LeviSamJuno

Book Review: Grave Descend by John Lange

2011-02-18T08:00:00.036-05:00

Grave Descend by John Lange

Publisher: Dorchester Publishing Company; November 2006

ISBN: 9780843955972
Original Publisher: Constant c Productions; 1970
Paperback: 203 pages
Genre: Mystery
Source: GoodReads swap
Time to Read: 2 hours

Synopsis (from Amazon)

SOMETHING’S GOING DOWN OFF THE COAST OF JAMAICA
Diver James McGregor is used to being hired to explore sunken ships. But there’s something strange about the wreck of the luxury yacht Grave Descend. No one who was aboard tells quite the same story about what happened. Then there’s the matter of the mysterious cargo they were carrying…
In one of the most beautiful places on Earth, a sinister plot is about to unfold. And if McGregor’s not careful, he may find himself in over his head.

Background
My favorite author since adolescence is Michael Crichton ever since I watched Jurassic Park and read The Lost World. By the time I graduated high school, I had read everything he had printed in his own name to that point. However, I had only read one of his pseudonymous works and really did not know what else he had written. Thanks to GoodReads, I was able to get a quick list of everything attributed to Crichton and even put them on a wish list so, when someone was ready to swap out their copy, I would have a chance to get it.

Grave Descend was the first book to become available to swap from another GoodReads reader, and I jumped at the chance. This was a very quick read and pretty easy to follow. Crichton had written this book while in medical school, and it was published in 1970. That year it was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original. The printing I read was the first reprint ever of the book (from my research), which was published for the Hard Case Crime series.

My Reaction
This was a very quick and enjoyable read. It reactivated that part of my brain that had enjoyed the Hardy Boys stories as I tried to figure out the mystery as it was unfolding. The main characters were easy to cheer on, rather reminiscent of the hero of an action movie. The antagonists were complex enough to be believable, but still somewhat larger than life. I guess you get that from these stories where espionage and coverup are involved.

There were times when I got a bit confused by some of the action and which character was whom, a problem I think would be somewhat unavoidable in this specific story. I had to read the last chapter twice to figure out what did finally happen to the relationships of the main characters. Overall, the book was a nice distraction from doing things not related to reading and is something I could easily pick up and read a couple more times.

Reading Challenges:

Want this book? Care to help out LeviSamJuno, too? Click to buy Grave Descend from my aStore.

Monday Mind Maneuver 2

2011-01-17T08:00:00.028-05:00

Today's MMM is another cryptogram, mainly because it's an easy fallback thing for me to come up with so quickly for this morning.

MMM Cryptogram #2
Clue: M = A

AMWEORCC JMOOZB AWUPR ZFB AMWEORCC;

ZOGX GUINB JMO AZ BNMB.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

ANSWER
Highlight the space between the brackets below.
[Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.]

Monday Mind Maneuver 1

2011-01-10T04:00:00.009-05:00

Just for fun, I thought I'd do a fun, start-of-the-work-week brain booster, which I hereby officially name the Monday Mind Maneuver (and I cannot tell you how difficult it was to find a word beginning with M that actually worked there to complete the necessary three-fold alliteration). I'll try a whole bunch of little things here to get your mind going, perhaps with riddles, cryptograms, logic questions, research dissertations, and the like.

Today's MMM is a cryptogram. In case you're not familiar with cryptograms, this is a phrase wherein all of the letters have been substituted by a different letter. For today's cryptogram, your clue is H = L.

MMM Cryptogram #1

UA FGW ZLB KSLI YJUD, YJSB FGW JLXS

DWZZSDDAWHHF DGHXSI YJS AUKDY

ZKFRYGMKLT AGK YJUD EHGM. ES DWKS YG

YSHH GYJSKD LEGWY UY.

- An original quote by LeviSamJuno

ANSWER
Highlight the space between the brackets below.
[If you can read this, then you have successfully solved the first cryptogram for this blog. Be sure to tell others about it.]

Book Review: Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

2011-01-05T08:00:00.121-05:00

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
by Robert Louis Stevenson

Publisher: Longmans, Green, and Co., 7th ed.; 1886.
e-Book: 141 pages
Genre: Gothic mystery, classic
Source: Google Books
Time to Read: 3 hours

(Traditional Rating: 5 Stars)

Summary

A classic mystery (categorized as a Gothic mystery), Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a story about Dr. Henry Jekyll, a well-known, upstanding and wealthy citizen. While handling changes to his will, lawyer John Utterson, Jekyll's dear friend, is disturbed by the naming of the sole recipient of Jekyll's estate upon his death: one Edward Hyde. Utterson's feeling gets even worse upon hearing about the beneficiary's character through another acquaintance who witnessed Hyde, whom he instantly and inexplicably disliked from the first sight. His friend saw Hyde trample over a child carelessly and then, once confronted, paid the parents off with a check signed by Jekyll himself. The only explanation Utterson can arrive at is that Hyde is blackmailing Jekyll.

The story follows Utterson's attempt at helping Dr. Jekyll get out of the blackmail, investigating Hyde's background only to find that he has no history. Utterson finally gets a breakthrough when a nobleman is beaten to death in the street and all the evidence points to Hyde. Now Dr. Jekyll is secluded in his laboratory, isolating himself from his servants and friends, but the staff of Jekyll's estate are certain that Hyde has murdered Jekyll and is hiding out in the lab. Utterson finds out the truth through sealed letters, which end the last two chapters of the book, only then revealing the mystery that most readers already know.

My Reaction

I have seen many variations of plays, movies, TV shows, and cartoons based on and inspired by Jekyll and Hyde, but this was this first time I had ever read it. This was also the second book I have read by Stevenson (the first being Treasure Island). Although it took me a while to get into Treasure Island, I was instantly gripped by J & H, and I think that is mostly because of my familiarity with the subject versus the former book. When I read the first few pages, it almost felt like an episode of Law & Order, where you see the seemingly unrelated characters who just happened to stumble into the dead body of interest to that particular episode. Unlike the show, however, I discovered that Utterson was really the central character and point of view for the book.

With that unexpected way of telling the story, I was very curious in how Utterson was involved in the whole reaction to relationship between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Knowing the outcome of the story, the most fun for me was discovering the mystery with Utterson (more like a Columbo episode than Law & Order). However, the way Stevenson wrote the story, I think it would have been a far more enjoyable read had I not known the twist to the story so well. Fresh readers in the late 19th century were fortunate in this respect.

An element I was struck by that I must mention is the fluidity with which Stevenson interlaces scriptural references throughout the story. Using a simple phrase from the Bible, the author instantly paints the picture that may have otherwise taken a paragraph to describe. This was probably second nature to Stevenson, being the son of a minister (even though by the point of writing this book he was openly rejecting his religious upbringing). Additionally, the common theme of the duality of the nature of Dr. Jekyll (torn between good and evil and seeking a way to separate them) is a striking allegory to the moral battle everyone faces.

Just as many people have said about Stevenson's other books, the author did not waste a word in the telling of this story. I was engaged the whole way through and encourage anyone seeking a good classic read to choose Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Reading Challenges:

2011 e-Book Challenge

Want this book? Care to help out LeviSamJuno, too? Click to buy Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from my aStore . Note the link goes to a newer publication of the book from a different publisher.

Book Review: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

2011-01-03T14:00:00.002-05:00

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Pictures by W.W. Denslow

Publisher: George M. Hill Company; 1900

e-Book: 264 pages
Genre: Children's/Fairy Tale/Classic
Source: Google Books
Time to Read: 1-1/2 hours

Summary
The original published version of this classic fairy tale from L. Frank Baum is available as an e-book for free, complete with original illustrations by W.W. Denslow. Though most famous for its 1939 film adaptation starring Judy Garland, the story of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz began in this book form as a modern fairy tale for the children of Baum's time. In his introduction to the book, Baum claims that the old fairy tales could be filed away since moral lessons were now taught in modern schools and that this new tale exists solely for the enjoyment of its intended audience.

The story is familiar, but in its book form there are more adventures that failed to make it to the screen. Dorothy, complete with her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry's one-room house and her dog Toto, are swept away by a tornado from gray, rural Kansas to the colorful and strange Land of Oz. She is met by the Munchkins (here all dressed in blue) and the Good Witch of the North, celebrating the demise of the Wicked Witch of the East, who was smashed flat by Dorothy's house. The Good Witch gives the little girl the dead witch's silver shoes and asks how she got there. Dorothy only wants to get back to her aunt and uncle in Kansas, so the Witch of the East helps.

Dorothy is sent to the City of Emeralds on the road paved with yellow brick (I think the aforementioned imagery as it is worded as such in the book brings a fresh picture in mind, avoiding the movie cliché). There she is to meet the Wizard of Oz, who should be able to help her get home. Along the way, she meets the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion (all three about whose origins we find more backstory). Her three comrades all have a need they would like to request from the Wizard. From there, they continue their journey along the road which passes through the several other adventures both before and after visiting the Wizard, who sends them on a quest to kill the Wicked Witch of the West before he honors their requests.

In the end, the three Oz residents in Dorothy's party are granted leadership by the peoples of three different lands within Oz (the Scarecrow becomes ruler of Emerald City, the Tin Woodman over the former Wicked Witch of the West's domain, and the Lion over the animals in the forest). Glinda the Good Witch of the South (who only just appears near the end of the book) reveals the way for Dorothy to get back home.

My Reaction
I really enjoyed reading this book. Having seen the movie more times than I can even recollect to count, I at first had the images of the movie in mind. However, with the assistance of Baum's literary imagery and Denslow's original illustrations present in the e-book, I was able to completely reimagine the story, which turned out to be somewhat different from the movie. As far as those differences, the characters in the book seemed more well-rounded, especially with the backstory that each of Dorothy's companions gave.

The fantastical land of Oz that Baum laid out was certainly one that children (and even well-imagining adult) readers could visualize and even almost believe while reading. The way he had the different communities in Oz so markedly unique revealed the imagination the author had. This is certainly a fairy tale with a good deal of adventure and fantasy that I believe any child would love to hear read over and over and which adults can read and enjoy.

Reading Challenges:
2011 e-Book Challenge

Want this book? Care to help out LeviSamJuno, too? Click to buy The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from my aStore . Note the link goes to a newer publication of the book from a different publisher.

2011 E-Book Challenge

2011-01-03T08:00:00.004-05:00

The 2011 E-Book Challenge is being hosted by The Ladybug Reads. I don't have an e-reader except for an app I downloaded to my computer from Google called "Reader Library" that allows me to download and read books from the Sony ReaderStore, including access to the free public domain books from Google Books.

Click the image above to go to the site of the challenge host for more information and to sign up for the challenge. I am going to start small and try for the "Curious" Level (read 3 e-books), but I may surprise myself and reach one of the higher levels: Fascinated (6), Addicted (12), or Obsessed (20).

Books I've Read for the
2011 E-Book Challenge

1. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
2. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
3.

Bible in a Year

2011-01-01T08:00:00.005-05:00

Bible in a Year

With a fresh year ahead of me, I pray that this will be the year I read the Bible all the way through and hope to grow closer to God and learn more about Him and my role in His kingdom in the process. Using the plan from the Bible Reading website, I am once again going to attempt to read the Bible in a year (BiaY).

Last year I started out really well until I started missing a day here and there and trying to catch myself up before missing a few days. Before long I had missed whole books and then abandoned the effort entirely, going right back to where I started.

At the top of my sidebar on top of the rest of my reading challenges this year is my tracker for the BiaY. I am tracking it by number of chapters read (out of a total of 1189 chapters in the King James Version). Fortunately the ubiquity of the Bible in many places makes missing a reading difficult to accomplish: I have used my pocket Bible, BibleGateway, and the Bible reading plan website to catch up on my reading in the past. So, admittedly, I have no excuse to not do this.

Feel free to join in with me, too. I need the extra accountability and support.

Law
Genesis
7 / 50 chapters. 14% finished!
Exodus
4 / 40 chapters. 10% finished!
Leviticus
0 / 27 chapters. 0% finished!
Numbers
0 / 36 chapters. 0% finished!
Deuteronomy
0 / 34 chapters. 0% finished!

History
Joshua
10 / 24 chapters. 42% finished!
Judges
0 / 21 chapters. 0% finished!
Ruth
0 / chapters. 0% finished!
I Samuel
0 / 31 chapters. 0% finished!
II Samuel
0 / 24 chapters. 0% finished!
I Kings
0 / 22 chapters. 0% finished!
II Kings
0 / 25 chapters. 0% finished!
I Chronicles
0 / 29 chapters. 0% finished!
II Chronicles
0 / 36 chapters. 0% finished!
Ezra
0 / 10 chapters. 0% finished!
Nehemiah
0 / 13 chapters. 0% finished!
Esther
0 / 10 chapters. 0% finished!

Poetry
Job
4 / 42 chapters. 9.5% finished!
Psalms
5 / 150 chapters. 3.3% finished!
Proverbs
0 / 31 chapters. 0% finished!
Ecclesiastes
0 / 12 chapters. 0% finished!
Song of Solomon
0 / 8 chapters. 0% finished!

Major Prophets
Isaiah
6 / 66 chapters. 9% finished!
Jeremiah
0 / 52 chapters. 0% finished!
Lamentations
0 / 5 chapters. 0% finished!
Ezekiel
0 / 48 chapters. 0% finished!
Daniel
0 / 12 chapters. 0% finished!

Minor Prophets
Hosea
0 / 14 chapters. 0% finished!
Joel
0 / 3 chapters. 0% finished!
Amos
0 / 9 chapters. 0% finished!
Obadiah
0 / 1 chapter. 0% finished!
Jonah
0 / 4 chapters. 0% finished!
Micah
0 / 7 chapters. 0% finished!
Nahum
0 / 3 chapters. 0% finished!
Habakkuk
0 / 3 chapters. 0% finished!
Zephaniah
0 / 3 chapters. 0% finished!
Haggai
0 / 2 chapters. 0% finished!
Zechariah
0 / 14 chapters. 0% finished!
Malachi
0 / 4 chapters. 0% finished!

Gospels
Matthew
4 / 28 chapters. 14% finished!
Mark
0 / 16 chapters. 0% finished!
Luke
0 / 24 chapters. 0% finished!
John
0 / 21 chapters. 0% finished!
Acts
0 / 28 chapters. 0% finished!

Pauline Epistles
Romans
16 / 16 chapters. 100% finished!
I Corinthians
0 / 16 chapters. 0% finished!
II Corinthians
0 / 13 chapters. 0% finished!
Galatians
0 / 6 chapters. 0% finished!
Ephesians
0 / 6 chapters. 0% finished!
Philippians
0 / 4 chapters. 0% finished!
Colossians
0 / 4 chapters. 0% finished!
I Thessalonians
0 / 5 chapters. 0% finished!
II Thessalonians
0 / 3 chapters. 0% finished!
I Timothy
0 / 6 chapters. 0% finished!
II Timothy
0 / 4 chapters. 0% finished!
Titus
0 / 3 chapters. 0% finished!
Philemon
0 / 1 chapter. 0% finished!

General Epistles
Hebrews
0 / 13 chapters. 0% finished!
James
0 / 5 chapters. 0% finished!
I Peter
0 / 5 chapters. 0% finished!
II Peter
0 / 3 chapters. 0% finished!
I John
0 / 5 chapters. 0% finished!
II John
0 / 1 chapter. 0% finished!
III John
0 / 1 chapter. 0% finished!
Jude
0 / 1 chapter. 0% finished!

Apocalypse
Revelation
0 / 22 chapters. 0% finished!

Greetings, 2011!

2011-01-01T00:00:00.001-05:00

What a year was 2010! I started out the year with the 2-week-old news that I was going to be a father, something made all the more real by my wife's constant morning (and afternoon, and evening) sickness. Silly me, I thought I could handle a 100 book reading challenge, regular book reviews, Bible reading updates, and other normal blog updates while finding a house, trying to rent out a house, preparing for a baby, and taking care of Rebecka. A quick look at my updates from 2010 shows how well that went.

With the year beginning with plans for a baby in the late summer, we worked busily to get everything in order so he would have a place to stay. At the time we lived in a two-bedroom apartment where the second bedroom was my wife's work-at-home office, leaving maybe a drawer for our coming son to have as a bed were we to stay there. So, we upgraded our house search to level orange.

Meanwhile, Rebecka has a home near Cleveland where she lived before we got married and she moved down here to southern Ohio. It was at the time occupied by some of her family members and her mortgage was taken care of and everything went well. However they found themselves a house, which then required us to prepare that house for rental. We had tried selling it before, but the market for houses was historically dismal, so we took a week in the spring to fix up little things here and there and put it up for rent. Renters finally in place, we no longer had to worry about that house (except for, of course, the problems arising from being a landlord), and we pressed on to find our new house.

Through what can only be a divine intervention, we found a house that had been on the market for only a week and that was only being sold by the owner instead of through a realtor. The owners, however, had found that house through the realtor we were using to buy a house, and things just fit together just right for us to get the house: a 3-bedroom with 2 garages and a nice, fenced-in backyard with a swing set already in place.

The main obstacle then was the fact that we had two months before our son was due and had to move from our apartment to the house and (the nesting urge so great in Rebecka by now) prepare his room. Of course, new obstacles arose (getting rid of a pest problem, having to replace the carpets, moving in and out of the garage several times), until we finally had everything in place nearly a week before Samuel arrived.

Ah, yes: Samuel, our new son. First-time parents never expect that first month, and I was not at all prepared. It (the whole parenting thing) has gotten much better since then, and he's so fun now with his smiles and learning to laugh.

So, forgive my absence this past year. This year promises to be bigger.

The Scariest Street in Kentucky

2010-07-22T11:52:00.001-04:00

I like to zip around Google Earth and land in random places, take a look around, see if I can see a funny product placement, strange street arrangements, people doing strange things, or even see something I may have actually seen in person at one time.

My latest journey landed me virtually in the northeast-of-center part of Kentucky in a small town called Carlisle, which is actually a drivable distance from where I currently live.

View Larger Map

There was nothing immediately spectacular about this location. I just clicked from street to street, noticing little businesses and such.

Then I found it: the scariest street in Kentucky. West North Street, Carlisle, Kentucky.

When I saw the first image, I thought perhaps it was a simple image anomaly—overexposure or something. But all along this street is a stream of what could best be described as a shadow of what may actually be there. You'll have to look it up yourself to get the full effect of the terror that grew as I viewed image after image of distorted, indescribable horror, which I will now begin to describe.

I have two hypotheses. 1) The town was missing the day the Google camera car drove down W North Street (abducted by aliens or the government, perhaps off on vacation) and the guy driving the car hired an oil painter to create a vague likeness of the town that should have been there. 2) The town actually looks like this and is comparable to, say, where the Tales from the Darkside may have taken place or fodder for the stories used in The Twilight Zone originated.

Either way, the pictures are rather freaky. I'm rather surprised not to have found any reference to it on the Internet in sites where people post funny or odd things they find on Google Earth. In fact, simply posting my findings may lead to my soon disappearance.

Or maybe that's why I haven't posted any blogs for a while: retrograde disappearance. Maybe instead of being hidden in secrecy because of revealing something of national security, I don't disappear after I post this, but "they" actually go back to half-a-year ago and cease my blogging existence for a time.

But, I digress.

Perhaps the scariest part of this street is at 334 N Walnut Street looking in a southwestern direction. Below I have embedded the image as it exists today, July 22, 2010, 11:52AM.

View Larger Map

Do you see it?

A shadow. A man with a wide-brimmed hat. An image similar to the Exorcist movie poster.

Maybe someday I'll visit Carlisle, Kentucky. It will have to be broad daylight before I step foot on N. Walnut Street.

Movie Review: Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief

2010-02-13T22:11:00.000-05:00

Tonight Rebecka and I went on our Valentine's date to eat at Fazoli's and to see Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. The spaghetti was unexpectedly tasty this time around; the movie was also in many ways unexpected, but more about that in a bit.

