Volunteering Week

It's National Volunteering Week.
Seriously - it's a real thing. One of the organizations I work with runs a Christian Volunteering site called (surprisingly enough) ChristianVolunteering.org. We decided to make a video.




Visit ChristianVolunteering.org for more.

During the shooting and editing, the following expression popped up and I think I'll use it for my next Christmas Card.

Human Snake

Thanks to the fun people at Get out and play .com we have this video of a human snake.




GO!

Expelled

I'm not a movie reviewer by trade, but I do go to a bunch of movies and I eat popcorn.

Tonight I went to see "Expelled", a documentary about the oppression of even the words "intelligent design" if used in academia, the press, or politics. It's a run-n-gun shoot showing Ben Stein interviewing leading scientists, thinkers and writers who have been fired, labeled, branded, and ostracized for mentioning intelligent design, along with dyed-in-the-wool Darwinist authors, teachers, and philosophers.
Big picture - Ben comes through the heavy Nazi, Communist, Berlin Wall, and Eugenics metaphors genuinely asking for open, free, debate on the topic of intelligent design as a way that Evolution (change over time) began.
My favorite detail - The Darwinists all agree, as did Darwin that life began with a single cell. There's disagreement on where the cell came from. One scientist postulated that the cells piggy-backed on crystals. Another agreed that one way the cell got here was through seeding by another intelligent race of aliens. Clearly, he believed in the possibility of intelligent design, but not the possibility of a Judeo-Christian designer. Aliens "Yes", God "No" - everyone got that? Yikes!

Transitive Pictograph Verbalizations

Oh you transitive pictograph verbalizations, how do we Y thee.
Thanks to TorsoPants for the tee shirt.

Narcoleptic Cat

Everyone, meet Boone.
Boone, this is everyone.

Boone is a narcoleptic cat.

Don't believe me? - click on the picture of Boone to watch him pass out. It's hilarious.

Meanwhile, Boone has a day job.
Boone works at Kitty Wigs (dot com)

Seriously - kitty wigs.
Is that really necessary?

Garfield Minus Garfield

This is Garfield genius!
What's better than a random Garfield comic strip?
Why a Garfield comic strip without the Garfield.

Meet Garfield minus Garfield.



Thanks Tol!

A Monkey Washing A Cat

Yep... a monkey washing a cat.

Happy Fish Day

The French call April 1, Poisson d'Avril - or literally translated "The Fish of April". Traditionally, school children tape a picture of a fish onto the back of a schoolmate who then cries out "Poisson d'Avril!" when they discover they've been, as Ashton says, "Punked."

Here on the Wacky page, April 1 is a bit like Christmas. I look forward to the variety of hoaxes perpetrated by some great pranksters out there. Last year's Google hoax was particularly fun.

This year, I had the fun of setting up a little something that goes live on April 1.

I'm supervising a weekly blog for the community I manage as part of my work and we blog every Tuesday. This week, Tuesday happens to be April 1, so I couldn't resist. The posts are usually about what's happening in the community, with our members, or internet ministry in general. Over the last few months we've been phasing out one site: Gospelcom.net in favor of Gospel.com and next month we're taking the old site down entirely and pointing it to the new one. The new site has been incredibly successful so far. How successful?

Here's the gist of the blog...
Since Gospel.com has been so successful Google might buy us out. The Gospel.com brand name is so valuable that we're going to offer some services with the Gospel.com identity; services like Gospel.com email - or Gmail for short. We've even launched a new website showing the merger of Gospel.com and Google - Googspel. Of course that prospect is ludicrous and Google has no interest in the Gospel, let alone Gospel.com. I realize that for most people it's not all that funny, but to us it's hilarious.

The thing about trying to reach people for Jesus is that sometimes people see it as just a big April Fools Day joke. The rug's been pulled out from under them so many times that they can't trust people. When someone says that they love me, I tend to shy away. And if they tell me that they are going to love me, that makes me even more nervous.

But here's what I've learned. People fail. People fail all the time. I fail ALL THE TIME. I fail my friends, my family, my employer, the ministries for which I'm responsible. I mess up ALL THE TIME. It took me the better part of my life to figure out that God doesn't mess up, doesn't let me down, and doesn't fail. God is exactly who he says he is.

Our own histories and experience with people have skewed our perception of who God is, but when you really read what he says about himself, it's a very different picture than what we've thought for so long. Our culture has been throwing us a red herring for years about God. It's time that we pull that fish off of our backs and yell, "Poisson d'Avril!" one last time, and go see who Jesus really is.

