And Then Jesus Didn't Say...

Awhile back, the local rag published this from a nearby citizen:

Righteous difference is clear
By Austin E. Vanderzee
TeaPublished: July 20, 2007

I want to educate Christians who believe that Jesus would not support the death penalty. Let me encourage you to do something: Read your Bible.

Read about King David being an accessory to murder and stealing another man's wife and being told he was forgiven but still experiencing the consequences of his sin.

Read about the thief hanging next to Jesus on a cross who said, "We are getting what we deserve." Jesus allows the thief to die but promises him that his soul will be saved.

Read the dozen or more Levitical laws that, if broken, were punishable by death. Many of those laws were not even capital crimes.

In Romans 13, Paul writes that our God-ordained governments do not bear the sword in vain. Therefore, do what's right and you have nothing to fear.

Read Acts 5, where Peter executed two people for lying.

And try to remember this: God wants his children to clearly see the righteous difference between murdering the innocent and punishing the guilty. One is a sin in need of repentance, and the other is justice that needs none.Do what's right, and you have nothing to fear. God's words - not mine.

I was struck not only by the right-wingnut “Christian” movement’s unflagging willingness to twist, turn, and selectively quote the Bible--that document which they purport to revere above all else and all others--in order to get it to support whatever it is they purport to inflict on their fellow human beings...but especially by the strange fact that the author tells me he intends to "educate Christians who believe that Jesus would not support the death penalty," and then proceeds to quote almost everyone in the Bible except Jesus!

Well, this could not be allowed to pass unchallenged, and so I drafted the following, which the local rag saw fit to publish a few weeks later (at about the point where I had decided they would not):

One must always approach with caution those who assure us that they know what Jesus would or would not do, what God does or does not favor. A recent letter from Austin E. Vanderzee ("Righteous difference is clear") is a case in point.

Mr. Vanderzee says he wants "to educate Christians who believe that Jesus would not support the death penalty," and suggests we read the Bible.

He then supplies several Bible verses and scenes that purport to support his point of view. Curiously, none of the verses he sites actually quotes Jesus! He references Paul; he references Peter; he references the Old Testament...but his only reference to Jesus actually quotes "the good thief" who was being crucified with Jesus, not Jesus himself.

I draw from Mr. Vanderzee's examples that King David was in favor of the death penalty; that the apostles Peter and Paul were okay with it; and even that "the good thief" had accepted it, but certainly not that the Prince of Peace would elbow the hangman out of the way so he could pull the gallows lever himself.

The Jesus of whom I read in my Bible preached love, forgiveness, peace, and tolerance—not death, retribution, and revenge. That’s the Jesus whom I strive, in my feeble way, to imitate.

Sheer poetry, no?

But as I subsequently shared with one of my far-flung correspondents, I restrained myself pretty virtuously. For instance, I omitted mentioning that the Bible was written--and translated, and altered whether by accident or by design--by people, not by Jesus, and not by God. All you get when you bring that up is a bunch of people who erroneously conclude that you’re "against" the Bible or God or religion or maybe all of the above, and then you’re hopelessly off-topic.

I also skipped getting into how the "logic" of the original letter forces us to conclude that Jesus supports abortion.

No fooling. Read the letter again: He says, "Jesus allows the thief to die but promises him that his soul will be saved." (My emphasis.) The word "allows" is not there by accident, I’ll wager. I've no doubt that the author and the rest of the God-wants-blood crowd would make the argument that Jesus had it in his power to spare the thief but didn't (thus the word "allows"), thereby "proving" that God supports the death penalty.

Welllll...God thus appears to "support" abortion, since he isn’t stopping them (and the right-wingnuts assure me abortions are happening all the time).

And, with this kind of "logic," one might conclude that Jesus "supports" suicide, since, presumably, he could have spared himself but didn't.

One might also use this "logic" to "prove" that God "supports" war, since… Oh. Wait a minute. The right-wingnuts do use that sort of "logic," all the time. Never mind.

You see the rhetorical sleight-of-hand, I hope--the quick, easily missed substitution of supports for accepts.

There is a difference, and it’s important, indeed essential. That Jesus, for instance, occasionally indicates an acceptance of civil authority's actions does not constitute support for same, no matter how hard the right-wingnuts try to make it so. I accept that the state has asserted for itself the "right" to kill certain people for certain reasons; I certainly do not support or endorse same. I accept that sometimes wars are inevitable; I do not support or endorse war. The specious arguments put forward by the likes of this world's Austin Vanderzees are meant to convince us that God's/Jesus' apparent refusal to put a stop to something translates into support. But as I mention above, that sort of argument leads us to conclude that God "supports" abortion, homosexuality, pornography, and all the other bêtes noires of the right wingnuts--including, speaking of bêtes noires, bestiality, too, I imagine--since, after all, these things and plenty more exist in the world...or, to borrow Vanderzee's unsubtle phraseology, God allows these things to be.

But obviously the right wingnuts would argue vehemently that God most certainly does not support these things. And so I have once again runs rings round them logically.

For all the good it does. Logic never trumps viscera, and I am of the opinion that the right wingnuts--especially those who take such pains to assert their "Christian" credentials--behave almost exclusively in accord with their viscera and almost never employ heart or mind.

Perhaps this is what Cromwell meant by "the bowels of Christ"...

I did point out to one of my far-flung friends, Jerry, that one of several questions I beg in my response is the central question of biblical "authority"--or, indeed, "authenticity." (See above re who wrote the Bible...and who didn’t.) Although I consider him something of a grandstander, Bishop John Spong (Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers In Exile; The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love; etc.) does have the gist of it when he (frequently) writes phrases such as, "In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is made to say..." and so on. Jesus did not write the Bible. And as Bart Ehrman (Misquoting Jesus) and others have pointed out, a goodly portion of that which is ascribed to the Apostles and the Evangelists are of dubious authorship. Given all of this, even if the Bible were to quote Jesus explicitly as favoring the frequent application of the electric chair, inquiring minds would have to wonder...

But those who are comfortable asserting that God invariably agrees with them seldom, in my observation, fall into the "inquiring minds" category.

Meanwhile, the last line of the original letter--"God's words - not mine"--might cause me to conclude that its author is a fan of The West Wing, though that seems unlikely. I’m reminded of this now-famous (or infamous, in conservative camps) exchange with "Dr. Jenna Jacobs,” clearly a stand-in for Dr. Laura Schlesinger, in the second-season episode “The Midterms”:

President Bartlet: Forgive me, Dr. Jacobs. Are you an M.D.?

Jenna Jacobs: Ph.D.

Bartlet: A Ph.D.?

Jacobs: Yes, sir.

Bartlet: In Psychology?

Jacobs: No sir.

Bartlet: Theology?

Jacobs: No.

Bartlet: Social work?

Jacobs: I have a Ph.D. in English Literature.

Bartlet: I'm asking, 'cause on your show, people call in for advice and you go by the name of Dr. Jacobs on your show. And I didn't know if maybe your listeners were confused by that, and assumed you had advanced training in Psychology, Theology, or health care.

