Serenity

When I saw Batman in the theater there was a preview for a movie called Serenity. I’d heard of the director (Joss Whedon) before, because he writes a comic that I like called Astonishing X-men (he also created Buffy the Vampire Slayer), so, I was intrigued.

Turns out that the movie is based on a TV series by Mr. Whedon called Firefly. I had heard rumblings on the internet about Firefly. Apparently people dig it, and the critics liked it, but it got cancelled during it’s first season.

Like any responsible American would do I decided to investigate, so I ordered up the DVD’s on Blockbuster Online. I’ve watched the first seven episodes and guess what. It’s good. It’s a space western about a group of smuggler types. I like it a lot. Too bad it got cancelled. Hopefully hype from DVD sales, and the movie will be enough to warrant a second season.

At least if it doesn’t work out I still have the new Battlestar Galactica (best show on TV by the way).

Mere Mortal

"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible Gods and Goddesses. To remember that the most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship.

All day long we are in some degree, helping each other to one or another of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal."
- C.S. Lewis (not a Mormon)

Skydiving

At church today, someone gave a talk on obedience. He mentioned something about parachuting. I don’t remember exactly what he said, because as soon as he mentioned it I started thinking about how parachuting relates to the atonement.

When you jump out of an airplane you fall. It doesn’t matter whether you are aware that you’re falling, or if you choose to believe you are falling. The truth is that you are falling, and when you hit the ground you will die. You cannot fly, and you have no ability to slow your decent. You are powerless, by yourself, to prevent your death.

Fortunately for you, you have a parachute, but merely recognizing that your parachute has the power to save you will not end your plight. No amount of confession of your helplessness can save you. Recognition of your predicament is only the first step you will need to take if you want to live.

To save yourself you will have to act. All it takes is one simple pull of a ripcord, and your parachute will deploy, but even after the ‘chute is deployed are you safe? No, there are many things that can still go wrong. A gust of wind can blow you off course, and perhaps send you off to land on hazardous terrain, but if you keep your wits about you, you have the ability to correct your course. Again you have been required to act.

It is also possible for you to endanger yourself through your own carelessness, or even willful sabotage of your life-saving parachute. What if you were to take a knife to one of the ropes that tether you to your ‘chute. Sure it would be a terrible idea, but what if you did it anyway? You’re parachute would not be able to catch enough air to safely let you down. You would hit the ground hard, and it wouldn’t be very fun. You’d probably die.

Maybe you don’t want to actually cut through the rope, but it’s fun to just cut it a little bit? You could use a butter knife. Than you’d be able to slash at your rope, and yet it would stay attached, what harm could a little slashing do? It’s only a butter knife, and besides, all of this falling business is a little boring. You need a little fun, a little excitement. You know when to stop. You’d still be safe, or would you? If you kept at it long enough you still might cut through the rope, and send yourself plummeting to your doom. The parachute would be powerless to help you. You would have done it of your own will, and choosing.

Fortunately again, there’s always the backup ‘chute, or you can always just decide that cutting the ropes isn’t such a good idea, and you can stop doing it.

If you are prepared, and you use the parachute that has been given to you. Which parachute is free by the way, you can land safely. Have you saved yourself? No, you have been saved by the parachute. The parachute did the work, all you did was enable it, you would never have been able to survive without it.

We are fortunate that we have an infinite supply of parachutes, and we have been given the instructions on how to use them safely. There are people who know how to use them, and can help us. We have to use a good parachute though. One with holes in it will hardly do, and we have to obey the safety rules. They may seem restrictive, but they are in place to help us arrive safely on the ground, and we have help. We have been promised that there will be no winds, or any other adverse conditions that will be more powerful than we are able to overcome. We are even blessed, from time to time, with favorable winds that blow us to the best landing spots, and make our descent all the more enjoyable on the way.

I love skydiving, and I love my parachute. Wish me a happy landing.

