Korea: Unified and Free

I've been praying for a unified Korea. When I do this, I sort of assume that God knows that, included in that request is an obvious assumption that I also therefore pray for a free North Korea.

But as I consider this, liberty and unification are not truly ends. We're not talking about joining the Dakotas, after all. There is a greater disparity today between North Korea and South Korea than existed between East and West Germany in 1989. The dictatorship in place is relatively independent as opposed to the Soviet puppetry in place at the end of East Germany.

So, when I pray for the miracle of freedom, food, infrastructure and eventual unification with the South, I recognize a need to extend that prayer for the decades following severe "post-totalitarian stress disorder" as well as for the people of free Korea, who will obviously welcome reuniting with their countrymen, but will also have a new burden to bear.

I hope this doesn't sound political. Because it isn't.

Foul Balls in Center Field

To celebrate the boys of summer, I present the catchiest tune from the most clueless baseball player/lyricist in the history of the game.



Confusion and defeat has never been more inspirational. Thanks, Matt & Kim!

[Lightspeed - Matt & Kim]

Science: No Place for Consensus

"Scientific" consensus sucks. It is science-defeating. It is anti-science.

Isaac Newton's "laws" of physics were unbreakable until that ding-dong Al Einstein guessed that Mercury should do a galactic jitterbug in the sky due to gravity's impact on light wave-particles.* Heck, we still cling to those laws, because, for everyday living, they do the job pretty well.

The problem is that scientific consensus usually does the job of keeping things running smoothly, until it doesn't. People forget that Galileo's problem wasn't that he was a man of science taking on the Catholic Church: he was a man of science taking on scientific consensus. The Catholics just happened to be in bed with the reigning consensus of the day.

So here's my word of advice: when they say "consensus," you say "Galileo."

*Kids: please don't use me for homework. Suck it up and borrow the Cliff's Notes guide to Quantum Physics from the deadbeat in the back of class. Oh wait. That's me. Proceed.

Scott Jorgenson Reigns Quietly Over Lap-Band Ad

I just caught one of my all-time favorite actors in the history of the galaxy last night at 2* in the morning on a commercial for Lap-Band adjustable gastric banding system.

In the brief, but moving, drama, Scott Jorgenson complains about his knees with Shakespearean acumen. It takes up about 2 or 3 seconds of screen time, but it haunts me still. Unfortunately, the good people at Lap-Band have only released their commercial at their proprietary site, so I'm unable to embed the performance here.

So go here and click on "View Our Commercial" to enjoy Mr. Jorgenson's riveting performance. Or to learn more about putting a remote-control tourniquet on your innards. Frankly, it sounds like a fun past time, but I don't think I'd like the side effect of wanting to eat less.

Scott Jorgenson: every man's everyman. Next up: Fear of Girls 3.

*This is my dilemma: I can sleep a full 3 hours every night, or I can strain arcane knowledge from the electronic underworld of the mid-night hours. How would you split the baby?

Weezer: Pork and Beans

There's nothing more delicious than pork and beans and the Internet.



Weezer is so lame. Greatly lame, that is.

Ancient Observation of the Gryffin

Adrienne Mayor is an independent scholor who studies ancient folklore and attempts to plot it against known archaeology and geology. This method led her to a conclusion that the ancient mythological beasts, at least some of them, have their origins in the scientific observation of the day, not sheer flights of fancy. In other words, the ancients were astute fossil hunters and reconstructive archaeologists and anthropologists.

A part of me wonders that if Mayor's basic assumptions are correct, is it not possible that the ancients were also astute naturalists, as well? Is it at all within the realm of scientific possibility, that the bones where fossils now lie were once, more recently than we might normally make conjencture, covered in flesh?

Greek Fire and the Silent Death of the A-bomb.

Greek Fire was the most formidable naval and siege weapon in Byzantine, and, likely, pre-modern, history.

It could burn on (or even under) water, lighting whole ships afire, and its composition was a closely guarded secret (indeed, even today, there is debate over its composition.)

How does such a weapon get lost to history? It is incredible that such a military advantage would not again appear until the Great War with the modern flamethrower.

The atomic bomb and its more impressive progeny may well be headed for the same fate. Now, I know, I know, there are plenty of parties interested in proliferating nuclear weapons from now until Judgment Day (perhaps even to hasten it) but culturally, we've moved on: the days of the Cuban Missle Crisis, the Midnight Clock...even Godzilla movies are now a part of an almost quaint history.

Perhaps a weapon that is so devastating that it has only been used once (well, twice) since its invention creates its obsolescence through its very power. Or perhaps it will lay latent for decades or centuries, awaiting its revival.

