The Acting

This was a pure gem for Robert Downey Jr. as he masterfully filled the shoes of our metallic hero. With all the problems Downey has had in the past it’s easy to approach his performance skeptically… until the movie starts. The ease and comfort with which he fell into the role of Tony Stark (Iron Man) is nearly dizzying, as was his command of the camera and fellow actors.

Stark is a complex character who’s unbridled and energetic approach to women and engineering (a winning combination tantamount to chocolate and peanut butter) would leave both the geekiest slacker-geniuses and the smoothest lady-killers equally schooled. Downey fit the part like a glove.

Jeff Bridges and Gwyneth Paltrow also rise to the acting occasion to round out the cast of conflicted characters. Bridges was excellent and sold the corporate suited Obadiah Stane. Paltrow, looking better than ever, deftly portrayed a demure yet savvy “Pepper” Potts (Stark’s assistant) including near-perpetual nonchalance at Stark’s antics.

The Physics

Being an engineer I always have a hard spot for bad science (especially physics) in movies. By “bad” I don’t mean things like light sabers or warp drive… I mean science that violates known and common laws of physics.

Now, it’s believable that some super-armor can absorb severe impacts by missiles and bullets… but if you’re inside the suit you still will feel the full forces from your sudden changes in velocity. In Iron Man there are times when Stark’s body undergoes accelerations and decelerations that would near-liquefy his brain, yet he easily survives.

At other times Stark lands (on his feet) onto both hard and soft surfaces from incredible speeds and without leaving much of an imprint… yet in one part of the movie just gently setting down his suit feet-first onto a concrete structure caused it to collapse – under his weight, I guess – and then collapse through an additional floor of the house down into the basement.

The Undertone

My biggest gripe, being a former soldier and perpetual patriot, is the goofy take on national defense and military weaponry that the story partially took. Stark is the mastermind behind his father’s business, the powerful weapons development and manufacturing company Stark Industries. After Stark’s ordeal at the beginning of the movie he starts to rethink the morality of creating weaponry after seeing his weapons used by the bad guys to hurt innocent people.

Hollywood frequently interjects leftism into its movies, and I’ve become numb to their depiction of the US military as a shoot-first outfit. Iron Man was a little better at not doing this. But the annoying thing is that the inevitable conclusion to Stark’s moral crisis would have to have been: making good weapons for ourselves leads to bad people using them for evil so I should stop making good weapons for ourselves. As if our enemies would no longer have any weapons? As if the mere existence of the weapons coerces people to do evil things?

Now, I work for Lockheed Martin (but don’t speak for them in any way construed or misconstrued) and our fighter jets (or any of our weapon systems) don’t find their way into terrorists hands regardless of what Hollywood says. America’s defense technology is kept under such tight export controls that it’s a wonder sometimes even our staunchest allies can get hold of it.

And speaking of… did anybody besides me notice that Stark Industries was a completely un-subtle spoof of Lockheed Martin Corporation, the United States’ biggest defense contractor? Not only does the Stark Industries logo (complete with bold-italic capitals and elongated angle-point) look strikingly like Lockheed Martin’s, but they even make the same F-22 Raptor fighter jets!? [see photo]

The Movie

Despite my bellyaching I highly recommend this flick for any lover of action and acting. I thoroughly enjoyed it and anticipate a sequel, because what’s a comic book story without lots of sequels?

Now, I don’t put much faith in the so-called Academy Awards – mostly because the “Academy” is elitist Hollywood lack-of-intelligencia who feed on their own self-stimulation. For Walk the Line, I think the attention it got was deserved, and I wish I had seen it long before now. The story felt sincere and was well screen-played.

However, the biggest plus was that these famous actors did their own music! Witherspoon and Phoenix earned MAJOR street cred with me by putting their musical chops to the test. They performed wonderfully and several of their performances can be found on the movie soundtrack.

By the way, when buying music tracks I have been thoroughly pleased with Amazon‘s newish MP3 service. It’s usually cheaper than iTunes… but most importantly, it’s DRM-free!

