white after labor day

I pick on fashion quite a bit. This post isn't really going to be any different, but I thought that I would at least acknowledge it.

If you want to wear white clothing you'd better work it into your wardrobe in the next three days. Why? Who knows? Someone somewhere decided that white should only be worn in the summer, and no one challenged it.

Don't get me wrong. It doesn't really impact me, so I barely care. I still have to wonder at the insanity of it all. Why don't women stick it to tradition en masse and wear white throughout the year? Why must they let someone else tell them what to wear? Why not let this be the winter of discontent?

blind spot

Try to guess what irritates me the most about the above view of the front of a large SUV.

1. The vehicle is obnoxiously larger than any person should rationally need.
2. The vehicle color is not bold enough.
3. That SUV cost way too much.
4. I can't see to turn right at the stop sign because this brilliant person just pulled all the way up to the edge of the intersection rather than providing enough room for me to see oncoming traffic. All I can see to my left is what is captured in this picture.

If you answered number four take a bow. Well, kind of. This is not a picture of an actual vehicle that has done this, but it might as well be. It happens quite a bit.

There are a lot of things I like about living in Kansas. One thing that I don't care for, though, is that the large vehicle (pickup, SUV, etc) to resident ratio is extremely high. This does not really bother me for any reason other than that the people who drive these large vehicles seem to forget that someone in a car can't see over them. Very often, if I am at a busy intersection where one road has a stop sign and the other does not, somebody will pull up far enough in his or her oversized F-150 or Ram or Hummer in the lane to my left that I cannot see oncoming traffic from that direction.

Some people may say that this is not a big deal. Just wait for the truck to pull out or just take a chance and pull out anyway. I have to wonder, though, how hard it is really to stay back a few feet from the intersection when you are in a truck or SUV. That's all I'm asking.

wisenheimer

A little over a year ago the word of the day in our office word of the day calendar was "wisenheimer." As can be seen in the image included in this post, this refers to someone who is a smart aleck. Since a few people around the office tend to make smart remarks, the definition has since been affixed to some cardboard and a magnet and provided as a reward people when they make a remark deemed worthy of the reward.

Strangely enough, I seem to have the reward a lot. I don't have it all the time, but probably enough to make me think before saying some of the things that enter my mind.

I have actually had the wisenheimer award for over a month now, because I forget to hand it off when other people make smart aleck remarks. I actually am hoping that posting this will remind me to give the award away the next time I hear a wisenheimer remark. Part of my says that there is little point in me trying to award it to someone else, though. It will be back in my hands by the end of the day.

doubt

"Faith isn't about feeling. It's about will."- Jim Towey (Mother Teresa's former legal counsel)

I am not, nor have I ever been, a Catholic. Even so, I have always had a great respect for Mother Teresa. I have heard reports that she was not always perfect, but no one is. Simply put, the sacrifice that she endured for the greater good speaks of a nobility that I cannot imagine attaining through my will alone.

In the last few days, word has gotten out about a book that details the doubts that Mother Teresa experienced about her faith. I honestly do not know how most people would react to her saying, "No faith—no love—no zeal—[The saving of] souls holds no attraction—Heaven means nothing." It is possible that a lot of people will see this with disillusionment or as evidence that faith in Christ is not real or it is misplaced. I see this as evidence for her true faith because she was willing to grapple with the doubt she had.

I am actually surprised at how much a lot of people want to make it look like they have it all together. In a church setting is is okay to say that you have had doubts in the past about your faith, but to say that you currently have doubts is somehow taboo. I personally cannot fathom true faith without the presence of some doubt. I am not necessarily even talking about doubts of God's existence, but perhaps just doubts about what He is doing in your life.

