HAPPY BIRTHDAY
TO ME!


Well, February 25th passed, and I didn't.

Your Aardvark is now 50.

Your Aardvark does not go to sleep with the Grim Spectre hovering over his thoughts. Your Aardvark does live with an abiding annoyance with his mortality. One could say that he has Issues With Adam.

"Isn't that cute." the agnostics and atheists are saying. "He has issues with a myth...."

The Aardvark does in fact believe in Biblical Creation. He believes that Adam did the Big Stupid.
He believes that he has Words for Adam when they meet. "The fruit could not have been THAT good.", he will say, "And Eve could not have been THAT pretty...."

He believes that Death is not a kind of creepy pal, but is in fact the Final Enemy, and he is not happy about it. The Aardvark likes life, and because he has only experienced life here, he has no basis for comparison, and is not sanguine about Major Change. He believes in Heaven, looks forward to it, but is in no hurry. The big Five-Oh only aggravates the issue, because What Has He Done With 50 Years, And Where Did They All Go?

Oh well.

The younger 'varks and the Dread Dormomoo all went out of their way to ease the blow by distracting him with presents, and cake. It went a long way. The list of Goodies includes:

• A diecast Zero-X model, with amazing detail (see picture above). It is from a favorite movie, Thunderbirds Are GO.
• A boss Tiki figure, to go with the whole Space-Age Bachelor Pad motif.
• An awesome McFarland Jonny Quest diorama
• A comfy terry robe, for the Lounging. Not a smoking jacket, 'cos your Aardvark is housebroken.
• The Requisite Birthday Lifesavers...a family tradition of obscure beginnings.
• More To Come, as the post is still handling them...

The CAKE, now, was a departure; an utterly decadent, repentance-worthy confection called "Raspberry Heaven". Dark chocolate bundt cake with a cream-cheese, semi-sweet chocolate and fresh raspberry filling. A white vanilla icing glaze.

Oh, goodness. 4-stars.

Thank you!

GOD DOES NOT CARE.

I have come to several realisations. Most of them are less-than-Pollyanna material.

First, if you choose to do things YOUR way, rather than God's, as revealed in His Word, then it really doesn't matter if you volunteer for Hospice, attend Imus' "First Church of the Gooey Death and Discount House of Worship", meditate on the "Aquarian Gospel of Swithin the Unsure" in the centre of a butterfly and sunflower filled field, or take unholy orders in a Crowleyesque Church of Satan. Really, it just doesn't matter. It's binary! You either choose God's way, or not.

God is an articulate...mmm....God. I mean, His Son is the Word made flesh, so c'mon.
Like the loser bumper sticker says: "I believe in the Big Bang...God said it, and >BANG<, it happened!" Thus, He is able to get His point across. His apostle Paul warns:
"Don't be unequally yoked with unbelievers." People, this does not mean merely to avoid getting into an MLM with some unrepentant clown (though it remains a good idea!) but it also means DON'T MARRY AN UNREPENTANT CLOWN.

Oh wait...I hear a voice from the back:

"If my wife hadn't married me back when, then I would NEVER have become a Christian."

OK, let's take this apart: NEVER. Never say never. You cannot possibly know that. (This is not a Straw Man. I hear it every time this comes up, and it's always the guys that say it. Eve couldn't follow God's instructions to godliness, neither can these chicks apparently follow God's clear instruction. God may well REDEEM their choosing their own way; this can not be construed as God's blessing their rebellion.)

Back to the original point. You may trot out a myriad of perfectly reasonable rationales WHY you should do your own idea, rather than follow a sovereign, loving God's clear instruction.
Many people DO. I have a dear friend who has fallen for an addicted unbeliever. "He's a GOOD man...and if I can bring him around, it will all be worth it." I can see her already in my mind's eye, dressed in black, with prematurely white hair, calling out to God for this guy, years down the pike. This is not Obedience and Witnessing. This is rebellion and self-martyrdom. It comes down to this: What does God say. Forget your Very Good Ideas.

God does not care about them.

He has His will, and He knows it works. Do His will, and be amazed.

UPDATE...UPDATE...UPDATE...

To quote a John Astin character, "I'm feeling MUCH better, now.".
Back is better, and the HEADACHE is gone.

"It's gone, it's gone...my head is gone...." --Dishonest John

Many thanks for the prayers!
.............................................

More prayers are needed:

Please pray for the honeybees.
This is not a joke. If you like to eat, pray health and long life for the bees.
Curious?

This is a worldwide phenomenon.

Sex with "no strings attached".

Oh BOY! The tubes of the interWeb have made me more popular than EVER.
My Yahoo mail is always bringing news about Friends Who Want to Meet Me, especially Friends With Whom to Have Sex With No Strings Attached.

