Even though it's apparently technically legitimate, one of my biggest pet peeves is the use of the word "itch" as a verb, as in "he itched the bug bite". Blech. I double over and cringe in disgust. You scratch a bug bite, or an itch, or anything similar. You don't itch it. The itch is what you scratch. If you can just follow that one simple request, we'll get along fine.
Category: ramblings
The U.S. State Department is issuing a warning cautioning Americans against traveling to Bahrain for fear of terrorist attacks, which means that once again my 4th of July plans for this weekend have been completely messed up. I guess they don't really understand that some people made plans a long time ago to visit various Persian Gulf nations, and that an advisory on the Friday before a big travel weekend just doesn't cut it. Dagnabbit!
I got two nice letters in the mail today, one from President Bush, another from John Kerry. Apparently, both of them are interested in having me be a more active part of their lives, and I was heartened by their efforts at reaching out. George invited me to have dinner with him in Washington, which I thought was a nice gesture. I did have some questions about where we might eat though, since he seemed to think it would cost around $2,500 per person. I haven't eaten out in D.C. in a while but my sense is that we could probably find a KFC or something that's a little cheaper. I guess George really wants a night on the town! John's letter was sort of weird too, he sort of rambled on about a bunch of current events and political issues, but didn't really give me an update on how he and Theresa are doing or when we might take that fishing trip we've been talking about. He did ask for money, and while I'm always happy to help John out of a rut, I wish he'd be more specific about how much he needs and what he needs it for, instead of all these checkboxes for "$50" all the way up to "$250". John's such a character.
It's always good to get letters in the mail from friends wanting to catch up...
As we dive into May, the month that restores honor and dignity to the season of Spring after the treachery enacted by March and its bastard stepchild April, I thought I'd mention a few favorite "May" things:
Continue reading "Celebrating all things May"
Fair warning: this post is pure rant.
I have a Sprint PCS phone that I use as my primary, and only, home phone line. There are tons of reasons why I like this arrangement, which I won't go into here, but I've been a loyal, pay-on-time Sprint customer for several years now. Which is why it was maddeningly frustrating to go to make a call today and get a note that my account had been shut off because I was over my spending limit.
Continue reading "Sprint PCS needs to run cron jobs more often"
It's "you can't make this stuff up" day here on the Internet. Today's highlights include Woman tries to pass fake $1 million dollar bill at a Wal-Mart and It's every other state that's confused about time changes, not Indiana. And we wonder why people on the U.S. East and West coasts consider everything in between to be a vast wasteland...
I use more words than I should
More than I mean to
I wish I could just mumble
and be understood
Just smile quietly
And ignite a connection.
Words have meaning
But meaning is life force
And it's a shame to
use it all up just
getting acquainted
When the real joy
Lies ahead
In the unsaid
A convergence of funny things going on on-line has hit me this week, so I should share some of those. First you have the "e-mail virus wars" that have broken out between the Bagel worm and the NetSky worm. The two apparently wage war on each other on your vulnerable desktop, including cursing, malicious uninstallation, sounds on your speaker, and more...follow the drama here. Then you have the Dishonest Dubya lying action figure, which, regardless of your political views, is just a fun toy to play with. 🙂 Then you have your culturally insensitive parody of a Microsoft product. And finally, you have the latest issue of The Onion, with news stories such as "Virulent Strain Of Soy Flu Traced To Single Tofurkey" and "Jesus Demands Creative Control Over Next Movie". Enjoy.
Random rant: In 1970, Intel produced a memory chip, the first, capable of storing 1 kilobyte of data - a couple of paragraphs of text or so. Today, one can obtain memory chips that store many gigabytes of data - enough to hold entire movies, encyclopedias, and more - for mere hundreds of dollars. So, why is it that when I finish pumping gas at a gas station and hit the "RECEIPT YES" button, the piece of crap machine can't store that one simple keystroke in its input buffer long enough that it doesn't have to ask me 5 seconds later, "RECEIPT? (YES/NO)". It can remember a credit card number, do complex fuel tax calculations, and even tell me about the latest sugar-coated crap I can buy inside, but not that I pressed that button a few seconds ago. It's a scary, scary world we live in, folks. Bah!
The assignment given for my New Testament course was to "write a biblical parable."
What I came up with is obviously not a parable in the traditional sense, but I like to think of it as the parable of parables; it is the story of a common theme that runs throughout the literature of the biblical time and that represents a fundamental (or at least well-established) part about how our society tends to work. In that sense it is a story that evokes a deeper meaning from itself when examined closely in relation to our own lives, as does a parable in its purer form.
Once there was a boy born of no great noticeable lineage. When he grew up, he found that he was deeply disturbed by the problems of the world around him and that he was going to devote his life to changing things radically. He found that he was a good speaker and had a knack for communicating with people in direct, powerful ways. He learned a lot about the problems he was facing and he lived and dined among those who contributed to them.
He began to talk, in public and in private, about the problems and about the fundamental causes and possible solutions. He would sometimes end up with large groups of people gathered around him as he talked. Though he had many followers who believed in his cause, he only had a few that he considered his true friends and true believers. Besides, it was becoming dangerous for him and his followers to talk about the problems any more because there were many who opposed his views or said that he had no right in the first place to address the problems because of who he was. After a while, his following and support got so large that it seemed he was actually making a difference. People were actually beginning to catch on to what he was saying, and at the same time becoming less accepting of those who caused the problems or who had oppressed their existence. Finally, his enemies decided that his words were too dangerous because they addressed deeply buried problems that, to face, would shake the very foundations of the world built on top of them.
He was tried and convicted by the attitudes of his time and by the prejudices of his enemies, and so they plotted to kill him as punishment. They did so, quietly and quite normally with the typical sort of lynching. He died, and in a fairly short time, the mission and movement that he had created did not have enough forward motion to sustain itself, and it died fairly soon thereafter.
This is the story of Jesus Christ. This is the story of Martin Luther King, Jr. This is the story of the poor and homeless person who fights daily to find a home and raise a family. This is the story of Medgar Evers, of Malcom X, of any man and woman that has ever stood up for what they believed in because they could do no other. This is the story and the song of the suffering servant.