T-Bone's World

For I'm a Jolly Good Fellow (Apparently)

2010-02-27T21:29:00.003-05:00

I recently experienced an event in my life that I'm not sure how to handle. For the first time, at least that I can remember, I was the object of a public performance of "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow". It happened last week at a congratulatory dinner that my boss and some co-workers had for me in honor of a new job that I'm getting ready to start. I hadn't ever given any thought to how I would prepare myself for such an occasion but it all happened so fast that it didn't really matter. One minute I was enjoying a nice dinner with friends and the next I was saddled with this new responsibility that frankly, I never asked for and am not at all sure that I want.

As far as public congratulations songs go, I think "Happy Birthday" is probably the lowest pressure. You can't really argue with that one. If you were born on this day, then this day is your birthday and of course it's your right to be happy on it. That's pretty cut and dried. "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" though...that's a different story. I feel like that song carries a lot of pressure with it. It implies that you are indeed a jolly good fellow. What if you're not really a jolly good fellow? Or what if some people don't agree? I mean, it's perfectly reasonable to assume that in any large group there may be one or two people who may not be on board with publicly proclaiming my virtues to the world? Doesn't that put them in an awkward position? I don't want them to feel like they have to lie. On the other hand, how embarrassing would it be to have somebody who doesn't sing along? You know somebody's going to ask them why they weren't singing.

Marco: "Hey Alf...why didn't you sing along with us?"

Alf: "Shoooot...I'm not singing that song about him. Listen, I know that dude and believe me...he is not a jolly good fellow."

And what is my responsibility going forward? Is there a certain amount of time that I'm expected to remain jolly and good? A week? A month? A year? Is it a rolling 365 days or does it expire at the end of the calendar year? What if I do something that is not in line with the expectations of a jolly good fellow? I'm not perfect after all. Is there a governing body of jolly good fellows that could strip my title from me if I fail to represent them properly? It's just so much pressure. All I really wanted was a piece of cheesecake.

I think this might be why they hate us...

2010-02-17T21:39:00.002-05:00

I saw a commercial on TV tonight for a medicine that makes your eyelashes grow longer. It. Makes.Your. Eyelashes.Grow.Longerrrrrrrrrrr stack o ver flow errorrrr...rebooting.... Sorry, my central nervous system shut down for a second there because of how stupid that last sentence was that my brain just made my fingers type. My fingers were so pissed about that too...you have no idea. So just a thought here...science I'm looking at you...maybe let's spend a little less time working on drugs to make our eyelashes longer and maybe a little more time on things like AIDS, Cancer, Autism or maybe a cough syrup that tastes like a BLT sandwich.

2010-02-15T21:04:00.000-05:00

[via Minimal]

This is why I don't own a white couch...

2010-02-14T22:52:00.001-05:00

Am I who I want to be?

2010-02-14T21:04:00.007-05:00

There is a blog that I read once in a while called "Am I Who I Want to Be". It belongs to a friend of a friend who I have never met but I followed a link to her blog once because I was sort of intrigued by the title. I don't know the context in which she is asking the question, but it's a good question just the same isn't it? I suspect that the answer is probably the same for all of us. I'm not sure that I've ever really met anyone who is truly happy with who they are. Maybe these super contented people are out there somewhere, but I've never met them if they are. Maybe I've met people who didn't care enough to bother complaining about their life but I don't think that's the same thing. All of us have something that we want to change. We're too fat or too skinny or too tall or too short. Our noses are too big or too small and are a little bit crooked. We're too shy or we can't shut up. We're too lazy or we're workaholics. There's always something isn't there? Here's the thing though...I don't think perfection is really all that desirable a state. Don Miller has been talking for the past few years on the importance of using your life to tell a good story. I'm sure this means different things to different people, but here's what I know: the stories that resonate with me the most are full of characters that are almost always flawed and deeply conflicted in some way. This is true in film, literature, music and, most frequently, in real life. The quickest way to lose my interest is to tell me a story about somebody that I don't care about. (As an aside, this is why I hate most reality tv so much. With very few exceptions, it's people with no discernible talent living their rich people lives full of manufactured drama. It reminds me of (the criminally underrated) Mike Judge film Idiocracy where America's favorite TV show is just video of a guy getting repeatedly kicked in the groin . And believe me, it's a very short drive from "The Jersey Shore" to "Ouch! My Balls"...but I digress). I guess in the end, maybe it's OK if I'm not who I want to be yet. Maybe the struggle and the pain of getting there is what makes the story worth telling....or listening to. What do you think?

