Baseball and Jesus across the Pond

Here is a really weird article written about the Rockies (yes, the Colorado Rockies) for The Independent (a British joint) by a guy that doesn't seem to know much about the MLB, America, and religion in sports. David Kuo linked here first.

Osteen and the King

Confession: I was ready to be outraged by Joel Osteen last night. I almost wanted to be outraged, but instead I didn’t feel that saddened or disappointed by what I heard.

I can’t tell you I agree with him. I don’t know what kind of stuff he personally does with his money; like that $13 million advance.

I do know that he comes across as a genuine believer. Yes, I have only seen him on TV, but he most definitely has a passion for God and what God can do in someone’s life. His theology does seem light, there is no doubt.

He unabashedly knows what part of the Gospel he is good at teaching. He believes that is his niche. Someone else’s niche may be talking about sin and redemption. Someone else might find there niche in exclusively helping the poor.

I guess what I am saying is that I do believe he is doing a lot of good for God. And, I guess, what I struggle with a bit, is realizing that God is at work through something like Osteen’s ministry, but I don’t really agree or enjoy his (Osteen’s) type of message or ministry.

I didn’t come away from the interview outraged. I simply came away unaffected. There will always be believers out there that are doing a lot more polarizing and dividing than Osteen is doing. I didn’t hear any judgment out of the man’s mouth last night.

He reminded me of a really excited kid in a Sunday school class that is just so happy about what God is doing in his life, and that is where Osteen is stuck. I guess I am all too human to hold that against him.

Osteen on Larry King Live

Speaking of never seeing Joel Osteen in the media. He is on Larry King Live tonight. I don't even know why I am posting this. Those that come here either don't have cable or the time to sit down and watch Larry King, but just in case...he is on tonight with his wife, Victoria.

And this just in...the impossible feels quite good. World Series. Get some.

Mmm...Corn

It is The Omnivore's Dilemma on the big screen.

Check out King Corn. Coming to theaters this fall.

A $13 Million Advance...

I have never seen Joel Osteen in the media before the 60 Minutes interview that aired last night. I recommend that you take ten minutes to go to the 60 Minutes page to watch the interview. It was eye-opening and demands reaction, not necessarily criticism of Osteen, but we need to be aware of giant trends within Christianity like the one Mr. Osteen is such a huge part of.

It is astonishing how so many people buy into Osteen's message of prosperity, and it is scary that his message seems to encompass a very small portion of the real Message. He draws 16,000 people every Sunday to an old sports arena that he has spent $100 million on to renovate into a state-of-the-art mega church. According to 60 Minutes, there aren't explicitly religious symbols anywhere near the front of the church like, I don't know, a cross, but the arena's ceiling does change color to the music. Ooh. Ah.

Just a few standout facts:

The annual in-house offering is $43 million.

Mr. Osteen's ministry receives another $30 million by mail or online donations.

Mr. Osteen received a $13 million advance...ADVANCE...for his new book that comes out this week I believe.

During the interview, not one word was mentioned about helping the poor with all that money, or what the heck Mr. Osteen does with it. The message: come to God and you will prosper is enticing to say the least, but it eclipses this message, that I think might be a little more rewarding: come to God so that others may prosper.

Rocktober

I am watching the Rockies play in game 3 of the NLCS. They are leading the series 2-0 and winning the game 4-1. If they win this I think they’ll have won 20 of the last 21 games. Pretty incredible.

There have been some complaints about the Rockies getting a couple generous calls by the umpires, the standout being Holliday’s slide into home plate in the one-game playoff against the Padres. In all footage of the slide it looks like Holliday’s hand was aimed for the right side of home plate but it collides with the foot of the Padres catcher, who was blocking the plate. You can’t tell for sure if Holliday touches home plate, but you can tell for sure that the catcher is blocking it. This is key. Why? Because catchers cannot block home plate when they are not directly fielding the ball. By the time Holliday slid into home, or tried to, the ball was nowhere near the catcher but he stood there blocking it anyways. This is against the rules. Bad Padre, bad.

