To all the readers who are guys

This isn't the Halloween post I had wanted to make.  The original plan was to do something rather bold (read as: utterly insane) with twelve pumpkins. Maybe next year.

Instead...

There's something I need to say to my male friends, to the ones who are husbands and fathers:

Never stop thanking God for what He has given you.

You have no idea how truly blessed you are, to have someone to spend your life serving, cherishing, honoring, and treasuring. Don't let a day go by that you don't thank God for that. Don't let a day go by that you don't thank her for being in your life.

And if you are so blessed as to be a father, never EVER take that for granted! There are some guys out there who would do just about anything, to know what it's like to be the father to a child, if only for just one day. I have most wanted to be a husband and a father. I don't know if that will happen now. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life to have never held a child in my arms, to have loved and comforted it as a father. I will probably never know what it's like to do the "tea party" with a little girl or be there for a son's game. I won't know what it's like to guide and nurture my children and do my best to encourage them to love God and to love others. I dreamed for so long of a home built on love, not one ruled by fear. And now, I don't see that happening.

If you are a husband who has been blessed with a wife, if your are the father of sons or daughters, if you have a home devoted to serving God and each other... then never cease to be thankful for that. You have been given more than all the wealth of this world put together. You have a joy that some pray for but will never know. Don't ever forget that.

Read More

A personal parameter

I have only always fought hardest for those things which I have held most precious and dear.

I do not know how to be otherwise.

Read More

I don't know what to write

Isn't that something.  I have a blog getting close to five thousand posts and over a million and a half readers and I don't know what to write for it.  In the past month and a half I've suddenly wound up with a writing career that until now I could have only dreamed of.  I'm writing more than I ever have before.  I'm finding creativity and drive to write about anything and everything almost.  And I can't write a thing for my own blog.

I went from a nobody who had all that mattered in life, to a somebody in high demand and nothing to show for it.  Now what would the Preacher at Jerusalem have to say about that?

"Meaningless!  Meaningless!"

Yesterday I wrote from the heart and did it for nothing and was the happiest man on the face of the earth. 

Today I write professionally and I give it my heart and make good money, more than I am used to by far, and I'm asking God why He...

"No.  Don't go there Chris.  Don't be angry at Him.  Be frustrated.  You can be frustrated.  You can even have some doubts.  Everyone doubts.  Even Mother Teresa doubted.  But don't be angry at Him.  Job refused to curse God.  Job thanked God and praised Him.  Praise Him for what He has done in the light, remember that during the times in the dark..."

I want to write.  I want to write for me.  I want the Christopher Knight who wrote as deftly and with passion about everything from doggies to dancing to Star Wars to sundry silliness to be here writing and instead tonight at the keyboard, that's not him at all.

The Walking Dead?  Saw the season premiere last week and this week's is still sitting fresh on the DVR.  Don't ask me what I think about Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: I haven't watched it at all, though they're also on the DVR just in case.  Gravity?  I want to see it soon.  Every day I tell myself "I'm going to see Gravity today" and it hasn't happened yet.  Because I've been busy with the full-time career God suddenly and without warning landed in my lap.  In part.  Mostly it's because I have seen success and found it wanting.  Boring.

People chase money, they chase celebrity, they chase after fifteen minutes of the spotlight.  If you want a vision of the modern world, witness Jesus turning down Satan's offer for all the kingdoms of this earth... and then a billion-fold hands rising up with screams of "PICK ME!  PICK ME!"

Tolkien was right: immortality within the circles of the world would be a wretched, damnable thing.  It would be the most damnable thing of all.  Fellow Inkling Lewis put it well: that once man had fallen, death was God's merciful way of allowing for an escape.  Took me a long time to realize that.  I was afraid of death for so long, after losing too many people.  Now I accept it.  Appreciate it.  Have found a serenity in it: that death is not a thing of dread but a gift to embrace in due time.

Why shouldn't I embrace that gift when it comes?  I have fought devils without and demons within.  I have seen things that can not be explained.  I have borne secrets that men have slain for.  I have carried responsibilities that none should have been given.  I have loved and lost and hoped and throughout it all I have given every possible iota of effort toward staying true to whatever it is that God has made me to be.

