The Invisible Library

The Guardian has an extract from How To Be Idle by Tom Hodgkinson:

For all modern society’s promises of leisure, liberty and doing what you want, most of us are still slaves to a schedule we did not choose. Why have things come to such a pass? Well, the forces of the anti-idle have been at work since the fall of man. The propaganda against oversleeping goes back a very long way, more than 2,000 years, to the Bible. Here is Proverbs, chapter 6, on the subject:

Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:
Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler,
Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.

(I would question the sanity of a religion that holds up the ant as an example of how to live. The ant system is an exploitative aristocracy based on the unthinking toil of millions of workers and the complete inactivity of a single queen and a handful of drones.)

Christianity has promoted bed-guilt ever since. This passage from the Bible is used as a bludgeon by moralists, capitalists and bureaucrats in order to impose upon the people the notion that God hates it when you get up late. It suits the lust for order that characterises the non-idler.

He goes on to sing the praises of being idle, a past time I’m quickly coming to enjoy more and more myself. Currently, I’m housesitting for my aunt and Uncle. Their place is in a festering little suburb and for the last two days, I’ve been lamenting the fact that I’m a good half hour’s drive (at least) from anything to do. Reading this excerpt however, has made me realise that I’ve got my head all turned around. I blame Grad school which has once again brainwashed me into believing that I should be productive all the time. I should enjoy myself while I have peace and quiet, before school starts up again in three weeks. Maybe I’ll lay around and watch a movie, or write a nit. Or perhaps I’ll simply do nothing at all.

Thaks to Chris at CT for the link.

I don’t know if it’s just me being a big ol’ film geek or if everyone does this but I dream up ways to improve the plots of movies that have a good premis but are poorly executed. Seeing as how I have rather eccentric tastes, I hardly expect everyone to agree with some of my ideas, and I’m no longer young enough or ambitious enough to believe I’ll ever get anyone in Hollywood to pay attention to the ways that they could improve their storytelling abilities. But hay, this is my blog and so I get to write whatever the hell I want.

To this end, I’m starting what will very likely be an ongoing, if somewhat sporadic, series in which I detail the alternate/revised plot outlines for movies I’d love to see, but don’t expect to ever be made.

This post got away from me so I put the rest of it up on the Story Time page.

Fred over at Slacktivist has been dutifully dissecting the Left Behind series and postulates an interesting concept that I have often pondered myself:

Despite the book’s intended PMD premise, I still haven’t ruled out the space alien theory. I’m not thinking of the almond-eyed grays of Close Encounters, but of the powerful creature in Star Trek V who masquerades as God.

[edit]

Such a malevolent alien creature, one vastly more powerful and intelligent than us, wouldn’t have much trouble performing enough “miraculous” signs to convince us it was divine. Those who believe that omnipotence is God’s only significant characteristic would be especially susceptible to such a ruse.

Imagine that such a creature has been listening in on the radio signals beaming out into space from our little planet. For decades, those signals have included the prophecy babble of PMD radio preachers like LaHaye and Harold Camping. The creature realizes it has been given a step-by-step blueprint for how to steal away all of Earth’s children for use as slaves in some nefarious intergalactic plot…

The evil alien posing as God is a far more interesting story, one I’ve pondered writing myself. It contains an intriguing philosophical problem: What would the world be like if the Bible were literally true? What would be the psychological effects of living in a society like ours, that is full of so much “Biblical Sin”, to suddenly be confronted by a wrathful bearded figure with a host of killer angels at his disposal? How would it feel to live your life knowing that this same bearded control freak was watching everyone, all the time? Which made me realize just now that the world of the Biblical Literalist very closely resembles 1984 just with a a thin veneer of metaphysics.

In fact, such a hypothetical world would be worse than Oceania under Big Brother. Winston and Julia can at least entertain the fantasy, for a little while, that there is a place where Big Brother cannot see. In the world of LB, no such fantasy can be entertained. We all know that God is watching all the time, everywhere. It says so in the Bible. And that the smallest transgression of his neigh whimsical law would bring fireballs and plagues of locusts and Killer Angels to our doorstep.

I find it odd that so many Evangelicals fervently wish for this Biblical Tyranny, since that’s what the Second Coming amounts to in PMD theology: 1000 years of Jesus in Jack Boots. A world where the mere thought of masturbating brings the flaming sword to bear witness to your physical damnation.

