Watch them ‘Subjunct’

In the English language we have several different moods a verb can convey two critical moods are subjunctive and indicative. It is important that you understand what those two moods reflect on the factual nature of a statement. A subjunctive mood implies a contingent or hypothetical nature for the statement. For example the statement, “I might have said that,” implies uncertainty and is very non-commital. Indicative is very fact based and attempts to state things with a definite feeling. This doesn’t make the sentence true by itself but it does convey some sense of certainty. You might here someone say, “I didn’t say that,” and give a feeling that the statement was not correctly quoted.

Now, why do I care about grammar? Greek class for one, but also because the politicians are heaping great amounts of trash onto the bonfire of American politics trying to use smoke and jeerers to position themselves higher in innacurate polls and public opinion. What I’d suggest, other than attempting to actually listen, even if it’s to the party you don’t favor, is that you diagram sentences, analyze what is being said/spewed and listen for words that are indicative or subjunctive. Not only will this help you here and now with the upcoming election, but if you get selected for a jury you’ll be extra cool and you can wow the other jurors with your slick hair and grammatical pontifications.

Postal Presents

We have a United States Post Office delivery person (is that Politically Korrect enough?) who is friendly and thinks Abby’s cute. Therefore whenever something arrives 7th class mail and says, “To XXXX or Current Resident” he kindly scratches out the resident’s name and circles ‘or current resident’ and then places things that might be of interest to Abby in our mailbox. This cracks me up as we have gotten a huge number of catalogs for children’s toys as well as a bunch of samples. While I know that this isn’t the normal course of action I have to say that the companies couldn’t have better focused marketing as this guy knows his route well enough to know that Jane Doe (retired) is less likely to want the mass mailing catalog for Toys ‘L’ Us. The other side of this is that we have a cupboard full of individual samples of diapers that we won’t be able to use until kiddo #2 comes. Oh, and he also dropped off quite a nice razor that was shipped out as a sample for me… I don’t know if that’s a hint or he figured that the woman who was the initial recipient didn’t want the mens razor. Seeing as how I don’t shave my legs I don’t know if it matters what gender your razor is 🙂

Arnold Appleseed?

If you’re not familiar with an Arnold Palmer, sometimes called an Arnie (but not in reference to the the Governator), it is a drink. It is half Lemonade and half Iced Tea (with capital letters, apparently). Well, I have been drinking within the last 6 months or so a similar concoction which is one quarter to half apple juice and the rest being Iced Tea (with capital letters, apparently). However, I don’t have a good name for it. So, what I’m asking for is a name for this ‘new drink.’ What should I/we call this tasty libation? By the way, some flavors of Iced Tea (with capital letters, apparently) do not work with apple juice, that is a warning in case you find yourself suffering from a headache after trying peppermint Iced Tea (yeah, yeah, you get it already) with apple juice in it. Or, if you try this drink and you get diarrhea, dry or itchy nose, drowsiness, heartburn or inflamed feet as medical side effects, it wasn’t my idea.

So, what would you call it? Remember Texas Iced Tea is already taken and Colorado Iced Tea sounds lame.

Is It Passion?

I’m listening to the new Roper album and the song ‘Day of Pigs‘ really struck me. This song is about how we can work ourselves up into a frenzy and get good feelings basically by out of drive or desire in the flesh. I used to be rather charismatic (though I’ve had charismatic friends who’ve doubted that) as a teenager. I was convinced that ‘being a Christian meant that I had to be holy.’ While this sounds good it falls so short of what we’re created to be in Christ. The key is ‘in Christ.’ You see, one of the major things I’ve learned since moving to Denver is the fact that I’m in Christ. If you look at Ephesians and Colossians you will see that all of your holiness is Christ’s holiness imputed (credited to your account) to you (Ephesians 4:24). All of your good works are His good works planned out for you to do (Ephesians 2:10) and no matter what you do in this life you are hidden in Christ (Colossians 3:3).

