Horatius At The Bridge

Dear Readers, you do understand we had to memorize this, as schoolboys? here's an excerpt from Macauly's epic Horatius:

 

And nearer fast and nearer

    Doth the red whirlwind come;

And louder still and still more loud,

From underneath that rolling cloud,

Is heard the trumpet’s war-note proud,

    The trampling, and the hum.

And plainly and more plainly

    Now through the gloom appears,

Far to left and far to right,

In broken gleams of dark-blue light,

The long array of helmets bright,

    The long array of spears.

XXII

And plainly and more plainly,

    Above that glimmering line,

Now might ye see the banners

    Of twelve fair cities shine;

But the banner of proud Clusium

    Was highest of them all,

The terror of the Umbrian,

    The terror of the Gaul.

XXIII

And plainly and more plainly

    Now might the burghers know,

By port and vest, by horse and crest,

    Each warlike Lucumo.

There Cilnius of Arretium

    On his fleet roan was seen;

And Astur of the four-fold shield,

Girt with the brand none else may wield,

Tolumnius with the belt of gold,

And dark Verbenna from the hold

    By reedy Thrasymene.

XXIV

Fast by the royal standard,

    O’erlooking all the war,

Lars Porsena of Clusium

    Sat in his ivory car.

By the right wheel rode Mamilius,

    Prince of the Latian name;

And by the left false Sextus,

    That wrought the deed of shame.

And nearer fast and nearer doth the red whirlwind come. Stand back in awe.

Your Old Pal,

LSP

Epiphany

 

What a beautiful Epiphany morning, crisp and clear with the sun rising over the common behind the Compound. I say "common" but I don't think any of us have grazing rights on this bit of vacant land owned by the Civic Power. Regardless, I wasn't there to recce out a site for a new parade square or even admire the scenery, no, I was there to work.

Don't laugh, I was, and spent the morning hanging drywall for a new Habitat For Humanity house.  What a good cause and led, in this instance, by a neat guy who got me into the swing of things. He's retired now and spends his time putting up these houses for the good of the community, but had been a soldier for 20 years.

A Mexican immigrant, he joined up in 1969 and fought in Vietnam where he was wounded, "What's that, 49 inches? Sometimes my memory's not so good, I stepped on a mine." Mines aside, D stayed in and retired in 1989 as, I think, a  Command Sergeant Major with III Corps. "Phantom Warriors," I offered, resisting the urge to ask how an armored corps could somehow classify as "phantom." He grinned, impact wrench in hand, "That's right, III Corps."

What a good guy and he liked the fact that my eldest, the erstwhile and maybe future cadet, was stationed at Fort Hood, "It'll always be Fort Hood, man. Have you been down Tank Destroyer Boulevard?" I replied that I had. "There's a lot of power there," he said in a quiet tone and I agreed that there was.

Ahem, Civic Power, Roads

Then we were finished for the day and I tell you, I really enjoyed the work, the company and the chance to put faith into practice. All you biblical scholars out there will recall Christ was rather insistent on people helping out those less fortunate than ourselves. That in mind, I'll be back on the project, big fun to boot.

An Epiphany? Yes indeed, on several levels. Not least, tear yourself away from the appalling news cycle and do something good and constructive. Exercise your faith, put "tract into act" and all of that, and who knows who you'll meet along the way. But I won't preach.

Cheers,

LSP

Position Open?

 

mendacium

Now look here, you lot, there's a position open at Harvard, Satan's Vatican. Yes, Claude's stepped down from being Prez for a 900K DEI salary. She had to resign because copy and paste, even though zhe was a POC. Zerohedge goes so far as to say Claude was some kind of huxter, a fraud. Here:

One reason that DEI recently took hold of academia so ferociously is that intellectual standards had long ago slipped to nothing, and corruption had already taken the place of the sincere search for and teaching of truth. Once that was gone, whole institutions came around to embracing fakery, fraud, plagiarism, political favoritism, and outright and brazen hoaxes as just the way business is done.

So which one of you, dear readers, will step into Gay's deeply oppressed if highly remunerative boots? To help you decide, here's the Genius of Yoko, have look:

Your Old Pal,

LSP

Te Deum - And Return

 

Return to what? The ancient Faith of the West, the faith of Bohemund at the gate, of all that's right and true. Stand fast by that and think, what else do you have? No luggage racks on the back of a hearse, my friends, ask Epstein.

