Here and Now

Man, I just burned an hour reading about Fridge Logic and some of the cross links (like "What Happened to the Mouse" and "Plot Holes"). I experience Fridge Logic all the time - after conversations, after sermons I've preached or heard, after reading articles or books or watching stuff - you know, when you're thinking back on (the conversation, the TV show, whatever) and suddenly realize, "That didn't make any sense at all." I've made logical jumps in sermons that, when thinking back on what I said, I realize that I didn't connect the dots, for example - you know, I say point A and point D but don't make reference to B or C...sigh. But usually it's TV or movies - and the website has all kind of examples of that like**: In A Christmas Story , w hy didn't the powers-that-be use hot water to get Flick's tongue off the flagpole? **(so, you have to click the link on "It Just Bugs Me" to get to the Fridge Logic e...

I just read this post a few minutes ago (I read a variety of blogs - this one is mostly about roleplaying games) in which the blogger makes the statement: Sometimes I feel like I belong to a generation that sits in the dark, watching The Big Bang Theory and wondering why their friends don't call anymore. Worse, we spend our time posting inane garbage to Facebook , instead of actually calling a human being on the phone to hear a familiar voice. And I don't know how old this guy Christian is (but he likes Innocence Mission, so he's okay with me) but I think everybody under - what - 50 or so is in this category, or at least so many of the people I know who are my age and a little older and it seems like EVERYBODY younger - this is true of. Sit by myself, writing a blog, tweeting, surfing facebook, whatever - more connected than ever before, more isolated than ever before... In the post he says something about one of his friends dropping out of the game because of personal st...

So a few months ago I put together what I call the Ultimate (Virtual) U2 Concert - I pulled live performances from about 20 bootlegs and live official releases - fifty plus songs (like 4 hours, I think). One of the songs that I play a lot is from their All You Can't Leave Behind album - Kite. Somewhere I can taste the salt of the sea There's a kite blowing out of control on the breeze I wonder what's going to happen to you Do you wonder what has happened to me? The story of the song is that Bono came home from tour and wanted to do some "daddy" stuff - took his kids up on a hill near the sea and tried to fly a kite and it was an unmitigated disaster. I love the song - I have my own kite stories. When I was four years old we lived on Shelter Island, a little island off of the north shore of Long Island, NY. It's only accessible by ferry ( I just Google mapped it - yeah, I thought that somehow I'd be able to tell where I lived 38 years ago from above...)....

Okay, seriously, anybody remember that old Petra song? I cut my Christian musical teeth on Petra (man, what a weird metaphor... anyway) - the "trilogy" of Never Say Die, More Power To Ya and Not of This World . Great stuff, for the time anyway... So, it's twenty something years ago and I'm listening to the song "Killing My Old Man" one day. The chorus goes: Killing my old man You may not understand He's a terrible man Got to make a stand And kill the old man So - I'm listening to that, and my dad walks by my room. Then he walks by again. Then he comes in the door, "What kind of song is that?" (had he only lived long enough to hear song lyrics today, he wouldn't even have been fazed...but I digress). I explained that it's a Christian song about letting the old man in me - the flesh, the sinful me - die so that I can live in new life in Christ - and it's a play on words, you know, to get the listener's attention. Okay,...

Well, I don't pretend to understand html*** but somehow I lost my ability to track how many people visit the blog. I think I've got that back up and running. I may be better off not knowing, however. No pressure then, you know? On the other hand, there is value in knowing that somebody is paying attention. I mean, everything we do is kinda on a stage, isn't it? Mark Beeson at Granger Church said at Innovate last fall words to the effect, "If you say it - it's permanent." No, there was more to it than that - but his point was that if you say something, it doesn't go away - it'll get youtube'd twittered, texted, something'd - it's public (worldwide, even) and it's permanent. But, in a way, it's always been like that - though not in the same way. The things we say and do don't leave, do they? I remember the day my father told me he was disappointed in me (of course, he had reason to be - I had stolen something - but I sti...

