Doctor WHAAAAAAAT?

this weekend i started watching Doctor Who.

i told people i was watching Dr Who but someone’s daughter told me that in this case you aren’t allowed to abbreviate Doctor and who am i to argue with anyone ever?

i started watching the Christopher Eccleston Doctor Who because that was the start of the new generation of Doctor Whos [Whose?] although for the first two tweets i spelled his last name Ecclestone with an e on the end and fortunately discovered my error before the grandma police [or anyone else’s daughters] could come calling.

[and to be completely honest, i actually saw my first ever Doctor Who episodes with Tom Baker back in the day when my dad did an exchange with a pastor in the unfortunately named Hull in England – you try saying, ‘My dad is a pastor in Hull’ with a South African accent! – and so Tom Baker’s Who was always the picture i had in my mind of Doctor Who]

IT BEGINS

but have been meaning to watch it for a while and eventually got round to sneaking an episode on Friday i think it was. 

and it was weird! 

the fun part is that i love Christopher Eccleston. i think he plays the part so ridiculously cheekily arrogantly fun and he reminds me of Tim Roth as the Doctor, Cal Lightman, in ‘Lie to Me’ which is a series both tbV and i enjoyed a lot. but i could definitely see him having taken on the role directly after Eccleston and creating a seamless transition if only anyone had thought of it.

so episode one – you know, the one with the plastic mannequins and dustbins that come to life and start chasing people and then shooting them with the guns that appear from underneath their fingers like an Austen Power fembot on steroids.

but so many people had said such nice [and extreme] things so i felt i had to carry on.

episode two was the one about the end of the world – you know, level up the intensity slowly cos once you’ve killed earth, where exactly are you going to go from there? but since it was something like 5 billion years in the future [you know, plausability and all] and because the mom from ‘My Family’, Zoë Wanamaker [a surname slightly less silly than the premise of this episode] played the last living human who was in essence the last living stretched out human face and skin and veins that would have made Michael Jackson say, ‘um, hold on the scalpel please’ i decided i had no choice but to see what episode three had to give.

which was ghost people trapped in the gas piping who inhabited dead bodies and tricked Doctor Who into thinking they didn’t want to take over the world, but fortunately Charles Dickens [yes, THE Charles Dickens] was on hand to figure it all out and save the day.

you can’t make this stuff up. oh wait, apparently you can and they did and i have been warned by my podcasting friend, Jacob, that the next two episodes are rubbish and i’ll thank him when they’re over [i’m not quite sure why i’ll thank him for having just watched two rubbish episodes but i’ll take it!] – he also told me that after these next two episodes, it’s gold. i’m not sure if that is suggesting that it is suddenly going to get super good or if the next two episodes have gold as a major plot point, or with the evidence i’ve seen so far maybe even a major character.

YOU CAN DETERMINE MY FATE

i’ve been told to EJECT! and head over to Matt Smith, i’ve been told to RETREAT! and back pedal to more classic Who like Tom Baker – what’s a boy to do?

so my question to you is this…

why should i continue [without giving away major plot points]? is it the story or the acting or the vibe of the show or the absolute ridiculousness or the immeasurable brilliance or what?

what i am asking is why do YOU enjoy the show? 

[as for now i’m going to keep watching for Eccleston’s steely charm and Piper’s giddy smile every time she runs, especially when she is running hand-in-hand with the Doctor]

[…and, of course, because i have yet to witness a single Dalek!]

 

Creativity? Come on church, world…

It feels almost like a daily thing now where I am tweeting or facebook-sharing or blogging about some latest idea of immense creativity [and often remarkable simplicity] that has blown my mind yet again and caused me to direct the question to the church [of who i am a proud member – well, to the body of active Jesus-followers for sure, the greater collective of people-who-call-themselves-christian-but-live-lives-that-completely-don’t-reflect-it i am a lot more nervous to associate myself with] and also to the world of when are we going to catch up?

this morning it was 14 year old Zev from Natick, Massachusetts, who is responsible for these incredible creations:

self-portrait by Zev, shared from article on demilked.com

 

Last week is was the Coca Cola company and this creative piece of engineering, viral marketing and political and human unification:

And last night it was this revolutionary new clothing fabric that you can spray on a person from a can and watch it turn into a t-shirt:

Which is all very good and well for art and product placement advertising and fashion design…

But more and more as I see inspirational creative designs, ideas and programs that different people are doing around the world my eyes go to the church [we do claim to follow the God who breathed the Universe into existence in a single breath or word] and have to ask, when are we going to get more creative with our creativity? 

