Vacation!

Todd and Cindy are here in Georgia. They've taken a week and a half of their vacation to fly out here for a visit and to see Georgia in all of it's hot, humid summer glory! I'm especially lucky because they're out here on my birthday, as well. I hope they have a good time, and there will be a few pictures to post sometime next week.

A Couple of Movies

Though there are a bunch of movies in the theater that, collectively at least, Kim and I would like to watch, we only had time for one, so went to see Batman Begins (thank you, Kim!). It turned out to be a good choice for both of us. Far and away, it was the best Batman movie I'd seen, and Kim and I decided that in certain respects, it was better than Revenge of the Sith. Yes, I said that.

Christian Bale was a great young Bruce Wayne, but the movie could have flopped again if they hadn't allowed for the transition from the man to the bat, which is why I think the others became a bit tired even before they were bad. While it was still an adventure movie, it was grounded in realism enough that the cape and cowl were believable when they finally came out.

The early reviewers who said that Ken Watanabe was a great villain, dark and powerful, were absolutely correct, but they do no credit to Liam Neeson's Ducard - I think he really stole the show. There were hints of a Qui'Gon in his acting, but even Kinsey was more Liam than Kinsey in mannerisms. People who hire Liam get Liam, I reckon.

They left the end wide open for sequels, so it will be interesting to see if Christian sticks around for a sequel or is spooked by the mainstream side of Hollywood.


We also watched Shawn of the Dead on DVD Sunday night. I wasn't a fan of zombie movies, and I'm still not after Shawn, but it was definitely the funniest one I've seen, and perhaps the best. It wasn't too gory for me, which I was worried about, but the whole movie was very tense, which I suppose is good for the genre, but I tend to handle that kind of tension with aggression, and I did at that movie. Kim had to calm me down several times while I was incredulously demanding that they go back and pick up their weapons if they're going to go out there.

So, if you're a more well-rounded person than me and enjoy the thrill of that kind of movie, I would recommend it. But I'm not recommending it to myself again.

The Cornerstone Menagerie

While hacking away at a stump in our backyard this morning, I came across another rather large spider. This time I managed to get a good shot of it, so I thought I'd post it, and wrangle up some of the other animal shots Kim's taken over the last few weeks:


She's a wolf spider, with a body just a little under an inch. That large bulb behind her isn't part of her body; it's an egg sac. She's about to be a mommy!


Another family - this one in the back corner of our front porch. The chicks hatched and grew so quickly! First it was just a little clump of twigs in the corner, then a writhing clump of gaping beaks, and now an empty nest and a dungheap on the floor of the porch. Thanks, guys!


One of the Squirrel SWAT team on a solo mission. Usually they work in a group to steal the birdseed from our bird feeder, but this guy's got a side job.


Another Bandit.


Our Green Anole on his favorite perch.

We also had a hornet visit inside the house this last week, but I was too busy hunting him down and ensuring his destruction to take a nice portrait.

Scores of treefrogs sing carols to us every night, but I haven't gotten any good shots of them yet (though there was this bad shot of one).

Heddy will be arriving with Todd and Cindy next weekend, and then we'll have all of the animals we need!

Back on Track

Well, maybe not back on track, but I've gotten back into the gradual building of Coera after a long gap (mostly filled with Xboxing).

In time, it may become an illustrated Blog, as well!

Movie: What the [bleep] Do We Know?

I rented this movie because of so many anonymous recommendations. I'm not sure I know anyone else who has seen this movie yet, but if you have, let me know - I'm very confused by it.

The movie is unlike any I've ever seen, but it's not unlike a 2-hour Discovery Channel special. Or at least, that's how it starts out. Add in a healthy dose of Self-Help and Religion, and a peculiar (comic relief?) sequence, and that mostly covers it.

I don't know if a movie like this can have spoilers, but based on the way the movie is presented, this might count as one, so beware:

The movie is mostly clips from interviews mixed with an example storyline, which follows the life of a woman who's learning about the things discussed in the interviews. During the course of the movie, no credentials, names, etc. are given for the interviewee's, and I began to suspect very early into the movie that these were in fact actors portraying scientists, explaing Quantum Mechanics (purportedly what the movie is about) and how it impacts biology and morality. This became especially worrisome as they started makeing broad statements and conclusions that I believed to be false, and the movie built from them. At this risk of my theoretical framework, I decided to watch a bit more passively, and just watch the movie, ready to discard the whole package at the end if necessary.

