Minor Thoughts from me to you

Test: Can you tell whether this cow was treated well or not?

How much histrionic handwringing about this beef recall do we have to endure? From The New York Times, presumably nicknamed "The Gray Lady" because it's gone senile, writes:

"A nauseating video of cows stumbling on their way to a California slaughterhouse has finally prompted action: the largest recall of meat in American history... A lot of that beef has already been eaten, and so far, thankfully, there have been no reports of illness. But the question Congress needs to ask is how many people need to get sick or die before it starts repairing and modernizing the nation’s food safety system?"

Am I the only one to ask the question of how cows being killed "inhumanely" (and that's really an interesting term to apply to the death of something that isn't human, isn't it?) results in beef that is not fit for consumption? Even if we waterboard the things before putting them through the grinder, their meat is still meat. A stressed cow does not equal a poisonous cow.

Slap a fine on the meatpackers to appease the heifer-huggers and serve 'em up. Send some to my house.

One of The Economist's recent blog entries reminds me of why I like the magazine as much as I do, notwithstanding its faults. Can you see any mainstream American newspaper making this comparison?

"IMAGINE Nazi rule in Germany surviving for decades, with Hitler undefeated in war and succeeded on his death in the early 1950s by a series of lacklustre party hacks who more or less disowned his “excesses”. Imagine then a “reform Nazi” (call him Michael Gorbach) coming to power in the 1980s and dismantling the National Socialist system, only to fall from power as the Third Reich collapsed in political and economic chaos.

"Imagine a shrunken “German Federation” suffering ten years of upheaval, before an SS officer (call him Voldemar Puschnik) came to power, first as prime minister and then as president. Under eight years of rule by Herr Puschnik, Germany regains economic stability, largely thanks to a sky-high coal price."

Readers who chose to comment on the above description can be broken down into righteously indignant "whataboutisms" from Russians and your typical anti-Westerners, those who angrily noted an even more accurate parallel - Turkey - and a couple of level-headed chaps who simply by virtue of their existence make living in this world much more tolerable.

You know how it's said (at least, I've heard it) that after a long marriage, you tend to start resembling your spouse?

Next time I witness such a phenomenon, this story will make me wonder:

"Twins separated at birth have married each other without realizing they were brother and sister, it has been revealed.

"The British couple's marriage has now been annulled by the High Court after judges ruled the marriage had never validly existed."

Next time anyone calls the plot of Oedipus Rex forced, we know just where to refer them.

(From FOXNews via SKY News)

Im Gegensatz zu vielen anderen Pokerspielen, bei denen die Pokerspieler gegeneinander spielen, online blackjack hier die Spieler direkt gegen das Haus.

Despite the certain eyeball-rolling from the young ladies in our lives we know is sure to come - or perhaps, in fact, because of it - your Minor Thoughts correspondents feel we cannot possibly consider ourselves socially-responsible bloggers without mentioning the latest on video-game addiction.

So: According to The Economist,

"Both console gaming [i.e., Nintendo, Playstation, et al.] and its online counterpart ["multiplayer online gaming"] are booming businesses that are set to keep on growing. In 2004 the industry saw its revenues overtake those generated by film box-office receipts. This year it is expected to outstrip the music business with revenues of $37.5 billion, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), a consultancy. And the games industry is forecast to expand by over 9% annually over the next few years to become worth $48.9 billion by 2011."

The Republic of Korea, "home to the world's most extreme gamer culture" (The Washington Post)), is of course greeting this news with only slightly less enthusiasm than it would the melting of all polar ice caps.

[In 2006] the government -- which opened a treatment center in 2002 -- launched a game addiction hotline. Hundreds of private hospitals and psychiatric clinics have opened units to treat the problem... An estimated 2.4 percent of the population from 9 to 39 are believed to be suffering from game addiction, according to a government-funded survey. Another 10.2 percent were found to be "borderline cases" at risk of addiction -- defined as an obsession with playing electronic games to the point of sleep deprivation, disruption of daily life and a loosening grip on reality."

Never mind that the above symptoms are also typical of Korean life in general; contemplate instead facing a future in which there exist double the number of nerds alive today. Korea's government sure is. And while admittedly, the concept produces a few obvious positives - for one thing, that 5+% of the male population will obviously not be mating, and that's good news for a country about to experience a dire shortage of females - the "Land of the Morning Calm" just feels it is not quite yet ready to concede that its proud, ancient warrior tradition has come down to how well it plays Halo.

Which is why, at this point, war with France is its best option.

Blizzard HQ

I'm an American and I know Terrorism when I see it (and I see it everywhere). This influx of next-generation games on Korea is certainly nothing less than Cultural Terrorism. And, as the Israelis can tell you, if there's to be any hope of ending terrorist attacks, the country must cut them off at the source: those rogue states which serve as their nurseries.

