08's been good to me

unfortunately, i find it difficult to remember my life further back than one month ago. it's a curse, but whenever i try to think about the "year that was," i can't get out of the current context. small stature, small brain, i guess.

in spite of this natural barrier, for the sake of you, dear reader, i will try to bend my mind to the past. and by past, i mean beyond december, because you can read my complaints about that

 month in my last post. 

if you didn't know it, '08 was the year of change.

yep, let that soak in. 

do you hate it when people try to sum up 365 days with one word or phrase? it 

drives me crazy. i can barely classify one day of my life, much less a year. why should this particular time period from january to december have any particular thematic significance over the previous one? why is january the magic dividing line?

rant over. back to year of change. 

i moved to STL. that's a big change. 

new dog. change. 

overplayed carols destroyed my christmas. no change.

convinced a few people in STL to be my friends. change.

hastily demeaned, disrespected, and stonewalled new friends. no change.

started working at home. change.

traveled to asia, twice. change.

helped a friend build his house. change.

finally ended over a decade of living in the same city as cullin. change.

piled into the car with my entire family and drove over 14 hours to san antonio for christmas. no change.

as you can see, the change clearly outweighs the no change. also, there's that whole first african american elected president thing. i guess that puts the stranglehold on it. year of change!

lame blogging aside, it has been a good year. getting to see my family over the holiday reminded me that i'm blessed by them, in spite of our collective weirdness. one thing that has been amazing about getting older for me is that i feel like my parents have become my friends. not completely, of course, but it's refreshing to be adults together. 

also, i'm including some christmas-related pictures below. the one triumph i did have this year was a couple strands of classic ceramic christmas lights. i've been fighting my wife for them since last year. sometimes you get help from unexpected places, in this case, my mother-in-law. shocking.

here's my lame stan's favorite picture that he took this year. it's a picture in a picture. get it?

this christmas, we joined the  rest of 21st century middle class america and purchased a "flat panel tv (don't call it a flatscreen)."

in other '08 trivia, a good friend started a music blog. thom's lazy eye. if you're into bad critiques and self-referential humor, its pretty awesome. i rated my best albums of '08 here. 

end stream of consciousness year in review.

goodbye 2008. 

i was gone, now i'm back

attempting to get back into blogging over the most destructive and choatic holiday season may not be my best idea. but my mind is made up. plus, the only people i'll let down are two or three bored dudes who would be watching battlestar galactica or playing "gears of war" (not that i know what that is).

so, what to make the first post back about...my life sounds good. before thanksgiving i started working on a new program for work. it required me to travel to four different locations around the country, staying at each for about three or four days. do the math on that one and ... yep, that's about a month of traveling. not exactly the best recipe for a great december.

then, there is the truly sad news that my wife's uncle was killed in a car accident over thanksgiving weekend. we have been between the two poles of tennessee since to be with her family. it has been a sad but also strangely redemptive time.

so, with that large dose of reality, maybe i should get back to blogging. or if that was it, back to distraction. i was under the impression the internet had no other purpose than diversion. but then a friend linked (the same one who is plugged into gears of war as you read this) me to peer preassure is forever. the blog belongs to my former english teacher and his wife. i will say nothing more. so, i guess it's not back to distraction. but maybe back to blogging for me.

lame

someone left this lame note on my car the other day. i guess i was parked a little close to the white line (the sidekick next me was over it, so i don't feel bad at all). besdides noting that they probably bought a ream of these "parking violation" notices from skymall or another equally worthless institution, i'd like to make a few notes about the ticket itself.

"Bull Headed, Inconsiderate, and feeble..." wait, which is it? i can see bull-headed and iconsiderate going together, but then feeble as well? did i feebly attempt to park? then i probably wasn't bull-headed but just plain bad at turning the wheel. which is it? i'd like to know.

"a safari of pygmies from the African interior." really? you just referenced pygmies, among goats, mules and elephants. i know gross exaggeration is sometimes funny. but not when it's on the windshield of my car.

