After two days of family parties and meals hosted at our house, we’re still decompressing. I’ll most likely get back to regular blogging briefly next week but it will probably be 2009 before we return to a regular schedule.
So…hope you had a great Christmas. Enjoy the weekend.
One of my former TrueU editors, the current ski bum Matthew H. John, reminded me last week about an article I wrote last Christmas for the now defunct webmag. It was called “My Favorite Christmas Story” and it’s about a parable that’s not usually associated with Christmas (but should be). Rather than send you there, I’m gonna reprint the whole thing here. Including the footnotes.
Merry Christmas!
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My Favorite Christmas Story (originally appearing at TrueU.org)
Elfin Dentists, Miraculous Trees, and Vampires
This is a wonderful time of year for people like me who look forward to those days, right after Thanksgiving, when we can finally do the thing for which we’ve been waiting month after month after hot, summery month. Lug out the Christmas decorations? No. Pop in the John Tesh Christmas album? Nope. What I’m talking about is far more meaningful than either of those things: it’s watching old television Christmas specials.
With a spacious DVR and a broad selection of channels, a person can really stock up on Christmas programming during the month of December. My kids are young, so over the last few years I’ve enjoyed introducing them to some of the great televised Christmas stories of my childhood — which, trust me, were already old when I first saw them. These include the following:
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the classic, stop-motion, Rankin-Bass production, featuring brilliant performances by Hermey the Elf (who really just wants to be a dentist), Yukon Cornelius (the crusty old prospector), and Bumble (a supersized Yeti who gets his scary teeth extracted by Hermey). Good times.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the animated Dr. Seuss cartoon, not the one with Jim Carrey. Because: ick.
A Charlie Brown Christmas, which is probably my favorite. Reason #1: It’s always refreshing to hear an unvarnished retelling of the Christmas story, right out of Luke 2. Reason #2: It always cracks me up when the entire gang starts to sing, at which point their heads tilt back, their mouths open wide, and we get a full-on look up their noses. Reason #3: The mystical transformation of that scrawny stick of a tree into a thick, lush, full-blown masterpiece of holiday décor, simply because a scrum of kids descended upon it and started waving their hands around. It’s like miraculous group tai-chi!
My kids love the three specials above just as much as I do. There are others on my favorites list, however, that the kids don’t get to watch, like the 1984 film version of A Christmas Carol. George C. Scott is a fantastic Scrooge and I’ve yet to see a more nightmare-inducing Ghost of Christmas Future. Then there’s “Amends,” the classic episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which tells a story of forgiveness, grace, and resurrection, concluding with a Christmas miracle (snowfall in Sunnydale!). But it also includes, you know, vampires and vampire slaying, which the kids aren’t quite ready to add to their holiday viewing schedules.
Anyway, enough nostalgia. We’re awash in Christmas stories this time of year. You have your favorites, and so do I. But there’s one Christmas story I return to every season which never seems to get any press. Not on TV. Not in the children’s books. Not even at church.
Nevertheless, it’s a story you know well. You can read it for yourself in Luke 15. It’s the parable of the Prodigal Son. But before we get to it, let’s talk about the incarnation.
The Incarnation: More Than a Breakfast Drink
What comes to mind when you think about Jesus? If you’re like most evangelical Christians, your answer probably has something to do with the things we celebrate at Easter, the other big Christian holiday. We think of the cross, perhaps. We think about forgiveness and about Jesus dying for our sins. We think of the resurrection and the gift of eternal life. And you know what? Those are good things to think about. No problems there. In fact, Paul makes it clear in 1 Corinthians 15 that, if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, our faith is useless. The Christian faith pivots on whether or not the resurrection really happened. In terms of importance, it’s hard to beat that.