I think the movie is one of the best independent flicks I’ve seen. I watched it with my wife – we found it full of passion and sincerity. Particularly, it was refreshing to see professional musicians acting in lead roles with such engaging realism… probably so engaging precisely because they aren’t actors, and therefore their acting was much more believable, if that makes any sense.

Without giving anything away, the movie is about two amateur musicians each struggling in their own way. They by chance embark on a week-long musical collaboration that culminates with them recording their songs over a weekend. Throughout the movie each of them shares songs that find their way into the storyline (and ultimately onto their recorded CD).

Mere hours passed after watching Once before I bought the soundtrack… which was filled (pleasingly) with all the songs from the movie. For fellow musicians especially, I highly recommend this movie and its soundtrack.

From wikipedia…
Once is an Academy Award winning 2007 Irish musical film written and directed by John Carney. Set in Dublin, this naturalistic drama stars musicians Glen Hansard (of popular Irish rock band The Frames) and Markéta Irglová as struggling musicians. Collaborators prior to making the film, Hansard and/or Irglová composed and performed all but one of the original songs in the movie.

Shot for only €130,000 ($160,000), the film was very successful, earning substantial per-screen box office averages in the United States. It received extremely enthusiastic reviews and awards such as the 2008 Independent Spirit Award for best foreign film. Hansard and Irglová’s song “Falling Slowly” received a 2008 Academy Award and a 2008 Grammy nomination, and the soundtrack as a whole also received a Grammy nomination.

SUPER-QUICK SUMMARY

The Golden Compass (the movie) is a great story captured in a well-made cinematic fantasy-scape that I enjoyed, and I found it fairly benign for kids despite the emails warning of impending doom. The book series that the movie comes from, however, is not as innocent. Although aimed at kids, it’s not nearly as kid-appropriate as the movie, and decreases so from book to book (as does the quality of the storytelling).

THE MOVIE

I thought the movie itself was well worth seeing. The special effects were impressive, although I have become numb to great CGI after the Lord of the Rings film trilogy‘s mastery of the device. I also thought the casting was splendid – with a very demure and poised Nicole Kidman and a very wild western Sam Elliot (who is one of my faves). The little girl playing the lead character Lyra was Dakota Blue Richards, who in her first ever movie role managed to encapsulate the Lyra character almost identically to my perception of her from reading the book prior… impressive.

For everything negative about the books you may read in this post, keep in mind that I don’t apply that to the movie. The only caution would be if seeing the movie may lure your kids into reading the books… books you may find inappropriate.

THE CONTROVERSY

Now for the controversy – I have been sent emails that warn me to not give any “support” to this movie and to warn every parent I know to keep their children far away from this movie. That’s really quite overblown. The emails also warn that there are clearly anti-church, anti-Christian themes in the books. That’s quite TRUE.

Though, let me interject here that with the thousands of people involved in the business of movies (from making to marketing to merchandising) there does not exist a blockbuster movie whose ticket revenue doesn’t support someone evil somewhere… so if you don’t want to give “support” to anything evil join an Amish community.

Anyways, this controversy is SOMEWHAT similar to the clamor over the Harry Potter books… and although I haven’t read any Potter I have enjoyed the movies and thought them harmless fun. Despite the outcry that Harry Potter would swoon young children into a dangerous curiosity with witchcraft, the reality is that young children long for the flying broomsticks, scaled dragons, magic wands (that shoot lightning), and fairy creatures – these things are not only part of Harry Potter, but are largely found in The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia. But REAL witchcraft is more like mixing a special hot tea to get that promotion you’re looking for, or drawing a circle in the dirt and standing in it to imagine the face of your soul-mate, and no kid is interested in such “mundane” witchcraft.

THE BOOKS

In PARTLY the same way as Harry Potter or The Chronicles of Narnia, The Golden Compass is a children’s story rich in creatures, magic, compassion, oppression. HOWEVER, the book series (His Dark Materials) does go way beyond the generic “good versus evil” tale. There are clear counter-Biblical messages which the author does not deny.

