ACKNOWLEDGE MY GRAMMATICAL DOMINANCE

English Genius
You scored 100% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 100% Advanced, and 100% Expert!

You did so extremely well, even I can’t find a word to describe your excellence! You have the uncommon intelligence necessary to understand things that most people don’t. You have an extensive vocabulary, and you’re not afraid to use it properly! Way to go!

Thank you so much for taking my test. I hope you enjoyed it!

For the complete Answer Key, visit my blog: http://shortredhead78.blogspot.com/.

With a smug, condescending hat tip to Zombyboy.

Dare you to match me.

EXTRA-COOL MUSICAL CHALLENGE!

Here’s how it works: I give you a new genre of music; you come up with a description of what it is, maybe a couple of fake artists or song titles.

For example, “snore-core”:

DIY movement of young artists attempting to re-create “the ultimate lo-fi sound”: classic Muzak from the 60s and 70s. Key artists include Eleventh Floor, Customer Convenience Crew, The Otisites, and Blue Light Special.

Got it? Good. Here’s your genre:

“dip-hop”

BLOGGING AXIOMS COLLECTED

Since Bryan said he hadn’t seen my first four axioms, I gather them all here for the sake of convenience.

Hasty’s First Axiom of Blogging

A blogger will regret any post he or she ever makes about any figure caught up in a sex scandal.

The Joyner Corollary to Hasty’s First Axiom

There are also certain names which a blogger is better off not invoking at all, scandal or not.

Hasty’s Second Axiom of Blogging

There is no topic so controversial and interesting that the blogosphere can’t make people thoroughly sick of it within five days.

Hasty’s Third Axiom of Blogging

The quality of your most recent post and the likelihood of a catastrophic server failure are directly related.

Hasty’s Fourth Axiom of Blogging

When you have no new ideas, try changing your color scheme.

Hasty’s Fifth Axiom of Blogging

As the number of blogs increases, the number of comments on any particular blog decreases. Furthermore, as the number of comments declines, so does the number of trackbacks, as traffic-hungry bloggers eventually decide to link only to articles at the biggest blogs. The future of blogging, then, will entail millions of bloggers linking solely to whichever happens to be the largest and most prominent blog with trackbacks turned on. Whichever blogger this is will displace Howard Stern as the King (or Queen) of All Media.

And, as a lagniappe, let’s not forget Hasty’s Meta-Post:

[journalist or blogger] writes [in/on] [name of media outlet]:

A bunch of stuff that confirms my opinion that [[[journalist or blogger] is a [genius or idiot]] or [[name of media outlet] is a [beacon of truth or thin veneer of lies]]]

Heh.

HASTY’S FIFTH AXIOM OF BLOGGING

Hasty’s Fifth Axiom of Blogging is as follows:

As the number of blogs increases, the number of comments on any particular blog decreases. Furthermore, as the number of comments declines, so does the number of trackbacks, as traffic-hungry bloggers eventually decide to link only to articles at the biggest blogs. The future of blogging, then, will entail millions of bloggers linking solely to whichever happens to be the largest and most prominent blog with trackbacks turned on. Whichever blogger this is will displace Howard Stern as the King (or Queen) of All Media.

UPDATE: Jed links and comments and notes his struggles with SpamKarma, which intreprets the ‘free’ in ‘freedomsight’ as a sign that he’s trying to push pharmaceuticals or naughty pictures. My apologies, Jed; I am but a humble liberal-arts grad who knows about as much about HTML as amoebas know about landscape architecture.

RECEIVE THE BENEDICTION

If you’ve been reading this blog long enough, you know I’m Lutheran, and you would correctly deduce that therefore the election of a new pope is not a tremendously significant event in my life. Like many commentators, I’ve been more amused than bemused at the number of people who seem genuinely shocked that Benedict XVI comes to the papacy with a reputation as a doctrinal conservative, one given to the defense of traditional faith.

Just how, exactly, do you think you get to be pope, anyway? By promising to spit in the holy water? Or by trying to sell the actual Virgin Mary to GoldenPalace.com?

Equally amazing is this breathless missive, in which some surprise is expressed that a 78-year-old man with a history of stroke believes that his life expectancy may be measured in years, not decades. I dunno, seems pretty reasonable to me.

