Ross TenEyck's Journal

It's been a while since I sacrificed electrons to the gods of blogdom, but it's been a busy week.

First of all, on Sunday I celebrated my birthday (which was in fact the previous Wednesday) by playing the Runebound Island of Dread expansion, and then by going out to dinner with a bunch of people. It was a good day.

It was immediately followed by a solid week of class; I spent this last week in "Spirituality and Religious Education." The week-long format (9:00 AM-4:00 PM, Monday to Friday) is pretty brutal, because it packs a quarter's worth of class into one week; but at least it's efficient. And even though I signed up for this class simply because it satisfied the "elective in religious education" program requirement, it turned out to be an awesome class and I'm really glad I did it.

But we had five books to read and write papers on (granted, extremely short papers) before the first day of class, and then group presentations to prepare for Friday, and of course six hours of class time and intense discussion for five days in a row. So all in all, I'm pretty wiped now.

Fortunately, I'm on vacation next week (technically I was on vacation this last week too, but the next week is actually a vacation) and I'm pleased to say that I have no plans at all. Tomorrow I will probably sleep a lot and not interact with any human beings; beyond that, I'll just follow whatever whim comes along for the next week.

• Iron Man [My review]
• Speed Racer [My review]
• The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian [My review]
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull [My review]
• Kung Fu Panda [My review]
• The Incredible Hulk [My review]
• WALL-E [My review]
• Wanted [My review]
• Hellboy II: The Golden Army
• The Dark Knight
• The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars


This was pretty good.

I really liked the first Hellboy, which was gritty and funny and redolent of H.P. Lovecraft, and I really liked Pan's Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro's last movie, and the trailers for Hellboy II looked awesome; so I went into this eager to have my socks blown off. They weren't... quite.

The best part of this movie is clearly the visuals. The macabre creativity that was so evident in Pan's Labyrinth is all through this flick, and while one has to think that there are some pretty scary corners in Guillermo del Toro's mind the result is gorgeous. The sequence in the Troll Market has to be seen to be believed.

The story, however, isn't quite strong enough to live up to its elements. In contrast to the first one, it lacks some vital focus. The fundamental conflict of Hellboy's character -- his destiny is to bring about the end of the world, but he refuses to do it -- was key to the first movie, but while it tries to be relevant here it wavers in and out of the picture.

Still and all, as I said, even if the story wandered a bit the movie taken as a whole is pretty good, and you should see it if for no other reason than the creature shots.

Via seawasp

Top 25 box office hits of all time, so far.

Bold the ones you saw in the theater, italicize the ones you saw another way, leave those you haven't seen plain text.

1. Titanic (1997) $600,779,824
2. Star Wars (1977) $460,935,665
3. Shrek 2 (2004) $436,471,036
4. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) $434,949,459
5. Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) $431,065,444
6. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) $423,032,628
7. Spider-Man (2002) $403,706,375
8. Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005) $380,262,555
9. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) $377,019,252
10. Spider-Man 2 (2004) $373,377,893
11. The Passion of the Christ (2004) $370,270,943
12. Jurassic Park (1993) $356,784,000
13. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) $340,478,898
14. Finding Nemo (2003) $339,714,367
15. Spider-Man 3 (2007) $336,530,303
16. Forrest Gump (1994) $329,691,196
17. The Lion King (1994) $328,423,001
18. Shrek the Third (2007) $320,706,665
19. Transformers (2007) $318,759,914
20. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) $317,557,891
21. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) $313,837,577
22. Iron Man (2008) $311,708,133
23. Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) $310,675,583
24. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007) $309,404,152
25. Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983) $309,125,40

Clearly Hollywood owns me.

Let's look at a sampling of people who share the birthday July 9th:

Donald Rumsfeld
O.J. Simpson
John Tesh
Courtney Love

WHAT THE HELL, RANDOM FORCES OF THE UNIVERSE? What karma am I working off from a previous life to warrant this?

