Thursday, July 27, 2023

Dr. Caligari Had a Better Cabinet

 There's been a shuffle of Canada's Parliamentary Cabinet. Surely each candidate was carefully vetted and is the wisest possible choice for their position. Let's look at a sample.


The new Minister of Transport is a drunk driver. 


The new Minister of Mental Health has said, publicly and apparently not in absurdist jest, that "Honk Honk," as used in memes and online posts about the Freedom Convoy protests, "is an anachronym for Heil Hitler."


The returning (!) Minister for Women thinks that men in dresses are women. 


Truly this be the clownest of worlds.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of CD players. If you don't know what those are, ask somebody who had to ask their parents what a record player was.


Friday, May 20, 2022

Reading Log 2022

 Reading Log - Playing Catchup, 2022 Edition

Part one in a possible series. This is another batch of books that have been on my "already read" shelf for a long time. Once again, I don't remember much about most of them, which itself may say something. I'm doing a major purge / reorganization and need to free up the shelf space, so off we go.


Top 10 of Everything 2013 - one of those books of lists and brief articles that I used to like propping open on the table to read while I ate. Nowadays I almost never even eat at the kitchen table, much less read while doing so. The year in this book's title, along with the tag in it indicating I received it as a Christmas present in 2012, are probably good indicators of how long it's been on that shelf.


UnPHILtered by Phil Robertson with Mark Schlabach. I don't remember anything specific about this book, but I still miss seeing the Robertsons regularly on TV.

I discovered Duck Dynasty largely by accident. I'd heard the name, but thought it was just another reality show about vapid rich people. Then I happened across an interview with a guy in waders and camo overalls standing in a fountain on what looked like a university campus, talking about Jesus. It was terrific, and I soon learned his name: Jase Robertson. I decided to give his show a chance, and was pleased to find out it was about a likeable family who have values and actually love and respect one another. I became a regular viewer. I also liked the spinoffs - even Going Si-Ral.

My copy of this book also contained a makeshift bookmark that's a hint as to how long it's been on the shelf: a parking receipt from 2015.


The War Against Boys by Christina Hoff Sommers. The attempt to define traditional masculinity as pathology is a particularly destructive and pernicious aspect of the postmodern ethos. That particular crusade seems to have become more subtle, shifting from an attack on masculinity to denial of the very concept of gender. Watching various lunatics try to avoid using terms like "man" and "woman" in favour of nonsense like "penis owner" and "person who menstruates" would be amusing if there weren't people out there deranged enough to take it all seriously. "Terf" is now one of the harshest insults that can be hurled; as far as I can tell, it means, "person who understands that there are actual biological differences between men and women." Or, put more succinctly, "sane person."

This book was an excellent overview of late-twentieth-century progressive attempts to damage boys and turn them into ineffectual men. Sadly, that effort bore some fruit, largely in the form of the aforementioned deranged "woke." The warning that Sommers sounded probably prevented some further damage.

When my son entered elementary school, I took a tour of his classroom. I noticed that the books in the classroom didn't fit the postmodern, gender-erasing model, many of them being obviously designed to appeal to either boys or girls. I remarked on that fact (in approving, less inflammatory terms) to the teacher. She said that the experiment with "gender-neutral" books had run its course, because children weren't interested in them and gravitated naturally to books "for their sex." It was nice to see a public school do something right. That was a long time ago, though, and by now that teacher has probably either radicalized or been driven out.

I recently learned that Sommers has publicly stated that she's pro-choice. That seems incongruous, given how sensible she is otherwise. A quick search makes it look like she's not militant on this issue, though, so I'm hopeful that she simply hasn't applied her logical rigour to it - or even that she simply doesn't want to bother arguing about it with morally bankrupt, scientifically illiterate zealots, so she proffers a weak pro-choice position to move on from the topic. 


Never Trust a Liberal Over 3 - Especially a Republican by Ann Coulter. I agree with Ann Coulter probably 90% of the time and usually find her edifying and entertaining, even if I sometimes find she crosses the line into cheap shots. But I no longer feel any great need to read all of her weekly columns, or even her more recent books. Maybe it's because I've heard it all, maybe it's part of a general "letting go of stuff" feeling I've had lately. 

With Coulter, though, at least some of it has to do with an area where I'm not quite on the same page as her: illegal immigration. I'm floating in the noncommittal middle on this subject. As much as I appreciate the benefits and blessings of my country, I'm not much of a patriot or nationalist. The Bible clearly teaches to treat the alien / foreigner among us kindly (Leviticus 19:34, among others), and I don't see any qualifiers about their legal status. But it also teaches that the rule of civic law is to be respected (Romans 13). At the same time, completely open borders are simply not feasible or sustainable. So I'm left grateful that there's no real need for me to take a firm position.

Coulter definitely has a firm position. That's fine; even if I rejected a writer for disagreeing with me about something, I couldn't argue against her any more than I can argue for her. However, I found her weekly columns, when I last read them regularly, getting awfully repetitive. Too many installments seemed to be essentially listing crimes committed by illegal immigrants. It got boring fast. I still check in sometimes, but only sporadically.


The Atheist Syndrome by John P. Koster - Koster describes atheism as a religion unto itself, with dogma and prophets. He examines prominent atheists (Darwin, Freud, Huxley, and Neitzsche) to reveal their similar histories (overbearing fathers leading to resentment toward and rejection of God as a paternal figure), then their legacies of death and destruction. Whenever man decides there is no God, he effectively decides that he himself is God, and chaos follows as everyone does what is right in their own eyes. Koster's book is illuminating.


Genesis by Janis Schacht - a 1984 book about one of my favourite bands. It follows the standard template for books that just use an artist's name as the title. A history of the group, album writeups, member profiles, etc., with no noteworthy revelations or controversial statements.  A fine read if you aren't already familiar with the broad strokes of the band's history, and nothing you haven't heard before if you are. Worth picking up if it's cheap, but very much supplanted by Collins and Rutherford's own far more recent memoirs.


The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Reading this book (and East of Eden) left me wondering how such a great book had never been brought to my attention before. I had the same reaction the first time I saw the movie Network: "How come nobody told me about this?!?"