"Besides I don't like demineering, egotsitical or simpleminded drivers..." i'm nearly positive leaving this note qualifies you for all three.

"I sign off..." is this a radio broadcast? i thought i was getting a parking ticket?

"wishing you an early transmission failure (on the expressway at about 4:30 pm)." if i get a transmission failure on the "expressway" at 4:30, you will most likely be stuck in traffic behind me. those kinds of thing tend to have a wider effect.

"May the Fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits." medieval arab humor. excellent. it makes perfect sense when you examine the quote in context. we went from a team of mules circa to 1800 to a pygmy safari to syria around the time sal ad-din. this guys knows how to throw in the historical clues!

this was actually really fun. the next time your paging through skymall or cheapworthlessshit.com, make sure you pick up a stack of these "parking tickets" and leave them on random cars.

remember, remember...

anarchists around the world are counting on you. light some fireworks tonight in memory of their hero.

no electioneering...yet

i played my part today and voted. i put in a good hour in the line beforehand. but from what i hear, that's not too bad on election day. aside from the nice woman next to me who insisted on repeatedly letting me how she was voting, everything went smoothly.

the real question now is, "will this, finally, be the end [of the election]?...no, really, will it?" i don't even want to watch the results come in. i have this recurring fear that i'll wake up tomorrow morning and we'll still be staring at the same screen with the same poll numbers and the same newscasters will be telling us something about a recount. like groundhog day but unfunny.

let's hope that's not the case. all this election nonsense has really cut into my extra-curricular actives. do you know that i haven't seen an episode of battlestar galactica for six months? no joke. there was a time when i couldn't phrase a sentence without wondering if i could reasonably insert the word "cylon." now, my head's cluttered with "failed economic policies" or "maverick" or, even worse "joe the plumber." what can you do with that garbage?

sadly, i found out about nader's election day press conference too late. seeing him conduct a press conference with one-word responses would be a nice way to end all of this.

all hallows eve

halloween is different here. growing up, i used to a little fanfare on the front lawn, similar to the image at right. a jack-o-lantern, maybe a ghost. the weird families might have a witches' cauldron on the porch.

here, the house at the right is the minority. these families are butchering bodies on the front lawn in the name of all hallows cheer, see below.



seriously, those are heads on stakes! maybe they hate trick or treaters so much that they've placed the embalmed, severed heads of last year's victims in the front yard to ward off any newcomers--richard the lionheart style.














because everyone needs a good graveyard at their stoop...and a weird einstein mask on their lion statue.















whoa there! giant spiders!?

if those things lay eggs...















a ghoul's ball! this one is pretty awesome, except that the ghosts look like little klan members 'dancing' in front of someone's house--yikes.














this one is actually not that amazing. but usually that orange thing is a giant pumpkin. it drives franny crazy. the skeleton coming out of the ground doesn't make her happy either. she stares at it pensively when we walk by.











this freak show is the masterpiece. i couldn't capture it all in one shot and even multiples don't do it justice. see the video below. yes, that is theme music you hear in the background. people live here.













do you think they call their house "haunted valley?" i hope so.

party like its 1517

on friday, several of us st. louisians went to concordia seminary's oktoberfest bash. it was my first oktoberfest, sectarian or non, and i was not disappointed. most of us watched the covenant v. concordia soccer match that evening (a note of seminary soccer: given the opportunity they will take the fall just like regular soccer players). so by the time we made it to the celebration, the crowd had thinned. luckily, there was plenty of beer still on tap and we managed to scrounge together some of the remaining bratwurst and sauerkraut. we had a great time.

not only was the food and beer free, but it was brewed by schlafly of st. louis. these guys know what they're doing when it comes to beer. i had a few pints of their excellent oktoberfest and pale ale.

the seminary rocked the block in style. in the quad they had a legitimate polka band in leeder hosen. by the time we got there, most of the groupies had moved on, but the band played on as if it was a full house. they were still playing when we left.

st. louis finally feels like fall: a cool evening with good beer and friends.





