mountaineer musings

Matthew 5:43-48

"You have heard that it was said,
'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'
But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you,
do good to those who hate you,
and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you,
that you may be sons of your Father in heaven;
for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good,
and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
For if you love those who love you, what reward have you?
Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others?
Do not even the tax collectors do so?
Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect."

1.13 THE BOX PART II

HALADKI: i'm not scared of you.
WEISS: well, you should start being scared of me.

finding nemo

DORY: i shall call him "squishy", and he shall be mine, and he shall be my squishy. here, squishy, squishy. here, little fella...

if i were simon cowell...

...i'd probably not have much time to blog. so i'll stick with humbly giving out my correct and scarily-in-line-with-simon's opinions to my enormous fanbase in this fabulous medium. to make it more like i'm-actually-a-judge-on-the-show-because-i-should-be, i'll address all of the contestants as if i'm sitting in simon's chair.

ryan seacrest, simon's hair is great, leave him alone. i am one of those smart girls who agrees with camile valesco. simon is sexy. ooh!! happy times!! william hung will be coming back for the march 1st bad singers episode! i love it. btw, for a related story, read scott ott's report on william hung's next bangin' moves.

elizabeth letendre -- wow, great pipes, great job on the song, but the dancing and outfit not so good. you're a dancer! show us!! but wow, you did a great job on the song, kudos, kudos. she's a good sport and can take simon's criticism well. IDOLS01

eric yoder - what a cutie. and a pilot! wow, you look kind of young to be flying people around, but i'm sure you're good at it. blah blah blah. at first, i thought, oops, bad song choice. but paula was right, you picked it up later. I LOVE YOUR VOICE! SO MUCH! course, i love clay aiken. i know a lot of comparisons are drawn between you and clay (happy sigh), but i still can tell the difference between your voices. you've got your own voice, and your own voice has a fan. that's me, in case you're wondering. i mean, you probably have a lot of other fans. but they're not blogging here... IDOLS02

amy adams -- i love your personality. you kinda remind me of me, with all that energy and life and little bit o' kooky. oh, and that's my all-time most frequent karaoke song. so i've gotta like you. really good voice, and a whole lot of sparkle on stage. and i wouldn't mind reading or seeing an interview with you, so i think i might vote for you. IDOLS03.

jon peter lewis -- the pen salesman. you have such an adorable personality. and you are so wrong about yourself. you and your brothers are all photogenic (btw, love the tooth-gap). i've said this before, you have such a unique voice. i really love that about you, and you have to get one of my votes, because i love tiny dancer. UPDATE: votes all taken up. sorry, i hope you come back for the wildcard round. every time you open your mouth, i've forgotten what your voice sounds like, because nothing in the world sounds like it, so you surprise me every time. scare me at first, but eventually, i'm just lovin' you. IDOLS04.

charly lowry -- wow, where are ewe frum? "i think my accent has made me distinctive from the other contestants." ya think? well, you started off kind of shaky, and i don't like pink so much (except on lilies), but you prove to have a great voice, you can wail. you've got fabulous stage presence. and i do agree with simon here. very good voice, but you need to let go. i think we'll see you in the top 12, even if you don't make it thru tonight. IDOLS05.

jonah moananu -- ok, you make me laugh, big guy. drama teacher? yeah, i can see that. free style rapper who is as self-deprecating as some joyful people tell me i am, gotta love you. and don't tell yourself you're not cute, because ya are. i think you have a great voice, i think you did a good job, but paula and randy are right. you didn't push your range, and that makes me think of ruben studdard. if you didn't have such a great personality, i wouldn't consider you at all, just because i don't like laziness in this competition. i wouldn't take it as far as simon and say you're not very good, i just think you could have done so much better. IDOLS06

leah labelle -- i really like you, i like your stage presence, and your voice is wonderful. but you had all kinds of pitch problems tonight. am i the only one who heard the flat notes? but overall, i do agree. you should move on to the next round, you're probably in the top 10 in the competition, just get the nerves under control, and you'll be great. IDOLS07

latoya london -- whoa, BRAVE song choice, at least that's what people tell me when i do it at karaoke. um, you might have my favorite voice in all of the competition. you are perhaps the most talented person in the competition. fabulous all over the board. you're a star. brilliant, brilliant. and simon is correct, you kept it quiet, and just EXPLODED. and did i mention you are gorgeous? absolutely beautiful. congratulations, and welcome to the top 2. you are WONDERFUL. the only person tonight who is a definite shoe-in in my book. WOW, YOU EVEN GAVE ME CHILLS ON THE REPLAY!! BRAVO. IDOLS08. VOTE FOR HER!!!

