Month: May 2005

When you’ve grown tired of Weed-B-Gone, and RoundUp just can’t get the job done, look no further.

Behold – the Red Dragon.

500,000 BTUs, trigger ready for the weed fighting power you need!

Via Boing Boing

Go check out Arthur Chrenkoff’s ‘Good News from Iraq‘ installment.

I’m watching ‘Meet the Press’ on my DVR (I record the show and watch it later in the evening). Howard Dean is being interviewed by Russert. Dean is running around in circles. He makes a statement, Tim hammers him with a contradiction, then Howard ignores it and runs in another direction.

What a piece of work. I never thought there could be a chairman worse than Terry MacAulliffe. Howard Dean has him beat in spades.

It sucks.

Ah, travel. Some love it, most hate it. I hate it. We left Grand Rapids early enough to drive back to O’Hare in time to have a couple of hours before our 3:45 PM flight. No problem right? Right. We got to the airport right on schedule. We moved through ticketing and security, ate at Wolfgang Puck’s, then moved to the Delta lounge. All good. About 3:00 PM or so, we walked over to our gate, only to find that our 3:45 PM flight was delayed until 6:00 PM. Back to the lounge we go. The Delta lounge isn’t one of the better ones at O’Hare, so we were pretty much bored, and the heat was turned up a bit too much, so one couldn’t help but drift off into a half sleep. Not fun.

Wheels were finally up by 6:25 PM and we landed in Seattle at around 9:30 PM. I pulled into my driveway at midnight, but with the time change it felt like 3 AM.

I’m leaving Grand Rapids today and driving back to Chicago to board a plane at O’Hare. So, my day is gone. I’ll check in tomorrow.

I have no idea what to make of this.

Thursday night, I watched Star Wars: Episode III – The Revenge of the Sith. Understand – I’m not a Star Wars geek, so I did not gasp in amazement after each ‘answer’ was revealed which unlocked the many mysteries from Episodes I, II, IV, V, and VI. Luckily for me, my theatre in Grand Rapids was not packed full of costumed geekoids, so there was no impromptu ‘acting’ going on in the aisles. For this, I was grateful.

I liked the movie. The acting (as widely reported) wasn’t good, but the special effects were outstanding.

I was on the lookout for the so called anti-Bush messages that I’ve read about from other blog articles and main stream media reports. I couldn’t find anything along these lines. Some have claimed that the evil Chancellor Palpatine character is really a caricature of Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee. I myself could not see the connection.

I did discover a different message played out in the movie. In fact, the message is more like a warning. A warning to the Catholic Church.

What is this warning? Priest should remain celibate, and homosexuality is a threat to the future of the church.

(***Possible Spoilers Ahead – Be Forewarned***)

One of the movie plot lines focuses on the pregnancy of the Padme character who is carrying twins Luke and Leia. The father of the twins is none other than Anakin Skywalker. Both Anakin and Padme have chosen to keep their marriage and the pregnancy a secret from everyone, including the Jedi council. If the council were to find out that Anakin was married and that he was a soon-to-be father, he would have no chance at becoming a Jedi Master. Throughout the first part of the film, Anakin has dreams that Padme will die during the delivery of the twin babies. Apparently, when a Jedi has dreams, it’s a sign of the future to come. Anakin is appropriately fearful of this, and he decides to do whatever possible to save Padme from impending death.

This is where all good goes bad.

Jedi are to be selfless people, and are only to think about the welfare of others. The problem is, Anakin’s love, Padme, will die if he doesn’t do something to save her. He believes he’s due a seat on the Jedi council as a ‘Master’, but he is rebuffed by other Jedi masters. This makes him angry and suspicious of his fellow Jedi. A woman has come between Anakin and the Jedi code. Due to his dedication to Padme, he rejects the code of the Jedi. He begins thinking selfishly – he begins to crave more power. Ultimately, Anakin is doomed as he turns to the dark side.

When a woman comes between a Jedi, a wedge is driven between the Jedi and his fellow Jedi’s. The will of the council cannot be done. The mission of the council cannot be completed. The Jedi who is involved with a woman focuses completely on her, and not on the needs of others. As she demands more from him, he begins to think only about her and his life with her. He is unable to think and care for others in an equal way. He has become selfish and cannot be a Jedi Master.

Is it a mistake that there are no women on the Jedi council? No.
(I have since been informed that there have been women on the Jedi council in the past. Thanks for all who provided that insight. I stand corrected. -ed.)

The Jedi council is the Catholic Church.

The Padme character, her pregnancy ‘problem’ and her neediness represent homosexuality in the Catholic priesthood.

While celibate, a priest can do the will of the church. They can selflessly serve their catholic parishioners. Once they break their celibacy and give way to homosexual urges, they become focused on it and cannot effectively serve the church any longer. They hide their character from the church, just like Anakin hides his marriage and fatherhood from the Jedi council. They know that if the Catholic church finds out about their homosexuality, they can no longer serve as a priest. They become more selfish and think only of themselves, of feeding their urges. They no longer care about their victims. Anakin no longer cares about the people he once loved and to protect his power, he permanently harms them or kills them.

As a homosexual priest carries out his actions in private, he permanently harms his victims, mostly young boys. In the film, Anakin kills Jedi younglings without remorse. This heinous act is one that no Jedi could even think about. He no longer carries any guilt or shame over his actions. Ultimately, Anakin succumbs to the dark side, becomes Darth Vadar, and the republic is destroyed. As homosexual acts by church priests propagate, the strength and trust in the church is broken.

The warning from Star Wars: Episode III – The Revenge of the Sith is simple. Priests in the Catholic church must remain celibate, or the church will succumb to evil and face destruction.

Flashback: In 2002, other bloggers wrote about the Catholic church connection to the Jedi council.

(Comment moderation is in effect, so if you don’t see yours right away, it’s because I haven’t approved it yet. Since I’m on a business trip, I might not get to it right away, but I intend to approve most if not all comments from every side on this. If you intend on being vulgar, well then…there are other blogs that might accept those comments. This blog does not.)

Via Boing Boing, a workprint of Episode III hit the Internet in the last few hours. Except for a timecode and some watermarks, the XVID file is watchable.

A 320 x 240 sized window on your computer screen is no substitute for the big screen ‘experience’ you’ll find down at Loews, so don’t get too excited.

How do liberals get their message out these days? They scour the latest science fiction MOVIE and create parallels between fictional characters in the film to current members of the Republican party. Here is an example:

• The liberal advocacy group Moveon.org was preparing to spend $150,000 to run advertisements on CNN over the next few days – and to spread leaflets among audiences in line at multiplexes – comparing Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, to the movie’s power-grabbing, evil Chancellor Palpatine, for Dr. Frist’s role in the Senate’s showdown over the confirmation of federal judges.

It’s hard to believe that within the Moveon.org institution, there isn’t someone with at least an ounce of intelligence who can stop these wackos from putting their energies into dim bulb protest ideas like this one. Obviously, when you are devoid of ideas (let alone solutions) for today’s problems, you run to the nearest cinemaplex to further poison the minds of teenage geeks who already live in an alternate reality.

May the force be with you.