Social Lubricant

the internet

Gabe Lyons - opening keynote for the Internet Ministry Conference made this observation...

The internet is the new beer

Meaning - it takes away the inhibitions and promotes a lack of consequence for one's actions.

Since I don't drink, I guess facebook is now my vice?

Not Ashamed

One of the biblical writers, Paul, wrote in his Roman letters:

I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.
Romans 1:16 - New International Version (NIV) Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society

Paul couldn't have anticipated this "Sonseed" moment.



There are tons of embarrassing moments in Christianity. The Crusades and the Inquisition come to mind... While I didn't have anything to do with the methodical torture and killing of Jews, nor a holy war against our Muslim brothers, I do play bass in the band at church.

I would like apologize in advance for 30 years from now when someone looks back at what we do and mocks. I'm sure we'll deserve it.

- Thanks to my sweet Sister in-law Michele for passing this one along.

Tow This

Tow away

Who gets to tow that? I imagine they will call the towing company next door to tow its own truck.

I live next door to a towing company and they often park their trucks right outside my windows. I've never complained, but they are loud. When these police order signs went up, I was very thankful, and the street was bare for... gosh... at least the weekend. Today, they started parking out there again.

Fire!

Fire!

Jodi is awesome.
Jodi signs up for a variety of giveaways, promotions, contests and such.
Jodi wins stuff.
This time it was a dinner for up to 8 people at the Golden Corral buffet. We didn't know that it was also a sales pitch for some kind new-fangled fire safety device.

As seen in the picture, they roped in a herd of customers wanting a free meal and who were willing to sit through the presentation. Sylvia and I chose to skip the presentation and just enjoy a buffet meal on our own. We sat next to the banquet room so I could mock the presentation whenever possible.

The most wonderful time of the year

September 19 is upon us again!
Talk Like a Pirate Day
It's a regular feature around here: 2007
And something I try to celebrate with a certain degree of gusto each time it comes around.

Do not confuse Talk like a Pirate Day with the Day of the Ninja. They are not the same.

Tina Fey Glasses

Yeah
it was awesome.

Not political - just dang funny.

Tina fey returned to Saturday Night Live as Sarah Palin and kicked off the season opener with her old cohort Amy Poehler as Hillary Clinton. Oh... it seemed some guy named Michael Phelps hosted. Huh...

Bag O' baby

Bag O' baby

My local Wallgreen's store has everything. I had to stop in for some supplies today and there on an end-cap was a display containing this: Bag O' Baby.

Not to make light of a tough situation, but man! Couldn't some people struggling with infertility get a false ray of hope from this?

Like it's some kind of kit?

Seriously, what do you do - just add water or something?

Not a parking lot

Well done

This is the front of my apartment building and not some cheesy used car lot.

Can you believe that someone would just drive up on the front yard like that? Well, I guess if you have 4-wheel drive, you use it.

Nice parking job Mr. "I'm so important".

Well done.

McCain - Palin

McCain - Palin

I can't be the only one who thought of this can I?

The thought of Michael Palin in the pepperpot drag getup along with John McCain has me in stitches. Sarah Palin is probably a better choice.

keep on giving

ADD: the gift that keeps on giving.



Clearly this poor fellow missed the first day of marketing school where they taught people the three basics.
1) who is your customer?
2) what do you want your customer to do?
3) how do you spell "ad"?


It's math, it's medicine, it's advertising
(addvermathicinetising)


And that's just plain awesome.

100 posts

It was about 18 months ago that I converted the long-standing Wacky pages into a blog. I actually started the Wacky thing of the week on a shared drive at Calvin College over 10 years ago and the wackiness continues.

For this one-hundredth post on the newer blog-version, I needed something memorable, something superior, something wacky.

I give you: Badger Badger Badger

Mushroom...
Snake...

Tanks alot

According to my friend Paul...
This was taken in front of the Gardendale, Alabama , Walmart while she (the subject of the picture) was going to the Flea market.

Now I ask you...
Who sits and looks at a pair of men's briefs and says hmmmm...I can make a nice summer top from these!! On the other hand...
$6 for a three pack is a good price!

wow

I Feel Great!

