Book: Wild at Heart

My discipleship leader recently gave me this book for Christmas. It is amazing. I don't think there is any book I liked better than this one. It's about how society and the church have repressed and taken way what men need... and how to get it back.



It's the sort of book that you only pay attention to a page number if you have to stop in the middle of the chapter and want to remember your place. Otherwise, you might forget that the numbers even exist. It's that enjoyable.

It worked just right for me because Christianity and life had grown to be boring for me. This book helped revitalize me.

Have you ever watched a movie where there was a bunch of things that happened in it and you didn't know why they happened or how they related to each other and all that was revealed near the end of the movie? That exhilarating feeling is a sensation I felt a few times throughout the book. Except it meant a lot more to me because it was events in my life!

I recommend this book for anyone, whether they are male or female, this is a great book.

UPDATE: April 16, 2007: A comment on my friends' reactions to the book.

One Family Friendly Checkout?

Grocery stores have been notorious for putting strange, gross, and even unnecessary things at their checkouts. Strange? The "U-scans." Apparently a lot of research has been put into people having as little face to face contact with other humans. Also I've noticed some grocery stores with TVs at their checkouts.

I find it funny and kind of sad that they think we've come to the point that we need TV as we wait in line. With that extra time of waiting, much can be done, now that I think of it. You actually have time to reflect, think, pray. So much effort to throw out media messages out there. But here's what I absolutely hate about checkout stands, and I'm not exaggerating, I am choosing the word "hate" because it almost begins to express my strong feelings. Alright, here's what I hate, all the porn.

I said it, they are pushing these sexy images (porn, by definition is not a measure of how much skin is showing but is, by definition, any media in which the purpose is for sexual arousal) on the magazine covers in front of our faces.

I hate it. Why? Well, as a man, I have a built-in desire to fight for a beautiful woman, and this stuff they are trying (and succeeding to a lot of the time) to get me to look at distorts this inward desire to the point in which it becomes selfish, because it takes away all the work and fronts just the pleasure. But the problem is, the pleasure alone does not satisfy, and so they make it worse and worse in failing attempts.

Apparently, someone in charge of what gets put at the front of these grocery store checkouts grew a brain, or just realized something, and decided to make one of the checkouts a "Family Friendly" checkout.

This checkout was the one to the left that I was in, and it seemed to have all the same elements of our checkout except without the pictures of women in thongs, etc. There was a sign, akin to the "Express Checkout" sign, that said "Family Friendly." Now, I think this is a good thing, but I hope that they don't use this as an excuse to continue to put pornographic magazine covers at the checkout as we so often see.

To be honest, what I'd like to see is instead of having one "Family Friendly" checkout, I'd rather see all the checkouts remove the porn, and if they can't do that, just put all the crap onto one checkout stand that's out of the way, so that the people who actually want to be around that stuff can be, and the rest of the people who are tired of it can stay away.

If a grocery store chain did this, it would set itself apart from the others... everyone wins.

"Internet Wayback Machine"

I found something really cool just browsing around. It's called the "Internet Wayback Machine" (Google it, I'm feeling lazy right now). What it does is that you can type in the address to a website and see what it looked like a long time ago. I had a lot of fun with it and I think that you will too. A trend I noticed was that at first, a lot of websites were only Texted based. Then it became really bold and blocky, and today the colors are milder and there's more rounded corners. I prefer today's look out of the three to be honest!

Keep in mind, it doesn't generate everything from back then. You might end up only getting to see text in Times New Roman even if it had a different font and images, but it is very cool.

So, if there's a website you visit a lot and you ever wondered what it would be like to see it a long time ago, now you can!

All those Google Ads

At one time, before I came to Blogger and perhaps before I even knew exactly what a blog was supposed to be, Blogger offered you to have your own domain and just use Blogger as a platform. Of course, you'd have to find a service to give you a domain and you'd have to pay for it, but another option they had was for you to use a "blog*spot" address hosted for free. Wait? Isn't this the way it runs today? Yes, but the difference was that when you had it hosted for free on a blog*spot address, it came with something. Ads.

I found this out when I watched a "Learning Blogger" video discussing the pros and cons of having your own domain verses using a free blog*spot address. Blogger Article: Learning Blogger

Today, somehow, Blogger can give you the platform and the hosting for free, without ads. Today, there is no "premium" version to pay for--all of the services are built-in to one solid, free version of Blogger.

They even allow you access to your code; a service that I saw as something you had to pay for on a different blogging platform.

So, why am I even typing this post? Well, it seems that today, some bloggers are putting in ads on their blog, to make a little money I suppose. My question is, "Why do it?" Blogger is finally ad-free but now you can find that some bloggers choose to pepper their blogs with ads.

At least though, these are mostly calm, text-based "Ads by Google", and not the flashy, sound-and-light-show, "make billy the hamster pounce on three Q-tips and win an iPod", "You've won (must complete seventeen offers)", light-electric disco mania ads.

There is a bright side to this. Because Blogger is owned by Google, Blogger is likely getting some of the profit from the Google ads that some bloggers opt to use. I bet that there are actually more ads on blog*spot addresses now than when they were mandatory. My conclusion is that Google/Blogger won't need to put mandatory banner ads on blog*spot-address blogs because... us bloggers at large have done it for them.

What people do with their blogs is none of my business. Because of all the ad-filled blogs, I might not ever be forced to have ads on my blog. Your ads are probably paying partially for Blogger's servers; in a way, you're taking the ads so I don't have to, and I appreciate that. But as for me? When it comes to visiting one of two sites about the same thing--one has ads, the other doesn't--it's obvious which one I'll be more likely to visit. That's my take on it.

The New Years Partay

Well they didn't use my game (see previous post), but the event was a lot of fun! There was hide-and-seek, a ping-pong tournament, and at the end, dancing. The dancing wasn't planned, it's just... put music on, youth group, it's gonna happen. I danced in it. Hip Hop style, it was a lot of fun and apparently I did really good! I was really tired afterward but that's the fun of it!