Haven't felt much like writing or doing anything else these last couple of days; even playing internet spaceships has been :effort: Thus the lack of posting.

This Lileks story about the police cruiser parked in front of the drop-off boxes doesn't really surprise me. Police tend to park anywhere they want in their cruisers, regardless of the signage; I will grant that I've never seen one parked in a handicap spot. Still, it's one of those things that ought to be drilled into young cadets' heads: the law applies to you, too. Including the parking regulations. People understand if you're blocking traffic so that they don't drive through an accident scene or into the middle of a shootout, but parking in front of drop-off boxes at the Post Office, not so much.

Speaking of the mail, it doesn't look like I'm going to get Christmas cards out this year. First, I have no idea where the box of cards went to during the massive cleaning & purging earlier this year, and second, I can't afford postage for them anyway. Maybe next year.

( On a completely unrelated topic )

In other news, the trailer for Iron Man 2 is out, and it looks to be 50% violence, 50% coolness, and 50% awesome.

Secular America, it appears that the Church has had enough of your shenanigans. (The Western Confucian via The Marmot's Hole)

One photographer's battle against anorexia in the modeling field.(Probably NSFW) (Ibid.)

Need to pick up the season's hottest political tomes? Look not further than The Other McCain! As a further inducement, the taste Amazon gives Stacy off these sales goes to support independent news reporting of the sort not often done by the lamestream media, and keeps Mrs. McCain happy. Honestly, who could deny a woman like that the pleasure of a jingly tip jar?
"But I already have a glut of books/hate politics/want to get something for my SO!" you say? Well, that's already been covered, with some helpful tips on maintaining a happy marriage supplied along with some tasteful art. (YMMV)

As for me, well, I don't have a wife and six kids, but I wouldn't mind a little traffic through my portal either. Take a look at my bookstore or take advantage of Amazon's Black Friday Deals.

Last but not least, The Dugout gives thanks for Joe Mauer.

I think this XKCD strip mostly has it right, except on the business side he mercifully omitted the other panel where you get a "2" (needs improvement) rating on your annual review because you spend time surfing the internet instead of staring at your cube walls being bored.

Great article in Wired. Much like global warming, this debate pits deliberate ignorance against science. For my part, I think people who make medical decisions for their children based on what Jenny McCarhy says deserve what they get, but I don't appreciate them putting my life -to say nothing of my family and friends!- at risk because of their stupidity.

(Instapundit)

This comment wins the internets:

"Disturbing, But Oddly Satisfying Vision Update: A comment from Mrs. Peel too good not to promote to the mainpage:

Of course! It's Constitution Day!

*envisions the Constitution taking bodily form and rampaging through Congress, avenging the abuses it has suffered*

"Oh, you want me to JUSTIFY eating you, Senator? Just read the COMMERCE CLAUSE! What's that you say? The Commerce Clause governs only interstate commerce? NOT ACCORDING TO YOU IT DOESN'T! NOM NOM NOM"

Om nom nom, indeed! Run, Senator, Run!"

From Ace, source of the finest madness.

Jim Carroll died Friday and apparently was just found today. I wasn't familiar with The Basketball Diaries or its movie version and never heard this song until today when I saw the post on Althouse:

Makes me think maybe I was missing something, but I don't know. Once you've read one story about talented people pissing away their talents so they can snort or shoot up, I think you've read them all. Good song, though.

As for Patrick Swayze, well, I never saw a lot of the movies he's well known for. I did see this one.

(Ace)

P wants to do a road trip, so this is going to be quick & dirty.

Most important: Alexandria accepted my application for substitute teaching. Fairfax County, on the other hand, deprecated my lack of classroom teaching experience and said they'd take me only as a substitute instructional assistant. Which counts as classroom experience, so it's a step toward the eventual goal of landing a FT teaching job.

Still no call from Don Beyer. For all I know they sold the Sportage for scrap and are hoping I don't find the fatal flaw in the Legacy they loaned me.

