"I practically invented decline." -Michael Scott

Hola blogworld.


Despite what it looks like, they are not leading worship.

Nothing big to post this week, but next week.. big news. So let's get on with the random thoughts...

Consumer vs Producer.
I finally have the words for a concept that has been floating around for a while when it comes to my vision for youth ministry. We have created a generation of church consumers who rate their church experience on how well their needs are met. More and more I'm getting excited about people who are looking at the needs they can meet as part of a church family. More on this later.

One way.
Have you ever driven somewhere and only had to make left turns? I was heading to a friend's house the other day and with the exception of exiting the freeway (doesn't count) every move i made was a left turn. Kind of freaked me out.

Closure.
Speaking of driving, one of the simple joys in life that mi hermana pointed out, is when the song ends right as you are turning off the car. Does anyone have a term for this? If there isn't one out there, I'd like to suggest 'closure'. My closure record is 16 in a row over the course of a couple of magical days back in 07.

If you're on twitter, you should follow Christopher Walken at :
***sorry, the link didn't post twitter.com/cwalken

Fridays have become our office music days. so far we've had:
Otis redding/soul day
Ladysmith Black Mambazo day
Bob Marley day
Caedmon's Call day
Jack Johnson day
80's day
and i think our secretary is planning on having Yanni day.

Is it just me, or is t-pain and his robot-voice on every song on the radio?

Overhype.
This has been a word dominating my culture conversations lately. Here's my list of things that are overhyped:
watchmen (overhyped and disturbing)
bruce springsteen (i just don't get it... sorry union members)
AIG (there are plenty of other corrupt companies that need some tough love as well)
NCAA basketball (i skipped bracketology this year and haven't missed it at all)
twitter (i joined because i'm hoping someday it will be useful)
hating the new facebook layout

Kings.
Best new show on tv. It's a modern day version of the story of David, which means it will probably be the raciest show in primetime. Go to hulu.com to catch up.

Creeper.
Still trying to figure out if/what to say to chica #2. I don't really want to use facebook to ask her out, but options are limited. I'll keep you updated on what I decide/consequences.

Reminder:
The on-ramp is for accelerating to safe freeway speeds. Please do not stop at the end of the on ramp. Also, if your car is not capable of maintaing reasonable freeway speeds, please do not travel via freeway. Thank you.

Science.
The restrooms at our office complex are down the hall, and a require a key to gain entry. I have discovered that the time it takes for the key to work is in direct proportion to my need to get in.

Mafia.
I've said it before, and I'll say it a lot more, I love my friends in youth ministry out here in SoCal. I've got a long list of blessings in my life, and the people that I serve with are right near the top.

Listening:
Switchfoot: Nothing is Sound
Thrice: Vhiessu
Rancid: Out Come the Wolves
Pearl Jam : Ten
Hum: You'd Prefer An Astronaut

Reading:
Purpose Driven Life
Crazy Love
Exodus
Band of Brothers
Something Under the Bed Is Drooling.

Planning:
Camping trip
Surf lessons
Overseas vacation
Young adults retreat

One love, one heart.

A Mighty Wind.

I dare you to watch this video without laughing.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

one love, one fart.

Fall down seven times. Get up eight. - Japanese Proverb

This story is awesome.



In a culture of complaining, this story really strikes a chord with me. I would like to reiterate what DJ's dad said, this guy has nothing to be embarrassed about. Listen to this wisdom:

"If I fall, I fall. It's just another challenge. I'm going to fall, it's just the way it is; I'm going to do it. So, you know what, you get back up, learn from your mistakes, and do it again."

one love, one heart.

Action Michael, Action DJ, Rog-R-Bot and the Fire-Breathing French Dragon: as told by one of my 6th graders.

This is action figure dj, and action figure michael. They work at an electronic store called Directdisc, which is owned by a fire-breathing french dragon. The fire-breathing french dragon runs his shop like Donald Trump, telling everyone that they are fired.

Action figure Michael comes with a giant mustache/wings. He used to be a semi professional football player, but his mustache/wings prevented him from making plays, because it was so heavy. And people couldn't see the number on his jersey. He wants a new job, but it's tough in this market.

Action figure dj comes with a some mini wings, a fire extinguisher and a pet transformer named Rog-R-bot. Action figure dj used to work at a car wash, but left when he kept getting soap in his eyes, and spent all day rinsing them out.

As for Rog-R-Bot, he used to have his own kids show called 'Mr. Rog-R-Bot' where he taught preschoolers about traffic safety, but was kicked off because it stunk.

The End.

Tune in next week, when in the year 3035 AD, action figure Michael and action figure dj fight over 'love interest'. action figure dj loses his hovercraft-truck and action figure Michael uses his mustache to win over the ladies.

one love, one heart.

Happy Birthday Chuck Norris.

I think the picture speaks for itself. But if you feel like you need to learn more about Chuck Norris, check out his fact page.

one love, one heart.

Guest Blog from OK Chick

Hola Blogger World! I’m OK Chick, and I am your guest blogger. Now, I assume most of DJ’s readers reside in sunny, beautiful, close to the beach, CA? Well, I reside in Oklahoma. It’s possible; some of DJ’s sunny CA readers have a misconception about my fine state. I mean really, who comes to Oklahoma for vacation? No one. Furthermore, I’m sure what national news coverage we’ve received; hasn’t been flattering. I realize you’ve probably seen the shirtless redneck, missing two front teeth, give his tale of the tornado, which just destroyed his mobile home. Well Blogger World, there’s more to Oklahoma than rednecks, OU Sooners Football, Indians/Tepees, Barry Switzer, Toby Keith, and Garth Brooks. So please, step inside my world.

Wind
We have a lot of it here in Oklahoma. I know everyone thinks Chicago is the Windy City, but that’s only because Oklahoma wasn’t counted as a state when Chicago claimed the nickname. Really, Oklahoma City should be called the Windy City. This morning I was up at 5:15am for a run. Do you know that the wind was already blowing 22 mph? True story.

Thunder
No, not the sound made by lighting; the basketball team. Last year we stole an NBA team from Seattle, and changed their name to Thunder. It has made Oklahoma Thunder one of the most hated professional sport organizations in history; or so my buddy Bill Simmons from ESPN.com argues. Whatever, we have an NBA team and Seattle doesn’t. Get over it! We pack The Ford Center every game to see our Thunder lose. Besides, I support Seattle economy almost every day by stopping at Starbucks. It’s practically even. Folks, I buy a lot of nonfat Chais.

Oklahoma and Texas is basically the same thing
I would like for you to erase that statement from your brain. Go ahead- erase it. We are nothing like Texas. Have you met people from Texas? They have big hair, huge belt buckles, and talk with reeaaalll Southern accents. We Oklahomans like to keep our hair and belt buckles to a minimum level. Also, we do not talk with Southern accents. Fine! If you go to the backwoods of Oklahoma, waaaay south, you’ll find some folks that speak with southern accents. But here in OKC, no way. Also, I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Red River Rivalry? Yea, that right there proves how much the two states hate each other.

Fatties
Yes, we are more on the hefty size here in Oklahoma. It’s to be blamed on all the fried chicken, turkey legs, Indian tacos, bbq, fried okra, biscuits and gravy, and Sonic slushies we consume. Last year OKC Mayor made Oklahoma’s weight his top priority. He went on every nationwide news show and called our state fat. Yeah, it was a great moment. He challenged our stated to lose one million pounds in a year. It’s been over a year and we’ve lost 300,000 pounds. Needless to say, we don’t care that we’re fat because fried okra dipped in ranch is dang good!

Friendly
Down here people acknowledge each other. It’s not out of character to have a stranger strike up a conversation with you in line at Wal-Mart. However, I do not fit this mold. If I’m in Wal-Mart and I spot someone from High School; I will run and hide. If it helps me avoid having meaningless talk with them, I’ll go stand in the dog food isle for ten minutes. BUT generally, everyone is very friendly in this part of the world. Not saying the people of sunny CA are not friendly, but we’re REAL friendly around here.

