The Jury Duty That Wasn’t

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I received an invitation to a ‘party’ via the postal service requesting I come.  They even wanted me to RSVP, but threatened I could only declined once, and if I did I’d have to come the next time they invited me – no matter what.  Well, I took the Arapahoe County Jury Duty Computer Selection System up on its invite.  Except that today when I was ready to go I followed some of the instructions they sent me (I actually followed all of them, but some of them were pertinent) and called a phone number.  To my joy the number didn’t get typed in incorrectly so that I’d discover some adult hotline being run by the county.  Instead it told me I didn’t have to come in.  Therefore my civic duties had been completed but I never left my house.  Drat.

The upside is that someone is probably in court without me on their jury.  That’s good because the lawyers don’t like it when the jurors shout out, “All trafic violations should lead to capital punishment!”  Especially when its a small claimes case about shoes that didn’t hold up five minutes out of the store.

Stupid Picture Face Disorder

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There is a problem in our modern culture something that needs to be addressed: Stupid Picture Face Disorder (SPFD). If you’re not sure what I’m talking about I suggest that you take out some sort of picture taking device at the next social function you find yourself at, and you’ll learn what I’m talking about. Someone who looks perfectly normal will begin moving ten times more than they have the rest of the night. Or they might stick their tongues out. or they might make some other goofy face. These are examples of SPFD. This problem is probably bigger than America realizes. Just search Google for Stupid Face. At parties cameras come out and SPFD strikes the degreed astrophysicist so that he looks to have arrived on the short bus.
Imagine, if you will, the groom up at the altar. His bride walks down the aisle, the very picture of beauty and grace. The pastor has them facing him and begins, “Dearly beloved, we’re gathered here today to join these two…,” and it is at this moment that the pastor sees that the groom has SPFD due to the wedding photographer and is beggining to stick out his tongue, and it is also at this moment that the pastor involuntarily spits out the word, “Freaks!” instead of the normal, “people.” SPFD can strike anywhere and it needs to be stopped.

Fortunately there are some solutions to SPFD. It should be noted that the usual person strikes into SPFD as a deterrent. You see at some point in time, often in the teenage years, their mothers drag out pictures of them naked at two years of age in front of their girlfriends, or maybe someone takes a picture of them dancing at a party and instead of it looking like the super smooth moves of a brilliant dancer it looks like a poster for seizure awareness. Instead, when cameras come out people should stop doing goofy things like putting carrots in their nose (see exhibit a)

Exhibit a: Carrots

Or maybe sticking their tongues out (see exhibit b)

Exhibit b: tongues out

And definitely not trying to avoid the picture by moving out of the way (see exhibit c)

exhibit c: trying to avoid the picture

Instead people with SPFD should hold still and act normal. That way they can avoid the goofy pictures being pulled out by parents, weird relatives, or displayed on the Internet. Once you’ve seen that you can look normal in a picture, and by normal I don’t mean like the models who are photoshopped to death on magazine covers, you will discover that SPFD can be a thing of the past. Remember, only you can prevent forest fires.

So I went to the Mall…

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And who lets these teenagers go out with their brains turned off? I went into Hollister, which is kind of like a clothing store, except that the first thing that you think when walking in is not, “Clothes!” Instead you think, “Must have air!,” because they have perfume all over the place stinking the store up to the point where you honestly consider buying things at Goodwill instead, because you’re sure the clothes look as bad, and that the air will smell musty instead of like the inside of a perfume bottle.  Upon departing Hollister we walked about the mall attempting to get to various places to buy things.  At one point in time two teenage girls exited the shop I was about to pass and slowed me (and all three frillion people behind me) down because they were walking in the gear right before reverse, with little gas.  I don’t know what made them think, “Lets slow this whole mall down,” but whatever it was, I’d like to have it outlawed.

Whew!  I know that sounds cranky but it was a day filled with shopping, and while I love shopping, I love shopping with efficiency even more.  I’m an efficiency nut, which is why I drink water in glasses instead of from sieves, cullenders, funnels and firehoses.  I also try to buy low emission vehicles that get good gas mileage.  And, to reduce my shopping headache I shop for the holidays now.  Which is not as good as shopping in July, except that sometimes people want to get gifts that are more recent.  If I could pre-order more of life, I think I would.

