Bordering on Cool

Kudos to Tyler Anderson (at least I think the delivery man said Tyler's name) for donating the first 13 CD's for my Wall of AOL Shame in the computer lab. As you can tell, it's a meager start, but I'm confident that donations will pick up once altruistic students see the need to coat this wall in shiney reflective plastic discs. Can you beat a donation of 13 AOL discs?

Ode to Spell Checkers

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

Ickey Floors?

Ok, I've heard of famous celebrities and atheletes going into business after retirement. Restaurants, record companies, sports anchors ... it's the way to spend the time (as well as the millions of dollars) when the career ends.



But last week I came across this store. Remember Ickey Woods, the Bengals running back who became famous for his end-zone dance entitled "The Ickey Shuffle"? Apparantly he has started a business in Sharonville selling ... floors. It's not a big deal, just a streetside little shop, cornily decorated (as you can see) and relying very heavily on his noteriety for business. Call me strange, but I have a hard time thinking of owning a an Ickey Floor.

Wouldn't it be great if he had commercials where he was doing the "Ickey Shuffle" on his "Ickey Floors" to demonstrate just how durable and reliable his floors are?

The Great Toothbrush Conspiracy

Have you ever wondered why toothbrushes are so expensive? I always have ... until I visited the local dollar store last week and found this pack of 10 toothbrushes for only 99 cents. That's right, only a dime per toothbrush. And these are fairly good quality color-coordinated toothbrushes ... complete with a handy-dandy compartmentalized storage case and lid.

At first glance, it appears that a toothbrush is pretty simple ... just some plastic and rubber, maybe an injection-molded product that costs a few cents to manufacture. But when you look down the row of toothbrushes, even the generic ones are at least two dollars. There must be a reason ... maybe it's the hundreds of fine bristles, maybe the rubber grips, maybe the ... uh, maybe something else. But what?

I can tell you from experience ... when I was in college I spent three summers working for a company called Advanced Elastomer Systems. AES is the world's largest producer of engineered thermoplastic elastomers (TPE's), a kind of rubber that can be molded like plastic. I won't go into the boring details here, but I will tell you that TPE's are the material that toothbrush grips are made of ... TPE's are the material that the expensive toothbrush grips are made of.

I will testify here: Even with the most expensive TPE's and polymers available, it's pretty much impossible to spend a lot of money making a toothbrush. In fact, a fancy toothbrush couldn't cost more than 10 cents to make. So why the $3.95 price tag?

Don't be a victim. Visit your dollar store and put P&G out of the toothbrush business. Or call me and I'll give you a couple of mine. Rage against the machine, baby.

How To Be An Ohioan

1. Know the state casserole.
The state casserole consists of canned green beans, Campbell's cream of mushroom soup and dried onions. You can safely take this casserole to any social event and know that you will be accepted. In fact, Neil Armstrong almost took this casserole to the moon in case he encountered alien life there. NASA nixed the plan out of concern that the casserole would overburden the Apollo rocket at liftoff.

2. Get used to food festivals.
The Ohio General Assembly, in an effort to grow bigger offensive linemen, passed legislation years ago requiring every incorporated community to have at least one festival per year dedicated to a high-fat food. Thus, Sugarcreek honors Swiss cheese, Bucyrus has a bratwurst celebration and Gahanna, seeking an edge over other towns, has recently introduced the Triglyceride and Low-density Lipoprotein Festival. It is your duty as an Ohioan to attend these festivals and at least buy an elephant ear.

3. Know the geography.
Of Florida, I mean. I've run into Ohioans who couldn't tell you where Toledo is but they know the exact distance from Fort Myers to Bonita Springs. That's because all Ohioans go to Florida in the winter. Or plan to when they retire. Or are related to retired Ohioans who have a place in Sarasota. We consider Florida to be the Lower Peninsula of Ohio.

4. Speaking of Ohio weather . . .
Wear layers or die. The thing to remember about Ohio seasons is that they can occur at anytime. We have spring-like days in January and wintry weekends in October. April is capable of providing a sampling of all four seasons in a single 24-hour period. For these reasons, Ohio is the Layering Capital of the World. Even layering, however, can pose danger. Golfers have been known to dress for hypothermia and end up dead of heat stroke because they couldn't strip off their layers of plaid fast enough on a changeable spring morning.

5. Don't take Ohio place names literally.
Upper Sandusky is below regular Sandusky. Circleville is square. East Liverpool has no counterpart to the west. Also, if a town has the same name as a foreign capital..... Lima or Berlin, for example...... you must not pronounce it that way lest you come under suspicion as a spy. Hence, it's not LEE-ma as in Peru, but LYE-ma as in bean.

