Thursday, December 14, 2006

Why do you ask me these questions at five o’clock?

“Why do you ask me these questions at five o’clock"?

You know, some guy always comes up to my window to renew his driver's license at 5:02. Of course, he swears that by his watch, it is only 4:55. Every friggin' day.

Followed quickly by:

"Can I answer in Spanish? Do you speak Spanish?"

No. Disculpe, pero no entiendo castellano.

It is going to be a very long century.

13 comments:

buddy larsen said...

LOL--are their watches ever "fast"?

Anonymous said...

buddy:

His complaint about it being five o'clock is in some ways worse than his not knowing about the Shia and the Sunnis.

Next time there is a disaster in his district, somebody will have to call him at 3 in the AM...

It is still a republic. Whether we can keep it is another question.

Charlie Martin said...

Now now, just because they'v e gort a little lisp.

loner said...

Members of the Intelligence Committee, mind you, are paid $165,200 a year to know more than basic facts about our foes in the Middle East.

No, they're not. They're paid that because they won election to the United States House of Representatives in 2004 or later. Knowing anything—anything at all—has never been a requirement for taking a seat in the House chamber.

Anonymous said...

True. And not knowing anything explains quite a bit. The bills ghost-written by lobbyists, the phalanx of aides and consultants paid to give their boy a bit of gravitas in front of the CSPAN cameras, the ease with which they can be manipulated by the career bureaucracy. The whole thing.

buddy larsen said...

Well, the top-down fix is always soviet. The bottom-up fix needed to have started many years ago in the nursury. So, where does *that* leave us?
(hint: "ska-rood")

Anonymous said...

Buddy:

(hint: "ska-rood")

But have they ever known anything? Have they ever - as a group - been more than mediocrities?

buddy larsen said...

The best and the worst of us, right there in DC. Lately, more of the latter, it shore does seem.

Anonymous said...

David:

He is the one who has rarely named our enemy, Islamic nihilism.

This is true. But the prospective head of the House Intelligence Committee should know something about the troubled places of the world.

I mean, if the Democrats actually cared.

Unknown said...

David:

I have heard Bush say that we are at war with Islamic fascists and whenever he does say that, someone gives him hell. If he does not say that someone gives him hell.

How about the American people, both in office and out of it making a half ass attempt to figure out who it is that wants us dead?

Did anyone expect FDR to explain to the American people who the Nazis or the Japanes Empire were?

People have gotten so damn lazy.

Charlie Martin said...

David, the reason he doesn't name "islamic nihilism" is because nobody but you uses that term, and you're using it wrong.

He has said "islamic fascism", which has the advantage of being connected with the way the words are used in the rest of the English-speaking world.

Luther said...

No SyT, I slightly disagree. Most folks do not know the meaning of "nihilism." From Webster's "

2 a : a doctrine or belief that conditions in the social organization are so bad as to make destruction desirable for its own sake independent of any constructive program or possibility"

I happen to think that fits.

Charlie Martin said...

Luther, only if you think that they think the imposition of Islamic ruole is not a positive program etc. Much less the more formal philosophical position of nihilism: "[T]he belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy."

My grandfather used to tell a story about the city guy who came to the San Luis Valley to hunt elk, and ended up shooting one of Granddad's bulls, because the only description the city guy had of an elk was that it was really big and had horns.