Jacobs: I don't believe they are confused, no sir.

Bartlet: Good. I like your show. I like how you call homosexuality an abomination.

Jacobs: I don't say homosexuality is an abomination, Mr. President. The Bible does.

Bartlet: Yes, it does. Leviticus.

Jacobs: 18:22

Bartlet: Chapter and verse. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions while I had you here. I'm interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. She's a Georgetown sophomore, speaks fluent Italian, and always clears the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be? While thinking about that, can I ask another? My Chief of Staff, Leo McGarry, insists on working on the Sabbath, Exodus 35:2, clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself or is it okay to call the police? Here's one that's really important, 'cause we've got a lot of sports fans in this town. Touching the skin of a dead pig makes us unclean, Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point? Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother, John, for planting different crops side by side? Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads?

Think about those questions, would you? One last thing, while you may be mistaking this for your monthly meeting of the Ignorant Tightass Club, in this building, when the President stands, nobody sits.

As I’ve been in the habit of saying, as soon as someone starts to tell you the Bible makes it clear… your best bet is to hot-foot it in the opposite direction.

An Unanswerable Question?

This one has me stumped, I'll admit.

I was taking an online survey the other evening, and one of the first questions, if not the first, was :

CITY. Which of the following cities do you live nearest to? (Check one only)

So far, so good. There was a drop-down menu with a fairly long list of choices--Amarillo, Baltimore, Kansas City, Nashville, New York, and on and on.

And there, at the bottom of the lengthy list (right after Wilkes-Barre), was the stumper:

None of the Above

Well, clearly, that can't be right. One of those cities must be nearest to me. Even if the list had consisted solely of cities on, say, the African continent, one of them would have had to be nearest to my domicile, no?

I mean, if the question is, Do you live nearer to the Atlantic Ocean or the Pacific Ocean, the answer cannot be "neither." You do live nearer to one than the other. (I suppose it's mathematically possible to live on a spot that is precisely equidistant to both shores...but even so the odds are greater that you would be at least a couple of inches closer to one or the other.) And don't tell me that you actually live closer to the Indian Ocean: That wasn't the question! The question was which of these particular oceans do you live closer to.

Ditto for the list of cities. I don't live very close to Las Vegas, but that wasn't the question--the question was which one of these cities do I live nearest to...and clearly there is an answer. (In my case it happens to be Kansas City; your actual mileage will vary.)

Which makes me wonder where the people who wrote the survey live.

So It's Said

Here's another batch of quotations; all of them this time from the excellent A Word A Day:

My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. -Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)

The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion. -Arthur C Clarke, science fiction writer (1917- )

A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill. -Robert A. Heinlein, science-fiction author (1907-1988)

You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you. -John Wooden, sports coach (1910- )

For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery. -Jonathan Swift, satirist (1667-1745)

Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him. -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)

How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, packaged cake mixes, frozen dinners, and instant cameras teach patience to its young? -Paul Sweeney

There's so much pollution in the air now that if it weren't for our lungs there'd be no place to put it all. -Robert Orben, magician (1927- )

The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been. -Madeleine L'Engle, writer (1918- )

There are two things to aim at in life; first to get what you want, and after that to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second. -Logan Pearsall Smith, essayist (1865-1946)

When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stone-cutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it would split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before together. -Jacob A. Riis, journalist and social reformer (1849-1914)

If the truth doesn't save us, what does that say about us? -Lois McMaster Bujold, writer (1949- )

An open mind is a prerequisite to an open heart. -Robert M. Sapolsky, neuroscientist and author (1957- )

Be careful how you interpret the world: it *is* like that. -Erich Heller, essayist (1911-1990)

When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stone-cutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it would split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before together. -Jacob A. Riis, journalist and social reformer (1849-1914)

Never eat more than you can lift. -Miss Piggy, a character in the cartoon The Muppet Show

Nothing produces such odd results as trying to get even. -Franklin P. Jones

Let your capital be simplicity and contentment. -Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)

One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being. -May Sarton, poet and novelist (1912-1995)

I don't trust a man who uses the word evil eighteen times in ten minutes. If you're half evil, nothing soothes you more than to think the person you are opposed to is totally evil. -Norman Mailer, author (1923- )

If an animal does something, we call it instinct; if we do the same thing for the same reason, we call it intelligence. -Will Cuppy, journalist (1884-1949)

We have in fact, two kinds of morality, side by side: one which we preach, but do not practice, and another which we practice, but seldom preach. -Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970)

Language is the archives of history. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

News Flash: Pope Likes Catholic Church Best

My friend John, one of my far-flung correspondents (who, like most of far-flungs, will often read these rambles and occasionally comment on same, but never here on the blog), thinks it strange that I have not commented on Pope Benedict's astonishing claim that he thinks the Catholic Church is the One True Faith (actually, it's a document prepared by the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is only one of the things the Mainstream Media got wrong, or got lazy about).

Maybe it is. Strange, I mean. But I guess I commented on it so much in individual correspondence with the far-flungs, as well as in real-time conversation with several acquaintances and co-workers of the non-Catholic persuasion (attentive readers will note that I work for a Lutheran organization, in which capacity it turns out that I have become a Defender of the Faith as well as a Denouncer of Catholic Myths, not unlike the Roaming Gnome) that if feels like I've dealt with The Issue, such as it may be. But John made me feel remiss in my self-appointed duty to inform, entertain, and illuminate, and so I will toss in another $0.02 worth here.

Incidentally, the infamous document, with the catchy title "Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church" is online here: http://212.77.1.245/news_services/bulletin/news/20586.php?index=20586&lang=en#TESTO%20IN%20LINGUA%20INGLESE. Caution: It's a real page-turner, so don't start it at bedtime if you have to get up early the next day.

By and large, I am puzzled by the hew and cry over this document. As near as I can tell--not being a theologian, and that's an important point to make if only because the document is obviously written by theologians for other theologians, which right out of the box makes it problematic in terms of the Mainstream Media's ability to get the story straight--the document does little but re-state a position from which, to my knowledge, the Catholic Church has never deviated, viz., only the Catholic Church (more accurately, the Catholic faith) is "complete" in terms of what Christ wants in his church.

In the fifty years to which I can speak, that has always been the mantra. Other churches (and for simplicity's sake we'll call them churches and not worry about the document's claim that bunches of them are not "real" churches at all) possess in greater or lesser extents some of the Minimum Daily Adult Requirement, but, like Total, only the Catholic faith contains 'em all.

Which is where we get the One True Faith monicker that I throw around in semi-sarcastic fashion. When I was a kid, OTF was invoked in all seriousness; and of course plenty of people still feel that way.

The pope being one of them.

You find this shocking?

Now, feel free to disagree with the pope all you like. I often do. Lots of people do. I don't have any issue with people disagreeing with the Vatican. What I have issue with is the umbrage that so many people seem to be taking. Indeed, more than a few of them strike me as the sort of people who lie in wait for something to come along and offend them.

