The Great Separation

My Short Story "Tidal Pool" is Up.

This is me plugging myself. - Hey everyone.

The online entertainment news magazine, TheCheers.org, is running my short story "Tidal Pool."

Here's the lead in:

The Mall. One of Life's Tidal Pools. A slice-of-life in the day of a computer/video game mall sales man.

Swing by for a read. Let me know what you think. As opposed to letting me know what you don't think, because you couldn't tell me what you're not thinking about.

I, on the other hand, could probably tell you what you were not thinking about. At which point you will be thinking about it.

Watching Paint Dry. The New Reality Show.

About time. - LOL! I love the satire of this.

Ananova™ is reporting on a webcast reality TV show that hopes to, "bring about the end of reality TV...."

Viewers will be able to watch a different kind of paint dry on an empty wall each day. They'll also be able to vote for their favourite [sic] paint.

The producers came up with the idea after deciding they'd rather watch paint dry than see another reality TV show.

I couldn't agree with them more. Here's a link to the UKTV Style paint page.

Disney Lusting for Your Tweens.

A Perverted Company. - I think it's time Christians wrote Disney completely off their vacation destinations. Start boycotting their movies too.

WorldNetDaily™ is reporting on Disney's latest cash mouse, or in this case, cash witch.

This latest Disney creation sweeping the world is a tween comic book/book series titled, "W.I.T.C.H." and it features five adolescent girls who, as the Disney website claims, "Go to School" and "Save the World," through their magical powers. WorldNetDaily™ reports:

A new Disney book series for adolescent girls aptly named W.I.T.C.H. promotes witchcraft and magic, a development that adds to the arsenal of those who criticize the company for being anti-family.

And as I've noted in a past post on Disney and its use of sex appeal, these girls are very sexy and scantily clad in their tight fitting witch outfits. The picture to the right is of one of the girls named Will.

This whole aspect of sexuality in Disney's cartoons and series is really beginning to bother me.

The book series was first published in Italy and has since worked it's magic around the world gaining in popularity and is now being released here in the states.

WorldNetDaily™ sources a website, www.ac18.org, covering the new series from a Christian standpoint in an article title, "Mickey Mouse leading children to Hell."

Quoting 1 John2: 15-17, which tells us not to love the "world" and defines what is the "world," the author of the site writes:

If Disney isn't a prime example of what the Bible means when it says "the World" I'm not sure what is. The world is subtley [sic] deceptive, just like Disney's WITCH book series which no doubt will begin a gradual progression towards the occult practice for some young people. Satan wants nothing more than for a person's life to be filled with things that appear to have meaning, but in the end have none and keep a person from tasting the truth. He tries to use a world filled with illusions and fantasies like the pictures above to fill our lives with things that only deceive and bear no fruit. It's like going to Disney World - none of its real, and at the end of the day, you've paid out the nose and don't have much to show for it. If the average life is compared to a day at Disney World, much of it is spent just standing in a line so we can go through the motions of yet another ride centered around some shallow theme. Sometimes it behooves us to ask ourselves why we do the things we do. Our hormones, instincts, emotions, indifference, and our lack of understanding oftentimes lure us around like animals as well. Meanwhile, God who is capable of using you in a mighty way calls us to forsake the things of World, forsake our flesh, and obey Christ. This means more than to simply stop sinning. It means to forsake life here on earth and all the shallow meaningless things that we mistakenly prioritize and live as a Citizen of Heaven carrying out a mission here on earth.

Amen.

The Great Separation continues.

Past T.G.S. posts about or referencing Disney:

Related Post(s):

A Wrinkle in Time Comes to ABC.
Disney Co-Financing a C.S. Lewis Book.
Disney Gets Second Homosexual Event.
Disney Pays Hundreds of Thousands for Millions in Free Press.
More Evidence that Disney is Drunkenly Stumbling.
ABC Attempting to Debunk Christianity.
Talking Food Has a Long List of Adopters.
More On Disney Environmental Madness and The Battle of the Spirit Realm.
Disney Going Environmentalist Now? Caterpillar Sues.
Disney & PETA Swimming in Same Pool.
Night of Joy.

