On Thursday of last week my son drove down to the ranch for a brief visit during his two days off from his 12-hours/day position as a sous-chef in one of the better restaurants in this part of our lovely state. He's a busy man, so we don't get to spend a whole lot of time together, but this visit of just twenty four hours, to help celebrate my birthday, marked the first of four days of beauty and love and good things.

We had a nice dinner at a nearby joint known for its funky exterior, its more funky interior (funkier interior?), and flavorful grub; then we sat around the ranch sipping tequila liqueur and looking at pictures from the old days, when the children were little. We had a lot of good laughs at each other's expense, mostly for unusual clothing selections from twenty or more years ago, and on Friday morning My Lovely Bride (hereafter referred to as MLB--no affiliation with Major League Baseball) and my son went out to breakfast at a local confection shop while I trundled off to the slaughterhouse for the day's carnage. Later, B and I played some tennis before the rains came and before he headed north for an evening of revelry with his friends and co-workers.

The gang at the slaughternouse had a little birthday surprise planned for me and it was nice--cake and ice cream and snouts, pizza and entrails, chips and salsa and hides. Just kidding about the snouts and entrails and hides. . . .

My special birthday request this year was tough for MLB to accommodate, but she's a trouper, so off we went to the local theatre for the opening of The Simpson's Movie. Yes, I laughed and I cried, but mostly I laughed until I cried. Spider-pig was too funny. Bart's naked skateboarding scene was too funny. Moe in his underwear was too funny. The rip-off of the French national anthem at the end of the film was too funny. Then it was off to another local eatery for what turned out to be, for me, an overcooked hunk of not-especially-tasty meat, and for MLB, a badly undercooked and nasty looking hunk of yellow-fin tuna (which was subsequently replaced by a chicken-salad-thingy).

Saturday we arose early, slammed some coffee and associated chemicals, hopped onto the buggy, and flogged the horses into an unnamed western state to visit family, specifically Baby Jade and her Mama and Papa and to attend the big event of the day--Baby Jade's first birthday party. What a sweet and wonderful child she is--a true blessing for her Mama and Papa and all the rest of us who are lucky enough to be around her. We had lots of good conversation, lots of good grub, lots of cake and ice cream (which was starting to become a regular thing for me), and then a high speed night-time tour of the area on our way to Baby Jade's house (Baby Jade's Mama was born with a lead foot), where we spent the night.

Sunday, after giving the horses a little time off and a quick oat breakfast, we climbed back aboard the buggy and flogged the poor creatures again, back to the ranch--but not before encountering wonderful rain squalls, magnificent light playing off the mountains, plenty of greenery, wild flowers by the side of the buggy-trail, the occasional road runner (minus the coyote), and a killer sunset once we returned home. MLB mounted her trusty steed, Marvin, and headed north to retrieve Max the Wonder Dog while I tended to the other horses here--washing and brushing and shoeing and so forth--and now our little family is as complete as it's going to be this week.

Today, alas, we returned to the work-grind, but we're prepared--I have new music from my son, a gift card for the local chain bookstore from my boss at the slaughterhouse, and MLB has another slew of photos that she's going to turn into greeting cards for friends and loved ones. Today's report about Baby Jade's most recent medical procedure to expand her esophagus was positive--the blessings continue. A wonderful four days it was, full of beauty and love and, damnit, cake and ice cream. I'm startin' to look more like Homer Simpson with each passing day.

AJ

P.S.: No animals were harmed before, during, or after the trip described in this posting.

Music of the Day: Harvey Mason, With All My Heart

The gaggle (synonyms: throng, horde, crowd, multitude, group) of Dems vying for their party's nomination held another of their televised gab-fests last evening and I tried, I really tried, to watch it. I prepared myself by having a couple of beers and a big ol' plate of Mexican food after finishing up at the slaughterhouse, and then I came home, took a quick shower, and settled onto the couch and yanked on the starter-cord on the gasoline-powered remote. I had to run through some of the channels before I found the Dems, first encountering Jessica Simpson, and then Larry King and Paris Hilton (again, or is this show on some kind of an endless loop?!?!), and finally Kathy Griffin (whose entire act consists of two "jokes"--obscenities and frequent references to gays and/or lesbians). So with that lineup fresh in my mind--an insipid blonde know-nothing, a cadaverous and scary extra-terrestrial-looking man, an irresolute spoiled heiress, and a loud chunky girl--as background for the "debate," I was ready. Or so I thought.