I am reminded here of several Protestant acquaintances who, over the years, have expressed varying degrees of dismay because they are not "allowed" to receive Communion in the Catholic Church. Their attitude, invariably, is that their church "welcomes" everyone to "the table," so mine should too. Setting aside the fiction that all Protestant churches as so "welcoming"*, it has struck me that the majority of these folks wouldn't be caught dead in a Catholic church in the first place, let alone lined up for Communion, so it's complaining for the sake of complaining.

Put another way: My church teaches that there are seven sacraments; most other Christian churches ignore that and teach that there are two. My church teaches that only men may be ordained; many (though certainly not all) Protestant denominations ignore that, too. My church teaches that salvation come from the combination of God's grace and our own actions; most Protestant churches ignore that teaching, and indeed insist that their view--"grace alone"--represents a "more mature" theology.

And so--given that they don't view the pope as the leader of the Christian faith; given that they freely ignore many of the teachings of the OTF; given that they aren't shy about insisting that their points of view are, for want of a better term, "right"...what they heck to do they care what the pope (that is, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) is saying?

Again, a great deal of it sounds like complaining for the sake of complaining.

Interestingly, just the day before "Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church" hit the fan, I was at lunch with some of my Lutheran pals when my ears picked up something from the other end of the table. One of my companions was saying something about how difficult life must have been for Martin Luther and the other reformers, to which another added, "And being right wouldn't have made it any better."

Well, there you have it. They think their religion is right; I think mine is right; you think yours is right. And so on. So what's the brouhaha? Well, geez, the Vatican actually came out and said they think theirs is right. In public and everything. How rude!

Get real. To those who claim that this strikes a blow somehow against "ecumenism": If you're really interested in dialogue, then you must acknowledge that by definition you don't have dialogue if people are avoiding talking about certain subjects--like, you know, our differences. To those who pretend that their feelings have been hurt by the pope: Grow up. I've spent a large portion of the past 50 years being assured by "good Christians" that I am not a "real" Christian because I'm a member of the Catholic Church. Who cares? To those who will insist that "my church doesn't go around pretending it has all the answers": Balderdash. They all do. That's why they exist. The only difference is in whether they choose to come out and say so, or to speak indirectly and obliquely in minced words.

Here are some sources for additional reading:

"Document Released By Pope Stirs Catholic Controversy" by Father Jonathan Morris at Fox News.

"The Pope's Got A Point" by Rabbi Yerachmiel Seplowitz in The Jewish Press.

"Dobson Offers Insight on 2008 Republican Hopefuls" By Dan Gilgoff. I throw this in for malicious fun--it's one "Christian," James Dobson, asserting that another "Christian," probable GOP presidential candidate Fred Thompson, isn't actually a "Christian" at all! I include this in the spirit of clean-up-your-own-yard-before-you-complain-about-the-neighbors'.

__
* One of my co-workers, an ELCA Lutheran pastor, tells of the time he and his sons were traveling and were refused communion at a Missouri Synod Lutheran church because they were strangers to the pastor. Some churches do seem to "welcome all" to communion, but I think their number is smaller than those that do not. But that is just one of several inconvenient truths that are ignored in order to reserve all the vilification for the Catholic Church.

Who Am I?

Okay, so I admit this is partly my fault, but I think these various websites need to take some responsibility too.

Here's the deal: A little while ago I decided to change some preferences in my Zap2It account. (Zap2It is the online TV listing I emigrated to when I got tired of waiting forever and a weekend for TV Guide's graphics to load. Now, of course, Zap2It has discovered Flash-animated advertising, so it takes forever and a weekend for the...ad...for...Glenn...Close's...new..series...to...load...before...the...listings...will...appear.) This meant logging in, naturally, and that's where the problem began. I put in one of my e-mail addresses and a likely password. And was rewarded with a screen that told me my "e-mail/password is invalid."

Well, yes. But which is it?

I have half a dozen e-mail addresses; in all likelihood I would have used one of my "big three" in signing up. I have more password out there than you can shake a stick at, and while I keep important ones stored (not on the computer, and not in a form that any would-be trespasser is apt to make sense of) there are half a dozen or so that I use for "non-vital" purposes like this one. It's been too long since I did permutations or factorials or whatever they may be to figure out how many possibilities we have here, but it's a bunch.

Of course, there's the "forget your password?" button...which means I have to keep plugging in e-mail addresses until I hit the magic combination. So I got it on the second try--that's not the point! The point is, wouldn't life be simpler if they would tell me which item, the address or the password, I got wrong? It would certainly cut down on the guesswork. And since some (indeed, many) sites seem capable of doing this, I don't suppose it's prohibitively difficult to effect.

And, yes, I could just write this stuff down. But I'm not always in the same location as my password list (seems like a bad idea to carry it around with me). And is it too much to ask that they meet me halfway?

DVR

I notice that the DVR that I bought last fall from Geeks.com, the easy-to-remember Lite-On LVW-5115GHC+, is on sale again for ten or fifteen bucks less than I paid for it. Oh, well...I've had all these months of utility, and it wasn't that expensive to start with (I think I paid $75 or so).



Utility...and oddities.

Well, maybe not. This is my first experience with a DVR, so maybe they're not oddities at all; maybe they're common to the species. I keep reminding myself that this is a low-end, entry-level machine, and that if I had spent more I probably could expect more. And I remind myself that more expensive units record to a hard drive and thence, if desired, to disc, whilst this machine records directly to discs, which may make a difference, too.

Still, at the very least, I have to ask myself why the computer that is the guts of the thing wasn't made smart enough to understand that if there is an empty block of, say, 2:30:00 over here, and an empty block of, say, 00:05:00 over there, and the timer is set to record a program that is of an hour's duration, then the thing to do is record the program into the first block and not the second block, which will only result in a "disc full" error at the end of five minutes. When, clearly, the disc is not full. But nooooo. I have to go in manually and tell the silly thing, via an "overwrite" command, that it's okay to write to that empty block of space. Very primitive. And, of course, the number of hiccups resulting from my foolishly glancing at the disc menu and seeing that there's "plenty of time" to record, and not checking to make sure that the LVW-5115GHC+ knows that there's plenty of time, has resulted in several missed opportunities these past six or eight months.

The question is, why isn't it smarter?

I am a bit disappointed in the picture quality of the LVW-5115GHC+, but I'm not sure where the blame should rest. Previously I had a little Cyberhome DVD player attached to that TV set (the bedroom set), and the picture was fine--but of course that was playback-only, and almost always professionally recorded DVDs, so I am to an extent talking apples and cabbages here, I know. But it seems to me that the picture on even professional DVDs viewed through the LVW-5115GHC+ is a little washed out, the colors less vibrant. In both cases--the Cyberhome and the Lite-On--I have to play through a VCR, since the TV set in question is an older model that doesn't have the proper input ports...indeed, it has no input at all except for an RF post and the old dipole antenna connection. And that may degrade the picture somewhat, although, as stated, I did the same thing for the Cyberhome and the picture was good.

