News Flash

I might have a new favorite cut on THE album. Is it the Canadian idiot? Being that I’m surrounded by Canadians and former Canadians here in this North Star State, I better not admit to that. And white I can, to a great degree, relate to “White and Nerdy,” I was never in the glee club nor on the chess team.

The song that is me, or should I say us, is “Trapped in the Drive-Thru.” This epic, which runs longer than 10 minutes (for good reason), is taken directly from the weekly dialogue of me and my wife. I can’t figure out how he did it, but he possibly tapped into our cell phones (he’s an accomplished geek, you know) and transcribed our conversations. He did, however, substitute “Burrito King” for Arby’s in one verse. Other than that it’s pretty accurate.

It is our story. And now it is our song. And now we can now listen to it, all the day long.

I suppose our next obligation is to contact Al (we are his close personal friends, you know) and offer our faces for a possible video of the song. We have been busy this summer and that probably explains why he couldn’t reach us in time to include a video for this song on his just released CD and DVD combo.

Oh well, I am getting pretty hungry now. I better go hunt down my wife and see what she wants to do for brunch.

I Found It

dig dat pimped ride

No, this is not a post about the 1970s ad campaign by Campus Crusade, which featured small white buttons with those three words printed simply on them. It was a well funded campaign and included billboards, maybe radio and TV, along with the ever-present buttons. I remember that it caused some of us to wonder why it was “it” and not “him.” (Or, would it have been better theologically to display something like “He found me” on those buttons?) But that was then and this is now. Living in these early days of the new millennium, I’ve been searching for a different small round object. This one is shiny and has lots of music on it, and from my small sampling has been selling very well. In this autumn of 2006, Weird Al has yet another CD to peddle.

The good news is: I finally found the sought after Weird Al album “Straight outta Lynwood.” Or should I say, it was found for me. After checking my fifth “sold out” retail establishment, I approached one of those geeky kids in the blue and yellow at Best Buy and explained my dilemma. Being the good sport that he was, he felt my pain and came to my rescue. Because the store’s computers were down, he couldn’t easily check the inventory of the other local stores; but he did look up the actual phone number of a nearby store and called them direct. And yes indeed, they had the merchandise. I was in luck (even though I had to drive in the opposite direction of home.)

Long story short, I have the disk. And it is now, as we speak (or should I say as I type), on my iPod. My favorite cut by far is the title track “White and Nerdy,” where he pokes fun at himself for not being able to relate to the gangstas. Both the audio and the video are awesome.

Kinda Weird

I should have stood in line Tuesday morning at 8 am. For my search this Wednesday evening for Weird Al’s latest CD was in vain. I knew it would be a hot commodity. They were no where to be found.

I should be a buyer for Target or Best Buy. When will these corporate suits give the “weird one” his just due? The man is a genius. A maestro. A national treasure.

He writes the songs that make the whole world sing. He transcends all styles and genres. He is the true uber-musician. The great one. The one that can adapt to any movement in the history of music.

I wonder if his plea on one of the earlier released singles encouraged fans to run and buy his CD instead of downloading it. Entitled “Don’t download this Song,” it tells how pirated music makes it tough for him to pay for his gold-plated Hummer and his diamond lined swimming pool. So go out and buy it, like you know you should. But shop someplace far from where I pick up my goods.

News Flash

I can hardly contain myself. I’m literally shaking now as I type. I’m experiencing euphoria on a level I haven’t experienced in years. (I’m sorry this is not related to the fact that my lovely wife arrived home from a weekend retreat this afternoon.) I just finished laughing myself to tears. My belly was jiggling enough to completely digest my entire supper and I think there’s probably now room enough for two types of pie now available in our kitchen.

I was fully engaged in my latest addiction, wikipedia. It’s kind of like surfing the net only in a more civilized uniform form. (As I’ve mentioned before, this encyclopedia seriously dwarfs Britanica, World Book, Colliers, and the unabridged Oxford Dictionary combined.) I forget now where I started, by I ended up on the entry for one of my favorite artists, Weird Al Yankovic. In reading about him it said that his most recent album was released on September 26, 2006. What??? But today’s only the 24th. Do I really have to wait two more days for the actual release? Boy are these next two days going to drag by! I suppose that I will have to be camped outside my local Best Buy or Target come Tuesday morning at 8 am.

