I’m going to the dentist now, and I know he wants to yank a bunch of teeth.
I am frankly terrified.
If you don’t see me tomorrow, you’ll know why.
A Few Sassy Questions
You might like to try these out on your liberal friends and family members. These are questions that can’t be answered using prog ideology. Watch the fun when they try!
1. If the public schools are as great as the teachers’ unions say they are, then how come private “learning centers” are springing up everywhere you look? My home town is only two miles across, and we have several of them, including a new one that just opened.
1a. If you need to send your kid to a “learning center” because he or she is not learning bupkus in school, why do you continue to send the child to that school?
2. If “the people want gay marriage,” as our media and politicians and movie stars tell us, then how come 31 out of our 50 states have amended their constitutions to ban same-sex imitation marriage? It would be banned even in California, if the forces of evil hadn’t, as is their custom, found a friendly judge to nullify the people’s vote.
3. If human activity really is causing the climate to go out of whack, and if we really do have only 500 days before we’re all destroyed by “climate chaos” (as agreed recently between the foreign minister of France and the idiot John Kerry)… does that mean that if we pay real high taxes and let the government control our lives, we won’t get any more hurricanes, droughts, tornadoes, floods, forest fires, or earthquakes? Can government really keep those things from happening?
3a. If John Kerry and Al Gore and all the rest of the Climate Gang really, truly believe in what they’re telling us to believe, then how come they still live in colossal mansions and zoom around in private jets?
4. If the leaders of the Democrat Party sincerely believe the government ought to create “income equality” in America, does that mean I’ll be given an income like Nancy Pelosi’s or Harry Reid’s?
4a. Or does that mean that their incomes will be brought down even with mine?
Go ahead, ask these questions. It’ll be fun to see what answers you get–if their heads don’t explode first.
We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Laws
It’s against the law to hold up a Seven-Eleven. But if you do it, and get caught, you still might get away with it. You could plea-bargain to a lesser charge and maybe get off with a suspended sentence. The prosecutor might bungle his case. Maybe the store owner won’t press charges. Maybe some irregularity in police procedure might spring you.
It is not against the law to oppose same-sex pseudomarriage or any other goal of Organized Sodomy. But it’s easier to get away with an armed robbery.
A football player tweets a discouraging word about the first “openly gay” player to be drafted by the NFL–and suddenly he’s suspended from his team–that is, stripped of his livelihood–pending “education” that will make his mind right.
Two guys lose their cable TV show, which was about buying and selling houses, when it becomes known that they don’t support imitation marriage. The CEO of Firefox gets driven out of his job because he supported Proposition 8, the referendum by which Californians, by a great majority, reserved marriage to a man and a woman only. This was the law of the state until the bad guys found a friendly judge to overturn the election. Now, although anyone was perfectly within his legal rights to vote for or contribute money to Proposition 8, it is certainly treated as a crime.
The fig leaf is this argument: “We’re not doing anything to limit freedom of speech; but speech does have consequences.”
OK, sure: you get a TV or radio show and the audience doesn’t tune you in, the network is within its rights to tune you out. You write a book that people think is horse manure, they’re not infringing on your rights by refusing to buy it.
Supposedly we are a nation of laws; and yet a whole new class of punishable crime has been created without benefit of a single word of legislation. The punishments have been imposed, and are being imposed. If you’re the only serious Christian baker or photographer or job printer in a city featuring many bakers, photographers, or job printers, you can bet your bottom dollar the “gays” will come looking for you: and then you will either have to take an active part in one of their imitation marriages, or they and their friends in the bureaucracy will destroy your business.
I would caution you not to let them catch you being a racist; but as we all know already, there is absolutely no way for any Caucasian human being to avoid a charge of racism.
Introducing Our New Toilet
I’ve still got a toothache, the dentist can’t see me till Thursday, and right now the plumber is here, about to install our new toilet. The old one has been sent on to the Smithsonian Institution as one of the few surviving examples of Babylonian bathroom fixtures.
The new toilet is sitting in its box on the sidewalk, waiting to be carried up the stairs. I could not help laughing sardonically at the legend on the box: “Simple, Do-It-Yourself Installation, No Tools Necessary.” Like you could just set it on the floor and take a dump.