It's also possible that the cable-TV connection in the bedroom isn't that good--the picture back there has never been as crisp as the one in the living room, although of course theyr'e different sets and so on. But ever since we moved into that house we've noticed that you get interference on cordless phones if you wander into the bedroom with them, so I suspect there's some kind of an electromagnetic issue there, too, and thay may affect the TV reception.

Or it could be a combination of things, including (as I've concluded) that the Lite-On just doesn't have that good a TV tuner, based on my attempts to "fine tune" it via the remote control.

I haven't yet gotten into my eventual plan to transfer all those miles of tape to disc, although I have tried dubbing from disc-to-disc, with so-so results. This seems to be the result of quirks in the discs recorded with the Lite-On and how they play back on other DVD players. Specifically, I had recorded a couple of local newscasts in which figured groups that my kids are involved in, and wanted to save just those little segments for posterity. So I plugged the Cyberhome DVD player into the Lite-On recorder, and went to town. Well, not really. The recorded discs didn't quite behave properly in the DVD player--jumping around rather than smoothly forwarding, and sometimes not reversing at all. I had to unplug and restart the Cyberhome a couple of times to get it to "snap out" of a catatonic state. Eventually I gave up and just suffered through the entire newscasts, hitting the record button on the DVR when it finally got to my part. Again, primitive, but it worked.

Well, it worked on ONE disc--I tried with a second disc, a recording of my daughter playing her saxophone at her church, and so far I have yet to find any DVD player that will even recognize the disc as a disc, let alone play it. And, yes, I went through the "Finalize (Make Compatible)" steps under Disc Tools. Worked on one disc, not on the other. (Neither disc will mount on my Blue and White G3 Macintosh, but I have in the past observed that it, or its CD burner/DVD player, is very fussy about things, up to an including failing to recognize certain brands of CD-ROMs.)

On the whole, I guess the LVW-5115GHC+ is adequate for my current purposes--mostly recording, watching, and then wiping TV shows. The DVDs are certainly much easier to deal with than VHS tapes, and I have yet to encounter a DVD player or recorder that eats discs as VCRs and cassette players were wont to do with tapes. But the main thing the LVW-5115GHC+ has done is point out what features will be mandatory on my next DVR, specifically a hard-drive and a decent tuner.

As for Geeks.com, I would definitely order from them again...though of course I have one small quibble: The packing sheet for the LVW-5115GHC+ says it's supposed to come with a DVD-RW disc. It didn't. So I e-mailed Geeks.com and told them as much, hoping that they could simply pop one in the mail to be. Got back a nice reply saying they weren't set up to do that, but if I wanted I could send back the whole package and they'd send out another one. Way more work than it was worth, so I declined...all the while wondering how hard it could possibly be to grab a DVD-RW off the shelf (they sell media, too, so it's not like someone would have to make a Circuit City run) and stick it in a padded envelope. Oh,w ell--obviously not a big deal as far as customer service is concerned, since I would, as indicated, buy from them again.

But here's a lingering problem: These past 25 years or so, I have gotten into the habit of "taping" TV programs. But now I use discs. Am I now "discing" programs? "Recording" sounds stilted and clumsy. As this technology replaces VCRs, will we find that we are still "taping" things, even as we still "dial" our telephones that haven't sported a dial in 30 years or more?

McCain's Free-Fall

Drew Westen, in "Telling Stories on the Campaign Trail: Lessons from McCain's Free-Fall" at The Huffington Post, writes:

The problem for John McCain was that his transparent right turn onto a bridge to nowhere and his cheerleading for a man he personally knew to be despicable -- because he'd looked into his eyes in South Carolina and seen his soul -- didn't fit the story that made him so compelling. Instead, as the perfidy of Bush Republicanism was about to become increasingly clear to the American public, what became equally clear was that the honorable McCain had learned from Dubbya that the straightest line between McCain and the White House was a dishonorable one. [Read the whole thing here.]

Though never a big fan of McCain, I once upon a time had him in the "maybe not so terrible" column of presidential contenders. In years gone by, I felt that, philosophical and political differences aside, he was a man of integrity, and had he gained the GOP nomination in 2000, and won, well, that would certainly be a better outcome than some others I could think of (which came true). But now McCain has emerged as Just Another Politician, willing if not eager to check his integrity at the door, set aside any principle or higher ideal, in his quest for office. As Westen puts it, "he sold his soul for a brief lease on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."

It's actually sad: If he had always been a guy I distrusted (or worse), his behavior on the campaign trail this season would serve as an I-told-you-so moment. The fact that I once had a certain regard for him (albeit perhaps grudging) makes his fall--and his bizarre tone-deafness to the way he is coming off even within his own party--an ungleeful event.

The mistake McCain made is this: As Westen points out, he seems to have decided that Bush's 2000 playbook was his path to the White House. But Bush was, is, and always will be unprincipled. McCain was, or at least was perceived as, a man of principle. (Remember the "Straight Talk Express," anyone?) When he threw principle out the window, when he revealed himself as another empty suit who would say or do anything to get elected, he lost not only his chance but himself.

It's too bad that his legacy now seems to be to serve as an object lesson to other politicians. As if they're listening.

The Dog in the Night-Time

Inspector Gregory: "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"

Sherlock Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."

Gregory: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."

Holmes: "That was the curious incident."

--Arthur Conan Doyle, "Silver Blaze"

And speaking of watchdogs who remain silent, here’s this from the Washington Post:

In Intelligence World, A Mute Watchdog
Panel Reported No Violations for Five Years

By John Solomon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 15, 2007; A03

An independent oversight board created to identify intelligence abuses after the CIA scandals of the 1970s did not send any reports to the attorney general of legal violations during the first 5 1/2 years of the Bush administration's counterterrorism effort, the Justice Department has told Congress.

Although the FBI told the board of a few hundred legal or rules violations by its agents after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the board did not identify which of them were indeed legal violations. This spring, it forwarded reports of violations in 2006, officials said.

The President's Intelligence Oversight Board -- the principal civilian watchdog of the intelligence community -- is obligated under a 26-year-old executive order to tell the attorney general and the president about any intelligence activities it believes "may be unlawful." The board was vacant for the first two years of the Bush administration.

The FBI sent copies of its violation reports directly to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales. But the board's mandate is to provide independent oversight, so the absence of such communications has prompted critics to question whether the board was doing its job.

"It's now apparent that the IOB was not actively employed in the early part of the administration. And it was a crucial period when its counsel would seem to have been needed the most," said Anthony Harrington, who served as the board's chairman for most of the Clinton administration.

"The White House counsel's office and the attorney general should have known and been concerned if they did not detect an active and effective IOB," Harrington said.

Read the whole of it here.

Feeling safer yet?

Church, Scandals, and Money

Read this this morning on The Huffington Post:

The Business of the Catholic Church
Bill Maher

Posted July 16, 2007 | 10:35 AM (EST)

In this great and diverse country, one is always proud to see their own city on the front page of the national newspapers, so you can imagine my pride yesterday when Los Angeles turned out to be the place where the Catholic Church has had to pay the largest fine ever for diddling kids, $660 million. (Full disclosure: I was raised Catholic and I was sometimes alone with priests, although none ever tried anything. Which is a little insulting.)