People think they know what it is that will make them happy.  They think it's fame or fortune or money or... something.  The things that more often than not contribute to the modern wretchedness.  And then they become desperate to bargain with God, to deal with Death, for just a few more years or months or even hours of that very wretched nature.

The Preacher was right.  "Meaningless, meaningless..."

I've been writing a poem for some years now.  Its title is "Cursed Recursive".  It is a stream of thoughts from the mind of one with bipolar.  Recursion is a bad thing, we were taught in that C programming class at Elon years ago.  A program can get caught in a recursive loop, if you aren't careful when you're writing it.  And then it just goes on and on and on and on, unable to break.  Unable to break free.  Unable to stop.  Funny.  I barely passed that class, now I understand it better than ever.

People have told me that they missed my writing.  Well, here's some writing.  I don't know what it's about.  Maybe it will make sense later.  Sometimes that happens.  But here it is, for what it's worth.

Read More

Tom Clancy, father of the techno-thriller, has passed away

Tom Clancy was one of the first authors who I would eagerly await the next novel from.  I was a high school sophomore when the film adaptation of The Hunt for Red October came out and I read the novel soon afterward.  I spent the next several months and into the summer devouring everything Clancy that I could find.  The night before Hurricane Katrina hit, I curled up with my newly-bought copy of Executive Orders and by the time the storm's outer bands were hitting I couldn't have cared less: Clancy had engrossed me again.

Tom Clancy was a pure American... I'm not going to just say "writer" but also, just leave it at "pure American".  What do I mean by that?  This is a guy who had dreamed as a kid of being a pilot in the United States Navy.  What kept him from having that dream was an eye condition that instantly disqualified him.  Clancy wound up going into the insurance business... but he never quite gave up on his dream.  What did he do?  He started reading and researching United States military aircraft and naval vessels.  He learned everything he could about the government and military of the Soviet Union.  And then he set out to write what President Reagan would later call "the perfect yarn".  Almost thirty years later and The Hunt for Red October is arguably the definitive novel of modern naval warfare.  As well as being one hell of a gripping story.

He couldn't be in the Navy, so he made a phenomenally successful career out of writing about the Navy.  And along the way became perhaps the most prominent icon of the modern Navy.  How many other places in the world could someone have an opportunity to do a thing like that?

Tom Clancy - who gave us Jack Ryan, Marko Ramius, John Clark, Ding Chavez and many other characters in a genre he made all his own if not created single-handed - passed away Tuesday.  He was 66.  At the time of his passing he had another novel due out later this year.

Thoughts and prayers going out to his family.  Think I'll watch The Hunt for Red October tonight in his memory.

Read More

Reconsidered

Like Michael Corleone said: "Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in."

Last week I posted that it might be goodbye for good for my blogging.  Lots of things went into that.  I have wound up extremely busy with work-related stuff lately (speaking of which, I'm soon going to be advertising freelance writing services on this blog, and if you want to go ahead and solicit my services e-mail me at theknightshift@gmail.com and I'll be happy to discuss it with you!).

And then, from my perspective, some... very lousy things happened on this end.  My spirit wound up darn nearly broken.  Friends counseled me to not be discouraged, to keep going.  That this blog has given them hope when they needed it, even if at times I myself feel little or no hope at all.

Huh.  Imagine that.  Getting hope from the hopeless.  I suppose anything is possible...

Maybe just as writing about the bipolar disorder has been, I should keep writing to... stay grounded, stay focused, on things.  Keep grounded in reality.  Be able to see beyond my own problems.  Maybe even offer something worth visiting this blog for people who are needing something to smile or laugh at.  Who knows: maybe even provide something new to think about.

So for the time being, I'm going to stick with it.  I'm going to try even to have a new photo of Tammy up tomorrow.  The frequency of posting may not be very often, at least not for the time being.  But it will be something, anyway.

Just one thing that I'd like to ask: this is a very difficult time for me right now.  However it is that you can or are led to, some prayer for Yours Truly would be seriously, seriously appreciated.  I don't know how I've been brought through the past week, except for God bringing me to where I am now.  I have to thank Him and I have to thank those who have kept me in their prayers.

I suppose, if there is any hope at all in this world, that is where it is going to begin...

Read More

Goodbye

Dear readers,

This is likely to be the last post made on The Knight Shift.

