I'm the political junkie that adores Ace of Spades and Allahpundit, for their class and style!
They're so HHHOOOTTT! But we have to pay attention to Betsy. Newbies - inside jokes and sarcasm abound.
Your Political Profile:
Overall: 90% Conservative, 10% Liberal
Social Issues: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal
Personal Responsibility: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal
Fiscal Issues: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal
Ethics: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal
Defense and Crime: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal
It all began the day I found that from my window I could only see a piece of sky. I stepped outside and looked around. I never dreamed it was so wide or even half as high. The time had come to try my wings and even though it seemed at any moment I could fall. I felt the most amazing things. The things you can't imagine if you've never flown at all. Though it's safer to stay on the ground,
sometimes where danger lies there the sweetest of pleasures are found. No matter where I go, there'll be memories that tug at my sleeve. But there will also be
more to question, yet more to believe.
The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize the less I know. Each step I take, each page I turn, each mile I travel only means the more I have to go. What's wrong with wanting more? If you can fly, then soar! With all there is, why settle for just a piece of sky?
There’s not a morning I begin without a thousand questions running through my mind. That I don’t try to find the reason and the logic in the world that God designed. The reason why a bird was given wings, if not to fly and praise the sky with every song it sings. What’s right or wrong, where I belong within the scheme of things...
And why have eyes that see and arms that reach unless you’re meant to know there’s something more? If not to hunger for the meaning of it all, then tell me what a soul is for? Why have the wings unless you’re meant to fly? And tell me please, why have a mind if not to question why?
And tell me where- where is it written what it is I’m meant to be, that I can’t dare to have the chance to pick the fruit of every tree, or have my share of every sweet-imagined possibility? Just tell me where, tell me where?
If I were only meant to tend the nest, then why does my imagination sail across the mountains and the seas, beyond the make-believe of any fairy tale? Why have the thirst
if not to drink the wine? And what a waste to have a taste of things that can't he mine?
And tell me where, where is it written what it is I'm meant to be, that I can't dare to find the meanings in the mornings that I see, or have my share of every sweet-Imagined possibility? Just tell me where - Where is it written? Tell me where - Or if it's written anywhere?
It is time to settle down on the porch of life, sit on that porch swing with the afghan over the legs, and tell my stories to the few passers-by that dare to stroll up the walkway. I will breathe in slowly, and deeply... I WILL HAVE FOUND MY COOL, STILL WATERS...
...standing up on the cliff overlooking the waves, the wind the only sound for miles, peace in my soul, and THE ONE standing near me in THE ALL KNOWING SILENCE...
Women who have that spiritual sense to convey to this burgeoning spiritual butterfly.
Intelligent men who have something interesting to say. Make me laugh or smile and you'll have a friend for life. Be REAL. Honesty goes a long way in my book. Perfection is hard to come by, and sometimes the flaws are more interesting to unwrap. Do you have honor and integrity? Are you capable of admitting when you are wrong; yet, still hold your head up high?
This is not the Lost And Found: If you're still trying to find yourself, you won't find it here. Know where you're going and "who" you want joining you for the ride.
All the fun and happiness is in the journey; the people you meet; the places you go; and the things that you do along the way...
My musical taste is very eclectic. Rather than list a thousand songs and artists, ask me about the few thousand that touch a small portion of my love of music.
TUTOR: "What does it feel like when you're dancing?"
BILLY: "Don't know. Sorta feels good. Sorta stiff and that, but once I get going... then I like, forget everything. And... sorta disappear. Sorta disappear. Like I feel a change in my whole body. And I've got this fire in my body. I'm just there. Flyin' ike a bird. Like electricity. Yeah, like electricity."
MARK DARCY: "I don't think you're an idiot at all. I mean, there are elements of the ridiculous about you. Your mother's pretty interesting. And you really are an appallingly bad public speaker. And, um, you tend to let whatever's in your head come out of your mouth without much consideration of the consequences... But the thing is, um, what I'm trying to say, very inarticulately, is that, um, in fact, perhaps despite appearances, I like you, very much. Just as you are."
BRIDGET: "You once said you liked me just as I am and I just wanted to say likewise. I mean there are stupid things your mum buys you, tonight's another... classic. You're haughty, and you always say the wrong thing in every situation and I seriously believe that you should rethink the length of your sideburns. But, you're a nice man and I like you. If you wanted to pop by some time that might be nice... more than nice."
