Saturday, December 24, 2005
Tis The Night...
Resurrection of life
within its eternal circle
will shine and pour down from the sky
over the beauty of the world.
Now the above text is about the sun - and its light, as days will progressively grow longer henceforth. The eternal cycle of nature and its four seasons (most noticeable where I am located - indeed! No - I am not particularly fond of winter...!)
The Christian Faith came in and made the ADEQUATE SUBSTITUTION - instead of worshipping a natural phenomenon that is a mere aspect of the grandiose Creation of God, the Light of the World - the True Light - the Saviour Is Worshipped on the same date now.
Verily, it is not important WHEN the Lord Jesus Christ was born - what matters is that He Was Born! And He Is The Way!
And on December 24th - we celebrate Him!
No knock on other traditions - just a question of perspective. A man is more important than his environment... Society sure acts that way - man and his PROFIT are more important than the environment! Hence - be consistent now... The Son of Man Is much more important than the sun! (And no "sun of men" puns now...! You know who you are - those who make these puns, that is!)
Jesus Has Been Born To Us
Jesus Is Life
Jesus Is Resurrection
Jesus Is The Way;
for whomever believeth in Him
will gain life even though he may have lost it!
Happy Holiday Season - To All!
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Labels: Jaci Velasquez, music
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Friday, December 23, 2005
Flock Over To The Polls Time...!
For Luminous Friday Night Videos' sake!
Although this time out once you do click on the link here, you will be getting lots of extras too! THE 12 SONGS OF CHRISTMAS - as compiled by yours truly, of course! Expect to be entertained - and to be led to think about things as well!
After that, tracks # 13, 14 & 15 are the ones you have to vote on - pick one to lead the way into 2006! As the first track on a new playlist right here on The Luminous Blog... A playlist that will replace the one you are listening to right now, starting December 30th! Again - choose wisely! For these playlists last for two weeks here... on The Luminous Blog...!
I could round up the choices here - but really... they are three practically unknown bands; their names here wouldn't tell you much of anything... And even the titles of the songs would not... really, you have to see and listen to each video in order to vote! These have to be seen to be appreciated! All three tracks (again, numbers 13, 14 & 15) are great choices - but only one will get the nod to headline the new playlist here, on December 30th!
Get set - ready - vote!
And if the videos don't play - follow the instructions found in the comments section on the linked site itself!
Thank you very much!
And... Happy Holidays!
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Thursday, December 22, 2005
Luminous scoop time again ~~ an IMDB review preview by yours truly...!
What better than children's fare during the holiday season... hmm? Here is one bit of it that time and audiences forgot... which I happened to stumble across online the other day and felt like I had to mount a defense case for! (Why do I always do that though? It only gets me in trouble more than half the time! But that is another story...) First off, two short and succinct summaries of what was reviewed - not a movie, not a TV series... but a cartoon! Not just any cartoon, mind you - a funny cartoon show! One that spoofed the perennial cat and dog dynamic... Batman... and Clint Eastwood, indirectly! You might say that this one had it all indeed! My actual review (or as IMDB calls it, "comment") addresses previous "reviews" that really shouldn't have been bothered with...! *lol* As usual, I am the final word on the topic... *LOL* Enjoy!
The Schnookums and Meat Funny Cartoon Show is a television cartoon show about a cat named Shnookums and a dog named Meat who don't get along very well. From this simple basic premise a number of wacky scenarios unfolded - trust me on that! This series also included segments a trifle more creative, in some sense: The Adventures of Pith Possum which features a super hero named Pith Possum and his sidekick Obediah the Wonder Raccoon - and Tex Tinstar - a Cowboy who always gets into trouble! This show was created by The Walt Disney Company in 1995 as a spin off of the show Raw Toonage . A canned 'Schnookums and Meat' pasta in tomato sauce was sold in grocery stores. Somewhat ironically, a disclaimer on the can's label read, 'This product does not contain meat.'' Well - it's a good thing, I think!
