AMC right now is showing Dune: the finest homo-erotic glorious heap of a sci-fi epic that 1984 had to offer!

Alfred Hitchcock once said that Smokey and the Bandit was his "favorite guilty pleasure" of a movie. And that's pretty much what David Lynch's adaptation of the Frank Herbert novel Dune is for me.

The short version (the one that Lynch allowed his name on, and not the "Alan Smithee" extra-long version that has much more cool stuff in) is on AMC right now and I swear they've messed with it more... as if it wasn't messed-up enough already. For one thing at the beginning of this one I noticed that the Guild Navigator's voice was different, somehow. It didn't sound as menacing as I remember it. Come to think of it, it was different: it's definitely not the same voice as is the Navigator's in the longer version (which was the same voice as the short version). Maybe AMC decided to make it sound clearer to the audience or something.

Geez, I've always been conflicted about this movie. I read the novel Dune in September 1990, when I was a junior in high school and... yeah, it was definitely one of the book that most changed my life. So much metaphor in it about religion, and economics and addiction and the costs that come with "playing it safe". The stagnation of cultures and how it is more often than not countered by the outbreak of crusades (or jihads)... Dune the novel was the *perfect* nutshell education about the pattern of history. And when David Lynch got his hands on the film rights he almost pulled off a perfect adaptation.

EXCEPT for all the unnecessary bizarro crap that he just couldn't resist "being David Lynch" about and had to throw in. I mean, "weirding modules"...?!? Where da heck did THAT crap come from?! The Navigators need the prescience they gain from the spice to guide the ships through space and that's from the novel but when it comes to guiding those ships with their anuses ummmm... no. I don't wanna touch what Lynch did with the Harkonnens but since we're on the subject: what was the man thinking?! Sure they were a decadent lot in the novel, but not this bad: that scene where Baron Harkonnen pulls the "heart plug" on the nubile young boy slave with the flowers that he kisses and molests as the kid is bleeding from his aorta and dying as the life seeps from his eyes (oh yeah the naked kid is wearing a giant transparent Glad-Bag, parse that as you will) is just... wrong, dude.

The only time I've been this confused about an item of pop culture came a few years later when I listened to Richard Harris singing "MacArthur Park":

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
'Cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!

I say again: "whu honey?" Go back to teaching at Hogwarts, Dumbledore: this croon's shining moment only came when "Weird Al" Yankovic turned it into "Jurassic Park".

I spent months after reading the original novel trying to find Lynch's film version on video. It finally came on a local teevee station on Easter Sunday in 1991... on my 17th birthday as it happened. I watched a bit at home then went over to my grandmother's house for Easter dinner. She let me watch the rest of it there and when the Reverend Mother appeared with those messed-up teeth Granny asked me what I was watching and I told her "It's the movie version of Dune" she looked back at the screen then me and said "whatever it is, it looks weeeiiird." Was really sweet, seeing my 84-year old grandmother laugh at a crazy sci-fi movie like that. But then, she was one of the few members of my family that ever "got" my whole Star Wars craze, too. The day after the Episode I toys went on sale I had to watch the local news at her house, 'cuz I was first in line for the 12:01 AM opening at Toys R Us to get the new Star Wars toys. And I was trying to explain how "we would be the first to set our eyes on a virgin pile of unsoiled mounds of Star Wars merchandise." And then a few days later when I camped out for Episode I tickets. She never ceased thinking that it was really cute that her 25-year old grandson could still be this big a kid.

It was on my 17th birthday that we watched this messed-up flick together.

It was on my 26th birthday that we had her funeral. I was one of the pallbearers. It wasn't a very happy birthday.

Dear Lord... five years later and I still miss her.

Maybe that's what keeps drawing me to David Lynch's Dune: for all the visual assault that it is, to me it represents a very tender moment that I shared with my grandmother, who remains one of the sweetest and most influential people in my life and who I will always regret never lived long enough to meet the girl who became my wife. It was the kind of moment where a kid who's a little (or a lot) more different than most realized that he was not only loved unconditionally by someone, but that person loved him enough to make an effort to appreciate what made him tick. I sure wish I could tell you what made her tick... but I can't, except to say that she simply loved everyone, whether you were family or not, or white or black or even gay or lesbian, which a few wound up coming to visit her house more than once. EVERYONE was welcome to put their feet under her dinner table (and believe you me she wasn't going to let you leave until she was sure you'd stuffed yourself with all the homecooked food you could possibly want, no matter WHO you were). She loved you whether you believed in God or not: she knew He loved them despite that, so she'd better learn to love them too.

Sheesh, never thought I could have so many thoughts and feelings associated with a David Lynch movie.

Anyhoo, I know the Sci-Fi Channel remake a few years ago kept a lot more things faithful to the book, but Lynch almost accomplished a perfect adaptation here. You can tell that he was hitting on all the right cylinders so far as Herbert's themes went... if only he hadn't mucked it up in so much other crazy imagery. For whatever reason, I'll prolly never buy the DVD but I always have to catch this whenever it's on the tube.

