partsofspeaking

The Guy Who Dances While Mowing His Lawn Because of His Diabetes Drug The Cricket Commercial with the Hairballs Saying "Hi-Yee" The "I've Fallen" Commercials (however, the product is great; it really helped my mother in a bad time. The commercials really play on fear.) The Liberty Mutual with the Emu (Why?) Any prescription drug commercial Commercials I love: Progressive Ice Skating Commercial Geico Karaoke in the Antarctic Original Liberty Mutual Commercial--"I totaled Brad"  List will continue.

The world does not need my opinion on this ginned up controversy. But I'll do it anyway. As much as I hate to say it, I come down on Harvard's side on this. Yes, they are elitist bullies in some ways. Yes, they are woke. Yes, they discriminate against Asians. Yes, this was a set up and someone who opposes his politics looked for evidence against him (which he should have known would come to light eventually) and made it available to hurt him. But. . . . A college like that makes decisions on admitted students based on what they have done in their youth, in 17 or 18 years. And Kashuv, at 16, prior to being there on the day of the Parkland shootings, was clearly racist (and vile), to say the least, in his posts on social media. Sixteen is not ten or eleven. At sixteen he could drive. He's expected to start applying for colleges. He's supposed to have some judgment. As my son wrote, let's not die on this hill. I'm surprised by those on the right defending him...

Yesterday I finished this novel by Thackeray from the mid-1800s. It was a lot of fun to read. I had watched the Reese Witherspoon version and a recent miniseries on it. They were ok, but missed the real soul of the book. In order to make the viewer feel connected, they portray the characters too positively. Thackeray doesn't make that mistake. Nobody is exemplary. They have more flaws than good qualities, but they do have at least one good quality. Becky is hilarious, wicked, fun, despicable, and understandable. Her rejection of her child is unforgivable, but maybe he didn't need to be around a mother like her, and she knew it. She at least gets Dobbin back with Amelia--her only truly good act. Does she kill Jos? What is the evidence? Would she be so evil? I don't think so. I think deluded Jos thinks it. Amelia is so annoying that I vocally said, "Yes!" when Dobbin left her. I really did. I knew they would get back together, but she deserved the rejection, how...

I have started to listen to an interesting podcast from the Center for Lit. It seems to be produced by a family who are really into homeschooling but they are very literature and their discussions of reading material are good for walking my dog or driving the car. They were discussing books to reread. I recently reread Crime and Punishment and plan to reared The Brothers Karamazov soon. I've reread Anna Karenina, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Pride and Prejudice , among a few others. They beg to be reread, but there is a bigger reason. I am not the same reader now I was in my early 20s, or 20 years later. Many books must be reread because we are not the same people. In fact, I am not sure how much we really get out of these "classics" when we are 18-24, typical college age. Now I read them because I want to engage with them. Back then it was either curiosity, or because I had to, or I had some frightful, misplaced sense they were "good for me." (I...

Click here. This essay questions why Disney has moved from a portrayal of romantic love as the end to a portrayal of family love as the highest. The comments are good, too. Not that we can't enjoy Frozen and Tangled just because. But the portrayed relationships are so  . . . different that we can't overlook them. I am glad that finding romantic love (heterosexual) is not the theme of all of them. For one, it reinforces the dependent woman. Second, there are other types of love. Third, such portrayals do not show the complexity of really living in marriage. As has been noticed about Jane Austen's novels, she doesn't exactly portray a lot of happy marriages (although there are some with minor characters). On the other hand, the idea that "friends are family" or "we can cobble together our own family" is problematic. The biological family has to be the core of civilization. We do need to bend it sometimes for adoption (not a 20th century phe...

Guilt is from violation of objective morality (God's law). Shame is from perceived violation of societal norms. Unfortunately, shame is stronger with some of us than guilt. Case in point: Motherhood. Motherhood is shame from day one. Someone is always trying to make you feel "guilty" about something you are not doing or did not do as a mother. Why do people do this shame game to others? To make themselves feel superior. "I breastfed til the baby was 2 years old. I am more sacrificial. I am a better mother. I care more." There is nothing in the Word of God about such things. But it is easier for us to make our own personal standards THE STANDARD rather than obey the law of love.

One of the modern calls in the religious world is "I want a deeper experience of God" or "I want more from my relationship with God." I confess to not understanding this cry. It seems to lead people into charismatic teaching and mystical practices. Even some to Buddhist practices, such that they mix Christianity with Easternism. Some of it, I suspect, comes from poor teaching in churches about Christian spirituality and lack of knowledge about the history of Christian spiritual practices. Christianity has a balance of inner and outer. We do not worship what is within or from within. We only worship because of what God has done, and we have a responsibility to service and community. If we are focused on inward experience, we will be frustrated. Buddha sat under a tree. Jesus walked around and healed and fed people.

