Saw this headline today, and my geeky nerd enthusiasm went through the roof:
‘Firefly’ returning to cable; Fillion says he’d play Mal again
Could it be true? Has the fan buzz really worked? Does a network finally have a smart bunch of suits working for them?
No.
The actual story is that one of the channels in the US is airing the entire series over the next couple of weeks. Grrr. Argh. Sigh.
It breaks my heart.
Going to go watch an episode of Dollhouse now.
Way back in September I wrote about the newest novelty Bible: The C.S. Lewis Bible. I commented on the publisher’s marketing ploy that this new Bible would provide fresh insights into the writings of Lewis, and I talked about how it is just another example of marketing the Bible to make it about “what we want.”
I really thought the hoopla about this Bible was over in September. And then I read an article over at Christianity Today this morning, where the hoopla continues because the publishing company is supposedly not being faithful to Lewis because of the Bible translation they chose to pair with his writings. That’s right, C.S. Lewis is supposedly spinning in his grave because the publishers chose the NRSV translation instead of the KJV.
Quoting Leland Ryken, the article states:
“The choice of the NRSV, of which HarperCollins is the U.S. publisher, seems to have been a marketing decision rather than a logical choice,” Ryken said.
Um, the whole project is a marketing decision, and not a logical choice.
It’s been an interesting week for movie news.
First, a “leaked” promotional photo for X-Men: First Class was put up on MSN and then promptly pulled after the director saw it and freaked out. I’m not hyped up about this movie. I think the X-men franchise needs to disappear. (I know, I know, this coming from a Marvel fan). But, really, they messed up X-3, and then destroyed Wolverine (and massacred Deadpool in the process). I’m not hitching my wagon to the X-men movie, I’ll gear up for the Avengers instead.
Then, Chris Nolan announced that he has cast his villains for the next installment of Batman: Bane and Catwoman. All I can say is that they better do Bane better than they did in Batman and Robin.
And then today, I got the horrible, horrible, awful, devastating, want-to-rip-my-hair-out news that Hollywood has hired a writer to re-boot the Lethal Weapon series. No. No. No. Very bad. No touching the Lethal Weapon series!
/ so ends my rant.
One of the features of WordPress is it will tell you how people get to your blog. They may click a link from another blog’s blogroll, or from someone linking to a particular article.
The other way is to use a search engine. WordPress tells me what phrases people typed in their search engine to find my blog.
Here are the top 10 wackiest ways people found my blog using a search engine in 2010:
10. Cheese. People have found my blog by typing in a variety of “cheese” themes: Cheese wearing clothes; Christianity and cheese; Horrible cheese; novelty cheese; sci-fi cheese; psychology of cheese.
9. Sarcastic inspirational posters. This doesn’t surprise me, given that I post demotivational posters every Monday. But someone really typed that in a search engine?
8. Examples of spineless people. I’m pretty sure that they landed on this post when they used that phrase; it’s probably not what they were looking for.
7. Should a Christian be wimpy? Again, it probably led them to the post in number 8.
6. Erotic humiliation. This was very much a “what the heck” moment when I saw this. But, they probably hit the main page on a day when I quoted from the Christian Humanist blog that used the word ‘erotic’, and further down the main page was a buffy motivational poster with the word ‘humiliation’ on it. For a PG-13 blog, the fact that they found this blog using that search query is mind-boggling.
5. Never worked in a church going to seminary. Hmmmm. Best guess is they hit on my Training Up Pastors — Going to Seminary post. Just for the record, I have worked in a church and yes I’m going to seminary.
4. Riker Beard. This one made me laugh. But I did in fact write about the famous Riker Beard.
3. Cthulhu Christmas. This obviously led to the motivational poster. But people are actually googling for “Cthulhu Christmas”?
2. how canada churchs can helps me imagrate to canada. Yup. Spelled just like that. Wow. Just wow.