Now the counter-Biblical messages in His Dark Materials can be compared to The Da Vinci Code, except that the latter was never meant for children, and adults would see it as readily filled with enough historical nonsense that there was no semblance of truth to be mistook (at least not by anyone intelligent). But kids are much more innocent and impressionable, and there are indeed – in His Dark Materials – specific counter-Biblical messages found directly in the storyline… it is very subtle in the first book, more open in the second, and blatantly obvious in the third. In fact, the third book’s dialog holds messages that would surely confuse impressionable young Christian children.

From what I’ve read online the author of His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman, is a self-assigned Atheist and decided to write His Dark Materials as a sort-of counter-Narnia story. Pullman would have done better to just write a solid epic children’s story, because although the first book is great, he starts to meander into an amalgam of preachy open-ended bunny trails that bear little resemblance to the exciting start of the tale. Indeed, the further you read the more convoluted (and counter-Biblical) the message gets – until the end of the third book when the reader is doused in a horrid yawn-fest of anti-climax.

If you are looking for an Atheist children’s story complete with homosexual fallen angels, pre-teen main characters who have sex with each other, and “God’s” military general of Heaven’s army getting horny for Nicole Kidman… then this is your book series.

Here is a great critique of the book series: His Dark Ending by James Schellenberg.

Here is an Amazon customer’s rant about the book series… it reads like something I would write.

You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!
~ Scrooge, to Marley – A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

So recently I had a dream where I was in an interplanetary university exchange program, and I was taking advanced medical classes at a futuristic galactic teaching hospital… alongside the characters from the hit TV show Grey’s Anatomy (which I am addicted to and probably watched several hours of before this dream).

So here I am, not really knowing anything about medicine, but having a good time chumming up with the characters of Grey’s Anatomy. Soon I realize that I am in this exchange program as a military officer, because I notice I am in uniform. I start running into soldiers at the medical installation who are familiar to me (for real)… and I realize they are my soldiers who were in my real-life US Army unit. It dawns on me that in my dream I am still an officer in my old unit… except that now we are an intergalactic strike force! How cool is that? And for some reason my whole unit is with me for my medical training.

Well… eventually the Galactic Empire attacks the planet we’re on – yes, the same Galactic Empire from the Star Wars movies. I don’t know why they attacked, but it may have to do with galactic domination.

So everybody at the medical installation starts freaking out… including the Grey’s Anatomy characters who conduct themselves entirely as any Grey’s fan would expect them to. I’m racing around trying to summon up my soldiers to mount a hasty defense. There is a lot of chaos and there are stormtroopers and planetary security forces fighting everywhere. I’m able to get most of my soldiers assembled. I quickly bark out orders to my NCOs to form up for a counter-attack. They take their soldiers into positions in front of a huge field next to the main building of the medical installation. This field was not anything like the Endor moon from Return of the Jedi… this was more like something from Little House on the Prairie.

In the dream I know that there will be heavy mechanized units assaulting the medical installation using this field as an avenue of approach. I plan on counter-assaulting this force’s flanks with my ground troops. Unfortunately, I quickly realize that I have no weapon. Worse yet, my unit has no weapons!? So all of us start scrambling to grab loose weaponry from dead stormtroopers and security forces laying about. Eventually, we find weapons and get in concealed flanking positions. We see an Imperial Walker and several Scout Walkers poke above the grassy knoll at the top of our field – not 40 yards away. My NCOs watch for my hand signal to open up on the objective.

Then I wake up. I’m sure we would have whooped ‘em.

Granted I watch a lot of sci-fi and war-type movies… and that combined with being a former military officer probably embeds battle-laden dream seeds into my psyche. About a third of the time my weapons don’t work properly and about two-thirds of the time I’m terribly outnumbered. Sometimes the aliens I encounter are familiar, as from a popular video-game. Other times my enemies are human-ish.

