Blogolalia

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

24: Day 8

Four hours into the new season and I’m optimistic that this season of 24 will be better than last season’s crapfest.  ***SPOILERS follow***

As always, Tuesday’s reading requirement is Dave Barry’s blog. Today’s quote:

Jack got sucked into a plot to kill the head of the Generic Islamic Republic, President Sham, who has been negotiating a nuclear treaty with President Woman President and also bonking a professional journalist who has been set up as the fall person for the plot by the real plotters. Jack and Chloe tried to explain this to CTU Director Brian Hastings, who does not believe them because, in keeping with established CTU-director tradition, he has the anti-terrorism instincts of lasagna.

And The Amazing Steve’s recap, too. His quote:

Davros tells Cole to make everyone move to the northeast. Cole calls it in, but says that Davros is with him now! Just as Davros is about to pull the trigger to kill Cole, Jack shoots Davros! Just in time! Davros is dead, and Jack takes pictures for his CTU Memories Scrapbook.

I may be reading Magic Lamp during the new season of LOST, too, since it looks like he writes about that as well. Woo.

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Blogolalia • Don't Mess With Jack • Lostaways, Tailaways, & Others - What the Heck is Going On? • (0) Comments • Permalink

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Food Network Humor

My new favorite humor blog.

Adult language alert, for the more sensitive. But it’s hilarious.

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Blogolalia • Gourmandery • Hilarity Ensues • (1) Comments • Permalink

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Anyone Can Post Anything on the Internet, But Should They?

[via Letters from Kamp Krusty]

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Blogolalia • Hilarity Ensues • Permalink

Monday, October 05, 2009

TG and WC Updates

Both of the kids’ blogs have updates, including Molly Ann’s latest stats from the 6 month well check.

Ticklish Giggles

Whiny Complaints

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Blogolalia • Isn't He the Cutest? • Isn't She Lovely? • Permalink

Monday, September 14, 2009

Pics of Little Miss

I posted new pictures of MA at her blog.

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Blogolalia • Ho Hum - Yawners from Life • Isn't She Lovely? • Permalink

Friday, August 21, 2009

Pondering a Change for Ye Ole Blog

I’m still having problems getting to FTP to update the blogware and I really don’t have the time to devote to it anyway. So I’m considering just letting this domain languish and moving the blog to WordPress freebie. I know there are some limitations to what I can upload (the Etsy-mini box, for instance). For those who use free WordPress, can you tell me how you like it?

The potential site is here (I set it up as a back up when the blog was down last year).

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Blogolalia • Technophobia • Permalink

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Blog Tour: Your Jesus is Too Safe

When I started to blog 7 years ago, one of the first blogs I started to visit regularly was The Thinklings. It is still one of the go-to blogs for me every day. One of the founding Thinklings is Jared Wilson. In the weird way of blogging, I consider Jared a friend even though I have never met him in person. So we’re friends in the ether, but we are brother and sister in Christ and have enough real life contact (we’ve swapped Christmas cards, that counts, right?) that I do call him friend. I was honored to be one of the few to whom he sent the manuscripts for his two unpublished novels for review - I loved both and still hope to see them in actual book form sitting in one of my bookcases. Now I’m one of the happy many who have had a chance to read Jared’s first published book, this time a non-fiction work, Your Jesus is Too Safe: Outgrowing a Drive-Thru, Feel-Good Savior. And I’m pleased to be a part of the blog tour of his book. For more information on the tour, see this post at Jared’s solo blog. While you’re there, click around the place, there’s some really good stuff there. I confess that I haven’t quite finished the book yet, although I have read about 3/4 so far. It’s a challenge to find the time with my full-time job, parenting a toddler and infant, and everything in between. I’m actually surprised that I have been able to get any of the actual dead tree book read at all since most of my actual reading these days is done by listening to audiobooks in the car on my commute to and from work. But what I have read is excellent and powerful, with solid theology, and as a nice bonus it is funny in places, too.

Cutting through the glossy, modern perceptions of Jesus, Jared C. Wilson returns to the gospels for twelve raw, realistic portraits of Christ in this revolutionary book. Your Jesus is Too Safe offers a clear image of the historical figure of Christ in his biblical and cultural context. Ideal for readers dissatisfied with the “Buddy Jesus” that has pervaded the evangelical landscape, Your Jesus is Too Safe provides a devotional, inspirational survey of Christ and his kingdom with a conversational style, humor, and a solid theological foundation.

