a few random things that have been rattling around in the old noggin…

+ Why is it that 9 out of 10 movies/TV shows that show alien life make them out to be 10 times uglier and smarter than us? If there is other life out there, I like to think it’s absolutely beautiful and completely moronic.

+ I am plagued with guilt every time I throw away a penny. I feel like it throws off the whole United States Currency system. There’s probably some guy at The Mint right now pulling his hair out because his numbers just aren’t working out. “I don’t understand! We had 41 more cents in circulation yesterday than today! Money just doesn’t get thrown out! Who is responsible for this anarchy?”

+ Best Christmas gift of 2009 – The Kindle. Worst Christmas Gift of 2009 – kindling.

+ I’m sorry Jeep owners, but I really don’t want to understand.

+ You know when a sporting event shows you a live feed of a remote crowd (like at a bar in another city or troops overseas), only the people don’t realize they’re on TV until the split second before the camera cuts back to a different shot. I hate that.

+ Top 5 grossest inanimate objects to lick: fly swatter, used band-aid, movie theater floor, Keith Richards, and the plunger at work.

+ I’ve been dropping generic ibuprofen for so long that the genuine Advil someone gave me the other day was a pleasant surprise. That candy coating is delightful.

+ In Pennsylvania we have lottery ticket vending machines near the exits of most supermarkets. Every time I see someone feeding greenbacks into one of them I shake my head and punch myself in the face for not having any cash on me. Why? I have a foolproof plan for making money off of these folks. Hide a $5 in one hand and a $10 in the other and tell people you are a part of a new live lottery game called “Guess the Hand”. For $20 they guess which hand has the $10 bill. If they win, they win the $10. If they lose, they win the $5. Nobody walks away empty-handed. As dumb as it is, it still makes more sense than buying lottery tickets.

+ Things I love: calendars, rooibos tea, maps, waiting rooms with current magazines, playoff football, and paying an extra 50 cents for premium scotch tape.

+ Things I do not love: slow gas pumps, drying off with a wet towel, cereal boxes that have not been properly opened, static electricity, and winter.

+ Every fortune cookie should read “Your tummy’s about to hurt”.

+ If  I was around when that Tower of Babel mess happened, I totally would have just been making stuff up.

+ Every time I blow my nose with toilet paper I feel like I’m doing a good deed. You gotta figure those squares of toilet paper know their fate when they come out of the factory. 99 out of every 100 squares will be used to clean bodily waste. But it’s every square’s dream to be used for a higher purpose: a runny nose, a bloody zit, makeup removal, drying a teary eye, and maybe even cleaning up a tiny puddle of koolaid because you were trying to enjoy a refreshing beverage while pinching one off. Won’t you join me in shunning facial tissues to rescue a square of TP today?

+ The most useless buttons on the face of the earth are the calculator buttons that have an “M” on them. I’ve never used one of those on purpose in my entire life.

What About You: anything floating around in your head you need to unload?

My boy Jonny Acuff posted 3 questions over at Stuff Christians Like today.

1. What Christian blogs are you reading that are funny?
2. What comedians that are Christian do you love?
3. What Christian writers are creating great satire?

Jon then listed his answers to those questions and guess who made the list? this guy! (that would be me for those of you not envisioning my pointing both of my thumbs at myself)

In fact, you may be here for the first time because of Jon’s endorsement.

So…if you are new here and you’re wondering if I’m funny or not, I don’t know what to tell you…actually, that’s a lie. Yes i do.

Your best bet is probably to read this post, The Best of The Ramblings, and see if my brand of humor lines up with yours. If you enjoy it, go tell Jon he’s brilliant for mentioning me (and subscribe to Ramblings and Such for more of my nonsense).

If it’s not for you, blame Jon and go egg his house with roe.

Thanks so much for stopping by everyone!

And thanks for the endorsement Jon! (sorry I called you Jonny earlier…and sorry I called you ‘my boy’)

+ Bluetooth earpieces were the best thing that ever happened for people who can’t stop talking to themselves. Unfortunately for them (and fortunately for the rest of us), nobody flaunts them around in public anymore because they’re just not cool.

