2005 on the Crusty Curmudgeon: a preview

And now that the new year has been ushered in, here are some rambling ideas about my plans for the rest of 2005.

Biggest change: I am happy to announce the inauguration of Sacra Eloquia, my theology blog. This isn't a "division of labour" thing; I'm not going to change the general focus of the Crusty Curmudgeon. Rather, I feel that the anything-goes format of my current blog just isn't conducive to extended and detailed expository theology, so I've started another one where I can post on-line "sermons" on a somewhat regular basis.

I am going to start by duplicating the material I posted here on sola Scriptura and solus Christus, and add the remainder of the five solas as the Carnival of the Reformation progresses. Then I am finally going to convert my partially completed Sunday school series on Galatians to Web-friendly HTML. Lord willing, I will complete that series online even if I never get a chance to preach it. My plans in the longer term include:

1. switching to the Old Testament, to Daniel
2. "First Principles," a series on Hebrews
3. back to the OT again to work through Ezekiel, then segue into . . .
4. . . . the Gospel of John

I have no intention of deprecating theoblogging here. If anything, I hope to revive and finish the series on God's will that sort of fizzled in the fall.

Reading and reviewing: In 2005, I don't intend to push myself to read more. I do enough of that as it is. But I want to double my writing output; my goal is to post at least one book review every two weeks: 26 book reviews for the year. I'm also going to focus my reading efforts: a few years ago I started reading all of Stephen King's novels in order of publication, so I'm going to pick that up where I left off, with Pet Sematary. I started reading through Dorothy Sayers' mystery novels last month, and I'll finish that series next year. And I'm just about due for another Tolkien blitz; it's been a few years. Apart from that, come what may.

Theatre time: My goal for 2005, again, is not to artificially increase my viewing. I watch enough TV and movies as it is. But I intend to bump up my writing about movies by focusing my viewing on a few subjects. First, as I mentioned some time ago, I intend to view all the Coen brothers' films in order of production, one film per month. Second, I want to go through all ten of the Star Trek feature films - again, one per month. And third, awhile back I made a list of my personal favourite SF movies, two per decade; having done so, it's only fair that I should post some extended critical commentary on all of them, starting with my Top Three: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, and Contact. "First," "second," and "third" don't indicate priority, just intention to focus on these three areas, but I do intend to finish the first two and at least make a serious dent in the third category.

Other plans: Not much, so far. One area I haven't explored yet is reviewing music. I listen to an awful lot of it, but I haven't felt that I could write an album review to quite the same standards as I can for books and movies. That's starting to change as I get more interested over time in listening critically to a wider range of composers and genres.

And, of course, there will undoubtedly be a redesign of the whole site sometime in September, on or about its second anniversary - as I always like to put what I learn about Web and graphic design over the year into practice.

I'm looking forward to sharing this year with you all. Soli Deo gloria.