Alternative Energy Source

"Splendid! I just had an idea for a cheap form of power: by bringing pasta and antipasta together, we could be looking at the utter annihilation of ravioli and the liberation of vast quantities of energy. I safely predict that an average-size cannelloni would be able to power Swindon for over a year. Mind you, I could be wrong."

-Jasper Fforde, Thursday Next: First Among Sequels, 18.

Merry Christmas

As a rule, I try not to repeat quotes. But in honor of Christmas, here's a favorite passage on the incarnation. Merry Christmas to all!

***

Rome was a flea market of borrowed gods and conquered peoples, a bargain basement on two floors, earth and heaven, a mass of filth convoluted in a triple knot as in an intestinal obstruction. Dacians, Heruleans, Scythians, Sarmatians, Hyperboreans, heavy wheels without spokes, eyes sunk in fat, sodomy, double chins, illiterate emperors, fish fed on the flesh of learned slaves...all crammed into the passages of the Coliseum, and all wretched.

And then, into this tasteless heap of gold and marble, He came, light and clothed in an aura, emphatically human, deliberately provincial, Galilean, and at that moment gods and nations ceased to be and man came into being—man the carpenter, man the plowman, man the shepherd, with his flock of sheep at sunset, man who does not sound in the least proud, man thankfully celebrated in all the cradle songs of mothers and in all the picture galleries the world over.

-Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

Tongue Twister

IRRELEVANT BENEVOLENT ELEPHANT

-Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots, 144.

***

I think this would be a perfect band and/or blog-name...

Kafka

"But this is preposterous!" shouted Hopkins as he was dragged away.

"No," replied the Magistrate, "this is Kafka."

-Jasper Fforde, Lost in a Good Book, 198.

Welcome to Jurisfiction

"Please," said a voice close by, "draw me a sheep!"

I looked down to see a young boy of no more than ten. He had curly golden locks and stared at me with an intensity that was, to say the least, unnerving.

"Please," he repeated, "draw me a sheep."

"You had better do as he asks," said a familiar voice close by. "Once he starts on you he'll never let it go."

It was Miss Havisham. I dutifully drew the best sheep I could and handed the result to the boy, who walked away, very satisfied with the result.

"Welcome to Jurisfiction," said Miss Havisham...

-Jasper Fforde, Lost in a Good Book, 285.

In a Philadelphia...

AL: Because in a Philadelphia, no matter what you ask for, you can't get it. You ask for something, they're not gonna have it. You want to do something, it ain't gonna get done. You want to go somewhere, you can't get there from here.

MARK: Good God. So this is very serious.

AL: Just remember, Marcus. This is a condition named for the town that invented the cheese steak. Something that nobody in his right mind would willingly ask for.

MARK: And I thought I was just having a very bad day....

AL: Sure. Millions of people have spent entire lifetimes inside a Philadelphia and never even knew it. Look at the city of Philadelphia itself. Hopelessly trapped forever inside a Philadelphia. And do they know it?

MARK: Well what can I do? Should I just kill myself now and get it over with?

AL: You try to kill yourself in a Philadelphia, you're only gonna get hurt, babe.

MARK: So what do I do?

AL: Best thing to do is wait it out. Someday the great cosmic train will whisk you outta the City of Brotherly Love and off to someplace happier.

-David Ives, Hat tip Terry Teachout

Readers

No one becomes a reader except in answer to some baffling inner necessity, of the kind that leads people to turn cartwheels outside the 7-Eleven, jump headlong through a plate-glass window, join the circus, or buy a low-end foreign car when the nearest auto-repair shop is fifty miles away. With these dramatic examples fresh in your mind, you'll probably require only a small amount of additional convincing that my little theory--based on years of painful experience--is true. Reading requires a loner's temperament, a high tolerance for silence, and an unhealthy preference for the company of people who are imaginary or dead.

-David Samuels, From Rereadings, ed. Anne Fadiman, 3.

