Confessions of A Moving Target

James Bond (007) is Britain’s top agent and is on an exciting mission, to solve the mysterious murder of a fellow agent. The task sends him to Jamacia, where he joins forces with Quarrel and a loyal CIA agent, Felix Leiter. While dodging tarantulas, “fire breathing dragons” and a trio of assassins, known as the three blind mice. Bond meets up with the beautiful Honey Ryder and goes face to face with the evil Dr. No.

While it contains all the classic elements of Bond films ( A beautiful woman, egomaniacle baddy …etc),  this movie is very anti-climactic. This can be attributed to several things. First, the soundtrack is incredibly sparse. It does have the classic Bond theme which is very important but apart from several variations on that theme the soundtrack is very forgetable. This sparsness also bleeds over into the foly and sound design. Outside of a few basic special effects like explosions and gun fire, when a character isn’rt speaking, all you hear is silence. Second there is no real tension built up and when what little tension there is comes to a head it gets resolved quicky and without any real problem.

All in all it was a good intro to the Bond series. My wife attributed the sparseness and the anti-climacticity to the era. I told her that Hitchcock was doing incredible suspense and climaxes as many as 5-6 years before Dr. No, so era is no excuse.

Side note: I’ve noticed a plot divice in Bond movies that I will keep track of through the retrospective. I’ve noticed that Bond is usually knocked over the head and unconscious in order, plot-wise, to get him to the enemy’s secret base.

America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity. She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights. She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right. Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet on her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world; she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit. . . . Her glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.

- John Quincy Adams’ address as Secretary of State to the U.S. House of Representatives.,Independence Day 1821.

- Einstein Bros. six cheese bagel with onion and chive cream cheese.

- Rogue Brewing Co.’s Dead Guy Ale

- Macs

- P.F. Chang’s

- my iPhone

- A good French Press pot of coffee

Music:

I used to buy into the propaganda. “Democrats kill babies.” But as I grew up and moved on into the “real world.” I started to meet some democrats. They weren’t the incarnation of evil after all.  I eventually became a huge fan of a TV show that had, as it’s main character, a Democratic President. Slowly and thankfully My eyes have been opened. And while I may not agree with some basic democratic principles there are a good many areas where the GOP would do well to sit down, shut up and take notes. As I look at Fox News and other people who represent the Republican Party (inside my family and out) I become more and more sickened. So many Republicans that claim to be so devout seem to leave their faith at the door when it comes to dealing with people with different political views. I have heard insults, lies, exaggerations and downright slander from supposed Christians that would make a sailor blush. Put it on FOX news and it must be true. Have O’Reily spin it his way and that spin must be true. Obama or Hillary said it …. it must be a lie.

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I believe that in the day of our full deliverance we shall lift up, every one of us, such a song of praise as we are not capable of here. We shall sing with all our powers of heart and tongue at the sight of what we have been delivered from. Even then this will be the sum and substance of the song—“Salvation is of the Lord.” He has wrought it all, and brought us safely through. The hymn of Miriam, and of all the children of Israel at the Red Sea, when they had passed through it, and all the Egyptians were drowned, was a very exultant song, but what will ours be when the gates of hell shall have been overthrown, and all our enemies destroyed, and we shall find ourselves before the eternal throne saved for ever! Shall we not exclaim, “Sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously”? Shall we not, each one, tell out his own ex-perience, and bid our fellow-believers sing yet more and more rapturously unto the God of salvation? Will not some of you take up that note which Miriam dwelt upon when she could not see a single Egyptian? Pharaoh’s chariots and horses were all sunk in the sea, his chosen cap-tains also were drowned in the Red Sea; and so she struck her timbrel, and with all the maidens she danced right joyously as she sang, “The depths have covered them. There is not one, not one, not one of them left.” Thus will we sing in heaven. “ There is not one, not one of them left. Not one of all the sins, and all the trials, and all the temptations, and all the vexations of life: the Lord has removed them all. There is not one of them left. Salvation is of the Lord.” - C.H. Spurgeon

The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough — more than enough — of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we labor on — not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace.

- J.F.K.

This is my first blog post from my iPhone. Now I have another way to shame myself because of a lack of blog posts.

“We are set free, but unto what? If the thing that I’ve been talking about on these records, if the message is about being set free and liberated by Christ, if that’s true, then the big question becomes, How do we live in light of that freedom? What are the fruits of that freedom? There’s a point at which the rubber of our theology must hit the road of ethics. There’s a point at which, if we pride ourselves in knowing about God’s character, our knowledge of that character must inform the way that we love and live with people.”

- Derek Webb at a show in Souderton, PA August 19

 ”One might have hoped that, with so gracious a creature as wine, even the most ardent religionists and secularists would have made an exception to their universal custom of missing the point of things . . . Consider first the teetotalers . . . Something underhanded has to be done to grape juice to keep it from running its appointed course. Witness the teetotaling communion service . . . Do they seriously envision St. Paul or Calvin or Luther opening bottles of Welch’s Grape Juice in the sacristy before the service? . . . One of the most fanciful pieces of exegesis I ever read began by maintaining that the Greek word for wine, as used in the Gospels, meant many other things than wine. The commentator cited, as I recall, grape juice for one meaning, and raisin paste for another. He inclined, ultimately, toward the latter. I suppose such people are blessed with reverent minds which prevent them from drawing irreverent conclusions. I myself, however, could never resist the tempation to read raisin paste for wine in the story of the Miracle of Cana . . . Does it not whet your appetite for the critical opera omnia of such an author, where he will freely have at the length and breadth of Scripture? Can you not see his promised land flowing with peanut butter and jelly; his apocalypse, in which the great whore Babylon is given the cup of the ginger ale of the fierceness of the wrath of God?

(Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb, pp. 89-90).

( HT: Douglas Wilson  )

“Christopher Love was beheaded for alleged conspiracy against the current Lord Protector of England, Oliver Cromwell.  Love, Thomas Watson and William Jenkyn were among those imprisoned for treason.  Cromwell charged them with conspiring to bring back the monarchy and the King after parliament had charged the king with treason and beheaded him.  Watson was released, Jenkyn died in prison, and Christopher Love was beheaded.  The following letter is one of many to Mr. Love’s wife.  However, this is Mr. Love’s last letter to his wife on the day he suffered.”

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