As of today, I am forty years old. The big four-oh. My thirties are behind me; an exciting new decade looms ahead.

Doesn't feel that different, so far.

Back when I was talking about upcoming Anglican conferences of import, I forgot to mention the Church of England Synod, which happened this last weekend.

The Synod was fraught over the issue of ordaining women as bishops. The C of E has been ordaining women as priests since 1994, but not (yet) as bishops; and a lot of the Anglo-Catholic traditionalists are strongly opposed.

You might ask why, given that the fight over ordaining women as priests was lost some years ago, they'd go to the wall over ordaining women to the episcopate. One of the reasons is that only bishops can ordain someone to any order (bishop, priest, or deacon); in the tree of apostolic succession, priests and deacons are leaves but bishops are nodes. If no bishops are women, then traditionalists can simply avoid parishes that have women priests; but if some bishops are women, then in order for a traditionalist to know if any given male minister is validly ordained, they'd have to make sure that he was ordained by a male bishop, who was in turn ordained by a male bishop, et cetera and so on. It would make living within the same church substantially harder for the traditionalists.

I haven't been following the C of E politics that closely, but I'm given to understand that pretty much everyone knew going into Synod that women bishops was a done deal; the votes to block it simply weren't there. What the fighting and the angst was over, was what provision (if any) would be made for the traditionalists. One proposal was a non-geographical diocese, with guaranteed-valid clergy, to which traditionalists could belong; that didn't pass. Another proposal was for some kind of "super-bishop," a plan the details of which I'm pretty hazy on but it's moot because it didn't pass either.

In the end the motion to ordain women bishops passed, as everyone knew it would, with a rider that there would be some kind of as-yet-unspecified "code of practice," apparently meaning a set of canonical provisions intended to safeguard traditionalists. From what I'm reading, a lot of traditionalists don't consider this nearly good enough.

This isn't a small cadre of diehard reactionaries, either; before Synod, some 1,300 clergy (including eleven serving bishops) signed a letter declaring their intention to walk out of the C of E if adequate provision for traditionalists was not assured. Many of those 1,300 are retired clergy, but still.

Liberals, meanwhile, are faintly astonished that this is even a question here in the twenty-first century.

Coming as it does in between GAFCON and Lambeth, this is interesting, to say the least. Some commentary I've read is asking, "Wait -- when did 'that gay issue' suddenly become 'that gay and women issue'?" Because the conservatives in the Anglican Communion, as I've remarked before, are sharply divided over the issue of ordaining women, a whole lot of them aren't going to be comfortable suddenly having those issues put in the same bucket. (The other faction, of course, is delighted to have them both in play; they're convinced that ordaining women was what sent the Anglican Communion off the rails in the first place.)

Between this and GAFCON, it seems to me entirely possible that we're looking at a three-way major split of the current Anglican Communion: liberal, conservative evangelical, and conservative Anglo-Catholic.

However, that will be as it will be. During the Synod, the Archbishop of Canterbury gave this sermon, which I commend to you. He said what needs to be said.

There are, I don't doubt, any number of people for whom the phrase "Independence Day" evokes a stirring image of aliens blowing up the White House. But not me.

No, for several years now, "Independence Day" has irresistibly brought to mind the Martina McBride song, which has two of the classic country music mainstays: wife beating and a murder/suicide. If it had a dog and a pickup truck, it would be almost the Platonic ideal of a country song.

Nevertheless, in honor of the day and in hopes of spreading the earworm, enjoy.

So clynne recently posted a book meme supposedly from The Big Read, but given that the list of 100 books is weirdly random and contains some duplicates as well as a few real dogs, we all have our doubts.

But it made me think: surely we can compile a better book list than that.

So I'm inviting suggestions: what, in your mind, are the great or at least truly significant books? They don't necessarily have to be books you like, or even have read; but they should be books that you feel a reasonably well-read person ought to have read.

