Category: rants

jonathan and i went to eat lunch with pam today at womans’ hospital in the cafeteria. you wouldn’t think it but the hospital cafeteria has really good food so i enjoy eatting there. the fact that pam gets an employee discount of 25% makes it even better. today we went through the line to get out food and pay for oud food. when the cashier rang the food up we were in for a little surprise. it seems the cashier accidentally gave pam the physicians’ discount rather than the mere employee discount. you would think that since the doctors are statistically the highest paid employees of the hospital their discount might reflect that. afterall, why not help the little guy/girl out and give the janitors a bigger discount on their lunch than you give to the medical doctors? it seems right to me.

of course, that’s not how it really works. when pam received the physicians disocunt instead of the employee discount that she should have received she received a 50% discount instead of a 25% discount. makes perfect sense doesn’t it?

my run for the day
distance – 3.0 miles
total time – 24:46
pace – 8:15/mile

Statue of Liberation
Originally uploaded by rcooper.

something is really wrong with our faith when we combine national symbols with the symbols of our faith. the powers of rome and judea feared what CHRIST represented because they saw that HE was dangerous to their hold on power. this doesn’t seem to really fit in with the MESSIANIC JEWISH REVOLUTIONARY that the new testament portrays.

now don’t get me wrong. i love my country. i haven’t been all over the world but i’ve been to western europe, easten europe, and central america and i like the system we have here in the u.s. of a. better than anything else i have experienced. yet, i don’t like it enough to worship it. being a citizen of the united states is not where my first loyalty lies. nope it’s a different kingdom that holds my highest loyalty and i constantly struggle to make sure nothing else (money, power, consumerism, etc) gets in the way of that loyalty.

i can’t see that a “statue of liberation” would be a good thing.

i posted this on my ministry blog a couple of days ago but i figured i would post it here also.

CLICK HERE to read the new york times article – robertson is pilloried for assassination call
would some one please tell me how “assassination” fits into CHRIST’s plan for the kingdom?

i just can not get it through my mind how a supposedly CHRIST-honoring show can make bold statements about assassinating a non-hitler type ruler. chavez is no saint and personally i think it would be great if he wasn’t in power. some say he’s driving his country economically into the ground. yet he’s not committing human rights violations on a monsterous scale. whose lives will be saved by killing such a man? the only thing that will be saved by assassinating him is money and oil. in my opinion this is not a very good reason for toppling a government and almost a blasphemous reason when it comes from someone who professes to be a follower of CHRIST.

and now robertson has issued an apology which says:

I said our special forces should ‘take him out.”‘Take him out’ could be a number of things, including kidnapping.

common on! just admit it when you mess up. we all do every now and then. it just seems that robertson has more talent for making public, idiotic statements than the rest of do.

i’m really ready for some sane CHRISTians to get noticed being the public mouth-pieces of the religious right (of which i am not a part). i’m tired of being “lumped in” with these psychos.

pat robertson was an idiot before he said this but this statement and his semi-non-apology just proves it once again.

i was standing in front of the vending machines in the church family life center foyer and i found hooters potato chips in the church vending machines. what’s up with that? i think it’s pretty funny.

i actually have strange feelings on hooters:

• first, i don’t see what the big deal is. i mean really, you can see much more revealing attire on the street.
• second, if i had a daughter i would never want her to work at hooters because the restaurant is advertising her like a piece of meat. the thought of a human being being treated as nothing more than an object to be gawked at is abhorrent to me.

so basically , while i think the restaurant is no big deal i still think the idea of treating women as objects is awful.

let me announce this for everyone to hear – unless you are handicapped or you have a small infant sitting by his/herself in your vehicle there is absolutely no reason for you to just leave your shopping cart anywhere within a parking lot. the purpose for all the cart corrals is for you to place your shopping carts in them.

i hate it when people just leave their carts strewn all over the parking lot.

i love people who are passionate about something. truthfully it doesn’t really matter to me if what they are passionate about is just plain stupid. i would rather be around someone who is passionate about believing something that is complete idiotic and wrong than i would be around someone who is right but has no passion for what they believe.

