i always thought they did grooming there

""Petco Park might be the place where homers go to die, but PETCO stores are where animals go to die." - Dan Shannon, PETA. From this article.

meant to post this a while ago

Sometimes when I'm around my computer but not the internet I write posts in notepad that I intend on putting up here. I found one today, I wrote it sometime in February or March. So anyway, I figured I went through the work of typing it then so I'd put it up...

This morning during my first period prep I turned on the TV to kill some time and see what was on. I found two or three "Christian" shows on, none of which were giving out sound Biblical teaching. One was getting me really mad, trying to get people to make "vows" where they'd give money to the guy. The dude would sit there and read stuff out of his Bible, and say "The Lord is shun baba yama hala lama the anointing is strong here, bablala someone here is going to tap into this power, I know it" etc etc. He was like a stinkin psychic friend but he had a Bible open in front of him and was using Jesus' name all the time. Grrrr.

One of the other things I saw was an infomercial wherein two midget twin brothers were espousing the wonders of real estate and how they can get you rich quick.

Man, morning TV is a wasteland! More arguments for video games. Or going outside, whatever.

i will live a simple life

I'm back from my trip down to SoCal. LA was interesting - the part we stayed in appeared to be some sort of Korea Town. I went into a Korean market and was interested to find two things. One - there were flatpanel LCD displays hanging from the ceilings with news and whatnot in an otherwise dingy store. Two - there was an "American Food" aisle with things like Frosted Flakes and microwave pizzas and Pop Tarts. On Saturday morning the store had a traffic director with a whistle who tried to manage the large volume of cars entering and exiting the relatively small parking lot. Across the street were a number of Korean protestors holding signs and shouting with a megaphone. I hear they've been protesting there for over a year about working conditions or something...I guess I admire their dedication. I'd just go get a job somewhere else.

My time with Janelle's family was good. I enjoy spending time with them, and feel welcomed and like I belong. I'm glad that the steretype of "the hated inlaws" will not be true in my life.

This week will likely be busy, what with oneeighty preparations and catching up with what I left behind in going to LA.

byrnes rules

Went to the A's season opener last night with some friends. Man that was a good time, especially with Byrnes' 2-run pinch hit in the bottom of the 8th. The A's sure do win in style.

Lineage 2 is now in open beta and the characters are sticking around into retail. Any of my recreational computer time is spent there, trying to keep up with my more hardcore buddies. It is a pretty fun game...but without the other guys to play it with it'd get boring before too long, I know it.

I've had a sore throat for the past few days...I'm hoping it doesn't turn into anything.

Thursday evening I'm leaving with the Cornelio family to attend a funeral in Southern California, will be gone for the Easter weekend. I will miss my Crossroads family on this weekend - will be the first Easter I wasn't there since 1996 I think. But I will be spending it with my future in-laws. Anyway just thought I'd share that. I have been pretty quiet lately. Blame Lineage for sucking up my computer time.

all hail west virginia

Their Governor has been angered. I bet if Ahnold made such a request that guy would've bowed down and begged forgiveness.

you must play this game

Play it! And make sure you read the strategy guide too, even if you beat it. This is gold.

cry me a river

The distance between Fremont, CA and Melbourne, Australia is 7,884 miles according to Jeeves. That's really far.

whoa

Holy crap. Watch this trailer. If anyone speaks Japanese and can give me a hint as to what these people are saying, I'd appreciate it. I must find a way to see this movie.

in the airport

I'm at the Ft. Lauderdale airport right now and I managed to hook up to a hotspot. That's a pleasure, considering we arrived over 2 hours before our flight is scheduled to depart. I was able to spend the last hour plus catching up on my e-mail and various web stuff that I usually like to keep track of. Good stuff.

There are some things I meant to post before I left but never got around to doing, so I'm going to post those. I'm going to mess with the date so they show up when I meant them to post.

