X-Men, Poverty, Etc.

Quote of the day: "Senator John Edwards declares war on poverty. Moments later, poverty declares victory." - The Colbert Report

First of all, I want to point out that my posts really aren't nearly as long as you all think. For some reason the columns on these blogs are ridiculously narrow. In actuality, they are probably about two pages.

Practical updates: To those of you hoping/praying/thinking happy thoughts about my financial, administration(al), and social situations up here at ND, thanks. The past few days have been really great. I went to a really great church and met some great people who have been really helpful. They took me to the grocery store, had me over for lunch, and even got someone to loan me a bike.

Also, the financial stuff is just about worked out - mostly.

I also had lunch today with a professor of the theology department, which was really great. We talked a lot about the project and directions I might be able to go with it. Generally: looking at the response of the North African Church over a few centuries to social problems, specifically as opposed to the government and in comparison or contrast to the Eastern Churches. A recent book in this vein has been published regarding the Cappadocian fathers from the East (good old Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa). It's called The Hungry Are Dying, and it focuses specifically on poverty and sermons about the poor. I'm getting it from the library tomorrow.

Specifically: looking more at Carthage and Cyprian and how the Roman institutions dealt with sickness, poverty, etc. In my reading today I learned that due to the grim nature of Punic (Carthaginian) religion, which was pretty much akin to OT craziness (human sacrifice, worship of Baal-Hammon, etc., extremely ritualistic), Christianity was often viewed as freedom from fear and legalism.

Also, here's a quote-to-ponder-of-the-day: "If it was fated that the Roman character should change when Carthage fell, would that Carthage was still standing." - Silius Italicus on the Roman sacking of Carthage, which became gruesome to the point of human sacrifice. Apparently Scipio himself wept when he conquered Carthage.

Now I want you to think about that quote, and about America, and about humanity in general while you read the rest of this post. Then get back to me with your comments.

I'm also reading a book called Not the Way It's Supposed to Be, which is about the doctrine of sin. Very fascinating thus far; I'll keep you all posted.

So tonight we (i.e. me, the roommate JB, and the roommate's friend Pat) watched the infamous X-Men (it's not worth posting a link). I've seen the third one, and I've heard that the second one is actually a pretty good movie. But I had to watch the first for the sake of watching it. It wasn't very good, I admit. The best part of the movie was when the X-Men were fighting in the Statue of Liberty and JB said, "Way to f*** up a national monument, idiots." And then the best part of the night was watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. The Daily Show spent a while mocking the whole ridiculously predictable Sears Tower scare. They juxtaposed CNN's crazy coverage with the later press conference which basically equated to: "Well, no, they didn't exactly *have* any weapons or *craft* a plan, but, uh, we, uh...Next question..." Fear-mongering makes me angry.

However, I'm always interested in the social agenda behind comic books. I did a little bit of reading up on Wonder Woman a few weeks ago, and I almost posted it, but I decided no one would care. For those interested, though, check out Wikipedia's article on Wonder Woman and learn about how it was created by a feminist. If any of you are working on politics and cartoons and such (cough, Molly, cough), you might want to think about throwing comic books into the mix.

I did learn this fascinating tidbit about X-Men from Wikipedia:

"Ironically, the cast of this comic book series, which would in decades hence become a vehicle for stories about prejudice and racism, was originally racially and ethnically homogeneous, seemingly comprised entirely of the WASP-type character that was the de facto model for most comic book heroes at that time. Furthermore, their arch nemesis was Magneto, a character later portrayed as a Jewish concentration camp survivor, whose key followers, son and daughter, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch were Gypsies (Roma), an ethnic minority in Europe."

So apparently it wasn't until the 70s that X-Men became a civil rights symbol. I noticed when I watched Spiderman 2 again recently how comic book supervillains are often based on the premise that humans are basically good and then turn evil by some sort of unnatural accident or traumatic experience (or at least the major supervillains).

I think that's all. Emily comes to visit on Wednesday which is flipping awesome.

Keep me posted.

Peace,
Sam