in re: New Year's Resolutions

My pastor said something a couple years ago that stuck with me:

"Jesus is not particularly interested in your self-improvement schemes."

Iceland on the rebound. Lessons? Anyone?

Remember a few years back when I said that forgiving student loan debt was the thing to do with the billions of relief dollars -- instead of giving them to banks?

Iceland did a version of that. They forgave housing debt when their entire economy went to shit. How's that working out?

Fitch Ratings last week raised Iceland to investment grade, with a stable outlook, and said the island’s “unorthodox crisis policy response has succeeded.” 

People Vs Markets
Iceland’s approach to dealing with the meltdown has put the needs of its population ahead of the markets at every turn. 

Once it became clear back in October 2008 that the island’s banks were beyond saving, the government stepped in, ring-fenced the domestic accounts, and left international creditors in the lurch. The central bank imposed capital controls to halt the ensuing sell-off of the krona and new state-controlled banks were created from the remnants of the lenders that failed.

Observing Lent 2012

It's Lent again. M and I are eating whole foods and no meat for the discipline this year. And we're taking Sundays off, because that's the Sabbath.

Which is interesting because every Sunday for the past 3 weeks has been a day to eat meat, and not have to think so hard about what I eat.

Except that thinking about not thinking about eating is still thinking about eating.

Yesterday, I ate a lot. A burrito from my favorite burrito place, and then a half-pound burger at Wendy's, and then a Geno's cheesesteak after church meeting, and about a liter of Mello Yello after all that.

You might think I'd have some gastrointestinal trouble, but no. Even though I've been eating somewhere around 1500 calories a day for the last three weeks, mainly in fruits and vegetables, a day of gluttony does not upset my stomach at all. It doesn't even upset my conscience.

What it upsets is my taste. Cheap meat used to be a big part of my diet. Now, with this discipline going on, I think wistfully sometimes of eating at crap food places again because they're cheap and easy.

But what I noticed yesterday was that the food didn't even taste that good. It wasn't bad. But if I'm going to look forward to food, I want it to taste good when I get there.

Today, I'm back to the usual. All I've had today is some fruit and yogurt (which is processed, I know, but too bad). I'll probably have some cheese and whole wheat bread before I go to bed. That's kind of how I eat this Lent. Not much. Mostly plant-based. I don't know yet what I keep and what I eject after Easter.

Epiphany

At cell before Christmas, one of our hosts, Rachel, prepared a thoughtful activity for us about hope.

She had purchased glass ball Christmas ornaments and decorative strands. Then she printed out strips of green and red paper with hopes on them.

There were a variety of different ones, at different levels of thought and inclusion. It was hard to fill out. It's work to think about and name your hopes. I spent most of the evening on it, off and on.

After I got home, I dropped my ornament on the floor, and the glass ball broke. I was left with a loose handful of hopes.

So I won't be hanging that on our tree next year. Instead, I'm going to put them here at QT so they'll be visible all year long.

These are the strips:

• This Christmas season, I hope... to shake this low-grade depression sooner rather than later.
• For myself, I hope... to have the same job this time next year. To become the person I was made to be.
• For my family, I hope... for wisdom and care about money and things.
• For my neighborhood, I hope... for fewer helicopter flyovers. For more community.
• For this world, I hope... that the protests of 2011 effect real, permanent change for the better, and don't spin out, run out, or get bought out.
• May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. Romans 15:13

Movies April 2011

The A-Team (2010)

Good enough at the outset, but problems set in like an evening mist. Ok, so Mr. T having a nonviolence epiphany in jail, this is a nice twist. I don't think any of us expected a real attempt at character arcs. But by the end of the move his arc is... a repudiation of nonviolence? An embrace of killing as a problem solver? Also, at the climax of the movie, Face is doing the planning and Hannibal is doing the lying. Wha wha what? Did some pages get mixed up?

The villains were fantastic though. The theatrical CIA agent and his inept stooges along with the sociopathically professional security contractor were comedy gold -- separately, but especially together in the car. We watched that scene twice.

Date Night

I'm trying to put my finger on what's off about this movie, and I think the problem is a slapdash plot obscured and illuminated (in the medieval monkish sense) by excellent comedians and quality production values. Not good enough to recommend, but not bad enough to hate. You make the call, sports fan.

Movies March 2011

The Wire, Season 1, Disc 3

I like the Wire, but I don't like-like the Wire like everyone else seems to.

Dogs Decoded: Nova

Part of an ongoing experiment where we try to figure out what our dogs are thinking.

Sukiyaki Western Django

Genres collide! Unsatisfyingly!

Futurama, Season 5

Freakonomics

Based on the book of the same name.

Man, Woman, and the Wall

This movie is so Japanese.

