Perhaps questions marks are falling out of favor. Quotation marks too.
I Couldn’t Handle It
At least, I doubt I could handle it. I don’t go in for scary movies or haunted houses, though I have done scant but real research into occultic things–I hate all of it. I want to hate it more than I do even. Regardless, if I were the type to seek out scary adventures for Halloween and I lived in Britain, I’d consider the ones pictured here.
What Evil Could Snow White Teach Your Child?
Having attempted to debunk God and not being one to leave well enough alone, author Richard Dawkins now wants to debunk Harry Potter.
I think looking back to my own childhood, the fact that so many of the stories I read allowed the possibility of frogs turning into princes, whether that has a sort of insidious affect on rationality, I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s something for research.
Chilling, what? Maybe he’s open to the harmlessness of fairy tales, but he’s already convinced that teaching children about hell is abusive. (via Books, Inq.)
Christ Jesus lay in death’s strong bands
A hymn of Martin Luther’s
Christ Jesus lay in death’s strong bands,
For our offenses given;
But now at God’s right hand He stands
And brings us life from heaven;
Therefore let us joyful be
And sing to God right thankfully
Loud songs of hallelujah!
Hallelujah!
No son of man could conquer Death,
Such mischief sin had wrought us,
For innocence dwelt not on earth,
And therefore Death had brought us
Into thraldom from of old
And ever grew more strong and bold
And kept us in his bondage. Hallelujah!
But Jesus Christ, God’s only Son,
To our low state descended,
The cause of Death He has undone,
His power forever ended,
Ruined all his right and claim
And left him nothing but the name,–
His sting is lost forever.
Hallelujah! Continue reading Christ Jesus lay in death’s strong bands
My proposed itinerary
I have a full calendar this weekend. Or rather, full by my standards. Quite leisurely compared with the calendars of those of you who are caring for invalid parents or raising two-year-olds. But if God had meant me to have old parents or young children, he wouldn’t have made me me.
In which case somebody else would be taking care of them anyway.
Tomorrow I ride up to Fargo, North Dakota, to St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, where I shall speak to the Georg Sverdrup Society on “Problems in Translating Georg Sverdrup.” I’m sure they could find room for you as a guest, if you find PowerPoint presentations on 19th-Century Norwegian syntax compelling.
And on Sunday I’ll be with the Viking Age Club at the Bloomington Town Hall Museum in Bloomington, MN. We’ll have an outdoor camp. The forecast high temperature is 40°, with high winds.
Vikings wore down-filled parkas, didn’t they? Sure they did.
Playing the game
There are questions about the story of that McCain volunteer who says she was robbed, then beaten up and then had a letter B “carved” into her face. As others have noted, it doesn’t smell right. I could be wrong, but I don’t like it.
Talk show hosts made much yesterday of graffitti painted on the homes of Sen. Coleman and Congresswoman Bachmann here in Minnesota. Some of these stories failed to notice that some Democrats’ houses were also targeted, notably that of my very liberal congressman, Keith Ellison.
When you’re a Republican, winning shouldn’t be everything.
Get the Worms Out
LiveScience reports: “Fishermen have long known that you can drive earthworms to the surface with a strange technique called worm grunting.
The trick involves driving a wooden stake into the ground and then rubbing the top of the stake with a long piece of steel called a rooping iron. It generates a peculiar grunting sound that drives nearby earthworms to the surface where they can be easily collected for fish bait.”
I wonder if something similar could get the worms out of congress.
Any pine in the Glade?
I think I’d have to work pretty hard to think of a less significant question than the one I pose below, but it nags at me. I’ve been meaning to blog about it for some time.
How come there isn’t any pine-scented room deodorizer anymore?
Oh, I know you can buy it during Christmas season. This is especially for people like me who have artificial trees (I’m a middle-aged bachelor, for pete’s sake—it’s not like I’m denying my heirs a Precious Memory). It allows us to pretend that we have a real tree desiccating in our living spaces, as long as we keep the lights pretty low and our eyes squinty. Which we middle-aged bachelors do quite a lot anyway, because we’re still trying to master that Charles Bronson thing that somebody said worked so well with the chicks in the ’70s.
Even longer ago than that, when I was but a wee keebler, pine was about the only kind of room deodorizer you could get. It came in a narrow glass bottle. You unscrewed the steel cap and pulled it outward, and a thick terrycloth wick that was attached to it came out of the bottle. You pulled it as far as you liked, depending on whether you wanted “a vague whiff of Douglas Fir from a distant mountain” or “bathing in a vat of Pine-Sol,” and evaporation did the rest. The bottle generally lasted about three days, I think, no matter how much wick you exposed. But it was a pine smell, and it pleased me. Continue reading Any pine in the Glade?
The Gag Rule
Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) wants to reinstate The Fairness Doctrine. I believe that is the Democratic Party position also. Sen. Bingamen said, “I would want this station and all stations to have to present a balanced perspective and different points of view instead of always hammering away at one side of the political . . . I guess my thought is that talk radio and media generally should have a higher calling than just reflect a particular point of view. I think they should use their authority to try to – their broadcast power to present an informed discussion of public issues.”
But as you may already know, when they say “talk radio,” they really mean Rush Limbaugh.
President Sarkozy Has the Rights to His Image
French President Sarkozy owns and can manage the use of his image, says his lawyer, so the little voodoo doll kit with his likeness must go.