A Piper Cub Lands in Philistia

This is why you don’t give your credit card to a 15-year-old you don’t even know.

Dick Cheney, never one to pull punches, addressed Democrats’ criticism of the administration’s handling of Iraq:

Making your point and being a bit funny and self-deprecating, too. Rock on, Mr VP!

Buying this is a sure-fire way to get your dog laughed at by all the other dogs.? Besides, men have a long-standing tradition of blaming it on the dog.

HT to Blogotional.

I think this would make a cool poster (if you’re a geek like me).

This is the preface of a series of posts (how many, I have no idea) regarding spiritual lies that we tell ourselves or that (more often) others tell us. I had originally thought about titling these as “hyper-fundy myths”, as the source of many of these (for me, anyway) is the hyper-fundy circles in which I used to spin. However, the more that I think about these, the more I realize that most of these lies are not limited to such circles. I have seen them on both ends of many spiritual spectra.

And “myths” isn’t a strong enough word, either. Hercules is a myth, but no one died because they believed it.

Oddly, many of these statements will be very easily identifiable as lies. So why bother mentioning them? Well, for two reasons:

You may say, “Well, duh — it’s obvious that that’s not true”. But then, not everyone is as smart as you. One may be able to — at the surface — identify something as a lie, but still live as though it were the truth. This, more than anything, is the part that will kill you, as the cognitive dissonance eats you alive.

“Kills you”? “Eats you alive”? Isn’t that a bit harsh? Not really. I know too many people whose lives were destroyed by this drek. One (at least) literally. One can’t climb into the thought processes of someone who committed suicide, but one can see the circumstances surrounding it.

As a Christian, I would have to confess that nothing good comes from me, but only from God and (maybe) through me. This fact is very evident in the examination of these lies. I believed every last one of them at one time or another (even though I’d probably deny that at the time) and God showed me the folly of my thinking.

If He shows you some correction as a result of these posts, then “yay God” (as a friend of mine is fond of saying). And if not, maybe this can help you reach someone else in a similar situation. At the very least, you’ll have a better idea of why I’m so weird.

Here is an excerpt from The Life of Colonel David Crockett (better known as Davy Crockett) from his days in Congress. It seems that Crockett questioned the Constitutionality of the government dole, challenged fellow congressmen to put their money where their mouths were, and got exactly zero takers.

Crockett’s speech is interesting and inspiring in this day and age when Congress seems to be actively pursuing new ways to take our money and spend it elsewhere. But what’s even more amazing is his admittance of misguidance and correction. Sadly, this would never happen today.

Had an IM conversation today with one of my co-workers:

A few minutes later, I received the message and replied to Manny in IM:

(Manny’s bilingual — I’m not. Hasta del taco.)

I’m not one to go looking for left-wing bias in the media (no one really has that kind of time, anyway). But sometimes, the bias jumps up and bites you on the glutes like a rabid chihuahua.

Such is the case of this article. It seems that a church in West Palm Beach, Florida, had been repeatedly burglarized, and so several of its members decided to guard the church themselves. And they caught a burglar and tied him up. End of story.

But, no, that’s not compelling enough. Let’s emphasize the fact that they were “[a]rmed with baseball bats”. Be sure to point out that they subdued the thief by hitting him with those bats (as opposed to saying, “Please, Mr Burglar, don’t feel like you need to leave”). Classify it as a “beating”. And don’t say that they restrained him — they “hog-tied” him. That sounds much more demeaning, much more inhumane.

Perhaps even more alarming is the inanity (oh, let’s call a spade a spade) gross stupidity of a portion of the readers of this story on the web. There is a poll asking if the church members did the right thing. The choices are:

As of the time of this writing, a full 11% of those who answered the poll chose #2. The first sentence of the article refers to “a string of burglaries at their … church”. Clearly, the “authorities” were unwilling or incapable of “handling it”.? Yet these people don’t get the disconnect.? Sadly, they probably vote, too.

In Atlanta, there is a restaurant called The Abbey. It’s one of those high-fallutin’, take-four-hours-to-eat kind of places. Well, when your city is hosting an Olympics (as Atlanta did in 1996), that’s just not acceptable. With that many people in town, you want to get a lot more business through those doors.

So, as a lot of businesses did, The Abbey underwent a temporary transformation. As discos were all the rage in Europe in the mid-90s, they turned the restaurant into a discotheque.

As you may have guessed from the name, The Abbey was a church before it was a restaurant. So a church became a disco.

As soon as I first read about this, my immediate thoughts went to Steve Taylor’s song, This Disco Used to Be a Cute Cathedral.

Not only did Duke get bounced from the NCAA tournament last night, but because LSU held J J Reddick to just 11 points, he FAILED (oh, what a beautiful word) to break the single-season ACC scoring record held by Georgia Tech’s Dennis Scott. All he needed was 17 points going into last night’s game. Given that half the world picked Duke to win it all, that meant he had to average only 4.25 points per game.