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 |    My primary Writing.com blog. |
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Logocentric (adj). Regarding words and language as a fundamental expression of an external reality (especially applied as a negative term to traditional Western thought by postmodernist critics). Sometimes I just write whatever I feel like. Other times I respond to prompts, many taken from the following places:  "The Soundtrackers Group"  "Invalid Item" "Blogging Circle of Friends " "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" "JAFBG" "Take up Your Cross" Thanks for stopping by!  |
Is November 7th really Notary Public Day? I'm always so skeptical of these pseudo-holidays...  I am a Notary Public here in California, though, so I guess I should probably say something about it. I've been a notary since about 2011, I think. Each of my commissions has been paid for by my employer so that I can notarize documents for them; and I've taken the opportunity to notarize a bunch of other stuff for people on the side, mostly as a favor to friends and family. Becoming a California notary requires renewing a commission every four years, and to do that you have to pass a test. One of those annoying ones where they can ask you anything about notary law type stuff and you either have to study really intently, or just hope that you get questions you happen to know. I'm a member of the National Notary Association, and they actually offer an all-inclusive training where you bring in everything ahead of time and they help you take your photo, get fingerprinted, fill out your application, take an all-day test prep course, and then actually take the test in the afternoon right after you've had an all-day cram session. I could technically get away with renewing my commission by just taking the test, but notary law can be pretty specific so I find it helpful to brush up on everything by devoting one day every four years to cramming for it and getting it all done at once. Being a notary isn't exactly glamorous work, but it's nice to be able to help friends and family with that (everyone needs some form or document or other notarized sooner or later), and it's actually been a great opportunity to get to know higher-ups at my company too. At the various places I've worked, my actual day-to-day work doesn't always involve interfacing with the heads of the studio... but the heads of the studio are often the ones who need something notarized, even if it's personal in nature. Family trust documents, passport applications for their kids, real estate documents or litigation or contracts that require proof of execution... so it's been a great way to get "face time" with the heads of the companies I've worked for. One of the things that's fun about being a notary to VIPs is to see the kinds of things rich and important people need done. The thing I notarize most often for "normal" people are things like government forms and applications, maybe the occasional real estate document or something along those lines, etc. For the "important" people, I've notarized all kinds of crazy stuff like private aircraft lease documents, registering a new "flag of convenience" for someone's yacht, high-profile divorce settlements, wage garnishment orders from a court, etc. I always find it interesting what kind of shenanigans rich people get up to.  Fun fact about notaries, though... did you know they can administer oaths of office? And did you know that there are no restrictions on what kinds of offices I can administer an oath for? If the President of the United States needed to be sworn into office on Inauguration Day and no Supreme Court justice or federal judge were available and I happened to be walking through the National Mall and someone was like, "Is there anyone here who can administer the oath of office to our new president?" ... I could do that!  Well, not technically since that would be in Washington, D.C. and I only have jurisdiction and authority in California ... but still. |
"Take up Your Cross" | What is your favorite topic to hear sermons about?I really enjoy sermons that challenge me to think about my own life in a different way, that find a way to apply Biblical lessons and concepts to the modern world. The history lessons about the life and times in the Bible are fine, as are the times when a sermon does a really deep-dive on the nuanced meaning of a particular passage of Scripture, but those feel a little more "academic" to me and I prefer the "practical" sermons where there's some wisdom imparted and some tips or advice on how to follow Jesus a little more closely. As far as specific sermons (or sermon series), the one I enjoyed the most recently was a two-year series going through the entire Book of Acts, where we read each chapter and verse together and our pastors analyzed each piece of it and talked about what it would look like in our modern context to be like the church in Acts. It was one of my favorites because each week was a little bit of context/background on what happened in the Book of Acts, and then an application component where we talked about lessons we could take from them and apply to us today. I think it fundamentally shaped us as a church and, for me personally, it resulted in a major leap forward in my faith. ___________________________________ "Blogging Circle of Friends " | Write about the idea of self-care and what it means to you.To me, self-care doesn't mean anything specific beyond spending time doing the things that recharge you. I think the list of things that accomplish that differ for each person. Some people might like more traditional self-care routines like massages, baths, manicures/pedicures, haircuts/styling, etc., while others might just prefer alone time to read, go for a walk, relax in a jacuzzi, etc. Now that I have kids, I define self-care as pretty much any time that I have to myself where I don't have to be a parent. Date-night with my wife, personal time to go see a movie that isn't of the animated Disney variety, or even a lunch out with a friend are things that I do to take care of myself. I also read a lot in my spare time, like after the kids have gone to bed. I should probably add exercise to my self-care regimen at some point so that I can actually get back into shape again...  ___________________________________ "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" | Time and Thoughts "In one hour, A person thinks about 3000 thoughts." --Tad James. I'm guessing some of those thoughts are the ones that pop up on their own into our minds. What do you think about Tad James's claim and which kinds of thoughts pop up in your mind? Also, is your mind so active that it tires you?Based on the number of times I think to myself, "Am I hungry?" and "I wonder what so-and-so is doing?" and "Is it break time yet?" that number might actually be an undercount. But seriously, I think 3,000 thoughts an hour is probably pretty accurate, depending on what you count as a "thought." Three thousand thoughts an hour is 50 thoughts per minute, or one thought every 1.2 seconds. That feels about right, especially if you count "different thoughts on the same topic" as individual thoughts. For example, if I'm planning my day, I'll probably go through a hundred thoughts in a minute about what if I did this first, or that... if I waited to do that, could I do this other thing at the same time... things like that. And those moments of rapid-fire thought processes probably more than offset any moments where my mind is more relaxed and not thinking about too much.Although, who am I kidding... even if I'm not doing much, my brain is still thinking about dozens of different things. On a day off I'm still thinking about stuff on my to-do list, something I want to write, ideas for things to accomplish at work, side projects, etc. My mind is definitely active enough that it tires me out sometimes. I really don't know how to just turn my mind off and exist in the moment without thinking a dozen other things at the same time. ___________________________________ "Invalid Item" | Daylight Saving Day - You have an extra hour for this one.I used to think that the people who advocated for the abolition of Daylight Savings Time were a little crazy ... it's not that big a deal to turn your clocks forward or back twice a year, right? Well, then I had kids and I realized how wrong I was. Changing clocks throws kids (and therefore the entire household) out of whack for the better part of a week. And for what gain? In our modern age where we don't have very many people working by literal daylight anymore, it seems crazy to have an entire society still following a practice that was first developed almost 250 years ago.Lately I've been really questioning a lot of stuff like this ... and time zones. It's so frustrating to try and figure out what time it is in a specific area in the world. Why not just have one universal constant for what time it is, and then adapt accordingly? "Business hours" don't have to be 9am-5pm in 24 different time zones ... we could just have one global time (it's 11am everywhere at the same time), and then each region can state the hours that are "business hours" for them. So what if "daytime work hours" are 11pm to 11am? Would it be confusing at first? Sure. But is it inherently any more confusing than needing to make a call to another country and having to go, "Hmm, it's 10am here. I wonder what time it is where they are?" Then proceeding to have to do math. Maybe I'm becoming more curmudgeonly in my old age (okay, there's no maybe about it, LOL), but I'm getting more in favor of global constants that - after an adjustment period - would make it simpler and require less translation from one place to another. Heck, while we're at it, let's all get on the metric system too! Everyone: "Wait, did he just say to get rid of daylight savings time, time zones, and the imperial system of measurements?" |
| Mysterious Lumps in the Earth's Mantle May Be Remains of the Crash That Formed the Moon This article from Smithsonian Magazine highlights the prevailing theory that the moon was formed around 4.5 billion years ago when a very young Earth planet collided with a protoplanet called Theia, which was approximately the size of Mars. According to the article, the impact sent debris into orbit around the Earth, which then accreted into the form of the Moon. Which is kind of cool, I guess, but the buried lede in this story for me is the newer idea that fragments of Theia may have become lodged in our planet. In fact, there are apparently two continent-sized pieces of material in the Earth's lower mantle that scientists theorize could be pieces of Theia. One is beneath the continent of Africa and one is beneath the Pacific Ocean. There's some debate in the scientific community about whether these pieces of Theia are well preserved into the continent-type masses that newer research suggests is down there, or if the pieces more evenly mixed in the mantle and have just become too intermingled to tell them apart. But, either way, the far more interesting implication of this story - at least for me - is that there is extraterrestrial material beneath the surface of our planet.  From a writing standpoint, there are so many possibilities the information in this article creates. One of science fiction's best devices for how humans evolve to the point where they can start exploring the stars is the discovery of alien technology ... but then you have the challenge of explaining how it was discovered and evolved to the point where we harnessed something more technologically advanced than we are. Think of all the possibilities now that there's bonafide alien fragments inside our own planet! The ideas for a story using this as background are already percolating ... |
