A important message

There is a rule in English grammar that concerns the word 'a'. Basically when you are using the word 'a', if the word that follows it starts with a vowel (a,e,i,o,u), then you use the word 'an'. Otherwise, you can stick with 'a'. It is a fairly simple rule. Now English, being the ornery cuss that it is, decided to throw in a twist. Sometimes when the word following 'a' starts with an 'h', the word 'an' is used instead. That is why it is correct to say "it is an honour to meet a hockey player". Unless you hate hockey players, in which case you would never say that anyway. All things considered, it is quite a minor twist on a simple rule, almost as though English was just adding a token twist and not going for anything to hard, such as the 'i' before 'e' rue ('i' before 'e', except after 'c', or when sounding long 'a' as in 'neighbour' or 'weigh', or on holidays or weekends and all throughout May, and you'll always be wrong no matter WHAT you say. Now that's a tough rule).
However (now I am super conscious of when I am using 'h' words), people are not satisfied with that simplicity. They have to overthink it and get it wrong, consistently. I am constantly assaulted with the following phrase: "an historic", as in "the election of Barack Obama is an historic ocassion for the world because apparently nowhere in the world has a minority of any kind ever had any sort of power and the USA is the first to do it (there certainly have never been any women leaders because in the USA women have been considered inferior and unelectable, so women never rule a country, especially in a democracy...SHUT UP BRITAIN!)" Sorry.
But say the word "history". Go on, say it aloud to yourself. "History." "History". "History". Unless you are British (where women are never elected to lead because the USA hasn't had a female president yet!), you are saying the 'h' very clearly when you say 'history', or 'historical', or 'historocity', or any variation thereof. So WHY DO PEOPLE USE 'AN' IN FRONT OF IT!!!
Seriously, it drives me nuts! It is one of those things that people seem to do because it makes them sound scholarly, so they think. But they are wrong, 'history' does not need 'an'. It is not a vowel. Because the 'h' in 'history' is softer than the 'h' in 'hockey', it becomes lost if you say 'an historical'. The 'an' makes it 'an istorical', and 'istorical' is not a word unless you are British (we refuse to acknowledge the existence of Margeret Thatcher - she was a crazy mass delusion brought on by living in Britain and not seeing the sun more than a couple of times a decade).
It wouldn't surprise me if I was 'technically' wrong, the 'an historical' is accepted as correct, but just because everyone does it does not mean it is correct.
There, I feel better.

Top 250: #82

2001: A Space Odyssey

Plot Overview: "Mankind finds a mysterious, obviously artificial, artifact buried on the moon and, with the intelligent computer HAL, sets off on a quest." Straight from the IMDB website.

Surprisingly, I had trouble finding this movie to rent. I had to go to four separate video stores before I found a copy to rent. There was one to buy for twenty bucks at a Roger’s, but I have not seen this before, so I didn’t want to spend that much money on it and then not like it. I figured this is probably one of the best known of the top 250, so it should have been easier to find, but alas, I was wrong. And now we begin!

Camera man to director: "Sorry Kubrick, I left the lenscap on. Should we go back and reshoot it?" Director to Cameraman: "Nah, let’s just put up a drawn picture of a lion. That’ll be fine."

Is it sad that this music, arguably the most famous music from a movie (perhaps besides Star Wars) makes me think of an ad for the lottery?

Five minutes in and we finally start the movie!

OOOH! MONKEY!

Also, wild pigs. With MONKEYS!

Actually, just guys in MONKEY SUITS! And yet, still exciting.

Wow, they’re angry, greedy, loud and violent monkeys. I can see why people think we evolved from them.

Charleton Heston is going to show up soon, I can just feel it ("What, the statue of liberty? It was Earth all along!")

Early rap music! Complete with early rap dance!

Yay, more black screen!

Aww. The leopard and the zebra are friends. They’re laying down together, though why the leopard gets to lay on the zebra’s neck is beyond me. Looks uncomfortable. But they’re the best of friends, I can tell.

"Hey, where’d this choir come from? Keep it down, we’re trying to sleep!"

Yeah, I’d be angry too if someone left their giant black slab in my yard. That thing doesn’t look stable.

