What About My Friend Con?

Sitting on the train this morning, I heard a guy talking loudly on the phone, really having a good rant. I started feeling sorry for the person on the other end, who apparently couldn't even get a word in.

I then got the urge to see what this guy looked like, so discreetly looked around for a quick glance, upon which I realised he wasn't on the phone at all. He was just talking to himself, or to anyone who might care to listen. Which I did.

Here are some highlights:

"They called me a bludger? Me? What about my friend Con? He thinks he's the boxing champion. Pff. I could go over there right now and take him. Don't think I couldn't."

I didn't.

"And you're going to blame me for the last 45 years of Sydney's history? When I wasn't even in Sydney back then?"

Well, I wasn't, but now that you mention it..

And then later came some fascinating conspiracy theories about how music was trying to talk to him about heaven and hell:

"First there was Alice Cooper in 1976 with "Go To Hell". Then Bryan Adams in 1984 with "Heaven". Then in 1987, Belinda Carlisle with "Heaven Is A Place On Earth", and then finally U2 in 1987 with "If God Will Send His Angels". And don't get me wrong, these are good songs. I like them all very much."

Personal problems aside, the guy knew his music history, which I had to respect.

Anyway, there is no real point to this post, other than the fact that I couldn't let these genius rants go undocumented. And all this before 7am.

Bjork, Aged 11

Here's something that might surprise you.

Did you know that Bjork recorded her first solo album way back in 1977, the year I was born? She was only 11 years old at the time.

Here is the great front cover, designed by her mother~

How cool is that? Here is one of the tracks from the album, Álfur Út Úr Hól, a cover of The Beatles song 'The Fool On The Hill', sung in her native Icelandic.

Song Of The Week

"Birthday"

The Sugarcubes (1987)

Listen~

Thursday Peanuts

A Challenge

I have a bit of a challenge for you.

I get sick of the way we go about our lives, and when we see friends and acquaintances, we say "How's it going?" or "What have you been up to?", but then have the tendency to give vague, trite answers that keep people at arms-length, and don't really reveal anything about what's really going on.

Q1)"How's it going?"
"Not bad, not bad. A bit tired. Glad it's Friday".

Q2)"What have you been up to?"
"Not much, just working away. Works fairly busy, but nothing much out of the ordinary is happening".

BOOOOOORRRRRIIIINNNNGGGG!

So, I'm going to answer these two questions for you now, in a more truthful, open way, and I'd love you to do the same in the comments bit. That's my challenge. Come on, we can do it.

Q1) I'm going okay. I'm a bit frustrated with myself lately, as I haven't been working as hard as I should, and I keep wiling away my time on unimportant things to put off thinking about the harder things in life (relationships,my speech, my walk with God,being a strong pro-active husband and father). I have let these things slide a bit, as I have been wrapped up in my own little hobbies-safer, less threatening things to think about.

Q2) A lot of my spare time and thoughts have been wrapped up in some creative projects I'm working on in my own time. I am really excited about these, and want to continue these things, but I realise now it's important for me to take them out of the 'sacred place' that I've put them in. I can't set them up as competition to God, or they will just be no more than idols, rather than the good and right, working out of the talents He has given me.

Family life is going well, though is pretty tiring. It's quite hard to find that second wind at the end of the work day to switch on to being a present, loving and selfless husband/father. There isn't much time on weekdays to put into my kids, and so that time needs to be focused and purposeful on my part. I find this really difficult, as the tendency is to just want some time out to veg in front of the tele. For me, a big juggling act is trying to be a good father/husband, as well as trying to fit in outlets for the creative energy I have, to stop me feeling frustrated.

Well, that's me, as of 25/2/10. What about you? How are you going, and what have you been up to?

Succumbing

The other day RodeoClown declared publicly that I was scared of Google Reader.

Now, I will stand for many things, but being called yella is not one of them. So, I have decided after much consideration to try one of these (not at all) new-fangled reader thingies.

I just started putting it together just now, and having never even seen what one looks like, I feel a bit like your grandma who's just been given an iphone. What does this strange shiny black object do?

