From Meccanina to Atlantis

For your holiday pleasue I have compiled links to the first six chapters of, "From Meccanina To Atlantis," by Takuan Seivo of the Brussels Journal.

Read them. They will make your head hurt, but read them. Think about what they say.

Part 1 - "The March of the Body Snatchers."

Part 2 - "From the Clenched Fist to the Raised Middle Finger."

Part 3 - From Encirclement to Breakout."

Part 4 - "Tribe"

Prt 4.5 - "Darkness in the Cranimum."

Part 5 - "From Screeching Cats to SDG."

A Christmas Gift from Brussels

This from the Brussels Journal and is so well said that anyone reading it will have to stand in awe.

Except, of course, those on the Left who deny the obvious.

A bell curve society is not enough, however wise and virtuous the smart ruling elite may be. Hope is important. Opportunity is important. Encouragement and empathy are important. The left-tails of IQ and talent distributions should not be cut off as though at the hips, and forgotten.

If I had the opportunity to counsel a person of lesser intellectual potential, domestic or imported but earnestly yearning to better his lot in life, this is what I would say in the context of China’s piano-playing tsunami, though it can serve as a metaphor for the larger context:

You may be just a minor cabinetmaker in a small, dinky shop. Your alcoholic father beat you when you were young, and your native lower-class culture discouraged education.

You will never be invited to the emperor’s gilded chambers like Mozart was. Beautiful women will not faint upon your entrance, as they did upon Liszt’s. Your name will vanish forever a few years after you are dead.

You have no chance of being equal. Don’t let Body Snatchers propaganda fool you. Forget the self-esteem crap they teach you in school.

Even if you had the means to buy yourself a piano and give up your saws and chisels for the practice of music, even if you used your minority status to gain admittance to a prestigious conservatory under Body Snatcher rules, even if you practiced 12 hours a day, you will never be Mozart’s equal. And that’s not because of the mystery of his genius.

For Mozart was the son of a great musician and the brother of a great musician, and the grandson, on his mother’s side, of a talented amateur musician. And Clara Schumann, a giant among virtuoso pianists, was not only the wife of the composer Robert Schumann and the great love of composer Johannes Brahms, but also the daughter of Friedrich Wieck, perhaps the best piano teacher of the 19th century. And Beethoven was the son and grandson of professional musicians. And there were at least 60 individuals surnamed Bach in the annals of Western music.

And it’s no different in our times. Krystian Zimerman is the son of musicians. Yo-yo Ma is the son of musicians. Ennio Morricone, a living legend, is the son of a trumpet player. But he also honed his native talent – as have all the others-- by decades of arduous study and journeyman work.

But with all the opportunities given, and with all your hard work, you still cannot be equal -- because your genes are not equal. You were not born a blank slate; banish Body Snatchers’ lying promises. They are lying to flatter you so that you vote for them, or to sell you stuff you don’t need.

Life is unfair. It cannot be made fair by reengineering society, which is the Body Snatchers’ sacred project. It cannot be made fair by giving everyone a subhonest mortgage loan and putting a flat-panel import TV in every parlor. Both the left and what passes for the right lie about this.

If I go along with the government’s scheme to redistribute my earnings to you, will you give me a piece of your chiseled cheekbones in return? Cheekbones, talent, charisma are all distributed “unfairly,” you know, and they are as good as money in the bank.

It’s Western Civilization that’s God’s equalizing gift. If you play Mozart’s music in your shop, you will make better cabinets. Even cows yield better milk with Mozart. So, first, chuck all those rap CDs. Forget about the stupid Associate degree the Snatchers will give you if you just enroll in their stupid Multicultural Studies program at their stupid Community College.

Make cabinets. But make them the way JS Bach composed music: SDG. Laborare est orare – to labor is to pray. And pipe in a bit of Bach or Schubert while you are working, for that will put you in touch with a higher power, a power that will infuse you.

If you are more sensitive to the play of space than the play of time, buy a wall calendar with the twelve most magnificent medieval cathedrals of Europe. Contemplate those pictures daily.

In time, you will have become the best cabinetmaker in town. You will make so much money that you will be able to hire a chamber orchestra for your daughter’s wedding.

And that daughter will have spent her childhood helping you in tidying up your workshop at the end of the day. While Bach is on your portable CD player. And her son will get started on the violin when he is four years old, which will help him in becoming a successful engineer.

