That King George was a right bastard:

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such disolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

We’re better off without him.

( Photo Source / Photo Rights )

“The most memorable epocha in the history of America.”

I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival…It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations from one end of the continent to the other from this time forward forever more.

John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776

Enjoy and cherish your freedom this weekend.

( Photo source )

Unlike any year prior, a large number of my friends seem to think 2008 sucked.

Hoping that 2009 is better for all of you.

There will be no stupid April Fools Day jokes on this site today. That is all.

(Mainly because all the good domain names are taken.)

Nate loves music. Everything from Christmas carols to heavy metal gets him dancing, with head bobbing and arms waving. And when he loves a song and the song ends, claps his hands and shouts, “Yay!”

This morning at mass, the last notes of the first hymn had just finished echoing through the church when Nate decided to add an Alleluia of his own: “Yay!”

He brought an extra shot of joy to the whole congregation on an already-joyous morning.

So on this Christmas, from Nate’s family to yours: “Yay!”

Kid’s Blog

We’re in New York, visiting Dineen’s parents for Christmas. Her father has just finished making us breakfast, her mother is at work, and Dineen is upstairs taking a shower. Alex is playing with a Fisher-Price bus, running over plastic pedestrians at criminally negligent speeds.

Nate, as he has done many times, grabbed my hand and pulled himself to standing in the kitchen. Then he let go, and stood unassisted for about ten seconds. Still not breaking new territory.

Then, he took a step, unaided. And another. And then fell crashing to the ground.

But it’s two steps, by himself, and he seems eager to try more. Seeing Nate’s first steps was a better Christmas gift than anything that comes in a box.

The day’s almost over. The flowers you ordered? Didn’t come. The card you got? Lame. The cute little custom-order teddy-bear you heard about on the radio? Everyone else got one too.

So what’s a guy to do on Valentines Day to redeem himself? Spend a little time thinking about how you’ll spend every day of the rest of the year proving how much you love her. Tell her what you’re going to do. Then do it.

Good luck, fellas!

UPDATE (2/16/08):
New rule: If you’re under the age of 18, on your first serious relationship, and wondering how to handle this person who you’re convinced is the love of your life, you must include the following three sentences in your comment or I will not respond:
1. This is my first love, not my last.
2. I will love again.
3. I’m still figuring out who I am and so is the object of my affection, so whatever we have now is certain to change in the next few months or years.
Harsh? Maybe so. But I shouldn’t have to say this – you should have read previous comments.

First we hit some clubs down in Ybor City, finally ending up in a champagne-soaked, half-naked orgy of New Year festivities where we caroused until the sun came up.

Wait, that’s not what happened.

For reasons that will be obvious to even the most casual readers of this site, we all celebrated the arrival of the New Year in full-bore domesticated style, butts planted on the couch watching TV. Drinking and nudity were had in abundance, but primarily in the form of nursing and diaper changes. Some drug use, too – with cough syrup as the drug of choice for the three of us fighting off sinus infections.

The real excitement of the evening was skipping all the Times Square tripe on the tube and catching up on the first half of the first season of Lost. I highly recommend it, by the way; both the show and the DVD set as a means of watching it. We scoffed at the commercial breaks; we popped episodes one after another like crack-flavored potato chips. The power went out shortly after midnight – probably the result of a badly-supervised teenager with too many fireworks at his disposal – so we switched the DVDs over to my laptop until the battery was almost dead. The power came on just as we crawled into bed about three in the morning.

The biggest change of the coming year, my newborn son, continues to be an enigma to me. The tricks of handling a newborn have long faded from my memory as Alex has grown up into a wonderful boy with ever-better communications skills. When Nate is unhappy, Nate just screams or cries, and there’s almost nothing Daddy can do to console him. Even Alex, who has been very loving so far, muttered at one point, “Baby go home!”

Dineen will be taking a few weeks off work and her mother is staying with us for a bit longer, so between the two of them they’ll be able to get Nate adjusted to living here, which will allow the rest of us to adjust to Nate living here. In the meantime, we’ll all be struggling to get enough sleep. I may end up taking involuntary naps at work.

The couch, it beckons.

There may be no expression of the Christmas spirit than this one carol:

Joy to the world!
The Lord is come.
Let earth receive her king.
Let every heart
Prepare him room;
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven, and heaven and nature sing

Joy to the world!
The savior reigns.
Let men their songs employ.
While fields and flood
Rocks, hills, and plains;
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat the sounding joy

May there be joy to you and all those in your world this Christmas.

Growing up in Florida, we never had white Christmases, so we had to find or make our beauty elsewhere. Our neighborhood found it in the luminaria, a tradition from the Southwest that founds its warm to other warm climates.

Every Christmas Eve, we would get a bucketful of sand, a stack of paper bags, and some plain taper candles. Each bag got a one-inch cuff at the top, a couple of inches of sand at the bottom, and one candle. We lined the streetfront and sometimes the driveway with bags spaced about three feet apart.

At 7pm, the streetlights went dark and the candles came to life. Every street and home, on this one night, glowed as if by magic.

This year, for the first time in many years, I’m going to be doing this myself. My new neighborhood north of Tampa doesn’t yet seem to be aware of the tradition, but I’ve got years of experience as a kid and even better, I’ve got a corner lot.

It’s going to look fantastic. I’m hoping that within two years, this entire neighborhood will glow.

It’s a sign of the times when even your Christmas tree ornaments are at war.

There are few moments in a man’s life when the veil separating the absolutely mundane from total bone-shaking terror parts and allows the two to mix. Today I had just such a moment, putting Christmas lights on our house for the first time.

Generations of received wisdom dictate that properly placed lights run along the roofline. On our house, portions of the roofline hang twenty feet or higher in the air – more than three times my height. Leaning over with a drill in one hand, a power screwdriver in the other, and hardware clamped firmly between my lips would be unsettling even in with the best of support underfoot. But my so-called “Gorilla Ladder,” extended to that height, performs less like an 800-pound primate and more like a ferret on crystal meth – shaky, unstable, and apt to bite you at any minute.

Only the narrow rung digging through the rubber soles of my shoes held me aloft as I juggled drill, screwdriver, screws, and bracket with one hand, punching hole after hole into the roof overhang with the other. The concrete of the driveway and front walk covered the ground miles below. Heart pounding in my throat, I punched in the last of the brackets and dropped carefully down the trembling ladder.

I can only hope decorating the Christmas tree is less intimidating – it’s only eight feet high.

UPDATE: See? This is what I was afraid of. Lump of coal to Brad for the link.

I’m thankful for after-dinner naps.

Dineen found that an Amazon.com search for “christmas stocking” includes some results which might surprise Mrs. Claus.