The Essence

To quote Mr. Og Mandino from the Greatest Salesman in the World, "I will greet this day with love in my heart!"

To quote 1st Corinthians, Chapter 13, "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not love,I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge,and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains and have not love,I am nothing.And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor,and though I give my body to be burned and have not love,it profith me nothing.

Love suffereth long and is kind.Love envieth not.Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doeth not behave itself unseemly.Seeketh not her own.Is not easily provoked.Thinketh no evil.Rejoiceth not in inequity, but rejoiceth in the truth.Bareth all things.Believeth all things.Hopeth all things.Endureth all things.Love never fails.But where there be propheses they shall fail,whether there be tounges, they shall cease,whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.For we know in part, and we prophesy in part,but when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

When I was a child I spake as a child,I understood as a child, I fought as a child,but when I became a man I put away childish things.For now we see though a glass dark plain, but then face to face.Now I know in part, but then shall I know even also as I am known.

And now abideth faith, hope, love - these three, but the greatest of these is love."

Even here, beneath the Carolina moon.

Dread

I'm Baaaaaaaack!

I'm baaaaaaaack and kissing the ground beneath my feet! I have never been so glad to say goodbye to a place and hello to home in all my life! (with the exception of my one trip to Washington DC in 1990)

Let me summarize my vacation; (a) I did not want to be there, therefore it sucked. (b) all kinds of s%*t went wrong, therefore it sucked, and (c) New Orleans Shaved Ice was shut down because the building was torn down, therefore vacation sucked. Now that we have that established and put to bed in the record books, let's move on to positive things.

I am proposing to just grab life by the tail and start kicking; holding nothing back! I've had it with morons, doom boomers, and blabber blasters. I'm putting a smile on my face that will kill grizzly bears, I will laugh in the face of adversity, mean spiritedness, or any general sassy butted twit. I will try very very hard to keep from telling such fwits to go have intimate sexual functions with themselves. I know. I know! What a perfectly naughty thing for me to even think, much less say. The point I am making is, I plan to be optimistic, fired up, energized, and ready to shake things up until they spew over. I want to be through with doom and gloom!

Doom never built anything, and gloom never has seen the light of day. So why bother with either of them? I will ask for God to guide my hands, my feet, and comfort me. I will love. I will not be intimidated. I have missed loving, missed the quiet calm of confidence, when you know that God's hand is at your back,

Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld

A great love deserves greatness, especially a love beneath the Carolina moon.

Dread

Continuing right along with my final full day of the vacation of (fill in your favorite expletive here), I’ve discovered the usb cable for the digi cam is missing. Okay running right out for another is no problem, but its just that I planned on posting a picture or two, but by the time I go buy one and get back…blah blah blah. I’ll just post something when I’m back home, maybe next week. Something’s wrong with the smoke alarm in the condo also, and the wife side swiped a post last night denting and scratching both doors on the passenger side of the Taurus. This afternoon the electricity went off and didn’t come back on until after 9:00 P.M. The list goes on, but I will spare you.

Thankfully the fine Carolinians with links listed on the right à have done a fine job of maintaining blogs for the past week. They have been interesting, entertaiing, educating, and a breath of fresh air compared to my grousing.

There is one thing most readers wouldn’t have known though. For the past week I have also been seriously contemplating leaving my employer of the past twenty-six years. Am I entertaining another offer? Nope! It has just gotten so bad under the current board and leadership that I’m considering, strapping on my life vest and abandoning ship. I’m thinking maybe my chances are better swimming with the sharks than drowning with rats.

But I haven’t decided. There’s things to talk over with the boss. I really am having a difficult time seeing just how any of this can work out for me to stay; a very difficult time. But that’s another story too. I’ve been wrestling with other issues also. Many! Napoleon is right, “God is great, and I’m an idiot.” Read his post at The Life and Times of Mediocrity, then the other links. They’re all great. But then what do you expect from beneath the Carolina moon?

Tomorrow I go home.

Dread

Vacation in Torment

I would say I am on the vacation from hell, but hell is no place to joke about. I have finally, after 4 days of trying and grousing the DSL that was promised with the condo up and running. But it won't work with my wireless router. So if I am to use the net, can I sit on the balcony, out by the pool, in the spacious living room? NO! I must sit by the bed side table in the tiny dark bedroom!!!!

