Why I'm staying Lawful Good.

This is making the geek rounds, although I don't know where it originated:

This appears to be an easy way to start your super villain career. It happens all the time: You graduate from Villain School, and you suddenly realize you haven't given a lot of thought to how you intend to establish your evilness and become a public enemy. "Should I be a wicked genius, like Lex Luthor? A space pirate, like Amalak? A mighty sorcerer, like Mordru? A big pile of goo like the Blob? Or just a random creep, like Paste Pot Pete?"

Well, wonder no more! With this handy chart, you can determine your name, using your real first, last, and middle names, and the date of your birth.

I, for example, am... let's see here...

Strike Fist, the Pestilence of Earth! 

Um...

Really?

Maybe I'll just skip the villainy for now. Seems like a lot of work anyway.

Thunderstruck.

Fourth Sunday in Lent...

Today's reading in the Catholic church is the story of the Prodigal Son (from Luke 15), but I wanted to go back a little in Luke to chapter 10. I've been re-reading some C. S. Lewis, and although this verse hasn't come up, it reminded me of this, Luke 10:18 (KJV, for you old-schoolers):

And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.

It's one little line with no further information; it's part of Jesus' explanation as to why he has been able to grant safety from the power of the Enemy to his apostles. It's the kind of verse I would shoot past as I blah-blah-blah-begat-begat my way through the Bible, ignoramus that I am, except for its amazing imagery. It immediately tells us several important things:

1) There is a Satan, and he fell. 

It's a key issue -- and it's strange to me that there are people who believe in Jesus but not in Satan. Jesus certainly believed in Satan. In the next verse He describes Satan as the Enemy. He wouldn't do that if there were no Satan, or Satan was just some guy.

I guess it's a temptation among well-meaning people who see evil as a psychological problem rather than a force so real that it actually exists outside human beings. Perhaps they think Luke just stuck that line in chapter 10 because he believed in Satan. But if you start thinking that way, why would you trust the Gospels for any information about Jesus at all?

It also tells us that Satan was in a good state once, and plummeted to a bad state. He didn't start out being rotten.

2) Jesus was there to see it happen. 

This was dogma I always had trouble with, the doctrine that Jesus was present with God before the world was made. I thought that was something the guys in collars just made up. And yet it's right there. We know Satan's been at us in one way or another since the beginning, so if Jesus was present, it follows that He too has been around at least that long. If you accept His words, you have to accept that as well.

It brings me back to that famous quote from Lewis in Mere Christianity: 

You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

3) About the manner of the fall.  

It's an amazing image---when we think of the fall of Satan we might imagine a body being cast from a great height into a great depth, but this is more than that. This is sudden, shocking, brilliant. Lucifer means "light bringer," suggesting a good and righteous duty, but it also tells us how a creature of light would fall---blazing, like lightning; instantly; and amid a terrifying storm.

Jesus was the greatest storyteller in history, as seen in the power and depth of the parables; His concision is such that He could have told War and Peace in a fortune cookie. Here, in just eight words (in the English translation), "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven," He packs a dazzling image with a wealth of information. He puts things unknowable to men in a way that we can grasp. In every profession we see Him turn to---writer, teacher, preacher, doctor, psychologist, boss, vintner---He was the best.

Okay, that's enough depth for me. Tune in tomorrow when I'm back to eating something or complaining about the dog.

Inside out.

Clash of the snacks. But this is more than just a battle of taste. This is a battle of philosophy.

In this corner, ConAgra-owned H.K. Anderson's pretzel nuggets filled with peanut butter:

And in this corner, Hormel-owned Skippy's P.B. Bites, peanut butter nuggets filled with, uh, pretzel:

Two tasty snacks, both with the great taste of peanut butter and pretzel. But they are opposites. PB inside/pretzel outside vs. pretzel inside/PB outside.

Each is the yin to the other's yang. Identical, yet completely different.

Can a person hate one and love the other? How? And yet, how could one love both, as one is the inside-out version of the other?

But can they really be that different? Perhaps this is one of those "Last Battlefield" Trek things?

At what level are they the same? In what realm are they different? Can one repel, one attract? Is one the normal, the other the obverse? Converse? Inverse? And what about Combos, huh? No one's even considered how Combos work into this.

Would one be unable to choose, and be caught between them like Buridan's ass, starving? Or just scoff them all down like a Colorado stoner?

Can one possibly reject one, and keep the other?

Yes. My wife liked the Anderson nuggets better. Says the Skippy ones are too sweet.

See, this is why most philosophers are men. Women take all the fun out of it.

Flocked up.

Yep, neighbors getting all flocked up again. 

I was kind of surprised to see the pink flamingos around here in winter. Usually you'd expect to see them closer to June, to like, graduation time.

Of course these flamingos are fund-raising flamingos, used to extort money from innocent civilians.