Wow.
Wowee wowwowwow.

The limitless cyber-vistas beckon.

These emails, which get deleted instanter, raise an interesting issue. (Why is it impossible not to get Freudian when one writes about sex?) The concept of "sex with no strings attached". Not to get all Harry-met-Sally, but I question that this is even possible, even amongst the most fillintheblank-pathic.

A 70-year-old man is rocking on the porch with his wife of five decades. No words pass between them as they sit and watch the world go by. Finally, she hoists herself up from her chair, and shuffles into the house. Minutes pass, then the screen door squeaks opens, and the old lady shuffles behind her hubby's chair, whereupon she raises her arm and >CLANG< wallops him with a cast-iron skillet.
What's THAT for?" He complains. "Fifty years of bad sex." is her reply.

Three days pass, and the missus is sitting, knitting on the porch. The old man comes up behind her and >WHACK<, he hits her on the head with an axe handle.

"That's fer knowin' th' diff'rence." he grumps.

Point- there are ALWAYS strings with sex, whether the memories of Other Partners, the worry of Measuring Up to an experienced partner's other lovers, the microbial leftovers of previous encounters, or the emotional ties you have with a sex partner- and there ARE emotional ties, as you are at your MOST naked in that embrace. Sorry, no footnotes, you'll have to go to the library for that.

Besides, you know it's true.

I may be spotty as far as blogging goes for awhile.
I have torn my back up. It hurts.

whine, whine

It HURTS.
Missed church yesterday :^(
Loen gave the Dread Dormomoo a back massaging chair cushion for HER birthday.
She let me use it. It helped, but I woke up the same way this morning.

Evil.

The fun news is that I can't work very well either, so it's going to be aspirin and Doans pills for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

How bad do I feel?
The family are going to Mikawa Japanese Restaurant.
I'm not.

This is getting to the place that sent me to a chiropractor over a decade ago.

Sorry to seem all pouty, but this is old...

Any prayers would be appreciated.

*cue Twilight Zone theme*

Art Bell had a UFO guest on last night, James Gilliland, who claims to be able to summon UFOs on demand. Bell broke with his standard discomfort re: group mind experiments, and had his audience "summon" UFOs during the last hour of his show. Bell had the listeners ""invite" the saucers, and then go out to look for them.

They came.

We are currently in a major UFO flap across the world, so awareness is high. Bell, of course, defines his audience, from the True Believers to nuts with chronic insomnia, hence his audience is READY for the chance to see a UFO. But there may well be more at work than hyperactive expectation.

The mind experiments are the closest Bell will come to prayer. He has (successfully) conducted tests of Group Will on the air, such that it freaked him out, and seriously evoked ethical questions in his mind. Dare he summon the awesome dynamo of mental dunamis at his mere whim? (Frankly, I'd be comfy voting for a man with scruples like that, UFOs or no.)

So, you may expect that you FIND what you're LOOKING FOR. Bell's and Gilliland's experiment may point to another angle: the spiritual nature of UFOs. If Diversity is the True God of the Cosmos, then SOMEWHERE there must be a UFO contactee who has been instructed in the Gospel by the aliens...at least something approaching the Biblical plan of redemption. But to a man...little green, grey, or saurian...the humans So Taught by the UFOnauts are given Anti- Biblical, "new agey" all-is-one, it doesn't matter WHAT you believe, just BELIEVE, Ascended Master stuff. Thus as a Christian, I see a disconnect as far as the enlightenment found in these encounters.

The saucer guys go out of their way to either degrade humans (probing), or inoculate them against the Faith Once Delivered.

To quote an old hero: "DANGER, DANGER, WILL ROBINSON!".

Insofar as the mind experiments go, the old Monkey's Paw lesson comes to mind:

Be careful what you ask for.

Thursday was a BEAST; the Entire Cosmos was engaged in preventing me from getting anything done, timely or otherwise.

Now you know how important I am.

Thus, it is 3:45 am Friday as I write this pathetic screedlet. I was printing a job 'til 2:30, then I got home and coated some screens so that I will have summat to work with later today. I showered and Got Things On My Mind, so here I am.

Allow me to prophesy: In the next 18 months be prepared for an economic downturn. Despite Ben Bernanke and his Magic Helicopter, the economy will slow considerably. Y'see, it's part of The Plan. The Party of Compassionate Givemint has engineered the whole thing. The increased Minimum Wage, that Benison from Yonder DC-way, is already having the true Desired Effect (and kiddies, it is not to enable pimply-faced burger flippers and bluevests to better handle the Demands of Fiduciary Responsibility. Nossir.) Small businesses are already reducing hours, and letting workers go, due to the increased expense of the higher M.W.

