Barnson.org

In reviewing the blog, I have realized, that with Matt’s change of beliefs, you only got half the story of our dear Joshua’s birth. He told you the part about Joshua breathing in tons of amniotic fluid and being born with double neumonia. The bad news was it was the worst that pediatrician had ever seen. She carefully tried to break the news to us in hopes to not upset us too much. The good news was it was not an infection. Obviously they kept him in the ICU to be carefully observed and poked.

During this same time, all the family began to arrive. I asked Matt’s stepdad, Dennis, and Matt’s brother, Jay to administer to Joshua by giving him a Priesthood Blessing. Matt obviously wasn’t thrilled, but at my insistance, they gave him a blessing. I was not there to hear what was said in that blessing, as there were only supposed to be two visitors at a time and we’d already broken that rule by having three.

The next morning they x-rayed Joshua again. Another pediatrician came in to check on him. She asked the nurses repeatedly if they’d x-rayed the right baby. Then she said, “Either they x-rayed the wrong baby or this baby received a blessing yesterday.” Now obviously this is Mormonville for a doctor to say something like that but when she came in to report Joshua’s health she let us know this not a normal circumstance. Joshua’s lungs were clear. Not clearing. They were clear. Obviously we needed to continue the antibiotics since they had started them right away. In fact, figuring out the correct dosage of antibiotics was the only reason Joshua stayed in the hospital an extra day.

We are all greatful for the touch of the Master’s hands in the hospital that night. Miracles do happen and we are truly blessed.

Today Josh is pushing 12lbs. and is probably an inch longer already. He is five weeks old tomorrow and is very healthy and happy. We’re glad to have him as a part of the Barnson clan.

Sunday I had a terrible sore throat. When I get them, the cold hits and it lingers for weeks. With a newborn in the house and no insurance, we really need to stay healthy, so I decided to try a “cure” a close friend of mine recommended….garlic. She said to swallow a clove of garlic when you first feel the cold coming on, and then one more the next day. I’m thinking HOLY COW that’s a horse pill and a half and I really don’t want to smell like garlic, but I decided to give it a try. I warned Matt of the possible ordor, and swallowed the garlic with a glass of chocolate milk. It went down easily (I chose a small clove) and I hardly tasted it. The trick is fill your mouth with the liquid, pop the garlic and swallow.

The next morning my sore throat was gone, but I still felt like a cold was threatening. At lunchtime I took the second clove with the last bit of chocolate milk I hid from my kids specifically for this purpose and swallowed. The cold never hit!

Are you brave enough to try it? You’ll have to ask Matt if I’ve smelled like garlic this week.

To top it all off, it’s my state House Rep that introduced the bill last week. The guy lives 1/2 mile from me.

I’m so excited, I already left voice messages with all DFL party members sitting on the Human and Health Policy Committee.

Please, please, please, please….ratify that sucker!

Of course, the Hospitality lobbyists are stepping it up, protesting the ban, saying it will depress sales.

Let’s get the big ones out of the way.

Is the movie all the positive reviews say it is.. the best ever made.. or even better than Braveheart? As a film, no. As a matter of fact, it is a film with flaws, it makes a couple odd decisions, and has at least one shot that I considered out there.

Okay, then, is it as bad as the negative reviews have said.. Boring, Fetishist, or just plain Bad? By no means. As a film, it is quite good – on about the level of “The Patriot” or “Amistad”.. but not quite “Schindler’s List” or “Braveheart”. As a film, it is comparable to “Return of the King” in that it makes some mistakes, overkills some moments, but is still tear rendering in parts, and in its entirity, equals more than the sum of its parts.

Okay then again.. Is the Film Anti Semetic? No.. but if I were Jewish, and looking for it, I would notice that Caphius, the Jewish High Priest, and the Crowd of his supporters, are really given the Black hat in this film. They are villians in the movie.. almost Mustache twirling, while Pilate is let off easy. That being said, every hero in the film is Jewish, the Roman Guards are the most brutal, and the only character in the film called “Jew” to his face, is a non-follower of Jesus who willingly puts his life on the line to try to save Christ. The movie is true to the Gospels, and does leave out some inflammatory moments, in order to be more friendly.

