« "There Will be Blood" Part 2 - Futures speculation and the price of crude | Main | "Turbulent Priests" »

31 May 2008

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

SubKommander Dred

Charlottesville, Virginia
31 May 2008

Sir;
Happy Birthday. Unfortunately the only present I can offer is my enduring gratitude for providing this space where I have been able to learn so much from you and the others that post here.

Your most humble servant,
SubKommander Dred

EAS

Best wishes on your birthday. Your Dad and Mum should be right proud of all your achievements and on this blog readers part thank you for the great forum you maintain.

Taters

A very Happy Birthday to you, Col. Lang and many happy returns.

Maureen L.

Happy Birthday, dear brother. Since I can't be there to help you celebrate, thought I might send you a classic Python entree to go with that birthday cake:

Monty Python- Spam
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anwy2MPT5RE

Have a wonderful day today!

frank durkee

Simply Thanks for sharing.

J

Happy B-day Pat, be sure to have a brewsky to celebrate, notice i said 'a' as in singular/one, lol. Again, best wishes for your B-day.

Helena Cobban

Very many happy returns-- stick around, we need you!

And thanks for all your great work here.

Sidney O. Smith III

Happy B’day. Time -- ’tis the strangest dimension of them all.

But like Qoheleth says, the essence of life is to enjoy the moment. So I certainly raise a glass to celebrate Col. Lang’s B’day, SST and, of course, the 2007 NIE.

And to see how fortunate we are, I say take another look at Col. Lang’s remarks about Scott McClellan and his new book. In a few short paragraphs, Col. Lang interwove the following allusions, topped off with one image:

1. Quote by Cardinal Wolsey (“If I had served my God as diligently…”)
2. Quote by General Robert E. Lee (“Duty is the most sublime…”)
3. Reference to Ruritania
4. Reference to the Southern novelist Thomas Wolf (“can’t go home again”)
5. Reference to Rothko chapel
6. Use of the word “Ziocon”
7. A play on the image of Johnny Depp’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”

And you, WaPo?

David Habakkuk

Happy Birthday!

My wife and I raised a glass, to wish you and your wife good health.

And may your fighting spirit continue undimmed, for many years to come.

Mike

This old Airman would like to wish a Happy Birthday to an old Soldier, to thank him for his service to our country in and out of uniform.

Montag

Happy Birthday, Colonel. I'm continually impressed by the range and utility of your current activities. I think the worst curse would be to suffer Machiavelli's complaint. In 1513 he first mentioned writing "The Prince" as the ultimate Insider condemned to live out his remaining days as an Outsider:

"I am going to waste. I cannot go on this way for long without becoming contemptible in my poverty. Besides, there is my wish that these Medici lords would begin to use me, even if they were to start by setting me to roll a stone, for if I should then fail to win their confidence I could only blame myself. Having read this thing [The Prince], one will see that I did not sleep or gamble away the fifteen years I was engaged in the study of statecraft, and anyone ought to value the services of a man who has become richly experienced at another's expense...."

Ah, but we do, we do, Sir.

zanzibar

Best wishes Pat! And may you have many more birthdays in great health and spirit.

William R. Cumming

Glad to see you reach the 1/2 way point Pat!

Happy Birthday!

Bill

Leila Abu-Saba

My best wishes to you, sir, on your birthday. Here's hoping you enjoy the day to the fullest, surrounded by loved ones, with finest health in the many long years to follow.

Sherry Long

Have a wonderful day, Colonel.

Thank you for your blog.

Cieran

Happy Birthday, Colonel!
And may you have many, many more...

Charles I

Happy birthday Pat, many happy returns. This page is a tremendous present to us all, so kudos to you, and our thanks to your parents. Now you celebrate while I go and find out what the heck the Qoheleth is. . .

Mark K Logan

Happy birthday Col.,

A selection of Dave Barry
quotes:

Nothing is ever really buried in a meeting. An idea may *look* dead, but it will always reappear at another meeting later on. If you have ever seen the movie _Night of the Living Dead_, you have a rough idea how modern corporations and organizations operate, with projects and proposals that everybody thought were killed constantly rising from their graves to stagger back into meetings and eat the brains of the living.


