Final Exams!!! (Full Version)

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JoToP -> Final Exams!!! (5/24/2006 5:40:13 PM)

Its time for Final Exams!!!

1. Indulgence was:
A. King Charles’ subsidy extracted by taxing Irishmen who owned more than one dulge.
B. payment to the Roman Catholic Church for salvation grace.
C. considered a four-letter word by illiterate Quakers.
D. giving second helpings of gruel to young serfs.
2. Encroachment was:
A. an Enlightenment philosophy which taught men to draw conclusions by means of well organized nervous twitches.
B. the introduction of the infamous “Croach Act” into Parliamentary Procedure.
C. an English Royal toll for traveling the King’s forest.
D. usually counteracted effectively by equal, but opposite out-croachment.
3. Medieval maps:
A. were shaped roughly like a cartwheel.
B. always had a backgammon board on the reverse side.
C. depicted the world just after the Pre-evil and just prior to the Post-evil Period in history.
D. depicted Warsaw as the “World Wart”.
4. Cortez:
A. was a minor Klingon second lieutenant.
B. plays the conga for Santana.
C. was the name for any member of a Portuguese court.
D. was a Spanish Conquistador.
5. Lollards:
A. was a mispronunciation of “Rorrards”, which is Chinese for “Western Capitalist Pigs”.
B. were the inventors of the “lollard popp”, a hard candy on a stick given out to children on Christmas Day in post-Medieval Europe.
C. were followers of Wycliffe.
D. were Plague victims who survived, but not without a permanent speech impediment.
6. Which of the following best describes the reason for the development of
the clock?
A. Monks needed a reliable clock to call them to matins (prayers).
B. Medieval Product Engineers needed something to tell them when it was time to call a Project Meeting.
C. Generals needed precise knowledge of when to start the war.
D. The Y1K panic.
7. Ptolemy was:
A. the star-chart dude.
B. the capital of Potemkin.
C. a philosopher in favor of religious tolerance.
D. chairman of the “Silent Pi Society” (died of pneumonia).
E. inventor of the ptop hat and ptails, (also a consummate ptap dancer).

8. Spinoza was:
A. a philosophe known for skepticism.
B. the originator of the technique of taking the nose between the knuckles of the index and the middle fingers and twisting it skyward while chuckling, “Hyuk, hyuk, hyuk!”
C. inventor of the failed Submarine Screen-Door.
D. one of John Calvin’s most ardent pupils.
9. The Portuguese:
A. were the unquestioned conquerors of Luxembourg.
B. is the plural form of “Portugoose”.
C. began the exploration of the African coast under Prince Henry the Navigator.
D. were special Spanish sailors.
10. John Locke based his works upon the Christian works of:
A. Samuel Clemens, atheistic novel writer who lived nearly a hundred years later.
B. Branislav Kolchensky (my personal, if rather obscure, favorite author).
C. Samuel Rutherford, author of Lex Rex.
D. Banjo Man Franklin, famous 18th century maker of lightening powered stringed instruments (now deceased and cremated in Walker County, GA, we hope).
E. Goldie Locke, his wife and the true brains behind the legend as well as an outstanding naturalist who had an unusual knowledge of the rare porridge-eating bears of northern Europe (now practically extinct because porridge bogs have been almost completely wiped out by Dutch real estate developers). (She now runs a rocking chair repair shop in Boise, Idaho. You can find her Online at www.justright.org.)
11. Descartes is known for having said:
A. “I am, thou art.”
B. “I think, therefore I am.”
C. “I am, therefore thou art.”
D. “I think thou art a ham.”
E. “You stink, therefore I scram.”
12. Newton was best known for his:
A. Laws of Motion.
B. Laws of Reason.
C. Counter-Reformation ideas.
D. Advance s in modern Arithmetic.
E. Arresting stare and 23” biceps.
13. The Greeks taught that the four (4) Universal Elements were derived from:
A. Primordial Jovian thunderbolts.
B. Blood, sweat, toil and tears.
C. Clouds, silt, lightning and ice.
D. Heat, cold, moist and dry.
E. Willy Wonka and his Amazing Universal Element Factory.


Have them on my desk first thing in the morning. No fair cheating.



JoToP -> The Da Micki Code (5/30/2006 3:11:03 PM)

Its been right there in front of my face for a long time, but it finally hit me: my sons both have grown up greatly disliking all things Disney. How did that happen? Disney is a sacred American institution of G-rated childness. Disney teaches America’s children all of the essentials they need to know such as “follow your heart,” parents are doofusses who are trying to suppress youthful expression, Circle of Life, magic, and other great stuff that makes it possible to live the American Dream. I’m wondering if, taking their present attitude, JoToPs A and B are going to find themselves marginalized in the Magic Kingdom.
Mrs. JoToP and I, having discovered our shortcoming in the boys’ education, began to rifle through all the childhood material, looking for the key that turned the boys away from following their Disney Sing-Alongs, took them to Disney World... where did we go wrong and why did they apostatize from the Way of the Mouse. Our search for the answer to this perplexing question led us into an excavation of that dust-laden cache of ancient documents, our Attic. It was dangerous work, but essential to discovering the mystery behind the boys’ defection.
We first bombed the attic with insect foggers to cut down on the danger of spider bites and the prospect of getting the willies from camel crickets. Then, with mag-light beams cutting through the dust and fume, we made our way stealthily into the hostile environment. We carefully removed the dust from the boxes stacked one on top of another until we located the one we had been searching for, the children’s books. After a great deal of rearrangement and dislocation, we managed to get the box out of the attic and into the safety of the adjoining studio where we could examine its contents in a friendlier light.
One by one we removed the thin, chipboard covered documents from the box and flipped through them, looking for clues. We studied dozens of documents about obsolete objects of technology— steam locomotives, steam engines, dump trucks, tugboats, even a steam shovel (interesting how important steam is in childhood development— I may have to do a separate study on this)— each having to justify their existence in the onslaught of higher technology. In spite of the somewhat Amish slant, we decided these had not seriously effect our children, so we passed on. The entire set of Babar looked suspicious, an Indian Elephant who was a monarch, quite un-American. Still, this did not seem to have had too deleterious effect on the boys’ psyche and could not account for an anti-Disney paradigm. On and on we went, through tigers, and baggy elephants, puppies, clowns ({{{shudder}}}, can’t believe we raised the boys on those horrible entities), more trains (what was it with trains??? I don’t remember a story about how horses and bisons were displaced by trains. Nothing on the replacement of chariot or wagon technology.), down, down deep into the nefarious box until we struck of vein of Disney booklets. I was amazed at how few Disney books we had and it wasn’t long before one particular book grabbed my attention. I don’t know what it was, a feeling that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up when I touched the book called Mickey’s Picnic.
I sat back on the floor and read through the book. It was about all the Mickey gang preparing to go on a picnic (hence the title): Mickey, Minnie, Daisy Duck, Goofy, and Pluto. What struck me was that Donald was missing. Ostensibly, according to the story line, Donald had not been invited because in the past he had “caused trouble”, but no specific “trouble” was named. That got my attention! What was the True Reason behind excluding Donald from the picnic. The gang packed the picnic basket and loaded it in the balloon tire, Betty Boop-style car and headed for the picnic site. When they arrived, they left the picnic basket at a certain spot and went to the swimming hole for a swim. That didn’t look right to me. No one in his right mind would ever leave a picnic basket alone in a cartoon setting. This is a favorite scenario for cartoon ants as anyone should know. Its almost stereotypical and yet, leave the basket they did. It just didn’t smell right.
While the gang swam, Donald showed up! He was angry at having been left out of the picnic. This is a similar motif to Olympian goddesses being left out of Jovian banquets and causing wars on earth. I began right there to suspect that Donald was not Donald at all, but was Donna, an evil duckess who had been sanctified in later tradition and transformed into the benign Daisy. Donald and Daisy are really one and the same person, split into to personalities in order to fill in the gaps of this later invasion of the narrative by subsequent redactors. Note how he extracts his revenge. First, he stole the picnic basket, thereby depriving them of their sustenance, then he tied the legs of their trousers making it impossible for them to cover their nakedness. Both of these motifs have their roots in pagan culture, the wrath of the gods on the crops and the lack of shame resulting from the Fall. These are the driving principles behind Disney, if you think about it without the taint of a predominantly Warner Brothers world view. And this underlying principle made it necessary at some point for the Disney myth brokers to adjust the more innocent and pristine story to conform to the new ideas of Disneyism that were evolving and driving the industry.
Now, I could be wrong in my interpretation of these encrypted symbols and I’m open to correction, but I think I’ve sealed up the case that there is something else happening in layers below the story as it is given to us. After all, if we took this story at face value, it’d be of no more significance to us than a child’s story. There has to be a subliminal message or else I’m wasting a lot of time typing this expose. You can’t expect Disney to come right out in the open and reveal their hand, they’re definitely going to couch their real agenda in symbolic terms.
On one page, for instance, you have a picture of the gang sitting around the picnic basket. If you look carefully at Goofy, you’ll notice that he is actually Clarabel Cow with a black nose bulb attached precariously to his face. But the nose bulb is out of perspective, revealing that Goofy really does not own that nose bulb and since Clarabel Cow is the only character who does not have an indigenous nose bulb, Goofy is obviously Clarabel in un-drag. I would suggest that Mickey is purely fictitious and is simply a reworked version of Goofy, who is the real leader of the Mickey Mouse Club, which, according to early cartoon works now considered by the established Disney system to be pseudopigraphia, was originally called the Goofy Cowgirls. But Goofy has been “demoted” so to speak because he really is a cartoon zealot and the myth of the Magical Mickey, the humble and contrite mouse, has been put in his place. But you can’t just jettison Goofy completely so he is consigned to the lesser role of Mousketeer. But remember, Goofy is really Clarabel Cow, which means that the original leader of Mickey’s Gang was a female. Naturally, in the early, pre-feminist days when Disney was just getting started, they couldn’t make this public, so Clarabel became Goofy. This wasn’t uncommon, think of such masculine pseudonyms as George Eliot. Pluto, who looks exactly like Goofy, but doesn’t talk, is really an early attempt at demoting Goofy from zealot leader to disciple. After all, who can really imagine a mouse keeping a dog for a pet.
As shocking as it may seem, I have to conclude that there is not, nor has there ever been such a person as Mickey Mouse. And my boys saw right through this at an early age. I tell you, its frightening, but we have to face the truth and not allow this lie to go on any further.