Okay, I'll post more when I have calmed down enough to not scream at the Bell South techs. For right now...GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!


Dread

Psalm 62: 1 & 2

Truly my soul waiteth upon God: from him cometh my salvation. He only is my rock and my salvation; he is my defence; I shall not be greatly moved. (Psalm 62: 1 & 2)(KJV)

The pressure cooker has been on here, so I've missed blogging on the blogs. But there's tons of good reading from my fellow Carolinians on the right link list. So I'm off for vacation. I'll post, when I can, as I can from the road, through the coming week. Meanwhile read the links. They're great!

Thanks Mom for the Psalm refrence. You were right..., as usual.

And now, I'm gone fishing off of Cape Fear, still beneath the Carolina moon.

Dread

Love is Timeless

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction of being loved for yourself, or more correctly, being loved in spite of yourself.- Victor Hugo

Love Is

Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.- Aristotle

Pandering

Race pandering is one of the most insidious forms of racism to have ever seeped from the slobishness of mankind. The only thing more pitiful, is the mentality of those who buy into it.

And that's my perspective from beneath the Carolina moon.

Dread

July 13, 2006 Quote for the Day

"Our courage will be our ammunition." Poncho Villa just before getting his arse totally kicked at the battle of Celaya.

I hope to do better in my pending battles. There are many Scriptures to point the way.

Dread

I'm Bored, Let's Go for a Ride

Keeping my promise to myself, to use more “visuals” in my posts, the one I’ve included today has no bearing, illustration or relationship to today’s post, other than it’s obvious relativity to the term “redneck”. A certain 1969 Dodge Charger RT did figure into the lives of people who were my close friends once, and a distant cousin. However, those are stories for a rainy day. For sure, they deserve to be written down some place and preserved for descending generations; just not here, today. After all, this is a blog, not a book. And we are trying very hard to maintain family values here.

Keeping my promise to post occasional quotes about whatever, here's a couple from Mary K. Witte's book, "Redneck Haiku":

Wedding night fireworks
as Flo's ex-husband threatens
to bring back the kids.

and...

Betty Lou surprised
to learn you can get pregnant
in a church parking lot.

Hey, at first, I didn’t think much of them either. But then, I considered the reflected juxtaposing irony and how that same irony so defines the tragic magic that cripples the southern psyche. Once you get past the intended superficial belittlement of the stereotyped culture, there’s a quiet brilliance in each one. And yeah, I’m full of it! So post your own haiku. Then, head over to SC Girly Grl’s and browse through her post on Lucky Women.

Dread

Job For Sale

The boss came in to work yesterday dressed as a man. He's fooling no one. We could have auctioned his job on ebay and found better candidates!

Dread

Friday Fiesta Uno

It’s the end of the work week, the anesthesia has worn off, and time I caught up with a bit of bloggin’ about the Carolina blogs. Funniest blog of the week (probably month or year) is Bless Your Heart. You HAVE to read Shannon’s July 2nd post entitled “Hole-y Hole-y Hole-y”! You especially better read it BEFORE you decide to have chuldrun. Yes I know how to spell children, but we’re talking bout chuldrun… you know… what Southerners have instead of children? Anyway, click here and scroll to Hole-y Hole-y Hole-y.

After you’ve ROFLYAO, surf on over to Mike’s America, where Mike has posted a cornucopia of patriotic Americanism that you won’t want to miss, even if the 4th has past. There are some jewels for links to great patriotic music and more. One small item that stood out to me was the excerpt from President GWB’s speech at Fort Bragg North Carolina… “They were the first coalition forces to arrive on the scene after the bombing of Zarqawi's safe house. They administered compassionate medical care to a man who showed no compassion to his victims. And when this brutal terrorist took his final breath, one of the last things he saw was the face of an American soldier from Fort Bragg, North Carolina.”

Wooohoooooooo!!

Palmetto Pundit , Barry is back from vacation and with a couple of posts under his belt, has also managed to touch on Islam; “Islamophobia” to be exact, and misguided Americans who fake fast, or fake fasting I should say. If Islamakazie sympathizers starve themselves, do I care?

