Mother Teresa and the long dark night of the Christian soul

It is far too easy a thing to believe in Christ.

When I say that, there are two meanings that I have in mind: both radically different yet not mutually exclusive from each other at all.

The first meaning is the one that I discovered a long time ago: that to believe in Christ is something that the least among us can do. Even the smallest child can have faith and know the fullness and abundantly joyful life that is to be found in Him. Indeed, scripture tell us that "...unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 18:3).

This has been at the heart of some of my greatest spiritual struggle, because I confess that I do not possess the heart of a little child. And there are times that I think that I would do anything to know what it is to have that childlike, innocent belief in God that we are called to have.

There are people around my own age who, more than they will ever realize, I have for many years envied terribly the strength and source of their faith. These are people in their early thirties, in their early twenties and even younger, that do have that childlike faith in Christ. They enjoy a belief in God that I don't know if I will ever get to experience the way that they do. And please don't think that I haven't tried, either. I don't begrudge them their faith at all, but I have always felt and little doubt that I will always feel like an outsider to them, looking in from the cold outside at the beautiful warm glow of their spiritual fire.

At the same time, I do understand that my own walk with the Lord has been shaped and molded by such situations and experiences, so that it is one that most other people will never know or comprehend, either. And I really don't know if I would like the thought of others having to go through the same things that I went through. My faith has strengthened considerably over the years... but I don't dare boast that my faith is "strong". It isn't. And whatever strength that may be there doesn't come from my own spirit or free will at all. It only comes because God led me through tribulation and fire. And it still isn't strong enough. Even now, my faith is being tested as it never has before, and I really don't know how I am going to be able to endure this new trial. If it is endured, it will only be by the grace of God that He will have seen us through.

So some of us know a thing about what it is to serve Christ that others do not, and those others know something also that may never be understood by some. Maybe none of us are capable, or are supposed to be capable, of comprehending the total mystery. At least not on this side of eternity. Which is probably a good thing: can you imagine the pride and arrogance that would come if any of us could claim that we knew everything about living the perfect life in Christ? Oh certainly the knowledge is there, but it will ever be tarnished by carnal nature so long as we inhabit this earthen realm. There can be such a thing as perfect knowledge and still be something evil and destructive... as Adam and Eve learned in the garden.

But none of this makes one's certain walk with the Lord better or lesser than that of another. In our own way we each strive to yield to the will of God, in whatever circumstance that He has put us. We do so knowing that it is the will of God that we serve, and that His will might not be known to us in our time on Earth or even for a hundred years. But we know that His will is a perfect one, and that we get to play a part in it - however great or mean - is a tremendous source of comfort and strength in our travails.

This struggle with faith also has bearing on what it is when I said that "It is far too easy a thing to believe in Christ" has another meaning: one that I have only recently begun to understand. That being, that we as Christians - and I am inclined to believe that this is much more prevalent the case among so-called "evangelical" Christians of the modern western sort - do have a terrible tendency of making the Christian life out to be an easy one.

The faith can be easy to find. The strength to persist and persevere in continuing that faith... not so much.

All of my life, I have watched people "lead others to the Lord". They lead them to the point of salvation and they need never fear Hell again. Unfortunately that's about as far as a lot of people get. That's as far as a lot of us who are already believers in Christ are willing to take them: to salvation and not one step beyond.

Oh sure, we can tell them about salvation... but we hardly ever bother to tell them about what it is that they are really getting into.

Becoming a Christian is something that the childlike can do. It's also something that only the most sober-minded and clear-thinking should do. And it should not be something that we do for any other sake other than His.

Why do we place so high a priority on the salvation experience and so little on the lifelong process that follows? There are two reasons, I think. The first is the one that I like least: that maybe we lead others to Christ and then we abandon them there, in our own contentment that we have bolstered the forces of God on Earth. Which in reality is just a satiating of our own selfish ego. Look at the churches, the preachers, the "Christian organizations" that boast of having hundreds or thousands of followers and members. I'm not saying that all of them are like this, but many of them do want the appearance of earthly affluence and go about achieving it by persuading themselves and others that they are doing "the work of the Lord". So it is that they become quite busy at recruiting individuals and hardly do anything at all in encouraging the individual to grow for sake of Christ alone.

This is why I've come to despise so much of what modern Christianity - and especially Christianity in America - has turned into. Even among ourselves, we don't look at the individual in Christ so much as we do at the individual in church. I do believe that we are supposed to have fellowship with other believers. But that fellowship is supposed to build up and edify us so that we can go out into the world as believers, and be missionaries with our actions and our attitudes. But I digress...

Put simply: I believe that God works through individuals, not through the masses. "Mass men" seek power for themselves. The Christian man seeks to serve others for no other reason than out of love for God.

The other reason why we often don't want to think about what comes after others reach the moment of salvation is less devious but none the more excusable: that we're too lazy to care. Probably because we don't bother to fully pursue Christ in our own lives as much as we should be doing.

Committing one's life to the Lord is not something that should be done lightly. Salvation, yes. I believe that is easy enough and is supposed to be easy enough. But the pursuit of Christ means a life that is going to be met with affliction, confrontation, persecution and at times, abject desperation.

If and when I have children, there's not going to be any of this "leading them to the Lord with a bedtime prayer" nonsense when they're 5 or 6 or whatever. I'm not saying that it's not possible for that to happen when they're at that age. But if my children want this... if they really want this... then they're going to have to understand what it is that they are embarking upon. They are going to have to want to follow Christ, even knowing how much it is going to invariably cost them and how much they are going to be arrayed against their own nature.

If they want to follow Christ, then I'm going to tell them that they shouldn't want that just to "stay out of Hell". Becoming a Christian is not supposed to be "fire insurance for the soul". We each should choose to follow Christ because we recognize the inadequacy of our own soul and that we are incomplete without yielding to the perfection of Christ.

To truly be a Christian often means to stand alone in the eyes of the world, with no support other than the faith in knowing that God is present and that His grace is sufficient to overcome.

To truly be a Christian does not mean, and was never supposed to mean, a one-time trip to the altar to be "saved". Yes, salvation is instantaneous and for all time, but the process of sanctification is one that continues on throughout earthly life. The most severe Christian life is one of never-ending crucifying of the old self and the putting to death of the former nature.

To truly follow Christ means not trusting what the world tells them to believe and accept. It even means not automatically trusting what others who come in the name of the Lord tell them to believe. Heck, it's going to mean that they can't even assume that we as their parents know and fully understand everything enough to be completely trusted. God, they can and should trust. But not fallen mankind.

(I'm telling you here and now, my children are going to grow up knowing fully well how a lot of Christians have been very very foolish for putting their trust in any political party.)

To truly follow Christ and to seek after Him in all things is not a life of comfort and control and power. And to cast off those fetters of worldly life does not necessarily mean a spirit that knows absolute the joy and serenity that comes with faith in Christ, that so many preachers and books teach we are to have.

Now what kind of a Christian parent would I be, if I didn't tell my children about all of this? Not a very good one at all.

These are all things that I have struggled with to varying degrees at one time or another in my life. And for whatever reason, they all came flooding back to me yesterday after I read a new article in Time Magazine, titled "Mother Teresa's Crisis of Faith".

In newly-surfaced correspondence that is just now being published in the book Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, we are just now coming to realize that Mother Teresa - one of the most beloved and renowned servants of Christ of the past century - suffered tremendously from times in which she felt an absence of God and a lack of faith.

