soccer

I think my personal curse is that I love playing most sports, but I'm not particularly good at any of them.  At this stage of life I'm far less competitive than I used to be, however.  So, I can get a lot of enjoyment out of a losing effort.

In the past few months I have become re-acquainted with soccer.  I played when I was in early elementary, but have barely ever played since.  Some people from our church formed a team on a co-ed, novice soccer league, and I decided I'd join. As with many sports, I've always assumed there is more to the sport than I understood, and I've learned that this is one of the few times that my assumptions were correct.

Through a short season of games I am working on improving my poor form in everything from kicking to running, and I'm learning how pathetic my endurance is, even with my recent bout of exercising.  Enough others on our team are as new as I am that our team is objectively the worst-performing one in the league.  However, winning really isn't everything.  This is one of the most consistently fun things I've chosen to do in a long while.  I really look forward to our Friday night games for little reason other than the fact that I enjoy playing sports.

I used to think that my interest in playing sports was directly tied to my being a very competitive person.  Honestly, now that I am less competitive I enjoy playing them more.  There is less pressure to do well, and I can focus on small accomplishments during the game rather than whether our team won.  Every week I'm able to tally a few accomplishments I'm proud of to offset the embarrassing things I'm doing on the field.

Being on a losing team has also provided the opportunity for me to talk to our kids about being a good loser.  I understand kids getting mad when they lose, but I have been able to point out to my son especially how everyone on our team is very happy after the game, even when we get trounced.  It's one thing to say that keeping a good attitude when losing is important, but it's another thing to be able to illustrate the appropriate attitude and behavior.

Our team is still searching for that first win.  Maybe when we get that I'll get a new burst of competitiveness.  For now, I'm just enjoying the journey.

toy cars and fireworks

Last week we visited my parents' house for the Independence Day holiday.  There were two noteworthy things about the visit.

First, my mom pulled out some of my old toy cars for the kids to play with.  I did not expect CD to get excited about playing with them, but she found some Micro Machines that she liked.  Her statement to me was that the were cute, and she asked if I thought they were cute when I was a kid.  I told her that is not the word I would have used.

Second, I do not recall being anywhere where there were more fireworks being set off by random people in the neighborhood than this last weekend in the town in Nebraska where my parents currently live.  Every July Fourth brings some fireworks no matter where I am, but I was not used to half the neighborhood in their driveways setting off fireworks at once.  I think this is due to the official display being on the night before the Fourth.

out of place

A lot of the time corners must be cut in television shows, movies, and other forms of entertainment due to budget.  To an extent I understand that, as I believe that most people do.  Some of the cost savers bother me more than others, though.  The biggest may be having someone who is very obviously not from a certain area of the world portray a character from that area of the world.  In this case I am talking about when this is blatant.

An example of what I am not talking about is having Apu in The Simpsons voiced by Hank Azaria or Kahn  Sr. in King of the Hill voiced by Toby Huss.  In both of these cases the characters are presented as a bit tongue-in-cheek, and there's at least a hint of what seems like it should be the right accent in their voices.  I am also not talking about the fact that ancient Roman, Greek, and Hebrew individuals are frequently presented with a British accent.  I don't know how people are supposed to have sounded like in those regions a few centuries back, so it isn't as offputting as it might otherwise be.

Three examples of what I am thinking about spring to mind.

The first example is more significant to me than it would be to others since I had some childhood experience living on and around reservations.  Native Americans have historically been portrayed by non-Native actors who do not talk a bit like any Native Americans I have met and whose facial features were very Caucasian.

This has gotten better in more recent decades than it used to be. I remember talk about relatives of a Native family I knew actually holding a short part in Dances with Wolves when it was filming in the area so some Natives have found roles. My bar for acceptability here is pretty low.  All I am really ask for is someone with a believable accent and who looks Native American to play Native American characters.

As an aside, Dances with Wolves was a pretentious and poorly paced movie if ever there was one. 

The second example is from a movie I rewatched several months back: Around the World in Eighty Days.  One of the main characters is Princess Aouda who is presented as an Indian (from India) princess who the protagonist rescues from a cult that is trying to sacrifice her.  She is played by Shirley MacLaine in this movie.  In case you are wondering how not Indian Shirley MacLaine looked in 1956, the below image from the movie should give a hint.

