Friday, September 29, 2006

A Picture with a Green Frame






Once, on a dare, I ate an entire ten-pound bag of basmati rice.

I used to build cardboard boxes out nothing but cardboard and tape.

Once, I ran so fast that my shoes caught fire. My feet still have the scars.

Yesterday, I walked to the train station.

When I was 15 years old, I punched a guy so hard I broke my own nose.

I like to play sports.

No I don'!

WTF?

That was a major faux pas!

My desk is covered with an ear wax and turkey gravy patina.

It was valued at over 1 million dollars on antiques roadshow.

My son will turn three next saturday.

He can already read in five different languages.

Once, I caught a bean bag without even looking.

A tower of blocks stacked six feet high contain more energy than a nuclear bong.

If a stand of trees has more than 14 individual trees, it's not a "stand." Instead, it's called a shrift.

I invented the word "blog."

I taught Michael Jackson how to "moonwalk."

I have walked on the moon.

Some lead, some follow, some get out of the way. I do all three at the same time.

If an elephant were the size of me, it's tusks would have to be made out of gold just to survive more than three days.

A beer bottle once broke me over its head.

I read it on Reddit.

I call people "macaca" and get away with it.

I'm waiting for my ride, but I have to wait inside the store where they let me play the organ.

It was an awesome old funky Hammond organ.

I wanted to buy it.

A cell phone can be built entirely by hand using only an old cellphone.

I don't give wedding advice. I am wedding advice.

There are 8,093 results for "bong" on flickr. There are 82,173 results for "jesus." There are 61,037 for "sex." There are 233 for "chode." There are 1,174,306 for "tree." There are 3,349,095 for "me." There are 1,917,440 for "you." Sounds about right.

Love means never, ever wearing parachute pants out in public.

Love means not owning parachute pants.

Love means cheese.

The Seahawks will score more than 30 points against the Bears on Sunday.


Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Do (Not) Pass Go

I hereby issue a warning: the main portion of this post will discuss matters theological, religical, and possibly pseudo-philosophical. If you are not interested in this kind of stuff (or even if you are) I would recommend reading the following instead:


  1. If you live in the District and you want to fear for your life: Read This

  2. If you like football and profanity: Read This

  3. If you like addictive and maddening Flash games: Play this



There, that should cover all but the most masochistic of readers (Hi!)

So, I recently borrowed/was handed unsolicited a book from my friend Mike. It looked like this...

And here is what Mike had to say about it. Wait, no, here is what he had to say about it.

Here is what I have to say about it so far. And by "so far" I mean, halfway through the second part (the part about practical application)

After reading the first part all the way through, I decided that it may (not) require a re-read. But anyway, I liked some things about it and disliked others. I liked the obligatory rundown of what some of the hallmarks of postmodern thought are. Every "postmodern" or "emergent" theology book is required by law to have some sort of introduction to the idea that all inputs can/will be interpreted differently by different people, and the chapter in this book on that subject was probably the best one I've read. Second, I liked that it was short, since my reading time is synonomous with "times when I find a seat on the train or bus" However, just because it is short does not mean that it is light. Mr. Rollins is, regardless of all judgment of his theological beliefs, a good writer. More importantly, he is a concise writer. If there's one thing that obfuscates the intent of any philosophical piece it's florid prose. I guess Mr. Rollins is not trying to obfuscate anything. Third, I liked his idea that the Bible is best read with a "prejudice of love." If we're going to read it with a prejudice (and if you would just read the freaking intro to this book, you would know that that is unavoidable) it might as well be with a "prejudice of love," right? And fourth (there are more than four things I liked about this book, but this post is already getting long), I loved the linearity of the presentation. Instead of introducing ideas all scatter-shot and letting the reader sort things out, Mr. Rollins has presented them in a logical fashion in which one thought leads directly to the next. This makes the reading easier, but is not very "emergent." It's almost like he has a specific thing he is trying to make us think!

