Quote of the Day

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.

--Abraham Lincoln

Spasms, maybe.

I don't know why I just changed the design.

Wow, That's Unique.

Chris was opening AOsmellL CD's for my wall yesterday when he noticed the "unique registration numbers and passwords" included:

eBoy?

This might sound weird, but I was thinking about online dating services today. I've always thought of them as being really lame, really weird, really scary. I know a couple of couples who met online, with mixed results. But for some reason, today it was starting to make a little sense.

Think about it ... right now we're expected to find our spouse, our soulmate, our beloved, by chance. Happenstance and circumstance, combined with proximity and history, set us up with the person we're going to spend the rest of our life with.

When we're looking for a book in the library, we don't skip the card catalog and wander through the shelves. When we need to get some cheese for dinner, we don't put on a blindfold and go into a random building, hoping that it's a supermarket. When we want to call our mother to tell her how much we love her, we don't dial 10 random numbers.

Think about it ... one day online dating and personals will not only be common, they will be the norm. It will be totally weird to hope to find "someone" without at least considering narrowing it all down by personality, interests, hopes and dreams, and creed. Some of us romantics would want to hope that the mystery will still reign supreme, that dating won't become completely cerebral and premeditated ... but I honestly doubt it.

In 5 years, we'll be IMing in video (on our cell phones in 10 years). And by that time you'll hear the genuine philosophical debates emerging:

Is it really weird to find someone online?
What's wrong with searching?
Wanna meet somewhere to discuss it?

Last Supper Sandwiches

Tylenol, Baby.

My parents decided to come down and visit this weekend, so I spent Friday night and Saturday afternoon hosting them at my place. We didn't do much ... I gave them the tour of my workplaces and home (and a mini-tour of downtown), but it was good to spend some time with them and help them realize the concept that I truly am alive and well down here in Cincinnati. I like my parents ... they're really cool. It's kind of fun ... they both have retired this past year and they're just figuring out a lot of stuff again for the first time.

Friday night I went to the best concert I've been to all year. Relient K, Bleach, and two other bands (I can't remember) were all performing at The Underground. I hadn't purchased tickets ahead of time, because I didn't know if I would actually be able to go (with my parents in town and all) ... so when I arrived at 8pm I had to wait in the ticket line. I waited for an entire hour (in the frigid cold) until they told us that they had decided not to sell any more tickets. But it was great ... I could hear the opening band through the crack in the door. It sounded like it would have been an awesome show, if I had only been inside the arena. On my way home, I realized that I haven't been to a real rock show in over a year. So this was definately the best show I've seen all year.

Wow.

My parents left Saturday afternoon, and I spent most of the time since then just reading. I feel like I'm smarter now. And I have a lot of thoughts that I could share, but I just don't want to trivialize them by posting them here. So I'll just end this post with something I realized while on the throne in the bathroom of a mexican restaurant:

Tylenol is lonely T spelled backwards.

The Microsoft Corporation, 1978

Dodgeball!

Remember the days of dodgeball? Elementary school in phys. ed. (or gym, as we called it), boys vs. girls or our team vs. your team. Strategy, speed, diving catches, getting pelted in the face with little balls. I was never very good at it (my arms were literally made of cooked pasta), but I still enjoyed the thrill of the hunt. In fact, I really liked hanging out near the back wall and trying to catch runaway balls. It's funny, such a harmless little sport, but there so many people that think that dodgeball should be banned.

Well, we're in the midst of a dodgeball tournament during recess-time here at school. Each grade (5-8) has been whittled down to the championship team, and then us, the esteemed faculty, get to take them on. Last week we took on the eighth graders ... and I'll admit it, we got totally mauled. These kids can throw ... and they've had years and years to hone their strategies. We, the teachers, were basically coming out of retirement. My noodle-arm got cooked (yes, I'm still sore). But it definately got the blood moving ...