The Problem with Google Buzz

2010-02-12T12:27:00.003-05:00

[Via Gizmodo]

A Delicious Cycle

2010-02-07T08:09:00.001-05:00

It's been a minute...

2010-01-30T17:29:00.009-05:00

So I haven't updated this blog in a while in case you hadn't noticed. It's not that I haven't had anything to say, I just haven't been making the time to sit down and write. I'm trying to pay more attention to things like that this year. It's hard to make the time to organize my thoughts and sit down to get them on paper (so to speak). I tend to do almost all of my updates to Facebook or Twitter directly from my phone and my blog has suffered as a result. I got a new laptop a few weeks ago though so I'm hoping it will allow me to be a little more mobile and maybe free up a little time for writing.

One of the things I've been spending some time on recently is photography. I know that's kind of the default hipster hobby these days and like Stewie says everyone who takes a black and white picture of a lawn chair thinks they're super deep. I have managed to take a couple of shots that I'm pretty happy with though and I'm learning how to use Photoshop and some of the other really cool Mac tools that make your pictures look better. Here are a few of my favorites. Let me know if you love them or hate them...or anything in between.

Really AccuQuote?

2009-07-16T12:18:00.004-05:00

Is this really how we want to sell life insurance? We can only assume from the picture that this little girl lost her mommy or daddy and is now homeless because her parents did not care enough to purchase life insurance. Could there be a more blatantly manipulative advertisement? The only other possibility I can think of is that this is such a low budget outfit that they could only afford to take one picture and the kid just wouldn't cooperate. Either way...this ad sucks.

Haters gonna hate...

2009-07-13T17:29:00.000-05:00

Do you?

2009-07-06T12:42:00.001-05:00

“While you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don’t give a shit. What’s worse is that you’re more upset with the fact that I said shit than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night.” -Tony Campolo

The Death of George Tiller and My Thoughts on Abortion

2009-06-07T12:25:00.016-05:00

Around lunchtime last Sunday I began to feel the pangs of a looming internal crisis. My wife Regina got a text message from her sister saying that George Tiller, notorious late term abortion provider, had been shot and killed at his church in Wichita, Ks. As I processed that information over the next hours and days I experienced a range of emotions that I hadn't fully prepared myself for.

Being raised in a fundamentalist Baptist church in the suburbs of Wichita , George Tiller played a prominent role in the formative years of my spiritual and political development. He was equal parts bogey man, Adolf Hitler and the devil himself. He was the face of evil incarnate and he carried out his grim work just a few miles away from the mall that I frequented as a teenager. Long before I could ever grasp the complexities of an issue like abortion (I'm not sure that I do now), I was standing outside his clinic holding poster board protest signs. I have a vague recollection of one late night vigil where I was actually interviewed by a local TV news crew. I don't recall the exact reason for the protest but I remember that it was cold that night so the January anniversary of Roe V. Wade would fit I suppose. In any case, the news crews shows up and somehow I end up in front of a reporter with a bright light in my face and they're asking me why I was there. My brilliantly succinct 13 year old answer was something like "Um well, because um, I don't um, think it's right um for them to um be able to kill um babies, you know?" That was literally all I knew about abortion...it involved killing a baby, and of course that was wrong right? I couldn't even understand why we were there. How in the world could we even be having the conversation? This was the most black and white issue I could possibly imagine. In my mind, the typical abortion case file involved a teenage girl or twenty-something young woman who got pregnant as a result of her sinful lifestyle and was too selfish to make room in her life for a new baby so she decided to take the easy way out and get an abortion. People got abortions because they wanted to fit into a prom dress and not have their freshman year of college interrupted.