JoToP -> FINALS!!! part 2 (5/31/2006 9:04:01 AM)

Before Darwin published Origin of the Species, Lyell conceived of and worked out a theory of the age of the earth by the study of rock formations called:
a. take a wild guess.
b. hyperluniary delineation.
c. counting rocks in Darwin’s head.
d. hunting for labels that said, “Made in the year 5,000,000,000 B.C.”
e. geologic time scale.

Intrusive Igneous Rock is formed when molten rock hardens:
a. on the earth’s surface.
b. in mid-air.
c. under water.
d. beneath the earth’s surface.
e. on any igniot that happens to intrude on the premises.

Rocks are important because:
a. if we didn’t have them, we’d all look just like weasels.
b. without them, slingshots would just go “thwip” without effect.
c. without rocks, the world would be nekid.
d. then John Kerry would have absolutely NOTHING in his head.
e. lava surfing would get real old after awhile.
f. b through f.

The king or emperor of Russia went by the title of:
a. Koenig
b. Kaisar
c. Caesar
d. Czar
e. Vladimira Iliavich Commissariovich Branislav Kolchensky

The queen of England in the mid-1800’s was:
a. Victoria
b. Mary
c. Anne
d. James II
e. Bunny Mae

Charles Boulanger, French reactionary to the Prussian occupation of France said:
a. “Run!!!”
b. “We should expel the Allimaine!”
c. “Powder and shot is our bread and butter!”
d. “Combien le person du Francaise esquilia isi, silvous plait!”
e. “Throw the rascals out!”

The king of unified Germany during the period called the First Reich (under Otto von Bismark) was:
a. Wilhelm I
b. Wilhelm II
c. Will Ham III
d. Villain IV
e. Billy Bob Heinig

Existentialism is the philosophical idea that:
a. You exist for no other reason than to bring your history teacher Expensive Presents.
b. I exist for no other reason than to receive your Expensive Presents
c. Existence is its only excuse for being.
d. c. is a stupid answer.

Two-hump camels are called:
a.) Llamas.
b.) Bactrian
c.) Bihumpmels.
d.) Abdul.
e.) dromedaries.

For two (2) points:
How many Brittny Spears does it take to screw in a light bulb?

One more question for one (1) point:

If you put Benny Hinn’s brain in a blue jay, it would:
a. flutter around trying to put its frozen claws on people’s necks.
b. fly backward.
c. have plenty of braincase room spare.
d. switch over to a pasta diet.
e. all of the above
f. none of the above
g. any two of the above
h. g.
i. h.
j. i.
k. etc.

Another question because I only have 99 points and I need to make up another question which is only worth one point
Placer deposits, panning, sluicing and dredging are all terms related to the extraction from the earth of ______, which is my personal favorite metal and I’ll be glad to take any you might have hanging around your house that you’re not using. [Hint: It’s a yellow metal, very heavy, soft and worth {current market value} about 750 g-men per OZ.]



JoToP -> RE: FINALS!!! part 3 (5/31/2006 11:56:31 AM)

Let's see how much you all have learned about the State of Georgia.


1. Products created or made by man are called
a. artifices.
b. artifacts.
c. artichokes.
d. man-made creations.
e. bones.
2. The southeastern region of the United States is called the
a. Sunlit Region.
b. Moonshine Region.
c. Sunbelt Region.
d. Sunshine Region.
e. Redneck Region.
3. Scholars say the southeastern region is the only region in the United States with a distinctive
a. river.
b. State Bird.
c. custard.
d. possum.
e. culture.
4. Georgia’s mild temperatures, 48.34 inches of rain and 66-70% relative humidity make up what is known as the
a. comfort zone.
b. pleasant zone.
c. twilight zone.
d. zone of erudition.
e. Y. I. I.!!!!!!! (Yankee Immigration Index).
5. “Alapaha” is
a. an obscure Indian tribe that once lived around Thomasville, but which mysteriously disappeared around the middle of the 15th Century.
b. the name of a river on the border of North Carolina and North Georgia.
c. what everyone in the know shouts before parafoiling off of Tallulah Gorge.
d. the primary soil type of the coastal plain region of Georgia.
e. the name of Button Gwinnett’s old hound dog.
6. Georgia’s soils have one thing in common:
a. they are the world’s cleanest dirt.
b. they are all good for agriculture.
c. they were all imported from China by Oglethorpe to aid in the production of silk.
d. they taste good.
e. they all make an awful bathtub ring.
7. Florence Martus was Georgia’s famous
a. nightingale.
b. Poet Lariat.
c. Waving Girl.
d. steamboat.
e. nut case.
8. “Suwannee” means
a. “the river of the deer”.
b. “mimshaka”.
c. “beware of the wannee-wannee”.
d. “flowing waters, by the stream, under the shadows of the mountains of the moon which are forever shimmering in the cold light of yesterday... by Alapaha ‘Panther Breath’ Suwannannee Beaver Tail, dedicated to his late wife Marcy, circa 1832— All Rights Reserved.”
e. “river of the pole cat”.
9. Georgia’s two State Birds are
a. the grebe and the cookoo.
b. the chuckwalla and the wild turkey.
c. the mockingbird and the grouse.
d. the brown thrasher and the bob-white quail.
e. the turkey buzzard and the dodo bird.
f. the bat and the flying squirrel.
10. The Georgia Song is (used to be... and should still be)
a. Georgia On My Mind by Ray Charles.
b. Chattanooga Choo-Choo by Benny Goodman.
c. I’d Rather Be in Milledgeville by Branislav Kolchensky.
d. The Georgia Song by Alabama.
e. My Old Kentucky Home by Sea Biscuit.
11. Georgia is bordered by states.
a. Confusion, Idiocy, Lunacy
b. Texas, New Mexico, Arizona
c. Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi
d. North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee
12. Ossabaw Island is a nesting ground for .
a. Great Blue Herons
b. Red-crested, Web-footed Lake Loons
c. Sea Turtles
d. Sea Cucumbers
e. Ossabaw Ospreys
13. had a face that looked as though “the devil had been threshing peas on it”.
a. William Fremont
b. Ponce de Leon
c. Henry Cabot Lodge
d. William McWhir
e. Damian Lintel Threshmugg
14. Until laws were crafted prohibiting the sale of impure food in Georgia disease was dealt with predominantly by means of .
a. Miasma
b. Silk screens
c. Nicotine
d. A friendly slug to the head
e. Quarantine
15. In the early 1800s, malaria was thought to be carried by .
a. Fleas
b. Rats
c. Swamp fog (miasma)
d. Mosquitoes
e. Pachyderms
16. Two major events that carved out the terrain of Georgia as we see it today were
a. Global Warming and urban spread
b. John Clarke and George Troupe
c. John Deere and Massey Ferguson
d. Glaciation and mountain uplift
e. Gradual drainage and wind damage
17. The general government under Confederation had no power to tax and had to money from the States.
a. Requisition
b. Extort
c. Tax
d. Borrow
e. Counterfeit
18. The between Virginia and Maryland lead to the call for a convention in Philadelphia to discuss the problems in 1787.
a. Sherman Anti-trust Act
b. Shay’s Rebellion
c. Virginia/Maryland Conflict
d. Issue over the location of the Capitol
e. Baseball game
19. The first institute for the mentally ill was built in (what Georgia city) .
a. Milledgeville
b. Marthasville
c. Marieville
d. Nuttyville
e. AndrewAutown
20. recommended the new sight for the capital.
a. George Troupe
b. Crawford Long
c. Cassias Clay
d. Branislav Kolchensky
e. John Clarke



JoToP -> Advice for the Ladies (5/31/2006 4:51:01 PM)

Thought I’d do a little public service work for our ladies-at-home who are valiantly cutting all kinds of corners in there quest to meet the budget and make all ends meet. First of all, if you think about it, if you cut corners enough you’ll have a circle and the ends will not only meet, but will have become indistinguishable from the rest of the arc that is in the middle. If you’re looking for symbolic meaning in that, you’ll be disappointed because I was just engaged in overworking a metaphor.

