Collateral Bloggage

Yes, I know I normally do book reviews in my Monday Morning Musings posts.  But I didn’t do one this week, and I wanted to have one queued up for Saturday Book Reviews over at Semicolon.  The Fair Elaine suggested I go with Wordful Wednesday, and I think it’s brilliant.  It has the added bonus of not being a real word as near I can tell.  But the best part about it is that it makes nice counterpoint to TFE’s Wordless Wednesday. Oh, and I can be a bit more verbose if I give a book its own post.

I may at some point just ditch the whole daily themes thing and just post what I want, when I want.  Stay tuned.

So, to the book reviewage!

The title of Dean Koontz’s Relentless could describe the author himself as he marches on a two-titles-a-year pace that shows no sign of letting up. Instead, it refers to the antagonist of his latest thriller.  Or does it?  Wait and see.  It could just as easily refer to the pace of this book.  Sometimes I like a more cerebral approach to a thriller, though I can’t think of an example off the top of my head.

The thing that drives the pace of the book is the peril and the visceral connection it makes with a reader.  At least a reader with a young son.  Because the book is about a man whose entire family is under threat of gruesome, horrifying death.  It starts benignly enough, with an author (Cullen Greenwich, inexplicably nicknamed “Cubby”) receiving his first “serious” book review by a leading (read: out of touch) reviewer.  Of course, the author finds himself missing some of his viscera after reading the review, and notes how poorly written and factually incorrect the review was.  Told repeatedly by his wife to not respond, he opts for the next best thing:  he stalks him.

Okay, he doesn’t so much stalk him as he tries to get a look at the guy.  And then things go badly.  There’s an unfortunate encounter with the trollish man (Shearman Waxx) in a restaurant lavatory, which ends with one word from the antagonist: “Doom.”

Greenwich doesn’t take it too seriously, but after a blatant (and nonviolent) invasion of his home followed by a middle-of-the-night (and violent) attack, he realizes he’s in deep.  Even then, it takes a phone call from another author who received the same treatment (and more, terribly more) to get him moving.

The rest of the book follows Greenwich and his family as they run from Waxx, who seems to be nearly omniscient and omnipresent.  What his motivation is, I won’t reveal.  Who he works for, I won’t reveal.  But it’s certainly a novel idea.  Suffice it to say that Waxx represents some very different viewpoints to those expressed in Greenwich’s work.

I’m a big fan of Koontz’s mostly clutter-free writing, and I’m even a fan of his predictable quirks. This one had a pretty good grab-bag of them. There was a prominent dog, a couple of quick stops at churches (with obligatory mention of the nave, narthex, and sacristy), a gifted child, a main character with a secret past, and a few mentions of architecture.

While reading this one, I picked up on a couple of other things Koontz features that I really approve of.  They include:

• A very happily married couple.  Koontz seems to believe that traditional families are actually good things.
• Stark contrast between evil and good characters.  He’s definitely not onboard with moral relativism.

How gripping did I find the book?  Well, I strongly considered violating my don’t-read-Koontz-after-10pm rule.  Why that rule?  Well, Koontz is very inventive in coming up with extremely bad bad guys, and Relentless was one of the better examples of his skill.  And I’m prone to both vivid nightmares and somnambulance (sleep-walking).  These are traits that should not be combined.  So instead I try to read something funny or inspirational right before turning in.  Not that Koontz’s work is bereft of inspiration.  But I don’t go for scary stuff before bed.  You might also gather that I don’t do horror movies.

The “secret past” of the protagonist gets its own chapter, and it plays out well (as opposed to the slow unraveling of it in Dark Rivers of the Heart that somehow made something horrifying also very boring, at least on audio).  It’s all narrated in the first person present, which just seemed like the perfect way to do it.  By the way, the entire book is told in first person.  Seems like about half of Koontz’s works are.

Just as a warning, there was a larger than usual suspension of disbelief necessary here, though not when compared with Odd Thomas or Lightning, I suppose.  In fact, the climax of the book had something in common with Galaxy Quest, of all things.  Let me know if you find it.

