We've All Been There...

Tattoo gone wrong: Stars and gripes forever?

Belgian teen says she requested 3 stars on face — but woke up to find 56

 

How bad is it of me to see her photo and start laughing?

I laugh because…well we’ve all been there.

 I mean really, who hasn’t fallen asleep at the tattoo parlor while you face is being pricked with a needle only to wake up and find your intended “small” tattoo has been exponentially multiplied.  I know I have.

You see this goes along with my post from yesterday.  Unless some responsible adults begin to see the need for youth being mentored into right decisions this is what could happen.

First it starts with an innocent enough decision to watch High School Musical, and maybe even believe that it was good.  But that only spills into sequels and HSM3’s. 

Next you’re foolishly saying statements like “Twilight is a good movie” or “I love when Lady Gaga comes on the radio”.

And now we can say that this behavior leads to star tattoos all over your face.

This is clear science people.

Universal Man Truth

"I once loved a girl who almost loved me, but not as much as she loved John Cusack."
— Chuck Klosterman (Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto)

Teens Need Mentoring

Teenagers need help!

They need the positive influence of adults in their lives.

Not only do they need adults who say to them “follow me as I follow Christ”, but in this crazy world filled with so many poor substitutes we need adults who can help teenagers navigate the murky waters of all areas of life.  Including pop culture.

And let’s be honest friends.  Teenagers are failing in this area.  And there are adults in this world who are only encouraging their poor decisions.

Two examples.

1.        Lady Gaga.  – I usually try…try…to find the pop culture relevance of the fashion of the day, but having listened to several of Lady Gaga’s songs over the past few months, I just can’t see it.  Her songs sound like anything else I’d hear in a club (not that I go clubbing much…ever…but that’s where her style of music seems to fit).  The lyrics to her song are just dumb (for example).  And her pant-less style seems more like a substance-less stunt than any real fashion.   And yet she’s a major pop culture figure right now, why?

2.       Twilight – Recently it ruled the MTV Movie awards, and this week it dominated the Teen Choice Award nominations.  Now I can’t say much beyond the first book and movie, but I did read and see the first.  And it was dumb.  Sappy, predictable, formulated and without any real creativity.  It’s just not a good or original story. 

I implore you to get involved in the life of a teenager and help direct them to good entertainment. 

 

Living Dead

Wanna watch the entire movie Night of the Living Dead?
Of course you do, zombies are awesome, and this is there movie origin.
Here it is. Isn't Youtube amazing.

Potential 2009 Summer Reading List

These are the books I am currently looking at reading this summer (and throughout the rest of the year), or at least the ones I want to read.
I've currently read 33 books this year (view the list of titles on the left side of my blog page), and will definitely reach my year goal of 40 (I'm going to have to set that bar higher next year).
Obviously I won't read all these book below this summer or thru the end of the year. But these are some that look interesting, at least when I judge them by their cover.
Feel free to purchase me one if you'd like, or if you have one, or some, of these...may I borrow them and save myself a penny. Thanks.
But first, to the library...

Digital Reading

Govenor Arnold Schwarzenegger is considered a plan to reduce the number of educational textbooks at California continues to address it's $24.3 billion dollar deficit. As the textbooks phase out the internet-based learning materials will increase.
About time huh?
Now I love books. And pages. And bookmarks?
I love libraries and book stores.
I love smelling brand new books and finding rare, interesting copies of favorites.
When I think of a dream home the first thing that comes to my mind is built in bookshelves.
However, when thinking about our nation's education systems: textbooks are out of date. Information evolves and updates at such a rapid rate that the average textbook is out of date in no time at all.
It is only obvious that as school systems continue to battle squeezing budgets, the paperless world of the internet can dramatically free up the funds for expensive textbooks and redirect them to more significant educational concerns, like adequate funding for teachers, administrators, etc.
Yada, yada, yada.
Oh...check our BookGlutton.com for some books online, to see the developing possibilities of digitial reading.
I say all that to pass on this following quote from Clive Thompson's thoughts on the Future of the Reading in the Digital World; he says (and i think it's interesting and exciting):

The technology is here. Book nerds are now working on XML-like markup languages that would allow for really terrific linking and mashups. Imagine a world where there's a URL for every chapter and paragraph in a book—every sentence, even. Readers could point to their favorite sections in a MySpace update or instant message or respond to an argument by copiously linking to the smartest passages in a recent best seller.
This would massively improve what bibliophiles call book discovery. You're far more likely to hear about a book if a friend has highlighted a couple brilliant sentences in a Facebook update—and if you hear about it, you're far more likely to buy it in print. Yes, in print: The few authors who have experimented with giving away digital copies (mostly in sci-fi) have found that they end up selling more print copies, because their books are discovered by more people.
I'm not suggesting that books need always be social. One of the chief pleasures of a book is mental solitude, that deep, quiet focus on an author's thoughts—and your own. That's not going away. But books have been held hostage offline for far too long. Taking them digital will unlock their real hidden value: the readers.

www.facebook.com/tsharrison

Facebook now allows you to personalize your Facebook URL. I'm not exactly sure what this does for me, but I suppose it does allow me to direct people to me on Facebook easier.
Are we friends?
If not, find me here: facebook.com/tsharrison.
Revolutionary? Maybe not.
Cool? I don't know.
New? Definitely.
Nice and shiny.

