Twice in as many days, I have heard a friend or relative say those exact words.
Curious, that...
"That was the most violent book I've ever read!"
(Never heard that one before. Thanks to Bob Ceres for telling it!)
I would say that this country is in the hands of madmen... but then I cannot but think that we have been that way for quite some time.
And that grinning lil' girl holding it is Jessica Wanstall, 11 years old, 4-feet 10-inches tall and weighing 83 pounds. She's the young lady who caught the fish on the River Ebro in Spain.
Bet ya it won't be no ordinary fish tale Jessica tells her mates when she comes back from holiday...
Click here to reel-in the story of Jessica and her record catch!
And then young master Demetrius chose to attempt to turn his Chevy into an amphibious vehicle.
Demetrius drove his toy truck into the nearby river and was swept away by the current. His frantic family and Royal Canadian Mounted Police launched an intensive search for the tyke, expecting the worse...
...but three hours later Demetrius Jones was found alive and laughing and 13 kilometers (a little over 8 miles) away by a group of fishermen. Demetrius had clung to the truck - what he called his "boat" - for the entire crazy ride. After being treated for mild hypothermia at the hospital, he was soon released.
Incidentally the toy truck was pulled from the river and still works fine.
(Bet I'm not the only one who thinks Chevy should work out a huge endorsement deal with Demetrius and his family: "Like a rock!" :-)
They work with a medium found at any typical Toys R Us... but their vision is as grand as Cecil B. DeMille's.Anthony and Jessica Rondina are a talented brother/sister pair out of Huntersville, North Carolina that got into animation with a high school project. A few more films under their belt and now their feature Jericho: The Promise Fulfilled is sweeping up film festival prizes and earning the duo widespread acclaim! Christian-Movie.com interviews the Rondinas about their Gideon Production Group, how they animate with LEGO minifigures, their future projects and how they dedicate it all to God. And if you wanna see more of the Rondina pair's awesome work, mash down here for their official website!
...it's quite often an entrancing spectacle. And sometimes even a pretty disgusting one: witness this rendition of Darth Sidious (left) as if it has been done by the great master Beougereau.Worth1000.com is currently hosting Round 3 of their Star Wars/Classic Art mashup series, and it will have you both in stunned awe and sidesplitting laughter! And yet, Renaissance art ever seems to be the perfect motif for that saga of a galaxy far, far away.
And if you want to see some earlier Star Wars/classic renderings, here's Worth1000.com's first batch and here's the results of their second call for the same theme. And Something Awful has a similar thing going on too.
Turns out to have been a programming error on the part of Visa, and apparently it's hit a number of its cardholders. Visa and his bank quickly resolved the issue for Muszynski, and he was no longer stuck with a tab that was more than 2007 times the current national debt.
But hey, as bad as inflation is getting, it's just a matter of time before all our purchases are this astronomical! :-P
And here is a photo of Lauryn and her mother (and my cousin) Robin. They could be - and have been - mistaken for sisters!
And in case any of y'all are wondering: Yes, ALL the women in my family are this beautiful! :-) Not to mention very sweet and among the most Christian ladies I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.
Anyways... Happy Birthday Lauryn!
This is Bennie. She and I have been friends since 1992, when we first met while she was tagging along with family that was visiting from out of state (she used to be an exchange student with them). We hit it off so well that the following summer I visited her in Belgium... and that was my first time ever outside of America! We've hooked up quite a few times over the years. Here she is in the kitchen, making a special Belgian dinner...
What was Bennie and her family cooking up? Well, first there were these stuffed peppers and tomatoes...
And then for dessert, there was this chocolate mousse (made with real Belgian chocolate!)...
I'd thought that I'd gotten a photo of Bennie's stepson Gaetan, but apparently not. He does show up quite often in the camcorder footage though (so there is evidence that he actually exists :-). This photo is of his sister Fleur. And as you can see like any typical fourteen-year old girl, Fleur enjoys using Facebook to keep in touch with her friends (that's what she's doing on one of my computers, and incidentally this is one of the VERY rare occasions that you will EVER see my video editing room... and yeah it's a spare bedroom too :-P). The only thing really different is that when Fleur is on Facebook, she's doing it in French! How kewl is that?!
