Grisly Movies and Anti-Heroes

I found a couple of news articles on Yahoo! which I found quite concerning. The first one was about a new movie directed by Peter Jackson, of Lord of the Rings fame. He was hoping to produce a PG13 rated film, because that it believed to attract the greatest number of viewers. However, early screening audiences complained that there was not enough violence! They were disappointed that the death of one character was not more grisly and visual, so Jackson went back and tried to “improve” it. Although it’s sad that Jackson bowed to such pressure, he is the creator of LOTR, so it’s not as if you could expect a very clean movie. What was really disturbing though was that people wanted more violence- more gore. It reminded me of ancient Rome- not just their Coliseums and gladiators, but even the theatres, which had real, live crucifixions! It’s disturbing that the modern world seems to becoming fascinated with gore and violence as well.

The second one was about a van heist anti-hero in France. This security van driver had over a million euros in his van, and he stole the money and then disappeared. On the Internet, he was being hailed as a hero! There were Facebook fans, even a “Tony Musulin for President” page and another called “The World Is Yours: Tony Musulin Best Driver 2009”. People were praising his robbery as “the heist of the century” and congratulated him on his “no guns, no violence” approach. Now he has turned himself in to the police. But what I want to know is why do people see him as a hero? He’s a robber! He stole other people’s money. What’s admirable in that?

Is it that he was like a modern-day Robin Hood, stealing from the rich, and now people are happy to see the rich people get what’s coming to them? Or do people just value cleverness over goodness? Do people congratulate somebody on putting on a “good show” even if such shows destroy the social fabric of society? Are we so bored and corrupted? If robbery and violence becomes acceptable, then society quickly runs down hill. I would like to try and understand why he became such an anti-hero, if anyone has any ideas, please tell me.

I don’t remember if I told you guys this, but I’m attempting to write a 50,000 word story in one month- to be finished by the end of November. I am currently sitting at the 10,000 word mark, which means that I have a LOT of typing to do. I’m still going to cross the 50K mark by the 30th, don’t worry, but it’s going to take some work. But I will get there! I think my next post will spill some of the plot.

Ways I’m Trying Not To Waste My Life

The things I get myself into. Only a few days ago, Beth and Squid convinced me to have a crack at writing a 50,000-word story in one month, otherwise known as NaNoWriMo (National November Writing Month, or something like that). Pretty big project. Therefore I need to be averaging about 1660 words a day. That is going to keep me very busy all month. I estimate that will mean 1 ½ hours of writing a day, as I can type two pages of story [a page being about 500 words] in one hour.  Of course, having an edited, polished end product isn’t the goal, the goal is to write, write, write!

 

The benefit of a project like this is that it’s a productive way to spend my time. Practising writing and stretching my creativity is a much better way to spend my time than playing games all afternoon.

 

I am also intending to pick up Lord Of The Rings again, I was reading it and jotting down some thoughts about it, and then for some reason, I gave it a rest. So I’ll be doing that this week as well.

 

Another ambitious plan I have in mind to keep myself from wasting my life is doing a bit of cleaning up (gulp!). I normally have a basket of ironing at the end of my bed, but over the last couple of days I’ve narrowed it down to a few shirts, which I hope to iron in a couple of days. I’m also slowly removing the mountain known as “Joshua’s School Tray” and filing all the stuff away. The trick is to do a little bit every day, instead of spending all afternoon at it; that way I’m not discouraged by always working, working, working. After my desk and my ironing are cleaned up, I’ve set my eyes on my cupboard of hobby materials, board games etc. It’s pretty full, and pretty messy. If I can give that a bit of attention every day, I can make the mess manageable.

 

Good grief, I’ll be sounding like my organized sister in a minute!