6. Become mulch literate.
Ohioans love mulch and appreciate its subtle differences. Learn the difference between hardwood, cypress and pine bark at a minimum. Researchers think the state affinity for mulch derives from its relatively flat terrain. People have a subconscious need for topography, and when it can't be supplied naturally, they are more likely to make little mulch hillocks in their front yards.

7. Be knowledgeable about sports.
In order to talk sports with obsessive fans in Ohio, you have to be knowledgeable on three levels - professional, college and high school. The truly expert Ohio sports fan knows not only the name of the hotshot quarterback at Abercrombie and Fitch High School, but also what colleges he's interested in, how much he bench-presses, who he took to the prom and what he got on his biology quiz last week.

8. About trends . . .
Remember that Ohioans are never the first to embrace trends. When we do embrace them, we do so with a Midwestern pragmatism. For example, if you see an Ohioan with a nose ring, there's a good chance he's had it undercoated to guard against rust.

9. How to sell things . . .
The best way to sell something in Ohio is to attach the term "Amish" to it. The product need not be genuinely Amish. This would explain the existence of Amish moo shu pork.

--Author Unknown (but he's surely from Ohio)

Quotation of the Day

"Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life."

-Brooke Shields, during an interview to become spokesperson for a federal antismoking campaign.

Dia Numero Uno

Well, this was an exciting day. Because we were hosting the CHCA Invitational, I spent nearly the whole day cutting out labels, assembling notecards, and making giant scoreboards. I was kind of scared that the meet would be highly disorganized and confusing, but it turned out to be very well run (by the high school and athletic department) and very fun! The boys turned in a good performance, finishing 4th, and the girls totally stepped it up, winning the entire meet by one point. And that's even after a mishap that sent Karah and the other leaders going the wrong way for a hundred feet or so. Now all that's left is the MVC Meet, the league championships. I think our girls are favored to win it all, while the guys have a good chance for a strong showing there.

After the meet, I headed down to Kenwood for my first official day at Apple. Of course, I forgot all my paperwork, so I had to drive home and back once more. But once I got there I was warmly welcomed by the other employees and given some basic training stuff. I'll be running through procedures and learning the ropes for these next couple of weeks, but it looks like it won't be long before I'm out on the floor as a Mac Specialist.

It's so interesting being on the other side of the equation ... working in a mall as the person selling a product. Being one of the first people to see new technology as it emerges. Seeing why Apple does what it does and how much passion and purpose goes into every little detail. I know that I'm going to love working there ... and mostly because of the people. It's very obvious that every person working there is brilliant, with plenty of quirks and personality to boot. They love interacting with people and really seem to want to foster some unique friendships with each other. It's also pretty awesome to see customers coming in, their faces lighting up as they see stuff, some of them questioning like children and others just marveling at beautiful machines. I really do feel inspired ... more alive, more wide-eyed.

Ah, first impressions ...

Quotation of the Day

"Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can't help but cry. I mean I'd love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff."

--Mariah Carey

Calling All Coasters

I'm going to start collecting CD's and CD-ROM's to use as decorations in my computer lab at school. Those pesky AOL discs, improperly burned CDR's and CDWR, old audio CD's, whatever ... I'd like to coat an entire wall with them, and I have a feeling that once I start students will begin bringing them in as well. But I need enought to make a respectable start (right now I only have 3).

Can you start collecting these for me? Especially if you're near an AOL display, where they give away thousands for free, you could grab a couple dozen at a time (there's got to be some use for those, eh?). Once I have thirty or forty I'll start putting them on the wall.

Hmm ... if I get enough, maybe I'll even install a disco ball in the ceiling ...

Trigger Happy

I just saw what was quite possibly the funniest television show on the face of the earth. It's called Trigger Happy TV, and it's just a group of what appears to be Brits doing street comedy, situational things that catch the general public off-guard. Sumo wrestlers in elevators, scores of guys in giant squirrel suits fighting to the death, a black-clad man slowly counting to 200 at an open mic poetry reading ... you name it, it's there. If you ever have the chance, check it out.

Though I Walk Through The Valley

Unwound

I have a feeling that this is going to be a long week, with relatively little time to post things, so I might as well take a little time tonight to tell a couple stories and such. I'll go reverse-chronologically.

