Author Archives: Randy Peterman

Race Card Drivers

No, the title is not a typo. In fact its a play on words. If you read this site normally that will be as surprising as waking up in the morning and discovering that your breakfast cereal has indeed not changed into a leprechaun. My friend Robin just sent me a link to a new reality series called “Black. White.” wherein families of (wait for it…) black or white ethnicity go under the not so careful eye of makeup artists to look the opposite color. What the heck? Why do we need this on television? Why do we need to see if people can cope with being in a different environment? Who is driving this issue of racism and segregation so that it will not die?

Sure, it is convenient for marketers to be able to use demographics to discover white or black or hispanic or Hawaiian or Japanese or Chinese or purple dinosaurs [with inordinage influence on children] neighborhoods so that they can sell racially targetted products, but do we need to further the concept of American inequality? This is just more postmodern drivel wherein we will discover that many people don’t know what other people go through and that someone somewhere is putting us all down so that we can be in perpetual victim mode. But not me, I’m done. I’m not going to watch this show or any of the other shows that make a big deal out of race. In fact I will go so far as to say that if more shows come up I may start writing the networks and let them know that the only thing that is real about reality television is that it really stinks.

Know Thine Sausages

Today at lunch Abby looked up at me with her beautiful blue eyes and said with such excitement, “Dad, masali tastes like pepperoni.” Which might as well have been French, Russian or any other language besides some dialect of English at first. I didn’t know what she was talking about until I realized that she was talking about salami, which is a completely different kind of sausage, but at least it was close. Salami doesn’t taste like pepperoni to me, but it is a good tasty sausage, and therefore I enjoyed it during my lunchtime meal.

Jumping the Shark

Have you ever heard the phrase, “Jumped the Shark?” Just in case you haven’t its a reference to the TV show “Happy Days.” In the show the Fonz is water skiing and jumps over a shark. Thus the phrase was used to describe a show that had reached the limit of ‘reality’ and switched to the crazy in an attempt to continue churning out plot lines and story boards.

A couple weeks ago Abby was watching Dora the Exlorer and Dora was on a boat with her friends the map, backpack, boots and Hitler. OK, not with Hitler. They came upon treacherous waters with sharks in them. The whole boat jumped over three sharks.

Wow. I totally lost all respect for Dora. Wait, I don’t think I had any in the first place.

I Finally Get It

Growing up my dad would tell the story of my first time to a movie. He took me to see “The Fox and the Hound.” I heard the story of my explanation towards the climax of the movie possibly 50 times or more in my life. I never understood why my dad told that movie so often. Friday night I learned why. We took Abby (and Evie, but she slept the whole time) to see “Curious George.” For the record I think they should have called it Curious Jorge the Intrigued Monkey, but they didn’t because apparently this is based on a book series that I found completely mind numbingly boring as a child and that book series was not called Curious Jorge the Intrigued Monkey. But I digress.

Abby just glowed and glowed throughout the movie. As event took place she would exclaim various things. She smiled a lot, but she sat still on my lap through the whole movie. It was wonderful to see her excitement and enjoyment of the rather goofy cartoon. And, in the end it was way better than the books.

One Hundredth

I’m watching Olympic luging right now (commercial break+computer recording=breathing room). I can’t imagine that many parts of my life are critically evaluated by one hundredth of a second. At work we’re glad when computers operate relatively closely performance wise and we never focus on hundredths of a second by itself. Sure, when you’re iterating through something that has thousands of lines or hundreds of thousands of lines you have to think about one hundredth being multiplied into seconds and eventually into minutes, but I won’t be getting a gold metal – just a “Wow, that’s fast.” verses a “It gets the job done.”

I don’t know that I do anything in one hundredth of a second, but it sure is nifty to have that sort of accuracy when measuring luge speeds.

UPDATE: They actually were keeping track of things to the thousandth, but the difference between racers was hundredths of seconds at times.

Yeah for White Powdery Stuff!

No, I’m not talking about cocaine, sugar or baby powder, I’m referring to snow. We got some last night and its still falling ever so daintily from the sky as I type this. Abby can’t wait to play in it, and I can’t wait to drive in it. It always makes Jessica nervous when we have snow, but I quite enjoy the fun of the challenge. As I wrote before: drive carefully!

Unsuper Bowl

I used to watch the Super Bowl for the commercials. This year, they stank. This year I was actually watching the superbowl for the athletics and physical abuse that is the National Football League. However, the two teams really didn’t deliver on the intensity that I had expected. I’m just glad that in the end I got to have fun at our friend’s house and that we got to eat smoothies.

I actually had to drop Evie off in the kitchen with Jessica because she was too distracting to watch the game. No, not because she was being awkward its just that she’s so darn cute. I had to have Jessica hold her so that if Craig asked, “Randy, did you see that?” I would be able to answer, “Yes.” Instead of hoping John Madden would talk over an instant replay. Of course he might say, “Could you feel that [insert football player’s name] was going to do that as the play started?” Or maybe, “Well, you know you’ve got to be a good quarterback to be called a good quarterback.”

To that I say, “It’d have to be a good game for it to be called a good game.” It was an OK game, but it was surely not as exciting as playing the drums in High School while the home team got beat to smithereens by anyone and everyone that came to play us. When you play the drums you’re cool, and you never lose because people want to hear you groove.

Sneaking One In

Normally I post all of my theological stuff (of the last year or so) on my Bible blog, but today I heard a quote that I think should be thought provoking for all readers of this blog. I have been listening to MP3’s from Alistair Begg, a reformed theologian (no, I don’t abide by all reformed theology, but Alistair is atypical in many regards because he understands and teaches clearly about the position and identification of the believer with Christ… but I digress), he was discussing the errors of legalism within the church and the world and had this to say about the attraction of rules to new Christians and those who are old Christians who unfortunately don’t know any better (for a long time I fell into this latter camp):

It wasn’t that they were susceptible to a sub-standard Christianity they were susceptible to the notion of a super-standard. That incidentally is why the cults always fish on the fringes of Faith [I Want to know Christ – Part A]

The problem for many people is that they hear that Christianity will make people ‘better’ instead of recognizing that Christianity merely puts all believers on one level: they recognize their failure as humans to be perfect and their need for Christ’s righteousness. You don’t get a “Power Up” or an extra life, or a raccoon tail, you get your sins paid for, even the ones you’re going to commit. There is no super-Christian, and there are no below average Christians, what makes you a Christian is faith and not actions. Salvation has never been by any works that we do with the simple exception of one: having had faith in what God says He will do.

This quote really grabbed me, I hope you like it 🙂