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.
“With that in mind, let’s look ahead to what’s on the menu for this year: four adaptations of comic books. One prequel to an adaptation of a comic book. One sequel to a sequel to a movie based on a toy. One sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a movie based on an amusement-park ride. One prequel to a remake. Two sequels to cartoons. One sequel to a comedy. An adaptation of a children’s book. An adaptation of a Saturday-morning cartoon. One sequel with a 4 in the title. Two sequels with a 5 in the title. One sequel that, if it were inclined to use numbers, would have to have a 7 1/2 in the title.”
Which, if you think about it, should provide some encouragement to preachers who just want to point people to Jesus every week. We seem to enjoy the same stories. Retold. But with bigger explosions. Next time I preach I’m taking some dynamite to church.
“But for now, let’s just admit it: Hollywood has become an institution that is more interested in launching the next rubberized action figure than in making the next interesting movie.
Which is why my church will one day need to offer these plastic Jesus toys to raise revenue. Because there’s lots we can appropriate from Hollywood.
Hey. You can now comment on posts here using Facebook commenting. Check it out. You’ll love it. Or maybe you won’t. For those of you who still don’t have Facebook the traditional commenting options are still available… Try it, and let me know.
If you don’t read Dinosaur Comics then you should. Don’t start with this one though. It’ll get you stuck in a mobius strip style infinite loop of perfect days with no resolution (unless you cheat).
There’s nothing all that special about taking a photo of yourself every day for a year as you grow facial hair (unless you’re like me and can’t really grow anything but fuzz). But turning it into a stop motion adventure is something new and exciting.
Interesting. I hereby resolve to write more viral friendly titles on my posts in the hope I will make millions of dollars from the Internet and be as cool as this guy.
The other day, over at thebeanstalker.com (my coffee blog, read it, click some ads – I make money), I did a little experiment with coffee and beer. I bought a proper coffee beer and made my own. It was science. Tastebud stretching science. I like beer. Nothing beats it on a hot summer’s afternoon. I also like marshmallow. And chocolate. But I’m wondering if chocolate-coated beer-marshmallows is taking things a bridge too far (though coffee beer probably is too). Why not just enjoy all these things separately…
But they look so good.
And here’s how to make them. To whet your appetite – here are the ingredients from this recipe.
Chocolate-Dipped Beer Marshmallows with Crushed Pretzel Garnish Makes 18-22 marshmallows, depending on how you cut them
For the Bloom:
1 1/2 tablespoons (just under 1/2 ounce) unflavored gelatin
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/3 cup (2.5 ounces) flat dark beer
For the Sugar Syrup:
1/4 cup (2 ounces) flat dark beer
1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons (5 ounces) corn syrup or sugar cane syrup
3/4 cup (6 ounces) granulated sugar
pinch salt
For Coating and Topping
10-12 ounces milk chocolate
2-3 teaspoons canola oil, optional – for thinning the melted chocolate
1/2 cup stick pretzels
Somebody, somewhere (I think it was a guy named Andrew, who I think, based on his email address, was a leader on the schoolies camp I went on – how random that he would be reading my blog ten years later) suggested I blog about having pet turtles more often. I think that’s a good idea. Pet turtles really are the coolest thing since pet rocks. And pet rocks were cool.
They do funny stuff. Like this:
Why you should get a turtle
They’re exotic, a little left field, and people (especially kids) love them. They love watching them in the water, and the love watching them run around. Turtles have a funny way of running, with in built comedic value.
Turtles are relatively low maintenance (eventually).
Turtles are amphibious. Amphibians are awesome. So are reptiles. Turtles are both.
What you should know before you buy a turtle A hatchling
Our turtles at a very young age
There’s really no such thing as a penny turtle. You might remember having one as a child. What you had was a baby turtle that you probably grew out of. Our turtles started off the size of 50c pieces. Now they’re somewhere between the size of a bread plate and a dinner plate. They start small, but grow big.
There’s a bit of set up cost involved – you need heat lamps, UV lights, docking platforms, and eventually a big tank. If you get two (which we did) there’s a good chance they’ll fight. And you’ll need extra space. Most of our problems have been caused by turtle fights.
Get lots of Betadine. Betadine fixes everything. If your turtle has a wound, a fungal infection, a spot – Betadine will fix it.
You can’t tell if young turtles are male or female. It’s a gender lottery.
If in doubt – take them out of the water – they only need to be in the water about an hour a day. They like being in the water. But sometimes their shells need time to dry out. For a long time ours slept in a box, wrapped in towels.
The internet is your friend. There are heaps of good turtle resources online. I even bought ours on the internet and had them flown up to Townsville from Brisbane. When I was worried about one of them I turned to the internet for help. One of our turtles, Rosie (short for Roosevelt) was a little more sickly than the other, Frankie (short for Franklin) perhaps because Frankie used to bite her around the neck and take her for a death roll.
