Weigh Day, May Day

I do not own a bathroom scale. (I don’t have a cell phone either, but that’s probably a story for a different day) Not having a bathroom scale may be like not having a toaster – it is odd, but you can manage. Incidentally I do have a toaster. It’s a horrible one, but I own it free and clear.

So, without a scale, I have mostly gone about my business blissfully unaware of my own weight. From time to time you come across one, at the doctor’s office or, usually, at someone else’s house, (but practically never in the middle of the road) and then you can take the opportunity to find out how much you weigh. (Yikes! This is either the result of not owning a scale or the purpose of not owning a scale.)

But, as it turns out, the place where I am employed has a scale. I work for a large organization that does a great deal of shipping and mailing and they have a scale. Not a bathroom scale, mind you, but a scale the size of a bathroom! Well, maybe not as big as your bathroom, but certainly larger than my Aunt Rinda’s outhouse.

About once a week I go down to the shipping area and, real casual like, I saunter over to the Giant Scale and I stop right in the middle and check my weight. My wife and I have recently begun eating a more healthy diet and getting some exercise and so Mr. No Bathroom Scale has to go to the Shipping Department to check his weight on a Giant Scale that can handle a Forklift.

Today was Monday – Weigh Day - so I saunter down to shipping to see how I am doing flabwise. I was anticipating a not so good number because last week I fell off the wagon. All for good causes, of course. Boss buys us lunch one day and there’s leftovers the next day and then the Sunday School class picnic on Saturday and then a churchwide cookout the next day. I think there is still dried hot dog water under my nails. Fingernails.

Anyway, when I arrive at the Giant Scale there is a gang of women with about three suitcases per using it! My scale! Now what am I going to do? I can’t weigh later – after lunch – I’ll be heavier! I know what you are thinking. Why didn’t I just walk over and ask if I could step on the scale – it would only take 5 seconds? Yeah, well, how many of you weigh for the public? I’m not doin’ it.

Well, I decided to just walk around the perimeter of the basement and come back around to the scale. How long could it take to weigh a few suitcases? Boom! Put the bag on the scale, Boom! Read the number, Boom! Remove it, Boom! Another bag! And so on. What, it’ll take me five minutes to walk the basement and I’ll come back and they’ll be gone.

But NO! They are still there! And bags are open and stuff, STUFF! is being moved from bag to bag! Apparently there is some goal these bags have to meet and the owners of said bags will stay RIGHT THERE AT THE SCALE until every bag is just Goldilocks right!

So, I was licked. It was lunchtime. I went and ate my salad and made myself who knows how much heavier. When lunch was over, back down I went and weighed after the Luggage Chapter of Weight Watchers meeting had broken up. And my hot dog indulgences of the previous week had indeed punished me. The scale flashed a number I won’t repeat here and now. It was a total from two weeks ago. I’ll tell you when I have a happier number. After I, like the luggage, have moved some of my stuff.

The Missionary Heart

From the blog at Desiring God comes a touching post from a slain missionary.

Expose the Works of the Darkness

In this post John Piper, writer and pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, encourages Christians to action in the fight against the capricious destruction of unborn human beings. He exposes some of the hypocrisy of the abortionists with statements such as:
". . . it is hypocritical to speak as though choice were the untouchable absolute in this matter and then turn around and oppose choice in matters of gun-control and welfare support and affirmative action and minimum wage and dozens of other issues where so-called pro-choice people join the demand that people's choices be limited to protect others. It's a sham argument. All choices are limited by life."

Please read it all.

Those Actually Engaged With The Enemy Know You Shouldn't Help Them

As if the differences between our intelligent and selfless military personnel and liberal politicians, such as Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, weren’t stark enough, Fox News reports another. Apparently in the military you can actually be busted for aiding the enemy.

Piper on Partial Birth Abortion

This article on the recent Supreme Court decision regarding partial birth abortion is, as is everything John Piper writes, brilliant.