The ending was appropriate if not completely satisfying.  Perhaps Koontz could’ve made a different decision about the scope of the antagonist’s conspiracy and gone with a more conventional ending.  But it still worked.  I particularly admired the last paragraph of the book.  I’ve left out the first sentence of it, as it might be spoilery.  But here’s the rest of it:

Evil itself may be relentless, I will grant you that, but love is relentless, too.  Friendship is a relentless force.  Family is a relentless force.  Faith is a relentless force.  The human spirit is relentless, and the human heart outlasts—and can defeat—even the most relentless force of all, which is time.

I believe this is now my longest non-Theology Thursday book review. Fun!

(Bonus points to anyone who noticed this went out yesterday.  I was obviously time-skewed.)

One of the things that really bugs me these days is when Christians throw around the word “heresy.”  My current attitude is that if you resort to accusing the person on the other side of your argument of heresy, you’ve just lost the argument.  This isn’t to say that heresy doesn’t exist, of course, but how do we define it, exactly?  For a Catholic, with a monolithic Church and an authoritative Magisterium (the Teaching Office of the Church), it’s pretty easy to define.  Anything that doesn’t match up with the Catechism would qualify as heresy.

But what about for the rest of us?  How do we define heresy?  What should our reaction be to encountering it?  I think 2 John has a pretty good summary of both:

Certainly, “the truth about Christ” could be interpreted fairly broadly, but John actually already did us the favor of defining his terms:

Back in 1 John, there was an additional way to get called “antichrist,” and that involved denying that Jesus was the Messiah. But basically it boils down to denying that Christ was who he said he was.

Some will argue that denying the Trinity is heresy. Or that the ideas of Calvinism/Arminianism are heresy. (Yes, those groups tend to bandy that word around a fair bit. Interestingly, Open Theists, who disagree with both of them, rarely try to lose the argument in this way.) Others will accuse those with a non-traditional view of Hell or Satan of heresy. I don’t see John doing that.

This is actually one of the things I really liked about John R.W. Stott’s Basic Christianity.  We tend to over complicate just what are the crucial doctrines of Christianity.  But if it’s boiled down to the nature of Christ and his work, that’s probably a good place to stand.  Everything else is peripheral.  Not unimportant, but peripheral.

The interesting thing about the 2 John passage is verse 11: “Anyone who encourages such people becomes a partner in their evil work.”

I’ll admit, I read quite a few books containing what some would call heretical views.  There’s The Shack, which has strong Universalist underpinnings, as well as heterodox stylings of the Trinity (identified as Modalism by more than one argument-losing pastor using the “H” word).  And there’s The Origin and History of the Doctrine of Endless Torment, which espouses a Universalist view.  I even read a book called Why the Jews Rejected Jesus, which basically says it’s because he wasn’t the Messiah.  Or how about (try not to scream) the book I read that purported to explain how to be a Christian and believe in evolution? (Saving Darwin, and it didn’t really accomplish its goal.)

A friend of mine actually expressed concern that I might somehow damage my faith when I told him I was reading a book by a Christian author who doesn’t believe in Satan.  (For some reason I didn’t do a full write-up on that very poor book, but I gave a brief explanation of how bad it was in my 2008 Reading Recap – it’s #9).

So am I encouraging these people?  Am I becoming a partner in their evil work?  I don’t actually think so.  First, I don’t believe their work is evil, because none of these works meet John’s criteria of denying Christ (well, except the one by the Jewish guy, and it’s not like that was unexpected).  So it’s true, as you may have inferred, that I don’t believe that views on Hell, the Trinity, or Creation/Evolution are really very important.  Well, okay, important but not matters where the “H” word should be thrown around.

Basically, I think it boils down to not supporting Christians who hold abberent views of Jesus.  Claiming he wasn’t really a human being, or that he wasn’t the Messiah.  Those things are worth fighting over.  The others we should allow some latitude on.  It’s okay for people to be wrong about peripheral issues.  But we’re generally not comfortable with that.

Thoughts?  Wow did I ramble on this!

(Somewhere in this post is a deliberate misspelling.  It’s a movie reference.  Bonus points to any who can figure it out.  The Fair Elaine already found it and was appalled.)

