Month: October 2004

The Bewhiskered One himself appeared on videotape this week urging Americans to elect John Kerry as president. Well, that wasn’t exactly what he said, but you get the point.

He uttered that Michael Moore nonsense about Bush continuing to listen to the children reading their book after he heard of the attacks, and had the gall to claim that those minutes enabled his goons to successfully finish their murders. People who know how leadership functions know that this claim is ludicrous.

Sammy also made the remark that Americans, four years later, still didn’t understand what it would take to make him quit murdering us. All we have to do is the opposite of what Bush has done.

It reminds me of junior high school when the bullies offered terms of surrender to those of us who were weak and wimpy. If we let the Muslims take over the world, impose Islamic law on us, and saw off the heads of whoever they think needs it, then they’ll not fly airplanes into our skyscrapers.

Sounds like a deal to me. Vote for Kerry!

I’m a member of the American Academy of Religion, the preeminent association of teachers of religion in colleges and graduate schools. There’s almost no prestige in this status; I paid my money and signed up. Nevertheless, as a member, I’m in contact with what goes on in the field.

Something came in the mail today that is so typical of AAR-type mindsets, I thought it might be good to record it for posterity. It’s a catalog of new books, and one of the blurbs seemed worthy of comment:

[John Doe] argues that church Christianity is handicapped by two great errors–an interpretation of Jesus the co-equally divine Son of God incarnate and the belief that there is a controlling supernatural world beyond this world. We need to go back and start again from the historical Jesus and his message and create a modern version of his kingdom religion–a religion that is immediate, beliefless, and entirely focussed upon the here and now.

The “two great errors” that this author dislikes are, of course, historic Christianity. It’s what the apostles believed, what the Church Fathers believed, and what Christians, Catholic and Protestant, have always believed. If you’re an average American, you believe it, too.

If you do believe it, I ask you this: do you want to feed your kids to teachers like this at the local Hellhole University, and pay money for the privilege to boot? Let me assure you, I live and work in this field and this guy is nothing strange. Send a kid to a college that isn’t expressly evangelical in its beliefs and you can expect such things to be pumped into his head vigorously.

Adam Young has written a masterful essay on what’s wrong with the modern concept of an American president. Join the revolution; check out the Constitution Party.

I tend to stay on the trailing edge of technological development. I figure that the latest and greatest will always have bugs that need to be worked out, and I don’t care to be the exterminator. I stick with the old methods until the new ones become old. That way, I know that whatever I’m doing has already proved itself.

I have a house full of computers. Most of them were manufactured in the 1980s. They do a great job. For instance, the main machine in my office, with which I run my plumbing business, is a TRS-80 Model 4, slightly upgraded. It boasts 128K of RAM, a blinding clock speed of 4 MHz, two 720K floppies and two 360K floppies. I can dial up and connect to the university where I sometimes teach and, from there, access the Internet (text only). With that machine and others just like it, I produced all of my Ph.D. work in the ’90s.

I’m never one to stay in a rut, though, so I’ve made a recent breakthrough. I acquired a refurbished Palm IIIxe this week. Postage and all, it cost $35, which is about 10% of what the latest and greatest handhelds are running.

This quantum leap in equipment was occasioned by my recent addition of fifty blank 4×6 cards into the file drawer where I keep my job records. My original attitude, when I opened this business three years ago, was “Technology? We don’t need no stinkin’ technology.” I opted to implement the KISS system wherever possible: Keep It Simple, Sewerman. My to-do list was kept on a scrap of note paper in my shirt pocket and discarded at the end of the day. Shopping lists, reminders, notes from phone calls or conversations were all entered into a little notebook I kept in my hip or shirt pocket at all times. Jobs were written on 4×6 cards and tagged with a colored paper clip to signify status: scheduled, awaiting payment, postponed. Completed cards were filed by address and contained a record of what I did at that job, complete with any necessary drawings on the card. Plans for life in general went into a calendar made of blank 3-ring forms bought at the office supply store.

But when I added the last fifty cards into my file drawer, I began to face an ugly fact: that 12″ drawer is now full. I began three years ago with a small box for the job cards. Eventually I went to two boxes: A-L and M-Z. Then I moved to this big “recipe” file drawer. It works really well, especially since I drilled a hole in it and inserted a bolt which I can use as a lock to keep the drawer from sliding out of its case accidentally. But in a few weeks, that box will be obsolete.

You see, I have to take my job records into the house at night and back to the truck in the morning. If I left them in the truck and “something happened,” I’d lose a major feature in my customized, personalized customer service strategy: I know my customers and what I did at their homes. Lugging the big box isn’t too hard, once you learn how and where to grip it (along with the attache case, etc.) But two big boxes? It ain’t gonna happen.

To remain a one-man operation and to maintain close contact with my records, I figure I have to digitize. *sigh*

At first I tried to find a way to do it with the cell phone, but my phones just aren’t that sophisticated and I didn’t want to buy $500 worth of smartphone and accessories along with a big bill every month. So the $35 Palm IIIxe looked like a good place to start experimenting. With 8 megs of memory it can easily hold all of my job records, my customer database, and whatever accounting apps I might decide to run.

This model became passe over two years ago, so it’s just about my speed.

Yeah, one day I’ll rear back in my rocking chair and tell my great grandkids “back in ought-4, I got me my first handheld. You couldn’t talk to ’em; no sir; you had to poke ’em with a little plastic stick and write what you wanted ’em to do. And they didn’t know anything unless you wrote it in first. Had to put batteries in ’em every few weeks. Times were hard back then, yes sir . . . ”

Cats are strange. I’m not a cat lover, but some people are. They’re strange, too.

