holly

The “war” on Christmas

2
2 months ago
by Lundie in

I’m just going to vent a little bit here. If you are offended by what I post, I do apologize, and would like to discuss it further…Please partake of the comment section below!

I’m a Christian. Perhaps not in the standard American sense that may come to mind, but I do believe in and love Jesus Christ. I also say “Happy Holidays!” to people who say “Happy Holidays” to me. If someone wishes me a “Merry Christmas!”, I will return the greeting in kind.

I have been dismayed at the number of people I know…people who I like, respect, and thought were reasonable…that have bought into the idea that there is a “war on Christmas”. Bill O’Reilly and others have created this straw man so that people could be united in hate against this invisible enemy. Unity = good. Straw man = bad.

Yes, stores have changed their terminology. Why? Because they want your money. Their whole purpose is to get you to spend your hard-earned money at their over-decorated stores. So…if a store owner believes they may alienate Jewish people wishing to celebrate Hanukkah by only decorating their store in traditional Christmas decor, it’s probably in their best interest to change to a multi-cultural “Happy Holidays”! This way they can get more “bang” for their marketing “buck”.

Am I in denial that there aren’t Christmas haters out there? No. But I would honestly rather hear from them, and have a discussion. Because, guess who I hear doing all of the hating? Over and over and over? My Christian “friends” on Facebook. I’m getting so tired of people who purportedly disciple themselves after Jesus Christ himself, going on rampages of hateful defiance towards imaginary attackers of their beloved holiday greeting terminology.

WHAT A BUNCH OF CRAZINESS….. We can’t say “Merry Christmas” now ? We have to say “Happy Holidays”. We can’t call it a Christmas tree, it’s now called a Holiday tree? Because it might offend someone. If you don’t like our “Customs” and it offends you so much….. then LEAVE… I will help you pack. They are called customs, and we have our traditions ! If you… agree with this…please post this as your status!!… MERRY CHRISTMAS….

And then, there are the ones who, albeit genuinely, complain about the over commercialization of Christmas IN ALL CAPS.

I DO NOT CARE IF THIS DOES OFFEND SOMEONE…THIS IS WHAT I BELIEVE…I AM SICK AND TIRED OF EVERY YEAR WHEN CHRISTMAS COMES AROUND; THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO WANT TO TAKE CHRIST OUT OF CHRISTMAS BECAUSE IT MIGHT OFFEND SOMEONE…WELL, HOW ABOUT ALL OF THE CHRISTIANS?…WHAT ABOUT OFFENDING US BECAUSE YOU ARE TAKING OUR CHRIST OUT OF CHRISTMAS?…CHRIST IS CHRISTMAS!…IF YOU AREN’T CELEBRATING CHRIST THEN WHY ARE YOU CELEBRATING?…CHRISTMAS IS ABOUT THE BIRTH OF OUR SAVIOR!…CHRISTMAS IS ONE OF A FEW HOLIDAYS LEFT THAT CELEBRATE “MY” CHRIST!…LEAVE “MY” HOLIDAY ALONE!…AND TELL EVERYONE MERRY CHRISTMAS, NOT HAPPY HOLIDAYS!…RE-POST IF YOU’RE NOT ASHAMED!!!

So in closing I’ll just share a verse from the Bible for us to reflect on. Luke 6:27-30, in which Jesus says, “If you hear a rumor that someone was offended about something someone said to them that is just like something you say to other people, you should become enraged, throw caution to the wind and do what you must to stand up and declare your rights to say things in an increasingly offensive and all-capitalized manner to everyone you know and like instead of to the rumored offended offender!”

‎[Positive emotion] [Current Holiday] [Exclamatory punctuation],
Lundie

Game Image of The Portal Cake

The Cake Was Not a Lie

0
3 months ago
by Lundie in , ,

For J5′s 6th birthday, J4 and I decided to throw him a Portal birthday party.

[For those who haven't seen or played Portal by Valve...]



To complete the game you solve complex puzzles to complete levels. The computer, named GlaDOS (who you hear speaking in the video above), talks to (and taunts) you the whole time. GlaDOS, while playing mind games with you, promises you cake, but as you proceed through the game, you find out that “the cake is a lie”.

