Crabby Abi's Blabbing

Archive for July, 2006

I was reading tonight from the New Era the words of President Hinckley.  He said, “The Church may call upon you to make sacrifice.  It may call upon you to give of the very best that you have to offer.  There will be no cost in this, because you will discover that it will become an investment that will pay you dividends for as long as you live.  The Church is the great reservoir of eternal truth.  Embrace it and hold fast to it.”

 For some reason it brought to my rememberance the testimony meeting we had at the end of girls camp this year.  One of the young women said something that I don’t think I’ll ever forget.  She said that we know who we are and where we are from and what we need to do in order to get to where we want to go.  But sometimes we do stupid things.  We don’t necessarily do them on purpose, we just do them – it’s our nature.  Just because we may do something stupid, however, doesn’t mean that we are suddenly bad people.  It just means that we made a mistake.

We know a few things: 1. We will make mistakes.  There’s no way around that.  2. Heavenly Father knows the intent of our hearts.  3. We are God’s children and are loved by him on a level that we cannot comprehend.  So, if Heavenly Father knows the intent of our hearts, then he knows that we are trying so hard to be as good as we can be.  He knows that we know what we should and shouldn’t do.  He also knows that we are not perfect but are striving to become perfect.  He loves us too much to leave us to figure it out on our own and has given us tools in order to find our way back home and to help us in the things which we are called to do during our time here on earth.  These tools include the scriptures, prophets, apostles, teachers and each other.

We know that we have been put on the earth to be tested.  We weren’t put here by ourselves – one at a time.  We were put here together.  The purpose of being here together is to help one another get through the difficulties of life.  “Mourn with those that mourn”, “comfort those that stand in need of comfort.” 

Some people are easier to love than others.  How easy to love are you?

I’ve seen three movies in the past 7 days, two of which were excellent and one of which I’m still trying to figure out.

Last Friday night (date night), my husband and I went and saw Superman Returns.  I get that the movie is about a super hero so I’m somewhat understanding when Lois is thrown all over the inside of an airplane and comes out without even so much as a scratch on her arm.  I think we’ve all seen enough super hero movies to know that the actual “hero” isn’t the only one graced with super human strength, scratch resistant skin, Gumby like mobility and/or wind/air/water resistant hair.  Each character blessed with the presence of said super hero seems to get just enough of the super human strength to make the hero’s job just that much more difficult.  Come on now – how much fun would it have been for Lois to actually have drowned in the sinking boat when she hadn’t had a real breath in like 3 minutes?  Or killed in the airplane when her head was repeatedly smashed against the walls, floor, other passengers, seats, etc.?  Then the saga is over and we have to go back to before the beginning.  Oh wait.  I guess technically we don’t have to kill off a super hero to go back to before the beginning – do we Bruce?

Kevin Spacey was excellent.  Always a treat.  All in all, I very much enjoyed watching Superman Returns and will probably go see the next one when it comes out.

Speaking of sub-human… What was with the nasty gooeyness of Davey Jones and his crew?  Yuk.  It was like watching CSI Miami – the one where the girl is found in the water.  Exactly.  It’s a movie I’ll have to see again – gotta catch all the stuff I missed the first time around.  And it’s not like they closed it at the end either.  I thought that everything was tied together rather nicely – Every character returned, even ones that had only been mentioned in the first movie and not seen. 

I was telling one of my co-workers the other day that I was excited to see the movie.  He asked me if I was one of those “Johnny Depp lovers.”  We got into my first experience with Johnny Depp.  I’m not sure how old I was when Edward Scissorhands first came out, or how old Johnny was, but I remember thinking that it was the strangest movie I had ever seen and never cared to see again.  It had to be at least 15 years ago which would have put me at about 12 and way to young to be exposed to the greatness that is Johnny.  Or the greatness that he was then.  He’s better now.  Just keep digging…  Anyway, after watching that movie, I swore that I would never see another movie with him in it for as long as I lived.

Then I saw Chocolate. 

I actually had to be talked into seeing that movie because he was in it.  I was skeptical, but enjoyed it nonetheless.

When I found out that Johnny Depp was in the first Pirates movie I wasn’t exactly thrilled but since I’d been in love with the Disneyland ride, I had to see it.  I loved it.  I bought it on DVD the day it came out and watched it weekly for months memorizing as much as I could.

I do have to say – the first one is better than the second.  And by the looks of it the third one will be too.  Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be though?

Tonight I went with a friend to see The Lake House.  While it was romantic and cute, I still wonder – WHO asked Keanu Reaves to cry??!  Yikes.  And the sneeze?  Whoa.

There are always problems with time travel movies.  In this one, there wasn’t anyone actually travelling through time, but it still had essentially the same issues.  If you change something that happened to someone two years ago, they aren’t going to be the same person today as you think they are.  And yet she was.  And he was too.  And there’s a two year gap between the letters.  And did she get the ones in the box in the attic?  What about his brother?  What’s he going to think when she suddenly shows up with his brother after he just told her that he was dead – died on Valentines Day (of course) two years previous?  And how come, when she told the brother what her name was, didn’t he get it?  How could he not have put two and two together?

Yes – I have the same issues with Back to the Future and Lost In Space (although I have much bigger problems with the latter) and other such movies.  Oh – one of the biggest Time Holes is in Minority Report with Tom Cruise.  If he hadn’t seen himself shoot someone, he wouldn’t have gone looking for the guy he shot to find out why he shot him.  If he hadn’t gone looking for the guy he woudln’t have shot him.  It’s a big friggin circle that doesn’t make any sense in the end and it turns out to be a big waste of time. 

The thing is – I’ll probably buy that movie.  It was just cute enough to keep me going until the end.