Of Happy Rebellion

Just got introduced, via Dinosaur Comics, to the webcomic Rock, Paper, Cynic. While some of his strips are less appropriate, there are some that are quite funny:


I can't tell you how many times I've thought this, that just being content is close to the most revolutionary thing you can do, because everyone, everyone, everyone is going crazy in some small way or another. So if you could just be happy with a balloon on a cool fall day, you might just be more insurgent than Marilyn Manson, Thomas Jefferson and Ché all rolled together. Which would be a fearsome sight in and of itself.

Of Blogging Technique

I've found that I hate trying to read a blog post that is long, not even excessively so, unless I am super excited about the topic it is discussing. For that reason, I try to keep my posts short, and even if they aren't, I try to break up the paragraphs so it is easier to read.

Still, I think that keeps some people from commenting because it seems like it's only "T.J.'s short thoughts" and does not require response. Or maybe I just don't talk about things that are interesting enough.

One technique I've notice Jon Acuff uses at Stuff Christians Like is to ask a question at the end of most of his posts.

So, what do you think? Are shorter blogs better? Are shorter paragraphs easier to read?

Of Resonating Literature

Sometimes literature just resonates with you. It takes your meager circumstances and elevates them or mirrors them in the higher plane of that which you are reading.

"When once he was within the cabin there was nothing to do but kiss. He avoided her mouth—the mouth reveals so much, but she wouldn't be content until she had pulled his face round a left the seal of her return on his lips. 'Oh my dear, here I am.'

'Here you are,' he said

...

Did my lies really start, he wondered, when I wrote that letter? Can I really love her more than Louise? Do I, in my heart of hearts, love either of them, or is it only that this automatic pity goes out to any human need—and makes it worse? Any victim demands allegiance.

...

'Missing Mass on Sunday's a mortal sin, just as much as adultery.'

'Adultery's more fun,' he said with attempted lightness.

...

...he felt his whole personality crumble with the disintegration of lies.

...

'Why do we go on like this—being unhappy?'

'It's a mistake to mix up the ideas of happiness and love,' Scobie said with desperate pedantry, as though, if he could turn the whole situation into a textbook case, as they had turned Pemberton, peace might return to both of them, a kind of resignation.

...

One ought not to lie to two people if it could be avoided—that way lay complete chaos, but he was tempted terribly to lie as he watched her face on the pillow. She seemed to him like one of those plants in nature films which you watch age under your eye.

...

'But I simply don't understand. If you believe in hell, why are you with me now?'

How often he though, lack of faith helps one to see more clearly than faith. He said, 'You are right, of course: it ought to prevent all this. But the villages on the slopes of Vesuvius go on...And then, against all the teaching of the Church, one has the conviction that love—any kind of love—does deserve a bit of mercy. One will pay, of course, pay terribly, but I don't believe on will pay for ever.

...

'I can regret the lies, the mess, the unhappiness, but if I were dying now I wouldn't know how to repent the love.'

...

'It's not much good confessing if I don't intend to try. . . .'

'Well then,' she said triumphantly, 'be hung for a sheep. You are in—what do you call it—mortal sin? now. What difference does it make?'

He thought: pious people, I suppose, would call this the devil speaking, but he knew that evil never spoke in these crude answerable terms: this was innocence."

From Book III, Part I, Chapter I of Graham Greene's novel The Heart of the Matter. Read. Buy.

Of Talking Animals

British Accents/Animals: Always funny, so funny:

Of Dr. Horrible

If you have not already seen Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog, you should. I say this for your benefit. It is a very vital piece of you entertainment, I assure you.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog was an alternative musical written, directed and produced by Joss Whedon during the writer's strike. It contains a plentiful amount of witty lines such as "It's not about making money, it's about taking money! Destroying the status quo, because the status is NOT quo."

In addition to the hilarity of a musical about an aspiring evil scientist who want to join the Evil League of Evil and get up the courage to talk to the girls of his dreams/co-laundromat user, the three-act musical speaks sincerely and pointedly to a number of profound topics. Many of the songs consist of intense and direct dialogue about everything from the real nature of evil to social change to a time-stopping freeze-ray.

Honestly, you should go watch it. Now.


Neil Patrick Harris is making that face at you. Because you have not seen it yet.

There. I gave you two different ways to watch it. Now go.

Of White Ninja

I while ago, I stumbled upon a number of interesting and hilarious web comics. The first being Dinosaur Comics, which consists of the same images for every comic, with different text, an interesting and dynamic and often hilarious concept. The second, and more favored, is White Ninja Comics:


The humor is dry and random and genius.

Of Bowler Hats

I have decided that I want a bowler hat. Some of them aren't cheap though. Or just this whole daggum outfit:


I think maybe I was born just over a hundred years to late for my tastes. Maybe. I can just really dig the whole mid to late 19th-century look. The Victorian period in clothing was bangin'. That is all.

Of God's Creating Practice

Quick question: do you think that there is anything that God did not create?

Of Mouths and Magazines

Showbread used to be my favorite band of all time. I love this music video. I love the song "Stabbing Art To Death" even better, mostly because of the bangin' lyrics.

Anyways, this is one of my favorite music videos of all time.

Of A Collaborative Exodus

Not that I am trying to force or drive anyone to quit Facebook, as I have done, but I found this interesting article about the recent Facebook exodus. It says that "while people are still joining Facebook and compulsively visiting the site, a small but noticeable group are fleeing — some of them ostentatiously."

I guess you could define my leaving as ostentatious; I created this blog a few months before I did it to maintain some sort of "online voice," although the need for that is somewhat questionable. I wrote a note, made event, the whole shebang. It is a little vindicating to see that some people are of a like mind and are considering or acting in the same manner that I have.

I have even been considering returning recently, so you made consider this post to be mildly irrelevant and hypocritical. But that is your prerogative.

Oh, and I dislike coffee.