So I DID stay up after the Superbowl (and, yeah, I was pretty happy the Saints won - been a fan since Fifth grade or so...second to the Steelers, of course...) and I did watch Undercover Boss. The episode, for those who didn't watch it, was about the President of Waste Management going undercover in a bunch of entry level positions (recycling plant, porta john emptying, getting stray papers flying around a windy hillside, riding in a garbage truck). It was good to hear the President say that he didn't realize how hard his people work (physically) and it was enlightening hearing him say that he didn't realize how the policies that he handed down from his desk affected real people in sometimes not good ways. I was really glad the guy got fired from one job (couldn't fill enough bags of flying paper at the landfill) and I was not surprised he couldn't cut it on the recycling line, either (I did the UPS unloading one Christmas so I get how demanding assembly line work ...

...for Saturday's post to be a condemnation of anyone who has ever read this Blog - I really did figure I had just been gone too long... Hmm - analytics still shows zero page hits... oh well... Thanks for checking in on me, though...

I stumbled across this post this morning and...well...wow... Lizard people under Los Angles (reminds me of when Orson Welles did the War of the Worlds broadcast and everybody freaked out. How long have people been so gullible? Okay, now that I think about it, is it really any different from all those Paranormal shows on TV? Not the fictional stuff like Ghost Whisperer or whatever, but on SciFi (sorry, SyFy - ugh), Discovery, the History Channel (the freakin' HISTORY channel for crying out loud), National Geographic Channel...and...wherever, I don't watch 'em, I hate 'em. But we'll believe anything, won't we? Yeah, we've come SO far...

Hmm... "Nobody's fault but mine..." Intriguing - I started regularly posting again January 26 - on January 27 my page views went to zero and haven't budged since. Did I wait just that little bit too long and alienate all my readers?**** Did Google analytics go down? Did I have phantom readers to begin with? Dunno. I guess I'll just keep plugging away and see what happens. I was way more comfortable blogging when I didn't think anyone was reading it. Now that that's the case again...hmmm, maybe I'll blog more. Yeah, I'm a paradox. That's why Lori loves me, honest... **** I can confidently say "readers" because I have two followers (I know who you are) so, however that works, they must know I've updated...right? Um...hello...(tap - tap)...is this thing on?

I hate reality TV (hate's not really a strong enough word...loathe...despise...abhor...detest...well, you get the picture) but this Sunday night after the Superbowl is a so-called reality show called Undercover Boss that is really intriguing me. How many times has an employee said something like "If my boss tried to do this job he'd be fired" or something like that. I can't stand Idol or Survivor or Hell's Kitchen or whatever. I can just tolerate home improvement shows (though Extreme Home Makeover not so much) and sometimes it's fun to watch stuff like Ace of Cakes or whatever (though the "cakes" they make are about as Reality as the Simpsons). But this intrigues me - a CEO trying his or her hand at an entry level job? It can't be pretty. I bet at least one gets fired (justifiably) - I hope that it won't be too...exploitive? I mean, shows like Wife Swap are all about putting the worst possible combinations together and then watchi...

I love maps - and maps that tell me goofy things are even better :) So, below is a map of all the McDonald's in the US. Why? 'Cause the farthest you can ever be from Mickey D's in America is a 145 mile drive (granted, that's in the population deprived state of South Dakota***) and east of the Mississippi you can't drive more than maybe 30 or 40 miles, tops, right? I mean, we're in the middle of nowhere, and I can McLunch in Warren or Corry (20 min or so). *** South Dakota has just over 800,000 people - Greater Pittsburgh Metropolitan area is 2.4+ million...

Wow - I stood up this morning...and sat right back down. Not my back this time, though, but felt really dizzy. Managed to stumble around to let the dog out and do some things I needed to do... Laid back down again (I only got about 3 hrs sleep last night), stood up...right back down. This is a freaky feeling... Unless the diet pepsi we have has fermented, I can't explain it...

Michael (who is in, like, Mongolia or something right now) posted this on his blog: "Some tell us that following Jesus is a simple matter of inviting him into our hearts. But when we do that, Jesus always asks, 'May I bring my friends?' And when we look at them, we see that they are not the kind of company we like to keep. The friends of Jesus are the outcasts, the marginalized, the poor, the homeless, the rejected - the lepers of life. We hesitate and ask, 'Jesus, must we really have them too?' Jesus replies, 'Love me, love my friends!'" - Peter Storey, former leader of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa, in "Listening at Golgotha" I so completely get that. And I want to live that...