BTW, the Dune novels themselves - the ones that Frank Herbert wrote - are a magnificent series and prolly the most epic and thought-provoking only after Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Yeah, I appreciate most of the other science-fiction classics. I even wound up using Isaac Asimov's Foundation years ago while doing practicum as a student teacher, as a way of introducing the themes of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to high school students. I've been keen on some of the more obscure ones (speaking of which, Philip Jose' Farmer's Riverworld novels are science-fiction's greatest secret and whoever did the Sci-Fi Channel adaptation should be dragged out into the street and shot) and someday I'm praying that someone like Peter Jackson will do a big screen version of Harry Harrison's West of Eden. But other than Tolkien, no other sci-fi/fantasy writer molded my thoughts on things as a teenager than did Herbert. Be warned though: the first three books in the Dune series you can coast through. It's when you get to God Emperor of Dune that you REALLY have to swim against his unrelenting torrent of philosophy and theology. And by the time you get to the last one that he did, Chapterhouse: Dune... well, let's just say that I've heard from way too many people that that novel triggered WAY premature adolescence in a lot of guys. But if you get to the very last pages of the very last novel and you're in the know on things, you'll catch the very sweet homage that Herbert makes to his beloved wife Beverly (who had just passed away from cancer). And so far as that "too many unfinished threads" thing goes, a few years ago someone found some computer disks that had Frank Herbert's notes and outlines for an ending chapter to the entire saga, and according to the official Dune website Herbert's son Brian is using that to base two forthcoming novels - Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune - that should wrap everything up. Hope they're better than the recent "Butlerian Jihad" Dune novels he did with Kevin J. Anderson... those were BIGTIME disappointment in my book.

(Okay, I better finish now, before I start ranting about how Kevin J. Anderson messed up Star Wars back in the mid-Nineties. He did write my all-time favorite Star Wars novel though: Darksaber. But I'll scream about that later.)

One thing's for sure though: I never stopped being this kind of a geek. Or ever grew out of being a kid. Not really. Granny wouldn't have wanted me to stop being like this either. And that's not what my dear wife or my closest and dear friends have ever wanted: they like the fact that, at heart, I'm still a big kid. And if I still watch weirdfest movies like the original Dune, well... what's the harm in that, eh?

Because in the end, it's what keeps me young forever. And what keeps me looking out for the simple things in life... like love and truth.

(Oh yeah, AMC is showing Mad Max with Mel Gibson later tonight. Let's see if this is the "new" version that has the original undubbed Australian accents :-P)

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"Voices of North Carolina" premieres tomorrow night on NC Public TV.

Chad Austin over at Chad's Running Commentary sends word that PBS stations in North Carolina will be broadcasting the debut of a new documentary. Yah I know some people think that "PBS" means "Pretty Boring Stuff" but fact is they DO air some amazing things besides dragging Betty White and Kermit the Frog out every spring to shill for money. And if you happen to live in-state you really, oughtta, gottta watch this thing tomorrow night 'cuz we've received word that it might get a lot more crazy than PBS is mostly known for. In his post Chad writes that...

North Carolina may have the most diverse mixture of dialects of anywhere in the United States, according to NC State linguistics professor Walt Wolfram. I helped Dr. Wolfram get the word out on his new documentary, "Voices of North Carolina," which airs on North Carolina public television this Thursday at 10 p.m. Dr. Wolfram discussed his project and fielded listener calls today during an interview on WUNC radio. For those of you residing in the Tar Heel state, tune in Thursday night for an informative and entertaining look at the way we talk...

You can click on the link to Chad's blog for info on where to order VHS/DVD copies of the film and that might be wise if nothing else than to have as a collector's item 'cuz reliable sources have informed me that one of the "Voices of North Carolina" will be none other than Maggie Valley, North Carolina's very own legendary moonshiner/bootlegger/author of Me and My Likker/collector of curios/several other things that I've been sworn to silence on: Popcorn Sutton! I've never actually met the man himself but having spoken with a lot of people who do know him... well, let's just say that he's DEFINITELY a larger-than-life character whose reputation has far exceeded the bounds of not just his region or his state, but his country also. Should be a hoot to watch the guy in action come tomorrow night!

"Voices of North Carolina" airs Thursday, January 6th at 10 PM on North Carolina Public Television.

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Is it The Day After Tomorrow? Wild thing I've been wondering since the earthquake...

Little after 10 PM on an early January evening here in North Carolina. Average for this time of year for this part of the night is about 20-30 degrees Fahrenheit, and if we're getting buffeted by a winter storm that usually goes to between 5 and 20 and sometimes a lot lower.

According to the Weather Channel's website, right now it is 64 degrees. The projected low for the next ten days is predicted to be 39.

