Friday, December 08, 2006
Thursday, December 07, 2006
First Snow
One clear sign that Christmas is right around the corner, is the first snow fall of the season. Well, Christmas must be on it's way, because Fort Wayne saw it's first snow accumulation overnight.
I awoke early this morning, and upon glancing out the window, found that about an inch of that cold white stuff blanketed everything. While it is pretty and all, I'm really not ready to deal with that stuff yet. Now, I'm not going to complain about it, because it will do no good. I will say, though, it's nasty and cold.
More later.
I awoke early this morning, and upon glancing out the window, found that about an inch of that cold white stuff blanketed everything. While it is pretty and all, I'm really not ready to deal with that stuff yet. Now, I'm not going to complain about it, because it will do no good. I will say, though, it's nasty and cold.
More later.
Monday, December 04, 2006
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Ah geez, it's always something
Yesterday was a bad day all the way around. I didn't feel well when I woke up, and really didn't want to go to work. I went anyway, and when I went to leave work, the shit really hit the fan.
When I went to start the car, it began shaking and rattling, annd made some funny noises. Well, I pulled out of the parking lot, and noticed the service engine light had started flashing. So, I slowly made my way back to my place, and parked it. Now, I'm thinking the problem is due to a lack of oil, and the need for a tune up. But I can't be sure. So I have made an appointment for Thursday morning to have the car serviced.
The servicing of the car is going to cost quite a bit; an astounding $468.85, parts and labor. Man, we're talking serious highway robbery. I'm not looking forward to writing the check for the car, but it's gotta be done.
So, for the time, I am without a car. April was kind enough to bring me to work this morning, and will be picking me up when my shift is over. Thank you hun.
On top of this bullshit, the weatherman is talking snow for the weekend. I have to get this car fixed, so I can go buy a new cost.
Ah geez, it's always something.
When I went to start the car, it began shaking and rattling, annd made some funny noises. Well, I pulled out of the parking lot, and noticed the service engine light had started flashing. So, I slowly made my way back to my place, and parked it. Now, I'm thinking the problem is due to a lack of oil, and the need for a tune up. But I can't be sure. So I have made an appointment for Thursday morning to have the car serviced.
The servicing of the car is going to cost quite a bit; an astounding $468.85, parts and labor. Man, we're talking serious highway robbery. I'm not looking forward to writing the check for the car, but it's gotta be done.
So, for the time, I am without a car. April was kind enough to bring me to work this morning, and will be picking me up when my shift is over. Thank you hun.
On top of this bullshit, the weatherman is talking snow for the weekend. I have to get this car fixed, so I can go buy a new cost.
Ah geez, it's always something.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Another day, another dollar. I guess.
I'm sitting here in the office, having just finished the daily chore of putting all of the daily news content on the website. Now that I have completed that task, I have been hit with a big wave of exhaustion. My eyes are not wanting to stay open, and that's not a good thing. It's a little warm in here, so it is making sleep even more appealing. I wish the window in front of my desk actually opened. A nice, cool, blast of air would help about now.
Not sure what I'll be doing when I leave work. May actually go home and take a much needed nap. Should work on some personal projects, but don't know if I feel like it. We'll see what happens.
Hope everyone reading this has a wonderful day. Back to work now. Ciao!
Not sure what I'll be doing when I leave work. May actually go home and take a much needed nap. Should work on some personal projects, but don't know if I feel like it. We'll see what happens.
Hope everyone reading this has a wonderful day. Back to work now. Ciao!
Monday, November 27, 2006
BUYING THE WAL-MART JESUS
BUYING THE WAL-MART JESUS
The new Wal-Mart Supercenter just opened up in my town, and man, what a sight! It’s a mammoth structure of utilitarian architecture that houses everything from a grocery to a garden center, along with every dry good you can imagine from fashion wear to office supplies. And people just flock there because it’s one-stop shopping, famous low prices, and a quick “get in and get out” affair. It is an amazing achievement in the history of American consumerism.
