“Marxism is the opium of the intellectuals.”

- Edmund Wilson

Hey, guys. What's shakin'? Let's see...what can I talk to you about?

Well, last Friday the Princess's family took me with them to see "Invincible", which was actually pretty good, considering it was about football. The thing I remember most about that movie, though, were the trailers beforehand. There was one for a movie called "Happy Feet" which I really want to see. It has a star-studded cast, lead by Elijah Wood! Yay! That one had all of us yukking it up. We also saw the trailer for that movie with Ben Stiller about the museum that comes to life at night, which I can never remember the name of. I do want to see it though. I also really want to see "Snakes on a Plane", but I don't know if I'll get there.

Then on Friday night it was Hugh Hewitt's trivia, which y'all already know about. I was there, just trying to do my job as team manager, and what does Terry Keegan do? He kicks me off our table! Hey, man, that's not cool!

So I had to go sit in the corner, where I met another lady who had been kicked off her table, too. She told me her husband has a blog called Late Night Rants and he also writes for Anti-Strib. We had fun, even though we were exiled; and I found out that she is from Switzerland. Cool beans, huh?

I also got a couple of photos of my team, but it was hard because of a low battery and people getting in the way. We lost with 17 points, and I've been debating on whether I should drop these guys or give them another chance.

What do you think?

I've got a new game to play!

It's about pirates. My mom (that would be the Reverend Mother to you) calls it The Boat Game. But that's not it's name. I'm not exactly sure what it's really called, but everyone at church calls it Pirates. It's something called "a constructible strategy game", which I guess means that you buy packs of game cards and begin your adventure. The packs aren't very expensive and it's a really fun game. It requires a lot of strategy, which some people don't have (wink wink nudge nudge).

Pirates is really fun because you get to act like a pirate. You get to sail around to islands and get treasure from them. In fact, coming up there will be a new series of Pirates that has something called Unknown Island (I think) where there will be things on the island that you have to fight! Oooooooohhhhhh, spooky! You can also sail around and blow people up! NNEEEEEEEEEERRRR--BOOOOOOOOOOOOOMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Whee, hahaha! In other words, that means I have the time of my life while fighting a newbie! MWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! (Can you tell I'm addicted to sound effects and laughing evilly?)

What you do is:

1. Learn how to talk pirate.

2. Go out and buy a pack of Pirate cards (available at Target for $4.25, or you can give me $3.75 and I'll get you a pack from the bookstore at church, 'cuz they're cheaper there, and I'm nice...sometimes, mwahahaha.)

3. Look at the cards that you got in your pack (it varies on what ships you get, depending on what type you get from the store. There's Davy Jones' Curse (the best one by me,) Pirates Crimson Coast (that one's o.k., sometimes if you're lucky you get a fort in a pack), South China Seas (that one's pretty good, you get a Chinese Junk ship in them sometimes, and junk ships are not junk!), and American Revolution.) There's a game in every pack!

4. You get 40 points to start out with. You use those points to buy ships. (You can only use those points when you start the game, you can't use them when you're playing!)

5. On the main card for a ship there is a row of symbols. The first one is how many masts your ship has. The second one is its cargo space (how much gold and crew your ship can carry.) The third one is its movement (For example, if your ship's movement is "S+L," then your ship can move one short (the the length of the short side of the card) and one long (the long side of the card). And the 4th symbol is how many cannons it has (if your ship has a white cannon and a red one, that means that you have one short range cannon and one long range cannon. Short range is white and long range is red. There is a number on the cannon. If it is a two, that means you have to roll a three in order to shoot someone. Also, you need to be in range to shoot someone, which means if you have a short range cannon, they need to be within a short side length of the card of you).

6. Read the rules to find out the rest, or go here for how-to-play animations. Also, no game boards are required. All you need is a coffee table or any good-sized flat surface and even with only one pack of game cards you've got a game!


Whoa! A mysterious fleet sails out of the darkness!


Here's one of my five-masted ships, the U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson. Five-masters are good because they're hardest to sink,
but this one only has short-range cannons. Bummer.

So, interested yet?

Arr, matey.

Ciao for now,
Tiger Lilly

P.S. American ships are not very good, so don't get the American Revolution packs.

One more week of blogging vacation for me, but I thought I better get my summary of last Friday night's Trivia Challenge up and on display.

