What I’m reading: I finished Endless Things
What I’m listening to: Boxer
What I’m watching: Sumo marathon on ESPN Classic.
What I’m drinking: An awful lot of Hendrick’s G&Ts; that’s trade show life for ya!
Where I’m going: Nowhere. In fact, I’ll probably be working at home much of the week.
What I’m happy about: That my flight home from San Diego was only 40 minutes late. Oh, and that my wife and my dog were waiting both for me at the top of the stairs when I walked in the door at 1:45am on Saturday.
What I’m sad about: George Carlin died last night.
What I’m pondering: Which of my neighbors left a Jack Chick tract in my mailbox entitled, Love the Jewish People. Don’t get me wrong; it’s pretty awesome, even if it doesn’t reach the heights of Dark Dungeons. That’s the problem the history-oriented tracts have when they match up with the comic-narrative ones. Of course, this was the all-time awesomest. (I’m pretty sure I know which neighbor it was.)
yeah, no mystery on that last one.
Love the Jews – or else you will be destroyed or made irrelevant… Just the kind of loving, inclusive, non-coercive message I think Christ would have wanted perpetuated. Honestly, the weirdness of the zealous Zionism of the Christian fundamentalists still baffles me, even if I grasp the theo-politics of it.
Now, let me get back to my progressive liberal Episcopalian dismantling of society as we know it by supporting gay marriage, the heretical ordination of women, and the vulnerable and disenfranchised people of the world – so un-American!!
My favorites are when they rail against drugs or rock music or something that Jack Chick just doesn’t quite “get”. Agreed that the history ones are hard to read sometimes. You might dig this: http://www.316now.com has 11 short films based on actual Jack Chick tracts. There is an animated “This Was Your Life” that you might dig, plus some live action adaptations as well. Check it out.
George Carlin died and I didn’t see a word … must’ve happened on the weekend when I have no internet access. I’m going to have to go out and buy some of his albums now. Coincidentally, James Wilde–a Time magazine reporter for some 30 years and a distant relative of Oscar–died June 18th in New york although he lived here in Istanbul for many years. He loved writing poetry and devoted himself to it after he retired from Time, but the stories he knew …! The dozens of African wars he covered that no one ever heard of but that helped unhinge him and drove him to drink himself into rehab (he told some hair-raising stories of Vietnam as well) … I am thinking of them both because they’re both gone now and suddenly everything they made–albums, books of poetry–are more valuable. Honestly, I wish I had spent more time with James when he was still among the living. There will be a memorial service here in istanbul at the Crimean Church if anyone happens to be in the area …