Nothing about this is wrong

***Update: Thanks to Dave for pointing out that the link below takes you to a version of the test that kicks you to a dating site at the end. Here's a link to a quiz that will actually give you an answer . . . . actually . . . yeah, I just went and changed the coding for the badge below so now it will take you to a non-manipulative version of the quiz.***

25

Boy you craysee

I know: two posts in one day?!? What am I thinking? Well, I'm thinking that you need to check out this great website. It's called Songza and it's a music search engine that let's you search the internet for songs by your favorite bands. You can listen to the song on their site or go to the source which is, from what I can tell, usually YouTube or MySpace videos or tracks. Check it out.

Songza

Zombies again

Happy New Year! Or is it New Years? As I've been wishing people that all day today, I question myself every time I say it. I think it must be 'New Year', but if you think otherwise, I'm up for correction.

Anyway, check out this awesome video I just found. It's a zombie remix of the West Side Story. Amazing.

No voices in my head

Okay okay, I know that lately, I've only been posting links to things and not really posting anything original at all. There are a couple of reasons for that. First, I've been in Conway sitting around watching SportsCenter again and again and again all morning and YouTube videos all afternoon because there's just not that much to do here, and that leaves me with very few interesting stories to tell the 12 of you who read my blog. Second, I've promised that I would write about some of the things that I've been thinking about for the last few months, but as of yet, I don't think I've finished thinking through those things enough to be able to offer you a summary. It's been good for me lately to just write down as many of my thoughts as I can in rough form and start to mull over those. As of this very moment I'm renewing my vow to you (isn't that romantic?) to actually write something serious on this blog and try my best (for your sake and mine) to summarize what I learned at and through L'Abri.

Until then, I want to point you to an article that I just read. Literally, I just finished reading it, and I don't think I've read something that's summed up my views on an issue this well and coming at such a perfect time as this. The article is called "No Voices in my Head" and it's by Bill MacKinnon who writes some at the blog The Internet Monk which has quickly become one of my favorites. The article concerns the idea of God's leading or personal revelation to individuals and how obsessed the evangelical church in America has become with "feeling led" by God or "hearing" from God in a private way. Here are two excerpts, one from the beginning of the article and one from the end:

I’m a lousy Christian.

There. I’ve said it. People say that admitting it is the first step. What makes me a lousy Christian you ask? Hidden sin? Lukewarm commitment? Worldliness?

I wish.

At least if it were one of those, I could do something about it. No, what makes me a lousy Christian is something I don’t seem to be able to do anything about. You see, God isn’t speaking to me. He won’t give me assignments. He didn’t tell me who to marry. He was obstinately silent when I had to decide whether to take my current job. He doesn’t give me secret knowledge about other people or situations. In short, He isn’t doing for me what seemingly the rest of the evangelical church claims He is doing for them.

and

It is curious to me that if someone in a typical evangelical church stood up and said an angel spoke to him and told him that God wanted him to be a missionary to Africa , we would be very skeptical at best. Yet if that same person stood up and said that he “just really feel led to go to Africa to be a missionary”, the "amens" and applause would be deafening. Yet the former is biblical and the latter is not.

Read the article. It's not that long. Don't be turned off by what seems to be cynicism about the idea that God could speak to people privately. He says in the article that he's not talking about what God can do but about what we can teach (read: tell people to expect).

I imagine that when I summarize my thoughts over the last few months, this issue will play prominently into the discussion. Read the article and if you have the time and energy I'd love to hear what you think about it, positive or negative. Any of your thoughts will help me work out my own.

In other news, I leave in about seven hours to go to Atlanta with my family to hang out with my dad's side of the family for the weekend. There's about 30 of us so it should be loud. It's always a good time. If anything awesome happens I'll be sure to let you know.

Spanish is como estas

Since there's not a whole lot to do around Conway right now I have been watching almost every video on YouTube. It's a little bit dorky, but I don't care because if I wasn't watching every video on YouTube then I wouldn't be able to show all of you these great clips that I find.

