Scream

Some first year students join the movie association in their university. Pai, Nuna, Tam and Man travel to a resort in the forest for their orientation day. However, upon reaching the resort, the students start to disappear one by one. No one knows what is happening to them or who the murderer is. They are all very scared and try to escape from the resort.  Who will be the last survivor?

เรื่องราวของกลุ่มนักศึกษาใหม่ซึ่งสมัครเข้าชมรมภาพยนตร์ และได้ไปรับน้องที่ต่างจังหวัด โดยมี พาย หนูนา ตั้ม และแมน ไปด้วย แต่เมื่อไปถึงสถานที่รับน้อง ซึ่งเป็นรีสอร์ทกลางป่าใหญ่ ได้มีนักศึกษาหายไปทีละคน ทำให้กลุ่มนักศึกษาต่างพากันหวาดกลัวและพยายามที่จะหาทางหนีกลับบ้านแต่ก็ไปไม่รอด

Cast of Scream:
Kemakarn Yennoom
Potchamol Sansanor
Solaya Chankete

Director:
Jarungsak Wonglaeng

Running Time:
1 hr 33 mins

Watch Thailand’s horror movie "Scream" now for free online at WOWtv! Click HERE for more information.

*Only available for online viewers in Singapore

About WOWtv

WOWtv is a leading US-based broadband entertainment provider, streaming an extensive library of video content to internet savvy youths and young adults throughout Asia. Some of the programs that are available from WOWtv’s Singapore website include the latest fashion programs from Video Fashion New York, popular Korean drama series, top-notch BBC documentaries and dramas, and much more. WOWtv is also in the midst of expanding their offering to include social networking and user-generated content functions and is planning for more exciting new features such as offering music online and E-commerce in the near future. WOWtv is truly the all inclusive platform for the internet savvy youths and young adults of today to gather, entertain themselves with videos, music, shopping, share their own creations and network with others. Click HERE to visit WOWtv Singapore now.

Scream (Dimension Collector's Series) is available at Amazon for $5.99. To Order click here
Amazon Product Pages contain a lot of other details on this product as Customer Reviews, Sales Ranking, Special Offers, Alternate products that customers are going for and much more.Want to read these details? click here

Want to get some other Format / Binding / Version? You can search for them from here

Other Products of Interest

• Scream 2 (Dimension Collector's Series)
• Scream 3 (Dimension Collector's Series)
• I Know What You Did Last Summer
• Halloween
• Halloween H20 - Twenty Years Later (Dimension Collector's Series)

i am an introvert. according to the myers-briggs type indicator, that means i get my energy from within. and what that means is that no matter how much i like them, people, especially extroverts, draw energy from me. a simple concept with many implications....

case in point. last night i totally lost my mind. i mean lost as in, it wasn't there. i could not think. i could not remember anything. i was literally walking in circles. my mind felt fried. why? my introversion?  asperger's? anxiety?

well, the day started with me being a bit stressed because i had friends coming over  [a couple and their 4-yr-old child] . i do not really have people over but i had been to their house so much and they had been so gracious that i knew it was "my turn". plus, the guy was going to look at and fix the brakes on my volvo saving me about a thousand dollars. ok, so that much i figured i could handle, and if the kids played nice and quietly, might even enjoy. i pictured my friend and i sitting peacefully on the couch, her husband at work in my garage and the kids upstairs cooking imaginary food in the play kitchen.

this did not happen.

the couple [both extroverts] appeared stressed when they got here. they were bickering and going in and out  of the door taking turns smoking [i hate smoke and the noise of doors opening and closing]. but, i really count these people as friends so it was fine. the man soon left to get his tools [which he had forgotten] and change clothes and was to be back in about 20 minutes. he did not show up for several hours, leaving his wife upset and in a worse mood. to add to that, the poor woman had a headache. we tried to watch a movie but the one she chose was pans labyrinth and i had forgotten it was subtitled. neither of us felt like reading a movie so that ended quickly.

