An abbreviated Ramblings for your Christmas Eve enjoyment…

Ever see someone you know in Blockbuster Video? You say “hi”, and then you walk around the store paranoid that they’re keeping an eye on you to see what you’re going to rent. The thing is…they are watching you. And they can’t wait to see what you rent so they can tell all their friends about you and your terrible movie selections.

My favorite aisle in the supermarket? Gotta be the cereal aisle. Brings me back to when I was a kid. Apple Jacks…Fruit Loops…Lucky Charms…BooBerry…Fruity Pebbles…it was like fantasy island. It was literally the aisle of fantasy. Every form and flavor of sugar you could ever want, all small enough to fit on your teaspoon*. If only our parents let us eat sugary cereals every meal like we wanted to. We’d all be twice as big with rotten teeth.

*by the way, cereal MUST be eaten with a teaspoon. If you eat cereal with a tablespoon, speak up so I can mock you publicly.

The only thing annoying about pre-paying for gas is “the crawl”. You pre-pay $20 in gas and when the pump gets to about $19.75, it sllooowwwwsssss dooooowwwwnnnnn. This is especially aggravating in the winter when it’s 20 degrees outside and the wind is whipping through the pump bay so hard that your ears feel like swiss army knives digging into your skull. The good pumps don’t start the crawl until there’s about 15 cents left. The worst of the bunch get into the crawl with 50 cents left to go. I haven’t done it yet, but whenever I hit one of these long-crawling gas pumps I’m tempted to just put the pump back in the cradle and let somebody else crawl out the free pint of gas.

Note To Self: never rent a Mall kiosk during the holidays to set up an author book signing. That author I walked by yesterday looked like the loneliest man in the world.

Please don’t use the expression “Tis the season” unless you can provide me with an a decent explanation of what the word ’tis’ means. I don’t even need an accurate explanation…any explanation will do really. I don’t ask for much.

The second-worst feeling in the world is that second or two right after you bite down hard on your lip or your tongue. You know you’ve been there. The worst feeling in the world? When you bite the same spot again ten minutes later.

I’ve always despised the nickel for not having ridges on its edge like the quarter or the dime. I find it acceptable for the penny to be smooth, but I expect more out of my 5-cent piece.

If I knew I was going to get amnesia tomorrow, here’s what I would do:

+ write myself a note explaining that I had amnesia, which is why I had no memory
+ put together a photo album so I knew who my friends and family were
+ write another note detailing how I don’t like to eat and enjoy working out with free weights, in hopes I can trick myself into having an amazing body.
+ Finally, and most importantly, I would hide a bunch of $20 bills all over my house. Finding them would provide me with countless unexpected happy moments for years and years.

I’ll try to post a few Christmas pics this weekend, and I’ll be back on Monday, ready to bring the fresh.

Josh asked me the other day for my thoughts on President-Elect Obama inviting Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration. To be honest, I hadn’t thought much about politics since early November…it’s just not my thing. (I’m still subscribed to Nate Silver’s 538 blog, but frankly, the Coleman-Franken recount interests me as much as the opera). So even though I don’t really have a strong opinion about this…here’s a few of my thoughts…

+ I thought it was a ballsy move for Obama. He knew those on the left would hate this choice, but he did it anyway. So good for him.

+ Had something like this happened during the campaign, Obama’s conservative critics would have called this posturing and trying to buy votes. Well, he’s already won. So you can’t play that card. (Although if he was already posturing to set himself up for re-election in 4 years, that would be quite a crafty move.)

+ I like what Larry Shallenberger wrote at the Burnside Blog, saying Rick Warren is probably exactly where he is supposed to be.

+ I’m glad Rick Warren said yes. Anybody with a lick of sense understands that by giving this invocation, Rick is not adapting the principles or morals or politics of Barack Obama. He’s not giving a vote of confidence to everything Barack Obama believes in (and vice versa). The two of them agree on much and disagree on much. We all realize that. It’s about time we stopped building walls with the bricks of disagreement, and started building bridges with the planks of agreement. You can’t have much of a conversation through a wall, but you can certainly have one on a bridge. I think that’s what Rick Warren is doing here. He’s not compromising his values. He’s engaging in the process, with held head high and an utmost respect for a president-elect he doesn’t always agree with, and he’s taking his values and beliefs with him.

UPDATE: No sooner had I posted this about building bridges than I read about the recent conversation between Rick Warren and Melissa Etheridge. (from Melissa Etheridge’s article in The Huffington Post):

I told my manager to reach out to Pastor Warren and say “In the spirit of unity I would like to talk to him.” They gave him my phone number. On the day of the conference I received a call from Pastor Rick… He explained in very thoughtful words that as a Christian he believed in equal rights for everyone. He believed every loving relationship should have equal protection. He struggled with proposition 8 because he didn’t want to see marriage redefined as anything other than between a man and a woman. He said he regretted his choice of words in his video message to his congregation about proposition 8 when he mentioned pedophiles and those who commit incest. He said that in no way, is that how he thought about gays. He invited me to his church, I invited him to my home to meet my wife and kids. He told me of his wife’s struggle with breast cancer just a year before mine.

