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Comments and opinions expressed on THE KNIGHT SHIFT are those of Christopher Knight and not necessarily those of subjects discussed in this blog, of advertisers appearing on it or of any reasonable human being. Any correspondence/irate letters/lawsuit threats/Nigerian e-mail scams can be sent to theknightshift@gmail.com.
Before you even think of knocking, please know this ...
- "King James Version-Onlyism" is not only bullcrap, it is a doctrine bordering on heresy. I'm not talking about using the King James Version as a personal preference. I use it myself a lot of times. And no doubt always will. But to suggest that I'm a "lost sinner" because my main preference is the New International Version or some other translation is a lie from the pit.
- If you are doing this for your church or your pastor, you've already messed up. You're supposed to be doing it for Christ.
- Yes, I have a "home church". It is a real home church, in every sense of the term. If you believe that a "church" must have a building and a pastor, then you don't understand what church is to begin with. And it's not my problem if you can't comprehend that.
- If you don't even know why you are asking me "Are you saved?" then don't waste your time asking at all. Because I've been around the block enough to know that practically every time I get asked that, it's from someone who doesn't give a flying rat's butt about me or my salvation at all. They just want to know if I'm "of the same mindset" as they are and more to the point they want enjoy having a smug sense of superiority.
- If I tell you a story about Thomas Aquinas, it's only because I want you to think about it and if you understand the gist of it, then I hope you'll take it to heart.
- It's hard for me or anyone else to tell you that we're going to Heaven if it's too obvious that you are not sure if you are going to Heaven to begin with.
- I'm not interested in building up "your church". And I don't want to be bothered by people who are trying to grow a church either. I would much rather be visited by people who are sincerely interested in building the Kingdom of God.
- If you tell me that your church is "fundamentalist", keep on walking. Because you do not want me as a member.
- Understand that you are paying a visit to an irreligious follower of Christ, who is not interested in "religion" at all.
- I can spot the people who are witnessing for the sincerely right reasons a mile away. If that ain't you and you come here with the wrong motive, I will know.
- Realize that you are dealing with a guy who is fed-up with how a lot of Christianity is "playing games" and "putting on a show" more for our own sake than for God's.
Sorry I have to do this folks, but after what happened yesterday here, I'm compelled to post a notice to anyone else who may come a'knockin'. I'm thinking of making a sign of it for my front door too.
I'm assuming that Popcorn has a second home or some other accommodations in Tennessee, because in addition to the bond he also cannot leave the state until at least a hearing next month ... that could send him to jail once more. He also must wear an electronic monitoring bracelet, submit to drug testing (and cannot imbibe of his or anyone else's "likker"), and agree to have his property searched at any time by federal agents.
I'll say again: Popcorn made a bad move by running a still across state lines in Tennessee, when if he had stayed home in Maggie Valley he could have remained in business. The man should have known better. But all the same: it doesn't look like the federal government has anything better to do than harass a legitimate American folk hero, and someone who is keeping alive some of the proudest traditions of Appalachia. It's funny: our government won't do anything serious about millions of illegal invaders, but it does have the will and resources to pursue a regular citizen who's just minding his own business and not hurting anyone else.
More details about the Popcorn Sutton Saga will be posted as they develop ...
On Saturday, March 29, 2008, Earth Hour invites people around the world to turn off their lights for one hour – from 8:00pm to 9:00pm in their local time zone. On this day, cities around the world, including Copenhagen, Chicago, Melbourne, Dubai, and Tel Aviv, will hold events to acknowledge their commitment to energy conservation.
So by asking everyone to turn out the lights for an hour, this event's organizers believe that this will accomplish something meaningful?
Ha!
This whole thing is a stunt. As is everything motivated by "awareness" pretty much. A year from now it will barely be remembered at all. I do believe in being responsible with the environment, as wise stewards and custodians over it. And I certainly believe that mankind's activity over the past two hundred years has had an effect on the Earth: how could it not?
That said, Earth Hour is still just another one of those "flashes in the pan" intended to let people feel good about themselves and delude them into thinking that they just did something that "really matters" when in fact they haven't done anything at all. And I hate that kind of thing. Along with so much else it distracts us from taking hold of our own lives, and belittles us into thinking we have to "join the group" in order to make the most of our time on Earth. And we get so pressed to "help the cause" that we don't stop to look at who is leading this movement or to where, exactly.