i failed to mention that just a few minutes before they arrived, my 22-year-old daughter [another extrovert and at times, drama queen] called and needed rescuing from a restaurant about 30 miles away... telling me she was stuck for 5.5 hours and she hated her life and needed a ride. i told her i had company coming [who did not have cell phones] and i could not get away, making me feel a bit guilty and even more anxious. i am sure a bit of this was normal maternal worry - the rest just me.

meanwhile, back at the house, we were still waiting for brakeman to return and our kids started playing very loud and running up and down the stairs. i corrected my usually very well-behaved son and she tried to calm her daughter with no success. at the same time, my 11-year-old daughter returned from a sleepover with a friend and decided that they would both hang out at our house. this involved a loud walkie-talkie that her friend carries everywhere, periodic giggling [which is not bad but added to the already rising noise quotient] ,blaring songs from the internet and more door opening and closing and stair running.

about that time, my best friend called me from out of state telling me she was feeling down. i was really concerned about her but the day had already rendered me feeling unable to help or even talk much. she knew i had company and hung up quickly although i told her it was ok which, through absolutely no fault of hers, added to my guilt, stress, and mounting anxiety.

ding, dong. ding dong. what now?  a lady i did not know at the front door. it was my daughters friend's mother who had decided [very nicely] to come over and introduce herself. i invited her in and attempted to include my other friend in our conversation but felt very pulled and distracted as we talked. she stayed about 45 minutes during which time my other friend was making multiple phone calls to her husband [in the same room] asking where he was and pacing back and forth.  about that time the kids came down hungry. my daughters friend's mother left and then brakeman came back, without tools or supplies, saying he couldn't get the brake parts because he was $1.98 short. i then had the option of packing up everyone in my house and going to the store myself or just saying forget it. i said forget it and made plans to do it later.

more smoking.

more doors opening and closing; sometimes slamming.

i think i was beginning to act like a senior with dementia.

i fed the kids, offered to drive the couple by the bank [long story] and left my daughter cooking ramen, which at the time of my departure, she had already messed up by putting the pasta in before the water boiled and so i had to help her start all over...

i got in the car; happy to be alone with my son and no one else. then... my cell phone started ringing. omfg i thought i was going to literally go crazy. i managed to get through the bank thing, get home, get my kids in bed, shower, and then stare blankly at the tv for about 5 minutes before falling fast asleep.

today, i feel physically beat-up, my mind is less than alert [and that is an understatement] and i have absolutely no energy. i honestly think i am going to have to regulate my social interaction [especially with extroverts]. that seems so horrible but i do not seem able to function with such overload.

oh yeah, and the printer broke. twice. grape jelly fell on my almost-white carpet. and my son's adorable but rambunctious playmate tried to saw my white walls with a toy tool. oh, and the drilling! i almost forgot about the drilling. the kids were playing with toy drills all day and this loud wiggles guitar; something my son never cares much to play with when he is alone. errrgh.

obviously, this is a venting blog and one that i am sure is more for me than anyone else.

even writing this was exhausting.

so now, i am going to take my son [who starts preschool in 2 days yay!] and grab a coffee, plan nothing else for the rest of the month, and try to recover.

if anyone involved in yesterday's circus reads this, know i love you but i have some idiosyncrasies that if i do not respect, leave me pretty much disabled, if only temporary.

i posted the song below because a quiet mind is what i need now and i can honestly say my husband is one of about 3 people on earth that has this effect on me. the other two should know who you are.

this is actually lipsync to blue october; but all the concert videos are terrible as well as the anime ones.

naked scream, originally uploaded by Michael Clark.

]]> http://hoopscoach.wordpress.com/?p=805 Mon, 13 Oct 2008 12:49:58 +0000 hoopscoach http://hoopscoach.es.wordpress.com/2008/10/13/the-screamer/ Last night I was watching one of my favorite shows on HBO, Entourage.  If you are familiar with the program, you know Ari Gold.  (If you're not, head to Wikipedia).

In the episode, Ari was on the Golf course with some people and one of the guys (Warner Brothers Studio head) he was golfing with was a lunatic.  He loved to scream, typical Type-A.  Well after his blood began to boil, the poor guy had a heart attack right there on the green.

It really put things in perspective.

This episode got me thinking...

I often watch a coach on the sidelines and observe the behavior.

