Can't get away from the war. I've mostly stopped watching TV news because of it. It's hard to watch those "embedded" reporters going on and on with nothing to report on except "It's hot" or "It's cold" or "We got caught in a sandstorm". And I haven't seen any real news about the war in some time. Where is Saddam? Where are the weapons of mass destruction he was hiding? I don't expect (or want) to hear about troops movements, and I'm slightly surprised we aren't getting more actual news.

Then there's this other side. Salam Pax is gone. Perhaps he's dead. Perhaps he never really existed. We may never know. But there hasn't been a new post since the 24th of March. I hope that, if he is real, he's just lying low somewhere until this whole thing is over.

Another point of view came from a friend who visited on Monday. Her husband is in the Gulf. She had been given strict instructions to not reveal his location to ANYONE for security purposes, so she was more than a little surprised to see his unit on TV, with all that secure and secret information being given out by an embedded reporter. Both herself and her husband had serious doubts about the "justness" of the war, but her husband went to do his job anyway. As she told me, we may have our doubts about Bush's agenda, but how much harder must it be for a soldier with doubts to go and fight and possibly die for something they don't truly believe in? In any case, that had changed with her last letter from her husband. He was in Southern Iraq somewhere helping to distribute food and water, and the relief and thanks from the people made him, for the first time, feel good about what he was doing.

Then there are the pro-war "protesters". I see them every time I see anti-war folk. The pro-war folk hold up signs with a radio station's logo front and center, and around it are the words "Free Iraq" or something. It's hard to tell what they say. The radio station logo is so large, while the supposed message is so small. I can only wonder why they don't go make their own signs.

Many of the "No Iraq War" signs are changing, too, I notice. More people are holding up signs that say "Support Our Troops, Bring 'Em Home" instead.

I suspect most people who are opposed to the war are like me. I think we went in wrong, I think Bush is working very hard to make himself a war criminal in the eyes of most of the world, but I don't want our soldiers dying and hated. While I wish we could pull out, I'm realistic enough to know that we'd better finish what we started this time, or the consequences will be even worse for the citizens of Baghdad. I blame Bush Sr for this mess, for not finishing the job when he should have. That time we would have been completely justified in going against the UN. Because he didn't, because he stopped short, the Iraqis lived through twelve years of hell on Earth. But that doesn't make Bush Jr's little crusade right. The UN stopped us last time, the UN should have been the ones to go in. Jr Bush's determination to go in without them has only made a bad situation even worse, and painted the Americans as the bad guys, when the only bad guy should have been Saddam himself.

Bah. I'm getting myself depressed, and babbling on. Time to go finish getting ready for work.

Comments (2)

Good point, I think I like "to not hate" (or even "to not put down") better myself. I just copied and pasted and didn't really think about it too much.

David J | Email | Homepage | 04.03.03 - 9:28 am

I think the original title was intended to mean "celebrities in opposition to war" as the noun, but as it reads, it makes it sound like the title is for supporting the opposition to war. Since this is apparently meant for the pro-war crowd to read, that title will immediately put them off.

I still wonder if all the statements are true. They sound right, but I haven't gone to check on their veracity.

Tegan | 04.03.03 - 9:46 am

I don't expect anything from the Mariners this year. Heck, I've never expected anything except some good baseball. So, as I write these words, I've turned on the first M's game of the season and I'm about to watch it. I won't predict anything. I don't have any idea who will win. I think Oakland is favored, but then, they usually are.

First thought: The "Ichiro Shift" commercial is actually pretty funny. But I hate the new slogan. Man, I wish the game would start! Introductions and ads, ads and introductions.

Ah... Ichiro. He nearly makes the play. That was a lot closer than any other player in the league could have made it. Randy Winn gets a double... time for me to sit in front of the TV happily.