Apparently, the Rockies have gotten a few more generous calls. I haven’t seen them all, but I did see the one last night where Matsui was clearly not safe after a super slow-mo playback. The commentators were quick to point out the Rockies streak of luck. Likewise, I think it will take the Rockies 3-0 record in this series to get a somewhat respectable view in the sports media. Prior to tonight a lot of the sportswriters and commentators out there were referring to the Rockies as an anomaly, or not referring to them at all. They would say that the Rockies streak is due to luck, not of talent coming together in a cohesiveness that is shocking to see in any sports team, let alone the 2007 Rockies.

Yeah, the Rockies are a Cinderella team right now, but they should still get the benefit of the doubt. For example, when the Rockies get a break on a call the announcers shouldn’t act like the Umps are in on it. If it was any other team with a lot of playoff experience that was on their way to win their 20^th game out of 21 games, say, the Yankees, you would only hear a peep about those lucky breaks. No one would chalk them up to be the reason for the Yankees' hot streak.

Go Rocks. I am on the bandwagon.

Red State, Blue State, One State, Two States

I recently saw a nationwide layout of how each state voted in the 2004 election and there was a big patch of blue in the upper Midwest. It was Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. I live in a blue state now. I knew this before, but the map reminded me that this is a supposedly pretty liberal state. I find this utterly surprising.

If anything, Wisconsin seems much redder than Colorado does. A lot of the people look like they belong in Wyoming. They are a little rough around the edges; wear Harley shirts to work, love their trucks and guns, and care about the Packers, the Badgers, and cheese curds. I wouldn’t expect these people to have voted for Kerry in 2004, but I wouldn’t expect them to have voted for Bush, either.

I’m just guessing here, but Kerry might have really appealed to some Wisconsinites because he wasn’t Bush, and that’s about it. The Wisconsin way seems extremely laid back and homey. They don’t leave the state that much, which is odd because a big chunk of them seem oddly disappointed with where they live, like they have been sentenced here for life (for proof, see quotes at end). And not many people move here. Wisconsinites enjoy sticking around for a while, a long while. It doesn’t seem their style to bother with anyone’s affairs, whether it is some other part of the country, world, or even county.

This is something that some people seemed to already have figured out about Wisconsin before Kate and I moved here. I would say to them, “We are moving to Milwaukee.”

“Milwaukee? Why are you moving there?” They would say.

And, if we didn’t get that, we got this when we got here.

“So, where did you move from?” They say.

“Colorado.”

“Are you mad? Why’d you move here?” They clearly aren’t joking. I am pretty sure I could have mentioned any one of some forty states and I would get the same reaction.

Deciduously Delicious

Unlike in Wyoming and Colorado, Wisconsin actually has a fall. In Colorado and Wyoming summer just extends into September and October for a while and fall happens in a couple of days.

I took a little time on Monday to walk around taking pictures of the trees near Lake Michigan.

I am really not getting sick of finding this view in the middle of the country. There really isn't anything like walking through a forest and finding this random beach and a body of water that does a great deal in convincing you it is an ocean.

This was definitely the most vibrant color I found and the photograph really doesn't do it justice. Sorry.

There was a wasp nest hanging out in its branches.

Rocks, Badgers, Packers, and COWBOYS

Oh, bother. What to write right now?

I just had my first shift at the new Bucks. They do a lot of things differently at this store so I felt like a bit of a retard. Give me a week and I think I will be back to my old form.

Before Kate and I left for La Crosse I posted on how I wanted the Rockies, Badgers, Packers, and the Wyoming Cowboys to win over the weekend.

Now you know, of course, that the Rockies won. Amazing. People around here have been asking, "Are you a Rockies fan?"

I say, "I am now." Lets hope I can be for a few more days or weeks.

The Wisconsin Badgers, ranked 5th in the nation, lost to Illinois on Saturday. I have never been sort of close to a top 5 college football program. That was sort of exciting while it lasted, but the Badgers are no more. They will probably come back from it, but crack the top 5 again? I don't think so.

