I May Never Ride With The Calvary

But Mothax did.

Riding with the 1st Virginia Cavalry at the Battle of Gettysburg

Over 10,000 reenactors showed up for the Battle of Gettysburg last week in Pennsylvania, and I was lucky enough to be one of them.   My buddy from service in Bosnia, and also the best man at my wedding, Mike Schramm has been doing reenacting for about 6 years, and has asked me innumerable times to join him.  The 150th Anniversary of Gettysburg seemed a good opportunity to get my first experience doing it.  And my Editor for The American Legion Magazine said he thought it would make an excellent magazine piece, so my wife (as photographer and camp cook's assistant to Mike's wife Jo) and I camped out with men, women and horses for a week.

Sounds amazing.  I've always enjoyed talking to reenactors.  I'm sorry to have missed the events around the 150th anniversary of Gettysburg. 

GO USA!

Apparently, according to my office mates, some fellows from the US are not sporting as hard as the fellows from another country. So... y'know, folks, SPORT HARDER!

Or whatever it is you need to do, I mean. At this point, the extent of my knowledge about things is that they should avoid biting anything on the playing field. Since they are presumably adults, and capable of not gnawing on random objects and/or persons, I kind of figure that there is something else they may need to be doing.

Maybe try more of that?  Whatever it is?

GO USA!

An Oevure in RPG Game Sessions

2225 things Mr. Welch can no longer do during an RPG

Yes, you read that correctly.  Over two thousand individual prohibitions.

Looking them over, I can only say that the man is obviously an increidbly talented artist of some sort, and that I'd love to watch him play a game with an unsuspecting GM.

Some examples:

17. Collateral Damage Man is not an appropriate name for a super hero.

43. No longer allowed to set nazi propaganda music to a snappy disco beat.

195. I cannot use a silent feat enabled power word stun and blame it on the dog.

231. I am not allowed to do anything that would make a Sith Lord cry.

296. I cannot make called shots with a crew served weapon.

325. Even if he was a paragon of humanity in his alternate dimension, Good Hitler is not an appropriate superhero concept.

393. If I can fit my head down the gun's barrel, I can assume it doesn't have the non-lethal option.

443. Zombies are not infectious in D&D. So I should stop shooting PCs in the head if they are bitten.

472. When my cleric is told to "Buff the Elf", I know exactly what it means and may not misconstrue it in any way.

1683. Killing the orc horde by drowning them all at once is heroic. Killing them by drowning them one at a time is an alignment check.

And my personal favorite...

1932. I will stop telling people the elf is openly fey.

That leaves 2214 for you to peruse.  Enjoy!

Juxtaposition

Matter:

Matter is a science fiction novel from Iain M. Banks set in his Culture universe.

The main character in Matter is a woman who is essentially abducted by aliens (even if she does come to appreciate it) and disappears, only to return years later.

Jim Sullivan:

Jim Sullivan wrote one amazing – and as it turns out oddly predictive – record, and then disappeared while traveling from CA to TN.

He reportedly walked into the desert, and was never seen again.

Jim Sullivan's one record?  U.F.O.

He seems to have managed the abduction part.  Perhaps he will manage the return, as well.

A Righteous Weapon

Revelation 19:11

And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.

Colt 1911

Designed by John Browning, the M1911 is the best-known of his designs to use the short recoil principle in its basic design. The pistol was widely copied, and this operating system rose to become the preeminent type of the 20th century and of nearly all modern centerfire pistols.

Just sayin'.

"Very dangerous. You go first."

Explorer plans hunt for Genghis Khan’s long-lost tomb

The tomb of Mongolian emperor Genghis Khan -- who created the world’s most powerful empire by raiding and invading across Eurasia -- is a lost treasure archaeologists have sought for years. And one man thinks he knows where it is. 

“Ghengis Khan’s tomb is my obsession,” Nichols, a noted authority on the emperor, exclusively told FoxNews.com. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it. But I’m not happy just reading about it, or knowing about it. I need to have my feet on it.”

Be very careful, Mr. Nichols.  You may find exactly what you are looking for...

To seek the sacred river Alph,

To walk the caves of ice;

To break my fast on honey dew,

And drink the milk of paradise...

I had heard the whispered tales 

Of immortality –

The deepest mystery –

From an ancient book, I took a clue

I scaled the frozen mountain tops 

Of eastern lands unknown,

Time and Man alone,

Searching for the lost – Xanadu.

Xanadu...

To stand within the Pleasure Dome
Decreed by Kubla Khan!
To taste anew the fruits of life
The last immortal man!