I'd love some guidance as I partake in this new endeavour, if you'd kindly condescend enough to sink to my pleb-level for a moment.

1)I added a blog address and got all that persons' posts dating back to the Neolithic and Chalcolithic Ages, when they were blogging on stone tablets around a campfire. I don't want this, how can I just have their recent posts?

2)How will the Google Reader thing remember me as me? I can't see anywhere to sign in and make an account or anything. Do I have to do something about this?

3)I can see posts, but can't see anywhere to comment. If you can't comment, what the heck is the point, o ye Reader savvy?

4)There seems to be a million options and subheadings everywhere. What do I need to know, and what should I ignore?

5)Do I need to do something to a post after I read it to make it go away, so I don't end up with some giant backlog?

6)Is Google Reader a good one, or should I go for another one?

Any handy tips would be greeted with gratitude.

Shackleton

My muse has gone AWOL. I think it's all the web restrictions and the fact that hardly any pictures are loading for me. Booooo.

Here's a deep poem about it:

I wanna fly but my wings are clipped
and my beak is snipped.
I am full of rage
An animal inside a cage
I'm on the edge
Slippin from the ledge.

Fwoo. Glad I've exorcised those demons. They were harshing my mellow.

Gosh, what a stoopid post. You see? This is what happens when you shackle me.

Oh, IT Support, won't you let me live?

Speech Diary

The Speak Easy convention on the weekend was tiring but good. I heard lots of interesting talks by stutterers, speech pathologists, professors and clinical psychologists. And I met a stack of fellow stutterers from all around the country, which was really great.

A high point for me, was an open mic session, where I decided to jump up and talk in front of about 80 people, off the cuff, into a mic. Take that, comfort zone:)

Hot Pants

You know it's hot when you put on the folded jeans you took off the line yesterday arvo, and they've still got heat in them from the previous days' sun.

Our bedroom was like an oven last night. When I pried my skin off the sheets this morning, I swear I smelt bacon..

Fascist Regime

For some reason, my access to blogs and websites at work is getting more and more restricted. Some of my favourite blogs are now being blocked, and lots of the pictures on other blogs (including this one) are just coming up as blank squares with a red cross in the corner.

This hurts.

Nathan's blog, which is now completely blocked to me, has now taken on a different air. If you can't have something, you want it all the more. Now Nathan is like that bad kid in primary school that you're not allowed to play with, because he's a bad influence.

Sure, he's trying to get you to jig class and smoke behind the toilet block, but if you actually tried to get to know him, you'd see he has a heart of gold.

Curse these restrictions!

Having a bit of a day off today. See y'all tomorrow.

In the meantime, rack your brains and tickle your fancies with the quiz.

The Quiz

1. Mudcake or lamington
2. Something interesting we don't know about you
3. A sound that chills your blood
4. Your last Facebook update
5. In absolute sworn honesty, if you had to either go without books or the internet for a year, which would you give up?

Song Of The Week

"Problem Child"

AC/DC (1977)

Listen~

AC/DC are in Sydney at the moment. Had I a spare several hundred dollars, I would have liked to see them.

Anyway, I love this little gem, released a few months before I was born. That ultra-simple three chord riff still packs a fair wallop!

Speech Diary: Speak Easy Convention

All this weekend I'm going to be at a big stutterers convention in the city.

It is celebrating 30 years of the Australian Speak Easy Association, a big support network for stutterers, run by stutterers. I have kind of gotten involved with them over the past 12 months.

It should be really helpful and interesting, with lots of different seminars and workshops etc. I'm looking forward to it very much.

Wealth, Honour and Life

Humility and the fear of the LORD
bring wealth and honour and life.

~Proverbs 22:4

Thursday Peanuts

Renovations III

It's day 3 in the Big Brother house.

The shine has worn off for Ben, and he's about ready to make a run for it.

It's not so much that he doesn't like his fellow housemates, as that he needs a few more metres between them to prevent the familiarity from breeding contempt.

Restlessly, he heads to the diary room to send a teary message to his loved-ones on the outside.

