it’s not about you

Click here.

Brent, this one’s for you.

story here.

I’m trying to convince all the guys in the house to grow mullets.

I posted a list of words Judah adapted back in November. By request, I’m posting a few more.

Oatmeal is “ay-meel.”
Stand up is “demas.”
Adam is “Abmm.”
What’s up with that is “Wasabidah.”
San Francisco is, “San ’sco new home.”

She has also started saying, “that’s cool.” Mark, upstairs is “my Mark.” Our housemate Dan, is “my Dan.” She refers to herself in third person, as in “Judah’s happy,” or when we get to the park, “Judah’s here!”

That’s all I can think of right now.

from Emerils:

Twinkies went on sale for the first time on April 6, 1930. Now, in honor of the movie King Kong, Hostess has released a limited edition with banana cream filling. Did you know that banana was the original Twinkie flavor back in 1930? During World War II when there was a banana shortage, the company changed the filling flavor to vanilla.

So I’ve recently been alerted to a case of an Afghan man, converted to Christianity from Islam, who is about to undergo trial in his country. Since first hearing about the case, it has received widespread international attention.

You can read the latest New York Times story here.

I know very little about Islam, and in all honesty it is hard to take those who say it is a peaceful religion seriously, especially when someone is quoted as saying this: “The prophet says when somebody changes religion, he must be killed.”

I know Christianity has its own asshole “clerics” who say some pretty idiotic things, but I find that on the whole, the Christian community at large recognizes their stupidity and they are not considered the voice of the Church.

Part of my confusion with Islam is the calls for death all the time - from converts to newspaper cartoonists to all Westerners - even people who were never Muslim in the first place. People in many Muslim countries even believe that vaccination attempts against diseases long eradicated in the West, such as polio, are attempts to sterilize Muslim girls. I mean, seriously.

Maybe it’s just the media, but the impression being sent about the religion is that it is one of controlling its constituents by means of fear-mongering and complete, unadulterated intolerance.

Hope this isn’t too random, but these are some floating thoughts and observations i’ve had over the past few weeks. I’d love to hear yours, especially if you have any light to shed.

Shackleton said the likely temperature increase this century would be between one and five degrees Celsius, and the average rise in sea levels one to three feet. There is, he continued, “also the possibility of relatively abrupt shifts where the climate system could experience a dramatic shift.”

The good news: We “won’t be alive when most of the effects occur,” he said.

The bad news: We all will have succumbed to bird flu and mad cow disease.

via the Washington Post.

Go here.

***update***
So, apparently, the page I was on uses something called “cookies,” and is no longer displaying the page I was looking at, which I had linked to from another site. Forgive my complete ignorance for not knowing how all this techie mumbo-jumbo stuff works, but Joshua and I were clued in on this website, which sells T-shirts for men and women. Page three of the T-shirts is for women. I think they are pretty funny. The whole site is pretty funny.

So we have new phone numbers again. Comment or e-mail if you want them. Joshua has details here.

Poverty Stricken Africans Receive Desperately Needed Bibles.

A quote: “More than 60,000 urgently needed Bibles arrived to allay suffering throughout the famine-stricken nation of Niger Friday, in one of the largest humanitarian-relief operations ever attempted by a Christian ministry.”

God, I love The Onion. Your thoughts? I have something to say about this, but I’m still too amused to put it together…

So I’m going to the Page Street Center on Monday afternoons with Adam, our Ironman housemate, to help volunteer at Body & Soul, the food pantry program. We bagged produce for a while, and then Eric asked me if I could pass cookies out to everyone waiting in the room. I have two stories to share and want to know how YOU would have responded.

While walking around offering cookies, I asked a couple of street guys sitting on a couch if they would like one. They both said no. I kept going and as my back was to them, I heard one of them say, “Well if you’re the cookie, I could take a few bites.” What would you have said/done back?

On my second go-round, I had a whole package of cookies. The first man I offered them to reached in and took about a third of what was there. I said, “Hey now, don’t be greedy.” Good-naturedly, of course. He gave me a dirty look and said, “Your job is to pass out the food, not tell me how much I can have.” What would you have said/done back?

This should be good.