I often wonder why some scream their heads off and some are cool, calm and collected.

In the past, I was a screamer; both during games and practices.

I have learned to tone it down, and down and down and down.

It's almost to a point now where I'm like, "These kids don't want to be yelled at."

When I was younger, I hated to be yelled at.  It scared the living daylights out of me when a coach, parent or even teacher screamed at me for making a mistake.

I have made a commitment to myself to stop screaming, stop yelling and taking that energy and using it in a more positive way.

-Coach Finamore

Hoops135@hotmail.com

Beautiful pain, the wretched scream of my existence
high standards to live by
If beauty is in the eye the beholder then I am blind
Because I don't see mine
The word stings my ear drums
I loath the existence of me
They say beauty is skin deep so I cut...
I cut through the surface looking for something more
looking for something deeper than beauty
Only finding the blood of my pain
So I cut further
I think I'm going insane, I cut but there's no truth to be found
Until I finally see the truth is me
The beauty that's real can only be seen, when you cut through the skin
The real beauty is within

Sachin

If you really think about it... what the hell were they supposed to be!? They're kinda like weird hippo things, but they just look so blank, quite sinister. They're some of these things you'd see in a nightmare, and they wouldn't have to be doing anything, but it'd still be bloody terrifying. Watching you with those eyes....

And of course this is just the Moomins I'm referring to... they had some damn freaky friends too! There's some guy with a stupid hat, the short angry ginger one, and a kangaroo! What the hell!? It just gets crazier and crazier!

Now some of you will be thinking that the Moomins were never scary. This picture begs to differ:

How much more stereotypically insane looking can they get? The hollow, yet piercing stares will set pure liquid fear into the heart of even the bravest of men. And just look at the little ginger one... she has a fucking rolling pin! She'll beat your face in with no mercy whatsoever, just look at the intense rage in those eyes.

I leave you now with another horrifying image...

Song: 'Billy Joel - We Didn't Start The Fire'

Edvard Munch was born in Løten, Norway, in 1863. The son of an humble doctor, he lost his mother at the age of 5 and would lose his sisters a few years later, due to an epidemic of tuberculosis.

Young Edvard engaged in studies to become an engineer, but soon started taking drawing classes and organized his first personal exhibition two years later, in 1883. At first, his style was very much influenced by Scandinavian Naturalism, particularly that of Christian Krogh, his first teacher. After a trip to Paris, his Realist style showed an Impressionist influence, for Munch had been very inspired by the work of Edouard Manet and Paul Gauguin. The complexity of Munch's style can also be explained by the great influence that the Symbolist painters Odilon Redon and James Ensor exerted on him.

Edvard Munch was very much interested in social issues, and he travelled to Berlin, Dresden and Munich where he met the precursors of Expressionism. Later, he would travel to Italy to study the Renaissance masters. Munch's artwork often features the themes of death and sex, and symbolizes the turmoil of a man who suffered very much from the loss of his mother and sisters.

At the turn of the century, Edvard Munch's work was finally acknowledged, but the artist also started suffering more and more from nervous disorders. In 1923, he became a member of the German Academy of Fine Arts and in 1925, he became an honorary member of the Academy of Fine Arts of Bavaria.

Edvard Munch died in 1944, in Ekely, after having donated his work to the city of Oslo, which included about 1,000 paintings, 15,400 engravings, 4,500 watercolours and drawings, 6 sculptures as well as many letters and manuscripts.

The Context

The Scream was painted in 1893, at a time of profound changes in European societies. Those upheavals were very much reflected in the artistic production of the time period, which had been freed by the Impressionists twenty years earlier and was becoming more and more complex. Edvard Munch's work lies somewhere between Symbolism and Expressionism, much like other painters of his generation such as James Ensor, Vincent van Gogh and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

At that time in history, Norway was still attached to Sweden (and would be until 1905) and the entire European continent went through a phase of turmoil that would culminate with the two world wars of the 20th century. This decadent fin de siècle is a great source of inspiration for those who would soon become the Expressionists and for all the artists who would vendicate pictorial freedom.