Here's four videos by the same people. I'm sure you've seen the first one, but I just found the other three and they are just as funny if not funnier. I hope you enjoy.

Happy merry

Merry Christmas everyone. I'll post something with more words in it tomorrow, but until then, here's my Christmas gift to you: a dance video I edited last night while waiting on Santa. It's made up of a bunch of clips from different times while I was at L'Abri. Enjoy

PS If you're reading this post on Facebook, you'll have to actually come to my blog to see the video.

American Gladiators

This was the most exciting show of my childhood. American Gladiators was, is, and will always be the best fighting/wrestling-related action/drama ever made in the 80s and resurrected in the 00s. Here's a great clip that, I think, truly shows the high quality wrestletainers that they had on this show. We can only hope that in the new version there will be gladiators as amazing.

Amazing beatboxing puppets

I need a life . . .

Classy people read my blog

This might creep you out, but I don't even give a care.

After I started my blog up, I registered with Google Analytics so I could see how many people were coming to my blog, where they were coming from, how long they were staying, etc. Don't worry, I can't find any information about you specifically unless I know you're in some random place like Croatia on December 12 and I see that I had three hits from Croatia that day. I would know that it was probably you, but it doesn't tell me your name or anything like that so don't be so paranoid and vain, as if I would try to track you.

Aaaaaaaanyways. One of the things I can check on is what things people search for on Google that leads them to my blog. The following are a few of my favorite keywords that people have searched for and ended up at my blog:

--"that bird is not my doppelganger"
--"beard growth fill in" - this person actually spent 9 minutes on my blog
--"fisherman beard" - there were numerous beard searches which leads me to believe that I'm not the only one self-conscious about my lack of manly facial hair
--my favorite beard-related query: "how to shave so that it grows more and tough"
--"bicep is twitching"
--I would like to meet the person who searched for this, I'm sure he's . . . awesome: "pictures of awesome jet planes doing awesome things" - he only spent 30 seconds on the site so I guess the Swiss jets weren't awesome enough or doing awesome enough things
--"where do most jamaicans live in brooklyn?"
--"it's my last chance to say something to save my marriage" - fortunately this guy/girl didn't stay on my site for very long

And finally:

--"dirty swiss lady gallery" - proof that there are lots of pervos on the internet; this guy searched my site for dirty Swiss ladies for 8 minutes before moving on

Yes, classy people read my blog. People who are interested in an eclectic mix of topics ranging from SNL skits to how to be a more manly man to where to find weird niche pornography. Thanks for reading y'all.

Journaling

Here's a good and interesting article comparing the journaling habits and styles of early American Christians to those of the modern American. Here's an excerpt from the introduction:

In this essay, which briefly compares the recent phenomenon of “journaling” to early American devotional writing, I’ll try to answer several questions: Why did so many early American Christians feel compelled to keep diaries, and why has there been such a surge of interest in “journaling” in our own time? How do today’s “spiritual” journals either resemble or differ from early American diaries? In the first part of this essay, I show that early American Protestants kept diaries in order to “crucify” themselves and worship a transcendent God. In the second part, I argue that today, Americans write spiritual journals for a very different set of reasons: to create an authentic sense of selfhood, to come to a deeper appreciation of their own worth, and to find God within them.

And here's a link to the article. "'A place to go to connect with yourself': A Historical Perspective on Journaling". Interestingly enough (and the author mentions this as well), many of the critiques that we could level against the modern practice of journaling find no criticism or counter-examples within current Christian writing, thought, and theology. Also interesting is, in my opinion, how the theology of several of the most widely-read preachers and writers coming out of the theological traditions of the early American Christians (Puritans) can, if read without care to discern these themes specifically, leave the reader or listener with the same sense of self-loathing and lack of self-worth that the author rightly criticizes in the theology of their predecessors.

Enjoy the read.