As you read this, I’m on the way back to Florida from Tennessee. A day after my mom’s mini-stroke, she had another one, and spent Thursday night in the hospital as a precaution. So I drove up to spend some time with her, arriving just as she got back from the hospital.
I had a great time with her, my sister and brother-in-law. Mom once again bounced back quickly, and was walking around and taking care of business, albeit with a little weakness on her left side. She was in great spirits, though her speech is still a little slurred, especially when she’s tired. Her prognosis is good; her blood pressure is lower again, and the tests she had done show no brain damage. She’s meeting with the doc on Tuesday, to follow up and set up some speech therapy, and maybe some physical therapy too.
But we laughed as much in the last 48 hours as we ever have. We talked for hours, about everything, and my sister and I developed great comic impressions of mom’s slight speech slurring.
I know: that sounds terrible. Maybe you need to know my family, but mom laughed until she was crying, and all three of us had to catch our breath multiple times. The only normal one there was my bro-in-law Jimmy, and he just shook his head, watching us carrying on like lunatics.
There’s nothing like family, and I appreciate the good wishes and prayers you all have sent along for mom this last week!
So this column will be a little shorter than usual, because I just have a few notes on stories that I saw before I got the news and headed north on Friday.
First up, the Miss Universe pageant was recently bought by a dude who thinks he’s a woman, and the contest was won last year by another dude in a dress. Which is great, because people are really ready for unattractive guys to elbow aside actual women – with their yucky feminity and their .7 waist-to-hip ratios – in beauty pageants.
Annnnnndddddd… they’ve filed for bankruptcy. The boy/girl boss says that the pageant is experiencing a “liquidity problem.”
I’m no international beauty pageant expert – although my wife and both daughters could win a series of them – but I don’t think they’ve got a liquidity problem, but a rigidity problem.
As in, half of the “girls” in the last bathing suit competition had visible erections.
Next, it’s been said that “violence is never justified,” which is a companion-piece to the bromide, “War is Never the Answer.” That last statement is obviously wrong. For example, when either, “Hitler?” “Hamas?” Or “Communist Invasion?” is the question, then war is the best answer, 3 out of 3 times.
Similarly, violence is often a solution – and even the optimal response – if you or someone around you is being attacked or menaced.
An illustration of this truth could be found last week in the student band section at a Texas Southern football game. I know, it’s a cliché because it’s true: just like drug cartels and biker gangs, college marching bands have a fearsome reputation for their routinely horrifying acts of violence.
This story was no different.
So the marching band is playing in the stands, and some moron is relentlessly heckling a tuba player in the middle of a song. Because, I guess, tuba hecklers gotta tuba heckle? The jerk is holding some kind of a beverage (I’m guessing not orange juice) and he’s screaming in the face of a dedicated tuba-ist. (Tuba-er?)
After at least a solid minute of this in the video that I saw (and for all we know the heckling could have been going on a lot longer at that point), the intrepid tuba-nator – without putting down the tuba, mind you – threw four right jabs of varying quality.
None of those punches would make an onlooker think that maybe a retired Mike Tyson has joined the tuba section at Texas Southern. But in Tuba Man’s defense, you may have noticed that no heavyweight fight in history has featured two big guys trying to turn each other’s lights out while carrying a tuba in their off hand.
Though if that’s ever done in a pay-per-view, I’m in!
Anyway, the fourth jab laid the heckler out flat. (The non-orange juice may have been a factor.) And my man on the tuba got right back into the song. (“Where was I? Oh yeah… blat blat, blat blat, etc.”)
The story says that the incident is being investigated… I hope as part of an evaluation process for potentially awarding the tuba guy with the Texas Southern version of a meritorious service medal.
But for now, I salute you, Texas Southern Tuba Player.
And if I may suggest a new motto for the school’s tuba section: “Tex-Southern Tubas: Playing some brass, and handing out naps!”
Finally, you’ve probably seen the story about the fed-up guy in Panama who shot two arrogant environmentalist narcissists who had been blocking a freeway for many days, at a cost of $80 million per day in lost revenue, in addition to putting people’s lives in danger who might require medical help.
Tragically, the two road-blockers died, and the shooter is likely to face heavy consequences. And while the kind of entitled idiots who engage in these kinds of stunts deserve a butt kicking, they don’t deserve to die.
But I think that this incident makes a larger point: when government purposely does NOT do its fundamental duty of enforcing law and order, the people will eventually be forced to do it, and many people are not going to like the results.
This is an extreme example, but we’ve seen others, as when leftists and corrupt media (but I repeat myself) attacked and smeared Kyle Rittenhouse as the embodiment of a white supremacist vigilante. Never mind that they were 180 degrees wrong, as usual – Rittenhouse was no vigilante, and the four violent criminals he shot in self-defense were all as white at Liz Warren (#wemustneverstopmockingher).
But he never would have been forced to shoot those creeps if the Dems who ran Wisconsin and Kenosha hadn’t totally abdicated their responsibility to protect law-abiding citizens and their property from marauding mobs of violent leftists. Those mobs did all kinds of damage to Kenosha homes and businesses in the days leading up to Rittenhouse’s famous degenerate-eradication incident, and the cops did nothing to stop them.
So the next night, when they were doing it again, some citizens resisted, in acts of completely justified self-defense.
If our corrupt and negligent government continues to do more of the same, expect more of the same from law-abiding citizens, especially if the police are made to stand down in the face of the anti-Semitic thugs – to pick just one example – that we suddenly find among us.
If they keep it up, they’re going to find themselves confronted with an army of Rittenhouses and Texas Southern tuba sections, and they are not going to enjoy the outcome!
Hamas delenda est!
Martin Simpson 