Oh, and don’t forget about the official Smiley Face mascot greeting you on every sign. It just makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside as you spend your money to save money.
The only problem is that the former Wal-Mart building in town is now vacant since the retail giant moved its local operation to the new Supercenter facility. Hard to believe that twenty years ago this smaller Wal-Mart store was the shining Camelot on the hill for local shoppers. Now it’s just a castle ruin, an empty shell of its former glory as the company moves on to bigger and better things. Alas, a sign of the times, I’m afraid.
Prior to the beginning of this Sam Walton invasion, our town had a few Mom-and-Pop retail stores downtown, but they’re gone now, too. The first Wal-Mart that landed here soon priced those little shops right out of the market and made it too easy for the faithful customers of our local enterprises to be slowly seduced by the discount convenience of the new store in town. Hometown loyalty and one-on-one service be damned! Pretty soon, those slow-paced, family-run stores with creaky wood floors and clanging brass cash registers had to close their doors for good. Nobody valued their unassuming brand of commerce anymore.
So why do I bring all this up? Because it seems to me that many Christians today have been infected with the same corrupting consumerism that has given rise to the Wal-Mart Supercenter. Their lives are no longer content with the eloquent simplicity of Jesus Christ and His Word, but now clamor for a wide variety of new and improved Christianized products to over-indulge their so-called faith. The congregations have moved out of the austere model of the small-town church, where unadorned worship to God rang forth, and have instead built for themselves Christian Supercenters in which to sell their worldly goods and services in the name of Christ.
You see striking evidence of this Wal-Mart mentality in postmodern Christianity every time you step into your local Christian bookstore and have to walk past shelf after shelf of shiny religious trinkets and trite bestsellers before you get to that little section of plain black Bibles in the far back corner. You see it every time you watch millions of professed Christians assemble in their multi-million dollar sanctuaries to hear feel-good sermons by Smiley Face mascots who offer heaven and happiness at a discount price.
Of course, it didn’t use to be like this. There was a time, believe it or not, when we survived just fine without the trappings of modern consumerism in our life. Long before the first Wal-Mart was built in my mostly-rural area, the presence of any kind of retail store was a rarity. All people really had back then was the Sears catalog. It sat there, prized like the family Bible, on the kitchen counter. Every member of the family had gone through that tome over and over again, memorizing the products that they dreamed of having one day. Yet they had no money for such luxuries and if they did, it was only due to careful hoarding of every stray penny they could scrape up. Sometimes they had to wait three years before saving enough money to buy that fancy hand-cranked clothes wringer so Mom didn’t have to wear out her arms twisting the clothes dry, unaided by modern technology.
Of course, when times got really bad, even the Sears catalog brought no comfort, except to supply a need for toilet paper in the outhouse.
Back then, we had a Great Depression caused by the blind self-indulgence of the Jazz age; and rural people in this area (through no fault of their own) were especially hit hard by it. These poor country folks didn’t have convenience stores, they only had each other. Families made just about everything they owned, and if they couldn’t make it, they had a good neighbor who could. It was a time when farming was so bad that it was more profitable to use their corn crop to burn in their stove for heat than to sell it for a lousy few cents per bushel. So the local families knitted themselves together and looked out for one another. It was a hard time, sometimes a desperate time. But with lots of faith, love, and patience, they got through it together as a community. There was no such thing as fast food outlets, shopping malls, or Wal-Mart Supercenters to bring swift temporal relief to their plight. It was a bare-boned existence that divided the wheat from the chaff, and forced humble folks to focus on the simple things in life that really mattered and to rejoice in them.
So you see, there was a time when Christians in this country were content with being lowly, meek, and poor in spirit. They served humbly in small congregations, read their Bibles faithfully, and prayerfully focused on the glory of Christ alone as they witnessed and brought aid to others. Over time, however, we became more prosperous and self-satisfied, and just like the Jazz Age, we began to borrow on a spiritual capital that we no longer possessed in order to gratify our ever-increasing desire for the things of this world. Soon, many churches became bastions of consumerism and began emulating themselves after the business world, until they finally transformed themselves into a kind of Wal-Mart Christianity.