And the Packers. Well, I used to really dislike Favre, but since moving here I have observed so much love and appreciation for the guy that it is sort of contagious. And the season they had for the first four weeks, that was a thing of beauty. The loss to Chicago at home on Sunday night was not, but Favre has bounced back before. How can you not like the elderly professional that does interviews in a white tank-top, gray hair, and a salt and peppered beard? Total dude.

And the Cowboys? Oh, I would give anything to see a game there this season. They have another big game at home this Saturday against New Mexico. I don't know what they have in them this season, but I am pretty excited to see what it is.

The Quarter Life : Career

It is time, time for the next installment of The Quarter Life. If you aren't familiar with The Quarter Life, visit the first installment here on my blog, and here on Aaron's blog. The second installments can be found here and here. Aaron's new blog on career should be up shortly. Read that here. Caught up? Read on.

Aaron said this would be challenging. Of course it will be. What am I supposed to do here, offer up advice on a career decision? I don’t know if I can do that.

I can tell you I love writing. By deciding that I would like to write for a career I made a logical decision by connecting my love to a potential career. I think I picked an illogical career though. I say this because, like many things one can become, you don’t become a writer, in terms of a career, just by going to a university and receiving a BA, an MFA, or a Ph.D. Instead of initials after a name, a writer seems to be forged by years of living in poverty, being broke, overcoming a drug addiction or defeating alcoholism, and spending years of his or her life in solitary confinement, mentally speaking. And then there is the nagging question: am I any good at this, or am I completely wasting my time?

I was just watching Chariots of Fire (1981), a true story, and there is a great scene in which Harold Abrahams is talking to his trainer (played by Ian Holm, as made very famous by his role as Bilbo Baggins) about wanting to be a faster runner. Ian reluctantly agrees to do his best, but adds “We can’t put in what God left out.”

I guess what Ian Holm says strikes a cord in me because I don’t know what God left out in terms of writing talent. I like to think that he didn’t leave much out, but to be honest, I don’t know. And, since I don’t know, and still love writing, I keep on doing it, hoping that years of practice will eventually help me find out if God has put in anything at all.

This thinking ushers in a search for validation, which I try not to seek in my career, but I realize validation is important for me. It helps motivate me. Thinking I am okay or good at something isn’t enough to convince me that I should spend my days reading and writing. Here is some validation I have experienced in the past: an “A” on a paper, a high hit-count on my blog, a community newspaper’s decision to publish my words, and friends and family complimenting me on something I wrote. These are all great forms of confirmation, but I have become hungrier for a different kind of validation.

A regular writing gig. A paycheck directly related to my words. Appealing to strangers, perhaps even acquiring a fan base beyond my intimate circle of friends. These are all lofty achievements that, at my age, would be extremely rare for me to have. Nonetheless, these are some examples of validation that a successful writing career might bring about.

When I think of a career as a writer I usually arrive swiftly at contemplating my validation. Am I any good? Yeah, my mom says she enjoys my writing, but I am her son. Am I pursuing something that is going to bring me to my 60s without one feature length article or book to show for it?

These are the kinds of questions I fend off everyday. Sometimes my doubt runs rampant. I’ll have a whole week to produce something and I don’t. I can’t even seem to write anything worth showing to the public. I flirt with the idea of abandoning the pursuit altogether.

It is during waves of doubt, dryness, and my lust for validation that I realize my love for writing isn’t going to take me to that many places if it remains about me. I become even hungrier for a different kind of validation, but something clicks this time. There needs to be something living and breathing inside my words, something universal. To produce writing like this there needs to be a major harvest on my soul, experiences, and my life. When I sit down with a notepad or a computer and really try to hash it out this way I usually come up with something that at least one of you might relate to. If there is a connection, then I feel like I have done my job.

It is hard to think of writing right now as a career because I am not getting paid for it and I don’t do it forty hours a week. In fact, it probably sounds a lot like a hobby. You could call it that. I guess I won’t take offense. If my hobby turns into my career I would be pretty blessed, and even more fortunate if my readers can relate on a spiritual level to my material, forging a connection we share in a relationship with Jesus or questions of faith, truth, and life.

