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Showing posts from August, 2009

A Message from Planet Me

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I've been pretty stoked with all you faithful "come along every dayers", who have checked on this blog space out of curiosity or the opposite of contempt to read me musings... This week you may have noticed the rapid decline in my prolificy but rest assured its not due to lack of topics or inspiration but rather to my trying to organise my priorities in such a way that I am not burning the candle from the middle as well as at both ends! I will now restrict my posts to night's before a day off which are every second Wednesday and Thursday and every alternating Friday... occasionally I might be able to squeeze a few more in but I found that I became a man obsessed with posting blogs at whatever cost, which usually involved me falling asleep on the couch, work or while driving... plus I have some serious study commitments this year and had been neglecting them... But I am still committed to this site and have a great deal many more delightful bits and pieces to post befo

Joseph - King of Dreams - A Review

Joseph - King of Dreams I recently raided my nieces DVD collection and discovered a little Dream Works treat that didn't involve cross dressing fairy tale characters and big green ogres preaching the feel good PC gospel of tolerance and the message of "its ok to be a freak if it makes you feel good" for a change! The movie - Joseph King of Dreams, and we sat ourselves down for an evening of entertaining cartoonery. Joseph, as you should know, is the prequel to Moses - Prince of Egypt and tells the story of how the Israelites came to live in Egypt before they became the slaves of the Exodus. The original story of Joseph can be found of course in Genesis Chapter 37 and onwards. It is one of the most riveting and movie worthy stories of the Bible. Why this story has only warranted an animated feature and an Andrew Lloyd Webber Musical is way beyond me, it's replete with Jealousy, favouritism, betrayal, temptation... there are even cool things like Dream Interpretation an

Modern Day Christianity and the Absence of Miracles

I was recently humbled when someone wrote to me the below question and I said, "Sure! I'll get right on it!" That was two weeks ago. I've been procrastinating... The question was: Why is it that in the christian church do you have such a lack of the power of the Holy Spirit?I know people hear from God and sometimes here and there people get healed but I mean, what happened to people raising the dead and wicked signs and wonders we can show off to non-believers... has the Devil been trying to snuff out that power in the church?Or do people just not want all that weird stuff happening to them? Why is there such a small amount of the Holy Spirits power in the church?And what to do about it? So not being in any way an authority on the matter here is my attempt at an answer... One passage of Scripture that really jumped out at me when I was thinking about this was from 2 Timothy 3:1-6: 1But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2People will be lo

A is for Abortion

I have a particular friend who wears her heart on her sleeve, and as you can imagine a heart on a sleeve can sometimes raise a few eye brows. A few months ago, while both her and my wife were expecting their first babies, my friend posted a pro life article on her Facebook. Fair enough, one would think, after all, I’m pro her choice to believe in such a thing; the fact I happen to be pro life myself doesn’t fact either, even if I was “pro choice”, I would think that surely I would still support a pro lifers’ choice to disagree? Apparently not. The fervent protest s against her post was extreme and intense. Never before, on something as trivial as Facebook, had I seen an instant out pouring of pseudo-moralistic passion. Pro-choicers on the left of me, Pro-lifer’s with me on the right; but the curious thing was the loaded cannons were on the left had, ready, aimed and firing. While we on the right were concerned about the lack of choice of the unborn, all the protestors were concer

This Week on Planet Me...

For the first time in ages I seem to have drawn a complete blank. Its not conventional writer's block, its just Australian Idol is on the telly and therefore I've just experienced my first Black Hole. I think it was the Asian guy singing "Imagine" who started sucking the gravity out of the room and now five minutes later all my brain matter is tinkering on the event horizon of complete mindless ear pillaging tripe. Maybe I'm just jealous there is no New Zealand Idol, but even if there was I would never go down that road again. I'll never forget... actually scratch that, it seems I've intentionally forgotten the day I queued in the rain behind thousands of wannabe Australians at Brisbane's Suncorp Stadium just to be told, after hours of umbrella holding and fantasising about blowing the judges minds with my vocal whips, that there were too many contestants and to come back tomorrow. Which I did. And I sucked. I had spent the whole week strolling down

District 9 - A Review

My own internal reaction to this film was so exciting that I completely forgot that I had hit a bollard with the side of my car on my way to see it! Thankfully, like the film, there were no dents to be seen... This is one of those flicks where you see the trailer and you think, WOW I HAVE to see this movie... usually you see such a film and you walk away realising you have fallen for the same boring old story, retold a million times by Hollywood film makers. Not this time. District 9 disembarks from Hollywood regurgitation, it is wonderfully disgusting in its satisfyingly realistic view of Human Nature and portrayal of alien weaponry that turns a human into instant splatter puss. Not since the very first Predator Movie or Alien have I seen such a stirring and blood curdling piece of sci-fi story telling. There is nothing ordinary about this legendary piece of work and the bar for Science Fiction has been raised forever. This is certainly a film for grown ups. Director Neil Blom