These weren't the usual bouts of spiritual distress that each of us as believers go through at times throughout our lives. Mother Teresa no doubt had to fight through those too. But in letters to numerous confidants across her long decades of Christian service, Mother Teresa wrote often from the depths of despair and longing to know that God was indeed with her. And in reading these letters, I really couldn't get over the impression that however it was that we saw her on the outside, Mother Teresa was in dire spiritual agony for most of her life. She really did have to live through "the long dark night of the soul", and quite possibly she did until the day she passed away ten years ago next month.

Here is one letter in which she particularly expresses her inner turmoil...

Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? The Child of your Love — and now become as the most hated one — the one — You have thrown away as unwanted — unloved. I call, I cling, I want — and there is no One to answer — no One on Whom I can cling — no, No One. — Alone ... Where is my Faith — even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness — My God — how painful is this unknown pain — I have no Faith — I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart — & make me suffer untold agony.

So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them — because of the blasphemy — If there be God — please forgive me — When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven — there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul. — I am told God loves me — and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?

Honestly, I'm still feeling a bit of shock at the thought: that Mother Teresa struggled so much with her faith. And at the same time, it doesn't really come as a surprise at all.

Mother Teresa did have faith. That she felt overwhelmed with feelings of doubt and despair, and yet clung to her faith in spite of it, is evidence enough of that. I know that some are obviously going to claim that Mother Teresa was in "denial" because she "couldn't bring herself to believe that there really was no God" or some other nonsense. But what Mother Teresa expresses in these letters, is what I have gone through in my own spiritual life. I would even say that my Christian life has had times of far more doubt than it has of enjoying feeling secure in my faith.

That we, as believers in Christ, should know what it is to go through "the long dark night of the soul" should not be taken as a lack of faith or even as a sign of weakness. The real weakness would be to surrender without confronting those doubts headlong... and again, not for sake of ourselves or that others "expect" us to, but for His sake. His grace really is sufficient to see us through the night, in the face of our trials.

I don't know if Mother Teresa ever felt her doubts wiped away and her faith restored. In the end, it doesn't matter: our faith is not something that is dependent upon our feelings. That Mother Teresa persevered in spite of mere "feelings" should shine, even more brilliantly than a Nobel Prize, at how much strength that God had granted such a frail and tiny woman.

Mother Teresa found it easy to commit her life in Christ. She also found that it wasn't easy to endure to that commitment. But Mother Teresa endured all the same. I'm hard-pressed to think of how the life of the believer should be any more ideal than that.

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World War II sub found 65 years after disappearance

The U.S.S. Grunion, a submarine that was last heard from on July 30th, 1942, has been discovered on the floor of the Bering Sea.

From the story...

The mangled remains of a World War II submarine were found in the Bering Sea on Wednesday night, more than six decades after the U.S. Navy vessel disappeared with a crew of 70 off the Aleutian Island of Kiska.

The discovery of the USS Grunion culminates a five-year search led by the sons of its commander, Mannert Abele, and may finally shine a light on the mysterious last moments of the vessel.

"Obviously, this is a very big thing," the oldest son, Bruce Abele, said Thursday from his home in Newton, Mass. "I told my wife about it when she was still in bed and she practically went up to the ceiling."

A remotely operated vehicle snapped pictures and captured three hours of video footage of the Grunion on a rocky underwater slope north of the volcanic island, according to John Abele, who was in Kiska Harbor with the search team on Thursday.

The submarine lies 1,000 feet from the surface and had been crushed by water pressure, Abele said. He is director and co-founder of the medical equipment company Boston Scientific Corp. and the youngest of the three brothers.

"The most surprising thing was the damage," Abele said. "It was much more than we or anyone else imagined. Initially it was very hard to recognize as a ship."

The hull had imploded so severely that the interior, including bunks and a dive wheel, are clearly visible, Abele said. No human remains were found.

Click here for the search team's official website and they've just started posting some photos from their underwater cameras, too!

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Review of Marco van Bergen's ZERO HOUR!

Something I've been saying for awhile: the next revolution in film-making won't be in Hollywood. It'll be coming from out of the hinterlands. There is something really wonderful happening across the world, my friends: a new breed of filmmaker, and I'm seeing them as young as 12 all the way up to their 50s and 60s. People armed with the new technology of cheap digital filmmaking who are doing incredible things around their hometowns and down in their basements... which are more often than not rigged-up with makeshift greenscreens. Regular people, no longer content to watch the magic on the big screen, are now telling themselves "I could do that, I can do that. Maybe I will do that!"

Marco van Bergen is one of those people. A mid-teen filmmaker in the Netherlands, van Bergen just finished his new movie Zero Hour. This past week I was honored to be granted the opportunity to give it a looksee.

Zero Hour is about a tidal wave that hits a research facility on an island, and how the survivors frantically fight to survive. That this sounds much like Poseidon is bolstered by how some footage from that movie (along with clips from Titanic and other major motion pictures) is used in van Bergen's film. But don't let that fool you: Zero Hour is defined by its own cinematography (and by a largely original score by German composer Ralf Wienrich, which won a whole slew of awards at a major competition in Amsterdam a few days ago). There are some terrific shots that van Bergen and his crew pulled off, including a number of great special effects. Yet Zero Hour doesn't make the mistake that many other productions on this scale fall to the temptation of doing: making the effects supersede the story and the characters. Indeed, the scene that stands out in my mind from Zero Hour is an escape through the ventilation system: there was a much greater sense of claustrophobia and dark humor in that part than I would have expected from an older, more experienced filmmaker.

I couldn't help but think while watching Zero Hour that I was being blessed to witness the early efforts of a very talented group of young people, that I've no doubt we are going to be hearing quite a lot of good from in the years to come. Heck, if I was a bigtime studio exec, I'd throw Marco and his crew a couple million dollars and really turn them loose!

If you want to find out more about Zero Hour, check out the movie's official website. Oh yeah, and there will be a soundtrack CD of the film's score coming out soon, too! If that were only true of some other movies...

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Stephen Sommers directing G.I. Joe movie (plus who might be writing the script)

No not a remake of The Story of G.I. Joe, the 1945 movie about Ernie Pyle, and it's not a movie about the foot-tall action figure that your daddy might have played with. Sommers is directing G.I. Joe, a big-screen flick of the extremely popular toy line from the 1980s.

From the story...

While G.I. Joe toys have been around for decades, the movie will be based on the toy line launched in the 1980s, which also was tied to a Saturday morning cartoon and comic book series.

Director Stephen Sommers' take was inspired by a trip to Hasbro's headquarters in Rhode Island, where he learned in depth about the world of G.I. Joe. Sommers then met with Paramount brass, who sparked to his ideas. The studio is eyeing a summer 2009 release.

The film will see soldiers from all branches of the military fighting a terrorist group called Cobra, led by the Cobra Commander and featuring such villains as the Baroness, metal-faced arms dealer Destro, master of disguise Zartan and biker gang Dreadnoks.

On the good guys' side were heroes such as the mute ninja Snake Eyes and the fetching heroine Scarlett, who were led by a Joe named Duke.

And then IESB.net has who might be writing the script: Stuart Beattie, who worked on the Pirates of the Caribbean movies for Disney.

There's more that I want to write about this, but not right now. Suffice it to say I've had some thoughts lately about a big-screen G.I. Joe movie (let us pretend that... thing... from 1987 never happened) and why it might not work as well as the Transformers did. But if Sommers is helming and Beattie is writing, I am inclined to have some confidence in this.

