Christian fantasy literature, and commentary on assorted subjects
From October 31, 2013
Would you believe it? There is now a Hunger Games Chocolate Candy Bar ( http://www.vosgeschocolate.com/category/vosges-wild-ophelia-hunger-games-chocolate-candy-bars ).
If memory serves, The Hunger Games is about a nasty world where most of the people starve while the ruling class wallows in debauched luxury, and once a year a bunch of teenagers have to kill each other off in a kind of lethal Survivor game: the last one left alive wins a food supply for his or her district.
When I saw this product, I asked the clerk behind the counter, “Are these people serious?” He replied, “It’s advertising; and advertising’s always serious.”
You can always buy a chocolate bar; so what is it, really, that they’re selling here? A chance to identify with the parasitic ruling class? Or a chance to feel solidarity with the downtrodden common people?
Maybe my sensitivities are too nice, but I can’t help thinking this little marketing gimmick is in rather poor taste. If I had written The Hunger Games, I think I would object. I mean, I write about all this misery and suffering, and you name a freakin’ candy bar after it?
The times we live in are not only evil. They are inane.
Satan has a lot of real idiots working for him.
P.S.–I was wonder, what comes next, after the Hunger Games candy bar? My wife suggests 50 Shades of Grey… licorice whips.
From June 3, 2021
I spend hours every week studying the follies and deficiencies of our public education system, the costliest ever created in recorded history. I know it’s awful.
But just one chapter into this book–The Dumbest Generation, by Mark Bauerlein–had me shaking my head and muttering to myself.
It’s far worse than I thought.
Bauerlein, a college English professor, realizes something I realized years ago. The single worst thing about public school is, it makes your age-group peers the most important people in your life. That in itself was one of the worst ideas ever. But now, says Bauerlein, social media and a plethora of electronic gizmos have made an atrocious situation horrifyingly worse.
Kids and teens now live in the moment, cut off from the past, never pondering the future, unable to look any farther than their own little social media bubbles–obsessed with what other kids are doing, saying, playing… And they know… nothing.
All those boxcar-loads of money spent on “education,” and they come out of college knowing bloody nothing. They’re fixated on their peers in the social media. They never look beyond it. No history, no civics, no literature, no nothing. Maybe they’ll read a comic book now and then. And watch TV.
The author bases these claims on the results of many authoritative studies involving hundreds of thousands of school and college students.
What’s to worry?
Well, they can all vote, can’t they? And they’re always ready to Protest For Social Justice. Because it’s expected of them. Because their peers do it.
It is literally the march of ignorance.
I’m going to review this book for Chalcedon, so I have to read the rest of it. And I think I’d better pray harder! We are talking about creating a country full of conformist know-nothings who will not be able to sustain a constitutional republic. I’m a political scientist, I know these things, trust me: you can’t have a republic of idiots.
Got really busy this afternoon, hence the drop off of posts.
Tomorrow I have to run a couple of errands and vote.
Our town doesn’t even have a republican running for city council. That part of the ballot just says “no petition filed”. I guess people just gave up.
Will have more to say tomorrow.
By the way, I got a call from my friend in Florida. Her neighbor, who was shot the other day is recovering nicely, but his arm is still paralyzed. Hopefully that will straighten out. He was a totally innocent bystander.
Have a good night, all.
See you tomorrow.
God bless everybody.
Patty
We’ve seen lots of videos of cats and dogs cuddling human babies. Betcha bunnies do it, too. But here’s a new one on me–a cockatiel kissing up to Baby and whistling a lullaby. Animals understand us better than we think.
This is truly weird, but I don’t think it will be anything good.
From October 11, 2012
Yesterday I drove past the church in which I was raised. I haven’t been inside the building since I heard the new pastor say, “Adultery is no big deal.”
Yesterday they had a new sign up on the front lawn, next to the old sign advertising “a welcoming and affirming congregation.” The new one reads:
“Stop persecuting them by deporting them. Let them stay.” “Them” being illegal aliens, people who break our country’s laws.
What was this sign doing in front of a church? Well, they don’t care much about God’s laws; why should they respect man’s laws?
A Prayer
This is a prayer which I pray every day now, for my country.
“Father, we as a nation are so far gone in sin and folly, so blind, so deaf, so lawless, that we cannot possibly save ourselves. Stretch forth your mighty arm, and the hand that created the heavens and the earth, and by your irresistible strength turn us off the disastrous course we have been following: turn us back to you, and make your face to shine: and then we shall be saved. Amen.”
