Christmas Party

Yes, there will be Dirty Santa.

Southern Man spent the entire evening right there on that couch with his foot up but the camera got passed around so there were plenty of pics.

A lovely couple.

Another lovely couple; Southern Man's Bible discussion group leader and his fiancée.

Whoo hoo, look at our presents! Southern Man would soon steal those dark chocolate truffles...

...but she was able to obtain this lovely plaque to replace them. Yes, it's one of Southern Man's favorite verses and will be carved into his fireplace mantlepiece someday.

What's a party without a little backyard fire?

Southern Man was pretty dazed for most of this one (praise the Lord for oxycodone and hydrocodone and all other fruits of the poppy) but is pretty sure he and everyone else had a good time. And he did get home with those chocolates. Lord, thank you for good friends and modern medicine and dark chocolate! Amen.

Christmas Day

On Christmas Day Southern Man wandered over to a cousin's home for a family lunch.

Southern Mother, Southern Father, and Southern Great-Aunt, the youngest sister of Southern Man's long-departed grandmother.

The ever-lovely Southern Mother.

Our gracious host, Southern Man's first cousin once removed. Why, yes, he's changed her diaper a time or two.

Southern Second Cousin and an American Girl doll. Southern Daughter also collected those for a while.

SFCOR, her charming and handsome husband, and SSC.

Charming and handome husband's brother and his lovely wife.

Christmas Eve

As one might imagine Southern Man spent most of Christmas Eve on the couch with his leg propped up so most of these pics were by Teen Daughter. The long-time family tradition has been to gather at the Ancestral Manor on Christmas Eve so it was, as always, a large and merry gathering with much eating and chatting and reading from the Christmas story (as recounted by Saint Luke) and a generally wonderful time.

Teen Daughter selfie.

Another family tradition - Southern Sister stuffing the stockings. Southern Man usually stuffs with a favorite drink and a book.

Southern Daughter at the fireplace. She was fortunate to get leave for Christmas break and we were all delighted to see her.

What's Christmas Eve without a little Star Wars? Southern Son watching - well, geek points if you can identify the film from the screen shot.

Two of the Southern Cousins admire their gifts.

Back row: Southern Son, the three sons of Southern Brother, and Southern Father.
Front row: Teen Daughter, the adopted son of Southern Sister, Southern Mother, and Southern Daughter.

It's the most wonderful time of the year. Lord, thank you for sending us Your Son. Amen.

Surgery

Today was spent busily waiting, first for an ultrasound (part of the aforementioned physical exam of last Monday) and then surgery on that busted leg. The Bone Doc had alluded to not only putting a plate on the bone but any number of pins and screws to hold the rest of the ankle together but Southern Man put in a mild protest and asked that the ankle be left to heal on its own and then through the magic of modern anesthesia it was three hours later and he was in the recovery room getting dressed (yes, his memory kicks in as he is struggling to pull his pants on). There was no cast, just a splint and lots of wraps. After a quick trip to the pharmacy for wonderful pain-killing medications Southern Father drove The Titan to the Ancestral Manor where Southern Man put his foot up and just relaxed for a while before heading home to sleep in his own bed. And also to mix another pitcher of margaritas with which to wash those painkillers down. It hurts - oh dear Lord does it hurt - but tomorrow is Christmas Eve!

All You Need To Know About Liberals And Morality

Hat tip to Gay Patriot. Click on the link; the folks in the comment thread make some interesting points.

Bone Doc

Southern Man got the call yesterday from the Bone Doc and saw him (or, rather, his PA) this morning. That fracture blister had swollen to epic proportions and the pic is sufficiently disburbing that Southern Man is going to make you click on the link to actually see it.

Fracture Blister

They usually wait for these to go down on their own but this one was so large that they lanced and drained it before applying the splint which means that Southern Man must remove the splint, remove the dressing, clean the wound, apply all manner of topical ointments and gels and such, re-dress the wound, and put the splint back together.

Every day.

This would be easier if he could actually reach that foot.

Surgery is scheduled for Monday (apparently screws and pins will be involved) but only if the swelling goes down so Southern Man must behave himself and keep that foot elevated and iced for the rest of the week. In the meantime he is pondering his dressing-changing options which vary from former girlfriends who are also nurses to paying the local urgent-care clinic to do it. But the big picture is that once again Southern Man is on the recieving end of the finest health care on the planet. Lord, thank you for you continued blessings and care. Amen.

