Monday Fun

Via Townhall

it IS common sense

Listen to it once, twice, as many times as it takes to hear it all. I played this video and had a holy-ghost revival at my desk.
In a current political culture grossly lacking in common sense, here's Thomas Paine dishing it out in spades.



Anyone else interested in a Second American Revolution? My calendar's free. Let's do this.




Hat Tip Kristin Lamb

Quote Them

Via Patriot Post

"Bitter as it is to accept the results of the November election, we should have reason for some optimism. For many years now we have preached 'the gospel,' in opposition to the philosophy of so-called liberalism, which was, in truth, a call to collectivism. Now, it is possible we have been persuasive to a greater degree than we had ever realized. Few, if any, Democratic Party candidates in the last election ran as liberals. Listening to them I had the eerie feeling we were hearing reruns of Goldwater speeches. I even thought I heard a few of my own. Bureaucracy was assailed and fiscal responsibility hailed. ... But let's not be so naive as to think we are witnessing a mass conversion to the principles of conservatism. Once sworn into office, the victors reverted to type. In their view, apparently, the ends justified the means."

Ronald Reagan

Quote Them

Via Patriot Post:

"Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it."

John Adams

"You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer."

Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Quote Them

Via Patriot Post:

"For many years now, you and I have been shushed like children and told there are no simple answers to the complex problems which are beyond our comprehension. Well, the truth is, there are simple answers -- they just are not easy ones. The time has come for us to decide whether collectively we can afford everything and anything we think of simply because we think of it. The time has come to run a check to see if all the services government provides were in answer to demands or were just goodies dreamed up for our supposed betterment. The time has come to match outgo to income, instead of always doing it the other way around."

Ronald Reagan

Quote Them

Via Patriot Post

"No taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant."

George Washington

25 RANDOM THINGS about me

25. My dreams are all action/adventures that star me and some varying male Hollywood celebrity I generally dislike or simply would prefer stayed out of my dreams.

24. The poetry I write in my head always starts with, “There once was an old lady who lived in a shoe…”

23. On a typical day, I’ll swallow 33 vitamins. It’s like a gel cap marathon that doesn’t end until the last Prolamine Iodine crosses the tonsil finish line.

22. When I was a kid, I’d lay all the chairs down on the kitchen floor after my parents went to bed because I thought they were tired from sitting up all day.

21. I think life is too short to wear uncomfortable shoes.

20. Our two-story house burned down to the ground December 1979. We were asleep inside and it was a miracle my father woke up and we escaped, jumping from the second story porch roof. (Since I was only two, I was tossed off. But my Dad caught me.) I remember vividly every moment, every sound, every feeling, every thought, despite being vertically and age challenged. I grew up knowing three very definite things: 1. All possessions, once applied by the right temperature, turn to ash. 2. The vinyl seats of a 1980s Oldsmobile are freezing when you’re only dressed in pajamas and there’s nowhere else to shelter. 3. There is no reason my family and I should have survived. So God spared our lives for a very real reason - to honor Him with what time remained.

19. I wear three ring bands on my fingers. Each has a specific achievement or memory or represents an obstacle God’s brought me to and over. When I feel overwhelmed or disappointed or even lost, they remind me of these moments in my life, what God has brought me through, and it gets me back into focus. Plus, they’re pretty and I like to stare at my hands.

18. I’m never completely still. If you think you’ve caught me still before, you didn’t. I was probably wiggling my toes.

17. Beer tastes like liquid shredded wheat, without the bananas and milk. Yuck.

16. I dream about being anonymous one day.

15. Despite passing it off as a joke, I really do think Jillian, my Jeep, is alive and speaks to me. Sometimes I pat her dashboard while driving down the road as a show of affection. She responds by getting more miles to the gallon.

14. My handwriting is nearly unreadable. As a kid, I use to spend hours training and starving my handwriting into submission (my entire family – father, mother, brother – has beautiful penmanship). However, I believe all the dieting and exercising of my penmanship has forever screwed up any chance I had of writing legibly. I use to feel ashamed of my penmanship, hiding it under dark colors and vertical stripes. Then one day, realizing God thinks my handwriting is beautiful, I stripped it down to its birthday ink and let it run free.

13. I have my father’s nose, mouth, chin, and shape of face. I have my mother’s eyes, forehead, cheekbones, and dimples. The rest of my body I stole from a little old lady down on Hutchins Street on a stormy October night in 1977.