But I gotta' tell ya', I never made it past the first "question" I heard posed by a gentleman through You Tube; I have to assume that this "question" was well-vetted and then selected from countless others that were not selected for inclusion in the "debate." (I read a report today that said the nice people at CNN had indeed screened the You Tube questions beforehand. What the hell were they thinking? Read on.)

The question was, and I'll try to quote this as accurately as possible, "Is African Americans ever gonna' get reparations for slavery?" There was a semi-coherent preamble to this question, but that slipped my mind as soon as this penetrating and incisive interrogative was posed to the assembled Dem-pols. Damned fine question, that, and relevant too in the age of insane terrorist thugs who wish to murder us irrespective of our views on reparations for slavery. My first response, out loud, to the great consternation of Max the Wonder Dog (who was sleeping at the time) was, "Well, is they?" Max looked askance at me, but he didn't seem to know the answer to one of the fundamental questions of the coming presidential election. Neither do I. . . .

I didn't stick around for the answers given by the Dem-pols; I punched in the code for the Military Channel (again!) and settled in to watch film footage of British soldiers kicking the snot out of a bunch of unfortunate Argentine conscripts in the Falklands. My question at the end of the show was, "Is the British ever gonna' apologize to the Argentines for rendering a monumental ass kicking?" And then, "Well, is they?" Again, Max the Wonder Dog looked at me (sort of--he's mostly blind these days, but still a pretty cool old dog), but again he seemed to lack an answer to my question.

I tried. I REALLY tried. But I'm going to have to try harder, I guess, to sit through the next Dem-Debate. I heard snippets of various answers proffered by various Dems on various radio shows today and I must admit that I completely overlooked the Humor Opportunity Factor when eschewing these Dem Canine and Equine Shows--as in the Dennis Kucinich (Representative from the Planet Whackazoid) declaration that from now on his motto/campaign slogan was going to be "Strength Through Peace."

That's gonna' have 'em quaking in their sandals in the caves of Afghanistan.

AJ

This morning I received an e-mail comment from a nice person who I assume is affiliated with Blogstream; in it she mentioned that this blog, Average Joe, is the "most active" of the blogs in this classification.

That means only that I have written more stuff here than other Republican bloggers. Not exactly high praise, but I take small compliments and kudos when I can get 'em. I hope that aside from mere activity and frequency that there might be some occasional snippets of quality or humor or something akin to an "Aha!" moment as a result of this thing.

Any and all comments that I have received are welcomed and appreciated--except that one in which I was called an "ass wipe."

Ha!

Thanks for reading.

AJ

Music of the Day: Gary Burton, Works

In a previous posting or two here in the distant past, I made reference to a Gas-Bag Senator from Massachusetts (and here I'll have to be more specific--the Tall Gas-Bag Senator from Massachusetts, not the Short, Fat, Rheumy/Boozy-Looking Gas-Bag Senator from Massachusetts) and his comments about (a) his fellow Vietnam veterans and (b) the current members of the armed forces of the United States. In case (a), he accused his fellow Vietnam veterans of systematically carrying out murder, rape, torture, and pillage in the South Vietnamese countryside and that such incidents were not infrequent or haphazard but were, according to him, enshrined in policy and condoned by the government of the United States and the leadership of the military--all of which is patently and demonstrably false. In case (b), his view of current members of the American military is that they are mere mindless dupes who, should they not be able to serve in the military, would be nothing but the unemployed, and the unemployable, members of the shiftless class. The Tall Gas-Bag, having failed miserably (praise God!) in his attempt to become the President of the United States had, more or less, submerged into the dismal swamps from which he briefly arose, but now, once again, he has re-surfaced, and again he is invoking his self-proclaimed knowledge about the Vietnam War and its relationship to the current situation in Iraq.

Last week the Tall Gas-Bag Senator proclaimed that should we "redeploy" our troops out of Iraq, as we did in the case of South Vietnam in the 1970s, not much bad will happen, as in the case of South Vietnam, where he asserts not much bad happened.

If you have been following the debate about Iraq, you know that some make the claim that a "redeployment" of American troops elsewhere out of Iraq would likely lead to genocide there and the re-establishment of a terror-based state. It is therefore important that we examine the notion put forward by the Tall Gas-Bag Senator that "redeployment" from Iraq wouldn't be, for the Iraqis, as bad or much worse than what happened in South Vietnam--again, which he says wasn't much at all.

