...and now you know

I love Raisin Nut Bran cereal. I don’t buy it very often, because I get tired of it after a while, and it’s sort of expensive, but I really like it.

I love Jesus, but not always very well. I love my family, and my friends, but I don’t always do that very well, either. I pronounce “either” “eye-ther”, not “eee-ther”, and I do this because when I first met my friend Angie in the 8^th grade, she said “eye-ther”, and I thought that was so cool, so I started saying it that way, and it’s since become habit. I do not say “nye-ther”, I say “nee-ther”. At least, I think I do.

I really like “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”, and the Knights Who Say “Nee!” It makes me laugh. There are a lot of stupid things that make me laugh. But truly stupid things just annoy me. There’s a fine line sometimes, I admit. When Noah screams, that really annoys me, but I haven’t figured out an effective way to stop him from doing it, especially when we’re driving in the car and he’s sitting directly behind me.

I like words a lot, which is one of the reasons I think I’ll make a good editor. I like words like “blather”, and “pulchritudinous”, and “splendiferous”, and I like to look up things that I don’t know. When I’m writing, I like to use a thesaurus. I’ve even learned the keyboard shortcut for the thesaurus in Word, and that’s saying a lot. I just don’t use keyboard shortcuts—I don’t know why—but I know this one, and I use it. It’s Shift+F7.

We just got “Mission: Impossible” on DVD. When I was a senior in high school, or, more accurately, the summer after I graduated, three of my friends and I went to a summer camp, and we had this game of sorts that we played, stemming (very distantly) from Mission: Impossible. Actually, I think the only thing the game had in common with the movie was that we “sang” the soundtrack. You know, “Dunh-dunh, dunh-dunh-dunh, dunh-dunh, dunh-dunh-dunh, Dunh-nuh-nuuuuuh, Dunh-nuh-nuuuuuh…..Dun-nuh!” Anyway, I have no idea how the “game” got started, but you used your blow-dryer like a gun, and you had to shoot the other person. If you didn’t happen to have your blow-dryer with you, you used your hand. And then there was this whole other thing with the sign-language letters “K” and “P”, and we did this “ka-poo” thing, and maybe that was the sound of the gun shooting, but over it all was the Mission: Impossible theme song. That is a prime example of stupid things I think are funny. You may just think it’s stupid, but it was a lot funnier in person. I don’t remember what happened if you got “shot”. Maybe Angie can help me out on this one. Anyway, we laughed till our sides hurt, and I’m sure people thought we were mentally deranged, but it was really funny, and lots of fun.

I don’t mind doing laundry, but I hate putting it away. Folding’s not so bad, but it is always followed by putting away, so it has a negative connotation in my mind. But I enjoy the actual laundry sorting and loading the washer, as much as one can enjoy housework.

I’m enjoying the “Fellowship” book. I haven’t skipped too much, just a few songs or verses of poetry, and I’ve made a concerted effort to read most of those. There haven’t been the pages of description that I remember, but I also think those come in the second or third book—at least, that’s where I remember them. Anyway, I haven’t skipped too much this go ‘round.

I should really be folding laundry, so I’m going to do that now.

un-original

I've spent about an hour or so reading several Christianity Today articles, while waiting for Shutterfly to upload my pictures. Long story, but I get a free hard cover photo album from them, originally a $40 value!

Anyway, that wasn't my point. The articles were my point. There's this one, which is sort of about sex and the church, but is also about so much more--the Church's relevance in our society, its relevance in our individual lives...it's long, but there are some really good parts.

And then there's this excerpt from one of Kyle Lake's books. He's the pastor that was electrocuted during a baptism here in Waco. The article's a look at Romans 8:28. It's pretty good, too. One of my favorite lines was, "Yet, no matter who you are or where your theology stands, all people who strive to thoughtfully deal with God and life are forced to live within the tension of God's providence and a chaotic world."

And, just for the sake of staying current, here are two semi-opposing ideas about the Da Vinci Code. The first article is pretty anti-Da Vinci Code, but in a reasonably intelligent way. My favorite line from this article was, "I love Jesus. It makes me physically sick to entertain discussion about the ways in which the defining acts of his life—his Passion, Resurrection and establishment of the Church—could be a diabolical scam that he never anticipated nor experienced. It would make me sick to hear salacious lies about anyone I love; how much more my Savior?" And then there's this article, which talks about how the Da Vinci Code can be a positive thing for the church. Also reasonably intelligent. For the record, I don't have a definitive opinion either way toward the book/movie.

And other than that, I have nothing to say.

Bloggity-blog blog

Unlike this guy, who is annoyed by the blogging world as a whole (at least he sees the irony of this), I am fascinated by the globality (is that a word?) of blogging. I was blog surfing today (more in a minute on how dangerous that can be) and was struck by the international scope of the blogs I was viewing. Of course, I didn't have any idea what most of them said, since they weren't in English. But I saw blogs of people from Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Venezuela, Taiwan, Japan, and Canada. (Does Canada count?) Way to be a global thingy, blogspot! (For those of you who don't watch Sesame Street, Global Thingy is a little cartoon that teaches us all about peace and harmony and how to get along.)

So the dangerous aspect about blog surfing (by clicking the "next blog" button at the top right) is that you never know what kind of stuff you're going to run across. I stumbled on one blog that pinned my hair to the wall. (I think my Memaw used to say that.) I'm not talking about ignorant (or intelligent) political postulations or self-aggrandizing teenager babble, though I saw plenty of that. I'm talking porn. Straight-up, graphic porn. I was shocked that something like that would be so easy to access. So, beware. Also, did you know that the only way to report objectionable content to blogspot is to "flag" said content? Then blogspot will review the number of flags a site receives and check for inappropriate or illegal content. Seems a little irresponsible to me. I'm sorry, but there are some things that just don't need to be "said", so take your "free speech" melodrama and...well, anyway. Way to be a socially-negligent thingy, blogspot!

So to cleanse the mental palate, I took some cute, wholesome pictures of cute, wholesome things. I also had lots of fun playing with our new digital camera (Canon DID discover the water damage in the old one, but we were able to buy the upgrade for less than we paid for the old one.) I marveled at the brilliance of digital photography, where it's okay if you take 75 pictures just to get 10 good ones, and you don't have to spend any money to find out which ones look stupid. Overall, it's been a very enjoyable morning.