Creator of "Hunting for Bambi" Admits Fake in Court.

Schnitt was right. - I posted first about the "Hunting for Bambi" thing way back on 2004.07.15.

As a refresher, it was about a company in Vegas offering men the ability to hunt down naked women in the wilderness with paint guns.

I noted then that a conservative radio personality, Schnitt, suggested it was just a ploy to sell the pornography videos. And today it is learned he was right.

Michael Squires reports in the Review-Journal:

Michael Burdick admitted in Las Vegas Municipal Court on Tuesday what all but the most gullible already knew: Paintball hunts of nude women were never really for sale in the Nevada desert.

The entrepreneur who earned money and grew infamous last year making that false claim in order to promote his "Hunting for Bambi" video pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors: doing business without a license and providing false information to a public official.

Now, for the shocker. This guy, Burdick, moved his business in October to St. Petersburg, Florida. That's my back door.

That's just great. As if St. Petersburg doesn't all ready have enough problems to deal with.

Bangladeshi Village Trampled by Grieving Elephants.

Nature Strikes Back. - Ivory poachers shot, killed, and de-tusked a young male elephant in the forested area of Cox Bazar, Bangladesh.

This action apparently sent a herd of twenty elephants into a frenzy of revenge and mourning.

While some elephants took up guard of the corpse others took charge of a nearby village.

HiPakistan reports:

Following the killing, a herd of more than 20 elephants went on a rampage, uprooting trees, destroying nearly 50 straw huts, and forcing nearly 1,000 villagers to flee to safety, Mitra [a forest ranger] said.

Some of the elephants stood guard over the dead body, chasing away any humans who tried to approach. Some were heard making mournful sounds, the forest ranger said.

How's that for an animal oddity?

Liberal Attack Dogs want Rush Limbaugh Gone from Armed Forces Radio.

Do those dogs bite? - Melanie Hunter, the Deputy Managing editor of CNSNews.com is reporting that a newly formed left-wing watch-the-big-dog group calling itself Media Matters for America is targeting Rush Limbaugh for removal from the Armed Forces Radio.

Hunter writes:

According to Media Matters for America, which describes itself as the first organization to systematically monitor the media for conservative "misinformation," Limbaugh has spent the past four weeks trivializing and condoning the U.S. mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison.

I've heard Rush speak about the incidents in the prison and he certainly hasn't condoned them, but he has tried to put them in perspective.

Rush's radio program is three hours Monday through Friday, for those that don't know. The Armed Forces Radio airs only one hour of his program.

Rush is also one of the few champions the military has in the big media, so it is little wonder that he is being targeted for removal.

This looks to me to be a campaign to weaken the morale of military even more through the use of the Abu Graib scandal, something that looks more and more like how the media used the Tet Offensive in Vietnam.

Ann Coulter takes on the media on this Tet/Abu Ghraib comparison in her column "Tit for Tet" over at WorldNetDaily™ and makes some interesting points:

We have liberated the Iraqi people from a brutal dictator who gassed his own people, had weapons of mass destruction, invaded his neighbors, harbored terrorists, funded terrorists and had reached out to Osama bin Laden. Liberals may see Saddam's mass graves in Iraq as half-full, but I prefer to see them as half-empty.

So far, we have found chemical and biological weapons – brucella and Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever, ricin, sarin, aflatoxin – and long-range missiles in Iraq.

What gets me is that I don't hear from the liberals that this is a war, the war on terrorists, that we must win. And I find that frightening. They seem to be blind to the fact that these Muslim Terrorists desire peace through the subjugation of all to the Islamic law. That is their goal, world domination founded under the Islamic law. Quran, Sura 9:28-33 (italics mine):

[9.28] O you who believe! the idolaters are nothing but unclean, so they shall not approach the Sacred Mosque after this year; and if you fear poverty then Allah will enrich you out of His grace if He please; surely Allah is Knowing Wise.