Just like Greek Fire.

Pearl Bailey and Dinah Shore Sing About Serial Murder

Bailey and Shore tear into Mack the Knife:

One thing I can say about the evil we've brought into the world is that it gave Dinah and Pearl great subject matter to lampoon. God bless those great ladies.

The Strug Gambit and Glory

Because it is the weekend, and, when humans do something astounding, you never forget it:



One foot, man.

One foot.

Kerri Strug sacrificed her foot to secure gold for her team, costing her the only shot she would ever have at individual glory. Sacrifice isn't always a long, drawn-out deliberation. She had prepared her entire life for glory, and, at glory's cusp, instead chose sacrifice.

And gained glory.

Funny that.

Guild Season FINALE: Boss Fight

Guilders:

Man up.

And woman.

Up, that is.

Internet Killed the Video Star - With a Uke, a Harp and a Bass

The Wrong Trousers get it right.

Penrose-Carter Diagram of the Finite Observer Looks A Lot Like Einstein

Einstein didn't know the guy, but he loved his work.

Great little sidebar: A mother brought her son to the rabbi, and the rabbi said to the boy; “I will give you a guilder if you can tell me where God lives.” The boy thought for only a moment and then said, “And I will give you two guilders if you can tell me where he doesn’t live.”

Heresy, Apostasy and the Lovecraft Error

Recently, I've run into a glut of people who are always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.* Somewhere along the line, they've traded the adage "One never stops learning" for a counterfiet: "One never starts learning."

I suppose it is sort of Zen to "learn by not learning," but, in effect, it is no different than good, old-fashioned "not learning."

These people are not heretical in their attitude towards one's ability to comprehend. I wish that they were. Heresy is an error in thought or expression that can, if unchecked, lead to problems in execution. But the "everlearner who never learns" is an apostate. They've educated themselves well on the ins and outs of any given instruction, and choose to fall into the shadow of that instruction instead of walking in its light.

Now, to be clear, the state of heresy or apostasy is only one that can be applied to those who would otherwise claim Christ. In other words, non-believers can't possibly qualify as apostates or heretics - this is a misunderstanding that many non-Christians have (that all Christians view them as heretics, or apostates. Don't worry, non-believer - you are simply a heathen!)

However, as far as these theological concepts can be translated and applied in a different fashion, you just know I'm going to do it.

One of my favorites is what I call the "Lovecraft Literary Error." I enjoy the strange, cosmic stories of H.P. Lovecraft very much, but I have no illusions that his beliefs (which run completely counter to my own) held a heavy influence upon his work. Atheists with a penchant for the weird honor Lovecraft as one of the forefathers of speculative atheism. What strikes me as counterintuitive, however, is that a devout atheist would see fit to create an entire cosmology of alien races, posing (unintentionally or otherwise) as uncaring gods in an indifferent universe in order to demonstrate that the indifferent universe was cold to humanity. Good ol' ld H.P. made up some might hot gods in order to demonstrate their icy non-existence, I must say. Fortunately for his fans, Lovecraft's object was not to write religious allegory, but to make up some awfully throttling yarns.

How exactly does the horrifying image of a slumbering, octopus-headed Cthulhu demonstrate a lifeless universe? How exactly does the sneering diabolic plots of a soul-crushing Nyarlathotep demonstrate that man is without soul?

They don't.

The creative, emotional pull of Lovecraft's horrors can only be described in religious terms. There is no "no-God" in the Lovecraft-created world, despite there being a "no-God" in Lovecraft's personal worldview. His argument, of course, would be that the mystical creatures are, at turns, a lampoon of the supernatural and/or evidence that the created beings populating his books are evidence that human creativity is our only solace in a loveless cosmos. But I never get the impression that Lovecraft is trying his hand at satire, and I don't buy that human creativity would serve as anything but a humiliating goad if, in fact, human creativity was, truly at heart, nothing but a rigged, emotional shell game.

The Lovecraft Error occurs when one attempts to discredit a thesis by evoking the tropes of that thesis to prove its opposite. It is when, for example, atheists are forced (by their own admission) to develop "proxy liturgies" in order to touch on matters of the (non-existent) spirit. Theoretically, it could also occur if a Christian were to attempt to implement (not exploit) nihilism in a story in order to demonstrate man's dependence on God, although I'm not even sure how such an attempt might function.