No fooling!

Happy Fish Day!

Are you paying attention?

Test your visual acuity with this simple video test:



Today is Good Friday - it's a day that we post-modern, millennial, post-literate Christians tend to overlook when we're not looking for it. We tend to miss the miracle that's just around the corner. If it's never been explained to you before, I'm going to take a really quick crack at this.

Jesus, who lived not just a good life, but a perfect life, died. He died in the most horrible way that the most brutal culture ever to walk the planet could imagine. Then, after he was buried for a couple of days, he got up and walked out of his tomb. No one ever did that before, and no one has done it since. Afterwards he ate and drank with his friends, thousands of people witnessed him walking around living and breathing. He's still alive right now. The best and worst part of this for me was that he did it on purpose. He knew that because of the rules of the universe, someone had to put things right between us (me) and God. The only way to do that was through a sacrifice like this. His act of selfless love tore down the wall between me (us) and God and now we can live directly with him in our lives, without fear. Today is Friday when we remember his death, his sacrifice, and the huge pileup of everything we've ever done against each other, ourselves, and against God. On Sunday, we'll remember that in one moment everything changed.


It's Friday, but Sunday is coming.

Let me know if you want to know more: brianatkinson [at] mirthmobile [dot] com

Does it really?

Does it really?

I used to drive by this sign all the time and it made me laugh.

Seriously? It Works?
What works? I imagine their sales pitch going something like this...

"Hi, this is Brian from It Works Marketing. I was wondering if you had any marketing needs that It Works Marketing could take care of today."

"No, we don't have any graphic designers."
"No, we don't have any one who has any marketing training or anything."
"No, we don't actually have any experience."
"What do we do? Well, we recently bought a box of sticky letters that we could use to put on a sign out in front of your place."

"No... we don't have any Goo-Gone to help wipe off the adhesive from the previous sign."

Yeah - something like that.

Fred and Sharon

Holy Crap!



Yep... holy crap!

That's all I've got to say about this one.
Thanks Steve.

OK - I've got more.
If you go to Fred and Sharon's website you can view that video and if you're feeling particularly masochistic, you can pay $1 Canadian to see more. Anyone willing to shell out the Loonie and write a review?

Jump in - the water's fine

When some people decide to follow Jesus, it's all at once and they jump right in.


(wait for the second kid)

Others have more of a process they need to go through and some have to put a toe in the water first.

When God brought His people to the land that He promised them, he said,

"When you reach the edge of the Jordan's waters, go and stand in the river."
Joshua 3

Once they did, God parted the water in the river, just like He did earlier in the big migration story - parting the Red Sea. God spent 40 years teaching a people that they needed to trust Him. When he got them where they needed to be, he asked them to take the critical step in faith.

I'm not the first person to say this - but to me it seems that if you go and read that whole story, God wants us to trust Him and not ourselves. He wants us to leave our "good sense" behind and go jump in the river (lake).

What do you think? (read the story first)

Thanks to my Mom for sending me the video.

Bear with me

Some fantastic bear moments from around the internet:


1) from Jonathan: Bear Rescued on Donner Pass Bridge






2) Stephen Colbert hates bears
Flickr Group
official site






3) Bear with me a moment - from xkcd.com
Thanks to my brother Chris for getting me hooked on that one.







and just because I can't resist another Stephen Colbert moment:

Screen Cleaner

So we ran out of screen cleaning wipes at my office the other day and our purchasing department got us a replacement.



Please consider donating to Gospel Communications so we can either get some real screen cleaners or feed this little guy.

Thanks to Jon for that one.

Even better when you watch it in your browser. For best cleaning be sure to maximize your window.

What's a Gygax?

Maybe you heard that Gary Gygax died.
Maybe you're saying, "Brian, that's awful. Who's Gary Gygax?"
Maybe you're in the first stage of grief, denial.

I tend to move along pretty quickly.

Here are 16 jokes about Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, that you'd better not make. There's an internet full of nerds who will get out their vorple blade and... oh man.