1. She wants to be worshipped. I have NO idea how this phrase managed to find my blog.
…Is the restaurants!
Since moving to Caronport, I have been disappointed by the restaurant offerings in Moose Jaw. If I want a decent burger (Wendy’s) I have to go to Regina. That’s right, you can’t even get a decent burger in Moose Jaw. Even worse are the Asian restaurants — they all serve the same fried Canadian fare. On the upside, it has meant we have done a lot more eating at home.
So we’re going back to Ontario for Christmas, and I have mapped out the restaurants we will be visiting.
First up: Some great Viet-Thai. I think I miss this the most. A place to get a huge bowl of fresh noodle soup for $5. My favourite in Hamilton is Ben Thanh. The food is so healthy and so diverse. We’re going our first night back, and I already know what I’m having when we go: 212B (every item is ordered by number). 212B is Stir Fried Lemon Grass Chicken with green and red peppers, onions and served in a basil sauce. YUM!
Next up: German food! Most people in Hamilton go to the Black Forest Inn for German, but it is nothing compared to Zum Linzer. Zum Linzer is in a converted house, and the dining room probably doesn’t seat more than 50 people, but the food is spectacular! And the desserts! Oh the desserts! The reservation is already made, and we’ll be dining with good friends. It will be a blast!
Don’t forget: Okay, this may seem really simple and kind of silly, but I even miss a simple chain restaurant: Swiss Chalet. Decent food for a cheap price. And I always get the same thing — Quarter white with fries and then I steal Chuck’s dipping sauce which he doesn’t use. Did you know that there is not a single Swiss Chalet in Saskatchewan? The horror!
And of course there will be a Christmas dinner at my mom’s thrown in there somewhere. Love my mom’s turkey.
So yeah, that is our trip in a nutshell. And if I believed in Santa Claus, I would ask him to do something about the restaurants in Moose Jaw.
Okay, so it’s winter. It’s winter in Saskatchewan. It’s cold (-30 C). It’s snowy (already had 10-15 cm, expecting another 5 cm).
Everyone is bundling up. Coats, hats, mitts, long underwear, and snow-pants. Those of us with remote car starters are thankful that we can start the car from inside our nice warm houses (big thanks to my in-laws for our remote starter!).
If you don’t have to go out, you don’t.
So can somebody explain this to me?
Is this some sort of seminary rite of passage? You will graduate with your M.DIV or MATS degree if you bike all year round? Is there a Seminary Credo like the Postal Service: Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night nor subzero temperatures will keep a seminary student from riding their bike to get to class.
This is our first full winter in Caronport. I don’t know if I’m going to make it all the way through. It’s COLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
* The blogosphere is all aflutter with the release of the translator’s notes and online preview of the new NIV 2011. I blog about the Bible and theology and stuff, I should be excited right? I think I have translation fatigue. Or Bible translation/edition cynicism. At a practical level, how many churches are going to rush out and replace their NIV pew Bibles for NIV 2011 pew Bibles? Other than seminary students and scholars, who is really excited by this news? Do I really need another translation on my shelf? I have at least 7 already. Meh.
******************************
* Today is Election Day in the U.S. I have been avoiding the politics tab at Fark.com for weeks because of the craziness of this election. Tea Party, Barack Obama, Restore the Sanity. Blah, blah, blah. I’m not even in the U.S. and I have election fatigue. How much worse would it be if I had cable television? As my mother-in-law has said, “I’ll be glad when the election is over, because then they’ll stop running the attack ads 24/7.” I know Canadian elections are boring compared to the U.S. elections, but I’d take a civilized Canadian election over this crazy election, any day. Meh.
