moving parts of the kasper clan

So, as part of the new and exciting me, I’ve decided that I need to start reading more books. Well, this and that I need to finish the books that I start. Currently, I have around… oh… 392 books that have bookmarks somewhere within the first quarter of them.

I’ve finished 3 good books since I’ve been out here in Rhode Island, and I’m currently working on finishing C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. Which reminds me, Mike, I’m still waiting for your review…. =;)

But here’s some really good blips from the last week’s worth of chapters I’ve read….

Warning: Open minds required below….

As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

For Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.

If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realise that one is proud.

The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love them.

The worldy man treats certain people kindly because he ‘likes’ them: the Christian, trying to treat every one kindly, finds himself liking more and more people as he goes on–including people he could not even have imagined himself liking at the beginning.

Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance.

… people are often worried. They are told they ought to love God. They cannot find any such feeling in themselves. What are they to do? The answer is the same as before. Act as if you did. Do not sit trying to manufacture feelings. Ask yourself, ‘If I were sure that I loved God, what would I do?’ When you have found the answer, go and do it.

The other set were accused of saying ‘Faith is all that matters. Consequently, if you have faith, it doesn’t matter what you do. Sin away, my lad, and have a good time and Christ will see that it makes no difference in the end.’ The answer to that nonsense is that, if what you call your ‘Faith’ in Christ does not involve taking the slightest noticice of what He says, then it is not Faith at all–not faith or trust in Him, but only intellectual acceptance of some theory about Him.

Even though C.S. Lewis’s theological books are a little more terse, intellectual, and harder to plod through then his more famous Chronicles of Narnia, I think it is well worth your while. He has a wonderful, logical way of speaking through his words.

Go read a book! =;)

Oh my goodness. My workmate, Mike, came in to work singing (well, okay, the song has no words, so he was humming it) this song that I immediately remembered but couldn’t for the life of me figure out what it was. And the worst part was that since the song has no words, I didn’t think I’d be able to google it enough to figure out what it was.

Little did I know that google is mightier than the spoken word. I underestimated the power of the google, I admit it.

I typed “banamana” into google and before I knew it, I found this page that had someone else’s similar story (the getting the song stuck in your head and not being able to figure out what it is). TOO FUNNY!!

Of importance, though… here’s the Muppets video of the “Mahna Mahna song” (see, Mike, I told you it was the Muppets!!!)

Here’s a high-quality MP3 of the glorious Mahna Mahna song!!

Here’s a wikipedia page for this amazing song.

Words cannot possibly express how fantastic this song is. Genious, I say!! They’ve even used it recently in a Doctor Pepper commercial!

My beautiful bride and I just finished watching Must Love Dogs. I am a huge John Cusack fan, as is Lynn. However, Must Love Dogs barely bubbled up above the “sure could have done something more enjoyable with the last two hours of my life” mark. It was a cute film, to be sure, and those involved did decent-enough jobs. Christopher Plummer was excellent, as always. It just seemed like it was a really long, drawn-out, wholly predictable, average romance movie (guys–read: “chick flick”). And this was no fault of John Cusack, honestly. I mean, really, it seemed like he was intentionally left out of most of the movie. And the ending, when they finally did realize that they loved each other–that must have been the shortest romantic ending to a film that I ever have seen. Wholly incongruous. It’s a word. Look it up. =:)

This, my friend, was no Serendipity. Now that movie (also a John Cusack film) was most probably the most agonizingly enjoyable romance movie that I have ever seen. John Cusack was incredibly good in it. And he was very good in Must Love Dogs too–when he was allowed to be on the screen.

Also, is it just me or is the current predictable recipe in romance movies to put as many double-backs/twists/turns/heartbreaks into the movie until the time just runs out? I think I counted 47 in Must Love Dogs–an amazingly painful amount, to be sure.

So, if you ask me (and I know you’re not… it’s more an expression of speech, dear reader), if you’re in the mood to see a good romance movie, go rent Serendipity.

If you’re in the mood to see a good John Cusack movie and aren’t particularly of the romance-movie persuasion, do yourself a favor and go rent Grosse Pointe Blank. Grosse Pointe Blank is without a doubt one of the best and most funny John Cusack movies, ever made, coming darned-near close even to Better Off Dead. Really. Must Love Dogs, however, is not.

Nate Eagleson, ladies and gentlemen… Now this is absolutely hilarious.

Note that the above image gives good detail on the tear. At first I refused to make the tear, fearing it might damage the purity of the art, which had involved only folding and thumbtacks to that point, but eventually, my passion for realism (and pseudo-legible characters) surpassed my passion for artistic purity.

Many thanks to the Rite Aid Corporation, for providing the IS team with a digital camera that was sitting abandoned in my cube. I can completely understand why we would need such a thing.

You might not find the humor in this, but having worked at Rite Aid for 13 years, I feel able to say that it is, in fact, absolutely hilarious. The art of it is subject to the eye of the beholder, of course, but the canvas (my old cubicle at Rite Aid) is apropos or nothing, as is the medium he has chosen.

Nate, I wish I could have worked with you longer. Perhaps time and God will cause our paths to cross again. =:)