INTRO: WE MOVED

I don't even know the date. Anyway, we are settled to some extent in the new digs and most of the really annoying, stressful issues have been resolved and it is beginning to seem like home. We have trash pickup - no mean accomplishment; if you are subject to the monopoly of "AAA" trash service I strongly recommend you inquire about a competitive company, one of which we found, which was the best Christmas present I could have asked for.

AAA trash service belongs in the trash heap of history. Mark my words: If any company deserves to be liquidated and flushed down the sewer, it is AAA.

Mountains of trash are a formidable problem, which AAA seemed determined to prolong from the day we moved in when they picked up our trash AND TOOK THE TRASH CAN AND SUBSEQUENTLY REFUSED TO RESPOND TO OUR REQUESTS FOR SERVICE FOR TWO WEEKS until we discovered we had a choice in trash removal companies (it's now been three weeks and AAA still has not returned our numerous calls - I'm thinking fourth or fifth circle of Hell).

Other than that, the difficulties have been manageable. We had carpet installed immediately prior to the move-in; we got russled around like gimpy pigeons during move-in day; and then we stupidly left ourselves only 20 hours to clean out the old abode on the final day, the conclusion of which will go down in my personal history as the worst 2 hours of my life even exceeding the last half of the marathon I once ran after no training at all (clocked in at 5:18 - the major surprise was that no matter how limber and overall healthy you are you cannot fool your leg muscles and they lock up completely after 13 miles if they are not used to running, and then brother you are dead meat).

But we have gotten the furniture delivered and put together (much by me) and unpacking has progressed to the point where I can open a bottle of cabernet with my own wine opener and I can drink said vino from my own coffee cup while sitting at my own kitchen table typing into my own wireless Internet portal.

PART TWO: NO, WE'RE NOT THAT SHALLOW, BUT OTHERS ARE DEALING WITH THE BIG STORY

Ok this is obviously not a current events post but it would be stupid not to acknowledge current events: The tsunami seems to be the worst natural tragedy in the history of mankind. In the realm of important stories, this is pretty important. I'll only add these thoughts to what all the other smarter people are undoubtedly saying:

This horrific series of tidal waves may result in the deaths of 250,000 people. Stalin is said to have killed over 20 million people.

Man is more dangerous than nature.

I'm thinking that whatever God accomplished with that Noah-era flood - whether it really flooded the whole world or was just a breach in the vicinity of the Black Sea - He probably was a little taken aback by what we have done here on our own in terms of sheer murder. Mother Nature is tough but we humans are brutal.

PART THREE: CHOICES SHOW WE'RE NO HEROES

We gave some extra money to the church last week, mainly because we've been lax throughout the year. Also we were conscious of the tax deduction aspects - hey, we're not saints, we're just doing a few good things and trying to take credit for each of them. But now it seems like we should consider giving more.

Contemplating this choice in the light of current events makes me think that so much of what I normally consider important is totally superficial. I'm in the process of shopping for a car. I will scale back on this purchase and send some extra dollars to the relief efforts.

PART FOUR: GOOD NEWS IN THE FACE OF BAD NEWS

Bad news is rampant; it is everywhere in our public and personal lives. To be honest, it dominates my thinking. Even without the tragedy of recent days, I'd have said that life is mostly one problem after another, and when things are looking good a dark cloud is undoubtedly on the horizon.

This is the difficulty of the Gospel. For me, it is hard to accept the general concept of Good News no matter where it comes from. I think this is why the general response to the life of Jesus was equivocal. He came as the messenger of good news, but we were not ready to accept it. Signs and miracles were not enough to shatter our ingrained, cynical perception of life on Earth.

This is why I am not a preacher. I believe in the Christian message but I am not one to sell it to others. I am lacking in faith. Even if you give me unassailable evidence that something Good is around the corner, I will be plagued by suspicions that a hammer is about to fall.

How to recognize and accept something good: This is a problem, and it is what I will be working on in the coming days. It may not be interesting for others, but it is all I care about right now. Life is pointless if you cannot respond with happiness to good news.