Game-wise, that oddly enough means France, which is at least good fortune for Korea in that it's one nation the R.O.K. can conceivably conquer. Unbeknownst to innocent adult-adolescents everywhere, the tentacles delivering their favorite computer crack have for years led back to the French multinational beast that is - Vivendi! The froggy biz is responsible for some of the best-known games on this planet, including the current holy grail of all gaming experiences, the seminal World of Warcraft itself.

Who could have ever suspected that a development firm with a name like "Blizzard" would start each day by singing La Marseillaise (Do they even have blizzards in France? You never hear about them, at least not in the US)? But then, really, who could have suspected the French of going into the video game industry at all, and doing well at it? Maybe it's just our twenty-plus years of experience with company names like "Nintendo" and "Atari", but we Americans tend to expect our geek culture to come from the East; we gave up on the Old World long ago. How is this understandable?

The simple answer is: it's not. And people fear what they don't understand. And they hate what they fear.

Ergo, we here at Minor Thoughts hate this development, and urge that Korea teach this Eurotrash to meddle in our affairs but good. They need to be made an example out of before we all learn, to our infinite self-loathing, that the Finns are behind our favorite action movies.

Well, the Chinese have stopped even pretending concern for the welfare of the foreign peoples to whom they export. As if shipping potentially hazardous tires, dolls, wooden art sets, and even faulty fortune cookies wasn't enough, now they're selling people missiles.

But Saudi Arabia, a country so renowned for being concerned with safety that it still doesn't allow women to drive, has taken a stand. Its own Interior Ministry recently

"made its largest terror sweep to date, arresting 208 al-Qaida-linked militants in six separate arrests in recent months... The ministry said members of [one] cell were planning to smuggle eight missiles into the kingdom to carry out terrorist operations, but it did not say what kind of missiles or what the targets were. [The newspaper] Okaz reported Sunday that the missiles were already inside Saudi Arabia [when they were confiscated]."

A Minor Thoughts source also confirmed that lead-based paint was used to decorate the weapons.

The findings of a recent Gallup poll suggest that of all political persuasions, Republicans feel most mentally healthy - and it's not even close.

Reports Gallup's site:

"Fifty-eight percent of Republicans report having excellent mental health, compared to 43% of independents and 38% of Democrats. This relationship between party identification and reports of excellent mental health persists even within categories of income, age, gender, church attendance, and education."

Now, the blog Daily Kos correctly notes the obvious reason why the poll hardly settles the issue.

"Notice anything missing? Like, say, pointing out that this was SELF REPORTED mental health? And this poll is really not so much a poll about mental health than a poll about people's PERCEPTIONS of their mental health?"

The blog goes a little far, however, in its vitriolic attempt to fully rebut the results.

"[Gee,] why would anyone doubt that someone who considers themselves a Republican wouldn't be completely honest and forthcoming with a complete stranger on the phone about a personal matter that has no small amount of social stigma attached to it?... If we have learned nothing[sic]... it is that Republicans are well adjusted, honest folks who are in no way invested in maintaining the illusion of complete normalcy to a judgmental and unforgiving society that they helped bring about and still maintain."

Since the names of the participants in these studies aren't revealed, fear of embarrassment can hardly be much of a factor. Plus, Gallup itself does play fair by mentioning that, "In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls."

It also cannot be said that to learn how separate demographics perceive their own mental health is not in itself enlightening. A group's belief in its own mental health likely, at the very least, indicates a lower shared stress level.

None of this is to suggest that Republicans are more mentally healthy in general than Democrats (I know far too many Republicans, many of them just as angry and bitter as any Democrat), only to remind that the poll should not be cavalierly dismissed as partisan. Such a trend likely means something - but possibly nothing more than that Republicans generally possess a less stress-inducing world view ("Planet Earth will be just fine."), whether right or wrong, which translates into more assurance and attendant better mental health. At this point, who can say?

All that out of the way, your Minor Thoughts correspondents would like to point out that the inclusion of other independents within our bracket is doubtlessly throwing off our score.

CATHOLIC LEAGUE SPOKESPERSON Kiera McCaffrey is righteously indignant about an album booklet included in Britney Spears' new CD release, "Blackout", reports MTV.

Said booklet shows Britney Spears and a handsome man of the cloth getting cozy together in the confessional.

Declares McCaffrey: "What would be great is if she got serious about her religious faith and instead of mocking the confessional, maybe she could visit one for its intended purpose... [The photo of her on the priest's lap is] a cheap trick."