I’m not sure if this holds true for most readers, but I actually don’t read many books that I plan on reading.  I know that sounds confusing, but what I mean is that I tend to just read whatever the winds of chance send me.  I subscribe to the Library’s RSS feed for new materials, and I generally get about 20% of my reading ideas from there (and I know this because I just checked my list, and six of the thirty I’ve read this year came from there.  That’s enough math for this blog post.)  But the vast majority of reading I do comes from some form of word-of-mouth.  I’ll hear an author on the radio, I’ll read a blog post about an upcoming movie and spoil it by reading the book first, I’ll bounce around Amazon’s “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” list or I’ll simply get a book recommendation or “have you heard of?” from a friend.

So, I’m making a goal to start reading more books I actually want to read (by the way, I checked my list, and my “planned” reading stands at about 30%).  Which means I need to consider what books should go on that list.  This is separate and distinct from the list of books I’d like to like to read. That latter list includes:

1. Twilight – I know I’d be cool if I read it, but I just can’t summon the will to want to. Plus, my sister read it and said it was for girls. So as a man of the male gender, I refuse.
2. War and Peace – Now this one properly goes under my list of books I wish I’d already read. It’d work well for literary one-upsmanship. “Well, I read War & Peace.” Kinda like Brian Regan’s “I walked on the moon” bit.
3. N.T. Wright’s Christian Origins and the Question of God series.  2100 pages.  I love Bishop Wright, but this just isn’t going to happen.
4. John Adams, by David McCullough.  It’s too big.  It’d throw off my book-a-week pace.  But I could’ve gotten it at the Library Book Sale for $2 last fall.  Still kicking myself about that.  By the way, the miniseries was awesome.
5. Any random smattering of “Leadership”/”Career”/”Self-Improvement” titles.  Seems too much like work to me.
6. Moby Dick.  I’ve heard Melville is tedious, and I’m not into tedium.  I already read The Historian (not by Melville, but tedious).

It’s odd that I’m having trouble coming up with titles for that list.  But off the top of my head, here are some books I’d like to read:

1. Slaughterhouse-five, by Kurt Vonnegut. Not sure why, but this one makes the list.
2. Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger. Mostly this feels like an obligation.
3. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller. I’ve heard it’s cool.
4. The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett.   Just because.
5. Emma, by Jane Austen.  My wife tells me that I cannot read this before she does.  Sounds like a race to me…
6. The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumass.  Because I loved The Count of Monte Cristo.
7. Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stephenson.  Pirates.  Need I say more?
8. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe.  Elaine told me I should.
9. The Life of Pi, by Yann Martel.  Heard it’s awesome.
10. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini.

Hmm…I thought for sure I’d come up with more for this list.  Obviously I need help.  But if I take recommendations, then they’re not ones I want to read.   Ah, I’ve got it.  You’ll just be helping me remember titles I’ve been wanting to read.  That’s the ticket!

Any recommends?

— – —

The IRS just informed me that they think I shorted them out of $2k on my 2007 return.  I’m fairly certain I didn’t, and I blame TurboTax if I did.  So now I get the fun of sifting through my meticulously organized scattered records to figure out what happened. I do rather like how it took them fourteen months to figure this out.  I don’t like the fact that I’ll bet I end up having to pay.

— – —

Yes, I’m writing about strawberries again.  You’ve now missed out on Hood strawberries.  They’re gone until next June.  But Albions are also really good, and they’ll be at the markets for a few weeks at least.  The nice thing about Albions is that they last longer before going bad.  With Hoods, you’ve got basically 36 hours to use them, and then they’re gone (and we made a bunch of Freezer Jam, which is awesome).  Albions are a little hardier.  And they’re big and beautiful.  So pick some up!

Late again, I know.  But it’s still Monday Morning somewhere!

The latest audio book I’ve listened to is Uranium: War, Energy and the Rock That Shaped the World, by Tom Zoellner. It’s a really fascinating story, and the audio book is fairly well done. My one real quibble with it is the decision of the narrator to use “authentic” accents when reading quotes from interviews with the various figures in the story.