I narrowly missed out on reading The Grapes of Wrath in university. I was a Religious Studies major, and the school I attended had three tracks in its RS department: Biblical studies, theology, and world religions. If memory serves, I took almost every course in the theology track, none in the world religions track, and every course but one in the Biblical studies track. I regretted missing out on the one Biblical course I didn't take; the lead Biblical professor was an excellent scholar and teacher, and it was a privilege to learn from him. I had a schedule conflict with the only time that last course was offered, though. That one course was The Bible in Literature, in which Biblical references, allusions, and influences in the canon of literature were studied. The course's major project was a deep dive into The Grapes of Wrath.

As for why I didn't take any world religions courses - I was already a Christian, although an embarrassingly immature one, by the time I entered university. I had no interest in studying other religions in any depth. There's a reason why Treasury agents learn to detect counterfeit currency by studying authentic bills until they know them intimately and can spot any deviation. Yes, knowing the telltale signs of common counterfeits is useful (and it's why I've since looked into the main teachings of cults and non-Christian religions), but the best defense against counterfeits is deep knowledge of the authentic.

The Grapes of Wrath is a masterwork. And I say this despite disagreeing rather strongly with some of Steinbeck's obvious political leanings and sympathies (In Dubious Battle is far more hamfisted). Steinbeck's writing is simply beautiful. Almost every page contains at least one sentence that stands as a near-poetic work of art in its own right. The plot is compelling, the characters are sympathetic and strongly drawn, and Steinbeck made some very brave choices. The book was condemned as obscene in some quarters, partly due to its communistic themes but largely for the ending, and I have to admit I didn't quite get what happened on the last page until I reread it a couple of times. I wouldn't expect most writers even today to get away with the ending, and virtually none could carry it off as skillfully.


Based on a True Story: A Memoir by Norm MacDonald. Norm MacDonald's recent death was a massive loss to comedy. Bob Newhart now reigns unrivalled as the funniest man alive. But sadly, even he won't be with us forever, and there's no obvious successor. Norm was the only other candidate. Their collaborations were far too rare, but their combined talents gave us a great slow-burn sketch that Norm wrote, with Bob trying to redirect a disgruntled postal worker's potential violence. 

As for this book - it's brilliant, and hilarious. I would have expected nothing less from Norm. I can't say more without spoiling it.

I recently saw The World's End, starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Major spoilers for it ahead. What I'm about to say will also indirectly spoil Norm's book a little.

I knew nothing about The World's End going in except those two stars. I loved Shaun of the Dead, and consciously decided to go into this movie (and Hot Fuzz, which I watched around the same time and also rate very highly) with no advance knowledge. For the first while, The The World's End is a poignant and funny story about a group of reunited friends, with a dark undercurrent of one of the group feeling like he peaked during their younger years and has nothing to look forward to. That was a perfectly good story, and was being told entertainingly. 

Then something happens that completely changes not only what the movie's about, but even what type / genre of movie we're watching. It veers into completely unhinted territory, but continues to be entertaining and compelling (and to hold onto the themes of friendship and failure). It's great.

Norm's book does something similar. At the beginning I thought he had just written a straightforward funny memoir, like many of his fellow Saturday Night Live alumni have done. Then, out of nowhere, along comes a turn. At first I thought he was doing a very Norm MacDonald-esque bit, and we would return to the narrative shortly. Nope. Norm straps the entire book to a booster rocket and blasts off for parts unknown. Genius.

I miss Norm, and I'm far from alone. At least we still have I'm Not Norm , a YouTube channel dedicated to his work. 


Real Marriage by Mark and Grace Driscoll. Setting aside the later controversies around Mark Driscoll's ministry (allegations of bullying and abuse of authority, sadly all too common in the megachurch culture), I vaguely remember this book as being fine for what it is. The only part I remember specifically is an entire section of "Are we allowed to do <various acts>?" sex questions from married couples. The Driscolls consistently answer, that as long as your intimacy is shared only between you and your spouse (i.e., no adultery or third parties involved), everything's fully consensual, and no one is being hurt, then that's entirely up to you. Not only do I agree, I can't understand why a Christian couple would even ask the question.


The Stranger on the Road to Emmaus by John R. Cross - a terrific explanation of Christian beliefs, suitable for the questioning, those young in the faith, and the more mature as a refresher and teaching tool. Highly recommended.


The Enemy Within: Terror, Lies, and the Whitewashing of Omar Khadr by Ezra Levant. My interest in Levant, like Coulter above, has become less active over the years. Once again, I still generally agree with him, but there's only so long one can listen to even arguments for their own positions. When Sun News first started, I was a daily viewer of Levant's show. I gradually drifted away, simply because it became repetitive. I'm not a big fan of Rebel Media, mainly because they need to fundraise and pander so much to niche elements to survive. If the CTRC had treated Sun News remotely fairly, they'd still be on the air and that wouldn't be an issue.

As for this book, I don't remember much specific. I still think Omar Khadr was old enough to know what he was doing, and that he is culpable for the death of Christopher Speer. I'm not sure he should have spent the rest of his life in prison, but very sure that he didn't deserve a payout from the Canadian government. I'm dubious that he was tortured in custody by any reasonable definition of the word, although he was certainly manipulated during his questioning, like any suspect of a serious crime. He seems to have kept his nose clean since his release, and I hope he continues to do so. But he's still a young man, and only the future will tell.


Peace Kills by P.J. O'Rourke - I still like P.J. O'Rourke, and made lots of notes (none of which I'm taking time to transcribe here) while reading this book. My drifting from reading his work, unlike Levant and Coulter, stemmed partly from him having become less prolific in later years. It's not (entirely) me, it's him. And I just found out he died., which will probably slow his output even more.


The World Treasury of Modern Religious Thought, edited by Jeroslav Pelikan. This exemplifies that counterfeit study I mentioned earlier. Lots of highlighting in my copy.


Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking, Sixth Edition by Browne and Keeley. I'm not going too deeply into my personal info, but I have some formal training as an analyst. I've read lots of books and taken several academic courses on critical thinking and bias detection, much of which focusses on trying to identify and reduce the effect of your own personal biases, which everyone has. This book was fairly useful, as far as I remember. It's disheartening to see the level of discourse on social media these days, when too many on any side of any issue are mashing their keyboards to post variants on "Everybody who doesn't agree with me is DUM HURR DURR DURR."