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Software pirate sentenced by government to use Windows

Scott McCausland pled guilty to uploading Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith onto the Internet a day before the movie's release in May of 2005. He received 5 months in jail and then 5 months home confinement. As part of that part of his sentence, McCausland agreed to have some tracking software installed on his computer.

There's just one problem: McCausland is a Linux user, and the government doesn't have any tracking software that runs on Linux.

So now the government is making Scott McCausland use Microsoft Windows, or else don't use a computer at all.

If they make him use Windows Vista, would that violate the Geneva Convention?

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Bush: Another who fiddles while the town burns down

Here is a rendering based on various busts and statues of the mad Roman emperor Nero...

And here is George W. Bush during his speech yesterday...

"In the latter part of their reign, when rebels have become completely wicked, a stern-faced king, a master of intrigue, will arise. He will become very strong, but not by his own power. He will cause astounding devastation and will succeed in whatever he does. He will destroy the mighty men and the holy people. He will cause deceit to prosper, and he will consider himself superior."

-- Daniel chapter 8, verses 23-25

One of my best friends is fond of saying that "the eyes are the window of the soul". Folks, I see that picture of Bush, and there's only a pitch-black abyss staring back. No wonder he doesn't care how many people die in this war of his.

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NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS trailer is online

Actually it's been online for about 2 weeks now but it somehow didn't show up on my radar until this morning...

Mash down here for the trailer for National Treasure: Book of Secrets. I absolutely loved the first movie: it was like historical pornography. This new film is said to have Benjamin Franklin Gates (Nicolas Cage) wound up in a plot involving the Lincoln assassination, the 18 missing pages from the diary of John Wilkes Booth, and a sinister secret in the Gates family history. Diane Kruger, Jon Voight, Justin Bartha and Harvey Keitel return from the original, and will be joined by Helen Mirren and Ed Harris. It comes out on December 21st.

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Bush makes tacit admission that Iraq is about his own ego

A little knowledge is said to be a dangerous thing. George W. Bush's grasp of history is downright lethal.

Here's one of the stories about Bush comparing Iraq to Vietnam, in which he made sure to use emotionally-charged words like "re-education camps" and "killing fields".

The biggest irony of that: if Bush is talking about the "killing fields" of Cambodia, then maybe it will interest him that the genocide might never have happened, had the people of that country not given the Khmer Rouge so much support following American attacks on Cambodia during the Vietnam War. The Khmer Rouge's rise to power was a direct result of American interventionism in Southeast Asia. Just as we are intervening in the Middle East today with Iraq.

But here's what also bothers me: in this same speech, Bush said that America will stay in Iraq as long as he is President.

In other words, Bush is admitting that the American presence in Iraq is not dependent on achieving "conditions of victory", whatever they happen to be at the moment. No, now Bush is making it clear that American forces being in Iraq are solely there because he wants them there, without that necessarily being in regards to the best interests of this country. This war really is about satisfying one man's ego now: Bush has actually come out and said it.

Meanwhile, 14 American soldiers are dead in a helicopter crash in Iraq. And the mother of one soldier who died in Iraq is asking "I want to know why I'm planning a funeral while George Bush is planning a wedding."

And one California family is mourning the death of their second son in Iraq.

I very strongly doubt that Bush, or any of this war's supporters, have shed any tears of grief for those lost in this conflict of theirs. They really can't look past their own egos and see the very real individuals who are dying for no reason at all in this senseless war.

Yes, I wonder too why Jenna Bush and this beau of hers haven't volunteered to serve in Iraq. I mean, if this war is about freedom, then it seems as though they would want to do their part in securing it, doesn't it?

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ATF agents caught editing Wikipedia pages for Star Wars, beer

You may have heard already about the Wikipedia Scanner, a new website that lets you find out who has been editing what Wikipedia pages and from where. And since the site went bigtime last week a lot of activity has come to light, such as the Central Intelligence Agency and the Vatican making edits, Apple, Microsoft and Dell adding negative info about their competitors and Diebold attempting to wipe out serious concerns about the integrity of its voting machines.

Now comes word that Red's Trading Post has blown the lid on what members of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms are doing with our tax money.

Among other things, IP addresses that trace back to the BATF have been responsible for Wikipedia edits regarding: Star Wars, Calvin and Hobbes, Charles Bronson, Samuel Adams Beer, and Harry Potter.

I suppose it's easier for ATF members to play around with fantasy, than it is for them to "edit away" the very real world that they have played a part in creating (WARNING: graphic image at the link).

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Finally saw THE SIMPSONS MOVIE

Over the weekend I got to catch The Simpsons Movie. It came out at the end of July and people who know me best had assumed that I would see this on opening day but I wound up waiting about three weeks. At one point I thought I'd just wait to see it when it came out on DVD.

I'm glad that I didn't! The Simpsons Movie was the funniest film that I've seen at the theater in quite a long time. I'm going to heartily recommend watching The Simpsons Movie during its cinematic run because the show's producers seriously play up the fact that they have a full-length motion picture to run around in (i.e. Bart writing on the blackboard "I will not illegally download this movie" on the classic opening chalkboard shot). The movie tends to "slow down" somewhat during the final third of the movie, but overall I was laughing pretty hard throughout the entire show. My biggest fear was that this would basically be one half-hour Simpsons episode strung out across 90 minutes, but gladly it doesn't feel like that at all: it's actually quite a lengthy and intricate plot for an animated comedy. And as a fan of the show who has - like many - lamented a perceived decline in quality over the past few years, I have to say: this certainly felt like vintage Simpsons from ten years or so ago. If they have been "saving the good stuff" for this movie, then I am feeling inclined to forgive the show's producers. Let's hope that The Simpsons Movie marks the beginning of the pendulum's swing back upward.

Great movie. I enjoyed it immensely. And I'm hearing that some people who don't even care that much for The Simpsons are liking it a lot too. Well worth seeing during its theatrical run.

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Charlie's Soap commercial on YouTube

Charlie's Soap is a locally-produced item that's been available here for quite awhile. It's now fast becoming known all over the place as a substance that will clean anything ("...from false teeth to diesel engines" as the label says) while being very friendly to the environment. Here's a pretty hilarious commercial for the stuff that I found on YouTube:

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YOUNG INDIANA JONES on DVD and why history teachers should want it

TVShowsOnDVD.com has the scoop on what to expect with next month's long-awaited (well I sure have been wanting this anyway :-) release on DVD of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles - Volume 1.

In case you never saw this, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles was a show on ABC that started in March of 1992 and ran for a year or so on-and-off. The brainchild of George Lucas, Young Indiana Jones Chronicles followed, well, young Indiana Jones on adventures from the time he was 9 on up into his early twenties. We got to see Indy meet T.H. Lawrence (of Arabia) and Howard Carter (discoverer of Tut's tomb) in the burning sands of Egypt, all the way to fighting in the trenches of World War I and then as a college student in Chicago where he was roomies with Elliot Ness. It was an amazing show that happened to come along at the wrong time: I've always thought that television networks struggled quite a bit back then with a lot of new shows that were well ahead of their time. ABC was rife with this: first Twin Peaks, and then Young Indiana Jones. I also think in hindsight that the show was probably marketed the wrong way. How it should have been marketed is something I'm still trying to figure out. In any case, I've always thought that The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles had enormous potential as a teaching aid in the classroom, and indeed that was the driving impetus that was part of the show's production from its inception.

