Photography credit: My Wife.

When you forget who you are, go back to the land you come from. Not the nation or its institutions but the land itself.

My wife goes to work from here and up the Turnpike every day at dawn. Most people have their coffee and the radio and cruise control. The tunnel vision of the constant commuter, the road a ribbon to ride to the office. But not her.

Lately, she’s been pulling over en route to take pictures with her cellphone. Because she finds the land at dawn inspiring.

She’s sent me multiple photos, beautiful photos. This is the one I can’t get out of my head. Initially, I thought the telephone pole at left was a fault. It isn’t. Bent and ugly in the foreground, it’s the crap we have to look past in order to see what’s still vital and lovely.

Beyond the horizon, through that pink mist, lies the majestic Delaware River. The eye that took the picture knows that and could see it. This is no wasteland. It’s just part of the wave of life, which isn’t always battering but salving and life giving. Mist is water is life. And light is light.

I find it inspiring. I find my wife inspiring.

However dark it gets, I have this. And you have this. If you want it and can see it.

Darkness in Detroit.

Sometimes a movie doesn’t have to be great. It just has to have a timely context. This one dates to 2010. It’s a modest sci fi movie with a good cast and a better than average script. Not MUCH better than average, but better than Stephen King or Rod Serling could do. Not the TMI dialogue of King or the TMI messaging of Serling. Result? A movie length Twilight Zone episode without the precious sermonizing at the end. Like the Japanese do so much better than we do. (Oh wait. They already made this movie too. And it was haunting.)

Okay. This one isn’t haunting. It’s suddenly “Mystery Science Theater 3000” starring Hayden Christiansen, John Leguizamo, and Thandie Newton.

A palpable predatory darkness suddenly attacks the City of Detroit. People disappear, leaving only their clothes behind. The few survivors are those who were holding or wearing lights at the time. (Smokers who were lighting up got spared; amazing that NPR liked the film.)

You’re thinking, “Is this another episode of the dreary Left Behind franchise?” But NO, it isn’t. Or NPR wouldn’t have liked it, right?

Sunrise gets later, sunset gets earlier. Our focus is reduced to a bar bearing the lights “Sonny’s Happy Hour.” Cool.

When the inner jeering starts. What’s the darkness that’s stalking the survivors? It’s fucking Detroit. Maybe umpty generations of liberal tax and spend liberal politics that sucked the life out of everything. Or maybe it’s the Tea Party attacking the rights of the welfare state. Or is it even worse than that? One after another dies proclaiming the words “I exist,” which suggests that maybe we don’t, that there’s a new statist sense in which we don’t actually exist anymore. Even that our only freedom lies in surrender to the annihilating darkness.

It all works pretty damn good for the Detroit of 2013, don’t it? What I mean by context.

Watch this movie and there will be times you’ll be sure you can see the Obama administration flowing down the street.

Of course, the bottom line is the old reliable leftist truism of unforgivable sin. The only ones permitted to survive are children. The rest of us must die. Even the cars of Detroit have to die. The kids will have to escape on a horse fed by organic apples. How cool is that?

Who knows more about light than children who don’t know anything?

The term ‘Golden Girl’ is overused. This is the usage that’s literally true. Her coat looks like gold.

She’s also the one who can keep Raebert off the couch. When she’s on mommy’s lap he’s jealous but has nothing really to say. He weighs 110 lbs, she weighs 7 lbs.

The Exotic Donut.

They like each other. Funny. The most utter opposites you could possibly imagine. But he knows that her couch time is not his. And he never steps on her.

As I said, funny.

One thing that’s my fault. The pictures above make her look too big. She’s not big.

But big enough.

Another Fox Thing. Have to say, I’m unmoved.

