Cloverfield And Christianity

Michael Spencer, a recovering fundamentalist, has trouble with eschatology (I know the feeling) and pens an unconventional movie review:

Just how bad can things get and Christian eschatology remain “on track?” What versions of eschatology can accommodate the facts of catastrophism as we know them today? How do the scenarios of Cloverfield and Armageddon work into Christian theology?

Do those Christians who believe in global warming need to say we could wipe out human life with a man-created catastrophe? If that’s true, why wouldn’t we say it? Because Jesus won’t let it happen and upstage his return?

I tend to think that eschatology is often the weakest area of applied Christian theology; the area where there is the least reflection and rigorous examinations of what we assert. If the giant lobsters come ashore to have us for dinner, where does all of it fit into the totality of Christian belief?

Until we work all this out, I’ll be watching more monster movies, and keeping an eye on the lobster tank at Krogers.

Rambo And Iraq

Jesse Walker notices something missing in the new movie:

…the word "Iraq" appears nowhere in the movie, and neither do "Al Qaeda," "Islam," "9/11," or "bin Laden." The writer/director/actor told Ain’t It Cool News that he did this because "the idea of Rambo dealing with Al-Qaeda, etc. would be an insult to our American forces that are actually dying trying to rid the world of this cancer. To have at the end of a 90 minute movie the character of Rambo seizing Osama bin Laden in a choke hold then dragging him into the Oval Office then tossing him in the President’s lap declaring ‘The world is now safe, Chief’ would be a bit insulting." I don’t doubt Stallone’s sincerity, though World War II-era GIs didn’t seem to mind the fact that Superman, Captain America, and the rest were fighting alongside them in the comic books. Personally, I wouldn’t have minded seeing some of the Afghan heroes of Rambo III return as villains in Rambo IV, but that might push the franchise into areas that Stallone would rather leave alone.

Matt Zoller Seitz differs:

Cowritten and directed by Stallone, the fourth Rambo movie is a bracingly political picture — as much an argument in movie form as No End In Sight; a pro-interventionist rebuttal to all the 2007 documentaries and dramas about America losing bits of its soul in Iraq. The I-word is never spoken in Rambo, yet in its coded way, the film makes a case for why we are in Iraq and should stay there until the job is done, whenever that may be. […]

I can’t think of another blockbuster action franchise that has been so unabashedly right wing in its world view. The original Rambo picture, 1982’s First Blood — based on David Morrell’s engrossing 1971 novel — gives no obvious hint of where the series would eventually go. It’s one of the most accomplished action films of the 1980s, a have-it-both-ways thriller with a persecuted prole hero that pretty much any viewer, from Ralph Nader to Pat Buchanan, could cheer. For much of the film’s running time, Rambo comes across as the latest incarnation of The Man Pushed Too Far — a police-brutality-victimized drifter terrorizing the small town cops and soft-bellied National Guardsmen that mistook him for a smelly hippie. The film is fundamentally left-wing in its conception. But in its final scene — Rambo’s post-rampage meltdown in Trautman’s presence — it makes a sharp right turn. The hero weeps about being called a "baby killer and all kinds of vile crap" by protestors, and says he only did what he needed to do to win — but "Somebody wouldn’t let us win!"

JFK and BHO

A story of historical karma:

The bond began with Kenyan labour leader Tom Mboya, an advocate for African nationalism who helped his country gain independence in 1963. In the late 1950s, Mboya was seeking support for a scholarship program that would send Kenyan students to US colleges – similar to other exchanges the US backed in developing nations during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Mboya appealed to the state department. When that trail went cold, he turned to then-senator Kennedy.

Kennedy, who chaired the senate subcommittee on Africa, arranged a $100,000 grant through his family’s foundation to help Mboya keep the program running…

One of the first students airlifted to America was Barack Obama Sr, who married a white Kansas native named Ann Dunham during his US studies.

Keynes’s “Jew Boy” Quickie

By looking at his journals, Evan Zimroth tries to decode the private life of John Maynard Keynes:

Keynes obsessively counted and tabulated almost everything; it was a life-long habit. As a child, he counted the number of front steps of every house on his street. Later he kept a running record (not surprisingly) of his expenses and his golf scores. He also counted and tabulated his sex life.

The first diary is easy: Keynes lists his sexual partners, either by their initials (GLS for Lytton Strachey, DG for Duncan Grant) or their nicknames ("Tressider," for J. T. Sheppard, the King’s College Provost). When he apparently had a quick, anonymous hook-up, he listed that sex partner generically: "16-year-old under Etna" and "Lift boy of Vauxhall" in 1911, for instance, and "Jew boy," in 1912.

This list, where he names names but gives no details, Keynes organized year-by-year. He was scrupulously honest, too, even in times of sexual famine. For three years running—1903 to 1905—he records no sexual partners; ‘nil,’ he admitted. As he became older, though, the number of his partners increased dramatically, so that for 1911 he lists eight partners (although half of these are probably one-time pick-ups), for 1915 he lists seven, and for 1913 (his highest score) he lists nine different partners. One or two men are repeaters: DG (Duncan Grant), for example, runs throughout.

The other sex diary is more puzzling and, in a way, more informative. An economist to the core, Keynes organized the second sex diary also year-by-year, but this time in quarterly increments.

Unfortunately for us, however, this second sex diary is in code. And as far as I know, no one yet has been prurient enough to crack it.

(hat tip: Kottke)