| WDC 48-Hour Challenge: Media Prompt | Prompt ▼ I haven't seen this particular video before, but I'm definitely no stranger to the "kids content on YouTube" space. Especially during the pandemic, we watched so many videos on YouTube with our kids, and they really love this kind of short-form content where they can jump from one video to the next after a few minutes. As charming as this video is, I can't say it's been my favorite Media Prompt on the site; as much as my kids love these videos I've found myself getting tired of the "content creator" space on YouTube. And the self-published space on Amazon, to be honest. I've generally been a huge proponent of having no gatekeepers and everyone just being able to put their work out in the world for the world to judge ... but lately I've been swinging back in the opposite direction a bit and seeking out works that are produced by established media companies (books published through a traditional publisher, TV shows and movies from established companies and studios, etc.). I'm glad a I had a chance to do another Media Prompt entry, though; the 6pm WdC time deadline on Fridays is 3pm my time, and I'm usually in the middle of the workday when I realize that I missed the deadline that I'd been meaning to get to for the past two days. Thankfully today was a slower day and I was able to spend a little time listening to the video and coming up with this entry. |
| To qualify for my Watch List every month, the following has to be something that I've watched that's new to me. It doesn't necessarily have to be a current show, but it can't be reruns or rewatches of something I've already seen. So if I'm including it in this list, it means this month is the first time I've watched it. I'll put "DNF" (Did Not Finish) next to anything that I stopped watching and have no immediate plans to finish. Movies  Haunted Mansion (2023) (DNF) Heist 88 (DNF) Hotel Artemis The Invisible Man (2020) Reptile (DNF)Television Fleabag (Season 1) The Morning Show (Season 2) Parks & Recreation (Season 1) Star Wars Rebels (Season 1) Super Pumped: The Battle for UberOn the movie side of things this month, I ended up DNF'ing quite a few because they were honestly just really boring and failed to spark any interest after a half hour or more of watching. I finally got around to watching Hotel Artemis which was one of the very few movies that I worked on during my ill-fated four-month stint at a former company... and I can't really say that I missed all that much by waiting five years to watch it. And I had heard great things about The Invisible Man remake, but I have to admit that I didn't really love it. Overall, I can't really point to any of the movies I watched in October and say that I loved them or I'd watch them again. For television, there was a lot of stuff that was pretty good ... the current season of The Morning Show is a lot more compelling than the second season, and Star Wars Rebels is a great animated series that was the basis for the live-action Ahsoka show that I enjoyed watching last month, so I was really excited to watch (and not at all disappointed by) the animated series it was based on. I wasn't as impressed by Fleabag as a lot of other people seem to be, but it's a short series so I'll probably finish it up just to say I watched it, and the first season of Parks & Recreation was... not very funny... although I've heard that it's very similar to The Office (the US version) where the first couple of seasons aren't as funny as later on when you get to know the characters and care about them. My favorite show this month was probably Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber. I'm a huge fan of biopic limited series, it stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and it's written by the guys who created Billions so it was just an all-around well done series. I've heard it's actually going to be an anthology series where each season will take on a different story from the business world, and a different company's origins. If they're all as good as this first season, I'm all for it. TOP PICK: Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber |
| Today, November 1st, is National Author's Day. This year, I thought I'd dedicate it to some of the authors I've ready recently (i.e., this year) and what I find compelling about their work. By design, I've read considerably less this year than in years prior, so I don't have a huge selection of books to choose from, but there are still a couple authors that I want to talk about. Blake Crouch. I haven't read a book of his that I haven't enjoyed yet, and each one has tackled a complicated, vastly different subject matter. Crouch has a way of taking a general idea (time travel, the many worlds theory, nanotechnology, etc.) and building it into a believable narrative with compelling characters. He's also really good at pacing and not bogging down the narrative with too much detail despite the extensive research he's done (something a lot of writers try to do... show off all the homework they've done on a book). Honestly, Blake Crouch is the closest approximation I can think of to an idealized version of myself as a writer. Someone who can take a "big picture" idea, make it accessible to the average reader, and do it in a way that doesn't sacrifice the quality of the characters or their narrative. I can't recommend his books highly enough to people who are fans of complex (but not obtuse) science fiction. John Mark Comer. One of my favorite Christian authors and thinkers today, I like him in the nonfiction space for a lot of the same reasons that I like Blake Crouch in the science fiction space; Comer is always coming up with compelling, thoughtful books on a variety of topics. He's tackled concepts like spirituality in a world consumed with hurry, finding identity in the everyday lies others tell us and we tell ourselves, and dealing with afflictions like anxiety and depression through a religious lens. His writing is both casual and insightful, making it really accessible for both Christians and nonbelievers