I've watched this sort of nonsense ever since Earth Day in 1990. Enough to say with utter conviction that darn nearly all of the "environmental movement" is driven by politics and not about sincere concern for the Earth at all. And that's why I refuse to have anything to do with radical environmentalism: it is an inherently corrupt movement that creates more problems than it solves.
In case I haven't articulated it already: I think that people who support George W. Bush's "Surge" in Iraq are, for the most part, idiots.
So for the past year and more we've been hearing "The Surge is working! The Surge is working!" I'm reminded of how some passengers on the Titanic actually believed beyond all rational thought that the ship was coming back up to the surface just before it took its final plunge into the Atlantic.
Some of us knew it was only a matter of time before this mercenary operation failed. I just didn't expect it to happen so soon.
So in case you haven't heard already, Iraq in the past few days finally began collapsing into full-blown civil war. And the United States government is becoming actively involved on the side of the Iraqi government that it installed. Which is something that no sane leaders ever do with another country's civil war. Bush was a fool to step in and Iraq's prime minister Nouri al-Maliki was a fool to have accepted the aid, if Bush even offered it. Because if there's one thing that history has proven about civil wars, it's that outside interference always turns a bad situation into something far nastier. It will come back to bite us in the rear sooner or later.
But here's the thing about American involvement in the Iraq civil war: the U.S. is using air strikes against the Shia militias. This is pretty much equivalent to an official statement by the Bush Administration that "We admit that the Surge has not worked at all." Calling in air strikes is a very clumsy, ham-handed way to deal with a ground-based rebel force. For the faction using air support like this, it basically means that you don't care to broadcast wide and clear to your enemies that your own ground-based forces aren't up to snuff and can't win.
So George W. Bush has not only given many Iraqis who had so far been "on the fence" a damned good reason to take up arms against American personnel, he has also let it be known that "The Surge" has failed, and that the capabilities of United States military - the mightiest armed force in the history of the world - are now significantly diminished.
This past week might finally prove to be the point where it can be said that the Iraq War, at last, was the worst foreign policy fiasco of the previous quarter-century, if not longer. Because nothing has been gained, and everything conceivable has been lost because of it: innocent life, countless resources, and now the last shreds of respect for both American diplomacy and military prowess.
I don't know if we'll ever recover from this mess. Maybe we don't deserve to.
Earlier this week this blog reported the arrest of Popcorn Sutton: perhaps the very last of the original Appalachian moonshiners and an American living legend. As of this writing Popcorn is still in jail in east Tennessee after a raid that caught him with almost a thousand gallons of still-brewed booze and many hundreds of pounds of unfinished mash.
Since his arrest, Popcorn Sutton is gradually gaining support for his cause. I've heard that a legal defense fund has been established, and I'm trying to find out more details about that. Someone is even selling "Free Popcorn" shirts on CafePress. And now a couple of musicians have done a short song in honor of Popcorn. Enjoy!
For Christmas I got Lisa a Nintendo Wii. Had to camp out all night during cold rain in front of a GameStop store the week before to get it (this was when they had the vouchers thing going, and I wound up getting a Wii for Lisa and a Wii voucher for my sister, who got hers a little over a week after Christmas ... am I a great husband/brother or what? :-)
Along with the Wii I bought a card worth 2000 Wii Points, to spend on extra games or whatever through Nintendo's online store for the Wii. And until now we hadn't used it at all (guess we've been having too much fun with everything else on the Wii). So yesterday I loaded up the points and "went shopping", and even though it cost 500 points I thought it would be neat to have the Internet Channel installed. This is a version of the Opera browser customized for the Wii, that lets you surf the web (kinda like WebTV).
The Internet Channel for Wii is pretty neat. The first thing I went to was this blog (of course!) and then Lisa's and a few friends' sites. Then I went to Flickr. Why? Because I wanted to see if there were any new pictures of a certain girl...