Is the film too Violent? No, but it is QUITE violent, in three points.. and, of course, Christ is bloody most of the film. That being said, Gibson pulls away a LOT, gives us a LOT of breaks, a LOT of out of focus shots and reaction shots. It is very like the scene where William Wallace is tortured in “Braveheart”, but three times, with a bit more blood. It doesn’t compare to “Kill Bill”, “Natural Born Killers”, “Freddy Vs. Jason”, or any of those. It is not for the squeamish, but it is an appropriate level of violence for a Rated R film.

Well, then, Justin, what DID you think, in your own words… AS A MOVIE: Well shot, well acted, well scored, well edited, well written film that makes mistakes, and runs the risk of alienating a Jewish audience. A Brilliant performance by Jim Caveziel as Jesus, and Notable performances by Mary, Satan, and Mary Magdelene. Much like watching Frodo bounce on the bed in “Return of the King”, there are oments I wish I could cut out or shorten, not because of brutality, but because they don’t belong or they are redundant.

3 and a Half Stars

PERSONALLY: I don’t think Gibson was trying to make a great movie.. and that is important. This is supposed to be a tool to slap complacent Christians a bit.. and say “Guess what.. it wasn’t a little mocking, and up he goes”. This movie made me cry twice (I don’t often really cry in movies), and made me relate to my faith in a closer way than I have in a while. There are things I believe, that I always have, that now, I better understand. It is harder to be complacent now.

As a message, it did more for me than most church services I have attended, and made me reexamine at times.. and at times had very visceral emotional moments for me. I believe that this man was put not put on a cross, but went there willingly, and by doing so, I have benefitted. Once the emotional mountaintop experience leaves (I dont put much stock in that anyway) I will be left with the contemplation, and that will stick with me long after I am done emotionalizing.

I am faced with a real man instead of just an icon, going through real stuff, instead of just ignorable words, that really really sucked to go through.. and he could have chosen not to.. and suddenly it is a LOT less about “hell”, or this whole “God will get you” mentality that gets criticized so often… its about gratitude, end of sermon.

Justin, WHO will like “Passion of the Christ” most believers will. most people on the fence will. Fans of artsy cinema will. Gibson (as a director) fans will. People with strong stomachs exploring Christianity will.

WHO WONT? Many Jews, Many atheists, People who have hosility toward Christianity and if you have a kid under 14, keep them away. People unaccustomed to violence will be turned off and find it gratuitous.. those who are used to it a bit more will handle it well.

Okay, lads and ladies.. what are your responses..

So I recently started listening to Don & Mike. For those of you from Washington, I know you may be wondering “Where has he BEEN?” Remember, I’m from nor-eastern Maryland and we didn’t get D&M until 105.7 started carrying them out of Baltimore. If you’ve been listening to talk radio at all, then you’ll probably know that the FCC cracked down on Viacom/Infinity radio stations after the Janet Jackson incident. D&M/Stern/The Junkies all were affected. No bad language, no sexual humor, pretty much back to the 60s.

Not that this is bad, but I’m kinda torn. Don & Mike were hilarious, but I couldn’t listen to them with my kid in the car. Now my kid can listen (kinda), but they aren’t as funny anymore.

My question is this: do we want (and need) the FCC (or government) to be the cops here? It seems that every generation has pushed the limit a little further than the one before. Now Bush wants to be the one who “restores” the morals to society?

Regardless of whether you condone same-sex marriages, that’s a religous choice. What possibly does it have to do with givernment? Bush is playing to his conservation base by pushing this amendment. Who is he (or the government) to say if that’s right or wrong. Murder, theft, rape, these all have clearly defined victims. Gay marriage & Janet Jackson’s breast, who’s the victim here? I can raise my kid to have the morals I believe in, I don’t need George Bush to tell me what they should be.

My $.02 Weed

UPDATE by matthew: There’s a sequel to this by Justin, and yet another update on the topic in October 2004 by Sammy G.

So, in my mailbox today, I got an absolutely awesome review of Mel Gibson’s new film, “The Passion of the Christ”. I’ve censored the foul language, but it actually made me laugh the first time I read it, it was so over the top. It’s by a girl named “Gabrielle”, and I won’t share any more details about the reviewer — but here’s her review.

WARNING: It is a spoiler! So read only if you’ve already seen the movie, or have no intention of seeing it, or if, like me, spoilers don’t tend to reduce your enjoyment of a movie.