This animated series is actually about three different cartoon set-ups. The first, "Schnookums and Meat!" involves a dumb pair of animals, Schnookums the cat and Meat the dog. This was infinitely superior to Ren & Stimpy! Next, "Pith Possum: Super Dynamic Possum of Tomorrow" is a spoof of the 1966 Batman TV series, with Pith Possum and Obediah fighting crime in Possum City. Finally, "Tex Tinstar: The Best in the West" is a parody of Western serials, involving the title character, a cowboy, and his, ah, entourage. The end of each episode ends in a cliffhanger for next week, not unlike the serials did or the same way "Rocky and Bullwinkle" imitated as well!
My Own Luminous Take On It Now...
A toon that was irreverent - as it SHOULD BE!
I don't recall much anymore from the few episodes that I caught - and I know there were only 13 or so - but this is MUCH better than the "Garfield And Friends" show (...) that the so-called "coolguy" here was eagerly awaiting way back then!
It is, if memory serves me right, also less crude than the Ren & Stimpys or Beavis & Buttheads of the day... and a whole lot more intelligent fare than the Itchy & Scratchy portions of the Simpsons! As for any "connection" to Tom & Jerry... sheesh... T&J were BORING - this was not!
None of you guys noted that Shnookums & Meat = S&M! The show is RIFE with hidden meaning! NO OTHER TOON made recently compares to it - not Cowardly Dog, CatDog, Grim Adventures of (I forget their names!) and the rest! The cat & dog duo was priceless. The super-hero parody was priceless (I mostly remember the "Superwaterbuffalo-oooooh" baritone voice... *lol*) The Western serial send-up was priceless too!
And another thing none of you guys underlined... this was directed by SETH McFARLANE! It led to FAMILY GUY! It was, in effect, his stepping stone! Personally, I can't stand Family Guy (or King of the Hill... or The Simpsons themselves!). But if THIS SHOW was resurrected - I would want to WRITE FOR IT!
Shnookums and Meat... Action League Now!... Futurama... those are the few toons I have liked - ever! All short runs... all under-appreciated... and all innovative! (And all three with more potential for longer runs than The Tick or Earthworm Jim - IMHO!) "S&M" (*lol*) may have been shunned by both Disney fans and the opposite breed of fans (...) but it found the audience it was worthy of in Canada - as it was the main piece, week after week, of a Saturday morning line-up on the CTV network... Goes to show that someone"s "trash" is someone else's treasure... hmm?
Labels: luminous simulpost, penned by moi
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Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Lights... Camera... Action!
Ever had the impression that you are in a dream... or in a movie... and that reality is not reality at all? For reality can often - very often - be found to be in fact stranger than fiction... even the form of fiction our brains weave up when we are asleep. Like the song says it so well... Row Row Row The Boat... Life Is But A Dream! And we are but actors in the Film of Life - the Director Will set up the scenes to be played out... all in due time! We need not worry about that...! We have to act our parts well - that should be our only concern! Accomplish what we were placed upon this Earth to do - the grandest stage or screen of all verily, this Earth... Deliver our lines... and take a bow! That's about all we're good for anyhow...
Alas, there are some who get delusions of grandeur into their tiny heads... yes... Actors who rebel and think that they are as good at directing as anybody else (no, I am not targeting Kevin Costner, Sean Penn or Clint Eastwood here...)
It may be true in the movie business... it certainly is true in sports entertainment, where a wrestler is the "actor, director and producer" of the spectacle that goes on inside the squared circle... but in the "Film of Life" - despite some degree of manoeuverability... some leverage... some tiny bit of control that we have... ONLY GOD IS IN CONTROL! He Is The Grand Director (to put Oliver Stone and Cecil B. De Mille to shame - yes!) and NO ONE MEASURES UP TO HIS WILL!
The expression "take control of one's life" is really about surrendering control to GOD - not to go nuts in the process of being a "control freak"! Because, if one was really "in control" - one would crumble under the pressure! Let GOD be in control - and "take control of your life" by maintaining yourself on the RIGHT PATH - that is all we need to do! STAY ON THE RIGHT PATH - and God Will Take Care of the rest!
