Dirty deed – done dirt cheap

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Ahh… some “Christians” give the rest of us a bad name. Choosing to make one verse of the bible a point of distinction for your ministry is almost always a bad idea. The badness increases based on the obscurity of the verse – the prayer of Jabez is a case in point. As is the building of a massive cross shaped conference centre in Nazareth.

If your verse is this:

And he said, so is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; And should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how

You’re likely to be in a bit of trouble. Especially if you use that verse to justify a ministry of literally “seeding” the ground in the Holy Land. Because the ground is nicer there. More sanctified.

Seed of prayer is a service that enables believers all over the world to cast a seed of prayer in the Holy Land.
Casting a seed is a spiritual ceremony in which your prayer or heartfelt personal memory (which might be represented by anything that symbolizes your hopes and dreams, such as a photograph, a token, a greeting card, or a piece of jewelry) is cast as a seed of prayer upon the soil of the Holy land.

And what’s in it for you – if you choose to partake in their service. For a $12 fee (plus extras).

Apart of course from the feeling of spiritual wellbeing. This. Holy soil.

If you use it for your tomatoes they’ll no doubt be blessed. And taste better.

You can also get a DVD of your casting ceremony. To relive the moment no doubt. Over and over again.

YouTube Tuesday (a day behind)

One of my favourite EA sports games was the Rugby League 96 game featuring commentary from Channel 9’s commentary team – with no Phil Gould. I hate Phil Gould (except when he’s coaching NSW). One of Paul Vautin’s frequent pieces of commentary advice was for people who did something stupid to “give themselves an uppercut”. This guy took that advice literally…

Shirt of the Day: Time Travel Instructions

Say you invent a time machine. And accidentally send yourself back in time – and it breaks. And Doc isn’t there to fix it for you. And you need to get modern science happening quicksmart so that you can send yourself back home. You better be wearing this shirt when it happens…

8 bit dinner set

Make your next dinner party a perfect tessellating Tetris dinner party with servings customised to fit the bill. Here’s a link to the designer. You can’t buy these yet.

Tickle rage

I have a confession. I have a dangerously low tickle threshold – lower than indicated by this graph. My wife likes to tickle. This is a shameless attempt to prevent any future tickling.

Meat your maker

This gun looks pretty threatening – especially to a plate full of chopped beef. From here. Unfortunately it was probably an April Fools Day joke. They were offered to NRA members who could “prove themselves in the kitchen”…

A street car lamed, bridge higher?

Ok. So that title was purely a reference to a Tenessee Williams play. But this is pretty funny. This Google Streetview car misjudged the height of a bridge. And submitted the photos anyway.

Sickening toys

Is there a hypochondriac in your life? Do you think they’d enjoy visualising the germs on their children’s toys? Perhaps this new line of bacterial toys is just the ticket.

Here’s Chlamydia, Mad Cow and Black Death – but there are plenty more where they came from.
Chlamydia

A bunch of links – April 14, 2009

Unleavened cake?

Apparently this is how people who celebrate passover do it – with an Old Testament inspired cakefest.

Tree story – it happened to a friend of a friend of mine…

Well not really – perhaps subscribing to the six degrees of separation theory they’re a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of mine. This children is why you shouldn’t eat (or breathe) seeds. This is a 5cm plant growing inside somebody’s lung. True story.

I hate the bands that you like

Generally speaking I’m not a big fan of Christian music. Usually because it’s a cheap and nasty rip off of perfectly acceptable (if not sanctified) secular music tailored to a gullible Christian audience who will fork out money for poor quality material thus perpetuating the existence of bad Christian music by creating a market for it. Wake up people. Stop buying bad Christian music just because it’s Christian.

Here’s some of the baddest Christian music ever released (at least judged by the album art) – while these are all thankfully stuck in the past there are modern equivalents who were no doubt performing at Easter Fest over the weekend. And will be turning up at a Youth Alive event near you.

I wanted to follow up my post on humility with a reference to possibly the most arrogant Christian brochure I’ve ever read – where a guest speaker – a youth worker from Townsville – was hailed as a “voice of a generation” and a “once in a lifetime evangelist” – and I’d never heard of him. And I live in Townsville. But instead you get these.

And – if you like the heading of this post you can get it as a shirt from the Red Vs Blue store.

Brick Testament

The Brick Testament has been pretty useful for churches all over the world. Probably more useful than the author intended. Our minister even used the scene depicting Israel’s mass circumcision in Joshua…

It would no doubt have been useful in Easter celebrations over the weekend… And quite possibly an inspiration for John Safran.

But while the Brick Testament’s depictions of biblical scenes are often works of art this effort from Sweden takes the cake

Parishioners at a church in Sweden celebrated Easter on Sunday by unveiling a 6-foot-tall (1.8-meter-tall) statue of Jesus that they had built out of 30,000 Lego blocks.

It took the 40 volunteers about 18 months to put all the tiny plastic blocks together, and their creation shows a standing Jesus facing forward with his arms outstretched.

Philosophical flatulence

If a man passes wind in his office chair and Twitter is there to hear it – would you listen?

One of the things I was taught at uni was that a lot of technological innovation is driven by the adult entertainment industry. Video cassettes, the Internet, and glossy magazine printing technology have all benefited from hundreds of millions (perhaps billions) of dollars of investment from the industry. I thought that was interesting.

I also think it’s interesting that in the “open source” era so many applications of new technology are being driven by toilet humour. Particularly a fascination with flatulence. One of the most downloaded iPhone applications (and I don’t have it) is iFart – it’s basically a portable whoopie cushion with the full natural gas sound spectrum available at the push of a button. Enlightening. Really. It says so much about the human condition.

I’m delighted today to have discovered an all new low in the use of technology for the purposes of toilet humour… Here’s a description:

The Twittering office chair “tweets” (posts a Twitter update) upon the detection of natural gas such as that produced by human flatulence. This is part of my commitment to accurately document and share my life as it happens.

Here’s the detailed instructions for how to build your own… and here’s the OfficeChair’s Twitter account so you can follow the farts in real time. Hooray.

Stimulating questions

Has anybody out there received their stimulus money yet? I’m curious. Townsville readers probably haven’t – but I’m wondering what percentage of people have.

Apparently the Government is essentially casting lots to determine who gets paid when.

All cheque and EFT payments will be made using a post code selection process that is randomly generated, ensuring all post codes are evenly distributed to each state and territory each night (using the Australia Post predetermined percentage spread).

So, are any of you punks feeling lucky?

Have any of you done the morally, socially and theologically responsible thing and spent it? Or is it going in the bank?