Song Clip Quiz!

Listen to each song clip and try to identify what song it's from! All clips are two seconds long and, with a couple exceptions, are all from instrumental portions of their songs. How many can you identify?

Men at Work
Land Down Under

David Bowie
It Ain't Easy

Pink Floyd
Comfortably Numb

David Bowie
Magic Dance

The B-52's
Rock Lobster

Talking Heads
Take Me to the River

Leonard Nimoy
The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins

Little Shop of Horrors
Skid Row (Downtown)

Korn
Freak on a Leash

David Crowder Band
O Praise Him (All This for a King)

Led Zeppelin
D'Yer Maker

Joe Cocker
You Are So Beautiful

The Righteous Brothers
Unchained Melody

Pink Floyd
Brain Damage

Caramell
Caramelldansen

Styx
Come Sail Away

Rednex
Cotton Eye Joe

The Oak Ridge Boys
Elvira

Jars of Clay
Flood

Newsboys
He Reigns

Pink Floyd
In the Flesh?

Journey
Loving, Touching, Squeezing

The Decemberists
The Mariner's Revenge Song

David Bowie
Space Oddity

Queen
Under Pressure

Pink Floyd
Wish You Were Here

 Final Score:

Creation In All Directions

Not too long ago, in this exact same galaxy, there was a debate. It was a widely publicized event that filled my news feed on Facebook with comments for quite a while. This debate pitted Bill Nye, of Science Guy fame, against Ken Ham, young-Earth creationist extraordinaire, in order to answer the question, "Is creation a viable model of origins in today's modern, scientific era?" In case you missed all the excitement, you can watch the debate here on YouTube. I never watched it.

The debate itself really isn't that important for the purposes of this post. I only bring it up because it caused a lot of discussion about the question of creation. And, while I tend to stay away from any topic that might even remotely be described as "hot", I do actually have some views on this one. Interestingly, very little of the discussion that I witnessed really matched these views. So, since other people are failing to talk about my thoughts about creation on their own, I guess I'm kind of obligated to speak up. Like when the teacher asks the class a question and I'm the only person who knows the right answer. Because, obviously, my view of the origin of the universe is right. Duh.

So, without further ado, I'll start by stating that I am a creationist. I believe that the universe was created by God as described in the book of Genesis, in a literal six days. I believe that this creation occurred sometime within the "recent" past. (The most popular age seems to be about 6,000 years, which I will use for the sake of argument. However, my own beliefs on the exact time of creation don't get much more specific than "recently".)  For me, these beliefs are a matter of faith. They aren't based on any particular evidence, scientific or otherwise, beyond a trust in the Bible's description. And, as far as I can reason, they also can't be disproved by science or any other evidence that I've seen.

No... really. I'm serious.

Let me explain...

In general, there are two major positions involved in this debate. Christian young Earth creationism claims that the world was created by God 6,000 years ago. On the other side, the predominant scientific theory claims that the universe began with the big bang, 13,800,000,000 years ago. In case you were wondering, those two numbers are fairly different.

Now, one day, I was sitting in a chair somewhere thinking about stars, the universe, and the unimaginable sizes and distances associated with them. I do that a lot. I was thinking about how the Milky Way galaxy is estimated to be somewhere around 100,000 light-years across. At some point during that thought, it occurred to me that, as a result of that immense size, it must take light somewhere around 100,000 years to travel from end to end. Obviously. Then I was presented with a conundrum. If the universe were only 6,000 years old, then the light from anything beyond 6,000 light-years away couldn't have reached Earth yet. We wouldn't be able to see anything beyond that distance. This was a problem for the creationist leaning of my beliefs.

As a demonstration of how drastic this problem is, I've put together this neat image. Use the two buttons to switch between a beautifully rendered conception of what our galaxy might look like and that same image limited to an area with a radius of 6,000 light-years from Earth.



                     

Image taken from Wikipedia - Milky Way

I kept thinking about it for a few minutes, and I reasoned that a recent creation could still be possible if, instead of light only starting to shine at the moment of creation, the universe were created with light already in motion. Problem solved. Since then, I've heard this brought up on occasion in discussions as validation for a 6,000 year-old universe. However, after continuing to think about it for a while, I found that this didn't quite work out.