Choose Your Own Adventure- The Kiwi Fruit

So, you're walking to work this morning, and you walk by a man taking a big crate-load of fruit in to a cafe. He's about ten metres away, about to enter the cafe, when you walk behind his van, and notice a stray kiwi fruit has come dislodged and rolled into the gutter. It's a cleanish gutter, but a gutter nonetheless.

Do you-

A) Shout 'hey mister! You dropped a kiwi fruit!' and run the misplaced fruit in to him, opening yourself up to a 50% chance of either vague gratitude or vague ridicule.

B) Ignore this chance occurrence, and continue on your way. The fruit's in the gutter, after all, what are you gonna do?

C) Be spiteful and angsty, and kick the kiwi fruit or squash it under-foot, just because you can, so ner.

D) Loiter discreetly while the man enters said cafe, then casually bend down and put the gutterfruit into your bag, then continue on your way, whistling innocently.

E) Get to your desk, and enjoy the spoils.

F) Get to your desk and feel a pang of guilt, and so instead leave it in the common kitchen for some lucky unsuspecting third party to enjoy without guilt, but with possible gutter material.

Renovations II

So, the renovations at work start today.

Apparently the builders are 'the crack team that built the Big Brother house.' (The production company I work for was responsible for that little gem of Australian television.)

So I'm a little paranoid that they are going to surreptitiously install hidden cameras around the office, and fill it with strange, oversized, gaudy furniture. I may even have to walk around all day in just my cozzies and fiddle with my hair a lot.

Dark days, friends. Dark days indeed.

Speech Diary

My two minute mini biography last night at Toastmasters went really well. I was fluent for the entire time, so I'm pretty stoked about that.

My 'points for improvement' were to have more volume, and engage with the audience more. Baby steps, baby steps.

Don't Think I Don't Know This

The main thing to remember when you discover how to do a cool new trick in Blogger is to not overdo it.

Use it sparingly.

Less is more.

Cross Pollination

My homeboy Nathan at St. Eutychus invited me to do a guest post for his Mad Skillz week.

I wrote some stuff about what I do for a job. Check it out.

Music History 101

Something I take very seriously, is giving my kids a good musical education. I want them to know their stuff, right from the start. It would be cruel to have them get to primary school without having heard anything but kids cd's.

After some deliberation I decided that a good starting point was the 1950's, just a few years before The Beatles. The start of rock n' roll.

Little e is now pretty well versed on the 1950's -- Little Richard, The Everly Brothers, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins etc. Her two stand out tracks thus far, the ones she requests the most, are these two little gems:

1. 'Kansas City' by Wilbert Harrison. Dorothy comes from Kansas. Therefore this song must be great.

2. 'Come Go With Me' by The Del-Vikings. Or, 'Dumb be Dumb', as Little e calls it.

Two fantastic songs. She has very good taste.

From there, we've been easing into The Beatles and The Beach Boys. She is pretty fond of The Beatles, and particularly likes 'Hey Jude' (partly because there's a Jude at church. So she can relate.)

I'm not sure where we are going to go next. I will need to consult my notes, and do some prep.

Speech Diary

I'm going to my first Toastmasters meeting for the year tonight.

I'm down to do a two minute mini biography. I'm going to do it on my hero, Clarice Beckett.

I'm kinda nervous.

Life Lessons or, The Amassed Knowledge Of Thirty-Two Years Of Life On Earth

#2. People who drink plain milk from a carton in public, are to be treated with caution. This activity is not normal and a scrutinising eye should be kept on such offenders.

Renovations

Me and a few other people I work with are currently out of our sweet XL work spaces and stuck in a dark little room altogether. We'll be in here for a couple of weeks while our whole office gets smashed up and renovated.

I'm doing some mandatory eye-rolling and whinging, but secretly I like it, because it's something different, and feels like we are all on a little adventure together.

A Couple of Blog Questions

1. You know that 'followers' thing on the sidebar, where you can follow someones blog? What does this mean? Does this mean you get sent posts automatically or something?

2. You know how sometimes people type stuff, then put a line through it, like it's a mistake? I like that. How do you you do it?