Before I get to that, however, just a quick note about language here; the term used above is "redeployment," which sounds neat and orderly and painless--but "redeployment" as it is currently made use of by various Dem-Pols is, at its heart, Dem-Speak for "bug out." And, "bug out" means: "So long, you poor bastards, we're on our way back to CONUS, you're on your own, good luck, not much bad is going to happen, just wait and see. Call. Write. Let us know how things work out. Keep your heads down."

I have never met the Tall Gas-Bag Senator, so I cannot judge what is in his heart; I can only judge him by his words and by what he does. His words about the state of affairs in Vietnam after the communists successfully invaded the south and "reunited" the country under their totalitarian government leads me to a couple of possibilities about what is in the Senator's heart or head. According to what he has recently said about Vietnam, the Senator is either (a) ignorant of the facts of history, or (b) he lies when he invokes this telling of history to support the ideology of his party. I cannot think of a third alternative.

Let's look at both of these cases. If it is true that he believes things were not too bad in Vietnam after the communist takeover, he must be ignorant of the facts of history. The facts are thus: Approximately 1 million Vietnamese human beings lost their lives as a result of the policies of the communist government there; in June of 1975, "people were suddenly called in for reeducaation, which officially lasted three days for simple foot soldiers and an entire month for officers and civil servants. In fact three days often became THREE YEARS, and the month became SEVEN OR EIGHT YEARS. The last survivors of the reeducation programs did not return home until 1986. Pham Van Dong, the prime minister at the time, admitted in 1980 that 200,000 had been reeducated in the South. Serious estimates range from 500,000 to 1 million out of a population of 20 million. The more difficult cases were sent north, to the more unhealthy distant areas, to camps originally built for French prisoners. Isolation was TOTAL, and there was ALMOST NO MEDICAL CARE. Survival in these camps depended on parcels sent by the families of prisoners. Undernourishment was as bad as it was in the prisons; detainees were fed only 200 grams of poor quality rice per day. The hardest punishment was undoubtedly solitary confinement, SOMETIMES FOR YEARS ON END, with no contact allowed with family. Torture was hidden but EVER-PRESENT, as were EXECUTIONS. In prison, the tiniest infringement of regulations was punished harshly, and rations were so small that death often came within WEEKS." (From The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, by Courtois, Weerth, Panne, Paczkowski, Bartosek, and Margolin, pages 572, 573. Emphasis added.)

Another quick note about language: the term used above, "reeducation," sounds neat and orderly and painless, just as does "redeployment." With respect to reeducation however, you must must put out of your mind sweet notions like night school to bone up before taking the LSAT or the GRE's, or perhaps to refresh your memories about and knowledge of Plato's Republic or British literature or the music of the West Indies. Reeducation in the context quoted above is coerced indoctrination, not some benign behavior-modification scheme that might find its way into your daughter's middle school classroom. It is a process that features imprisonment against one's will, planned starvation, torture, and terrorism. Remember that somewhere between 200,000 and 1 million Vietnamese human beings were "reeducated" by their government, quite a few of them "reeducated" to death. Those people and their families might be surprised and shocked to learn that the Tall Gas-Bag Senator thinks things weren't too bad in Vietnam after our "redeployment."

I suppose it is possible that the Senator is not aware of these facts of history, despite the fact that the very book cited above was published by Harvard University Press in 1999. Harvard is in Massachusetts, but maybe he just missed reading this one. If this is the case, that he doesn't know these facts of history, he is an ignorant fool who proclaims knowledge in the ABSENCE OF KNOWLEDGE and we should reject out of hand his pronouncements on this matter of policy.

I also suppose it is possible that the Senator IS aware of these facts of history, but chooses not to acknowledge them when he makes an argument for or against a policy option for this nation. If that is the case, he is purely a mendacious liar whose opinion on the matter we should reject out of hand.

This reminds me, finally, of a talk given by one of my professors in graduate school (Dr. M.P.), the title of which was: Don't Confuse Me with the Facts, My Mind's Made Up. Maybe next time the Tall Gas-Bag Senator from Massachusetts can get one of his staff members, or a summer intern, to do a little fact-checking before he opens his mouth, and quotes history, on a policy that has life and death consequences for people who don't vote in Massachusetts.

