New acronym-meanings for CBS
September 20, 2004
Can’t Be Serious!
Countenancing Brazen Stupidity
Clowns Behaving Shamelessly
Carrying Bad Stories
Covering Butts Strenuously
Credibility Badly Shaken
Controlled By Simpletons
Feel free to add your own…let’s expose CBS as the joke it is, all across the internet.
Taken your AQ Test yet?
September 16, 2004
I just did; maybe you’ve seen the commercials. I can’t even remember the name of the website; you’ll just have to watch until you see the commercial and write it down for yourself. Anyway, as it turns out, this thing is a commercial for Land Rover, and “AQ” stands for “Adventure Quotient”. Whateva…
Anyway, I’m a Passionate Investigative Pioneerguess that’s what, a cross between Antonio Banderas, Jim Rockford, and Davey Crockett? I am “willing to chase adventure anywhere”; “willing to forgo (sic) comfort for the sake of experience”; and “one of the rare few that can feel comfortable in any situation”. Wow, that’s good to know; I’ll base my life on an SUV ad…
Ah, but there’s more: I have a secondary profile! Not only am I a Passionate Investigative Pioneer, I’m also an Inward Inspirational Seeker! Yahtzee!!! What, I’m Rain Man mixed with Norman Vincent Peale and a bird dog?
And then, it gives me tips on what “others who share this Adventure Quotient” like to do: they go to Central America,Vietnam, Middle East, Wild West, North Africa, Indonesia, Antarctica, Nepal, and Madagascar (I’m going to call my travel agent tomorrow to see if I can book the combo Ho Chi Minh Trail/Afghanistan Extravaganza). Activities include Transcendental Meditation retreats, shrimping, traveling with a nomadic tribe, zip-line racing, snorkeling (hey, I’ve actually done that!), and a few others. Maybe I can go shrimping with a tribe of yoga experts…
Getting a little too happy with himself?
September 16, 2004
Since I’ve already used my blog, a few months back, to “dis” Tony Campolo on some of his stances on homosexuality, it may seem, from what I’m about to write, that I have a vendetta against him. Nothing could be further from the truth; I have always considered Tony to be one of my favorite authors; I’ve read many of his books and plan to read more; he is a guy, because he comes from more of the “evangelical left”, who challenges my thinking, and while I don’t agree with him some of the time, I appreciate the fact that he challenges me.
That said, he’s really starting to cheese me off, and here’s why: it sure is beginning to seem to me like Tony Campolo is getting just a little too happy with himself. I was in San Diego for the Emergent Convention back in March, and I went to the “Book Group” for his book, Adventures in Missing the Point, co-written with Brian McLaren. It was a massive disappointment on several counts, the first being that it became obvious from the questions that hardly anybody there had actually read the book, as I had. What it instead turned into was a massive “Suck-up to Tony” session, as the adoring masses lobbed softballs at him and hung on his every word as he pontificated (not too strong a term to use, you’d agree with me had you been there). And the thing that bothered me (well, in addition to the fact that the thing he got most passionate about was the “International Minimum Wage” idea proposed by Dick Gephardt, as utterly silly an idea as I can ever remember being advanced) was that Tony seemed to revel in being…Tony. He just seemed a little too happy with himself.
Fast-forward to 15 minutes ago, when I went to Amazon to check out his latest book, entitled Speaking My Mind : The Radical Evangelical Prophet Tackles the Tough Issues Christians Are Afraid to Face. Tony, it’s starting to wear a little thin. Came out with 20 Hot Potatoes that Christians are Afraid to Touch about a decade or more ago; great book. Followed it up with God is not a Republican or a Democrat a few years later; not as good as the first (his subject matter, as I recall, was a good bit more obscure than the first), but okay, fine, continued along the same vein of calling the church to deal with stuff that makes us uncomfortable. Now, he’s back again, this time as “THE Radical Evangelical Prophet”, replete with his shimmering mug on the front. I’m sitting here imagining Jeremiah doing a book tour billed as “THE Radical Israelite Prophet”.