Secondly, I highly recommend that ladies do their own car repair. There’s nothing to be afraid of; its really quite simple. All you have to do is follow these simple steps.

1. Determine what the problem is.
2. Remove everything until you get to the part that is causing the problem.
3. Remove the problem part.
4. Take the problem part down to the auto parts store and show it to the person behind the parts counter.

Let’s pause here for a moment because we have gotten into the most complicate part of this thing at this point. First, make sure and bring a book, magazine, cell phone, i-pod, laptop, or miniature DVD player because you are going to be standing in line for a while and will need something to distract you. The counter you’re aiming for is manned or womanned by two people. One of them is on the phone trying to explain to the cheaters who call in before they come what 43 things are possibly wrong with their car and where to scrape away the grease to find the engine ID number, without which the parts person is lost as to accuracy of information given. The other person behind the counter is handling the line you’re in and can’t speak Spanish, which is slowing down everything. There are other people working the store, at least they’re wearing Auto Parts Store bolo shirts, but they’re on break and are cracking jokes with each other and with the person working your line, who looks nervous and harrowed. If your lucky, the manager will show up and everybody will get behind the counter and start shouting “Who’s next!” But don’t count on it; call your sister on your cell phone.

In front of you there will be several kinds of humans with various agenda to present before the lone parts person. Some of these people are so greasy that it is impossible to say for certain what their ethnicity is. They keep turning around in the line and looking at perfect strangers and saying things between their teeth that are sibilant for the most part and should not be repeated. All this angst is being caused by a well-dressed guy who is being served at the front of the line. He’s holding a tiny bottle of touch-up paint, you know, the kind that has a half tea-spoon of paint in it, dries up in the bottle after you break the seal, and costs $12 a bottle. He’s asking the counter person if the company that makes it is a subsidiary of the factory that produced the paint on his car which is an Oldsmobile. He’s not sure that Oldsmobile’s black paint is the same as the black paint in the tiny bottle he’s holding. The counter person doesn’t know, so the customer has asked for the manager, who’s not there at the moment. He wants to know if he can bring it back if it doesn’t match and what he needs to do to remove it if it doesn’t. He’s about made up his mind to buy it so now he’s asking what equipment he’s going to need to apply it; does he need Bond-o, should he get a mini-paint spray kit, is it going to glob, run, or feather if he uses a brush, what size brush should he get and does it matter whether it has synthetic or natural bristles, what grit emory cloth should he prepare the surface with, etc., etc., etc.

You might want to bring a sack lunch with you when you go, I just thought of that.

When you get to the counter, show the counter person the defective part. They’ll look up your car in their computer, so be ready with the make, model, color, whether its got an air conditioner, size of engine, tire pressure, leather or synthetic interior, inside diameter of the left exhaust pipe, an impression of the trunk key, what station is currently set on the radio... and with these simple bytes of information they will be able to find your car in their computer along with fourteen other cars made by the same body manufacturing corporation all of which have engines made in an equal number of corporations both domestic and abroad. Then, they’ll key in your defective part and bring up an array of possible parts you can choose from, some from the manufacturer, some new from other manufacturers, and some refurbished buy little companies with names like Magnum Gas Filter Reworks, or Bubbanators.

The most expensive will have a lifetime warranty, which means that they cover it as long as its working. You do realize they’re not saying they will replace it until you die, I hope. They’ll replace it until it dies... but they won’t replace it if its dead. And they won’t replace it unless something’s wrong with it. In other words, they won’t replace it at all. If you want a warranty, get a five year or one year warranty. Those actually warranty the part.

They may offer you a core recovery if you have the old part, which you do. If you don’t bring in the part though, you pay the full core charge price on the part. If you do this, keep the part in your glove compartment along with the receipt. That way, if you run out of money and need to buy something, you can exchange the part for money in the future. Its like having a little Income Tax Return in the middle of the year, quite cool.


Take the new part to the check out counter and wait a while. There’ll be someone leaning against the wall in front of you, but don’t bother him, he’s on break. A manager will show up shortly and scowl at him and his break will mysteriously be over and he will help you. He’ll probably flirt with you while ringing up the part as if you were totally raptured by the black grease under his fingernails and the flake of Skoal lodged between his two front teeth. When I go to the counter, I am called “Bud” if the counter person is a guy and “Hun” if she’s a woman. Any letters behind one’s name or any number of laborers one commands are meaningless in an Auto Parts Store. Even George W. Bush is “Bud” or “Hun” in an auto parts store.

Alright, back to our list:

5. When you get home (its up to you if you go immediately home or whether you go through the car wash first... you, not your car) put the new part where the old one was.
6. Put all the other parts where they were before.
7. Put any parts left over in the trunk of the car.
8. Call a trusted mechanic to haul the vehicle to his garage for proper repairs.

Just a couple of other tips before you take the plunge. It’s a good idea to have a parts manual for your car. You can acquire one at your local auto parts store. They usually have a rack with car books on it. Yours won’t be there, in fact, the only one’s you’ll see will be about ten copies of 1992 Chevy Cavalier. But you’ll probably find one within a year or two of your car. Its chancy, but you might want to buy one and work with it.

The book tells you in great detail how to deal with your car. There’s usually a Troubleshooter’s Guide in the back that’s pretty handy. It works like this:

Problem: Car won’t start
Possible solutions:
Using ignition key instead of trunk key.
Lack of fuel.
Defective electronic ignition.
Defective starter.
Dead or defective battery.
Defective alternator.
Defective valves.
Bent or broken cam shaft.
Timing gear.
Timing sprocket.
Blown head gasket.
Chrysler product.

The manual will also suggest tools that will facilitate the work on your car. If you happen to be replacing the front end suspension, the book may say, “Remove tie rod with tool number C1445B and tool number ZX65834.” If you order these tools from the company that makes the manuals (and they usually don’t sell tools), they’ll send you a ball-peen hammer and a crow bar.

Whatever you do, take your time and enjoy the adventure and the savings. Most shops charge a flat rate of thirty cents for all replacement parts and $700 and up for labor, so you are definitely beating inflation. Just make sure none of your small children are around while you work. They aren’t old enough to hear you talk that way.



JoToP -> Letter from Branni (6/2/2006 10:06:33 AM)

I get letters from my Slavonic friend, Branislav Kolchensky, from time to time. most of them are too incomprehensible to share with the general public, but occassionally he sends me a letter he wants posted in his unusual mission to lift up the spirits and the intellect of Americans to the level of Bulgaria, which, as far as I know, no longer exists. Here's one of his letters for your benefit:

quote:

Gre-etings and Peace to all you followers of the decadent capitalist, George Vashington,

It is being a long time that I should degraded myself to the writing in this subversive Sloppe Shoppovich. But now that I drop by I might as well make you peoples smart with my wit. I am wery intelligent man in my country. Just last week, the Secretariat of the Polit Bureau... he calls me up and says to me, "Hey, Branni" (he call me 'Branni' because he is knowing me so well)... "Branni" he say, "Every time I drop my pumpernickel, it is falling to the ground with the butter side down. What is the problem, my good friend, Branni," he say. ( You notice, he call me his "good friend"... not just Branni. It is because I am important man in my country, is all.) So, I tell him. "You are buttering your pumpernickel on the wrong side."

So while JoToP is fixing the materialistic luxury items that are being manufactured by inferior American industry, I will do what I can to fix what is wrong with your mind. It is least I can be doing for poor American bourgeoisie.

I am forever (until I die),

Branislav Kolchensky


Very inspiring. I hope it helps you in your daily walk.