Caching On Crutches

You don't think a minor setback like a fractured fibula is going to keep Southern Man from geocaching, did you?

Dedicated cacher or just plain crazy? You be the judge.

The Hazards Of Geocaching

Southern Man loves to geocache. In fact it's possible that he's a little obsessive about it. So on a beautiful Sunday afternoon after church and lunch with friends he headed for the lake to pick up a few caches; in particular, one he'd looked for a few times and not found but some recent log entries gave him hope that it was there and waiting for him.

Supposedly the cache was in a tree near this bridge.

Well, Southern Man followed the hints and climbed the tree and found nothing and came back down and then while actually back on the ground stepped on a root or something and twisted the fark out his ankle. And the twisting was accompanied by a loud "pop" and movement where none was expected up above the boot.

There was yelling and screaming and perhaps a tear or two were shed but Southern Man managed to hobble back to the car and since he didn't find that cache he drove to the next one on his list and limped through the woods and found it and logged it (thus satisfying his CDO-fueled desire to maintain his streak of daily finds) and then went to the laundromat where he somehow manages to get the laundry started and then settled down for a consultation with Dr. Internet...



...who said "if the affected ankle can't support any weight at all, it's probably broken."

Well, this was a good thing; since Southern Man could hobble around on it (after a fashion) it was probably just a bad sprain and since he was not in much of a mood to go to the emergency room and pay them ungodly sums of hard-earned money just so they could wrap it up and tell him to put ice on it and send him home and by Divine Providence he was already scheduled for a physical the next morning with his usual physician so he decided to just grin and bear it and let The Doc check it out on Monday morning and in the meantime dropped by Wal-Mart for a big bottle of ibuprofen and a wrap and decided that CVS charging $60 for a stick was too much and went home without one where he mixed a pitcher of 'ritas and pulled out his lone reserve hydrocodone from a two-year-old prescription (having forgotten that they keep him awake) and made chicken nachos and put a stack of DVDs in the player and settled down for an evening of eating and movie watching and generally not moving at all.

He left the boot on until midnight figuring that given how much that foot was swelling that would be the best compression he would get...

...might should have left that boot on...

...and took that hydrocodone and after a sleepless night (damn hydrocodone) he found out the next morning that there was no way on God's green earth that the boot would go back on so he put on a sandal and made his way to The Doc. In The Hyundai, which would turn out to be a mistake. Where he found out that (a) he had better get back on the Southern Man Diet and also that (b)...

Dr. Internet was wrong!

That's broken bone number three for Southern Man; the second was after a morning of intense but fall-free snow-skiing after which he tripped in the slush down by the lift and broke his arm and the first was (no kidding) when he broke a finger playing an arcade game at the mall. Sometime this week he will go to a specialist and get it set (which they won't do until the swelling goes down) and in the meantime dropped by the pharmacy to rent crutches and then went downtown with physician-signed forms in hand - first to the Department of Transportation and then to the Department of Public Safety - for a permit to park here:

And he wasn't the least bit shy about asking for it, either.

So now Southern Man is at work (grades are due by noon tomorrow) with a throbbing foot that is not at all looking forward to driving a stick back home. Lord, grant me safe passage home and quick healing. Amen.

Saturday Meanderings

After a few hours in the office to get some grading done Southern Man went to the monthly geocachers luncheon-slash-Christmas party...

Mr. Gator.

The Gift Table.

A Festive Gathering.

Look what I won!

Manly men thinking manly thoughts.

After a few more hours at the office Southern Man cut by the mall for a little last-minute Christmas shopping. It looked like Black Friday! But there was an all-male choir and Southern Man listened to good Christmas music for a good long while.

God rest ye merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay...

And then much to his surprise he stumbled across Southern Brother and his lovely wife.

Why, yes, we're waiting for the shop to finish engraving your daughter's gift.

So Southern Man got his own shopping done and then headed to the monthly Christian dance.

Aren't they just the cutest couple?

Well, perhaps not. Photo by the guy in the other photo. She's the hostess of our monthly dance and Southern Man's sister in Christ.

Line 'em up!

Saturdays are fun! Lord, thank you for good friends and good times. Amen.

Movie Review - The Desolation of Smaug

Today was the last day of classes so Southern Man celebrated with a light dinner and drinks and then a double feature, in glorious IMAX 3D, of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey at 8:30 and then the midnight release of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.