The Quiz

1. You'd never find me reading...

2. Did you 'do' Valentines Day?

3. Last DVD you watched

4. A word you find off putting

5. You're at a cafe. Big brekky or pancakes?

The Inner Workings Of A Fool

When I walked out of the house this morning at 5:45, it was dark and wet. It wasn't raining, but it had been, and there were puddles everywhere, and the sky was full of heavy rain clouds.

I had a 20 minute walk to the station, but could easily have just walked across the road and caught a bus. This would have been the wiser, more logical thing to do, as it looked like it could pour again any moment.

Instead, I kind of recklessly thought, 'who cares', and just walked instead. As it turned out, I made it to the station just in time-- it started bucketing just as I got under the cover of the platform. My attitude then was 'yeah, just as well.' Not 'thank you', not, 'well that was silly, I'm fortunate to have made it'. No, 'just as well'.

Had I gotten wet? I would have been seething and resentful. Towards who? Well, probably not towards myself, even though the predicament would have been entirely of my own doing.

This got me thinking about the mood I've been in and what it stems from. I have been pretty bitter and frustrated of late, about various things, but my stubborn heart doesn't bring these things to God in a real way. Rather, I strain against Him constantly, and pull away, trying to make myself happy and fulfilled.

I get reckless and foolish, and get myself in to hot water, not walking the paths I know to be best for me. I strain hard to get control of the reins, even though I know I only lead myself in to ditches when I'm the one in control.

The example above is a silly, inconsequential one, but it made me realise how much I have a similar attitude with the bigger, more important things in my life. I wander about in folly, and if all goes well I think 'well, I deserve that, why shouldn't things go well for me?'. But if things don't go well, I well up with indignation, and resentment towards God, and the people around me. 'You obviously don't care about me.' And so then, the only way I learn or grow, is when things go badly, and I have to eventually lean back on God.

When there's no recognition or gratitude for all the blessings that God constanly showers you with, the only way you ever learn, grow and become disciplined, is through pain and struggles.

How foolish!

It is good to preach to yourself with what you know to be right, and here are three different quotes that I was ruminating on this morning to try and unscramble my sinful, illogical thinking--

1. 'If we would gather from a kiss all the good it might confer upon us, we should not so often smart under the rod.' (Spurgeon)

2. 'A man's own folly ruins his life,
yet his heart rages against the LORD.' (Proverbs 19:3)

3. 'Do not be like the horse or the mule,
which have no understanding
but must be controlled by bit and bridle
or they will not come to you.' (Psalm 32:9)

Disappointing Discoveries

Moleskine notebooks are not made from actual mole skins.

Song Of The Week

"Skull"

Sebadoh (1994)

Listen~

One of my favourite opening lines to a song: "There is history in this place.."

Bad Coffee, Cool Monster

I just drank about three quarters of a coffee that was apparently made with off milk. It tasted very foul.

I was a bit torn with what to do. Maybe I should have taken it back and said, 'hey no offence, but this tastes like warm, milky bile', but I just kept picturing the look in the eyes of my broken-hearted coffee lady, as our barista/customer relationship was tarnished forever.

But I couldn't just throw it out either. Not only was this three dollars of hard-earned coinage, but also my coffee hit for the day, the thing that would stop a morning headache coming on. I had to somehow push through the pain barrier.

So I kinda blocked my nose a bit, and guzzled, imaging I was Bear Grylls swilling some horrid concoction lovingly prepared by a remote jungle tribe. He'd say something stoic like 'it tastes unholy, but it will give me the much-needed energy and protein I need to scale that mountain over there'.

I made it through most of it, but kept the last bit for an experiment. I poured it carefully onto a little patch of grass, which I will revisit on Monday. I am expecting to see some kind of paranormal H.P Lovecraft tentacle monster to grow out of the accursed soil. If I live to see Monday.

10 Things

You may have noticed that I was a bit of a Negative Nancy yesterday- gripe, gripe, gripe! After reading Simone's post, I thought I'd try to turn that around a bit today.

