Not Desperate Enough pt. 2: My half-baked plan

In yesterday’s post I arrived at the conclusion that the ultimate reason I am still single is that I am not desperate enough.  Fortunately for me, lots of people are desperate on my behalf. It is actually quite normal for someone to give me the following advice in a completely serious manner, “What you need is to get married.”  I understand the sentiment but the advice in and of itself is not terribly helpful.  It is also quite normal for people to try and fix me up. I have always resisted being fixed up, but no more.  I have decided that the worst that could really happen is that I have a bad night.  So I have made a decision.  If you are reading this and thinking, “I know the perfect girl for you.”  Now is your chance.

I am saying yes to all fix-ups.  There are at least 3 in my facebook inbox right now that I have made no response to.  If you sent me one, you can consider my answer a yes.

Before you fix me up there have to be some ground rules.   Most people are not very picky when fixing up somebody else.  I’ll make a list of what I am looking for.

Here are the non-negotiables:

  • She must be, and have always been, a female
  • She must be at least in her late 20s.  That is to say, a grownup
  • She can’t smoke very much crack
  • She must be a Christian. By that I mean regular in church attendance and concerned about God’s will for her life
  • She must be single and never married
  • She must be willing to go on a date with me

Here are the things that would be nice:

  • I am a Southern Baptist minister, so it would be good if she were a Baptist
  • If she knows the proper usage of your and you’re and that ur is not a word, that would be a plus.
  • It would be good if she was available on Tuesday nights because that is my only free night of the week.
  • I know lots of my regular readers are in North Carolina, but it would be good if she were reasonably close to Hopkinsville.  I can drive to Murray, or Paducah , or Nashville, or Bowling Green, or even Lexington.  However, you would really have to be convincing to get me to go to Atlanta or Raleigh, or Colorado Springs for a blind date.

Here are the rules for you… the fixer upper:

  • You may not get upset with me if I’m not interested. I promise not to get upset with you if she’s not interested in me
  • You have every right to upset if I am a complete jerk and never call or write her back. To my shame I have done this before
  • Don’t fix me up with a total stranger
  • Don’t fix me up with someone I already know.  If there was a girl I was interested in I would have asked her out already (I learned my lesson about that one a long time ago)

Yesterday I called this my half-baked plan for the future.  Now you see why, because that’s it, that’s the plan.  You can do the work for me.  Just think of all the bragging you can do if things work out.

Not desperate enough? pt.1

Many people look at my life and they see a problem I am single.

I sometimes feel like I wear a badge of singleness, or that there is a giant red S stamped across my resume and, for that matter, my life.  Please understand me, I would like to get married.  One of the things I desire in life is to be a husband and a father. In my quest to become a full-time youth minister, my singleness has been, without question, my single greatest detriment.  I have to tell literally every committee I speak to that I would like to get married, but that I haven’t met the right girl yet.

So how is it that I became 35 and single?

The way I see it, there are three factors.  The first factor in my singleness is my living circumstances.  I have been living alone (unless the dog counts) for the past 10 years.  And somewhere over the course of these last 10 years I have become comfortable with my life.  It doesn’t bother me to be alone and I am almost never lonely.  In fact, I am rather content.  Contentment is normally not a problem, it is a blessing.  It has, however, been a factor leading to my singleness.

The second factor in my singleness is the situation of my life.  I have been a member of only small churches for the past 15 years or so.  So let’s just say that the pool of eligible women has not been huge.  While at SEBTS there were a few girls I was interested in.  Girls are really good at sending signals though, and I can usually tell when they are not interested back.  I did get rejected a couple of times, which is actually good.

The third factor is how I spend my free time.  When I’m not at work or church (those are often the same thing) I watch TV (alone, in my house - not a lot of girls there) or I fish.  A watershed lake on the back side of Ft. Bragg is not a very good location to meet people at all.  It is certainly not a real hotbed of eligible females.

I think the problem at the core is that I am not desperate enough.  I would like to meet the right girl and get my life to the place where everybody else thinks I should be, but I don't feel incomplete or broken in any way because I haven't.

Tomorrow...My half-baked plan for the future

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Best Web Junk (September 24)

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Today in the best junk of the web we have 2 videos. This first one really speaks for itself[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG9M86FPDRg]

Secondly, a backwards music video.  I think these things are neat.  Not so much because of the effects but because people had to pronounce the words backwards to make their mouths not look wrong[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01TL9bUWr6I]

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To Burn or Not to Burn?...