By then, your seed will be in the pool of potential equals. And a hundred years later, perhaps a Mozart or a Galileo bearing your surname may be born.

You are standing at the threshold of a magnificent cathedral, the edifice of Western Culture. Much of it was built SDG, for a glory greater than man’s glory. Even the side chapel of its science was built with a sense of that glory, and awe.

It’s a capacious edifice too. It will take you in no matter where you live, no matter your race, religion or social background. It will reward you and your heirs a thousand times over, if you love it sincerely. But if you are foreign-born and live in the West, leave your other baggage outside, and enter in a spirit of reverence and humility.

Remember this at Christmas.

How the Democrats stole Christmas

I think this, from Coldheartedtruth explains what the the Democrats mean when they say, "Every vote must count!"

For instance, instead of a ballot that had marking for more than one candidate being thrown out as an overvote (say an X in one and another totally filled in) the canvassing board was awarding that vote for which ever candidate had an "X" in the spot:

So in the case of this ballot... which is normally an overvote, the canvassing board awarded the vote to Franken.

Since the ballot is marked twice it should, in a world that demanded rational actions, this and others like it would be trashed.

No one can tell what the voter meant. You know that. I know that. The Leftie barking moonbats of Minnesota, aka Democrats know that.

Right before America's eyes an election is being stolen. Our democratic process is being pissed on and all the media can cover, what little they do, is the arguments back and forth.

Why doesn't CBS, NNC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC and Fox make a large copy of the picture above and show it on the news saying, "This is what is being used to elect Al Franken."

Christmas Advice

Achieving Peace & Calm During the Holidays

I am passing this on to you because it definitely worked for me, and we all could probably use more calm in our lives, especially at this hectic time of the year.

Some doctor on television this morning said the way to achieve inner peace is to finish all the things you have started. So I looked around my house to see the things I’d started and hadn’t finished and, before leaving the house this morning, I finished off a bottle of Merlot, a bottle of shhhardonay, a bodle of Baileys, a half a sicks pak of bear, a butle of vocka, a pockage of Prunglies, tha mainder of bot Valum scriptins, the res the Chesescke an a box chocolets.

Yu haf no idr who frkin gud I fel.

Peas sen dis orn to dem yu fee ar in ned ov inr pece an culm

happpee halidozees

Hat tip to the Rottweilier Empire!

A Christmas Posting

Every blog should have a Christmas favorite. You know, a touching story based on childhood memories of all the family gathering together.... or something like that.

Well this is mine. First posted a year ago, I bring it back. Think about as you watch all those lights a flashing..........

It's not that I don't like compact fluorescent lights (CFL). I do. It's just that I don't think the government should be telling us we must use them. In fact, I hope people resist, because when they keep on using old faithfuls and paying for the use, that will help cover the fixed cost the electric utility companies must pay to remain in business.

Yes Virginia, there is no Santa Claus. If we all reduce our usage by, say 50%, the per unit cost of what we will use will have to go up to match that "cost." Otherwise, they will go out of business. And although we all know that corporations are evil nasty creatures with evil nasty bosses... except for PBS and NPR of course... having your local electric utility "turn out the lights" would be no fun. No fun at all. So as universal usage goes down, per KWH price is going to have to go up.

Money is made in this world when someone knows something others don't. And that is not illegal, unless the CEO withholds bad news while shorting the company's stock.. and other such things.... So my plan has been, and I have executed it brilliantly I must say, was to reduce my usage by, among other things, using CFLs. And since I have reduced my usage with no change in life style the plan was working.

Now, George Walker Bush has abandoned his free market roots and ruined it all. He has told people they must change, and put the full force of the government behind it. Oh the horror!!!

So pay no attention to the cost savings, the fact you can buy them in various "colors," use them with dimmer switches, etc. And that wee bit of mercury is meaningless.

Oh. You disagree?? Ah. I see you are smarter than most. Because us smarties know that the three people who run America have sat down and figured out that in about 30 years the environment will have returned to a pristine state and the EPA would be out of business throwing thousands of do gooders out of work. But now, with all those CFLs being dumped we will have thousands of clean up sites!!!

Knowing stuff like this is why I support this organization.

Merry Christmas! And keep those lights blazing!