 

I’ve also become re-interested in Chess. Some time ago, I brought a book about 50 great chess games played by masters of the game. In between the actual moves the author has written down his analysis of the decisions, and explores the consequences of other moves. The idea is that you can study these chess masters, analysis their good moves and their mistakes, in the aim of improving your own game. I’m intending to do that, as well as play more chess against my handheld chess computer. This handheld chess computer has 73 levels (the difference between levels is how long it thinks for before selecting a move). On the 73^rd level it has no time limit on how long it can think for. I am currently on level… 6. I’m flogged every time. Obviously I need some improvement. J

 

With all these projects, I have to eliminate a few time-wasters of mine. Primarily this means my computer time and my wargames [historical battle games played off the  computer]. Mum gives me ½ hour a day for computer games, and 1 hour on week-ends. With all these more constructive projects, computer time is going to become a lot less common for me. My wargames (think playing with toy soldiers, but with rules based on real history) are another thing I spend a lot of my time on, to the detriment of other activities.

 

When you are trying to establish new habits, I don’t think it’s a good idea to eradicate all of the bad habits, especially if they’re only bad when in excess. If I’m not desperately trying to catch up with my writing on Saturdays, I’ll play my wargames then. My computer games will probably become a “crash-time” activity, something I do when I just want to crash and relax.

 

At the moment, I’ve written 1,080 words in my NaNoWriMo story, and although I’m not satisified with all of it, the important thing is to keep writing. I hope to reach the 3,000 word mark tonight. Perhaps I could write for a while, give it a break, play a bit of chess, reading or cleaning, and then come back to writing. I’ll see how I go.

In 70 Years I’ll Be Dead- The Question Is What I Do Until Then

Imagine if you, one Saturday, woke up at 6:00 AM. Your mother says that you will be having a family dinner at 6:000 PM, so if you want to finish any projects today, you have twelve hours. Instead of starting your day with a bang, you watch TV until 9:00. How would the rest of your day go? How much would you get done?

Not only would you have wasted three hours of your day, but you would have very little motivation to get stuck into all the worthwhile projects you wanted to do over the rest of the day.

If you do the maths, you’ll see that is exactly what the stereotypical teenager is doing! After some research on the internet, I estimated that I could probably expect to live to be about 85. In other words, in 70 years, I have a good chance of being dead. That doesn’t leave much time for dilly-dallying.

Society expects teenagers to party through the teen years, not really accomplishing anything worthwhile, just having fun. I’m often tempted to waste my life like that myself. But I don’t think we realize how much of our lives we waste this way.

If we waste away our childhood and our teen years, doing nothing of much importance, we’re whittling away the first 25% of our lives, just as you whittled away the first 25% of your day watching TV. There’s no reason to imagine you will be able to pull yourself out of the habit of wasting your life once you hit adulthood, than you would be able to reconstruct your day after watching TV until 9:00. We can’t afford to waste our lives.

My family had a discussion about this (in which we built that 9:00 AM analogy together) after reading Psalm 39

“LORD, make me to know my end; and what is the measure of my days; That I may know how frail I am. Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths; and my age is as nothing before You; Certainly every man at his best state is but vapour.”

Psalm 39:4-5 [NKJV]

School and Politics

I suppose it’s time for a personal update.

What’s up? Not a lot.

School started last week, so I’m back to my rigorous school schedule of 6 hours of school work a day. My plan is that if I can wake up at 5 o’clock, I can eat, have devotions, give the dog a walk and do my jobs by 6:30, and start school. That means that if I go to bed early, if I don’t read over breakfast and if I stay focussed during school, I can finish everything by 1:00, giving 30 minutes for family devotions and family meeting.

That’s the theory. In reality, I’m not there yet. In particular, I keep falling to the temptation to read over breakfast, which means I get carried away with my book and spend 90 minutes instead of 10 over food! As you can imagine, that just wrecks my schedule. However, I will get there! What’s the normal schedule for you guys?

The other exciting news is that Parliament has started sitting again this week after having a couple of weeks off. Ever since I came back from Canberra, I’ve been paying more notice to politics, and so, this afternoon, I’m going to watch Question Time on TV. Provided I’m not lagging in my schoolwork, I’m intending to watch it as often as the family schedule permits.

In Canberra I also discovered that parliament is broadcast on FM radio. Hopefully we get reception for it. So I’m intending to keep up to speed with politics via the TV and the radio- as well as the news of course.

I should post some photos of the model soldiers I’ve been painting soon- they look pretty good.

