Tagged: relationships

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.

Because Every Christian Should Be Able to Do Likewise Without Blinking

The crazy man said, “Turning the other cheek when *someone else* is oppressed… is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes.”

Biblical Christianity says: Nope. You answer to your creator for you and no one else.

The crazy man said, “Yield unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” and then discussed rule of law vs rule of personality, and concluded that the Law should always be followed.

Biblical Christianity says: Yup. The Law should always be followed. I’m not sure where he thinks his reasoning is different. (This is sarcasm as we all know he actually meant to argue that the Law enforced by men who don’t follow the law themselves does not count.) To be sure, Biblical Christianity has always believed that murder is wrong.

The Astronaut is just as Wrong as the Politician

Deuteronomy 6:5 says “You shall love Yahweh (the LORD) your god…”

In Mark 12:30 after Jesus is asked a question, he says, “You shall love the lord your god…”

Talerico and Glover, to the undulating praise of their respective bases, both drop the specificity of the commands. Why? Do they not know their bible?

Obviously Talerico is out for destruction and will misuse and abuse any words from any writer as he goes about accomplishing his quest. Despite his claims to the contrary, the Bible books and their authors are not sacred or special to Talerico.

Glover is a different story.

For my part, I imagine that he feels some sense of “people are actually listening to me!” and for some reason, this translates to “…so I better not push them away!” (as it does to so many pastors who have 15-min of fame).

But (according to the library that we call “the Bible”) the blood of Jesus matters, which means the time he spent on earth matters, which means the other people alive with him mattered, which means the previous people who lived matter, which means that Moses’ words matter in their totality.

Moses was preaching Yahweh, not god. It would have been confusing (it still is confusing) if Moses told a bunch of prone-to-idolatry people, “Love god”. The response to this exhortation, back then and today, should always be, “Which god?”

For his part, Jesus was talking to a scribe, which we can reasonably presume means literate man, and Jesus includes the full phrase from Moses, “the lord your god.”

It is not Biblical Christianity to read scripture and assume that because of the new and singular demonstration of Yahweh’s all-powerful status in the resurrection of his son Jesus the competition for “who is god” is over in the lives of us mortals.

Does Grover not know this? I don’t know. What I do know is it is obviously distasteful to push people away. And yet, the core and empowering belief and living hope of Christianity is the resurrected Christ Jesus (son of Yahweh). However, the fact that there is a specific and easily namable hope and belief of a religion does not prevent their from being many, many anti-Christ’s who disagree and don’t care about the belief.

The question for you is, “If you don’t quote scripture accurately, what are you even quoting?”

Quote it accurately, I say. Because, in a world of confusion and sin, using accurate quotations indirectly (indirect because you’re honoring the precise words of another instead of thinking their words don’t matter—as if all we care about is some ethereal, abstract concept) it indirectly conveys to the audience that you matter. And if you matter, they matter.

Life isn’t a simulation. Life isn’t a game. And more life is the goal. And as Paul wrote, “…if you confess with your mouth Jesus as lord (Yahweh/trinity talk) and believe in your heart that god (Yahweh) raised him from the dead you will be saved (Romans 10:9),” is the only way to get eternal life.