JoToP -> HEY!!!!! (6/2/2006 10:33:14 AM)

I just got a brand spankin' new 15 ton hydraulic jack!!! It is so cool! You just roll that sucker up under the car, taking care to find a balanced location, pump the handle three times and the car goes flying in the air. Its a little hard on the rafters, but now I can change those other three spark plugs without having to pull the motor.
BTW, down here in the South, that big lumpy thing under the hood that propells the car is called a "motor". I don't care what the Yankees think it is (they call it an engine, which is what we call the folks what used to live around here and litter the place with arrowheads). You can go to any mechanic in the South, toothless, spitting savants who are capable of making a car go from 1 to 60 in -2 seconds flat on corn mash, and they'll pat the hood and say, "Whut kinda mawtah ya got under thar." I rest my case.

Southern mechanics also kick your tires for free. They kick the tires because they have very sensitive toes... so sensitive that they can determine your tire pressure through their toes. Southern mechanics can also listen to your motor and tell what's wrong. I've seen it many times, Bob leans into the open hood for a thoughtful minute then announces, "The #3 lobe on the cam shaft is worn down by .5 mm. It wants some Valvoline." Some Southern mechanics can diagnose the problem by inserting a divining rod up the tail pipe. I don't ask questions, they never fail to return my car to me in perfect operating condition.



JoToP -> A Product of Deep Meditation (6/7/2006 8:05:49 AM)

I just got out of the Lotus Position (it only took fifteen minutes this time, to get out of the position, that is) where my mind left my body and went into the cosmos in search of deep wisdom and understanding. Mysteriously, my mind came back to a common theme, Swiss Cake Rolls... the state of perfect nothingness.

The only other thing I can think of to say about Swiss Cake Rolls is that the name is obviously designed to leave One with the impression that One is eating Something Classy because it is chocolate and has the name “Swiss” attached to its moniker and everyone knows that the Swiss are the best in the world at making chocolate products ever since they managed to get their names on Swiss Miss Cocoa. Feeling Classy while eating a pasty, overly sweetened log of Food Product is very important to some people and is preferable to eating the exact same product and feeling Kooky or Ridiculous because it has the name Ding Dong, Twinky or Google on the package.

What claim does Switzerland have on fine chocolate products? That’s the trouble with the German-type people. They think that just because they can make clocks and toy soldiers — that somehow makes them the leading experts on chocolate. Besides, if you look at a current map, you’ll see that cocoa comes from the tropics of South and Central America where bananas, plantains and maniacs grow. It would make more since to believe that native South and Central Americans would know a thing or two about their own product. Switzerland, on the other hand, is on the same latitude as Fargo, North Dakota where icicles, wiregrass and Yetis grow, and needs to stick to Army Knives and cheese and keep their frigid noses out of the tropical business and you can take that to the bank.

I will now approach this topic in a Scientific Manner by listing the ingredients of the Swiss Cake Roll, which will also serve to fill in space and make this paper appear Long and Scholarly.

Ingredients: Sugar, corn syrup, water, vegetable shortening (Partly hydrogenated soybean and cottonseed oil), enriched bleached flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine, mononitrate [vitamin B1], riboflavin [vitamin B2], folic acid), dextrose, cocoa, eggs, soybean oil, colors (caramel color, red 40), whey (milk), leavening (baking soda, sodium aluminum phosphate) emulsifiers (sorbitan monostearate, polysorbate 60, soy, lecithin, mono- and diglycerides), salt, cornstarch, sorbic acid (to retain freshness) natural and artificial flavors.

It has to be written in infinitesimal letters so that you will not be able to duplicate the formula which, when not being used for making junk food and with only slight adjustments can produce a biochemical weapon capable of annihilating every living organism within an area equal to five city-blocks.

Now, you would think that this is an absolutely exhaustive list of the Swiss Cake Roll’s ingredients, but you would be wrong. There is much that is Not said in the above list and That is what bothers me. For instance, just what are “caramel color” and “red #40?” A bit of brief research will reveal that they are made up of the following ingredients: acetone, methylene chloride, trinitrotoluene, lysergic acid diethylamide. Polysorbate 60 actually means “many sore bates”, including punctured earthworms, crickets and spring lizzards (salamanders); 60, to be exact. You’ll notice that sorbic acid adds the explanatory parenthetical remark (to retain freshness) suggesting that this particular chemical is ordinarily well known to be used for something else like retaining freshness in Egyptian mummies. And you may have noticed the term “emulsifiers” and wondered, as I did, what exactly that means. Well, it means “suspension of one liquid into another that will not naturally mix”, like Swiss Cake Roll juice and human blood.”

The real attraction to junk food is supposed to be the taste, and this is where things really get complicated because, according to the list of ingredients, the Swiss Cake Roll contains Both natural AND artificial flavors. But I can tell that there are no Natural flavors in the Swiss Cake Roll because the Only Natural Flavor that exists for junk food is Root Beer. The only hard candy that tastes like what it claims to be is the Root Beer Barrel, anybody knows this. Everything else is Artificial Flavor like cherry, grape, lemon, lime, raspberry, strawberry and cheese. Grape candy can only claim to be “grape” because of the purple food dye that is in it. It may look “grapish”, but it in no way tastes anything like an actual grape. “Cheese” flavor tortilla chips or Nachos are covered with an orange powder extracted from the cheetoh plant which is there to make the consumer think that he/she is eating something that tastes like cheese, when actually it tastes like exactly what it is: riboflavin.

Otherwise, the only thing that is really important on the package of Little Debbie’s
Original Swiss Cake Rolls is the chocolate icing that has stripped off of the cake roll and is clinging to the inside of the wrapper waiting to be removed with the two front teeth, which evolutionists inform us is a vestige of our ancient beaver ancestry, but which we now know, in light of the above observation is there by design. Second to that in importance, however, is the word “The Original.” This word is there to inform you that in the complex world of Food Products, there exists at least one counterfeit to the Swiss Cake Roll, so beware! Eat a fake cake roll at your own risk, there’s no telling what may be in it. And even if its ingredients are completely innocuous, partaking of it could stigmatize you into some undesirable class stratification, whatever That means.

The truly Astonishing thing about it all is that Young Humans actually consume large quantities of Swiss Cake Rolls and, thereby, eagerly add to their growing supply of adipose tissue. Out of a Control Group of 1000 Young Humans, at least 1200 enthusiastically embrace Swiss Cake Rolls, which explains why so many Young Humans have chocolate smudges on their ankle-length tee shirts. The real problem is finding a Control Group of Young Humans, for, as any Old Humans know intimately, “Youth” and “Control” are two words that are as compatible as “Nitro” and “Glycerine.” But, then as we have seen, so are “Swiss” and “Chocolate” and they’re laughing and yodeling all the way to die Bank.



JoToP -> Taking on N.T.Wright (6/7/2006 8:29:57 AM)

You may not be interested in a theological treatise, at this point, but try to stretch out and think deeply. There are big ideas being knocked around the theological schools these days that tend to filter down to the "common pew sleeper warmer". You would do well to understand where some of this comes from. I therefore submit, for your edification, this scholarly paper on biblical hermeneutic.

THE NEW MOSINE PERSPECTIVE

A New and Unheard Of Hermeneutic (Which Means, “How to Understand the Bible, in Plain English) and I Can Say All This Because Subtitles are Supposed to be Long So That They Can Explain Everything the Paper is Going to Be About As If I Weren’t Going to do That In the Body of the Paper Anyway.... Thank You
by JoToP


I’ve been looking over the New Pauline Perspective lately and I think that we of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in the United States should reconsider our position on it. Maybe we have been a bit hasty in our judgment of those who believe that we should take on a more Hebraic Approach to understanding the Bible. This New Pauline Perspective does have some interesting points in spite of the fact that it is named after a girl.
First, it states that we should not approach the Bible as Westerners, even though the last word in the book of Jonah is “cattle.” This is easy enough for me because I am not from the West. I am from North Mississippi and I, therefore, take a North Mississippian approach to everything.
There is great danger in taking a Western approach to interpreting the Bible. It is because of a Western approach that the Children of Israel worshiped a Golden Calf or Dogie. If they had been thinking Hebraically, as they should have been, they’d have worshiped a Golden Camel.
Now that I have plainly demonstrated how thinking Western can lead to false doctrine and practice, you can see how it would not be desirable for us to view the Church as an Open Cattle Range instead of as a Multi-National Corporation as it should be viewed. New Proselytes would have to be hog-tied and branded with “Lazy Cross” or “Fish” or “Fish Eating Darwin” brands or other Sacred Symbols. Christians would be driven in huge droves by the tens of thousands from Houston to Abilene. Satan would be a Mule Skinner and pastors would chew tobacco. “Blessed are the Peacemakers” would refer to a Colt 44. It would not be a pretty sight.
On the other hand, those who believe in the New Pauline Perspective teach that a Western view is somehow synonymous with a Greek outlook. I think that’s pretty silly. I’ve only heard of one Greek cowboy in my life and that was Anthony Quin. If you just Need verification of this So Obvious Fact, I refer you to the Clint Eastwood movie, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, which so Authentically portrays the Actual West and was, in fact, filmed on location in Western Italy.
There is a lot more charm to thinking Hebraically. I take it that this means that we should think about biblical stuff in the same way that a Modern Israeli would. After all, how can anyone in this century think like a Hebrew that died 2,000 years ago? So it must mean Israeli because they’re the only people left on earth who speak Hebrew and Hence— think Hebraically.
Using Modern Hebrews as our guide might be kind of fun. We could, under this paradigm, settle doctrinal and interdenominational disputes by means of Car Bombs and Precision Air Strikes. We might even pick up a few juicy subsidies from the Co-Operative Program.
But, I ask, why stop there? According to the New Danieline Perspective, we should interpret the Bible Babylaically. Wouldn’t you like to see our August Reverends in Braided Beards? Or we could adopt a Davidine Interpretation and think Philistaically or Moabaically. How about a New Judgine Perspective in which we interpret the Bible from a Canaanaic slant.
You can see, by now, where I’m heading, no doubt. To the Fridge for a Ham and Swiss on Rye. But before I go there, I would like to propose the oldest and most pristine Hermeneutic Principle known to man:

