Requested by “Thewhiterabbit,” an old church and Sunday school favorite–Holy, Holy, Holy, sung by the Altar of Praise Men’s Chorale. Background sets by God the Father, maker of heaven and earth.
Month: February 2021
Jumping Cats!
I once did two weeks of cat-sitting for a neighbor who had half a dozen cats in his apartment. He also had a plethora of hanging plants, some of them affixed to the ceiling. For almost the whole time, the cats ignored the plants: but then they went into full Tarzan mode. Oh, what a mess! Hanging from the overhead light fixtures, too. It was as if they had suddenly discovered how to fly and were making the most of it.
Sort of like the cats in this video.
Startling Footage: Shark and Crocodile
I happened upon this video the other night, and thought you might be intrigued by it.
What happens when a huge saltwater crocodile, swimming in shallow water, crosses the path of a bull shark? The bull shark, by the way, is responsible for more attacks on humans than any other species of shark–and it’s just as at home in fresh water as it is in salt. Saltwater crocodiles also eat people, when they can get them.
The croc being twice the size of the shark, and armed with horrendously powerful jaws and lots and lots of sharp teeth, the bull shark decides not to bother it.
But the thing that gets me is… does anybody ever go wading, fishing, or clamming in that water?
The Invention of Breakfast Cereal (‘Oy, Rodney’)
When we last saw Lady Margo Cargo, in Chapter CDIV of Violet Crepuscular’s epic romance, Oy, Rodney, she was dowsing perilously close to the vicar’s fatal wading pool. Her crusty old butler, Crusty, is obstreporating every time he has to stop to dig a hole. But in Chapter CDV, they turn up a prehistoric treasure!
Just three bone-breaking feet below the surface, they find a metal plate inscribed with mystic runes. It looks sort of like this:
“Oh, Crusty!” Lady Margo evaporates. I am not at all sure about her use of that word, but she’s the author. “This is a runic inscription produced by a shaman of the ancient Celtic tribe, the Iguanodon People, unless I am very much mistaken!” (“You probably are, you daft old bint,” grumbles Crusty.) “It must have been buried here sometime around 537 B.C.”
“It’s junk,” opines Crusty.
“Nonsense!” quips Lady Margo. “Can’t you read it? Didn’t they teach you anything in school?”
Easily translating the mystic runes, Lady Margo discovers that the inscription is a recipe for what we would now, in the 21st century, call Store Brand Corn Flakes. “All we have to do,” she says, “is build a factory and start producing these. They’ll sell like hot cakes! The most feverish imagination will hardly suffice to calculate the profits!”
But this is how they get out of venturing close enough to the wading pool to get sucked under. They rush back to Cargo Hall to clean the plate and summon Lady Margo’s solicitor, a man who was once a trapeze artist but had to quit because he kept falling off the trapeze.
“Little do they know,” Ms. Crepuscular writes, “that Lady Margo has mis-translated what is actually a dreadful curse on anyone who removes this object from its burial place. The Iguanodon People are not extinct for nothing!
“And now I shall break for breakfast! It so happens I have a box of corn flakes, along with plenty of mint-flavored toothpaste with which to sweeten them. An experienced romance writer,” she adds, “is always on the lookout for real-life details to plug into her story!”
That’s just what makes her book so wonderful.
A Movie with a Parable: ‘Fracture’
Not that this movie has any explicitly Christian content; nor am I sure that the parable I’m seeing in it was intentionally put there by the film-makers. But I see it notwithstanding.
Anthony Hopkins plays a clever man who finds out his wife is cheating on him with a police lieutenant. So he hatches a fiendishly clever plan to kill his wife and manipulate the lieutenant into unknowingly destroying all the evidence of the crime. I mean, this plan is a doozie!
An up-and-coming young prosecutor tries to bring Hopkins to justice, but the killer outwits him at every turn. Meanwhile, the policeman is desperate for revenge and keeps trying to tempt the prosecutor to lie and cheat and manufacture evidence to win the case.
So where’s the parable? Let me see if I can tell you without spoiling the movie for you.
More than anything else, what brings criminals under judgment? What keeps them from getting away with their crimes? Why were even the pagan ancient Greeks so convinced that their gods would surely punish evildoers who’d seemed to escape punishment by worldly authorities?
