You are currently browsing the monthly archive for November 2011.
I’m always nervous that if I don’t have some kind of system to keep track of what I’ve worn, I’ll end up wearing my favorite shirt eight times a month (something that Debbie tells me wouldn’t actually be a sin – but I’m thinking – wouldn’t people start commenting: Hey, do you have a thing about that shirt?).
In any case, to prevent this sort of thing from happening, I keep a document in my dresser and every day I write down some quick code for what I’m wearing (for example – “bl str sh” might mean “Blue striped short sleeve shirt”) and then I look up earlier in the list to see when I last wore that shirt, make sure it’s more than two weeks ago and cross out that instance.
Want proof? I just finished this page and have started another.
I’ll just note that the top left portion includes items from last Christmas.
So I’m curious – what do you do to make sure the horrible over-wearing of your favorite shirt doesn’t occur?
I don’t think I’ve publicly admitted it on this blog, but I’m a bit of a Star Trek fan. I’ve watched almost every episode of at least four of the shows and I’ve been to exactly one convention. Does that qualify me?
So recently my wife and I watched The Captains, (it’s instant viewing on Netflix) a documentary produced by William Shatner in which he interviewed all of the other Star Trek captains.
It was actually quite interesting.
The most intriguing part was a section in which he asked all of them about the personal cost of being cast in the role. In it we learned that four of the actors who played the Captains were divorced, two of the divorces were at least indirect results of being actors on science fiction television and one (Kate Mulgrew) said that her kids resented her role in Star Trek and were ‘dripping contempt’ for the show.
And then (at 58:55) Mr. Shatner asks Avery Brooks (Deep Space Nine – Benjamin Sisko) about his family life during the show and what follows is two minutes of . . . well, I would call it glorious incoherence.
How would you describe it? I’ve taken the time to transcribe it – here it is:
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Shatner: Did you lose family time?
Brooks: Of course!
Shatner: Did it hurt?
Brooks: Of course!
Shatner: But how much harm was suffered -
Brooks: Well, you’d have to ask them, I mean, because the attendant, the attendant of – of the movement of time, y’know for us all, y’know, there-there it is, there – the one – the one hand or the other. I mean who knows, therefore, y’know, in retrospect, y’know. I mean, you can do it that way: say I should have done this as opposed, y’know, I mean, who knows? I mean so – so – so I hold fast to what I’ve chosen to do and I’m not apologizing for that. But the attendant toll taken on family and all of that is, that’s – that’s it.
Shatner: What do you mean, ‘that’s it’? That’s profound. That was terrible.
Brooks: It’s true, baby.
Shatner: That was terrible.
Brooks: Well, it’s not terrible or not terrible, it’s true. It’s true.
Shatner: Well, it’s true, you suffered.
Brooks: It’s true, they suffered.
Shatner: You suffered.
Brooks: It’s true-
Shatner: But you suffered as well.
Brooks: Well, watch -
Shatner: Well, if they suffered, you suffered.
Brooks: Watch what I’m saying to you.
Shatner: I’m listening.
Brooks: It’s true. It’s not terrible or not. It’s true. You know, the toll – the toll on people, you can’t get it back. I mean, no matter what. I mean, whether-whether the decision to make, y’know, to do the thing or not to do a thing – you know what I’m talking about?
Shatner: Yes, I do. Did you discuss this with Vicki like this or did you -
Brooks: She knows, of course! I’ll move. Whether we survive is still accident, isn’t it? Whether we survive all of the sum of who we are -
Shatner: The cumulative effects of life.
Brooks: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’ve got to live it, baby. Like you. What’s different?
Shatner: The same.
Brooks: Hmmm.
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Hmmm, indeed.
And for the record, Avery has been married to Vicki since 1976.
No matter how long you wait to do the laundry, you’ll always have that first thing to put in the bin after you’ve started it. You’ll be tempted to think, “If only I’d waited!”, but don’t.
This might apply to other areas of your life, as well.
As the story goes the popularity of the movie “The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button” did not go unnoticed by the other Hollywood studios. The odd tale showed Benjamin throughout the course of his life growing backwards – from old to young.
One competing studio actually worked on a similar concept, this one where a man went through his whole life looking like he was a balding man of sixty three. But studio execs quashed the project saying there was “no character change” and that the protagonist was “too static”.
In the end the original concept photography was sold an used as another on-line education grant advertisement:
When I was quite young I used to watch the animated superhero show ‘Underdog’.
I will say that as a young child I found some of the scenes to be quite scary and sobering and none were more frightening to me than the episode called “The Phoney-Booths” in which the evil Simon Bar Sinister created phone booths that would transform normal people into slaves (with odd siren-like lights on their heads) who would do whatever evil he wanted them to.
And when Underdog fell into the trap and became (temporarily!) evil himself, the seven year old me found it very disturbing.
All that to say that when I see this internet add on the yahoo website:
. . . it kind of freaks me out a little bit. I’m pretty sure that’s not what the marketers were going for.
One of the most interesting thing about the Gospel as God’s Plan for Our Salvation is that in order for it to work, it required great evil – great Sin – to happen.