The movie is based on Rick Riordan's first book in the Percy Jackson series. The title character (in the book) is a teenage boy with ADHD and dyslexia who finds himself facing monsters of mythological proportions and the revelation that reveals him to be the son of Poseidon, Greek god of the sea. (More about the book can be found at my review of the book, once I finally finish writing it.) Percy is taken to Camp Half Blood with his best friend Grover, whom he discovers is a satyr, and father figure and now camp counselor/trainer Mr. Brunner, who was his Greek mythology teacher, but now at the camp for demigods is in his true form as a centaur.

Director Chris Columbus (also director and producer of many of the Harry Potter movies, among other notable films) and Fox 2000 Pictures present a visually stunning sequence of action, disturbing monsters, and mythological adventure. If this movie was not geared toward a 3D experience, it very well could be done. I actually had to turn my head a few times to avoid hydra heads and a very frightening harpy (whose on-screen time was all too short). Otherworldly locations like Mount Olympus and the Underworld were breathtakingly realistic.

Now to the aforementioned "unexpected" part of the movie. Because I am writing this review from the perspective of one who enjoyed reading the series, much of my disappointment in the film is connected to the differences from the book. The producers presented a rather shortened and reimagined film that ended up only somewhat tied to the book. Sure, some of the characters are there (with the exclusion of a few that I thought were intimately connected to the enjoyment of the book), and the basic premise and goal of the movie matches the text. Of course, I understand that movies have to edit down the books on which they are based for time purposes; otherwise you get a six-hour movie that the common viewer does not have the attention span to endure (not unlike Percy Jackson).

However, I do not understand the redrawing of many of the scenes to the point of no recognition. One of the key plot points in the book was the way Percy discovered he was a son of Poseidon; in fact, much of the first half of the book was spent building up to that fact to the surprise of not only Percy, but the entire camp—Chiron included. The movie (even from the trailers) just lays that fact right out and no one seems very affected by it save Percy. In the end, I wondered if the screenwriter actually read the book; at best, I think someone he knew read The Lightning Thief when it first came out and then tried to recollect it to the screenwriter over the phone amid frequent dropped calls and other interruptions.

The movie's incongruity aside, it was still fun to watch. And my wife, who had never read the book, really enjoyed it. The movie is PG, but it seemed to be a bit much for some of our audience members under the age of eight; a couple mild vulgarities for "comic" effect seemed a little superfluous and might cause some to leave the younger ones at home. So, I definitely recommend the movie more to nonreaders, even though readers and fans of the book will enjoy it; but, like me, they might spend most of the time arguing with the movie in their heads and spend the ride home explaining what "really happened" to anyone willing (or not) to listen.

Book Review: The Night Room by E.M. Goldman

2010-01-26T13:46:00.003-05:00

The Night Room
by E.M. Goldman

Publisher: Viking Penguin
ISBN: 0670858382
Paperback: 216 pages
Genre: Young Adult/Sci-Fi
Source: Purchased at Dollar General.
Time to read: 3 days
aStore Link: The Night Room

Summary
Seven high school juniors are selected to participate in a computer program project called Argus, a simulator that thrusts each individual to their tenth high school reunion. By combining lifestyle patterns obtained through student interviews, the students get a glimpse of what could be their futures. As frightening and enlightening as that is, they also discover that one member of their group is missing from the reunion, a memorial plaque revealing her date of death. Each successive student's experience with Argus adds another layer to the building suspense as Ira and the others try to figure out what happened to her and what they can do to stop it. Through it all, the students discover more about themselves, their relationships, and the value of living.

The story in third-person narrative mainly follows student Ira Martinic, with a few side stories involving other members of the teen test group, as well as some behind-the-scenes drama with people directly involved in the production of Argus.

My Reaction
When I saw that Goldman dedicated the book "To the Crew of the Starships Enterprise" and read her bio, I figured I would fit right in with her style of writing. Throughout the book, the characters refer to Argus as a version of the Holodeck from the Star Trek series, and it was a fair approximation without being a complete copy of the idea. The copyright date of 1995 placed the book in the timeline of when Star Trek: The Next Generation was a current series, which incidentally was the same time I was young and watching the series. I related to this book well.

Although the 11th grade characters were a small sampling of typical school caricatures (school paper reporter, all-around nice guy, chick everyone wants to date, jock), Goldman did a good job of rounding them out as they reacted to their simulated future selves. The background story involving the Argus developer and her assistants adds sufficient information to the story, as well as more interest in their characters. In fact, I think I would really enjoy another book focusing on some of the college students' experiences with Argus that led up to the high school experiment.

Though written for the secondary school age bracket, The Night Room I think appeals to anyone who has been in high school and can remember those moments when planning for an adult future was all at once exciting, frightening, and intriguing. Fans of Star Trek: TNG will also appreciate some humorous parallels.

Want this book? Care to help out LeviSamJuno, too? Click to buy The Night Room from my aStore.

Book Review: The Ruthless Realtor Murders by David A. Kaufelt

2010-01-22T14:24:00.003-05:00

The Ruthless Realtor Murders (A Wyn Lewis Mystery)
by David A. Kaufelt

Publisher: Pocket Books; 1997
ISBN: 1416502998
Paperback: 244 pages
Genre: Mystery
Source: Purchased at Dollar General.
Time to read: 12 days
aStore Link: The Ruthless Realtor Murders

Summary
Wynsome Lewis is a thirtysomething realtor in fictional Waggs Neck Harbor, New York, where realty and money are on everyone's minds. Some shady property deals have led to two women being strangled to death with pantyhose years earlier; now another realtor is dead, and the killer is still at large. As one of the "Ruthless Realtors" connected to a particularly questionable real estate venture, Wyn discovers that she is very likely on the vengeful murderer's list. Lecherous big city Detective Pasko, in an attempt to reclaim public reputation, investigates the town's curious characters to narrow down the potential suspects. His plan leads to using Wyn as bait, but she would rather try to figure out the case herself.

My Reaction
It took me a long time to get into this book. Out of the 29 chapters, I didn't really get interested in solving the mystery until about Chapter 16. Before then, I could barely read two chapters at a time. I really never warmed up to the main character, Wyn Lewis. Since this was the third in the series of Kaufelt's Wyn Lewis series, I wonder if perhaps I missed some character development in the previous two books. By the end of the book, though, I did finally warm up to her. I really liked her husband more, even though he was basically a male paragon, but the book was not about him.

Pasko had no redeeming qualities about him, and he was one of the "good guys." The necessary "bad cop" and tough guy from the streets, Pasko was to me more of a bother to have to read. His diametric opposite, Captain Homer Price, was another character I enjoyed and would have loved to read more about. Unfortunately, his role in the story fizzled out in the end. I did find a few of the other characters mildly endurable, but that's about it.

My least favorite part of the book was the way a few of the characters would say "like" as in "Like I need this inconvenience!" It may be a way of talking in New York, or perhaps I was reading it with the wrong intonation in my head. But it always seemed to me that the multiple times Kaufelt used that idiom was like hearing your grandmother say "cool" or "internet" with an awkward, not contextually accurate word placement.

I was satisfied with the ending, partly because it did end, but also because Kaufelt did keep the mystery pretty suspenseful throughout, with plenty of twists and turns to keep you guessing. All in all, it was not a total waste of time to read. If I could go back, I think I might have read the beginning of the series first.

Want this book? Care to help out LeviSamJuno, too? Click to buy The Ruthless Realtor Murders from my aStore.

A to Z Reading Challenge

2010-01-19T10:58:00.005-05:00

I had read about the A to Z Reading Challenge from many of the other Reading Challenges I've perused. So in the spirit of doubling up my reading this year, I present my A to Z Reading List for Authors and Titles. Click the above link for the official page.

A to Z Authors
A
B
C
D
E
Funke, Cornelia (Inkheart)
Goldman, E.M. (The Night Room)
H
I
J
Kaufelt, David A. (The Ruthless Realtor Murders)
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
Stevenson, Robert Louis (Treasure Island)
T
U
V
Woodruff, Elvira (Ghosts Don't Get Goosebumps)
X
Y
Z

A to Z Titles
A
Bone Factory, The (Nate Kenyon)
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z

Bible in a Year: Day Sixteen

2010-01-16T22:30:00.006-05:00

Today's Reading: Matthew 5-7

Summary
All three of these chapters are collectively called the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 5 contains the Beatitudes ("Blessed are....") and several illustrations of obeying the commandments. Matthew 6 contains the Lord's Prayer and instructions in how to give alms, pray, and fast. Matthew 7 contains the allusion to a tree bearing good fruit and that a good tree should not give bad fruit.

What I knew
The Sermon on the Mount pretty much epitomized Jesus' teachings on holy living, so one would be hard pressed to have not heard preachers or Sunday School teachers refer to, mention, or quote much of the contents.

What I learned
I did not know for certain that the Beatitudes were part of the Sermon on the Mount, nor that all of what I read was all contained there. Having now read the three chapters in sequence and in context, I see how it flows together in a clearly orchestrated manner.

Doctrinal Importance
There is so much here doctrinally, I have to narrow it down and pick a few that really stood out to me. At the end of Chapter 5 (verse 48), Jesus sums it all up by telling us to be perfect even as God is perfect. As scary and impossible a task as that seems, Jesus wouldn't have told us that if it wasn't important.

The parable of the tree bearing good fruit tells us that a person is judged by their fruits; a bad tree gives bad fruit and cannot give good fruit. The solution: bear good fruit, which is something that can only happend when God changes the tree from bad to good.

The instructions to give alms, pray, and fast in secret also say that those who do those thing in public for show get their reward. They want the attention and to be looked at as being noble and righteous. But God doesn't want you to do it for show. In fact, He promises to reward you openly if you obey Him and do it in secret.

Jesus also tells us to love our enemies. It's easy to love someone who loves you back. Treating an enemy like a friend and not repaying bad with more bad not only frustrates their efforts, but it is a good way to show love for them.

Finally, at the end of Chapter 7, the people are astonished after hearing the sermon because Jesus did not just speak like a scribe as if He were reading the Torah and reitorating what had been said. He taught with authority; note the root "author" in the word "authority."

Bible in a Year: Day Eleven

2010-01-11T22:17:00.003-05:00

Today's Bible Reading:
Genesis 4-7

Summary
Chapter Four of Genesis chronicles the birth of the first family's sons Cain and Abel. Cain grows to be more of an harvester and Abel a shepherd. God accepts Abel's blood sacrifice but not Cain's offering from the ground. This causes Cain to become crestfallen and seek out vengeance on Abel, whom he later kills in an act of the world's first murder. God confronts Cain and casts him away with a mark upon him to keep anyone from killing Cain. Then the chapter lists the generations after Cain beginning with the son of Cain and presumably his sister. Finally, Adam and Eve have a son, Seth, whose generations lead to men calling upon the name of the Lord.

Chapter Five is a list of the generations of Adam all the way through Noah's sons. The list is pretty much unbroken except for two stories of note. First is Adam's great-great-great-great grandson Enoch of whom it is said to have "walked with God" and later "God took him." Second, Noah is named by his father Lamech because he will comfort them from the toil and work of the cursed ground.

Chapter Six tells of the growing sinfulness of the people on the earth, causing God to repent from making man in the first place. But Noah came from a righteous heritage and "found grace in the eyes of the Lord." God speaks to Noah and has him build an ark to save Noah's family and enough animals to replenish the earth after God sends a global flood to destroy all other living things. Here is where God gives the ark's building instructions.

Chapter Seven is where God instructs Noah to take seven clean animals and two each of the rest onto the ark. Once all the animals and Noah's family (including his wife, sons, and daughters-in-law) are on board the ark, the "fountains of the deep" and the first downpours began deluging the earth covering every piece of land.

What I knew
Early Sunday School classes teach all about Cain and Abel and Noah's Ark, so I was pretty informed about those particular stories. My own studies had made Chapter Five particularly interesting to me as it details the family line of Adam through Noah. A quick timeline using the given ages and years reveals that Noah's father Lamech died a few years before the flood and the oldest man recorded in the Bible (Noah's grandfather, Methuselah) died the year of the flood.

What I learned
Seeing that Noah was favored by God probably because of his righteous nature, I have to believe that Noah had faithful teachers in his parents and grandparents. Though Methuselah died the same year of the flood, it appears that he most likely did not die in the flood. I like to think he died before the flood since he would otherwise have been in the ark with Noah and his family. I did a little online research to discover that Methuselah means "death and sent" or, more loosely, "when he dies, judgment." It seems Enoch (Noah's great-grandfather who walked with God right out of this world) may have had a hidden prophecy right in his son's name. So, when Methuselah died at the extreme and very blessed age of 969, judgment was on its way.

Doctrinal Importance
First off, man's fall from grace into a sinful nature resulted very quickly in what is considered by most societies to be the worst sin of all: murder. The very first generation of mankind saw murder. However, we also see that God still loved His creation and that the first parents still loved God by bearing and teaching a lineage of God-serving people. I think we see in the family history of Noah that parents have a responsibility to pass on their knowledge and love of God down to their children. If Lamech had been like the rest of man at the time, then Noah would have been just as unrighteous, and no one would be left alive after the flood. Finally, the flood is an important doctrine of Christianity because it is one of the many that demonstrates God's hatred of sin and impending judgment that can befall anyone.

Book Review: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

2010-01-10T21:00:00.004-05:00

Treasure Island
by Robert Louis Stevenson

Publisher: Penguin Popular Classics; 1994
ISBN: 0140620834
Paperback: 224 pages
Genre: Classic Fiction; Adventure
Source: Purchased for 39¢ at the local Goodwill store.
Time to read: 9 days
aStore Link: Treasure Island

Summary

Treasure Island was Robert Louis Stevenson's first full-length, published novel, which began as a story for his stepson. The main character and the narrator is a boy named Jim Hawkins who lives and works in his parents' Admiral Benbow Inn. A drunken buccaneer has been living at the inn and causing quite a scene among the locals. After he receives a black spot (an item representing pirate judgment) from an old, blind pirate named Pew, the buccaneer dies, leaving behind an unpaid room and a seaman's chest. Jim and his mother open the chest and find a bag full of coins of all different nationalities and a document containing a map. They escape the inn just before a band of pirates begin to break in and search for the map, which leads to an island containing Captain Flint's buried treasure.

Jim takes the map to Doctor Livesey and Squire Trelawney, who then immediately embark on a voyage on the ship Hispaniola, hiring Captain Smollet and a crew recommended by Long John Silver. Silver and most of the crew he brings with him were part of Flint's voyage to Skeleton Island, unbeknownst to Livesey and Trelawney. At sea, Jim finds himself in a barrel of apples and accidentally overhears plans for mutiny from the pirates, which he soon relays to Livesey, Trelawney, and the Captain. Soon to land at the island, Jim Hawkins and the rest of the trustworthy crew plan a way to make it off the island with the treasure and their lives.

My Reaction
Until I read this book, I did not realize how much I already knew about it simply from references in popular culture. International Talk Like a Pirate Day could very well have been originated from a group of readers fond of this classic tale of pirates, treasure, and island adventure. In fact, I found just about everything I think about when I imagine pirates in this book. (The only thing Stevenson left out was a few hundred uses of the now ubiquitous pirate word "Arr!" but that may be anachronistic.) This alone I think demonstrates the far-reaching influence of this book as it applies to the popular view of pirate caricatures.

Normally when one thinks of reading "classic literature" one expects a laborious trek through hundreds of pages of archaic phrases and unfamiliar circumstances. Treasure Island is a refreshing reminder of why there are "classics" and has encouraged me to seek out others to read. Despite being over one hundred years old, it is easy to immerse oneself in Jim Hawkins' place throughout the action.

It took me a few pages to get used to some of the nautical terminology and Stevenson's use of apostrophes and phonetic spelling to illustrate the way the pirates were talking. However once I figured out what he was doing, the characters' voices in my head were clear. The action and suspenseful moments kept me turning the pages. I even jumped a bit in the part when Jim accidentally ended up with the pirates in the middle of the night. Descriptions easily laid out the setting of Skeleton Island. In fact, some of the more bloody scenes were surprisingly descript considering this was a tale aimed at young boys, but nowadays the target audience has seen more than that in a single video game.

I was also impressed with the character development within the novel. This was truly a coming-of-age type of tale for Jim Hawkins, learning nobility and honor practically as he fought to keep his and his party's lives and dignity. Long John Silver was mostly the star throughout because of his interesting mannerisms ("and you can lay to that") and his manipulative character. Just when I thought I figured out Silver's motivation, he pulled out another trick. The rest of the characters were distinct and multi-dimensional, with only one or two archetypes (Pew being one of evil villain, though he doesn't last long in the book).

Overall, as many other reviewers have said, Stevenson did not waste any words in writing Treasure Island. Everything written had purpose and added to the story. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting a fun exciting page-turner, as well as to anyone wanting to get started reading the classics.

Want this book? Care to help out LeviSamJuno, too? Click to buy Treasure Island from my aStore.

Book Rating Systems

2010-01-04T16:24:00.002-05:00

FICTION

Enjoyability: This system is highly subjective and is based on how much I personally enjoyed the piece.

5 = I found myself completely immersed in the work, didn't want to put it down, will probably read again.
4 = I was aware that I was reading but still had fun with it and still got lost in the story a few times.
3 = I had to labour through a few pages or chapters but found some parts of the book that I could fly through in interest.
2 = I finished the book for the sake of finishing what I started, and was probably offended by some of the material in it.
1 = I didn't finish the book.

Readability: This system is based on the ease of reading the book.

E = Elementary: an elementary school student could read this book with ease.
H = High School: a high school student could easily read this book.
C = College: college-level reading.
S- = Science (light): the book is filled with explained scientific jargon.
S+ = Science (heavy): the book is filled with scientific jargon that may be difficult for people in the mainstream to read without picking up a dictionary or web-searching some words.
M- = Medical (light): the book contains a lot of medical jargon but explains the terms understandably either directly or by context.
M+ = Medical (heavy): the book contains a lot of medical jargon that the author assumes the reader understands.

Characterization: This system is based on how believable and dimensional the characters were.

4 = Almost all of the characters could almost be part of my family. They act and exist like real people, even if a completely mythical and impossible creature.
3 = There were some archetypal supporting characters, but the majority of the main characters could have existed.
2 = The main character(s) carried the story, but they didn't really have any interesting characters off of which to work or respond.
1 = I had little to no empathy for the main character(s) or any of the supporting characters. These could not be real people at all.

Overall Impression: This system takes into consideration the above systems plus a factor of how likely I am to recommend the book.

A+ = Exemplary. A must-read for everyone.
A- = A very enjoyable book, especially for its target audience.
B+ = An enjoyable book, but probably not for all audiences.
B- = A book you should at least have on your shelf.
C+ = An ok book, good for a rainy day.
C- = An ok book, good for a snowed-in day.
D+ = If the library is closed and you can't find anything on the Internet to read.
D- = If the Internet's down and your house is clean and you've read everything else on your shelf twice.
F = If you were the victim of a Bradburyesque fireman and this was the only book hidden behind the portrait in your bedroom.

As I incorporate this system into the reviews, it will be denoted at the top underneath the book information in a format similar to this:

Reviews

2010-01-04T08:00:00.013-05:00

In an attempt to increase my reading comprehension and enjoyment of the books I am reading, I plan on reviewing the books I read. Then, I shall post my reviews and recommendations here to share my enjoyment with you. I would like to extend the reviews to more than just books as I have a load of old records, cassettes, and CDs that I would like to review just because most of what I have are unique compared to most music collections.

I'm building a basic format for the reviews that will probably evolve over time as I get a little more used to the whole process. For now, the format is as such:

An image of the item I am reviewing either

a scan of the actual item in hand or
a stock photo provided by an online store.

Basic information of the item, including

Title
Author/Artist
Publisher/Producer
ISBN
Length/Format
Genre
Time it took for me to read it*
Source (where I obtained it)
Link to item in my aStore

Synopsis/Summary
Review
Rating based on my rating system

* I tend not to have a lot of time to read for fun throughout the week, so my time to read will vary based on how much extra time I have to read. As a matter of perspective, books I am really interested in I can read within a week or so. Books that take me a while to get into may take up to a month. Hopefully being a part of the 100 Books Reading Challenge will increase my reading speed.

