Pirate Adventure

...because hey, why not? It's Sunday.

The Reason I Won't Tell My Kids That Santa Claus is Real

(Click on the pictures for a larger view)

(Thanks to wetherobots.com)

Wistful

I'm a bit wisful this evening - the proximate causes including my wife's temporary absence while she visits her parents and my semi-exhaustion from the project I'm working on. Fatigue, Vince Lombardi famously said, makes cowards of us all. But I also feel more heavily than usual the absence of my dad. It has been more than a year, and the pain is not generally so acute as it once was. But I notice that many of my former enthusiasms have been tempered by a sense of the evanescence of all things temporal. I understand more personally the expressions I noticed as a kid on the faces of older people as they consider today's pleasures in relation to times and people gone by.

The feeling of futility tells me I need to draw nearer to God. The wistfulness is partly an incorrect view of things (i.e., I'm not seeing things in light of what God tells us of what's ahead in eternity) but is also a reminder that this world is not my home. Sigh. How often I am reminded, and yet the lesson hurts still.

A Spoonful of Sugar...Please!

I am struggling to force myself to do work that does not appeal to me in the least. I can think of a thousand things I'd rather be doing. I pity every child in school who has to force himself to sit in those chairs and do hour after hour of (what is to him) drudge work. I am both the child and the taskmaster right now. To see if I could find something encouraging on the internet to inspire me in this task, I found this admonition from William C. Gannett, author of Making the Most of Life (1886) admonishing us to “the very fundamentals of all fine manhood and fine womanhood, the fundamentals that underlie all fulness and without which no other culture worth the winning is even possible,” namely:

• power of attention
• power of industry
• promptitude in beginning work
• method and accuracy and despatch in doing it
• perseverance
• courage before difficulties
• cheer
• self-control and
• self-denial "

The sermon in church this past Sunday was on giving thanks as you go through trials of all kinds. The pastor advised that if we cooperate with God and learn the lessons the first time, maybe God wouldn't have to keep bringing us round again and again through the same thing. Those who love me can pray I would not be mutton-headed, and would learn to exercise these qualities in the present state of self-imposed torture in which I find myself.

The Dirt Man!

As I work this evening, I am listening to an interview with a professional investigator of the paranormal on the "Coast to Coast" show. He is skeptical of most of the things he has been called upon to investigate, from UFOs to haunted houses to sightings of the Moth Man. If only he could see what I've seen today! When I got up this morning, I heard a lot of grunting. Simultaneously, a man made of dirt - dirt! I kid you not! - gathered himself up and stood beside my bed. He has been with me ALL DAY and is WITH ME EVEN NOW! He's watching the screen as I type. Not only that, he's not just a mindless clod (clod, get it?) because even though I can't look into his eyes right now, I can tell he's thinking about what I'm writing.

It gets stranger. The dirt man was accompanied by a woman made of dirt, as well as a child, also made of dirt. Strange you may think it, but the dirt man seemed quite fond of them, caressing them with his hands of earth. He looked up at the sky earlier tonight and seemed to be moved by the beauty of the evening clouds.

He shows no sign of leaving, and evidently plans to be there when I go to bed. I won't be surprised if he stays with me all my days.

Amazing! A man made out of dirt, who not only functions physically, but also thinks, perceives, and feels. How did he come to be, this man of the unthinking, unconscious dust? Was he made in a moment, or did it take eons?

Either way, it would take a miracle. As any truly skeptical investigator could tell you, dirt just doesn't get up and do those sorts of things all by itself.

- Chris Ross

The Highlights of History

I don't know if anybody is reading my posts or not, but if they are, they (you) should pay particular attention to this one. Every year around new Year's day, Hugh Hewitt posts his six-hour conversation from 2002 with Dr. Larry Arnn, President of Hillsdale College, free to download (website listed below). They discuss the highlights of Western history, and the conversation is intended to be a sampler for people to find things they would like to learn more about. Dr. Arnn is a neat guy, and so is Hugh Hewitt. By "neat" I mean in this case that they are good, smart, wise, and worth listening to. I listened to the whole thing last year when I was painting part of my house. It was so good I think I'll listen every year. It's a really worthwhile experience for anybody who likes history and would like to know what it means to be Western in terms of ideas and outlook. You can listen or get the podcast at :http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/talkradio/Show.aspx?RadioShowID=5

My Theory on Dragons and Giant Movie Monsters

People are fascinated by dragons. Tolkien knew: the worm fires interest, from Fafnir to Smaug to Ancalagon the Black. The more the Cloverfield monster is like a dragon - i.e., lizard like and (this is a must) breathes fire - the greater its chance of capturing the popular imagination. I'll grant that wings in this case are not a must, since a monster as big as a skyscraper that breathed fire and could also fly is just a bit much to take on.

You're all laughing at me, I know. But you just wait and see if my theory holds water. If movie studios asked my opinion more often before they dumped millions into their movies, I could help them make a lot more money. [Yes, I know that the coolest movie dragon ever, Vermithrax (pictured above right) was in a movie that only fared modestly at the box office. But it was Vermithrax that made it possible for that movie to attain the status of a cult classic rather than a forgettable flop.]

Reading and Mental Health, Or Not

This will have to be an abbreviated post today. Maybe I can expand tomorrow. With regard to Cloverfield: the Wikipedia article on Cloverfield noted that there were erroneous rumors that the movie was based on H.P. Lovecraft's horror stories. I looked up the article on Lovecraft. Fair disclosure: I've never read Lovecraft. But it's amazing to me that, just as there are linkages between authors that enrich the soul (I'm thinking, for example, of the Inklings, George MacDonald, G.K. Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers) there are apparently linkages between authors whose works tend to impoverish the soul. I guess I thought of them as being birds that flew solo. Silly of me, I guess. Lovecraft, and some of the authors connected with him, seem to have one link after another to suicide, mental illness, depression, atheism, cosmicism (which is the belief that human life is not so much meaningless as it is inconsequential and doomed), and racism. Then I went into a comic book store today. I keep forgetting why I gave up comics in between my visits. This is why. Darkness has largely taken over. It's depressing. C.S. Lewis said of Boswell (which could have been said of Lewis as well) that "to read him is to grow in mental health". Without wishing to condemn any person (especially those I have not read first hand) or any genre, I think I can say that I'm reminded that there are those authors for whom the opposite is true.