« August 2007 | Main | October 2007 »
I heard about this the day after it happened, since it was on a local newscast. Just felt like posting it. I laughed heartily, but it may amuse no one else.
The context: Former Miami Hurricane Kevin Everett was injured making a tackle. But there was good news! He had regained movement in his arms and legs.
Unfortunately, they ran the wrong tape, from an earlier courtroom story. What are the odds?
Dear Church Solutions Magazine,
I do not think you should have a "sexpo."
I saw your website, for your upcoming event: www.churchsolutionsexpo.com. I feel that a sexpo, even in the interest of helping pastors expand what you call the "houses of worship market", is inappropriate, not right, and just generally wrong.
While the Bible is largely silent about sexpos, that does not, in my opinion, make your sexpo acceptable. You say, for example, your sexpo "will have a unique appeal for exhibitors".
I'm sure that's true.
I don't think it's appropriate, either, that apparently it's not only at the Phoenix Convention Center, it will spill over into a pub. (http://www.churchsolutionsexpo.com/pub.html)
You say you've "earned (your) reputation as the experts on running a church." I don't doubt that. But hosting a sexpo, with a seminar regarding improving "customer service"? Morally dubious.
I am not comfortable with you and your sexpo. I feel, and, to be honest, have long felt, that sexpos are not an appropriate church-themed activity.
I will not be attending your sexpo.
Sometimes, I come up with my own kitchen creations. This is something I'm kind of proud of. It's like Chex Party Mix, except you make it at home. It's really good.
My friend Paul said I should show my radio listeners how to do it, so we taped it on one of those new "digital" cameras. Then Paul edited it and superimposed text to illustrate what I'm doing.
I'm pretty proud of how helpful this turned out to be. I don't know why everything is squeezed horizontally. You don't have to do that in real life when you make this recipe.
Serve, and enjoy!
(This is a re-run, at Chris's suggestion, in keeping with the "I'm Not Good at Too Much" theme...)
Theologians debate the nature of Hell: Is it temporary? Is it eternal?
No, it's two years. Three, in some states. Hell is Junior High.
I joined the band in seventh grade. I chose the flute.
Don't ask. I don't know why I chose the flute. I regretted it immediately. I didn't know I'd be the only guy within a 500 mile radius playing the flute. Mind you, Assumption, Illinois, has three seasons: Football season (autumn), hunting season (not sure), and Skoal-chewing season (year-round.) Of the 60 guys enrolled in the school, 59 played football.
I played the flute.
I tried to quit. My mom wouldn't let me. I remember asking our band director, for marching/parade purposes, to allow me to always march on the interior of the formation.
In Junior High, the only time you succeed is when you don't want to. I became the First Chair flautist. I beat out some high school girls for this honor. You'd think they'd find this alpha-male display attractive. They didn't.
We practiced in a band-shell arrangement, woodwinds on the lowest level. The floor was a hard tile, the walls concrete block. Our band director, Mr. Sesko, had us all together, junior highers and high schoolers, to practice for a big concert. The room was silent. Everyone was warmed up. Silence.
A sheet of music fell off my music stand.
I reached back, through the hole in the metal folding chair, contorting my shoulder a bit to reach the music. I tipped the chair. It fell over. I lay atop the chair, my arm pinned mercilessly between the folded seat of the chair and the back of the chair.
I couldn't get out. My body's weight pinned my arm inside, and I couldn't get up because my arm was stuck. Please know that a folding chair is, essentially, a Chinese trap.
The room was silent -- except for the clattering cacophony, I mean. It was loud, as it generally is when a boy is vainly flipping about, kickin' it dying fish-style, clanking a metal folding chair against the hard floor. No one helped.
I remember looking toward the clarinet section. Tammy Corzine and Jill DeBrun watched in amazement. I remember looking up, as I thrashed about, at Mr. Sesko, still on the podium, baton still in ready position, his mouth agape.
No one helped. Clankety-clank. Clank. Clankety-clank. Clankety-flip-clank-argh-clankety.
Eventually -- I can't remember how -- but I got loose. I know I got loose, because I'm not currently wearing a folding chair. I remember I had to leave for x-rays. I had to wear my arm in a sling at school.
My mom eventually let me quit playing the flute, but now it's kind of cool to bust it out at some gig. I now play guitar and I wear some camo stuff. I can bench press a lot now.
Where is everybody?
Dave Barry says: Whoever you were in middle school? -- that's who you are now, in your mind. For those who care: It may help to note that Brant is still wrestling a folding chair.
I've been thinking about making a bracelet for myself -- seriously. It will say, "WWNPD?"
"What Would a Normal Person Do?" I honestly ask myself that a lot. What would a normal person do, in this situation? What should I do to not mess this up, to come across as a human with typical, baseline, everyday, coping skills?
I can't do stuff right. Important, everyday stuff.
I tried to fix a kitchen cabinet door. It had a bad hinge. I went to True Value Hardware and purchased a hinge. I went home and drilled holes for the hinge. It didn't quite fit. I drilled an additional hole, then realized I had the hinge backwards. I drilled more holes, then realized I was installing the hinge upside-down. I drilled some more holes, and then realized I was putting the hinge inside the door when it was supposed to be outside.
Net result: Hinge never fixed, 16 new holes in cabinet. We then moved to Texas.
I can't do normal-person stuff.