Cardinal Mahoney announced that to help pay for the deal, the church would sell a building it owns on Wilshire and about 50 other properties they weren't using, which reminded me, oh yeah, the Catholic Church owns more property out here than Bob Hope did -- and why? Oh, yeah, because it's a business -- and not just a business, really, the greatest business in the world, in that, like all religions, it's selling an invisible product. It doesn't really get easier than that, unless you count Edgar Bergen, a ventriloquist on the RADIO.

The total payouts for abuse cases in dioceses all over America is now over $2 billion, and I imagine much of it came from people who went to Church and bought the invisible product by dropping their hard earned money into the basket (Full disclosure: when I was a child, that was my favorite part of the mass, and my father often let me put a quarter in). I wonder what those people think when they see that their money got spent on buying the privilege of touching and fucking kids. I was reading a week or so ago about Aga Khan, a very rich man who leads some tiny sect of Islam, and it's a good one to lead, since lots of the followers just send the dude money for being him.

It's the Ultimate Hustle.

Happy belated birthday to our dear editor -- thanks for letting me vent on that, it was on my mind and I'm doing Leno tonight and did not want it to come out there! Also let me plug my stand-up special this Saturday night on HBO -- I've been on the road, and it's ready and then some!


In cases like this, one must always filter for sensationalism and the quest for the joke, and having done so I mostly agree with Mahrer's sentiments, though not his tone (and I have yet to figure out why people seem to be so annoyed about the Catholic Church owning property. My only complaint--and it's directed at all churches and all religious organizations--is that I think the enormous tax breaks they receive violate the intent of the First Amendment). But I felt he, and most other observers/critics of the issue, are missing an important point. And so I told him that, in posting this comment:


Mr. Mahrer misses an important point: Long-range, this is good news not only for the victims but also for the Catholic Church.

Disclosure: I am a Catholic, although that strain that some insist cannot exist, viz., bleeding-heart liberal Democratic pro-choice Catholic. I am sickened and angered by the thought of priest pedophiles (like Mr. Mahrer, I spent a lot of time around priests--went to a Catholic college--and met some profound jerks, but no criminals), and even more sickened and angered that some bishops knew their crimes and protected them. (Why are they not behind bars?)

That's where "good for the Catholic Church" comes in.

If anyone learns anything from this atrocity, I hope it will be that cover-ups don't work. Ever. The accessories-after-the-fact who felt they needed to "protect" the institution from "scandal" created greater "scandal": the revelation that they covered up crimes, and then attempted to obfuscate and obstruct justice as the crimes came to light.

Now that dioceses are being hit where, as they say, it hurts, one hopes--perhaps naively--that some in leadership positions will learn a lesson: You can sweep it under the carpet today, but sooner or later the bulge will start to show and it will cost you a good deal more to clean it up later. In a perfect world, people who purport to be working on God's behalf would not have to be hit in the wallet to be made to understand this principle, but it ain't a perfect world.

P.S.: When I throw a few coppers into the collection plate, I am not buying an "invisible product": I'm helping in a small way to finance the good things that the church does--education, health care, poverty and disaster relief, etc. Another terrible side-effect of church "leaders" covering up priests' crimes is that the people who benefit from these services have been and will be victims of the fallout.


Meanwhile, my indignation extends to prosecutors and district attorneys in various jurisdictions who have inexplicably failed to prosecute the bishops who knowingly covered up priests' crimes. They are, as I assert above, accessories after the fact and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. That, too, would be good for the church in the long run.

But since when is anybody interested in the long run?

False Witness

For reasons mysterious, I am still and yet again astonished by so-called Christians who seem content, nay, eager, to lay aside their Bibles and their Ten Commandments and the stated principles of him who they claim to revere in order to slander, degrade, and repudiate any and all who aren't in lock-step with them and their opinions, philosophy, and prejudices.

Latest case in point: Yesterday Hindu Chaplain Rajan Zed said the prayer with which U.S. Senate sessions typically open. This was the first time that a Hindu prayer opened a Senate session.

Naturally, "Christians" were outraged. A "Christian" family in the gallery disrupted the prayer and had to be removed by the sergeant-at-arms.

(Side note: A couple of years ago, on a visit to Washington, D.C., we were treated to a tour of the Capitol by a staffer from Senator Tim Johnson's office, which included a short stop in the Senate gallery. We were instructed beforehand to be absolutely silent (even though they weren't really doing anything at the moment); I said afterward it was like being in church, only more so. Indeed, one of the ushers, or bouncers, or whatever he was, went over to some clown who was wearing his stupid softball cap and made him remove it. So for a family to disrupt the proceedings--especially, I would think, during the opening prayer--strikes me as fairly extraordinary.)

What was the objection? Well, that those heathens in the U.S. Senate were kicking off their business with a prayer by someone who "does not pray in Jesus' name."

Here's a sampling of some of the un-Christian rhetoric foisted on an unsuspecting Senate by Chaplain Zed:

"We meditate on the transcendental glory of the Deity Supreme, who is inside the heart of the Earth, inside the life of the sky and inside the soul of the heaven. May He stimulate and illuminate our minds."

"United your resolve, united your hearts, may your spirits be at one, that you may long dwell in unity and concord."

"Peace, Peace, Peace be unto all."

Well, clearly, these are all un- if not anti-Christian messages. When did Jesus ever say anything about peace? Where in the Christian Bible does it give any indication that God is everywhere? Where in Christianity do we find any exhortation that people need to get along for the common good?

(Hmm…actually, you may have me on that last point.)

So one wonders what the brouhaha is all about. I suppose…

A. Zed is neither a Christian nor a "Christian." Duh. (The distinction between the two is this: the former is someone who genuinely strives to follow the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, and who probably accepts him as the Son of God and Savior of the World; the latter is someone who has a list of the "right" words and the "right" action that he or she uses to judge whether someone is a "real" Christian. You might be a God-fearing churchgoer who accepts and lives out everything in the first clause of the previous session, but if you don't attend the "right" church or use the "right" shibboleths, you are not a "real" Christian.)

B. Zed did not use the phrase "in Jesus' name." See above re shibboleths, as well as re Zed being neither a Christian nor a "Christian." Also he referred to the Creator as "the Deity Supreme" and not "God"…as, apparently, God intended.

C. Zed is not the "right" kind of chaplain: See, my guess is that the "Christians" who tried to shout him down would have made a scene even if he had been a Christian chaplain…but the "wrong sort" of Christian, i.e., a Christian and not a "Christian."

D. These "Christians" persist in perpetuating the fiction that the United States was founded by "Christians" just like them, and that that "Christian" land has been wrested away from them by godless liberals, Democrats, and homosexuals who are either not "Christians" or the "wrong sort" of Christian and who tend to use words like tolerance and ecumenism and cooperation instead of "in Jesus' name" or "personal savior" or "born again."

