A neat little post I came across this morning, from the Detritus of Empire blog. Go read it all, but here's a taste:

There are, or were, specific toasts for each day of the week. As related to me by a couple of Royal Navy Lieutenants* at a pub some years back:

Sunday: “Absent friends, absent friends.”

Monday: “Our ships at sea.”

Tuesday: “Our men.”

Wednesday: “Ourselves, as no one else is likely to bother.” Alternate version: “Ourselves, Our Swords, Old Ships” Old ships being a reference to shipmates.

Thursday: “A bloody war or a sickly season.” (The death of more senior officers was the most reliable route to promotion in the age of sail).

Friday: “A willing foe and sea room.”

Saturday: “To our wives and sweethearts.” This is the only toast said to still be in common use, as is the customary response from the youngest officer present “May they never meet!”

*In the Navy the rank is pronounced much as it would be in America. Lieutenant derives from the French phrase en lieu tenant, or holding a place for another. The British army uses the variant “Leff-tenant” for perverse reasons known only to themselves.

For a while, a few years ago, my wife and I went to some performances from an "edgy" off-off-off-off-Broadway theatrical company in Kansas City. Yeah, it was run by a gay guy. Yeah, the plays were fairly funny. But after seeing a few of the productions, I was getting bored by all of the gay jokes.

Now I find that I shared that artistic judgment with playwright David Mamet. The setting is Mamet is teaching a class--I imagine on play writing (the quote is via the Wall Street Journal):

"Are gay people people too?" I (Mamet) asked the student, and he said that of course they were. "Are they aware of that fact?" I asked him. And he responded similarly. "Then why," I asked, "as they are aware of the fact, would they find its repetition on stage entertaining?"

"Ah, but," he said, "the straight people should see it."

"Ah, but," I said, "the straight people don't care. They may reward themselves for the ability to be bored by a play with a Good Message, but they, just like the gay people, come to the theater to be entertained. Your enlightenment is insufficient to capture the audience's attention for two hours."

I really don't have any particular problem with gay people, or homosexuality myself (by which fact you can infer that I'm not actually a conservative--I'm a classical liberal, really: in today's parlance, a libertarian.) I would really prefer however not to be beaten about the head and shoulders with gayness (or any other Message) for two hours straight, thank you very much. That's my fundamental problem with Democrats, "progressives," and others of the collectivist ilk. They insist that everyone else care about Their Pet Issue with the same burning fervor that they do. But the real world ain't built that way. "The straight people don't care."

Most of which feature the word "fuck" apparently:

A linguistic masterpiece. The kid got dialectical game.
Via Ace of Spades HQ which got it from BoingBoing

You read the headline to the story: Jackrabbit men wrap up Colbert and immediately think of a comedian testifying in front of a Clown Congress committee . . .

Time to take a short break, I think, from today's posting frenzy . . .

. . . and home-brewing beer, and going to the Women's Final Four, and dealing with some fiddly businessey-type detail stuff, and asking the accountant to file tax extensions for the fiddly stuff, and trying to re-establish the diet, after gaining 10 pounds at the Women's Final Four . . . and re-reading some of the Honor Harrington sci-fi book series, and . . .

. . . that kind of thinking . . .

Here are some pictures of the snowfall today in the Kansas City area:

Snow drifting against the downstairs patio door (sorry for the funny pattern--through the screen door, don't ya know.

View out the front door

Our cul-de-sac

Out the back door, over the deck, with snow piling up on the grill.

(I changed the post title from "Late winter snow storm" because, you know, it's spring now!)

We spotted this deer just beyond our back fence, the other day at around dusk. He, or she, had worked his/her way down the utility easement about three houses, when I snapped this picture.

This goes into the little-used "Life" section . . . wherein Glenn Reynolds aka Instapundit, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, discusses personal finances and what he does differently from fellow Tennessean Dave Ramsey's approach:

We don’t follow the Ramsey approach. It’s good for people who have debt problems, but we’ve never had those as we’ve avoided debt. My approach is tailored to my laziness, and lets savings be the control on spending. I decide how much money to save, and it goes into a money market account, automatically every month. The key is that this account is for money to go into, not to come out of, except for major purchases (like a house or car) or emergencies. I have a separate “slush fund” savings account that also gets an automatic deposit every month, and that gets hit up for routine unscheduled things like home and car repairs. Every once in a while I sweep money out of the “don’t touch” money market account into another account at a different bank that is inconvenient enough to access that I don’t take money out of it. (I guess that’s the “really don’t touch” account). At the end of the year, I look at the various account balances and know if I’ve saved as much as I planned; usually it turns out to be more, as I sometimes put unscheduled money — speaking fees, royalties, etc. — in there instead of the slush-fund savings account if I’m feeling flush.

This system turns my considerable sloth into an asset; savings is automatic, while spending takes effort. Taking money out of those “don’t touch” accounts is an event, meaning that I think about it before I do it, and thus don’t do it much. Likewise, almost the only credit card I use is American Express, which I pay off every month. You can stretch the payments, but, again, you have to make a conscious decision to do so, which means you have to think about it and realize how dumb it is, so I don’t. But the key is to prioritize saving first. Once I’m saving what I’ve planned to, I don’t have to worry about what I’m spending; it’s taken care of.

Hmm. The Insta-Sloth. Seems to be working for him, judging from the number of fun toys he blogs about on a regular basis . . .

It's for a good cause.

No, really.

And yeah, I'm late. Why am I always the last one to find out about these things?

Vitamin D!
Omega-3!