The Grax Domain

28 Oct 2007 TMNT review

There really isn't that much to say about this film, which is about four mutant turtles getting caught up in an ancient warrior's desire to create a vortex to a parallel dimension to harness its power, whilst at the same time Leonardo and Raphael having their own brotherly feud.

The animation style reminded me of The Incredibles, which pleases me.

When things really heated up between Leonardo and Raphael it pleased me.

The fact that Donatello and Michaelangelo got disproportionately less air time than the other two brothers displeases me.

The story itself is adequate, though it's not going to win any awards.

The whole thing is quite serious and not childish, which pleases me. The fact that the movie is nothing like the 90's cartoon series pleases me even more.

In summery TMNT is a good film to kill around an hour and 15 minutes of your time. Certainly worth a rent but unless you are a huge fan of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles it'll probably only get watched once or twice.

Still, it would be nice to see some kind of sequel of TMNT.

GRAX RATING: 3/5

22 Oct 2007 SILENCE!!! I KEEL YOU!

Presenting Achmed the Dead Terrorist.

21 Oct 2007 Thought of the Day #7: Pimples and Self Harm?

Does it count as self harm if you squeeze a spot and it hurt but you got satisfaction from it?

19 Oct 2007 Alpha Course: Week 3

This week session was entitled “How I Can Be Sure of My Faith?” Because in today's society, and presumably back in the day, how could anyone be sure of their faith when there are so many things putting doubt in your mind?

The minister said that the new testament was written in a way to make sure that there was no doubt in a person's mind that they're were either a full Christian or not. So that a Christian would be sure in their faith.

He also mentioned about the facts of God being truth. He also promised great things and bliss and crap like that, but only if you believe in Him. And there (I think) lies the problem. What good is the promise if you do not believe?

He also got two volunteers from the crowd to illustrate a point. He stood in between them and they all face forward. The guy in from was the facts [of God] and the guy behind was feelings and he was in the middle. He illustrated the point of if you focused your faith upon the 'constant' truth of God then your faith is stable. However if you focused your faith upon ones feeling then your faith waxes and wanes as your feeling do. It is at this point where most people's faith can fail.

As soon as he said that my mind began to ponder what he said. If we focus our faith on the facts [of God] and forego our emotions, that would surely make us all into emotionless automatons. What a frightening and dull world that would be. Still sense did come to me as I realised that the minister did not say “solely” upon the facts, meaning that there's always gonna be some emotions involved.

The minister went on to discuss the difference between religion and Christianity. Religion is defined by 'Do and Don't', in other words “If you do this and that and don't do this, etc, then God will accept you”. However Christianity is about what has been Done. Jesus had died on the cross so that everyone's sin would be forgiven. All we have to is believe in Him and be thankful for His sacrifice. That is the basics for being a Christian.

That seems a little bit too easy to me. Does that mean that we are all born as Christians as default? I guess not because we don't know who Jesus Christ is when we are born.

Oh yeah, I think the minister also mentioned something about Jesus asking for obedience as well, but he didn't go into too much detail about that.

After the minister rant we broke up into our usual groups to take in what was said and to discuss. During one stream of conversation we somehow gotten on to the subject of the bible. As you do. One of the people in the group talked about how she has this 'bible verse per day' notepad thingy. The idea is that each day has a verse that relates to the day your having. Sometimes it doesn't mean anything, but sometimes it's eerily relevant to your day.

The following conversation went something like this:

“Ah, so it's like Horoscopes then?” I stated.
“No, it's nothing like Horoscopes” she defended.”It's nothing like horoscopes. The bible is the absolute truth whilst horoscopes are something that somebody makes up”
“But it is like horoscopes” I said.
“No it isn't”
“Yes it is. It's a random verse and the person reading it is trying to twist it so that it applies to them for that day. By chance no less!”
“No” she replied, “No its not like that”
“It's still a random verse per day chosen by some guy. Tell me, who determines which bible verse goes in which day?”
We both went quiet at that point as we'd reached a stalemate. We had to agree to disagree.

One of the guy's answer to everything was “It's about having a relationship with God”. It's starting to become a bit of a one-liner joke. It's starting to get a little bit old...