A year ago I discovered Taci, an unbelievably cute cocker spaniel whose owner Kalen loves to take pictures of her and post on Flickr. Taci looks almost exactly like Bridget, our cocker spaniel who sadly passed away way too young some years ago. Kalen is quite a talented photographer and she's captured Taci in so many sweet (and often funny) poses and expressions. The pic above is one of the latest that Kalen has taken of Taci. So I zoomed-in with the Wii Remote and took this photo of Taci's face on a 37-inch high-definition television set via the Wii! Kalen thought it was hilarious (and hopefully so did Taci :-).
By the way, that might be the last photo that I post on this blog of our high-def TV: the one that I've been referring to as "The Behemoth" ever since we got it a little over a year ago. You can't see it in this photo but there's something wrong with the screen that looks like it's been a manufacturing defect (that's not a reflection on the company that made it by any means, these things just happen every so often). We tried to get it fixed but it's not really feasible, so next week the retailer is giving us another high-def television, one that might be even better. Thank goodness we got the service plan for this thing. But still, I've grown quite fond of The Behemoth. So before it went away I wanted to post a photo of it displaying something beautiful for a change, as opposed to, say, Gears of War :-P
Near the small town of Darvaz in Uzbekistan is a place that the locals call "The Door to Hell". Thirty-five years ago some geologists were drilling for natural gas there and hit upon a cavern. Poisonous gas was detected down in the hole, so the excavators ignited it in the hopes that it would "burn off" and clear out the air so that they could explore further.
It's been burning ever since, non-stop, for more than three decades.
Mash down here for more photos and one scary video clip of "The Door to Hell".
EDIT 2:28 pm 03/30/2008: Someone noted in the comments that Darvaz is actually located in Turkmenistan, not Uzbekistan. So I stand corrected. But in my own defense, I just took the original website at its word that this was Uzbekistan :-)
George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (or 1984 as it's more commonly written), the all-time classic novel about totalitarianism and the destruction of privacy, is now available for free reading on the web... and legally, too!
I read this book during the spring break of my senior year of high school. In many ways, Nineteen Eighty-Four broke the ground for much of the foundation of my personal philosophy and beliefs. And it's probably a safe assumption that to most people who've read the book, mentioning it brings to mind Big Brother, or the Thought Police, or Room 101. Certainly the telescreens of the book can now be seen as greatly prescient, considering how our own government is now fully capable of spying on regular American citizens without a warrant or any real oversight (I'll leave it as an exercise for any readers as to whether this government is actually doing it, but have you ever known of a government given power and then choosing not to use that power?).
But to me, the scariest concept of Nineteen Eighty-Four was always Newspeak and Doublethink. Because each day we see Newspeak all around us. Most people don't even care that it's there at all, they have become so inured to it. In Nineteen Eighty-Four Orwell shared the brilliant observation that without adequate language to share ideas, those ideas and thoughts were rendered utterly impotent... right to the point that over time, it would become impossible for a person to even be capable of the thought at all. Hence, the Party's systematic destruction of language as a measure of controlling the people. Most often this was done by cramming many disparate thoughts beneath the umbrella of generic terminology.
Now think about how many - some would even say "most" - Americans are intellectually incapable of thinking about this country's politics beyond the entrenched two-party system. Very many Americans only think that they are capable of deep meditations about this nation's politics... when in fact their thoughts have already been dictated by language and those who control it: the leadership of the two parties, with the eager assistance of a corporate press.
Don't even get me started on Doublethink. I've had a long day and don't feel like trying to educate some people for whom it would be lost in a cloud of cognitive dissonance.
But I must ask: how is what America is turning into not like the Oceania of Nineteen Eighty-Four?
Read the book, if you haven't already, and judge for yourself.
Chef extraordinairePaul Prudhomme - from whom millions of people have learned that there's more to Cajun cookin' than just having a bottle of red pepper handy and who has sometimes been blamed for the near-extinction of the redfish - was hit by a stray bullet while preparing food on a golf course near New Orleans during a PGA event two days ago.
Prudhomme felt a sting on his right arm above the elbow and thought he had been stung by a bee.
Turned out that he had been grazed by a .22 caliber bullet.
So what did Prudhomme do? He kept on cooking! Minutes later he was back in action and served up some tasty cuisine for the golfers, caddies and guests at the Zurich Classic.
Doesn't surprise me at all. Having known some, I can attest that them Cajuns are a good and hardy folk. Glad to hear that Prudhomme is okay, and is back to making more tasty gumbo!
