Mar 11

A Valentine’s Day Lesson

I had just gotten on the interstate a little before 6am. It’s February, it’s cold, and I see this woman walking on the side of the highway wrapped in a blanket.

Now I don’t pick up a lot of people that I see hitchhiking, but I do pick up some. Many times I have been left walking after my car broke down on the side of the road. One time our old truck broke down a few miles outside of Lexington. Nobody else wanted to pick up a long-haired guy in a long black trench coat. I walked, freezing, in the cold November rain for a long time before this car pulled up. It was a Taurus full of Mexicans who were kind enough to let me squeeze in with them and they gave me a ride back into town.

So I couldn’t just let this woman walk on the side of I-70 in the dark in the middle of February. I pulled over and she got in the car.

“I done got myself stuck. On Valentine’s Day. Ain’t that some ——“

She said she needed a ride to a truck stop, which seemed a little odd as there was one just a mile behind her.

I tried to converse with her, but it was difficult. Whenever I would ask her a question, there would be a 3-5 second delay before she answered. I couldn’t tell if she couldn’t hear me, or didn’t want to answer.

“How far you goin’?” she asked.

“I’m going all the way to downtown Kansas City.”

She thought that was very funny.

“You goin’ to another party?”

What? What kind of question was that?

“No, I’m going to work.”

She had nothing to say about that. We sat in silence for a long time, me driving and her smoking and fidgeting with her knees.

“Where you live?”

Seemed like an innocent enough question.

“I live in Higginsville.”

“You live alone?”

Uh oh. I don’t typically pick up on hints very well, but even I was getting a bad vibe about this chick now.

“No, I’m married and have two kids.”

We continued to ride in silence, occasionally interrupted by a general question from me, followed by a delayed vague reply from her. She wanted to stop somewhere to buy cigarettes, which I declined. Then she mentioned how tired she was, and asked if I had money for a motel room. Um, no, I don’t carry cash. I was starting to think her conversational skills were influenced by something other than a hearing problem.

When we reached the truck stop, she didn’t want let off at the truck stop building, she wanted let off at a truck. More accurately, she wanted me to get out, leave her in my car, while I asked a trucker if she could use his CB to ask area truckers for a ride.

“Sorry, I can’t. I’ve got to go to work, and I need to get going.”

She sat there for a long time fidgeting with her knees, rocking back and forth.

“I’m so sleepy, I’m so tired, I’m so sleepy, I’m so tired.”

She wasn’t getting out of the car. Oh, great, I thought. I’m gonna be on COPS.

“I’ve got to leave, and we are in a truck lane,” I told her.

“I’m just getting myself worked up to get out!” she said while rocking.

Finally she got out. I locked the doors and made for the interstate posthaste.

 

And that’s how I accidentally picked up a prostitute on Valentine’s Day.

 

Once I was back on the road I called my wife and related my harrowing tale.

“YOU PICKED UP A WHORE!?” she asked incredulously.

“Well, I don’t know for sure that I did, but it certainly looks suspiciously like that.”

She thought that was quite hilarious, but asked me not to pick up any more women on the side of the road.

It’s hard to say just what lesson I learned from this–or should have learned from this. Right now it still seems pretty surreal, and my application seems pretty shallow, but so far all I got is:

‘If you see a woman walking along the interstate in the cold at 6 in the morning, lock the doors, hit the gas, and keep on driving.’

Mar 09

Overheard while watching Ghostbusters: 15 yr old female

Girl: Even the Amish people are jumping!

Guy: Those are Orthodox Jews.

Mar 07

VBS 2013 Development Diary: #10: Gospel vs. Blues

Both gospel and blues are musical traditions rooted in the American South, both are based in tragedy, pain, and misery. But the difference between gospel and blues is that the gospel offers hope. The very nature of the blues is that there is no hope. Your heart is broke, you’re probably going to die from it–and then things will get worse. Don’t matter whether it’s deserved or not, the point is that it stinks–and there’s nothing you can do about it.

It is completely true–I totally borrowed a plot element from a major motion picture for my VBS. The key difference is that the motion picture is a blues song. The character in the movie never changes–she begins selfish, everything she does is selfish, and the very last thing she does–committing suicide–is still selfish. There is no hope. To quote an oft-forwarded email, “The Blues are not about choice. You stuck in a ditch, you stuck in a ditch; ain’t no way out.”

In my story there is hope–and change. Our protagonist does change–certainly beginning selfish, but becoming different. The funny thing is that for years I wanted to write an Iron Man kind of story–a selfish jerk goes through some really bad things and comes out on the other side different–better different–than he was before. But I never could seem to get it right; the scripts ended up morphing into something else. But this year I have inadvertently written that story.

From a storytelling perspective you want to see that change. If the character is the same in the first act as he is in the third act, then what was the point of this story? If Tony Stark is the same after becoming Iron Man as he was before he became Iron Man, the movie would be a failure (I’m looking at you, Jumper).

From a teaching standpoint you want to communicate that there is hope. If I fail to communicate that, then why did I write this VBS? If my only success is as a storyteller, then I have failed, because I missed the point of telling the story.

Mar 04

Overheard: 60 year old female

“I’m talking about them raccoons that’s in my house.”

Mar 02

An Isadora Duncan

“This is what they call giving somebody an Isadora Duncan.” –Filmmaker commentary on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, from the scene where Eddie Valiant gets information from R.K. Maroon by feeding Maroon’s tie into a Moviola film editing machine.

