I've bored you with this before but all you gots to do in life is think about the fruit of the spirit (Gal. 5:22,23) in what you are doing. If it's working at a coffee shop with weird people or interacting with your family - if you focus on love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control you can keep yourself focused on God.
It's something I had to really focus on when I was at Hershey Park on Monday with my family. Apparently Monday night was Clueless People Night. A magical night where all the clueless people on the east coast converge to celebrate their cluelessness. Unfortunately we were not aware of this. I mean, how can an entire family cut in line in front of us? It's not like they were all twelve years old. The parents and their kids all just cut ahead of us. Not like oops, we didn't see you there, but like we're in a thin line with rails on both sides of us, and we need to squeeze by the way better looking family so we can get on the Wild Mouse three seconds faster.
Now the fruit of the spirit should come into play right? Of course I was all like, "Thank you Heavenly Father for this chance to display the fruit of the spirit to the reprobates and unwashed of the world." I then lifted my hands on high and rose slightly off the ground while a warm glow surrounded my being. The family immediately bowed in shame and repented and prayed the Sinner's Prayer with us. God was glorified, and when we got home that night, there was a sack of gold in our mailbox.
That's totally what happened.
So in summation...
Fruit of the spirit - do it.
We'll glorify God and get sacks of gold at the same time.
Now that the Olympics are finally over so I can go to bed before 2AM, we must consider the goofiest Olympic sports. Ping-pong, badminton and trampoline. I believe that if you can play something in your backyard or basement, then it doesn't constitute a sport.
Big voice announcer guy, "Coming in the Olympics for 2012 in London... a brand new Olympic Event... Hide and Seek!" Can the favored Chinese be upset by their longtime rivals the Americans? Or will they continue their stranglehold on the sport when they've won consecutive world championships?"
Other announcer guy, "Well Charles, the sport has come into question lately with biased judging and there are some Chinese contestants that are clearly under the age-limit, including their star player."
"Yes Bob. If it wasn't for their star hiding behind the controversial laundry basket, the Americans would have won the 2011 World Cup of Hide and Seek."
I was MC'ing at the Purple Door Festival last weekend and it was awesome. I kinda just get up in between bands and yap about nothing. While I was yapping, someone raised their hand, and asked if I was Asian. Yeah, it happened. Later on someone offered me a double cheeseburger then threw it up on stage (which I caught with one hand). I had a dance off and gave it out as a prize. Twas a fun day. Someone had me sign an autograph as "Asian guy" and another wanted me to sign as "Filipino guy". Them Christians are weird.
On to the news:
State Bird has four new songs up. Wow. Four. That's like a lot.
If for some reason you actually go into Hot Topic today, you'll be able to listen to the new Underoath album while you are buying your Cradle of Filth shirts. If you can't bear to walk into that store, then just go to their myspace cause they have a new song up there.
You can vote for Inhale Exhale on Headbangers Ball. Not sure if anyone watches that show. Does MTV even play music anymore? I guess so. Shocking news.
MXPX has a picture disk out. It's a vinyl record with a picture on both sides.
I write the songs that make the whole world sing. And cry. And then sing again.
Okay, so I'm not going to say they were trying to make a comparison to Christ with The Dark Knight but Christ is the standard of all heroes and I'm going to see where The Dark Knight stacks up - and it stacks up very well. Much better than messianic characters like Neo from the Matrix or William Wallace from Braveheart. And... I'll keep this short.
This amazing analysis contains spoilers, so don't read it if you care about learning about what happens in the movie.
Notice the Joker is not a typical bad guy. He's not out to destroy good, he like Satan, is out to turn good into evil.
The movie said that Harvey Dent was the symbol of the good in Gotham. So what does Joker do? In the hospital he doesn't kill good, he tempts good and turns it into evil.
Now bring in Batman. In the dialogue it is constantly asked, "how does Batman become more than a hero?" Well somehow either intentionally or unintentionally the writers came very close to the Christ example. The movie ends with Batman saying something to the effect - that to become more than a hero, he must become whatever Gotham needs him to be. In this case Batman had to assume the sin of Harvey Dent, as to save the city. In the same way Christ had to assume our sin to save us.
I could go much deeper into this, like how Joker tried to turn the good people on the ferryboat into murders, but that would just make this article way longer that it needs to be. You get the idea. Obviously the comparison only goes so far, but it went way further than any other movie I can think of at the time because of the 'becoming sin for others' concept. Batman just didn't die during that act. If he did then he'd be much closer to the standard that Christ set.