John C. Larsh, better known to countless fans during decades of radio work as Jack Armstrong, has passed away at 63.
Armstrong is probably most recently remembered around here for being a longtime DJ at WMQX Oldies 93. I used to listen to him every day: Armstrong was easily one of the liveliest radio personalities that I've ever found on the dial. But before that, the Chapel Hill born-and-bred Armstrong had also worked in the Boston, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and San Francisco markets. During his long career he got to hook up with Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry, Frank Zappa, and many other musical legends.
Armstrong's zest for life reflected in his radio work, especially after the Guinness World Records certified him as being the "world's fastest talking human". Armstrong also pulled off the rare feat of being a double-record holder when he broke the one for most revolutions on a roller-coaster: 750 on the Thunderbolt in Pittsburgh, riding it for 34 hours (my butt's sore just thinking about it...). And Armstrong's passion for radio would eventually lead to his being ensconced in the Rock 'N Roll Hall of Fame as part of the "This Is Dedicated To The Ones We Love... 100 Jocks From 1935" exhibit.
You can find out much more about Jack Armstrong at his official Myspace page, which is already becoming a shrine to his memory.
Thanks for the many good laughs and great tunes, Jack. We'll miss ya.
EDIT 8:42 a.m.: Want to hear just how fast Jack Armstrong's voice was? Here is his trademark sign-off in MP3 format (and thanks to WBFO for hosting it). Here's what Armstrong is saying, in case you need a guide...
"Don't get none on ya, do it twice, be nice. It's very nice to be important, but more important to be very nice. Let it all hang out, drag it in the sand, and make a deep rut. People who live in glass houses shouldn't... A bird in the hand makes it hard to blow your nose. One good turn takes most of the blankets. You can lead a horse to water, but don't push him in. Nothing smells any worse than a wet horse, or you can lead a horse to water, push him in and teach him the backstroke, then you've really got something. Wash your face in the morning, neck at night. Love is life, life is love. Light your own candle and the world will be a much brighter place. When you get to the end of your rope, tie a little knot, hang on and swing. Stay calm, try to adjust. You can't live with 'em or without 'em. Hoo hee, HEE HOO! Don't let your six gun get rusty. It's been a business doing pleasure with you, it's been real... and your LEEEEEEADAAAAAAAAH love you-ah!"
The first time I ever saw Richard Widmark act in a movie, it was The Long Ships. WFMY aired it as a Saturday afternoon movie when I was eight years old. I happened to start watching right at the scene where Widmark's character Rolfe, the dashing Viking, is about to ride the "Mare of Steel" and that crazy Moorish king Aly Mansuh (played by Sidney Poitier) gives him a "demonstration" first. I can't say that I remembered Widmark himself much from that scene: the sight of a long curved razor blade that the condemned was forced to slide down belly-first made a much bigger impression on my young mind.
Since then I've watched Widmark in Kiss of Death (his breakout film), Judgment at Nuremberg, and many others. At Butt-Numb-A-Thon 9 this past December one of the early movies on the program was Pickup on South Street starring Richard Widmark as "Skip" McCoy. It was a huge hit with the crowd. I must admit: I had come to be a fan of Widmark but that was one movie that had stayed under my radar until then. It was one of the films I discovered there that made the trip to the festival very worthwhile.
This requires a bit of set-up for readers who aren't in this part of North Carolina/south-central Virginia ...
Two or three times a week on Reidsville's WGSR Star 39 television station, a group of local ministers calling themselves the "Church of Christ" do a series of live broadcasts. The shows have various names, but they're all pretty much the same: a show starts, the minister runs some old video of a Baptist or Pentecostal or preacher of some other other denomination that they don't agree with (sometimes it's video of a debate of that night's "Church of Christ" guy hashing it out with another pastor). While the video is running that night's preacher silently stands on the set giving the camera a stern gaze, then he stops the video and begin blasting whoever it is that's on the "hate list" for the evening.
So these "Church of Christ" guys believe that everyone is a hellbound sinner who is not a member of their brand of church. To them, there is no salvation outside of their "Church of Christ".
