food
I was thinking this morning...as i was contemplating what breakfast food should be consumed...about the tree in the garden of eden. you know the one, the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Nobody really knows what was hangin on that tree. some people think that eden was in the mesopatamium river valley where apples don't grow but bananas do.
i was thining that the tree probably had one of the following hanging from it branches. Ho Ho's, ding dongs,cherry turnovers, bear claws, or very possibly hot krispy kremes.
those things, for me are big temptations. i had cancer a few years ago and read and learned all about nutrition and what should go into your body and why, and definitely what should not go in there.
A few interesting thoughts: your body was made for fruits and vegetables and water. if none of the other stuff,( almost everything else), had been introduced to my tastebuds, they would be fine with just those few friends. As a matter of fact (well at least some say its a fact, i haven't tried it) they say that the tastebuds kind of re configure themselves every 14 days or so. which is to say, if we could not eat anything but fruits and vegetables for 14 days our tastebuds would go "hey that's great! that's what i want!" At that point all the hydrogenated stuff on the shelves in the store could stay there and we might live a little longer. Problem is, we are surrounded by hydrogenation and sugar...and we have a memory...and the memory keeps on reminding us as we see all the stuff around us, "hey that stuff tastes great". So here we are with a decision.
We know it clogs up the arteries, we know it poisons the system, we know it builds bad fat and heck we even know there is a good chance that a lot of it causes cancer.
So, back to the garden. The tempting fruit was dangling in front of them and God said "hey, you wanna live a long time? You want life to be good? Don't eat that!"
And today a lot of tempting stuff is dangling in front of us and God is saying "Hey you wanna live a long time? You want life to be good? Don't eat that.
decisons decions decisions.
waffle house
Sitting with my wife and one son today in waffle house. the all star special is a darn good deal for 4.99.
waffle extra crispy, bacon, grits. toast, all the butter you can eat, two eggs, butter on the grits, butter on the toast, butter on the waffle, and of course water to drink because we need to stay healthy.
Two booths down was a family with three boys. they might have been 6 10 and 12. the six year old was dancing in the middle of the floor to the music he had played, Born to be Wild. The 12 year old was walkin around...and the 10 year old was listening to his overly zealous dad explain to him in no uncertain terms all the things the kid had done wrong at the football game. this dad without question wanted to live his life again through his son and wanted his son to be the football player he had been.(my gues is the footbally player he remembers but probably not the one he was). He wanted to teach his son a lesson about how he should play and about how stupid his mistakes were. When his son (who was evidently exhausted and wished he could be anywhere else but there) started to cry, the dad looked up at the wife and wanted to know what he had said to make the kid cry. Here was Mr. Big with no understanding at all of how his expectation probably couldnt be met and no sensitivity toward a very sweet looking kid ...all he wanted to do was make his kid into something he wanted.
I wanted to get up and go do some magic at their table and make him smile and tell him i was sure he had done the best he could and if he didn't get better at something he wasn't interested in then, hey...maybe he could take guitar or learn flash on the computer or do whatever it is that makes his soul soar.
One kid kept dancin, not understanding yet what might be in his future, one kid kept pacing because he had been there before and just didn't want to sit and listen to it any more and was probably glad he hadn't had a game today. and the last kid...he kept crying and cried on the way to the car and feels like a failure and hates football and will grow up to either hate his dad...or yell at his children.
I grabbbed my seven year old and pulled him on my lap and told him i loved him and then i thought about my heavenly father and was so glad that he loves me and challenges me and holds me when i cry and gently pushes me when i dont do my best.
May all of our children discover who they are meant to be because the rest of us dads emulate our heavenly father.
and if the guy from the waffle house today should ever read this...hey...chill out let your kids live.
my three sons
i have a seventeen year old, a 13 year old and a 7 year old....all boys. Today was sunday and we all did the church thing together. My oldest took two of his friend with him today. it was actually kind of a bribe or trade. he was editing a video for them for their class, so they went to church with him ...mainly so they could leverage the time they needed to get the video done. our church is qutie interesting for highschool guys whose only experience has been in the boring kind. One of the friends just kept on looking around as if his head couldn't take it all in. He hadn't been in a church for years and to see al lthe lights and screens and graphics and a cool band and rocking music just kinda made his head spin. It was really fun to watch him watch all that was transpiring. He sat totally absorbed in the message of the pastor as well. I am guessing he may never have heard a relevant, authentic-sounding, fun witted, pastor before and it's probably safe to say he hadn't heard anything really captivation from a preacher before.