But if there’s any downfall to our evangelical emphasis on Easter, it’s that we’ve unconsciously shipped the Christmas story off to second place. We talk about the resurrection all the time. But the incarnation? The story of the Christ child, Emmanuel, “God with us”? Other than during these few weeks at the end of the year, the first coming of Jesus gets scant attention. Maybe it’s because the entire concept is pretty hard to wrap our minds around. The theological idea that Jesus was 100 percent man and 100 percent divine doesn’t exactly lend itself to one of those handy charts in the back of our Bibles, right before the maps of Paul’s missionary journeys. It doesn’t play well on Flannelgraph, either.*
In fact, I’d be willing to bet that, while almost any churchgoer can tell you the significance of the resurrection, a surprising percentage wouldn’t even be able to define the word incarnation.*
And that’s a problem. Because without the incarnation — without God becoming flesh and dwelling among us — you don’t get to Jesus. His life and death don’t mean much if He’s not fully man and fully divine. The resurrection doesn’t happen if He’s not God with skin on. Which means you wouldn’t be too far off in identifying the incarnation as the central point of the entire Bible.
Then why, upon hearing the word incarnation, are we more likely to think of a flower or a breakfast drink* than the mystery we celebrate at Christmas?
The Father’s Full-Speed Hug
If the incarnation is the story of God entering His creation — of God refusing to wait for us to come to Him and instead, demeaning Himself to come to us — then the story that best illustrates it is the Parable of the Prodigal Son. And that’s why it’s my all-time favorite Christmas story, better than anything Charles Schultz or Dr. Seuss have ever told.
As far as parables go, the title is misleading. Somewhere along the way, it got named after the son who leaves his family, squanders his money, and returns home a failed wreck of a man. But I wonder if maybe the story isn’t so much about the son as it is about the father. When the son left home, requesting his inheritance in advance, what he was symbolically doing was telling his dad to drop dead. He humiliated his father. The son’s actions would have stunned Jesus’ listeners, and they wouldn’t have been surprised had the family immediately disowned the boy and moved on as if he never existed.
But that’s not what happened. Consider the father’s response when the son returned. “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him” (Luke 15:20).
I love the detail that the father saw the son “while he was still a long way off.” He hadn’t written the kid off as dead, as would have been expected. Nope, he was actually waiting for him to return. He was looking for him. And when he finally saw the prodigal, the dad leapt out of his rocking chair, stumbled down the porch steps and tore off down the road like a crazy person. The father took action. He went running toward the son who had so humiliated him. He didn’t care what it looked like, or what anyone else thought. He only cared about his child.
The father, of course — the crazy guy laughing and weeping and kicking up dust as he sprints down the road — is God.
Return & Redemption
Occasionally, due to speaking engagements or writing assignments, I travel solo, leaving my wife and kids at home. I love to travel, but being away from my family is hard. In fact, the best part of these trips is always the return home, because I know one thing: my kids will be at the airport to greet me. When I leave the secured part of the terminal, I always stop and get ready, because what comes next is one of my favorite things in the world. My kids will see me from way down the concourse. Their faces will light up. They’ll start running. And within seconds, I’ll be smothered by a flying, screaming, two-child, four-armed hug. It’ll be all I can do to drop my carry-on, kneel down to their level, spread my arms and try not to fall backward to the floor. And I love it. There’s no better way to return home.
The uninhibited joy of my kids’ arms-wide-open airport sprint is no different than the father’s actions in this parable. That’s what God does in the incarnation. By coming to Earth in the person of Jesus, God doesn’t wait for us to approach Him. He comes to us. He puts on flesh and blood, and in doing so, He redeems what it means to be human. He wraps all of Creation in his hug, restoring us to fellowship with Him. Through the example of His love, He restores us to fellowship with each other.
That’s the story of Christmas, and it doesn’t involve animated beagles or stop-motion reindeer or quippy vampire slayers. It’s a story about a father, and a fallen child, and how the long road between them vanishes thanks to the sprinting sandals of grace … disguised as a tiny baby in a manger.
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* FOOTNOTE 1 — If you’re too young to know about Flannelgraph, read this excellent John Fischer article.)
* FOOTNOTE 2 — Quick definition: Incarnation is the theological term describing how the Creator of the world stooped to enter into His world as one of His creations. In the incarnation, the divine nature unites — perfectly, mysteriously — with human nature. See John 1:1-18 and Philippians 2:6-11.