I'm going to break this down into categories, suggest a few starters, and open the floor to suggestions. If we come up with enough, I'll try to compose it into a 100 list; if not, well, at least we'll have amused ourselves a little.

I reserve the right to be completely arbitrary about any aspect of this.

Antiquity
The Iliad/The Odyssey
The Bible
...?

Medieval
Le Morte d'Arthur
...?

Renaissance to Victorian
The Collected Works of Shakespeare
...?

20th/21st Century Mainstream
Ulysses
...?

SF/Fantasy
The Collected Works of H.P. Lovecraft
I, Robot
...?

Romance
...?

Mystery
The Cadfael Series
...?

Thriller
...?

Children/Young Adult
The Oz Series
The Narnia Series
The Swallows & Amazons Series
...?

Suggest away!

• Iron Man [My review]
• Speed Racer [My review]
• The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian [My review]
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull [My review]
• Kung Fu Panda [My review]
• The Incredible Hulk [My review]
• WALL-E [My review]
• Wanted
• Hellboy II: The Golden Army
• The Dark Knight
• The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars


There's a term Fridge Logic, which describes that moment, some hours after watching a movie, while staring vacantly into the fridge, when it suddenly occurs to you to wonder, "Wait a minute... why couldn't Qui-Gon Jinn just have mind-tricked some other schmuck into accepting Republic credits in exchange for local currency, which he could then use to buy the hyperdrive from Watto, thereby avoiding the pod-race and by extension the whole Anakin fiasco?" It's the delayed recognition of something that makes no sense.

Well, when it comes to Wanted, I'm here to tell you that there is no fridge big enough.

There are movies that require you to suspend your disbelief. This is not one of them. For this movie, you must hogtie your disbelief, lay it on an altar, and cut its heart out; and it's worth it, because it is the altar of Awesome.

Remember, back when I first talked about it, I said that the bit from the trailer that convinced me was when our hero shot someone's bullet out of the air? That is probably the least ridiculous thing that he does in the entire movie. We're talking stunts that make The Matrix look like a lecture on physics, and a plot that is -- literally -- made out of whole cloth.

If you're willing to take this movie on its own terms, then it is glorious. If you're going to nitpick, then it will make your head explode.

The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori, had this to say:

Much of the Anglican world must be lamenting the latest emission from GAFCON. Anglicanism has always been broader than some find comfortable. This statement does not represent the end of Anglicanism, merely another chapter in a centuries-old struggle for dominance by those who consider themselves the only true believers. Anglicans will continue to worship God in their churches, serve the hungry and needy in their communities, and build missional relationships with others across the globe, despite the desire of a few leaders to narrow the influence of the gospel. We look forward to the opportunities of the Lambeth Conference for constructive conversation, inspired prayer, and relational encounters.

(From ENS.)

I have to say that I would have been happier if she had not used the word "emission."

The Archbishop of Canterbury has responded to the GAFCON statement (discussed below). His response is here. Here's a taste:

The 'tenets of orthodoxy' spelled out in the document will be acceptable to and shared by the vast majority of Anglicans in every province, even if there may be differences of emphasis and perspective on some issues. ... Despite the claims of some, the conviction of the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as Lord and God and the absolute imperative of evangelism are not in dispute in the common life of the Communion

However, GAFCON's proposals for the way ahead are problematic in all sorts of ways, and I urge those who have outlined these to think very carefully about the risks entailed.

For compare-and-contrast, here's another recent talk by the Archbishop; in this case, it's a short article he wrote to be read at a conference on the notion of "primacy" in the church. In this case he's writing academically, but when he says:

The problems that in different ways face the Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican communions at present show how difficult it is to frame this issue constructively. Roman Catholics are still labouring to discover how to disentangle the missionary apostolic charism of the See of Peter from juridical anomalies and bureaucratic distortion. Orthodox have often 'frozen' the concept of primacy in an antiquarian defence of the 'pentarchy' as the structure of the church, thus allowing non-theological power struggles rooted in nationalism and ethnocentrism to flourish with damaging effect. Anglicans have failed to think through primacy with any theological seriousness and so have become habituated to a not very coherent or effective international structure that lacks canonical seriousness and produces insupportable pluralism in more than one area of the church's practice.