The blurb grabs your interest, but when you start to read the contents, you realize that this is a good, meaty, thought-provoking, convicting, and fun read about Jesus. There are plenty of Scriptural references to back up his points about who Jesus is and who he is not. I know that I appreciate the reminders and the challenges to my complacency to accept the often weaker, inaccurate, and misleading portraits of Jesus in our current churches and culture. I appreciate Jared’s passion to make Jesus fully, truthfully known. My favorite bonus bits in the book? The footnotes, which reminded me of Eggar’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Since I wasn’t sure I would be able to post a review, I asked Jared a few questions about his faith and the book. 1. As general background, please tell us about your spiritual journey: a) how you came to faith in Jesus Christ and b) how you came to the place where you wanted to write this book. I grew up in the church, and my earliest memory of professing faith was when I was about 6 years old. I don’t remember praying the sinner’s prayer or anything, but I remember knowing week to week in Sunday school that it was really important to do. I do remember being baptized when I was in the 2nd grade. When I was 12, like most kids that age do, I went through a crisis of sorts in which I wondered about my salvation. The church was showing those cheesy late 70’s “Thief in the Night” rapture movies then too, and that didn’t help. I was deathly afraid of everyone being raptured in the middle of the night and getting left behind, and of course having my head chopped off in the tribulation. So I said the prayer again and was baptized again a few years later. I don’t point to any of these incidents, really, as when I “got saved.” It was until later I began to see them all, as weird and juvenile as they were, as just signposts along the way of working out my salvation, which I believe was secured for me on the cross. I got saved 2,000 years ago, give or take. The book really came out of a convergence of things in my life. Ten years or so ago a coworker in a bookstore handed me a copy of a book by N.T. Wright called The Original Jesus that really pushed my thinking about Jesus and the four Gospels. I really felt like I was seeing them for the first time. And that kind of began my intellectual journey in the historical Jesus stuff. And then about 5 or 6 years ago I began sort of a Gospel renaissance in my life, sort of a combination of embracing a more Reformed theology, getting under the mentorship of some really gospel-centered writers and pastors, and then a personal crisis the brokenness of which I cannot even put into words as of yet. But all of that left me with the stripped down all-importance of the gospel in my life and the preciousness of Christ. So the book is sort of the outworking of my interest in the historical Jesus and my passion for gospel-centeredness in my life and in the evangelical church at large. 2. What is/are the driving factor(s) that got you writing Your Jesus is Too Safe? Two things, really: Believing that nobody ever was harmed by fixating on Jesus, and in fact that fixating on Jesus is how we get closer to God. And believing that the evangelical Church is pretty much Jesus-stupid. I’ve sat through church services where his name isn’t even mentioned. Jesuslessness is huge. And the problem the Introduction of the book sort of sets up is that even when Jesus is mentioned or taught in our churches, he is frequently a pale or perverted version of the Jesus we see in Scripture. 3. Is there one main point that you hope people will take away from the book? Yes. Well, two (or three). That we are worse than we feared but we are loved more than we imagined. And that Jesus is all-surpassingly awesome. 4. Finally, on a more frivolous note: a) what is your favorite movie of all time and why? “Casablanca.” It’s just dang near perfect. Bergman is beautiful, Bogie is badass, the dialogue is brilliant. I just love it. And the dueling anthems in the cafe scene gives me goosebumps every time. b) what is your favorite novel of all time and why? That’s a hard one. I’m gonna say C.S. Lewis’s Perelandra. Lewis’s “true myth” stuff really resonates with me, and this particular book of his captures those concepts so poetically. It’s really a thrilling book, in addition to being wise and adventurous. But I could have easily said Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy or John Updike’s Rabbit Redux or Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair. c) what is your favorite non-fiction book of all time and why? Lewis’s essay collection God in the Dock. I think more from that book has influenced more of my thinking than anything else. But again, this is so hard to pin down. Lewis’s Mere Christianity is a favorite too. For a much more in-depth review of Jared’s book, see IMonk’s review here. For a much better interview, see IMonk’s interview here.

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Blogolalia • Bookish Things • Life in the Spirit • Permalink

Monday, August 10, 2009

Make and Takes

I discovered this cool website this weekend - Make and Takes. I heart M&T. It’s an awesome resource for parents (I was going to say moms, but there are dads who get into this kind of stuff with their kids, too, so I didn’t want to discriminate) who love to do fun things with and for their kids.

For instance, the newest post is for Star Wars Felt Fingerpuppets. Click over to see the cute picture - I think Princess Leia is spot on.

I plan to make these today - we’re eating a ton of granola bars in our house recently (me for the galactogogueal properties of oats, Jesse because they taste good). Beau is buying the ingredients that we do not have while at Wegmans this morning.

And one day, I hope to make one of these for each of my kids - how cute!

[UPDATE]: Here are photos of the finished granola bars. I made note of the problems with the first attempt in the comments.

