Category: personal

So I found myself on another degree mill kick this morning (one of the wonders of Facebook is finding “friends” who have “degrees” from some of these places). The video above came from today’s search through the interwebs. Bethany Divinity College & Seminary is located in my hometown of Dothan, Alabama. You can read for yourself about the college and the requirements they have for their degrees. I would love to be able to say that the school makes me proud of my hometown, but after looking at what they offer and require I can’t say that.

You should watch the above video. Why? Because of the wonderful example  it is of calling other modes of education outdated in such a wonderfully outdated manner. The video looks and sounds like it was made in the late 70s. It was posted on YouTube in 2012 by Bethany as an example of why you should use them for your education. BTW in my opinion you shouldn’t use them.It is my opinion that they are a degree mill, a unaccredited “school” that provides an “education” that won’t be accepted by accredited institutions and doesn’t really prepare you to do what it is supposed to prepare you to do.

Bethany describes other modes of education as outdated in a video that claims to that Bethany is on “the cutting edge”. I’m not sure what decade this video would have been consider “cutting edge” but I’m betting it was before the 80s, maybe before the 70s.

To paraphrase old Jeff Foxworthy‘s old “You might be a redneck” series of jokes: “If you watch the above video and think it is cutting edge, you might be out dated.”

Personally it reminds me of all the times I see people, businesses, churches, and other organizations talk about how something it new and exciting when the truth is that whatever you are doing is basically the same old thing. For churches this usually means “We’re the church for people who don’t like church” which should usually just be translated “you can wear shorts to church and our pastor has a cool beard, but everything else is basically the same”.

Noah really likes Parks and Recreation. Since Noah liked the show I thought I would Netflix the series. I just finished it which means I have now watched the rather odd 7th season. In the 7th season there is one episode about The Johnny Karate Super Awesome Musical Explosion Show.

Johnny Karate (i.e. Andy Dwyer, a.k.a. Chris Pratt) has 5 Karate Moves to Success and I love them. The 5 karate moves are to each day:

• Make Something
• Learn Something
• Karate Chop Something
• Try Something New (Even If It’s Scary For You)
• Be Nice To Someone

A long time ago I started teaching the boys 4 things that I wanted them to remember if I were to I suddenly die (at the time this would have probably been from an alligator attack since we were living in Baton Rouge). This was important at this stage of my life because it was not uncommon for me to be involved in something that could possibly lead to my death.

I’ve mentioned the 4 things before. They are that a real man …

• Loves God
• Loves his family
• Respects/protects women
• Protects those who are weaker than him

The list works and I continue to ask the boys concerning the 4 things whenever I leave from visiting them or they leave home to go back to school. However, if I was looking for a new list I would seriously consider Johnny Karate’s. I even think “Karate Chop Something” would work if I directed it toward karate chopping injustice (i.e. I’m going to call my senators tomorrow – POW).

Is it too late for me to encourage my college age young men to karate chop something each day?

I love living in Wisconsin and being from the South. Ninety-five percent of everything is super cool because of the contrasts that I experience during my days because of the differences between the two cultures. However, five percent of the time the conflict is too great and I become frustrated. Yesterday Conor was the sources of one of those 5% moments.

I ran into Conor yesterday at Emy J’s¹ . It is incredibly typical for me to run into a “thread” at Emy J’s. It is one of the multitude of reasons that I love going to Emy J’s. We spent around an hour solving all the world’s problems (you’re welcome) and I introduced Conor to the Firecracker rolls at the Main Grain. If you have not had one of these then you need to go to the Main Grain early (because they run out) on a Wednesday and get one. They are amazing. Anyhow after an hour I decided to go home and eat leftover homemade chicken and dumplings for lunch. I invited Conor to join me because Pam’s chicken and dumplings are amazing. I mean seriously. I literally moan when I eat these things. They are that good.

Anyhow it didn’t work out for Conor to be able to join me because I couldn’t verify with Pam that there was enough left over for two, and while I am willing to share my leftover chicken and dumplings with people I care for, I am most definitely not willing to give up my leftover homemade chicken and dumplings. As I wrote earlier, they are VERY good. So we decided it was best for the friendship for him not to come over.