The Everyday Guide to the Bible by Carol Smith (who is oddly uncredited on the cover). A dollar store find. Perfectly good for what it is, with brief summaries of each book and thematic overviews.


The Wealthy Barber by David Chilton. Personal finance has been an interest of mine over the years, but it took me a long time to get around to actually reading this book. I think at this point Chilton's observations and advice are so well-known and established that they seem to have passed into common knowledge, making the book seem simplistic. It isn't; when it was first published, it was innovative and is actually foundational to current financial wisdom.


Revelation Unveiled by Tim LaHaye - very interesting and informative. I'm not sure I fully concur with LaHaye's thesis that each of the seven churches correspond to a historical age, but it's certainly food for thought.


The Complete Gospels, edited by Robert J,. Miller. I've seen fellow Christians write that they need a stamp for some of the books in their library: "Heretical garbage, for research purposes only." One of these days, I should have one made.

This book is a a product of the Jesus Seminar, a collection of "scholars" who presume to decide on Biblical authority by vote. They are not to be taken seriously. I have it because it's a competent compilation, for reference purposes, of the known apocryphal "Gospels." A quick read of most of them demonstrates why they were rejected by the Church. They contain a great deal of obvious nonsense, sometimes reaching the level of blasphemy. In the fourth chapter of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Jesus, still a child, loses his temper and strikes another boy dead for having bumped into him. IN the following chapter, he makes the parents of those boys blind as punishment for having objected. These are not tales of the Jesus that Christians worship (hence the lack of capitalized pronouns in those last few sentences).

The Seminar also have the nerve to present their versions of the four Biblical Gospels, going to great pains to undermine traditional Biblical authority and the Divinity of Jesus. For example, these quotations from the introduction to their version of the Gospel of John [sic throughout]:

"Jesus speaks not like the first-century itinerant teacher that he in fact was but as if he were from heaven..."

"There is in this gospel very little of the historical Jesus' actual teaching .. and it is not altogether certain that this Beloved Disciple, as he has usually been known, was in fact a real person."

The footnotes are full of similar pernicious implications. This book is useful as reference, but in the same manner that a laboratory might keep samples of poisons on hand to study and synthesize antidotes. Heretical garbage, for research purposes only.

 

The Art of Cross-Examination, by Francis L. Wellman. I used to work for an organization that conducted fact-finding investigations with fairly high stakes if shenanigans on the part of our "clients" were uncovered. I was an office drone, far below the level of the employees who got to have all the investigative fun.

One day an opportunity was extended to a selected bunch of us drones: we could begin participating directly in investigations, by conducting preliminary telephone interviews. No extra pay, and if we found anything it got sent off to a real employee to follow up, but we'd be in the game. Training was promised. I signed up.

This book comes in because I read it while working at that organization, in hopes of one day participating in these sort of interviews. By the time a client was talking to one of our people, they generally already knew they were under the microscope, and their attitudes ranged from evasive to hostile. I figured the more I knew about detecting deception and getting the truth out of reluctant subjects, the better.

When the training began, we were handed scripts with laughably useless questions (Think, "Have you committed any felonies you'd like to tell us about?") and told we'd only be talking to people who had reached out to us - i.e., nobody who had any reason to think they were under investigation, almost always because they weren't. We were forbidden to deviate from the exact wording of the scripts. I immediately got that this project wasn't being done to enhance the organization's legitimate operations, it was being done so the suits above me could tell the suits above them that they'd increased our investigative capacity without actually making any effort or spending any money. I bailed out literally within minutes of beginning "training."

I don't remember anything specific about the book. This was all a very long time ago.


Stopping here for this one. Still lots and lots of books left on the shelf


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of the current sociopolitical climate in the U.S. (and, to some degree, Canada).



Saturday, October 30, 2021

Crowder May Or May Not Agree

 Hi there.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of something I made with a meme generator.




Monday, October 4, 2021

2021

This morning I went to church. We had about a third of our usual attendance. Everyone was wearing masks, had to show documentation of personal medical information to be allowed into the building, and was careful to stay six feet away from anyone who isn't part of their own household. 


Then we all sang a song with the refrain, "I'm no longer a slave to fear..."



Enough rambling. Here's a picture of a one-eyed dog. Bonus trivia fact: Genesis have recorded two songs about one-eyed dogs. That was not a major factor in having this one's eye removed. Not that it was nonzero, but the glaucoma was the main reason.



Wednesday, November 4, 2020

Mid-Election Hooptedoodle, 2020 Edition

 I wrote this not long after the 2008 election:


Someone else came over to me the day after the election and, clearly hoping to gloat, asked what I thought of the results. I said, "What a horrible, humiliating night...for Obama."

Their eyebrows shot up, and they asked how I could possibly say that.

"Easy. After Bush's two terms, given his incredibly low approval ratings and popularity, the Democrats should have been able to nominate a lava lamp and get almost 500 electoral votes. Obama's under 400. His winning by that close a margin is like me playing one-on-one against Michael Jordan, and his winning by ten baskets to seven. Nobody expected me to win, but the fact that it was that close is embarrassing to him."


Multiply that by... well, a really big number to understand how mortified Biden and his supporters should be by the current uncertainty. The mainstream media and the jobless left have spent four years caterwauling nonstop about President Trump. Some small percentage of it was even justified. He's been continually and loudly condemned as a monster, a buffoon, a tyrant. 

And the best and brightest that the Democrats could muster, with four years to prepare, is currently in a dead heat with him, too close to call. Imagine being pitted against the love child of Hitler and Charles Manson in a popularity contest and having the voters unable to decide which of you they prefer.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of sunglasses.



Friday, April 24, 2020

2020


Anyone who's upset over the government easing COVID-19 restrictions should be relieved that the virus isn't transmitted by licking boots.

Enough rambling. Here's a picture of otters.


Saturday, August 31, 2019

Reading Log: Playing Catchup


The last few years have gone by much more quickly than I'd expected. I never stopped intending to write "Reading Log" entries for each book I finished, although I was developing a backlog even when I was blogging regularly. I've kept adding books to a shelf reserved for future articles. That shelf is overflowing. When I look at it, I honestly don't remember ever having opened some of them. The article below will be based on my memories and impressions of the books, and may contain wild inaccuracies at this point, especially as my brain exaggerates things I really liked or hated.

