The driver-less Klown Kar of State, powered by some arcane Google algorithm, continues to hurtle down the road this morning, and needs no comment from me, though you know I will anyway on the way to something else.

I mean, really. The Secretary of State of the United States of America actually stumbled through some mangled syntax the other day about the murders of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists being justified- or justifiable. He caught himself, but his correction was almost as bad, and betrays the goofy worldview that got us in this mess. Seeking to differentiate the kinds of murder Islamic terrorists conduct, he issued a weird statement. I will let the Secretary speak for himself, though he probably shouldn’t:

“There’s something different about what happened (in Paris) from Charlie Hebdo, and I think everybody would feel that. There was a sort of particularized focus and perhaps even a legitimacy in terms of – not a legitimacy, but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, okay, they’re really angry because of this and that.”

“This, and that” as grounds for justifiable homicide. Or sending James Taylor to France to sing them “You’ve Got A Friend” to demonstrate solidarity against murdering low-life scum. There appears to be a lot of that delusional thinking going around, since it sounds painfully like the tortured logic uttered by the front-runner in the Democratic Presidential campaign last December, when she described her ideas about Soft Power, a concept that succeeded so well in the disastrous Arab Spring:

“This includes leaving no one on the sidelines, showing respect even for one’s enemies, trying to understand and insofar as psychologically possible, empathize with their perspective and point of view.”

Gosh, I would hate to leave anyone on the sidelines, particularly homicidal barbarians. All we really need to do is crush them like the cockroaches they are. It is absurd. I could go on with quotes from all over our Government that demonstrate pretty graphically that the real threat to the national security is not ISIS, but people who are concerned about who comes to our shores. And Republicans, of course.

Insert Standard Declaimer Here: I am not a frigging Republican. I lean libertarian, but I retain something that apparently the Progressives have forgotten, or better said, never learned: Critical Thinking. This stuff is way easy.

Let’s try a simple exercise. Western Civilization is pretty cool. It has had its moments over the last two millennia, but in any modern criteria, it is better than an alien social-religious system largely unchanged from the 7th Century. I am not particularly religious, but I recently found proof of this in the soaring beauty of the Catholic Funeral Mass I attended before news of the Paris butchery began to spread, and the marvels of the Brahm’s Requiem at the Kennedy Center on Sunday.

Christians are not a bigger problem than Muslims, and there is no moral equivalency between them, as hard as tortured leftist syntax might try to assert. In fact, I don’t find Christianity to be a threat to anything in particular, except maybe not issuing marriage licenses in one county of a rural coal state where all the rest of them will, and happily. If you find that rises to the same level of insanity as throwing Gay people off buildings, or lopping off their heads, I would suggest therapy.

On the other hand, I consider a waxing Islam to be a threat to the way I like to live my life, gay, cisgender, purple or polka dot. Christians, writ large, accord women something approaching equality much more than the oppression and slavery with which they are treated by Islam. Oh, I do not accept Sharia Law, and will fight to the death any attempt to replace our Constitution and the rule of law with its tenets.

Which is sort of an odd way to get into a discussion about pillows, but trust me, this whole thing has been a real pain in the neck. Have you taken the pillowcase off and looked at your pillows lately?

I did the other day. I have been enjoying the slow decline into senility. There is something new and surprising to learn every day, which I promptly forget. The aches and pains are the most enjoyable. All the old injuries and insults to my body are back, crowding around one another to provide entertainment. The knees, the shoulders, but bum leg. The neck.

There doesn’t appear to be much I can do to remediate most of the sources of pain. I ran too much, crashed into too many immobile objects to expect that the joints would have survived undamaged. My brother Spike is exploring some options to deal with the knees, and I will allow him to blaze that particular trail.

The neck is something peculiar, though. I don’t know if the spreading paralysis that came on when Raven and Big Mamma were dying was from stress, or ancient blunt trauma, or a combination of both. It comes and it goes. One time, preparing for the 800-mile drive from the Old Dominion to The Little Village By the Bay, I had to painfully twist my entire torso to try to catch a glimpse of the passenger-side mirror in the Hubrismobile.

That eventually subsided to a dull ache, but like I said, it comes and goes.

I was listening to satellite radio on the way down to the farm the other day. I love the various genres that all have their own channels, country to old alt rock, classical, talk and everything. I think there is a Catholic channel; probably one with learned commentary by an Imam, too. That is what America is about, right?

The target demographic is mostly people like me, and long-haul truckers. We tend to be people of a certain age, and the potions and nostrums advertised are targeted at the aches and pains of entropy. I don’t listen to them very closely, and my eyes glaze over when a familiar one starts to ooze out of the dashboard, which can be a distinct threat to navigation. One struck me as being of immediate utility.

There is a guy named mike Lindell who sells pillows from his web site at www.mypillow.com. Odd line of work, but he is a specimen of the kinds of entrepreneur who made this nation great. His product is proudly made right in the USA- in Minnesota, where people spend a lot of time in bed in the winter. His ads talk about reducing arm and neck pain, and his ten-year quest has been to produce and distribute pillows that will alleviate it.

My particular pain in the neck may be exacerbated by the stress of living in one of the proclaimed ISIS targets, or not, but the steady low-level ache made the ad resonate.
I did some basic due-diligence on the matter (there are apparently people who did not read the instructions for initial use) and discovered my size and sleeping habits were suitable for a “White” model pillow- they have several, depending on your body mass and preferred position. I wound up ordering two of the queen-sized pillows for Big Pink and the farm. You can order direct from Mike, and get a two-for-one deal, but try as I might, I could not find the offer code and wound up buying from my go-to e-vender instead.

They arrived with that new Amazon speed of heat delivery. The pillows are constructed of a unique octo-surfaced foam filling and were rolled into two plastic-covered cylinders in the iconic brown box. I released them, saving the instruction that told me to run them in the dryer on regular heat for fifteen minutes.

Later, I did so, after watching them swell and recover their intended shape. I stripped the covers off the existing pillows and marveled at what was underneath them. They are old friends, and well used, but will need a trip to the dry cleaners before I get anywhere near them again.

I was actually looking forward to getting back from Lyon Hall and trying them out.

I am here to report on the results of day two of the trials. I successfully slept through the night twice. No shit. Down at 2130 and up at 0500. Relaxed, refreshed, and ready to believe two or three impossible things before breakfast.

Considering the number of pains in the neck we are expected to deal with each day, that is a real accomplishment. I give “My Pillow” five stars, and may go back to bed right now.

Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Editor’s Note: The Nagato saga will resume just as soon as the world settles down a bit. Probably before the election, ins’hallah.