"I’m gonna touch it. No, I’m kidding. Wait, I’m gonna touch it. No, no, maybe not. This time I’m really gonna touch it guys, I swear!"

"Hmm, feels oddly smooth. The next obvious step is to taste it. Mmmm, black slab, just like momma used to make."

Aaaaaannnnnd they’re gone.

Aaaaaannnnnd they’re back.

Ever since the monkeys were dancing around, I’ve had "Do The Hustle" running through my head.

"Wait a second...if I pick up this bone...and swing it around...it can be a tool...that I can use...to...become the new chief of the monkeys. Take that old monkey chief!"

Wait, so they were vegetarian until they realised that they could kill the pigs with bones? The fact that they were twice their size and way stronger hadn’t been enough. They needed weapons.

Aww, their first civil war. And it’s all thanks to the giant black slab.

"Fine, take your stupid watering hole. We don’t want to drink there anyway, now that you’ve run through it. And killed one of us basically in it."

He’s the only passenger on a civilian passenger space-plane. How much was his ticket? Also, the stewardess is wearing a turban. Also also the pilots have been squished at the sides of the screen. Looks painful.

To get on the space station, you have to state your name, surname first, followed by Christian name and initial. What if you don’t have a middle name? There’s no provision mentioned for that.

You’re almost on the moon, talking to her on the fancy video phone. You don’t have to yell, she won’t hear you any better!

Amazing. In the future, all women wear skirts, except those who wear dresses. All above the knee, of course. And with heels. And, in one case, fishnet stockings. Yay, progress!

Ah, these women are wearing pants. And turbans. The aerospace industry has gotten more random in the future.

"Zero Gravity Toilet: Please read instructions before use." Yes, for the sake of us all, please do.

Wow, bad fashion has landed on the moon. It’s like looking at a train wreck with a tie.

They really were progressive. In a group of twelve people, there are TWO token women. They’re all white, of course, but c’mon – TWO WOMEN!

Wearing skirts and heels, of course.

Uh-oh, that choir’s back. Shoo, shoo!

Director: "Okay, you’re walking on the moon, where there’s no gravity. So make sure to walk the same speed as usual, but put your feet down heavier than normal. And lean back slightly."

What the...? How did the monkeys get that thing way up on the moon?

"Okay, I’ve touched it. Now...dang. My helmet’s in the way. I can’t taste it."

"Do the hustle. Dah da da da da-da da da dah..."

The computer is named HAL. As in HAL Johnson? Somewhere on another ship, there’s a JOANNE McLeod computer too. Those are two fit ships.

Ooh, punch cards for the computer. Nice.

Seriously guys, air has been leaking out of something for like five minutes. You really need to check that out.

Never mind, it stopped.

HAL just stares at them as they leave. Of course, he has no eyelids...

Apparently computers in the future can lip read.

There’s an intermission. Followed by more black and more creepy music. That cameraman needs to be fired.

You rescued him by smacking him in the head with a robot arm and then grabbing his neck in a pincer? Next, just let him float away in space. It will be kinder.

"You know, if I squeeze just a little bit, I could pop his head right off....Nah...."

Huh. The computer went crazy and took over the ship. That can’t be good. Now he’s killed three people. Yep, definitely not good.

Apparently to survive in a vacuum you have to squeeze your eyes shut really tight.

He’s halfway to Jupiter and he’s trying to shut down the computer that runs the ship. How’s he supposed to get home?

Wait, this computer went online in 1992? Oh great, that means there’s a crazy computer out there somewhere, just waiting for his chance to take over the world. Actually, that’s not too surprising.

How did the choir beat him to Jupiter?

Aaah! The Death Star is orbiting Jupiter, which, oddly enough, has seem to have lost its rings.

"He’s gone to plaid!"

He makes it to Jupiter, goes through some crazy space-time warp, and ends up in a Victorian style bedroom (albeit with futuristic floor tiles).

Watch out, it’s DARTH VADER! Without his HELMET! And WEARING a WIG!

That’s not Darth Vader. It’s Steve Martin in a bathrobe!

That’s the second biggest foetus I’ve ever seen! And it’s orbiting the Earth. Everyone run for it!

