And, as luck would have it, ultimate truth is likewise ineffable. That much we've already proven in the post-positivist thinking of both Russell and Wittgenstein.

This doesn't slam the door on the proof that god doesn't exist, but it does tend to wipe the smirk off of Hitches' face.

Our problem isn't that we want or need to believe in God, it's that we each want to own our own version of the same.

This makes perfect sense to me and has always been allowable under the premises of ineffability, omniscience, truth and the like...but no one can make a plug nickel off of the concept of God once God ceases to be a concept. So, therefore, we must s*tcan philosophical honesty and go back to fighting over intellectual territory that, by rights, belongs to everyone in the first place.

Not that simple facts ever stopped us from fighting with each other before, just that it all seems even more ridiculous now that we've come full circle to where we started.

If you substitute the word, "ultimate truth," for all those grand pronouncements in the Ten Commandments, stuff starts to make alot more sense. Especially if you've ever dated, or married, the same type of person two or three times in a row, in spite of your best efforts to avoid the prospect.

...I think I share some of your attitudes about the Schaeffer-meister.

His website points to a myspace page. Sometimes he interacts there, but his latest website posting suggested he was touring for his new book and wouldn't be online that much for a while.

We slid into the ridiculous on this thread, from the ludicrous. People in the biz, apparently, are petty and petulant...but I don't think Eric is an exception there. I just think he's coming at things from a completely different worldview and these idjits are trying to successfully pass judgment on him based on the principles of a single worldview.

And, of course, Eric sets himself up for this by trying to bridge the gap between this world and the one he's trying to get to know. So he fails from time to time. Been there, done that. My point has been that at least the guy is trying. People who go off to the monastery and live the life of an aesthete aren't really helping anyone transform the world.

...repeat bidness, squirrel-monkey.

Does your mother know you dress like that?

...and, Rebecca, your fashion sense isn't really the issue.

It's your youthful enthusiasm for the toxic waste of popular culture.

An enthusiasm I do not share with ES. Diffrnt strokes for diffrnt folks.

Why don't you do a hit piece on someone who deserves it? Someone like a cancer patient or someone suffering from muscular dystrophy would be right up your alley.

...you: easily annoyed.

...me: easily amused.

...if I'm in a foxhole and the shells are raining down around me, I want Vic Mackey in the foxhole next to me. Period.

That, my friends, is Vic's appeal as a character and a role.

Anyone who reads and understands the "extrajudicial" history of the US government and all of its initiatives (including its war on rugs, thugs and drugs) knows full well how amoral public service in the trenches can be. Vic Mackey consistently looks to wring the American Dream out of a wasteland of disillusionment and broken promises. He gets his for his family, for himself, and for the rest of us in about the same order we all do. Sometimes we become narcissistic or egocentric in our pursuits, but, in the main, we're out here trying to do the deal -- just like Vic.

The Sopranos often bored me. The Shield almost never has. The Wire (I only saw the first two seasons) was good in season 1, but season 2 went into outer space. But if it's as good as ya'all say it is, I'll get the rest of season 2 and season 3 at the video store and get down to bidness. It's another year before I can get my Vic-fix.

Dutch twisted a cat's head off, for crying out loud. Dutch needs to be revealed to be some sort of serial killer/rapist type whom Dani clubs to death like a baby seal.

Vic is amoral. He is not a criminal in any way save the strictest, "Bobby Kennedy," interpretation of the law (before the Civil Rights movement altered his perception). Vic is not a sociopath or a psychopath.

Vic is simply gifted (to an unrealistic degree, let's be honest -- his ability to juggle stress without any real exercise program or chemical assistance makes him super human to the point of being surreal) in a way that makes him the perfect angel of justice, mercy and vengeance for the crimes commited against the American people BY a hijacked American Dream.

Vic sincerely wants to see sick people locked up and real criminals kept behind bars.

But no genuinely feeling human being could take the pounding that Vic's thinking would put it through. They would simply go insane, like Shane has, and screw everything up.

I want to see Vic Mackey take on the Bush drug and oil cartels coming out of Mexico.

How does it end for Vic? Saving his daughter in a car accident caused by the Armenian mob...he dies a heroes' death being eaten alive by flames no mere mortal could even consider taking on, let alone remain conscious through.

Pounder's character moves up and out of Farmington to an undisclosed location in some self-righteous bureaucratic morass.

Shane? Blowing spit bubbles from a rocking chair near "catatonia" and listening to a scratched-LP version of the theme from "Deliverance."