Hey You!

Yeah you! Look, if you have to refer to yourself as a “Good Christian” frequently, there’s a pretty good chance you aren’t one. I’m not saying there aren’t good Christians out there, but they don’t go around telling everyone they are one. In fact, good Christians tend not to really think about it at all, they just are. You know, I realize its hard. The Bible doesn’t mention corporate politics at all. There are no ‘Thou Shalt Not’s for the business world. But just because there aren’t specific words for it written down, that doesn’t mean that lying, cheating and stealing in the name of upward mobility on the corporate ladder is excused. Its still lying, cheating and stealing, and by its nature, if you do it, you aren’t a “Good Christian”. So please, stop saying it.

Taking the “Bad” with the good.

Recently, we (Jodi and I) came to the realization that we were paying our cable company a bunch of money to give us access to movie channels we never watched. I mean, we are avid DVD fanatics, and we buy any movie we love (read: watch more than 3 or 4 times), so these channels go unwatched. Mostly they go unwatched because they show the same crappy movies over and over again, and any original programming they have is either on at a time we are unable to watch it or we just assume at this point that its going to come out on DVD.

To that end, I called up the cable company and had them cancel all the premium movie channels. Saving me somewhere in the area of $30-$40 a month. I took some of that savings, and realizing that we still wanted to see movies, reinvested it into reactivating our subscription to NetFlix (there is a link over on the right side somewhere).

NetFlix rocks. For $20 a month, they mail us movies of our choosing, we watch them, mail them back, and they mail us more. We can have 3 out at a time, and with a distribution center really close to us, its a 2-3 day trip from when I drop a movie in the mail back to them to when we get the next movie.

That’s the good of the title of this article… Now on to the "Bad".

Its in quotes for a reason. We got "Bad Boys II" in the mail the other day. For the first time in a long time, you are going to see me say.. I was unimpressed.

Sure, it had some funny lines. Sure, it had chase scenes and cool explosions. But, to be honest, unlike the original Bad Boys, I didn’t care about any of the characters. They could have all died in this film and I would have shrugged it off. And when they go to Cuba… well, lets just say that believability isn’t just tossed out the window, its loaded onto a rocket and launched into space. Exactly.

Anyway, in the end, I felt like I wasted 2 hours of my time, and 5-6 days of my NetFlix life. Stuff blows up good, but the overall movie is bad.

24 February 1999

This morning I woke up a little late. Our Monday morning meeting (which is always held on Wednesdays) was due to start and I wasn’t going to have enough time to do my normal morning ritual AND make the meeting. So I took a 3 minute shower instead of 10. I’ve got a ghost of a goatee one cause shaving just the sides took less time that the full shave. And I skip out the door, breakfast in hand.
And then I stop.
I live in Atlanta, and we don’t get snow that often. So when I got outside and saw that everything was dusted in a powdery white, I had to pause and take it in. The whole drive to work was slow and I made my way in awe of the beauty that fresh snow can bestow upon an otherwise dingey looking world. Before I even got out on my neighborhood I almost turned around to get my camera so I could take some pictures of this wonderland around me.
Slowly, slowly, I made my way to work. And I wasn’t alone. Other people were driving slow too. Not because the roads were slick. We had no ice, no snow on the streets, they were clear. People were driving slow, just like me, to take it all in. It wasn’t a blizzard, or even just a handful of flakes here and there. This was the perfect amount of snow for a place that doesn’t get it that often. A thin layer of white over everything but the roads. The rooftops, the yards, the branches of trees. And that which had fallen on the street had melted in place, so that it drifted away as water and didn’t leave those ugly clumps of brown and black dirty snow.
It was pure.
And it brought to me something I had been missing for a while… with my job, my home, my everything, I was getting a little tired, defeated, and depressed. But now I realize, for what is not the first nor the last time I’ll have it pointed out to me, that sometimes all you need is to look at things with new eyes.
Have a wonderful day.
—–
Theater Review:
none.
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Today’s Song:
The entire New Miserable Experience album by the Gin Blossoms. It’s all good. Not a bad song in the bunch. Even the country song is cool (“You can’t call it cheatin’ ’cause she reminds me of you”). I listen to this and to their other stuff and it makes me a little sad to know that the group broke up, but at least they put out music this good before they did.
—–
Today’s Movie:
Cloak & Dagger. I had forgotten about this movie until last night when it was on the Disney Channel. It’s not a great movie, it’s not even a good movie. But I remember when I saw this and I was big into the role playing game Top Secret, and at that time, this was the coolest movie. It’s about a kid who has this imaginary role playing character that he actually wills to life. Now, compared to other super spy guys, Dabney Coleman as Jack Flack seems kind of silly, but to a kid of 9 or 10 years old, he made a great secret agent.
—–
TV Highlight:
Well, another week, another Buffy. Last night saw the return of Vampire Willow. Alyson Hannigan is cute, but when she gets all dressed up in those evil leather outfits, its just that little something extra that pushes her into the sexy category. Still, Buffy the Vampire Slayer remains one of the best shows on television.