You might remember the Engineer’s Guide to Cocktails… well, this is a nicer version.
More here (where you can buy it as a poster). Via FlowingData.
Author: Nathan Campbell
Nathan runs St Eutychus. He loves Jesus. His wife. His daughter. His son. His other daughter. His dog. Coffee. And the Internet. He is the pastor of City South Presbyterian Church, a church in Brisbane, a graduate of Queensland Theological College (M. Div) and the Queensland University of Technology (B. Journ). He spent a significant portion of his pre-ministry-as-a-full-time-job life working in Public Relations, and now loves promoting Jesus in Brisbane and online. He can't believe how great it is that people pay him to talk and think about Jesus. If you'd like to support his writing financially you can do that by giving to his church.
A hair razing event
I was craving steak all day. That’s where it started. You could say my trip to the supermarket to buy eggs for breakfast set the ball rolling, because that’s where I saw them. Two succulent pieces of eye fillet. Just the right sizes. One slightly bigger than the other (I am more than slightly bigger than my wife). Perfect. I had to have them. They became mine.
They sat in the fridge all day. Looking at each other, and their neighbours. The Beans. The Beans too, were destined for the fry pan. With a little butter, and some pepper.
Sometime in the early hours of the evening, you could say they were at sixes and sevens, the minute hand and hour hand that is, the steaks made their way to a dish. Where they met Olive Oil (not to be confused with Popeye’s girlfriend) and Rock Salt. Their demise at the hands (or teeth) of mastication was imminent.
Perhaps I was distracted by the thought of chewing on a delicious piece of barbequed steak, perhaps I was pondering the lack of blogworthy material filtering through my “Publish Now” button. Who can say. All I know is that for a moment, a long moment, between turning on the gas bottle, opening up the valves on the barbeque, and lighting a skewer to stick between the fronds of the grill, I thought “I can smell gas, but it’s airy and open out here, so it shouldn’t be a problem”… thoughts can be so misleading. The faggot alight (well, the skewer, unlike commercial radio I’m ok with using a word that has multiple meanings – because that’s what Dire Straits was singing about. Sticks with jewelry and makeup. Millionaire sticks.). My thoughts turned to introducing flame to gas. Which turned out to be a more volatile proposition than I planned – sending a ball of flame into my face. I shut my eyes. I smelled burning hair. I ducked and dived. Coughed and spluttered. And then went into some sort of shock, before making my way inside to confess my adventures to my wife. Who had been asleep. I surveyed the damage in the bathroom mirror – my previously almost invisible eyebrows were now almost more invisible, if that were possible. My eyelashes were but a shadow of their former selves. And my carefully nonchalant attempt at a beard was now half as substantial – which is to say not very substantial at all, though more stinky. My fringe, slightly puffier than the rest of my hair at the best of times, was now puffier, and shorter by half, than the rest of my hair.
So next time somebody, even if its the little voice inside your head, says “don’t turn the gas on 45 seconds before you light the match” – learn from my mistake. Don’t turn the gas on 45 seconds before you light the match.
Party like a Presbyterian
If there’s one thing Presbyterians like it’s a party.
So if you’re a Presbyterian who likes to party you should get a hold of this slightly awful Christian rap…
Here’s a promo video. This is all the sample I needed.
Tumblrweed: 3eanuts
Gary found/posted this gem. 3eanuts. Peanuts cartoons with the third panel removed leaving the characters in some sort of existential crisis where the punchline has no joke. Reminiscent of Garfield minus Garfield, and incredibly brilliant.
Love it.
Orchestral Friday
It’s Friday, Friday, Friday. Which means time for fun, fun, fun. Orchestra style.
Thus says the beard: Women wearing pants, pyjamas, an abomination
Ladies you need to be subjective to your husband or you’re a witch.
Don’t shoot me, I’m just the messenger. Shoot this guy instead (though he looks armed and dangerous).
The Petebox: Human beatbox looping thing
This is clever, and one of my favourite songs. Thanks largely to Fight Club.
Here’s his version of Nirvana’s Lithium.
He promises more regular videos here – and the fun on this one starts about a minute in.
Coffee at the Corner Store Cafe
I know, most of you are already reading my cafe reviews on thebeanstalker.com, right. But I have to point out that if you’re looking for an incredibly cool cafe to hang out at, or to study at, in the Toowong region – then you should most definitely head along to the Corner Store Cafe on Sylvan road.
Here’s my review of the Corner Store on thebeanstalker.com.
That’s a photo of my double shot flat white from yesterday. Because we spent the morning there. The food is also excellent. Try the Beef Dip – a popular Canadian dish, and the Bacon Cheeseburger – a popular everywhere dish.
E-I-E-I Yo(ga): Yoga farmer a bit of a stretch…
Honestly, this could only be worse if this was from some sort of Christian Television program. This guy is seriously creepy.
Via Jesus Needs New PR.
A swordid tale: Taiwan’s last bladesmith
Being a red-blooded male I love swords. Every stick in the backyard had sword potential when I was a wee lad. So because I love swords I am fascinated by this little doco (via a list of seven almost obsolete professions) about Taiwan’s last sword maker.
