f l o o d

The Passion

i just watched "The Passion of the Christ," and i don't know what to say here. part of me wants to anyalyze and describe it as a film, but that's impossible. as a cinematic work, it stands on its own. it's solid. but of course it's not just a film. i cried. sobbed, is more like it. as i left the theatre i could barely contain myself. when i got to my car the tears returned.

instead of trying to put my thoughts into words, i'm gonna direct you to jon's blog entry about "The Passion." he describes perfectly my own experience in watching the movie, from the critic's responses to how personal an it all was.

When people say that there's too much blood that it distracts from the message, or that we don't really see enough of Jesus' ministry to be affected by his death, or so on and so on, they're missing the point entirely. The movie isn't about Jesus, it's not about Gibson or his "mission"-like undertaking, or the controversy and politics; it's not about the blood, the realism; it's not even about evangelistic opportunities or lives being changed. As I watched the movie, it wasn't about any of those things.

I cried. I cried hard. But it wasn't only because of the suffering depicted onscreen; I started sobbing long before the trial took place. It was because Peter disowned Christ, and the moment I saw Jesus look up at him while being beaten, I saw that he was looking straight at me. When the adulteress woman reached out to his feet and he lifted her up from the ground, it was me. When he carried that cross up the hill as the soldiers spit on him, whipped him, mocked him, it was all about me. And even when they had driven the stakes into his hands, he was able to look at the very ones who had crucified him and say, "Father, forgive them," I saw that it was all about me. In the garden, as he prayed for the Father to somehow spare him the excruciating torment of the hours to come, and realizing that the Father would be forced to turn his ear, it was because of me. When he cried out "Why have you forsaken me?" it was me.

i hope you dont mind me stealing a whole chunk of your writing jon, but i have no better words to describe how i felt watching the movie.

yes, the jewish pharisees and roman soldiers were depicted as evil perhaps to an unnecessary extent. yes, it was graphically violent and brutal. but it was real. as an avid filmwatcher it is easy for me to think "oh, it's just a movie, it's not real." but there has never been anything more real in all of history. we read about the beating and the whipping and the nails in the Bible, but it's only words on a page. even as vivid as the human imagination is, we can't understand what Christ went through for us. but to see it...that is the power of this medium.

i may be watching the movie again on saturday with a bunch of people from church, but i wanted to see it by myself before that. for some reason i feel that watching it with a large group of christians would somehow diminish my ability to view the film from a personal standpoint. i'm not even sure now if i want to see it again on saturday. not because i don't want to go with other people, but i feel almost as if i watch it again so soon it'll somehow lose some of it's impact the second time around. but i know thats just silly. the relevance and depth of this story have nothing to do with the film itself.

Father forgive us, for we know not what we do.

Less Nerd than I Had Imagined

33.333333333333336% of me is a huge nerd! How about you?

ok, this post is another cop-out where i just link you to another quiz, but this quiz is awesome. the questions are really tough, and i didn't turn out to be any where near as nerdy as i had thought i was. i don't know if i should feel happy or sad about that. i knew what a lot of the questions were referring to, but i didn't know the actual answer. and it gives you this warm, proud feeling when you know the answer to an incredibly obscure, geeky question.

though i am rather proud of the fact that i couldn't answer most of the star trek and d&d questions. as nerd as i may be, i hope to never descend that deep into the realm of geek.

i do wish i knew binary though.

Nothing

no updates cuz i've had nothing to talk about. school is boring me out of my wits. i am completely uninterested. and when i'm uninterested, i'm unmotivated. which leads to bad bad things.

it's been interesting talking to wayne lately. the things he's been going through are exactly what i was going through in davis. praise God he's reaching out to people and finding support and seeking God through it all. i just wallowed in my misery and wound up screwing myself over.

i joined a cs clan. SfC, Soldiers for Christ. it's been fun, but i'm trying not to let it take up too much of my time. it wouldn't be good for me if my parents saw me playing games all day. if you play, look for me. my steam name is corbanSOG.

I am Lisa Simpson

which simpson's character are you?

Rewind

let's do the time warp agaaaaiiin...

bonus points to anyone who can tell me where that first line is from.

we're going back in time a little bit today. here are some pics of my puppy amaya when i first got her. i brought her to troy's house where cindy took some pics. she got all tuckered out from the excitement and fell asleep on the ground infront of troy's house. i never posted these because, well, i never had a place to put them.

hee hee. isn't she teh kewt? of course, she's about 5 times this size now. but she's still a cutie.

Buying Opinions

here's an interesting article about super bowl advertising. actually, it relates to advertising in general, but focuses on an issue concerning this year's super bowl. it's a good read.