As you can tell from the photo below, Team "Three Weddings and Funeral" showed up at the Friday night trivia event ready to play and with fire in our eyes. That's Jeff and Leo in the front (left to right) and myself and Ben on the opposite side of the table.



We were in the thick of it, but we had trouble with names, losing a point because we could only come up with half of the name of the Irish president, and missing an easy lay-up on the name of the proprietor of Keegan's due to an epic brain-fart (to be fair, the Twins had runners in scoring position against the White Sox on the TV over our heads at the time). Those are points you just can't let get away in rarefied air of such a heady competition. We did know, however, that Damascus is the longest continually inhabited capital in the world (for a few more months, anyway).

Congratulations to Terry Keegan (see, we know the name) for coming up with some truly worthy questions (unlike the People magazine trolling that has characterized more recent Thursday night contests) and to our local Fraters Libertas team (fortified with Atomizer's mother) for keeping Hugh Hewitt and his All Stars from coming into our house and making off with the hardware. Best of all, the event raised a couple of grand for Soldier's Angels, the MOB's official favorite charity (next to Keegan's, that is).

Ok, the real reason I've been on blogging vacation is that I've been cramming for this Friday night's All-Star Triva Throwdown and fund-raiser for Soldier's Angels. Our team of Jeff Kouba , Leo Pusateri, Uncle Ben and myself will mix it up with national talk-show host and Blog-father Hugh Hewitt, the Fraters and many other minutiae-minded precontenders. We'll be "managed" by the Mall Diva who, if this devolves into the expected Wrestlemania brawl, will leap into action, squirting hair-spray into the eyes of our opponents (either that or traitorously turning on Ben).

Our captain entered our team name as "Three Weddings and a Funeral", but since there's usually a Hewitt-inspired Ralphie-Christmas Story theme to this competition I've suggested we call ourselves "The Bumpus Brothers." I can just hear Chad the Elder cursing "those %$#@* Bumpuses" as we hound the competition and run off with the prize!

Anyway, the event starts at 9:00 p.m. so come on down and cheer (or heckle) your chosen squad. While you're at it, please make a contribution to Soldier's Angels, a great organization dedicated to supporting our troops and their families. Hope to see you there!

Not content with trying to get his pro-life, pro-family, pro-small business points across in his blog or through his work as official graphic designer and tee-shirt maven to the MOB, my friend Derek Brigham has decided to run for the Minnesota Senate in District 45. The 45 is a deep-blue bastion and current fiefdom of long-time DFL incumbent Ann Rest.

If you want to help Derek to join the State Senate and change our government towards more conservative leadership (especially within the Republican Party), please go to his site and make a FULLY REFUNDABLE (up to $50 if you live in MN) donation. He needs to make his donations goal before the end of August, so the time is now. Please help if you can. It won’t cost you a thing through the MN PCR donation plan.

Hey, everyone! Sick of hearing about my birthday, yet? Remember, only 361 days until my next one!

My week was a blast; what with winning trivia, Sock Wars, dresses and presents! I especially liked Sock Wars, where several friends I hadn't seen in a while showed up. For Keegan's, though, my memory is a little bittersweet because I really wanted Marty to sing me Happy Birthday, and he didn't show his face all night. Coward. But, I did get a cigar as you all saw in an earlier post.

Saturday was dress-up day, and we ate cake and opened presents. Even Felix fit right in for this occasion, as he always wears a tuxedo. I decided to put a bow on him for good measure. Isn't he cute???





We also played a game that Surly Dave taught to us. We have decided to call it "The Spanish Inquisition!" It's a bit like 20 Questions, but played in a larger group. One person is "it", and they have to leave the room while the group decides on something to do or be. Then the "it" person comes back and has to figure out what the group has decided by asking yes or no questions (there is no limit in this game). Well, one round I was "it", and I must be very hilarious, because the whole group was busting a gut at my questions while I was utterly confused. They were so mean to me! What I didn't realize was that the thing I had to figure out was that everyone wearing glasses had to answer "yes" to every question, regardless of whether or not it was true, while everyone not wearing glasses could tell the truth. There were three bespectacled people sitting in a row, so I'd ask questions of the first two, hear "yes" and then I'd think I knew the solution and I'd ask the last one, my uncle, if the answer was such-and-such. He'd say "yes" but no one would celebrate so I'd ask the next person (no-glasses) if I'd won and she'd say "no." I had to put my head down a lot, because it hurt. Sound like fun?