So here are 10 things that I'm thankful for today:

1. God's compassions are new every morning (Lamentations 3)
2. I'll see my girls this afternoon
3. I just had a good coffee
4. I can hear cicadas humming outside
5. I had a good night last night with friends
6. I got to see Little e this morning before I went to work
7. I have a job that can support my family
8. There are exciting changes around the corner
9. We're watching The Mighty Boosh at lunchtime at work
10. When I lift my eyes from my computer, I can see all the way down to Kurnell, though I'm in North Sydney

What are you thankful for today?

Thursday Peanuts

What's A Never-Nude To Do?

It looks like I may never fly a plane again.

I was scared enough of flying as it was, but the introduction of the new Superman X-ray vision scanners may be the last nail in the coffin.

You wanna go a'travellin'? Well you'll need to leave your dignity here with us, thank you.

The Christian And The Cage Fighter

I am pretty prone to missing the boat, and discovering some hot-topic just as it's gone tepid. Maybe I subconsciously avoid heated debates because I don't like arguing.

But anyway, a week or two ago, my friend Craig Schwarze wrote a post about cage fighting on the Sydney Anglican website, which stirred up a lot of comments and controversy. I just skimmed through all 255 of them!

Another blogger Al Bain subsequently wrote a post about it, and most of the comments followed a similar thread of disapproval.

I don't know much about this sport, and actually have a greyish, undecided opinion on it all, but a few things sprung to mind as I read over all this stuff. Here's my thoughts in point form-

* Christians will never agree on everything, and what one persons' conscience genuinely is at peace with, another will genuinely find abhorrent. But neither is necessarily right or wrong.

* Issues like this are rarely black and white, so arguing right vs. wrong is not really the appropriate argument. Motives, personal conviction and context need to be carefully considered.

* The Bible is not about a bunch of rules and restrictions, and using one or two verses to back up an argument does not make it the final word on a subject.

* A lot of care and thought should be taken before one person condemns another's interests. If you write off one thing, you need to be prepared to scour your own life and interests first.

* Disputable matters are just that.

* The perceived 'weaker brother' is to be beared with (born?) and/or lovingly rebuked, not shot down for having a different set of convictions.

* It's good to discuss disputable matters, but it's pretty understandable to see why people don't do it more. Who wants to be pounced on and judged?

* The question, 'What Would Jesus Do?' gets thrown around too flippantly.

Speech Diary- What Do My SHOULDs Do For Me?

As you have seen, your SHOULDs are arbitrary. They are not right just because you hear them in your head! One sensible approach to SHOULDs is to explore the costs and benefits of maintaining them. In other words, what are you SHOULDs really doing for you? Are they helpful or unhelpful? Are they worth keeping?

Lets look at an example. Below is a Cost-Benefit analysis of living with a perfectionistic SHOULD about stuttering:

“I SHOULD BE FLUENT AT ALL TIMES”

Advantages:

-When I'm fluent, I'll feel like I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing
-I'll work very hard to be fluent

Disadvantages:

-If I'm not fluent I'll feel guilty and blame myself.
-I'll very often feel like a failure and be upset
-I'll never be able to achieve my goal of ALWAYS being fluent, so I'll be disappointed lot of the time
-I'll be irritated, sad and anxious most of the time when I have to speak


As you can see, there are lots of serious disadvantages to this SHOULD. It is setting the person up for failure, shame and frustration. Consider the following syllogism:

(A) Human adults with a history of stuttering tend to be dysfluent from time to time
(B) I’m a human adult with a history of stuttering
(C) Therefore, I SHOULD stutter from time to time

Life Lessons or, The Amassed Knowledge Of Thirty-Two Years Of Life On Earth

#1. A Scotch Finger biscuit broken across-ways rather than the intended length-ways just doesn't taste the same.

My Favourite Paintings #1 -The Scullery Maid

'The Scullery Maid' (1738) by Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin.

Chardin was a French painter, that unlike his peers who painted nobility and grand historical scenes, painted humble domestic scenes and still lifes, portraying poor servants and ordinary, rustic objects with accurate affection.

I love the stark design sense of this painting, the way the light-coloured maid jumps off the dark background. I love the thickness of the paint, and the texture of the girls clothes. I like the way her gaze is not on her work, and the drudgery and monotony of it, but is looking away- her mind is elsewhere.