In doing a little more digging, I found that at least two of the videos from the album are already available on line at www.youtube.com. (What a wonderful cyber-world we live in.) I watched “White and Nerdy” and “Don’t Download this Song” multiple times. I shared my joy with my wife and daughter. And now I’m thinking about requiring my son to come home early so he too can feast his eyes on this musical delight. A dad’s got to do what a dad’s got to do.

Please pray that I will be able to sleep tonight.

Blink and you'll miss this blog

blink, blink, nudge, nudge, say no more

I finished reading an awesome book Wednesday night about decision-making. So with much confidence and determination, I have decided to blog.

The Week in Review (sort of, like thru Tuesday)

Monday night was a challenge. Tuesday night was great. The first school night of the week began and ended with my daughter struggling through a paper on worldviews. She had to give a summary of the views of three figures that dominated the thinking of the 20th century, namely Marx, Freud, and Darwin. I wrestled with trying to help her, giving her a balanced representation of these three without actually writing her paper. But it was tough. Finally at about 11:00 I needed to go to bed. She needed a conclusion. So I told her to write: “But, what do I know, I’m only 16.”

I thought it was a great ending to a so-so paper. However, her teacher did not think so. He was quite upset and threatened to have her re-write the paper. So you can guess who got his behind chewed Tuesday afternoon. But Tuesday night made up for the earlier attack.

At the Porch for our weekly Bible Discussion Group, we attempted to finish off Joshua, putting him to rest with a quick read of the last three chapters. But it was not to be. We started and ended with chapter 22. Part of the reason for the delay was the fact that a few in the group are well versed in their Hebrew and are able to give us translations for the meanings of some of the original names and places. This brought us into discussion about some of the bizarre religious rituals and practices of the Canaanites. Well, one thing led to another, and with only one female among our group of 12, the discussion turned into a laugh-fest full of double entendres and lots of bad guy humor.

But amongst the “fun,” we were struck by the power of this part of the story. Believe it or not, suspicion and misunderstanding reigned on the west side of the Jordan River (and probably both sides.) The eastern two and a half tribes wanted to build something for the kids and grandkids, so that future generations would remember what happened “way back when.” The western 9 and ½ (rounded up to 10) became suspicious of what those other folks were up to and made plans to wipe them out. They thought that those on the other side of the river had resorted back to some nasty Canaanite practices. But fortunately, the west-bankers got the full picture before they wiped out their kin.

So out of our belly laughs and snide comments (or maybe in spite of them) came an encouraging word. We were painted a great picture of an ancient people, “being people,” but reconciling before any heads rolled. I guess in most cases it’s easier to make peace with someone while their head is still getting nourishment from below.

I do love the O.T. (i.e. Hebrew Bible or Torah or Tanach or earlier testament, for my more enlightened friends). It’s not as tame as we like to think.

Tuesday night took me back many years to my days sitting in certain Hebrew and O.T. classes taught by a guy that would get so excited over the great stories. He was an old, tall, lanky fellow that frequently got in trouble for the way he taught these stories and for the comments that he made. His constant immersion in these texts often put him at odds with the powers that be and what was “proper” at the time. But he was great at giving us an appetite for these books that Jesus read.

It's a Wiki World

First IBM ruled the digital world. Then Microsoft took over. Not too much later, it was Google that made a huge splash. Now is it the Wiki Foundation's turn?

I’m sure that many, like me, have increasing turned to wikipedia for quick answers to what or who or how or where on a variety of topics. Each time I visit the site I’m blown away by the breadth of its capacity. Today I was doing a google search for a local Minneapolis radio station. And behold, one of the top suggestions led me to wikipedia. This ever-present expansive encyclopedia had multiple pages on this local (not-that-popular) radio station, describing its history, philosophy, and relation to the Twin Cities market. Is there anything that’s not included in this behemoth?

I’ve been running into this site with ever greater frequency of late. It touches on literally everything. And now I’ve been reading about how they plan to expand into numerous other endeavors: including a wiki-dictionary, a wiki-library, a wiki-university, wiki-quotes, wiki-news, and wiki-whatever else you can think of. And now they even plan on having a non-wiki type wiki-encyclopedia where only “experts” will have access to its content. I suppose this is in response to wiki gone wild feeling that many have.

