After their stupid commercials promising that the time of questions is over, and that it is time for answers I feel like Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men.
"Them" being the producers playing the Nicholson role, and "Us" being we, the viewers, playing Tom Cruise.

Us: Show creators, are you going to finally give us some answers?
ABC Network as the Judge: You don’t have to answer their questions! Just keep them watching...
Them (to ABC): I'll answer their questions!
[to Us]
Them: You want answers?
Us: I think I'm entitled.
Them: You want answers?
Us: I want the truth!
Them: You can’t handle the truth!
[pauses]

Them: Listen John Q. Public, we live in a world that lives and dies by ratings, and we have to guard those ratings by any means necessary. Whose gonna make a show as good as we can? You? You, there, on the couch, liveblogging an episode? We have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for fictional characters, and you curse the writers. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what we know. That making you wait, as tragic as it may seem, probably boosts ratings, and saves the jobs of all our lowly gaffers, make-up artists and key grips. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, entertains you. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me making this show, you need me making this show. We use words like art, drama and character-driven. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending our craft. You use them as as fodder for the water-cooler. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to people who enjoy the entertainment that we provide, and then questions the manner in which we provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and watched the show. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a pen, and start writing your own show. Either way, we don't give a darn what you think you are entitled to as long as you watch the show.

Here's some things I want answers to:

What happened to the children? You know the ones the others kidnapped from the original crash site, and then later from the tailies. What did they want with them? Where are they now?

What about the "special" kids? You know Walt and Aaron were both supposed to be special. How? Why?

Why were the numbers on the hatch? And why did Hurley hear them mentioned? I know you think you answered that question, but you really haven't put it all together yet.

Why does the Island move? Through time, through space, whatever. And come to think about it, why was Ben allowed to come back since he claimed anyone who moves it, can't come back?

What is the origin of the Island's special properties?

Wassup with Christian Shephard? He's important. Have his appearances been real or Smokie?

Why doesn't Richard age?

I tried not to list the obvious questions, which they seem headed towards answering, like "Who is Jacob?" and "Who is Smokie?" I'm bringing up the questions they seem to have forgotten about. I'm afraid the show's gonna end without them answering those questions, and I'm gonna be mad.

What about you? What answers do you feel you are entitled to?

1- Bi-partisanship, smartisanship, dumbisanship...oh, phooey. When virtually EVERY member of the other party votes against it, maybe that should mean something if you actually care about bi-partisanship. But it doesn't. At the end of the day, idealogy is what matters. And this is liberal idealogy, plain and varnished.

2- We don't have the money. Seriously, we don't. Read carefully now. "WE. DON'T. HAVE. THE. MONEY." Of course, on the upside, if China decides not to loan us the money the stimulus package won't be able to be implemented anyway. This last sentence is not a joke and my tongue isn't in my cheek. I'm serious. The money will have to be borrowed from foreigners.

3- It's mostly government spending. Do you seriously think that money can be used most efficently by government entities to stimulate the economy? That's like deciding to send a team of five year olds to water your garden by walking from a pond to your garden with sponges. Yeah, some water's gonna get there...

4-So many of the jobs "created" are temporary construction jobs. I mean, come on, people. Do you really think that's going to stimulate the economy or have long-term impact? Yes, it will help some construction companies and workers for a couple years, but then what?...

5- The debt amassed here that will have to be paid by your children's tax dollars is beyond most of our comprehension. Think about how much of your monthly mortgage payment goes to interest. Now multiply that by a million, or a billion or a trillion or a gazillion. Oh, nevermind. Who knows how much anymore?

6- It's socialism. So much of this involves government takeover and/or handouts it's .... I don't have a word.