12. When I’m about to devour a good meal, I rub my hands together first. Don’t ask me why. Don’t ask me what it means. Don’t ask me to stop. It’s totally involuntary.

11. The only things I actually enjoy shopping for are Native jewelry, discounted books, and ink pens.

10. There are only two famous people I’ve ever wanted to meet. One: he and I share a birthday and a political passion. Two: he and I exchanged a letter once, plus he sent me an autographed copy of his newest book. In another life, I was supposed to be both of these guys combined, but a girl. I’m supposed to be a girl in all my lives. Or a yellow-legged Pekin Robin.

9. I use to be ticklish. I’ve since decided against it.

8. My favorite movies are romantic comedies because they reflect absolutely no shred of reality or possibility.

7. In the fall of 2007, I was on seven planes in ten days. It was my first experience in an airplane. I don’t enjoy the bathrooms.

6. I took piano lessons for five years when I was a kid. I don’t play the piano, but I’m an excellent typist and have unnaturally strong fingers. Not hands. Just the fingers. They can crush ice, crack pecans, and squeeze phone books in half. Yet I still can’t open those dang potato chip bags.

5. I’ve done construction work twice in my life, with my dad (when I was a teenager) and my brother (about a summer ago). Kneepads make me feel invincible, which is why one day they will be the death of me.

4. My favorite people in the world are all calm. That holds true for my favorite dogs, boyfriends, relatives, vacations, road trips, and stomachs.

3. Just for the sake of being different than the current culture, I’m not going to take offense. And just for the sake of being sane, I’m going to ignore those who do.

2. If I can stand for anything, it will be truth, justice, and the American Way. If I can wear anything, it won’t be the Superman costume.

1. My hair use to be so long I could sit on it. But it kept complaining. So I had some friends of mine, let’s just call them good fellas, chop it off at the knees and feed it to the fishes.

to Awaken the Passions

Per reader request, a Singularity excerpt:



Gina was behind the wheel.
She’s my Georgia peach girlfriend who can talk louder than any human ever to live and believes cooking fried chicken is an act of worship.
We were late for a wedding and lost on the intricate and construction laden campus of The University of Tulsa.
We’d been everywhere seeking the chapel and after 15 minutes of going into a circular nowhere, we reached yet another dead-end.

I was telling her to go right; the other passengers were shouting left. She couldn’t make up her mind so she just went straight.

Normally I’d go with the flow. But there wasn’t a road. We were driving through the frat house lawns littered with men and their emptying beer cans. Our car was full of three women in evening attire and one legally blind male (the other passenger) screaming for his life.
This may not have been the wisest decision. In fact, it wasn’t really a decision at all. Instead of turning left or right, she did neither. She didn't make a choice but acted on it.
Let’s call this Nothingness in Motion.

Nothingness in Motion is marking the letter “c” on every multiple-choice question because we really don’t know the answer.
Nothingness in Motion is using phrases like “isn’t that nice,” “that sounds interesting,” and “very informative,” when your boss starts talking bass fishing.
Nothingness in Motion is political correctness from your hair color to your shoe choice.
Nothingness in Motion is always playing it safe by never playing at all.
Nothingness in Motion is always letting what's hot, what's popular, what's in, being what's you.
Nothingness in Motion is living a life of mediocrity because we’re too scared, too uncertain, or too dead to live.

Harsh maybe, but true. I know this place because I’m there. I'm staring at the puke green of the walls as we speak.
I’m passionate about politics and theology, chap stick and sociology, psychology and reflexology and even love, when we speak in rhetorical musings. But speak of it personally, speak of it about me, and…well…um…no comment.

How can I talk more passionately about a ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals than I can about my own heart?

Here’s what John Eldridge and Brent Curtis had to say about this in The Sacred Romance:

“In the end, it doesn’t matter how well we have performed or what we have accomplished – a life without heart is not worth living. For out of this wellspring of our soul flows all true caring and all meaningful work, all real worship and all sacrifice. Our faith, hope, and love issue from this fount, as well. Because it is in our heart that we first hear the voice of God and it is in the heart that we come to know him and learn to live in his love.”

This avoidance of what ignites us, what pushes us to our limits, this is the evil that is Nothingness in Motion. What it’s really saying is:

In life, my heart is missing in action, but I'm not going looking for it.