3:78, #572: Bob's Wondering Away

My brain's on overdrive this morning; especially since I'm cranking on "It Happens" by Sugarland!! Here's what I wonder:

If humans go 'boo hoo' when we cry, do cows go 'moo hoo?!!'

Have YOU ever actually cried by saying 'boo hoo' or have you ever in all your born (or even your unborn) days heard someone else actually cry 'boo hoo?'

For that matter, as Eddie Izzard points out, have you ever actually slipped on a banana peel? Have you ever seen someone actually slip on a banana peel? Have you ever seen documentation of someone slipping on a banana peel...even on You Tube? (That would have been contrived, no doubt, so IT DON'T COUNT!!)

Why do we stick our lips out in an exaggerated kiss shape when we're shaking our booty to some cranking tunes we enjoy??

Will the Christian whiners (whingers, if you're of Brit extraction) be really ticked off in Heaven when there's nothing to whine/whinge about? Oh, I forgot, they'll be perfect too...MY BAD!! TRUE THAT? DUUUUUUUUDE!!!!

Got any wonders of yer own??

3:77, #571: Ode to Melancholy Babies

While sitting in a tub of stress and tension salts,
I mused on Melancholy and other human faults,
No raven black came rapping, tapping on my chamber door,
A-quothing and a-croaking, "Never, Nevermore!"

But, thought I...Keats and Poe were rather quite neurotic.
The darkness in their souls gave thoughts that neared psychotic.
A Mideast Carpenter once implied, while speaking of 'the eye,'
When 'bad' its darkness overwhelms the soul which cannot die.

John and Edgar embraced the darkness in the soul.
They walked Vader's 'dark side,' never able to be whole.
Night's Plutonian shore they walked, enslaved to human evil.
Satan bored into their lives as to cotton thrusts the weevil.

Poe wrote that Gilead contained no healing balm,
"An artist must serve Mammon," Keats said without a qualm.
Said Carpenter has made the Way by offering His best.
"Come to Me, you heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

Sources:
Poe: "The Raven"
Keats: Letter to Percy B. Shelley, 8/16/1820
Photos: Wikipedia common domain

3:76, #570: Owed to Indolence

Well, I'd have gotten around to writing this parody on Keat's Ode to Indolence, but I was too busy doing the work I so thoroughly enjoy here at Camp Cornelius! ;p In reality, I 'rest hard' in my attempt at indolence, usually smoking a good ceegah whilst contemplating my next literary outrage. Here's the result this time around:

Here I sit before computer screen with widening hips,
My brain transferring thoughts through active finger tips.
While Keats mused about Love, Ambition, and Poesy,
My Muses would be Blogs, Facebook, and Plain Lazy.

Here I sit, a sad misfit, with not a whit of...well, wit.
Poesy has sailed, Love has failed, and Ambition has bailed.
My Facebook friends make no amends...I think I've got the bends.
They wonder why, someone like I should search the sky for reasons 'WHY?'

But then, again, every now and then, I think...
Can I really be indolent if I'm writing this stupid poem?

3:75, #569: Ode on a Home D Pail

Yesterday I wondered why we don't have a Five Gallon Bucket Day to show the respect we have for one of the most versatile items in the construction worker's world next to Duct Tape. It dawned on me that, if John Keats can get famous writing 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' and four other odes, I can create a poem to Homer Paint Bucket, so here goes:

Forsooth, oh bright hued plastic pail,
Of orange made with stamped detail,
Borrowed name of Greek renown,
Your Odyssey is o'er all the town.

Had Agamemnon's fleet met gale,
Whilst approaching Troy for to assail,
Iliad's lines your name would hale,
As Achilles screamed, "Myrmidons, Bail!!"

Like Gunga Din of Kipling fame,
You carry water without shame,
Your 'lazarushun' plastic hide,
Holds rigid when kicked, covered, or tied.

Inverted, you become a seat,
On which your owner can justly meet
The needs of working sitting down
As earlier said o'er all the town.