If you've ever seen the Christian ixthus "fish" sign on the back of a car with feet "evolving" on it and DARWIN filling its belly, then you've seen the Lovecraft Error in action. Any Darwinist with a modified religious symbol on the back of his car is unconsciously admitting that a) Christian symbols are worthy of co-option and that b) Darwinism should be adhered to in a religious manner.

The Lovecraft Error artfully, probably unintentionally, demonstrates reason's blind spot. And if there's one thing I've learned from you people of earth, it is that reason, most certainly, overlooks its own faults.

*Second letter to Timothy.

Motivational Word of the Day

Mindflights has been serializing Jane Lebak's Seven Archangels: Annihilation for a while.

If you haven't been reading it, you are a stupid idiot.

How's that for motivation?

[And anyone who doesn't realize that "stupid idiot" isn't stupidly redundant is so stupid that it makes me stupider than I already am, who is pretty darn stupid in the natural.*]

*I've been put in "stupid" jail by my shoats who are on "Dad, we don't say 'stupid' in our house" patrol. I must unleash the stupid somewhere. Looks like you just won the word lottery, gypsy.

Cowboy Poets: The Descent

Baxter Black - Pink Fuzzy Slippers



Versus

Billy James - One Cent Stamp



Versus

Tex Haper - New Wave Country

Tom Lommel: International Champion of Championhood

I think it is finally time to admit it:



I love the Lommel.

Oh, wait. I admitted that in '07. Well, it's time to update the admission. Or re-admit. Or admit again.

I'm a repeat admitter.

PS - Doug Doug makes a cameo. Yes!

How to Kneel Before General Zod

Unsolicited Advice for the Zeus of Political Mythology

One more political statement, and then I'll have completed my entire campaign for County Coroner/Dog Catcher.

Accusing someone of "just speaking from the Democratic/Republican (or other)" talking points is not debate. Maybe the talking points are brilliant. Maybe the person believes the point they are making. Maybe the opponent is right. Those talking points have been researched, crafted and vetted for a reason. If there is a flaw in them, expose the flaw.

Like it or not, talking points are, generally, substantial arguments. Calling arguments talking points is a way to avoid debate, not to engage in one.

Accusing someone of a rhetorical fallacy is, often, a rhetorical fallacy. Everyone on the internet has "strawman" "ad hominem" "post hoc" "appeal to authority" and all the rest memorized, or at least bookmarked.

Listen to what your opponent is meaning. Stop looking for loopholes to give yourself a technical fall.

Persuasion is an art. Don't do it by numbers.

Those are my talking points.

Scared? Really?

I'm not one for human politics, but there's been a new fad circulating that I really must crush swiftly.

"Scared."

That's got to go, people.

Almost every partisan I've heard has, at least once, resorted to the "I'm really scared of what may happen to this country if So-and-So gets the nomination."

I've heard people express "fear" of what would become of their nation under a Reagan Administration, a Clinton Administration, a Bush Administration. I recall Republicans absolutely gasping for breath after being "drowned" in Clinton for eight years, and I hear the same gasping this year, now coming from downtrodden Democrats.

But...

Really?

"Scared?"

As in, "My life, liberty and choices will fundamentally change for the worse if some politician gets a job and that makes me scared?"

People.

Calm down. If you've never led a rearguard action against the roving Stone Imps of the Mystery Leviathan, you may want to re-apply your use of the word "scared." That, my (imaginary) friends, was scary. Voting for a civil servant, even if he's sort of corrupt, or stupid, vain or mean-spirited, isn't going to thawart the restoration of your nation's mythical glory.

Because you live in a free nation, I'm afraid the duty for participating in the country's glory falls on someone else's shoulders.

Yours.

Keep in mind that, my simple public expression (whether you agree with it or not) by its very existence proves unequivocably that Orwell's nightmare scenario has in no way descended upon this nation (and, if you needed this blog to prove that to you, well...you're welcome.) And Clinton didn't turn this country into an orgy of selfish cultural cannibalism either.

Your cute little nation, with its ideals of debate and independence, representation and minority voices, still stands. Trust me, when the trolls take over, you'll know. The good news is, you won't have to worry about voting for the one who loses the contest. The bad news is, you won't have a vote at all.*

*[And the really good news is that Trollkind is pretty disorganized and generally underachieves. Once we tried to organize a raiding party, but ended up just wandering around at the mall.]

Decanal Adjectives of Majestic Authority

These days, adjectives (and their even more despised kin, adverbs) are as unwelcome as a barnacle on a beauty queen.

Some of this has to do with the prejudice of an increasingly ignorant readership. That's right, I said it again: humans are stupider about words than they used to be. [Way smarter about pictures, though, but don't tell them I said so.]