Well, it's coming 15 years after its premiere, but it looks like The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles is finally going to bear the fruit it was always intended to bear. The DVD set of Volume 1 is going to weigh in at 12 discs. What's on them? Well there'll be the first several episodes from the show, but also a bunch of historical documentaries that George Lucas and producer Rick McCallum have been working on for several years now just for this DVD release, an "interactive timeline" and some other goodies.

The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles - Volume 1 is going to street with a suggested retail price of $117.99 (U.S.). Which is the most that I've ever heard of for a DVD set of a television series. But I cannot emphasize enough how much of a wonderful tool this is going to be for teachers of middle and high school history classes. The episodes themselves, I always found to not only be rollicking fine entertainment... but they were also some of the finest historical fiction that I've ever come across. This was a show that showcased the history of the early 20th Century with an unprecedented amount of detail and accuracy for a show with a network television budget. Much more important than that, the show made viewers appreciate - through the eyes and experiences of young Indiana Jones - some of the most important events of the past hundred years in a way that perhaps audiences had never been led to empathize with before. The episode that takes place at Verdun, during which Indy is a courier for the Allied army in World War I: to this day, that episode haunts me like precious little on television has. That's one episode that might have a lot more relevance today than it did when it first aired in the spring of 1992, even (if you saw it you'll probably understand what I'm talking about).

If I ever wind up teaching history in a high school setting, you'd darned well better believe that I'm going to get this set. Not just for my own collection and as an Indiana Jones fan, but because this is going to present a lot of material that I'm eager to share with my students in a way that is going to thoroughly engage them and make them want to learn more about it on their own. Which, I've always thought, is how you can know that you've succeeded as a teacher.

So if you are a history teacher already, you may want to check this out: I've a hunch it's going to wind up seriously recommended as an instructional aid, and you might want to look at having this in your school's library.

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Ron Price and Lord Voldemort: THE SAME MAN?!

Over the weekend I was re-reading through parts of the Harry Potter books and something really scary crossed my mind. It turns out that there are numerous striking similarities between Harry's arch-nemesis Lord Voldemort, and disgraced Rockingham County Board of Education member Ron Price (the admitted thief and loather of public participation).

Consider...

- Lord Voldemort has no friends. Ron Price couldn't find a friend or relative who would hold his Bible as he was being sworn-in for the school board.

- Lord Voldemort conned many people into thinking that he was a charming man. Ron Price conned many people into thinking that he was a "conservative" Christian.

- Lord Voldemort is fixated on himself and sees everyone else as a potential threat. Ron Price is fixated on himself and has said that "I've learned who my opponents are and who will work with me."

- Lord Voldemort and Ron Price are both mad with power.

- Lord Voldemort and Ron Price both lash out against those who oppose them: Voldemort tries to destroy Harry Potter and Price is trying to destroy the Moores.

- Lord Voldemort's mad schemes were opposed by the Order of the Phoenix. Ron Price's mad schemes have been opposed by P.O.T.S.M.O.D. (People Opposed To Standard Mode Of Dress).

- Lord Voldemort speaks Parseltongue. Ron Price speaks Neocon with a forked tongue.

- Lord Voldemort steals valuable items and hides them around England. Ron Price steals valuable items and hides them in the trunk of his car.

- Lord Voldemort hates Half-bloods and believes they are bad for the Wizarding world. Ron Price hates common people who take a stand and has called them "bad for the community".

- Lord Voldemort wants to have control of one school. Ron Price wants to have control of one school system.

- To stay forever young Lord Voldemort uses Horcruxes. To look forever young Ron Price uses... well, we'll let you judge for yourself.

- And last but certainly not least...

"TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE"
becomes the anagram
"I AM LORD VOLDEMORT"

while

"RONALD FILER PRICE"
becomes the anagram
"IRONCLAD PILFERER"

!!!

Maybe we should start referring to Ron Price as "He Who Should NOT Be Named"...?

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Last thing I'm going to say on this blog all weekend

"This part of my life...
this part right here?
This is called 'happyness.'"

-- Christopher Gardner (played by Will Smith)
from the movie The Pursuit of Happyness

God is good. Life is good. And my pursuit of happyness has come a very long way today.

Have a great weekend :-)

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TRANSFORMERS is coming to IMAX!

Transformers is coming to IMAX screens all over the place on September 21st! It's gonna be bigger, louder... and it's going to include more footage than what we've seen in conventional theaters already!

Here's the story at SuperheroHype.com. Very good thanks to Eric Wilson for passing the word along over here :-)

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I finally have a complete set of BABYLON 5 on DVD!

Well, almost a complete set. But it is the part that counts most!

As I've said here before, I'm not much of a television watcher. A show has to be very good before I invest my valuable time in sitting down to enjoy it on a regular basis. And it takes nothing less than storytelling of the highest caliber to keep me captivated and coming. That's why I love Lost so much. And ten years before that, there was Babylon 5.

This was the standout science-fiction show of the Nineties. And easily one of the best shows of that era, period. Babylon 5 broke bold new ground and in my sincere opinion set the pace for all the good shows that have followed. I don't know if there had been this kind of thing attempted before with American television that Babylon 5 pulled off: a broad, sweeping epic boasting a definite arc with a beginning, middle and end. The show was programmed to last for five years, tell its tale and then bow out, without becoming bogged-down as a "franchise".

What was it about? Babylon 5 was set (for the most part) aboard a space station in the 23rd century, at a meeting-point in space between several interstellar superpowers (including a coalition of Earth-aligned planets) and several other minor races. Babylon 5 was five miles long, armed to the teeth, and always seeming to attract the wrong kind of attention. This was a show with terrific settings and special effects but above all else this was a show about characters. These were real three-dimensional people who grew and changed dramatically over the course of five years worth of plot. It was the first sci-fi show I ever saw that treated the subject of religion seriously, and without scoffing at it (my favorite episode is the one with the Baptist preacher... and if you know which one I'm talking about, guess what my favorite scene in that episode was :-). It had drama, heartbreak, horror and insane humor. And I don't know if I can keep singing its praises without being here typing all afternoon.

Well anyhoo, in spite of how much I loved this show, until last night I'd never had the complete series on DVD. And I've been such a big Babylon 5 fan that I taped it's complete run in broadcast not once but twice: first off of TNT when the show moved there from syndication and then when Sci-Fi Channel started running it in widescreen.

So the first Christmas that Lisa and I were married (2002) I wound up getting Season 1 on DVD as a gift. The following year I got Season 2. The year after that I received Season 3 and the Movie Collection, which has the 2-hour pilot episode and the four Babylon 5 made-for-TV movies. But all of this time, for one reason or another I never wound up getting seasons 4 and 5.

Well right now, Best Buy has all the Babylon 5 DVD season box sets on sale for $19.95 each, whereas they usually street for about $60. So last night I went to the Best Buy in Burlington and drove back home with Season 4 and Season 5 in my happy possession :-) Here's the entire set that I now own...

I also own the original DVD release of "The Gathering" and "In The Beginning", but since those are already in the Movie Collection I didn't put that here in this photo. Prominently absent are the DVDs of Crusade, the Babylon 5 spin-off series. Why don't I own those? Mostly out of frustration: I was really looking forward to Crusade... and then TNT had to botch it up beyond belief (the Wikipedia entry for Crusade barely even begins to describe the hell that this show went through). Because of TNT's machinations, Crusade became two wildly different shows mashed together with all kinds of continuity problems sticking out like sore thumbs. I would love to see this part of the Babylon 5 saga continued and resolved someday, but TNT put too bad a taste in my mouth to even try to enjoy Crusade as it became in its hands.