Tornadoes
We have a lot of these in Oklahoma. Tornadoes are kind of a big deal around here. We take our weather and weather people very serious, probably more than most state. Every true Oklahoman knows what weather person is associated with each channel; and each person has “their weather person”. It’s kind of your go-to person when the sky is dark and it’s raining. I’m more of a Gary England girl. He’s on CBS. Lord Gary, as we call him, has been tracking tornadoes for 100 years. Really, he’s old. I trust a person that has lots of experience in this field. Also, he’s so funny to watch on TV. When he starts cussing it’s hilarious! Oh and they have even developed a drinking game for Lord Gary/Tornado Season. I’ve never played. I prefer to be sober during tornadoes. You know, in case a tornado comes ripping down my street, and I need to get in the closet.

Hopefully, I’ve cleared up any misconceptions. By the way, I’m jealous of you folks that live in sunny CA. You have the beach!

**be sure to check out OK Chick's Blog, it's a must read!

one love, one heart.

Happy Birthday Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash is one of my all time favorite musicians. Songs like Folsom Prison Blues, and I Walk the Line resonate across all styles of music to this day. For my money though, his best song was a love poem written by his soon to be wife, June Carter. I remember the first time I heard Ring of Fire. I was in the car with mi madre and mi hermana and we were driving up north to L.A. for some reason. I turned the radio to the legendary KROQ station and heard this great song by (another one of my favorites) Social Distortion. I had previously caught the tail end of the song and was stoked to hear it in its entirety. I turned the radio up and sang along, when my mom (so it seemed at the time) ruined the moment. "This is an old country song". Screeeeeeeech. "No way" I replied. But mom assured me that it was an old country song, and she sang along. I knew my mom wasn't a Social Distortion fan, so she must know what's she was talking about. A few days later we were at the mall and I stopped in to the Wherehouse music (remember those?) and for the first time ever ventured into the country music section. There it was, Johnny Cash: Greatest Hits, right there at the start of the 'C's. I put on the headphones and scanned in the cd and for the first time heard the infamous horn riff that provides the memorable melody to what instantly became my favorite song. It was a few years before I told anybody that there was a country singer that I really liked. These were the grunge years, the ska years, and the punk years. I remember one day my friends were going through my cd collection and they laughed at this out of place country cd. We put it in the discman and cruised downtown seattle. I thought my music cred was gone, but my friends loved it too. I was floored. Pretty soon I started playing guitar, and with Ring of Fire being a simple GCD chord riff, it was first on my list of songs to learn. Over the years most of my friends have heard me play this, or at the very least know that I am a huge fan.

So why is this a big deal? I'm a music person. A large part of the reason that I am a music person is because of Johnny Cash. So thank you Johnny Cash. Thank you for providing me with a great soundtrack to my life. R.I.P.

One love, one heart.

Confessions of a Wrestler.

Things that should have tipped off me and brohymm that we were in the wrong theater when we went to watch The Wrestler last night:

1. The lack of men in the theater.
2. The preview for the Hannah Montana movie.
3. The light, bubbly music as the movie started.
4. The opening monologue with a cheery voice.

Yeah, so as soon as we saw the words 'Confessions of a Shopaholic' appear onscreen we booked it out of the theater and managed to find our theater just in time to see the preview for T4.

By the way, to the ticket taker at the AMC in Mission Valley, it's second theater on the left, not the first.

Oh yeah, The Wrestler was really good. Not a kid friendly movie by any means, but good none the less.

one love, one heart.

"I Recycle. I Cycle to work and Recycle home." - Nick Thune

Hola blogworld.

I've never been one to get caught up in much in the hype machine that it is environmentalism. I'm not going around emptying aerosol cans into the air, but I've always had my doubts as to how effective these measures are. There seems to be a lot of inconsistencies in mainstream environmentalism, from studies funded by oil companies, to groups like the ELF (earth liberation front...worst anagram ever) burning down new homes.

Anyways, here are a few things that I came across recently that I thought were noteworthy. I'll include a list of sources at the end.