Palmetto Sweetheart had a secret, for a day, then told it, but it was, is, wow, neato! Check it out!

It seems several of us took the opportunity to at least verbally close the aperture on Islam this past week. SC Girly Grl threw a well placed pitch, followed by a nice piece on Men of Valor. They’re worth the read. As odd as it may seem, I fully understand her cryptic Left Hand Right Hand post. Perhaps down the road of time… well, all things in due course. To everything there is a season.

Napoleon over at Life and times of Mediocrity sent up a flare to signal he is alive, in the form of a couple of posts. One is a subject that needs more than state wide promulgation. Everybody in either Carolina needs to realize what is about to happen, besides football season in a couple of months. Sadly, it's politics as usual in the Palmetto State.

From time to time when I can think of it, I’ll place a quote here relevant to, oh whatever. You can figure this one out fairly easily. It’s from Bob Wallace who writes various things about various stuff; some of which I like.

“I used to get lots of people writing me emails about how peiple stuck in the 7th century were going to conquer us…no, I don’t think so.”

Dittos Bob! Especially, never here, beneath the Carolina moon!

Dread

BUI the Evening Edition

In a late breaking thought, I just had to do a second post today. You know how Islamokazies are all beefed up over being rewarded with seventy two, or a thousand, or whatever, number of virgins in their afterlife, all for being insane enough to blow themselves up while killing innocent people? Well, I actually hope that it's true, and that is exactly what they each get. WITH, the understanding of course, that every one of those virgins looks and thinks and acts just like...oh...say...BETTY FRIEDAN?

Blogging Under the Influence

I haven’t swizzled alcohol since the late 1970’s. However, having had a little out patient surgery done this morning while being doped into oblivion leaves me no choice but to either skip blogging today, or to blog while still under the influence of the anesthesia. I doubt BUI will endanger lives, so here goes!

I have gradually come to realize that I am not a politically correct person. Having flashed a gnome moon here, declaring it to not be a Carolina moon, I now have a shrub moon to post. It’s not a Carolina moon either, although, the idea for it very well could have been a Carolina idea. I know you all have seen the statuary of the little black men with red caps and coats with white pants that hold out a ring to tie a horse up to, or holding a lantern. Personally, I always wanted to put two of those on either side of my drive entrance, except I want custom castings of two of the little fellows mooning. I told you I’m not politically correct. Politically correct types do not even put the little black men out on display anywhere, much less mooning ones. I don’t have custom castings such as I describe, but I do have the shrub moon pic below, and present it now.





Meanwhile, back on the Ponderosa, I’m feeling a bit woozy and have yet another doctor’s appointment to keep. So, while I'm still ahead in the polls, what say we call it a wrap for today? Another day, another moon, all beneath the Carolina moon.

Dread

The 4th of WHAT???

It’s July 4th and been a dismal day for me. It hasn’t been a disaster or anything like that, just a bland and dismal day. I read a post by a fellow of the name of Holland from Charleston, South Carolina. He for the umpteenth time has refused to sing The Star Spangled Banner in church when the congregation sings to celebrate Independence Day.

Holland is evidently a die hard Confederate, albeit a grand embarrassment to his family once a year when he stands and refuses to sing along with the crowd at church. Oh, ye heathen heretic! Me thinks someone needs to get a life, and it is EYE… AYE… I! Poor Mr. Holland. My brother, seven in ten Baptist men don’t sing in church anyway. They just move their mouths. But now there is Presbyterian precedent that may get you in trouble… Let’s just move along, shall we?

Speaking of getting a life, I visited my parents today who are getting up in years now. Dad wanted to show me his satellite dish network thingy. I don’t do TV stuff. I see those TV gadgets show talking pictures, when I walk through a room where someone is playing with one, but I never play with the gadgets myself. So, I settled into a chair for instruction. He turned the gadgets on then started flipping through the channels, pausing on each one to read to me out loud the name of the channel that appeared in large, close caption style at the top of the screen, as if I couldn’t read it. Of course he thinks I can’t read, because I stopped listening to him when I was around 5 years old, and he thinks I haven’t learned anything since because of it. But I digress, and he did continue.

