Potpourri

Gentle reader, a few collected notes that I've not felt like putting into long form.  Cheers.

SELF

~Grateful for the encouraging calls from my mentors and friends, they seem to come just when needed, everytime I start to dip a little bit. Each one is a sign of growth, a notch in the belt, and a blessing.  The full range of topics comes out - from news reports of dancing girls in buses (the so-called "Skank Tank" roaming somewhere near CENTCOM proper), to very personal recollections of the outbreak of war, and its unseen heroes.

-> Task request: Finish digesting the New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics to help refresh and enrich my perspectives of literature, music & lyrics.  It's a phone book - there's no way I'm going to upload all that knowledge, but it's a healthy diversion.  I've converted the spare bedroom into my ready room, it'll find a good home from there and outside of my bookcase, it's primed for action.

~Valuable repost for you:  Managing Oneself, by Peter Drucker.

~Today's going to be a good day for creativity, one of my favorite words was just featured on dictionary.com

Sylvan
-adjective
a.of, pertaining to, or inhabiting the woods.
b.consisting of or abounding in woods or trees; wooded; woody: a shady, sylvan glade.
c.made of trees, branches, boughs, etc.

Another interesting find came from Wikipedia:
Metonymy and synecdoche


One example of a single sentence that displays synecdoche, metaphor, and metonymy is: "Fifty keels ploughed the deep," where "keels" is the synecdoche as it names the whole (the ship) after a particular part (of the ship); "ploughed" is the metaphor as it substitutes the concept of ploughing a field for moving through the ocean; and "the deep" is the metonym, as "depth" is an attribute associated with the ocean.
~Grateful for my favorite tree, the weeping willow, whose little cutting alone sprang roots and leaves in my window.  Amazing.

~Star Hustler is geek chic.  Loved him ever since my paper route days - 3a.m., you're the only one awake and watching, the truck drives, the bundles crash with a thud, and you're putting on your sneakers in front of the bluish hues from the screen.

~Got the chance to drive on the legendary Route 66 driving west out of D.C. last weekend, it's been far too long off the open road.

~Made the exciting discovery of a lean-to in the tiny woods around my house. Every kid should have a little fort out in the brush and scrub that's only accessible by a tiny hidden path.

POLITICS

~Story of a true daughter of freedom, Star Parker.

"Parker said the war on poverty has really been a war waged by liberals on four fronts -- "war on the family, the war on thought, the war on tradition and a war on religion."
"The poverty that we see today is directly related to people having children outside of marriage and then not working to support those children," she said.

~Annelise Anderson writes in the National Review about the great communicator:

"The triumph of free markets and democracy over totalitarianism is the great political story of the 20th century, and Ronald Reagan was one of its most visible authors. The man who emerges from these writings is different from the public figure we all know. It was often said about Reagan that 'what you see is what you get,' and in a way this is true — he was open and honest and believed what he said. He spoke from the heart."

~Quote of the day, found in the fora:

Internet jackass: "The term 'illegal' is a media/hate word that doesn't reflect the complexities of the individual cases of undocumented aliens, nor does it have any bearing on the legal or societal merits of allowing any particular individual to stay or deciding to deport them. But by all means, stick with your one label fits all approach to other people. It works for lots of ignorant bigots every day."
The tongue-in-cheek response: "Kind of like 'racist' is a word used by the morally weak to automatically trump all rational dialogue.  Kind of like the word 'homophobe' is a label to tear down morally straight people.  Kind of like 'teabagger' is applied to a group of people that aren't fans of being taxed to death (but you are?).  Tired of heterophobes like that guy."

Ouch.

~A good parent to the rescue:  "Had a 'date night' with his daughter (15yo) to show her how a real man (gentleman) with class and manners treats a date with respect. Not that her mother and I are ready for her to start dating, just to teach an impressionable young lady the minimum standards she should accept. However, our daughter took the opportunity to attempt to persuade me to let her start dating!!! My daughter: the negotiator!" 

POP CULTURE

~On 24:  Fan of Kiefer but haven't watched much of the show. Saw they're maybe making a movie. One of my best friends tried to get me into it, but nowadays I watch mainly movies and a show that starts with "L."
Beyond the first two seaons, was the theme mostly that they had to prevent a terrorist from carrying out some task within a given time frame? Thus, the whole clock thing. It was funny that on Simpsons and South Park, virtually identical '24' spoofs came out at the same time.  Also, did they choose our usual "politically correct terrorists" e.g. Kiefer vs. Irish Republican Army, Kiefer vs. former Soviet republics trying to sell a nuke... were any of the bad guys "post 2001 era bad guys" or not? Just curious for the sake of my own pop culture osmosis.
P.S.: Funny how Lost came into play around the same time Survivor had so much momentum - i.e. both going with the stuck on deserted island theme.

~The Simpsons program is abundantly, erm, liberal, which is really no secret.  It's a show that should've been put to pasture long ago.   I watched a gag on the "Stealing First Base" ep with a montage of kissing from popular movies...  I thought, "Please don't.  Please don't," and - yep, men kissing. 

IRONIC AND SAD DEPT.

~Tulsa Chicken Hut new marketing promo: "I'd step over a dead body for a three-piece bucket!" - Marv

~"Commentate." Why do folks in & around sports insist on using this word? There is such a thing as a "commentator," but no such thing as the verb "commentate."  The word they're looking for is "comment," which is quite sufficient.