His accents are mostly okay, although his German tends to get mixed with a bit of Russian/Czech. The only powerfully bad one is his Aussie accent. Admittedly, it’s a tricky accent to do, and I once knew a guy from Australia who had trouble keeping his own accent straight (of course, he moved to the U.S. when he was seven, so there’s no question that he was faking it).

My thinking is, it’s a nice idea to do the accents to break up some of the monotony of a narrator’s voice, but if they’re not really well executed, it detracts from the narrative. I don’t call myself an expert on accents (though my friends say I’m quite adept), but I usually find that less is more.

By the way, it’s an interesting book, especially if you’re interested in the history of The Bomb, and what it means when a nation is “enriching” uranium, and that kind of thing.

— – —

I’ve just read an early favorite for my Favorite Book of the Year, and it’s my magic Number 30 for the year.  There’s just something nice about cresting that number.  The book?  Escape From the Deep: The Epic Story of a Legendary Submarine and Her Courageous Crew, by Alex Kershaw.

I’d heard that a film is in the works, and being a bibliophile, I just had to read the book first.  It was utterly riveting.  I stopped reading everything else and took it with me wherever I went.  Couldn’t put it down.  I can’t say enough about it.  And I can’t say any more without spoiling it, so if you read on, it’s on your head.

Basically, the book covered the fourth and fifth (final) patrols of the USS Tang, the most decorated submarine of WWII.  On the fifth patrol, the sub sank a number of enemy ships, but their final torpedo malfunctioned.  It circled back and exploded on impact with the after section of the sub.  The 300-foot sub sank in 180 feet of water (meaning it was at an angle for some time).  A group of men escaped from the bridge, and another group escaped from the ocean floor after filling the ballast tanks to sink the boat the rest of the way.    They were the only sailors to escape from a submarine during the war.  To put that in perspective, some 3500 sailors were lost in subs during the war.

Of course, they escaped into enemy waters and were soon picked up by the Japanese.  They spent nearly a year as POWs, albeit without being officially listed as POWs (in other words, the Japanese didn’t play fair in their handing of them).

Like I said, it’s just a completely riveting story.  Tragic in parts, of course, since very few men escaped the sub at all.  But the story of survival is amazing.

— – —

Ethan and I have become fans of Ninja Warrior on G4.  We spent quite a bit of time yesterday watching it (the Mariner’s game wasn’t coming through on FIOS, and then it was).  If you’re a fan of Wipeout, you’d probably love Ninja, because it’s just way cooler.  The challenges are larger in scale, and the competitors tend to be a step up from what you’ll see on Wipeout (although the average Joe thing does make Wipeout interesting).

The best part, of course, is listening to the hyperactive Japanese announcer giving the play-by-play (as opposed to the snarky-American-doofuses on Wipeout).  I like to think I could give Stage 1 a good run, but I probably couldn’t.  And Stage 2 would probably be the death of me.  Fun to watch, though.

I don’t normally do much blogging on weekends.  I certainly jot down ideas or placeholders for Monday Morning Musings or Theology Thursdays, but normally I don’t post anything.  But it’s Father’s Day weekend.  And so I blog.

I love being a dad. Since Ethan arrived, I’ve often wished we’d started having kids earlier, because I find being a dad such a cool experience. Oh, there are definitely trying moments, but overall being a dad ranks as awesome.

Not long ago, I was out throwing fly balls for Ethan, and he had a breakthrough. Suddenly, he was catching more than he was dropping. I started lowering the throws a bit and eventually they were more like throws to first base, and he was gloving nearly all of them. After we’d thrown nine or ten back and forth without one hitting the ground, I realized we were “having a catch.”

A big, dumb, uncontrollable grin broke out on my face, and initially I thought it was just that I was really proud of my son. Since then, though, it’s occurred to me that many of my best memories with my dad revolve around sports, and baseball most of all (on account of playing baseball more than other sports, with hockey a close second).

Anchorage isn’t exactly rich in sporting events one can attend, but I remember going to see the Bucs and the Pilots (Cook Inlet League Baseball…I know, that game again) quite a number of times with the old man.  And we caught our share of Seawolves games (UAA Hockey).  But mostly the memories are of playing sports.

Of course, it’s not like all my childhood memories with Dad involve sports.