that's right, the band played on.

elections

we're finally approaching zero hour. four years ago these nuts began announcing their "exploratory committees," which i think is the political equivalent of a debutante ball. i guess we only have ourselves to thank for paying attention.

politics is a pretty dirty business. talking about is typically the equivalent of driving a dump trunk through the celica of whatever conversation you were having. because i mentioned my candidate in an earlier post, i thought i'd go into the reasons i got behind him in this one. i even had the damn thing typed up. in the end, the dump truck was too big, even for me. i gave up. it just sounded too tired.

i've been fed up with the "election question" for a while now. i burned myself out way too early pouring over the caucus and real clear politics. by the time clinton and obama got to their third debate, the media's campaign catchphrases had become torture devices. the words "pantsuit" and "change" made me want to drown myself in one of those plastic kiddie pools. don't ask why, it just seemed dramatic.

then there was romney and mccain. one was the old guy that everybody liked to talk about as if he was already dead, praising his service to the country. the other everyone wished would play dead. do you remember when the big news story was that romney had illegal immigrants working at his house? are you serious?

yeah, that was back in february or march. i was tired of it then. my exasperation turned to anger, and i turned to apathy and cheap beer to deal with it. sadly the race went on, and sadder still, i followed it more and more. even though i'd heard the candidate positions on all the big issues, it became vitally important to read all the latest articles. why did he say this? what does the absence of that mean? how many point will that cost in the national average? those were the questions.

so instead of lambasting you with my expertly formed political opinoins, i think i'll throw all my energies into the local elections. all i know now is that we're electing a new governor and that somebody want me to vote 'yes on a,' which i'm pretty sure just puts a cap on the amount of casinos we can have and how the money is spent. gambling for education, that makes sense...

things that make me laugh part iii

on the front lines: the vp debate

on my afternoon bike ride yesterday, before i busted a brand new tire (REI, i'm coming for you), i was assaulted by a mass of people carrying signs, shouting, and using car horns like madmen. i'm pretty monotonous in my bike route day after day. the only thing that changes is the direction in which i start my trek through forest park. usually the only people i see are young, college-aged girls with youngish college-aged guys in tow, doing their "exercises." though sometimes i do see the middle aged man running or biking in spandex--a sight not to be missed.

well, yesterday i thought the door had been left open at the local asylum. people were shouting and generally carrying on like fools. and then it hit me, vp debate.

well, why did the freaks have to interrupt my beautiful biking afternoon (further put on hold by a flat tire)?

as i made my way further down skinker and deeper into the crowds, it was clear that the obama side had a distinct upper hand in representation. and i really mean upper hand. there were tons of them. sadly for mccain, i only saw two groups of supporters for him: an old woman waving a little flag in front of her house and a small group of students who were sheepishly trying work their way past the army of obama supporters, like four workers crossing the picket lines.

for disclosure purposes i should probably tell you now that i'll be voting for mccain. i know, i know, lecture me. i'm not going to defend myself here. but in spite of that, it was pretty cool to see all the obama supporters out there. they clearly came from a wide range of backgrounds. not only were they loudly and adamantly obstructing the bike lanes, but they were pretty excited to do it. i had a fun time watching them.

i shot a couple videos on my phone, so they're a bit scrappy.







iupat had a ton of union members on site, proudly chanting for obama.



you can barely hear them, but at the beginning they are shouting, "yes we can." then they start, "o...bama, o...bama."



my wife and i went down the street to watch the debate in par--which is actually just a poorly named bar. i would have loved to see it in person, but the small number of seats that were not claimed by either party or reserved for the press were raffled off to students--spoiled brats.

the debate seemed to go well for both sides. vp debates have always seemed pretty dubious to me. just another chance for either side to hit home whatever their candidate is harping on and less about the vp contenders themselves. it's not really a debate so much as two sides talking past each other, just stating campaign promises.

