The Evening Mouthful

I’ve been reading Mr. Waitsel Smith’s Christian Knighthood articles for some time now, and they are powerful reminders of what it means to be both a servant of Christ and a confident, genuinely masculine man. Today’s article hit particularly close to home because he uses my favourite superhero as an example of the virtue in question, Righteousness. (Those of you who know me well will remember that Superman has been for me a powerful reminder of the righteousness and strength we have within us through the power and grace of Christ.)

I have included here a small portion of Mr. Smith’s article and provided a link for you to read the rest if you so desire.

Cheers!

Righteousness means “doing what’s right” – plain and simple. To be a righteous man or woman should be the goal of every spiritually-minded person. Righteousness is the other virtue talked about in the book of Proverbs, besides wisdom. It is the most god-like of qualities, besides holiness. It is what God imputed to Abraham, “the Father of all believers,” because of his faith. It is the quality the Pharisees envied in Jesus, but never attained themselves. It is what separates “God’s people” from everyone else. It is what we as humans subconsciously crave more than anything else.

The opposite of righteousness is sin, and the opposite of a righteous person is a wicked person. Righteousness can also be called “justice,” which is what the knights of old called it. “Righteousness” and “justice” are used almost interchangeably in scripture. A just man does what’s right, a righteous judge is always just in his judgement. Justice is one of the things God says we should fight for. (Isaiah 1:17; Deuteronomy 10:18, 16:20; etc.)

Like Superman – he fights for truth, justice and the American way (or, freedom). He fights for exactly the same things all the best men and women who have ever lived fought for. Truth is what a free man thinks, justice is what a truthful man does, freedom is what a just man enjoys. The three go hand-in-hand. You lose one of these, you lose all three. If Americans ever lose their love of truth, they’ll lose their justice and their freedom. If they ever lose their love for justice, they’ll lose freedom and truth. If they lose their love of freedom, they’ll lose truth and justice. These are the three things every great civilization, and every great life, is built on.

-Waitsel Smith

Read the rest…

I came out pretty fortunate on my first band name + album meme, the image and the band name mesh perfectly. Cool. And the album title is vaguely capitalist, too. I enjoyed this. (Got the idea from joeld and rachelskirts.)

***

Instructions:

1. Go to Wikipedia and hit “random.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random) The first random Wikipedia article that comes up is the name of your band.

2. Go to Quotations Page and select “random quotations.” (http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3) The last four or five words of the very LAST quote on the page will be the title of your first album.

3. Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days.” (http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days) The third picture in the top row, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4. Use Photoshop or a similar program to put it all together.

5. Post the results to your preferred online outlet with this text in the “caption” or “comment.”

Took this at the old Library today, made me laugh.

My accidental foray into digital modern art. Eerily similar to many of my fitful post-Tyler Bates and Paul Haslinger nightmares.

Welcome. I draw like I write: carefully and boldly but utterly incomprehensible.

Currently Listening
Dinosaur: An Original Walt Disney Records Soundtrack
The Courtship

I’ve got a growing list of practices which I find greatly enrich my life. I would like to share one of these things with you every once in a while. Feedback, disagreement, or supplementary comments are welcome and desired.

Tip #1: Wear Real Pajamas at Night

Jammies are one of those things that are so important when you’re a kid, but gradually become rarely-considered and slide into a place of secondary importance as you get older. This must not be.

There’s something about the clothes in which you’ve been toiling, sweating, playing, thinking in all day that makes them like a synthetic skin of sorts. When they are removed at bedtime, it is like molting (sorry for the disagreeable mental image there): shedding the tired, rumpled, now-ill-fitting skin and replacing it with soft, colourful, comfortable (even stylized) attire is freeing and rejuvenating, and is symbolic of discarding all the troubles, problems and hassles of the day. You are now free to relax and prepare to grow a little more tomorrow.

Even better, at least in my case, are colourful, highly personal jammies that help bring me back to that time in my life when my only unhappiness was being unable to buy the latest Batman action figure. That time when I was unconcerned with grown-up stuff. When I could be made happy by a set of Superman PJs and a bowl of Count Chocula. Those days when I never finished watching the Zorro movies because I was in the backyard swinging a homemade sword in the air by the time the movie was half through.