I can remember the smell of Dad’s lab (where he let me play with the colored chalk and found out I’m right-handed at a chalkboard but lefty elsewhere…I didn’t find that out until college).  And his yellow notepads.  I doodled away on quite a few of those while hanging out in his office.

And I remember a lot of instances of pressing my cheek up against Dad’s scruff so he’d do the jaw-clenching thing I thought was so awesome.  Or trying to squeeze between his ankles while he was standing so he’d give me the calf-flex-ribcage-crusher.

Why do so many of my memories involve muscles flexing?  Maybe it’s that a son revels in his dad’s strength.  Funny how that gets flipped on its head later on.  I remember Dad waking me up one morning (which I believe was about as much of a chore as I now have trying to wake my son), squeezing my arm and saying, “Feel the arms on that kid!” to no one in particular.

And I remember appreciating that Dad didn’t put pressure on me about things.  I remember bringing home a report card with something sub-par on it (could’ve been a C, might’ve been a D – that one quarter of U.S. Government), but Dad didn’t come down on me.  “You can do better,” was all he said.  He was right.  And I did.  And it made it all the more awesome when I was working at Longs Drugs after my best semester at George Fox and Dad came driving up to hand me my report card (which had just arrived).  Straight A’s.  To me, it was no big deal, but it felt good because I knew Dad liked it.  You should’ve seen his grin.

But back to sports. Maybe it’s funny that most of my memories of Great Sports Exploits stem from my Little League days.  But that’s the way it worked for me.  I was much more into sports in grade school than afterward.

There’s something just so good and right about a dad being involved in his son’s sports life, and I’m really glad I have so many of those memories.  I can vividly remember looking for my dad after scoring a goal (or two) in hockey, or spotting him on the sidelines of an outdoor game, shaking (shivering doesn’t begin to cover it, and you’d understand if you knew my dad).  And how can I forget how Dad tried (mostly in vain) to learn to skate so he could share some rink time with me?  I’d be surprised if the injuries he sustained in that pursuit don’t still pain him.

My favorite memories, however, are of baseball.  I know.  Shocker.

I remember many a night, throwing with my dad until he’d start to complain about his arm being shredded.  Of course, I now know what that feels like, after having my son insist that he’d like to catch twenty, then fifty, then one hundred fly balls as his skill has increased.  But I do like to throw, so it’s a good soreness.

(By the way, just in case there’s any question about Ethan’s future Favorite Sports Memories with Dad, he can name the Mariners’ starting lineup and most of their reserves and probably everybody in the bullpen.  And he can tell you their uniform numbers.  And show you their batting stances.  You could say I’ve succeeded in imprinting baseball on him.)

Dad was always quick to praise me when I’d make a good play on defense (two unassisted double-plays at third base in one game!), but here’s what I remember most:

I was always a nervous batter.  There’s something about the way you can hear yourself breathe in a battered, oversize batting helmet.  Makes you nervous.  I never had the quickest bat, so I always had to make sure my timing was right.  And I really wanted to get a hit.  Because dad was right behind me.

No, he wasn’t the ump.  He’d always (or at least frequently) wander over behind the backstop to watch me hit.  He wasn’t overbearing, never once issuing me a “Come on, Seth!  Lay off the high ones!”  No, instead, here’s what he’d say:

“Okay, Seth.”

That’s it.  Right as I stepped into the batter’s box, that’s what I’d hear.  And what  a packed phrase it was.  I knew what it meant.  Dad’s watching, and he knows what I can do.  And he doesn’t expect me to knock the sky down or anything.  Just do my best.  I loved that there was no pressure there.

Of course, I struck out my share  of times.  But I also got my share of solid hits.  I was never the kid who hit the ball over the fence, but I could usually find a hole.  And after I’d get to first, or second, or sometimes third, I’d see Dad wandering back over to the bleachers with this big, dumb, uncontrollable smile on his face.

Now I know what that smile was all about.

Love you, Dad.  Happy Father’s Day.

Obama taking a hard line on fly terrorism

WASHINGTON, DC — President Obama is making it clear he’s not taking any guff from flying insects. While filming an interview with CNBC, Obama administered an epic beatdown to a particularly persistent pest.

