Nov 4, 2009
Proof:
Told you so.
Oct 29, 2009
Free tip: If you're in the mood to get angry, browse any site that offers daily Christian devotionals. You may find a good one or two, but you'll soon run across one like this:
(Don't let the length intimidate you. As is the case with most craziness, it's a quick read.)
Manipulation is witchcraft!
1 Kings 21:25—But there was none like unto Ahab, which did sell himself to work wickedness in the sight of the LORD, whom Jezebel his wife stirred up.
Jezebel manipulated Ahab every day of his life. Manipulation in marriage works this way. A wife can manipulate her husband with sex. It says, “If you buy me what I want today, the bedroom is going to be exciting tonight. And if you don’t, I’m going to be like an iceberg until you cave in. It’s your choice, Bubba,” That’s witchcraft. You can manipulate through moods. “Give daddy what he wants, or he’ll get mad.” That’s witchcraft, and you’ll be giving into it till the day you die.
I’m talking about the spirit of witchcraft evidenced by manipulation. In the home, children will try to manipulate the parents. Many times a rebellious child will try to divide the parents, getting the father to stand against the mother, and vice versa. That’s witchcraft, pure and simple. When the child gets older, her or she will threaten to run away if they don’t get their way. I’m speaking from experience here.
I was raised in a very strict German home. If I told you how strict, many of you would think it was child abuse. It was strong. No movies. No dominoes. No Monopoly, because it had dice and my mother didn’t want her son to grow up to be a gambler. That’s how strong it was. So one day I got the idea that I’d just leave home. I’m 17 years old and bright as the noonday sun. And I came in and told my German mama, “I’m leaving. I’m getting out of here.” She said, “Fine.” Then she pulled my suitcase out of the closet and started throwing my clothes in it and telling me goodbye. I got a revelation that I wasn’t going to be there to eat supper. Mother wasn’t upset at all. She was telling me about Traveler’s Aid whenever I ran out of money and things like that. It took me about five minutes to start eating humble pie. I said, “I’ll do anything you want me to, just let me hang around and eat another meal.”
Is your home divided because your children are manipulating you? Parents, you stop it. You get together and you make those little tortilla snappers jump up and do what you want them to do. You’re the leader at your house, they’re not. Listen up, teenagers. Your parents do not owe you a perpetual good time. If you’re bored, get up off your duff and dust the furniture, vacuum the rugs, make the beds, wash the clothes, go outside and cut the grass, clean the windows wash the family car and then go back inside and straighten up your room before you leave to straighten out the world.
When children grow up, many mothers try to manipulate their grown children with guilt. Some of you are forty years old and can’t cross the street without your mother’s permission. That’s not good. Mother’s manipulation goes something like this. “I just want you to remember that I almost died giving birth to you. I slaved to feed you. I took clothes off my back to clothe you. I begged and borrowed to give you a big wedding. An now you won’t do what I want you to do.” That’s the spirit of Jezebel; that’s witchcraft—stop it!
Devotion taken from Pastor Hagee’s book 12 Sunday Mornings Volume 3 – currently unavailable
Where to begin, where to begin...how about the fact that Pastor Hagee's understanding of how women talk seems to have been learned from spam email about penis enlargement? "The bedroom is going to be exciting tonight?" Did she install a disco ball?
You've got misogyny, obviously. That's an easy one--sort of a staple in ill-advised Christian messages. It bothers me that this fictional woman calls her husband "Bubba," but it bothers me more that--in the same paragraph about sexual manipulation--Hagee includes the priceless: "give daddy what he wants, or he'll get mad." Let's leave your weird role-play stuff out of this, Padre.
Apparently most of Hagee's readers consider a home without movies, dominoes, or Monopoly an abusive one. I guess I can understand that, because Monopoly kicks ass. But referring to children as "tortilla snappers" is either one of the more racist things I've ever heard, or Hagee was suffering from word salad, and the person he was dictating to didn't want to correct him.
If Hagee thinks his domino-less home was borderline child abuse, than what would he call the slave-labor he suggests for teenagers? I'm all for children helping out around the house, but he's listed every chore that people don't want to do. What are the parents doing during all this, watching Fox news?
The worst, predictably, is the crux of his argument. In what is surely meant to be "Hagee getting personal," he opens up, sharing a childhood story about how, in a fit of rebellion & witchcraft manipulation, he threatened to run away from home. He then explains that his mother, in her wisdom, simply pretended not to give a damn, which made him come to his senses and go set the table.
What is more manipulative than a mother pretending she doesn't care that her son is skipping town!? He raises this tactic up as the perfect way to make someone eat "humble pie," (another method: tell them it's lingonberry) but she's the worst offender of all.
I've got news for you Pastor: your mom's strict rules may have kept you from a life of gambling and vagrancy, but--if your theory is correct--she was also a real-life witch.
