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Religion & Morality

A Call to Arms. And Legs.

The Spirit of 1776 lives!
The Spirit of 1776 lives!

Do you love your country? I do. What are you willing to do to save it? For it needs saving. Seriously.

Understand, this is not a Democrat versus Republican, or Liberal versus Conservative issue. It’s a Right versus Wrong issue. Our country, our values, our freedoms and our inalienable human rights are under attack. From where I sit, we each have but two choices – ignore the problem and hope it goes away, or do something about it.

So what do we do?

I think the answer are the many Tea Parties that will take place across the country on July 4th.

I am against the idea of armed insurrection. To take up arms against your own country is a contradiction of the very reason to fight – how can you protect the Constitution by violating it? (Answer: you really can’t.) Until and unless the Federal Government ignores the Constitution on a wholesale basis, taking up arms is NOT the answer. And, frankly, we’re a long way from that. Unfortunately, the American people are in the position of the proverbial “frog in the pot,” with the Progressives, Socialists, Communists, and Anarchists turning up the heat, gradually. Ignore the threats to the Constitution at your own peril. [Read more…] about A Call to Arms. And Legs.

A Guide to Making Apologies.

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you might have heard about the current troubles of David Letterman, and his serial apologies he’s made regarding the “joke”(s) he told regarding Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin and her daughters. Last night, Letterman made yet again another attempt at contrition. Color me “unimpressed.” You see, when you apologize, there are a couple of things you must do – and at least one that you must not do:

  1. Say “I’m sorry.”
  2. Say “I was wrong.”
  3. Say “It’s my fault…I accept responsibility for the mistake.”
  4. Say “I beg your forgiveness.”
  5. Say “I will do my best to do better, and not make the same mistake again.”
  6. Do NOT say “I’m sorry, but…” and then go on to offer any excuse.

When you offer an excuse, you’re essentially saying “what I did wasn’t that bad,” “it wasn’t really my fault,” or other weasel-words that attempt to deflect responsibility. [Read more…] about A Guide to Making Apologies.

Frame of Reference.

Something dawned on me the other day. I was talking with a friend last night and brought this up, and when I’d explained my point, he said that he’d never thought of things in that way before, and it was an idea that explained a lot. Now I’d like to share it with you.

Few people are alive today that are old enough to remember what life was like in America before Progressivism changed our country, and therefore it’s difficult to appreciate the difference in the way things were before, say 1920, and now.

Think about that for a minute. I was born in the late 50s, and grew up in the 60s and 70s. I have never known a time when Senators were appointed by State legislatures. I’ve never known a time without the IRS. As long as I’ve been politically aware, we’ve had Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, et cetera. In short, every year I’ve lived on this Earth, the United States has existed under a Federal government that is perceived as all-powerful, with the perception that the States report to/work for the Feds, and the people essentially work for the government.

Talk about bassakwards. [Read more…] about Frame of Reference.

The Origins of the Feces.

Everybody’s wired differently. Some people just want the facts. Others, like me, want to know what caused things. For me, it’s not enough to know what’s going on…I want to know how we got here.

If you’re a Glenn Beck listener (and if you’re not, you should be) he’s identified the Progressive Movement of the early 20th Century as the point at which politicians began remaking our government and diverting it away from our core Constitutional principles (essentially, the smallest government possible to do the job) to one that features Big Government, Big Taxes, and a trend towards treating the Constitution as a quaint document that really has little bearing on life today. [Read more…] about The Origins of the Feces.

Hey, Letterman…didn’t you used to be funny?

The (only) funny thing about the jokes made by David Letterman at the expense of Governor Sarah Palin is that they make laughable the claims of those on the left, that the media – both the news media and the entertainment business – is unbiased. Imagine the outcry if, say some “comedian” made some similarly tasteless remark about one of Obama’s daughters. I don’t think anybody on the right would be laughing. And I know the reaction of those on the left – outrage, anger, and a call for the guilty party to be imprisoned or shot.

That’s the way life goes in the ObamaNation. Understand, I’m NOT blaming Obama for Letterman’s behavior. (He has plenty to atone for on his own.) Sarah Palin is a public figure. While I believe the “jokes” Letterman regaled his audience with were disgusting, Gov. Palin is well able to defend herself. Her daughter, however, is NOT a public figure, nor should she be subjected to the kind of vile crap that Letterman spews. [Read more…] about Hey, Letterman…didn’t you used to be funny?

State of the (Dis)Union.