Those preoccupations were very much shared by Munch. As early as 1899, in Germany, Max Liebermann was leading a group of young rebels which Munch joined, but the latter soon created a scandal at the Verein Bildender Künstler, where the group had exhibited their work, with one of his paintings. This scandal would lead to the creation of the Berlin Sezession. We also know that Munch was friends with August Strindberg, Stéphane Mallarmé and Stanislaw Przybyszewski.

Although Munch was a great source of inspiration for the young artists of the Expressionist group Die Brücke, The Scream was not entirely well understood at a time when the sweet melancholy of Scandinavian Symbolism was so popular. The violence and expressionism of Munch's composition shocked the audience of the time period.

This tormented phase of History is also symbolized by the fact that, in 1937, the Nazis would sell 82 of Munch's works (which were owned by German museums) because his art was considered "degenerate."

The Painting

The main version of The Scream is kept at the Nasjonalgalleriet, in Oslo, but it is important to note that Munch made more than fifty variations of this composition in different media.

The Scream represents a figure walking on a road, with their hands open and placed on each side of their face to cover their ears, and their mouth wide open. This road is overlooking the fjord of Oslo (which was formerly named Kristiania until 1926) and the scene is viewed from the hill of Ekeberg. In the background, we see the hills that surround the fjord and a few boats at rest.

This scene was not entirely born out of the imagination of the painter, for Munch explained in his diary:

"I was walking along a path with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature."

This note leads us to believe that the figure - Munch himself - is not in fact screaming but simply reacting with horror to the scream of Nature. By placing his hands on his ears, Munch is desperately trying not to hear this scream that is putting him in some kind of panic attack.

The colours used reflect the artist's angst, with violent contrasts and the depiction of a bright red/orange sky that translates Munch's impression. The colours are intense and almost remind us of a Fauvist painting, although the emotional power they carry places Munch more as a pre-Expressionist.

The shapes are also very expressive and simplified. The figure of the artist actually reminds us of that of a skeleton, which might have been inspired by the work of Belgian painter James Ensor. In fact, it is believed that Munch would have been directly influenced by a mummy he would have seen shortly before paiting The Scream. While renowned scholar and professor of modern European art (New York University) Robert Rosenblum asserts that Munch would have been inspired by a Peruvian mummy seen in Paris in 1889, an Italian anthropologist claims that Munch was instead influenced by an Inca mummy kept in a Florentine museum. At any rate, the similarities between the figure in The Scream and traditional Inca mummies are obvious enough to assume that Munch had somehow been influenced by one of them.

The rhythm of the colours and the curves, similar to a whirlpool, makes the viewer feel dizzy. The dramatic, excessive usage of perspective creates anxiety and tension. In fact, the perspective and the characters seem to lose themselves in the background.

Commentary

The Scream is without a doubt Munch's most famous and most symbolic painting and one of the most famous paintings of all times, probably due to the originality and intensity of the subject.

Munch's Scream shows the influence of Symbolism and Post-Impressionism (particularly Gauguin's Synthetism) and clearly announces Expressionism; it is a work of great iconographic and psychological intensity which reveals the dramatic disorder of the artist's mind. In fact, The Scream is seen as the expressionist manifesto of pain and despair, which makes the composition universal; it speaks to all of those who have experienced such psychological suffering and anxiety.

The colours, and the shapes that ondulate lock the character in its own existential angst and highlight a feeling of claustrophobia. The curves also reflect the inner vertigo felt by the artist, as well as his (psychological) solitude.

The Scream is not the only painting where Edvard Munch expresses his malaise and his morbid anxieties. In fact, The Scream reminds us very much of two other paintings Munch composed respectively in 1892 and 1894: Evening on Karl Johan and Anxiety.

Interestingly enough, a 2003 article published on The Guardian website explains that astronomers were able to identify the time that The Scream depicts and explain what Edvard Munch really saw in the sky at that particular moment. According to them, "an amazing series of sunsets followed the eruption in 1883, half a world away, of the Krakatoa volcano." If you are curious to read the full article, click here.

