Picking fights, Part Deux

Gimme a "money shot".

Just one Muslim who says this is wrong.

Just one. I'll kiss your ass on Main St., USA for the next twenty years. There ain't such a creature in existence. My lips are secure in their sanctity. I dare ya, make me come forth and perform this embarrassing, disgusting act. Nothing in the Book of Islam will make it happen. Moderates don't exist.

The fight I alluded to in the last post is a dare to those who claim to be "moderates." I am a nasty, heathen American calling you out. I am fresh out of apologies. There is nothing for you here but confrontation. Come out and play, bastards.

This started as a comment on a previous post. It has graduated into a full-blown statement; a dare of sorts. Come out and fight me. I am weary of your next attack. I laugh at images of the Prophet. I live in Blairsville, Georgia. I am a heathen American. Not a cringing Dane or Frenchman. I will openly defile an image of Mohammed, if that’s what it takes to get you to come out and play. I mentioned my dislike of bloodthirsty blogs the other day. I sound insane with my dare; nevertheless, I dare ya. I’m tired of waiting; come out and fight me, one on one. Don’t be a coward who slaughters 3,000 of my people in a building; be a champion. Come to the foot of Scorpion Hill, load up, and let’s get to it.

I sleep with a handgun by the bed, and an open invitation. I am an old man, and can be easily overcome. So, bring it on. Your self-righteousness tires me. Line up at the foot of the hill, and show me how righteous you are for Allah. I dare ya.

All right, let's pick a fight.

I hear these horror stories every day about bloodthirsty blogs. People are out there wanting to do murder on each other. They are searching for internet babes, and looking for everything from internet handguns to methods of suicide.

If you want to cancel your ticket, take a mouthful of water and put a bullet between your teeth. The law of physics and hydrodynamics will kick in, and you'll blow your head clean off your neck.

For the rest of us, there is the law of life. God gave us this life. It ain't easy, and we often wish we'd done a better job.

I am tired of hearing people of "faith" chanting "death to..." others. Line up at the foot of Scorpion Hill, and storm the house. Ol' Possum will fight you off to the last round. What are you gonna do, cut short my young life?

I dared someone to show me a "moderate Muslim" the other day. I grew tired of people searching for reason where there is none. People who declare themselves to be "moderates" in America are asking after the voice of reason in the Islamic community. There ain't no such animal.

One of the cowboys said it best in "Tombstone". "Don't any of you have the guts to play for blood?"

The most effective weapon in the modern world is a 17-year-old kid, plucked from his home and moved to an alien culture halfway around the world. Tell him that the rules are off, and nothing he has been taught counts.

The Islamic world will see ruthlessness like nothing they can imagine in Mohammed's worst frenzies. Keep it up, and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Beating up Boyington

I have my personal hero from the Greatest Generation, my quiet father who did a drive-by thing with German Panzers in December of 1944.

Second among that pantheon of heroes, and a much more public personality, is a Marine named Greg “Pappy” Boyington. He is the stuff of legend; a Marine aviator with more kills than any other on record. By the accounts of his commanding officers, he was also an arrogant, insubordinate SOB. The best warriors are often the worst soldiers.

“Pappy’s” specialty was luring Japanese fliers out to fight him one-on-one over the Pacific. His luck eventually ran out, and he spent 20 months in a Japanese POW camp. Before he rode his Corsair into the ocean, Boyington had established the legacy of “Boyington’s Battling Bastards”, the legendary “Black Sheep Squadron”. The title was toned down for the more respectable press of the time, but the public knew the story of those courageous Marine aviators who showed up every day, and dared the Japs to come out and play. The former Flying Tiger didn’t ask permission; there was a war on, and he made it up as he went along.

“Pappy” was a tormented man, and had a hard time in civilian life after the war. He battled alcoholism, and was reduced to being a pro wrestling referee in the fledgling days of the “sport”. It’s been a few years since I read his autobiography, but I think he even parked cars for a living at some low point. He resigned from his beloved Marine Corps to fly with Claire Chenault in China before the infamy of 7 December, 1941. A flawed person, like so many of us, “Pappy” was a perfect hero. Cursed by his COs, he saw what needed to be done, and went out to do it.