Cardinal Ratzinger may not have been the preferred choice of the punditocracy, and he certainly wasn’t the choice of many American Catholics, because, as one Catholic theology professor put it, ‘Ratzinger is the one who “basically said no” to further discussion of hot-button issues such as the ordination of women, priestly celibacy, birth control and homosexuality.’ There is, of course, no greater sin in the secular/ecumenical world than refusing to discuss these issues, preferrably until one reaches the correct opinions. But even non-ecumenical American Catholics are not thrilled with Ratzinger’s elevation. Heck, almost a decade ago, Andrew Greeley’s novel White Smoke ended with the hateful, putrid Ratzinger caricature losing out to a youngish, progressive Latino cardinal . . . whom I believe chose the name Benedict, though I may be wrong. So it really wasn’t supposed to be like this; with the end of John Paul II’s papacy, the Roman church was supposed to enter a new, more progressive era.

Right concept, wrong direction, and wrong end of the papacy.

In fact, I think John Paul II’s papacy gave tremendous credibility to the notion that Christianity itself is growing more conservative as the distance from both Vatican II and the tremendous societal upheaval of the 1960s increases. JPII’s papacy wasn’t the end of an era, but rather the beginning of one–one in which the Roman church would care less and less about the world’s approval. This change made strange bedfellows of the Roman church and conservative American protestants, as the two groups found they had more in common with each other than either group had with the great mushy middle of American Protestantism and the last twitching remnants of European Christianity. Consequently, it’s fair to say that the social-justice-based ecumenical movement, which has been with us for about fifty years, got completely overshadowed by an ad hoc coalition of disparate religious factions. The Catholics and evangelicals have created more true church unity than the World Council of Churches could ever dream of–this despite the fact that the Catholic/evangelical alliance hasn’t produced any formalized agreements like we mainline Protestants are fond of.

Benedict XVI may, by his own admission, be a transitional pope, a placeholder who keeps the throne of the fisherman warm while the next pope passes through the refiner’s fire. But we need only look to his election, and John Paul II’s papacy, as signs that modernism and postmodernism are both dead within the church. Global Christianity is not behind the times, but rather ahead of them. What is needed now in church leadership is theological clarity, but not merely that; as we are increasingly able to accept that the ages have not been wrong about everything, the quality of continuity becomes more useful. It will not do to question authority just for the purpose of questioning authority. Today’s world has demonstrated that the only people who still say “don’t follow leaders” are the ones who want to lead you themselves.

SPOT THE DOOFUS

It shouldn’t be too hard . . .

0.5

So today Serena turned six months old. It hardly seems like six months have gone by since that morning. It feels like much longer than that, like even though she’s new, she’s also ancient; in a sense, she’s always been a part of my life.

I never realized, until she came along, how hard I actually worked and how short a day really is. There was always time enough for everything, but now there isn’t–not that she’s terribly demanding; it’s just that she’s so much more interesting than so many of the things I’m used to doing, so I’ve had to give some of them up.

It is, of course, a fair trade.

BOOK ‘EM, DYL-O

Dylan says I have to do this, so here goes . . .

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

Hmm . . . something useful; something which could protect the life of the mind in the face of a new Dark Ages . . . I’d have to go with Thoreau’s Walden. You can gag on his insincerity, but at heart, every American is a Transcendentalist wannabe.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Yes. Though I’ve finally come to the conclusion that the man’s writing talent is a touch over “hack,” Andrew Greeley has created a number of female characters that I found irresistible. Who better than a celibate to tell us what actually touches our hearts?

The last book you bought is:

I don’t buy new books, usually; Half Price Books loves me. I could not for the life of me tell you what the last new fiction book I bought was. The last not-new one was Shea and Wilson’s Illuminatus! trilogy, and I just bought that today.

Nonfiction is a different story; the last new nonfiction book I bought was James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds, which I resoundingly recommend to anyone.

The last book you read:

The Worst Rock & Roll Records of All Time by Jimmy Guterman and Owen O’Donnell. It’s a great, snark, hilarious book, but I’ll spare you the suspense: the worst rock song ever (according to them) is “My Ding-A-Ling;” the worst album, “Having Fun On Stage With Elvis;” the worst artist of all time, Billy Joel. Those are some pretty solid picks.