The events and people in this movie are purely fictitious and any similarities to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Except for the monkeys. That part totally happened.

Summary: I liked it. I thought it might be a, well, stupid movie, but it was actually quite interesting. Kubrick, the director, did a good job of telling the story visually - in two-and-a-half hours of film time, there is something like forty minutes of dialogue. The rest is told with pictures and music. A few parts were a bit overdrawn, but all in all, a solid film. And there are many philosophical areas that could be examined, trying to determine what it all meant, but I don't feel like it right now. The giant foetus was creepy looking, that much I will say.

Also, I updated Grasp the Nettle today.

En-croy-AH-bluh

I'm not the first person to blog about this, and I won't be the last, but I am going to add my voice to this...travesty (?)...yeah, that's probably a good word.
Carleton University in Ottawa has decided to stop its cystic fibrosis charity drive because the disease is not "inclusive" enough. Read about it here. Or here. Or here. Or even here.
Apparently they were led to believe that CF affects only white people, and thus was not inclusive enough. My first question is, what disease is inclusive enough? Is prostate cancer too exlusive because it does not affect women? Is breast cancer to exclusive because it affects primarily women?
Second, what if the disease had only affected black people, or Asians? Would they have cancelled the fundraising then? I somehow have my doubts. This actually makes me a bit angry. I'm all for not excluding people, but there are limits, for criminy's sake.
Some of the people on the student council who made this decision claimed that it was largely because they had talked about rotating the charity for which they raised funds. That could be, but then why was the other issue mentioned at all? Sounds kind of fishy to me.
Due to the outcry, CTV is reporting that they have changed their minds and will support the CF charity after all.
Good.
Ridiculous...mutter mutter...PC garbage...grumble mutter...gah

I'm so very confused

So I checked to see if anyone had commented on my last post, and all it said was "News is coming. Maybe tomorrow." I had no idea what news it was talking about, and it was my own blog. I'm very mysterious.
I finally did it. I quit my job. One of them anyway. I finally decided that working six days a week was too much. I spent too much time being exhausted and having no energy. Of course, I am still going to work at both jobs for the next month and a half, but after that, it is full time at one, no time a 'tother. Also, I get a twelve day vacation in there as well, which is exciting.
Oh yeah, the job I'm keeping is at the paint store. As of February first-ish I am a paint man full time!

Authorised

News is coming. Maybe tomorrow. Now go to bed.

I Am Fortune's Fool

I just watched Romeo + Juliet again, and I'm always surprised at how angry it makes me every time. There are so many little moments where the tragedy can be averted but the timing is always off by seconds. The focal point of my rage is the messenger missing Romeo by mere seconds - Romeo passes the message telling him that Juliet is actually alive but never receives it! And yet, for all that, I never want it to actually change. I really do not think that Shakespeare's play would still be known if he had kept them alive in the end. How many times do people complain about movies needing to have happy endings? I know it makes me roll my eyes often (not every time). We all like happy endings, but sometimes the tragedy has more to say to life than the happy ending.
As for the version of the story I watched, specifically Baz Luhrmann's version starring DiCaprio and Claire Danes, I think it was a brilliant move. I have no problems with the classics and with staging it in the 1600s or whenever it was 'originally' set. But in many ways, updating the visuals made the story more accesible, made the ideas more sensible to a modern mind. To suggest that the only context in which it works is its original context is not a good suggestion because the world has changed. When Shakespeare wrote it, he wrote it in modern context for him. He did not write a story set in Roman times, but in a time that was current for him and his audience. So what is wrong with updating it so that it fits a current context for 'modern' audiences? I say nothing. If I saw DiCaprio running around in bloomers, holding a sword, I would probably spend my time laughing and/or rolling my eyes, and never watching again.
Kind of makes me wonder what the fascination with the King James Version of the Bible is.

So close

I had a whole odd little post half-written out. And then the more I wrote, the more stupid I realised it was. So instead, I just updated Thunderfunk the Superchicken at Nettle. It's better this way. Trust me.

