Ironhold

Many years ago, someone I knew served a mission in Sweden. What he told us when he came back was that there were a lot of people who had been raised within Islam, but had come to disagree with it theologically and wanted to leave. However, he claimed, most of these people feared that if they left they would be subject to discrimination, persecution, and even violence. Leaving Islam would mean having to uproot themselves and relocate a goodly distance away from anyone who knew them.

As I've mentioned before, in real life I have an MBA. I took classes (yes, plural) that heavily leaned into sales / customer service / formal communication. Every word and phrase had to be measured to ensure that they were as inoffensive as possible and always expressed as much optimism and cheer as appropriate. I mastered it, of course, for the sake of my grade, but pretty quickly caught on how much of it was acting. The original idea behind it all was that you have to check your emotions at the door so that you can focus on getting the job done, but at no point did they ever say "Yeah, once you're off the clock you're good". I think that's part of what your dad fell into, as no one ever gave him permission to drop the mask once he was off the clock. The other part? In the US military, there's a culture that the way the family of each service member behaves is a reflection of that service member, with many civilian spouses presuming that they have the rank of their military spouse. I was raised in that way, and so know how it is that people sometimes hold up their own families as "see how model they are? It means I'm a model person as well!" without thinking through the implications. After a while, everything goes to maintaining that facade even if what's underneath it is falling apart, the whole bit about "whited sepulchers". Yes, this is the same overall program where I wound up being taught the "applied psychological warfare" side of marketing.

The reference is "Transcendence" by Crimson Glory, a pioneer in the progressive metal genre.

As explained in the song "We Three Kings", the gifts were symbolic. "Born a king on Bethlehem's plain, gold I bring to crown him again." The gold was a symbol of his status as a monarch, as he was of the line of King David. As a monarch, Jesus should by all rights have lived a life of finery and riches, from a crown on his head to the throne he sat on. "Frankincense to offer have I. Incense owns a deity nigh." The frankincense was a symbol of his divine nature. As a divine figure, it would have been common practice for incense to be burned as an offering towards him, its scent filling the worship chambers. "Myrrh I bring, a bitter perfume." Myrrh was often used in the embalming process, a way to deal with the smell and other side effects of the process of decay. It was a recognition of the prophecies that he would die and be reborn.

In a word? It's horrible. The assault on the senses starts almost immediately, when you're hit by lighting that alternates between pastel and neon. Then you realize that they did some heavy digital effects work to change the skyline, even going so far as to alter the weather for certain scenes. As if that wasn't bad enough, you literally have digitally-inserted lens flare in some scenes. Throw in the odd camera angles, and it's downright surreal at times. Then we get to the initial brawl between the Jets and the Sharks. One kid literally gets a nail punched into his ear, and we see the whole thing, nail, blood, and all. After more surreal lighting and camera shots, we find out that the pharmacist is dead and his widow is running the store, something done so that Rita Moreno could have a role in the movie. Turns out that the reason why the pharmacy is a neutral spot in the turf war is because a white guy married a Puerto Rican woman, so neither side wants to try anything there. Once you get past these and other changes, you realize that they changed the order and context of a number of the songs. Yes, they did that. Several songs are now sung by different characters and under different circumstances, such as "Cool" now being sung by Tony as he tries to talk the rest of the Jets out of fighting. In the middle, you notice that whenever the girls have a dance number their skivvies are visible as their skirts twirl, a further reminder that it's no longer the 50s / 60s. Anybodys has been remade into a full-on transgender individual rather than simply a tomboy, which ironically explained why the kids wanted nothing to do with her because of the stigma that being transgender had in the 1950s. Yes, it seems like whenever Hollywood finds a tomboy or a pretty boy in a work they have to make them transgender for some reason rather than stopping to understand why the original character is the way they were. Maria and the other girls are now maids rather than garment industry workers, something that even the Puerto Rican community has protested, given how critical the garment industry was in providing jobs for young women like her in NYC and removing the context behind her sister-in-law's desire to strike out on her own. Several key sequences were also changed, including the finale between Chino and the police. The cast did the best with what they were handed, but what they were handed was an absolute disaster.