At any rate, Munch's Scream remains an incredibly expressive artwork, one of those rare paintings that do not, in fact, need any explanation to transmit the feelings it carries. Edvard Munch, like Toulouse-Lautrec and van Gogh, shared a similar post-impressionist spirit that translates their tormented, overwhelming feelings and inner crisis and opened the way to Expressionism.

The Scream, by Edvard Munch, oil, tempera and pastel on cardboard, 1893, Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo

     That is exactly what Scream (and its sequels) did.  Not an easy task either, since horror is looked down on by so many.  But every few years, something fresh and original comes along to spark the imagination and make horror movies okay to watch again. (and spawn horrible rip offs)  Here is the long an short of the plot.

     About a year after Sidney Prescotts mother is murdered, somebody starts killing teens in the quiet little town of Woodsboro.  When Sidney herself becomes a target, her missing father becomes the focus of the investigaion.  But as we soon find out, everybody is a suspect in this one.

     Here are some of the reasons why Scream works so well.  First for me would be its self aware sort of humor, poking a little bit of fun at all horror movies in general, while being one itself.  The scene where Jamie Kennedy recites the "rules"" is a classic.  Second is the cast.  We have some very good actors, but as we saw in the opening 10 minute sequence, nobody is safe, so you can't assume who will live or die, thus making the mystery a bit harder to solve.  But for me the last thing that makes Scream scary is the simple fact that its realistic.  What I mean by that is we have a serial killer, as opposed to a super human killing maching, such as Jason, or Freddy.  Sure if you look hard enough you can find a few plot holes, or leaps of logic here and there, but that can be said of any movie. 

    So there you have it, a good plot, great actors, lots of laughs mixed in between some scares, and a few elaborate deaths, and you have yourself a classic.  Some may not agree, but I'll just gut them like a fish.

Scream for hell !

And if my love would hold a baloon,

I'd grab the wrists of time

And reach out to you soon,

Before i'd give surrows back and try

To fix this aching moon.

To Watch the Video Visit Static Multimedia "Artist On Artist: Cornell & Timbaland" Music Video Item

PLOT:

The story is set in Monstropolis, a 1930s retro city inhabited by monsters, and centers around Monsters, Inc., the city's power company. Monsters, Inc. sends its employees to human children's bedrooms to scare the children, through teleportation doors set up on the work floor. The screams of children generate electric power for the city. However, the monsters believed that children themselves are toxic, and go to great lengths to prevent contact; should a monster be touched by a child or their belongings, the Child Detection Agency (CDA) is called to sanitize the affected being. With increasing numbers of children becoming desensitized to scary things, Monsters, Inc. is finding it difficult to continue to meet the power demands of the city.

One day, James P. Sullivan ("Sulley"), Monsters, Inc.'s top scarer, finds a door on the work floor after hours in violation of policy. Peering inside, he finds the child's room empty. Sulley hides when he hears Randall Boggs, a competitive co-worker, enter the work floor and returns the door back to the company's door vault. Sulley prepares to leave but finds that a human girl has followed him through the door, thinking him to be a giant kitty. Sulley quickly hides the child and gets hold of Mike Wazowski, his co-worker, to figure out the situation. Together at Sulley's home, they discover that being touched by the child is not harmful at all, and that when she laughs, the power surges to incredible levels, almost causing them to be detected by the CDA. Sulley nicknames the child "Boo" and becomes her caretaker until they can get her back home.

Sulley and Mike disguise Boo as a monster and return to Monsters, Inc. the next day. As Mike attempts to get the right door to return Boo, Boo wanders off into the plant, with Sulley giving chase. They accidentally stumble upon Randall and his "scream extractor", a device that takes the screams directly from a child, which requires Randall to actually kidnap the child from their room and bring to the extractor. Sulley takes Boo and attempts to tell Monsters, Inc.'s CEO, Herny J. Waternoose, about Randall, but is forced to demonstrate his scaring skills to new employees before he can do so. When he scares the robot subject, Boo becomes frightened of him, and reveals herself as a human. Sulley tries to explain the situation to Waternoose, but comes to realize that Waternoose actually conceived the whole plan as to keep Monsters, Inc. a profitable business. To keep them quiet, Waternoose orders Sulley and Mike exiled to the Himalayas, and gives Boo to Randall in order to extract her screams.