What motivates you when you are doing good works? Is it the Holy Spirit? Is it you abiding in Christ and He in you? If it is a deep, pashionate love for your God, then you will, in love abide in Christ. Don’t be drawn to new, more amazing levels of experience. Don’t be drawn to new ideas, but instead be drawn to the principles that are written in scripture. Rather than look at life as mountaintops and valleys (of which I’ve seen plenty in the Sierra Nevadas and the Rockies) but instead look at life from the heavenlies where you are positionally seated!

Instead of praying that you will go tell the world the gospel pray every day that you will abide in Christ and that His Holy Spirit would open doors for you to preach the gospel, the good news. And then, when you have met a young, hungry Christian heart, do the untraditional thing, do the biblical thing: disciple them. Stop right there and live with that person (in a figurative sense) until they are equipped to go disciple others. Then you can go onto the next person the Lord brings into your life. At that point in time there will be two disciplers… and then 4… then 8 and so forth. But make sure that your disciples are grounded in God’s word. Make sure they understand clear, concise bible interpretation. If you have not been discipled for any length of time (more than a 6 week discipleship group class) seek an older, wiser, godly elder (your church does have elders doesn’t it?) and ask them to disciple you. Titus 2 calls the older men to teach the younger men and the older women to teach the younger women. This is critical for continuity within the church as well as for good doctrine to be preserved.

It is not that emotion is evil, but that an equipped saint is 1,000 times a brighter light than a strobe light. When we try to go from high to high, or fire to fire we flash, we spark but are we a beacon? I encourage you to seek discipleship. If you’re looking for some good material or want some pointers I recommend disciplers.org which is the material that I was discipled with by my Dad. For further information on spiritual growth I also recommend the books at mjsbooks.com. The Green Letters will challenge you and will give you lots to think about as you grow in your relationship with the Lord.

Passion? I’m clothing myself in Christ, it’s fashion 😉

Engrish Acronyms

If you’ve not read engrish.com, one of my personal favorites for a good laugh, then you should go check it out now while I sit here and wait.

[Still waiting]

[Waiting some more]

[Gosh darn you’re a slow reader]

OK, I’m glad you’re back! Funny stuff, huh? This last week in Texas my friend Mike told us a story about a heavy metal concert he went to back in the day and there was a band there from Japan that totally blew the audience away. Not with their music mind you, but with their Engrish. They came out onto the stage and yelled, “LOCK and LOLL!” As Mike tells the story he can’t recall the actual headliner band he went to see, but this band is stuck in his head from now until he dies or the Mannheim Steamroller sets in. So, as I was chatting with another friend tonight I realized that there was a whole area of confusion to exploit: Engrishized acronyms. For example:

ROR
Raughing Out Roud. Use this in place of LOL with your friends to help keep them on their toes (or finger tips if you will)
BLB
Be Light Back. Use this one when you’ve got to go to the potty and need to tell your frenz about it. There’s nothing quite like knowing someone is going to the bathroom at some remote location
LOFR
Lolling On the Froor Raughing. This one is even more intense than ROR and should be reserved for highly funny engrish.
ROTL
Rold Of The Lings, a famous movie reference. You can’t go wrong with Flodo, Aligoln, Gimri, Regoras, and Gandarph set out on an adventure only to be helped by Gorrum in the end. Oh, and Samwise, too, but his name doesn’t Engrishize well.

Roper is Released

<shameless plug>It has been some time since I’ve mentioned Five Iron Frenzy. Well, I am not mentioning them in this post. Nope, I’m mentioning the descendent band Roper. They have a new album out Brace Yourself for the Mediocre. I have listened to samples and am going to get it within the next couple days (get it the first week to help them rank on sound scan). </end shameless plug>

So I don’t plug on a weekly basis but this band is really cool, plus they’re from Denver, which makes them nifty on all sorts of scales. Even fish scales.

Shell Shocked

I think this picture accurately shows the absolute shock that comes over parents at times. Particularly parents of two-year olds.

