Sunday, January 18, 2004

I’m watching LeAnn Rimes sing the national anthem for the Colts-Patriots playoff game. Excellent. Really - she sang it live, she sang it in a key that fits her voice, and she knew the words. Thank you, LeAnn.

And she made me think of Britney *gack* and Christina *double-gack* and the direction those teen idols have gone and the direction that Rimes has taken since she came on the country music scene at age 13.

LeAnn is one of those rare child stars who manages to stay somewhat normal as they grow up and get richer/more famous. She seems to be a lot more stable and mature than the other two, imho. Maybe it’s because she’s married, keeps out of the tabloids, and while becoming an adult in the public eye managed to not turn whore-y. Sure, her videos are sexier, but they’re a lot more tasteful than those other two.

Anyone disagree with me here?

LATER: I don’t know if you’re kidding, Denis. Here’s a visual aid.

While surfing (before I settled on Liar, Liar), I caught a bit of the last few minutes of Diary: Gideon Yago in Iraq on MTV. Already knowing his bias against the war, I was a little interested to see what he had to say after a visit to the country.

What I saw was a little snippet of his conversation with some young 82nd Airborne troops. He asked them what they’d ask if they had a chance to ask their politician questions about the war in Iraq. One guy said he’d ask what was an acceptable body count before they start to revisit the policy.

My response would have been to remind him that there’s no acceptable body count and that the leadership doesn’t think in those terms. No death of an American soldier is “acceptable.” We’ve been fortunate that since the initial invasion into Iraq last spring, there have been only 500 deaths total. That’s pretty amazing and a testament to our military superiority and technology. Yet we grieve for the 500 soldiers who have been killed in combat and accidents and terrorist bombings. And we pray for those who continue long deployments or are beginning a long deployment, both in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I digress…

Gideon then showed clips of his interviews with Paul Bremer and Gen. Richard Sanchez (I don’t know his rank, I think he’s a General). He posed the “acceptable body count” question to the general, whose response was a disbelieving snort and a firm “there is no acceptable body count.” Like I said....

To Bremer, he asked about the complaints from the Iraqis he had talked to (that I didn’t see) that they’re no safer than they were before the war. Bremer was also great, reminding Gideon that Saddam was in power for 35 years and that it will take a lot longer than 3 weeks or 3 months or 6 months or a year to get the country rebuilt. And he reiterated that we’re there for the long haul, to make sure Iraq is stable before we leave.

Gideon’s final comments: he’s more confused than he was before his visit. He said that because we went in to liberate Iraq we now have an obligation to finish the job of rebuilding. The eyes of the world are on us so see if we stand by our word.

Now that’s interesting - because he’s exactly right. We have an obligation to finish the job that we started. A new regime must be in place and stable before we leave Iraq. We have to stand by our word to ensure their stability. I’m impressed that he gets that, at least.

I find that I’m fascinated by the Real World-Road Rules Challenge - The Gauntlet on MTV. The finale is on Monday night and I’m anxious to see who wins. I’m pulling for Real World, that team has perservered and won key challenges with half the team than the Road Rulers.

While watching the episode from last Monday that I forgot to watch, they did their normal newsbreak thing. It seems that the halftime show for the Super Bowl will be an off mix of Kid Rock, Janet Jackson, Nelly, P. Diddy, and Josh Groban. Beyonce Knowles will be singing the national anthem - at least we know she has the pipes, now the test is those pesky words. And I’m already annoyed to know that it won’t be live.

I love that movie. No matter how many times I see it, I still laugh out loud. It’s one of those that if it’s on TV and I happen upon it, I can’t turn away. I’m compelled to watch it. Because I love to laugh.

Yeah, it’s on TV right now. I’m doomed.

Saturday, January 17, 2004

...within the body of Christ.

Which Part Of The Body Are You?

Congratulations! You are the hippocampus. You have an excellent memory and can recall trivial facts at will (often to the irritation of those around you).

Now that you know your place in the body: go and serve!

Hippocampus Extensions

The answer: I watch way too much TV.

[via Jared]

I stopped at my local Blockbuster on my way home from worship band practice (yes, parental units, I’m on tomorrow, fyi). Before the team got started on the actual practice we were talking about random things and a couple of the guys mentioned that they had recently watched Bruce Almighty. I had been wanting to see it, so I decided to rent it. I also rented Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets that I still haven’t seen either.

So this morning, after paying some bills online, I popped the DVD in the player and settled in with a freshly brewed cup-o-java. I had heard good things about it (Jared had a good review, which I haven’t linked here. Maybe he’ll be kind enough to do that in the comments?) and I was not disappointed. What a fun and thought-provoking movie. Jim Carrey does what he does best. Jennifer Aniston is solid. The guy from The Daily Show was laugh out loud hilarious. But what I most enjoyed was something that those who only saw it in the theaters missed out on - the DVD extras.

Oh, those deleted scenes are gems. Well, most of them anyway. There are a few that the director was wise enough to leave out - they would have changed the whole tone of the movie and not for the better. But there are others that are pure gold. Should they have been in the final movie? I’m not sure, for me the original works as it is. But knowing that they shot those scenes, that those ideas were considered, brought me joy.

So now you’re going to have to go rent the DVD to see what I’m talking about.

I was so hoping to sleep in past 6:30am. Since it’s now 6:50am, and I’ve been up for about 15 minutes, it didn’t happen. *sigh*

At times I hate that I’ve got Annie on a regular schedule. She started pestering me to get up at 5:30. Every ten minutes, she’s hop on my back, “Is it time yet?” I could hear her thinking.

“Not yet, go lie down,” I’d mumble. Finally, I couldn’t take the interruptions anymore and told her to “hop down,” the true indicator that it’s time to get up.

