
Thank You.
Save This Page
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Days of Future Cast
The Glair - Days of Future Cast
Today, as Americans, we all have a series of serious choices to be made.
Godspeed with making the right ones.
And if necessary, God save us from ourselves.
Godspeed with making the right ones.
And if necessary, God save us from ourselves.
Saturday, November 01, 2008
Novelization
Pesharim - Novelization
I've decided to participate in the National Novel Writing Month Project.
I won't be following their rules exactly, as I think the attempt to write a 50,000 word novel (firs of all a 50,000 word novel is far too short, it is really more a novella) is not likely to yield anything much of real literary quality.
However I do think that the idea of trying to write consistently by word count, in a compressed period of time, without an attempt to edit as I proceed (but rather to edit later - or not to overedit my fiction as I initially progress, as is the truer case with me) is a very useful exercise. So in that sense I will be following the intent of this project. Anywhere the rules interfere with producing real quality in my efforts however, then I will be ignoring or modifying those rules. For instance I will not be working on the weekends. I have learned over time that the only real benefit to working six or seven days a week, at anything, physical or mental, is lowered productivity, lessened efficiency, ever decreasing enthusiasm, and your mind and body never lay fallow long enough to recover your full capabilities or exploit all of your potential fully. Recreation, relaxation, vacation, and rest are just as important to superb effort as are work, concentration, research, thought, exercise, training, and activity. (Although during the weekends if ideas occur to me or I need to make notes I will do that, I just don't do any real or formal work writing.)
But my novel will actually be written in about six months, I actually started in the first of October, I am averaging 500 to 1000 words a work day (I work Monday through Friday on the novel in addition to my regular work schedule), and at that rate I should have completed a 90,000 word novel (or thereabouts) by the end of March 2009, and with edits and rewrites I can expect to have completed the entire novel project by May to June 2009. I am so far about 9000 words into the work.
Then I will start marketing it by June to July 2009.
If not earlier through agent contacts.
I am also involved in other projects, such as the writing of short stories, I'm concurrently developing a script, and I have a couple of business and invention projects running as well, but this novel is one of my primary projects and one which I concentrate upon working on every workday.
However I do think that the idea of trying to write consistently by word count, in a compressed period of time, without an attempt to edit as I proceed (but rather to edit later - or not to overedit my fiction as I initially progress, as is the truer case with me) is a very useful exercise. So in that sense I will be following the intent of this project. Anywhere the rules interfere with producing real quality in my efforts however, then I will be ignoring or modifying those rules. For instance I will not be working on the weekends. I have learned over time that the only real benefit to working six or seven days a week, at anything, physical or mental, is lowered productivity, lessened efficiency, ever decreasing enthusiasm, and your mind and body never lay fallow long enough to recover your full capabilities or exploit all of your potential fully. Recreation, relaxation, vacation, and rest are just as important to superb effort as are work, concentration, research, thought, exercise, training, and activity. (Although during the weekends if ideas occur to me or I need to make notes I will do that, I just don't do any real or formal work writing.)
But my novel will actually be written in about six months, I actually started in the first of October, I am averaging 500 to 1000 words a work day (I work Monday through Friday on the novel in addition to my regular work schedule), and at that rate I should have completed a 90,000 word novel (or thereabouts) by the end of March 2009, and with edits and rewrites I can expect to have completed the entire novel project by May to June 2009. I am so far about 9000 words into the work.
Then I will start marketing it by June to July 2009.
If not earlier through agent contacts.
I am also involved in other projects, such as the writing of short stories, I'm concurrently developing a script, and I have a couple of business and invention projects running as well, but this novel is one of my primary projects and one which I concentrate upon working on every workday.
Real Dogs
The Exchange - Real Dogs
The wife and I went to get our dogs their rabies vaccinations today. It was my Great Dane bitch and my American Superior puppy, who is about a year and 3 months or so old.
Last week we took our sire mastiff American Superior.
My two dogs towered over every other dog around.
Even here, in a rural area (though not nearly as rural as it used to be, even at the fringes) almost no-one had a real dog.
A few people did. I saw one with a pretty Siberian Huskie, one guy had a German Shepherd, though it was young and small, just a pup. One Mexican guy had a cross between a Rottweiler and a Pit Bull. It was kinda snippy but well behaved enough. It wouldn't have lasted long against Bart though.
Everyone else had these little yap-yap, nip-nip, tea-cup, I don't know what the hell they were dogs. Which is fine I guess but I kept wondering, what good are they? What use do they really serve?