I just got back from my first evening at the Apple Store. Tonight there was a celebration from this last quarter, looking back at how well the retail store did and looking forward to a few new things. It was my first experience as an Apple employee (well, not officially, as I haven't signed the contract). And boy was it interesting. It seems like a completely awesome group of people, full of weird personalities and gentle inside jokes. There appears to be a healthy balance of mac enthusiasm and computer criticism, a very high morale, and a realistic drive to get out there and sell computers. In a way, I'm really curious how I'll fit into the equation ... I never really imagined myself working retail, let alone working in a mall (I hardly ever go in malls). And, although I think I have a natural-born ability to convince people of things, I don't really see myself as a salesman. In fact, I almost sicken at the thought of selling things. Luckily I'll be selling things that are actually worth it!

I've had a whole lot of down time this weekend. It was much needed. Today I woke up late, went to the late church service, went thrift shopping, then came home and watched the Browns game. Once again, they were completely victorious, overcoming some pretty horrible officiating and an early lack of running game to totally dominate the game. And I'm not just being a Browns fan ... they totally crushed Tenessee. In fact, I'm going to definately predict playoffs for the Browns this year. With two amazing quarterbacks, 4 outstanding receivers, and a solid defense, I'm predicting that the Browns make it to the AFC Finals. Just wait and see.

Last night I went to a reception at the home of one of my students. A guy named Andy was visiting from Uganda, giving a presentation of the ministry/program that he runs there for street children in the city. It was a pretty surreal experience ... a bit too upper-crust for me (the family is from the UK and have a higher sense of style and culture than I've been exposed to), but an amazing story of an amazing man. It was pretty ritzy, with food I can't pronounce and people from all over the world ... I'm just a little uncultured American boy, and I was pretty out of place. Until Tim (the little kindergartener) came and sat on my lap ... then I felt right at home. When I left I had to simply take a walk out in the woods to come to my senses again. Weird.

Yesterday the CC team competed at the New Richmond Invitational, where they once again had an awesome performance. Out of about 10 teams, the girls got 2nd place, bringing home a nice big trophy. Nevermind that I broke the thing at first ... it's now fixed ... they had individual performances of 9th, 10th, and 11th. That's awesome in the midst of over a hundred runners!

On Friday our school had the annual Fall Festival. You wouldn't believe how big of a deal this thing is. Tons of games, prizes, performances, and hundreds of people. We even got out of school early for it. It's so much fun hanging out with students outside of school, and even seeing some parents. Here's the funny thing ... I was exhausted, so I left at about 4:30 to go home and get dinner and a nap. I was scheduled to go in the dunk tank at 6pm, though, so I returned in about an hour. When I got there, I found that it had been rained out, and everybody was leaving. So there I was, ready for the dunk tank, and I was the only dry person in the place!

Ok, I've got to get to bed a little early tonight. As I mentioned, this week will be busy ... two CC meets, 2 parent technology workshops, training at the Apple Store, serving food at MCF's Tatonka, and another fun-filled week of computer-related bliss at school. :)

My Week

Ok, not literally, but it sure has been a tough one.

Engagement

I heard some advice today:

"Be engaged at least six months before you get married."

What do you guys think about this?

Fresh Bread

I heard today that bread in the grocery store is delivered fresh five days per week. Each of those different days has a different color of twist tie on it:

Monday is Blue
Tuesday is Green
Thursday is Red
Friday is White
Saturday is Yellow

You'll notice that the colors are in alphabetical order, and this even applies to the plastic clips that sometimes hold the bread closed. Next time you're buying bread on a Thursday, you probably want to find one with a red twist tie (not a week-old white one).

At least that's the word on the street.

Webels Without a Cause

I just got this email from a random person named Christian Webel. It looks like some Webel traits are pretty universal ...

Good morning! Excellent website! I was very happy to find another hip-Webel in the US :) Did your dad ever use the following corny phrases?: "Ready, willing and Webel"; "Where there's a will, there's a Webel"; or "Christian Webel, if you're able, take your elbows off the table"???

Create a wonderful day,
Ms. Christian Webel

'N Sync

This is totally awesome. I used to have a Handspring (kind of like a palm pilot), but the screen broke and I haven't used it in awhile. Then today I got the brainiacal idea to use this palm to synch my outlook (email, contacts, calendar, etc) with my iBook. I downloaded the Palm software on my school computer and my iBook, synched the palm with my work computer, then synched the palm with my desktop computer.

It's working beautifully, and now all of my information is almost completely seamless. Except for one thing ... I'm having trouble getting it to synch with Entourage (the Office X version of Outlook). We'll see, I'll get it ...

Amusement Park ... No Kidding?

Here's a picture of my friend Matt winning a giant Brian at King's Island this summer:



That was fun.