I guess that's their right to believe that (and to spend thousands of dollars a month to air their views) if they wish. Just like it's my right to believe what I do about salvation, and how it comes by the grace of God after we realize our need for forgiveness. In my Christian philosophy, that's all that we need to do to secure our destiny for eternity. Because anything else is of human effort and always doomed to fail.
If we have faith in Christ, that alone is enough. It's more than enough.
What really bothers me though is when these "Church of Christ" people display so much vitriol and outright hatred toward anyone who they perceive as "following false doctrines". If I were not a believer in Christ, and I were to come across their programming, there's no way that I could be convinced that Christ is real. It would probably just affirm for me that Christ is only something else that's meant to control us. I know better though: that a life in Christ is a free one, liberated from legalism.
But to hear it from these "Church of Christ" guys, a Christian life is about nothing other than legalism. Some of the things I've heard them say in their shows would make the Pharisees of Jesus's time seem even libertarian in comparison.
These local "Church of Christ" people don't even believe that a person can go to Heaven unless they were baptized. I suppose that according to them I'll go to Heaven anyway, because I was baptized (by immersion, in case anyone's wondering) not long after I came to Christ while in college. But it was never something that I did because I thought I had to do it to secure a place in Heaven. It had no supernatural power at all: I just did it because I wanted to publicly identify with my Lord and Savior. That's all it can do. But as it is, the adamant stance about baptism by these "Church of Christ" guys comes perilously close to outright Gnosticism.
Anyway, I've been watching them for awhile, and particularly a dude named Johnny Robertson who seems to be the ringleader. Or at least the most seeker of controversy (he was mentioned on this blog almost two years ago when the Westboro Baptist Church "God Hates Fags" gang came to town). He does a live program every Sunday night called What Does The Bible Say? (click here for show's website). He's also currently running a very ridiculous commercial for his show on WGSR, that you'll see at the beginning of this video.
I don't know if these guys are at all what could be called the "Church of Christ" as most people understand that denomination (knowing full well that Robertson and his brethren will bristle at being called a "denomination"). I've worshipped lots of times in a Church of Christ congregation, and I've never seen the bitterness and rancor that the local "Church of Christ" as represented by its ministers on WGSR every week display toward what seems like everyone imaginable. There were some members of one Church of Christ, in another part of North Carolina, that helped me through a very difficult time some years ago and I'll always be thankful for God putting them there at that moment.
I guess that it's what people like the Reidsville/Martinsville "Church of Christ" are doing every week in lashing out at those they don't like, that's one of the reasons why I'm so honked-off about this, because I do believe that Johnny Robertson and his crew are giving the sincere Church of Christ members a very bad name.
Well, for the past few weeks I had been feeling compelled to call up Robertson during his show, and ask him a question. One simple question, that I would have really enjoyed having an answer for. And it so happened that Easter night is what moved me to pick up the phone and take action.
I wanted to ask him: "How is what you guys are doing giving glory to Christ?"
So how did he respond? Here's the video ...
As you can see, Robertson could not answer such a simple question. He instead tries to gauge that I'm not a real Christian because I'm not a tough-enough opponent of "false doctrines" and then he tells me to "go listen to Benny Hinn".
Ummmm... saywhu...?
I've thought for awhile now that where Robertson and his bunch go wrong is that they refuse to see following Jesus Christ as anything but an act of corporate worship. As much as they fixate on the Baptists, the Pentecostals, attacking pastors of various denominations etc., I don't know if worshiping Christ as an act of the individual fits into their theology at all. He attacked me without knowing anything about me, assuming that I was "denominational". I've never professed to being any denomination. Oh sure, I've worshiped in various churches during my life, but not once have I called myself a "Baptist" or "Methodist".
Can't I just be a follower of Christ? Can't anybody? Not according to these "Church of Christ" people in Reidsville and Martinsville.
It's the classic case of becoming so obsessed with the enemy, that a person becomes the enemy. Robertson and his "Church of Christ" gang have so defined themselves by how they are not a "denomination", that they have not only become a denomination but they have become everything that is possibly wrong with a denomination. More than one person has even told me that they aren't anything but a bona-fide cult. I'm hard-pressed to disagree, unfortunately...
So Mr. Robertson, if you ever read this, I was wondering if you could please tell me: How is what you guys are doing serving and giving devotion to Christ, and showing His love toward others?