pam, my wife, found such a passionate person in one of her classes last friday. pam is presently taking courses at l.s.u. towards getting her doctorate in speech language pathology (a very noble profession). last week her professor announced that one of the students would be leaving the class here soon. she didn’t explain why so pam didn’t really know what was going on. this week pam got to class early and saw the student who would be leaving and therefore she decided to ask the young lady why she would be leaving. well it turns out that the young co-ed isn’t really a student at all yet. she’s from germany and has her bachelor’s degree in special education with an emphasis on speech pathology and she has her masters in speech pathology. awhile back she was trying to figure out if she wanted to go after a ph.d. or not. so she did what anyone would do when they were trying to determine if they would go after another degree or not … she started translating english speech pathology papers into german. in particular she started translating the work of pam’s professor at l.s.u.

while doing this the young german lady decided she had to get to know this professor. she was so enthralled by the writing of the speech pathology prof that she knew she would never be satisfied until she had the chance to go “soak up” the presence of the professor. the young co-ed told her parents she was going to move to america for 6 months just so she could hang out with the professors – a woman that neither the co-ed nor the co-ed’s family knew anything about. you can probably guess how that went over. even without here parents’ blessing she was still convinced that she needed to come spend time with this professor so at her own expense she moved over to america this past september. since september she has been hanging around the professor as much as she could just to learn from her. she leaves to go back to germany here soon.

that’s passion. i love that.

just for the fun of it i’ll send you to another passionate person. miss msdonald is an unknown person who has made her own mcdonald’s costume and goes around to various mcdonald’s restaurants. she does this just because she loves mcdonald’s. i don’t really understand how anyone can like mcdonald’s but i do respect the fact that she is so passionate about her poor choice in fast food restaurant loyalty.

about 6 weeks ago i was given a ticket by a sheriff’s deputy for not having an inspection sticker on my truck. i deserved the ticket so i don’t really have a complaint about that (though the deputy was not one of the nicer law enforcement agents i have ever met – most of whom are usually very decent people). today i went to the east baton rouge parish court house to pay the fine. i was amazed to find that the fee was only $20. of course, that’s not what i actually paid, nope by the end of the day i had paid $127.25 only $20 of which was for not having an inspection sticker. the other $107.25 was other fees that were supposed to be some how connected to the cost of my ticket, such as $77 for court costs (which if i had actually gone to court would have made a little sense), or $10 for jury compensation (i’m not real sure how they fit a jury into the very small room that the clerk was in but since i was charged for it i’m sure there must have been a jury somewhere in the room), or $2 for the supreme court (i must be more important than i realize since the supreme court sits in on my traffic tickets). my actual fine for driving without an inspection sticker was a mere 1/5 of the additional costs placed on the ticket.

something is wrong with this.

on the way home from church this afternoon i saw the first ice cream truck of the spring. i love ice cream and i especially love ice cream on wheels. i will regularly go out of my way to get ice cream from an ice cream truck. it was this love that cause me to decide to convince the driver of the ice cream truck to pull over and let me buy some ice cream for myself and my kids. i turned after the truck, got on his bumper, and desperately started flashing my lights. i couldn’t get a response so i started lightly tapping my horn. nothing.

i followed the guy for almost two miles flashing my lights, honking my horn, and screaming wildly with my kids for the guy to pull over and sell us some ice cream. no matter how much noise i made i couldn’t even get the guy to look in his rearview mirror. he just kept on meandering at his ten to fifteen mph pace. i finally decided to pass the guy, stop in front of him, and thus force him to stop so i could get some ice cream. i sped up to pass him and pulled into the opposite side of the road. when i did this he immediately turned to the right entering another road. i don’t think he ever saw me. i could hear his music traveling all around our neighborhood but i never saw him again and i was never able to purchase any ice cream.

they really should give people a hearing and vision test before they allow them to drive an ice cream truck.

i have to say that i’m a little disappointed. i post a picture of montana standing on the table and nobody has commented. i usually don’t really long for comments or anything but that picture was different. it’s funny. go ahead and look at it. it just plain funny looking to see a 12″ high dog standing on a table. i was sure everyone would get a great laugh out of it and that the comments would pour in. so i posted it believing that it would bring a moment of levity to your lives and you would respond by commenting on the hilarious nature of a basset hound on the kitchen table.

but no! nobody responded. what’s with that? it just simply doesn’t make any sense. do you people have no sense of humor? are you unable to laugh? are you unable to comment? has someone stolen your computer and therefore you haven’t actually seen the picture of my dog standing on my table? that would really be a shame. okay, i guess i won’t hold it against you since your computer was stolen an everything.