Practical Jokes

I have made a rather stunning discovery, which I would like to share. Someone showed me how holding down the shift key on a mac will make everything slow down. So what you can do is hold down the shift key and hit an expose button over and over. Then close down the computer and later you'll have to wait until the windows stop bouncing at their extra slow pace. He said you can do that to other people and it's a lot of fun. I am too lazy to attempt it on other people, I did it to myself. Then I had to e-mail something and was really mad at myself for doing that earlier.

As I was watching the windows bob up and down rhythmically I thought to myself: self, I was just the victim of a retroactive auto-practical joke. I could do this sort of thing all the time. Right before I drift off to sleep I could tie my legs together. If all goes according to plan (fall asleep within five minutes of the event), the memory of tying my legs would never make it past the very-very short-term memory phase. I would wake up the next morning with no idea of what I'd done the night before. What a pleasant way to start the day.

When you think about it, it isn't fair at all. You see, what makes a practical joke sort of alright is its tit-for-tat nature. If you play one, then you are asking for it. Not so if you play one on yourself. A self inflicted practical joke will always be past-self playing a trick on future-self. The future never gets its own back.

And this is the case with everything, not just practical jokes. Take politics. Clinton left behind a load of troubles for Bush, who left an even bigger mess for Obama to make worse. Leaving politics (I hate politics), just look at life in general. We are always doing things to ourselves now which we will regret later. What's a tattoo but a nasty trick a twenty year old is playing on a fifty year old? You can laugh at your past self but you can never give it a good talking to. Hm, I'm sure there's a moral in there somewhere.

Scariest word in the English language. . .

Oops [!]

Usually accompanied with an exclamation point when it is written,* "oops" has long been considered the scariest word in the English language. At just four letters it packs a mighty punch. Although, its true strength can only be measured by the context in which it is uttered, "oops" is never a good thing to hear.


Close cousins to oops [excluding vulgarities]:
Whoops
Whoopsies
Whoopsiedaisies
Crud bucket
Shucks
We're in a tight spot
Did I do that?


*Depending on the enormity of the disaster. If it's a fairly harmless mistake, such as when a few innocent hairs are plucked out of existence, then only one is necessary. However, if it is a disaster of nuclear proportions, two or even three exclamation points may be necessary to convey the utter badness of the situation.

I just don't think people understand

So here's the headline I saw a few days ago:
U.N. alarmed by Lebanon rocket attacks on Israel
I am intrigued by this. Because, you see, it's so ridiculously obvious. Are there rocket attacks that don't alarm people? I would hate to see them. I mean really, how boring would that attack be?

We continue reading, though

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

You've got to be kidding me. Just when Kofi Annan steps down, we get a man named
Ban Ki-moon? We serve a marvelously funny God, my friends

expressed alarm on Wednesday over reports of Lebanese rocket attacks against Israel and urged all parties in the region to avoid actions that could make a bad situation worse. "That is ... a very alarming, very disturbing and troubling situation," Ban told reporters

Again with the alarm. Apparently General Ban hasn't been told that this sort of thing has been happening since the Muslims invaded like 1,000 years ago. And now he's asking Israel not to retaliate. Someone needs to give the poor man a briefing. Retaliation is my Israeli neighbor's middle name. Not really, but you see my point. Revenge is something they are good at. Their ancestors avenged the rape of their sister by convincing an entire city of men to circumcise themselves, and then came in on the third day "when they were sore" and butchered the lot of them.

Ban said that U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, were investigating the rocket attacks launched from inside Lebanon. The incident took place on the 19th day of Israel's offensive against Hamas militants in the Gaza strip.

Tough, that one. Israel fights Hamas militants. All of a sudden, rockets start
appearing out of Lebanon, a known supporter and harbor for Hamas militants.
Careful now, don't think about this too hard or you might get a headache.

Security sources in Lebanon said five rockets were fired, though two fell in Lebanon.

So these guys aren't just idiots because they're fighting against one of the most militant nations on the planet, they're also idiots in the traditional sense of the word. They can't even point and shoot.

"Hamas rocket attacks must stop and at the same time I have been condemning
the excessive military operation by the Israelis," he told an earlier news
conference in Cairo . . .

Apparently we're going to be forgetting that whole part where Hamas stole the land from Israel. Just like we forgot about Hitler annexing Austria. Because that worked so well.

The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza said 1,010 Palestinians had been killed
and 4,700 wounded by Israel so far. The Israelis say on their side 10 soldiers,
and three civilians hit by cross-border Hamas rockets, have been killed.