Some of this has to do with the prejudice of an increasingly prickly batch of publishers who have seen far more adjective abuse than any creature ever should.

Adjectives are easy to strike. Their presence doesn't technically change the objective meaning of a sentence.

But they shouldn't be carelessly expelled. Wouldn't it be great if writers could still get away with absolutely brilliant prose like:

It was truly an awful moment; with terror in that ancient and accursed house itself, four monstrous sets of fragments-two from the house and two from the well-in the woodshed behind, and that shaft of unknown and unholy iridescence from the slimy depths in front.

~H.P. Lovecraft - The Colour Out of Space

I say bury 'em in adjectives. It'll at least give the copy editor something to do.

Iron Man is a Movie about a Man With a Suit of Iron

There's a little independent movie making the art house circuit right now called Iron Man. I'm sure you haven't heard of it, but here's hoping it finds an audience.

I believe that it is a meditation about a man on the precipice of honor, and his inner conflict as he struggles with his personal identity as it relates within the pressures of an upper class upbringing. Or something.

Also: there's explosions.


Wildly Popular 'Iron Man' Trailer To Be Adapted Into Full-Length Film

Troll Gentle, Monster Kind

You don't want to hear this any more than I want to say it, but...boss's orders:

You might be lost, looking in the world for the one thing that will actualize you, while simultaneously running from the One thing you don't want to admit might be able to provide that connection.

Tough beans.

Turn around. Admit you've got no idea.

Repent, sinner! Repent!

Kickin' it old school. Hope this helps.

I ate a helicopter. Sorry.

Note to self: if you are going to grill a hot dog, wrap it in bacon, bury it in cheese cubes, pour chili over it, top it with shredded cheese and sour cream, do not wrap it in a spaghetti taco.

Sounding good in theory is not the same thing as feeling good in belly.

Tasty though.

Dorrie the Little Witch!

My close* personal** friend*** Patrick Rothfuss reminded me today...ever so slowly...of Dorrie, the Little Witch!

I just had to put her somewhere I wouldn't forget her!

Thanks, buddy old pal Patrick. Are we still on for that...uhm...undefined occasion when we together (except in totally separate locations) will watch the same television program or perhaps instead take note of the local weather? Great. It's a date.

*I believe he lives in a nearby state, such as Wisconsin or Maine.

**As in, "not personal at all."

***Using the definition of "friend" loosely, as in "George Washington and the Red Baron are super good friends, because they both knew where the Atlantic Ocean was."

Via (somewhat indirectly) The Flog of Felicia Day

QUICK TIME SENSITIVE UPDATE - Patrick Rothfuss is having a book signing at an independent bookstore TOMORROW in WISCONSIN. If you are capable of either tomorrow OR Wisconsin, you should consider it. He is a book writer of quality. Expires 5/4/08

Brain Stratego on a Risk Board

By mercy, I've been given a pretty effective tactic in this rolling little war with Thor. Only two words, but they have been invaluable:

Think. Slower.

Dream of the Rude

Once, in a great moon, a human bothers to note that monsters still quietly roam, outside the range of cellphone cameras and AP wires. We show up on blogs, occassionally, but, if anyone is reading them, no one certainly believes them!

When I goof up and actually am noted, one of the first questions I'm asked either subtly or overtly depends on the disposition of the asker.

If the asker is a follower of boss Jesus, he usually asks something along the lines of "Aren't you worried that you are obscuring His mission with your constant cultural garbage?"

If the asker has nothing to do with Christ, his complaint is the reverse. "Shaddup about the Freak already, get to the decadent showtunes and French postcards already!"

Which gives me a good idea that I'm executing the Troll-Lord's commission: don't be the scit -- but be in the scit.*

I try damn** hard to keep my theology tight as a drum while pounding away at the beat of a world so loved that some god died for it. I don't know which side I'll err on at any given time. I just hope I err.

Error is the only way I know I'm trying.

*Believe it or not, I still read and recite in the Anglo-Saxon tongue from time to time. It comes in handy when I need to express something earthy without justifying my word choices. And frankly, I still think the Dream of the Rood opens best in its original language.

**Yes, literally "damn." Gotta keep sheol and its destiny in mind -- keeps me desperately focused. Yeah, even when I'm faking an interview with Steve Allen.

Because I Don't Play Nice

There's really only one way to celebrate May Day.

My imaginary readers are just going to have to forgive me in advance.

It's Lordi time.

Don't follow the link if you can't handle the Troll-spawned Gospel of the Arockalypse.