That's what this hinges on the most: where is the love in what you are doing?
Because if this is just a thing about works, without the real love toward others, then what you are doing is already a dead thing that God cannot possibly bless.
(For more perspective on the "Church of Christ" as represented on WGSR, check this blog out.)
It was Thanksgiving eve Back in 1971 He had on a pair of sunglasses There wasn't any sun He used the name Dan Cooper When he paid for the flight That was going to Seattle On that cold and nasty night
-- "The Ballad of D.B. Cooper" by Chuck Brodsky
More than 36 years after Dan Cooper bailed out of the back of a 727 into stormy night and American folklore, a parachute has been found in Washington state that the FBI is speculating could have been used by the legendary skyjacker.
It was on the night before Thanksgiving in 1971 that a man calling himself "Dan Cooper" (more often erroneously called "D.B. Cooper") boarded a Northwest Orient flight in Portland, Oregon bound for Seattle. Shortly after takeoff Cooper told a stewardess that he had a bomb, and gave instructions to have $200,000 in unmarked bills and four parachutes ready upon landing: two loaded in the front of the plane and two in the rear. The demands were met, Cooper allowed the passengers to leave and then the 727 took off again, this time headed south. About a half-hour into the flight, Cooper went to the back of the plane and was never seen again. He took the money and one of the parachutes and jumped out of the plane via the aft stairs.
Ever since that night, there have been all kinds of theories and rumors about what happened to Dan Cooper. In 1978 a 727 placard describing how to lower the rear stairs was found in the Washington woods by a hunter, and a few years about $6,000 from Cooper's haul (the serial numbers matched those of bills that were given to Cooper) was discovered on the banks of the Columbia River near Vancouver.
Some believe that given the fierce wind, heavy rain and freezing temperature along with how Cooper was described as wearing normal clothes that would not have provided much protection from the elements, the general consensus of law agencies is that Cooper did not survive his jump and that his skeleton is still laying around somewhere deep in the forests of the Northwest. And then there are others who believe that he not only did survive his caper/stunt, but that he took the money and went on a lavish spree. The story I've heard over the years is that Cooper had someone (usually a girlfriend) waiting for him, and they wound up blowing the wad at the casinos in Las Vegas.
Personally, I think Cooper made it all the way down alive. And if this parachute was his, then the following detail from the story certainly indicates that he survived the fall...
Children playing outside their home near Amboy found the chute's fabric sticking up from the ground in an area where their father had been grading a road, agent Larry Carr said. They pulled it out as far as they could, then cut the parachute's ropes with scissors.
Sounds like someone didn't want that parachute to be found. And whoever it was, they were alive long enough to bury it.
I've been a Dan Cooper buff ever since I was nine years old. This is one story that I'm certainly going to be keeping my eye on.
(And along with the radioactive cat story, this is the second post in a row pertaining to the Seattle area. Pretty weird, huh?)
A lot of people will be glad to know that Rock Band is getting ported to the Wii. But how long is that going to last when these details about the release become widely known? To exclude the downloadable content feature and online play is an insanely bad move by Harmonix. From a business standpoint, it makes no sense at all! Nintendo Wii is the best-selling video game system on the market today, consistently outpacing both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. Now bear in mind that for those two systems already, Harmonix has sold over 6 million copies of new tracks that have been made available since the game's launch in November.
Obviously, the downloadable content is one of Rock Band's most popular points. Harmonix is courting disaster by consciously stripping it from the Wii edition. They aren't just going to be losing millions of dollars in potential profit from lack of downloaded tracks, but a lot of Wii owners - and I'm one of them - are going to see this move as petty at best, and outright insulting at worst.
Besides, there is no reason at all why the Wii could not support either the downloaded content or online play for Rock Band. It can save tracks to an SD card, and I'm sure that some kind of encryption/encoding scheme is possible that would prevent tracks from being illegally copied. Technically, the online capabilities of Rock Band could certainly be shared with the Wii version. So why aren't they?
The suits at Harmonix had best reconsider, and announce that the downloaded content and online play are going to be in the Wii version too. Or else they're going to wind up with tons of unwanted Rock Band for Wii boxes that'll take up a hella lot more space in a landfill than those E.T. cartridges ever did.
