The Gala at Galatia & beyond

Did in fact finish the 5 day study plan of Galatians.  I don't think I extracted as much from it as I would have liked.  Between his precision and the out of body existence he lived with..........It's almost like a stream of consciousness writing except it's got some important stuff in it.  In some ways, it reminds me of the Old Testament passages such as the Book Of Job when God was listing various creations.  Not every word in those passages is worth something on its own.  It's not worthless when taken as a whole, and maybe it's worth more than I realize, but that passage, along with others that I've been reading more recently from the prophets, just go on and on, would be much easier to read if it were permissible to read God's Word in an abbreviated form.  For instance, "I created the Earth and everything in it, far before even Abraham's time, how much more before yours.  Can you name all of my creations?  You are foolish for thinking you can!"  See?  A medium sized paragraph.  Instead, The Bible stretches it out over the course of two pages.  I'm sure there's something of value in those two pages, possibly an opportunity to worship if nothing else.  That's actually a passage I read several months ago.  I've read stuff more recently that I don't even recall well enough to paraphrase or cite by book, much less chapter or verse.  So obviously that bit of Job does register with me somewhat.

Ugh.

I've only read one entry of my One Year Bible this week.
Despite this and the last many many weeks/months of similar results, I am fairly confident I will finish the One Year Bible in 2 years, not 3 (or 4, or 5......).  I'm not entirely sure how that's possible.  I must have been doing something right some of this time.  Weird.



In other news, I finished watching THE OTHER WOMAN (2009) w Natalie Portman.  I started watching it several months ago and got through a good chunk of it in one sitting and watched a little more later and just finally got the last half of it watched.  It's a relatively short movie.  COLD MOUNTAIN (2003) was a more "period piece" like movie and was twice as long and was not bad.  I saw about half of it.  Melodramas are good, IMO, but they don't need to be 3 hours long.  THE GREEN MILE was 3 hours long, but it wasn't entirely melodrama.  It had a lot of quant conversational moments.  It was so long because it had a leisurely pace like that of a Stephen King novel.  It didn't rush into the drama.  If it had, it would've come across as rushed and without any frame of reference for the audience to recall.  THE GODFATHER was 3 hours long, but it was not a melodrama.  It was a fictional document, meant to illustrate the eerie bridges that exist between the courts and the streets.  While I don't agree with it, mainly because it fictionalizes the mafia to look good in ways that it never did, I do also agree that the courts have no authority on truth.  They do have the authority however to punish you for not bowing down to them.  They can pull a gun on you and demand you say otherwise, but the truth is not what I say nor is it what someone else says.  The truth simply is.  One's inability to know the truth or comprehend it doesn't change it.  In that respect, the courts rightly refer to THE FACTS.  A fact is not truth.  The existence of a fact that does indeed exist is a truth, but the same goes for the existence of facts that are not documented in ways the courts have the ability or authority to know or comprehend, which the courts do not deem FACT, but rather OPINION, or something else.  A court ruling declaring someone guilty is not necessarily right, but you cannot argue that point without a humongous pile of paperwork filed and submitted.  A casual statement of common sense is enough to get you thrown in jail.

The epistle to the Galatians

I started a 5 day study plan yesterday.  Not sure if I'll be able to finish it in earnest.  Paul(?) uses something akin to calculus to navigate the hypocrisy of whatever it was the Galatians were doing wrong which is not explained.  I'm good with numbers but quaddigitchart xing is intimidating.  I'm not even sure if i can do longwinded minuses on paper.  I manage a budget of $250 per month including food stamps so maybe I'd be less rusty if I was flexing some middke class weight...idk.  But pre algebra and beyond were the iceberg to my titanium; the kryptonite to my Krypton; the "Fine; DON'T just say no!" to the Holy Spirit at work in my soul.
I...might finish it.  It's going to take a lot of chugging and good will to accomplish and sloth is probably my strongest nemesis at this point in time.

Avril Lavigne - round 6

I had read about Avril Lavigne being sick but had no idea she was so gravely ill and that it was such a long standing issue for her.  She published a new song today co written by her.  It's rather good.  It seems a little short but that's better than it overstaying its' welcome.  That aside it's a well conceived and well executed piece of music.  Avril Lavigne i think was responsible for the conceptualization. She stated in a newsletter that a couple BTS bigcheezes in the industry were mostly responsible for the execution of the concept Avril had penned.  I'm glad she realized she's not cutout to write and arrange music on her own.  