Reid Recall

Harry Reid has wandered off into the land of the treasonous and any who agree with him are right there, as well. To advocate his position on the war you have to either be hoping for the demise of Western Civilization at the hands of the militant Mohammedans, or be blissfully unaware of danger these fanatics pose. I think it’s time for the good people of Nevada to get involved. Can you not recall your man, the Gray Davis of the Senate? I was hesitant to make the comparison because it may serve to besmirch the record of such a selfless servant as Governor Davis.

C'mon Osama, Dis Rutgers!

Don't you wish the Islamic terrorists would say something nasty about the Rutgers women's basketball team so the left in this country would join the fight?

Bill Simmons, The Sports Guy

I've read Bill Simmons' running diary at ESPN.com of the first day of the NCAA tournament and there are some very funny bits in it and some stuff I don't get and some crude stuff - in other words, the usual. I did, however, notice a couple of revealing threads that kept running throughout the post. If something is praiseworthy, classy or even slightly "traditional" (Indiana's uniforms, Duke, Dick Enberg) Simmons despises and ridicules it. And something he or his drunk buddies or Borat says (or they say in a drunken Borat voice), then it's brilliant.

In other words, the average high school sophomore could have written the same.

When did ridicule and disdain become the gold standard for sports reporting?

Attention Please

Southern Seminary president Al Mohler comments on a problem we've known about for years:

"Just a few decades ago, educators and other observers were warning that the American attention span was growing dangerously short. Serious political debate had been sacrificed in favor of "sound bites." Educators reported that students had difficulty maintaining focus on a subject -- even for just a few minutes.
Well, it now looks like those minutes my be turning into seconds. WIRED magazine reports that younger Americans now constitute a culture of media "snacking" and "bite size" entertainment. Apple Computer's iTunes service sells music by the song -- not just the album. YouTube and similar Internet sites offer films and movies that often last a minute or less."

And the fact that NFL football, NASCAR and pro wrestling have grown in popularity during the years of shortening attention spans is purely coincidental.

Eye of the Beholder

According to this story “cultural authorities” here in the states are engaged in a “comprehensive psychological war” against Iran. These comments from an Iranian official in response to the film "300", now enjoying big success in the States.

Comprehensive? As in coordinated? Who is alleged to be cooperating here? Hollywood and the Pentagon?

Really?

Who ever this “government spokeman” is, he has no clue whatsoever about what is going on in the United States.

2 for the Money

It is difficult, for some of us, to find movies worth our time and money, and, when you've got a theater nearby that runs them some weeks after release for $2.50, it increases the odds that we won't lay down between 7 and 9 dollars for the privilege. And I like movies. That said, I have seen two new films that were worth the price of admission.

Amazing Grace is the story of William Wilberforce's campaign to end the slave trade in the British Empire in the 18th century. Wilberforce fought this battle for decades at the expense of his popularity and health. He fought because it was right.

The Ultimate Gift is a "Hallmark"-style film involving a dead rich man, his estate, his greedy family, an estranged grandson, and a single mom whose adorable and precocious daughter has cancer. If you think it's predictable, well, you may be right - BUT - it is not shallow, it is not cheaply done and it'll get you (fist on chest) right here.

Both these films have references to Christian faith and the role that faith plays in driving the main characters. It is more obviously pronounced in Amazing Grace. Wilberforce is shown meeting his old pastor, John Newton, on multiple occasions. Newton, the author of the hymn Amazing Grace, was himself a former slave ship owner before his conversion to Christ. The film relays his famous quote, "I am a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior!" Amen.

If you need relentless action, nudity and crude language in order to be entertained then you'll want to skip these two movies. You can't handle them. If, on the other hand, you've a soul that needs nourishment and intellectual exercise, viewing either or both of these movies is time (and dollars) well-spent.

Mercy

Saturday is my wife’s birthday.

She is the most selfless, caring and giving person that I know. I am a better person by a thousand times because she’s in my life.

