Reviews of movies, anime, and the occasional TV show mixed with warnings on Blogger spam. Also to be found are musings on whatever I am thinking about - all from the point of view of being left to watch everything from the sidelines of life.
First, the single he is most famous for – if you don’t recognize his name, you’ll recognize the tune:
Brubeck lived a long life and died at the ripe old age of 91. He missed 92 by a day, but will be remembered as long as good jazz music still gets played. I really need to add more of his music to my personal library.
Check it out, this is what musical brilliance sounds like.
It has been that way trying to get the Spirited Away review written and I hope to get it up soon. It has been a case of interruptitus from many sources this week should be better – after this afternoon. “After this afternoon” sounds redundant doesn’t it? Yet it isn’t. So there is my weird thought for the day.
This afternoon involves a tooth extraction, so I’ll be able to directly compare the experiences. That’s one way to find out if a statement is hyperbole, but I don’t recommend following in my footsteps.
At least weight training is working out. While I’m still at pathetically low weights, it is nice to be able to consistently do it again. In fact, I need to go do it right now, so time to wrap this up!
Updated in the early evening:
Well, I forgot this was the consultation phase of things – it has been a stereotypical Monday. So it will be Thursday bright and early before the tooth pulling actually happens.
Only dread one day at a time…
Several Sundays ago, I found myself pondering how to describe one of the major prerequisites to repenting. It is something that Paul mentioned in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 7, verses 7-10:
For though I made you sorry with a letter, I do not repent, though I did repent: for I perceive that the same epistle hath made you sorry, though it were but for a season.
Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance: for ye were made sorry after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing.
For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.
It was while teaching that this came up and I described it as being a sincere desire to change and stop a sinful behavior versus the classic teenager’s line of “I’m sorry, okay?” There is a world of difference between the two attitudes, but I still felt my description to be lacking. So I went looking for more eloquent descriptions from others.
Elder Dallin H. Oaks spoke about it in 2001 during a seminar:
Lehi taught this principle when He said the Savior’s atoning sacrifice was for “all those who have a broken heart and a contrite spirit; and unto none else can the ends of the law be answered” (2 Nephi 2:7). The truly repentant sinner who comes to Christ with a broken heart and a contrite spirit has been through a process of personal pain and suffering for sin. He or she understands the meaning of Alma’s statement that none but the truly penitent are saved. Alma the Younger certainly understood this. Read his accounts in Mosiah 27 and in Alma 36.
President Kimball said, “Very frequently people think they have repented and are worthy of forgiveness when all they have done is to express sorrow or regret at the unfortunate happening.” 3
There is a big difference between the godly sorrow that worketh repentance (see 2 Corinthians 7:10), which involves personal suffering, and the easy and relatively painless sorrow for being caught, or the misplaced sorrow Mormon described as “the sorrowing of the damned, because the Lord would not always suffer them to take happiness in sin” (Mormon 2:13).
That’s great stuff, but Claudi V. Zimic’s 2007 General Conference talk All That We Can Do really jumped out for me personally and got to the core of what godly sorrow is about:
It is difficult to bear the sufferings that are inflicted upon us, but the real torment in life is to suffer the consequences of our own shortcomings and sins which we inflict upon ourselves.
There is only one way to rid ourselves of this suffering. It is by means of sincere repentance. I learned that if I could present unto the Lord a broken heart and a contrite spirit, feeling a godly sorrow for my sins, humbling myself, being repentant of my faults, He, through His miraculous atoning sacrifice, could erase those sins and remember them no more.
The Argentine poet José Hernández, in his famous book Martín Fierro, wrote:
A man loses a lot of things
and sometimes finds them again,
but it’s my duty to inform you,
and you’ll do well to remember it,
if once your sense of shame gets lost
it will never again be found.
If we don’t experience the godly sorrow that results from our sins or unrighteous actions, it will be impossible for us to remain on the way of outstanding people.
He brought up a word rarely used these days that has become so old fashioned and quaint a notion that it has lost much of its meaning. Of course I am writing about the word “shame.”
Over at Dictionary.com, the noun “shame” is defined as:
It is the first definition that applies in this case.
