Dark River

I used to regularly buy my printer ink from Staples because they had a generic version of the HP ink I need. They have stopped carrying it because HP apparently promised them untold riches if they would quietly drop the program. You can read about it here, and, if you find this annoying, let Staples know here. If anyone has any suggestions for other generic ink options, post them in comments.

Here are some pictures from my recent trip to Leeds and from Marilyn and my recent visit to the cherry blossoms here in DC.

Life here in DC has been busy but fun. For those few who still check this woefully rarely updated blog, I thought I'd post some pictures from Christmas. Most of the pictures are from our vacation in Miama Beach with Marilyn's family. Hopefully time may soon allow a longer post, but for now--we like our apartment, our new church, and our lives in DC in general.

People have been asking both Marilyn and I what our new apartment is like, so I've posted some pictures on my Parazz site. Go to the "Washington Apartment" album. You can also check out some pictures from my trip to Totnes, England last month. The conference was a disappointment, but the location was beautiful. Hopefully I'll post more about life in DC later.

It's been a while since I've updated, and much has happened, so this blog may be long on content and skimpy on that razor-wit pontificating that I know draws so many of you to check my page for updates so many times each hour.

To begin with I am now, (almost) officially Dr. Doug Reside. I passed my defense, turned in my dissertation, and it was accepted by the graduate school and published by the library. However, I didn't turn in my dissertation until one day after the deadline for summer graduation so that I could remain a funded graduate student this semester and take theatre classes.

Then, about a day before the semester started I was invited to an interview at the University of Maryland's Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH). I went, found the job and the environment interesting, and, when I was offered the position 2 days later I decided to take it. The job looks like it involves a lot of different things, but mostly I’ll be working with humanities faculty members to design new technologies for their disciplines (and also working on my own research). So, yes, Marilyn and I are moving to Washington DC by the end of September.

Marilyn and I participated in Marilyn's sister's wedding last weekend in Albany, NY. The rehearsal dinner was held at a country club where several other weddings rehearsals were also being held. I overheard two little boys from another wedding discussing one of their friends. I guess this explains why I ended up dropping out of Hebrew at Truman State:

Boy 1: "He doesn't even know what "Mazeltoff" means!"

Boy 2: "Yeah, he can't even read a single WORD in Hebrew."

Boy 1: "Yeah, well...I've heard he goes to Sunday School..."

I put some pictures from the wedding at my here.

By the way, the title of my entry comes from a very funny website that records conversations overheard in NYC. The pure of heart should be warned before visiting that, as with an actual trip to NYC, many of the overheard conversations are a bit crude.

Marilyn’s birthday was two weeks ago and I took her on a surprise day-trip to the Cincinnati Zoo. She likes the penguins and we spent about ten minutes watching them congregate in what seemed almost to be cocktail party discussion circles. One would occasionally appear to get bored, leave the circle, and swim playfully in the little lake for a while. In another exhibit, a black bear would methodically walk to the front of the cage, frolic in the water for a bit, and then return to a little cave before beginning the cycle again. We watched these exhibits along with delighted toddlers and their parents, all of us assigning human emotions and conversation to the animals (I suggested the black bear was returning to the cave to check his “Black Bear-y”). But by another exhibit, less crowded and much darker, Marilyn and I paused in almost comic horror to watch a circle of tiny vampire bats sitting around and feeding on what appeared to be bowls of blood in the violet glow of a black light.

Also two weeks ago in Lexington, a driver’s foot slipped and her SUV bumped a concrete barrier in a parking garage causing it to break, fall, and kill a pregnant woman who was on her way to work early to build up some hours of maternity leave. The next day another woman parked her car on the side of the busiest highway in town, wrote a suicide note, and stepped out in front of an on-coming semi-truck. On a global scale, this probably makes for a pretty good week in a city. At our house church, when the first story was told, someone quietly exclaimed, “Good God.” Another, forgivably, blasphemed, “If only…”

In the early Romantic Era, William Blake wrote a series of poems that made him, in the words of Christian literary scholar Northrop Frye, “a victim of anthologies”. The Songs of Innocence and Experience have been so often excerpted in textbooks that one might start to think of Blake as a sort of proto-Wordsworth, celebrating the beauty and rejuvenating power of nature in contrast to the “dark Satanic Mills” of urban life. But even in these poems, as has been often noted, Blake’s view of nature is clearly ambivalent. This is the collection that includes the poem “The Tyger” in which the poet, meditating on the “fearful” tiger, writes:

“When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?”