Hot? I’m not buying it. Go-for-the-jugular lawyers are never really hot. Fox has lots of blondes I prefer. Heather Knauert is nicely pneumatic. Ainsley Earhardt is sweet and reliably bakes cookies for everyone. Dana Perino is a relentlessly polite dunce who should learn how to bake cookies. Gretchen Carlson is dumb as a rock but still has great cheekbones on top of her childbearing hips. Elizabeth Hasselbeck is a semi-celebrity with the IQ and pluck of a reality show contestant. Alisyn Camerota is hopeless in every respect but at least she’s honest about what a high maintenance spouse she is. Martha McCallum, on the other hand, is first rate in every respect but, uh, ten years older than Megyn Kelly.

Starting to catch the drift here? Megyn Kelly is… desirous of being a star. She learned tactlessness and nonlistening skills from Bill O’Reilly, filibustering from Sean Hannity, transparent unctuousness from Greta van Susteren, and being full of herself for no particular reason from Shepard Smith. What a doll.

Importantly, she’s up against MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and CNN’s Piers Morgan in the nine o’clock hour. Hard edged as she is, she’s no lesbian but the mother of three children. Touchdown! And she’s also not a halfwit Brit pantywaist. Touchdown! Not a Rhodes scholar either, but who cares? Pretty good chance Bill O’Reilly’s connections can get her into Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government so she can start claiming, as Marist grad O’Reilly always does, that (s)he’s a Harvard man, er, Harvard working mom. See?

I’m sure she’s smart and capable enough to have a run in prime time. What I wonder is whether there’s really anything exceptional about her. She’s sitting in a hammock between O’Reilly and Hannity, who are both exceptional. O’Reilly has charisma, a gravitas that oddly transcends his intellect. Hannity has a sunny, perseverant nature that enables him to work and dig and keep at it like some kind of conservative bulldozer, no matter how grim or tiresome things get, as well as be emcee of every kind of forum; he’s the perfect game show host of political punditry. Greta, who’s now — let’s face it — been bumped to below prime time, is only twice as smart and accomplished as Megyn, but I’ve never seen her legs and don’t want to.

Does this make Megyn Kelly a smart move for Fox News? Maybe. Does it make her a good move? Not necessarily. Being combative is not the same thing as being insightful. Being pretty is not the same thing as being attractive over the long term. If she gains fifty pounds will we still want to watch her interrogating fat congressmen with toupees?

If they wanted a blonde in the nine o’clock hour, it should have been Martha McCallum. Why? Because I’d still watch her clever eyes and careful questions even if she did get fat. Think about it.

In preparation, Martha McCallum posed for this as her ultimate glamor shot.

Oddly, no teddy.

Don’t get me wrong. I wish Megyn Kelly well. I’m just not sure she’s up to it. Part of why I continue to harbor strong doubts about the soundness of the Fox News Channel. The other part being their continuing, baffling, total inability to spell anything more ambitious than “cat” in their onscreen graphics. Maybe Lincon can forgive them, or Coolige, but not me. I’m a hard ass.

Oh. Kimberley Guilfoyle is okay. Her implants aren’t as ridiculous as Andrea Tantaros’s. But they’re brunettes and therefore irrelevant. The Hispanic chick — uh, Julia Banderas — is okay too, smart, aggressive, and sexy, even when she’s pregnant. But irrelevant. Just like Harris Faulkner and Lauren Green — because, you know. Are we clear here?

Actually, why are blondes better than brunettes in any objective sense? I’m thinking I might rather have dinner in the Rainbow Room with Harris, Lauren, and Nicole Petallides than with any of those blondes up top. And Julia Banderas if she’s through being pregnant for the moment. Kimberley Guilfoyle not so much. She can stay home with Andrea, lying to their friends about how much they adore Bob Beckel.

Don’t get excited. I’m not trying to start anything lurid. Blondes yell about what people are wearing. Brunettes yell about what people are doing. More interesting. Redheads watch who people are being. I’d have one of those by my side for protection. She’d make sure I wasn’t being bad, I suppose. More vitally, she’d back up my excuse for leaving when all the yelling gets too loud.

It always does. Are boobs actually advanced bio-tech, treble loudspeakers?

Forget I asked that.

Never mind.

I teased with this post. My better half captured the Raebert en route upstairs tonight. He usually does it faster (i.e., like a total maniac), but this time she was standing in his way with the camera. He’s also gentler with her. As he should be. But maybe you can get a sense of it. Maybe the most film can give you of real life.