What are you currently reading?

Shea and Wilson’s Illuminatus! trilogy.

Five books you would take to a deserted island:

As Dylan did, I’m going to claim the Desert Island Discs exemption and assume I get the Bible and the complete Shakespeare. However, I probably won’t read the Shakespeare.

1. The Crucified God by Jurgen Moltmann. It may be the only theology book I really need. Robert Farrar Capon’s The Foolishness of Preaching is another favorite of mine, but without anyone to preach to, its usefulness would be somewhat limited.
2. Living More With Less by Doris Janzen Longacre will help me stave off the materialistic withdrawal pains; perhaps instead of thinking myself deprived on my deserted island, I’ll rejoice that I’m free of the need to keep up with anybody.
3. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. Sooner or later I’m going to feel the need to conjure up images to remind me of who I was/am; this remarkable book will lessen the frustration that often occurs when translating images from the mind’s eye to two-dimensional reality.
4. The Essential Ellison by Harlan Ellison. This is a big enough book that I can’t just blast through it in a day, plus it contains enough out-of-left-field thinking to inspire my own creativity, which I figure I’ll need to avoid going insane, since even I can’t spend all my time reading.
5. St. Valentine’s Night by Andrew Greeley. Memories of love will probably become incredibly painful, but I still don’t want to forget what it’s like. This book, flawed as it is, captures the feelings of love the way I feel them.

(Yes, yes, I know; I answered this question too literally. If whomever started this meme wanted to know my five favorite books, that would have been an excellent question to ask . . .)

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

Steve Casburn, since he’s a librarian, and the other librarian who haunts these parts doesn’t blog; Harry, who reads lots of interesting stuff; and Zombyboy, just because. Oh, and Dave Fried, because I’ll be danged if I’m going to let some meme-writer tell me I can’t issue this challenge to four people.

BOOK REVIEWS, OF A SORT

I’ve officially ejected on Gaiman and Pratchett’s Good Omens. This is the second time I’ve tried to read it, and the second time I’ve failed. Too many characters; I can’t keep them all straight. I mean, I’ve read novels with a lot more characters than Good Omens, but I could keep them straight, because I actually cared who was whom. Not with this book, though. Maybe I’m a little too close to the subject matter, but it struck me as too clever by half. It was sort of like the “Left Behind” books as conceived by Douglas Adams and, while I know this puts me in a minority, I never did care for Douglas Adams’ writing.

Ben Elton’s Popcorn was a different matter, partially because the novel only has five or six real characters, and mostly because the ridiculous plot keeps the enterprise from bogging down. Popcorn tells the story of an Oliver Stone/Quentin Tarantino archetype who makes insanely violent movies, but denies that his films have any effect on society. A pair of mass-murderers suspiciously like Mickey and Mallory from Stone’s Natural Born Killers decide that their only hope for avoiding the electric chair is to get this producer/director to admit that they are his creation; they wouldn’t have gone around killing people if he didn’t make it look so goshdarned cool. It’s an interesting concept, but Elton, a Brit, just can’t hide his contempt for Americans, their guns, and their media. In the end, the whole book gets torpedoed by the thought that TV cameras can do for these lowlifes what they did for OJ or the Menendez brothers. Following a Die Hard-style bloodbath, Elton caps off the novel with a ridiculous epilogue in which, with a heavy hand, he tries to claim that no one, ultimately would claim responsibility–or be held responsible–for the mass-murder spree. One gets the sense that Elton would like to blame Hollywood and gun manufacturers. Popcorn was, to borrow a media cliche, a real page-turner, but the conclusion is so unsatisfying that I can’t recommend it. In the real America, these two killers would fry like chickens.

Back to American authors for me. Next on the docket are Tom Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Simmons and Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus! trilogy. Thence it’s on to the Sean Stewart book Zombyboy recommended.

VIGNETTES FROM A MARRIAGE, #(WHATEVER)

He: One of the the stocks in my fantasy stock market thingy is up 21% today.
She: Why don’t we own this stock in real life?
He: [sad, bemused smirk]