Zombiegeddon and the Minor Prophets

I too have been working my way through the Minor Prophets one by one in one stretch. I assume that since I told mom about this a while back, she let it slip to my little brother, and he is emulating me, which is great. I am about half way through Malachi, and then I have to go back and hit Amos. After that , I will have read and studied them all.

Last month, another blog gave an update on the status of preparation for the coming Zombiegeddon. One of my guilty pleasures just so happens to be Zombie stories, so I enjoyed that post.

God has promised that He will not destroy the world by flood again, but what about a zombie apocalypse? I submit for your consideration Zechariah 14:12-13:

12 And the LORD will send a plague on all the nations that fought against Jerusalem. Their people will become like walking corpses, their flesh rotting away. Their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths. 13 On that day they will be terrified, stricken by the LORD with great panic. They will fight their neighbors hand to hand.

I do my daily reading from the New Living Translation. I keep Biblegateway.com on hand to cross check certain passages which seem a little out there, but for the most part it is all good. To be fair, the NLT is the only one that uses anything synonymous to 'walking corpses'. Even the NLT cross reference to Leviticus 26:16 does not mention walking corpses.

It could just be referring to some kind of rage inducing Ebola and necrotizing fasciitis hybrid, and it really sounds like what happened near the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but I like to think that one day we will get a good old fashioned zombie shoot out.

Einstein Scooped By God

In my current daily scripture readings, I'm going through the minor prophets (which I've always felt are good to do all at once, sort of like pulling off a band-aid -- I kid, I kid). Anywho, I finished up Habakkuk this morning, and came across this little gem:

The sun and moon stood still in their place
at the light of your arrows as they sped,
at the flash of your glittering spear.
Habakkuk 3:11 (ESV)

The "your" in this case, of course, is God. Anywho, of what does that sound like a description to you? Light... speeding. Physical objects, relative to the speeding of said light... standing still. Hmmm... did God, through His prophet Habakkuk (which, incidentally, I will name my fourth male child, should I have one) give us an inkling about Special Relativity, which implies, inter alia, that when an object approaches the speed of light, time "slows down" for that object relative to the non-moving object, such that, ultimately, time would stand still for the speeding object, relative to the non-moving objects?

Okay, I'm probably stretching things, and I've taken the single verse WAY out of context, but still, it's a fun thought.

Facebook and the Death of Blogging

Wow. So my dear brother Sam has shamed me into posting something here, and good for him for doing so. It's been nearly a year since my last post. I could come up with all kinds of excuses (and no doubt will in the near future), but suffice it to say that two kids is a whole lot more than one more than one kid (that sentence does not contain a typo). I've even let my blogging slack off considerably at my other home. Does this mean I'll pick up the slack now? I could promise that, but it would only make me feel slightly bad when I fail to live up to it.

Anywho, it occurred to me that there might be another culprit for my lack of blogging (and others' lacks, as well) (others' lacks? Really?). Let's face it, this past year has been rife with topics for ample discussion, almost more so than the previous year, what with a Democratic congress and the anti-Christ in the Oval Office and all. And yet getting the motivation to post something here or elsewhere has been my major bar to blog-worthy productivity. But then it struck me: I joined Facebook this year.

For those of you who don't use it (good for you!), Facebook allows one to post "status messages" that are visible to a select group of people, typically one's "Facebook friends". For those that actively participate in Facebooking, these status messages represent, for many, the lifeblood of the activity. Many people simply use the status updates to give a short, trite explanation of what they're doing or how they're feeling at that exact moment: So-and-so is baking his shoes. Who's-her-face is integrating Bessel functions. Joe Somebody has a case of the Mondays. And so on, ad nauseam.

Others, however, like to be a bit more declarative and informative in their status updates. For example, this morning, I posted the following status update:


And there we have the problem. From that one post, which was politically relevant, but both pithy and snarky, I received 20 comments in one afternoon. In short, I received all the adulation (such as it is) that blogging garners me, without having to write an in-depth, well-thought-out blog post, and I know it was viewed by many of my "friends", which I can't guarantee in the blog world since such posts would be in the wild-and-woolly blogosphere rather than the nice, contained format of Facebook status updates.

And this is a bad thing, I think.

See, before Facebook, an idea would pop in my head: a witty observation, a clever turn of phrase, a silly remark, etc. With no immediate outlet, that idea would marinate in my brain for awhile, accreting to itself more heft, until the idea turned into an itch. This itch would make itself known to my fingers, who would then go and type it up on the blog. But in the Facebook era, the glimmer itself has the outlet of the status update: and thus, my ideas never get the chance to mature into full posts, remaining in their larval stage.

What is the resolution to this conundrum? I'm not sure. I think I might be verging toward New Year's Resolution territory here. Perhaps I will self-impose a ban on putting anything meaningful in my status updates, to force myself to blog more. Perhaps I'll allow myself to update my status, but only AFTER a blog about the topic. Maybe I should pimp my blog more on my facebook page. But after it's all said and done, I should probably commit something into print so as to be held accountable for my productivity, so: I hereby solemnly swear that I shall put forth some amount of effort into considering the possibility of attempting to reverse the precipitous decline in my blogging output in some manner consistent with my own personal principles, notwithstanding any foreseen or unforeseen circumstances which may or may not hinder said effort. And that's a promise you can take to the bank!

Extreme Shepherding

At a former job, my boss was a Kiwi of Irish ancestry. He and I were discussing international stereotypes, and I asked him what type of American jokes they told. One of the two most common stereotypes was as John Wayne type cowboys, which I absolutely can live with even though I understand the sentiment to be action without thought. The other stereotype was sort of a Las Vegas, lavish excess lifestyle, which I can understand and agree with.

