O show me a mind and I'll boggle it

Photo Jennifer Weber 2010Recently I changed my home page from Yahoo to Bing because I was wasting so much time clicking on Yahoo story links, it was becoming counterproductive.

How many times can you gawk at and mentally rate mostly-dreadful celebrity red carpet outfits? 

(Yes! I know "mostly dreadful" modifies "celebrity" and not "outfits" in the sentence preceding this one. That's how I meant it!)

Or read about a new diet that promises you'll lose ten pounds a week if you can manage to consume only cod liver oil, jalapeno peppers, and saltine crackers? 

Or how to clean anything off your upholstered furniture using only plain water, an old stretched-out scrunchie, and a toothpick?

Or become a millionaire by saving two pennies per week, and soaking them in a sauce of vinegar and turpentine with a dash of baby powder?

I have difficulty resisting stories like those.

Homepage Versus Search Engine

I would holler for Erica to c'mere! and we couldn't rest until we'd critiqued every red-carpet-event designer, decolletage, hemline, color, fit, style, shoe, bauble, and hair/makeup worn by Hollyweird's current lineup of starlets, divas, ingenues, bimbomuffins, studflakes, and wannabes.

Photo Jennifer Weber 2008It was singularly pathetic and I'm ashamed to tell you it mattered to me, even for a split second.

Bing, on the other hand, with its single stunning daily photograph and subtle storyline prods at the bottom, is not only classier and leaner, more noiselessly cerebral … it's also much less intrusive on my clearly too-impressionable psyche.

I still use Google's search engine, though. Sorry Bing; in my opinion it's unequaled for ease of use and depth of results. 

Besides, saying you Googled someone is way more fun than saying you Binged them. If they just read it and didn't hear you pronounce it, the Binged party might think you said "binged" as rhymes with "hinged" or "tinged" instead of with "dinged" or "ringed" and that's just … strange.

It simply won't do.

Nevertheless, this morning I spied Bing's storyline teasers and couldn't help but click on the one about the FBI's apprehension of the "barefoot bandit."

Now, I still don't know what that's about and could not possibly care less. I mean, they didn't even specify what or who he was wearing. Is his bad barefoot self clad in Armani, Ralph Lauren, Bill Blass? Classic tux or deconstructed Depp-esque cool? 

We may never know.

The Barefoot Bandit Causes A Stir

What stopped me cold was this tagline included in one of three search results: "Colton Harris-Moore, aka the 'Barefoot Bandit,' has becoming something of an outlaw folk hero as he continues to allude authorities in a catch-me-if-can crime spree."

Photo Jennifer Weber 2008Continues to allude authorities. Has becoming. Catch-me-if-can.

And this from a supposed "journalist" at the ultra-progressiliberal Huffington Post.

Of course I had to follow the link in order to learn the identity of the buffoon propped up as a "writer" at HuffPo … and send him/her an informative email … but perhaps understandably, there was no byline.

Then I got stopped dead in my tracks by the first comment on the item:

What journalism school did this writer attend, the Sean Hannity School of Journalism at Bob Jones University?

OK … wait just one cotton-picking minute.

Come On ... Line 'Em Up And Let's Compare

I don't pretend to promote attendance at Bob Jones University. But academics-wise, you could put their students up against any graduates of State-funded institutions, and you're going to find that the BJ students -- Academy or University -- can read and comprehend and conjugate with at least the same degree of facility as their public-school peers.

In most cases they'll be miles ahead. This is documented. As in test scores.

I do believe that even a freshman janitorial major at BJU could put together a paragraph better than the one with which the HuffPo "writer" burdened the journalistic world.

Because, see, a one-celled amoeba with dyslexia and an inferiority complex could do that.

Photo Jennifer Weber 2010I don't watch Sean Hannity and wouldn't call myself a fan, but I think he's a great American. He knows the truth and is not afraid to speak out. He's a smart man. Even so, he doesn't claim to be a journalist of any stripe. He's a commentator; a political pundit. Big difference.

No matter; this particular HuffPo commenter wasn't going to let facts get in the way of his opinion that if you're blithering fool enough to think that to allude is to give the slip, you must also be a conservative.

So … conservative equals stupid?

In what universe? 

Only in Liberal La-La Loopy-Stupey Land.