...he can hardly help but have been thinking of recent events.

The "Global Anglican Future Conference," GAFCON, wrapped up its meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday. This is the meeting of conservative Anglican leaders who want to respond to what they perceive as a crisis in the global Communion. I talked here about the pre-meeting document they released.

The conference released a final statement, and it's prompting interesting reactions.

The speculation going into GAFCON was that they would declare a formal schism from the liberal Western churches of the Anglican Communion (meaning the Episcopal Church in the U.S., probably the Anglican Church of Canada, and the way things are going possibly the Church of England itself.) Reports from the conference as it was going on seemed to indicate a backing away from that possibility, to the chagrin of some and the relief of others. Then the final statement came out, and the press coverage (and blog commentary) is split on whether it represents a schism, a takeover, or a reform-from-within movement.

Here's what the statement itself says. It begins by declaring that the conference will "launch the GAFCON movement as a fellowship of confessing Anglicans," which thought it later expands:

We, the participants in the Global Anglican Future Conference, are a fellowship of confessing Anglicans for the benefit of the Church and the furtherance of its mission. We are a fellowship of people united in the communion (koinonia) of the one Spirit and committed to work and pray together in the common mission of Christ. It is a confessing fellowship in that its members confess the faith of Christ crucified, stand firm for the gospel in the global and Anglican context, and affirm a contemporary rule, the Jerusalem Declaration, to guide the movement for the future. We are a fellowship of Anglicans, including provinces, dioceses, churches, missionary jurisdictions, para-church organisations and individual Anglican Christians whose goal is to reform, heal and revitalise the Anglican Communion and expand its mission to the world.

...and goes on to state firmly, "Our fellowship is not breaking away from the Anglican Communion."

The "Jerusalem Declaration" referred to above is a confession included in the GAFCON statement. It declares the standards of authentic Anglicanism to be Scripture, the four Ecumenical Councils [there were actually seven Ecumenical Councils, but for historical reasons some branches, particularly Protestants, don't like the last three], the three historic Creeds (the Apostles', the Nicene, and the Athanasian), the Thirty-Nine Articles, and the 1662 ordinal and prayerbook.

So far, the statement describes an internal body within the larger Anglican Communion, a "fellowship" committed to a particular flavor of Anglicanism. There are many such bodies, large and small. However, the statement continues:

We, the participants in the Global Anglican Future Conference, do hereby acknowledge the participating Primates of GAFCON who have called us together, and encourage them to form the initial Council of the GAFCON movement. We look forward to the enlargement of the Council and entreat the Primates to organise and expand the fellowship of confessing Anglicans.

We urge the Primates' Council to authenticate and recognise confessing Anglican jurisdictions, clergy and congregations and to encourage all Anglicans to promote the gospel and defend the faith.

We recognise the desirability of territorial jurisdiction for provinces and dioceses of the Anglican Communion, except in those areas where churches and leaders are denying the orthodox faith or are preventing its spread [emphasis mine], and in a few areas for which overlapping jurisdictions are beneficial for historical or cultural reasons.

...

We believe this is a critical moment when the Primates' Council will need to put in place structures to lead and support the church. In particular, we believe the time is now ripe for the formation of a province in North America for the federation currently known as Common Cause Partnership to be recognised by the Primates' Council.

In other words, they intend to form their own "Primates' Council," consisting of known "orthodox" Primates and those additional Primates who pass the orthodox screening test. They intend to continue providing oversight to parishes and dioceses in heretical provinces (i.e., the U.S. and Canada.) And they're calling on their new Primates' Council to recognize a new province in North America, to be made up out of Episcopal Church breakaways.

