Next time you enter a fight to the death and have the choice of weapons. Choose this shirt, and make the other guy wear it. It’s a guide to all the “deadly” pop culture pressure points. Just aim for them. Simple.
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.
Shirt of the Day: Pressure Point
Just a spoonful of sugar…
Have you ever wondered just how (un)healthy your daily caffeine fix is? For many of us coffee is modern medicine. And some people need sugar. But the more sugar you put in the worse it becomes for you. And nobody wants to be taking medicine that is bad for them. Which is why this little infographic is going to come in real handy.
Check out the full version here.
Ninjitsuit
My first thought when reading about this new, controversial “Burquini” the Islamic bikini invented by an Australian and banned in France (two things that make something more likely to be awesome) was that it looks pretty much like a ninja suit.
Am I right? Yeah. Which got me thinking further – firstly, I didn’t know what a ninja suit was actually called – which was a bit of a gap in my ninja arsenal. For the record it’s a shinobi shozoko. But it’s always dangerous to put a ninja in a box.
Besides the typical ninja uniform, the ninja would use any type of clothing that would get them closer to the mission goal. Sometimes the ninja dressed up as priests, peasants or even samurai. Whatever the mission required, they did.
So, now you’re wondering why I am still talking. You’ve got my point. Well, no. You haven’t. Have you seen the Mythbusters Ninja Episode – it’s my favourite – not because they do cool ninja stuff, but because they go to a ninja warehouse and buy awesome ninja equipment for their ninja mission.
Well, there’s a place like that on the internet. And you can buy a ninja suit for $69 (I assume US) that includes ninja shoes, ninja socks and ninja boots. You can get a different pack that comes with some gear as well for $82. I know what I want for Christmas… or a wedding anniversary present… (hint, hint).
Retard retardent
I overuse the word retard. I understand it’s offensive to many people. I just like the way it sounds. Phonetically, rather than contextually. It’s such a dismissive and insulting word. Apparently it’s so insulting that it’s no longer politically correct to use it to describe people who are actually retarded (technically, literally retarded)… I didn’t know that. Now I do.
Here’s the problem with reinventing the wheel – as spelled out in one of those Slate articles…
But any psychologist will point out that changing the name is, in the end, folly. Whatever new term comes into favor today will seem insensitive, or worse, tomorrow. A nation of 10-year-olds has pretty much exhausted the pejorative power of "retarded" and is eagerly awaiting a new state-of-the-art insult. (The AAMR actually went through this before: In 1973, it switched its name from the American Association on Mental Deficiency to its current appellation because "deficiency" implied, well, deficiency. And retarded, at the time, did not.) The current frontrunner, "intellectual disability," even contracts nicely to ID, which can become a cousin of LD (for learning disability), which served as a choice epithet among the circles I ran in in fifth grade. Steven Warren, the president of the soon-to-be-differently-named AAMR, admits that whatever term his organization comes up with, all the little boys who have crushes on little girls and so call them "retarded" will be quick on its heels. In other words, the AAMR will almost certainly be going through an identity crisis again in 20 years, just to stay ahead of the game.
This also ties in nicely with my little treatise on swearing from a few weeks back.
Grunge grudge
Grunge is so 1990s. The music in particular, the aesthetic in general. I am so very sick of seeing invitations/flyers/advertisements/websites designed with a grungy aesthetic. It’s usually done by people with no real appreciation of the sub culture they’re advertising to (ie the iGen boys and girls in their tight jeans and stupid faux 80s haircuts with bits that have obviously been missed by the hairdresser).
Grunge is cool if you’re in Seattle and either the pastor of a megachurch or a founding member of Nirvana. Otherwise you’re pretty much a wannabe.
Next time you’re asked to design something to promote an event for the yoof can you please avoid the hackneyed dark colours, letters with bits missing and scant regard to horizontal and vertical aspects. Nobody thinks you’re cool anymore. We just think you’re trying too hard.
Acronyms v Initialisms
Just so you know… if you reduce a series of words to initials and pronounce them as a word it’s an acronym, and if you pronounce each letter individually it’s an initialism.
So when I write a headline using an acronym it’s your job to read it as a word so that you get the pun.
Ironically, TLA the popular “acronym” for three letter acronyms isn’t an acronym, it’s an initialism.
Thanks. That is all.
Coffee idolatry
JT’s Between Two Worlds is one of the pillars of the Christian blogosphere. Today he shared a little link to this article on sacred cows – and coffee in particular.
While I can appreciate where the author is coming from – I do like my coffee. More than most. It stings a little to see coffee lumped in with U2.
What you find on many websites is some kind of description like this: “I love reformed theology, U2, anything by Steven Soderbergh, and a fresh cup of joe.” Or maybe: “My interests are theology, issues of social justice, Beastie Boys, and an Americano from (fill in neighborhood coffee shop here).” Or perhaps: “Can’t resist a good Bonhoeffer quotation, Edwardsean philosophy, and a venti mocha with light whip.”