It’s not a necessary routine, and my reasons might sound all smarmy and rosy, but it’s a comforting practice, and anything that keeps me at least SOMEWHAT of a happy little boy is worth doing.

Nowadays I wear some bright blue and red Hockey-themed PJs that my older sister Liz made me for Christmas: they’re awesome!! (Maybe I’ll post a picture sometime.) I’d like to get a new set like you see in the picture below: those were the best jammies I ever had. If I could (if they made ‘em in my size), I’d be wearing a full sleeper, with a zipper that goes all the way from the neck to the ankle.

This Tip is respectfully dedicated to my wonderful friend and most favorite roommate of all time, Peter Baehr, who never wears jammies.

Well, I’m writing this update early (normally I do ‘em on Sundays) because I don’t know if I have time tomorrow and I’d rather get it over with. This is my last update before I go on vacation back home in Minnesota (ahhhh…), so after this you won’t hear from me until August. After I leave, there will be precious few guys in the Video Department for a while. Thursday and Friday, I was the only guy besides my boss in the office. VERY boring to just sit around at work, not having anyone to talk to. Everyone else is on vacation, and soon I will be too. Yessssssssss!

Nothing of note happened this week except that I got an iPod and I was in the kitchen for the fifth time in two weeks. Meh. Nothing grosser than piles and piles of shredded beef, refried beans, coconut, rice, peanut butter, ranch dressing, and other unmentionable, unsavory foodstuffs swirling around and getting clogged in the filter, requiring you to reach down THROUGH all that so as to pull out the filter and wipe it off. I feel like CinderFella.

Well, I think I shall use the rest of this update to give you the next section of my comic fable. Because it is a Christmas story, and because I generally start getting ready to celebrate Christmas as soon as July 4th is out of the way, I shall begin the new section with a cool Xmas-y picture.
PS: Due to extenuating circumstances, I cannot release any production pics from my Christmas movie until August, and there will be only one trailer. But it’ll be good, never fear.

Sir Sigmund Irving Capillary eased his stricken frame slowly onto another stricken frame, namely that of his armchair, which had been a wedding present from his third cousin all those miserable years ago. The chair had been purchased at the local Kingdom of Charity™ discount store (he had almost bought it himself two weeks before the wedding) and it was already threadbare when he had received it. Now, nearly seven decades later, the chair was a mass of cracked, ancient wood, peeling latex, and irregular lumps of solder. The chair had always threatened to collapse, and Senile Sir Sigmund had tried everything to keep it together, so to speak.
The chair creaked and groaned as Sir Sigmund rested his miserable, nasty body on the old chair. Many of the other knights in the province had asked why he still kept that chair, after all these years. “To remember,” he always told them, and they always nodded knowingly, but they really must have not known it that well, because they always kept asking later on, at which point Sir Sigmund would drive those annoying knights away by singing “Auld Lang Syne” in a minor key. Naturally, Sir Sigmund did not have many friends, but he didn’t care. He just liked to be alone with his nasty, miserable char, and remember.
After a minute or two of reclining on the ancient armchair, Sir Sigmund got bored. After another minute or two, he got up, picked up the chair, and threw it with all his might into the fireplace, where it smashed into an unrecognizable heap of latex and solder. The line of glass bottles on the mantelpiece quivered, and a satisfied smile flickered across Sigmund’s countenance. Remembering is so boring and stupid! I need a change of pace , he thought. He slowly hobbled over to the door and yelled out of it.
“Hey! Blair! Get your measly self inside this moment!”
In the distance, a shuffling pitter-patter could be heard, and in an instant, Blair Liverstone walked over the threshold, grinning weakly through his chapped, yellow lips. “Thou called me, Sir Sigmund?”
“Yup. Light a fire for me, will ya? It gets cold in here. And I’ll need a new chair, too.”
“Sounds good.” Blair walked over to the fireplace, took one of the bottles off the mantle and smashed it over the broken, twisted wreckage of the chair. He took a match out of his pocket and, after deftly scratching it across the sole of his foot, tossed it into the fireplace. Soon the room was filled with the cheery light of the blaze, and with the smell of burning latex, solder, and sixty-eight-year old vodka. Sir Sigmund looked with disapprobation at his young helper.
“What makes you think you can use those bottles of vodka for just any old fire?”
The wheezy wimp shrugged. “We’re all out of the regular ale. What else was I supposed to use?”    Sigmund’s face softened and he nodded sagely. “I suppose you’re right,” he said. After a moment, his face hardened again and his bony finger pointed at Blair in an even more vigorous display of disapprobation than before. “You still haven’t obtained me a new armchair. Hurry up!”
Blair sighed. Sir Sigmund never missed a chance to get angry with him, and he was getting fed up. Serving this senile guy is so boring and stupid! He thought. I need a change of pace. Maybe if I snuck out at midnight and took the express train to Montyshire… but his thoughts were interrupted by the harsh sound of Sigmund asking when dinner would be ready.
“Hey! Blair! When will dinner be ready?” Blair sighed again and started looking for that spare can of Spaghetti-Ohms®.