but for the gop, i guess there was a bit more at stake-- it's pretty bad if an interview with catie couric makes you look dumb. so in that sense, the gop got more out it. one big, "hey, our candidate's not a moron" party.

but the dems did alright as well. no big gaffes for joe, who i thought would have never received the vp tap after one particularly big mistep early on in the primary.

anyway, enough pseudo political hash. word from the front line: watching a nationally televised debate in your city is about like watching a nationally televised debate anywhere, except for the party before and after.

hot lava, on repeat

thanks once again to indie surfer, i've been on a steady dose of hot lava's "apple+option+fire." go to indie surfer if you want to know more about them--i can't add anything of value. if you like good pop music, you'll probably like these guys.

apple+option+fire

website

balloon glow

a couple weeks ago, stl had a balloon race. the night before, the ballooners got the party started with a good old fashioned balloon. they filled up their hot air receptacles and synchronized their torches to a horn that went off every ten minutes. it was petty amazing and also provide some good fodder for the camera (and yet another excuse for a tripod).



anyway, enjoy the show. i've been traveling quite a bit over the last few weeks, so hopefully (regrettably for some) i'll be able to get back on top of the blog world. and by "on top" i mean continue to post about things that only concern me.

worthless foray into second rate photo editing

i've been playing around with images of my family members (and myself) on picnik. if you don't have a design degree/don't want spend 85 hours learning photoshop, it's a great, cheap way to edit photos, all from the comfort of your web browser.

i'm thinking of making a t-shirt of the image of my grandfather: paterfamilias. my fear is that he will see it and say, "what the hell kind of drugs has that fool been taking." that's a probably more of an excuse than a fear.

things that make me laugh pt. ii

on blogging and voice

what is your desired 'voice' when you write? other than 5 pages of a half-ass sci-fi novels, i didn't do much writing before the blog world took over. and i don't really think i can count lame history papers on the spanish armada or why eisenhower was really a genius for letting the ruskies take berlin...

the more i write on blogspot, the more i've been thinking about the idea of voice. i know from the two literature courses i've had over the age of 18, that a writer's voice is typically pretty specific. kind of like its audible counterpart. the thing that drives me crazy about this concept is that there is a voice i want to have and voice that i actually have.

but my desire is subliminal. typically, this is how it works. walking down the street (more likely, sitting on the couch), i hatch an idea that sounds interesting to me. at that moment, i begin to imagine how i would write the post with my desired voice. my desired voice is a casual genius. an offhand observer of the world, he's sharp, but never overbearing. he knows the game has been going on for years, so he's naturally cynical, but not depressed--he realizes the value of humor. he has a ready knowledge and wisdom about nearly everything and can candidly discuss any subject intelligently. but since he doesn't need to impress you, he feels comfortable talking about whatever subject interests him at the moment, no matter how trivial. since he is such an amazing person, whatever interests him is going to be damn interesting to his readers.

then, i actually sit down to type up a post. what comes out is shockingly different: trite, random, insular, and all around hastily written. i usually get distracted or bored toward the end of my posts and cut them short out of laziness. as much as i'd like to think of myself as a great undescovered writer, blogging his way to relevance, i'm just like the other 99% of the people with blogs--a self-absorbed nerd with spare time.

but why is it so hard to be honest? if i know i'm not the writer i want to be, why can't i at least set out to be turthful? it would seem far simpler to write from my own perspective than from the artificial one.

i'm guessing this is where those who actually know something about writing chime in and say something about why it's so difficult to be a good writer because of the difficulty writing the truth. i'm not exactly sure what the saying is, but isn't there something that says that all beauty is truth? i think so.

i just realized lewis has a great quote on this and found it here.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

C. S. Lewis

franny

yes, we did get a dog. yes, we named her franny. try not to read into it. we're pretty obsessed with her right now, even through she has issues in the urination arena. she is a 7 month old golden retriever from a local rescue shelter. so she has some confidence problems as well. but have no fear, she's starting to come out of her shell inch by inch.