I am no one’s idea of a handyman, but even I know you do need tools to install a toilet properly. Why do manufacturers even say things like “No Tools Necessary”? It reminds me of the video cabinet we got some years ago. The instructions were in pseudo-English, making no sense whatsoever, and the “tool” provided–which, according to the claim on the carton, was the only tool you’d need to put the thing together–was this tiny little metal L-shaped thing. Twelve hours later, with my friend’s full complement of power tools, we finally had something that would stand up. That is, it stood like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, except it could lean first one way and then another.
I hope the new toilet turns out better than that.
Where is the Reset Button?
I woke up this morning with a toothache, my heel spur is killing me, and I’m stuck here waiting for a plumber to fix my toilet, which yesterday started leaking from the bottom.
I need to re-start this whole week. If it’s this bad by Monday morning, what’s it gonna be like by Friday?
Comment on the news: Does Pope Francis honestly expect the assorted dictators, assassins, Muslims, communists, and crony capitalists who run the nations of the world to redistribute wealth, rescue the poor, and create “equality”? And they call me a fantasy writer!
I certainly wouldn’t trust Obama, Pelosi, and Reid to do it, or McCain, Ryan, and Boehner–and that’s in my own country. Much less would I want to farm the job out to the varmints who govern places like North Korea, Zimbabwe, China, and so on.
What is wrong with the pope, that such a crackbrained notion would even enter his head?
The boys in the Vatican had better watch him very closely, or he’ll wind up buying the Brooklyn Bridge.
A Bone to Pick with the Mummy
Not that this is a burning issue; but then I’d rather not get involved with burning issues on the Lord’s Day.
No–this concerns mummy movies. Not the newfangled ones with computer-generated cheesy effects, body builders, and whatnot. I love the old mummy movies, in black and white, from the 1940s. The original, starring Boris Karloff as The Mummy, from 1932, is a classic work of cinematic art. The sequels are, well, mummy movies. I make no apology for liking them. The ones with Lon Chaney Jr., The Mummy’s Hand, The Mummy’s Tomb, The Mummy’s Ghost (even though there’s no ghost in it)–a wonderful addition to our culture.
Nevertheless, there is one thing about all these mummy movies (except the first one) that kind of bugs me.
How do people ever manage to get themselves caught by the Mummy?
I mean, the Mummy’s not exactly Carl Lewis, is he? He shuffles, wobbles a bit, and is so, so sloooooow. If you sent him to the corner store for groceries, you’d starve before he ever got back.
In addition to being slow, he is also clumsy and awkward. He never has full use of his left arm, so he shuffles toward you with his right arm extended so as to strangle you with one hand. And no one ever gets away! You’d think someone would eventually get the idea to take a sword or something and chop off the one arm the Mummy can use. What could an armless mummy do to you?
But no–a mummy victim never has a chance. Most of the victims just raise their hands, even though the Mummy has not said “Stick ’em up,” and back up into the wall, or fall down, and just get strangled. Like, why not, uh, run away? Even Chris Christie could ran away from the Mummy. The few victims who do try to run away, always make a beeline for the nearest blind alley, from which there is no escape.
Again, it’s not a burning issue. It’s just a little thing that bothers me, as Columbo would say.
Ah! For the day when I can settle back and watch Columbo vs. the Mummy…
Grace vs. Good Works: A Primer
Someone said to me yesterday, “I have a real problem with the doctrine of predestination. It doesn’t seem fair!”
Not that I’m a big man in the theology shop, but I think I do understand that “predestination” is just another way to say that our salvation is up to God, not us. And that’s a good thing, I explained.
“Suppose you’re on your death bed, and you expect to go to heaven because you’ve done the minimum 500 good works required to get you through the door. And suddenly, as you review your life, you realize you’ve miscounted. You’ve only done 498! So it’s no heaven for you, after all–missed it by that much.”
That’s quite a burden for any soul to carry. Wouldn’t you rather rely on the grace of God, the free gift obtained for you by Jesus Christ?
But what, then, about good works?
“I will show thee my faith by my works,” says St. James (James 2:18). We are saved by faith, says St. Paul, and not by works: “For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God. For what saith the scripture? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.’ Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” (Romans 4:2-4)
Don’t worry about your works. If you have faith, and are predestined for salvation, the works will follow.
Say It Ain’t So! A Bad ‘Columbo’ Episode?
As you can see, Columbo himself is embarrassed by this episode.
I’m afraid it is so, kid.
Even as Hollywood libs freak out upon discovering that Islam is not so nice for women, my wife and I last night saw a bad Columbo episode: A Final Salute to the Commodore in Season 5.