Achy breaky everything

We had our first big snowfall of the season starting late on Saturday night (when it was more rain than snow) and continuing until late Sunday morning. Of course, it was the first Sunday I had worked in a couple of months, and I have not been shown how to use the snowblower, and everything had to be clear before church, so I ended up being at work by six so I could spend the next three and a half hours shovelling by hand an entire long driveway and four entrances to the church. Now I am sore and determined to learn how to use that bloody snow blower. Even the palms of my hands are sore. I don't know how that works, but they are.
The real annoying part is I hadn't bothered to worry about the snowblower because I had checked the weather a few times and it had never said it was going to snow. Boy will it be nice when we can control the weather. And the birds.
Anyway, I updated Grasp the Nettle again. Enjoy.

Top 250: #87

The Great Escape

Plot Overview: A group of POWs near the end of WWII devise a plan to escape through a tunnel.

I picked this movie up at Superstore in a bargain bin. I had actually picked out another movie that I wanted instead, but I put it down to look at what else was available, and someone then picked it up and walked away. The Great Escape was my second choice.

Having now watched this movie, I can see why it is a classic. There are many characters in this movie, but unlike some films I found it easy to keep the characters straight and to know who was doing what and why.

It's weird, but I find I don't have much to say about the film. I probalby should have kept notes while I watched it, like I usually do for this sort of thing. Plus, I'm tired and sore. But I do find it interesting that one of the main characters later went on to play John Hammond (the old dude with the beard) in Jurrasic Park, and he also directed Gandhi in 1982, which is currently at #162 on the list. I wonder if there are any other movies on the list that were directed by actors who also appear as actors in movies on the list. I bet Clint Eastwood has a director and actor credit on the list. Yup - Million Dollar Baby and Unforgiven.

Anyway, The Great Escape actually surprised me at the end due to how many of the characters get caught or killed, but that is accurate to real life, on which the story is based, which I did not know.

Steve McQueen shows his cool, of course. He was a pretty good motorcycle rider and he got to show that off a bit here, which was cool. Later, he died of lung cancer. Sad.

I was surprised at the main music theme because I knew the music very well from other movies. It is a song that usually plays over montages, especially when characters are preparing weapons for a fight. You would probably recognise it if you heard it.

Early in the movie, the warden of the prison camp says that the camp was built to be unescapable, and that they have gathered all of the prisoners who were most notorious for escaping from POW camps (obviously only to be recaptured later). Later he seems surprised that some of them escaped. No wonder Germany lost the war.

Something else that I enjoyed about the movie was seeing things that were familiar to me because I lived in Germany. I miss it there.

Well, hopefully I'll get to more movies from the list soon.

Nettle

Regular as...clockwork I am I am.

Being 40 feet in the air on a swaying lift makes a guy think

I want to get married. I want to get married so bad sometimes that I can almost taste it. It's a fruity taste with just a hint of mint to make things go down smooth. But today I came to a realisation - that cannot be my goal.
You see, for much of my life I have basically found myself unable to make any sort of definite plan for the future because I was essentially waiting for marriage so that I could go on to life from there. I guess I felt like I wasn't really living life until then. I could probably go on for hours about reasons for that, but for now suffice it to say that any time I thought of the future, getting married was the real catalyst for any significant plans.
And then, out of nowhere, I realised that such a thought left me spinning my tires. And while spinning tires can be fun - doing a big smoky burnout is always cool - it ultimately means I am not going anywhere. Truthfully, I have known that for a long time, but this is different. I think that with everything that has happened in my life in the past year I have been lead to a place where the truth of the realisation to finally penetrate my thick skull, through my brain and all the way to the heart.
Marriage is great, but it cannot be the goal in and of itself, at least not for me. It takes my focus away from my passions and my dreams. It leaves me seeking love and completion in marriage and only in marriage. It is as though I cannot be a complete person unless I am married. The problem with that line of thinking is that if I am not a complete person outside of marriage, then I will not be a complete person inside of marriage. Marriage will enrich and change that fullness, but it will not make it happen.
So now...I have no idea what to do. Part of me wishes that everything was suddenly clear, that my entire life was now laid out for me, but that is not the case. For now, I am just happy that I have removed something that was blocking me from even contemplating the path. I have already had some ideas pop into my mind that I had never allowed myself to consider before, and that is exciting. I guess I will have to see where it all leads.
But in the meantime I should get some sleep. I work tomorrow.