WILLIAM HUNDERT: "Aristophanes once wrote, roughly translated; "Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, and drunkenness sobered, but STUPID lasts forever"... The Greeks and the Romans provided a model of democracy, which I don't need to tell you, the framers of our own constitution, used as their inspiration. But more to the point I would think when the boys read Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Julius Caesar even, they're put in direct contact with men, who in their own age, exemplified the highest standards of statesmanship, of civic virtue, character, conviction.... The worth of a life is not determined by a single failure or a solitary success... However much we stumble, it is a teacher's burden always to hope, that with learning, a boy's character might be changed. And, so, the destiny of a man... As I've gotten older, I realize I'm certain of only two things. Days that begin with rowing on a lake are better than days that do not. Second, a man's character is his fate."
BOB: "It gets a whole lot more complicated when you have kids."
CHARLOTTE: "It's scary."
BOB: "The most terrifying day of your life is the day the first one is born."
CHARLOTTE: "Nobody ever tells you that."
BOB: "Your life, as you know it... is gone. Never to return. But they learn how to walk, and they learn how to talk... and you want to be with them. And they turn out to be the most delightful people you will ever meet in your life."
CHARLOTTE: "That's nice."
ADA: "Dear Mr. Inman, I began by counting the days, then the months. I don't count on anything anymore except the hope that you will return, and the silent fear that in the years since we saw each other, this war, this awful war, will have changed us both beyond all reckoning. Inman. It is three years and I remember your name. I count the number of words that have passed between us, Inman and me - not very many. But I think about it. I will not leave Cold Mountain. My last thread of courage is to wait... for you. I would have followed you anywhere... to Mongolia. I looked once more down Sally's well, and this time there was nothin' there to haunt me. Just clouds. Clouds, and then... sun. Yesterday I saw you walking back to me. I thought I was seeing you fall, but instead I was seeing you come back to me! All this while I've been packing ice around my heart. How do I make it melt? If you are fighting, stop fighting. If you are marching, stop marching. Come back to me. Come back to me is my request. My love where are you? With no hope of reaching you I write to you... as I have always done. Are you alive? I pray to god you are. If you saw us this Easter... you would know that every step of your journey is worth it.
Come back to me. Come back to Cold Mountain."
MONICA: "It's a trip, you know? When you're a kid, you see the life you want, and it never crosses your mind that it's not gonna turn out that way."
BARBARA: "And I knew that since I was pretending to be a girl who would have sex on the first date you would have pretend to be a man who wouldn't have sex for several dates. And in doing so, we would go out on lots of dates to all the best places and all the hit shows until finally, one night, you would take me back to your place - that you were pretending was someone else's - in order to get the evidence you needed to write your exposé... by seducing me until I said, "I love you." But saying "I love you" was also my plan. I just wanted to tell you the truth so that when you heard me say, "I love you" you would know that I knew who you were, and you would know who I was. Then you, the great Catcher Block, would know that you'd been beaten at your own game... by me, Nancy Brown, your former secretary. And I would have, once and for all, set myself apart from all the other girls you've known, all those other girls that you never really cared about, by making myself someone like the one person you really love and admire above all others: you. Then, when you realized that you had finally met your match... I would have at last gained the respect that would make you wanna marry me first and seduce me later."
CATCHER: "I never once said a word about Nancy Brown, and the only prize I wanted to win, was you. Crazy, Isn't it? After all our tricking each other and our game playing, I'm the one with the love letter and your the one with the scoop. Still, I'll keep my eyes on the billboards.
MARIA: "Your old tutor did you a great disservice, Mr. Kynaston. He taught you how to speak, and swoon, and toss your head but he never taught you how to suffer like a woman, or love like a woman. He trapped a man in a woman's form and left you there to die! I always hated you as Desdemona. You never fought! You just died, beautifully. No woman would die like that, no matter how much she loved him. A woman would fight!"
NED: "Men aren't beautiful. What they do isn't beautiful either. Women do everything beautifully, especially when they die. Men feel far too much. *Feeling* ruins the effect. Feeling makes it ugly."
"Billy Chapel, in quest of the perfect game, also realizes he may very well be at the crossroads of a brilliamt career. He's a cinch to wind up in the hall of fame. However, after this game he has to make the big descision. A, will he continue to do what has been his life, maybe more important than life itself, or will he hang it up and will the perfect game give the logical conclusion to the great career?"
JANE: "I need a regular guy. Not the guy in the Old Spice commercials."
BILLY: "Last night should have been the happiest night of my life, it wasn't because you weren't there. I'm not telling you this to make you stay or to change your mind, but I want you to know that I know that I need you."
