Hindsight really is 20/20

So Abigail and I just finished watching United 93. In case you missed it, this is the dramization of the flight that crashed in the Pennsylvania field. The movie is 100% pure brilliant cinema. It takes what by all accounts is an absolutly amazing story of human courage, and portrays it in the absolute most realistic way possible. This is seen even down to the word spoken. The people talk like real people, stumbling over words, repeating themselves, getting easily excited,etc. Watching United 93 is a sobering experience.

Of course watching that movie caused me to think of the fall out of that one horrid day, and sadly the truly horrid was still to come. I can agree with military action in Afghanistan, that was the most visible and viable source of terrorism that we could identify, and we went for the juglar with good success. However, our nebulous and impossible war of terrorism took an ugly turn.

I once wrote that I "reluctantly" supported the idea of war in Iraq. I can now look back at myself and say WTF?!?
Just thinking about the crap that is going on in Iraq is getting me frustrated and angry. So many people are dying on both sides and for what? Bush's stupid-ass war is creating terrorists not fighting them. I know that I am not the first to make these remarks, but the current conflict in Iraq is quickly turning into another Vietnam. We are fighting a war for a vague idealogical cause, we have no clear cut objective, and we are fighting in a land that our armed forces are not personally invested in (and thus do not feel a need to truly protect it). Even if some sort of viable exit strategy is put into place, and the US pulls out of Iraq. What did we acomplish? Yes, Saddam Hussein is out of power, and that is a good thing, but honestly are we going to leave Iraq a better place than we found it?
The war in Iraq was a mistake, a bitter, terrible mistake with long reaching consequences. Now that we started this mess, we as a country our obligated to see it through. However, I so despertly wish that our country's leadership would accept responsibility for their mistake (and complete, blantant misleading of the American public. Seriously, where are those mobile biological weapon units that we saw on satelite?). Seriously the whole thing would be down right frustrating, if it were not so tragically, heart breaking sad. . .

Jumping the Shark . . and I'm proud of it!

Podcasts are for sure the new "big thing" on the internet and every website in the world has one, and now I do to! Well actually, I don't personally but I am heading up the podcast for the Allied Oddballs . Two other members of the clan joined me via Xbox live and we rambled for about half an hour. Keep in minds that we are all podcast rookies, but I don't think we did that to terrible, check it outhere

Another way to waste time

As if I needed that . . .

Anyway I discovered that there is a large community of people who take video game songs and remix them. For some awesome sounding stuff . Check out VGmuisc.com and ocremix.com to waste time with me.

You are beautiful my sweet, sweet song

So I am enjoying reading week. I have had no classes this week, and I have done reading. Though, I probably should have done just a bit more than I have done up to this point. This week has really served for me as a good time to catch my breath and reflect back on the past six weeks. Thus far Seminary has been challenging all around, and I suppose that is what it is suppose to do. However, I am curious if somone is a bit more left leaning in theological matters that myself, has been equally challenged. Theoretically that should be the case since in a marketplace of ideas all valid views should be treated equally, but I sometimes wonder if that is truly the case at CTS. While I have been presented with ideas like historical criticism (actually I do not minde historical criticism, it is the whole search for the historical Jesus that bothers me) and (the much despised) process theology, I have found my faith, understanding, and relationship to have actually grown stronger by being presented by ideas that I do not agree with. In wrestling and coming to terms with these ideas I have been able to better reflect on who I understand God to be. To put it in Seminarian terms, I now realize that I have a very high Christology, and my understanding of God is very Trinitarian. In reflecting on those aspects, I reheard this song and it, in a nutshell, and very simply explains what I believe (of course to properly expain what I believe takes more than a few lines of a song, but this does provide a nice snapshot), and it really uplifted me when I heard it last week:

You are so Good to Me
You are beautiful my sweet, sweet song
You are beautiful my sweet, sweet song
You are beautiful my sweet, sweet song
And I will sing again

You are so good to me
You heal my broken heart
You are my father in Heaven (2x)

You are beautiful my sweet, sweet song
You are beautiful my sweet, sweet song

You ride upon the clouds
You lead me to the truth
You are the Spirit inside me (2x)

You are my strong melody, yeah
You are my dancing rhythm
You are my perfect rhyme
And I will sing of You forever

You poured out all Your blood
You died upon the cross
You are my Jesus who loves me (2x)

You are my Father in Heaven
You are the Spirit inside me
You are my Jesus who loves me

Help me decide

In the next week I have to read about 300 pages. For the past month that has been the norm, but reading week is in sight! There are no classes startng a week from this coming Monday. Now I will use reading weak to stay caught up and even get ahead in my seminary work, but not that Monday. That is game day. I fully plan to spend the entire day playing video games. The question is which game? Here are the options I am giving myself:

1: KOTOR

This is considered the best Star Wars game ever, and I have not played it! I have it for Xbox so I would fire it up on Monday, put 8-12 hours in on it, and then try to finish it up with an hour here and there throughout the week.

2: Nintendo DS

Speaking of Star Wars, my DS probably feels like an abandoned step child. In this option I will give the DS some love while watching all six Star Wars movies in a row.

3: Kessen III

As I think I have mentioned before I got my 360 ahead of the planned schedule because of a good deal. A casualty of this good deal was Kessen III, because I had more or less just gotten it but not yet played it. So for this option I will dust off my PS2 and play it all day.

4: Blockbuster

There are a few 360 games I would like to play, but will probably never get the opportunity to these include: Prey, Blazing Angels, and Alaskan Adventures, and Just Cause. So for this option I will go to Blockbuster and rent a game to play for the expereince (and extra achievement points). I think some of those games like Prey can eve be beat in a day.

5. Civilization III

It has been so long since I have played a game on the PC that I by and large have to be considered a console gamer, but I recently traded an old PC game for Civ III. In my junior year of college this game completely and fully consumed one month of my life, and I am willing to give it at least one more week.

So that is the goal I am striving to this next week as I plod through 300 pages of religious academia. Which option would you pick?

In completely unrelated things, I am unbelieveably excited for this game (and no the game is not a joke):