Granted I haven't been to McDonald's in about a week.

This was witnessed first-hand, otherwise I don't think I'd have believed it.


THE DEMISE OF THE SUPERSIZE

It is now no longer an option from McDonald's. When I ordered my Big Mac combo, I said SUPERSIZE and I was DENIED!!!!!

I don't know if this decision makes me happy or sad. I think I'm inclined to say sad. It truly is a sad day in pop culture.

ADDENDUM:
After I had finished my post I started to eat my meal. Buried the fries and some of the drink. Opened the Big Mac box and looked down and saw 2 patties sticking out on the top layer. First thought was "oh score I get an extra patty". Alas my Big Mac was assembled WRONG. The order went Top bun, 2 patties, pickles, sauce, lettuce, middle bun, cheese, lettuce, sauce, and bottom bun. What the #%@$*#!. Seriously, I realize it was 2:30am (after rolling back the clocks (my McDonald's happens to be 24 hours)) but it's not THAT hard to assemble my Big Mac in the correct order.

If you a Christian I highly recommend checking out Nooma.com. And if you aren't then check it out anyways.
Basically this is a series of videos that was conceived by this guy Rob Bell who is a pastor at Mars Hill Church (you can listen on one of his sermons here).

They are the new medium for presenting Christ's word. I've known about these for the last 3 years and I keep coming back to them, to use and for personal use, because they hit the points so succinctly. His ability to raise questions and direct you towards God is quite amazing. Even High Schoolers and Jr Highers will sit through one of these short 10 min videos. And best of all they will listen and have questions afterwards.

If you are in ministry in any capacity (Katie and Derek (if Derek reads my blog) and Jenny) you should really take a look at these wonderful tools. (the Princeton crowd you might be interested in these as well)

I've seen all but one of them and I would recommend any of them. The use of a visual media speaks to people today who would rather watch the projected image of someone rather than the live person in the room (check it out next time you are at a large gathering with monitors, most people will watch the monitor instead of the actual person), and it is able to capture their attention and then God captures their hearts.

I really wish mainline churches would learn from this church in the ways they are in touch with the culture around them, yet so rock solid and unwavering in their convictions. I can only hope that my ministry strives to make sense of the changing world around us and does not fall in to stagnancy and repetition, therefore becoming useless and devoid of the power that resides in the Holy Spirit.

Please check these out if you have a chance. They are only 10 bucks each.

All.........Link........Friday

Andrew's Ghetto Blog

The Link from the Ghetto Blog

www.chickenfight.com


Halloween Toon

24

something to think about

Here's the deal, I have this whiteboard at home and I turned it into my "ghetto blog". So we were sitting around and thought it would be an awsome idea to actually turn this into an actual real live blog composed of pictures. So I am proud to present Andrew's Ghetto Blog for your enjoyment.

Enjoy!!!

If you didn't know Val Kilmer is playing Moses in a show in LA. And all the reviews say he sucks. And I quote from the October 29th Entertainment Weekly pg 79

"About 30 or 40 showbiz commandments get shattered by this show at Hollywood's Kodak Theatre, but let's start with one: Thou shalt not cast a celeb non-singer as the lead in a sung-through musical...having a pitch-challenged Val Kilmer as Moses...One waits in vain for Kilmer to break into his old Top Secret! song: 'How Silly Can You Get?'"

After reading this and knowing that tonight was the Jr. High halloween party I decided to don the attire and become Moses myself. I'd hope that I could possibly put on somewhat of a better performance. So with a little help of the children's ministry at church, I had transformed into Moses. To the lauds of the kids I accomplished my task. Everyone was impressed with my recreation of the herald man.

Who knows who or what I'll be next year, but I got to say I had fun as Moses tonight.

Why I love Costco, let me count the ways.
1 I bought 4 pounds of butter for under 8 dollars (7.99) when conventional grocery stores (non sale) price is around 4.50-6.00 dollars for one (1) pound of butter. I love Costco.
2 I bought 36 packages of Top Ramen for only 3.59. That's .10 cents a package. Not only will I have enough salt intake for 100,000 people, regular stores only have it for .10 every once and a while. I love Costco.
3 I bought a gallon tub of pickles for 3.39. Granted they're not the crunchy kind and are somewhat sour. Nonetheless a whole gallon of pickles for what it costs for a few spears in the store. I love Costco.
4 Free Samples...enough said. I love Costco.
5 I don't pay for my membership because my mom does and with every membership you can get 2 cards. I love Costco and my mom.
6 You can get a hot dog and a refillable coke for 1.50 at the snack shack. I love Costco.
7 Bulk booze. I love Costco.