But anyway, I had a very good birthday. Now I am older and wiser. I feel older because Sock Wars made me sore; and I am wiser, because I know I need to stretch first next time.

Day three of the party action and it's time to shift gears to more grown-up things: a formal tea party. And yes, time for the great birthday dress unveiling!



Mall Diva and Lindsay, apres le guerre.




Family and friends were urged to dress formally; Tiger Lilly, Diva, the Reverend Mother and Princess Flicker Feather were
among those getting dolled up.


Princess Flicker Feather and the Diva.


Time for presents!


Wow! What a day! It's even more fun than this tea par-tay!

Since most of Sock Wars took place in the dark (or very low light), photography opportunities were limited. About midnight, however, we stopped the games and started to clean up. Something strange seemed to be happening, however ...


Demon Sock Warriors!



Girded for battle, Cousin Lindsay and the Mall Diva.

The Mall Diva's Golden Birthday Tour kicked off one day early with a stop Thursday at Keegan's for Trivia Night and so her "peeps" could pay tribute.

Our team, appropriately named "Golden Birthday" and consisting of the Diva, myself and Kevin Ecker, finished in a four-way tie for first with 19 points. We would have won outright if MD, our licensed beautyologist and fashionescenti had known the name of the new J-Lo cosmetic line. Oh well, here's our traditional victory token:



Once the important business was out of the way - it was time for presents! A couple of "Old Stogies", David Strom and Margaret Martin, presented the Diva with her very own cigar, a Black Pearl! (Andy is upset in the background because he forgot to bring a present).



No matter. Andy figures that while the Diva is still too young to drink beer, there's no law against her wearing it. (Kevin not only forgot to bring a present, he also forgot to pick up a beer to pour.)



For Friday night, on to Sock Wars!

I'm still on blogging vacation, but a recent event got me to pondering comparitive cultural approaches to crime and punishment. I will meditate on this during my time off. In the meantime:

Four young men broke into an apartment in South Minneapolis last week, only to be wounded and chased away by an intended victim wielding a samurai sword. Three of the attempted robbers have been arrested: Hossem Chalbi, Iman Ahmed Abdelhakim and Mohammed Khalil. I don't want to jump to conclusions, but I'm guessing that these youths aren't Amish.

Chalbi was slashed on the arm and Khalil was slashed on the abdomen and also lost a finger. Assuming Khalil isn't a wayward Amish who has forsaken his religion of peace, but is perhaps a follower of the Islamic law of Sharia, then he got off relatively easy: the Sharia penalty for theft calls for amputation of the whole hand.

(Interesting but unrelated sidenote: the attempted robbery took place in the 3100 block of Lyndale Avenue S. I used to live just two blocks away, in the 3100 block of Harriet Avenue S. I didn't have a samurai sword, but I did keep an old bayonet around the house.)

Scrappleface with another classic:

Why Do They Hate Airplanes?

"Vacation" is sweet. So far I've been able to resist the temptation to let fly on the busted terrorists, the missing Egyptian "students", the use of samurai swords for home defense, capital punishment for auto-insurance scofflaws and the mystery of how Chrysler went from Lee Iacocca to Dr. Z.

I'll be getting back to the routine soon enough, but as this video proves, even if you're on a treadmill it doesn't mean you can't have fun.

My dad said, "post something to keep the homefires a-burnin'!"
Like he can just take the rest of the summer off and make me do this instead.

As I stated before: I am lazy. For today, at least. Thus I instigate (dun dun DUN) an open thread! Cool beans! If you've never posted a comment on the Nightwriter blog before, I dare you to. To all you regulars- Welcome back! I'll think of something to start with.

Ok, so it's day one of my blogging vacation and here I've already broken my self-imposed exile. Just because I intended to stop writing, however, doesn't mean I've stopped reading and this post from The Wide Awake Cafe brought me out of my hammock. It contains a link to a series of photos and video images from EU Referendum that show the revealing timeline and backstory behind the famous images from the Qana attack (caution, the photos of the childrens' bodies are intense).

It is clear that, as we have known, the Israeli attacks killed many civilians. What is illuminated, however, is what we have long suspected: these events, if not deliberately instigated, are enthusiastically manipulated by the likes of the dynamic duo of Green Helmet and White Tee-Shirt Guy with assistance from their gang, The Willing Media in their never-ending quest to score political points.

