Things To Do Before I Die #1

Attend Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

Well, I added a little something to the blog.

I read a lot. I've not read as much as usual so far this year, but I generally read a lot, and as anybody who knows me knows, I like to recommend books and generally share (or force) my love of books with people.

So now, right under the profile, will appear a picture of the book I'm currently reading. I'll update this as regularly as I start new books. Clicking on the picture will take you to its Amazon page.

Also, underneath that picture, is a link to a list of the books that I've read during this year. I've been keeping track this year just out of curiosity over how many books I typically read per year. I've, of course, also rated how much I enjoyed each book.

Feel free to comment on that page or recommend books to me.

Also Glad to Know (I Think)

You scored as Bomb. Your death will be by bombing. You will probably be an innocent bystander, not doing anything wrong and not a person who was targeted at, just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Bomb 73% Suicide 60% Natural Causes 60% Disappear 60% Stabbed 47% Gunshot 47% Accident 27% Disease 27% Suffocated 20% Posion 13% Drowning 13% Cut Throat 7% Eaten 0% How Will You Die?? created with QuizFarm.com

Glad to Know

You scored as Chalcedon compliant. You are Chalcedon compliant. Congratulations, you're not a heretic. You believe that Jesus is truly God and truly man and like us in every respect, apart from sin. Officially approved in 451. Chalcedon compliant 100% Modalism 67% Adoptionist 33% Pelagianism 33% Monophysitism 33% Monarchianism 33% Nestorianism 25% Gnosticism 17% Albigensianism 8% Apollanarian 0% Arianism 0% Donatism 0% Socinianism 0% Docetism 0% Are you a heretic? created with QuizFarm.com

Lectureship Quote of the Day

"As luck would have it, God is with us." - Randy Harris

Impressions of Lectureship

It’s going great. Mark Love (who’s performing Kalyn and BJ’s wedding) puts on a great show. I loved Lectureship when I went to school here (though I hated having to skip class to go to them), and it’s nice getting to experience all of it now. I’ve a couple of potential blog posts bouncing around in may head that have been sparked by the lectures. They may come out sometime. We’ll see.

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The quote of the week so far (or a close approximation of that quotation at least):

“My homosexual brother and I often visit gay bars together.” – John Mark Hicks

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The worst moment of Lectureship so far:

When several people sitting in front of me walked out of the lecture after Hicks’s comment. Hicks (who I think may be kin to me some way) said this in a discussion on how purity metaphors have been ill-used in our tradition (Church of Christ), to the point that people become physically disgusted at the mention of certain sins and, as a result, we have not allowed themselves to display Christ’s incarnational love toward the marginalized in our society. It was a great lecture, and I was saddened that some people wouldn’t even hear the lecture out.

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The most constant annoyance:

So far, I’ve attended eight classes and three theme speeches. In each of these eleven talks, at least one cell phone has gone off. On the first night, Dr. Money got to the rhetorical flourish at the end of the big speech, and a cell phone went off and sort of ruined what was really an important moment.

If I ever teach a college class again, I’m going to become a one of those cell-phone Nazis who kicks the student out of the class when their cell-phone goes off. I was nice to the students last semester, but now, I’ve decided, it’s a lesson people have to learn.

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The second best quote so far (once again, an approximation of that quotation):

“It always interests me at how many sorts of Bibles there are. There’s the Student’s Study Bible, the Businessman’s Study Bible, the Baby-Boomer Woman’s Daily Devotional Bible, and so many others. I keep hope that some really intrepid publisher will come out with a Bible for me, the Study Bible for the Clinically Depressed.” ---Steve Weathers (of course)

Reminder #21

Don't write anymore disgusting blog posts, at least for several months.

Reminder #20

You know, if it’s in the middle of the night and you don’t want to turn on the bathroom lights because you’ve been sleeping and their ridiculous brightness will be too painful to you and will keep you from going back to sleep and you’ve slept in a sort of funny position, too, and you just don’t know how accurate your aim is going to be at that commode that you can’t really see that well anyway, remember: IT IS OK TO SIT DOWN TO PEE.