The Princess Bride

We watched this, and then watched it again with William Goldman's commentary on. Not too revealing, but now I can say I did it. The dialogue still sparkles in this movie. I've occasionally thought as I watched this movie, that I don't think it could be successfully remade. It's not a just-perfect movie, but the chemistry and joy in its inception and production are non-reproducible. In the commentary, it was flattering to get William Goldman's validation, saying roughly the same thing.

2012

About as dumb as we thought it would be. Yep, about that dumb.

Arrested Development, Season 3

I never watched the whole 3rd season in order, so I decided to do that. Still funny, but the humor was starting to wear thin. As long as I'm heretical about people's favorite shows, I'll say that maybe it's just as well that this show ended when it did. Now it will always be James Dean, and never fat Elvis.

Soul Eater, series 1

Netflix just added a mess of anime, and I've been sampling. So far, this is the only one that's made it past the first episode for me. The story is standard, but the design sense is odd, and there's a pretty readable pattern in the way manga/anime builds stories that I'm trying to internalize. Anyway, it's fun, and the characters seem one-dimensional at first, but the story starts to builds depth into them as it goes.

Being asked for advice

More and more often these days, people come to me for advice, on issues of money management, relationships, and sundry topics. I try to meet these queries with straight face and sober application of experience. But in shallow submergence is an urge to shrug and crane my head looking for someone else with answers.

I'm happy to report that the urge stays submerged. This mastery of the WTF reflex is one of several signs of maturity I've been manifesting in the last year or so.

As a direct result, somewhere in the last 24 months or so, people have started to see me as a guy who knows where his towel is. I can think of three major things that account for this:

1. I got married, and did a good job of it. This makes it seem as though you know something.
2. The askers are generally younger, and did not know me in the near-past when I was more overtly lost and desperate.
3. I am actually sort of getting my shit together.

It's novel to grow up and fill in.

Movies February 2011

Pixar Short Films: Vol. 1

That was fun.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Yet another Terry Jones film that looks wonderful, and has some smashing ideas, and still seems like someone left out a couple pages of crucial exposition before the end sputters in. The guy is so consistent, I gotta think he's doing it on purpose. But Why? WHY?

Cartoon Noir

I love animation, but I guess I have to make an exception for this.

I Am A Sex Addict

The title. The title pulled me into this one when I was sick at home and cruising Netflix one day. It's an autobiographical documentary about a guy who finds out he has a sex addiction. It's interesting to notice where he was embarrassingly self-revelatory, and where he glossed.

Superman/Shazam!: The Return of Black Adam

A misnamed series of four DC universe shorts featuring Superman and Shazam, the Spectre, Green Arrow, and Jonah Hex respectively. Uniformly excellent. In the first one particularly, the creators seem to revel in their freedom from violence censorship that colored most of Warner Brothers' DC animation. I have never seen such loving attention in animation paid to punches -- gut punches, kidney punches, slow-motion punches to the face detailing the spit that flies out of a mouth.

Batman: Under the Red Hood

Remember that story from the comics about Jason Todd coming back from the dead to bedevil Batman? This is that in moving picture form.

Exit Through the Gift Shop

I like street art already, and so I was surprised, because this wasn't that. It was about a guy who knows street artists. A watchable, enjoyable documentary.

Ip Man

A high quality, but not life-changing martial arts movie.

Die Hard

This movie is underappreciated. Not that people don't like it, just not as much as they should. I don't recall watching another action movie with so many twists and visual bits and gags executed so deftly. I want to study the script for this flick. So much to learn.

Movies January 2011

Work and rampant volunteerism took all my giveadamn for the last quarter of 2010, so no formal record of movie watching was kept. I probably watched 900 films a month during that period. No one will ever know now.

But this month, I'm trying again!

The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Toy Story 3

Hercules Unchained (MST3K)
These things are less fun watching alone.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
Good stuff.

Jab We Met
M and I love it when the local access channel shows clips from Bollywood musicals as music videos. Streets of people dancing, and a guy or a girl singing about chaste love, while moving in a way that is the entire opposite of chastity. delightful! So we looked on Netflix for Bollywood musicals and found this one. Yay!

Improved bewilderment

A consistent feature of my life up to now has been a continual sense of bewilderment. That there is constantly, constantly more going on than I apprehend, or am even able to. This must say something important and dismal about my psyche.

While driving around at work the other day, considering what has changed, what I've gained in my 39 years, I realized I might have learned to be bewildered better. Not bewildered less, just better at thriving in that environment, like a microorganism you didn't know could live in a scalding geothermal vent. More grace in the flailing, less lost in the confusion.

I feel like the eventual goal is zero confusion. For now, I'm happy with what I've got.