Quotation of the Day

"There are two kinds of people in this world; those who divide everything into two groups and those who don't."

-Kenneth Boulding

Dass It.

The following is The Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13) in Pidgeon, according to "Da Jesus Book":

�God, you our Fadda.
You stay inside da sky.
We like all da peopo know fo shua how you stay,
An dat you stay good an spesho,
An we like dem give you plenny respeck.
We like you come King fo everybody now.
We like everybody make jalike you like,
Ova hea inside da world,
Jalike da angel guys up inside da sky make jalike you like.
Give us da food we need fo today an every day.
Hemmo our shame, an let us go
Fo all da kine bad stuff we do to you,
Jalike us guys let da odda guys go awready,
And we no stay huhu wit dem
Fo all da kine bad stuff dey do to us.
No let us get chance fo do bad kine stuff,
But take us outa dea, so da Bad Guy no can hurt us.
Cuz you our King.
You get da real power,
An you stay awesome foeva.
Dass it!�

Thumbs Up for the Weekend

This has really been a great weekend. After school last week, I really was exhausted on Friday, so I simply came home and did a whole lot of nothing. I cleaned up some messes and watched a very interesting movie, Thirteen Days. It chronicled the specifics of the Cuban Missle Crisis, an event in history of which I was previously quite naive.

Saturday I took the cross country team out to Pleasant Vineyard for some rock climbing, orbitron, canoeing, pizza, and relaxation. Well, relaxation for everybody else, that is. We had a blast though ... and I always love mixing up those worlds ... PVM and CHCA ... and there was even a touch of Miami too, as Annie and Melissa and Amber came out to help out. Here's a picture of the gang on the orbitron:



When we got back to school, I went inside to gather a couple things that I had mistakenly left there on Friday. As I was leaving, I saw the boys soccer team, who had just returned from a 2-0 win. They were heading to Columbus for the Crew (Major League Soccer) game that night. And they happened to have an extra ticket, so I went along. It was so wheat!



Honestly, I had never been to a soccer game of that caliber, and didn't expect it to be very much fun. But it was a blast ... an absolute family environment with some pretty hefty competition. Afterwards, we had the fortune of meeting three of the stars (a CHCA parent arranged it through Athlete's In Action), including Brian McBride, hero of the USA's World Cup. It was an awesome experience.

The rest of the weekend was good, too. I went to the Vineyard this morning, where they finished up a great series. I picked up Till We Have Faces (by C.S. Lewis) from the library, walked in and out of an overpriced Goodwill, watched the Browns tromp the Bungles, went up to camp to get my fishtank and help clean up from a paintball weekend, then came home and sent out a mass email update of my life. All in all it was a good weekend. Oh, yeah.

A Mad Dash

Locks.

I'm hardly someone who gets irritated or angry very easily. You could seriously come up to me on the street and punch me square on the nose, and I'd probably get up and say something like, "Wow, what a great shot. Is your hand ok?" I'd probably be most worried about getting blood everywhere. But as I entered my apartment tonight, I realized a simple fact:

Locks totally perturb me.

In college I didn't lock anything. I kept my dorm room door and windows open all the time ... in fact, it wasn't uncommon to return home and find someone else in my room or to be woken up by a friend climbing in the window. I even kept Geri (my van) unlocked with the keys in the van. I simply didn't have anything to hide ... and if someone really wanted something of mine that bad, they could have it. I trust people, even people I don't know, and I really don't place too much value in material things.

Nowadays I don't mind locking and unlocking my car, simply because it has remote keyless entry. In fact, that's kinda fun, like a miniature remote control for a really fast television. But today as I left school (locking my office and lab behind me) I mistakenly left my car keys in my desk, so I had to use the spare car key. How frustrating, manually opening the door. Then, when I got home, I had to unlock the outside door and the door to my room, all while balancing a load of groceries from Sam's Club.

Argh! Why can't I just walk in? Why is it so important that everything be so secure? Didn't we learn our lesson on 9/11/01 ... no matter how much we plan and control and protect, the only things that really matter anyways are not in our own hands!

Maybe one of these days those retina-scanners in the sci-fi movies will become common, and doors will open automatically when they know we're coming. Maybe America will eventually become like one giant commune (or like the Acts 2 church), where we all share everything and trust each other implicitly. Maybe one day we'll just give it all up.

Or maybe I should just go live in the woods ... again.

