Month: January 2005

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tsunami videos #2

tw3.jpgpreviously i posted some links to tsunami videos that were amazing. unfortunately everyone else thought they were amazing also and crashed the site that was hosting them. so here’s a post with a few new videos of the tsunami that are up for now.

if i find more later i will post them again. there is some absolutely amazing footage out there.

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bobble head theater

i frequent a site called emergingminister.com that has some good ideas that i get inspired from, modify, or sometimes blatantly steal. they have a series of “bobble head” videos that i think or hilarious. so for your viewing pleasure i have placed a few of them up on the site. here they are:

i hope you like them because they crack me up. i can’t believe this guy has so many bobble heads.

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bobble head theater

i frequent a site called emergingminister.com that has some good ideas that i get inspired from, modify, or sometimes blatantly steal. they have a series of “bobble head” videos that i think are hilarious. so for your viewing pleasure i have placed a few of them up on the site. here they are:

i hope you like them because they crack me up. i can’t believe this guy has so many bobble heads.

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procrastinating

i’m presently at cc’s coffeehouse working on the sermon i’m supposed to preach at the 9:30 a.m. worship service tomorrow and i’ve reached the point of needing a mental break so i’m decided to right in the blog for a second or two. as many of you know we have a new member of our family, montana. she’s a great dog and was already very well trained by the time we adopted her. even though she’s housebroken she’s had a few “accidents” getting familiar with our home and we’ve had to clean up a little bit of urine. one of those accidents happened this morning. it was really no big deal and was very easy to clean up because it was on a shirt that i was going to iron for church tomorrow. up until a few minutes ago i did not realize that the urine had seeped through the shirt on to what was below it.

i’ve been at cc’s since about 1:00 p.m. (it’s 4:00 now no matter what the blog clock says – it’s wrong and i can’t figure out how to change it). every so often someone would come and sit by me for a little while and then get up and move to another spot. this has happened four times. i had not really thought much of it. i personally don’t like sitting by strangers when there’s no chance to actually interact with them so i have just figured that they felt the same way and had moved because a better spot had opened up. at least that’s what i thought.

i have a lousy sense of smell. i’ve been told by a doctor that this is because i have a deviated septum. the allergist who told me this said it had probably happened during my years of football or rough housing as a kid. however it happened, i definitely messed up the inner workings of my nose sometime during my life. this has left me with a sense of smell that is sub-par. i can usually smell something for a second at most and then it’s gone. even during that second the wind has to blow in just right direction and the smell has to be pretty strong. i guess that’s why it took me so long to smell the dog pee that i had been carrying around with me.

my laptop messenger bag had been under the shirt that was peed on. when i saw the shirt i looked under it to make sure that it had only gotten on the shirt. nothing below the shirt seemed to be wet. the carpet was fine. i thought my bag had been fine because i couldn’t feel any wetness and i was unable to smell anything. well apparently dog urine takes awhile to reach it’s full potency because i began to smell the urine a few minutes ago (after my fourth coffeehouse neighbor had moved). so i lifted the laptop case up and verified that it was the recipient of montana’s marking.

on the good side montana’s urine has kept people from bothering me. since even i can now smell the urine now i think i’ll probably go home and wash the bag.

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rodney mullen video

i’m not the biggest skateboarding fan in the world (though i have one child who is really into it and another who thinks he is). yet, when i saw this video of rodney mullen street boarding i was amazed. this amount of skill in anything is impressive to me. when you can do things that should be against the laws of physics and make it look very easy then you must have an extreme amount of skill. anyways, you need to see this video whether you like skateboarding or not.

here it is. – windows media version
here it is – mpeg version

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reading list

you may have noticed changes happening to the blog (i.e new top design, blogroll on the right hannd side, flickr zietgeist, etc.). i’m finally beginning to understand a little bit of the coding of this css stuff. i still don’t get most of it but i do at least understand a little. i’m presently trying to figure out how to add an automated “reading list” to the blog. i’ve seen this on several other sites. unfortunately i can’t find which ones had the reading list and therefore i can’t ask them how to do it. so if you know how to put an automated reading list and feel like passing a little help my way i would appreciate it.