The problem I saw was that, when we see the light from a distant object, we are seeing that object as it was when the light left it. We are essentially seeing back in time proportionally to the distance of the object. For instance, the M80 star cluster is about 32,600 light-years away. Therefore, the light that we see now left the cluster 32,600 years ago and, by looking at it, we are essentially seeing 32,600 years into the past. That means that there was stuff happening in the M80 cluster that long ago. But, if history started 6,000 years ago, then how could it extend many thousands of years before that?

I continued thinking about it a lot and ended up coming up with a conclusion. Since I'm not really interested in writing an entire book on the subject, I'll skip over the rest of the sequential thought process and jump straight to explaining that conclusion.

I continue to believe (again, as a matter of faith) that God created the universe sometime in the "recent" past. But, in light of the issues I had found, my view of creation was forced to change significantly. I now believe that, when the universe was created, it was created with a history. With a back story, if you will. Much like when an author writes a stage play, the characters don't suddenly appear out of nowhere at the beginning. Even if it's never mentioned in the story, it's assumed that there were things that happened before the story began. Like that author, God is also writing a story. Except, being as infinite and omnipotent as He is, He has made His story reality. The show started fairly recently, but there is an entire realm of history before that point which is no less real than anything that happens after. It's all part of the same story. God didn't just pick a starting point and create everything after that. He created both forward and backward in time. He created in all directions.

Therefore, if someone shows me a rock and asks me how old it is, I consider there to be two answers. Both are equally correct, depending on your perspective. I could say that the rock is 6,000 years old because that's when it came into existence, i.e. when the play began. However, the story goes back much, much longer than the beginning of the play. So I also have no problem saying that, according to the best efforts of science, that rock is millions, or even billions of years old. If asked whether I believe in a young, intelligently-created Earth or an old, naturally-formed Earth, I can confidently answer, "Yes".

It occurred to me to ask, "What would happen if we traveled backwards in time past the point of creation?". I've concluded that nothing special would seem to happen. We wouldn't find ourselves in some void next to God as He prepared to begin His creation. Instead, time would just keep flowing backward. We might not even know that we had crossed the exact moment of creation. If we kept going, we could eventually see the natural formation of the universe, because that's the story that God has written. As part of the story, we could not on our own step outside the realm of the story. Back to the Future didn't exist in the fifties. But when Marty McFly traveled thirty years into the past into that decade, he didn't find himself on the Universal Studios lot. He stayed within the realm of the story in the town of Hill Valley. For us to go back to see God creating would be like Marty going back to see the sets being built. Of course, as a character in the story, Marty doesn't even know that he's on a set in a movie. God has chosen to reveal that fact to us, His characters, as part of His story. The director has stepped into the story and interacts with it, giving us hints of what it's like behind the scenes. That's why we know, and the only reason we can know, that there even was a creation event or anything else beyond the reality that we see.

I believe that this is important in the Christian's view of the universe and the One who created it. Many creationists do their best to refute, or even ignore what science says about the history of our universe. But, by denying that such a history occurred is to deny an important part of God's story. When I look up at the stars, I can't help but be awed by the God who created them. I believe that God expects the same response when we look back through His creation's history. Rather than ignoring the story, we should long to learn more of it. And that's why this post exists.

A Sample of Verbal Pet Peeves

As many of you, my non-existent readers, might know, I can often be identified as a minor (or sometimes full-fledged) grammar nazi. I definitely like to keep my speech as correct as possible (in most situations) and have been known to mercilessly point out others' grammatical and/or orthographic errors. In tonight's post, I'm going to highlight two particular errors in speech that I see frequently and which, therefore, annoy me more than most others. I've mentioned both before in the past in different forums, but they both continue to plague English speakers worldwide. So they can certainly bear repeating.

"I could care less."

When people don't care about something, they'll often state that they "could care less" about it. This is frustrating to me because what they're saying is actually the opposite of what they mean. If you say you could care less about something, then that means you actually care about it! It's like saying, "I could own fewer apples." If it's possible to own fewer apples, then, logically, you must own at least one apple. Only if you owned at least one apple would it be possible to own fewer than you already do. The same is true for how much you care about something. If it's possible to care less, than you must already care some. And so, to say that you don't care, you must say, "I could NOT care less." That definitively states that you are at the absolute minimum level of caring, which would be to not care at all.