Now, we've had it be this warm before only to make up for it in spades. Twenty winters ago we had a Christmas and New Years in the seventies and mid-eighties... only to suffer through a massive snow and ice storm a few weeks later that dropped the mercury to minus-2. And that was the high for a couple of days! And this part of the state went four years or so with nary a snowflake in sight. Younger kids were wondering if older people were just making up stories about the white stuff and some of us were even forgetting what it really looked like. But as the saying goes "be careful what you wish for" 'cuz then came "the Storm of the Century" in 1993 and we didn't complain about snow for the next ten years or so.

So, weather here can be a little wonky. The thing is, it's really wonky all over the place right now: snow in Phoenix, warm rain in Michigan, unseasonably hot in places that should be freezing...

I'm just wondering: did last week's earthquake in Southeast Asia do something to Earth's climate? More to the point: could it have permanently altered the world's weather patterns?

Had a science teacher years ago who told us that there was evidence that the ice ages happened because of precession of the Earth's axis. The poles aren't quite stationary: they wobble like the axis of a spinning top that follows a circular path (here's a good site that explains it better). And the theory went that as the pole migrated a little further one way, it caused the hemispheres to either receive more or less direct sunlight than they normally got. So if precession caused the northern hemisphere to lose sunlight, it could have triggered a climate change that led to massive sheets of ice covering most of northern Europe and North America.

Scientists are now reporting that last week's earthquake shifted the North Pole by an inch or two. Doesn't sound like much. But when you consider Complexity Theory and the whole "butterfly effect" thing where a butterfly flaps its wings in Hong Kong and changes weather in New York City... well, how much more a headache would meteorologists get from an entire planet moving?

I've only a cursory knowledge of weather (sometimes wish that I'd studied it in college) so I don't know: I'm just a historian/writer/filmmaker/website designer. But it's something to consider. In light of my earlier post, thought I'd throw that theory out for public consumption.

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A "great Christian leader chosen by God"... and it ain't Bush either.

Someone sent me a link to an interesting article by Maureen Farrell titled "'God Is With Us': Hitler's Rhetoric and the Lure of 'Moral Values'". I know nothing about Maureen Farrell at all, but this is a pretty scary read in that she notes the uncanny parallels between the semantics of the Third Reich and what George W. Bush says (which his followers parrot). The gist of Farrell's piece is that anyone can say the right words and make the correct gestures and come across as a devout and God-honoring Christian. That... and also that people are foolish to blindly follow such a person without also examining his underlying character (you know: the things and beliefs that really define what a man is). The German people got hoodwinked by Hitler because of his rhetoric, and now many Americans are following suit behind another man and judging him by slick packaging, instead of taking the time to size him on their own.

I dunno about you, but I'd rather let my conscience before God and my understanding of scripture be my guide as to whether any man is worth considering as my leader. Why should I let Karl Rove be a substitute for that?

But anyhoo, after reading this and finding some photos on sites that Farrell linked to, they made me recollect a few things that I'd seen over the past couple of years. Since pictures speak a thousand words, I found the following juxtapositions to be curious, to put it mildly...

LEFT: Hitler prays at Nazi rally in Vienna circa 1940
RIGHT: Bush prays at prayer service circa 2004

LEFT: Hitler signs Bible for Christian supporter at Nazi gathering, date uncertain
RIGHT: Bush signs Bible for Christian supporter at Republican gathering in West Virginia, August 2004

LEFT: Hitler leaves the Marine Church in Wilhelmshaven
RIGHT: Bush leaves... well actually, there are no photos of Bush leaving church to be readily found. Probably because despite Christians being admonished to not forsake the assembly of their fellow believers, Bush is not known to regularly assemble with believers (whether they're his "fellows" or not is left as an exercise for the reader).

LEFT: Hitler gives the Nazi salute in front of a holy edifice in Nuremburg in 1934.
RIGHT: Bush gives an unholy salute in front of Barney the dog in 2003 (approx. date).

"Submitted for your approval."

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Trailer for Hotel Rwanda, and the first scholarly book about Oskar Schindler

This is now officially the first film of 2005 that I want to see. Last year it was Miracle and it didn't disappoint. This year it's going to be Hotel Rwanda with Don Cheadle and Nick Nolte, and I only decided that I wanted to see it this bad a short while ago when I read ComingSoon.net's interview with Cheadle and watched the trailer. I vaguely remember this, come to think of it: the hotel manager in Rwanda who turned his palatial resort into a safe haven for hundreds of refugees during that country's civil war a little over ten years ago. Here's the link to the trailer (in Quicktime format): even this short preview makes for some powerful stuff.

