MakeBabyJesusCryFilter

2003-06-10.

So I got pissed off, and spat a bitter little gob of snark into this Metafilter thread linking Christianity.com’s so-called Sexual Purity Fact Sheet.

Twine42 and Pollomacho both respond that the thread itself and the paste-in of the infamous Dr. Laura letter are aimed more at what I referred to as “those damn wacky homo-hating Christians,” to address the pick-and-choose Biblicalism of fundamentalist morality, and are not meant as an attack on what they call “true Christianity.” The thread goes on, however, to skeptical attacks on Paul and scriptural historicity (these “St. Paul was a misogynist revisionist bastard” statements have been popping up a lot in my attention lately) which cause me to question just what a “true Christian” is to them. While Christians may not all be the wacky homo-haters they think many of us are, we still are followers of a way of life and a world view which is becoming more and more alien to this increasingly secularized world.

Substrate drops more than one theological jewel into the thread with this comment: “So, according to this nobody is getting into the Kingdom of Heaven anyway.” Exactly right! We are fallen humans in a fallen world, and we are, each one of us — regardless of race, creed, sexuality, political affiliation, or MeFI user ID number — unable to inherit the Kingdom by the efforts of our own fallen virtue.

Who then can be saved?

(Of course, if you’re one of them secularist types, the idea of salvation and an afterlife is probably just a superstition from some unreliable old religious text anyway, right?)

“Good Old-Fashioned Robbery”

2003-06-10.

I caught my train out of Union Station to Baltimore at 7.55pm last night. About five minutes later, this happened.

Update: Changed the WaPo link to a police press release because the news story expired. Some guy walked into Union Station with what looked like a live grenade and tried to rob a store. He was caught by police. More info from the NLEOMF, commending the police officer who covered the would-be robber’s grenade till they were found to be fake.

Meeting mod_rewrite

2003-06-07.

Just got a couple of URL rewrites done for the archive, with some help from Apache rewrite guide and an easier-understood beginner’s article. Things are coming together. When everything goes live, then I can really begin blogging in earnest, and you’ll get all the juicy details.

Compensatory Linkfest, Part Deux

2003-06-07.

I spent the day in New York with Amy yesterday, and am now enjoying a weekend with relatives up in Connecticut. In my absence, more content for you to peruse and ponder:

– After breaking his nose by walking into a wall, Barry Manilow looks all set for what could be the biggest comedic campy-ironic comeback since Shatner.

– Maid-less in Manila: DeQuiros on living the Filipino life without maids. I grew up surrounded by a whole gaggle of maids who were constantly cleaning, cooking, laundering, and generally bustling about the house. I’ve found since moving out that I am far more suited to a life where I do my own household chores, thus helping lower-class Filipinos pursue other opportunities for advancement.

– This is old, but the story of Accordion Guy and “the New Girl” is a harrowing tale of real-life drama and deception, culminating in a series of shocking revelations. The climax for me comes when he asks, “What’s the difference between HTTP GET and POST?”

– The Guardian wises up a bit. Good. I myself am against Wolfowitz’s preemption policy, but pandering to standard far-left Bush-and-Oil rhetoric does not raise the level of debate one bit. (The latest Get Your War On, however, does.)

That’s it for now. I shall see you all Monday, when I can finally get the new random layouts up and running.

Compensatory Linkfest

2003-06-06.

While I’m away and/or still tweaking the blog, entertain/inform yourself with these links collected in my post-academic absence:

– You Grow Girl! Gardening for dummies.

– Kalsey’s Buttonmaker, a simple GUI frontend to the button image generator, which has only helped to propagate the “Buttons for Everything” meme. (I got this link through an IM from Dean Mc-K, and I am forever penitent for my failure to properly credit him when I posted the buttonmaker to MeFi.)

– Filipino movie afficionados may be interested in checking out Weng Weng’s sudden burst of popularity. Famous Filpino dwarven B-movie actor makes a sudden comeback through web video mashups, proving once again, that yes, the Filipino can. Can what? I do not know.

– Experience a Revival at Dubious Ministries! Revival of what? I’m not sure. But Bobette Shifty’s Mission to the Anglicans is not to be missed.

– Dating a blogger, reading all about it, (NYTimes, reg. required) in which Rick Bruner and other bloggers discuss the perils of blogging about people they know.

That’s it, I’m off to Penn Station. More later.

Here and Gone Again

2003-06-06.

So Valerie thinks that the name “Garver” should forever refer to bloggers going on hiatus. I must disagree; I for one am proud to say that, in returning to the blog world, I am indeed “Going Garver,” hence redeeming the good professor’s worthy name.

Anyway, I’ve been in the process of rewriting and redesigning this whole site, practically from the ground up, and there’s still a lot to do. At least the basic PHP and Movabletype stuff is finally working; I just need to tweak my CSS, templates, rewrites, and include_paths. Another week, perhaps, and you’ll get to see what’s been going on behind the curtain.

Right now, though, I’m about to catch a train to New York to meet up with Amy, and after a day being all tourist-y, I head up to Darien, CT to meet up with a bunch of uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews, and nieces whom I have not seen for over a year. More updates when I get there.

How have y’all been?