If it is, I would like to thank you all for joining me on this little adventure.  It lasted almost ten years, and was approaching its 5,000th post.  I like to think that it was time well spent and that you had as much fun reading it as I did writing it.

God bless,
Chris

Read More

November 23rd is "The Day of the Doctor"

A short while ago the BBC finally revealed the title of the Doctor Who Fiftieth Anniversary Special.

November 23rd will be "The Day of the Doctor".

And here is the official poster for the episode...

Ho-leeee smokes, that is an insanely great piece of work!  I have literally watched the final moments of "The Name of the Doctor" at least once on my iPad ever since it aired in May, all because of John Hurt being an incarnation of The Doctor that we never knew even existed.  Seeing him strolling away so casually from those dead and burning Daleks - like a man walking straight out of Hell itself - just gives me the shivers.

And look!  There's a "Bad Wolf" sign!  What could it mean?!

The BBC also announced that "The Day of the Doctor" will have a running time of seventy-five glorious minutes.

Now, if only the BBC could release a trailer for this baby...

Edit 6:59 p.m. EST:  I can't resist doing it.  It's just too good.

Here again - or for the first time if you haven't seen it yet - is the mind-blowing shock ending from "The Name of the Doctor":

Read More

My thoughts on Syria

This has been one of the busiest periods that I've been in for quite some time now, hence the lack of blogging as actively as I'd like.

That being said, I'm feeling more than a little led to get this off my chest...

For well over a decade I have believed and as of this writing I still believe that George W. Bush was the absolutely worst President in the entire history of the United States.

For the PATRIOT Act, for creating the Department of Homeland Security, for failure to strengthen our border with Mexico, for a war in Iraq with no definitive goal or even overall purpose, for all of the "bailouts" and "stimulus" that deepened the damage to our economy... for all of those reasons and more, George W. Bush will forever be one of the most destructive Presidents that America was ever cursed with.  And I have no doubt that a wiser citizenry in generations in the distant future will point to Bush the Lesser as a grim example of how broken our current system of politics is, and has been for a very long time.

I earnestly believed that Bush the Lesser's place of shame would be secure for a very long time to come.  But now...

If the United States military is directed to take action in Syria, as is looking more and more likely to happen, then Barack Obama will have become the absolutely worst President in American history.

And barring going full-tilt bonkers and launching ICBMs at Quebec, I don't see how anyone else ever would possibly topple Obama from that spot.

Syria is not something we want to get mired in.  Other countries' civil wars very rarely are.  But Syria is the meanest situation imaginable.  The ruling government are not the good guys.  The rebels are not the good guys either.  There are many good people who are caught in the middle of this: they aren't combatants at all.  Many of them are Christians who are being targeted by the rebels.  And speaking of those rebels: there is considerable evidence that they are aligned with Al-Quaeda.

Just as there is overwhelming evidence that the chemical attacks we have seen in the news were not launched by the Assad government at all.  That they might in fact have been perpetrated by the rebels.

President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry are at best, horribly misinformed about Syria.  They are at worst, blatant liars.

And there is no reason whatsoever to involve any American money, any American equipment, or any American life with any aspect of the civil war in Syria.

There are some things in this broken world which all one can do is appeal to God in prayer about.  Things beyond the jurisdiction of any sane and rational government.  What is happening in Syria is one of those things.  There is nothing the United States as a sovereign nation can do to remedy that situation.  But there is plenty that it can do to make it worse, and nothing worse than launching a military strike in Syria.

If Obama does this, nothing good will come of it.  Nothing at all.

Nothing.

Read More

Tammy Tuesday returns with an ear-full

After an absence of too many weeks, Tammy the Pup is back!  That was my fault though: just been way busy on this end of things.  And I've a few posts percolating in the ol' gray matter that I'm gonna try to channel into reality the next coupl'a days.

But anyway, here's Tammy, in a pose that is familiar to anybody who has ever owned a dachshund.  I don't think a day goes by that I don't have to "reset" Tammy's ears back to their factory default position.  Here she is with both of hers about to get fixed...

Read More

Somebody help me out here...

I was horribly occupied all this past week with an assignment and am really out of touch on things.

What's this about Miley Cyrus being the next Batman?

Read More

This week's Tammy Tuesday's guest host is... Lucy!