"Surely Ted Kennedy missed seeing this unfortunate Unintended Consequence!" Sure, and he also bought Mary Jo Kopechne water wings. No, the Dems are VERY aware of this side-effect of "their" largesse. With an increasingly moribund economy, the Jackasses....er...Donkeys will slide into Election 2008 pointing at slowing business and increased unemployment, and they will say:

"Lookit! See what 8 years of a Republican White House has done to your pocketbook? WE can fix it by soaki...errrr, raising taxes on the wealthy, and giving that money to the Littul PEE-pul in the form of entitlements and increased services."

That's it. "Abbadee, abbadeee, That's All Folks!!"

Next: What can we do??

Well, the Utah yout' who gunned down five random folks before being reduced to worm fodder himself had an interesting twist to his life.

Yep, he was a Lutheran.

I kid...I KID...

Yeppers, this murderous kid, described by his aunt as "a good boy" was a Muslim. Apparently he took all the lessons from The Religion of Peace, Love and Tolerance to heart.

Wow...this is a real twist: all that teen angst running headlong into Islamic fervor. Instead of going Emo and cutting himself, he went Jihad and cut down strangers at the mall, busting, as they say, a cap.

Maybe there just wasn't a Hot Topic there....

I am robbing from my comments here

An affectation which I abhor is avalanching (my term), or "Hannitizing".
You repeat yourself, you iterate, you restate in a triad to hammer home your point. It is like a verbal avalanche to the ears.

I think he has a good start, there.

------------------------------------

The most egregious example of marketing humbuggery is the "hand dryer".
You know, those blow-ey things in public restrooms that are rarely good enough to do more than shove the water around on your hands.

But...but...they are environmentally friendly!
They reduce disease-spreading paper towel waste!!
They SAVE TWEES!!!

Hateful.

They are run on Electricity.
Electricity production has considerable environmental impact. Mining...burning fossil fuels...greenhouse gases...in short, hand dryers are likely a major culprit in the Global Warming
issue.

I AM thankful for the reduction in paper towel waste. I can't TELL you how many family members I have lost to Paper Towel Pestilences. I caught the plague from a W*l-M*rt a couple of weeks ago, I think. All those rats burrowing through the piles of sodden paper towels. I get at least a couple of bites every time I go in one. I got a neat pet, though. Caught 'im whilst he was still hanging on. We call him "Snappy".

"They save trees". HOW MANY TREES had to die in the Pliestocene age to supply YOUR greed for tepid blown air in your wretched bathrooms; what Cretaceous carnage was wrought to save some desksitter the trouble of ordering paper towels? Hypocrites!
Oh...and trees are a renewable resource. They keep growing! You can't stop 'em...unless you pave over the land to build a shopping center in which to install hand dryers.

The best thing that hand dryers accomplish is to discourage people from washing their hands.
Now, I have a virtual fetish for hand-washing, and I note...and mutter to myself...when people bypass the lavatory on their way out of the bathroom.

I'm so glad that disease won't be spread THAT way!

The power to Tax is the power to destroy.

Especially my piece of mind.
The Dread Dormomoo and I have spent hours today counting and evaluating the physical property used in our business. Why?

So that bureaucratic yahoos at town hall can charge us for purchasing equipment used in plying our trade. Sales tax is not enough, no. The gravedigger must pay tax on the shovel he uses, the baker on his kneading-bowl and oven. Men (and women, for we must give the succubi their due) who produce NOTHING take it upon themselves to dream up novel ways to steal from the producers like us.

Ooooooh, oooooh....Romans 13....kneel and kiss the ring.

Nope. The limit of human government is to reward the good, and punish the evil.

Precisely what reward is this contrary and arbitrary robbery to the good? Or am I evil, and must be punished with the confiscation of my goods or money in the course of doing business?
What possible Biblical rationale can justify the continual predatory escalation of taxation from all levels of government? And to what purpose? The increase of an anti-Christ system's implementation of ungodly, un-Biblical programs and justifications.

I am boiling...and we aren't EVEN talking income tax yet....

A thought I had from reading another blog (Vox Popoli):

The seminaries are themselves the enemy. --bw

Seminaries and denominational structure represent the "federalisation" of the Christian faith. What began as-and was designed to be- a decentralised system based around the local church, led by multiple elders (bishops, pastors, presbyters, shepherds, overseers...names showing different facets of the same office) of proven character and worth, and facilitated by deacons, responsive to local situations, has been twisted into a biblically unrecognisable monolithic, top-down structure. Biblical teaching was handled by the local leadership; disciple-making was the olders leading the youngers in the Way they should go. All were enabled to accurately handle God's Word (2 Timothy 2:15, "Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needs not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.")

