Kim got a new car!

That's an awful picture of it, but that's the one from Carmax' web site. Kim will probably blog about it, too, at some point, and hopefully we can get some better pictures of it when the light is flattering.

It's a smokey blue 2002 Chrysler PT Cruiser. I think she did a great job picking a car! She seems to be pretty happy about it, too, though I get more excited about new cars.

A few new movie reviews

Kim and I saw Hitch on Friday - what a funny movie! It wasn't perfect - the end was a little hokie, just as the reviewers suggested, but there were plenty of laughs all around. Will Smith was great in his role, as were Eva Mendes and Kevin James. If you're looking for a decent romantic comedy, this is a good one!

If you're looking for a decent comedy period, don't look at Anchorman or Napolean Dynamite. I rented both of those, and the only reason those 4 hours on Saturday weren't a complete waste of time was that I read the news on the internet at the same time. I can see why both might have their adherants - Napolean Dynamite had its moments of unique quirkiness, some of which might have been funny if I were watching it with a bunch of other people and we could all laugh at it and drink a beer together. Maybe. Anchorman had that same sort of outlandish Saturday Night Live humor, and had about as many funny parts as your average episode of the same. The difference is, being live, SNL actors can tell when no-one is laughing and move things along. When Anchorman begins to fall flat, it just keeps falling.

By the way, go watch Constantine!

Ang Lee's The Hulk

I never saw The Hulk in theaters; Kim and I missed it somehow. We rented it on DVD later, and I thought it was great - I couldn't understand why it had been panned. (It received 59% rotten reviews on RottenTomatos.com - just under the rotten threshhold. That was for the DVD - I think the theater release was worse). I saw the last half of it on cable on Saturday, and bought it on sale from Target on Sunday, then watched it through twice (once normal, once with Ang Lee's commentary).

I think it's my favorite superhero movie. That puts it ahead of either Spiderman or X-men, both of which were excellent. It puts it ahead of the Batmans, which isn't too hard. It puts it ahead of the Supermans, and, yes, ahead of Constantine, Hellboy, or any of the other one-offs.

I'm not totally sure why I like it so much, though I'm sure Eric Bana and Jennifer Connelly are very empathetic actors for me. I thought the comicbook-stylings of the editing were flawless. The special effects on the Hulk himself were among the best I've seen, and I tend to be pretty hard on special effects. But there is also something that Ang Lee brings to movies, something that he brought to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon that was missing from Hero and The House of Flying Daggers - something poetic, something deep and refined and sincere.

Did any of you watch The Hulk? What did you think? How about compared to other superhero movies?

(Correction: The Hulk received 59% positive reviews on RottenTomatoes.com.)

Review: Hem, Eveningland

Eveningland is the second CD by HEM, and the second CD that I've bought by them. I bought the first CD, Rabbit Songs, because of one track on a compilation CD, and I listened to it over and over again. I think HEM falls into the Folk category, though if there was a Lullaby category, they could slip in there, as well. A review said they had Appalacian roots, but my sensitivities aren't keen enough to pick that out. The lead singer has a dusky voice with the emotive sincerity of Beth Orton, and the band is big enough (I think there's a string quartet, a clarinet, a guitar, and something else) to fill out the songs, but small enough to stay cozy.

I bought the second CD because of a nostalgia for the first, and because of a comment on that same review - someone had said that her very young child had all of the lyrics memorized and would sing along with the CD, and it seemed the perfect CD to have for a child - it's intended for adults, in that it's not condescending or geared for a certain age, but the lyrics and melodies are pure and simple, and wholesome, I think.

I recommend this CD fully.

Houses!

Kim and I were going to look for a house to rent, but on a lark I ran my figures through LendingTree.com. Lo, and behold, we're pre-qualified/pre-approved for a $200k loan! So now we've been looking at houses in the Cobb County area with at least 3 bedrooms, between $160k and $180k (and a few that are a bit more and a few that are a bit less). But that search left so many houses for sale, so we've limited the search to houses in just Marietta and Kennesaw, to houses with at least 4 bedrooms, and mostly just to houses with big front porches and a basement (with some special exceptions). That still left several hundred houses, so we've selected our favorite 45 or so, and now Kim and I are driving around to take a look at the houses and the area they're in. We've seen about 20 so far, but we've only been able to knock about 5 or 6 off the list so far. There are just so many good houses here!