[9.29] Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Apostle have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection.

[9.30] And the Jews say: Uzair is the son of Allah; and the Christians say: The Messiah is the son of Allah; these are the words of their mouths; they imitate the saying of those who disbelieved before; may Allah destroy them,; how they are turned away!

[9.31] They have taken their doctors of law and their monks for lords besides Allah, and (also) the Messiah son of Marium and they were enjoined that they should serve one God only, there is no god but He; far from His glory be what they set up (with Him).

[9.32] They desire to put out the light of Allah with their mouths, and Allah will not consent save to perfect His light, though the unbelievers are averse.

[9.33] He it is Who sent His Apostle with guidance and the religion of truth, that He might cause it to prevail over all religions, though the polytheists may be averse.

The Great Separation continues.

Christian Carnival XIX Parks at Parks at Parablemania.

Come one, come all. - There's some great posts in this week's edition of The Christian Carnival. Swing by for a read.

You won't be disappointed.

Site Slowness

This is just to let folk know, if you are able to read this that is, that the TypePad servers that host The Great Separation is having some difficulties. So that is the reason for the slowness of the site loading or being unavailable at varying periods.

Here's what TypePad is saying about the issue and what they are planning to do about it:

We apologize for the intermittent slow performance of TypePad web sites over the past 2-3 days. We're having some problems with our storage servers, so we're scheduling a hardware upgrade for the early morning of Saturday, May 28, 2004, from 12:00am to 2:00am Pacific time. During that time, TypePad-powered sites and TypePad itself will be down for maintenance. Thanks for your patience!

So there you are. Hopefully things will be straightened out ASAP.

Militant Hindus Forcing Christians to Convert.

They hate you because of me - India has a population of one billion according to the CIA WouldFact Book.

AsiaNews.it is reporting that a para-military Hindu group that calls itself Hidutva Rashtriya Swayamsevak (RSS) is setting out to stop conversions to Christianity. Also noted is that in the last five years it is estimated that somewhere between five thousand to twenty thousand tribal Christians have been forced to convert to Hinduism.

The extremist Hindutva Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) movement and its frontal organization Dharma Jagran Vibhag (religious awakening department) have announced the decision to establish groups of armed youth, called Raksha Sena, in every village of the Central Indian tribal state Chhatisgarh, in order to stop conversions to Christianity. John Dayal, vice-president of the All India Catholic Union, an organization that unites 16 million Indian Catholics has strongly denounced this.

The birth of the Reksha Sena was supported by Dilip Singh Judeo, former Forest minister under Vajapayee’s BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) government, who was awarded the position for leading the violent Ghar Wapsi (“Return Home”) movement for converting the tribal Christian of central India to Hinduism. “At its peak,” Dayal explains, “ the Ghar Wapsi movement consisted of armed men, many of them from outside the state and most of them non-tribal upper caste activists, forcibly rounding up tribal villagers into camps where Judeo and other would wash their feet, while gunmen and bowmen watched, and tell them they were now Hindus.” R K Kamath, a journalist of Mumbai, documented this in the well-known report “Fishers of Men.”

The CIA FactBook breaks down the religious make up of India as such:

Hindu 81.3%, Muslim 12%, Christian 2.3%, Sikh 1.9%, other groups including Buddhist, Jain, Parsi 2.5% (2000)

The Great Separation continues.

Viggo Mortensen Speaking 4th of July Event. In Denmark?

Who knew. - Here's an odd piece of news and trivia. Denmark celebrates the 4th of July. In fact they host the biggest 4th of July celebration outside of America.

One of the guest speakers at the event will be Mortensen, famed for his Aragon portrayal in "Lord of the Rings."

Netscape® has the AP story:

Danes and descendants of emigrants have celebrated the U.S. Independence Day with barbecues, square dancing and country music outside Rebild, a village 155 miles northwest of Copenhagen, since 1912.

That's pretty cool if you ask me.

(Hat tip to my little brother.)