My views on politics, life, death, the army, and other things too miscellaneous to mention here. This is a personal blog. This blog is 100% factual.
Bill Duckwing
Poet, Author, Journalist
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Your Super-Cute Daily Terror Alert Update Will Be Forevermore:
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"There are some myths and untruths surrounding the role God plays in our daily lives. To say that religion and politics do not mix, is certainly a myth, unless you ask a liberal. Anything that affects a Christian (and voting is one of them) — enters into the religious realm. Trying to separate the two is like trying to separate oil from a glass of water, it's impossible to do. "
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Monday, March 27, 2006
Jesus Fucking Christ, George Mason
I only caught part of the first half and all of the second of the game last night against UConn, but jeez louise if I can't figure out this outcome.
Wow. The game really had it all -GMU would be 12 points behind or something and you'd be like that's all to be expected, and then you'd start to fix dinner and relax a bit. But then GMU would be all like fuck that, and then went ahead and pulled all these 3-pointers out of their asses, and then they'd be like fuck that shit again, and go ahead and totally out-rebound these UConn guys who should normally be able take every ball that drops from any distance higher than their arm's length, and then minutes later you're burning your steak on the stovetop because you're screaming your ass off at the TV screen. Because for some stupid reason, you're actually witnessing David vs. Goliath in real time in the real world on your fucking TV set.
It was the most incredible, most emotional game I've ever seen in my entire life. It was like watching "Hoosiers" without the need to add in any dramatic bullshit to get the tear ducts working.
The movie version of this is going to fucking kick ass. They should call it "Masons." Holy fuck.
I mean, fucking George Mason University. Maybe the fact that they're local serves up love on my appreciation of them, but really, the only reason I know that these guys exist is because I went to the Patriots Gymnasium this one time to watch the Barenaked Ladies play. This was years ago. I remember that Train was also there. Also, Five for Fighting. You cannot make this shit up. The "Superman" song from Five fo Fi was kinda cool because the guy did it all solo with his guitar, and 9/11 had occured only a few months ago. Still, it was a piece of shit all ages concert where beer was served in an enclosed beer prison where strangers would pay 8 dollars to drink a small plastic cup of Budwiser and then stare and wink at each other and pretend they weren't closet alcoholics. Other than that, I really have no idea why I would care enough to think about George Mason University or think anything of it at all.
But after last night, I'm pretty sure I'll never be able to forget them again.
I mean, seriously...
-duckwing, at 10:08 PM
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Wednesday, March 22, 2006
A Robot’s Christmas in Wales
One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant bleating of the noises I sometimes hear a moment before I shut myself off, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.
 All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the flamebots.
It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her “son” J.I.M. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland, though there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, J.I.M. and I, fur-capped and moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green glass of their eyes. The wise cats never appeared.
We were so still, Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen in the muffling silence of the eternal snows - eternal, ever since Wednesday - that we never heard Mrs. Prothero's first bleet from her igloo at the bottom of the garden. Or, if we heard it at all, it was, to us, like the far-off challenge of our enemy and prey, the neighbor's polar cat. But soon the noise grew louder.
"Beep!" cried Mrs. Prothero, and she beat the dinner-gong.
And we ran down the garden, with the snowballs in our arms, toward the house; and smoke, indeed, was pouring out of the dining-room, and the gong was bombilating, and Mrs. Prothero was announcing ruin like a shrieking and buzzing massive old computer system with a barrage of blinking lights. This was better than all the cats in Wales standing on the wall in a row. We bounded into the house, laden with snowballs, and stopped at the open door of the smoke-filled room.
Something was burning all right; perhaps it was Mr. Prothero, who always shut himself off there after midday dinner with draped cloth over his face. But he was standing in the middle of the room, saying, "BEEP BEEP WHIRRRRRRR!!!" and smacking at the smoke with a slipper.
"DOOP CHK DEEP," cried Mrs. Prothero as she beat the gong. "Cli-chuck Whirr-whirr-whir EEEEEEEEEEEEE," said Mr. Prothero, “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE."