There was also a little bit of history about the bible, namely how preachers of old were pretty much the only people who can read (as nearly everyone was illiterate back in the day) and so they told everyone what the bible said. It was a rather interesting bit of information, a nice chance of pace.

I left this weeks Alpha Course feeling like I was still no closer to becoming a Christian. The answer presented to me didn't convince me that I needed to be a Christian. Truth be told it's more fun being the troublemaker in the discussion groups and creating heated discussions. I'm may not be sure of my faith, but I'm quite sure I'm no Christian.

Here's a question that keeps playing on my mind and I'm sure I've been given an answer but I forgot it. If all our sins are forgiven because of Jesus Christ does that mean we don't sin again? That is to say, any new sin does not get stored up but gets instantly forgiven?

14 Oct 2007 Trip to Alton Towers

So my girlfriend, Princess, and I decided to go to Alton Towers this Saturday. It was very last minute, she's a theme park nut and I've never been to Alton Towers before, so all the signs pointed to a fun day out. It was a mixture of highs and lows.

The Highs

• The good rides - Nemesis, Oblivion, and Rita. These rides did to me what rollercoaster rides should do; make me scream like a girl. Air was pretty good, but not as thrilling as the other three.
• The crazy golf - It was a fun couple of hours to waste and Princess managed to win a free game at the end. Not bad for £5 a head
• The garden area - This makes Alton Towers stand out of all the other theme parks. The gardens and the tower itself are quite stunning. Picturesque and make the whole place seem more... authentic and real. It was fun to get lost in it for a while
• One of the queues – There were a couple of people in the Terror of the Tower line that worked at Alton Towers having the afternoon off. It was a couple hours wait and we had a laugh talking about things including some of the stupid things people say to staff members (like “Does the Nemesis ride go upside down”) and some of the ghost hunting they have done. It made the hour wait a lot more bearable. Tip: Always be friendly and chat with the staff, you might get lucky.
• You Day – They started this new feature where they video you riding on selected rides and you can watch it all on DVD. In theory this is cheaper and more fun that getting a photograph. All you need to do is wear a wristband electronic sensor for the day (very Big Brother) and there's no obligation to buy. The pose I did on one of the rides make it worth dong alone.

The Lows

• The crap rides – There were a few lackluster rides that included The Runaway Train and the crappy haunted house with bolted-on laser gun game thingy.
• You Day – The sensor was not picked up on all the rides, we were not allowed to preview the DVD and on one of the ride we were not even on it! They had put some random people on our DVD.
• Terror of the Tower – It was just no scary. The cannibalistic master was not scary. Hell the bill for our dinner was scarier than that fatty. Not worth the 2 hour wait, I could have done a better job at that attraction.
• The dinner - £20 per head?? For a simple buffet meal at the hotel? Are you mad!? We'd been better off going to McDonalds.

Despite the negative it'll be worth going to Alton Towers again properly. With a crowd. And poses on all the rides.

Mind you, isn't it a tad illegal to have video footage of other people without their permission? What with the Data Protection Act and all. I would want people accusing me of anything dodgy or seedy with the footage and stuff.

12 Oct 2007 Alpha Course: Week 2

This week I was in a better mood than last, got me some dinner and dessert. So maybe this week I'd be more receptive to the Christian message.

Session 2 was entitled “Why Did Jesus Die?”. Despite my initial thoughts it wasn't just because he was a trouble-maker for the Romans. The point was that he would take on all of mankind's sin and to be sacrificed to God so that everyone would be forgiven. Just like the sacrificial livestock people used to do.

The speaker of the night spoke to us after the meal. He covered various ideas including:

• Everybody has sinful, negative thoughts (like lust, greed, depression, etc)
• People can be addicted to negative and sinful thoughts and action (which I agree with, sometimes it feels good to be bad).
• God is love
• He told the story of a man who was a self-destructive alcoholic. One day he looked in the mirror and said “I hate myself, don't want to be like this anymore”. So he went to the church, accepted Jesus Christ into his life and became a new man.
• People feel good when they confess to God about their sins.
• God offers eternal life. However there are people who don't necessarily want that gift. I know one Christian who finds that idea quite intimidating.

