Tagged: relationships

Maybe My First Podcast Recommendation Ever

I can’t recall ever using this blog to recommend a podcast episode before. In any case, I haven’t done it often. But I just listened to one that is a “must listen”, if such a thing exists.

It is Peter Robinson’s latest. He interviews a historian on the topic of The History of Communist China. (It is just over an hour.)

Do you know any communists? If so, listen.

Have you somehow marooned yourself and your WordPress Reader alone on an island? If so, listen.

Let’s just say, upon completing the episode, I have begun teaching A- and J- (5 and 4 respectively) two general and absolute truths. (I do it catechism-style, Q&A.)

Firstly, What is the first defense against communists? The first defense against communists is books—communists hate books.

Secondly, Who do guns protect us from? Guns protect us from communists.

In the same vein, it seems now is as good of time as ever to share another national security proverb my young progeny get to repeat, “The Democrats are not the fifth column.”

On Juneteenth’s Despair

Anyone else’s read of the passing scene include that the Juneteenth folks are desperate? They are even more lame than most pastors and evangelists. No matter how ambiguously noble they make their particular “holiday” sound, no matter how much of the population they invite, no matter how family friendly they make it, I will never celebrate Juneteenth.

Why?

Because it is rooted in victimhood.

Lincoln didn’t wait for someone to tell him it was okay to be free. Neither did GW or TJ.

The slaves, however, waited. The enslaved waited. And they always will wait. That’s what makes them slaves. That what allows them to become enslaved.

So “no”, my family and I won’t be celebrating.

Their cause isn’t noble. Their invitation isn’t sincere. And the whole family friendly ploy is a joke. If bounce houses had any value, world peace would have broken out, starting in urban neighborhoods—last generation.

Literate vs Illiterate Love According to Hollywood

I recently rewatched The English Patient. (You should too.)

I also am looking forward to seeing Avatar’s latest installment, but refuse to pay.

Today I want to draw attention to the way Hollywood handles the constantly interesting problem (to literates) of illiteracy still existing on the Earth.

In EP, she says, “I wanted to meet the man who could write such a long paper with so few adjectives.” Any man who could write that paper would know instantly that she was his for the taking.

In Avatar, there is an assertion (“I see you”), which is context dependent. Men can say it to men in greeting, but it can also mean, “I want to have babies with you.” Here’s the second meaning’s scene.

Question to ponder: Are they actually communicating the same idea?

Follow-up for “this-is-difficult camp”: Are they even able to communicate the same idea, as in, can illiterate people actually “see as far/much/deep” (metaphorically) as the literate?

Enjoy!

One Teeny, Tiny Flaw

I remember catching my mom in a bookstore aisle, kind of tucked away once. The book she was reading was self-help for “control freaks”. Understand, then, that she was the control freak in our family, and my sense of the encounter was that she was embarrassed that her son had seen that maybe she didn’t want to be.

I barely need to repeat the following, but for the unfaithful readers, please accept without question that my wife isn’t in love with yours truly anymore.

Books actually play a pivotal role in the drama, albeit in an unpredictable way. One of her main complaints to me, about my way of life, is that all my book reading does not lead to more money.

For my part, one of my main “asks” of her is that she stop reading the latest Christian bestselling “health and wealth” sermon transcripts masquerading as books. And truthfully, I don’t care that she reads them, but I would like her to read, at least some of the time, real books—not “The Secret” part 73. I mean even pulp fiction or Louis L’Amour or whatever is flying off the grocery store shelves these days.

This last time home, I saw an unfamiliar book stacked upon her bible called something like, “How to Live With A Manipulative Husband”.

Do you see the problem, folks? It’s easy to miss, so I understand if you don’t.

As for me, I am seriously considering putting out a best seller for us husbands. What do you say?

The title will be, “How to Smarten Up Your Wife AND Get Her to Stop Buying Crap.” Or maybe, “How to Make Your Wife Understand That She Doesn’t Need Makeup and Wigs Just Because All Other Women Wear Them.”

This might need to be a series, actually.

Another could be, “How to Live with a Woman Who, as It Turns Out, Is an Immature Child Who Lacks the Ability to Reason.”

Then there could be one on, “When Your Wife Married You, But Listens to Every Other Human Being Who Has Ever Uttered Speech Sounds Instead.”

The capstone, and I mean Fifty Shades of Grey success, will, of course, be, “How to Actually Get Your Wife to Stop Complaining and Be Happy.”

Men of the blogosphere, I’ve got you pegged as less than 10% of my readership. But what say you? Would you pay to unlock these secrets?

“White Sinners”, A Review of The Bride!, by Maggie Gyllenhaal

Motionless pictures can be art, too. The Bride!, like Sinners, is art for the reason motionless pictures can be art. The trouble, the thing that has everyone ate up, is Ms. Gyllenhaal’s picture is in motion. Hmm.

Lucky for her, the door for this kind of post-post-modern, detached, boundary-less art was opened by Mr. Coogan (and I am sure others). Just the same, I have always heard about some people who are able to be captivated by a single painting for hours. That is the closest this wind-riding-knuckle-dragger-with-a-blog can use in describing how this movie works.

Is The Bride! a reimagining? I have no idea. The interwebs confirm that there is no book by Shelley. Apparently there is an early movie and some other movies and books of the titular concept (Bride of Frankenstein). But I am pretty sure this film is just an original continuation story—and it should have been marketed and reviewed as such.

