In which I (admittedly way over my head on the subject being discussed) attempt to explain to Akemi why humanity must toil as a result of original sin:
Jelly went in for a stem cell boost the other day and is now at home and on the mend. Will be interesting to see what kind of results we get on this second go-round.
Finally, just wanted to respond to blog regular, Maggiemayday, who tells us she used to attend a Bad Movie Night. Well, it just so happens that I did too, back in the day, when Paul and I had absolutely nothing better to do with our Saturday nights. Whew! We sat through some truly execrable dreck including Showgirls, Barb Wire, Boxing Helena, Color of Night and the movie that retired the weekly theme night because we couldn’t imagine topping it with a worse contender: Battlefield Earth.
Enjoy them apples. Ain’t no undoing it now. Well, there’s the Way, but it doesn’t involve apples. *think, think, think* Yep, apples are right out.
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Where do they put the stem cells?
First, I thought this last time, but I didn’t comment, but you sound just like my cousin. Like eerily so. Which is weird because he grew up in Switzerland, not in Canada (of course, I’m assuming you grew up in Canada only because your mom and sister live there, but my parents and sister live in Arkansas and I’m not from there, so….assumptions only get so far. Feel free to correct me 😀 )
Second, these crack me up. My husband is a pastor, so there’s a whole ‘nother layer of humor for me 🙂
Oh so thats how and why it happened, I have often wondered for sure, thanks for clearing that up, apples and trees, and men must do what women say, wow, now I know… clear as mud, as they say… I agree with Akemi, does not make sense. But you explain it so well. I give you 5 choc chip cookies. and a macaron. Hugs to Jelly and well wishes.
~~and do the Jackass movies count as bad, I mean yes they do…ew.
Oh jeez. Akemi is priceless. Her take on the mythology we here in North America have mostly grown up with is so on target. I can’t wait till you work your way through some of the other stories. Joseph and his brothers perhaps? I am curious to see if her viewpoints on Joseph are the same as mine.
Yea, battlefield Earth definitely set a new low for movies in general. Still, I have confidence that someone will eventually make a movie that surpasses it on the worst movies list. Just look at how many idiots have control in Hollywood.
thanks for sharing. i enjoyed a good chuckle. And hope Jelly continues to improve.
I hope Jelly improves with this latest stem cell boost. 🙂
Your next movie list should be those that you watch every time they’re on, no matter how many times you’ve seen them. Mine are Tremors & The Terminator (the original)
I like “movies so bad they are funny” but not just plain BAD. Things like The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and The Dunwich Horror etc.
Might I suggest you get others to explain Adam and Eve. You really are going to confuse her beyond belief, lol. It’s okay Akemi, not many religions really make sense, it’s not just you. 🙂
Meant to ask the other day if Jelly belly was out of her diapers yet. Hopefully that is all better now. Hope the stem cell shot does the trick. Get better Jelly!
LOL….yes, Battlefield Earth was ugly bad, did I mention bad, sir?
yeah, color of night was….i don’t even know what that was. i recall that scott bakula said that they didn’t even have a director for some reason during the first few days. bruce willis said to him; “between us we have 9 years of TV experience, we can figure this out.” (or something like that) so apparently they directed themselves (and one presumes the movie) for a few days.
Home again, home again, jiggity-jig!
Been a long travel day. Was good to see you, Joe, to meet Akemi, and to taste my first macaron. Hope to see you next year.
@archersangel–that story agrees with what I learned in Acting I a few years ago. Actors need to know how to direct themselves as individual players. (Hope that makes sense.)
*turns air conditioning below 70° F to bring stuffy Texas bedroom to VanGroovy temps*
Hopefully Jelly gets better soon Joe!
Try countering that bad movie thing with some asian movies. It’s different, granted I haven’t seen that many but the ones I have seen blew me away.
People say watch Red Cliff, I watch Red Cliff and I’m like WOW.
Great Adam and Eve discussion. Positive thoughts for good stem cell injection results.