You probably heard about the accident Steven Curtis Chapman's son had, where he accidentally killed his adopted sister a few months ago. Well, here's an interview with the family and how they have been dealing with the loss. Yeah, it's not about a yelling band, but hopefully you can still appreciate a Christian family holding on to their faith during hard times. I highly recommend it.
In TV news, Darth Milhouse has actually seen the first episode of season three of Heroes. He says it's amazing. Good thing too cause season two was total crap.
In movie news, Mummy 3 was okay. The first one was amazing, the second one stupid. This fits right in between them. At least this bucks the trend of: great first movie, sucky second movie and total crap third movie. Matrix and Pirates, I'm looking at you. Don't even try to pretend your second and third movies didn't totally suck. You can't fool me. I went to college. I know that butter is way better than margarine.
In other news, Brett Farve, get off my stinkin' TV. I don't care.
Just a quick encouragement for you to be great. But what is 'great'? Great isn't power, reputation, wealth or embarrassing Tom Brady in the Superbowl (no matter how awesome that was). It's serving. God wants us to serve others. So in his book, you get more 'points' for serving, and none for being awesome and cool. Greatness IS Serving. So who are the people God placed in your life to serve? Family members, friends, coworkers, church people, even Tom Brady. Figure out what you can do for them and start doing serving things today - and be great.
MT 20: [25] Jesus called them together and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. [26] Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, [27] and whoever wants to be first must be your slave-- [28] just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."
MT 23: [11] The greatest among you will be your servant. [12] For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
Yipee! It's my birthday today! If you'd like to give me a birthday present, you can just donate to our Philippines ministry (we're way behind last year's giving). Thanks!
Wow, I just downloaded Firefox 3 and it is blazingly fast. I don't know anything about programming or whatever, but all I know is that pages just pop up for me now instead of rolling in content as the page loaded.
In other news, I've been watching the Euro2008 soccer tournament and man, talk about fakers. Anytime those guys fall to the ground they act like they broke their leg in twelve places. It seriously happens every three minutes. Maybe if they spent more time playing rather than rolling on the ground acting, the scores wouldn't be 1-0.
Calvin and Hobbes was the greated comic strip ever. I thought this was pretty funny, cause Calvin's dad, does a lot of the same stuff I do when answering my kids' questions.
Calvin's dad answering questions, quoted from various Calvin and Hobbes books by Bill Watterson.
Q. Why does the sun set? A. It's because hot air rises. The sun's hot in the middle of the day, so it rises high in the sky. In the evening then, it cools down and sets. Q. Why does it go from east to west? A. Solar wind.
So The Incredible Hulk movie was the exact, perfect movie made for that character. Now, Bruce Banner is no Tony Stark. He's not carefree, he's haunted by a killer inside him. So the tone of the story isn't going to like Iron Man. How do you make an interesting movie about a Hulk, when your main character doesn't want to become the Hulk? But they pulled it off.
Here's all the major points of why the movie worked:
Apple released info on the new iPhone. It's very cool. The number of people guilty of covetousness just multiplied in direct proportion to our population's internet capabilities. I have Verizon not AT&T. So I will go unfulfilled in life. I wonder if it's a sin to unlock the iPhone for use with other carriers. Ah the ethical conundrums we here at Decapolis ponder.
Iron Man. Yeah, you know what I'm gonna say - it was tons of fun. It got most everything right. It avoided a lot of missteps from other movies such as boring research scenes (like Ang Lee's Hulk) by having a robot to talk to and make jokes with, weak female leads (Batman Begins, Spiderman) by having an Oscar winning actress and villans where you can't have big ending slug fest showdown (Ang Lee's Hulk, Superman Returns). Only the music sucked, everything else was very cool.
Speed Racer. Whoa, this was totally fun too. I wasn't expecting anything. It basically was a live action cartoon, where all the physics, dialogue, fighting scenes were right out of a cartoon. And surprisingly, the movie had a decent amount of emotion. I know you didn't see this, so I recommend you do (if you can find it - it was a total financial bomb).
Julia, the love of my life, has her birthday today. You can wish her a Happy Birthday here. Or you can yell "Happy Birthday" at the photo above. I set it up so she'll be able to hear you. She's the one with the sunglasses about to give lollipops to strangers. Happy Birthday! I love you!
