u/rookiebatman

I'm currently finishing up a lengthy rewatch of the 1989 season, where I watched about 130 games, and I intend to be even more thorough with 1990. I intend to watch every snap of every 1990 game that's been uploaded to Youtube. At one game a day, that should take me about 7 or 8 months. I won't necessarily watch the entire telecast for every game. For some of them, I'll speed things along by skipping through the commentary and replays during downtime, but I will at least watch all of the actual plays (and I'll usually slow it down in the 4th quarter if the game is close). For a few specific "featured" teams, I'll try to watch all of their full broadcasts, and maybe also the full broadcasts for whichever team is at the top of their division in any given week.

It would be fun to have someone I could chat with about this as I go. I'm not expecting anyone else to go all in like I am, but maybe someone else would enjoy watching one game a week or something like that.

I think I've already been spoiled on who wins the Super Bowl this year, but even so, please don't give me any spoilers on what happens during the 1990 season (or following seasons, since I expect to watch them eventually too).

My brother is a hardcore evangelical, and I remember one chilling conversation with him (back when he was still talking to me) where he said that he believed God's foremost, primary characteristic was not love or compassion, but rather justice or righteousness. I'm waffling a bit because I don't remember the exact word he chose, but the very clear implication was that he believed following rules was a lot more important than love or acceptance.

In some sense, I gotta give him points for honesty, because he was just saying what a lot of other evangelicals are thinking. They'll go to church and sing "they will know that we are Christians by our love," and then spend all their time and effort trying to make non-Christians follow a very Evangelical set of rules (by force of government), instead of just trying to love them the way Jesus loved prostitutes and sinners.

Since there's a huge crossover between the type of Christian who wants to force their moral opinions on everyone else, and those who believe the Bible is inerrant and infallible, it's really baffling why they think God would use the analogy of a good shepherd watching over his sheep. Sheep are notorious for being too dumb to understand things like rules or training, so being a shepherd has nothing to do with making sure your flock follow the rules.

Other than herding his sheep back in the pen at the end of the day, so they can be safe from wolves while the shepherd is asleep (an issue that wouldn't even apply to God anyway), a shepherd has nothing to do with administering or enforcing rules. They aren't training the sheep in obedience, they aren't raising the sheep to act a certain way, they very specifically according to the Bible aren't punishing the sheep who go astray. The good shepherd rejoices to bring that lost sheep back into the fold, he doesn't get angry at it for being disobedient.

How the fuck do they map that analogy onto a god who they believe cares more about holiness and obedience than love?

I only recently finished Jury Duty, so I didn't read any of the discussion about it at the time. Apologies if something like this was already talked about back then. I saw a comment on a Youtube video about Jury Duty, which said "Now I want to see ‘Lone Pine’ starring James Marsden, with Ronald Gladden," and this was my reply...

I understand why they did Company Retreat, because they wanted to do basically "Jury Duty, again" and you can't do that with the same people. But I think it would legitimately be a delightful followup to Jury Duty if they actually made Lone Pine (or any other movie, for that matter), on a shoestring budget, with all the same actors from Jury Duty (with Ronald as an actor or director or whatever else). There's no hoax or prank, not trying to fool anyone, just having a good time making a cheap little movie. The TV show would be documenting the making of that movie, kinda like the episodes of Project Greenlight after the winner is chosen (but with the familiar faces from Jury Duty).

It won't be like that William Shatner prank show where they pretended it was a big Hollywood movie even though there were only like five people there. Ronald and everyone else knows that it's just a lark, but it would still be fun to see the gang back together, and see the behind-the-scenes of them making a movie together.