Bible in a Year: Day Three

2010-01-03T20:30:00.001-05:00

Today's Bible Reading:

Romans 1-2

Summary
Romans 1:1 identifies the Apostle Paul as the author of this epistle to the Christians in Rome. Paul speaks about the Gospel and coming to preach in Rome. He then notes that righteousness comes from faith, but God is wrathful against the unrighteous who know they should be righteous by the revelation in God's creation. Paul talks about how people do not glorify God and worship the creature rather than the Creator and are given up to "vile affections" and a whole list of unrighteous actions and behaviors.

Romans 2 talks about the fairness of God's judgment on unrighteous man because man is inexcusable about knowing to do right, either by the written Law or by the law written on their hearts. Paul finally ends on the fact that there is no difference between an outwardly circumcised person and an uncircumcised person if righteousness is not internalized. Therefore, circumcision does not save and lack of circumcision does not condemn.

What I knew
"I am not ashamed of the gospel" is found in a few really good gospel songs, and it is the basis on which Paul preached to whomever he came into contact. The last half of Romans 1 I had studied before when first I was confronted by someone saying the New Testament did not condemn homosexuality. My studies led me to this particular chapter, and I was pretty astounded at some of the other things listed there that are commonplace behaviors today.

What I learned
A commentary I read said that it is one thing to be a racial Jew, and a whole other thing to be a spiritual Jew. It's really what is inside that counts; any outward, ceremonial sign is not what regenerates.

Doctrinal Importance
Romans is probably the most preached book that I've heard because there is so much in it instructing us to live righteously. Romans 1 tells of the natural degradation of morality that the sin nature and ignoring of God's laws causes. The list of immorality at the end of the chapter not only list what man is capable of, but it is a snapshot of what the Christian should avoid. Romans 2 illustrates the fact that neither circumcision nor uncircumcision are necessary for salvation, but that God is praised by internalizing righteousness and acting in a Godly manner.

My Amazon Store

2010-01-03T08:00:00.001-05:00

Check out my new aStore through Amazon. I'm currently loading in some of my favorite books, CDs and more for you to peruse and possibly buy at your leisure. I also have a special section for items that I have mentioned or reviewed on the blog. I will also provide a link to anything I review in case you want to check them out yourself.

This of course is not a plead for any kind of money, but if you were planning on buying something at Amazon anyway, you might as well do it through my aStore and help out the blog at the same time.

I also have a little widget at the bottom of the page, too. Be sure to check it out!

On Reviews

2010-01-02T22:38:00.005-05:00

"I liked it. It was good."

In high school, the above was the summation of what most of the students would respond in any kind of review of some book they were to have read, a speech a classmate had given, or to any other performance to which they were to respond reflectively. A little molding and prodding by the teacher would eventually let the spoken notions expand to more than just trite answers of personal opinion.

It became more of a joke in college acting class such that the first answer in response to a student's monologue or some other speech would be "I liked it; it was good." Then all (including the professor) would chortle before the class moved on to more specific peer reviews of the student's performance, mostly consisting of a long-winded attempt at being deeply intuitive in an attempt to stall until class was over thus giving the wordy reviewer another day to practice his or her own monologue.

Unfortunately that is the most I seem to remember about giving reviews, especially since I have been toying with the idea of doing some kind of media reviews. All I can think of when I sit down to write about a movie I have seen is "I liked it; it was good." Any attempt to put into words the reasons why "I liked it" or why "it was good" get stuck somewhere in the transit between my memory and my afferent carpal nerves.

While I continue to compile my thoughts on the movie Rebecka and I saw tonight (Sherlock Holmes), I shall attempt to at some point put my thoughts here. In the meantime I will also be researching more about doing reviews and hopefully be able to put down something worth reading.

Bible in a Year: Day Two

2010-01-02T20:30:00.003-05:00

Today's Bible Reading:
Matthew 1-2

Summary
Beginning from Abraham, Matthew gives the lineage of ancestors that leads up to Jesus. At the end of Chapter One, he recounts of Mary being with child through the Holy Spirit according to the prophecy. Then he tells of an angel visiting Joseph to tell him about the coming birth of Jesus.

In Chapter Two, wise men from the east visit King Herod in Jerusalem having followed a star pointing them toward the newborn King of the Jews. The scribes revealed that he would be born in Bethlehem, so Herod told the wise men to find him and come back to Herod so he could go "worship him." Once the wise men found Jesus and gave their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, God told them in a dream to not return to Herod (who had other plans than to worship the new King); they then told Joseph and Mary to take Jesus to Egypt to escape Herod's wrath. Herod in the meantime had every child under two years old in Bethlehem killed. After Herod's death, Joseph and his family returned to live in Nazareth.

What I knew
Though Luke 2 is the most often read Christmas story, Matthew also has an important account that reveals a lot of the prophecy being fulfilled. It is also the place where the wise men and their gifts are mentioned, as well as the angel coming to Joseph and Herod having the babies killed in Bethlehem.
What I learned
Something I sort of knew before but had forgotten about was in 1:17 when Matthew, from the genealogy he gave, shows that there were 14 generations from Abraham to David, 14 generations from David until Israel was held captive in Babylon, and 14 generations from then until Jesus' birth.

Doctrinal Significance
The virgin birth of Jesus is one of the most important doctrines of Christianity. In Matthew 1 and 2, we find a lot of prophecies that were fulfilled in Jesus' birth, including historical events, His lineage, the way He was born, the location of His birth, and the events immediately following His birth. His birth is the beginning of the culmination of much of the Messianic prophecies from the Old Testament. That so many are fulfilled in Jesus is far more than mere chance.

Bible in a Year: Day One

2010-01-01T20:00:00.002-05:00

Today's Bible Reading:

Isaiah 1-6

Summary
These chapters of the prophetic book of Isaiah contain Isaiah's visions from God concerning the judgment of His people. The people of Israel have turned their backs to God, participating in vain rituals, idol worship, and all manner of transgressions, while still trying to make sacrifices unto God. He compares them to Sodom and Gomorrah, but in His mercy compels them to become clean and "cease to do evil."

While the first chapter voices God's displeasure at the sins of Judah and His offer of forgiveness, the other chapters focus on prophetic revelations of judgment for the wicked who do not turn from their evil ways. The righteous will be spared. A parallel is drawn between a protected vineyard bearing wild grapes.

Chapter 6 details Isaiah's vision of the Lord on His throne surrounded by six-winged seraphims crying "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts." Finding himself in the presence of God, Isaiah declares himself a "man of unclean lips." One of the seraphims takes a hot coal and purges Isaiah's lips. The Lord gives Isaiah a mission to prophesy a judgment to the people.

What I knew
A few key verses from these chapters, plus the entirety of the sixth chapter, I had heard preached or referred to several times. One of my best friend's favorite verses (and increasingly mine) is found in 1:18

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

which is a very beautiful verse promising forgiveness of sins.

I recognized a couple of places that have been referenced in songs: "beat their swords into plowshares" (2:4); "neither shall they learn war anymore" (ibid); and, of course "Holy, holy, holy" (6:3).

What I learned
There are many levels of prophecy I discovered so far in Isaiah. Based on some cursory research just on the book as a whole, I found out that some of the prophecies have been fulfilled in captivity of Judah by other nations. Other prophecies point to end times.

Doctrinal Significance
The doctrines of holiness, righteousness, and seeking forgiveness are clearly laid out in these chapters of Isaiah. Also found here is God's promise that He will honor righteousness by preserving those who seek His forgiveness. At the same time, the unrepentant and those that give empty sacrifices without any change in their way of living will be judged. This judgment is not reserved for just the people of Israel. There were many things pointing to the judgment of nations that do not honor God and His righteousness.

Bible in a Year Challenge

2010-01-01T13:00:00.002-05:00

I present a new reading challenge that's a couple thousand years in the running: To Read the Bible in a Year. Since I have already determined to read 100 books in a year, I consider this one to be the ultimate foundation of that reading challenge.

Today I began a 52 week Bible reading plan, partly because I have never read the Bible completely and was going to attempt it this year. But when our pastor made a request that all the congregation participate this year in attempting to read the Word over the course of the year (and even provided a daily guide to follow), I was doubly determined to do so.

I have to admit my severe slackness in reading and studying the Bible like I should. I tend to let everything in the world distract me or take priority over even a cursory glance at the scripture. So now I have the urge and method to increase my biblical exposure from whenever we read at church to a daily and personal study.

In addition to reading the Bible, I am going to attempt to apply what I read as I review at select points. I will provide a summary of the text, what I knew before I read it, what I learned from reading, and finally what I see to be part of the doctrinal significance of the passage.

100+ Reading Challenge 2010

2009-12-27T22:17:00.014-05:00

In order to kind of jump-start my daunting task of reading the mass of books on my shelf that I own and have yet to complete, I have decided to join the 2010 100+ Reading Challenge from J Kaye's Book Blog. I only learned about reading challenges at all in October, so I was a little late to start on anything. The 100+ Challenge gives challengers a year to read pretty much any one hundred (or more) books, which is a pretty flexible enough set of standards for me to attempt. Feel free to go along with it by clicking the image or the hyperlinked text above.

Below I will list the books as I read them. Hyperlinked titles go to my review of that book. At the end of each item is the date I finished the book.

THE LIST

January

1. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (Jan 10)

2. The Ruthless Realtor Murders by David A. Kaufelt (Jan 23)

3. The Night Room by E.M. Goldman (Jan 26)
4. Inkheart by Cornelia Funke (Jan 31)

February
5. The Bone Factory by Nate Kenyon (Feb 14)

March
(READING)
6. The Liberation of Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey
(TO READ)

New America by Michael A. Smith

Walking Thru Hale by Angie PelphreyBeast by Peter Benchley

The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story by Richard Preston

A Time to Kill by John Grisham

Buzz Riff: A Novel of Crime by Sam Hill

The Absolutes by James Robison

1984 by George Orwell

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

A Surprise Christmas Gift

2009-12-26T08:00:00.004-05:00

The first Christmas Rebecka and I had together as a married couple was only after a little over a month of being married and just over a year of dating. So, Christmas 2009 was a little more exciting than 2008 because we had all that time to get to know each other more, to be able to determine what to get each other as gifts. Both of us apparently very much enjoy surprises but are just as proficient at surprising other people. That made this Christmas all the more exciting.

Having simmered on the decision for quite some time now to some day learn to play the piano, Rebecka very sneakily got the ball rolling for me by prepurchasing a month's worth of lessons. She also bought me a Crosley record player with USB connection so I can start recording my growing collection of records to digital files.

I countered her surprises with a fish tank, something she has been debating on getting for the better part of this year and which she was not expecting at all. She was also hinting at needing an electric razor, although this hinting was a little more overt. Well...to the point of basically asking me to get her one. So, I did.

Above all, however, Rebecka ended up trumping all of the Christmas gift surprises with something the Tuesday before Christmas, December 22nd. I came home from work and did my usual after work routine while she was completing dinner preparations. As I came out in the hallway, she was holding up two sticks of the Clear Blue brand, both brazenly declaring "Pregnant" in crisp, blue, digital displays. She showed me two because she wanted to be absolutely positive. (She actually took another the next day, just to be extra-absolutely positive. This will be summarily followed up next week with a doctor's visit to provide blood-test proof of her extra-absolute positivity.)

Yes, reader(s): I am a father. Wow. That's the first time I really wrote it like that, and it is very strange to see, especially having come from my own fingers.

I do say "I am a father" here in the present-tense rather than the future tense because I have already fathered a new life. The entity currently growing within my wife's womb is a living organism, having been created through the fertilization of two haploid gametes--one from me and one from Rebecka. The embryo has a set of genes distinct from either of us, making a brand new person, though tiny and encased as he or she grows.

Ahead of us, Rebecka and I have the rather scary path of nurturing, training, and teaching our child to be an adult; to train him or her up in the way he or she should go. The person growing inside Rebecka right now is an evidence of the awesome workings of God's almighty power. He who has a hand so large that He can hold the entire universe is also small enough to deal with us in a personal, loving manner, even to the point of meticulously designing the little hands being formed in utero.

I pray that God will guide us to make the right decisions as we seek to depend more on Him while this child is in our care. We do not take this responsibility and privilege lightly. Please remember us as we strive to train our new child to become a person after God's heart.

1550 Books to Read

2009-11-05T12:20:00.006-05:00

I am in the process of compiling a list of all the books on my bookshelf (loosely defined as anywhere my books are: on an actual shelf, in boxes, in the car, etc.). In the process I have come to the conclusion that I have not read or completely read most of them. Many of them are textbooks or reference books, so I have perused them in times past. A few of them (which I still want to include in my comprehensive list) are game books: crosswords, word searches, cryptograms, etc.

In the course of all this, I have discovered I actually own a few of those books deemed "Classics" by the people who deem such books in that manner. Further, I've discovered that I have not actually read most of those so-called Classics. In fact, when I think back on my required reading in school, we were never really instructed to read any of the Classics save condensed versions of books like Tom Sawyer or an entire part of a semester devoted to The Great Gatsby; as a result, much of my reading involved Young Adult or RL Stine books, until I grew into reading Michael Crichton books and the like.

So, I have decided to make it a firm goal to read as many of the most popular and highly recommended books as I can. I have compiled a list made from such Internet postings as this which encompasses a great deal of reading. There are roughly 1550 titles listed--a daunting mountain of reading material indeed.

My short-term goal is to increase my amount of reading. Since college, when I was inundated with required reading of textbooks and scholarly journals to prepare research reports, as well as spending a great deal of time rehearsing plays and learning lines, my reading frequency has reduced to just about nil, aside from whatever I read on the Web.

A great deal of my inspiration for my desire to read more is my sister. Sissy is the paragon of an avid reader, a quality that is mutliply aided by the fact that she works as a media assistant in an elementary school in the library. My niece Kayla (Sissy's daughter) has inherited that same quality (the reading enthusiasm, not the media assistant job--she's not of working age yet). Through conversations of what books they are reading and how much they enjoy it, coupled with Kayla's frequent re-reading of many of her books, I felt rather behind the mark. The over-achiever in me was finally revived.

My long-term goal is to have read all of these "must-read" books. I don't have a timeline for this just yet. However, my first step is to finish compiling my list of books I own. This is a three-fold purpose: 1) to see if I already own any of the books in my list; 2) to finally reorganize my books with a fully complete catalog (unrelated to my reading endeavor); and 3) to determine which of the books I own I have or have not actually read.

I have two middle-ground goals as well. Firstly, because I realize I have not read most of the books on my shelf, I want to start whittling away at them first. Most of them are not on my 1550 list, but it seems silly of me to start getting and reading new books when there are countless untouched ones in my possession. At the very least, I will find out which ones I don't like and can give them away.

My last goal is to be able to review the books I've read. This will encourage me to not just enjoy the books, but to read them analytically and objectively. In turn, I will engage myself in writing for a purpose once again, increasing my blog posts and hopefully leading to a point where I can write more freely. (Reading the books will help with that, also.)

So, with that, I'll get started on my task!

(Hopefully the reading increase will ameliorate my horribly short conclusions.)

On Anatid Gifts

2009-10-20T12:48:00.002-04:00

Call me strange, but I'm of the persuasion that if someone were to give me a duck, I would take the duck.

On Choosing a Slogan for Your Product

2009-10-06T19:43:00.005-04:00

Choosing a slogan for your product is so important it is often best to leave it to experts. However, paying an advertising firm to pitch your product with some creative and catchy bit of word play can be very expensive, particularly if it is your first product.

So, what can you do?

Firstly, investigate and research other jingles and slogans from products similar to yours in design or function. (Of course, it is best if your product is not too similar to already prominent products. Patent and copyright holders tend to frown on copycat products. Their lawyers, however, tend to grin behind their lawsuit.)

In your research you should notice a common theme occurring throughout the plethora of slogan types for your product. For example, if your product is something usable in the kitchen, the slogan will likely incorporate flash phrases like "slices and dices" or "low on fat, big on taste" or "less likely than the leading brand to sever the distal portions of your phalanges."

Comparably, if your product is a new kind of medicine, your research will turn up slogans like "works quickly," "makes your life happy," or something equally likely to be forgotten mere moments later (and for the following hour and a half) when the announcer tells you everything that could possibly go wrong after taking the medicine, conversely making the potential product purchaser confused whether the commercial is made by the product makers or by their competitors. The point is: don't market prescription drugs in commercials.

Next, should you continue to determine to come up with your own slogan, it is necessary to come up with something fun, catchy, and possibly humorous. Be careful, though, that your interesting slogan is not misleading. Take for example the possible rough draft of the slogan for a well-known poultry producer (who shall remain nameless unless some kind of product placement reimbursement is possible): "The Inedible, Credible Egg." Try to imagine the effectiveness of their ads with a slogan like that. Sure, it gives the consumer a product they can believe in; but will they buy an egg they can't eat? Unless, of course, the product is a type of egg-shaped digital dictionary made out of asbestos-coated lead dipped in bubonic plague.

Finally, when choosing a product slogan, it is vitally important that you let someone else read and react to it before presenting it to the general public. They can present a different perspective that can shape your slogan into something more effective and interesting. Furthermore, it can help eliminate poor planning and editing: something this informative piece would be if I took the time to look back at what I wrote and let someone read it before I posted it.

These pointers are just to help you get started in your slogan creation for your product. Assuming you have a product that someone needs or wants, a great slogan can make even those skeptical buyers look twice at your product. And, above all, avoid grinning lawyers.

On My Avoidance of Sports

2009-10-02T13:05:00.002-04:00

I once heard a sports enthusiast say:

"There are two kinds of people that matter in this world: Athletes and Athletic Supporters."

I think that's one of the reasons I never really became a fan of any sports...along with my natural aversion to anything involving forceful physical contact whereby I might get hurt.

Update

2009-07-21T10:36:00.004-04:00

Greetings.

I haven't gone completely away from the blogging, but my busy schedule has gotten even busier. So, I won't be able to update much for at least another week or so.

In the meantime, I bring the following improvisational group to your attention: The No Pants Players. This is West Virginia's Premier Improv Troupe. They are based in Charleston, WV, and perform monthly at South Charleston's LaBelle Theatre.

Rebecka and I went to see them Saturday night (18 July). They are simply hilarious!

Comments on "Song Time, Part Two"

2009-07-13T15:00:00.000-04:00

"Chorus for a Country Song" was very random and involved Rebecka and me making fun of a country/gospel song we had heard on the radio. After many derivatives of random parts of the song, this came to mind.

This song is best understood if you sing it with a twang. "Sometimes" should be pronounced, "Sum-tahms," "washcloth" should be "warsh-clauth," and have a bit of a yodel at the end of each phrase.

Song Time, Part Two

2009-07-13T09:00:00.003-04:00

Chorus for a Country Song

Sometimes I think I'm a washcloth,

Then I stop and look at the floor.

I go back to what I was doin',

And wonder what I did that for.

Someone's Surprising Sarah

2009-07-08T09:00:00.005-04:00

Setting: 7:00AM, Wednesday, 8 July 2009, Somewhere, USA

Seated in a chair, our secretary heroine stares contemplatively at a single book setting in the center of the otherwise empty desk. Sarah wonders where everything has gone: her computer, keyboard, notepads, phone, box of tissues. She hesitantly reaches to open the desk drawer to find nothing inside. Searching through drawer after drawer yields the same results.

Suddenly, the book opens of its own volition. Sarah jerked, causing her chair to roll back about a foot. She sat upright again, determined to figure out what was going on here. Scooting her desk chair forward, Sarah peered into the open book. She gasped at what she saw.

Standing in the center of the page, moving just enough to be noticed as something unusual, was a little figure. Sarah leaned in closer to see exactly what kind of thing it could have been. She saw what appeared to be a little man but with three sets of all appendages.

Shaking his fists violently at Sarah, the little man seemed to be shouting, though his voice was much to tiny for her to hear anything. Sarah leaned a little closer, causing the little man to step back and cringe into a shielded position. Slowly he raised up his head as he realized no danger befell him. Sarah began to speak, but his frantic fist shaking began again; this time, she was close enough to hear.

"Shhh--before you speak, listen to what I have to say!" the little man shouted as loudly as he could, although his voice barely reached Sarah's threshold of hearing at the tiny frequency the voice emitted. "Sarah, I have been sent here to bring you a message, and you must promise to listen." Shocked that he knew her name, Sarah's eyes grew wide and her breathing became shallow. She studied the little man's face a while before she realized he had paused, waiting to hear a response.