Those are hints.
God does not always punish crimes here and now; sometimes He waits. Sometimes He uses evil men to chastise His own people. But you can be sure the crimes not punished here are punished somewhere else.
This movie can remind us of that.
A Meditation: Prophets
My Bible reading has brought me again to the prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel: and the word that God delivers through them, as usual, has very badly scared me.
God is going to lower the boom on Israel, on Judah, and on Jerusalem. He is going to pour out His wrath on them; and these, His prophets, deliver the warning of impending destruction and call for national repentance. And of course they don’t repent, and God wipes them off the map.
When I read these writings, I can’t help feeling that the prophets are also talking about my country, in my time. America. And other countries that have rejected or bastardized their Christian heritage. All of us. Those warnings apply to us.
So, yeah, I’m scared. Is it too late for us to repent? Too late to turn aside God’s wrath? Have we as a nation allowed one too many abortions, one too many Drag Queen Story Hours, one too many mutilations of children to “reassign their gender,” one too many preachers silenced for preaching God’s word, one too many mockeries of marriage, one too many pagan idols carried into our churches… Can we allow those things, and still escape judgment? Have we already run out of time? Has our punishment actually begun?
What can we do but pray?
O Lord our God! Remember that these things are done against our will, without our consent, and over our objections! Remember that we have tried to stop them, but have not the power to do so. Remember, Lord, and deliver us out of the hands of those who do those wicked and ungodly things, and refuse to repent, refuse to change their ways. In Jesus’ name, O God, deliver us. Amen.
‘Fallacies of Pop Christianity’ (2013)
It’s the nature of vacuums to be filled, one way or another. The vacuum created by churches’ failure to teach the Bible has been filled by, among other things, something we might call “pop Christianity.”
Is it any better than New Age drivel, atheism, or out-and-out paganism? Didn’t Israel, in the Old Testament, try to get by with pop Judaism? And how did that turn out for them?
By Request, ‘Fairest Lord Jesus’
This is a good old Sunday school favorite. Our church’s hymnal said it went back to the Middle Ages.
Fairest Lord Jesus–requested by “Thewhiterabbit,” sung by kids from the Fountainview Academy.
Dog Goes Nuts for Stairs
I dassn’t post more videos of cats and dogs frolicking in the snow. I admit I wasn’t frolicking this morning when I chipped the ice off my car. So… we shall remain indoors.
Does your dog or cat enjoy romping up and down the stairs? Our cats don’t do it much anymore, although Robbie will tear up the stairs to celebrate a more than usually satisfying visit to the litter box. I wish I could do that (running full-tilt up the stairs, I mean).
Memory Lane: What Was the Name of This Quiz Show?
Louisiana blueberries
Patty and I have been trying to remember the name of a really silly quiz show from many years ago, featuring teams of high school students from all over the country. No, it was not It’s Academic. My friend William A. Smith led the team our school sent to It’s Academic, and he answered all the questions single-handed. A few years later he cleaned up on College Bowl. If you’re reading this, William A., you still da man in my book.
This other show was on early Saturday afternoon, and we watched it a few times because we couldn’t believe how hopeless it was. Two questions in particular stand out.
First, “What state leads the USA in blueberry production?” They had a graphic to go with it–a map of Louisiana with blueberries on it. Duh. The question was multiple choice: A. Louisiana. B. Nevada C. Arizona. D. Kazakhstan. And would you believe it? Even with that big fat hint in front of them, none of the students–none!–got the answer.
The other question was even sillier. Again, multiple choice. A certain king of France (either Louis XIV or Louis XVI–hard to keep track of all the Looies) was very short of stature, so they invented something to make him taller when he attended a formal dance, creating a fashion still in vogue today. One of the multiple choice items was “Stilts.” Stilts for ballroom dancing. The answer was “High heels,” with a picture of the king wearing high heels, but the hint was to no avail.
Were they kidding? But wouldn’t you know it? “Stilts” was the answer they picked.
After that, we stopped watching the show. I have no idea how long it lasted on TV.
Imagine the appalling results if they brought it back today.
Can any of you out there remember the name of this show? We’re stumped.