One Thing That Won't Be Tackled on Sunday: Issues
By Eli Pariser
Campaigns Director, MoveOn.org Voter Fund
link

When the Super Bowl is beamed into living rooms around the world Sunday, you can expect to see TV spots hyping cars, beer, razor blades, three different erectile dysfunction cures, toilet paper and snack foods.

The ads will be slick and clever, lavishly produced, brilliant in their marketing. Some, no doubt, will be sexually suggestive or violent. Most will cost $2 million to $3 million to produce and broadcast.

But here's what you won't see: a single ad about the big issues that face our country today.

Outrageous as it may sound, CBS has decided that ads selling erectile dysfunction medicines and toilet paper are appropriate for Americans, but serious discussion should be banned. An ad about our country, our war, our president, the state of our schools or the size of our budget deficit? That, in the eyes of CBS officialdom, would be too controversial.

We know, because we tried. We thought that the Super Bowl, with 130 million viewers, would be a great place to get our message out. So we held a contest on the Internet to select the best ad we could possibly run. The ad we selected — from 1,500 submissions — shows children cleaning offices, washing dishes and hauling trash. It ends with the question: "Guess who's going to pay off President Bush's $1-trillion deficit?" (It's viewable at http://www.MoveOn.org ).

But even though we were willing to pony up the $1.6 million to pay for it, CBS refused to sell us the time, citing what it says is a 50-year-old policy prohibiting ads that take stands on controversial public policy issues.

CBS claims its policy is designed to keep the Citibanks and Microsofts of the world from buying time to tell Americans how to think. "It is designed to prevent those with means to produce and purchase network advertising from having undue influence on 'controversial issues of public importance,' " the network said this week.

Sounds fair, doesn't it? But what it really means is that if McDonald's buys an ad promoting its tasty Big Mac, no one can run an ad that says Big Macs are full of fat and unhealthful. Pfizer can run a spot saying it's "helping people in need" get medicine, but we can't air an ad saying that Pfizer lobbied to weaken the new Medicare bill to prop up drug prices. Halliburton has slick ads that stress its role supporting the troops in Iraq. But CBS would reject an ad that pointed to Halliburton's profiteering.

The fewer issue ads run, the more time there is for ads with mud-wrestling women selling beer and leggy models peddling fast cars. CBS execs think Americans love mindless consumerism more than anything else and that it's their duty to pander to this.

But with "fairness" doctrines no longer governing the airwaves and the media more concentrated each day, it's getting harder and harder to engage regular people in political discourse. Even the town square has been replaced, in most communities, by private malls, where politics is not encouraged.

Instead of taking every opportunity to promote civic discussion, commercial broadcasters like CBS shrink away. The airwaves are, more than ever, private enterprises. And for that we pay a price: As public political speech becomes more difficult and infrequent, the public becomes less engaged in the policies, processes and laws that govern us.

"Controversy" isn't the real problem. Network front offices love it when one group or another protests sexy babes in bikinis peddling beer brands, or violent video games in which the highest body count wins. That builds buzz.

The CBS policy represents the triumph of corporate self-interest over the public interest. This is the same CBS, after all, that yanked the Ronald Reagan miniseries recently when Republican bigwigs complained. As Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) noted this week, "These are the same executives at CBS who successfully lobbied this Congress to change the FCC rules on TV station ownership to their corporate advantage." CBS simply would rather not risk offending powerful people in Washington who decide such critical regulatory matters.

But try getting that issue into a 30-second spot for Super Bowl audiences.

Enjoy

doh! i pulled a major stupid. i accidentally left the garage door open when i came home last night, which is just an open invitation for someone to come in and take stuff.

well, someone did. i had my cd's stolen from my car, and they took my dad's cell from his car. it's my own fault, so i'm not all pissed or anything. just upset at myself for being careless, plus my dad's mad at me now for getting his phone stolen. he's not the kind of person who's able to just let go of things and move on, he gets worked up. and stays worked up. oh well.

they didn't take my nice stereo or anything else that would have been difficult to move, so we figure it was just some kid from the neighborhood. well, they're in for a big surprise then because my cd case is half christian stuff, and the rest is music the average teen has never even heard of. oh well. i hope they enjoy spiritual depth of charlie hall and the haunting icelandic melodies of sigur ros. i lost about $400 worth of cd's, so i'm not gonna get my cd collection rebuilt anytime soon. all i've got left are the cd's i didn't keep in my car, which are the ones i don't isten to. plus about 40 empty cd cases sitting here in my room. i wonder what i should do with them? funny thing is, i've actually been getting bored with my cd's lately and i've been listening to the radio a lot. of course, that doesn't mean i didn't want them anymore.

i could have sworn i closed the garage though. i always close the garage when i come home. meh.