I actually think that being willing to doubt in certain situations allows people to work through issues that can derail faith later in life. Just because you convince yourself that you don't doubt God does not mean the doubt is not there. I think it is better to be honest about the concerns you have to work through them before they grow into something that really does threaten your faith. Of that I have very little doubt.

fake

Last night Golden and I watched John Tucker Must Die. While I did have a tiny bit of doubt about the flick, the movie was actually as good as I expected. It is very similar to Mean Girls with the exception that the villain is a player rather than a queen bee. To be honest, I was the one who wanted to see it. This may surprise some people, but I expected this to be more of a thinker than I think most other people expected it to be. Since both Golden and I liked the movie I was not totally off base.

Both movies have one major theme that I greatly appreciate. The main character in each film enters school as a nobody and is eventually catapulted into popularity through some evil scheme to destroy someone else. In the end of both flicks the main character learns that popularity is empty if it is attained through being fake, and that it is easy to become the person that you originally hated.

I think that most people agree that being yourself is a good thing and being fake is a bad thing, but I wonder if people only think that at the extremes. Is letting fashion dictate what you wear so that you don't stick out like a sore thumb being fake? Is rooting for the home team to fit in not being yourself? Is fixing up your house or car to impress others wrong? Is changing some of your interests to match those of your social group wrong? Are the rules different if these things are done by an adult, an adolescent, or a child?

I am deeply concerned about when NJ and any siblings he may have in the future (no, Golden is not pregnant) are old enough to crave acceptance from peers. It is inevitable. God made people that way. How much leeway should I provide in letting my children express themselves, though, when they are really just expressing what is popular in their social context? I wish I knew.

So, even though it appears on the surface that I just watched another dumb teen movie, I think there is a lot to learn from what I saw. For one, I learned that John Tucker doesn't have to die just yet. He is only able to do wrong because his victims allow him through their own selfishness.

wide eyed

I have been rediscovering some of the older music that I have because I have been loading some of it onto my Nano. I came across a song that never failed to make me think, even though the music style is not what I typically like.

From "Wide Eyed," by Nicole Nordeman.

When I met him on a sidewalk
He was preaching to a mailbox
Down on 16th Avenue
He told me he was Jesus
Sent from Jupiter to free us
With a bottle of tequila and one shoe
He raged about repentance
He finished every sentence
With a promise that the end was close at hand
I didn't even try to understand
...
Not so long ago, a man from Galilee
Fed thousands with His bread and His theology
And the truth He spoke
Quickly became the joke
Of educated, self-inflated Pharisees like me

There may be a small danger in encouraging people to listen to the guy with a tequila bottle in his hand. I have to say, though, that this is not really one of my problems. My problem is more likely at the opposite end of the spectrum.

I have already documented that I have a tendency to write certain types of people off as wackos. The question that I have to ask myself is whether this tendency would cause me to ignore Jesus if I lived in His day. Would I see him as a drunken lunatic when He spoke to me? Would I think myself too good for God?

cra-un

I was discussing an old episode of The Simpsons at work the other day. In that episode we find out that Homer is actually naturally smarter than average, but that an incident from his childhood in which a crayon was shoved into his cranial cavity caused him to lose most of his intelligence. The crayon is removed and Homer learns that life is more difficult for those who are intelligent. Out of cowardice he has a new crayon inserted where the old one was and he returns to his former dense self. When I tried to explain the scenario, though, the meaning of my words was lost.

Apparently, almost everyone pronounces the word "crayon" wrong. I say this because they pronounce it differently than I do. I pronounce the word with a short "a" (as in "hat") and end with a soft "un." So, when I say, "crayon," it sounds like "cra-un." The popular way to pronounce the word is roughly the way it is spelled, though I have noticed that even the people who believe this is how the word is pronounced vary somewhat in how they actually enunciate the word. I also think some people use a short "a" when they think they are using a long "a."

When I talked about the crayon in Homer's brain cavity my audience was not sure what I was talking about. Was I describing a cranberry and just shortening the word? Did I invent a new word? For my part, I couldn't figure out what the confusion was about.

For the last two days I have had to try to convince five or six other people that they are the ones who are pronouncing the word wrong. No one seems to accept my logic, though. I guess Homer was right. Life is harder for the intelligent.