I’ve seen the movies. Heard the stories. Best ever, super human, yada yada yada. For some reason this short video convinces me that all the things they say about Bruce Lee being the best athlete ever are true. Forget what your lying eyes are telling you. This is not possible. I had a friend when I was about sixteen who had a pair of these. After five minutes I looked about like this guy.
H/T Borderline Sociopathic Blog for Boys. Go take a look. Oh…and no girls allowed.
I’ve had many boats over the years. Wood, glass, sail and power. The one thing, the only thing I thought I had learned in burning through stacks of money while stewarding these craft through my ownership period was that boats are never ever free. Typically you purchase them in a fit of romance for an inflated price, spend every spare second better devoted to more utilitarian purposes such as gainful employment or quality time with family and loved ones slaving over them, blow every nickle you have a a few that you don’t getting her ready for a very few glorious summer weekends of use per season. Then when the romance starts to wear thin, and the romance always wears thin, you sell her for a fraction of what you paid excluding the hundreds of hours of back breaking labor in self performed maintenence, vowing never again.
Two weeks ago with summer waning, in a moment of weakness I again succumbed to the lure. This time the boat was free! All I had to do was haul it away and let the fun begin!! It appeared to need only a little cleaning up and some minor repair. A hundred or so hours later and many more hundreds of dollars, it is no where near ready for christening. It’s looking better but is past the point of aesthetic improvement and needs a few prohibitively expensive parts to make her seaworthy. Winter is fast approaching. I do not have a carport or garage.
What the Left will never understand about human nature is that humans beings will forever want. Give them a Trabant and they will want a ’62 T-Bird. Provide state sanctioned Classical and they choose Jazz. Tell them Chocolate and Vanilla are the only proper choices and they will find a way to circumvent the rules if 31 flavors is what they desire.
Commenter Authurstone posits rather simplistically in a previous post that libertarian philosophy boils down to a “I’ve got mine, fuck off” attitude as if this isn’t equally true of leftists like himself. In a breathtaking display of egalitarianism he then trumpets his willingness to pay his income tax to the federal government every year as proof positive of what a compassionate soul he is. Rest easy Arthur, your place in the statist Nirvana is assured.
The difference in leftist vs. classically liberal or libertarian philosophy is that the fuck off factor cited so eloquently in Arthurstone’s equation above for people like me boils down to “I have mine, how best can you get yours” and for Arthurstone and those like him it is reduced to “I have mine, let me volunteer someone else’s for you”. The Left continually operates under the assumption that wealth is a static thing rather than being continually created. There is only so much money, resources, even climate, and the only answer for them is in how best to equally distribute a never changing bottom line. The classically liberal on the other hand realize that nothing is static. The progressive seeks always to plan from a given point while the classically liberal knows that there is no given point to plan from. Our Earth and the people on it are always in flux and as such are to be adapted to, rather than futilely insisting that it and they adapt to each of us. Enhancing conditions to promote wealth creation through lower taxes for those who, you know, create wealth, ensuring a free market economy with a minimum of (this is not to say no) government interference, these have been proven to overwhelmingly have the most benefit for the greatest number of people when compared side by side with leftism wherever either has been put into practice. You leftists out there can squawk all you like about theory but when put into practice, the previous sentence is not opinion but provable fact.
It is natural for people, all people, to want to keep what they have and they will use whatever power they have at their disposal to do so. This is our nature. It is unfortunately also a part of human nature that if offered something for nothing, it will be taken by these same people without thought or regard to where it is coming from. Any philosophy worthy of calling itself such will recognise as a given the former and to identify as an evil the later. Any government of the people worthy of the name will adhere to this basic philosophy, as a free and prosperous society is impossible without it. The proper role of government, limited in scope and always with the consent of the governed, is to regulate somewhat these selfish tendencies without stifling them. Ambition and compassion are vital to a healthy society when each is properly constrained. We have been blessed through our founding documents with a government that properly constrains these extremes of our nature if only we follow its wise counsel. It’s worked pretty well for 233 years. Whata’ ya’ say we not fuck it up.
It has been awe inspiring to watch the speed with which the Dem’s have allowed themselves to be painted into a rather severe political corner. Faced with a bit of opposition on cap and trade and then on healthcare, mostly from the powerless Right after having run as the party of bi-partisan national reconciliation, they have inexplicably lashed out at anyone, Republican, Democrat, or Independent, who would dare question their attempts to fundamentally restructure the governments relationship with its citizens, referring to them as brownshirts and organized mobs rather than openly discussing the ramifications of these changes as was explicitly promised by what was to have been the most transparent and ethical administration in living memory. It seems that when you promise hope and change and rainbows and instead deliver brass knuckle Chicago style politics to the mostly elderly citizens attending these town hall meetings, Americans will notice and are taken aback somewhat. Go figure.
I suspect that Obama, being a political survivor of the highest order and still early in his Presidency will find a way out of this mess that he has curiously inflicted upon himself, but at other times I wonder. For someone who was supposed to bring everyone into a big circle jerk of Kumbayah bi-partisanship, he has shown himself to be remarkably clumsy and out of touch in this regard.
Hubris can be a necessary but sometime cruel master to those who practice the art of politics. In the game of power, foes and erstwhile allies alike will possess contingency plans. In the fevered rush to implement his statist agenda through bullying rather than reasoning, Obama may find he is the last man in the room when push comes to shove. He may find himself alone when the voice of political survival whispers into the ear of those who make a career of self interest. Wouldn’t it be a strange turn of events if Obama himself this time ended up being the one tossed under the bus in the interests of power.
My wife has a friend who identifies her vocation as that of Life-Coach. Through Tantric chanting, meditation, and the other usual touchy feely new age BS, she ostensibly offers help to those who can’t quite figure things out… regarding…how to figure things out. Try as she might, she has never been able to articulate satisfactorily to me just what it is that she does that would induce someone to fork over to her their hard earned money.
Oh well, different strokes I guess. Personally if it was me and I needed someone to explain how life works, I’d choose this guy.
There are a lot of athletic activities out there that require great skill, but there is something about surfing that has always inspired absolute awe in me. It seems more a spiritual endeavor than a sport somehow.
I have come to the realization this summer that I have lost my two boys. Not that they have gone missing or anything, I simply mean that suddenly they are not children any longer and somehow while my back was turned have jumped the fence into young manhood. In what seems just a day ago I made a jump of my own, putting a more carefree life aside and choosing to live for something bigger than myself. Being 38 and never married it was more like jumping out of a plane than over a fence, and now I find that after a joyous fifteen year freefall my chute has opened and I am gliding back to familiar ground. Back to the life left behind. Only that life no longer exists.
The ground is the same as before but the terrain will have changed completely by the time I touch down. As much as I will miss being the center of my children’s world in the years ahead, I will take solace in the certainty that they will forever be the center of mine. When I was 38 and heard the call “for whom shall I live my life”, I could very easily have said I will do as I have thus far and live it for myself. As I watch my two young men start on their life’s journeys I will be mindful of and grateful in the knowledge that not only do they represent two lives with infinite potential, but that in the miracle of their births they created within me a new life as well.
westsound modern 
