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

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

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.

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

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…

it wouldn’t start.

Full disclosure: it did this about two weeks ago to my wife. She called me, I walked her through some ideas, and the car started. She thought I was a genius. I was lucky.

This time, no matter what I (or any of the other guys in our small group) tried, the car would not start. Plenty of juice in the battery, but the starter… she no starting.

So, the family whose house we were meeting at loaned us a car (Thanks!), I told them that I was leaving my keys in the center console, and I’d get it figured out from home in the morning. We packed up the borrowed car and drove the 45 minutes or so home, went to bed, and I tried not to think about car trouble.

See, I’m that kind of a guy. I have zero ability with cars. None. Zilch. Nada. I can change a flat in an emergency (although not quickly), and I might be able to change the oil if you held a gun to my head. (Why are you holding a gun to my head for an oil change? Hold a gun to my head for $25 and have Wal*Mart change your oil, for goodness sake.) So, when something goes wrong with my car, I get mighty agitated (you know, like a washing machine). I flip flop between worry that the problem will be prohibitively expensive to fix and worry that the mechanic will take advantage of me.

Anyway, I finally managed to get to sleep. We had a plan for the morning — around 9, call the mechanic, figure out what he wanted, and then call the roadside assistance people and get the car towed.

We woke up early. Just that sort of a morning. I’m an early-to-rise sort of guy anyway. My family, not usually, but hey… I’ll take it. We went through our usual morning routines (Luke: “Me-meal!” Rebecca: “Yes, I’ll make you oatmeal.”) I got out of the shower and started picking up whatever I needed to take back to my office with me (cell phone, laptop, dayplanner), when right beside my cell phone, what did I spy?

I spy with my little eye the key to the car that is 45 minutes away.

Yep.

Idiot.

So, now, even if I call a tow truck, they can’t move my car without possibly damaging it. The mechanic certainly can’t check if the starter is the problem if he has no ability to start the car. I really messed this one up.

So, I hopped in the car and drove back to Backwoods, WV.

At that point, the day mostly turned for the better. I got to have a lovely breakfast with family, see my brother by marriage’s farm (the man has got a view, let me tell you. If you want to see majesty, I can tell you just who to call). The tow company got there, eventually, and did a respectable job with my car. The mechanic (who I’d never met, but is likely related to my wife… seriously. West Virginia!) got the part quickly, and got it fixed in a better-than-respectable amount of time (I tend to think anything “Same-day” in auto mechanics is downright miraculous). The mechanic even did me the favor of pointing out that my tags were expired. I should’ve known that, but it had escaped my attention.

Here’s where it kind of turns again. I thanked him and paid him and got on the road headed home. I looked at the clock in the car and thought, 1:00… not at all bad. I called my wife, told her I was on my way and that I planned to work about 4 hours when I got home to make up for part of the lost day. She stammered a reply, which was strange but… it felt like a long day, so I didn’t question it.

10 minutes later I turned on the radio. None of the presets worked. Hmm, I thought. I guess at some point, the battery got disconnected. That makes sense actually, starter and all. It hit me. The clock was wrong.

Yeah, it was 3:10. My day was shot.

I was almost home when I remember the dead tags. I called my wife and said, “Rebecca, you need to call about our tags. Apparently they’re expired, and we’re going to end up getting pulled over.” We talked about a couple of other things, and as I was winding down the conversation, I saw a too-familiar sight around these parts: the town of Fayetteville PD’s SUV pulled out from its spot on Route 19 behind me.

“Honey, I’ll be a few minutes,” I said. “I’m getting pulled over for those dead tags.”

No lie.