+ Gotta hate it when the car in front of you decides to spray his windshield and gets washer fluid all over your car. If anyone is aware of an after-market accessory I can throw on my car that shoots a stream of bacon grease 50 feet forward all over the back window of the car in front of me, let me know.

+ Why do people get offended when they offer you a bite of their food to try and you say “no thanks”? I’m not rejecting you as a person, I just don’t want to try the glazed halibut.

+ Oftentimes when I am buying milk I’ll reach as far back as I can to grab a fresher gallon. The thing is, I always feel a little guilty when I’m doing it, like I’m breaking some unwritten code of the convenience store that will throw off the natural order of things like removing spiders from the food chain. Am I the only one who does this (and feels bad about it)?

+ If I ever get a tattoo, it will be a datestamp of the date that i got the tattoo. That way the answer to “what is your tattoo of?” and “when did you get it?” is the same thing.

+ I’ve got to be honest, I don’t know the back of my hand very well.

+ Hard to believe thanks to the prevalence of bottled water and filtered refrigerator dispensers, but 10 years ago people actually drank tap water without thinking twice.

+ Sometime I don’t think of a spoon as a spoon, I think of it as a mini-bowl with a handle.

+ I’ve found that the best thing about wearing glasses (as I now do occasionally) is it gives you something else to fidget with if you find yourself in a conversation you don’t really want to be in. The other best thing about them is they help you to see better.

+ What’s the most you should ever take out of those “need a penny, take a penny” jars at cash registers? Sometimes people stick dimes and quarters in there and I almost feel bad taking them. I think the limit should be 35 cents or 7 coins, whatever comes first.

+ My favorite nickname for left-handers: southpaws. My least favorite: devil-handers.

+ One of the best things about being an adult is the ability to eat candy without getting sticky.

+ Whenever I’m walking 10-15 feet in front of someone and I round a corner, I will immediately double my pace for 5-10 seconds so that I can increase my lead by about 5 feet. Then I slow back down to my original pace. My intent is for that person to A) round the corner and see me suddenly much further ahead of them than I was, B) realize that I am still walking at the same speed, and C) have their mind completely blown. Basically I want people to think I’m an unintentional magician. What can I say, I dream big.

when the rambling thoughts fill the cup, they eventually overflow and splatter onto the blog. here’s the latest for your consideration…

If friction ever goes on strike, pushpins are in a world of trouble.

Why does every sentence have to be complete? I don’t understand what the big deal is if

My biggest concern with us replacing traditional light bulbs with those energy efficient ones…what are cartoonists going to do when someone gets a bright idea?

Is ‘maybe’ the new ‘yes’? Maybe.

Let’s be honest with each other for a moment. It is not only impossible to find a needle in a haystack, but I submit to you that no one has ever actually looked for a needle in a haystack. Why? Because I don’t think anyone has ever sewn anything while sitting on hay. Who would do that? The next time you hear someone pull out the “it’s like finding a needle in a haystack” cliche, I think you need to call them on it.

You don’t see many chinese stars flying around these days.

I’d like to thank the person who did the research and development to figure out the exact sharpness that a fork should be. In the process he probably endured many a hungry night and bloody tongue.

Never play Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun. It’s against the rules.

I think someday we’re all going to wear contact lenses that are actually microcameras. So when you want to take a picture of something, you just press your right temple or say “kodak!” and it instantly saves the image of whatever you were looking at. Trust me, 20 years from now we’re all going to have the future equivalent of USB ports in our armpits.

Do you think the person who invented soup just left a bowl of food out in the rain?

Why are they still putting the phases of the moon on calendars? Who cares about this other than werewolves and garbage men?

If you tried to feed scrambled eggs to a chicken, would it eat them? And is that technically poultry cannibalism?