Along the way, one of the items you have to use to solve your puzzles, and strangely get attached to is the Weighted Companion Cube. It looks like the regular Weighted Storage Cubes except for the little heart in the middle:

In order to win, you must defeat GlaDOS. Part of that process requires the removal and destruction of the “Personality Cores”. These four cores look like this:

After you defeated GlaDOS, you actually see the promised cake:

Game Image of The Portal Cake





For the party we put up Level signs all over the house. J4 even created a couple of “portals” that let you “look through” to other parts of the house. (I really wish I’d taken pictures of them…!)

We had Weighted Companion Cube and Personality Core cookies:

And we had cake. No lie.

2010-11-07-LundieClose-152x152

What would @chrisbrogan do??

0
4 months ago
by Lundie in

Recently Chris Brogan stopped following everyone on Twitter. His original philosophy was to follow back everyone who followed him. He had hundreds of thousands of followers. After some spam DMs, he decided to start with a clean slate.

Today he sent this tweet:

And it got me thinking…. As a Christian, do I “follow” Jesus Christ in my heart and mind in the same way that I “follow” Chris Brogan on Twitter?

Let’s see what being a @chrisbrogan-follower looks like —

  • His voice, along with about 300 others are in my Twitter stream
  • I occasionally interact with him – sending an @ reply to something that strikes me as interesting, but I know full well that my voice is not likely to be heard
  • And in my stream, he too gets drowned out by other more chattery, needy, demanding to be heard twitterers

So, while I am technically a @chrisbrogan-follower, do you think he and I have a relationship? Is there any indication that we interact at all? Nope! None.

Sometimes I think that being a “Christ-follower” or “Christian” can mean roughly the same in terms of relationship with Christ as I, as a @chrisbrogan-follower, have a relationship with the actual person, Chris. You know, like I’m always open to hearing what Jesus has to say, but it’s more probable that He’ll end up drowned out by the hundreds of other voices in my life.

So, like @chrisbrogan, I think I’m going to do some pruning of my “following” list, but not on Twitter. In my internal thought-life. My #1 desire is to live out the tenet “Jesus is Lord”. That means that He’s at the very top (and almost the entirety) of my list of “input”. It’s time to un-follow all of those other distracting voices that serve no purpose other than to numb me to real, present living.

And how about you? Who are you “following”? Do you have any noise in your life that you really need to let go of?

2010-11-07-LundieClose-152x152

Listening

0
5 months ago
by Lundie in

I’ve had this blog for a long time, but lately I have not had many words to write. I hope someday that will change. I know that I have a lot of words in me to share. Not that I have anything significant to say. Not that I have anything superior to the many brilliant blogs out there. But I have the love of the language and I have something stirring deep in my heart. These two things together mean some kind of writing, somewhere.

For now, though, I’m listening. There are some blogs that are just the right thing at the right time. Like elora nicole’s post, resistant heart.

So for now, I’ll be satisfied with sharing tidbits of things that grab my focus strongly enough for me to want to share.

Peace.

Klayton - Celldweller

@Celldweller Show at Reggie’s – Compiled Playlist

0
6 months ago
by Lundie in

Two of the four opening bands were good — Prep School Tragedy and Cyanotic. We had seen them last year at Reggie’s. I actually think PST got better. Cyanotic was fine, but were not as polished as last time. They did not have any of their visual media, so the Cookie Monster Vocals (a la Brian Posehn’s Metal By Numbers) were a bit more noticeable.

The other 2 were really, really bad. Their horrible visual presence could have been forgiven if their music had been tolerable. It was not. I understand that some artists’ shock value (badly performed gratuitous nudity, “sacrilege”, depictions of violence, etc.) is part of making their point, but horrible music? Simply inexcusable.

In complete contrast, Celldweller / Klayton and Bret (Blue Stahli) were their awesome selves. It was the end of their tour, and you could tell they were ready to be home, but they put on a great show. Several people who attended were kind enough to up load their videos to YouTube. I’ve grouped them (as I find them) into the playlist below.

Note: You can see John’s head front and center in most of the videos. I’m to his left – usually marked by the glowstick in my hair, and glowstick bracelet (rocking out at about John’s ear height!).

We stuck around after the show to meet them. Nice and friendly as ever. Quality musicians.

Celldweller - pic with Klayton and Bret

Celldweller Show Clips

PS…

(From 2009) After a particularly long winter drive during which we played Blue Stahli’s ‘Antisleep Vol. 1″ several times, this became Jack’s new response to hearing “Overclock”

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