LlamaCare: The Fight for Equality

According to the AP (All-Powerful ones), SCOTUS (the Supreme Counts of The United States) have decided to overturn the President's landmark legislature LlamaCare, despite cautioning voices from dissenting Counts and famous actors.

Justice Wholly Toledo has viciously decried LlamaCare, citing statistics. This strikes me as a basic misunderstanding of the role of a Supreme Count. They are supposed to figure out what all the big words in the Constitution mean, not cite statistics. That's what pundits and sports announcers do.

Worse however is the discrimination against Llamas inherent in this controversial decision. Some say that LlamaCare makes people pay for healthcare they don't use, but how is that even an issue? Why is money such a big deal when the government can just print more of it and give it to us?

How could you deny a face like that?

As always, it's the silly ReTublicans causing the stir in this debate. They want llamas to pay for their own health care, arguing that healthcare is a privilege not a right. (What about my right to privileges, huh?) Thankfully, DemoBrats bravely assert that llamas are incapable of getting off their proverbial llama couches and getting a job good enough to provide health insurance. Only DemoBrats are willing to pay the money necessary to keep llamas from feeling like they've been discriminated against.

And that's what's at stake, isn't it? No one cares about letting people get good doctors, it only matters that politicians can say with a clear conscience that he has done his bit to get every llama has been insured. And nothing is worth so much as giving a politician a legitimate talking point.

Show your support of LlamaCare by using the hashtag #savethellamas on Twitter and Pinterest. We will not be silenced until more people get free stuff.

I Puritani Synopsis

It's that time again, folks. Your occasional opera synopsis. Today, I puritani by Count Carlo Pepoli and the great Italian composer, Vincenzo Bellini. That this was Bellini's last opera had to do less with the opera and more with his dying, in case you were wondering.

The Puritans

Some soldiers listen to the principles sing a prayer. Riccardo is moping because his intended, Elvira, doesn't seem to be digging the relationship. Once he pops off, Elvira herself enters with her uncle, who she insists must call her his daughter. He tells her how he persuaded her father to let her marry for love, which makes her chipper, for now she can marry Arturo, the dashing royalist. Arturo gets word of this and serenades her. Soon, however, he discovers that the fugitive ex-queen of England is tooling about the castle. He insists on escorting her to France once they can escape unnoticed. Elvira reenters and declares she is pumped for her wedding. She also deposits her veil on the ex-queen's head to see how it looks, but forgets to remove it. Everyone admires her innocence. 

It's not every day you get the Queen of England to model for you

Arturo is stopped by Riccardo, who is still peeved he's taken his girl. Stopping him from trafficking political fugitives is a great excuse to get revenge, he reasons, but Arturo works his charm on him. He is allowed to leave with the queen, provided it happens now, sans wedding.

Arturo inexplicably charms everyone

Elvira frolics onto the stage. Arturo's absence makes her go nuts. A whole new act is devoted to Elvira still going nuts. In the third act, however, something happens. Arturo is done chaperoning royalty, and declares he is giddy at being safe in England once again. Elvira stumbles onto the stage, and after twenty minutes of ecstatic reunion, the two of them kiss and make up. But Arturo is not as innocent of the law as he suspected, and he is sentenced to death for his royalist tendencies. But, lest there be need for a third (fourth?) mad scene, a universal pardon arrives. This is in time to save Elvira’s sanity, but not Arturo’s, as he has already by this time sung multiple notes above C5. Elvira, once again pumped for her wedding, out-sings everybody like any sane woman might.

Finis

Check out my other synopses by clicking on the opera label.

What if You Were to Die in a Year?

Last night, I wrote this in my journal:

Alas, conservative champion Andrew Breitbart died late last night. He was only 43. The question typically raised by this sort of distress is not helpful in everyday life. "What if you were to die today?" It's an interesting and sobering proposition, but hardly practical in effect. Writing to everyone how much they mean to you, spending the day with your closest companions, a vigil of prayer, a day of dissipation—all may embody a man's ideal for his last day, but none form a pattern to be adopted over the course of his life.

In that entry I argued there is a better question to ask in the wake of such a death.

"What if you were to die in a year?"

Now that is terrifying. If you had a year, or five, or ten, what would you do? How would you scatter the sands of your waning days on Earth? This question is a chaff-burner, if there ever was one. The things in a man's life that are enjoyable but peripheral fade away, leaving only what he values most. That could be most comforting and energizing.

Or most terrible.

The idols of the mind and the heart are nearly imperceptible to the casual observer of life. Yet someone forced to conclude what he will do before the expiration of another year sees all. There is nothing left to hide who you are and what you want.

The death of the energetic Breitbart has compelled me to reevaluate what I'm doing and where I'm going. I don't want to die at 30 and regret it. Indeed, I don't want to regret my death were it to occur at any age.

Living up to that maxim is another matter. Time to go edit my novel.

A bit of pictorial levity: