Mar 25 2007
Light Posting for a Few Days
I’m off to the golden wonderland of Omaha… Back in a few. Meanwhile, chill with the bears. Have some penguin. (Okay, polar bears and penguins don’t co-exist, but you get the idea.)
Mar 23 2007
Friday Movie Meme
1. Name a movie that you have seen more than 10 times.
None. The most times? Probably Princess Bride .
2. Name a movie that you’ve seen multiple times in the theater.
The original Star Wars .
3. Name an actor that would make you more inclined to see a movie.
Hmmmmm. Cyn and I have never watched a Tom Berenger movie to completion so we might go just to see if lightning strikes the theater.
4. Name an actor that would make you less likely to see a movie.
Alec Baldwin. Sean Penn.
5. Name a movie that you can and do quote from.
Monty Python’s Holy Grail . “Ooh, Dennis, there’s some lovely filth down here.”
6. Name a movie musical that you know all of the lyrics to all of the songs.
None.
7. Name a movie that you have been known to sing along with.
Does Veggie Tales count?
8. Name a movie that you would recommend everyone see.
Casablanca .
9. Name a movie that you own.
Just one? Off the top of my head, I own The Great Escape .
10. Name an actor that launched his/her entertainment career in another medium but who has surprised you with his/her acting chops.
Or maybe the other way around. Fred Thompson. “Son, the Russians don’t take a crap without a plan.”
11. Have you ever seen a movie in a drive-in? If so, what?
Way back in the day. Jeremiah Johnson is the only one that comes to mind.
12. Ever made out in a movie?
Sure, back in high school.
13. Name a movie that you keep meaning to see but just haven’t yet gotten around to it.
Amazing Grace.
14. Ever walked out of a movie?
Event Horizon . It turned my stomach.
15. Name a movie that made you cry in the theater.
Guys don’t cry in movies. Okay, Old Yeller .
16. Popcorn?
Always. No butter.
17. How often do you go to the movies (as opposed to renting them or watching them at home)?
Once a month or so.
18. What’s the last movie you saw in the theater?
Bridge to Terebithia . I don’t recommend it .
19. What’s your favorite/preferred genre of movie?
Sci-fi, action.
20. What’s the first movie you remember seeing in the theater?
Yours, Mine and Ours.
21. What movie do you wish you had never seen?
Event Horizon .
22. What is the weirdest movie you enjoyed?
Allegro non Troppo . Very surrealistic. Naked Lunch was also right up there, but it wasn’t very high on the enjoyment scale. Just weird.
23. What is the scariest movie you’ve seen?
See #14 and 21.
24. What is the funniest movie you’ve seen?
Holy Grail or Life of Brian .
Mar 22 2007
Cities to ACLU: Take a Hike
(HT: CitizenLink via Stop the ACLU ) The relentlessly anti-Christian ACLU has run into a stumbling block. They threatened Thomasville, North Carolina with a string of lawsuits if that city didn’t cease from the hateful practice of praying before city council meetings. Thomasville told them to mind their own business.
Officials in Thomasville, N.C., voted 6-1 Monday to ignore threats from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and allow prayer at city-council meetings.
Mike Johnson, senior legal counsel for Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), provided the council with a proposed policy in compliance with the U.S. Constitution.
“It’s amazing that, in a country founded on religious liberty, the right to open a public meeting with a prayer would be under attack,” he said. “But that is exactly what the ACLU has been doing the past several months - using its familiar tactics of fear, intimidation and disinformation to force municipalities into passive compliance with its agenda to eliminate our First Liberty, religious freedom.”
Councilman Dwight Cornelius said he hopes other municipalities will stand up to the ACLU.
“This is a freedom of speech issue, pure and simple,” he said.
ADF offers assistance to any municipality that’s under attack for “simply continuing a practice that the Supreme Court knows is ‘deeply embedded in the history and tradition of our country,’ ” Johnson added.
It’s about time people started resisting the strong-arm atheism of the ACLU.
Mar 21 2007
Faith in Art
Look familiar? It’s called “The Prophets Hosea and Jonah.” This is one of my favorite pieces, for a number of reasons, but it’s not a work we know much about. It was painted by the Italian High Renaissance painter Raphael (also know as Raffaello Sanzio, Raffaello Santi, Raffaello da Urbino or Rafael Sanzio da Urbino) around the year 1510. It may have been a sketch to be integrated into works commissioned by Pope Julius II for rooms at his palace at the Vatican.
According to the National Gallery of Art , the work is “pen and brown ink with brown wash over black chalk, heightened with white and squared for transfer on laid paper.”
The artist was a contemporary of Michelangelo, who painted
this work
at about the same time.
Mar 21 2007
What Are You Reading Right Now?
I tend to read several books at a time. So, right now, I’m working on these three:
Storm Front by Jim Butcher (from the Dresden Files series)
The Frigates by James Henderson
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (Unabridged audio version from audible.com )
What are your favorites right now?
(HT: Bird at Thinklings )
Mar 21 2007
Nuff Said
Cartoon by Dave Walker . Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons .
Mar 20 2007
Freedom of the Press Spotted in Eurabian Enclave
Occasionally there is a sparse dusting of common sense. The Danish editor who published the mohammed cartoons won a Free Press award. (HT: Darcey at Dust My Broom )
Cartoons: Editor gets award 19/03/2007 22:26 - (SAPA)
Copenhagen - The Danish newspaper editor who chose to publish controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005 was on Monday awarded a free press prize for his “determination and courage”.
The Danish-based Free Press Society awarded Flemming Rose the inaugural international Sappho Prize, which comes with 20 000 kroner ($3 568).
The publication of the 12 cartoons in the daily Jyllands-Posten in September 2005 prompted an international storm.
Lars Hedegaard of the Free Press Society said the prize honoured a “journalist who combines excellence in his work with courage and a refusal to compromise”.
Hedegaard compared the pressure placed on Rose and his newspaper to apologise for publishing the cartoons to those voices calling for the appeasement of Nazi Germany at the dawn of World War II.
“Decisive to our decision was Rose’s courage to print the cartoons and to stand his ground under the worst storm any journalist has ever endured,” Hedegaard said.
Mar 20 2007
Dean Koontz on Faith and Beauty
Go here and read the article. Koontz is a practising Catholic - but don’t hold that against him. He has a great understanding of the nature and source of beauty, and of our ability to enjoy it.
I can walk in the rose garden, watch the joyful capering of my dog and see the indisputable work of God. The key is beauty. If the world is merely a complex and efficient machine, beauty is not required. Beauty is in fact superfluous. Therefore beauty is a gift to us. If we were soulless machines of meat, the survival instinct would be all we needed to motivate us. The pleasures of the senses - such as taste and smell - are superfluous to machines in a godless world. Therefore, they are gifts to us, and evidence of divine grace. The older I’ve gotten, the more beauty, wonder and mystery I see in the world, which is why there are ever more of those three things in my books.
Amen and amen.
And on writing:
Many years ago, I stopped outlining stories. I started with a character I liked, and just plunged. With no outline, I went where the characters took me. I gave them free will, and a wonderful, mysterious thing happened. The characters made their way to truths through their actions, and these truths grew from within the work rather than being imposed by me from without.
When you create this way, you find yourself in a flow state - what athletes call “being in the zone” - and in the flow state you feel your creativity coming to you from a higher and much greater creativity. You feel the presence of God, a humbling experience. This is why I avoid publicity as much as I can. The book is more important than the author. Critical praise and celebrity are hollow rewards. Real joy comes from those moments during the writing when you feel the great beating heart of the divine.
Mar 20 2007
Environmentalism is the New Communism
Media Ignore Czech President: Environmentalism is the New Communism (Posted by Noel Sheppard on March 20, 2007 - 13:01)
If the president or prime minister of a former Soviet bloc European nation told Congress that global warming skeptics were like communists inhibiting human freedom, do you think this would be headline news?
Well, as amazing as it might seem, Czech President Vaclav Klaus made some rather astonishing comments in a letter to members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee about how “climate change and especially man-made climate change has become one of the most dangerous arguments aimed at distorting human efforts and public policies in the whole world.”
He went so far as to claim that “we are not witnessing a clash of views about the environment but a clash of views about human freedom,” and that communism has been “replaced by the threat of ambitious environmentalism.”
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