Posted by John Climacus at 12:57 | Permalink

...no matter how well you plan it. We actually hired movers this time, and it still turned into the ordeal from hell. Fixing, finalizing, vacating and cleaning the old place was the worst; it kept me busy from last Thursday until about 1:20 am this morning, the last 20 hours of which was performed in BITTER cold as in wind chills below zero and my winter clothes of course packed away somewhere so I was raging like Lear on the heath, cursing heaven and earth. I'm just now coming down from the heights of anger so I will keep this short lest any of it rub off on ye the innocent. I'll be back once I've gotten into the Christmas spirit.

Posted by John Climacus at 03:50 | Permalink

This guy or gal has left a number of interesting comments here in the past couple months, but since October when the sickness set in we have really been playing catch-up with this Forum due to the press of everyday life. We've fallen from our previous readiness in proferring arguments and we've really just fallen off the wagon in so many dimensions. But our first priority when we get back to the position of 'leisure to think' is to answer the H.O.T.U. on a number of good questions.

Thanks for writing and please give us a little more time. Messages from your standpoint are some of the ones that interest us the most.

Posted by John Climacus at 04:47 | Permalink

One property sold, another presumably about to be bought tomorrow (today actually) a.m.

Inspections completed, items packed, house in total disarray, key animals quarantined until Liberation Day, watching spouse and offspring closely to ensure no major mishaps, unveiling innumerable little annoying faults which must be rectified by me the non-carpenter before we can get out of here unscathed, cursing - ever try to remove a bathroom sink stopper to remove clogs? forget it, they don't come out, you have to bend a coathanger into a hook and dig along the edges - painting, conforming with dictatorial homeowner's association covenants which will indict you for an unapproved length of 1 X 4 on the edge of the deck but will remain oblivious to houses literally falling apart on both sides of yours, dreaming of a better life.

Allergies were bad for a couple days but seem to have eased. The first big push of rearranging spewed a massive explosion of allergens at yours truly and forced a return to nasty medications, but I seem to have adapted. Adapted with certain fruit-based tonics, that is.

The new digs will be incredible, and subject to FAR less arbitrary dictates by covenant nazis. The cats will have their own home out in the yard, as it should be. Our kitchen will have approximately 25 feet of counter space compared to 6 feet here. We will have a convection oven, just like they have on Iron Chef. I don't know what it does, but I want to have it. We will have a garage you could hold the shuttle run in. ('Mama, bring the erasers!') The bathrooms are porcelain palaces. There are closets like you can't imagine. Coats will be welcome. The newcounterculture.com office will be a testament to manly achievement and scholarly productivity. Room for fishing poles, room for tools, room for books, and room enough to close a door and still feel as though you are in a self-contained world in itself.

I may even put up a dart board and break out the home-brewing ale paraphernalia ...no, let's not get ahead of ourselves, we may be leaning into the orbit of hubris. Climbing up out of the current snail hole is one thing: Anticipating the summit before you're actually there is another.

For now we will just say we are moving, and blogging will remain light, and by this time next week things should be a whole caca-load better. Hooray for bloated property values in the DC Metropolitan Area! We'ze movin' out of prim 'n' proper, planned-community, NIMBY, John-Kerry-Lovin' town and gettin' us a big old house in red-state-country on the distant side of the Fairfax County line. We're gonna be 'Virginians' dammit, not 'Washingtonians' anymore. Catch y'all on the flip side.

Posted by John Climacus at 04:15 | Permalink

'This is supposed to be funny, right? They're just little monkeys? Now I don't have to worry I'm assuming because whatever the monkeys may be up to I'm safe, right?'

Yeah, friend, you are safe, assuming you follow a few new rules. Just play along and you'll be ok.

Posted by joe at 02:21 | Permalink

Day job pressures have been immense, along with the requisite family obligational time investments, among which was this performance tonight, all of which has kept us away from the site for days. By the way, if you are in the vicinity of a Revels group, go see them. Just do it. We went tonight and it is absolutely too cool for school. Western civilization kicks ass, and these guys bring the distant past to life like nothing you've ever seen. It's a window into Western culture 500-900 years ago. Thank God for the Revels, and Merry Christmas. Under God.

The real reason for non blogging continues to be the real life stuff, employment-wise, and it may be getting interesting. A project long in the works may be about to bear fruit. If it does, it will be some type of paradigmatic example of good over dumb, noble over lazy, fair over what-the-hell-were-you-thinking. We could help a bunch of folks who have been forced into a legally indefensible and financially burdensome position simply because they are small businesses. If it works, it will be one of the most significant and morally rewarding professional efforts I've been involved with. It will be a really big deal. If it doesn't work, my cynicism will simply harden even further. Either way, I come out a better man.

