Big Tents and Small Churches
Happy Monday, folks. First, a few news items.
As you folks may have noticed, I pay a lot of attention to North Africa, and Libya and Algeria in particular. For those of you who don't know, whenever Colonel Qaddhafi goes anywhere on an official state visit, he takes an entourage of beautiful female bodyguards, and a big friggin' tent. Well, the Guardian wonders where he'll pitch it when he visits London. In Ireland, they're shuffling Guinness brewery locations. The important part for me is that they're keeping and revamping the St. James Gate facility - I have some great memories of that place. Meanwhile, MSN has an article for us guys about keeping your place female-friendly. Given that I'm slated to have sisters visiting my place next week, this article was very helpful.
And I'm sorry, I can't save this for Thursday. We have a new one for the "Senator Barack Obama is a clueless imbecile" file. The AFP has an article that's titled Obama says missile shield cannot target Russia: Poland's Sikorski. Now, this would indicate to most that Senator Obama is attempting to reassure Russia, right? Well, read on.
Now, ignoring the fact that a team of AFP staff writers couldn't spell "Lavrov", there's one simple problem with this article: Senator Obama seems to completely misunderstand the concept of a ballistic missile defense system. Aimed at Russia? You don't aim an interceptor missile at anything that hasn't been fired at you. This guy wants to be our Commander-in-Chief, and he can't even comprehend that a defensive system isn't aimed at another country in anger? Unbelievable.
Okay, so I'm about to open up on a pair of seemingly independent, but oddly interrelated aspects of my life: church, and women.
I attend a fairly small Anglican church that's a couple of miles from my place. One of the unfortunate side effects of attending a small church, and in a denomination that's dominated by folks over the age of forty, is that there are extremely few young people. In fact, I can probably count the number of people between the ages of twenty and thirty without resorting to open-toed shoes, if you catch my drift.
Now, this could be to my advantage. After all, if there were, say, ten people in that age bracket, and I was the only guy, and the rest were single young women, that'd be pretty sweet, huh? Yeah, that's not the case. First off, most of the folks in question are married: Big Orange and Surfer Dude, Olive Oil and the Butt Rubber, Disc Golf Champ and Disc Golf Wife. Also, despite some hiccups, I'm pretty sure that The Artista and What Was are in the long process of getting back together after a brief experiment with What Is.
So, where am I going with this? Simple: whenever a young, single woman shows up at the church, everyone suddenly gets really interested in the concept of setting me up with her. So far, it's happened twice; the first time was with a pretty blonde college instructor who turned out to be seeing someone. Today, it happened for the second time.
Now, I'm not exceptionally offended by this. After all, I haven't so much as touched a woman since April. I can use any help that I can get, right? It's really entertaining, though, because it's almost as if there's a fervor about it: church-going Christians seem to have it in their heads that a person can't be happy unless that person is coupled up with a member of the opposite sex. In such a small church, the fervor gets even more entertaining.
The new girl seems nice enough; I happened to have been asked to join a group for lunch, that just happened to have invited her along as well. Whether she and I live happily ever after or not, I hope that she sticks around; we need fresh blood in the young adult demographic, and I appear to be about the only solid influx of youth that the church has gotten in the last year.
Stop laughing, Mighty Mo.
In other news, I got an E-Mail from Ikea on Sunday, and my Poäng Chair has been shipped. If I'm lucky, I'll have it delivered and assembled by midnight on Wednesday. I've also put up a few posters (U2 albums, Mark Twain playing pool, and A Bold Bluff). I'm planning to put up some satellite imagery (day and night satellite maps of the Earth) and a few maps, just to add some color to the walls. You'd think that a guy would do this when he first moved in, but that just wasn't the way I rolled this time around. Hopefully, I'll be able to start in my next place with a little bit more furniture, and a little bit more time than I had when I moved here last July. Expect photos by the end of the week.
Aiming interceptor missiles at Russia. Honestly.