There was no fire to be seen, only clouds of smoke and Mr. Prothero standing in the middle of them, waving his slipper as though he were conducting. "Beep boop tweet," he said. And we threw all our snowballs into the smoke - I think we missed Mr. Prothero - and ran out of the house to the telephone box. "Chuch-chuch," J.I.M. said. "Blop BLeep." "Whrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr."
But we only called the fire brigade, and soon the fire engine came and three tall robots in helmets brought a hose into the house and Mr. Prothero got out just in time before they turned it on. Nobody could have had a noisier Christmas Eve. And when the flamebots turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, J.I.M.’s “Aunt”, Miss. Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. J.I.M. and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall flamebots in their shining helmets, standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, "Hello…I am a Pyrotechnic Robotic Organism Trained for Hazardous Exploration and Rational Observation, or P.R.O.T.H.E.R.O. How may I be of service?"
Millions of years ago, before the Age of Robots, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when the humans sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before sleek spaceships could go the speed of light, when they rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed. But here a newly manufactured robot says: "Wee-bobooboboboboobobbobobo-BEEPBEEP."
"Bloop beeb boopboop," I say. "chchcuck whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr."
"Beep?"
"chck WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-chic-chuch."
"Bweep boop weet?"
"WHIRRRR-WHIRRRR."
"WHIRRRRRRRRRRR."
"WHIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR."
"Boop Beep Boo?"
"Chichic-chuck-EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE."
"ER-beep beep?"
"bloop…….bloop……….bloop……..bloop ...."
"beep……..beep…………beep………beeoop...."
"Che-chik zoot zoot."
"Zoot zoot?"
"Beee….whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr "WHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRRRRRRRRRRR
RRRRRRRRRR"
"Beep." "Beep."
"Bawagabawaga….zzzzzzwwwwwwwweetetetetee."
"Beep."
"Szooo beep boop WEE TEE TEET?"
"WE ARE HERE TO PROTECT AND SERVE MANKIND."
Not many those mornings trod the piling streets: an old droid about to be dismantled always, fawn-bowlered, yellow-gloved and, at this time of year, with spats of snow, would take his constitutional to the white bowling green and back, as he would take it wet or fire on Christmas Day or Doomsday; sometimes two hale newer prototypes, with faux pipes blazing, no overcoats and wind blown scarfs, would trudge, not beeping, down to the forlorn sea, to determine if a trip to the factory for robot upgrades were necessary, to blow away the fumes, who knows, to walk into the waves until nothing of them was left but the two furling smoke clouds of their inextinguishable briars. Then I would be slap-dashing home, the gravy smell of the dinners of others, the bird smell, the brandy, the pudding and mince, coiling up to my imaginary nostrils (oh to be like the human!), when out of a snow-clogged side lane would come another robot of the same model and type of myself, with a pink-topped memory stick storing pictures of a young human smoking in the street, and the violet past of a damaged light sensor, cocky as a bullfinch, leering all to himself.
I hated him on sight and sound, and would be about to put my dog whistle to my interior heatsink cooling fan and blow him off the face of Christmas when suddenly he, with a violet wink, put his whistle to his heatsink cooling fan and blew so stridently, so high, so exquisitely loud, that gobbling facets, their processors overheated with heat, would press against their tinsled windows, the whole length of the white echoing street. For dinner we stared at plastic turkey and blazing pudding, and after dinner the “Uncles” sat in front of the fire, loosened all bolts with a cresent wrench, put their large shiny hands over their watch chains, groaned a little and turned themselves off. “Mothers”, “aunts” and “sisters” scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. “Auntie Bessie”, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse, whimpered at the sideboard and stared at some elderberry wine. The dog had died out centuries ago. “Auntie Dosie” had to be content to stare upon three aspirins, but “Auntie Hannah”, who liked port, stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, beeping like a big-bosomed thrush. I would blow up balloons to see how big they would blow up to; and, when they burst, which they all did, the “Uncles” jumped and rumbled. In the rich and heavy afternoon, the Uncles processing like dolphins and the snow descending, I would sit among festoons and Chinese lanterns and crush dates between my steel fingers and try to make a model man-o'-war, following the Instructions for Little Engineers, and produce what might be mistaken for a sea-going tramcar.