After dinner, Sir Sigmund stretched his shrivelled legs toward the fire and closed his eyes, listening to the crackling of the fire and letting his meal settle. His new chair, despite being fashioned from two old wine kegs and a slab of polished shale, was actually far more comfortable than his old one. Blair finished doing the dishes and pulled another keg close to the fire, and began warming his hands. It was now the middle of November, and the well water he had used for doing the dishes was very cold. Of course, it was not as bad as in winter, when the water would freeze and he would have to drop boulders down the well to break the ice. Once he had not been able to find any boulders, so he had grabbed a passing alley cat and chucked it down the well as hard as he could. It had worked fine, but the next summer he realized that he would have to dig a new well so they would have safe water to drink.
Now, his hands were cold and damp and he needed to work some feeling back into them, so he stretched his hands towards the fire and arched his back, listening to the CRACK! POP! SNAPPLE! of his vertebrae as they realigned themselves. In a few minutes, his hands were their old room-temperature selves again, and he sat back on his keg and looked at the old knight, whose eyes were opening again. Sir Sigmund looked at the fire for a few moments, then at Blair. Then he spoke, and what he said was the last thing Blair could have expected to hear from a man who had done nothing but remember for the last sixty-eight years.
“What ever happened to that old alley cat that used to hang around here?”
Blair knew from experience that he would have to answer honestly. That old knight could spot a lie a mile away. “I chucked it down the well last winter.”
“Is that why you dug the new well last summer?”
“Yup.”
Sigmund frowned in disapprobation. “You know I deprecate violence. Unless, of course, the cause is good.”
“I did it to break the ice at the bottom of the well. It was frozen.”
“Couldn’t you have used a boulder?”
“We were fresh out.”
“Well, that’s all right then.” Sir Sigmund looked at the fire again, and then spoke, and what he said was what Blair would have expected to hear from a man w
ho had done nothing but remember for the past sixty-eight years.
“I’m bored.”
Blair wanted to get up and scream, “ME TOO! I’VE BEEN BORED EVER SINCE MY FIRST LAME AFTERNOON IN THIS PLACE! LET’S BOOGIE ON DOWN TO THE MARKET-PLACE AND RUSTLE UP SOME PRINCE VALIANT COMICS!” but he had long since learned to restrain his selfish, spontaneous nature, so he merely replied, “Why?”
The ancient knight looked at him sharply. “Why shouldn’t I be bored? Nothing ever happens around here, except remembering, and I’m so fed up with remembering those terrible memories that I’ll go crazy if I don’t do something soon!”
Blair shrugged. “Do something? Like what?” The senile soldier looked at him with an icy, abstract chill in his eyes.
“Like Getting Revenge.”
Blair did a double take. “Revenge? I thought and old but incredibly experienced geezer like you would have gotten all the revenge you wanted years ago.”
“Nope.”
“Oh.” Blair thought a minute. “Like getting revenge on whom?”
Sigmund’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know. It could be anybody.”
Blair frowned. This wasn’t making sense. “Are you sure you’ve been drinking out of the right well?”
Sigmund glared at him. “I have all my wits about me, thanks.  I just don’t know who it was who wronged me all those miserable years ago. I would sort of like to know who it was. And give him what for.”
“What did he do to you?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Oh. Well, forget it then.”
Sir Sigmund looked at Blair sharply. “Be that way, then. Nevertheless, I want you to prepare for our journey tomorrow. It‘ll be a long quest and its cold out. Pack accordingly.”
Blair let out a cry of anguish. “Quest? But it must be all of twenty-four degrees outside! Where could you possibly want to go questing at this time of year?”
Sigmund’s lips opened wide in an anticipatory grin. “The Castle of Administration.” At this, Blair’s yellow, chapped lips opened wide as well, but not in an anticipatory grin. Rather, they parted in a scream of dismay that rippled through the cottage, thundered throughout the surrounding forest, and was even audible at the Navy Blue Forest Train Station four miles away.
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