Now... as far as "delusions of grandeur" go... DON'T! Just don't succumb to them! Don't be a Dubya... or rather - forget about Dubya... the FIRST MAN IN AFGHANISTAN was a whole lot crazier than even him (believe it or not!)
Check out the link... and you'll see...
"The First Foreigner In Afghanistan (...) Josiah Harlan, a Pennsylvania Quaker who some 150 years ago began a 20-year trip through Central Asia. After riding into Afghanistan on an elephant, Harlan declared himself to be royalty -- and the heir to Alexander the Great. His adventures are widely believed to have inspired Rudyard Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King."
Hmm... Josiah... Dubya... it even rhymes! *lol*
Blessings! ;)
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Alas, there are some who get delusions of grandeur into their tiny heads... yes... Actors who rebel and think that they are as good at directing as anybody else (no, I am not targeting Kevin Costner, Sean Penn or Clint Eastwood here...)
It may be true in the movie business... it certainly is true in sports entertainment, where a wrestler is the "actor, director and producer" of the spectacle that goes on inside the squared circle... but in the "Film of Life" - despite some degree of manoeuverability... some leverage... some tiny bit of control that we have... ONLY GOD IS IN CONTROL! He Is The Grand Director (to put Oliver Stone and Cecil B. De Mille to shame - yes!) and NO ONE MEASURES UP TO HIS WILL!
The expression "take control of one's life" is really about surrendering control to GOD - not to go nuts in the process of being a "control freak"! Because, if one was really "in control" - one would crumble under the pressure! Let GOD be in control - and "take control of your life" by maintaining yourself on the RIGHT PATH - that is all we need to do! STAY ON THE RIGHT PATH - and God Will Take Care of the rest!
Now... as far as "delusions of grandeur" go... DON'T! Just don't succumb to them! Don't be a Dubya... or rather - forget about Dubya... the FIRST MAN IN AFGHANISTAN was a whole lot crazier than even him (believe it or not!)
Check out the link... and you'll see...
"The First Foreigner In Afghanistan (...) Josiah Harlan, a Pennsylvania Quaker who some 150 years ago began a 20-year trip through Central Asia. After riding into Afghanistan on an elephant, Harlan declared himself to be royalty -- and the heir to Alexander the Great. His adventures are widely believed to have inspired Rudyard Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King."
Hmm... Josiah... Dubya... it even rhymes! *lol*
Blessings! ;)
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Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Shootings Galore
Today was the burial of Laval municipal police Constable Valerie Gignac, aged 25 years-old when she was shot and killed when called in to intervene in a dispute between neighbors. I have been in the heart of these type of things - but, luckily, neither my neighbors nor I owned a rifle at the time of *our* disputes... a rifle that could blow sizeable holes into almost anything - at close range. In *this* dispute, it was the pacifier that took the shot - and died for it. Ironically, the 40 year-old man who shot his rifle through the door blindly *fancied* women in uniform... He must have taken too much to heart the TVA series Jasmine... Alas, he still shot Valerie fatally.Laval, Québec is not the only Canadian spot where law enforcement officers have been the victims found at the wrong end of a loaded weapon - Western Canada has been the place that has seen the most such revolting reversals of situations recently. The most recent incident was not fatal, even though the Manitoba Mountie who was shot that time was shot... in the face. "Five shots were fired at the Mountie's cruiser. One bullet whistled through the windshield, ripped through (the Mountie's) nose, cracked through a cheekbone, continued down the back of his throat and lodged near his spine." Two months before this shooting, another Manitoba RCMP officer had been killed under very similar circumstances - and before that, no less than four RCMP officers were slain, but near Mayerthorpe, ALBERTA this time. The foursome was investigating "stolen parts and a marijuana grow operation" on a suspect's property - a suspect who proved guilty as well as lethal. He killed all four officers and then killed himself. Some of the gruesome details are found here.