I only wish they were still called price club. Oh the days.

Even a greater promise than any politcal party.
I will be glued to the TV for at least the next 2 World Series games (bring out the broom for the Soxs) mainly due to THIS article.

FREE TACOS for EVERYONE (at least in America). I will take the day off of work and go to as many Taco Bells as I could in the 3 hour period. Yes I know the consumption of gas would be higher than the value of the .79 cent tacos, but it's the American principal of FREEdom.

Everyday (at least that one day) will be Taco Tuesday.

I was totally impressed by the short amount of time it took me to move some big things today. John and I started around 11 and were done by 2. Things moved: refrigerator, washer and dryer, bed, large bookcase, patio furniture, and a desk. Granted I had spent all week making small trips with my car doing most of the smaller boxes and such, I was really glad that it didn't take FOREVER. But now I still have to move most of my stuff into my room. But the other roommate that AJ and I are switching rooms with isn't home right now and that's pretty much why I'm blogging because there isn't much to do until I can start moving things into my room and then begin unpacking the boxes.

Did I say how much I don't like moving? But with the current flux of my life I don't really know how permanent this move is going to be. So that in its self is fairly frustrating.

Today at the top of the show on The Screensavers, one of the hosts showed his FREE iPod from freeipods.com. It works. I'm still waiting for pictures from Adam about the free iPod that he's supposed to be getting in the mail soon. This gives me sooo much hope.

Either click on the link in this post or see the link on the left side of the page.

I realized today that it's been 5 years since the end of High School. I know some schools have the whole 5 year reunion thing. But frankly I'm glad that my school decided not to have the 5 year. I'm nervous enough about the 10 year, but at this point in my life I'm definitely suffering from "failure syndrome". Not in the sense that I hate my life or that I haven't done anything productive with the last 5 years. But when you go to school with a bunch of people who wanted to be doctors and you (me) are living at home again and kinda without a job and to top it off want to go into ministry, then you start to feel like a "failure". It's hard enough to have to tell people that I'm not going to become a "Priest". Let alone that I just want to develop relationships with kids to tell them about Jesus. It's not like I'm ashamed about who I am or about my faith. There is just this cultural stigma about those of us who work in ministry. Those on the outside just have a hard time understanding working for little to no money, working well over what little we are paid, wanting to sit in a room with 40 screaming Jr. Highers and liking it. And then there's the one about how because I work at a church then I am automatically "holier than thou". No one can say anything bad around me, they cannot be themselves out of fear of judgment, or that I as a person am incapable of having fun. I hate misconceptions. Anyone who knows me, knows I am the last thing from not fun. I just hope that my friends who knew me in High School will be able to think that I have not changed so much that I am no longer capable of having fun if I work at a Church. Maybe I can pull a Grosse Pointe Blank and tell people that I'm a hitman or a used car salesman. I think that would go over a lot better. With the car salesman, at least I'd have pseudo-friends cause they'd all want a good deal. Oh wait, they are all doctors, better tell them I'm a BMW salesman.

Well 5 more years till I have to face the inevitable.

I know I really shouldn't complain about gas prices since all the people in Europe pay like 5-7 bucks a gallon, since they are on the metric system. But then again they do have much smaller cars and better efficiency and they are not as reliant on them as we are. I wouldn't complain so much except for the fact that the place that I'm housesitting and the place that I'll be working at are like 20-25 miles away from my house. And that's one way. And I drive a Daewoo. To quote an Adam Sandler song "piece of $%#^ car, oh, I drive a piece of $%#^ car"
It's not like gas is made in some far off place like Nebraska, it's made 40 miles down the coast from where I live. You would think it would be cheaper for me to buy gas here than for some gas truck to drive 1300 miles to Spokane WA and they only charge them 2 bucks a gallon when I'm shelling out around 2.50 a gallon. Hmmm???? Logic, what's logic. I understand that since I live in a large metropolis that there are WAY more cars here and ever cent that it is higher here they make .01/per gallon times as many cars there are. But can't you just be happy with the extra MILLIONS of dollars you are making by having the gas .01 - .05 cents more expensive here in LA instead of .50 cents higher than Spokane and I'm sure around .75 cents in other places in the country. Geesh.
Since I keep hearing about barrels of oil being sold for X amount on the market, I keep wondering to my self how many gallons are produced from one barrel?? Cause if it's more than 20 then I'm going to start buying my gas in bulk by the barrel instead of by the gallon. I'm sure I'll save some money that way too. I also don't understand why it is if people don't like paying soo much for gas then why they keep buying stock in the stuff which only jacks up the price on the market and makes it more expensive for us. Wouldn't it be more logical to sell your stock right now when the market is at a record high and make LOTS of money, cause I'm sure you only paid around 40 bucks a barrel for it and now it's over 50. Hmm 50 - 40 = 10 dollars of profit per barrel.