(If you go to full screen video, you can repeat at will. I know it’s quick.)

Just keeping my promise. We all have demons. Mine at least loves me. And his mommy. They have a diploma together.

He was the smartest one in the class. But he was just showing off. Teaching us he understood it all.

P.S. A reminder for Ron, in case he thought there was some trickery involved.

I’m thinking all the time…

I’m uncharacteristically at a loss here. I simply don’t have the resources for the news aggregating tasks it takes to sum up the outrageous offensive against American citizens we’re seeing from our government.

It’s not a perfect storm. It’s a perfect hurricane. Terrible revelations in every aspect of this misbegotten administration’s performance in office. Counterpointed by childish presidential tantrums in which the self-proclaimed post-partisan American messiah prefers to call his opposition hostage takers and extortionists rather than take the step of negotiating with them for the first time EVER in his five years in office.

Help me out here, guys. Stories about despotic shutdown theatrics, state by state ObamaCare screw-ups, continued foreign policy disasters, ongoing leaks and discoveries of felonious behavior by the IRS and NSA, and media complicity in the burying of all these are to be found at Hotair.

Stories about the near instantaneous conversion of the federal bureaucracy into a metastasizing Patrician-proletarian tyranny, as well as specification of the extent of the ObamaCare lies, incompetencies, and threats to constitutional liberties are best found at National Review Online. Look for pieces by Charles Cook, David French, Mark Steyn, and David Auerbach.

An excellent hitting on all the media bases is located at the Rush Limbaugh Show, today’s edition. I have an ipad app called “Listen Now” which should enable you to hear today’s show even after it’s done. Do it, even if you never listen to him. His tone is more equable than mine would be. Which, to be sure, isn’t saying much.

But he led with the most buried lede in recent MSM history, Obama’s 37 percent approval rating. Which he contrasted with an extended clip from CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on the night he announced GWB’s 36 percent approval rating. Wolf could barely contain his joy that evening, and the number was repeated half a dozen times. Exuberantly. Obama’s similar rating was buried halfway through an AP story whose headline announced that polls show people blame Republicans for the shutdown. Rush went on from there… And he said much I would say too. But he has his stack of stuff, and I have only my quiet Internet tinkering of a morning. Sometimes you have to defer to the bigger stack of stuff.

Dig with your own shovels and share. Here’s the one link I will offer of my own, from Breitbart’s Conversation site.

I was at a dinner recently where I happened to be seated at a table with new acquaintances of the liberal political persuasion.

We went around the table introducing ourselves. As I said that I work for a “conservative website,” a man at the far end of the table made his displeasure known by booing. He wasn’t kidding.

These were professional, accomplished, senior members of the community. They had never met a conservative before. Their first reaction was hostile. No one chided the man who booed, or apologized on his behalf for his rudeness, or laughed to break the tension.

Instead, I began to face questions: you really support what Boehner is doing?

Yes, I replied. He’s doing the right thing by standing up to the president. Gasps.

Look, I said, trying to be diplomatic. I understand how Democrats see this. Democrats believe that these extremists have taken over the Republican Party, and they don’t like government much anyway, and–
“They can’t stand the fact that a black man is in the White House!” someone interjected.

That’s not true, I said. Oh, yes it is, they said.

Ok. Why don’t we put that thought in a box for now–we’ll come back to it, I offered. Let me finish. From a conservative Republican perspective, it’s necessary to stand up to Obama because he is doing things that no president should do, not just in policy terms but also in violating the constitutional separation of powers.

That stunned them. “What? You really believe that? Like what?”
Delaying the employer mandate under Obamacare, for instance, without statutory authority.

Oh, you Republicans and your business friends should like that.
No, actually, I don’t. And it’s just the start…

The conversation was cut short by the sound of a glass tapping at the next table, for a toast. We never did come back to the question of whether I was a racist who could not stand a black man as president.