For example, last night (after watching several episodes of Grey’s Anatomy) I dreamed that I was in some type of advanced sci-fi medical exchange program where I had to travel to this interstellar university for medical classes… and my classmates were characters from Grey’s Anatomy. Anyways… it wasn’t long before the Empire (yes, the one from Star Wars) attacked with Stormtroopers and heavy vehicles. For some reason most of the battle took place in the woods… not the forest of the Endor moon, but rather something more like Little House on the Prairie.

In terms of XHTML and CSS I had to rewrite some style to fix the layout of my theme. This custom-made theme I use employs very complex style markup and thus is very sensitive to change, and the upgrade to version 2.1 brought on some small syntax changes.

And then of course there was some PHP I had to rewrite… mostly because version 2.1 handles pages differently in the database schema.

And then I had to patch up my Jumps pages because version 2.1 totally handles link categories differently and also deprecated some primary link PHP functions.

Wow… I guess it was a lot of work now that I think about it.

Saddam is dead. Good. Iraqi justice for an Iraqi tyrant and butcher. Some would say that he will now go to the happy Islamic hunting grounds with his bazillion virgins… but methinks he is in a more “toasty” climate.

Saddam’s execution illustrates a glaring and tragic flaw in modern Western society… our near infantile resolve. There are lab rats pumped with half their weight in glucose and sexual endorphins who have a greater attention span than most Americans. I mean… how long did we keep our resolve to fight back against the blood-lusting terrorists after 9-11? Two weeks or so?

The point is, once the bad guys are caught and rendered powerless then people with a weak resolve and an Alzheimer memory quickly forget that the bad guys are actually bad. In fact, in displays of idiocy saved usually for skinny-dipping with piranhas, people actually start to feel SORRY for the “poor, helpless, bullied” bad guys?! The same bad guys who’ve tortured the elderly and raped young girls.

Even Saddam exemplifies this example somewhat. People started to see Saddam as helpless and pitiful rather than an evil man about to be punished for his great evils… testimony to our inability to maintain a truthful perspective of justice despite our emotional moods.

And here’s my proof positive… can you think of any movies you’ve seen recently where at the end, after an epic fight, the good guy kills the bad guy? Now, the reason why the bad guy usually has to die is because he deserves it (based on his horrific acts during the story) and it is the only just end that resolves properly for the audience. BUT (and here’s the kicker), 9 times out of 10 the good guy must slay the bad guy in such a way that he had no choice. It is cliché to the max, but most assuredly either the good guy will be on the ropes – a breath away from defeat – when he lands a lucky blow of the sword, or a lucky shot of the pistol, and the bad guy falls dead. OR, after being disarmed and left at the mercy of the good guy, the bad guy will pull a concealed weapon in a last desperate effort to win only to THEN be killed by the good guy.

Fortunately the current Iraqi judicial system is not squeamish about its resolve or its duty to uphold justice and actually punish the guilty (what a novel thought).

Mr. Saddam, roast in hell.

I am going to see TDVC because it will probably be a great movie and I like to see great movies. I like to watch Tom Hanks breathe an intangible but undeniable spark into the life of almost any character he plays. I try to only watch so-called Christian movies when they also are great movies on their own (like The Passion) or have some merit other than their “Christian” label. It makes no sense to watch inferior artistry just because of the label. Would you let a dubiously mediocre surgeon cut you open because he was a Christian?

I am going to see TDVC because it will be a topic of conversation for sure. The controversy alone has generated more dialog than any movie already released right now. The talk may well be questions about the validity of various parts of the movie… the accuracy of the historical references… the theological implications… and of course, the “could it all be true?”. Many of my friends and coworkers will come to me, being “the religious guy”, and ask me what I think about it or what my “priest” says about the movie. I know this from experience.

