…to take from the world his own.
2:54 p.m. PT: What will the state of your soul be on the glorious day of Christ’s return? Listen to Crystal Lewis sing, “People Get Ready.”
She warns: “There’s a day that comes when we will be divided right and left. For those who know Him and those who do not know. And those who know Him well, will meet Him in the air. Hallelujah! God is with us. And those who do not know, they will hear ‘Depart I knew you not.’ For my friends you see, there will be a day when we’ll be counted. So know Him well, know Him well.”
There will be a day of reckoning, my friends, and all will be counted.
Headed back to the right coast. See you there, God willing. Thanks for reading LBC.
Friday, November 30: The play will go on. Gary Hines will have to find a different idiotic cause. Will somebody give that man a real job? Or a hobby?
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6:47 a.m. PT: Provocative title, eh? Keep reading.
When I was a teen, my grandmother used to watch “Murder, She Wrote.” I thought the hour-long mystery drama was exceedingly boring. Years later, after the show went into syndication, I watched a few episodes to see if the show lived up to its 80s hype. Indeed. I was hooked. I’ve probably seen every episode from all 12 seasons.
I’d heard the main character, a teacher-turned-mystery-novelist named Jessica Fletcher, was modeled after British mystery author Agatha Christie, who wrote such books as The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (my favorite), Murder on the Orient Express, and Death on the Nile. I don’t know whether it’s true, but I started reading Christie’s novels. I was hooked.
(See Agatha Christie’s Official Site)
I especially enjoyed the novel And Then There Were None. It was originally published in 1939 under the title Ten Little Niggers, which came from a nursery rhyme of the same name. The title eventually was changed to Ten Little Indians, then to And Then There Were None.
By now you’ve probably heard the latest NAACP uproar. With no important work left to do, a local NAACP branch president in Ohio pitched a fit complaining about an upcoming high school performance of a play based on the book.
***Scroll down for music-related book recommendations***
12:14 p.m. PT: Southern California has been unusually overcast the past few days, and it’s got me feeling a bit glum. I needed some cheering up, so I pulled this out of the closet:
It’s “Come On Get Happy,” the theme song from “The Partridge Family.” I know you old heads remember that show: a band of five kids and a mom touring in a psychedelic school bus playing gigs. The song cheers me up every time I hear it. Yeah, it’s kind of corny, but it works. 
Which song(s) cheers you up when you’re feeling blue? Goodness knows we could all use a lift sometimes.
Later…FL Mom says Hanson’s “MMMBop,” anything from the Mary Poppins movie soundrack, and Veggie Tales songs cheer her up. 
Music, music, music, any kind of music…
Book Recommendations
I’m three-quarters of the way through a book called This Is Your Brain on Music. Good overview of how the brain processes what we call “music,” why we like certain chords and rhythm, how musicians lure us in with “deceptive cadence” and pleasure our senses with syncopation, and much more.
The author, a former music producer, believes in Darwinian evolution, but don’t hold that against him. It doesn’t detract from the book’s core theme. I recommend it.
Next on the reading list: Net, Blogs and Rock ‘n’ Roll: How Digital Discovery Works and What it Means for Consumers.
3:47 p.m. PT:…becomes one of the “rockingest nerds on the Net” and dances all the way to the bank.
I like reading “resistance is futile” and making-money stories. Check out this one at Wired.com about 68-year-old Doug Morris, chair and CEO of Universal Music Group, which owns Island/Def Jam Records (see reference), among other labels. The dinosaur once reviled the digital file format (MP3 players are “repositories for stolen music”!) until he realized how much money he could make and how futile it was to resist changes in the marketplace.
According to the story, Universal sued YouTube and MySpace, then made a licensing deal with YouTube and Yahoo (which nets Universal over $20 million a year). Morris also worked out a deal with Microsoft that pays his company $1 for every Zune player sold, plus licensing fees for Universal’s music in Zune’s online music store. Sweet.
Bumped
Tip of the hat to Dawn Eden for blogging about Donna Joy Vance, a 16-year-old whose mother refused to have her murdered in the womb, despite a chilling prenatal diagnosis. See the story and video.
Donna Joy’s mother said even if her baby lived only a few minutes, she wanted to “give her some dignity, wrap her up in a pretty blanket. Say ‘I love you’ and let her go.”
I imagine it’s pretty frightening to be told your unborn baby might be born blind, deaf, and faceless, but it comes down to this for Christian parents: Do you trust God? Whether the baby is born healthy or with deformities, Christian parents faced with a grim diagnosis must set boundaries. How far will you go? Murder is not justifiable because a baby will be born with serious problems.
Dawn links to two sources that help parents care for and cope with “abnormal” babies, Be Not Afraid and Prenatal Partners for Life.
Continue reading Surf-Worthy Life and ‘Second Chance’ Resources
9:59 p.m. PT: Although I’m sick of politics, I decided to participate in TV One’s Presidential Forum project. The network will link to black political bloggers starting today, leading up to a presidential forum webcast on Saturday, December 1 (yes, it’s almost December).
TV One is a “a new cable/satellite television network, programming primarily to African American [Cringe!] adults.” The network recently aired “Roots: The Next Generations,” which I thoroughly enjoyed. Hadn’t seen it in years.
My sister think it’s unwise to stop blogging about politics altogether. She says there’s a lot at stake in presidential races, and who is in the White House makes a difference in our lives, even though it may seem pointless to care. I suppose she’s right. 
I haven’t been following political news, so I’d like to know the who, what, where, when, and how of the presidential race. Can you catch me up? What’s the latest Clinton and Obama news? What do you consider blog-worthy?
Update: Shelby Steele has written a book titled A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can’t Win. I haven’t read the book, but according to a review (forgot where I read it), Steele says that because Obama grew up somewhat privileged, he was to exaggerate black America’s “oppression” to appeal to black voters, or something like that. Most Democratic politicians do that, don’t they?
Other reviews:
6:53 a.m. PT: While no human being can be colorblind, government policy must be.
Given this country’s sordid racial history, the promise of equal treatment without regard to race, and the inherent unfairness of being judged as a member of a group instead of as an individual, it’s imperative that our government is forced, if necessary, to get out and stay out of the skin color business.
In response to the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and strong resistance to race-neutral school assigning, courts across the country ordered school districts to desegregate. They were required to dismantle official and unofficial race-based school assignment policies. But in a strange Alice-in-Wonderland interpretation of the case, school districts continued to use race to assign students (to achieve a racial “balance”), despite the wording of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (emphases added):
Continue reading Another Victory for Colorblind Government Policy
10:38 a.m. PT: LBC’s source code disappeared for a while. My host restored backup from the wee hours of Thursday morning, which means all the cool comments from Thursday morning through Friday are gone. 
I’ve reposted the California pictures. Nice comments about those. Gone. Oh, well.
Hanging out in Hollywood today. Have a good one!
Sunday, November 25: I snapped a couple of photos of the billowing smoke from the Malibu fire, but you can’t see it very well:
Friday, November 23 (reposted 11/24): The best part of California is the Pacific:
