New experiences

In all my years of shooting, I have never once engaged in Trap or Skeet.

Until today.

Damn, I can see my money getting used up quick on that.  That's way too much fun.

SSDD

Same Shit, Different Day.  Is there anyone who's actually surprised that Moochelle is her usual classless self?

Michelle Obama and three of her family members are staying in a $8,350-per-night Beijing presidential suite, but despite a 24-hour butler and other perks that come with the lodging, her entourage has inconvenienced 'pretty much everyone' and made the hotel staff 'fed up,' a well-placed hotel staffer has told MailOnline.

The sumptuous pad at the Westin Beijing Chaoyang hotel – its website calls the room 'an oasis of comfort – is a 3,400-square-foot masterpiece including a private steam room, 'corner sofas with silk pillows,' and in-room dining for six. 

But the Obamas' stay has already affected staff and guests at the hotel, with the Westin front-desk veteran alleging that Mrs. Obama's mother Marian Robinson has been 'barking at the staff since she arrived.' 

Not only do Barry and Moochelle waste hundreds of millions of US Taxpayer dollars on their world vacations, but they ruin the day for everyone else around them while they do so.  They are the Ugly Americans.  Classless, clueless, hopeless.   I cannot wait until they finally leave the White House, and I'm pretty sure that most of the civilized world feels the same way.

!!!!!

Be careful for what you ask....

Since I had a request to continue this story.....


So there I was, seated upon the porcelain throne Monday morning, enjoying the peace and quiet that normally accompanies being up early and having the loo to yourself, when the earth moved.  A normal stress reaction is to have your sphincter clench up.  So when my porcelain throne began bouncing up and down and side to side, my body does what a body does when caught in a stressful situation and clenched up.

However, since I was halfway through the act when I clenched up, it had a two-fold effect; it was one part defecatus interruptus, and one part rocket-propelled poo, as my body's reaction to the entire house bouncing like a trampoline being abused by Micheal Moore caused my lower intestine to empty out at the speed of light.  I was alternately caught halfway between painful constipation and crapping at such velocity that it caused a backsplash that wet my nethers and required quite a bit of ass-wipe to dry completely.

And as I said, the first thought in my head was "I'd better flush this before we lose water."

Luckily there was no interruption of services, as the earthquake and the noise the dogs were making woke up the Ragin' Mrs., who had to use the facilities herself immediately upon getting out of bed.

I'd been through other earthquakes before, including the Nisqually earthquake in Seattle in 2001.  But I'd never been through anything like that while in the middle of deep contemplation, as it were.  It was an interesting experience.

So... ahem....

Apparently someone wrote a piece about the "sorrows" of monogamy.

What a load of crap.  Let me just excerpt a small part.

In Jones’s view, long-married humans confronting boredom have three basic coping “strategies” to choose among. Some spouses become “quashers,” resigning themselves to their sexless fate either bitterly or with frenetic, Facebook-posting cheer. “Sneakers” stalk old flames online.

(.....)

Unexpectedly, however, Jones reserves his most astutely acerbic commentary for the third group, marriage “restorers.” “Overachieving” restorer couples (according to him, there are no underachievers in this cohort) are typically “affluent, educated, successful, and highly motivated,” and they attack their sexual malaise as a project:

Look, folks - I speak as a monogamous man, happily married, who has been together with the same woman for over a decade:

As long as you work on keeping your marriage strong, the sex just gets better.

There are plenty of married folks out there who seem to think that once the ring is on the finger, all work towards improving the marriage or making yourself presentable to your spouse can end.  Those people are idiots, and it's no wonder they're bored with monogamy.  Then there are the general assholes, who look at marriage as a way to control the spouse.  Those people are also idiots.  Got it.  Great.

But if you put the same amount of effort into your marriage as you put into getting your spouse to marry you in the first place?  If you and your spouse constantly work to keep your relationship strong?

Mind.  Blowing.  Sex.  Peel-paint-off-the-walls sex.  Curl your toes and straighten your hair sex.  Make the neighbors call the cops due to the noise sex.

Just because I got married didn't mean that I stopped dating my wife.  We go on dates.  We watch movies together on the couch.  We do all the same things we did when we were dating and more.  And our sex life is better now than it's ever been.  Because we both care enough about each other not NOT take each other for granted.  We don't just expect that life will go on without any effort on our part.  And as we've grown in our relationship and our love for each other, we've found out even more about what makes each other tick, and what trips our triggers. 

Monogamy is not boring.  If you're bored with monogamy, you're bored with your relationship, and that's a signal that there are huge problems in your marriage.  It's not the sex that's bad, it's your marriage.

The Modern Man

Taken from John C. Wright's blogpost, which of course is a must read.

Now, an odd suspicion should be growing in the mind of the reader at this point, having heard this list of passions. These are all matters the modern men, especially men of the Left, the cynics and nihilists, have taken particular pains to mock and deride.

Lust and fornication, the moderns certainly admire and support, but lust and romance are opposites, even as fornication and marriage are opposites. The idea of a bride and bridegroom both coming to the marriage bower as virgins and cleaving to each other in tender yet fierce mutual adoration, worshiping each other with their bodies, and forswearing all other partners, this is an image the moderns find repellant, if not incomprehensible. It reminds them of the suburbs, or white picket fences, or Ozzie and Harriet. To them it is saccharine and nauseating. The only marriages they favor are gay marriages.