right now, sticks are a pretty big deal for fran. that, and sleeping underneath my desk while i work. we'll have plenty more stories to come, but enjoy the pictures for now.

i get a bike, my wife gets an education

my wife had her first day of classes yesterday. we went to a local coffee shop before to "prepare ourselves." by that, i mean she read some proverbs and i stubbornly and unsuccessfully tried to upload a file for work (depressingly, it was the second place i'd been to besides my house to upload this file). then it was carpool time. the students headed off to begin their new lives, i moped upstairs to wallow in self-pity. it was a good morning.

so far, class sounds good. to start the class, her teacher locked her in a room with a homicidal schizophrenic. apparently, she did pretty well for a first-timer. i like their hands-on approach!



i'm sure many of you are wondering where i've been recently. sorry if i didn't return g-chats or respond to facebook group requests. i've probably been out riding my brand new old schwinn bicycle: the traveler iii. i got it with the birthday money my wife spent on shoes which i later returned. with some very slight tinkering on the bike, everything mostly stays together. i've taken a couple rides through forest park already. mostly, i hear people crashing or running into things because my bike is so amazing. so, if you start hearing about a lot of bike and people wrecks--it's ok, it's just me and the traveler iii.

road rage

on sunday, we visited a church in webster grove, about 15 minutes away. the service itself was great and we enjoyed a nice lunch with the members afterward. as we left the neighborhood, we heard tires screech and i slammed the breaks as a ford escort with racing stripe flew down the street we were about to turn on.

we were in a pretty quiet neighborhood, without much of shoulder and no sidewalks, so it was kind of scary to see car go flying by right in front of us. my wife decided she should let the chump know how frustrated she by honking the horn. that's when everything became really fun.

naturally, psycho hit his breaks, flipped the escort around and started barreling towards us. not wanting to instigate a high speed chase, i had no choice but to sit, listen to the sound of squealing tires and a red lined engine and await my fate. when he got right in front of us, he, shirtless with bright orange hair, leaned out of his car and shouted, "if you wanna do something, do it!"

then, he raced off in the opposite direction. of course, we were all more than a little rattled and drove slowly home. we passed him once, at a gas station up the street. he eyed us suspiciously as we drove passed. i wonder if he even recognized us. i kept an eye in the rear view mirror the entire ride home, all sorts of disasters playing out in my head.

i've experienced crazy drivers before, but this opened up a entirely new chapter to me. welcome to st. louis!

showtime at the hi-pointe

the past two weekends, i walked down the block to dogtown's local theater, the hi-pointe. the single screen theater has been around since the 20's, under various owners. apparently, they typically show a mixture of indie and big-name flicks. the past two i've seen have both been blockbusters: the dark knight and tropic thunder. more on those later.

i'm pretty excited about being able to regularly stroll down the street to catch a flick. though i was spoiled with the "riveria" in knoxville, the place more than makes up for its lack of option with class. if you can handle the steep steps to the men's bathroom (ADA standards noticeably absent), you are rewarded with urinals that have been voted the best in st. louis by the river front times. yes, they have the generous full length models.

its pretty amazing to watch a movie in a place where people having doing the same for the past 80 years. i'm excited about experiencing many other st. louis gems, but this has been my first.

also, you gotta love a place that let's you know what you're getting into on the marquee.

ok, now onto the movies. if you aren't a nerd, you probably shouldn't read on. i'm not planning on editing to much of this and it will get pretty dorky. also, while i don't give any secret plot points away, i will discuss the movie in detail.

the dark knight:
i went into this movie with very high expectations. i was a big fan of batman begins because it restored the story of batman to something above an overblown music video. but it also was just a good film. batman has always been melodramatic and overwrought, but in a way that still told a good story.

the dark knight may be one of the few sequels that actually exceeded my expectations. as before the tone of the film was excellent. realistic enough to draw you in, but with enough comic book high-paced action to keep things moving.

the acting was excellent. heath ledger literally disappeared into his role. you find yourself watching the movie just for him. as a whole, his scenes stand out as my favorite.

