February 28, 2006 at 1:02 pm
Lunchtime fun: Google Picture Post
1. The city and state of the town you grew up, no quotation marks.
2. The town where you currently reside.
3. Your name, first and last, but again, no quotes.
4. Your grandmother’s name.
5. Your favorite food.
6. Your favorite drink.
7. Your favorite smell.
February 27, 2006 at 1:57 pm
Post-Emergent?
Andre Daley has decided that he’s “post-emergent.” He brings up a lot of really good points, like:
4. Talk, talk and more talk. My experience is we love to talk about this stuff but other than retro worship stuff we don’t get around to acting on it. Even so talk about diversity has never come to the fore. I want to be the church and act like the church not just talk like the church.Read the rest here.
I guess I’m not ready to give up just yet (big — and true — change doesn’t happen quickly).
Update: More good thoughts at Alan Hartung‘s Blog here.
February 20, 2006 at 09:22 am
Nine Inch Nails (photos and video)...
Nine Inch Nails, Saturday night, was fun. Kemper Arena isn’t one of the greatest places to see any band, but NIN (as I’ve heard) never disappoints. (I’m sure they pay dearly for their sound engineers when touring places like this.)
February 17, 2006 at 09:34 am
/\/ | \/\
Thanks to Doug, this is where he and I will be on Saturday night:
February 13, 2006 at 10:57 am
Grandma Samoff, one year later...
It has almost been one year since my Grandmother Samoff’s death. I’m not good with dates like this, so it took an emotional essay that my dad wrote and sent to a few of us to get me to remember. It’s not that I don’t miss my grandma — I do. It’s just that some dates don’t readily stick with me (ask my wife). It’s something I’m trying to change.
I’m not going to copy my dad’s entire essay here, but I thought this section was something extremely thought-provoking:
I have a practice of having devotions when I get up in the morning. I read my Bible, I pray regarding things of concern and for people on a prayer list, I also write in a note book, thoughts, poems, and short (and personal) essays. One morning I did something that moved me to my bones; I can not express thoroughly or clearly the emotions of this particular morning and the finality that took place deep in my heart and mind.It brought a tear to my eye last night as I read it and it has done so again right now. Sometimes it take another’s emotions to realize your own. As I sit and read the other things my dad wrote, I have an understanding of how the world is not so bright after certain people leave it. My grandmother was an amazing person and I hope my memories will last long enough to tell my son about her.
Let me try to express what took place that morning in this way, the title of that morning’s short essay was, “The day I took my mother off my prayer list”. That morning, about week after Mom“s funeral, I picked up that day“s prayer list and looked at my family member“s names and saw the word “Mom”, in that moment of the silence during my morning devotions, I reach over and picked up, off my desk, a “Liquid Paper DryLine Grip” and said with a deep sigh “good bye Mom I love you” and stroked her off my prayer list. I think it was at that moment it actually hit me that Mom was gone.
February 13, 2006 at 09:12 am
Lance Armstrong: The Antichrist?
The other night, Julianna and I were astonished to find Lance Armstrong prominently gazing over our fair city. Thanks to American Century Investments, we now have an eyesore of a billboard that makes Kansas City feel just a little too much like West Hollywood.
Yuck.
Anyway, this got my wife and I thinking…
Here we have Lance Armstrong, an instantly recognizable public figure in most parts of the world. He has recovered from a deadly “head injury” (well, sort of). He has gotten most of the Western world to proudly wear “his mark” (don’t believe me?). He may just very well run for some public office one day.
If anything, the similarities creep me out. Remind me not to vote for Lance if he ever does run for public office.
February 10, 2006 at 08:16 am
"Office Space" has its perks...
Last night, a recent project of mine was sent out to nearly 20,000 employees of my company. That’s pretty flippin’ sweet.
This wasn’t the easiest project to complete. There are so many levels of management here and everyone seems to want to stick their hands into what’s going on. What should have taken a week actually took three. Anyway, because of all of the hassle (my project went through countless revisions and four complete redesigns), my “customer” (actually just another department within our company) left this amazing bouquet of chocolate on my desk for me this morning.
Wow.
Not only that, but due to some late nights and weekends spent on this particular project, I’ll be leaving at noon today.
February 02, 2006 at 09:43 am
A peek inside Jacob's Well...
And, yes, this is pretty much how it always is…
And, this is how our children are always acting up (singing The Village People’s “YMCA”):
Tim Keel delivered a really cool, little five-minute sermon after we ate that really meant a lot to me. It can be summed up, sort of like this: We are not a group of volunteers who do what we do because we know there is a big list of duties that must be checked off. We are a group of people who have decided to live, worship, and serve together as a family. We do the things we do because we desire to help our family members exist, not because we feel obligated or even indebted. For this reason, Jacob’s Well succeeds as a single body of believers and not something as simple as a group of volunteers.
Update: Mike King posted some more (better quality) pictures here.
February 01, 2006 at 3:19 pm
EMBARQ...
February 01, 2006 at 3:17 pm
Another hero dies...
I know that most people are caught-up thinking about the recent passing of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.‘s wife, Coretta Scott King — which is very much due her. Today, though, I found out that one of my personal heroes, Nam June Paik, died. He was 74.
Paik was a musician, filmmaker, and artist (among other things). If you’ve heard his name before, it’s probably because Paik is most noteably attributed with being the “inventor of video art” (which, I would argue is most definitely true). In fact, it is because of Nam June Paik that I first began thinking of film and video as legitimate artform — and one of the reasons why I thought CalArts was the school of choice when I decided to return to school. (By the way, CalArts provided all of the Nam June Paik footage I could have ever dreamed of, despite the fact that most of his pieces are better seen in person.)
I was fortunate enough to be able to see a few of Paik’s full-scale installations at a showing at MOCA a while back. It was awesome. While most of the pieces presented were a bit dated and, since, many times copied, it was like viewing a piece of my history. It was as if I was coming into contact with a long lost relative.
Farewell, Nam June Paik. You made your mark — not only on me, but on culture, and the world.