Month: November 2013

Costco Labels the Bible ‘Fiction’

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

In a Costco store in Simi Valley, CA, thousands of Bibles carried stickers that read, Fiction $14.99.

Fiction, of course, is something that is not true.

As reported by Fox News and other sources ( http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/11/18/costco-bible-is fiction/?intcmp=obnetwork ), someone at Costco said the placement of the “Fiction” stickers on the Bible was a “human error” that has since been “fixed.” Then they clammed up about it altogether.

I visited my local Costco to see if they were labeling the Bible as fiction there, but there they didn’t have any Bibles at all.

Has Richard Dawkins been named CEO of Costco? Was it just some sophomoric atheist in the stockroom playing a childish joke? Or could it have been someone who reasoned that, since Americans treat the Bible as fiction, it might as well be labeled fiction?

When I think “fiction,” I think of the giants of fiction and fantasy–Al Gore, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and that arch-fictioneer in the White House, whose “If you like your current health insurance plan, you can keep it” ranks as one of the all-time great works of fantasy. Betcha Costco has all of them labeled Non-fiction.

Meanwhile, I heed St. Paul’s advice: “Let God be true, but every man a liar” (Romans 3:4).

Update: As of today, Costco has “apologized” for labeling the Bible fiction.

But who is going to apologize for treating it like fiction?

Education Nabob Rails Against ‘White Suburban Moms’

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who used to preside over the circus of overpriced failure that is the Chicago public school system, has blamed “white suburban moms” for problems with “Common Core”–the scheme to have the federal government micro-manage all the nation’s public schools ( http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-obama-care/111813-679647-duncan-blames-white-suburban-moms-against-common-core.htm ).

Common Core uses grammar, math, science, and history lessons to indoctrinate children into a state of left-wing Kool-Aid drinking–with lessons like, for instance, “The people must obey all the commands of government officials.” Sit. Heel. Beg. Roll over. Because the program is so enormous, unwieldy, and messianically ambitious, the feds have had a lot of problems with it.

I have interviewed Arne Duncan. What he wants for public education, down the road, is for children to be in school 12 hours a day for at least six, and maybe seven, days a week, all year round–no summer vacation, no time off for good behavior. This is because he believes families are incapable and irresponsible, fathers don’t really exist, and only the government has what it takes to raise children.

But it’s all the soccer moms‘ fault that Common Core isn’t a roaring success–them and their naughty pushback.

Then again, soccer moms voted for the Big Golem in the White House who made Arne the Grand Sultan of Education, so maybe it is their fault, after all.

You want leaders who will “take care of you”?

Sit. Stay. Play dead.

How to Keep Your Deadly Poisonous Snakes

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A friend sent me two news stories yesterday, to see what I would make of them.

First, a church pastor in Tennessee is defying the state’s ban on possessing wildlife–in this case, dozens of poisonous snakes kept in the church’s snake room. (Did your church have a snake room? Mine didn’t. If I had known, when I was 10 years old, what I was missing–!) The pastor says that if exceptions can be made for zoos, schools, research facilities or whatever, then his church ought to be allowed to keep rattlers, copperheads, and cottonmouths, too. ( http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/16/us/tennessee-pastor-disputes-wildlife-possession-charge-by-state.html?_r=0 )

Second: more and more travelers are complaining about airlines allowing passengers to bring their pets aboard–not in cages or carriers, but sitting on the seats or even wandering around loose in the aisle. ( http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/16/business/emotional-support-with-fur-draws-complaints-on-planes.html?hpw&rref=health&_r=0 ) Thanks to the American Disabilities Act, you can bring pretty much any kind of animal you please onto the plane with you, as long as you’ve got a letter from a “mental health professional” certifying that this dog, cat, or hamster is a “emotional support animal” and not just a pet going on a trip with you. A lot of the other passengers have a hard time understanding that distinction. I am reminded of Mavis Pugh in the classic Fawlty Towers episode, “The Kipper and the Corpse,” bringing her obnoxious little dog into the hotel dining room.

When I read these two stories, a connection leaped immediately to mind.

Why doesn’t the pastor have his poisonous snakes declared emotional support animals? It’d be the easiest thing in the world to find some daft mental health professional who’d gladly write a letter to that effect. Hey, where does it say you can only have your emotional support animals on an airplane?

Problem solved!

Did I Write That?

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I’ve been reading a book I wrote circa 1988 and published in 1990–and what I wrote has shocked me.

