The Old Face Of Tolerance In America

The grumpy Gus above is the monster of Frankenstein as imagined by Edison's film production in 1910.
With a face like that selling oranges, what wouldn't buy apples?
Here's what's what: on Morlocks a telefilm of Frankenstein from the 1970's is being heralded for it's depiction of man's greatest triumph-eternal strife, I mean life.
Here's the tolerance thing.
The idea that MAN can somehow, even with stitching together spare parts and adding Gatorade succeed to
eternal life on HIS terms is eminently tolerable.
God plan for Salvation? Not so much.
So...rather than accept that God has a plan in place which could make Eternity quite comfy for you...you would rather the above?
According to Christ: "  ⁶³“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life." John 6:63
If the flesh profits nothing, it doesn't matter if Doc Frankenstein, Hannibal Lecter and the 1st Jubilant Quilters Society all worked together on a project-nada. Zilch would be accomplished, except possibly that the website for the Quilters might seem a bit...garish.
Mary Shelley didn't corner the marquis on this idea. Going along in a similar but similarly odd vein, Robert Heinlein once wrote a story where a dying rich man had his brain inserted into the body of his beautiful female assistant, whose brain had met some untowardly fate.
The rich man woke up. The lady woke up. They shared the body, and this story predated the Steve Martin movie "All Of Me" by at least a decade.
Consciousness in the flesh rather than the spirit? What a horrible thought, that we would continue to have our being in the leftovers buried or burned to ash.
But that would be more tolerable for most than the simple plan of Salvation offered by God.

The New Face Of Intolerance In America

She looks nice, doesn't she? Wait till you get to know her. She recently wrote a column for some newspaper (do we still have those?) which has stirred up a lot of fuss over nothing. It's nothing, really. Except this...lady...saw an opportunity to hitch her wagon to a star-making event, get her name in print, and maybe, just maybe get a job sometime down the road.
I guess opportunism is alive and well in America-and its name and face is Kirsten Powers, which I tell you so you can forget it.
This "journalist" took issue with the fact that the trial of a man accused of killing eight people wasn't getting the media coverage it deserved.
What, Kirsten? Do you know how many murder trials take place in America every day? Should they all make the front page? What if Selena Gomez wears a new hairstyle, huh? That should be shunted to page 16 for a murder trial?
The Doctor is Kermit Gosnell; the ones he is alleged to have murdered are a woman seeking an abortion and seven live fetus which had their necks 'snipped' after birth in a form of murder by decapitation.
He had run what is termed an "abortion clini...

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Sometimes You Fail...S'okay

Well. The neat thing about being fixed in time is we can only see a step or two ahead of us-I couldn't tell you
today what the weather will be like a decade from now. So we deal with what we have now.

 Star Wars was Great. The SW Holiday show? Not so much.

Too much Wookie, not enough Leia and Han. Ambivalent about the other guy and the roboty guys.

In this scene Leia is looking up at the stack of money she was getting to show up. The roboty
guy is mimicking her.
It doesn't always come down to money.
Laid off in January. Hired to do something else in March. The management is concerned
that I might be too old/out of shape to carry my part of the load come Summer. C-ya siesta time.
Back to the old job May 1st for a short term contract.
So-a good idea that didn't work out. S'okay. Whether I live in luxury or starve in a carboard box, God will take care of me, and once I am no longer fixed in time-once I get to Eternity with God, it won't matter what I did here in 2013. I'm already 100% more successful than that beeping trash can seen above. I still have a job.

Working the work work

 Oh yeah- THESE guys. Hansons with an H.

 Newcomer and star. Lindsay Crouse and Paul Newman

.

In color.

Why? Why post this? What does this have to do with the price of peanuts in Pawtucket?
Movie Morlocks, talking about stars who became bigger than the screen personas falling into self-caricature.
Never happened to Paul Newman, though he was one of the biggest. Examples:
The Hansons wouldn't be the Hansons without their taped up glasses. That was their persona.
Lindsey Crouse and Paul Newman: working actors who never fell into the trap of becoming personas,
never became known for a certain image, a singular look. Crouse is still working, according to IMDB, and
though she hasn't had the career of a Newman, she has done good work for decades.
Right now I'm working the work work. I respect the Crouses and Newmans who worked hard at their jobs, who didn't 'coast' or take it easy, becoming older versions of their star-making roles.
I have to get up and do, and I may never 'retire' until I can't. Keep working.