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That's not even the question.  Obviously there's no good reason for a Christian minster to consider burning the Qur'an (or Koran?) so my question really is; why would he be considering doing this?  I have not heard any person from either end of the political or theological spectrum be supportive of the idea.  So I cannot believe that he has the actual conviction that God is telling him to do so. My belief is that it’s for attention.  Nobody has ever heard of Terry Jones (Not the waitress in this skit) before his plan to burn the Qur’an.  He had about 30 people in his church last Sunday, but he will have hundreds there (mostly media) for his book burning.

So I’ll just toss the question to you in the comments.  Why do you think he is burning the Qur’an?

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What You People Come Here For (August Edition)

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It's been a few months, but I usually make a list of the interesting searches that have brought people to my blog in the previous month and share my favorites with you.  What you see is simply cut and pasted, there is no editing.  Anything you see in parentheses is my commentary on the search.

  • is it bad if my eyes water with bell's p (I had Bell's palsy 3 years ago and my right eye waters every time I eat, so I assume it's not bad)
  • dunkaroos manufacturing plant
  • cat mario
  • say the word pentateuch (pent-uh-took)

This time around I present a new feature.  This is my favorite quote from my spam filter during the prior month. I chose this one because it almost seems like it could make sense in some absurd world, but sadly it's just an attempt to get my readers to click on an ad for some drug.  So without any further ado I present to you the spam comment of the month:

you here bad At you a uneasy choice

(BTW: I think this would be a brilliant idea for a web comic.  Somebody with talent illustrate the ridiculous comments from the spam filter)

My current 5 favorite Android apps

I love my Android phone. (HTC Evo)  One of the things I love about the phone is that it is an internet-connected computer that is always in my pocket.  So when I’m stuck at the DMV for a couple of hours, I have something to entertain myself.  There are currently over 20,000 apps.  This post today is simply to share my favorite 5 with you.

  1. Appbrain – An app for managing your apps?  Yes.  The appbrain website is wonderful.  You can manage your apps from the full-sized screen of your computer.  The site has reviews and recommendations.  You can install and uninstall from there and just sync with your phone.  It is pretty much everything I could hope for in an app manager
  2. IMDB – In my previous post about my phone I complained about the lack of an IMDB app for Android, then a week later the official one came out.  It is exactly what you expect, and it is incredibly useful.  My only complaint is that search is not default on the home screen.
  3. Alchemy – So unbelievably addictive.  It is amazing how rewarding it is to open up a new icon.  Each one is like a little treat that makes you want to play more.
  4. Air Control Lite – In my opinion, the best game on Android.  It’s just landing planes without crashing them, but it is addictive and fun.
  5. Google maps – The GPS and turn-by-turn directions in Google maps are excellent and one of the reasons to get Android.  They work as well as any GPS I have ever used and come free with your phone.  What's not to like?

Bonus pick: Seesmic – I am a very regular Twitter user, and this is my favorite Twitter app.  It gives you icons for every tweet, previews pictures and informs you of @s.  It works wonderfully.

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What I Learned from My First Minor League Game

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Greer StadiumLast night I attended my first ever Minor league Baseball game with my church.  I went to Greer stadium in Nashville to see the (AAA) Sounds whip the New Orleans Zephyrs 10-1.  Since it was my first ever minor league game I learned some things and I thought I would share.

  • The Brewers have a potential star coming in Brendan Katin. He had 2 homers, including a grand slam and 7 RBIs
  • Minor league ball has a lot of non-baseball activity. There was literally some giveaway or some fan event in every half-inning
  • McDonald's gives away McDoubles like they are water
  • You want access to a baseball player? Minor league ball is the way to go
  • You want free stuff? Minor league  ball is the way to go.  Two members of our group got t-shirts (stuffed with coupons for McDoubles) and a third should have had a foul ball.
  • You can get A LOT of kettle corn for seven bucks
  • There are really no bad seats in a small baseball park
  • A 15 year old emergency poncho is in pretty much perfect condition provided it has never been taken out of the original plastic
  • The minor leagues will leave a pitcher in for a long time even if he is getting absolutely shelled
  • Everybody likes to watch a little kid dance
  • Technically you can use an Android phone for your fantasy draft, but it is not going to work very well