(video embedded)

Many are praising the President’s initiative and fly-killing technique, saying that this country needs decisive and inspired leadership in the larger war on vermin.

Still others worry that such an aggressive response will only serve to embolden the fringe factions in the fly community, leading to an escalation in fly terrorism.

Source: O.Handwasher, proud member of the National Rubberband Association, dedicated to arming the citizenry against the forces of crawling and flying creepiness.

Bible Read-through update: I’m a bit off the schedule for covering the NT twice. I’m up to 1st Peter, and I really need to finish my first pass this month to stay on track. In the OT, I was severely derailed by the genealogies in 1 Chronicles (and by really not getting enough sleep).

I’ve been tossing around, in my own mind, this question: “Should I worry about reading the genealogies?” So far, my answer still comes back “Yes,” even though I happen to know that a certain pastor who encourages Bible-reading skips them. Maybe I’m just a perfectionist when it comes to reading, and since the Bible counts as a book on my List of Fifty for the year, I don’t want to say I read it unless I really read it.

And really, should a Bible read-through be easy? This morning I came across 1 Chronicles 21, the passage where the plague (sent as a judgment for David taking a census) stops, and David goes to the home of the location the plague stopped and tells the owner he wants to buy the building and offer sacrifices there.  The owner, Araunah, offers to make the whole place a gift, and even to give David the cattle and grain for the offering.  But David refuses, and has one of my favorite lines in the whole Bible:

I’ve written in the past that Bible reading is easy for me. It’s an ingrained part of my morning routine, and it really doesn’t take a particular effort on my part to do it. After all, I’m constantly reading something, so reading a particular thing is no big deal.  Maybe the difficulty I’m having this year is God trying to tell me that he wants my offering to cost me something.

I think this goes for many areas of ministry, as well.  When I sing at church, it takes time, it take rehearsal, and it causes me some nervousness.  These are all costs, and they’re generally asssumed to be negatives.  But when I consider that some pain in an offering is a good thing, it changes the perspective somewhat.

I’m sure there are many other areas this would apply to, but I’m going to leave it at that for today.

I recognize I didn’t MMMuse last week.  Family in town.  Priorities and all that rot.  Anyhoo…

I didn’t really watch the NBA Finals, even though I used to be a huge basketball fan.  (That was back before I discovered that baseball is the Only Sport Worth Watching.)

Maybe the fact that the Lakers took two games on Orlando’s floor takes the wind out of what I’m about to write about, but since I actually wrote it before the Finals began, I’m keeping it.

And here it is (see if you can detect my very subtle yet virulent preference for baseball):  Why, exactly, is Home Court Advantage important in any way in basketball?

In baseball, Home Field Advantage is easy enough to understand. Baseball fields aren’t all carbon copies of each other. Some are domes, some aren’t (and you can play the ball off the catwalks in the domes). Some have quirky outfield fences or obscene amounts of foul ground (Oakland). So knowing your own field could help.

There’s also the issue of the Home Team having last-ups.  Let’s say a game goes extra innings.  The home team knows that if they score a run, the game is over.  The visitor has to get a lead and then hold it. That’s a definable advantage for the home squad.

But with the NBA, how’s it work, exactly? Okay, sure, the home team will be loud. But that’ll happen in any arena. So the noise level can’t really be a factor. The basket’s at the same height, and the court’s the same length, and the first possession is determined by the tip-off. So where’s the advantage?

I’m forced to conclude that the Home Team will normally get more Home Court Calls by the officials. Which is really, really lame. Am I wrong here? Somebody enlighten me, because this seems to be just another reason baseball is superior.

Oh, and congrats to the Lakers.  Since I don’t really watch, I don’t have any particular opinion about who should’ve won.  I like Dwight Howard better than Kobe Bryant, but I don’t have the pathological hatred of Kobe that some have.  (Nor do I harbor particularly ill fillings toward a certain formerly-Twins-catcher-now-playing-in-Chicago.  Like how I still brought this around to baseball?)

— – —

I ran (if you can call it that) a 10K on Saturday.  Colin dragged me for the last two miles, and it was my fault for starting us off a little fast.  Maybe if I’d tempered my enthusiasm a bit, we’d have come in at a lower time.  Still, we started running and didn’t stop for 6.2 miles.  That’s something.