Sadly, outrageously, the score is being kept by dead bodies. These little girls are dead, perhaps coldly killed by Israeli bombs, but assuredly and cold-bloodedly exploited by the psycho cockroaches of Hizbollah and its patrons who first used these children as human shields and then searched the rubble for the most shocking remains to be paraded bathetically in front of the cameras and then abandoned as indifferently as when they were thrust into the line of fire in the first place.

This story, combined with the news that broke over the weekend of the doctored photos published by Reuters (a story that even CNN couldn't ignore) is truly depressing. Rather than return to my hammock, I think I may go to my prayer closet instead.

That's all I'm blogging today. However, for more details on the Reuters scandal see these related stories from Powerline, Michelle Malkin and the blogger credited with exposing the fake photos, Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs (slow loading due to very heavy traffic).

Frankly, I'm not much of a Francophile, but there is one French custom that has a certain appeal to me: the month-long August vacation.

I like blogging and I've had more fun and gotten a lot more satisfaction from doing this than I ever expected when I started nearly 18 months ago. Therefore I'm not planning on quitting anytime soon. I am, however, going to take the rest of this month off to try and remember what I did with all my free time before I started blogging.

I've got some chewy books I've been wanting to read, a couple of new Xbox games I've barely touched, a fantasy football campaign to plot and a desire to spend some of the remaining summer evenings out of my basement. There's also an element of personal development to this exercise: I want to see if I can get through a day without looking at it as blog-fodder; I want to see if I can get to bed earlier at night; and I want to see if I really can stop, anytime I want to.

That doesn't mean "The Night Writer" is going dark the next few weeks, however. The Mall Diva and Tiger Lilly can post anytime, and I'm pretty sure there'll be more updates leading to MD's big golden birthday bash (not to mention the big unveil she's been promising of her birthday dress). Furthermore, I may pop in if something timely comes up or occurs to me that I can't let pass without comment.

I'll be back the week after Labor Day, and I hope you will be, too.

Obi Sium is running for Congress in Minnesota's Fourth District, a seat currently held by liberal DFLer Betty (I don't remember the words to the Pledge of Allegiance) McCollum who replaced the late Bruce Vento in the long-time DFL stronghold.

Sium is Eritrean by birth, a U.S. citizen by choice, a civil engineer by profession, and a Republican by philosophy. Oh, and a non-entity by the standards of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, which has ignored his campaign except for a short article back in May that both announced and dismissed his candidacy.

Here then are a list of the top 10 things Obi can do to get the PiPress to cover him:



10. Go bar hopping with Mike Hatch's daughters.

9. Go cruising with Norm Coleman's dad.

8. Change his name to Obi Ventoson.

7. Say that the streets of St. Paul were laid out by drunken Irishmen.

6. Get bumper stickers that say, "What would Obi do?"

5. Promise to propose a nationwide smoking ban.

4. Propose raising taxes.

3. Call a press conference to criticize the President or the war.

2. Get Michael Brodkorb at Minnesota Democrats Exposed to mention him — and then wait three months for the PiPress to break the story.

...And the number one way he can get the Pioneer Press to cover him...

1. Call the newspaper and say he is "Obama."

Mitch reminds us that yesterday was the one-year anniversary of the death of war correspondent Steven Vincent, killed not in the heat of battle but in cold blood by Islamic "warriors" who targeted him because of things he had written (I believe we're still waiting for the New York Times to be outraged).

Interestingly enough, today happens to be the birthday of one of America's first embedded reporters, Ernie Pyle. I read a lot of Pyle's writing, and writing about him by others, when I was in junior high and high school. It was a time when war was a fascinating subject for me and I read voraciously about the Civil War and World War II, cutting my teeth on Richard Tregaskis and the Landmark Series put out by Random House and moving on to Pyle and many others.

Pyle was a native of Indiana, where I lived at the time, which may have made him more interesting to me at first. What stands out now for me, however, is that his coverage of World War II may have been the first reading I had done that pierced the romantic cloud of glory and honor and all the glittery trappings that can so easily mask the reality of war when viewed from the distance imposed by geography, or experience — or willful ignorance. While there was certainly plenty of glory and honor in Pyle's stories, it was tight-lipped and gritty as he related the activities of men who didn't fight for a cuase so much as they fought for each other and for the chance to see another day, and sometimes paused to consider what they may have lost in the process. A great collection of Pyle's columns can be found online here.