I also don't own (yet) the "Legend of the Rangers" DVD. I watched that when it first broadcast and it was... odd. Even for Babylon 5. But maybe I'll give it a shot again. That movie has the distinction of being the only thing of Babylon 5 that I watched while visiting Lisa's apartment at University of Georgia when we were dating.

And there is one new, made-for-DVD Babylon 5 movie called "The Lost Tales" that just came out. I'm probably going to get that soon, too.

But in the meantime, I'm relishing having the complete set of the core Babylon 5 series in my possession, where I can enjoy it - like any good book - in the years to come and where it can be waiting for my own children to discover and enjoy someday.

Now, since I finally have them all, I'm wondering what to make for dinner tonight as I start watching them anew. I figure that I've got two choices: bagna cauda (you will understand this if you've watched Babylon 5) or Red Baron's pepperoni pizza (two other people will understand that one :-).

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Alaska football game to make sports history tonight

Tonight at 7 p.m. Alaska Time (that's 11 p.m. for us folks here on the East Coast) the Barrow Whalers will open their 2007 football season against the Seward Seahawks.

It will be the first-ever live broadcast over the Internet of a sporting event from north of the Arctic Circle! The game will be played 300 miles above the circle in Barrow, Alaska: the northernmost point on the North American continent.

Click here to enjoy the game on the Black Diamond Sports Network when it starts streaming live. The pre-game show starts 20 minutes before kickoff.

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AWESOME pics from THE DARK KNIGHT hit the web!

Well, looks like I get to go out on a good note tonight after all!

Check out this incredible still of Heath Ledger as the Joker from The Dark Knight...

"Starting tonight, people will die. I'm a man of my word. FFFFFFHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"

(from The Dark Knight teaser)

And there's a dozen more or so floating around out there right now. Here's where I first found them on Ain't It Cool News but if they get hit with a cease & desist then you'll know what to look for 'cuz it's all over the blogosphere tonight anyway :-)

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So we're not becoming a fascist state under Bush, huh?

Americans may soon be required to have a passport to board a domestic flight. Or... get this... to picnic in a national park.

Yup, you may soon have to possess a passport the next time you want to fly off for a visit to Aunt Tilly in Akron, or take the family to vacation in Yellowstone.

How in the world is this different from "Your papers, please..." in the Soviet Union?

How, indeed?

Will people keep ignoring what is happening, now so obviously right before our eyes? Will the people of this country ever take off the rose-colored glasses and stop denying what is going on?

I've said it before, will say it again: America has suffered more grievous damage during George W. Bush's time as President than she ever has throughout her entire long history. And I don't know if we'll ever recover from it all adequately enough.

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Homeland Security enlisting clergy to quell dissent

I'm going to start this post with a reference to one of my all-time favorite movies. In The Patriot, right after Gabriel goes to the church to recruit members for the militia, Reverend Oliver (Rene Auberjonois) lays down his clergyman's wig and takes up the rifle. And this is what he tells his congregation...

"A shepherd must tend his flock.
And at times... fight off the wolves."

I know: The Patriot is a work of fiction (even though some of its characters were real historical figures). But Reverend Oliver's sentiment is a real one for a follower of Christ. Especially for a true patriot in every sense of the word. Real Christian patriots are loyal to a law higher than man's. They will defend it. They will fight for it. If need be, they know that they may even be called upon to die for it. And they can accept that because they understand that there are worse things that can happen to us than deprivation of comfort or a painful death.

See that quote at the top of this page by C.S. Lewis? That's what that's all about. That's what most Christians - and especially Christians in America - used to know and appreciate.

Let me put it this way: a real Christian minister in modern America would not be blindly doing or believing whatever this government tells them to. A real Christian would dare to question, and to stand up and defy this government if it comes to that.

Well folks, it looks like sooner than later the wheat is going to be separated from the chaff so far as spiritual leadership in America goes. We are about to see who will stand for God and who will stand for man. From KSLA in Shreveport comes this report...

Homeland Security Enlists Clergy to Quell Public Unrest if Martial Law Ever Declared

Aug 15, 2007 07:07 PM

Could martial law ever become a reality in America? Some fear any nuclear, biological or chemical attack on U.S. soil might trigger just that. KSLA News 12 has discovered that the clergy would help the government with potentially their biggest problem: Us.

Charleton Heston's now-famous speech before the National Rifle Association at a convention back in 2000 will forever be remembered as a stirring moment for all 2nd Amendment advocates. At the end of his remarks, Heston held up his antique rifle and told the crowd in his Moses-like voice, "over my cold, dead hands."

While Heston, then serving as the NRA President, made those remarks in response to calls for more gun control laws at the time, those words live on. Heston's declaration captured a truly American value: An over-arching desire to protect our freedoms.

But gun confiscation is exactly what happened during the state of emergency following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, along with forced relocation. U.S. Troops also arrived, something far easier to do now, thanks to last year's elimination of the 1878 Posse Comitatus act, which had forbid regular U.S. Army troops from policing on American soil.

If martial law were enacted here at home, like depicted in the movie "The Siege", easing public fears and quelling dissent would be critical. And that's exactly what the 'Clergy Response Team' helped accomplish in the wake of Katrina.

Dr. Durell Tuberville serves as chaplain for the Shreveport Fire Department and the Caddo Sheriff's Office. Tuberville said of the clergy team's mission, "the primary thing that we say to anybody is, 'let's cooperate and get this thing over with and then we'll settle the differences once the crisis is over.'"

Such clergy response teams would walk a tight-rope during martial law between the demands of the government on the one side, versus the wishes of the public on the other. "In a lot of cases, these clergy would already be known in the neighborhoods in which they're helping to diffuse that situation," assured Sandy Davis. He serves as the director of the Caddo-Bossier Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.

For the clergy team, one of the biggest tools that they will have in helping calm the public down or to obey the law is the bible itself, specifically Romans 13. Dr. Tuberville elaborated, "because the government's established by the Lord, you know. And, that's what we believe in the Christian faith. That's what's stated in the scripture."

Civil rights advocates believe the amount of public cooperation during such a time of unrest may ultimately depend on how long they expect a suspension of rights might last.

This Dr. Durell Tuberville is a bad shepherd for his flock. He doesn't believe in "fighting against the wolves". He's going to let the wolves come in and devour those that he believes he has been called to care for.

Heck I'll put it this way: if I were a minister in an area that the federal government was using armed force to suspend Constitutional rights in, I would have but one instruction to my congregation: "Aim small, miss small."

Ministers who go along with Homeland Security like this are traitors. To their countrymen and to their calling. They may not have acted upon it yet but they've thrown their lot in with the powers of man in opposition to the power of God.

And so far as Romans 13 goes, I'll attempt to put it in plain-enough English for these so-called "minsters" to understand...

Here in America, the government is not in authority over us! We the people have the authority! This government only has whatever authority it derives from us!

It is my belief that we rebel against this authority - which God Himself has entrusted to us - when we do not use it responsibly. And we do not use it responsibly when we tolerate these weak people who abuse it in the name of government. 1st Peter 2:13 tells us to "Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every authority instituted among men".

Well, the Constitution and what it stands for is what we have instituted in America. If we are not loyal to the Constitution against all enemies, then we are in dire violation of scripture. And I'll be damned if I let this government tell me not to be loyal to a Constitution that more people than we'll ever know fought and died for.

The wolves are coming. They want to devour everything that we have and everything that this country is supposed to stand for.

Where are the shepherds this time who will fight them off?

