An email from a friend about his trip to Moscow
I deleted all the negative things he had to say and just left the positive:

I’m up here in Idaho freezing my [tail] off for Jeremy’s wedding and I just thought I I’d send you a little note…You may delete this e-mail now. I love you Rick.

Matt

Why I Wished I Was Lutheran Again Last Wednesday
I walked into the sanctuary to see two large candles, one on each side of the large altar. After the acolyte has his way with them, the priest walks in and says, “The candles are lit. The table is set. And we have come to feast.” Then the handbell choir broke out into “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee.” I think I’m going to have lots of kids, so I can start my own handbell choir. Hm.

It’s posts like this that keep me wondering about Barlow
One, two, three and to the fo.

Vote

Egg nog: Delicious, creamy, holiday drink? Or disgusting mass of slime, with a terrible stench? Please submit your opinion!

St. Anne’s Pub on Moulin Rouge

Q: Some of the movies you review are R rated, or are movies with immodesty and sensuality and cesspoolian themes. Moulin Rouge is one example. How can you recommend these movies for Christian viewers?

Douglas Jones enters the fray: It’s understandable how some people might be bothered by Moulin Rouge, but the review makes the point that viewers have to look beyond the surfaces of this movie, and it suggests a frame for this. Good people can disagree about watching this particular movie, but the review makes the point that the overarching narrative is about the destruction of the ugliness and perversity of the Moulin Rouge underworld by means of sacrificial love. The Bible also contains scenes of immodesty, bad sensuality, and cesspoolian themes. But, like the movie, the point is to show how these things can be destroyed by the gospel. Since the whole movie is about the destruction of perversity, it does show plenty of symbolic ugliness (there is one five second scene of side nudity, no frontal anywhere). After all, the film is about the redemption of a harlot who meets the prodigal son (cesspools and all). The film is a hard sell for Christians, but that’s part of what makes the effort interesting. Christians tend to have a very weak manner of handling symbolic ugliness. A movie like Braveheart actually has frontal nudity and story-approved fornication by the Christian hero and still gets embraced as a grand Christian story. The Moulin Rouge story does the opposite and gets condemned. We have to learn how to read the whole narrative, not just atomistic bits. What does the whole story say about some ugliness, not just what it is out of context. Out of context, many parts of the Old Testament prophets would be condemned as obscene too.

Things I have forgotten lately

That I was supposed to practice music with Lynne’ today

Oh, I’m hungry. I forgot to eat.

How to spell “liquid” (but then I remembered)

Where my mom went… she’s not here

What month it is

That Thanksgiving is.. it’s tomorrow? Wow.

Well, I just remembered that I forgot to mop the floor

Umm… I forgot.

Sharpening Iron with Insults

Jesus loves you but everyone else thinks you’re a prick. You better ask forgiveness. Love you brother.

Music & Books

Often, I’m in the mood to put on some good, classical music and read an equally good, theological book. Or maybe some literature, but that’s beside the point. The point is, no matter what my mood, I just can’t multi-task like that. If I’m listening to music, I’m focusing on it. I study its rhythmic patterns, intervals, and structure, while enjoying its beauty; but I can’t do that if I’m reading a book at the same time. I’ll automatically block out either the content of the book or the music. And I still won’t be able to fully concentrate on the other, so the whole effort ends up being a waste. If I’m going to read, it has to be quiet. Music is one of the most distracting things (second only to juicy conversations going on between two other people who don’t know that I’m eavesdropping) to me. I need to be in the book I’m reading or the music I’m listening to. I can’t be inside both at once.

Paranoid

I don’t know what it is, but I’ve had this feeling all day that I’m wanted by the police. And more than that: I feel like terrorists and assassins are after me. Some guy in a big orange truck pulled out in front of me on the road. I imagined him rolling down his window and waving a pistol at me. Yeah. And it gets worse, but I’m not going to go on, in case children read this blog. Is there some kind of medication for this type of thing?

I hate…
I hate when I start things and never finish. It’s like when