Category Archives: Culture Nights

Sweet dreams are made of this

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by the Night Writer

I don’t think I’ve ever written much about “sexy” on this blog, but I’ll tell you now that when it comes to music I think Annie Lennox’s voice is the sexiest I’ve ever heard on a recording. She could generate chemistry by singing the elemental tables, and she could sing the telephone book to me and I’d listen just for the chance that I’d hear my name from her lips. While I think she’s attractive in her way (she’s always had a great face for videos), physically she doesn’t turn my head the way her voice does. I don’t know what it is exactly about her voice but ever since the Eurythmics days I’ve found it mesmerizing.

I read today that her latest album (and her final one with Sony after 30 years) released this week. It’s entitled “The Annie Lennox Collection” and features the best cuts from her solo career, including covers of “A Whiter Shade of Pale” and Ash’s “Shining Star”. A noticeable omission from the collection is her Oscar-winning “Into the West” that struck the perfect note at the end of “The Return of the King” conclusion to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I’ve already got that song from iTunes, so I’ll likely download the new album and add it to the collection.

One of the interesting things from the story today is that Lennox is an avid blogger, embracing the internet as a musician and a writer. She posts every couple of days and has a nice, direct style, though I suspect she and I might not share the same politics.

Hmmm, perhaps if she were to podcast ….

Oh, well, the new album includes her hit “Walking on Broken Glass”; here’s a link to original video of the song, a “Dangerous Liaisons” take-off featuring John Malkovich and Hugh “House” Laurie. Very amusing.

A way of the gun

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I sat on the edge of the bed and looked down at the gun in my right hand. It was black, with a dull gleam, a scent of oil and cordite. It wasn’t beautiful, it wasn’t ugly, it didn’t look like anything other than what it was…functional — and with a very specific function.

“My God,” I thought, “what have I done?”

A Poem for “Choice”

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I came across this poem in time for “Blogs for Choice Day” today:



Middle-Age

by Pat Schneider



The child you think you don’t want

is the one who will make you laugh.

She will break your heart

when she loses the sight in one eye

and tells the doctor she wants to be

an apple tree when she grows up.



It will be this child who forgives you

again and again

for believing you don’t want her to be born,

for resisting the rising tide of your body,

for wishing for the red flow of her dismissal.

She will even forgive you for all the breakfasts

you failed to make exceptional.



Someday this child will sit beside you.

When you are old and too tired of war

to want to watch the evening news,

she will tell you stories

like the one about her teenaged brother,

your son, and his friends

taking her out in a canoe when she was

five years old. How they left her alone

on an island in the river

while they jumped off the railroad bridge.



“Middle-Age” by Pat Schneider, from Another River: New and Selected Poems. © Amherst Writers and Artists Press, 2005.




Atlas shrugged, and smiled a knowing smile

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I was talking to my sister-in-law the other day and she said her husband, who’s been at his job for more than 20 years, has been bumped back to the night shift by someone with even more seniority. “I’m trying to keep a good attitude about it,” she said, “because, after all, at least it’s a job.”

“You’re right,” I replied. “Jobs are important; only 9 out of 10 Americans have one.”

All right, I can be an incorrigible smart ass, especially around family, and that’s a trait that has barely mellowed over the years. Even I’ll acknowledge, however, the gathering economic storm building overhead as if the country were one large trailer park. My sense is that things are going to get worse before they get better and that this is no mere hiccup but more like a full-on bulimic purge. To keep mixing my metaphors, Dylan once said “You don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” and my “forecast” doesn’t require a special degree or even a Doppler. In fact, if you’d spent time in college reading “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand you could probably do the same. As the current winds increase it might be interesting, if not all that helpful at this point, to head for the basement with a copy of her book.

Stephen Moore made a similar point last week in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Atlas Shrugged: From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years”. In it he points out frightening prescience of this all-time classic.

For the uninitiated, the moral of the story is simply this: Politicians invariably respond to crises — that in most cases they themselves created — by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs . . . and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism.

In the book, these relentless wealth redistributionists and their programs are disparaged as “the looters and their laws.” Every new act of government futility and stupidity carries with it a benevolent-sounding title. These include the “Anti-Greed Act” to redistribute income (sounds like Charlie Rangel’s promises soak-the-rich tax bill) and the “Equalization of Opportunity Act” to prevent people from starting more than one business (to give other people a chance). My personal favorite, the “Anti Dog-Eat-Dog Act,” aims to restrict cut-throat competition between firms and thus slow the wave of business bankruptcies. Why didn’t Hank Paulson think of that?

