The Flying Spaghetti Monster does make for some impressive stain glass art. But who wants to worship a god you feel like stabbing with a fork and devouring?
So with iconography and prophets the broad church of atheism is well on its way to being an official religion. All they need now are some unholydays.
I’m a sucker for cheap books. Especially cheap Christian books. Especially dodgy cheap Christian books at a library fire sale because nobody has ever borrowed them… I’m building quite a collection. With the intention of inflicting them on you dear reader blogging my way through all of them.
First cab off the rank is Jacob Aranza’s “Backward Masking Unmasked” published in 1984. The book features an opening letter from a Senator of Louisiana. Senator Bill Keith describes the sinister nature of Rock’n’Roll as one of the “burning issues of our time” – in hindsight I think it’s fair to say that Keith was not a modern day prophet.
Jacob Aranza is described in his cover blurb as being one of the outstanding young ministers of America. And someone who was involved deeply in the drug/rock culture of Houston, Texas at the age of nine. He was obviously uniquely placed to provide insight into the evils of such bands as AC/DC, the Beatles, the Bee Gees, Blondie, John Denver, Bette Midler, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, and Eric Clapton.
The book only briefly covers the cover issue. Backwards Masking. It features spurious quotes from lobby groups, a weird blend of quotes from disparate psychologists seemingly cherry picked to build a case, and a bunch of conspiracy theory like links between various bands and a particular Satanist. If anybody has seen John Safran’s Music Jamboree it’s a bit like watching him build a case against something – only Aranza is serious. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Safran had read this book – it also accuses the Beatles of adopting backmasking techniques in order to further their own conspiracy theory that Paul McCartney is dead (which featured on the show).
In future posts in this series I’ll be sharing some insights into the bands you shouldn’t be listening to. But let me close with a passage from the introduction.
“If you don’t think this music is affecting the values of young people then listen to a few letters that were written in response to the subject of backwards masking being used satanically by rock groups. These letters were taken out of Hit Parader magazine. Hit Parader is a very popular rock magazine read by young people between the ages of 8 to 18:
“In a recent Hit Parader, a coupe of your readers wrote about rock bands and Satanism. Big fricken deal! The listened to Stairway to Heaven backwards, I’ve heard it too. But I still listen faithfully to Led Zeppelin.” – Gary Walker, Washington.
“All these Satan/Rock comparisons are driving me up a wall. I’m a good Catholic, but I also love rock.” Stan Lapinski, Florida.
“The people who say that rock and roll music and the various groups are devil worshippers are ignorant, and don’t know what rock music is all about. It’s just music! It relieves people from all the everyday problems. If anything it helps people.” – Steve Crocker, Florida
You can plainly see that backward masking and the forward messages of rock have taken tremendous toll already by the responses of these young people. The statement they are making is clear, “Don’t confuse me with the facts.””
This introductory chapter concludes: “So hold on to your earphones, here we go!”
If you have a favourite 80s band you think might be satanic let me know in the comments and I’ll include them in subsequent posts.
This made me laugh. I’ve been mostly disintrested in the whole British election thing. Who cares who runs the ninth most important country in the world. I thought about posting about Gordon Brown’s press “gaffe” the other day. I thought the media beat up was pretty nasty – given that he was smashed by the press for giving them full access to his campaigning. They crucified him. It wasn’t nice. Anyway…
From here.
Via David Ould.
Did you grow up playing Super Mario Bros? How about the Legend of Zelda? Megaman? Did you ever imagine what life would be like if Link (from Zelda) could run around stabbing those stupid goombas with his sword?
Now you can bring Link into Mario world, and stab away. Thanks to Super Mario Bros Crossover by Exploding Rabbit.
I played with Link. Powerups upgraded his sword. Playing Mario with the Zelda theme music is also kind of cool.
This is a post about how to code stuff in WordPress. If you’re a regular reader who doesn’t care about this stuff, just skip it. I won’t be offended.
I’ve spent so many hours frustrated at this. I scoured the web for “how to” articles, and none of them actually solved my problem… so here is the solution I’ve sued to get the “like this” button working on all of my posts on my blog in both the index.php page and in my own second loop in the sidebar…
The iframe version of the like button worked really easily – it was only the FBML button I had problems with (which has cooler features). I couldn’t figure out how to get the FBML Facebook Like option to work on WordPress without using a plugin. I don’t like plugins (if I can code it myself).
Here are the steps I took that I think solved my problem (I will try adding some things I removed back in to see if they break what I’ve done).
Step 1. Remove any “Facebook Share” plugins or code already in your posts. I read on one of the plugins that it might clash with preexisting Facebook code.
Step 2. Set up your “application” on Facebook.