The author speaks

I updated Fools of us All on Grasp the Nettle today. I hope you're enjoying the story. I know I am!

How to make the devil smile

The whole problem with the creation vs. evolution debate is that it is a question with no real importance. The only result of any debate is anger and division.
Here's why I say that - if we really believe that God created the world, then why does it matter how he did it? He could have done it in six days, in six minutes, in six hour, in six billion years. He's God. He does it how he wants to do it. And if someone were to ever prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that evolution is complete fact, then how does that affect God? It doesn't. It would merely highlight an aspect of his character, namely that he is a planner; everything he does has a purpose and a plan and he is in charge of it all. In my mind it is almost more impressive if he did take that much time to evolve things to the level we see them today. If you think about the amount of details that had to go right, the exact perfection of the genetic mutations so that one species dominated over another is astounding. Why couldn't God do that as an example to us of how much care he has for his creation.
This 'debate' is a microcosm of a larger science vs religion question, one that also does not make sense to me. I cannot see how any scientific discovery or advancement precludes God from the equation. If I truly believe that God exists, that He is a personal God who cares for His creation and that He is still active today, then how can I say that science rules Him out. Is He not in charge of the entire universe, from the largest of planets to the tiniest of molecules? Then should it not follow that everything we discover about the world around us is how He planned it out? Yet so often it seems like christians are constantly trying to tear down science, or to subtly twist it to show God's specific fingerprints on it. I even have examples of both cases.
First is the issue of a bumblebee's seemingly defiance of the laws of nature when it flies. Usually a christian will say something like: 'according to the laws of science [or aerodynamics if they're being more specific] a bumblebee cannot fly, yet it does anyway.' The point is then made that science cannot explain everything, or that these creatures do not rely on science but on God. There is usually a bit of smugness in the relating, a sort of 'take that science' attitude. There are two problems with this statement, however. First, science can explain how a bumblebee flies. I spent about five minutes looking up information on Google and learned that it is related to stuff I don't understand because I am not in that sort of scientific field. Basically according to an extremely narrow (or possibly incorrect, the origin of the myth is hard to pin down) calculation, bumblebees cannot fly, but to show how they fly a different set of principles and calculations have to be looked at, something that has not quite been able to be figured out exactly until that last few years, partly due to the small size of bees and the limits of computers, if I understand the articles I read correctly. Second, it was never really a matter of bees not being able to fly as it was a matter of scientists not quite figuring out how to explain (mathematically) how it does so. Just because it cannot be explained fully does not mean it cannot happen (the Trinity, anyone?). Read an example and simplified explanation of the myth here.
Next is the issue of tweaking science to make it seem like God is laying down little hidden messages to people so they cannot miss Him. An example of this is a story floating around about laminin molecules, which are apparently molecules in people (and possibly in all animals as well) that are very important. As one article I read states - they "hold one cell of our body to another cell". The amazing part, according to these stories, is that these molecules look like tiny little crosses. Isn't God so amazing? The problem here is that diagrams and models of extremely tiny things like atoms and molecules are wildly inacurrate. They are designed to make it easier for a person to understand them. If I remember my high school science, the common diagram of an atom - a dot with some orbits around them (the proton being circled by electrons? something like that) is wrong simply in scale - the orbits would have to be room sized or building sized to be accurate to the size of the tiny dot. The same is true with the laminin molecules - the cross shape is a visual representation of something that would be hard to do on flat paper otherwise. In reality it looks nothing like a cross. It is discussed more fully here.
Science is not the enemy of religion. Evolution is not the final nail in Jesus' coffin. God is so much bigger than that, and that is what makes it so amazing that He would want to hang out with us. He is beyond the universe (not the known universe, but the entire universe). You could easily say that the universe is in Him. So the next time someone tries to convince you that evolution is better than creation, just ask them how evolution proves God does not exist, rather than wasting time arguing a moot point.

It's that time again

Almost forgot.

Wow, todays edition of Grasp the Nettle is a long one.