Now, as a counterpoint, here are four things I didn't like about it. First, in my opinion (IMHO for those that only know IM-English) there is not enough discussion of what Jesus actually taught. Instead, we are treated to dozens of quotations from contemporary, or at least relatively contemporary, philsophers talking about what Jesus meant when he said what he said. To me this seems like scuba diving in Rimrock Lake and reading a sign on the bottom of the like that tells you what the Great Barrier Reef looks like. Actually, that might be the world's worst analogy, so never mind. But you get the idea, right? Second, Mr. Rollins seems to flirt dangerously with a faith of pure existentialism. He struggles and ultimately fails, again according to me, to define faith as anything other than some undefinable "experience" of God. Sort of a, "you'll know it when you see it" kind of thing. I can't cotton to this thinking. I just can't. Reason, science, evidence, these all have to play a part in it. Why would the original Christian documents spend so much time emphasizing the truth of what happened (death, resurrection etc) if "what really happened" is irrelevant in the face of a "God Experience?" I guess I would fall somewhere between Mr. Rollins and Francis Schaeffer on this topic. Third, and this one may (not) be fair, I don't like the services described in the latter half of the book. To me they sound like shows. Good shows probably, but shows nonetheless. I think this ties in to the existentialism of the book/emergent movement in general. You can easily use a good show (cool art, candles, digital projectors, constant music!) to produce a feeling of "experience!!!!" without any substance. Politicians know this, rock stars know this, it is common knowledge. I'm not saying that the services described have no substance, but the focus of them seems to be on having it look "cool." Even a dirty heathen could make a "church" "service" look cool and seem "authentic" if you taught them a few key words and ideas. They don't need to believe it, but they can sure make other people "feel" it. This worries me in general, and maybe I'll write a post later about what I think might be better. But maybe not. And finally, fourth, I wish "emergent" writers would stop using the same ol' people to endorse their books. I can look at the cover and know what Brian McLaren thinks about it, you don't need to tell me. Wait, that's a bad example because his blurb is on the cover. Well, imagine that it wasn't, I would still know what he would say about this book. Isn't there somebody out there who we don't know about that liked this book? Anyone? Or is it just that "unconventional" "emergent" people are just as easy to market to as any other group and that upon seeing a few key endorsements we go into a sort of unthinking trance and buy the book? Yeah, probably that one. I wish I was a religious book publisher because that's where the money is: selling books to upper-middle class, self-loathing yet strangely self-righteous urban white people. Wait, am I just talking about myself here? Crap!

List Tuesday: It's All Over



Two Signs that the Apocalypse is Nigh (Or Metaphorical Apocalyptic Drama if You Don't Believe that Revelations is a Literal Description of What Will Happen In the END TIMES, You Stupid Heathen)


  1. Weird Al is cool again (I say "again" with some hesitation as I'm not sure if he has ever been cool with the general public before, and by general public I mean "anyone other than 12-year-old boys")


  2. So liquids are now allowed through security at the airport, at least in small quantities. Of all the types of liquids you can have, four were specifically mentioned as "allowed" in this morning's Metro Express. One of the four was "personal lubricant."

Friday, September 22, 2006

Random Picture Friday: That Darn Cat Dog



This is such a beautiful picture. We love it's evocation of the wide open field of freedom so brilliantly espoused in the doctrines of baseball. Whatever that means. We just made it up right now.





Let us tell you, if we had a nickel for every time we've been viciously body checked by a giant dog in a giant field of grass, well, we, uh, still wouldn't have any nickels. Dang.

Thursday, September 21, 2006

We Will All Be Astronauts

And by "astronauts" I mean "rich" thanks to Web 2.0

Here is my sales pitch for the all new A Ton of Bricks, complete with logo!



Welcome to the all-new A Ton of Bricks; We're about what Web 2.0 is about. We are on the brink of a new age and Web 2.0 is the new New.

It's all about community. Taggable folksonomies! On-demand news clouds with one click! Roll your own podcasts! Cry out, blogosphere! Social is the new push!

Here are some of the features that will be incorporated into the All New A Ton of Bricks - this will change everything.


  • Dynamic inline updating with yellow fades!

  • An AJAX-driven GUI

  • disintermediate peer-to-peer communities

  • post rss-capable networking

  • Ruby on Rails

  • enabling of embedded platforms

  • incentivized user-contributed network effects

  • Emergent topologies based on PERL-enabled sub-scripting

  • DRM-free video sharing through Skype

  • Monetizing through AdSense

  • Real-time aggregation of content-sensitive Atom feeds




We shall transcend borders.

Bad Photoetry Thursday: It's Been a Long Time Coming

Here it is again! Yay!

And before you ask, no, I don't know what it means. You tell me what it means, smartypants.

Here We Go

So what do we do when it seems as though the world has fundamentally changed since the last time we wrote a post? We don't have an answer, but we will see as things progress. Today we will just write a post about food, how's that for starters?

Food thought #1:
Even though it seems like it, it is not a good idea to have Black Pepper Jack Doritos, French Onion Dip, mini Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and 5 beers for dinner. Trust us on this one, you will regret it the next day.

Food thought #2: We have finally decided that disliking Magic Hat beers on principle because so many other people (read: New Englanders) think Magic Hat is some kind of unassailable masterpiece brewery, God's gift to beer drinkers etc is pointless. What changed our mind was when we opened a bottle of MH's Seasonale Jinx and found the following quotation on the cap "All my friends are brown and red." Any brewery that is willing to quote Soundgarden is all right by us. Plus, this just shows that Magic Hat wishes it were a Pacific Northwest beer.

Food thought #3: For the rest of our life, every time we drink a beer, before we take our first sip, we will raise it to Will Stavlund's memory and say a prayer for his family.

Food thought #4:
We have devised the best recipe ever. Just listen to this. Dorito. Lasagna. All you do is replace the lasagna noodles with Cool Ranch Doritos. And maybe replace the ricotta cheese with that liquid nacho cheese in a can. How could this not be good? Well, maybe the tomatoe sauce should be replaced with some kind of taco sauce. This is making us very hungry.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

William Addison Stavlund



May 9 - September 12, 2006



Our Father, who art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22

If I missed your blog in this list, send me an email and let me know. I want to hit as many as I can.