"<blank> and I" vs. "<blank> and me" (aka The Use of First-Person Subject vs. Object Pronouns in Compound Subjects and Objects)

I'm sure every English speaker has been told a million times by both parents and teachers that it is correct to say "<blank> and I" rather than "<blank> and me." The problem is that, while that's very often true, it's not ALWAYS true. Unfortunately, it's popularly thought that, whenever your're talking about yourself along with someone or something else, then you must use "I". However, that actually has absolutely nothing to do with whether you say "I" or "me". What determines which you use is whether you are referring to yourself as a subject of the sentence or as an object.

When you are a subject, then you much use the subject pronoun, "I". For example, "My friend and I went to the park." The subjects in this sentence are "my friend" and "I". Or, more properly, the sentence has a single "compound subject", "my friend and I". The popular rule applies here, so there's no problem.

Things change once you become an object of the sentence. For example, "The man told my friend and I a story." In this case, you and your friend are the objects of the sentence (or, again, you are both part of the "compound object"). As an object, you must now refer to yourself using the object pronoun, "me". Therefore, to say "my friend and I" is now WRONG, despite anything your elementary school English teachers may have drilled into your head. It actually is correct to say "The man told my friend and me a story."

This may seem terribly complicated, but it's really not that hard to figure out which one you should be using. The simple trick is to imagine that you're only talking about yourself. Whether you are the subject of the sentence or you are part of a compound subject, the rule is the same. (The same is true for object vs. compound object, of course.) If you were the only one going to the park, then you would say "I am going to the park." You would never say "Me am going to the park." That's very obviously wrong. Bringing your friend along doesn't change anything. That's why you must say "My friend and I", rather than "My friend and me."

The same trick applies to compound objects. Just imagine you're the only one hearing the story. You would never say "The man told I a story." Once again, that's obviously wrong. Instead, you say "The man told me a story." Adding your friend doesn't change anything here either. Therefore, it's correct to say "The man told my friend and me a story."

And, with that, my pedantic nature has been satisfied. At least until tomorrow when I shall again, undoubtedly, encounter one or both of these persistent errors.

The Art of Not Posting

Those of you who have been following my blog may have noticed that I don't post too often. In fact, following my blog is probably about comparable to following an empty bucket of cheese. It really isn't going anywhere on its own, so following it is kind of silly. Thus I expect that, when I address my followers, I'm not really addressing anyone at all. But the fact that I doubt that you're reading this is not what I want to write about.

The purpose of this post is to explain, for the supposed none of you who have been wondering, why I haven't been posting anything. Contrary to popular belief, it's not because I've forgotten about my blog's existence. I actually think about it semi-frequently. It's also not because I hate writing. My hatred of writing has little to nothing to do with how frequently I do it. No... the real reason my blog remains stalwartly void is because I can never think of anything that I think appropriate to write about. That is not to say I have nothing to write about. I actually think of things I could post all the time. But those things are inevitably rejected for any number of reasons. Here are some of the more common ones.

The Idea is Too Negative
I'll often think to write about how and why I don't like something. For example, I hear a Casting Crowns song on the radio and I think about posting about how much the band annoys me. I've even gone so far as to compile a sort of rough draft in my head with a list of every reason for my dislike. Each reason would be elaborated with profound elegance such that none who read them could possibly come away with an opposing view. Or at least that's the way I imagine the post in my head. But, in the end, I always worry that posting about everything I don't like will render my blog annoyingly negative and judgmental. You, imaginary reader, might ask why I don't make sure to also post about things I like to balance the negativity. The reason is because I'm actually fairly resistant to disliking most things. If I do find myself thinking about how I don't like something, I'll almost always feel the need to justify that dislike. I'll think about why I don't like it and come up with a list of reasons. Sometimes I look at that list and realize that none of them are good reasons. At that point I can't really justify not liking the thing and it gets moved to the "I don't really care about it" category. That probably sounds really weird. My point is that I usually think about why I don't like things. The same is not true for things that I do like. When I find something I like, I'm usually content just to enjoy it without over-analyzing my feelings for it. For example, a post about why I love rock climbing would probably go something like this...

Rock climbing is pretty awesome. I've always liked to climb things, so it's natural that I would love climbing rocks. It's a good workout and, if I can find friends to come along, can be a good social activity. I wish I was climbing right now, because that would be fun. Yay for climbing!

As unbelievable as it may be, my blog would be even more pointless and boring if it were filled with posts like that. They certainly wouldn't be able to balance the carefully constructed arguments for why everyone should dislike anything that annoys me. So I've chosen to keep a balance by omitting both sides.