So, this is supposed to be a quiet weekend morning in the 21st century. The deeds of the Greatest Generation are 60+ years in the past. Our memorials are established; our statues are raised.

Not quite. “Pappy” Boyington is an alumnus of the University of Washington. The university recently entertained the notion of a memorial to this hero. All kinds of nastiness has erupted over it, including rhetoric that “a Marine is not the kind of person we’d care to represent the university.”

They don’t call it The Left Coast for no reason, and we in other parts of America are accustomed to intellectual disconnects from the denizens of that rarefied environment.

If this American hero is not honored, it calls down eternal shame upon the University of Washington. “Pappy” did his duty, and didn’t take “no” for an answer. His squadron had the highest kill ratio of any Marine aviation unit serving in a desperate war. He had 28 “kills”, and they are just that. People died; he didn’t start the war, but he tried his best to end it.

Fly on, “Pappy”. My pa is #1, but your legacy soars with the eagles.

Grandpa Spencer spins

I posted an apology the other day. There was a problem with the web site; I truly felt I was wrong for a hasty judgement, blaming a troll for a technical malfunction. There is precedent for such suspicion, but I wanted to be a nice guy.

My grandpa, Spencer Clay Bryant, was right. Don't equivocate. Don't apologize. I'm sure Mother Mamie played hell getting the old man into church. When his time came, this veteran of War I and the Spanish-American War was surounded by women; his last words were a request for a cup of coffee.

Those conversant with history may recognize the significance of Papa's name. Family genealogists reliably inform me that there is a more direct link to John Jay, the statesman who took issue with Abraham Lincoln.

Henry Clay and John Jay didn't apologize. Right or wrong, they spoke their minds.

Southern guilt is like Nazi guilt. The original generation is wrong on a specific count; thus all generations are gulity of oppression, vicious racism. No amount of retraction will make up for that momentary lapse of reason. My grandpa sensed this dichotomy; thus his admonition to never apologize.

I am raised in the Christian church; thus taught to apologize when I find myself wrong. So, I'm sitting in the Possum Den the other day, staring at the latest monitor read-outs, and muttering "dang...maybe I shouldn't have been so quick to cuss that boy!"

I made an apology. I equivocated. "I might've been wrong."

The reply was to the effect of "What took you so long...?", and enough obscenity that I had to delete the post to conform to my minimal PG-13 standards.

My grandpa was right. Is there a point to apology? Nothing short of death, and I ain't a murderer.

I will never apologize again. I don't suffer the arrogance of infallibilty, but I'll depend on my handful of faithful readers to pull me up short when I'm getting over the top.

My mind is mine. Right or wrong, this is my space, and I shall speak what pleases me.

Like Samuel Jackson at the end of "Pulp Fiction", I'm trying real hard to be the shepherd, and not the tyranny of evil men.

Another feeding frenzy?

I feel like hurling chunks, and not just because of the chemo.

Seeing sharks in a feeding frenzy is sick-making. I lived in St. Petersburg, Florida, for five minutes. I had a friend who owned a boat, and at times we would go out to the mouth of the Pinellas River and shoot sharks. We’d chum them with beer and various gatherings from the butcher shop of the local grocery store, then load them with various caliber rounds from a variety of semi-automatic and highly-accurate [scope-sighted] weapons. Bill W.--…a big, burly guy, used to laugh manically and empty entire 30-round clips into the suckers. Then he would drag them aboard, over the gun’ales, while we reloaded and drank more chumming beer.

Had I known that sharks have commercial value, I, too, would have been dragging them aboard the boat. Sharks are at least cleaner and easier to catch than reporters who work the DC beat.

Lawyers have commercial value. Even reporters have commercial value; at least to their syndicates. Shooting victims have great value to lawyers; anyone who is shot by a real gun has great value to a litigator who can assign fault for the fate of the injured party to a corporate manufacturer of firearms. Forget the fact that they might have been a felon in the commission of same…

Shooting victims have great value to their next of kin, if they don’t survive the incident. See above about lawyers. The celebrity of a shooting victim enhances the person’s value to the lawyer involved, and the beat goes on…

Ah, but I digress. A big-time lawyer, gunned down by the vice-president of the United States, is, as they say, priceless.

