Black (Friday) is the New Holiday

25 Nov 2011 1 Comment

by C.O. Bonham in Random Musing, Well founded paranoia Tags: , ,

Thanksgiving, the Holiday where we say “Thank you God for everything that I have.” Today is the day after that one. Black Friday, the day where we say “What about all of the things I don’t have?”

 The News has been going on for weeks about Black Friday, since Nov 1st to be precise, and the great sales and crowds and economic upturn that is expected to accompany it. Where did Thanksgiving go? A visitor to our country is likely to think that we celebrate Black Friday as a national Holiday. Last night on the CBS evening news the anchor actually called it Black Friday Eve.

   Thanksgiving is overlooked enough as it is; with it being hidden between Halloween and Christmas. We really shouldn’t obscure the Holiday completely by placing a fake Holiday immediately after it. A Holiday where instead of being thankful and happy we scramble around and fight and go into debt just so that we can worship the false gods of Consumerism and Greed.

Why did so many people waste the true Holiday Camped out in front of Best Buy instead of eating turkey with Family and Friends?

I am writing this too late to stop anyone from going to those early sales but that is because I did a little thing I like to call sleeping in.

 Black Friday isn’t good. Good Friday though is a different story.

 

 

On Writing

19 Nov 2011 1 Comment

by C.O. Bonham in Random Musing Tags:

Hi sorry I was really bad about getting a post out this week; I will try harder next week. Until then here’s a little look into my writing philosophy. 

I have heard it said that great writing teaches us about humanity. Where we’re going, where we’ve been and everywhere in between.

But if you really think about it isn’t writing really about only one person? The Writer. The only reason we write is to be understood by others. We have these thoughts in our heads and all we want to do is share them. Sometimes when the words are in our mouths they just don’t come out right. So we sit and think about what we are trying to say. We put it on paper. Try as hard as we can to make the meaning clear. And then hope that someone is listening — Reading.

Writing isn’t about enlightening humanity it’s about connecting with humanity. Are all writers socially inept introverts like me? No. But I’m sure that all writers feel like they have something to say.

Writing is very much the act of putting one’s soul down on paper.

Fiction = Dreams. Non fiction = Conscious thought.

So the next time you’re reading anything remember it’s not about you or the human race or even the main character it’s about the writer.

Yes I am even conceited enough to say that it’s about me.

But if understanding me better helps you know yourself better or even humanity, then that’s ok too.

Cathrine

The Big Three

09 Nov 2011 2 Comments

by C.O. Bonham in Random Musing, Shakespeare, Star Trek Tags: , , ,

There are three great works that are so deeply ingrained into our popular culture that there isn’t a person on the planet who wouldn’t recognize quotes from one of  The Big Three.

These three opuses will forever be around to shape the human imagination and to inspire future generations.

The three greatest collections of knowledge and inspiration, which are so powerful that each was built on the shoulder of the one before, are:

The Holy Bible — which is the very truth of God. This is the work of works. It has shaped our modern culture into what it is.

The Christian Bible tells us why we are the way we are and what we should yet strive to be.

The Complete Works of Shakespeare — Encompasses of the human spirit. It tells us what we are as the Human race. Shakespeare shows us how we think and how we feel.

Like the Bible, Shakespeare requires Faith. denying that Shakespeare wrote his own plays is like denying that Jesus was the Son of God.  In the same way that no one would die for a madman, would Shakespeare’s friends have bothered spending the money to publish the First Folio if someone else had written the plays?

And the last but definitely not the least is. . .

Star Trek — Take the franchise as a whole or just take the three original seasons of The Original Series, either way it would be hard to deny Star Trek’s influence over our modern way of life. Just flip open your Cell phone and talk, you are holding the communicator from Star Trek.
Star Trek inspires us to look to the future. It encourages progress and it shows us what we can achieve and what the future can become.

Star Trek also embraces the past and reminded the generation of the late 60’s and the early 70’s of the moral lessons that were no longer being taught in their class rooms. Maybe not a lot of people realize it but Star Trek is actually a series of Morality plays that expound Biblical morals and Shakespearian ethics.

Go ahead question me but then sit down and really watch it. Even if the show is lacking in direct quotes you have to admit that the ideas are there.

So there they are the Three most important contributions to modern society. The inspirations for everything  we achieve.