These acts and edicts sound farcical, yes, but no more so than the actual events in Washington, circa 2008. We already have been served up the $700 billion “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act” and the “Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act.” Now that Barack Obama is in town, he will soon sign into law with great urgency the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.” This latest Hail Mary pass will increase the federal budget (which has already expanded by $1.5 trillion in eight years under George Bush) by an additional $1 trillion — in roughly his first 100 days in office.

The current economic strategy is right out of “Atlas Shrugged”: The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you. That’s the justification for the $2 trillion of subsidies doled out already to keep afloat distressed insurance companies, banks, Wall Street investment houses, and auto companies — while standing next in line for their share of the booty are real-estate developers, the steel industry, chemical companies, airlines, ethanol producers, construction firms and even catfish farmers. With each successive bailout to “calm the markets,” another trillion of national wealth is subsequently lost. Yet, as “Atlas” grimly foretold, we now treat the incompetent who wreck their companies as victims, while those resourceful business owners who manage to make a profit are portrayed as recipients of illegitimate “windfalls.”

I’ve been thinking about re-reading the book, especially since I’m sure I’ll understand it a lot more than I did 30-some years ago, but I’m concerned that I’ll get too angry (again) over the treatment of the individual in the story … and by the creeping sense that there’s nothing one can do to keep it from happening in real life. Of course, in the book, one man — the right man — can make a difference.

Ultimately, “Atlas Shrugged” is a celebration of the entrepreneur, the risk taker and the cultivator of wealth through human intellect. Critics dismissed the novel as simple-minded, and even some of Rand’s political admirers complained that she lacked compassion. Yet one pertinent warning resounds throughout the book: When profits and wealth and creativity are denigrated in society, they start to disappear — leaving everyone the poorer.

One memorable moment in “Atlas” occurs near the very end, when the economy has been rendered comatose by all the great economic minds in Washington. Finally, and out of desperation, the politicians come to the heroic businessman John Galt (who has resisted their assault on capitalism) and beg him to help them get the economy back on track. The discussion sounds much like what would happen today:

Galt: “You want me to be Economic Dictator?”

Mr. Thompson: “Yes!”

“And you’ll obey any order I give?”

“Implicitly!”

“Then start by abolishing all income taxes.”

“Oh no!” screamed Mr. Thompson, leaping to his feet. “We couldn’t do that . . . How would we pay government employees?”

“Fire your government employees.”

“Oh, no!”

Abolishing the income tax. Now that really would be a genuine economic stimulus. But Mr. Obama and the Democrats in Washington want to do the opposite: to raise the income tax “for purposes of fairness” as Barack Obama puts it.

David Kelley, the president of the Atlas Society, which is dedicated to promoting Rand’s ideas, explains that “the older the book gets, the more timely its message.” He tells me that there are plans to make “Atlas Shrugged” into a major motion picture [A younger Glenn Close would make a dynamite Dagny Taggart, IMHO. NW.] — it is the only classic novel of recent decades that was never made into a movie. “We don’t need to make a movie out of the book,” Mr. Kelley jokes. “We are living it right now.”

Ozymandias Shrugged

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Back when Dennis Miller was one of the undefined on Monday Night Football, ABC found it necessary after games to post explanations of the eclectic comedian’s erudite references on the MNF website. I was reminded of this after yesterday’s Day by Day cartoon featured a lonely statue of Al Gore in a snowy wasteland, with the words etched on the pedestal mostly obscured by snow drifts. Nevertheless, the words that were visible may have rang a bell in a seldom-used hallway of my mind. Ah, yes … Shelley’s “Ozymandius”, the sonnet dedicated to the hubris of Man, though Ozymandius’s statue was located in a desert waste instead of a snowy one. Oh well, with a high temperature forecast for tomorrow of -2F here in Minnesota, the comic gave me a warm feeling.

Here’s the unobscured text of “Ozymandius”:

Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my works. Ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

For your pleasure

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An interesting excerpt from the foreward of the book Amusing Ourselves To Death.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions”. In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

This hits on part of what I was getting at in my post earlier this month Just Desserts in an Appetizer World.

HT: TechnoChitlins, via American Digest.