Thoughts I had while watching “The Miracle of Christmas” at the Sight and Sound Theater last week…

…Do you think angels need their wings to fly or are they just ornamental? I’ve always thought they were just ornamental. In fact, I don’t even picture them moving when they fly. They just kind of sit there, not doing anything except ruining the aerodynamics of the sleek angel’s bodies. I think wings are like the angelic version of the appendix, only they don’t kill you if they rupture.

…How far is it from Bethlehem to Nazareth? Would it be wrong of me to pull out my iPhone and Google that right now? I don’t think so…I’d be enlightening myself, and wisdom is Godly…Hm, 80 miles, that’s a long walk…Do you think God picked that moment in history to send Jesus into the world because cars weren’t invented yet? Otherwise the 80-mile trek wouldn’t have been so impressive. Joseph and Mary could have done that in about an hour in a Honda Pilot if the traffic wasn’t too bad.

…then again, maybe the incarnation had to happen when it did, because the internet hadn’t been invented yet. If it had been, they wouldn’t have needed to travel to their home town to get the census done. Herod could have checked out the demographics of his country on Wikipedia between Google searches for “how to wipe out all the young males in your country” and “hot concubines”. I’m glad God thought of all that before deciding when to interrupt history with the virgin birth.

…Are frankincense and myrrh just spices? Do they even smell good? What if the combination of the two smells was awful, like combining the wonderful smell of cinnamon with the pleasant smell of honeydew melon. Great fragrances on their own, but together they smell like sadness. What if Mary and Joseph really liked the one smell and not the other, do you think they carried the frankincense home with them but re-gifted the myrrh to the innkeeper?

…And what did Mary and Joseph do with all that gold? Since the gifts were for Jesus, did they put it away for him when he turned 18 or did they spend it all on themselves? And if they did spend it all on themselves, did they do it with one big ticket item like a new carpenter’s shop or a couple cattle? Or did they just take out a few gold pieces here and there thinking they’d pay it all back at some point like Harry and Lloyd with their suitcase full of I.O.U.s in Dumb and Dumber?

…And if they did spend all of the gold, did they feel bad about it? Did they ask for forgiveness once he starting doing miracles? I’m thinking at one point if Joseph said to a 12-year old Jesus, “will you please pick up your room?”, Jesus might have said back, “How about I do it when you pay back the 500 pieces of gold the wise man brought me when i was born?” Then there would have been a long silence, and then Jesus would have said, I’m just kidding dad! I love you!” (you see kids, you CAN talk back to your parents without it being a sin! Bryan said so…)

…How about the star that the Shepherds saw in the East? Was that a real star that God turned up the volume on so it would burn brighter just so they would notice it? Or was it actually a holographic image of a star, and not an actual star? (I know holograms hadn’t been invented yet, but God could have traveled in time and grabbed the technology and brought it back with him for this one time). I mean, God could have done anything he wanted right? Maybe just for fun he created a giant light-bright peg and stuck it in the sky and made it glow like a huge star. Who didn’t love Light-Bright?

…I wonder how many other people saw the star (aka, Giant Light Bright Peg) and had no idea what it was. I bet there was a bunch of people who saw it and thought it was aliens from outer space. You’ve gotta think that even back then there were a few wackos who believed there was life on other planets. Nazareth was probably their version of Area 51. Remember that quote from the Bible about “can anything good come out of Nazareth?” I’m guessing that was a reference to aliens. You see, you’re not going to get that kind of biblical insight out a Matthew Henry Commentary, I’ll tell you that right now.

…What do you think would have happened if Joseph, between gags from the smell of the cow crap, had said to Mary while she was pushing baby Jesus out, “Isn’t this so cool, honey! I bet some day people all over the world put out little statues of us and the animals with fake straw to celebrate this fantastic moment! The only way this event could be better is if you weren’t feeling any pain, but that possibility won’t exist until epidurals are invented in about nineteen hundred and forty-two years!” She probably would have ripped his arm off and sunk her teeth into it to deal with the pain like they used to do with pieces of wood during civil war amputations. Mary was fierce like that.

What about you..do Christmas plays hold your attention or do they make you wish you had an iPhone to play with?