narrative landscape

Mr. Shookfoil has "tagged" me. So now I have to fill out this dumb little quiz or I'll have bad karma. And who wants bad karma? Should be fun.

4 jobs I have had:

-Ninja fighter during the cold war
-Camp Counselor in Brookneal, VA
-Staff Writer for The Rutherford Institute in Charlottesville, VA
-Bookstore jack of all trades in St. Louis, MO.

4 movies I could watch over and over
-O Brother, Where Art Thou?
-Napoleon Dynamite
-Brokeback Mountain
-Elf

4 books I could read over and over
-Genesis
-House at Pooh Corner
-The Odyssey
-PCA Book of Church Order

4 musicians I don't get tired of:
-Bob Dylan
-Mark Heard
-Johnny Cash
-Neil Diamond

4 places I have lived
-Charlottesville, VA
-Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
-Banbridge, Northern Ireland
-Research Station, Antarctica

4 tv shows I watch
-The Simpsons
-E! Tonight
-24
-Lost



4 places I have been on vacation
-I don't feel like answering this one.

4 websites I visit daily
-Viva El Birdoes
-NY Times
-Gmail
-Covenant Library catalog

4 favorite foods
-Pulled Pork BBQ
-BBQ Ribs
-New York Strip Steak
-A nice rare burger

4 places I'd like to be right now
-That cool research station in Antarctica
-In the treehouse at Camp Hat Creek
-In the smoking room/library/study in the house I'm going to own someday
-Busch Stadium (if it was a summer night with the Cards in town)

4 bloggers I'm tagging
-Jordan
-John
-Ruth
-Jared

Ami and I just got done watching a movie on my ibook in bed. We watched it in bed because I broke the dvd player last week by (accidently) putting in two dvds at once, which wouldn't at first seem like that major a thing, but it jammed up the disc player and we had to pry it open to get the dvds out. One was a library disc, so we definitely had to get that one out, as we know personal experience that the St. Louis library system charges you $30 if you lose or destroy one of their dvds. We know this because Rolen made "Ron Burgundy: Anchorman" into a chew toy a couple months ago. (On another note, this is a great example for why the government shouldn't run anything--I mean, $30 to replace a dvd you could get for $8 at blockbuster? Absurd). So anyway, you can imagine my sense of desperation as a I tried to get the library dvd out of the dvd player and how I might have ended up destroying the player in the process. The movie we watched on the ibook was "Me and You and Everyone We Know", which turned out to be a great movie--very funny and random and sort of poetic, just how I like movies. (Though there are a few objectionable scenes). The funniest scene was about poop and IM and some miscommunication, and that definitely qualifies as random. If you've seen it, you know what I mean. Ami didn't think it was as funny as I did. It really was a great movie-beautifully filmed and hinting toward the difficulty and possibility of human relationship. Definitely the independent movie of the year, if you're into independent movies.

I've recently gotten involved with a group blog effort of various Christians (most of whom have some connection to Covenant Seminary) to basically post critical reviews of books we're reading. It's a diverse group of writers (notably including Sean Lucas and Jeremy Huggins) and should be fun. Come have a look.

This is the piece that I gave Ami for Christmas. It was done by one of our good friends here at Covenant, John Early. We like it a lot.

The new season of 24 started this weekend, so Ami and I have a second tv show to keep up with. Jack Bauer is back to his old tricks, and it looks like the country needs saving again...Thank goodness someone's on the job.

I listened to a good bit of the Sam Alito hearings last week at work, and while I'll never be a card-carrying member of the GOP, the performance of the Democrats on the committee was just embarrassing. They were like some pathetic kid who still can't believe they lost the election a year ago, still can't believe W gets to nominate judges whose bias he likes, just like every other president whose party owns a senatorial majority. (Now, I don't like W either, but the man is the president--and I do like Alito and Roberts).

I'm back on the Denver Broncos bandwagon for the first time since Elway retired, looking for a Denver-Carolina Super Bowl.

I heard some guy on the radio defending Bush's newly disclosed policy of legally/illegally (depending on who you ask) wiretapping citizen's phone conversations without a warrant by claiming "The only people that have something to fear are the ones with something to hide!" That's about the most naive political statement I've ever heard. Try telling that to the Japanese Americans rounded up into internment camps during WWII. Yeah, our government's never taken advantage of its power over anybody in its history, that's for sure. there might be an argument to be made for giving the gov't the power to listen in on citizen's phone conversations, but the argument that the gov't will never abuse that power seems to be a shaky one to me. honestly, the whole thing sounds to me like GWB wants to be my male older sibling, and I would rather he was just my president, personally.

Ami, Cael, and I are finally getting settled back in St. Louis. Christmas was great, but it was a whirlwind--two and half weeks, lots of different beds, lots of new people holding our son. He was a champ through it all, but still it was difficult for all of us. Of course, seeing family was great, but it just underscored the difficulty of them being there and us being here. I'm not sure what the resolution for that problem is, but for now the resolution looks like this: me studying for the spring semester and working at the bookstore, and hanging out with Ami and Cael in between. It looks pretty good from here.

One of the things I realized over break was how much I'm beginning to miss art and beauty here. Somewhere in between the theological and biblical studies I'm immersed in here, I've forgotten what it was like to read poety, much less write it. The world I inhabited at UVA seems very far away sometimes--the world where I lived and breathed beauty and poetics, spent most of my days looking for it. That's another problem that doesn't have an easy solution. I bought Ami a great painting for Christmas that was done by one of our friends here. That'll help with the art problem. And I've found some new music I like--Sufjan Stevens is my new favorite replacement for Bob Dylan on the ipod. (Don't worry, Bob, I'll be back). And I can make some resolutions to start writing again, but it's hard to believe that I'll keep it up once the semester begins. Enough of the complaints of an almost former poet.