From the amount of yapping they did they seemed pretty effective noise makers, but in a real fight I thought, one hard kick to the snout and the skull of these things would cave in like a house of cards. They seemed about as dangerous and useful as a bicycle horn at a monster truck rally.
My dogs were enormous by comparison.
The other dogs cowered from them but for most folks they were amazing and the belles of the ball. Kids ran up to them saying, "Gosh," ooing and ahhing, petting all over them and a few of the smaller kids asked if they could be ridden. (I don't let kids ride my dogs, even though my bitch and my sire could carry them.) Adults kept saying, "what are those?" "man they are big," and "good Lord, what does that thing weigh?"
Seeing the size of these other things though made me realize two things. People keep down-breeding the size of dogs til they are smaller and more useless than most cats. All they are really good for is cuddling on the couch with chicks like a cat. Which seems kinda shameful and downright counter-productive to me. the function of a dog, in my opinion, is not only as a pet, but also as a real companion to go in the woods with, to play, wrestle and fight with, and to serve as a faithful and fearless guardian for your family, friends, and neighborhood for when you can't be around in person. It's like people are breeding the purpose out of the animals simply so they can carry them around in their back pockets like they were some kinda weird, personal dwarf-child. I got nothing against that kinda dog as a pet, but if that's all your packing then it seems to me like you're shooting plastic pellets at potential bears when real trouble starts.
Secondly it made me realize how to a large extent so much of the territory around me is becoming suburbanized, urbanized, feeble and febrile. Urbanization tends to take all of the power, self-reliance, strength, and health right out of a people. And not just takes it out of the people, it seems to take it even out of the animals around them and the animals they choose to have around them. Like people are downbreeidng all sense of vitality and power right out of themselves merely for the extremely questionable benefits of urban convenience and urban conformity.
I got no interest in it myself.
Weakness, puniness, yappiness, being like everybody else in the herd (especially when the herd is headed downhill off a sharp cliff-face), and down-breeding.
No interest in it for myself, my kids, my lands, or my animals.
More empower, more strength, more self-reliance, more capabilities, not less.
Certainly not less.
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The wife and I went to get our dogs their rabies vaccinations today. It was my Great Dane bitch and my American Superior puppy, who is about a year and 3 months or so old.
Last week we took our sire mastiff American Superior.
My two dogs towered over every other dog around.
Even here, in a rural area (though not nearly as rural as it used to be, even at the fringes) almost no-one had a real dog.
A few people did. I saw one with a pretty Siberian Huskie, one guy had a German Shepherd, though it was young and small, just a pup. One Mexican guy had a cross between a Rottweiler and a Pit Bull. It was kinda snippy but well behaved enough. It wouldn't have lasted long against Bart though.
Everyone else had these little yap-yap, nip-nip, tea-cup, I don't know what the hell they were dogs. Which is fine I guess but I kept wondering, what good are they? What use do they really serve?
From the amount of yapping they did they seemed pretty effective noise makers, but in a real fight I thought, one hard kick to the snout and the skull of these things would cave in like a house of cards. They seemed about as dangerous and useful as a bicycle horn at a monster truck rally.
My dogs were enormous by comparison.
The other dogs cowered from them but for most folks they were amazing and the belles of the ball. Kids ran up to them saying, "Gosh," ooing and ahhing, petting all over them and a few of the smaller kids asked if they could be ridden. (I don't let kids ride my dogs, even though my bitch and my sire could carry them.) Adults kept saying, "what are those?" "man they are big," and "good Lord, what does that thing weigh?"
Seeing the size of these other things though made me realize two things. People keep down-breeding the size of dogs til they are smaller and more useless than most cats. All they are really good for is cuddling on the couch with chicks like a cat. Which seems kinda shameful and downright counter-productive to me. the function of a dog, in my opinion, is not only as a pet, but also as a real companion to go in the woods with, to play, wrestle and fight with, and to serve as a faithful and fearless guardian for your family, friends, and neighborhood for when you can't be around in person. It's like people are breeding the purpose out of the animals simply so they can carry them around in their back pockets like they were some kinda weird, personal dwarf-child. I got nothing against that kinda dog as a pet, but if that's all your packing then it seems to me like you're shooting plastic pellets at potential bears when real trouble starts.