The Idea is Too Divisive
There have been times when I've thought about writing about my opinion on those topics which are constantly causing heated 120-post/hour debates that stem from a single Facebook status post. Now, I really don't think there's anything wrong with discussing the controversial. However, in the end, I just don't like doing it. I've been known to add one or two posts to those status message conflicts from time to time, but that's pretty much all I ever care to do. Even if I could write an entire book on the subject, I'm pretty much always content to concisely make my point as best I can and move on. The real problem is that it's extremely rare to find anyone in those discussions who is actually willing to listen to the other side. People tend to use those arguments to proclaim their opinion (usually as obvious fact) without any intention to actually engage in meaningful discourse. So, even if I do manage to get drawn into one of these debates, I'm always quickly frustrated by the realization that my carefully constructed arguments are mostly being skimmed over. From there, I quickly lose interest in the conversation. So, while I might think to write about such topics, I never think for long before realizing that I'm just not interested in writing about them. Anyway... I don't want to write too much about how I dislike hot-topic arguments and risk tainting the entire blog with negativity, so that's all I say.

The Idea is Too Inane
Far too many blogs fall into the trap of becoming detailed postings of "What I Did Today." That's boring. Even if something happened to me one day that I thought was really interesting, that certainly doesn't mean it's interesting to anyone else. There have been times when I've thought about writing about my experiences at work. But it only takes a moment of reflection to realize that I'm really the only person who cares what I had to go through to replace that thermocouple in the tediously designed fireplace. At least no one cares enough to read a detailed account. At best, there might be a small handful of people who would find something interesting. My coworkers might appreciate a work story. My friends who climb might be interested if I talked about a particular route I was working on. But this blog, despite not having an audience, is targeted toward a much larger group. So I really can't bring myself to write about things that I know will only hold the interest of a select few, if any. That pretty much rules out the entirety of my day-to-day experience.

Despite the difficulty I have in finding topics to write about, I've not given up entirely. I do still plan on posting things once I'm able to think of them. Maybe someday I'll even get the hang of thinking of things and I'll post regularly. For now, I can only hope that it's not another four months before I next get around to producing a post for you to not read. Until next time, à bientôt!

The Wonders of the Internet

Several years ago, I decided it would be fun to play a video game in French. Unfortunately, there aren't too
many French video games for sale in the DC metro area, so I turned to the internet for help. I went to ebay and, after quite a bit of searching, I found a lot of several French games going for fairly cheap. There was one expansion that was useless without the original game. Another was a defunct MMO that was also pretty useless. It also contained The Sims along with all its expansions, which was neat. But what really made be buy the lot was the copy of Diablo II and the expansion, Lord of Destruction. Though already quite aged, that was (and still is) among my favorite games ever. If I enjoyed the game in English, how much more awesome would it be to play it in French?!?

Fast forward to about a month ago. While going through my collection of video games, I came across that French copy of Diablo. I've recently been putting some renewed effort into improving my French, so I was excited at the prospect of again being able to practice while slaying demons and hoards (herds?) of possessed cows. But, when I went to install the game, I was dismayed to find that I couldn't find the CD key. It had been printed on an insert that had come in the case, but was now missing. I tried using the key for my English copy, but to no avail. My disappointment was epic.

Once again, the Internet was able to save the day. This time, in my opinion, in a much more awesome way than before. It occurred to me that Blizzard (the makers of Diablo) have a service set up whereby you can register your games on their site. Once registered, that game can be downloaded anytime you want. I had already registered my English copy, so I knew I could at least download it in English. Hoping to trick them into letting me download the French translation, I logged into the French version of Blizzard's site. Unfortunately, it still recognized that I had registered an English version, so that's what it offered. But then I noticed a tiny link next to where it listed my region which read "Change". Clicking on that tiny link opened a previously hidden menu which allowed me to choose from a whole list of languages, including French. Yay!!!

Even more recently, the long awaited Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was released. Due to my general being-too-busy-this-time-of-year-because-of-work-ness, I've opted not to buy the game immediately and risk getting sucked into it and accidentally staying up to play it until ten minutes before I have to leave for work in the morning. That's what this blog is for. But I couldn't resist the temptation when I saw that Steam was offering Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion on sale for only five dollars.

Those of you who have seen my video game collection might wonder why this would be tempting when I already own the game for XBox 360. The answer is simple*. I have my Steam installation set to French. Not only does that mean the Steam interface is in French but, when possible, it also downloads games in French. So, in the little time I've had after work, I've added Oblivion to my French video game agenda. More yay!!!

