Sometimes There is Nothing To Say.

Sometimes there is just nothing to say. One minute you are enjoying a sweet spring day and the next you are wondering what righteous hell hath God unleashed upon this earth. Your mind races as you try to reconcile some appalling act of mindless destruction with your need for a world view and an existence that you took for granted just a few moments before. Wasn't it just spring? Didn't the Red Sox just win? Didn't today seem like it was shaping up to be a great day? The television and the radio and the internet all try to bring sense to the senseless in real time with a torrent of verbal sewage that is all about being loud and being first instead of being factual and being fair.

Sometimes there is just nothing to say. There was nothing fair about the event though was there? A new violent atrocity in a long line of violent atrocities that have dogged mankind since we first crawled out of the primordial ooze. The steady march of passing time shedding no light on things while casually crushing the facts of an hour ago. The only thing that was for sure was it was worse than we originally thought, but not as horrible as it could have been. Is something  a fact if you could also apply it to a child's play date, a trip to the dentist, and a presidential term? What do you do when the facts mock you instead of enlightening you? What if the only fact you get in the great squalling 24  hour news cycle is that there are no facts.

Sometimes there is just nothing to say. I worked hard to have a post ready last week. I was just finishing it up when a couple of truly warped young men decided to ruin everyone's Patriots Day by making their own statement to the world. Their statement was so casually cruel, so devoid of understandable meaning that seemingly everyone else with a microphone, a blog, an outlet, or a twitter feed rushed in to fill the space. It was a natural reaction and I wanted to jump in too, but I just couldn't wrap my head around it. It was too close, too personal, it happened too fast, there were hour by hour twists, then it was over. Over and experienced by me in a way that was different from the experience of every other person on the planet. So, if you blog do you speak and make it about you? or do you pass and leave everyone to feel their own version of reality? Sometimes there is just nothing to say.

Doesn't what happened  speak for itself?

           

       

                                 

Is there really anything I can say? Is there anything anyone can say? Sometimes there is nothing to say. There is no grand pronouncement that will make something understandable. Some things just make us all equal for a moment. Best National Anthem ever.

March Madness

I know it's April, we'll do April madness after the month is over so we can give it a proper assessment. Right now we are doing March Madness because March is over and it was pretty mad. Basketball? No, how could basketball possibly compare to a full blown sequester? Sequester! You know, Sequester! What the news people have been flapping about for over 3 months. It happened this month. For real.

Doom, Destruction,Chaos! Run-a-way! Run-a-way!

What do you mean "So What!" Don't you know that bad things will happen? They will. People on television said it would be a fiscal apocalypse, or at least a fiscal cliff. It was coming. It was going to be bad. It was even worse than that. Madness I say! Madness! Oops. Turns out the world didn't go immediately over a cliff. Turns out that big events don't always have big effects. Turns out that the nightly news and the modern media make their money on disaster and overkill. Turns out that if it's not on fire it's not news.

It just seems more urgent this way.

So in order to make a budget discussion as news worthy as say; a school shooting, we need barking headlines about the worst possible things that could happen in the most immediate ways possible. Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God, the sequester! But what if the consequences aren't immediate and destructive? What if years go by as the changes caused by the sequester slowly alter the way we do business? What if it ends up working out just like almost everything in real life works out? That is it takes time and only turns out sort of like the experts predicted. Madness right? How are we going to decide what's good for the country if we have to pay attention for years and years only to maybe hit a dead end down the line?

Well, how about that school shooting? It didn't happen in March, but it was so horrific that when March finally rolled around surely it altered the way we approach gun ownership in this country...

Actual permit card Obama thinks you should have to carry.

... or maybe it won't. But that would be madness wouldn't it? Surely there is enough political will after such a horrendous event to affect at least minor change in the gun laws? Even if it was bad law that's why we have a Supreme court, something should have happened by March right? Well there might have been if you could have gotten a vote in the days following the actual shooting. That didn't happen though which gave people time to come to their senses. After all you never know when an islamo-fascist backed attack  from Korea working hand in hand with the branches of our government that are hopelessly tangled with the  FEMA controlling, sharia loving, 47% that are personally on Obama's payroll so they can topple our job creating over-taxed 1% plunging the entire country into a totalitarian prison camp where hard working white people had better hope that they have enough guns to overcome all of the above plus the sadly honorable but hopelessly duped US military. For real.

Just because it is a movie doesn't mean it couldn't happen.

Madness. On a local note the Boston Phoenix closed down last month. Damn you Craig's List! The Phoenix may have financed itself with ads for adult entertainment and roommate searches but in return we got a weekly alternative to the status quo media. Alternative does not always mean accurate but I'll stack up their reporting on the build up to Iraq or the finical meltdown against any other news source. You want the drama of the Sequester go mainstream, you want the nuts and bolts of the Sequester read the Phoenix. Except it's dead. I'm glad Craig's list is taking care of the hookers and the collage kids but doesn't one less voice, one less viewpoint seem like madness when huge portions of what we call facts comes from anonymous Internet sources?

A sub and a squid attacking Boston? What could be more newsy than that?

Madness. A little piece of your past shuts down and is gone. The people you know and respect own machine guns why? The big bad that stalks the news doesn't immediately scorch the earth so, we forget about it? If the crazy shit that does happen causes no political will, and the crazy shit that doesn't happen is too underground for anyone to notice, and in the end there is no-one but the establishment, or faceless bloggers telling us about both... well WTF!

There is only one answer... jerky! If I'm going to be hiding in the woods clutching my AK47 while I wait for the combined forces of North Korea and Obama to swarm down on me I want some good tasting jerky.

Mmmm! Jerky!

1. So you will need at least 4 lb. of London broil, flank steak, brisket, or hanger steak. No sense drying out an expensive cut of meat until those government goons actually show up.
2. Lay the stuff out flat, trim off excess fat (which you can add when you grind your own burger meat), and pop those bad boys into the freezer for 60 minutes.
3. Once the cold firms them up slice the thin with the grain. (if you cooked these cuts on the stove you would slice them against the grain so they would be easier to chew, but as jerky they will just flake apart if you do them this way. Go with the grain you have been warned).
4. Toss the sliced meat into a 1 gallon storage bag.
5. Add a cup of soy sauce.
6. Add a cup of Worcestershire.
7. Now it's up to you. Garlic powder? Cayenne? Honey? Chili Powder? Mustard?Hot sauce? Pepper? 5 Spice powder?
8. It's all you after step 6. Allspice, honey, and hot sauce give you jerk jerky. Tomato paste, black pepper, and coke give you bar-b-cue. Tomato paste, vinegar and liquid smoke give you barbecue. If you are fighting for freedom you might as well have the jerky of your dreams.
9. Heat the oven to 150/200 degrees. Whatever your ovens lowest setting might be.
10. Be best results will come if you put the meat directly on the oven grates, but that is messy and you don't want the stormtroopers mocking your house keeping as they drag you off to your doom so feel free to use cookie sheets. You'll have to turn the meat every 3 hours.
11. It will take at least 6 hours to dry but I'd give it at least 8. When it is done it should be dry and slightly bendy. If it cracks you can still eat it, it's just that the experience might be a little lest satisfying.

Madness. How did I forget the biggest story of March? We have a new Pope! Even if you are not Catholic you still have a new Pope since the Pope controls more peoples thinking than the NRA and Fox News combined.

...and he's infallible. What could go wrong?

 Sorry about the no hope post. March just struck me that way. Now make way for spring and I'll be back with something better. At least I'll be ready for either the warm weather or the end of the constitution. Whichever comes first.

Yeah Korea, I'm coming for you!