— – —

If you don’t know the Hoods are in at the Farmer’s Market, you are hereby notified of your First Warning.  Your Second Warning will occur if you do not consume some of them by next week.  Don’t make my kick you out of Oregon.

(And if you don’t know what Hoods are, please don’t tell me.  I may have to issue you a bit of a fustigation.)

(They’re strawberries, but you didn’t hear it from me.)

— – —

Well, it’s time for the Baseball wrap.  The season is done, and Ethan wishes we had another game tonight.  It was a fun experience, and if I do it again next year, I’ve learned some valuable lessons, and if some of the kids (and dads) return, it could be a whole lot easier than this season.

Some highlights:

1. My son never having to hit off the tee.  Because he’s awesome.
2. Two flyballs caught by one of my guys in one inning (and then he doubled off the runner at first both times).  Yes, that’s four outs, but we weren’t really counting them.
3. Serving up a homer to another of my guys.  Best hit I saw all season from anyone.
4. Watching one of my guys almost have a popup land on his head.  Yeah, he didn’t really realize there was a game on.
5. Getting my most difficult hitter (just getting him to recognize which direction the ball was coming from was a chore) to connect twice in the same game.

— – —

The Next Food Network Star has started up again.  Love that show, even if I generally can’t be troubled to watch the actual winner’s show most of the time.  I’ve found you can pretty much guarantee several things that’ll happen:

• Somebody will have a tagline or culinary philosophy that’s confusing/banal/just plain stupid.  This year’s early candidate:  “I’m comin’ at you from the mind of a chef.”  Ummm…what?
• Somebody apologizing for their food.
• Somebody describing their dish as containing “good” or “great” or “wonderful” things, as opposed to using, you know, appetizing language including such things as flavors or aromas or textures.

Yes, it’s ever-so-slightly train-wrecky.  Love that.

Fast Food Franchise Turning Molehills Into Mountains

PRIMETIME, TV — Taco Bell this week unveiled a new series of their infamous “Fourthmeal” commercials with the novel tagline, “because obesity doesn’t happen on its own.”

There’s really nothing much more to add to that.

Source: O. Handwasher, who recognizes he hasn’t done this in a while and wanted to start back in with a short one.

Now and again I pick up a book, read it a bit, then decide to shelve it in favor of something else I’m diggin’.  And sometimes I pick said book up again and think, “Why did I ever put this down?”  Or I just pick it up again and decide to make it my Nightstand Book.  Usually it’s something that’s easier to digest in small bites.

Basic Christianity, by John R. W. Stott fell into that last option.  It wasn’t what I’d call hard to read, but it didn’t lend itself to a plow-through.  And so it sat, buried on my nightstand, for more than a year.  But during a hiatus in my Library Patronage, I was reading a book not suited to before-bed reading (read: on the boring side), so I needed a substitute.  And here we are.

Of course, once I got within thirty pages or so of the end, I took it off the nightstand and made it my Lunchtime Book.  (Lesser-known book-types:  Toilet Tank Book – Dad’s was usually Shogun, Desk Book, Backseat Book – The Shack for much of this year, Emergency Take-along In Case Wife Wants to Go Fabric Shopping Book – any title will do.)

There are so many titles available about excruciatingly arcane bits of theology that it’s refreshing to delve, every now and then, into the simplicity of Christianity.  Because, at its core, Christianity is very simple.  Paul sums it up nicely in 1 Corinthians:

Stott proceeds logically through the Basics, starting with the Person of Christ (His Claims, Character, and Resurrection), then shifts to Man’s Need of Him (what sin is and why it’s important).  He finishes up with how Christ’s Work (Death and purchase of Salvation for us) fills Man’s Need, and then details Man’s Response to Him.  This latter section was especially good, because he wrote about Counting the Cost before making a decision, and then the crucial role of Being a Christian, as opposed to Becoming one.

I’ll admit I tend to get caught in a lot of Theological Arcana, so this was a good book to ground me a bit.  Not that it’ll stop me from blogging about all kinds of boring things in the future, mind you. But still a good change of pace.