So, anyway... what's my point? Other than the obvious point that videos games in French are wonderful, of course. The point is that it's quite awesome that the Internet can so easily enable me to play them that way. Before the Internet, I may have had to go to France, or at least Canada, to get a French copy. At the easiest, I would have to find a specialty store that had one, probably with a huge markup since it would be imported. Now all I have to do change a setting in my software and the French version is readily available. The most awesome part of that is that something that was once extremely difficult to get because of issues involving international trade is now available without leaving my chair. And even without paying anything extra. So yeah... that's all I have to say.


* - That's the French word "simple", not English. Meaning and spelling are the same, but pronunciation is different. It's a clever hint that is completely lost in written format. Too bad this isn't a vlog.

A Collection of Short Stories

When I was in first grade, my school had a program for fifth graders where they could volunteer some of their recess time to help teachers in whatever ways they could. One day, my teacher had to step out of the classroom for a few minutes. During that time, she left the class under the supervision of one of those older students, making sure we knew that we were to be very well behaved while she was gone. Shortly after she left, I was finished with the work we were supposed to be doing and quickly got bored. So I tore a strip from a piece of paper and wrote a note on it saying something to the effect of "My name is Justin. What's yours?" We had been told to work silently, so introducing myself verbally was out of the question. We had also been told to stay in our seats... but I had to break that commandment a little to carry out my plan. When the fifth-grader (after 22 years, I don't remember her name) wasn't looking, I quietly slipped out of my chair and sneaked up behind her. I draped the note across her shoulder then quickly ran back to my seat to avoid getting in trouble for being out of it in the first place. The next time her patrol brought her past my desk, she dropped off her response on the same slip of paper. We went on to become friends... as much as any first and fifth-grader can be friends.

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I think I was seven (maybe eight) when my family went to New York to see Cats on Broadway. It was my first time seeing the show, but I already knew the show very well. I had listened to the soundtrack enough to have pretty much memorized the entire thing. This should be no surprise to anyone who knows my love for cats, which was already fully developed by that time. When the intermission came, I overhead the couple that was sitting in front of my family. They were kind of confused about what was going on. For some reason, the concept of a bunch of cats gathering in a junk yard, singing and dancing, was foreign to them. I stepped in and explained what was going on up to that point. They were very nice and I spent pretty much the entire intermission talking to them, explaining the different songs and answering their questions about the show.

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My third grade teacher, Mrs. Davis, was extremely cool. One time, I came to her fairly randomly and asked her if I could get up in front of the class to sing a song from... wait for it... ... ... Cats. I didn't really expect her to allow the break from our usual schedule, but I really liked the musical and thought it would be fun to share some of it. Much to my delight, she actually agreed to let me sing. At some point between classes that day, she set aside a few minutes for my performance and I sang Memory in front of the class.

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One day, again during third grade, the class was called to the front of the room to sit on the floor while Mrs. Davis read us a story. This was a fairly common occurrence back then. My desk was in the front row, so I didn't have to go very far. I sat down and waited for the rest of the class to sit and settle down for the story to begin. In the meantime, two other boys from the class sat down next to me. As everyone was still quieting down, one of them said to me, "Hey, does this hurt?" Before I could even turn to look at him, he jabbed his finger into my ribs. I had already had enough experience with stuff like this to know that he was much more interested in seeing my reaction than in knowing whether or not it actually hurt, so I did my best to hide that reaction. Unfortunately, I was unprepared and it hurt too much. I let out a soft sigh, hoping it wouldn't be noticed, but he and his friend did notice and they spent the next several seconds laughing about it. I liked that even less than I liked the pain in my side. As the class quieted down and the story began, I sat there contemplating what had just happened and decided to teach myself to hide pain so that it wouldn't happen again. I resolved to never again give anyone the satisfaction of knowing they had hurt me.

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When I was in fifth grade, we weren't allowed to run on or around the playground equipment during recess. This was a problem because I loved to play tag, and there was no more fun place to play it than on the playground equipment. Fortunately, the rule was really only lightly enforced. It wasn't too long before I had started an underground tag club. I came up with a whole list of rules designed to keep us from getting noticed and to avoid any injuries that might draw attention to the club. Anyone who wanted to play with us had to follow those rules. I led the club for that entire year, regularly recruiting new members. We got caught a few times, but always managed to avoid any serious trouble.