She stuttered out a quiet and meager "Sure." Sarah listened intently as the little man spoke slowly and clearly.

"Sarah, you may have wondered why your desk was empty, save for this book and, of course, me. Someone in management has sent me here in a very surreptitious manner to tell you this. Sarah, you're fired."

Sarah paused a moment, taking in the little man's words, making sure she got every little word. She jerked her head backwards as she realized finally exactly what he said. She just got fired! Sarah glared at the little man and quickly grabbed the front of the book. Slam went the book as the heavy cover met the rest of the open pages.

Slowly Sarah opened the book to the page where the little man had stood. She was not sure he was even real; but if he was, had she just killed him? Situated on the center of the page, just where he had been standing, was a light colored smudge. Sarah looked closer and saw that the smudge was actually paint, and written in the paint in tiny but discernible letters was the word "Surprise!"

Sarah stood up, confused. Streamers and confetti started streaming down from the ceiling. Salsa music started playing out of invisible speakers. Some of her coworkers started emerging from the walls as if they were at one point part of the drywall, but now back in human form. She looked at the desk again. Standing in the middle of the book where the paint had just been was the little man with three sets of all appendages smiling, waving, and shouting happily.

Somehow a cake rose out of the desk. Scribbled in sugary, blue icing was "Sarah, You're Fired!" Sarah was now very disoriented, feeling the room shift around her like water in a washing machine. She raised her hands to her face and would have screamed had her larynx not been frozen. She started to run away but, as if on a treadmill, she stayed in one place.

Suddenly the world stopped. Sarah found herself falling quickly until, finally, she sat up in bed. Sleeping beside her up until now, her husband woke up and asked if everything was okay.

"Sure, sure...just a bad dream," she murmured sleepily.

"Someone needs to stop eating pizza at bedtime," her husband warned warily.

Sarah nodded in silent agreement and began to lay her head back down to sleep, until she saw something that made her scream--out loud this time. Sitting across the room on her dresser was the little man with three sets of all appendages waving, smiling, and shouting happily: "Surprise!"

(5) If I Were King of the Forest...

2009-07-07T09:00:00.000-04:00

... my Chief Ambassador to the Kingdom of the Lake would be a squirrel, just because I'd like to see a squirrel swim.

Fireworks Etiquette

2009-07-06T09:00:00.000-04:00

Scores of people lined the riverbank as several different fireworks shows lit up the cloudy night sky, reflecting a distorted but beautiful light show in the river below. Bright, colorful bursts of sparks and fire arrived noiselessly until two seconds later when the sound finally caught up with the light that had already disappeared from view. Cheap snappers and sparklers popped and sizzled all around us, filling the pauses with peripheral sight and sound while the sky prepared for another rocket to pierce its blackness. One could be mesmerized in the awe of these moments.

That is could be mesmerized, if it weren't for several factors making the experience at times uncomfortable and generally annoying.

Huddled in a tight circle in the prime fireworks viewing spot, a group of about seventy teen girls (and I may be exaggerating: they could've been preteen) loudly, incessantly, and somehow simultaneously held conversations with themselves, punctuated by laughter that made even the exploding projectiles of fire form a finger and pair of lips to shush the girls, which made them laugh scornfully and even more loudly. Though their merriment may have held true with the spirit of the Independence Day festivities, I'm sure they were less concerned with patriotism and enjoying the fireworks than they were with, say, the Jonas Brothers or making fun of their parents.
Small groups of people on either side of my wife and me kept inching closer and closer to us, not unlike those rusty, spike-laden walls that creep insistently and horrifyingly inward toward the hero of an action/adventure movie. Except, in our case, we were less likely to procure tetanus or unwillingly obtain body piercings and more likely to get lung cancer because...
...everyone in this area smokes! When I say "everyone," I do not actually mean to imply that absolutely everyone here smokes. I do mean to imply that the proportion of smokers to nonsmokers in any given outdoor event is about 25:1. The parents, their adult children, and some of their underage children huffed and puffed to their (and our) alveoli's discontent, being ever so careful to make sure they either stood upwind of us or turned their faces toward us when they exhaled.
The fireworks themselves were impressively unimpressive. At a rate of about one firework every 30 seconds, the audience's very short attention spans caused them to wander off mentally and physically. (In particular were some people (possibly inebriated) getting a little too close to the dropoff point of the riverbank.) Whoever directed the fireworks did not use a lot of creativity, unfortunately. Some of the 'works themselves were beautiful and appropriately loud, but there was no theme. By the time the finale came (which I think was more about getting out of the park before the rains came than actually completing the show), my wife and I were walking back home.

Thus ends my curmudgeonly report on the fireworks.

Sunday Night Service

2009-07-05T22:00:00.001-04:00

I do not recall ever experiencing a church service quite like the one tonight. People came to the altar and prayed. Several different people sang. Many people testified.

This morning, our Sunday School class (for which I was pretty late) was talking about the need for prayer in a Christian's life. Someone mentioned about how groups of people from the Bible would pray together for God's healing or protection or deliverance from the enemy.

In the worship service, a little girl was baptized and a teen rededicated her life to God.

In the evening service the choir, instead of staying up in the choir seats like normal, all came down and prayed.

The preacher preached 2 Chronicles 7:14, urging people to keep themselves from pride, pray and seek God's face, and stop doing things contrary to God's will--stop sinning. He urged us to pray for our country and our leaders. Someone from the congregation stepped up and walked to the altar, urging everyone in the church to come up and do just that.

The evening service lasted 2-1/2 hours, a short time when you consider some other types of churches who may begin at 10:00AM and stay until 3:00PM; but for our church, it was a welcome change from the ordinary.

I believe God blessed our service because people obeyed the Spirit and prayed like they had not done before.

Biology Lesson of the Day: Arm Hair

2009-07-02T09:00:00.001-04:00

Biology Lesson of the Day

Arm Hair

Adaptation to one's environment and habitat is essential for all creatures, from archaebacteria to humans, viruses to Sequoia trees. Otherwise, changes in those environments or habitats could prove fatal to the creature and spell doom for its species.

Today's Biology Lesson deals with an adaptation that we see in humans: arm hair.

There is no great debate that I am aware of over the origin and necessity of arm hair in human males. In fact, a quick keyword search of "why do guys have arm hair" will bring up mostly results regarding hair removal products, commentary on national and cultural differences regarding shaving, and, for some reason, pictures of Julia Roberts. Still, very little dispute can be found about the purpose of arm hair.

Arm hair is a result of the same stuff that causes other body hair: androgens. In fact, body hair in general is scientifically referred to as "androgenic hair." Androgens are those hormones (including testosterone) typically found in more abundance in males than in females and are, in fact, what stimulate the growth and appearance of all male secondary sex characteristics. A female can also have excess androgens in her system leading to the development of some of these same male characteristics. Contrariwise, a male can have too few androgens and not develop those characteristics.

Now that you understand where arm hair comes from, chemically and biologically, let us now turn to why I believe human males have adapted arm hair.

Picture this: a group of early era males is seated in the cold, shivering against the wind. They have taken care to cover their cores in loincloths (made from the skins of the animal they last killed for food) to block as much of the cold as they can. In an effort to keep their weapon use agile, they have not added sleeves to the loincloth. As a result, their arms are ready but freezing. Some of the men are bigger, hairier. Their bulk and extra covering from the hair keep them warmer for far longer than the smaller, smooth men. If anyone dies from the cold, it will be the latter.

They make their kill and take it home. They prepare it for their families and eat healthily. They feel the grease and other particles of food that stick to their mouths and facial hair. Napkins having not yet been invented, they reach up their forearms and wipe.

This happens year after year, generation after generation. The more hairy of the males outlast the less hairy, both because of protection from the elements and because of having extra food left over on their advantageous arm hair. The ones that outlive the others live to produce offspring likely owning the genes predisposed to growing more hair.

Today, we have sleeves and houses and jobs that typically don't require facing bitter wind to get food. The arm hair seems superfluous. However, we (and I am speaking mainly about males in the first person plural here) have learned to use this adaptation for another purpose. This new purpose is not entirely as necessary for survival against hunger and wind, but it is worthwhile.

This new purpose? Picture this: a guy is out cooking on the grill. He's got his sleeves rolled up (or if he's from Lincoln County, no shirt whatsoever) and the smoke is rolling off the grill. He goes to wipe his brow with a handkerchief? No! He wipes off his brow with his forearm, which is covered with (say it with me) arm hair.

Arm hair, once used to shield man against the elements, is now little more than a napkin. That is why still, to this day, men will always forget to get a napkin when they eat and instead prefer to wipe off their mouths with their forearms. It is just one of the advantages that have carried on through the millennia.

Oh: Canada!

2009-07-01T09:00:00.001-04:00

In keeping with my timely recognition of holidays, it is my duty to present to you today's holiday of choice: Canada Day. As many of you may know (but probably more of you do not), the First of July is Canada's Fourth of July. In much the same way that Americans celebrate Independence Day, Canada and Canadians around the world celebrate with fireworks, parades, and the annual arrival of the Canada Bunny to deliver sparkly treats and maple leaves. The celebration commences with a public singing of the Canadian National Anthem "O, Canada!" which is hummed along wordlessly around the country since, just like in America, the people don't really know the words to their anthem either--unless they happen to be acquiring or have a music degree.

Canada was officially born in 1867 as a result of the Canadian Confederation and a carefully designed delivery room. After a little bit of epidural and some parental coaching, Canada burst into the world to a room full of appreciative and happy people (and the father passed out on the floor). Like many new parents, the Fathers of the Confederation were not certain what to name this new creation. One of the great grandfathers of Canada, Jacques Cartier, had started calling the area "Canada" (based on the Huron-Iroquois word "kanata" meaning "village") in the 14th Century. The name stuck like a hair in a biscuit (or a cheveu in a bannock), until it came time to officially name the country. Then, every Canadian cousin, uncle, great grandneighbor, and sisters' ex-brothers-in-law showed up with suggestions, such as:

Victorialand,
Tuponia,
Superior,
Frances ("It was your grandfather's middle name. You do want to honor your grandfather, don't you?"),
Borealia,
Hochelaga, and of course
Steve.

Although I am partial to "Superior" for its anatomical accuracy and "Borealia" for its astronomical allusion (the Aurora Borealis would make much more sense to people nowadays), I wasn't around to give my suggestion. So: Canada it is!

Excited to have a new name, Canadians evidently forgot one of the most important parts of becoming a nation: conquering a foreign country. No, I'm sorry. I mean: making a flag. It was nearly one hundred years later before Canada had its own flag. Before 1965, Canada still semi-proudly waved the Union Jack in the corner of their flag. Prime Minister Mackenzie King ("King Mack" to his friends) tried to get a new flag created in the '20s and the '40s, but a couple of wars broke out (not related to his flag-making attempts) and he became too busy.

Finally, in 1964, Prime Minister Lester Pearson ("Pierce Lester" to his pointy stick-wielding boyhood bullies) established a committee featuring fifteen members of all different parties (conservative, liberal, social democratic, and ice cream social) and gave them six weeks to design a new flag for the nation. For five-and-a-half weeks, the committee labored and debated over what kind of sandwiches they should order for the next meeting. Finally, around the Thursday afternoon before the deadline, someone stepped up and suggested they all bring their own lunches so they can get down to the business at hand: how to celebrate their successful sandwich-ordering accomplishments.

Somewhere in there the red maple leaf (with 11 points representing the fact that a maple leaf typically has 11 points) and the red and white stripes were suggested and put on a sample flag. In 1965, the flag was accepted and has been flown proudly as the national symbol of Canada since.

So, happy birthday, Canada! The world wouldn't know what to do without you.

I close with the following tribute to Canada:

"O, Canada! Our home and native land.
Something something something all thy something hmm...
O, Canada! O, Canada!
God shed His grace on thee.
O, Canada! O, Canada!
How lovely is thy maple leaf!"

(4) If I Were King of the Forest...

2009-06-30T09:00:00.001-04:00

...I would try to improve communications with King of the Savannah, President of the Tundra, Emir of the Desert, Prime Minister of the Arctic, and Premier of the Mountain. Extra-regional outreach is important to maintain a kinship among all of our animalian and plantian underlings.

Why I Have Never Been a BINGO Caller

2009-06-29T09:00:00.003-04:00

If I ever had the opportunity to be a BINGO number caller, it would probably be my last opportunity. My time spent would be filled with false-starters like:

"B-4 I start calling out the numbers, I want to thank you for this opportunity to be your caller tonight."

"I ate ten sandwiches before tonight, so hopefully I'll be energized the whole way."

"N- case you were wondering, this is my first time ever at the BINGO board."

"G...it sure is nice to be here."

"Oh, 75 is the total number of possible numbers I will call. Just wanted to make sure you knew that."

I'm sure the old ladies would love me. Those BINGO cards flying at me after a few of my winning zingers would be signs of celebration of my awesome BINGO calling skills.

Buying a House is Realtor Fun

2009-06-27T09:00:00.002-04:00

Rebecka and I are in the process of trying to buy a house. Actually, we are already in contract and have the loan ready and everything. In the contract, though, is this wonderful clause we inserted that states that the contract is "contingent on acceptable house inspection report," which means that if we do not like what we see in the house inspection report (which we had to pay for), then we can walk away from the contract and the purchase of the house.

Now we work with a realtor who represents one realty company out here. The owners of the house work with a different realtor who represents another realty company and, incidentally, is a long-time friend of the owners. (We know this because there is some kind of requirement that family or close friends of house sellers must indicate to all potential buyers about this. I wasn't entirely sure why at the beginning, though I think I'm getting a handle on it now.) Having your own realtor working for you as a buyer is probably the best thing you could ever do as far as house-shopping.

Our realtor works for us to make sure we get what we want out of the house we will buy. She gets a commission off of the selling price, which is part of the selling realtor's commission. I'm sure the selling realtor is excited about us having a realtor. So, as a result, we do not have to talk to the sellers directly at all. If it wasn't for the paperwork, I probably would never have know their names.

When we started the contract, we had just come away from a house that we liked much better and was significantly lower in price, but that was sold before we really even got our offer faxed to the realtor. So, with this next house that was high on our list of properties we liked, we decided to ask the seller how much they would be willing to take. It had been on the market for almost a year, so we figured they would be willing to drop the price a bit, which they did, but only a little.

So, the offer they accepted was in the amount of the price they wanted. They almost did not take it because they had a built-in surround sound system. Of the few manly characteristics I have, one of them is the sheer masculine enjoyment of having the voices of news people surrounding my head with the subwoofer shaking with the baritone of the anchorman. Well, that and explosions.

Oh, the audacity of us to request the built-in speakers! How dare we ask for something like that when they "came down so far on the price"! Fortunately, their realtor was smart enough to say "don't lose this house because of the speakers."

We had a qualified and very professional home inspector look at the house. He looked at every little detail, took pictures, crawled under the house, climbed on the house, opened and closed doors and windows and vents. It was amazing. Afterwards, he showed us his key points of concern and then emailed us later a formal report detailing very clearly the problem areas and what may be needed to fix them.

So, now I come back to that wonderful inspection clause. One of the major problems with the house was that the land and driveway was sloped toward the house, causing excess moisture to end up in the crawl space. This led to a build-up of condensation underneath the house and on the insulation. This problem can further lead to rotting the underlying timbers, black mold, and weakening the foundation--none of these a small problem. As any good homebuyer would do, we had our realtor ask their realtor to fix the problem or allow us money in the mortgage to fix it ourselves.

Now this is where I started discovering the reason for the thing about the realtor being closely associated with the owners. Their realtor was appalled (and possibly even asilased) that we would ask such a thing. Were we trying to get out of the contract? (Note: If we had been just trying to get out of the contract, we could have just said, "Oh, we didn't like what we saw on the home inspection: see ya!" and it would've been justifiable and legal.) Our realtor responded that there were 29 problems that the inspection found and that we as the buyers were willing to take care of all but four of them (all four of which were directly related to the water problem).

So, as of today, we are still waiting to see if they will fix the problem and we get a new home, or if we are searching again.

UPDATE: 6/27/09 7:00PM

Seller decided that it would be better for him to continue paying on a house which has been for sale--and, in which he has not lived--for a year now than to pay a little bit of money up front to fix a (bad) problem so that we could buy it. Why can people not look at the big picture of things before they make incredistupid decisions? Oh, well: now on to find another more different house.

Deaths of a Sidekick, an Angel, and a Superstar

2009-06-26T08:04:00.006-04:00

What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death?
--Psalms 89:48

The past few days have been filled with expanded media coverage of notable people whose deaths have rocked the entertainment industry. Each situation was tragic.

Ed McMahon
Ed McMahon was once the late night television audience's best friend while he was Johnny Carson's announcer and sidekick for many years. In addition to that, he hosted, emceed, and regularly appeared on different shows, maintaining his welcome presence on television. Sadly, near the end of his life, he suffered from mold poisoning, broken bones, and great financial loss.

Farrah Fawcett
Naturally beautiful and famous because of that beauty, Farrah Fawcett lit up television, posters, and magazines. She was even a very talented artist. Her life, however, was cut short due to a rare cancer that seemed to very quickly overcome her despite a reportedly strong will to beat the cancer.

Michael Jackson
Popular music changed in a major way because of Michael Jackson. From boyhood stardom, he built one of the most successful music careers of all time, right up there with Elvis Presley. His later years were filled with controversy, eccentricity, and a out-of-this-world type of lifestyle. His life, too, unexpectedly and suddenly came to an end.

I feel sorry for the families and other direct parties whose lives are now forever changed by that one inescapable fact of life: death. It is not easy to deal with, whether someone dies of old age, or of a terminal cancer, or just out of the blue.

It is very difficult for me, however, to sympathize with the great sadness that seems to reverberate from the large fandom across the country and from around the world due to the passing of these common people who made it to worldwide fame. I found myself watching the extended news coverage; but I increasingly found that some of the people interviewed on the street, over the phone, or via some other blog/tweet/update placed too much expectation--too much of their self-worth--on whom I can safely guess were people they had never met. They acted as if their lives were dependent on the existence of this one actor or musician.

And the problem I attribute this to is idolatry. I guess we are all guilty of hero worship from time to time. When someone in the entertainment industry appears to have some of the same humble beginnings that common people like we have, it builds a kind of reverence to a person that we could have been. So we vicariously celebrate and enjoy the successes that person has and get angry when they do something stupid to hurt their name or diminish their fame, as if they had done it to us personally. They are, after all, representing us: the common people.

The media exacerbates this problem by contributing hours of coverage surrounding the announcement and investigations into the deaths of the celebrities. I find it very disrespectful, also, that they focus cameras on the ground and in the air to catch perhaps the dead body (the body of some grieving person's sibling, child, parent, or spouse) in transport. But, that's another topic for another time.

Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
--Exodus 20:3

Do you idolize a common person who happened to make it to stardom? Did you react to the deaths of these talented people (or any like them) more than as if it was a member of your own family? Do you plan a pilgrimage to their home or to build a shrine in their honor?

Then, my friend, I am afraid you have placed too much trust in and invested too much of your devotion to a common person. They may have had an impact on the entertainment industry, but of what lasting value is that? Music today is not the same as it was when Michael Jackson came on the scene; but neither is it the same as when Elvis changed it before him, nor as when some of today's stars have changed it today. The same goes for film and television.

Every human life on Earth is temporary. The fame, fortune, and fan bases of these three stars could do nothing to make their bodies immortal or to stop their souls from going out into eternity. Though I don't tend to go preachy with my blogs, I feel it is necessary in this case:

Only one person has that power over death. Only one person deserves the devotion that so many people had for the three poor souls whose lives have ended.

...I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.
--John 10:17b-18
And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.
--John 10:28
And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood,
--Revelation 1:5, KJV

Marketing Idea: Phone Numbers on Advertising

2009-06-25T09:00:00.003-04:00

I've noticed a lot recently that company-owned vehicles are also used as advertising, most notably by having the company name, phone number, and website prominently displayed.