Hulk Out

In an earlier entry I mentioned Ben’s new habit of vigorously shaking as a way to voice his disapproval. The other day we found out just exactly what he’s doing. He started doing it for no reason, and he told his Mom that he’s turning into the Hulk. Sometimes he’ll even do it on command now. He did it earlier today, complete with muscles flexing and everything. I think I hurt myself from laughing so hard.

Size Matters

Speaking of laughing until it hurts. My Mom told us about a time this weekend when she changed Ben’s diaper. He pointed to his twig and berries, and proudly declared “That’s my penis.”

“Yes it is.” My Mom observantly replied.

“ It’s a big one.” He proclaimed.

I swear I didn’t teach him to say that.

I wanna be Rich… mond!

I had a job interview with Richmond American Homes today. I thought I did well, but you can never tell with these people. If I was them I’d hire me :] Hopefully I’ll hear back from them soon.

Who’s your Daddy?

It was Father’s Day today. Since I’m a Dad, that means that I got stuff. I got two ties, one’s blue with a floral print. The other is blue with those diagonal stripes that ties often have. I also got a shirt that says “Best Dad Hands Down!”, and it has Jared and Ben’s handprints on it, thus the “Hands Down”. Then I got “The Neverending Story” and “The Dark Crystal” on DVD. Both are great movies that I really dug when I was a youngling.

Batman Begins (to rock!)

I saw “Batman Begins” a couple of days ago. It was righteous! The previous Batman movies pale by comparison. In fact, they no longer exist as far as I’m concerned. This is THE Batman movie. I’m not a film critic, so I’m not going to try to sound smart by describing the great performances, and the subtext, and all that mumbo-jumbo. I just like to say that it was good.

Zombies are cool.

I started reading a comic book called “Walking Dead”. Robert Kirkman writes it, so I checked it out, because I really like “Invincible”, which he also writes. It’s about zombies. It’s a lot like a zombie movie, except it’s much more epic, because it’s a comic, and it can go on forever, unlike movies which inevitably come to an end. It’s really good, but I still like “Invincible” better.

Lark Boy and Shava Girl

I took Ben to see “Shark Boy and Lava Girl” yesterday. He liked it a lot. The rest of the day he kept telling me that he wanted to watch it again. He even sat through the whole thing. When he saw “Robots” in the theater he got bored towards the end, and started messing around, and getting out of his seat, but this time he didn’t.

Yellow Turtle

Tonight I read Ben an alphabet book for his bedtime story. I read the T page, “T is for turtle a fellow who’s slow.” I was reading about umbrellas on the next page when Ben interrupted to say “He not leddow. He’s gween.” (He’s not yellow. He’s green.)

Who da man?

About 6 months ago is when Ben stopped saying “Iname!” pronounced eye-na-mee. At least I think that’s how it’s pronounced, no-one knows for sure really. He used to say it whenever he got in trouble. After you would tell him that he’s not allowed to do whatever he was doing he would yell “Iname!” to voice his protest at being corrected. What he meant by it is anyone’s guess. He could have been trying to say “Be nice to me!”, or it did sound a little like “I’m the man!”. Sometimes Doug or I would argue with him. This is how it would go.

“Ben get down from there.”

“Iname!”

“No, I’m the man.”

Even more emphatically “INAME!”

“No, I’m the man.”

“INAMEEE!!!”

We still don’t know what it meant, and now that he’s a little easier to understand, he’s given up on trying to say whatever it was that he was saying. Maybe he thinks that we finally got the point.

His new thing is to look you dead in the eye, with a perfectly straight look on his face, and the he shakes his head really fast, but very subtly. The movement is so small that you can barely notice it. It’s kind of like he’s shivering. Apparently in his world this is a good way to voice displeasure, and in a way he’s right, but that’s my fault. See, instead of chastising him like I would for having a verbal outburst or for hitting something, I laugh at him. Yes, I laugh. I can’t help it. I try to keep a straight face. I even try to pretend that the face shaking makes me angry, but in the end I burst out with laughter, and then he laughs, and we’re both laughing, and I’m saying to him “Wait, aren’t you supposed to be in trouble?”