Kinda ironic that I'm just now finding out about this movie, 'cuz today I started reading Oskar Schindler: The Untold Account of His Life, Wartime Activities, and the True Story Behind The List by David M. Crowe. I've been waiting to read this for a looooooong time: I've known Dr. Crowe for years 'cuz he was one of my history professors in college, and he told us way back in 1998 that he was working on this. There was Thomas Keneally's book in the early Eighties that led to Spielberg's movie, but Dr. Crowe's book is the first seriously resarched work (to the best of my knowledge Crowe was the last person to interview Schindler's widow before she died) to be produced. And at just 20 pages into it I think it can safely be said: this is going to raise a lot of eyebrows as word gets around about it. I'll post a review as soon as I can plow through this massive (and well annotated) tome.

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Reason #27 why Revenge Of The Sith WON'T disappoint.

The past few months I've been blissfully unaware of anything happening on the Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith front. But when Ain't It Cool News screamed that they had a ton of RotS pics I succumbed to the temptation. Still don't know most of what happens in this next movie (one of the reasons I had to retire from TheForce.net: spending almost 3 years before Episode II came out and learning EVERYTHING about it beforehand lessened my enjoyment of the final product) but the below image has good vibes coming out of that ugly face...

That's the soon-to-be-Emperor himself, Darth Sidious. Doesn't look too much like Palpatine does he? Well, from what I have heard SPOILER (highlight with mouse to read) there's a "reveal" scene where Palpatine is confronted by the senior Jedi and he transforms from the smiling statesman into the prunefaced powerhouse that you see here END SPOILER. One thing I do know for certain is that SPOILER we learn MUCH more about the Sith and their history in this movie, including discovering that Darth Sidious was once the apprentice of a Sith named Darth Plagueis... whose Dark Side studies may bode ill for a certain future member of the cult END SPOILER.

What else can be said but "kewl!"

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Republican-resurrected Reich? Vox Day suggests as much.

Gotta love Vox Day: for one thing he's a brilliant Christian thinker. That focus on things from the eternal perspective makes his essays noticably bereft of the temporal goals that muddle the minds of many other essayists. He's also a published science-fiction writer, which merits his being way up on the geek totem pole of respect and awe (am trying to figure out where I fit in this scheme of things: I've written some sci-fi but haven't sought to publish it, but am almost finished making a short sci-fi film that will be distributed... so maybe I'm a "quasi-master geek" :-) And he's one of the darned few columnists that I make it a point to read every time he's got something to say: there ain't many real intuitive thinkers in this world since Thomas Aquinas back in the day, and I like to study what few masters that there are.

Well anyhoo, Day's got a new piece this week called "Anti-Christian America" and he's wondering aloud why it is that the "party of less government" is leading the charge toward turning history's most free nation into its most state-dominated. Consider the Intelligence Reform Act (that nobody can admit to reading before passing into law). Day doesn't believe the American people should yield any more of their freedoms to the government...

Well, we yielded more nevertheless, thanks to our Republican administration, House and Senate. It is clear that the American people have been betrayed with this so-called reform bill by again having their liberties sacrificed on the altar of homeland security. It stuns me that so many supposed champions of freedom support these abominable actions – I can't even imagine the howls of outrage were it President Hillary Clinton leading the charge for such a step toward 1984-style government

It's a doozy of an article. Punch here for the rest.

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Happy New Year!

'Nuff said. That and also: May the mistakes of 2004 give us wisdom in 2005.

(Hey, I can be hopeful, right? :-)

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Christianity shouldn't "rise": it's most potent when it's fallen.

Found a piece by John Gleeson in the Winnipeg Sun titled "Christianity rises again in 2004". From the title alone I knew this was going to be headed in the way wrong direction. An excerpt:

Even in Canada, where secular liberalism has ruled for decades, 2004 has seen an unprecedented outpouring of scriptural argument as part of the national debate over same-sex marriage. Never in recent history have so many Canadians publicly stated their unswerving commitment to Christian principles...

Part of this new, vocal Christianity is undoubtedly a reaction to the rhetorical zealotry -- and actual threats -- of Islamic extremists. And part of it has to be a reaction to the increasingly shallow popular culture that surrounds us.

Gleeson is trying to frame Christianity within temporal boundaries... which isn't where it belongs at all. Hence, he continues the sin that many Christians - cogent of it or not - commit: that having a faith in Christ can be a tool to be wielded in this world. For good, no doubt... but inevitably becoming a leverage for power.

Christians aren't supposed to be a "faction" in this world. We are called to be out of it and beyond it, but with hearts sympathetic toward those still within it. Dropping us back into the world can only serve to add our own weaknesses to it, albeit with those weaknesses bolstered by a self-righteousness little seen from any other faith. Why then should we resurrect that which we are called to crucify?

I'm going to keep saying this 'til I'm dead or whatever: Christians aren't called to have power. We are called to serve Christ. And it's way past time that we started doing that.

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Most Americans are... well... idiots. And slaves.

