A little reflection . . .

There is a fantasy I sometimes indulge in. No, not the one of Liza dressed as Wonder Woman, but an altogether more arrogant one.

I am dead and I come, broken and bleeding and tired and worn, to the foot of the steps that lead to the throne of God. And in this fantasy, the gleaming white steps are the concrete representation of Purgatory (after the wonderful work of my friend Mercury Gray). And I stumble up them, step by agonizing step, and eventually come to stand before the throne of Jesus Christ. And He looks down on me, and I can finally meet His gaze.

He speaks to me.

“Welcome, beloved and trusted servant – enter into the kingdom prepared for you before the foundation of the Earth.”

He glances down at my side. I am holding a sword. I realize I have been holding it for a very long time. He shakes His head and smiles.

There are others here – people I recognize, at least I do now. There is Ignatius, and Aquinas, and John-Paul, and others. And because this is a fantasy, even people like Dr. Monica Miller and Michelle Yax (who are still alive) and even people who don't exist – so I can see Vladimir Hunyadi and Elizabeth Studdock.

“You can put it down,” says Ignatius.

“You don't need to fight any more,” adds Aquinas.

“You won,” explains John-Paul.

“The war is over?” I ask.

“For you,” they answer.

And I let go of the sword and – and this is where it really becomes fantastic, because I have no idea what this will feel like, because I don't know how to do anything but fight – I feel at peace. And I am content.

And I want this fantasy to be real so very much – not because I want to feel at peace, but because I want to be able to want to feel at peace. I want to be able to be content with not fighting. I don't want to feel guilty for not trying to advance the Kingdom and get myself to Heaven.

But right now I am not content with that – I feel guilty. And so that is why I do fight, and why I continue to break my friendships and risk hurting others and hold such extreme positions. Right now, I don't actively seek peace. I don't want the war to end, because if it did I think I wouldn't know what to do.

When the war ends for me, I know that I will be happy not fighting. I just don't know what that happiness will feel like.

That's why this is a fantasy.

A Silk-Robed Son-of-a-Bitch

I apologize for what is perhaps a somewhat brutal title, and I also apologise for not discussing the final day of our recent trip up north - but this was something which resonated with me.

If you would like to read the news report on this matter, please do so. If you want to read my version of it, read on. In fact, in either case, read on - I do more than simply report a fact here.

The basics of the story are simple; a woman goes into an abortion mill for an abortion. And the abortion is botched and a living baby is delivered. The baby is struggling for breath and trying to cling to life - but the baby is alive. The baby has been born. The little girl child is alive and out of the womb and is breathing. The baby, by any standard, even the twisted standards of the pro-abortionists, is a living human being.

And a worker at the abortion mill takes the baby, and sweeps the living human being into a plastic bag, and throws the plastic bag onto the roof of the abortion clinic.

And, of course, the baby dies of exposure.

This is not a theoretical tale, this is not some hypothetical story designed to argue against the Born Alive Infants Protection Act . This is something which really happened. This is yet another example of the thing which Barack Obama says doesn't happen.

(Yes, Barack Obama claims people are never born alive after botched abortions. You know that guy doesn't let little things like facts get in the way of what he does, of course.)

The reaction to this tale around the office where I work was, as would be expected (given the fact I work with human beings not liberals who seem to only care about whales and gays), entirely horrified. It was the reaction of people who didn't believe this sort of thing could happen.

I, of course, had a slightly different reaction.

I am from Europe, of course, and so my reaction was just as horrified as theirs, just as disgusted - but not as shocked. I know this sort of thing happened on a daily basis only a few short centuries ago. 2000 years is not long in the history of the world, and leaving babies to die of exposure because they were unwanted was common practice for the ancient Greeks. The pagan world was full of that sort of stuff - it forms the foundation stone of tales of incest, patricide and revenge.

This ended when that civilization collapsed, and into the void came the Christian world. And that is a simple truism - there is nothing more to be said about that. When Christianity comes, child sacrifice stops.

But we now live in a post-Christian world, don't we? We're too sophisticated to believe the old legends, aren't we? We're so civilized and educated that we can kill children, aren't we?

Have you ever stopped to consider - a simple glance at two images will do - just how much our civilization looks like Greece? Like the nation that killed its children? Take a look at Washington and Athens.





Look at that. Look at the glory that was Greece - look at the nation that was a rotting carcase of decay inside, defended by loyal soldiers on the outside. Look at Washington and look at the decadence and child-sacrifice of Athens. And then look at the Marines and look at the Spartans.

There is a reason they look the same. Because they are.