so. after last week, which wasn't even worth my reviewing (for those of you who missed me last week), tonight was the best night so far. i thought week 1 was stacked, that all the talent ended up in that week, but oh, how wrong i was. no, wait. i'm never wrong. i only change my mind. so i changed my mind.

today

today i have been living the dream life of rand mcnally. it's weird, because all day i dreamed about posting comments on people's blogs. weirdness and illness aside, i'd say i'm living the good life. eating chunky monkey (a phrase i'm sure you're all tired of hearing, but just get used to it) and living by my boyfriend jason's song.... well, actually, just living by the title part of the song. none of the rest really applies, and i'm not sure i know what it means. he's so complex and simple. anyway, my point is i've slept all day. good times.

3.13 AFTER SIX

IF YOU HAVEN'T LEARNED BY NOW, ALL MY REVIEWS CONTAIN SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE EP. I AM NOT PEOPLE MAGAZINE (bleck) OR ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY. I AM SARAHK. ANYWAY, DON'T READ IF YOU DON'T WANT IT SPOILED.

i saved posting this review of last week's show for 2 reasons. 1) it was still in draft form and not ready to be published. 2) with no ALIAS last night and none next week, i figured you'd all need something ALIAS related to do this week. so here you go. i wrote most of this as i watched the ep. last week, so it's in present tense, while the intro is in past tense. i hope you can deal with that. oh, and i also made it super-long so you can read it for the next 2 weeks. ration yourself if you must.

well, i think it's been a couple of years since we last saw a new episode of the best show not on television. i know this must be close to true, because when watching the "previously on ALIAS", i'm thinking, "wow, it's been so long since i've seen that. was that just the last episode?" in other words, ABC, we need to have a talk about how you're treating the show. preempted for lame movies. preempted for house makeovers. preempted for anything that does not remotely involve jennifer garner, michael vartan, bradley cooper or david anders. i'm pretty sure that if ABC could get the rights to show Eye of the Beholder, the absolute WORST MOVIE EVER, every sunday night, they would probably preempt ALIAS for that. the dvd box set for season 3 comes out on september 7, so i'm pretty sure that i'll have the whole season on dvd before they ever show it on tv. bah, ABC, bah. anyway, on with the show.

in the first scene tonight, there's this really tall cliff thingy that syd and vaughn are planted on for recon purposes, and oh it is very scary. and now they are parachuting right off of it. i think i'm going to hurl.

so about a month ago, syd and vaughn got all gag-puke sentimental when they were captured by the north korean army while extracting a covenant agent. the ep. begins with a discussion of lisenker's (the defector) info. unfortunately (translated: we need a mission), lisenker's info, called the doleac agenda, is kept inside a scary fortress with all kinds of countermeasures to keep out bad guys and cia agents. the agenda details plans for all 6 covenant cells (hmm. 6 covenant cells, exactly 1/2 the number of cells of the alliance. j.j., your numbers tricks don't get by me!). syd & vaughn are supposed to go on a mission together to talk to the lady who designed the system, which syd is unsure about. i mean, like, she really really like likes vaughn, but like, he's married to that, like, evil woman, and even though the audience, like, knows that she's evil, like, sydney just THINKS she's evil. so sydney, at the prompting of spydaddy bristow, asks dixon to send weiss with her instead.

so then spydaddy bristow goes to visit sloane. if you can remember back to the last ep. (you may need to re-read my last review to remember back that far), jack was going to kill sloane to save sydney. which i thought was a great idea, btw. anyway, sloane says he forgives jack, because sydney's life was on the line, and throws out some refuse like, "you and sydney are my lifeblood. you're all that sustains me since emily died. i can't live without you two people who hate me. how about a hug, jack?"