There were other funny things that took place at the mall such as watching the elevator doors nearly close on a baby stroller because the designer of the elevator figured that the moms and handicapped people who were going to ride in the elevator also were Olympic athletes in speed training.  Fortunately the mother in charge of said stroller was a veteran and shoved the stroller further into the elevator causing the doors to relent.  Relent Green is people [sorry, I just thought that since soylent and relent sounded similar…].  Once in the elevator the scary scene in the movie started.  You know the one where the deep rumbling sound starts and then higher pitched dissonant sounds kick in and you really know something bad is going to happen?  The nasty, nasty sounds from the thriller movies were coming from the mechanics of the elevator.  Yippee!  But as passengers we didn’t race out of the elevator once the rapidly opening (and don’t forget closing!) doors expanded to their open position, instead we slowly paced out so that those getting on would not know that they were getting into the scary elevator.  We should have been screaming just to freak people out 🙂

One last brilliant thing happened in the mall.  I saw a security guard pick up a pair of balloons that had lost their ‘float’ and slowly lower the ribbons from the balloons into the garbage can and then take a utility knife *cough* of the swiss variety *cough* and pop them.  In the mall.  In case you have missed out on the sound of balloons popping in your life let me gently remind you that they don’t just go, “phhhhhhhhh.”  Popping balloons go BOOM!  And since post 9/11 too much of America is still scared of being wiped out at the mall.  By terrorists.  Shame on the security guard who has the sense to get rid of the extremely dangerous “unattended items” in the mall, but in a way that scares the kaka out of a large group of trapped lemmings.  By simply cutting the balloon by the thicker rubber at the knot he could have released the air in a slow and quiet way.  But Lone Tree’s best apparently like a good laugh.

I guess I laughed, too.  Inside, because I knew that laughing at all of the brainless teenagers and mindless adults would probably get me beat up.  And I didn’t need to be beat up.  If the security guard was as dump as it appeared/sounded he probably wouldn’t know how to break up a fight anyway.  At least I might have smelled good when it was all over if the teens shopped at that one ‘clothes store.’

Questions for Randy: Britney/K-Fed Edition

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I get asked by friends sometimes, “Randy what do you think about [insert some topic here]?” They ask because they know that I have an opinion about pretty much everything. I have an opinion about everything because I’m a collector. The Franklin Mint issued a series and I’m paying a monthly fee to collect opinions now. This morning my friend Robin asked, “So, what do you think about this britney/Kevin thing?” [editors note: this question was prompted] And since I figure that most of the internet cares about what I know, what I don’t know, and what is really happening in the lives of two famous personalities I thought I’d answer her here.

First we need to look at the facts. For example, Britney Spears used to be a hot property, but now that she’s had two kids she’s slightly less hot because people figure that Kevin had to actually involve himself with her in a way that removed the status of ‘sex icon’ and turned her into ‘mother of two.’ I will note that my wife is a mother of two and she’s still hot property, but she’s my hot property and you better keep your hands off. Another fact is that Kevin Federline, much like Ali-G is a fictitious character. How can we know this for sure? I believe that his middle name being ‘Earl’ is a dead giveaway. My grandpa’s name is Earl. I had one classmate in 6th grade who was named Earl, but otherwise, nobody is really named Earl. Secondly we know he’s fictitious because he doesn’t wear his hat correctly. Fake hat wearing is clearly a sign of fake people. Lastly its important ot recognize K-Fed as a fake person because K-Fed is blatantly a rip-off of the FedEx logo as witnessed by the graphic below:

Comparing the Obvious

The truth of the matter is that real people are involved here. People with real hearts, real feelings and a need for real love. unfortunately they’ve bought into the political agenda that I would call, “Hollywood.” That agenda tells them that love is purely a feeling and that money, sex, sex and more sex are the most important thing to a famous marriage. And sure, it sounds nice on cellophane, but its just sad. I hope that the miraculous will happen and both Britney and Kevin will wake up one morning and realize that they have to be real with themselves instead of worrying about how they’ll look on YouTube.