Point of clarification: It wasn’t the tree of knowledge. It was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Rather important distinction. And, as you hint at, nothing but tradition says the fruit was an apple. For all we know, that fruit could be long extinct now.
Anyway, yeah, that’s a pretty complicated discussion.
Oh, and my take on why God didn’t just put the tree somewhere else: The tree was there to provide the one thing that Adam and Eve weren’t allowed to do. Eating that fruit was the only thing forbidden to them. Free will gives us the option to do things we shouldn’t. So, if the tree was somewhere else, the option to make the wrong choice wouldn’t be there, and so free will would have been meaningless.
@Joe:
First, Happy Thanksgiving! And it sounds like you all had a fun Adam and Eve discussion. After your powers of suggestion planted the thought, did Akemi get her apple?
Thanks for your recent pictures of Campagnolo’s…I went there last night with my customer and they all were impressed (as was I). It didn’t look like much from the outside (and it’s definitely a little bit of “industrial chic” on the inside, including the green plastic chairs), but the food was good and very comparable to what I’ve had in Milan. Yes, I’ll post some pictures later in the week.
Today I was thinking about taking a tour or something, but after scheduled meetings all week, emails, and emergency software projects in the evening, I think I’m in the mood for something a little less structured. Maybe a walk around an art museum, or someplace of historical interest. I’ll see what strikes my mood.
I do have to stop by a Macarons shop; I haven’t forgotten you all Sylvia and Eileen, we’ll make distribution arrangements when I get back. 😉 And I have to pick up some odds and end that Barb and the kids are expecting, but I have all day to do that. Probably the biggest decision I’ll make is on where to eat…so many choices…guess I’ll see what falls out.
These are cute conversations.
Maybe this will help answer some questions.
http://www.gotquestions.org/tree-knowledge-good-evil.html
When God created us he gave us a free will. A choice to follow him. Wouldn’t you rather have someone choose to love you than be forced to? Doesn’t that make for a more genuine love? But we don’t have to pay for sin anymore. God provided a way out for that because he loves us.
uh huh….guys do whatever girls ask them to.
Akemi’s response, “…excuse me?..” is sooooooo spot on!
Agree with Randomness, Red Cliff was good.
A milllion times better than Battlefield Earth to name one bad movie.
Jelly had another stem cell treatment? Go, Jelly! Give her a hug and smooch from me. Sweet girl.
That darn apple. We’ve been paying for it ever since.
Shawna & Kabra have it right. With the apple we gained the knowledge of good and evil. Unfortunately we know evil too well, because we live with the daily reality of fighting off the impulse to do bad things instead of good.
The apostle Paul wrote, “For I do not do the good I want, but I do the very evil I do not want to do!” (Romans 7:19)
Who hasn’t felt like that? Nobody can be 100% good all the time. “Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.” (Rom. 7:20)
That is original sin. We were born with it. If you leave a little kid alone, never teaching them anything, will he or she always be cute, kind, and obedient. LOL! Heck, no. So then, what? We’re doomed because of original sin?
Paul continues, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body [and its natural tendency to sin] that is subject to death? [the penalty for sin] Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Rom. 7:24-25)
“Now wait a minute,” you might be thinking. How can one man, God’s Son, pay the penalty for all of us? It’s only fair. Because of just one man, Adam eating the apple (and God holding Adam ultimately responsible), original sin was inherited by all mankind.
Christ was the only one who lived a perfect life on Earth, without sin. He was the only one qualified to pay the penalty for our sin. If we accept His payment for our sin, we are not doomed, we are delivered. 😀
And the beauty is… we are not just delivered for eternity, when our mortal flesh dies, and our immortal souls live on.
We can be delivered daily, with God’s help, here on Earth. Because isn’t life a daily battle, to keep from saying the stuff we shouldn’t, and doing the stuff we shouldn’t do? Especially in heavy traffic, or losing patience w/ family!? (Some of my personal failures.)