I doubt these folks thought of themselves as mean people. But I am certain many other conservatives have had similar interactions among liberals in elite, polite society. Worldly as they are, they have no clue.

Uh, why does he care to remain civil with them? Scorch their asses. They’re braindead as zombies. But that’s the great conservative delusion, isn’t it? Try to appear reasonable and dead things that subsist by eating living things might somehow stop reaching for your working brain with carnivorous intent. Oh well. I’ve said my say on this point multiple times. No one listens. It’s better to get along with your enemy than pursue him into the wasteland he’s chosen for a home and cut off his last retreat. I’ll stop now.

Never mind.

This is a president, a government, a nation out of control. There is so much horrifying stuff going on that it’s almost impossible to hold it in mind at the same time. Why, perhaps, the MSM has shut down so completely. There are ironies within ironies, insults wrapped inside insults, corruptions nested like Russian dolls, and the only thread through the maze is the base realization that absolutely everything the president, the White House, and his factotums and party say is a deliberate lie.

Bald, outrageous, shameless, contemptible, cynical, viciously minded, and ultimately stupid lies. What they’re counting on is that we’re too stupid and gullible to keep track or hold them accountable.

I fear we are.

On the other hand, Raebert sat with me while I listened to Limbaugh this afternoon. He said not a thing.

Okay. Sometimes he’s just a Great White with hair.

Don’t laugh. He’s cooler than you think.

Sometimes, even when you’re seeking distractions, dark is the way to go.

Yesterday I happened on “Dredd,” a remake of perhaps the silliest Sylvester Stallone movie ever. But my wife was away and what the hell.

Sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason why you find good things. Dredd is a good thing. Forget Stallone. This one is a well crafted triumph among action flicks. We never even see the face of the hero (is it a spoiler to reveal that Judge Dredd is Kiefer Sutherland’s sidekick from 24?) The movie is hypnotic, intense, and wonderful. I almost never watch movies more than once. Today I’m taking time out from my second viewing in 24 hours to tell you about it.

Watched just enough the second time to confirm that it’s all deliberate, incredibly well thought out, and working toward its end from Scene 1.

Cheap comparisons won’t do. Road Warrior in a high rise. Dirty Harry in an incredibly bleak future. Robocop but much much darker and less political. The Crow with a helmet. Die Hard with no laughs. Joss Wheedon’s Serenity without space travel but a kickass chick to die for. All slightly right but thoroughly wrong.

This is its own thing. Good versus evil. And evil for once rightly conceived as a destructive force that can’t be contained or mitigated or appeased with good intentions. It poisons what it touches, in this case quite literally. Society is not to blame. Human nature is. Without the rule of law, without absolutes, human life becomes an inferno. In Dante’s model, there are nine levels of hell. In Dredd there are two hundred, as many as there are stories in one Megablock of one Megacity.

Judge Dredd and his unexpectedly talented apprentice are sucked into a doomed situation. Ultimate spoiler: they win.

Why I’m watching again. The first time, all the film’s, uh, body language seemed to suggest we’d get one more bleak advertisement for the death of everything virtuous. That’s the real victory of this movie. It exploits all the dark conventions — from music to hyper violence to betrayal within sacrosanct institutions — and still permits good to prevail. Over a villainess you can’t stop hoping will die from minute one.

I have to get back to it now. I suggest you get to it soon. Judge Dredd is no vigilante. He’s a soldier. One who never ever gives up. Glorious to see.

P.S. Just finished my second viewing. I loved this movie. How many times do you watch to the end of the closing credits? I did this time. How about you?

…this hurtling through an upstairs hallway aimed at YOU. What I experience every night as Raebert returns from his pre-bedtime outing to me. It is so swift, so violent, so thundering, that I haven’t managed yet to capture it on video. I promise to try harder. His brakes are as instantaneous as his acceleration. He comes to a halt an inch from my face, gives me a kiss, and then goes for a drink of water.

This post is, to be honest, a placeholder. So I’ll always know where to find this treasure trove so thoughtfully provided by Lake.