Just desserts in an appetizer world

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For the world offers only the lust
for physical pleasure,
the lust for everything we see,
and pride in our possessions.
These are not from the Father.
They are from this evil world.
(1 John 2:16, NLT)

Earlier this month I happened across an article about a study looking at the impact the media has on health. The study was actually a consolidation of some 173 different research projects over the past 28 years that looked at lifestyle links to bad health in children and adolescents.

Media Bombardment Is Linked To Ill Effects During Childhood
Washington Post
December 02, 2008

In a detailed look at nearly 30 years of research on how television, music, movies and other media affect the lives of children and adolescents, a new study released today found an array of negative health effects linked to greater use.

The report found strong connections between media exposure and problems of childhood obesity and tobacco use. Nearly as strong was the link to early sexual behavior.

Researchers from the National Institutes of Health and Yale University said they were surprised that so many studies pointed in the same direction. In all, 173 research efforts, going back to 1980, were analyzed, rated and brought together in what the researchers said was the first comprehensive view of the topic. About 80 percent of the studies showed a link between a negative health outcome and media hours or content.
…
The average modern child spends nearly 45 hours a week with television, movies, magazines, music, the Internet, cellphones and video games, the study reported. By comparison, children spend 17 hours a week with their parents on average and 30 hours a week in school, the study said.

While the study was looking exclusively at children, this isn’t a problem exclusive to children, of course. The appeal of media is entertainment; entertainment attracts eyes and whatever attracts eyes is going to attract advertising, and advertising deliberately sets out to stoke our appetite for what feels good or looks good or that we absolutely have to have. And ever since Eve first cast eyes on that juicy apple our appetites have gotten us into trouble. There’s even an old saying about one’s eyes being bigger than his stomach, referring to someone who has bitten off more than he can chew, or has more on his plate than he can digest.

It is not an uncommon failing that our lust often outpaces our wisdom, which tags along behind like a troublesome little brother shouting, “Hey, wait up!” or perhaps like Boo-Boo timidly suggesting, “The Ranger isn’t going to like that, Yogi,” as our hero launches into another misadventure in quest of a “pick-a-nic basket!” Jane Austen would not be dismayed today to learn that “Sense” still outpaces “Sensibility”.

I’m not talking just about food, either. There’s hardly a “crisis” in our society today not caused by our unchecked appetites. We have an increasingly obese population packing on pounds as we pound down the pomme frites (believe me, I know whereof I speak); we over-extend ourselves financially choosing rewards over reason, all as the rate of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) goes up every year while the supposed adults shrug their shoulders and say, “What are you gonna do?”

Now you didn’t need me to point out those things in the previous paragraphs, or to suggest that something’s just not right. We all “know better”, yet things always seem to get out of hand. Why? Because we’re living in an appetizer world and all too often wind up with our just desserts.

We like to think we’re sophisticated and impervious to the countless advertisments bombarding us everyday, yet this is the air we breathe and the water we swim in. Most of the media messages we see, and almost all of the advertising, is in one or more quadrants of the “You know you want it/gotta have it/deserve it/you can get it easy” matrix, driving a nearly insatiable hunger that goes beyond mere calories, rendering restraint as something quaint and to be ridiculed.

Well, self-restraint, anyway. External restraints are all the rage today as those who would scoff and say abstinence is unnatural and impossible will turn around in the next vote in the legislature and ban smoking and then cast their eyes on the grease merchants. Self-government is the highest and purest form of government and the hardest to achieve because it threatens all other forms of government and these fight back and they play for keeps.

Those who would seek dominion over us will tell us to have sex with whoever, whenever and however but we can’t be trusted with what we put in our bodies or how we spend our money and everyday “we” prove them right in our greed and excess because everyone else is doing it. Conservatives like to say that the government should learn to live within its means like the average family does, but how can that be when the average family itself is over-leveraged? I heard a speaker say recently that people aren’t using credit now for luxuries or splurges but to cover the bills for the necessities.

If we don’t govern ourselves someone else will be glad to do it and even be embraced for it, at least initially. Why is there always so much interest in the latest diet? Because we all want an easier way to lose weight other than eating less and exercising more and hope springs eternal that some outside agency, or eating plan, will come in with its rules and make us thinner or better over night. The mortgage crisis was created by programs that portrayed home values as a Big Rock Candy Mountain of paradise and finance as being nothing but whip cream and bon-bons — and then Hansel and Gretel are shocked when they wind up with a tummy-ache and find out they’re trapped. Then the government steps in and says, “Oh, you foolish children, look what I have to clean up” and we bob our heads sheepishly and say, “Yes, Mum” without asking who set the table in the first place.