Now, we have congregations hiring a seminary indoctrinated preacher ("Pastor") to do their work, feeding predigested teaching as ably as any penguin parent.

The Mega-Church movement is the feedlot outgrowth of this phenomenon.
Kind of a doctrinal Golden Corral.

Feel free to argue, but provide Biblical proofs.

There is much sturm und drang over t' Vox's.
GUNS!
FIREARMS!
PARASITISM!!
CANNIBALS!!!

Now, I own a shootin' iron. I need to practice. I need a shotgun, too. I believe that it is wise to own firearms, when they are handled responsibly. There is no Scriptural mandate to own weaponry. Much has been blathered about Jesus telling his apostles to sell their spare cloak and buy a sword. They came up with two swords amongst them, and Jesus said "That's enough.".
(Luke 22:35-38) Two swords among twelve guys.

Hardly sounds a militia, does it?

One rule of thumb in Bible reading...or ANY reportage...is to find
Who is spoken TO, and what the situation (or context) is.

Again, I believe it wise to own and know how to use a gun.
There is hardly enough in Scripture to Build A Doctrine from.

That said...

Two of the funniest firearm things I know of:

Screwing a silencer on the barrel of a revolver.

This paraphrased bit from "Get Smart": Agent #8 (Burt Mustin)

Agent #8 - "My grandfather invented the first silencer"
Smart: "Really?"
Agent #8 - "Yes...when he fired his pistol, he yelled as loud as he could."

Now THAT'S Comedy!

SORRY, GUYS & DOLLS!

I have had to reactivate the wretched word verification.
The Plumbline is being assailed by...inappropriate comment spam.
(That was humorous...I repeated myself, there.)

What they were advertising was not up to the the normal altitude of standards here,
and my time is worth more than wasting it on weeding out tares.

I leave you to figger out the height.

Lest I be misunderstood...

My "Jesus Loves Osama" post - from MY perspective- had nothing to do with politics.
I recognise that the left-leaning churches attempt to realise God's Kingdom on Earth through
"Social Justice", which ultimately springs from Socialist Liberation Theology.

This is one reason why I attempt to keep things on a firm Biblical base.

Regardless of what motivated the Offending Signage, the WORDS were utterly correct.

Reminds me of Paul's attitude in Phillipians regarding those who were preaching the Gospel from less-than-pure motives:

15 Some, to be sure, are preaching Christ even from envy and strife, but some also from good will;
16the latter do it out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel;
17the former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition rather than from pure motives, thinking to cause me distress in my imprisonment.
18What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and in this I rejoice. Yes, and I will rejoice...

We live in a depraved and degenerate world. Contradiction and paradox rule the day, but the Gospel remains a clarion call to a Kingdom of Life, Light, and eternal verity.

Our proclamations declare to whom we owe fealty. I desire to be clearly walking in the Light.

I have changed my mind.
Because of his apparent r-tardness, I think the bill for Boston's
Anti-ATHF bomb squads should go to the Mayor.



Was the guerrilla ad campaign stupid?

yes.



Was the dreadlocked "performance artist" an imbecile?

yes.



But the Mayor deserves the bill.
Maybe Homeland Security can leave a tip.

Photo courtesy Telegraph Media Group

Now, a church in Sydney, Australia has put up a billboard proclaiming "Jesus Loves Osama".
PM John Howard criticized the move. To quote Lex Luthor:

WRO-O-O-O-NG!

There has been no truer word spoken. The sign is utterly appropriate and correct. The church MUST act as Nathan to the country's David, proclaiming the truth of God's Word. The Scripture
verse below the sign is apt. "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you".

Jesus said that. So should we.

All of this is NOT to say that Jesus condones bin Laden's murderous bent, any more than he does our various lying, covetous, prideful, or adulterous proclivities, but rather that Jesus' redemptive sacrifice extends EVEN to the Osamas, Pol Pots, and Castros of the world, if they would but repent, and take the proffered gift, obeying Messiah as Lord.

Pray for those...for the weapons in our spiritual war are not physical, but are mighty before God....

-------------------------------------
From the sublime to the ridiculous:

Hello, Boston.

HOW STUPID CAN YOU BE?

I mean, you have kept Ted Kennedy in drink for decades, and I shan't even discuss John Kerry.
Your Big Dig project is a fiasco, but this?

Out of nine cities that were targeted by this guerrilla marketing ploy, only you went tilt.

Boxes with a cartoon character outlined in LEDs paralyzed the city. What an amazing example of the Nanny State in action.

On the flip side, Turner Broadcasting should pony up every penny for the defense of the two fellows who placed the ad displays.

Wouldn't hurt to pray for the media mavens who shape our popular culture. Here are my thoughts on that. Please read it all. It's short.