Category Archives: What’s going on

What do you say?

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If I hadn’t had bloggers on my feed reader, I don’t know when I would have learned about the horror story yesterday regarding Virginia Tech.

What can you say about something like that?

I think if I had lost a son or daughter I would have to use someone else’s words:

“If I speak, my pain is not assuaged,
and if I forbear, how much of it leaves me?
Surely now God has worn me out;
he has made desolate all my company.
And he has shriveled me up,
which is a witness against me,
and my leanness has risen up against me;
it testifies to my face.
He has torn me in his wrath and hated me;
he has gnashed his teeth at me;
my adversary sharpens his eyes against me.
Men have gaped at me with their mouth;
they have struck me insolently on the cheek;
they mass themselves together against me.
God gives me up to the ungodly
and casts me into the hands of the wicked.
I was at ease, and he broke me apart;
he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces;
he set me up as his target;
his archers surround me.
He slashes open my kidneys and does not spare;
he pours out my gall on the ground.
He breaks me with breach upon breach;
he runs upon me like a warrior.
I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin
and have laid my strength in the dust.
My face is red with weeping,
and on my eyelids is deep darkness,
although there is no violence in my hands,
and my prayer is pure.

“O earth, cover not my blood,
and let my cry find no resting place.
Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven,
and he who testifies for me is on high.
My friends scorn me;
my eye pours out tears to God,
that he would argue the case of a man with God,
as a son of man does with his neighbor.
For when a few years have come
I shall go the way from which I shall not return.

“My spirit is broken; my days are extinct;
the graveyard is ready for me.
Surely there are mockers about me,
and my eye dwells on their provocation.

“Lay down a pledge for me with yourself;
who is there who will put up security for me?
Since you have closed their hearts to understanding,
therefore you will not let them triumph.
He who informs against his friends to get a share of their property—
the eyes of his children will fail.

“He has made me a byword of the peoples,
and I am one before whom men spit.
My eye has grown dim from vexation,
and all my members are like a shadow.
The upright are appalled at this,
and the innocent stirs himself up against the godless.
Yet the righteous holds to his way,
and he who has clean hands grows stronger and stronger.
But you, come on again, all of you,
and I shall not find a wise man among you.
My days are past; my plans are broken off,
the desires of my heart.
They make night into day:
‘The light,’ they say, ‘is near to the darkness.’
If I hope for Sheol as my house,
if I make my bed in darkness,
if I say to the pit, ‘You are my father,’
and to the worm, ‘My mother,’ or ‘My sister,’
where then is my hope?
Who will see my hope?
Will it go down to the bars of Sheol?
Shall we descend together into the dust?”

If you want to keep up with the purgists

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I don’t blog alot… about FV anymore (though, relatively speaking, this sentence would stand on the first four words). Too busy. Have a lot of good stuff in mind but simply don’t have the time (about anything, not FV; nothing more really needs to be said about FV, though some souls are charitable).

But I do follow a few blogs that regularly put out reality checks on this issue. If you are a denizen of the Reformed meteorite (did you expect me to say, “Reformed world”? Puh-leeze!), this may interest you. Here they are:

  • Wedgewords. Despite Steve’s obvious youth (he has a Xanga account) he regularly prints out data that is really good and demonstrates that he has not yet burned out. Shine brightly, Steve!
  • Post Tenebras Lux. No argument is too outrageous to be handled seriously and patiently. I’m constantly amazed Xon is willing to be so longsuffering. May you keep on keeping on.
  • Blog & Mablog. In insane times, one easily becomes insane. This doesn’t happen through conforming to the insanity. It can often come through taking it seriously as a threat. Utter, unrelenting, seriousness is madness. You lose your sense of humor and you lose your mind. Doug has plenty of serious material, but what keeps me reading him is that he writes in a way to encourage light-heartedness. Never stop having fun with us, Doug.
  • Whilin’ Away the Hours. She has been taking a break lately. But sooner or later I expect she will be again dishing out more than she receives in her complaint box. Easter is for resurrection, Barb.

Template changes coming

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Mrs. Hornesdotorgslashmark has informed me that my template is evil. I realize now I should have snagged a different template before Jandy grabbed it, but now it is too late because nothing is more tacky in blogdom, I think, than taking the template of someone on your blogroll. The problem is that I wanted a white background.

So we’ll see what happens. I suppose, if I were brave, I’d take a template and try to change all the backgrounds, but I have a hard time conceptualizing templates in WordPress… Also, I have no idea if my mysterious font size issues will resurface.

Young again, Heinlein’s quest for the open-access space chick, and space opera raves, etc

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Well, in many ways as decrepit as ever. And still not over my cold. But, for the first time in a long, long time, I am binging on fiction. Several books at once without losing interest in any of them.

And I haven’t updated the side bar yet, so you’ll have to read it here.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Not sure what I think about it, but I am finding it engaging enough that I am going to finish it. Thoughts in some future post, perhaps.

Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. I read this in seventh grade from the Delora (sp?) Jr High Library. I shouldn’t have been permitted to check it out but I think most of it went over my head. I certainly don’t remember anything so weird. When I got my copy from our local public library system (hardback) I was amazed to read the VIPs who gave it blurbs. Tom Clancy? What have his novels ever had to do with Market Anarchism? Yet he makes it sound like Heinlein is the father of the modern world.

Ugh. It’s the whole “left-libertarian” thing. Everyone pays lip service to the idea of a min- or anarchic arrangement but is perfectly happy in a totalitarain democracy so long as 1) they are middle class and 2) have free sex (there my not be any such thing as a free lunch but a taxpayer funded abortion is just dandy). The The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is a pansexual utopia. The entire rest of Heinlein’s political vision is entirely secondary to this–for him and for everyone else.

And really, was Heinlein even capable of imagining a female protagonist who did not want to offer herself up to the male lead without obligation? Even his “conservative” stories, as I recall, always have the woman trying to get the man to at least try her out once or twice before they get hitched. Before the late sixties the man always insisted on “doing the right thing” even though the woman had the moral compass of Hugh Hefner. There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch but there is no other kind of space chick in Heinlein’s worlds.

In the meantime, I finished Old Man’s War and liked it enough to want to read all sequels. The starting premise is that earth has been cut off from interstellar travel. They can be passengers, but those who live in space (relative to Earth) are in charge. The arrangement is that all the impoverished areas may migrate, but not wealthy North Americans. However, there are unreported wars going on and the Colonial Military is recruiting… seventy-year-olds. Basically, you get to sign up for some mysterious kind of “after life” in the trust that they have the technology to make you young again. There is more to the scenario, but I don’t want to give away anything beyond the cover and the first few pages. For reasons I can’t reveal there are some rather inappropriate passages in one chapter–so I don’t recommend this for everyone (of course, flipping past pages is easier than fast-forwarding a dvd).

I have to admit, despite really interesting dialog, I was getting disappointed toward the middle of the story. I couldn’t help making correlations with Halo–I’m surprise the name “Cortana” was never used–and Starship Troopers (a better Heinlein story). I started asking myself how much a person could ask of me just because of a brillian premise… And then suddenly everything changed. The whole story turns out to be a new version of Orpheus only with Orpheus coming out much more successfully. It’s a romance billed as a war story.

Speaking of great military space opera, I am entirely entranced by BSG. Lee Adama’s speach at Balthar’s trial was a Girardian triumph. And then the cliffhanger was excellent! It really bothers me however to learn that the show is not as popular as it used to be. What’s up with that? Any ideas?

To return to my first news, both Jennifer and I are still pretty sick (Jennifer much more so). We’re really busy and this would be a good time to suddenly get well!