If I don’t see the movie I can’t enter into those conversations… I can’t directly and credibly engage those people with their questions. As a Christian I’m called to engage. Some Christians might say I could engage by speaking what I know to be true from the Bible about who Christ was and who Mary Magdalene was without having to see the movie… but it wouldn’t be as genuine, as applicable to specific scenes, or as honest. And it wouldn’t be as credible. Credibility is important, because there’s too many hypocritical Christians out there already. You know who you are… you who will condemn Desperate Housewives or Harry Potter or [fill in the blank]… and you haven’t even seen any of them!? All you know is that some schmuck behind a pulpit found it to be a convenient target to fill a Sunday morning rant session and you walked away with an opinion other than one you formed yourself. Now I’m not advocating diving headfirst into the sin city underground and steeping yourselves in every manner of worldly medium… there has to be some limits and you need to use your brain… but today’s Christians tend toward a missionally debilitating conservatism when it comes to culture.

Back to TDVC… I’ve heard Christians tell me that “I don’t want my money going to them”… but who is them? The “them” is probably about 75,000 people scattered over all of the cinematic industry, from marketers to mass-producers to theater employees to stunt doubles. The notion of keeping money away from a particular “them” is a fool’s notion. Your money will go to Hollywood in some form or another no matter what movie you go to. Then the argument Christians are ultimately making by proxy is whether or not to see movies at all, but that’s not the argument they’re vocalizing… so are they confused or intellectually dishonest? Or maybe just plain hypocrites? Christians have had a shameful streak of openly boycotting a “Judas” only to ultimately patronize a “Pontius Pilate”… whether we’re talking clothing, movies, restaurants… you name it. Here’s a tip – see the best movies, buy the best clothing, and eat at the best restaurants. Dig?

So you’d have to be an “outed” gay Muslim cleric hiding in a Pakistani cave not to have heard all the controversy surrounding this movie. Catholic and Protestant groups are calling for boycotts and disruptive litigation. But why? They say the movie is offensive… but how? Sure, the story has all the historical accuracy of an episode of the Teletubbies… much like most other stories from books and movies. Sure, it said Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, but does that offend you to hear someone think or say that? Are we all of a sudden offended by anyone with a different view than our own? Do we only see movies or read books that we already agree with? Who exactly, then, are we trying to engage? Many are seeking some truth from somewhere in this topsy-turvy world, and they just may look for it in TDVC… wouldn’t it be great to use TDVC to enter into a dialog with them about Jesus? Wasn’t that what the Book of Acts says Paul did in Athens?

Pastor Ed Marcelle of Terra Nova Church was a scrambled soul looking for truth in 1988, long before he became a pastor, when the movie The Last Temptation of Christ came out. The movie was met with much controversy from Christians for how it depicted Christ, so local churches would picket theaters and hold demonstrations. Ed recalls going to see the film and having to jostle his way through a crowd of Christian protesters who wore stern frowns of disapproval toward everyone they saw and stood in stiff-shouldered groups to impede entrance into the movie. What was the goal of any of that? What possible constructive purpose did that serve? None… those Christians may have had sincere hearts and some Biblical knowledge but they were acting like idiots. They could have brought a friend to the movie and then afterward talked all about Christ for hours over coffee… a priceless opportunity.

To my Christian readers, listen up a second. TDVC comes out soon. Don’t play the idiotic boycott game… and don’t let priceless opportunities slip away. Be like Paul in Athens and go see the movie. Because if you don’t then someday you may just have to explain why not. *wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge*

Here’s a good site for TDVC error checking: www.davincidelusion.tv

Anyways, these 1600×1200 images of love both come from DT-Extreme, a website actually devoted to fan art of the band Dream Theater (one of my absolute favs). If you’re a DT fan you can find a myriad of wallpapers and mix CD covers of great quality here. And… occasionally you can even find a good Matrix wallpaper with scripture on it. That’s the one on the left. The one on the right features many lines of lyrics from various DT songs across their many albums. Enjoy.

I’m referring to virtual Easter eggs… hidden messages or features in a movie, DVD, computer program or other of various media. The term is a parallel to the so-called “Easter egg hunt” of today.