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Toward the end of my fifth grade year, my friend Robin decided to write a play and try to get it performed for the school. She spoke to our teacher, who said she would try to work it out. Robin began work on the play and started asking some friends, including me, if they would be in it. I thought it would be a lot of fun to be in a play and, hopefully, be able to put it on for the school, so I agreed. Over the next couple weeks, Robin and the cast met every few days during recess to go over the script as it was being written. It never did work out. There really wasn't enough time left in the year to pull it all together. But it was still a lot of fun working on it.

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One day in the beginning of my sixth grade year, my math class had a free day where there was no lesson. Instead, our teacher let us spend the entire class playing games. She pulled out an assortment of math-based games and sat at her desk as the class played. I wasn't going to be fooled, though. They may have been games... but they were still designed to teach math. I decided I would use my free time to actually be free from math, so I remained at my desk and pulled out a sheet of paper. I thought it would be really fun to write a secret code that I could use to write notes to friends. It only took me a few seconds to realize the fatal flaw in my plan. I knew none of my friends would want to learn the code. But I was too excited about having a secret code to give up so easily. Looking up from my desk, I noticed one other person also still sitting at his desk a couple rows in front of mine. I didn't know him at all and figured he probably wouldn't have any interest, but I decided to try anyway. I got up from my desk, sat down next to him, and asked, "Hey, do you want to make a code?" He replied with a surprisingly enthusiastic "yes" and we spent the rest of the class working on our secret code. Hans and I have been friends pretty much since that day.

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I played percussion in the school band from fourth to seventh grade. I really loved playing drums. I really liked cymbals, too. The crash cymbals were a lot of fun, even if they were heavy. I loved playing during the first two years. Unfortunately, once I got into middle school, the curriculum expanded and I was forced to learn to play the keyed instruments as well as the drums. I had joined to play the drums and had absolutely no interest in actually learning the layout of a keyboard or how to read anything more than rhythm. In addition to that, our percussion section was very large and there were never enough percussion parts in any song to give everyone their own. "Fortunately", the school was very well stocked with different types of keyboards, so everyone was still able to play. We just had four or five people playing the same keyboard part on every song. Of course, that made it relatively rare to actually have a drum part. By the end of sixth grade, I was pretty much hating band. Things got worse in seventh grade. There were two eighth-graders in percussion, Derek and Gene, who seemed to make a sport out of making fun of me for just about anything they could. I got made fun of a lot throughout school, being the tiny nerd I am, but they were especially relentless. I put up with it for a while, but I eventually got frustrated and went to the teacher about it. He called the three of us into his office the next day and talked about it. At the end, he threatened to have them removed from the band if they didn't leave me alone. Things quieted down a bit, but it wasn't long before they were at it again. I went to the teacher again and he threatened again to have them removed. He was forced to make that same threat two or three more times over the next several weeks before I gave up on going to him. One day, it occurred to me that Derek and Gene were being so mean because it was fun for them. Not that I hadn't known that... but I hadn't really thought about it too much. From that I developed and tested a hypothesis. I decided that I would start completely ignoring them. I wouldn't react to anything they said or did. I wouldn't even acknowledge their presence if I didn't have to. It wasn't easy. Especially not when getting pelted by spitballs or hit with mallets. But the test was success. It wasn't too long before they realized it was no longer fun and they eventually started leaving me alone. In fact, it worked so well, I decided that I would do the same to anyone who picked on me. As anyone who's ever been in middle school can probably guess, the next year and a half gave me ample opportunity to practice. I went into high school extremely skilled at not talking to people.