When we met later that night, he entered the room with open arms and an open heart. We agreed to build bridges to the future.

I don’t know where this is all going, and that’s ok. I won’t fear change, I won’t fear hard questions, and I won’t fear people and things that I don’t understand. I will love and I will pray and I will submit to the Spirit of God that I believe is leading me during these few short years I have on earth. I will do this when it is easy and feels good, and I’ll do it when it is hard and doesn’t feel so good. I will continue to learn and never think I know it all. I will hold firm to my beliefs, but never assume I have all the answers, and always be willing to dialogue and engage with others. I believe this is what Jesus asked of his followers and I believe he was who he claimed to be, so that’s what I’m trying to do.

So what about you all? What are your thoughts on Warren and Obama? Respectful and honest opinions only please…

What to do on a lazy sunday morning when church is canceled because of the weather? Have some photoshopping fun of course.

Here’s what I did: I loaded this page of random flickr images and had to pick one of them to create a cover a for book. I reloaded the page and repeated 6 more times to come up with 7 total images. Then I used my hack photoshop skills to turn these images into the 7 book covers for books I didn’t write.

note: I TOTALLY should have given credit to the photographers of these images, but I didn’t think to do it as I was loading the random images. Now I have no idea who they are. I offer them my full apologies and assure them that I will make no money off of their amazing images.

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Inspired one day when his broken camera served as a paperweight, author Bryan Allain spreads his message of efficient reuse to the world: “Don’t Throw Out That Broken Camera!”. A paperweight, a christmas tree ornament, a hat, and even a weapon to fend off intruders…discover the many uses of that busted Canon.

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World renowned makeup artist Bryan Allain walks you through the dos and don’ts of the art of makeup. Using everyday objects like sidewalk chalk and charcoal briquettes, Bryan paints on the palette of the female face with the grace of Van Gogh and the edginess of an angry Alec Baldwin.

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A collection of Bryan Allain’s shortest stories. Some are only 40 syllables long. Others are wordless.

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The harrowing tale of a young man raised by russian con artists in an ethyl alcohol distillery.

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Are spoons getting smaller these days, or are our liquids just taking up more volume? In the spirit of Malcolm Gladwell, Eric Carle, and Henry David Thoreau, author Bryan Allain takes an in-depth look into the curved eating implement named after a form of snuggling.

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Poet Extraordinaire Bryan Allain weaves an afghan of words and feelings in this engaging collection of rap music without the heavy bass and bling. Comes with a coupon for Kleenex to help you sop up all the emotion that will pour out of you as you melt in the eruption of words and punctuation.

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What’s in that girl’s belly? Is it an 8-month old fetus or a whole lot of Amstel Light? In this visually stunning masterpiece, author/photographer Bryan Allain provides 125 pictures of round female guts for which you must answer the question: Is she pregnant…or is that a beer belly? Great as a party game! (answer key provided in the back of the book!)

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So if these books were real, which one would you want me to write? Which one would you buy?

Back in October I entered a contest on Literary Agent Rachelle Garnder’s blog and earned an honorable mention. Last week she held a haiku contest, and i took a stab at it. She was looking for haikus about writing or about the holidays. (haikus are 3-line poems consisting of 5 syllables, 7 syllables, and 5 syllables.)

I wasn’t one of the 6 finalists she selected, but I did win another honorable mention. This time for the “Most Environmentally Sensitive Haiku”. Pretty funny considering what I wrote wasn’t very environmentally friendly:

Don’t cut that fir down!
Plastic trees are far better.
Somewhere Al Gore smiles.

Yeah, that’s right. I’m starting a revolution of people who think it’s better for the environment to have a plastic christmas tree! (Even though according to an article I found at Slate.com, it’s probably better for the environment that you don’t buy that fake tree because after you’re done with it in 15 years, it will just sit in a landfill.)

That was fun Rachelle, thanks for the opportunity! And while we’re on the topic of publishing blogs, here’s a list of all the writing/publishing blogs I read. If you’ve got a good suggestion to add to the list, please share…

• Agent Rachelle Gardner
• Agent Chip MacGregor
• Author/Agent Terry Whalin
• President of Thomas Nelson, Michael Hyatt
• Author Mary DeMuth

So, none of you are actually done with your Christmas shopping right? I’m headed out over lunch to pick up a few things.