If I were a Presbyterian missionary people would connect my work to a God that I serve and glorify (hopefully) with the work that I do. I have grown up valuing this connection between my faith and work. So, I would love for people to see in my career something that suggests a higher calling. Don’t get this confused for self affirmation. I want the validation to be directed toward God, hopefully, if I am that lucky, through a little part of my work.

That is the ideal scenario, but what if I end up doing humor writing for a career, how are people going to get some God out of that? And what if I end up reviewing books for a living? Am I going to feel like I should be doing something else to promote the true love I know? No, because regardless of how successful I ever become as a writer, I will know that God made me passionate about words. I believe I am honoring Him by using them.

However, I shouldn’t completely ignore the questions that arise. By answering them I can find a better path or clearer thinking. However, most of that doubt and questioning is going to keep me from the one thing that I want to develop into a career. I once said, on this blog actually, that a man can’t hear much of the world if he spends all his time on it looking for affirmation of himself. I don’t want to waste my time here doing that, but I still really want to write, and if I didn’t write, it would be to deny one of the greatest passions God has put in me.

During a conversation in Chariots of Fire, Eric Liddell is trying to convince a friend that he must run in the Olympics (Paris, 1924) first before he goes on to missionary work in China. He says this:

I believe that God made me for a purpose, for China, but he also made me fast and when I run I feel his pleasure. To give that up would be to hold him in contempt. You were right. It’s not just fun. To win, is to honor him.

I can’t say that I am a fabulous writer with as much confidence as Liddell says he is fast, but I do know that to give up now would be to deny what I know for sure God has put in me, a voice.

*After refusing to run the 200m on the Sabbath, a race Eric Liddell could have easily won, he took first in the 400m. He died as a missionary in occupied China following WWII.

Flying the Flag

Wearing an American Flag pin doesn't make you patriotic. The pin on the politician's suits has become more of a political statement than a show of support for what America used to stand for in the world. What am I getting at? The pin drives me crazy. When I see a politician wearing it I think a little less of him/her...immediately. The only thing they are doing is tarnishing the flag.

Mark Schmitt wrote on this phenomenon today. Pull quote:

I am, I admit, more concerned about what my country does, how it conducts itself, how it lives up to its unique aspirations than I am by something that happened to [9/11] our country. That's not alienation from my country; it's patriotism in a democracy. It's the belief that we bear some responsibility for the actions of our country, and even if we opposed them, we should ask what more we could have done.

Read the rest here.

The Weekender

Kate and I are going to La Crosse this weekend, but first I have to say a couple of things.

Go Rockies!

Go Badgers!

Go Packers!?!

And, above all, Go Cowboys! It is the 300th game at the War. That is War Memorial Stadium for all you so unfortunate to never have watched a game there.

It's Business Time

Flight of the Conchords, Ladies and Gentlemen.

Please, Ann, don't take it off

When I saw the cover of Ann Coulter's new book I was disturbed by her pose, her showing off, her...cleavage? I thought I would write on it. I didn't, but this lady did.

And, after another quick look at the bestsellers list, I see that Colbert has overtaken Coulter. Take that.

Amazonian Bestsellers

Ouch. Just a minute ago I had nothing to share, but I’ll share with you this…

Ann Coulter’s new book, titled If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans, is number six on the Amazon bestsellers list. What an airbrush job on that cover, huh? I guess she doesn't have the testicles (she would say she does) to fill the cover of her new book with her face like the author of bestselling book #8 does. Many of you might recognize this young man from TV. His name is Stephen Colbert and his new book is titled I Am America (And So Can You!).

I guess I don't have much else to say about that. I will be outraged today by the thousands of people that think Coulter is worth it. Choose your side, right or left. That's fine with me, but Coulter is so fringe it should be illegal.

The Void

Some days I just expect to be full of words.

