Christian fantasy literature, and commentary on assorted subjects
From April 18, 2019
These two 17-year-olds are smart enough to be engineering students: but can they figure out how to use a rotary phone?
We’re not making fun of them. They’ve never seen, let alone used, one of these before. And yet it wasn’t so long ago that a rotary phone was found in every American household.
This is how knowledge gets lost. And it can happen quickly.
All right, rotary phones are obsolete, we don’t need them anymore, few people still have one. The rotary phone has been replaced by more advanced technology. But much more important knowledge can get lost, without being replaced: a knowledge of history, for instance, or a grasp of civics. Thanks to our laughably inadequate “education” system, knowledge of history and civics is all but extinct. That’s why there are millions of young people who literally do not know that the law of the land, the Constitution, limits what the government is allowed to do.
We don’t need the rotary phone anymore, but we still need history and civics. And we’re quickly losing that knowledge.
We could wind up paying a very heavy penalty for that.
From July 7, 2021
By now it’s become obvious to all but the looniest leftids that “Defund the Police” is an idea whose time has not come. So Democrats are trying to convince us that they never said it! They’re trying to shift this load of failure onto the Republicans. It’s not going to work, but at least they understand they’ve got to toss this clunker overboard and sail away from it as fast as they can.
This was hard for them, because, as leftids, they simply can’t admit that any of their ideas is hopelessly, disastrously wrong. If they could do that, they wouldn’t be liberals. Even as they try to walk away from “Defund the Police,” they’re battening down the hatches to defend Critical Race Theory–a Democrat project even more unpopular than defunding the police.
Sometimes the only thing you can do with failure is to walk away from it. You don’t double down on the Edsel–and CRT is an Edsel. (Note: If you’re too young to remember the Edsel, just think of it as “Windows 8.”) Practically everybody hates it. But because liberals can never be wrong, they will defend CRT. They will defend the indefensible.
What earthly good does it do to “teach” anyone that white people are born evil, everything they do is bad, no matter what they say or do, they’re racists–while black people are born without the sense God gave a pincushion, they can’t achieve a blessed thing without liberals handing it to them on a silver platter…
Can you imagine basing a whole culture on this crap? Everybody would be angry all the time! Or depressed. Who in his right mind wants to live that way?
But because it’s their pet project, the Far Left Crazy is doomed to defend it.
Let’s make this their Waterloo.
G’day! Byron the Quokka here, hosting your weekend TV festival brought to you by Quokka University, Region AA2 Pick-up Stix champions! Here’s a little sample of what we’ve got lined up for you this weekend:
5 P.M. Ch. 08 IT AIN’T YOUR DAY–Game show
If you thought Queen For a Day was total trash, wait’ll you see this! One of the guests is a pathological liar; the others are the tragic victims of horrible fates. Can the celebrity panel pick out the phony? If they can’t, we shoot Chuck Connors! Host: Chief Justice Earl Warren. With Turok Son of Stone and his Orchestra of Honkers.
Ch. 14 MY GUN HAS FEELINGS, TOO!–Western
Edgar Buchanan stars as wandering gunslinger Francis X. Sapirstein… who sings his gun to sleep each night and talks to it all day. This week: The Shoggoth Gang (the June Taylor Dancers) put a price on Francis’ head–$3.98–and then try to collect it themselves! Sheriff Lugnuts: Maurice Chevalier.
5:22 P.M. Ch. 22 GARGLING NEWS–Indescribable
Can you announce the world’s news and gargle at the same time? Anchorwoman Ginger Foogu can! Well, all right, nobody can make head nor tails of what she’s saying–and the commentary by Karl “Chainsaw” Mulligan doesn’t help. But you can always read the newspaper while you’re watching!
6 P.M. Ch. 43 MOVIE–Jungle adventure
“Vampire of The Lost World” (Mexican, 1963) features Steve Reeves look-alike Jorge Meniscus [Editor: We don’t believe he looks like Steve Reeves] leads an expedition of school children and maniacs into the depths of the New Jersey Pine Barrens in search of a lost city full of vampires–stealthily stalked every step of the way by a Soviet super-spy (Dan Blocker).
6:20 P.M. Ch. 64 THE BOOGALOOS–Sitcom/Philosophical reflections
Poppa Boogaloo (Carl Sagan) goes into hysterics when he can’t find his lucky tie-clip… and the family’s afraid to tell him that Joody (Donna Reed) is dating a man who sneaks up on people and scares them. Momma: Heather Locklear. Soopy: Dr. Phil. Man Who Sneaks Up on People and Scares Them: Lorne Greene.
Okay, that’s it for free samples! If you want any more, you have to watch it on your TV set.
Byron the Quokka, signing off!
