Slow Day in the Federation

So I was just hanging out at home on a Saturday when Spock came around. We drove his Buick down to the boardwalk and nerve pinched the guys in front of the gym, then we got a six of Bud and some potato chips and watched the trains.

A Missing Digression

Feel

I feel it’s lack. A vague disquiet. An echoing discordant silence.

I tell myself time turns.

I tell myself tides roll.

I tell myself things evolve.

 

I feel it’s coming and going. Drama and madness. Passionate complications.

I tell myself I am well rid of it.

I tell myself I am grown beyond.

I tell myself I had traded in illusions.

 

I feel it’s thundering heartbeat. Striving and changing. Rearing up through ashen stone.

I tell myself to watch the moon.

I tell myself to count to ten.

I tell myself to accept mercy.

 

I tell myself I feel fine as I am.

 

I know I don’t believe myself.

I know I lie.

 

I know I really feel nothing.

Racing Ben-Hur

Ben-Hur has always a very problematic bit of literature for me. In so many ways throughout my life Ben-Hur represented everything I felt needed ridicule. The religious viewpoint of the text was a good place to start, with it’s concept of the ancient Hebrews falling all over themselves to worship “the Christ”. From there it is easy to mock the clumsy and, from a modern standpoint, bizarre combination of religious tract and melodramatic pot-boiler, with a rousing sports story tossed in.

The of course there is the movie, with Charleton Heston turning in a cleft-chinned, hamhanded performance that seemed to be consciously ignoring the homo-erotic fabulousness all around him (he was actually totally unaware of that angle, according to the director of the film). In so many ways, I was born to mock Ben-Hur.

However, the author of Ben-Hur, Lew Wallace, led an amazing, fascinating life and his journey along with the effect his book had on Victorian morays, means there may be more to this chariot race then meets the eye…

A Painted Digression

Paint

The paint is not dry, the sign says it quite clearly as I stand by the bench.

The same sign has been on the same bench for three weeks, yet still, yet still I stand.

You see, I know what we are like.

We NEVER believe the paint is dry…until it’s wet.

Name That Anime Theme!!

Sorry, another video, but dammit this is important.

For some reason unknown to anyone but their musical director and maybe Jesus, the Towson University marching band decided to perform the following well-known anime theme song.

Watch and listen, enjoy the overbearing horn section and more vibraphones then you could kill in a month of Sundays…and see if you recognize the Anime series the music is from.

Answer is after the jump.

 

 

D&D on a Surface…CRITICAL HIT!

Sorry to post so much video today, but this is just….amazing.

“A Rorschach Test on Fire…”

Just had to share…love the song, love the video (even if the video is only half the song…).

The song is of course by Jonathan Coulton, the video was made at a Cornell Summer Animation Workshop by Pisut Wisessing.

 

Think he can do “Feelings”?

Behold, Hu-mons…someone decided to translate and perform Eminem’s Without Me in Klingon. He even calls himself Klenginem.

Damn.

Why didn’t I think of doing that?

Now if only the rapper in question had sounded a little angrier, and a little less 16 years old…

And after the jump, because I knew you would demand them…THE LYRICS! Now we are all ready for Karaoke Night.

…And a little more Hell, please.

I knew he was that way the first time I saw him in that hat…

A Morning Digression

Hope

A new day rises.

The Bluebird of Hope soars free.

But do mind the fangs.

…and Speaking of Hell….

The following oh so tempting invitation has gone out to the world from the Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, North Carolina (their website is currently suspended however…there’s a shock). I swear if I were in the area and had nothing to do Halloween night (improbably, I know, but still…) I would drop by, just for the food and the sex in the vestibule.

Halloween Book Burning
Burning Perversions of God’s Word
October 31, 2009

7:00 PM – Till

Great Preaching and Singing

Come to our Halloween book burning. We are burning Satan’s bibles like the NIV, RSV, NKJV, TLB, NASB, NEV, NRSV, ASV, NWT, Good News for Modern Man, The Evidence Bible, The Message Bible, The Green Bible, ect. These are perversions of God’s Word the King James Bible.

We will also be burning Satan’s music such as country , rap , rock , pop, heavy metal, western, soft and easy, southern gospel , contempory Christian , jazz, soul, oldies but goldies, etc.

We will also be burning Satan’s popular books written by heretics like Westcott & Hort , Bruce Metzger, Billy Graham , Rick Warren , Bill Hybels , John McArthur, James Dobson, Charles Swindoll , John Piper, Chuck Colson, Tony Evans, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swagart, Mark Driskol, Franklin Graham , Bill Bright, Tim Lahaye, Paula White, T.D. Jakes, Benny Hinn , Joyce Myers, Brian McLaren, Robert Schuller, Mother Teresa , The Pope , Rob Bell, Erwin McManus, Donald Miller, Shane Claiborne, Brennan Manning, William Young, etc.

We are not burning Bibles written in other languages that are based on the TR. We are not burning the Wycliffe, Tyndale, Geneva or other translations that are based on the TR.

We will be serving Bar-b-Que Chicken, fried chicken, and all the sides.

If you have any books or music to donate, please call us for pick-up. If you like you can drop them off at our church door anytime. Thanks.

My favorite part is the fact that in the list of heretical writers, they include “The Pope”. All of them? They make it sound like a stand alone title passed down father to son, like The Phantom. “Beware…the Priest that WALLKKSSSSS…” Does he get a sharp purple Mitre with a skull on the front?

I also dig that not only are they serving both fried and BBQ chicken, but “all the sides”. You can tell when a book burning is swank because they serve both potato salad AND macaroni salad.

I would be inclined to think this is a hoax, except that the always exceptional First Things is blogging about it.

As a comment from a Rabbi Fraser states on First Things, “Think positively. They are burning books, not people.”

Amen.

Also, who knew there were so many damn bibles…

Hell Must Have Quite a Waiting List

OK, I am going to hell with at least eight nine, possibly ten eleven (when I am feeling self-critical) of these on my rap sheet. Feel free to guess which.

Anyone beat my total?

What’s Next? The Religious Implications of Casper?

I am no stranger to serious and philosophical concepts in comics and graphic novels…even those considered on the surface to be juvenile. Of course there is Watchmen and it’s deconstructing of heroes, Dark Knight dealing with aging and the passing of a dream, Maus exploring man’s inhumanity to man, Persepolis looking at being a woman under the rule of religious extremism, the work of Neil Gaimen examining our relationship to the eternal and the depths of our own souls….LOTS of big chewy concepts disguised as kid stuff.

However, not even I am fully ready to face existential questions of predestination in Archie, let alone his wrestling with his inability to accept the fact that he can fully love two different people. I mean….HUH?

Despite that, this quote from the current writer about the question of who Archie will marry at the end of the current story arc is priceless…“The polls that I’ve seen ran about 80/20, Betty over Veronica, with Jughead continually coming in a strong third”.

Read on to find out more…

Wielder of the Speedbump of Anor

I want this sign as a tattoo.

I don’t care where, just somewhere cut into my flesh.

A Reflective Digression

Twilights

A year of shattered twilights

Words of strange intent echo back, lyrics out of time and mind

Regrets hang low behind me, like overripe fruit, marking wrong roads.

 

A year of shattered twilights

Cannibal memories lurk ahead in ancient sentences spoken by no one.

Recast and rephrase, running for the edge, any edge.

 

A year of shattered twilights

Sliding down, set like a stone on a final shelf.

Set like a final stone.