Category Archives: Wild Card

How many signs does that guy have?

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Yesterday, the driver next to me at a light honked his horn, then held up a sign telling me about a problem with my minivan that I need to get fixed ASAP. (“Expired car tags,” if you’re wondering.)

My two immediate thoughts:

  1. Wow! What a helpful guy! Thank you!
  2. Wait a sec – who just carries around a sign like that? Are expired car tags a cause near to his heart? Does he have a whole stack of signs for various problems? “Your left turn signal is out.” “Front passenger-side tire is low on air.” “Blue smoke coming out of your exhaust.” “Bumper falling off.”
How many signs does that guy have?

The 5 Worst Candies Your Kids Brought Home Last Night

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Sweet & Sour Twizzlers

Terrible. Just terrible.

  1. Dubble Bubble – “Original” Flavor. In an emergency, Original flavor Dubble Bubble can be used to patch bicycle tubes. Even worse, they were right next to the Green Apple and Grape flavors at the grocery store. C’mon, people!

  2. Spider-Man “Candy Sticks.” These are candy cigarettes that were discovered in a warehouse somewhere and repackaged to be politically correct. My children actually fought over the one box we received. Since I used the distraction to steal Fun-Size Snickers from their baskets, I didn’t stop them.

  3. Atomic Fireballs. I love the taste, but I could do without the adamantium-coating and the mouthful of cinnamon-flavored saliva. Give me Red Hots any day. I bet dentists make a fortune off these things.

  4. Chocolate coins. Do you know what I use these for? I tell my kids that they’re real coins and buy all their Butterfingers from them.

  5. Sweet & Sour Twizzlers. Disgusting. Mushy on the inside, rubbery on the outside, with an absolutely horrible “sour” taste that wasn’t at all sweet. I took one bite and threw away the rest. It has to be a really bad piece of candy for me not to finish eating it. I have found loose Jelly Belly jelly beans under a couch cushion, and I’m not proud of the amount of self-discipline it required to throw them away.

5 Terrible Costume Ideas

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In case you haven’t had time or money to create a good Halloween costume, here are 5 terrible costume ideas that won’t require any expense or advance preparation.

1. Time Traveler from the Future. We all know that changes to the past will change the future, right? So a time traveler from the future has to be very, very careful to blend in perfectly and do nothing out of the ordinary. This costume involves dressing as yourself and doing what you normally do, except you will be very, very careful about doing it.

2. Bigfoot. Don’t let anyone see you or take a picture of you all night long.

3. Someone Else. You know those clothes you have in your closet that you never wear because they just don’t look like something you would wear? Wear them.

4. Mafia Victim. Hang out with your friends as normal, but be a little bit too talkative about sensitive information. Partway through the night, disappear without leaving a trace.

5. Movie Extra. This one is extremely difficult to pull off. Wear clothing that blends in with the crowd and make sure that all of your reactions are appropriate for the moment. When you talk to other people, say nothing except “Peas and carrots, peas and carrots.” Whatever you do, don’t upstage the leads.

Muslim Charities and the BBB

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Before coming to work for InterVarsity, I reviewed charities for the Better Business Bureau. The BBB has one of the best charity accreditation programs in the country. Charities are asked to submit financial statements, governance documents, and copies of their fundraising materials, and the BBB reviews them against a set of 20 Standards for Charity Accountability.

Today, the BBB and a group called Muslim Advocates announced a plan to encourage Muslim charities to undergo the BBB’s accreditation program. Muslim charities have been under a great deal of scrutiny since 9/11 for supposed ties to terrorism, and ethical Muslim charities hope that this new program will encourage donors to trust them with their money. One of the mantras that I repeated while I was at the BBB was that it was nearly impossible for a donor to tell the difference between a “legitimate” charity and an unethical one, and that even the definition of “legitimate” was questionable. For example, the American Red Cross has been involved in a number of ethics scandals, regarding their executives, their handling of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, and their blood donation program. Yet the Red Cross unquestionably does a great deal of good. Are they “legitimate”? Are they “ethical”? This is why the BBB’s standards are so important. The standards provide 20 objective measures of a charity’s practices and policies, so that donors can make their own decision. According to the Wall Street Journal, one of the first charities to volunteer for the program is the Islamic Center of Greater Cincinnati, which would have been part of my territory.

