The Walking Dead (Season 1)

***

I feel kinda bad--I wasn't as impressed by this as I'd expected to be.  I heard people talking this up for like a year, and everyone said it was so good . . . I guess maybe I had unrealistic expectations.

I will say, though, that the visuals are some of the best I've seen.  The zombies are gross, and there's a sufficiently icky amount of gore (but not so much that I was grossed out completely).  The cinematography is excellent--the pull back shots of zombie swarms or abandoned or overrun buildings, or the creative angles during action scenes really resonate with the viewer.  Unfortunately, the weakness here (and it's a big one) is the characters.  I didn't actually like many of the characters, or really care about them that much.  And that drastically lowers the stakes in any given zombie attack.

Invasion (C.H.A.O.S. Trilogy #1), by Jon S. Lewis

**

Improbably named surfer teen Colt McAlister learns the hard way that comic book monsters are real as he faces off against shape-shifting aliens. Evil, shape-shifting aliens with nefarious plans for the the human race. Aliens armed with mind control chips, flying motorcycles, alien minions, and robot bodyguards. Colt, his childhood friend/requisite hacker, and an ultra-buff and well-connected new buddy struggle to prevent world domination while trying to avenge the mysterious deaths of Colt's parents. Will they succeed? Do we care?

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, by Neil Postman

*****

Pretty much an amazing book.  I realize I am way behind the times, and lots of folks discovered this gem years ago, but better late than never, right?  The only thing that could have made this book any better is if Postman had offered more in the way of solutions to the problem he so skillfully and persuasively describes.

Husbandry Spiritualized: or, The Heavenly Use of Earthly Things, by John Flavel (in Works of John Flavel, Volume 5)

****

An excellent and insightful study of the spiritual lessons we can learn from the world around us--particularly the world of farming and, to a lesser degree, nature.  Some of the analogies are a bit simplistic, but then Flavel is explicitly addressing the farming community, an audience he views as rather simplistic. 

Each discussion is between 4 and 8 pages of length (excellent for devotional use) and begins with a description of the natural phenomenon (sowing grain, for example), followed by an analysis of how that phenomenon is similar to a spiritual truth and application to Christian life.  Flavel then includes a series of reflections from varying points of view (i.e., a worldly person's reflections, a backsliding Christian's reflections, a lazy person's reflections, a discouraged Christian's reflections, etc.), and then closes with a poem.  I must confess, I found the poems rather underwhelming, but the application and reflections were quite good, and often convicting. 

Why We're Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be, by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck

****

Going into this book, I knew next to nothing about the emerging/emergent church, and this was a great resource for getting up to speed on some of the strengths and weaknesses of the movement.  The movement is notoriously difficult to pin down, as they eschew creeds and there is no ready definition of "emergent," so the authors pieced together what they could from the written works of some of the more popular authors/pastors who have self-identified as emergent.  The authors freely admit that the sources they consulted may not speak for the movement as a whole and that they may be misunderstanding the beliefs and attitudes of emergent Christians. 

Grimm (Pilot)

***

Not a bad start.  Police detective Nick Burkhardt starts seeing unusual things and comes to find that he is one of the last remaining descendants of the Grimms and that, like them, he can see real-life fairy creatures for what they really are.  Also, he clearly wants to be Brandon Routh, though I'm not entirely sure why, since he shows more range in the pilot than I've seen from Routh in his last three or four projects (excluding his surprisingly entertaining turn in the delightful Scott Pilgrim vs. the World). 

Information, impotence, and the information-action ratio

What steps do you plan to take to reduce the conflict in the Middle East? Or the rates of inflation, crime, and unemployment? What are your plans for preserving the environment or reducing the risk of nuclear war? [...] I shall take the liberty of answering for you: You plan to do nothing about them.  You may, of course, cast a ballot for someone who claims to have some plans, as well as the power to act. But this you can only do once every two to four years by giving one hour of your time, hardly a satsifying means of expressing the broad range of opinions you hold. Voting, we might even say, is the next to last refuge of the politically impotent. The last refuge is, of course, giving your opinion to a pollster, who will get a version of it through a dessicated question, and then will submerge it in a Niagara of similar opinions, and convert them into--what else?--another piece of news. Thus, we have here a great loop of impotence: The news elicits from you a variety of opinions about which you can do nothing except offer them as more news, about which you can do nothing.

~Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, by Neil Postman