E. Some people are always spoiling for a fight.

One might by now be thinking that the title of this piece, "False Witness," pertains to D above. Sort of, but not precisely. I was more taken by an item I came upon online while reading about the hullabaloo surrounding Zed's prayer. It starts with this provocative headline:

Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid Refuse to Allow Chaplain Who Prays "in Jesus Name," but Welcome Hinduism to the Floor of the U.S. Senate

And then comes this intriguing byline:

By Press Release: Wanda Sanchez on Jul 12, 07

"By Press Release"? What the heck does that mean? And a press release from where? Ordinarily one expects to see sources for a press release. And who is Wanda Sanchez? Who does she work for? What are her credentials?

I read on:

WASHINGTON, July 12 /Christian Newswire/--

Uh-oh. Christian Newswire. AKA "Christian" Newswire. This can't be good. But onward I press:

WASHINGTON, July 12 /Christian Newswire/--A Hindu chaplain will pray a Hindu prayer on the floor of the U.S. Senate for the first time in history. But yesterday, staffers from the offices of Senator Clinton (D-NY) and Harry Reid (D-NV) both denied a request for equal access to a chaplain who prays "in Jesus name."

And it goes on from there, in the same vein, viz., they let in pagans but keep out "real" "Christians." Read the whole thing for yourself here (where I first found it), or on the "Christian" Newswire here. And note ye this: No sources are given for this alleged "news" item. It's a complete rant. One is especially leery of such statements as

"Yes, we sponsored today's Hindu chaplain from Nevada to pray Hindu prayers on the Senate floor," admitted Reid's staff, "but we won't sponsor you because you're from New York ," they told Chaplain Klingenschmitt.

"Reid's staff"? They all gathered together and delivered the message in unison? One begins to pick up the sweet aroma of fiction.

And there's nothing in the "press release" that enables one to verify any of it. Googling some of the phrases in the "release" produces a few hits…but all of them right-wing blogs that have simply picked up the piece and slavishly passed it along as more "evidence" of how those godless liberal Democrats are trying to destroy "Christians." Nor does one find any clue to the identity of "Wanda Sanchez."

Well, I'm certainly a liberal Democrat, and not a "Christian," and probably not even a very good Christian, but I do seem to recall something in the Bible along the lines of "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." I'm pretty sure that translates to don't lie about other people.

And so, the question of the day: If the Ten Commandments come from God; if Christians believe that God's Commandments are to be obeyed; and if the Eighth Commandment prohibits lying about people…then why don't "Christians" feel obliged to honor God's Commandment?

"Great" Spam!

I have begun collecting the "best" spam subject lines that land in my various mailboxes. What are the criteria? Mostly, a good mangling of standard English will do. Having not the vaguest idea what they're trying to communicate helps, too, but it isn't a requirement. General weirdness is the main thing.

For your entertainment I present them here as they came to me, "sender" first, followed by subject line. The "sender" notwithstanding, some of them appear to have been written by Yoda.

---

Leta Hill That those cadwell

Augusta Grant bigger d1ck in 2 weeks grew

Roslyn Mccall Don't let your x-life suffer sfilra

Wilma English Get A Bigger Today! dearie

Collectibles Today It's a Draw! John Wayne wall decor art first

Tony Must Have apothecary we acclaim: unusual markdown.

Mamie Davidson gzk Gain Up to 4+ gaixc

Lula Oconnor It till buena

Hot Sexy Christian Singles »-(¯`v´¯)-» View Single Christians Photos »-(¯`v´¯)-»
(do not the words “hot,” “sexy,” “Christian,” and “singles”—arranged in that order—not strike you as peculiar?

Lesa Taylor But sadism do bare

Elnora Ritter Become A New Man -Max-Xl grown jar

advanced my vdirt

Bridget hormone dtitled

Jesus disheveled and then and since the roles of the offering was firm but how would b...

inside Jarrett A he most

Geneva Bailey bijouterie crouch derelict

fort at delivery For caffeine Studies in humans have not shown that allocation

Ashley Novak basilar cowherd agricola

Ladonna Olson in from sanitary

Headache ranch enforceable

Guy N.Lillian cone wring

Jacob Against simple and you're playing with; his desk as the tight: smile. Pirenne's ...

Micah Brooks Be eveleth because guadalupita

Jeff automatically, and out here, too old gweat achievement, This?

Deidre Phelps Not mahoney at coulomb

Charles Alexander Yes. Which Mallow, found ourselves, a Smyrnian jacket for its

Roslyn Shields As who collar

Terra Hogan FW : my Pen1s is bigger than aghast ?

Janice Griggs weatherbeaten acrimony permitted ;

Chrystal Buckner wow, Monica was shocked beakrebi

Dolly Otero ceremonial astigmatism procession

Leigh Woods the rocket kent

Pearl Harper fckb Don't cut yourself short... szyps
(eventually I shall write a book with a character named Pearl Harper)

As They Say

Another batch of quotations...as usual, from A Word a Day.

Don't be yourself. Be someone a little nicer. -Mignon McLaughlin, journalist and author (1913-1983)

I am aware that no man is a villain in his own eyes. -James Baldwin, writer (1924-1987)

Tolerably early in life I discovered that one of the unpardonable sins, in the eyes of most people, is for a man to presume to go about unlabelled. The world regards such a person as the police do an unmuzzled dog, not under proper control. -Thomas Henry Huxley, biologist and writer (1825-1895)

Since we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our minds, our one duty is to furnish it well. -Peter Ustinov, actor, writer and director (1921-2004)

It's like, at the end, there's this surprise quiz: Am I proud of me? I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth what I paid? -Richard Bach, writer (1936- )

Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace. -Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. general and 34th president (1890-1969)

It might be a good idea if the various countries of the world would occasionally swap history books, just to see what other people are doing with the same set of facts. -Bill Vaughan, journalist (1915-1977)

Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him. -Martin Luther King, Jr., civil-rights leader (1929-1968)

What I stand for is what I stand on. -Wendell Berry, farmer, author (1934- )

The conscience of the world is so guilty that it always assumes that people who investigate heresies must be heretics; just as if a doctor who studies leprosy must be a leper. Indeed, it is only recently that science has been allowed to study anything without reproach. -Aleister Crowley, author (1875-1947)

There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to other animals as well as humans, it is all a sham. -Anna Sewell, writer (1820-1878)

The World Today

So very true.

Sticking Points

In re the last line of the previous post (“Amazing what sticks with you, no?”):

Although I have long had difficulty remembering numbers—a cashier can tell me how much I owe, and I will have to look at the cash-register screen before writing the check—I have long been amazed at how well certain numbers stick in my head…and how poorly others do.

For instance, I recall instantly my family’s phone number from my boyhood in Omaha—though you might say that 393-1393 is a pretty easy number to remember, even forty years on. How, then, that I still remember my grandfather’s number—393-1632—some twenty years after his death? Or my best friend, Joe’s, number, 393-1395?

