BARLEY SERVICES: no ordinary plumber

On Dec. 18th I posted a link to an excellent video presentation honoring our military troops who would be spending Christmas away from home. That link is now broken. Use this one instead. If you haven’t seen the video, do it.

As most of the blues songs say, “I woke up this morning” to a really cold Memphis: 21 degrees. That makes us Southrons worry, as we are never really prepared for anything below 30. I began to lament my fate until I got on the web and read about the blizzard up in Yankeeland, as is depicted here:

When I walked out to get my newspaper, I was greeted with the Memphis version of January:

So here I sit with a hot cup o’ joe, fireplace consuming wood like a hornworm on a tomato plant, looking out at such a scene.

Y’all be careful up there.

See an animation of the aforementioned coffee.

I am indebted to my friend David Gish for this link.

There’s a coffee available for $300/lb called Kopi Luwak. It’s made from the excrement of an animal called a paradoxorus, who climbs around in coffee trees and eats the berries.

“Bottoms up!”

I came across this photo, which I like very much:

Well, I guess that I don’t like the photo all that much, but I certainly like the captions.

Two facts should stand out when considering the Second Amendment. First: it is not a grant of a right. The government does not create rights. Instead, it is a prohibition against the federal government infringing on a right that already exists. Second: the purpose of an armed citizenry was to make government tyranny impossible. Our right to guns is not based on the need to protect ourselves from local punks, it is based on our right to be free from government tyranny.

Jefferson said “The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time. The hand of force [he meant government] may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.” Rights come from God and they are intact even when government uses force to deny the free exercise of those rights. The right to keep and bear arms is one of those rights.

I grew up in Houston, Texas. It only snowed once every six years or so, and that snow would melt within a day. This makes me sensitive to people who’ve never seen snow and how it can paralyze a city. Therefore I submit this photo, shot from my front yard.

We lived through the snow and ice.

Eight degrees is nothing to sneeze at; but I successfully avoided all frozen pipe calls, kept my old truck running, escaped the ditches and oncoming cars that awaited me on every side of the slick streets, and kept the fireplace at home stoked and radiating. And the crisis passed.

Now, one week later, it’s 70 degrees in Memphis and the forecast says it will continue for several days.

Eat your heart out, Indiana.

And what does a Fundamentalist get his son for Christmas? Here is Wesley with his new T-shirt and Taurus PT-132 semiauto:

We had a great day at the Barley household this fine Christmas. I was going to go to work, but The Voices said to stay home and clean the guns. So we’re doing our part to spread the message of the angels: “Peace through Superior Firepower.”

Yes, we Barleys live in a world where “gun control” means hitting your target. The Kingdom of God will be a time of universal peace. This isn’t it. In a fallen world such as ours, thugs need more than a smile and an assurance of unconditional positive regard. They need the fear that comes from knowing that their prey might be armed. And if they guess wrongly and attack us, we hope to assist the city of Memphis in its beautification program by eliminating a little of the trash at no charge to the taxpayers.

And should you dislike the idea of shooting an attacker dead, I suggest that, in the event that you happen to be attacked yourself, that you call out for a social worker to counsel the poor, disadvantaged punk who’s about to feed upon you. If that doesn’t work, maybe you should hope like heck that there’s a trained handgunner nearby.

In the final analysis, we are the richest and most free nation on earth because our military forces defeated those who would have enslaved us. People in hellholes across the third world work hard and live carefully, but they still don’t enjoy blessings such as ours. Other people, such as their government or bandits, make it impossible for them to flourish and grow rich.

We are a free people only because other people, evil people, cannot overpower us and steal what we have produced. Such people are out there. Make no mistake, they’re there. The newspaper is filled with stories of such people. The primary restraint against them is firepower.

I have my health and my family. There are a number of millionaires who’d gladly trade places with me, because I’m richer than they. But I can continue to be rich only if evil men are restrained by the fear of deadly force. God bless our military, and God bless all the responsible gun owners who stand ready to defend themselves and their families this Christmastide.

A big ol’ storm has paralyzed the midwest, and Memphis isn’t doing so well, either. When I crawled under a house yesterday morning, everything was fine. When I emerged some hours later, the city was covered with sleet, with more coming down all the time. By the time I set out for home (a fifteen-minute drive under ordinary conditions), it was dark and just at the time when rush hour is worst. It took an hour and a half to get home. Nobody was driving over 20 mph, and most of the time, when we were moving at all, we were going about 5 mph. All of the streets were packed with bumper-to-bumper traffic, as the Interstates were impassible.

Thus it is in the South. We don’t know how to drive in ice and snow, and it just doesn’t pay to spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars preparing for a storm that might occur once every three or four years. We have no snowplows, very little salt and sand, and apparently a governmental workforce that isn’t too enthusiastic about getting overtime hours.

Today the roads were iced over. You could drive 40 mph, but you couldn’t stop! So folks were still creeping along like a snail on his way to see his mother-in-law. Combine that with a backlog of plumbing jobs I had to get to and you can imagine why I see little attraction in the song “It’s the *most* wonderful tiiime of the year.”

Ah, remember the halcyon days of working for a plumbing company. I put in for my vacation months in advance; I broke it up so that the days would adjoin my regular days off. I’d put another log on the fire, put my feet up, and let the Company fend for themselves. Christmas was a great time.

Now I can no longer tell the Company to go jump in the lake. I am the company. So I fight the single-digit weather and the icy streets, solving one problem after another, because folks rely on me and turning them down would be the equivalent of throwing them to the wolves.

But it’s still too doggone cold.

Here’s a great video that everyone should view.

These are the words to “Homeward Bound,” the song playing in the background:

In the quiet misty morning when the moon has gone to bed,
When the sparrows stop their singing and the sky is clear and red.
When the summer’s ceased its gleaming, when the corn is past its prime,
When adventure’s lost its meaning, I’ll be homeward bound in time.

Bind me not to the pasture, chain me not to the plow.
Set me free to find my calling and I’ll return to you somehow.

If you find it’s me you’re missing, if you’re hoping I’ll return,
To your thoughts I’ll soon be list’ning, and in the road I’ll stop and turn.
Then the wind will set me racing as my journey nears its end,
And the path I’ll be retracing when I’m homeward bound again.Bind me not to the pasture, chain me not to the plow.
Set me free to find my calling and I’ll return to you somehow.