7- Tax Cuts would work better. When people have more money, they spend it, or invest it. That's how the economy actually works. Really. And by the way, I mean actual tax cut, meaning that you send less of your money to the government. I don't mean "tax rebate" checks, or "tax refund" checks which are actually wealth redistribution when people who don't actually pay income tax get checks. I mean actual tax cuts where you and companies having to pay less at the end of the year. Or how about a tax moratorium? Rather than spending billions of dollars, why not just suspend taxes for one year? Well, OK. I don't know far $787 billion will go. Will that support our Federal Gov't for a few months maybe? During that "tax-free period" the government can borrow money to fund itself, and fund all the states too. How's that for stimulus? :)

8- The liberals used this as an excuse to spend money on their pet projects. The list of things in this package law "wish-list come true" is truly ridiculous. For congress and state governments it's like Christmas. And like the Little Shop of Horrors, those pets are going to keep growing and demanding more and more, long past our ability to feed them. "Feed me, Seymour."

9- Now more people will be on the dole. How are we going to keep paying those people once the stimulus money runs out? It's hard to go back people. Just look at Social(ism) Security. We used to live without it. Now it's political suicide to even think anything against it. And right now some of you are thinking about me, "Hey, my grandmother lives on social security. How dare you!" Exactly.

10-State and Local Governments are salivating. Today Texas Governor Rick Perry announced that contrary to his previous statement that Texas wouldn't take its billions from the Federal government, he's changed his mind. He wants to spend that money enhancing border security. State governments are going to be duped into taking that money and boosting social programs. And once the federal funds run out, they'll be faced with state government programs that they can't pay for, but that the public will continue to expect. It's political suicide to stop hand-outs. But they can't wait to get that money to do all kinds of things. Do you think they'll cut local taxes since they are getting so much outside funding? NO WAY! Now they get to do more.

11-Headlines like this one - How stimulus will affect you - The $787 billion package passed by Congress offers tax breaks, tuition help, and more. » What you'll get (from the Yahoo Home Page)

Greed is greed, Mr. President. Whether it's a corporate CEO or a plumber. And here you are not just encouraging the deadly disease of "I-want-itus" but creating it too.

12- The same Government that broke our economy by making banks adhere to their liberal agenda, is trying to fix it by making more industries adhere to their liberal agenda.

13- The same President that decries "corporate greed" is now fostering greed among state and local governments in ways previously unimaginable.

14- I don't think it's going to work. It reminds me of a story my former pastor told me. He had a church member who was a dermatologist. The pastor asked the dermatologist to look at a rash his son had. The doctor said,"We have two options. I can write you a prescription for a cream, and the rash should go away in about 6 weeks or you can just wait for it to go away on its own" My pastor said, "How long will that take?" "About 6 weeks", came the reply.

Please tell me good things about "Porkulous Rex" in comments. I'd love to hear something positive. And I don't mind being proven wrong. (Well, not too much anyway. ) Or maybe you want to tell me why you're mad too. How long can we make this list?

OR PLEASE DO THIS FOR FUN - How many cool nicknames can you folks come up with for this monstrosity?

HT: Deadly Viper Character Assassins Blog

From Stuff Christians Like: Remix - #9. Comparing Braveheart to Christianity.

3. Jesus was a brawler.
Look at that verse where he clears the temple. Jesus is wild. He's intense and violent and leading a revolution. No forget that, he's leading an xRevolution, which is like a revolution only a million times more relevant to today's culture. I mean check out how he cuts off that Roman soldier's ear when they come to arrest him. Jesus was a ninja! Huh? That wasn't him? He healed that dude? One of his last physical actions was to wash people's feet and heal the guard? You are ruining Braveheart for me right now. I hate you.

Heh. "You are ruining Braveheart for me right now."

And "he's leading an xRevolution, which is like a revolution only a million times more relevant to today's culture" had me spewing diet coke all over my monitor.

As voted on by a select panel of my one year old.
Read the rest of this entry . . .

Bumper sticker I saw yesterday:

"Jesus had a mullet"

On the way home tonight, I was listening to the Mack Brown show-- the weekly program featuring discussion with the head football coach of the Texas Longhorns himself.