I missed this series the first time around, so I’ve been really enjoying it on DVD. In the first four seasons, the quality of the episodes ran from good to superb.
But this one was just horrible.
Peter Falk’s friend, Patrick McGoohan, directed this fiasco. Instead of the usual Columbo schtick of torturing smart, sophisticated murderers by talking about his wife and coming out with philistine remarks on art and culture, all the while appearing to be the innocent little twerp in a crummy raincoat, McGoohan had Peter Falk muttering, constantly repeating himself, and pawing the rest of the cast. At first we thought it was just Columbo trying to unbalance a suspect played by Robert Vaughn, crowding and mauling this guy who hates to be touched; but we soon noticed he was doing it to everyone. Sometimes he did it while muttering and repeating himself. All in all, a flop.
But it teaches a lesson that everyone who tries to tell a story, in any genre, in any medium, would do well to take to heart: unintelligibility does not equal profundity. “Man, that was deep!” is the college sophomore’s way of admitting that he didn’t understand the story he just read or saw in a movie–probably because it had no meaning, it wasn’t about anything. Falling for this old trick is one of those things you’re supposed to grow out of. This is why I don’t like Serious Mainstream Literature, or movies like Carnal Knowledge–it’s either about nothing at all, or something irreducibly trivial blown up as a big deal. And pretentious pseudo-intellectuals say they like it.
This Columbo episode didn’t rise even to that level.
And now I must return to the Real World, where the Pope, who seems not to have paid any attention to the past 60 years of history, says governments have gotta Redistribute Wealth and put an end to Income Inequality.
That doesn’t rise even to the level of a bad Columbo episode.
Progress on ‘The Temple’
I’ve written half a dozen chapters of my new book, The Temple (No. 8 of my Bell Mountain series) and so far, so good. My wife and my editor think so, at least.
It’s so much more pleasant and fulfilling, doing this, than writing about the slow murder of my country at the hands of her ruling class. I sit outside in the springtime, with my pen and my legal pad, birds singing, flowers blooming: say a prayer, get to work, and before long, I’m in the land of Obann. Later my wife will ask me, “Didn’t you see, didn’t you hear” this or that–and I’ll have to admit I missed it. I was riding with Lord Chutt’s wagon-train full of gold, or following Helki as he spied on it.
Now, if only people would buy and read these books! Books can’t accomplish anything without readers.
Let me take this opportunity to angle tastelessly and vulgarly for readers’ comments on my books. Have they done anything for you at all–the few, the proud, who’ve actually read them?
I know–I sound like John D. MacDonald. Hundreds of thousands of readers loved his Travis McGee books; but at one point in his career, MacDonald didn’t know that, and went to the trouble of setting up a special post office box in hopes that his readers would write letters to him. His career turned out all right, didn’t it? But he was some time waiting for it–time which surely seemed a lot longer, to him and his wife, than it really was.
Are You a Racist?
OK, it was a hoax: someone told a bunch of men and women on the street somewhere in southern California that Speaker of the House John Boehner said he doesn’t like Mexican food, and asked them if they thought that made him a racist (see http://www.infowars.com/obama-supporters-not-liking-mexican-food-is-racist ). Bearing in mind that all sorts of responses could have been left out of the final version of the video, we still have a lot of people saying oh, yes, by golly, that’s racist! They all said Boehner had to resign (for admitting he didn’t like Mexican food). They all agreed the country “cannot tolerate this bigotry.” One woman said, “They need to make an example of him.” Hey–how about a public beheading?
I wouldn’t take this at all seriously, except a year or two ago, “education” bureaucrats in Britain branded two-year-old infants as “racists” because they wouldn’t eat spicy foreign food. Besides which–are we not hectored by Democrats and media, every single day, that any opposition to them or to their policies, any criticism of the current occupier of the White House, is racist?
I don’t like Mexican food, especially when it’s prepared by Welsh people. “Racist, racist, racist!”
But you know what? I don’t care anymore. They use the word “racist” like they use “um” or “y’know.” The only way you can convince a lib that you’re not a racist is to volunteer to be “it” in a Knockout game.
Meanwhile, it’s a beautiful racist morning here, the racist dogwood tree is in full bloom, the racist bees are gathering racist nectar from the racist flowers, and all racist in all, it’s racist a lovely racist day. I racist hope all you racists out there racist enjoy your racist afternoon.