the plot really takes it up a notch from the first. whereas batman begins strayed into hero movie formula on occasion, the dark knight dug in like a good crime drama. at times it was difficult to keep up with the plot--which was good. it's nice to have multiple layers to sift through. it picks up with what batman started in the first film, which is one of the themes of this one. we see batman dealing with what he has created choosing to fight as a vigilante. the fake batmen were a smart addition. the opening scene is excellent--it sets up the plot while introducing us to the joker's sense of style.

the writers really let themselves go with the joker. i think this is where the film truly succeeds. they allow his character to run free, which brings out the complexities of the story that make batman so great, like the relationship between batman and the joker. does the existence of batman make the joker's appearance inevitable? (though i haven't read it, apparently this is the theme that the killing joke by alan moore explores, next on my list of graphic novels to read)

will and i were discussing this when he was in town and i have to give credit to him for bring it up. but it is through the joker that the movie also explores philosophical questions. the first comes from the pressure that citizens, policemen, etc. put on batman to turn himself in. the joker has decided that if batman turns himself in, he'll stop killing more people. out of fear, everyone then places the onus on batman stop more murders. if only he would reveal himself, the joker will stop. what we are willing to sacrifice to have what we want right now? ultimately, the joker changes his mind and decides that life is better with batman around.

the other occurred when the joker rigged the two boats to explode. the boat with the regular citizens votes to blow up the other boat, containing criminals. if one boat does not blow up the other before midnight they are both destroyed. they know it would be wrong to incinerate the other boat, but by taking a vote they try to pass off responsibility to the majority. i thought this was an interesting point about potential weaknesses of democracy, majority rule, and reliance on opinion polls. that's me reading into it.

i love any film that rises above its genre. the dark knight transcends the common super hero movie. but then again, i'm a pretty huge nerd.

tropic thunder:
this movie is pretty funny. nothing special, it pretty much meets expectations. there's nothing like hollywood making fun of itself. unfortunately, its blazing saddles attempt to mock racism seems more like lip service--it takes shots at african-americans, asians, and mentally retarded people alike, but it's generally a funny movie. however, if you find yourself in the wrong circle, you may have to defend your decision to see the film.

things that make me laugh pt.i

i laugh every time.

music: TVOTR

today, i've been enjoying the new tv on the radio single. you can, too:
http://www.tvontheradio.com/

the album comes out next month. if you need to be reminded why you should be excited, watch "wolf like me."

charred paper, fractured plaster

for the past week, i've been forging my resume into a titanic juggernaut that thwart the most stubborn receptionist. or, for an entire week, i've been staring at the past three years of my employed life boiled down to 3 bullet points, fighting back tears and feelings of inadequacy.

why is i'm judged by merits my resume writing capabilities over what i have or haven't done? it just seems to encouraged embellishment. to be honest, this works to my advantage. i haven't actually been working that long. it still drives me crazy.

to spice things up, we decided to hang pictures, shelves, and maps in our apartment this week. mostly, this went according to plan. we generally bickered about the placement of items, moved them around, moved them back, and settled for something neither of us really loved. hanging on plaster is painful as well, but we figured out where we needed to drill pilot holes and where we did not and moved on.

the one piece we didn't argue too much about was our cheap, target "wine rack and glass holder." we both thought the most natural place was next to the refrigerator in the kitchen. dutifully, i pulled out the appropriate tools, measured, and marked the holes and began to drill.

about halfway toward the required anchor depth, i hit and impenetrable barrier. like any man, i assumed i just didn't have to right drill bit, accepted the excuse to go to home depot, and bought a masonry bit--fire wall be damned!

but this trick also failed. after several hours of sweat, tears, degenerate speech and foul oaths i managed to get the thing on the wall--crooked. which is where it sits now.

work at home

out of pity or boredom, a few of you have asked me what it's like working at home. today i decided to do a little documentation. by documentation, i mean that i took a few random pictures of myself and my desk.

