A Few New Photos

The Afternoon Mix

• Joe Cocker – Classic Cocker (Laugh if you must, but I still love it.)
• Amos Lee – Supply and Demand
• nine inch nails – year zero
• The Violet Burning – drop-dead
• Foo Fighters – In Your Honor (Disc 2)

New toy…

I’ve talked about it for years, but I finally broke down and bought a camera (using up all of my birthday and Christmas gift cards:)

Here are a couple of other random photos I took today (1st day with it.)

Bella #1

Bella #2

My Desk

Rob Bell on book of Revelation

I stole from the holy wild, who stole from daves blog; whole lot of stealing going on!  Regardless of the theft – great video.

in the end

I do not want to be something I am not.
Do not want to pretend to be something you want.
Seems like I have ears but I do not hear.
Like I have eyes but I cannot see.

I practiced using the right words.
Practiced all the trivial acts of kindness.
I reinvented a more comfortable you.
Something more like what I want.

Your words are still on my lips.
Perverted into weekly therapy.
I changed all the difficult parts.
Reassigned my own improved meanings.

I can justify my every action.
Insult for insult.
An eye for an eye.
A lie to warm my heart at night.

Who am I becoming?
Where am I going?
Why am I here?
Will I find you in the end?

The Road

The Road: 4/5

This movie was based on the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same title.  I have wanted to read the book for quite some time, but have yet to do so.  From conversations with individuals that have read both The Road and No country For Old Men, they contain a lot of the same style.  McCarthy frustrates some readers with ambiguity.  Complaints about the movie version of No Country For Old Men seemed to echo this as well.  I thought No Country was extremely good (unfortunately I’ve not read that book either.)

For anyone that has seen Will Smith’s I Am Legend, you may have flashbacks during The Road.  There are similarities, but the Road goes well beyond a horror flick.  It relies on emotional drama opposed to fierce bursts of action.  Some may feel the movie is slow, boring, or uninteresting.  It is not a summer action movie, nor is it a feel good movie.  All that said I really liked it.  The Road was well done.  It did a beautiful job of creating a real world, a horrific world, a world that forced you to empathize.  How would I react?  What would I do?  Could I do things differently?  Any better?

The basic plot is a man and his son trying to survive after some type of apocalypse.  Viggo Mortensen plays the man and Kodi Smit-McPhee plays his son.  Charlize Theron and Robert Duvall are also in the movie briefly.  The entire movie was dark.  Very little color was used, which helped create the post-apocalyptic atmosphere.  Another strange aspect of the movie (and I assume the book as well,) is that no names were used.  Your never given a name for the dad, the son, or any other character in the movie.  I actually did not notice this until looking the movie up on IMDB.  Some of the scenes are just downright haunting.  If nothing else, the movie will give you the opportunity to reflect.  It yanks you out of your cozy surroundings for two hours and forces you to feel dirty.  The movie forces you to question.  It will make you uncomfortable.  I loved it.  I needed some time away from reality.  I needed some new questions to ponder.

Would believing in God be easier or harder in a post-apocalyptic world?

Would the spiritual be more or less prevalent in a post-apocalyptic world, and how would that affect the first question?

Could I kill someone for protection?

Could I kill myself for protection?

Could I live for someone else?

If God asked me to persist when everyone else was giving up, could I persist?

The Road is a movie worth seeing in my humble opinion and there really are not a whole lot of those out right now.

New Moon

New Moon: 2.5/5

I’ve not spent very much time on WordPress over the past week and a half, mainly due to a cold.  If I wait much longer, I am not sure I will be able to unscramble my thoughts in a coherent manner.  I’ll start from the most recent of events, the theatrical release of New Moon.  My wife and I made plans to see New Moon several weeks ago.  We’ve both read the books and hoped this would be a better adaptation than the first.

My hopes started to waiver the closer it got to the night we were going to see the movie.  Reviews were brutal.  In fact the tomatometer was running almost 20 points lower than what the original Twilight movie scored.  All this to say that I walked in with some pretty low expectations.  I was pleasantly surprised.  I still don’t like some of the casting decisions.  While I am sure Kristen Stewart is a great person, she should not be acting (at least not playing the part of Bella.)  Edward and Jake are not much better, but Robert Pattinson (playing Edward) is somewhat believable.  I really liked the Volturi and still enjoy the Cullen family (both well cast.)

I thought New Moon followed the book better than Twilight, but at the same time it may be harder to follow for anyone not familiar with the Twilight series.  The entire Quileute storyline seemed awkward.  Being shirtless all the time might sell more tickets, but doesn’t do much for the actual movie.  In addition, there are several deviations from the book – usually action scenes.    I still enjoyed the movie and would recommend it to anyone that has read the books.  For anyone else, there is little reason to throw money at this movie.

Stay classy Bud…

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=4659318

Google Wave Invite Arrived!

Finally got my Google Wave invite.  Looks like a really fancy email client with an empty contacts list right now.  I’ve sent one invite, leaving me seven more.  Most of these will be sent to work colleagues.  I’ll let you know if I have any invites left after Monday.

Poker in the news…

If you’re a poker fan, then you probably already know Joe Cada won the 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event.  In addition to the bracelet, Cada earned 8.5 million for his first place finish.  Cada beat 6,493 other players to win the main event, including a final table with Phil Ivey.  I listened to a good portion of the event live on the internet before watching portions of Tuesday’s broadcast on ESPN.  It is very surprising to me that excitement surrounding the WSOP continues to grow.  2009 saw record fields, including an infamous day 1d in the main event that turned away hundreds of players.

I was rooting for Phil Ivey to win the main event.  Ivey is widely regarded as the best poker player in the world.  An Ivey win would have helped further the argument made by the Poker Players Alliance (and others) that poker is indeed a game of skill.  Instead, poker enthusiasts were treated to their worst nightmare:  suck out after suck out on a global stage.  Phil Ivey was knocked out by Darvin Moon when his Ace-King couldn’t hold against Moon’s Ace-Queen.  Kevin Schaffel was knocked out in eighth place with Aces when Eric Buchman’s Kings improved to a set of Kings on the flop and quads on the turn.  Steven Begleiter was eliminated holding Queens by Moon’s Ace-Queen when an Ace hit on the river.  If you were rooting for anyone other than Moon or Cada you probably felt like someone punched you in the gut at least once during the final table.

Hopefully the non-enthusiasts won’t let a few bad beats taint their views of poker.  Support has been building:

• H.R. 2267 the Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection, & Enforcement Act of 2009 now has 62 cosponsors
• Congressional Joint Tax Committee recently reported that licensing and regulation of Internet gaming would produce up to $41 billion in revenue over 10 years
• S.1597 the Internet Poker and Games of Skill Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act was introduced by Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) in August of this year

The dark cloud on the horizon is the December 1st deadline for regulatory compliance of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA).  Online players have already begun reporting letters from their banks warning of the coming deadline.  Too soon to tell how this will change the poker landscape, if at all.