Did He who made the black bear make the vampire bats? Of course, while the black bear seemed cute and the vampire bats looked, as Marilyn said, “like looking into Hell,” I would much rather meet a bat in the wild. The fairy tales and most of our media-savvy culture know that appearances can be deceiving. I could try, at this point, to build some sort of argument to explain the problem of pain on this thought, but I’m not sure it would be all that satisfying. I wasn’t there when “the stars threw down their spears” nor even when “the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy”, so I don’t really have a nice theodicy to conclude this…which is sort of exactly the point.

In the most recent issue of Christianity Today Chuck Colson, a former Nixon staffer and one of the louder voices in what is, increasingly clearly, “the old guard” of evangelical Christianity, writes a relatively generous criticism of “the emergent church” and its discomfort with claiming to definitely know Truth. He writes that while the “emerging church can offer a healthy corrective if it encourages us to more winsomely draw postmodern seekers to Christ” their methods “must not deter us from making a solid apologetic defense of the knowability of truth.” That’s fine, to a point. We “shall know the truth” and Jesus is the “way, the truth, and the life.” But just because some truth can be known (because it has, by grace, been revealed to us), it doesn’t follow that all (or even most) can. I’m pretty sure Colson wouldn’t disagree (after all, he recently refused to sign a “truth statement” of the evangelical “new guard” which stated “human-induced climate change is real”). I suspect, though, that his set of “knowable truths” is quite a bit larger than mine. We basically had to steal “the knowledge of good and evil,” why then are we so quick to build and defend systematic theologies to explain how they work? The Emergent Church has its problems, no question, but any attack on its reluctance to claim knowable truth should be specific and nuanced. One wonders if God’s response to Job would have been so furious and sarcastic if he, like the emergent church, had simply stuck with “Blessed be the name of the Lord” and beyond that said only, “I don’t know.”

Well, at least Beyond Personality (one of the "books" in Mere Christianity). The BBC has recently put about 14 minutes of Lewis's wartime radio talks which eventually became (Mere Christianity) here

Link: http://www.holyfolks.com

I read a couple of blogs that occassionally offer free magazine subscriptions. I recently signed up for a free subscription to Charisma: The Magazine About Spirit-Led Living. As the title likely suggests, its a charismatic-Christian publication that is sort of like a penecostal Christianity Today. My theology isn't really anymore charismatic than my personality, but I'm also pretty sure the good ol' cessationist dogmas of the indepedent Christian church aren't exactly right either. Anyway, the magazine usually has at least a few good articles. Unfortunately, like Christianity Today, they are also funded by ads that rank up there with the problem of suffering as a real sort of test of faith. The most recent issue had one of the best/worst I've seen. I'm not exactly sure what the copyright laws are for advertisements, so I'll just provide a link. Go ahead and check it out but be sure you hit the back button the moment you're tempted to fork over $79.96 for the set of four (a real savings considering the price of just one of these dolls is $19.99).

Along with providing hours and hours of disappointed and obligatory play for the poor fundamentalist kid who dared to ask for a Bratz! doll, these little rosy-cheeked beauties solve a number of the problems that have plagued fundamentalist adults since the first publication of the Scofield Reference Bible. First, we now know how Noah got all those animals in the ark. Didn't remember seeing the Noah doll? Ok, click here again (but be sure to come back). Those a'int the ten commandments that white bearded patriarch on the right is toting. Those there are genuine, "Honey I Shrunk the Pacaderms," elephants. Apparently, while the scribe of Genesis 6 thought it was a good idea to explain just how to build your very own ark, the instructions for the shrinking ray gun were sealed up with the sayings of the seven thunders.

The accompanying text is useful as well. The text in the magazine version explains that magnets implanted in the hands ensure a continual posture of prayer when they aren't carrying their laws, Christ-child, shepherd's crook, or mini-mammals. This ensures these holy folks are "always faithful," and therefore, "always smiling." They gots the joy, joy, joy, joy down in their heart and sewn permanently across their ever-lifted countenances.

If you go to the "Contact" section of the website you can vote for your favorite Biblical character to be immortalized as the next Holy Folk. The current suggestions include "Joseph and the Dreamcoat" (either "coat of many colors" is too long to fit in the drop down menu, or the Holy Folks are banking on the fact that Tim Rice's lyrics are more recognizable than the book of Genesis), and "King Solomon" (who, I guess, can smile while proclaiming the "Vanity" of all things as long as his magnetic hands can clutch his included concubine). I'm considering a write-in vote for the Gesthemane Garden playset. That way Marilyn can hold the Mary doll at a distance while my joyful Jesus cries out an exultant "Your will not mine." Its inspiring, really. Maybe FEMA can start offering magnetic palm implants to alleviate depression when the next natural disaster hits.