Shirley MacLaine playing an "Indian" princess

She made no attempt to adopt even a mild accent during the movie, so the entire time that character was on the screen I was thinking, "Had anyone associated with this film ever met someone from India?" Now I know that I am asking a lot for a movie released fifty-eight years ago, but I also know a lot of people from India.  No film holding a Best Picture Oscar should have been allowed to pass off Shirley MacLaine as Indian.

Finally, I spent some time last month playing a game on the Wii called Secret Files: Tunguska.  It's largely a puzzle game where you are supposed to pick items up around a playing area and figure out how to combine them to work toward a specific end goal.  The storyline for the game has German characters traveling on a Russian train, in an Irish pub, and through a Cuban psych ward.  At no time did any speaking character in the game come close to having even a fake German, Russian, Irish, or Cuban accent.  Ultimately, since this was a puzzle game the storyline did not matter so much, but it was jarring hearing "German" and "Russian" characters who sounded like they were from the American Midwest interact.

All of this being said, throw the flimsiest of Sci-Fi plots my direction and I will eat it up.  Perhaps I am not as discerning as I am portraying myself here.

c64 batman

When I was a kid our family had a Commodore 64 computer, and most of the games I played were on that machine.  Of everything that I played, though, the game that probably had the greatest impact on me was Batman: The Caped Crusader.  I was really into the old campy TV series, and the game was more advanced than most Commodore 64 games, so it made sense that I would like it.  It also held some value as one of the gifts for me that my dad had picked out.

As much as I liked the game, I was never able to complete either of the two missions, one against the Penguin and one against the Joker.  In both situations I was able to get right to the end, but was never able to figure out the last thing to do to complete the mission.  I spent hours trying to figure it out, and never to any avail.  In the years since I have often wondered if I was missing something or if the game had been broken.  What I would not have given for the ability to get a game walkthrough like is available online for most games today.

In thinking about game walkthroughs recently occurred to me that I could probably get a walkthrough of completing the game online, and I quickly found some YouTube videos of someone completing each mission.  That completing both missions combined lasts less than twenty minutes is not a reassurance to my gaming abilities as a sixth-grader.

I'm including the videos below of the game for my reference rather than anyone else's because there is no reason anyone who did not play the game would care.  However, I still wish it would have taken the person playing this less than twenty minutes.

Joker, Part 1:


Joker, Part 2:


Penguin:

something light

I actually have a very difficult time coming up with light topics for this blog.  The deeper or more involved ones take some time to type, but I usually have several in the back of my mind that I am mulling.  The problem with that is I expect that most people wanting to read a blog are not looking to commit a lot of time reading through multiple treatises that simply state the blogger's personal viewpoint, and are instead looking for something light.

So, here's a random list of statements about light.

• I used to think that foods labeled as "lite" were labeled using an improper spelling to get around FDA rules.  At least today, there are FDA rules for what can be labeled as "lite," so I was probably wrong.
• Thomas Edison did not create the world's first incandescent light bulb.  He created the world's first economically viable incandescent light bulb.
• A lightsaber's colors are determined by the crystal used in its creation.
• The person who was struck the most times in his life by lightning was Roy Sullivan, who was struck seven times over a period of thirty-five years and change.  He died at his own hand due to relationship troubles rather than directly due to the lightning.
• A boxer who is in the official Lightweight class weighs between 135 and 140 pounds.  The limit for  heavyweight is a mere sixty pounds more than the upper bound of this at 200 pounds.
• About ten years ago some researchers successfully stopped and restarted light by forcing it through a super cold cloud of atoms.  This all occurred in the span of a thousandth of a second, which makes you wonder if the validation process was the researchers asking each other, "You saw that, right?" and responding in the affirmative to make each other feel good.
• The poem Charge of the Light Brigade retells the true story of a cavalry charge in the Crimean War that occurred due to miscommunication.  The poem supposes that the soldiers knew the charge was a mistake, but gave their lives for it anyway.
• Hasbro has an online Lite-Brite that you can use to make and print designs.
• The first traffic light in a form similar to today had two colors (red and green) and used a buzzer as a warning of light change rather than a yellow light.
• Gordon Lightfoot's Wikipedia page lists his various musical styles as, "folk, folk-rock, and country music."  I could have sworn that was three different ways of saying the same thing.
•  The word, "lite," in Swedish means, "a little."

sabbath: revisited

Several years back, I posted on the Sabbath and my opinion on its observation. I have always had an aversion to how it was enforced when I was younger, so I didn't stop to think that it might have some benefits.

