Sure thing Monta

"A lot of players might do it for the money. Of course the money is there, but I look at it as a chance for a job at the highest level. I'll be doing it because I love the game of basketball."

Monta Ellis, MSU signee on why he is foregoing college to enter the NBA draft. The CL story here.

Count me as a skeptic.

B

Separated at birth??

Seth has an uncanny likeness to Bobby. Some of the guys here at the SHAC noticed the similarity, mentioned it the other day at lunch and put this collage together.

Also, much has been made of the fact that Skip looks alot like Timmy.



And in all fairness, Alfred E. Newman and I could be brothers.

Bizarre

I don't follow the NBA much. I'll occasionally look to see how any MSU alums are doing, but I don't consider myself an NBA fan.

Last night, courtesy of my friends Ryan & Sarah, I attended a Houston Rockets game at the Toyota Center. Surprisingly, I enjoyed it. I say surprisingly because typically the NBA is more of a display of individual athletic prowess and less a demonstration of fundamental basketball. I usually prefer college hoops for that reason... plus it seems most college players are still playing mostly for the love of the game (admittedly some play on the hope of future NBA earnings).

Anyhow, I was pleasantly surprised that the Rockets hustled, played defense, passed the ball (very well) and basically beat the tar out of the Seattle SuperSonics who are apparently a higher ranked playoff team. It was fun and I enjoyed it and they did most of it without the assistance of Yao or T-mac.

As an aside, Turbo, the Rockets amazing mascot retired last night. Ryan and I wonder whether he is being pushed out or if he just got old? He does some amazing stuff, like doing a backflip off of a 20 foot ladder and dunking the ball. He sure is MUCH cooler than Clutch, the emasculated bear.

Oh the shame..

I was reading a former MSMS classmate's blog. He has an interest in regional linguistic variations and posts on the subject from time to time. He recently posted this which contains a link to a simple linguistic profile.

The quiz is very simple but mostly accurate. While I'm not sure what "General American English" is (55%), I am proud to say that I scored 35% dixie. That leaves 10% unaccounted for (ok, ok... 5% of that IS accounted for but I'm in denial). That unmentionable 5% betrays my "secret" family ties... Mom, Dad and the sisters were all born in Chi-town.

I went back and tinkered with some of the answers to see how the results would differ. Some of the questions that made a significant effect on the 'Dixieness' I had never even heard of and I've lived in Dixie all of my life (except for those 3 years in Texas and London).

Anyhow, if you're reading, take the test and post your results.

Your Linguistic Profile:

55% General American English

35% Dixie

5% Yankee

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Punting beyond my coverage...

Here's pics from this weekend's activities. H hijacked the MSU/AU baseball game and turned it into a birthday party for me (we lost the game 8-7 but won the series). My sister Jill thought I needed some hair so she got me the maroon wig... then Babs showed up and said I needed some hair... same maroon wig. Hence lots of good pics with my nephews and matching hair. Enjoy. All pictures are taken within the friendly confines of Dudy Noble Field, Polk-DeMent Stadium.

Captions are under each picture.

Me discovering that I'd been had....

H & I self portrait.... from Friday night (the surprise party was Saturday afternoon).

Big hair #1....

More of the same w/ Jill & Coop. Jill left her big hair at home this weekend.

Coop & Uncle Batch w/ matching hair... The second photo is featured on the MSU website... you can see it and the caption here. Aunt Karen and Uncle Mike are visible just over Coop's shoulder.

Matt & Uncle Batch... the hair runs in the family.

Batch and Bubba (barely off to the side).... at this point the dogs were rallying back from a rather large deficit. If it weren't for some really questionable base-running we might have won the game.

Finally, First Row Russ, Babs, Liz, Pete.
Second Row Jill, Steve & Kevin.

H put a lot of effort into the weekend... it was really nice to be with friends and family to celebrate the birthday. Mike and Karen get the long distance award for traveling all the way from Hoffman Estates, IL (~750 miles).

More important than the celebration of my 30th birthday, this weekend also marked the 5th anniversary of my marriage to H. In honor of that she put together an anniversary booklet that highlighted different memories of our 5 married years (places we've lived, vacation destinations, other significant events, etc...).


In addition to ALL of this she also gave me this ESV Reformation Study Bible.



I haven't had as much time to look at it as I'd like, but so far it has more than lived up to the hype. I highly recommend it. If you're interested in one for yourself you can get one here.

All this to pass along what my friend Alan Carter reminded me of a few weeks ago. As we were catching up and sharing stories we of course came to the topic of our wives... after telling him what all H had been up to recently he commented on how capable H is and then, in a very matter of fact manner said,

"Son, you've punted beyond well beyond your coverage."

Indeed I have Alan, indeed.

False Piety...

In his Review of "Hollywood Worldviews", JollyBlogger does a nice job describing how Christians should be engaging the arts and media, in particular the Hollywood movie houses. He also highlights some of the struggles we have in particularly difficult areas (sex, violence, profanity, etc...).

Here is an excerpt:

And, having said all of that I agree with Godawa that we need to look deeper into movies and look beyond the sex, violence and profanity to the story itself. He points out, as many others do, that stories are all about redemption. A more profitable way to view movies is to view them in terms of their themes of redemption instead of the scoresheet mentality of how many sex scenes, violent images and uses of profanity are in the movie. We can view them more intelligently by looking at who or what is in need of redemption, what is the problem or conflict they are being redeemed from, what they are being redeemed to and how that redemption is accomplished. Analyzing films this way will help us get at the underlying message of the stories in the movies we watch.

These ideas speak to my recent growing frustration with the unbibilical, moralistic ideas of Victorian purity that are throughout the church today. Rather than engaging culture in discussion of fallen man and the redemptive promises of Christ, many Christians have disengaged from all such discussions and created a Christian sub-culture full of selfrighteous prudes. In this sub-culture, the imputed righteousness of Christ is largely obscured by our civilized false propriety. Franky Schaeffer describes this well in his essay, sham pearls for real swine:

Civilized, the Bible has become a devotional prop of middle-class values instead of being the rude challenge to false propriety it actually is. The Bible is 'a dangerous, uncivilized, abrasive, raw, complicated, aggressive, scandalous, and offensive book. The Bible is the literature of God, and literature — as every book burner knows — is
dangerous. The Bible is the drama of God; it is God's Hamlet, Canterbury Tales, and Wuthering Heights. The Bible is, among other things, about God, men, women, sex, lies, truth, sin, goodness, fornication, adultery, murder, childbearing, virgins, whores, blasphemy, prayer, wine, food, history, nature, poetry, rape, love, salvation, damnation, temptation, and angels. Today the Bible is widely studied but rarely read. If the Bible were a film, it would be R-rated in some parts, X-rated in others. The Bible is not middle class. The Bible is not "nice." The Bible's tone is closer to that of the- late
Lenny Bruce than to that of the hushed piety of some ministers.

As Christians we need to repent of our piety and righteousness and return to complete reliance on Christ's all-sufficient sacrifice. We need to break free from the bondage of man-made rules that deny the sufficiency of Christ. We need to re-engage the world around us without fear. We need to be authentic in our relationships and take off this veil of false righteousness. We need to stop being so squeaky clean and get our hands dirty engaging a fallen world, taking the real Christ with us to redeem those we meet.

B

P.S.- If you would like to read the entire Schaeffer essay, I'd be glad to email it to you.