Category: Other People

Seems obvious to me, but children just seem like a luxury most people just shouldn’t indulge in. I mean, you can do quite well making not much money if you’re only supporting yourself. But feeding eight people on a minimum wage salary? Not bloody likely.

The solutions, of course, are difficult. If we “care about the children” we’ll increase aid to families with dependent children, but then the “personal responsibility” right complains about “welfare queens” and “abuse of the system,” and the childless cranks like me tend to get annoyed that all their money is going to support people too irresponsible to use a rubber.

Frankly, I don’t have kids and don’t plan to, but I still find the Child-Free Movement, like the QuirkyAlone movement, incredibly annoying. Being single and childless is not a “movement.” I have no problem paying my education taxes, or helping out when my co-workers have sick kids, because I know those kids will be paying for my retirement. That’s the intergenerational commitment that the childfree selfishly ignore. Still, I wish people would think twice before, as it were, pulling the trigger and bringing one more miserable squalling child into this world. It’s not like the kid will be grateful or anything.

Gruesome: Man attempts to recreate crucifixion, discovers that once his first hand is nailed to the cross, he can’t use it to nail the other one.

Political: Quiz on the origin of various political platitudes. Hint: RNC.

Criminal: Coverage of the Aryan Brotherhood, America’s favorite prison gang.

JD Nyland rules. That is all.

Holy Anorexia, or penance and bodily mortification through starving, has a long and complicated history.

John Ashcroft and separation of church and state. Remember, this is a man so disliked by the general public of (very conservative) Missouri that he lost an election to a dead man.

Neat flash thingy: Tulse Luper Suitcases.

I wanted to say something funny about this, but I’ve been saving it for long enough I should just link: Journal of Manly Arts. Found through doing research on boxing.

The Bloggies have a category for “Best tagline.” I’m rooting for MightyGirl with “Famous among dozens.” Although given her following, she might have to cop to being (gasp) popular.

My great-great-grandfather, “Texas” John Slaughter, a Texas Ranger, was known in his day for dispensing rough justice, and had an actual song composed about him. It featured the charming lines “with Texas John Slaughter men did what they oughter cause if they didn’t they’d die.” That may have been from the TV show (also listed on IMDB) but I think it was from movie (curiously, not featured in IMDB). Addie Slaughter, played in the TV show by Annete Gorman, was my grandmother. I should note that she was mortified by the disgraceful and inaccurate portrayal of her childhood; I know this because we made her watch one of the movies for at least ten or fifteen minutes before she got too frustrated with it and stomped out. I was pretty young at the time so I don’t remember a lot of what happened.

I’m not sure I have a real personal motto, but I often feel better when I remind myself of an old Chilean saying, one I learned early on but understood only after months of intensive drinking: “Filo, no importa,” “Eeeh, it doesn’t matter. When I say it, I allow myself to stop worrying about things that seem, momentarily, to be incredibly important.

Integrity, knowledge, and ability were hallmarks of every endeavor David Weber undertook. In addition he always maintained an ironic sense of humor, and his mantra that “There is never enough time, there is never enough money, and nothing ever fits” was legendary.

It’s comments like these that make me wish comment spam weren’t such a problem. Mmmm, conspiracy.

Busy Busy Busy has taken the “Shorter…” concept from Crooked Timber’s Daniel Davies and run with it. In that vein, Jeff Jacoby’s shameful and intellectually dishonest column in this week’s Globe can be summarized as follows:
“It’s a universal truth that male and female are opposite, while black and white are equal.”

Oh, those liberals, at it again with their historicizing and comparisons of intolerance to intolerance. More importantly, and more convincingly, there’s an NYT editorial discussing the first constitutional amendment defending marriage:

“Representative Seaborn Roddenberry of Georgia proposed an amendment that he said would uphold the sanctity of marriage. Mr. Roddenberry’s proposed amendment, in December 1912, stated, ‘Intermarriage between Negroes or persons of color and Caucasians . . . is forever prohibited.’ He took this action, he said, because some states were permitting marriages that were ‘abhorrent and repugnant,’ and he aimed to ‘exterminate now this debasing, ultrademoralizing, un-American and inhuman leprosy.'”

I wonder if discussion of this issue in certain elementary schools is legal, or if it constitutes the “teaching of homosexuality.”

I’m refusing to get married until gay people get the same rights as straight people. Or until I’m not so terrified of commitment. One or the other.