And finally, here is a picture of Bennie and her husband Eric. Yes, THAT Eric! The same Eric who told us last Thursday around 3:30 in the afternoon that he was going for a walk... and didn't come back. At 7 p.m. I had to call 911 because we had no idea where he was, Eric speaks no English, he was in unknown territory and this was the first time he had ever been overseas (or even on a plane trip for that matter). Around 7:30 a Rockingham County Sheriff's Department car pulled into my driveway and a deputy that I've known for years told me "he's walking up the road!" James didn't speak French and Eric didn't speak English but James told him "Chris Knight?" and Eric smiled and nodded. Turned out Eric walked to the end of the road I'm on toward thick woods, kept walking and ended up going more than six miles, then turned down a road he recognized from earlier that day and walked back along U.S. 158, stopping to get a Coca-Cola from a nearby store. When Bennie and I found him he was sans shirt and grinning like nobody's business. All told that was around FIFTEEN MILES that Eric walked through Terra Incognita without getting shot for trespassing, sunk in quicksand or held hostage by drug dealers. Someday I'm going to bring Eric (and Bennie to translate for him) to talk to our Boy Scout troop, 'cuz this guy definitely set a new standard for hiking in Rockingham County!
Anyway, here he is along with Bennie, sitting on the front steps of Speedwell Presbyterian Church near Reidsville...
'Twas quite a good time, with an old friend and some new ones. Lord willing I'll get to reciprocate and get back to Belgium sooner than later. It really is a sweet lil' country, and as you can see it breeds some rather hardy folks (not to mention being the home of Belgian chocolate, the Smurfs and Tintin, and the saxaphone).
Bennie, Eric, Gaetan and Fleur, thanks for stopping by. Y'all come back now, y'hear?!? :-)
Well, there it is: Michael Jackson's hair catching fire during filming of a Pepsi commercial in 1984, in footage published for the first time by US Magazine. This is something that had grown to legendary proportions long before Jackson's death a few weeks ago. And at the time this was a huge story.
Seeing this at last, the only thought that really comes to mind is "My God..." This was a far more gruesome mishap than I can recall ever hearing it described. Amazingly, Jackson was still dancing for several seconds, completely unaware that his head was ablaze.
Something that I have found rather intriguing about the Harry Potter phenomenon over the last few years: Where the heck has all the "Christian" opposition to these books gone to? I mean, I remember when the movie of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was coming out, and the local TV news showed these overly-righteous "Bible-beating" types marching outside of a nearby theater about how the Harry Potter books were "evil", "witchcraft" and "leading children astray". I'll never forget this one particularly stern-faced young woman in an outfit like something out of Old Salem (or perhaps olden Salem, Massachusetts) who said she would "never" let her children read Harry Potter.
To which I said to the screen "Fine you hard-hearted ninny, but don't tell the rest of us what to do with ours!"
But nearly eight years later, and all of that alleged "Christian opposition" to Harry Potter has pretty much evaporated.
Well, not completely. At left you see a photo taken yesterday of severe nutcase Rev. Doug Taylor in Lewiston, Maine, as he publicly destroys a hardcover copy of a Harry Potter book.
Look at Taylor's face. Especially look into this man's eyes. Does that truly resemble at all the visage of a person who has the love of Christ, the grace of God, the humility that comes with fully knowing that one's self is not perfect and that we are all struggling in this world? I don't see that. Instead I see something in Doug Taylor that I have seen many more times than I care to count: someone who cannot or will not control his desire to hate others and is willing to use the name of Jesus Christ to excuse that hatred.
Thankfully, Doug Taylor and his Harry Potter-hating kind (including those lunatics from the Jesus Camp documentary and only the better angels of my nature kept me from weighing in on that as fully as I had wished!) have been relegated to the region of laughingstock over the last few years. But... why is that?
Part of the reason is that I cannot help but believe that J.K. Rowling, the authoress of the Harry Potter novels, completely and without apology disarmed the self-righteous wrath against her work with the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final novel of the saga. No one who read that book could take away anything from it other than it, and subsequently the entire Harry Potter series, has carried a brilliant pro-Christian message. Indeed, many have since come to praise the Harry Potter novels as the finest Christian allegorical writing since C.S. Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia. What I found especially endearing about the Harry Potter novels is that Rowling not only touched upon, she fully delved into something that has gone missing all too much from not just most children's literature but a lot of Christian fiction as well: how we approach death. The theology of Harry Potter's world is absolutely recognizable as that of the Judeo-Christian tradition, where to cling to life is to ultimately lose it and where there is no greater love than to lay down one's life for his friends.
Now, why does that sound so familiar?
So I think that in some measure, the Harry Potter books themselves have shamed thoughtless opposition into silence.
But mostly, I think that the reason why there is not nearly as much fevered hatred toward the Harry Potter books is that most of these same "Christians" who have publicly shown spite against the books in the past, are now... well, bored with Harry Potter.
And I think that says a lot about what kind of Christians they are, or have been.