This is a meagre attempt at briefly acknowledging some of these books, largely so I can get rid of them and reclaim the shelf space. My original plan had been to go much deeper into each one.

Keep that in mind as this gets long. I wanted it to be even worse.



Anna Karenin by Tolstoy - this was part of my push to read some of the "classics" of literature. It was a slog. So many pages of rambling about farming techniques and the boring lives of the idle rich (who are nonetheless plagued by money problems - cutting back on the "idle" part would probably help with that).

My memories of Anna herself are that she's a horrible character. Completely selfish and irresponsible. The second-most contemptible female protagonist I can remember ever reading about. (First place will show up shortly.)

Finally, from the back cover of my Penguin Classics edition:

"In this tragedy of a fashionable woman who abandons husband, son, and social position for a passionate liaison which finally drives her to suicide..."

Dude, spoilers!

Nice use of the serial comma, though. All is forgiven.



Suicide Squad: Trial By Fire v1 by John Ostrander, Luke McDonnell, et. al. - I started reading comics when I was a toddler. For many years, all my favourite comics and characters were from Marvel. I had a massive Spider-Man collection, and lengthy runs of many of Marvel's other titles. Although I was well aware of DC and had a few hundred scattered issues of their books (compared to several thousand Marvels), I only really followed Teen Titans and special events like Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Suicide Squad hit the stands not long after I hit adolescence, just as I was outgrowing straightforward stories of good versus evil and was ready for some moral gray areas. Things don't get much grayer than Suicide Squad. It immediately became my favourite comic, a position it held until Hitman - another book with a thoroughly non-heroic protagonist - came along a decade or so later. Hitman and Suicide Squad were also two of the very few titles I kept when I sold the vast majority of my collection.

This is a compilation of the first few issues of the 1980s incarnation of the Squad, plus a few bonus features. It's a fine collection, and one I was surprised and disappointed to find on clearance at a comic shop. Too bad its cover reprints the cover from the second issue, not Howard Chaykin's striking art from the premiere.

Overall the comic holds up well, and is far better than the movie. Although the movie shares a basic premise and some story beats from Ostrander's original series (including Slipknot's attempted escape at Boomerang's urging, with the same explosive result), it was far inferior. The inclusion of Harley Quinn and the character assassination of Amanda Waller were mistakes. In the comics, although Waller will ruthlessly sacrifice her field agents for the sake of the mission, she's deeply loyal to and protective of the Squad's support staff. In the movie she personally slaughters a bunch of her own office staff for no good reason.



The Chrysanthemums and Other Stories by John Steinbeck - this is a tiny book. 58 pages, about three by four inches. I noticed it for a couple of bucks when I was browsing ABE.com, so I ordered it because it was a Steinbeck book I didn't have. My interest in Steinbeck resurged somewhere in the last few years, and I resumed gradual pursuit of my old goal of reading his entire output. At least the fiction. I'm not sure I'm interested in reading the travelogues.

In addition to the title story, this pocket-size edition contains Flight and The Murder. All three demonstrate Steinbeck's penchant for never giving anybody a happy ending. And although I'm far from "woke", as only mindless drones say unironically, even I found the gender politics of The Murder problematic. A quick Googling told me I'm far from alone.

I found a few oddball little collections like this over the years, short stories in varying combinations, often overlapping but usually containing a story or two I hadn't read yet. Then it occurred to me to check into the publication history, and I learned that all the stories were from The Long Valley, so I stopped accumulating samplers and bought that instead.



Not Dead Yet by Phil Collins - this is a terrific memoir. Funny, informative, and insightful. Phil exposes a lot of his own faults and failings, and comes off as immensely likeable.

Some of the anecdotes are gold. I especially liked the story of his being cut from George Harrison's All Things Must Pass album and later being teased  - and pranked - about it by Harrison himself.

Musically, my favourite member of Genesis is Tony Banks, the group's keyboard player and for many years primary composer. Tony doesn't come off as well in this book. Although it's clear that Phil likes and respects Tony, he doesn't gild that Tony can be abrasive and hard to work with. Mike Rutherford's memoir said the same, perhaps even more bluntly. (I read that one too, but don't own a copy, so it isn't on the shelf for me to discuss any further.)

My ownership of this book has a funny history. I don't think I even knew it existed when I stumbled upon cheap copies on ABE.com (where a lot of my books come from these days). I bought it, read it, enjoyed it very much, and gave it to a friend who I thought would appreciate it. Then a few months later I was given a brand new copy as a Christmas gift. I was glad to get it, because I was hesitant to part with the first one.



Beyond Freedom and Dignity by B.F. Skinner - I have no memory of reading this book. It's got one of my stickers inside the front cover, with my name, when and where I bought it, and how much I paid for it, and it's been highlighted, as is my wont when reading non-fiction (and sometimes even fiction). But when I picked it up from the stack to write this entry, I didn't remember ever having seen it before. That's going to happen a lot here.

I remember B.F. Skinner, certainly. I remember reading Walden Two (which may be further down the pile), and I remember writing a paper on him on the way to getting my psychology degree. I remember that some of his conditioning principles are quite interesting and useful for educational purposes, but potentially totalitarian if applied too broadly.

From a quick skim through the passages I highlighted and the first line on the back cover ("We can no longer afford freedom, says B.F. Skinner"), it's plain that we're crossing into totalitarianism here. Funny how so many people see nothing wrong with removing all sorts of essential freedoms from others - as long as they're the ones who get to decide who's restricted and how. Just as apocalypse stories are popular because everybody imagines themselves as one of the survivors, fascism fantasies always involve being one of the (very few) rulers, not one of the (very many) subjects. Skinner was just another wannabe tyrant.

Long ago one of my friends dismissively summarized libertarianism as, "Do whatever you want as long as you don't hurt me." I corrected him by saying that it's closer to, "Do whatever you want as long as you don't hurt anybody." This is why libertarians should, and often do, oppose abortion as a violation of the non-aggression principle. For Skinner, and other elitists who think their principles should be imposed on others, the non-aggression principle gets tossed out the window before the car leaves the driveway.