Bottom of the second. A woman came into the store today, and asked what the odds are of getting a hit in baseball, and what would be the best type of dice to use for a baseball game that her son, in 3rd grade, was designing. I said that the best hitters only hit 1/3 of the time, but for a game you want more hits or it gets really boring. You simply don't want a baseball board game to play like baseball. So she took a selection home so they could test which one worked best.

Ouch. An Oakland home run. Garcia was pitching well. He has this tendency to give up home runs, though, and this one was a two-run one. I hope the Seattle bullpen is strong this year.

Double ouch. This game is already gone sour for the M's. Not even the end of the second, and I'm already writing them off. Not a good sign (but a typical one for a pre-2001 Mariners fan). Ah well, I still love 'em.

Ah, the season's first loss! Well, there are worse things in the world, some of them going on right now. I'll take a home-team loss. Hopefully the next game will go better for them.

The Top 100 April Fools' Day Jokes. I'm disappointed that the Almost Live! Space Needle joke didn't make the list.

Smurfs: Hardcore courtesy of Pulse News. (full article is here)

It's been sad pickings this year, but the Pulse has certainly come through with some good ones. I particularly like the Neil Gaiman/Todd McFarlane team-up one, as the choice of book (Mr. District Attorney) is so perfect. Vertigo at 20 was amusing, but not as fun.

I was so inspired by the latest Secret Files that I decided to re-dedicate my website to Vulko! For those of you who don't know who Vulko is, he's the Atlantean advisor to Aquaman who first showed up in the Silver Age series. Vulko has been everything, including dead (so he fills all the requirements of a DC superhero). He's been the King of Atlantis, a regular scientist and scholar, a mid-wife (!), a general... you name it, he's been it in Atlantis. My new website has an overview of Vulko's life from his first appearance up to the Secret Files appearance.

Anyway, my new website is up, and I urge you to check it out and then let me know what you think of it. I'm sure you'll love it. I'm also sure it's the best Vulko fansite out there!

After checking my stats, it looks pretty clear that nobody has bought anything through my blog from Amazon.com. I'm not surprised, nor particularly disappointed. I am amused, but that's just because I'm in a good mood, I'm sure. A few people have clicked through, but nobody has ordered anything, which means I won't be able to get that Smallville CD I was thinking about ordering. Aw shucks.

Hubby-Eric, on the other hand, has had great success with his bookshop. Someone even bought a computer through his website, which gave him $10 in credit (the maximum allowed). Maybe I can get him to order the CD for me...

Tomorrow is the most dangerous day of the year on the internet. The problem is that many people don't understand this whole "April Fools' Day" thing, and that some people take far too much glee in it. While it's true that the absolute best April Fools' Day joke is one that seems completely true until the last line, it's also true that too many people nowadays don't bother to read all the way to the last line.

And then there are people who don't realize that you have to put something in the joke to make it clear to any attentive person that it's actually a joke. While an emphasis on the date is good, it's often not enough. Too many jokes are far too believable, and get reported as truth because the zinger isn't in the joke itself.

As a reader, I take everything I see first reported on April 1st as a joke until I see independent confirmation on other days. It's the only way to survive the most dangerous day of the year on the internet. As a website designer, my April Fools' Day jokes tend to be pretty obvious, with the hope of raising a chuckle in my readers instead of springing a "Gotcha!" on them.

Now that I've actually got my bookshop up and running, I thought it might be fun to promote some of the cool books I'm putting in the shop (if nothing else it ought to get me to write up notes about the books on the shop page). If you choose to buy this book through the link to Amazon I provide, I'll get a tiny percentage in the form of credit. If you don't choose to buy it that way, I urge you to check it out anyway, because these are NEAT books.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

This book has gotten a lot of well-deserved attention for its re-creation of the Golden Age era of comic books. It's a great story of how two cousins break into the business of creating comic books. One to escape his boring life, and the other to escape his own past and continuing sense of helplessness. The occasional aside to the reader tells you what the piece the boys are working on today is worth in the current market, just to lend a strange sense of reality to the book. And the ending, while not completely satisfying, is certainly appropriate to this kind of book.