The government is now our financial diet plan but rather than trying to restrict our intake it seeks to pour more money into the candy store, hoping that it is a rising tide that will lift all boats when in fact it is a a rising tide of obligation that levels, rather than lifts, all debts. The water rises but now all of us will be up to our necks.

Name your price

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“Right is still right, even if nobody is doing it. Wrong is still wrong, even if everybody is doing it.”
–- St. Augustine

Tuesday’s post about the role and necessity of hope reminded me of something I wrote way back in the early days of this blog about having integrity. Having hope is an important part of being a person of character and integrity because it gives you a vision for the future and a picture of what you want to be like. One of the reasons that hopelessness, on the other hand, removes moral restraint is because a fatalistic outlook sees no benefit in the present for not taking the easiest path or pursuing the most gratifying action.

In my old post I used the story of a man I knew of whose hope — and integrity — didn’t fail him in a time of great stress. It’s a great illustration of how doing the right thing can not only bring peace but triumph and I hope it is an encouragement for all who read it. Here’s the main part of the original piece:

Have you ever struggled to do the right thing on your job or in your business while it seemed like everyone else was getting ahead doing the wrong thing?

Several years ago I talked at length with a man by the name of Ronnie Carroll who had an amazing story. In the late ’80s Ronnie owned a satellite TV dealership in Tallahassee, FL. This is a great business to be in in that part of Florida because it is almost impossible to get TV reception there unless you have a dish.

Ronnie was having a tough time, however, because he was the only dealer in the area who refused to sell illegal decoders that allowed folks to unscramble HBO and the like without having to pay a fee. His potential customers would hear his policy and go on down the road and buy their equipment from a dealer that would also sell them the pirate decoders.

For months Ronnie watched business go out the door. He eventually had to close his shop and try to operate his business from his home. Ronnie prayed throughout the winter, asking God to “judge his cause” and seeking direction on whether he should find another line of business.

That spring a couple of gentlemen from the FCC showed up at Ronnie’s door. They said that Washington had made it a priority to crack down on illegal decoders and they were starting in his area. Their investigation had already shown that Ronnie was the only dealer in the area who wasn’t selling the devices and they wanted him to be in charge of collecting the pirate decoders. All dish owners were being told they had a 30-day grace period to turn in their outlaw decoders and pay Ronnie a $300 “disposal fee” or face prosecution. Simultaneously many of his one-time competitors were facing prosecution themselves and were going to find it hard to stay in business.

It also turned out that the company that made the bootleg devices also made legal decoders. Since the dishes wouldn’t work without some kind of decoder the FCC required the manufacturer to provide Ronnie with a line of credit to buy legal decoders to sell to the people turning in their outlaw equipment.

“Overnight,” Ronnie said, “I suddenly had people crammed in my living room and lined up down my driveway to turn in their devices and buy new decoders and subscriptions. There were judges, lawyers and police officers in line. I bought a sign that said, ‘As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord,’ and put it by my front door.” Immediately Ronnie’s business went from barely surviving to grossing more than $80,000 a month. Several newspapers and television stations interviewed him and he shared his story with all he talked to. When I last talked to him years ago his business was still thriving.

One moral to this story is that God doesn’t move quickly: He moves suddenly. It may not look like anything is going on, but His blessing is already on the way and in one moment to the next everything can change. Heaven forbid that the moment right before that is when we give in. When the FCC rang Ronnie’s doorbell he no doubt thought it was a bill collector, and not the answer to his prayers. We need to expect God’s faithfulness, and don’t let our actions or attitudes succumb to what appears to be reality.

What is the price you put on your honesty and integrity? Will you sell it – like Esau – for some piddling and short-term gain? We live in a world full of hustlers, always trying to shade themselves a little edge here and there. The dismaying thing to me is not that this happens, but for what little amounts people are willing to trade their name and integrity. The thing about a path that is straight and narrow is that there are no corners we can cut and still stay on it.

Proverbs 22:1 says, “A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold.” Temptation is always around to provide opportunity and justification; when exposed to the light, however, these justifications are shown to be flimsy and selfish. Likewise, we may not see the true value of our reputation until we ourselves are exposed, and by then it’s too late. What we get never seems equal to what we give up. Indeed, it is “too late” the moment we cheat, not the moment we get caught.

