You know what bugs me about the president’s public relations event today? (Aside from the fact that I’m a “Nazi” NRA member, and thus an enemy of the people. Plus the fact that the Bill of Rights has somehow become suspicious.) It’s the use of the kids.

He brings out these kids who apparently wrote letters to the White House asking him to do something about gun violence.

Does anybody really believe these kids wrote those letters on their own initiative? That they pondered the options and decided they were morally obligated to bring their concerns to the highest office in the land?

No. You and I both know they were assigned to write these letters in school classes. After a class discussion, carefully orchestrated by the teacher to come to the approved conclusion, they were assigned to write letters, which the teacher then posted for them.

For some reason that sort of moral exploitation really offends me.

It offends me on our side too, by the way. There’s a pro-life organization around here that puts up billboards along the highways. It also runs radio ads. And the ads consist of little kids reciting lines written for them by adults, like, “My mommy says that I could suck my thumb before I was even bo-orn!”

It’s cute, I suppose. And the organization does a good work (the billboards, in my opinion, are less manipulative.) But the point of the radio ads seems to be that these are children speaking simple truth out of their innocent hearts. When it’s nothing of the kind.

Just like the presidential show today.

By the way, a lot of Sunday Schools and parochial schools have sent letters to the president over the years (40 years now), protesting abortion. I’m eagerly awaiting the press event where the president brings those kids out for the cameras.

So here’s the trailer for the upcoming History Channel series, Vikings.

On the basis of this trailer, and what I’ve read, I’m not as sad as I have been that I don’t have cable and won’t be able to watch it. I suppose I’m hypercritical. The first thing reenactors look for is always costumes, and these seem… weird. Instead of dressing people as we’re pretty sure they actually dressed, they’ve allowed their costumers to get “creative,” especially with leather. And what’s with the guy (I think he’s the star, playing the legendary Ragnar Lodbrok) with the sides of his head shaved?

Also they have a woman warrior. You know how I feel about this. I don’t deny that Viking women could fight. But I’ve never seen any account, from sagas or the chronicles of the Vikings’ victims, that mention women being a regular part of armies.

Maybe it’ll be OK. But I won’t order cable to see it. Maybe it’ll show up on Netflix.

Anyway, I think the people who made the trailer borrowed ideas from my book trailer.

Addendum: Re:the filth. One of the things we know for sure about the Vikings is that they were notably fastidious for the times. We have an Anglo-Saxon document complaining that the Vikings were stealing all the English women through their effeminate habit of bathing once a week.

“Cognitive dissonance” is a useful term, especially in my life. I first learned it – it will surprise none of you to learn – from a counselor, and he wasn’t talking about himself. But during this winter of our discontent, I find myself even more dissonant than is my wont.

On the macro level, I see no hope at all. I can’t conceive a scenario by which conservatives and Christians, and conservative Christians, can possibly come back from the losses we’ve suffered. I fear the future, not only because I see persecution (if relatively light by global standards), but because I love my country. I have this crazy idea that you can’t sow scoundrelism and reap integrity, and that you can’t borrow your way out of debt.

I know that God is in charge. I’ll stipulate to that. He was also in charge during the Diocletian persecution.

So that gets me down.

On the other hand, it’s beginning to look very much as if 2013 may be the year when things turn around for me personally. I’ve got the translation work, and there’s some publishing news coming up, and things look pretty good from here. I’m particularly pleased that it should happen in a year ending in “13,” as I decry all forms of divination, and telling the future by numbers counts as that.

I can imagine Noah having a neighbor who came over his house yelling, “Hey! Good news! My big deal came through! What do you mean boat ride? I haven’t got time for a boat ride –”

Tina Clarke’s Christmas Candle in colored ink

Christmas Sailboat by Delilah Smith

The Three Wise Guys by Brenda York

Ending with something completely different:

“The Moravian Single Sisters’ House on Church Street was used as a combination dormitory, industrial and religious center for single women within the community.”

Maybe in your Christmas reading, you have wondered about cooking a goose. You’ve read about the Cratchit’s Christmas dinner: “There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn’t believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by apple-sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as Mrs Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn’t ate it all at last. Yet every one had had enough, and the youngest Cratchits in particular, were steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows.” Here, Isabella Beeton writes on how to choose and prepare this bird.

Don’t forget the Smoking Bishop drink, which is not the same as the cheese Stinking Bishop. Honestly, I don’t think I would like either of them.

Horrible news out of Connecticut today. Horrible; unimaginable. Our prayers go out to everyone affected.

I’ll probably be sorry I said this, but people keep coming up with gun ban ideas. Which is perfectly understandable, but in all honesty I don’t think it’s well reasoned.

Unlike a lot of people, I’m old enough to remember when events like this were unheard-of. I think there may have been one school shooting during my childhood, but I never heard about it at the time. It wasn’t something that kids had to think about. It was less likely than getting hit by a falling airplane.

So clearly something has changed since that time.

And what has changed has not been the availability of guns. Hunting was much more popular then than it is now, and handgun laws were only in force in a few cities.

So what has changed is not that.

Something else must have changed.

Hmm… can you think what that might be?