It's also interesting that the lyrics really do seem true to her usual defiant self but are directed to God.  She even mentions being drawn closer to Him during the deepest lows of her illness.  So now we the spectators wait an album title and release date.  4/5

About Love, in a time of Biblical thirst

I wrote this here as a response to Michael Tull's post on Quora answering someone's question about morality and religion.

It may not apply in every respect to all of the multitude of people who have similar attitudes about Christianity, but maybe someone will find use from it

•       The different people in this world who call themselves Christians can be summed up with a careful examination of Genesis Ch 3 Vs 4 & 5 — The snake didn’t say one word in there that is an outright lie.  The two first humans did not face the life that they - presumably - would have desired in place of the one they had after they'd eaten the fruit.  To explain further would be to experience the life that Adam & Eve had prior to eating of the fruit.  To date I have not.  Likewise, for God to have clearly explained to Adam & Eve what the consequences of eating the fruit were as a means of keeping them from eating it would require one of two things A) SHOWING them the nightmare inducing wasteland that we now live in or B) Explaining to them something they have no frame of reference to understand even a little.  A would be punishing them for something they'd yet to do and B would be absolutely pointless.
•       Israel, now that it has been re-established as a nation, is free to follow whatever laws it wants. As far as I know it has not adopted the texts of Leviticus and Deuteronomy etc. as their law. So until such a nation comes to existence, there is no need to kill disobedient children. God sent four simple instructions to the early churches and those are documented in Acts Ch15 V19.
•       Slavery was not a problem until the practice of it became more like locking someone in jail and throwing the key away. The Bible clearly lays out a limit of 7 years. And in most cases, slaveowners were not acquiring slaves by means of kidnapping. People would volunteer themselves as slaves to repay debt they had accrued. More info here Does the Bible condone slavery?    
•  “Some say homosexuals will burn in Hell” Saying homosexuals will go to Hell is not necessarily incorrect, but the relevance in saying such a thing is dependent on the context and the relevance of the context is ultimately what people should consider before opening their mouths to say anything, regardless of what it is.  Paul said something similar to the Corinthian CHURCH because they were partying like they were on 42nd Street circa 1980 instead of sobering up like 42nd Street circa Y2K.  42nd Street Y2K is not perfect.  God nor any of His messengers demanded or implied an expectation of that.  "If you love Me you will follow My commands."  The thing is, the love you have is like the water in a vase.  You can fill it halfway and allow the flowers to flourish or you can put just enough in to give the flowers nutrients or you can drown the flowers with it.  We being born dead I don't believe are even willing to drown in love.  Our self preservation instincts kick in before we even take a step toward Jesus.  We must deny ourselves and take that step anyway.  Jesus will run toward us and do the rest for us. Jesus said to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Him.  He did not say to pick your dream vacation and throw a rock at some random person so that might see the inscribed on it "Jesus knows what you're doing and you're gonna pay for it"

MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE BLU-RAY OCT 23 2018

GREAT NEWS!

Stephen King's MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE

coming to Blu ray

Oct 23, 2018

MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE PRE-ORDER

FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I honestly don't care about the fact that it's 1080p or any of the special features and b.s. like that.

What's REALLY FNNN AWESOME is the Goblin truck shown on the front cover almost centralized as it is.  I mean, as much as I love the Karl Lorimar VHS cover-art from the old video store days of 1987-1992, I gotta say it could have been a little clearer.  The Goblin face does come across as downright blurry even on a near mint collector's copy being sold on eBay.  Sealed copies are very rare and absurdly expensive.  The Anchor Bay 1996 re-issue with similar but inferior cover-art is a little easier to find, but it's vastly inferior, and even if I were to go a little easier on it, it's just not worth spending $15 on a sealed VHS tape.  I'm buying a VHS for either one of two reasons

1) It's going to remain sealed for display purposes, which I can't afford to be utilizing my money on at this point, even if it's 70% off of the alternative of buying what I *actually* want

---OR---

I can buy a sealed copy with the false assurance that the tape is going to playback at a higher quality because of the factory seal not being broken.