Get a bucket to feed your turtle in. Turtle food stinks. And feeding them in their tank is a recipe for an incredibly stinky weekly clean up job.
Steps to getting your pet turtle
Check licensing requirements where you live. Organise this first.
Find a breeder – normally there’s enough time between contacting a breeder and getting the turtles to complete the next step.
Set up the tank – you’ll need a dock of some sort (a rocky platform will do), a UV lamp to keep the shells healthy, and a heat lamp to keep their blood warm. A heater in the water is optional. They’ll get on their docks more if the water is cold (this is good for their shells too). You need to set up a tank a week before you put the turtle in it to get the chemical stuff happening properly. Apparently.
Get some food – we use pellets and frozen turtle cubes (fish guts). We’ve tried with some cereal based pellets and they hate them. We also occasionally give them fruit and veggies. Which they seem to like. We put feeder fish in their tank, about 100 at a time. And they gradually disappear. But if you want some fun – kill one and hand feed it to the turtles and watch them go nuts trying to catch more.
Get your turtles. Watch them swim. Enjoy some LOLs.
Check your turtles regularly (especially when they’re young) for little blotchy spots on their shells and skin. These are bad – and should be treated pretty much straight away. Keeping them out of the water a bit will help.
Take them for walks outside (but watch for birds). The sun is good for them.
Wash your hands after touching them when they’re little. Turtles carry salmonella. And trust me. You don’t want that. Buy some of that reptile wash. Trust me. A week of gastro isn’t fun for anybody. They grow out of this after a while – I’m not sure at what point – but I don’t wash my hands anymore.
Some links
I bought the turtles from a dealer on Aussie Pythons and Snakes (an all purpose reptile forum). I paid $65 a turtle two years ago. You’ll never find prices like that in a pet shop.
Not my favourite passage in the world, not my favourite sermon, and not my favourite ending to a sermon (I should have just left out the last five minutes).
But people have said nice things, and I’m probably a harsh, but realistic, self-critic.
When I illustrate I don’t really stick to my notes. And I think that’s heaps more listenable and engaging. So that’s something to work on. I’m much better at telling a story when I know how it all hangs together – and I suspect I can do the same thing with the passage after I’ve worked it up. But preaching from notes is good discipline and hopefully prevents rambling.
Wow. It’s a bad time to be a Christian in England.
A couple in England. A Christian couple. Who have fostered a bunch of kids. Have lost the right to do so in the future because the believe homosexuality is wrong and will tell the children they foster that this is the case.
This is like reverse gay-adoption. Now Christians can’t adopt. Essentially. Wow.
“At the High Court, they asked judges to rule that their faith should not be a bar to them becoming carers, and the law should protect their Christian values.
But Lord Justice Munby and Mr Justice Beatson ruled that laws protecting people from discrimination because of their sexual orientation “should take precedence” over the right not to be discriminated against on religious grounds.
They said that if children were placed with carers who objected to homosexuality and same-sex relationships, “there may well be a conflict with the local authority’s duty to ‘safeguard and promote the welfare’ of looked-after children”.”
Here’s the response from the Derby City Council. Bolding mine.
A spokesman said the authority “valued diversity and promoted equality” and “encouraged and supported children in a non judgmental way, regardless of their sexual orientation or preference”.
He added: “The court confirmed that the local authority is properly entitled to consider a prospective foster carer’s views on sexuality when considering their application to become a foster parent and in fact, failure to do so would potentially leave it in breach of its own guidance as well as the National Minimum Standards.”
I would buy it. It would make me cooler and I’m part of the Apple Cult. It would be better than Evian. Which is naive spelt backwards. Did I just blow your mind?
I’m guilty. Partially. Of taking the same iconic tourism shot as everybody else. Though I also learned this lesson back in my tourism marketing days – so I’m much more interested in taking photos of people, or odd angles, or trying to do something unique, than I am in taking the same picture that features on post cards you can buy for a dollar – though those do have a place if you’re on a study tour (hence their appearance in the albums from the Greece and Turkey trip we went on last year).
“Switzerland-based Corinne Vionnet is our guide to the world’s most famous landmarks, monuments millions have visited before. Her art is created not by acrylic, oil, or watercolor, each piece is made by combining hundreds of tourist photos into one. After conducting an online keyword search and sifting through photo sharing sites, this Swiss/French artist carefully layers 200 to 300 photos on top of one another until she gets her desired result.”
Including the Parthenon, on the Acropolis in Athens.
Here’s my shot from that spot.
This composite shot of New York is interesting too, just because it still has the twin towers.
Going social with Facebook Comments
Hey. You can now comment on posts here using Facebook commenting. Check it out. You’ll love it. Or maybe you won’t. For those of you who still don’t have Facebook the traditional commenting options are still available… Try it, and let me know.
Also. Almost 100 people (99 at the moment) like St. Eutychus on Facebook. Are you one of them?
March 2, 2011