Please help my daughterme to help my daughter do her homework. She is supposed to write a paragraph on someone she considers to be an anti-hero. According to this web-site, an anti hero (in literature) “is a central or supporting character that has some of the personality flaws traditionally assigned to villains or un-heroic people, but nonetheless also has enough heroic qualities, intentions, or type of strength to gain the sympathy of readers or viewers.”

In my daughter’s case, she has to find someone who is an example of a living anti-hero. We talked a little about it, and I gave her some suggestions of those I think manifests the qualities of an anti-hero in real-life. She didn’t like my examples (Bush, Jessica Simpson) and she thought of others of her own (Lindsay Luhan and someone else that I forget), but in the end she thinks she might write on Oprah. But she is not very happy with that choice either.

Do you have any suggestions? Let us hear them (even if it might be too late for my daughter’s assignment, I’d still like to hear what you think).

As much as I love the theater, I have not gone much to the theater over the last few years, but the past year, I have been able to go to both school productions as well as public ones. Last year, we went to my daughter’s high school production of Beauty and the Beast and a few months ago we were able to get tickets to David Henry Hwang’s revived Flower Drum Song at the Fullerton Civic Light Opera. So, when I found out that the National Ballet of China was performing Raise the Red Lantern at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, I grabbed the opportunity to take my family to watch it last weekend.

Oh, my! What a performance. The entire production was presented with vivid and symbolic colors, masterful dance sequences, and the unique blending of classical ballet with traditional Chinese music, art, decoration and even the intermingling of a play-within-the-play of the Peking Opera gives the entire production just that much more unique flavor. The story itself was somewhat different from the movie of the same name of director Zhang Yimou, who was also the director of the ballet. Yet, the whole gamut of the emotional ride of oppression, love, jealousy, household discord, intrique, deceit and forgiveness was captured that kept the story moving forward in a production that is presented entirely by dance. It was a little hard for my wife and children to follow, but I loved everything about the production. It brought me to tears in the first scene and brought a lump to my throat in the last. It was simply superb.

The production opened in the US in Northern California, and just finished its Southern Californian leg. It will move on to Washington D.C. at the Kennedy Center and will finish its US tour at the Brooklyn Academy of Music mid-October. I highly recommend it!

Okay, I will move on. After attempting to engage them in conversation once more, and even writing an email to ask for clarification why my comments were not accepted, and not receiving any reply, I guess I can confirm that I have indeed been ostracized. It is a strange feeling, and for us bloggers, in a way, it is rather devastating to the ego. One of the reasons we blog is because we want an audience, and one of the reasons we leave comments on other people’s blogs is because we would like to engage others in conversations. But when your comments are banned without explanation, and your emails are ignored, it can get quite… well… irritating. However, I will take a deep breath, and moveblog on. No biggie. Just realized how others are perceiving me. Perhaps I am a danger to your faith and you shouldn’t be reading this blog. Or at least that’s the impression I am getting from some quarters.

I need to get a hold of myself. Of late, apart from struggling with lack of inspiration to put up new posts, I have been getting a little disheartened when I read other blogs. I don’t know if it is an indication of the kind of people who blog, or just that I happen to just have stumbled on a group of bloggers who tend to be (1) opinionated and (2) intolerant. Whether they themselves hold conservative positions or liberal ones, I have found quite a few people who just do not entertain other views and would either jeer, or condemn opposing views. There is no middle ground and therefore no room for discussion.

A few nights ago, I found a brand new blog that is a collaboration of quite a few “God-bloggers” who share their various posts on theological matters. This blog purportedly aims to foster “a forum in which participants will be tough-minded in their analysis but respectful toward each other. Debate is a contact sport, so we don’t discourage intellectual blocking and tackling within free and open encounters. But obscene, profane, or racist rhetoric - to cite only some obvious examples - shuts down debate.” Fair enough. I thought this might be a site to engage others in rigorous discussion.”

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Two things that distract me, yet bring me some inward satisfaction, even joy, are web surfing to check out what’s out there in blogosphere and finding new blogs to add to my already growing Bloglines subscriptions, and also checking out new books to add to my wish list on Amazon.com.

I thought I’d share some of the gems I found recently. Never Eat Alone Blog by the author of the best-selling business and personal development phenomenon is an interesting site. I haven’t yet read his book but from what I can gather from the P.R., the reviews, the testimonials and of course, his blog, I have made it one of my “must-have” books. However, I am trying to heed the advice of my blog-friend and one of the few regular blog readers here, Dawn of Frugal for Life, so I may not go out (or online) and buy it yet. I might check out my local library first. But you never know it might come in handy when I need some retail therapy (which, to me is most likely an amazondotcomspree)!