Either way, it's a waste.  I don't need to buy a sealed VHS just to watch a movie on VHS.  Cassettes get old.  They just do.  Sealed or not, dust accumulates through the tiniest molecule of torn shrinkwrap and then if you have a TV bigger than 15", you get absolutely no benefit from the "formatted to fit your TV" business of VHS.  OF course, when your wide/flat-screen TV is only 19-22", those black bars can sometimes get in the way depending on how the movie in question was filmed.

AAAanyway;

Er.  Seriously.  There has still **NEVER** been a DVD edition of this movie that featured the Goblin truck on the front cover.  The two DVD editions (in the U.S. at least) that got on the mainstream distribution circuit featured a painting of a truck grill plastered with scraps of human remains.  Kinda gross, fitting I guess, since that's what some people think of when they hear the name Stephen King.  This guy I knew from St. Louis, staying in Cape Girardeau for his college education couldn't wrap his head around my interest with movies that had a melancholy or negative slant to them.  It's not like I watched exclusively horror movies.  He knew this.  I did see some pretty big shockers when I was 14 and 15.  But aside from PIECES and BLOOD DINER, the availability of viable gore clotted rather quickly.  I'm really not sure why I watched so many horror movies when I was 14 and 15.  I eventually realized how pointless it was and gave up.  I did have some intention of writing a book similar to Videohound compiling horror movies and stating noteworthy facts about the movies such as the cast etc.  But that was kind of a fruitless pursuit because I seriously was falling asleep during half of them by the time I got to be 16 and 17.  So obviously my interest in the genre and my limited awareness of what constitutes a "noteworthy" fact in the context of a horror movie was not really fit for a book about horror movies.  I also thought I was going to be in a band someday.  Yeah.  I wonder why that never happened....?...big mystery there, I know, am I right or am I?

Anyway.

Stephen King, especially this particular movie, was not all about gore.  It was almost an action movie in some respects but also a bit of a dark comedy, albeit centered around a world betrayed by its' own creations.  THE DEAD ZONE, like THE GREEN MILE, had some dark and dreary stuff, gore/violence, but was not really a horror film.  CARRIE was almost a Lifetime Movie of the Week, except the gore element really got played up to the 9s toward the end.  SALEM'S LOT and THE SHINING were both very much horror movies, but were rather limited in their gore quotient.  The concept of vampirism was used more as a social commentary about small town idiocy in SALEM'S LOT and THE SHINING seems to be King reflecting on the ways he was failing his family with his drug addictions, framed in the context of the going ons within a haunted hotel in the area's off season.

Ehh (big belly sigh sigh)

Anyway.........

Hmm.

This movie is a little cheaper at a couple other sites.  It might go further down in price at those sites as well as Amazon.  I doubt I'll be able to order it by or before Oct 23.  I saw at a BestBuy a similarly packaged BLOOD DINER with a price tag that wasn't really any better than what you see there --- MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE as of the moment is $32.99, although it'll probably go down to maybe $22.99 and then go back up shortly after to somewhere closer to $25+   It'll probably go down to under $20 eventually, of that I have no doubt).

My wants are piling up, seriously.

Also been wanting IDW's 1st GHOSTBUSTERS hardcover omnibus ($30-$40 retail)

and IDW's represings of NOW COMICS' THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS comics from the mid-late 80's (vol. 1)  ($20 standard retail)

and a sealed copy of the original VHS edition of Wes Craven's THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS (I found one on Amazon, still haven't found the will to jump on it)

And then IDW's GHOSTBUSTERS: ANSWER THE CALL, which is basically IDW attempting to re-write the massive mess that Paul Feig's movie was, complete with a much more compelling story and more definition to the characters.