Eschaton

It's gonna be the future soon: I won't always be this way. When the things that make me weak and strange get engineered away. -Jonathan Coulton, "The Future Soon"

Recent (Good) Reads

Seventy-Seven Clocks, Christopher Fowler (British mystery) The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place, Maryrose Wood (kid lit) Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl, N. D. Wilson (theological musings) Ten Second Staircase, Christopher Fowler (British mystery) Keeper, Kathi Appelt (kid lit) The Chestnut King, N. D. Wilson (fantasy)

Fall Highs

1. Trying out some of the hikes in AMC's Best Day Hikes in Connecticut
2. Finding my way home again, despite washed out bridges & unblazed trails
3. A used book sale across the street from my apartment
4. Frequent library visits
5. Scads of books, wedged in my bookshelves and piled on my dresser
6. Watching episodes of Avonlea on scratchy library dvd's
7. Jog/walking
8. Kids' Club
9. Pirate vs Ninja raking and volleyball
10. Leadership Core back at my apartment
11. Fabulous fall weather
12. Breathtaking sunsets and sunrises
13. Windows that open
14. Listening to Bill Mallonee bootlegs
15. Not studying

The Scandal of Particularity

The scandal of particularity is a still broader notion, for it includes the understanding that God is at work is certain very specific times and places and ways to accomplish His will. The Christian faith is not a religion of spiritual truths, of moral or inner principles by which one ought to (or even may) live. It is the claim, radical in the ancient world and still more radical today, that God has reached into human history to do those things necessary to restore the relationship between Himself and us that our first ancestors shattered, and which still divide us from Him. This scandal of particularity is at the heart of the claims of the Bible to historicity, and make it fundamentally different from every other religion on earth. -David Adams (quoted here).

Yeast

In the Passover, in the old way, the house was to be purified, every yeast germ removed. Long codes of purification were handed out to characters then, characters in those early chapters. Shellfish tainted you. Polyester tainted you. Foreskins tainted you. Human holiness was fragile in those days.

Things have changed...

Leave the yeast. Be the yeast. Do not fear the shadowy places. You will never be the first one there. Another went ahead and down until He came out the other side.

-N. D. Wilson, Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl, 155.

Oreo

In this way Penelope's happy and sad feelings got all mixed up together, until they were not unlike one of those delicious cookies they have nowadays, the ones with a flat circle of sugary cream sandwiched between two chocolate-flavored wafers. In her heart she felt a soft, hidden core of sweet melancholy nestled inside crisp outer layers of joy...

-Maryrose Wood, The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place, 175.

Pearly Gates

I do not doubt that whatever gates there may be, they will be pearly. But I know how pearls are made. Do you? In Heaven, the gates will be made of oyster spit.

Exercise: Envision those oysters.

-N. D. Wilson, Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl, 155.

Great Showdowns: Dread Pirate Roberts vs Vizzini

-Scott C (more showdowns here)

Great Showdowns: Lady vs Birds

-Scott C (more showdowns here)

Great Showdowns: Frodo vs Gollum

-Scott C (more showdowns here)

Wet Laundry

A pudgy young man with slicked sandy hair appeared before them. Shaking his hand was like removing wet laundry from a washing machine.

-Christopher Fowler, Seventy-Seven Clocks, 67.

Camp Songs

*** This Fall I've committed to lead music for a once-a-week after-school kids' program at church (think VBS spread out over the school-year), and I've been all over the internet looking for new songs. These guys aren't terribly scriptural - okay, they aren't even slightly scriptural - but I am just delighted by their videos, and only wish there was something similar for goofy church music. (Totally a legit genre.) Speaking of which - do YOU have any favorite goofy church / camp songs? Leave a comment!

Word of the Day

Our house is in a hooroar, with the back kitchen all ripped to pieces for a face-lifting job, and we can't even find our way to the refrigerator without a compass. But I guess the dust will settle eventually.

-E. B. White, Letters of E. B. White, 446.

***

I must find some opportunities to work the word hooroar into my conversation. Perhaps when I have failed to read yet another critical work memo, I could casually remark that my email inbox is in a hooroar? Pretty sure I've also come across some hooroarific databases...