Saying,

LSP

Another One Bites The DEI Dust

Just when you were thinking Dumb, Evil, Idiot (DEI) couldn't sink any lower, another one bites the dust. This time it's Philly's DEI Officer, Leslie Marant, via Zero:

Thanks to help from Harvard's Claudine Gay, who was unable to condemn harassment on her campus against Jewish students and was later found to have plagiarized <checks notes...> what appears to be her entire body of academic work, it looks as though the diversity, equity and inclusion ("DEI") wolf in sheep's clothing is finally starting to be seen for what it is. 

That reverberation may have made its way to Philadelphia, where the crime and drug-ridden city is once again attempting to make a swift change back to law and order under newly-sworn in mayor Cherelle Parker, widely acknowledged to be the most pro-police candidate out of the Democratic choices in the city. 

And just hours before Parker was sworn into office, the Philadelphia Police Department’s first diversity, equity, and inclusion officer, Leslie Marant, was fired, according to a report by the Philadelphia Inquirer. Almost as if when your hellscape of a city needs more police desperately, it doesn't matter what color, race, creed or orientation they are. Go figure.

 

Leslie's radical socialist salary was a mere 170K+. I guess that makes zhir a low-level satrap.

Cheers,

LSP

UFO News

 

I can't even comment except to ask, will any of the space aliens who live amongst us be brought to justice? OK, they killed Epstein and his business partner, weird how the CCTV cut out at the appropriate moments, and jailed Ghizzy. What can we say, reverse engineered alien tech is obviously pretty good. In fact it's super stealth. 

No one saw it in the first place and if they did see it they forgot it or hid it, like the FBI. But there are exceptions to the rule, sometimes the off-worlders slip up, like at Harvard, where Claudine "Gay" got zhirself fired for copy and paste only to be awarded 900K. Yes, the Galactic Council looks after its own.

Then there's Sean Lennon. His dad was King of the Hippies who married the vocal genius of Yoko and then he got shot; clearly space aliens. But what's this, off-world Sean's come into orbit and said this, "Have you guys heard of DEI? It stands for ‘Dumb Evil Idiots.'"

Dumb Evil Idiots. Well said, Sean, come back to Terra, all is forgiven, and we have to ask: Are some aliens on our side?

Cheers,

LSP

Salve Regina

 

Disregard this at your peril.

Lacrimarum Valle,

LSP

Aaand it's Gone

That'd be the Satanic Vatican's President, "Claudine," curiously named Gay, the shortest ever-lived Prez in the Kremlin on the Charles' storied career of privileged leftist perfidy.

Defiant

Gay lost zhir seat as top Harvard ruler because zhe couldn't stop copying and pasting. Here at the Compound we look forward to Harvard's next choice of academic brilliance.

Self-Satisfied

In the meanwhile, the appropriately named "Gay" has been given a teaching slot at Satan's Vatican and a golden parachute of not much less than a million ultra leftwing Dollars. You can look it up on the internet. My, what a lucky very rich radical socialist.

RICH

Academia, those hallowed halls of academe, needs to be purged. Root and Branch. Yes, we're looking most especially at you, Harvard.

Illuminatio Mea,

LSP

Play Up Play Up And Play The Game - UPDATE

 

You'll recall Great Britain faced off the Mahdi in the 1880s, with General Gordon losing his head in Khartoum and a British Square being partially broken at the battle of Abu Klea, in which the beloved and heroic Col. Burnaby was killed by a Moslem spear to the throat. 

Sir Henry Newboldt wrote a poem immortalizing the thing. Here it is:

There’s a breathless hush in the Close to-night —

Ten to make and the match to win —

A bumping pitch and a blinding light,

An hour to play and the last man in.

And it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat,

Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame,

But his Captain’s hand on his shoulder smote —

‘Play up! play up! and play the game!’

The sand of the desert is sodden red, —

Red with the wreck of a square that broke; —

The Gatling’s jammed and the Colonel dead,

And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.

The river of death has brimmed his banks,

And England’s far, and Honour a name,

But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks:

‘Play up! play up! and play the game!’

This is the word that year by year,

While in her place the School is set,

Every one of her sons must hear,

And none that hears it dare forget.

This they all with a joyful mind

Bear through life like a torch in flame,

And falling fling to the host behind —

‘Play up! play up! and play the game!’