Today we took on the fifth graders. A totally different ballgame. Puberty has not yet set in, even for the girls, so we were a little more evenly matched. Just imagine Billy Madison pummelling first graders ... what a joy. Now don't get me wrong, we had our challenges. I got out on my first throw because I hit one in the head (hey, I was aiming for his legs but he was too short!). And they never get tired ... we were winded after the first game.

Needless to say, we crushed them. next up is the seventh graders on Monday. Can we take them? I'll be practicing all weekend ...

Major Life Accomplishment #4

During my years of high school band, I sat next to Robbie Neidlinger in the trumpet section. We spent hours and hours amusing ourselves and others (but mostly ourselves), making up puns and trying weird feats. I particularly remember one of our quests ... we spent the entirety of my senior year trying to flare one nostril. We tried everything, but neither one of us ever got it. In fact, I've periodically tried to do it over the course of the past 6 years, and I still have never flared one nostril. I've come really close, but that only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

Several of you may know of this quest of mine ... as I have challenged you to try your cartilage out for it. And now, my friend, I present you with this picture:



I promise that I have not digitally edited this picture ... I am really flaring one nostril in the picture. And I've decided to reveal the secret of my success right here on webeldotnet. I'm going to describe, in detail, how you too can flare one nostril. Here's the secret:

Go to the dentist and get a filling.

You see, I've only been to the dentist for minor, piddly things before. Cleanings, free toothbrushes, catching up on the latest issue of Time magazine ... you know, the usual. I have had a couple chipped teeth, but I've never had braces or a cavity or filling or even had my wisdom teeth removed.

Because I finally had dental insurance last year, I decided to go in and get my teeth cleaned by Dr. Fennell, Nate and Matt's dad. While he was in there with the Tilex, Dr. Fennell discovered a couple of minor cavities, so he made an appointment two weeks later to get them fixed. Naturally, it took me a year and two weeks to actually come in for the fillings (I guess I wrote down 2002 instead of 2001).

To make a short story even longer, I finally got those teeth fixed today. In order to fix it, however, the dentist had to numb my gums (say that 10 times fast ... with numb gums). Only he didn't just numb my gums ... he numbed the entire gum region, which we all know includes the cheek, lip, and ... nostril!

So, for another 20 minutes or so, my nostril is immobilized! I can finally do it ... I can flare one nostril! When I discovered this in the car on the way home, I had to get out my camera, right there on I-75, and take a picture. In fact, I took 35 pictures, hoping one would turn out.

I think this is a major turning point in my life. I'm turning over a new leaf, opening my eyes to broader horizons and putting the shadow of the past behind me. If any of you know Robbie or how I can contact him ... please let me know. I need to share the peace and satisfaction I have from this mountaintop experience.

I'm the king of the world!

Really?

Bummer.

Memorable Memoribilia

I was just visiting a website called Red Light Runner, and I saw several items that I own for sale.

They're selling MacQuariums (just like the one in my classroom) for $149.

They're also selling Think Different Posters ... my Kermit one is listed at $120, the Ansel one is $70
Lucy is $90, and Miles rings up at $80. They don't even offer the Bob Dylan poster, as it is very rare (they had to stop printing it for copyright issues). I did just find it on eBay for $250, though.

Help!

I'm standing here in the Apple Store, trapped like a pitiful rodent, and I'm hungry. Won't somebody help? Won't somebody smuggle me a hot dog or a strawberry milkshake or even a cookie?

And I thought Rebooting Was Bad ...

Virtual Facelift

I've just updated all of the pictures on the PVMcamp website, getting rid of the year-old ones that have been there. I also updated the info, fixed a couple bugs with the way Internet Explorer displays the navigational system, and added a better counter. I'm hoping to take some time this week to teach myself Flash (or to start learning it, at least), then put together a new staff recruiting website. The theme? Be Someone's Superhero.

Time to go have some ice cream and make a suprise gift for the cross country team ...