Organic food.
It seems like a good idea. Eating food that is free of those nasty chemical fertilizers, pesticides and such. Anything that's natural has to be better for you right? Well, not necessarily. Cancer rates have dropped since farmers began using chemicals, and organic farming uses a lot of manure which results in a greater risk of contamination. Despite accounting for only 1% of the food supply, organic food accounts for 8% of cases of E. Coli.

Another funny thing about those chemicals is that they were invented for a reason, to increase food production. Organic farming is pretty inefficient. The current acre of farmland produces 200% more than it did 70 years ago, and the same goes for meat and poultry. According to some guy that won a Nobel Prize, we could feed 4 billion people if we all went organic, which is pretty lame for the other 2.5 billion left to starve.

As for the environment, organic food has a whole lot of issues to overcome. Because it is inefficient to farm, there is a shortage of organic food available to people that desire it the most. This means that organic food is being shipped hundreds of miles by (diesel) trucks. So in a way, organic food might actually be harming the environment.

Recycling.
Another seemingly good idea. Let's reuse everything. I was raised with images of forests getting clear cut and burned, and then panning out to shots of the globe being covered in water. Did you know that the number of trees on earth has actually increased over the past 50 years? Logging companies have long made it a practice to plant more trees than they cut down in an effort to ensure future growth.

As for landfills, some researcher at Gonzaga did a study about U.S. consumption and figured out our garbage over the next 1,000 years would fill a 35 square mile area 100 yards deep. This is less than 1/10th of the land that we currently use for grazing, and this is over a thousand year period. Also, our paper disposal has gone down significantly over the past decade with the rise of electronic communication.

Another flag recyclists wave is that of saving resources, which really is a matter of perspective. If you consider human labor to be a resource, then Los Angeles alone shows the ineffectiveness of recycling. In L.A. there are twice as many garbage trucks as there would be if there weren't a recycling program. Recycling requires more trucks and more people to oversee the process. So it's tough to measure the effectiveness of the overall impact of the recycling program.

Lastly, a chemist figured out that you would have to use a ceramic mug over 1,000 times before you would see benefits over using styrofoam cups for those 1,000 cups of coffee. This is taking into consideration the amount of energy it takes to make the mug, and the amount of energy and water it takes to wash it after each use. My dad had this beat, he used the same mug for years without washing it. It was gross.

Carbon offsets.
This is by far the worst idea environmentalists have come up with. A carbon offset is basically paying a company to reduce their carbon emissions to make up for your usage. This is basically paying for your guilty conscience. Currently, there is no structure set up to monitor these purchases, so you have no idea what, or how much you are buying, and what that exactly means. In fact, government investigations have shown that a large number of carbon offsets were just empty promises, or that companies were already planning on reducing their emissions. That's like offering me money to drink less diet soda.

Like I said before, these things do not mean we should package stuff in excess materials or waste energy and empty out cans of hairspray for fun. But, I think it is time we stopped worshipping the Earth and started worshiping the creator. If we focused the same amount of time and energy into serving others and caring for those in need we would rise up a generation of people that knew how to take care of all of God's creation. It's easy to get sidetracked by good intent, but when we get so caught up in preventing Waterworld from happening that we are willing to believe anything that lobbyists, and extremists cry out, I think we miss our true calling, which is a life of worship. We were not made for a life of fear, or trying to cover our guilty conscience, or searching for personal identity by identifying with a tree, and definitely not for satisfying self-interest groups.

If you need me, I'll be at the beach picking up trash.

One love, one heart.

p.s. here are some of the sources:










**** The links show up in my editor, but for some reason they aren't showing up on the post. If you really want them just comment****

What am I gonna do with 40 subscriptions to Vibe?

Hola Blogworld,

Office.