I don't know about you, but I feel GREAT!

Here's a guy who made up his mind to do something and by golly, he's doing it. Spirit like this is contagious and gets around the office simply by being near it.

One problem, he based his new plan on a snack-bar instead of a really good idea. This is where planning really has to come into play.

What is the one thing you do really well?

Are you ready to go, do, and be that?

Thanks to Keller for pointing me to that video!

not dead yet

I've been listening to the local radio station in Grand Haven. It's small-town and full of delightful little nuggets that you just don't get at the big stations. I worked on the air for about 12 years and I fondly recall the goofy things I had to do. Some examples from my career:

• weekly psychic/astrologer call-in show
  
• remote broadcasts in the mobile studio van...
  
• at a car dealership, from 5:30-10 AM, and the dealer didn't open until Noon
  
• at a TCBY for an entire week
  
• in a city park on Saturday night from 7-Midnight
  
• at a movie theater, in a mall, from a pay-phone, on a Tuesday night
  
• commercial for a Mexican restaurant featuring blatant racial stereotypes
  
• horrible commercial read live on the air by a business owner

However, yesterday I heard something new. It seems that my local station includes the reading of the obituaries column as part of their news broadcast. If that weren't creepy enough, here's what I heard yesterday:

Well... there are no new obituaries to share with you today... so... we'll be back with more news after this:
(commercial) "Would your family be properly cared for if something happened to you?..."

Then I had to pull over as the rest of the life insurance commercial played.

And then that happened

And then that happened

My office isn't the best place in the whole wide world right now and yesterday the ceiling started to cave in.

Seriously, right in the middle of a meeting and right on cue as Andy said something with just a tinge of despair. Andy's usually a very positive fellow, but this was priceless. We all stared at the can-light hanging from the ceiling by two slender copper threads and then just exploded in laughter.

It kinda helped.

The other day though...

Jon started making some crack about Genesis (the book, not the band) and after an awkward silence asked,

"What? We're not joking about creation?"

Luke just smirked and muttered,

"Too soon.

I nearly hemorrhaged.

Stop - The Agency Treatment

Thanks to Paul for pointing me at this gem


Anyone been at a client meeting like that?

Can't start soon enough

The Arena Football season is drawing to a close and that means NFL isn't far behind, and that means Fantasy Football!

I placed 5th last year - right in the middle of the pack with a group of friends. The Fightin' Amish will live to fight another day, but since I've moved to Grand Haven, I thought I should come up with some other potential team names. So - with my apologies to David Letterman (and other mis-users of the top-10 list) here are my top 10 rejected Grand Haven Football Team names:

10) Beacon
9) The Loyal Townies
8) The Retired Beachcombers
7) Hey I'm from Chicago too!
6) I just came in from GR for the weekend
5) I'm sooooo drunk
4) How do you get to the beach from here?
3) The Lousy Tourists
2) The Mighty Coast Guards (thanks Sylvia)
1) The Disappointing Musical Fountain

Rotten things part 2

Things that suck

Whilst installing an upgrade for an operating system, I inadvertently closed my laptop, putting it to sleep. I honestly forgot it was going on until I was half-way home. When I tried to fire it up again the computer was pretty unhappy.

So, I tried to rescue the OS with the install CD. After about 90 minutes, I got this message in the picture:

That was not good.

So, I tried a few more things for a while and finally did a clean install and restored the data from a week-old backup. Not horrible, but not great either.

Also, the fan makes a horrible noise.

Rotten things part 1

into the shredder with you

My office is not a fun place to work right now. In an attempt to get some funding together, I worked with our advancement (a goofy word for fundraising) staff and came up with a wiz-bang of a letter to a select audience.

Then things changed again.

Then we couldn't send out the letter. So, we had to shred them. Jon came up with the bright idea to feed them into the shredder en-masse. He used this funky little staple-less stapler to connect all the letters together. Then we fed them into the shredder in a big-ole paper train.

That made the office fun again for a while. I hear we might be getting ice-cream sandwiches soon.

Creative Juices

Thanks to Dave and Kevin for passing this one on to me.



Get your creative juices flowing?