Time seems to have little to do with it. I remember those numbers from forty years ago, but can’t recall my college phone numbers from thirty years ago. I only remember that the numbers in Swanson Hall were whatever the campus prefix was plus 4 and the room number—4747 my freshman year and 4743 my sophomore year. But I have no recollection at all what our number was when a couple of friends and I moved off-campus our junior and senior years. I can’t even think what it may have started with.

I can remember the number I had in St. Paul—698-1276—but I can’t remember if I had that same number in my first apartment, on Cretin Avenue South, or just in the apartment Peg and I took on St. Paul Avenue when we were first married. My office number at the Webb Company started out as 698-7450, I think, and later switched to 690-7450 as the neighborhood outgrew the 698 prefix.

We moved to Sioux Falls in 1984, but I have no idea what the phone number was for the year we lived on Louise Avenue. I do recall that, like all the phones on that end of town in those days, it began with 361. This was the cause of some confusion, for it had not been too many years since every blessed telephone number in town began with 33. Indeed, when my family first moved here in the late 1960s, the town was small enough that it could exist on not only that single EDison exchange, but also that only the odd numbers needed to be attached to it: 332, 334, 336, 338. This led to the annoying habit of many locals to give only five-digit phone numbers:

What’s your number?

It’s two seven nine three five.

Um…two sev— that’s not enough numbers, is it?

Which of course made you look like the idiot. More idiotic, though, is that too many people in my community still insist on giving you only five digits if the first two are both threes, even though the town’s population explosion coupled with the breakup of the Bell System means it’s been over twenty years since every number in town was on the EDison exchange.

You might say that duration would cause a number to stick, and that would make some sense, I suppose. But I had the same number at Stafford Advertising for three years or so, and today haven’t the vaguest idea what it might have been. Wouldn’t three years be enough for a number to stick?

You might say that the number’s relative importance would cause it to stick—but wouldn’t a work number be pretty important? And if nothing else, wouldn’t the sheer number of times you give out your work number cause it to lodge pretty solidly? Anyhow, what would you make of the fact that I can remember not only my Omaha friend, Joe’s, phone number so clearly but also my Sioux Falls childhood friend, Dave’s number, and yet can’t remember that of the girl I dated pretty steadily through high school, nor my wife’s from before we were married?

Maybe it has to do with age—not that I’m getting old and forgetting things, since the odd stuff I obviously do remember seems to negate that idea. I mean, the age I was when I learned things. When you’re a kid, knowing your family’s phone number is a big deal. It’s important. Perhaps my parents worked with me to ensure that I knew it in case I got lost. Maybe that’s why I remember my grandfather’s number…but why, then, don’t I remember my other grandfather’s number, since he was alive until I was 10 or 11? Unless it’s precisely because he died when I was a kid, while my other grandfather lived until I was in my thirties.

But of course all the numbers of all the lockers I ever had in school are long gone, as are their combinations. Most room numbers vanished only a couple of weeks into the school year: once I learned where they were it was no longer necessary to remember what they were. Except our old Debate Room at Washington High School was 419.

Street addresses stick a little longer, apparently. 7433 Hascall Street. 4527 Decatur Street. 1533 St Paul Avenue. And so on. Do we utilize a house number more than a phone number?

I am reminded (for a few things stick, you know) of a Blondie comic from years ago, a Sunday strip, in which a fellow appears on the Bumsteds’ doorstep telling them that he grew up in that house and was wondering if he could look around. They invite him in, and he sentimentally recalls sliding down that old banister, sitting in the kitchen as his mother cooked, playing in his old room, etc. Tearfully, as he’s leaving, he thanks them for their trouble and avers that he will never forget those wonderful days at good old 123 Elm Street or whatever the address was.

And of course the Bumsteds have to inform him that this is Maple Street, and Elm is two blocks over.

Found in a Wallet

Whilst cleaning out an old wallet today, I came upon a scrap of paper (well, several, in fact, but one in particular) on which I had scribbled two quotations.

The first is from my old friend Monsignor James Michael Doyle. It does not originate with him, for I had and have heard a similar sentiment expressed elsewhere although I am unable to find attribution for it. What Doyle said, as jotted by me on March 6, 2005, was:

Love without truth is unlasting. Truth without love is intolerable.

I have seen “irresponsible” for “unlasting.” Either way, the sentiment holds.

The second quotation also was presented by Doyle (who was speaking at an “adult forum” hosted by my wife’s Lutheran church: Doyle and I share a keen interest in ecumenism), who correctly credited Ralph Waldo Emerson:

The years tell much that the days never knew.

Ain’t that the truth.

I am, incidentally, always amused by the way certain artists and writers are almost invariably credited in a particular, and particularly stilted way. Ralph Waldo Emerson. So we don’t confuse him with all the other Ralph Emersons writing out there. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow—not to be confused with Henry Throckmorton Longfellow, the taxidermist. Of course, we all get caught up in it, to such an extent that it seems very odd to be confronted—as you sometimes will see on books published in the first half of the twentieth century—with Ralph W. Emerson or H.W. Longfellow. It just doesn’t look right—sort of like Lee H. Oswald or R.M. Nixon. It takes you a moment to figure out who’s being talked about.

Speaking of Longfellow (the writer, not the taxidermist, though it hardly matters), I am further reminded of a line from something I read in my adolescence, though Google fails to yield a single hit. The reference was to the great department-store Henry Wadsworth Woolworth, who refused to open a store in Alaska because his motto was “keep the Nome buyers yearning.”

Amazing what sticks with you, no?

How Tough Can it Be?

You will say I am sensitive to this burning issue only because my last name ends in an S. And, probably, you will be right. But having spent my entire adult life working with words, much of that time as an editor, all of it as a writer, I have to ask myself:

Why does it seem so freakin’ tough for people to correctly form the plural and/or possessive form of names ending in S??

It is so simple. You have one Smith; if you have more than one, you have two Smiths. If something belongs to Smith, you say it is Smith’s. If it belongs to the family, you say it is the Smiths’. It is all so straightforward, no?

Why, then, do people simply fall apart if the proper noun happens to end in an S?

Here’s an example, from yesterday’s edition of the local rag. The reporter on this story is easily the most on-the-ball writer they have down there, and I apologize for that being faint praise. But apparently she suffers the same malady that afflicts so many, and suffers also from having no good editor to help her out.

Experienced couple to lead Salvation Army
By Jill Callison
jcalliso@argusleader.com

Published: June 21, 2007

A couple with long ties to the Salvation Army have been chosen to lead the local church.

Majors Michael and Judith Mills have been ordained ministers for more than 30 years, but their ties to the Salvation Army go back longer than that.

"We're really products of what the Salvation Army can do to help individuals," Major Michael Mills said.

"My father was a recovering alcoholic. The Salvation Army helped him change his life, and we started going to church as a family. My wife was in a foster home out in South Dakota, and she started going to the Salvation Army there."

Judith Mills was raised in Rapid City and Aberdeen.

The Mills will replace Majors Paul and Mary Duskin, who have been assigned to the Eastern Michigan and Divisional Headquarters in Detroit.

Okay—catch that? The family name is apparently Mills, with an S, not Mill. And yet in that last paragraph, when they are being referred to in the plural, they are called “the Mills.”