Super Freakonomics by Levitt & Dubner - the original Freakonomics caused a stir by suggesting that normalizing elective abortion reduces crime rates down the road, because many of those abortion victims would have grown up in circumstances that correlate highly with criminal activity. Levitt & Dubner went out of their way to insist that they weren't endorsing this, they were just observing the logical connection. There may be a technically valid point there, but it's still repugnant. It amounts to preemptive, speculative capital punishment. It's almost unbelievable that we now need to explain to some that it's wrong to kill people because of what they *might* do in the future, but here we are.

As for this sequel, once again I have no memory of having read it. That's not a good sign. I love books about unintuitive connections and surprising phenomena. Whenever I read something by Malcolm Gladwell or Nassim Nicholas Taleb, I bore the people around me with, "Hey, did you know...?" stories for a while afterward. Even skimming the back cover and table of contents for this one brings back nothing. That's a pretty good indication that there was nothing interesting there when I actually read it.



That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis - as with Steinbeck, my goal of reading all of Lewis's works plods along glacially. And again like Steinbeck, I make an exception: I have no interest in reading Lewis's early poetry, partly because he wrote it before becoming a Christian, and therefore before becoming relevant, but mostly because, well, it's poetry. Pass.

This book, Out of the Silent Planet, and Perelandra (amusingly referred to on the back cover of this book by the apparent alternate title "Voyage to Venus") together comprise Lewis's "science fiction trilogy." I usually dislike the entire sci-fi genre. I've never seen a single Star Trek episode or Matrix movie, and although I've watched Blade Runner repeatedly in hopes of catching a glimpse of what others enjoy about it, it just gets worse every time. However, I liked Lewis's trilogy. That may be partly because it's a playful, innocent form of science fiction. One of the books hinges on an interplanetary journey taken in a spaceship constructed in an English backyard garden, presumably using household tools and materials. It's like reading about the Backyardigans or Muppet Babies taking a voyage to the stars, and is clearly not meant to be taken seriously or analysed as to scientific plausibility. For these books, the allegories and spiritual messages are the point. And on that level, Lewis succeeds entirely.

I actually listened to the entire trilogy as audiobooks, and enjoyed them very much. I read along with That Hideous Strength as I listened, and noted passages in the audio that weren't in my printed copy. There's a preface by Lewis in which he acknowledges the abridgement "to a length suitable for this edition." I may continue to watch for an unabridged copy, if such a thing is readily available.

The entire trilogy blurs together now. I couldn't tell you now which story elements were in which book. I enjoyed it all, though, and appreciated the Christian themes throughout. There's a planet of unfallen inhabitants who are corrupted by a visit from Earthlings; the humans become the Serpent from Genesis, tempting the pristine creatures into sin. And one section was particularly creepy, with a cosmonaut trapped in a spaceship with a demon-possessed colleague who just kept staring at him and calmly repeating his name, over and over, until it nearly drove him to madness.



We The Living by Ayn Rand - and here we have that worst female protagonist mentioned earlier.

Ayn Rand is a complex figure. She had some good philosophical ideas, mostly around individualism, personal responsibility, and the immorality of socialism. This leads to many conservatives, especially young ones, admiring and referring to her. However, when you dig deeper -and it doesn't take far - you quickly see that Rand elevates individualism to selfishness and personal responsibility to condemnation of altruism. Her responsibly self-reliant citizen quickly becomes a sociopath. The conservative, especially the Christian conservative, soon has to part ways with most of her principles.

Rand herself was a thoroughly unpleasant person. In an appearance on Donahue she was cranky and unreasonable, insisting that anyone who questioned her was being rude and didn't deserve a response. This is an early prototype of the modern leftist tactic of accusing sane people of whatever bigotry or other heresy they can think of and urging that dissidents be silenced  ("deplatformed"). Her personal life was no better. She may have had the germ of some good ideas (I still have hopes for Atlas Shrugged, which is in both my to-read pile and to-watch folder of movies on a hard drive), but she should not be seen as any sort of role model.

On to the book. If Anna Karenin was a five out of ten on the selfish-and-irresponsible scale, Kira, the protagonist of We The Living, is a solid ten. She's utterly amorally pragmatic, with no concerns past what benefits her. The costs to those around her, those who for some reason care about her, don't matter, and "right" and "wrong" aren't relevant categories in her mind.

Kira is more than willing to use sex as a tool to manipulate the men unfortunate enough to cross paths with her, freely getting naked and swapping fluids at will. I'm pretty sure there's a word (maybe more than one) for women who barter access to their bodies for personal gain. Even stranger is that despite the frequency of her liaisons, I never had a sense that Kira took any pleasure or gratification in sex. It was just mechanical. She seems almost personally asexual but willing to broker her anatomy with all the passion of a salesman spreading open the pages of an encyclopedia for display to a prospective customer.

So, Rand wrote a book with an awful protagonist. Doesn't mean anything about her as a person, right? We don't think Vince Gilligan is a monster because he created Walter White.

Hey, what's this quote from Rand on the back cover?
"..it is as near to an autobiography as I will ever write....The specific events of Kira's life were not mine; her ideas, her convictions, her values, were and are."
Welp, I guess we're done with this one.



Thy Kingdom Comics by Adam 4d - I'm a big fan of Adam 4d's work. He's a contemporary C.S. Lewis. He's not saying anything revolutionary or new, but he's teaching Christian truths clearly, with humour, and accessibly enough to reach a broad audience.

Adam's comics are freely available online at https://adam4d.com/. I bought the book for the same reason I buy most of the books, movies, and music that I bother with these days: because I wanted to financially support his work. I bought extra copies to give away.

Fun side note: for a long time I thought he was just using a nickname, and when I told people about his work (which happened frequently), I pronounced his name as though he were a Star Wars robot: "Adam Four-Dee." Turns out his name is "Adam Ford."



Magical Mystery Tours: My Life with the Beatles by Tony Bramwell (with Rosemary Kingsland) - Tony Bramwell worked for the Beatles in varying capacities from the group's earliest days to the end, then went to on a long career behind the scenesd in the music industry. I assume this book holds to the rule of "with" authorship - Kingsland probably interviewed Bramwell, took notes as he recounted anecdotes, then went off and wrote the book with his direct involvement being minimal at most.

