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Showing posts from October, 2008

2008 Thingie Proxy Race is Completed!

Long-time followers of this blog (are there any?) may recall that my son Eliot and I are somewhat involved in the Vintage Slot Car hobby. Well, actually only in a small corner of that hobby, in which vintage Thingie slot cars are raced. This is now the 3rd year in which cars from all over the world have been sent across continents and oceans to be raced all across Europe by drivers we've mostly not even met. We entered two cars last year and only one this year. The overall results are in, and of 34 cars in the Fast & Scratchbuilt class, we finished 19th. Not bad, considering we really don't know much about building these cars or procuring fast vintage motors. Here are the results: I've also mentioned Edo Bertoglio before ... Edo is known as the King of the Thingies ... or simply the Thingie Kingie ... and here is why. Take a look at part of his Thingie collection, which will form the centerpiece of an Art Show he is putting on next month: If you squint real hard, you

Satan's Most Effective Lie

Based upon the hundreds of cartoons I have seen which assume this view, the dozens of pop songs which are based on it, and the clueless discussion of the topic of hell on internet forums, I estimate the devil's most effective lie to be this: that he is the Proprietor of hell, rather than the chief being for whom it was set alight, and the first one who will be cast into that everlasting fire. Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels ... (Matthew 25:41)

September 23, 1979 - Organized Religion

Sometimes, in order to help me love those I have the most trouble loving (e.g., Obama supporters), I have to remember who I used to be myself. One day in my life that seems to best capture who I was 30 years ago is Sunday, September 23, 1979 . I was an engineering student at The Cooper Union, beginning my senior year, and I resided on Manhattan's lower east side. That day is interesting to me because it brought together so many things that seem to have typified various aspects of my life up to that point, and in some cases, since. To understand my day that Sunday, you need to know that I was a recreational consumer of LSD in those days, and that was a day I was tripping. ( Strike 1 against me, from my current persective of a middle-class, middle-aged, well-respected-man-about-town-doing-the-best-things-so-conservatively perspective.) My acid friends and I had something very special planned: We attended the No Nukes Rally and Concert in Battery Park, under the shadow of the World

1st Annual Hot Rod Anglican Cafepress Awards

All of these logos were found simply by searching for "Anglican" at CafePress ... And, our first winner, for Best False Dichotomy is (drum roll ...): In the Scariest Message category (watch out for folks driving a car with this bumper sticker!) ... In the Best Unintentionally True Message category (envelope, please!) ... This next award is for the Worst Misspelling of "Millennium Development Goals" ... In the Harry T. Cook Award for Most Tripped-Out Logo : In the Best Use of Redundancy category, our winner is: For Best Example of Self-Serving Guilt-Manipulation , we have a clear winner: In the Shameless Racism category, the unanimous winner was: And, our GRAND PRIZE WINNER , in the Love and Tolerance category is (wait for it!) ... Congratulations to all our winners. See you again next year!

You Might Be an Anglican News Junkie If ...

You might be an Anglican news junkie if ... You're currently using an Anglican Mainstream mouse pad . You know ++Peter Akinola's middle name. Your screensaver is a photo of Archbishop Gregory Venables. You have more than 50 posts at StandFirm . People at work refer to you as that crazy Anglican guy/lady . You click "Refresh" on the Anglican Curmudgeon's blog page more than 10 times per day. You know the first and last names of Gene Robinson's "husband." You are wearing an I Like Iker button . There is a KJS --> English dictionary on your desk. You can name at least 3 Anglican Instruments of Unity . Just kidding; there are no Instruments of Unity. You have a TEC Diocese Countdown Calendar on your wall, which reads: Today's TEC Diocese Count = 111 110 109 ... You wear a Hot Rod Anglican T-shirt !

Biblical Literacy and The Episcopal Church

An internet acquaintance (who tends to be on the opposite end of the political spectrum from me) was writing to me to agree with something I'd written. But she capped her comments off with the following statement: Honestly, people act like children about all this. So what if your dude doesn't get elected? You accept it and move on with your life. Wallowing in self pity and refusing to acknowledge that Christ does indeed live in every person is kind of a crappy way to live, in my opinion. To be honest, the part about Christ living in every person (emphasis hers), made my jaw drop. This is a 20-something young woman, a committed Episcopalian, who is pursuing a path that will lead to Ordination. I was at a loss, for a moment to explain to her why I do not believe that Christ dwells in all people. I felt exactly like the person (described by G. K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy ) who is asked to tell why he prefers civilisation to savagery. The fact that everything in the New Testame

Making it Hard on Satirists ...

TEc Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori had this to say about the Diocese of Pittsburgh wising up and leaving the rotten corpse that is The Episcopal church today: "I believe that the vast majority of Episcopalians and Anglicans will be intensely grieved by the actions of individuals who thought it necessary to remove them from The Episcopal Church," Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said after the vote. Yes, and I believed the Chicago Cubs would win the World Series this year ... You see, when she says goofy stuff like this ... it makes it really hard on anyone trying to satirize TEc. Thanks for the LOLs, Katharine! But with your absurd reality outstripping my satire on a daily basis ... you're putting me out of business here!

Orthodox Anglican Identity - Rev. Dr. Charles Erlandson

The Ph.D. Thesis of my very smart brother (well, one of two very smart brothers; they are twins), the Rev. Dr. Charles Erlandson (a.k.a., Zolton, Diocese of Fort Worth ) is now available to be downloaded from the St. Andrew's Parish website . You can read the full "teaser" on it here. In his doctoral dissertation, Orthodox Anglican Identity , the Rev. Dr. Charles Erlandson examines this orthodox Anglican identity in terms of the complex identity that consists of structural, normative, stylistic, and historical definitions. Structurally, he argues, orthodox Anglicans desire to live together in a clear and authoritative communion life but are likely to produce a messy and ambiguous structural identity. Normatively, orthodox Anglicans desire to assert a relatively clear and strong identity by turning to the Bible, the Prayer Book, and the Articles but that many orthodox Anglicans will be unwilling to submit to the Prayer Book or Articles in any meaningful way, and impo

Metabo Grinder ... Higher Power?

Once, after I had finished confessing an episode of drunkenness to a priest, he gave me some background on AA . (Wait ... is the person Confessing bound by an oath of secrecy, or only the priest?) Anyhow, he mentioned that in Step 2 of the 12 steps you admit the existence of a higher power. Of course, the priest and I had already admitted the existence of this Higher Power, in the Triune God. But, he mentioned one case in which the only "higher power" that one of the "friends of Bill W" could think of was the air-conditioner in his full-size Buick. Apparently, this man lived in some intemperate region, such as Arizona, and his Buick's air-conditioner was the one thing in his earthly existence which had never let him down. As the priest's story went, the man eventually graduated from belief in his car's air-conditioner to full-fledged belief in God. I was thinking, the other day as I worked on Eliot's car: If I were an atheist, what would my higher p