* FOOTNOTE 3 — Seriously, am I the only one whose mind automatically conjures up the old jingle for Carnation Instant Breakfast, the powdered chocolate drink? (“You’re gonna love it in an instant!”) Please tell me I’m not alone in this.
My brother-in-law sent me the photo below. It’s a screen capture from the Billy Graham Christmas special (with Franklin Graham), which aired on local stations somewhere between Dec. 6 and Dec 14 this year. I didn’t watch the show — thanks, but I’ve been evangelized plenty in my lifetime — but it’s likely I would have been equally amused and annoyed by the graphic at the bottom right of the screen:
I know there are few evangelicals more respected than Billy Graham and his son, Franklin. Despite some well-documented rebellious years (and despite having suspicious hair) Franklin has largely followed in his dad’s evangelical footsteps — only with less interest in befriending presidents and more interest in social justice. His Samaritan’s Purse, for example, is an excellent relief organization working on behalf of children and fighting poverty and AIDS. Good job.
And I know that Franklin’s (and Billy’s) “thing” is large-scale evangelism. Big events. Stadiums and arenas and thousands of decisions “to follow Jesus.” While I’m not in the theological place where I think salvation is necessarily the oversimplified pray-this-prayer-and-now-you’re-saved approach the Grahams have made popular, I can’t deny that many, many people have taken their first steps toward God through their evangelistic campaigns.
But surely somebody on Graham’s team saw the unintentional hilarity and/or ridiculousness and/or cheapening of the Gospel that comes from putting this phrase on the television screen:
For a relationship with Jesus Christ: 1-800-631-7141
As if they had whole pallets of relationships with Jesus stored in the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association warehouse, and they’d drop one in the mail to you immediately.
As if you should act now — don’t wait – because if you call within the next ten minutes, not only will you get a relationship with Jesus Christ but we’ll throw in a commemorative plate of the Last Supper, too!
As if they also had Jesus on the phone, standing by, and as soon as they determined you weren’t a crazy person and gave you security clearance, they’d transfer you over to his line and the two of you could chat for a bit and start building that relationship.
As if operators were ready to transform the condition of your eternal soul over the U.S. telecommunications grid.
Billy Graham and Franklin Graham are good guys and have done lots of good things. Evangelical Christians are mostly good people and have done lots of good things. But TV graphics like this one help explain why people think we’re weird.
Anyway, phone lines are open. Call now.
As an early Christmas gift for you, I am providing you a gift most of you will be able to use many times over the next year. As a Facebook user, I know how difficult it is to come up with creative and interesting status updates on a regular basis. Wouldn’t it be nice to just have a list to choose from? Especially a list based on the rap lyrics of classic Kool Moe Dee songs?
Of course it would.
When Kool Moe Dee was writing rap songs in his late-1980s heyday, I have to wonder if he was some sort of old-school, fortune-telling genius MC, because you can take almost any KMD couplet and come up with a good, concise personal update. It’s like he was composing, back then, for the yet-to-be-invented social networks of today.
So below are some status updates you can put to personal use. Just to keep from going overboard, I’m talking them only from the lyrics of two of his most famous singles: “Wild, Wild West” and “I Go to Work.” The latter song is particularly fruitful — especially for writers, as you will see.
For better comprehension, I may tweak the grammar slightly to make these lyrics work. I’m also formatting them in the familiar 3rd-person Facebooky way, using Jason is/was…
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“Wild, Wild West” for Facebook
Jason was smooth, until someone pulled a gun.
Jason was flying, just like a track star.
Jason prefers to fight you on like a man and beat you down with his hands and bodyslam you…
Jason doesn’t start trouble, but boy, does he end it.
Jason’s time, he likes to spend it…snapping.
Jason will take time out to beat up a sucker, if he wants static.
Jason is talking about Nazareth, B.O., Tony and Milton, Mike Mike Sluggo, and Mike Chillion.