This is effective if you have a very limited company outreach. Otherwise, the company is limiting itself severely by missing potential customers:

All cell phone carriers who may see the advertisement and may want to call right then and there.
Out-of-state visitors who do not know the area code.
People in other states in which they may see the company vehicle or other advertisement.
People living around state borders who may have to call three or more different area codes daily and don't have time to ascertain out of which one the company is operating.

The remedy: make sure all advertisements, including the company vehicles, have the area code with the phone number.

Misheard Song Lyrics

2009-06-24T09:00:00.005-04:00

The way my brain works, simple things I hear produce fascinating results sometimes. Take, for example, lyrics that are somewhat difficult to understand in their recited form. (I neglect to put the word "song" here because some of these instances occur during rap tracks, which by no means could, neither should, be considered a "song.") I am certainly not the only who has misheard song lyrics, but I take great honor in being able to remember what I mishear and take it a few steps farther into what hopefully can be construed as, at the very least, funny.

The song in reference today is one by the group Queen, a group famous for being one of the groups I have actually heard of from my lifetime. In this particular instance, the title of the song is also a commonly misheard lyric: "Another One Bites the Dust." It is a song that I believe has something to do with a population of carpet mites that live off of the fallen epithelial cells of living organisms that walk along the carpet. If not, someone needs to write a song for these misunderstood, microscopic creatures. Of course, the only line I know from the entire song is "another one bites the dust." and that this is followed by a quickly spoken string of garble that has about six syllables and is repeated twice.

That brings us now to some of the results of my brain processing this information in its unusual and, some may say, insanity-reflective way:

"Another one fights the crust,"

"A brother incites the rust,"

"He smothers the rice and dust," and (with the subsequent line)

"A mother indicts the bust, and it's Millard Fillmore, and it's Millard Fillmore."

I just really like the image of someone's mother formally accusing a stone sculpture of the 13th US President of something like perjury or grand larceny.

(3) If I Were King of the Forest...

2009-06-23T09:00:00.002-04:00

...my royal robe would be made out of the finest leaves of ferns, dogwoods, maples, and oaks, with a nice cotton lining, 'cause I like to feel warm and cozy. No one wants a shivering, uncomfortable forest king.

Right On Queue

2009-06-22T09:00:00.001-04:00

By this point in my life, I have spent approximately three-eighths of it (or roughly twenty-one years) waiting in line. (The other five-eighths or so has consisted largely of other sedentary activities such as watching TV, writing, browsing the Web, eating, and the occasional mid-afternoon nap.) I feel pretty confident that I understand the basic techniques and courtesies involved in being an on-queue member. I've had a lot of practice and some stern but effective teachers (as evidenced by the fact that I always move to the right side of the hallway, use the right-side door, and occasionally hold my hand up to my mouth to be quiet as we walk through the napping Kindergarten part of the school).

Evidently I am one of a few members of society who has passed the "Waiting in Line" course (though my certificate must have been lost in the mail). Not only that, but it is apparent that, unbeknownst to myself until recently, I have been thrust into a major part of the uncertified society as an unwilling ambassador to hold high the torch of line-waiting excellence. This I do nonverbally and quietly, of course; this blog serves as my verbal reminder, I suppose, to those who do not see through the subtlety.

The most common type of line I find myself in is a cashier's line. Whether it is in Wal-Mart, a grocery store, or a gas station, the rules of line etiquette still exist but are so often ignored or even trampled underfoot like an altruistic ant trying to carry its downtrodden comrade to safety during a parade. I think these rules can regain a foothold in society, and I am here to help. Here is a short list of habits I urge you to practice to become or maintain your place as a courteous member of the community of line-standers:

Keep an empty space between you and the person in front of you. It may help to judge how much space you need to leave by looking at the floor and visualizing your shoe-length plus a half between your toes and the heels of the person ahead of you. If you cannot look down and see your shoes, then visualize the same distance, only from the farthest point of your body in front of you (e.g. stomach, nose, beard). This should be adequate space to make you and the people around you comfortable.

Far too many times do people wait gawkily like a moose in a whirlwind until the very second the cashier reminds them (typically with a polite sneer or eye roll) that payment is required. Then, the frantic search begins. Have your method of payment planned ahead of time. If you plan to pay with credit card, have it in your hand ready to swipe or give to the cashier. You tend to have plenty of time while the cashier is scanning and bagging your items to reach into that preplanned part of your pocket, wallet, or purse and retrieve your currency.

Make sure you have everything you plan to buy before you get in line. I cannot count how many times I have seen someone lay their planned purchases on the counter, only to realize they forgot to get the hygiene product they originally came in for, along with a presumptive, "Would it be okay if I leave these here; I'll just be a second?" I am sorry: your place in line has become void upon the removal of yourself from that line.

By no means should you ever reach behind you to get your wallet and, instead, reach into the back pocket of the person behind you. I know this seems like common sense to most of you out there; but believe me, there are some for whom common sense is no more familiar than the postulates of non-Euclidean geometry.

If you are buying lottery tickets, cigarettes, or any other of the unsavory items that must hide behind the counter, do not (a) scratch off your numbers while you are still in line, making the people behind you increasingly willing to sacrifice a little composure--and if necessary, the heel of a shoe--to end your turn in line; (b) complain that they never have your favorite brand of cancer-causing, smoke-inhalation agent; (c) require the cashier to leave from behind the counter to go find you something he or she already told you they do not have in stock. If you simply must do any of these things, it is your penalty and duty to pay everyone in line behind you either half of your winnings (ha! 'cause you will ever win the Super Lotto Mondo Espresso Jackpot) or to add each person in line to your will as you will not be needing your money for very long.

With the inclusion of technological advances such as cell phones with text messaging and web browsing capabilities, a new element of line courtesy has been added. If you are texting in line, be sure to look up from time to time to keep up with the line or, more importantly, to not run into the person in front of you.

Finally, keep your cell phone conversation to a minimum while in line, particularly if you happen to be one of the following people in line: (a) the person at the head of the line at the register; (b) the concurrent caretaker of a rambunctious, inattentive toddler who is throwing things off the shelves and/or kicking other patrons in line; (c) incapable of speaking below the volume of an exploding steam engine; or (d) the cashier.

It is my earnest hope that citizens read and apply simple rules like those above, along with some common sense, to their daily routine of standing in line. We as a contemporary and interacting public society who come together frequently to participate in this long-standing, standing-for-long-periods-of-time activity should make it as comfortable and easy as possible. Take time to educate the unlearned and steps to penalize the unwilling.

I must now close as the line ahead of me is finally moving. If I can get this toddler off my foot and my wallet out of her dad's hand, I might get to buy my soda by the time he finishes cashing in his lotto ticket.

Gas Station Annoyance #5

2009-06-20T09:00:00.004-04:00

Top Five Gas Station Annoyances

5. Entering & Exiting

Blame it on the (already mentioned) poor parking design or simple carelessness on the part of drivers, but getting into and out of a gas station is no less difficult or treacherous than removing an abscessed tooth from an awake and irritated bear. As far as coming into the station, the entrance to the gas station comes straight off the main road, usually requiring one of two maneuvers: (1) crossing four lanes of traffic at just the right moment that you suffer only a lost rear bumper; (2) turning into the station at such an angle that your right front fender briefly touches your trunk. Upon escaping the cars flying by you on the main road, you must immediately swerve to miss the following obstacles:

a car backing out of a (most likely) non-existent parking spot (the driver obviously busy turning up the bass volume on his or her radio);
a pedestrian walking to their car from the convenience store at a snail's pace, his or her face showing full acknowledgment of the fact that you could run him or her over if you weren't such a nice person;
a pyramid of windshield washing fluid, inexplicably blocking the only available marked parking spot;
a car coming in the entrance diametrically opposite your current position but for some reason taking the pump nearest to you; and
a convenience store jumbo-sized Styrofoam soda fountain cup placed in your way by a now-absent adolescent such that the straw (about three feet long) would pierce your tire and/or gas tank if you attempted to squash it, (which would be much to the prankster's delight had he or she actually stayed around for more than five seconds to see the fruit of his or her labor after placing it there.)

Trying to leave the station is an equally insurmountable feat. Remember how you entered? Now you are to do it in the opposite direction. Thousands of other cars, waiting for that perfect traffic moment, are in line to speed across and into your path at speeds upwards of the rotational velocity of Jupiter (the planet, not the god of Roman mythology.) At any given gas station at any given moment, five hundred drivers are racing each other for the chance to make it into or out of a gas station with, at the very least, their cell phone conversations being filled with curses hurled at the other maniac drivers and, if possible, their lives.

I propose immediate action to help alleviate the problem of gas station entrances and exits. Of course, I can't do anything about it right now. I'm still waiting to find a good traffic moment to get out of this gas station.

Gas Station Annoyance #4

2009-06-19T09:00:00.005-04:00

Top Five Gas Station Annoyances

4. Employees

I have worked retail for a great percentage of my short working career. Having somehow overcome that role in the working arena, I do not envy anyone working with the public directly their jobs. In fact, I try to be as courteous and helpful as possible.

Having said that, I also know something about one's responsibility to customers as a retail worker. I am not too naïve to believe that all employees working with customers face-to-face feel the same level of responsibility as I do to make sure the customer's needs are taken care of above all other responsibilities.

But, evidently there is something in the gas station employee handbook that states that the least important thing they have to attend to is the customer. This extends to any and all customers, whether they be in the gas station store trying to checkout, at the gas pump waiting for the clerk to turn on the pump, locked in the bathroom because the bowling ball attached to the key has broken the key in two, stealing personal hygiene products from the rack, or on fire at their car because they failed to put out their cigarette before opening their gas lid and releasing the highly combustible gas.

Standing in line with my one drink, expecting perhaps a two-minute wait (speaking of naivety), I found that there was only one cashier. Given that I was hitting the store at the peak rush hour of gas stations (first thing in the morning so people can get their gas fill-up, donuts, cigarettes, lottery tickets, more cigarettes, and a jumbo-supreme coffee), this was slightly amazing to me. More so amazing than that, though, was that there were three other people visibly working throughout, all presumably with cashier training. However, they had more important things than to fool with the mile-long line of patrons.

The lone cashier, however, was attending to two customers at a time: one in the correct line where normal people check out and pay; and one who decided that as long as he could reach over the mountain of stuff blocking people from, say, putting their stuff down and paying there, he could put his stuff down and pay there. (I have to give this particular cashier credit for being an exception to my argument this morning, as she handled both customers with all the finesse and courtesy one might give a small but annoying child of 14 in need of juvenile detention.)

What about the other employees? Here's a quick overview of the things that were more important than letting people buy their stuff so they could get to work on time:

making sure both coffee pots (one caffeinated, one hyper-caffeinated) were in working order and full;
filling up the already full donut rack;
mopping one spot for the entire time I was there;
leaning against the counter conversing with a truck driver about the weather or the price of diesel or something equally inane (perhaps the fact that there was a line of customers reaching to the back door);
getting a fire extinguisher ready to whack a fly that had landed on the donut rack.

Gas Station Annoyance #3

2009-06-18T09:15:00.002-04:00

Top Five Gas Station Annoyances

3. Gas Prices

This is a short one, but it needs to be addressed. For far too long has the subject of gas prices been blatantly passed over by the media and shunned in public conversation. I cannot understand how this topic has been ignored over the past three years or so without an outcry from the general society of Americans. How can such a problem persist until our civilization of capitalism crumbles underneath the weight of civic discontentment this impropriety provokes?

I am speaking specifically, of course, about the little "9" superscripted at the end of the price-per-gallon of certain gas station signs. Have these people never had an algebra class? How do think they will ever sell a single drop of gas when they purport that their gas costs the price to the 9th power?!

Think about it: for the image hyperlinked above, the cost of a gallon of gas at $2.99 ^9 would be $19,100.32! Outrageous! Only the best-paid Donald Trumps of the world would be able to afford gas at the price suggested by the poorly planned sign.

This problem is not isolated to the gasoline industry, but it is akin to the common problem of grammatical incorrectness exacerbated by global acceptance of textual mediocrity. I urge you, VIPs of the gasoline industry, to fix this problem and ease the fury of unsettled citizens outraged by this blatant disrespect for mathematical formulae. Say what you mean and make sure that message you are sending out is understandable and clear. If gas is $2.99 and 9/10ths, you can just say $3.00.

My hope is that the people in charge of gasoline prices everywhere take heed to this very important request. I also hope it may lead to the alleviation of fears that people like you and me hold in these uncertain times.

Gas Station Annoyance #2

2009-06-17T09:00:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, I yammered on about the annoyance of trying to find a parking place at a gas station in the first of my

Top Five Gas Station Annoyances

2. Lottery Tickets

I am sometimes accused of being as gullible as most normal persons, but I just cannot buy into (or buy at all) lottery tickets. This has to do with a lot of reasons, but I will only deal with (a couple or one) today.

If you have gone to a gas station recently (and I am pretty sure most of them are the same as I have visited gas stations in more than two counties in my lifetime, thus making me an expert), you will have seen lottery paraphernalia prominently taking up most of the space on the cashier counter such that you cannot see the cashiers texting to their friends about random people they see in the security monitor and placing bets on who will be the next sucker to buy a lottery ticket.

Covering the front counter, windows, doors, refrigerators, newspaper racks, toilet seats, and the cashiers' faces are advertisements asking you--pleading with you--to play the newest Scratch 3 game. "You'll have fun," the ads say. "The State Lottery benefits schools, old people, and small pets," they promise. "The chances of winning are 1 in 72,523,144," very small type around the size of a molecule of cytoplasm indicates. The ads are hard to ignore.

Even harder to ignore is the ocean liner-sized lottery machine on the counter that replaces the part of the store where you were originally able to (and I may be showing my age here) put the stuff you were going to buy on the counter. (Reflecting on yesterday's blog, this may be part of the reason it takes people so long to get their money ready, having only two hands and all.) The large computer has two main functions: it (1) allows the cashier to input your numbers or to randomly generate similar nonwinning numbers, and (2) dispenses the ticket. For some reason the computer must be of the type used during World War II, perhaps for security.

The main problem I have with the lottery stuff in the gas station is that, no matter how many people are waiting, it takes 4-1/2 hours to process one ticket. Ok, maybe I am exaggerating a little. But, the two minute transaction to buy my soda instead required a nap and a bathroom break for everyone else in the line while Fred McTicketbuyer slowly and meticulously chose his numbers, paid with change (which is what I'm sure was all that was left over from his paycheck...but more on this for another topic), bought a good sized handful of instant win tickets, slowly and meticulously scratched off the spots, then cashed those in for another Super Lotto ticket.

I wonder why these things cannot be automated? Why take up a cashier's much needed time and attention to sell me my pop when the process of lottery ticket buying takes no more effort than paying at the pump? I mean, if you can pump your own gas, you should be able to waste your money directly and of your own power without troubling the gas station staff or other customers.

In fact, I think I will invent a Self-Utilizable Customer Cash Expending Renovator (SUCCER). All you have to do is insert your cash, change, check, credit card, debit card, food stamps, insurance policy, or coin collection, just like you would at a vending machine or ATM. There will be a teeth-shattering grinding sound as the machine converts the currency into a fine dust. In return, you will receive a card that says "Thank you for ~~wasting your money~~ playing the Lottery SUCCER," and "Odds of winning are best in the lottery world: 1 in 1 will win a card just like this!"

Of course, the fine dust is just for show. I would actually be in the machine taking the money. I wouldn't have anything else to do: I still haven't been able to buy my soda.

Gas Station Annoyance #1

2009-06-16T09:00:00.008-04:00

I had an interesting morning stopping by the local gas station to run in and grab a quick drink on my way to work. I had it all planned out: pull into the parking lot, park near the door, jump out of the car, run into the store, grab my drink, go up to the register and pay, and then jump back in the car and pull out of the parking lot back onto the main road. It should have been simple enough, taking maybe three minutes.

Should have been.

Of course, somehow in the jumbled assortment of memories lodged in my brain, I forgot the countless other times I went to the gas station to grab a quick something, only to find myself forced to wait behind other people (usually very rude and inconsiderate people) in every step of (what should have been) the quick process.

Thanks to the general populace of people who patronize local gas stations, and lucky for you reader(s), I now present my:

Top Five (or Fewer) Gas Station Annoyances

1. Parking

For some reason during all of the planning, blueprints, and construction of the actual physical location and layout of a gas station, the designers forget to include any parking at a gas station. With my limited understanding of the building construction process, it seems to me that somewhere along the line, within the flow of the many different hands and eyes through which the plans and building materials passed, someone would have stopped and said, "Hey: where are people going to park?" More likely, though, someone did stop and say, "Hey: we need to get this done by Tuesday."

As a result, you are left with either parking next to a gas pump (whether or not you actually need any gas) or are forced to improvise a parking spot somewhere along the perimeter of the gas station. Even then you are very limited in where you can park within the concrete polygon filled with varying obstacles.

If you park between the gas pumps and the store, you stand the chance of blocking someone in or being blocked in yourself by someone else creating parking spots out of the ether.

If you try to park along the concrete barriers dividing the parking lot from the main road...well, you can't, because all along the perimeter are such things as a line of 30-foot towers made up of 150-lb bags of mulch or road salt (depending on the season); a beer/snack/cola/cigarette truck blocking both entrances as well as three gas pumps while the product delivery guy chats up the cute gas station clerk for an hour and a half; aluminum stands bearing signs proclaiming "Cigarettes at Rock-Bottom Prices!" and "Sign up for our Credit Card today and get 100 Points toward your next gas purchase!*" and "It's hot outside! Beat the heat with a treat from our Beverage Cavern!" (the last one still hanging around in the middle of the coldest blizzard). *Actual cash amount toward gas purchase is $0.000112 per point.

In the rare occasion that lines designated for parking actually exist somewhere on the gas station property, someone will have taken it upon themselves to make sure their vehicle is parked perpendicular to these lines or otherwise decides that, since they'll "only be in for a second," they can park angled across two or three lines with their engine running, music blaring, children honking the horn, and dog howling out the slightly open window--all of this while they are inside for half an hour trying to get the attention of the cute gas station clerk chatting it up with the cigarette delivery guy.

Tomorrow, look for "Gas Station Annoyance #2." Feel free to post some of your own annoyances apropos to this subject.

Flag Day

2009-06-15T10:40:00.007-04:00

In case you missed it, yesterday was June 14th. I caught some of it, but part of the day I was driving with Rebecka from northern Ohio, with another significant portion of the day spent recovering from said driving. Then, we went on to church in the evening and spent time with some friends afterward at a Mexican restaurant (though most of the time at the restaurant was not spent eating as there were about veinte of us).

My point for today, however, is not to inform you of the minutiae of a random Sunday. No, today I come to you with another purpose: to inform you of the minutiae of a random day of the year, namely June 14th.

Most notably you may have noted the many news media notations of that notable American holiday of the year that involves the date June 14th: Flag Day. Now, with my Lincoln County Public Educational System (motto: "Where the students of today are prepared for tomorrow's snow day.") history education, I don't really know that much about Flag Day. I attribute part of this omission from the class objectives to the fact that Flag Day occurs during summer break and, therefore, did not allow for us to have a free day to spend every class making some kind of papier-mâché (French for "student-made art project filled with glue and paper") flag. Another reason I think Flag Day was not taught was because it is not an official federal holiday and, thus, no retail store sales advertisements.

Ultimately, I believe the main reason I never learned anything about Flag Day has to do with the fact that I was not what you would call a "sports enthusiast" or an "athlete" nor even an "athletic supporter." This in itself had never really presented any difficulty to me except for the fact that my history teachers were very sports enthusiastic. In fact, I am fairly certain it is a state requirement that all high school sports coaches have a history degree. To fill their time in between practices and ball games, the coaches have a secondary job to sit at their desks in a high school history class and recount old stories about games they should have won and how great the football team was this weekend, but that they need to step it up for the next game. These stories, I believe, counted in the content standards for history education.

Apart from all this, Flag Day is an important day to commemorate as I'm sure it has something to do with the American flag and patriotism and the fact that there are only about twenty more shopping days until July 4th, as indicated by the many flags that appear magically overnight on the many telephone and electric poles down every Main Street in the USA, probably put there by history teachers in an effort to recruit more athletes for the next school year.