The muse seems to be lacking the last couple of days. This happens regularly, and yet I get so bummed out whenever it does.

I might be unknowingly exhausting my writing capacity by thinking every minute about writing next month. Really. It has been on my mind all the time. This isn’t good. I hope to not think about it for another month. I’m not even going to write down an outline. I am going to write, thus ensuring even more that my novel, or whatever it will be, will be awesomely bad.

I start at the Bucks on Monday. One good thing: I got my old rate back.

Kate and I are going to La Crosse, Wisconsin on Friday to visit her Grandma for the weekend. Kate tells me it is a pretty drive. It should be with all the color going on around here now that it’s fall. I'm excited to go somewhere again.

I am looking forward to having a tighter leash on my free time. I think my productivity will increase.

On my profile at nanowrimo I listed Iron and Wine as my favorite music to listen to while writing.

I just created a flickr page. Here is the address: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shosblog/

Stone-skimming Record

You never know what foolishness you will find on a news blog. Over at the Guardian's news blog I found a link to this video. Enjoy.

Expectations for November

What I feared about publicly proclaiming my attempt at writing a smelly blob of novel 50,000 words deep has come to fruition. People expect me to finish.

I received an email today from nanowrimo.org that included in it some tips for finishing the monumental task. One of the tips:

Tell everyone you know that you're writing a novel in November. This will pay big dividends in Week Two, when the only thing keeping you from quitting is the fear of looking pathetic in front of all the people who've had to hear about your novel for the past month. Seriously. Email them now about your awesome new book. The looming specter of personal humiliation is a very reliable muse.

I won’t go as far as emailing you all, but do know it isn’t my plan to drop out and face personal humiliation, rather I will write on, and then face the personal humiliation if I ever let any one of you read what I write.

NaNoWriMo

Ever since I happened across National Novel Writing Month (or, NaNoWriMo for short…serious) two weeks ago I have been doing a lot of research about it. Some of that research includes, but is not limited to, how much work that would take, how awfully bad the writing would be, and how I have never stepped up to such a mentally daunting task before.

I have also been brewing all sorts of tragically boring novel ideas around in my head since I was introduced to NaNoWriMo.

I haven’t thought about the undertaking without thinking about my blog, my precious blog, which is home to only a few. For a month, or however long I would last in NaNoWriMo, my blog, I’m afraid, might be a desert. I could give progress reports on the project, but beyond that I don’t think I could write that much more considering I would have to be producing 1,667 words a day in order to get 50,000 by midnight on November 31.

So, I am signing up. You can register starting tonight. I don’t know how long I’ll last, but my goal is to finish, regardless of where my novel takes itself.

I’ll be sure to do a healthy amount of blogging in October.

Playing Host

Well, my parents left Saturday night after an awesome visit with them. Kate and I agreed, it was weird to be playing the hosts for the first time in our new, married life together, but we really enjoyed having them here and we look forward to hosting anyone that comes out to Milwaukee.

Kate took the day off on Friday so we could all go down to Chicago. A thirty minute drive south brings you to the northern most stop on a Metra line that serves Chicago’s North Shore. The train ride takes an hour and a half if it stops at all stations between Kenosha and the Loop in Chicago.

We had a blast in Chicago. The first thing we did was to take the architecture river cruise. This was awesome. Some of you have most likely been on the tour as well, but if you haven’t, go on it next time when you are in Chicago, unless of course, it is January.

We walked all over Chicago, from the river to Millennium Park to the John Hancock Tower, all the while staying on Michigan Avenue. At sunset we took a 40-second elevator ride to the 96^th floor of the John Hancock Tower, which is, I just found out last night, considered to be the fastest elevator ride in North America. While on the 96^th floor we were seated at a window table sipping martinis and having hors devours. The view was incredible. This was a great end to a one-day adventure in Chicago.

Below are some pictures of my parent’s visit to Milwaukee.

From our table at The Signature Lounge on the 96th floor of the John Hancock Tower.

The Chicago River at night.

The Calatrava wing of the Milwaukee Art Museum.