I had breakfast last week with a group of guys from “the Porch.” A good number of the guys, as far as I could tell, were academicians. Sitting directly across from me was a professor at a local college. He was bantering back and forth with another gentleman about movies they have recently seen. As part of the attempts at humor they were pretending to be real sticklers about sources for their information. In response to one query, the professor across from me (with tongue planted firmly in cheek) blurted out that his authority on the matter was wikipedia. From the round of laughs I could sense the distain that probably exists around this website as a legitimate source for information (at least among some in this group).

Not sensing a similar backlash on most construction sites, I’ve been personally unaware of this possible prevailing attitude. But I’m sure the wiki people are in tune to it. And that’s probably why they’ve introduced something called “Citizendium,” which I just read about this afternoon. In an attempt to raise the bar of legitimacy I’m assuming that the wiki-meisters are looking at ways to still promote their open sourced philosophy while at the same time build in “safe guards” (and with it a higher reputation) for those looking for gravitas (how’s that for a throw back to the 2000 election and a fine example of a run-on sentence.)

So it seems as though wiki is mutating quite well these days and will soon take over a good chunk of our cyber lives. Then we will all know what we all need to know.

I’m even now starting to question why I didn’t drive around looking for a wiki-church this Sunday morning. I guess they still have their work cut out for them.

The Wall of Sound

the scream

For those of you who know my daughter, you know that she talks a lot. (That is why, in part, that she has a boyfriend who, to my knowledge, has yet to speak a word. And that is why, in part, I blog. It just doesn’t make sense for me to get a word in edge wise around here.) And while she talks a lot, she’s probably known more for the very high volume of sound she can create. And she has no mute button. Nor have I been able to find a volume switch. Very loud is all she knows. Very loud and very often describe the sounds that bounce off our walls each evening now that she is not hanging out with her boyfriend and absent.

She was in the middle of a diatribe this evening which she was sharing with all of our neighbors to the east and south (those were the windows that were open.) Some people worry about their pets disturbing the neighbors. We have greater concerns.

I tried to break in to her monologue to encourage her to whisper. I kept motioning for her to bring it down, bring it down. When she finally told me that she was whispering, I came to the realization that her whispers are louder than my shouts. And I always thought that rock music and jet airplanes were two of the worst things for the eardrums.

Well, the next two days we are getting a reprieve. She is on her way with her school to Wisconsin for a “bonding, get to know each other” time at some camp. I thought I should give a fair warning to all our friends to the east. I might still have a little cotton left in my supply if you let me know soon enough. Your ears will thank you.

The photogenic family 

Boy, am I going to miss my brother! 

A shot from the summer 

At least he picked a Dodge 

playing a little four on the couch (with Raven cheating) 

More Piggy-backing Holidays

Back when I was at summer camp during my elementary school years, I was playing a huge group game something like dodge-ball or tag. The leader of the game was calling out certain people to be represented on a special team. The criterion for inclusion was having a birthday on a holiday. I very much wanted to be on that team. So I dug into the recesses of my brain and pulled out the fact that my birthday fell on that memorable and infamous “Women’s Suffrage Day.” Yes, you skeptics, it is a real holiday. August 26th is the anniversary of the day that women in the U.S. got the right to vote. And we’ve been suffraging ever since. (Just kidding.) Actually it’s kind of nice, because my wife took me to the polls this evening (and she even told me who to vote for!) What a country!!

But back to why I bring up this ancient memory. I had a birthday recently and once again I reached out and grabbed my wife’s age. I received some cool cards and stuff that day, but one item has quickly become part of my daily routine. It’s a simple item. It’s small. It’s black. It’s low tech. But, boy does it make reading easy. I can now eat and read with ease (two of my favorite activities.) My hands are free to feed my face while my eyes are free to quickly scan each page. Sometimes the greatest gifts in life are the simplest.

my black leather book weight

An Anti-post

Well, I’m back in the pattern of not blogging. It actually feels pretty good. Two days in a row. No posts. And with no posting comes no worries. No loud protests. No chance of offending anyone. No chance of tempting someone to actually read this drivel. No chance that my wife will want to talk about something I’ve written. Wow, now I’ve got something to think about.

Happy Belated Back-to-School Day

With the official holiday of Christmas on December 25th, we usually get the day before as a bonus holiday (unless you work retail.) And with the official holiday of Easter, we get the preceding Friday as a matching holiday (although we Americans don’t take it as seriously as they do in Europe.) I was thinking today that we should lump the past two days together as another bonus two-fer deal.