*****************************
* The hostile takeover bid of Potash Corp. has hit media saturation. I can’t go to a single Canadian news site, read my daily paper, or listen to the radio in the car, without someone mentioning that the Canadian government will decide this week whether the bid by BHP Billiton can stand. And it’s not just Saskatchewan news outlets that are covering it ad nausem. Now of course, you could say, “but you should care! You saw what happened when Stelco Steel in Hamilton got bought by foreign (in this case US) interests.” True, but Stelco was a disaster of a company prior to the sale, and it’s a disaster even after it’s sale to US Steel. Look at it’s neighbour Dofasco. Dofasco got scooped by ArcelorMittal, and is now a subsidiary of the steel giant. And it doesn’t have the drama and chaos that Stelco continues to have. The sale of Potash Corp is not the end of the world. Meh.
******************************
Ever since the new mega patch came out in advance of Cataclysm, World of Warcraft has been unplayable for me. I can check my mail and go to the auction house, and that’s about it. I’ve even tried playing on a low-level toon away from the crowds in Dalaran (aka “Lag”-laran), but the framerate still sucks. While it is frustrating, I have been feeling overall bleh towards the game, even before this patch chaos. Is Cataclysm going to make the game different, or will it be more of the same, just updated? Do I really want to shell out money for the X-pac in December? I probably will buy it, but I still say Meh.
So what are you feeling “meh” about today?
It was announced this week that George Lucas is once again re-releasing the Stars Wars movies, this time to cash in on the 3D craze. This is not exciting. This is not news. It would be news if Lucas didn’t “re-release” the Star Wars movies every couple of years. Each time, he promises that the movies will be better, but his changes usually amount to nothing more than tinkering, although in some cases it results in fan-boy rage, (repeat after me: Han shot first!) Even the most ardent sci-fi fans are wearying of the glut of Star Wars re-dos on the market. I mean really, how many copies can should one fanboy own?
In other news this week, it was announced that yet another English Translation of the Bible is about to hit the market. The Common English Bible is being released, which means that there are 32 english Bible translations in the market. It has of course raised the question, have we reached the saturation point for English translations?
It feels like Bible publishers are like George Lucas. George Lucas has figured out how to milk the sci-fi geeks for all they’re worth and in the process turned Star Wars from a great cinematic feat into a cash cow machine of marketing brilliance. Bible publishers have done the same with the Bible.
Who are all these translations for? Not for non-Christians. Just like the new 3D Blu-ray, re-edited Stars Wars films are unlikely to win over new fans to Star Wars, it is unlikely that these Bible translations are aimed at winning new people to read the Bible. They are marketed for the Christians. And how many Bible translations do we need sitting on our shelf? Does it really make us read the Bible more? Given the current rate of biblical illiteracy in the Church, it doesn’t seem to be working.
Not to mention that each of these translations then come with their own Novelty Bible marketing schemes, and most of you know that Novelty Bibles are a pet peeve of mine.
Paul Wegner, quoted in the CT article says, “We’ve probably reached the saturation point… It may be doing more damage than good. It’s gotten to the point that people are making money.”
The CT article continues: “In other words, profit may be prompting more translations than readability concerns demand.”
Now I’m not arguing that we should be KJV-only folks. Just as we shouldn’t all have Star Wars on Beta-Max. Both are pretty outdated in 2010. I just wonder if the Bible publishers’ time would be better spent working on translating the Bible into those languages that still don’t have access to the written Scriptures. Likewise, I wonder is George Lucas would be better off spending time working on a different project, even expanding the Stars Wars universe (that is so long as he writes the cheques and lets someone else do the writing).
Or, in the category of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” they could combine forces and Bible translators could work on producing a Bible translated into Shyriiwook (That’s “Wookieespeak” for you non-nerds)!
*************
Addendum: For the record, I own two copies of the Stars Wars Trilogy, one on DVD and one on VHS (though the VHS is in a box in the basement somewhere).
Addendum 2: I have 6 Bible translations on my shelf.
Addendum 3: The Stars Wars universe consists only of the original three movies (A New Hope; Empire Strikes Back; and Return of the Jedi), the new movies do not exist.