I needed a job once, so I applied at this pie restaurant. It was called "Pie-Full Delight", and they needed a waiter. My interview was very impressive. I communicated beautifully, and the owner-lady was taken by my charm and insight, and thrilled to have "such an intelligent young man" on her little wait staff.
I was the worst waiter in the history of pie.
They didn't have the heart to fire me. I left forgotten meals up on the counter. I forgot which tables were mine. I was eventually assigned just one (1) table. I feared messing up again, so I creepily watched them eat until they were sufficiently creeped out to leave.
Within two disturbing weeks, they moved me to a little room in back, where I interfaced with customers no longer. My job? Full-time pie-box folder.
I wasn't very good at that, either.
I took a job at the FootLocker at the mall! At least I'd get a cool ref shirt! They assigned me, as well, to a back room, putting shoe boxes in order. It was tedious, but at least I could tell myself, "Soon, I will be issued a ref's uniform, and that will be cool." And whistle, too.
"Next week, I think," my manager told me, smugly, while he stood there with ref uniform and whistle.
He told me that for four weeks. "Next time -- we'll have your ref's uniform." I asked why they wouldn't move me out onto the sales floor, and he said I needed more Back Room Shoebox Training. I got depressed, and eventually gave up. I never got my ref uniform.
My last day, I used my employee discount to get a super-cool pair of Adidas shoes. My paycheck wasn't that huge, so I think I had to give the manager like six dollars on my way out. We were both kinda sheepish about it.
It started early. In high school, I got a job working at a popcorn factory. "Hutch Big Puffs". They asked me to paint the outside of some metal buildings, but I didn't do a good job. I tried hard, though. They eventually had me sit in a lawn chair, on the factory floord, and scrape moldy labels off popcorn jars. I did this with a putty knife.
It was a 12 hour day. Sometimes, some Harley-dudes would sit with me and we'd all sit and scrape. They talked about motorcycles and guns and stuff. I contributed to the conversation as I could, and, as a flute-player and the President of the Student Librarians Association, I had much to say.
I eventually learned to stop saying it.
Anyway, I'm not very good at much stuff. I'm like a bumbling genius, except for the genius part. The other day I walked home happily from the gym. Then, the next day, my car was gone from in front of our house? Stolen? No -- I left it at the gym, where I had driven it the day before.
I want a bracelet, "What Would a Normal Person Do?", but I'm told a normal person doesn't do that.
Showdown: Scot McKnight takes on the blog-satirists of D.A. Carson.
I'd be excited to see the outcome, save for the fact that A) I don't know who D.A. Carson is.
And -- oh yeah -- B) I don't know who Scot McKnight is, either. But that's beside the point. I am, theologically-speaking, a "doofus".
Point is, McKnight, who seems like a cool guy, thinks satire merely turns people against each other. To his credit, he doesn't like it employed against Carson, who's probably also a cool guy, with whom he disagrees strongly on whatever it is they talk about. And that's laudable, I think.
But is satire wrong?
McKnight says, mostly, yes, it is. We have a brief exchange in the comments, and I recommend reading them to appreciate what he has to say without my summarizing.
Satire employs humor to expose folly. It can be horribly mean-spirited, it can be utterly dehumanizing, or it can be used against that which is not, actually, folly at all. These are all very bad things, of course, but they are all very bad things that can also be done with scripture-quoting.
I say intent, as always, is the key. I can employ bible verses to selfish and hurtful ends, I can be utterly non-ironic to selfish ends, and I can even use honesty -- surely a good thing, right? -- to selfish ends. There's nothing particularly wicked about satire.
All humor is simply this: Incompatible frames of reference, overlapped. In this respect, there's nothing stunningly different about the ironic. As I've mentioned before, little kids will laugh when you show them a dog, and say, "Meow! Meow!" They're little ironists. We laugh at incompatibility.
Fact is, satire sticks out -- and stings -- because it's so dang powerful. And it's tough to handle, too, like electricity: You can bring life with it, and light up a hospital.
Or you can stick a fork in a socket.
Satire is not easy to write (well, anyway) but -- forgive us -- some of us will fairly ooze it. There's a difference between a way of seeing things, born of pain, and just-plain-bitterness. If you don't "get" well-developed irony, or if you're not a great painter, for that matter: Maybe count your blessings. And maybe thank your stable parents.
For some of us, overlapping incompatibility was life. Still, I agree: Viewing the world with only an ironic lens is a bad idea. And milk becomes a poison when we drink too much. But they're parts of life, and not altogether disdainful ones.
As I mentioned on McKnight's blog (linked to by Bill Kinnon, who rules -- that's how I found it) I think satire, when well done, is a beautiful thing. It requires a bit of a deft, and self-effacing, touch. Then, it can be not only redemptive, but economical, by golly.
You can read volumes about moral relativism. Or spend 30 seconds with the Simpsons:
In one episode, the City of Springfield hosts a "Do What You Feel Festival" downtown to celebrate being loosed from moral bounds. The bacchanal seems quite wonderful, until we notice the ferris wheel has separated from its base, and starts rolling down the street, children passengers screaming.
A kid sees a lunching maintenance man, and plaintively asks him why he didn't attach the safety bolt, which is sitting on the grass next to him. Why? Why?
"Well...I didn't feel like it."
Succinct, funny, and pretty dang worthwhile.
Recent Comments