Play up! Play up! And play the game! It's easy to mock this,  unless you're, ahem, Texas A&M(!), and the beastly place which calls itself "Clifton," but maybe not so fast, punters. Are duty, loyalty, esprit de corps and sheer resolution in the face of the enemy bad things? I will face you, enemy of my people, and I will not give up. Ever. There's a virtue in that, call it fighting spirit if you like.

Your Friend,

LSP

PS. A schoolboy "rallies the ranks." Reflect on the line. Try saying the chorus in that very same, unbroken voice and see where it leads you. Maybe to this:

Coronation And Deadly Folly

What a scene, Napoleon, self-crowned and proclaimed leader of all the world crowns his Empress Josephine, resplendent in diamonds as the powers of the Church look on, scowling at the blasphemy of the thing. Triomphe! for the Corsican upstart and his Consort. Lesueur captures the moment, with pre-industrial grandeur:

Triumph indeed, but hubris met nemesis in the Iron Duke, Wellington, who put paid to Boney's scheme of a new world order with himself in charge, smashing the upstart at Waterloo. It's said that clubland in St. James was awakened to the fact of allied victory in 1815 by parades of jubilant people carrying captured French Eagles.

So much for Boney. Wellington stated, laconically, "They came on in the same old way and we beat them back, in the same old way." You can imagine the 50,000 casualties on the field of battle. Here's the Duke in older and seemingly kinder visage:

Josephine Bonaparte died in 1814, a year before her beloved husband met disaster at Waterloo.

Sic transit,

LSP

Space Force Skulduggery

 

Space, the final frontier of war, a vital component in full-dimensional, cross-spectrum supremacy, so thank Rods from God we've got a Space Force. Now, you probably see the Space Force as looking like this except with non-reflective black armor, which is invisible in space:

No, wrong. It looks like this, like Lt. Col. Bree call-sign "Tranny" Fram. Force Lethal or what:

After you've gotten over the weird and unpleasant uniform, note that Bree's on record as saying, "Inclusion is a national security imperative." Of course it is, because if we don't have brigades of trannies in the Space Force all those ChiCom and Russkie satellites won't die laughing.

Dear God, Kyrie Eleison, we've come to this, a blasphemous parody of a woman claiming transing's a key element of our national defense. Take note, Mr. Putin, you'd better start mobilizing the trannies if you're going to even think about taking out Ukraine and NATO. 

random Hollow earth ad

Wow, this is almost as absurd as the stupid old lie, "Trump's a Kremlin agent!" or "unless you wear a mask you're going to die of COVID! and kill me too!" Could it be that the Russkies, forever cunning in the dark arts of espionage and subterfuge, have infiltrated our beloved Space Force and are even now funding and boosting the trans green movement in hopes of irreparably weakening the West? 

A real Space War, let the reader understand

You know, as in "you've got no more industry or energy and all your soldiers, what few you have, are gender dysmorphic, so give us the Arctic or we'll mispronoun you. A lot. Until you surrender and cry in the battalion counselor's office."

I say again, 2024's shaping up for weird and bad craziness.

Your Most Inclusive Pal,

LSP

Happy New Year!

 

Well done, we made it to 2024, no small feat, and local friendlies celebrated the fact with whoops and fireworks which bombed across the firmament like the guns of Kursk. There was traditional gunfire too, off on the edge of town by the sound of it, maybe a pistol or two. All very exciting, and I joined in the fun by setting off a few strips of firecrackers, drawing a big round of Mexican applause.

Fun. Then it was time to head to bed and another installment of Iain Pears' excellent Arcadia, check it out. Today? A brisk walk with an excited dog to the Pick 'n Steal via the Olde Meth Shacke, which is being refurbed by Pedro and his crew. 

Wymmxn Priestesses

Gone are the days of ne'er do wells lolling shirtless and witless in their ragged pajama bottoms, behold instead the new advent of hard at work artisans from south of the border doing their thing. Good for them, though I miss the spectacle of meth shackery, being a creature of tradition. 

A Typical Fighting Monkey

Now, safely back at the Compound, we reflect on the coming year, what will it bring? Good question, and I'm not a betting man but I'll wager my fighting monkey against any ten of your wymmxn priestesses, yes, ten, that 2024 will be even crazier than bad old '23.

Cheers,

LSP