Happy Birthday Rosie!

Have We Advanced Too Far For Our Own Good?

Malcolm Muggeridge has SUCH a way with words! His discription of the current state of Western civilization is right on target, sad as that is. In the following excerpt, Mr. Muggeridge addressed the education system, the advancement of technology, the increasing availability of multiple forms of entertaniment, the new onslaught of terrorism, and the "right" of choice, which some people possess, while others do not.

Thus did Western man decide to abolish himself, creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania, himself blowing the trumpet that brought the walls of his own city tumbling. And, having convinced himself that he was too numerous, labored with pill and scalpel and syringe to make himself fewer, until at last, having educated himself into imbecility and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keeled over, a weary, battered old brontosaurus, and became extinct.

Movie Review of the Month... or Year (ok, so I don't get out much!)

Elizabethtown

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There are few movies that I actually go to the theater to see, but I have been waiting for several months for this one to come out and would have gone to see it opening night if it weren't for the fact that I was waiting to see it with my roommate who was out of town. Having said that, I was dissapointed.

The overall theme was good: there are things more important than success as defined by the amassing of wealth, namely, family, love, and life. There were a number of funny scenes, but just as many crude elements. This was not Kirsten Dunst's finest performance. She is not cut out to be a man chaser. Orlando Bloom, on the other hand, did a pretty good job as an average American (especially for a Brit). Unlike his other movies, there were plenty of good shots of him without costume make-up. =)

It's not a bad movie, just not worth the $9.50 I paid to see it. It is definitely one that you should wait to see on DVD, unless you just really want to see Orlando Bloom on the big screen. =P

I'd give it 2 stars (one for O.B. and one for the humorous elements).

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Is There Ever Really No One There?

I have always liked like limerics. Once again, I heard this quoted by Ravi Zacharias and so looked it up. It's a good reminder that nothing exists in a vacuum. Regardless of where we are, we are seen by our Creator. This should be a good reminder to us when we are making a personal decision that we think will affect no one.

There was a young man who said, "God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there's no one about in the Quad."

REPLY
Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd:
I am always about in the Quad.
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be,
Since observed by Yours faithfully, GOD.

~ Ronald Knox

1936 Insight

As usual, I was listening to Ravi Zacharias this morning. He quoted a poem I had never heard before, so I looked it up and was surprised to find that it was written in 1936! I often think things are bad now, but when I read things like this, the truth "there is nothing new under the sun" becomes more apparend to me.

First dentistry was painless;

Then bicycles were chainless

And carriages were horseless

And many laws, enforceless.

Next, cookery was fireless,

Telegraphy was wireless,

Cigars were nicotineless

And coffee, caffeinless.

Soon oranges were seedless,

The putting green was weedless,

The college boy hatless,

The proper diet, fatless.

Now motor roads are dustless,

The latest steel is rustless,

Our tennis courts are sodless,

Our new religions, godless.

~ Arthur Guiterman

Epitaph

The wall on which the prophets wrote
Is cracking at the seams
Upon the instruments of death
The sunlight brightly gleams
When everyman is turn apart
With nightmares and with dreams
Will no-one lay the laurel wreath
When silence drowns the screams

Between the iron gates of fate
The seeds of time were sown
And watered by the deeds of those
Who know and who are known
Knowledge is a deadly friend
When no-one sets the rules
The fate of all mankind
I seeIs in the hands of fools

Confusion will be my epitaph
As I crowl a cracked and broken path
If we make it we can all sit back and laugh
But I fear tomorrow I'll be crying...

~ King Crimson