.

Ladron Que Roba a Ladron was a great movie.

Eco-Design and What You Aren’t Eating.

The New York Times ran two articles that highlights the direct and indirect ways the turning economy is effecting how we eat.

First, big-box companies are finding new, economic and ecological ways to package and transport food. Funny how in an oil-based economy the economic and ecological factors of design are beginning to merge. Milk has never looked so different!

The way we consume food is changing indirectly as well.  11 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating is the most blogged about NYT article right now. Why this has more to do with nutrition and less with the economy, it is worth noting that the exploration of foods that are dried, cured, or root vegetables (which are prevalent on the list) is a nod toward the food production of our grandparents. The foods mentioned on the list are for the most part cheaper, less in vogue, in less demand, and capable of being stored for longer periods of time than the staple foods that people are eating regularly. In a tight economy, spend-thriftiness and storage are great ways to counter rising food prices, and people are beginning to factor this into their lives, even if subconciously at first.

The Return of the Enron Loophole.

From the NYT Outpost blog:

“Now consider the present dilemma: oil doubling over the last year, gas at $4.50 a gallon in places and the oversized influence of speculators in a market where few used to tread. Big investors are free to run up oil futures contracts thanks in part to former Senator Phil Gramm. He is the Texas Republican who co-sponsored the so-called Enron loophole in 2000 at the behest of what was later found to be one of the nation’s biggest criminal enterprises.

“Enron may be gone, but its legacy lingers in the work done by politicians who did its bidding. And Gramm, who once told corporate contributors, “I have the most reliable friend you can have in American politics, and that’s ready money,” is now the chief economic adviser to Senator John McCain.”

In what may be paramount to treason on Wall Street, a hedge fund manager has been divulging the secrets of speculation:

Take away the excess speculators who are in the market purely for the ride, and oil prices could drop by half. That’s the view of Michael W. Masters, a hedge fund manager who’s been advising Congress this year.

“There are no lines at the gas pumps and there is plenty of food on the shelves,” said Masters, whose testimony has been widely discussed in financial circles but rarely in the political realm. What has changed, he said, is the presence of big speculators making futures bets.

“If Wall Street concocted a scheme whereby investors bought large amounts of pharmaceutical drugs and medical devices in order to profit from the resulting increase in price, making these essential items unaffordable to sick and dying people, society would be justly outraged,” he said.

I wonder what the SEC is waiting for in the regulation of the commodities market. We are paying more at the pump and the grocer, but we have food and are surviving. What we don’t see is how the abuse of commodities trading in America is causing food riots in Southeast Asia. That is wrong, cruel, and inhumane. This needs to stop, now.

The Uselessness of the News.

I have recently stopped paying attention or viewing the news. I have certain things that come into my Google Reader that are “news worthy” in the political sense, but for the most off I have been abstaining from everything revolving around traffic jams, stabbings, crane accidents, murders, and the weather.

I didn’t realize how much time the average person spends listening to weather forecasts. Here’s a hint: go outside.

I have been preparing to leave work by looking out the window, evaluating the weather, then stepping outside. Or, when I water the plants in the morning I decide whether I’ll need to bring a raincoat or not and then dress accordingly. No weathermen, no Weatherbug in my system tray, just eyes and a brain.

What is newsworthy, what is really important to oneself is what is happening around you throughout the day. Everything else, if it is big enough or important enough I will simply hear about in conversation. I let others do my news gathering for me, and I can relax in the morning and be surprised by rain clouds or the progress on fence building in New Mexican deserts.

All Finished With the Best Picture Nominees.

I have finally viewed all of the Academy Award Nominees for Best Picture from last year. Do I agree with the selection of No Country for Old Men?

Yes, when considering the type of film the Academy and critics favor. After all the film theory, studies, viewing I have been doing this year I have to say that No Country for Old Men was best in the traditional cinematic sense of authorship, cinematography, and metaphorical layering of meaning (also known as auteur theory, mis-en-scene, and operatic meaning—do we need all this film jargon?). No Country for Old Men was a narrative with a meta-narrative that finally eclipsed it in the final scene, as the torch of the father leads the old sheriff into Hades as Helena and others have done in myths before. The film mythologized the contemporary, and this was what made it so great. We are left feeling the continual fragmentation of the world of the 1980s in the film, as we look for Old Men to guide us into the unknown.

The other four films, generally speaking, dealt with contemporary issues via the past or present. I liked Juno the best out of these movies, entertainment wise, and I think Juno is a possible Best Picture candidate because it ushers in a new generation of “independent” film making and comedy, as seen in other movies like 40 Year Old Virgin, Waitress, and Knocked Up. The morality tale as comedy is a way of film making that is being revived and in one sense is Shakespearian.

Atonement was all about the ending, or was it an ending? Atonement was a film that surprised in unexpected ways. The post-modern dilemma of film, story, and “reality” unfolds over time, and “reality” is seen as eroding gradually from both directions. The horror of war erodes the future from the past/present, and the horror of sin and guilt erodes the past from the future/present. In many ways, Michael Clayton functioned in the same way, as fact/fiction or truth/lies were interwoven into a story that presents itself as a drive toward an atonement of compliance with the forces of corporate America and un-hindered capitalism.

There Will Be Blood was a peculiar film. It felt like Citizen Kane. The ending is haunting, frustrating, perplexing, and beautiful. The final words and actions, daresay the whole life, of Daniel Plainview are the antithesis of the Christian story. His actions are an anti-atonement: a taking of blood that is not sacrificial but monster-like. He is a modern day Grendel.

Aside.

Beets…Bears…Battlestar Galactica!

Welcome.

I never really know what to put into first posts, but here it goes.

I blog about theology and spirituality all the time. It’s an adventure I have come to love.

Yet, lately, I have also wanted to say things about how well the Dodgers are doing or how a peche lambic just rocked my world, and that doesn’t really fit in with conversations about making your own prayer beads or “The Security System” in Brian McLaren’s new book Everything Must Change.

Also, I have been wanting a site to showcase essays I have written for coursework and webzines, my photography, and web design I have been doing.

So here’s a site where both will be accomplished.