But after the movie ended, they displayed the credentials for the interviewees, and they were at least as honorific as what you might find in a typical Nova or History Channel installment. It was very bizarre and a bit of a twist, which is an unusual feature of a "documentary".

When all was said and done, I agreed with the general point of the movie, but not many of the details. Of course, I'm not qualified to argue Quantum Physics, but that topic is given only an elementary overview, and is mostly lost as the movie continues.

If anyone else has seen this, let me know - I'd like to discuss it, but I don't think I could explain the whole thing if you haven't seen it.

Revelations

At last I've finished the Bible on CD. There were several pauses along the way, some lengthy, as I had new CD's to listen to, or I had trouble with my CD player, or I just wasn't focused enough to spend an hour to Darth Vader variably chastise and encourage the Colossians.

I've read through the Bible twice before, and read most of it a dozen other times in bits and pieces during bible studies, but there is a lot to be said for doing it this way. First, it's much faster, which is a actually a benefit and not just a desire to be done with it. Reading through the Bible, before, I found the task so onerous at times that I would get stuck reading the same passage several times, and have to come back to it when I was a little more focused. When it's being read to you and moves along quickly, the really difficult parts just slip by without you noticing (though it was hard not to notice just how particular God was telling the Israelites how to build a tabernacle), and if you drift off, you're still moving on and don't get bogged down. Also, when it goes faster, it's a lot easier to remember what just happened in the last book, and how it all ties together.

Hearing someone read it to you almost feels like you're going through it with someone else, as well, and that makes it a bit better.

I came away from the experience with several new (to me) conclusions, some of which I've mentioned before:

The Old and New Testament are very different. This is perhaps self-evident, but I'd slipped into the belief that the one is simply a continuation of the other, but this is not true. The Old Testament's primary concern is history and religion - here I mean religion in the terms of the Latin religio, which is more to do with a practice or rituals than a relationship with the divine. The New Testament is more about morals and ethics - the concern is not so much about what to do, buy why to do it. As the gospels become more and more distant and the Church becomes more entrenched, the morality begins to be lost in religion again, but it's hard to expect otherwise. I'm not saying that the Old and New Testament are in contradiction - for the most part, they are not - the difference is more akin to a toddler not allowed in the street without holding an adult's hand, and teenager playing stickball in the street because they're wise enough not to run the wheels of a car to save a ball (most of the time).

The history portion of the Old Testament really feels like the other Classical Histories - the further back you go from the writing, the more fantastic and supernatural the heroes and their circumstances become. As you draw closer to the time of writing, you see more natural men and women who reflect back on the lost "Golden Age".

Prophets are not necessarily godly men or women - they are not pastors. They have the same temptations and failings of the people around them (I'm thinking in particular of Balaam, Miriam, Aaron, and Elijah, but there are other examples), and though they are a mouthpiece for God, it's more a matter of do what I say, not what I do. I guess the positive take on that is that we don't need to be perfect to do God's work; a more sinister view might be either that even the greatest were corrupted by power or worldly needs, or that some real scoundrels got into the Bible just because they pulled the wool down over everyone's head and got lucky a few times.

Paul's not as bad a guy as I thought. Yes, he did supercede the gospels in importance, which is blasphemy, but what else would we expect as Jesus's charisma faded and less energized folk needed to settle back into a routine, a religion, instead of a morality and a faith? Paul, I think, did the best he could to adapt the Spirit into a practice - to make ethics a routine. I think he made many mistakes, but from the tone of epistles, I doubt he would say otherwise. I think he would be very sad to see people using his epistles as if they were the eleven, no ten, commandments written in stone from God. I think he would have a lot of letters to write to the churches around the world.