"I will have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love. Love above all. No... not the artful postures of love, not playful and poetical games of love for the amusement of an evening, but love that... over-throws life. Unbiddable, ungovernable - like a riot in the heart, and nothing to be done, come ruin or rapture. Love - like there has never been in a play."
DAVID: Great architecture is only gonna come from your passion. And even that won't assure you a job.
Louis Kahn died in a mens room in Penn Station and for days no one claimed the body.
Look at that. Is that beautiful?
The money men did not weep because the great ones are impossible to deal with. They're a pain in the ass because they know that if they do their jobs properly, if they just this once get it right, they can actually
lift the human spirit, take it to a higher place.
What is this?
STUDENT: A brick.
DAVID: Good. What else?
STUDENT: A weapon.
DAVID: Louis Kahn said even a brick wants to be something. A brick wants to be something. It aspires. Even a common, ordinary brick wants to be something more than it is. It wants to be something better than it is.
That is what we must be.
RAFIKI: What was that? [laughs] The weather - Pbbbah! Very peculiar. Don't you think?
ADULT SIMBA: Yeah. Looks like the winds are changing.
RAFIKI: Ahhh. Change is good.
ADULT SIMBA: I know what I have to do. But going back will mean facing my past. I've been running from it for so long.
[Rafiki hits Simba on the head with his stick]
ADULT SIMBA: Oww. Jeez... What was that for?
RAFIKI: It doesn't matter, it's in the past.
ADULT SIMBA: Yeah, but it still hurts.
RAFIKI: Oh yes, the past can hurt. But the way I see it, you can either run from it, or learn from it. [swings his stick at Simba again who ducks out of the way] Ha. You See? So what are you going to do?
ADULT SIMBA: First, I'm gonna take your stick. [Simba snatches Rafiki's stick and throws it and Rafiki runs to grab it]
RAFIKI: No, not the stick. Hey, where you going?
ADULT SIMBA: I'm going back.
RAFIKI: Good. Go on. Get out of here.
SGT. GENGO HARA: "Do you remember that Christmas?"
COL. JOHN LAWRENCE: "Yes."
SGT. GENGO HARA: "It was a good Christmas, wasn't it?"
COL. JOHN LAWRENCE: "It was a wonderful Christmas. You were drunk."
SGT. GENGO HARA: "May I go on and on being drunk?"
COL. JOHN LAWRENCE: "Sake is wonderful."
SGT. GENGO HARA: "Thank you. Father Christmas. Thank you."
COL. JOHN LAWRENCE: "There are times when victory is very hard to take. Good bye. Hara-san. God bless you."
SGT. GENGO HARA: "Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence!"
"What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?"
"But that doesn't mean to say, of course, there aren't occasions now and then- extremely desolate occasions—when you think to yourself: 'What a terrible mistake I've made with my life.' And you get to thinking about a different life, a better life you might have had. For instance, I get to thinking about a life I may have had with you, Mr. Stevens. And I suppose that's when I get angry about some trivial little thing and leave. But each time I do, I realize before long—my rightful place is with my husband. After all, there's no turning back the clock now. One can't be forever dwelling on what might have been."
"You cannot say to the sun, "More sun." Or to the rain, "Less rain." To a man, geisha can only be half a wife. We are the wives of nightfall. And yet, to learn kindness after so much unkindness, to understand that a little girl with more courage than she knew, would find her prayers were answered, can that not be called happiness?"
..."these walls were not meant to shut out problems. You have to face them. You have to live the life you were born to live."
"He even took the Gramophone on safari. Three rifles, supplies for a month and Mozart. He began our friendship with a gift. And later, not long before Tsavo, he gave me another. An incredible gift. A glimpse of the world through God's eye. And I thought, "Yes, I see. This is the way it was intended." I've written about all the others, not because I loved them less, but because they were clearer, easier. He was waiting for me there. But I've gone ahead of my story. He'd have hated that. Denys loved to hear a story told well. You see, I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills."
"The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds, and that's what you've given me. That's what I hope to give to you forever. I love you. I'll be seeing you."
"Who am I? I am... I am the Invincible Sword Goddess, armed with the incredible Green Destiny. Be you Li or Southern Crane, lower your head and ask for mercy. I am the desert dragon. I leave no trace. Today I fly over Eu-Mei. Tomorrow... I'll kick over Wudan Mountain!"
"Do you find that this approach usually works? Or let me guess, you've never tried it before. In fact, you don't normally approach girls - am I right? The truth is that you're a quiet sensitive type but, if I'm prepared to take a chance, I might just get to know the inner you: witty, adventurous, passionate, loving, loyal. Taxi! A little bit crazy, a little bit bad. But hey - don't us girls just love that?"