Plus, we're moving personally, i.e. our home, AND I am moving the office of the day job. Phone calls and meetings with strangers, architect's drawings, loan officers, real estate agents, vendors out the wazoo and numerous other elements not normally in our universe are lately front-and-center.

This leaves the Alpaca Burger Forum in a sort of limbo for the time being, but I think that is a good thing. I think it will be much better when we get re-settled into the new digs. I am bored sh*tless about politics (a luxury, I suppose, only for those who have just won) and wish to get more focused on what the whole newcounterculture.com site was intended to be about in the first place. It wasn't politics or war or even the culture wars. It was supposed to be the communication of a variety of edifying notions, all of which were mysteriously squelched and forgotten between the time we purchased this Web space and the time we actually began typing out content.

Maybe we should just blame that on the cats and move on.

The next 10 days will be absolutely brutal and I want to warn in advance that any postings during this period should be viewed as volatile, ill-considered and evoked under duress. It's all going to get better, you'll see. The Alpaca Burger Forum will be a happy place, a calming place, even if it kills me to do it.

Posted by joe at 02:45 | Permalink

What do you know, some free time. Actually it's time that should be spent packing for the big move, but which has been hijacked by my slothful nature and can now therefore be viewed as leisure time.

Where to begin, where to begin. First, as is my wont when first hitting the computer, I visit the man of many templates who is about to celebrate a milestone. Good on ya', Ace, you deserve it.

The next stop, usually, is the view from Iraq, which today discovers liberal blogs. It's an interesting take; I'd recommend reading it.

Speaking of good causes, Eric reminds us about a good cause. We should all support it.

And obviously, if you are not tuned into the sentinel at the gate of civilization itself, you are not tuned in at all. Better watch the monkeys, folks, because you can be damn sure they're watching us and thinking: 'Any day now, any day now...'

Next, I did not post this, so don't blame me, ok? Seriously.

Finally, I go to this guy's site a lot, and I don't know why millions of others don't. It's just a muthaload of links and information. I should be as productive [ed. note - site has changed].

Well, other forms of leisure await, and time isn't getting any easier to waste. Good night.

Posted by joe at 11:26 | Permalink

No time to write. No time to think. Big project at work. Grip on reality slowly, slowly slipping away. Appointments may be missed, bills left unpaid, sweet nothings left unsaid, the very heart of our humanity becoming drier than a stone on the road in the desert.

The quest for glory and riches is a cruel venture indeed.

Posted by joe at 02:00 | Permalink

As I've noted earlier here, here, and here (at minimum), there is a crazy kind of behavior pretty prevalent among liberals or progressives or whatever they happen to be calling themselves.

A whole bunch of them are real a--holes.

You can gather this pretty quickly by spending a little time perusing their conversations at democraticunderground (no link for you today, a--holes) or dailykos (ditto). And I'm not referring to partisanship. Everyone has a right to be as shrill in their partisanship as they want. I'm referring to the instinct to cheat.

Oh yeah, I can hear the cries of 'look who's talking, a Bush supporter!' Yes plenty of those on the other side believe the Bush team stole the 2000 election. It's total BS, but if you believe it you believe it. My personal take is that this belief stems from a combination of propaganda, and some liberals' projection of their own tendencies to the other side.

But arguing about the 2000 election is not the point. The point is that there are a lot of thieves and moral ingrates on the Left. If you are of that persuasion and are neither a thief nor moral ingrate, please do not take offense. I know some decent liberals and read others in various publications so I do know you can support the progressive agenda and not be a low sort of person. And of course you can be a conservative and a thief.

In general, however, I see a good deal of real sick thinking among those on the liberal side of the fence. It's been observed in many posts here that there seems to be a psychological element to many liberals' dysfunctional view of reality. More evidence comes up in this recent Powerline post about the d-ckheads who wrote a script to vote over and over again in Wizbang's Web log awards and thereby screwed it up completely:

Now he's been put in an impossible situation where he must either disqualify the liberal blogs en masse for cheating, or let them ruin the contest. Is this a big deal? No, but that's sort of the point. The liberals' instinct to cheat is so strong that they can't even participate in a fun little contest without trying to spoil it for everyone else. That's sad, but, as I said, it's also typical.

