Matrix Ping Pong

This is one of the funniest and most creative things I've seen all year. Matrix meets table tennis, baby.

[via bb]

Undigestion

Mmm, carbonated milk.

Redigestion

Our dog, Chewie (I call him "dog") just barfed on the carpet. My roommate made him lick it up. Yummy.

Time for Change

Ah, the joys of retail jobs.

How?

I don't know which is worse:

More copies of the IKEA catalogue are being printed this year (130 million total) than than are copies of the Bible.

A church elder "performing an exorcism" on an 8 year old autistic boy killed him by sitting on his chest daily for three weeks (sometimes two hours at a time).

Did I really want to start reading the news again after camp this summer? Perhaps a certain degree of ignorance is wise ...

[via relevant]

Evidently.

I think my new favorite word is "evidently." It's simply a great way to start sentences when you find out something suprising and new.

Case #1. A way of subtly expressing sarcasm at the unexpected way new information was just thrust upon you. For example:

Evidently I have four more classes this year than expected.
Evidently our network administrator is resigning in two weeks.
Evidently BW3's has really expensive wings made of cardboard.
Evidently the video equipment I need for the workshop I'm about to teach has been "borrowed."
Evidently the drain in my bathtub is clogged.
Evidently I drove without car insurance for almost two months.
Evidently our servers are down today.
Evidently I have seven straight classes on Wednesdays.
Evidently I should change my address (two weeks later).
Evidently the alarm clock function on my iPod doesn't always feel like working.
Evidently television really is an electric drug.
Evidently facial hair is extremely intimidating to adolescents.

Case #2. A means to describe wonderful and exciting information that has just come to your attention. For instance:

Evidently someone in this apartment complex has a wireless hub.
Evidently I can live for a month on camp food leftovers.
Evidently I left a dollar bill in the pocket of these jeans.
Evidently my class sizes will be much smaller this year.
Evidently I'm now able to ad-lib all of my technology workshops.
Evidently the Klendworths are in town.
Evidently the kids on my cross country team can run like the wind.
Evidently dogs are really good at cleaning dirty dishes for you.
Evidently we don't have to wear orange shirts to work at Apple anymore.
Evidently Brian and Val had their baby, Caleb Martin.
Evidently facial hair is extremely intimidating to adolescents.

Overall, I highly recommend incorporation of this fine word into your lexicon. It will enhance the quality of your interactions, bring a hightened sense of awareness to the suprising turns that life can throw at you, and bring smiles to the faces of the people around you.

Or something like that, evidently.

20 Questions

Check out 20 Questions. All you have to do is think of an object then answer the computer's questions, one by one. It successfully guessed that I was thinking about a human being in 13 questions, a speaker, a CD, and carpet in 19 questions, masking tape and a wall in 28 questions, and foot fungus, a street car, and a pane of glass in 29 questions.

It'll provide endless hours of fun for the entire family. Or 5 minutes of amusement for you, I suppose.

The New Mallrat.

35 years old.
Dark, nervous, unkempt hair.
Avoiding eye contact like the plague.
Sitting indian style outside the Apple Store.
Hunched over the laptop on his laptop.
Ganking the wireless Internet connection.
Self-satisfied in his avoidance of dial-up constipation.
Afraid to step inside the store and have a conversation.

He Drew the Winning Number.

So this ordinary guy has been infatuated with Drew Barrymore since the 2nd grade (when she was in E.T.). He's broke except for the $1,100 he won on a game show ... so he borrow's a friend's credit card, buys an expensive camera from Circuit City, and has 30 days to document his quest to get a date with Drew (before the return policy on the camera runs out). Check out the trailer, it's well worth the minute of your time.

Leave it to Dunf.

Yeah, Pizza Tattoo Day.

Here you go, Sarah. Happy?

So I'm sitting here, once again united with my cozy pink pappizan (bowl chair), soaking in some hours of empty time. That's right, folks, it's six in the evening and I have absolutely nothing that I need to do before I go to bed. How glorious.

I'm watching the World Series of Poker on television right now. It's true ... T.V. is the electric drug. It's only my second day having a television near me in the last eight or nine months, and I'm already drawn to it. But I think it's ok, for now at least ... because I'm watching poker, of course. It's hilarious to see these guys and their emotions. Sure, they're betting hundreds of thousands of dollars, but some of them are still way too into this. The best thing about poker on T.V.? Definitely the cinematography ... whoever is shooting this thing is brilliant.