SECOND WARNING: The review is graphic. Not for the exceptionally squeamish. And it’s not gonna make you want to go see it.

THIRD WARNING: I had no intention of seeing this movie myself anyway (I could hardly imagine a topic that would bore me more), but this reinforced my previously-held opinion.

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Ok, people, I have to tell you this movie was the most disgusting, horrifying, f—— made by a mad man film I have ever seen.

The ENTIRE movie was watching Jesus being flogged and watching literal chunks of his body come flying off exposing his ribs, his inner chest wall and covering his entire body with deep gashes that made him look like chopped liver.

The movie starts with him in Gethsemene praying. Then this serpent who looks like some monster out of Lord of the Rings comes out (with no eyebrows) and tries to tempt him. It follows the story pretty much to the tee, actually too much to the tee. The crucification scene is as graphic as you can get with so many close ups on this guys bloody, flesh hanging body that it just makes you want to vomit. Then after they have put one nail in one arm they decide to dislocate his other arm to put it where the soldiers want it.

They show EVERYTHING.

The end is simply this……you see the canvas that was covering his body shrink as if someone has let the air out of it and then you see Jesus sitting there with a totally perfect body except…..when he gets up there is a fricken HOLE right through his hand!!!

And that folks is how it ends. Total shock affect. That is all it was. I have no idea what Mel was going for because this did nothing to me to help me know Jesus better, make me love him (actually he said some really strange things during his torture), or make me want to understand Christianity any better. It was totally just gross, inappropriate and disgusting.

Just for affect you see a crow sitting on top of one of the crosses of one of the theives. You see this crow start pecking the eye out of the thief before a soldier shoos it away. I’m like “what in the heck was that for?”

I’m curious what the affects to Mel’s career will be after this. This really was horrible and beyond disgusting.

Major UGGGGHHHH. It is midnight now and I’m going to try to get some sleep without nightmares.

Thank the heavens it is rated R. There is nothing faith promoting about this movie and no one with any sort of queasy stomach should see this…ESPECIALLY children!!!!!!

You might have noticed that, other than comments on other people’s entries, I’ve been pretty quiet lately. In large part, it has been due to spending many hours at work, and the last thing I’m interested in upon coming home is looking at a computer screen again.

But a larger part is due to me putting in some consideration about where I want barnson.org to go. I really dig our political, social, philosophical and other discussions. And yet, when I participate, eventually my wife or someone else in the family will ask me to pull down my opinion on something or other because barnson.org is “a family site”. In some ways it is — I keep our pictures here, and my ruminations on various things. Recipes, music, that kind of stuff.

I want it to be more — yet, within the confines of its role as a family site, I cannot allow it to be certain things.

So today I registered a new domain. It will be a new site, where I will be a bit less guarded about my opinion, and hopefully, you’ll feel more open to express yours. It’s going to take me a week or two of setup to hammer down the look, feel, and functionality, but I intend to have a few features:

* BBCode-style markup for easy formatting * Moderation of posts, so that nothing starts out “front-page”, but can be moderated there by the community (or else, when we’re starting and the posts are few, the system can auto-moderate stuff to the front page now and then) * Open discussion of topics that are of interest to us. That means, the gloves are off. You’ll be able to say what you mean there without the Blue Meanie (me) censoring what you say. Within bounds, of course, I don’t want to host porn or something. * Easy blogging for those of us that don’t blog elsewhere. I hope to have urls kind of like Sourceforge, where the person’s name can be the first part of the URL (like “my-project.sourceforge.net”). * Trackback, so that you can notify other sites that you’ve written about their articles. * Ability to keep glossaries, books, etc.

My primary goal here is that I want to create a community site that’s not just another k5 or slashdot. I have a few ideas to make its focus really different from the usual thing. Part of my goal is to see if I can put together a “six degrees of separation” social experiment, and document who knows who how. It won’t start out that way, of course, and there are other sites that do similar things, but I think I have a few unique ideas that will keep it fresh and interesting.