I have a history of head trauma. This, combined with stress, lack of sleep, and other issues, have severely affected my memory. A lot of my childhood possessions are dear to me because of this, as I can still remember things associated with them, and that helps me keep my past in order.

Yes folks, Hasbro got Clint Black to do music for a Transformers series.

This is a thought that came to me while tossing around some ideas in my head. For a sci-fi series, I had the idea of a character I have tentatively dubbed "The Undying One" During a major space war, the character, who was born and raised on another planet, became cybernetically-enhanced to better fight the war during a critical period when it looked like the bad guys would win. This turned the tide, but it was his recovering a powerful and potentially magical / divine artifact that won the war... seemingly at the cost of his own life. Mortally wounded in the effort, he set his ship on a collision course for what at the time was a planet few even knew existed, let alone knew the coordinates of... Earth. But while his body did cease to function, the combination of the cybernetics and the artifact did something even he doesn't understand that preserved his consciousness and spirit on Earth, and before long he found himself "reborn". He crashed in the desert, but it was near enough to a city. In the city was a woman who was pregnant with an infant that died in the womb and would have been stillborn. Instead, he took possession of the infant's body in a process that initially blanked his memory. Thus, he was born again, slowly remembering who he was and realizing that he was living a second life. As much as I want to tell a story with implications that'll leave the readers scratching their heads and debating, I do wonder what this would mean for church theology. He himself didn't actually die per se, but he has been literally reborn.

There are a lot of places in my area that collect toys, and the last few years it's been hit-or-miss as to who donates what. Because of this, I've had to limit my individual donations to $10 or less per item donated so that I can get the maximum amount of items in the maximum amount of bins. Last year was so bad that when the local movie theater was collecting it was literally just myself and a few of the theater workers kicking anything in, and that's *with* the theater giving away $5 gift cards for their arcade to anyone who donated. I think I eventually talked the manager to just throwing the leftover gift cards into the mix so that they had more things to give to the kids who needed it.

I prefer this version better, as it sounds like someone who has been through a terrible time still trying to be optimistic.

Manowar. Heavy metal band best known for their Viking war anthems and for having once set a record for loudest concert. This is literally the most divine version of the song I've ever heard.

One of the more traditional Christmas songs I play each year.

People often have significant differences in what they mean by "disrespect". At the extreme end, this can even include "I'm right, and anyone who disagrees is being petulant".

In my annual Halloween safety column, I recount an incident that happened to one of my brothers. He was at a convenience store buying gas. He also picked up a bag of off-brand gummi candy while he was in there. There were wooden splinters in the gummi candy. Yes, I was there when he opened up the bag. The only thing he can figure is that something broke apart at the factory, the splinters made it inside, and quality control missed it.

In the case of the poisoned Halloween candy, however, there is an actual origin: a man who was deep in debt attempting to murder his children for their life insurance policies. The story was continually circulated without vital context, and it exploded from there.

A few years ago, the folks at controversial internet forum 4-Chan began to question whether certain "progressive" news outlets were actually doing any sort of independent investigation into certain topics or if they were just taking initial reports at face value. To this end, one user came up with a fictitious story about the OK symbol being adopted as a "white power" gesture and started farming it out in various forms to different "progressive" outlets. A group known as The Root took the bait and ran the story, using this 4-Chan user as their primary source. It didn't take long for 4-Chan to blow the whistle and reveal what had happened, but by then it was too late as many "progressive" internet forums had already taken the initial The Root article at face value and were spreading the word accordingly. Once word started getting around that the OK symbol was now supposedly racist, actual white supremacist groups started using it. For obvious reasons, only very biased and uninformed people now use The Root as a source.

Pretty much. He never should have been there in the first place, and he likely didn't even know any of the people who came after him until they came after him, so he did what little he thought he could to defend himself.