When I was a kid, what honoring a Sunday Sabbath meant fluctuated a bit, but from my perspective it almost always meant making the day more boring. Church was obviously boring for a younger boy, but as entertainment appeared to conflict with keeping the day holy, there were times when Sundays were intentionally made to be dull so as not to dishonor the Sabbath.

Now that I am an adult and have more control over how my life is run, a weekly break from work does not sound like a bad thing. My last time reading through the Bible one of the things I watched for was how the Sabbath was to be observed by Israel and what its true purpose was. It was during this reading that it occurred to me that keeping the day holy was not about putting on a show of piety on that day, but rather one of trust. Part of the point of the Sabbath was that God's people trusted Him enough that they would break from work one day out of the week even when doing so would impact them economically (like farmers during the harvest, or merchants traveling distances between cities).

A further point that I frequently heard when growing up was that workers need at least one day a week off.  Too many work days in a row will drive a person crazy.  This is something that I have always agreed with, and I still do.  Beyond that, though, I am finally at a point in my life where a Sabbath rest sounds like an appealing thing.  It just has to be on different terms than I grew up with.

Things that I think should qualify as a Sabbath rest include, but are not limited to, the following.

• An afternoon at the park
• An afternoon at the beach (no, still no real beaches in Kansas)
• An afternoon watching football
• An afternoon playing football, soccer, baseball, etc
• An afternoon watching a movie
• An afternoon reading
• An afternoon playing board/card games

While it is certainly God's privilege to expect sacrifices that seem absurd, the requirement of boredom one day a week always seemed ridiculous.  I think I would feel differently about it if I saw that doing this grew my relationship with Him, or caused me to understand Scripture better, or provided some other notable spiritual benefit.  For me it did not, and it still doesn't.  Strip away the anti-entertainment rule, though, and I am all about slowing down and having a quiet and reflective day once a week.

penguins and polar bears

Several years ago some of my coworkers and their spouses played Cranium at a casual get together. One of the guys I worked with at the time, and someone who was generally very intelligent, had to answer a true/false question that asked roughly, "Do polar bears eat penguins?" He said they did not and provided an elaborate explanation. If I remember correctly, his reasoning was that penguins are protective of their young and travel in groups, so that they would be dangerous to hunt. While he was correct that polar bears do not hunt penguins his reasoning was faulty. The real reason is that polar bears live in the Northern Hemisphere and penguins live in the Southern Hemisphere. The phrase, "Penguins and polar bears," immediately became metaphor in my office for being right despite faulty logic, and I have come to love the concept.

One application of the concept is intellectual. Is a person who has a lot of the right answers, but who makes a lot of logical mistakes intelligent? What if that person is right only because he or she learns the right people to listen to even if he or she does not properly understand those intelligent peoples' logic? Is this person intelligent or not?

One application of the concept is ethical. For example, can a person with seemingly random ethical code be considered ethical for rightly considering murder wrong if he or she has no solid rationale for that belief? To further illustrate this, if a person decided that shooting people at close range was wrong because there is a chance that a splatter of blood will stain his or her clothes, is this person thinking ethically in that he or she believes that shooting someone at close range is wrong? Is the entire value of an ethical code the actual rules or is there significant value in the rationales behind the rules?

One application of the concept that I have posted on before is spiritual. If someone has faith in what is true for all of the wrong reasons is it true faith? As an extension of this question, is it inevitable that the person's false reasoning will undo his or her faith?

There are other applications as well, but they all boil down to the value of the work to get the answer versus the accuracy of the answer. I value the work more, but maybe that is so I can justify being wrong on occasion.

heroes or villains

I have seen most of the episodes of Survivor. The main appeal to me is that it is like people watching on steroids. One thing that doesn't appeal to me, though, is that the show is designed to bring out the worst in people.

This season the gimmick is that people who have been on the show in past seasons have been brought back to play either on a heroes team or a villains team. People who have done darker things when they played before are on the villains team and people who have been more likable are on the heroes team. While I understand the compelling narrative this will create for this season of the show, all I think it will do is prove that heroic, or even altruistic, behavior is not rewarded in the game and the people who have been edited to look heroic really aren't.

