Eugene Peterson’s “The Message”

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Update, 2005: Eugene Peterson on spirituality. Now I have a newfound respect for him, more than enough to overshadow my annoyance at “The Message.”

Eugene Peterson’s The Message gets gentle treatment from Bible scholars, mainly because it isn’t presented as a Bible translation. It had better not. I’m not a very big fan of The Message‘s use of “dumbed-down” Scriptural paraphrasing; to me it smacks a bit too much of going beyond what is written.

Of course, that’s most likely just me being a theological snob. I do acknowledge that there are people who are helped along in their understanding of Scripture by paraphrased texts such as this. I am not one of those people.

Mel Gibson as Jesus

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Lethal Jesus? Brave Sacred Heart? Mel Gibson, action star and prominent Roman Catholic, may be cast as Jesus in a film about the Passion. I can already see Jesus with blue makeup on half of his face, yelling, “FREEEE-DUUUM!!!”

Update, years later: Well, we all know how that went. So glad Jim Caviezel did it instead.

Starbucks still serves Short

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On my arrival in the USA, I wasn’t too surprised to find that “Short” was not included in the Starbucks hot coffee sizes. (“Small” in other restaurants over here, after all, is often the size of the Filipino “Large,” so what need is there for the diminutive “Short”?)

It turns out, however, that the 8oz. Short is still a viable option; you just need to ask for it by name. Not “Small” or “Regular” — that’ll get you a “Tall” — but a “Short.”

(Not that it matters; $1.30 is a lot to pay for just 8oz. of coffee.)

“We’re actively looking for a bigger size,” Scheumann reports. “Perhaps a 30-ounce cup.” Bigger than “Venti”? Sure, go ahead, Starbucks. You could call it “Vat.” Or “Swimming Pool.”

DC MeFi (Non)Meetup

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The DC MeFi Meetup last night consisted of me and MrMoonPie wandering through Kramerbooks, wondering if any of these lost-looking souls scattered amongst the shelves were actually MeFites in disguise. We paged for “Anyone from Metafilter?” twice, and I accosted the one stranger we could find who was wearing an IT-related t-shirt. He was not from MeFi. We parted, weeping bitter tears.

(Actually we didn’t weep. But we did compare digital cameras, and I learned what “Me Morde” means.)

Blogroots redesigned

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It’s almost scary, how this monster called “Blog” is growing and evolving. Blogroots has been redesigned in the style of pb, Meg and Matt’s upcoming book. The new BlogPopuli page is an eminently practical implementation of Trackback being directed to the aggregation and display of audience-generated content. Excellent, excellent work.

For my part, here are some mentions of blogs in Philippine mainstream media: “Enter the portal…” (Philippine Daily Inquirer, 2BU section), KaBlog! (PDI, Infotech section). That last one was rather bitin.