I wasted way too much of my life on the Beatles. One task yet remains, as I assemble and catalogue my collection of Beatles music, books, and memorabilia in preparation for liquidation. As a rule I no longer buy or read Beatles-related books, but for many years I bought and pored over every such publication I could get my hands on. I picked this one up because it was very cheap (oddly, it doesn't have one of my usual stickers inside the cover recording the details of its acquisition) and, frankly, I didn't remember who the heck Tony Bramwell was, so I was hoping for some new perspectives.

I wasn't disappointed. Bramwell (/Kingsland) offers up lots of fun insider stories. Not much sensationalistic dirt - he clearly still likes the Beatles and most of his colleagues in their entourage. There's one notable and entertaining exception. Bramwell makes no secret of his dislike for Yoko Ono and includes plenty of shots at her. That makes it well worth at least a skim for any Beatle fan.



Lectures in Systematic Theology by Henry C. Thiessen - just as it says on the tin. This book contains a thorough and rigourous systematic theology, covering the relevant topics in depth but in a style that's comprehensible to the layman. I can easily imagine using this book as a reference when leading studies on a wide variety of topics. The Scripture index at the back, listing every reference to any given Bible verse in the book's text, is especially useful.



Bone Volume One: Out from Boneville by Jeff Smith - this is a modern classic of the comic genre. My copy is a 2004 Scholastic printing, in colour. I think I bought this for my son to read when he was very young.

An earlier edition of this book gave me a great story from my days running a comic shop. For that alone it will always hold a special place in my heart.



Collected Works of Oscar Wilde, published in 1997 by Wordsworth Editions Limited - another artifact of my vague goal of reading the loosely-defined canon of western literature. Wilde is too prominent a name to ignore. The first oddity about this book is a typesetting error that runs throughout its 954 pages: somewhere in the process the apostrophe character was lost and replaced with spaces. "Can't" becomes "can t", "Dorian's" becomes "Dorian s." It's inexcusable for a publisher to have allowed this distracting, annoying error to reach shelves.

Wilde's writing is generally quite entertaining even now, over a century later. Almost every page contains a one-liner or two that's funny or insightful. I read this book with highlighter in hand, and found no shortage of targets.

Despite his own well-established hedonism, Wilde's writing often reflects the widely Christian culture of his day. It's taken for granted in the social backdrop in a way that would be foreign to most modern readers. However, Wilde goes horribly off the rails when he tries to write about Jesus directly. It immediately becomes obvious that although Wilde knows a little bit about Jesus, he does not know Him personally. The most egregious example is in the essay The Soul of Man Under Socialism:

 "And the message of Christ to man was simply 'Be thyself.' That is the secret of Christ."

No. A thousand times, no. Jesus did not come to Earth, be born of a virgin, suffer, die, and rise again to tell us to "be ourselves" (whatever that even means). He did it so that we can accept His sacrifice, embrace His salvation, and be forgiven of our sin so that we can spend eternity in His kingdom. Wilde's is a disastrously wrong belief that can lead nowhere except Hell.

Nothing else Wilde wrote could possibly matter in the slightest if he left this life with such a heretical view of Christ. I hope he repented before then.



Holy Lands: One Place, Three Faiths from Life books, no credited author(s) - another one I barely remember. This was published in 2002 by a western journalism company, so I would expect it to be an apologetic for Islam. A new skim appears to support that expectation. An article on the Koran ends with:
"As with the Old Testament, there is violence, sometimes meted out in Allah's name, but the Koran more often urges mercy and compassion."
The dangling participle, demonstrative of the writing skill I expect from "professional journalists," leaves it unclear whether the Koran contains more exhortations to mercy and compassion than does the Old Testament, or the Koran encourages mercy and compassion more than it encourages violence. Either way I doubt the claim.

The introductory paragraph on Christianity demonstrates a view of that faith that is so incomplete as to be laughable. Presented sentence by sentence with commentary interspersed:
"In Israel, 2,000 years ago, a child was born to a Jewish couple."
First of all, what is that first comma doing there? More importantly, Jesus was not born to a "Jewish couple" unless they consider God Jewish. He was borh to a Jewish mother and into a Jewish home, but this sentence subtly asserts that Joseph was His biological father and the virgin birth is a myth.
"Jesus grew to be a charismatic preacher, gathering disciples as he went."
[SIC] throughout because of not capitalizing pronouns referring to Jesus, but that's admittedly a stylistic decision. Other than that, this sentence is unobjectionable, if a little minimizing.

"This Son of God performed miracles, they said: raising the dead, calming these waters of Galilee."

"They said" is subtle but pernicious, encouraging the reader to reject these claims.
"Jerusalem's authorities, perceiving a threat, had Jesus executed."
Fine.
"His followers, taking up the cross, built the world's largest religion in his name."
That's it. Not a word about the Resurrection. Not a word about sin, repentance, or salvation. Not one iota of what Paul considered of primary importance (I Corinthians 15:1-5). This is Christianity as mere philosophy, which is no Christianity at all.

I'm sure Islam is given just as skeptical an introduction, though. Let's take a look:
"More than 1,300 years ago, a man in Mecca was visited by the archangel Gabriel and received an extraordinary gift: the word from Allah, the one God."
Stated as fact, no qualification.

Welp, I guess we're done with this one.



Bizarre Phenomena - Reader's Digest books, no credited author(s) - a worthless compilation of pseudoscience and urban legends. If you're looking for a book that suggests the Loch Ness Monster just might be in there somewhere, based on long-discredited photos, this is for you. Dishearteningly, my local library has a copy of this on the shelf. In the Science section.



Being Born and Growing Older: Poems and Images Arranged by Bruce Vance - this, as the title suggests, is largely a collection of poetry, and I don't like poetry. I've owned it since the days when I would sweep up any and all books on religion (and several other topics of interest) that I found in library book sales, flea markets, or other cheap sources. In a mental Freudian slip I misread the title as "Being Born Again and Growing Older" and assumed it was about aging as a Christian. Nope.



Enough rambling. Here's a picture of the bookshelf that housed all of these. And still a bunch more.




