Entries from July 2007 ↓

Good freakin’ album. Buy it. You will not regret it.  Even if you’re not a fan of roots-influenced-alterna-country-rock, this will make you one.

(Hey, the cover art matches my blog’s color scheme!)

Kelly Boggs, a frequent contributor to Baptist Press News, recently commented on a billboard he saw while sitting in traffic on I-35 in Dallas. It was an ad for a paternity testing service, and displayed boldly the words “Who’s The Father?”, along with a phone number to contact the service.

Rev. Boggs went on to lament the depths of depravity that we’ve sunk to where such a service is necessary (or marketable). I found it interesting, though, that he seemed to focus largely on the mothers in such situations — particularly “women who are so promiscuous that upon discovering they are pregnant, need to play ‘eenie-meenie-minie-moe’ to have some clue as to who the father might be.”

Boggs’ article hinges on the assumption that these services are necessitated by “a large and lucrative market: pregnant women who have been physically intimate with more than one person”, but I’m not so sure. In these days of prolonged adolescence, where “men” (term used loosely) want to live like they’re seventeen well into their thirties, it seems much more likely to me that the market is created by guys who refuse to take responsibility for the children that they’ve helped to bring into existence. The women are then left with little other recourse than going to one of these services to establish paternity and force him to pay the support he rightly owes.

Now, I’m not going to deny that there are likely some very promiscuous women among these services’ clients. There probably are. Still, should a Christian’s first reaction to such a billboard be to look at the moms and assume that they’re whores? I don’t think so.  If we really believe that men are to lead the home and the family as Christ leads the Church, then our first look should be to the dads, and our assumption should be that they’re cowards who need to “man up” — ideally, by being involved in his children’s lives, but at least financially.

Makes me wonder. What do you think?

D’oh!

My Dad recently commented that I could likely successfully be tried for crimes against grandparents for the lack of Zoë pictures on my Recent Photos page.  Probably true.  My camera’s hardly seen the light of day lately.

I’ll do better.  I know she’s the only reason about half of my readers come around here anyway.

. . . because she’ll be busy reading that damned Harry Potter book.  Yarr!

At least there won’t be any more, so I won’t have to deal with this again.

(Thanks are due to GFM for restoring my access to the site, btw.)

My ISP appears to be having some DNS issues and I haven’t been able to access my site (or any other sites hosted on the same server) from my house in a couple of weeks. I can still hit the server from work (where I am now), but I generally don’t have the time (or mental reserves) to blog from here.

Hoping the DNS problems are resolved soon, but there are a couple of updates in the pipeline.

Well . . . while the Bishop of Olympia (under whom she serves) is “excited” about Anne Holmes-Redding’s Christianity/Islam mashup, the Bishop of Rhode Island (who holds jurisdiction over her ordination) doesn’t quite share that enthusiasm.

She’s been suspended from the priesthood.

(HT: AlMo)

. . . and I’d like to not be fat anymore.  I’ve gone from about 190 pounds to 250 in the two years since we moved to Ohio (and that’s after going from about 160 to 190 in the Tennessee years).

Now, I don’t expect (or even want) to go back to my high school/college weight of anywhere between 150 and 175.  Looking at pictures of myself from those days, I wonder how I even survived being that skinny.  I look darn near emaciated. (And honestly, short of some horrible disease ravaging my body, I don’t think I could get there even if I wanted to).  I actually like being a bit bigger than I used to be.  I just don’t like having a gut.

So, I suppose if I have a weight goal, it’ll be 200.  Fifty pounds lost.  In reality, though, my only goal is a flat stomach.  I actually feel fine, but I hate the way I look in just about everything I wear.

Thing is, I have no idea how to get there.  I’m convinced that running/jogging is from the Pit of Hell, so that’s out (or at least a last resort).  I used to play tennis avidly, but haven’t played in years and have no one to play with here.  As far as diet is concerned, that’ll be a little easier.  Far fewer high-fat foods/sweets.  More veggies.  Less beer (maybe . . . three a week isn’t much at all).

Any success or failure stories are welcome.

. . . I had to know.

(HT: Dave)

I generally go to my financial institution’s website once a week or so to make sure everything’s lining up with our own records, that nothing out of the ordinary is going on, etc. Until this week, everything was fine.

Then on Wednesday, I noticed three mystery charges. They were for $19.99 each, and each had “BLIZZARD-ENT*ELECU, 800-592-5499, CA” in the description field. “Blizzard Entertainment,” I thought. “That’s the World of Warcraft company.” After a little Google sleuthing, it seems that I was the victim of identity theft. Some pimple-faced teenager (or some 40-year-old comic store employee living in his mom’s basement) who couldn’t afford the $20/month decided that my money would be well-spent on a WoW account. And it seems that I wasn’t the only person that this exact thing had happened to recently.

I immediately called my bank, canceled my debit card, and had them send me a new one with a new number, so next time the loser’s account cycles, it’ll get canceled. Called Blizzard, but they weren’t too much help (but they were cordial). Tomorrow, I’ll be filing a dispute with the bank to get my $60 back.

All things told, this was little more than an annoyance, but it was a HUGE annoyance. I’m quite vigilant when it comes to my personal information on the Internet. Unfortunately, that was taken out of my hands recently, as I received a letter from the Ohio Department of Taxation, stating that my name and SSN were among those contained on a stolen computer (this story was all over the news). That’s the only way I can think of that this fool could’ve gotten the information needed to make charges to my card. Fortunately, the letter offers a free year of “identity protection” from a company called Debix.

I think I’ll take them up on that.

One of the coolest pastor’s kids ever.