Those 3 GB items alone are like 5 years worth of birthday gifts, as if I have any business hoping for anybody to buy me anything for my birthday.  For crying out loud --- I'm 34 years old and the only accomplishment to my name is providing minor small batches of assistance to my mom when she babysits my two nephews.  And my mom knows me enough to suspect when it's about time for me to up and go home and just waste my day down and away.  My sister was kind enough and financially blessed enough (more so the former than the latter I think...) to spend almost $100 on dinner out to an Italian restaurant in celebration of my 34th year of existence (granted, some of that $100 was for her and her husband, as well as my mom and my 1st(and@thetime only)nephew but still....)  Just sayin'...idk......I don't know why I'm so antsy about it.  I'll probably (although it's by no means a guarantee) get $20+ circa Christmas and then in January I can whittle down that list a little.  It's really not important.  If it were, I'd be dead or have done it already.  I don't need "my" books to be healthy or happy.  It just seems like if I were going to spend money, why not in that manner?  What do I spend money on instead?  Little spots of insignifance...idk.  Like I can't stand having money but I don't want to spend it unwisely....yet I somehow trick myself into thinking I've reached a compromise and really I just downright waste my money.   Ibought 3 CDS from FYE about a week ago.  I sold one of them at CD WArehouse a couple days ago during my psychiatrist appointment to get a refill of RX and the other one I tried to sell to CD Warehouse but they wouldn't accept it (not sure why).  The other CD was not yet received because they somehow didn't include it in the shipment, and I didn't know this until the package came.  Now I gotta try to sell that one.  It might be maybe worth keeping if I hadn't already bought that album on digital.  But really, half the songs on it (LAST YOUNG RENEGADE by All Time Low) are just filler.  "Dirty Laundry" and "Good Times" are the two standouts, although there's nothing really all that great about those particular songs.  The title track is OK.  It sets the tone for the album.  Their collaboration with former Indie rock it darlings Tegan & Sara was also really good.  I never can remember what it's called.

I also bought 2 DVDs and a CD from SecondSpin.com and I now intend to sell the DVD that I haven't yet already sold and the CD I'm keeping, although I don't listen to it that often and am kinda trying to suck as much out of Spotify before my 2 free months are up on the 3rd of September.  I have enough CDs to go a month without Spotify.  I need to save up some money for Christmas.  I didn't get anybody squat last year except maybe my mom and my sister.  Not sure if I even did that.  So I need to get at least a little bit of some gifting done for my adopted family consisting of my Gramma Della and her two sons and biological granddaughter (my two uncles and my cousin).  They really have been great at welcoming me and my mom and sister.  I really never fully realized how much they cared about us until we got ready to leave Missouri and they each threw us a going away dinner gathering.  That was real cool.  I really had no idea my sister and my cousin were that close until my sister got invited along with me to her wedding and my Gramma was explaining their relationship and I was like "Yeah, I can see how that would mean something", but I figured those days were gone and the days themselves were just kinda there in the first place.  I don't personally have a whole lot of preference about people individually.  I consider human companionship to be a blessing, but who my friends are is really just a toss of the dime and friends really should be a dime a dozen and I don't expect anything out of anybody except to help when I need help, as outrageous as that may sound, I realize that's not a realistic expectation, but we're not meant to just let people drown when we spot it.  Many people more and more think it's OK to do that, and that's been going on for the past 40+ years, and some day it'll get just flat out weird if someone does stop to help someone that is clearly very much in NEED of help.  I don't expect favors granted me.  If I can get help with some small insignificant thing great.  But if nobody wants to, I'll get by.  Friends are just people you haven't met.  Unless they decide to be your enemy.  They may be your enemy, but you should be an allie to all people, through prayer.  Jesus did indeed say that and a lot of other things you can read of in THE HOLY BIBLE.

idk.  I'm probably not articulating half of what I'm saying here as well as I should.  Hhrrrrrrmmm.

MY MIND MAKES NOISES (2018 perfected)

These last few years have seen almost a torrent of bands trying to successfully tow the line between slick pop and indie rock.  The turning closer to slick pop and away from indie rock became almost official with 2008's OCEAN EYES by Owl City but then got toppled in 2013 with THE BONES OF WHAT YOU BELIEVE by CHVRCHES.  Just when I thought it couldn't get any better than perhaps another album by CHVRCHES, this new band Pale Waves shows up.  Spotify has 10 songs by them, six of which are on their upcoming CD titled MY MIND MAKES NOISES.  The other 4 are part of an EP titled ALL THE THINGS I NEVER SAID.  They sound very similar to a band called The 1975, except this Pale Waves does it with more consistency in their quality of songwriting.  Most albums have a little bit of lull here and there, like filler that can still be satisfying in its own way.  For CHVRCHES, that was "Lungs" and "Science/Visions", but these guys have no lull.  In light of a recent playthrough of their 10 songs on Spotify, I can tell you there are some songs that are indeed stronger than others.  However, when six singles all manage to hit the spot, the remaining 8 from the upcoming LP have got to be WTF awful or this band is just really that freakin' good.