No, no no. The Millses. One Mills; two Millses.

I’m sorry if that “sounds wrong.” No one said this was going to be pretty.

But it is straightforward. It’s every bit as straightforward as our Smith example. One Reynolds, two Reynoldses. Reynolds’s house; the Reynoldses’ house.

Several years ago I was a panelist at a writer’s convention. A woman in the audience asked a question about this very subject—how to properly for the possessive and/or plural form of names ending in S. One of my co-panelists—a well-regarded writer whose name you would recognize were I to provide it (a name that does not end in S, by the way, which is telling), and a woman who was and perhaps still is teaching English at a U.S. college, which also is telling—in all seriousness advised the questioner to avoid using names that end in S, since she herself couldn’t figure out how to keep it straight.

Ow.

I had a similar unsettling incident a few weeks ago, teaching a writing class at a local college. In that instance, I was commenting to my class on the gender-sensitive case, which they pretty much all seemed to have trouble with. I shared my (correct) opinion that, although it’s awkward, the proper form is to write Everyone must bring his or her book (rather than Everyone must bring their book, which is how my students were crafting such sentences), upon which one of the better students (in a group of really good students, it must be said) informed me that she had once raised the issue with another instructor in the English department (a member of the permanent staff, who had advanced degrees and letters after his or her name and everything), whose sage advice was to just go ahead and use their.

Ow, again.

I am reminded of my third-grade teacher, Sister Hildegund, a lovely old woman…but, alas, a very old woman, and one who should have been retired some years earlier (she literally would fall asleep at her desk during class, the poor thing). At a parent conference, she informed my folks that she didn’t understand “the new math” (as it was known in the 1960s)…and so simply did not teach it.

Ow, ow, ow.

The benefit of learning how to do something the proper way, as opposed to throwing up one’s hands in defeat and announcing that he or she “doesn’t get it,” is that once you do get it…you’ve got it, for good! Nothing is gained—no one progresses—by taking the attitude that, well, since everyone is doing it wrong we’ll just do it wrong, and sooner or later it will be right. (Obviously, that’s where we’re going with who and whom, and I have felt for some years that by the middle of this century, at the latest, all but the most hidebound of grammarians will be insisting upon the distinction. That’s fine—the language is, after all, a living and always-evolving thing—but until that time, there is a difference, and it does matter.)

And don’t even get me started on those signs people have on or in front of their houses—or, sometimes, on their RVs—telling one and all that they are The Anderson’s…or The Jone’s…

So They Say

The latest installment of collected quotations, mostly (actually, this time, all of 'em, I think) from the excellent A Word a Day newsletter:

Underground nuclear testing, defoliation of the rain forests, toxic waste ... Let's put it this way: if the world were a big apartment, we wouldn't get our deposit back. -John Ross

Lots of people think they're charitable if they give away their old clothes and things they don't want. It isn't charity to give away things you want to get rid of and it isn't a sacrifice to do things you don't mind doing. -Myrtle Reed, author (1874-1911)

The crucial disadvantage of aggression, competitiveness, and skepticism as national characteristics is that these qualities cannot be turned off at five o'clock. -Margaret Halsey, novelist (1910-1997)

The hardest-learned lesson: that people have only their kind of love to give, not our kind. -Mignon McLaughlin, journalist and author (1913-1983)

I am now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself. -Emily Bronte, novelist (1818-1848)

What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak. -George Santayana, philosopher (1863-1952)

How can they say my life is not a success? Have I not for more than sixty years got enough to eat and escaped being eaten? -Logan Pearsall Smith, essayist (1865-1946)

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust? -George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), novelist (1819-1880)

Whatever people in general do not understand, they are always prepared to dislike; the incomprehensible is always the obnoxious. -Letitia E. Landon, author (1802-1838)

The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them. -George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950)

Dumb, or Just Annoying?

Some years ago, when I was experiencing technical difficulties with my then-provider of e-mail, I opened up a Hotmail account. Today it's primarily a spam-magnet, but I keep it alive with a couple-three newsletter subscriptions and generally check it every week or ten days.

There are many reasons that Hotmail is the least favorite of my freebie e-mail accounts (it's slow, it's clunky, it fills up with Microsoft junk mail, etc.), but at the top of this list is this: It has a stupid sign-in procedure.

Yeah, yeah, I can have my Mac, or Firefox, or Hotmail itself remember some of the sign-in stuff, at least for awhile. But I prefer not to do that. Which means that whenever I sign into Hotmail I have to let them know I'm signing into Hotmail!

Here's what I mean: When I sign in to my Yahoo! Mail account, I type my username in one box and my password in the other. When I sign into my Gmail account, I type my username in one box and my password in the other. Heck, when I check my ancient Netscape Mail account, I type my username in one box and my password in the other even though it's now AIM Mail or something else these days.

Get the pic? Then riddle me this:

How's come when I sign into Hotmail, I have to add @hotmail.com to my username?

I mean, at the top of the page it says MSN Hotmail. Below that it says MSN® Hotmail® is changing... to Windows Live™ Hotmail®. (I'm thinking some of those proper nouns might be trademarked or registered with the U.S. Patent Office. But it's just a guess.) At the side of the page it says WindowsLive Hotmail. Above the sign-in fields it says Sign in to Hotmail.

In short, it seems to know that it's Hotmail.

But if I foolishly type my username instead of the whole address, it says Please type your e-mail address in the following format: yourname@example.com. Need help signing in?

Um, no, I don't need any help...but it seems the folks at MSN/Windows/Live/Hotmail do, for yourname@example.com implies that they have suddenly and inexplicably forgotten who they are.

This surpasses what I had some years ago considered to be The Dumbest Thing in E-mail, when AOL swallowed up Netscape. One fine day I received notice that I would have to change my username, which I had had for years and years, because it "conflicted" with a username at AOL. That piqued my interest, since my Netscape username was the same as my old and long abandoned AOL username. So I sent e-mail to that AOL address...and it came back with a no-such-user notification.

So that was dumb. But the Hotmail deal is dumber.

And while I'm at it, here's some similar but unrelated cyber-dumbness:

I have long since lost track of the number of times, in filling out this or that form, survey, etc., I am asked to input my date of birth. Fine, but ever since the turn of the century, the request--nay, demand--is always that it be in the form "mm/dd/yyyy." Now, stop me if I've said this before, but the yyyy part is silly. See, there is no one alive today who was born in 1856, nor is there anyone alive today who was born in 2056, so if I were to fill in, say, "56," would it not be pretty safe to assume I mean the 20th century version? I realize that now we do have among us people who were born in the 2000s...but, in the first place, I'm not sure too many five-year-olds are entering the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes online; and in the second place, I'm not sure too many 95- or 100-year-olds are either, so I think it would be safe to assume that someone who filled in "02" as date of birth was not born in 1902 and probably not born in 2102 either.

I'm sure there's a perfectly swell computer-y explanation for having to indicate which century I was born in. That doesn't make it less silly, however.