Your Minor Thoughts correspondents naturally take umbrage at Ms. McCaffrey's assertions. Getting a pretty woman to sit on your lap is not a "cheap trick"; it's a difficult art - especially if you want Quality. It took the writer of this article 4-5 months to get this beauty onboard, and while he's no Don Juan, he doesn't think the Catholic League could've done any better.

But this leads us to the real tragedy: because, really, having a pretty woman on your lap is simply one more Biblical value which the Whore of Babylon can never understand. Looking at these photos, the priests of Rome see blasphemy, whereas we Protestants, quite frankly, see a step in the right direction.

At least Ms. McCaffrey and her ilk have the comfort of knowing not a lot of priests are going to see what fun they're missing, though. Sales on Spears' album debuted below expectations and have been sinking ever since.

The new film adaptation of Beowulf's justly been receiving loads of huzzahs for its groundbreaking use of 3D technology (The Economist has devoted an article to how exactly it works), but its screenplay has received far less - if any - respect from the critics.

This is perplexing, since what writers Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman have written is something of an achievement - a new, nearly legitimate interpretation of England's oldest epic poem. The general failure of film critics to recognize this may be due to the same ignorance which resulted in their complaints about Frank Miller's 300 earlier this year. No review of that movie was apparently complete without the observation, soon trite, that the directors had forgotten to give their Spartans body armor. But this only revealed how many of those reviews' writers had actually missed one of the movie's fundamental points: 300 isn't an attempt to accurately recreate a historical event, but an attempt to accurately recreate the spirit of how Ancient Greece would retell such a historical event. The Spartans are nearly naked not because that is how they really fought, but because that is how Greek artists would depict them.

Director Zack Snyder himself has said as much:

"300 is a movie that is made from the Spartan perspective. Not just from the Spartan perspective, the cameras are the Spartans, but it’s the Spartans sensibility of the Battle of Thermopylae... If you had Spartans sitting around a fire and they were telling you before anything was written down what happened at Thermopylae, this is the way they would tell it. It’s not necessarily down to the fact that they don’t have armor on. Everything about it is just to make the Spartans more heroic [italics mine - go get your own].”

Beowulf is the same kind of creation, only far, far more ambitious. Not only does it recreate with a sometimes wince-inducing measure of honesty the kind of world in which the story purports to take place, but with only two notable (and ultimately unnecessary) exceptions that I could count, the movie is completely faithful to its source material - yet reinterprets that material in such a way that the themes of the story are doubled in strength.

The story of both the original poem and the movie is easy to summarize: an over-the-hill king named Hrothgar is besieged by Grendel, a monster who enters his hall every night and eats a couple of the king's apparently very loyal subjects. Beowulf arrives and rips the monster's arm off, then follows the beastie into its cave in order to kill its mother, too. As proof of his kill, he brings back Grendel's head. Years later, Beowulf dies saving his kingdom from a dragon. The End.

What holds all of this together, in the poem, is the comparison readers are invited to make between King Hrothgar at the beginning of the poem and King Beowulf at its end. Beowulf the movie amplifies this theme by answering the questions about the poem most of us never even thought to - but should have - asked: Why doesn't Grendel kill Hrothgar himself? Why does Beowulf return to Hrothgar with only Grendel's head? And really, the dragon's just kind've a random tack-on, isn't it?

Well, not anymore, it's not. Gaiman and Avary explain Grendel's torturing of King Hrothgar as the confrontation between an illegitimate, freakish son and his deadbeat dad. The kingdom's wrecking by a monster is the result of its king's fornification with a bewitching succubus. The same demoness successfully seduces Beowulf, when he arrives in her cave to kill her, and thus the warrior later returns with only Grendel's head.

This coupling between man and Satanic siren, of course, results in the birth of a new monster, which bedevils the crowned Beowulf many years later: the dragon. Everything thus comes full-circle and Beowulf finds himself in the exact same position as his predecessor - naturally, the very best of scenarios in which to contemplate the two mens' differences.

See what I mean about the themes being strengthened? Yes, liberties are taken in that new "scenes" are added to the story. But they're really nothing more than most theologians do with the Bible itself, imagining details that do not contradict what is known, in order to make sense of story points otherwise not understandable.

The consequences of failing to at least pay child support are brutally exposed in Zemeckis's film..

I shouldn't really be surprised that these particular writers pull it off. I'm used to Hollywood bungling its adaptations, but Neil Gaiman is a British import who's made his name writing modern takes on mythology; it's his niche, and he's good at it. Stardust is another example of his work.

And really, that might be why I enjoyed Beowulf, and you should take any recommendation here with a grain of salt; Beowulf can play the part of a straight-up action-adventure story for your typical moviegoer, but it's also a game being played by a couple of lovers of literature with their brethren. Fun-averse purists aside, inhabitants of English Departments far and wide are watching this movie with glee. And they understand why Beowulf feels it necessary to get naked before wrestling a giant.