Tuesday, April 24, 2018

2018

My greatest accomplishment in 2017 was realizing I could safely add "essential oils" to the list of terms that indicate I can safely stop listening to someone.

Enough rambling. Here's a picture of an octopus containing my family.


Sunday, May 14, 2017

Reading Log: Gonzo Dylanology

I'm encouraging anybody who's ever met me, heard me or even seen me, to get in on the action and scribble their own book. You never know, somebody might have a great book in them. -Bob Dylan

 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. - I John 4:15 (NIV)


Time for another confession. Despite my credentials as a music nerd with a major in the sixties and post-doctoral research in the seventies, I was never a big fan of Bob Dylan. I'm aware of his work, and acknowledge and respect his contribution to the canon of modern music, but his stuff just never did much for me. His collaborations with George Harrison were his only works that really interested me.

Dylan's far from alone in that category. There are many "major artists" whose work hasn't held my interest beyond an overview of their catalogue. The Doors, The Rolling Stones, Elvis, Jimi Hendrix, Queen, U2, The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin - I'm familiar with all of them, and have their work in my collection, but rarely listen to them for fun.

In the eighties and early nineties, I knew Dylan primarily as a source of comedy. Unfortunately, he tended to come off as the butt of the joke, not as a conscious participant. "Conscious" has more than one meaning that works in that sentence.

I was watching live, and probably taping it, when Dylan went into a fugue state while receiving a lifetime achievement award at the Grammys. Thanks to the magic of Youtube, that moment has been preserved for global posterity right here. Saturday Night Live did a great Dylan bit shortly thereafter, with Dana Carvey as Dylan and Mike Myers as his interpreter, Tom Petty, but it doesn't  seem to be on Youtube and NBC's site doesn't acknowledge that a world beyond the U.S. border exists, so forget them.

In 1992, Dylan appeared on David Letterman's 10th anniversary special. This was toward the end of my seven-year streak of not missing a night of Letterman, so again I was watching, and probably taping. It was hilarious. Paul Shaffer had assembled an amazing band that included Steve Vai, Doc Severinsen, Carole King, and Mavis Staples among its dignitaries. Dylan came onstage, and this huge rock orchestra started into Like A Rolling Stone (a song I probably didn't know at the time). The band was rocking and grooving as Dylan stepped up to the mike and... proceeded to mumble incoherently for a few minutes. He just made vaguely rhythmic nasal sounds, occasionally punctuated by "DIDEN YEWWWW" or "HAWDZIT FEEL" (my best guesses, based on phonetics). Youtube to the rescue once again - you can watch it here.

I recently read Paul Shaffer's 2009 memoir, We'll Be Here For the Rest of Our Lives (a candidate for a future Reading Log entry). He confirms that Dylan was disengaged and uninterested, sometime not bothering to sing at all during rehearsals. Shaffer was just grateful that Dylan came through for the actual show, although he calls the performance "a more than decent 70 percent."

In recent years I decided to check out Dylan's explicitly Christian albums, from his "born again" phase. Until then I only knew of this work from the mocking of critics, notably "Serve Yourself", John Lennon's childish response to "Gotta Serve Somebody". I listened to the three albums, Slow Train Coming, Saved, and Shot of Love. The only songs that really stuck with me as a whole were Solid Rock and In The Garden, and the latter was significantly improved in the live version found on the bootleg album Rock Solid, which I also added to my collection. I talked about hearing these albums a bit way back in this entry, over eight years ago. Not a bad followup turnaround time by my standards. (I started working on this article in 2014.)

Dylan was far more explicit about his newfound faith than I had expected. These albums weren't the least bit subtle. He was preaching a message of fire and brimstone, warning listeners that only Jesus saves. As is often the case for me and Christian music, although I didn't care for the music, I loved a lot of the lyrics. Saved, the second album, struck me as much more strident than the first. Jody Beth Rosen described Saved well: "It’s as dogmatic as they come, and it’s Jesus-fearing, and unlike other Dylan records its prediction of the apocalypse cannot be interpreted as anything other than what it is."

Dylan's Christian walk seemed to have followed a path similar to my own. Even after surrendering to Christ I was briefly a weak universalist, followed by a season of legalism before settling into a more relaxed attitude that I would have earlier seen as complacency.

This music made me want to know more about Dylan's personal story. I wanted to learn how God lit this fire inside him. I wanted to hear his testimony. Unfortunately, it was at this point that I learned that Dylan is a notoriously closed book to interviewers and would-be biographers. A detailed account of his spiritual journey would not be easily forthcoming. He granted only a few interviews that touched on the subject, many of which are linked on Dylan Devotional.

I was discussing this with a co-worker who's a far bigger Dylan fan than me. He loaned me a couple of Dylan books from his extensive library, hoping they'd help satiate my interest, as well as a copy of Infidels, which my friend considers something of a coda or postscript to Dylan's overt born-again period.

Thus, we come at last to the reason why this entry is a Reading Log. However, it's an unusual one in that I usually actually finish a book before writing about it.

The borrowed books - which, as is my wont, I've kept for way too long - are Sam Shepard's 1977 Rolling Thunder Logbook and Robert Shelton's 1986 No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan.  The former was intended to give me insight into Dylan's mid-seventies life, and the later is a straightforward biography.

I think I read most of the Rolling Thunder Logbook, maybe even all of it, but I didn't care for most of it. It's written in the "gonzo journalism" style that Hunter S. Thompson popularized and his colleagues at Rolling Stone ran with. The style is marked by being disjointed and full of pretentious literary allusions, many of which consist solely of mentioning the names of better writers. Here's an arbitrarily chosen sample passage - this is a complete section / chapter / piece entitled "Hotel Crypt":

It's not long before the nucleus of us takes its shape. Who's who in the
galaxy of things. A small band with all the implications of the Big One. The world we slide through like it's never there. But now it seems reversed. Like we're not there and all around us life is going on about
its business. Waitress serves and goes back home. Back to REAL LIFE.
Back to MOM and DAD or KIDS and HUSBAND or both or all. And us sitting. Us sit eating crab legs in a hotel crypt.
This is typical of the book. Lots of simple declarative sentences, often lacking subject, predicate, or both. If 184 pages of this appeals to you, then I can unreservedly recommend this book. I might also recommend any of several twelve-step programs. This is not to say that the book is entirely without charm.  I particularly enjoyed the account of Dylan deciding partway through a play that he found the content offensive and shouting all the way out of the theatre, thoroughly disrupting the proceedings.

