Review of The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount

...An interesting review on a book that describes how fundamentalism itself (Israeli, Muslim, and Christian) is a driving force (self-fulfilling?) that plays into the political decisions we make. Its good to note that religious zealousness is a necessary ingredient to consider better than we have, when making our political decisions.. (can you spell I-R-A-Q ?)

So you wanna own an American Bulldog?

I guess the problem with general descriptions of breeds is that the writers are always fans of the breed. Maybe descriptions of breeds should be written up by the people who actually work to get specific breeds adopted out.

American Bulldog Rescue has the fairest description of the breed that I've found yet. This is the kind of thought provoking simple essay that everyone should read before they buy a dog. Honest and clear and it made me feel guilty for not having worked with my bulldog more. Ouch... it touches home. A sign of good writing - from a person who cares about the actual dogs and has an incentive to tell you the truth.

The only thing they left out, was that my American Bulldog smells. I have to bathe her more than once a week, but I really don't know if that goes with the breed or not (but have a feeling it does.)

Left Behind?

I'm in a Sunday school class and we've decided to study the book of Revelations. Actually, we don't study the Bible, we just read it out look in class, taking panoramic views, and comment to each other applying our minor insights. It's a style that is refreshing compared to the pontificating all-knowing all-boring typical evangelical church classes I grew up with.



I've tried my best over the last 30 years (since I went to Bible College and studied the Bible with fervor) to avoid dealing with the popular notions of what is commonly called the "End Times" stuff. You know, the "Rapture", the "Second Coming", the "Anti-Christ", "666" and all that other queer apocalyptic rambling. This study is called Eschatology. I quit studying Eschatology in my early 20s when I decided that the popular interpretations were all wrong and in fact from any objective sense couldn't be found in the Bible as it was being taught to me.



Well obviously Tim LaHaye just can't die and go away. He's always been a menance to any evangelical trying to maintain dignity. I hate to dis him much - [actually, I like to dis him a lot - its just not very Christian], but his views have had way too much sway in popular Christian culture.



Saying all that to say this: Thanks to joshmag.com I've found that this debate is alive and well and everybody who considers themselves Christians hasn't swallowed it whole. Thank God! Consider this critique of LaHaye's pop eschatology:

This unrecognizable, heterodox puree includes chunks of John's apocalypse, mixed together willy-nilly with the stranger bits of Daniel, Ezekiel and the minor prophets and slices of St. Paul's meditations on death and Christ's warnings of judgment.

Sweet, huh?



Check this guy out if you have the vaguest idea what I'm talking about.

Driving Dead People in Iraq

My son, Brandon is okay. I was worried about him last week. He's driving an ambulance in Iraq now. Here's his last email he sent me which I thought was pretty interesting.

"geez i wish i had something GOOD to tell you but in all honesty if i started telling you the kind of news that goes on here with my daily work i'd be pretty depressing. i have been doing something different lately though, been driving the one and only ambulance here for the KBR medics, it's been crazy because i have to go on these medical runs like 5 times a day, usually it's a broken leg or injury or heat stroke/dehydration but we've had a few interesting ones. i had one military (AirForce girl) die on the way to the hospital from an overdose. it was weird seeing someone freshly dead but not with massive mutilation from burnings/explosions, it's like totally different. i don't want to be morbid but the first thing i thought of was night of the living dead. just like she could just sit right up and start walking. well that's all, hope that's not too weird but i'm sure mom has dealt with a lot of dead patients while working in a hopital. cheers"

Does Your Dog Howl at Night if you Die?

...my wife calls me at work and sounds all desparate. she says with this tear in her voice that she opened up her phone this morning and for some reason the date said it was January 1981. this freaked her out. I knew instantly why.



...my son was born Jan 1, 1981 - New Year's day... he is over in Iraq now working as a combat firefighter for Halliburton. I don't have good contact with him because of the obvious distance... I get emails from him every once in a while.... I've been emailing him all day and asking, "Are you all right?" .... hopefully he'll respond soon with his usual "Yes, I'm ok"... I haven't heard from him yet though.



I hope the universe isn't tied together with some kind of mystical cause and effect where weird things happen like a mother's electronic contraptions display weird dates because something somewhere else bad happens on the other side of the world... something as distant but as close as your own belly button.



It used to be an old belief that when a person died in their home at night, their dog knows it and will howl all night. My grandmother told me once.... says she's heard it herself a few times.... she also told me February was the worst month for her family and always feared it. She died in a February.



I keep checking my own clock on my phone and emailing Brandon.... he should be alright....

American Masters . Hank Williams | PBS

Watched the story of Hank Williams on American Masters the other night with my good friend and father-in-law Ike Lovvorn. (This Emmy award-winning series always has great stuff.) The particularly poignant moment for me on this night came from Ike, when at the end of the show he says, "It always makes me really sad when I hear the story of Hank Williams."

