Sitting in bed in the dark, Calvin says, “Sometimes at night I worry about things and then I can’t fall asleep. In the dark, it’s easier to imagine awful possibilities that you’d never be prepared for. And it’s hard to feel couragious in loose-fitting, drowsy bear jammies.”

Hobbes replies, “That’s why tigers sleep in the buff!”

I just found this search website of Calvin & Hobbes comics and some other popular cartoons. I don’t see how copyright allows for this.

(More of Calvin’s wisdom: “What good is originality if you can’t crank it out?”)

Emily Karr writes for NRO:

And it isn’t just the God-fearin’ folk [Philip Pullman] finds frightening—he duly recognizes the atheistic USSR as one of the most cruel and effective theocracies in history. In an essay in the Guardian, he explains that “the real division is not between those states that are secular, and therefore democratic, and those that are religious, and therefore totalitarian. . . . You don’t need a belief in God to have a theocracy.” It’s no coincidence that he often refers to the poseur-God who is murdered in his trilogy as “the Authority,” for it is the enforcement of any authority he despises more than God. His opinion of Catholics who take offense at his book? “Nitwits,” he says.

One is tempted to write a book with a main character named “Philip Pullman,” described with his background and vital statistics, then replace his personality with that of a power-hungry tyrant who kidnaps and slaughters children to further his own goals. Perhaps go so far as to make the literary “Philip Pullman” responsible for the enormity of pain and suffering in the world. If he objects, call him a nitwit for failing to see the deeper meaning in your work.

As long as I have a post idea I haven’t used yet, I feel rich in material. What I always forget is that my idea bench is usually about one player deep.

I’d been meaning to do a post about how Christians have gone from complaining about the commercialization of Christmas to complaining about being left out of the holidays entirely, for some time. Last night I used it, and tonight I find myself swept and garnished of topics.

Which won’t stop me from posting. I’ll just write about myself. Haven’t tried that in, oh, a day or two.



I’m in the midst of a Christmas card crisis. I’m one of those tedious people who send a Christmas letter with their cards, and I have an annual protocol for it. First I write the letter. Then I translate it into Norwegian, so I can send it to my friends and relatives in the Old Country first, since mail takes longer to get there.

An indispensable tool for me over the years, in setting those letters in Norwegian, has been a book I acquired (oddly enough) during my sojourn in Florida. It’s an English-Norwegian dictionary, where you can look up the word in English and find the Norwegian equivalent (“Boat,” for instance, is “båt.” “Tree” is “tre” [which also stands in for “wood.”]. Squirrel, oddly enough, is “ekorn” in Norwegian. I’m not kidding).

But this year I’m being handicapped by the complete disappearance of my dictionary. It ought to be somewhere right around here by the computer, since I always leave things where I last used them, and never straighten the desk up. But I’ve been through all the piles and it’s nowhere.

I blame the elves (“nisser” in Norwegian).



Speaking of Norwegian, I see that my PBS station is broadcasting the new musical production, “Northern Lights: An Evening With Sissel” tonight. Chances are your PBS station is broadcasting it too, one of these nights, during the sacred Pledge season. I’m no great booster of PBS, but this is your chance to discover why I’ve been promoting this woman all these years. I expect you to watch it. You will be tested on the material.

The timing was spot on. In my mental calendar, November is a cool month that’s all about Thanksgiving. December is a white, snowy month that’s all about Christmas. So on the selfsame day that I turned the calendar page, the Frost Giants dropped four inches of heavenly sugar on us, like theater techies lowering the “Winter Scene” backdrop from the flyspace over the year’s stage, right on cue.

But four inches was all it was. No mighty blizzard. Commerce did not cease. Schools wouldn’t have closed if it had been a weekday (probably some would have been delayed, but they wouldn’t have closed).

It did keep me from doing any Christmas shopping. The roads were kind of slick, and as you know, one of my secret shames is that Mrs. Hermanson, my Chevy Tracker, does not actually have operative four wheel drive.

I did go out, though, to my regular Chinese buffet. The Guangzhou Restaurant in Robbinsdale has become my steady Saturday lunch venue. Their buffet is not extensive, but it’s good food, and not expensive. And now they know me, and pretty much expect me. I’ve achieved the status of “regular.” They don’t actually know my name, but I have a regular booth.

It’s not hard to have a regular booth on Saturdays at the Guangzhou. I think they do a pretty fair weekday business, but on Saturdays I’m sometimes the only one around. If I don’t show up, I think of all that food going to waste, and I feel guilty. (Not that most of it doesn’t go to waste even if I do show up. Even I don’t eat that much.)