Mind Stealer was the last of four horror novels I wrote for Zebra Books during the 1980s horror boom. At the time, I didn’t know it would be the last.

I was never terribly proud of it because they changed editors on me and the new editor made a mess of the book. I had to work like crazy to restore some semblance of readability.

Mind Stealer is the story of a special, hush-hush management training program run by Japanese consultants somewhere in the North Carolina wilderness. Back then, America’s business community worshiped everything Japanese–especially their insanely fanatical devotion to their employers.

So I wrote about that. And I wrote savagely. I wrote raw. I read it now and wonder, “Why was I so angry? What was in my heart, to make me write like this?” I’ve found in it no glimmer of redemption, and I don’t remember writing any such thing into it.

If that was who I was then, and God has heard my prayers and changed me so that I can hardly recognize my own writing from that age of my life, then I give Him thanks and rejoice. If I had stayed the man whom I discern in the pages of Mind Stealer, I’d have burned out like a highway flare. The fire would have consumed me.

I would write that story very differently today, if I had to write it at all. But I’m sure I don’t have time for it.

PM: Britain Needs More Social Mobility

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Prime Minister David Cameron says the United Kingdom’s government must “do more” to increase social mobility.

To see what happens when government “does” something, see Obamacare.

Now, how do you energize social mobility from the top down? Among the options the British government is considering are these.

1. Hand out peerages. Like, when you woke up at noon today, you were Joe Blow, unemployed yobbo. But along comes PM Cameron, your fairy godmother, and–bibbity-bobbity-boo!–suddenly you’re Lord Blow, Viscount of Whatever. And your drunken ass of a cousin is the Earl of Swill. Everybody’s got a title!

2. Abolish peerages. All right, that’s downward mobility. No earthly government has ever succeeded in making everybody rich; but any bunch of idiots with power can make millions of people poor without half trying.

3. Enact the ‘Queen for a Day‘ Program. Sack the royal family and set up a system that allows every man, woman, and child in Britain to be royal for a day. Wouldn’t it be cool to have a Prince of Wales who was really Welsh? Why shouldn’t every charwoman have her day in Buckingham Palace? Everybody gets a turn.

There’s only one proposal the government has totally rejected:

To back off, to get out of people’s lives, and let anyone who can rise as high as he can.

“That,” says the PM “would be unfair to lazy sods who have no ambition.”

The Day of the Pimp

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

To rally support for Obamacare, idiots in Colorado have loosed a new ad campaign exhorting women to have promiscuous sex. In the words of the Colorado Observer’s headline, “Fans of Obamacare Urge Young Women to Hook Up in Edgy Ads” ( http://thecoloradoobserver.com/2013/11/fans-of-obamacare-urge-young-women-to-hook-up-in-edgy-ads ).

One of the ads illustrated shows a young woman ogling a young man with the caption, “OMG, he’s hot! Let’s hope he’s as easy to get as this birth control.”

OMG is shorthand for taking the Lord’s name in vain. Well, you know how some sinners think: in for a penny, in for a pound.

The idea they’re pushing here, of course, is that, thanks to Obamacare, young women are now “free” to have sex with as many different men as they please–because the government will provide them with contraceptives paid for by other people, and, if that don’t work, abortions paid for by other people. So get out there and start slutting!

Remember–the progressive/liberal/commie plan is always to estrange people from God by encouraging them to sin, and so make them totally creatures of the all-devouring State. For a deeper understanding of how it works, read up on Mau-Mau initiation rituals.

P** on my Leg and Tell Me It’s Raining

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Some of you think chess is boring; but I don’t think many of you would think that a $2.55 million prize purse is boring.

This year’s World Chess Championship–in which Viswanathan Anand (India) defends his title against the top-rated player in the world, Magnus Carlsen (Norway)–offers a purse of more than two-and-a-half million smackers, 60% to the winner, 40% to the loser. That ought to make it exciting, right?

Wrong. So far, this is the worst “world championship chess” I’ve ever seen.

Maybe I’m old-fashioned; but I think chess games between the two top players in the world ought to be good games, packed with drama, tension, brilliancy, and art. But the first three games of this match have been terrible.

In Game One they went 13 moves into the game, and while still in the opening phase, repeated their moves three times in a row to force an automatic draw. In Game Two they went a few moves longer before again forcing a draw by repetition of moves. And in Game Three they actually got into the middle game–then, seeming to lose interest, they exchanged all their pieces (chess as a fire sale?) until they had none left, thus forcing yet another automatic draw.

