the resistance

keith olbermann---pour yourself a drink and sit back and listen to his response to rumsfeld's speech to the am. legion yesterday---keith says they "they have the battery in backwards"----the whole "islamo-fascist" thing is typical of the republicans' fukd up metaphors and keith starts to turn the argument back on them----he and jack cafferty are the only two teevee commentators i can stand on a regular basis---

killing infidels

i'm not sure about his methodology, but the conclusions seem about right---

In a previous post, I counted the number of people that were killed by God in the Bible. I came up with 2,258,360, but that didn't include the many massacres for which no body count is given in the Bible. So, for the sake of completeness, I figured I ought to at least provide a list of God's un-named and un-numbered victims.

mr. gay europe

his name is nandor gyongyosi---that would be an hungarinian name---i'm concerned about the star belt buckle as a fashion statement, but i will let robert be the judge of that----

ahnold

first he vetoes the gay marriage bill passed by the legislature, but now . . .

From Agape Press: "Shock and dismay -- that's how pro-family groups in California are reacting to news this morning that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a bill that gives homosexuals new and far-reaching powers. "

Then today he agrees to caps on greenhouse gas emissions----it's a watered-down version of what the democratic legislature wanted, but CA will still be the first state to do such a thing---

semi-big weather

great line of thunderstorms has rolled through---originally blowing up over cobb, but exploding on down into douglas after that----the wind was about the best i've experienced here---you could just lay into it and let it hold you up---50mph? 60 mph? i need an anemometer, but i guess the assocation would get all upset if i started sticking weather equipment on the balcony---

settles bridge

this is the oldest river bridge in the chattahoochee national recreation area---built about 1880---erosion has exposed the wooden, concrete-filled caissons that support the east end of the span---thieves carried off a lot of the steel in the 1940s and the wooden roadway has long since rotted away---

a display of fundamental ignorance

i don't know why i read this stuff---

today it occured to me: science is dead. We have reached the end of the Age of Science - what will come after, I don't know, but I don't think that we'll ever again have a time when Science is enshrined as some sort of god-like arbiter of right and wrong. . . . Why did science stray from the path of truth? I think it is because we ceased educating the men of science with a knowledge of religion - a knowledge, that is, of genuine truth, genuine reason, and the relationship of man to creation, and his Creator.

fat baby girl cat

kinda miss the kitten----first time since 1971 that i haven't had a cat----bebe is a particularly plush one, too, and not as prissy and finicky as some---

hope

"dems poised to win control of the house," the headline sez---

par for the course

what a bunch of dickheads---democratic dickheads at that---the alabama dems just couldn't live until they figured out a way to keep the illustrious alabama state legislature from having its first openly lesbyterian legislator---the story is not over . . . .

update: actually it may be more the fact that it's a white candidate winning in a district that has been black for decades----

another novarian tower

the first floor piers are being poured

gawd awmighty

my kinda guy---well, you know what i mean:

In the end, you don't need a top-down entity to give life meaning. If anything, if nobody is out there, it is much more important to find meaning ourselves. Instead of this world being a mere staging for the next world of eternity -- meaning it doesn't really matter what we do now -- it's better to realize there is no eternity, that this is it. In that case, we better be careful what we do, make our choices consciously, treat people kindly and be moral because this life is what really counts.

culture wars

from pat buchannan, who invented the very concept of a "culture war," when asked by time magazine "can conservatives win the culture wars?"

Those of us on the right have been losing ground since the 1970s and '80s. Can we ultimately win? I think you would need a reconversion of the country to a traditionalist, Christian point of view--and I don't see that coming.

i hate to think what it would be like if they had gained ground since the 1970s and 1980s----but it's gratifying to see a fuktard like buchannan just give up----

curiosity killed the cat . . .

old ladies

well i finally figured out how to dub vhs to dvd today and copied an interview that charlotte did with grandma lillian jones in the 1980s---it is great and made me laugh out loud more than once---talking about sleeping in the same bed as her aunt anna and how she kept a jug of whiskey by the bed, a drink before bed and in the morning---some boys that liked to work on the girls cars laying down---a little pause, and then "we didn't wear pants back then"----she was a good baptist but not like those today---she remembered the "sillybub" that they had at christmas, it too with whiskey, and the kids and everybody would have a drink----talked about her boyfriends and teaching school and meeting jasper sr.----she was a good woman---also copied a tape i did of grandma hart's place in 1990 (she died the year before)---and a tape of elva spangenberg doing a tour of rhodes hall in 1989 when she was 102---elva, jewell, and lillian---i miss them all but not in a sad way---just glad i knew them---

shit or shinola

or chocolate---but mostly very simple people---

AP - Thu Aug 17, 8:33 PM ET Cruz Jacinto, an employee at Bodega Chocolates, holds a piece of chocolate believed to bear the likeness of the Virgin Mary in Fountain Valley, Calif. Thursday, Aug 17, 2006. Workers at the luxury chocolate company discovered a two-inch tall column of chocolate drippings under one of their vats that some think bears a striking resemblance to the Virgin Mary.
(AP Photo/Nick Ut)

poor new orleans

it is unbelievable that a year later, a lot of new orleans and the gulf coast is still in ruins---from the poor houses in the lower 9th ward (left) to jefferson davis' house, beauvoir, at biloxi (right)----but, hey, we're the greatest country in the world, right?