Secondly it made me realize how to a large extent so much of the territory around me is becoming suburbanized, urbanized, feeble and febrile. Urbanization tends to take all of the power, self-reliance, strength, and health right out of a people. And not just takes it out of the people, it seems to take it even out of the animals around them and the animals they choose to have around them. Like people are downbreeidng all sense of vitality and power right out of themselves merely for the extremely questionable benefits of urban convenience and urban conformity.
I got no interest in it myself.
Weakness, puniness, yappiness, being like everybody else in the herd (especially when the herd is headed downhill off a sharp cliff-face), and down-breeding.
No interest in it for myself, my kids, my lands, or my animals.
More empower, more strength, more self-reliance, more capabilities, not less.
Certainly not less.
Save This Page
The Posterity of Things to Come
Pesharim - The Posterity of Things to Come
This is the first part of the rough draft of an extended essay I'm writing. It will be partially political but mainly about the unique nature of America and her culture and civilization, and what present events might entail about the future of the United States.
I intend to rewrite it, enlarge upon perhaps in six or seven parts then prepare it for publication and then to publish it.
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This is the first part of the rough draft of an extended essay I'm writing. It will be partially political but mainly about the unique nature of America and her culture and civilization, and what present events might entail about the future of the United States.
I intend to rewrite it, enlarge upon perhaps in six or seven parts then prepare it for publication and then to publish it.
Part One
History is full of ruined nations. Nations that rose upon their summer blush to heights of great and sometimes incredible power, only to fall back in winter to an early, quiet, or a continuously shallow, complacent grave. In the course and passage of history this is the way of things. The way things have always been, and the way they shall always be. Or is it?
Rome rose, benefactor of, and contender with, both the Greeks and the Jews, then fell, eventually in both the East, and the West, at the hands of barbarian hordes, yet in both spheres it gave birth to Christendom. Eventually Christendom rose from babe to maiden and gave birth to Europe. The peoples of Europe then in their various turns delivered up the Age of Exploration, like Christendom less a nation than a worldview of nations. And although Christendom is not thought of anymore as a political sphere of influence, it still exists, and in many ways is far more widespread and influential across the globe that at any point in her past.
There are no more colonies or lands to explore or stake by ship or sea, yet Europe too still exists, and might even be mighty in our own day had she not squandered all her virtues in the countless and often ill-conceived and vice-filled wars of those squabbling tribes we moderns now call nation-states. The Age of Exploration that Europe fathered likewise gave birth to many things, including eventually the realms of the Americas and onwards from there to our present home, to the United States of America. What then will the United States of America give birth to? What will we bear and what will we parent? And will what America generates replace her, or merely continue on along beside her, she and her children running parallel and co-prospered through future time?
In the United States we often see ourselves as the culmination of the inexorable grind of the forces of historical progress. And so we are, although as with all things, all events, all ages, all nations, all peoples, we are as full with our own, and sometimes indistinct and unobserved flaws, as we are pregnant with untapped, unexplored, and unexploited potential. But we sit upon the pinnacle of history at this point in time, at this age of modernity. Uneasily we sit, but then again we have always sat uneasily upon the height of power, for we have a different view of the responsibilities, and benefits, and luxuries of power than most any other nation has ever had in the history of the world.
And because of this we are different, in many respects, in many important respects, than any who have come before us, be they Babylonian, Persian, Chinese, Greek, or Roman, or Jewish, or Frank, or French, or Italian, or German, or even Byzantine or British (those with whom we have shared the most in common politically and militarily in respect to our view of the world, and our place in it). Our work in history is different, is less easily defined, more nebulous, and yet in some respects more vital than any who have come before us along the path of recorded time.
We are Judeo-Christian in our spirit, Greek in our philosophy, Roman in our pragmatism and methods of administration and expansiveness, British in our technologies, German in our innovation and science, Byzantine (in both the good and bad senses of the term) in our politics (both internally and externally) and military capabilities and apotheosis of warfare, European in our laws, and unlike anyone else at all, ever, in the profound nature of the immense amalgamation of peoples, civilizations, languages, and ideas and ideals which formulate and comprise our culture. And yet within this body, this unlikely organism of various and assorted traits we are also, at our soul - wild-men, frontiersmen, people along the edge of the world. What can you say of such a people other than they are a marvel the likes of which has never before been observed, and that they are a danger unlike any other peoples who have ever existed?
