is it wrong to punch an amish?

pam and i went remodeling shopping tonight. we are looking into remodeling adam and noah’s bathroom. while we were walking down the aisles of menards an amish male challenged me to shopping cart chicken. actually he was walking down a side aisle about to join the main one that pam and i were walking down. i saw him and he saw me. i know this because he looked me straight in the eyes. as he got close to the main aisle i thought he would stop. that is what he was supposed to do. everyone knows that the side aisles don’t have the shopping cart right of way. well this amish guy apparently doesn’t have to live by the rules that everyone else does. instead he just walked straight into the main aisle forcing me to slam on my shopping cart brakes (i.e. my feet). it was a pretty aggressive move for a pacifist. this of course is what threw me off and is why i didn’t say anything to him. i’m just not used to being cut off by men in suspenders.

worst song by the numbers

i’ve mentioned before that all of you should listen to “the american life” but i want to give you yet another reason to listen to it. in this past week’s podcast, “numbers“, they played two songs that have been developed by polls of typical musical taste of americans. they have a song that should in theory be made of the musical elements that the most americans like and a song that is made of elements that the most americans hate. here’s the worst possible song. it is hillarious. you should download it right now and place it on your ipod.

here’s the link.

hail storm

monday through thrusday i have to pick up adam and two of his friends from the fitness camp they are a part of. yesterday we had a decent intense hail storm (lots and lots of grape sized hail). it was bad enough that i finally had to stop the car and find a tree. that’s when the three teens tried to talk each other into running outside, touching a table, and running back. the video above is what happened.

it’s probably not funny for everyone else but it was a blast in the car.

stuff likes this makes me miss youth ministry

for praying bowlers?

bowling ball rosary

thanks to perry polnaszek i went to a church planting seminar at green lakes conference center that was quite good. not really anything particularly new but a good reminder of stuff that is important. on the way back to point i saw this. it’s a 30’ high rosary made of bowling balls. that’s not something you see every day.

my run for the day
distance – 5.47 miles (1600 meters intervals plus recovery)
time – 58:07
pace – 10:38/mile
weather – 81º
note – this is the first week of serious training for the indy marathon

sometimes you just can't win

15 year old amanda rouse, a california teen, wasn’t feeling well and so skipped out of school and hopped onto a school bus of elementary students. of course, she shouldn’t have done that. she should have gone to the school office instead. yet when the bus driver fell out of her set and hit her head amanda was there to jumped into action. she managed to work around the fallen driver and get to the brakes. she stopped the bus and saved all the elementary students, and the bus driver, from harm. her reward for the little adventure was detention for skipping school.

here’s the article.

call me

this is completely hilarious.

a guy in chicago goes into a muffler repair shop to rob it. when he is told by the employees that they had little money on hand and that only the manager, who wasn’t there, could open up the safe he responded by giving them two phone numbers to reach him at when the manager got back. he left promising to come back when they called. of course, they called the cops instead. the police officers came to the shop and they called the guy at the two numbers. since he believed that the manager had returned he came back to the muffler repair shop waving his pistol to get everyone’s attention. so one of the cops shot him in the leg.

this guy is a real genius.

root beer kegger

my wonderful wife spotted this article. it’s about a group of teens who threw a root beer party. the keg (which was root beer) was noticed and the cops were called. since the cops had arrived at a party of what appeared to be underage drinkers (though it wasn’t) their duty required that they breathalyze ever teen there. this ended up equaling 89 “0.0” readings on the breathalyzer.

this whole incident came about because of some teens being kicked off of the school cheer leading squad. the girls that were kicked off where seen in some facebook photos with red solo cups in their hands. the school administration had no proof of any alcohol being in the cups but in their minds those cups equaled underage drinking and that was enough to remove the girls from being cheer leaders. please don’t assume i’m naive. i know a lot of teens drink and i know that many times those red solo cups are actually full of liquor. yet they’re not always full of anything wrong. i also support 24/7 conduct policies for extracurricular high school activities. i think it’s perfectly appropriate to hold a kid to a higher level of conduct based on him/her being in the band, on a sports team, in student government, etc. yet i think that the administration should always have to have proof when they decided that a teen has done something against the rules. they can’t just make guesses based on broad generalizations and then punish people based on those assumptions. well anyways, the root beer kegger came about when a student decided that he was going to prove to the school administration that just because something looks like it may be against the rules doesn’t actually mean that it is. thus there was a party of teens doing things that looked like they could be breaking the 24/7 policy but actually were in full compliance with it.

of course, i believe it’s even more important that we don’t jump to assumptions, and actions based on those assumptions, within the church. it seems like some people within the bride of CHRIST want to make assumptions concerning the state of someone’s soul or beliefs based on things that they may associated with “sinful” activity or erroneous belief. in fact, sometimes it seems that some people within the church are more concerned with how you say your beliefs than they are with whether or not what you believe is true. there’s a great line in a waterdeep song that goes “not so much about the truth as whether you said it right.” i think that line does a great job of summing up the situation i’m talking about. it seems like we sometimes get so concerned about someone doing something “wrong” that we jump to conclusions to protect the church from heretics.

the problem is that sometimes those assumptions are completely wrong. a root beer kegger proved that.

SIDE NOTE – these are just thoughts mom. nobody has come after me for anything i’ve done or said. i’m a little upset about that because all the apostles were chased around by the religious people for the lives they lead. the apsotles’ faith in JESUS, and the life that resulted form it, ticked off the religious people of that time. i figure if i’m really following JESUS i too should be ticking off a least a few religious people. but don’t worry mom. it’s not happening yet.