As I age and mature I find myself thinking about, for birthday and Christmas, fewer impractical extravagances (pirate hat, Tesla coil) and more practical needs (debt reduction, flatware). The side effect is that I am becoming boring. Before you no doubt object, remember that I have mentioned ‘flatware’ twice already. I used to be largely […]
MadMania
Faith, Books, and Stuff
There is a folk song called Donegal Danny about a man whose ship was caught in a storm and all of his fellow fishermen perished. Here are part of the lyrics: “And often at night when the sea is high And the rain is tearing at my skin I hear the cries of drowning men […]
In honor of Heather’s and my 17th anniversary on the 17th of next month I gave my Sunday School students a custom-made riddle. I told them that they had until our anniversary to give me the answer, in writing, and that the winner would get $17. So far I am in no danger of losing […]
“Even the success of apostles depended, in a certain way, on the prayers of the Church. Few Christian congregations feel, as they ought, that it is their bounden duty to pray for the success of the Gospel, both among themselves and in the world. The Church is weak, dark, poor, and imperfect, because it prays little.”
n. A unit of measurement equal to at least four billion. It was created as a humorous tribute to astronomer Carl Sagan.
You are probably familiar with some of the more colorful collective nouns used for groups of particular animals, such as a crash of rhinoceroses or a spoonful of pandas. A group of crows is a murder, while a group of ravens is merely an unkindness. I decided to look up what a group of platypuses […]
“The human figure is coming back into fashion in painting, and what are all those poor [expletives deleted] going to do now? They never learned how to draw.” –Thomas Hart Benton, referring to painters from the Abstract Expressionist movement, via Robert Wernick
n. One who attends a small, rural school in the middle of the Corn Belt, but dresses like he is growing up on the mean streets of Compton. The girls brought this wonderful term home from high school. As far as I know the usage is entirely localized to our school.
n. tobacco juice, or perhaps more accurately, tobacco spit. From now on when I highlight a word, I am going to try to, as the OED does, offer a quotation. In this case, a story: So we’re all sitting around playing D&D: Me, Mike, Kevin, and other people unimportant to this story. Kevin and I […]
The girls and I watched the Back to the Future trilogy this weekend. It was the first time we’d watched them in a long time, and more amazing than ever; we caught so many things we hadn’t see before, and the girls could actually understand the entire plots (they were just wee ones the last […]