Comments on "Poetry Time, Part Nine"

2009-06-13T15:30:00.001-04:00

"BD Class #2" was written in the same free class period as "BD Class #1." It has the same basic theme of my doubts about those particular students being in the Behavioral Disorders class because they only seemed to be rewarded for misbehaving in their normal class by being segregated into this different environment where evidently anything was game. I never had a chance to sit in with the normal teacher for this class, however, so I don't know exactly how the class normally went. But, as a substitute teacher, you can usually tell when things going on in class are common things or if they are just acting out in front of the sub. The actions in that class always felt like it was the normal run of things.

The ABCB type of rhyming scheme is my usual way of writing poetry. Refer to my Bad Poetry posting for my limited view of poetry and you will understand why most of my poems have a clear and simple rhyme patter, this one included. Uncharacteristic of my poems, though, I ended the poem with a break in the rhyming scheme, I think to express my discontent with the pattern I saw occur with students who were pretty much alienated by the system to get them out of the teachers' hair in as few years as possible. Either that, or I couldn't think of anything to rhyme with "rewarded."

Poetry Time, Part Nine

2009-06-13T09:00:00.001-04:00

BD Class #2

Behavioral disorders,
Or BD for short.
Are they real disorders
With evidence to report?
Or are these misbehaving
Students set apart
Because the other teachers
Cannot their help impart?
Is ADD or anger to blame?
A disease or need for attention?
Surely these kids need much more
Than a week's worth of detention.
From what I know, from what I've seen
They are simply being rewarded
Because in this class they do nothing.
They graduate regardless of merit.

Comments on "Poetry Time, Part Eight"

2009-06-12T15:30:00.003-04:00

While substituting a Behavioral Disabilities class at Duval, I had one class period with no students. Most of the classes were small anyway, so if one or two students missed, it was free time for me. In fact, this particular class was filled with students who would skip school anyway, so this class was somewhat the easiest class I ever had to cover. There was only one period that had more than a handful of students in it.

It was during one of these free periods that I had nothing better to do than write. (And, really, there's nothing better to do than write most of the time anyway.) This class was also one of the first substituting appointments I had, if not the very first.

"BD Class #1" was written after having an interesting experience with the previous class period, in which I only had two or three students. These kids were between 14 and 16, and talking very openly about their sexual, drug-use, and other negative experiences in much the same way one would talk about having gone to the movies the previous evening. Their language was also filled with profanity. (There was a teacher's aide in the class, too. This being one of my first experiences, I followed her lead on how to handle the students talking about what and how they were discussing. She never batted an eye about it, so I didn't throw.)

Behavioral Disability was a separate class to try to handle students who had problems behaving in normal classes. Normally, this is for students with varying degrees of autism, ADD/ADHD, or otherwise prone to violent or disruptive behavior. In this case, I think some students were put in the class whether they were behaviorally disabled or not. To this end, I concluded that "[t]he students in BD lose," by which I meant they were separated in an effort to change their bad behavior, but their bad behavior persisted.

Poetry Time, Part Eight

2009-06-12T09:00:00.002-04:00

BD Class #1

Foul words, bad deeds,
Taking drugs, smoking weed,
Having sex, causing trouble.
The students in BD lose.

Comments on "Poetry Time, Part Seven"

2009-06-11T15:30:00.001-04:00

"Early Reflections of a Substitute Teacher" was written during my first month of substitute teaching. I had been subbing and working the museum concurrently, making my subbing available on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays and working at the museum the other days (except Sundays). I ended up back at my original high school several times in that month, mostly due to my proximity to it from home compared to the other schools in the county.

I found it very interesting to be in the reverse role in identical surroundings. For six years (no, I didn't have to repeat two grades in high school; we had 7th through 12th grade in the same building) I had sat in the position of student, pupil, nervous test-taker and unsure speech/report-giver. Now, after college, here I was in the same rooms but at the teachers' desk, now assuming the position of teacher, educator, nervous test-giver and unsure speech/reprimand-giver. Those same feelings of adolescent student-hood were, by the walls of that school, reformatted into eerily similar feelings of early adult teacher-hood.

Just a few years of substitute teaching, followed by the almost completion of my Masters in teaching, led me to realize the futility of me being in a classroom of students whom I would have to keep in order. If I could be in the classroom, create lesson plans, and cooperatively instruct and guide the students, I am certain I would be a great teacher. I lack, however, that element of authoritativeness to keep a classroom in order. Thus, I gave up any hope of teaching in the public middle and secondary school sectors. I still think I would be a great college professor, though.

This poem, by the way, reflects my desire to teach in North Carolina. Before substitute teaching, I had gone to a teacher's consortium where I got to meet with several teaching recruiters from various states and boards of education. North Carolina had (and last I checked still has) some of the best teaching incentives in the country, including discounted groceries and housing, as well as a system of mentoring from experienced teachers to help the incoming new teachers. I would still like to get to live in NC some day, but it's not as much a priority anymore.

Poetry Time, Part Seven

2009-06-11T09:00:00.000-04:00

Early Reflections of a Substitute Teacher

Duval High School
Orange and Black.
Who'd think after 5 years
I'd be coming back?
Not to learn so much as teach,
Substituting from 7th English
To 9th grade Speech.
Biology degree, so far, unused,
But one day this time will be excused.
When I have my own class (in NC, I hope)
I'll teach Biology (and theatre, if I can cope).

(This poem can be found at my Helium account.)

Happy Birthday to Me

2009-06-10T09:00:00.001-04:00

Today is my birthday. I'll be the insignifcant 2 - 7 (which added together equals 9, which is a multiple of 3, which is a prime number). I wasn't going anywhere with this. I just got distracted.

In lieu of gifts, please purchase Einstein Sings: A Play in No Acts. Better yet, tell me you want to produce the play. That would be an awesome gift!

After all, this is the big 2-7, a birthday with no more significance than, say, belly-button lint.

Speaking of becoming 27, there is a phenomenon or theory or whatever called the "27 Club". Evidently there is a running roster of famous people who die within the age of 27. Most of the people in this list were famous rock stars or some other similar musician-types who dabbled heavily in drugs and promiscuity, many during the '60s and '70s (decades infamous for their drug-laced cultures). I think perhaps that at age 27, after several years of basically murdering themselves physiologically from the inside-out, their bodies or brains couldn't take any more abuse.

Granted, I am not nor ever will be famous (at all). I have no proclivity to the various activities the 27 Clubbers obviously suffered from to their demises. In fact, for my 27th birthday, I'll be working, going home to my Rebecka, then to church where I'll be leading the choir nervously. Then, maybe I'll go to bed.

Domestic Relationship Between a Canine & a Feline

2009-06-09T09:00:00.001-04:00

My wife used to have a dog: a cute, little, yippy dog named PJ. She used to belong to Rebecka's parents (the dog, I mean, though Rebecka used to belong to her parents as well, I suppose), who then gave PJ to Rebecka, who was living alone in her own house at the time (Rebecka, that is). To make a long (and already to this point very parenthetical and confusing) story short, when we got married (Rebecka and I, not the dog) and moved to an apartment, we had to find another home for PJ. Fortunately, Rebecka's aunt in West Virginia took PJ, which was good because she (Rebecka's aunt) likes dogs and has a good-sized lot of land to let PJ run around on and sniff things.

Of course, being a tiny Pomeranian/Poodle (or what I affectionately refer to as a "pomepoo"), PJ is an inside dog. Already dwelling in the new home PJ was moving to was a cat. (For clarity sake, we will call the cat Fifi. I don't know the cat's real name, but most cats are named Fifi.) Conventional wisdom tells us that when two pets of entirely different genera (especially when one is a canine and the other is a feline) attempt to live together in the same household, trouble abounds. I would like to be able to tell you that conventional wisdom does not apply in this instance.

However, both PJ and Fifi have staked their claims to certain territories of the house. Once the other party enters into that claimed space, the old cat-and-dog fight imagery made famous by many cartoons past is reenacted. Most of the time this occurs late at night or while someone is on the phone or anytime it seems to be most inconvenient. But, for most of their time cohabiting the same household, PJ and Fifi just avoid each other's company, as if a mammalian force field undetectable to humans exists to keep them separated.

I am fairly convinced, though, that the late-night fighting and general avoidance of each other is all an act. See, I think PJ and Fifi, in an effort to eliminate the humans so they can have the home to themselves, have collaborated a stealthy scheme which involves carefully planned timing and artful dodging. In fact, I believe that PJ and Fifi sit around in the easy chair or sofa enjoying civil conversation over hot tea and crumpets while the humans are out working. As soon as the car door shuts, the pleasantries are dismissed to be replaced by the expected canine-feline interactions.

Like most lap-type dogs, PJ has a little doggie bed. For most of her stay at this new home, she'd sleep in the bed in the living room and, come bedtime, her new owners would move her bed to the bedroom to sleep. To eliminate this continuous process, they bought a second bed for PJ--one for each room.

PJ did not get to use this new bed the first few nights. She wasn't necessarily too attached to her first bed. It wasn't really even the fact that the new bed ceased the nightly ritual of which she was so fond. No, the reason she could not use the bed was because Fifi--in all its feline chicanery--fixed itself immovably on the bed, staking squatter's rights. After nights of trying to convince the cat to extricate itself, the owners finally had to buy a new bed.

This is the humorous part (so feel free to laugh at what comes next): The family now has three pet beds. Fifi (the cat) does not use any of them. Oh, the comedy of cat connivery.

Memories of Walter

2009-06-08T13:49:00.004-04:00

I've been waxing nostalgic lately. Maybe it's because of my upcoming birthday (and the flurry of familial birthdays that surround it). Perhaps it is due to the way my mind does circles and loops all the time, bringing images from my past to the front of my mind causing me to pause, sigh, and then let it cycle again to the region of the back of my mind from whence it came. Mayhaps it is what countless other people do at the same rate as I. At any rate, I apologise in advance for the haphazard quality of this particular blog.

Whatever the reason, one of those flashback memories came to me Sunday. While living in Lincoln County, I attended a church where I really started forming my spiritual and musical roots. I started going there in my later teen years in high school all the way through my senior year in college (or thereabouts). A sequence of wildly various events has led me to not be able to go back there again, but I still have fond memories of days gone by.

At this church I got my first taste of singing in a group. I can't remember exactly how it happened, but at some point I started learning to sing bass in the choir or the congregation or something. My friend Jeff (a piano player and natural baritone singer) helped train me while we were singing near each other. At the same time I was singing along with the bass singers on CDs (or maybe tapes back then) of Gold City, the Cathedrals, and Peace of Mind, among others. So, somewhere in there I started forming my ear for hearing bass.

Someway or another I was convinced to start singing in front of the congregation with three older guys: Norris Keeling (lead and, incidentally, the church choir leader), Walter Dunlap (tenor), and Rick Dunlap (baritone). The back story I am not entirely clear on, but they went by the "Canaan Land Quartet" years back. They had a bass singer as well back then named Winford Curry (previously a pastor at the church and also a great evangelist). With Winford pastoring elsewhere, the guys sang trio at church from time to time. Somewhere in there I had the chance to sing bass with them.

The few times singing at church led to us singing at other churches for a short while. But, at the time I was starting college and didn't really have much time to go with them very often, though it would have been great. Summarily, we went back to just singing less and less frequently until Norris passed away (just a few years ago).

This flood of memories has been brought back again because of the passing of another of those men who helped shape me into who I am as a singer and as a Christian. Over this past weekend, Walter graduated to Heaven. Now I find myself thinking fondly back to those times, wishing there was someway to do it again for at least one more song, knowing that there is one more everlasting day coming where we can sing forever more in the presence of Almighty God.

I close in prayer for all the people close to Walter Dunlap (and there were so many). I also close with the chorus of the song that has been running through my head (in his voice) ever since I first read of Walter's passing. This is the song I first heard him sing, and he sang it many, many times before and after that time. Now he is with the One who wrote his name in the Lamb's Book of Life.

He Wrote My Name
(O.S. Davis (c) Thompson Music/BMI)

"He wrote my name way up in glory.
He saved my soul from sin and shame.
I never shall forget the day
When my Savior wrote my name."

Marketing Idea: Pop Bottle Lids

2009-06-08T09:00:00.000-04:00

During the semi-quarterly contests that pop companies have where you buy a bottle to see if the lid says that you won a free t-shirt or whatever, I think that instead of having "Sorry Play Again" on the underside of soda bottle lids for losing bottles, they should have something a little less sterile.

Examples:

"Ah, dude...sorry. You just missed it."

"The guy here just before you got the winning lid."

"You win this bottle of (name of drink), but not the good prize."

":*-("

Comments on "Poetry Time, Part Six"

2009-06-06T15:00:00.002-04:00

"Logan's Roadhouse" was a poem I had originally subtitled "A Poem of Customer Satisfaction". Working at the museum at the time, I attended a meeting during which we discussed customer service and interaction between coworkers. One of the major points was positive reinforcement.

The meeting coordinators encouraged us to reflect on a time of positive customer service. I had just eaten for the very first time at Logan's Roadhouse a night or two prior and was very pleasd with the price and quality of the food, as well as the customer service. And, of course, throwing peanut shells on the floor is an endlessly satisfying activity, as long as I don't have to clean.

Poetry Time, Part Six

2009-06-06T10:33:00.002-04:00

Logan's Roadhouse

All of my needs were satisfied;
None of my wants were denied.
My expectations were exceeded.
Logan’s gave me what I needed.
Plus, I got throw peanut shells on the floor,
An added pleasure I adore.

(This poem can be found at my Helium account.)

Comments on "Poetry Time, Part Five"

2009-06-05T15:00:00.001-04:00

"The Dime" has very little to explain. It is obviously nonsensical. I was working the register at the music store in the mall. Another of the cashiers was up there with me. It being a remarkably slow day with no shipment to put out and not much desire to clean anything, we just kind of fiddled around at the register. I scribbled this little rhyme on a piece of scrap paper and handed it to the other cashier. She looked at it, laughed, wrote her own silly poem (something short about being bored, without much rhyming); and then the moment was finished.

By the way, Zombie Nation was one of the artists playing on our playlist (which I only know because of the fake, corporate DJ mentioning it before and after the track). I couldn't think of anything to rhyme with "denomination", so I went nonsequitir with it. I still have the scraps of paper we wrote on somewhere, I do believe.

Poetry Time, Part Five

2009-06-05T10:25:00.003-04:00

The Dime

The Dime is a lonely creature.
It only has one distinguishing feature:
Although it's a coin of
Rather high denomination,
It's the smallest coin.
Now, here's Zombie Nation.

Comments on "Poetry Time, Part Four"

2009-06-04T15:00:00.003-04:00

"The New Student" was probably one of the first unassigned poems I ever wrote. Well, at least it's the first one of which I have record present. I was in eighth grade at the time--the quality of my poetry writing skills don't seem to have grown any sense then; and I was having an okay time at school, as much as junior high students can have at school. Then, this punk kid gets transferred to our school. He was the stereotypical bully: big, dumb, and full of profanity.

Looking back, I cannot even tell you this kid's name. I'm only dimly aware that he did not end up staying at the school. With my present understanding of the middle school student mindset, I can safely assume this kid--who probably got transferred more than his fair share of times--came from a home that was either too lenient or mostly uncaring. It would not be surprising to find out that he had a very dysfunctional family background, maybe even adolescent drug use.

I wrote this short verse with the intent to get my feelings (which I believe are collectively referred to as "teen angst") out on paper, something I found myself doing increasingly more often as I matured. In fact, most of the times that I wrote to "get my feelings out on paper" end up erased, scribbled out, thrown away, or (as I later began typing more than actually writing) deleted entirely.

Poetry Time, Part Four

2009-06-04T10:16:00.000-04:00

The New Student

From a large city he came
To a rural town. (A shame
He had to enter my place
Of rest and grace.)
Now my world is upside-down
With his words so profound,
And his essence of evil ways.
Why did he have to come to this place?
In his home he was more adapt;
Here he just carries wrath.

On My Chicken Spaghetti Recipe

2009-06-03T10:09:00.001-04:00

I am a huge fan of food. Please don't take that to mean I am physically a huge fan of food insomuch as I eat a lot of food and, thus, huge. (Based on my height-weight ratio, however, I should probably be a few inches taller.) I am also not a motorized, multi-appendaged cylinder which induces airflow.

I have a growing collection of recipes at home. Some are neatly assembled into a 3-ring binder (although not necessarily categorized in any certain order.) Others are alphabetically arranged in a 3" x 5" card box. Still more are hastily thrown into a shoebox. The majority of these recipes have been collected by cutting them off of the backs or sides of boxes, removing them from can labels, or ripping them from magazines and newspapers.

As such, some of the recipes have ragged edges or do not quite fit inside the card box (hence the shoebox). I have transcribed some of the recipes onto index cards. I plan to sometime do the same for all of the loose recipes. (I even write it on my semi-monthly "To-Do" lists, in the same column as about fifteen other things that I plan to do. These include transferring the rest of my records and tapes to digital format, completing a distance-learning course for bookkeeping, exercising, and building a theater.)

Unfortunately, I don't really get to cook very often. My current job gets me home somewhat late in the evening, so my wife more than happily (and more than tastily) has dinner in the works by the time I get home. This way we don't have to starve as I try to invent some new concoction that we will never taste while gulping it down hungrily. Consequently, most of the recipes in my collection lay in the box on the bookshelf, quietly sobbing and despondent about their lack of fulfillment.

However, once I get to make something, I usually make the same thing. (This is usually at my wife's request.) If there is one thing that I can make well, it is Chicken Spaghetti. It is not really my own original recipe. I ate it somewhere and got the ingredients from whomever was there to tell me about the ingredients. Anyway, it is a recipe that has stuck with me, much like the cheese sticks to the pasta.

In order to broaden the reach of such a tasty dish, I posted the recipe to my Helium account. At the time, there was not a category for "Chicken Spaghetti", so I created one. I reiterate that I was the one that initiated the category of "Chicken Spaghetti" on Helium's site. Now, if you'll look at the site ranking for recipes within this category, you will note that there are seven (as of today) articles, with mine ranking 7th--last place. I find it funny.

Anyhow, I encourage you to try the recipe. It is super tasty. It only requires chicken, angel hair pasta, processed cheese, and diced chiles & tomatoes. If you are a vegetarian, grow up and eat some meat! No, wait: only joking. In fact, we have made the dish without chicken, and it is just as tasty without it. (I call the meatless version "Pasta Mexitaliano".)

Let me know how it turns out.

Comments on "Poetry Time, Part Three"

2009-06-02T14:38:00.003-04:00

I should be, like, the next Mother Goose or something, if I keep coming up with stuff like "Running".

Of course, I'd have to go with a different name. Maybe "Father Gander?"

No, too obvious.

"Padré Ganso?"

Too muppety.

"Goosemaster Funk?"

Poetry Time, Part Three

2009-06-02T14:36:00.002-04:00

Running

Feet aglow with fire
Running as on air
Speedily and hastily
To hopefully somewhere.
Blurring like a hummingbird,
Yet stirring up the wind;
Running quickly onward
Perhaps to meet a friend.

Comments on "Poetry Time, Part Two"

2009-06-01T16:57:00.001-04:00

I don't know where I got the inspiration for "Vicar of Wicker". I think it was just the fact that the two main title words rhymed. Some poetry scholars might be able to see something in it, but I don't really. I put it on my Helium account under "Poetry: Politics" just because there seemed to be a little bit of a political air to it.

Poetry Time, Part Two

2009-06-01T09:11:00.000-04:00

Vicar of Wicker

Thou vicar of wicker,
Tyrant of twigs.
You hasten not to your
Public of pigs.

You stand and gaze mightily.
No virtue you bear.
Your people stand anxiously,
Awaiting their fair share.

Have you no decency in you at all?
Do you eagerly await your downfall?
Give it a try.
Do what you must.
But, look on within
And do what is just.

Look not at the world
From your opaque point of view;
Instead look on them
As if in their shoes.

(This poem can be found at my Helium account.)