This was like the definition of comedy. A very proper gentleman, arriving at very proper black-tie affair, starts down a flight of stairs. At the top of the stairs, he slips on a banana peel [insert cliché here] and starts to fall. The sight of such a proper gentleman falling unceremoniously onto his ass is funny, as pomposity deserves comeuppance. The further down the stairs he falls into the ballroom, the louder the laughter becomes.

When he finally fetches up at the bottom of the stairs, his neck is broken. The laughter stops. When did it cease to be humorous?

I know a few lawyers. Mr. Whittington is not among them. He is in my prayers personally. It ain’t funny. Getting shot never is. The possibility for lawyer jokes is endless, but…

I don’t hunt. I don’t begrudge this privilege to others, on some vague politically correct obscure grounds, I just don’t do it. Not a sport. Maybe if the rabbits can shoot back. Anyone who was forced to read the classic “The Most Dangerous Game” in high school will understand a loss of taste for blood sport. I’d shoot Bambi for food if the kids needed it, but that’s a whole ‘nother scenario. They know where the grocery store, and its meat counter, is located.

The vice-president of the United Sates shot someone in the face the other day, in what amounts to a hunting accident. It is a horribly personal incident. There is a wonderfully succinct bumpersticker that sums it up: “S*** happens”.

Playing around in the woods with firearms increases this maxim exponentially.

At the age of 14, while hunting with my father and my 14-year-old cousin, I squeezed the trigger of a 1898 Mauser to see if it was loaded. The accidental discharge barely missed my dad and cousin Dick. Like some other moments that I never forgot, that sticks. The dried grass and pines are what recall the incident; the landscape of the event.

I have since received some shooting lessons that, like riding a bicycle, do not escape memory. Despite your “one shot, one kill” creed, make sure of the background, and watch those snap shots. In the field, with a loaded weapon, you never know…

Forget killing Bambi for bloodsport. This isn’t about some birds that PETA might consider more vital than an aborted human baby. This isn’t about a Golden Age lawyer whom some people might consider fair game.

If I needed an example of [Im]Pure Politics for a classroom of high schoolers, this is it.

I come from a subsect of politically incorrect, gun-owning southern folks. Alvin York would respect our respect for life. We know how to shoot.

I heard a press conference the other morning. “What did the vice-president know, and why didn’t he..?”

The vice-president knows his target wasn’t clear, and he capped a guy in the face. I don’t care whose fault it was. When you wander into the woods with loaded weapons, stuff may happen. Everyone may know the rules of engagement, but stuff happens. That's part of the kick of hunting.

So, we impeach the second-in-command, make speeches about “the culture of corruption”, and position ourselves for the abortive attempt to regain liberal sway over the direction of America in 2008? I fall in with Pink Floyd, and ‘leave them kids alone.” What a crock of nothing! Check that last; what a crock of desperation.

Mr. Cheney’s unfortunate incident involving Mr. Whittington is a personal matter. My first reaction, as a citizen, was to speculate how ludicrous Ted Kennedy will look trying to accuse anyone of manslaughter, assault, diving for his pants while others drown, or any other charge some over-valued lawyer can concoct. The feeding frenzy of the liberal, agenda-driven press is an indictment beyond words. They are prey to the Kennedy curse, and Ted’s Da Man; the last voice of a dying dynasty that cursed America for nearly a century.

The DC press corps, and their respective syndicates, has added themselves to this Hall of Shame. Sean Hannity, whom I used to call to the phone and beleaguer when he worked local Atlanta radio, has it right when he addresses the liberal Democrats at large: “Keep it up! I love it! Every time you take a position, we win!”

Ditto.

The Usual Suspects redux

They don't learn, they don't listen, they don't answer to anyone.

Why do these people keep getting re-elected?

Apologies are for wimps..

I was perhaps unfair to another person the other day. In my childish way, I tend to blame others, and suffer paranoid attacks of: “Why doesn’t this work?”, when the fault may be user error regarding computers.