then sydney goes to see dr. barnett, who gets a lot of play in this ep., and tells her that vaughn is her soulmate and that she's having a really hard time coping. um, is it just me, or does syd really have a lot of problems, not the greatest of which is losing her bf of less than a year to an evil demon? let's see... mom not really dead, mom evil, mom shot me, mom tackled me with a hockey stick, i miss my evil mom again, dad trained me when i was 6 to be a spy, dad framed mom for bad stuff and almost got her executed, found fiance shot dead in the bathtub, rescued the man who shot my fiance, partner shot, brief mission partner's throat slashed while i was being tortured in a mental institution, woman i loved like a mother accidentally shot by my previously shot partner, best friend tortured by evil dentist, guy with big crush on me kidnapped and tortured by same evil dentist, i myself tortured by same evil dentist, found out i was working for the bad guys, oogled by gross old man on a posh 747, old boyfriend came back into the picture, he turned out to be evil, but i didn't know that until i killed him, roommate killed by genetic double, genetic double posed as roommate and invaded all kinds of my privacy, found previously tortured best friend apparently dead in bathtub, kidnapped by evil agency for 2 years, lost 2 years of time to "i can't remember", oh yeah, there was that prophecy that said i'm gonna destroy the world, my eggs were stolen by evil agency, evil agency "tried" to make babies w/ my eggs and prophet's dna, had all-out brawl with roommate's double, killed her, no, i didn't, but my not-dead best friend did, oh, no, i doubt that, too, karate-fought my partner, who stabbed me, almost executed at the hands of a north-korean firing squad, had to work with the most evil man in the world so i could destroy him, same evil man "loves me like a daughter" (gag), but you know what? i miss vaughn. THAT i cannot cope with.

so then we have a scene between my favorite baddie sark (happy sigh) and that evil woman lauren. i wish sydney would just accidentally shoot or poison her or something already. so sarky confronts vaughn's evil wife and tells her he knows she killed his father and that he's not too torn up about it. he proposes that they kill the leaders of the 6 covenant cells and steal the keys to their headquarters. then they'll bribe the head of the covenant for power in exchange for not turning the keys over to the cia. lauren, evil as she is, agrees. oh, and may i just say, i want to vomit every time sark looks longingly at lauren. gross, she's more evil than you are, julian!

so syd & weiss meet with vivica a. fox, the person who designed the fortress countermeasures, and weiss gets all i'm-about-to-have-my-own-tough-guy-bounty-hunter-show tough with vivica, and he's good at that. go, weissy! so vivica tells them there's no way they can break into this place, and marshall and carrie start working on a plan to do just that.

ok, so here's a very disturbing scene. and this is an unfortunate image that i care not see. watching sloane shoot up something green into his veins. first of all, the shooting up is enough to make me queasy. but the most disturbing part of all is that he's shooting up something green. is he a martian? i mean, i've never done drugs, not smoked pot, never even been drunk. so maybe i'm just a narcotics idiot. but what is the green liquid? it makes me think that rambaldi was an alien, aka sloane, and in order to stay alive 500 years on earth, he has to shoot up with martian juice. new theory, folks, and i came up with it all on my own. spread it around, and maybe j.j. will write it. or maybe i am j.j. in which case, i'm bringing back will to the show!! woohoo!! moving right along...

wow, it took me half an episode to notice that spydaddy bristow has lost weight. i kept noticing he looked younger, i'm guessing this is why. i have a little crush on spydaddy bristow as it is, so i imagine the new youthful appearance is going to make my crush even worse. i already have a crush on a bad guy, now my crush on the dad guy is going to get bigger.

so anyway, after sloane/rambaldi shoots up green martian juice, he calls jack and tells him that he needs to see a shrink (sloanebaldi, not jack). so barnett flies to whatever country sloane is in to visit him. may i just say that i think this is a great waste of taxpayer dollars. flying a cia shrink to whatever other country so she can counsel a lunatic who should be in prison or on death row in texas (let's face it, we've got a great track record for actually following through on our executions). so anyway, as the astute or even not extremely stupid viewer would imagine, sloane starts manipulating barnett. eventually, he starts talking to her and tells her that he has a big secret about jack and sydney. since sloane is nothing but the double-crossing spawn of satan, i'm sure this is just another ploy to hoodwink the spies bristow. he'll use barnett to do it for him.

meanwhile, covenant cell leaders are starting to turn up dead, courtesy of vaughn's evil wife lauren and sarky-pooh. so syd, vaughn & jack leave immediately for the sufficiently-countermeasured chalet in chamonix. on the plane, vaughn tells sydney he knows and understands why she requested that weiss replace him earlier. she tells him in very certain terms that she will not be "the other woman". so then they start their mission, which is very complicated. so shockingly enough, they survive all of the booty traps -- i mean, booby traps -- and retrieve the doleac agenda.