Even avoiding the fact that this use of the word "Hero" dilutes its true meaning (which is actually the topic of another post I have been mulling), most of the people who look like good people on the show and who do well can either thank the way the show was edited or thank the fact that people will usually forgive behavior they can see themselves committing. It is next to impossible to get far in the game, let alone win it, without lying or stabbing someone in the back. Most of the people who look like they kept their morals intact only appear that way because they allowed others to do the dirty work. By my personal standard that makes them complicit in the behavior.

While in my less sane moments I have wondered what it would be like to be on the show, I could never actually be on it. At some point I would have to make a moral choice about how dishonest or even malicious I would be willing to be to win the million dollars. I think that I would retain my morals, but part of me is scared I wouldn't. In Survivor: Fiji one of the contestants who was known as "Dreamz" famously went back on his word on a major deal with another player and later claimed it was a part of strategy. My impression of the situation is that Dreamz started with honorable intentions but eventually rationalized that the chance at $1 million was worth backstabbing. That one incident in particular is the one that most makes me believe that the show really is about compromising one's morals to win the game.

Some people will argue that Survivor is only a game, so being less than noble is a valid and acceptable strategy, but I believe that is a slippery slope at best. Where is the line of acceptable behavior? If lying is acceptable because it's a game is becoming physically involved with another player with the sole intent of moving forward in the game? Is physically harming another player acceptable? You could say that physically harming someone impacts their life outside the game, but I have to believe that getting stabbed in the back by someone he or she trusted also impacts a person's life outside the game. Honestly, if it really is true that morals don't apply because it is only a game, then the better player really is the one who does do the sketchier things if those things get him or her further in the game.

It is for this reason that Survivor is my second favorite reality show rather than my first. I like my favorite, The Amazing Race, because playing dirty is less of a benefit, and actually frequently a detriment, to the player or team involved. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy seeing how the different social situations and the narrative of the show work in Survivor. I just enjoy a show more when I can feel like an honest person doesn't automatically have the deck stacked against him or her.

a mind of violence

Just as a warning, this post is a relatively frank assessment of one specific part of the male mind as I see it. The content, other than possibly being blunt, is merely PG in nature. Also, since my mind is male, I feel that I am far more qualified to write on that than something on the female mind. While I am not explicitly requesting this from anyone, I would love to hear assessments from other people on how they believe the minds of people of their gender work.

A lot is made of the focus of sex in the male brain. Not nearly as much is made of the focus of violence. While it may be true that the male brain is more wired for sex than violence, I am not currently convinced that this is the case. I think the drive for violence is more easily masked and diverted than the drive for sex and that is why many diminish the important of violence in the male mind.

First is the most obvious type of mental violence which makes it the easiest to mask. My experience has been that I imagine out violent scenarios to situations quite frequently, and I believe this is something that is common to most or even all other men. This is something that has always been with me, meaning I did not learn it from watching TV and movies, and I do not believe I am alone in this given the content of most action films and comic books. Given how opposed I am to offensive physical violence, that I continue to experience this should carry some significance. This maskable violent imagery is only the most straightforward element of violence in the male mind, though. Just because I imagine violence doesn't mean that anyone has to know about it, but there are other telltale signs of violence in men's minds.

Diverted violence is generally related to a focus or interest in warfare and the elements of warfare and dystopian survival. My observation has been that even many of the most pacifist men have interests of which the appeal is largely due to the similarity to some element of warfare. This can take the form of sports, video games, and business, among other things. For example, football is just a proxy for the actions on a battlefield. It is less obvious than gladiatorial fights were, but all of the symbolic stuff is there. Violence in video games is almost redundant, but even most games that are not violent involve vanquishing a foe. Games that do not involve this are usually designed as crossover games to appeal to women. Finally, the business world is almost entirely structured to be a battle zone. The strong and those supported by the strong (meaning government-supported entities) survive largely by ripping the competition to shreds (I just got a violent mental visualization about that).

Dystopian survival mentality is sort of related to warfare mentality in that my male mind is wired to accept that every once in a while society will destroy itself through warfare and a group of people will have to survive the wilds after it is gone. This is not without some truth. At any given point in time through history there are regions of the world where this is reality. I am not an outdoor sportsman and I do not even own a gun, but I can say that they have some appeal because they would come with the knowledge that I could hunt and fish to provide for my family and shoot to protect my family if society disintegrated.