What I’m saying is that it is coming across to me that Tony is starting to really get off on the idea that he is America’s leading “voice crying in the wilderness” or something, and frankly, maybe he is, but he’s starting to come off as self-promoting a bit too much for my tastes.
Perhaps it’s time for someone to be a prophet to Tony Campolo…
Another reason to hate the Yankees
September 7, 2004
As if we needed one. Can you believe the classless, tacky, shameless tactics of the New York Yankees, who begged baseball to give them a forfeit against Tampa Bay, when the Devil Rays were home in Florida during the hurricane and didn’t make it back to New York to being a doubleheader on Monday afternoon? George Steinbrenner embodies the reason why I am so much less a baseball fan that I once was, but this is incredibly weasily, even by Steinbrenner standards. George is an embarrassment to the once-proud game of baseball, and for once, Bud Selig did something right in denying that pathetic request.
I STILL don’t pay too much attention to baseball, but…
September 6, 2004
My, what a year to be a St. Louis Cardinals fan (as I have been all my life)!
Things Kerry and Bush are too gutless to touch…
September 3, 2004
1. Socialist Security This system of coercion is poorly conceived and headed toward bankruptcy eventually. Socialist Security: “all the security that socialism can provide“. But neither of these guys is ever going to suggest doing what needs to be done to it, and pols just keep putting it off and putting if off, no one having the guts to address it for fear of a backlash inspired by the opposite party’s hysteria.
2. The I.R.S. There is simply no good argument for the continued existence of the I.R.S. and the behemoth, social-engineering tax code. It borders on immoral. The I.R.S. has to go. But will one of these guys touch it? Nah…both Republicans and Democrats are beholden to the system.
3. The Drug War In the dictionary, under “throwing terrible money after awful money after bad money after good“, you’ll see our current efforts to “fight” the drug war. News flash: we ain’t winning. News flash: we ain’t ever gonna win. Oh, we’ll occasionally score some feel-good “victories”, but at what price? We make people criminals by criminalizing things that, in some cases are no worse (and in some cases, not as bad) as legal substances. We make drug kingpins rich; we fill our prisons with people; with the money we waste on the “Drug War”, we could actually get serious about border security. Daddy can go to work, come home and start drinking Jack Daniels, be royally sloshed by 7:00 PM, sleep it off, go to work the next day, and be considered a good citizen. If Daddy comes home after a day of work and lights up one doob, he’s a lawless criminal who’ll be in jail if he’s caught. I’m not arguing for drugs– good gracious, what a moronic thing to do–I’m just arguing for policy that actually makes sense. Which our current drug policy most certainly does not.
Y’all got any more where these came from? Or you wanna tell me I’m nutz?
A learning experience…
September 3, 2004
I just finished two days of being trained as a “church planter assessor”; i.e., if somebody in our district of the E Free church wants to plant a church, I will now be certified to be part of a team assessing the ability of this person to actually succeed in planting a church. I learned some good stuff (and had the privilege of taking part in the assessment of a guy and his wife who passed with flying colors!
But what I learned, perhaps most of all, is that I am probably not a guy cut out to ever plant a church myself. I grew up–and until 11 years ago, spent all of my life–in fundy, basically traditional, churches, and developed pastoral skills that work pretty well (I can preach you a mean sermon, dude…) in such contexts, but I’m not certain that I have–or will ever have–what it takes to launch out and plant an emerging church. Not despairing; still open to involvement in the EC, because I believe that it is headed in the right direction. Just pretty sure that I’m not going to be a guy to get one up and running…
This phrase comes from the 1978 "Jonestown massacre" in which most members of the Peoples Temple cult, blindly following their leader Jim Jones, committed suicide by drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid.
Osborne: A Contrarian's Guide to Knowing God
Schlossberg: Idols For Destruction