Well I'm tired of ranting, so if you have a degree in business or the stock market and can better explain this to me feel free to do so in the comments.

Here are a few things that I've found interesting over the last few days.

Kathryn you'll appreciate this site

The college weekend was good. We headed down to San Clemente for some camping near the beach. It turned out to be more of a hangout type weekend instead of more of a spiritual weekend. But that was fine, I think the group needed to take more time to relax and get to know each other more. Which isn't inherently bad, but John and I both came to the conclusion that we cannot let that be an excuse every time a retreat or outing seems to be more of a "relaxed" environment. The other big event of the weekend was the fact that at 1 am on Sunday morning it decided to RAIN. Camping + Rain = LAMENESS or as AJ would say LAMPNESS. It wasn't a light rain like mist in the morning, but it was so hard that I thought it might be hailing. So we waited out the night and then things dried up a little and the next morning we packed up and headed home.

I'm looking forward to housesitting this next week. It's always fun to be in a new place for a little while, since the last few years it hasn't really felt like I've had a permanent home. Which I guess only is perpetuated by the fact that I will be "living" in someone else's home. And I guess this all spurs from my desire to become more "settled" and feel like I'm not in a current state of transition.

I've really started moving my stuff this week. If you didn't know I'm moving into a house with AJ and some guys, due to my mom moving to Sacramento. My grandfather died over the summer and she ended up buying the house up there, so she'll be moving up there. I'm totally looking forward to this new endeavor. It will be nice to not live with my mom (not that I don't like her), but there is something to be said about independence. Did I mention how much I HATE packing up all my stuff and then having to unpack it all. Since this is like my 3rd or 4th time in a year.

I also will be starting a new job this week sometime. I'm still not sure exactly when, but let me tell you it will sure beat painting a house all day long. I'm not too sure about how I'll handle the 40 hours a week and the crappy commute. But then again I'm the guy who was working 50+ hours a week doing 2 jobs, so I'm sure I can handle. But I've become pretty accustomed to doing pretty much nothing. But I can't complain about having cash to pay bills.

Otherwise it's been fun to kinda just sit around the house (or what's left of it) and do not too much. You must be thinking "then why hasn't he blogged forever", and the answer is that: I'm just lazy. Sometimes it's nice to be lazy.

On a side note. I don't really like rain. It makes me somewhat depressed and want to just sit around and do nothing. Nothing at all. I guess that's why I won't live in WA. But I really do like the smell of freshness after the rain has stopped. How it fills my nostrils and leaves me with a refreshed feeling.

I don't have time to post, the last few days have been quite busy. I'm off for a college group weekend. Lots of things to talk about when I get back, if I have the strength. Enjoy the weekend, go see Team America, but don't see Shall We Dance?, if you really want to see it go and rent the original, it's in the foreign section of Blockbuster on VHS.

Back in my senior year of college, I got my hands on one of my favorite shows on DVD.

My So Called Life

So in honor of one the best shows, that really was only on for one season, I held, My So Called Life Nights.
Friends would come over on a Fri or Sat night and we would watch a few episodes at the apt. It was soooooo much fun. I would bake cookies or have drinks or other fun things for us to do. We made it all the way through the whole season and they really were memorable nights for those who attended.

Basically the show was soo good due to Claire Danes. What 13 year old boy would have the hots for this chick? Seriously.

Recently I've been thinking about all the things that I need/want to do. There's so many of them and it never seems like there is enough time. I hate that.

• learn more about CSS and HTML so that I can design a new and better blog page


• see Sky Captian and the World of Tomorrow (I still haven't done it yet)


• clean my room


• vote


• finish watching the Star Wars Trilogy on DVD


• get a youth ministry job


• laundry


• do a turn-around trip to Vegas


• while there go to skymania


• fix my muffler


• get married


• oh wait, first get girlfriend

There's this "theory" that celebrities always die in batches of 3, within a short period of time. I'd cite other examples but I don't feel like doing the research, but I'm sure you can think of some youself.

Here's number 3
Christopher Reeve

The other two were, if you paid any attention to the news.
Janet Leigh on 10/4
and
Rodney Dangerfield on 10/6

Sad.