The speaker talked about how people have been brought to their knee screaming to the ceiling, confessing to God and asking for forgiveness. This act would bring them great joy afterwards, even to the sceptics. One answer I can come with about this is because it simply feels good to confess. It removes a great weight off their shoulders. Everyone also has a strong urge and desire to feel forgiven, wanted and loved. My argument in this case is people can get this sensation by confessing to anyone, anything, or even to themselves and still get that feel good feeling. They don't need to confess to God.

One of my other criticism was the story of the guy that used religion. I saw it like he was using it as a crutch when in actual fact he shouldn't need to. It's a sign of weakness. I ranted about this in the discussion group, but towards the end I realised that there's no negative reason to use something for motivation whether it be from a person, a pet, an object, or even a religion. So that was a bad argument on my end. I think that having belief is good. It gives people strength and motivation.

I mentioned the idea of 'Cut and Paste' religion, where people can take parts of various religions that they liked and paste it into one religion that they follow. I got funny looks from the rest of the group members. I also mentioned a theory that a friend of mine had. Jesus Christ might not have been the Son of God but in fact an ordinary man that knew Reiki, hence his abilities to heal. I got funny looks from the rest of the group members.

During the group conversation my mind began to wonder about God's love. God has parental love for all His children, like a parent has love for their children. One could argue that He has a biological drive to love His children, whether if He actually wanted to or not.

I left that night feeling like there has no boundaries when being a Christian, not rules or guidelines. To me that would mean that everyone could be mean and cause chaos and anarchy and still go up to Heaven so long as they believe in Jesus Christ and what he did for all of us. The only thing that would be stopping us from chaos is our own conscious.

Some of us don't even have a conscious. And yet they can get Heavenly goodness at the end.

Where's the justice in that?

10 Oct 2007 Old friends, sailing with the Fantastic Four and a new Ice Age

In this dream I started by visiting my Dad (current cybergoth look) and my brother and generally enjoying ourselves. We went into a shop and I was looking for a particular Marvel graphic novel (I can remember which one, but it actually exist). I didn't find it in the end so I decided to settle on one of the more recent She-Hulk graphic novels. Afterwards we went to the train station for some reason and I bumped into my old friend Harlandos. It was great because we had not seen each other in a while and used the time to do some catching up.

Harlandos revealed to me that he intended to get his girlfriend some driving lessons (I think it was for her birthday or something). However I wanted to borrow his credit card for something and he leant it to me. After a while I wanted to return the card to him but somehow I got really lost.

[missing scene]

I somehow ended up at my old work colleague, Kaz, house (though I don't really know where that is in real life). The time was spent with friendly banter but there was a lot of sexual flirtation between the two of us. But I didn't allow it to go any further because I was afraid my girlfriend would find out and get the wrong idea. Actually a part of me felt that she would find out and I would be in a lot of trouble. Sods law.

[This is where the dream starts to get a little odd]

Then Kaz and I were on a power yacht sailing to the North Pole across the Atlantic Ocean. We were sailing with Reed and Sue Richards, of Fantastic Four fame, plus some other random people. Reed and Sue were heading north to try and stop the evil alien pirates from creating a new Ice Age on the Earth. They were planning to negotiate with them. The yacht capsized a couple of time but was able to correct itself like a kayak. I could feel the waters being very very cold. The weather was becoming colder and more snow was falling.

Soon we checked the map but there was a problem. Whilst sailing up the Atlantic Ocean we had somehow ended up in the wrong direction and were actually heading for the South Pole, not the North Pole. We were starting to panic, time was running out for planet Earth (I think we had about 30 minutes left at that point). What were we going to do??

Luckily we all managed to correct our yacht's path somehow and reached the North Pole in time to reach the evil alien pirates. Now was the time to negotiate.

Then I woke up.

5 Oct 2007 Alpha Course: Week 1

Not a great start to the course. Having a stressed out day at work, bad traffic on the roads, turning up half an hour late, being in a crappy mood. Arguably I wasn't in the right frame of mind to listen to a bunch of Christian stuff. But I still persevered and was pleasantly surprised that I was just in time for dessert. After the food we all gathered round the minister, given our course booklet and began to listen to him speak.