From Pyle I began to get a picture of men who hated what they were doing but knew it had to be done, which I later learned also pretty much described his own feelings about his calling. Though he won a Pulitzer for his reporting and was able to leave the war for awhile, Pyle chose to re-enter the storm and was subsequently killed by a sniper while covering the action in the Pacific.

Steven Vincent was a worthy successor to Pyle and there are many others today such as Michael Yon who carry on the tradition of giving the reader a chance to see the picture up close. That is an invaluable perspective because it blows away the camouflage that others (pro and con, left and right) so easily create for those who prefer to watch from a distance.

In the process some of these correspondents die too young. At the same time, something very important lives on. I urge you to check out the above link to the Pyle collection and rediscover (or discover) the power of a compelling story, expertly told.

Kevin Ecker is trying to organize a Splatball (or Paintball) Battle Royale pitting the local lefty and righty MOBsters against each other on the field of valor and latex projectiles. So far the righties have shown more interest in getting all Pulp Fiction with it, while the other side appears to have its head tucked under its collective left wing.

If it's an outdoor event I don't know if I'll be able to participate since running around on uneven terrain dodging sniper fire isn't something on the approved activities list for my knee. I can't, however, be called a "chickenhawk" because I actually have played splatball before. A few years ago an evening of splatball was the featured attraction of a bachelor party for a friend of mine. It was wintertime so we rented an indoor splatball arena, in this case a warehouse-sized building with an urban warfare motif inside featuring false building fronts, windows, doors, alleys and a no-man's-land in the middle that also had some cover.

Former governor Jesse Ventura once said, "You haven't hunted until you've hunted man," and that was one of the few things he said that I could agree with. I'd never played splatball before that night and when the whistle blew to start the first game I got a rush of adrenaline unlike any I'd ever experienced playing football or basketball or even from getting into fights; the thought that someone I might not even be able to see might be drawing a bead on me at that very moment definitely got my heart pumping. I didn't like the idea of standing still on defense so I decided to join a couple of guys who were going to try and get around the other team's flank. To do so, however, I'd have to cross an open space about 10 feet wide. I took the first two steps of my dash...and took a paintball pellet on the forehead part of my visor. Actually it hit the air vent of the visor, and the paint dripped through the vent and into my eyes. Thirty seconds into the game and I was baptized, literally, by fire — and I hadn't even fired a shot yet! The good, they die young.

Fortunately there were several more games to go and many more chances to get my licks in. One problem we were having, however, was that the temperature outside was about 20 below, and the warehouse was minimally heated. With all the energy we were expending the temperature wasn't uncomfortable for us, but the plastic skin of the pellets we were shooting grew brittle and would rupture easily, squibbing your shot and jamming your gun when it happened. One time I had laboriously worked my way around and behind a guy on the other team; leaping out from cover I shouted, "Die, scum!" or something similar, triggering my gun as my opponent turned. Instead of hearing a satisfying, "pssshh-THWACK!" I heard a muffled blub and purple paint seeped out of my barrel while my would-be victim dove over a box and tried to return fire as I did my own disappearing act.

In another game, each side was allowed a "medic"; if you were hit you could get back in the game if your team's medic could get over and touch you. Right off the bat this friend of mine took off on a banzai charge right at the middle of the other team's defensive wall. He was shot down directly under the guns of the other team, and began calling for the medic. Our medic decided, however, that this was a terminal case and not worth picking up a few more welts in the attempt.

Another variation in the rules called for a player on each side, previously and secretly designated by the referee, to turncoat on his teammates. Unfortunately for me, the "spy" on our team was sharing a bunker with me as we tried to pick off any heads that popped up in the sector in front of us. In the middle of the battle I heard,

"Hey, John."

"Yeah?"

"I'm the spy. Surrender?"

He held his gun on me, the barrel about a foot from my wide target, close enough to raise a welt the size of a popsicle. I considered.

"Ah, oui, mon ami," I said.

All in all it was a very fun time and it took a couple of hours for my heart rate to return to normal afterwards, and another day or two for the various bumps and bruises on my body to fade. The memories haven't faded yet, and I have warm thoughts of my night on the front lines. If I do it again, however, I'm going to be sure my ammo is warm, too.