Maybe it's because the end of the year usually elicits reflection on the past twelve months that I've been putting the serious thinking into overdrive lately. So here goes one more (probably not the last before 2005 hits).

The American people are idiots. The men, women and children of the United States are too lazy and willing to be led around like they had a chain through their collective noses to deserve freedom at all, for the most part anyway. Actually, they don't want freedom to live and think for themselves: they want someone else to do it for them. So it is that the American people have become a slave race.

For the past several months we saw most of this land's citizenry get whipped-up into a frothing frenzy over two men who wanted the White House. How often did it occur to us that neither one deserved what they wanted? Or that we do not have to be locked into the "two-party" mindset... if we didn't want to, anyway.

Come to think of it, when was the last time someone came out and asked aloud "Did God give the Democrat and Republican parties a monopoly over this country?"

And if they're acting like God did, when the Hell are we going to knock both of them off that high horse and start running this country on our own, per the stewardship that God gave us, as in "we the people"?

Americans like to believe that their government is keeping them safe. Yeah, trusting the same politicians who not only won't secure our borders (a requisite for any nation to maintain its vitality) but openly invite outsiders to storm onto our turf, taking up resources and jobs and other things that we should be keeping to ourselves. That ain't selfishness, folks: America should be jealous of her own resources in a lot of ways. It's the only thing that's made America so productive a nation... not to mention charitable. Think any other country could give as much to the disaster relief following the Southeast Asian tsunami as we are? And we're criticized for not giving enough even. Hey, we're giving to them even after a lot of those countries started getting our good-paying jobs in the high-tech sector: if they wanna complain, they can earn their own relief money. But in the meantime we should do what we can to make sure we can KEEP giving to those who need it (meaning no more blank checks for you to pay Palestinians and other terrorists with, Mr. President) by tightening our borders (on which you're committing treason, Mr. President). Why most Americans don't care about that when it's sapping away at their livelihood... well, I suppose that so long as Wal-Mart has their precious "Friends" DVDs on sale, everything should be hunky-dory.

The American people should not trust government at all to keep them safe. They should first and foremost trust God. Then trust themselves. They should trust themselves with guns and trust God to give them consciences not to use those guns unless absolutely required. That said, they should NOT just "shut up and take it" when corrupt people in government start rolling over them. God gave us freedom, not man. God doesn't take away without reason, but man takes away on the slightest whim. And if any man - be it crooked politicians or abusive cops, from the lowest dogcatcher to the highest office in the land - starts eroding at what God has bestowed upon us, there becomes not just a rationale, but a compelling moral obligation to resist that erosion by whatever means necessary: the soap box ideally, the bullet box if need be. But given that the American people have lost their will to resist that our forefathers had, if they wanna get screwed-over by those who want more power over them... well, so be it. At least some of us have chosen that their own children will be free, at least.

Okay, there's more I can rant about, but I've a full day ahead. More later, no doubt.

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Environmentalist kooks take note: Man CANNOT destroy the world!

And the 9.0 earthquake in Southeast Asia two days ago proves it. The biggest quake in 40 years was so strong that it slowed down the Earth's rotation by approximately 3 microseconds. It was a release of more energy than all the nuclear weapons that all the world's nations have ever produced. It might have moved the island of Sumatra 100 feet from where it originally lay. One estimate has the death toll at 60,000 and possibly climbing to 100,000 or more. The Christmas 2004 earthquake will go down as one of the worst disasters in human history...

...and this is supposed to pale in comparison to the threat of undisposed styrofoam cups?

There's no need to go over what's already been said in the wake of this tragedy: our thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Southeast Asia that got hit by this thing, and unfortunately that's all that a lot of us can do right now. But in my mind, it reinforced something I started realizing about ten years or so ago: man can't destroy the Earth, because man doesn't possess the power to destroy the Earth. And it's the acme of egotism to think that we can, in light of an event like this. And I'm not aiming this post at ALL environmentalists either, because I do believe that each and every one of us should be good stewards of the Earth, and be responsible with the respect that's due it. But to those claiming that we have the ability - whether intentional or ignorant - to destroy it completely... now, that's some bravura.

Two things I'll throw out there right now, if anyone's interested: first, Dixie Lee Ray (the late former governor of Washington state) wrote two books years ago called Trashing the Planet and Environmental Overkill that should be absolute MUST reading if you want to know more about the relationships between man and the environment. I read both while a college student over ten years ago (on my own time by the way) and Miss Ray's work REALLY propelled my thinking on this subject into what was then taboo ground.