Integrity is not something that can be taken away from us -– we can only give it away. We need to be careful that in our efforts to make a name for ourselves that we don’t end up giving that name away.

What a Dad’s to do

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by the Night Writer

When my oldest daughter was born, nigh on 20 years ago, they put that tiny little bundle in my arms — arms that had, just a few hours earlier, been lifting furniture and heavy equipment in the delivery room as I tried to vent my anxiety and frustration. The contrast between the weight of those items and her seven measly pounds belied the heavy but invisible mantle that had just been laid across my shoulders.

Our pastor knocked and came into the room about that time and I turned my daughter toward him and said, “Now Faith is” — as in “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1). Our little miracle baby, Faith Christine, was amongst us and I had just taken up my first watch.

I thought of this the other day as Ben made his case for how much he admired Faith and, in exchange for my blessing, gave his personal promise to safeguard her heart and well-being, to support her physically, emotionally and spiritually, and to raise my grandchildren in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

I know there are a few people — well, probably many — who question the need or propriety of a would-be husband these days asking his prospective father-in-law for the daughter’s hand in marriage. “Women aren’t chattel to be passed from one patriarch to another!”, or “Doesn’t she have a say in the matter?”, or “What right does Dad have to get in-between young lovers?” Some of the more perceptive might even ask, “Why isn’t he asking both the father and the mother?”

To me it’s all part and parcel of a culture that has grown accustomed to demeaning and diminishing the role of parents, going back to the days when we started saying “Don’t trust anyone over 30,” the presentation of adults (especially dads) as dolts on “family” sit-coms and the cultural and educational conceit that young people are wiser and more informed about “how things really are” than those stick-in-the-mud old folks. As a result we miss, or become uncertain about, certain nuances.

Now, I enjoy playing the role of patriarch and benevolent dictator, but that is because I take it seriously and have not shirked the robe that comes with it. It fits. I have not viewed my daughters as my property to be maximized for the greatest return on investment, or as servants and dependents sent for my own amusement. My wife and I have always realized that we were not owners, but stewards, of what we were entrusted with and we structured our lives and our daughters’ with an eye to providing the things that prepare them for long-term happiness (especially how they can get this themselves), even if it involved some not-so-happy decisions.

I have to say we are well-pleased with the results to date. Yes, Faith is well able to direct her own life, but every woman needs a man in her life who knows her value and is willing to sacrifice for her well-being. Before I cede that position to another I want to be darn sure he knows what is expected.

Ben may not be perfect (he’s got some dents where the University of Hard Knocks has deposited wisdom), but the situation has been nearly ideal. They’ve known each other for almost three years and have progressed gradually from acquaintance to friendship to courtship and now engagement. While they have not been physical, they have been intimate, taking the opportunity to really know each other and weigh their respective characters. Similarly, our family has had the same amount of time (actually, longer) to get to know Ben and make our own evaluation. This isn’t some shaggy freak Faith has drug home from a concert and asked if she can keep him.

So, while my stewardship is not yet finished, its days are clearly numbered. The promised land my daughter and I have been preparing for for so many years is at last on the horizon though, like Moses, I will not cross with her. She will always be my daughter, but then I will have something even better. A friend.

Two, actually.

Man(ival), what a week

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I was too busy vacationing last week to contribute an entry to this week’s Manival, and I’ve been so busy with other things this week that I’m a little slow in calling your attention to this week’s host, I Am Husband. If you’ll go over there you’ll see that the carnival is doing quite well without this clown (me). There are several fresh posts from some of my new favorite bloggers, plus nice work from some new contributors.

Of course my attention is going to be drawn to a post entitled “Why My House is a Diva-Dome” by Dad of Divas. He writes authoritatively, but his daughters are much younger than mine so he has little idea of what’s coming. I could tell him (or he could read about it here) but why spoil the fun? I’ll also second the recommendation from this week’s host that you read the “Real Men Dote” (@ Trey Morgan)and “What Dads Really Think About Porn” (@ Discovering Dad). There’s lots of other good stuff as well about Marriage & Family, The Character of a Man, House and Home and other Miscellaneous Manliness (including another funny trip to Dr. Awesome’s mail bag.) Dude, check ’em all out.