On a related note, I hear that Poker Night at Miami is still going strong ... in fact, the poker table I procured for it a couple of years ago has been covered with some new cloth and is buffed and ready for another year. Bring that.

So now I'm living in my new apartment in West Chester. It's actually rather nice ... at this point I still haven't moved my stuff out of storage, so I'm living just with my camp things. It's clean and simple, uncluttered and uncomplicated. I'm hesitant to get the rest of my earthly possessions ...

My roommate, Mark Killian, is a teacher at the high school ... it's actually pretty interesting how our paths have crossed during the past few years. Mark went to Miami (as did I), lived in Oxford for the past few years, came out to PVM for a couple retreats, was one of the founding members of Cobblestone Community Church (a sort of off-shoot from OBF, my church), coaches the middle school football team (while I'm coaching cross country), and lives in the same apartment as I. But we hardly met last year, even though I think we share the same heart (in many ways) for the kids at CHCA. It's good stuff, I tell ya. Good stuff.

For all of you who've been trying to get ahold of me by phone for the past month, I've finally determined that my phone is dead. Kapoot, six feet under, bit the dust, like a doornail, dead meat, wormfood, terminated. The good news, however, is that I've replaced it ... so I should be back up and running if you wanna give me a call.

Hmm, what else ... I took a road trip last weekend to North Carolina with Amber, Billy (Thorpe, not Maynard), and Katie Whys to visit Becky and Wicker (and the random family they were staying with). The stories are probably too numerous to mention ... but it was a good time, that's for sure. I got some mean scrapes on my face (from a killer swing), square-danced in the middle of the street, had an inspirational conversation with a seven-year-old on the side of a mountain, went jumping into the base of a waterfall, and drove Louie on a roller-coaster mountain road (near the Blue Ridge Parkway).

Today I went back to school to start cleaning out my room and office ... what a chore that's going to be. I kinda picked up and left suddenly in June, leaving quite a mess behind as I took off for three months of camp. It's kinda relaxing just to be cleaning and organizing, but the task seems almost monumental. We'll see how it goes the next couple of days.

At Apple this week I'm co-leading a computer camp for kids ... it's the result of a promotion that the store ran to give families who bought computers this summer a chance to send their kids to a week of camp for free. It's kind of crazy ... the curriculum is really loose, providing for a lot of freedom and uncertainty as to how we're going to entertain teach these kids for 2.5 hours every day. But it's fun ... I like improvising in front of the kids, reading their attention level and competencies, challenging them and changing gears midstream. The advanced class (Tuesday and Thursday) is cake, but the beginning class (MWF) is going to present quite a challenge. I have no clue what we're going to do with the kids tomorrow to keep their attention for the entire time. Hopefully the creative juices will start flowing as I hit the pillow tonight. We'll see.

Ok, folks, I'm outtie. Gonna go do some rollerblading in the new neighborhood. See ya.

Thrice as Nice.

What kind of glue do you need?

It costs $263.12 to divorce your wife via text message in Malaysia.

Yawning is more contagious for empathetic people.

How Relaxicious.

I'm thinking about going to the chiropractor just because he's there. Or perhaps I should just go for some of this.

Resurfacing.

Now this is weird, sitting down to write a post for my website. I've done this about a dozen times this summer, only to abandon it because it seemed like too monumental of a task to complete. But this time I'm going to go ahead and post whatever I get typed, no matter how incomplete or insufficient it may seem. The ice has to be broken sometime.

I think it's hilarious that you guys posted so many comments in my absence ... it's sweet that webeldotnet became a medium for your conversations. Hopefully that trend will continue, especially now that you camp people have joined the conversation! Sweet, yo!

So yes, camp is done for the summer. I'm still living out here for a few more days as the staff starts to trickle out and we clean up the campgrounds and such. We've got about three weeks until school starts ... three glorious weeks of rest and transition. I'll be moving (once again) to West Chester, re-writing some curriculum, taking a couple roadtrips, finishing up the camp multimedia stuff, and preparing my soul to head back into the schoolyear with intentional compassion.

To start to tell stories about what happenned this summer, or even to summarize it all, would be ludicrous. Every moment was saturated, dripping with excitement, insanity, emotion, creativity, passion, laughs, and difficult decisions. On top of all of that, I haven't yet had a chance to really sit down and process it all, to have some quality alone time to reflect and rest and recover and relax. So I'm just going to avoid talking about it at all. :)

So instead I'll simply nurse my poison ivy, stretch my tired muscles, and leave you these few words. Goodnight.