Homebrew Dystopian Fiction: The Hold-Up

“Here, take ‘em, enjoy yourself.” I said matter-of-factly.  Well, I have to admit there was some sarcasm in there, but what could I do, the guy was trying to take my keys and drive off with my truck.  Despite my inner awareness that this wasn’t going to end his way, there is only so much I can hide on the emotional front.  

“You’ll never get it started.”

“Why is that?” he asked, eyes narrowing.

“Because it doesn’t run on gasoline” I replied, again matter-of-factly.  “You’ll never get it started” I repeated.

“What does it run on, batteries?”

“Wood gas.”

“What’s wood gas?”  His voice had dropped an octave.  He was obviously trying to intimidate me and betraying building frustration.  Not to be outdone, my command of the situation allowed me a healthy measure of patience.  He wasn’t going anywhere in my truck.  I think he was beginning to figure that out.  But he had to figure out if I was lying before he could move on to other possible exploits.

“What’s wood gas?”  His voice was still low, unnaturally low and quiet because it wasn’t his usual timbre.

“Wood gas is a gas that comes from wood when you burn it without enough oxygen and in the right conditions in a closed environment.  The flammable parts are hydrogen and carbon monoxide.”

“What if I just make you start it for me?”

“Look, it’s not like you can just saunter out into the street, hop in and start ‘er up.  It doesn’t work that way.  It takes about five minutes and in that time, you’ll be attracting a lot of attention.  I always do.  There’s lots of questions.  People are going to be a little leery of someone standing over my shoulder with a gun.  Even after I do get it going, I have to adjust the fuel/air ratio to make it go.”  I was exaggerating a little bit.  It did take a few minutes, it does attract attention, and I do have to adjust the fuel/air ratio, but once I get it going, it’s relatively easy to drive.  While I’m not a fan of lying, I’m less concerned about omitting a few facts when I’m on the stereotypical wrong end of a firearm.

He began to look a little distressed now.  He glanced around suspiciously as if looking for someone eavesdropping on our conversation.  Times were tough and I can only imagine he was a little hungry.   Gas was wobbling around $12 per gallon.  But it was still available.  Peak oil was finally firmly upon us.  The growing economies of China and India had been consuming fuel at an ever increasing rate.  Where once their consumption was a small sliver of the pie, now it had been trying to overlap other slices.  If you know anything about pie charts, you know that isn’t how it works.

We were in bad shape.  I mean, we were still in shape, but it wasn’t the shape we wanted to be in for sure.  Other countries had the jump on us.  Fully accustomed to $12 gas, many European countries and their democratic socialist governments were able to more rapidly shift their economic reliance to non-oil based fuels.  We have a lot of natural gas, but we weren’t ready for the switch. 

We only had some tens of thousands of electric cars, about the same in natural gas, and probably only a few dozen wood gas vehicles.  Fortunately, mine was one of them.  Since I was a kid, I wanted to live off grid.  It was not only a hobby, but a goal to go off grid, and the last tie to the grid was that liquid fuel, inexpensive, dense, and convenient.  Then I discovered wood gas.  It’s not nearly as dense so it’s better suited for stationary applications like generators or tractors, but it is easily adapted to on-the-road vehicles if you’re willing to give up about half your horse power and a third of your cargo space.  But more than anything, it’s cheap.  One pound of wood will get you over a mile and you can get over five thousand miles on a cord.  I was on the ball.  I had embraced the technology before it was necessary and now I was doing okay whilst many were hurting for fuel.

“In that case, give me your money.”

“I’m driving a pickup that runs on wood, what makes you think I have any money?”

He raised the gun to my face.

“Alright.  Here.”  I pulled out my wallet and upon opening it, extracted a wrinkled twenty dollar bill that looked as though it had gone through the wash.  I handed it to him.  “That’s all I got on me.  It’s yours.  If you had asked without the gun, you would have gotten the same thing without the lesson in biofuels.  I keep it in there for just such occasions as this.”

“Fair enough” he said, “I don’t have any bullets anyway.”

Love Your Enemy Step 1: Identify Your Enemy

It has been said to keep your friends close and your enemies closer. 

Jesus said to love your enemies. 

Step 1 I believe is to identify your enemies.  Admit to yourself who your enemies are so you can love them on purpose.  Aside from the more obvious enemies, who else counts?

I'm thinking about this lately.  To be a follower of Jesus means having to listen to one of his most basic and direct commands.  "Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you."

But who is it?  I believe it is akin to the question asked of Jesus, "who is my neighbor?"  Jesus said even someone considered an enemy (a Samaritan) was a neighbor.  So we know our enemy can be our neighbor.  But what if your neighbor is your enemy?

What if you spouse is your enemy?  This certainly could more obviously be the case if you spouse has divorced you and is trying to get custody of your children or a substantial portion of your money.  But what if that is not the case?  What if you and your spouse have a very happy relation ship and he or she just keeps using all the hot water in the morning because they take too long a shower?

