Month: December 2004

James Taranto of “Best of the Web” posts an example of just how natural selection works:

“Longtime wetlands advocate” Jonathan Aurthur, 56, committed suicide last month by jumping off a cliff, a Los Angeles Times obituary reports. The family had a tragic history of mental illness; in 1996 Aurthur’s 23-year-old son, Charley, killed himself by jumping off an overpass into freeway traffic. But the Times suggests the motive for the elder Aurthur’s suicide was partly political: “Friends said [he] was despondent over mounting debt, his son’s suicide and the reelection of President Bush.”

An argument for evolution in action. And a candidate for the Darwin Awards, I’m sure.

Sharp as a Marble has this photo of Pablo Paredes.

“The Madame Tussaud’s museum revealed that a controversial waxwork nativity scene starring David and Victoria Beckham, as holy couple Mary and Joseph, has been mauled in an attack.(AFP/Jim Watson)”

This is so wrong, on so many levels, that I don’t know where to start…

OK, I’ll just hit the high spots, cos I’m waiting on a call so I can spend some money we didn’t expect to (but are glad to spend and glad we are able to spend, even so). It’ll make a low-level distraction.

First, traveling backwards through the news, the lame brain who beat up the waxworks figures of the Beckhams has good taste but lousy morality. Those figures were/are someone else’s property and he (I assume the attacker/defacer was a he) had no right to deface them. Lousy morality? Yes, because theft and destruction of others’ property is a moral issue.

Next: even on a merely aesthetic level, the nativity featuring the Beckhams as Mary and Joseph, Samuel jackson as a shepherd and Blair, Bush and some guy I don’t recognize but am told is a muckey-muck in Britain is just about as tasteless and stupid as I’ve seen (in about the same category as the guy who protested the “Parade of Lights” in Denver with a “baby Jesus” with a paper tear oozing out of one eye and “It’s My party and I’ll Cry if I Want to” playing in the background–yech!) I’ll post a close-up pic later, but take my word, the costuming alone is just lame-brain stupid…. No, “stoopid”.

Let’s leave aside for now the use of celebrity visages in the portrayal of the scene (although there is some fodder there). Imagine: first century Jews wearing pierced earrings. Just think on that one for a second. Mary and Joseph were chosen, we are told, because of their “righteousness” etc. According to their traditions and law, the wearing of earrings was for slaves, alone, and was forbidden to practicing Jews.

OK, a “stoopid” slip by sub-literates, there.

But what is David beckham, as Joseph, doing wearing not one, but TWO crosses as jewelry?!? The cross, as an item of jewelry, gained usage only after the death, burial and ressurection of the newly born child the nativity purports to represent… Stoopid sub-literacy, again.

I’d continue, but such stupidity is enough to prompt me to observe that although the doof who defaced others’ property was wrong, the property defaced was already so flawed as to be defaced in its very creation.

[sigh]

(OK, I will admit that Kylie Minogue as the annunciatory angel is at least decent eye candy… 🙂

Sean Gleeson has a pic of Mickey Moore-on looking as though he had been poisoned with dioxin a la Yurichenko. Sadly, such is not the case, and Gleeson avers that the disfiguration seemed to have been bean dip. I demurred with:

Bean dip? I think not. 2 possibilities:

1.) Pic #2 makes me think of what a s**t-eating dog might look like were it to start out as ugly as Mickey Moore-on.

2.) Think: reverse peristalsis.

Of the two, I think the most likely is the second, given what Moore-on so frequently spews.

Notice my deference to unknown sensibilities. I have no aversion to writing the word “shit” on my own blog, as I view it as a perfectly good and useful, though perhapos vulgar, word. See my defense of vulgarity, below and elsewhere.

But “reverse peristalsis” evokes a far more disgusting image than simply “shit-eating dog.” It’s in the nature of dogs to be carcophages (indeed, for dogs it is frequently a survival trait), but spewing shit forth from the mouth, as Mickey Moore-on does almost every time he opens his for anything other than stuffing with more fois gras, is about as repulsive an image as I can conjure… And it’s simply normative behavior for this despicable example of human devolution.