The most striking part of the movie was the leading lady’s effortless range. I mean she goes from repulsively demonic to irresistibly infatuating in the blink of an eye.

The gore is realistic and nauseating—another instance of “I hope my kids never find out I watched this”.

There are scenes of obvious first wave feminism (…like I know what that distinction means to experts. What I mean by first wave is that some women don’t want to be stay at home moms). But unlike some reviewers, I didn’t see it as proselytizing or advancing an agenda. It’s just a movie, folks. At ease!

On the whole, in addition to Sinners, I place it alongside Joker 2. I would like to give it a second chance now that I know what’s coming. But I am not sure there will prove to be enough time.

The Contest is Not Certain

When I moved to Minnesota I immediately noticed the Somalis. If you’re unaware, they are in many towns up there, not just the Twin Cities—small and large.

The most obvious thought I had—being a geographically and climate-varieties informed American—was, “Why the eff are they staying in the cold?”

I would see them, men especially, wearing one thin layer of buffalo plaid pj pants, holding their parka tightly with ungloved hands when the wind was blowing around below zero chills.

“What is wrong with this moron?” I would constantly think.

Don’t misunderstand me. This had nothing to do with that part of the body between the brain and the wind. I thought the same thing about any poorly dressed soul. It’s just that typical Minnesotans, if they know anything, know how to put on a coat. So the Somalis stood out.

For the life of me, I couldn’t think of any industry or job that these Somalis worked in that wasn’t in every other state in the Union.

The God’s honest truth is that I just shook my head and reckoned, “Well, I have heard of Chinatown(s). So I guess a feature of American life is that some country’s immigrants just arrive and stay close.” I had never experienced the desire to stay with “my people” beyond the concept that moving out of America has never been a consideration. America is mine. So I will move around it as I please or where the wind blows me.

Just the same, I still thought they were dumb for staying in the cold. Like even my Midwestern-grown self had no idea how different the weather really is in latitudes north of Nebraska. But I also wasn’t from latitudes north of Nebraska. These people, the underdressed Somalis, were from the desert. They had actual experience in a different, surely more pleasant climate. Why didn’t they drive south? The St. Louis airport has the same work available that MSP does. Why not just move down to the Midwest and start the life there? Or, hell, why not just keep going and end up in Dellis. Or Tampa?

I thought and I thought and I thought. I just couldn’t figure it out. Why did they stay?

Thuck-Y-Dideez

I first heard of Thucydides in college. This would have been 2001-ish. We weren’t studying him, but the professor needed to make a point and used the classic “Athens-open, Sparta-closed” historian to do so. Along the way, the professor interlaced a story about how a student came to him complaining about the reading and pronounced thoo-sih-di-deez: Thuck-Y-Dideez.

Funny stuff.

I do not know what the Thucydides Trap is, but I want to post an informed guess before I google it. What did Xi mean when he used the phrase?

Before I reveal my surmise, I want to add here that a chinaman using a western anecdote is real evidence that America and the West are already winning the war with China. And rightly so, since we’re obviously the more relevant civilization.

Okay. That said. What is the “Thucydides Trap” that we hope to avoid?

War.

(Wish me luck in my AI-ing for confirmation/information.)

Poverty Can Be Immoral

As I see it, there are two, maybe three, ways to live in poverty.

Firstly, you can be grateful for what you have. This would be the Biblical and wise posture.

Secondly, you could (though I can’t think of anyone like this) remain neutral or ambivalent towards your condition. Asking for nothing more, expecting nothing more, and receiving nothing more. Again, this doesn’t seem to be a real posture, but I am not willing to rule it out.

Thirdly, you can believe that your impoverished condition is somehow not your fault. The flip side of this posture being that you believe you deserve and are worth more material good than you currently possess. This posture, then, is immoral poverty. It is immoral, not merely because it is unbiblical, but because it is rooted in untruth. Put plainly, you will not find an immorally poor individual who isn’t living a life of wild lies. Lies permeate their life like wetness permeates water. They are soaked in lies.

(Take a breath.)

Faithful Reader: Do not mistake the above for useful information. It is trivial observation based on this morning’s fight with my lying wife. Also indicative that the observation is useless is the following: There is nothing that can be done with these people. Their immorality is complete and airtight. They live within a perfectly logical netherworld. There is no prayer available to us that isn’t already floating to the heavens. There is no god capable of changing their behavior, capable of rescue. There is no help to be found on the mountains for this problem.

How does one live alongside such people? It can only be accomplished through exceedingly particular, nuanced, and ultimately discrete analysis of cause and effect.

That, then, is your wisdom for this Choosday, as Twain’s Jim utters it—which calls to mind another big assist: books.

On Noble Pleasure

Anyone else, for whatever reason—be it environmental considerations or energy (mine is energy)—refuse to turn on hot water to wash their hands? And given this state of play, then, every so once in a while, wash them right after someone who isn’t so aware, and, for the briefest of moments, feel just regal as the still-warm water hits? For my part, I imagine the pleasure is exactly comparable to what it must have felt like to sneak a dessert made with the richest, purest, and freshest ingredients right off the King’s china after he had departed—and before the other (reckless and shifty as they were) servants entered—the hall.