Before this ode gets overdrawn,
And blog enthusiasts start to yawn,
I'll wrap this up with this to say,
"Got Homer's Bucket for today?!!"

3:74, #568: Chickamauga

Yesterday I caught up with my lack of attention for three years on the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest one day in American history in general as well as the bloodiest one day battle of the Civil War. Today marks the 147th anniversary of the Battle of Chickamauga, Georgia in 1863, the bloodiest two day battle of the American Civil War.

If you want to find out the 'usual' approach to this particular battle, there are several excellent histories of the battle, including the Official Reports at [http://www.civilwarhome.com/chickama.htm] as well as books by Steven E. Woodworth, Six Armies in Tennessee, The Chickamauga and Chattanooga Campaigns and Freeman Cleaves' Rock of Chickamauga: The Life of General George H. Thomas. The Wiki article I just read suggests Peter Cozzens' book This Terrible Sound: The Battle of Chickamauga is excellent, though I've not read it. If you want to find out the unusual approach, keep reading.

It turns out that just at the moment the Confederates were about to take advantage of the gap in the Union line that Rosecrans mistakenly created, yellow jackets started stinging the Rebs and their officer's horses, making chaos the order of the hour and continuing their advance impossible. Gee, I guess the Lord used yellow jackets in Georgia much in the way He used hornets in Canaan when he drove the Canaanites out on behalf of Israel. Oh, my source is Bromfield L. Ridley, Battles and Sketches of the Army of Tennessee. He put it, "Added to the horror of the galling fire, the generals and staffs encountered a number of yellow jackets' nests and the kicking of the horses and their ungovernable actions came close to breaking up one of the lines. Blue jackets in front of us, yellow jackets upon us, and death missiles around and about us--oh, the fury of the battle, the fierceness of the struggle over Carnes' battery!!" (pg. 220)

One other important 'out of the way fact': General John Bell Hood lost his left leg to a minie ball at Chickamauga just two months after he lost the use of an arm at Gettysburg. As a result of these injuries, he was know to use laudanum to help manage his pain throughout the rest of the War; which many historians feel clouded his judgment in several following battles and helped destroy the Army of Tennessee in the battles of Franklin and Nashville after Hood took over command July 17, 1864.

The last oddball info piece: General A. P. Stewart who led the charge at Chickamauga, Bromfield Ridley who was part of his staff there, and John Bell Hood were all evangelical Christians who played integral roles in the conflict when God Caused the Civil War.
Notice how I got a plug in for my book again?!! ;p

3:73, #567: Antietam

I can't believe that up to this point in Self Indulgent Civil War History I haven't made a post for the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day in American history, including the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York! Today is the 148th anniversary of when General Lee headed back South when he received the first defeat at the hands of the Yanks in his career after he had decided to invade the North in order to scare the Yankees into letting the Rebels walk away from the nation their forefathers had helped found, if he could not 'whup' them into capitulation.

On September 17, 1862 General Lee had a decently fortified position that led to the Battle of Sharpsburg, Maryland, known in the North as the Battle of Antietam (named after the local creek)...General Daniel Harvey Hill thought it humorous that the North and South couldn't even agree on the names of several of the battles, with the agrarian South naming the battles after the closest town and the industrial North naming them after the closest body of water. For instance, the Battle of Murfreesboro was Stone's River, First Manassas was Bull Run, Sharpsburg was Antietam, Oaks Hill, Missouri became Wilson's Creek, Shiloh, Tennessee was Pittsburgh Landing to the Yanks and the Battle of Gaines Mill was Chickahominy River.

You'll notice the dead bodies photographed in front of a little structure known as The Dunker Church due to the fact that the small congregation of pacifists worshiped the One who said He 'did not come to bring peace but the sword' in their own fashion, complete with architecturally modest structure which was directly opposed to the tall, majestic structures prevalent among many other denominations of the day. Needless to say for those of you who have followed this rambling blog, I devote two whole chapters of God Caused the Civil War to just how God was illustrating His displeasure with Americans of all sorts by staging battles nearby houses of worship. If you want to check out the book, get in touch with Westminster Seminary's Library for an inter-library loan or just write me and I'll email you as many chapters as you can stand to read!

