Beautiful day, sunny, breezy, not too hot. Stuck at the office most of the day, responding to a muted but chilling observation from on-high that I need to be more “proactive” — but made it back before the whole thing was over.
Today was the day of the block party. Street blocked off. Kids riding bikes in the street. Gangs of children I don’t even know appearing on my porch and demanding glasses of water, or to use the bathroom. People standing around drinking beer. As I type, karaoke out front. I can hear my wife singing “hey hey hey, goodbye”. After three bottles of strong and yummy Pilsner Urquell (the Czech Republic’s gift to the world) I took my turn in the karaoke barrel. I did a horrible version of “White Rabbit”. I then made partial penance by doing an on-key a capella version of Merle Haggard’s “Sing Me Back Home”. Then I quit while I was ahead. Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock’N’Roll” beckons, if someone gets more beer. (Now someone’s doing Whitney Houston. Bad call. Whitney doesn’t even sound good doing it, and she’s hitting the notes.)
One of the guys down the street wants to go see the new Matrix movie. Our wives said, in unison, “you two can go”. I’m going to treat that as an evening pass, and run with it.
My two year old was so tired she was falling down, but fought like a tiger not to have to go to bed. Once I got the dirt and snot and chocolate wiped off of her, and got her into a dry diaper and a pj, she fell asleep like a rock.
Got good news the other day that Los Straitjackets are going to be playing walking distance from Lex’s pad on the 4th of July. Woo hoo.
Work looks to get ugly. Plus I’m trying to get the doc to give me some medicine and he won’t return my calls. And my kids are beating me into the ground. And other stuff going on for the next little while. Can’t say for how long. But God is in His Heaven and all is right with the world. Still, I’ll have to trust the other ChicagoBoyz to pull the train for a while.
Meanwhile, this Robert Kaplan interview(cited by Instapundit) is brilliant. The article from the dead tree magazine is even better — and will be online pretty soon, so be on the lookout for it. Currently reading Copse 125 by Ernst Junger, and Right Face: Organizing the American Conservative Movement 1945-65 by Niels Bjerre-Poulsen. Just finished David Hackworth’s book Steel My Soldiers’ Hearts. Also read Russia’s Chechen Wars 1994 – 2000: Lessons from Urban Combat by Olga Oliker. These are all excellent. Figure on “book reports” here as soon as I can focus. I have a bunch of other good ideas for posts, too. There’s a lot going on in the world and as always, I’ve got opinions longer than you have time to listen or read.
Lex, for you we will always have time to listen and read.
Lex, let us know how the serious reading is going. I’m slowly sifting through Russel Kirk, The Conservative Mind. It’s great reading, but it’s slow going. The style is wonderful, but it’s packed with so much yummy philosophical goodness that I find myself re-reading many paragraphs a couple times just to let things sink in. Oh well, serves me right for reading the summary of all western conservative thought, rather than just reading the 30 or 40 ur-texts… I’ll be posting a short essay on it each week, probably for most of the summer, as logical breaks in the text suggest it.
Pilsner Urquell is not exactly a gift from the Czech Republic, since it dates back to, iirc, the 15th century. But it IS delicious. Simply the finest beer in the world. I’ve been drinking it for 30 years after being introduced to it by a musicologist who studied in Vienna.
Even the Communists couldn’t destroy it.
I’ll grab a Budvar before a Pilsner Urquell, but a fine brew none the less. If you ever make it out to Prague, you can be drinking half liters of the either brew for about .75 cents each. Yes it’s true, beer is cheaper than water in Prague.
As for God being in Heaven… hasn’t been since the summer of 1919, when Shoeless Joe was out hitting Ty Cobb.
Your wife a Sox fan, Lex? If I had to guess, sounds like Beverly, I don’t think they know “Hey, Hey, Hey, Goodbye” up north!