• Neither shaken, stirred, nor concussed!

    All right!

    So, I was on my way downstairs to write you a post. I’d been upstairs thinking on this one for almost an hour now. You know, that time on the weekend when you don’t have anything you have to do, you’ve slept-in like a teenager, and you’re awake but you don’t feel like getting out of bed… so you don’t.

    Sorry, I know I’m mostly speaking to adults here. I don’t mean to brag.

    Well, it was that kind of morning. I spent some quality time thinking up a great post, filled with some old-school nonsense and JK style humor. I was walking down the stairs with a little bit of hop to my giddy-up, and now I’m writing this post instead.

    I did something I haven’t done much in my life, mostly due to a lack of opportunity. I really should have guessed by now. Stairs are not your friend. They should always be treated with respect. NEVER take them lightly, especially when you’ve got a little hop to your giddy-up.

    I fell down the f…ing stairs. F…! Effing Ess! Frack me and the %&#@ing slippery socks I walked in on!

    I’m mostly all right. No broken bones or torn ligaments. No brains were concussed, overly shaken, or stirred. Cheryl was kind of wound up though. This wasn’t the kind of mishap that happens on stair 8 of 10, where the potential energy is rapidly diminishing. This started at the top, man! A tumble may have been involved.

    We’re eagerly waiting to see how my neck and back will fare in the hours to come.

  • States Rights Attack!

    Am I the only one who hears folks yelling about the Constitution and State’s Rights in the same breath, and feels their irony senses start to tingle?

    Let me get the obvious out of the way:

    1. I’m not a Constitutional Scholar
    2. I didn’t play one on TV

    While I’m at it, let me get the less obvious out of the way too:

    1. I’m not a historian
    2. I don’t think I’m smarter than the average bear
    3. I didn’t stay in a Holiday Inn last night

    I’m not even a history buff, though you might say I’m an intermittent, amateur historian. As such, I’ve been slogging through The Federalist Papers over the last year or so. I open up the copy on my Kindle when I’m having trouble sleeping.

    Anyhoo, back to irony.

    As I understand it, the US Constitution arose from the anarchy and ashes of the Articles of Confederation – a government (if you could really call it one) where the original states had ALL of the rights… and all of the power. My recollection from high school history was that in it’s earliest days our government was a chaotic mess, and the Constitution’s chief aim was to reign in the chaos by shifting some power away from the states, to the central government.

    Alexander Hamilton in Federalist #1:

    “Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new Constitution will have to encounter may readily be distinguished the obvious interest of a certain class of men in every State to resist all changes which may hazard a diminution of the power, emolument, and consequence of the offices they hold under the State establishments….”

    Yep, I dove deep for that one, eh? All the way down to the first sentence of the third paragraph of the fist essay.

    We could argue all day and into the next millennium about how much power the Constitution shifts to the central government, but I don’t think anyone can argue it does. Well, you could… but you’d be wrong.

    So this is what’s going through my head when someone starts popping off about The Constitution! The Tenth Amendment! States Rights!

    I wonder if they’re familiar with the history of the document they invoke, sometimes with a bit of angry spittle.

  • Breakable

    I wasn’t aware of this until recently, but my children treat me like I’m old and frail – like my bones are made of glass and my internals pop like a soap bubble. I don’t remember doing this with my father, but then this may say more about me than my son. My dad always seemed fairly rugged. Mind you – and I think he’d admit this himself – he’s not what you’d call a physical specimen. Folks don’t walk down the street, look at my dad, and say: “that dude’s more likely to break me than get broken.” But if we were out playing catch and he fell, I wouldn’t rush to his side asking (worriedly), “are you ok?”

    Two weeks ago I got out my old Aerobie. I dove for an errant throw, rolled through a fall, and slowly got up. Adam did the worried-rush over I described above. Incensed, I turned to him and said, “Adam, I’m not that fragile.”

    Of course, much of this week my back and neck have been killing me, but surely that’s just coincidence.