Sometimes I love Whitworth, sometimes I despise it.
Please read this article from the school newspaper before continuing.
It is all concerning this picture or a portion of the picture, I don't know since I haven't seen the poster in question.
My friend Stephanie told me about the article and controversy the other day when we were talking on the phone, she had read the article too. (Matt and Jeni I'm sure can shed a little light on the subject since they are there)
All this prompted to write a letter to the editor, it is as follows:

Letter to the Editor:
RE: Homecoming poster prompts decency debate.

Get over it!!! As someone who is outside the "Pinecone Curtain" and not inside a "Christian Bubble" and someone who pretty much got fed up of the "Whitworth Christian" by his senior year, let me repeat myself, "GET OVER IT".
First let me state that you are free to tell me off or say what a dumbass I am. Yes I used the word ass. It also happens to be my initials too. Get over it.
Post complaints to http://aslanseely.blogspot.com
I'm sorry you didn't like some poster, I really am. But let me tell you something, if you didn't already know, there will be lots of things in your life that you will not like. LOTS OF THEM. Trust me.
As someone who is in ministry, I have been doing a lot of thinking about us as Christians and culture (take Kent McDonald's Youth Ministry class). I live in L.A., not the most Godly city on Earth, but how is it we are going to interact with an unchurched world if all they hear is our condemnation of how they are living their lives?
1 Bjork is an artist. 2 Her album cover is art. 3 Enjoy it for art (if you struggle with porn then don’t look at it). 4 Her music is good, listen to it. 5 I'’m sure none of you have ever seen cleavage before, never (just go to the Loop on a sunny day).
Hmm…anyone seen Moulin Rouge??? “Oh, I love that movie” they all say. Well I just popped it into my DVD player and what?!?!?! in the first 15min, CLEAVAGE!!!! Oh no better not watch that movie.
I hope you see what I’'m getting at. We need to interact with and fully understand our culture if we are going to be a Church that is able to impact the world in Christ'’s name. This is after much theological thought. I'’m not saying that everything is O.K., but I am saying we must be able to view the world through eyes that are not ashamed to say “God is here in this, let me find him, and show others”.
P.S. If you have not seen the movie “Saved” go to Blockbuster on Newport and rent it. You can tell me that you hate that too and I'’m not a good Christian. Please do.

Seriously guys, GET OVER IT. Stupid Christian College.

P.S. If you have not seen Saved, please do so, it will make you laugh at how STUPID we Christians are. If you really want to be mad, check out this church (warning: this site may/will offend you), they even hate Billy Graham.

In the heat of all the political muck muck, I really wish I was in a "battleground state", but no, I live in CA. (not that I don't love living here)
This does mean that I do miss out on the tons of mudslinging, particularly in the realm of TV ads. I've seen a few of the notorious "swiftboat" ads but nothing coming from the candidates themselves. I guess we're not important enough for them to spend their money to run ads on our TV channels.

And it's not like I don't watch much TV, I actually watch way too much TV. Is it the channels I watch, I do stay away from most of the major networks, (aside from FOX but only because that's where they show Simpons reruns) mainly cause all their programming sucks. If I want to see people living in a house together I'll just go over to someone else's house and watch them...LIVE. Or if it some absurd dysfunctional family drama, I'll just go and talk to one of my Jr Highers, bless them for what they have to put up with...but a lot more real than TV. I basically stick to the cable networks, where I feel that my money is going to support somewhat higher quality programming and the occasional soft-core porn on HBO. Just kidding.
If you know where I can view some of these fun yet never seen on CA TV presidential ads please feel free to let me know. Otherwise I'll have to settle watching the debates and listening to W ramble on about how America is "safer now" because Saddam is not in power anymore. Blah blah blah...shove it up a flagpole.

Now for something completely different.
A gripe about Firefox.

When opening comment boxes from various webpages, either the html in the box doesn't know how to tell Firefox to make sure that the text all fits within the box, or to auto resize the box so that the text does fit, or even on Kathryn's blog, I can't read the last few characters in the comments, because Firefox won't let me even resize the window it opens in. Lame. Otherwise I still haven't had many things I don't like about it so far. It even has this cool extension (or plug-in) which allows you to control things about the window with mouse strokes. For example I can close a window by holding down my right-click then moving my mouse down and then right...presto...a window closed. Pretty cool hugh?

I jumped on the bandwagon and I'm trying out

I'm switching from Netscape to Firefox. I hardly ever use IE (internet explorer) so this isn't some MAJOR thing. I've been used to tabbed browsing and some of the features that Firefox offers that IE doesn't. Netscape is pretty good about blocking pop-ups and it was never one of their selling points. Hmm...always had pop-up block in place, long before you had to install something that would stop them. Granted my version of Netscape is 7.0, I still think it's pretty amazing. If you are looking for an alternative to IE give it a go. See this article from The Screensavers for some cool features that you can add to Firefox.