Well, that’s about all that’s happening over here. What are you guys up to?

How Should I Spend My Money and My Time?

I watched a news report about animal cloning and the incredible amount of money spent on it. At first I thought that there were a lot better ways for these pet-owners to spend so much money, and then I thought about how I spend my spending money. So I wrote this.

I have two hobbies. Both are constructive, productive, quality hobbies. If I took my hobbies as far as I wanted to (without being obsessive), I could spend $10,000 on my hobbies over my entire lifetime. Should I be doing that? That much money could provide enough drinking water for thousands of people in Sudan, thanks to programs like Dollar for a Drink. Is it right for me to spend it on myself?

This leads to the question, how much time should we spend on playing, and on working? By “working” I mean, being productive so that the results of our labour have long-lasting affects on ourselves and on the people around us. My hobbies don’t really fill that definition. “Work” might not be the right word; I’m only using it in relation to how I often have the choice to spend my time either on my hobbies or on my life passions and probable career (history/politics/philosophy).  Just because they are my passions doesn’t mean that it’s not easier to spend my time on my hobbies- my passions are still “work” in a sense, work I enjoy, but still work.

So should my play simply be a means to an end, so that I’m rested enough to go back to work and study efficiently? Or is it all right to give some of my life to play?

The relaxation side of the argument in my head says that humans need relaxation. If we worked 24/7, we’d crash and never get anything done. Spending time with other people, just relaxing, is very important- we can’t spend life in the fast lane. Hobbies are my relaxation. We shouldn’t always be working, after all, God created the 7^th day for resting.

I know there is validity in all those arguments. But the “work” side of the argument says that only the 7^th day was for resting! Considering that the average lifespan is about 80 years, I have approximately 64 years left to live out my life’s passions, and its terrible stewardship to waste them. The question is, are my hobbies good stewardship of my 64 years?

The ancient Spartans dedicated their whole life to the military, and refused themselves any creature comforts that could reduce their ability to withstand the rigours of war. We can admire their discipline, toughness and dedication, but when it comes to actually wanting to replicate that…

I don’t think God expects us to live up to the Spartans’ extreme lifestyle. There is a place for relaxation and hobbies. What I’m trying to find out is, how much play, is too much play?

Flogging A Dead Horse Thief

This email was too good not to share. I’m not sure if it’s true though. It’s entitled

“Flogging a Dead Horse Thief”

Political Spin at its best

It just all depends on how you look at some things…

Judy Wallman, a professional genealogy researcher in southern California , was doing some personal work on her own family tree. She discovered that Congressman Harry Reid’s great-great uncle, Remus Reid, was hanged for horse stealing and train robbery in Montana in 1889. Both Judy and Harry Reid share this common ancestor.

The only known photograph of Remus shows him standing on the gallows in Montana territory:

On the back of the picture Judy obtained during her research is this

inscription: ‘Remus Reid, horse thief, sent to Montana Territorial Prison 1885, escaped 1887, robbed the Montana Flyer six times. Caught by Pinkerton detectives, convicted and hanged in 1889.’

So Judy recently e-mailed Congressman Harry Reid for information about their great-great uncle. Believe it or not, Harry Reid’s staff sent back the following

biographical sketch for her genealogy research:

“Remus Reid was a famous cowboy in the Montana Territory . His business empire grew to include acquisition of valuable equestrian assets and intimate dealings with the Montana railroad. Beginning in 1883, he devoted several years of his life to government service, finally taking leave to resume his dealings with the railroad. In 1887, he was a key player in a vital investigation run by the renowned Pinkerton Detective Agency. In 1889, Remus passed away during an important civic function held in his honor when the platform upon which he was standing collapsed.”

P.S. The email had this disclaimer at the bottom- it’s like those “authorized by” notices you find at the end of a government ad- read aloud very quickly in a low tone!

“Consider the environment before printing.”

Socialization- the Homeschooler’s S word

In my last post, I shared a bit about what happened when I spent a week in Canberra. I’ll share some photos sometime… but I didn’t take very many photos, and I think the other delegates are intending to facebook their photos- which probably means I’ll have to get my head around facebook… (major rant about technology etc. etc. etc.)