THE NEW MOSINE PERSPECTIVE
(Hence, the Title)


This perspective presupposes that Moses, who was trained in Pharoah’s Court (Hebrews 11:24 ), interpreted the Creation, the Fall and the Covenant, get this— Egyptaically. This concept revolutionizes the way we should interpret Scripture, placing E. Wallace Budge and Rosetta Stone in their proper places at the top of our list of great theologians.
Now, just what great theological doctrines can be extracted Egyptaically from the Bible? Well, I’m proposing that this New Mosine Perspective is going to clear up a Lot of confusion in the way in which we approach the Bible. First of all, when you approach the Bible you Must be sure that you are going Toward the Bible and not Away from it. That is very Key to approaching the Bible as it is very difficult to actually pick up the Bible and read it when you are Physically moving Away from the book.
Another thing is to look at the words as something like hieroglyphic symbols. Instead of seeing a word in the Bible like “man” as just a word, you must understand that what it is Actually saying is “human being.” This also helps you to understand that “the Children of Israel” were actually grownups and not children in the strict sense of the word. And another word that is very confusing in the Bible is “milchkine.” This is not an Actual milchkine as we know them, but is a Picture, if you get my meaning, of a “milk cow.” Now, how else, except by means of an Egyptaic paradigm, are you going to understand these terms and many, many more besides?
Another aspect of the New Mosine Perspective is to see the Bible as Two-Dimensional, like an Egyptian base-relief sculpture. Now, don’t get me wrong. The Bible, as a book is not Two-Dimensional. That’s ridiculous. Like all books, the Bible is Three-Dimensional. It’s the pages that are Two-Dimensional, seeing that they are flat. It’s the flatness of the pages of the Bible that keep all the words from bobbing up and down and floating out the window. I hope you can see how complicated it would be to understand the Bible if this happened and we can thank the Egyptians for the Two- Dimensional aspect of the Bible. After all, they’re the guys who wrote on papyrus, which is where the word “paper” comes from.
Now, so far, I have written this Highly Professional Article having made use of no less than four (4) footnotes, which just goes to show how Authentic and Intellectual its contents are.
My Third Principle of Mosine interpretation of the Bible has to do with those Egyptian carvings and paintings of Men In Profile with long, one-toed feet one out in front of the other in such a way that they would not possibly be able to walk. I’m assuming that they actually slid from place to place, possibly because Mankind had not yet learned how to lift up one foot at a time and put it back down again. They also had hands with fingers tightly spanned together like a Karate Chop. This may be because Mankind had not yet learned how to make a fist. I’m not exactly sure what this has to do with interpreting the Bible, but I’m working on it because I’m sure it’s Key and I’m open to any suggestions no matter how idiotic. In the meantime, don’t give up reading the Bible just because you haven’t got the hang of thinking Egyptaically, yet. Maybe if you try sliding your feet one in front of the other while reading it’ll come to you at least that you could use some professional help. But if you don’t try understanding the Bible at all, well...Tut, Tut.



JoToP -> RE: Taking on N.T.Wright (6/7/2006 8:44:44 AM)

Footnotes


[Below are the footnotes to the thesis A New Mosine Perspective above. The reader is invited to attach each note to any sentence he/she feels most appropriate. they have been posted in tiny font for obscure scholarly reasons.]

1.) Note with what unassailing logic I have sealed up the above case.
2.) A paradigm is “two-cents worth” with inflation. In the Original Old Dutch it was called a Pair-O-Dimes.
3.) Note the Bible reference which authenticates my new Heresy Doctrine.
4.) ...and if you do get my meaning, please explain it to me because I’m still a little unclear about all of this myself.



JoToP -> Problems getting tobacco (6/7/2006 5:27:12 PM)

O.K.! I went into CVS yesterday to get a pack of pipe tobacco. I sez to the cashier, sez I, "I need a pack of Borkum Riff Cherry Cavendish pipe tobacco. It's in a red pack." So I'm sorter watching her out of the corner of my eye and pretending to read the cover of a magazine. Its Cosmopolitan and contains about a dozen articles on how women should do unmentionable things for their men. My mind isn't on it really because I'm coming into that age where what pushes my buttons are articles on Second Temple Judaism and Variegated Nomism. The cashier is getting frustrated, looking through the cigar section. She's just about to pick up a pack of Red Man chewing tobacco. She did hear me say "red". Then she triumphantly pick up a black pack of pipe tobacco, so she did hear me say "pipe". I say, "Its in a red pack" and go on with my hair raising perusal of Cosmo. (What in the Sam Hill is a V-Zone? Don't answer.) Finally after almost picking up Captain Black she discovers the prize and brings it to the register. Red faced, she says, and I quote, "Oh. You want Borkum Riff."
So, it was my fault that she took so long finding the product. You see, I told her up front that I wanted Borkum Riff. But apparently I told her subconcious and not her concious mind. She heard me say "Borkum Riff" otherwise how would she have known that I wanted Borkum Riff? My bad for not making sure that when I said it, the words did not filter up to the conscious level more quickly.
So, I said, "Could you get me a pack of Borkum Riff Ultralight? Its in a silver pack." I was buying time while reading the headline of Globe, "Twelve year old gives birth to Batboy."



JoToP -> Which reminds me.... (6/7/2006 5:40:16 PM)

Since this is the Blogge is designed to be instructive to the general public as well as the private public, I think this is an appropriate time to take questions of theological significance. This one just arrived about six months ago and I've been givin it a lot of thought whenever I go to the bathroom... i.e., the Think Tank.

Do Angels need Air Vibrating a Larynx to Speak?


Why would anyone want to deprive angels of their favorite mode of communication? For centuries now angels have been dropping in air vibrating larynx's. What else are larynx's good for anyway. They just run around the woods eating chipmunks and spraying car tires with musk. If an occasional angel can come along and air vibrate one or two of them, what's the big deal? After all, angels are spiritual beings and don't have a voice box, which makes it difficult for them to be heard. I wouldn't be surprised if larynx's were put on this earth just to be air vibrated by anxious angels with something on their minds that they need to get off their chests. And if this is a threat to the larynx population, maybe we should consider breeding larynxes for angelic amusement. In fact, I think I'll get on that right now. Its about time we did something constructive on this thread.



JoToP -> Having to do with... (6/7/2006 5:45:44 PM)

This is not one of the more interesting aspects of poetic craftsmanship, but it is still necessary to be learned and practiced, so do not skip over this lesson. Its about word meanings, values and poetic license. It has to do with how words work and was pioneered by the obscure and failed dictionary writer Henry Wordswork, who couldn’t go alphabetical because of a rhyming impulse he had inherited from a court jester ancestor dating back in the late A. D. 1363s. Henry finally gave up on his dictionary venture and started writing poetry, but was backed into further ignominy by Henry Wordsworth and the rest is history.

With that background safely out of the way, let’s discuss word meaning in relation to certain inflections. I think it would be appropriate to deal with the IC words, otherwise known as the Having To Do With words. Any word ending in “-ic” is defined as “having to do with...so-and-so.” These words are handy in poetry especially when you are hung with a line ending such as “crick” (a moving stream of water), “shtick” (how the Ephraimites do NOT pronounce “stick”), “kick”, “nick”, etc. Your next line can be any word, so long as it ends in “-ic” and will hold its own meaning in a “having to do with” sort of way. “Geriatric” means “having to do with Germans or Jerry Cans” or something like that, you get what I mean. Academic means “having to do with ‘Acad’ an ancient city state in the Fertile Crescent”. “Polemic” means “having to do with skunks”. “Anaemic” means “having to do with anemones”. “Demonic” means “having to do with demonstrations”. “Magnetic” means “having to do with Manganese, (you’re not likely to use this word unless you are familiar with the culture of the inhabitants of Mangan)”.

