Lost – Further Instructions

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My anticipation pre-show: 9

My feelings about it post show: meh 6.

Some other people thought is was great.

I was all excited because we get to see what happened to Locke, and Eko, and Desmond post hatch ‘incident’. Opening, bright light, Locke’s eye. The dude had the wickedest scar from the crash, with the vertical slice down the center, made him look like a comic book hero/guru person thing. He’s on his back in a grass clearing. He hears Desmond run by in his flash-the-island quest, but can’t say, DUDE? Where are your pants?

Click on to read the rest.

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Jericho – Federal Response

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Ohhhhh where to start…

Jake is tired of war… the card game… get it? Oh such tired cliches so early in the show. We could play crazy-8s.. oh come on, the bar is open all night? I think that Jake and friends must go fill up the generator every four hours or so to keep that joint in business.

We have POWAH! And then all the phones ring at once. While a literary device, the calls would in reality rollout as the system dials out… but Jericho is small, so the telephone company might be able to simu-dial everyone… Not without someone knowing that WORKS at the phone company… but this is Jericho, suspending belief is step one.

Further on suspending relief. A powah surge attacks the library. And since it is an electrical fire the firemen will stand by their hoses until that political lackey of a mayor gets off his rump and shuts down the breaker. Oh, and that breaker, yeah it shuts down the fire pumps too. WHAAAaa? Okay, I’m with the dude that is calling for an investigation. No way! No how! and silliness abound in this whole tepid plotline! *deep breath*

Lets get to the main points. Hawkins, no long content with dial-up, can take his lappy outside and fireup his portable satellite dish to get broadband. And then web-surf on sites where the only readable text is the word security. Also, it seems that the small town of Jericho has muni-wifi, since the power came up everyone flips open their lappy and starts IMing:

dude1: hey, did u c the shroom cloud

dude2: we r so pwned

Actually, no one can do anything because it seems the DNS servers are down, but the wiley teenage miss popular is also a sooper seekrit computer nerd and knows about IP addresses and how the intertubes were made for surviving the big nuclear bubble. She tries one of the IP addresses she’s memorized, you know the one staring with 308, I. kid. you. not. *fume* (okay, plot device like all phones in tv-land use a 555 prefix, get over yerself geekboy!) But that IP has been redirected, to a Government run webite (that is now silently melting, not from nuclear radiation but from overloading… unless they had some super-seekrit mirroring program… okay, I give up, enjoy the show!

Oh.. and Hawkins, used to be a ‘pool guy’ like Jake. Now they can be bestest FF. (Pool guy is code for someone that knows how thing work mechanically, or have a mini-van with a real live electrical plugin in the back.. um.. WHY haven’t these been used in the first six days post armegeddon?

… … … *sigh*

Okay, I’ll just skip all over the municipla services discontinuitys… Michael has done a better job hitting the actual plot points. So I’ll recount, no, is too much, I’ll sum up.

  • Eric’s a jerkwad who’ll break both his wife and mistresses hearts, because that is all that matters after a nuclear attack, protecting the knowledge of your infidelities.
  • School teachers can call up their kids and start recess whenever they want, so play in the fountain next to the library, don’t worry about the sparking transformer, just keep playing in the puddles.
  • Jake is gonna come clean with his dad about where he’s been. okay.. next week, first we gotta drain this scotch and eat mashed potatoes.
  • The President doesn’t ever show up on time for television appearances. And because of this, it seems… That retaliation will be delievered without informing the people of the United States.
  • Ballasitic missle launches cause earthquakes in Kansas.

Next week, or maybe in weeks to come, the stupoid writers will start actually writing scripts that make sense. (congrats Jericho, though, you got a full season buy, so we have 18 more epis to let the writers practice… go you can do it!)

The Truth Project

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That is the topic we studied in our bible study last night, here is a link:

The Truth Project

Produced by Focus on the Family, it is a fairly good worldview study, looking at the ‘big’ questions.  Last night we watched the third segment, that talks about ‘Anthropology’ and tries to answer the question of ‘who is man?’.  The segment, taught primarily by Dr. Del Tackett was mostly over the question of evil, if it exists, where is comes from, and how the secular world view has some unsatisfying answers to the question of evil.  Pointing out that secular thought (from Rosseau and Maslow) has a basis that man is essentially good (aside: what you say, isn’t that what the Bible says, that we are good?  Um well, yes, in our original state, in the natural state, we are fallen, which is different than good… ).  Tackett does a good job of tying knots in the secular response of the question of evil, because if man is essentially good, and the source of evil, as some philosophers say, is the cultural institutions, where do institutions become evil, if their sum is made up of ‘essentially good’ parts.

Tackett never really answers the where does evil come from, and more points out that the secular response to the question is unsatisfying.  Good, well produced video, that brings up some good worldview discussions in our group.  We’re left realizing that man’s default state (currently, not pre-fall) is a corrupt state, that although we still bear the ‘image of God’, we lack the Spirit of God and lack the control over our ‘inherent’ ‘natural’ instincts and in a way the problem of evil, is the problem of being fallen.  Or as the Calvinists say, Totally Depraved.

I’m looking forward to next week’s session.

Busy night… no recaps…

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Thursday is becoming the busiest night of the week for us, last night we had Michael’s pre-school art and book fair, then I had bible study for and hour and a half. Which brings us to about 9:30 and over four hours of TV to watch… (well that is why God made DVRs… right?)

Couldn’t make it through them all… so Six Degrees song dedications will have to wait until tomorrow night. Snarkwife Stacy recapped Grey’s so I don’t have to. And Survivor is far enough along where there isn’t much to talk about until the field gets whittled down more. But I do have some comments.

