Open Letter to the Growthinistas, Pt. 1.75

Okay, I don't care who you are...THIS is funny...

HT: Vee @ Living Journey

Preaching Through Adversity

Found this article while surfing this morning, watching my boy while my lovely & gracious wife prepares for the day...

The Vampire L'Estat Gets Saved

...well, not really...but the author of the novels he appears in does.

Anne Rice talks about her faith in the Lord Jesus in this article in the Washington Post.

I haven't read her new stuff (a semi-historical-fiction-y treatment of the life of Jesus), largely because I'm already bogged down with other reading, and my "extra-cirricular" "just-for-fun-to-blow-off-steam-and-relax" reading is currently The Dreaming Void by Pete Hamilton - so I don't have time right now.

But since the second book of the Void Trilogy's not due out until tentatively much later this year, after I'm done with TDV, I think Anne Rice's new stuff just might be on the docket...

I must get this book.

The Stand To Reason dudes review a book that sounds awfully interesting: Why We're Not Emergent (by Two Guys Who Should Be).

I must get this book.

Modern Mechanix: "What Will Life Be Like In The Year 2008?"

Interesting retro-look-back article here that gives a pretty interesting look at what life was prognosticated to be like by futurists* in the year 1968.

*Futurist: Someone who predicts what the future will be like based on extrapolations from present-day conditions and reasonable trends. Not to be confused with theological futurists, who (correctly) interpret the Apocalypse as being mostly yet-to-be-fulfilled.

Bob Hyatt: Dialogical Preaching

I find this fascinating. I'm not ready to do this on a regular basis on a Sunday morning - this is a lot more along the lines of what we used to (and will again, once interest in it grows again) do in home fellowships...but it's sort of what we're still able to do at CC Lakeshore on occasion being that we're not much bigger than a typical home fellowship anyway, when I'll ask questions of the congregation during the study - with the purpose of actually getting answers - for the purpose of encouraging real interaction with the Text.

Adoption Day

So my lovely & gracious wife and I pulled in to the driveway of our small yet tiny house Saturday night, after shopping for stuff with which to decorate the sanctuary for Resurrection Morning. Since we'd been out all day (driving almost to Detroit), we hadn't gotten the mail yet, and so my wife went to check it. We'd pulled in to home to get my car, so that after decorating, she could just go home and sleep, knowing I would stay until about 2 a.m. as normal preparing for Sunday morning, and as we'd gotten out of her car, I'd joked, "Gosh, wouldn't it be just swell if the adoption finalizaiton papers came in the mail today and we didn't wind up having to appear before a Wayne County judge and all that...?"

When my wife opened the mailbox, there was a manila envelope there, right on the top of the pile. She hesitated getting the envelope out, but finally did so, and opened it, peeked in - and screamed. She ran to me, and jumped on me. All the while, I'm freaking out myself, wondering what it was. All she could do was hand me the envelope, and I looked in...

ORDER OF ADOPTION
Let it be knonw, that having found...blah, blah, blah...that from this date and henceforth, the parents of the adoptee are: {myself and my wife}, and the name of the adoptee is Masen Elijah Macon

It's over, he's ours, and I still haven't peeled either myself or my wife off the ceiling yet.



To top it all off, the date of the order was March 17th - St. Patty's Day, which is a very significant day for my wife's family (being Irish and all).

Sweet...

...and also just for fun...

One of the blogs that I follow in my Bloglines reader contained an "HT" to another blog (and now that I know what "HT" means - thanks Bri'D), which I jumped to, which led to another, and another, and...

...you get the general idea.

Anyway, one of those blogs contained a pretentious "My Personality Profile" badge on it. Now, I don't put much stock in this sort of thing - I admit, I'm very suspicious of most things psychobabble. My opinion on that has been changing over the years, largely through interaction with another CC pastor who also happens to be a licensed counselor, but even still, the aversion persists...

My natural skepticism amplifies when we get to the subject of "personality profiles," which I tend to view as little different than those fortunes you get out of those really cool cookies you get at the local Chinese restaruant after you pig out responsibly enjoy your Sweet & Sour Chicken. Just general enough to fit anybody, just quasi-specific enough to give people the impression that they're actually accurate.

Sort of like a group-think kind of Rorschach test, that your company usually sinks a lot of good money into that could have gone to profit-sharing.

Argh.

Anyway, it was free; for grins, I took the test.

For further grins, I shared the results with my lovely and gracious wife and a good friend, sort of as a "chuckle chuckle chortle snort" kind of thing.

...they said it nails me.

D'oh.

ENTPs are logical, innovative, curious and downright inventive. They see possibilities for improvement everywhere and possess the ability to understand complex concepts. ENTPs are introspective and carefree nonconformists. They often neglect the more common areas of life while pursuing new solutions. ENTPs can be good conversationalists and exciting company.

About the ENTP Expert Quotes & Links

"ENTPs are idea people. Their perceptive abilities cause them to see possibilities everywhere. They get excited and enthusiastic about their ideas, and are able to spread their enthusiasm to others. In this way, they get the support that they need to fulfill their visions"
- Portrait of an ENTP (The Personality Page)

"It is so natural for these individuals to practice devising gadgets and mechanisms, that they start doing it even as young children. And they get such a kick out of it that they really never stop exercising their inventive bent"
- The Portrait of the Inventor Rational (Keirsey)

"ENTPs are usually verbally as well as cerebrally quick, and generally love to argue--both for its own sake, and to show off their often-impressive skills... argument as a sport."
- ENTP Profile (TypeLogic) "ENTPs contribute an innovative, versatile, and enterprising approach to work. They view limitations as challenges to be overcome and look for new ways to do things. They need to find a niche for themselves in order to be free to maneuver. They prefer the start-up phase of a project rather than the followthrough or maintenance phase. Once the project is designed, they prefer to turn it over to someone else."
- ENTP - The Innovator (Lifexplore)

"...attention seeking, experience junky, insensitive, adaptable, not easily offended, messy, carefree, dangerous, fearless, careless..."
- Jung Type Descriptions (ENTP) (similarminds.com)

It even gives a list of "Other Famous ENTPs," both real and fictional.

Among my apparent "real" ENTP-fellows:

1. Alexander the Great (oh yeah...)


2. Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt (the "Walk Softly But Carry A Big Stick" guy...I knew there was a reason I always liked him...)


3. Richard Feynman (the dude who thought up the entire field of quantum computing)

and others.

I don't get too excited about all that, though, since "Celine Dion" apparently shares my same personality-DNA.

::insert blank stare here::

My fictional personality-mates are even more interesting, including:

1. Cosmo Kramer


2. "Doc" Brown ("...one-point-twenty-one gigawatts!!!)


3. Wile E. Coyote


4. Q (the quasi-omnipotent bane of Captain Jean-Luc Picard)

I'm really not sure what I think about all that...

Anyway, it was fun...now back to real work...

I Are Smart

Well, since everybody else is doing it, I figured - why not.

So I took the Blog Readability Test.

Turns out, this blog will elucidate and entertain a college undergrad.

TV Reviews

Yay, me.

You can't see it, but I'm high-five-ing myself.

Yuddie.