Or I would go out, my bright new boots squeaking, into the white world, on to the seaward hill, to call on J.I.M. and D.A.N. and J.A.C.K. and to pad through the still streets, leaving huge footprints on the hidden pavements.
"Bweeto…BEEPBEEPBEEP!"
"Bloop Beep?"
"Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr."
"Beep?"
Iron-flanked and bellowing he-hippos clanked and battered through the scudding snow toward us as we passed Mr. Daniel's house.
"Whirrrrrrrr."
"Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr."
"Whirrrrrrrrrrr…bee-beep." Or we walked on the white shore. "Beep?"
The silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea. Now we were snow-blind travelers lost on the north hills, and vast ancient skeletons of deceased dogs, with flasks round their necks, were up to us by their tormented “owners”, baying nothing. We returned home through the poor streets where only a few beta versions fumbled with bare steel fingers in the wheel-rutted snow and beeped after us, their noises fading away, as we trudged uphill, into the cries of the dock birds and the hooting of cargo space convoys out in the whirling bay. And then, at “tea” the recovered “Uncles” would be jolly; and the ice cake loomed in the center of the table like a marble grave. “Auntie Hannah” laced her “tea” with “rum”, because it was only once a year.
Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the stairs and the gas meter ticked. And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't the shaving of a moon to light the flying streets. At the end of a long road was a drive that led to a large house, and we stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand in case, and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant and maybe webfooted robots wheezing in caves. We reached the black bulk of the house. "Beep? Beep beep?"
"Chik," J.A.C.K. said, "Beep Beep Beep." One, two three, and we began to emitting sounds, our noises high and seemingly distant in the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied by nobody we knew. We stood close together, near the dark door. Good King Wencelas looked out On the Feast of Stephen ... And then a small, dry noise, like the noise of something who has not spoken for a long time, joined our bleeting: a small, dry, eggshell noise from the other side of the door: a small dry noise through the keyhole. And when we stopped running we were outside our house; the front room was lovely; balloons floated under the hot-water-bottle-gulping gas; everything was good again and shone over the town.
"Beeeeeeeeeep bloop," J.I.M. said.
"Beeeeeeeeeeeep blooooop," D.A.N. said, who was always reading.
"Whiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr," J.A.C.K. said. And we did that.
Always on Christmas night there was music. An “uncle” opened fiddle.mp3, a cousin beeped a MIDI version of "Cherry Ripe," and another “uncle” MIDIed "Drake's Drum." Checking my internal thermostat, it appeared very warm in the little house. “Auntie Hannah”, who had moved on to examining a parsnip wine, MIDIed a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said an ancient human’s heart was like a Bird's Nest; whatever the hell that meant; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the bleeting sounds rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I opened some maintainance programs to the close and holy darkness, and then I shut myself off.
-duckwing, at 10:58 AM
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Tuesday, March 14, 2006
How Much Lower Can Bush's Poll Numbers Sink?
You know, even though Harry Belafonte is a total fucking liberal asshole who should be excommunicated from the United States of America because he talks treason whenever he's in Cuba or some fucking country like Venezuala or whatever fucking country it is assholes like Harry Belefonte come from, I still sure love me some calypso.
"How low can you go?"
Yeah, that's right! I'll be doing the calypso all over this place tonight, boys and gals. Shoot me a guess -he's been in the 30's since, like since forever, right? Do you think he'd Nixon out in the 20's, or even further than that? Isn't this post a little weird, when you think about it? Isn't it strange that in one post, presumably jovial about Bush's low poll numbers, I was able to take a stronger and way more offensive strike at Harry Belefonte, for absolutely no reason whatsoever?
Isn't that something...
-duckwing, at 10:01 PM
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Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Was my last post actually in November?
Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick! That isn't good!
I know I said I wasn't going to come back, but I don't think anything I've said about where this site was going ended up being the truth.
The house of cards seems to have some super glue keeping the loose joints together. So, well that sucks, so we're going to have to do some serious thinking about that.
So yeah, I'm back for 2006.
-duckwing, at 9:39 PM
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