And then there's this: toward the end of Jurassic Park (the novel, not the film version that I've always thought Spielberg completely botched-up apart from the music and sheer special effects) Ian Malcolm gives what's almost a complete monologue about "destroying the world". Years ago Charlton Heston read the novel and called up Rush Limbaugh's radio show, saying that he wanted to read the passage aloud for Limbaugh's radio audience. I managed to record it and played it over and over so many times over the years that I memorized the whole thing. It's adapted very slightly from the original novel, and I wish I could locate a soundfile of this on the 'net, but just imagine Charlton Heston's voice reading the following from Jurassic Park:

You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity! Let me tell you something about our planet: Earth is four and a half billion years old. There has been life on it for nearly that long: three-point-eight billion years. Bacteria first, later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea and on the land. Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals: the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals. Each one enduring millions on millions of years. Great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away... all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval: mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away. Cometary impacts. Volcanic eruptions. Oceans rising and falling. Whole continents moving in an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years. Earth has survived everything in its time. And it will certainly survive us.

If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the Earth was sizzling-hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere. Under the soil, frozen the Arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again. Might take a few billion years for life to regain variety and of course it would be very different from what it is now, but the Earth would survive our folly. Only we would not.

If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiation sears the Earth... so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It's powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. Many others will die out. You think this is the first time that's happened? Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison. It's a corrosive gas, like fluorine. When oxygen was first produced as waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on Earth. Those plants were polluting the environment: exhaling a lethal gas! Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless life on Earth took care of itself.

In the thinking of a human being a hundred years is a long time: hundred years ago we didn't have cars, airplanes, computers, or vaccines. It was a whole different world. But to the Earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms... and we haven't got the humility to try. We've been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we were gone tomorrow, the Earth would not miss us.

In that context, the Indonesia earthquake is almost a blessing: how often is it that we become privy to the life-pulse of this Earth on so grand a scale?

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The Trail of Tears began on my front doorstep... literally.

Oh yeah, one last note before I head out the door: I've blogged several times from the road, though I don't usually make a note of where I am. But from where I'm sitting right now if I look to my left and out through the window of Lisa's old bedroom, I can see the site of where the Vann House stood a few hundred yards away. That - and the land that Lisa's family lives on - used to be part of New Echota, the capital of the Cherokee Nation. Her family wound up owning most of this, though most of it got sold off over the years. But that already came a long time after one of the most notorious events of American history...

It will be 169 years ago tomorrow, on December 29th 1835, that at the Vann House - which I can see from the keyboard that I'm sitting at now - that the Treaty of New Echota was signed by representatives of the Cherokee Nation and the United States government. The Cherokee leaders agreed, in an effort to stave off more militant removal, to give up all their lands east of the Mississippi. In return they got $5 million and forced relocation of the Cherokee people - courtesy of the United States army - to a large tract of land in distant Oklahoma. A little bit further away from the Vann House (it's at New Echota State Historic Site near Calhoun, Georgia) was the first "relocation camp" (really an armed fort) that the Cherokee were rounded up at before being shipped off.

The Trail of Tears had begun. 169 years ago tomorrow. And within clear eyeshot of where I type these words from.

That's not all that New Echota is remembered for. The Cherokee government was based very much on the United States Constitution: you can even visit the reconstructions of their capitol and supreme court buildings at the site. And there is also the building where the Cherokee Phoenix newspaper was printed in both English and Cherokee. Oh yeah, I also gotta mention that the Cherokee were the only nation of Native Americans to have their own written language. They owed that feat to the wise and noble Sequoia, who also made his home on the very land where I'm writing this from.

As an American, a follower of Christ, a historian, and being part-Cherokee myself, this spot can be a pretty humbling place to consider some things.

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It's really confusing me why self-professed "liberals" are so upset about Christians taking over America...

...because I just took what has become for me a rare peek inside Free Republic and Liberty Post. I'm not going to "name names" but I did happen to notice the attitude of any number of posters on either site.

"Liberals", don't worry: Christians did not take over America's political establishment this past November. Because they aren't really Christian to begin with, at all. Or really "Christ-like" anyway. I mean, would a REAL Christian suggest mass-slaughter of registered Democrats? And yet that's just ONE thing that I saw mentioned on both sites, from people who claim to be on "the right side of things" and don't hesitate to gloat that "they won"... whatever the hell it is that they are supposed to have won. Whatever it is, I'd sure love to know what exactly it is that they plan to do with it, now that they've "won" it.

This is pointing toward something that I'm going to be writing about soon that God has been leading me to think about a lot lately: remember when Jesus said that not everyone who claimed Him would enter into the kingdom of Heaven? Except we are also taught that anyone who professes with his tongue that Christ is Lord is saved... so how are these two reconciled with each other?

It's like this, I'm coming to believe...

- All Democrats are going to Hell.

- All Republicans are going to Hell.

- All liberals are going to Hell.

- All conservatives are going to Hell.

- All who are not part of the Christian religion are going to Hell.

- While all those who are proud to be of the Christian religion are DEFINITELY going to Hell, buddy!

All of these people and more are going to Hell, because Hell is all that's left for them. It's a mercy that God would have given them that much provision, because in His love for them He couldn't let them enter into Heaven... where they would only be more miserable.