It's the same thing that happened in all the online polls before the election. - it became a cottage industry among the leftist bloggers. Ok, that was geared toward winning the election and they're within their rights to do it. But it's symptomatic of a type of behavior you see more and more of. As has been said here before, all the more reason to be thankful their political power is on the decline.

Posted by joe at 01:51 | Permalink

What an idiot I am. It turns out the flood of comment spam from November, which is causing so much consternation around the blog world, could have been entirely avoided in my case if I had just paid closer attention to the built-in options that Noah included in the Greymatter control panel. I could have turned off comments for posts not on the main page, of which I now have something like 350. And which are now loaded with spam from the a**holes selling online gambling and flowers.

Along with the built-in ability to blacklist IPs and available hacks, this is making me think the decision to go with the gm platform may have been fortuitous. Other than the fact that I have to spend gargantuan amounts of time cleaning up the comments one by one.

BTW if anyone knows of any good harassment techniques, you could probably find worse ways to spend your time than practicing on the folks represented in my archived comments (just go back to mid-October and earlier and pick almost any entry). Thanks in advance.

Posted by joe at 05:07 | Permalink

This was funny for a couple weeks but now it's getting sad and weird. I wonder if ignorance on such a grand scale can occur without some really horrific event(s) eventually taking place. Combine the mental energy of too many dumbasses and pretty soon you've got an accident waiting to happen. Representative sample:

I'm sure you do believe that the dems will lose again and again - and they will as long as the fraud and civil rights violations continue to exist - in your state and others. Your citation of money is truly myopic. The important thing is to defend the voting rights and methods that our nation uses. Money should never be an obstacle to that endeavor. And no, it is not time to "move on". It is time to stand and fight this cancer eating at our electoral system. Your comment about "conspiracy theories" is truly laughable! Literally thousands of "irregularities" have come forward. I don't see you guys explaining ANY of them to the satisfaction of the experts in the field. This does not fit into the category of "conspiracy theory". These examples of "irregularities" are out in the open for all to see. Now, there needs to be investigations to determine WHY they happened, WHO is at fault for them happening, and HOW to prevent them in the future. So, no Mr. Chairperson, we are not "moving on".

Some gems can be found in the following threads:

Why Kerry and the DNC should DISTANCE themselves from the OH recount...

IMOP Franklin County Ohio Is The Smoking Gun!

Just Received Email Back from the Ohio Chairman of the GOP

Have a good weekend. Watch out for moonbat clusters as they can be dangerous when they gather in herds.

Posted by joe at 06:04 | Permalink

Read it, re-read it, save it, put a copy in your desk drawer at home, and hang a copy on the refrigerator for your kids to read: Michael Ledeen in today's NRO.

Posted by joe at 01:49 | Permalink

This is a biscuit for the liberals. There are probably many other good ones on this site, but this is proffered exclusively for the thoughtful post-Nov. 2 victims. You know who you are.

If you want to tie the Republicans up in pretzel-knots, emphasize the immigration issue, if you can. It's real complicated, and there are no easy answers. I suspect any solid opposition would need to come from a Lieberman perspective, which may not be all that realistic.

But it's there, and it's a problem for the GOP. See if you can run with it.

Posted by joe at 12:44 | Permalink

Ah, the good life. After spending hours tediously adding to my "banned IP" list and diligently deleting comments, I have to sit back in my chair and wonder: Is this the summit?

What I mean is, when your idea of constructive engagement is a mug of vino and denying access with extreme prejudice, is that all there is? To look back on one's past posts and see a satisfyingly plump quota of comment notices - 4 here, 6 there, 12 in some places - can give the feeling that one has entered the arena of the "players." Not to bother with the fact that the vast majority of these contributions come from the "online poker" and "phentermine" ass-crack-lickers. At least we're getting some attention, non?

I fully understand now why so many of the big dogs have turned off their comment sections entirely. I don't know if Greymatter is unusual, but it appears the comment-spam-suckwads are able to insert their messages and contact info in an automated manner into this software and the only way to get them out is to ban and delete them comment by comment. This takes time; and while the time passes more pleasantly with the fruit of the vine, it doesn't pass THAT pleasantly.