Right now I'm listening to 'Deguello' (Slit Throat) cranked up to mind numbing decibels from the new version of 'The Alamo' [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NONil_hvUKc] and am getting ready to blast the Bejeebers out of my computer opponent at, yes, yes, The Battle of Antietam!!
Are you ready to march to the sound of gunfire?!!

3:72, #566: Rue

Dictionary.com has sent me down one of the rabbit trails I sometimes wander, like Aragorn chasing Gollum, this morning and has produced this following diatribe, so you may RUE the day you jumped on this blog! Now, with that disclaimer, let's wade into this...

'Rue' has the primary meaning of being sorry for something done in the past...as in 'rue the day I got on this blog!' It also turns out that there is a plant called 'rue' that's not only indigenous to the Mediterranean region (hence, the picture at left from Wiki's public domain file), it shows up in Luke 11:42 according to the Wiki article I've been perusing. The plant is a nasty bit of work (rather pretty in the garden, though...much as the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil) that serves as an herbal way to induce abortion; which, now that I think of it, could serve as a sermon illustration for The Fall when man aborted his relationship with God by eating of the fruit of said Tree. Somehow the connection between being sorry for an action and self-induced abortion just naturally seems to pop out to my way of thinking...so sue me! The Pharisees got lambasted by the Lord for tithing mint and rue in Luke 11:42 while they ignored justice and the love of God...obviously, again, a connection with the whole abortion issue if you ask me...and you did, in one respect by tuning into this channel!!

Now, for you French scholars, 'rue' means 'street,' as in the famous 'Murders in the Rue Morgue' by Edgar Allen Poe, supposedly the first detective story written. The woman murdered by the orangutan had her head nearly cut completely off...not unlike the practice of ripping a baby's head off in utero these days in the USofA. Well, perhaps Poe could have cleaned up his story by having an abortion clinic located in the Rue Morgue where rue tea was served to expectant mother-don't-wannabes that they might someday rue the deed they'd done...
Got Tell Tale Heart?

3:71, #565: 1,206 So Far

One of the neat things about computers is that you can count long columns of statistics in short time by using 'sort' and 'word count' where it gives you 'by line' as an option. Well, just for curiosity a few minutes ago I checked out my Movies Sorted File and found out I've watched at least 1,206 different movies since October 11, 1990 when I started keeping track of things in order to settle 'intellectual differences of opinion' between me and Audio Visual Man.

So what's my point? Self indulgence...what else?
Wonder how many more I can add to the total before I kick the bucket...and, yes, 'Bucket List' is on the list!

Now, being this concrete sequential that I am (some might say 'statistics freak'), I also know that I've watched 'Gettysburg' 35 times and 'Lord of the Rings' 29 times.
Ready to march to the sound of battle?!!

3:70, #564: Valley of Smokes

I was just looking over Any Day in History and came across the item that on this day in 1781, Los Angeles was founded in Bahia de las Fumas...the Valley of Smokes...by 44 settlers. It makes perfect sense to me that smog should be the eventual result...or a place where cigarettes are popular...or dope...given the location's name. Then the question becomes, just how did the valley get the name in the first place? Did the natives peddle tobacco there to the Mexican and Spanish folks who showed up to steal their land?

Of course, this whole Valley of Smokes stuff reminds me of the Valley of Hinnom mentioned in Scripture where Canaanites and depraved Israelites sacrificed children in the fires as well as kept a giant rubbish pile burning which was a picture of Hell...for a pretty good read, see the Wiki article at [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gehenna]. Maybe child sacrifice was typical of the native Americans in the region, something they might have shared with the Aztecs and Mayans?

Gee, '...and the smoke of their torment goes up for ever and ever' as Revelation 14:11 says sounds like The City of Angeles might be in the Valley of Smokes for a while.
Got a light?