That constitutes a little more than simply a "fellowship" within the existing Anglican Communion.

(Speaking of the "Common Cause Partnership," I talked a little about them in this old post. All I can say about the idea of forming a working province out of that group is: good luck with that.)

Now, it must be remembered that, as with any conference, not everyone at the GAFCON meeting in Jerusalem was of one mind on the best way forward; and so the resulting statement is bound to be a compromise of some sort.

Still, as I read it, the "GAFCON plan" is not to break away formally from the liberal Western churches and the existing leadership structures of the Anglican Communion, but rather to simply ignore them. Most (not all) of the bishops attending GAFCON are skipping Lambeth, and the statement notes that, "While acknowledging the nature of Canterbury as an historic see, we do not accept that Anglican identity is determined necessarily through recognition by the Archbishop of Canterbury." As for the Episcopal Church, it says bluntly, "We reject the authority of those churches and leaders who have denied the orthodox faith in word or deed."

It remains to be seen how this will play out in practice. But to my eyes, this is a schism in all but name, and I don't see how it can avoid becoming a formal split in fairly short order.

• Iron Man [My review]
• Speed Racer [My review]
• The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian [My review]
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull [My review]
• Kung Fu Panda [My review]
• The Incredible Hulk [My review]
• WALL-E
• Wanted
• Hellboy II: The Golden Army
• The Dark Knight
• The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars


This is a movie with a clear and timely warning, and that warning is: Apple products do not behave according to spec.

That aside, I liked it. Pixar hasn't made a dud yet, and while I wouldn't rank this as high as The Incredibles (my favorite Pixar so far), I might put it on a par with, oh, Cars.

Most of the first half of the movie takes place without any real spoken dialogue, and it works well enough that I was a little disappointed that they resorted to speech later on. Granted, it would be hard to convey the plot without any words at all, but I would have liked to see them try.

Speaking of the plot, liralen has some interesting comments (also spoilers, so beware) about the movie; and while I can certainly see where she's coming from I have to say that it didn't strike me that way. To me, the ending was about learning that it takes hard work to build a better world.

Visually, it's gorgeous. And I don't mean that the animation is outstanding, although it is, I mean that some of the scenes are just plain spectacular. There's one sequence that's worth the price of a ticket all by itself.

You should see this one.

1. Post 3 things you've done in your lifetime that you don't think anybody else on your friends list has done.
2. See if anybody else responds with "I've done that."
3. Have your friends cut & paste this into their journal to see what unique things they've done in their life.


Hmm...

1) Had a poem published. On a bus.

2) Carried a sword into a church.

3) Written a serious paper on the hermeneutics of H.P. Lovecraft.

GAFCON -- the conference of conservative Anglican leaders -- has begun.

The organizers released a document called The Way, the Truth and the Life [483 KB PDF] just prior to the conference; it's intended to be a précis of the "orthodox" Anglican position. It's long, but worth reading if you're into that sort of thing.

I have to say that I admire it. Of course, I disagree with several of the premises and many of the conclusions, because I'm a liberal Christian and this document is staking out a conservative Christian point of view; but given those premises it's a clear and coherent statement of that position.

Unfortunately, I don't think that we on the liberal side can easily point to an equivalent document. Probably the closest is the 2005 Episcopal response to the Windsor report, To Set Our Hope on Christ [621 KB PDF], but even Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has admitted that it was "not our best effort." I keep meaning to write up, for my own satisfaction, an apology for the liberal position; perhaps I'll have a chance to do that over the summer.

The other interesting thing about the GAFCON document is that it speaks from a fairly strong Reformed position. I've said before that one of the unusual features of the current Anglican conflict is that it has united conservative Evangelicals and conservative Anglo-Catholics, two groups that have not traditionally seen eye-to-eye on much. The African churches tend to lean heavily Evangelical, so it's hardly surprising that their theology is on the Reformed side; but I'll be very curious to see how the conservative Anglo-Catholics respond to this.