Godly sorrow is shame, in my opinion. That pain felt that you have done wrong and know you have no valid excuse for it can feel like your soul is on fire and not in a good way. So if you feel that flame that is named shame, it is a warning that you need to change what you are doing. Spiritually speaking, that begins with repentance. It is a vital first step toward coming to Christ that must be made.
So that concludes my thoughts on godly sorrow on this Sabbath day, which I hope was a good one for you.
It is ironic that I would be reading about the end of upgrading CPUs in home PCs a week after doing just that. Over at Ars Technica, there is an article about how Intel is planning to move to soldered on the motherboard processors and probably abandoning sockets.
To those few remaining hobbyist builders who do buy a low end CPU to be upgraded later this is something of concern. Unfortunately for them, this is no longer the norm in home building PCs. Instead we see most people swapping out the entire guts of a system when they upgrade, so this isn’t a big deal to them.
For me, I have always operated on the cheap side of computing and have upgraded processors on most rigs I have had. The three PCs in the house all have had more powerful CPUs dropped in that have extended their lives out considerably. The real world performance gains have been nothing to sneeze at either.
So I’m a little sad to see this kind of change to the industry being talked about. It is far from the first computer component category to implode with dedicated sound cards and video cards becoming niche products made only by a few manufacturers. With most PC users content with the onboard gear, only gamers have kept those two items afloat.
Combine this with the talk of AMD being in serious trouble and we have a recipe for returning to the bad old days of computing where PCs cost two to four grand to buy. Maybe ARM can start making inroads as an architecture against x86, but…
Like you’ve been run over by a Mack truck? That’s how yesterday felt thanks to a cold that leveled me. It was so bad my vision blurred forcing me to quit halfway through watching a movie. Today is better, thankfully.
In the process of writing the review for Spirited Away, I took just over 400 screen captures and now am choosing 40 to use. After that, more will be taken for the extras and narrowed down to ten. Then I have to get The Last Starfighter screen captures underway. With a lot of luck and perseverance, both reviews will be up by Saturday.
Meanwhile, I present a video I found on YouTube of another 1950’s jet fighter since I have been waxing nostalgic since Thanksgiving:
It is a rare thing to find color footage of forgotten jets like the F-89D. It is a pity the massive volley fire of rockets was not shown.
The Canadians had a more successful jet in the same role, the Avro CF-100 Canuck. Fortunately, there is more footage of it around:
They look like Mk. 4 models to me and here you do get to see rocket pods fired as well as guns. Early F-89’s were gun armed with six 20mm cannons, but the Delta model on only carried rockets or guided missiles.
I am perpetually amazed at what engineers and designers pulled off with the technology of the time.
Massive swarms of shoppers bustling about like yellow jackets on the prowl for meat or sugar is not my idea of fun to deal with. It has been many years since I braved a store during the Black Friday weekend and so far I’ve succeeded at avoiding the perilous locations. For those of us (mainly of the male persuasion) who consider shopping boring and/or painful, the Web has given us a way to safely survive Black Friday.
Online sales.
In my case, there usually isn’t anything I’m even interested in the big store sales, but there is gold to be found at online vendors. Yesterday, I snared Iron Man 2 on Blu-ray at Amazon.com for under $4 along with a couple more heavily discounted BDs. My little Christmas present to myself, now that I have taken care of required gifts to others.
Not once while browsing did I get crowded away from a display, though a cat did jump on me. Spending long minutes if not hours standing in line to get in and also to check out? Did not happen. Only a few mouse clicks were required, which is not terribly taxing. It was bitterly windy and I did not feel it at all.
I have come to the conclusion this is the manly way to shop. You can be as under dressed as you want while lounging around with food and drink, yet still score a decent deal. This isn’t just surviving Black Friday – it is surviving it in total comfort without any stress.
You should try it.
Here in the States, it is the holiday of Thanksgiving tomorrow. Festivities mean I won’t be online, so I’m wishing everyone a safe and thankful holiday a little early.
A few things that I am grateful for this year:
So what is on your gratitude list this year?
