Theological Graffiti: bloggers edition
by Kim Fabricius
In response to a suggestion by Halden, here's a final series of clerihews by Kim on theological bloggers:
An und für sich
All say brilliant, some say pricks,
And especially savage
With those who dis Slavoj.
Maggie Dawn,
This isn’t a come-on,
But at her winsome blog I’ve lingered,
Musing if she’s rosy-fingered.
Brad East
Blogs from the Beast –
He’s from Austin –
But at least posts good news to lost liberals from Boston.
Halden Doerge
Has meteorically emerged
As a star of the blog aperçu.
Some say it’s his brains, others the microbrew.
Jason Goroncy
Is keen on oenology as well as theology:
Which explains his supporting the Blues –
It’s the booze.
Richard Hall
Does it all
At Connexions, from matters Methodistic
To driving a fundy called DH ballistic.
David Horstkoetter,
Influenced by Metz and Bonhoeffer,
On theopolitics top-notch,
Flies high on frisbees, flying farther on scotch.
Cynthia Nielsen
Is so smart it’s a sin,
And she’s impeccably orthodox:
Also a fox.
Byron Smith
Thinks green, turns red, gets pissed
At escapist’s eschatologies –
And at misplaced apostrophes.
Jim West,
On a Swiss roll, never gives it a rest.
Typing away at a thousand computers,
He’s also a one-man theological Reuters.
Michael Westmoreland-White,
Hyphenated, like Baptist-Mennonite,
Southern as comfort, big as a barrel,
Conscientious at picking a nonviolent quarrel.
Unfortunately, my rhyming abilities have been exhausted. But I managed to do one more:
Evan Kuehn
Whistled a little tune,
Quietly suppressing his glee
When a new reference volume arrived in the library.
I should've seen this post coming. Somehow I didn't.
well im not sure what to say... speechless...
My final (as in last cigarette):
G.K.C.
Couldn't always see
That the Good News
Came and dwelt among the Jews
Kim Fabricius
has a vocation to teach us -
and though you may reject him,
it's rather dull to disrespect him.
Sorry for anyone who had to read J's vicious comments. Unfortunately Blogger doesn't allow me to block IP addresses — so until now I've just been silently deleting his comments when they appear (every single day). But this latest outburst was real nightmare material. So I think I'm gonna have to take the plunge and move the blog to a different platform, one that will allow me to block IP addresses.
If anyone has any technical advice about this, please send me an email!
Oh, and in the mean time I've also activated comment moderation: sorry for the inconvenience, but this is just a temporary measure to ensure that J's comments don't appear again. Thanks for understanding!
By the way, I've just learned the correct pronunciation of Halden's surname — so here's an alternative:
Halden Doerge
Had a pet corgi;
He lovingly stroked it for a minute or two,
Wondering how it would look on the barbecue.
Ben:
I don't have your email, but I'd like to speak to your 'technical blog' comment above regarding J___'s spam.
WordPress has fairly straightforward import-from-blogger tools. There is a black listing feature, I believe.
Kim:
I could not agree more with your assessment of Cynthia Nielsen. You hit the nail on the head. ;-)
Nature is where we exist and live for better or worse, although this is not entirely accurate. We experience the paradoxical status of living both within Nature, and above Nature.
E.g. we can observe and talk about it as phenomenon. We are "creatures" (Harvey Cox), yet we are responsible for our creatureliness, so to speak. It has been said that Robertson Davies' novels describe our human condition as a "middle passage", a kind of (but not exactly) Purgatory, albeit within Creation, where our choices matter. Once brought into Creation, we have no particular way out of it, apart from the choices and decisions we make. The degree of Free Will that we have may be up for debate, but we perceive our "Free Will" as the reflection of the Deity's freedom, and so what we have represents His gift to us.
Perhaps Paul Ricoeur has something to say about this too, in his "The Symbolism of Evil" (e.g. "Sin and the Greater Powers")
NYC area
I hate to say it, Ben (it seems rude after you've blessed me with such a nice clerihew!), but my name is pronounced oddly as well. "Kuehn" is actually like "Keen". Don't ask where that pronunciation came from, I haven't a clue... especially since the original spelling was probably "Kühn".
Will, many thanks for your comment — I'd be extremely grateful for some help! Here's my email address.
Hey Evan, sorry about that! Let me try again:
Evan Kuehn
Is the first to have seen
New things that arrive in the library:
Books are a coal mine, he's the canary.
And here is a re-write for Halden:
Halden Doerge,
Who likes a bit of bloggy argy-bargy,
Is a star ... [etc.]
Evan,
Re. your surname - the German u-umlaut is actually produced almost identically to the English "ee" sound, but with rounded lips. Try saying "ee" and simultaneously rounding your lips as though you were going to whistle. So, my guess is that the pronunciation of your surname derives from non-German speakers trying to approximate the u-umlaut according to the rules of English phonology.
Totally off-topic, I know. But at least I'm not J!
And Beth, we all bless you for the fact that you're not J!
I suppose you're right, Beth... I think rounded lips when I think umlaut, rather than the vowel in between the rounded lips. I can see how that transition could be made pretty easily.
To put everyone's minds at ease, my last name does in fact rhyme with "beast."
what fun! I've never been described in Homeric terms before...
I like the 'toasts and roasts' applied by the regnant clerihewists of the theosphere.
Kim (and Ben), I think you're slipping. Where was the rhyme with my last name, eh? No, don't take that as an invitation. Plenty of people have already tried throughout my childhood, only to end up with sprained tongues.
When David Horstkoetter
Read Goethe's Young Werther
He felt the same sort of pain,
And wrote a sad letter about his unrhymable name.
Damn. Don't fuck with doctors.
Otherwise they'll rhyme your ass. =)
Thanks for the shout-out, Kim--even though I'm working on reducing the barrel size. :-)
Ben - Your Aussie readers will mutiny en masse
If you denote other than donkey (or perhaps mule) when you assibilate ass.
For Aussies sternly assert; it's a ludicrous farce,
To refer to an ass when in truth, you mean arse.
Crikey, Fat, you're right to opine
That my asinine cussing is quite arsinine!
(There's a reason, you know:
Too much HBO.)
Please can we have no more rhymes... Please?
Please?
"No more rhymes, I mean it!"
Ahem.
"Anybody want a peanut?"
Suppose a situation (imagined hypothetically),
Where theology is discussed fundamentally,
And the word at the end of a line co-incidentally,
Rhymes with the preceding line's word (just accidentally),
Would that upset you monumentally?
Sorry Jon - The Devil made me do it.
Thanks for that
Fat.
Thanks, Kim. If I slim down the barrel, will you redo the rhyme? MW-W
How about this, Michael, as the last couplet:
He doesn't do hate,
So you can beat him up - especially since he's lost weight.
LOL. Ouch!
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