Archive for the ‘ randomness ’ Category
While I can't condone the scarring of this little child, I can learn from (and laugh at) Will Ferrell's strategy for not paying his rent. WARNING: there is questionable language in this video. Someone really needs to clean out the landlady's mouth with a bar of soap.
I signed up for the Indy Mini many moons ago with high hopes of qualifying for the Boston Marathon. While I gave up those hopes within 15 minutes of completing my registration, I still desired to run and finish the Mini. Fast-forward several lethargic months, add in effort and desire to sell my house, and throw in a knee that is reminding you that you don't deserve to visit Boston, let alone dream of running the marathon, and you have my current situation.
I can't let good money go to waste, so I'll show up the day of the race and spend several hours working my way toward the finish line … if I have to. However, if you would like to run the Mini, but did not register in time, I'd be willing to work out a deal with you. It's too late to officially transfer my registration to you, but you'd have the race packet to run the race (and a t-shirt that screams "I take initiative"). Your time would be listed under my name (so you'd better get training), but it would most definitely be your time.
If you're interested, please let me know by calling me or by emailing me.
Hey Friends. Ok, this is the deal. I signed up for a new television service in January called AT&T UVerse. My television signal now comes over my phone line, as does my DSL. Ironically, I am no longer under the obligation to have phone service. Anywho, I apparently was one of the first people in Indy to sign up for this service. I did so because they gave me a DVR, but did not make me sign a contract. Happy Days! Again anywho, the nice people at AT&T called me up and asked if I'd like to host a party to help expose this budding technology to others. I said "no." They asked if I wanted some money. I said "keep talking."
So this is the deal: for each household that is eligible for the service that I invite, that household gets $25 and I get $25. AT&T caters the party (sandwiches, desserts, and soda pop), and will send in people to clean up. There is NO OBLIGATION to purchase anything. If you're eligible, just showing up gets you $25 and free food.
I could use help saving money for grad school, and you could use $25. So, if you'd like to help yourself and me out, do the following:
Thanks for considering this. Again, you will not be pressured to buy anything. There will be someone giving a short demonstration. He/She would probably be as happy as a schoolgirl for you to sign up for something, but as far as I'm concerned, you'll be there to collect $25, eat free food, and to help me out.
Please let me know if you have any questions!
This update is a tad overdue, but hey, it's here. Not much has happened since my last update one and a half months ago. And by "not much" I mean more or less the following:
Wow, I really thought that there would be more. Welp, that's a quick update. I'm off to spend some quality Easter time with family. The weather appears to want to produce snow, for which I am excited. I love a traditional white Easter.
Strength and Honor.
For all of those who care, after almost 24 hours of continuous travel activity I've arrived safely back in Indianapolis. Thank you so much to those who prayed for my trip. The time was memorable and fruitful.
Hello World. I've had troubles updating my page for the last couple days. I cannot access it any more from a web browswer. "Then how might you be adding this post?," you might ask. Well, it's prety geeky. If you understand what it means to ssh to a server in the US and to use lynx to add a post, then kudos to you. I should have many more stories upon my return to the US later this week.
There should, however, be updated photos.
I've seen the promise land, and it lies behind double razor wire. We went out on Thursday to videotape damage from the most recent war with Israel. Damaged buildings litter the landscape of south Lebanon, all the way to the Israeli border. There, at less than two hundred yards, lie the fabled and actual land of Israel. Not too far from there we were greeted by a man that had received food aid from the church we visited. He invited us in for coffee and chocolate. We, of course, accepted.
Seeing bombed out buildings and bridges is more than a little surreal. As an American, I've seen countless hours of TV footage of bombs and bridges actually being blown up – the Gulf Wars Part I and Deux have ensured that. What I have seen little of is the aftermath of war. It is humbling. Buildings ripped apart display half-open rooms with traces of normalcy, though all is beyond the normal. "People lived here, yet will never return." A friend of mine wrote of such conflict in the Sudan several weeks ago on his blog. He finished his description with "and someone somewhere thinks that it is worth it."
Yes, I understand that there are complex political and religious realities that create war. A lot of thinking went in to the who, when, what, where, and why for the bombing. But standing in the rubble now, the question "is it worth it," must be asked, even if after thinking long and hard the answer is 'yes'. Because the answer may be 'no'. And no matter the answer we must stand in the rubble and ask the question so that when (not if) the next time comes to make a similar decision we will know the pain we are causing, even if it is cloaked as an attempt to do a little good.
