links for 2008-12-12

Continue Readinglinks for 2008-12-12

A Message To The Spoiled Under-30 Crowd

Note: This is from one of those fun email forwards…

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning… uphill BOTH ways yadda, yadda, yadda. And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they’ve got it!

But now that I’m over the ripe old age of thirty, I can’t help but look around and notice the youth of today.
You’ve got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia! And I hate to say it but you kids today you don’t know how good you’ve got it!

I mean, when I was a kid we didn’t have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!!

There was no email!! We had to actually write somebody a letter. With a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!

There were no MP3’s or Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the damn record store and shoplift it yourself! Or you had to wait around al l day to tape it off the radio and the DJ’d usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up!

We didn’t have fancy stuff like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that’s it! There were no cell phones. You had to share the kitchen phone with the super long cord with everyone else in the entire family. And we didn’t have fancy Caller ID Boxes either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, a collections agent, you just didn’t know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

We didn’t have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! You had to go to an arcade to play games. Games like ‘Space Invaders’ and ‘asteroids’. Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination!!

And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever!

And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!
When you went to the movie theater there no such thing as stadium seating! All the seats were the same height! If a tall guy or some old broad with a hat sat in front of you and you couldn’t see, you were just screwed!

In the early days, there wasn’t even cable television! Back then you had only 5 channels. Eventually cable came out, but it was only around 15 channels, and there was no on screen menu and no remote control! You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your butt and walk over to the TV to change the channel and there was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I’m saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons!

And we didn’t have microwaves eitehr. If we wanted to heat something up we had to use the stove or go build a frigging fire … imagine that! If we wanted popcorn, we had to use that stupid air popper machine – or if you were “rich” you got the Jiffy Pop thing and you shook it over the stove forever like an idiot.

That’s exactly what I’m talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You’re spoiled. You guys wouldn’t have lasted five minutes back in 1978!

Regards,
The over 30 Crowd

UPDATE:

Continue ReadingA Message To The Spoiled Under-30 Crowd

Real Biblical Marriage

Passed along from a friend via email

If we were to create a constitutional amendment defining marriage based on the teachings of the Bible, it would look like this:

A. Marriage in the United States shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women. (Gen 29:17-28; II Sam 3:2-5)

B. Marriage shall not impede a man’s right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives. (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21)

C. A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. (Deut 22:13-21)

D. Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be forbidden. (Gen 24:3; Num 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12; Neh 10:30)

E. Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any State, nor any state or federal law, shall be construed to permit divorce. (Deut 22:19; Mark 10:9)

F. If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother’s widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law. (Gen 38:6-10; Deut 25:5-10)

G. In lieu of marriage, if there are no acceptable men in your town, it is required that you get your dad drunk and have sex with him (even if he had previously offered you up as a sex toy to men young and old), tag-teaming with any sisters you may have. Of course, this rule applies only if you are female. (Gen 19:31-36)

Continue ReadingReal Biblical Marriage

links for 2008-12-11

Continue Readinglinks for 2008-12-11

Books I Read in 2008

It’s my 12th Annual end of the year reading recap. Grand total: 30 books. I don’t think that’s my lowest total, but it’s no 98 titles like in 1997. And boy, oh boy did I hit the genre fiction this year. It did help to have lots of fun light reading while all the wedding planning and such was going on — too much to think about during all that to be reading weighty tomes.

Maybe I’ll finally get that “year of reading Proust” started in 2009. Ha! Who am I kidding? I started Swann’s Way more than once and kept falling asleep. I should go back to it just to cure my insomnia. I have lots of other good books on my shelves, so I need to range further afield in the coming year, though.

  1. The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn Iggulden and Hal Iggulden
  2. The Geographer’s Library by Jon Fasman
  3. Locked Rooms (Mary Russell Novels) by Laurie R. King
  4. The Art of Detection by Laurie R. King
  5. Standard Hero Behavior by John David Anderson
  6. The Best of MAKE (Make) by Mark Frauenfelder and Gareth Branwyn
  7. Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Volume 1: The Long Way Home by Joss Whedon, Andy Owens, Georges Jeanty, and Jo Chen
  8. Marvel 1602 by Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert
  9. The Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman
  10. Jane and His Lordship’s Legacy (Jane Austen Mysteries, book 8) by Stephanie Barron
  11. Justice Hall (Mary Russell Novels) by Laurie R. King
  12. The Game (Mary Russell Novels) by Laurie R. King
  13. The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes
  14. The Secret of Lost Things by Sheridan Hay
  15. The Archivist: A Novel by Martha Cooley
  16. The Egyptologist: A Novel by Arthur Phillips
  17. Here Lies the Librarian by Richard Peck
  18. Maps and Legends by Michael Chabon
  19. The Fencing Master by Arturo Perez-Reverte
  20. Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography by David Michaelis
  21. The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse
  22. The Digital Photography Book by Scott Kelby
  23. Night Work (Kate Martinelli Mysteries) by Laurie R. King
  24. A Grave Talent (Kate Martinelli Mysteries) by Laurie R. King
  25. To Play The Fool (Kate Martinelli Mysteries) by Laurie R. King
  26. With Child (Kate Martinelli Mysteries) by Laurie R. King
  27. The Spice Box by Lou Jane Temple
  28. Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue
  29. Snobs by Julian Fellowes
  30. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Continue ReadingBooks I Read in 2008