Alas, it appears that even retiring won't put an RCMP officer out of harm's way for good - as a retired officer found out in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. Mark Bourque was shot dead while driving through the capital city - just as Valerie Gignac was being laid to rest half a world away. Thousands of police officers were marching alongside her coffin - how many will march alongside Mark's?
At the other end of the spectrum - and the other end of Canada as well; in Nova Scotia - a 70-year-old man was shot and killed by an RCMP officer... An investigation is underway... The man was reputedly armed and "dangerous" at the time when he confronted the RCMP officer (who, understandably, with so many of his colleagues biting bullets, took no chances at all...) Maybe they thought they were shooting down Scrooge?
Labels: commemorative
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Monday, December 19, 2005
In a reflective mood... still...!
Sol's passing this week-end makes *this* luminous blogger think back to the early seventies... when *this* picture was taken! I am one of the littlest ones on the pic - in the august presence of one Patof... my all-time favorite clown! Too young to appreciate Sol & Gobelet's refinement (!) I took to Patof and his puppet acolyte, Mr. Tranquille instead... It was all in the normal way of things I suppose...!Patof was like a Don Quixote without much of a cause (or a budget for that matter!) and Mr. Tranquille was his Sancho Panza with an attitude... Much more preferable, in my estimation, than the "Don Coyote & Sancho Panda" substitutes... and, in fact, the original duo itself... if you ask me! Embarking on a misguided quest for absolutely nothing is simply NOT an uplifting message in my book - nope! And Cervantes' sequel to the Man of La Mancha's "adventures" was even more of a downer... Don Quixote could have been better than Baron Munchausen - instead the latter's absurdism is made more real! And Quixote is ridiculed... when the truth is, child-like mentalities (especially ones that genuinely want to do some GOOD on this Earth) are the most pleasing to GOD... His confusing a windmill for a dragon is comical, of course - but it is his intent that should be underlined - and rewarded, not mocked by his own author!
What prompted this spontaneous review of Don Quixote - you ask? Check out the link... and make strategic use of the Babel Fish tool found right here on The Luminous Blog! It is the rather odd decision from the Biblioteca de Ponta Delgada, São Miguel, Açores of hosting an exposition about "D. Quixote, herói criado pelo escritor espanhol Miguel Cervantes"... What is wrong with this picture? The "espanhol" part, I say... On the momentous occasion of the HOLIDAY SEASON, they should honor either CHRIST or a national hero... and the Açores belong to PORTUGAL... not SPAIN! (Sorry, Spaniards ~ NOT SORRY!) If it absolutely had to be a spaniard "icon" - let it be a saint then... or El Cid! Don Quixote, being as fictional as the Scarlet Pimpernel or the Saint are, he's simply an odd choice for too many reasons...
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Sunday, December 18, 2005
statistics sundays - lugubrious edition
Barbara Walters wants to know where heaven is now... and how to get there too! Good luck on that Barb... (When? I know neither when her special on Heaven will air nor when she is embarking on her quest to find it...! The answer to the first question though will surely be found once you click on the link - and go to abc.com!)One illustrious personality (that few know though) who has moved on... passed on... "checked out" (as per "Twisted History" lingo)... gone on to bigger and better things... ascended not descended... on his way to indeed find Heaven hence is SOL... aka Marc Favreau. Who was "Sol" you ask? As I am the only one who seems to know who he and his buddy Gobelet were (since I am the only one who reviewed them on IMDB - here.) I therefore feel inclined towards speaking about the master of the wordplay (the French wordplay, mind you) here, today - a mere few HOURS after his departure...
