Month: October 2013

Principal to Parent: Shut Up!

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

We’re all in favor of the federal government micro-managing America’s vast multitude of public schools, right? Well, they say we are. Because our schools are pretty much of a joke throughout the civilized world, the devouring worm in Washington has come up with something it calls “Common Core.” Although it’s being implemented pretty much everywhere in the country, its actual content is pretty much a secret. But somehow getting the federal government into every single classroom, every day, deciding what exactly shall be taught and when, is supposed to give us “world-class” schools, according to compulsive liars.

What’s it really all about? Check out this little encounter, experienced by a parent in North Carolina:

“When I began seeing the ill effects of Common Core in my second grader’s classroom, I reached out to other parents and asked if it was just me. Other parents echoed how they did not like Common Core Math and what it was doing to their children. We asked for a meeting with the teacher and the principal. The principal denied us access as a group, and outright told me to stop communicating with other parents about the Common Core because I was generating ‘unrest.'” ( http://truthinamericaneducation.com/common-core-state-standards/principal-tells-parent-you-cant-talk-about-common-core/ )

You ask, “Who do these people think they are?” I’ve told you who they think they are. They think they are “change agents” who are going to turn America into a socialist basket case run by dictators, and they are going to use America’s children to do it.

Let me shout it from the housetops: GET YOUR CHILDREN OUT OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS!!! Why do you let these wacked-out communist wannabes “educate” your kids? GET OUT, OUT, OUT!

Writing with Jurassic Ink

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

There’s so much going on, it’d drive you crazy to try to keep track of it. If I tried to write about it all, I’d go into a decline. I mean, just look at our poor country. You could just sit down and cry.

Hmm… A wasp just landed on my hand and didn’t sting me. I find that encouraging.

So how about this for news today? From the fossil of an extinct squid which they believed to be 150 million years old, scientists in England have extracted black ink and used it to draw a picture of the living animal. ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/5794280/Scientists-draw-squid-using-its-150-million-year-old-fossilised-ink.html ) How does that grab you?

All right, the ink wasn’t just sloshing around in liquid form. But all they had to do was add some ammonia solution to the contents of the squid’s ink sac, and, as they say in England, bob’s your uncle.

Now, how can it be that this ink is still useable after 150 million years? It’d make a great Bic commercial–“Still good after 150 million years!” Is our understanding of fossilization all wrong? Are we way off base in our estimation of the age of the fossils? Is today’s “science” overdue to be re-labeled “quaint beliefs of yesteryear”?

And we get this just two days after the news about Triassic flowers! [See “Another Black Eye for Evolution,” Oct. 16] What a horrible week for Darwinism! It could hardly be worse if they’d found a Bronze Age arrowhead in the skull of a tyrannosaur.

In the battle between Scientific Dogma and Scientific Discovery, Mr. Darwin is backed into a corner and getting pounded into jelly.

Someone ought to stop the fight.

A Helpful Hint for Writers

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Charles Laughton sometimes had trouble getting into the character he was playing. When that happened, he suffered agonies. So did the producer and director. Laughton was usually the star of the movie, and when he stopped, the whole show had to stop. That could get very expensive.

On occasion, Laughton broke out of the jam when he suddenly “found the man.” Someone else, often a real person, would become for him the character he was trying to play. By using this real person as his model for the character, Laughton would be able to play his role. He was a great artist, but don’t ask me to explain how thinking of the real-life Edward VIII suddenly showed him how he should play Claudius the Roman emperor.

I use a similar method when a character won’t come alive for me. If you’ve tried to write fiction, here’s a trick that might come in handy.

Most of my fictional characters don’t need any special help to come to life, but there’s always somebody who can’t quite make it. In The Glass Bridge, which I’m currently writing, Lord Chutt suddenly came alive when I “found the man” in British actor John Nettles, who plays Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby in Midsomer Murders. I sincerely hope I don’t have to pay him for this: but as soon as I imagined Nettles playing Lord Chutt in a movie, I had the character–bingo! Worked like a charm.

I often do this with a book I’m reading. When I read The Lord of the Rings, I “see” and “hear” Strider/Aragorn as Charlton Heston. Elrond is Leonard Nimoy, Saruman is Vincent Price, and so on. This makes my reading experience much more vivid; and I’ve learned to do it in my writing.

So, to those of you who are taking a crack at writing fiction, try envisioning your story’s characters as played by some of your favorite actors.

It works for me.