Liberalism Damages The Brain

That conservatives are all at once vying for the title of Collective Village Idiot, fighting for the right to wear the Dunce Cap, is what liberals want you to believe. That's what suits their twisted purposes. 

Photo Jennifer Weber 2010Since when do conservatives write for the left-wing-loon Huffington Post anyway? I wouldn't think their big toes -- much less their news items or opinion pieces or even their oatmeal cookie recipes -- would be welcome inside the cyberdoor.

Let me tell you something. Liberal equals severely retarded. Like, people who do not have the ability to learn, however slowly.

(Sorry if that's not PC enough for you. In case you've forgotten, you click out the same way you clicked in. Hasta luego. Bon chance. Auf wiedersehen. See ya.)

Still here? Excellent! Let us continue.

As in, all logic, all attempts at helping liberal progressives to understand even the most elemental truths, eludes even the most dogmatic and pragmatic and sympathetic of teachers.

I've said it before and I'll say it again in case you weren't paying attention: I would rather my four children be illiterate (which they most decidedly are not) than for any one of them to have spent even one day as a student in a public school or university, being taught by knee-jerk libs.

Because when you send a kid off to school, it's less about academics than about philosophy of life.

Like the philosophy of life which gave rise to the taxpayer-funded program that will supply kindergarten through fifth grade students with condoms beginning this fall at Veterans Memorial Elementary School in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Parents may not opt their children out of the program.

I said kindergarten. Through fifth grade. Now who's stupid?

Photo Jennifer Weber 2010The best education is given and gotten at home, anyway. TV off; book in hand. Biblical literacy as touching all issues. Firm but loving discipline. Consistent character training. Full advantage taken of teachable moments. Family vacations that include not only fun, but opportunities for awareness of our place in history.

Learning happens as you sit in your house and walk in the way and lie down and rise up. You get the idea. 

With all the shortcomings of the private Christian school and the independent fundamental Bible college (and believe me, there are many, and I am not blind to them … au contraire), they are a far better choice than any State-sanctioned "education" your tax dollars -- or any other kind of dollars -- can buy.

And you know what else I've said and would now like to iterate?

I'd rather be dead than a liberal. 

I'd rather never have lived, experienced all my earthly joys, loved with my whole heart, been a wife and mother, known the eternal God and become His child, reveled in His glorious creation -- than to have been born and spent a single day as a liberal.

So Much To Be Grateful For

Photo Jennifer Weber 2010Thank God, I eluded liberalism. I gave the slip to its certain slow, agonizing, cruel demise of character, morality, wisdom, purity, knowledge, truth, beauty, love … indeed, the very essence of life.

Catch me if you can, liberals! 

But here's a piece of news you won't read in HuffPoor:

You can't. Because for all the unfortunate anomalies inevitably to be found in any group or belief system, conservatives are by and large the brightest lights in a sign liberals can't even read.

And now for your enjoyment and the final nail in the conservatives-are-stupid coffin: I'll mail you a round-trip plane ticket to Paris if you can identify a single card-carrying conservative in this clip of Jay Leno interviewing people on the street a couple of weeks ago.

(Yeah, that's me, profiling. Deal with it.)

The black grandfather may be the only exception. Too bad he was unable or unwilling to pass his rudimentary knowledge of this great country's birth on to his children and grandchildren.

~ Q.E.D. ~

Soccer players ... tell me why again?

The heir apparent. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010So after church today TG and I were talking to a fellow about the South Carolina Gamecocks being the 2010 College World Series Champions.

I said whatever you do, please don't mention LeBron James.

Why did I say that? Apart from the remark being a humdinger of a non sequitur, I myself brought up the name of the person I said not to mention.

You are justified in feeling even sorrier for my family and personal acquaintances than you already did.

I know they've wished more than once they could click out of my presence as easily as my small (but choice) blogging audience is able to do.

To my dubious credit, I instantly saw both the irony and the inanity of my own statement.

Treasure the moment because that isn't always the case.

Jennifer Weber 2010And I see the non sequitur of this next thing I'm about to do ... as in, ask you to please watch a YouTube of my son's soccer team introducing themselves one right after the other and telling where they're from ... nearly two years ago. 

I know; it makes no sense. Humor me? Please? 