Suddenly, without warning, a winter rang out.

It wasn’t winter on Saturday, but it became winter on Sunday. The forecast called for a few inches, and I wondered idly whether I’d need to use the snow blower.

But the snow kept coming. The question changed from whether I’d need to clear it out, to when would be the optimal time to start. I still had the idea it would taper off in the afternoon, so I waited until 2:00, then sallied forth. My neighbors, with whom I share the driveway, were already clearing off the area in front of their garage. I did the liturgical exercises necessary to start up a snow blower that’s been sitting since spring (even if you put fuel stabilizer in the tank, which I had), and then dug in.

I have often encountered bad snow for blowing, but this stuff was almost precision engineered to jam up in the blower chute. Heavy, wet, adhesive. The temperature was just below freezing, and the snow never quite made up its mind whether it wanted to be slush or not. I’d go a couple feet, then clear the chute with a stick, then go a couple more feet, repeat. It was a little better between the houses, where the sunlight didn’t reach. My neighbors stayed on the job too, which also helped. Eventually we got it cleared.

But it was still snowing.

It snowed through the night. The next night, after work, I ran the snow blower again, to clear the rest of the snowfall – a couple more inches. Fortunately the temperature had dropped, and this stuff blew out pretty nicely.

I realized that this was the first time in my life I’d been happy to see colder weather. Continue reading Note to House Stark — it’s here →

So Dave Brubeck died today. A great loss, though he lived a very long life. I recall a conversation some years back where a guy told me he’d tried to get into jazz but just couldn’t. I agreed that I don’t get jazz either. “But I do like Dave Brubeck’s ‘Take Five,’” I said.

According to this piece at First Things, Brubeck was a convert to Catholicism. I recall a (different) friend telling me quite a few years ago that Brubeck was coming to his church to lead a musical event. So I’d heard he was a Christian, but didn’t know which branch.

They can always use another ivory maestro in heaven, I’m sure.

Haven’t written a rambling, self-indulgent post about my own life for a while. Come to think of it, our stats have gone up too. I wonder if there’s any connection… no. Impossible.

I did Thanksgiving with the family as is the custom, and it went pretty well. Except that I slipped down the basement stairs in the morning while getting the turkey ready, and came out pretty sore. It’s getting better slowly, but I’m confident I bent my tailbone. Again. I did it once before, years and years ago, and as it happens it occurred right here in Roseville, the summer I was doing youth work here. I should probably move away for my own safety. On the other hand, if it’s another 40 years before the next accident, I guess I’m pretty safe, even if I live as long as Brubeck. I did not go to see a doctor. He’d only tell me to apply heat and take pain killers, which I’m doing anyway.

I finally replaced the rubber stair treads I’d been meaning to put in for seven years, though.

The translation job forges on. I had one of those little “eureka” moments last night. The author, in talking about King Harald Finehair’s political system, used a Norwegian term, “statsapparatt.” I translated it literally – “state apparatus” – but knew a better term was out there somewhere. Last night I got it at last – “political machine.” I’m pretty confident that’s the actual idea. This pleased me no end.

Words are my life. Pathetic, isn’t it?

Nasty, brutish, and short.

A Norwegian friend, now a missionary in Brazil, sent me a link today that set my heart a-dancing. And believe me, my heart could use the exercise.

According to this article from a Norwegian web site (don’t worry, it’s in English), a University of Oslo professor, Jan Terje Faarlund, has published a radical thesis. English, he claims, is a Scandinavian language.

No, really.

Faarlund and his colleague Joseph Emmonds, visiting professor from Palacký University in the Czech Republic, now believe they can prove that English is in reality a Scandinavian language, in other words it belongs to the Northern Germanic language group, just like Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic and Faroese. This is totally new and breaks with what other language researchers and the rest of the world believe, namely that English descends directly from Old English. Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, is a West Germanic language, which the Angles and Saxons brought with them from Northern Germany and Southern Jylland when they settled in the British Isles in the fifth century.

It goes like this. Traditionally we’ve been told that our English language, as we speak it now, is the product of a cultural collision between Old English, the language of the Anglo-Saxons (who were nasty, brutish and short, the guys King Arthur fought against), and Norman French (the language of the guys who conquered the Anglo-Saxons). It’s also generally acknowledged that there was some influence from the Old Norse language of the handsome, sophisticated, and nice-smelling Danish settlers of northern England.

But Faarlund notes that the English dialect that finally ended up becoming modern English comes from the East Midlands, which was part of the Danish settlement. Also, English grammar is closer to that of Scandinavian languages than to West German languages (like Dutch and Flemish).

So if you’re an English speaker, you’re a Scandinavian, and you never knew it.

Doesn’t that make your day better?

(As for the image that accompanies the article, he’s saying, “I promise never to do that again.” And she’s saying, “We’ve discussed this before.”)

10 Sci-Fi/Fantasy Shows That Were Canceled Too Soon: from Paste Magazine

You know, I watched the pilot of Firefly and liked it, but somehow didn’t like it enough. I think it was the sexual content. My sweet, sweet wife said my expectations were too high, having heard so much praise over the years, but I’m not sure that’s the reason.