It comes out the same day as The Story So Far's new album.  But I'm kind of annoyed with that band after them taking all damn year and beyond to get stuff off the ground and their style was always a little obnoixous, and what the heck is this he's singing about Opiods?  Is he abusing prescription medication and singing songs bragging about it??!!!!?  I probably will buy it eventually but I had an order for it and the Pale Waves CD placed together at bullmoose.com, and decided to cancel the PROPER DOSE (SSF) portion of that order.  It seems weird breaking it up like that but I really need to trim things down.  I cannot really afford to pay for so much b.s. all the time for the rest of my days.  What I really need to do is focus on Jesus more and less on music and the other blessings God bestows upon us.  I need to take the advice that was spoken of on the radio -- be there for those that are important to you.  I get bored doing that, but it's not really that much of a chore really.  It's probably just as much of a chore doing that as it is sorting through stacks of music figuring out what if anything I want to listen to, full knowing that what I want to listen to I probably haven't even heard yet and whatever song I haven't heard yet that I want to hear probably sounds a lot like some other song that I may never even ever hear since all music borrows from itself, sometimes intentionally and other times not so much.

Not to mention life just resonates better with God in it.  I read The Bible Sunday and Monday last week, 3 total entries and everything just felt better.  I felt like I was in 3-D more so than usual.  Since then I've read one entry of my Daily Life Principles Bible edited/annotated by Charles Stanley, and it just isn't enough.  I had a psychiatrist appointment that took up 5 hours of the day between the drive to (45 mins apprx) and the drive back with a couple stops on the way (2 hours).  The waiting room took 1.5 hours.  I spent some time hugging my ill nephew (he's OK, just a little icky feeling) and for that brief moment I felt like I was fulfilling the entertained notion of presence purported by that guy on the radio I just wrote about a few lines up ago.

But I still neglected to read God's word.  It's not as if I didn't have time.  Sure, I had less time than I would have liked to have.  5 hours going to and from the psychiatrist and in between..... and 2.5 hours babysitting does cut into that but it doesn't make it some insurmountable feat.

Try again next time, if God wills a next time.  

THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS (1991) vs AVATAR (2009)

I found AVATAR rather annoying in the way it portrayed the success of the goody good lone wolf up against the behemoth of evil that he was up against.  This film, unlike that movie, is not based on a large chunk of one facet of US history.  This film is based on a long standing problem that far predates US history and is told in the most outrageous way possible.  It's over the top in the depictions of evil, and the "good guy" is less of a saintly type than the character in AVATAR.  More to the point, he's a child, and he has his convictions about morality, but he's still a child -- which means it's easier to talk him out of those convictions and get him entrenched in this twisted rabbit hole he ends up stumbled upon.  The film is basically a fairy tale.  The sleeping beauty of sorts whose stuck in the high tower waiting for her prince charming is indeed a Cinderella type, constantly walking on egg shells to avoid facing the cruelty of her parents, and is indeed rescued by an actual human being rather than a "fairy godmother" (whatever that is...).  A real whopper of a movie.  Sure, it's not a cure for poverty.  Wes Craven, regardless of his religious faith or lack thereof, should know based on his Biblical teaching that the poor have no savior except surrender to Jesus and that salvation is not in this life but in the next, for those who accept the terms laid forth in The Gospel.  AVATAR, on the other hand, made me yearn for a time and place where being gung ho about your beliefs was enough to keep you alive in your physical shell as it is currently known and not get struck down any minute by a giant robot.  People read the story of Daniel in the Lion's den and think the moral of the story is that God will keep you out of trouble if you pray to Him.  The fact is there is no moral to that story.  That story was a piece of a much bigger story.  And that much bigger story was a piece of an even bigger bigger story.  But I'm getting sidetracked.  Anywayyy.  I'm probably too tired to bother writing this anyway, although not tired enough to sleep I don't think.....maybe I'll edit this later, I might not.