Ok, you can go ahead and return to the site to buy one (or four) now. If you don't, I might actually have to start paying for Charisma.

Just heard that one of the CCF vans was hit by a suspected drunk driver on the way back from Texas. There is an article on the accident here and a TV news report here. I guess Joe Belzer is still in the hospital in Oklahoma but listed in good condition.

I just got back from another conference in England. This one was in Bristol (on the Southwest coast). I'm still sort of jet-lagged, so I can't be that creative, but I just wanted to post some pictures. They are at my shutterbook site. Note especially the picture of the Bristol Phone book which dedicated four full pages to "Bouncy Castles." Apparently a Bristol favorite.

In the spirit of the awards season, and because top # lists seem to generate a lot of interest (see Sara's blog entries) I thought I would offer my views on the best of Art and Entertainment in 2005. I know its a little late, but a wise man recently proved that Decemeber does not have a monopoly on year-in-review postings.

Best CD I purchased: Jason Robert Brown's Wearing Someone Else's Clothes

Many reviews have compared Brown's work to Billy Joel's early work, which in certain cases, is accurate, but this album has greater musical diversity. It's difficult to describe this CD in terms of genre. There are rock songs, protest songs, gospel, and the title song which may best be described as self-deprecating Caucasian hip hop. If you're interested check out the label's website. You can download the entire first song in MP3 and hear some clips of the others.

Best Book I Read: Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King

This one's kind of old, and I've mentioned it before, but it is really good. The movie version with Anthony Hopkins only covers the first (but to my mind best) part. The novel is a collection of marginally interrelated stories that reflect on the various movements of the 1960s from the perspective of someone in the late 90s. If you generally don't like Stephen King I would still recommend trying this one. The stories aren't particularly horrific (only the first really has directly supernatural elements) and the prose is a little more carefully constructed than in some of his other work. There is some relatively strong sexual content in the second story, essential for the character development, but still something to be aware of if it bothers you.

Best Movie I Watched in the Theatre: The Producers

I didn't actually see all that many movies in the theatre, and (if you didn't know) I'm a big musical theatre fan, so take this for what it is, but The Producers was still lots of fun. I hated the touring production when I saw it in St. Louis, and I still don't think the script or music are actually that great, but the original cast (more or less preserved in this film) makes it easier to understand why all the New York critics went so crazy over the show. Like Moulin Rouge, this both mocks and celebrates the musical genre, so if you think musicals are silly you can take some comfort in the fact that the film does too.

Best Movie I Watched on DVD: Angels in America

This is the several hour long HBO adaptation of the two Broadway plays, but it works exceptionally well on film. Neither Marilyn or I were prepared to really like it, but we both considered it one of the best films of we saw last year. The dialogue is poetic and honest, the filming beautiful, and the performances (by Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, Emma Thompson, and Marie Louise-Parker, among others) are consistently brilliant. The film is set in the 80s during the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in New York. A young gay man discovers he has HIV (a virtually unknown disease at the time) and begins to see visions of the angel of America who informs him he is to be a prophet to his country. There's some full, though not terribly titillating nudity, some mild sex scenes, and a relatively frank exploration of AIDS, so again, be warned.

Let me know your own lists. You obviously have good taste in blog reading, so I want to know what else you like.

Nipper, the Labrador-beagle mutt my dad got for free when I was in fourth grade, died today. Yeah, it’s a story for Disney movies and country songs, and I don’t really want to be maudlin or clichéd, but it’s a common enough experience that maybe I can excuse a bit of public grieving on a blog read mostly by people who knew him.

When Marilyn worked at Joseph-Beth (the local mega-bookstore) she got an advanced reader’s copy of the now best-selling Marley and Me by Josh Grogan. I had started it a few months ago, but had never found the time to finish it. When Nipper went into it the doggie-hospital earlier this weekend I decided to pick it up again. At around midnight last night, several hours after Marilyn went to sleep, I was crying over Marley’s death and wondering whether the catharsis was worth it.

There are some really nice scenes in the book though. In one, Marley is just beginning to get old and the author is taking him on a walk. They decide to visit an old Civil War cemetery, but Marley is unable to make it up the hill. They turn around and go back home. The author thinks, “We’ll make it to the cemetery another day.”

I don’t know why we seem so given to invest our hearts in pets. If, as tradition has it, they don’t have souls, it seems kind of cruel that we’re built that way. But maybe their short lives prepare us for those harder partings that will come later. Animal sacrifices symbolized and prepared for the final sacrifice of Christ. Maybe, in the sort of prosperous life which allows me, at 27, to have only actually seen a dead person once (my 90+ year old great grandma), the short lives of our pets can serve as a reminder that, turn back as often as we are allowed, the cemetery is still the end of journey for all flesh. Cherish and prepare…

Or maybe I’m just trying to avoid actual grieving...