Einstein Sings: A Play in No Acts

2009-05-28T15:19:00.004-04:00

Well, here it is. The final published edition of Einstein Sings: A Play in No Acts by Seth Davidson & Levi S. Johnston. Click the image for a preview of the first few pages and the back cover. Hopefully we will get to see this play produced. Until then, it is an enjoyable read, even for people who don't typically read plays. There are lots of humorous footnotes and Authors' Notes, funny imagery, and a good dose of old-fashioned hilariousness.

Why I Post My Bad Poetry

2009-05-28T09:14:00.005-04:00

It is no secret that I am not a big fan of poetry. Now, I don't blame poetry in itself, nor do I blame the many talented poets that have formed and creatively expanded the literary art form. In fact, I have good friends who also happen to be poets.

Actually, I'd like to take this moment to introduce you to Dr. Constance Stadler. I quick search on her name (or the alternative "Connie Stadler") will bring you to many places where she has posted her thought-provoking, sesquipedalian compositions. In addition to her poetry skills, she is a wonderful person that was a great help to me while I was in college.

Still, though I find some poetry interesting, it tends not to interest me. Granted, I have a science background with only spurious abilities in writing satire (or whatever you might be able to call much of what I write) and interpreting plays, and a great deal of practice writing research reports. Most of my language/literature courses beyond high school were only taken as required or because they were in some way related to theatre.

This brings me to what I believe to be why I am not a fan of poetry. Throughout all of my English and literature courses, not much time was ever spent on poetry. It was a short section at the end of a chapter in a couple of classes. The names (not necessarily the works) of Emily Dickinson, e.e. cummings, and Robert Frost are just a few that I remember from high school. Perhaps because of the required standards and objectives in those classes the topic of poetry was less important than knowing parts of speech and being able to use an encyclopedia.

So, as a result of not understanding much of poetry, I fall to the default position of not really caring much about it.

Why, then, do I write poems? Even more importantly: why do I post my bad poetry for all the world to see? (Based on the number of comments I get on my blog, that could be as many as my wife.) I certainly can tell that my poems, with their uneven meter and obvious searches for rhymes, are as close to being good poems as a t-shirt from Hot Topic is to being prom-worthy. (For those of you who are getting ready for the SAT: "Levi's Poems : Good Poetry :: Hot Topic T-shirts : Prom Clothing.)

If nothing else, I have learned that poetry is a means to express oneself. If that happens to be in very poorly-worded, unsyncopated, and essentially obtuse ways, it does not really matter. They will never be published in a compilation of great works (though I did fall for the poem book scam that makes it seem like you wrote something that just needs to be published, as long as you pay $30.00 for a book containing 10,000 other poems that just had to be published, a great percentage of which fall under the same category of useless poetry as your own.)

That is why I write poetry at all.

I still don't know why I show it to anyone. Maybe you can give me a hint?

A Trio of Silly Jokes

2009-05-27T16:29:00.002-04:00

These jokes are by no means original. However, they always make me laugh. The trouble is getting someone to buy into it. They always know that something is awry with the question, and only a couple of times have I had anyone actually ask--innocently and unknowingly--the desired setup question that is required to make the joke work.

I present to you a trio of my favorite silly pun jokes, or whatever you want to call them.

Joke #1:

Mr. Joke-asking-person: "Excuse me, young sir. Do you have any updog?"

Mr. Unsuspecting-joke-answerer: "What's 'updog'?"

Mr. Joke-asking-person: "Not much, dude; whassup wit' you?"

(Mr. Joke-asking-person laughs maniacally at the joke victim's expense. Mr. Unsuspecting-joke-answerer stands unamused and slightly baffled.)

Joke #2:

Mr. Joke-asking-person: "Excuse me, young sir. Do you have a henway?"

Mr. Unsuspecting-joke-answerer: "What's a 'henway'?"

Mr. Joke-asking-person: "Oh, about three or four pounds."

(Mr. Joke-asking-person commences with the laughter. Mr. Unsuspecting-joke-answerer gets the joke this time, but continues to be unimpressed by the humor.)

Joke #3:

Mr. Joke-asking-person: "Excuse me, young sir. Do you have a buttfer?"

Mr. (by this point not so much an) Unsuspecting-joke-answerer: "What's a 'buttfer'?"

Mr. Joke-asking-person: "Why, it's for pooping, silly."

(Mr. Joke-asking-person is now ROFL-ing in a very literal sense whilst Mr. Unsuspecting-joke-answerer seeks the hammerfore.)

Mr. Joke-asking-person: "What's the 'hammerfore'?"

(Mr. Unsuspecting-joke-answerer shows him exactly what the hammer is for.)

Comments on "Poetry Time, Part One"

2009-05-26T13:22:00.002-04:00

I worked in the ElectricSky Theater of the Clay Center's Avampato Discovery Museum. We had this 60-foot domed screen upon which we could project the entire night sky from a star ball at the center of the room for our planetarium shows. In that same area was where a 70-millimeter projector would fill 3/4 of the screen with giant, moving images. A state-of-the-art sound system and reclined seating made everything in the theater an immersive experience.

Apart from the thrill of getting to work with all of this high-tech equipment and project my voice through the bass-enhancing speakers, we had to watch the same movies (most of which were within forty minutes in length) over and over and over....and over again. During a movie's 6-month run (yes: we only had 6-month rotations) at 5 showings a day, we watched what amounts to hundreds of hours of the same movie.

Most of the time it would take a couple of months to get tired of hearing the same voices, the same narration, the same music, the same sound effects, the same sequence of events, the same bad dialogue...I think you catch my drift. One film in particular stayed rather comparatively fresh with very few intolerable moments for most of its run: Pulse: A Stomp Odyssey, mainly because there was no spoken dialogue--just very awesome rhythm and music. (I'll post more about this film in a future blog to ease your anticipation on what intolerable moments were in that movie.)

Anyway, I said all that to say this: the poem I posted previously about dolphins was written while I was sitting in the dark at the console while Dolphins was playing on the screen. My mind already knew what sounds and sights to look for in case I needed to react to something going wrong with the film (that is, the film going through the projector; unfortunately, the movie never changed). Early on in my position there I was trained to respond to the sight of scratches in the film, unsynced audio, or too much light on the film. I always reacted to these with a speedy and Pavlovian response: nervous, shaky hands, upset stomach, and squeaky voice over the radio.

But, as I was saying, I was trying to avoid reciting the lines with the movie as I fell asleep. That's where the poem was written. It's not a good poem, as is typical with all of my poems. I just thought you'd enjoy the context in which they were written.

Poetry Time, Part One

2009-05-26T11:15:00.002-04:00

A Poem Inspired by MacGillivray-Freeman's 70-mm Film Dolphins

A dolphin is a dolphin,
But it is not a fish.
A dolphin is a mammal,
Like dogs, baboons, and pigs.
Dolphins swim the oceans,
In rivers, bays, and seas.
They come up to the surface
And through their blowholes breathe.
Dorsal fins, pectoral fins,
And springboard-loaded tails
Dolphins jump with amazing force,
Reaching heights where humans fail.
Spinner dolphins, Dusky dolphins,
Amazon River dolphins, too.
Surprisingly, the killer whale—
The orca—is a dolphin—it’s true!

(This poem can be found at my Helium account.)

Comments on "Song Time, Part One"

2009-05-21T13:39:00.004-04:00

I wrote this song "Ode to Supporting Characters" in 2004 either waiting for or during rehearsal for a college play. Although I don't quite remember the initial impetus for writing it (apart from the play rehearsal environment), I do still have the melody for it in my head. At some point I think I tried to build a musical play around this song. As you can probably guess, I have never brought that to completion. It's still floating around in my head though. It would most likely be a play about a play, or at least a fourth-wall breaking farce about musicals.

Song Time, Part One

2009-05-21T11:04:00.009-04:00

Ode to Supporting Characters

verse 1

Cop Number 1, you were the first on the scene.
Cop Number 2, you helped to keep it clean.
Man Number 1, you got to say a few lines.
Man Number 2, you had to nod there behind.
Woman Number 1, you got to scream real loud.
Woman 2 caught her before she hit the ground.
Doctor Number 1, you had to bear the bad news.
Doctor Number 2, you stared down at your shoes.

chorus 1

Supporting characters in the movies we see.
Unsung heroes who make the story complete.
You never get to see your name up in lights,
But your roles are important in the movies of life.
So for all you ones and twos,
And sometimes threes and fours:
We sing this song to you
To say that we want to see more.

verse 2

Clowns Number 1 and Number 2 in a car
Climb out first to be big stars.
Then Clowns Number 3, 4, 5, & 6
Stand in behind them to do a few tricks.
Drunks Number 1 and Number 2
Get to sleep on the bar for an hour or 2.
We hate to leave out some we have not said:
The supporting actors who get paid to play dead.

chorus 2

Supporting characters in the movies so dear:
Men and women with importance unclear.
They stand and walk, they hardly talk,
But sometimes they get a line or two.
They never have names,
Yet they’re always the same.
But we need them:
The supporting characters we love.

Gender-Related Perspectives on Bathroom Cleanliness

2009-05-19T09:38:00.003-04:00

Between our toilet and the bathroom counter sets a toilet brush. This is one of those fancy kinds of toilet brushes that has its own storage cylinder that helps hide the fact from your house guests that you even need to use--nay, own--a toilet brush. (The common "courtesy" of hiding the toilet-fixing tools is always a point of great turmoil for me when visiting someone's bathroom, as I often do. Somehow that is always the very time when the toilet decides to overflow, not flush, or leave behind too many signs of me having been there.)

Upon placing the brush side into its place in the storage cylinder, you can rotate the handle and the brush disappears inside like a spy into a secret bookcase passageway, hiding away until it is needed once again. Of course, the next time you realize you need a toilet brush, you forget that the white thing in the corner with the long handle sticking up is a toilet brush, so you end up going to buy another, more normal one.

In the odd event that you eventually remember that you have a futuristic, Bond-esque toilet-scrubbing device, the enclosure has long since sealed up from the oozing, unspeakable horror that was on the brush the last time it was put away, an alien substance cementing the brush to the frame.

In the corner where the brush contraption and the bathroom counter meet, resting atop the brush cylinder is a single, wadded ball of toilet paper. I do not know whether or not this toilet paper has ever been used. Certainly it has not ever been moistened as it still seems to have that cottony fresh look about it. In fact, the top portion that I can see is still completely white.

However, this little ball has been there for at least a month now, maybe more. It has occurred to me a few times to do something about it, but as I am of the male portion of the human species, that quickly ricochets to some other random thought that makes me forget whatever it was I happened to be thinking of at the time. Thus, I leave behind the restroom and the lonely ball of lint-free two-ply.

For some reason, though, a new thought sprung to my mind as I was in the restroom recently. Why is that my wife has not seen and subsequently done away with that little piece of litter? Understand, it's not that I think it is her place or purpose in society as a woman to make sure the restroom is clean. In our household, though, we do have our own responsibilities that we have divided somewhat in the sense of the things we gravitate toward completing more than the other. She doesn't like to wash dishes, but I don't mind to do it. We each put our own clothes away--I don't know where hers go anyway. She is an excellent cook; I make a mean sandwich. I take out the trash; she cleans the bathroom.

Then I had an epiphany. As I was standing there in the bathroom doing my business--thinking of things to write about--I understood a possible reason the paper was still there. When I use the bathroom in the fashion that males tend to, I can see in plain view around and behind the toilet. When she uses it, she sees everything in front of the toilet. That explains why the floor on that side is always pretty clean. Also, from her usual standpoint in front of the sink and mirror, I noticed that I could not see the corner from there either. The paper was still there because she never saw it!

With that revelation came another, equally stunning notion: I am evidently too lazy to pick up and throw away a single piece of bathroom trash. That, or I'm too wary of sticking my hand down that close to the toilet.

Of course, it is probably stuck to that white, long-handled, cylindrical thing. Maybe I should buy a toilet brush to get it out of there. I can't seem to find one anywhere in the house.

(This article can be found at my Helium account.)

A Story Created in an IM

2009-05-13T09:40:00.006-04:00

Once upon a time I used to enter random chat rooms in AOL (back when it was all the rage). Rather than engage in any meaningful conversation with anyone in the room, I would just say random, funny (at least to me) things, which were typically ignored, shunned, cursed at, or were otherwise a nuisance to the general assortment of people in the room (populated mainly by teenage boys trying to get teenage girls to speak to them in an assortment of conversations appealing to some of the baser of man's instincts.)

But, occasionally, someone else with a similar sense of humor to mine would take the bait and join me in random banter, which became even more funny juxtaposed with the scrolling screen of swear words, emoticons, and acronyms. Though I would usually only find these people one at a time, then somehow never run into them again, a few became pretty good online friends. In fact, one of them even came with a friend to see me in a play in college. They brought flowers and everything.

This same particular friend asked me to tell her a story. So, I had her help set up the basic setting and character of the story, which I then used to write an off-the-cuff fairy tale of "Max and the Green Bean." I was so pleased with the way it turned out that I posted it to my Helium account: "Max and the Green Bean". Note that the beginning of the story is the setup provided by my friend (identified as "D"). I hope you enjoy it.

Puberty

2009-05-12T22:00:00.003-04:00

Scientists have known for a long time that something happens to young people as they start to grow from immature, highly-dependent children to immature, highly-opinionated children. This occurs around the age of 8-15 for girls and 11-45 for boys. It is during this time of development called "puberty" that tiny chemicals called "hormones" are sent surging through the body when a part of the brain called "Steve" is activated. Many medical books have been written describing exactly what activates this process, some of which are on my bookshelf this very moment. The results of all these flowing hormones include the following:

Bones begin growing at exponential rates. Most notably, the major leg and arm bones are the ones to undergo the most growth. It is estimated that if puberty were allowed to continue unabated, the average basketball rim would be 100-feet high, and the average Caucasian male would still not be able to dunk. Additionally, the walls of the skull thicken for two purposes:

To act as a more effective helmet for the clumsiness attributed to learning how to walk in an increasingly different body; and
To make it impossible for the voices of their parents to absorb into their brains.

Muscles begin growing to accommodate the bones. Since girls reach puberty earlier than boys, this may explain why the preadolescent boys are afraid of the girls in their class. Not understanding what's going on and having watched too much television, they believe the girls are either becoming a race of female Incredible Hulks or have been exposed to some sort of radioactive sludge (in the form of "cooties").

Metabolic rates increase. The rapid growth taking place in the pubescent body requires a lot of energy. Therefore it takes a lot more food and sleep to keep the body going. Experts estimate the average pubescent female eats twice as much daily as she did between toddlerhood and puberty. Similarly, the average male eats roughly three-and-a-half times as much as a male African elephant. In order to restore the body, they also need to sleep longer and more often. Doctors suggest a continuous pattern of sleep for a 12-year-old from about 8:00AM til noon on their 16th birthday.

The brain begins to mature. For their entire life up until puberty, children are concrete thinkers. Everything they have learned is based on solid, sensory examples. To them, "2+2=4" mostly makes sense when they think of "2 apples plus 2 apples = 4 apples." Puberty, however, begins to mature the mind so that abstract thought is possible. They will be able to look at a more complex math problem, such as "4x + 4 = 28" and, instead of visualizing apples, they can instead form an abstract thought such as "If we have calculators, why do I need to know how to do this?"

Psychological ideals begin to mature. During this awkward, life-changing transition from childhood to awkward adulthood, the pubescent is suddenly finding him- or herself as not just a member of a family, but as a member of society. A boy or girl in puberty is struggling to find his or her place amongst his or her peers, friends, classmates, and other pop music stars. This development into psychological independence leads the pubescent identifying his or her moral standing on important issues (such as whether or not [insert teen idol sensation of the month] is "hot") and his or her perception of reality (such as the likelihood of [insert teen idol sensation of the month] noticing them at the concert).

Peer perception becomes important. A direct result of the psychological development is the need to feel accepted by one's peers. At this point, the pubescent's relationships with friends become more important than even the family relationships. This is where peer pressure comes in to play. Peer pressure can affect a child's actions and decisions relating to clothes, schoolwork, music, drugs, and even how they vote for American Idol finalists.

Reproductive organs mature. This is, of course, the main reason for puberty. Since it is typically a taboo topic and one very embarrassing for both teens and parents, it must be treated carefully and respectfully. If a pubescent has questions, it is best to answer them directly, with confidence, and in a loving manner.

Example:
Son: Dad, I have a question about puberty.
Dad: Err...um...ask your mother.

I am kidding, of course. During puberty, it is physically impossible for kids to talk to their parents. In fact, if they were to even attempt it, not only would they be shunned by their entire group of peers, but their very biological processes could surge puberty into overdrive, causing their skin to turn green and their bodies to shoot up into stratospheric heights.

But, you won't need to worry about that: they'll be asleep.

(This article can be found at my Helium account.)

Flooding

2009-05-12T09:06:00.003-04:00

Many days of continuous rainfall has caused a great amount of flooding in this area. As the overflowing creeks, ponds and streams finally start to empty into the Ohio River, it almost seems like the barges going by are at eye-level. The many pictures appearing in the local media outlets tell stories of lost property and livelihoods, as well as a few lives.

Having lived in an area that flooded at least once every spring, I was introduced early on to the catastrophic effects of flooding. At one point, the water was within an inch of coming in the door. At the time I lived in a trailer which was set rather high and far forward of the nearby creek. That year, the water even got into the front of the car but not causing anything more than an unpleasant smell that lasted a couple of months.

I have to note, however, that the most prominent problem I always notice about floods (and this time is no different) is the huge amount of debris the rapidly-rushing water washes downstream. Although some of the debris is certainly not something that the original owners intended to lose, the majority of it is what can only be described as garbage. Living as I did in the trailer, my brother and I lost a few toys we had in the yard, as well as some items we had in storage underneath the trailer (including a bag full of good-quality, plastic, food-storage containers). After the rain had ceased but the flood had yet to recede, we would sit on the porch and watch as other kids' toys floated past, accompanied by someone's collection of aluminum cans, followed by plastic trash bags and the occasional tire. Along with all that would also be all of the litter that had previously laid along the sides of the road and in people's yards.

When the water had finally gone down to near-normal levels, the ground would be littered by whatever had been too large to be carried any farther. In the upstream areas, most of the trash would be larger things: tires, pieces of houses or trailers, doghouses. Farther downstream--such as at the river near which I now live--the smaller pieces of trash that began their journey perhaps miles upstream accumulate into a large, floating mass of garbage.

The church I now attend used to have flood problems in their old building. Part of the solution when they built the current church building was to install some drains in the ground that would allow most of the excess water to continue its flow without creating a flood problem. It was certainly a good idea; but, last week a problem arose. There are houses and other types of dwellings up the hill from the church. No less than nine tires ended up following the flow of the water down the hill. The tires, along with a substantial amount of other trash, covered and ultimately obstructed the storm drains, causing a waist-deep flood which trapped a few cars in the parking lot and closed off the main road.

This elicited a flurry of questions in my mind:

Were the people on the hill trying for a world record tire-hording record of which I was not knowledgeable and may have enjoyed attempting?
Upon seeing the water rush down the hill, did they hold a tire-on-the-water race? If so, who won?
Did they intentionally set their trash out in the flow of the water just because they were too lazy to get rid of it in any other neighborly way?

And, finally, the most far-reaching question:

Would there be so much flooding if people would clean up after themselves and stop littering the roadways, yards, creeks, and gullies with their trash to allow the storm drains to work unobstructed?

Am I Back?

2009-05-05T16:39:00.003-04:00

For the many, many couples of members of my former audience, let me re-welcome you to my blog.

I know what you're thinking: "Is he really back?" "Is this time for reals?" "Blue cheese is not very blue at all."

But, yes: I am here to attempt it once again. A year later, no less.

Now, rest assured, I will be pretty fastidious for a good couple of posts. Then, perhaps I'll wane away again as time or topic elude me. But, we shall see.

For now, I close with a quick "Here's hoping I stick around this time."

P.S. Blogs are rather fading away as it is, anyway. At the very least I will be able to hammer out some interesting/funny things to ease my creativity bug.

Old Post: Theatre

2009-05-04T16:37:00.002-04:00

I love theatre. I love the word (particularly spelled in the aforementioned fashion). I love the feel. I love the action. I love the smell. From time to time, you will see me mention theatre and my particular fascination with it.