I had a post ready reminiscing about my childhood - but this trumped it... Maybe tomorrow. Last night Lori and Rachel were watching American Idol (yuk) and I was puttering around and Elie was bouncing between the living room (where the popcorn was) and the dining room (where her toys were) singing: Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious If you know what I am saying you will be ferocious I LOVE my kids' interpretations of song lyrics (Rachel, years ago, it was "Joy to the world, the Lord is Gus...") *** It's just too much fun listening to them belt out songs, completely confident in their lyrics, even when they change them from chorus to chorus. So nothing deep here about it - just that my six-year-old is hysterical sometimes - and she knows it :) *** if you have all the time in the world, and can tolerate a little PG-13 humor, there's the internet archive of misheard lyrics, kiss this guy (named for the misheard lyric in Hendrix's "Purple Haze")

Yeah, it's already past my birthday in this new year - and I'm just getting around to the blog...sigh... I didn't guess how busy I'd be moving back to the area. But it's not just that. I don't know if it's just getting older (I refuse to ACT older...but some things you just can't stop...) or if I'm just running dry - but it seems like I just don't have anything left to say in the blog. If I'm thinking theologically, I'm usually putting that toward worship and stuff here at church... It's not like stuff isn't happening in our lives. Rachel and Elie are loving school, Lori discovered that she really likes being a classroom teacher and loves her class of fifth graders. Lots of stuff has been going on at church - things are really happening here... Dunno. Christmas day we had a brief service and toward the end, as I was finishing up, getting ready to pray, Elie brought up a paper airplane (it was a REALLY informal service, but p...

"Churches should be places where people come to hear the story of God and to tell their own." I just read that line in a book called Chasing Francis . Is that what church is? I like the simplicity and honesty of the statement - but is that all? It seems a little...self-centered. You know - it's about me hearing and me telling. What about me serving and me sacrificing and...? So, that's not ALL churches should be. Okay - then, yes. Churches are where we hear about God and where we tell what God has done in our lives. So - yeah, that's it. I just was struck by that statement.

So I stop in a little early for my shift at the Crossing (I stopped at the hospital to visit someone and I couldn't) and there's about a half dozen teenagers sitting around the kidney-bean shaped table talking about...well, everything. And I hear (from a girl, no less) - "There was an episode of Star Trek about that..." About what? Dunno - I was heading to the other room. When I came back they were talking about Pokemon...sigh... But I'm a little comforted that Geeks still talk smack about Star Trek - and Pokemon - and all that goofy stuff. And it's not just because I'm a Geek - but because kids are still being kids - being themselves - and hanging out. This whole new virtual world scares the cr@p** out of me. Not because I'm so tragically unhip (I am, but I don't care) but because I worry about kids being more connected than ever before - and more isolated. I just had a conversation with my friend Jim (well, a couple weeks ago) about what I w...

So I spent about 10 or 12 hours working on a video that is 1 minute and 8 seconds long. I had to learn to use a brand new program (Adobe After Effects), I had to use gimpshop to edit some still images, audacity to edit audio from 5 different sources and, of course, edit it all together into something that will, hopefully, matter... I can't wait to use it Sunday - of course most people who see it won't think it took very long - but that's okay, it's almost exactly how I wanted it to be (the one minor issue is a thin blue line where I chroma-keyed an image - and didn't get the settings quite right). I got so immersed in doing the video, I almost missed a lunch appointment I had today with a friend - I was, of course, almost 20 minutes late. Jim knows me. He brought a book. But I lost all track of time doing the video. There are some things that I just so enjoy doing that I can get completely lost in them - video editing being one of them (model trains and music a...

Well, Lori gave me a hard time this morning because I haven't blogged in...well, forever. A couple things have happened that have kept me from the keyboard. The first is that I'm trying to pour all my creative energy into what we're doing at church - so I haven't wanted to be distracted by blogging and facebooking (like I've been any good at that, anyway) and the like. But more importantly, I haven't felt like I have anything to say. I mean, sometimes it's okay to take an online quiz to find out what classic movie you are (if you look back, you'll discover that I was once Apocalypse Now and once Easy Rider, go figure), but I'd rather actually have something to say. See, the thing is, at Otterbein church I have lots of opportunity to talk with real, live people the kind of stuff that I would normally have posted here. I had a great conversation about spiritual gifts and being filled with the holy spirit with Steve the other day and I started a c...