As you folks may have noticed, I pay a lot of attention to North Africa, and Libya and Algeria in particular. For those of you who don't know, whenever Colonel Qaddhafi goes anywhere on an official state visit, he takes an entourage of beautiful female bodyguards, and a big friggin' tent. Well, the Guardian wonders where he'll pitch it when he visits London. In Ireland, they're shuffling Guinness brewery locations. The important part for me is that they're keeping and revamping the St. James Gate facility - I have some great memories of that place. Meanwhile, MSN has an article for us guys about keeping your place female-friendly. Given that I'm slated to have sisters visiting my place next week, this article was very helpful.
And I'm sorry, I can't save this for Thursday. We have a new one for the "Senator Barack Obama is a clueless imbecile" file. The AFP has an article that's titled Obama says missile shield cannot target Russia: Poland's Sikorski. Now, this would indicate to most that Senator Obama is attempting to reassure Russia, right? Well, read on.
US Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama has said he will only proceed with installing a US missile shield base in Poland if it does not target Russia, Poland's foreign minister said Thursday.
"In talks with me, senator Obama made the realisation of our (missile shield) agreement conditional on whether he will be certain that the system is not aimed against Russia," Radoslaw Sikorski said at a joint press conference in Warsaw with Russian counterpart Sergei Larvov.
"In a mini-military briefing given before yesterday to senator McCain in which I participated, I can say that what the candidate was told about the purpose of the (missile shield) system has nothing to do with Russia," Sikorski said of a consultation with the Republican presidential candidate John McCain.
"So we hope that Russian fears over this agreement, will dissipate with time," Sikorski said.
Now, ignoring the fact that a team of AFP staff writers couldn't spell "Lavrov", there's one simple problem with this article: Senator Obama seems to completely misunderstand the concept of a ballistic missile defense system. Aimed at Russia? You don't aim an interceptor missile at anything that hasn't been fired at you. This guy wants to be our Commander-in-Chief, and he can't even comprehend that a defensive system isn't aimed at another country in anger? Unbelievable.
Okay, so I'm about to open up on a pair of seemingly independent, but oddly interrelated aspects of my life: church, and women.
I attend a fairly small Anglican church that's a couple of miles from my place. One of the unfortunate side effects of attending a small church, and in a denomination that's dominated by folks over the age of forty, is that there are extremely few young people. In fact, I can probably count the number of people between the ages of twenty and thirty without resorting to open-toed shoes, if you catch my drift.
Now, this could be to my advantage. After all, if there were, say, ten people in that age bracket, and I was the only guy, and the rest were single young women, that'd be pretty sweet, huh? Yeah, that's not the case. First off, most of the folks in question are married: Big Orange and Surfer Dude, Olive Oil and the Butt Rubber, Disc Golf Champ and Disc Golf Wife. Also, despite some hiccups, I'm pretty sure that The Artista and What Was are in the long process of getting back together after a brief experiment with What Is.
So, where am I going with this? Simple: whenever a young, single woman shows up at the church, everyone suddenly gets really interested in the concept of setting me up with her. So far, it's happened twice; the first time was with a pretty blonde college instructor who turned out to be seeing someone. Today, it happened for the second time.
Now, I'm not exceptionally offended by this. After all, I haven't so much as touched a woman since April. I can use any help that I can get, right? It's really entertaining, though, because it's almost as if there's a fervor about it: church-going Christians seem to have it in their heads that a person can't be happy unless that person is coupled up with a member of the opposite sex. In such a small church, the fervor gets even more entertaining.
The new girl seems nice enough; I happened to have been asked to join a group for lunch, that just happened to have invited her along as well. Whether she and I live happily ever after or not, I hope that she sticks around; we need fresh blood in the young adult demographic, and I appear to be about the only solid influx of youth that the church has gotten in the last year.
Stop laughing, Mighty Mo.
In other news, I got an E-Mail from Ikea on Sunday, and my Poäng Chair has been shipped. If I'm lucky, I'll have it delivered and assembled by midnight on Wednesday. I've also put up a few posters (U2 albums, Mark Twain playing pool, and A Bold Bluff). I'm planning to put up some satellite imagery (day and night satellite maps of the Earth) and a few maps, just to add some color to the walls. You'd think that a guy would do this when he first moved in, but that just wasn't the way I rolled this time around. Hopefully, I'll be able to start in my next place with a little bit more furniture, and a little bit more time than I had when I moved here last July. Expect photos by the end of the week.
Aiming interceptor missiles at Russia. Honestly.
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