Jesus has Ninja Skills

At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds. - John 8:59

I always knew there was a reason why I liked that guy.

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The Long Barbie

I went to church this morning at my new church. We had communion and they ran out of wine (juice actually, cause they're Baptists) just when I got to the server. It was most disconcerting for me.

After church I got invited to a Barbie with my friends. I ummed and ahhed, and eventually after being chased up, I decided to go.

It was out in Berowra. I went for the Barbie, which turned into a Monty Python watching, which turned into roast dinner, which turned into post dinner Wii games.

I was only expecting to be out for the afternoon, but I only just got home. I'd left my jacket at home so I got a little chilly by the end.

I had fun. I'm feeling more comfortable with the group now. I get the jokes more, I'm better at speaking up. I did like spending a whole day with this crew, they're a good bunch, I enjoy them a lot.

I had a good Friday.

And Counting...

You know how on the Gmail site it tells you how much space you get with Gmail and the number is always ticking over, higher and higher, as you watch? Is there some little man* in Google land whose job it is to just install hard drives on the Gmail server? Constantly, day in day out, night and day, installing hard drives. That would be a tough job. Poor guy.


*Notice how I said little man, just assuming he's little and male? Some would call me condescending and sexist. I would say, I'm a realist. If you think about it, the job has probably been given to a munchkin. Who else works day and night? And who else is small enough to fit in those confined spaces like servers with the speed needed to install hard drives fast enough to stay ahead of the ever increasing demand for Gmail storage space? And when have you ever seen a female munchkin do any work at all? You haven't because they're at home, in their tree, having munchkin babies. And we should thank them for it because they continue the legacy of munchkin work all over the world, having babies so that for generations to come we will have lots of email storage and people to live in those boxes by the side of the road and change the traffic lights.

Climbing the Ladder of Success

I ran the bible study at Bible Study last night. It was only my third week at the group and I probably won't be there again for a while. It's on Monday nights and I usually have college. So I was impressed that they let me lead on my third week. I remarked on this when I started and made some crack about how I was going to teach from the Koran about our great prophet Muhammad. It did go down with the hilarity that I had planned. Mainly people just looked puzzled, so I moved on quickly.

I enjoyed running the study. We did doubt. I took three weeks of studies that we'd done in youth group last year and condensed them into one. I could do that because we had more time, and I was pretty sure we'd have less inane discussions about anything but the topic (yes old small groupians, I'm talking about you). On the other hand taking three weeks to look at three passages would have meant we could gone deeper with each one.

All up though, I was happy. I enjoy doing stuff like that.

Sundays are Good Days

I spent much of today sitting in the backyard reading. I also had butter chicken for lunch. And I watched the special features on The Bourne Ultimatum as a special treat because it's Sunday which means it's the Sabbath which means it's a day for special features. I'm pretty sure that's what God intended.

I also went to church. I'm really liking going to church. I just sit there. I'm totally a church consumer. I do nothing. It's the Sabbath, why work? Church workers are Sabbath breakers. They should be stoned to death.

Kicking It Old School

I've been watching a lot of movies on DVD lately, with a bias towards older ones. I've been having a wonderful time. Let tell you why I've had so much fun.

1. The Matrix

I loved watching this movie again. I hadn't seen it in years. And then I watched it the other week and it brought back all the memories of the first time I saw it. People talk about films like Star Wars and about how when it first came out it was ground breaking. The Matrix is that movie for me. It changed action movies. Bullet time was a revelation. And having white people, shoot guns and do kung-fu like a Hong Kong movie... so special.

I remember paying attention to the whole production process while they were shooting it here in Sydney, and then to see the finished product, which turned out to be amazing; I was thrilled.

2. Conan the Barbarian

I had never seen the movie so I felt I should, it was Arnie's big break, and I'm feeling a great affinity for action movies at the moment.

I was totally not disappointed. Though I think it would have been difficult to disappoint me. There was plenty of a mindless violence and dumb villains.

By far my favourite bit was where Arnie punched a camel in the face. Cinema doesn't get better than that.

3. The Borne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy

What can I say? Jason Bourne is awesome. Another film that changed the action genre, Bourne took the whole good with guns and hand-to-hand combat thing that The Matrix started and took to a whole new, realistic, shaky-cam, quick cut level. You watch Bourne and you think "Yeah, that really could happen." Or at least I do, but maybe I'm gullible.

4. The Green Berets

This was the first film ever made about the Vietnam war. It was shot in 1968, had John Wayne and was pretty much just one big piece of propaganda. The whole thing was shot in the USA, it's like they thought "If we just scatter a few Asians with conical hats around no one will know we're actually in Georgia." Damn Francis Ford Coppella had to come through and ruin it all for everyone. (On a side note, did you know that Full Metal Jacket was shot entirely in England? It's true. They had much more realistic conical hats so we were all fooled.)

Also adding to the un-authentic flavour was that the Viet Cong's guerrilla tactics pretty much resembled trench warfare without the trenches. They'd just walk out of the jungle shoulder to shoulder in a line. With tactics like that it's no wonder the US lost the war.

Anyway, aside from being terribly unauthentic, I had a wonderful time watching it. Propaganda is always fun. I think my favourite moment was when a US soldier, being kind to an orphaned Vietnamese boy, let him hop in his bed and spend the night with him. In the 60's you could do anything.

5. Notes on a Scandal

The first non-action film in the list, this was great. I'd been putting off watching it for a while because everyone told me it was horrible. And it was. It was a train wreck of story. Judi and Cate are just amazing. I'm glad I watched this. I'm also glad I put off watching it for a while. I think I needed to be in the right head space.

6. Nixon

Long, but good. What is it with Oliver Stone and American Presidents?


I love DVD.