The Phantom City

Stephen Fry, quoting Oscar Wilde:

Satan, one afternoon, was wandering in the Libyan desert when he came across a group of junior devils trying to tempt a monk. The monk was very holy: Satan watched as the little demons offered him worldly riches, power, wisdom, anything he wanted if only he would renounce his God. The demons were getting nowhere, the monk was firm in his faith and rooted in his virtue and steadfast holiness.

Lucifer could bear watching no more and approached. ‘What exactly is going on here?’ he asked.

‘Master,’ the imps replied, ‘This man is entirely good. He will not be provoked in to renouncing God. We have offered him every worldly pleasure and power.’

‘Out of the way,’ said Lucifer. ‘Let me show you how it’s done.’ Lucifer stepped forward and whispered something into the monk’s ear. Immediately the monk roared with anger, tore his holy robes asunder and filled the air with the most profane and obscene oaths against God. It was an awesome sight. The demons immediately fell to their knees and cried to Satan.

‘Verily, you are the Master. For forty days and forty nights have been tempting him to no avail, and yet, even in a twinkling, you turn him from God to us. What, in hell’s holy name what did you say to him, oh Lord of Darkness?’

‘It’s really very simple,’ said Lucifer, ‘I just told him his brother had recently been made Bishop of Alexandria.’

Seems like a lot of these floating around right now. I got tagged by Too Many Topics, Too Little Time. It was originally seven things, but I decided to modify it a little to see what happens.

The rules:

1. Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
2. Share seven (and a half) facts about yourself in the post.
3. Tag seven (and a half) people at the end of your post by leaving their names.
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged.

Here we go…

You ready?

This is so exciting…

Feel free to back out at any time…The safe word is “Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften”.

Spoiler warning…

Okay, let’s do this…

1. Post-college, I’ve never worked for any length of time in a non-public-service-related environment. My job trail goes association > newspaper > nonprofit news organization > association > government contractor > government contractor. I didn’t intend it that way. It just happened. Kind of makes me wonder what I’ve missed.

2. During that period of time, I’ve lasted through something like eight major layoffs without getting hit. Not sure how that happened, either.

3. I got a Wii Fit the other day. NewEgg.com had them for list price. Balance is very important to the Wii Fit. I think it was laughing at me when I tried it out. My center of gravity is apparently two feet behind me, possibly at some sort of Lagrange Point between myself and the Earth. (Either that, or it’s the fact I have the posture of a 19th-century Bavarian burgomeister.)

4. “Misanthropic introvert who doesn’t like to be alone” describes me well. The last time I took a Myers-Briggs test for work, I hit 30 (the highest) on Introversion. Yet I suspect some folks would consider me chatty.

5. INTP. In case you were wondering. I also scored 30 on Intuition. We got cards with our letters on it. I could never remember what they meant. They don’t have a Memory score.

6. I don’t remember high school very well, and hanging out on Facebook I’m starting to think that might be abnormal. I remember people from high school, but not a lot of specifics about me or things that happened around me. I’m not really sure those count as my formative years. I’ll bet they would if I hadn’t liked them, though, which is why I’m glad I went where I did. (There was something cool about walking into a 9th-grade classroom at a school I hadn’t been to since the 6th grade, and having one of the guys say, “Hey, Shane’s back!”)

7. Speaking of high school, I do have at least one vivid memory: I was going to ask someone out, and ended up walking past them, going into the bathroom, and throwing up because I was nervous. Luckily I stopped doing that sort of thing by grad school.

7.5. I’m really proud of my ability to…

Anyway, time to tag 7.5 people. I’ll copy this to Facebook, where many of them reside. Y’all can figure out the half-person thing amongst yourselves, but remember…It could be that I just consider everyone else to be 15/16ths people. (Although, technically, if I went by mass, and the unit of measurement were me, I could easily see some of my friends being one-half.)

Let’s see: Adam, Astrid, Carolyn, Chris, Katy, Lorrie, Melanie, Sarah.

Am I missing something here? There’s a brief news flurry today about Batwoman being the first gay superhero. I realize the actual story is that DC is going to feature her as the lead in Detective Comics, but the current Batwoman incarnation has been “out” since 2006, as far as I know.

Not to mention the current version of The Question, Northstar, Midnighter and Apollo, one version of Catwoman, Scandal Savage, Flatman, Obsidian…the list just keeps going.

It’s interesting that DC is turning one of their flagship comics over to a gay character for a while, but I suspect sales, her place in the DC Universe, and the writing won’t be much different than if, say, Nightwing was going to be the star. (No, he’s not gay. Ignore the costume.)

Let’s see, the Carolina Panthers have hired the defensive coordinator who ran the little-feared Colts D, the defensive coordinator (as linebackers coach) of the Texans, and the secondary coach from the Rams.

That, and Julius Peppers is probably out of there.

Wow, all of that really makes me look forward to next season. Somebody tell me the ‘Skins are going to be really good.

Update: And the Redskins might be about to sign the guy who stomped on another player’s face. Yay.

Courtesy of Inside the Panthers.