Chardin was a master of depicting different textures, a perfect example being the tub laying on its' side. Look at it for a few moments, and you can imagine exactly what it would feel like to touch, and the sound it would make if you tapped it.

Self-Pity vs. Repentance

Self-pity and repentance are two different things. I came to a place in my life when I realised that 90% of what I had thought I had been doing as repentance, throughout most of my life, was really just self-pity.

The difference between self-pity and repentance is this: self-pity is thinking about what a mess your sin got you in to. Self-pity is thinking about the consequences of it, what a wreck it's made of you, how God will probably get me for it, or how my parents will probably get me for it, or how my boss will probably get me for it, or all the problems it's going to create in my life, or already has created in my life. O Lord, how sorry I am that this has happened, O Lord get this out of my life!

And what you're really doing is saying, I hate the consequences of my sin. But you haven't learned to hate the sin. So what's happening is, instead of hating the sin, you're hating the consequences of your sin, and you're hating your self for being so stupid. Self-pity leads to continuing to love the sin, so it still has power over you, but hating yourself.

Real repentance is saying, what has this done to God? What has it cost God? What does God feel about it?...When you see what effect it's had on the loving God, who died so you wouldn't do it, who died for your holiness- when you begin to see that, it melts you, and it makes you begin to hate the sin, and it begins to lose it's attractive power over you. And instead of hating yourself, you begin to hate it, and bit by bit the idol begins to get crushed.

--Tim Keller, from this talk.

The Quiz

1. How long have you been living where you live now?

2. Your mood, right now

3. Excited about..

4. Frustrated with..

5. You'd laugh if you saw me...

Choose Yer Own Adventure- The Korean Restaurant

You go to a Korean Restaurant, and are looking at the menu at the entrance, still undecided if you're going to commit. Before you've had much of a chance to peruse, the overly-friendly waiter comes up and closes that menu, and gives you a different one- a simple, all on one page, laminated one.

"Westerners like this menu", he says, and recommends some basic kinda thing at the top of the list. "This one is nice".

Are you--

a) Appreciative of the help, seeing as though you weren't that confident to order from the other menu.

b) Annoyed that he assumed you had no idea of what to order, and wanted you to choose from about five dishes rather than fifty.

c) A bit uneasy about the whole 'you Westerners like..' line. You're not really offended, it's just kind of annoying and condescending.

Wicked

E and I had a nice night on Saturday seeing the musical, Wicked at the Capitol Theatre and having dinner at a Korean restaurant.

The musical was really good. Very well done, and really entertaining. I'd say the first two thirds were a bit stronger than the last section. Truth be told, I was nodding off there for a fair portion. Nice to go and do something a bit different though.

The night was a little soured by the fact that afterwards we spent an hour trapped five floors down towards the Earth's core in a hot, fumy, claustrophobic underground carpark for no apparent reason.

But all in all: good night.

Another One

What can I say? I finished all my work yesterday.

My personality type apparently--

ISFJ - "Conservator". Desires to be of service and to minister to individual needs - very loyal. 13.8% of total population.

Free Jung Word Choice Test (similar to MBTI)
personality tests by similarminds.com

It also deduced that I'm prone to crying, want to be a librarian, and don't want to be a rock star. Lies, I tell you.

Warts And All

I love a good personality test. I did the one Simone did the other day.

Here's my results. Gotta love the fact that I got 18% for 'toughness'--

Advanced Big 45 Personality Test Results Gregariousness 50% Sociability 70% Assertiveness 58% Poise 50% Leadership 66% Provocativeness 50% Self-Disclosure 70% Talkativeness 54% Group Attachment 26% Extroversion 54% Understanding 66% Warmth 70% Morality 74% Pleasantness 62% Empathy 78% Cooperation 70% Sympathy 66% Tenderness 70% Nurturance 70% Accommodation 69% Conscientiousness 70% Efficiency 54% Dutifulness 66% Purposefulness 58% Organization 78% Cautiousness 50% Rationality 62% Perfectionism 78% Planning 58% Orderliness 63% Stability 26% Happiness 46% Calmness 22% Moderation 26% Toughness 18% Impulse Control 34% Imperturbability 18% Cool-headedness 34% Tranquility 14% Emotional Stability 26% Intellect 66% Ingenuity 74% Reflection 78% Competence 70% Quickness 58% Introspection 82% Creativity 58% Imagination 70% Depth 82% Openmindedness 70%

Take Free Advanced Big 45 Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

Wicked

We got given tickets to see Wicked for Christmas, and we are going tomorrow night. I'm looking forward to it, and am curious as to what it will be like.