The problem is, this over-indulgence in the churches will one day takes its toll and collapse like the stock market in 1929 because it is built on a foundation other than Christ alone. And when that inevitable day arrives in which we are stripped of our fleshy provisions and thrust into a great spiritual Depression, how will this rabid Christian consumerism provide for our needs and how much of it will quickly be engulfed by the fires of God’s testing?
In the end, it’s hay and stubble, my friends. All this Wal-Mart Christianity is just hay and stubble.
The new Wal-Mart Supercenter just opened up in my town, and man, what a sight! It’s a mammoth structure of utilitarian architecture that houses everything from a grocery to a garden center, along with every dry good you can imagine from fashion wear to office supplies. And people just flock there because it’s one-stop shopping, famous low prices, and a quick “get in and get out” affair. It is an amazing achievement in the history of American consumerism.
Oh, and don’t forget about the official Smiley Face mascot greeting you on every sign. It just makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside as you spend your money to save money.
The only problem is that the former Wal-Mart building in town is now vacant since the retail giant moved its local operation to the new Supercenter facility. Hard to believe that twenty years ago this smaller Wal-Mart store was the shining Camelot on the hill for local shoppers. Now it’s just a castle ruin, an empty shell of its former glory as the company moves on to bigger and better things. Alas, a sign of the times, I’m afraid.
Prior to the beginning of this Sam Walton invasion, our town had a few Mom-and-Pop retail stores downtown, but they’re gone now, too. The first Wal-Mart that landed here soon priced those little shops right out of the market and made it too easy for the faithful customers of our local enterprises to be slowly seduced by the discount convenience of the new store in town. Hometown loyalty and one-on-one service be damned! Pretty soon, those slow-paced, family-run stores with creaky wood floors and clanging brass cash registers had to close their doors for good. Nobody valued their unassuming brand of commerce anymore.
So why do I bring all this up? Because it seems to me that many Christians today have been infected with the same corrupting consumerism that has given rise to the Wal-Mart Supercenter. Their lives are no longer content with the eloquent simplicity of Jesus Christ and His Word, but now clamor for a wide variety of new and improved Christianized products to over-indulge their so-called faith. The congregations have moved out of the austere model of the small-town church, where unadorned worship to God rang forth, and have instead built for themselves Christian Supercenters in which to sell their worldly goods and services in the name of Christ.
You see striking evidence of this Wal-Mart mentality in postmodern Christianity every time you step into your local Christian bookstore and have to walk past shelf after shelf of shiny religious trinkets and trite bestsellers before you get to that little section of plain black Bibles in the far back corner. You see it every time you watch millions of professed Christians assemble in their multi-million dollar sanctuaries to hear feel-good sermons by Smiley Face mascots who offer heaven and happiness at a discount price.
Of course, it didn’t use to be like this. There was a time, believe it or not, when we survived just fine without the trappings of modern consumerism in our life. Long before the first Wal-Mart was built in my mostly-rural area, the presence of any kind of retail store was a rarity. All people really had back then was the Sears catalog. It sat there, prized like the family Bible, on the kitchen counter. Every member of the family had gone through that tome over and over again, memorizing the products that they dreamed of having one day. Yet they had no money for such luxuries and if they did, it was only due to careful hoarding of every stray penny they could scrape up. Sometimes they had to wait three years before saving enough money to buy that fancy hand-cranked clothes wringer so Mom didn’t have to wear out her arms twisting the clothes dry, unaided by modern technology.
Of course, when times got really bad, even the Sears catalog brought no comfort, except to supply a need for toilet paper in the outhouse.