E O D

My hands aren't blue-I used my MacBook to snap the picture, and there it is.
E O D. Explosive Ordnance Disposal. They do the most dangerous work
to keep others safe. I have and wear this pin for a Marine who died doing just that.
What happened Monday in Boston is a terrible, horrible event which should never have happened.
I hope that President Obama is right when he said, "those responsible for the attacks in Boston would "feel the full weight of justice.".
I hope so. I know that it will happen when God judges those responsible. 
May God Bless Boston and those around the world who have been touched by this act of terror. 
And may God have no Mercy on those who did this.

The Blessing Of Forgottenness

Musing about pain today, and how it is a blessing that each pain we feel, that is, physical pain, can end.
There are pains which do not go away, but I'm talking about the sometimes pains that do have an
expiration date, that don't stay with us forever.
Example-my young friends just had a baby, and it seemed that she carried the babe for just about a
year, though of course it was the regulation 9 months. That pain, and the birthing pain subside and are
forgotten.
A week ago (and I'm not comparing this with childbirth pain-just an example) I hurt myself kinda bad
overdoing physical labor at work. Pain lasted a few days, but now I'm tip top.
There IS a blessing in not storing aches and pains continually. I call that good design-God knows how much we can bear, and how frail our frame.
Looking at my right hand I can't hardly see the 15 stitches that once graced two fingers. That never actually
hurt much, but the point is that even the flesh forgets it's wounds eventually. Praise God for imperfect memory!

Society's Dustbin

This post may not make a lot of sense, but bear with me for a few. Today I read a movie review
where a graveyard was offhandedly referred to as "Society's dustbin".
Naw.
It isn't a trash repository. No one would decorate a garbage can. But often graveyards are beautiful, as if in hope that those whose remains remain will take cheer at their surroundings, their their visitors will more easily
consider their loved ones to be in Heaven because their dust and ashes reside in beauty.
I read that Jonathan Winters passed away today; his second best movie was "The Loved One" where he played the greedy hypocritical owner of a very high class graveyard. Now his remains will end up in one.
Where my body-turned-to-ashes will reside makes no difference to me-I may buy a plot near my family, but
would be just as pleased, sensing death near, to walk off into the woods and lay down under a tree.  
My view would be that of the picture above, titled "Fall Up" as it shows autumn still up in the trees from the underside. I've always liked how the shadows of leaves lay upon other leaves. That would be better than a headstone.

Gully Foyle Is My Name

Not MY name, of course, but you get it.
Spring cleaning, aka not cleaning my home, getting sidetracked
every few minutes by re-discoveries, set me on a path that brought me here.
First, putting my DVDs in order, I discovered that I do still have "Firefly-the complete series" on Blu ray-thought it lost-which has nothing to do with this post.
Turning to the right, I viewed my mess of a bookcase. Rather than restoring order, I picked up an anthology of mysteries, one authored by Ray Bradbury-still nothing, postwise.
But Bradbury's bio mentioned Lewis Padgett, a pen name for Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore, which led me back to the intra-nets to read up which mentioned in passing Alfred Bester, and here we are.
My perfect record of not having seen any/read any of the Harry Potter/sparkly vampire/Twilight books/ movies remains intact. I haven't been 'Twee" aged since the mid seventies.
But back in those days I did read quite a bit of SF; conversations about movies at Movie Morlocks recently sparked the idea that I wouldn't mind seeing Roger Zelazny's "Amber" series being given the big screen treatment-if childish magic and vamp love can generate sequels ad infi-boredum, why not spend the milobucks on something with teeth and meat?
Amber, with it's princes and princesses of Amber and Chaos, blood feuds and wars and all of that predates and is more expansive that George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones. It has teeth.
As does Alfred Bester's "The Stars My Destination" which for me is an allegory of the 1950's political landscape in the same way as 1956's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers".
It also rips up the rich (Hollywood's ears just perked up) and major corporations (Hollywood is cheering) in a way that would be quite cinematic-ally interesting.
More space opera than Sci Fi, I would enjoy also seeing E.E. "Doc" Smith's "Lensman" series in film. All of the "Star Wars" films to date would amount to about half of one book of "Triplanetary", the first in the series.
But now, in the mid-afternoon of my life, I imagine that more of what I'd like to see happen won't. Much of what I have seen I will see repeated. S'okay. Waiting for the Millennium. By then I should have my house clean.

