This is the earliest known picture of me, taken shortly after invention of the camera during the Truman administration.
This was well before science had perfected the ability to prenatally determine the sex of the child, and my parents had been expecting a girl. Hence the dress.
The cross-dressing doesn’t disturb me as much, however, as what appears to have been done to my feet.
Now–I think that baby feet are adorable. Indeed, it is almost a fetish with me, and I will admit to nibbling on many a baby toe and to having put each and every one of my own childrens’ tiny feet entirely into my mouth at some time or other during their formative years. That is my shame.
But that transgression pales in the wake of whatever sick thing has been done to my own feet here. They are SUPER tiny. Have I not only been humiliated with the wearing of women’s clothing, but did my parents also engage the services of a foot-binder to disfigure my poor little tootsies?
I look like a pirate with two peg legs.
Somehow, by adulthood my feet ended up normally-sized (although they did serve me poorly on my recent trip to Japan, when I had days of walking 8-10 miles).
But I shudder to think of what must have been going on in those early days.
Gee, I hate to be a bad Democrat, but I have to agree with Mitt Romney on this issue.
And it gives me the opportunity to thank John McCain for selecting Sarah Palin to be his #2 and not Mr. Romney–which would have been a much-improved ticket that just might have cost Obama the election.
His op-ed piece from today’s NY TIMES:
IF General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.
Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.
I love cars, American cars. I was born in Detroit, the son of an auto chief executive. In 1954, my dad, George Romney, was tapped to run American Motors when its president suddenly died. The company itself was on life support — banks were threatening to deal it a death blow. The stock collapsed. I watched Dad work to turn the company around — and years later at business school, they were still talking about it. From the lessons of that turnaround, and from my own experiences, I have several prescriptions for Detroit’s automakers.
First, their huge disadvantage in costs relative to foreign brands must be eliminated. That means new labor agreements to align pay and benefits to match those of workers at competitors like BMW, Honda, Nissan and Toyota. Furthermore, retiree benefits must be reduced so that the total burden per auto for domestic makers is not higher than that of foreign producers.
That extra burden is estimated to be more than $2,000 per car. Think what that means: Ford, for example, needs to cut $2,000 worth of features and quality out of its Taurus to compete with Toyota’s Avalon. Of course the Avalon feels like a better product — it has $2,000 more put into it. Considering this disadvantage, Detroit has done a remarkable job of designing and engineering its cars. But if this cost penalty persists, any bailout will only delay the inevitable.
Second, management as is must go. New faces should be recruited from unrelated industries — from companies widely respected for excellence in marketing, innovation, creativity and labor relations….[Rest of article]
Actually, the game pictured at the left is not Warren Buffett’s favorite computer game–but I’m sure that it will soon be mine. This is a screenshot from “Left 4 Dead”, a first-person-shooter featuring a post-apocalyptic world filled with zombies, which is being released today, if I’m not mistaken.
Four people at a time can play as a team, making the game perfect for myself and my three sons, who–with varying degrees of enthusiasm–have indicated that yes, Dad, you can play with us… (They know I love zombies and other undead almost as much as life itself).
They have expressed concern that my limited mousing skills could be detrimental to the team, but I have gently pointed out to them that every great zombie movie has had at least one “spaz” that has needed to be rescued by the true heroes, and that this would only make our gameplay more authentic. So we’ll see.
Which brings me back to Warren Buffett’s favorite computer game. Arguably online Bridge is technically his favorite game–he and Bill Gates have a regular game going–but in reading his biography just now there are a couple of references to a helicopter computer game that he plays a lot of. After a little GOOGLING I found it here. I’ve spent about five minutes playing it and, well, I stink. (But don’t tell my kids. Anyway, I don’t think that poor helicopter-flying skills necessarily translate to poor zombie-killing skills. We’ll see…)
Besides not playing football very well there lately, Kansas is known for its bizarre Jesus People. This is not the Westboro Wackos putting up this sign. It is the Spirit One Christian Center.
I was browsing in Barnes & Noble over the weekend and came across a book called UnChristian, by David Kinnaman. He studied why the younger generation is leaving the Christian churches in droves. According to his research here are the percentages of people outside the church who think that the following words describe present-day Christianity:
* antihomosexual 91%
* judgmental 87%
* hypocritical 85%
* old-fashioned 78%
* too political 75%
* out of touch with reality 72%
* insensitive to others 70%
* boring 68%
***
Yep, those are the Christians I know.
There is an irony to the reference to Exodus 20:3, by the way. It is the familiar “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.” I don’t think too many knowledgeable people dispute that the Muslim God and the Christian God are pretty much the same God–the God of Abraham, who started us all off with Adam and Eve. Beyond that, the two religions mostly just differ on which of their Magic Guys–Jesus or Mohammad–is the one that we should pay attention to.
Jesus spoke Aramaic, so upon the Cross he was calling out to “Allaha”–the Aramaic word for God.
This con has been around for over a century, and this is an interesting variation of it. You think you wouldn’t fall from something like this? Think again:
COLUMBIA, S.C. – A South Carolina Roman Catholic priest has told his parishioners that they should refrain from receiving Holy Communion if they voted for Barack Obama because the Democratic president-elect supports abortion, and supporting him “constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil.”
The Rev. Jay Scott Newman said in a letter distributed Sunday to parishioners at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Greenville that they are putting their souls at risk if they take Holy Communion before doing penance for their vote.
“Our nation has chosen for its chief executive the most radical pro-abortion politician ever to serve in the United States Senate or to run for president,” Newman wrote, referring to Obama by his full name, including his middle name of Hussein.
“Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exists constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil, and those Catholics who do so place themselves outside of the full communion of Christ’s Church and under the judgment of divine law. Persons in this condition should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation.” [Rest of article]
This is the earliest known picture of me, taken shortly after invention of the camera during the Truman administration.