Executive Summary:
Where to start? Well, first I apologize to lying to all of you. I've done pretty much everything I said that I would not be doing. Let's start with going to the large pro-government rally commemorating the death of Rafiq Hariri. The radio was calling for 600,000 people to gather in the city center. Ask any one of people there and they would have told you that over a million would be in attendance. We did not intend to go, but as with any transgression we took a sip and ended up finishing the entire glass. On the way out of town we passed near the roads leading to Martyr's Square, the location of the rally. Though still a good distance away, we felt very safe taping the mass of people walking to the city center. Bearing a free Lebanese flag, we joined the masses, taping along the way. As we approached the center of the rally, the security got tighter, as did the breathing room. To get a better vista we used Dave's camera as a ticket to get on the roof of a nearby building, providing us with a spectacular view of the mosque, demonstration, and Hariri's burial site. The scene was very peaceful, yet full of passion as people chanted in support of the government. Giddy as school children having , we made our way back to the car and headed to lunch. There we would be transferred to another driver that would take us to the southern portion of Lebanon, thus turning me into a lier twice over. Along the way we stopped off at Tyre (cf. Acts 21:3 to take pictures of the ruins. As we ventured further south, the damage from last year's war with Israel became more evident. Bridges remain impassable after being bombed. Bombed roads have been fixed with gravel, rendering them passable, but drastically increasing the travel time between Beirut and the south. Hezbollah flags and pictures of Nasrallah (the leader of Hezbollah) became more prevalent. Our driver asked if I feared Hezbollah. "Not when they're far away from me," I responded. "They're really not so bad," he replied. An awkward silence ensued. He continued to yet again broaden my perspective. While not all Lebanese people think Hezbollah are "good guys," they are considered to be the group that pushed Israel out of Lebanese lands many years ago, thus providing freedom and returning dignity to the Lebanese people, both Christian and Muslim. Have they done bad things? Yes. But they have also done good things in the eyes of the people. Soon after we reached our destination town in south Lebanon we filmed the prayer meeting and Bible study of the church plant. A few minutes into the service the power went out. Within a minute someone had initiated the back up system: four fluorescent bulbs attached to a car battery. Dave filmed remaining majority of the service in what appeared to be dance club lighting. Upon returning to the house of the pastor, we were greeted with a fine Lebanese meal and warm conversation in a mixture English, Arabic, and Ukrainian. After a tasty meal of potatos, lamb, labneh, lebanese bread, and much more, our hosts treated us to the story of how they met and were engaged to be married. The 31 year old wife-to-be was a single mother living in the Ukraine, about to lose her apartment. She prayed for a husband who could provide for her and be a father for her son. At the recommendation of a friend at church, she filled out an online dating form. Now at this time a Lebanese man in the Ukraine told her pastor's about a man he knew in Lebanon who was looking for a wife. Her pastor passed along the information and suggested that they correspond. After many emails, requests for pictures (and polite requests for more pictures after not caring for the expressions), and a lot of prayer, the wife-to-be waited until the end of the July War and travelled to Lebanon to meet her suitor. She did not simply want a man to be a husband, she wanted a man of character to be a companion and a father for her ten-year-old. After a week with the man's family and in his country, he proposed and she accepted. A few months after that she and her son left their life in the Ukraine and moved to Lebanon for a new life. The couple really is quite cute and happy, and the man has accepted the child as if it were his own. I could do little but sit back and laugh to myself at the beauty and hilarity of such a story. Before heading to bed as a liar twice over, I ate roasted chestnuts and looked at pictures while laughing at what I thought was the correct moment in the grandfather's jokes. He, by the way, reminded us greatly of Uncle Joe from "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," a fact that has put "And I've Got a Golden Ticket" on the soundtrack to this trip.
I've grabed some stills and movies of Lebanon and put them up on the site. Enjoy!
All is well and I have much to tell, but that must come another day. We are headed out yet again to get some more footage for Dave's talkie.
One thing however: any educated person should have understood this before (I include myself here), but don't believe everything the news tells you. When I spent four months in Sierra Leone, I was struck by how the lack of constant news was a breath of fresh air. I am typically a news junkie, and to be without allowed me to see how the news media works hard to keep us in a healthy state of fear, just so we "tune in at five o'clock" or "check it out online." If we're afraid, we want to know more. And if we want to know more, then we must turn to the only dealers that support our "need" to know.
Enter Lebanon, 2007. On Wednesday, the international news agencies picked up the story of the bus bombings here in Lebanon. Three people tragically lost their lives. "People died today in the [unsafe] Middle East; film in at eleven." This hits the news because it supports the fear that the media wants to utilize to keep you tuning in. Now, fast forward one day to the rally the bus bombs was supposed to affect: nothing but a peaceful rally of 600,000 people in the Middle East. We didn't know that those even happened, did we? People die at Mid-East rallies, right? Or at least American flags must be burning to keep little children warm, right. No and no. The only flags you saw were Lebanese flags, and they were out in droves. No one was killed. No American flags burned. And it was safe enough for this rather large American to walk amongst the crowds.
So, yes, people are killed over in the Middle East in repugnant ways. But no, it is not the norm. The most important thing to realize about people over here is that they are very, very much like you. True, they may look different, talk differently, dress differently, etc, but so do people from Kentucky, Massachusetts, Hawaii,
So, the things you see on the news really happen, but they are not the whole story. In fact, they never can be the whole story, but we must not forget that.