working at home has pros and cons. you don't have to shower every morning, but then you stink most of the time. you get to see your wife most of the day, but that reminds her how annoying you are. you don't have to commute, but you find yourself staring at the neighbor's window wondering why they leave the their blinds closed all day long. you start going over scenarios in your mind: meth lab, video game addict, closet goose-stepper. then you realize that you've been staring at their window suspiciously for 45 minutes. you're the reason the blinds are drawn. so, with that problem settled you can go back to doing whatever it is you want to do--i mean, err...work.

then there is the co-worker arrangement. i do miss being in the office because i miss out out the everyday interactions with my co-workers. the squirrel who habitually hangs out on the roof just outside out stairwell has helped me knock around a few new ideas, but squirrels are so unreliable. there one day, gone the next. so that remains a pretty large negative.



the best part about working at home is that you get to one-up your friends about how gas-efficient and 'green' you are. i'm still trying to iron out the exact words, but i'm thinking my line to drop at parties will be something like this.

when it came to my occupation, i took a hard look at the world. gas prices, global politics, and climate change being what they are, i truly believe i have a moral imperative to work from home. and now that i've made the switch, i just sleep better at night. to be honest, i don't know how you could otherwise.

i've been looking for a good angle in making new friendships for a long time. i think this should do the trick.

move in

for the first post of my newly revamped blog, i'm letting the pictures do the talking. my hope is to keep this thing updated regularly.

here we go.

more graphs from the economist...

the above shows the prediction of premature deaths due to ozone defenicies by 2030. i know that on one hand, 57 people out a million doesn't sound like a lot, but i think we should be concerned.

the religious right

Not that I'm a particularly huge fan of Mike Huckabee, but I'm excited about what some are calling a shift in dynamics for the Religious Right. I'm tired of hearing about fellow Chrisitans blindly voting for Republicans simply because they put forth pro-life candidates. And even if huck was not the greatest choice, he was still a step in the right direction. If Christians believe that it is their duty to engage in politics, then they also need to realize there are more issues to debate than abortion.

This from Sojourners Magazine:

What's Next for Mike Huckabee?

Tuesday evening, John McCain clinched the Republican nomination for president, and Mike Huckabee, the last remaining contender, conceded defeat. Huckabee's campaign, and the failure of the Religious Right to support him, has been one of the most interesting and puzzling stories of this primary season.

While Huckabee is certainly a social conservative, he refused to toe the line on a number of issues. And that is more evidence for why I say the monologue of the Religious Right has ended and the evangelical agenda has broadened.In the Republican YouTube debate, the candidates were asked if they believed every word of the Bible. Huckabee said that while some of the Bible was allegorical, we needed to take much of it much more seriously than we do - such the words of Jesus that say, "As you have done to the least of these you have done to me." This is not the text that most conservatives quote when asked about the authority of the Bible.

In an interview with Reuters in January, Huckabee spoke about the broadening evangelical agenda:

Unquestionably there is a maturing that is going on within the evangelical movement. It doesn't mean that evangelicals are any less concerned about traditional families and the sanctity of life. It just means that they also realize that we have real responsibility in areas like disease and hunger and poverty and that these are issues that people of faith have to address.

And when conservative columnists such as Robert Novak attacked Huckabee for not being a "real conservative," this is precisely what they meant. When Huckabee was governor of Arkansas, he advocated spending money on poor people - behavior that is offensive to the economically conservative wing of the Republican Party. While Huckabee is a consistent social conservative, he is considered suspect by the party's economic conservatives who, of course, don't support spending any money on overcoming poverty. Huckabee disagrees with them.On immigration, in that same debate, there was an all-out attack on "illegal aliens" who became the new scapegoat, the new "other," for many of the Republican candidates - and the preferred way to energize their primary base. Except for the acknowledgement from John McCain that "these are God's children too," every Republican candidate preceded to demagogue the issue, beating up on undocumented immigrants for crass political gain.