I was the only homeschooled student among those 30 other 16-17 year olds, and I found it very interesting to see how 30 of my peers interacted for a whole week. Of course, Homeschoolers are always being asked “what about socialization” but in the end, I realised that I was indeed socialized.

On the first day, we had a picnic to get to know each other. Most of the delegates formed this huge oval so that everybody could talk to everybody- although there were often two or three conversations going on. As we got to know each other a bit better, everybody split off into groups of 4-6 delegates. I found that a little tricky, because I am used to either going to a friends’ place, playing with all the kids, or mingling in church and other adult functions. In church or other functions, you talk to an adult for 5-10 minutes, he goes off to get a coffee, and you wander around to the next interesting conversation. Here, people largely stayed in the same groups over the week, and since I didn’t do that, I wasn’t in the hive of social activity. I wasn’t shunned or ignored in any way and I was fully included- I just had a different model of socializing than they had.

All in all, I realized that homeschooling had given me the ability to socialize very well with many people, and with people of different ages. It was encouraging to realize that.

Does anybody else have observations from times there were large numbers of kids socializing together?

Trip Down Canberra Lane

Well, I am back.

In case you didn’t notice, I’ve been away for a week. Miss me?

Thought not.:)

I have just spent a fantastic week in Canberra, the Australian National Capital, as I was part of the 2009 Rotary Adventure In Citizenship programme. Rotary funds year 11 students from all over Australia to travel to Canberra for a week and learn about being an active citizen of Australia. You could describe it as a leadership course, which particularly focused on Parliament House and the cultural icons of Australia. It was fantastic!

A quick summary of the whole week- we did many role-plays of our political system (including Question Time and a mock Federal Election), toured the War Memorial, Australian Institute of Sport, the embassy area, the US Embassy, Duntroon (the royal military college), Old Parliament House and Questacon (a kids’ science centre). We met Members of Parliament, Senators, scientists, a navy veteran of 17 years and some renowned journalists. We saw Question Time, and parliamentary proceedings. Four of the delegates (including my roommate) met the Prime Minister. As you can imagine, it was a very hectic week. What did I learn? I realized just how transparent the Australian political system is- we are privileged to live in Australia. I gained a new respect for politicians. They work very family-hostile hours, it’s very lonely if things don’t go your way, and in reality, 90% they do vote the same, instead of the constant bickering and negativism that you see on the news.

I also made very interesting social observations as I mingled with 30 teenagers from all over Australia with me being the only homeschooler. I’ll be sure to share my observations with you all!

“Bolt”- a great family movie

My younger brother (he’s 11) is really hooked on a new Disney kids’ movie called “Bolt” (rated G). I have to admit that I really like it too- but for a very different reason. There is more value in the personal story that “Bolt” tells, than in the action and explosions etc (which I suspect is why Daniel loves it). Because of this fantastic personal story of loyalty to friends, I rate this as easily one of the best Disney movies I’ve seen in a very long time.

The basic storyline is that Bolt, a cute white dog, is the star of a very popular TV show, and he believes that everything that happens on the movie-set, the evil bad-guys, the fact that his beloved Penny is in mortal peril, and most of all, that he is endowed with incredible super-powers is all real. However, he gets a shock of reality when he is accidentally transported from Hollywood to New York. Desperate to get back to Penny, he is joined by Mittens, a cynical cat who is convinced that Bolt is sadly deluded.

As Bolt travels across America on the way back to Penny (who is heart-broken) the cat slowly starts to convince him that he is just a normal dog. This leads the greatest part of the whole movie. Bolt finally realises that he’s not a super-hero, but that leads to a self-identity crisis. If he doesn’t chase bad guys, then who is he?

Fortunately, the cat is right there to be a friend to him and lets Bolt know that being a normal dog is the best gig in the world. She teaches him how to do all the dog things, and restores his self-worth in himself.

Although the movie focuses on Bolt’s loyalty to Penny, there is also the everyday loyalty between friends. When Bolt’s entire world was falling apart, he had a friend to stand by him, and let him know, he was special. That is why the movie “Bolt” is so great.