From the Salmon

With one week left to go, let the word spread across the land…

It’s a veritable movement, people.

I’m so damn proud.

I know it’s Halloween and all, but I’ve been listening to Christmas music all day. That’s right, kids, Sufjan’s got 5 discs of Christmas music coming out next month, and you can stream them all right now. Lock your doors, hide the candy and enjoy.

I just got an email from Jesus.

Apparently, Jesus not only can get me a great deal on drugs like Hoodia, Levitra, and Paxil (with NO PRESCRIPTION REQUIRED!), but He also can’t seem to spell any of them correctly.

Mysterious ways, indeed!

Wired asks. Writers respond. I rejoice.

Now, this is Michael J. Fox. He’s got Parkinson’s disease. And in this commercial, he is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He is moving all around and shaking. And it’s purely an act.

— Rush Limbaugh, October 23

:: :: :: ::

“The Greatest Man in America”
from Moxy Früvous’ The ‘b’ Album

Not since Jesus Christ has the world seen someone
With such widely syndicated views
Hundreds of years from now they’ll celebrate Rush-mas
And Rush-ashana for the Jews.
‘Cause he’ll pull the plug on femi-nazis,
paranoid minorities and gays.
He’s a burning bush with a network push,
Sure to start a country-wide blaze.

iTunes | Amazon

If Nightmare covers were sacrilege, this is damn near blasphemy….

Aha! See?

I knew there was a way to say this more clearly.

As long as I’m browser pimping, I may as well point out that Firefox 2.0 is out. Get thee hither!

Biking home from work today, I saw this beauty:

Animals are just little people in fur coats.

I think I know what the sticker was trying to say, but it sure picked a strange way to make its point.

First of all, the term “little people” is extremely insensitive. Come to think of it, I honestly don’t know the new term du jour, so maybe we just shouldn’t refer to them at all. In fact, it’s probably best not to talk about anyone shorter than I am. Regardless, I’m fairly certain that term is still right out.

And second, you’d think that animals would know better than anyone that Fur Is Murder. So what the hell are they doing with the coats?

Methinks that bumper belonged to someone who’s missed a few memos.

What’s this? No, seriously, WTF is this? It’s bad enough that they’ve made a 3D movie out of the one of the best animated musicals of all time, but to release a disc of covers? Really terrifyingly bad covers? Such schmaltzy sacrilege can only mean one thing… Sandy Claws has taken over Halloween this year. Perhaps it’s a preemptive strike in the War on the War on Christmas.

I’ve been waiting for Christianity Today to post Miroslav Volf’s article “The Church’s Great Malfunctions” from their most recent issue so that I could offer an excerpt and link to the full article. I’m getting the feeling that they aren’t going to publish it online, so here’s one part of the article that I found particularly interesting:

A Serbian soldier rides on a tank and triumphantly flashes three fingers into the air — a symbol of the most holy Trinity, a sign that he belongs to a group that believes rightly about God. Clearly, his faith, in some sense, gives legitimacy to his triumphant ride on that killing machine. He’s not alone in draping the wild-eyed god of war or the fierce goddess of nationalism with the legitimizing mantle of religious faith. Some of his Croatian enemies did the same, as have many Americans who eagerly merged the Cross and the flag. They follow in the footsteps of many Christians over the centuries who’ve left behind them a trail of blood and tears.

[…]

So why have Christians, who embrace a peaceable fath, often been so violent? There are three main reasons, and they roughly correspond to the three reasons for faith’s idleness.

First, a thin faith. Too many Christians embrace the ends mandated by their faith (for instance, maintaining the sanctity of unborn life or just social arrangements), but not the means by which faith demands that these ends be reached (persuasion rather than violence). The cure for religiously induced violence is not less faith but more faith — faith in its full scope, faith enacted with integrity and courage by its holy men and women, faith pondered responsibly by its great theologians.

Second, seemingly irrelevant faith. Can a faith born 2,000 years ago tell us anything useful about democratic governance, running a modern corporation, or defending a nation from terrorists? Sensing a tension, we use faith merely to bless what we think is right to do. It takes hard intellectual and spiritual work to learn to understand and live faith authentically under changed circumstances. This work cannot be placed only on the shoulders of theologians; it must be an endeavor in which faithful people from all walks of life are engaged, and study of a variety of disciplines must be involved.

Finally, unwillingness to walk the narrow path. Often “impractical” slides into “overly demanding.” Someone has violated us or our community; we feel the urge for revenge — and we set aside the explicit command to love our enemies, to be benevolent and beneficent toward them. Or we believe that our culture is going down a perilous road; we want to change its self-destructive course — and we forget that the ends that Christian faith holds high do not justify setting aside its strictures about the appropriate means.

And so we’re back at the question of character. In addition to applying an authentically understood faith to various spheres of life, we need properly formed persons who resist misusing faith in oppressive ways. For the Christian faith produces devastating results when it devolves into a mere personal or cultural resource for people whose lives, like the life of that Serbian soldier, may be guided by anything but that faith.

Hardly. But more and more people I know are finding their way to this site, so I finally did something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time. I’ve written an explanation for why I’ve chosen to write under a pseudonym. Does the reason involve superpowers or radioactive spiders? Only the link on the sidebar knows for sure….

Yesterday, Scott alerted me to the new Bravia commercial from Sony.

It’s stunning. Perhaps not as stunning as the superball ad, but still spectacular in its own right.

And yet, as dazzling as these ads are, I have to admit to being more than a little bothered by them. More specifically, I’m bothered by the fact that neither of these ads aired or will air in the United States. Instead, we get the vapid Bravia ads that I saw probably four times tonight. I feel like they had something to do with Peyton Manning buying shoes, but I’m admittedly a little hazy on the plot.

Apparently, the idea that a television has breathtaking color must not have tested well in the US market. I’m left to assume that what did test well was appealing to base gender stereotypes. Which will somehow make me want to buy a television.

Rumor has it that the US ads are part of some grand scheme to keep people from zipping past their commercials with a DVR, so there’s some extra fanciness for the Tivo crowd.

Tell you what, Sony. You want people to stop what they’re doing and watch your commercials? Try blowing 70,000 litres of paint out of a building. Or launch a quarter of a million superballs down a hill.

What’s that? You say you did both of those things? That’s great!

Then show it to me, already. I promise I won’t look away.

Dear Internet Explorer users,

It’s not often that I will implore anyone to download a Microsoft product. But Internet Explorer 7 was released today. Please, please, please download and install it. Please tell your friends and family to do the same.

It’s not perfect. It’s not going to save the world. Hell, it still hasn’t caught up to Firefox or Safari. But it is a huge improvement over the version you are using now.

If you do this for me, perhaps we can never speak of those versions again. You have no idea of how happy that would make me.

Thanks,
zalm

Life of Brian — The Musical!! Brilliantly titled “Not the Messiah,” the musical will be (according to Eric Idle) “funnier than Handel, though not as good.” (via)