But I didn’t drive there. That is silly on the face of it, I know. All summer, when the walking was easy, I drove to the restaurant. Saturday, when the arctic wind was blowing and snow was piling up, I trudged through the drifts. This was because, aside from the minimal danger of dying of exposure, my feet were more dependable than my slightly bald tires would have been on the streets that day.

I think I’ll walk to the restaurant more often in the future.

Starting next spring.

Via Mirabilis: You know that Gospel of Judas that National Geographic made a big production of last year? The one that suggested that Judas was actually following Jesus’ instructions in betraying him, and was a great saint in Heaven?

Never mind.

Turns out it was just a bad translation.

Could happen to anybody, right? Who among us has not promoted a major TV special and sponsored a national promotional campaign on the basis of a quick-and-dirty, slanted translation?

You don’t imagine there was any agenda here, do you? Is it possible that some people at NG jumped the gun on publication and fact-checking because they had an ax to grind against Christianity?

No, no. Forget I suggested it.

I went to my Viking Age Club & Society meeting tonight (the snow isn’t expected till sometime in the morning–maybe not even till the afternoon).

Anyway, I took the exit from Hiawatha Ave. onto Lake Street in Minneapolis. And there, on a corner in the underpass, stood a guy with one of those hand-lettered cardboard signs. It said:

NEEDED:

1. WHISKEY

2. STRIPPER

3. CHEAP HOTEL ROOM

Full marks for honesty to that fellow. (No, I didn’t give him anything.)

At the meeting, members of the club gave me a Christmas gift, which was entirely unexpected. It was a copy of the new Sissel Christmas CD, in concert with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I have it on the stereo at this moment, and it’s lovely.

It’s also autographed.

Just when I think I’ve got the world figured out, somebody’s nice to me. Sheesh.

Evel Knievel has died, if you hadn’t heard. I was never a follower of his career, but I thought I’d mention it since he professed faith in Christ a while back. His connection with Robert Schuller gives me pause, personally, but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he made The Really Big Jump successfully.

I was once in a fellowship group in Florida where three of the guys had first been drawn to Christ through watching Schuller on TV. By the time I met them, all of them had left Schuller’s brand of pop-salvationism behind for more nourishing spiritual fare.



Here’s a rhetorical question:

When you’ve got crowds of thousands who’ve turned out to demand the execution of a middle-aged schoolteacher because she allowed the little girls in her class to name a teddy bear “Muhammad,” are you allowed to point out the self-evident fact that those people (in particular, making no assumptions about their fellow countrymen or co-religionists) are scumferrets?

No, probably not.



Another rhetorical question: Do you think some of these people’s anger might possibly arise, not from her perceived blasphemy, but from the fact that she comes from another country and has a different skin color?

No, no. Impossible. That could only happen in America.

We’re expecting a snow storm tomorrow. I was planning to do some Christmas shopping, but I may be snowbound. If you don’t hear from me again, notify my next of kin—whatsername, that hot chick from House.

Hopeful today? You can forget about it for tomorrow. This article shows how everything from the Alps melting to crocodiles relations, from diarrhoea to collapsing gingerbread houses, is due to global warming (heard on Limbaugh’s show).

The Hollywood Writers strike continues (for those who care) and FanLib.com has some silly suggestions for making it without your favorite show. Learn to swing a light-saber or build a Star Trek-type phaser. Read a tie-in novel or visit Scranton, Pennsylvania. Do not attempt your own CSI-style investigation or see if you can get your featured on a show of Stupid Criminals, but you could volunteer at a food bank or take some of your decent stuff to a trift store.

From the Barna Group: “A new Barna Group study shows that most Christian parents will purchase [CDs, movies, games] for their children despite their misgivings about the content of those products. The result will be stress for many well-intentioned but morally uncertain parents, and inappropriate exposure for millions of morally vulnerable children.”

I think these are nifty. Both come via Mirabilis.

This one’s a virtual whale. You set the inset on a spot on the whale’s body, then watch him swim by, life-sized.

This is a story that needs to become a novel. See, there’s this important antique clock in Paris, and the authorities were just letting it rust away. So a group of “guerilla” restorers broke into the museum, set up a workshop, and worked for a year to restore the thing. Only then did they alert the government to their act of reverse sabotage.

It seems to me there’s a parable there.