Full enjoyment of the show is thus reserved for a select audience of which I, for once, am a member.

So, not often getting the chance to be part of an elitist "in-crowd" at anything, I'm naturally going to go see it again. Have fun doing whatever it is you, y'know, non-English Major types do with your lives.

If you haven't heard yet, the horse-chestnut tree that gave famous Jewish refugee Anne Frank so much comfort in the early 1940's has been condemned by the city. And I don't mean "condemned" in the sense that the U.N. "condemns" things; I mean it's going to be ripped out of the ground. The tree's simply so old now, it's become a hazard to its human neighbors, who understandably take a dim view of a piece of living history crushing their houses.

However, that hasn't stopped it from continuing to comfort somebody; a few people have picked off some of its chestnuts and are now selling them on eBay. The price for your own Anne Frank Chestnut Tree (TM) is, at present, over $30,000 and climbing.

On a personal note, I'll be reading The Diary of Anne Frank for the first time soon. I've just got about a hundred pages of The Brothers Karamazov left before I jump into it.

(Tip o' the hat: FOXNews' site).

Bruce Campbell

What do you get if you mix the classic comedy The Three Amigos with the cult classic Evil Dead series of humorous horror films?

You get Bruce Campbell's new movie My Name Is Bruce, an indie flick (you'll rarely see Bruce starring in anything else) in which actor Bruce Campbell ostensibly plays himself kidnapped by his #1 fan, who has seen far too many of his movies and earnestly believes Bruce can save his town from a very real Chinese demon. Campbell, of course, simply believes that the whole situation is a grand example of method-acting, and his agent is behind it all

Something about these types of films fascinates me, perhaps because by their very nature we see so few of them. Nothing like My Name Is Bruce could exist if Bruce Campbell himself were not America's great B-movie icon, patron saint of the working-class actor - a status he cemented in 2002 with his extremely successful autobiography If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of A B-Movie Actor (the obvious problem with his having become famous for taking on awful roles, of course, is that he has thereby created his own career's ceiling; God knows, he'll never get headline work as anything else now - but that suits the reportedly very humble Mr. Campbell just fine). Since he is, a wonderfully unique little cinematic experience has been created, one which doesn't even require a high level of quality to be enjoyable: a tribute to and roast of an awful sub-genre, encapsulated in a tribute to and send-up of a man identified with it more than anyone, starring the man himself.

And starring him in a way which is not offensively worshipful. Just as musicians sometimes betray their total self-obsession through songs about themselves (e.g., Fergie's stunningly odious "Fergilicious"), movie stars' occasional forays into self-portrayal often feel uncomfortably egotistical. Mel Gibson's cameo in Paparazzi is an example of self-portrayal done right: with a touch of self-deprecation. According to early reviews, My Name Is Bruce takes the same approach, but runs with it.

"[Bruce is portrayed as] rude to his cast mates and crew, hitting on a pretty co-star with some more terrible one-liners, treating his fans like dirt, attempting to fire his incompetent agent (played by Ted Raimi in one of three roles), finally retiring to his trashed mobile home where he gets drunk and passes out on Shemp’s Hooch..." (Ain'tItCoolNews.com )

You can't help but like that; sure, nobody (at least, nobody worth taking seriously) blames Chuck Norris for signing onto Sidekicks - as Roger Ebert writes, "Norris is believable in the role, not so much because he is playing himself as because he is the kind of nice guy who actually would do something like that" - but Campbell's approach is far more entertaining.

At least, it would be entertaining if I were to go see it; I doubt any theaters in Korea will be showing it (in fact, I doubt more than a handful of mainstream theaters in the U.S. will be showing it). So it goes; I'm not the target audience anyway, and to appreciate something is one thing, to enjoy it quite another.

Above: "Blogger Etiquette."

The Economist is a classier magazine than most. Even the comments on its website's blogs, I've often noticed, tend to be of a far higher quality of cut than you'd find, say, here, where you * won't even post and give me the attention I pathologically crave.

But back to The Economist: Really, on what other site is it demanded that you register not just any old "username", but under your very own "pen name"? And how many websites automatically add the address "SIR-" to any e-mail you send them?

I don't know, but I'll tell you one thing: our own Webmaster Joe here at Minor Thoughts could learn a thing or two from this approach. Why I have to read posted comments that start out "Hey, Butthead", I don't know, when we could program this WordPress mutha to automatically add "To The Writer Of The Most Brilliant Article I Have Ever Read" to each barbed arrow you misanthropes aim at my sensitive heart.

