I have to pass on this metaphor alert from the Wall Street Journal’s Best of the Web:

“We hit the ground running. We’re at the bottom of the food chain but . . . we have really made a dent up here.”–Sen. Jim Webb (D., Va.) on his time in the Senate so far, quoted in the Washington Post, March 21

The pope baptizes a prominent Italian Muslim.

Italy’s most prominent Muslim, an iconoclastic writer who condemned Islamic extremism and defended Israel, converted to Catholicism Saturday in a baptism by the pope at a Vatican Easter service.

No doubt this will lead to violence somewhere, as does anything that offends “the religion of peace.” But that’s no reason not to celebrate a soul coming home.

I’m back. Somewhat. To an extent.

I actually went back in to work Friday, for about six hours. But when I dragged myself home, I was too beat to post. Today I managed to stick it out for the whole eight hours, and I’m going to try to do a couple posts here, tired or not, because I’ve been piling up stuff I want to post about for the past week, and I’m going to explode if I don’t get some of it off my chest. And exploding will do my health no good.

To start with, Will at View From the Foothills has tagged Phil and me with a meme. Although telling you unimportant things about myself is hardly a departure in this space, I’ll go ahead and do it. The rules are as follows:

1. Link to the person that tagged you.

2. Post the rules on your blog.

3. Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.

4. Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.

5. Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, I’ll start out my list on an Irish note, and let it blow where it lists from there.

1. Green is my least favorite color. Oh, I love the green of springtime, which can’t come soon enough for me, but when I contemplate the visual spectrum objectively, I pass over green. I don’t think I own any green clothing (lucky for me I’m not Irish). I think the reason comes from candy. In the Rules of Candy, at least from when I was a kid, green meant lime. And I hate lime. Red, on the other hand, could mean either strawberry or cherry, either of which pleases me. Nowadays you sometimes get green candy that’s apple flavored, but that’s a postmodern aberration. Apple candy ought to be colored yellow, like it says in the Bible.

2. I always resented the Irish as a boy. Partly because I hated green (see above). Partly because I couldn’t understand why the Irish deserved all this attention and Norwegians didn’t (you can say that there are a lot more Irish than Norwegians in this country, but you didn’t grow up in Kenyon, Minnesota). But when I grew to maturity, I discovered Irish music and was completely won over, to the extent of developing an Irish alter ego to narrate The Year of the Warrior. Since I got into Father Ailill’s skin, I’ve found myself occasionally thinking I am Irish, and having to remind myself I’m not.

3. In my opinion, the most beautiful woman to show up on the scene in my lifetime was the tragic Swedish-American actress Inger Stevens. She had all the standard attributes of the ice princess, the untouchable blonde Hitchcock heroine, but she also had big blue eyes and dimples. I never watch “Hang ‘Em High” (because the gallows scenes are too harrowing for me) but when I watch “Five Card Stud,” it ain’t for Dean Martin.

4. I used to be able to recite Francis Thompson’s “The Hound of Heaven” from memory. I still remember most of it, but there are gaps.

5. I’ve never met anyone famous, that I’m aware of. I’ve had contact with a few people of some note by e-mail.

6. I was co-winner of the New York C. S. Lewis Society’s Screwtape competition back around 1975. The challenge was to write a new Screwtape letter. I shared the prize (which consisted of publication in the newsletter, nothing more) with Jennifer Swift, who is, I believe, like me a minor Fantasy writer now. My letter was better than hers.

As is my wont, I shall not tag anyone else with this meme. If you want to carry it on on your own blog, be my guest.

John Coleman, the man who gave us The Weather Channel, says if global warming advocates will not stand for a debate with credible scientists who oppose their theory, then he’ll sue Al Gore for financial fraud.

“Since we can’t get a debate, I thought perhaps if we had a legal challenge and went into a court of law, where it was our scientists and their scientists, and all the legal proceedings with the discovery and all their documents from both sides and scientific testimony from both sides, we could finally get a good solid debate on the issue,” Coleman said. “I’m confident that the advocates of ‘no significant effect from carbon dioxide’ would win the case.”

Coleman has been critical of the climate change hype you see everywhere and how his cable channel, now owned by someone else, has encouraged the hype. “In December 2006, The Weather Channel’s Heidi Cullen argued on her blog that weathercasters who had doubts about human influence on global warming should be punished with decertification by the American Meteorological Society,” according to the Business & Media Institute.

“A new study by The Nielsen Co. found that the PG-rated movies with the least profanity made the most money at the U.S. box office,” reports the AP. The study shows that parents carefully screen for language in the movies they bring their kids to see. Also web chatter helps most movies, but apparently it doesn’t help horror movies.

Andree Seu blogs on how easy it would be to adapt Biblical stories for the screen.

“Okay, so what does a Christian film look like?” one of you asks over lattes at Starbucks, your pens poised above blank sheets of paper.

“It tells it how it is,” replies Johnny. “The Christian is nothing if not a prophet of truth.”

I wish I could remember the title of a book one of my college English professors said was the best story from Jesus’ time period he had read. It something like Ben Hur, a story about a man or boy who lived around 30 A.D. and meets Jesus at one point in the story. It was juvenile fiction, but I don’t remember any more than that.

Some British literature professors say literature has no value, according to a new book by Rónán McDonald, The Death of the Critic. It’s “a polemic in favour of the critic as a ‘knowledgeable arbiter.’ In McDonald’s account, it is a reason for sharp regret that no one cares any more about ‘the critic.'”

In a section on blogs, online reviews, and the prominence of reader groups, McDonald “argues that the demise of critical expertise brings not a liberating democracy of taste, but conservatism and repetition. ‘The death of the critic’ leads not to the sometimes vaunted ’empowerment’ of the reader, but to ‘a dearth of choice.'” Not that critics just have better taste than everyone else, that their judgments are purely subject to their whims. Critics should have the knowledge to help us see the value of some books over others. “McDonald proposes that cultural value judgements, while not objective, are shared, communal, consensual and therefore open to agreement as well as dispute. But the critics who could help us to reach shared evaluations have opted out.”

I’ll try to put something substantive on the blog later today, but let me counter Lars’ sickness posts with a declaration that I have arrived. My life is indeed complete now. My people inform me that I have donated one gallon of blood (O negative) through my local non-profit org. Blood Assurance. There’s no need to thank me.

I felt considerably better last evening, and thought maybe it would all be done by this morning. But I woke up to find myself weak and coughing. Haven’t even had the energy to read much today.

On the upside, I’ve completely lost my appetite.

Sorry, this is all you get from me today. I have the flu. It appears to be the famous “24 hour bug,” because I started feeling lousy last night about this time, and I’m coming back now. But not enough to produce a decent post. I’ll be back tomorrow, I trust.