The Story So Far -- newness coming Sept

So far two of the 11 songs on the album are already available.  2nd single was released a few+ days ago.  Just got through listening to it.  good stuff.  Their 1st single was good.  This is more my kinda thing, but both are what I'd expect from this group of pop punkers.

CD edition not yet available for pre-order via Amazon.com.

mp3 edition is only $7.99 so I assume the CD edition will be slightly more, maybe $9.99 (+tax).

Was feeling really frustrated yesterday or one day not at all long ago about the lack of things that I want.  Well, I guess God decided to throw me a bone.  Thanks! //    It always seems weird that I have X amount of dollars and can't think of a single thing I'd be happy to find in my mail box.  The only things I ever consider are things I've already "been there done that".  How rediculous is it to depart with something only to find it swim to shore again?  At $7+ a pop, to boot.  Crazy.  It's now almost a miracle if I can find a CD that costs less than $5 that isn't cheaper or just as cheap locally.  If it's not cheaper or just as cheap locally, then Amazon or WalMart are offering it BRAND NEW for the same price as the lowest priced used copy.  Mailing a CD via USPS First Class used to cost $2 apprx.  Now it's over $3.  And Amazon's marketplace fees have seemingly skyrocketed, and they were never all that low to begin with.  There's this band of shady pawnbroker types selling under the name Decluttr who also have their own website.  I've never had any problems with them.  Whenever I have had problems, they rectify them quickly.  I've read many a horror story from people who have sold stuff to them and claim to have been ripped off.  These stories usually surround stuff like smartphones etc.  I've only heard crybabies complain about selling physical media to Decluttr.  One guy took an issue that was his own making --- attempting to sell an item to them that did not meet the condition guideliens --- and turned it into an enormous conspiracy theory with an even longer tirade that morphed into 3 or 4 mini tirades.  Other than that, and people who probably sent in scratched CDs without looking at them to see if they were scratched and felt cheated that they didn't get the amount they were promised..., I haven't noticed anyone cite them for suspicious retail practices buying up media.  I think the smartphone issue might be just a tricky thing to get resolved.  I myself would not do a factory reset on my phone and then sell it to somebody.  There's probably a good amount of scrubbing involved in eliminating your personal data and even if you pay for a software that promises to get that accomplished, I don't see how you can know that it did what it was supposed to do UNTIL you try selling your phone to someone via the mail service.  And that's on top of the fact that phones do get damaged in transit and customer service representatives often don't have adequate information to give to customers seeking explanation, as infuriating as that can be often times.

but in any case, decluttr's prices are generally rock bottom, even on Amazon, but they're even lower on eBay and their own retail website.  So it's not *always* a high price to pay to re-buy something I want, but it does seem extremely wasteful nonethess.

I really don't think I need to give every dollar I have to the church or some other charity.  I don't think it's my place at this time to be doing that given the reckless way I eat and sleep and do everything else I spend my day doing and not doing.  If my monetary giving lined up with my physical health which lined up with my spiritual health, I wouldn't feel so bad about it, but I feel it's a dangerous path and a path I would regret, however selfish that sounds because of the truth being what it is.

Honestly, I have about $20 circa August that isn't budgeted for and there's nothing I haven't already owned that said $20 can buy me.  At least nothing that is edifying to the soul and pleasing to the mind.  Sure, I could probably find some dumb piece of music that I don't even like or subscribe to Hulu or something....the household shares Netflix, so it's all good on that front.  I don't like Amazon Prime because they have a ton of nothing.  75% of their stuff is now original programming and most of that is a bunch of junk.  They offer little snipps of greatness but 2 or 3 movies worth watching doesn't equate a worthwhile service.  Hulu is basically an assortment of TV shows with a random assortment of movies that generally line up with Amazon's Prime offerings.  Amazon has what they describe as "channels".  Collectively, the channels have a good lineup of suff and if I could get them in a bundle, that might make Amazon Prime altogether worth about $20 a month when you factor in all they have to offer aside from movies.

Anyway.

