Postmodern Renaissance Culture Revolutionary

I have been named Time's Person of the Year. You haven't heard. Yep. Little ol' me received it. I just found out today. Now, it's not a popularity contest. And it isn't supposed to be a recognition of something. Time just chooses a person to grace a special issue at the end of the year who has made an impact on the world. And I was chosen. Oh. You don't believe me. Well, I should mention that you have been chosen also. Time's Person of the Year is YOU. When I heard about this, I thought it was really just a gimmick. But then I read this statement. "If you choose an individual, you have to justify how that person affected millions of people," said Richard Stengel, who took over as Time's managing editor earlier this year. "But if you choose millions of people, you don't have to justify it to anyone." As I read this, two thoughts come to mind. 1.) This sounds like laziness to me. And I know lazy. If you have to choose one person to ...

My family always wants to know what I want for Christmas. So now that I have a semi-permanent place to keep accessible information, I am posting my Christmas list. There is something on this list for every price range. So don't freak out. This is for my families' use. But if any of you feel inspired, it will be gratefully received. Dremel Pro Tool with flex shaft attachment Movie - Whale Rider - available at Target for 5.50 Book - Faiths of Our Founding Fathers - Canon PowerShot S3 IS A chanter - it's a musical instrument to learn the bagpipes Bagpipes - my next big musical advancement A room to play the bagpipes in - so my wife won't divorce me Book - Conversation Book - Kingdom Keepers Jeans - size 38 - 30 DVD - MacGyver season 2 DVD - Due South - season 3/4 DVD - Greatest American Hero - season 3 Comic books - I especially like Spiderman and Batman Chik-Fil-A coupons Cokesbury gift certificates Off Kilter Merchandise - Off Kilter is a Celtic Rock band. I curre...

The other day I was flipping across the radio channels, listening to anything worthwhile (which means passing over all sports stations). I landed on Christian talk radio. I do not listen to Christian talk radio very often. But I listen in from time to time. Today I happened across the program, "Truths that Transform". This is Dr. D. James Kennedy's program. He was promoted his new book dealing with "What if America were a Christian Nation?" What sparked my interest in this program is that they were mentioning the historical faith heritage of the U.S. My degree is in history. I have a personal love of history. I believe that history is critical to understanding and living the present as well as planning for the future. Dr. Kennedy made a comment that really made me stop and think. Since I was driving, I couldn't actually stop. And I couldn't really think too hard. But there was a "fact" thrown out that really gave me reason to ponder. Dr. Kenned...

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! As we roll into the full swing of the holiday season, planning for Christmas has begun. I am always a little burdened at the thought of the worship services that point to and flow out of Christmas. Our Waffles and Wassailage is our first "special" service. This is our multi-generational, family oriented hanging of the greens service. Then we have the Christmas Eve service. This year we will hold two services: a 6:00 and 8:00. This year we will also have a Christmas morning service. That's right. A Monday worship service to celebrate Christmas. Every time I have mentioned this to church folks, I get a, "You have finally flipped your rocker" look. But I have some very solid reasons for this decision. 1.) Christmas is a high, holy day of the Christian year. It is the commemoration of the birth of Jesus. This is the day we remember the Incarnation. That is, God coming and walking among us. That is the importance of Christmas. Not present...

I'm back good folks! Some of you didn't know I had left. It's okay if you didn't miss me. I was at Walt Disney World. Again? Yes, again. This time I went by myself. Partly for fun and partly for a conference. As I was doing some research for a project I am working on, I found this item of news: Controversial new Bible cuts out difficult gospel passages -18/10/06 A new Bible translation is causing controversy after it cut out difficult parts surrounding economic justice, possessions and money. The new bible version, released by the Western Bible Foundation in the Netherlands, has created a storm by trying to make the Christian gospel more palatable. According to Chairman Mr. De Rijke the foundation has reacted to a growing wish of many churches to be market-oriented and more attractive. "Jesus was very inspiring for our inner health, but we don't need to take his naïve remarks about money seriously. He didn't study economics, obviously." According...