No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.

Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.

People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.

The main accomplishment of almost all organized protests is to annoy people who are not in them.

The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above-average drivers.

There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."


In the past decade or so, the women's magazines have taken to running home-handyperson articles suggesting that women can learn to fix things just as well as men. These articles are apparently based on the ludicrous assumption that men know how to fix things, when in fact all they know how to do is look at things in a certain squinty-eyed manner, which they learned in Wood Shop; eventually, when enough things in the home are broken, they take a job requiring them to transfer to another home.

Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who have had years and years of training can, using only their hands and feet, make some of the worst movies in the history of the world.

Women often ask, "What do men *really* want, deep in their souls?" The best answer -- based on in-depth analysis of the complex and subtle interplay of thought, instinct, and emotion that constitutes the male psyche -- is that, deep in their souls, men want to watch stuff go "bang."


pbrownlee

Congratulations, Colonel, on your splendid and continuing victory over the entropy demon.

And also to your resident Middle East expert who, I imagine, may sometimes be a silent partner in this little coven of well informed grumps you've lashed together.

In parts of Newfoundland they used to (and may still) celebrate the birthdays of folk who are no longer perpendicular ("How old is Uncled X?" "135." "Oh...") and they did something similar a couple of years ago for what would have been John Betjeman's centenary (do people know him in the US?) -- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/5292350.stm
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/reviews/story/0,,1871426,00.html
http://rehanqayoom.blogspot.com/2007/10/battle-of-camel-pira-betjeman-birthday_707.html
http://www.johnbetjeman.com/

It is possible that you may suffer the same fate -- and have already achieved a kind of immortality (the best kind?) in the minds and hearts of those of us you have touched.

Having cleared that up, may I share one of the strangest Betjeman poems? (He was easy to underestimate.)


A Shropshire Lad

The gas was on in the Institute,
The flare was up in the gym,
A man was running a mineral line,
A lass was singing a hymn,
When Captain Webb the Dawley man,
Captain Webb from Dawley,
Came swimming along the old canal
That carried the bricks to Lawley,
Swimming along, swimming along,
Swimming along from Severn,
And paying a call at Dawley Bank
While swimming along to Heaven.

The sun shone low on the railway line
And over the bricks and stacks,
And in at the upstairs windows
Of the Dawley houses’ backs,
When we saw the ghost of Captain Webb,
Webb in a water sheeting,
Come dripping along in a bathing dress
To the Saturday evening meeting.
Dripping along, dripping along,
To the Congregational Hall;
Dripping and still he rose over the sill
And faded away in a wall.

There wasn’t a man in Oakengates
That hadn’t got hold of the tale,
And over the valley in Ironbridge,
And round by Coalbrookdale,
How Captain Webb the Dawley man,
Captain Webb from Dawley,
Rose rigid and dead from the old canal
That carried the bricks to Lawley,
Rigid and dead, rigid and dead,
To the Saturday congregation,
And paying a call at Dawley Bank
On his way to his destination.


Bodo Reisling

Happy birthday, Colonel. You are the vital center of good sense, in most things.

Bodo

Neil Richardson

Dear Colonel,

My very best wishes and many happy returns. And I once again thank you for your insight

Nancy K

Happy Birthday Colonel Lang. May this year be your best year ever and may your blog spread truth to many many more people. This at times sad old world needs many more people like you. Thank you.

J.T. Davis

Best wishes on your birthday, Colonel. Eat, drink and be merry. I'll join you in a wee dram. I'm due for a drop.

Cujo359

Birthday salutions back at ya. Happy Birthday.

Fr. John Shimotsu

Dear Colonel Lang,
May God bless you on your birthday.
V/R
Fr John

The comments to this entry are closed.

My Photo

February 2021

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
  1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
28            
Blog powered by Typepad