let's talk about pencils

I saw reports of blue ice on the northern rim of the country too.  I don't quite get walking across a frozen river or lake.  I guess there is ice fishing, but I don't quite get that either.

Apparently the dawgs have misplaced their robes of frivolity.  No interest at all in the Swedish bikini team, no mention even of charming ladies who are the Fantanas.  I have tried several times to bring up the subject of Nicki Minaj's fake butt and nada,  Nothing here apparently but weighty subjects and ice cream machines.

Old Dog, not being as progressive as Beagles or myself, missed our plea for attention on fb over the weekend.  Could there be new readers even now as I type?

Interesting that the Swedes are building up their army, they used to give the Russkies quite the hard time and way back some think that it was they who first colonized Russia.  Wait a minute, conscription in Sweden?  Since we have ended it here nobody, except to make some obscure point, dares even mention it.  Internet research reveals that Swedish conscription is not as onerous as our draft,  Not everybody goes and the term is less than a year.  And I expect if you are in the Swedish army there is much less of a chance that you will be sent off to fight some pointless war.

I think Beagles has a rosier conception of the behavior of the Crusaders than a detailed history would allow.

I have read that the first wave of Russkies into Berlin were not the wild men that the Germans had feared, but the second wave was exactly that.


But wait a minute, here is a real issue that kids can't even hold a pencil right anymore. I don't remember that we ever had to have lessons in holding a pencil.  I do remember graduating from the fat crayons to skinny ones, but I don't remember anyone failing to make the transition.  I have nothing for cursive, I remember those endless green sheets of Parker Penmanship and I can't say good-bye to that fast enough.  But a pencil, with all its attributes, why that is a thing of joy from toddling into dotage.

Mine was often a spaceship blasting off from its red rubber tail when the lesson was boring, which was always.  What a thing of beauty was a sharply pointed pencil: the lead, which really wasn't lead but we thought it was.  I poked myself with one once and a bit of the point when into my skin and I thought I would die from lead poisoning, that bit of wood around it that gave off a sawdust smell when first sharpened but then quickly grew dark from the air I guess, that thin layer of bright paint, just begging to be nibbled, that eraser that seemed to melt away so that long before the pencil's life was over it carried on its back end a twisted bit of metal that looked like it could take an eye out if you used it properly.

I would go on, but I am being distracted by a recap of the Oscars last night.  Half of those Oscar nominated movies are crappy anyway, but it's not even about them, it's all about who wore what color dress or sported what ribbon and who spoke up for a politically correct issue (everybody), and movies anymore are considered good or bad not by how entertaining they are but how correctly they express their political message.

You guys know I am a good liberal and I generally believe in the cause of politically correct things, but when that is all that anybody talks about, in a certifiably correct manner of course, it is incredibly boring.  We might as well go back to being puritans again,..