From Austin, Texas.
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About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Recent Posts
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- Day 10: The Fascist Regime Blames a Plane Crash on Nonwhite People
God save us from your followers!
Don’t mistake Perry’s statements for anything more than one huge amount of pandering to his presumed base.
That could be just as easily directed to Michele Bachmann. Yesterday I saw that she claimed God is telling us, with an earthquake and a big-ass hurricane, that He is mad at us because we need to cut our big-government spending or some bullshit like that.
If He wanted us to do these things, maybe He could just make it so like God always does, right? But whatever…
And I thought He was mad at us for the Gay Marriages in New York. At least that’s what I was expecting to hear from the usual suspects.
The difference between Perry and Bachmann in this regard is that, with Perry, the sign reads as a church mocking a cynical politician for claiming that God is talking to him. The same sign directed at Bachmann would read like they were honestly suggesting that she had an undiagnosed mental illness.
That’s the difference between a political operator and true believer. When Perry says “God told him” to do something he sounds like a standard snake-oil salesman. When Bachmann says the same thing I do have to stop and wonder if she’s just really good at selling the snake oil of if she’s really hearing a voice telling her to do this stuff.
Same feeling I get. There is something about Bachmann which leads me to believe she would not be pandering if she claimed to actually hear the audible voice of god speaking directly to her. There are fundamentalists, and then there are FUNDAMENTALISTS.
She is the latter.
Just like Americans voted for a fake hero (Bush) over a real hero (Kerry), the fundy GOP base is favoring a fake fundy (Perry) over a real fundy (Bachmann). They loves them their snake oil.
She actually hears the voice. But she doesn’t know it’s actually her freaky husband whispering in her ear.
Not only does she believe she hears God’s voice, she seems to believe anyone else who claims that they do. Remember how she just gushed over Dubya at that SOTU address? She looked at him like he was the second-coming.
That girl is scary.
Here’s my first comment on my awesome new computer. It came just after noon today. Hurricane cost me a day.
Thanks everyone! I can’t wait for it to get dark so I can see the backlit keyboard display.
That backlit keyboard feature is awesome. I wish the keyboard on my desktop computer offered that. It’s nice typing in the dark.
I was thinking about that last night as I typed that Yuval Levin piece in the dark. I thought, after tomorrow I’ll wonder how I ever managed to do this.
But, “back in the day”, when I took typing in high school, you weren’t supposed to even look at the keyboard when you were typing. That got you a frown from the teacher.
But, in the digital age I guess that’s not a sin anymore……
Ah, the times they are a-changin’.
I’d guess I’m a bit younger than you, but had the same thing in typing class (though it was called ‘keyboarding’ in my school). I don’t get why anyone who spends all day in front of a computer wouldn’t put the effort to learn that skill, it’s such a time saver.
Plus, you don’t have to pause in your typing to watch TV or check out an attractive young lady walking by 😉
(or an attractive young man, for you ladies out there)
I never took typing. I took autoshop instead. But after using a computer for a few years, one day I realized that I was typing without looking. I don’t know how long I was doing it before I realized I was doing it.
Guess I’m in the opposite boat – I never took autoshop, but after 11 years of owning a Jetta there is very little I can’t repair on it 🙂
I would guess I am a bit older. When I was in high school, the closest we came to a computer class was something called “Data Processing”. It consisted of stacks and stacks of punch cards which held programs that you had to run through a collator to sort them and then a big, clunky, noisy metal box of some kind to generate a report of your executed program. I didn’t lay my fingers on a computer keyboard until my third year of college. And even then, you had to schedule your time on it days in advance. If you missed your appointment, you were screwed.
And no, I did not go to school at the same time as Thomas Edison.
One of my professors in college told us almost the exact same stories – so I’d guess you guys are probably about the same age. Or…you’re the same person! You didn’t happen to be a professor at University of Michigan, did you? 🙂
It is crazy to think about that now, isn’t it? Your average smart phone has processing power that would have put a campus full of computers from that era to shame. All so we can play “Angry Birds”.
We didn’t have smartphones, we had Texas Instrument Scientific Calculators. We were so deprived.
This is what I went through high school and college with. Oh, memories.
Oh you youngsters! I started with a slide rule in aeronautics class back in
theye olden times.I’m not even going to ask how far you had to walk to school, and at what angle of inclination the walk was (both ways of course). 🙂
Don’t forget barefoot – in the snow.
