Whataday.

Staff infections.
Wildfires.
Dumbledore is gay.

On top of all that, I received a package in the mail today.
No, it was not a sparkly new phone, something far, far more strange.



Allow me to explain.
This past summer, my friend Brandon and I ate at Hardee's once and a while in between classes. One of those days, we received a Hardee's punch card to get a free, I kid you not, fishing pole.

So, that was a surprise. Hardee's feeding me for life.
A bigger surprise was the "warning" label that was casualy printed on the handle of the rod. It reads:

WARNING:
THIS PRODUCT CONTAINS A CHEMICAL KNOWN
TO THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA TO CAUSE CANCER,
BIRTH DEFECTS AND OTHER REPRODUCTIVE HARM.

They might as well have sent me anthrax on a stick.
Craigslist here I come!

GOP, Pick Huckabee...

Wow. Watch all 6 if you can...


After watching this, I am fully convinced this is whom I'll be voting for (should he get the GOP nomination). Other than the fact he is a genuine conservative, ex-preacher, successful governor, and eloquent speaker, he is honest. Authentic. He wants to lead with honor and dignity and restore the United States to our heritage. I hate taking sides so early, especially with a candidate that is certainly riding a dark horse, but if more people could see how good of a man he is, well, they might be more inclined to vote for him. Thus, blog.

Hallogiving's Eve

I had an appointment with a Mac genius at the mall the other day. As I walked in, I noticed hoards of packaged Christmas decorations sitting in the middle of the mall. Christmas?
It's not even Halloween! Or Vinegar Day (Nov 1)! Or Plan Your Epitaph Day (Nov 2)!
Or Thanksgiving for that matter...

Then I went to K-Mart with Rachel before we went to the Buck50. K-Mart, bless them, has Christmas trees up. And right beside the trees, Halloween masks and pumpkin carving kits. I really cannot believe it.

We are such a consumer driven culture. It's turning our holidays and pastimes into bargain bens.
The problem is, once those "special days" start getting more and more materialized, we will eventually forget why we are celebrating anything. The only thing that unites us as Americans is that we get off work. Well, most of us. I have to work on Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve...

Application

So, as you know, I have been writing papers and reading a lot. Good news! I was actually able to have an intelligent discourse with a Muslim man named Ali last night. He was an intellectual, and wanted to discuss Christianity in “today's world,” i.e. post-modernism (or the neo-enlightenment). Most of the talking points concerned universals and particulars, as well as how to define truth. We conversed for about 45 minutes.
Anyway, I was encouraged, and he got the gospel. Pray for Ali.

post-script

During our discussion, one of his friends, a more devout Muslim, was yelling things like, "Read Qur’an, follow Allah!" or "You study Qur’an, and live well, and go to paradise!"
This made me think of many evangelical Christians and how we respond to the criticism of the world - namely, that there is a right/cordial way to go about defending and explaining Christ. Next time I see a man simply hold a "Jesus SAVES" sign, I'll go up to him and say,

"Yes, Jesus SAVES us the embarrassment of appearing undisciplined and ignorant by giving us the ability to study to show ourselves approved, and thus sufficiently communicating with (and not simply TO) a lost and dying world."

I should get that down to a phrase and make a T-shirt. However, that would make me a hypocrite. Pass this time.

Latricia

I work with a girl named Latricia. She is very witty...I keep trying to convince her to quit Caribou and do stand up for a living.
Here is a story she related to me [with my emphasis bracketed]:

Latricia: Hey, want one of THESE? [She flung a couple of rectangular cards over her back as she walked by]

Jon: What are those? [bending down and inspecting the cards, then rising...]

Latricia: OK... [very irritated] I took this lady's order at the bou-thru [drive-thru], and she had like, 400 candy apples in the back of her car. I was like, "You working at the Fairgrounds this week, Ma'am?" Lady said [excitedly] "Oh yes!" Then she reached into the back of her car, and I was thinkin like "Yeah! she's gonna give me some fair tickets, coupons, or candy apples or summin. Then she popped her head back around and gave me these cards!"

Jon: [examining] Oh...a business card?

Latricia: Yeah! [angrily disappointed]. A business card! I was like "Get outta here ya carny!"


And that, ladies and gentlemen, kept me laughing throughout the whole day.

Happy Days

I was working on the last page of a 15 pg. report that is due tomorrow...