Parenting is Shocking
Abigail had ‘the runs’ today, which caused her pain and discomfort. We don’t like it when she’s sick or hurting because most of the time it is completely out of our control. What was shocking about this experience was the absolutely bizaare instinct that Abigail showed each time she’d have an accident (every time but once today… uggghhh). The instinct that kicked in for her was removing her panties, pull-ups or whatever else happened to be around her bottom no matter where she was. This gave the opportunity for messes way beyond our sickest dreams. However, Jessica, being a good working-class, blue collar, do-it-yourself-er took care of the mess. This made me look like an insensitive guy. Of course this isn’t completely out of character, but I work for cash-money during the day which puts me at a distinct disadvantage. Jessica on the other hand works for no money but probably puts in more manual labor than most construction workers (which may be an unfair comparison given that I always see them on break).

However, that being said, the shock of parenting gets outweighed by the wonderfulness of snuggles, kisses and “I love you’s” from this little girl.

Life of Crime

When I was a kid my cousin Jenny was one of my most-favorite cousins [apologies to my other cousins for a youth’s favoritism], whatever she liked was cool. She wanted to grow up and be a hair dresser and so I would let her do my hair up all ‘cool’ so I could look like whatever the cool guy’s name was (I don’t even remember the actor’s name). Jenny really liked MacGyver. If you don’t know what MacGyver is (there are readers of this blog who are younger than Mr. Swiss Army Knife) he was a guy who could get himself into tough situations where evil people were going to kill him and he’d always use science or ingenuity to get out of the bind. In one particular episode MacGyver opened a car door with his knife (or so I thought). This little bit of influence leads me to my story…

I, a six or seven year old boy, wanting to be like MacGyver got into my dad’s toolchest and got out his rather large buck knife and opened it up. I knew I couldn’t whittle anything with it because my whittling skills were pretty poor (mostly because I wasn’t allowed to have knives). I knew that I wasn’t supposed to have the knife, but I was a big boy in my mind so my parents needn’t know about the knife until I could prove to them how good I was with it. Well, after thinking a bit I thought about opening up my neighbor’s son’s car door. He was home for the weekend from college. Ms. W. (his mom) gave me my first drum set because her son Brian didn’t use it anymore. I really respected her as a single mom and as a large black woman who probably could have killed me with a look.

So I inconspicuously walked over to the driver’s side door and tried to fit the giant tip of the buck knife into the lock slot. It didn’t fit well, but MacGyver’s knife took a while to unlock the door, almost up to the time he would have been caught. My luck ran out sooner than his did because Brian came out and said, “Hey, what are you doing to my brother’s car?” I told him of my plan to use the knife to get into the car and he said, “I’m going to go tell my mom!” I argued that he shouldn’t but he didn’t listen.

I ran (note to self: don’t run with sharp objects) with the open knife to the garage, and threw it into the drawer because there was no way I was going to undo the lock that held the blade open. I hid behind the trash can and breathed so slowly that I almost passed out. If there was one thing I had learned from the episodes of G. I. Joe it was that when the enemy was near you needed to stop breathing and keep yourself quietly hidden away. I heard Ms. W. open her door and listened to her spout statements like, “What sort of boy tries to break into their neighbor’s car?” I also admire her for not swearing when she probably would have been at least moderately justified for calling me several creative names my parents had not picked. Ms. W. arrived at our front door where my mom was equally shocked to find out what I had attempted. She looked and looked for me.

My mom never found me until I turned myself in. She then marched me over to Ms. W.’s house where I appologized with great tears in my eyes. She forgave me and I learned an important lesson: Buck knives don’t fit in car locks. I also learned that if I was going to be a ‘smooth criminal’ I was going to have to take lessons. They didn’t offer those at the local rec center. So much for my life of crime.

Back in CO

Now that I’ve gotten back into Colorado I’ve got to readjust to Mountain Time as well as not staying up too late. However, that won’t be too hard because the jet lag made me tired.

Jessica told me a funny story regarding Abigail that I just have to share: Abby was on the potty and asked if I had an ‘agina.’ Jessica told her I did not. She then asked if Ice Cream had an ‘agina.’ I don’t know that I’ll be able to eat ice cream again 🙂 Of course Abby comes by it honestly because at about 5 or so I got to watch a steer (castrated bull) get butchered and I asked my mom if every single piece of cow they removed from the carcass was a uterus.