A certain accusation has recently reached my ears, that certain people who might remain nameless have found my past few posts to be "boring." Furthermore, these people (person, really) have complained about the rarity of posts in the last couple of weeks. I refer these individuals (Keith!) to my first post, in which I say, quite explicitly that "I make no promises about quality, quantity, or length of postings." If it helps, you can think of this blog as a sort of gamble: maybe there will be a good post today, maybe not. See... isn't it fun? Just like Scratch-its.

Now, moving on to more important things...regarding The Passion, I think I may be the very last person at NNU (perhaps the last Christian anywhere) to have not seen it. I originally was planning on it--I was one of the most excited to hear about it back when the news first came out...then came the controversy...then the hype...then the mass mobilization of Christian forces to turn the poor movie into a social phenomenon...and suddenly, I find myself not so very excited after all. Furthermore, I hear that it's extremely gory and emotionally excruciating (English-type people will note the pun...) so I'm not sure that I want to put myself through that, even for the exquisite filming that I've heard so much about. After all, I was sick all night after seeing The Hours on the bigscreen, and this promises to be a lot more intense than that. Maybe I'll see it when it comes out on video.

At any rate, it rather annoys me when I see all these churches with "See The Passion of the Christ" up on their reader boards, buying up entire shows for their parishioners, and taking possession of this movie despite the fact that it wasn't made by them or for them. It seems to me that these same people would have been rabid towards Mel Gibson if he had portrayed a Christ that was in any way different from their conception of Him. In any case, I'm pretty sure that it's just a movie, not a message from God or an instrument of revival; perhaps it will make people feel something, but in most cases it will probably be no more than the impact of The Shawshank Redemption or Schindler's List.

I wrote an letter to the editor of The Crusader today in response to a letter written about the feminist issue. It's hard to write editorials because you have to anticipate every negative response to your argument and try to address it in the first place, which can make you sound somewhat wordy or else paranoid. I showed it to Dr. Gismondi and he liked it, but suggested that I take out a certain sarcastic comment in parentheses. That's the other hard part about editorials: biting your tongue when you have a the perfect acerbic barb. He was right though... Darn it!

On a lighter note, it seems I have finally developed a taste for regular, brewed coffee. I was beginning to think it would never happen, that I would be stuck paying for $4 drinks for the rest of my life, but the other night I was at the Cafe de Paris in Boise, where they don't have espresso, and so, needing something to go with my chocolate cake, I ordered coffee and liked it (with a lot of cream and sugar.) This is something of a lifesaver, since I no longer have to consider every study trip to OMC a kiss goodbye to my spending money. I can get a 16oz coffee for less than $2 with a refill, and save the Vanilla Viennese with no foam for special occasions. And it's spring. Life is good.

Labels: Christian sub-culture, coffee, meta-blogging, movies

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Sunday, March 07, 2004

Spring Firsts