Of course this was before I had ever heard of words like anencephaly, a condition where the baby is born essentially without a skull or the major part of their brain, usually blind, deaf and unable to feel pain. This particular birth defect is fatal 100% of the time. This was before I read the accounts of families who discovered that the precious baby that they were hoping for and planning for and praying for and waiting anxiously to hold and love and raise was essentially on life support inside the womb and had no chance of survival. Let that sink in for a moment. Fatal 100% of the time...no chance of survival. What do you do with that? As a young prospective mother how do you even allow your mind to process that information? Do you get a 2nd opinion? A 3rd...4th...5th opinion? Do you experience denial and anger and bargaining and all the other stages of grief that humans go through when a loved one dies? Do you carry the baby to term and allow it be born and die naturally? Do you have an abortion and end the pregnancy on your own terms? Do you name the baby and bury it and have a funeral like any other baby who dies tragically? I read of families who did all these things. Which of these choices is more right than the other? And who decides?

So these were the things that were running through my mind last week when I heard that Tiller had been murdered. As a lifelong opponent of abortion the coldly pragmatic part of my mind reasoned for a moment that the death of George Tiller would result, at least in the short term, in less abortions. On the other hand, the murder of this man would likely set the pro-life movement back by decades and turn Tiller into a martyr for the pro-choice movement. Worse still would be the damage to the peaceful, prayerful, non-radical arm of the pro-life movement who would likely be painted with the same broad brush as the murderer who pulled the trigger. Further still, what about the women who used Tiller's services as a legal if not horrible option for dealing with a fatal neural birth defect like anencephaly? Could it be that on some level this man who was the face of evil to me as a youngster was in some way, to some women, the hero that so many people are saying he was? Was it possible that by providing a less terrible option than carrying and giving birth to a baby with a death sentence that he was in some way bravely doing what needed to be done but few others in the medical community had the constitution for? Is it possible that for some people, in some circumstances, the services he offered were the more humane choice? The bile rises in my throat as I type that. It breaks my heart and makes my head spin to say it but I just don't know anymore. Does Pro-Choice mean pro-abortion? If you allow for abortions in extreme cases (like anencephaly) are you ethically and logically obliged to allow and approve of abortion on demand for all reasons? If you concede a little ground on this issue have you, in effect, conceded everything?

Here is what I do know - too often Christians who hang their hats on the sanctity of life seem to mysteriously disappear when the logical end of their stance on abortion comes knocking on the door of their church. Without the intervention of the church or other community minded organizations, poverty stricken, poorly educated people whose lives spiral into a vicious cycle of crime and poor decisions result in more tragically unwanted children destined to repeat the mistakes of their parents. We say we are against freely available condoms and sex education, the morning after pill and Plan B contraception for spiritual, ethical and philosophical reasons. But we fail to remember that ideas have consequences in real life. The effects of these philosophies we espouse are very often the victims of the abortions we fight to prevent. Pro-life has to mean more than just caring for 9 months and then moving on to the next girl in line at the pregnancy crisis center. As Christians we must value life in all of it's forms and stages.

I'm a lazy writer...

2009-06-07T11:53:00.004-05:00

So it's been a while since I've posted anything substantive on this blog (some would say years...but that wouldn't be very nice of them). Basically, I just came down with a nasty case of blog-slack. I went on vacation for a week and some other stuff and just haven't made the time to sit down and write. I need to do better about that. I love to write but it's very easy to get out of the habit. Writing isn't always easy and frankly, watching TV is much easier. Consequently, TV has been winning the battle for the hour or so of free time I have at night that isn't consumed with family or work. Anyway, my summer resolution is to write something, anything, at least once a day. It might not always be a blog post, but even if it's just some free verse that I dump out of my brain into Google docs I think it would worth the excercise. Any other aspiring bloggers/writers feel the same way?

