It’s “All Hallow’s Eve”, or Halloween, and I’m manning the door with treats and hot cider. Since 2001 I’ve set up a fire pit in my front yard and served hot cider along with the treats to warm the kids and their parents that come by. Tonight however it’s cold and very windy, and while the idea of a fire sounds good in concept I know that in practice it would be colder than a witch’s mittens.

This year then I’ve set up in the house, but I’m still offering hot cider, which has been enthusiastically received for the most part. A couple of people have looked at me like I was some kind of weirdo for offering a hot drink, as if it might be spiked or something. Well, I guess if you have a holiday that revels in the scary and even demonic then people are right to be a little paranoid.

We didn’t have a lot to do with Halloween when our girls were little because of the occultic overtones, especially since these have seemed, to my eye, to be even more pronounced in later years. More recently however I’ve come to the conclusion that what is really being celebrated is the profit motive as Halloween has become one of the most lucrative merchandising opportunities in our culture. I’m not sure how it ranks in comparison to another emerging holiday — Super Bowl Sunday — but I know they sell more Halloween paraphernalia than they do for Thanksgiving. And at that some part of me takes a certain satisfaction in knowing that those who take the Samhain traditions and meanings seriously can now be just as offended at the commercialization of their holiday as I may be during Christmas.

For the most part, then, I’m not as concerned that people are being lured to the dark side by Trick or Treat. At least, I’m sure it doesn’t happen any more often than somebody becomes a Christian by watching “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” I know there is real darkness out there, however, even more chilling than tonight’s wind and much more destructive. I also know darkness hates the light, so I’m not going to lock the doors and turn the outside lights off while hiding in my basement tending my own little beacon. No, the darkness likes to be where the people are, and that’s where I need to be as well. I am not willing to cede an inch of ground.

So, while the girls are at Hallelujah Night at church I’ve spent the last few years stoking the fire and heating the cider and smiling at and making eye contact with each visitor, complimenting their costumes, and dispensing goodies with a liberal hand — and no one leaves without hearing a heartfelt, “God bless you.”

Update:

Hey, I even got a couple of “God bless you’s” tonight in return! A couple of people have even said they miss the fire and hope I’ll have it back next year.

We haven’t had much traffic for 30 minutes or so, and it’s been a pretty slow evening. I didn’t think a little thing like the weather could slow kids down from the annual candy crawl, but maybe people really are getting smarter. I think I can turn off the porch lights and settle down to some real work on the laptop. I know, of course, that just as soon as I get everything just so, the doorbell will ring (lights on or not).

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When you get in trouble and you don’t know right from wrong
Give a little whistle! Give a little whistle!
When you meet temptation and the urge is very strong
Give a little whistle! Give a little whistle!

Not just a little squeak, pucker up and blow
And if your whistle’s weak, yell, “Jiminy Cricket!”
Right!

Take the straight and narrow path
And if you start to slide
Give a little whistle! Give a little whistle!
And always let your conscience be your guide

An MTC bus driver asks to be excused from driving buses that advertise a local gay magazine. Muslim cab drivers at the Minneapolis airport refuse to transport passengers carrying alcohol. Some pharmacists refuse to dispense “morning after” pills. Why does an individual bringing his or her conscience into the workplace make headlines?

Actually, someone’s conscience is at the root of just about everything that makes headlines, whether it’s the story of a liquour store being held up, domestic abuse, egregious stock options or lieing about an opponent in a political advertisement. In each case someone has made a decision about what is right or wrong for them and pushed his or her morality on others, usually with negative consequences. Most will agree that the examples I just cited reflect bad behavior but shrug it off as just the way things are; perhaps we’ll even feel a little personal smugness becuase “I wouldn’t do something like that.” But what about when someone acts out of his or her desire to do what they think is right, even if it stands in opposition to society’s norms? Why is it easier for us (or the pundits, anyway) to shake their heads at those who act badly out of their own self-interest, but shake their fists at those others for being self-righteous?

In a free society and a free market these actions should not be a big issue. True, it can lead to inconveniences and even some perceived injustices, but these can be managed by the market. If a taxi-driver at the airport doesn’t want to take a passenger carrying booze (or even, by their same reasoning, an unveiled or unescorted woman), so be it, but suffer the consequences of the market. If there’s a sudden surge in the numbers of women or alcohol-carrying passengers waiting at the airport, other cabs can move in. If the airport, in an effort to serve it’s passengers, passes a rule that says a cab either takes the next waiting fare or goes back to the end of the line, that’s fine, too. Everyone gets to make a choice. It’s not too different from telling the taxi captain that you want a cab that accepts credit cards, which is already common practice at the airport.