Since God made most men this way I do not think there is anything naturally evil or wrong about the violence drive as I have described it in the same way that there is nothing naturally evil about the sex drive. The wrongness occurs when the drive for violence goes unchecked and manifests itself destructively. Where that point is where the drive is unchecked is for God to know. I just have to be sure not to reach that point.

this side of the fence

As the old adage, "The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence," indicates, it is only natural to believe that other people have it better. I don't think things are quite so simple, though. I think that, while most people believe the grass is greener elsewhere consciously, they are so attached to their life that they wouldn't trade it for the apparently greener grass of someone else's life.

I started thinking about this because of fantasy football. In one of my leagues the rules are configured to encourage trading players before the season starts. Even though the rules are set this way so that a fair trade would benefit everyone involved, there are hardly ever more than two or three trades. This is because most people overvalue the players that they have and this causes them to be unable to set terms that someone else in the league is able to agree to.

I have been on both sides of the metaphorical fence at different times in my life. I have been the person who saw someone else who appeared fortunate in different areas of life and thought that it would be cool to be in that person's shoes. I am aware of a few situations where people were jealous of me due to something that they thought made my life better or easier. The obvious response to this jealousy is that the jealous person doesn't know what problems the person on the other side of the fence has to deal with. That response is not really the point of this post, though.

Like a person who is unwilling to trade a mediocre fantasy football player away because he or she overvalues that player, I think that most people would choose the hardships of their own lives rather than those of others if they were really actually given a choice. I am not saying that someone who has lost a child or a spouse wouldn't want them back. There are certainly exceptions and this is not a hard and fast rule. I am saying, though, that most people take ownership of the things in their lives and that causes those things to become a part of who they are. For example, if I were to trade my hardships for someone else's that would be the equivalent of giving up a large part of who I am.

One of my Facebook friends a while back lamented about how hard it is to be a nice guy. I agree. Life is seriously stacked against the nice guys and in favor of the inconsiderate jerks, but the reason that he is a nice guy is that at least on some level because he gets value in it. Not to negate the spiritual reasoning for being nice but, at a minimum, a significant part of what keeps him from being a selfish jerk is that it would be denying part of what his true self is, and that would be more painful than dealing with the drawbacks of being nice.

So, if you look at someone else's burden green with envy about how easy they have it, you have to ask would you really lose what identifies you as you to make your life a little easier if you actually had the choice. Could you really toss your hardships for someone else's? Even though I am not fond of the troubles I have had in my life, I don't think that I would.

chuck e. cheese

I didn't go to Chuck E. Cheese too much when I was a kid, but when I did it was a treat. I think the fact that I didn't go too much made each visit something I even looked forward to more. There weren't any near where I lived, but there was one a few miles from my grandparents' house, so that is the one I visited.

This weekend, Golden's mom said she wanted everyone to go to Chuck E. Cheese to celebrate Mother's Day because that is something that they did when Golden was a kid. It was something that NJ would enjoy as well. So, that is what we did on Saturday.

I had some concerns that there would not be anything there that someone as young as NJ would be able to enjoy Chuck E. Cheese's, but I was mistaken. There was plenty there that he liked to do. The only part of the night he did not seem to enjoy was leaving.

While we were there, I had plenty of time to observe the intricacies of how a Chuck E. Cheese store operates, and I had an epiphany. Chuck E. Cheese is essentially a casino for kids. I am sure that I am not the first to come to this conclusion, but this was the first time I drew the parallel. Given the big focus that some churches put on gambling and the casino environment, it is amazing to me that I have never heard anyone decry Chuck E. Cheese or Showbiz Pizza at any point in my life. Below is a sampling of the similarities that I saw.

• Casinos have chips and Chuck E. Cheese has tokens. Both of these imply to the person inside that they are not spending actual money.
• In a casino you hear "clink, clink, clink, clink" from the slot machines. One of the noises that you hear a lot at the cheesy mouse is the "click, clink, clink, clink" of the token machines.
• There are a lot of lights.
• The carpet is very busy.
• There are a collection of games that are fun enough that you don't really care if you get a payout, and there are a collection of games that you only play on the small chance of a big payout.
• The animatronic machines provide entertainment similar to the singers that sometimes work for casinos.
• In both situations the house always wins.
• Most importantly, almost every part of human nature that a casino is supposed to appeal to exists in the local Chuck E. Cheese.