We serve the God who is able to do “Immeasurably more than all we can hope or imagine” [Ephesians 3.20] and yet too often we seem to be content with hoping and imagining for really small things [like a bunch of people to come and meet in a building week after week]. Now don’t get me wrong – very often Christ-following people have been on the forefront of radically creative inventions and innovations in fields like healthcare and home-building and water purification and so many other areas and so it has happened and is happening… but this call goes out to the rest of us, and especially those who have identified exceptional talents in themselves of writing and photographing and creating and bringing together and so on, to perhaps consider using our talents in the direction of things like poverty and homelessness and trafficking and racial segregation and war…

One such idea involved a really broken woman who ran as a means of finding some sense and sanity in the middle of a really messed up life, until something beautiful was birthed out of that…

And I’m not saying you have to be a Jesus-follower to do this and so this call extends to the whole world of course, but with our claims to be connected to the greatest source of creativity the world has ever known we should at the very least be there…

The creativity is in here… how about we get it out there..?

imagine a world where this was the norm…

this is a clip with the passing-it-forward [Jesus kinda provided the inspiration with ‘Love your neighbor’, right?] idea that is powerfully dramatised and passed on to me by my friend Kevin Smuts:

 

and then a friend of Kevin’s posted this short and true story which is apparently the inspiration for the first piece.

while i hope our motivation for doing ‘random’ acts of goodness is never to try and one day get free medical procedures, these certainly are a great reminder of how generosity breeds generosity… and the best kind may be when you don’t expect to be rewarded in any way…

what is something generous you have the power to do today? 

 

something something Miley Cyrus, something something Ben Affleck Batman, oh and by the way, Syria!

hm. so i couldn’t sleep. just had too much going on in my head. so i thought i’ll jump on here and throw a little bit at the screen. probably more for me than any of you, but that’s okay.

the one thing is the crisis in Syria. which to be honest i don’t really know a whole lot about. not enough by any stretch of the imagination.

i know that a while back over 600 people had been killed. but i also know that chemical attacks were made. i know the death toll is well over 1000 now.

i know that America are paused to intervene. i know that UK, France, Germany and Turkey have joined the calls for intervention.

i know that America does not have the greatest reputation both in terms of their motivation for getting involved in world skirmishes and also their actual involvement in a number of countries, both in the middle east and beyond.

i read that Kevin Rudd, prime minister of Australia had this to say: “I do not believe the world can simply turn a blind eye to the use of chemical weapons against a civilian population resulting in nearly 300 deaths, or more, and some 3,600 people hospitalised.” [The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/26/syria-us-un-inspection-kerry]

AND THEN THERE WAS MILEY

meanwhile from the corners of the CNN.com website to the front page of the Onion satirical online news site, from Twitter to Facebook and beyond, a huge number of people seemed to be spending the last 24 hours obsessed with the goings on at the Video Music Awards show.

in particular, Miley Cyrus and the number she performed with Robin Thicke, that was so sexually explicit and in-your-face dodgy it sent a picture of the reaction of Will Smith and his family while she was performing viral just by their looks of disbelief and what-the-heck-is-going-on-here-ness

i watched the video and it was too much of too much. as Robin Thicke’s mom commented after she was shown it, “I can’t unsee that.”

it is bothering me that the Miley Cyrus thing clogged up the Facebook status and Twitter feeds and only here are there is there mention of what is happening in Syria

[it should bother me equally as much that i spent more time following information about Mileygate than i did researching the situation in Syria, although Val and i both ended the evening sharing information with each other as we read up on different reports of it]

also remembering that the previous 24 hours had been completely taken up by the internet’s overwhelmment at the news that Ben Affleck would be playing Batman in the new Superman vs Batman movie [to date more than 50,000 signatures have been added to a petition asking for him to be deBatmanned]

THE EUGENE CHO CONVERSATIONS

Eugene Cho is someone who i follow on Twitter. He is a follower of Jesus and from what evidence I have of his life I have a lot of respect for him. He challenges and encourages me regularly by what he writes and shares.

he tweeted some stuff about the war in Syria and got all sorts of conversations going:

Eugene Cho ‏@EugeneCho: We can’t do nothing in the face of genocide in Syria. It may not be popular but one we must make.Praying for wisdom and courage for leaders.

