Left Behind, pg. 218 It's strange even typing this sentence, but here is something on which I agree — at least somewhat — with Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. Rayford Steele has prayed the Sinner's Prayer and skimmed the Gospels, and he wakes the next morning with an overwhelming urge to pester his daughter, Chloe, about his newfound faith. He wants to talk to her, or at her, until she breaks down and converts. He wants to strap her into... Read more
In my initial response to the "Prairie Muffin Manifesto" I seem to have struck some readers as smug and disdainful. My apologies for any smugness, but the disdain was intentional. That disdain, however, is reserved for the PMs ideas — not for the people who hold them. Like many American evangelical and/or fundamentalist Christians, they seem like Very Nice People. I don't dislike them, but I strongly disagree with the unholy rot they've embraced in lieu of Christianity. (The appropriate... Read more
For the Fourth of July, the paper ran a profile of a man named Sergio who is studying to become a naturalized citizen. The article included a series of sample questions from the naturalization test, and included a link to a practice Naturalization Self Test from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Click through the sample questions and you'll find some that Vice President Dick Cheney would get wrong: What is the supreme law of the United States> A. The... Read more
Here's a story from today's paper — "Rising rates, prices squeeze borrowers": Rising interest rates and higher gasoline prices are putting the squeeze on consumers' budgets, and many are finding it harder to keep up with their bills. … An important measure of consumer financial distress, late payments on credit cards, ticked up in the first quarter, according to figures from the American Bankers Association. The Washington-based trade group said the percentage of bank cards 30 or more days past... Read more
There is a crack, a crack in everything That's how the light gets in … Got so many good suggestions with the alphabetical list last time, I'm doing it again … "Another Good Lie," Mark Heard "Anthem," Leonard Cohen "Anthems for a 17-Year-Old Girl," Broken Social Scene "Anybody's Guess," Vigilantes of Love "Anywhere's Better Than Here," The Replacements "Apocalypservice (Or Jakob Dylan's 115th Nightmare)," Don McCloskey "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" Bryan Ferry "Army of Me," Bjork "Around the World in... Read more
"Keanu Reeves may not be a particularly talented actor, but if anyone could make the figure of the slacktivist — part couch potato, part action hero — a compelling and sympathetic one, the star of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and The Matrix is doubtlessly the proper choice." — Joshua Glenn, in Slate Read more
I remember this from an episode of Dark Angel … The Los Angeles County Sheriff's plans to patrol his city with flying police drones didn't get off the ground, but it's just a matter of time before some other sheriff or police department manages to pull this off. Flying police drones, usually armed, are a staple of dystopian science fiction. The key word there is "dystopian." What is it that makes some people watch Bladerunner or Dark Angel or even... Read more
Left Behind, pp. 217-218 I refer to Left Behind and its many sequels and prequels as the Worst Books Ever Written because they're so consistently awful in so many different ways: theologically, politically, ethically, stylistically, all presented along with howling errors of continuity, logic and even basic geography. All of which combines to make these books not merely bad, but instructively bad. The interwoven strands of diverse types of awfulness in Left Behind raise some interesting questions. Does the authors'... Read more
Busy day. Just got back from an unannounced 9-hour visit to Delaware and I have to brief Congressional leaders on the comprehensive political, social, economic and strategic conditions there. I'm not really sure I'm qualified to brief anybody after such a brief hit-and-run stay, particularly since I spent the entire time there in one room of one building, in the middle of the night, isolated and insulated from whatever was going on outside. But, hey, I went there, so I... Read more
There's been a lot of discussion on the Internets of Left Behind: Eternal Forces — the new video game set in the fantasy world of Tim LaHaye & Jerry B. Jenkins' best-selling apocalyptic novels (see, for example, this jhutson post at Daily Kos). I guess I didn't expect this to be so controversial because I still remembered playing the original, text-only version of the game. I started playing on the old mainframe system — the same IBM megacomputer Edgar C.... Read more
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