In the six hours or so since that previous post......I feel like I have grown more as a person than, I probably have in, well... a very long time. Emphasis on "very".And with the sun rising on this new day......I am finding myself thankful to God, that however He allowed my mind to be, that He did bless me with a wonderful mind.And now I am going to keep on doing what I have always done: doing my best to make the most of it.To put it in some perspective:...
Friday, March 04, 2011
Sources at this late hour...
...are telling me that this blog - yes, this one - is "about to bust wide open". Apparently, in a way that's not bad, for once.That is all.Guess I should dust off the welcome mat again, h...
Thursday, March 03, 2011
E.T. phones home and dials down destruction on Earth!
Very, very disturbing (yet funny) trend I've caught lately happening on the Intertubes. Some clever chaps are taking 1982's beloved film E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial and giving it the Frank Miller/The Dark Knight Returns treatment. Namely, producing faux trailers for grim, dark sequels to E.T.And so far I've found two of these pieces of work!This first one splices together footage from E.T. with another Steven Spielberg movie, War of the Worlds....
A church that requires faith to enter
This is an Orthodox chapel near the city of Chiatura in the former Soviet state of Georgia...Oh yes, you can go in... but first you have the climb a rickety, rusty metal ladder up a 130-feet tall column of rock. The building atop the column was constructed sometime between the sixth and eighth centuries and is thought to have at first been a pagan temple (the rock being ummmm......
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Three people have asked me about Charlie Sheen and bipolar disorder
Perhaps that's been prompted by (A) Charlie Sheen's out-of-control antics during the past 72 hours and (B) the "Being Bipolar" series that I recently started on this blog about my own experiences and struggles with bipolar.And now it's being asked aloud by a lot of bigger news outlets.I'm not too "hip" about things on the celebrity scene. In fact, the last thing that I would ever want to be called is a "celebrity". I am a character. My life is...
Darn you Steve Jobs!
My plans have been thrown afoul... because now I'll have to be here next Friday afternoon to place my order for the iPad 2 on Apple's website.(Mash here for one of Engadget's myriad of articles about the product's unveiling today.)I didn't get an iPad last year, but I fell in love enough with the simplicity of the design that... I knew this was on my short-list of "things I never knew I needed" and ought to have. For more than a decade people have...
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
What I'm about to say has nothing at all to do with "religion"
Christ is the only path toward finding God.But, there are many paths toward finding Christ.Who am I, then, to say that how another another has found Christ is inadequate or even "wrong"? Who are any of us to demand that we have found the "one true" way of discovering Christ, to the exclusion of all others?It would only seem to most matter that Christ is found at all. And He will be found, by those who seek Him... whether they are even conscious...
Monday, February 28, 2011
Frank Buckles, the last surviving United States veteran of World War I, has passed away
In Flanders Fields
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived,...
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Be thankful
My dear readers,I was told that Tim Scales was at a meeting of the school board on Friday night. Everyone that I've spoken to said that he was, as always, full of cheer and good humor and... just full of life.And then, yesterday morning at the Food Lion that he worked at, he collapsed and died. One member of the board tonight said that everyone is still in deep shock about Tim's passing.People, I have asked you for prayer recently. I thank you...
Tim Scales has passed away
This community has lost a respected and admired leader... and a friend to many.The sad word came late last night that Tim Scales, Vice-Chairman of the Rockingham County Schools system here in North Carolina, passed away yesterday morning. He had served on the board since 2000, and had been representing District 6 in the western part of the county.Can't express how torn up...
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
BEING BIPOLAR: Trying to make amends
I don't care what this looks like. This is something that I need to do.I am coming to realize that, during the span of my life I did hurt a lot of people. And even though those were times when I was suffering episodes of my bipolar mania, I still have to own up to all of it.I am counting on this blog being read by many who have been in my life over the years. No, I don't know who you are or where you are. But since two people from my past have...
Saturday, February 19, 2011
BEING BIPOLAR, Part 5: God and Mental Illness
READER ADVISORY: This, the fifth installment of an ongoing series exploring what I have experienced and learned from living with bipolar disorder, contains an account of an extremely graphic nature. My writing about it here marks the first time that I have revealed in public an incident, the nature of which I pray would never happen to anyone. This advisory is not to "warn...
Friday, February 18, 2011
Trailer for ATLAS SHRUGGED: PART 1
Yes, I have seen the new trailers for Thor, and for Captain America: The First Avenger, and for Green Lantern and Transformers: Dark of the Moon and every other trailer out right now for a tentpole movie this year.But I haven't posted about them. If you want to find them, here's YouTube. Knock yourself out.I am however going to post the trailer for Atlas Shrugged: Part 1...The...
Detroit to get geeks-financed statue of RoboCop
I guess if Philadelphia can have a Rocky Balboa statue, and if New York City has one of Ralph Kramden and if Milwaukee has the Fonz as a landmark, then Detroit should get a lasting monument to its own... hero?(Oh yeah, I almost forgot : nearby Mount Airy - the model for Mayberry on The Andy Griffith Show - has that life-sized bronze statue of Andy and Opie going fishing! ...
This blogger is impressed... but just mildly... by Watson's streak on JEOPARDY!
So one of the bigger stories this past week has been IBM's supercomputer Watson beating all-time champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter during a three-game series on Jeopardy!. Watson's final haul was $77,147, with Jennings coming in second with $24,000 and Rutter third with $21,600. During Final Jeopardy! on the last night of the contest Jennings wrote "Who is Stoker?"...
Doug Smith remembers Dale Earnhardt and reflects on NASCAR
Today is the tenth anniversary of the death of NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt Sr.. On this occasion, good friend Doug Smith wrote some thoughts and posted them on Facebook. Doug asked if I could post his essay here as well. I don't follow NASCAR too well, but I remember Earnhardt as being one of the finest drivers to ever be in the sport, and Doug's thoughts about the state...
