I can take it if She can!

With the coming of the Great Recession, many eyes in imprisoned unemployment turned hopefully, or desperately, toward the freedom of Graduate School. Madison became the great embarkation point. But not everybody could get to Madison directly, and so, a tortuous, roundabout refugee trail sprang up. Eau Claire to La Crosse, across the Mississippi to Winona, then by train, or auto, or foot, across the frozen wastes to Minneapolis in Norwegian Minnesota. Here, the fortunate ones, through money, or influence, or luck, might obtain admissions letters and scurry to Graduate School, and from Graduate School to the Real World. But the others wait for their applications to be reviewed in Minneapolis and Madison.

And wait.
And wait.
And. Wait.

New Years Resolutions

Today is a good day I think to resolve that New Years resolutions are kinda strange.

I'm not here to make my own resolutions. That could be potentially productive and not a waste of my time, whereas I tend to do only those things that are a colossal waste of time. No, I'm here to snarkily criticize the New Years resolutions of others.

A local radio station was airing the New Years resolutions of people who called in, and it was going about as well as you'd expect. After all, who calls into a radio station to share their New Years Resolution? What goes through the mind of such a person? Do they not have the kind of self-restraint or introspection required to determine that the contents of what they're about to say shouldn't be shared with anyone, let alone the wide audience available via radio?

Anyway, callers are limited to three resolutions. One woman lists these:

1. To lose some weight, of course.
2. To be better professionally and as a person.
3. To spend more time with her family.

First of all, that's four resolutions, lady. And second of all, when you resolve to be a better person, you make every other resolution redundant: being a better person already implies being in better health, being more productive at work, and being closer to your family.

This will cheer me up

Normally, facebook is pretty good about knowing what's going on in my life, and my personal tastes in single ladies, music, and Jim Doyle. But sometimes it's good to know that the artificial intelligence can get things completely backwards, too. Be happy, everyone: facebook becoming self-aware and playing nice games of thermonuclear war and Farmville is less likely than we thought.

Sidenote: Anyone who gives or gets the atheism shirt for Christmas gets a sweet visit from the irony fairy.

I'll be less cryptic

Or more accurately, I'll let Al Mohler express exactly what I was thinking in my last post.

I won't light a candle, but I wish I could set hearts aflame

Homophobia doesn't lead to repentance. Guilt might, but the Accuser was a murderer from the beginning and knows how to make people feel guilty, too. And believing that there can be no forgiveness is the last thought that went through Judas' mind.

Maybe if that kid knew just what happened on a Friday two thousand years ago he'd still be alive. Maybe others would too. But how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?

But what shall we preach? That there is no law and therefore no transgression?

And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

Jeremiah Was A Pretty Good Prophet

Tonight's facebook ad:



No more after this, I promise.

Nice Try, Facebook

I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God.