I think a nap is in order for later.

Friday, January 16, 2004

By “date” I mean the traditional man asks woman out, they go out, they continue to go out enough that it’s considered “dating.” Got it?

Some in the Christian community kissed dating goodbye and decided to go the “courtship” route. By “court” I mean the ultra-traditional man asks woman’s father if he may ask the woman out, the father consents, the man and woman go out, etc.

Get the difference? OK. All that to get to the pick up lines from Discoshaman. From his post, the thing that cracked me up was

For those not in the Christian ghetto, you have to know some militant courtshippers to appreciate these lines.

My favorites from the list:

10. “So I talked to your dad last night...”

9. “I lost my phone number. Maybe through a purposeful relationship, we can find out if I’m supposed to have yours.”

6. This one comes right out of the book of Song of Solomon, “You’re so, so, how can I say this biblically? Your teeth are like a flock of ewes that have come up from the washing...Your hair is like a herd of goats running down a mountain!”

1. “My parents are back in town. Wanna come over?”

I’m cleaning up the files from my old computer and I came across an old photo from my Young Life staff days in the northeast. In honor of my brothers and sisters who suffer for the Lord in the arctic cold, I post that photo here.

See if you can spot me in the midst of the group. Note the date was in 1997, I think in September when were at our camp property at Saranac Lake, NY for an adult guest weekend/staff meeting.

What’s weird and sad is to look at that picture and see that more than half of us are no longer on staff and a lot of us are no longer living in the region anymore either. Of course, we’ve been replaced, so that’s good.

I was shopping at the mall during the Christmas season, as were many others. Were you there?

I was walking along on the upper level when I approached the area where Santa’s Workshop was located (on the lower lever) and when I looked down, I saw this.

I laughed out loud because I couldn’t help myself, garnering a few odd looks from passers-by. I’m sure that if I had been at the expected eye level with that thing it wouldn’t have looked like was I thought it was at first glance. I went back to get the picture after I got the camera as a gift.

Today’s Friday Five:

1. What does it say in the signature line of your emails?

I don’t use the signature feature in either my work or personal emails. What I type is usually just “Jen” with a smiley of some sort.

2. Did you have a senior quote in your high school yearbook? What was it? If you haven’t graduated yet, what would you like your quote to be?

Nope. We didn’t have those things in our yearbooks.

3. If you had vanity plates on your car, what would they read? If you already have them, what do they say?

I’ve had vanity plates in the past. If I got one today, I’d try to get “VAJENYA” which I believe to be pretty self explanatory for anyone who knows me. Right? However, if you need explanation, please say so in the comments.

4. Have you received any gifts with messages engraved upon them? What did the inscription say?

Not that I can remember. Beyond the plaque from my college print journalism internship, I can’t think of anything.

5. What would you like your epitaph to be?

I have no clue. I know what I want to hear God say when I arrive in heaven: “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

I don’t like it much. Sure it’s new, it’s a little faster. But the network is slower and Internet Explorer keeps giving me error messages for random things and shutting down. And this is for work-related stuff. We use forms that are online and I can’t get access to them even after loading the plug-in. Argh.

In addition, the printer/scanner that I have at my desk is apparently non-standards compliant and we’re not “allowed” to use it. So I have a $400 printer that’s useless and yet I need it to do certain tasks, like scanning.

Compliance does not equal increased productivity.

Your tax dollars at work, people.

Thursday, January 15, 2004

Responding to the direction the comment thread for his post on Biblical worldview is going, Joe @ Evangelical Outpost has put together an excellent explanation of the difference between post-modernism and Christian thought. To whet your appetite:

The secular postmodern world believes that God doesn’t exist. Ontologically speaking he possesses no Being and, obviously, no knowledge. Postmoderns do, generally speaking, believe that humans exist. Since epistemology follows ontology, humans are the ones that determine what is true and what it not true. In fact, since humans exist individually rather than collectively their epistemic standards are also individual.

In other words there is no outside standard by which they can determine if something is objectively true. It is either “true for them” or “false for them.” (Two or more humans might collectively agree, but that is a decision they make rather than a standard imposed upon them from the outside.)

[...]

The Christian, however, view things differently. Ontologically speaking, God does exist and therefore can also possess knowledge. God, like humans, can determine what is true and what it not true. One difference between God and man, though, is that God is infinite while man is finite. Man can have finite knowledge about what is true or false but God can have infinite knowledge.

If moral truths exist then God can know them. In fact, God can know all moral truths. Unlike the postmodern human who is finite and can only have opinions about right and wrong, God is infinite and can have perfect knowledge about what is morally right and morally wrong. We can also deduce that if AMTs exist then God knows what they are.

A commenter at Tony’s said something interesting about The Passion... movie in response to this post.

While I agree that an accurate portrayal of Christ is essential, I’m one of those Christians who believe that when God says not to bow down before an image or to not even create one of Him, He meant it literally.

I cringe when I see a mere man up on screen portaying Jesus. I guess that’s my pet peave.

I think there’s a clear distinction between creating an idol to represent God (whom we haven’t seen) and representing the reality of Jesus’ humanity. Jesus walked the earth - he lived, died, and lives again. I don’t consider it to be against God’s commandment to portray Jesus in a movie. Especially when the movie is made to tell the Gospel message. This movie is a tool that Christians can use to share our faith and message with our unbelieving friends.

I’m curious if the commenter has issues with all portrayals of Jesus that have been made.

At some point while was in Florida I hit the 30K visitors mark. Thanks to one and all, most especially my regular readers.

The newly married Accidental Jedi just rolled over 30K as well. Congrats, Mrs. Solo.