Old Favorites Resurfacing, Purposeful Work, Music, and a Very Chill Sloth

This entry is part [part not set] of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

Busy and stressful day (which ones aren’t, right?) so the bulk of the feed is just kind of distraction and nostalgia.

Good news is, some of that nostalgia is for creators that are putting out new work for the first time in a while. Faith No More announced it’s first new album in 18 years and Flight of the Conchords may be coming back to HBO after being gone for far too long. Oh, and the director’s cut of Nightbreed is starting to get advertised in places (my copy is already pre-ordered).

Amid all that an article about how doing purposeful work leads to better everything all around. I don’t find that all that difficult to believe. When I was both excited and engaged with my work, when I felt it had a clear, distinct, and necessary purpose, everything went more smoothly. Not flawlessly, mind you, but the bumps didn’t feel quite as disruptive and there was a much cleaner sense of accomplishment when all was said and done.

These days, since I’ve kind of lost all sense of purpose (also still trying to find it or something similar, so don’t worry too much), I’d much rather be spending my days (and nights) like the sloth you’ll find in the feed. Just kind of laying back chowing down on.. stuff.

Anyway, here’s the feed…

Reboots, Rumors, Religion, and a Kick Ass Waterslide

This entry is part [part not set] of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

Aside from the ongoing discussions about Guardians of the Galaxy, the story today that most caught my attention was a kind of scathing take-down of the currently popular “Prosperity Gospel” movement.

From what I can see, there’s nothing “Gospel” related in the prosperity gospel. In fact, it seems like it pretty clearly goes against just about everything that appears in the Gospels. I’m even hard pressed to see how they could possibly spin any interpretation of their basic call to action from anything I’ve ever read in the Gospel (and, being raised Catholic, I have some background knowledge on that).

As a friend of mine pointed out, the big thing that really gets me about this is this movement is setting people up to fail and, when they fail, they’ve not only lost their money and likely their hope (if not a bunch of social standing), they’ve also lost Faith.

Faith can be a really important thing.

It can give us something to hold on to during rough seas.

It can provide us with context to express the joy we find.

It can lift us up so we can reach levels we wouldn’t otherwise think possible.

Poison that by attaching it so heavily to the material world and the implicit message that if you don’t succeed, it’s because God hates you… and you negate all the good faith can do and leave only the worst parts.

It can teach you to hold a grudge.

It can spur you to vile acts (since you’re unredeemable, anyway).

It can hold you back as you endless seek the approval and forgiveness that’s just not going to come.

Faith is always a double-edged sword. All the prosperity gospel seems to do is hand the sharpened end to those who follow it. Most will get cut, some will be gravely wounded. Those that manage to get past the blade and grab the handle will then be fully conditioned to swing that sword to cut down others they see as easy marks–and ways of increasing their own material wealth.

Some things don’t particularly belong to the temporal world. Faith is one of those things. In fact, I’d go as far to say that it works best as disconnected from the physical world as possible–existing in a very personal space or mind and emotion that only tangentially nudges things in the “real” world.

It’s definitely not something that should be confuse the metaphorical gold of the purified soul with the all-too-real gold changing hands at the money lenders’ tables. Setting up in a sacred space didn’t go to well for those money lenders…

Anyway… here’s the feed…

 

Politics, SciFi, Comics, Comedy, and, well, Pretty Much a Little of Everything

This entry is part [part not set] of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

I’ve really got get back on track to do posts on Fridays… or any of the times over the weekend that I think “Gee, I should probably post something to my actual blog…”

Because by the time Monday night rolls around, I’m usually doing so many other things that I put this off until the last minute and then find myself at a loss for something even vaguely meaningful to yammer on about. (Which is likely why I don’t do videos.)

Instead, as usual, I’ll just say there’s a lot that went into the feed since Friday morning. Some of it sparked some really good discussions, some of it is just really awesome in and of itself, and some of it has likely gone completely unseen–so you could be the first to discover it! (Or, uh, something like that.)

Anyway… here’s the feed…

https://www.facebook.com/kierduros/activity/10152191008695981

Food, Real Heroes, Diversity in Comics, Movie Trailers, Net Neutrality, and some Randomness

This entry is part [part not set] of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

It was a busy weekend. One that probably should have been busier, as I still didn’t get everything accomplished that I wanted to. Almost caught up now… almost.

My college and my home town have both made the feed recently. The first for being named “geekiest” by (DC) local nerd mecca Think Geek. The second for being the host of a full on rave-type festival this coming weekend. That second one is kind of surreal… as that’s exactly the sort of thing that would have never even been considered before the performing arts center on the Woodstock site (Bethel Woods) was put in place by a “local boy who done good” (by making a few million dollars in the cable TV industry (he sold his local empire to Time Warner over a decade or so ago).

More important news has come up, of course. There’s still the ongoing net neutrality fight. But the FCC is also dealing with a spectrum auction for wireless space. It’s going to be all former TV broadcast spectrum–so it can mostly make it through concrete buildings–and is reported to open the door for better cell service because of it. The words “super wifi” were also thrown around in a few articles. Very interesting, indeed.

And, returning a little to geeky news, the new trailer for Marvel’s next blockbuster, Guardians of the Galaxy, dropped today. I think it’s looking pretty amazing. Every time I see something new about this film, I love it more. It’s going to have an full on action/comedy feel and (director) James Gunn is looking like he’s pulled it off perfectly. That’s not much of a surprise. The man has a great grasp of genre and how to twist it just right to add the perfect amount of humor (check out Slither to see what he did with horror and Google PG Porn to see what happened when he took all the sex out of porn film ideas).

There’s also a new version of Dungeons & Dragons on the way in July. It’ll be the fifth edition. I played about one and a half sessions of 2nd Edition AD&D in college (before we abandoned it for Cyberpunk and RIFTS) and a handful of sessions of 3.5 a few years back when a friend was running a custom world setting using those rules. I’ve dabbled in it a little (as the OGL) while looking at some other game settings, and I can firmly say I’ve never cared much for the D&D system. So I’m thoroughly unimpressed that we’re getting a new version (priced at about $50 per core rule book, at that!).

In the past few years, I’ve checked out over a dozen different role playing systems and I’ve liked most of them better than D&D. Of course, I’m more story and character oriented than a lot of the classic D&D stuff seems to be… and I’ve never been interested in fully optimizing a character to just kick ass like a lot of people I know who played D&D seem to (at least once upon a time) be into. I like flaws in characters and games where combat doesn’t necessarily happen every session.

Ah, well… guess we’ll see how that all plays out. I expect some mighty nerd rage (just like when 4th edition came out).