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Monetary hypocrisy

If your or I were to make counterfeit money, we would go to prison.

If the Federal Reserve makes counterfeit money, it's considered "business as usual".

$17 billion today that got injected into the system. That's almost $90 billion since last week.

If this keeps up, the "dollars" that you can print up with the Epson on your desktop are going to be worth more than actual Federal Reserve notes.

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High school students being forced to pick majors

I have to quite seriously wonder how long will it be before this is becomes proposed for schools here in Rockingham County, North Carolina. I mean, we've already got at least one school board member who has said that students are there to learn how to "find a job" and not how to be individuals.

This same school board member re-affirmed that to me rather strongly at the meeting the following night, by the way. I honestly can't see it as being too far of a stretch for him to be in favor of something like this, either...

Students at many high schools across the country are being forced to pick academic "majors" as early as 9th grade, according to a story in today's The New York Times...

Ninth graders often have trouble selecting what clothes to wear to school each morning or what to have for lunch. But starting this fall, freshmen at Dwight Morrow High School here in Bergen County must declare a major that will determine what electives they take for four years and be noted on their diplomas.

For Dwight Morrow, a school that has struggled with low test scores and racial tensions for years, establishing majors is a way to make their students stay interested until graduation and stand out in the hypercompetitive college admissions process.

Some parents have welcomed the requirement, noting that a magnet school in the district already allowed some students to specialize. But other parents and some educators have criticized it as preprofessionalism run amok or a marketing gimmick.

"I thought high school was about finding what you liked to do," said Kendall Eatman, an Englewood mother of six who was president of the Dwight Morrow student body before graduating in 1978. "I think it's too early to be so rigid."

Debra Humphreys, a spokeswoman for the Association of American Colleges and Universities, called high-school majors "a colossally bad idea," saying youngsters should instead concentrate on developing a broad range of critical thinking and communication skills.

"Today's economy requires people to be constantly learning and changing," Ms. Humphreys said. "A lot of jobs that high school students are likely to have 10 years from now don't yet exist, so preparing too narrowly will not serve them well."

Here's why this approach is so horrible: it's trying to mold and craft people into being gears in a machine that can be installed and swapped-out. It specializes people too much. Instead of giving individuals a wide, rich foundation of knowledge and critical thinking skills from which they can draw upon throughout life as they themselves see fit, it defines them downward according to Utilitarian purpose.

In other words, it restricts the students from being the individuals of ability and free will that they are supposed to be.

But I guess that tearing down their potential isn't of much concern to some people, apparently.

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Paramount confirms: TRANSFORMERS score CD is rolling out!

Warner Bros. Records will "shortly" be releasing the album of Steve Jablonsky's orchestral score from the movie Transformers, according to a Senior Vice President in the Music Department at Paramount Pictures.

The Knight Shift blog received this confirmation a short while ago. And you've no idea how happy I am about being able to report this!

The word comes from a source wishing to identifying himself as "Sam Witwicky all the way from New Zealand" (and in case you're wondering, I already asked if his eBay username was "ladiesman217" and he said that it's not :-). "Sam Witwicky" was able to correspond directly with the good people at Paramount Pictures: the studio which along with DreamWorks was responsible for producing Transformers. Our man Sam told them about the interest there's been in a CD release of Jablonsky's score and he mentioned the online petition (which may hit 5,000 signatures in the next few days).

Here's what Sam received back...

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dan Butler at Paramount
Date: Aug 16, 2007 4:12 AM
Subject: RE: Transformers Original Score
To: Sam Witwicky

There will be a score album released shortly on Warner Bros. Records. Thanks for your interest!

Dan Butler

Senior Vice President

Business Affairs & Legal - Music

Paramount Pictures

So there's the word pretty much from the top: soon, we'll be getting to put our grubby lil' paws on a shiny new CD containing that majestic score from Transformers by Steve Jablonsky!

To all of you who have signed the petition and have otherwise been showing support for this album and getting the word spread about how much we'd love to have it in our collections: THANK YOU!! Nothing would please me more than to be able to shake hands with every single one of ya :-)

And very special thanks to Dan Butler and the folks at Paramount for having this great news sent along to us!

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1000 MILES TO GRACELAND: Our honeymoon pilgrimage to Memphis

We celebrate many birthdays. But to the best of my knowledge there are only two people that the western world takes time out to commemorate the deaths of: Jesus Christ, and Elvis Presley. Curious, that...

So today is the 30th anniversary of the death of Elvis. Which a lot of folks no doubt are going to be remembering in various ways. Here's mine: the story of how Lisa and I wound up devoting a considerable chunk of our honeymoon five years ago to the King of Rock and Roll.

I suppose all of this came about because of what you see in the picture on your right. This was taken at the rehearsal dinner on the night before our wedding at this restaurant in Calhoun, Georgia. As dinner was winding down Lisa's dad thanked everyone for coming from such far away (we had guests in from Brooklyn, Australia and Belgium!) and thought that it would be a good time to introduce everyone and how they were related to the bride and groom, and basically it was a great idea to "roast" us as he put it.

Well, I had no idea that this was coming, but Chad Austin spoke about how he and I had been friends since kindergarten, all on up through high school and it was at that point that he mentioned Chris "doing his Elvis impersonation". HOW THE %@#$ DID HE THINK TO BRING THAT UP AT A TIME LIKE THIS?!? That was something that started in one particular session of computer class when we were juniors in high school, and before I knew it there were posters all over campus advertising "CHRIS KNIGHT TONIGHT LIVE, SEE HIM DO ELVIS AT 8 PM!" Well, being a good gracious groom at my own rehearsal dinner I thought it'd be wise to demonstrate just what the joke was about, so I got up from the table and in front of everyone I did my world-famous "Elvis shaking his pelvis" routine. It was a huge hit! And that's all that I plan on talking about that. In fact, forget you ever read this much about it.

Let's move on, shall we...

So we finished with dinner and Lisa went back to her parents' house for a lil' "get-together" with the girls and a bunch of us guys - Chad, "Weird" Ed, Johnny Yow, the amazing "Lowbridge" and I - went off for a bachelor's party at U.S. Play in Marietta. The next day we had the wedding and that afternoon Lisa and I took off for our honeymoon in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. We'd planned on being there from Saturday night on 'til Wednesday but decided to extend our stay there a day. That still left us with plenty of time for our honeymoon trip but we didn't know where to spend it at.

I think it was late Tuesday that the idea hit to drive all the way across Tennessee, and make a "religious pilgrimage" to Graceland in Memphis.

We checked out at the cabin rental place on Thursday morning and it wasn't long afterward that we were on I-40 headed west across the whole length of Tennessee. We left Gatlinburg at about 11 and after a loooooooong drive we finally got to Memphis almost at 8 p.m.

The next morning, we went to Graceland. There's a visitor's center where you board a shuttle and if you like you can get this fancy audio tour thingy that you wear earphones with as you walk around the grounds.

Anyways, here's some photos from our visit to Graceland. First is the front door of the place...

There's not too much photo-taking allowed inside Elvis's house (and the upstairs portion - where the King lived and ummmm, died is strictly off-limits) but we were able to get a few good pics elsewhere on the grounds. Here's Elvis's swimming pool...

Here's Lisa in the backyard area...

And here in the Meditation Garden of Graceland is the grave of Elvis Presley, along with mother Gladys, father Vernon and his grandmother Minnie Mae...

And here's a closeup of Elvis's grave...

