Attention New Testament Geeks

Nicole and have been fans of Tom Wright for a long time. It started with a cheesy VHS series of his we watched at CBC, then sludging through his multi-volume magnum opus as North Park undergrads, and continues currently as we're both reading his newest popular book Surprised by Hope. He's a giant in the field of New Testament studies in addition to being an articulate pastor and theologian; so I was surprised and entertained to find out he'd be a guest on the Colbert Report...



Colbert demonstrates his own Biblical literacy in the interview, and Wright does a good run down of his new book. But the funniest segment of the show was actually Colbert's other guest, cookie monster. "Me have crazy times in 70s and 80s. Me like the Robert Downey Jr. of cookies!"

Finally.

"DAMMIT CHLOE! I haven't peed or eaten in 24 hours!"(Ahem, don't we mean darn it?)

It took a lot of time and hard work, but I finally finished. Over the past year and a half I've been making my way through all 6 seasons of 24 (the show I love to hate and hate to love). It was grueling! Think what that means. Each season has 24 episodes--24 x 6= 144. Each episode is an hour long with commercials, but I watch them on DVD so they're about 43 minutes long. That's 103 hours and 20 minutes that I spent with my old pal Jack and the crew at CTU. Holy cow. I'm done. Until Season 7 starts in '09 (according to the preview Tony is alive and he's evil. ARGH.).

I love to learn things, so for me it's nice when my entertainment is also educational. I've learned some important life lessons and rules of thumb from my time with 24...

1. You can get anywhere in LA within 10 minutes.

2. If you work for CTU or the president and you get arrested, don't fret because you'll be working again within the hour.

3. On any given work day, you may be required to torture your co-workers and/or kill your boss for some reason (seriously, Season 3, Ryan Chappelle? Worst. Episode. Ever.)

4. It's easy to fall in love during a terrorist threat!

5. Violence is always the answer.

Seriously, as much as I mock it and am generally morally opposed to it, I am a big 24 fan. My dream is to have the CTU ringtone on my phone at work because it's also a Cisco (just like they use on the show!) but alas, it is not one of my choices. I could find it for my cell phone but that just wouldn't be the same.

Anyone else out there? Who are your favorite/least favorite characters? Who are you sad/glad that they killed off?

Droopy music

For many weeks after Evie died, I was way too fragile to listen to sad music. I didn't think I ever would be able to again! This doesn't seem like a big deal, but most of my music collection is filled with artists who are prone to focusing on the dark side of life (see Neil Young, Lucinda Williams, Emmylou Harris, Ryan Adams, Johnny Cash, and so forth). A lot of the songs I used to love are filled with themes of death and love lost, and up until recently my favorite music just made me feel worse. But now, it kind of makes me feel better. The lyrics mean more to me, and sometimes it's reassuring to have someone else express how I feel in an artistic way. I'd like to share this verse from Emmylou Harris' Hour of Gold:

The world will be my witness
when they excavate my heart
and find the image of your face
imprinted there like some Shroud of Turin
that neither time nor tundra could erase

Good stuff.

Another thing I was unable to do was watch sad or violent TV shows or movies. I thought that actually would be good for me, to have violence out of my life. But, alas, I finally popped in a disc of Season 6 of 24 that I got from Netflix and now I'm once again addicted to the most violent show ever on TV. Darn you, Jack Bauer.