filming away a fortune and eyebrows

"$200 million down the drain" was the comment a good friend of mine made today about the new Transformers movie. the film made $60.6 million on its opening day and for something described by critics as "loud, tedious and 147 minutes way too long", i agree that it's a lot of money wasted.

what i'm now wondering is: if 'Revenge of the fallen' was actually fantastic, would we still consider all that money to be a waste? how do we justify spending 200 million dollars on our own entertainment?

now i'm by no means a soldier for making poverty history. i'm as selfish and greedy as the next person so i'm not exempting myself from this accusation. 

isn't there something fundamentally wrong with us when we can spend billions of dollars on movies and television every year and not spare a cent of that money for people who can't even afford to eat? how can we sit in the cinema with a clear conscience as we watch the funds that could feed millions be acted away in front of us? there are people in the world starving for our entertainment. 

so i'm setting myself a challenge. i'm not sure if it's the best way to respond but it's all i've got. for every dollar i spend on entertainment each week (eg cinema, buying dvds & music etc) i'll put $1 aside to be donated to a charity (yet to be chosen) at the end of the year. it will be interesting to see how much money i spend on my own entertaiment. i shall keep you posted

on a totally different note, how weird are eyebrows?! i've never really realised before! random bits of hair in the middle of your face. i'd love to know what God's purpose for eyebrows is. i suppose it has something to do with sweat. man we are funny looking. i'm glad we all have eyebrows because i'd be freaking out if i was the only person with random strips of hair on my face.

thats all for now. trying to get as much sleep as possible this weekend. grace be with you all :D

diligent hands

'the hand of the diligent will rule, but the lazy man will be put to forced labor' Proverbs 12:24

Now that the intense pressure of english assesment has been lifted, i have the opportunity to blog without feeling guilty for wasting precious essay-writing time. as i think about the way i have employed my time over previous weeks, i realise my tendancy to procrastinate has festered into a sinful laziness. i spend too much of my time being idle and disregard the importance of working faithfully in the role God has put me in at the present.

In proverbs 31 we see that a woman of noble character "does not eat the bread of idleness" (v27). In 2 thessalonians 3:6, Pauls warns the christians "to keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you received from us." My idleness and procrastination is something i need to ask God to help me change. My friend Cathy reminded me the other day of the importance of having 'diligent hands'. i think as christian students, this is one area where most of us are at fault. hmm...more on this topic in the weeks to come.

now to random trivial information. i have discovered a few things in the last couple of days:

1. although shampoo smells delightful, it happens to taste like evil in foamy form. no more accidental mouthfuls. ever.

2. i am not skilled enough to eat noodles with chopsticks and in the future will choose the lesser humiliation of using a fork in order to avoid the much greater humiliation of spilling honey soy chicken everywhere.

3. table 17 is gone. it took me 6 weeks to notice

4. its nearly july!!! the year is half over and im cheering. also, i have memorised the pledge of allegiance especially for another independance day beth has to spend with people who don't think its a big deal. thank you My Girl.

one last thing before i stop assaulting your reading eyes. in a few weeks we celebrate the 500th birthday of a brilliant and controversial thologian, John Calvin. i'm positng a countdown. 

Get the John Calvin birthday clock at Calvin 500

thats all for now. grace and peace be with you all :D

no offense...

i'm on a bit of a typing roll (bad expression, im not really engaged in any sort of rolling motion) and decided to share with you something that i find fairly laughable.

and that is, the expression "no offense". it seems that any comment, no matter how inappropriate or insulting, can be made as long as it is preceded by this expression.

"no offense, but you smell like foot"

what am i suppose to say to that? "oh no worries, i'm not offended, i happen to adore the aroma of foot"

i mean, really, how am i not supposed to take offense at a comment like that? saying "no offense" doesn't change the fact that what you're saying is, in essence, offensive. it doesn't make sense. you might as well be saying, "now i know the sun doesn't exist, but it's really really bright outside"

no offense, but i think thats a bit wrong

tardis travels part 1

I think one of the coolest things about being a Doctor Who fan is the way it makes me feel like I'm a history buff. I mean, who better to get your information from than someone who has actually been back in time?

For example, as we were studying the cities of Vesuvius in my ancient history class, I made frequent reference to "that time the Doctor went to Pompeii in A.D 79".  I had thorough knowledge of the architecture, the clothing, and even the colloquial language of the exact time period we were studying. i guess the problems started to arise when we were talking about the actual eruption. my classmates couldn't quite believe me that it was caused by aliens livng inside the volcano....

stupid humans

one of the ridiculous things about humanity is our tendancy to take credit for things when they are going great but when they take a turn for the worse, immediately point the finger at someone else.

i was listening to matt chandler this morning and he made the point that thousands of planes take off and land safely every day and no-one thanks God for it but when one plane crashes and people die, we shake our fists at the sky and say "how could a loving God do such a thing!".

Seriously, we ignore God and trod all over his planet and do whatever we want and he still gives us air to breathe and food to eat and friends to enjoy. what right have we to blame him for anything? how ridiculous are we who want to ascribe greatness to ourselves?

blogging

blogging is an interesting phenomenon. why do you do it? why am i doing it? why are you even reading this? (assuming that someone is, and i'm not merely typing to an empty void...that'd be lame.)

i think the answer for most of us is that there is something strangely thrilling about baring one's soul to a computer screen in the hope that someone will read it and label us in their mind as an interesting person. 

is a blog an accurate representation of a person's heart? undoubtedly we will tend to only type things about ourselves that we want others to know. so what is actually in our hearts, our true attitudes and desires may, more often then not, remain concealed. ...