A new preview of coming comic Batman & The Outsiders shows Batman pontificating in his cave about why a shady corporation manufactures "quantities of Berkelium and Californium".

"Two highly radioactive substances with no practical industrial applications,"

muses the crimefighter, adding that "[the corporation] has contacts with the European Space Administration."

The writer of the series, Chuck Dixon, is well-known as one of the handful of dyed-in-the-wool Republicans that somehow manage to find jobs in the entertainment industry, so it's not surprising that he'd be the one to slip in a jab at the other end of the political spectrum. What is also not surprising is that, having suffered all my reading life through similar little apropos-of-nothing comments from the 90% of writers out there who are Democrats, I find I'm really no more amused when the shoe's on the other foot.

Above: "Y'know, Jake, I gotta say... Talking with you and opening up like this really does beat looking at my dad's magazines."

Remember that age-old stereotype concerning what men want to do and what women want to do? You've seen or heard it a thousand times, perhaps even experienced it yourself: the woman wants to talk and get to know the man. But the man, well, y'know, he's just interested in - ahem - one thing...

No longer, Folks. Time.com's Bill Tancer reports:

Currently, for web users over the age of 25, Adult Entertainment still ranks high in popularity, coming in second, after search engines. Not so for 18- to 24-year-olds, for whom social networks rank first, followed by search engines, then web-based e-mail — with porn sites lagging behind in fourth.

Clearly, when seeing a woman naked is less important than social interaction for a college-age man, it's not the Battle of the Sexes that's been lost - it's the War.

Above: A Chinese propaganda poster from 1986. No wonder Communism has appealed to so many. I would've called this The Communists party, but its painter named it _Youthful dance steps. _Oh well.

Say what you want about China's Communist leaders, but they get results, and they get them quickly. From the latest Newsweek:

"In the 10 years since Hong Kong's return to Chinese sovereignty, official statistics show that the number of "working poor"—defined as those who earn less than half the median income—has nearly doubled."

The article itself, of course, naturally goes on to blame this 100% increase in poverty on "turbocapitalism".

Which, you have to admit, is at any rate a great name, and we here at Minor Thoughts will probably be using it a lot from now on until we can finally lay claim to the word as our new domain name.

The Good Lord's reputation for cruelty amidst our world's heathen is in no way improved when scientists make discoveries like this:

"A sexy sway of the hips, long-believed to be a sign [of] seduction from women, actually may mean back off, according to a new study.

"A woman with a sexy walk is unlikely to be ovulating, which is typically when single women seek out male partners, according to a new Canadian study, French news service AFP reports."

Yes, you read that right: a woman is least interested in sex right when her body is performing magic show-worthy feats of hypnosis on male passersby.

On the plus side, say what you want about the misuse of American tax dollars on grants for questionable academic research, but those Canadian professors are earning their public funds.

President Bush: "General Musharraf, you can't be the president and the head of the military at the same time."*

General Musharraf: "Aren't you?"

President Bush: "...Uh... Well.... Hell. Yeah."

Above: New GOP logo.

Although the Bush Administration has quite typically failed to capitalize on it politically, all Americans are this week definitely enjoying the benefits of Republican-birthed legislation: additional sunlight.

According to FOX News,

"If you turned your clocks back one hour Sunday morning thinking it was the annual move back to Standard Time, all you succeeded in doing was moving into a new time zone... President Bush in 2005 signed the Energy Conservation Act, which pushed back the time change in an effort to squeeze just a little more daylight — and a bit of energy savings [And let's not forget sleep - Adam] — into the daily lives of Americans."

Yes, it's certainly a public relations coup ("GOP '08: A Little Ray of Sunshine In Your Life"). However, those of us of a more theological bent perhaps cannot help but wonder: could this be one more ominous example of Big Government extending its influence into spheres best left inviolate? Is an inept bureaucracy really capable of deciding better than ourselves and God just how much daylight we should all get?

I do not think I am jumping at shadows (of which I notice there are now fewer). There are already worrisome reports by refugees from that most confused of government powers, North Korea - apparently on Sunday morning it became March. The American state of Georgia, still experiencing a severe drought, must now contend with an extra 1% of scorching rays from Father Sol. And questions are already being raised as to just how deep in bed our elected officials are with Big SPF.

Add to all of this a horrifying experience I had once with a tanning salon (I literally spent three days naked as a result) and - well, I guess I'm just afraid of your average, low-income American getting burned by The Man again. Let's be careful out there.

Why do we from the U.S. sometimes call people "Indian givers"? Is it because a generation's worth of experience with the cutthroat prices of 7-11 and the Holiday Inn have convinced us the term is an oxymoron?