It seems the only similarity I can't draw is that you have to pay for your drinks at Chuck E. Cheese. Then again, Mr. Pibb doesn't lead a person to spend money as freely as a mixed drink does.

After I have said all of that, this doesn't mean that we are going to keep our kids out of Chuck E. Cheese. It just means that I am going to try to be fully aware of what appeal the place has to them.

jarts

For some strange reason, we were discussing lawn darts at work a few days ago. This brought back some memories. It also reminded me of some questions that I have always had about why I had the opportunity to have memories of lawn darts.

My grandparents had a set of lawn darts that all of the grandkids played with when we were growing up. I don't know how many countless games we played, but it was more than just a few. Not only that, this was when we were anywhere from five to twelve years old. We were probably not as responsible with the game as we should have been since we were so young.

I do not know why we were allowed to play the game. None of our parents were uncaring or in the least bit permissive. Our grandparents were even more cautious. I guess no one really conceptualized that the game could be more dangerous than any other outdoor activity.

My experience with Jarts ended one day when my cousin tried to throw a dart over my sister's head and miscalculated. She was struck near her eyebrow, but she was not seriously wounded. It shook everyone up enough that it was the last time we played the game. I think the set got thrown out immediately. I do know I never saw it in the house after that day.

Given that experience, it actually perplexes me that someone ever thought this game was a good idea. I know it originated in an era that was not as litigious as society is now, but in retrospect it was probably a bad idea to design a game in which children hurl metalic missiles at a target near where their opponents are standing.

Lawn darts were actually banned for sale within the United States in 1988, probably due to other experiences where victims were not as lucky as my sister.

Back to my discussion at work, we found a place that apparently sells lawn dart parts to individuals in the United States under the assumption that selling parts gets through a loophole in the Consumer Product Safety Board's rules. I have some moral issues with someone doing this, but at least the people buying the game know what they are getting into. If they don't I hope they do not get the opportunity to learn the hard way.

I do have to offset my overly cautious side, though, with an observation. In it's defense, the game was a whole lot of fun.

holiday recap

It feels like forever since I last posted something. A part of me wants to believe that someone else besides me has felt some withdrawal from my lack of posts over the last two weeks.

I will restart my normal posting schedule on Monday. Until then, here is a recap of the last two weeks.

• Golden and I visited her family and my family for Christmas. As I noted, NJ did well in the car. He got very fussy and stayed that way when we entered Missouri near St. Louis, though, so it did not end as well as it started.
• I did do well in Christmas presents, but I am always leery to go into too much detail about presents because I will probably not evenly express appreciation for my gifts.
• NJ got a lot of gifts, so now we are starting to run out of places to put his toys.
• We celebrated the new year with my parents, which was kind of funny because neither of them stayed up until midnight. Golden made it with the assistance of a short nap beforehand.
• I shipped my laptop in to get it fixed at the end of the trip, so that is the real withdrawal I am experiencing right now. I have rediscovered books and magazines in the last week.
• Maybe the thing that I am most happy about is that we missed a lot of the bad weather that Kansas City got while we were gone. Seeing news reports of the Kansas City airport from Pittsburgh made me happy I wasn't in the area.
• We visited Dash and T on the way through Indiana. It was nice getting to see them and to get the grand tour of their house. I also always like the opportunity to play board and card games.
• I will be trying to fit a small renovation project into the schedule before classes start again. This could get interesting, since it is not my forte.

To reiterate, remember to start checking the site again beginning on Monday, as I will be getting back to the old schedule.

on a tangent about sin

One of the podcasts I listen to is just two guys who record an hour-and-a-half fantasy football conversation out of their living room in Philadelphia. Usually, this podcast makes me think more about what quarterbacks I want on one of my teams than about spiritual issues, but last week was a little different.

One of the guys noted that he had offered a wager to a Dallas Cowboys fan regarding the next Cowboys/Eagles match-up. The response he got from the Dallas fan was that he didn't gamble due to religious reasons. This started a conversation in the podcast over whether gambling is officially a sin. A quote that stuck with me was, "Why is God against everything I think is fun?"

Something that really annoys me is that I often feel forced to either take a position for works or against works. Either I have to be the judgmental person who sees just about everything as a sin, or I have to be the permissive person who can't make the judgment that anything is wrong. On this blog I have picked on the judgmental perspective more, but both options are equally frustrating to me.