I don't watch regular television, basically, for any reason. I'll watch CSPAN, CNN, HLN, MSNBC, and FOX NEWS for my update on world events, and what the MSM is saying about it. Other than that, if I'm watching something it'll be something like this....
“Every fairytale corner of the Monarchy contributed visitors to the Ringstrasse. Visiting Vienna meant, above all, walking that boulevard, for seeing sights, for just being there. Exotic apparitions mingled among strollers in Western attire. As Bratfisch swooshed past, a Muslim – from the Imperial Protectorate of Bosnia – shuffled along in crimson fez and pointy white slippers, hawking ornate teakettles and inlaid snuffboxes. Coptic priests, mitres and beards and violet waistbands girding dark-green Cossacks, trooped beside Hasidim in black silk caftans and large-brimmed beaver hats. A Carpathian peasant took off his white fur cap before crossing the wonderful street – a form of Balkan humbleness. And few of these strangers in Vienna would ever guess who sat in the headlong carriage.â€
"One of human nature's most effective ways of sabotaging happiness is to look at a beautiful scene and fixate on whatever is flawed or missing, no matter how small"
"If anything in these legends should shock the faith of the over-scrupulous reader, he must remember the nature of the place and make due allowances. He must not expect here the same laws of probability that govern common-place scenes and every-day life; he must remember that he treads the halls of an enchanted palace and all is 'haunted ground'."
"Listen, everybody! There's no limit to how high we can fly! We can dive for fish and never have to live on garbage again!"
"...I feel like I'm sleepwalking anyway and I can almost believe it never actually happened. Maybe I dreamed a lot of stuff. Stuff that I thought happened in my life. Stuff I thought I did. Stuff that was done to me. Wouldn't that be great? I'd love to think that ninety percent of it was just dreaming."
"If you will not take the trouble to serve your country to the small extent of registering and voting at every election, of giving reasonable time to the study of public questions, and of raising your voice in the right way in favor of what you believe to be right and against what you think is wrong, you are betraying your country and helping to make it possible for her to lose her freedom. Our fathers risked all to obtain these rights, and we are only called upon to do a little thinking and a little voting to keep them; and yet even that is too much for some people."
"If I were in America I could say "I love you, dad", the way they do in the films. But in Limerick they'd laugh at you. In Limerick you are only allowed to say you love God, and babies, and horses that win. Anything else is softness in the head."
"Japan for me has been the land of lost connections, of wanderings from the path of the guidebooks, missing what I was supposed to see, and yet always knowing that I am seeing something which strikes me, which I will always remember, which I have never seen except in dreams. So often, though, the significance remains occluded, lost, the connection to the past impossible and inpenetrable."
My children.
Mr. Boobah ~ the wanna-be Harry Potter, Juni Cortez, Anakin Skywalker...
My eldest son, Mr. Jaybird, achieving goals and exceling while doing it. Having other kids and parents say they look up to him and hope to emulate his accomplishments puts a smile on my face. To have any small part in that is a glorious gift!
"There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all.
This is just as true of the man who puts “native†before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance.
But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else.
The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English- Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian- Americans, or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality than with the other citizens of the American Republic.
The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American."
U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt
Addressing the Knights of Columbus in New York City
12 October 1915
"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his
place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."
U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt
Source:Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.
Ronald Reagan
40th president of US (1911 - 2004)
You Are Most Like Ronald Reagan
People tend to think you're a god - or that you almost ruined the country.
But even if people do disagree with you, they still fall victim to your charms!
And...
STUFF: A nebulous term that can refer to (1) a tangible
thing, or to (2) a situation, condition, or process, as
exemplified below:
A: This is really rough stuff: Typical statement of an Army Ranger, weapon at sling arms and carrying a 30 pound pack, after jumping from an aircraft and marching eight miles to his rally point, in the rain.
B:This is horrible stuff: Typical statement of a Navy SEAL, lying in the mud with his 40 pound pack, weapon in hand, after jumping from an aircraft, swimming a mile to shore, and crawling past enemy positions to his objective, in the rain.
C: I love this stuff: Typical statement of a camouflaged U.S. Marine Recon, up to his eyeballs in a vermin-infested swamp, with his 60 pound pack, a weapon in each hand; after killing several alligators while negotiating the swamp, assaulting the enemy camp and slaying all occupants; and after slithering back into the slime of the swamp with plans to kill all enemy soldiers who wander past his undetectable vantage point, in the rain.
It's okay to let people know the sacrifices you give for your country and countrymen.