Theological Reductionism

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Reductionism is the concept of taking a biblical doctrine and reducing, summarizing or ‘boiling the doctrine down’ to one finite statement that could very well be an oversimplification.  Worse than that reductionism may be ignoring the entire counsel of the Word of God in favor of one passage.  One premium example of this would be the polarized views of Calvinism or Armenianism.  Both of these views (when taken to their logical extreme) can be examples of reductionism.  The scriptures put a great amount of tension on the subject of God’s undeniable sovereignty and man’s undeniable responsibility for sin and other actions.  Are these two different ideas mutually exclusive?  No.  The scriptures present a paradox wherein God is sovereign and man is responsible for his actions.  This isn’t inconsistency, its the complication of mankind being created in God’s image and therefore having a will and God’s being God and not having any of His power lessened by man’s ability to desire and will various things.

Reductionism is what fans the flames of fanaticism or doctrinal narrowness in areas where the scripture presents a message that is more broad.  Baptism’s relationship to salvation is a good example of people reducing all theology down to a few passages even though other passages in no way require water baptism.  Or furthermore the idea that tongues is a heavenly prayer language… their is only one text that could be gone to for proof text and that is not what the context of the passage that I Corinthians 13 is referring to.  Reductionism is what allows bad theology to stay bad and what keeps believers blind.

When you study a doctrine make sure that you review what the whole word of God says about that doctrine and in the correct context.

Wheezing the Juice

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Polly Shore, one of America’s most famous not-so-funny comedians (apologies to those of you who really, really enjoyed him) was in the movie “Encino Man,” and in that movie he used the phrase, “Wheezing the juice,” while inside of a quickie-mart type establishment. Write now I’m feeling like my juice has been wheezed. I haven’t written anything good and funny in a while and I’m not 100% sure why.
As my buddy Trint said, I need to get downtown so that I can see the inspiring sites. Basically I’ve got to get out more. I’m in a routine now where my evenings are spent running errands at places like Target or going to the chiropractor. Those are two incredibly hilarious places, let me tell you. No, don’t let me tell you. There isn’t anything to tell. Last night I had Bible Study, which was good, but its not good for comedic material per se. I’ve had some Mormons visit me the last few weeks and I’ve gotten together with them, but they just make me angry because they refuse to engage their brains – their whole religious system is based on turning off their brains.

So, I’m going to try to be extra observant at the mall this weekend as we try to actually get all of our Christmas shopping done in one day. And then come home and write the funniest thing I’ve ever written.

Counted.

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I went and voted this morning. Growing up I was told by my parents that I had relatives that didn’t vote because they didn’t think that it mattered. That was hard for me to grasp. While I knew that certainly I wasn’t a dictator, I also knew that I had been given power to change the way things happened in this country, my state, my county and my city.

If you haven’t voted, and for some reason are sitting on the fence, please consider printing out a provisional ballot, going over the ballot (this could take a while depending on where you live), and getting to the polls. Sure, you and I may have voted differently on various things, but we’re exercising a right. And the thing about rights that every citizen must understand: each right is a responsibility, if you’re not responsible with your right – they may take it away. Then your vote won’t be counted because it won’t exist.

Floaties

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Flickr Photo

Floaties

Originally uploaded by RandyPeterman.

When you think that maybe you got an extra large amount of grounds at the bottom of your cup it can be quite a surprise to discover that you actually have letters put in as a gift by your one year old. I wonder if I can get Starbucks to create an alphabeccino.

The Kissing Ice Cream Shop

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Abby and I went on a little daddy-daughter-donut-date this morning. As we passed a shopping center Abby announced, “There’s a kissing ice cream shop!”

To which I asked, “Why is it a kissing ice cream shop?”

Her reply was that the logo was some red lips. Which logo you might ask?

This one:

Dairy Queen

Never saw the lips before. Now I’ll probably never see the words 🙂