Category: navel gazing

I’ve just been looking through some old posts by that little bastard I thought I was thirty years ago. Hard to believe I was ever as bad as that. That’s all done with, anyway. Thirty-nine today, and sound as a…

A few things that don’t really require entries unto themselves, but are worth passing along to any Gentle Readers who require a moment’s pause… This list of who the Iraq Study Group hasn’t bothered to consult really is astonishing. I…

Isaac Rosenberg, Break of Day in the Trenches, 1916 The darkness crumbles away It is the same old druid Time as ever, Only a live thing leaps my hand, A queer sardonic rat, As I pull the parapet’s poppy To…

Dear Democrats in the House and Senate, Well done! I mean well done in the election campaign, of course. There are millions of us feeling the same mixture of elation, relief and anxiety that I’m sure you are now. I’m…

Well, well, well. Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi. Hoo-ah. That’s Interesting. And good, of course. If nothing else, it’s yet another taboo broken; the next female Speaker won’t have to be the first female speaker. I’ve never…

[for quadrennial, read mid-term] Election Day, November, 1884, by Walt Whitman, from Leaves of Grass, Book XXXIV: Sands at Seventy. If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show, ‘Twould not be you, Niagara–nor you,…

Rust is life. Rust is what separates us from the Egyptians. Rust is the natural process of our unnatural achievements. Most of the time, we think about rust as what happens when iron turns to crap. Rust is the destroyer,…

November, is it? Well, as Gentle Readers are no doubt aware, November is National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo for short). Now, Your Humble Blogger has been to see the doctor recently, and it turns out that I do not…

I’m not sure that Gentle Readers will all have seen Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert’s column over at Redstate called The Choice Could Not Be Clearer. The concluding paragraph has been making the rounds: In short, Democrats do not…

What should somebody interested in politics and rhetoric say about the latest screwup by Senator Kerry? I should say botch. Who uses the word botch? Who among us cannot say that we do not leave jokes unbotched? I have not…