What if they ate all the brownies without you getting as many as you wanted?

What if they roll over and shake the bed and wake you up all the time?

What if they like the thermostat at a different level than you?

What level of love do they rightly deserve as commanded by Jesus?

I submit to you that in some sense, everyone is your enemy.  Each person on this planet is in some way in your way.  They may want your money, they may be driving too slow on the freeway in front of you, they may burn trash in their yard, they may be breathing your air, they may waste your time, and they may be doing whatever it is totally by accident without knowing they are inconveniencing you.

Love them. 

Stop and consider what it means for you to love them.

Writing versus Reading

Just got done with a year long binge of reading.  Yeah, reading, not cocaine, not porn, not watching the entire run of Weeds.  Well, I did the Weeds thing, how could I not.  I'm from the West Coast right?

As you've seen, not much writing has been getting done around here.  And it's probably because of all the reading.  Apparently, I can't read and write at the same time.  Let me clue you in to the monumental task that it is to keep my considerable intellect occupied.

In the last year, I read:
The Lord of the Rings
Dune
Dune Messiah
Children of Dune
God Emperor of Dune
Heretics of Dune
Chapterhouse: Dune
Speaking of Jesus by Carl Madearis
The Next Christians by Gabe Lyons.
Love Wins by Rob Bell
Sex, Mom and God by Frank Shaeffer and that rounds out back to about March at which point it gets a little fuzzy.

Before that, I read Crazy for God by Frank Shaeffer, Rebooting the American Dream by Thom Hartmann, They like Jesus but not the Church by Dan Kimball, and When Christians Get it Wrong by Adam Hamilton. That goes back to when I got Kindle for iPhone in the early part of the year.

If that weren't enough, after Lord of the Rings, I read:
The Hobbit
The Rapture Exposed
Liespotting
Pornland
Fuse of Armageddon
And I'm currently working on Wind Power by Paul Gipe, but that's for class.  I'd read it anyway.

That's a year's reading for me.  I read more books in the last year than many people read in their entire life.  If you're wondering which books to read, I don't often finish a book if I don't like it.  You could read any of these and find them stimulating

But I think I'm going to start writing again.  I've already been working on my beekeeping website.  It's my own personal encyclopedia of beekeeping.  Check it out at parkerfarms.biz.  I also have a beekeeping blog at parkerfarms.blogspot.com.

I'm still looking for ideas, though I have plenty of fodder in politics.  I like hypocrisy especially.  Not to watch it, to criticize it.

I am,
WiredForStereo

@wiredforstereo on Twitter too.

Book Review: Fuse of Armageddon

In modern apocalyptic fiction, there is but one name known throughout the world, Left Behind.  It is a novelized account of what will happen when the beast of Revelation shows up and decides to do his work.  But it's terrible.  Popular among the young and impressionable evangelical conservatives, but to any discerning reader, just terrible.  The plot lines are thin, convoluted, completely lacking in reality or human condition and at some points, patently bogus.  Like the part where as soon as the conservative Christians are raptured away, the world goes to heck in a rocket sled and just signs the whole planet over to the 'antichrist.'  Like liberals could ever agree on anything.  I put 'antichrist' in quotes because of how horribly they misuse the term.  Nowhere in the Bible is mentioned "the antichrist."  In the few places it does appear, it's "an antichrist" or "of antichrist."  The antichrist is not a single person, but anyone with a certain attitude or ambition.

I digress.

Anyway, Sigmund Brouwer and Hank Hanegraaff started their own series which is the partial-preterist answer to the Left Behind series.  It's called "The Last Disciple."  Instead of showing a future plot line, it is historical fiction as what John was talking about took place during the decade or so before the fall of the Temple in 70 AD.  The wrote the first two books and then took a break to write "Fuse of Armageddon."  Fuse is a tomorrow sort of book where you get the idea that the lead up to the climax of the book is taking place right now.  In novel form, it shows what could happen if dispensational eschatologists took their beliefs to ultimate fruition and tried to bring about Armageddon by sacrificing a red heifer and cleansing the temple mount with its ashes.  It shows what could happen if radical christian Zionists get their hands on the controls.

Mr. Brouwer as the novelist is the analog to Jerry Jenkins, the novelist of the LB series, and Mr. Hanegraaff is the theologian behind the story the same as Tim LaHaye.  The prime difference is, Brouwer and Hanegraaff write things that could actually happen.  Their characters say things people would actually say and they do things people might actually do.  Their characters are smart and there's no spiritual heeby jeeby nonsense going on to finagle things in to fitting the biblical narrative counter to the way real people actually do things.

In all my exploration of theology and eschatology, the partial preterist viewpoint is the only one that has ever made sense to me.  And it doesn't rely on doing grammatical douchebaggery to make everything fit together like a jigsaw puzzle of a beautiful sunset which ends up being a mustard stain on a pair of mechanic's overalls.  It fits together and it makes sense and all you have to do is take the literal things literally and the apocalyptic things apocalyptically.  Also throw in a bit of 'tradition is slightly mistaken about when certain things happened.'  I'm always a sucker for getting rid of outmoded traditions.  It works because it makes sense for real people who said these things, who heard these things, and who did these things.