You see, I'm coming to understand that Heaven is for those who really want to live life. And the only way that life can really be had to the fullest is to yield over one's life to God and let Him make of it what He will. You can't avoid that prerequisite by grafting yourself onto a group of your fellow men and claim strength in numbers to overcome that which only leads to spiritual death.

Heaven is meant for individuals who can die so that they will live. It is not intended for collective masses who would just as soon kill others so that they might not die.

All of this has some tremendous ramifications on everything in our culture, including the political spheres of influence here in America. But I'm not going to dwell on Heaven and Hell too much today: it's a beautiful day outside. My wife and brother-in-law are in the living room playing Halo on our Xbox and blowing each other to smithereens. "Mom", my mother-in-law (who I love as much as my own Mom) is baking cookies. "Dad" is down in the basement doing Lord knows what with his tools and that crazy imagination of his. And I'm gonna grab the new MP3 player that Lisa's parents got us for Christmas and plug it into the car stereo while I take the B-52s advice and go "Headin' down the Atlanta highway..."

Like I said, it's a beautiful day. I'll save the weighty theological discussions for later :-)

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Naughty, not nice... so Dad sells kids' Christmas presents on eBay

In the old days if a kid misbehaved his mom would throw out his comic books. Today she sells them on the Internet and buys a fur coat with the profit! Just heard that GoldenPalace.com, the online gambling outfit known for its crazy promo stunts, had the winning bid of $5,300 and plans to donate the toys to a needy family. So at least some kids who'll prolly appreciate it will have a Merry Christmas. Not so for these brats, who learned the hard way that Santa is making a list and checking it twice...

Dad tries to sell Christmas gifts on eBay

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

HOUSTON (AP) - The kids were naughty, Dad put the presents on eBay instead of under the tree - and Mom's been crying ever since. Now, even the tree's down.

Saturday morning was sure not to be very jolly for three brothers - 9, 11 and 15 - who didn't straighten up when their father told them Santa wasn't too pleased with their fighting, cuss words and obscene gestures.

Dad and Mom had warned their sons that the Nintendo DS video system - and the three games that go with it - were headed for the auction block if they didn't get their act together.

"No kidding. Three undeserving boys have crossed the line. Tonight we sat down and showed them what they WILL NOT get for Christmas this year. I'll be taking the tree down tomorrow," the man announced in his eBay posting.

"If you don't buy them, we'll return them to the store," the seller known online as magumbo-2000 reported on the site.

Thursday night, the auction wound down with bidding at $465.01 - below the price the man had set. He said he would probably list the items again.

A single day of particularly bad behavior set the Christmas crackdown in motion.

"These are normally really good kids," said Dad, who asked the Houston Chronicle not to reveal his name. Dad even admits he and Mom are partly to blame for being too lax at times.

But enough was enough. The warning of an impending sale came earlier in the week at a sit-down between offspring and parents.

"We told them they were destroying each other and the calm and peace in the household. It had to stop," said the man, who did tell the paper that he works as an information technology specialist and lives in Pasadena.

The boys pledged to be nice, but were back to their old ways the next morning.

That night, Dad announced that he would indeed be putting $700 in video games up for sale on eBay. The oldest boy double-dared his dad to make good on his word.

Dad said Mom has been in tears since the showdown.

"I don't do it outwardly," he said, "but I'm crying on the inside."

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Culture, Christianity, and Clay Aiken

We kinda "spread out" the Christmas gifts in our family instead of unloading them all in one shot: everyone gets something Christmas Eve night (usually the more thoughtful stuff). Then next morning the REAL toys - like Dad's new recliner, or my LEGO Star Wars Millennium Falcon set, or the Xbox that "Weird" Ed and I tore Greensboro all to pieces inside-out trying to find for Lisa - get doled out. That's when Lisa found the new Clay Aiken "Merry Christmas with Love" CD in her stocking.

And the night before, prior to us turning in for a long winter's nap (among other things) she received my first gift to her for the season: Clay Aiken's book (co-written with Allison Glock) Learning to Sing: Hearing the Music in Your Life. Yeah, she's been an Aiken-aholic since that first night he showed up looking like Opie Taylor's illegit son on "American Idol" but I must admit: I've a lot of admiration for the guy too. So it was that yesterday morning while resting from the long drive to her parents' house (I may not have gotten Lisa back home for Christmas... but I came within a half-hour of it ;-) I wound up perusing through Aiken's book. Then started reading. Then got hooked and ended up finishing a few hours later.

And to the surprise of some who might consider it a mere "puff piece" or some other schlock meant to capitalize on Aiken's moment of glory, it's definitely not an ego-trip by any stretch. In fact, it's a darned good read that I've no problem whatsoever recommending to anyone.