Your Business Card is Crap...

2009-05-17T14:53:00.002-05:00

How do I know this? Because this dude says so...

[via Monkeysforhelping]

The Bike King and the 10 Commandments

2009-05-17T10:08:00.003-05:00

If Fireproof is the Citizen Kane of "Christian" movies then The Bike King and the Ten Commandments has to be the Evangelical answer to Plan 9 from Outer Space. Please to enjoy 3:47 of the finest performances ever captured on film. My favorite part is when the God tree magically spits out an unlabeled CD-R of what I assume to be the 10 Commandments. Sigh...no, I'm not kidding...

For a more detailed (and slightly snarkier perspective) check out Patrol's review of this instant classic.

The Weepies - Can't Go Back Now

2009-05-03T20:12:00.001-05:00

I am so into this band right now...they just make me smile

My blurry-ass pictures from my stupid camera...

2009-05-02T19:48:00.005-05:00

I took a few pictures on this trip that I was happy with. My Olympus digital camera sucks only slightly less than the Kodak Disc camera I was when I was 12 so most of my snaps come out blurry which is very frustrating. Here are a couple that I was happy with...

Here is a link to the rest of the pics from my trip in case anyone is interested...

Never again...

2009-05-02T18:39:00.012-05:00

Although there are many days when I question my career choice, I can say that working for Massive Dynamic (shout out to all you Fringe fans out there) has given me many opportunities that I don't know that I would have otherwise. Among these opportunities is the chance to travel a bit every once in a while. I actually enjoy travelling so the few trips I take a year are not bothersome and other than getting a bit homesick towards the end, I am usually glad for the opportunity to see and experience new places. Last week I had the chance to spend about 6 days in Germany and Austria. If you've never been I can't recommend it highly enough. It is breathtakingly beautiful country. I spent the majority of my time in a small village at the foot of the Austrian Alps called Jenbach. It was like stepping into a postcard. Everyone there was wonderfully kind and welcoming. They serve a fantastic Austrian beer called Zipfer (almost exclusively). Like when you order a beer, they don't ask "what kind would you like?" they just pour you a Zipfer. So I had a few of those...

Last Friday, my colleagues and I stayed in Munich, Germany and spent the evening with a fellow employee from Munich, a gentleman named Karl-Henz who showed us some local beer halls (are you noticing a trend here?) and an amazing Italian restaurant where we enjoyed dinner late into the evening.

On Saturday, we had the opportunity to spend a few hours at the Dachau concentration camp memorial. I can honestly say that this was one of the most profound experiences of my life. I don't know how you can really prepare yourself emotionally for something like this, but I was not. As you approach the camp you are met by an iron gate bearing the German phrase "Arbeit macht frei" which means "work will make you free".

As I walked through the gate to the camp I broke down and had to stop for a few moments to compose myself. It's literally as if you can feel the weight of everything that happened in that terrible place.

Gate to Dachau Camp

After viewing a brief film on the history of the Dachau camp and the atrocities that took place there, we walked the grounds and toured the prisoners barracks and bath house.

Prisoner bunk house

Prisoner toilet facilities

Guard Tower

There really aren't words to describe what it's like to be in a place like this. I was overwhelmed by feelings of sadness for the people who suffered and died there and simply for the human condition that allows people to hate so much and to commit such atrocities. In the midst of all of that sadness and despair however, there was a tiny flickering hope that maybe as a people we learned something from that dark period in our history and remain committed to ensuring that it never happens again.

Make 'Em Say Uhh...

