End Times Tuesday

Trying to catch up with the regularly scheduled post topics...

END TIMES TUESDAY



In my humble opinion one of the finer books about the end times in recent memory...and not only because it is rife with catholic imagery.

From Amazon...

     Michael O'Brien presents a thrilling apocalyptic novel about the condition of the Roman Catholic Church at the end of time. It explores the state of the modern world, and the strengths and weaknesses of the contemporary religious scene, by taking his central character, Father Elijah Schafer, a Carmelite priest, on a secret mission for the Vatican which embroils him in a series of crises and subterfuges affecting the ultimate destiny of the Church.

     Father Elijah is a convert from Judaism, a survivor of the Holocaust, a man once powerful in Israel. For twenty years he has been "buried in the dark night of Carmel" on the mountain of the prophet Elijah. The Pope and the Cardinal Secretary of State call him out of obscurity and give him a task of the highest sensitivity: to penetrate into the inner circles of a man whom they believe may be the Antichrist. Their purpose: to call the Man of Sin to repentance, and thus to postpone the great tribulation long enough to preach the Gospel to the whole world.

     In this richly textured tale, Father Elijah crosses Europe and the Middle East, moves through the echelons of world power, meets saints and sinners, presidents, judges, mystics, embattled Catholic journalists, faithful priests and a conspiracy of traitors within the very House of God. This is an apocalypse in the old literary sense, but one that was written in the light of Christian revelation.

A really great read, it is only one in the series "Children of the Last Days" and while the others are good, this one is great.

Recommended Highly...

ONWARD!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

As a catholic and male of moderately proud Irish descent, it is mandatory that I post something very very Irish!

And so..

The Irish Image Blitz! 

St. Patrick, an Englishman who became the patron saint of Ireland.  An amazing man with a fantastic lexicon of myths that have surrounded him:

He drove the snakes out of Ireland (allegorically, they meant the pagans)

He used the shamrock to teach the pagans about the Holy Trinity

His staff, the Bachal Isu, was the actual staff of Christ and was presented to Patrick during a vision of Christ himself.

He converted the grandson of the great Irish legend, Finn MacCumhal, to Christianity.

and many many more.

He's like a Catholic Superhero...

And continuing our Irish Image Blitz!

Happy Sonday - St. Patrick's Day edition

Been away for a few days due to connectivity and computer issues, and now I'm back with a vengeance!

A few things I'll post about soon...

Pope Francis! - Yay!

The Death of Robin (again) but this time its Damian Wayne - BOO!

The disgusting state of DC Comics...

Thoughts on the Disney/Star Wars buyout...

Anyway,

Happy Sonday!

Sometimes its nice to remember Jesus was not only God, he was man as well.  That being said, he cried and he LAUGHED.

These remind me that Jesus, friend of Peter, James and John, cousin of John the Baptist, and probably the previously mentioned James and John, son of Mary, had a sense of humor and probably laughed loud and well!

This miniseries with Jeremy Sisto playing Christ is not great, but it does a nice job of showing Christ's humanity.

The novel by Christopher Moore has (like most of his books) has absolutely laugh out loud moments and while skirting the line on blasphemy in a couple of instances is definitely one of my top 10 books of all time.

Buddy Christ from the Kevin Smith film Dogma.  Plenty of anti-Catholicism to go around, but I really love Buddy Christ.  Even have a little one somebody gave me that sits in my office.

Another excellent book about the life of Christ - this was actually written when Anne Rice briefly came back to the Church after 40 some odd years away.  Of course then her liberal sensibilities resurged and she left again, the second book in the series is good, but nothing like this one and I truly fear the 3rd...

Remember...

"God is a comedian playing to an audience that is afraid to laugh."

Voltaire

ONWARD!

End Times Tuesday

So, with the preproduction beginning of the next film in the X-Men franchise and with it being based on the classic Days of Future Past storyline, I thought I would pay a bit of a tribute to what is probably the most copied cover of all of comicdom...

END TIME TUESDAY...

DAYS OF FUTURE PAST EDITION!

Happy Sonday Image Blitz

Running out of time today so I'm left with an image blitz...

And the Jesus allegories for this week are...

John Coffey (The Green Mile)

Klaatu (The Day the Earth Stood Still)

Neo (The Matrix)

Superman (Superman) and really played up in the horrible Superman Returns.

Aslan the Lion (The Chronicles of Narnia).  This one is so blatant that its almost not even worth calling it an allegory.  He's a Lion, He's a Lamb, He's a Savior.

Probably the best of the bunch if you ask me...

ONWARD!!!

Super Saturday - Belated edition

I've been out of commission for a couple of days and thought I'd go ahead take a step back in move forward with...

Super Saturday!

Let me just say that I've alway been a fan of Superman.  Something always appealed to me about the ultimate boy scout.  The guy that would go out of his way for everyone, would say "Yes ma'am", the one that for him, the costume was the disguise.  Underneath the costume he was a shy, bumbling kid from Kansas.  I think he's been mistreated in the comics for a long time, Smallville was (and I'll get hate mail for this, if I had any followers), was close but dropped the ball on a number of key elements.

Anyway there's a rich mythology around Superman, and hopefully I'll explore some of that here.  In images and occasional pithy comments...

Zod is one of my favorites from Superman's Villains List.  In most incarnations he is an enemy of Jor-El who, once he escapes from the Phantom Zone, tries to exact his revenge on the son of his old enemy.

And who has never uttered the phrase "Kneel before Zod."

I liked a lot of things about Smallville, the evolution of the Super-Suit being one of them.  This was a near home run in my book. 

If it had looked like this, it would have been Golden.

Kara Zor-El.  Again, a key part of the Superman mythos that has been abused and misused over the years.  I liked the actress for Smallville, but hated that she was more experienced and that Clark learned more from her than the other way around. 

Absolutely awful movie with Helen Slater in the early 80's...just awful.

And

ONWARD!