But then Mike Huckabee spoke. He agreed that our borders need to be protected and enforced (I do too), but then defended his support for a failed bill in Arkansas to give scholarships to exceptional students - including undocumented children. He said he didn't want to punish children for their parents' illegal actions because "that's not what we typically do in this country." This educational plan, he said, was intended to bring people from illegal to legal status. He continued, saying that he had received a good education; but if he hadn't, "I wouldn't be standing on this stage; I might be picking lettuce; I might be a person who needed government support." Then he said, "In all due respect, we're a better country than to punish children for what their parents did." Although he later moved more to the right in the heat of the primaries, that response remains.

Is that ultimately why the leaders of the Religious Right didn't support Mike Huckabee until late in the primary season? Is it because many on the Religious Right are really more committed to economic conservatism than social conservatism? Have religious conservatives gotten so used to their access to power that are they afraid to risk standing for principle over pragmatism? Huckabee was the most consistent social conservative Republican in the race - he won a straw poll at the FRC Values Voters Summit this winter - yet most of the leaders of the Religious Right never rallied around him. But the evangelical base did, keeping him in the race until this week.Now that he is out of the race, what's next for Huckabee? The conservative Washington Times said that Huckabee is at the forefront of an evangelical revival, and quoted his former communications director as saying

He has become the leader of a new generation of Christian conservative voters. ... There is nobody else you can identify outside of Mike Huckabee as a leading person to take on that role, really in a new era where evangelicals care about a lot of things like the environment and working with the poor.

And, as former Bush staffer David Kuo wrote in The Washington Post,

That there's now a pitched battle for the soul of the religious right is a horrifying thought to Republican leaders long familiar with the old religious right, a hierarchical group dominated by larger-than-life figures who'd anointed themselves Jesus's political representatives. But that movement is withering at the top and in revolt at the grass-roots. ... What's new is how widespread social justice issues are in the evangelical world. Leading New Testament theologian N.T. Wright, a conservative, says that the greatest moral issue today is not abortion but the economic inequality between the U.S. and Europe and the developing world.

So, stay tuned. We haven't heard the last from Mike Huckabee.

what are we missing out on?

this is always a controversial topic. according to the map above (from the economist), our government is selectively blocking certain social (youtube, facebook, etc.) content on the internet. notice saudi arabia, iran, and sudan are among the worst. i guess it's no surprise that internet freedom correlates with government repression.

defying logic

“The important question for John McCain today is, is he going to learn the right lesson from this, and what is the lesson?” Mr. Limbaugh said, according to a transcript posted on his Web site. “The lesson is liberals are to be defeated. You cannot walk across the aisle with them. You cannot reach across the aisle. You cannot welcome their media members on your bus and get all cozy with them and expect eternal love from them.”

the above from an article in the Times, covering McCain's response response to their own report on his relationship with a lobbyist 8 years ago.

while a focus on limbaugh is not the point of the article, they included his quote at the end to show how staunch conservatives have reacted.

the us/them mentality of limbaugh et al really baffles me sometimes. i guess that sort of rhetoric is large part of what attracts his listeners.

maybe i'm being dramatic, but i feel like this sort of discussion IS NEVER beneficial. even in limbaugh's book, aren't liberals still americans, as in not enemies?

The PCA guru (cont.)

Here's a response to the article - with some thoughts from Keller himself on some of the content.

The PCA guru

Interesting Newsweek article on Tim Keller.

Ahhh McCain

THIS IS THE REPUBLICAN LEADER?
(Drudgereport Headline)

titus andronicus

titus andronicus

Kafka's Canada and what it could mean for us

I heard of this case a few nights. Kafkas Canada stirkes eerily close to our last book the trial. I would love to know some thoughts on the matter and anyones opinion of similar happening in the US. Also here is a video clip of his first "hearing". This is an amazing example of political correctness and sensitivity gone awry. How far are we from this in this country, in my opinion we have only a very short distance to travel before everyone with "extreme beliefs" meaning offensive to any minority or favored group, is hauled before an inquisitorial body like this.

The Trial part I