As it turns out, no; in fact, it doesn't even have anything to do with India. According to our totally anonymous but still surely trustworthy friends at Wikipedia,

"The expression 'Indian giver' is based on the belief that Native Americans would lend items to the settlers, in other words, let them borrow necessities. The settlers thought that this was a gift from the Native Americans; hence, they were shocked when the Native Americans asked for their items back."

Which, you have to admit, explains a lot - like, for instance, why after the Native-Americans gave Native America to us walking ghosts over a hundred years ago, some of them have had the temerity to ask for it back. Or, even more brazenly, to be paid for it. I mean, yeah right. As if we didn't do them a favor by taking all that tobacco off their hands; every time the Surgeon General wins a lawsuit, our cigarette companies should counter-sue the whole Cherokee nation.

Sheesh. No wonder the Mormons decided these people are Jews. You're feeling all buddy-buddy and then: ka-ching! Your bill, Sir!

But wait: _The Phrase Finder _ suggests that everything isn't so cut-and-dried as we might like to believe.

"It is more likely that the settlers wrongly interpreted the Indians' loans to them as gifts."

Uh... Hm.

Well-

OK. Let's face it, that's possible. Seriously, raise your hand if that hasn't happened to you, y'know? An honest mistake. And it does explain why a race so ostensibly into borrowing didn't invent the library before we did; I was all set to accuse Benjamin Franklin of intellectual theft.

Indeed: if this is the sort of miscommunication that's been going on all these years, I can start to see where some of this Native-American hostility toward us honkies is coming from. How long have we White people just been taking their stuff on the assumption that it's all a gift? How many of those "Take One Free" tables I keep running across on reservations might really just be good old-fashioned tourist traps? Good grief, they probably have an arrest warrant out on me by now.

Fellow members of the Master Race, we need to make this right somehow. There's a lot of healing that needs to go on here, and it's probably going to take us a while to figure how to really iron it all out. In the meantime I suggest we start with small tokens of affection.

Maybe we can name our favorite sports teams in their honor.

For contact information, please see postscript

This is not the time to be writing a love letter.

Bluntly, I've got snot all over my face. It's pouring both down my throat and out my nose, wherein it joins a non-stop stream of tears that have rendered this screen in front of me all but unreadable. And good grief, my head - o my poor head - my head right now is so foggy that, were ya t'ask me if I'll be going to Heaven tonight 'pon my surely-inevitable death, I'd quite confidently answer you yes - I just probably couldn't explain to you why.

Brilliant bounds for boogying back betwixt the bedsheets, you might say - for instance, if you were yourself the young lady to whom the letter is actually going. But Darlin', it's your birthday, and lemme tell ya something: the world outside our houses may be diving headlong into Winter (a fitting metaphor for my body), but it's been Springtime in my heart '365 since I started courting you.

And by God, you weren't born on the 25th of October, now were you?

According to Facebook, the answer is no, it was definitely the 24th (knew there was a reason I signed up for that), so let's go.

Anna

A best friend of mine once famously yelled, upon being complimented by her boyfriend for the millionth time or so about her physical appearance - not about her mind, not about her spirit, not about her driving record, but about her looks: "Is that all there is?!"

Many a long-form essay has been written to answer exactly that question, but here it's sufficient to point out, if I may plagiarize liberally from Mr. Charles Dickens (yep, I can, he's dead, thanks Chuck!), that Anna was attractive, to begin with. There can be no doubt whatsoever about that. And this must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. Just how attractive is she? So attractive that compasses do not function properly within her immediate vicinity. If you were to go hiking in the woods with Anna you would get lost. And if you were a man, you would not care.

I high-light this obvious detail of Anna's character not to elevate it at the expense of other admirable and more important qualities, but to hopefully shed a little light on the position I'm currently in; since the first day I remember meeting her, Anna's always been an object of non-platonic interest to me.* That being the case, I admit to sometimes having difficulty extricating myself from the perspective of the Suitor, which to degrees both wrong-headed and righteous has almost always been my role.

(*I actually suspect Anna doesn't care too much to recall this secret motivation of mine in sharing pre-courtship time with her. Back when we met, the beauty firmly belonged to a school of Christian thought which demands of the meaningful Christian relationship a slow development via at least one year of best-friends-ness, after which both male and female realize that there is something more to their friendship than just platonic interest and weep in their respective beds to the LORD God Almighty for the evil spirits to be cast out of them. This is eventually and grudgingly followed by a second year of companionship, known as "courtship", in which the respective parties involved join each other at their respective family's dinner tables, engaging in wholesome dating activities like passing the biscuits, pouring each other refills, etc. - just so long as their hands never touch. Eventually, this leads to the gentleman caller trying to pass the woman of his dreams a diamond ring, which her mother should smoothly intercept and, if she can get away with it, flush down the commode.