So............

Let’s put today’s lesson to work, shall we?

I wrote her name in sand using a shtick
Then came the ocean waves and erasetic
“Vain man,” said she, “To kick against the ****
Or e’er my name erase from earthatic”
“Not so,” quod I. “let baser things have trick
to die in vain. My verse your nametic
Doth eternize and in the heavens click (actually stars twinkle instead of click, but this tutorial...)
Beneath the orange, Harvest Lunatic.

Where whenas death shall men their buckets kick (man, this is good stuff)
Our love shall live and later loves inspiric.

Now, you try it.



JoToP -> Fall (6/7/2006 5:48:32 PM)

At this time of the year, I get to kind of longing for Fall. Fall is the most important season of the year and this is Absolutely True because it is the only season with two (2) names. Autumn is its oldest name because nobody knows what it means. I think it means, in High Ugaritic, “Time for the fauns to come out.” Fauns were little men-goats that used to live around England millions of years ago. English people evolved from them, which explains why English people, to this very day, eat out of things called “tins.” It’s a throwback to the time when they actually used to eat the “tins” and leave the contents littered all over England to attract Bubonics, which would later give them no end of grief, but would also herald in the Industrial Revolution.
Fall is a more recent word and means, “time to get out the blower and clean out the gutters” in Old Slavic. No need to elaborate on that—pretty cut and dry.
But the question that has been plaguing mankind throughout Time Immemorial is, “Couldn’t you just punch up the price in the time it takes to get the scanner to read the bar-code?” Since I’m still doing research on that and the verdict has not yet come in, I’ll tell you why leaves change colors. There are two (2) commonly held theories regarding this subject:
1.) Cold Weather. Most Scientists respond to this theory with streamline, unerring logic by saying, “Malarky.” So much for that theory.
2.) Fairies Paint the Leaves. Scientists are split 50/50 on this one with half for the idea, half against it and half unwilling to commit.
3.) The Days are Shorter in the Fall. I don’t personally see what that has to do with it, but time is running out and it’ll be Bedtime soon, so, let’s push on to THE REAL REASON, which only I know, but am willing to tell you about, since I’ve already registered the idea with The Library of Congress, and thus, I am not particularly concerned about “Patent-Jumping.”
4.) The Reason is, plainly: Aliens. Look at the incontrovertible evidence. In the Fall you have:
a.) More Swamp Gas.
b.) More Weird Cloud Formations.
c.) More “Soviet” planes flying over U.S. Air Space because they can no longer find that Large Land Mass that once had the letters “U.S.S.R.” engraved on it.
d.) More Cigar-Shaped Objects with blinking lights floating about and…
e.) (And this one clinches my case…) The Leaves Change Colors.
Do you see how it all fits together?! So when you go up to the mountains to see the leaves, don’t be disappointed if it’s not as spectacular as you hoped it would be. Look up at the stars. And if they start to change colors, Get Underground because it’s probably Global Thermonuclear War… or swamp gas. It’s hard to tell the difference sometimes.



JoToP -> June (6/7/2006 5:55:21 PM)

I was born in June, so I figure I know more about it than most people do, seeing as how, as of tomorrow, I will have experienced more Junes than any other month of the year, and that's got to count for something. For instance, I happen to know that June was named after a Roman goddes named Juno who was, among other unmentionable things, the goddess of weddings. This means she was the goddess of uselessness, because humans have never needed goddesses involved in weddings, they have them just fine without goddesses and never think anything of goddesses while they have them and especially afterwards when Venus is supposed to take over. But, in ancient days, Juno used to keep one of her crones around to Officiate the wedding. The vestige of Juno's crones are now called Wedding Coordinators. They usually dress in clothing that looks like pajamas, have hair that looks like insulation, are tanned to a leathery texture, and are showing a full meter of cleavage. They are even dressed this way DURING THE WEDDING. It reminds me of the time I walked into a Barber Shop and saw the barber for the first time, an old guy who's iron gray hair looked like it had just been run over by a Troybilt Tiller. I quickly looked up at the barber poll and said, "Oh! This is a barber shop." and left. But, thankfully, brides and grooms are oblivious to what is going on at the wedding, giving every wedding commodities and services institution out there ample opportunity to see to it that they get off to a normal, American start in life, i.e. up to their eyeballs in debt. I’ve always wondered just who weddings are snazzed up for, certainly not the groom who’d gladly get married in a grocery store. Not the bride, either. She’s trapped in a Bridal Room for hours being preened by 26 relatives and barked at by Juno’s crone. When she finally comes out, she walks down the aisle looking straight ahead, does the ceremony, and spends the next hour and a half getting her picture taken at every possible angle and with every person who is even remotely connected to the wedding, including the stretch limo driver. Then she and the groom go to the reception, which is somewhere else, after the guests have already been there long enough to make the food tables look like the aftermath of Krakatoa. I gave up trying to figure it out.



JoToP -> RE: June (6/9/2006 5:15:37 PM)

I'll be gone for a while so I thought I'd leave you with something edifying for a change.

Dry as Dust Reality is Actually Watered Down

I purposely named this article “Dry as Dust Reality is Actually Watered Down” to make it sound like the smarmy headlines of the vast majority of modern journalism. Why the bad puns and wearisome alliterations? It is not a demonstration of literary art, but rather a way of drawing the attention toward an issue even though the bait to get one’s attention is quite poor. It is just another symptom of our times, a time in which the average attention span can be measured in seconds. This is further manifested in the declension in reading in favor of visual stimulation, pictographic communication, and rapid changes in scenery within thirty second commercials. It is as though the conscious mind is hidden away and only peeks out, like a hermit crab, into reality for a short moment, then retreats into its escapist shell again. Marketers must be quick and decisive if they are going to catch the attention, then they must unload as much information as they can into the listener/reader within a brief space of time. It is no wonder that A. D. D. is such a common diagnosis among young school children today. American children are being converted into Zip Files.

Among young people of school age, this condition is further manifested in the form of boredom. Boredom is best understood as— being where one does not care to be, feeling compelled to be present in a condition that is mundane. But in order for one to judge a condition as mundane, one must judge some other condition as the opposite, as exciting and appealing. What place? Do school children know of some hidden world other than this material/spiritual world God has made? Once again, it is as if the student has been dragged out of Some Other Place into a world of uneventful time passages. Yet that Other Place does indeed exist. It is a world of the mind that takes away the taste for the world that God has made and sees any event that is not immediately attached to Self as irrelevant and uninteresting. It is a world that every parent must declare war upon and must seek to lovingly destroy.

The world that resides in the minds of children does not fall easily when it has been fed to fatness by the imagination brokers of our society. If it were just a matter that children who watch too much television, listen to too much hip-hop or heavy metal, read too much pulp fiction, or play too many computer games retreat into themselves, the problem would not be so serious. Remove the culprits and the mind should bounce back to normalcy, but that is not the case. The truth is that a child can take a little television, music, fiction, and games a long way because the mind of the Fallen is a factory of fantasy and mythology. It is not exactly natural for sinful people to like reality, that is, God’s created world. Since the Fall, since mankind has taken the knowledge of good and evil and become like gods, people live with a strong urge to recreate the world ex nihilo. This world that is made from nothing is the world of fantasy and imagination. In this world, the little creators place themselves at the center. They see themselves as all-knowing, all-powerful, the receivers of the praise of all other people. This is a fascinating world and much preferred to the Mundane World in which another God rules and knows and is worshiped. Reality is an undesirable place, a wasteland to be visited, plundered for myth-making material and escaped. Fantasy is the world of Man, the factory of myths, the foundery of gods and idols, and the place where Self stands unchallenged in the center. The little gods of these little universes imagine themselves to be safe from the God of Reality, but they forget that He who made their minds holds the master key to their back doors and in this there is both hope and the weapon that every parent must use against these worlds of unreality into which children retreat.


God’s world is real. It is the only real world there is from high heaven to the lowest earth. Having created this world mysteriously from nothing, he is the initiator of all of the events that transpire within it. Having spoken the universe into existence he called his unfathomable purposes into it and it operates in accord with the deep counsels of his will. Some of those purposes he has chosen to reveal to man through his written word, the Bible. History is the unfolding of his purposes in the passage of mankind from one generation to the next— the consequences of moral corruption on the condition of the created order, the failed quest for social equality, the restless search for an object of worship, the sense of standing out of synch with God, the aggravating futility in the government and subjection of the earth. History also reveals the beginnings of a reversal in the Curse from the time that Christ came to do for man what man has utterly failed to do for himself.