They updated their Roku app to reflect the Prime member music available selections and the Amazon Music Unlimited streaming catalog.  This was much needed good news as Roku only had Spotify and then Spotify left the Roku platform and apparantly has no interest in coming back.  Rhapsody is still available on my LG Blu ray player, but it wasn't working the last several days I had access to it.  I think it might've been something about the weather at the time.  I might re-subscribe to that.  But honestly I'm almost not sure why I even have a blu ray player.  GHOSTBUSTERS (1984) is one of my favorite movies by default, a lifelong companion so to speak, and I don't own it on Blu ray or DVD.  I have it on streaming and my Roku does it really well.  If my LG player could do Pandora the way it does Rhapsody (now known as Napster powered by Rhapsody, if anyone is confused..), then I wouldn't need a Roku, but Pandora is almost more fundamentally necessary than any on demand streaming service could possibly be.  Streaming services are good for playlists that you can fall asleep to.  Something about the unpredictability of radio -- even a station that is often guilty of lacking variety -- just adds something to the experience of hearing music.  On the other hand, that unpredictability can be extremely annoying when you know you can't sit there and listen forever and some song you really hate is taking 6 minutes of your time loudly and proudly not crawling in a hole and dying.  Well, actually, radio doesn't play 6 minute songs -- except with online personalized stations i.e.: Pandora, if you like 6 minute songs........... -- at least not 6 minute songs unedtied.  Well, sometimes they do I suppose.  I think the radio edit of Meat Loaf's "I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)" was apprx 6 minutes.  If you wanna balk at that, just change the station already.  It's a freakin' awesome song unless you just don't want beauty in or around you.  The stations that play ugly music are somewhere further over yonder.  Well, that's not necessarily so.  There's a station in my old hometown that played a genuine MIX of genres and it was always an annoyance when they'd play a really really really good song and then follow it up with some "I'm too sexy to care about you" type song.

Man, this blogpost is never going to end.  Y'all still reading it?  Ugh.  Sorry.........

wiseguys

There seems to be a parallel between wisdom and folly in The Bible and even in the present world of today.  God forsaw this with the Tower of Babel and put an end to it.  He had high hopes for Solomon, and they were dashed, although Solomon did eventually realize the error of his ways.  Now we have a world filled with every kind of abundance one can think of and freedom to enjoy it, and arrogance against God is at an all time high, at least as far as since the gift of God's Holy Spirit. People blame the freedom that we have as a country, but forget that this freedom we have was not a problem until people started distancing themselves from God.  It's kind of similar to the Israelites' insistence on having a King rule over them.  God was their King but they didn't want God as their King.  They were given stern warning of the consequences of having a King, but they were stubborn and didn't listen.
I do wonder about the people who die every day without the ability to read God's word or even hear about it and I do not hesitate to help out charities that work to spread The Gospel.  I can't say I have enough Love for my fellowman to risk my position in the world to go to these people and there's no justifying that.  It is a little worrisome to think that any minute/month/year(?) now, the whole world will have access to God's word, as many organizations are ramping up efforts to distribute it, since anytime after that is when the Antichrist will come and have 7 years of reign and The Bible does not provide any clear cut indication of weather there will be any Christians in the world when The Antichrist comes.  Jesus speaks to the Apostles and tells them that the leaders of the world will persecute them in His name, and that in the midst of the persecution, they will be a witness of Him and in the same paragraphs he speaks of climate change and political distress etc.  It's hard to know if he's speaking of day to day variances of these things and trying to tell them not to take them as signs of the End Times or if he's speaking of a marked increase of these things that indicates The End Times.  I'll have to go back and read what he says again.  I do remember he says stuff about rumors of war and not to be deceived etc....
I probably worry too much to be taken seriously as a Christian, in general.  I think I worry significantly less about the Antichrist's coming than one would ordinarily expect given that worrywart fretting I'm often wasting my brain on, but it's hard to know what exactly to expect.  Will there be any indication that I can detect?  It may not even happen in my lifetime anyway.  I have to resist temptation to fall back on that, but at the same time, it's not happening, to my knowledge, and as far as I know it hasn't happened.  So what's there to worry about?  The danger of a perished soul is a imminent threat right now as I type this.  There really shouldn't be any time to devote to thinking about The End Times, but somehow I find room to do so and still enjoy food and music and sleep overtime mostly out of boredom (it's called unemployment/retirement -- mentally disabled).

SIDE/EXTRA POST (Off topic):

Not sure if I need to go on and say this, but being mentally disabled doesn't mean my mind isn't valuable.  It just means the value it has to people who have the position of employing people is slim to none.  I am scatterbrained and emotionally convoluted.  "Well what does that mean?"  You don't know what it means because you don't have experience with it.  If I said I was happy to someone who had never experienced happiness, firsthand or secondhand, I'd get the same response.

