www.andrewmackay.net:

via my little brother Matt. This is awesome.

It’s my sincere hope that this is a scene from some b-grade, ironically dumb movie. If it isn’t, the world just got weirder.

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.”

- Jonathan Swift, brilliant writer and satirist of the 17/18th century. Want proof? Read this.

General state of the blog update:

Welcome back, good to see you, all that stuff. Here’s the thing about this blog: It’s only useful as long as it’s serving a purpose. And it’s a little bit of a drain on resources. And, as I approach the place where my time is more and more at a premium, trying to keep this up as a 6 day a week venture is just beyond my capabilities. But, the discipline of routine writing is good for me. So, here’s what you can expect: Monday will continue to be the day where I pawn off something good someone else said as though I put work into a post. Wednesday and Friday, you’ll continue to find original content related to reading, writing, music, creativity and the Believer’s life. The rest of the days of the week (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, for those of you not diagramming this out on a piece of paper in front of you), you’ll find nothing new. Hopefully this will allow the content I do post to be higher-quality, as well as allow for some additional sanity / time with my family / etc.

Thanks for reading, truly.

Andrew

There’s a hilarious post / song over at Andrew Osenga’s website. He lost a toe five years ago. One of his friends wrote a song about it. You should listen to it.

My boy and I are up early-ish this morning, and the conversation has gone like this: (Imagine a two-year-old inflection)

Luke: Want see Mama

Me: Well, we’re trying to let Mama sleep, so you need to just play with daddy. Want to come look out the window?

Luke: Ooh, Mr. Brown’s car!

Me: Ooh, it rained all night.

Luke: Yeah, rain rain. It’s wind?

Me: Yep, the wind is blowing. We need to talk about some breakfast.

Luke: Maybe some blue macaroni?

Me: That’s not breakfast.

Luke: Oh, just crackers.

Me: That’s not really breakfast either. How ’bout toast or cereal or oatmeal?

Luke: Maybe… play motorcycle?

Me: Wow. You have the opposite of a one-track mind, don’t you!

and so on. It’s a fun morning!

This is a clip from CTV’s Olympic morning, hosted by Jay Onrait of TSN, the Canadian sports network, along with Beverly Thomson. Jay Onrait is known for saying outrageous things on SportsCentre, but in this case, putting him with a news team that isn’t necessarily used to working with him, well… lets just say that he manages to keep the only straight face in the building. Best olympic clip ever? Close, but not as good as Sid’s winning goal. That was epic.

We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and a mystery.

- H. G. Wells

It’s a frequent conversation here in West Virginia. “I’d watch hockey if I could follow the puck… now, back when they had that red dot over it, I loved it…” This is most frequently said by people who love me and know that I probably hated the red dot. But, occasionally, I hear it from random people.

For those of you who are blissfully unaware, when Fox had part of the NHL rights deal, they decided to embed a microchip in the puck that would then allow them to digitally put a red dot over the puck to make it more obvious for television watchers (pronounced “Americans”). It was an attempt to make watching hockey easier, I guess.  Thankfully, no real hockey fan thought it was a good idea, so when Fox dropped out of the hockey broadcasting business, the system dropped out with them.

However, it does raise an interesting issue. If you haven’t been watching hockey for very long, apparently it can be tough to track the puck. I won’t pretend like I know what that feels like — I don’t remember a time in my life when I couldn’t track the puck for the most part. Of course, hockey’s been on in my house (and the winter game of choice) since I was born. But, in an effort to help, I’ll tell you how I watch the game.

1. Follow the little black disc. Yeah, self explanatory. If you can obviously see the puck, you probably should just stick to that.

2. Flow of game. Check what color the goalie is wearing. Look in the direction he’s looking for a guy who is not wearing the same color as him. You’ve found the puck.

3. Beware the dump and chase. Frequently, teams will “dump” the puck into the opposing team’s zone, and then chase it in hopes of setting up an offensive opportunity. Dump and chase takes place around the boards, the hope being that a good body check will get the defense off the puck and provide that opportunity. If there are guys skating hard and you can’t see the puck, check around the boards.

Hopefully those tips help. For the record, my Toronto Maple Leafs are still winless. They play tonight… maybe they can get out of this streak.

David Wells is one of the smarter people I’ve ever read.

“In our postmodern culture which is TV dominated, image sensitive, and morally vacuous, personality is everything and character is increasingly irrelevant.”
— David F. Wells

If you read enough “how to blog effectively” articles, you’ll find “letting your readers into your life” listed somewhat frequently. Something about emotional bonds and stuff.

That’s not my motivation today. I had a lousy day yesterday. I want to talk about it. It’ll be therapeutic. My twelve step group doesn’t meet till next Tuesday. (That is a lie. I don’t have a group. I do meet with a therapist on a semi-weekly basis, but he’s my brother-in-law; we don’t meet for therapy, we meet to eat.)

Wednesday night, we got to our small group meeting in “Backwoods, WV” (name changed to protect the innocent), 45 minutes from home, on time. We were glad to get there. I parked in the wrong place, and when I endeavored to start the car to move it to the right place…

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