To find the sacred river Alph!
To walk the caves of ice!
Oh, I will dine on honeydew
And drink the milk of Paradise!

A thousand years have come and gone,
But time has passed me by;
Stars stopped in the sky.
Frozen in an everlasting view

Waiting for the world to end,
Weary of the night;
Praying for the light.
Prison of the lost – Xanadu.

Xanadu...

Held within the Pleasure Dome
Decreed by Kubla Khan...
To taste my bitter triumph,
As a mad immortal man.

Nevermore shall I return,
Escape these caves of ice;
For I have dined on honeydew,
And drunk the milk of Paradise...

"No job, no home, no peace, no rest, no rest."

Man walks along the railroad track

He's goin' some place, there's no turnin' back 

The Highway Patrol chopper comin' up over the ridge

Man sleeps by a campfire under the bridge

The shelter line stretchin' around the corner

Welcome to the New World Order

Families sleepin' in their cars out in the Southwest

No job, no home, no peace, no rest, no rest.

And the highway is alive tonight

Nobody's foolin' nobody is to where it goes

I'm sitting down here in the campfire light

Searchin' for the Ghost of Tom Joad

Ballad of Accounting

"So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God."

– Romans 14:12 

There is always an accounting.

Some come... sooner than others.

In the morning we built the city

In the afternoon walked through its streets

Evening saw us leaving

We wandered through our days as if they would never end

All of us imagined we had endless time to spend

We hardly saw the crossroads and small attention gave

To the landmarks on the journey from the cradle to the grave

Cradle to the grave, cradle to the grave

Did you learn to dream in the morning?

Abandon dreams in the afternoon?

Wait without a hope in the evening?

Did you stand there in the traces and let them feed you lies?

Did you trail along behind them wearing blinkers on your eyes?

Did you kiss the foot that kicked you? Did you thank them for their scorn?

Did you ask for their forgiveness for the act of being born?

Act of being born, act of being born

Did you alter the face of the city?

Make any change in the world you found?

Or did you observe all the warning?

Did you read the trespass notice? Did you keep off the grass?

Did you shuffle off the pavement just to let your betters pass?

Did you learn to keep your mouth shut? Were you seen and never heard?

Did you learn to be obedient and jump to at a word?

Jump to at a word, jump to at a word

And did you ever demand any answer?

The who and the what and the reason why

And did you ever question the setup?

And did you stand aside and let them choose while you took second best?

Did you let them skin the cream off and then give to you the rest?

Did you settle for the shoddy? And did you think it right

To let them rob you right and left and never make a fight?

And never make a fight, never make a fight

What did you learn in the morning?

How much did you know in the afternoon?

Were you content in the evening?

And did they teach you how to question when you were at the school?

Did the factory help you grow? Were you the maker or the tool?

Did the place where you were living enrich your life and then?

Did you mix among the standing of all your fellow men?

All your fellow men, all your fellow men, all your fellow men

Channeling Bocephus

As a someone who grew up listening to country music (among other things), I appreciated coming across Nobody Sasses a Girl in Glasses.  The GiG spends a bit of time discussing and defending country music:

About a year ago, a friend from college forwarded me this rather long chain of overwrought analyses of country music by people who once heard a country song on the radio and thought, now here's something to politically over-analyze... 

All these people - sorry, I obviously mean folks - agree that country music is really parochial and stodgy, and so perhaps represents the psychology of conservatives, who we know are parochial and stodgy and also country music fans.

I think she absolutely captures and distills the spirit of country music here:

Country music has in fact heard of and experienced Manhattan and corporate finance and divorce and the importance of whole grains in a healthy diet, and it is not impressed or convinced that these things supersede its own narratives.

Ah-yep.  RTWT, if you have the time.  She has a lot more to say on the subject, and she says it well... though maybe not as succinctly as Hank managed.

Massad Ayoob on Zimmerman

A continuing series of articles from Backwoods Home Magazine.

Part 1: The Zimmerman Verdict

Part 1: The "Unarmed Teen"

Part 3: "Who Started It?" 

Part 4: The Stand Your Ground Element

Part 5: The Gun Stuff

Part 6: "What If" vs. "What Is"

Part 7: Why the Jury Didn't Learn About Trayvon Martin

I hardly suppose that he's done with the series...

Updated: Nope!  I'll add links to additional postings as they appear.