The title of this blogpost is taken from this article - an excellent study of what liberals are. Liberals are people who, fundamentally, are traitors to human ideals. They are the people who say that civilization simply isn't worth defending, that the civilization we have had is just bad and wrong, and that it needs to be changed.

They forget that the civilization we have is the only one we have. They forget that outside of civilization there is simply darkness, madness and endless war. In the words of Mace Windu, Jedi do not fight for peace, they fight for civilization because only civilization creates peace.

And what do we have now? We have a world where not only do things like this happen - but people running for public office and who stand a strong chance of winning want this to happen.

Barack Obama voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. An act which, if it had not passed in the US Congress, would have made what this murderous witch who stuffed a living human child into a garbage bag did entirely legal (or, merely illegal because it would be something like "inappropriate disposal of medical waste").

Let's go over that again, liberals (really, the rest of this post is written as if the person reading it is a liberal supporter of Obama. Please continue to read if you are not, but you might find yourself being accused of things you don't do. When you see the word "you", rest assured it only refers to you if you are a liberal Obamaite).

Your messiah wants a world where this sort of thing is legal. He wants a world where she wouldn't have had to stuff the child in a garbage bag and throw her on the roof. She could have just waited a few hours and then stuffed her dead body in a garbage bag and disposed of her body entirely legally.

This is the world that Barack Obama wants. This is what the Harvard-educated silk-robed son-of-a-bitch who's never held a single job which wasn't paid for with tax-dollars wants. This is the world he is fighting for. This is what your donations have wrought.

Forget the economy. Forget the war in Iraq. Forget everything else - they don't matter. Obama wants a world where leaving children to die is legal. He wants a world as mad and as dark as the world before Christ.

And now, if you vote for him having read this, you want it too.

Seriously - check out this page. On that page is a video; it is polemic, but what is not? But there are also documents - or links to them, at least. Check them out. Read them. See that Obama genuinely did oppose the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. He worked for a world where infants would be left to die. His story about only opposing it because it didn't contain certain language is a lie. It is a damned, flat-out, total and complete lie. It covers up what he did because even he knows that what he did was wrong. And he has to hide it.

So, read that page. And then, if you vote for Barack, you know that you are voting for a man who thinks that children should be allowed to die. It's that simple. Everything else is meaningless - he supports the killing of 4000 children a day (the number killed by surgical abortions), wants to sign the Freedom of Choice Act (which would make abortion even easier, removing every single law which prevents it - so allowing partial birth, without parental notification, for any reason whatsoever), and wants to allow infanticide.

You know this now. I have told you. There is evidence in the links above.

If you vote for this man, you tacitly agree that this is okay. Or tolerable. Or acceptable when weighed against other things.

Yes, John McCain might bomb Iran. Yes, John McCain might stay in Iraq for 100 years. At the current rate of the war, that means somewhere in the region of 80,000 American soldiers would die (and that is a ludicrously exaggerated number - McCain never meant the war would last 100 years, and you know it).

It takes twenty days to kill that many babies with abortion.

Estimated civilian deaths so far are roughly 80 to 90 thousand. Call it 100 thousand. 110 thousand in total (civilian and military)? Good enough estimate? Over five years. So, 100 years of war at the current rate (which would be impossible, as anyone knows, but I'll play your damn numbers game) - 2.2 million.

At current abortion rates in the USA . . . . 550 days. Eighteen months and about a week. Give or take.

That's it. Those are your numbers.

I wrote this post while watching, of all things, Knight Rider. You remember that, right? 80's series about a man and his talking car. David Hasselhoff with his bouffant hair and leather jacket and chest wig and whatnot. The hero in black riding into town on his trusty steed - updated for the twentieth century, of course.

America was raised on these sort of stories. 20 years ago, we still believed in this kind of hero - a man who risked his life to make things right. A man who worked for the Foundation of Law and Government. A man who "champions the cause of the innocent, the powerless".

A man who does not exist .... not any more, I suppose.

Now our heroes are men who want to kill the innocent and the powerless.

Have we really changed so much?

Time will tell, I suppose. Time will tell me, to be precise, a some point of the morning of November the 5th.

If you were considering voting for Obama and you read this, then you have the facts. You are now, as we Catholics say, culpable. And if you vote for him, saying that "Well, that is okay" or "On balance it's alright because of the war" or some other fatuous excuse, well .... I just destroyed that argument for you. It's not even vaguely comparable.

If you vote for him, you approve of infanticide.

Not "choice". Not "change". Set that aside. Allow Roe v Wade to stand in this scenario - Obama says that already living children should be left to die of exposure. Without food, without comfort, without a blanket for warmth or even human companionship. Medical attention is simply out of the window.