Jason fights with his hands and nobody’s a punk.
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“I Go to Work” for Facebook
Jason goes to work like a doctor. When he rocks the mic you got to like the way he operates.
Jason makes miracles happen, just from rappin’.
Jason is so lyrically potent and he’s flowin’ and explodin’.
Jason is on the scene (mean).
Jason has the potential to make you go, then chill.
Jason’s got the credentials, that is of which he chose to make a rhyme and chill.
Jason will fulfill to make a couple of mill as he builds a guild.
Jason’s right-hand man is his mic stand and the microphone that he owns.
Jason’s game plan is keeping at a steady pace.
Jason intends to hit the top “just when I wanna.” And it’s a matter of time, and he’s gonna.
Jason sent ya runnin’ around, holdin’ your head, askin’ your homeboy, “Yo, man, you hear what he said?”
Jason is telling everybody hanging out on the block, “It’s time to wake up and check the clock.”
Jason is writing out word after word. With each letter it becomes visibly better.
Jason’s foundation built a nation of rappers.
Jason came to roam the land he owns and stand alone on the microphone.
Jason shows the suckers in the place who run their face the bass and a taste of who’s the ace.
Jason’s coming in first. With each verse, he builds a curse.
Jason has to slap you senseless with endless rhymes. (Don’t pretend this is anything short of stupendous.)
Jason’s gotta wait. It takes time. He don’t write — he builds a rhyme.
Jason draws plans, drafts the diagrams…an architect in effect (and it slams).
Jason goes to work like a boxer. He trains the brain and aims to outfox ya.
Jason’s rhyme knocks ya. Sometimes it rocks ya so hard it stops ya dead in your tracks.
Jason is coming with an endless amount of words in a hurry, like a flurry.
Jason’s got a hand of smoke writing at the speed of light with insight.
Jason wrote rhymes at a level so you can’t relate — unless you’re intelligent, so stay awake.
Jason is riding a crescendo wave to save the mental state of the fan so he can understand his pencil.
Jason flows. He throws all-pro.
Jason is not merely putting words together for recreation.
Jason gets paid to rock the nation.
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You’re welcome.
Now it’s your turn: Using the comments section, find a Kool Moe Dee lyric — any song — and turn it into a Facebook update. Best one wins my utmost appreciation, and a promise to actually use it at some point.
I sorta like like formatting a blog post as a conversation between two Jasons, so I’m gonna do it again. Don’t you dare try to stop me.
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Jason 1 (interviewer): So you said you had an announcement. What is it?
Jason 2 (interviewee): Hang on, wait a second. What’s with the attitude? You just jump right into the question without pleasantries or introductions or anything?
J1: I’m busy. Readers are busy. We don’t have time for that stuff.
J2: You’re my least favorite Jason so far. Couldn’t Fake Jason do the interview?
J1: Apparently he’s hunting the legendary Yeti in the mountains of Nepal.
J2: Oh. He’s always getting the cool assignments.
J1: We hates him. Preciousssss.
J2: Um…
J1: (clears throat) Yeah, OK. So your announcement?
J2: I have finished the first draft of O Me of Little Faith. As of last Friday. Finally.
J1: Congratulations. That’s the book you were writing for Zondervan, right?
J2: Yes. It’s a book about faith and doubt and my struggles with both.
J1: It sounds a lot more personal than the Pocket Guide books.
J2: It is. Those books are historical and snarky and information-based. This one is a combination of storytelling and memoir and some personal thoughts about a life of faith.
J1: And doubt.
J2: Yes, faith and doubt. I’m a Christian, but I’m not so good at the faith part of being a Christian. It’s about how I’ve learned to live with uncertainty and unanswerable questions and all that stuff.
J1: It’s still funny, though, right? Please tell us it’s still funny.
J2: Does the Pope pee in the woods? Does a bear live in Rome? Wait…um…well, of course it’s still plenty entertaining! Lots of self-deprecating humor. You know how good we are at deprecating on ourselves.
J1: Ew.