 

 

Another Black Eye for Evolution

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

In Darwinian mythology, flowering plants don’t come along until well toward the end of the Age of Dinosaurs. That age, the Mesozoic Era, is divided into three parts: the Triassic Period, when dinosaurs first appear (along with mammals); the Jurassic, famous for its terrifically huge dinosaurs; and the Cretaceous, at the end of which the dinos go extinct.

Because no fossils of flowering plants were found in rocks said to be older than the Cretaceous, Darwinists concluded that flowering plants did not “evolve” until then. They also told us grass didn’t exist until the Age of Mammals, which was “a fact” until a dinosaur’s fossilized stomach contents showed… a lot of grass.

The Triassic flowers–the fossils are pollen grains–came from Switzerland and from the floor of the Barents Sea ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/24331982 ). So again the Darwinists’ stately flow of “evolution” is knocked all out of whack. Flowers are not supposed to be in the Triassic!

Their theories are so much better off without the fossil record. Remember being taught that “birds evolved from dinosaurs”? Kiss that one goodbye. Now we’ve got Triassic birds that were flying just as the first dinosaurs were supposed to be coming on stage. ( http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/literature/2009/06/16/did_birds_fly_in_the_late_triassic )

For a real laugh, do an Internet search for “dinosaur soft tissue.” How can soft tissue still be around, after millions and millions of years inside a dead dinosaur? By now they’ve discovered too many examples of it to laugh off.

Scientists would be better off without science. That pesky self-correcting process inherent in real science, those inconvenient discoveries, play the devil with their theories.

Darwinists should take a hint from their colleagues in the “climate science” racket, and brand those who make such discoveries “deniers,” attack them in the media, lobby to cut off their funding, and loudly demand that “evolution denial” be made a crime.

Betcha they will.

P.S.–Any Creation scientist worth his salt would have predicted the eventual discovery of Triassic birds and flowers.

Shocking Video That’ll Turn You into a Monster

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Oops, I lost that story. But why let a good headline go to waste? Anyhow, I have another story.

My wife takes surveys on the Internet. Today she took a survey on a new ad for a credit card company. The ad featured a woman rejoicing deliriously in all the great boons that were going to come her way, now that she has such-and-such a credit card. Don’t ask me exactly what she said: I can’t listen as fast as she was talking.

Then came the survey part.

“Do you think this is the kind of ad that people will talk about?”

When was the last time you invited a bunch of friends and family over to talk about commercials? Is there really anyone as benighted as all that? Get a life.

“Do you feel this ad was sincere?”

If your mind just naturally associates words like “sincere” and “commercial,” you probably need a lot more supervision than you have.

“Your responses indicate you found this ad annoying. What about it did you find annoying?”

My helpmeet simply answered “everything.” Shakespeare would have said, “How do I detest thee? Let me count the ways.” Commercials are by nature annoying. If the ads are the best thing about the show you’re watching, you need to be watching something else. All right, the ad is better-acted and better-written than a soap opera. It’s less irritating than a heavy nosebleed. But that hardly makes it a thing of beauty and a joy forever.

The ad’s hook is that this woman calls the credit card’s customer service, and–voila! The person who answers the call looks exactly like the caller!

And they call me a fantasy writer.

 

Oh, No! It’s Columbus Day!

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

This is the day when libs ‘n’ progs of all stripes lament and bewail Christopher Columbus‘ discovery of America in 1492. Teachers’ unions make sure the kiddies learn what a total calamity this was. Oh, alas! If only the Aztecs and the Mayas could have gone on doing human sacrifices! Oh, if only there were no United States! You’ve heard it all before.

Then again, maybe a great Chinese fleet discovered America in 1421, as described in a book titled 1421, by Gavin Menzies. His findings are controversial, but it could’ve happened. Chinese ships of that era made it to East Africa and Europe; they could’ve reached America.

On the other hand, since 1964, Oct. 9 has been officially recognized by the U.S. government as “Leif Erikson Day.” Oops, it slipped past me this year. Around 1000 A.D., Icelander Leif Erikson, son of Eric the Red, visited a place he called “Vinland.” Archeologists have found the remains of Norse settlements in Newfoundland.

There is no day to celebrate Some Poor Devil of a Carthaginian Mariner Who Got Blown Off Course and Wound Up Here, circa 300 B.C.

The point is, America was probably discovered more than once; and even if it hadn’t been, it would have been discovered eventually. And pinhead college professors and other left-wing dummkopfs would still be crying their eyes out.

I have no problem with that. Whatever makes them cry, has got to be good.

 

Bombs Away!

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

I like to write outside. It’s especially nice in the Fall. Except there’s one little problem.

Black walnut trees–there are at least three of them right outside our door. The nearest one produces big green nuts as big as baseballs, thousands of ’em. And all week long, the tree has been dropping them. You should hear it when the wind blows: it sounds like D-Day.