My mom used to play a lot of Hank Williams on our 6-foot long "Hi-Fi" record-player when she did her weekly house cleanings. She'd crank it up real loud so she could hear it over the vacuum cleaner roar.... And then she'd sing all-silly-like at the top of her lungs along with the songs. I think the cheatin' songs had a special meaning to her. I guess the story of Hank tugged at the heart of my father-in-law also. He kind of sniffled when he mentioned to me how Hank's story made him sad.

Building a Cabin with a Bowie Knife

I've been building a cabin with a Bowie knife. Really I've been using a chainsaw and a hammer and nails too. Not much more than that though it seems. It's been fun but very hard. I should've blogged the whole series of events, from how to get the parts and planning the structure to buying the parts (cutting down the trees, I really mean) and hammering it all together. But, I've been too tired everyday to think about blogging it all too. The most amazing part for me has been how expensive it is to just drink water and then to poop and pee. I tried digging a well myself and then gave up after one hour of pick-axe work, a two foot pile of rocks, and six inches deep of a "well".... I apparently live on all rocks.... (I really thought that, "Hey, this ground is moist here, maybe I can dig a little and find a spring.... heck, how'd they do it in the old days?"
I thought wrong.

I ended up paying $8,000 for a big truck to come in and drill straight down 300 feet and install a pump and a little tank.

Then someone had to rocksaw another 300 feet across the property just to lay the pipe to get the water from the well to the cabin.

To actually be able to "go to the bathroom" in anything close to a civilized manner is also very expensive. (Believe me, I tried building an "out-house" and my wife threw a fit. I also looked into the humanure concept and composting your own waste. But pooping and peeing into a bucket and covering it up with sawdust to later take outside to dump into a pile, just had a certain barrier of cultural overcoming that I couldn't bring myself to conquer.) A septic system is a big deal and it costs me another $9,000.

Then you've got to put it altogether. That takes another $500 worth of pvc pipe and valving and lots of hard, hard labor. My wife found the toilet at a Good-Will store for only one dollar (yes, that's right - $1.00 ! We were very excited about that.)
So, just getting water and then to excrete and rid myself of waste-water has cost me $17,500. It's just unbelieveable, that as incredible as it might sound, when you own your own land, you still can't even START to survive without taking out a major loan from a bank!
So now I can poop and pee and drink water. And I owe the bank. I still have to build my shelter. I have a bowie knife. I'm working on that part still.

Grizzly Man

I'm looking forward to seeing this movie of a questionably sane young man who goes out to live with grizzly bears, like one of them - Grizzly Man.

I've heard this guy and his wife were eaten alive by grizzlies and the video camera was running but the lens was still on... but the sounds recorded were said to be horrifying beyond endurance.... I guess they are not releasing it to the public.

The trailer hints at this but doesn't explore it.

Muslims against Human Rights and Democracy?

So, let me get this straight.... our system of freedom allows them to train and develop their ideas to completely undermine us here in America and other free countries? What's wrong with this picture?



And in case you think for a minute that people everywhere actually value the same basic freedoms that we in America value (Hello, Bush?), then consider this call to arms from the Islamic book, "The American Campaign to Suppress Islam":



"It is time to distinguish Truth from Falsehood as clear and distinct as

life is from death. On one side, the side of Falsehood - are America, the

KaafirWest, and your rulers and their supporters which includes the

politicians, thinkers, economists, people of the media, and others

allured by Capitalism and seduced by its way of life, together with

those who call for democracy, pluralism, human rights, and free market

policies. And on the other side, the side of the Truth - are the aware and

sincere carriers of the Islamic Da'wah and those who follow them

from among the Muslim Ummah who adhere to their Deen."



Yes, that's right - at least this one Islamic author is AGAINST Democracy and Human Rights and enjoins all Muslims to be also! Read 'em and weep people.

I don't think America has a campaign to wipe out Islam - but maybe it should.

I don't think America has a campaign to wipe out Islam - but maybe it should.



Maybe I am totally clueless or have only been reading extremist Islam materials, but if what I've been reading is anywhere near the center of Islamic thought, then America is deluding itself if it thinks peaceful coexistence with Muslims is possible. By their own publications, non-Muslims seem to be only worthy of death and there is no tolerance whatsoever of other peoples or other religions.



The Christian God that I know of doesn't seem to be the same Allah fellow that I've been reading quotes from out of the Koran. This Allah and his "messenger" (Mohammed) seem totalitarian, absolute and intolerably nuts if you ask me.



If there's a God in heaven that's good, it ain't the same God as this Allah of Islam.



I'm sure America isn't fighting Islam, but rest assured Islam is fighting America.

Bin Laden's Fatwa

After reading some of Josh's blog, I realized I didn't know what a "fatwa" was. I looked it up and found it is an Islamic declarative legal curse upon something or someone. Salmon Rushdie had a fatwa placed on him for writing "The Satanic Verses" and Bin laden has made a fatwa against America, Israel, and against as he puts it - "people of the cross."

Wow! Powerful and ugly stuff. This guy really is evil and seriously wants to incite young Islamic men to kill as many Americans as possible. Scares me. So exactly why should all Americans be put to death? Don't quite get it still?