Smittypalooza was great fun, and the host has a recap here. Lots of good conversation in addition to meeting the legendary Paco, R. Stacy and Smitty their own selves, and some lovely ladies who had flown in from Arizona, Idaho and Michigan for the 9/12 rally*. All in attendance agreed that this would have to become a recurring event, so we might well see this happening on a monthly basis, or maybe only every six weeks. Much depends on whether Smitty was able to cover his tab with our contributions. :)

I said a couple weeks ago that I'd review Inglourious Basterds and Reservoir Dogs, which I saw while in Ocean City.
( Spoilers )

Finally, Allahpundit's account of 9/11. Original Twitter feed here. I read this when I got home early this morning, and it put me in a somber mood, remembering how the day went. (Ace)






*Also present was Matthew Vadum, who writes for the American Spectator.

Where to go for lust, greed, etc.
(Instapundit)

( Forstchen's One Second After )
tl;dr: This is an excellent read, much like Stirling's Dies The Fire except without the Alien Space Bats and RenFaire Celts. The hardback is available for ~$6 at Barnes & Noble, and well worth it at the price.

Farmer says coastal elites should STFU and quit telling him to farm like his granddaddy did. Also, the truth about boxing up shoats.
(Reason via Instapundit; Bailey's post at Reason.com is also worth reading in its own right.)

When she's bad, she's horrible, but when she's good, she's gorram outstanding. Megan McArdle on American obesity, what may be causing it, and how hard it's going to be to change it. She had a post earlier in the week about the difficulty of permanently changing one's weight which was also good, and I don't know why I didn't link to it.

Kid Rock, he say:

"It's gay. If one more person asks me if I have a Twitter, I'm going to tell them, 'Twitter this ****, mother****er,' " the shaggy-haired rocker tells Rolling Stone. "I don't have anything to say, and what I have to say is not that relevant. Anything that is relevant, I'm going to bottle it up and then squeeze it onto a record somewhere."

(Hot Air)

Turns out the late Farrah Fawcett was considered for the lead role in a mini-series rendition of Atlas Shrugged, at least in Ayn Rand's mind.
(The Corner)

Got a call from a headhunter wondering if I was interested in a three-month contract job @24/hour. HELL YEAH. Hopefully either that or the Monday interview will work out.

In the meantime, more shopping tonight. I should be set for a couple weeks now, with the possible exception of milk and eggs. Maybe coffee.

In the unreal world, Michael Jackson is dead. I was surprised to find out he was roughly my age, but considering the life he's lived I'm surprised he didn't punch out sooner, possibly with an assist from an angry parent. Ah, well. He's a shining testament to the uniqueness of our nation: only here can a poor black child grow up to be a rich white woman.

Roundtable Pictures talks about how teachers ruin Catcher in the Rye by trying to present it as something it isn't. (AmSpecBlog)

I avoided that book like the plague, deliberately taking forensics and grammar courses in high school to avoid being assigned what people had been sighing over as a "classic". I'd been reading classics for a long time, and I was pretty sure nothing this damn popular with English teachers qualified. It still doesn't sound like something I'd want to spend any time on now.

Megan McArdle agrees: lack of sleep makes you stupid.
This is in the context of an argument over whether it's smarter to let interns get more sleep, as opposed to the current training regimen which has them getting screwed out of sleep as badly as MASH surgeons during a big push. It's times like this that I wish I knew when Sue Page-Phillips disappeared to; as the only doctor I knew personally, she'd have some insights on this that nobody in my current tribe of friends has. Oh well.

Hermes is breeding its own crocodiles, because the natural supply can't keep up with demand. I wonder whether there is now a subsidiary market in Aussie croc meat. (Marginal Revolution)

Jules Crittenden reminds us that today is the Army's 234th birthday; also, a link roundup on the mess in Iran.

Or, how to land an F-16 with a spinal injury. (Maggie's Farm)

Anyone who claims there are no more heroes isn't paying attention.