So I’m sitting in my chair, trying to write, and these large, hard nuts are falling all around me. Maybe I ought to get a batting helmet.

Are they edible? Sure–and black walnuts ain’t cheap, either. To get at the nut, first you have to get through the green skin and the green insides, which will stain you brown for weeks, no way to wash it off; and then you come to the actual nut shell, which is as hard as a rock. Inside that is a small, edible nut which will have cost you much more labor than it’s worth.

This year’s crop is infested with white worms that eat the yellow stuff between the outer skin and the inner shell. They make no contact with the edible nut, but the sight of them is not appetizing.

Meanwhile, it’s still “Bombs away!” out there. You can hardly walk across the yard for all the nuts, but the tree isn’t out of ammo yet. I dassn’t sit down to write without first offering up a prayer that I don’t get beaned.

So far, so good.

P.S.–The link to “white worms” has absolutely nothing to do with the worms you find in these walnuts. The Wikipedia article has to do with “white worms” used to feed aquarium fish. My white worms are merely disgusting.

‘Our Conservative Movement,’ LOL

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

I keep getting calls from assorted politicians’ fund-raisers asking me to give them money “to keep up the momentum of our conservative agenda.”

What? What momentum? What has anybody been conserving lately? Have I slept the sleep of Rip Van Winkle, or is someone pissing on my leg and telling me it’s raining?

We’ve got a Marxist “community organizer” (translation: drone) in the White House, our courts are dismantling marriage and the family and trying to erase Christianity from public business, half the churches have bent themselves all out of shape trying to be conformed to this wicked world–what in the world do these people think they’re conserving?

If we lose our Christian faith and Christian culture, if we lose marriage and the family, our republican institutions, and government subservient to God’s laws and the Constitution, there won’t be anything left of America that’s worth conserving.

The next time one of these characters phones you, just as you’re sitting down to supper, try this. Ask them, “Just what is it that you guys think you’re conserving? It sure ain’t marriage, the family, our national identity, or Christianity. If you can’t save those, what good are you?”

Let us know if you ever get an answer that amounts to anything.

More Books to Rot Your Teen’s Mind

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

My local library is going to host a talk by a certain author of Young Adult fiction. And the high school has assigned one of his novels to be read by two of the English classes.

This particular novel is about a boy who shows up to high school wearing lipstick. Once upon a time, if some freak tried that, he would’ve been sent straight home with a sharp letter to his parents. He would not have been allowed to ponce around all day, creating a disruption. But of course now everyone else is required to endorse his loony lifestyle.

The purpose of these novels, we are told, is to “confront issues all teens face on their journey to adulthood.” Huh? Could it be that “all teens” have to “confront” these issues because certain adults are obsessed with shoving them under young people’s noses? In some public school districts, “gender education” starts as young as kindergarten.

Hey, check out the International Reading Association‘s 2013 Young Adults’ Choices Reading List (it’s a pdf file on their website). These are the books the IRA deems the cream of the crop. What’s your pleasure? Sexual anarchy, witchcraft, paganism; abortion, morbid obesity, early death–it’s all here, waiting to be shoved into your teenager’s brain by the friendly folks at IRA and your local teachers’ union.

And to the parents who let them do it, a single question–

Why?

 

Doubling Down on Global Warming

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

The Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times are again beating the drum for Global Warming. We’ve only got till the year 2047, the AP babbled yesterday .Then the temperature’s gonna shoot up and we’re all gonna die.

Following one of the coolest summers ever recorded, the revelations of “Climategate” which revealed the massive lying and cheating indulged in by “climate scientists” to make their point, and the outcry by hundreds of real scientists that this is all humbug, Global Warming has fallen upon hard times. No one with any sense believes in it anymore.

When, then, is the Hard Left doubling down on it?

This is what you need to understand, so you can explain it to your friends who get all their “news” from the B.S. media.

They can’t give up on Global Warming because it’s just too good a gig for them. It’s the “open, sesame” to unlock an undreamed-of wealth of tyranny. Pay us higher and higher taxes, give up more and more of your freedom, give us power over every aspect of your lives–or else you’re all dead kippers. We, the experts, are your only hope!

The beauty of it is that, if we give them all that they demand, and nothing happens–and it bloody well isn’t going to happen, because it’s all a hoax–they can say, “See? It worked–we saved you!”

But if we all do start to fry, they can always say, “Oh, no–you didn’t give us enough power and money! You gotta give us more!”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to have to live like the poor souls in The Hunger Games just on their say-so.