- Betsy and I assembled a sort of hanging/swinging motorized baby rocker device yesterday (evidently I need to brush up on baby tech nomenclature). Packages ordered from our registry are appearing on our front porch with alarming regularity.
- Betsy now answers the questions “How are you feeling?”, “When are you due?”, and “Boy or girl?” approximately 735 times per day. I have postulated that learning a person’s emotional state by asking how they’re feeling is like learning a quantum particle’s position: The act of measuring changes the status.
- Baby shower coming up this weekend. Just like in that song: “Hallelujah, it’s raining
menbabies.” - Why do we give plush toy bears to babies? The bear is the baby’s natural predator.
- Recently ripped the carpet off the front porch. (Yes, there was carpet on our front porch. No, we didn’t put it there, but we did leave it on for about five years longer than we should have.) Now I’m midway through the much more difficult process of scraping off the carpet glue using a de-gooping agent (the technical term).
- Now that Trump is officially the nominee, I’ve started putting real thought into what I can do to oppose him. I’ve got a small project in the works that I hope to unveil next week. Nothing amazing, but hopefully a start. Not that I’m crazy about Hillary or anything, but I really don’t want to explain to my kids someday how Trump became President and I didn’t do anything to try to stop it.
- Speaking of which – I don’t have too many nice things to say about Ted Cruz, but his non-endorsement of Trump was pretty great.
- Star Trek Beyond (coming out tomorrow) is currently at 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is about 90% higher than I would have guessed, based on the initial trailer. Always glad to be wrong about things like this.
- I’m seeing that Batman Killing Joke animated movie on Monday. I don’t have high hopes for that (although I liked the graphic novel), but – as with Star Trek – I would love to be wrong.
- My Great Bible Read (with Betsy) continues apace. We recently finished Leviticus, which is a truly horrifying book if you take it at all seriously. Leviticus 21:9 has God himself explicitly ordering people to be burned to death. As a Christian, you have two choices: Believe in a God who commands people to be tortured to death, or believe that not everything in the Bible is the word of God. If I were a Christian, I’d go emphatically with the latter.
- We’re on to Galatians now.
- The Ohio chapter of the EFA (which I’m the coordinator of) recently had its third meeting. Lots of exciting plans in the works, including some strategies for recruiting new members.
- I’ve stopped putting the hyphen in “email,” upending a decade of personal tradition. TIMES CHANGE AND WE MUST ALL CHANGE WITH THEM.
- Yesterday I finished reading Bart D. Ehrman’s book How Jesus Became God. Regardless of your religious beliefs, it’s a fascinating historical study that will open your eyes to all kinds of important but seldom-discussed information about the theological development of the early Church.
- Still doing a bunch of copyediting for Dragonfly Editorial. I have thought more about hyphens and dashes in the past twelve months than in the rest of my life combined.
- Congrats to Ben Trube. He knows why.
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Brian D. Buckley 
Good thing the carpet goop is on the porch — some de-gooping agents require good ventilation .
I’m on the fence about ST-Beyond. I saw the first reboot (eh) and skipped the second. I’m thinking the switch in directors will be a plus, though. I’ve read that some disgruntled Trek fans have referred to this as “Fast & Furious in outer space” — and I would totally watch that.
I would, too – but I’d prefer they didn’t label it “Star Trek.” 😉
I’m that way with some franchises, and not really with others. It may be a factor how far they’ve traveled from the original creator(s). For example, I really enjoy the Downey/Law Sherlock Holmes movies, though they are far from reverent.
On the other hand, if you’re going to do Nero Wolfe, as A&E did a while back, you damn well better do it right (they did 🙂 ).