1971. The first time I was ever on Disney property. No. I don’t remember it. I don’t even have any pictures of being there. But that was the first time. I was less than a year old. We went to Disneyland. I have no clue if that imprinted on me the deep love that I have for Disney parks. But every trip in my memory (1984, 2003, 2006) has been one of powerful memories. Things that I wouldn’t trade anything for, even if I could. I’m not an overly emotional kind of person when it comes to warm, fuzzies. I’m a logic person. Emotions get in the way of logic. But when it comes to Disney trips, all that logic stuff takes a flying leap. I don’t feel like the same person when I’m there. I will do things and act in ways that aren’t normal for me. I become something more than the day to day Todd. Maybe even something better. I said earlier that there wasn’t much magical that happened on our trip. I meant that in a tangible way. There weren’t a lot of the little plusse...

While Lisa and the boys slept in the next morning, I wanted to get a few pictures of the Lodge. So I walked around with my coffeeish and got some nice shots. Then I headed back to see if everyone was up. We packed up the last items. We got our travel bags supplied. Checked the room. Threw away extra stuff. And then left our beautiful poolside Lodge room. We got down to the Canyon restaurant and had to wait a bit. The boys were really out of sorts this morning. We were all exhausted. They didn’t eat much of anything. We didn’t even have seconds on the skillets that Lisa and I ordered. We were just ready to leave. Lisa wanted to check on a few last minute items at the mercantile and pin cart. I wanted to see if it was possible to work some magic with our left over meal credits. The Disney Dining Plan was free, remember? Well, we took advantage of it. But not enough. Between the four of us and the meals we ate, we ended up with 0 snacks left (uncrustables we...

As soon as we got into the MK, we were fairly close to the time for the new Let’s Have a Ball show. This is a crowd interaction moment with a meet and greet with Aurora and Prince Philip. Now, for the longest time I have wondered why Disney didn’t do more with Aurora. And as I analyzed it, I realized that Disney has missed some prime capitalization property. Here’s why. Sleeping Beauty is the perfect Disney princess movie. First you have the beautiful princess to catch the girl market. Second, you have a classic fairy tale that gets the literary crowd. Third, the movie is very beautifully drawn and filmed which should win the artistic vote. Fourth is the villain. Maleficent is the quintessential villain. She is the embodiment of evil. So you have your villain lover’s covered. You have some great fight scenes between Philip and the minions of Maleficent as well as with the dragon. Boys love this part of the movie (we know this first hand). You have Flora, ...

We really did something stupid that next morning. Not chronically stupid. But it was stupid, nonetheless. We got up early. We were out late and Lisa and I didn’t crash until after 1:00. Then we were up early the next morning. We had to be. It was Maelstrom Meet day. Today was the day we would meet some more of our Maelstrom friends. And we were meeting at Animal Kingdom. To ride Expedition: Everest. We drug the boys out of bed and got them dressed. Lisa made plans to meet the first couple of friends who would be at AK first thing at the bus stop. So off we go to meet Ashclan and Mr. Ash. But someone was missing from our little crew. The newest member of the family didn’t make it out of the room. No, not #2S. Pal Mickey. #1S was in a tizzy because he forgot his Pal. And I wanted him to get every moments enjoyment out of that investment. So I hiked back to the room to get Pal Mickey while Lisa and the boys met our new friends. When I got back, I got to meet...

We got to the Magic Kingdom well in advance of the party. We were looking for supper. We decided to go to Cosmic Ray’s. I'm too sexy for this armor Nothing spectacular. It’s counter service. But I was itching to go do something. Oh, I did make one little kid cry. I walked by the window and just waved. I was friendly enough about it. But the kid was on the way to meltdown. I just pushed him over the edge. It’s wrong, but I got a little bit of a charge out of that. I know. Bad, bad, bad. We left Ray’s quickly after setting the child off. And set out to make the youngest of our party happy. We rode Peter Pan. This is the picture. Me as Hook (very unconvincing) and #2S as Pan riding together on Peter Pan. That was kind of fun. Then we went and did something he didn’t like. Just to maintain balance in the force. We rode Haunted Mansion. #2S no likey this ride. I covered his eyes while he covered his ears. After the Haunted Mansion, it was close to parade t...