I say “imagine,” but I doubt it’s possible. Living with a deerhound is truly a life-changing experience. You can’t know what that’s like without doing it. Not a challenge or a boast, just a humbling fact. Well, I feel humbled anyway.

Some of you are starting to get it. Deerhounds are special.

Thank you. They’re ferocious, greyhound fast, unstoppable, and determined. And too smart for our own good.

He was unhappy that his mommy had to go to work today due to the government shutdown and its shuddering implications to the military. But when I told him she was coming home at last he smiled.

Yes. He smiled.

You think Rae couldn’t run with those guys above? He’d run them down and eat them. He’s faster, stronger, and more intent than all of them. He also has more hair. The missus wants to clip him back to racehorse trim. I think he’s fine the way he is. A shaggy knight whose clouded brows give him expressiveness, fine and lovely. When he moves he’s like greased lightning, a horse with the bit in his teeth. Except that he likes marinara sauce. And he understands English. Start to see the problem?

Da Bearz. Really?

Am I the only one? Maybe not. But I’m one of the few who’s willing to be honest about it.

I think it’s ridiculous, tiresome, esthetically offensive, weirdly lewd, and hypocritical to boot.

I’m talking about breast cancer awareness month in the NFL. Pink shoes, pink sleeves, pink gloves, pink crotch towels, pink pacifiers*(?), pink helmet decorations. Stop it.

Why pink? Because pink is appropriately girlish? Or because nipples are pink? You decide.

I don’t doubt that NFL football players have a great devotion to the female breast. Otherwise they wouldn’t be continually arrested for sexual assaults in strip clubs and jealous violence against their girlfriends.

But what’s this October Pink thing all about, really? It’s a PR stunt, an incredibly forced and long-running one that detracts from the game without doing a scintilla of good.

Women in the NFL audience are unaware of breast cancer. They see Brian Urlacher wearing pink shoes and they think, “Hmmm, maybe I should get a mammogram.” Or their husband Chet sees Michael Vick’s pink sleeves and he thinks, “Hmmm. Maybe Marge needs a mammogram.”

Bullshit. It accomplishes nothing. The media are jam packed with stories about breast cancer. You can’t get through a normal day without hearing some story about sufferers, survivors, or even preemptive mastectomies.

But guess what? Prostate cancer kills almost as many men as breast cancer does women. Nobody talks about it but Don Imus, which is why nobody watches him anymore. Men are the prime audience for NFL football. Men are far less likely to go to doctors at all, get screened for prostate issues, or urge other people to do the same. But we don’t have a calendar month of bright blue shoes and big blue ribbons on the lapels of every sportscaster on TV. And I don’t want one. My prostate is my business. As a woman’s breasts are her business. (Who could think they enjoy pink NFL accessories that cause everyone in the room to stare at her bosom with a giant question mark on their face? That’s helpful? How exactly?)

Before you get offended, think about it. Of all the causes in the world, breasts are the single easiest one to get behind. Women want to keep them and men want to see and touch them. Being for them is a win/win. Unless you’re not a gullible idiot about the silliest things done in the name of breast health.

So? The NFL cares about breast cancer and literally nothing else. If it were just a stunt, as it so obviously is, I’d leave it alone. But I don’t watch the Chicago Bears or the Pittsburgh Steelers to see them dolled up in pink tights and pumps. I expect them to look like men playing a man’s game.

And I can’t get over the suspicion that a bunch of twenty-something men are acting out a coarse joke and laughing about it in their locker rooms. Pink is a porn term, you know. Or didn’t you?

Sick of the whole thing. I know a LOT of you agree with me. I understand if you don’t have the guts to admit it. Just know that I know that you’re out there.

*Yes. The Giants’ Victor Cruz is wearing a pink mouthpiece that looks exactly like a baby’s pacifier. Who’s he laughing at? The Giants generally are wearing enough pink to be hawking for a Vegas brothel. Think that’ll help them beat the flailing Eagles?

P.S. The NFL just ran a commercial featuring a woman claiming she hadn’t thought of checking herself until she saw the pink accessories. I don’t know about you, but my bullshit meter is pinned on 11.