A quick note about the name on the King's grave marker, since it's helped fueled speculation over the years that Elvis didn't die in 1977. You see, Elvis's full name really is "Elvis Aaron Presley". But for years it's been claimed that his middle name was actually "Aron". Indeed, that's how Elvis himself spelled it for a long time, until he discovered that his legal name did include "Aaron". The reason for the "Aron" spelling was that Elvis thought it sounded so much like "Garon", the name of his stillborn twin brother. Anyways, when the official death certificate was made out for Elvis it spelled his full name as "Elvis Aron Presley"... which led some to wonder if there might be something sinister at work. And some have said that the name on the grave marker is not the actual legal name of Elvis, either. Which is which? Since it was Vernon Presley who was in charge of the grave arrangement and how the memorials were made out, I'll defer to his judgment.

There's a pretty extensive collection of Elvis's belongings that are on display at Graceland, including all the King's certified gold, silver and platinum records (this takes up every bit of wall space in one cavernous room and it's still growing). You can also see Elvis's vehicles, including his planes and his cars, not the least of which is his famous Pink Cadillac...

There's that guy again, unholying the holy ground...

We spent most of the day at Graceland, and thought it was well worth taking an unplanned excursion for it during our honeymoon. Later that night we went out to explore Memphis some more. Here's a shot of Lisa taken right before sunset, with the Hernando de Soto Bridge crossing the Mississippi River in the background...

A short while after this, since it's not everyday that you get to cross the Mississippi, we got in our car and took I-40 over the bridge. That way we also got to say that we visited Arkansas during our trip. But since by this point the sun was fast going down, I told Lisa that we had better get out of Arkansas "before the monsters come out". Look this is the state that produced Bill Clinton: that's more than enough to scare me about the prospect of being stuck there when darkness falls, 'kay?

So we turned around fast and headed back over the river and got back to Memphis. Here's a groovy statue of Elvis that we found...

And here's a statue of another famous son of Memphis, B.B. King...

Lisa and I took a nice trolley ride through downtown Memphis. We got to see Beale Street, which was just as lively as I imagined it would be. And I just did miss getting a picture of this because it it took about 5 seconds for me to realize what it was that I was looking at, but we also saw the Lorraine Motel: the place where Martin Luther King Jr. was shot (it's now the National Civil Rights Museum, but it's still quite recognizable as the Lorraine Motel).

The next morning - on Saturday, now a week after we were married - we left Memphis and headed back to Calhoun. To get there we decided to go through Mississippi and Alabama. Lo and behold the route included Tupelo: Elvis's birthplace! So of course to make our pilgrimage complete we had to stop and see the place. Here's Lisa at the historical marker outside Elvis's childhood home:

Here are some photos inside the place...

And here's Lisa and I on the front-porch swing...

And that's pretty much how we spent a good part of the second half of our honeymoon: paying our respects to the life of Elvis Presley. From the time I left Reidsville for the wedding, until we got to Memphis, it was roughly one thousand miles (hence the title of this post). Considering that our wedding had included wacky music, Star Wars action figures, and a garter snake, I suppose it was a quiet enough way to wind things down :-)

So, too all of my friends who are reading this: considering that this is the 30th anniversary of his passing, should or should I not likewise pay tribute to the the King by posting a YouTube video of myself "doing Elvis"? :-P

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Mike Nifong: The dog ate my law license

Mike Nifong - the disgraced former district attorney who prosecuted the Duke lacrosse case - has turned in his law license and had to note that he never framed it... because his dog chewed it up. Courtesy of The Smoking Gun, here is Nifong's letter to the North Carolina State Bar explaining the condition of his license...

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U.S. Air Force pilot is "face" of Decepticons in TRANSFORMERS

In this summer's blockbuster movie Transformers, there is a character called "Mustache Man" in the credits. He's a holographic projection that the Decepticons use in their vehicular modes to make it look like they've got a human operator. We first see him in Blackout's cockpit during the initial attack on the base in Qatar, and then later wearing a police uniform inside Barricade and then sitting in Starscream's cockpit. We never actually see Mustache Man speak, but he's got an amazing on-screen presence that really conveys the personality and menace of the Decepticons.

Well, according to the Albuquerque Tribune in a story from about a month ago it turns out that this earthly face of the Decepticons is a real-life helicopter pilot instructor in the United States Air Force. Maj. Brian Reece has been in the military since age 17, and has served in Iraq and Afghanistan several times. And then about a year ago...

...he was chatting with director Michael Bay on the "Transformers" set at Holloman Air Force Base near Alamogordo. Bay, who was using Kirtland helicopters in background shots for the movie, was lamenting over not having cast actors for some of project's smaller roles.

"He was talking about it," Reece said, "and one of my guys walked by singing that stupid `Team America' song. I thought, `You've got to be kidding me. You're gonna walk by singing that song?'

"So I was like . . ."

Reese made what he calls "one of those death glances" — an eyes-narrowed, chin-tightened, don't-tread-on-me stare that suggests impending doom to its recipients.

Upon seeing this, something in the director's brain apparently clicked. Quicker than you can say "Action!" — or in this case, "You've got kind of a piercing stare" — Reece had a role.

"Michael wasn't looking for it," said Ian Bryce, one of the film's producers. "It happens. Sometimes you meet people and you start talking about the movie and suddenly the light bulb goes off. Michael's very good at thinking like that."

Minutes later, Reece found himself in the helicopters he'd been sent to help fly — this time as an actor with a fake mustache fixed above his lip.

Very cool! The article also talks about how Reece's wicked stare made a serious impression on Steven Spielberg.

Here's hoping that we'll see Brian Reece as the front-man for those diabolical 'Cons again in future installments of the Transformers movie franchise!

EDIT 9:39 a.m. EST: Here's the scene from Transformers where Frenzy summons the Decepticons, featuring two apperances by Reece as the Mustache Man:

I'll also say this: I really dig that Decepticon theme music, with its unearthly chanting.

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The technology of They Might Be Giants

Let's get what I'm obviously going to say out of the way. The thing that I always mention whenever the subject of They Might Be Giants comes up. Namely, that Flood from 1990 is the greatest musical album ever produced.

I dare anyone to try and tell me otherwise. Not when every single song on this album is nothing less than a work of freakin' genius.

I've owned a copy of Flood in one form or another since 1992. It's easily the most-played album on my MP3 player. So many good memories associated with this album. I sorta feel a duty to shamelessly pitch for it :-)

Anyway, yeah I'm a huge fan of "the two Johns", Linnel and Flansburgh. These guys have always been on the cutting edge not just of music but of technology. And now Gearlog has an awesome interview with John Flansburgh in two parts (here's Part Two) about the band's use of technology, going right back to the days of the original Dial-A-Song and up to Long Tall Weekend, the first album by a longtime performance group released completely in MP3 format. Well worth a read if you're interested in either contemporary music or how the use of computers and other tech has grown up around it.

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PULP MUPPETS

'Nuff said...

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Pastor poses serious question: Have Christians embraced Satan?

Chuck Baldwin - a Christian minister who I have a tremendous amount of respect for - earnestly asks in his latest essay: "Have Christians Already Accepted the Mark of the Beast?"

All I will say is that this should be a challenging read for those who think that some people in our government are "anointed by God".

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Board of Education votes to limit speakers to 5 minutes, and only 1 hour for comments

I'd planned on attending Monday night's meeting of the Rockingham County Board of Education, and would have been there had some things not arisen on this end. So there's no first-hand account this month. But the Reidsville Review already has up a story about some of what went down this time.