Apparently if you visit my Facebook page you can meet Christian Women easily. So I guess my Facebook page is helpful in some respects.

Big Win

I'm just stoked about this win tonight. I would be thrilled if the Rangers can actually take this series from the Dodgers. I think it might legitimize the ball club this year. And I still believe that this is a team that is still going to improve once some of their prospects make their way up to the big. (Sorry Julie)

Confused by My Jealousy

Does anyone other than me think it’s weird that I would actually be jealous of a 14 year old boy who was hit in the head with a meteorite?

Honestly, how cool of a story would that be.  Sure the meteorite was only the size of a pea after it deflected off his noggin and implanted itself in the earth, but it was still a meteorite.  It fell from the sky only after passed by the moon after visiting Mars, Jupiter and Venus. 

I am so jealous.

Wipe in Comfort

I dare someone to order this. I double dog dare you.

1,000,000th Word

The English language, which adds about 14 words per day, is the largest language on the planet.  And at 5:22 a.m. ET the one millionth words was added.  It was…(drum roll please)…“Web 2.0”.  

Really? 

“Did I hear a niner in there?”

A word shouldn’t have numbers in it. 

Wouldn’t Web 2.0 be a name or a phrase?  But not a word.

 

And it’s amazing what does get classified as a word.

Obamamania.

n00b.

Wardrobe Malfunction.  Isn’t this a phrase? 

Carbon neutral.  Again isn’t that a phrase?

 

If combined words count as a word, shouldn’t we have at least a million words just in numbers?  Twenty-one would be a word. One-hundred twenty-one would be another. One-hundred-thousand two-hundred twenty one would be another.

 

And what about words with multiple meanings are they counted multiple times?

How about bat, as in the noun describing a baseball bat?  Is that one?

And what about the verb bat, describing what you do with a baseball bat?  Is that two?

Also, there is the verb bat, as in when a woman bats her eyes at her beau; is that three?

There is also the flying nocturnal mammal; would that be four?

And does the combine words baseball and bat (baseball bat) count as another?

 

And to make it even more confusing and asinine take the word Jai Ho.  It’s a Hindu word used as an exclamation for victory.  It a word from another language.  We complete took a word from another language and made it our own.  Why not just take every word ever spoken, from any language and make it our own.  We’d have a few million words then.

 

You know what, forget it.  I was going to throw a great big party in light of the one millionth word, yea! for the millionth English word, but no more!   

Counting our English words is just stupid.

 

Oh.  One more thing.  I like how the article (Linked above but re-linked for your convenience.  I know I’m a nice guy.) made it clear that the English language contains more words “than any other language on the planet”.  That’s awesome!  An article on the English language leaving the possibility of life on other planets open.  Because we wouldn’t want to offend the intelligent life on other planets who have a larger vocabulary than ours. 

 

Good grief.

This Had Better Not...

...be anything like the last movie. Because as much of a Spider-Man fan that I am, that movie was a complete let down.

Currenlty nothing has even been set in stone, but at a recent convention this poster was displayed in order to attract toy distributors and other movie tie ins (i.e. fast food restuarants, video games, etc.)

So without a scene filmed and without an actor having officially signed on (although Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst are attached, along with director Sam Raimi, according to the IMDB website), this poster was released.

And I'm not going to lie to you. I am already really excited about this film.

Beautiful Bella

I finally saw bella tonight. Actually, tried to watch it once before but was unable to finish it because something came up and I ended up having to return it before I finished.
Beautiful film and a great soundtrack.

Three's Company for this Chuck

So recently I moved into a home with my sister Chelsy. Her husband, Mickey, has been deployed to Iraq for 12 months. Since she didn't want to stay in El Paso, where they have recently been station before his deployment, moving here to San Antonio and us sharing a home together just made sense. Also, for the summer my other sister Cayla is staying here with us before returning to Mary Hardin Baylor in Belton, TX where she will finish her senior year of college.
So it's only obvious that I would hear several snickering remarks about how I'm living a Three's Company kinda life. Of course I'm not partial to this because, and only recently did I figure this out, that Jack was passing himself off as gay in order to share the apartment with the two ladies. I am not trying to pass myself off as gay, nor, for the record, am I of that persuasion. Plus I don't trip over couches, and I could never work as a chef at a restaurant.