So... this was supposed to be a Tammy Tuesday: the weekly pic of my mini dachshund. Unfortunately the little girl is feeling under the weather today! But don't worry folks she's got that mischievous glint in her eye which is already threatening to unleash havoc when she's back to normal soon.

I didn't want to make it three weeks without something though.  It was my girlfriend Kristen who had the idea of letting her new Chihuahua Lucy fill in for Tammy.  Lucy was in the back seat of my car yesterday when Kristen snapped this hilarious photo of her flashing a wry grin...

Incidentally, for those who remember when Kristen adopted those two Chihuahuas last month: well that's Lucy and her son is now named Charlie.  We're hoping that Lucy and Charlie will get to meet Tammy sometime soon.  If/when that happens I'll be sure to post some pics and video of their encounter :-)

Read More

Beastie Boys' "Sabotage" performed by librarians!

This might be the most awesome-sauce loaded thing you behold all weekend: some New York City librarians have made a parody video of "Sabotage" by the Beastie Boys! And they totally pulled it off in the spirit of the original music video that Spike Jonze directed.

M&D 2013 Sabotage from Mike and Duane Show on Vimeo.

Read More

From our friends at the NATIONAL POLICE GAZETTE...

There was a horridly huge amount of work-related... work, these past several days and as a result I couldn't post a Tammy Tuesday either last week or this one.  I'll do my best to entice her for new material this coming one.

Until then, as penance for failing to have fresh photos of my mini dachshund, here is a depiction of a monkey wearing a tuxedo about to club a man to death as he sleeps...

That illustration was first published in the January 6th, 1883 edition of the National Police Gazette: America's original tabloid newspaper!  And you can find even more classic, wacky, and often disturbing images from the archives at its official website.  Visit them, and be sure to tell National Police Gazette proprietor William A. Mays that Chris Knight sez "hey!"

Read More

Father Dowling, mystery no more: Priest of Missouri accident comes forward

I could not resist having fun with that title.  It was just too punny!

One of the more intriguing stories last week was that of the mysterious priest who arrived on the scene of a vehicular accident in Missouri.  19-year old Katie Lentz was on her way to church when a drunk-driver smashed her car.  Emergency workers tried for more than an hour to get Lentz clear of the wreck and it looked like she wasn't going to make it.  Just then a Catholic priest appeared, anointed Lentz with oil and prayed with her.  It was very soon after that firefighters and EMTs got Lentz out and flown to a hospital.  And the priest?  He vanished before anyone had a chance to thank him for being there.

Curiously, he didn't turn up in any of 90-some photos that were made of the crash site.  Between that and the effect he seemed to have on everyone involved, many have wondered if it was an angel who came to Katie Lentz's assistance.

Father Patrick Dowling

Father Patrick Dowling (right) of the Diocese of Jefferson City came forward today, identifying himself as the priest who attended to Lentz.  Father Dowling spoke with Catholic News Agency about the incident, and elaborated on the part that he ended up playing...

Though the highway was blocked off, “I did not leave with the other cars,” Fr. Dowling commented. He parked as close as he could, “and walked the remaining 150 yards. I asked the Sheriff if a priest might be needed … on checking, he permitted me to approach.”

“When the young lady asked that I pray her leg stop hurting, I did so. She asked me to pray aloud and I did briefly … the rescue workers needed space, and would not have appreciated distraction. I stepped to one side and said my rosary silently until the lady was taken from the car.”

Once Lentz was removed from her vehicle, he explained, “I then shook hands with the Sheriff, and thanked him, as I left. I have to admire the calmness of everybody involved.”

Something I couldn't help but appreciate: Father Dowling reported that he administered the Catholic sacraments of Anointing of the Sick and Absolution to Katie Lentz.  Which would be routine for a priest "except that there was something extraordinary it sounds like, in the sequence of events that coincided in time with the Anointing.  You must remember, there were many people praying there, many, many people... and they were all praying obviously for healing and for her safety.”

The thing is, according to news articles from the past week, Lentz worships at an Assemblies of God congregation.  She isn't Roman Catholic.  Neither does it sound like the denominational background of anyone involved was ever questioned or commented upon.  It was one person who happened to be a follower of Christ being at the scene to minister to another follower of Christ when she needed it most.