My trip to the Florida Keys was great, though I am looking forward to being home. I get to see Janelle tonight for the first time in over 20 days, so there is even more motivation for all this travel to be over. I had a lot of fun with everybody, both the Chicagoans and Teddy who lives close but I don't see enough. In a week or two I'll be putting up some pictures and whatnot. So yeah, off to post that old stuff.

off i went

I'm going out of town tomorrow. Headed to the Florida Keys with some friends from here and Chicago. Definitely looking forward to some relaxing time with good friends. I'm disappointed some people can't make it but know that it'll be fun anyway. It will feel like a vacation too, because I've been in that metalshop class for so long. Gonna hit the ground running when I come back home too. I'm going to take my digital camera and hope it decides to work.

I doubt I'll have internet access at all on my trip - I'll be gone till Sunday. Be good now.

observations from school

I talked this morning with a man named Greg, who works as a facilities guy around Washington High School. He's a big blue-collar guy, works hard and seems like a man just doing his best to provide for his family and his kids and all that. He saw that I was reading my Bible and we started up a conversation about that. It turns out that he used to be studying to be a minister way back in the day, but something happened in the family that distracted him and his wife wanted the whole family to go to a Catholic church together. So now he said he gave up on that minister thing and converted to Catholicism, and he's doing that with his family. It looked to me like he felt that was his real calling or something but he couldn't do it because of what happened. Like maybe, he said, the devil realized he was going to be a good minister and did something to mess that up.

Then he started talking to me about how he teaches catechism to 4th grader's at St. Edward's, a parish in town. It was hilarious watching this manly man start to talk about a 4th grader named Mikaila that was frustrating him because she was starting to, as he said "develop. You know, get her 'girly parts' I guess you could say." I could tell he was uncomfortable just talking about it. I didn't know people actually said "girly parts."

Anyway I just wanted to share that, I don't have any special kind of lesson or anything from him. I just think it's interesting how people can have stories in them you totally didn't expect. And I feel like I almost ran into a sitcom character. Good hard-working guy, doing his best to be an upstanding Catholic family-man but real and honest at the same time, masculine and has difficulty talking about "girly parts" and all that. And then there's the twist of maybe he was meant to be something different. Maybe he was meant to be a church pastor instead of a facilities guy at Washington High School. Or maybe he could have been. Just thinking out loud.

Added a few links to the "other blogs" section over there on the left. I can't keep up with all of these guys at the same time, but there's usually something good to read among them. If you only check out one see Rudy Carrasco's site and if you check two from the new ones check Rudy's and liquidthinking.

more on the passion

Here are some comments from Doug Pagitt that I identified with to some degree. For the entire entry go here:

A few theological comments. I am glad to see theological comments being made in movies and am not intending to say the movie-makers should do anything else. The place my theology departs from the movie is in the amount of suffering before the crucifixion. The beatings were so severe and in my opinion an over-stretching for what probably happened. (I don’t think any human body could take the kind of beating the movie showed and not loose consciousness, let alone stand). But the real issue was the disproportionate amount of beating in comparison to the crucifixion. From what is in the bible it is unclear how long the beatings took, but less than 3 hours is a reasonable assumption. The time of Jesus on the Cross was probably about 3 hours. But the movie placed most of the time on beating and the cross was almost a brief relief from the scourging. I found myself saying, “just get him to the cross”. I wanted the pain to stop. That is where I find trouble with the beatings focused sacrifice. If our thought of the sacrifice of Jesus was what he took in the beating, and not the loosing of his life we end up with different story. We could end up with a story that says we will suffer in this life and this body, but we will escape that suffering through death. It makes death the freedom (almost Brave Heart like. Interesting). I felt this in the movie. When Jesus cried “It is accomplished” I found myself feeling,” good it is over”. Death as relief?!
But the story of Jesus is not that death is relief from pain, rather that resurrection is the relief from death. I am not saying Mel Gibson tried to do this, but I think many people will conclude that the embraced cross was a good thing. It is the resurrection that the good thing.

Ah crap. Well I wish him luck wherever he goes. Garcia seems like a good guy, DUI notwithstanding. Heh. Probably be vultured by the Raiders or something.