If you can't tell, I'm very excited - possibly even more so than Kim, which is a surprise.

Here are a couple of samples:

One
Another

Lighting! Thunder! Rain! Hail!

We got it all today.

Kim and I went windowshopping for houses this morning, and it was foggy. When I left for work a little later, misty rain faded out ranks of trees as I turned the bends on the freeway. During work, the windows darkened over, then flashed and building boomed. The rain fell against the roof in waves, hard then soft, then not at all as the sun reflected off the wet driveway. Water and leaves dripped from the trees. Then the building boomed again, and the windows were dark, and the rain was pelting the roof again. Justin and I waited under the eaves for the rain to let up, but it started hailing, stones the size of peas, then lima beans. On the drive home, the rain hit the window so hard I couldn't see, and then wasn't there at all. Big welding arcs of lightning lit up the hollows between clouds, and lightning root systems flashed into the horizon, leaving inverse memories.

It's still thundering now, but I don't think it's raining.

I really like the weather here. I just wish it would have snowed.

Another Blog

I've started a second blog: Coera.blogspot.com which is meant to take over the original purpose of this blog. More details there as I build it up.

Still more from the OT: David

I'm into the Books of the Chronicles now, so I'm well past the story of David and Solomon. Along with Daniel and Jesus, I think David's life story is my favorite.

David's story, while listening to it this time around on the CD's, struck me for the first time as being remarkably similar to Arthur's, which is definitely my favorite mythological cycle. There are a number of similar characters in the two stories: Arthur, of course, as the Pendragon, and the great king of Britain, is the analog of David, the Lion of Judah. Merlin, the druid/wizard/psychic who first recognized Arthur as the ordained King of Britain, who trained him in the right path, but died before the king's greatest test came, is a good fit for Samuel, chief priest of Israel. Uther, first king of Britain at constant war with the indigenous Brits and the Saxons, a flawed, war-mongering king, matches up with Saul. Uther was Arthur's father, Saul was father of David's best friend, his father-in-law through marriage, and his adopted father of sorts as David was brought to play before him.
David's great sin was impropriety with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite - it cost him his first son by her and a rightness with God that kept him from building the temple - a task left to his son Solomon. Arthur's great sin was an incestual relationship with his half-sister Morgan - it led to a wrongness that brought death to the land and kept the Holy Grail from him - this Grail was found by a member of his Round Table, Galahad. David's son, Absolom, brought civil war to the land in a bid for the throne, and David defeated him even as he loved him; Arthur's story with Mordred is remarkably similar.
We haven't even begun to compare ancillary characters, like Joab and Gawain.

I'm not sure if my love for Arthur started from reading Bible stories about David, or if the Arthurian legends are shaped around the Bible stories, or if I'm drawing parallels where there really aren't many.

Solomon's stories are pretty cool, too, and I hear there are a lot more of them in Arabian history. I think I'd like to look into that sometime.

Movie Review: Constantine

I've been to a few movies since my last movie comment. I've at least seen The Wedding Date, and I'm sure there are a few others, but that's okay.

Constantine.

This is the first movie I've really been looking forward to this year (or rather, the first to come out - I'm pretty excited by Revenge of the Sith and Batman Begins). Constantine was great - great in the way that does not disappoint and even surprises, but isn't perfect, along the same lines as Hellboy or Bram Stoker's Dracula. I haven't ever read Hellraiser, so I don't know if it's true to the story or if all of its greatness is just a mishmash of excellent scenes from a larger, better story.

There were a bunch of great scenes in the movie, and only a handful are in the previews, so I won't spoil them by describing them here. I will only say I really enjoyed Lucifer and Gabriel (though the "soldier demons" weren't my favorite). Keanu Reeves was almost believable as a "hard-drinking, hard-living man", but his backstory was pretty clever. I don't think I'll be watching it again in the theater (There are still other movies to be seen out there), but when the DVD comes out, it's going on my Amazon wishlist.