Chaos Theory - A Review

I suffer from the problematic predicament of writing a review for a movie I saw three days ago. Hopefully no brain cells crucial to the memory of this film have died in the interim. Though given that memories are strongest when attached to strong emotional reactions to things my feelings regarding this little piece of cinema are somewhat absent... This was not a film that came out in mainstream cinemas in New Zealand, and by mainstream I do mean the ones that I happen to work at. I've seen it sitting on the new release stand at my local DVD store for several months now and have wanted to get it out soley because it has Ryan Reynolds on the front cover, looking bewildered. No I'm not a man with a secret girl on the inside harboring an abominable crush on the Reynolds Burger but I do think the guy is seriously funny and after gorging on the Two Guys and a Girl sitcom, watching one episode after the other in a home made marathon of welcome convivialness, who could blame me?

The Random Fish and Chips Dude is a Sparrow's Fart

I was thinking tonight as I let go of a few meals long forgotten in the porcelain portal we call "The Bathroom" that the time we spend "on the loo" should not be time wasted. Rather it should be embraced as an opportunity of endless potential. I say "endless" but over the next... however long it takes... I've decided to come up with one hundred wholesome things you can do on the loo that will enhance your life and guarantee you unlimited happiness for at least 11 minutes at a time. Here goes. Things to do on the Loo Number One: Learn to knit. In recent months I have learned the joys of knitting. Traditionally a sport for the female of the species I have discovered it to be complicated and intellectually stimulating, and have therefore concluded that a man must have invented it. After a while men became bored of this complicated and somewhat unnecessary procedure and opted for the easier method of killing something and wrapping its skin around himself f

Drag Me to Hell - A Review

Well, Hell is a four letter word that seems to raise the room temperature whenever it is mentioned in this day and age, especially if the person mentioning it believes in it. If your seat is getting warm and your forehead turning crimson then that is because you are reading a film review about a movie about Hell by someone who actually believes that such a place exists. However, I suspect the real Hell is not quite what Sam Raimi had in mind when he made this film. In this movie Chirstine, a lovely sweet "girl next door" type, is busting her guts battering her eye lids and flexing her dimpled smile as a loans officer, desperate for an Assistant Manager's position at the bank she works for. However her boss implies that she doesn't have what it takes to make the tough calls such a job demands. Its at this point that a decrepit false-toothed, creased and crinkly elderly woman comes in with a request for her third mortgage extension. Desperate to prove herself ruthless C

Canned Dolphin

I was meant to be writing a review about Drag Me to Hell but I’m just so tired I feel like my head might end up doing the typing and my blog will end up looking something like this: EW” fE’p ;sea;’OJ AGS ‘ OIJ wpio ma erepo iu ‘ LJ ge’ oij G’ JPOg ess If I did that a million times a second for the next billion years then maybe, like the chimpanzees typing Hamlet, we would end up with the best blog ever written, but by then my key board, after being caked in blood, brains and skull fragments, might become part of my coffee table and finally part of the floor; thus adding to the miracle that anything was typed at all, let alone the even bigger miracle that there will still be Microsoft software in a billion years. If it did work no one would notice, because they would all be at the theatre – watching Hamlet performed by Chimps. People always go for monkeys despite the greater things in the world. Imagine how many people today drink tea just because they saw a PG Tips ad and decided that

Reader's Response

The below is a recent response from one of my faithful readers... used with permission I might add! I thought it was an insiteful insite worth sharing... espcially the bit where he says "Another great blog you posted"... I guess I'm sharing this because I would like to remind you all of the scary state of affairs we are finding ourselves in if we allow complacency to keep our mouths shut, especially around voting time. Political Correctness must be captured, tortured, hung, drawn and quartered - it is an ethical system based on arbitrary human values, depending on what is popular at the time rather than on absolutes. I was thinking today taht it would be neat to get a large island and chuck a whole bunch of everyone on it. Say a few thousand/million people from every culture and religion in the world and force them to all pretend they're all the same and then sit back and see what happens. It would be a primo experiment... oh wait, its happening in England right now!

Stuff about Things and All that Jazz or this week in 2009...

Well, my I’m busting so I’m going to use the fact that my bladder may explode as a good insentive to write this down as quickly as possible... You may remember that on a dark stormy night of great gusts of wind my poor dog’s house was picked up and carried far far away... well, wherever “far away” is it is still there without even a letter or a phone call to say when it is coming back. In fact I think it might have run off with another Dog Kennel and eloped. I’m kind of hoping it will be like one of those tricks where someone steals a garden gnome and takes pictures of it all around the world until it returns with a tan and sunglasses. It would be nice to have some photographs of Hagrid’s little home classing up the Eiffel tower or next to the Loch or even providing shelter for poor starving Australian who couldn’t get the first home owners grant because their really a kiwi in denial... sorry that would have gone over quite a few of your heads, much like my canine’s kennel did during l