Eugene Cho ‏@EugeneCho: Stunning and shameful. Over 1,000,000 children have fled Syria and another 2,000,000 children are displaced within the country. #WeMustAct

Eugene Cho ‏@EugeneCho: I’m so torn but…Yes, I do support military intervention in Syria. There’s a distinction between military aggression & military protection.

to which he got some huge pushback – some was more accusatory:

wondermirk ‏@wondermirk: @EugeneCho Really bro? I can’t retweet that. Violence is simply not acceptable. Fighting for peace is like fornicating for virginity.

Maxwell Mooney ‏@MaxwellAMooney: @EugeneCho come a long way from the pacifism you endorsed not long ago. Could it have to do with your recent political ties with the Prez?

while others were more just wrestling with the question themselves:

Warwick Rendell ‏@WarWraith: @EugeneCho It’s something we were discussing earlier. How do you protect the oppressed from the violent oppressor without violence?

And as someone who has a strong focus on non-violence [certainly a more focused intentional view on non-violence since our time over here as we have faced the idea and concept and questions related to it a lot more] it feels like a huge catch-22. If doing nothing means we see another potential Rwanda, then surely there has to be a better answer? But if entering violently just escalates the violence and creates flashbacks to time in Iraq and a lot of the mess that happened there, then what?

WHEN MILEY MEETS SYRIA

Back to Eugene Cho, who feeling similiar to me about the fact that the Miley Cyrus dodgefest was receiving more focus and attention than Syria tweeted these:

Eugene Cho ‏@EugeneCho: That so many would be outraged by #MileyCyrus and yet, so apathetic by what’s going on in Syria, Congo,& North Korea…is truly outrageous.

Which made perfect sense, until this conversation happened on Facebook:

Eugene Cho: That so many would be outraged by ‪#‎MileyCyrus and yet, so apathetic or uninformed by what’s going on in Syria, Congo, and North Korea…is truly outrageous. The former is entertainment. Yes, bad entertainment but the latter is real life.

Tracy Bieger: While I wholeheartedly agree about the horrible atrocities taking place here, I think the former is also real life. The very real implications of a young woman who is looked at by other young girls as a “role model”, and the objectification and sexualization of young girls is still okay. This only fuels human trafficking, and the rape culture we still live in. Very real life.

Eugene Cho: Tracy Bieger – Appreciate that comment. Fair pushback. Really fair and important. Another reminder why we need to be open to pushback. Thanks for sharpening me.

WHERE DOES THAT LEAVE US, ME?

To be honest, feeling pretty helpless.

What is there to do besides making statuses, tweeting my interest/horror/outrage and then moving on again next week when the next big thing hits?

And how do i differentiate in my mind the “big” thing that is Ben Affleck as the new Batman or Miley Cyrus twerking Robin Thicke inappropriately and the “big thing” that is a war that has currently seen more than 1000 people die?

To me, both are glaringly obvious symptoms that we live in a broken, messed up world. Which is both quite scary, but also quite encouraging in a sense as it just makes a whole lot of the Jesus-following stuff i believe a lot more clear.

The world is definitely in need of some saving. And i happen to know a Saviour. I don’t think that’s a huge coincidence, but I do think I need to figure out some more stuff in terms of the ‘what do we do with this stuff’ness of it all.

Anyone got any thoughts or ideas?

The Weekend Watch-up 24 Aug

So what videos caught your attention this week? From the incredible to the ridiculous, this is what held my attention:

This look like way too much fun to be had without me being a part of it – The Human Slingshot:

 

This is a bit of an older one but it’s really great and deserves a spot for those who may have missed it – Kenichi Ebina doing dance-ish Matrix moves on ‘Talent:

 

The next two were the car wreck you just can’t help slowing down to stare at as South Africa launched its new news station care of the Gupta family and it was BAD:

 

And suddenly #ANN7 became a trending tag on the Twitter… but fortunately we can’t claim World’s Worst on this one as this bad day on the job suggests:

 

If you made it to the phrase “Boom goes the dynamite” you have more stamina than most… suddenly Ben Affleck as Batman doesn’t feel like the worst thing we’ve seen this week.