When Iwas a kid, my friends and I used to play a game called “King of the World.” We’d speculate on all the grand things we’d do or change, if we had absolute power. Who’da thunk it, that we’d elect somebody who’s Hell-bent on playing the same game as a grown-up? If you’re like me, you’ve figured out by now that the Federal government is waaaaaaaaaaaaay out of control. I just finished reading The Five Thousand Year Leap, and I gotta say it was more than eye-opening. Shocking. Inspiring. Disturbing. Motivating. All at the same time. Quite an accomplishment for one book. It got me to thinking, how do we get our country to move away from Socialism, and back to the founding principles that made our country great? If you’re a frequent reader of this blog, you might suspect that I have an idea. And you’d be right. [Read more…] about State of the (Dis)Union.

Beauty is their Bidness.

In my salad days, I played a bunch of beauty paegants. As a pit orchestra drummer, you get a unique perspective on pageants, much like you do when you get to see a magician’s act from behind the curtain. As an arranger/composer/orchestrator, my father got a good bit of pageant work, too. He did arrangements for some high-profile contestants, the biggest of which was Miss Louisiana, Anita Whittaker, who placed in the top five of the Miss America pageant. So when I talk about pageants, I’m not simply doing the armchair quarterback thing – I’ve been there and done that. [Read more…] about Beauty is their Bidness.

Partying Like It’s 1836.

For those of you not from Texas, 1836 was the year the phrase “Remember the Alamo!” passed into our national lexicon, for it was that year, that 187 Americans told Mexican General Santa Anna and his 6,000 troops to go suck an egg. The Americans held off the Mexican Army for 13 days. They were eventually overrun and killed to a man, but they never gave up, never surrendered, and never quit.

On Wednesday, I was proud to be among what I estimate to be about 10,000 other Texans who gathered at that same, sacred spot in San Antonio, to draw a metaphorical line in the sand (the Alamo, by the way, is where that expression came from), to send a message to Washington: “You’re NOT LISTENING.”

If you watched the coverage on Fox News, you already know this. If you watched the mainstream media, you have no clue. [Read more…] about Partying Like It’s 1836.

Beck: The 21st Century Paul Revere.

Another guy who got it.
Another guy who "got it."

There’s something happening here. You can feel it in the air. You can see it on people’s faces, hear it in their voices. Change. And I don’t mean the kind of B.S. “Change” that we saw on Obama’s campaign posters. I mean the kind of change that changes the course of a nation. And the tipping point is this afternoon.

I’m a conservative. A proud conservative. And I believe this country is, frankly, going to Hell in a hand-basket. Sadly, this started long before Obama took office. While I believe that George Bush the Younger is a principled, Godly man, too many things that happened on his watch ran contrary to my conservative principles. That was bad. This is worse: since Obama took office, the country is on a toboggan ride, downhill towards Socialism. Spending like drunken sailors (no offense to our Navy, guys – it’s just an expression), Congress seems content to fiddle while the U.S.A. burns. No program is stupid enough, wacky enough, or costly enough to deny it funding, while even the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office warns that most of the “stimulus” they’ve passed will not only fail to stimulate the economy, but will in fact prolong the recession. Obama has acknowledged as such, even back as far as the campaign days. When asked about his plan to tax capital gains even when it’s been proven, time and time again, that this will have a detrimental effect on the economy, he replied, “But it’s the right thing to do.”

The right thing to do. Interesting turn of phrase. [Read more…] about Beck: The 21st Century Paul Revere.

Bosses from Hell.

My 11-year-old daughter asked me today to tell her a story. No big. But she wanted to know about stupid people that I’ve known and worked for. I’ve actually been pretty lucky…although I’ve worked WITH a lot of stupid people, most of the people I’ve worked for have not been stupid. Mind you, I’ve worked for people that have DONE a lot of stupid things. (And when I say “a lot” I mean, take the biggest number you can think of, double it, and then raise it by the next order of magnitude, and you’ll have an idea of how many stupid things.)

As you might expect, I’m not at a loss to regail my kid with stories about stupid things I’ve seen at work. The story that sprung to mind today is a true story. (I swear!) I’m changing the names to protect the guilty, the innocent bystanders, the quick, and the dead. So…

What seems like a lifetime ago, I worked for a guy who had a pointed stomach. Seriously. He’d herniated the muscle wall of his midriff, and his stomach (already a large part of his physical presence) became somewhat conical in shape. Think of one of Madonna’s B-52 nosecone bras, deduct one cup, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what his stomach looked like. (At one time, in a civil disobedient mood, I decided to write a book as a rip-off homage to the then hot, new book – A Hundred and One Uses for a Dead Cat, that I planned to call A Hundred and One Uses for a Pointed Stomach. Use #1: Breakdancing.)