Anyway, here’s a clip of Nipper a few years ago. He was old in this video too, but in a sort of doctoral defense, he demonstrates all the knowledge of tricks he learned over the years.

Bye-bye Nipper.

As I believe I've mentioned before in these pages, Marilyn and I have been attended a house church/emergent community/new-monastic gathering for the last couple of months. If you aren't hip to all the coolest trends in American Evangelicalism, this is basically just a small group that meets on Sunday morning, shares communion, and is particularly interested in social justice issues.

There is a family in the church who have three brilliant kids: one a teenager and two in elementary school. They are lots of fun to play with and last week during one of the meetings I was serving as their robotic horse (basically the 21st version of the old classic "Playing Horsey"). The two younger kids were riding on my back and started fighting for the spot nearest my shoulders. I warned them, in robotic horsey voice, that I was powered by Christmas Spirit and I could feel it running low. They both began to chant "Santa Exists! Santa Exists!"

After a bit I was really running low on energy and was a little weirded out by their little Christmas-TV-Special credo, so I trotted over to the manger scene and declared "Ah, now I see the real reason for the season. Santa means nothing to me anymore." I began to stand up, figuring I'd found a way out.

The kids, though, were not yet bored of the game so they simply changed their chant to "Christ Exists! Christ Exists!"

They got a few more minutes of riding time before I escaped to a "watering hole" in the kitchen.

I'm a busy grad-student and so, like the unfortunate fellow in the commercial who used the credit-card with the black-out days for rewards, I'm going to try to consolodate my holidays. Now, I don't want to give up getting presents on two different days so I'm going to leave Christmas and my birthday (it's a holiday, really) separate. Valentine's Day, Halloween, and Easter are usually worth at least a little free candy these days so I'll keep them separate as well. I don't want to combine lose extra days off so I'll keep Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day on different days as well. Let's just combine two meaningless holidays and into one of the holidays where I get a day off... Like this:
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This year I resolve to update my blog at least once a week...
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April Fools!
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(I'm wearing green as I write this)

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Ok, if you actually want humor you should be here instead.

Marilyn and I went to Nikki Jones' party for New Years. We got there a little early so we stopped by the Science Center and visited the Dinosaurs. I've posted some pictures on my Shutterbook page. The airplane thing is a replica of that private spaceship that recently won the x-prize.

Marilyn and I made a pilgrimage to London over Thanksgiving weekend. We were sick of beets seeped in red dye sauce and cranberries that retains a cylindrical shape all the way from the can through the digestive tract, so, good Tories that we are, we decided taxation without representation wasn't such a bad thing. So, while our families were busily putting on the pounds, we were losing them like crazy (mostly to the VAT). There happened to be an academic conference on musical theatre composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim at London's Goldsmith college as well, so I popped by and presented a paper there on Friday afternoon.

After the conference we slept off our jet lag and wandered around London on for the rest of the weekend. I just missed the Hogwarts Express

but I drowned my sorrows in a bag of hot chestnuts

Actually, on Sunday night we went to a church I had attended when I studied abroad in England a few summers ago (Holy Trinity Brompton). Afterwards I wanted some more chestnuts, but the stand was closing for the night. The vendor was out of bags, but he said I could put them in my pockets if I wanted. I held out my hand, but he laughed and told me to hold up my coat pocket instead. This I did, and boarded the tube that night with the equivalent of about 8 bags of chestnuts warming the side of my leg.

Marilyn and I went to Bloomington this weekend to say hi to a few old restaurants. There are some pictures of us in Byrant park and some more pictures of Miles here.

Most of the readers of this blog probably remember that I didn't have a car for all but about 2 months of the 6 years I lived in Kirksville, MO. Mostly I relied on the kindness of my car-possessing friends (many of you) and my bike(and, to some extent, on the fact that you could walk just about anywhere in Kirksville in an hour or less). Before I moved to Kentucky, however, my grandparents gave me $1000 for a car. I supplemented this with $500 of my savings and purchased a 1986 Volvo Station Wagon which had traveled, at the time, 148,152 miles. Because he had so many of them, I decided he should be names Miles (a name a friend from high school had also given to one of her cars).