There are no doubt some who are going to be disheartened to discover that it wasn't a real angel who came to the side of Katie Lentz and those working to save her life, but rather a very human priest.  But that doesn't mean that it wasn't a miracle.

Miracles don't have to be shimmering demonstrations of supernatural wonder and glory.  Do I believe that God allows miracles to happen?  I absolutely do.  Even today.  And some of them are of the sort that one can't readily explain away.  Believe me, I've tried.

But that isn't what most miracles are.  A miracle is God letting things "click" into place, at precisely the right time.  And Father Dowling's being on the highway that close to the accident is as much a miracle as any miracle out of the New Testament.

Personally, I take great comfort in knowing that it was Father Patrick Dowling who came to Katie Lentz's aid.  Because if God can use one of His mortal flock to work a miracle through, He can do the same with any other.  Including you.  Perhaps even me...

Read More

THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED footage found! Behind-the-scenes of Jerry Lewis' unreleased Holocaust film

Jerry's Kids, circa 1972:
You won't hear "You'll Never Walk Alone" the same way again...

It might be the cinematic coup of the decade: a seven minutes-long clip of behind-the-scenes footage from The Day the Clown Cried has been posted to YouTube.

Perhaps the most infamous movie never released, The Day the Clown Cried is the 1972 film directed, co-written and starring Jerry Lewis which ended up in a legal mess about ownership rights which kept it from being finished and distributed.  That was more than forty years ago.  Maybe it was for the best.

What was The Day the Clown Cried about?  Here's the synopsis as I first heard it: "Jerry Lewis is a clown in a Nazi concentration camp".  Lewis was playing a washed-up German clown named Helmut Dork (?!) who gets drunk one night and bad-mouths Hitler in earshot of some Nazi officers.  Dork gets sent to a prison camp, then winds up at Auschwitz where the kommandant uses Dork as a "Judas goat" for herding Jewish children into the gas chambers.  In the final scene, Dork chooses to walk with the kids into the chamber and die with them: making the children laugh as the Zyklon-B canisters drop through the chutes.

It was supposed to have been Lewis' first "serious" motion picture: something he had pinned Oscar hopes on.  He wanted to try something which wasn't comedy for a change.  So he went with a tragic story about the Holocaust.  It didn't end well.

(If you're interested, I wrote much more about The Day the Clown Cried on this blog four years ago.)

To this day nobody apart from Lewis himself and a few favored individuals have seen the entirety of The Day the Clown Cried.  Lewis purportedly has kept the only copy locked up in his office all this time.  Where he once was passionate about finishing and releasing it, he is now adamant that it will never be shown.

So this might be the most we'll ever see of The Day the Clown Cried, courtesy of YouTube user "unclesporkums"...


I'm gonna reiterate what I said four years ago: there's no doubt that The Day the Clown Cried would have been a box-office horror and likely would have upended Jerry Lewis' career for all time had it been released.  But even so, it demonstrates how Hollywood was trying to deal with the subject of the Holocaust: something that happened a quarter-century earlier and which people were still trying to grasp.  So it can't be said that Jerry Lewis can be faulted for trying.  If anything, he made an effort that should be appreciated.  A failed and flawed effort, but in retrospect it wasn't one that many others could have attempted.  Lewis' heart was in the right place.  He just lacked the proper pathos for the project, and I wonder if anyone at the time had it.

Read More

Who was that priest? Miracle and mystery on a Missouri highway

He was there.

Everybody at the scene, from firefighters to police paramedics to the victim herself, saw him and heard him.

His calming words and peaceful demeanor are being credited with saving the life of a 19-year old young woman.

But he is nowhere to be found in any of the nearly 70 photographs taken at the site of the accident.

Neither can anyone figure out how he could have been there to begin with, since the road was blocked for two miles by police on both sides of the wreck.  There were no parked cars.  There were no pedestrians seen approaching the site, either walking along the road or coming across the fields along Highway 19 near Center, Missouri.

He disappeared before anyone could thank him.

And yet he was there.  His presence is being called a miracle.  And many are wondering if the person - who seemed to be a black-garbed silver-haired Catholic priest in his fifties or sixties - might have been an angel.

Katie Lentz: Attended by an angel?