He made the sword from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, he seems pretty cool. Check it out.
Religious inkling v religious inking
Chris Eckert is an artist. And a philosopher. Of some sort. Though all artists would like to think they’re philosophers. And I really like this “Auto Ink”…
He wanted to represent the truism that the greatest predictor for your religious beliefs is where you live. Which is true. It’s not the only factor, but it is a factor.
So he designed this…
It’s a tattooing machine that will randomly assign you a religion – and you’ll be stuck with it for life, symbolically tattooed on your wrist.
What I’d like to know, is what happens if you want to choose a religion after doing the hard work of thinking about it (what would I know though, my parents are Christian so my compliance was virtually assured). Can you get a second tattoo? Over the top of the first?
Here’s the blurb from the machine’s web page:
“The strongest indication of a person’s religion is geography. You are born into your religion. That doesn’t make it irrelevant or incorrect–religion provides a framework for basic morality that’s very powerful and it gives people a cultural identity that spans borders. I’ve attended mass in Dutch, German, French, and Spanish and I’ve always felt like I belonged. While my personal experience with religion is one of inclusion, a system that unites people from different regions and cultures, the public face of religion is often one of exclusion. Muslim, Christian, and Jewish zealots who know what God wants. More specifically they know what God doesn’t want and apparently God does not want me…or you. This public face of religion is always so certain, self-confident, even arrogant. That anyone could possibly know the “truth” when that truth is randomly assigned at birth is just funny.
Auto Ink is a three axis numerically controlled sculpture. Once the main switch is triggered, the operator is assigned a religion and its corresponding symbol is tattooed onto the persons arm. The operator does not have control over the assigned symbol. It is assigned either randomly or through divine intervention, depending on your personal beliefs.”
It’s provocative and creative. So it’s art. Watch it work.
The “real” Holy Hand Grenade
If only Monty Python knew the truth. Holy hand grenades aka glory bombs actually make people laugh.
Via scotteriology
PETA wants animal inclusive Bible
Let me just start by congratulating PETA for sinking to a new low with the name of their blog. The PETA files. Because we all think animal rights should be associated with child abuse, for the lols.
Then, let me move on to highlighting PETA’s latest ridiculous campaign.
“When PETA heard that the Committee on Bible Translation had revised the New International Version (NIV) of the Christian Bible to use gender-inclusive language, such as replacing “men” with “people,” we thought, wouldn’t it be great if the new NIV showed consideration for female (and male) animals too? So we wrote to the Committee on Bible Translation and asked them to use “he” or “she” rather than “it” to refer to animals in the next edition of the NIV.
“Language matters. Calling an animal ‘it’ denies them something,” PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich told CNN. “They are beloved by God. They glorify God.”
Since God loves all His creation (and if you’re not convinced of this, try reading Matthew 25:40, Isaiah 11:9, or Luke 6:36), it’s only fitting that humans do the same by showing respect to every living being. Maybe Psalm 50:11 says it best: “I know and am acquainted with all the birds of the mountains, and the wild animals of the field are Mine and are with Me, in My mind.” Perhaps if we change the way we speak about animals, our thinking will follow.”
Here’s the CNN piece referred to in that post…
There are some more stupid quotes from PETA in that article, here’s the meat of their argument.
“God’s covenant is with humans and animals. God cares about animals,” Friedrich said. “I would think that’s a rather unanimous opinion among biblical scholars today, where that might not have been the case 200 years ago.”
Now, I’m not sure that PETA has even a rudimentary knowledge of Greek or Hebrew – but they may be interested to learn that their beef is with the languages themselves, not with the Bible translators. Because the languages have male, female, and neuter nouns – and you’d have to bring gender to the table by your own agenda, to suggest that animals are anything other than an it. You’d have to create a bias in the text. Which is exactly what translators shouldn’t be doing.
David Berger, a Hebrew scholar lets them have it on this basis in that CNN article:
“In Hebrew all nouns are gender-specific. So the noun for chair is masculine and the noun for earth is feminine. There’s simply no such thing as a neutral noun,” Berger told CNN. “It’s unusual to have a noun that would indicate the sex of the animal.”
Another scholar, from Baylor University, David Lyle Jeffrey, disagreed with the rest of the nonsense from PETA’s suggestion…
“I agree with their contention that God cares for all of creation,” Jeffrey said. “It is true that we have a responsibility to reflect that affection.
“In gender-inclusive Bible translation the generic terms for humankind, let’s say, are then replaced with an emphasis on he or she. Instead of the generic he, you say he and she. I don’t quite see how that would work with animals,” Jeffery said.
“Do we need to know the gender of the lion Samson slew? What would it give us there?” he said. “You could try to specify that, but you would be doing so entirely inventively if you did. It’s not in the original language. … Nothing is made of it in the story.”
“When you get to the point when you say, ‘Don’t say it, say he or she’ when the text doesn’t, you’re both screwing up the text and missing the main point you addressed.”
Double Rainbow for a Choir
This post is mostly for Simone – because she likes to teach her choir songs from YouTube – so what better than a choir, on YouTube, singing a YouTube classic. YouTube style.
That is of course a choral arrangement of this song.