The moral of this story, kids, is: don't mess with Israel. 13 deaths compared to 1,010?! That's absolutely incredible.

Here's what I don't think people get. People don't understand that God's promises to Israel aren't finished. If God is going to redeem the nation of Israel as He has promised, He's got to have something to redeem.* In the Six Day War in 1967, Israel was attacked by Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt. They were outnumbered almost 2 to 1 in infantry, 3 to 1 in the air, and 3 to 1 in tanks. By the end of those six days, Israel had had 800 men killed, 2500 wounded, and 15 captured. The four Arabic nations had lost 13,000 men, 8,000 wounded, and 6,000 prisoners. Israel lost 46 aircraft as compared to more than 400 aircraft. Don't mess with the Lord's chosen. David didn't kill Saul even though he was unfaithful, because Saul was God's chosen one. I can think of no other nation on earth that is that small, surrounded by that many enemies, and that has lasted for that long. So, as the eloquent Pastor Hadding has said on many an occasion, I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'. 

*This does, in fact and in most every way, represent what I believe. It may or may not represent what Rob believes, we haven't discussed it yet. Something tells me we will shortly. 

I answer my own question

So here's my answer. Why are there poor? Well, it's my fault. And it's yours. I hope it's the fault of every single one of you. It's President Bush's fault, it seems to be Obama's fault, Clinton claims it's his fault, but I'm not so sure that we can blame it directly on bin Laden, Hussein, or even the serpent. 

The poor are the Church's fault. I come very close to believing that when I stand before the Judgment Seat, God will ask me "And how about that guy you saw under the bridge and didn't stop for on January 6, 2009? What did you do about that? Hmm. Well, what about . . . " 

Most of us have heard Mr. Doug Jones's take on the gravity of economic sins. I'd agree with that. Too many preachers use the divorce rating among Christians as a barometer for the Church (this is not at all to justify or reduce the importance of marriage as holy and sacred; divorce is horrible, but we fail to realize that poverty and hunger are equally horrible tragedies). What about the number of people below the poverty line? What about the number of deaths by starvation in the US? What about the number of thefts carried out by desperate parents?  I'm not even touching Africa yet. I'm just asking you to look at what is happening in our own backyard. 

Christ said that it wasn't the healthy but the sick who need the doctor. The gospel dies in upper middle class Suburbia. It explodes in the projects. While popular European Christianity (and, some argue, even American Christianity) begins to die, the faith is growing by leaps and bounds in China, Pakistan, India, Africa, and the Middle East. Could it be because the Catholic church did so little to relieve the abject poverty of the natives that South America has never been stable and prosperous? 

What I'm saying is this: the Church is to disciple all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Trinity. We preach the Gospel and disciple the nations by living out the faith. We start living like Christians, and people will start noticing. Spurgeon once said, joy is our missionary. As Pastor Wilson said, you don't reach atheists by debating them; you get to them by having them over for dinner. Theology doesn't save people; the Gospel does. St. James applies this to giving when he says "If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, be warmed and filled,' without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?" Too often Christians talk about God's love to an atheist as if it's this ethereal emotional thing that couldn't help anyone even though, deep down, it really wanted to. God's love is not a pretty, teardrop-eyed, softly-glowing-in-the-snowy-moonlight sort of thing. It's visceral, physical, and sometimes it looks like a toothless, legless, drugged up old man in a wheelchair who hasn't had a bath in a month. If an atheist looks over and sees a Christian volunteering at a soup kitchen every Thursday, when you start picking up homeless guys and buying them dinner, when he sees you sacrifice for those less fortunate, he'll be ready to hear about that love. That Love that will turn the world upside down. 

Giving to the poor is the Church's responsibility, its duty. We can't expect the government or other agencies to do it, however willing President Obama may be to do so. The poor are out there because we Christians are letting them be out there. Every family that starves to death is an indictment on Christianity; every homeless drug addict is condemnation. And who knows, perhaps the day the Church ends poverty will be last day of all? 

I catch the general public up

So it's finals week for most of the collegiate world, and we are no exception. While I have plenty of work left to do and it's pretty early, I thought I'd take a sec and update everybody on what's been going on. 

1) Not to toot my own horn, but so far I'm batting 1000 on my movie predictions. The Day The Earth Stood Still got panned so badly it made Twilight look good. 

2) I think if I nail every one of my prophecies regarding upcoming film, somebody should buy me lunch. 

3) So it was a little chilly tonight: 

4) This excites me to just short of no end. 

