Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader will take a guess that the Smallholder either received his new home PC and is playing; or he has traveled to visit relatives who have a good PC and a high-speed internet connection.

Just a guess.

Carry on.

Ally, the always insightful doyenne of Who Moved My Truth, points out that men and women think differently.

I agree.

Ladies, when you are analyzing the actions of your man, you are probably reading waaaaaay to much into things, kind of like Mr. Crowder did with Herman Hesse in tenth-grade English.

The Celibate likes to try to figure out what her dates are thinking.

Answer: Not much.

Would you like an illustration of this principle from Smallholder’s dating history?

Of course you would.

Freshman year of college. I had kept in contact with a couple casual girlfriends from high-school. I mean casual in that we were friends who occasionally kissed. No baggage or anything. In fact, one of the girls was also casually seeing my best friend - the currently MIA Minister of Propaganda. If I came home for a weekend, I might catch a movie with whoever was around. One might visit Longwood on the occasional Saturday. No commitment, or anything.

While I was off at Longwood, they became good friends. Never bothered to tell me about it. They knew they were both seeing me and weren’t upset by it.

So over Christmas break, a buddy and I decide to have a formal dinner and take friends caroling afterward. So I call one girl up - she was a singer - and asked if she wanted to be my date. She said sure, but couldn’t come to dinner because she had some kind of madrigal rehearsal. Cool.

Well, I get to talking with girl number two. She tells me that she has church that evening, and I figure, hey, I can have dinner with her before church. Completely innocent. Didn’t have an agenda or think it through at all.

But then they started talking about what they were doing over the weekend. They discover that one has a date with me at 6:00 and the other is meetng me at 8:00.

Now they knew that they were both seeing me. But evidently, by trying to see them both in the same evening, I had violated some horrible rule, so they drove over to my house to break up with me.

Together.

Tag-team.

Ouch.

I really wasn’t trying to be a scumbag. But evidently their analysis of my actions differed.

If only the Air Marshal had just posted a long, insightful essay chock full o’ philosophical goodness, only to see my irreverent quest to outdo Manning shove his post down the page.

Heh.

Did you read about the woman so desperate to have another baby that she killed a pregant woman and cut the baby out of her stomach?

It gets better.

She was caught because she was showing off “her” new baby. Among the show-off stops was her pastor.

She butchers a woman, then shows off the ill-gotten good of her crime to her pastor?

I’m so glad she is my co-religionist.

Jesus.

In Today’s Post.

Imagine if Christians who put all their energy into fighting court battles used their passion to, I don’t know, help the poor?

I could be wrong, but I thought that it was “render unto Caesar,” not “render Caesar prostrate before your political action committee.”

Jesus.

I’d hit on thefirst minion to find the Tom Lehrer homage in the previous post.

Smallholder@nakedvillainy.com

The Big Hominid has been fighting a running battle with his employers over wearing a lab coat to teach English classes.

Thanks very much.
I’m here through Sunday. Try the veal.

* We are the folksong army it doesn’t have to rhyme
** And it doesn’t matter if we put a couple of extra syllables into a line
*** Holla back young ‘uns! What? It works for rappers! What? Do I need more profanity?
**** What, gaijin is Japanese? Well aren’t you the Far East scholar?

You think Peyton Manning is a stud.

Ha. I laugh in his general direction.

He might have thrown 46 touchdowns, but I, the great and marvelous Smallholder, can write 46 blog entries in a day.

Just don’t ask for meaning, insight, or coherance.

Hell, don’t even ask for no rudimentary gramma or speling or punctuation

Go to Google.com.

Type in “toad sexing.”

Click on “Feeling lucky?”

1) When your snot freezes inside your nasal passages and turns into hard little chunks that internally stab your delicate nose tissues.

It was cold this morning when I went out to the barn. NINE degrees. I couldn’t even use the tried and true method of keeping your feet warm (standing in a fresh cowpie) because Bonnie appears to have been too cold to take a dump. Perhaps the Big Hominid has ideas about de-constipating a bovine.

2) Star Wars and All Its Evil Permutations.

I hate to break it too you, geeks of the world, but Star Wars sucks. Seriously. The plot is stupid and unbelievable, the dialogue trite, the actors untalented, the science ridiculous, the special effects dated, the romance forced, the philsophy asinine, the alien cultures unoriginal and vaguely racist, the jedis silly.

You only liked it because you saw it when you were ten. Admit it. Any movie half as hackneyed that was released today would languish in obscurity. Think of the atrocity committed against Robert Heinlein. You don’t see Dina Meyer or Denise Richards action figures*, now do you?

3) Sadie living in my barn.