Oct 22, 2009
OK, confession. I have been trying for over a month to finish American Pastoral, the book that won Phillip Roth a Pulitzer Prize, was named one of the greatest novels of all time by TIME, and took a runner-up spot in the "greatest work of American fiction in the last 25 years" contest that NYT Book review did a few years back. I have picked it up and put it down two pages later a dozen times, but I've also done full-chapter trudges (Phillip Roth chapters are about 290 pages long) that have left me with not much more than tired eyes and a thin layer of mild depression.
There are quite a few good things about the novel. The character of Swede Levov is great, well-developed, someone the reader can really see. The plot is compelling, the narrator is exactly the right person to tell the story, and the device used to deliver the story from a close third-person perspective is genius. There are scenes that I felt--really felt--in a visceral, stinging way. But Phillip Roth stops every few paragraphs to pontificate, to masturbate literary-style, in a way that makes the whole thing feel like riding a badly-designed theme park ride. The dull parts are too long and too numerous, and the exciting parts are too short to feel like they were worth the wait.
I also think that we should care a little more about Mary, Swede's daughter, before she goes where she goes/does what she does. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I'm not a father yet, but my inclination throughout most of the story has been "tell her to screw off, Swede!"
This whole rambling academic vibe must be Roth's shtick. I read The Dying Animal first, (library was out of American Pastoral) not realizing that I'd already seen the movie they adapted from it. I admit, I didn't figure out that it was the same story until I was halfway through, mostly because I was too busy wading through Roth's diatribes. We spend the whole of this novella in the narrator's head as he details his affair/obsession with his (much) younger student, so it ends up reading like an extra-long Wordpress entry. I think I got through this one because it was both shorter (under 200 pages) and sexier (possible alternate title=Boobs and Death: One Man's Thoughts), but it was no easy battle. I've always preferred authors that didn't do all the thinking for me.
The decision is, do I keep reading American Pastoral so that I can say I gave it my all (and so I can raise my hand if I'm ever in a book club and someone asks)? Or should I spend my energies elsewhere, with one of the many books I've got on deck that I'll actually enjoy? I can't decide. I think that people that give up on books too quickly cheat themselves, but just writing about the possibility of reading another chapter is making me yawn. Plus, I bet I can figure out the end (everyone is unhappy, lives that seem perfect aren't, anyone?)
Considering Elegy (The Dying Animal adaptation) was one of the few movies that was better than the book, maybe I'll stop now and hold out for the American Pastoral movie due out in '11. Considering it has a good director and great cast going for it, I can't imagine it being anything but an improvement.
Oct 17, 2009
A surprising number of celebrities are honest-to-goodness Scientologists. Since this "religion" is guano-crazy, I wanted to find out why. It took some digging, but I discovered the true reasons behind some of the more unbelievable conversions.
You may not know this, but Battlefield Earth is actually adapted from the first half of a book by L. Ron Hubbard. No lie. Problem is, Travolta was contractually obligated to star in Battlefield Earth 2: The Second Half. L. Ron told him the only way he could get out of making this movie, which could only be described as a "career-crucifier," was to convert. Travolta admitted defeat, not realizing that it was already too late.
Similar situation, actually. Kirstie was drunk on Schnapps and ice tea the night she signed up to co-star with Travolta in Look Who's Talking. What she didn't realize is that is was an eleven-sequel commitment. That's right, eleven sequels to this. Kirstie woke up, hungover and freaking out. Luckily, Hubby (L. Ron's new nickname, not her Baywatch-directing husband) stepped in an offered to make the whole thing go away if she'd start going to his "church." The rest is history.
It's a little-known fact, but Jenna Elfman is a serious method actor. She got into Scientology to prepare for her role as Dharma in the "hit" ABC series Dharma and Greg and has never got around to un-registering.
Actually, he was tricked into it. What follows is the exchange:
Giovanni Ribisi: (Whistling a tune as he walks down a street)
L. Ron Hubbard in disguise as a friendly hippie-type: Yo Maa-an.
GR: Oh, oh hello. Hi. What, ah, what's going on my friend?
LRHIDAAFHT: Yo dude, I can get you like the highest you've ever been man. You'll love what I've got. Come back to my house with me.
GR: Oh, ah, see--I don't do drugs or anything. I'm clean, you know? Thank you, though, for the offer and everything, ah--
LRHIDAAFHT: Please man, you'll like it, come on.
GR: Well, ah, I guess I could ah, you know--come with you. I'm not gonna do any drugs but if you want to just hang out or whatever, you know, that would be okay.
LRHIDAAFHT: Yeah, come on to my house ma-an.
GR: Oh, ah, haha, OK.
Later
LRHIDAAFHT: Sign this or I will fucking kill you.
GR: (signs it, weeping.)
He was bored, and he thought it would be funny.
