Sir Ware-Armitage Strikes Again!

Tonight we celebrated the return of Sir Ware-Armitage, one of my favorite cinematic villainous scoundrels, expertly portrayed by Terry-Thomas.  We'd never seen "Those Daring Young Men and their Jaunty Jalopies" before, but we read that a few cast members returned from "Those Magnificent Men and their Flying Machines," and we thought we'd check it out.  First of all, it was disappointing that although these were some of the same actors, they were actually not the same characters.  In the case of Terry-Thomas, he portrayed the first character's son.  Nevertheless, the movie was a pleasant excursion, and a bit of a romp in places, as some movies in the 60's tended to be.  We'll just say some bits were predictably wacky, and move on from there.  Needless to say, we enjoyed the first movie a lot more.  Highlighting this movie, however, were the Brits, who we never got tired of seeing on screen.  Sir Ware-Armitage was hilarious as always, but the newcomers Peter Cook and Dudley Moore were scene stealers.  

We had a nice fire roaring in the fireplace as we watched this movie, the perfect answer to a terribly cold and wet sort of day.  Of course, it didn't snow.  It did north of us, but we just got cold wet.  It was the sort of cold wet that had you running from place to place outside, with no casual walking to the front door or the car door or whatever.  We were at the office today while Madison was at school - she's already got some perfect scores, although these are for Art and that's to be somewhat expected.  She's working very hard in art though, so that's not to be downplayed at all.  She works hard at all her classes, and though math seems to be getting more difficult this semester, she's going to do her best in that class and all others.

We did some work in the office, setting up for Sunday, and we'll do that again tomorrow.  Afterwards, we were at the groceries getting a whole lot of stuff.  It seems another wave of this virus is rolling over us, and we want to be ahead of the curve with the groceries somewhat.  Last year I remember getting a lot of things early, and folks thinking I was a bit of a conspiracy theorist.  A week or two later, and the Great Toilet Paper War of 2020 was on!

Speaking of conspiracy theories, the story of the day is that many social media platforms are in the midst of the Great Purge.  Starting with the President of the United States, in fact.  It's an interesting play, attempting to stop communication from the President of the United States, as it certainly gives away the political alliances of all involved in the censoring.  Not that anyone had much doubt about such a thing to begin with.  But a subtle shift is taking place as a result, as all those lost souls from the purge are now flocking to other social media outlets, separating everyone even further than they were before.  Forget any reasonable debate.  Tribal factions are in place, and everything is so binary now.  I love that word, because it is so appropriate, and I have to give credit where credit is due.

The problem we have online is that an algorithm decides what we want to see, which ends up creating a simplistic, binary view of society. It becomes a case of either you're with us or against us. 

Yeah, I know, right?  Leave it to Mr. Bean to state the obvious.  No doubt there are things we disagree with that he may feel, and visa versa.  But intelligent discussion about any disagreements seems out the door at this point.  And perhaps not just out the door, but down the block, through the woods, and sunken in that half-frozen lake about sixteen miles away.  That being said, there's some concern about even this blog's existence, and of course other accounts elsewhere.  Was there something said here that was deemed worthy of cancelling?  The answer is probably yes, because of the third and fourth word there:  "something said."  

I love this Billy Joel album, but the cover never really sunk in as much until now.  He's pointing a finger at himself, a allusion to the old expression, "Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones."  We all have flaws, and we all are worthy of being cancelled for things we've said or done.  Perhaps that's why we don't hear so much from he himself about this or that opinion.  Because society is currently merciless, tribal, and engaged in some sort of Civil War where there is no clear Mason Dixon Line.

These lyrics - from another album - are a place I feel myself approaching:

I believe I've passed the age of consciousness and righteous rage I found that just surviving was a noble fight I once believed in causes too I had my pointless point of view And life went on no matter who was wrong or right

I don't think my point of view was pointless, so much.  I still believe one way is right and another is not.  But in the Bible, Jesus did something unique with that story of the coin Peter found inside the fish's mouth.  In that story, he was accused of disobeying the current laws of the land, and of course he was not. He said as much, and as we all know, Jesus is right.  But rather than sit there and argue with them and show them he was right, he simply had Peter go fishing, get the taxes from a fish's mouth, and move on to more important things.  There are more important things than to sit there on social media and fume, or even worse respond and engage in an argument with others, versus any sort of intellectual debate where both sides respect and learn from one another.  Social media is not that place.  It's a place where some people sign on in order to throw rocks, and inevitably they get hit with a rock and that leads to escalation and in fact nothing is really accomplished, except perhaps the fruit of seething hatred for others. 

Interesting times.  Anyway, we said our prayers tonight.  I'm tired, because I've been up since 3:30.  But we did get some things done today, and we did do our reading tonight.  We read about Samson, and Madison got a kick out of how rude he was to his own parents.  Afterwards, we read from "Scoundrels," meeting Han Solo and Chewbacca for the first time in this book, and already having fun with that.  It was not that bad of a day - we tried to avoid the obvious significance of the day, and I'm not going to bring that up presently.  It's a birthday, and it's a sad reminder.  We prayed tonight, for peace, for rest, for healing, and for our nation.