The first picture: the scored bars cooling in the pan.
Second picture: the crumbly bars on a platter.
Third picture: the aftermath - someone had to clean up the pan, so I did.

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Blogolalia • Crafty Business • Gourmandery • Permalink

Sunday, August 09, 2009

This is Cool

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

Stick with it during the seconds of nothing. There is more after McFerrin’s initial stuff.

[via Thinkling Jared]

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Blogolalia • Do You Hear What I Hear? • Things That Make You Go Hmmm... • Permalink

Friday, July 31, 2009

New Posts at TG

There are a couple of new updates at Ticklish Giggles.

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Blogolalia • Where's the Parenting Manual? • Isn't She Lovely? • Doc's Report • Permalink

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Playing the Role of Tourists

Robbo the Llama Butcher’s post here reminded me of the story of the visit to the Natural History Museum made by my parents, Beau and Jesse, and the Cootiekids last Friday. All went well until lunch, when my mother lost her cool with a cafeteria worker.

Now, if you know my mother you know that she is one of the most well-mannered, genteel, and gracious ladies ever. It takes a lot for her to lose it. A. Lot.

Apparently, she waited in line and when it was her turn, she asked for pizza. “That’s not this line,” she was told. “OK, then, I’ll have a hot dog,” she said. When the hot dog was placed on the counter, my mother reached for it, assuming it was hers. But the cafeteria lady pulled it back and gestured to the dude behind my mother, making it clear that the hot dog was that guy’s. He looked sheepish as he took the hot dog, clearly knowing that it should have gone to my mother, but not wanting to rock the boat of the cafeteria lady any more than had been rocked. I never did get all of the details, but I think it was at that moment that Mom’s head exploded. Dad pulled her away before there was actual carnage. In his words, it was “a thing of beauty” to see Mom in her ire. Mostly because it is so rare.

Somehow they got all of their food and then the sticker shock set in when the bill came to $60. $60 for hot dogs and chicken fingers.

As Mom and I said, they get you into the museum with their free admittance, but then they’ve got you over a barrel when it comes time to feed the family. I’d rather pay an entrace fee and have a reasonably priced meal, thanks. My parents can afford $60 for a crappy lunch, but what about the family with young children who have saved their pennies for a trip to DC? Did they plan for $60 lunches? I sure hope so.

It’s a reminder of why we don’t play tourist in our own backyard.

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Blogolalia • My Freakin' Family • Permalink

Saturday, July 18, 2009

We Choose The Moon

Via Thinkling Bill, I’m getting my nerd on this weekend by checking out We Choose The Moon. It’s a website devoted to running the audio of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon in real time. I’ve got a window open and it’s kind of cool to just listen to the static and hum of the radio transmissions. Then randomly someone will key the mic to say something rather mundane. Of course, I haven’t really had a chance to listen when they’re in the midst of a full work day yet, although I did hear some conversation yesterday between Buzz Aldrin and Houston about some problem with their TV signal in space - apparently they were getting wavy lines on their screen up there and they wanted to check with the contractor if that was to be the norm or if it was some glitch that could be fixed.

[UPDATE (9:15 am)]: Just ordered my new glasses and heard CapCom explain that while it is now 40 minutes past the scheduled rest time, they have opted to let the astronauts continue to sleep since there’s nothing pressing for them to do at this point. Love that little nerdlet of info.

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Blogolalia • In the News • Technophobia • Things That Make You Go Hmmm... • Permalink

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Books: The Spellman Files

I saw The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz mentioned at Rude Cactus. His review of the third in the Spellman series sparked my interest so I check out the audio version of the first novel from the library. It didn’t disappoint.

First, the characters were well written. I felt like I really knew the people and I grew to care about this nutty family as the story progressed.

Second, the way the story was told was well done. Flashbacks and current time played well with each other and moved the plot and the mystery along at a good pace.

Third, the narrator was fantastic. I don’t care how well a novel is written for the page, if the narrator stinks then the book will stink for me.

I liked the book so much that I immediately put the second in the series on the hold queue at my library. It has arrived and I’ll pick it up tonight on my way home from work. It’ll have to wait until I’m done with my current book, but it’s next in my mental queue of commute listening.

If you like quirky characters and a fun story, then you will like The Spellman Files. 4.5 stars out of 5.

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Blogolalia • Bookish Things • Permalink

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

The Missing Taxi

There’s a new post at Whiny Complaints.

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Blogolalia • Hilarity Ensues • Isn't He the Cutest? • Permalink

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Kids

There’s a new post at WC.

Did I mention the other day that parenting is hard?

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Blogolalia • Hilarity Ensues • Where's the Parenting Manual? • Permalink