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From time to time reflections about work, vocation and ministry occupy my thoughts. As someone who very early in life felt the “call” to “full-time Christian ministry” I often ponder about the implications about “full-time Christian service.” Previously, spurred by a friend’s email, I pondered about the difference between thinking about your work, profession or vocation as a career and thinking about it as an occupation. There is a sense in which focussing on career advancement for instance may impinge upon our calling as God’s stewards. I also wrote and thought a little about how our sense of self-identity is often wrapped up in the work that we do, or the professional titles that we use at work.

For instance, my role at my present company is to seek new relationships with companies to do business with our company. Such a professional role is often known as “Business Development Executive” or “New Account Executive”. Both very professional sounding name. What did I choose to call myself? I often introduce myself as “The Sales Guy”. Because I feel that is descriptive of my role and work. Also, because I wish to elevate the status of sales people generally. Anyway, I am digressing here. Will come back to this line of thought perhaps in a separate post.

Let me back up to my earlier thoughts about vocation, call and ministry.

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I have been having site problems. My hosts think my site is hogging the resources on their server and that they have contacted me many times to fix it and I had simply ignored them. So in desperation they closed down my site this morning. As I was at work all day long, I did not notice it until an hour or so ago. They were pretty rude to close me down without warning, but they think they had written to me many times to fix my site and I had not responded.

If that is so, I would apologize, but the fact is, I did not receive any email at all except the one this morning that says my site has been shut down. I had actually wrote numeorous times to them about the slowness of my site and asked for help. I also asked them for help dealing with my spam, but they couldn’t really help. So, when they finally determined that it was my site that was causing the problems, they reckon that they wrote me numerous emails to fix the problems. But fact is, I just did not receive any. So what did they do. Shut my site down! Now, they think that they have done the fair thing. This is really bad.

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This guy doesn’t thinks He is anything like the one to whom the guy who sat next to him in the restaurant prayed, and he is intensely and passionately convinced about it too. HT: Christdot. So who does your God look like?

From one of the contributors to my former pastor’s blog: “Has the War on Terror Morphed into a War on Dissent?”

If you don’t already know about this, Scott Parkin, from Texas, had been visiting Australia on a valid visitor’s visa. While in there, he had been staging peaceful protests in front of Halliburton’s Sydney corporate offices, dressed as a pig to illustrate Halliburton’s executives with their snouts in the trough profiteering in the war. He also gave workshops in peace activism and “on non-violent methods of suggesting there might be moral dimensions to the behaviour of governments and corporations.” (What a novel idea, eh?). Perhaps it is because of the adverse publicity he created against the company, or the government, or both, he was assessed to be a security threat to Australia and was deported. He was also slapped with a $11,000 bill for the airflight, the law enforcement officers who accompanied him, their stay in L.A. and their return flight back to Australia. Interesting, huh?

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Questions are very helpful tools. They help us to discover, to investigate, to clarify, to illumine and eventually, hopefully, to find the right answers. Sometimes, though, questions could also lead us down the wrong path. We may be asking the wrong questions, or we may be asking the right questions at the wrong time. It is important to be able to find the right answers, but often the right answers do not come up at the first or second question. Sometimes we need to dig deeper.

I raised several questions recently about people’s reactions to the Katrina tragedy, the ensuing tragic comedy (and here’s a great illustrative post about what I mean) and the sometimes destructive debates that go on between folks who not only do not see eye-to-eye with one another, but take opposite sides just because they don’t like each other’s politics or dogma. (No need to link to those, as there are far too many examples going around the ’sphere).

People are still asking questions. I wonder though why people turn to questions like these only when calamities of such magnitude occur. Why do people who suffer suddenly ask “Why me?” And why do bystanders ask, “Is it because of their fault/sin that such a bad thing has befallen them?”

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So, people are at it again. Some are blaming God all over again. Others are questioning God. While still others are defending God’s Name. Others still appear to be defaming God’s people, especially those who they think do not have it just right doctrinally. Why oh why?

In the wake of the natural and people disaster that is the Katrina and its aftermath, everyone and seemingly their dog has an opinion to share as to why such calamities happen. While we ponder whether God’s hand moved against people via the storm, hurricane or earthquake, and while we conjecture of the direct and indirect, natural or spiritual causes, most seem to agree that God weeps through the suffering of people in events such as this.

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So, apparently, I am a 100% “Free Thinker,” that is if I am gullible enough to trust the verdict of the Gullibility Test:

Free Thinker

Welcome to the top 5%. You’re a true free thinker and a person who is well informed about the reality in which you live. Although you may have been easily manipulated earlier in life, you eventually gained lucidity and developed a healthy sense of skepticism that you now automatically apply to your observations and experiences. You are endlessly curious about human behavior and the nature of the universe, and you have one or more lifestyle habits that most people would consider odd or unusual. You are not only of very high intelligence, you are also extremely creative in one or more areas (music, art, software development, inventing, etc.)

If you were in The Matrix, you would have taken the red pill, completed the combat training, and started fighting (and beating) agents from day one.

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