Idea: Past-Life Regression Archaeology

Today I bought a little book on reincarnation from Barnes & Noble. The book was in the bargain section - yea, in the clearance section of the bargain section, and Lo! even the clearance price had been marked down. It's actually a decent little book on different theories about reincarnation, what major world religions say about the subject, and both evidence for reincarnation and arguments against it.

For anyone who doesn't know, I believe in re-incarnation. I think Kim is agnostic on the subject, so I bought the book for her to read as a question-prompter.

As I was reading through the book today to find out what it said before I gave it to Kim, I had an idea.

A lot of universities spend millions of dollars on archaeological expeditions intended to cast even just a little bit of light on ancient cultures, practices, and history. (Actually, the expeditions are also and perhaps more so conducted for the glory of the university and its professors, but that's another topic.) Many of these same universities have less-well known programs researching extrasensory phenomena, including hypnosis and past-life regression.

Many famous cases of past-life regression go back hundreds or thousands of years, definitely into the periods that fascinated archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians. Several well-documented cases of past-life memories portrayed the person with the memories recalling details that were otherwise publicly unknown and only corroborated after the memories were investigated.

I think it would be terribly instructive if a university (or perhaps just a well-funded freelancer) conducted wide-cast interviews to regress a large number of people (perhaps college students) to find subjects who have memories of interesting historical periods. I haven't done any research to find out what percentage of people regressed can remember past lives, much less lives more than 100 years ago. Nor have I done enough research to find out what kind of details are provided - usually the hypnotists seem interested in names and events that may be causing imbalances today, rather than seeking general information about their subjects' past life environs.

I don't expect many legitimate scholars would take date from past-life regressions seriously. Some of them may even be upset by the idea for whatever silly reason. But if a sufficiently detailed and robust body of memories could be produced, I bet at least a few scholars would go out of their way to try to disprove it, and if they couldn't... Or even more provoking, if it filled in gabs in knowledge....

That would be interesting.

A New Template!

Well, it's not very fancy, and it's not much of a creative departure from the Template I edited, but I trimmed down the css and re-aligned the colors in the Rounders4 template. I like the way it looks!

When Kim and I move out and I can set up my desktop again, maybe I'll work some background pictures back into the template. :)

Ideas

I get ideas from time to time - I believe most people do. Many of those most people, though, seem to keep their ideas to themselves, because someday they might be able to cash in on it.

I'm not so anxious to cash in on my ideas, but I am anxious to keep other people from doing so. I don't mind if someone sees one of my ideas and realizes it and makes a boatload of money, but I don't want to be locked out of my own idea, and I don't want the rest of the world to be locked out of an idea that someone got from me as a gift. But, I'm going to believe in the goodness of people, and I want to share my ideas (or at least write them down somewhere), so here's some of them:

Curritos
I've been turning over this idea for a long time, and I haven't even tested it, mostly due to my general aversion to cooking. I don't know if I'm afraid to cook or just unused to doing it, but I don't do anything but the most basic cooking very often. The idea of the currito is that it's a curry and rice wrapped in a tortilla. Curry has this kind of soury-bitter taste (or at least the very few curries I have tasted do), and it seems like the sweetness of a flour tortilla would balance that nicely. Maybe a little meat or chicken would give it some body.

The Day-Night Rotating Moon Watch
This is difficult to explain, and much easier to illustrate, so maybe I'll work up an illustration and post it someday. Basically, the bottom dish of the watch is painted half with a day scene, the sun at the center, and half with a night scene (no moon!), and 24 hour marks ring the dish. Just below the glass dome of the watch, a disk of glass, half clear with a tick at the zenith, and half opaque, rotates every 24 hours. As the disk rotates, it shows the day/night status and the hour. Between the disk and the dish is the sphere of the moon that makes one revolution around the center of the disk every 28 days (or so), and rotates on its axis (perpendicular to the axis of the watch) on the same schedule. Half of the sphere is painted black, half white, so as the moon rotates, it changes phase. The dish may have to be depressed along the path the moon takes, so the sphere won't take up too much space. I think that would be pretty cool!

The Teddy Bear/Digital Pet/Savings Plan
Kim keeps saying she wants a dog, and one day I told her we should just get a stuffed dog that eats dollar bills. Better yet, a piggy bank, so we can get the money out later. Then I had an idea.

