February is the worst, Secretary of Defense, and the Flying V

Have I mentioned how I think February is quite possibly the worst month? You feel like winter should be over, but it's often punctuated by terrible storms and a string of heart-numbingly cold days. My perfect weather would be a blustery November, a true white/cold Christmas, and then Aslan would arrive in Narnia and spring would break across the eternal landscape of winter.

So, I'm no meme expert, but I tried to whip one up in honor of winter storm Nemo and Gov. Chris Christie's response. Here's what I came up with.

So, now Senate Republicans are blocking Republican appointees for cabinet positions? Are the only respectable nominations for Senate Republicans the reanimated bodies of Ayn Rand, Ronald Reagan, and William F. Buckley? Granted, I think we could use some major cuts in the Department of Defense, so maybe this is a step in the right direction. Next: total nuclear disarmament, stop using drones, and reduce our standing army to pre-WWII levels.

As that liberal hippie peacenik Dwight D. Eisenhower said, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms in not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.  It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

Or, as hymnwriter Brian Wren hymns:
"And all the powers that wreck and rule
must lose their glamour, strength, and skill
to dazzle minds or crush the will.
The waking hopes of God's oppressed
will not be beaten, bowed, and awed:
They tell the world that Christ is Lord."

While we are working on this, I think we also should be able to agree that people that buy guns should have to go through a basic background check and not be able to buy a high-capacity magazine even if you do pass the test. So, if you have any other problems that need to be fixed, let me know, and I will solve (read: rant about) them in my next blog.

Just once when a lone Wild defenseman picks up the puck behind his own net, I want him to yell "Flying V!" and watch it form up and fly down the ice.



It's a childhood dream; don't kill it by telling me how the flying V is ridiculous and would be destroyed (like it was by the Icelanders) in the NHL.

Question: if my final paper for my early liturgical year class is going to be on the origins of Christmas (which it is), and if I'm studying Christmas all day today, does that make it acceptable to listen to Christmas music? I'm not necessarily asking for permission...

Also, there's a new poll in the upper left of the page allowing you to vote on which classic American novel you actually hated reading, even though you thought you were supposed to like it. You can vote more than once, for all the haters out there.

Okay, now I have to read all those books about Christmas that can suck the Christmas spirit right out of you. Later.