It's Because I Miss Him

My son is the first player on the video. THE FIRST ONE! You don't have to watch for long unless you just want to!

The second young man is the first cousin of my son-in-law and therefore first cousin once removed of my grandchildren. Just saying. A little genealogy there for you.

If you stick with the video past 0:12, I think you'll like the accent of the Irish guy as well as the French-speaking Knickerbocker brothers. 

(After all, Bastille Day ... which just happens to fall on Javier's birthday ... is only three days away.)

Andrew (back to my kid) will start practicing in a few weeks for his third soccer season with the Crown College of the Bible Royal Crusaders. He plays goalie now ... wish you could see him fling himself up into the air and onto the ground to keep a ball out of the goal.

Kid's a madman. Always has been. I miss him. His sisters are here all the time but between college and his job at summer camp and Air Force obligations, Andrew gets to spend approximately one week per year at home.

Did I mention I miss him? And he's the first one on this video?

Snapshot Saturday: Watery ways

I never get tired of watching the water splash and gurgle and sluice from the multi-layered burbling fountain at Finlay Park in Columbia.

The water bubbles up and cascades down from here:

Then it goes here ... I'm not too sure what the actual function of the gate might be, but it looks pretty:

The water finds egress in a minimalist way I think Frank Lloyd Wright would have loved. There's a welcoming pool at the bottom.

It's cool.

SkyWatch Friday: Columbia

I took these thirteen photos as the day began to wind down in Columbia, South Carolina, on Friday, July 2, 2010. The first picture was taken at exactly 8:00. The last was snapped at 9:03.

A lot happens in an hour!

+<>+<>+<>+<>+

Cromer's Peanuts: Guaranteed Worst In Town.

The delicate Columbia skyline.

The fountain at Finlay Park.

Do you like the Governor's Mansion gates?

Half staff for the late Senator Byrd at the Matthew J. Perry, Jr. United States Courthouse.

Olympia Cotton Mills clock tower. 

The tower challenges the sky.

 

Purple clouds through the panes of Olympia, looking toward Granby. 

The defunct conveyor still connects Olympia and Granby Mills, now loft apartments. 

The cotton ride, stark against fading light. 

Night approaches Granby Mills. 

Nearby, the Southside Baptist Church steeple pierces twilight. 

Going home. 

Happy Weekend~!

You don't say

I'm hyper-verbal. Means I talk a lot.

Not making excuses, or asking you to understand or even accept me.

None of that is necessary! Truly. As you were. I'm just saying.

Because I'm hyper-verbal, I often say the wrong thing. The law of averages has a tendency to prevail in such cases.

But I'm occasionally guilty of saying the right thing. Not always at the right time, but now and then the right thing.

You can never win them all but if you keep working at it you can win them some.

And that's saying something.

Perhaps because I'm hyper-verbal or maybe because I believe in getting as good as I give, I put a great deal of thought into the things others say.

And the things they don't say. 

Which maybe isn't strictly fair but -- alert the media -- fairness isn't exactly a thing that sets up a lemonade stand on every street corner, using plenty of real sugar.

I have a short list of things that are, in my opinion, difficult for anyone to hear. The reason being, they contain diminutive barbed belittlements, which nobody needs and everybody wants even less.

They're like the cockleburs I used to find embedded in the folds of my socks after running free as the wind through a field in summer. A painful nuisance.

Don't say them. Do you hear me?

I hope you find what you're looking for.

Implying, you're stumbling through life blind, helpless, like an ankle-sprained Helen Keller on uneven crutches, just hoping to bump into the thing you can -- in that segment of your grey matter that is in fact functioning -- determine was what you wanted all along.

Clue: just because certain people are inclined to live in view of an ideal without soliciting your advice doesn't make them brainless bumblers. 

Even if they're way dumber than you, to arrive at that conceit-freighted conclusion doesn't make your stock go up. 

Sometimes -- egads! -- they're smarter than you and if you'd stop judging, there is an outside possibility you may learn a thing or four from the Quixote-esque seeker of a better place to hang their metaphorical hat.

But even if they are brainless bumblers from whom less than nothing of worth is to be gleaned, so what? Does it make a difference to you? If so, why? Are you jealous? 

Sometimes people simply can't stand it when others have the courage to pursue a dream, however quixotic. Are you one of those people? 