Of course, in my version of the story, there is a small band of Atheists who decide to sneak into heaven and kill God, freeing humanity from his despotic rule. They would have to contend not just with hoards of Killer Angels, but also blinkered Evangelicals who want the sadism of this world to remain, so they can watch with glee as their neighbors and relations are charbroiled alive for eating shrimp.

Bruce Springsteen has an OpEd at the Times:

Personally, for the last 25 years I have always stayed one step away from partisan politics. Instead, I have been partisan about a set of ideals: economic justice, civil rights, a humane foreign policy, freedom and a decent life for all of our citizens. This year, however, for many of us the stakes have risen too high to sit this election out.

Through my work, I’ve always tried to ask hard questions. Why is it that the wealthiest nation in the world finds it so hard to keep its promise and faith with its weakest citizens? Why do we continue to find it so difficult to see beyond the veil of race? How do we conduct ourselves during difficult times without killing the things we hold dear? Why does the fulfillment of our promise as a people always seem to be just within grasp yet forever out of reach?

I don’t think John Kerry and John Edwards have all the answers. I do believe they are sincerely interested in asking the right questions and working their way toward honest solutions. They understand that we need an administration that places a priority on fairness, curiosity, openness, humility, concern for all America’s citizens, courage and faith.

Julius draws us a little picture of just how the Bush administration has been using terror alerts to distract the public from news that reflects badly on them. It’s a big picture, because they’ve been doing it for more than two and a half years.

While the Alamo is the most famous mission in San Antonio, it is not the only one. There are four others, Mission Concepcion, Mission San Jose, Mission San Juan, Mission Espada. The missions follow roughly the path of the Rio Grande, from the middle of downtown San Antonio, all the way out to the countryside. Just beyond the missions there is an old railroad track.

Legend has it that one night, a school bus returning from a field trip stalled on the tracks. No one was around to hear the children calling for help as the train approached, unaware. Ever since then, any car that stalls neer the railroad tracks will be pushed to safety. You don’t even have to be in any danger for this to happen and often times, people will come out to the Ghost Tracks, put their car or truck in neutral and enjoy the ride over the tracks and down the embankment.

While I was in SA this past week, my wife and her parents took me to experience the Ghost Tracks. We drove up to the tracks, put the car in neutral and almost immediately, felt ourselves moving forward. we rattled over the tracks and dad steered us down the slope and off to the side of the road. we tried this several times, in various combinations: engine on, in neutral, engine off in neutral, close to the tracks far away from the tracks; once we were about three hundred feet from the tracks and still we were pushed to safety.

While we were there, another family drove up in a pickup truck. They were there to give some visiting relatives a thrill as well, which made us feel better. Camaraderie in silliness is always reassuring. They, however, came prepared with a sack of flower.

Part of the legend says that is you dust the trunk or tail gate of your vehicle with flour or baby powder. you can see small handprints appear after you’re pushed across the tracks. so they did and my wife, had her camera handy, so we could photograph the evidence.

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned on this blog how much I enjoy the Amazon Customer Reviews. They are some of the most amusing writing around. Often, I’ll spend an hour or two at work just cruising around, reading customer reviews for some of my favorite books. The best ones, I think, are the ones written by Evangelicals for books like the Joy of Sex or Ulysses. But this book by Michelle Malkin is one of the best reviewed books I’ve read in some time. Scan down a few and make sure to read the review by General J.C. Christian. Be sure not to miss the reviews by the defenders of racial incarceration. Priceless.

Baghdad - July 31, 2004

Caught a glimpse of the darker side of the Green Zone the other night. As I mentioned in my previous e-mail, I had started getting to know the Lebanese guards who protect our offices and living quarters. The ones who guard us seem to be decent guys. However, some of the others are into questionable activities.

Read the rest.

Today begins a journey to Boston, not one of political campaigns but a road trip of new archivists from the University of Maryland College Park. Members of the group Student Archivists at Maryland (SAM) will leave this afternoon and begin their collective and individual trek into new professional territory–the Society of American Archivists conference.

The meeting will hopefully help the student group build connections with professionals and also contribute to next year’s programming, as well as help those students already looking for work and publishing opportunities. For a number of us, this will be our first SAA conference. This blogger anticipates no shortage of topics to report.

Also, upon my return will be the first blog in the human rights series, despite a little reporting difficulty.