Most computer-learned-folk have encountered these little hidden gems before. You’re at work and a co-worker clutches some scribblings he got off the so-called internet the previous night… he blurts out a certain word for you to type in some obscure area of a Microsoft Office application… and then instructs you to click a nondescript area of the screen while holding down a couple specific keys… and presto, you’re playing a crude version of Spy Hunter that features the names of the Microsoft programmers of that application.

Since the advent of DVDs virtual Easter eggs have flourished. The DVD format has allowed for the very easy tucking away of virtual goodies in hundreds of home movies.

Although, even though virtual Easter eggs are in the digital world… the real world can have “virtual-style” Easter eggs, too. For instance, I was just in Blockbuster yesterday having my wife of almost four years put on my account there… and the associate looked on her computer at my account and said casually with my wife standing there… “I see there’s a [insert ex-girlfriend's name here] still on your account… would you like me to remove her?” All I could do was laugh, and my wife had to translate for the associate that the laugh meant to indeed remove the relational artifact from my Blockbuster account.

And in the spirit of Easter eggs I have put one in this post somewhere.

Some more popular web sites devoted to Easter Eggs:

• The Easter Egg Archive
• Egg Heaven 2000
• DVD Easter Eggs

In the story, the main character (said red violin) was the perfect creation of a master Italian craftsman named Nicolo Bussotti. However, every search I do for him only comes up with information on this movie. Is he a fictional character? I’m so ignorant… I just thought he was like Antonio Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri.

For my instrument, the modern guitar, there are no grand movies spanning centuries… nor could there be, unless to unfold an epic featuring an ancient lute or oud from Biblical times that gets smashed by… I dunno… a meteorite and is unknowingly rebuilt by a drunk luthier into a Fender Stratocaster. Weak… very weak. So instead, let’s just munch on a few guitar wallpapers for Wallpaper Wednesday. I have no idea where the one on the right came from (but it does tie in a Biblical reference to the guitar!)… but the one on the left is from guitare-nstructor.com.

Well, I’ve caught myself recently pulling these same shenanigans. Today, in particular, I started a sentence with “Back when we had to log into Unix workstations”… and I could have easily added something about not having new-fangled so-called wireless internet. Now, this really isn’t shameful, but I can’t help but wince at myself whenever I hear something like that coming out of my mouth. Lately I’ve taken to starting those sentences in the mimicked voice of the proverbial old man (the one with the weather-forecasting big toe) and in that way almost poking fun at myself before anyone gets the chance.

And why not reminisce about the good ‘ole days of computing? It’s not like I’m telling stories about punch cards (way before my time). The days of hunting around campus for a free workstation in one of my undergraduate institution‘s multiple computer labs was a time of computing excitement. The so-called information superhighway was just starting to flourish and the rise of the first-person shooter had dawned. Them was good days! For fun we’d reset the servers of the freshman dorm workstations… great amusement for upperclassmen, and a belated explanation for the oft random crashes of those pesky freshmen terminals.

I could go on about learning to surf the “command-line” way using a UNIX window running in MIT’s X11R5. Or how about gopher? Or using the brand new Mosaic program to browse something called the world wide web? Ahhh… pure nostalgic geekness.

With the marketing industry being at the top of its game, and the wild popularity of J.K.Rowling‘s books to begin with, and with the relative enjoyability of the first three movies… OF COURSE this one was going to make the mad duckets (lots of money). But, although I enjoyed the first three Potter films I had some trouble with this one.

It wasn’t the darkness by any means… I rather enjoyed the small departure from pure sugar candy. It wasn’t the lack of good special effects, because they were excellent… the dragon climbing on the castle looked really good to me. What it was, in my best estimation, was trying to squeeze a huge book into a little 2-hour movie.