Yes, the United States of America is indeed a danger. A real and persistent threat, even within the heart of the maelstrom of well-intentioned struggles we have sometimes created for ourselves. We are dangerous in the ideals we champion, dangerous in our construction, dangerous in our enormous capabilities, dangerous in our very nature. Danger is knit into our very blood, bones, and being. We were created from peril, fashioned from risk, birthed in enterprise, raised in conflict and competition, molded and tempered in challenge, and made to endeavor. We are the frontier of the future. The world did not create us from blind circumstance, and neither did the past, it is the future who is our father, and our mother, the as yet unseen horizon.
But with parentage such as this that does indeed makes us dangerous. Dangerous and foreboding, to our enemies, to our allies, and to ourselves. You cannot be a thing of danger and not give pause to the timid heart. This is the way of things. This is our way. The American Way.
History is full of ruined nations. Nations that rose upon their summer blush to heights of great and sometimes incredible power, only to fall back in winter to an early, quiet, or a continuously shallow, complacent grave. In the course and passage of history this is the way of things. The way things have always been, and the way they shall always be. Or is it?
Rome rose, benefactor of, and contender with, both the Greeks and the Jews, then fell, eventually in both the East, and the West, at the hands of barbarian hordes, yet in both spheres it gave birth to Christendom. Eventually Christendom rose from babe to maiden and gave birth to Europe. The peoples of Europe then in their various turns delivered up the Age of Exploration, like Christendom less a nation than a worldview of nations. And although Christendom is not thought of anymore as a political sphere of influence, it still exists, and in many ways is far more widespread and influential across the globe that at any point in her past.
There are no more colonies or lands to explore or stake by ship or sea, yet Europe too still exists, and might even be mighty in our own day had she not squandered all her virtues in the countless and often ill-conceived and vice-filled wars of those squabbling tribes we moderns now call nation-states. The Age of Exploration that Europe fathered likewise gave birth to many things, including eventually the realms of the Americas and onwards from there to our present home, to the United States of America. What then will the United States of America give birth to? What will we bear and what will we parent? And will what America generates replace her, or merely continue on along beside her, she and her children running parallel and co-prospered through future time?
In the United States we often see ourselves as the culmination of the inexorable grind of the forces of historical progress. And so we are, although as with all things, all events, all ages, all nations, all peoples, we are as full with our own, and sometimes indistinct and unobserved flaws, as we are pregnant with untapped, unexplored, and unexploited potential. But we sit upon the pinnacle of history at this point in time, at this age of modernity. Uneasily we sit, but then again we have always sat uneasily upon the height of power, for we have a different view of the responsibilities, and benefits, and luxuries of power than most any other nation has ever had in the history of the world.
And because of this we are different, in many respects, in many important respects, than any who have come before us, be they Babylonian, Persian, Chinese, Greek, or Roman, or Jewish, or Frank, or French, or Italian, or German, or even Byzantine or British (those with whom we have shared the most in common politically and militarily in respect to our view of the world, and our place in it). Our work in history is different, is less easily defined, more nebulous, and yet in some respects more vital than any who have come before us along the path of recorded time.
We are Judeo-Christian in our spirit, Greek in our philosophy, Roman in our pragmatism and methods of administration and expansiveness, British in our technologies, German in our innovation and science, Byzantine (in both the good and bad senses of the term) in our politics (both internally and externally) and military capabilities and apotheosis of warfare, European in our laws, and unlike anyone else at all, ever, in the profound nature of the immense amalgamation of peoples, civilizations, languages, and ideas and ideals which formulate and comprise our culture. And yet within this body, this unlikely organism of various and assorted traits we are also, at our soul - wild-men, frontiersmen, people along the edge of the world. What can you say of such a people other than they are a marvel the likes of which has never before been observed, and that they are a danger unlike any other peoples who have ever existed?
Yes, the United States of America is indeed a danger. A real and persistent threat, even within the heart of the maelstrom of well-intentioned struggles we have sometimes created for ourselves. We are dangerous in the ideals we champion, dangerous in our construction, dangerous in our enormous capabilities, dangerous in our very nature. Danger is knit into our very blood, bones, and being. We were created from peril, fashioned from risk, birthed in enterprise, raised in conflict and competition, molded and tempered in challenge, and made to endeavor. We are the frontier of the future. The world did not create us from blind circumstance, and neither did the past, it is the future who is our father, and our mother, the as yet unseen horizon.
But with parentage such as this that does indeed makes us dangerous. Dangerous and foreboding, to our enemies, to our allies, and to ourselves. You cannot be a thing of danger and not give pause to the timid heart. This is the way of things. This is our way. The American Way.
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