If someone asked me why everything they wanted to do was a sin, I would probably have a hard time responding because my conception of sin would likely be different from that person's conception of sin. I don't think that God is waiting to automatically strike down everyone who commits some specific action that a lot of people consider a sin, but anything that a person considers fun has the potential to come between that person and God. Things that may appear to be sins aren't and things that may not appear to be sins are.

When Jesus said that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, I do not think he was exaggerating. It would make sense that the man who has more money and the trappings that go with it (power, security, popularity) simply has more things that can get between him and God. Having those things is not sin, but being unwilling to give them up is.

So, for the moment, I think that just about everything can be a sin. Whether you put it before God and let it become sin is another story.

fantasy world

Just about everything I have done for entertainment recently is a form of escapism. I have active escapism through fantasy football, fantasy Survivor, and a comic book character strategy game called HeroClix that we have been playing at work. For my passive escapism I have been filling time with TV and movies.

I have given this some thought. At first I thought it must be that I am subconsciously trying to escape the chaos of life. On further consideration, though, I have to think that it is because I have little other choice.

This is not meant to be a complaint at all, but the forms of entertainment I choose are largely due to what is possible. Even if I prefered to spend all of my weekends hiking, that is not something that I can easily work into my current schedule. Whether I would structure it into my schedule if it were easier is debatable, but the things that are the easiest to do are what I end up doing.

I do not understand how some parents of small children can remain socially active. That is definitely a challenge for me, and if the real world is a challenge I'll happily take a fantasy world alternative.

you don't know that?

I am watching the game show 1 vs 100 right now. The game is structured so that one person is asked a series of questions as are a group of one hundred people in the audience. If the person outlasts everyone in this "mob" in the audience he or she gets one million dollars. If they miss a question, the people in the mob who have not yet missed a question split a pot of money.

When I watch a game show I frequently ask how people do not know some bit of information. For example, I thought that everyone knew that in Paul Revere's Ride two lamps meant that the British were coming by sea. Golden thought everyone knew that a white sale was for linens. We both got one of these two "easy" questions wrong.

It is always interesting to hear what people think is information that everyone should know. I have been surprised in the past when intelligent people I knew didn't know information I thought was common. I also know that many times people have reacted the same way to me.

Sometimes it is a little difficult to acknowledge that I don't know something that everyone else does because it might betray that I am not the vault of useless knowledge that I like to be. When it comes to the stuff that a person wants to take pride in knowing I think just about everyone is that way. One person may not feel stupid not knowing who the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation was, but that same person might be embarrassed not to know something about cars, or fashion, or something else. I just have to avoid expecting to know it all.

name that band

Each picture below represents a band name. Not all of the bands are still together, but more than one still is. All of the bands are very well known, so don't be thinking of obscure musicians.

As an example of what I am getting at, if I displayed a few images of Sisyphus pushing a rock up a hill, you could answer that this represented The Rolling Stones. That would also probably be one of the easier pictures to guess.

I did not plan it this way, but I think the pictures start easier and get progressively harder. Others may differ on that opinion.

I will provide the answers tomorrow in the comments. Feel free to try to guess the answers before then, though.

1. This is easier when approached from my perspective.


2. I never claimed to be an artist. Even so, it should be obvious that these are sheep. What does that have to do with anything, though?


3. Aren't they cute? I mean the birds, not the politicians.


4. Are there any card games where you only hold three cards? I only displayed these three cards because this clue is difficult enough without me throwing extra cards into the mix.


5. No, I did not mean to make this guy too small for his robe. Again, I am not an artist.

Hopefully I don't need to warn anyone that there is a possibility that someone will throw some guesses out in the comments. So, if you don't want anyone to tell you the answers yet you may not want to read the comments until later.

summer trip: day six

Miles so far: 1441

So much has happened since last post. Normally, I might dwell on that, but due to complications with my laptop's ability to plug into an Internet connection, I am outside mooching off someone else's wireless connection. Needless to say, I am short on battery power. No taking time to upload pictures for this post, either.

The main reason that Golden and I planned this trip when we did was to go to her cousin's wedding. On the way there we determined that taking NJ into the main service was a bad idea, so I entertained him in the church lobby while the wedding occurred. In this weird turn of events, I met the bride for the first time and had a short conversation right before she walked down the aisle. I'm never sure what to say in those instances.