A lot of kids seem to love those little digital pets that you have to feed and play with, or else it will wither and die. Some of those digital pets you can buy extra chips to "feed" or upgrade, or to teach it new games. What if a store like the Teddy Bear company sold a teddy bear with a personality, a teddy bear that you had to feed and play with. In order to feed it, or teach it games, or get it to grow (mentally), you have to go back to the store or go online to buy upgrades. Feeding it will cost money... maybe $5 or $10 at a time, a couple of times a month. (Give the thing a usb plug in the back, maybe.) But of those $5, only an incremental amount goes to the store's overhead costs - their main benefits are customer loyalty and the original cost of the stuffed animal. Most of that money goes into a savings account tied to the toy.

The idea is to teach kids to save. Parents might be more willing to give kids money for their toy if they know it will go toward a college fund. Kids probably won't know or care that they're saving, but 10 years later, when they see how much they put in and how much it's worth now, they might get the savings/investment bug early, when most people believe you should start saving. The bank or investment firm might give favorable rates if it means they are likely to get lifetime customers based on early imprinting on the kids.

I think that idea might be worth a fair amount of money - it may even be a whole business by itself. But I would be pretty excited if I saw someone make it happen.

Sexual themes in stories?

So, I think it's silly that a scene of murder in a movie is sigh-worthy and a scene of sex is controversial, or at least worrisome to many parents. People are becoming a little more jaded to sex these days (or at least some people), but violence is even more overlooked.

Now, I'm as a big a plankeye as the next guy, and there are guns and death and violence in a lot of the things I write about, or draw, or whatnot. But, since I'm already moving into what I think should be an adult rating with all of that violence, I figured I should try to throw in an equal number of sex scenes. Okay, that would be pretty ridiculous and perhaps impossible (unless I was writing straight porn), but I'm trying not to shy away from sex scenes anyway, if I can handle writing violence.

So, what do you think about that? I'm really interested to know.

More to the point, I'm probably about halfway through a story that I think shares an audience with Playboy. I was originally planning on writing it for the magazine, but it looks like it's going to end up being about 25 pages, which is way too long for Playboy.

Should I post the story, or a link to the story, here on the blog? Or would that kind of sexuality taint an otherwise fairly tame (if blasphemous) journal? I'd really like to know what anyone who might read this semi-regularly thinks. Has my admission that I'd write a story like that ruined your opinion of me already?

More from the OT

Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and a little bit of 1 Samuel.

I think I'm moving through the "Heroes" section of the Bible. The books of Moses are like Greek mythology - tales of the gods and their pawns. These books are filled with the peers of Aeneas and Odysseus - men who are driven by duties to the gods and occasional redirectioning by visits from the gods or their emmisaries, but the main gods have pretty much withdrawn themselves from the action.

I'm still struck by the level of violence sanctioned by God in the Old Testament. Today, a man was visiting a Benjamite city (ie an Israelite city, not one of those crazy pagan cities), and the men of the city demanded that his host deliver him up so that they may "know" him. (That sounds kind of like Lot's visitors in Sodom, doesn't it? I'm beginning to suspect, though, that the request to "know" the stranger wasn't the threat - the homosexuality wasn't the scary part, but rather the veiled implication that the man will be mugged and beaten.) The host gives the men of the city his visitor's concubine instead, and the rape and beat and abuse her horribly, so she dies on the doorstep of the host. The next morning, the guest goes outside to find his concubine collapsed on the doorstep, orders her to get up and follow him out of the city, and when she doesn't, he throws her over the back of his donkey, takes her out of the city, cuts her into 12 parts with a knife, and sends each of the parts off to the ten other tribes and 2 half-tribes. The other tribes then come and wipe out all of the Benjamites, including women and children, except for about 400 men who escape to the hills. But, since they're not too comfortable wiping out one of the tribes, the rest of Israel encourages the remaining Benjamites to pre-enact a Rape of the Sabines in order to get new wives.

Good stuff, God says.

The other thing I've noticed is how much prostitution there is so far, and nobody seems to mind, as long as it's not their daughter. Indeed, several of the patriarchs seem to have been johns. I've been coming to the conclusion that America's "Heartland" values are based more on the Old Testament than the New, but this seems like a real break in that theory...