Southern Man's fears (expressed in his original review of An Unexpected Journey) were put to rest tonight. Peter Jackson is handling the light-adventure and comic elements of the book with aplomb; for example, the conversation of the Mirkwood spiders is revealed only when Bilbo puts on The Ring. Martin Freeman is really just about perfect as Bilbo. The film also clears up a rather gaping plot hole in the book: just what did Thorin and a ragtag bunch of dwarves (and one hobbit) expect to accomplish at the Lonely Mountain? The film makes it clear that Thorin must have the Arkenstone in hand to establish his kingship and rally an army of dwarves to retake the mountain: thus the need for a burglar; the entire expedition revolves around recovery of this artifact.

And Benedict Cumberbatch was amazing as the voice of Smaug.

Well, thief? I smell you, I feel your air, and I hear your breath...

Yes, the film was a little silly in places, but not quite to the extent of the first one. An outstanding second act in the trilogy and Southern Man is looking forward to the third.

The Dark Enlightenment

This post at vocative.com (which Southern Man cannot recommend because they require you to log in through Facebook or Twitter to leave comments) provides a dire warning about the "creepy" new Internet movement known as Dark Enlightenment, who are supposedly neo-anarchists eagerly awaiting the fall of Western Civilization or something like that. At any rate they provide a convenient graphic of the bloggers who exemplify this extremest viewpoint.

Southern Man is eclectic and there's not really a section in the Dark Enlightment for "people who post pictures of their family and friends" but put him somewhere between "Christian Traditionalist" and "Masculinity" and not too far from "HBD." Just above Education Realist will be fine.

The names look rather like Southern Man's blogroll, don't they? And this map it will look even more like Southern Man's blogroll when he goes through the ones he's not familiar with and evaluates them as blogroll-worthy, which will save you the time of trying to root them out yourself. In the meantime here's a rough overview of this map of the Dark Enlightenment...

Naturally we must kick off our discussion of this creepy new Internet movement with the Christian Traditionalists, who desire a return to the clear and plain teachings of the Holy Bible and despair at the watered-down, non-judgemental, prosperity-centric feel-good message of today's commercialized and feminized church. Wow, that's really creepy. Southern Man is even now working up a fairly scathing series of posts in this area (concerning the watered-down, non-judgemental, prosperity-centric part, not the creepy part).

The Femininity bloggers are, by and large, married anti-feminist women who assert that a return to traditional relationships and gender roles is best for both men and women. Many are Christian and advocate scripture-based relationships; for example, SSM (who isn't on the chart but should be) would be on the bridge between Christian Traditionalists and Femininity.

The Masculinity bloggers also advocate a return to traditional roles and opine that the best road to a rich, full life is through self-improvement (with focus on diet, exercise, acquisition of skill and knowledge, and passion about what you do) and that the best way to attract and hold a good woman is through understanding how women actually view men and relationships (as opposed to what they say) and acting accordingly. The "Red Pill" meme is a constant theme among the latter group. The far edge of Masculinity are the PUA bloggers (e.g. Roosh) who focus on little more than casual sex but often provide keen insight into relationship issues and personal growth; Roosh himself is an advocate of learning foreign languages as an expression of self-improvement. The MGTOW and paleo movements are offshoots of Masculinity.

The Human Bio-Diversity (HBD) crowd states the obvious: there are measurable, quantifiable differences between both the sexes and the races. Naturally they're all a bunch of doubleplusungood sexist rascist bigoted thoughtcriminals. The chart correctly places Chateau Heartiste between Masculinity and HBD but Southern Man would move him up near Taki as CH also touches on Political Philosophy and Economics.

The Economists who can actually do math realize that the out-of-control spending, endless borrowing, and burgeoning welfare states of the Western nations will come to an ugly end, probably sooner rather than later, and discuss not so much how to stop it (many hold that we've already gone over the cliff and are just waiting to hit the ground) as much as how to survive in the coming brave new world of economic and social collapse. Southern Man was led to this map by Captain Capitalism happily crowing about his inclusion in the Dark Enlightenment; his book Enjoy The Decline is an extreme but lucid view of how to weather the oncoming storm.

The Techno-Commercialists and Futurists (Instapundit is a glaring omission here) take a more optimistic view: that capitalism, free markets, and emerging technologies will overcome the lethargy, inefficiency, and stagnation of the State and usher in a new techno-centric world in which goods and services are plentiful and cheap. But Southern Man sees a dark side here - a growing pool of young men who won't ever find jobs as unskilled labor is replaced by automation and technology.