Never mind that all the science says that a human fetus is a living human being - set that aside. A human fetus is certainly a human being when he or she is out of the womb and breathing the cold air of this hideous world we have given as his or her inheritance!

If you vote for the junior Senator from Illinois who won't release his academic or legal records and who has questionable ties to terrorists, you know what you are voting for. You are voting for the tacit approval of this. And yes, if I could vote, I would vote for the tacit approval of the deaths in Iraq - because they are not as bad as this. I would have no choice - just like the babies who are killed, of course.

And that approval makes you my implacable enemy and my implacable foe. I will fight you and your ilk with every breath in my body and every prayer in my heart. I will not rest until you or I are defeated and gone.

If there is justice in this world - karma, payback, cosmic scales, whatever - your plans will come to naught and your house will burn and you will suffer for your allegiance with the darkness.

But there is no justice in this world. And I know it.

But there is justice in the next.

I will see you all in Hell if you do this thing.

It's a while before November the 4th. You still have time.

Think on this when you read my future blogposts, which might bring the usual lighthearted funny back.

The Return of the Funny

Or, at least, hopefully.

I wish to apologize for the lack of the funny in yesterday's blog entry. As can probably guessed, I was very tired by the time I got around to writing the blog post.

Anyway, I have now just completed a day where we slept in until about 11AM, so while I am slightly tired, I am entirely more capable of bringing the funny. Or, at least, what passes for the funny on this blog.

The first thing we did this morning on getting up was take some photographs of the place where we are staying. As previously mentioned in this fine blog, the place we are staying at is called the Huron House. This tells us that i) it is a house and ii) it is on Lake Huron.

Witness the view from our balcony;



Walking down onto the beach, one finds oneself on the shores of Lake Huron. Lake Huron goes to the north ...



... and also to the south ...



I took off my shoes and socks and walked on the beach, and also paddled in Lake Huron. It is very cold - excessively so. I suspect that it is made of meltwater from Canadian glaciers, like Labatt's is. I think that currently the water coming out of areas north of the 49th parallel will be colder than usual, as Sarah Palin isn't there to heat things up being, as she is, debating with a man old enough to be her father but not nearly half awesome enough.

Anyway, as I had a camera and sand on my toes, I took a picture of my feet. A crazy plan started to form in my mind, which would involve Lake Huron and myself. But, as the shilling shockers say, we anticipate.



We then went in search of sustenance, and came across the Au Sable Inn in Oscoda. "Au Sable" is the name of one of the local rivers which flows into Lake Huron from the west, and is also the name of a small town here. Although all men of learning (and even the French, who actually speak this language) know that "Au Sable" means "with sand", the way to pronounce this is - apparently - Oh-sah-bo. Yeah, right. Bet the Quebecois love that stuff.

Anyway, how can we mock the French some more in this blog post? Why - by talking about the lager which I got with my lunch (which was a semi-decent fish and chips). the lager was "The Lager of the Lakes" and was rather good; it is a local brew. And on the label is a map of the Great Lakes. But not just any map - oh no. This is the worst map in the history of the world. Not since St. Jean de Brebeuf was tortured to death by the Iroquois and was forced to make a map with his own spilled entrails has there been such a bad map of the Great Lakes area. Behold the awfulness.



I mean, seriously. Come on. They say Michigan looks like a mitten or a hand. That doesn't look like a hand. It looks like some kind of carnival freak known as The Hideous Penguin Boy put his flipper into a coffee grinder and then, with the misshapen appendage left afterwards, attempted to make a crude facsimile of a human hand out of petrified chipmunk droppings. With his eyes closed. And while hanging upside down over a cauldron of boiling oil.

Bloody French and their inability to do cartography.

Still, the lager was very tasty and the food was good - although it was accompanied by little carved carrots. A lesser man would have simply assumed that these things were, you know, random shapes. I, on the other hand, know better.

Au Sable is called Oh-sah-bo because it is the Huron or Iroquois or Native American way of pronouncing the French (which simply has to be better than the French way, even if the Native American way involved simply banging the backs of your hands together and going "Blarph-blarph-blarph!") There is a huge Native American influence in the region.

Now, as everyone who has seen my awesome jacket knows, I rather like the Native American style thing going on. And this extends to all aspects of their culture and art. Including .... ancient Huron carrot-carving!

Seriously, man - who can't love these little, somewhat abstract, figures of men rendered entirely in slices of carrot?



Here we see the classic motif of Father and Son - the Father is taller and solid, reliable in the wisdom he will pass onto the younger generation. The Son reaches upwards, not yet having learned that his lot in life is to be eaten as a salad garnish.

