Fear and Trembling: News and politics

Once you're a Jet you are always Jet!

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 00:24:08 GMT

CHECK OUT THIS STORY. I can totally understand what was going on down in this scuffle. There is always a bunch of Methodist cruising around in 15 passenger vans down by our seminary looking for trouble with their open hearts, open minds and open doors. There is nothing worse than a gang of Wesleyans hopped up from their ice cream socials trying to bait us Baptist into a fight. Now and again we give them what they're asking for and send them scurrying back to their Bishop with their tails between their legs...

The latest Wal-Mart commercial says "I'm Crazy"

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 18:30:28 GMT

I have seen this commercial several times on television in the last few weeks. Follow the link and take a look at it. I will wait for you...

...Is is it just me, or is it telling us that people who drive mopeds to work and take human powered vehicles to run errands (skateboards in this instance) are crazy and that they should instead shop at Wal-Mart and continue to drive their cars and keep paying $3.00 a gallon? Of course, Wal-Mart sells the gas too, so for them it is a win/win!

Apparently it is in my best interest to keep up our dependency on foreign oil AND shop at a place that sells mostly goods from China that may or may not be poisoned with lead, melamine, or glycol, that are produced with labor that is mistreated and underpaid, that are made in factories with no environmental controls and benefits a government who has an official policy to oppress, arrest and even kill my brothers and sisters in Christ?

A few weeks ago I investigated the possibility of having a Christmas that has nothing made in China and discovered that this is almost impossible to do anymore! Last year I went to buy some strawberries that were on sale for a dollar a bag and when I flipped the bag over I discovered that the strawberries were made in CHINA! What kind of twisted economics makes it possible for a place to sell strawberries for DOLLAR that were grown and frozen halfway around the world, shipped across the largest ocean in the world, unloaded on the west coast and trucked to the middle of America? Something tells me that there is either something very wrong with the strawberries or that some poor soul is really getting a raw deal out of those strawberries. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

What can we do? Are there any real alternatives? I cannot afford to shop at the Whole Foods store down the street, I don't have the time to hunt down the country of origin on all of the items that I buy and the stores certainly do not make it easy on you to shop American. Back to the original statement, I do not think you are CRAZY to want to drive alternative vehicles (and I am not talking about hybrids see this post) and I do not think that you are crazy if you want to buy products that are safe for your family and don't exploit someone in a third world country.

The Chief's last dance at University of Illinois and my first video upload too...

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 18:16:59 GMT

After a battle of many years, activist have pressured the Board of Trustees at the University of Illinois to ban the Chief from performing at home games. The U of I will still be known as the Fighting Illini, which does not make sense. If you are banning the chief because of perceived offense to Native Americans then why retain the name? Perhaps we should change the name of the whole state as well. I wonder if they are going to keep the chief image on all of the U of I logos...

I guess when it comes down to it, I would probably would vote to keep the chief, but it is not something that I feel that strongly about. There are only so many battles one can fight and this is not one of them for me. I would add, however, that this issue is closely related to the flurry of campus speech codes that came about in the late eighties and early nineties that severely restricted any expression that could be found offensive to any group. These laws were all struck down by the supreme court

This also happens to be the first video that I have uploaded to the web and used in Fear and Trembling. I was actually at this game last night. My friend Jason got tickets for this game without knowing it was going to be the last dance of the Chief. By game time the tickets were going for $300 a piece on Ebay so I offered him the opportunity to back out of the deal and sell the tickets, but he wanted to go and we got to see this halftime and a very good basketball game as well. Illinois beat Michigan 54-42 and and judging by all the orange I think every IDOT worker in the state was there to see the game. In the second half a good number of the students took off their orange shirts to reveal black "save the chief" shirts.