I love the office I work at now. It's pretty cramped but it makes for some good times. Just like any other place we have our own little quirks. Here are a few of my faves:
At least once a week we have issues with our printers, which automatically qualifies us as an official office space. I have to fight the urge to yell 'PC load letter! what does that mean?' every time we have a hiccup with printing.
The secretary and I are about three feet apart so I typically have my headphones in, which means every time she says something I turn around and almost pull my laptop off of the desk.
Whenever somebody brings food in we all get hungry, but the office always smells good.
Our preacher has his own room, but it is only glass that separates us, so most of the time we are talking to each other through a single pane of glass. If I have anything serious to say I have to walk into his office because there's no way I'm keeping a straight face talking through glass.
At least once a week we start quoting a Mel Brooks movie. By we, I am not including our secretary. She's a saint.
Everything in our office is a shade of tan. The building, the carpet, the bookcases, our desks... everything.
My cheap target bookcase can not stand up on its own, we have to wedge it between another bookcase and a cabinet just to keep it standing.
When the sun is out, crows will fly into the window right in front of my desk. I jump every time.
Our preacher has Napoleon Dynamite stuff on his desk, I have my Goulet autograph. We get along really well.

Creeper.
So a bunch of my stuff is still in storage up in Simi, which is run by my least favorite creeper. When I was setting up the account, I picked up that she was trying to flirt (poorly) and tried to be as nice as possible. Sidenote: complaining about everything is not a good way to get someone's interest. Anyways, I went up there for the first time in a few months to pick up a few things, and when I got there my gate code didn't work. So I walk into the office (with nonickname alongside, I refuse to go in by myself) and ask her why I couldn't get through. She says she isn't sure and then proceeds to look up my account WITHOUT ASKING FOR MY NAME. I asked her if there was a problem with the gate, or if there was something wrong with my account, and she tells me that somehow my access was switched off. Mind you, this is the only person I have ever seen working there. She activates my code, we load up my truck, and on the way out nonickname points out the possibility that creeper probably messed with my code so I would have to come into the office. yikes. no fun at all. oh yeah, she also has access to my address and credit card information, so if you're out there creeper storage lady... let's be friends!

Universal remote.
I recently bought a universal remote for my tv and dvd player. It was a little more complicated to set up than I had anticipated, so I ended up reading the little instruction manual that came with it. Recently our government passed the single largest spending bill without anyone reading through it. Good idea. That's change you can believe in.

And you are...
I was up in l.a. on sunday night crashing at a friends' place in hollywood, and decided to go to the corner pizza place to grab some dinner. I walked in and it was like the scene from swingers where the crew walks in to the party, everyone stops and glances for a second, and then immediately turns their heads back to their really important conversations. I just chuckled and walked up to the only empty seat in the place and ordered a pizza and a pepsi (yes i'm drinking sodas again). Anyways, I'm sitting there at what is essentially the bar chillin waiting for my pizza, when the people around me turn and ask, 'so what have you been in?' not 'where do you work?' or 'where are you from?', but 'what have you been in?' i love that you just have to assume that everyone in l.a. wants to be an actor. and i'm love that i live in san diego.

214
Not always my favorite day, but this year I went to surferchica's birthday party and had a blast dressing up, hitting up a sweet sushi spot, and chillin with some new folks. Not a whole lot to tell there, but it was nice not to have something chill to do on 214.

Evangeline.
I talked with Evangeline Clothing about putting some designs to their shirts and possibly skateboards. It's a great company that's starting to blow up pretty decent. Be sure to check out the new site at evangelineclothing.com, and look for my stuff soon.

Pictures.
I found my box of pictures from back in the day, which look like they are mostly from church camp. If I knew then how much they would mean to me now I would have taken hundreds more.

Mere Christianity.
Is so much better on audiobook when read by someone with an English accent.

Reach for the stars.

A big birthday shout out to my main man Nicolaus Copernicus, who was born this day in 1473. Mr. C was the first guy to figure out that earth was not the center of the universe. He proposed that the sun is the center of the universe, and Galileo and Keplar backed it up a hundred years later. Nowadays we know the universe revolves around Kanye West.

Toilet Talk.

Another birthday shout out to Jeff Daniels, who will always make me laugh with the toilet scene from Dumb and Dumber.

anyways, there's a bunch of big stuff on the horizon that i'll hopefully be able to share with the blogworld soon. until then,

one love, one heart.