2009-05-01T13:30:00.004-05:00

So I'm playing (and I use that term loosely) in this basketball league at my church. It's an open league which apparently means that it is made up mostly of guys who are rehabbing a knee before they can return to the NBA or possibly sitting out a year due to academic reasons before they can transfer to Duke or North Carolina to finish their NCAA careers. I am the slowest, fattest, whitest guy within 10 miles of this gym and I am fully preparing myself to be humiliated every Monday for the next 8 weeks. We had the season opening Jamboree on Monday...it iterally looked like this (complete with the dude in the gorilla suit dunking from half court):

But I'm not going to quit...I signed up and I'm playing. At the very least, I should learn how to take an elbow to the solar plexus without vomiting. Wish me luck...

Colbert on the Origins of Evil

2009-04-05T19:13:00.002-05:00

If you're a member of the Colbert Nation (like I am) then you've probably already heard this exchange between Stephen and Dr. Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University on Lucifer and the origin of evil. My favorite part of the clip:

Dr. Zimbardo: "You've obviously paid attention in Sunday School."
Colbert: "I TEACH Sunday School motherf****!"

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Philip Zimbardo

comedycentral.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

NASA Name Contest

Subscribe to this blog...

2009-04-05T18:51:00.003-05:00

If anyone is interested in subscribing to my blog you can do that here via Feedburner. If you don't already know why you would want to do this, then you probably don't need to. If you do know and haven't already, then go for it.

Where the Wild Things Are...

2009-04-05T18:16:00.005-05:00

I know very little about this movie other than the fact that it is a film adaptation of the beloved childrens book by Maurice Sendak. That and the fact that it will be mind blowingly awesome. Here is a brief list of all the awesome things I spied (or heard) in the trailer:

1. Shadow of monster head (:14)
2. Glimpse of monster horn in sunlight (:21)
3. Monster's eye (:25)
4. Arcade Fire - Wake Up(:30)
5. Max's sweater (:39)
6. Max's rabbit costume (:52)
7. Catherine Keener (1:06)
8. By the Author Maurice Sendak (1:32)
9. From Director Spike Jonze (1:36)
10. Where the Wild Things Are (1:56)

And for the one thing that sucked about this trailer:

1. October 16 (2:06)

A brief moment of pause...

2009-04-05T18:00:00.005-05:00

I didn't realize it until just now, but I just crossed the 200 post mark here in T-Bone's World. I've been at this since June '05...almost 4 years. That's about 50 posts a year. If I'm really being honest, I have to say I'm not too proud of the pace there but then again, I'm not a guy who's ever gonna hit a 4 minute mile. Quality over quantity baby...quality is job #1. So let me take a moment to say shalom and thank you to all of my friends in the interwebs. Thank you for taking a moment to read what I have to say, listen to what I recommend or watch what I think is funny or compelling. It means more to me than you know...

Such Great Heights...

2009-04-02T20:10:00.003-05:00

Not that anybody really needs another reason to dig David Bazan but if you're looking for one here it is...him singing backup for Ben Gibbard on "Such Great Heights". I got to see this tour a couple of years ago and yes, it was amazing, thanks for asking. I've probably talked about this before because I've really only got like 3 or 4 cool stories that I just keep recycling. Me driving to Nashville to watch David Bazan open for Ben Gibbard is one of those stories. And yes, I am also aware that my blog has been a little Bazan heavy over the past week or so. Will I be changing that any time soon? I don't know...probably not as long as he continues to be the most awesome thing I have to write about. You've got your Jonas Brothers...I've got my David Bazan, mmmkay?

Slow and Steady Wins the Race...

2009-04-01T18:50:00.002-05:00

So that David Bazan show I told you about the other day? Yeah, it was only about 1000 times more awesome than I even thought it would be. Here's a little taste. Oh and if you're not a fan after this, please follow the advice my brother Justin would give: Do the world a favor and go ahead and punch yourself in the face.