I rarely watch Saturday Night Live anymore because I find too much of it un-funny, but every once in a while I’ll catch one of their clips online and get a good giggle. Below’s a prime example. Any love song from a Jewish man to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is gonna be funny and just a little disturbing.
The Davis Cup is back in Winston-Salem this weekend which is pretty bad luck for me. Since my client’s conference is next week there was no way I would have been able to take in the matches and prepare for my time in San Diego. Since I’m flying Saturday evening I could have tried to hit the Friday matches but realistically there was no way I could do it.
Instead I satisfied myself with TiVo-ing the matches so that I could watch them while I packed. All was well until the second match between James Blake and Paul Henri-Mathieu went into a fifth set and a couple of games into the set the announcers informed the television audience that the network (Versus) was going to switch to NHL playoff hockey at 7:00 p.m. no matter where the match stood. They also informed the audience that if you were lucky enough to have the Tennis Channel you could catch the match there or you could watch it online at Versus.com.
Sure enough they cut to the hockey pre-game show right at 7:00 and thus I missed a thrilling comeback by Blake. Apparently at 4-4 his serve was broken, then he was down two match points on Mathieu’s next service game before he broke back, and then he held serve and broke Mathieu again. But I’m just going by what I heard on the sports report because, you know, I didn’t see it. I was going to gripe about how Time-Warner doesn’t give me the Tennis Channel but does give me 840 shopping channels, and how my buddy Bobby gets the Tennis Channel because he has DirecTV, but from reading the comments on the article about the match at the Tennis Channel site it seems that they blew the coverage anyway so lots of people besides me didn’t get to see the conclusion of the match.
The good news is that Celeste will get to go with some friends to the doubles match today. That should be a lot of fun, and boy do I wish I could be there. Of course I’ll set my Tivo, but let’s hope there aren’t any hockey games to cut to this time.
The "new new thing" these days seems to be bar codes. Specifically customizable, two dimensional bar codes called QR (Quick Response) Codes that can be scanned by cell phones that have cameras and the QR Code reader software installed. I’d try to explain the concept, but since I barely understand it myself I’ll have to send you to a PDF that does have an explanation.
Ignorance has never slowed me down before so I won’t let it now. I’m happy to unveil the official QR Code for http://www.jonlowder.com:
I’m shocked, SHOCKED, to read an article that has me vociferously agreeing with my very own Congress Critter Virginia Foxx. Go get ’em Ms. Foxx.
I wonder if Congresswoman Foxx has read this little ‘ol blog of mine. If so and if she’s also read BlueNC and is still willing to co-sponsor the Blogger Protection Act then I have to give her a lot of credit for putting principles before what I’d expect is a little bit of disdain for the likes of me and others who snipe at her while sitting at home in our sweats, hammering out inane musings on our PCs.
I was catching up on my reading, going through the pile of Winston-Salem Journals that had stacked up during our week in Myrtle when I came across a "Letter to the Editor" that caused me to pause. I should point out that I consider the "Letters" a vital piece of my daily reading since they combine with my cup of coffee to really get my blood flowing in the morning. Let’s just say that I often find myself in strong disagreement with my fellow Journal readers.
Anyway, the letter that caught my attention ran on April and was submitted by Mr. Chuck Hemrick of Germanton. He wrote:
While reading the Journal
on March 30 and 31, I was appalled that little was said about the
recent rains being a huge factor in helping to put out the fires on
Sauratown Mountain…But Sunday and Monday
mornings’ rain were God-sent and an answer to prayers from all around
this community. My wife and I woke up each morning singing the old
church hymn, “Showers of Blessings,” thankful to God for sending the
rain!
In between those two paragraphs he points out that he also is appreciative of the efforts of local firefighters, but thinks the paper did not give God the credit he (she, it?) was due. My question for Mr. Hemrick is this, "If God is responsible for sending the rains that stopped this wildfire then wasn’t he also responsible for sending the severe drought that provided the tinder for the wildfire?"
You see this logic all the time in stories about natural events. A volcano explodes and the lava flow miraculously diverts around a church in its path. Of course that’s seen as a miracle delivered by God, but somehow God had nothing to do with the volcano exploding in the first place.
Now Mr. Hemrick does say that God answered prayers of the local community, but I imagine that lots of people who lost their houses to the wildfires in Southern California last year were also praying quite hard for rains to save their homes as they watched them burn to cinders. Were the prayers in North Carolina simply better than those in San Diego so God heard the former and not the latter?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a Christian and believe in God, but my faith does not include the belief that God directly intervenes in matters like saving property from wildfires. And I think that if I did believe that then I would also have to believe that God intended the wildfire to be there in the first place, and that God intended for New Orleans to flood, and for the homes in San Diego to burn, and for every other "bad" thing that’s ever happened. I don’t believe that because I tend to think of God as a kind of hands off manager that put all of this stuff that we call life in motion and then let those of us living the life to muddle through with the tools God provided us.
I don’t think I have the right to expect others to share my understanding of faith, so I think that folks who have a faith system like Mr. Hemrick’s, one that sees God as actively involved in all aspects of life, are just as entitled to that belief as I am to mine. My question is how can they see God as being active in providing miracles, but not active in creating the situations that necessitate those miracles? How can they see God’s intervention as a one way street?
Not a whole heckuva lot, unless of course you don’t mind paying top dollar to go to one of the 79 Ripley’s properties in town. To me Myrtle has become the anti-beach, a place that seems to exist to show exactly how badly man can screw up a natural wonder like a wide sandy beach.
The highlights from our time in Myrtle:
I can’t complain too much. Our kids are getting old enough that I can see a day in the not-too-distant future when we’ll not be able to easily get all of us off on vacation together. Sure the weather was awful, and granted I’m not a fan of Myrtle Beach, but I’ll take a week with all of us spending time together in Siberia over a week by myself in Hawaii. If nothing else this trip reminded me of that essential truth.
Befuddled 