Part 8: The Quantity of Injury Argument (7/24/2013)

Part 9: The Propaganda Factor (7/28/2013)

Part 10: The Semantics (7/31/2013) 

Part 11: Rating The Lawyers (Defense) (8/4/2013) 

Part 12: Rating The Lawyers (Prosecution) (8/8/2013) 

Part 13: Angela Corey (8/12/2013) 

Part 14: The Judge (8/18/2013) 

Part 15: Talk at the Scene, Talk on the Stand? (8/22/2013) 

Part 16: The Impact on the Black Community (8/29/2013) 

Part 17: The Cops (9/3/2013)  

Part 18: Aftershocks (9/8/2013)  

Part 19: Lessons (9/12/2013)  

Part 20: ... and Into the Future (9/13/2013)  

Witch? BOO!

The Pixar Theory

Every Pixar movie is connected. I explain how, and possibly why. Several months ago, I watched a fun-filled video on Cracked.com that introduced the idea (at least to me) that all of the Pixar movies actually exist within the same universe. Since then, I’ve obsessed over this concept, working to complete what I call “The Pixar Theory,” a working narrative that ties all of the Pixar movies into one cohesive timeline with a main theme. This theory covers every Pixar production since Toy Story.

A wonderful example of how people manage to find reasons and patterns in everything. 

But Do They Serve Spam

Today, It's the Bacon, Not the Pigs, That Has Haight-Ashbury Agitated

SAN FRANCISCO—The Haight-Ashbury district was all about peace and love until bacon entered the picture.

The trouble began in May, when this city's health department shut down a popular restaurant called Bacon Bacon after neighbors' complaints caused a permit delay. The neighbors' concern: the scent of bacon grease was blowin' in the wind.

Now bacon lovers have found out, and they're raising a stink.

Ahead of a permit hearing scheduled for Thursday, nearly 3,000 bacon advocates have signed a petition in support of Bacon Bacon. Phylis Johnson-Silk, who lives around the corner and loves the place, is making signs that say, "Bacon rules!" and "Really? You complained to the cops that you smelled bacon?"

By my count, there are three people complaining... and two of them were already looking for a way to close down the restaurant for other reasons:

But while Mr. Angelus was frying, some Haight neighbors were stewing. It was bad enough that the restaurant's patrons used neighbors' stoops for dining tables and that Mr. Angelus had a habit of parking his truck on the street, they say. 

Then one day, Ms. Nevins was outside and noticed another problem: a "strong bacon smell," she noted on a pad where she and Mr. Nevins were logging issues with the restaurant.

What could she have against bacon, really?

"A lot of people got really carried away with condemning me," Mr. Nevins says. "I used to be much more of a bacon eater," says Ms. Nevins. "But now I'm not."

Ahhhh - I see.  Want to take a bet that one or more of the complainers happen to be a particular strain of holier-than-thou ex-meat-eating 100% organic locally sourced hipster locavore vegan?


So, yeah.  There's a smell to the situation, but it ain't the bacon that stinks.

Something Fishy

... or not.

Taking omega-3 fish oil supplements may increase the risk of aggressive prostate cancer by 70%

Researchers at Ohio State University, in the U.S., also found that taking the supplement was also associated with a 44 per cent greater chance of developing low-grade prostate cancer.

Ye-owch. My strict regimen of Mountain Dew infused Twinkies sprinkled with Pop Rocks is looking better and better each day.

Not that it ever looked bad, mind you...

Grizzly Hills

It may look like Brett Binns is taking pictures of his time in Alaska...

.... but it's obvious he's in Grizzly Hills.

Or maybe it's just me.

I Heart My Hamster Ball

A Guide to Understanding Introverts.

Looking at it from inside my hamster ball, it seems pretty spot-on.

Sliding Down With The Post Office

A couple of months ago, in Going Down Easy, Sarah Hoyt spent some time talking about what she called "the gentile slide into chaos", where she noted:

This post comes from the fact I was talking to my husband and said “the first thing is usually the post office going unreliable.”

The post office?  Really?  She went on to explain:

The slide goes like this – it begins with mail distribution twice a day six days a week, and the mail fairly reliable in the sense that yes, you do get human error and things delayed a bit.  Then it goes to once daily...

Then slowly the mail becomes more unreliable.  Then one day is cut out.  Then delivery is every other day.

BUT the most important thing is how unreliable it gets.  We’re already pretty unreliable, the reason they’re mostly used for spam.  (Though their tendency to misplace stuff doesn’t help.)

But along that slide comes the time when the mail is COMPLETELY unreliable.  Anything you entrust to them has a fifty/fifty chance of arriving, and anything even vaguely useful/valuable WILL get stolen, unless you’re very, very crafty.

An interesting idea: post office reliability as an indicator of societal health.  I wondered how reliable an indicator this would really be, though.  So the post and comments got filed away into corner of my mind that records all the various bits of trivia that I come across on a daily basis.