Way to go, BBB!

Postmodern Art Gallery

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Yesterday, our daughters spent part of the afternoon painting outside on our patio.  When it came time to put away the paints, our 4-year-old had a stack of wet paintings that needed to be hung up and dried.  “Aha,” I thought, “I’ll just get some twine and clothespins and hang them on the deck.”  My next thought, however, was, “Twine and clothespins?  What is this – Little House on the Prairie? We don’t even have twine and clothespins!”

So I created a hanging wall with the contemporary equivalent: DSL cable and binder clips.  Problem solved.

Pictures drying on the deck

Pictures drying on the deck

DSL cable as twine

DSL cable as twine

Binder clips as clothespins

Binder clips as clothespins

Wal-Mart Doesn’t Like Macs, Apparently

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Wal-Mart Music DownloadsA humorous message from Wal-Mart’s music download website:

We’re sorry, your operating system is incompatible. To provide the best download experience, we can no longer support Windows 98, ME or NT. Please visit again after you upgrade to Windows 2000 or XP. 

I am amused because:

  1. I have a Mac, and don’t plan on “upgrading” to Windows anytime soon. 
  2. Notice how Vista isn’t even mentioned. 

 

The Final Countdown?

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Well, this is quite possibly our final Monday as a family with two kids.  Elizabeth is due to give birth to our son this Friday, May 2 (which is also my mother’s birthday).  Agatha was right on time – born at 8:00 am on her due date – while Ginger was two weeks late.  Just about everything is ready – we have a name picked out (it’s a secret), a crib, a freshly painted pirate-themed nursery.  Not everyone is ready, though: Elizabeth asked Ginger what she thought of baby brother.  She shook her head and said, “No like!”

Gillette AristocratIn other news, we received yet another free television, this time an HDTV from Elizabeth’s aunt!  While there, we also received several family heirlooms that had belonged to Elizabeth’s grandmother.  I claimed this incredible Gillette Aristocrat safety razor.  Elizabeth insists that I not use it, but, if I did, it came with several dozen extra razors.  

If I did decide to convert to “wet shaving,” at least I have some good guidance from Andy Crouch. 

A New Way of Ranking Colleges

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UC receives only 3 stars from GoogleWith all the hubbub over college rankings each year, wouldn’t it be great if there was a simpler way? Looks like Google has figured it out.  When you search for a business on Google Maps, you can rank it – ostensibly so that you can say, “Wow, great pizza!” or “Don’t use this plumber!”  I am amused that Google Maps lets you rank universities in the same way.  Sorry, UC – looks like you only got 3 stars out of 5. 

Note that you can order the search results by ranking.  I would NOT recommend this as a way of picking a college. 

The Running Animal

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To move things in a completely different direction, maybe human beings are the “running animal.”  We’re not used to thinking of human beings as physically superior to other animals – e.g. cheetahs are faster, elephants are stronger – but it turns out that human beings are the best long-distance runners in the world. So says Daniel Lieberman of Harvard and Dennis Bramble of Utah. In another article, Lieberman notes that:

Once humans start running, it only takes a bit more energy for us to run faster, Lieberman said. Other animals, on the other hand, expend a lot more energy as they speed up, particularly when they switch from a trot to a gallop, which most animals cannot maintain over long distances.

They also point out that human beings are the only animals in the world that run long distances – like a marathon – voluntarily.  Which reminds me of the scene from Back to the Future 3 in which some cowboys are laughing at Marty McFly’s “running shoes.”  


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