Each time he changed the channel he would read the channel name and comment thusly, “This is the Weather Channel, it has weather”…(channel flip)… “This is a movie channel, it has movies”… (channel flip)… “This is Fox News Channel, it has news”… (channel flip)… “This is a channel that I don’t get”… (static and snow)… (channel flip)… “This is ESPN, it has sports”… (channel flip)… (static and snow again)… “This is another channel I don’t get”… (channel flip)… “This is the Home and Garden channel it has home and garden stuff”… You get the picture?

Anywho, I decided to just let him go, and see how long he would narrate the channels. He has hundreds of channels on that satellite gadget. Well, over two hundred plus channels later, he won and I cried uncle….or well, I think I said something a bit hostile maybe …like suddenly screaming at him, “GOOD GRIEF MAN, YOU NEED TO GET A LIFE! Actually I wanted to scream that at him, but taking his advanced years into consideration, I merely told him I had to use the bathroom and wandered off. I figure if I haven’t listened to him for all these years, there’s no fairness in forcing him to listen to me. You just gotta love fair play, when you can actually pull it out of your back pack, dust it off and put it to use!

Over the weekend, I stumbled over a blog of sorts whose main editors/contributors seem to be Bob Wallace and Tom Novak. Wallace, who has the political correctness of a Scotsman serving on a US House budget committee full of Democrats, has a streak of mean humor that somehow doesn’t take itself too seriously. Novak seems to take his self and life much more seriously than I’m sure he or his life, were ever meant to be taken by our Creator. But, he is, at the least, a tenacious southern sympathizer. The man truly believes that the South was right, and implies that the legacy of Lincoln is to the US what Hitler’s legacy would have been to Europe.

My own political leanings, while tolerant, are not bleeding heart nor limp wristed. So, while I mix and muddle with Wallace and Novak, I probably wouldn’t vote for them for high public office. A committee, board, or council; yeah I would like to see either of them serve there just to be an antagonist, if not a promoter of truth, real justice, and the fundamental, founding principle, American way….but not the limpwristed, Beltway, New York, Hollywood, Amirakan way. Their blog is fairly vast, and I spent probably several hours spread over the weekend, and again today, reading through the majority of it.

So, I became somewhat drenched in conservatism and nearly instinctively slapped leather when my Dad commented out of the blue today, “We’ll never have a decent government as long as politics are on that thing!”, as he pointed to the TV. “WHAAAT?”, I asked. “As long as politics are on TV we will never have a good government in this country”, He elaborated. “What do you mean?”, I asked. “Why they lied something awful about poor old John Kerry in that last election”, he lamented. (Once again the dreaded and sinister THEY had done in another innocent Herman Munster look-a-like.) I felt it a good time to observe a moment of silence, and did so, straining mightily to suppress a expletive splashed barrage of some sort of guttural utterances. I am proud of my self restraint.

I will from time to time, maybe, share a link or two to the strange blogland I found. Suffice to say though, that I am not the only person on the planet that has found that James Carville, looks, sounds, thinks, and smells very much like Gollum.



Coincidence? Me thinks not! There’s evil afoot no doubt. But, at the end of the day, I still can’t say that I’d rather be someplace else, besides right here, beneath the Carolina moon, where the reasons for Independence Day are respected every day.

Dread

Unflipped or Floppie?

I’m back with an opinion today; an opinion that will likely be controversial. There is fashion that is just tasteless and there is fashion that is just plain vulgar. Vulgar is the term I use to describe what I call Tijuanna toe shoes, jandals in New Zealand, slippers in Hawaii, and thongs in Australia. Americans mostly call the annoying foot hazards, flip-flops.

People, these are not shoes! No matter what material you use to make them or how many sequins you glue on them, they are just dangerous and nasty, annoying, casual wear that I really don’t understand anyone even wanting to have in their closet.

Simply put, I find Tijuanna toe shoes to be vulgar. Yes I said vulgar! Do me a favor? Before you set about lambasting me, look up the word “vulgar” in the dictionary. Then look at a pair of the foot flapware, and tell me I’m wrong. Only the depraved in third world countries should wear flip-flops, and only then if they are the cheapest foot wear available at the time.