Arrivanoches, Roger

Well, they just couldn't let it go-the nutcase Wierdsboro {allegedly} Baptist churchers decided that
Roger Ebert needed a dishonor guard at his funeral.
I wasn't going to write about Ebert, as I wasn't a fan of his reviews or opinions. Sad that he died.
                                                                 shrugs
But the WBC crowd had to stink up the place with their hate spewing. They give Democrats a bad name.
In case anyone's thinking, "Wait a minuto, Doug! You just commented for the 18,000 time about homosexuals being sinners bound for hell-isn't that what the WBC believes?"
Allegedly. One major difference is that I try to follow the Bible:
"Bless your enemies. Be kind to those who hate you." That's a paraphrase, but you get the idea-Christians are called to pray for their enemies. Not shout and hold signs at solemn events where we were not invited.
If they were true Christians, rather than holding hateful placards at funerals, they would be in their church
praying for the Eberts of the world.
I'm not saying this now to boast, but to share a point:
in many ways, I oppose nearly all of the policies of President Obama. I think he is wrong about just about everything.
But I, as a Christian, and my church as a church body pray for President Obama, and for those in government under whom we live. Every Wednesday night my church meets for prayer; government officials, from President Obama down to the city level are listed and prayed for.
I pray for his salvation, that God will draw him to Himself and give him the faith to believe and be saved.
I pray that God will humble him and cause him to repent of his sins.
Would I ever picket a place, such as some Christians do at abortion clinic? I don't know. If I felt that God wanted me to do so, I would. He once had one of his prophets walk around naked to shame the Israelites
who needed shaming. I hope it doesn't come to that.
My point is: there's a distinction between Christians who try to live by God's teachings and those such as the Westboro crowd who only hate. You may not see  a difference, but for me it's there.

He Who Hates Loses

On the surface, the signage above may seem to rip on Christians. Nope. It would be true if Christians, as a group, went about killing everyone that they consider enemies. We are more the peaceful type.
Here's what God set down on a mountain once: "Thou Shalt Not Kill". Pretty clear, right?
In the context of the commandment 'kill' means murder. We aren't to murder, take a life or lives unjustly. All through the Bible people are justifiably killed; God Himself knocked the stuffins out of  pagans, driving them out of the Promised Land to make room for Israel.
Scripture also tells us to be obedient to governments that we live under. If your government has a death penalty for crimes, that government is not murdering criminals, but is being just.
This is also why Christians join the rest of their countrymen in taking up arms in defense of their countries-if your government sends you to war, you are obedient to your government and go.
I wish the Muslims, who pay lip service to Jesus as a prophet while rejecting the idea that God could have a son-I wish that Muslims would take the sign above to heart. It would make for a better world.

Friends, If I Have Ofended You...

...then good.
"⁶For this is contained in Scripture:      “Behold, I lay in Zion a choice stone, a precious corner stone,     And he who believes in Him will not be disappointed.”
⁷This precious value, then, is for you who believe; but for those who disbelieve,      “The stone which the builders rejected,     This became the very corner stone,”
⁸and,      “A stone of stumbling and a rock of offense”; for they stumble because they are disobedient to the word, and to this doom they were also appointed.
⁹But you are a chosen race, A royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; 
¹⁰for you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy." 1 Peter 2:6-10
"²²For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; 
²³but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, 
²⁴but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God."
1 Cor 1:22-24

Put in simple English, the message of the passages above is that the Gospel IS offensive.
Those who are 'disobedient to the word' stumble. To their doom.
"we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness"
The Jews were looking for a Messiah who would save them from Roman rule, establishing His Kingdom.
They saw no savior in Christ, recognized no proper sacrifice in His cross. 
The Greeks were looking for wisdom, and saw no wisdom, but utter foolishness in a supposed King
who allowed Himself to be put to death.

BUT...among Jews first and then the rest of the world, God still declares "to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God."