The main commercial sponsor appeared to be a high-powered DWI lawyer.

Right about now I can't think of many guys more to be admired in the blogosphere than Reggie Kidd.

Kidd is a professor at RTS Orlando, and recently one of his blog posts made big waves in the (reformed) blogosphere when he called out some of his brothers for what he saw as unnecessary and self-destructive infighting. He did not mince words.

He cited Herodotus chronicling the cooperation of Athens and Sparta to defeat a common foe, who wrte in part: "the evil of internal strife is worse than united war in the same proportion as war itself is worse than peace."

He then asked: why don't we get it?
Read the rest of this entry . . .

Popular Mechanics has a list of the 25 Skills Every Man Should Know: Your Ultimate DIY Guide. It's updated to include some computer/web related skills that manly men need in today's world. According to the folks at PM, you ought to be able to:

1. Patch a radiator hose (Check)
2. Protect your computer (Check)
3. Rescue a boater who has capsized (I guess. I've never rescued someone who's capsized, but I've spent some time on the boat and I know better than to jump in after a drowning guy.)
4. Frame a wall (Check)
5. Retouch digital photos (Not interested. My wife does all the photo stuff.)
6. Back up a trailer (Check, although interestingly, my wife is better at this than I am.)
7. Build a campfire (Check. But who actually does it the old-fashioned way?)
8. Fix a dead outlet (Check)
9. Navigate with a map and compass (Check)
10. Use a torque wrench (Check)
11. Sharpen a knife (Check)
12. Perform CPR (Never been trained in it, so unless what you see from watching TV counts, then no.)
13. Fillet a fish (Check. But it's just not worth it.)
14. Maneuver a car out of a skid (Check. But knowing how to do it and actually being able to execute in the moment are two different things.)
15. Get a car unstuck (Unstuck from what? I'll say check.)
16. Back up data (Check. The irony is that I lost the first incarnation of this post about 3 sentences in when my browser froze.)
17. Paint a room (Check)
18. Mix concrete (Check)
19. Clean a bolt-action rifle (Oh yeah, baby.)
20. Change oil and filter (Check)
21. Hook up an HDTV (Considering I don't own one, I'll have to say no. But how hard could it be?)
22. Bleed brakes (Nope)
23. Paddle a canoe (Check. But does this really qualify as some kind of special skill? Who doesn't know how to paddle a canoe?)
24. Fix a bike flat (Check)
25. Extend your wireless network (Would this be anything more than buying and installing the relevant hardware, of which there are several types? I've never done it, but I'm not sure how it counts as some critical skill. Setting up a wireless network would make more sense here.)

The above link takes you to the list, and this link takes you to a skill-by-skill descriptive breakdown of the list so you can make up for your shortcomings. How do you measure up?

This list seems deficient in a lot of ways. Of course it's a PM list, but a little more balance to what makes up a skilled man would be nice. I'd be happy to hear suggestions in the comments.

I just saw this classified ad:

WANTS TO BUY
An AK-47 for wife, in 7.62x39. Must be in excellent working order with no modifications to trigger and in descent appearance. No SKS models. Surprise for wife, please do not discuss it with her.

That's Texas.

A fifty-nine year old man is returning to Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas to play football one more time.

Michael Flynt, who last played college ball in 1970, is currently attending training camp at Sul Ross University in Alpine, Texas, along with about 100 other players -- most of whom are younger than Flint's own three children, the Nashville Tennessean reported Tuesday.

Flynt, who was dismissed as starting linebacker for the school's team in 1970 after a series of altercations, will find out later this week if he made this year's team's final cut.

I heard some guys on sports talk radio discussing this today. They invited callers who had similarly ageless exploits. One such caller was in his fifties and still works out heavily. He recited a list of his current weight lifting benchmarks, including leg pressing 400 lbs., bench pressing 300 lbs., and more.

That led to this exchange among the two radio guys:

Guy 1: Wow. I'm feeling emasculated just listening to this.