Thursday, September 07, 2006

The Power of Christ Compels Me

Did you know that the Vatican (part of the Pentavarate if you didn't already know) has a Senior Exorcist? It's true. His name is Gabriele Amorth. What a cool job. I can totally imagine what a conversation with him would be like between me and him at one of the stupid conferences I have to go to and I am meeting him for the first time and we are exchanging business cards and all that other stuff.

Me: Hi, I'm Schuyler.

Him: Hi, nice to meet you. I'm Gabriele by the way.

Me: Gabriele? Kind of a girly name, no?

Him: What? Are you saying that I'm..

Me: Dude, I was just kidding. So, what brings you to this conference.

Him: Oh, same old stuff, injuries, brain damage, new research, you know.

Me: Yeah, I hear you. Who are you with?

Him: Um, I'm standing here with you right now.

Me: No, I mean, who do you work for?

Him: See? You're not the only one who thinks he's funny. And I work for the Vatican. I've been there about 35 years now.

Me: Wow! That's quite awhile! What do you do there?

Him: Well, I started out in the heresy hunting department, for, oh, about 15 years then I moved over to the regular old "priest" thing for about 7 years, after that, I moved to the "kicking the devils butt" crew, and now I am Senior Exorcist.

Me: No kidding? Senior Exorcist?

Him: Yep, says so right here on my card.

Me: Hey, thanks! Here's my card.

Him: Has it been blessed?

Me: What, my card? Uh, I don't think so...

Him: Then keep that thing the $&%@ away from me. You might as well hand me a copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban! Filthy Garbage! Demonic!

Me: Okay, just chill man.

Me: So, Senior Exorcist. I bet you can Exorcize the hell out of people, huh?

Him: Literally. Although Senior Exorcist is more of a desk job than one that really gets me out in the field. It's mostly office politics.

Me: Yeah, that sucks. I mean, unless your desk was possessed and you got to exorcize it! Can a furniture be possessed?

Him: I guess a demon could live in a desk and move it around, poltergeist style. That's more "habitation" than "possession" though. And I don't think I would do the job.

Me: Why not?

Him: It's more a job for a Deskorcist!

Me: .......

Him: Get it? Get it? A deskorcist?

Me: .......

Him: Well, what do you do?

Me: Oh, you know, basic biomechanics research and stuff. We've done some injury testing on pigs.

Him: Some of the first exorcism testing was on pigs!

Me: That's a stupid biblical reference or something, isn't it?

Him: Yeah....



And so on and so on.

Look, I know this was stupid, but it's really funny if you picture it in some soul-killing (not possessing) conference center over a cup of crappy coffee and some who-knows-how-old crackers or cookies or something. Seriously, it is.

Bad Poetry Thursday: Skip the Good Stuff


Yep, that's right. From here on out it's bad poetry only. None of that sissy REAL POETRY garbage, only my own, um, garbage. It's okay though, when a bad poem falls in the forest it only makes a sound if it falls into a river (or lake, or any body of water bigger than a puddle of beaver urine, really) and then the sound is kind of like a little "splash" sound that doesn't carry very far because those ferns absorb the exact frequency distribution of those little "splash" sounds and the only places that bad poems occur in nature are always in conjunction with ferns, the most ancient of all plants. So yeah.



Sixteen (+/- 1) Lines from a Sheet of Graph Paper
byline

She once visited a friend
in California where trees hang like dangling chains
from the ears of the sky.
Her friend was older than her by half
a month, 45 and 7/12ths to 45 and 13/24ths
But other than that difference in age,
they were like two peas in a greek salad
green, and completely out of place.
She longed to see her friend succeed
but always looked the other way
at the least opportune of times
and missed success after succession
until a woman became king, which was a long time later
And alas it wasn't either of these two
these friends and erstwhile lovers
pitching softballs to each other
over coffee.

Once Upon A Time

One time, when I was in Germany...Okay, last weekend, when I was in Germany and I was riding Die Bahn from Hannover to Aschaffenburg and was going through all these tiny little rural towns in the central Germany forest, I saw all these dudes wearing the most ridiculous clothes. One guy was wearing a black t-shirt with with the words "SHOW ME YOUR SKILLZ FOOL" in giant block letters. Another guy looked like he stepped onto the train directly from Stupid LA, what with his slightly crooked white Dodgers hat, his huge "aviator" sunglasses, his pink and blue striped sweater, etc....

So I decided to coin a new word for this type of person. It's very clever, so there's probably no way that I am the first one to think of it. Anyway, the word is: Deutschbag. Sorry, I can't provide pictures, but when you go to Germany, you'll know them when you see them.


P.S. I just googled it, and there are 2,510 hits for "deutschbag." That's about what I expected for my "newly coined" word. At least there's no definition for it (at least correctly spelled) in the Urban Dictionary.