Shelton's book is a traditionally structured biography. I've read hundreds of similar books about dozens of different artists (I probably have 50 biographies of various Beatles alone), but had never invested the time in Dylan to have read one of his. And I still haven't, really. At some point it occurred to me that just because I enjoy someone's work doesn't imply that I should care where they went to elementary school, how many siblings they had, or when they lost their virginity. That's when I stopped reading most biographies. Not all, by any means, but these days I generally need to have some particular interest in the subject or some time to kill to bother reading any sections that could be headed "The Early Years."

I checked the index for Beatles mentions and skimmed a few passages, but in Dylan's case I'm really only interested in the story of his faith. I want to know how it grew to the point where he felt the need to express it so boldly, and more importantly why he stopped. Maybe it's as simple as Larry Norman's account: the audience didn't like it and told him to stop.

Unfortunately, Shelton's book stops short of the period in Dylan's life that interests me. Despite being published in 1986, Shelton's narrative disappointingly ends in 1977. An epilogue mentions only that Dylan had converted to Christianity, offering no further insight.

Perhaps tired of being constantly on the defensive, Dylan was reluctant to discuss his faith. He spent much of a 1984 Rolling Stone interview declining to explain his beliefs.

Dylan upset some moral conservatives in that interview by refusing to condemn abortion, dismissing it as "not an issue". As both an Evangelical Christian and an ardent pro-lifer (two separate matters, despite popular perception; my opposition to abortion is not primarily a matter of religious belief, and predates my conversion to Christianity), I think I get what (I hope) he meant. In a very real sense, abortion is not a root problem, just as theft or lying are not root problems. Sin is the root problem. In that light, theft, lying, and abortion are only symptoms.

The interesting question for me is where Dylan's faith journey wound up. That same Rolling Stone interview mentions that he was by then affiliated with an "ultra-orthodox Jewish sect", implying that he no longer held the New Testament in such lofty regard, and that his son had a bar mitzvah. Paul Shaffer's book seems to support this, noting that he's had to schedule some collaborations with Dylan around the Sabbath. Dylan may have reverted to straightforward Judaism, or adopted a Messianic Jewish faith.

The Infidels album offers few clues. It contains several songs touching on Biblical themes, but no Saved-style overt declarations. Neighbourhood Bully and Man of Peace seem to be about Israel and the Anti-Christ, respectively, but beyond being in favour of the former and opposed to the latter contain no particular insights into the specifics of Dylan's beliefs. I and I, personal favourite track on the album, has been seen as an allegory for Israel. Union Sundown is a surprisingly right-wing statement for someone in show business, but despite their frequent conflation, conservative politics and evangelical beliefs don't necessarily move in lockstep.

Muddying the waters, if Dylan had indeed renounced Christianity, it would be reasonable to expect him to have abandoned the explicitly evangelical songs he wrote and recorded on the "born again trilogy". However, the index of tracks performed live on Dylan's own site show that he continued to feature his gospel material in concert for many years afterward.

For a few years Dylan hosted a radio show called Theme Time Radio Hour. In 2006 he did an episode on the theme of the Bible. Lots of great old gospel blues. Interestingly, when he was naming books of the Bible early in the episode during the explanation of the theme, he included apocryphal / deuterocanonical books (e.g., Maccabees) in the list.

That program, the only episode of Theme Time Radio Hour I've ever heard, showed me a side of Dylan I'd never really considered. I'd long thought of Dylan as somewhat foggy and addled, possibly due to the cumulative effects of marijuana use. However, in that show I heard something new in him: a sense of humour. Now I think Dylan is well aware of his image as a doddering space cadet and is probably quite amused by it. He's willing to play up that image to maintain both a mystique (how can someone that burned out write such insightful songs?) and a distance from his audience, which has probably been necessary for him to maintain anything resembling a private life. Similarly, since getting past the stage of zeal of the recently converted, Dylan is probably content to let people speculate about his religious beliefs. It may even entertain him.

One interesting note - believers generally want to pass our faith on to our children. Although I've never head any explicit declarations of belief from Jakob Dylan, at least two Wallflowers songs touch on religious subjects: "Hospital for Sinners" and "First One in the Car", both from the 2012 album Glad All Over.

"Hospital for Sinners" is about the oft-forgotten truth that a church is "a hospital for sinners - ain't no museum of saints." It offers a vague but positive assessment of churches, concluding that "you ought to be in one." Referring to "statues and apostles, and other Godly things" implies that the churches described aren't all necessarily Protestant, but it certainly doesn't sound like a synagogue either.

The theology of "First One in the Car" is even less definite, but it's clear that the speaker is concerned with spirituality, even if that concern is only a nagging sense that prayer is sometimes appropriate ("I ain't superstitious, but it's making me nervous - now shouldn't we at least say something first?"). The song's refrain, however, actually contains a perfectly good prayer: "May God be the first one in the car, may He be the last one out of ours." The speaker is embarking on a new chapter in life, the nature of which is hinted at but not spelled out. Asking for God's presence and guidance in that sort of situation is to be expected from people of most faiths. I've heard a lot of prayers over the years that included variations of "Lord, please be with us as we..."

The bottom line regarding Bob Dylan's current religious beliefs is that we don't really know, presumably because he doesn't want us to. And that's fine. It's not my job or any other mortal's to judge the state of his soul. I certainly hope that he's got a saving faith in Jesus Christ, in keeping with Paul's statement about Christian conversion during his trial before King Agrippa: "I pray God that not only you but all who are listening to me today may become what I am" (Acts 26:29, NIV). Whether he does or not, some of the music he created from 1979 to 1981 has no doubt blessed and encouraged many believers all over the world.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of something that happened in my kitchen.



Monday, April 11, 2016

Some Achievements Are Their Own Reward


Congratulations are in order to the great state of Mississippi, for finding a way to keep Bryan Adams out!


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of a shadow on the grass.