What Does That Even Mean?!?
Posted by Rey
As you know I like to read, I like to write, and I like to combine both with the Bible (that is reading it and writing about it, not creating new chapters). Some people find reading the Good Book a tad too hard and sometimes, when they hear it being read with monotonous intonations (economics, supply, demand, Peter, James, and John) they find their eyes crossing, their vision blurring and visions of past movies start to replay in their mind.Heroes Bloody Wow
Posted by Rey
I mean, seriously. Wow. (fyi: the comments will be soiled with spoilers but please, don’t talk about anything you saw in the previews…i don’t watch them.)Will You or Will You Not?
Posted by Rey
I heard some theologian guys saying that Pelagianism is the natural belief system of men. No, I’m not talking about copying someone elses thoughts. Pelagius (not a Sith Lord either) believed that Jesus was a good example (whereas Adam was a bad example) to humanity and therefore humans have a responsibility to save themselves by doing good (which is carrying out God’s commandments). God could help people but really thought Pelagius, men and women have the free will and moral capacity to do it on their own.Thing is, I can see people saying “we have the ability to choose” and I can see people saying “Adam was a bad example and Jesus was a good example” but I can’t see many people, without reading the stuff, saying they had the will and moral capacity to keep the commandments of any god ( Go hold the heavens on your shoulder) and especially the Judeo-Christian God as clarified by Jesus.
For instance, Jesus explained one of the commandments that spoke about committing adultery and said that if a man looks at a woman with lust, then he has committed adultery already. I don’t think anyone would naturally believe that they had the free will and moral ability to stop the lust in the mind (or elsewhere for that matter). Jesus furthered his point by pointing out one of the commandments that spoke about murder and then stated that if a man is angry at his brother, he’s committed murder already.
In other words, the fact that Jesus is showing that our actions are just as messed up as our thought process seems to me that a person can’t automatically be a natural Pelagian (gessuhnteit) but rather have to be a circumstantial moralist which has nothing to do with God or Jesus’ example at all, but everything to do with ethics—which I think is a completely different question altogether.
Smootches and Kisses
Posted by Rey
Happy Valentine’s Day.Wondering In A Wintered Land
Posted by Rey
Folk down here have been growing crazy with the impending snowstorm. Down at the grocery store the guy over the counter gave me a toothless grin thanking the good lawd for the stawuhm about tah hit, since he hadn’t seen eight inches uf suh’now in he didn’t know how long.I thought he said eighteen but no, he said eight. I silently scoffed knowing how harsh the snowstorms were in New York but I also felt a tinge of fear since they’re not very good with snow clearing around these parts. Two inches of snow here means accidents but in NYC it means attach the plows to the garbage trucks and pour chemicals everywhere.
I must say the snow looked great outside, about four and a half inches canvassing my third of an acre plot. With a happy sigh I decided to go out and clear the driveway and stairs since I knew there would be sleet and ice later.
Two hours later I realized how annoying it is to shovel that much driveway space and after looking back and seeing it all covered again with another inch I decided to give up and go inside; I had enough of the eight inches uf suh’now.
Update,8:50 AM: 4 inches were added overnight. ::sobs::
Update, 9:54 AM: managed to shovel out my stairs and an entrance to one garage and have not gotten to the driveway yet. Apparently it also rained/sleeted last night and now it’s doing it again. Lovely.
Links N’ Junk 22
Posted by Rey
- retro. Google 10 years ago. Love the logo. (HT: Freakonomics) But then things were right in the virtual world.
- trek. Opera…the final frontier. (HT: Doug)
- games. Mario: flute style plus several other skilled performers. (HT: Curt)
- ads. Jolly has the best part of the super-bowl: the commercials.
- music. Darrel has a nice music video on his site starring Dean Stockwell and Dennis Hopper.
- tek. Blog posts via SMS from anywhere in the world (HT: Lingamish)
- odd. Scientists conduct a spin-off of the Pepsi Challenge: Smell of Sweat wins over Yeast.
- iLife/mSoft. Apple’s ads are usually way off base but man, their aim was true with this Security one. Vista is a bit, um, overprotective [/understatement].
Drawing From Puke
Posted by Rey
On my left on the faux-wood and hunched over a 12×18 sheet of newsprint paper is my five year old son. In his left hand is one of those rubber-gripped pens that banks use as giveaways and strewn about (yet within reach) are various crayons. That’s where he usually scribbles away but today is different: silence, no story…just concentration.“What are you drawing, Sy?” I felt like I had just stomped into a church and shouted “howdy!”
“Puke.”
“What?”
“I’m drawing puke. In my mouth.” Almost waving me off.
I continue watching, amazed at each stroke of detail, each toss of a crayon in his search for the right color and each subsequent reserved filling. He’s had reflux issues his whole life and seems to have inherited my wife’s migraines so Puke has been a part of him for a while. “The kid draws what he knows.” said The Greek when I told him. So the idea that he’s drawing Puke in His mouth is funny but it also makes me say to myself: he really thinks about this stuff.
The art is abstract (like most five year old representative art) but, when he seemed to step back and allow me back into his circle, I had to get down there with him. He began explaining each part of the drawing and I pulled out my stickies to take notes.
Naturally Speaking Dictation
Posted by Rey
I am currently trying out this new dictation software known as NaturallySpeaking and I’m not sure if it’s any good. I’m speaking as fast as possible to try to ascertain how good it actually is. And then afterwards I will thought flow of this post to the world wide web, and posted on my blog. I’m actually surprised that it just recognized the word blog since the previous program kept writing it as a block. And even surprised at the way that he chooses between two words that sound the same for example to and the number two. What I do wonder if it will spell the word. PE are I OD. That was just a test to see if I can spell out punctuation. Apparently it can’t. So that’s all I’m going to upload it onto the web and hopefully it’ll be okay. What’s interesting is that it even edited it out those annoying thinking sounds of me thinking. It does seem to remove some of the joy from writing though.Clichés: Gotta’ Catch Em All
Posted by Rey
Instead of trolling the web my peeps Thirsty David stopped in his tracks, and wrote a good and necessary post about annoying clichés and slang on the web (holla back David!). Yes, even clichés and slang that I have actively repeated time and time again.From the get-go I’ve been trying to drop this habit like a bag of bricks but I’ve been failing on SO many levels. It’s like going against the grain of every fiber of my being and down at this level I can’t see the forest from the trees, see what I’m sayin’?
David’s like: “Find. New. Ways. To. Use. Words.” But honestly man; been there, done that. Why does he have to make a mountain out of a molehill? See David, from day one I’ve been fighting an uphill battle to find a win-win situation where I can use a cliché or slang without it being so…so cliché-like; but I just keep falling flat. You feelin’ me, dog?
But I’ve been around the block, and I’m sure David and you readers have been too (where my people’s be at?) so I’m absolutely positive that with the proper synergy we can formulate a proactive solution to the web’s problem because That Is How We Roll. Let’s just not put all our eggs in one basket and hope for the best because that will just leave us caught between a rock and a hard place. Let’s come together and focus on this for a while because come hell or high water, we need to fix this.
So here’s to the WWW-Coast peeps. I’m out. Word.
