It's almost February, well nigh time for the first good cause of 2006.

More here.

(And if you are looking for a good cry, you can read the story here. "Stop. Stop. We have run out of virgins!" Heh.)

UPDATE: And now, as with every cultural earthquake worth its salt, this one has an official logo:

Be sure to click the link to check out the list of Danish-owned enterprises you can patronize in order to support the 'reverse boycott.'

(As a side note, we can observe that this would be much easier if we could simply mount a counter-boycott: As long as the Muslim communities around the world maintain their boycott of Danish goods, those of us who sympathize with the Danes could refuse to buy goods produced by the Muslim-majority states. Unfortunately, though, most of those states do not produce much of anything for export, except for sociopathic ideologies, which as far as I know we are already boycotting. Therefore, the reverse boycott is really the only meaningful course of action, so go grab a case of Tuborg and some nice pate or cabbage, ok?)

Posted by John Climacus at 06:07 | Permalink | Comments (3)

I'm in the process of moving into my home office, and in the past few weeks I have been immersed in organizing hundreds of books and magazines, and thousands of article clippings collected since the 1970s. As I sit here and survey this maelstrom of text, the one concept I would use to describe the theme underlying most of it would be: 'the conservative struggle.'

Since the 1970s, that's really what it's been. But right now, with the imminent confirmation of Sam Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court, I think it is time to replace 'struggle' with 'triumph.'

Message to George W. Bush: You done us good.

If there was one issue or rationale that has underlied the past two decades' calls for action for grassroots conservatives, it has been the prospect of impacting American culture by influencing the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court.

President George W. Bush, in case you had not noticed, has just accomplished precisely that. With the Alito and John Roberts appointments to the Court in the past few months, the goals we all have worked for have been fulfilled to a very large extent. Two young, pretty apparent conservatives are now seated in the Supreme Court of the United States.

I am currently working through a million column-inches of articles bemoaning the 'conservative plight' in our supposedly liberal political environment, and the reality is the biggest conservative goal of the past 20 years in terms of presidential effectiveness has been reached. (And maybe more good can still be done!)

Yeah, the other side got Roe v Wade. They got the mainstream media and pop culture and 'higher' education. But we just got the right butts in the right seats, for a long time to come.

Thank you, Mr. President. This is why we did all the work, and you came through.

Posted by John Climacus at 02:27 | Permalink

Terrorists voted into power in Palestine? My word, who could have seen this coming? It's shocking, is what it is.

After all, except for a few accidents of history, a cultural fork in the road if you will, they're basically just like us. We remember September 11, 2001 our way; they remember it their way.

Now, Hamas were no shrinking violets following 9-11, you have to give them that:

Have you asked yourself who the real perpetrator is? Allow me to answer you: Yes, it is you, America! You closed on yourself the door of injustice, so that none could pass through it but your destroyers. Afterwards, you decided to light the fire of destiny behind the door, until the fire consumed you, Oh America! I told you once that the mosquito sucks the blood of the lion. Have you realized that I was right? If not, look at your eye and see what happened to you in three spheres: the economic sphere (the World Trade Center building); the power sphere (the Pentagon); and the political sphere (the White House).

The question I hope everyone with influence on the U.S. purse strings is asking would be: Are we going to keep giving those folks $400 million per year? Maybe we could possibly reduce that figure...by approximately $400 million per year.

The Palestinian people made their choice and now maybe they've just bought themselves a big old honkin' war. Not the security detail kind either, but the kind with a deadly serious endgame.

Posted by John Climacus at 04:38 | Permalink

She was a good little pet, a good little ferret. Updates may follow...

Heaven must have needed some entertainment.

She was a goofy little thing when we first got her: always ON - in your face or, more likely, attacking any available extremity, unless there was a purse or pocket that might contain small objects which could be carried off and hidden behind the television. During her early caged years, each time she was first let out to play she would erupt into spasmodic paroxysms of sheer joy, jumping with these rapid-fire, half-pirouette hops that often as not landed her on her back.

She had the run of the house for a few years, and the 'happy dance' would then take place periodically with seemingly little instigation save for the presence of someone - or two - suddenly paying attention to her. This was usually when we got home from work or finished dinner and retired to the living room.

The 'geriatric' stage with domestic ferrets comes on pretty early - some vets will label it as early as the fourth year. Daisy was no exception. By the time she was three she'd been in the hospital for one major round of surgery: tumor removed from the tip of her tail and both adrenal glands removed. We were lucky to find the absolute best ferret vet in the entire world happened to be 15 miles away. No exaggeration: Dr. Tom Kawasaki practices in Woodbridge, VA and he is right at the top of the field. If you have a ferret and you're in the DC area, 'Dr. K' is definitely the man to see.