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE HD

5) The word "epic" hasn't really been creeping into the general vocabulary of our class so much as violently hurling itself, leaving behind it a trail of devastation and laughter. 

6)  Rob and I will be running like madmen (at least, I will be) down the concourse of the New Orleans Airport towards nine or so frantically waving people in approximately 114 hours and 48 minutes. Not that I'm counting. 

7) I am very much looking forward to Tim Tebow running all over the OU defense and destroying that poor sap that got the Heisman. 

8) Blackberry waffles hot off the iron, topped with cold syrup, and flanked by pepper bacon and cheese scrambled eggs, is pretty much the ultimate brinner. 

What's wrong with this picture?

It's a little hard to make out, but that's Starbursts sitting on Kaleb's plate. He left them sitting there like he was just peeling off shrimp tails.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is how short on food we are. Instead of chips (like normal people) we are eating Starbursts with our grilled turkey sandwiches (or veggie burgers, if you have the enormously good luck of being me).

Galactophagist (n.)

You heard me - Galactophagist. This is the new word of the day. Some of you philologists might be able to guess this one. Same rules as before (basically, don't be lame by cheating). Go ahead, impress me.

Finals at NSA

Finals for the Jerusalem term at NSA are almost over. Pretty soon the only thing we'll have to remember them by is our memories, a few grades, and some wacky pictures. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but it seems like study materials have a tendency to end up in weird places when NSA students use them.

This, ladies and gentlemen is why God made camera phones:

First NSA Final

Well, that was my first Final exam at NSA - Rhetoric 101. I suppose that could have been more painful. I'm going to decide just how painful that was after I get the grade back. Anyway, I'm still alive; tired, but still alive. I'll keep you updated on my vital signs as I get through this week. Prayers are always appreciated.

Blessings

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.

I find Scott Adams quite funny at times

So I was cleaning out the old email inbox today, and ran across this little gem of a link:

Best Fundraiser Ever

Now Scott Adams' blog (he's the guy who writes the Dilbert comic strip) is normally far from wholesome entertainment (Trey, remember the hat?) and I would greatly encourage you against reading it as a general thing. But this bit is extremely amusing to yours truly.

Microwave woes

Last night I was heating up some quesadillas in the microwave. It was one of those deals where you open the box, take out some stone-like things in the shape of a crescent, stick 'em in some sleeve, and then microwave the bloody heck out of them.

Well, I think there must be some universal law that you can't get a good ol' Aristotelian mean out of a sleeve pocket dinner. Either there's still a frozen portion (usually in the middle) or it becomes scalding hot. Actually, what usually happens is that you get both. The edges are scalding hot but the middle is nice and frozen. In the case of last night the edges were actually burned and the paper was about ready to catch fire. And yet, once again there is still a frozen piece the size of Alaska. So what do you do with the part that's already cooked to death? Slice around it and put the frozen part back in. But I don't want to ruin my nice crescent. . .

Maybe this'll be one of the things I ask God about when I get to Heaven.

I need some Sulfur Hexaflouride

really, really bad.



Don't try at home? Adam, be serious. I can sound like the devil himself, and you expect me not to try this?

I am Rob's questions of "what did I just watch"?

I watched a very interesting movie the other day. I needed to unwind after a day of studying so Kaleb and I rented and watched "Fight Club." This is, by far, the strangest movie I've ever seen and my thoughts on it are not solidified yet. As a result, I'm going to treat you to my thoughts on the matter and I simply ask you to bear with me.

I am going to summarize the movie's themes a little for those of you who haven't yet had the pleasure of subjecting yourselves to "Fight Club."

The movie seems to be about the shaky personal identity of modern consumers. The modern media and the ethics of consumerism have trivialized life to such a degree that no one truly knows who they are anymore. A name is not good enough, a name is simply an identifier; it's not an identity. My parents could have named me something different and it is conceivable that I would still be the same person overall. Even if I can trace my family name to two or three hundred years back, I have not truly learned anything about me. There most be something else, something more basic that defines me as a person.

It seems to me that people tend to define themselves by their religion. If someone asked me "What are you?" I could answer in a number of ways but I would probably answer with "I am a Christian. I am a child of God, born in sin but redeemed by God's grace - the blood of Christ." My identity as a Christian is the most meaningful and the most identifiable thing that I can point to illustrate to others what I am.