You get the point. Here’s the thing about this situation: there’s nothing ironic or unique about liking coffee. We all like coffee. Coffee is good. Made well, it’s really good. It’s kind of like saying you like bread. “Anything by Piper, Band of Horses, and Pepperidge Farm rocks my world.” Everyone likes bread. And everyone likes coffee.
Ouch.
Location, Location
Robyn is pretty thrilled. A little bit of a furniture rearrangement has rescued our kitchen bench space (and given me a sore back).
We now have a little coffee island in the dining room – making use of a buffet that was previously a fishtank stand and place for general clutter.
I have a habit of buying coffee sacks wherever I can – and I’ve finally put them to some use.
If you’re in the area why not arrange a time to drop round for a coffee… if you’re not in the area, you can always visit…
One day I might get a coffee machine that’s designed for home use.
Seek, and you shall find…
Checking just how people end up visiting my blog is one of my favourite past times.
Today someone got here by googling this phrase:
"what to write on your fb status to make your husband mad and nobody else gets"
Sure enough, if you google it, my controversial post on status updates is there are suggested result number 2.
Sadly I don’t think this would be very helpful for this person. So here are some suggestions, for that one person out there.
- Thinks Bert Newton is the funniest man alive.
- has a headache.
- Is looking forward to an early night tonight.
- Misses her husband and wishes he wasn’t over the other side of the world (only works if he’s not over the other side of the world).
- Is only cooking dinner for one tonight.
- Bought heaps of new shoes and dresses today while her husband was at work.
- Did some spring cleaning today and threw out her husbands collection of ___ which she never really appreciated.
Any other suggestions. Lets help this poor soul out in the comments.
Post it post
I’ve been reading Daily Vowel Movements for a while. Since its Andrew became one of the many Andrews who comments here on occasion. It’s a blog with a nice regularity. You should check it out.
Friday is my favourite day, because on Fridays Andrew posts his pointless post it notes – which are every bit as amusing as the index card version they were inspired by. Here’s my favourite:
4WD Segway
The real reason Segways haven’t taken the world by storm (despite having awesome brand placement on shows like Arrested Development) is that they’re not really all terrain personal transportation devices.
Here’s a handy solution.
YouTube Tuesday: Coffee culture
I know it’s not technically Tuesday. Well, not in Australia anyway. I’m a pretty inclusive kind of guy.
It’s been a long time since my last coffee post. I’d look it up, but that would take away valuable posting time and delay the wonder that is the Mona Lisa being recreated with coffee in Sydney. That’s right. This little video has gone all over the world, and it was created in our backyard. Impressive.
The perils of popularity
You may have noticed that my blog goes down occasionally. Hightek Hosting, my shared webhost, is a pretty awesome hosting company – and it turns out I’ve been causing headaches for all the other people on my server.
Here’s an email I received from the host today – my server’s name is Zeus.
Thanks to some smart and watchful technicians overnight, it appears that we’ve finally tracked down the cause of the constant Zeus Up/Down issues…and unfortunately, yes, it is your site causing them.
Basically, in short, your site fired up a bucketload of apache services and obviously fired them all at MySQL, causing an astronomincal load increase to the point of which we basically have to reboot the server to get it back online.
Now, I don’t know what a lot of that jargon means – but in short, I’m too popular for my own good.
Kick it to meme
Well, Anna from goannatree tagged me in a meme. Let me just say that I think meme is a stupid word. But I’ve never been tagged in a meme before – not even the stupid ones on Facebook. So I’ll do it. I have to: “share the titles and authors of 15 books that will stay with you, or have stayed with you. You are to write this list in less than 15 minutes.”
This will probably show me up as the trashy “pop culture” reader that I am… and I probably deserve it. Actually, I decided to pad out the list with impressive sounding books that I remember… I cheated really.
Sadly, other than the Bible, I really struggle to finish Christian books – they’re often hundreds of pages talking about an idea that could be summed up in a nice, concise, blog post.
Right, here goes.
- The Bible – well, that’s not trashy – author God, and various human agents.
- The Godfather – Mario Puzo.
- The Assassins trilogy – Robin Hobb.
- The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse – Robert Rankin.
- The Hobbit – Tolkien (I can remember as a child walking into Gould Books in Newtown – featured in Ben’s post yesterday and asking if they had Lord of the Rings by J R R R R Tolkien – which they did (without the extra Rs), and I bought it, sans cover and the cover was replaced with masking tape and a Coco Pops box – but the Hobbit was my first love).
- The Thursday Next series – Jasper Fforde.
- The Prince – Niccolo Machiavelli.
- 1984 – George Orwell.
- All of David Baldacci’s trashy airport novels.
- All of Conn Iggulden’s historical fiction books about Caesar and Genghis Kahn.
- The Daily Scribe – my first year journalism textbook.
- Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
- Almost everything by Ben Elton
- The Little Book of Bunny Suicides – Andy Riley
- I just read a great trilogy about assassins by Brent Weeks that I really enjoyed. They were almost unputtdownable. People who like Fantasy and enjoyed Robin Hobb’s Assassin series should check them out.
You are all now tagged. Feel free to put your list here in the comments – or on your own blog, but make sure you put a link to your post in said comments…