Guy 2: I'm not. It's making me feel like a little girl.

Guy 1: Um, that's pretty much what "emasculated" means.

(awkward silence)

The link to this caught my eye this morning. Unreal.

Dear Margot,
I’ve been seeing two women at my church. One I know from Bible study, the other from Sunday Eucharist. They don’t know each other and attend different services. I like them both, but am not sure I’m ready to commit to either one. My choir buddy says I should tell them about each other. That little devil on my shoulder says I don’t need to. Who’s right?
– Double Dipping Darrin in Dallas

Read the rest.

I'm in the kitchen, working on the computer. The Spurs/Cavs game was getting boring so Jill switched over to another show. It's a Christian station, and this show is featuring the guy who wrote one of those Why Men Hate Going To Church books.

He's blaming the abysmal church attendance of men on . . . altar flowers.

Personally, I think men don't go to church because they're idiots.

I've been teaching a guy's class recently (based on the excellent Raising a Modern Day Knight by Robert Lewis) and it teaches that one of the key traits of a real man is that he "Accepts Responsibility".

So, if you're a guy who's not going to church because your masculinity is offended by altar flowers or intimate worship or whatever other built-in excuse you've been able to find, it's official.

You're not a man.

Quit being a victim. Quit being a pansy. Accept responsibility, be a man, and go to church. Ditch your consumerism and what's-in-it-for-me-ism. Take your family to church. Start living Scripture. And if the church is too feminine for you, get involved, lead courageously, change the culture. For God's sake - we need you. Or, hopefully, you'll get so immersed in the life God's called you to that peripheral stuff won't matter so much anymore.

But if you must complain, please do it elsewhere. This world has enough whiners in it. We don't need one more.

I made Jill switch it back to the game, by the way. :-)

Go Spurs.

That is all . . .

This is a few days past due, but congratulations to Blest for hitting her weight loss goal. That chick dropped 78.2 pounds in 10 months. Amazing!

Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson square off at Christianity Today on the question: Is Christianity Good for the World?

Courtesy of the Jollyblogger, here's the New York Times on us cluttered types:

An anti-anticlutter movement is afoot, one that says yes to mess and urges you to embrace your disorder. Studies are piling up that show that messy desks are the vivid signatures of people with creative, limber minds (who reap higher salaries than those with neat “office landscapes”) and that messy closet owners are probably better parents and nicer and cooler than their tidier counterparts. It’s a movement that confirms what you have known, deep down, all along: really neat people are not avatars of the good life; they are humorless and inflexible prigs, and have way too much time on their hands.

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

- 1 Corinthians 13:11

So much to write, so little time.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. It's time I posit my theory of manhood. It's very simple:

We all need to grow up.

Suggestion #1: Church leaders concerned about the state of manhood in the church: please ditch the "all church guys are chicks" talk. It's not true. I mean, it sounds good, it sells books, it spices up sermons when you describe the alleged wussification of men in our society (even better if you add the picante sauce of manly curse-words to your message), but it's not the problem. The supposed feminization of the church, where real and not just imagined, is just a symptom of a bigger problem: the men in our churches that are part of the problem are not wusses, they just aren't men. They are boys.

The problem is a lack of maturity, not a lack of masculinity.

Read the rest of this entry . . .

Dan Edelen has done it again. Run, don't walk, over to Cerulean Sanctum to read his latest post: The Humble Warrior.

Here is an excerpt (the whole thing's good). I have nothing else to add, other than that I want to be like the humble man he describes.

Less often than that do we have examples of men who never picked up a sword or gun, who never spilled blood, but spent most of their time on their knees. George M?ller was such a man. A lot of the testosterone-laden out there wouldn't think much of M?ller; he was concerned for orphans. Sounds kind of womanly compared with the examples we see held up in bestselling men's books. But M?ller prayed. That man sweated out big prayers that met big needs and overcame ferocious principalities and powers that sought to destroy little boys and girls, demonic forces that wanted nothing more than to grind up children in the hardscrabble streets of England. And the one thing that people said about M?ller besides the fact that he was a praying man? That he was humble.