No More Revenge

I finished the Revenge of the Sith novel today. It started out really good, but about a fourth of the way through it downgrades to just OK. I still liked it a lot though. Between the novel and the movie I’d have to say that I prefer the movie, but the novel makes excellent supplemental material.

If I was Invincible, and Other Grievous Yarns

I picked up a new comic book called “Invincible” by Robert Kirkman. It is too good. The last thing I need right now is another comic to have to buy every month. I must be up to around 20 by now. I convinced Doug to give it a try, and shockingly enough he agrees that it’s great. He was skeptical at first, but the kid knows a good comic when he reads one, so he came around after he read it.
I’ve also been reading the novelization of Star Wars episode III: Revenge of the Sith. It’s crazy good. After watching the movie I knew that I needed to get inside Anakin’s head to be able to really appreciate what happened to him, so I thought I’d try the book. Boy am I glad I did. The book explains the motives and personalities of the characters in ways that just aren’t possible in a visual medium like movies. The character development really makes it great, especially with Anakin.

Please Bless Jared, and Jared, and Jared.

Ben has been (notice I didn’t say Ben’s been?) saying his night time prayers on his own lately. They usually go something like this “Mommy, Daddy, Jaiwed (Jared), Jaiwed, Babiel (Gabriel), Keddy (Kelly), Denny (Kenny), Babiel, Jake, Emma, Dana (Loredana), Chewyl (Cheryl), Doug, Keddy, Jake, umm Jaiwed, Amen.”
He used to say stuff like TV, and Spiderman. At least he has a little better priorities now

1,2,5,9

Ben finally counted to 10 yesterday without messing up. I’ve been torturing myself by reading him the same book about counting nearly every night for what seems like months. It’s good to know that my hard work has paid off.

Blog-head

OK, so I've been getting into this Blog thing. I’ve posted a few times and I hope to keep posting. But I couldn’t just be happy with posting could I? Nope I gotta try to mess with the HTML code, or whatever code the Blog template uses, to customize things. Man that Blog code can be finicky. Especially when you don’t know what it all means, but being the credit to cognitive learning that I am I’ve figured it out. So now I have a link to another Blog of mine which will contain lists of all my favorite things of a pop-culture variety. Hopefully I will enjoy it, as I’m likely to be the only who cares.

Nubian Princess

Kelly the yellow one with the pointy things is called a Naboo Starfighter. Yer welcome.

A Roll’s a Roll.

Jared rolled over for the first time yesterday. He’s been holding his head and chest up off the ground when he lies on his stomach. This morning I was lying in bed, and he managed to prop his head up and look at me from his basinet. All the more impressive considering that his basinet lies perpendicular to the bed with his feet closest to the bed, so he not only had to get his head high enough to see me, he had to turn it all the way around. Not Exorsist style head turning, of course. He had to twist his body around a little bit too.

Benglish. or Captain Kevin.

Ben’s been (Ben’s been, that sounds funny), watching Peter Pan lately. Today he told me that the crocodile (I only recognized the word as crocodile due to my vast experience in the art of Ben-speak) is going to eat Kevin. It amazes me that I was able to decipher what he actually meant at all. It sounded something like this “Cackendier is coming eat Kevin". Keeping in mind that I’m being generous with his pronunciation of “Kevin”. Kevin, by the way, means Captain. I don’t know if he can’t pronounce Captain, or if he thinks the guy’s name really is Kevin. Either way it’s pretty funny if you ask me.

It's somewhere in Pennsylvania.

Mental note: Next time you have sugarless candy, be sure to chase it with a shot of Pepto.

Does Sponge-Bob get cavities?

I spaced out today when I was getting Ben ready for bed. I accidentally gave him my toothbrush with the grown-up toothpaste, instead of his Elmo toothbrush with the kids toothpaste.

As soon as that stuff hit his tongue he made a funny “this is really gross”, face. He was spitting toothpaste, and looking at the toothbrush like, “what is this junk?”. Then he looked at me and said, “I want Sponge-Bob toothpaste”. I could hardly contain my laughter as I realized my mistake, and to make matters worse he told me, as I prepared his toothbrush, “I no like that toothpaste. It’s hot.” So funny.