I'm sure this program is only going to get better over time, I think it is going to be a highly user supported browser.

I've made a few more changes to the template, per requests (Matt colors will be part of the whole redo).

Leave more comments.

No one has commented on It only confirms what we've already known or Updating: Like changing the date on expired milk
I know they were part of the Mega 4 Posts on One Day but they are worth checking out.

Don't forget about the Prayer You section on the left side, it is seldom used these days.

I really want to do a total redo of the template but I'll stand with this for now. Tell me what you think of it.

But be sure to read the 4 posts under this one, they are all new.

Is it just me or does nobody follow common laws anymore?
Two quick petpeves.
1 Pedestrians - They have the right-away. You know those things called crosswalks?? If someone is in one of them you are supposed to stop and let them cross the street, somehow people seem not to know this. I was nearly hit 3 times tonight.
2 Emergency Vehicles - When one is comming your way (either from behind or in front) you are supposed to slow to a stop and move furthest to the right of the road to let them pass. Has the driving community gone deaf to sirens and blind to flashing red and blue lights???

this story I heard on All Things Considered today.
I had hoped that these people would be somewhat unbiased. WRONG!!!! It was very interesting to hear these evangelical Christians talk about how they are personally for Bush but would still "pray just as hard in the opposite way" if Kerry was to win. It made me kinda ashamed to call myself a Christian after hearing these people talk. There was one woman who talked about persecution, oh boy that got my blood boiling. Well you should just listen to it yourself and see what you think, that's what the comments are for.

Note to readers: Sorry for all the posts today, I guess I'm just making up for a lackluster showing towards the end of last week. I still need to post about In America and then we'll see if I get to last weekend at Joshua Tree. But I do have a list of things on my desktop of things that I've been wanting to post about. So many things so little time.

I saw this on TV today.
Way to go Koreans.

Here is the long awaited debate update, which I'm sure is almost quite irrelevant after a whole weekend of more insightful and politically savvy commentary, so therefore I'll keep mine short and hopefully entertaining.

When I sat down to watch the debate I happened to have my computer handy so I went over to cnn.com to see how they would be covering the debates. And alas I found that they would have 3 bloggers who would be simultaneously posting commentary to their blogs as the debate happened.

Here are a few links from the debates.

Transcript
Blogs
Paul Begala's (left)
Bob Novak's (right)
Jessi Klein's (a lighter take on the September 30 presidential debate through this CNN.com blog.)

Unfortunately none of the transcripts include any of the umms or long pauses, mostly contained with in the words of our "president". Did anyone catch the time Bush asked for his extension which if you were listening to the rules Lehrer said "at my discretion, a discussion extension of one minute", and then after Bush was granted his extension he stood there for almost 10 whole seconds without saying anything and then gave an incoherent answer.
Another note, if you go and read over any of the blogs listed above, there is much commentary about the flaws of Bush, but even the guy who was on the "right" had little to criticize Kerry about, hmm...even a small spider monkey could figure out which candidate to vote for.
I had heard that prior to the debate there was much controversy about the "rules" that the candidates would have to obey and one of them was not to move from behind their podium, due to the fact that Kerry is 6'3" and Bush 5'11" and the Republicans thought that if Kerry was seen standing next to Bush too often if would give him an unfair advantage. Well ladies and gentlemen here is that picture that they didn't want you to see. (It is not modified, but it was the only time that they were seen face to face)

And then there were the numerous quotes that came out of Bush's mouth, see AJ's site for a few but then there was:

"The only thing consistent about my opponent's positions is that they've been inconsistent."

in reference to AlQueda "We're facing a group of folks who have such hatred in their heart, they'll strike anywhere, with any means."

"Well, actually, he forgot Poland. And now there's 30 nations involved, standing side by side with our American troops."

"I've got a good relation with Vladimir. And it's important that we do have a good relation, because that enables me to better comment to him, and to better to discuss with him, some of the decisions he makes. I found that, in this world, that it's important to establish good personal relationships with people so that when you have disagreements, you're able to disagree in a way that is effective. And so I've told him my opinion." (opinions YOU have opinions??? are they missing??? or are they just like WMDs, there one minute gone the next??)

Only a few more days till someone gets ousted from office!!!

Well I've had a much busier day than I'd expected, so no posts, and now I have to leave for the weekend to head out to Joshua Tree with the High Schoolers. So you'll have to wait longer.

sorry I didn't post last night
I got home and the internet wasn't working and the box is in my mom's room and she was sleeping, I'll update soon after I get home from an appointment this morning