J2: I should clarify, though. It’s not actually finished. I’m not turning it in to Zondervan yet. I’ve just finished the rough draft. All the stuff is in there, but now I need to go through and polish it and make sure I’m not repeating myself. Also, I need to take out the lousy stuff.
J1: Then why the big announcement?
J2: Because the hard part is over. This is a time to celebrate. Coming up with original content is difficult. Editing? Not so much. At least, it’s not too hard for us.
J1: When do you turn in the final manuscript?
J2: After this next round of editing, when I’m happy with the manuscript. And then after I send the manuscript off to some trusted friends and advisers to get their input.
J1: Who are these “trusted friends and advisors”? Sounds fishy. Am I one of them?
J2: No. You’re too mean. Our wife is one of them, though. Along with some close friends who know us well and will be able to tell us when we are full of crap. And some editor/writer friends who will hopefully provide suggestions on language and style and content. They already know who they are, but I’m not mentioning names.
J1: Are you aware that there is already a book out called Me of Little Faith? It’s by noted comedian Lewis Black.
J2: Yes. I’m aware of it, though I came up with the title more than a year ago before Black’s book came out. Anyway, that’s why I keep saying my title is tentative. Do you think people will confuse our books?
J1: That depends. Are you a nonpracticing Jewish comedian, actor, and playwright known for furious yelling and ranting?
J2: No. I’m a writer who grew up Southern Baptist, known primarily for my high school mullet and for those Pocket Guide books.
J1: Then you should be fine. Even if the books do get confused, it’s not bad to be confused with a bestselling author.
J2: Good point. Do you think Zondervan would go with an alternate title, then, in order to piggyback on proven bestsellers? Like The Purpose-Driven Doubter? Or better yet: Doubtliers. Or, as long as we’re being sneaky, maybe a pseudonym…like Jason Osteen?
J1: Excellent ideas. Let’s look into it. So…what’s next after this book is finished?
J2: I take some time off from writing. Three books in one year is a whole lot. We shouldn’t do that again.
J1: But you’re a writer. It’s in your blood. Admit it: you’re always thinking what’s next. You have some ideas, I bet.
J2: Well, yeah. There’s at least one potential new project in the works. And I still have the bug to write something fictional. Like a novel. That Fake Jason Boyett novel on Twitter, while stupid, has been sorta fun to write.
J1: You know, we had that one idea for a novel several years ago, with the writer and the other dude and the thing about the thing? We never did anything with it. But it’s still a killer idea.
J2: Oh, yes. It’s good all right. You never know. That might be the next project. We’ll have to see if we’re up to it.
J1: We will indeed. Bwa-ha-ha-haaaa!
J2: Yikes. What was THAT for?
J1: It just felt right. Mysterious. Conniving. That’s how we roll.
J2: This interview is over.
I’ve been wondering this for a few days, so I’m going to drop it on the table. Watch out for the splatter. Please read and discuss.
Question for the Day: What’s the relationship between talking about doing something and, you know, actually doing something?
Anne Jackson is a writer and blogging and fellow church media person whom I interviewed here and here several months ago. Via some sort of social networking sphere (I forget…Twitter? Facebook? Blog?) she introduced me to the 50,000 Shoes in 50 Days drive for the organization Soles for Souls. Now, I like shoes and I like for shoeless kids to wear shoes and, let’s face it, where else can you buy two pairs of shoes for $5 anywhere? So I headed over to the campaign website and ponied up $20 to give kids some shoes. Then I blogged about it.
Apparently, somewhere between hearing about the organization and advocating for the organization, I did something crazy and radical — I actually donated money to the organization. According to Anne, who’s connected to the marketing of the 50,000 Shoes project, the statistics are a little discouraging. They’re not quite on target for the 50,000 shoes in 50 Days challenge.
Plenty of people are talking about it — to the tune of 3,500 blog posts written on behalf of the drive. But only 1,500 donations have been made. So…less than half of the people blogging about it are actually doing what they’re advocating and supporting the organization with something more than their social networks.