However, so long as each generation is bred on the fat of fantasy so each child of our waning West emerges into the adult life a cyclops, having a single eye for man and no eye for God. Men look at the events of the past and exclude God from it, seeing only the actions of men and the forces of determinism at play. History is a desert, a wilderness of successive attempts and failures, of man’s cruelty to other men, of an insatiable appetite to overthrow rule and to reign instead. But a single eye lacks dimension and depth perception. What is needed is another eye, an eye that sees the purposes, the ways, and the actions of God in the story that is history. The cyclops sees a world of skeletons and bare ground, but God is the vivid color and the variety of features in history. God glorifies history and lifts it above the mundane world in which man is alone and without meaning.

To the best of our understanding, history is about redemption, but not just the redemption of man through spiritual rebirth. It is about the loss and recovery of a world that was made good. The loss was not a loss to God, but to the man who was made to rule it and subdue it. Creation groans for its own recovery and waits for the work of Christ in the hearts of his people. There is a connection between the moral condition of man and the health of creation which only God understands. Whatever his secret counsels for creation may be, people will not create anything that is real in the unreality of human imagination and children should be taught this if they are to be of any use to God in this world. The world we are called to build is this world that God has made and it is unto him and his purposes that we must bend our backs before the task. This cannot be done so long as we languish in our self-centric world of mental flatness. The heart of the student must be changed so that he and she will prefer God’s world and the work that he has given in it to the world of childish mythology that thrives on lethargy and entertainment. If this world is mundane, it is because we and our children have sinful eyes. If it is going to become interesting to our children, their world will have to give way to God’s world.

Teachers face the all but impossible challenge of trying to make their subjects interesting and fascinating to their students. However, the competition to the teachers’ efforts is almost overwhelming. Unfortunately, it is the leniency and indulgence of the parents in their misplaced view of love and care that makes the teachers’ job so difficult. Parents, including this one, must learn to lovingly deny their children their lust for those things that divert healthy imagination away from the pursuit of God’s glory and honor and toward a deepening escape from his presence. Parents must take care not to spoil their children’s taste for good food— the Word of God, prayer, worship, fellowship with Christian friends, the counsel of wise adults— by allowing them to pillage the momentary sweet and subsequently impoverished food of the world. Only then will parents and teachers be working together to give the next generation a love for the real world that God has created and for the purposes for which he has made them.

See you all in a few weeks. God bless you all.



JoToP -> JoToP: The Return (8/17/2006 1:58:17 PM)

Wow!! Scared me for a minute! And I don't use exclamation marks very often, y'know. This blogge was buried under a ton of blogs and it took me a while to dig it out. I thought the admins had canned it, like putting the Ark of the Covenant in a warehouse in Washington D.C. or something. Anyway, the point is:

I'M BACK!!!



JoToP -> Writer's Block (9/6/2007 2:50:26 PM)

I’ve been writing and talking a lot over the past year. All of it is serious stuff, though, and those of you who know me know that I can only go serious just so long, then I have to let go of some humorous juices after a while. So, I sat down here and decided to compose a witty essay and I find that my mind is total blank. I’m woefully out of practice ‘cause it just ain’t happenin’. The problem is how to get in practice when there’s nothing on my mind. Its like applying for a job as a bank teller only to have them tell you they don’t hire anybody unless they have experience. I’ve never been able to figure that out. The fact is that banks are full of tellers, so they must have had experience as bank tellers before they were hired. So where did they get experience before they were hired into the first bank they worked in? There’s only one answer: they were born with experience as bank tellers. The minute they were born, the doctor pronounced, “Mrs. Stanton, I’m happy to inform you that you have a fine, healthy baby and, oh! She’s an experienced bank teller. That’s a plus!”

I don’t know how doctors determine that certain babies are experienced bank tellers while the rest of the human race are completely mundane, but it really doesn’t impact me anyway because I’m not a bank teller and have no desire to be one, even though, for all I know, I may be an endemic bank teller... I’ve never checked. I suspect that I’m also an endemic golf pro, but I’m not interested enough in the game to ever find out and that’s good news for Tiger Woods.

I guess my current problem is that nothing particularly funny is happening in my life right now. We have an ant infestation in our house, but that’s not funny. These ants have taken over the house. They’re easy enough to kill, but they have evolved the ability to automatically reproduce ten zillion antlings for every hundred or so that I tread under foot. They remind me of the skeleton army in Jason and the Argonauts. The upshot is that when you squash them, they smell like some sort of citrus. I’m considering making an air freshener out them and seeing if I can pull a profit off of them. Thought I’d call it AntFresh®. What do you think? I got the idea from the Ethiopians who have a problem with midges every few years. Billions of midges come up out of Lake Victoria and cover the land like a cloud. The Ethiopians go out and net ‘em, smash them up and make midge burgers out of them. That’s a little extreme, I admit, but it does capitalize on a problem.

I got a new truck. I know that’s not funny, but it’s a fine truck. It’s a mid-size Ford Ranger XL, metallic blue. Everybody wants it, too. I can tell when I’m driving it and when people pass by the house where its parked conspicuously for all to drool over. The guys don’t even look at it as they drive by and do you know why? They can’t stand it. They want that truck and they can’t even bear to look at it, their envy is so keen. I parked at Publix just the other day and this guy stepped out of his H2 and glanced toward my truck. I said, “Don’t even think about it!” and went in and bought a head of lettuce... just left him standing there stuck with an over-inflated SUV and Blue Ford Ranger Envy.

I also finished a book I’ve been working on for nearly two years, now. Its called The Naked Myth (provocative, huh?) so look for it at Barnes & Noble. If you see it let me know because I don’t expect it to ever be sold there. I’m going to be selling it out of Jack Daniels boxes for a good while, I’m sure. The book is not funny at all. Its mostly about philosophy, history, evolution, and the mythology. It is the culmination of thoughts of mine spanning over 25 years with all the humorous parts cut out. I account that book as being directly responsible for my sitting here right now unable to think of a single funny thing to write about.

I also discovered something particularly unhumorous about myself and that is that I have developed motion sickness. I was heading out camping at Black Rock Mountain last month and as I was winding the van around the twisty mountain roads, I started to get sicker and sicker with every curve. These are the same roads which, as a foolish, but dare-devil youth, I use to cut donuts on in a 71 Maverick. I even had a name for my Maverick, Sherm. My buds and I never opened the doors, just dived in through Sherm’s windows and sped off. I don’t even know if the doors worked. But the eight-track tape deck worked, at least track two worked which allowed us to play “Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog” every time we went anywhere and that was good enough for us. It didn’t matter how it sounded because we never listened to it anyway, we were too busy screaming the song in what could not possibly be taken for unison, even in India. Its pretty amazing how empty my head was back in those days. I’m surprised I remember anything, I can’t really be totally certain that I understood the English language back then, strictly speaking.

Well, nothing is coming so I’m going to leave this vain attempt. Maybe after a day or two of watching Pip, something will come. Pip is our dog. He is half Chihuahua and half Papillion, so he’s very little, more like a squirrel than a dog, but he’s cool. Being half Spanish and half French makes him full blooded Italian, so he’s unique. If he had wings, he’d be a fruit bat, which actually smacks of a certain degree of humor, but I’m too tired right now to make anything of it.



JoToP -> Encroaching Armadillos (9/12/2007 11:32:40 AM)