The guys left and we bought them some chicken and steak cooked by an entertaining japanese magician at one of those places where they set your japanese food on fire right in front of you and then toss things around on a spatula til it ends up in your mouth or on their chefs hat. They seemed meagerly enterttained there. Then they were off to shoot their video and edit for the rest of the day.
meanwhile i got to take my thirteen year old to barnes and noble bookstore and starbucks where he got to feel like a man with his hot drink and his book searching. we ran into a friend of mine while there and i introduced him to my son and then showed my son some of the books for sale there in the store written by my friend. he didn't say much but he felt better about life and family by the time we got home.
Meanwhile again i sat on the couch with my seven year old and we looked out the window together as the rain made the creek rise in the back yard and then we counted seconds between the lightening and the thunder. he asked if we could play yahtzee..and of course i would have preferred to just watch it rain so i said if it thunders within one minute then i will play.
the rain had ceased and i expected to not have to play and i saw no lightning whatsoever but within three seconds after i made the statement, thunder boomed and cracked and rumbled for about 14 seconds and my son just laughed and laughed.
and we played yahtzee. for a long time.
Meanwhile one more time, my oldest brought his agnostic young friends over and were int he basement editing for what seemed to them and to us way too long. i went down to watch and ended up finding sound efffects on my library, sharing some of jack handy's deeper thoughts with a few of them and cracking a few jokes as i watched their weird movie about a modern day beowolf where they massacred one another with swords and ended the movie with a violent gun shot.
sure i was scared.
tonight around eleven my seventeen year old came up to me and said "dad thanks for being so cool in front of my friends"
and then he said "i sure wish i could get them to come to church more often, maybe they would catch on"
my response to the "thanks for being cool" line was "no problem son, i don't know how to not be"
and then i said "well i guess we both have see that that isn't totally true huh?"
he laughed and then i had some thoughts:
what a great day. worthwhile times of fun and laughter and influence with all of My three sons. They may remember this day for a while or for a short time. Me, I'll remember parts of it for the rest of my life.
God, I know your asking me to play games and listen to thunder and go to the bookstore and spend time with you and your friends a lot. It;s good to be your son. I'm glad you know the authors of all the books and you actually created thunder and lightning and laughter is on your agenda for me a lot.
i have no doubt that one of the reasons you gave me my sons was so i could understand you a bit better.
and today...i do.
balloons
ithoughts
usually when i come home from work, my boys are either on the computer, playing games on the internet,glued to their game boys, watching tv(usually something that was taped on tivo or the other machine replay tv) technology is incredible. you can pause live tv, watch something that your tivo decided to tape for you because it "knows" your interests, you can get on line and watch japanese anime movies, record them, edit them and send them to your friends, all without leaving the comfort of your living room couch that is within 100 feet of your personal wi fi network so you have no cables connected. heck you can even write in your on-line journal and know that there is the potential for thousands or more folks to read it from all over the world before you get the energy to get off the couch.
Anyway...today i enter in to my electonics laboratory called home and there is more fun and excitement going on than usual.
i don't hear sponge bob's voice from three tv's, no electronic vibe music coming from my seventeen year olds room, and no kick and punch noises radiating from karate kicks on the japanese anime. i actually hear laughter and running and jumping noises...real life ...not on tv. i bought a pack of balloons yesterday and brought them home. round ones, long ones, some meant to hold water, short ones and fat ones.
