The Email I’m Sending out at Noon

Subject: Out of the office
Body:
Nashville MacAuthority,
It causes me no regret to inform you that I will be out of the office from noon today. Because of this, please refer all pricing questions, policy questions, procedural questions, iPod questions, video questions, Service questions and personal questions to others in the company.
Thank you for your cooperation and [...]

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Quick Notes

Sometimes I don’t have anything full length to say.

This weekend the wife and I are becoming Instant Parents as we housesit for friends and watch their 4 kids, who are four years old to sixteen years old. It’s ok, we’ll be fine.
We plan on recuperating from our temporary Parenthood by catching Slumdog Millionaire on Sunday [...]

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Review: Happy-Go-Lucky

(I posted about this film right after we saw it, but I thought I’d go ahead and write a proper review.)

Round this time of year many people watch a higher percentage of old films than they do on a normal basis. They drag out old VHS copies of White Christmas, Holiday Inn, It’s a Wonderful Live, and let these films play a number on the sentimental and nostalgic parts of their brains. Watching those films, we can’t help but think of the “good old days.” Now, arguably, these movies represent very little about their respective time periods, but with their overriding optimism and upbeat plots, we can’t help but dream a little dream about how things used to be better.

Mike Leigh’s latest film is not a musical and probably will never stir up much nostalgia, but it does paint an accurate portrayal of Now that will attract film watchers for years and years. The film is not an immediate classic, nor does it have any overwhelming strengths that make people talk or ensure its success as a indie phenom (no hip pregnant teens, crazy families in classic vans, or sex dolls posing as girlfriends). Instead, Leigh has crafted a film that is grounded in reality, to the extent that it is hard to remember these are characters and this is fictional.

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Per This American Life

If you’ve listened to the episode of This American Life that came out Sunday, you’ve heard the short play by the Neo-Futurists. It’s kind of a deconstruction of a conversation – instead of making a statement, they simply say “Statement.” It ends with a brilliant line that is currently my status on Facebook.

My wife and I have listened to it the past two mornings on the way to work, and laughed so hard we were nearly crying each time. Just now, inspired by that play, we had our own conversation via facebook chat. I’ll relay that for your enjoyment.

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Year End Lists

I guess there are many wonderful things about the rise of blogs and the decentralization of information due to the internet, but if I were to name just one that I really really appreciate, it is the return of the critic as fan.
As I read year-end lists of fiction and music (go here for books, [...]

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The Public Face of Christianity

Where you suppose seems a good place to start personal essays. Many personal essays that do not launch into anecdotes often start with supposing. Possibly because it is better to suppose than to think, and the world is full of people who simply think. But this essay is entirely about what I suppose, and how I wrestle with it internally, and how that effects my perception of hundreds of issues that one can’t avoid in today’s world.

Fundamentalist Christians are the devil, if you believe the narrative outside of Christian circles. This of course is the worst way to view it, a more positive spin is that Fundamentalist Christians are narrow-minded, anti-scientific, anti-scholarly, and more often than not, white middle-class, middle-Americans.

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On Writing

As I ease back into the habit of blogging, it is amazing how many thoughts come into my head in a given day that trigger the “I should blog that” response, and yet I find it so hard to write.
Let’s face it, I’m out of the habit of writing. Because of this, my blog posts [...]

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Podcasts I’ve discovered in the Past Week

The past three weeks I’ve been banished to the basement of the building where I work to sort paper. Thousands and thousands of pages of paper. We are being audited by Apple Inc. (because I work at an Authorized Service Center). It’s understandable, but the paper sorting is kind of hell.

But thanks to the magic of iTunes, and free programming that is Podcasts, I’ve turned what was mind-numbing hell into rather educational and entertaining time.

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