Apparently Entertainment Weekly has taken time out from it's busy schedule of doing whatever it is that it does to compile a list of the 1,000 best things of the last 25 years, broken down by categories. That includes a list of the 100 best books between 1983 and now, according to the esteemed authorities at EW.

So just for kicks let's do this meme style:

Bold the books you've read.
Underline books you started but didn't finish.

( List behind cut )

It's an eclectic list, and I've read fairly few of them. Several of them are books I recognize as having thought, "I should read that one of these days," though.

Well, I'm trying to keep this journal more or less PG-13 (ish) so I won't say what the internet is for...

But Avenue Q is hilarious. I am so glad I made time to see it.

I've promised a post on Anglican goings-on for a while now, but laziness the press of circumstances has kept me from getting around to it. Here it is.

( Cut for excessive verbosity )

• Iron Man [My review]
• Speed Racer [My review]
• The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian [My review]
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull [My review]
• Kung Fu Panda [My review]
• The Incredible Hulk
• WALL-E
• Wanted
• Hellboy II: The Golden Army
• The Dark Knight
• The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars


Let me see if I can capture the essential differences between this movie and the 2003 Ang Lee-directed Hulk:

Ang Lee's version: "Hulk sad. Hulk smell pretty flower. Hulk have daddy issues."

This version: "HULK SMASH!!!"

The fact that this movie is not a sequel but a make-it-didn't-happen to the old one, a scant five years later, opens up the exciting possibility that Marvel might decide to keep trying on some of their other less-than-successful recent outings. If they made another pass at, say, Elektra, they could hardly do worse than they did the first time around.

In any event, this one was not bad. Using the classification scheme from this post, I'd have to put it in the "Extremely Adequate" bucket. There were a couple of amusing bits, like when Bruce makes a point of buying extra-stretchy pants, or when you realize who the security guard he's talking to is; but mostly they concentrate on big set pieces where the Hulk can break things, because really, why else would you go see a Hulk movie?

What's also intriguing is that they're finally making motions to acknowledge that all of these Marvel characters theoretically live in the same universe. Robert Downey Jr. has a brief cameo as Tony Stark, S.H.I.E.L.D. is mentioned in passing, as is the "super-soldier serum," and it becomes very interesting that I see "Thor" and "Ant-Man" on the list of upcoming projects on Stan Lee's IMDB page.

I would give this one a mild recommendation. Unless you find yourself in the mood to see things get smashed, in which case you should definitely see it.

ETA: I forgot to mention that in the credits, along with the disclaimer about not resembling any person living or dead and no animals were harmed, was a statement to the effect that the use of tobacco products in the movie was "for artistic considerations," and was not intended in any way to promote or condone tobacco use.

Strangely enough, there was no similar disclaimer about the hundreds of guns, rocket launchers, grenades, and whatnot; nor about the various mutagenic substances that different characters have injected into themselves. Guns are no big deal, but you gotta cover your legally liable butt if someone lights up a cigar.

Ganked from officialgaiman.

When a New York family had their apartment remodeled, the architect built an elaborate series of puzzles, clues, and hidden compartments into it without telling them.

The story says:

"...the finale involved, in part, removing decorative door knockers from two hallway panels, which fit together to make a crank, which in turn opened hidden panels in a credenza in the dining room, which displayed multiple keys and keyholes, which, when the correct ones were used, yielded drawers containing acrylic letters and a table-size cloth imprinted with the beginnings of a crossword puzzle, the answers to which led to one of the rectangular panels lining the tiny den, which concealed a chamfered magnetic cube, which could be used to open the 24 remaining panels, revealing, in large type, the poem written by Mr. Klinsky."

It's like a Ditch Day stack with years of planning, a budget, and a host of skilled craftspeople behind it. Be sure to check out the additional pictures in the article.