Today Twitter Taught me that I am a Terrible Person

This evening, I had a completely random chance exchange on Twitter with a star of one of my favorite t.v. shows.  It was something I stumbled upon when checking Twitter really quick right as I was about to shut down my laptop before leaving work for the day.  And within minutes of the convo, I sorely regretted ever checking Twitter at all, let alone getting into this conversation.  I've had my Twitter account for a couple years now, and I follow exactly 70 twitter feeds.  They consist of the following:

There is Hope

We watched a movie this past weekend that made me realize that it is actually possible to make a PG-13 movie without watering it down in terms of "edgy-ness" (edginess?)  While this movie was definitely a case of a certain level of style over substance, (it was a bit lacking in terms of storyline), it was still very cool, very entertaining, very shocking in various ways, and seemingly quite violent.  The movie was Hanna:

You may wonder why I care whether it's possible to make a PG-13 movie that is "edgy".  The reason is that my beloved Hunger Games novels are currently in the process of being made into movies ... movies that will most definitely have to be rated PG-13 in order to appeal to younger teens (the books are "YA" novels, after all).  The problem is that the books are pretty disturbing and violent ... and I have not been able to figure out how that can be properly conveyed via PG-13 movies.  And any level of watering something down always makes me sad.

Well, Hanna, shows how it can be done without watering it down.  Here is what the two stories have in common, in terms of what needs to be "policed" by the MPAA:

• Both Hanna and The Hunger Games have disturbing themes, plus a generous helping of violence.
• Neither of the two stories have much of anything in terms of sex.  There is some very innocent kissing in each, but that's as far as they go.  So that earns them brownie points from the MPAA.
• As far as I can recall, neither of the stories have much in the way of swearing either.  I think there may have been a little bit in Hanna here and there, and just maybe a few very mild swear words (probably uttered by Haymitch?) in Hunger Games, but that is it.
• A decent amount of the violence in Hanna is actually done indirectly and symbolically, in the form of hunting/killing animals for food.  It works great to really get you on edge, and helps to give you that constant feeling that the characters are never safe, wherever they go.  And I'm wondering if maybe you can get away with more of that type of violence with the MPAA than you can the human kind of violence.  Hunting is the entire running them of the Hunger Games, so they could really take advantage of this.
• Hanna is violent in a way that does not involve a ton of blood and guts and gory stuff.  The Hunger Games, on the other hand ... starts off this way as well ... but as the books go on, I recall there being more of the gory type of violence (especially in the third book).  But there are ways they can convey this without actually SHOWING the blood and guts.  Harry Potter did a great job of this in Deathly Hallows pt. 2.

So yeah ... we'll see.  The fact that it is possible to do this does NOT in any way mean it's easy to do it, or that the filmmakers will be willing to take these risks.  It's still going to be very tough to pull off.  Fingers crossed, but still keeping my hopes low.  :-P

Bible Studies With Mary Ploppins: Leviticus

Here's my review of Leviticus:

http://biblereviews.wordpress.com/2011/10/09/leviticus/

Bible Studies With Mary Ploppins: Exodus

So, I ended up starting a new blog that is meant specifically for my bible review posts, to keep things more organized.  Oh wait, I just realized that I already said that in my previous post haha.  Oh well I mainly wanted to post the link to my next review here - Exodus:

http://biblereviews.wordpress.com/2011/09/25/exodus/

The batshit craziness that goes down in Exodus actually puts Genesis to shame (which I didn't think was possible), so that review ended up being even longer.  I am really hoping that the Leviticus review is significantly shorter (it's a shorter book at least)!!

Anyway for blog posts about randomness I'll probably still use this blog.

New Bible Reviews Blog

O.k. so I did end up creating a new blog for my "Bible Reviews", just so that I could have a blog with a particular theme to it.  I ended up starting it on WordPress instead of blogger (sorry blogger) because blogger's lack of some basic functionality in certain areas was annoying me.  Here's the new blog; I moved (copied) the Genesis review over there too:

Bible Reviews Blog

Bible Studies with Mary Ploppins: Genesis

This is my first "book review" blog post for my bible-reading project.  I started off, of course, "in the beginning," with Genesis.  This is a LONG-ass book.  50 chapters ... from what I can tell it's one of the longer books in the bible (I think Psalms is gonna kill me).  That's just from spot-checking though, maybe I'm wrong.  But this review is going to be long because there's a LOT to cover.  Though I suspect these reviews will probably get shorter as I go on, because I only have so much energy hahaah.  And I gotta hit a lot of really basic stuff in my first review that I probably won't need to re-hash in later reviews.

Anyway, let me start off by listing the good points and the bad points of this book, and in the end I'll give it an overall rating number.  I think I need to list my pros and cons before I can figure out exactly what that number is.  First, some overall thoughts:

This book by definition is meant to be a background book to kinda get us started on everything and give the backstory, as far as I understand.  It's likely for that reason that I didn't find it to be very fulfilling in terms of learning any actual LESSONS or getting to the point of a lot of these stories (it's engaging on a general entertainment level but I'm looking for something deeper from The Bible).  ;-)  It seems that the book is more focused on backstory than it is on lessons.  Presumably we'll get to those later on in the bible right?  I sure hope so.  Here is what I liked, and what I didn't like:

Bible Studies with Mary Ploppins

O.k. so … after my last couple blog posts where I blabbed about my thoughts on religion … I decided that I really need to FINALLY get to one of the tasks that I’ve been saying I am going to do (and procrastinating) for the past 15 years plus.  And that is to read The Bible.  The whole bible … cover to cover.  A majority of Christians have not done this from what I’ve observed … and when I was Christian I never did it either.  I just took in whatever pieces of it that my Sunday School and Christian School classes wanted to give me.  So everything I ever got was through the filter of someone else.

I made the decision around the age of 18 or so that religion no longer made sense to me.  But I’m thinking that to make a fully informed decision one way or the other, I should ACTUALLY read the bible.  So I’m finally doing it now.  I’ve got the King James version on my Kindle, and I am also using the “New International Version” on the bible.cc website along with that to help me translate the more undecipherable verses in the King James version (I’m actually reading them both simultaneously to make sure I’m not missing anything).

In a sense I think it’s almost a good thing that I was SO terrible at paying attention to the bible stories I was taught when I was a kid, because I can somewhat be a clean slate (and maybe a bit more objective) while reading it now, ha ha.  I mean not entirely of course, I remember the basics of the major stories, but I am finding that there are a ton of gory details that they don’t give you in Sunday School, now that I am reading it for myself.  And of course I can’t really be objective because obviously I’m coming from one particular point of view going into this.  But my lack of memory on the details definitely helps me to be more objective than I could be otherwise.

I’m thinking it would be kinda fun to do a book review of every book of the bible, as if it is a regular New York Times bestseller or something.  So far I have read Genesis (hot damn that is a LONG-ass book, 50 chapters).  So I’ll do a post of that review first (in a separate post from this one).  I’m almost wondering if I should start a separate blog for this, but I can’t yet guarantee how far I’ll get on this little project of mine, so let me start it off on this blog for now, heheh.  Since no one reads this blog (other than my husband and I’m already talking to him about this stuff in person), I’m mainly posting this stuff at this point for my own memory.  The bible is LONG and by the time I get a few books in, I’m gonna forget half the stuff that happened earlier if I don’t write this stuff down.