The mercies of God show up in various ways, some obvious and some not nearly so. I think a marriage to a person like my wife is the best of both worlds. Her pretty features, her graceful hands are obvious. Her smile can light up a room. It’s true – I’m not just leaning on a familiar phrase. All these things are clearly evidence of God being kind to me. But just as real are qualities which are not as apparent. She is strong and vulnerable. She is intense and full of compassion. She will communicate precisely and question closely and I am a better thinker and communicator because of it. Her passion for God and His Word drives me – it’s a full time job to stay ahead of and “lead” a student of God such as she is. We have great kids and it’s largely due to the fact that they have a great mom – and she inspires me to be a better father.

Like all of the mercies of God that I do not deserve, I do not deserve her. And just as there are times I fail to properly honor, love and serve God, so I often fail to properly honor, love and serve her. But let’s not be confused – she is NOT God – but that’s where she’s from. And it’s good.

Happy Birthday, Sweetheart

Rise and Shine

Thursday night I kept waking up with a notion of an idea for a story to write. Every time I awoke the germ of the idea was the same and I would drift off to sleep thinking, “That’s really good – I’ve got to write that.” I have heard you should keep a pad of paper and a pen by your bedside because your brain, ever working, never sleeping, will conjure incredibly creative ideas that should be written down or they’ll be lost. Ideas unencumbered by the day’s routine tasks or sights. I was hopeful that, since I keep no notepad by the bed, I would remember the idea because it was a good one and would be funny and insightful and almost write itself.

The morning came and I awoke, headed to the kitchen, drank some water and then headed to the shower. The brilliant idea returned and I began working it over and I realized, “This is so stupid – what was I thinking? Oh yeah, I wasn’t. I was half asleep.” Such a lame idea and I should write it down? How can it be true that some pizza-fueled figment of the dream world is worth writing down? This idea probably came from someone who had just woke up in the middle of the night. I’m thinking I should forget the notepad by the bed thing. You’re not supposed to be brilliant in the middle of the night. You’re supposed to sleep.

And the brilliant idea that kept recurring as I awoke? It was an imaginary conversation between Abraham Lincoln and Shaquille O’Neal. And like Abe wouldn’t know about basketball and stuff. And they could talk, you know, the Great Emancipator and the Diesel. And even though the lingo would be so different, they would still “connect”, man.

Yikes!

NBA and LaRussa

I often read Bill Simmons’ articles on ESPN.com’s Page 2. Simmons is very funny, though, he gets too crude for my taste frequently. (Eh, what can you do? I just click to something else. Ah, freedom!) But today he’s got a great bit about the poor Celtics. I have to admit I can’t imagine what it would take to get me to like the NBA again. (What to do today? Let’s see, make the NBA interesting to the casual sports fan or build a perpetual motion machine? Hmm . . . Hey! Bowling’s on!)

Anyway, there was a time when I was interested in the Celtics – all the Larry Bird years, natch - and sometime in the mid-70’s, though I don’t remember the exact years. Let’s just say I remember the ABA and I think it’s really too bad there isn’t a Buffalo Braves anymore and I remember an incredible 3 or 4 overtime game between the Celtics and the Suns in which a number of shots from somewhere between the circles kept going in at the end of several overtimes. What a game!

But that’s a while back and Boston hasn’t been too good lately, er, a long time. So Simmons is openly campaigning for the Celts to go in the tank the rest of the season so they can have the best chance at the number one pick in the NBA Draft. His running diary of Boston’s game with the Rockets is an attempt to jinx his team and snap them out of their (recent) winning ways.

He writes:
7:58 -- Has any athlete changed less over the past 15 years than Juwan Howard? He just drained a 15-footer -- throw some baggy shorts and a box haircut on him and I'd feel like we were watching the '93 NCAA Tournament. Remind me to find a place for him on the Tony La Russa All-Stars this year.

I’m sure it’s just an oversight, but they got LaRussa’s name wrong. It’s “WORLD CHAMPION ST. LOUIS CARDINALS manager Tony LaRussa”.

There. I just wanted to clear that up.

Otherwise, a good job outta you, Bill.