Anyway, this guy, aside from having the world’s only pointed stomache, had a history…and what a history it was. Early in his life, he’d gotten involved in the music biz, and all the associated evils therein, specifically drugs and alcohol. One day, he awoke, and decided to get clean and sober. Unfortunately, he also had a learning disability that required him to have to repeat things at least three times, before he could remember them.

I worked for him as the Creative Director, and did a bunch of copywriting, feature story writing, and editing as well. As such, it was my lot to review his writing, and edit it. Remember that learning disability thing? When he’d write something, he’d make liberal use of quotes. And use the same quote three or four times, within the same page. I’d edit out the duplications. He’d put them back in (and yell a lot).

After a number of failed projects, he decided to turn his attention to writing a book. And not just any book. No, this was going to be his magnum opus on Christianity. You see, he believed that the only thing wrong with Christianity was organized religion. And he was determined to write a book that explained the Bible to the unwashed masses – sort of a “cut out the middleman,” where churches represent the middleman.

Keep in mind, not many theologians take up the gauntlet on this one. Few people feel that they are sufficiently learned to tackle a project this large – the Christian equivalent of writing the Unified Field Theory. For someone who hadn’t even so much as one semester of divinity school.

I tried to gently point out that there were a number of worthwhile volumes on the market, filled with insightful analysis on the meaning of the Bible. He was not to be deterred. He genuinely believed that not just some, but ALL the theology books on the market had missed the point, and he was the Only One Qualified To Explain the Bible.

I pointed out to him that the Bible (other than the King James Version) is a copyrighted work, and you just can’t quote willy-nilly from it without paying a royalty. His workaround? Paraphrase, essentially coming up with his ‘own’ translation.

I tried to edit out his liberal use (and reuse) of the same quotes, several times on each page. He refused.

Did I mention how his learning disability affected conversations? He once came to me with another of his patented “brilliant ideas.” The exchange went something like this…

BOSS
“…now I want you to stop…I want you to stop what you’re doing…

ME
“Okay. What can I do for you?”

BOSS
“Okay, I want you to stop…and stop what you’re doing. And I want you to print…now pay attention now, I want you to stop everything, and print everything you’re doing on pink paper.”

ME
“Um…pink paper?”

BOSS
“Now I want you to stop…and are you listening? I want you to print everything on pink paper…cause pink is a…now I want you to stop and listen to this, cause it’s important…cause pink is a response color.”

Well…maybe it is in San Francisco, but even after explaining the difficulties of trying to print four-color process on pink paper, he was still keen on the idea. But that was not enough. Just when I’d seemingly exhausted ways to make it better – or mock the project in such a way so that everyone would get the joke but him…my prayers were answered. He shared with me the title of the book.

Are you ready for this? Are you sitting down? Are you resting comfortably? Okay. Here goes:

The Thoughts of Jesus Christ

by __________(INSERT NAME OF BOSS)

Pause with me for a nanosecond, whilst we explore the colossal enormity of this title. Most theologians would demur, rather than presume to be able to read the mind of the Son of God. Even more outrageous, to put one’s name on such a work could be considered sacrilegious at best, insane at worst. Of course, it could have been worse, word-wise. I suppose, “Jesus Christ…What was He thinking?” would have been over the top.

With a title like that, I was all but at a loss as to how to design the dust cover. I mean, I could have spent billions of dollars in conventional weapons, but this demanded something that was sarcastic in the extreme…something that scaled the heights of Olympus in satire. Something that would at once scream “Theatre of the Absurd” while keeping the author completely in the dark.

Now I’m not a joker, a smoker, nor a a midnight toker, for that matter. Never have been, never will be. But I have seen a package of Zig-Zag cigarette papers in my time. (See illustration above.) It struck me that a product that is most closely associated with stoner culture has a mascot that would look remarkably like the popular conceptions of what Christ might have looked like. Sans the joint in his mouth, of course. And what better way to say “this book is one big joke” than to slap a slightly-modified version of the Zig-Zag logo on the dust jacket. So I did. The boss, of course, didn’t have a clue (a leitmotif that ran through most of his input during my employment there.)

The book, of course, never saw the light of day. Which is just as well. But it does make a great story, about the pointy-stomached boss and his goal of better theology through repetition.