I had forgotten about all you can do with a balloon. blow it up and let it go and watch it propel itself in circles around the house before plopping on somebody or something. (one just landed on my keyboard) a bit slimey. you can blowem up and let the air out slowly and make funny gaseous flubbery sounds. you can bendem and shapem into animal shapes and poo shapes. i saw my seven year old annoy his mom by rubbing it on her hair (while she was on the computer) and watched her hair stand up.
then after he rubbed it, it can stick on the wall or the ceiling.
you can twist it up and make it make that awful sound that makes you think it's about to explode. you can stick it with a sharp object for the ultimate pleasure. (scaring mom). two long skinny ones are good for sword fighting. if it is half way blown up it's just fun to play with cuz it's moldable and squishy. it is interesting to see the reaction of someone not prepared for it when they feel the air from inside the balloon going up their neck while hearing that same blubbery sound.
indoor volleyball is fun czuse they go in slow motion. you can even play that one by yourself because of that whole slo mo thing, and then of course, when you fill em with water youve got yourself a whole other game to play. the cat on the bottom deck underneath the top deck didn't have a chance.
all this to say...i feel safer now knowing that if our electricity ever goes out our kids won't suffer greatly. as a matter of fact.
let's see... the total outlay for all the electronics was way more thousands of dollars than i like to think about.
the balloons...$1.03...for a hundred of em.
I don't know why they spend most of their time on their electronic gizmos.
good thing i have my super powered powerbook with a g4 processor so i can sit here and watch them play and write about it.
i might take my mini dv sony camcorder and shoot them playing with the balloons and then get on imovie and edit a movie of them. I don't know why they spend so much time on their electronic gizmos...oops looks like i have some more email coming in...better go
that's all
lower case journey
ithoughts
suppose this were to become a book...
not just some blog on an obscure page in cyberspace.
but a bonafied words-on-a-piece-of-paper with a bunch of paper and a cover around it and it actually sold in stores...or at least sat on shelves in stores...
let's think about what people would like to read...and like it enough they would pick it off the shelves and go lay down cash for it so they could read the whole thing in the privacy of their own home.
it needs entertainment value (draw cool picture here), maybe some tension, conflict between the reader and life, and hopefully something to do with the creator and the created and their relationship or lack of same.
so here we go....a lower case journey ( i read a blog today where someone bashed really badly all the bloggers who write in lower case,so why not be part of the bashees) (oh yeah and to do all the upper case stuff, millions more neurons and synapses would have to fire just to make the little finger move over to the shift key, and we all the know the pinky is the most complex to move, so lets save the electric energy that could be used for upper case and use it for content, given that everyone can still read the thing...who cares. i will use periods so you know it's the end of the sentence or i'll use those three dots... just like that so you will know to pause so get over the lower case thing if you are under it)
anyway here we are in a lower case journey thru the mind of a guy who spells through like this ...thru...
we'll discuss god and god stuff and teenagers, and life in the slums in africa and knats that buzz around your face when you try to type and truth...which can be known even by post modern folk who aren't sure about anything other than their unsurety which of course makes them sure about one thing...so...
there you have it ...
the opening to the big book that you have just purchased off a shelf somewhere so you can read stuff like this.
i don't think it will be the first chapter or even the forward...and for sure not the backword...
just the first page...
unless some publishing company thinks i have to put the copywrite stuff first and maybe their name, and then this will show up on page three or four but...i will name it
PAGE ONE!
alien vs predator
ithoughts
it is saturday
i slept late took my son to a yugioh store and traded up for the winged dragon or ra...only 17 bucks for a card with a dragon on it.
meanwhile in tanzania, most families won't make 17 dollars the rest of the month.
i spent 9 on some good catfish greenbeans, mashed potatoes, chicken,banana pudding and a cherry something...which most folks in tanzania won't get that much for the rest of the month either.
i used my indoor plumbing, my hot water, walked around in my 90 dollar nike shoes,drove my toyota van, and am going to a movie tonight to see alien vs predator...which sound alot like what life really is...
i'm an alien from another place that doesn't really belong on this planet and don't seem to be managing the planet's resources well and it's probably because of the predator from another dimension who thinks that i oughta keep mismanaging so that the planet stays under his dominion....
hmmm
i just made my first real blog and had no idea what my fingers were gonna type when i started so...
there ya go...