Consumerism is essentially a religion in disguise. For quite some time people have been inadvertently turning Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness into a very redundant list. This is, perhaps, a strange way of saying that people are slowly equating these three terms. And sadly, many people equate "the pursuit of happiness" with "getting as much stuff as we can." Therefore, these people believe that life (and the job of the government) is about being free to acquire as many possessions as possible.

Since, consumerism is a sort of religion it follows that people would tend to define themselves using its terms. However, consumerism only manifests itself in people's material possessions. So, in the same way that I identify myself as a Christian many people inadvertently identify themselves with their possessions. But because this identity is hard to illustrate to others they simply decorate their lives with a myriad of possessions and people will slowly start to figure out what kind of people they are. So the movie asks: "What if you lose everything?"

Spoiler warning: I might not be able to resist telling you the ending

The movie is a psychological drama. The film makers invite the audience to enter into the mind of a man who goes for days without sleeping. He is a recall coordinator who has to travel all over the country doing inspections. He describes himself as being a compulsive buyer of household items. He tries to solve his problems of identity with the kinds of things he uses to decorate his house. After trying to solve his problem of identity with his possessions he tries going to numerous support groups to get a high off of sympathy and crying. This fails when he realizes that there is a woman attending all of his support groups that obviously does not have the diseases the support groups are for. He ends up going four days again without sleep and this is when some part of him rebels. He begins to develop an alter-ego named "Tyler Durden" who personifies rebellion against established consumerism, radical existentialism, and charisma. Since we are seeing everthing through his eyes, the film makers very successfully make the audience think that Tyler Durden is a real person. Tyler Durden blows up our hero's condo and forces him to redefine his life. He has imaginary fights with this person (while really simply beating himself up) and sets up clubs all around the country called "Fight Club." This is where all the men who are sick and tired of their normal consumerish lives go to beat themselves up. Eventually, these clubs form into a terrorist organization called "project mayhem." Project Mayhem's main goal is to destroy everything that makes a modern consumer's life possible. Although, our hero remains involved with "Fight Club" project mayhem evolves without the knowledge of the first personality (the one who imagines Tyler Durden) and thus his alter-ego does things which he cannot control. He rigs up all the buildings of credit-card companies with demolition explosives and manages to get all civilians out of the buildings through the extensive "Project Mayhem" network.

As the story progresses, our hero becomes more and more like Tyler Durden (as personified by Brad Pitt). Even though the two characters stay separate (in a mix between Multiple-personality Disorder and schizophrenia) he begins to act more like his alter-ego, the man he wants to be. When he no longer needs his alter-ego, he shoots his alter-ego through the head (don't ask me how this works) and becomes an authentic human being, defined only through his actions - the marks he made on the world.


That's just what I think about it. This by no means exhausts the subject. I could be completely wrong and I'd be interested to hear your thoughts about it (especially the part where he shoots himself in the head and he manages to survive, but Tyler Durden disappears; that was weird).

I am helping cure racism . . .

By posting this.



NB: Please don't go randomly clicking on Flight of the Conchords videos, dear young readers. They can get rather mature rather quickly. And by mature I mean immature yet dirty. Funny, isn't it?

For legality - I downloaded this video using Google video. I'm obviously not using this for profit, just to make a few friends laugh. And this is easier than getting the embed thing off youtube, etc. I love the flying conchords, and if this is infringement I'll pull it at once. I just don't think it is.

"Fat Ass"

I recently re-watched "The Shawshank Redemption" and let me just say, that is one of the best movies I've seen. But that is not why I'm writing this blog post. I'm writing this post because of one character in particular: the one Captain Hadley kills because he was crying in his cell.

In the movie this character was referred to by the other inmates (Heywood in particular) as "Fat Ass". Since this is the case the credits have him listed as "fat ass".

How would you like that? You know he has to want to tell people that he played a part in "The Shawshank Redemption". But then the poor guy has an awful choice to make. Does he admit to his character's ignominious name (sorry for such a big word), does he lie about his part, or does he simply not mention his role in the movie? I guess he just has to tell people that he played the part of "fat ass". But gosh, how's that for eternal remembrance?

I wonder if that nickname stuck with him. Are people to this day referring to him as "fat ass"? If so, how much of an incentive is this to improve his physique in regard to his posterior tissue and general excess of flab?


Now, I realize that these people have a tough time thinking up names for extras; but come on. They could have called him "Man with a rather large posterior" or, uh. . . "big guy bludgeoned by Hadley". Ok, ok. Those wouldn't fit. But they've gotta figure out something other than "fat ass". This is a person's self-esteem we are talking about. Oh well, that's life I guess.