1. “Quick! Someone cast Raise Dead!”
2. “Don’t worry – he’s just play-testing the Astral Plane for the next edition.”
3. “He’s gone the way of Star Frontiers.”
4. “Analysts warn of a free-fall in Mountain Dew futures.”
5. “In the next town, you meet a stranger named Barry Bygax.”
6. “Now who will lead our young people to Satan?”
7. “With his last breath, he cursed the name of Marlon Wayans.”
8. “I wonder how they’ll divide up his XP.”
9. “Pallbearers, make a Bend Bars/Lift Gates roll.”
10. "At least he didn't live to see Disney's Greyhawk On Ice."
11. “Lorraine Williams is behind this somehow, I just know it.”
12. “The worlds of adventure gaming, fantasy fandom, and van painting will never be the same.”
13. “When I heard, I cried 2d10 tears.”
14. “Is there anything in the will about electrum?”
15. “Heart condition? Wow, I always thought it’d be owlbears that got him.”
16. “Suddenly, nobody in Heaven wants to hang out with Marilyn Monroe on Friday night.”


Thanks to Woot.com for that

How's your soul

Yesterday's Jesus post has me examining my soul a little more than usual. I think it started with this shot on the local news this morning:
Of course it's actually a very white orchestra. Clearly the quotes around "Symphony with Soul" indicate a title, but since I've been blogging on this "other blog" I can't help but see quotation marks a little differently.


And that got me thinking about Don Simmons.


So how's your soul?

just painful

I love Jesus.
Seriously! I am a huge fan. I think that Jesus is the best thing that's ever happened to me and so many of my loved ones. If you don't know what I'm talking about and you're curious let me know: brianatkinson [at] mirthmobile.com

Anyway, since I'm such a fan of Jesus I've made it one of my missions to be an everyday marketer for Him. It's one of the reasons I run this website. It's also one of the reasons why stuff like this makes me sad, angry and cracks me up all at the same time. Is there any wonder why there has to be a blog dedicated to how bad church marketing can be?

Most Christians who are really sold-out for Jesus tend to express their passion in a variety of ways. Some sculpt, some make movies, some write books and essays. Unfortunately, some create painful art.


Since we don't have any photographs of Jesus, people try to create some kind of image that represents who Jesus is to them. I just can't get behind this creepy Kenny Loggins in a tux version. Why did you have to paint this? Why?



This one was tough to pick out from the collection. I had a choice between this boxer with the gloves off and another in the ring, but with more of a WWF style to it. Jesus is no wimp. The man was a laborer, a carpenter, or some say more like a construction worker. He probably doesn't resemble the emaciated blond guy they show in the movies. On the other-hand I don't know if portraying Jesus as a bare-chested prize-fighter really captures the essence of the savior, even if you title the painting "Undefeated".



Last but not least, the inked Jesus. What more can I say about this one? For my Roman Catholic brothers and sisters out there who place a traditional importance on the role of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, please don't be offended by the "Father" tattoo on our Lord's bicep. I'm sure there's a renaissance Madonna on the other arm.

Thanks to my friend Stever for pointing these out to me.

Cat Herding

For years I've had the phrase "cat herding" in my bio but some people ask what that means.



To me, that commercial, shown first in the 2000 Super Bowl and later during the 2005 Super Bowl, does a great job explaining it. That's what I do.

tax dollars at work

It's funny how some random events can lead to some unexpected answers to some burning questions.
I hardly get any mail at my new apartment in Grand Haven. I'm getting some forwarded mail from my old place, and I'm getting some mail addressed properly, but not very much. Out of 6 possible mail delivery days each week, I seem to receive mail on an average of only 2 days. Why don't I get much mail?

Now the interesting facts and random events.
A check mailed to me on or near February 1 is now officially three weeks - undelivered - late - missing - etc.
I recently renewed my passport - and yesterday got a phone call from the passport people.
And I just spoke with my United States Postal Carrier (they have titles you know - USPC) in the hallway of my building.

These are two pieces of new information gleaned from the phone hallway conversations:
1) My USPC only works three days a week and the other three days are handled by substitutes who don't normally work this route.
2) My Passport was returned to the United States Passport Administration Office as undeliverable through the United States Postal Service.

Leading me to this conclusion:
US mail might not deliver to my home in a timely manner.
My tax dollars at work?

The moral?
At least I don't have Comcast for cable and internet anymore.

haircuts

I just got a new haircut - finally. Having recently moved to Grand Haven, I had to figure out where to get a haircut around here. Fortunately, surprisingly, freakishly, coifishly , mind-bogglingly, there are lots of places to get a haircut just up the street.

I'm even pretty happy with the results. Sylvia says it's her favorite so-far. So, as bizarre as 10 haircut places within easy walking distance and 100 more within 15 miles seems to me, I don't think it compares to how wacky this is:



Special thanks to The Chris for blogging that haircut.