Rest assured barnson.org is not going away. Keep posting and commenting. I’ll give you further news when I get closer to completion. I think you’ll be pleased with the results. And heck, maybe people like Justin will be convinced to move their primary blog away from LiveJournal or something 🙂

I’m pretty shocked by an article appearing in today’s New York Times Magazine. One the featured essays tried to support the notion of a rebounding economy by downplaying the loss of jobs in major sectors and demonstrating a growth of jobs in the hidden US service sector. Specfically, the article stated that the Bureau of Labor & Statistics tests job losss in such sectors like manufacturing, technology, and engineering to cheaper overseas providers, instead of honing in on jobs gained in masseuses, spas, and manicurist shops.

I’m not joking. The article referenced the American Massage Association when it spoke of the tripling number of registered masseuses and spa employees. Yes.

I first thought it was a largely-sarcastic article using the ludicrous as a way to demonstrate that we’re not only losing jobs in important sectors to overseas but that the trillion-dollar trade deficit isn’t getting reduced in the process. I thought the article was eventually going to end on the ideal that we’ve got to stop giving training and financial support to service jobs that don’t help in producing buy-end goods that can be exported. Instead, the article was dead serious, and really tried to use spa growth as an indicator that there is NOTHING to worry about. That even though other countries are picking up jobs from our manufacturing and software development, those people here who lost those jobs can always find work giving massages.

I figured the editors of the NYT were on crack for letting that thing run. I can’t wait to see the number of Letters To The Editors ripping on the author. How can she seriously write that we’re not too worry because the invisible hand of market demand is pushing us from creating tangible, exportable goods to become personal relaxation experts? How many Shiatsu professionals vs. automobiles are we importing from Asia?

The cause for alarm is that by losing jobs to overseas we’re stuck with having to win clearhandedly in fewer sectors, including education, medicine, science, technology, and entertainment. The latter is crucial, I think, because it what gets shoved down the throat of the rest of the world. It’s what marks the US imprint on the foreign household and street level. God help us if the US is really turning into a country of masseuses. 🙂

Sam

Today, I had a beverage with our illustrious poster, Sammy G, and his beautiful girlfriend at the Starbucks across the street from our old High School.

It came as a surprise to Mr. G that there was indeed a starbucks there.

You see, when we went to school, there was a crappy pizza place, a wendy’s, a “High’s” convenience store, a McD’s, a CVS, and a Pizza Hut within 2 blocks of the school, on opposite sides of Darnestown road.

Today, there is the same Wendys and McDs, CVS, and pizza hut, as well as a Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks, Subway, Comic Book Store, Sushi, Fuddruckers, Chinese Food, Mexican Food, Papa Johns (where the Crappy Pizza place was), Deli, Bagel Shop, and a host of other stores.

When we were in high school, the new Movie Theatre and Arcade was a building called the Rio. Now that is a whole plaza with RioGrande, 18 movie screens, A 2nd Mex Restaurant, hamburger Hamlet, Target, Borders, Galyans, Pier 1 Imports, Joe’s Crab Shack, Macaroni Grill, Starbucks, Taco bell, and a host of fancy outlet stores.

This can go on and on.. Shopping centers and movie theatres are popping up EVERYwhere here.. (there are literally 4 Multiplexes of over 10 screens within 10 miles of my house… and at least 15 Starbucks).

Frankly, I like it.. yup.. call me nutso.. but its cool for me. I hold little nostalgia of having to drive to Bethesda for decent food.. but there is an environmental and cultural cost.

The Small towns are going away. Frederick, the next burg up in the north, looks much like this now, and there is nary 15 miles of unadulterated highway between us and them. 10 years ago, we were the boondocks and they were a backward town. No longer.

So, Those of you here and there.. what do you think about the Sprawl. I’m divided, to be honest.

Oh, And Sammy looks much trimmer than I would have thought. The years have been kind.

Our favorite Sunday topic-starter, Justin Timpane, has just released his latest tune, Miracle, to the web. Check it out.

My review:

OK, dude, I know you don’t have a real piano, and that piano sounds fantastic. What did you use?

Nice ballad. Good slow-dance tune. You should do a version that includes drums for the dance floor 🙂

Only complaints: a couple of sung notes were off, and near the end, there’s a sudden drop in volume that is jarring. Oh, and you need to fix up your MP3 ID3 information (you can set that in Cool Edit, just go to “View”, “Wave Properties”, then pick “MP3 ID3” (the default is “Standard RIFF”) and fill it out. That way when I play it in Winamp, I see artist, title, etc.

Overall, though, I dig it.