Cell Phone Pics: Round One

Busch Gardens

Whew.
Got back from Busch Gardens Williamsburg last night.
That was a looooooooong day. I went with Rachel and two of our friends, and I walked at least 8 miles.
Here's some BG advice: always go on a weekday. We found a parking spot right when we got there, hardly waited in line for rides, never bumped into anyone...it was great. I am sore. I can't imagine trying to take a family there for the day.
I am exhausted.
All that and I successfully avoided studying for my online exams for one more day. Basically, I have to take one today, and finish the other tomorrow. I really should not even be typing this up. Ok, off to the coffee man.

iPhone update...

Read my Aug 25 blog to get some context here.

So I Clicked...and waited...and waited.
And, no joke, I have been a bit skeptical myself through this whole ordeal.
But let's just say there is a way to get around the hoopla if you spend the time researching the site(s) and reading all the "Terms and Conditions." Well, spammers, I read them, meticulously. I provided a pseudo-email address, called you and confirmed many details. And looks like now, the iPhone is almost in the mail.

Oh, and in case I don't get it, this was all a big joke.
Buah...

Bono Bush: Video 2

Pick Your Poison

So if it's 95 degrees in October, you wear shorts.
But if you go into any building, you will freeze. I'm sitting here trying to study and my feet are stuck to my flip flops. I can almost see my breath. In El Salvador, people wore pants all the time, I rarely saw a man in shorts, unless he was a gringo. I also burned my fingers today at Caribou. Not like, "Ooee, that shower water is too warm..." but like, a boiling pot of spagetti noodles hit the floor and sprayed your inner-thighs. That kind of ouch.
Luckily, a girl had gone through some kind of kemo, and I found her burn cream in the first aid kit. Though bandaged, one of my fingers is producing tiny blisters.
So if it's 95 degrees in October, you burn yourself.
And to cap it off, here are some funny T-shirt designs that I would have worn 10 years ago...

Random Things You Should Know

The "IHS" found on some crosses and churches stands for "In Hoc Signo" or "In this sign." It was the sign that God apparently revealed to Constantine that was plastered on some shields, that gave him victory in some wars.

Nalgenes are not unbreakable. I shattered my friend Chip's nalgene in college.

Defenestration means to hurl someone or something out of a window.

Mountain Khakis are the best pants.

If you collect a gallon milk jug full of tabs from aluminum cans, you won't get $100 from the recycling people.

Ergo literally means "therefore"

Jude quoted the Apocrypha.

You can not simply submit a word to Mirriam-Webster to have it inserted in the dictionary.

The national food of El Salvador is pupusas.

I have a midterm to study for. I should go do that now.

God-o-meter

http://blog.beliefnet.com/godometer/

Worth a looksee...

O Hill No

I don't quite understand why, but Mrs. Clinton is currently running campaign ads against herself. She notes her bad decision making concerning Iraq and poor health care agendas in the early nineties. Oh, and her cackle. Thankfully someone has cleared this up for us - here's the quote:

“The American people want a leader,” said Clinton campaign spokeswoman Carol Foyler. “And if her rivals won’t come out and attack her, Sen. Clinton is going to show leadership by attacking herself.”

Ahhhhhm...

The Village

After manning a study table in the fiction section I realized something. Of all the sections of the library, this one is the most frequented (and the hardest to study in). People flutter about, marching up and down the aisles, scanning and flipping through titles, shoving them into plastic green baskets. They seemingly avoid the history, non-fiction, resource, and informational sections. Why is this? I would suggest that they are obsessed with diverting their attention from the trials of this world, so as to lose themselves in a story (Pascal's "Pensees"). I would not have mentioned this if I had not made a trip to the restroom.
The library was about to close down, so I packed up my belongings. I hurried to the restroom. To make a taboo story short, as I was leaving, I noticed a pamphlet on the ground soaked in God knows what. I kicked it, and the title of the tract was "Knowing God Personally." (Let's not get into our presuppositions on tracts, whether or not we should hand them out, etc.) But seeing this gospel material and remembering the fiction section led me to this:

One: This is modern man's response to the gospel. Unsuitable for the intellectual mind...uneventful and unentertaining.
Two: This is the impact God's children have on a literary scale. We stay off the common shelves. I realize there are some Christian authors that contribute ideas of redemption and godliness in the modern digest. But why are there not more? Lewis, Milton, Bunyan, and Tolkien vs. LaHaye, Miller, Bell...and? Someone help me out here.

Well, back to Herm.