In any case, I can't turn off the comments because I get so little traffic that I need to keep every avenue of interaction open. I get some smart conservatives and some smart lefties who occasionally leave their opinions, and I can't afford to shut them out or this will really devolve into an echo chamber. But I think I've done some effective banning so hopefully the November 2004 assault will be the last one for awhile. But there are a bunch of worthless comments remaining in the months gone by, and it will take some free time, some will, some ruthlessness and some large bottles of red wine to get rid of them all.

In the meantime, please continue to visit this site, and completely ignore the links posted by most of our commenters.

And if you can think of a way to totally screw over the online poker folks, like maybe hooking them up with hackers, grifters, Mafia, FCC officials, or the massively-armed footsoldiers of the Christian Right, please do so ASAP.

When I go to bed I want to hear their screams emanating from the depths of hell. That's all I'm asking for.

Posted by joe at 11:59 | Permalink

Our family friend stationed in Afghanistan has a similar report to the last one. He called last night.

After asking how he's doing and offering support, congrats, thanks, etc, I asked a number of questions about how he thinks it's going: Do you think you're making a difference? Can you estimate when we can turn security over to the Afghans? Weren't the elections a success? Do you think the Taliban elements are being eliminated? Is it becoming more civilized? What's it like?

He's not a happy camper. His take:

It's not so great. When I first got here 5 months ago I thought I was really going to do something, that we were going to turn this place around. Now I don't think so. The culture is barbaric. They do things here you couldn't even imagine. They are so far from civilized I don't see how they'll ever have a civilized country.

I don't see how they'll ever change. The way they act is closer to animals than civilized people. Everyone steals everything. It's not even looked down upon, they just steal stuff right and left.

We set up schools and some educational programs, but it's such a tiny, tiny part of the population that gets exposed to it. Besides, the parents and grandparents aren't going to change, and the kids follow after them. The elections were in the capital and a few other places where the people participated, but it was just a small part of the population.

The country is huge and there are parts of it where Americans haven't even been. The people there don't even know Americans are here. We go in there and they think our sunglasses are X-ray vision glasses so we can see their women. They think our body armor is air conditioned and that is how we can stand the heat.

There are people who say that it was worse under the Taliban, that they were "fighting all the time" then, as opposed to now which is much better. But I don't know what to say about how they are now. From what I can tell they don't seem to be doing much improvement.

I hear about what is happening in Iraq and I think it's going better there. Maybe we are having more success there with the programs, but this place is different.

I allow for the fact that the cultural experience has to be overwhelming on the face of it, and probably even more so for a kid who previously was not overly familiar with world affairs. The realization that people in some countries are barbaric would be less striking for those of us who have been reading the newspapers for years.

But even discounting some of the evident depression due to culture shock, I take his analysis pretty seriously. The image that comes to mind is that of a drop in a bucket: The task of transforming a really, really foreign culture will take a PR/education campaign of massive proportions and immense brilliance, neither of which do I think our military planners have in mind (or within their realm of capabilities).

This is the potential flaw in the "peace through freedom" argument (which we have alluded to elsewhere). Maybe there's a reason some of these places have been so butt-ugly-organized for so long. Maybe certain cultures require heavy-handed top-down government in order to enjoy a modicum of stability. Maybe that whole friendly dictatorship model was a good one. We got rid of the Taliban and Saddam, now maybe we need to install some Shah-types who can maintain order.

I don't know; this is just one 19-year-old guy's perspective from one small part of the country and it's the only boots-on-the-ground report I get. But he's a smart kid and when he says the Afghan people are a long way from Democracy, American Style, I believe him.

Posted by joe at 10:32 | Permalink

Today, wackiness from Arab TV (via Memri): Sudanese Sermons: Rabbis are Fighting with the U.S. Army in Fallujah; Americans are Fleeing to Canada; The Jews are Like Malaria

Yesterday, good advice from Daniel Pipes: U.S. Needs To Learn Patience [in Iraq]

Couple days ago, short and sweet film review from VDH: Culling From Among the Mediocre in Hollywood - A short review of Oliver Stone's Alexander the Great

Timeless: The United States Beer Drinking Team

Posted by joe at 09:32 | Permalink