Now That's What I Call A Throne

September 10th

You'll notice above that I've made a link to leveled., the online slideshow of pictures that I took last October. I looked at this website again today for the first time in many months, and I was touched by the faces and images contained within it. If you have a few minutes (it takes 3 or 4), it's worth visiting again.

I think that I'm a little too removed from the immediate personal context of the terrorist attacks to have a genuinely appropriate perspective on what is happening in our country. Sure, I see what the media is telling me now, but I know that thousands of families were rocked and millions of people had their lives turned upside-down by this tragedy. Just hearing the testimony of several New York City natives on the radio yesterday had me in tears. And I feel foolish for being so cynical about America's compartmentalized view of September 11th (see my previous post). I apologize.

What is your current reaction, one year later, to the terrorist attacks?

Somebody Help Me!

Lots of What?

Bleached.

I just went to the Bleach cd release party tonight at The Underground in Fairfield. It was great ... after a long day of collecting various pieces of my sanity, I really needed a release like that. What a great band. What a great concert.

Except for the fact that the concert was actually last night. Yep, I missed it. What a bummer. On the way home, though, as I forlornly drove uncharacteristically fast, I was inspired with a new website design.

Don't ask me where that came from ... but I like it. I don't know when it'll actually appear, but I'd venture to guess that it'll be within two months. At least. :)

Bug Genocide

Did you know that they sell underwear for cars? They're called bras ... and they protect the front end of the car from bugs and kicked-up rocks and such. And judging from my experience washing Louie (my car) today, I may just have to buy one. Louie sure is one mad-bug-smashing-machine!

No Shooting Friends

I just saw one of the funniest movie clips ever. it's from Unbreakable, a film with Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson (quite possibly the worst actor on the planet). In this scene, Bruce's son is threatening to shoot him with a loaded gun:

father: if you pull that trigger, the bullet's going to bounce off of me. but then i'm going to go upstairs and pack and i'm going to leave for new york.
joseph: why?
father: because i thought we were just starting to be friends for real. and friends listen to each other and they don't shoot each other. do they, audrey?
mother: no shooting friends, joseph.
father: joseph, you are about to be in big trouble! now i am your father and i'm telling you to put that gun down. 1 ... 2 ...

Remember that, kids. No shooting friends.

Hangtime

I just saw this awesome PowerAde (sp?) advertisement ... it' looked like a traffic copter report on the news, until the camera pans over and sees this woman who is running up a drawbridge. She jumps the bridge ... and it really looks real! Has anyone seen that one?

Sure, I Guess So.

Just Call Me Butch

While cutting my hair this evening, I decided to try a new cutting method with the scissors. Bad game, Lance. Sure, experimentation is fun, but when involving scissors and your own hair, it's not always the best idea. I hacked it up royally. So, joining the ranks of the cartoon characters that keep eating some of the pie to make it look even, I just kept cutting it shorter and shorter.

Oh well ... it's been hot out lately. And I do like wearing hats ...

Whoops!

Hey, who needs locals anyways. It's alright if they fall in the river, they're just locals ...

hmm ...

The Kenwood Apple Store called me today to set up an interview for a part-time job as a Sales Associate. I wouldn't mind a few hours a week in jeans and a black shirt ...

So this is starting to get interesting. As September 11th slowly approaches, it feels like this country doesn't really know what to think. That day still doesn't live in infamy, it's not a historical day yet. The media is tiptoeing around, producing montages and catch-phrases, afraid to step on the nimble toes of the American public. Is there really a victim, an enemy, and an agenda?

I think that the American people have become quite numb, quite passive, relying on the media to tell them how they should feel ... realizing that (for the most part) they're pretty far removed from the incident of September 11th. I sometimes wish that the local news would produce a segment about our failure; that 20/20 would headline our vulnerability and naivet�; that USA Today would run a front page article showing how we deserved it.

I'm having a hard time understanding how this particular tragedy is so much worse than the other thousands of mini-genocides that happen every decade, how those particular 3,000 or so people were so much more valuable or important than the thousands that are murdered around the globe each year. Is it because they're Americans? Is it because they died on our own soil? Is it a pride issue, a power struggle?

Reality hit us. We're not all that big. We're not the boss. And we responded incredulously ... like our nation was hit in the gut and lost its breath. For a brief moment, we became more human ... we talked to strangers, shared our fears, and loved the unlovely. We were grounded.

But it didn't take long ... within the month most of us quickly reverted to our old ways. We're compartmentalized, numb, and self-centered once again. I still get weird looks from strangers when I say something to them that's not surfacy and evasive. The Red Cross is once again short on blood. The quest for significance and meaning is again relegated to evangelical Christians.

What's up with that?