In the set up options go to the “Connect”… make sure you put your URLs in the “connect” page.
I suspect, though I’m not sure, that you need to choose the FBML option on the Canvas page.
Step 3. Now you need to put some code in your header.
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
xmlns:og="http://opengraphprotocol.org/schema/"
xmlns:fb="http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml">
And this…
<meta property="og:site_name" content="YOUR BLOG NAME"/>
<meta property="og:title" content="<?php the_title_attribute( '' ); ?>"/>
<meta property="og:type" content="blog"/>
<meta property="og:image" content="THE URL TO THE IMAGE YOU WANT PEOPLE TO SEE ON FACEBOOK"/>
<meta property="fb:app_id" content="THE APP ID NUMBER FROM FACEBOOK (SEE BELOW)"/>
For example:
<meta property="og:site_name" content="St. Eutychus"/>
<meta property="og:title" content="<?php the_title_attribute( '' ); ?>"/>
<meta property="og:type" content="blog"/>
<meta property="og:image" content="http://st-eutychus.com/wp-content/themes/whiteplus/images/headertitle.png"/>
<meta property="fb:app_id" content="116899985006841"/>
Step 4. Insert the SDK code. Go to your footer.php and stick this block of code in before the you close your body tag (</body>)... this is the JavaScript SDK thing that Facebook talks about here – it allows you (because it’s in your footer) to call the “like” function from any page that uses your footer. Make sure you put your app ID in the spot that says YOUR APP ID.
<div id="fb-root"></div>
<script type="text/javascript">
window.fbAsyncInit = function() {
FB.init({
appId: 'YOUR APP ID',
xfbml: true
});
};
(function() {
var e = document.createElement('script'); e.async = true;
e.src = document.location.protocol + '//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js';
document.getElementById('fb-root').appendChild(e);
}());
</script>
Step 5. Insert the Like Button Code. Facebook’s default “like button” code won’t help you much if you want the address for individual posts to be sent through to your profile (and hopefully those of your friends when they like what you’ve written. You need to change the URL option to call the post’s permalink. Facebook will generate you a block of code that will give you options like having your friends photos appear when they like your post and stuff. I don’t want that. Put this where you want the like button to appear. Here’s the code I used:
<fb:like width="340" height="30" layout="standard" show_faces="false" href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" colorscheme="default"></fb:like>
There may be something to factor in depending on how your link structure works – some other posts I read had a couple of extra options around the permalink)… they use something like this: <?php echo urlencode(get_permalink($post->ID)); ?>
Melchizedek (Genesis 14) is a cool king of Salem (Jerusalem) who blesses Abraham. His name, in Hebrew, means either “king of righteousness” or “righteousness is my king”.
Adoni-zedek (Joshua 10), is also the king of Jerusalem, who summons an army of other kings to fight Israel. His name, in Hebrew, means “lord of righteousness” or “righteousness is my lord”…
Bit of a contrast there…
Literally. Here’s Mario rendered in bread toasted to various degrees.
Just build this glove. Stick it on your hand. And Bob, as they say, is your uncle. The glove will learn how you play, and tel you what it thinks will beat you.
Well, by pretty popular demand I have killed IntenseDebate. It’s back to no-frills commenting. Hopefully that brings more of you out of the woodwork.
Facebook is trying to take over the internet – they announced some new toys for web developers and bloggers last week – I’ve included one (though haven’t quite got it working yet – it should be fixed by the time you read this though…) that allows you to “like” a post both here and on Facebook with the click of a button.
I’ve also finally (and I’m pretty ecstatic about this one) managed to rewrite the code of my blog so that if you go to page 2 you don’t get page 1’s “Curiosities” you get the next ten. That was really annoying me.
If you think this post is largely pointless be sure to check out the tags (on the site) and you’ll see why I’ve posted it.
Staying awake until 2am writing website code trying to fix a little bug that nobody will notice anyway.
Sadder still is posting to tell you all about it (and to clear my cache so that the changes will happen).
A font flow chart for every occasion – though it doesn’t include Helvetica. Sadface. Click to make bigger.
Via Lifehacker.
Update – as Gav points out, Helvetica is there. I just missed it.
Optimus Prime in balloon sculpture greatness. Need I say more…
Long time readers will be familiar with my scambaiting efforts from last year. I’ve been trying to get a photo of a Nigerian Scammer holding a bible verse. I got one. Finally. Not the John 3:16 reference I was after, but I’m working on that. Meet my friend Kenny. That’s what I call him.
Stay tuned for the story – I don’t want to blow it yet, I’m still hoping for that elusive John 3:16 poster. I’m pretty sure other scammers have googled themselves and ended my game because of what they found.
Here’s his favourite Bible passage:
1Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
5And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
