This Relationship Corner: Nice Guys and Good Men

Talk about relationships enough, and you'll come across the same question: why don't girls like "nice guys?" It can be frustrating. You're in the dating world, you see yourself as a Nice Guy, but it seems that all women hate you. They'd rather date jerks who treat them badly. Meanwhile you're ready to put them on a pedestal and worship them. Why can't they see how great you are? Especially after all the nice things you've done for them?

And this is where I start to see a problem with this attitude. The longer I hear a self-proclaimed "nice guy" rant about women, I hear the same thing come up over and over. "I'm nice to that woman, so I'm entitled to date her." You nice guys may not realize this, but that's basically your attitude. You are owed a girlfriend, and you are owed the affections of whatever female you find attractive.

Internet writer John Cheese came up with an interesting theory about this attitude. In movies, television shows, and video games, we see example after example of a man "winning" the affections of a women. She may not notice him at first. Perhaps she even hates him. But by the end of it, he does enough good deeds to completely win her over. In effect, she's his prize for all the good things he did. It doesn't matter what she wants or thinks. He's the hero, he's entitled to her.

How Christians Can be Okay with Gay Marriage

Even when discussing gay marriage I'm still a geek. Oh, my!

So you might have heard President Obama recently announced his support for gay marriage. It’s the first time a sitting President has done this, and it got everyone’s attention. In years past, a sitting President up for re-election would have torpedoed his own chances with such an announcement. But by the looks of it, President Obama didn’t hurt his re-election chances.

I’m not here to talk about the 2012 election, though. What I want to spotlight is the issue of gay marriage and why it’s becoming acceptable for politicians to come out in favor of it. Yes, there are still votes like Amendment One in North Carolina and Prop 8 in California, but overall the tide is turning and America is now more in favor of gay marriage than against it. (50% to 48%)

I have news for a lot of you. Gay marriage is becoming a reality in this nation, and there’s no reversing this trend. It’s going to happen. It might not be this year or next, but by the end of this decade, we’re going to see a lot more states legalize gay marriage, and in the not-so-distant future, be it a Supreme Court ruling like Loving v. Virginia, or a Constitutional Amendment, gay marriage is going to be a reality in this country.

And this puts a lot of Christians in a quandary. All our lives, we Christians have been told that gays are evil, that legalizing homosexual activity, let alone allowing gays to marry, would be the end of civilization. If we let this happen, God would strike us down Sodom-and-Gomorrah-style. So how are we Christians going to deal with this new reality, how are we to behave in a world where gay marriage is becoming the norm?

How I Met Your Mother: "The Magician's Code"

Quick Review: So that's where they're going with this.

Marshall is partying in Atlantic City with Barney when Lily goes into labor, so the frantic father-to-be scrambles to get back to New York in time for the birth. Meanwhile, Robin and Ted try to distract Lily from her painful contractions. -tvguide

Spoilers ahead, so watch the episode before you proceed. Especially this one, because you know they like to do all these big reveals at the end of the season. Why do you think they stretch these things out so long? I mean, the entire show is built around the final reveal when Ted meets "The Mother," and if you've been watching for a long time, you don't want to go and get spoiled right when they finally get to the good stuff. And even if that's not the big reveal, you know we're going to find out who Barney is marrying. They've been teasing us for a whole year about that, so don't you think you should just watch the episode first? That's what I thought. I can't believe we even have to have this conversation.

This Review of 'The Avengers''

Quick Review: This is the superhero movie you've been waiting for.

Full Review: It began with one of the best post-credit sequences we'd ever seen. At the end of Iron Man, a movie that proved Marvel really got it when it came to turning its own properties into films, we were treated to one more scene. Tony Stark comes home and finds Nick Fury waiting for him. Fury, played by none other than Samuel L. Jackson, informs Tony that the hero universe is a lot bigger than he realizes, and they need to talk about a new team he's putting together.

That one moment changed everything. Up until that point, a superhero movie franchise was self-contained. Even though comic book heroes crossed over all the time, we never saw it in the films. Marvel, with its shiny new movie studio, decided to change all that. They figured, why not have Iron Man, Captain America, The Hulk, Thor, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and Nick Fury occupy the same universe? Thus began a series of movies that we knew would culminate in one of the biggest superhero movie events ever to grace our movie screens: The Avengers.

This was a pretty gutsy move on Marvel's part. Many studios have trouble committing to one big-budget blockbuster, and Marvel committed to at least six. Superhero movies are often hit-and-miss, and there's the fact that the longer a franchise runs, the worse the movies get. Marvel risked running out of steam before even reaching this promised movie, and they countered that by making sure each one of the movies leading up to The Avengers was solid.