And that takes us around to the Political Philosophers and Secular Traditionalists and Ethno-Nationalists, with whom Southern Man is less familiar (although he does read Derbyshire, whose views are frequently discussed by others on the blogroll) but he will visit them and add those as he sees fit.

Dark Enlightment, eh? To Southern Man they look more like people with clear minds and open eyes. He would be pleased to be named among them.

More On Diets

Southern Man stumbled across a post at Business Insider describing thirteen nutrition lies and was delighted to see that Southern Man's Platter continues to be vindicated by modern science. Or at least what passes for modern science at Business Insider. Their thirteen lies in a nutshell are:

• Eggs are bad for you.
• A Calorie is a Calorie.
• Saturated fat is unhealthy.
• Protein is bad for you.
• Whole wheat is good for you.
• Coffee is bad for you.
• Meat is bad for you.
• Low fat, high carb is the way to go.
• Refined seed and vegatable oil is good for you.
• Low-carb is ineffective and bad for you.
• Cut back on sodium.
• Sugar is bad for you because it contains "empty" calories.
• Fat makes you fat.

But if you already follow the Southern Man Platter diet you already know these things, don't you? Lord, we live in a land of plenty undreamed of by our ancestors. Grant us the wisdom to enjoy your providence with gratitude and in moderation. Amen.

Let It Snow!

Winter Storm Cleon (just when did they start naming winter storms?) swept in Thursday with enough vigor to shut the school down at 3:00 PM (with an additional message that we wouldn't re-open until Monday morning) so Southern Man headed back to The Land to face a cold weekend in The Trailer.

The problem with bitter cold weather at The Land is that it's boring. He can get the trailer warm enough with a pair of electric heaters and there's an electric blanket on the bed but there is little or no Internet service and no broadcast television. Southern Man's PS2 and gaming computers are up in The Barn and it's a little hard to play Guitar Hero or Armada or Doom when your fingers are numb. So when he's snowbound it's mainly sitting on the little couch and reading or watching DVDs. He has stocked up and has several books he hasn't yet read (horray for Project Gutenberg!) and several DVDs that he hasn't yet watched but there is a limit to how much reading or movie-watching one can do in a day.

Even when one of the DVDs has all twelve Andy Sidaris films, found the Wal-Mart $5 bin last week. Which works out to about 3¢ per nipple.

Fortunately this is a Daughter Weekend so there is additional entertainment automatically built in. Southern Man and Southern Ex arranged to meet half-way on both legs this weekend so it was just an hour drive up the turnpike to pick her up and transport her to the Ancestral Manor.

Southern Man's Snow Angel

As Winter Storm Cleon continued to shower snow and ice over everything there really wasn't much to do other than sit by the fireplace and play games. However Teen Daughter and the other Southern Women made their annual trek to a production of The Nutcracker, which Southern Man usually skips.

After church on Sunday we stopped by Burlington Coat Factory where Teen Daughter picked up a nice Calvin Klein winter jacket...

...and then we went back up the turnpike to meet with Southern Ex to end a nice, if very cold, weekend.

Christmas Luncheon

And to follow our own little IT luncheon the entire college gathered for a nice Christmas meal...

Two colleagues.

Mike invades an otherwise adorable picture.

The girl on the right is the Dean's administrative assistant; Southern Man feeds her white chocolate on a regular basis, as you can't keep the Dean's admin assistant too happy. Also, she has some sort of genetic defect that prevents her from enjoying the real thing.

Most of the gang.

The end of the semester draws nigh! Everyone needs to reset every now and again; we teachers get to do so twice a year. It's one of Southern Man's favorite aspects of teaching. Lord, thank you for new beginnings. Amen.

IT Luncheon

The last IT division meeting of the semester is not so much "meeting" as it is "Christmas Luncheon."

There was plenty of food.

Why, yes, Southern Man is somewhat obsessed with food.

The CS Department Chair and Southern Man's officially appointed mentor. They're both really very nice.

Our Fearless Leader, the Dean of IT. Southern Man's actually known him for about twenty years.

Mike in his natural habitat. He brought the most delicious cinnamon rolls ever.

Another one of the CS professors. We're about half boys, half girls - a little unusual for computer science.

Yet another one of the CS professors, and another who Southern Man has known for many years.

The departmental adminastrative assistant. Southern Man feeds her dark chocolate on a regular basis. One can never keep the admin assistants too happy.

Even though Southern Man has only worked here full time for a few months it already feels like home, mainly due to these friendly folks. Thanks!