Now, when I say "theatre" I mean the live-action performance on a stage and/or in an auditorium, with optional audience participation, scripts, or improvisation. Unfortunately, most of what appears to be popular is not theatre in my definition, but theater (note the transposition of the "e" and "r".) When I say "theater" in this spelling, I mean the auditorium/seating area in front of a large screen with surround-sound and optional THX, popcorn, and sticky floors. As I was saying, theatre appears to be dying.

Sure, there are the big Broadway shows that people who enjoy theatre (a declining breed) pay tons of their money for what anymore is a musical plethora of not-so-much-acting-as-dancing-and-singing. Additionally, there are the off-Broadway (and off-off-Broadway, and more prefixed off's) shows which have evolved into theatrical excuses to showcase attempts to push the envelope morally, politically, and sexually.

Alas, as I grow older, take on more responsibilities, and find myself losing time at a rapid rate, I realize that I, too, am part of that dying breed of theatre-goers and performing participants. How can it survive if there is no active involvement from people like me? Anyone else out there feel the same--or am I alone?

(This JPFPost was originally posted in February 2007.)

More Spelling Annoyances

2009-04-19T20:00:00.003-04:00

I'm here again after another good stretch of time between posts. Once again I must turn your attention to another set of annoyingly common and commonly annoying spelling mistakes a great deal of people make when making comments for public perusal.

Yes, it's true. People write comments that they know others in the general public will read. They seek to make a point in their writing, whether it be a snappy comeback directed at a previous commenter, witty commentary on the subject in question, or to provide additional insight into the discussion.

However, no matter the purpose in their discourse, too many times do they subject the readers to a mind-numbing plethora of poor grammar and bad spelling. (I define "bad" here as simultaneously "incorrect" and "destined to doom the future of humanity when pigeons and jackals with better spelling skills than the greater percentage of English-speaking peoples take out their rage with red ink pens and pleather-encased spell-checking dictionaries.")

That brings me to the point of this essay:

Common Misspellings and How to Fix Them

Common Misspelling #1
"Voila" vs. "Viola"

Voila (pronounced "vwa-la"): a French exclamatory word similar in meaning to "Presto!" or "There it is!"

Example of misspelling in context: "I took a little paint and a little chalk and viola: my picture was complete."

Viola (pronounced "vee-o'-luh" or "vy-o'-luh"): a stringed instrument larger than a violin; a certain genus of plants.

Example of misspelling in context: "I play second chair voila. My brother plays first chair presto, and his wife plays in the ta-da section."

Common Misspelling #2
"Definitely" vs. "Definately"

Definitely (pronounced "def'-i-net-ly"): without doubt or question.

Example of misspelling in context: "He is definately going to be late for practice.

Definately (pronounced "def-i-nate'-ly"): the wrong way to spell "definitely."

Proposed correct usage of the misspelled word: "The giant attacking Todd and Lee made Todd go definately*."

Common Misspelling #3
"To" vs. "Too" vs. "Two"

To (pronounced "too"): a preposition expressing direction.

Too (pronounced "too"): very; extremely; in addition; as well; also; additionally; furthermore.

Two (pronounced "too"): a cardinal number that is the same as one plus one, three minus one, the square root of four, twelve divided by six, and the digit in the ones place juxtaposed with the number four in the tens place of the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Example of misspellings in context: "Too make it two the to o'clock showing of The Miracle on 42nd Street, you need two make a left on avenue number too, but don't go to far or you'll find yourself falling intwo a mess of trouble, the likes of which you've not seen since your terrible toos."

Correct usage: "That was too funny." "He went to the store." "She bought two eggs."

---

If I can persuade even one...hundred percent of the general population to obey the correct spelling and usage of just these few words, I would still have a long way to go; but at least I would not have to strain my brain and annoy my left brain so much trying to decipher the hidden meaning behind everyone's comments. Keep in mind, I understand the basic evolution of language and the fact that technology helps to bridge gaps between different-speaking cultures by speeding up the changes in language. I understand all that. But, shouldn't there be some kind of structure, some sort of rules put in place to stabilize it?

With that said, I close with this.

*In case you don't get it: "The giant attacking Todd and Lee made Todd go 'deaf and ate Lee.'"

(This MySBlentry was originally posted on 20 January 2009 at 11:57AM.)

Paul Revere

2009-04-16T20:00:00.002-04:00

I know this is going to seem quite random; and frankly, it is.

Have you ever noticed how much the portrait of Paul Revere (by John Singleton Copley c. 1768-1770) looks like a cross between contemporary actor/heavy metal comedian Jack Black and the Monkees' Micky Dolenz?

Some of my Photoshop-skilled friends should draw something involving the three playing in a band a la "every-cartoon-from-the-60s-and-early-70s". You know, one has the wonky guitar, the other on drums, and one ..boards. Maybe throw in Keanu Reeves with a tambourine. Come to think of it, this might also resemble the Monkees a bit. Or a Monkees' bit. Or bit a monkey.

Oh...or maybe they should all be riding through colonial Boston on horses.

Yeah, that'd be great.

(This MySBlentry was originally posted on 24 September 2008 at 6:50AM)

COMMENTS FROM ORIGINAL POST:

Wow! Paul Revere really DOES look like Jack Black and Monkee Mikey.
Posted by Rebecka on Thursday, September 25, 2008 - 7:23 AM

What Happened to Clever Figurative Language?

2009-04-15T20:00:00.006-04:00

I like to watch YouTube, especially postings of Animaniacs cartoons, Whose Line is it Anyway, and various clips of excellent (most of the time) singing. (I include the recent Muppets postings with the ever-so-talented Beaker with these.)

However, the main thing that amazes me in any of these media are the comments below the videos by users (*pointing into the audience* like you...or you...or even you). Frequently, I view the comments before letting the video play to avoid those random 30-second long still videos ending in the Scary Loud Screaming Monster Face (which sounds like a good name for a rock band or an exclamation from Jerry Lewis' caricature voice) videos that purport to be something legitimate and end up making you spill tea on your lap. (Well, that's my excuse for the tea in my lap, at least.)

But, I digress. A lot. Very often in fact. But, I'm losing my point. Moving on....

The comments for these video sites (as well as on many blog sites and news articles) tend to be filled with various statements of profound insight into the subject at hand, profane attempts at being clever, pretentious nonsequitirs attempting to be humorous, or parasitic postings for porn sites. (Yay, I love alliteration.) But, now I get to my point:

What happened to clever figurative language? More often than anything you will read something like the following:

"That was (funny/scary/dumb/lame/boring/aquamarine) as (insert monosyllabic expletive)!"

or the now clichéd assortment of cyber-acronyms, my least favorite of which includes a variant of the "omigosh" syllables.

(Of course the grammar, spelling, and rules of punctuation will not be anything resembling correct, but I think you get the point.)

Far and beyond the dull, ineffective, and annoying use of expletives and overused but illogical metaphors is the sheer lack of creative figurative language.

"That was (funny/scary/dumb/lame/boring/aquamarine) as (a monkey juggling toasters/falling head first into a pit of rabid falafels/a raging horde of Jamaican water buffalo/Richard Simmons)!"

So, please, for the sake of creative language and the sanity of many: take great care in the words you choose to use. Make reading what you have to say interesting, not just another stream of toilet water (also a good name for a rock band).

And, now, back to Animaniacs. Ha, that Wakko is as funny as a bologna sandwich parade in Turkey.

(This MySBlentry originally posted on 19 August 2008 at 7:44AM.)

COMMENTS FROM ORIGINAL POST:

2 Kudos

I am laughing so hard that I am shedding tears over the rabid falafels!
Posted by Melissa Starcher on Wednesday, September 03, 2008 - 7:34 AM

MySBlentry 6

2009-04-14T20:00:00.001-04:00

Is this my sixth MySBlog?

I have no idea.

Did I even bother to look at my old blogs to see what number I'm on now?

Um...no.

Yes, friends and neighbors, it's time once again for my semi-irregular, never duplicated, often obfuscated, somewhat serrated blog about...oh, let's pick a topic from this hat here...cheese. Yes, cheese.

As many of you may know, I like cheese. Contrary to popular belief, however, I was not the originator of the website(s) devoted to cheese(s), nor did I partake in any of the early-to-mid 20th century "government cheese" goings-on. Sorry to disappoint.

In other news, 1 out of every 4 members of the population of Ohio makes up 25% of the population of Ohio (statistics allow for +/- 18.92% on a confidence level of 60%). In related news, I now live in Ohio, which is not WV, and for which I am much excited and certainly more on the satisfied side of the measuring line of what could possibly be taken to be happiness if one were not privy to the many interesting and unlikely things going on in my life right now.

This sentence is intentionally left blank.

By the way, in case you could not tell, I am just throwing in a stream of consciousness session of writing here to a) empty out a little bit of the "creative" backup I currently find myself no longer capable of suppressing; b) let you'se guys know I'm still breathing and sometimes take part in this social connective medium known as the Internet in general and MySpace in particular ("Internet" and "MeinPlatz" in German, respectively); and 3) give you something to read that may or may not, depending on your particular persuasion, waste some of your time.

This line is for you, RK: Greetings! (~.~)

In closing, I close with the following famous closing: Farewell.

(This MySBlentry was originally posted on 03 March 2008 at 9:23PM.)

COMMENTS FROM ORIGINAL POST:

2 Kudos

now that's toast!
Posted by NPP Brian on Thursday, March 13, 2008 - 8:21 AM

Updates

2009-04-13T20:00:00.000-04:00

Greetings!

Just a few updates on the craziness of life.

1. I have completed (finally!!!) the spring 2007 semester of grad school, which required countless, grueling hours of homework (thanks to the online college experience) and much time not able to be spent casually. Yay, it's over.

2. I took 3 of the four PRAXIS-II tests I am required to take for my certification and ability to student teach this fall (after which I will be finished completely). If I passed, I will finish in December (if I student teach well, I guess); if not, I have to retake til I do, which will push back my student teaching, which will push back my degree obtainment, which will push my mind further into the recesses of insanity currently entrenching my brain. But, I digress.

3. I have started seeking freelance voice-over work through Voice123.com, a network of voice-over artists. So far, I have auditioned for many things, but have not been chosen (among the other 10,000+ VO artists); but, I shall continue trying at least for a year. (Then, my subscription runs out and I can then determine if it is worth the "nominal fee".)

4. I don't really have a number 4.

5. DSL must finally be over 6 years old, because I now have--right here in Yawkey--a Digital Subscriber Line bringing my computer into the higher-speed Internet world! I have watched Homestar Runner episodes in no-time flat. I have been able to download a 2MB Word document in less than an hour for the first time in ever. I am so excited, I think I might cry for relief. *:D*

6. That's it.

By the way, please comment on my blog, if you would--it would make it seem so much more rewarding to update more often. You know, give some initiative--some reason--for keeping peoples updated on the malaise and minutiae of my life.

(This MySBlentry was originally posted on 02 May 2007 at 11:46PM.)

COMMENTS FROM ORIGINAL POST:

6 Kudos

Consider you blog commented. And welcome to the REAL internet!

P.S. No Pants Players show this weekend (fri + sat 8:00p.m. LaBelle)

*for non-Levi curious people, check out www.nopantsplayers.com

Posted by NPP Brian on Thursday, May 03, 2007 - 7:58 AM

--------

Hooray for the spring semester being over, and for Levi being one step closer to teaching!!! Boo for not having a number 4. : ( That's one of the best numbers in the world! I less than three you!!!

~Randy

Posted by Randy, of course! on Friday, May 04, 2007 - 11:07 AM

--------

Why do you think we'd want to read an update on your life... lol...j/k. Congrats! on completing this semester of school... and I'm glad you have the real interent now.

Posted by Rebecka on Friday, May 04, 2007 - 11:08 AM

'Tis the Season

2009-04-10T20:00:00.004-04:00

No, not for boughs of holly and strings of lights.

It is finally the season of warmth, rain, wind, and the Earth's northern hemisphere tilting more toward the sun than it has in the past 4 months. Yay! Spring.

It's time for preparing garden soil and planting seeds. Time for birds to return from their winter brooding places and frogs to emerge from their underground hollows of hibernation. Time for cold, wispy cirrus clouds to be hidden from view by miles of cumulus, stratus, and nimbus clouds beneath. Time for the Spring Sky to take its abode directly ahead in the night sky, pushing the Winter Sky further West. Time for spring break, spring showers, spring colds, spring cleaning, and spring renewal.

Of all the myths of old considering spring, they all had one thing in common: spring is a time of rebirth. The ancient people of Egypt believed the sun god Osiris, who had died in the winter, bring desolation, coldness, and darkness, was resurrected every spring, bringing back warmth, sunlight, and the Nile floods to help plant their crops. The ancient Greeks equated spring as the beginning of the six months of time when Persephone, daughter of the goddess of agriculture Demeter, was allowed to escape Hades; in celebration, Demeter would make the earth bloom. The Romans, borrowing identities and changing the names from the Greeks, saw spring as the time when Mars would start up his wars again, a reference to the thunderings and lightnings in the heavens in March. For most other religions and points of view, spring is the time of renewal, the vernal equinox, when Earth begins it tilt back toward the sun.

It is no surprise, then, that the celebration of Jesus' resurrection occurs in the Spring. His conquering over death and the grave is no more epitomized than in the natural occurrence of spring conquering winter, the hours of the day conquering the hours of the night. Unlike the many myths, and the recurring rotation and shifting tilt of the earth, Jesus' resurrection was once and for all. Unlike Osiris, He does not have to die every winter to be resurrected every spring. Unlike Persephone, Jesus has already conquered Hell (a word we get from the Greek word "Hades") and does not need to return there ever again.

But, isn't it awesome when you consider how God created this planet with a built-in system that shows exactly what He did for us? Isn't it worth pondering how "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork"?

(This MySBlentry was originally posted on 23 March 2007 at 6:59PM.)

COMMENTS FROM ORIGINAL POST:

2 Kudos

Beautifully put, sir.
Posted by Melissa Starcher on Friday, September 05, 2008 - 11:27 PM

Musings

2009-04-09T20:00:00.000-04:00

I just realized I used much of the same terminology in my first 2 MySBlentries: "must needs" being one of them.

And both entries referred to my procrastination in completing lesson plans!

Yay, my readers are going to be so pleased and endeared (read: "annoyed and turned away") by my limited vocabulary and verbage.

Go me, I rock!

(This MySBlentry was originally posted on 22 March 2007 at 8:49PM.)

Planning an Astronomy Unit

2009-04-08T20:00:00.000-04:00

So, I should totally be doing my homework right now, but I needed a distraction. Unfortunately, this distraction is compounded by the fact that I have dial-up and live in Lincoln County, which automatically triples the time it takes to be effectively distracted than it would for people with DSL living in normal places.

I have an 8-day unit to plan, type, format, and complete so that I can teach the 8-day unit to a high school environmental science class. I have my unit topic down: Astronomy. That's fine. I know where I'm going with that. I am confident in my understanding of astronomy and feel I am perfectly qualified to teach it since I have a biology degree (well, this logic seemed to work for the school system when having me teach middle school music, at least.) Of course, my desire to teach astronomy at all is because I used to work in a planetarium, wherein I gained most of my interest and knowledge of things astronomical.

But, how do I teach a unit on astronomy to students? What do I start with? The solar system, then stars. Start with stars first, with a little history of Galileo, then lead into constellations?

How long will it actually take to get the concept of astronomical units into the unwilling minds of high school students?!

Alas, my distraction must needs come to a close soon. At least I have both of my socks on today. I can't say as much for my brain's synapses.

(This MySBlentry was originally posted on 22 March 2007 at 8:22PM.)

MySBlentry One

2009-04-07T20:00:00.000-04:00

Greetings!

It's my first MySpace blog entry (or "MySBlentry," as I like to call it.) [Hint: pronounced "mice-BLEN-tree"]

This officially brings me up to date in social technology--at least in Lincoln County, WV, terms. (We're 6 years behind everyone else; I think our stores will start carrying DVDs soon.) Now, I have a MySpace account, which apparently makes me cool and unique--just like everyone else under 18 years old.

Er...okay, maybe not.

My coolness (or awesometude, more appropriately) is neither emboldened nor shattered by my hidden presence on the world's largest site for semi-anonymous, largely verbal (and thus lacking the important nonverbal cues of face-to-face meetings, which enhance social communication, but I digress) contact between different types of peoples.

Um....okay, now it's 10:38 pm and I am not completely finished with my lesson plan I have to turn in and do tomorrow night for class, so I must needs away myself.

(To self) "Away!"

(This MySBlentry was originally posted on 14 March 2007 at 10:31PM.)

COMMENTS FROM ORIGINAL POST:

2 Kudos

ur alwayz cool dont let anyone tell u different!!! I cant belive u never wahtched Andy Grifith before!!! Well gotta make sure my cholthes rwashed 4 thhe fair at 6:00 but we might leve here at 6:00 because the Dimmilison Derbey dont start till 7:00 but we might be thereat 6:00 so my bubby can help my uncle...well I guess I will let u go n if I dont c u tonight I will c u this weekend!!!

luv ya Bubby... April Dawn luvs her Bubbys

Posted by April on Monday, July 16, 2007 - 3:03 PM

Reading Music

2009-01-21T20:00:00.000-05:00

I wish I could read music a lot better than I can. I'm still at the stage where I look at the note and point going "Every Good Boy--B," the musical equivalent of counting your fingers and toes when doing addition. It is possible, I suppose, that I can get some music-reading lessons, but time is a luxury I have not possessed since high school. (Of course, I spent a lot of time in college sleeping in the lounge instead of taking music courses, which in retrospect I should have done. It was hard being a commuter student and maximizing time usage.)

This recent desire (which is actually something I have been mulling over for a while) to read music comes from recent articles and postings I have seen in several music-related magazines and message boards. The major point of contention continuously commented points to the necessity for a singer (or any other musical artist for that matter) to be able to read music to be successful.

That is, it is not enough to have an "ear" for music, or to be able to plunk around on a piano or guitar until you have finally practiced "I'll Fly Away" or that "Sweet Home, Alabama" riff with the CD to near-perfect mimicry. Granted, there are many musical artists who reach great heights with just their own inherent musical abilities along with a lot of practice. But, it is congruent to becoming a successful but illiterate business owner. Certainly, many have obtained accolades for performance, but at some point, they reach their summit.

How much more musically interesting, then, could an artist be if they were able to read music, and consequently, learn the intricate workings and manners of manipulating melodies and meters to create their own music? How much better of a singer would I be if I understood chords and could read music?

(This JPFPost was originally posted in January 2007.)

Cicadas

2008-05-29T15:38:00.003-04:00

It's time for cicadas! Although I enjoy the quiet, calm, and distant sounds of the annual cicadas, I can't wait for the Magicicada genus of cicadas to emerge from their seventeen-year slumber.

I was eight years old the last time it happened. I left Oklahoma to land in West Virginia to the rhythmic chatter of cicadas and hundreds of discarded exoskeleton shells all over the place. To an science-loving but entomophobic young lad, the experience was simultaneously exciting and nightmarish. But, now it is time again.

I was eight years old then.

17 years since the last wave of cicadas.

17 years since my father passed away.

I had not realized that until just now.

Will the summertime arthropod orchestra bring auditory-linked reminiscences of days long past?
Will they cause me to remember things I'd forgotten since I saw my father last?
Will the sight of obviated insect shells bring mental sight unfurled?
Will they give me pause to wonder what facade I show to the world?

17 years--the average time it takes to get from first steps on the carpet to last steps in the high school graduation march.

I can't believe I just got a lesson in memories and time from noisy bugs.

Memorial Day Weekend 2008

2008-05-22T09:59:00.003-04:00

It's time to take a Breaks!

We're running sound this weekend at the Breaks Interstate Park right at the borders of VA and KY for the 2008 Jubilee in the Breaks.

We're leaving Friday (tomorrow) morning in the bus (yay!), setting our equipment, and getting ready to sing and run sound Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.

It's gonna be fun! Hopefully, I'll get back in time for work Tuesday, though.