UPDATE & BUMP: They're not all in uniform, either. (Instapundit)

haikujaguar has a rant on the necessity of followers and how the Overculture (my term not hers) doesn't respect people who would rather support than lead. She calls for society to respect the sergeants as well as the lieutenants, the spear carriers as well as the heroes. I agree that the Overculture doesn't do this much, perhaps because most people in supporting roles aren't as charismatic and newsworthy as the heroes. I think there's also a point to be made that the Overculture has lost (or never had) the Catholic attitude that work gives dignity to the worker, whether that work is flipping burgers or running a multinational conglomerate. Personally, I suspect that one aspect of the Treason of the Clerks that goes largely unremarked on is the disrespect for anyone who is not an academic or some other member of the intelligentsia. This is evident in the now-infamous video of the CNN reporter at the Chicago Tea party; she had no respect for those people or their cause, and held them up for ridicule on a national news feed. So, yeah. We have a culture in control of the schools that tries to force everyone into a mold that produces chiefs and intellectualoids but no Indians or auto mechanics; the bastard spawn of Ayn Rand by John Dewey, these schools are, which is all the more reason to keep your children out of them and teach them yourself.

On a less serious note, beatonna put out the Geek Signal for non-Anglospheric history recommendations, and now has over 200 comments from people. I'm not sure you can find histories after the 19th century uncontaminated by Anglo culture, myself, since the sun never set on the British Empire and even that parts of the world that weren't part of Queen Victoria's turf were being run or heavily influenced by Englilsh-speaking types. Just for amusement value, what histories of the non-English-speaking world have caught your interest, oh well-read denizens of my f-list? Movies and anime are acceptable replies, if they're sufficiently historically accurate.

While this is the day we officially remember Washington & Lincoln, I agree with Bird Dog that we should also remember one of the great unsung Presidents.

Today was a day much like other days, except that it started with dropping onsenmark off at the Van Dorn Street Metro station so he could take the train downtown to the bus station and not have to jerk around riding Metrobuses to Ballston (change for Metro Center) when he could just take the Metro all the way. After the Day Job, I proceeded to the Night Job, put in about 3.3 hours, and went home by way of Chipotle.

Had problems all weekend with the Winbox choking and dying; tweaked the Realtek setup and am hoping for the best.

Am partway through the second reading of The Honor of the Clan and still don't know quite what to think about it. Picked up and finished Wodehouse's Psmith, Journalist, which was an amusing palate cleanser and not at all related to the Buck Godot adventure of the same name. Maybe it's some other Psmith novel that Phil had in mind.

"There's marriage, and there's everything else." Thus spake Cobb, and as I watch the fallout from the detonation of a friend's long time relationship, I have to wonder why more people don't get this and act accordingly. Sure, promises were made and broken, but this is why marriage used to be so damn hard to get out of. Marriage is SERIOUS FUCKING BUSINESS. You're making a legal commitment which is going to kneecap you financially as well as emotionally if you fuck it up. That's what it's there for. The tax incentives and stuff are just society encouraging what ought to be happening naturally. Any other kind of long-term relationship that involves sex and friendship that doesn't end up in marriage is going to explode sooner or later, and there are damn few exceptions I can think of that would prove me wrong. Like only one*. I find it significant that California and some other states snuck palimony into the legal system because they were too high-class to admit they wanted to put the stamp of approval on common-law marriage, which everyone knew was for trashy Southern folk and not glittering Hollywood people. Whatever.

I feel bad for both the people involved, but at the same time a little frustrated that they couldn't see this coming a mile away. Men who act like dogs aren't going to suddenly get up on their hind legs and start wearing Armani. Women going through stress that makes them crazy who won't put some of it down shouldn't be surprised that other people get tired of their shit and start looking for fun elsewhere. You want commitment? Get a ring. Nothing else works, because nothing else can call in John Law and the Church for backup.

*Edited because jolest is right, as usual.