 Furthermore, even a part time job puts me at risk of losing access to my antipsychotic medicines (I take 2), and there's no job I'm qualified for that pays enough to cover the expense of those.  The government may have overstepped its boundaries in deciding to step in and keep people such as myself from living in the streets, but this is the same government that everybody whines and cries to for every other societal ill that plagues humanity, so if welfare is a societal ill, I'm sure someone can get something done about it.

On a similar note, I thank God for my sister and her husband & their commitment to industrial and social excellence and for allowing my sister to bring her husband to God instead of the other way around.  And I thank my sister and her husband for their generosity in spirit toward me and my mom, who both live by the dollars of taxpayers.  And to the 45%(?) of voters who would rather not be paying for welfare -- you're not paying for welfare.  Less than 20% of tax dollars are spent on general welfare.  Taxes fund a huge variety of goernment operations.  So just think -- you're paying for the stuff that matters and your Democrat neighbors are paying for the other stuff.  This IS a Democracy, after all, inasmuch as China are Communists (Democracy, Communism, and Capitalism do not exist in the purist forms although capitalism did at one time exist prior to the Antitrust act that was passed long before minimum wage).
END RANT

END POST 7:09AM

Passionately sleepy

Watched about 25 minutes of THE GRADUATE (1967).  Not sure why the movie was such a huge topic of its day.  It's a really good movie, in the way of conveys what little story there is and draws you in to the character's mindset and it has a nice kind of metallic tranquality to it all.  Rather melancholy.  I'm not sure how that translated into the box office and critical smash it was and has remained.  I guess people in 1967 were yearning for a film that exposed some raw emotion to reflect what was going on in the hearts and minds of the nation's people.  Not many films have succeeded in that front in recent years, although that may just be me.  Sheelane Woodley was asked why THE FAULT IN OUR STARS was such a smash success and she remarked that there's at least one element in the film that everybody can identify with.  Everyone but me, I guess.  I felt the first 5 or so minutes of the movie could have been greatly expounded upon without all the nonchalant cool.  I guess the film was shying away from all that because so many people go through that themselves or have watched someone go through it and didn't need it replayed in a motion picture.  Hence, the movie was lost on me.  I knew a guy briefly who was in a Bible Study Group that I had recently started attending and he passed on.  I can't say I grieved his loss.  It was a little of a shock seeing him go on from here.  What shocked me more is the lack of emotion I felt toward it.  I am happy for him, that he is now in the arms of The Father.  I'm sure there are those in this world who sorely miss him.  Another guy in my men's group was good good friends with him and really had a bit of difficulty getting on without him.  I'm not sure what his relationship with his family was/is like.  But anyway.

When I think of films (more recent ones) that stir up emotion, aside from the 2-3 punch of FORREST GUMP and MR. HOLLAND'S OPUS, both now "old" movies (really, I'm not old, but I am getting there sooner than I tend to want to admit to myself), I think of MYSTERIOUS SKIN (2005 -- again, I swear I'm gonna be an old fart in another 15 years...geesh!).  But the subject matter of MYSTERIOUS SKIN alienates (no pun intended --...) much of the audience that it might have if it were some other movie............

I ordered THE PANIC IN NEEDLE PARK.  I started watching that movie when it was on Netflix a couple times but didn't get far through it.  From what I remember of it, it seems like it'd be a good film to watch while trying to get to sleep.  It seems to have this wintry chilling effect.  Maybe I'm wrong.  It's interesting that the movie landed Al Pacino his permanent status as Hollywood legend via Francis Ford Coppolla promoting him to star in THE GODFATHER based on having seen him in it.  Just kinda weird.  It's like FF Coppolla was the only one who saw the movie until news broke out that Al Pacino got hired b/c of his work in it.  And I'm certain most people who saw and enjoyed THE GODFATHER still don't have much if any interest in seeing THE PANIC IN THE NEEDLE PARK.

Mmm...odd place to end this post.  Seems there was more I had to say on this train...maybe.

I started typing this a few days ago on my phone.  Just couldn't figure out where I wanted to go with this.

xx