I said earlier that Christians like Rev. Doug Taylor desired to hate others and used Christ as an excuse to hate. But that by itself is nothing without a target upon which to fixate and focus that hatred toward. And that's all that the Harry Potter books have been over the years to these people. It has never been about sincere serious theological disagreement with the contents of the books. All that these loons had to hear was "witchcraft and wizardry" and that was enough reason to rail against these books until they were (often literally) hoarse with screaming.
But as the Harry Potter books have passed from fad into defining literature of the current Zeitgeist, these same Christians have also lost interest. They now have bigger and better enemies to latch their hatred onto: Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Sonia Sotomayor, Democrats in general, whatever. One Baptist minister in California is now even publicly praying not just for the death but for the eternal damnation of Obama.
That's why Harry Potter has fallen out of hate-filled vogue. Why would anyone want to pick on a fictional teen wizard when they can just as easily - and with even more intoxicating wrath - hate and seek to destroy a President of the United States?
Do these people have any idea not just how silly they look, but how much they are turning others around them away from Christ?
As a follower of Christ, I have come to understand how it is that we, as one minister wisely told me years ago, are supposed to be "in this world but not of this world". We are called not only to be missionaries of His word, but also ambassadors for His kingdom. And that does mean an active and passionate abandoning the lust for the powers and institutions of this carnal realm.
It's not Harry Potter or Barack Obama that is causing grievous damage to the world around us. No amount of book burning or lobbying or legislation is going to heal the land, or provide it what it really needs.
What this world needs more than anything is for those who profess to have Christ to start living for Him... for His sake, not for our own.
That was the first thing that popped into mind this morning when I read that President Obama might push through a vote on national "health care reform", that it's going to cost at least $1.5 TRILLION and to fund it Congress is looking at a 5.4 percent additional tax on the richest Americans.
Much like the dog in that cartoon: "Dear God, PLEASE spare us this!"
Lemme tell you what is going to happen if Obama and his allies have their way with their medical machinations: the quality of health care in America will plummet, a lot of the economy (that we can't afford to lose) that isn't related to health care will simply relocate rather than pay higher taxes, and the United States will lose its driving motivation toward cutting-edge medical and pharmaceutical research that the rest of the world benefits immensely from.
I thought "health care reform" sucked donkeys balls to no end when the Clintons tried to pull this one over on us fifteen years ago. It was a rotten plan then and as Obama and his crew are trying to do, it's even more rotten now.
And I hope and pray that there will be even more Americans opposing it this time around!
And not even the presence of the mighty Marneus Calgar himself - chapter master of the Ultramarines - was enough to stave off the combined threat of a massive Ork Waaaagh! led by Ghazghkull Thraka and a surprise attack by several squads of Chaos Space Marines who appeared on the scene to... well, spread chaos.
So today was the first time in three weeks that I've been able to get down to the nearest friendly local game store (FLGS) for a battle or two of Warhammer 40,000, the far-flung future-based miniature wargame that's wildly popular all over the world. Once again I brought several squads of Space Marines from the Ultramarine chapter. By 3:30 a new game was starting with 1,800 points of tactical value allowed for each side. Now, my own complete Space Marines only number a little over 500 points... but as there were two others playing Space Marines we mustered our forces along the eastern side of the table. Leading our forces was the indomitable Marneus Calgar (a miniature that I'll probably be adding to my own collection sometime). Before us stretched the landscape of a world held by the Orks, and among the more prominent features was a tower of some sort (we figured it was an oil derrick drilling for Ork petroleum). But no matter why we were there: we determined to enforce the will of the Emperor of Humanity... and the Orks were goin' die!
I think those of us playing the Space Marines had a feeling not long into Turn 1 that this battle was going to be especially brutal. First it was our entire squad of Scouts that we lost, and I was hoping we could get to use them to great advantage with their sniper skill. Alas! The Scouts were among the first to go, perishing by the guns of Ork heavy weaponry. At the same time a squadron of three Ork Deffkoptas attempted to take out my Dreadnought but he easily evaded the attack (for the moment). And then as if we didn't have enough to worry about, a squad of Chaos Space Marines attempted to teleport in front of our forces. However these missed a roll and wound up stuck intangible amid the wildness of the Warp, so for the time being we didn't have to worry about these traitors to the Empire.
Meanwhile on the southern end of the table the battle was becoming one of heavy hardware as several Space Marine troop carriers and tanks engaged with Ork battlewagons and a number of Chaos Space Marine vehicles. Calgar himself was put in the midst of this action which saw at least one troop carrier explode (and costing the lives of all the Space Marines within it). I wish that I could report more about the southern front of the battle however as we were too busy holding down the northern end, that's the part that held my attention throughout the nearly three hours that we were in combat.
