Heath's still playing bad football in DC

Heath Shuler, one of the all-time great NFL draft busts and recently elected congressman from North Carolina failed to score and threw two picks while leading his congressional team against a Capitol Police Dept team.
http://deadspin.com/sports/heath-shuler/shuler-still-playing-bad-football-in-dc-314028.php

You can't make this stuff up!

I try to be good....

Was going to go to the Y today and go running - even brought my running shoes.

but it was pickles B-Day yesterday - so made alternate plans instead.

New York to Paris

Someone at Google has a sense of humor. (#23)

Frickin' Awesome!

Lockheed Martin has conceived a new class of high-speed amphibious combat craft with a top speed of up to 50 knots on water and up to 80 miles per hour on land. Significantly, the vehicles can make the transition from land to water and vice versa in five seconds and will be capable of traveling 50 miles on sea and then 100 more on land without having to refuel.

I totally want one.

Condo for Sale

Tony Alleyne decided to embark on the project after he separated from his wife in 1995 and managed to turn his flat into a bachelor pad with a difference.

Gosh, I wonder why she divorced him.....

R.I.P. Steve Rogers

Though he was slain by a sniper's bullet, his legacy of fighting Nazis and Communists will live on.
Link

Still Living On A Prayer

Despite a sixth place regular season finish and a 1-7 record against the league's top 5 finishers, the George Mason Patriots are only one game away from going back to the big dance.

America's Sweetheart Cinderella, as CNNSI call them, isn't ready to hang up the dancing shoes yet.

Fourth game in four days is going to be tough, especially against a VCU squad that's had one less game and loves to press and trap from tip-off to final buzzer. Still, I like our chances tonight better than I did three days ago.


LET'S GO PATRIOTS!

sidenote Congrats to Belmont Bruins making a return trip as A-Sun Champs!

Why I don't Blog More

I think it's a generational thing. Growing up, diaries were always something you hid and lived in mortal fear that someone would discover, read, steal, and share exposing you to a living-hell of taunting and teen-angst; best demonstrated in this classic back-and-forth between Marcia Brady and her brothers (technically half-brothers) Peter, Greg, and Bobby:

Marcia Brady: [Marcia lost her Diary and is accusing one of the boys of taking it] Okay, if you hand it right over, I won't press charges
Greg Brady: What are you talking about?
Marcia Brady: As if you didn't know.
Peter Brady: Bobby, do you know what she's talking about?
Bobby Brady: No. Greg, do you know what she's talking about?
Greg Brady: No. Marcia, do you know what you're talking about?
Marcia Brady: I certainly do, someone in this room took my diary.
Greg Brady: Your diary, you mean you actually keep one of those stupid things?
Bobby Brady: What's a diary?
Peter Brady: It's a book, that you write things, that you don't want anyone else to know.
Bobby Brady: Why?
Greg Brady: So, you could write stuff like [Greg then sits at his desk imitating Marcia writing in her diary]
Greg Brady: "Dear diary, at last I met him, my dream man, it was at the delicatessen and our fingers tingled as we reached over for the same potato salad." [the boys laugh]
Marcia Brady: [shouts] I have never written any ridiculous thing like that in my diary!
Peter Brady: You didn't?
Marcia Brady: [shouts] I should say not!
Greg Brady: Then, why are you afraid that somebody might read it?
Marcia Brady: None of your business.

The current generation of "the kids" as I like to call them doesn't seem to have this problem though. I'll touch on that a little later.

Vanilla Frosty

Finally tried it the other night.

Meh.

Tastes like a McDonalds vanilla shake, but more frozen.

Not impressed.

Not always, but sometimes, on occasion....

Am I Really A Lutheran?

I was chastised today by one of the four people (yes thats' accurate) that actually reads my posts that I haven't posted anything in quite a while, so here goes.

I'm thinking of changing my religious affiliation from Lutheran to something else.
When I consider why I'm a Lutheran, the real answer is, because that's where my folks took me as a child. Admittedly not a deeply held theological viewpoint.

I enjoy the Lutheran service, not as rigid as the Catholics or as freewheeling as the Baptists which suits me well, and I enjoy the direction connection to Christ through the Catholic Church and St. Peter, but some of the views of the national leadership aren't mine. Far from it in fact.
It first began several years ago w/an article in the Weekly Standard titled, Fences and a "Just Peace" The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America makes a stand against Israel's security fence and in favor of a "just peace." (Never mind Palestinian terrorism.)

Here's an excerpt.

The Churchwide Assembly's adoption of the anti-fence resolution came as no surprise; on the contrary, it was a foregone conclusion. The Assembly, which is attended inter alia by lay representatives of the ELCA's congregations, merely rubber-stamped an initiative that was already in place, adopted over the past two years by the ELCA's monolithically liberal staff. The Lutheran Office of Governmental Affairs went on record opposing the fence by July 2003, and other church agencies had fallen into line before the denomination's members had an opportunity to be heard. The fact that the resolution passed by a vote of 668 to 269 suggests that many rank and file church members were rebelling against the national organization's fait accompli.

A crucial omission marred the [May 2005] article as a whole. There was not one reference to Palestinian terrorism originating from terrorist strongholds in West Bank cities, the causal factor in Israel's erecting a protective barrier. The omission is indicative of the striking disregard for Israeli suffering and loss of life that underpins the piece.

There have been several other items since, that I won't bore you by listing all, but what brought it to a head for me was my local congregation becoming a Lutheran One congregation. An official Lutheran group whose stated goal is to "Direct an additional one percent of the U.S. budget to address extreme poverty."

While reducing poverty is absolutely a goal for the Church, I don't see involving themselves in the budgeting process of the US Government is. Also, if I robbed a Belle Meade mansion and turned the stolen goods over to my local congregation for distribution to the poor, I'd obviously been in violation of the 8th Commandment. However, if I put together a coalition that convinced the local township to sieze the owners property, I'd be folowing the lead of the Lutheran One organization.

I've visited the Website on the Lutheran Flyer in the church bulletin www.elca.org/advocacy which is mostly devoted to Global Warming and is run by the DC office of advocacy. On a side note, I've met two members of that office when I worked in DC at an e-advocacy training, and of the three of us in the room, there was only one Lutheran present. I've nothing against other denominations, but should non-Lutherans really be setting, or at a minimum guiding. Lutheran policy? I can't imagine the Am Jewish Committee would be too big on employing a goyim like me, despite my work for them as a vendor on grassroots issues in the past.
I've written my Pastor and it looks like we'll have him over for dinner in the near future to discuss.

Carter Vs. Maynor

Best Wedding Ever!