I don’t know whether you’ve heard or not, but armadillos are coming this way. For decades, now, perhaps centuries, they have been gradually migrating northward away from their more tropical climes. This may not interest you in the least, but you have to admit that I put it quite well, particularly by making use of the poetic word “climes”. I could have said “habitat” and sounded like someone who is surprisingly being interviewed by the local news media and feels inclined to use words they would never use in ordinary conversation, words like “utilize”. Whenever a tornado comes through and wipes out a trailer park, the reporter invariably latches onto the person with the thickest drawl and the least teeth who will say something like, “We thought we was gonners, but we utilized the bathroom sha’r (shower) whal the house ‘uz cavin’ in ‘round us an’ somehow got th’ew it. ‘Sounded lak a train ‘uz utilizin’ th’ livin’ room.” This is just a colorful figure of speech though because used mobile homes do not have a living room. What was designed as a living room when the mobile home was brand new has long turned into a bedroom/dining room/mechanical shop/laundromat with no room left over for an electric train, much less one that puts off as much noise as a tornado. Of course, anything loud in the South sounds like a train, just as anything big is German, and any cooked flesh tastes like chicken. One thing we don’t need in the South is a Loud German Chicken; there wouldn’t be anything left to compare anything else to.
They say armadillo tastes like chicken, but I’ve never gotten up the nerve to eat any, probably because every armadillo I’ve ever seen was an unsavory carcass on the side of the road. That’s why I know the armadillos are indeed moving northward just as the experts are saying. I’ve seen their carcasses on GA400 about 15 miles south of my home. Come to think of it, I’ve never actually seen a live armadillo. I’ve seen plenty of dead ones on the sides of roads. In fact, that’s the only kind I’ve ever seen and I’m beginning to think that’s the only kind there is. I have seen live armadillos in documentaries, but you have to be careful about believing what you see on T.V. They can Simulate things on T.V., which is a term I picked up from the space program where you were conned into watching hours of spaceship models while listening to nasal voices from afar between an irritating “beep” which was the signal that somebody had finished saying, “The starboard station-keeping thrusters are go” and was waiting for someone else to say “That’s a roger”. Always at the bottom of the screen are the words “SIMULATION” meant to keep you from thinking that another spaceship that we had not been told about was traveling alongside the other, filming it. Now, since the Computer Age has come upon us fully, it is possible to Simulate with far greater accuracy. Things can be simulated digitally, now, which means that things can be created, even living things like armadillos, by utilizing digits, which are the special arrangement of atoms that your very computer is made of. Digits have come a long way over the years. They evolved from those little plastic square games in which you pushed smaller plastic squares around on a lightly lubricated surface with your forefinger, which is sometimes referred to as a digit. You know what I’m talking about— the little squares had numbers on them, or pictures, or letters, and you were supposed to utilize the one and only blank space in order to line all the squares up in a logical order to make a picture of Mickey Mouse’s face. People use to love to play with digits while utilizing the bathroom for tornadoes and other things. This was the original lap-top, which evolved into the Etch-A-Sketch® and, from there, it was a short jump to the modern computer.
So, the idea that armadillos may, in fact, not be alive at all, but only in the theoretical world of documentaries has a certain logical appeal. When I was young and living in Meridian, Mississippi, which is on a latitude about 100 miles south of Atlanta, Georgia, I heard from various authorities (i.e. Morgan Miles, who went down to Gulf Port every summer with his family), that dead armadillos were being spotted just thirty or forty miles south of Meridian. That’s pretty slow migration, if you think about it. The fire ants worked their way this far north in just a few years from all the way down in South America during the time of Charleton Heston, which wasn’t that long ago, really. But, then, if all armadillos are dead, that would explain why they are migrating so slowly. Still, you have to admire their determination.
I’m wondering what’s going to happen to the dead possum population once the dead armadillos start arriving and upsetting this delicate ecosystem. Dead possums will have to remain alive when their place on the highways and byways of life are occupied by armadillos and, with the ‘coon dog now on the Endangered Species List, there will be no natural enemy to cull the possum population as the automobile has served to do so well for so long. This is potentially a serious rift in the Pyramid of Life and worthy of the attention of our politicians. I think everyone should write their congressman and petition for fences, tighter legislation, and more patrols to be stationed to keep unwanted armadillos from drifting into these climes and utilizing much needed road shoulders. Have a heart! Stand up for our dead possums, today. Thank you.



JoToP -> A Brush with CCM (1/9/2008 11:44:48 AM)

My hand slipped the other night when I was setting the alarm and my finger scooted across the tuning dial and changed stations. It was dark, so I didn’t know what happened until 5:30 A.M. Instead of waking to cool, soothing oldies that lure my heavy hand to the snooze button, I found myself dreaming I was standing in front of a dumpster in the middle of Chicago with my pants down around my knees. Fortunately, I was wearing a tee shirt that went halfway down my shin. There was drool forming on the side of my mouth and I was thinking about how cool it was going to be when the world saw me and started feeling sorry for me. The dream was brought on by the Contemporary Christian Music® that seemed to be straining to get out of the speakers of my clock-radio. Even the numbers were growing pale with the effort.
I determined two things after I awoke: first, that I would nail the tuning dial to a Spanish station if I couldn’t find any other and, secondly, that I needed to listen to some Contemporary Christian Music® and see if I could get hip with the youth of our time. So I did and it took me all of two minutes to learn that being hip with the youth of our time is not fitting for a man my age and that I need to seek to lead them down the path of wisdom by starting a Kansas Ministry. Kansas was one of the quintessential bands of the 70s at a time when rock and progressive jazz were at their height and were being worked by actual musicians instead of the surfers and street punks of the 50s, in my opinion and in the expert opinion of almost everybody born in 1956. We were the generation who, looking back on the 60s, mopped our brows with a cold towel and said, “Whew! Glad I missed that.”
As I was sampling some Contemporary Christian Music® tunes, I grew aware of the feeling that there was something familiar about the style of the music — something from the primal stages of my memory from... Oh... when I was 14 years old. The guitar work sounded like it was fresh out of the cardboard, Sears, packing box, the one that looked like a coffin. The vocals sounded prepubescent and whiny, as if the producer had dragged the singer to the studio threatening to restrict his i-pod privileges if he didn’t do his duty to the microphone. The entire song could have been called “I Don’t Wanna”. The tune had an ascending nyah, nyAH, NYAH motif, like a jumping-rope tune from the Black Death Years. The male vocalists were trying to sound like they wanted their mammas and the female vocalists were sliding notes through their noses in an attempt to make themselves sound like Brownie Scouts, if they weren’t grunting in what I think was supposed to be a seductive manner, but I’m a little out of touch with elementary school these days. I’ve heard its changed since I was there, but we won’t go there.
The overall impression was, for lack of a better term, fetal. Then it hit me— why Contemporary Christian Music® sounded familiar to me. It sounded like we use to sound when we were first starting a band as early teenagers, only we stayed in the garage and played and did not come out until we had learned how to play, sing, and write music. Occasionally, a bold early-teen band would venture out of the garage and play at a church Valentine’s Day Banquet, but as long as they stuck slavishly to Smoke On the Waters, Stairway to Heaven, and Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown the audience was relatively safe. Even still, there was always one in every crowd who actually thought he was a natural musician after only six months of learning Mel Bay guitar chords. I went through several crowds in my tumultuous youth and I met many of these instant musicians. All of their songs were composed of sliding an F maj7 up two frets five times while singing,


Title: A Song of Praise

Lord, you-ou I love.
You-came down-from above,
Out of the blue.
I’ll a-al-ways love you.

If I could have collected all the “naturals” I met, I could have had them sing their composition in perfect unison without a second of rehearsal.
Its my theory that Contemporary Christian Music® escaped because of the invention of electronic garage-door openers. In the old days, garages were never opened because they were not used for cars, but for junk and the junk was usually piled up around the garage door in such a way as to keep early-teen bands trapped within and out of contact with the Public At Large. Before garage-door openers, cars looked so cool you wanted to show them off, but cool cars were replaced in the 80s and 90s by Chryslers and minivans, respectively, which are not the kind of vehicles you want to show off, but are anxious to get them hidden safely behind garage doors as quickly as possible. Today, vehicles have digressed to the Element, which looks like a Kleenex™ box and the Hummer, which is an SUV on steroids and should be disqualified. All other cars are now indistinguishable from one another and do not need to be shown off. If you want to know what your neighbor’s car looks like, look at your own.
Contemporary Christian Music® began to grow in the 80s when two phenomena took place: A.) the transition of the American car to the inside of the garage due to the urge to use newly installed garage-door openers and B.) the elimination of garage junk due to the rise of Garage Sales. Both of these forces unleashed early-teen bands upon the public and correspond to the sudden rise of Contemporary Christian Music®. I really don’t see how this kind of logic and proof can possibly be argued... against, that is.
There is a definite lackadaisical attitude associated with Contemporary Christian Music®. I think they got the model from punk bands like the New Bohemians who don’t bow at the end of the song, but sort of mill around the stage during the applause as if to say, “Can we go now?” Contemporary Christian Music® artists have their pictures taken in junkyards and littered alleys or stand in a sullen row looking sheepish, like they suspect that the camera is actually a machine gun or that they have been called into a police lineup. I guess the image being portrayed is “Geek for Christ,” but I’m probably wrong and it probably is saying, “Loser is Cool” or “Wouldn’t YOU Like to be as Depressed as I Look” or “My Jokes are Definitely Not Funny, So Don’t Even Go There.”
Well, that’s what I gleaned from Contemporary Christian Music® after an exhaustive 25 minutes of exposure to it. I won’t die for my opinion and I certainly won’t die listening to Contemporary Christian Music®. Rather than wake up to it ever again, I’ll hire a herd of llamas to stampede my bedroom first. Hopefully, garages will go back to their natural use and the whole thing will go away some day, but it doesn’t look like the Contemporary Christian Music® “artists” are making much headway toward learning how to play, sing, or write music. That’s because garages, not stages or studios, are the most fit places to learn.



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