Being told that Armageddon was going to happen in 1997 is tantamount to child abuse in my view.  Hope you had a better childhood.  That's all I got to say about that.

The only trouble I have with this book is something that was a terrible aspect of the Left Behind series, portraying the other side.  How do you write dialog for an argument for which one side is your side?  When should the opposing side be left dumbfounded?  How weak should the opposing side's arguments be?  The Left Behind series portrayed the other side exactly as they saw the other side, the trouble is, that's not how the other side is.  Brouwer and Hanegraaff do a much better job as far as I can see it, but it's still not perfect.  What is perfect?  I don't know.  I'm on their side.  I've never believed the stuff on the other side.  Sometimes you genuinely try to show what the other side believes, and sometimes you're just pushing propaganda.  Walk that line.  These guys don't push the agenda too hard, it's just part of the facts of the story.  In the end, the televangelist doesn't just magically switch sides on the issue, he thoughtfully admits that maybe his view isn't the only one, and that's something enlightenment does to real people.

Overall, I enjoyed this book.  I love the way Brouwer interweaves his plot lines, telling each story in little snippets and moving back and forth between them right at the most suspenseful moments.  I read this book pretty rapidly and would have read it faster had I had more time.  I give it 9/10, for the message and for the story.

I will be reading the next book in the Last Disciple series, it's coming out later this year and will be called "The Last Temple."

Update: Was the New World Translation mentioned as the most accurate translation of the Bible on Jeopardy?

I wrote about this several years ago and I have continued to get plenty of hits on the subject.  So having this subject kept fresh in mind, I have had plenty of chances to go back and re-look for evidence of its happening.

The myth is (via chain email) that on Jeopardy, Alex Trebek once presented an answer to the effect of "The most accurate translation of the Bible" to which the question was "The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures by The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society."

Did this ever happen?

The short answer is no.

I have never found any evidence of it.  Not on YouTube, not on Google Video, and not now that the entire archive of Jeopardy questions and answers is available online.  http://www.j-archive.com/

You are free to check for yourself.  But I have found more evidence for Michael Jackson still being alive.  Michael Jackson was a Jehovah's Witness as well, but that's neither here nor there.

The important thing here, aside from the evidence or lack thereof, is that you need to learn to think critically.

Let's review the situation here:

1.  The claim is from an email forward.  Anyone familiar with these, or Snopes.com or other debunking websites knows that email forwards are almost invariably universally unequivocally always false.  In my estimation, I'd say that upwards of 90-95% of all emails are completely bogus or at the very least offer a real picture with a false explanation.  NEVER place any trust in ANY email forward, it's like going to the casino and betting that you'll win every time.  It doesn't work that way.

2.  The claim is that the topic appeared on Jeopardy, a pop culture and history quiz show where people win actual money, is widely viewed, and features geniuses.  'The most accurate translation of the Bible' is a 100% subjective item, especially between the camps of Jehovah's Witnesses and the rest of Christendom.  Such a thing I dare say would never appear on Jeopardy.

3.  Consider the state of religion today.  If such a thing had happened, it would have been leaped upon by every religious media program there is.  It would be on the Bible Answer Man, it would be heard from the podcasts of innumerable pulpits, and it would be on every apologetics website there is.  However, the truth is, it isn't in any of these places.  There is a simple and overwhelming lack of evidence.  It's as if someone said "in the middle of a cornfield in Nebraska sometime between the years of 1984 and 2005, a man played checkers with a cornbread bust of Abraham Lincoln."  There's just no evidence.

I have heard several anecdotal reports of the question.  However, as we know, anecdotal evidence is one of the most unreliable pieces of evidence there is.  All humans have a propensity to remember things not as they were, but as some sort of glorified or horrified version of events.  The truth is, we make things up and we forget things and in our own minds without corroborating evidence, it always all still fits together seamlessly.  That's how our minds work.  But its only when you go back and watch that old film of the vacation at the lake do you realize that the boat was actually blue and not red.

The best explanation I have found for this happening is that there was some sort of church youth event which taught about different religions and at the end there was a Jeopardy style quiz for the youth to answer questions about what they had learned.  There was a question about which Bible JW's read and the answer was of course the New World Translation.  From there, it morphed into what we know as this phenomenon today where people still insist despite the evidence and logic that they saw that particular episode of Jeopardy even though they can't point to a time and even though the archive of Jeopardy questions contains it not.

It's sad that even today people will hold on to belief in something that doesn't matter in the slightest and that there is absolutely no evidence for.

Let it go.

It didn't happen, and it wouldn't matter if it did.

It's a Great Time for Democracy

Just wanna throw my hat in support for the democratic uprisings we're seeing all over the Muslim world, and in the US too in the fight for union rights.  These are all good things.

WiredForStereo