Oh sure, Aiken fills most of the book with accounts of his life from childhood up through "American Idol" and beyond... but wasn't that the point of doing this book anyway? Except that in Learning to Sing Aiken uses vignettes from his life to pass along the many lessons that he's picked up along the way. But where the book REALLY stands out is that Aiken does so with an objective eye cast upon himself that is candid to the point of brutal. He admits to making mistakes: like when he was 15 and he "borrowed" his step-dad's car to drive around with a girl he was trying to impress... among many other acts that he's up-front about. The relationship he had with his natural father is delved into with a lot of detail, which is certain to interest Aiken's fans who have wondered about the mystery between father and son. Before reading this book I had no idea that Clay Aiken had known so much turmoil and heartache prior to "American Idol". Some of it (hint: it's the chapter about what happened between Aiken and his half-sister) went further than bringing me just damned nearly to tears, if you catch my drift. But Aiken weathered it all, for two reasons: his simple yet profound faith, and his mother... toward whom he proudly confesses on the first page to being a "mama's boy". After reading the book, you'll understand why.

Jim Valvano - the legendary N.C. State basketball coach - told a crowd of fans shortly before he died of bone cancer that every day "you should laugh, you should think, and you should cry... that's a helluva good day!" That's what I went through in 240-some short pages of Aiken's book: it'll make you laugh. It'll make you cry. And it'll make you think: Aiken shares some profound thoughts on the society that we life in, and its focus on celebrity in particular. He wants his fame to contribute toward something useful to everyone instead of his own fame for fame's sake, which he writes he will gladly surrender when God ordains it and finally lets him become a teacher. And though it only comes toward the end of the book, all of this - including his life's lessons - are made to point toward his faith in and journey with Jesus Christ. Which is what led me to write this review to begin with: Clay Aiken takes a stance that runs against the grain of what passes for "Christian culture" in America today. "There was a church south of town that posted a neon sign every week that said things like 'Twenty-nine people saved on Sunday!'", Aiken says before asking "Are we keeping score now? Has church become McDonald's - billions and billions served?" Instead of preaching hellfire-and-brimstone or using his talent to browbeat his faith onto others - as some have suggested - Aiken believes that showing more love and less aggression is the key to showing the world that Christ is real. But he also makes no bones about being a believer - however flawed - who will talk about his faith whenever the opportunity arises.

After reading this, I'm led to think that Clay Aiken is not only a great singer with a genuine heart toward helping people: he's also - and I may be going out on a limb here but here goes anyway - going to be on the forefront of what I seriously believe is THE revolution of modern Christianity. There is coming up to be a generation that looks at the falsehoods and illusions of their elders and they've decided that they're tired of that. They want something real, something that fills a void in the spirit and they're going to seek it out. But they will also adamantly refuse to let themselves be exploited - by political grandstanders and the "Talibornagain"-types - for wanting that satiation. There is arising a new breed of Christians in America and they want nothing less than to yield their lives - all of it - to God instead of man. And it's going to be people like Clay Aiken, I'm really inclined to believe, that God will use to serve Him this way.

Well, what else can be said: I came away from this book with a lot more appreciation for Clay Aiken than I had before (and I had plenty already). Also a lot more faith about some things, which don't have to be gone into here. So if you want a lil' refreshing reading that is both culturally relevant (read as: "hip") and some thoughtful theology that can be taken in during a single afternoon, reach for the money that Aunt Tilly from Akron put in that Christmas card and go spring for Learning to Sing.

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It's a major holiday. Family's having a big dinner. What the heck did you THINK that I'd be doing?!

Just as with every Thanksgiving and Christmas (and a few times in between) for the past two years, last night I hauled out the propane burner and stainless-steel pot, and played around with 350-degree hot peanut oil and a turkey all pumped-up with garlic butter...
The finished product:Given that I didn't get to marinade this one as soon as I would have wished, it came out very tender and juicy. Hey it went fast so I guess that's the highest compliment a cook can receive, right? :-)

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"Nuts!"

It was 60 years ago today, on Christmas 1944, that one of the more amusing incidents in military history took place. General Tony McAullife of the 101st Airborne, U.S. Army was approached by Nazi envoys. A few weeks earlier Hitler had thrown the full weight of what remained of the German army into the Ardennes... his last great gamble to win the war. What would become known to history as "the Battle of the Bulge".

McAullife's forces, based in Bastogne, Belgium, were almost completely surrounded. The Nazis seemed certain to overrun them without mercy. Nonetheless the Germans thought the polite thing to do would be to ask McAullife to surrender. That's what they suggested they do after the envoys arrived in camp.

McAullife's terse reply: "Nuts."

The two envoys looked at each other, confused and not sure what this was supposed to mean.

"What, you want me to write it out for you?" McAullife barked. He reached over for a sheet of paper and a pen, and wrote what is considered to be history's briefest-ever communique between enemy forces...

TO: The German Commander

Nuts!

From: The American Commander

Why is it that wars just don't have the great characters in them like they used to?

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