As for glory and honor and patriotism, love of chivalry and love of nation, the modern mind regard these things with distaste or disgust or even horror. They are regarded as machismo, as sinister attempts to oppress the weak, or to glorify violence and aggression. Patriotism to the modern man is bigotry, and vile; love of God they dismiss as superstition. The moderns have an insolent double standard: The superstition is harmless or even admirable, in an avuncular and condescending way, when practiced by Mohammedans or Buddhists or Animists, but it is an appalling enemy of enlightenment and progress when practiced by Christians.

The mere fact that a matter so basic as the difference between the emotions called appetites and the emotions called passions needs here to be introduced is itself a symptom of the disease that afflicts the modern mind, and hence part of this autopsy.

 Well, go read the rest!  It involves the Lord of the Rings!

Relatives showed up yesterday

No, that's not a euphemism.  In-laws.  My in-laws lack the ability to plan ahead, or to inform anyone else of their plans, so I got the call from the Ragin' Mrs that they were inbound and due to arrive in a few hours.

They were home when I got here after work.  Had a good dinner, drank a glass of wine, and then they were off on their trip.  Took up my evening, though.  Perhaps I'll post something substantive later.

You can't absolve yourself

Absolution requires repentance, correcting yourself, and restitution for your sins.  And I'm willing to bet that this rube who just self identified can't check any of those boxes.

You can't be absolved until you make reparation and correct or fix the damage you caused with your actions.

You can't absolve yourself, although the Me Generation obviously is so clueless about how the World actually works that they are unaware of this fact.  Hell, this brainless bint voted for the Marxist Messiah twice - she's already proven that she's on the lower end of the intelligence scale.

And Nature Said....

...."WHASSUP, BITCHES!  I'M IN YUR GROUND, RATTLIN' YUR BASE!"

4.4 magnitude.  Not a huge one, and it was quick enough that by the time it was over I just realized what it was.  At first I thought a truck had driven into our house. 

And no kidding, I was on the throne for my morning constitutional when it hit.  My first thought after the floor stopped shaking was "I'd better flush this before we lose water!"

The things you think about.....

Saint Patrick's Day

Yes, he is a real Saint in the Catholic Church.  And yes I'm Irish on my Dad's side so we celebrate St. Paddy's day here in the Ragin' household.

I quartered an onion and set the pieces in our crockpot.  Then I put a corned beef on top of that onion.  Then I poured Guinness into the crockpot up to the bottom of the corned beef.  Put a lid on it, crank it up to high for about two hours, and then turn it to low for the rest of the time.

It's been cooking since last night.

It's going to be awesome.

The wife is going to make an appropriate potato, leek and bacon dish to go with it.  I'm a lucky man.

Catholicism 101, Part 1

OK, since Erin asked, I'll try to answer.  I can't say that I'm the best person to explain Catholicism, but here we go.

First, for those who don't really know much about the Catholic Church, let's start with the fact that the modern Catholic Church as most people today know it is fairly new.  The modern church follows the rules laid out by the Second Vatican Council in 1965, or Vatican II as it's popularly known.  Prior to Vatican II, the Mass offered by Catholic churches world wide was the Tridentine Mass.  That's the Latin Mass.  The modern Catholic church service is known as the Novus Ordo.

I was raised in a Novus Ordo church.  I also walked away from it once I left my parent's house and started living on my own.  My return to the church started when I started thinking about marriage, and has to this point brought me back to the Tridentine Rite.

In my opinion, the Novus Ordo mass is the Catholic Mass with the spirituality and beauty removed.

Let's talk about a few of the fundamentals of Catholic faith, shall we?  First and foremost, we believe that Christ is present on the alter at Mass.  A priest doesn't "say" mass, he offers the sacrifice of the Mass.  We believe that Christ is present in the Tabernacle, which is why Catholics are supposed to genuflect before they sit in a pew.  Christ is our God and Savior.  We treat him as higher than any king who lived on the Earth.  I won't bow or kneel for any man or woman on this planet; I kneel before God and God alone.

When the priest consecrates the Eucharist, God is present in the Host.  That little wafer of bread?  Yep.  Trans-substantiation.  In effect, the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ.  In the traditional Mass, when you take Communion (receiving the Eucharist), you kneel as you receive the body of Christ.  There is an alter server or deacon holding a plate under your chin just in case the priest drops the Eucharist, or you fail to keep it in your mouth.  Why?  Because you do not drop Christ on the floor,  period.

I suppose that there are a lot of folks out there wondering just why the hell Catholics are so darn caught up in the Body and Blood thing.  Well, because Christ himself commanded it.  "Take this, all of you, and eat it.  This is my body, which will be given up for you and for many."  The Mass is the bloodless recreation of God's sacrifice for us, and he has commanded us to perform that sacrifice.  So we do.

For those who wonder about the whole "Sit, stand, kneel, stand, sit, kneel, Sunday Calisthenics!" that Catholics do, it's pretty simple.  You stand for the entrance/exit of the Priest, and you stand for the word of God in the Gospels.  You kneel as you pray, and you sit for everything else.

I think that's about all I can write for today - my scattered thought patterns are pretty darn evident in my writing at this point.  In Part 2 I'll go over the Virgin Mary, who is an important person in the Catholic and Orthodox churches.