I say all that because this past Sunday while chit chatting with a former student home from her first year of college I mentioned this recent life change and she referred to me as Chuck Bartkowski. Now this made me laugh. Although I don't work at the Buy More, nor am I handy with computers, I do have daydreams of secret missions.
Plus if I was living a Chuck Bartkowski life...well...allow me to introduce you to my girlfriend. (She's the one on the left.) Okay, so I'm not actually dating anyone at the moment, but life Chuck I'm clumsily pursuing my options.

Plus I could have a cool theme song and a wrist watch walkie talkie.

Sermon in a Sentence

I have a conviction that no sermon is ready for preaching, not ready for writing out, until we can express its theme in a short, pregnant sentence as clear as a crystal. I find the getting of that sentence is the hardest, the most exacting, and the most fruitful labour in my study. To compel oneself to fashion that sentence, to dismiss every word that is vague, ragged, ambiguous, to think
oneself through to a form of words which defines the theme with scrupulous exactness—this is surely one of the most vital and essential factors in the making of a sermon: and I do not think any sermon ought to be preached or even written, until that sentence has emerged, clear and lucid as a cloudless moon.”

—J. H. Jowett, The Preacher: His Life and Work (Harper & Bros,
1912), p. 133.

I remember my Homiletics courses where we were encouraged to have a clear Dominant Thought. I've gotten away in my teaching and thinking about the importance of a succinct summary. My professor, when preaching, would often say, "if I can wrap up my sermon in a sentence I would say ____________".
Also I once heard another youth pastor at a conference say that if you can't communicate what you want to say in 18 minutes then you still need to work on your message.
Since I'm no Mark Driscoll, I bore myself after 20 minutes, I need to work harder to achieve this goal.

I have some new goals...

Shouldn't be hard or take long to accomplish this:

24: Season 7

Didn't this show just have their season finale on Monday (yesterday)?
Wow! That went to video fast.

New Roommates

My new roommates are up playing Rock Band into the late hours.

I recently moved into a house with my two sisters.

Cayla will be here for the summer and return for her senior year in the Fall.

Chelsy's husband Mickey was deployed to Iraq a few weeks ago for a little over a year after they had just moved to Ft. Bliss (El Paso, TX). And if you've ever been to El Paso, or heard about all the borderline violence, you can understand why she didn't want to stay there.

And then of course there is Keaton, Chelsy's son, my nephew. He's unfortunately not joining the band this evening. Since he is only six months he was carded and sent to bed; no partying for him.

I love my sisters.

Brain Farts

Lately I have been incredibly scatter-brained. 

I just reread my last post and realized I didn’t finishing typing the late couple sentences.  I started them, just didn’t finish them.  Which should tell you something; I stopped writing one sentence in midsentence in order to begin the next.

Also, I sent a Twitter tweet recently that wasn’t supposed to be a tweet.  Tweet or not, it made no sense in the context I sent it and honestly was a completely random thought that somehow made it too my thumbs.  I still feel stupid and embarrassed over that incident.

I’ve walked into rooms over the weekend and stopped abruptly because I didn’t know where I was or what I was going in to the room for anyway.

Today I was on my lunch break and I was going to read from a library book (Pygmy by Chuck Palahnuik), and I did read one page, but then I woke from a daydream and realized my entire lunch break was over.  And the sad thing: I don’t remember what I was daydreaming about.

 

And to make matters even worse, I started typing this post about a hour ago but I got side-tracked (about two sentences ago) and just realized I hadn’t finished it. 

2009 Summer Blockbusters

I was thinking about all the good movies that were coming out this summer this morning.  And because I like lists I thought I map out the summer movies that I want to see.  For no particular reason except that I was sitting here thinking I wanted to do this.  The ones in RED are the ones I’ll probably pay to see in the theater. 

 

May 1

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

The Limits of Control

May 8

Star Trek (seen)

May 15

Angels & Demons

The Brothers Bloom

May 21

Terminator Salvation

May 22

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (still need to see the first one)

May 29

Drag Me to Hell

Up

June 5

The Hangover

Land of the Lost

My Life in Ruins

June 12

The Taking of Pelham 123

June 19

The Proposal

Year One

June 24

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

June 26

The Hurt Locker

July 1

Public Enemies

July 10

Bruno

I Love You, Beth Cooper

July 15

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

July 17

(500) Days of Summer

July 31

Funny People

August 7

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

Julie & Julia

August 14

Taking Woodstock

August 21

Inglourious Basterds

 

Don’t judge me.  I tend to

Is there something I’m missing