...town, that is, and will be gone for about a week. Unlike TSO, I won't be putting up a week's worth of posts because I'm often gone for a week anyway even when I'm here.
I did see a couple of movies recently, though. One I can recommend is The Jacket, starring Adrian Brody, about a guy who dies more than once. My only disappointment was that, contra The Machinist, Jennifer Jason Leigh's breasts are kept modestly veiled behind a psychiatrist's lab jacket.
Saw War of the Worlds last night because I'm a sucker for sci-fi, but, aside from Dakota Fanning, the 'human interest' side of the story sucks. I think the original was better. And the attractiveness of Tom Cruise continues to elude. The guy's weird. Hard to put your finger on, but you can see it in his eyes.
Also saw an MSNBC documentary called "Signs of the Divine", in which the Left Behind authors were interviewed. One of them's named LaHaye (french for 'the hay'?). Tim, Jim, Slim? Not sure and can't remember the other one at all. But apparently it is an article of faith that, along with Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, atheists and every variety of pagan, Catholics will be "left behind" when the fabled rapture comes to town. I've never been much captured by the rapture but, if it must happen, I am to believe that, say, John Paul II would have been stranded while old Tim horsefood gets a ticket to ride? John Paul spent all his time praying and fasting and trying to convert the world to Christ. No wife, no sex period, no kids. And I don't think he drank as much as I do. Survived the Nazis, beat back the Commies. Lived in a palace (so to speak) but nothing in it belonged to him. Mr. LaHaye is rich. He writes best-selling bad books. He goes to the hairdresser. Looks like he's had a facelift. Doesn't have to wear long robes all the time. He probably lives a lot like you and me except that he gets to eat at better places, has a bigger house, and maybe doesn't swear as much. Doesn't seem fair somehow.
7 comments:
Re: Left Behind
This is from a fellow named Josh Shepherd, posted on The New Pantagruel Forums
*****
Speaking of bad apocalyptic and political writing, I've just finished a novella, 'The Ironic God Theory,' unpublished of course. Stop reading if you are bored.
It's called 'The Ironic God Theory,' and its narrator is a bitter, heavy drinking baptist theologian. He is bitter and heavy drinking because while doing his PhD at Duke, he met and impregnated and married a catholic colleague. And the rapture, which he thought a ridiculous and literalist idea etc., was in the end a rapture of Roman Catholics. All of the baptized, including his infant son. He, along with most of his big baptist church, Protestantism, and the Orthodox, were left behind.
He writes a book, 'The Ironic God Theory,' trying to respond to the crisis. He doesn't really believe it; it's more or less an exercise in sarcastic prayer, because what kind of God acts like this? It becomes a bestseller. And everything in his book begins to come true. Pan-Islamic takeover of the world. American dissolution, etc.
Well, at least it's the Catholics who get snatched up. But it can't be all of them. Just the ones who think, say, like me. And I do have a few Protestant friends I'd like to take along, like Cella. Other than that...God will know his own.
Going somewhere warm? Wait you're from Hurricane country! So when the rest of us escape the cold for the warmth do you do the opposite? Have a safe trip.
I think you should put up a week's worth of posts anyway!
Yeah, I'm already somewhere warm. I'm going some place stressful.
And it takes me about a month to put up a week's worth of posts.
In the first of the "Left Behind" books, they do throw a bit of a bone to the Catholics--saying that the pope disappeared along with all those other raptured folk. HOWEVER, they followed it up with a comment to the effect "This was the Pope who had scandalized the Church by sounding more like Martin Luther than a Catholic pope." Or something like that.
I read the first one or two of the books, but then when I decided they were going to take as long as the Tribulation to write about it, I gave up on it . . .
Oh, and I didn't like War of the Worlds much. How is it possible for that little girl to scream so continuously? Boy, her throat must have been sore.
And Tom Cruise as a dad to that teenager? Too weird. He didn't look old enough. Frankly, I've never seen the appeal of Tom Cruise anyway. I can't think of anything I thought he was GREAT in.
The pre-tribulation rapture is not a Catholic theory, it is actually an invention of Scofield (as in the Scofield bible commentary). Some of my best friends are dispensationalists and big-time Rapture believers and we used to have some pretty interesting conversations.
And I actually have read all but the last of the Left Behind books - but I have read them more as comedies or brain candy similar to Harlequin romances....... there are so many loose ends that never got tied up!
Interesting, Alicia. But what's this tribulation you refer to? Is there any way to, um, get out of it?
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