Am I hopelessly out of touch (yes!) or is that a little discouraging?
Call me old-fashioned, but I have trouble telling you to do something if I’m not willing to do it myself. I thought that was normal. Surely most people share that common-sense approach to responsibility or influence or whatever you want to call it. Right? But maybe not. I guess I’m naive. Because what does it say about our generation if we’re willing to engage our social networks to promote a cause, but we don’t do anything more than talk or write or blog? Why are we so willing to do the easier thing — like, um, clicking on stuff — but less willing to do the harder thing? When did talking about something good replace actually doing something good?
Which leads to this final question: Are social networks beneficial for anything other than joining meaningless groups or sending each other pieces of flair? Ponder that, and comment below.
In the meantime, I’m going to join my old friend Pete’s group. It’s called 1,000,000 Facebook Users Against Useless Facebook Causes Benefiting No One. Because we like to feel like we’re doing something.
So it’s a typical day in Holland Township, a lovely community along the New Jersey/Pennsylvania border. It’s quiet, serene, and bustling with busy families preparing for Christmas. Then a young white supremacist couple walks into a Shop-Rite Supermarket in New Jersey.
Like most white supremacist moms and dads might do in a similar situation (I’m guessing), Heath and Deborah Campbell went to the bakery and ordered a birthday cake. It was for their sweet little 3 year-old son, the oldest of their three kids. All they wanted was a cake that said “Happy Birthday” and had their little boy’s name on it. But the mean, nasty bakery people refused to honor their request. In fact, they flat-out refused to sell the Campbells a cake at all.
Why? you ask. For one simple reason: The Campbell’s birthday-having son is named Adolf. Adolf Hitler Campbell. That’s right: They named their little boy Adolf Hitler. They wanted the cake to say “Happy Birthday, Adolf Hitler!”
The Shop-Rite bakery balked. “We believe the request…to ascribe a birthday wish to Adolf Hitler is inappropriate,” said a Shop-Rite spokesperson in possibly the most understated sentence ever. Instead the Shop-Rite bakery offered to leave room on the cake after “Happy Birthday” so the Campbells could fill in the blank space with little Adolf’s name.
The Campbell’s refused the suggestion and left in a huff. “Shop-Rite can’t even make a cake for a 3 year-old,” the mom, Deborah Campbell, told the local newspaper. “That’s sad.”
You know what’s also sad, Mrs. Campbell? Let me count the ways:
1. Naming your oldest child after the first person everyone thinks of when the phrases “evil dictator” or “murderous monster” or “spawn of Satan” come to mind. (I’m assuming “Adolf Hitler Campbell” isn’t a family name that has been passed down from generation to generation. Which seems a fairly reasonable assumption.)
2. Giving your other kids equally offensive names, like Joycelynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell, which are the names of Adolf’s two little sisters. (The first one because you might as well name the child Racist Fathead Campbell, and the second one because that’s just an ugly name for a little girl. Even sticking with a Teutonic theme, Helga would have been a better choice.)
3. The lack of compromise. Surely Mom and Dad Hatemonger could understand the reluctance of normal people to embrace their child’s name. And surely Shop-Rite could find a way not to punish an innocent little boy just because his parents are thoughtless idiots. Why not a cake that said Happy Birthday, Big A! Or Happy Birthday, Tiger! Even Happy Birthday, Adolf! wouldn’t have been too objectionable. Who puts a full name on a cake anyway? I have never received a cake, for instance, that said Happy Birthday, Jason Thomas Aloysius Pol Pot Boyett!
4. The lack of compassion and foresight. Even if I were a raging white supremacist, I probably would think twice about naming my child Adolf Hitler, simply because school is hard and kids can be cruel. Just like you don’t live out your childhood failures through your child’s ability to hit a baseball, you don’t name your child after your personal convictions. This is why there are very few children named Democrats Rule Jackson, or Abortions AreSin Delillo or Shoplocal Artisans McDougal. You just don’t do that. Until he learns it’s best to identify himself as A.H. Campbell, this kid’s gonna have a long, hard life.