Yul is wishing Jonathan kept his big mouth shut. But really the only people on the island has been the three that are already in a solid alliance. Glad that Yul and Becky realized that my friend Flicka was a bit too flaky, but wow, their replacement isn’t that much better.

Cao Boi may make it to the merge, but he’ll soon go, he ends up stomping on whatever conventions there may be, and has lots of the ‘awkward silence’ moments happen right after he’s donw talking.

Speaking of silence, Stephanie needed to learn that, especially after the near miss the last tribal. She can practice it now, over her plate of mashed potato(e)s… she got voted off, after a very very close immunity challenge was lost by Raro.

Jericho – The Walls of Jericho

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Ummm should I have recapped this on first?  Is this thing on? hello?

Anyhoo, Michael also recapped Jericho, and Jollyblogger (great questions to consider in that link) is a viewer, and I like to link them, so here I go.

I’ve watched Jericho each week, partly because I’m marking time waiting for Angie to come home so we can watch Lost together.  Also because the storyline of nuclear holocaust… what’s not to like.  But it is a bit draggy, but they do a good job of keeping the mysteries alive.  I’m not going to blow-by-blow Jericho, because well, I’d start poking ice-picks in my eyes, so if you watch this show and want to dicuss the theories and story arcs, click to read on.  Other wise scroll down and read the LOST post. Continue reading →

Lost – The Glass Ballerina

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Since last week, Jollyblogger (David Wayne, who has an excellent blog on all things theological, btw) espoused a new ‘snow-globe‘ theory of Lost. He also had a ‘dead-pool’ poll for who would be the next character that died in the show. The winner was ‘Henry Gale’ who happens to already be dead, but like the votes for Mark Foley, he’s just putting votes for Henry into the Ben basket.

Last nights episode was a meh for me. Parts of it were omg… but for the most part I’m not wholly up on the whole Jin-Sun backstory, maybe it is that Korean subtitles aren’t near as funny as Japanese subtitles. Or how creepy looking Sun’s father is. Or .. well I just get bored with it.

So I’ll do some quick recapping and commentary and theorizing be done. So click if you don’t mind being a bit spoiled.

Other recaps:

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For AP: Biblical context for ‘With us’

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Last week, HotAir’s AllahPundit had a discussion on the Amish’s tendancy to outrageously forgive their enemies, and asked Christians to reconcile their advocacy of war, with Christ’s teaching of ‘turn the other cheek’.

Today’s controversy is Ted Turner’s comments on President Bush use of the phrase ‘if you aren’t with us, you are against us’, quoting AP, quoting CSPAN:

There are a lot of things about this war that disturb me and one of them is the attitude, that you know, that was well expressed by our President. He said it very clearly, he said either you’re with us or you’re against us. And I had a problem with that because I really hadn’t made my mind up yet.

Typical of Ted, who’s news agency cozied up to Saddam in prelude to Iraq, becuase they were neither hot nor cold… But anyways, my point is that that religious zealot Bush was using the words of Jesus in that speech. The lede:

“He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me, scatters. ( Luke 11:23)

I like Eugene Peterson’s ‘The Message’ paraphrase that renders the text as:

This is war, and there is no neutral ground. If you’re not on my side, you’re the enemy; if you’re not helping, you’re making things worse.

I think Ted’s comments fall into the ‘making things worse category. But that is plainly up to interpretation.

Also interesting to grab the crossrefrences in that Luke passage (one is Matthew 12:30 which is a synoptic, same thing, different verse…)

Luke 9:50 – But Jesus said to him, “Do not stop him, for whoever is not against you is for you.” (paradox? looking at context, the person in question is casting out demons in Jesus’ name, so while not technically a disciple, clearly on the same side…)

Revelations 3:15-16 “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot!. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I am going to vomit you out of my mouth!”

Whoa, that Jesus dude, knew how to slice to the point. Get with the program, take a side, stop hemming and hawing… Seems Jesus was a bit more complex than the ‘turn the other cheek’ angle. But we’re now talking spiritual warfare here, not Iraq and not the war on terror. Still good apocalyptic thoughts … even from Ted Turner… who is as lukewarm as they come.

Morphin’ Time…

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And now for something completely different. A couple of weeks ago, I signed up to teach a course for our church during our Wednesday night activities. The course is a video presentation based on John Ortberg’s book The Life You’ve Always Wanted. Let me cut&paste a bit from the preface:

If you have ever been frustrated with the state of your spiritual life. If you’ve ever wondered why spiritual growth goes so slowly. If you’ve ever wondered if real change is possible. If you’ve ever felt confused or stuck in your spiritual life — you’re my kind of person.

…

Throughout the centuries, wise people have devoted themselves to following Jesus in this way. This series is an attempt to make some of that wisdom accessible to people who line in a world of freeways, corporate ladders and Xboxes. When you are through, my hope is that you will accept Christ’s invitation to live life his way because it truly is the live you’ve always wanted.

A facinating topic, to be sure. One that I’ve struggled with for much of my life. Spiritual maturity or growth is a weird thing. If anyone has a litany of things you must do to mature spiritually, run away, seriously. Not because a list of things to do is inherently bad, it just might be misdirected. These past few weeks in my daily reading of blogs, or studying for Sunday School, or just leafing through the book that goes along with the study, I’ve realized I’ve playing a bit on the fringes of my spirituality.

Its gonna get wordy, so if you’re interested click to continue reading.

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Heroes – One Giant Leap

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Michael has a post complaining about some inconsistencies in the plot, and I have to say that he’s got a point. But if we start getting into inconsistencies in comicbook plots, then we’d have to start getting all slayer like on LOST, and dammit, I’m not going there. The writers should take note to tighten up some hole, but to give them some slack, we have to move the story along pretty quick.

The rest might spoil, so click on to read more.

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