Now that summer break is here, I finally had time to binge watch a Netflix show, and discovered Aggretsuko, an anime series based on a Sanrio character. Retsuko is a cute little red panda, and while she is a sweet, compliant, 25-year old accountant by day, she is a death-metal karaoke singer by night. She feels the daily grind of the 9 to 5 day job, with a chauvinistic boss, and difficult coworkers. Because she...
Joy. Sadness. Anger. Disgust. Fear. These emotions are the key figures in Disney’s film, Inside Out. Last week, I watched the movie and enjoyed the interplay between the different emotions as characters inside Riley’s head. The movie shows how the different emotions operate and communicate inside of her, and how each of her memories are categorized by a particular emotion. As the simplicity and happiness of childhood gets overpowered by pain and hardship as Riley...
“It seems like every girl who I have a deep conversation with ends up being attracted to me,” my guy friend told me over lunch. “It makes it really difficult to be friends with women, when they all seem to start liking me. But, it seems that they are only attracted to this one part of me. It’s like the equivalent of how men are attracted to women with big boobs.” “So, maybe you shouldn’t...
This summer I am working on my upcoming book on Esther for Wipf and Stock. This has taken me miles away from Galatia (where my doctoral research has largely resided) to the capital of the Persian Empire, Susa. Additionally, I am no longer in the first century, but am thinking about the reign of King Xerxes (Ahasuerus in Hebrew) in the fifth century before Christ. Needless to say, it has been a complete change of...
Dear Bryan, You’re probably at the piano, writing songs about things you know nothing about, like love and loss. Or doing vocal warm-ups so you can audition for that blasted show choir. (Don’t bother. You won’t make it until your senior year, and when you do, you’ll become a bigger nerd than you already are.) I do hope you’ll find time for this letter. I’m writing from the future, of course, to warn you about...
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