He then asked me what type of jokes we might tell about Kiwis. I told him that since most of us think New Zealand and Australia are basically the same place, and both places are just part of the British Empire, most of the jokes involved sheep. He humorously told me that he does not judge my orientation, and it is baaaaaad that I judge his.

If this video is for real: Extreme Shepherding, I have an entirely new respect for shepherds of the Empire.

The Last Straw

I have not written in almost a year, but this really pisses me off. I heard it first from Brother Glenn at Fox. In a nut shell, Obama been Lyin' held a press conference last week to announce that he would be holding a prime time press conference, scheduled for tonight, to reveal and explain (justify) his overdue plan for Afghanistan. That is fine and dandy even though he will not tell any truths while he talks, but he is preempting A Charlie Brown Christmas.

This is a beloved classic as we all know, but more importantly, it presents the Gospel, even quoting Scripture, in popular culture. It is the one time each year the Good News does a Navy SEAL infiltration into the houses and brains of the masses. For all of the children of parents who shield them from the Truth, this may be their only chance to have a question planted into their not yet jaded little minds that compels them to ask the right person, "Who was born in the City of David, and what was so special about Him?"

To quote a fraternity brother of mine (he was there way before I was), "You're a mean one, Mister Grinch." I realize that I am not anywhere near the first to tie those two cartoons together on this, but it really fits.

32 Flavors of AWESOME.

Robert Ferrigno, author of Prayers of the Assassin, occasionally writes some scathing satirical fiction for NRO. His fantasy meeting between BHO and GWB, here, is one of the funniest things I've read in a good long while. Just one of the many, many great lines:

W. waited for Biden to leave. The veep-in-training tried to slam the door, but it had weighted gimbals so that it closed gently. Clinton had the gimbals installed during his first term when Hillary had cracked the door-frame twice in one week.

But, as usual, read the whole thing.

It's Not News, It's CNN!

Author's note: this post was originally going to appear at Mazurland, but Marty's most recent post (which I saw as I was visiting the site to write the post) got me so ass-about-face that I decided to put it here instead. Take THAT!

So CNN presumably tells a reporter that they really want to drive home the story that the economy is in the tank, and the average American is totally screwed, redeemable only by the Obamessiah and his forthcoming Socialist New World Order "jobs program". Said reporter then probably decides that trying to find a nice sad-sack sob story of someone who lost their job because of the terrible economy, and is forced to subsist on meager government assistance and ramen noodles while they fruitlessly search for nonexistent jobs would be the best way to go about this. Typical awesome "journalism" that you might learn in a fancy college program that no lousy plumber could ever hope to accomplish, to be sure.

Anywho, said CNN reporter, a dynamo by the name of Jim Spellman, goes out and finds one Laura Glick, who the lede indicates was earning "six figures" before the downturn and now is hoping to get by on a "$7/hr job". But the devil, as they say, is in the details. The first flag to be raised: what was this magical job? She was a mortgage broker.

This should pretty much end the story right there. So somebody who made a lot of money during an economic boom which was based on unsound and predatory lending practices... made that money lending that very same money? And I'm supposed to feel sorry that the boom is over and she's out of a job?

But it gets better. In her misery, she has been without a job for seven months. Seven months! Why, because no one will pay her six figures to put people in homes they don't deserve and can't afford? I can understand the shock of finding your industry obsolete, but seriously, does it take you seven months to realize that "any job" is better than "no job"?

Oh, and she's on government assistance. $1400/month, apparently, in Colorado somewhere. I lived in Seattle-freakin'-Washington not THAT long ago on $1200/month. I paid my rent, I ate my food, I managed all my own personal expenses for that amount. Maybe rent has gone up, but maybe she's living beyond her means, meager though they may be.

And how has this downturn in her life impacted her lifestyle? From the article: "To get by she has stopped eating out, given up cigarettes and has stopped taking her pets to the vet for regular checkups." Well holy crap on a crap cracker, we've really hit rock bottom when we have to stop taking our pets to the vet for regular checkups!!! And notice the plural: how much better would you get by without paying for their food every month? And cigarettes? Not your precious life-shortening heavily taxed drug of choice, no! How on earth will you get by with healthier breathing, a longer lifespan, and a cleaner bloodstream? And the poor, poor woman, as if her pink lungs and unmonitored pet-health weren't a steep-enough price to pay -- now she can no longer afford to pay someone else to cook her meals for her! Oh tragedy of tragedies, the economy has truly sunk lower than the greatest of all depressions!

Seriously, CNN. If you're going to continue to peddle the doom-and-gloom (presumably to make way for the all-hail-the-Barachrist story on the first faint sign of an economic uptick), at least try. Maybe you can find a family that actually had to sell their SUVs, or move to a house that has fewer bedrooms than occupants, or something. But trying to make me feel sorry for a woman who was the cause of the problem in the first place, and got screwed? Not gonna work.

That Time of Year Again

Once again it's that hallowed time of the year when we celebrate the birthday of a certain someone whose very existence has changed the world for the better (a healthy and hale 31 years, thanks for asking!). Also, something about Elvis Presley. In celebration of that lesser thing, Glenn Reynolds links to an article he wrote some time ago about how Elvis Presley Saved The World From Fascism. The gist is that before Elvis came along and dominated all forms of media, the only way to dress up in funny clothes, see a great light show, listen to somebody who was a master behind the microphone and feel that you were apart of something greater than yourself was to be a fascist. It's worth a read; I think the only tangent he really misses is the tendency of the very "artists" who provide such alternate forms of group-unity expression to support the very fascist regimes that Elvis supposedly "conquered" (or at least averted).