If you like the Golden Age comics, do yourself a favor and pick this novel up.

Welcome to my second installment of my theology class. If you haven't read the first one, please go back and read it, or at least the first couple of paragraphs before moving on.

Today's wanderings are about Mormonism, and what it is. It's very strange, but a lot of people seem to think it's a cult and that it's not Christian. They are wrong on both counts, but it's funny to watch them delude themselves for no apparent reason. What do people gain by attacking a religion they don't belong to or understand?

I've read a bunch of the anti-Mormon books. They make for interesting reading if you know anything at all about Mormonism, as they are so obviously wrong and poorly argued that you wonder what editor let them by. I seem to recall one guy who argued that Mormonism was a cult, but every single critera he used to "prove" his point was also true of both early Christianity and the current Catholic Church. His definition was so broad it fit his own religion, and he didn't seem to notice.

However, that's off the track. I'd rather not waste time making fun of those guys, but it is important, I think, to mention that I've read many of those books. I'm familiar with their arguments, and rejected them in my own personal quest for The Truth.

Mormons are Christians. They believe that the only way to Heaven is through belief in Jesus Christ. That is the definition of Christian. If you want to create some more narrow definition of Christian, you are perfectly welcome to, but you will only make yourself look stupid by doing so. Christians are people who believe that salvation comes through Jesus Christ. Therefore, Mormons are Christians.

Mormons do not consider themselves Protestant. They did not arise out of the Protestant movement, but instead are a restoration of the church as Jesus Christ meant it to be. Yeah, that's in some ways the very definition of what a Protestant is, but Mormons believe that their religion is the true restoration, as prophecied in several bits of scripture.

The name "Mormon" comes from an extra bit of scripture that the Church has. The Bible is the first and most important scripture to the Church, but a second scripture called "The Book of Mormon" (after an ancient editor) is used as another testament of Jesus Christ. Originally the name Mormon was a derisive insult, but in true American fashion the Church members shrugged and took the name for themselves.

The Book of Mormon is an interesting piece of history. According to the book itself, it was written by a series of authors, starting with Nephi, who lived in Jerusalem with his family. Nephi's father started having visions of Jerusalem's destruction in the near future (this was about 600 BC) and took his family out into the wilderness, and eventually over to the Americas. Various descendants wrote in the book, which was written on metal plates to preserve the words for a long time, until a small compilation of the best bits (gathered by Mormon and his son) were buried in a hill far North of the troubles of the time.

In 1823, after reading a verse of the Bible, an ignorant farm boy prayed to God to know which church he should join, and got a rather unexpected answer in the form of a divine visitation. Eventually, he got possession of the long buried plates, and translated them with some divine help. The result became The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ.

Now regardless of what you think about the previous two paragraphs, remember that an international church has arisen from the belief that it is true, and that I, personally, believe it. But then, if a person can believe that God or his son was born of a virgin some 2000 years ago, believing that his true church was restored through the faith of an ignorant farmboy some 180 years ago shouldn't be that much of a stretch.

Comments (2)

Hey, you'll get no Mormon-bashing from me! I worked with a fellow for several years who was a devout Mormon, and we used to get in all sorts of theological discussions. He gave me a Book of Mormon once, and I read parts of it–if nothing else, so I could have intelligent discussions with him.

When it comes to religion, though, I'm afraid most of it sounds like wishful thinking to me. I'm still waiting for something to come along and convince me otherwise...

David J | Email | Homepage | 03.31.03 - 8:12 am

That's one of the small problems I have with religion. It sounds like a wonderful fantasy. How do I know it's true? I don't, of course. It's that whole faith thing. I tend to subscribe to the "Praise God and Keep Your Powder Dry" philosophy of religion. God is out there, but why should he help us if we aren't helping ourselves? Faith in God is great, reliance on God is wrong.

Maybe I should make that aspect of religion the topic of my next Theology Class posting. There's a lot of ground to cover there.

Tegan | 03.31.03 - 8:36 am