AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Mark dropped me a pointer yesterday linking to this delightful explanation of why President Bush has such trouble with the English language, and what happens when a German immigrant can’t find a job as a taxi driver.

The past four days, our family has watched four movies: A Scanner Darkly, Pirates 2, The Philadelphia Story, and High Society. (To be exact, the boys and I went out Friday night, while Margaret and Pip opted out of Scanner and stayed home to watch Spies Like Us.)

The classic movies were part of a family tradition, to which we were introducing Si’s girlfriend Laura. Whenever conversation lags in the Adam household, you can stir it up by suggesting that Katherine Hepburn is as beautiful as Grace Kelly, or that the addition of Louis Armstrong and Cole Porter makes up for the absence of Cary Grant. And, of course, when someone feels groggy in the morning, they always say, “This is one of those days that the pages of history teach us are best spent lying in bed.”

About Pirates 2, I don’t have much to say; it’s still a very slick movie about an amusement park ride. The animation of the doomed sailors worked very well; I enjoyed watching Bill Nighy, whose face came through clearly under the Chthulesque make-up. Johnny Depp was Johnny Depp, and Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom ran around and buckled swashes. The lack of even a shade of resolution at the end of this installment annoyed me, but I’ll still go to Pirates 3.

I was deeply impressed by A Scanner Darkly, though I understand why some people might not be. I loved the novel (one of P K Dick’s better-realized books) for the same reason: Dick writes about people I knew and cared for, with sympathy and honesty and sadness. Viewers who don’t recognize anyone they know or love among the characters of the movie will have reason to wonder why they should care about a hundred minutes of awkwardly-animated, drug-addled paranoia. David wasn’t convinced by the animation; I’d argue that the rotoscoping contributes to the movie’s ambiguous sense of reality. If the film were presented straight (so to speak), it would seem to assert the reality of everything it showed; by presenting everything in a way that raises the question “is this a hallucination, or is this what’s actually happening?” the rotoscoping underlines the novel’s challenges to what counts for reality.

David’s daughter thought that the movie’s affecting afterword cut against the plot’s grain. The afterword mourns the fate of souls who suffered disproportionately for their playing; the movie depicts the world of drug use as an abyss of vacuous, destructive, exploitive selfishness. Dick and Linklater don’t soften the movie’s judgment on drug use by presenting us with an attractive version of drug experience; I think that’s both politically and cinematically the right decision, but it leaves viewers without a convincing reason anyone would take Substance D in the first place. Still, I admired the movie and it touched me as the novel did; I understand why some viewers won’t like it, but anyone who might like it should give it a chance.

When you’re just restarting a complicated project, it’ best not to take on the biggest problems right away. The whole business quickly assumes daunting proportions when you view it from the perspective of its knottiest enigmas.

So a wiser person than I would have skipped over James 1:17 when resuscitating a project that involves fixing intricate formatting glitches, adapting to an analytical framework you don’t fully share, and accelerating the pace of one’s progress toward completion.

James 1:17 involves parallel clauses that juxtapose dosis agathê and dôrêma teleion; are they synonymous? Why the distinction? (After reviewing the evidence, I plump for rhetorical effect rather than lexical semantic distinction.) It identifies God as the “Father of lights,” a relatively peculiar characterization at that point — Scripture identifies God as creator of light, of course, and as universal Father, but that particular phrase seems unprecedented. The Dead Sea Scrolls’ usage “Prince of Lights” doesn’t seem to apply to God directly, but to an intermediate agent (it stands opposite the “Angel of Darkness” in 1QS 3.20, and Belial in CD 5:19).

Then it ends with a four-word phrase whose meaning is so obscure that scribes twisted it various ways to wring the semblance of clarity out of it: “the Father of lights, with whom there is no parallagê ê tropês aposkiasma” (“variation or shadow of change,” or something like that). The textual variations demand thoughtful attention; syntax and semantics of the phrase demand careful deliberation; and I have to express my conclusions in someone else’s preferred terminology.

Plus, I’ll probably have to revisit it after a while.

Margaret says that resumés and c.v.’s should have blurbs on them — so that the first page comprises pithy endorsements from the best-known people you can come up with, before a reader gets to the nuts and bolts of your experience, your qualifications, and so on.

She’ll be applying for jobs in a little while; maybe we can test that idea on her applications.

I should have known not to have a second large cup of Peet’s coffee. I usually don’t make my coffee as strong as Peet’s does, and they didn’t have any clean medium-sized cups, so they were serving coffee in their oceanic “large” mugs. Margaret very sweetly wanted to get a refill for me, and I thought about asking for decaf, but I hesitated. By the time I had made a significant dent on the second cup, I was practically shooting electric bolts out of my fingertips. I couldn’t concentrate on anything of hours after.

Next time, a one cup limit.

Chris pointed me to this exciting book, bound to be more theologically profound than the more famous novel — itself a parody of historical investigation — on which this work is based.

And when it comes to conspiracies, secrets, symbolophagy, and the ultimate answer, Chris is one of two people I would rely on (Margaret, of course, being the other).

As I devote increasing time and energy to re-tackling my commentary on the Epistle of James, I encounter a paradox. On one hand, I work best with fewest distractions; turn me loose with my Greek text and a lexicon, and I’ll happily translate and analyze at a high pitch of intensity.

Yet, as I delve more deeply into the Greek text, and as I mull over subtle exegetical problems, I feel an increasing need to look into the scholarly literature, to check for particular reference material online, to compare various commentaries to see whether some other interpreter has addressed the particular features of the text that intrigue me. And of course, the environment that makes all those reference materials available, also makes available a whole array of potential distractions.

Since I already have more to do than I could possibly accomplish, it occurs to me to begin planning an essay (possibly a short book) on the nature of theological evidence. I’d be drawing on one of my favorite books of theory (Questions of Evidence), on Edward Tufte’s work on information design (especially including his most recent book, which I ordered yesterday), and miscellaneous other essays and articles.

I don’t know what I’d find out, but I bet it would be worth the effort — if I had time and opportunity.

If we truly believe in the Holy Spirit’s power to effect reconciliation and conversion, none of us has anything to lose from keeping a very low threshold for motion into and out of communion with the Anglican Core. Indeed, if we love another and hold as a goal Jesus’ will for us to be one, we owe it to the Truth not to erect unnecessary barriers between “staying in” and “moving out,” and (again) to eventually returning.

To this extent, I’m inclined to support the Archbishop’s “two-tier” approach to communion — not because I believe people belong in an inner or outer circle, but because such a proposal befits a transitional stage in which the church discerns the shape of its loyalties. If a congregation could move relatively simply from one tier to the other, we could rely on the Spirit to gather faithful souls where they can visibly, effectively bear witness to the sanctity, faithfulness, and (yes) justice to which all are called.

If in the end, it’s hard to tell the difference between the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Communion (or whatever one might call the tiers), that itself might tell us something significant about our situation.

We brought Bea in for her summer haircut this morning, hoping to get her groomed before Margaret returned from moving Nate to Ann Arbor. Here she is, in her shaggy glory and in her shorn humility.

Margaret and Nate arrived safely this afternoon, and everyone’s exhausted — but the five of us are together for a week. What exciting adventures will we come up with? Maybe (in keeping with the family stereotype to which David linked) we should check out Who Killed the Electric Car?

I could’ve sworn that when I heard the Bush press conference Thursday morning, the President referred to “the United States and America” as two nations with a friendship one wouldn’t have predicted, since sixty years ago they were at war. But I haven’t heard or seen any follow-up to that, so maybe my ears deceived me.