alike. He has a new book on spiritual formation coming out early next year, and I'm super-excited to read it and see where he goes with that book. I've also read a few books by Brandon Sanderson this year (the secret novels from his record-breaking Kickstarter campaign), but I wasn't terrible impressed with them. Sanderson is probably on my all-time list of most influential writers because of his contributions to the fantasy and science fiction genres (both his books and his writing resources like his classes and his podcast), but the stuff that I read this year isn't even close to his best work (IMHO) so I have a hard time including him on a list of current-year faves. I still have a few authors left on my to-read list this year that have the potential to end up high on my year-end list. I'm excited to read Originals by Adam Grant (an author I've been meaning to read for a while), and Rick Rubin's book on creativity is still sitting on my bookshelf. I'm starting to get back onto a nonfiction kick with my reading, so I'm starting to gravitate toward books and authors that have done interesting work and thinking on particular topics. I have two months left in the year to meet my reading goal of 50 books (currently at almost 40), so stay tuned!  |
| To qualify for my Watch List every month, the following has to be something that I've watched that's new to me. It doesn't necessarily have to be a current show, but it can't be reruns or rewatches of something I've already seen. So if I'm including it in this list, it means this month is the first time I've watched it. I'll put "DNF" (Did Not Finish) next to anything that I stopped watching and have no immediate plans to finish. Movies Benji (2018) Heart of Stone Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch The Out-LawsTelevision Ahsoka (Season 1) Billions (Season 2) Special Ops: Lioness (Season 1)None of the movies I watched this month were any good. Heart of Stone was an okay action/thriller but ultimately not very original or terribly exciting, and The Out-Laws had some potential as a comedy but really went for predictable, lowest-common-denominator humor and fell pretty flat as a result. The television shows, on the other hand, were all good in their own way. The second season of Billions was just as good as the first, if not a little better because the characters were familiar and it was fun to see them grow (or not) in their own ways and butt heads with one another. Special Ops: Lioness had a really lame first episode, but subsequent episodes really picked up and it ended up being a really well-done show. As much as Taylor Sheridan annoys me, the man knows how to write compelling television.  And Ahsoka was a pleasant surprise. After some pretty lame recent movies and television series, the Star Wars franchise has really found its footing again, first with Andor and most recently with Ahsoka. It got me excited to watch Star Wars again, and to watch the Star Wars Rebels animated series that this series is a sequel to. I'll write more about the plot once I watch those, because it's one of my favorite Star Wars stories and I want to see how it unfolds.TOP PICK: Ahsoka |
| To qualify for my Watch List every month, the following has to be something that I've watched that's new to me. It doesn't necessarily have to be a current show, but it can't be reruns or rewatches of something I've already seen. So if I'm including it in this list, it means this month is the first time I've watched it. I'll put "DNF" (Did Not Finish) next to anything that I stopped watching and have no immediate plans to finish. Movies The Amazing Maurice LEGO Disney Princess: The Castle Quest Mummies Spider-Man: Across the SpiderverseTelevision Billions (Season 1) The Idol Jack Ryan (Season 4)For movies last month, I really enjoyed Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse. I thought it was a great sequel to the fantastic Spider-Man: Into the Spidervese and they managed to fit even more awesome references and jokes into this second installment. It was a ton of fun to watch. I wish I could say the same for the other three movies I watched this month, but all three of them were not great in their own ways. The Amazing Maurice was okay but a little boring (although I did love seeing Terry Pratchett's character of Death on screen!), Mummies was just plain lowest common denominator animation, and LEGO Disney Princess was cute, but not exactly my thing. I also just realized that the only movies I watched this month were kids' animation titles. The television I watched last month was (mostly) good. I finally started watching Billions and really got into it. The two main characters (Bobby Axelrod and Chuck Rhoades are great characters, and the show does an amazing job of showing us how flawed they both are. Damian Lewis plays "Axe," a hedge fund billionaire who became rich after shorting a bunch of stocks on 9/11 and other dubiously legal methods. You kind of know he's a bad guy, but he also tries to be a good dad, takes care of his employees, etc. And Chuck, on the other hand, is a "I'm fighting the righteous fight" kind of person as the US Attorney who prosecutes financial crimes, but he resorts to unethical methods to achieve his ends. It's a really interesting show about smart, flawed people who will stop at nothing to succeed. The fourth season of Jack Ryan was pretty good. The first (and probably only) season of The Idol was not good at all. It's only five episodes long and I literally could not muster the energy to make it to three episodes. It's about a pop music idol who falls under the influence of a dangerous guy who's basically a cult leader (played by musician The Weeknd). I realized after the fact that The Weeknd also created the show and executive produced it, and suddenly that made a lot more sense... because the show was basically about every character in the narrative falling all over themselves to flatter the character The Weeknd plays, even though the character himself is unlikeable and uninteresting. It felt like a vanity project where The Weeknd was like, "Okay, I want to do a show where I'm the coolest, most interesting, most compelling person you've ever met. So everyone just act like that around me." No thanks.TOP PICK: Billions (Season 1) |
