Quote of the Day

"You know, Tom, I'm not David - I never will be! - but today I found that who I am is pretty good."

(President Wayne Palmer from 24, as remembered by Aaron)

Um, good, Mr. President. I'm glad you have such good self-esteem!

An Obiter Dictum

As my last post made clear, snow has returned to the hills of New Hampshire. Once again the familiar crystalline white is spread over the surrounding countryside like vanilla icing. The sun has returned, fortunately, but it smiles not on budding flowers but on ubiquitous white. As an autochthonous New Hampshirite, I cannot be very surprised; nevertheless, I had no presentiment of this foreboding doom, and I have an animadversion to obnoxious surprises.

As the dour clarion calls of the pessimists reverberate throughout the land, I must allow that their lamentations have not completely convinced me that winter has become perdurable. Although I was disillusioned by the return of the hiemal weather, I am something of a realist. The return of favonian weather is inevitable, so if I simply exercise my longamity all will eventually be satisfactory. In the meantime, I have often found music to be a roborant when the prophesies of the clerisy are less than roseate. Therefore, allow me to present a little song I wrote to alleviate the pain of those who are suffering (including you in Georgia, where the temperatures last night were in the twenties!), to ameliorate, as I was saying, the discomfiture of any who both endure psychrophobia and read my blog.

Neither the sound quality nor the nor the stridulous tones of my voice in the nether regions of its range are outstanding, but I hope you found this diverting anyway.

P.s. Can you tell I was trying to get Claire to comment? :)

Upon the Return of Winter

Wherefore, once we the taste of spring had known,
Didst Thou, O Lord, deem right another storm?
The snow, whose ceaseless falling does transform
The scenery, has over flowers blown;
The vernal sun, which just so brightly shown,
Is hidden: sunshine is no more the norm,
And infant buds, perplexed it is not warm,
Must once more wait for south winds to be blown.
Is it to make the springtime fairer still?
I truly yearn for verdancy the more
Now that the white of winter has returned;
If this surprise was sent by Thy pure will,
‘Tis worth the wait; the spring for which I yearned
Will come, and I'll be gladder than before.

- The brilliant Eric Snadforth

What I Heard On the Radio Today

I don't listen to talk shows very much, but I do enjoy them when I can. It's always nice to get a more conservative perspective of the news, especially when there's some humor mixed in. One thing that makes me really happy is when the shows broadcast parody songs. For instance, the December before last, Glenn Beck ran a song entitled, "Happy Hanna-kwanza-*beep*mas" (to the tune of "Have a Holly Jolly Christmas") that ridiculed the commercial emphasis on "the holidays" instead of Christmas and the acceptance of Kwanzaa as a legitimate holiday. On the other end of the spectrum, I heard another one that was supposedly President Bush singing, "Bomb, bomb, bomb....Iran" to the tune of the Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann." Stupid, biased, misinformed, and/or wrong? Yes, but it made me laugh anyway. I'm sure I've heard others, too, but they just don't spring to mind....

...except for the one I heard today, which I think made me laugh harder than any I had heard before. It was on the Rush Limbaugh program, and it was supposedly Al Gore singing to the tune of Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire." The lyrics went something like this:

The earth is a lovely thing,
But it is .... warming.
The temperature has risen half a degree,
Soon we'll all be burning.

The earth's becoming a burning ball of fire;
Polar bears drown, drown
As the seas creep higher;
And it burns, burns, burns,
The earth on fire,
A ball of fire.

There were more verses, too, but that's all I remember. If you were lucky enough to be listening to the EIB network around 2:10 this afternoon, you know just how hilarious the whole thing really was: specifically, EXTRAORDINARILY hilarious.

While we're on this subject, did you know that in 1975 some scientists actually proposed MELTING the polar ice cap to avoid global cooling? (Link found on GlennBeck.com.) Ha! Maybe that plan for saving the earth will be back in vogue in another twenty-five years.

Prepare To Be Shocked!

I showed Brad and Claire's self-portrait to Daddy, and right away he said, "You know, what they SHOULD have done is make a picture of them together as one person."

It is Biblical, after all: "[Therefore] a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one." (Gen. 2:24) Now technology has made it more possible than ever before!