Sulley and Mike, after a brief falling out, realize that Boo's life is in danger, and find a nearby village where they locate a door connected to the work floor. They are just in time to save Boo from the extractor, and attempt to catch Randall, eventually leading to a chase on and through the millions of doors in the door vault. They eventually capture Randall and push him through a door, and then smash the door to pieces to prevent him returning through it. Sulley, Mike, and Boo then lure Waternoose into a trap, forcing him to reveal his plan while they were recording it as to present the information to the CDA. Waternoose is taken away, but the CDA insists that Boo must return to her world. Sadly, Sulley and Mike say goodbye to Boo, and watch as the CDA put her door through a wood chipper, reducing it to splinters, one which Sulley holds onto as a keepsack.

Sometime later, Sulley has become the CEO of Monsters, Inc., and has changed their approach: instead of scaring children, they make them laugh, which generates significantly more energy, making all the employees happy. Mike reveals a special project to Sulley: he has managed to rebuild Boo's door save the one piece Sulley kept, and invites him to finish it. Sulley places the last piece and enters the door, where Boo instantly recognizes him, much to Sulley's happiness.

At the end, several comical "outtakes" are shown where the movie's characters are portrayed as actors on an actual set. There is also a low-budget musical put on for the employees based on Mike's lie of actually producing a play to cover up the fact that they were looking for Boo in the factory earlier in the movie; the musical is a dramatized retelling of the film's events with several employees replaying the roles they had in "real life" (excluding Randall, who is presumably still trapped in the human world, his role filled by one of the janitors). These are also available as bonus features of the DVD.

REVIEW:

Other than The Incredibles, this is my favorite Disney/Pixar film. There so much to like in this one.

One must look in awe at the job they did with animating Sully. They even had his fur moving in the wind. John Goodman brings a warmth to the character that I don't think anyone else could have.

The door scene is breathtaking. The fact that there are that many doors and they took the time to animate each of them. For me, it felt like a roller coaster ride. Wonder if they've thought about making it into one.

Steve Buscimi brings a sliminess to Randal as only he could. Of course, the fact that Randal is a some sort of chameleon type creature helps, too.

Boo is one of the cutest little girls I've ever seen on film. The animators did an excellent job on her.

Negatives are hard to find here. I do kind of wish they'd have gone into a little more detail on what it is that the machine really does.

This is a good family film that all will love!

5 out of 5 stars

Then comes along Timbaland and we have the works below, tracks Timbaland describes as some of his, "best work ever." They are no doubt Timbaland tracks, the somehow convoluted, disarrayed samples that always seem to come together to form aural masterpieces. Cornell's stand out voice anchors all that seems to haphazardly happen around it, making sure that it stands out as a Chris song before being derided as simply another Timbaland piece.

[vodpod id=Groupvideo.1645508&w=425&h=350&fv=]

Są dni, gdy tęsknię za "bezpieczeństwem" dużego miasta. Ależ tam było miło w takie jesienne wieczory i noce... Główna ulica, niedaleko mojego domu, silnie oświetlona i monitorowana. Jakiś dzieciak zwrócił mi uwagę, abym schowała komórkę, bo ukradną. Było trochę po dwudziestej pierwszej.
---
Heaven 17  "Let Me Go" (1982)

Call me jealous, i don't care, cause I know I'm not. I'm looking at you, and realise you're trying so desperately hard to be a typical, emo self phototaking myspace girl.Tangkap angmoh? whatever bitch, seriously grow up and get a life.

And you know who you are, cause I probably got irritated with you once and told you off.

It was, and still is, commonplace to hear a preacher start a proclamation by saying, "God told me to tell you."  The fact is that you don't even need a position or a title.  Anybody can speak for God.  Apparently God decided to go against the way He's been doing things for all of human history and started speaking directly to individuals without validation.

Over the years, I've heard many things that people have signed God's name to, and over the years more than a few have raised my eyebrows.  There was the time at noon-day prayer when my wife stood up and gave the report that her widowed father had married over the weekend and that she was thankful to God.  BAM!!  One of the sisters hit the floor.  They rushed her out and got her together.  MY wife later found out that the woman had previously revealed that God had told her that the now-married man would be her husband.