She claims that she will have a new blog up soon and will move into the new digs. She had better. We miss her witty, wascally writing. But more importantly, since she started sleeping in the hay loft, the sheep are acting more even more skittish than after a visit from the Maximum Leader.

* But I’d buy the Dina Meyer one.

Kilgore has rejected me (indirectly) as well. I hounded the Maximum Leader to set him up with a friend of ours but Kilgore - get this! - wasn’t interested.

But I bet Denver Girl would have applauded his dexterity.

If you saunter over to “Enjoy Every Sandwich,” you will find a delightful political blog spiced with nuggets of self-loathing and perversion. It’s Grrrrr-eat!

As you peruse the postings, notice the right side of the screen. Skippy has posted all kinds of abuse from his readers. The Maximum Leader even got a spot on the honor roll by commenting on Skippy’s nipples.

But take note: There is no Smallholder quote. Why not? Whenever I link to one of Skippy’s excellent articles, I try to craft a paragraph appealing to the self-deprecating side of Skippy’s brain. But do my little alliterative or silly little insults make it into the hall of fame? Noooooooo.

I can’t write anymore. I have to go cry in the corner.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is upset that he cannot be in New York City on Thursday, January 6, 2006.

Why you may ask? Well, in addition to the fact that he hasn’t been to NYC since before the attacks. (Yes, your Maximum Leader’s memories of New York City still include the World Trade Center.) But the second reason is that he would love to be at this debate. Alexander Hamilton v. Thomas Jefferson: Of these two great Americans, which had the greatest impact on America?

What a great subject. Your Maximum Leader will write C-Span and suggest they attend and broadcast. He encourages his minions to do the same. Send your suggestion to: events - at - c-span.org.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is distressed to hear that a judge has ruled that the famous Barnes Collection may be moved to downtown Philadelphia.

Here is an LATimes article on the debate about the move.

And while your Maximum Leader is dumping links… Here is a good one from the Cranky Professor.

Your Maximum Leader has been following the contraversy concerning the Barnes Collection for a number of months now. To boil it down for minions who just don’t know what the hell your Maximum Leader is talking about (and don’t care to click through on the links) here are the critical issues. Albert C. Barnes established a foundation upon his death, the purpose of which was to preserve his collection of art in situ at his estate. The collection and estate were to become a school for artists. Fast forward many years and it appears that the trustees of the Barnes Foundation feel that the Foundation doesn’t have enough money to keep operating. The trustees propose moving some of the collection to museums in downtown Philly (a few miles away).

The key disputes are these: did the Trustees of the Foundation really try to come up with some method of funding that didn’t require the movement of some of the collection downtown? and is it legal to do so since moving the collection is directly at odds with the primary purpose of the Foundation?

From the perspective of the law, it seems that the second question is answered. The collection (or parts of the collection) can be moved. The first question remains unanswered. Your Maximum Leader hasn’t read anything that seems to say with any authority that the Trustees did more that give a quick examination to other options before deciding to just go with a move to Philly.

The underlying issue, which is the one that concerns your Maximum Leader. What is the purpose of establishing a foundation (like the Barnes) if at some point down the road the trustees have the ability to undo that which the original donor sought not to have undone?

Your Maximum Leader believes that here will be two major results of the Barnes decisions (should they be upheld on appeal). The first is that collectors will decide that out-right bequests of art to musuems or universities along with money to try and help out with the maintenance of the collection. But these bequest will probably not situplate that the collections be displayed in a particular fashion or be kept together.

NB: Your Maximum Leader has always been fascinated by how museums sell off parts of their collections to acquire new additions to their collections. He is intrigued by who the big Muesum Directors use their positions to fashion musuem collections in their image… But that is likely a subject for a later post.

The second possible result of the Barnes decisions is that private collections will just remain private or be liquidated upon the death of the collector. Why bother trying to preserve your collection through a fancy endowed foundation if trustees down the road (with no connection to the original collector generally) decide to fight the terms of the foundation because they seem out-of-date or troublesome. While sell-offs may in the end be a boon to museums (they could acquire peices in which they are interested without being saddled by others they are not); they will surely be a boon to private collectors who have no intention of displaying their collections ever.

It is a tough position to be in if you are a wealthy collector.

In other collection news, the Natick (Mass) historical society just sold the oldest known copy of The Scarlett Letter for over $500,000. Why? Because keeping the document wasn’t part of their mission. (Which is to keep artifacts concerning the town’s history & heritage.)

Carry on.

He’s been drunkenly celebrating the triumph of his interpretation of the Second Amendment.

See here - scroll down to the second part of the post.

I’m off to sulk.

UPDATE FROM YOUR MAXIMUM LEADER: Seems the diagram wasn’t wrong after all. Heh.