This is going to seem like a strange post, but I submit it for consideration. I am teaching I Samuel 8-15, the story of Saul's early kingship, before he goes fully mentally ill and tries to kill David for years. Saul is fascinating, Shakespearean and Greek tragedy-like, and a perplexing mixture of his own bad choices and sovereign blessing and judgment. I don't want to over-allegorize it for my lesson, but it's hard not to. However, I couldn't help thinking that the Israelites were like the Americans today who are calling for socialism and even bigger government to "cure all our ills," which are over-stated. Case in point: canceling student loan debt. Why should taxpayers cancel the student loans of young people who made bad financial choices about where they went to college? Go to a cheaper school. There is no right in the constitution to attend a $50,000 a year college. There are plenty of inexpensive colleges. I teach at one of the least expensive in th...

Bravo for their trying to address sexual abuse and racism. It's imperfect, though. I doubt they will ever please everyone, but I have to agree with the "disfellowshipping" of churches that harbor abusers and racists and do not want to address the problem in their midst. Of course, SBC churches are independent, not like United Methodists or Episcopalians in that regard, so compliance will be hard.  I hope it's not just grandstanding. I trust Russell Moore. Semi-bravos for their trying to address, or re-address, complenentarianism. I'm ambivalent here. 1. Women should be able to use leadership gifts and be seminary-educated if they are so lead. 2. I'm not ready for female head pastors and probably never will be but think ordination for deaconships and other roles is valid. 3. I wish someone other than Beth Moore was at the forefront of this issue. I would prefer a woman with "in-the-trenches" ministry experience (like foreign missions) and a semin...

I just wrote about Ida, an interesting if imperfect film (well, what work of art is perfect? Mine surely aren't) from a Polish director. In one of the character's arcs, she suddenly commits suicide. It's rather a shock; perhaps I should have seen it coming, but I didn't. Was the suicide "logical" within the framework or world of the story? I don't know. I think so, though the motive is not clear. It could have happened for three or four reasons (her past crimes, her isolation from family, her being abandoned by the niece, her dissolute lifestyle with men and alcohol). It raises a bigger question: do some writers use suicide as an easy plot resolution device. The character paints himself into a corner; financial ruin and shame are imminent, so bang, suicide to deal with it. In reality, suicide is a long-term process, rarely just spontaneous. From a whole different perspective, would it be better to have the character pay his dues, face consequences, than ...

Because a student recommended Cold War , I watched it and then decided to watch Ida , an earlier film by the same director, Pawel P. (sorry, can't spell). I watched it last night and I'm still thinking about it. I don't know if it's good or not. It won an Academy Award, so it must be good. The people on IMDB don't all agree. I don't think it's as good as Cold War , which I was more affected by. I think the difference is that Cold War is less ambitious and meets its goals. With Ida you have to deal with Nazis, Communists, the Catholic Church, AND the characters. And all that is done in less than 85 minutes, a lot of which is long shots of faces that aren't doing much but staring or smoking.  I understand why the long shots, but they seem overdone. So I'm thinking if to be minimalistic in the approach, too many holes and gaps are left unexplained and unfilled. For example, I thought the little boy whose remains they reburied was Wanda's child, no...

This is not a full review. It is more of a recommendation to a certain kind of movie viewer. A film student in my department told me Cold W ar was very good, so I saw it was free on Amazon and watched it last night. It was affecting. I won't forget about it soon, which is always the sign of a good movie. Mediocre movies I watch and forget. If you are one of those people who doesn't watch movies to read, it's not for you. It's also slow, with lots of long takes of the characters' faces. It is in Polish, French, a little German, and an occasional English word or song. It is about a world 60 or more years ago, when I was young and that today's millennials never knew (and therefore think we are exaggerating about communism). Additionally, the film does not "fill in the blanks." Every couple of years or so we have a segment about the characters. We don't know a whole lot about what happens in between. We just know where they are in that time frame...

I began the book in the fall, as part of NaNoWriMo, but not really. I worked on it in big spurts over Christmas, spring break, and after the spring semester is over. I have never been one to be able to write 15 minutes a day. I can't get any traction or in the zone. I do have a 45- to 50-hour a week plus job and other responsiblities, like most people. I gave up on the guilt about the 15-minute day failure a long time ago. I still produce. I finished the total first draft in late April I belong to two writers groups, so they read the first part (50 pages) of my novel. (It is in three parts, or acts.) Then I had four betareaders read the whole thing, three of whom gave good input. Then I did a second draft where I put in their comments. Then a third draft where I edited for wordiness and such, but in that process, I found a lot of gaffes in the plot. What I mean is (a) places where people give contradictory information, (b) places where characters know things they couldn't kno...

Yesterday I pushed the submit button on my seventh novel, my fourth self-published in that genre and my sixth self-published book with Amazon. I'm getting to be an old hand at that, although I confess to not understanding the marketing end of Amazon yet. So here it is. I wanted to make some comments about its writing that might help others. In my thinking there are two types of mystery fiction: one with dramatic irony and one without. Both have suspense but perhaps the one without dramatic irony has more suspense. To compensate, the one with dramatic irony has to have something else that is interesting, such as good characterization. What do I mean? Dramatic irony means the reader knows something (in this case, the culprit) that the characters may not, except the culprit. Crime and Punishment is an example. We know Raskalnikov killed the two women, the pawnbroker and her sister. The suspense, or dramatic question, is whether he will confess before he goes completely...