The plots were many, varied, and unrelated. At several points during the movie… even as far as two thirds of the way through, I’m wondering when the main plot of the movie is going to start! A couple times… just when I thought things were gettin’ a move on… a completely unrelated subplot would take full-reins of the film for 15 to 20 minutes. I was sitting their bewildered. I was confused that three of the six characters on the cover of the DVD (the ones besides Harry, Ron, and Hermione) had they been put in a ranking by plot-importance and/or screentime would have ranked more like 12th, 17th, and 20th. I was confused that Harry never smiled or acted with any male impetus… and in fact I was beginning to get sick of his whining.

Now, was it a fun movie? Sure. But, unlike my esteemed Pixar flicks, this one will leave adults’ common sense nerve hurting a bit. It may still be good fun for the kiddies (and indeed some of you may wonder why I have not left it as such)… but for the so-called grown-ups… instead of this DVD, I’d throw one of Tolkien’s in my DVD player if I were you.

Well, let’s not have all this Flash talk and military talk without a little mixin’ of the two. You remember Combat for the Atari 2600? It came bundled with the console (Pac-Man, too!) for a long time. This little cutie called MicroTanks is pretty close to that.

Too much. Make me crazy.
- Damir Jakubovic, 1st Lieutenent, Bosnian Army

That’s what my buddy Damir would used to say… that’s what I’m thinking right now. I have so much to post about… but it’s all only half-formulated in my mind. It’s like oodling out all over the place.

I have a couple really cool WordPress themes I’m working on but aren’t done yet.

I have a really long overdue rant on relevance and modern Christianity (and this one will rattle some cages).

I have some movies I really want to post about.

I have an oil tanker of Flash games to post.

But I have been spending a little time fixing up this blog to be the way I like it. Some tweaks here and there… many that you won’t ever see. What you do see are some new menu entries… that way it’s easier to get to some of my more featured content.

So, more to come very soon!

I recommend the Cherry Raspberry Ale, by the way…. you can tell I’m definitely comfortable with my manliness that I can recommend that while wearing a pink shirt.
- Pastor Phil Taylor, Terra Nova Church

Drinking is, by far, the least mentioned – in evangelical church culture – among all of Christ’s non-biologically mandatory activities. As if not mentioning it will feel more comfortable. As if Tolkien and Lewis aren’t tiltin’ back a St. Thomas Pale Ale together at this very moment.

Tilt one back with me, Dog.
- Dwarven Demolition Squad, Warcraft 2

So as I tried the ale on one of my pastors’ recommendations (man, I love saying that!) I thought to myself… self… different is good. And you don’t have to know me long to know I tend toward difference. [*yawn* this is two narcissistic posts in three days] I prefer to err on the side of action, rather than inaction… to err on the side of words, rather than silence (a decidedly unpopular stance in modern Christian culture). But that makes me different… and I’m cool with that.

Anything different is good.
- Bill Murray, Groundhog Day

There are a paltry, yet non-zero, number of exceptions to different being good… like if you just won a marathon you probably don’t want anything different right then… or if you just dodged a bullet… or if you just had a healthy baby. However, in the mundane world of the daily slave-ballet there’s more than enough room for some spice… a little something something.

Bam! Kick it up a notch!
- Emeril Lagasse

My spice comes despite myself. For instance… some people associate salt and pepper… I associate salt and vinegar. Some think of bread and cheese (or water or wine), where I’m more bread and circuses. Some associate ale and pubs… I think of ale and wenches (too many Elizabethan movies). I’ve never deliberately espoused nonconformity… it just wouldn’t feel right any other way.

…Because Allah loves wondrous variety.
- Morgan Freeman, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

Life is too short to bow to the expectations of others. Life is too short not to be different.

Future additions to this site: Books currently reading, music currently listening, games currently playing, movies currently watching, recommended lists of music – books – games – movies, Amazon.com wishlist, photo gallery and media gallery (music – flash games – programming examples – etc). I may even eventually add some limited advertising on here… not because I’m looking to turn a dime on this, but because websites with advertising – for whatever reason – look more professional.

I appreciate feedback of all types so give me a shout if you get the chance.