Best Web Junk (August 27)

I really liked Inception, but not this much. This entire post is a cake wrecks masterpiece.  Especially "They want to be drawed a picture of a Thrown"

I kinda want to visit the Texas state fair now and try some of  this stuff

I'm guessing you've already seen this but it's fun[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niIlfSNsLL4]

I am afraid this will turn out to be another internet hoax, but if not, it's really impressive.  When I was a kid we did similar things, but nothing on this scale and nothing this awesome [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTUFVsZtFNI]

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Why I Am Proud to be a Kentucky Baptist Again

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Remember when the GCR task force was controversial?  Remember all the fears and hand-wringing on blogs?  Way back when the GCR was still controversial and nobody really knew what would come of it, the Kentucky Baptist Convention decided to appoint a Great Commission resurgence task force of its own. On Tuesday that task force released its report, and I am proud of it for multiple reasons. We all have labels we place on ourselves.  For me, two of those things are Kentuckian and Southern Baptist.  For the last several years I have been a  North Carolina Baptist.  Now I'm proud to be home and I’m proud that the Kentucky Baptist Convention has done such an admirable thing with this report.  Also you may notice that one of the members of that committee shares a last name with me; that is even more reason to be proud.

I have made no secret on this blog that I love the Cooperative Program and that I believe it is the most effective tool our denomination has constructed to reach the lost.  I also have said that I believe the states keep entirely too much of the CP money.  (In fact when I was a NC Baptist I was strongly considering a motion from the floor that would push that convention toward a 50/50 split.)  One of the things I admire most about the KBCGCR task Force’s report is the quick move to a 50/50 split.  This is a hard decision.  It involves intentionally cutting the budget of every entity in the state convention.

Without the cooperation of the churches willing to give more, this will be even more of a hardship for the KBC.  But I believe that churches will be motivated to make their own decisions to give more knowing that more of their money will reach the mission field .

I applaud the task force.  My church is giving 1 percent more to the CP this year, and I encourage your church to do the same.

A great commission resurgence is not equal to giving more money.  I certainly realize that.  But it is definitely a part.  I applaud Bill Mackey, Hershael York, and the rest of the task force and I give my strongest urging to Kentucky Baptists to show up in Lexington in November and to pass the recommendations.  I will be there.

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Best Web Junk (August 20)

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I have been getting this same 3-part red-ring pretty much every other time I turn on the X-box lately so I enjoyed this.  But my NES was definitely done years ago Such a sad story

In other news.  Apparently guys will check out girls even if it is dangerous

I am fascinated by how stuff works and how stuff is made, so this link is right up my alley

This is world yo-yo champion Jensen Kimmitt and this video is pretty much amazing.  Like 10 times in this thing I thought he had the yo-yo in an unrecoverable knot.  Seriously, it's amazing.  Also, where did the world go for awesome yo-yo videos before youtube was a thing? [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knYCilujrFM&feature=player_embedded]

If the yo-yo didn't impress you, this definitely will [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtztrcGkCBw&feature=player_embedded]

My thoughts on the Ground-Zero Mosque

I think all bloggers are required by the law of the internet to comment on the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque,” so this is my attempt.  You are welcome to comment but I will be moderating.  Please keep it civil.

Now to my actual commentary -

There is no such thing as an unbiased opinion, so I will lay my bias out there at the beginning.  First, I am a Christian.  I don’t mean that merely as a title.  I mean that I have chosen to place my faith in Christ, and it is the most important thing that I have ever done.  Further, I consider myself a Christian apologist.  (Although I am still a bit shy of making this list) I have a strong desire to defend Christianity and the Christian worldview from all opposition in whatever form.

Secondly, I am a conservative Christian; meaning that I believe the Bible to be true in all that it declares.

Thirdly, I am a proud, patriotic American.  I am crushed with sadness when I think about the events of September 11 2001, and I know with certainty that the perpetrators of those events are opposed to what America stands for.

Those are my biases, so know that before you read any further.