5. The reason this is in the newspaper is because the parents complained. Shop-Rite wouldn’t have wanted the attention, so obviously the parents contacted the media about the incident. They wanted their kids to end up in the paper. They wanted little Adolf to get media attention. Any parent who wants their 3 year-old to get attention from the local media — regardless of the kid’s name — is disturbed on multiple levels. Even if you drop bigotry from the mix.
6. If cake refusal is such a big call-the-media deal, then there’s a really easy way to solve it: Bake. Your. Own. Freaking. Cake.
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I am sure your parents love you, Adolf. But I’m sorry they’re such nitwits.
[Thanks, Matt, for the tip-off.]
I scour the Interwebs for mind-blowing, helpful, and/or inspiring content so you don’t have to. I consider this a public service. Other people consider this “screwing around looking at websites.” Call it what you will.
May the following information entertain and edify you this week:
1. Alan Taylor at the Boston Globe is blogging an Advent Calendar of photography from the Hubble Space Telescope. Every day you get a new photo, with a detailed description of what you’re seeing. Even though it’s hard for me to wrap my mind around phrases like “600,000 times more luminous than our sun” or “11.6 million light years away,” the Hubble pics fascinate me to no end. We live in a beautiful universe.
2. The editors at Patrol have come out with an excellent end-of-year list of the “Best Faith-Inspired Albums of 2008,” otherwise known as “the greatest music Christians have made in the past twelve months.” I respect Patrol a lot, not just because I’ve written for the publication, but because they don’t care at all about bowing to the CCM industry (and its advertisers) or being nice just because an artist is a Christian or liking lame music just because it’s about Jesus. They’re just interested in music that’s good. As a result, this top-50 list features Don Chaffer twice and Michael W. Curtis Tomlin a combined zero times. You must read it, then go out and buy some new music.
3. That fine publication, Mental_Floss, is getting bloggy in a Christmas way, which has resulted in some great lists. One is 8 Great Christmas Specials (But Not the Ones You’re Probably Thinking). This is an awesome list for many reasons, but the best of which is that it includes Mystery Science Theater 3000′s takedown of the horrible 1964 film “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.” You heard that right. You can watch it below.
4. And lastly, I just became aware of this blog: Zooborns. It is a compilation of photos and background about, in their words, “the newest and cutest exotic animal babies from zoos and aquariums around the world!” On a scale of cuteness with 1 being a basket of bunnies and 10 being a kitten wearing sunglasses and hanging from a tree, this blog is off-the-charts cute. In fact, it may be the epicenter of cuteness worldwide. It is so cute it might actually make butterflies stream out of the USB slots on your computer. How cute is it? These three words should do the trick: baby pygmy hippo. I’ll let you see those photos yourself. Until then, here’s a baby gorilla.
You’re welcome. Have a nice Monday.
Save the world, one click at a time: I just finished up writing a short magazine article about click-for-charity sites. Many of you are probably aware of these online destinations, but I thought I’d do my good deed for the week and post an overview here. Then you can go out and, with a few clicks of the mouse, do something positive between watching lame YouTube videos and keeping up with fake twittering.
First…what? “Click for charity” websites let you contribute to a worthwhile cause by doing something you’re pretty good at already: clicking your mouse. These sites receive money from corporate sponsors — who want you to see their advertising — and the sponsors then agree to donate a certain amount of money, per visitor, to a specific charity per visitor. So you load up a site, click a button for free, and a charity gets money. It costs you nothing but time.
The Hunger Site Family: One of the best-known (and oldest) such places is TheHungerSite.com, which has been around since 1999, making it nearly prehistoric in the Interwebs timeline. Once a day, you can visit it — along with its partner sites for child health, literacy, breast cancer awareness, rainforest preservation and animal rescue — and register your presence with the “click here to give” button. One hundred percent of the money from their advertisers goes to a set of partner charities.