The bad news is that we do have the knowledge of good and evil. The good news is that while we know our sins, we can also know our own Savior, our deliverer from sin, if we choose. 🙂
Good explanation. This is the issue I have with the Bible. I remember having an argument with a nun about this. This is when I feel like I transitioned from the childhood understanding of the Bible to an adult understanding of the Bible. This story. My argument with her was: How do they know it was “Adam” and “Eve?” They couldn’t write back then. Maybe it was David and Hannah? How do they know it was an apple? Maybe it was an orange or a grapefruit. And, I rationalized, if they got THAT story wrong then the whole Bible was not true. I was very angry about it. Almost like finding out there was no Santa Claus. A very, very patient nun explained that the Bible was full of symbolism and I should not get hung up in all the little details that indeed I was correct about. Did I ever tell you my mother was in the convent on the road to becoming a nun and Mother Superior told her she did not have the calling? I have a picture of her in her “nun outfit.” My aunt said she did that for the attention because going into a religious vocation was a noble path for our family (and apparently there is a priest in my family history somewhere). I think all these stories were created to keep children in line. Reminds me of a story my mother used to tell me that scared the HELL out of me. She said that when you did a good deed, a brick was thrown up to heaven; when you did a bad deed, a brick was sent down to hell. Whatever house was built first was where you were going to be when you died. Of course, I don’t believe that hell is a place anymore. Technically it is supposed to be the state of being without God. But that story always stuck with me and she would invoke it every time I was “bad.” And of course “bad” to her was anything from not eating my food to whatever thing of the day was no longer something I was supposed to do that changed from moment to moment.
Can I ask if Akemi practices a particular religion or theology?
Great, now I’M craving an apple. Just got back to the rim of the Grand Canyon, at the end of my 4 day backpacking trip. It was a great time (if a little extreme on the heat side – 99F – in the shade!) and I’ll post some pictures once I get back home.
So, when the superhero movies are finally over, are we going to be moving on to Bad Movie Night?
@ for the love of Beckett – well said. “We can be delivered daily, with God’s help, here on Earth. Because isn’t life a daily battle…”reminded me of a few few songs on Tenth Avenue North’s new cd -The Struggle, have you heard it yet?
Gotta tell ya Joe, I came here first for the behind the scenes look at Stargate, but keep coming back for the Supermovie of the week and Akemi. What a sweet lady. Plus I find her confusion with the Western culture we all take for granted so fascinating.
My friends and I get together for an exploitation themed movie night, usually our movie nights are mostly horror films. The first night consisted of the following movies punctuated by episodes of the cartoon Adventure Time:
1) Hobo With A Shotgun (courtesy of Canada)
2) The Mummy (courtesy of old school black and white movies and Boris Karloff)
3) Tucker and Dale Versus Evil (courtesy of modern America trying to reboot the old 80s teens in the woods horror films with a hefty new dose of spoofing comedy)
PBMom — Wow, that story your mom told you is so, so wrong! What a horrible thing to tell a kid!
stargateatlantisseasonsix — I saw Tucker and Dale Versus Evil (because I like Alan Tudyk). It’s… kind of hilarious and wrong. And weirdly gruesome for what’s basically a comedy. A very funny take on the ‘creepy strangers’ theme, although it did take me a few sittings to get through.
@Shawna She was not exactly mother of the year. She was one of those people who should not have had children, but if she didn’t I wouldn’t be here, so I have to be thankful for my existence. If you thought that was bad the rest of my childhood would blow your mind. But the story did have the desired effect–a freaked out child who thought her soul would be damned for eternity in a house built for me in hell–like many other children my age who grew up Catholic.
I’m pretty sure Mac and Me is the worst of the worst. The dance numbers are an excellent substitute to waterboarding.
Okay, I’m really doing myself a harm while trying not to burst out laughing in my cubicle at your pocast, whew. I loved the “ending” where the snake comes out! Like Snakes on a Plane With Guilt.