Lately, I have become readdicted to watching the Honest Trailers videos from Screen Junkies. It was one of the few YouTube video series that I enjoy watching, the other two being Cinema Sins (which just got too long and a bit too mean) and How It Should have ended (which I still like to watch occasionally). I started back with the Honest Trailers because of the wait time that Rowen and I have in the parking lot before Connor is done with his after-school sports practices. The videos are short enough that we can usually get a few in (with their ads) before Connor shows up.

Honest Trailers are parody trailers of movies, tv shows, and video games. Like Cinema Sins, they often focus on exposing worn tropes and plot holes in humorous ways. They can also make up occasional fake plot lines by remixing clips from the film--for example, their trailer for The Matrix makes it look like the primary love entanglement is between Neo and Morpheus (rather than Neo and Trinity).  

One of their most famous episodes was their trailer for Frozen. Personally, I preferred their trailer for Moana due to its better song parodies. I also really liked that they got Ryan Reynolds to appear as Deadpool making his own Honest Trailers for the two Deadpool movies. 

As Screen Junkies been making trailers for nearly a decade, filmmakers have started taking to "Honest Trailer-proofing" their movies. Screen Junkies even has videos where they invite filmmakers to watch and respond to the Honest Trailers made from their movies. While certainly not all directors take this level of scrutiny into account, I do believe that its series like this and Cinema Sins that have led to the higher quality in the scripts and production value of recent movies. I feel that its an all-around win. 

The long twilights have returned. The sun set over half an hour ago, but a good portion of the sky is still bright, providing a vivid colors behind the shadowed trees that I can see out of my window. Meanwhile the temperatures are slowly rising closer to not only the fifties this week, but the low sixties in the near forecast. For the first time since November, I can see portions of the repurposed asphalt on my driveway and even hints of grass in a few spots on my lawn. I even was pestered today by a mosquito for the first time this year.

It looks like our extended April cold snap might finally be over. Despite my love of winter, it is time for it to come to an end. I'm ready to see green and start wearing shorts again. Hopefully, the sloppy mess on my driveway and road will clear up soon, allowing Janelle and I to return to our evening strolls. Perhaps we will soon have the opportunity to comfortably open up our windows again. Just yesterday, I once again enjoyed sitting in my living room, listening to the rain hit our metal roof.

​ Yes. I'm ready for spring.

I told a couple of my friends today that I feel like something bad is coming just around the corner. In doing so, I may have prevented the apocalypse. 

You see, I'm actually fairly terrible with my gut reactions. Time and again, I will feel a sense of foreboding only to have nothing happen as a result. Meanwhile, truly difficult or painful events broadside me with almost no warning. I'm continually caught by surprise, and usually when I'm in a place where I think that everything is going well.

Thus, the nightmares that have been stalking my dreams these past several nights, the uneasiness that I have in quiet moments, even the continual tension that I keep finding in my neck will all likely add up to absolutely nothing worse happening anytime soon.  

… At least, I hope so, because I am seriously on edge.

How does an enemy of the most powerful country in the world take that country down? What if that enemy could turn that powerful country's citizens against one another? What if that enemy could sow disinformation during a pandemic, disinformation that leads to more death and chaos than what the pandemic itself would have wrought? 

There are some simple rules for handling any epidemic (let alone pandemic):
1. Reduce travel
2. Avoid unnecessary contact
3. Take safety precautions when contact is necessary
4. Provide adequate medical supplies and train medical personnel
5. Develop and distribute a vaccine

These are all common sense steps in slowing or even stopping the spread of an infectious disease. However, it would be in an enemy's best interest to disrupt or discredit nearly every one of these necessary and simple rules. This enemy would try to convince people …
1. that the pandemic was not real,
2. that safety precautions were unnecessary or a violation of people's rights or dangerous--or a combination of all three, 
3. that people should mix freely with one another,
4. that the vaccine is not safe or is part of some attempt to track or control the population,
5. and that experts in immunology and epidemiology should not be trusted.

Now, we have concrete evidence that Russia has, in fact, been distributing such information into social media outlets. Putin has literally converted entire factories into disinformation distribution centers that target the U.S. However, the blame does not fall on foreign intervention alone; a great deal of the above disinformation is spread by good-ol' American idiocy. 

​Don't fall for the falsehoods. Use common sense. Don't let Putin win.

The second to last line of of today's Gospel has long fascinated me: "Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book." Certainly, we know that there were parts of the other Gospels that did not appear in John's version. However, I believe that John intended this to mean that there was more to the story than anyone had written down. 

This leads me to wonder what else we missed from the life of Jesus. Even some of the events that are written gloss over the actual events with general actions like "Jesus spoke to the multitude" or "Jesus healed them." At the time, those glossed over events were central to the lives of those who lived them, yet they are barely mentioned. 

I know that this is true for me. There are events in my life that had a profound impact on who I am, but that the other people involved might not even remember--let alone have recorded somewhere. For that matter, my own memory might be missing pivotal aspects of my life.

This does not mean that these events were not important, or that God does not pay attention to them. Rather, it means that there are many blessings in our lives that go uncounted and unrecognized. Our lives have been part of a greater experience that we might not even recognize.

Well, my computer ate another post just as I was finishing it, so I suppose that now is not the time to write about possible movie marathons this summer. I don't know why my computer and fate decided that this was not the time, but I'm not going to argue the point. However, as I just want to go to bed, I don't want to sit here trying to come up with something that my robotic overlords will allow (nor do I want to try and recreate what I had worked on for the past half hour). Thus, I will instead just send out wishes and prayers to all of you. May your life be filled with blessings and your autosave features not fail.

Rejoice! Christ has risen!

... I’m going to bed.