New Bern and Back

Same Tacoma, Okemah OK, 2002

We ran down to New Bern yesterday and played a contra dance, driving a rented Ford Escape rather than our usual ride, the '99 Tacoma with the 213K miles and dead air conditioner.  Boy was it fun.  We decided to come back late last night after the dance just to enjoy more time in the Escape.  The Escape is an escape, in other words.  Plus, they've completed a new road between Garner and Goldsboro now, which loses about 20 minutes of the trip.  We stopped for late burgers and a Cheerwine Float in Goldsboro on the way back and still got to the rental car place in Siler in under the Mapquest projected time of trip.

On the way back I was thinking of writing something about Glenn Beck's latest non-stop ravings.  He's on the case about some song in a grammar school in Tennessee that they had the kids sing for Earth Day.  While encouraging recycling, the song in the second verse also uses two verbotten words: "boycott" and "petition."  Beck had the outraged mother on board, and spent quite a bit of time on how this was just like Hitler Youth.  I had to think the obvious: this rancid three hours in hell Beck spews out daily is just like Goebbels.  The kid who sang the song said, when questioned, that she didn't know what the song meant.  That's kinda too bad.  There used to be something about a right to petition in the Constitution, didn't there?

Anyways, Beck is sort of like a soft ball on a tee.  So I'd rather quote the money shot in World'O'Crap's musings re the Atlas Shrugged movie.  I hope the World'Os won't mind--their site is always worth a visit, so hopefully the brilliance of this small paragraph will instill in you a burning desire to read more:

But even though I probably won't pay to see the Atlas Shrugs, waiting till it makes its way to Netfix, I think it deserves to be seen -- or at least evaluated as possible fodder for the sequel to Better Living Through Bad Movies.  Because the question is bigger than the weekly box office totals.  Can Objectivist philosophy, embodied on page and screen, overturn the current social and political order, driven only by the power of one, small, unpleasant, somewhat kinky and nicotine-stained woman's ideas, and the inexhaustible energy of a static electricity-fueled perpetual moment machine that defies all known laws of physics, and which only requires followers who have enough faith to wear heavy woolen socks and scuff their feet on the shag carpet all day?

That's just fine!  And although it is possible that "perpetual moment machine" might be a typo, I think not.  Indeed, living in the perpetual moment is one of our fundamental problems.  As the Daily Howler points out in its usual elegant argumentative style [http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh042911.shtml],  the entire "long-form" whirlwind, in its attempted reporting by the paper of record, the New York Times, fails to take account of the most fundamental fact--that Mr. Obama had already released the only legal document regarding his birth, the so-called "short birth certificate," in 2008.  That is to say, there is no story at all, no secret "more legal" birth certificate, no nothing, just the hot air of manufactured angst swirling with ever increasing speed in the utter void.  


In other words, apparently there are zombies in heavy woolen socks shuffling in other unseen dimensions, and more than might be imagined in your mundane world of ipods and igloos.  Meanwhile, real mysteries remain unattended.  Kyle Busch did not run in last night's Nationwide Race in Richmond.  WTF is that all about?

Sunday Morning Update:  18 Rules, mystery solved.  Rested and rarin' to go, Kyle won Richmond last night in decisive style.  Congrats to Jimmie Johnson, who managed an 8th place finish in a sow's ears to silk purses manner.  We also appreciated his tweet to Mr. Harvick, who had asked if his tweet followers would vote for Donald Trump.  "No" responded Mr. Jimmie.  You can't always get what you want.