I asked Jill if she knew what baby platypodes are called.
Jill (Instantly) "Platypuppies?"
That may be even cuter than "Puggles"
Though according to an official Australian website a baby platypus is not called a puggle, I've found several sites that say they are... and the internet is never wrong in aggregate right? If they are not called Puggles, than I vote for Platypuppies.
Saw "UP" tonight. We liked it it is certainly worth seeing in 3-D. I'll wait a few days to give my review, I don't want to either build up hopes beyond reasonable expectation, or send you into a movie with all my curmudgeonly notions rattling around in your head.
But here is a little Meme for you: If you are a Pixar fan, and you shouldn't really be reading this journal if you are not, Make a list of all the Pixar films from your favorite to your least favorite.
"Finding Nemo"
"Monsters Inc"
"The Incredibles"
"Toy Story 2"
"Up"
"Toy Story 1"
"Wall-e"*
"A Bugs Life"
"Ratatouille"**
"Cars"
*"Wall-e" is a special case. If you took just the first half, plus the space waltz, it is actually the number one or two pixar movie. But the second half is so bad that it is worse than "Cars" so it is really hard for me to place.
** I know that a lot of folks LOVE Ratatouille. It just didn't work for me, it was beautiful! But as someone once said "There is nothing wrong with it, but nothing right either"
I love Pixar. But I don't cut them an ounce of slack. Even "Cars" which I didn't really like at all is better than almost any other computer animated movie you care to compare it to. With one exception. "Bolt"
I mentioned that we watched "Bolt" yesterday, but I forgot to mention that we loved it. Maybe part of it was that our dog stars in it, but objectively it was a really good movie. I was not surprised to learn that John Lasseter, (Pixar founder) had a large guiding hand in the works. It felt like a Pixar film, but it was different enough to not be a clone. For a good initial judgment, I always ask myself, "Would I like to see it again?" There are a scale of answers:
"Immediately" = This is a great movie, and I would pay another $12 bucks to stay here and watch it again.
"I would like to own this" = Very good, worth seeing multiple times
"Maybe if someone brings it to my house" = Good, don't want to see it repeatedly, but would not refuse a free viewing
"If it's on TV and Alton Brown isn't on" = Mediocre, would not watch it again if there were a good alternative
"Are you kidding? I didn't want to finish it the first time" Horrible, Sadly this is the largest category in Panda Land.
Bolt was an "I Would Like to Own This" I'd give it 7.5 stars out of ten.
Other Movies seen recently
"Slumdog Millionaire" 7 out of 10 stars (This really was pretty good, I didn't give it a chance because of all the hype)
"la fille de d'artagnan" 8 out of 10 (English title "The Revenge of the Musketeers" We loved this Movie, it came out in 1995 and I saw it on my way back from Sweden, it is fantastic! Netflix it today. It is perfectly balanced campy swashbuckling and the characterizations are pitch perfect.
There is more but I want to actually review some of them.
In other news Jill and I are trying to find a church. You Godless heathens don't know how good you have it because there is nothing harder than finding the right church. Do you know how many churches there are in this area? Do you know how many are even promising?? The former is hundreds, the later none so far.
Church is a serious deal to Jill and me, just any old place won't do. There is a church on our block for all love, be nice to just walk there, but since church is not just a "show up on convenient Sundays" thing for us it has to feel right for
both of us. There is something to be said for being Catholic... If you look in the phone book and find the nearest church, it will be very much like your old church. The same is mostly true for the more established protestant denominations. I've been to many Methodist services, and at least to an outsider, aside from shifting personnel, I don't know if there is much difference at all. There are great differences in the congregation of course. If you go to a Catholic church in a wealthy part of town it is quite different from the other side of the tracks. But the
service is very much the same.
Once you get into the wild west lands of "Non-Denominational Christian Fellowship" all bets are off. You have no idea what you will be walking into. We have become pretty adept at getting a good read from the website, but you really won't know until you show up for service. If the place isn't right for you most of the time you walk out after the service and say "Meh, let's keep looking" Sometimes you look at your spouse and whisper "We need to get out of here, right...now"
The hardest part is when a church
looks great, but when you get there you get a terrible feeling that you should have stayed in bed that morning. That was the case today. The place seemed like it might be THE place, the place where we would feel comfortable, where we could contribute our part, teach and be taught, the kind of place you are excited to drag your carcass out of bed to go to.
Nope. We didn't last five minutes. I should say that I didn't last five minutes, Jill didn't get a bad feeling right away, but was starting to. It's been the other way around sometimes. I'll feel fine, even excited about a place but she will not. It has to be both, it never works out in the end if both of us are not on board. We commit too much to a church to have one of us dreading to go two or three times a week.
One thing we have learned is to listen to ourselves. We have stuck it out on a couple of occasions thinking "Well, lets just give it time, I'm sure things will get better, we'll get used to it." Nope, that inner voice is there for a reason, listen to it.
So now we are back to square one, except that we have tried all the most promising churches. Now we start looking at the second tier places with the hopes that we are getting the wrong read from the website. (this has never, never happened, but hope springs eternal right? 'Course The last time I visited a church that I didn't think looked right for us I sat in the parking lot to think and pray about it and they called the cops on me....)
It's discouraging. both of us really want to be part of a fellowship again. I think that is really the biggest problem,
fellowship. There are plenty of non offensive places that would be just fine if all we wanted was a good show on Sunday morning. The problem with places like that is that they really tend to be Sunday social clubs. The members really don't want to see you again till next Sunday, they don't really want to think about church more than is absolutely necessary. I know I sound harsh and judgmental, I'm not saying that they are not good people, I'm saying that they don't place the same importance on Christianity as we do. To us it is THE thing, priority number one. To them it is A thing priority, sixth or seventh. They go to church because they feel like they are supposed to, or because it makes them feel better about themselves, or because they just had kids and suddenly things like church seem really important. It's just not the way we approach it.
We feel that you should be in true fellowship with the people you go to church with, or at least have the potential to have real fellowship. It takes time, you don't make that kind of relationship with someone overnight, but you have to at least feel like that kind of relationship is possible. I give this teaching example:
If your car broke down in the middle of the night, list five people who you feel like you could call and who would come help you if they possibly could. Do you go to church with any of them? If not you are probably in the wrong place. This is such a good point for me because as many of you know, I am the least capable person you know when it comes to asking for help. I am terrible at it, and it is a character failing of mine. I
love to help people, I
hate to be helped. Patrick Obrien writes "There is a generosity in acceptation" I must be quite mean in this regard. : (
That is the kind of fellowship we are looking for, the fellowship of friends in Christ, and I'm telling you from hard experience that it simply does not exist in most churches in America today. Never even been heard of. I've long lamented that Church should be a lot more like the SCA. Or at least how the SCA used to be. A bunch of ragamuffins helping each other out anyway they could., looking out for each other, part of a big more or less dysfunctional family who even if they didn't always get along, would always be there for you when the chips were down. Sadly the SCA is becoming more like the Church, and the Church s becoming even more "Church" like.
Well. That got bleak pretty quickly. That is the trouble with a journal, you start writing down your thoughts and pretty soon you're ready to step off a cliff.
-Justus
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