They Deserve It.

You know what makes me happy? Those shopping carts with built-in racecars for kids. You know, the ones where the kids sit in front of the shopping cart and turn the wheel to pretend that they're driving through the supermarket. They have them at Biggs. And that makes me happy.

Caution

Mall Day

Today was a really interesting day. Let me get one thing straight ... I can't stand malls. But throughout the course of the day, I found myself in three different malls, doing very different things, for very different reasons. This might be a weird post, so be sure to take it with a grain of salt.

First, I was scheduled to work this morning at the Apple Store (Kenwood Mall) from 9am to 1pm. It was a fun day ... I really like Saturdays and Sundays, as the pace picks up a lot and the store is always full. I suppose that it'll be more like that everyday as the holidays near ... but anyways, today was really good, I think I'm getting the hang of it.

After lunch and a little reading at home, I decided that I wanted to go watch people a little. It's a hobby I have, just going to a public place and observing the people that pass by. Families, teenagers, old people, couples ... it just cracks me up to see the way they act, the way they talk to each other, the way that they think they're in their own little bubble even more when they're in a crowd. So I decided to go to the Tri-County Mall, as I have never been there before. I have a gift certificate from the track team last year for this mall, so I figured that I might as well see what stores they have. Like I expected, there's really nothing there that I'm interested in, so I don't know how I'm actually going to use that gift certificate (anybody want to trade it for cash?), but I did have an interesting time watching people. More on that later ...

Eventually I decided to round out the day by going to the Forest Fair Mall to watch a movie. It was called One Hour Photo, and it featured Robin Williams as Seymore Parrish, a photo clerk obsessed with the Yorkin family. It explored an interesting theme ... a loner, supposedly in the shadow of society, obsessed with having a "normal" life, decides to make doubles of pictures from a family, posting them on his wall and following their every move. Despite what the bulk of the public probably thought about Sy (namely, "what a creep"), I felt a suprising amount of compassion for the guy. He said that he was a "fat kid" who never really had friends growing up ... on top of that, there are several hints that he was abused as a child. And the driving force behind his intrusions into the Yorkin family are his desire to have them become a real family (and even his family, hence the name "your kin"). Seymore finds out that the Yorkin father is cheating on his wife and neglecting his son (hence the name "see more perish") and decides to do something drastic about it (because nobody else will). The movie itself leaves the storyline and motives open, not resolving the plot but leaving so many things open to speculation.

Kids, listen up ... I'm not endorsing this movie ... it's not a movie I'd recommend to anyone under the age of 20. You may not realize it, but a middle school kid, no matter how mature, simply is not able to handle or understand some themes maturely.

Here's the thing ... after spending time today in the mall "watching people", I felt weird. I just watched this movie about a "creep" who invaded other people's lives through his connection with them in public (he develops their pictures). Does that make me a creep? Is it "weird" or "scary" that I like to sit in crowds of people and watch them interact, watch them be sheep, watch them be real and unreal?

I think the real creepy thing aren't the people watching .... it's the people that have so much to hide. I live my life completely transparently ... I have no qualms about sharing anything with anyone. The only boundaries I have are the necessary ones between a teacher and student, and sometimes I even resent those. This is a conscious decision ... I am living as a child of God, doing my best to please Him and follow His commands. And even when I fail it doesn't make me ashamed or guilt-ridden ... it is a learning experience. I want to live unashamed, without fear of other people, because I do not answer to them. I come before the God of the universe as my judge, and He is not fooled by feeble attempts to hide behind "privacy."

Isaiah writes "Woe to those who go to great depths to hide their plans from the LORD, who do their work in darkness and think, 'Who sees us? Who will know?'"

David says "If I say, 'Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,' even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you."

And if you've ever read through John 3:16 to see the rest of the chapter, you'd read "This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God."

We should have nothing to hide. Right?

Redneck Horseshoes