Back then, we had a Great Depression caused by the blind self-indulgence of the Jazz age; and rural people in this area (through no fault of their own) were especially hit hard by it. These poor country folks didn’t have convenience stores, they only had each other. Families made just about everything they owned, and if they couldn’t make it, they had a good neighbor who could. It was a time when farming was so bad that it was more profitable to use their corn crop to burn in their stove for heat than to sell it for a lousy few cents per bushel. So the local families knitted themselves together and looked out for one another. It was a hard time, sometimes a desperate time. But with lots of faith, love, and patience, they got through it together as a community. There was no such thing as fast food outlets, shopping malls, or Wal-Mart Supercenters to bring swift temporal relief to their plight. It was a bare-boned existence that divided the wheat from the chaff, and forced humble folks to focus on the simple things in life that really mattered and to rejoice in them.
So you see, there was a time when Christians in this country were content with being lowly, meek, and poor in spirit. They served humbly in small congregations, read their Bibles faithfully, and prayerfully focused on the glory of Christ alone as they witnessed and brought aid to others. Over time, however, we became more prosperous and self-satisfied, and just like the Jazz Age, we began to borrow on a spiritual capital that we no longer possessed in order to gratify our ever-increasing desire for the things of this world. Soon, many churches became bastions of consumerism and began emulating themselves after the business world, until they finally transformed themselves into a kind of Wal-Mart Christianity.
The problem is, this over-indulgence in the churches will one day takes its toll and collapse like the stock market in 1929 because it is built on a foundation other than Christ alone. And when that inevitable day arrives in which we are stripped of our fleshy provisions and thrust into a great spiritual Depression, how will this rabid Christian consumerism provide for our needs and how much of it will quickly be engulfed by the fires of God’s testing?
In the end, it’s hay and stubble, my friends. All this Wal-Mart Christianity is just hay and stubble.
Back to work
The Thanksgiving holiday has passed, and the weekend is now over. That can only mean one thing, it's Monday, and time to go back to work.
A long week lies ahead of me, as I must now endeavor to build interfaces for a new database application I am building for work, and then attempt to populate and test the database. Not looking forward to it, but it has to be done.
I'm still feeling the effects of all the driving I did over the holiday weekend. With driving to Louisville, around town, and then back to Fort Wayne, I have been left quite sore and tense. The back, shoulders, and neck are really hurting this morning. Add that to being extremely tired, and it's definitely going to be a long day.
I wasn't able to take many pictures during the holiday, so I won't be posting those as I had originally said that I might. Oh well, better luck next time.
All for now. Time to work. Have a good one. Ciao!
A long week lies ahead of me, as I must now endeavor to build interfaces for a new database application I am building for work, and then attempt to populate and test the database. Not looking forward to it, but it has to be done.
I'm still feeling the effects of all the driving I did over the holiday weekend. With driving to Louisville, around town, and then back to Fort Wayne, I have been left quite sore and tense. The back, shoulders, and neck are really hurting this morning. Add that to being extremely tired, and it's definitely going to be a long day.
I wasn't able to take many pictures during the holiday, so I won't be posting those as I had originally said that I might. Oh well, better luck next time.
All for now. Time to work. Have a good one. Ciao!
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Back in the Fort
Just a brief message to let my readers know that I'm back in Fort Wayne now. April and I left Louisville around 2:00pm this afternoon, and arrived home about an hour ago. While I'm sad that the holiday vacation is ending, it is nice to be back home, and I am looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight.
Lots of stories that I could share, but at this point, I'm just too tired to care.
More later.
Ciao!
Lots of stories that I could share, but at this point, I'm just too tired to care.
More later.
Ciao!
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Happy Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving to all who read this blog.
April and I made it to Louisville last night, safe and sound. I must say, though, that traffic was a nightmare, from Indianapolis to Louisville. Gotta love slow and go traffic; for an impatient person like me, this was a real adventure.
Anyway, we are here until sometime Saturday, and are going to do as little as possible. We are having dinner at granny's house in about an hour, so I better get moving.
More later. Ciao!
April and I made it to Louisville last night, safe and sound. I must say, though, that traffic was a nightmare, from Indianapolis to Louisville. Gotta love slow and go traffic; for an impatient person like me, this was a real adventure.
Anyway, we are here until sometime Saturday, and are going to do as little as possible. We are having dinner at granny's house in about an hour, so I better get moving.
More later. Ciao!
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