A big announcement

It probably was not a good idea to ask you in yesterday’s post to spend 55 minutes and 35 seconds watching writer Anne Lamott being interviewed.

That is not the big announcement.

The big announcement is that today this blog turns...

This quiet, subdued celebration has been deemed ecologically correct by the Environmental Protection Agency of the United States Government and has also been awarded the Good Housekeeping seal of approval.

If you believe that, I have some swamp land down in Florida and a bridge in Brooklyn that you might be interested in acquiring.

But the part about being 5 is true.

Scout’s honor.

The celebration would have been perfect if the postage stamp had been a 5-cent stamp.

One makes do with what one has.

Here is my very first post.

Buddy, can you spare 55 minutes, 35 seconds?

If you can, you could do worse than spend it watching and listening to writer Anne Lamott being interviewed by Teresa Miller a few years ago at Oklahoma State University in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Here’s Part 1 (27:47) and here’s Part 2 (27:48).

You’ll be glad you did.

If you’re not glad you did, your money will be refunded cheerfully at the door.

The funniest five-and-a-half minutes of 2012 so far

...occurred at the opening of the 2012 London Olympics (5:37).

A close second was Queen Elizabeth II jumping out of a helicopter and parachuting into the stadium, but she was disqualified from the competition when it was revealed that a stunt double had done the actual jumping.

Here are Queen Elizabeth and some close associates in 2009 at the dedication of a statue of the Queen Mother.

...or as I like to call the photograph, “We few, we happy few.”

Even Mr. Bean would have had trouble making this group laugh.

Don't confuse me with the facts, my mind is made up

“Man on the street” interviews sometimes reveal more than you might expect.

As reported today at RealClearPolitics.com, America’s king of radio shock jocks Howard Stern sent a couple of his guys to Harlem to ask people about the 2012 election.

Their answers are not just eye-opening, they are downright jaw-dropping.

Just for the record and my international reading public, Obama is not Mormon, Romney is not Muslim, Paul Ryan is not Obama’s running mate, Paul Ryan is not black, John McCain is not a candidate, Sarah Palin is not a candidate, and Osama bin Laden is no longer with us.

You’d never know it from these interviews. though. Watch and listen and pick yourself up off the floor (7:29).

As Stern’s co-host Robin Quivers said, “Well, we’re obviously dealing with a whole population that doesn’t listen to the newscasts or read a newspaper.”

Obviously.

Well, at least Roseanne Barr is still funny (7:32).

Oops, wrong again.

Well, at least the people interviewed in Harlem got their fifteen minutes seconds of fame.

There won’t always be an England

Have you ever had a song stuck in your head?

Of course you have.

Last Wednesday evening, on the way home from our weekly Discipleship class, Mrs. RWP and I stopped at our local Waffle House. Our local Waffle House is a really upscale establishment, with a jukebox and everything. While we were there, the boyfriend of the night-shift waitress decided to illustrate what a big-time spender he is and parted with 25 cents to play some music for his beloved.

As a result, this song (2:29) threatened to become stuck in my brain, which would have been a fate worse than death, in my opinion.

But “Yellow Submarine” did not become stuck in my brain because another song was already stuck there. It still is. I have been replaying one particular song mentally for about two weeks now.

Oddly enough, it isn’t “There’ll Always Be An England” as performed by Tiny Tim on the Isle of Wight in 1970 (1:17).

No, the song stuck in my head is a Southern Gospel song, written in 1948 by a man named Vep Ellis. I do not know why it is stuck in my head; it just is.

Readers, this is your lucky day. I have decided to share this song with you in a performance by the Gaither Vocal Band in 2002. As often happens with Southern Gospel quartets, there’s some silliness at the beginning, but I choose to overlook that in the spirit of Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do and I hope you will too. But these guys -- David Phelps (high tenor), Guy Penrod (lead tenor), Mark Lowry (baritone), and Bill Gaither (bass) -- can really sing. Here is Vep Ellis’s “There’ll Always Be the Love of God” (5:42).