My thinking was prompted by a comment made at Tuesday evening’s Porch discussion. One of the well-spoken attendees told us about that very day being his favorite (by far) holiday. Christmas is o.k. as a holiday, he said, but the Back-to-School holiday trumps them all. The joy of seeing all the little munchkins march off to school is far better than anything he could envision under any Christmas tree. What a delightful day—it even makes the passing of summer seem worth it.

So, whereas most of us got to take off work the Monday of this week in celebration of Labor Day, the higher holiday—the one all parents revere—came on Tuesday. So next year, as you try to squeeze in one more day at the Minnesota State Fair, remember that this day of labor is a mere “eve” of that greater day of freedom, the first Tuesday of September. Maybe we should start calling it “Freedom Day.”

Two Days in a Row

My head is swimming. It was another invigorating evening at the Porch. We wrestled with Joshua, kind of like Jacob wrestled with the ?? in Genesis. We read through a good chunk of the bloody chapters, the ones where Joshua swings a mean sword and kings lose their heads, and it seems justified (at least in their eyes, for their situation.) It’s too late to give a fair summary of the evening’s discussion (how’s that for a cop out), but there was one verse that popped out at me for the first time (even though I’ve read the book numerous times.) It’s not a positive uplifting verse like 24:15 (as for me and my house. . . .), so I won’t recommend it for a life verse. But here goes--Joshua 10:14 says “There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the Lord listened to a man.” (So much for prayer.)

But I guess that’s a fair representation of the importance in taking care when we read any text and a fair representation of why this evening’s discussion was especially challenging, stimulating, and, I hope, fruitful. (I do apologize for sometimes going overboard with the commas too.) Our concern was that we not read this book as the Pharisees (and the Crusaders) did, and thus receive the rebuke of Jesus.

Laboring at the Keys

It’s Labor Day and I actually observed it in a proper way. For most of the past few decades, I’ve used this first Monday in September to catch up on drywall work that didn’t get done in the waning hours of summer. (Well, actually I did spend some time on paper work at the desk, overdue invoices and estimates, but my fingernails have remained mud-free.)

So what’s the deal with me blogging today? Does this conflict with my attempt to actually be unproductive and restful on this special holiday? And if I sit at the keys, do I really risk the chance of developing carpal tunnel.

I’ve noticed too that it’s been quite a while since I’ve posted anything. The entire month of August 2006 will be missing from my now somewhat-long list of monthly links on the sidebar. A sort of black hole or gap between my two front teeth, a broken string, a missed at bat.

So why should I now step up to the plate? I’m rusty. I might strike out. Or worse yet, I could get a brush-back slider, or even a fastball to the thigh. It might hurt. I could write something that I might regret, something that my wife might read and REMEMBER and hold me to.

I guess part of the impetus for blogging today is a conversation I had this morning with a friend with a new computer (with a wireless internet connection.) He wanted to know how to find our blogs—my wife’s, mine, and this Canadian’s (a guy he met at Cornerstone.) (I’m sure glad there’s not a surcharge on parentheses. (I really should thank God more often for them.)) But anyways, he’ll probably actually show up at this site and only find two month old news and think the site is abandoned. I felt that I owed him a howdy do (or is that due).

The other reason for blogging now is to help myself remember (and help keep me accountable to) my thoughts and plans. As my blog has been sparse, so has my mind been full of thoughts and possible actions. As my writing has waned, my reading has increased. After long hours of physical labor, I didn’t have the energy to write or create, but I did manage to crack open a book or two (or actually about a dozen or more.)

(After all, I’ve seen every episode of “Everybody Loves Raymond,” so what’s left to watch on the tube? I haven’t caught the “24” bug yet, I’m not smart enough to figure out “Seinfeld,” and I don’t want to be tempted by any home remodeling projects that look, oh, so easy.)

But back to the books. Besides working my way through the book of Joshua (yeah, that one with the blood and warfare and prostitutes) with my Tuesday evening study group and Anne Rice’s latest novel on the early years of Christ with a monthly book club, I’ve tried to tackle a wide range of challenging books. I’ve dabbled in philosophy, sociology, psychology, theology, history, and biography often at the same time.

It’s been fun and it’s kept me inside, out of the nasty summer heat and humidity (and away from yard work.) However, I did actually get out there and mow today. With almost two straight days of rain even OUR grass is growing.

Well, lest I use up my allotted words for this month, I better bid my blog adieu and break the news to the Warden that yes, there is an actual entry for September. So there.