With my fish and chips, I had ketchup. But not any old ketchup - oh no, sir! This was fancy ketchup. Check out the bottle;



Look, it is fancy. It says so right on the label! This ketchup was pooh-poohed by Liza as being "just catering ketchup, for God' sake don't take a picture of it, people are looking" but I knew better. It is produced by the Sysco Foods Corporation and is some of the finest ketchup ever. It is certainly better than Heinz, not merely in taste, but also in the fact that - to the best of my knowledge - Ms. Sysco is not married to some stupid flip-flopping Democrat waffle merchant who looks like Herman Munster.

Alas, it seems (according to Liza who, it must be said, knows little of ketchup) that this ketchup is not available in regular stores, but only in those large, catering stores and whatnot. I think this is a great shame, and strongly recommend some kind of petition to get Sysco to sell their product in regular stores - perhaps under the name "Better than Heinz - and not just because we aren't pro-gay, anti-family idiots! We're tomatoey, dammit!"

We then got on the road and went along River Road, which runs parallel to the Au Sable River. And there we stopped, and we took a look at a scenic lookout. I must admit, it was very nice.





(As an aside, I am typing this in the dark, with the lights turned off, so I can watch some fireworks someone has on the beach. But this means Shaak Ti's (my laptop) screen in the only bright thing in the room. And a small flying insect is crawling all over it. My computer has a bug. B'dum-tish!)

Anyway, this was a nice scenic lookout point, and it led down to the Au Sable River. And when I say led down I mean down.



Liza and I went down the dune - which was pretty easy, as gravity and massive amounts of shifting sand did the job for us. And then we splashed around in the river at the bottom, and then tried to climb back up.

Oh God, that was hard work. The sand kept sliding under our feet, the incline was about 60 degrees in parts, it wasn't a short distance. Here is the view back up.



At the end of it, we were pretty knackered. Some nice people took a picture of us after we got to the top (the arrived just as we were getting back to where we had started).



So, much tiredness there indeed.

After that, we went to the lumberman's monument, which is awesome. I bought a book about Paul Bunyan (whom I knew of before I came to the USA, as I am fantastically well-read and educated and that) and we took photographs. Here is a picture of Liza by the monument itself;



And here is a chipmunk! He is there, really - he blends in. Look for the black and white stripes against his little brown body.



And here is a cool shot of us on a giant set of pickup-stix! I could tell you how we did it, but then I'd have to kill you.



We then returned home, where my crazy plan involving Lake Huron and myself was put into practice. It was about 6 PM, and it is October. And it is Lake Huron.

Yes, I went swimming.



Flip me! But Lake Huron is cold this time of year! Sheesh, people! Even my chilblains had chilblains. It was very cold.

Speaking of any kind of blains - it is my believe that David "Asshat" Blaine should try sitting in the Huron for about three days. Preferably in the middle of the Huron. And then he should have to attempt to navigate back using an empty bottle of Lager of the Lakes. That should get rid of the annoying little oik that keeps littering our public spaces with his stupid stunts.

Coming this Fall! David Blaine eats his own head!

I did not stay in the water long, merely long enough to say - in some poorly-thought-out macho way - that I had done it.



Liza, as you will note, was sensible and did not go in Lake Huron. She documented the event.

We then went in the hot tub to warm up, and I am now going to bed.

'Night, John-Boy!

News from the knuckle

If you hold your left hand out, palm down, and imagine that it is Michigan, you will find myself and Liza on the outer edge of the first finger, in the middle, at the knuckle. This is the town of Oscoda, and it is some small-town little vacation spot. It is on the very edge of Lake Huron, and it's very nice.

We have taken a little vacation, just a few days, after the launch of RealCatholicTV.com, which is excessively pimp. And you get to hear all about it.

It is about a three hour drive up to Oscoda, and en route we played a wonderful game. It is called Take Photographs of DK with Enormous Animals!

A cow


A mouse


A fish


A sea-serpent


This was going to be Babe, but the big blue ox ran away .... and I only got Paul

Anyway, so we arrived at the hotel - and it is very nice. We are staying right on the shores of Lake Huron at the Huron House. Here is our room.





And here is the view from the little peep hole in the door.



We spent about an hour walking around Oscoda - and we had icecream. By cunning carving with a plastic spoon, I created this little version of the Washington Monument. Any other resemblance is purely co-incidental, I assure you.



After my frozen-daily replica of the world's tallest free-standing masonry structure, we went back to the hotel room and went into the hot tub and had champagne.





Life is hard, obviously.