gavoweb

spiritual | cultural | technological life

Gavin Richardson

oh shit it’s Jesus : reviewing sorta

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one of the latest batch of books sent to me via the ooze was a real eye catcher. partly because it was on the top of the stack. it was "oh shit it’s Jesus, the relevance of Jesus without all the religious crap." i had fun showing it to many of our church staff and other laity that happened to be around (it was right before vbs, so there were quite a few people). i even started reading it myself. however, i have yet to finish myself and i’m not sure i will.. why? people keep taking it to read.

one of the first things that caught my eye with the book is that it has no publisher. i went looking for the publisher mark and found nothing. then reading into the book apparently no one wanted to touch the book. not even a self-publisher company. they equated it to ‘the shack’ in some ways that is was controversial enough that publishers didn’t want to touch it.. i could get that. throwing ‘shit’ in a title isn’t exactly literary norm.

however, in the youth office it has become a funny book for us. lots of giggles. so it wasn’t surprising that one of the interns showed his college friend the book during vbs week. she sat down and read it in one sitting, which essentially rendered her useless during vbs but she picked an okay day to do that. i told her she had to write me a review for it.. not sure she took me seriously… i wonder why?

she loved the book. the writing for her was simple enough (ie. no heavy terminology) and flowed well. she felt like the book made some good points that she could identify with.

i was intrigued to get past page 9 which is where i ended the one time i opened the book and subsequently fell asleep on the couch. but it was our mission experience week, not a whole lot of time to read when you are in my position. so in a conversation about books i said to one of our adult youth ministers "i’ve got a book for you" and showed him the book, which he laughed out loud at. then he took the book and i haven’t seen it since. i’ll probably see it again but not sure when.

i asked him what he thought of the book so far. he was less than impressed. "it takes some easy pop shots" which for him were not enlightening or challenging. at that point he was hoping for me. but he reads on.. i assume he is reading on. otherwise i’d like my book back. haha!

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for the youth road trip : the scan game

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while on our missions experience i was reminded of a game we developed last year. it’s a great way to do the radio for the proverbial road trip. "the scan game" here are the details

  • the premise: everyone gets their shot to listen to the radio they want too via scan. fun begins messing with folks and their music choices.
  • the rules are simple. press scan on the radio. as it picks up the various signals the car trip members can choose their song by indicating "this is mine" or "i want this one!" you can only get one pick per round. once a song ends, no matter how long or short, it goes back to scan. at the end of the round winners and losers are decided, jokingly of course, with song choice & length as judging points. it is generally obviously who got the shaft on their song choice.
  • odd rulings: you can choose a sports event, but the scan starts back up when there is a commercial. same goes for a talk radio. npr can be a little iffy in this rule.
  • people can trade or ask others to pick a song for them if they have used up theirs already. but it is generally discouraged.

this can go on for hours. it is fun to pick up the different sounds coming through the radio in various parts of the states. if you are in a very rural part of the land it could be tough playing. especially if you only have two channels that come through. then you can do a manual shuffle on an ipod or other mp3 player.

and that is the scan game.

i’m a teenager again : can he do it?

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if you are like me, in the early 30’s and a golfer for your high school career, then you might feel like me.. i’m feeling like a teenager again. this guy who was a storm around the professional golf world in my teenage years is back. back in the day golf was one of my high school sports. loved it & lived it. and strangely enough, i watched i religiously. i know all the players, i knew all their swings. i knew all the stats. now, if i remember correctly norman had many leads in many major pro golf tournaments.. and many times he screwed it up or was on the wrong end of some miracle shot. so i wonder what happens today?

update: well, he didn’t do it. that would have been great but oh-well. maybe next time