Think about that the next time you're tempted to say -- with all the condescension you can realistically spare -- I hope you find what you're looking for.

Calm down!

Saying, in my estimation you are not calm, and because you are not in my opinion calm at this moment, you must immediately cease to feel and react in the way you see fit and begin emoting in a way that I see fit.

Because let's face it: my feelings are more important than yours and I shall bend you to my will even if I must resort to barking commands like a sleep-deprived drill instructor three weeks off his bipolar meds.

If you don't comprehend what's wrong with all of the above, perhaps you need to rethink the appropriateness of your telling others what to do in the first place.

And, news flash? Nobody ever calms down when told to do so. Ever. It's, like, a rule of the universe. 

Think gravity. Think Johnny Depp's cheekbones. Think second law of thermodynamics. Think puppy breath.

Just a few pointers to remember the next time those two uber-patronizing four-letter words Calm down! are holding hands, poised to make a flying leap off your momentarily leaden suicide cliff of a tongue.

I never think about you and/or We never talk about you.

Oh please. In my experience these two frighteningly similar statements are made only by people who think of you at least once daily and who talk about you as often as they can come up with a reason to, and find anyone who will listen.

In other words, the only reason you would have to tell a person, in effect, you don't matter at all, is that in fact they matter a great deal more than you can summon the grace to admit.

Because if you really never think of someone or talk about them, you will have absolutely no motivation to tell them so. Not to mention a dearth of opportunity.

The desire won't be there because incentive is missing. If you truly don't care, there's no payoff to saying you don't care.

Remember: the opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is passive indifference. 

Want to know if someone in actuality has less use for you than for moldy leftovers? If they're indifferent to you -- as in, could care less if you live or die -- they won't waste the energy it would take to hate you … much less to tell you they hate you.

If, on the other hand, they hate you in an unambiguous, way-out-there manner? Good chance they need you more than they would be willing to admit, even in secret. They may even love you and miss the relationship (however twisted) you once enjoyed … or that they only craved.

So before you say it, stop to consider how much you're revealing when you tell someone I never think about you and/or We never talk about you.

(Upside? If you hear these words, all is sometimes not lost. Reconciliation may be possible if both can summon a soupçon of humility and perhaps a smidgen of a sense of humor about personal foibles, leading to forgiveness and mending of fences.)

(Of course, not all fences need mending. If what's left of the horse is being used to affix elbows of macaroni to obliging sheets of construction paper in daycare arts and crafts time, and the pasture lies fallow, forgotten … leave the broken boards in the unmown grass and find something better to do.)

Fool you once, shame on me. Fool you twice, shame on you.

Interpretation: To my everlasting shame, I was enough of a bum to make a fool of you one time. However, if I decide to betray you again with even more thoroughgoing disregard for your feelings -- which I now am certain I have the power to decimate -- this time it will be to your shame that I succeed.

OK … how exactly does this work? Once someone has forever altered your life by their willfully inconsiderate and depraved actions, from that point on you are supposed to be able to divine when they plan to do it again? And then what … stop them? 

Because now you know what they're capable of?

Which is to sort of say, being tricked and deceived makes you clairvoyant? Is that it? Or just suspicious and cynical enough that you keep a private detective on retainer and never again trust the person who used you so ill as to render you debilitated by the mere memory of their perfidy?

If you know the answer to any one of those questions, I'd love to hear it.

I'm sorry you took it wrong.

Which is to say, what I said was not -- could not be! -- wrong. I do not say things that are wrong. I am perfect! Ergo, if you are having a problem with what I said, it must be that you took it wrong.

Those who use this quasi-apologetic phrase never stop yakking long enough to hear the irony of their own argument.

Because if you say something in the first place that was out of bounds to the extent that it had the very real potential of hurting a person, why on earth would you then compound the injury by accusing the person of being a dolt if they are hurt by it?

It's like lighting a match, putting it out on someone's skin, then telling them if it stung, it's because they weren't quick enough.

In a word: disingenuous.

So the next time you say or do something -- intentionally or unintentionally -- and someone has the courage to tell you that your words or actions wounded them, don't make it worse by shushing them with a patronizing insult.

Say I'm sorry. Then bite your tongue before the rest comes out.