I've seen it happen before to where people invite members of the church to "debate", assume that they'll just crush us by spamming us with tired old counter-cult materials they got in a bookstore somewhere and outdated pop culture stereotypes. When they realize that no, we actually know what we're talking about and can even counter their arguments, they'll start freaking out. This wasn't the plan, we're not cooperating, and they have no idea what to do next. Rather than face the reality that they didn't know what they were doing, it's just easier for them to shut the door on us and lock us out so that they can maintain the sanctity of their echo chambers, all the while running damage control to ensure that nobody tries to follow us out. It's not just an issue with religion, either. You'll see it in any discipline, field, or even social media forum where someone who was so utterly self-confident in their supposed superiority cannot compete in the Marketplace of Ideas and throws an absolute fit because of it. I'm dealing with this a lot right now as an entertainment writer, with the "elite" in many forms of entertainment (such as movies and comic books) losing their minds because the general public is starting to reject the increasingly polarized and poorly-written material so many companies are putting out and the "elites" can't understand why anyone would do that. These elites feel that they know what's best for the public and what the public should be consuming, so whenever their offerings fail and content from outside of the mainstream (or that otherwise goes against the elites) succeeds they panic and demand that the rules be changed to favor them while denigrating anyone who doesn't join the bandwagon. Right now, for example, "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" is on track to absolutely annihilate the 2016 reboot in terms of box office take. The film was a love letter to the fandom while also setting the stage for a new generation of characters to come in, and people are responding by buying ticket after ticket; my local theater actually has three of its eight screens showing it right now. But because the film repudiates the 2016 movie in every possible fashion, the 2016 film's Hollywood backers are furious and unleashing pure venom on anyone who likes the new movie.

You can't sell guns on E-Bay anymore. Not even toy guns. I have some vintage cap guns (we're talking 1950s) I was looking to unload, but the week after they came into my possession E-Bay changed the rules in that regards. I don't know of anyone locally who will give me a fair deal on them.

His dad lives in Kenosha and he has other relatives who live there, so he really *did* think he was protecting everything.

I generally work most, if not all, week long on Thanksgiving week because of local events and how the local newspaper works. That's generally a full shift on Monday nights, plus partial shifts on Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday. This is on top of the movie each Friday for review. That leaves me perhaps Tuesday and Saturday without issue, but this year I have a dental appointment on Tuesday. Family time? What family time?

If I was to go back and finish getting my certification as a forklift operator I could probably make 5x my salary as I am right now with the newspaper. The problem is that the newspaper I'm with is so short-handed that they literally could not function without me, and things are so lean we can't afford to hire anyone else even if they could find someone willing to do everything I do.

I have a heart condition to begin with, and this has led to high blood pressure. I got the Moderna shot before mainstream outlets like the AP confirmed that Moderna had heart inflammation as a side effect. I've noted before that the first shot left me laid up longer and harder than a mystery illness I had earlier in the year that could have been Covid, and that the second shot, combined with manual labor that day, left me so bad I should have gone to the hospital. As you can imagine, I'm more than a little scared now, and even my mom, who was super hard core on everyone getting vaccinated, has apologized for pushing me when I was initially so hesitant.

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-business-denmark-public-health-health-453163d8f93618fde90c06d3474921a0 If you get the Moderna shot, go right straight to the emergency room. Five countries in Europe have restricted the use of the Moderna vaccine because of an incidence rate of heart inflammation in minors. Anyone under 30 is not to get the vaccine at all, while anyone between 30 and 60 is only to get the vaccine if no other vaccines are available. Basically folks, Moderna is potentially more dangerous to your kids than Covid itself.

A very large part of our current problems is the dire shortage of skilled trades workers. For generations now, the mentality in the United States has been "college is for winners, trade school is for losers". There was a stigma attached to becoming a skilled trades worker, so much so that even in high schools kids were pushed towards college even when it should have been obvious that they would have been better suited in one of the skilled trades. As a result, these kids either failed out of higher education or didn't have the desire to go, hindering their entire lives. A very large part of why those ships are all stuck waiting to get into ports is because there aren't enough workers to handle them all once they dock. There aren't enough dock workers, crane operators, forklift operators, and others to actually offload those ships once they get to port. There aren't enough truck drivers, pilots, and train engineers to take the offloaded product and get them to where they need to go. There aren't enough mechanics and technicians to maintain those forklifts, trucks, trains, planes, cranes, and so on. Et cetra. Construction workers, plumbers, electricians, HVAC technicians, pest control experts, and others we count on to actually make society function are all in short supply, such that many of them can actually get more money as apprentices and newly-licensed beginners than many people with college degrees can expect to make just after graduation. And yet, the stigma persists.