I actually had to look that one up. Isadora Duncan was a dancer in the early 20th century, and she was killed when her long, flowing scarf got caught in the open spoked wheel of the car and broke her neck.

Feb 27

Warning: WD Caviar Blue 500GB

Where I work we have a lot of computers that have Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GBhard drives–and we are getting a lot of drive failures. If you have one of these drives in your computer, you need to back your data and/or get a new hard drive as soon as possible.

I will show you two ways of finding out of you have one of these models of hard drives. The first is to simply open your computer up and look at the hard drive (obviously, this only works if your hard drive is reasonably easy to open and access):

WD003

The other method is to check the Device Manager. For the purpose of this tutorial I am using Windows 7.

1. Click on Start, right-click on your computer icon, then click Manage.

WD001

2. Click on Device Manager and expand Disk Drives. If your hard drive begins with WDC50, it is likely going to die (technically all hard drives die, but in this case I mean soon).

WD002

In case you are wondering, ‘How will I know if my Western Digital drive has already died?

  1. You won’t be able to use/access/boot the drive.
  2. If it is hooked up, you can put your ear real close and hear this sound (you may have to turn up your volume for this link):
[audio: https://madmangraphics.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/WD500_CaviarBlue_Fail.mp3]

Feb 26

Mustache Twirler

The villain in a story who is evil for no other reason than that he is a villain.

Feb 23

church

I recently got to observe a discussion between pastors on the subject of church discipline, and I got to hear a word that everyone knows used in a manner I had never heard it used before. I have a long explanation before I get to the term. As you likely know, a term is a word used in a specific context.

Portions of the New Testament describe church discipline, a process by which the church as a local body deals with someone caught up in serious, unrepentant sin. I say ‘process,’ because that is how it is supposed to work: as a series of steps designed to bring the believer back to right relationship with God and, therefore, fellowship with the church body as well. It is not simply a ‘you sinned, now get out,’ kind of thing.

Yes, I am aware of some churches that have either really gone overboard, either abusing their authority, or doing nothing, continuing to permit rampant sin (see Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians, where he addressed an issue where a man was married to his own stepmother—and the church at Corinth was apparently cool with it). But I hope to give an accurate overview of the way the process is supposed to work according to Scripture.

  • The first step is simply you as a mature believer approach the individual in a spirit of humility as a friend/brother. Most of the time, that is all there is to it. The church body as a whole is largely oblivious, because the issue has been addressed on an interpersonal level. Despite the belief of many who despise the church, we really don’t like the idea of dragging people out and shaming them, any more than we would want that done to us—or our parents, children, or friends. I think Someone a long time ago might have taught on this concept, but maybe not….
  • The second step, if the person is unrepentant, is taking a couple of witnesses with you to again confront the person, to again implore the person to abandon their sin, and if they will not, to confirm the truth in order to obviate any ‘he said, she said’ business.
  • The third and final step is to take the issue before the church and expel the member from the local congregation.

The results of not performing this duty are bad for the person and bad for the church: the believer is left to continue wallowing in sin and therefore reap its consequences, and the church justly reaps the charge of hypocrisy, because of known sin within its own body that it refuses to deal with.

In the same way that ‘computer’ may apply equally to either an entire personal computer setup (with monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc), or just the computer part (not the monitor, keyboard, or mouse), ‘church discipline’ may refer to either the entire process or just the third step.

I know there is a question I have raised and not answered: what qualifies as serious sin? Well, that was the topic of the discussion—what merits the third step of church discipline?

I was at a youth worker’s conference, and Heather and I were sitting in a coffee shop with our pastor, his wife, and their (and now our) friends (another pastor and his wife). Besides us three couples, there was this guy that looked kind of like a pudgy, part-American Indian Indiana Jones with glasses, fedora, and leather jacket. My pastor and the other pastor brought up a couple of example cases to see how he would handle them. Indy presented his guidelines on how he would handle them based on the available Scripture. He made it a point to inform that there were other pastors who would disagree with him, that they would think he was not being firm enough, but I thought he was very balanced, firm, fair, and generous.

Finally, to get to the actual term. Indy used the word ‘church’ as a verb, expressed as shorthand for ‘church discipline.’

Pastor: “What would you do in the case of x?”

Indy: “I would do y.”

Pastor: “But don’t you think x is serious?”

Indy: “Yeah, but do you church him for it?”

 

Feb 21

That’s a nice case

I’m on my third iPhone now, all second-hand, all purchased or traded for. My first was an iPhone 3G, which was great, though it was a little slow, partly due to having to jailbreak it. Then I picked up a 3GS, which was way faster. Now I have an iPhone 4S. The best analogy I can think of speed wise  is like going from a car with a 4-banger, to one with a six cylinder, to one with a V12.

The phone came with a scad of extra chargers and cables and other doodads, plus a couple of nice Otterbox cases. However, I dislike big cases (I never used one on my previous phones). But the 4S came with a “bumper” case on it, just a thin, smooth case that covers the back, corners, and sides. It has a logo of an MU Tiger on the back, which I’m indifferent to. But the case is slim and smooth and doesn’t interfere with pocketing, so I kept it on.

I can do so much more, so much faster than I could before, especially making better use of my hour long commute. It’s like having an external extra brain to remember things for me.

Still, when people see my amazing phone, you know what they say?

“Wow, MU! That’s a cool case!”

 

Feb 18

This is how you respond to allegations…

Oxo responds to allegations that they are thieves with humor and style.

via Daring Fireball