What my dad does when I'm away. . .

Well, last Saturday my dad went diving with Ron Smith, Al Stout, Rachel his assistant, and her dad. There's a funny story about how Mr. Smith let the boat go and my dad had to jump in after it, but I won't go into it. Here's a video he made with his new underwater camera mount:

I am amazed

This is awesome. Sheer, total awesomeness. I want you to read the next sentence with care and an open mind.

Today, off the coast of Africa, Somalian pirates hijacked a Ukranian freighter loaded with weapons.

You can't make this stuff up. This is like something out of a bad Tom Clancy novel. God has such a sense of humor. Here is the New York Times write-up on this. I think it's hysterical because the plain, old fashioned piratical talk is just put out there like it's Obama or Palin speaking.

Okay but first of all:

"Ukrainian freighter loaded with tanks, artillery, grenade launchers and ammunition"

What the heck? Ukrainians? Really? This is way too good to be true.

Also: 

Mr. Sugule spoke on everything from what the pirates wanted (“just money”) to why they were doing this (“to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters”) to what they had to eat on board (rice, meat, bread, spaghetti, “you know, normal human-being food”).

"Just money," and "normal human-being food" - I laughed so hard it hurt.

And best of all, then the New York Times asked why they stopped it. This is the funniest thing I've heard in a month of Mondays.  

"'We just saw a big ship,' the pirates’ spokesman, Sugule Ali, said in a telephone interview. 'So we stopped it.'"

First of all - oh my freaking gosh, that's amazing. Second of all - spokesman? Seriously? Can you imagine that conversation: "Can I talk to your spokesman?" "Um, yes, let me get him for you . . ." Whispers to friends with a hand over the receiver - "We have a spokesman? I don't know either but this American is asking for him!" 

I have found something both fun and addicting

Judging a book by its cover. It shows you the cover of a book, and you guess how many stars Amazon users have given it. I did this 30 times, and got 10 right. That's after going to 3 and 15, so I'm pretty proud of myself. It's a lot harder predicting where people are tasteless than you might imagine.

http://www.judgeby.com/

Props to the oh-so-wonderful Good Morning Silicon Valley newsletter; my concession to my inner geek.

My sister's poetry

My sister, Hannah, is now taking the poetry class I took when I was a junior in high school, except now she's taking it from Joshua Gibbs whereas I took from Justin Hughes. They were asked to write a short poem on any subject that interests them. Hannah is a violinist and she really loves music in general. She was having trouble figuring out what specifically to write about so I suggested that she write a poem about Symphony Conductors (something I had thought about putting to poetry sometime; but of course she beat me to it). Here's what she wrote:

Hannah Noland
Mr. Gibbs
Poetry


The Ascension


The night he performed, I was there
Sensing the stillness, the vibrations, the lyrical power.
A creation – words, as it were,
Spoken directly to my soul.

A child’s first climb up a tree -
Love, terror, joy, pleasure compounded,
Listening, waiting, the triumphant ascension.
The climax, awaited, rejoiced.

Four quick strokes of his baton,
An imitation of God.

It's not finished, it still needs to be edited by her peers and such; but it looks like a "finished" poem to me. I thought it was very good. I'm pretty proud of my sister. . .

I think this is quite appropriate

Joel Osteen: Megachurch "pastor," speaker, Larry King interviewee, and author. Of fiction.

Props to http://faithandinches.wordpress.com/ Taken in JFK airport, of all places. Those Yankees get some things right, don't they? Hope for everybody, I suppose.

I'm telling you to wait, because this gets amazing

Okay, so a little background. If you don't know who Chuck Norris is, you need to do one of the following immediately: a) Get out more or 2) Go here and learn. For the record, he's a political conservative. Sorry, did that catch you off guard? I didn't think so.

So. Recently I've been surfing the internets trying to find the company that publishes a book I have to cite in my Rhetoric Term Paper. At said company's website, something in the lower left corner catches my eye. This is where it gets amazing. First, the title.
Black Belt Patriotism
Okay. What the heck? I'm speechless. Did someone let the 15 year old homeschooled boy try to write a book? What happened here?

Then I saw and understood the picture.
I don't know if you can tell, but that is, in fact, an American flag on his left sleeve. Priceless.

Yes, folks, Walker Texas Ranger has finally told you how to be a patriot if you don't want yourself roundhoused. But what could such a fount of knowledge have to write about? Let's see the 5 issues which Chuck says are important enough that he had to write about them.

1. Immigration and securing our borders
2. Winning the culture war for the sake of our children,
3. Triumphing in the war on terrorism
4. Tackling fiscal irresponsibility—both in government and at home.
5. Battling the problem of widespread obesity

If you did not laugh out loud at number five, you have no soul. Or shake your head in befuddled sorrow. I can accept that.

My polls- A defense

l would like to defend some of my polls, mostly the one about what God would smoke. I think this is a serious theological issue, similar to the one about how many angels could fit on the head of a pin. It may look ridiculous, but look a little closer. Okay, yeah maybe it is ridiculous. But you have to admit that it is funny to reject that God would smoke, because God is a CHRISTIAN!