Well I’m once again at the lake house, sleeping on the red leather couch that used to reside at my one gran’s and typing on the desk that came from the other’s.

It’s been foggy today and out the picture window across the front porch’s snow covered Adirondack chairs you could see the fluffy and dripping trees clearly just as far as the dock and then only an impenetrable wall of white.  Even Midway Rock, a blueberry bush bearing boulder with a sloping back and sheer front perfect for the daring to jump off was invisible, though I wouldn’t have recommended that today.  Good way to break a leg.

It’s almost never good skating weather here, too much snow on the lake.  One year I tried to shovel out a rink, but the weight of the snow pack on the underlying ice pushes it down far enough that the lake leaks over the shore edges creating a two or three inch layer of slush.  I don’t much like non-rink skating anyway, too bumpy and the creaks and cracks make me a little paranoid.

But it’s ok to walk on most of the time if you stay a respectable distance from the inlets and outlets and it can be fun to go out to the thick part where our neighbor lands his seaplane in the summer.  Lots of people do the snowmobiling thing and the tracks are all over the place but I find them noisy and disruptive.

I much prefer the stiff crunch of silence.

After a year on the B Team I got my chance to be a part of the Concert Band! at the eksmas concert.

Dat, dat, thump, thump, dah, dat, dat, dat, thump, thump, thump, dah, dat, dat, thump, thump, thump, thump, dah, daaaa.

Dat dat dat dat dat dat- Dah dah daaa!

I had strep and couldn’t make it and hated myself for being weak.  Turns out it was a good thing.

Band played in two acts with the Choir in between (I wasn’t part of school choir until senior year when I had to take a minimum of 4 credits and I only needed a 1/4 from Gym to graduate).  During the break when the curtains were closed basically everybody except the clarinets and the flutes snuck under the stands and got trashed.

The second act showed it and I don’t play my horn after I have a beer because you can taste it.

I did get to sit through the dressing down given in 4th period Concert Band the next day.

The director had got out in front of the audience the night before and issued refunds.  Chairs were absent and those of us who had been humming along got a chill of fear.

But we gave what you could consider a credible performance, or at least we pretended as much.

Nobody was gone for long and three months later at the Spring Concert it was hard to tell anything had happened.

Assault On Reason, Time Excerpts

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If you think that the world works any other way than this, that people do business with their friends or other people they have relationships with, you are doomed to disappointment.

Still, one thing I have a very hard thing tolerating is abuses of power relationships.  Call it bullying or harassment or what ever kind of coercive threat you care to, I find it fundamentally offensive.

I’m going to present 3 cases of what I think are abuses of power and I’d be curious to see how you react to them.

I was probably the world’s worst scout.  I was with 2 troops, each more horrible than the other and was never anything but a Tenderfoot, though I did earn some merit badges.

The first was full of the grossest reprobates and drunks at the Methodist Church (also home of the teen sex club youth group) the kind of guys who would fart in a glass and try and light it on fire at patrol meetings.

They were in fact a bunch of rip roaring pyromaniacs who would try and light just about any damn thing on fire, the bigger the better.

We were winter camping in a state park.  Not such a bad experience if you have a decent sleeping bag.  I will warn you that if there’s any snow pack at all (and this site had about 8 inches) you better watch your first step out of the tent in the morning because the residual heat from a small cook fire can melt a crater 20 feet across.  My peg was dangling when I woke up.

It was a small fire because it was put together by responsible sane adults since earlier in the day my dad had to drive one of the older wise ass patrol leaders to the hospital.

They had gone off to get wood and this rocket scientist thought it would be just as easy to hack up a picnic table.  He  was some surprised when his ax bounced off it and bit him in the leg I betcha.

It was pretty late in the day and we were all set up so they didn’t pack us all in the cars and drag us home, though I imagine they were sorely tempted.

Well, I’m kind of upset tonight because I’ve encountered some people with an attitude that is inexplicable to me.  Privately I call them Tories because the exhibit all of the classical features of Toryism.

Perpetually gloomy about the prospect of liberty they sulk inflicting their pessimism on morale.  They derive bitter satisfaction from their self-fulfilling prophecies of doom.  Openly aristocratic and monarchist they are content that their new insect overlords beat them and cheat them, panting for scraps like a common cur except a dog has too noble a soul to accept such offal.

But the worst offenders are those who think like this but still expect our votes, money, and effort as if they had some God anointed right to join the gated Village and get away from the foul smelling rabble.

What country are you from?

You have no right to my labor, property, or allegiance.  You are not the boss of me.  I am in fact YOUR boss, I gave you that job and I sign your damn check and I expect respect from my employees otherwise I fire their sorry ass and hire somebody else.

I can’t understand how the admission of several Congress people that their vote on the August FISA was influenced by fear for their personal safety because of White House lies about a potential attack on the Capital is anything but craven cowardice.  It is exactly the same thing as desertion in the face of the enemy.  Brave men have died for our freedom.  Do you have some special lucky charm that makes your miserable existence worth more than any of the 3892 that died for a lie in Iraq?  Would you sell your child for $10 million?

That’s the going rate you know.  I know what you are- now we’re just negotiating about the price.  Unless you just give it away.

Oh wait, that’s what you do.

You should be afraid of me because I know what you are…

A weakling.