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reading list help?

you may have noticed changes happening to the blog (i.e new top design, blogroll on the right hannd side, flickr zietgeist, etc.). i’m finally beginning to understand a little bit of the coding of this css stuff. i still don’t get most of it but i do at least understand a little. i’m presently trying to figure out how to add an automated “reading list” to the blog. i’ve seen this on several other sites. unfortunately i can’t find which ones had the reading list and therefore i can’t ask them how to do it. so if you know how to put an automated reading list and feel like passing a little help my way i would appreciate it.

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not as good as advertised

for CHRISTmas this year pam and i were given a gift certificate to ruth’s chris steak house. we were very appreciative of the gift. tonight we finally went to the restaurant to enjoy the meal that the gift certificate would buy. i had never been to ruth’s chris before and therefore all i really new to expect was high prices and ala carte meals. after eating there i can’t really understand what the big deal is. my steak was merely “okay.” it was by no means the best steak i’ve ever had – not even close to it.

pam and i actually think the whole thing is actually an emperor’s new clothes kind of a thing. i’m convinced that people must think “wow, this food is really expensive so it must be good.” people are too busy thinking this that they don’t realize that they are merely eating a slightly better than average steak. there are several places in baton rouge that serve a much better steak.

i still greatly appreciated the gift certificate.

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the kingdom of GOD

i’m not a democrat. i’m also not really a republican though i have voted for republican candidates more often than i have other candidates. with that said i am fed up with evangelical CHRISTians agreeing no holds bar with anything that politically conservative politicians say or do. i believe part of the reason for this is that conservative CHRISTians have reduced the gospel to personal spirituality and morality, the mindset is that your faith should lead to you becoming a moral person and therefore the politically active CHRISTian should fight for what seem to be obvious moral concerns. this is why evangelical CHRISTians are so focused on homosexuality and abortion. these stand out as moral issues.

yet i believe taking care of the poor and afflicted are spiritual issues. i believe this why JESUS came preaching the “gospel of the kingdom” rather than just the good news of personal salvation. again and again JESUS preached of the kingdom – a place where life was determined by the rules of GOD. the kingdom of heaven is a place where the followers of CHRIST fight for justice. i’m not sure that we CHRISTians have been fighting for justice. maybe instead of just providing food for the hungry we should fight against the system that would leave them hungry when there is more than enough food for all.

so here’s what has brought up this brief rant. sojouners is a CHRISTian organization that focuses on political involvement. there are definitely of a more liberal CHRISTian mindset. while i would probably be described as a conservative i love sojourners because they remind me to fight for social justice. hey regularly set up actions to email against various social injustices. right now they have set up an open letter to alberto gonzalez, the proposed attorney general, asking him to denounce torture in any fashion. apparently he has a mixed history on this and may have supported torture of foreign p.o.w’s before.

so what i’m wondering is why we never hear conservative CHRISTians standing up and saying “NO” against injustices such as this.

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feminar

i am firmly convinced that youth ministry as a whole is far to masculine in it’s nature. so much of what youth ministries do (my own included) is naturally more appealing to males than to females. we play active games. we use gross and odd events. so many of the leaders within youth ministries are male. student ministry is definitely a male oriented ministry.

so a while back i decided to do something about it by doing and event where there was absolutely zero male involvement. we call this our “feminar.” we did this for the first time last year and our girls loved it. it is the absolute opposite of any event that i would ever put on if i were in charge. last year’s feminar included a craft time and a fashion show in addition to the bible studies that set the tone for the night. i would never think of doing a fashion show. i still think the concept is stupid. yet it worked incredibly well. our girls loved it and it helped make sure real connections for our girls who had been visiting until then.

we’re doing it again this year february 4th & 5th. once again i won’t have anything to do with it. i can’t wait.