ok, so right in the middle of the mission to retrieve the doleac agenda, carrie starts going into labor. she and marshall are running the tech ops from L.A., through an uplink provided by jack, who's running coms in the field. so carrie starts to have a baby, and my first thought is marshall's gonna be a dad, that's scarier than sloanebaldi! and carrie, who has been anti-marriage until now says she wants to be married before the baby is born. uh, ok, carrie, but no preacher man around, what to do? not to fear, marshall is a computer geek and instructs weiss. weiss goes online and certifies himself as a minister of the church of mammals. i'm picturing weiss in a dolphin suit, or speaking whale like dory in finding nemo. "dooooooooo yoooooo taaaaaayyyyyyke thiiiiiiiis womaaaaan?" anyway, weiss marries carrie and marshall while marshall guides syd & vaughn through their mission. i feel like i've stepped into the twilight mammal zone. anyway, the mission ends as marshall and carrie say "iiiiiiiiiiii doooooooo", and spydaddy saves vaughn & syd by killing some pursuing guards. he SO ROCKS. oh, and marshall calls carrie "mrs. flinkman" as she's fleeing the room, and she waves him off with a quick "i'm keeping my name." good stuff.

ok, so somewhere in this episode, sark and vaughn's evil wife lauren kiss. so now, my sarky has been defiled by lauren reed. they have kissed. puke and gag and puke and gag and puke and wash my mouth out with soap. so here's the part where i have to correct myself. at one point in a previous review, i theorized that sark and lauren are brother and sister. but if so, J.J., YOU HAVE A SICK SENSE OF HUMOR!

alrighty. barnett and sloane finally talk, because, hey, we didn't waste those tax dollars for nothing. and sloane's got a big secret that's central to his very existence, and it affects jack & sydney. i'm pretty sure that i was right about arvin sloane. what's his middle name? his mother's maiden name is bishop, so that doesn't work. but i'll bet you if i knew his middle name, i could rearrange the letters in his name to be milo rambaldi (milo will also need a middle name). hmm. my next occupation, i think i'll be j.j. abrams.

ok, so sarky goes to visit the head of the covenant, who turns out to be none other than mckennas cole, who is obsessed with people's hair. and cole says something very interesting. that he is the man in front of the man? interesting. so the man is still running the show, and since irina is the man (or is she?), i'm thinkin' she's lurking around. perhaps as katya. da-da-DUM. anyway, this is where sark finds out that lauren double-crossed him and took all of the keys straight to cole after they had acquired them. um, i would like to point out that sark is really cute when he's been played like a xylophone. let me tell ya something i really like. i like seeing sark scared. so vulnerable. makes him almost sweet. oops. drooling.

so lauren gets back to l.a., and marches up to syd and says "stay away from my husband." that's the end of the show. and i hope that when it resumes next year, syd sucker-punches her in the stomach and then says "ok, you evil wh---". ok, i'll stop now.

one more thing before i go. if any of you out there actually believe that sloane is going to say that he is syd's father, we need to have a talk. speaking of talks, ABC, we're gonna have lunch soon. at 3:00. in the parking lot.

the hockey gods love me

the hockey gods blessed me twice today. first, spydaddy called me and told me i get to go to the stars game friday night. WOOHOO!!

then, i got this in the mail. i don't care that it's an ad. my 2nd boyfriend is on it. i love him.

and sunday, i'm going to a brahmas game. thank you hockey gods!

today

i still can't find my happy pills. AND I DON'T CARE!!!! of course, i haven't filled out any financial statement disclosure checklists yet, so i can't say i won't care later.

have a lovely day everyone!!

Psalm 19

The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament shows His handiwork.
Day unto day utters speech,
And night unto night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech nor language
Where their voice is not heard.
Their line has gone out through all the earth,
And their words to the end of the world.
In them He has set a tabernacle for the sun,
Which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
And rejoices like a strong man to run its race.
Its rising is from one end of heaven,
And its circuit to the other end;
And there is nothing hidden from its heat.

The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul;
The testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple;
The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart;
The commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes;
The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever;

The judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold,
Yea, than much fine gold;
Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.
Moreover by them Your servant is warned,

Who can understand his errors?
Cleanse me from secret faults.
And in keeping them there is great reward.
Keep back Your servant also from presumptuous sins;
Let them not have dominion over me.
Then I shall be blameless,
And I shall be innocent of great transgression.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
Be acceptable in Your sight,
O LORD, my strength and my Redeemer.

--NKJV

every one of us is blessed to be alive today. let us be thankful to God for our lives.

today

today i have laughed harder than all my previous days combined. if you're the one responsible for this, you know who you are.