As I was leaving Conor said “Enjoy your chicken and dumplings soup.” That’s right he called it “chicken and dumplings soup.” Now chicken and dumplings can be liquid enough to look like a soup (which is the way I like it because then you add in cornbread to sop up the juice) but it isn’t a soup. Therefore, it is incorrect and just sounds plain wrong to call it “chicken and dumplings soup”.

I ran this past the weekly small group that Pam and I are a part of and they were pretty much split down the middle on soup or no soup. It is chicken and dumplings folks. That is all. Just chicken and dumplings!

Get it straight you darn Yankees. 🙂

1. Mom you’ll love that Conor’s first words to me were “Hey I see that you too came to Emy J’s so people could see you read. [↩]

I am sure you have a true job title like “sound engineer” or “audio artistic developer” or something else like that, but right now I am irritated at you and therefore I don’t care about searching out your true title. I usually appreciate what you do. You add wonderful audio elements to the TV shows and films that I watch which help to immerse me in the world of the video I am watching. It wouldn’t be the same without you adding both small and big sound effects. Doors should sound a little squeaky when they are opened and you make sure they do, and how else will I know that someone drove by rather fast without that little tire squeal that you add to the scene.

Yet every now and then you add a sound effect that sounds more like something going wrong in my house than it does anything that would be happening in the movie. For example, last night when Pam and I were watching the 2016 Call the Midwife Christmas Special.

Now don’t judge me. Call the Midwife is excellent. It is a really compelling show and as a member of a care giving profession and the spouse of another member of said profession I will add that the care fictionalized on Call the Midwife is usually a wonderful example of how to listen to someone in need. The fact that I get bonus points with Pam for watching the show … well that’s just gravy.

Anyhow last night the cast of Call the Midwife cast was in South Africa. It was a very good episode, as usual. You however, Mr or Ms Sound Effect person, decided to randomly add the small tweet of a song bird in the background of many scenes. I’ve never been to South Africa so I wouldn’t know if there should be song bird tweets or not. I do know there weren’t random lion roars sprinkled throughout the episode. Anyhow the tweet was never very obvious so I never thought “Hey there’s a song bird tweet”. The sound effect was consistently there, sprinkled throughout the episode, and it sounded almost exactly like something going bad in our furnace or some creature deciding our warm house is a better place to winter than the very cold outdoors of Central Wisconsin.

Furnaces going out and unwanted furry visitors are a real fears up here in the cold North. If your furnace goes out when it is -3 degrees outside really bad things can happen and the battle never ends with small creatures that think “mi casa es su casa” during the yearly reign of Jack Frost. Therefore, your ears are alert for these sounds during the chilly time of the year.

Tweet, tweet, tweet. Is that a pulley going bad? Squeak, squeak, squeak. Is that a mouse figuring out if it is safe to come out and not see the cat?

It only took us a few times of stopping the DVR and listening to finally figure out the sound effect stopped every time we paused the video replay.

Darn you. Darn you all to heck sound effect people.

It’s a new year and I don’t have anything of any depth to write about so I’ll just post a couple of things just to get back into the habit blogging more often.

1st, Eric G made my day today because during setup he asked if I had a black sharpie. I know this doesn’t sound like much but it gave me a great chance to prove Eric wrong and proving him wrong is a wonderful thing. You see he regularly mocks my possible, the bag I carry with me pretty much everywhere I go to help me cope with whatever I may possibly face. He calls it my “man purse” because he doesn’t recognize the genius of a possible. That’s just wrong. it isn’t a “man purse”, it’s a possible. So when he asked if I had a black sharpie I was able to “why yes I do” with a smile and reach into my possible to pull out a black sharpie for him to use. It was a glorious moment.

2nd, each week I try to put a quote on the front of the of the bulletin (the piece of paper we put out each week that has info about who we are, the scripture for the week, and various announcements). My goal with the quote is to try and summarizes what the message is about. Sometimes I do a better job of finding quotes that do this than other times. Anyhow I try to find something that conveys this message because I figure that way if someone remembers nothing else from the message but the quote then they have a basic summary of the message. So this year I have decided to do a graphic from the quote each week and post it on the Tapestry Facebook page. If any “thread” would like to do some of these I would be more than happy for the help. Just let me know.