I wonder what a ticket costs. Anything over 49 cents, you got robbed.

A few commentators have tried to defend this fiasco by saying, “Well, hey, these guys play at such a high level, only a few of the top grand masters of chess can hope to understand these games.” As Judge Judy says, “Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining.” These games stink! Anand and Carlsen are playing like they’re just trying to get it over with so they can enter a Monopoly tournament.

I hope nobody’s thinking, “Gee, even if I lose, I still walk off with over a million dollars–just for showing up! Why give myself grey hairs, trying to win?”

I wonder what would happen if they knocked $50,000 or $100,000 off the purse, every time there’s a draw.

If big-time chess isn’t dead already, events like this will kill it.

 

Was Daniel a Prophet?

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

I’ve been having a discussion with one of my chess buddies at http://www.chessgames.com on the Book of Daniel. I take it as I find it. But he, following the lead of various Biblical scholars, believes Daniel was written not by Daniel sometime in the Sixth Century B.C., but by unidentified persons circa 150 B.C. (give or take a few decades). By then, the events prophesied by Daniel would have already happened–making the book not prophecy, but a pretended prophecy: in a word, a deception.

Believing this, he says, makes no difference to his Christian faith. Well, who am I to judge that? But it would make a difference to my faith if I thought big chunks of the Bible were a load of humbug.

In Chapter 11, Daniel accurately predicts the turbulent, complicated history of the Holy Land and the successors to Alexander the Great’s empire–including the long, see-saw struggle between the Seleucid Empire, centered in Syria, and the Ptolemaic Empire, in Egypt. The prophecy does not give the names of the individuals who make this history, but it does describe their actions–in great detail.

Because these predictions are so accurate, “scholars” say the book could only have been written after all those things had happened. They begin their analysis from the presupposition that there is no such thing as prophecy–that accurate and detailed predictions of the future are simply impossible.Then they hunt up “evidence” to support their position.

I don’t have a lot of time for scholars.

If my friend’s faith can survive “Biblical scholarship,” my hat is off to him. I presuppose the truth of God’s word–not to mention its fundamental honesty!–and reason upward from that basis.

Sure–I want to know a lot more about the persons, places, and events described in the Bible. I consult historians and archeologists. After all, it was a “scientific” finding–satellite photos showing the course of a once-mighty river that flowed across Arabia into southern Mesopotamia, now buried under the desert: a river that was hidden many thousands of years ago, yet is nevertheless remembered in Genesis 2:11-13 as one of the original “rivers of Eden”–that years ago shocked me out of my indifference toward the Bible. (They’ve even named this long-lost river: the Kuwait River.)

So don’t accuse me of despising knowledge. I just despise knowledge that only claims to be knowledge, and isn’t.

Atheist Mega-Churches (New Fad)

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This is bound to take its place alongside of pet rocks and Nehru jackets.

The “news media” this weekend–Fox, CBS, NBC– all featured reports of what they were calling “atheist mega-churches.” These are large gatherings, on a Sunday morning, of people who want all the church stuff but without belief in God.

It was started by two British comedians. It’s awash in money. They get together and sing “Here Comes the Sun” and “Lean on Me.” I’m sure they sing “Imagine,” too, although that wasn’t mentioned in any of the news articles. Like, right there is ample reason to stay away.

The services feature music, sermons without God, and assorted feel-good-about-yourself activities.

I’m confused. How do you tell the difference between one of these “atheist mega-churches” and a regular mega-church? If it’s that hard for us to tell, will God trouble Himself to make a distinction?

When the Son of Man returns, will He find faith on the earth? (Luke 18:8)

Only if He knows where to look.

 

Yachting With No Pants On

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One of my favorite writers was the late John D. MacDonald, best known for his Travis McGee series.

My wife and I were trying to remember which of the Travis McGee books contained MacDonald’s most embarrassing lapse as a writer–a little something about a boat with a nude all-girl crew. I mean, what ever possessed him to write such a thing?

We couldn’t find the book, but we did soon discover that “nude yachting” or “nude boating” have become big business. For a big pile of money, you can go on a “nude cruise.” John D, just didn’t realize how far ahead of the curve he was. (No, I will not provide a link. That would be free advertising.)

But to those who would take up this pastime, I have only two words.

Sunburn.

Splinters.

These two words, I believe, tell you all you need to know about frolicking around starkers all day long on the water, miles away from any shade. And on a wooden boat or yacht, do be careful of where you sit down.