But think: if the foretold (second) coming of the Christ is as Isaiah saw, with lions grazing on grass—literally a transformation of nature!—perhaps there is hope for even such travesties of nature as Mickey Moore-on. Let’s all pray for a transformation.

I don’t know why it is, but for most of my life, preachers of my aquaintance have been almost universally unimpressive during Advent season. It’s as though, for them, the Incarnation is something to mention in passing at a Christmas Eve service once a year. Sure, some may toss a crumb to the crowd by letting folks light an Advent candle and clumsily read some canned Advent “meditation” but seriously deal with the miracle, the purpose, the power of the Incarnation during the Advent season? Nah.

Here’s a good example of what all those preachers who “lose” me during Advent could be serving up, instead. Just CLICK the link. I’m going to be reading more of Donald Sensing’s sermons, if these be any sort of representative sample. (He does not know what he has achieved: I’m perhaps a wee tad on the hyper-critical side when it comes to crappy preaching. Or even simply sloppy sermonizing… )

Here’s another by the same guy. And another. What the heck is this guy thinking?!?!? he’s actually taking the Incarnation seriously?!?!?

And [shock!!!] he’s a Methodist!!

[heh]

I may just have to move to Franklin, TN for Advent/Christmas next year…

[Note: this doesn’t mean all the preachers I’ve known have been poor exegetes—although the majority have been—or that all of them suck swamp gas in their preaching gigs—although, again, a surprising number have indeed—but that darned few preachers of my aquaintance have been sensible in their approach to this miracle we observe during this season.

And when i say “we observe” I note that even the secular world observes it, no matter how much the American Criminal License Union and their ilk in the LLMB, the soi-dissant “justice system” and MMPA try to erradicate all Christian references from the season. Why then do so many folks in the pulpit seem to pay so little attention to Advent/Christmas? I dunno. I’d hate to make a blanket statement, but I will note that those in so-called liturgical churches at least make half-hearted stabs at connecting their sermons to the season (which may partly explain Sessing’s addresses, though not the excellence they manifest).

Anyway, at least I’ve found some sermons to fill that missing niche this Advent. I hope these links prove useful to others as well.

Ed: corrected spelling on Donald Sensing’s name 12-19-04

The Commisar comments on one-way “trackbacks”…

Perhaps he needs to be reminded—as I so frequently need to be reminded—that one ought not too readily ascribe to maliciousness or greed any behavior that is adequately explained by stupidity. I know I’m not really up to speed on all the blog ettiquette, terminology and technology, though I do not think I have been guilty of this particular faux pas—yet. And after the Commisar’s comments, I know I will be particularly scrupulous in observing links back to places I first saw rferences I mention here, even though I have always attempted to give credit every time I mention someone else’s comments.

Nevertheless, I appreciate the lecture on proper ethics/blogging ettiquette the Commisar offers. Points well heeded.

BTW, Thx TacJammer for making the link to the Commisar’s comments at The Politburo Dictat available in this post. (And, BTW, folks, TacJammer is a pretty darned good milblog. Check it out.)

Enough links, yet?

🙂

edit: yeh, I misspelled “Commissar”… more than once. Good luck suing me for it.

Also, the comments and trackbacks noted at both TacJammer and Politburo Dictat on their posts (1, 2) about this issue (1, 2) are worth reading, as well, even though my comment at TacJammer is not all that useful, since I can’t do the cool kinda “trackbacks” the really wonderful, marvelous folks like the Big Dogs (1, 2)do since as far as I know Blogger/Blogspot doesn’t seem to do them the same way and I have to just post regular old everyday links.

Of course, it might not be Blogger’s fault but be a result of my ignorance or stupidity. Someone will be sure to let me know. (Especially if it’s simply my stupidity. “Over-educated” is not the same things as “very smart”)

Edit #2: Hey! Maybe I need to check out the Haloscan thing I just added, as it says it “does” trackbacks”…

[duh]

🙂

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog. I hope both of you who have posted comments enjoy the improvement.

🙂

…but only for Harvey‘s “Carnival of the Pajamas.”

But since I don’t ever wear pajamas, here’s a recent photo. I move so quickly and so often (sometimes it’s a matter of life and death, you know) that it was difficult for the photographer who caught me in a candid pose to get a clear pic. That’s life…