AJ

Music of the Day: Vivaldi, Cello Sonata No. 6

A recent vacation road trip took us through various parts of northern California on our way to the great, and profoundly weird, city of San Francisco. Actually, that isn't fair--the city itself isn't weird,but the city itself seems to have more than its share of weird people, including the very strange woman we encountered more than once in the botanical gardens near the de Young Fine Arts Museum--she was wearing a red cape and matching red shoes and hat and she was rapidly fluttering around in circles, muttering and mumbling to herself, and at one point she appeared to be involved in a lengthy and deep conversation with some of the squirrels in the park-like setting. As she buzzed by us one final time, she muttered something like "We don't want you here. Go away." She didn't address any of the four of us directly, so perhaps she was talking to some phantom squirrel spirits--no matter really because we gave her a wide berth from that point on. No sense riling the local loonies. . . .

And we encountered other mutterers and mumblers in the Mission district on our walks there, many of whom were dressed in de rigueur street person attire or pushing the apparently obligatory shopping cart, but they seemed strangely normal (it is a city, after all, and this sort of thing isn't unusual in cities) compared to the Lady in Red and her pack of adoring, or at least acquiescent, squirrels.

But before we came across these folks, we drove through many places, including the little town of Boonville, where we stopped for a bit of shopping and some lunch in the tiny downtown section of this out of the way place. The server-girl was rude in the extreme, the sandwich was awful (my lovely bride insists that I describe the sandwich--a dry bagel, one slice of turkey, one slice of cheese, one nasty looking piece of lettuce, and some kind of basil mayonnaise), and it was clear that we as outsiders were not appreciated at all despite the fact that we were spending a little money in Boonville. Next to the lunch counter was a stack of newspapers, something called the Anderson Valley Advertiser, which announces itself on the banner to be (no kidding!) "America's Last Newspaper." This claim is bolstered by two phrases that appear on the banner and they are: "Comforting the afflicted, afflicting the comfortable," (it's a bad sign to have this kind of cliche on the front page) and "Fanning the Flames of Discontent." This kind of stuff appeals to me, on some crazy visceral level, so I put a one dollar bill in the jar next to the stack of papers and put the paper under my arm for some later reading.

You get what you pay for--no question about that, although America's Last Newspaper is not worth a dollar (maybe 50 cents, tops), but the exposure to what passes for "thought" in this part of the state of California was invaluable. There was an overlong "article" on why the town of Boonville needs a dress code--too many returning geezers in shorts and gray hair and yellow shirts, too much "neatly combed hair," too many kids who have never seen a cow. This piece then degenerates into a long whine about all sorts of things whose connection to a dress code was tenuous at best--women in the Lion's Club and the Chamber of Commerce, the bank president who wears a polo shirt to work, immigrants having taken over the phone book (!), a proliferation of liquor licenses in town, a new "glistening tile floor" in the gas station, and the town-wide smoking ban. It was too muddled for me, so I moved on, quickly, to the piece entitled Smoking with Arnold. This incomprehensible screed had to do with Governor Schwarzenegger's (referred to throughout the artile as The Hun) decision to replace someone on the California Air Resources Board with someone else, apparently not to the liking of the author, a man named Hatch, identified only as a California resident. I think the point of the article had to do with "development" (apparently a really bad thing) and the policies of former Governor Gray Davis and air pollution regulations and big salaries to government consultants and whatnot. It was, as noted above, incomprehensible--although referring to the Governor as The Hun was kinda' funny the first couple of times.

There is an article in America's Last Newspaper that takes up half of one entire column and this piece is on the author's many experiences getting his, or her, shoes shined. Chicago, New York, Barcelona, Tokyo all produced memorable shines for the author. Half of an entire column. . .on memorable shoe shines. . . .

There's more, much more, but it pains me to re-read this swill and to recall the awful sandwich produced by the rude girl in the town of Boonville (which, to its everlasting credit, has a brewery that produces a nice beer). Frankly, I don't know if I'm heartened or chagrined by the notion that this might be America's Last Newspaper, but I am worried that if this is the source of "news" and opinion in Anderson Valley, the state of California is in worse shape than I originally thought.

Not wanting to end on a sour note, I must say that northern California is intensely beautiful and our drive down the coast to San Francisco was spectacular. Beyond all of the views, the visit with family and friends in assorted places along the way was most pleasurable, if semi-exhausting. But it's nice to be back at the ranch, it's nice to sleep in our own bed again, and it's nice to pick up a local paper that is modest, comprehensible, has a sports page, and seeks to inform rather than to Fan the Flames of Discontent. No wonder the server-girl was so rude; she probably reads America's Last Newspaper.

AJ