Needless to say, the young lady and I have taken a divergent but equally righteous path, one with which I'm happy to report the gorgeous creature remains perfectly at ease. Yet, I secretly think she still clings to the idea, perhaps just on principle, that there was at least one point in our story in which I did not think to myself, "I must at the very least dance with that exquisite creation, because I'll never forgive myself if I don't."

To my mind, these supposedly base beginnings merely testify to the LORD's humor, and His grand love for subverting all of our expectations. I flatter myself one of God's better jokes on her.)

A birthday tribute is not about celebrating Anna's value to me in particular, however; it is about celebrating Anna's objective value altogether. Or at least, this is how I am feeling about it right now. Joe, if I look like I'm going to get myself into any trouble here, please feel free to edit (Joe: Oh, I'll edit alright. This is the chance I've been looking for since you put up the pizza picture). By teh way, Ana iz also stinki and hr shoes iz bad.

So I switch gears as best I can. I give up the sword and shield of my crusade for her heart for a little while and take up the (party) banner of her life. What is there to say about this woman when I am not in the position of trying to win her?

Summarily: everything I've just said, and far, far more.

That was perhaps never so apparent as over a year ago, when I was hanging out at her house and happened to peruse a couple of her family's picture albums. I got to watch a video or two of her when she was younger, too. The experience was interesting not just because of my curiosity concerning her past, but because of the emotions roused in me by viewing that past. The little girl smiled out from history at me and - she was not yet grown up. O, she was a very pretty child, to be sure, but to my hormones the little one was, of course, a total flop. Her immature body could elicit no interest. And as linked in my mind as this smaller version was to the one I knew... well, neither could Anna herself at that moment.

Point being:

'Pessa, if ever I have seen you with eyes at liberty from those rose-tinted glasses you're always claiming I wear, well, that afternoon was it - and I wanted you more than ever.

But not as a lover - I just wished we'd become friends sooner. I wished I'd known this swiftly-changing girl in the albums and videos; I wished I'd been able to stop in at a much younger Anna's birthday tea party to wish her - in a toff accent of course - the very best birthday she might have. I wish the next day you could've told me what your parents got you. And my heart simply burns with the wish, strange as it may seem, that I myself had gotten you something, on that special day and every one since.

You are a life very much worth celebrating, Anna. I am so very glad you were born!

May God [have blessed] you with a day to equal the joy He, even more than I, takes in you.

And sweet dreams.

Adam

PS: I cannot fairly deny my fellow males the opportunity to take their own shots at the most beautiful woman I know. It is not for me to influence who's affections she will accept. So, if you would like to write your own love letter to Anna, her mailing address is provided below.

Anna Fraijo-Ruiz #X10882

PO Box 1508

Chowchilla, CA 93610-1508 USA

There's something both precious and painful about evenings out with my fellow teachers at school. All of us so clearly desire, and desire badly, to be friends, because we are all living in a foreign country far from home's shores, and we consequently know that the immediately available pool of English-speaking Christians from which we might draw fellowship is limited to -... uh, well, us.

But, we are a motley crew. Thus we are having some trouble clicking. Our only extrovert finds himself faced with the horrifying understanding (perhaps not yet dawned 'pon him; I am unsure) that these people by whom he is surrounded will likely not kick it with him on the weekends, at least to his standards. His two fellow men are introverted bookworms. They quietly wait on the sidelines of table conversation like players in a game to which they do not know the rules. And beside them sits a beautiful and intelligent young, ethnically Korean woman about their age, who - being a fresh graduate of hallowed Bob Jones University on her way to law school - is probably not up for dating, along with a woman (a) easily old enough to be all of their mothers and (b) way cooler than all of them, being a field-hardened missionary to Uganda.

Summarily, this is not the kind of group for which you want to pick a movie.

And then there are our theological differences, which really the LORD Jesus must be praised for, as they're the only reliable topic of conversation upon which we've yet stumbled.

The very fact that we all work for our school means we're each classifiable as Protestant, of course, but whereas the beliefs of the good Catholic are well-defined, "Protestant" is a widely-cast label - nearly as widely-cast as the word "Christian" itself. We run the gamut. The older woman who serves in Uganda is Charismatic. The gentleman hailing from North Carolina is, needless to say, not. Cue fun discussions of whether the Church is still given the gift of speaking in holy tongues or the gift of prophecy, etcetera.

Wherein I occasionally hear something interesting like this:

"Satan can't understand what you're saying to God when you speak in tongues. That's because tongues are of the Spirit and he (Satan) is darkness."