There is an individual who drops by this blog occasionally. I call this person a troll, because he (?) has nothing significant to say, and his additions to the conversation are frequently so profane that he holds the record for comment deletions. I enjoy differences of opinion, and the politics of the personal attack, i.e. “you’re ugly…you’re a drug user…you're a Nazi SOB…” don’t bother me. These are the tactics of the “progressive” party, i.e. Those People. Their rhetoric, and the intellectual bankruptcy of their arguments, makes my points more succinctly than any verbiage I can summon from my limited hillbilly vocabulary. No one gets deleted because they have a point of view; that’s the purpose of blogging. I’d like to advance beyond my ten faithful readers, and become more than a mutual admiration society. I lack the intellectual capacity to provoke people into thinking beyond their personal envelopes. I hide from the real world behind the allusions of movies. When you get older, you can do this, as long as you keep the satellite bill paid.

I got locked out of my own blog the other day. UPI, and its server, sent me messages that said I am “forbidden”. I blamed my troll buddy “Liger” for this. I have been attacked before with viruses, computer worms, and unsolicited subscriptions to things varying from junk bond stock market reports to drug ads for erectile dysfunction.

I called this “the end”, and said this little corner was dead. Nope. It was maybe a technical malfunction of the server, or maybe I got confuzzled in dealing with my word verification procedure. That thing is difficult; even with new glasses; I can’t always make out the letters and type them in. I might see more comments if I dropped it as a requirement, but we need some standards.

I blamed the blog lockout on hacking by a troll. The immediate suspect was the person who posts profanity ad infinitum on my blog; Liger…one who assumes the identity and persona of a genetic hybrid of a lion and a tiger. We have become accustomed to you at ScrappleFace; if you consider yourself a representative of the liberal point of view, and have something to say, feel free to jump in. Dissension, and alternative proposals, will never be subjected to deletion.

The lockout was a server failure. I will give myself some kicks; that I blamed Liger for something that may be totally analogous. I’ll do a guilt trip for my failures, but don’t get too proud. Kids may wander in here, and while you’re free to cuss me to the ends of the earth in e-mail, I request reasonable PG-13 standards for this blog.

I feel bad that I accused Liger of hacking me and causing massive modem failure. This should not be interpreted as agreement with your POV. I am giving slack that you didn’t shut my site down. That is not the direction of reasoned discourse. Let’s boogie; let’s yell and scream.

I have a moment’s regret that I may have unfairly blamed someone for a fault of my own. Because of their politics of the personal attack, Those People are first in line to be blamed if there is a technical fault at some computer site. My UPI blog has unlocked, and maybe I am not being attacked.

We can fight and fuss all day long. If the libs have a blog, and you in particular, Liger, we’ll lay our arguments out. I have confidence that I’ll win in a debate over politics. If I am wrong for accusing you of hacking me because we disagree, then you have a real-time apology. The politics of disagreement does not include sabotage of each other’s forum.

I’ll give you a pass, that you didn’t hack me. Keep it clean, and you can call me all sorts of names on-site. If you want a cuss-fight, e-mail me and I’ll call you names that you haven’t invented yet. It’s my little corner, so I can decide the standards, and what’s right and wrong.

Jump in, if you have a POV that’ll stand analysis.
I was told to never apologize, by one of my ancestors, even if I’m wrong. I can be more gracious than my Confederate forebears. If I am wrong about someone hacking me to close down this site, then I ask forgiveness. If I am being weak, it is my fault. I do not apologize for my view of the world. If I am assigning blame without good cause, please pass unharmed by my judgment of conduct. Keep it clean, and let’s mix it up on politics, the ultimate point of view and bloodsport.

Maybe an apology, or I need to say "Bite me!"

I was perhaps unfair to another person the other day. In my childish way, I tend to blame others, and suffer paranoid attacks of: “Why doesn’t this work?”, when the fault may be user error.

See above; I think I double-posted with commentary.

Rodents who think they are smart...

For my pal Jack...

Happy Groundhog's Day!

I trust a rodent to tell me the weather like I trust a Democrat to tell me how a soldier feels...