As much as the bestseller shelves are loaded with books jam-packed with bone-chewing examples of manliness, the dearth of books featuring meek and humble men speaks volumes. Simply possessing a penis and knowing every great line from Spartacus, The Green Berets and the king of all warrior movies, Braveheart, doesn't qualify you for warriorhood. Making prideful, snarky assertions about someone's eternal security on the God-blog flavor of the week doesn't make you God's man, either. It takes a humble man to walk into his prayer closet (where, it should be noted, there are no ticker-tape parades), kneel in humility before the Lord, and start assaulting the powers of darkness through prayer. Your average street dog can easily sink his teeth into a flesh and blood foe, but only a meek man devoted to prayer can tear down demonic strongholds in spiritual places!

The problem with Christian manhood today is not that there aren't enough villages to plunder, it's that humble, stooped grandmothers are out there on their knees fighting the battles that "real" men are too proud (or lazy or weak) to fight. Too many men in our churches moan that someone stole their warrior badge. Meanwhile, Satan is plundering OUR village. And he's doing it not in the obvious places, but in the spiritual realms, the very place that prayer alone works.

Time to stir these waters again, although the source material I'm using is a review that is almost a year old. But we have been taking walks down memory lane here on Thinklings these past few days, so check out this Review of John Eldredge's Wild at Heart on Challies.com.

Tim holds back a little at the beginning (not really):

A few months ago I mentioned on this site that I was reading John Eldredge's book Wild at Heart and intended to write a review of it. After reading the book I elected not to write a review at that time. The book was so full of error and absolutely ridiculous nonsense that I just didn't have the heart to document it all. Honestly, I was frustrated and discouraged to see that a book like Wild at Heart could make it to the top of the Christian best-seller's lists.

You and me both, Tim.

It's not unusual for me to run into people that I really respect who think this book is one of the best books they've ever read. If any of you have read any of my other persnickity posts on WAH (click on the Wild at Heart category link), you'll know I disagree with much that Eldredge puts forth in this book. But I usually don't say anything negative about it to people I know who like it - what's the point in arguing?

I remain baffled that so many people find this book so revolutionary and edifying.

Mr. Challies continues:

Some of the greatest concerns are:

• Open Theism - Though Eldredge denies he is an open theist, the evidence does not support his claim. Time and time again he speaks of God in ways that can only be explained if you hold such views. "God is a person who takes immense risks? (p. 30). ?It?s not the nature of God to limit His risks and cover His bases? (p.31). ?As with every relationship, there?s a certain amount of unpredictability?. God?s willingness to risk is just astounding?. There is definitely something wild in the heart of God? (p. 32).
• View of Satan - Eldredge views Satan as the one who is to blame when we sin. He seems to believe that we are little more than victims rather than being fully, 100% responsible for our own sins.
• View of Jesus - According to Eldredge Jesus failed at something he attempted. When He encounters the guy who lives out in the Gerasenes tombs, tormented by a legion of spirits, the first rebuke by Jesus doesn?t work. He had to get more information to really take them on? (Luke 8:26-33) (p. 166). This, of course, is a complete misrepresentation of what happens in that passage.
• Use of Scripture - Eldredge does what is becoming all too common in the evangelical world these days. He uses verses and passages from the Bible without giving any context simply to make it sound like this is a Biblically-based book. Time and time and time again he assigns meanings to passages that are completely foreign to their true sense. At one point Garry Gilley says about the particularly ridiculous interpretation of the book of Ruth, "after all, no one else, to my knowledge, in the history of conservative biblical exegesis has ever come up with it before." Eldredge seems to make up meanings as he goes along.
• Revelation - Eldredge says that God talks to him directly. He also speaks to him through movies, books and so on.

I could go on, but really, what's the point?

I know how you feel, Tim.