This last one was the closest thing to a pleasant spring weekend we’ve had so far (at least so far as I recall), which means that it rained and was overcast much of the time, but there was that beautiful morning and early afternoon on Saturday… before it started hailing. Dime-sized servings here, no serious damage that I could see.

The man who invented the Pringle’s potato crisp cardboard tube has passed away, and some of his ashes were buried, as per his request, in one of those impact-resistant, re-closable packages.

I suffer from low self-esteem, I know, but I think I’d have to be pretty darn secure about my family’s love before I asked one of them to spoon some of me out of the urn and transfer it to a separate container. Even if they did wear a face mask.



By way of Red State, there’s a story about how the police in Great Britain are enforcing Gospel-free zones, where the presence of a Muslim majority makes it illegal to preach Christ.

I’m sure there are people on the Left who find this restriction of free speech repugnant. But I’m convinced a lot of them don’t see any problem. “Freedom of speech isn’t for you. It’s for them. Because they’re victims.”

This is one aspect of the major philosophical divide between conservatives and liberals today. Conservatives love freedom, and liberals love equality.

It comes down to your definition of equality, I think. Conservatives are terrified of equality as an absolute value, because it means the extinction of freedom. If you give people freedom, some will do better in the world than others. Then equality is gone. The race may not always be to the swift, but it is often enough to make the results unequal.

Liberals believe that the only real freedom is equality. If you insist on equality, then you can’t permit freedom in the traditional sense. Because freedom always ends up with the toys unequally distributed.

The bureaucrats of Britain see the Muslim population as an oppressed group which has been denied the equality it deserves. Therefore they must be given every freedom, and their opponents must be shackled, in order to achieve the supreme goal of equality.

It’s very likely too late for Great Britain, and for all of Europe. It may be too late for us, too. We’ll see.

Memorial Day, of course, is meant for decorating the graves of those who’ve served our country in the military. But it was always traditional in my family to put flowers on all our graves for the holiday. Being the only member of my immediate family who still lives around here, I carry the custom on, in my little way.

Memorial Day was cool and cloudy, threatening rain, here in the Twin Cities. But when I drove south to Kenyon and Faribault, where the bones of my fathers lie (metaphorically speaking; my parents are actually buried in Florida) I drove into bright sun and warmth that forced me to take my coat off. I had to put it on again when I got home. I had but crossed into and out of a stationary pressure ridge.

My brother was in town Friday night, and we went to see Indy 4. It was better than I expected, since I wasn’t expecting much. I liked the numerous digs at Communism—it’s been fifty years after all. About time Hollywood admits there were two sides in the Cold War. (Still waiting for the first Hollywood movie about the Ukrainian genocide, though.)

The worst part was Shia LeWhatever as the Marlon Brando wannabee. He plays the part with all the weight and authority of a runway model. And the scene where he swings through the jungle on vines, like Tarzan—painful. (You know, don’t you, that you can’t actually do that? Vines grow up from the ground. They don’t grow down from the treetops.)

And that was part of the overlong jungle chase scene. Not bad, but I am very weary of seeing large numbers of thugs firing automatic weapons at people with no effect whatever. I know it moves the story along, but what it really means is that the writers couldn’t figure out a clever way for the heroes to get away or to protect themselves, so they opted just to let them survive without explanation. Which is lazy.

The best part—Cate Blanchett as the evil Commie parapsychologist. The word “audacious” is being overused this year, but hers was a really audacious performance. She realized she was playing an over-the-top character, so she played the role over the top. Anybody can do that, but not everybody can make it work. She made it work. She won’t get an Oscar nomination for it, but she deserves one.

On Sunday I was in a Memorial Day mood, and I’d been enjoying Owen Parry’s marvelous Civil War mysteries featuring Abel Jones. So I pulled out my DVD of Gods and Generals. I had good memories of it, largely (I suppose) because it’s a rare example of a Hollywood film treating Christian characters with a measure of respect.

Sadly, it didn’t hold up on a second viewing. It’s probably great for a high school history class, but as a movie it was uninspired. Dull script, dull direction, dull cinematography, and not enough editing. It plays like a school pageant, with people making long speeches at each other for no particular reason, and confiding in one another without dramatic justification. And the dialogue sounded as if it was lifted from contemporary documents. That’s nice from an academic point of view, but it makes for stilted speeches. And I suspect that most people didn’t actually talk the way they wrote, even back then.

But it put me in mind of the right things.

“The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God can not be for, and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party–and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say this is probably true–that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By his mere quiet power on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And having begun, He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.”

–Abraham Lincoln (unsigned, undated document, possibly from Sept., 1862)

I had a disturbing experience today, in the men’s room.

(If ever there were an opening sentence calculated to send most of our readers running from their computers, doing their Edvard Munch “Scream” imitations, that ought to be it.)

But honestly, this post isn’t about the natural functions of the human body. It is about plumbing, but the brass-and-chrome kind.

I called our maintenance guy yesterday, to let him know that the automatic flush devices in the men’s room had stopped working. I’m sure you’ve encountered such things. An electric eye senses when someone comes close and then goes away, and at that point it triggers a flush. The electric eyes here had stopped working.

So the maintenance guy came to look today. He passed his hand over one of the electric eyes.

The device flushed.

He tried the others. He found that sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn’t. They definitely need maintenance.

But the thing is, he was able to trigger the electric eyes some of the time.

I tried it again. Nothing.

It was as if I were a walking phantasm, a shadow being, a monstrous thing of mist compounded.

I was a little afraid to check the mirror, for fear I’d have no reflection. (But I did. It was OK.)

Still, it was a troubling experience.

Then I thought, “Maybe I should make lemonade from this. If I’m invisible to electric eyes, I might have a brilliant future as a jewel thief.”

Continuing my one-man, hate-filled vendetta against the new Prince Caspian movie, I’ll link to a couple blog reviews today.

Christopher Cowan of The Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood has posted two pieces on the movie—here and here. His reservations are much the same as mine. Except for being more coherent, better developed, and properly researched, of course.

Gene Edward Veith at Cranach was disappointed with the movie, for a different reason.

Everything I read tells me that this is probably a pretty good flick, one which I’d enjoy under other circumstances.

But as an adaptation of Prince Caspian, it appears to be deeply flawed.

I’m sad about that.