I still prefer John to Paul, and Jesus to both. Peter sounds like the "head of the church" because of his strong will, not any divine proclamation. It's intriguing how most of the other apostles just disappeared off the face of the earth, though they were specifically chosen by Jesus for his ministry. Perhaps two-hundred years down the road, their legacies didn't gel with the Petrine/Pauline stranglehold on the central Mediterranean? I don't think there was foul play in the Early Church, or not any that directly led to the current church, but I do think that inspired men, filled with energy, but no unequal portion of the spirit, made poor, myopic judgements that let us all down. But life is change, we cannot expect anything, good or bad, to endure.

This was the first time I read the Bible that I was able to think of it as a book. This came more during the course of the reading than it was a vantage I started from. My graduate studies and more recent studies really, more than I'd thought, familiarized me with the literature and sentiments of the time, and it's much easier to see how the various books of the Bible fit into the genres of their age. They are perhaps among the cream of their crop, and while they seem a bit more salient than other examples, perhaps their relevance and clarity are more a result of millenia of study and mediation than any inherant quality.

I left off reading the Urantia Book some time ago do to lack of time and focus, but I think I'd like to get back into it. That book's take on the life of Jesus actually taught me more about the Christianity I want to practice than anything I've received from the Bible in the last ten years.

Philosophy: I am not a Victim

When I worked at Store of Knowledge, one of the women in my departent had printed out and stuck to the wall of her cubicle the phrase, "I am not a victim." At the time, I wasn't really sure what to make of it - was it her woman's roar? Had she, in fact, been a victim and was trying to get past it? I never asked her about it and never found out, but it stuck with me.

I think I know what it means now, at least to me. It's a reminder to be civil.

It strikes me that people are full-time victims. In all of their relationships, personal and public, they are constantly monitoring for infringement - for invasions of their space and rights. They are experts in the law and practice of just what their rights are, and where the boundaries of their space lie. When someone violates these accepted boundaries - cuts them off in traffic, steps on their turf, refers to them in a way that might somehow construed to be an insult - accident or otherwise - they take the full legal recourse.

When I say "they" and "people", I mean "we" and "me". I am not a victim, but I play one in real life.

While all of this is bad enough, we are not only full-time victims, we are professionals. We create situations where people can infringe. We look for litigiable circumstances. We trap people in conversations where in order to tell us the truth, they must offend. We monitor our borders not because we are so worried about personal loss, but because we enjoy the righteous anger of the violated, and the sympathy it generates. We are taught to do this.

I blame television for this. Or rather, I would blame television, but blame seems a symptom of a victim culture. Far better is to say that a way to alleviate the problem might be to be wary of victimization on television and in movies. Victims are heroes when they are not victims - when they refuse to let their aggressors demoralize them. Petty retribution for minor offenses is not a virtue. Accidents happen. Intentional violations are opportunities for forgiveness.

When I think, I am not a victim, this is what I'm trying to remind myself.

This is not the blog we're looking for... Move Along, move along...

Several people have commented that my blog has been inactive lately, but that's only because I don't have too much of significance to post.

I haven't seen a movie since Star Wars (that's not entirely true - I watched a couple of DVD's: Nausicaa was disappointing, and Wicker Park was surprisingly good - this is a trend I've noticed in Kim's and my movie choices, but I'm not ready to own up to it just yet), and I've spent a very large chunk of the last few weeks playing various Xbox games (I finished Jade Empire once, then became hopelessly stuck in a glitch the second time through that, according to various sources on the internet, is impassible and would require a restart; now I'm working through Knights of the Old Republic II which is very good, but it's beginning to become buggy as well).

I've come across no new fauna, with the exception of a neighborhood cat, who indirectly caused a tiff between Eyeore and Buddha that left them hissing and spitting at each other for almost an entire week. They're good friends again now.

In other news, I've taken a first minute step down the road of professional artistry - a road I'll only meander a few paces down, I imagine. My first paid-for drawing is here. It's not terribly impressive, but it made the commissioner very happy, which is really what it's all about. Since I've only had the one commission so far, I've started working on a large-scale digital drawing in the vein of the Mist Lake Monastery, which has generated the most interest and is thus probably the most commercial. Since it is such a large picture, it will probably be several weeks more before I'm finished enough to post it on Deviant Art.