Last post I complained a little about it not really being a vacation. Actually, Golden's aunt and uncle have done everything in their power to make things comfortable for everyone. Dash would be interested to know that I am now practiced up on ladder golf, which is a game where two golf balls that are tethered together are hurled at a plastic structure containing rungs. Golden's aunt and uncle hosted several rounds of that game.

NJ does not have a fever any more, but he has what looks like a full-blown case of chicken pox. He got vaccinated for it last week, and everything we can find on the vaccine says that the reactions don't occur in most kids, and when they do they are minor. I'd like to see the stats on that, though, because we can't be the only case.

On the way across Ohio to see my sister I took a few back roads to save time and money, thus skipping most of the Ohio turnpike, but hitting every traffic light in every small town along that stretch. I don't recommend that strategy to anyone else.

The last two nights NJ has been horrible come bedtime and has ended up in our bed. We have a policy that he never sleeps in our bed, so you know it had to be bad. Tonight he seems better, and I think that is mostly due to a stabilizing schedule.

I met the guy that my sister has been seeing for the first time yesterday. We talked a lot of history and politics. I think we both enjoyed that.

Today, we went to a state park in the area for a few minutes before deciding that miniature golf would be the most entertaining thing to do. My mom watched NJ while we played. I didn't do so well, but that mattered much less than the fact that we got to do something entertaining without having to worry about NJ.

Tomorrow. we leave for Scranton. To the question from an earlier post, yes, this is the Scranton from The Office. Unfortunately, the show is not filmed in the city, so there is not much to see from the show in Scranton. I'll be visiting my grandmother, though, so I'll have more important things to worry about.

lounging - christmas pt 1

Golden and I spent quite a bit of time with family this past holiday. From the night of the 20th until noon on the 23rd we were with her family. From the afternoon of the 24th until noon on the 30th we were with my family. Probably to the chagrin of Golden's and my family, I very literally tend to treat holiday time as vacation time. I sleep in. I don't do much. I try to just forget about the outside world.

Already I can hear people pointing out that this is not much different from how I am when I am not visiting family. There is a difference, even if no one else recognizes it.

I have a few reasons for kicking back like this. The first is that the time leading up to the holiday is generally very stressful, so I want to completely shut down once the actual holiday arrives.

The second reason is due to our families. When we visit Golden's family we usually watch TV in the night time. In the morning and early afternoon, Golden usually does something with her mom or both of her parents and I stay behind. I don't mind, but it causes me to lounge around a lot.

When we visit my family we spend a lot of time around the house largely because my mom wants quality time with us more than to be doing something. We end up playing board games and doing puzzles partially because these are quality time activities. We enjoy the games and puzzles as well, but I think that the main appeal is that everyone is together. Again, this tends to put me in a lounging mood.

There are probably other reasons for my lazy attitude over Christmas as well, but it isn't worth listing them. I look bad enough already.

300

This is my 300th post. Since 300 is a perfect score in bowling I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to give my thoughts on the sport.

I have always loved bowling. I am not really sure why, but I have a few theories. When I was five or six I even used to enjoy watching bowling on TV. Today I cannot imagine why I thought that was entertaining.

Upon some introspection, I think there are two reasons that I have always liked bowling. Since this enjoyment started before I can remember, I cannot guarantee this is completely accurate.

1. Bowling involves clearing out clutter. For some reason I enjoy the idea of clearing out a mess of pins and sending them to the mysterious darkness beyond the lane. I cannot describe the enjoyment well, but it exists.
2. Bowling is something relatively competitive that almost anyone can play.

Until I was about seven I used to beg to go bowling with my dad, but because I was very competitive and he was far better than me I always left the alley crying. Why couldn't I figure a way to win just one game? I still cry when people beat me.

I still remember the first time I broke 100. I was probably twelve at the time. A group of people from my church would occasionally play a few games at the small eight lane alley in town, and one of my friends would always cover whatever cost I couldn't pony up from the money he made from his paper delivery route. If I ever see him again, I should pay him back somehow.

The one and only time I broke 200 I was playing with friends over Christmas break when I was going to college. The following semester I took bowling and archery as a Phys Ed course and did not top 130 the entire semester. We were separated into groups of four students and the three girls I was teamed with all very regularly beat me. That certainly did quite a bit for my ego and my mascara.

The first time Golden and I went bowling I had a bad night and she had a good one. I think she beat me by twenty points. I have beaten her since, but you only get one chance to make a first impression. I'm still working on fixing it today.