Harry Potter...


Finally got around to seeing the first three on DVD. They were pretty awesome and did indeed get better with each one. Can't wait to see the rest!  ¶
2:35 PM 8 pithy comments

  Bunny Suicides...
Is it wrong to find cute little fluffy bunnies offing themselves in ways that Rube Goldberg would have been proud of funny?  ¶
3:04 PM 2 pithy comments

  Prezzies...
Overall I enjoy what I got (thought some things made me scratch my head).

Most intersting present of all goes to:



I would have asked for these if I knew they existed. I didn't, but my wife's aunt saw them and thought of me. She's in the habit of getting neat stuff. This sort of habit should be encouraged.  ¶
9:28 AM 1 pithy comments

  Merry Christmas...
to all ten of you that read this, I hope that yours was as blessed as mine!

  ¶
5:21 PM 2 pithy comments

  Video Games and the First Amendment...
Minors have a right to play violent video games. Or so a California judge says.


U.S. District Judge Ronald Whyte ruled late Wednesday that the state law, signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in October, unconstitutionally restricts minors' rights to information and granted the video game industry's request for a preliminary injunction.

"Serious questions are raised concerning (California's) ability to restrict minors' First Amendment rights in connection with exposure to violent video games, including the question of whether there is a causal connection between access to such games and psychological or other harm to children," Whyte said in a 17-page opinion (click here for PDF).

California is one of a string of states that recently have enacted similar laws restricting violent and sexually explicit video games--legislation that has been uniformly rejected by the courts. Laws in Illinois and Michigan were blocked by federal judges on First Amendment grounds in the last few weeks, and earlier laws in Indianapolis and Missouri's St. Louis County have also been shot down. The U.S. Supreme Court has not squarely addressed this topic, but it has said in other contexts that even minors have free-expression rights.

I hope this injunction gets thrown in the trash along with the judge's law school diploma.  ¶
8:46 AM 0 pithy comments

  Raiders on the Cheap...
A gif movie version of Raiders.

Thanks to In4mador.  ¶
10:58 AM 2 pithy comments

  Linking Madness!!!
Cuteness Overload - Take your insulin before clicking!

Hillbilly Housewife - How to live on the cheap.

Survival Guide to Homelessness - How to live on the cheaper.

Dr. McNinja - Haven't read it yet, but come on, Ninja Doctors.  ¶
12:44 PM 0 pithy comments

  Mysterious Cloaked Figure's Astonishing Test!
It's something to do on a slow day.

1) Does the departure of any one radio disc jockey, no matter who it is, merit a radio station changing its name, firing some DJs, and hiring others as they rearrange their schedule? I'm thinking specifically of 92.3 KROCK, soon to be known as “92.3 FREE”, but readers are free to answer the question on general principal.

No.

2) What's the absolute worst last-minute gift you've ever given someone, and how do you feel about it today?

For my first anniversary I gave my wife a copy of Dave Barry's "Guide to Guys". I lamely tried to pass it off as soemthing "paper" which is the tradiional first anniversary gift. It was lame then and it is lame now. We're still married and for that I'm thankful.

3) Which song would you say most influenced and/or changed your taste in music?

Hmmmm. My taste in music is pretty broad. It's hard to pin it down to any one song or artist. I'm gonna let this one gestate.

4) You can either have a passive mental super power, or an active physical one. Which would you prefer and why?

I'm gonna say passive mental, because I'm a passive mental person. Emphasis on mental. As far as the specific power goes I'd love to have a sort of post-cognition that would come from handling objects. You know go into a house, touch the walls, and know everything that went on there.

5) Would you be comfortable with fame?

No. I'm not sure that it would be good for me. Would I enjoy it? Sure.

6) Since people thought the last test was too hard, I'll throw in an easy one: list as many prepositions as you'd like.

from  ¶
10:39 AM 6 pithy comments

  AFDB
Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie - How to make one.

Apparently I've been doing mine wrong. That explains a lot!  ¶
9:59 AM 8 pithy comments

  The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions


I'm reading this book now. It's pretty cool. Basically you have two authors, a conservative and a liberal theologian. Both are telling the reader what their picture of Jesus looks like and how they arrived at it. You should pick it up.  ¶
2:08 PM 0 pithy comments

  Hangin' with Jesus,,,
I wish I could write like this, but I can't (yet) so I read this guy. He makes me think and sometimes it hurts, but it's always good.  ¶
11:39 AM 1 pithy comments

  V for Very Cool...

Click for trailer.

A move that's taking a big risk and one based on a graphic novel I REALLY need to read. This is gonna be awesome.  ¶
9:44 AM 3 pithy comments

  Commercialization of Christmas...
Merry Christmas Charlie Brown!!

Read the article I wrote for Nation's Punched, come back here, and share your Christmas commercial nightmares.  ¶
4:37 PM 9 pithy comments

  Burnout:Revenge...


If you have testosterone and an X-box, click the pic and buy it now.
If you are missing either of those things, then get them, click the pic, and buy it now.