Miles never really had working windshield wipers, but I learned to appreciate the powers of Rain-X. About a month after I bought him, some BSU guys in Kirksville helped me push him into their parking lot when the clutch went out. Over the course of three years he gradually decided it was too much work to supply power to EVERY light. The cement pillars that separate the exceptionally narrow spots in the Lexington library parking garage claimed most of his weather stripping. But for 2 years, he only broke down on the road once as he faithfully carried me between Lexington, KY and Bloomington, IN (about a 3 hour drive) every weekend.

This summer he began to have trouble on exceptionally hot days. I learned the poweful but mystical reviving ritual of kicking under the glove box while sitting in the passenger seat and shouting "BLAST!" He could probably have survived another couple of years, but Marilyn didn't know how to drive a stick shift and wasn't particularly enamored of his little quirks. We tried to sell him for about a month, but the only real interest faded when some drunken undergrad severly dented the back end when trying to turn around in our driveway. We bought a new Volvo (Rhodes) and decided to offer up Miles as a sacrifice at the altar of the local mega-church (hopefully the old covenant rules about blemishes doesn't apply to cars). I wasn't able to pass on the secret rituals, but I hope his new owners treat Miles with the respect he deserves...even if he's now a toaster.

Just a short entry for some quick updates. I passed my oral exams on Thursday which means I'm officially ABD (all but dissertation).
Also you can look at (and if you really want order) pictures from our wedding here.

I haven't actually been in contact with her, but Marilyn and I were a little worried about our fellow CCF alumnae Katie Albers who was attending seminary in New Orleans. I just got this from Joe Belzer and thought I would post it in case anyone else was wondering:

yeah... katie has been moving slowly north since the storm... and
was not affected by the flooding at all. though her seminary is
undewater. she is safe.

So that's good.

In other news, Kristin Tucker just moved into a dorm across the street from a building I teach in this semester. She came over to our apartment and ate Indian food with us yesterday.

Jared kindly resized the pictures for me so they'll load faster.
He tried to post a comment but apparently the Brendoman server doesn't like comments anymore.
Here's what he wrote:
That about blew my computer up trying to load all that. Here's how easy it should be. Pictures!.

(If you didn't figure it out, clicking "Pictures!" will take you to a nice, fast loading, version)

As most of you probably noticed, the picture page for the wedding/honeymoon had some problems in Internet Explorer (the picture didn't auto-resize so users had to scroll to see the full image). It worked fine in Firefox, though, so I wasn't in a big hurry to fix it. I guess Jared couldn't stand it any longer, though, so he made me this page to speed things along. The pictures may look a little weird because of the scale, but if you right click on one you like and select "Save as..." you can download a copy for yourself in its original size, full 5 MB, glory.

Link: http://www.uky.edu/~dlresi2/Wedding/pictures.html

I'm married now. I posted some pictures from the wedding and honeymoon here. The first few pictures are actually of Marilyn draining some Jones Soda that we had planned to use as vases at the rehearsal dinner (we changed our minds, and the Jones soda wasn't all that good, but oh well). Hopefully you can figure most of the pictures out. The pictures are full size but are in an IFRAME so they will take a while to load and look small but will retain full-quality for downloads.

Just thought I'd pass on a bad experience I had with State Farm insurance to warn anyone who might be seeking car insurance.

I have never had an accident or a ticket of any sort but I drive a 1986 Volvo Station Wagon that occassionaly tends to be towed to the shop. Since January of this year I required towing on three different occassions (although one of those three was needed because the company had towed me to the wrong shop in Louisville). I received a letter today stating that State Farm will not allow me to renew my policy because of "frequent" claims. After speaking with several agents they agreed to allow me to renew everything but Road Side Assistance (something AAA and even my cell phone company is willing to provide for about $5 a month). I know a lot of us drive older cars that may need frequent repairs, and some of us may have less than clean driving records, so if you're looking for an insurance company, I would strongly advise against State Farm.

(My fiancee uses AAA's Safeway insurance and has been relatively pleased with it. I will likely be switching to it when my policy with State Farm runs out)

You may feel free to ask me further questions or pass this on to anyone who may be shopping for car insurance.

The Tony Awards are Sunday night, June 5. I haven't been following the reviews well enough to predict anything other than the major awards, but for what its worth, here's what I think:

Best Musical: Spamalot
Best Book of a Musical: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Best Score of a Musical: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Best Actor in a Musical: Norbert Leo Butz
Best Actress in a Musical: Victoria Clark
Best Play: Doubt
Best Revival of a Play: 12 Angry Men
Best Revival of a Musical: La Cage Aux Folles

I suspect Light in the Piazza will take a lot of the technical awards. 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee will likely be shut out and post closing notices within a month of tomorrow night.