It was already kind of weird that my beard (or gotee I guess) was red.

But grey already. That's a little too strange.

Too strange for what? I'm not sure.

I guess it doesn't matter that much though. I'm in the process of getting rid of it.

But I have to grow the whole thing out first just to see what it looks like. A full beard. I can't waste what I got.

No Crying

The house needed cleaned. Pretty badly. Sunday's my day when I don't allow myself to grade anything. So, it seemed like a good day to clean. So, I did.

And for some reason, I like to drink milk when I clean. That's really the only time I ever just drink milk by itself (like without chocolate cake or little debbie breakfast brownies or anything like that). Milk and cleaning house just go together for me.

So, I was vacuuming and I reached for the green glass that had about an inch of milk left in it. Since there was so little, I was going just down it. But when the glass was upside down, I realized that it wasn't running out of the glass into my mouth. Instead, I was staring at it. It wasn't moving. Wrong green glass.

Anyway, I'm slow sometimes. And the milk, though it had been slow coming out of the glass at first, suddenly sped up a lot and fell at me.

Thankfully, I was quick enough to not duck. I dodged. It fell on the floor.

Luckily, I was already vacuuming.

Milk and cleaning house just always go together for me.

I've been interested in St. Francis. I ran across this poem attributed to him.


Lord, Make Me an Instrument of Thy Peace

Lord, make me an instrument of thy Peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love,
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
When there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
When there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that
I may not so much seek
To be consoled, as to console;
Not so much to be understood as
To to understand; no so much to be
Loved as to love:
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning, that we are pardoned;
It is in dying, that we awaken to eternal life.

Mindless Rambling

The Story.

So, tonight I went to Wal-Mart. And I saw two old people there, a couple, seemingly somewhat well-off. And they were concentrating very deeply on the crucial issue of which paper-towel brand was the better buy—Brawny or Bounty. They had their reading glasses on, comparing the labels in order to see which brand would give them the more paper for their buck. And they kept recalling the past, hoping to determine which of these had proven the most absorbent in the disasters they could remember. I watched them a while; I had several products to pick up on the aisle. And by the time I left, they still hadn’t chosen. In fact, the Kleenex Vivo (or something like that) brand seemed to have suddenly caught the woman’s attention. I left.

My Initial Reaction. (To be read sort of in the voice of Lewis Black.)

I was shocked! Horrified! Really, really stunned. And a little depressed. I just kept thinking that that was the sort of decision this couple should have made thirty years ago. You know! You’re supposed to get into a routine that makes some of those smaller choices go away. I was feeling sort of Sartrean, I guess, weighted down by this that horrible load of freedom, and I was thinking that eventually that load would lessen. I was looking forward to having routine, to having fewer choices to have to make someday. You know. I was thinking that you’d eventually get to the point where you could just go to the store and buy Brawny because you are Brawny people. You decided that you were a Brawny person when you were twenty-eight (after a few years of experimentation and all), and now you’re eighty-two, and you go to the store, and you don’t even look at all of the other choices. You just buy Brawny. That’s it. No decision process. No having to remember your reading glasses so that you can see how dense each ply of paper is. The little decisions should be made already, so that you can focus on the big ones.

My Reaction Now.

I think I’m insane. So it goes.

They were probably Bounty people. That’s what they looked like. They had probably just forgotten. Because they’re old.

Some of my sister's and BJ's engagement photos are posted over at Emerald's blog. Well worth checking out.

Super Bowl XL

Well, Super Bowl XL starts in thirty minutes. It doesn't matter too much (without the Cowboys), but I guess since it's the super bowl it has to be noted. So now it is.

My Picks

Who I Think Will Win: Seattle

Who I Want to Win: I don't care. Seattle's never won one. But Cowher's a cool coach. Maybe I've a slight preference for Pittsburg. That's why I'm picking Seattle to win.

Who really cares though?

Reminder #19

When shaving and you get the hickups... stop shaving!


---This piece of wisdom, courtesy of Will.