A Quotation
“Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.”
–Douglas Adams
Writers Cramped
Donald T. Williams on Three Things Evangelical Authors Can Learn from Flannery O’Connor. (Touchstone Magazine, September, 2007, via Pen and Palette.)
My fellow Evangelicals publish reams upon reams of prose. What we have not tended to write is anything recognized as having literary value by the literary world. What makes this failure remarkable is that our Protestant forebears include a number of people who did: Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, George Herbert, John Milton, and John Bunyan, to mention a few.
Equally remarkable is the host of near contemporary conservative Christians—sometimes quite evangelical and even evangelistic, though not “Evangelicals”—who were also important writers. G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, Walker Percy, and Flannery O’Connor are all recognized as important literary figures even by people who do not share their Christian commitment.
Where is the contemporary American Evangelical who can make such a claim?
Read the rest here.
OEDILF (The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form)
“This endeavor is well on its way:
From the words that begin with an A
Through the alphabet, we
Will continue to Z,
Writing limericks day after day.”
Here.
“Dogwood”
“Dogwood”
Acrylic on Canvas, 12 x 36 inches
A.M. Otwell, 2007
Museum of Bad Art
The Museum Of Bad Art (MOBA) is the world’s only museum dedicated to the collection, preservation, exhibition and celebration of bad art in all its forms.
Don’t Talk on the Phone During a Live Performance . . .
. . . or at least be prepared for the consequences! (funny video; very short)
Madeleine L’Engle (1918-2007)
“Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”
1 Corinthians 13:12, NIV“That’s the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious they’ve been all along.”
-Madeleine L’Engle
Thank you, Mrs. L’Engle, for passing on the glimpses that you saw. Thank you, God, for Mrs. L’Engle.
Story (with excellent bio) here.
Fun with Beethoven!
I’ll admit that it takes a little time to enjoy classical music, even when you’re having fun with it. Perhaps especially when you’re having fun with it. But since I serendipitously encountered two fun Beethoven references in just a few hours, I decided to go exploring to see what else I could find.
I’ll not save the best for last in this post, because, as I said, classical music takes time. Just in case you, Dear Reader, don’t have oodles of time today, I’ll start with the best.
“Argument to Beethoven’s 5th;” Sid Caesar and Nanette Fabray; 5:51; make sure you watch all the way to the end! (There’ll be a test later. . . or maybe not.)
Next is a link to a very, very interesting rendition of Beethoven’s Fur Elise (2:25). (Just imagine a googly-eyed umlaut; I’m too lazy to look up the HTML right now.) Based on the comments on that page, I don’t think viewers are “getting it,” but if you think about it for a few seconds, this rendition is incredible. . . or incredibly odd, at least.
Back to the fifth. I’m going to skip right over “A Fifth of Beethoven” and go right to the Beethoven Rap. (Back story here.)
Dudley Moore plays a well-done parody of a Beethoven piano sonata using the whistling tune from “Bridge Over the River Kwai” as a thematic subject here (4:29).
Beethoven on The Muppet Show (along with Victor Borge) (2:12).
And if you haven’t cracked a smile yet, maybe this will work:
(Beethoven is Funny, 0:42)
“Ough”
As a farmer was going to plough,
He met a man driving a cough;
They had words which led to a rough,
And the farmer was struck on his brough.
One day when the weather was rough,
An old lady went for some snough,
Which she thoughtlessly placed in her mough,
And it got scattered, all over her cough.
While a baker was kneading his dough,
A weight fell down on his tough,
When he suddenly exclaimed ough!
Because it had hurt him sough.
There was a hole in the hedge to get through,
It was made by no one knew whough;
In getting through a boy lost his shough,
And was quite at a loss what to dough.
A poor old man had a bad cough,
To a doctor he straight went ough,
The doctor did nothing but scough,
And said it was all fancy, his cough.
– Anonymous, cited in Carolyn Wells, A Whimsey Anthology, 1906
(via the always interesting Futility Closet)
