Neanderpundit

How about these apples!

A couple guys help a drowning stranded deer, and get fined. Nice.

By pointing out the different kinds of beatings.

The Ogwife was relating a story about the kid in Walmart who pulled a toy from the bottom of the display, which caused the whole display to self destruct, like pulling the pin on a hand grenade.

Partner pointed out that this would get you a ‘Store beating” when we were kids, and this made me think of all the different kind of beatings you could get, when beatings were the rule of the day.

1: The Store beating was the mildest form of beating, and was usually administered with the open hand. It was meant to hurt, but not enough to start the waterworks. Usually it involved rubbing the affected part until back in the car, where one received

2: The Car Beating. This beating was for the beating you deserved for what you had done in the store, but which your parents didn’t want to embarrass themselves with right there in the store. A little beating was OK< and always encouraged by other store patrons in the case of misbehaving children, but the real work was always done with as much privacy as could be mustered. The Car beating was administered with the open hand (Usually) though it could involve a purse or window scraper, or in extreme cases, a seatbelt. The Car beating concentrated on the head, and was administered over the back of the front seat. Damage was concentrated on the head, intended to cause some pain, and crying was practically mandated, so you could be given "something to cry about!". If you were unluckly enough to live close to the store, your still-incensed parent(s) often graduated you to 3: The Outside the House beating. This was a full-contact beating, intended to cause anything short of stitches, and involved hands, belts, rakes, car parts, aluminum siding, or really, anything that was to hand. the Outside the House beating could range over some distance, as "holding" incurred penalty points, but if the subject ran too fast he could be ordered by a less-mobile parent to stand still, lest he incur the awesome wrath of 4: the Indoor beating. The indoor beating was n0-holds-barred close combat and involved the Holy Trinity of Beating Implements. Hebrew law being what it is, the primary beating implement had to be the belt of a parent or one of the subject's siblings. ("Thou shalt not beat a child with it's own belt") The secondary beating implement was the ubiquitous Hot Wheels Track. These orange strips of plastic were purpose built for thwacking prepubescent boys, cleverly disguised as a toy. Holding was required, as the flailing of the subject could cause domestic damage-though if the subject could be aimed toward something- say, the ugly lamp your husband won in a contest (Think "Major Award") it allowed the parent multiple options- a: Destruction of ugly lamp. b: Blame destruction on child c: Reason to beat child more, and pass off the responsability of the second beating shift on the husband. (Not many people realize that is the "real" story of the 'Christmas Story" lamp.) The final tool in the trilogy of indoor terror was the plunger handle. While I was a pussy and bent to the will of the belt or the hotwheels track almost immediately, Partner, being far tougher and more obstinate than I, often required the application of the Plunger Handle to submit. Memreeeeez.

asks Ed, and pascal disagrees with my comments. Well, pascal is often wrong about a lot of things but we won’t hold that against him.

CS Lewis is the sort of atheist-turned-christian that spends most of his life writing things that are ostensibly object lessons but are really written to try to convince himself that his conversion to Christianity has merit.

Bucketloads of people read his stuff, like Narnia and Screwtape, and shout with glee at the wonderfulness of it all, but in reality, Lewis has it so wrong he couldn’t be further from the truth of things. This is because he wants to make God in his own image, which is utter bullshit. This leads me to write a new Og’s law, and you can take this one to the bank:

Anything written by a man which purports to reveal the mind of the Creator is a humbug.

Contrast Narnia and Screwtape with Twain’s “Diary of Adam and Eve” which is intended to be humor, but which does a better job of helping us to understand the Creator and our place in the universe than Lewis ever could. Lewis took the morality of the church and wove a story around it; the outcome is much like weaving a silk purse from leather buggy-tugs. You get the idea, but it’s strained and doesn’t fit, and illustrates fairly well the nastiness of which humans are capable. On the other hand, “Adam and Eve” illustrate the innocence and also the frailties of humans, and each of us can see themselves in the words of Adam and Eve, and we realize how much like them we are, and it helps us to understand why we are charged with the moralities to which we should adhere.

This is just my personal opinion. A lot of people just think Lewis is IT. Good for them. Jehova’s witnesses and calvinists think they are IT also. Good for them. I’ve never had any use for any of it, for the reasons above. I am suspicious of anyone who writes to send a message. I’m even more suspicious of anyone who writes to send a message of their interpretation of God’s plan. They’re most often wrong.