Ripple: A similar and newer site is Ripple.org, which follows the same well-established pattern as TheHungerSite. At Ripple, you can click to give access to clean water (through WaterAid), food (through OxFam), educational support (through the Oaktree Foundation), and cash toward a microloan (through the Grameen Foundation).
Free Rice (and a Fun Game): FreeRice.com takes it a step beyond the simple click approach. Here you make donations according to the results of a vocabulary quiz. For each correct answer you give, a sponsor donates an amount of rice through the United Nations food program. The questions start out easy, but get obscure pretty quickly. Play as long as you want. Where else can you donate rice and boost your vocabulary at the same time?
Chain Store Reaction: A unique approach in the fight against human trafficking and slavery comes courtesy of ChainStoreReaction.com. It lets you select from dozens of well-known brands — including Cadillac, Dell, or Kellogg’s — then send a respectful, personalized email to that company asking that they make sure they’re not using raw materials associated with slavery. You can customize the email, but it pretty much does the trick in a forthright yet respectful way. I know that responsibly eradicating slavery from a supply chain as diverse as yours is neither quick nor simple, the form email says, and I promise to support your brand through the mistakes, discoveries, and growing pains intrinsic to really addressing this problem. All I ask is that you begin. The site keeps tabs on which brands are responding to their queries.
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There are two ways to look at sites like those above. The cynical approach says click-to-give charity sites are the lazy person’s way to make a difference…but you know what? They still make a difference. A more positive spin is to realize that these sites are another way to help you make this world a better place…even when you’re already worn out from volunteer work at the homeless shelter or tapped out from child sponsorship.
So when you get burned out from real-world interaction, it won’t hurt to let your mouse do the charity work for you. Click away.
The other day a friend of mine was showing off the fact that he had that cool iPhone application, Shazam, that appears in the commercial…you know, the one where you can hold it up to any song that’s playing and it’ll tell you 1) the name of the song; 2) the name of the artist; 3) where to buy it; and 4) hidden metaphors and/or lyric meanings you might not have been aware of. (Sample conversation: “Pour Some Sugar on Me” is about THAT?)
That’s a pretty useful application. It that got me to thinking. What are some other third-party iPhone apps I’d like to see written and made available? I don’t have an iPhone, but if I did, these are the things I’d like it to be able to do:
1. Unlockage: Hold your iPhone up to any combination lock and it will suss out the combination. Please use responsibly.
2. iMindTrick: Wave your iPhone in someone’s general direction while speaking confidently to them (example usage: “These are not the droids you’re looking for“) and the iPhone will actually implant that thought into their brains. Again, please use responsibly.
3. iSouperDuper: Fill pot with water. Turn on stove. Select app, then choose from a variety of tasty soup options, including chicken noodle, minestrone, and classic chili. After choosing your soup, stir iPhone into the pot of water and watch the water transform into delicious goodness. Season to taste.
4. HotPlate (shown at right): Turn the face of your iPhone into a quality heat source. Perfect for reheating coffee, grilling half-sandwiches, or warming your hands on the slopes.
5. iDentify: Like Shazam, only for people. Say you run into someone at a party. You know you’ve met them before, but you can’t remember their name. Hold your iPhone up to one of their eyes and select iDentify. It will perform a retinal scan and tell you not only their name and social security number, but also give you a chart of their brain activity.
6. SinFinder: Using the SinFinder app’s internal setting, your iPhone will vibrate when you personally commit any of a list of preprogrammed sins, including covetousness, envy, and lust. Or, you may switch to the external setting and turn it outward, receiving subtle notification when someone within 30 feet of you commits an act of iniquity. Ideally, SinFinder would also be customizable, allowing Southern Baptists, for instance to add alcohol consumption as an optional sin.
7. iMassage: Using a special high-powered vibration algorithm, simply remove your shirt, apply scented oil, place your iPhone on your back, and load up iMassage. It will slowly move across your aching muscles, applying gentle pressure while also playing a soft, contemplative Clannad tune.
iPhone code jockeys? Get to work. I will expect royalties should any of these apps become a hit.
What iPhone apps would you like to see?