Anyway, we thought she was going to be dead that time, but Dr. K worked a miracle to bring her back from the brink. After that, there were several other emergencies mainly due to the fact that ferrets can be particularly slow in appreciating the danger of human feet. At least, this ferret was. After a couple broken bones it was back in the cage with Daisy: Either she was going to be stymied in her quest for continuous adventure or she was going to be smashed on the kitchen floor.

From age 5 onward the routine was to let her out for as long as we could, to mosey around the house, get her daily portion of ferret treats, and possibly fraternize with other local creatures, although she did not fancy herself in the same league as the feline or canine varieties. In her youth she would occasionally lope right over on into the cats and freak them out, but when she was older the puppy could poke and sniff and shadow her and she never paid a hair's worth of attention.

She did not have much in the way of strength or vigor, but even to the very end she could always keep the puppy flummoxed. (This was just taken in October 2005).

We thought we had lost her a few times. Earlier in 2005 she had lost nearly all of her hair and we thought at age 7 maybe this was it. But lo and behold she rallied in the fall, and for a couple months she seemed to be at 100%. By this time '100%' meant she was awake for treats and a little investigating maybe 2 hours a day and sleeping soundly the other 22. The routine was to let her finish her treats under the puppy's watchful, wistful eyes (leftover ferret-crunch nuggets were valued VERY highly), and then let her curl up in a blanket on the couch for an hour or so before putting her back in the cage.

She was semi-affectionate early on, often because after playing she would weasel her way under the covers or into one's pillow case or under one's shirt and fall asleep. Then in the middle years she was much less amenable to prolonged contact. You could hold her for a few minutes but after that she squirmed her way loose. But the last few months she was often a veritable lap-ferret and would curl up on your lap or inside your bathrobe for as long as you would leave her there.

We left on a business trip last Wednesday morning, and apparently that night she was suddenly unable to walk. One of our daughters was home and basically nursed her and kept her company through Saturday night, and she died just minutes before we arrived back. If I was there I might have rushed her down to Dr. K, and she might have died with strangers poking her with needles or in some strange cage. Maybe I wouldn't have, I don't know, but I would have been very conflicted. So although I wish I was with her at the end it probably worked out for the best. Our daughter, wisely, did not tell us a thing about it until we got home. Daisy was on the carpet, wrapped in a towel, peaceful. Thank God she did not die alone.

Well, I guess that's the eulogy. Though Daisy had personality to spare, there's no denying a ferret is not as high up on the sentience scale as a dog. You aren't going to have many 'shared moments' of mutual understanding. The only times I looked into this ferret's eyes were during the early years when she was attempting to gnaw the tip of my nose...and all I saw was sheer ferocity.

But over 8 years a lot can change in one's life. If one is living - as I have been - within the straight-jacket environment and sparse diversions of the 'all work, all the time' lifestyle, day in and day out, year after year, the limited elements of one's narrow daily universe tend to stand out more distinctly in memory. 'How far we've come' in a relationship or as a family; 'how much I've progressed' in career or personal growth; how much has been changed or lost or won or regretted - the richness of these reflections hinges on the details we have to draw from: a car, a house, a loved one's smile, a tirade, a meal, a garden, a rainbow, a song, a hospital, a party, a photo, a fearsome storm, a spectacular landscape, a peaceful day and, in this case, also a ferret. The span of time she was with us brackets a period when so, so much happened with our family.

Goodbye Daisy. We'll always remember you.

Posted by John Climacus at 10:35 | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (1)

Time for a fresh start.

Posted by John Climacus at 12:22 | Permalink

G. Gordon Liddy on the radio a few minutes ago announced unequivocally that Ariel Sharon died at 1:00 pm today Israeli time (about 9 hours ago).

One of his sources was Drudge, who at this moment is reporting Sharon's condition stable. The Post still has the report of 'modest signs of improvement' although it's a couple hours old.

AP from about 45 minutes ago also has Sharon still alive.

It'll be interesting to see if the G-Man scooped everyone on this or if his research people are just slacking off.

UPDATE: Sheesh. The G-Man was even playing a funeral dirge. Hadn't listened to him in over a year and did not hear the retraction, but I hope he has a well-developed humility schtick.

Posted by John Climacus at 02:39 | Permalink

Important article: It's the Demography, Stupid - The real reason the West is in danger of extinction

...What will Europe be like at the end of this process? Who knows? On the one hand, there's something to be said for the notion that America will find an Islamified Europe more straightforward to deal with than M. Chirac, Herr Schroeder & Co. On the other hand, given Europe's track record, getting there could be very bloody. But either way this is the real battlefield. The al Qaeda nutters can never find enough suicidal pilots to fly enough planes into enough skyscrapers to topple America. But unlike us, the Islamists think long-term, and, given their demographic advantage in Europe and the tone of the emerging Muslim lobby groups there, much of what they're flying planes into buildings for they're likely to wind up with just by waiting a few more years. The skyscrapers will be theirs; why knock 'em over?

Posted by John Climacus at 05:06 | Permalink