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At the end of sixth grade, I was allowed to choose what class I would take for my reading credit during seventh grade. My options were Advanced Reading, Spanish, or French. While I loved to read, I hated being told what to read, so Reading was always one of my least favorite classes. Advanced Reading was out of the question. I really didn't know much about either of the other options. I knew French was the language of love, which made it seem very feminine. I figured I'd probably be the only boy in the class if I took French. The only thing I knew about Spanish was that you had to roll your tongue. I had tried before and knew that I couldn't roll my tongue. Besides that, I thought it sounded silly when people rolled their tongues. In the end, I decided I'd rather be the only boy in the class than to have to ever roll my tongue. And that's how I got started with French. To my surprise, when the class started the next year, it was about evenly split between boys and girls. I was also surprised to discover how much I enjoyed learning the language. In the end, I would count French as my favorite two classes (I took it in seventh and eighth grades) in middle school. Unfortunately, it wasn't as enjoyable when I got into high school. My teacher in ninth grade just didn't seem to like me. I wasn't the only one she didn't like. Actually, she seemed to really like a few students and pretty much hated the rest. While I still enjoyed French, the class itself wasn't very fun because of that. My tenth grade teacher wasn't as bad, but she didn't really seem to love me either. I kind of gave her reason not to, though. I was consistently late for class. Usually only by about thirty seconds... but anytime after the bell was late in high school. She also didn't seem to like the number of profane statements I had written in French on my backpack. (This was a couple years before I became a Christian.) But what really made the class unenjoyable was that she was never satisfied with my level of participation. She was constantly complaining that I didn't raise my hand enough. I always felt like I participated enough, but she insisted that I didn't speak enough in class. One quarter, she actually threatened to fail me because of it. Even though I still liked learning the language, when it came time to choose classes for the next year, French was not on my list.

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I believe I was sixteen when, one evening, my aunt Marcia called from Maine. She wanted to talk to my dad, but he wasn't home and she got me instead. Not that that was a bad thing. It had been a long time since she and I had talked and we spent a few minutes catching up. I told her about how things were going in school and such. She talked about a trip that she was getting ready to take and how the rest of my family in Maine was doing. I've always liked talking to her and I was really happy to be able to catch up. At the end of the conversation, she said she'd probably be heading to bed before my dad could get back to her, so she'd try to reach him at work the next day. My dad wasn't very happy when got home from work the next evening. As he served dinner, he told me he had talked to my aunt and the she had told him about our conversation. She said she felt the entire time that I really didn't want to talk to her. Like she had to force the conversation out of me. As I took my dinner up to my room, my dad told me how sick he was of how little I ever said when I talked to anyone.

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One night, not long after I graduated high school, I was driving a friend home from somewhere. It was getting kind of late and we were both tired, so it was a pretty quiet ride. As I drove, I remembered a joke I had just heard and thought was pretty funny. I started to tell the joke, but suddenly found myself too nervous to even open my mouth. I couldn't really explain why I was nervous. In fact, I knew I had absolutely no reason to be. I took a few deep breaths and was able to calm down. I tried a second time, but met with the same result. I sat for a couple minutes this time trying to calm down and reason myself into being able to just tell the joke. Finally, after calming down again, I tried one more time. Once again, I couldn't even open my mouth to speak. I went the rest of the drive resigned to the fact that, no matter how much I tried, I could not break the silence.

First Post!!!!

Wait... really? This can't be right.

Is someone actually reading this?

I guess it's true, as improbable as it might seem. In that case, I'd like to apologize in advance for any boredom incurred by reading the content of this blog. I certainly don't intend to bore anyone, but I always imagine that to be the immediate result of any attempt to peer into my thoughts. I mean... is anyone really interested in reading about how I knew the battle at which William the Conqueror gained his title and the year it happened without knowing that I knew it? That's the kind of stuff I'll probably be writing about.

So why am I making a blog if I expect its readership to be in the negative numbers? The answer may shock you. I doubt it will, though. Put simply, the answer is because I've always been intrigued by the idea of writing a journal or diary. Someplace to put my thoughts on whatever subjects I choose to write about. But diaries are, by nature, private. I've always had problems writing when I know no one will read what I'm writing. It just seems pointless. I know that's not the purpose of a diary, but it's still been enough to guarantee failure every time I've tried to start one. I'll make a couple entries in the first week and then just kind of forget about it. So what's different about this? Well, a blog is, by nature, the antithesis of private. There's no guarantee that anyone will ever read it. In fact, as I've already pointed out, I don't expect anyone to. But there's a chance that someone will. Even just that slight chance gives me enough to be able to imagine an audience. And if I can imagine that someone's reading, it's much easier to write.

Even with an audience, I usually don't have much to say. I am quiet in writing as much as I am in speaking and anyone who knows me knows never to challenge me to a silence contest. So one shouldn't expect frequent postings here either. But, every so often, I may come up with some thoughts I deem worthy of voicing. I make no promise to deliver anything that's interesting to anyone but myself. Given my weird and eclectic interests, such a delivery is unlikely to happen.

Anyway... that's about all the interesting thoughts I have to share at the moment, so I'll wrap up this post fairly abruptly. It was the Battle of Hastings in AD 1066, by the way.