After the Orks and Chaos forces had resolved their moves and weapons fire for Turn 1, now came our turn. My own Space Marines killed four Orks with fragmentary grenade fire, and attempted to move into position to better engage the huge swarm that was the rest of the northern Ork forces... which threatened to overwhelm my position. And now I was faced with a tactical decision: should I attempt to take out the Deffkoptas or the ground-based Orks? After conferring with fellow "general" John, we decided to concentrate the next attack on the Deffkoptas...
...unfortunately, not long into Round 2 the Deffkoptas utterly destroyed my Dreadnought in one fell swoop!
And then the rest of the Orks rushed forward in a frenzy of lust and death:
From there, nothing worked. The Tactical squad of my Space Marines that was armed with missile fire still attempted to destroy the Deffkoptas... but on my roll I only got a 1! That wasn't just a miss, it was as miss as you can possibly get (think Stormtroopers from the original Star Wars movies).
As for the rest of the battle: the Orks made mincemeat out of my Space Marines and none of my rolls went good (save for taking out five Orks with one well-placed shot of fragmentary grenade). One by one I was having to remove the shattered corpses of my trusty Ultramarines from the field of battle. The Orks on the northern end moved down the battlefield to join their brethren, and the Deffkoptas roared ahead to continue their carnage.
All that was left after that was basically mop-up action as the Chaos Space Marines and the Orks decimated what remained of the Ultramarines. Marneus Calgar himself somehow made it off to fight another day, and Ork warleader Ghazghkull Thraka let out a howl of victory...
What happened next? Well, it was 7 p.m. and I was starving so it was time for me to grab some dinner. I can only imagine that the Orks and Chaos forces then turned on each other (and probably it was the Orks who started it).
So there's another week before the league at the aforementioned friendly local game store meets again to throw our armies of Space Marines, Orks, Tyranids, Chaos at each other: plenty of time to study tactics and maybe even bolster my forces (I'm thinking maybe about investing in a Rhino tank).
By the way, if you play Warhammer 40,000 also and are in the Greensboro/Reidsville/Burlington area or so, write me at theknightshift@gmail.com and I'll fill ya in on the very exuberant league we've got going, and I'm always up for having a good-natured battle with a new friend :-)
Two years ago, an online petition drive spun out of this very blog and may or may not have convinced The Powers That Be to release a CD of Steve Jablonsky's amazing score for the motion picture Transformers.
In 2009, Warner Bros./Reprise did release a CD of Jablonsky's score for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. And everything was cool this time, right?
Well...
A LOT of folks have written in here over the past few weeks about how much of Jablonsky's score for the new movie is missing from the current CD release. And we know for certain that there were plans to publish the full score (or a much bigger chunk of it than we have now anyway) but now, those plans have been officially dashed. It's currently not set to happen.
But now, a warrior has arisen "to light our darkest hour"!
Mike Casteel, a fellow fan of Transformers and Steve Jablonsky, has started a NEW online petition dedicated to getting a full score CD of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. It just went live tonight... but we all know how fast the last one drew support, aye? Let's hope and pray that Mike's will get even more! And I'm heartily asking EVERYONE who signed the one from two years ago to please sign this new one.
Have faith, friends. I believe that there will be a release of this CD, if there is substantial enough support and we nicely convey that. And from what I've seen on this end, the support is definitely there! So be a good fan of Transformers and Steve Jablonsky and everyone else at Remote Control who worked on this score, and sign the petition today!
There is simply no stopping "Weird Al" Yankovic! Last month he released his new single "Craigslist" done in the style of Jim Morrison and The Doors. And now Al's "Internet Leaks" collection has grown even more with "Skipper Dan"! It's about the never-ending lament of a poor guy who could have been a great actor... but instead wound up a guide on the Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland. Not so much a parody as it is just Al waxing philosophic in his own signature style. All in all, a pretty good song!Hit here for the "Skipper Dan" music video (directed by Divya Srinivasan) on YouTube, where you can also find links to purchase the song via iTunes and other online outlets.
Not even the sub-Atlantic metropolis of Rapture is safe from the global financial meltdown. In a move that would certainly have Andrew Ryan spinning in his grave had he been given a proper burial, Take-Two Interactive is delaying the release of its much-anticipated BioShock 2, the sequel to the critically-acclaimed 2007 first-person shooter that challenged players' morality as much as it did their aim.The cause for pushing back the release? To give BioShock 2 more development time and because the retail environment for the near future is being forecast as bleak. The game is now said to be coming out in "fiscal 2010"... which could mean anything. Take-Two's stock dropped a dollar and a half following the news.
Bummer. BioShock 2 was the video game that I was most looking forward to. But I guess in the meantime I'll have to make do with playing the original BioShock again, along with Ghostbusters: The Game (which a lot of people are telling me is very good) and Batman: Arkham Asylum later this summer.