As a teenager I was at a prayer meeting with the Philbert family.  They were seeking direction from God about a major decision.  Early in the evening, a word from the Lord came instructing them to make the move.  "Wow," I thought, "God is on the move tonight."  Then later that night, an elder who had gotten there late had another word from the Lord.  Confirmation?  Not at all.  The complete opposite was what he was told by God.  "Don't make the move, and if you do, trouble will follow."

This quickly turned into the kind of circus you can only find at church.  The opposing supposed prophets would have to try and figure out who heard wrong.  Neither would concede that he had made it up.  The elder had title on his side, and so the clown act ended as did the prayer meeting.  The family got together later and through reason decided what was best for the family.

Has God been speaking directly to you?  Recently here in Texas two people have been making that claim.  First a Cannibalism Suspect: 'God Told Me To Do It'. By KENNETH DEAN.  Then there's the pastor that has come to be know as Pastor Spanky.  He spanked, sodomized and raped a female member and forced her to look in a mirror.  He then said to her "This is what God told me told me to do to you."

So does this not beg for us to question a couple of things?  First, is God speaking to us directly today?  You might be surprised to know that the larger part of the orthodox church has said 'no' for most of church history.  Each school of thought has its own scholars that articulate well their position.  Continuationism says 'yes.'  Hard cessationism says 'no,' and soft cessationism says, "It's possible, but not normative and not probable."

Consider this.  If you had to send sensitive documents across the country -- the type of document that, if in the wrong hands, could affect the lives of millions of people in a negative way -- what measures would you take to ensure that the package wasn't tampered with or misdelivered?  Would you simply put a forty-one cent stamp on it and drop it in the nearest blue receptacle?  God forbid.

Let me suggest here that there is nothing more dangerous on the planet than the signature of God.  Put God's name on it, and people are afraid to question.  Put God's name on it, and people disregard reason and critical thinking.  Put God's name on it, and you are sure to hear some well-intentioned mother of the church say, "Baby, don't question God."  People, if we cannot be 100% certain of what God says and does not say, then, my friends, isn't all lost?

We are quick to be angry at the insane murderer who cites God as a reason for evil.  Yet so many casually stamp God's name on doctrines, desires, and encouragements.  This practice is killing many in the Body of Christ.  Many have walked away because something God never said in the first place failed to come to pass.

God, above all, takes His Word seriously, and so long ago He set criteria in place for us to know who is really speaking for God and who is a fraud.  Here is how you can be S.U.R.E.  A person speaking directly for God should or should be:

1. Show convincing signs of a Prophet (some undeniable, supernatural display of God's power). Often these sign where on demand.
   

2. Unequivocally bring or give all glory to God, not self or any other.
   

3. Relentless and Ready to die by the fact that God said it.

4. Exact; not only in message (must be orthodox) but in record.  There is no error margin when speaking for God.

Deuteronomy 13:1 (ESV)

“If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, 2 and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, ‘Let us go after other gods,’ which you have not known, ‘and let us serve them,’ 3 you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the Lord your God is testing you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. 4 You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice, and you shall serve him and hold fast to him. 5 But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has taught rebellion against the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of slavery, to make you leave the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil [1] from your midst.

A New Prophet like Moses

Deuteronomy 18:15 “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen— 16 just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’ 17 And the Lord said to me, ‘They are right in what they have spoken. 18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. 19 And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. 20 But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or [6] who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.’ 21 And if you say in your heart, ‘How may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken?’— 22 when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.

I had to wrestle with this as I know many will, having grown up in an environment where everybody supposedly heard from God, including myself.  My study on this matter has required me to change my thinking about these things.  How about you?  Do you have questions, concerns, comments?  Want to discuss this in private?  Go to the PM page.

Do people understand that if drivers' windows are closed, they can't hear you? Also, "excuse me"? Sounds like a case of misdirected aggression to me, composed pedestrian.

Then again, when someone slows down to let me cross the street, I pip, "Thank you!" Any chance that makes it through the glass windshield?