In the case of the pharmacies and birth-control or morning-after pills, women have a right to buy these things, just as I have a right to buy ammunition. Nevertheless, I can’t walk into any drugstore or sporting goods store and expect to find bullets. If a business-owner decides it is personally important not to offer something, it is his or her choice — and he or she can live with the business consequences if enough people choose to go elsewhere. Or the businessperson can hire some pharmacists who are willing to sell these items and some who won’t, or even decide to hire only pharmacists who will.

In the bus driver’s situation, allowing a reasonable accomodation to the person’s beliefs shouldn’t be that big of an issue, especially if the bus company decides that it is worth it in order to keep a skilled or experienced employee. For all I know, the same bus company may aleady allow Muslim drivers to take time out from their routes to pray at the prescribed times (though this seems difficult to work around). If the bus company doesn’t want to do these things, the drivers have a choice of what is more important as well.

I’ve had some experience with this type of situation myself. I once worked for a small advertising and promotion agency that landed a large account with a brewery. There was great rejoicing by the owners of the agency. It was also a great creative opportunity to do some high-profile work that would look good in a portfolio. I was asked to be the copywriter for the client’s main brands. This was an issue for me in that, while I’m not going to try and stop people from drinking, I believe it is wrong for me to encourage them to do so. At the same time, I had a young family to support. It wasn’t easy but I told the creative director that I couldn’t work on those brands. This was not well received because, after all, it was a “legal product.” I asked the CD how he’d feel about working on a cigarette account. It was then arranged that I would work instead on the non-alcoholic beer and bottled water brands for that account. Would I have quit my job of been fired if that hadn’t happened? Most likely. It wouldn’t have been a challenge I embraced, but I trust that God is my source and not the job I happen to hold. Others might have chosen differently, but that too is their choice.

While I may find situations where I am inconvenienced or offended by someone exercising their conscience, I am not going to try to ban it (this does not extend to someone who feels it is his religious duty to kill me, however). We all need to just deal with it; shop somewhere else, work somewhere else, we’ll find the place that makes us happy. There is nothing so intolerant as laws requiring “tolerance” as we’ve seen this week with certain groups advocating for an international law against criticizing global warming theories (this applies only to the global warming theories that agree that there is such a thing, that is).

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X-Men 3: The Last Stand is about to come out on DVD, which prompted this non-football-related thinking from ESPN’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback, Gregg Easterbrook:

Of course, one must suspend disbelief when it comes to superheroes. But what TMQ always wonders about X-Men, Superman, the Flash and the rest is: Where are the body organs that support their powers? I’m willing to believe a superhero can fly, but where is the organ that provides propulsion? Supposedly Earth’s yellow star activated in Kal-El powers that he would not have had under the red sun of Krypton. But still, some internal organ must produce the energy for his heat vision and the thrust for his flying and so on. In “Superman Returns,” Supe can even fly faster than light, a power he lacked in the comics; apparently some organ too small to even bulge under his skin propels him to warp speed. Really, there must be some physical point of origin for a superhero’s power. Storm must have a body organ that projects force fields that control weather. Iceman must have a body organ that can reduce temperature very rapidly, plus shed heat so Bobby doesn’t boil. Where in their physiques are these organs?

Beyond that, the X-Men premise defies scientific thinking about natural selection, which holds that new organs develop very slowly across hundreds of generations. Assume some body organ can allow Shadowcat to walk through walls or Colossus to change his skin to steel: it’s unimaginable such an organ could arise de novo in a single mutation. Many generations of relatively minor mutations would be required before a novel body organ could come into full functionality. Biologists from Richard Goldschmidt of the early 20th century to Stephen Jay Gould of the late 20th have speculated there is an as-yet-undiscovered natural mechanism that enables accelerated evolution. Otherwise it’s hard to imagine how creatures lived through long chains of generations with still-evolving incomplete organs, since incomplete organs should be a fitness disadvantage and thus render their possessors less likely to reproduce. Unless the X-Men are an argument for intelligent design! The intelligent-design crowd believes natural selection can produce minor alterations in existing forms but cannot produce new organs or new species; a higher intellect controls that. The sudden, drastic evolutionary jumps depicted in the X-Men movies and comics sure feel like intelligent design. In fact one of the most interesting X-Men, Nightcrawler, asserts that the very rapid evolution he and his friends experience could not occur naturally and must be the result of God intervening for reasons not yet known.