Considering Little e's absolute obsession with all things Wizard of Oz, I feel a little guilty that she's not coming too. We'll have to keep the details of Mum and Dad's night out kinda vague, methinks..

Song Of The Week

'Don't You Want Me'

Felix (1992)

Listen~

A bit of an unusual choice for me, but this week I've been nostalgic about when I was in Year 9 (1992), and my brother brought me these underground techno tapes back from Germany.

None of my friends were into this stuff, and it was all very unknown and mysterious to me. This song still rocks, I love it.

A Saved Bear

I was happy to read that my new hero, Bear Grylls is a Christian. Cool.

You can read an article about Bear and his faith here.

Thanks Jeff for the link.

Anon, My New Best Friend

Anonymous has been wreaking spam havoc on my blog lately, as you may have noticed. I'm pretty fed up with it, so I have changed some of my blog settings. I have disallowed anonymous commenting, and done a couple of other things.

If you are a legitimate anonymous commenter, (not trying to sell me pharmaceuticals), then it's as simple as going to the top right hand corner of the page and making a Google account. This doesn't mean anything heavy, it just allows you to sign in. Let me know if you have any troubles with the changes I've made.

Anonymous has been baffling me though. Often, rather than trying to sell me something, he's just apparently trying to flatter me. Here's an example. The other day I wrote a small post to say I was sick. Never missing the opportunity to build a brother up, my BFF, Anon said these encouraging words:

Nice brief and this post helped me alot in my college assignment. Thank you seeking your information.

Shucks, thanks my friend. Always happy to help with a college assignment.

But I'll leave you with one last tidbit he left yesterday, something interesting to ponder:

The writer of ben-vanishingpoint.blogspot.com has written a superior article. I got your point and there is nothing to argue about. It is like the following universal truth that you can not disagree with: Some people can never finish a I will be back.

Ohhhh man, that is sooooo true. Poignant, Anon. Very poignant.

Thursday Peanuts

When Business Is Slow #2

I popped into this shop after church the other day, to grab half a chicken for us to have for lunch, a little take away place run by a husband and wife.

The shop was empty except for the man and woman, which was a pity, because I needed another fellow human being at that moment, to empathise with what I was about to see.

They didn't notice me come in, and carried on their merry way-- she stood behind the counter, doing something or other, chatting away to the bloke. He sat at one of the vacant tables along the wall. Handy for him, was the fact that there was a power point just above his table, which was apparently just right for him to plug his electric shaver into. He buzzed away at his chin, as little bits of follicle gently dusted the table, the salt and pepper shaker, the menus.

The man then saw me, and while I sort of expected him to be sheepish, he looked up, kept powering on, and asked what I would like. Um, half a chicken please, with a sprinkle of salt, pepper and beard stubble, thank you very much. And don't bother washing your hands either, what the heck, we're all friends here.

I take the liberty now to speak on behalf of the community. Please open your shop, say, half an hour later, so that you have that extra time at home to do all necessary grooming (including, but not limited to, facial shaving, toenail clipping, nostril hair trimming, deep pore exfoliation, navel lint removal).

We will understand, and will in fact be very, very grateful.

Thanking you in advance.

Half Back

Hey friends--

Sorry about the quiet week. It's been due to a mixture of dumb ol' flu (for the millionth time in the last few months) and a big deadline at work (got a storyboard due this afternoon).

I'm half back today, with a couple of posts, but will be more fully back tomorrow, with time for comments and time to look at other blogs (for no blogger is an island, as you know).

Death Warmed Up

Sorry folks-- in bed hammered with the flu.

See you soon.