Sol was a combination of Sid Caesar, Slava, Bozo The Clown and Red Skelton! Nothing less! He was even a bit of a second coming of The Tramp... with a flair for a rich vocabulary though (the irony) - but one all his own! He had made his trademark to have a child-like way of conversing, misusing words deliberately for laughs' sake and inventing new words, amalgamating words in a way that made his stand-up comedy chock-full of double entendre...! A pure delight for the mind. When stand-up comedy is actually an intellectual exercize, it has reached new heights indeed and has become something special! Nothing of the kind in Comedy Central, I am sorry to say... Nothing comparable! An interesting statistic to share today would be the number of new words Sol came up with or used in a complete original way, during the course of his illustrious career... Alas, such a statistic was not tabulated it appears! :(
Only in Quebec (Canada) could such a unique stand-up performer exist - one who started out like Bozo, on a chidren's TV show, and then carried the gimmick forward with him to the stage in several one-man shows... And only in Québec would such a unique talent get so little recognition! Sheesh... quel "je m'en foutisme" chez ces foutus québécois! Mais ça, c'est une autre histoire! ;)
Or, as Sol would say, "ça c'est une autre hystérie!" *LOL*
Sol was, in real life comedian Marc Favreau. He was on par with perennial comedy man "Le Père Gédéon" as a most enduring comic figure in Quebec. Amongst the clowns, he was second to none - with my personal favorite (childhood fave, really) Patof being a distant second, who had remained in the children's fare genre. And Gobelet, Sol's one-time partner on the children's show that he initiated from, was an even more distant third. It is sad to realize that all three - Sol, Patof & Gobelet - are gone now. Marc Favreau, Jacques Desrosiers and Luc Durand would all three be clowning around in Heaven now...? :)
Onwards to actual statistics then (since the preceding was all a long preamble!).
Belief in Heaven is not likely to increase once Barbara Walters' latest (and umpteenth) Special airs (she getting into the twilight years of her career - and is now contemplating accessing TV Heaven - it is normal...) but it won't hurt... And, as rival network Fox proved with a recent poll, belief in Heaven is considerably high already...
"The latest FOX News poll finds that more than nine in 10 Americans (91 percent) believe in God and almost as many believe in heaven (87 percent). In addition, 84 percent say they believe in miracles and 79 percent in angels.
What about the dark side? Almost three-quarters of Americans (74 percent) say they believe in hell and two-thirds in the devil (67 percent).
(...) the poll also asked about ghosts and witches. A third (34 percent) believe in ghosts and a quarter in witches (24 percent). In addition, almost four in 10 Americans (37 percent) say they believe in astrology and one in four believe in reincarnation (27 percent). Hardly any say they believe in vampires (4 percent)."
Sorry, Buffy! More about all that here.
While we're at it, anyone up for some Religion Statistics... hmm? Although poorly formulated and barely readable, the numbers are interesting... even if somewhat contradictory of the Fox poll (maybe the following excerpt was when they polled illiterate atheists... hmm?) - and, yes; these figures are strictly for the USA... not sure which parts of the USA though (redneck country?).
"After the death, people thinks that there is Heaven without any Hell (8%), or Hell or Heaven (21%), or that there is an existence without neither Heaven nor Hell (26%), or there is reincarnation (7%, but there is a 22% believing in regressions or that it is possible to know about past lives...), or there is nothing (11%), or people does not know what happens (25%). About the question if God punishes persons by means of AIDS, earthquakes, etc., only a 13% agreed with that. The self religious identification was: 36% Catholics, 10% "Christian", 8% Anglican, 16% other Protestant (as total Christian = 70%), 1% Muslim, 1% Buddhist, 1% Jew, 7% other religion, 18% none. There was a 23% of respondents that attended religious services weekly, 9% monthly." See what I mean? Sheesh... even Sol mangling the language at his most ferocious (!) wouldn't sound THIS BAD...! And at least Sol did it for the LAUGHS...
If that excerpt was not enough torture for you, check out this link too, about the
rest of the world.
Marc Favreau was a believer - of course. Most gentlemen born in his part of the globe when he was born had no say in the matter... It was a given! And now he knows the good of that... for now he knows how true it all was! Luc Durand preceded him there... followed by Jacques Desrosiers... now the lone favorite of mine from those days that remains is one... Monsieur Tranquille! He won't go anytime soon - he's a puppet!
Sol and Gobelet are both on the other side now... As so many other great comical duos. Marc and Luc now know what that is all about (the clowns - not the evangelists, although the evengelists know too... better than the other two, yes... but that is another story).
Labels: commemorative
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