Most of today was spent working on things for my accountant.
There’s a lot to do, and spending a day doing accountancy really did bring back my old bookkeeping days. It amazes me–the sheer number of transactions an ordinary household has during any given year. This year, because of the number of medical bills we paid, it looks like I will be better off itemizing. 
The accountant will tell me which way is best. He is a very good guy, reasonable, fast, and thorough.
My table has assorted stacks of papers all over it. Thank heaven I eat at the computer. I like to watch something while I have my supper, so the papers will remain untouched until I start up again with them tomorrow.
Have a good night, stay warm and dry.
God bless everybody
Patty
From February 12, 2022
The “Cone of Silence” bits from Get Smart were some of the funniest TV comedy ever. Edward Platt (the Chief) never failed to make me laugh; and of course you had Don Adams, too.
It made me laugh then, and it makes me laugh now. They worked up several dozen variations on this theme, every one of them hilarious. YouTube has a bunch of them, if you want to laugh yourself silly.
Get Smart ran from 1965 to 1970. That’s a lot of Cone of Silence gags!
From May 1, 2012
“Gary, Indiana, Gary, Indiana, Gary, Indiana. Let me say it again. Gary, Indiana, Gary, Indiana, Gary, Indiana. That’s the town that ‘knew me when’…”
Most of us have heard that song. It’s from “The Music Man.” It’s a famous song, and it made the city famous. How many American cities are the subjects of a famous song?
But Gary, Indiana, for all practical purposes, is no more.
There are still some 80,000 people living there, according to the 2010 census—a decrease of almost 17% from the 2000 census. In 1960 Gary had a population of over 178,000; so today’s population figure represents a decrease of about 55%.
To get a better feel for what those numbers mean, you have to see the pictures. You can take an online tour of Gary, Indiana, on the “Forbidden Places” website.
Yes, the pictures tell the story. Schools, hospitals, the Methodist Church; post offices, factories, office buildings, and the Jackson Five Theater—all abandoned, all quietly rotting away. Broken windows, floors covered with debris, and peeling ceilings. Tons and tons of equipment, furniture, and accessories: desks, hospital beds, wheelchairs, file cabinets, electrical fixtures. And outside, mile after mile of empty streets—no cars, no pedestrians. When 80,000 people inhabit a city that once, and not so long ago, housed 178,000, it leaves a lot of unused space. One is reminded of Isaiah’s prophetic vision of the ruins of Babylon:
“It shall never be inhabited… But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there, and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there.” (Isaiah 13:20-21)
Continue Reading “Our Murdered Cities and the Freedom-Eaters REPRINT”
From June 13, 2018
Culture rot in the West has deep roots, at least as deep as the French Revolution. The 19th century came up with Marxism, Darwinism–and spiritualism, a new “religion” based on communication with the spirits of the dead.
A major factor in the rise of spiritualism was the devastation caused by World War I, which shook many people’s Christian faith right down to the ground. These were Christian countries killing each other’s young men by the millions: something must have gone very, very wrong. So a lot of people started looking for answers… in spiritualism.
Among the chief proponents of spiritualism was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the man who created Sherlock Holmes. Doyle also believed in fairies. I don’t write this to show contempt for him. Doyle was emotionally shattered by the war, losing a son, two nephews, and a brother, and spiritualism was his way of trying to cope with it.
In 1926 he published a novel of spiritualism, The Land of Mist, featuring Professor Challenger, the hero of The Lost World (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Land_of_Mist). In this novel Challenger, scientist and skeptic, is converted to belief in spiritualism. It doesn’t make for very edifying reading.
In Chapter XII we find an account of a seance in which a medium summons up the spirit of a “Pithecanthropus,” a prehistoric ape-man which has since been upgraded to Homo erectus, a human. The original science that reconstructed Pithecanthropus is today presented as a comedy of errors. But in 1926 it was settled science.
Here’s a footnote by Doyle, discussing the incident in Chapter XII.
“The account of Pithecanthropus is taken from the Bulletin de l’Institute Metaphysique. A well-known lady has described to me how the creature pressed between her and her neighbor [at the seance], and how she placed her hand upon his shaggy skin. An account of this seance is to be found in Geley’s L’Ectoplasmie et la Clairvoyance…”
This illustrates G.K. Chesterton’s maxim that when a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn’t believe in nothing; he’ll believe in anything. You can think of as many more illustrations as I can.
Conan Doyle wound up believing in a lot of things which Sherlock Holmes would have sneered at. We shall be more charitable than Holmes. Spiritualism swept through British popular culture and is, of course, still with us today. Along with equally queer beliefs in Man-Made Climate Change, gender fluidity, and utopian socialism. One wonders what the churches have been doing, all this time.
Chesterton was right.
