Things I shouldn't tell people because it's like kind of embarrassing, but I do it anyway:

Temptation Island was one of the best TV shows in the last 3 years.

I've seen The Matrix ten times.

I've seen A&E's "Pride and Prejudice" 15 times, and like in Bridget Jones' Diary, can endlessly discuss Mr. D'Arcy and the actor who plays him, Colin Firth. I've seen all his movies.

I can endlessly discuss Keanu Reeves and his movies as well.

I love musicals.

I love sappy hollywood endings.

Most indie flicks are ego driven self indulgent pieces of drivel that tries to pass itself off as "alternative art".

I think I've read all of Danielle Steele's books, and Stephen King's as well.

Political correctness is evil, and a mind control tool which tries to eradicate all that's great about being human and being alive, which is to express exactly how you feel about life. Life is sometimes not that great and people think and do evil things ... what's wrong with expressing that in art.

I went to library last night to write. It was like pulling teeth. I probably should have stayed home and typed the story I finished into my computer, but I wanted to get myself into the habit of writing at a certain time every week.

I was there for 2.5 hours and I did everything but write.

I ended up reading a book called "The Time is Now" by Rabbi Daniel Wouk. It was like a self help book to get off our duff and get on with your life. The last chapter was kind of depressing because it was letters that dying people sent to the Rabbi about how much time they wasted in their life and how they wish they had done certain things. It made the point though, didn't it? Nothing like hearing from the dying about how not to waste your life.

Then as another time waster, I wrote up the intro to a christian based writing class which I might someday want to teach. I'm calling the class "Riffing on the Bible: Adventures in Christian Storytelling".

Here's the class advert to be posted in some church bulletin:

"In jazz, musicians improvised on a melody and created riffs to make great music. Using well known biblical texts of disciple interactions with Jesus as jumping off point, explore the art of storytelling to your stories of your own faith journey in in a non-judgmental environment. While you are required to write, sharing is optional but come with an open mind to see how the Holy Spirit and the bible can inspire your creative writing.

If we are all disciples of Christ, how much can we ourselves in actions of the original twelve disciples in the New Testament.

The class will be riffing on the following new testament texts: (of course, to waste more time, I had to go through the bible to find some relevant texts to riff from)

1. Matthew 4: 18-22, Jesus telling the first discples "Follow me and I will make you a fisher of people".

2. Matthew 14: 25-34, Jesus walking on the sea and saying "Take heart, it is I, do not be afraid."

3. Peter's Denial of Christ three times (Matthew 26, etc)

4. Luke 9: 18-20, Jesus asks the disciples who he is and Peter says "you are the Messiah of God."

5. John 20-21, Doubting Thomas (my biblical favorite!)

6. Acts 9: Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus.

I wonder if I ever taught the class, if anyone would even be interested in showing up. Writing is such a private experience, and I wonder if writing about faith is just way too private to be talked about in a group.

It doesn't matter anyway because the exercise was just a way to distract myself from writing. I hate teaching classes from what little I've done of it. God did not give the "teaching is a good experience" gene.

I did manage to write up an outline for a new novel called "The Unsettler", but I'll discuss in another post.

So no, I haven't bought the new Harry Potter book out yet even though I did see it at the bookstore on Saturday.

The bookstore here only sells the Scholastic americanized version, and I own the children's box set paperback version from Bloomsbury.

If I want to read Harry Potter, I'm going to have to buy it through Amazon UK, because they have the Brit version with all the cute Brit words like lift for elevator and jumper for sweater.

What's the point of reading the story of an english wizzie boy named Harry Potter, if you're not going to read it in the original dialect of Britspeak?

Speaking of Britspeak, I watche the movie "Sexy Beast" last night. It was brilliant with Ben Kingsley, whom I still think of as Ghandi, playing Dan Logan a nasty git of a gangster with this unbelievable cockney accent. It had shades of some other brit dialect I've heard as well, like it had traces of Welsh or something.

Like I would really know the nuances of Brit dialect, but he definitely didn't have a scouser accent like the Beatles. And the only reason I know what "scouser" is because I dated an english semi-professional soccer player, and he was from Southport scouser cutie!

So I had my first brush with a "liberal christian scholar", Marcus Borg. A friend from church was raving about him, and since the church was doing a video seminar series on him, I decide to attend a session.

The guy has some good things to say, but his underlying assumptions just freaked me out. One of the things he said was, he didn't think that people could fully believe in the resurrection of christ. That really steamed me. Maybe he can't in his mind believe in the resurrection, but that doesn't mean other people can't.

Thank god, the ex-catholic brother guy was in the seminar because he's really smart and knows his jesus stuff. Steve said that Borg represented a minority viewpoint, and that Borg didn't even represent the mainstream of christian thought.

Steve then went on to talk about a couple of other biblical scholars, and said we needed to study their views as well. I was so happy when he said that.

I wish I'd written their names down though, because now I'm going to have to attend the rest of the seminar to get their names. DARN!

I don't know if I can sit through another seesion of some bible scholar telling me I'm psychotic for believing in the resurrection.

I hate when Bible study freaks me out.