There is one thing in that song that bothers me, though -- Snowbrush, take note -- and it’s this: the last two lines of the chorus do not appear to be Scriptural. Although there is a lot of truth in that song in my opinion, and the tune is downright catchy, when Vep Ellis wrote, “When all this earth shall pass away there’ll always be the love of God” he was misquoting Scripture. The New Testament tells us (three times, in fact, in Matthew 24:35, Mark 13:31, and Luke 21:33) that Jesus said these words: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.”

I know; picky, picky. But they’re not the same thing at all.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke used the Greek words λόγοι μου, logos mon, which is “my words” in English.

If Vep Ellis had written his song in Greek, he would have used the Greek words ἀγάπη τοῦ θεοῦ, agapē ton Theos, which is “love of God” in English.

Two different concepts altogether.

Or maybe not. The Gospel of John opens with, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot extinguish it.” So if the Word is God, and if, as we’re told elsewhere, God is love, maybe they’re not different concepts after all. And we certainly mustn’t forget all those instances in the Old Testament where we read, “his love endures forever.” Hmmmm....

Be that as it may, and I mean no disrespect whatsoever toward the Beatles or England or even Tiny Tim, if one of the songs in this post gets stuck in your head, I hope it is Vep’s.

Calling all scientists, geeks, nerds, and short-order cooks

Today is special. Today is one of two days each year when, if you wish, you can balance an egg on end.

Today is the autumnal equinox. The other time is the vernal equinox in March.

Do people in the Southern Hemisphere refer to the equinoxes the same way people in the Northern Hemisphere do? I mean, what we call the autumnal equinox occurs in their spring and what we call the vernal equinox occurs in their autumn. Also, their water swirls the other way around in their toilets. Perhaps Katherine and/or Helsie will explain to us why this is so.

The equinoxes are distinguished from the solstices in that while on an equinox you can, if you wish, balance an egg on end, on a solstice you can only fry an egg on the sidewalk (if it happens to be the summer solstice) or freeze and egg on the sidewalk (if it happens to be the winter solstice). Except, of course, if you happen to be in the Southern Hemisphere. In some years, of course, you can do neither because the day may not be, on the one hand, hot enough or, on the other hand, cold enough, to perform the aforementioned astounding scientific feats.

But today, trust me, you can, if you wish, balance an egg on end.

To boldly go where no man has gone before

If Earth were Star Trek and the western nations were the United Federation of Planets and the nations where a certain peaceful-sounding but actually quite bellicose religion that shall remain nameless holds sway were the Klingon Empire, then the solution to our current dilemma on the international scene would be simple. Obvious and simple.

All we would need to do is to wait for the sequel, namely Earth: The Next Generation.

“Pshaw!” you may be saying. “Pshaw!”

And I respond, “No, really!”

Think about it.

In Star Trek: The Next Generation, the overly melodramatic James Tiberias Kirk, Captain of the Starship USS Enterprise (William Shatner, in a role he was born to play), has been succeeded by the cool, calm, and quietly cerebral Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart).

In Star Trek: The Next Generation, Worf -- a Klingon -- is a member of the Enterprise crew. The Klingon Empire and the United Federation of Planets have ceased wartime hostilities and become galactic allies, while more sinister foes like the Romulans and the Borg require the former enemies to join forces to fight a common enemy. [Editor’s note. Regrettably -- and here’s the rub -- it took 80 years for this phenomenon to occur. --RWP]

Okay, so Star Trek: The Next Generation may not have Mr. Spock or Dr. McCoy or Lieutenant Uhuru, but it has a blind guy who can see better than his sighted shipmates (Geordi La Forge), an empath (the ship’s half-human, half-Betazoid counselor, Deanna Troi), an android as operations officer (Data), and a really neat bartender who looks like Whoopi Goldberg (Guinan).

It’s simple, really.

All that our world needs to resolve the current crisis are a blind guy who can see, an empath, an android, and a really neat bartender who looks like Whoopi Goldberg.

You read it here first.