the rude pundit reports in more detail about new orleans---ask me about beauvoir

preachers

Sin. Sin, Sin. You're all sinners. You're all doomed to perdition.
You're all goin' to the painful, stinkin', scaldin', everlastin'
tortures of a fiery hell, created by God for sinners, unless,
unless, unless you repent.
Elmer Gantry (1927)

I wonder if anybody still preaches like that---worse to think about, does anybody still really believe like that?----sinclair lewis wrote elmer gantry in the 1920s, but jonathan edwards could have delivered the same sermon in the early 18th century---did, in fact, with "sinners in the hands of an angry god," on 8 july 1741 at Enfield, Connecticutt---

God has laid himself under no obligation, by any promise to keep
any natural man out of hell one moment. God certainly has made
no promises either of eternal life, or of any deliverance or
preservation from eternal death, but what are contained in the
covenant of grace, the promises that are given in Christ, in whom
all the promises are yea and amen. But surely they have no
interest in the promises of the covenant of grace who are not the
children of the covenant, who do not believe in any of the promises,
and have no interest in the Mediator of the covenant.....Therefore,
let every one that is out of Christ, now awake and fly from the wrath
to come. The wrath of Almighty God is now undoubtedly hanging
over a great part of this congregation: Let every one fly out of
Sodom: "Haste and escape for your lives, look not behind you,
escape to the mountain, lest you be consumed."
jonathon edwards

according to wikipedia:

after [the sermon's] initial presentation, the audience
was so frightened that many attendees were found
openly weeping. There were also a number of reports
of swooning, outcries and convulsions from audience
members. It was also reported that, unlike the stereotype
of fire and brimstone preaching, Edwards read the sermon
in a monotone voice, and actually asked the audience to
quiet down so he might finish his sermon.

people still believed then

my parents generation remembered and romanticized "hell fire and brimstone" preachers, but by the time i came along, it was all kinda billy grahamized, heading toward tbn---thank you, jesus

wells drive

in addition to the semi-propitious street name, the new home has already begun to yield dividends: donald found three crisp 1970s vintage dollar bills in the house today---it must be a sign from gawdawmitey

morning for a change

you know what

another sunset ---this was friday evening

kittens and puppets

why is that bloggers are always posting images of kittens but almost never of dogs? i mean, i like a kitten (not to be confused with pussy) as much as the next person, but dogs are much more intelligent and thoughtful---just look at hershey when i asked him what he thought about spinoza----besides, dog is god spelled backwards, although i have never figured out exactly what that means---

reason? what's that?

a voice in the wilderness---it's old news and, these days, appealing to reason is pissing against the wind anyway . . . .

Thursday marked the 350th anniversary of the excommunication of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza from the Portuguese Jewish community of Amsterdam in which he had been raised. The Spinoza anniversary didn't get a lot of attention. But it's one worth remembering - in large measure because Spinoza's life and thought have the power to illuminate the kind of events that at the moment seem so intractable.

The exact reasons for the excommunication of the 23-year-old Spinoza remain murky, but the reasons he came to be vilified throughout all of Europe are not. Spinoza argued that no group or religion could rightly claim infallible knowledge of the creator's partiality to its beliefs and ways. After the excommunication, he spent the rest of his life - he died in 1677 at the age of 44 - studying the varieties of religious intolerance. The conclusions he drew are still of dismaying relevance. . . .

kings mountain butterfly

i went to kings mountain national military park, too---that was another of the big southern victories for the patriots---some of my lee ancestors were living not far from here in the 1780s and might have fought in the battle in october 1780---

cowpens national battlefield

here, on 17 january 1781, the continental army under daniel morgan defeated the british under banastre tarleton, who lost 110 dead and over 200 wounded to 12 colonists killes and 60 wounded---this was one of a series of battles that would lead to yorktown---hot as hell, but nice and quiet as i walked the route around the battlefield----

midtown moonbeams

is this a good investment?

oh, and the comment box on this stupid little blog is getting spammed---now you have to verify some letters before you can leave a post---not that anybody does that, but, anyway . . . .

dracul sundown

sundown the other night just reminded me of the race against sundown in Bram Stoker's Dracula