This is the most driving fun that you can legally have.  ¶
4:32 PM 2 pithy comments

  Nation's Punched
This is a new website/group blog thing I'm doing some writing for. Don't be surprised if you read something that looks familiar as no doubt this will be something of a scratchpad for that. Be forewarned that the language expressed by some over there is a bit...salty.

Three entries from over there that I wrote:
MAWAGE, THAT BWESSED AWANGEMENT...
BRIDGING THE GOD GAP
WHO DO YOU TRUST?  ¶
1:08 PM 2 pithy comments

  Napoleon Dynamite


Saw it last night. It was a very weird little movie that had me chuckling throughout and laughing outright by the end. I told my wife that I was just about that geeky in High School. Not in the same way, but geeky none the less.  ¶
1:01 PM 3 pithy comments

  “The Jesus symbol, the witch and the wardrobe”
is an interesting article in Salon that proposes to examine how “Christian” Lewis’ story is. She opens by supposing that most children who read it failed to notice its Christian underpinnings and saw it as simply a fairy story. From their she says that she felt betrayed by the peddling of “dreary old Sunday School” stuff in the guise of “silvery delight”.
She then goes on to tell us about John Goldthwaite’s critique of the stories. He says that

"whenever a professed Christian feels he must create some wholly other world to explore the meaning of his religion, he is flirting with bad faith. When he fills that world with the make-believes of other religions, he is playing at polytheism. When he further sets sorceresses to rule over it, and werewolves, incubuses and wraiths, he is dabbling in Manichaean dualism, the idea that standing opposed to God's good creation is another, separate and equal, or nearly equal, creation given over to evil."

Now I had to go and look up Manicheanism. It is a belief that from the beginning to equal and opposite forces existed and conflicted. Neither Narnia nor Christianity teach that sort of dualism. Both teach that evil came along early from a creation that rebelled, but that evil is set to rule only for a time and that good is destined to overcome. And actually in The Chronicles, the queen came from another realm entirely, brought to Narnia by accident though in her own realm she was in no way divine or equal to Aslan.
The Salon author goes on to say that if

“Christians choose to believe that evil is an independent entity (like Satan or the White Witch of Narnia), instead of understanding, as Goldthwaite puts it, that "the darkness that is in this world we are quite adept at casting ourselves, by eclipsing God's will with our own," they are lapsing into heresy. The true belief of Christianity is that God created everything and that because God is good, all creation is good. Evil arises when human beings exercise their free will by turning away from God and putting their own pride first. For purely evil creatures to exist, God would have had to create them, and God does not create evil.”

So believing in Satan is heretical now? Creation was all good at the moment of creation. Evil did arise from God’s creation in the form of Satan and the rest of the Fall. Satan is not “purely evil” in the sense that he has always been thus. He was once a servant of God too. I wouldn’t swear that the same was true of the witch, but I think that’s the case. I’d need to go back to my copy of the Magician’s Nephew where she first appears.
In closing she says

“So when the film of "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" opens, and if it's good, and if millions of children see it and fall in love with it, what they will love about the film, and the books if they seek them out, will be Narnia's equivalent of "the snow and the snow-shoes, beavers and canoes, warpaths and wigwams." If they don't realize that all this supposedly conceals a Christian message like a drop of monotheistic medicine concealed in a spoonful of pagan sugar, we'll be foolish to think they've been duped. If they're like the generations of children before them, they won't see or learn the lesson Lewis was trying to teach. Instead they'll see battles and adventure and magic -- and who's to say that's not what really counts? “

Which leaves me a bit confused. In her opening she says that she felt betrayed by the drop of “monotheistic medicine” but then says that the children that watch the movie won’t be duped, they’ll just see the fantastic elements and that will be enough. If all they see are the fantastic elements that’s fine and I think that would please Lewis. Sure he wanted to paint a picture of Christ and His creation. That’s not anti-Christian or heretical. Painters, sculptors, and authors have been doing it for centuries. But he also wanted a fairy story that could be enjoyed by children of all ages. I think if you get just the fairy part, that’s fine but if you’re in any way educated you’ll also get the rest which is just grand.  ¶
12:58 PM 3 pithy comments

  Droooooool....
I have no idea if you can buy this or not, the site's in Japanese. But I WANT ONE!!





  ¶
2:59 PM 0 pithy comments

  X-men III...


Click the poster to see the trailer. There's some good, some bad, and some ugly, but no doubt it'll get my 7.50 just like the last two. And by all accounts this is the last one.  ¶
10:50 AM 1 pithy comments

  Weekend...
I went to Asheville (well Marshall really) this weekend and spent it with a good friend from college and his wife. Much Soul Caliber III was played. We also played a game of Champions (the best multi-function RPG out there) and I watched Ong-Bak the best kick boxing movie ev-ahr. Much good food was eaten and many laughs had.

Also a web-site that I shall be writing some snarky articles for will be up soon (well it's up now but I won't put forth the URL quite yet). More to come.  ¶
9:07 AM 1 pithy comments

  Christmas lights...
This is some crazy cool stuff.  ¶
11:58 AM 5 pithy comments