That’s an interesting point, especially for a football columnist. Personally, I favor something more like the Intelligent Design model, though evolution is clearly the model in the NFL. Think about it:

330-lb linemen with cat-quick reflexes: evolution.
260-lb tight ends with 4.5 speed in the forty: evolution.
The Cover Two defense to the Tampa Two defense: evolution.
The West Coast Offense to the Vikings offense: well, it sure as heck isn’t Intelligent Design!

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From Michelle Malkin: The above phrase in Arabic is “lan astaslem.” It means “I will not surrender/I will not submit.”

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Buck Sargent’s April 15 post at American Citizen Soldier, quotes Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman from his book, On Combat: The Psychology and Physiology of Deadly Conflict in War and Peace:

If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen: a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath — a wolf. But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? Then you are a sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero’s path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia, and walk out unscathed.

The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog. He looks a lot like the wolf. He has fangs and the capacity for violence. The difference, though, is that the sheepdog must not, cannot, and will not ever harm the sheep. Any sheepdog that intentionally harms the lowliest little lamb will be punished and removed. The world cannot work any other way, at least not in a representative democracy or a republic such as ours.

Still, the sheepdog disturbs the sheep. He is a constant reminder that there are wolves in the land. They would prefer that he didn’t tell them where to go, or give them traffic tickets, or stand at the ready in our airports in camouflage fatigues holding an M-16. The sheep would much rather have the sheepdog cash in his fangs, spray paint himself white, and go, “Baa.” Until the wolf shows up. Then the entire flock tries desperately to hide behind one lonely sheepdog.

Understand that there is nothing morally superior about being a sheepdog; it is just what you choose to be. Also understand that a sheepdog is a funny critter: He is always sniffing around out on the perimeter, checking the breeze, barking at things that go bump in the night, and yearning for a righteous battle.

Here is how the sheep and the sheepdog think differently. The sheep pretend the wolf will never come, but the sheepdog lives for that day. After the attacks on September 11, 2001, most of the sheep, that is, most citizens in America said, “Thank God I wasn’t on one of those planes.” The sheepdogs, the warriors, said, “Dear God, I wish I could have been on one of those planes. Maybe I could have made a difference.” When you are truly transformed into a warrior and have truly invested yourself into warriorhood, you want to be there. You want to be able to make a difference.

Buck goes on to describe how this description applies to the developing Iraqi army of motivated “sheepdogs.” The entire post, which includes several other riveting first-person vignettes from the streets of Mosul is well worth reading.

(HT: Technochitlins).

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Last weekend the animated sequel Ice Age 2 earned some $67 million more than another sequel that also debuted, Basic Instinct 2. Instinct director Paul Verhoeven claims that the lack of interest in the Sharon Stone vehicle is due to the puritanical, Christian attitude of the U.S. as exemplified by the current presidential administration.

Of course the paltry gross may just be because it’s a bad movie, but Verhoeven could be on to something. Consider that the much-acclaimed gay sheepherder movie “Brokeback Mountain” has grossed about $80 million in the 17 weeks its been out – roughly $10 million more than Ice Age 2 did in just its first weekend, and some $200 million behind what “The Chronicles of Narnia” has taken in during those same 17 weeks (source: Box Office Mojo). Is it merely a case of good vs. evil or silly triumphing over slutty, or is it something more? I haven’t seen either one of the movies, but let’s, er, go to the film and break it down to see which might get my $8:

• Ice Age 2 features cute prehistoric animals that make you care about what happens to them; Basic Instinct 2 features a Tyranosaurus Sex.
• In Ice Age 2, moviegoers wanted another chance to see Ray Romano as a woolly mammoth; In Basic Instinct 2 apparently few people want another chance to see Sharon Stone’s woolly.
  (See, Marty, I’m trying to be evil.)
• If you go to an Ice Age 2 kid’s matinee you leave feeling dirty because of what you just sat in, as opposed to feeling dirty because of what you just sat through.
• Ice Age 2 has animals that act almost human; Basic Instinct 2 has humans that act like animals.
• The actors in Ice Age 2 are cuter and more animated.

Sorry, Mr. Verhoeven, my money’s on the cartoon but good luck with your film. Perhaps you’ll sell more tickets in those Islamic countries.

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