for 9 December 1999. Updated every WEEKDAY.
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Holy Roll Any film that starts off saying unequivocally that God exists and that Jesus is the absolute son of God cannot, by definition, be blasphemous or antireligious. Get real. Don S <bbcrock@hotmail.com> Dear Don S (if that is your real name), Allow me to introduce you to a much-heralded but rarely utilized concept: irony, which allows that there is no such thing as an unequivocal statement. Indeed, at its most rarefied, irony holds that getting "real" is at best a momentary state to be replaced with a question of just how "real" real is. Cue — sans irony — Alan Parsons' "A Dream Within a Dream" off his super-fantastic (really!) "concept" album, Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Or was it Tales of Misery and Lack of Imagination? Mr. M  Mxyzptlk, Babe, you missed the point — the first kill was the Fatted Calf (Disney), a reference to how they suck the life out of art for profit. The second wave of killing was the audience; they died for not knowing what they were facing (go ahead and watch ER forever, see if I care). God was only a plot device — like the new fall lineup, he made everything well again. I did like what you had to say. David A. Dorney <dadroc@csi.com> Disney rules and is down with the devil: Escape from Witch Mountain, The Devil and Max Devlin, The Devil in Miss Jones, etc.! More important, would you know Eric Clapton in heaven? He'd be that professorial-looking dude in the butterfingered section, hitting on goils (he'd call them birds) and rapping with Wilt the Stilt Chamberlain, the former Harlem Globetrotter who let Kansas University's long-ago shot at a national title slip through his fingers with the promiscuity he later reserved only for his Big Dipper. One small correction: God is the only plot device. Mr. M As a matter of fact, there is nothing blasphemous about mocking or subverting idols. Christians are actually supposed to do this, I think. Because they aren't pagans, right? You must be confusing the cultural phenomena known as Christianity with the actual religion. It's a short trip from "make no graven image" to "piss on graven images," isn't it? Your attempt to relate any of this to Pascal's wager was pretty unspectacular. Stick to writing about things you understand. Demmy Rooster <root@treehouse.dyndns.org> Dear Demmy, Fair enough. I get your point, though most of your message is somewhat less clear to me than the Christian meanings on Bob Dylan's Slow Train Coming LP or the Ayn Rand allusions on Rush's 2112, or, for that matter, the Poe allusions on that Alan Parsons Project record. Mr. M Tuning Out You forgot about college radio, which is usually a viable alternative to commercial radio, where it exists. If it sucks, at least you know they're not getting paid. Theoretically, one could even volunteer at the station. Although that sounds like a frightful lot of effort, what with MP3s and all. Turn off your radio and throw it away. Andrew <enewetok@gci.net> Ah, I well recall the sounds and smells of my college radio days: persistent 3 a.m. requests for King Missile's "Jesus Was Way Cool"; enticing, equipment-damaging smoke curling out of the engineer's room next door; moments of chaos followed by pure beauty, followed by dead air. But since our focus was on commercial radio's decline, these images seemed a bit out of place. Thanks for taking me back, though. (Now I feel really old.) Best, Anne I live in Calgary, Canada, where we are fortunate enough to be home to the best radio station I have ever listened to (that isn't saying much, of course) — CJSW (www.cjsw.com). We're also home to the very influential Power 107 (www.power107.com), which has clones all over the country, I am told; some rock station called CJ 92; and a couple country and soft rock stations. I'm writing to tell you that a breath of radio fresh air does exist somewhere in North America (and on the Web in RealAudio — why not listen for 20 minutes?). Where else could one hear a DJ stop a track because the general opinion of the studio (oftentimes, more than two or three) sucks? And that going back to the commercial-packed drone of "30 minutes of nonstop music" (don't quote me on the 30) has become increasingly harder and horrifying for me in the last few months. It's great to be able to listen to more democratic radio. In the five minutes or so it takes to restart your computer, the style and genre of fuzzy, tinny, streamed music will probably have changed completely. Michael Daines <mdaines@home.com> Hi Michael, Oh, you Canadians and your innovations! First, good radio — what next, free penicillin for everyone? We'll try CJSW, although if we wanted to hear songs continually stopped in the middle due to a consensus of suckage, we could just rewatch all those classic Gong Show episodes we scored off eBay. Anne Holy Roll Some of the things you said about faith in the Suck article ring true. Since I have not seen Dogma, I cannot comment on it. Christianity is one tough nut to crack. The Roman Empire tried to destroy it. The Roman Empire is gone. So did the former Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is no more. Therefore I'm not worried about Dogma, liberals, TV, radio, Congress, or the New World Order eliminating Christianity. God is perfectly capable of defending himself or herself (New Testament words for God are all gender neutral), so I'm not worried. Steve Lutes <utahraptor@hypercon.com> You're right about that tough nut thing, buddy boy. After all, my born-again Christian friends tell me that the Roman Catholic Church — they refer to it as the Whore in the Book of Revelation — has been trying unsuccessfully to crush Christianity ever since Peter set himself up as archbishop of Rome and started ringing up sales of holy relics. Mr. M (who cracked some tough nuts over Thanksgiving) |
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