When I came home from work tonight, I parked my truck so that its headlights were shining on the curb across the street. I saw a cat playing with a mouse. He’d let it run in the gutter for a while, then chase and catch it.

Mouse didn’t seem to like it and ran out into the path of an oncoming car. Attempted suicide, I suppose. The front tire struck the mouse, it flipped up under the body of the car, then the rear tire struck it. I thought that the cat’s fun was over, but somehow the little mouse survived and the entertainment resumed. And you thought that you had a bad day?

Does any other animal kill and eat its playmates? If your dog did that, what would you think? Cat lovers, take heed.

“Is this Kevan Barley? Yes sir, Mr. Barley, I got your name from John Shelton. I’ve heard that you’re the finest plumber in Memphis and I need your help.” The voice on the telephone fairly danced with dynamism and enthusiasm. After a few minutes I said “You’re Ed McAteer, aren’t you?” He seemed a little taken aback and asked if we’d done business before. After all, at his age, memory isn’t what it used to be. I answered “No, sir, it’s just that you are a public figure and nobody else I’ve ever heard speaks with such leadership in his voice. It’s hard NOT to know that it’s Ed McAteer.”

That’s how I met him: I cleaned out his sewer line. As time passed, I’d do several other plumbing jobs at his house. He called once and began by saying “I told someone just the other day that Kevan Barley cannot quite walk on water, but I’ve never seen him more than two inches deep, and he knows where all the rocks are!” I could tell that it was a line he’d used many times before, but I still appreciated the compliment.

Ed was famous for the coalitions he built. He was a “natural salesman” who believed deeply in the fundamentals of the Christian faith and the literal interpretation of Bible prophecy, particularly the prophecies about the nation Israel. He therefore created and led organizations dedicated to advancing those beliefs. I never heard anyone question his integrity, and I never saw anything in him that fell short of absolute commitment to truth. From where I sat, I believe that he had one passion: Jesus Christ as savior of the world.

The Left despised him, called him “the godfather of the religious right.” Who knows what dreams passed through their minds of how beneficial he’d be if only he were on their side instead of on ours? Ed was a man of rare abilities and rare commitment. He made a powerful impact upon his generation.

He collapsed at his home here in Memphis this past Tuesday; died “all at once,” as it were. He was only 78, but at the speed at which he thought and talked and worked, he probably got 120 years of living crammed into those 78.

His funeral is Friday, 10 AM, at the 28,000-member Bellevue Baptist Church, which is in sight of my home. I won’t make it, though. I’ve made too many promises to customers and will be gone plumbing.

But he’ll do fine without me. I suspect that the huge auditorium will be packed with his other friends. I’ll just wait and catch up with him later.

Shalom, Ed.

Terri Schiavo, severely disabled, has been in the news for months and months. Her poor husband Michael wants to kill her and mean people like Gov. Jeb Bush won’t let him.

The courts have now struck down “Terri’s Law,” the Florida measure that tried to restrict a husband’s right to terminate an unwanted marriage. With a little luck, she’ll be dead in no time.

My concern here, though, is not with Michael’s right to bump off his wife. I think more attention needs to be paid to the humanitarian side of things. The executioners intend to withold water until she dies of thirst. This just isn’t right. Dying of thirst is a slow and tortuous way to go. Terri is fully conscious and aware of what’s going on.

The Muslims have a much better method: saw her head off! She’ll be gone in seconds, almost no pain at all, and Michael can get on with his life. Of course, he should be awarded the privilege of dispatching her with his own hands, since he’s had to work so hard for so long to protect his rights as a husband.

The first debate of this presidential race took place last night. Pundits are unanimous that one candidate totally ran away with the victory and left the other in the dust. They just can’t agree on which candidate that was.

I don’t own a T.V., so I listened to the debate via streaming media on my computer. I didn’t get the visual effects–the expressions, etc.–so I had to concentrate on what was said.

Kerry is a better debater than Bush is. That’s really all you can learn from these events. Bush isn’t glib; he doesn’t “think on his feet” well. None of that has anything to do with running the executive branch of the federal government.

There’s a superstition that is nearly universal: debates show who’s correct. I call it a superstition because there’s no evidence for it. A person can be categorically wrong and know he’s wrong and still whip the stuffing out of his opponent if he holds all of the debating talent. Something like that goes on in courtrooms thousands of times a day right here in the land of justice for all. Have you ever been in a courtroom trial? Heh heh, I rest my case. You know I’m right.

Bush will carry Tennessee handily, barring some upheaving catastrophe between now and Nov. 2d. In fact, I expect him to win by a landslide across the country, and I’ve been saying it all year. That means I’m hardly a hero for putting a Peroutka sign in my yard today. Michael Peroutka is the Constitution Party presidential candidate. In not supporting Bush, I’m really taking no risks. If any fellow conservative attacks me, I have an easy dodge: “Hey, Kerry can’t win Tennessee.” Not every Peroutka supporter has it so easy.

9/11 seems to have changed everything. Among my friends, Bush can do no wrong. A “third party” is unthinkable, almost like supporting a different god than the one in the Bible. But there are some serious issues that we need to come to grips with. I’ll name one: abortion. We antiabortion folks get the Republicans’ rhetoric, the kids get the garbage disposal. Eight years of Reagan, four years of Poppa Bush, four years of little Bush, and where are we in the battle, hmm? And there are many other important issues where, despite the image which the Republicans project to us, they can be counted on to split the difference with the left when the radials meet the road.

But most conservatives begin shaking in rage when they see another conservative not supporting Bush. Hopefully better times and deeper thinking will return soon.