If you're not familiar with how it works, this site gives you a good idea. And is happy to sell you a passel of pink flamingos, too. The idea is that a person can hire the kids who want to raise money to plant plastic flamingos on someone's lawn in the dead of night, along with a sign explaining how they can pay the kids to get de-flamingoed. So the kids make money on both ends.

Unless the victim has no sense of humor and just takes all the flamingos and calls the cops. You have to pick your mark carefully.

Another site notes that the fund-raisers can also sell flamingo insurance to people who want to avoid the humiliation of waking up and seeing a plethora of the pink plastic punks all over the place. So that's great; the kids can make money doing nothing more than keeping a record of who paid the insurance. They wouldn't want to accidentally flamingo someone who'd already paid up.

Around here the high school seniors are using this to raise money for the senior sleepover, a big all-night (presumably drug- and liquor-free) party held at the school. I guess they need a lot of money to throw a good party for the whole graduating class, so they've started early.

I think this is a pretty good idea. The plastic flamingo is not a typical lawn decoration in the Hudson Valley, maybe because you just don't expect to see actual flamingos here. And unlike in Florida, virtually no one has a pink house, or a house in any kind of pastel color. Flamingos clash with everything here. When you see someone's lawn all a-sprouting with these things, you know they didn't do it themselves. So it's effective. And compared to the shenanigans kids this age can get up to, this is pretty harmless.

And it's just good, stupid fun.

I also like it because I don't have a kid in the school and I don't work there, and I don't know any kids in the school really well, so I'm very unlikely to be a target. Which is good, because I'm cheap.

As for the rest of you.... Well, nice place ya got here.... Be a shame if anything pink and plasticky were to happen to it....

Spring training injuries.

It's here! The Mets' first Spring Training game is today! Join us on this first leg of our journey as we follow our pennant-winning season with a second- or third-place finish! 

Of course, when you're a Mets fan you totally expect your stars to suffer season-ending injuries before Opening Day. Fortunately, for minor injuries, we have these! 

Yes, the dollar store provided me with these Mets-themed bandages, complete with Mets logo and Mr. Met on the box. Don't you feel better just looking at Mr. Met? I always do.

Teresa Taylor makes all kind of healthcare products, and they don't just do Mets products, they do all MLB teams. Although looking at the company Web site makes you think Ms. Taylor likes the Mets just a liiiiittle bit more.

Anyway, these are really good adhesive bandages, with lots of stick and a good seal. I'm sure they use these down in the Mets clubhouse. Not sure they'll be particularly helpful when Matt Harvey's arm falls off right after he signs a long-term contract. (Sorry, but that's how it goes. Forget it, Matt; it's Metstown.)

---

THRILLING UPDATE: Still sick. Day three. I don't think it's a virus that turns you into a zombie; just one that makes you feel like a zombie. Without the, you know, cranial cravings. Naturally I have an enormous project with a deadline that positively must be met tomorrow. Blarg.

If only.

The cultural history of the 20th century might have been much better. 

(Apologies for the stupid gag; Tuesday I had work but I came down with a lousy cold, so basically I was in a weakened state and this idea made me laugh. Imagine Backus reading Ginsberg poems if you want to turn it around. "You were never no locomotive, my good chap, you were a sunflower!")

Jobs lost to inhuman aliens.

As if we weren't in enough peril of losing our jobs, and voting for crazy people out of rage over losing our jobs, Boston Dynamics has come up with a robot that they say will mean the "end of manual labor." (Hat tip: IMAO.)

Yeah, thanks, ya big bunch of boffins! We didn't need those jobs and that sense of purpose anyway. Hey, how's the novel-writing algorithm coming along?

Don't you guys remember that episode of Super Friends? Well, maybe not, since the ageism in the technical fields is so strident that most of you were probably chewing your pacifiers while watching the first season of The Suite Life on Deck.

But some of us recall "Professor Goodfellow’s G.E.E.C." In this episode, a nice mad doctor comes up with the Goodfellow's Effort-Eliminating Computer, which eliminates all need for everyone to have to work by controlling machines, including robots, to do the work for us. Everybody starts getting dumb and lazy, and when the computer malfunctions, only the Super Friends can save the day.

All the early seasons of this show were pretty stupid and very preachy (you can watch the whole ep for a couple of bucks here, if you must give Google money), but this one had a pretty good message on self-reliance and the value of effort. Also that computers would fail you and cause people to die.

Well, no one died thanks to the Super Friends, but they're not real, are they? But Boston Dynamics is, and it's owned by Google, which sounds pretty similar to G.E.E.C. to me, don't you think? Hmmmm?

I know this is a situation with tragedy built into it; remember, Goodfellow was indeed a good fellow and meant well. But by trying to help humanity he damn near destroyed it. Before all the novels on Amazon are replaced by computer-generated blather, I suggest you check out Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano, the only novel of his I ever liked, but I liked it a lot.

It came out in 1952, a couple of decades before the Super Friends. If Goodfellow had read it, Wendy and Marvin might have been saved a lot of trouble.