The board voted 8-4 to impose a time limit of 5 minutes per each person who addresses the board during the public comments portion of the meetings. Which is considerably more than the limit of 3 minutes that the board was originally considering. Elaine McCollum, Reida Drum, Nell Rose, and Nell Rose voted against the limit. Voting for it were Celeste DePriest, Ron Price, Lori McKinney, Amanda Bell, Jim Austin, Wayne Kirkman, Herman Hines and John Smith.

I suppose that 5 minutes does seem pretty reasonable. This however is not: that in addition to the 5 minutes per person, the board is also limiting public comments to one hour per meeting.

Now I wish that I had been able to be at tonight's meeting, because this was something that I was afraid might happen, although I had enough faith in the board to believe that it would be rather unlikely.

Five minutes per person, I can kind of understand. But shutting off all public comment after one hour is completely unacceptable.

Let's say that this rule was in place during the school uniforms debate. As actively a part of P.O.T.S.M.O.D. (that was the group opposing the uniforms) that I was, I would not have wanted to see one side completely dominate all the time allowed for public argument. But if this rule had been enforced during the past few months, there's no doubt in my mind that anyone who was in favor of the uniforms would have been effectively shut out from having their support become a matter of public record. That wouldn't necessarily have been a conscious effort either on the part of the uniforms opponents: naturally they would have wanted the board to hear them out. But that shouldn't come at the cost of unfairly denying the other side their fair say in the matter, either.

What this means is that at some point during a matter of contentious debate, one side or the other on an issue is going to seek to abuse this new policy by "stacking the deck" in their own favor during the public comments time of a meeting. It probably won't happen anytime soon or even in the next year or two, but it's coming. And I really don't know if allowing for the possibility of an entire meeting devoted to public comments is going to alleviate that concern.

Folks, this is laziness. It's dereliction of duty, even. Members of the Board of Education should have understood when they ran for the office that they would be called upon to make a sacrifice of time in order to carry out the duties that they were asking to take up. If they were unwilling to see that done in due fairness for all citizens, then they shouldn't have run for the seat in the first place. They should be made to stay until 3 a.m. if that's how long it takes to listen to everyone, because that's what they signed up for when they said they wanted the job. If some board members can't take this demand of their office, then they should reconsider whether they belong on the board at all.

Do I think this is, in the least bit, a lash-back against the initiative that a lot of people in the public - the ones that Ron Price referred to as "bad for the community" - took in defeating the uniforms? Not much doubt in my mind on that one, folks. I dare not say this reflects on everyone who voted for this limit tonight but there were a number of those who went in favor of this that I can't say it's a surprise to see they voted this way. They're the ones who general consensus is that they think people in the public are getting too "uppity". I've heard that from a lot of folks these past few weeks.

Well, I've seen time limits imposed from this board before, and I've seen them done away with. We'll see how long this one lasts.

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The only thing I intend to say about Karl Rove resigning

The man is not and never has been a "genius". At most, Karl Rove is a thug who has devoted his entire life toward destroying others for the most shallow of reasons: political power. Whatever "success" he has enjoyed only came about because he exploited his lack of conscience more than he used any surplus of cleverness.

I won't say that Karl Rove is the source of most of the problems that this country is facing, as some will no doubt be fast to claim. But that Karl Rove was allowed to go as far as he did certainly is symptomatic of those problems. I see no reason to praise this accomplishment. Indeed, it says much about how seared our soul has become when many of us refuse to feel anything but dire shame at possibly admiring this man.

I imagine that Karl Rove is going to die someday: as an obscure, broken man with nothing more to show for his life other than the knowledge that he helped to hurt a lot of people, if not an entire country. After all, this is the man who helped engineer the biggest wholesale destruction of Constitutional rule of law in recent memory, to say nothing about pushing the drive for the war in Iraq and this administration's criminal refusal to secure our borders.

I defy anyone to tell me that there has been something decent and "Christian" about this man worth raising a toast in his honor.

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The Burger King commercial with Krusty the Clown

"I'm behind on seven alimonies! I'm wearing paper bags for shoes!"

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Merv Griffin has passed away

Quite a few times (I even heard him once tell this to a reporter during a TV interview) Merv Griffin said that he wanted these words to someday be inscribed on his tombstone:

Merv will NOT be back
after this commercial message!

I always thought that seemed to reflect a pretty good outlook on life.

Here's the story of his passing on Variety's website.

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... Then maybe America doesn't need saving at all

Stu Bykofsky, a writer with the Philadephia Daily News, is seriously suggesting that the best way to "save" America is to have another attack like 9/11.

Two months ago, a Republican party official also said that America needs to be attacked again so that people would appreciate President Bush.

If "saving" America means not only anticipating, but openly hoping for the deaths of innocent people, then America does not deserve to survive at all.

I mean that.

Here is the biggest problem that I have with these self-styled "neoconservatives": they believe that America's strength is supposed to be in material wealth and military might. They don't give a damn about the value of individual life. How else can they sincerely consider it to be "good news" when it's reported that the death toll of American military is the lowest in several months... and not bother to ask themselves if even one life needlessly lost because of this fiasco is one life too many.

These people don't care if others die for America. So long as they aren't the ones having to do the fighting and the dying.

If America is a country where the many are deemed to be expendable assets for the betterment of the few, then that America does not merit survival. If we are ceasing to be a people that values the life of the individual and the rights that God has bestowed upon him or her, then there is no longer anything inherently good in America at all. Certainly not worth fighting or dying for.

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TRANSFORMERS makes $300 million at U.S. box office

According to it's page at Box Office Mojo, Transformers had $299,633,598 in U.S. theater earnings as of Thursday, so it's safe to assume that it's crossed the $300 million domestic mark already. It's earned almost as much overseas, too.

And we still don't have that glorious orchestral score on CD yet! The petition to get an an album of the movie's soundtrack by Steve Jablonsky currently has 3,730 signatures.

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"FLASH! AHHH-AAAAAAHHHHHHH!"

So tonight (I guess it still counts as Friday night) the Sci-Fi Channel premiered its new show Flash Gordon, a 2007 update of Alex Raymond's classic comic book. And what I saw of it... wasn't good. Easily the worst thing was getting rid entirely of having Flash and Dale being taken to Mongo onboard Dr. Zarkov's rocket: in the 2007 show they get there by dimensional rift. I don't even want to begin to get into M.I.N.O. ("Ming In Name Only").

Here's something that's much better: the opening credits from 1980's big-screen movie Flash Gordon, with that amazing theme song by Queen!

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Bush's "war czar" wants to consider a draft

From Breitbart.com...

Bush War Adviser Says Draft Worth a Look

Aug 10 06:25 PM US/Eastern
By RICHARD LARDNER

WASHINGTON (AP) - Frequent tours for U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have stressed the all-volunteer force and made it worth considering a return to a military draft, President Bush's new war adviser said Friday.

"I think it makes sense to certainly consider it," Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute said in an interview with National Public Radio's "All Things Considered."

"And I can tell you, this has always been an option on the table. But ultimately, this is a policy matter between meeting the demands for the nation's security by one means or another," Lute added in his first interview since he was confirmed by the Senate in June ...

I will gladly support a draft. Provided that Jenna and Barbara and George P. Bush are the first to get inducted and put on armed patrol duty in Basra.

Or better yet, George W. Bush should suit up and take up the rifle on his own and set an example for the rest of us to follow. If Leonidas could lead 300 Spartans against two million Persians, certainly our own Commander in Chief can take point in his "surge" against a few dozen militants ... right?

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