What, no abacus? Slide rules didn’t come around until, when?
Actually, I had one until Mrs. ID rendered it inoperative in her search for beads during our hippie phase circa 1968.
It was the TI 41 that got me through college. Just threw it away a few years ago. More keys stuck than didn’t.
I had that exact “device”. Circa 1978. Got me through stat class in college. That and a lot of fear and hard work.
As for Boo’s sign. See http://www.says-it.com/churchsigns/
Nice idea though.
It sounds like we are of the same “era”. That red LED display was cutting edge, man. Toted that thing around for some time.
I recognize that sumbitch.
I learned to spell SHELLOIL with numbers on that.
That’s what little brothers do with big brother’s stuff.
You know, even with my typos that I usually correct very quickly on screen, I still type very fast. I look at the keyboard as I think but I probably don’t need to, really. But I’d probably go blank if I didn’t watch my fingers dancing on the keys.
Back in the day, you were typing something hand-written that you were viewing on a sheet of paper on an easel next to the typewriter, right? Presumably written by your boss or hand-written dictation, because you would have been a secretary, right?
How times have changed. I do my own typing and I wouldn’t have it any other way. And how I type is my business. It took a while but I learned to think right in to the keyboard. I do alright, I think.
I should add that I have no trouble typing on my keyboard using an under-desk keyboard tray, where I can’t see the keyboard at all. But I can’t think of what to “say” usually when I do that. So I moved the keyboard to the desktop in front of the monitor which is about 2 1/2 feet in front of me. It’s comfy since most of my time is spent mousing instead of keying anyway.
I don’t look at the keyboard when I type, but I do need to have some orientation. Once I know where to start, I can type just fine in the dark. But I think a backlit computer will help me keep my orientation and I’ll have less typos.
Your keyboards don’t have the bumps on the ‘F’ and ‘J’? That’s how I find my place.
Probably 90% or more of the time I use my computer, my hands are not on the keyboard at all. Getting reacquainted with the keys anytime I need to punch in a username or password is maddening, just to then pull my hands away and go back to the mouse again. Gimme the back-lit keyboard so I can do it all with one hand.
Also, too. Sometimes the other hand is busy.
I hope you get the humor in that.
Yeah, I hate going back and forth too – but I’d say 98% of the time my hand isn’t on the mouse. I use keyboard shortcuts for as much as possible.
Of course, my job involves typing code out all day, so that’s why – not a lot of programming can be done with a mouse.
I do get the humor in that – but I’m happy to remain in the dark as far as how many hands are on your keyboard at any given moment 🙂
If I were a programmer, I would probably type by touch for the reasons you state. And I could be one but I’ve never done that as a trade, though I have alot of education in that area that has dropped out of my brain like unused foreign languages will. I’ve always been the Systems Engineer (Hardware infrastructure planning, etc) who spends much of his time in meetings and never types more than a 1/2 page email at a time. Most of my time in front of the computer is spent reading and I use the mouse pointer to keep my place on the screen. My wireless rechargeable mouse runs out of juice every few days and I have to plug it in. My wireless keyboard about once a year.
Please, please, please tell me it is because you are reaching for your drink.
I’m smoking a cigarette. Yeah, that’s it.
Well said. Me too.
Yeah. In the classroom for our high school typing class mumble years ago, two typewriters out of 15 or 20 had the letters on the keys. I came to class early on the first day to be sure I got one of those, and I learned to type looking at the keyboard. I have regretted that move ever since. I can touch type, sorta, if I concentrate hard enough, but any kind of special keys I have to stop and look.
Glad you’re back up and running! And at least the timing wasn’t so bad – think how much more inconvenient this would have been had it happened a couple weeks earlier in the middle of the debt crisis crap.
When’s your birthday? Maybe I’ll pick one of these up for you to wear while you’re patio blogging – it’ll also help to keep your current reading close at hand!
My B-day is coming up. It’s Sept. 18. Thankfully, it wasn’t a week earlier.
You have the same birthday as my grandpa, aka the greatest man I’ve ever known. He’s 87 years old, his memory is going, and he doesn’t get around very quickly. But if you locked him in a room with George W. Bush, my money is on my grandpa being the one walking back out.
That sign isn’t from Austin. The URL on the photo takes you to a site where you can put any text you want on a church sign and sundry other items. Not being pedantic here; just don’t want such a fun website to go unremarked!
sorry I slacked the last few days but the diary list is now cleaned up after a mass-smiting of spam.