To be continued…

The main thing I’ll focus on for this update is letting everyone know the latest info about my newest movie, coming out on December 25. Starring two of my amazing brothers and my wonderful sister Grace, with a small cameo appearance by myself, the film is called

THE ENTERPRISING VAGABONDS

By the time the movie is released, it will have been in production for nearly two and a half years, from the time I first began conceptualizing in early August 2005 to the first screening on Christmas Day this year. I will not venture to explain the plot (such as it is): that will be accomplished by the two trailers I shall be releasing in August and September, respectively. I shall merely say that the flavor of the movie is what you would get if you sort of combined Alice in Wonderland, Nicholas Nickleby, The Princess Bride, and A Christmas Carol. The main editing of the film is nearly completed and I shall soon begin authoring the DVD, complete with book-oodles of extra features (few of them, I’m afraid, having to do with behind-the-scenes nonsense). My good pal Peter Baehr is creating the poster for the film, which will be released this coming July. The movie is a Holiday comedy having to do with treasure, greed, ego, and, of course, Christmas. The running time is slightly over an hour. The VERY FIRST PRODUCTION PHOTO has been attached for public viewing below, for your sneek-peeking pleasure!

During the shooting of the movie, we were often outside in zero-degree weather (plus wind chill!), and one thing we discovered is that period costumes are not very warm, even if one takes the precaution of long underwears. I think I can safely say that all of the actors (all four of ‘em) were mighty glad when we finally wrapped up the shooting process in early January. We had begun the actual filming in early November of 2006, and the goal was to have the film done by Christmas of last year. Alas, a hectic schedule hindered this, but I am glad to say that the film will be finally, for good-and-all DONE long before its Christmas Day release. I have to say that all of my actors did an INCREDIBLE job, and this is probably the funniest movie we’ve ever made together. Also, this is the first family-made movie that I haven’t gotten totally sick of working on. It will, for once, be just as much fun for me to watch at the premiere as everyone else in my family.

My week at Chicago was pretty run-of-the-mill, although the going-away party for my House Leader, Nathan Leichty, was pretty fun. There was copious pizza and root beer, and a very good time was had by all. Also, Peter Baehr has moved into the same house as me! It’s really cool: now, instead of having to say ta-ta come curfew, we get to say What HO! and let the good times keep coming. I must say he is quite ambitious when it comes to interior deign. I went to see his room and he has veritably transformed it. He re-upholstered his couch, added a palm plant in the corner, some swanky light fixtures, and a bamboo floor mat for his computer desk area. All in all, a vast improvement. Much nicer that the square-shaped, white-walled hole I live in, but I don’t want to spend what little money I have on improving the aesthetics of place I’ll only be living in for another six months. When I get fed up with a nasty-looking apartment, I merely close my eyes and do the dishes.

Well. These updates are getting shorter and shorter. That will change, however. In mid-July I get to return to good ol’ Minnesota for TWO WEEKS, one of which will be spent camping in the north of the state, swimming and fishing and relaxing generally. I can’t wait!! Other than that, that’s about it for today. I hope you are all having a MARVELOUS summer and I hope to hear from (and perhaps see!) all of you soon! God Bless and Love All!!

~Dave the 4th Dueck in Line for Top Dog in the Legacy

Okay, some pictures. First off, some IBLP family photos! We got together for one last photoshoot before Jamee leaves. These were taken by Britton Felber. Jamee’s adopted family continues to grow!

Then some pictures from my recent visit home. We went to ValleyFair (Minnesota’s modest theme park). The girls are my amazing sisters and Peter is… Peter. Also, my Wonka goggles made the rounds!

These are from the park a block from my house. It’s really creepy in winter! I walked there with my brother mark, my sweet sister Grace, and my brother Steve.

This was taken en route to Big Sandy in May.

We matched shades of green, so a picture was inevitable!