Katie Lentz (right), a student at Tulane University, was on her way to church this past Sunday morning when her car was hit head-on by a drunk driver.  Lentz's Mercedes was a mangled heap and by the time help arrived, the situation was bleak for a happy ending.

Firefighters and paramedics struggled to free Lentz from the twisted metal.  Despite her circumstance, Lentz spoke with her rescuers about her church and her plans to study dentistry.  But after an hour and a half of desperately trying to get Lentz out, it was clear that her vital signs were rapidly fading and that there was very little that could be done.  It did not appear that she would survive.

That is when Katie Lentz asked the emergency workers around her for a moment of prayer.  And that's when he appeared.  Out of nowhere.  Literally.

The priest approached Lentz and anointed her with oil he was carrying.  He prayed with her and with the emergency workers and apparently anointed at least two of them as well. Chief Raymond Reed of the New London, Missouri Fire Department later said that "a sense of calmness came over her, and it did us as well.  I can't be for certain how it was said, but myself and another firefighter, we very plainly heard that we should remain calm, that our tools would now work and that we would get her out of that vehicle."

Lentz was soon afterward finally extracted and evacuated by helicopter to a hospital.  She has suffered several broken ribs, a broken wrist, and both legs have multiple fractures.  But she is alive and poised to make a strong recovery.

And the priest?  He vanished.  No one saw him leave, just as no one saw how he could have possibly arrived.

Of all the photographs taken at the site of the crash, the priest is found in none of them.  Neither have inquiries with the Catholic churches in the area turned up anything about who he could have been.  Lentz's family and the rescuers at the scene would like to find him and thank him for his prayer and encouragement.  But whoever he is, he has not stepped forward.

It is an absolutely fascinating and beautiful story and there is plenty more at the Mail Online's article about it.

So... could it be that an angel came to the aid of Katie Lentz and those attempting to free her from the wreck?  Hebrews 13:2 tells us that we have sometimes "entertained angels unawares".

Perhaps it was a messenger of God who brought divine assistance to Highway 19.

Personally, it wouldn't surprise me in the least.  I've seen more than a few things along the way that I can't possibly explain.  Things which defy all notion of a rational basis.  And I've had to learn - some would add "the hard way" and not without merit - to stop looking for a rationale behind any of them.  "There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy," the Bard observed.

There are some things which one has to stand back and accept them for what they are, without any expectation of answers or understanding.  This mysterious priest, I would remark, is one of those.

And no matter one's faith or even lack of one, it has to be said: our lives are all the more rich because of them.

Read More

Goodbye NAND flash? Startup's new storage holds insanely high promise

Imagine a few years from now having a smartphone or an iPad equipped with extremely nonvolatile memory, retaining information for decades, is ultra-fast, can be made cheap with already-existing manufacturing technology, and holding a terabyte of data.

Your reaction is probably gonna be the same as mine: "Shut up and take my money!!"

A Crossbar RRAM chip sitting atop a CMOS

A little company called Crossbar came out roaring yesterday with its announcement about developing what it's calling resistive RAM (RRAM).  And as The Register is reporting, this could be the "flash killer" that makes NAND memory - which is fast approaching the upper limit for feasibility - obsolete.

From the article:

"With our working Crossbar array, we have achieved all the major technical milestones that prove our RRAM technology is easy to manufacture and ready for commercialization," said Crossbar CEO George Minassian when announcing his company's new NAND flash competitor. "It's a watershed moment for the non-volatile memory industry."

Whether Minassian's exuberance is justified remains to be seen, but Crossbar RRAM tech certainly looks good on paper. The company claims that due to the tech's "simple" three-layer structure, it can be stacked in multiple layers resulting in multiple terabytes of storage space in a single chip "the size of a postage stamp."

Performance claims are also worth a gander. Compared with top-notch NAND flash memory, Crossbar claims that its tech will provide 20x faster writes at 20x lower power and with "10x the endurance," all in a die size that's half that of comparable NAND.

Lots of technical specs at the link above, comparing Crossbar's RRAM with standard NAND.  I haven't read the whitepaper about it yet but if somewhere in there it indicates that RRAM also has NAND's problem with cell degradation licked, this is looking to be the hot next big thing in computer technology.

That, and it would be nice to carry an entire Blu-ray collection around on my iPad :-)

Read More