In an article I read on flip-flops last week, I learned that evidently they are not patented. I would like very much to point up this fact to Bill Gates, and suggest that he integrate them into the operating system of the postponed again, pending, new release of Wintendo. Once Bill starts charging inflated licensing fees for every pair, we should see flip-flops go underground. Of course there will always be bootleg flip-flops, and the Microshaft faithful, so it’s not a complete solution. Still, envisioning Microsoft emblazoned down the straps of every pair of toe thongs is somehow both humorous and satisfying. But, anywho!

Another thought is to permit the RIAA to copyright the flip-flop as a sound recording. Then they could fight the spread of flip-flops by suing wearers, and lobbying congress for special protection of their business model that suppresses free enterprise and limits free choice. But I’m really not wanting to destroy the entire footwear industry; just flip-flops. So, that’s probably not the best solution.

It was suggested to me that perhaps we could get a law passed that says flip-flop wearers must shop at Walmart, keeping them out of the path and vision of everyone except Walmart shoppers. I have noticed though, that Walmart shoppers in high numbers already pretty much support that effort. I think it would be safe to say that all flip-flop wearers shop at Walmart. The problem is, they are also still free to shop elsewhere. And besides, aren’t all of us forced to shop at Walmart for at least a few things, if not many?

Now, if Walmart would ban flip-flops from their stores, I’m sure that measure would put a dent into their being worn in public. But, very likely such a measure would only serve to boost the popularity of the Tijuanna toe shoe’s first cousin, the gel sandal; second runner up for ugly and vulgar. And come to think of it, banning flip-flops and gel sandals would very likely cut a bite of several hundred million dollars a year out of Walmart’s annual sales. So, forget soliciting Walmart’s assistance in ridding the planet of the foot flapping scourge.

I’m at wits end on this issue. Meanwhile, the din of ka-fop, ka-fop, ka-fop, grows even louder with each passing day of the summer. Something has to give! I suggest that the rest of us, the unflipped, resort to stomping on the exposed toes of the thoughtless vulgarites who insist on continuing to undermine fashion culture. If you have a better solution, I want to hear it. Weigh in people! We the unflipped must act to save the feet of our society, and our own sensibilities!

I’m wondering if there aren’t some political divisions to be discerned here. Don’t you wonder how a floppie would vote? No doubt it would be opposite of my unflipped vote. And with politicians always flip-flopping on issues… yeah, I think I’m on to something. It’s a good thing too, that we may get a grip on this before the gel sandal bunch runs somebody for US President. We better get busy. I hear gel sandals are gaining popularity in Arkansas and New York, two Tijuanna toe shoe strongholds. But thankfully, not here, beneath the Carolina moon.

I’ll do my best to not mess up and delete any comments this time around.

Dread

PS: It's good to learn that Napoleon is alive and well, and posting once again at The Life and Times of Mediocrity.

Less Opinion

I had to repost this post because I messed up my own comment to a comment... Have a nice weekender... mine's already flushed.

Today, I’m not opinionating so heavily, but focusing on the Carolina blogger links from the column to the right. Shannon of Bless Your Heart has a baby post covering two types. One is cute as can be. The other’s so ugly that it’s cute. SC Girly Grl has a sad tale of a baby not so fortunate, but the post is capped with a comforting poem. From my experience, I would venture that it’s one of her origination. To answer her question from earlier this week about being crazy, let us appropriately paraphrase Goldilocks. Some people are too crazy. Some people aren’t crazy enough. But her crazy is just right!

Mike of Mike’s America continues to fill in for the vacationing Barry at Palmetto Pundit. Idiocy from John Kerry, and lively discussion of various topics of Arab decent fill his pages. There’s been nothing new from Napoleon for a while at The Life and Times of Mediocrity. Should we worry or expect he's just busy?

I’m not Catholic, and doubt seriously I ever will be (see testing results on Monday’s post). I’m afraid that I am clueless as to what even goes on in Mass, had never heard of the Office of Readings, nor know what the Liturgy of the Hours could possibly be. But, Jennifer, the Palmetto Sweetheart who isn’t clueless and has and does, posted a nice piece from those sources. For me it is a confirmation of the establishment and place of the Church. Only, the term “the Church” means perhaps something a bit different to me than it does in some folk’s minds and hearts. But that’s just the way it is beneath the Carolina moon.

Dread