| "Take up Your Cross" | August 9, 2023 What is your greatest struggle with Christianity? My greatest struggle with Christianity is the book it's based on. It's a remarkable text, there's no question about that. And while I do believe that the words are more or less "divinely inspired," there's a lot of uncertainty about just how much of it one should accept at face value. Some believe the Bible is inerrant, while others believe the Bible is infallible. Some think the Bible is meant to be taken literally (as a science text, historical text, etc.) while others think the Bible is to be interpreted in terms of its storytelling (narratives, themes, etc.). Some argue that the Bible is the faithful and true word of God, while others believe that - in the passing of stories down through generations - certain authors took added their own interpretations or perspectives to the text, just as any translator does. There are over 100 currently in-print versions of the Bible in English, and many of them interpret the original-language texts differently. And while there is a lot of general consensus about what the original-language texts say due to consistencies from one to the next, who's to say that the original text is one hundred percent authentic? The four canonical Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) were written - at the earliest - approximately one generation after Jesus had been crucified, and yet tell stories of exactly what Jesus said during his time on Earth. Given that stories in those days were largely passed down by word of mouth from group to group, are we certain that the writers of those gospels (and the books of the Bible that came after) were word for word transcriptions of what happened with no editorializing or creative license? Some Bibles include additional books that others don't consider canon. Most Protestant Bibles contain the standard 66 books (39 from the Old Testament + 27 from the New Testament), but the Catholic Bible contains 73 books (adding Tobit, Judith, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, and Baruch). There are also additional books in the Apocrypha which are deemed to be non-canonical (1 Esdras, 2 Esdras, Manasseh, and any number of less popular epistles and other religious writings), but then raises the question of who decided which books were relevant to include or exclude and what their motivations were. None of this is meant to invalidate the Bible as a holy book, which I happen to think it is. It's worth studying and worth following; but I do struggle with it frequently. I wonder if the parts of it I read and don't agree with are just me being stubborn and thinking I know better, or if it some monk transcribing things two thousand years ago was like, "I'm going to infuse a little of my own interpretation of what I think this means" into the text. I think it's always dangerous to presume that God thinks exactly like you think and agrees with you on every single matter (that probably means you're not really trying all that hard to understand Him) ... but it's equally dangerous to presume that every word in the Bible is to be accepted without question, discernment, or interpretation of some kind (that probably means you're cherry-picking the parts of the Bible that match what you want it to say and ignoring the contradictions or other pieces of it). The Bible is something I'm pretty sure is meant to be struggled with. It's meant to be challenging and something that you spend a lifetime trying to better process and understand and derive insight from. So I guess it's no surprise that the Bible is the thing I struggle with the most. |
| To qualify for my Watch List every month, the following has to be something that I've watched that's new to me. It doesn't necessarily have to be a current show, but it can't be reruns or rewatches of something I've already seen. So if I'm including it in this list, it means this month is the first time I've watched it. I'll put "DNF" (Did Not Finish) next to anything that I stopped watching and have no immediate plans to finish. Movies Barbie Bumblebee Extraction 2 John Wick: Chapter 4 Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1 Puss in Boots: The Last WishTelevision The Bear (Season 2) Hoarders (Season 13) Yellowstone (Season 3)This month I finally caught some movies I've been meaning to see (Extraction 2 and John Wick: Chapter 4, specifically), and both were decent but not great. Barbie was a really interesting and different kind of movie; I wasn't quite sure what to expect going into it, and I thought it worked for the most part. I really like Greta Gerwig as a writer/director and always think she has a unique perspective on ideas. This was certainly no exception. Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1 was really enjoyable; this remains probably my favorite current action movie franchise (Marvel Cinematic Universe notwithstanding, of course ).As I mentioned in "Inspired by Hoarders" , I watched a recent season of Hoarders to get me in a "spring (okay, summer) cleaning" mood and it certainly did the trick. Yellowstone has been a show that I've loved up until this point, but this season just wasn't doing it for me and I'm not really in any rush to watch the next season anytime soon. The second season of The Bear, on the other hand, was fantastic. It's not a perfect show, and some of the episodes were just hard to watch ("Fishes" actually gave me anxiety watching it), but "Forks" was maybe one of the best episodes of television I've seen all year. It's a really impressive show that's worth watching.TOP PICK: The Bear (Season 2) |
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