This week's session is who Jesus Christ was. This got me excited. We were going to get the historical and actual facts about Jesus Christ. We were going to be presented with artefacts. We were going to be given a Discovery Channel style presentation. Or so I had hoped.

What we were actually given was one scarcely fill A5 side of paper with a few sentences about there being historical Roman and Jewish documents and a table stating the 6 different versions of the bible (the earliest existing copy being around 900 AD, there's no copy of the first ever edition of the bible). Hardly compelling evidence.

The rest of the talk was about what was written in the bible (like Mark 10:21) and all the various things that Jesus Christ had said about himself (again, more bible verses). There was also a couple of quotes from C.S. Lewis saying that there were four possibilities about Jesus Christ:

1. He was a con man, which Lewis believes is not possible because no con man would die for something that he would get nothing out of it (I'm sure there are lots of conspiracy theories on Jesus' death but this entry is already too long for me to go into)
2. He was insane, which Lewis believed is not possible (I can't remember why)
3. He was evil, which Lewis believed as not evil mainly because of the goodness he spread
4. He was in fact God made flesh, which Lewis believed was the only logical possibility.

I was not convinced. None of what the minister had said convinced me that Christianity was the right way. He only repeated a lot of things that would only be worth any value if you were a Christian already. That and Jesus Christ made a lot of claims that made him sound very arrogant (simply put, a whole bunch of "I am" this and "I am" that).

After the chat we were all broken up into small groups to discuss the things that were said as well as Christianity as a whole. Firstly we were given a small ice breaking exercise so that we got to know a bit more about the group members, then the floor was open for anyone to talk about anything that was said today.

I took this chance to voice my opinion.

One of the things the minister said that one of the difference between Christianity and other religions was that in other religions there are a set of rules that one must follow to essentially be a part of that religion and to be a good person. However with Christianity there are no rules. All that Jesus said was to "Follow Me" (Mark 1:17). Thereby Christianity is different.

Hold on a minute. Follow me? That's very open ended. Jesus asked us to follow him. What does that mean? Follow his footsteps literally? Copy what he does, thereby following in his footstep? Now to me that seems like a set of rules to follow. How exactly is this different from other religions?

I told this contradictory opinion to the group. One person mentioned the 10 commandments in the old testament, a set of rules. Another person states that there are in fact two guidelines to Christianity; Love Jesus and Love Thy Neighbour. Another person stated that you don't need to follow these guidelines. Yet I have seen other 'religious' people that don't follow their guidelines to the letter. To me the statement the minister said seemed a bit crap. There seemed to be a common theme with Christianity is this whole 'having a relationship with him', which is something I've heard being repeated several times by many Christians.

Our time had run out but I left feeling a little unsatisfied, like the answers I was given were not what I wanted to hear. Like they lacked any real backing to them. I left the church with a sense that Christianity was not quite right. I certainly was not getting closer to the light as it were.

Next week session is titled "Why did Jesus die?"

4 Oct 2007 Alpha Course: Introduction

My girlfriend has convinced me to go on a ten week course called The Alpha Course. As far as I can tell it is designed to either convert people into Christians or gives existing Christians a brush up on how they can be better Christians. Or something like that. Plus It's a social thing, meet different people, yadda yadda yadda.

Now I am not a Christian and I don't intend on becoming one. I find the whole religion to be... I dunno, too commercial. Plus the whole thing doesn't seem believable, or more like it feels like it can be explained in other ways (either through science or with some other 'far-fetched' theory). That's not to say I am an atheist. I do have a kind of spiritual side. I do believe that there is a possibility of there being 'more to life' than what we can sense and what science cannot explain. I mean all religions seem to share a common theme and a common set of elements, they can't all be wrong, can they?

The reason I trying out this Alpha Course is because I want to hear what they have to say about Christianity. That and a part of me wants to try and prove it's all wrong. I don't know if I can prove it wrong. I know that I won't be able to prove it wrong to all the other Christians (although it would be kinda cool in a blasphemous, sinful way). I just want to be satisfied to make my decision based upon what they present to me. Plus it is completely free of charge so there's no real reason not to do with.

So I thought I'd write about how each session goes to give people an insight to what happens on the course and how I felt it went. It's a shame that there is not an Alpha Course for all the religions. That way people are given all the facts before they made a decision on their beliefs.