How about you? Any videos you see this week worth sharing? Send us the links…fun

 

 

If you turn it off, no-one will die. [probably!]

i just turned off a TED talk about a third of the way in.

for those of you who may not know what a TED talk is, they are these brilliant [normally] shortish [10 to 20 min] talks on a whole host of different areas of life. someone gets up and speaks an inspiring talk on something they’re passionate about and as i said they are usually really good. this one wasn’t, so i turned it off.

and a strange thing happened…

no-one died. well not that i am aware of.

in other news i just finished reading the biography of Archbishop Desmond Tutu which i had been looking forward to for a while, but which i didn’t overly enjoy. i just don’t think it was particularly well written and it focused too much on events and happenings and not enough on Tutu’s engagement with them or emotional response to them. so while there were glimpses, i don’t really feel i got to see Tutu’s heart concerning apartheid and a number of other incredible events and experiences he got invited into.

and i kinda knew that from half way in but i just kept on reading because i kinda wanted to see where it ended i guess.

i can’t get those hours of my life back [and it was a bit of a wadey book so it was a bunch of them]

i am someone who has walked out of a bunch of movies – not a crazy amount, but probably more than most. and i can’t remember ever walking out of a movie that i regretted or feel like my life became worse off for not having watched it. i can, however, think of a bunch of movies that i feel worse off for having watched at all or having stuck out [usually ‘to see how it ended’]. and sometimes it just a waste of time [the recent RIPD being one of the worst movies Val and i have ever watched and it really was curiosity about how it would end and i will never get that hour and a half of my life back] but other times it’s imagery and content that i really don’t want or need anywhere in my mind [like the recent Arrested Development series which Val stopped watching and i really wish i had – when paedophilia is the subject of the humour, safe bet to turn it off, Brett] and it is good to be able to get up and walk out, or turn it off, or put the book down.

because no-one will die. 

and people have different levels of what they see as okay and what is offensive and what i have learnt to some degree is that i don’t have to be input police for everyone else and so if someone else feels like something is okay, that’s fine but i don’t need to feel like i can’t make the decision to stop taking it in or on.

i have gotten a lot better at that with books in the last few years [because there are so many i really want to read] and with series there are SO MANY good ones out there that i never have to subject myself to something bad or unenjoyable. turn it off and find something you enjoy.

this thought feels so simple and yet so terribly profound.

how about you? ever walked our of a movie or stopped reading a book? what was the motivation for you? and any regrets on something you really wished you had stopped before the end?

Goth bless America [with the most surprising of ways]

i watched this clip today – it was titled ‘Goth Andrew De Leon something something something’ and was obviously going to be one of those singing talent shows [the one without Simon Cowell] and clearly the big twist was going to be this goth suddenly singing like the offspring of Susan Boyle and Michael Jackson or something to that effect…

so i watched it and it deeply moved me [as they always do – pretend to be a rock but if you can watch this and not at least have the smallest hints of inner cry, you should get yourself checked out]

so watch the clip and be moved… but for me it was more about the person who thought they were nothing and turned out to be someone [which contains its own needing-to-be-looked-at issues of calling someone a someone just because they possess an amazing talent] receiving the affirmation they were looking for in life and before even going on stage declaring the hope that life was going to be completely different from now.

take a moment before watching though, and many moments afterwards, to think of the role of this guy’s family and friends and classmates and the responsibility and opportunities we have every day to give affirmation to and love those around us, so that they know it… and especially the ones who may not hear it from many people all that often [don’t waste your time tweeting Brad Pitt that you think he’s hot – i imagine he ‘gets’ that!]

which reminded me of a post i wrote for my old ‘Mash and Peace’ blog titled ‘Blessed are the Geeks’ that was about the labelling we tend to do so easily and the potential destructiveness of it…

so really who is your Andrew de Leon? [whether they can sing at all or not!] and what are you going to do today to let them know you care about them a lot?

[For a similiar themed article titled ‘Her life as a plus size model’ click here]