Archive for January 2007

January 10, 2007

By a River

12:23 am | Poetry | Comments: 11

Many summers passed me by,
without a care I watched them fly.
The days were long, the sun was bright,
young was I back then but now my
life is moving way too fast
and years retreat into the past.

I’m sitting by a river
with my feet below the water
wond’ring

Where we fly
When we die.

Sunset bathes the world in red;
Picture perfect once again.
My face is warm from sunlight but
the sun is sinking once again.
It tells me that the night is here,
the darkness with its shadows near.

Water swirls about me,
Soft and sweet but still I’m thinking
about

Where we fly
When we die.

Death is not a young man’s game;
In youth we have immortal frame.
This lie to me my mind has told,
we all believe it, just the same
but now the truth before me flows;
around my feet it clearly shows

that time is like a river
slowly moving to its glory
which is

Where we fly
When we die.

I know someday that I will fly
to unseen places when I die;
I live my life by knowing
that eternity awaits me

When I die.

- James w. Lanning

January 5, 2007

This Peeve is Feral

6:30 pm | Style | Comments: 7

I feel at this time the need to speak out against the “pouty/puckered lips” pose that America’s yoot has decided to adopt. I’ll never know how kids came around to the conclusion that it was a remotely good thing to do in front of a camera. It’s not sexy, it’s not funny, it’s just really stupid-looking. To elaborate, when I see such pictures I don’t say, “oooh baby she’s cute”, or “haha that guy is a funny guy”. I chuckle to myself and say, “heh, what a moron.” As for the roots of this ridiculous pose, I trace it as far back as an early episode of Boy Meets World. A more contemporary influence is of course Zoolander and its “Blue Steel” pose. We all laughed at the time, but it stopped being funny the moment we turned off the TV or walked out of the theater. Just do yourself a favor, folks, and smile like the old days. The Pouty Lips stopped being cute and/or funny a very, very long time ago.

January 3, 2007

What to Make of a State Funeral

9:17 pm | Culture | Comments: 8

You’ve got two types of people in the Gerald R. Ford scenario: people that care, and people that don’t. It’s easy to understand why people care. The office of President in our government is a big deal. It’s a tough job that isn’t for everbody, and the added bonus for the President is his God-given authority, over both citizens like you and me and the armed forces of the nation. As a member of the “powers that be”, the President deserves a great deal of everybody’s respect. So your average American is going to care because they consider a President to be a being somewhere between men and angels (or men and demons, if you’re a vein-poppingly-angry liberal). Veterans can also identify with Ford, a comrade in arms. And I am compelled by this as well.

But what about former presidents? They don’t have any authority. They just used to. America makes a big deal out of former Presidents mostly in consideration of prestige. I think former Presidents are way over-hyped in America. The significance of Gerald R. Ford, for me, was that he was a Christian man (by most popular accounts - although he was also a Free Mason) and a veteran. As for his faith, the funeral was so full of Christian truth that I’m not going to be the naysayer in this case. At any rate, alot of people out there “don’t care” in comparison to the veterans and average Joes on the street because they don’t see why it should be so different from any other funeral. I am also compelled by this argument, especially when my intended route has been blocked by the third motorcade in 48 hours.

I definitely understand the “it’s just another funeral” crowd. Do we really need a 20-vehicle State Police motorcade rumbling down Wealthy Street, lights flashing and sirens blaring, for Former President Carter? I can understand this if the man was actually the President. As it stands, he hasn’t been president for almost 25 years. The same could be said about the late Former President Ford, although his motorcade seemed like hundreds of vehicles. Motorcade sizes aside, I think many people in this country have legitimate reasons to be very emotional about all this. Likewise, many have legitimate reasons to reflect for a mintute or two then get on with life.

As for me, a patriot and a Christian, I cannot hear cannon roar and Taps sounding without getting a distinct lump in my throat thinking about the reward that awaits all faithful followers of Jesus Christ after their passage into eternity.

January 2, 2007

SIO Comment Archives Opened

7:08 pm | SIO | Comments: 5

Ever wonder why the first couple hundred SIO posts are so dismally commented upon? Wonder no longer; you can now read the dismally commented-upon posts in their natural habitat, complete with dismal comments! Head on over to our old address sio.blogspot.com to check them out. Many thanks to Haloscan for giving basic members access to all comments (rather than the last hundred) and also to Mark for pointing out that Haloscan had done it.

January 1, 2007

A Look Back

7:20 pm | My Life | Relationships | Comments: 6

This year I’ve discovered the joys of making New Year’s Resolutions. I never really made any before, because we all know how they generally work out. 2007 is going to be different. This year it’s all going to change. Just you wait.

Is there anything in this life that hasn’t been discussed to death? I think not. It makes you wonder, as a webrog legend, exactly what you should be writing about. I was thinking about love today - which as you’ll see by the end of the post is exactly the problem. I think that I’ve thought myself out of being able to fall in love. It’s scary, in a way. A few times in 2006 I was on the edge, right there, you know? But I thought my way out of the darkness and back into the light. So to prove myself wrong, this year I’ve resolved to fall in love - with a woman, mind you.