Twitter-er

I'm now a member of the Twitter-verse. Find me at http://twitter.com/philwilson27 or look on the left hand column below my links.

Still Alive

"This was a triumph..." (Portal fans will get that)

Hi all, I'm still here and I know that at least some of you are out there checking, since the Statcounter keeps going up.

Rest assured that I'll have pictures to share and some thoughts here and there, although I've experienced some sense of what Randy Harris talked about at Zoe last year with "losing my voice." Wondering what I have to say, if anything I say adds to the conversation or is just more noise in the background.

Hope the rest of you in blogland are well. Peace.

Time Off

I've got a several very busy weeks coming up in life and work, so I probably won't be blogging much for a month. I'll try to do it when I can, but it won't be very often. Talk to you when I return to blogland.

A Bible Question: John 15:22

I was reading through John the other night and came across a verse that gave me pause: John 15:22. It's in Jesus' last discourse to his disciples, where he has talked about the coming of the Comforter and this section in the NIV is subtitled "The World Hates the Disciples." I'll quote the section from 15:18-16:4.

18"If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. 19If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. 20Remember the words I spoke to you: 'No servant is greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. 21They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the One who sent me. 22If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin. Now, however, they have no excuse for their sin. 23He who hates me hates my Father as well. 24If I had not done among them what no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. But now they have seen these miracles, and yet they have hated both me and my Father. 25But this is to fulfill what is written in their Law: 'They hated me without reason.'

26"When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me. 27And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.

John 16

1"All this I have told you so that you will not go astray. 2They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God. 3They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me. 4I have told you this, so that when the time comes you will remember that I warned you. I did not tell you this at first because I was with you.

The quote itself is verse 22: "If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin. Now, however, they have no excuse for their sin." Besides dealing with that as a hypothetical, the idea there is an interesting one. Jesus is obviously talking about the immediate area and people around him, Israel, does this have a wider context? Could this mean people in the past, present, and future who don't hear about Jesus? So is this a specific statement with a wider meaning or a specific statement without a wider context?

YouTube Thursday: Movies I'm Looking Forward To

As you might have figured out at some point, I love movies. Sheryl and I used to go and see a movie almost every weekend back when we dated and first got married. Now? Not so much. A movie has to look really good for us to go see it. But here are two that I'm really looking forward to this summer.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull


Of course I'm looking forward to this one. I BEGGED my parents to let me see Raiders when it first came out. It had Han Solo in it and ALL my friends had seen it. They finally relented and I got to see it in all its face-melting gory... er, glory.

Things that make me excited for this one:

• Karen Allen back as Marion Ravenwood.
• The action
• Harrison Ford
• That music

Things that make me leery:

• The title. I mean seriously, what does that even mean?
• The humor. I liked some of the humor in the Last Crusade, but some of it got too slapstick. And I thought the way that Marcus Brody was so different from his character in the first one was the worst example of it.
• Roswell?!?

Iron Man


I also love superhero movies. Loved Spider-Man. Loved Batman Begins. Loved the original Superman, but I had a lot of experience with those characters going in. I knew their origins and their alter-egos. With this one, I know almost nothing that I haven't seen in the trailers and what I've seen makes me really look forward to it. Plus with The Dark Knight coming out as well, it's going to be a great summer.

Now all we need is a babysitter...

What Happened Yesterday: Do or Die Tuesday

Of course, nobody asked, but here's what I think happened last night in politics.

I think Hillary finally found something that would stick to Obama: the experience issue. With the economy seeming to be headed downward and the now-always underlying fear of terrorism, she found something that would stay in people's minds. And ultimately, with President Bush's ratings in the teens and 20s and what many consider to be his foreign policy blunders, it seems to be a legitimate fear for a lot of people.

When I was watching the election returns last night, I heard someone say that Obama had called himself a blank slate where people could project their own political feelings onto him, which so far had been a good thing. But with Hillary finding the experience chink in his armor, it was a negative because people then could look at him and think: "Hmmm. Haven't we already done the inexperienced Washington outsider thing already? And how's that working out for us?" Although one could make the case that her experience isn't that much greater than Obama's.

And again, it was negative campaigning that ended up doing it, at least partially, with the 3am phone ad being one of the predominant pieces.

btw for one of the best skewerings of that ad, fast forward to 6:40 of this Daily Show clip from Monday night.



So what now? Well, obviously no one's dropping out now and it looks more and more likely that we're heading to some kind of convention show down. I do wonder if the Michigan and Florida primaries are going to play into this at all. But one thing is clear, the Democrats are going to be in the news for a lot longer than the Republicans, with their "presumptive" nominee being taken care of in John McCain, undoubtedly causing resigned consternation among many parts of the party.

Connor's Sense of Humor

Connor is quickly developing a sense of humor, which I enjoy of course. Case in point. Friday night, I took the kids out by myself to one of the McDonald's that has a play area. Kinsey loved playing in the play area, and Connor wanted to, but obviously couldn't. He did find another mom that he liked and decided he'd play his joke with her. He pulled his hand into his sweater and walked up to her with a very serious look on his face, and then his hand appears and he just laughs and laughs. And then does it again, And again. And again.

So I guess he really is like me, except it's cuter when he does it multiple times. I think Sheryl and Kinsey are in trouble.

Wherein Phil Blogs About Nothing

It was a nice weekend. I got to hang out with my family most of it, play outside with the kids, watch a couple of movies with Sheryl, and yesterday, had a really nice night with small group at home, as we worshiped a little and intro'ed our study of Luke, as translated by the Voice. And it culminated with playing some full-on Rock Band.

Yay for simple weekends. They'll be fewer this month.