It might have stayed there for a good long time, except that it got dragged back into daylight by this recent post from Peter [1] at Bayou Renaissance Man:

I ordered some business cards to take to Libertycon, which Miss D. and I will be attending this weekend.  To my intense displeasure (euphemism!), the package was shown by the courier service as having been delivered, but I hadn't received it.  Inquiries proved fruitless.  This evening Miss D. and I went for a short walk, and found the package ripped open at the side of the road and my business cards thrown into the nearest storm-water drain.  Clearly, someone had hoped to find something valuable inside, and tossed the contents when they proved worthless to him.

Emphasis mine.  Hmmm.  What did Sarah have to say about that?

This is a sign post on the way down.  When you start seeing outright unabashed theft by postal employees, and no attempt to track down your registered package, it’s time to have your preparations for the rest of the slide made.

Because that type of theft is a “societal strictures have broken down.”  It’s not “the neighbors will rape and pillage” but it is the “people will pilfer from strangers as a matter of course.”  A package, entrusted to strangers to carry across the country is, of course, at high risk.

Bad delivery person?  Bad neighborhood?  I don't know.  The "pilfer from strangers" idea does seem to be gaining some traction with government employee now, though.  Just look at the TSA.  Which makes me think that it might be prudent to keep a closer eye on news reports about the postal service (and the TSA) for a while.

 

[1] Speaking of which: take the time, go to Amazon, buy his book, and enjoy.  Srsly.  "Take the Star Road" is good, solid, classic, Heinlein-esqe SF.  You'll be happy, Peter will be happy, and - best of all - he'll be encouraged to write moar books, which will make us all happy.  It's a win-win-win situation, all for the low price of $2.99!

Read About A Recommendation To Read A Must-Read

General James 'Mad Dog' Mattis Email About Being 'Too Busy To Read' Is A Must-Read

In the run up to Marine Gen. James Mattis' deployment to Iraq in 2004, a colleague wrote to him asking about the "importance of reading and military history for officers"... 

The problem with being too busy to read is that you learn by experience (or by your men’s experience), i.e. the hard way. By reading, you learn through others’ experiences, generally a better way to do business, especially in our line of work where the consequences of incompetence are so final for young men.

Elites would like to think of the members of the US military as barely self-aware drones who are in service because they have no other options.  The truth of the matter is very different.  Today's military - especially the professional military - is largely middle-class, well-educated, and extremely capable.

Shield Bash Is Totally OP in PVP

22 countries engage in vintage armored beatdowns at Battle of the Nations

On a field in Aigues-Mortes, France, armies from 22 nations are clashing. Armed and armored in medieval style, the combatants are vying for the title in this years' Battle of the Nations western martial arts championship. The entire thing is being streamed live on YouTube. This isn't a contest of foam on foam or even blunted wooden swords—the weapons and armor are period-accurate, and the risk of injury is real.

Interesting... how's the good ol' US of A doing?

In two mass combat heats today, the US routed Team Italy in a little more than a minute without taking any "casualties" (when three body parts touch the ground, you're out). Later on, the Americans lost a hard-fought battle with Ukraine.

Ukraine?  Ukraine?  C'mon, guys - they're not even a continent!

I'm not a big one for watching streaming video, but I really am going to have to check this out.

A New Hampshire Yankee in Madame Sherri's Court

An odd archive photo leads to a bit of historical research in New England...

... and an article on the Madame Sherri Castle Ruins.

It seems improbable, really. You wouldn’t expect to find the remains of a “castle” tucked into the southwest corner of the Granite State, yet there it is. Stories swirl around these ruins and its former occupant, but most folks in the area seem to agree on a few points: Madame Antoinette Sherri, a costume designer from New York, began buying land in the small village of Chesterfield, New Hampshire, in the late 1920s; she planned to build an extravagant summer home on the property. Her mantra, purportedly, was “Only the best,” and for years she threw wildly lavish parties there, hosting an eclectic band of friends from the city. Until her money ran out, that is.

What About... Bacon Pierogies?

CQ Roll Call's Taste of America

Brackets will feature 64 foods from across the country organized by region. States will play within their region. The Elite Eight will face off in the fourth and final week. The champion will be the state food that receives the most votes during the final round. The winner will be announced at a reception at Nationals Park on June 13, 2013.

Wait - what? Some states get two entries, but they limit PA to "Philly Cheese Steak"? Where's my pierogies?

Oh, and if you don't vote for Bacon, there's something seriously wrong with you.