The Record of the past that tells us how we began and why we are here.

The poetry and plays of The Bard that move  us to thought and spark our imaginations.

And the Futuristic morality plays that dare us to move forward without losing sight of the past.

Interesting how the Big Three move through the different mediums from written record to stage plays to television production.

One wonders, Will there be a fourth and what form will it take?

Vampires: only a Christian can kill them

31 Oct 2011 1 Comment

by C.O. Bonham in Random Musing, Theological Musings Tags: , , , , ,

Happy Halloween!

This is a very special blog post. I understand that some people who read my blog might not realize that I am a Christian. So I am including this one time *RELIGION ALERT* if you don’t think you can handle hearing a bit of the Bible then I will not fault you for not reading but I do hope you will read and think and enjoy.

It has always struck me as weird that only a Christian can kill a vampire. You’ve got: Crosses, Holy water, and in Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula Van Helsing even uses Communion bread to create barriers against Dracula. Even their vulnerability to sunlight is a metaphor for only The Son (of God) can kill them. Yet a Christian is about the last thing that you would expect to see in a Vampire horror movie.

Check out this clip from Fright Night the new remake of the 1985 cult movie.

This clip has a parallel scene in the original 1985 version but alas I could find no Youtube clip for it.

Interestingly, there is also a stunning parallel found in the Bible:

 “Some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would say, ‘In the name of Jesus, whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.’ Seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this. [One day] the evil spirit answered them, ‘Jesus I know, and I know about Paul, but who are you?’ Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and over powered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.” (Acts 19:13-16 NIV)

The very name of Jesus contains power but only for those that have permission to use it.

The above verse reinforces and give credibility to the claims made in the movie Fright Night that the only way a mere mortal can take on the undead is by having a relationship with the ultimate Undead, Jesus Christ, and in so doing become Undead ourselves.  

“And if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit, who lives in you.” (Romans 8:11 NIV)

Do you get it? Not just Heaven; not eternal afterlife. But Life in our mortal bodies.

Being one of the undead is great. Unlike the vampires and Zombies who terrorize and murder large numbers of people to survive a Christian only needs to feed on the soul sustaining flesh of ONE man. The Body and Blood and of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Halloween is the night that the Undead supposedly walk the earth. But Christians are the Undead.  So why is this night dominated by the forces of Darkness? Why does a Faith filled Christian never come to the rescue in Vampire movies?

Everyone Could use a Montage

27 Sep 2011 1 Comment

by C.O. Bonham in Random Musing Tags: ,

Montages are great they allow an epic task that would normally take forever to occur in 30 seconds or less. With some creative camera angles and an upbeat pop song anyone can go from science geek to superhero.

Want to lose weight? No problem. Just inter cut scenes of intense cardio workout with shots of the numbers on a bathroom scale steadily declining and finish with a shot of you modeling skinny jeans.

Wouldn’t it be great if we had montages in real life? Think about it.

If I decided to write a novel all I would need are a few really good shots of me typing followed by a shot of the printer emitting an endless stream of paper. Then a shot of red marked pages being crumpled and tossed into the waste paper bin. More typing. Insert the required shot of me sleeping on the key board while “rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr” flashes across the screen. More typing, hit the print key, shot of printer spitting out one last sheet of paper with “The End” on the bottom.

That was easy none of the wasted hours of staring at a blank word document or the annoyance of having to delete a days work because that scene I wrote was too clever by half. No getting distracted and organizing all of your writing utensils into separate pencil cups by color. Don’t ask.

Is it just that a montage gives a false sense of time passing? I don’t think so because it is understood that some of the montages take days weeks or even years out of the narrative time in the movie. What the montage does is give the viewer a false sense of focus. Making us think that we will really be able to stay in the game and devote the required amount of time to reaching our goals. It’s true that many people have stuck it out and written that great novel or lost the weight. But it doesn’t take  just one time of saying, “I am going to do this.” It takes constant re-motivation, patience and even knowing when to call it a day. Really, who wants to wake up to “rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr?” That would really upset me having to delete all those Rs before I could do anything else. 

The montage might work for people living in TV land but in the real world we have to do it the hard way with all of that real-time in between shots in which to lose focus and get distracted.

Now if you’ll excuse me I have some writing to do. But we both know that I’ll just end up wall papering my room with post-it notes.

Cathrine

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