I truly wish there were no mosques anywhere.  I believe that Islam is a false religion that involves worshipping a false god.  I believe that in many cases Islam is not merely a false, empty religion but that it encourages violence.  If not encouraging, at the very least it condones violence in a way that other world religions don’t.  (Though, if I were in India, I may feel the same about Hinduism.)

However, we live in a country where the freedom to practice religion is guaranteed by the constitution.  It is one of the beautiful things about our country; that people with such opposing convictions can come together and make a mostly peaceful nation.

In part, the first amendment says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."  The way I read this it means that as a country we will not have an official religion, nor will we prevent anyone from worshipping in a way that their religion requires.  (I know there are exceptions, e.g. human sacrifice, but for argument’s sake let’s leave them out.)

Politically speaking, I do not want to be involved in anything that tells other people how they can or cannot worship. Nor do I want someone telling me how I can or cannot worship.

I would definitely question the wisdom of those who want to build this prayer center when so much controversy has arisen.  It definitely does not seem like a good PR move for Islam in America.  And I clearly understand the irony that religious freedom is utterly incompatible with Islam yet religious freedom  is what will allow an Islamic center to be built there.

The most important part of this issue from my standpoint is not the political, but the spiritual.  I believe that God has given mankind moral free-agency.  In other words, humans make actual moral choices.  This fact means that we are free to choose wrongly.  There are consequences for all choices, and there will be a judgment that gives those consequences, but we are free to make them.

I believe that Islam is a false religion.  I would expect any Muslim would say the same about my religion.  The wonderful thing about the USA is that we are both free to say so, and I hope it stays that way.

WBAGNFAFFT III

I have 3 fantasy drafts in the next 2 weeks, so I thought it was time to break out an annual feature of my blog - WBAGNFAFFT.  Each year I post a list of what I think are clever fantasy football team names. Here is list #1 and here is #2.   So what I’ve done for you is to collect all of the clean & funny, WBAGNFARB’s* from Dave Barry’s blog over the last year.  This list is not comprehensive and it is not original.  It’s merely a collection from that blog.

  • Hissing Toilet
  • Weaponized Chili
  • Sausage-Addicted Kookaburra
  • Melon Chaos

I know it's a bit of a short list, but this year has been a bit odd for me.  My routine has been quite shaken, so my list isn't as long as normal.

*WBANGFARB = Would Be A Good Name For A Rock Band

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Best Web Junk (August 13)

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This is an awesome and creative win I'm obviously not a woman, and I don't even know what Ann Taylor is, so I have a hard time getting terribly outraged.  But if the woman on the left in this picture is not acceptable to that company, then nobody on earth should buy their clothes because nobody on earth will look good enough to wear them properly.

I know I say this often, but I love my Android phone.  However, I really enjoyed this list of things that droid does not do.

This is not the typical kind of video I post in Best Web Junk. It's a little more artsy than my usual video game or Star Wars related stuff, but it found it to be really neat[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0HfwkArpvU]

This parody of The Social Network trailer is more like the stuff I usually link to.  It's funny and awesome.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=putQn89TQzc]

Am I A Former Blogger?

A few of my friends have commented that I don't really blog anymore.  A quick look at my calendar from the past month confirms that.  In fact, in July there was only one post that was not "best Web Junk."

I realize that this has happened.  The best way to explain my lack of posts is by simply explaining that my life has changed greatly in the last few months.  I have moved twice, I have begun 2 new jobs, and not much in my life is very settled even now.

Writing, even if it's only a personal blog like this one, requires discipline.  I put a lot of thought, time, and effort into the posts I write, and I don't want to half-do it.  Maybe nobody cares if I write poorly thought out or poorly constructed junk, but I do.

I can't promise that I am going to go back to my old pace of blogging anytime soon.  I do, however, still consider myself a blogger and I will make an effort to get back to it.

If you are a regular reader, thanks for hanging in there.  One of the reasons I work at blogging is that I feel like my small audience deserves the best I can do.

Oh yeah, and you can still keep coming here on Fridays to see what I enjoyed the most on the web this week.

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Best Web Junk (July 30)

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Today is an all video edition of Best Web Junk.  Lots of good videos this week. Without question, this is the best video of the week.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHJwgA54Gqk]

I pretty much guarantee you have seen this by now.  But it is definitely some of the best web junk this week [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hvaeHllwtw]

Some of these are brilliant and hilarious[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZRLpc2egoQ]