Now I first heard this tidbit of spiritual strategy, actually, from a Filipino teacher who doesn't usually eat out with us - and to be honest, my snooty reaction was to off-handedly dismiss it as a bit of quaint Third World tradition which had somehow latched itself to Christian doctrine. Y'know: "Oh, those backward Filipinos."

So to hear it from a missionary raised in California quite surprised me (less surprising was to hear within the same conversation her confident assertion that Satan, the Prince of Darkness, is a fallen angel - a plausible possibility, but simply not so settled a fact as most Christians seem to believe). What surprises me leads to research. What I research leads to this blog.

QED.

The Devil We Know, The Devil We Don't

To begin with, let's deal with the question of whether the Adversary can understand prayers spoken in tongues: the answer is "Perhaps!", with an understanding that leaning towards "Yes, he can!" is probably the safer bet. No Bible verse concretely addresses the question, which means, to quote my Old Testament professor Dr. Wallace: "We really only know two things: We know I don't know and we know you don't know."

But when "the devil can cite scripture for his purpose," as the Bard once put it (in an allusion to Satan's tempting of Jesus), when he can presumably understand every other language in the world, and when at least one book of the Bible finds him freely conversing with the LORD Himself in Heaven (Job 1-2), it's certainly not unreasonable to suggest he can hear Spirit-breathed language - especially if, as so many would claim, the Devil is a fallen angel, one of a host quite likely knowledgeable concerning any holy tongue. On what Biblical basis are contrary claims made by those who say the holiest of tongues lies on a devil-jamming frequency?

At least the popular concept of Satan as a rebel angel has (ahem) wings. In the Gospel of Luke we are told that our Lord "beheld Satan fall like lightning from heaven." Reference to "angels who sinned" can be found in 2nd Peter 2:4. Jude 1:6, too. And if you Protestants out there are willing to peer outside the canon a bit, you'll find reference to a fallen prince of angels named Satanael in the Slavonic Book of Enoch.

But the most popular passages of Scripture cited as proof of Satan's former archangelic status are useful only when displaced from their contexts. As Wikipedia's entry on "Lucifer" notes:

"Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 are directly concerned with the temporal rulers of Babylon and Tyre, rather than a supernatural being; allegorical readings of these and other passages were typical of medieval scholarship but are usually not considered legitimate in modern critical scholarship. Accordingly, in most modern English versions of the Bible (including the NIV, NRSV, NASB and ESV) the proper noun "Lucifer" is not found; the Hebrew word is rendered "day star", "morning star" or something similar."

It's worth noting, too, that Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28:11-19 never refer to anyone as an archangel; if the latter passage was for some reason truly talking about Satan, then the Lord of Darkness would be a cherub.

Bereft of those sources, though, we are left without any canonical origin for the Adversary. In fact, all the Bible is willing to tell us is, ironically enough, that Satan definitely was never a good guy. Note 1 John 3:8, in which it is said that "the devil has been sinning from the beginning," and John 8:44, in which it is said that Satan "was a murderer from the beginning."

1 John 3:8: "He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work."

John 8:44: "You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies."

I won't suggest the above verses preclude a fall from Heaven. Revelation 12:9 clearly states otherwise:

"The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him."

So possibly Satan was tossed to Earth prior to "the beginning", as the phrase "the beginning" could just as easily refer only to Man's start rather than Satan's. Maybe it's even just a phrase (how often have we heard someone accused of being "against us from the start"?).

Regardless, here we've come to the Bible's last mention of angels in conjunction with "that ancient serpent". The phrasing might understandably get any member of the Satan As Ex-Angel camp excited; after all, there it is, in black and white. Satan has angels. Michael has angels. They're fighting. Even though the text does not clearly stipulate Satan to be an angel, one can put two-and-two together without a long leap, right?

Well, before we get too carried away, let's remind ourselves what the word "angel" means in both Hebrew and Greek: "messenger". The word implies status rather than race, much like the word "god" itself (a general term we Christians use pretty much exclusively for the LORD of Israel because we don't consider any other being truly worthy of the title, but don't forget that even Moses was once described as "god" to Pharoah). If Satan can be described as "god of this world" (2 Corinthians 4:4), why might his disciples not be described as his own "messengers"? And if the "messengers" herein are indeed fallen servants of the one, true God, does it still necessarily follow that Satan is an angel?

Logically, the answer is "no" - but, of course, that doesn't mean Satan isn't a fallen angel.

It's frustrating, not knowing the answers to the maddening mysteries the Bible often presents us; as unexpected and seemingly contradictory as his presence is in a universe ruled by our Creator, Satan is one of the most tempting targets for which to contrive an explanation. We should never the less resist the urge. False information represented as true is, after all, a lie - and we can be sure that the father of lies will not hesitate to turn new ones about himself to his advantage.