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Posts from the ‘The Lighter Side’ Category

Dec 19

5 Comments

Santa is the Man

Well, the city is blanketed in an unusual amount of snow, and Christmas is certainly in the air. This morning I was off to see the always interesting children’s school Christmas concert. I tend to approach these events with a high degree of curiosity—especially in our post-Christian context. What organizational gymnastics, I wonder, will the organizers have to go through to present a non-offensive, politically correct program for the many and varied attendees that will be present yet at the same time say something remotely significant that honours the season? I genuinely feel for those who have to organize these things. It can’t be easy. Read more

Dec 6

8 Comments

Text Message

After a period in the technological wilderness, I recently got a cell-phone. Needless to say (at least for those who know me) a large percentage of this device’s marvelous technology is utterly wasted on me. Last week I managed, after 20 minutes and no small amount of frustration, to send a six-word text message to a co-worker. As you can imagine, my euphoria was virtually unbridled. Perhaps my text-messaging incompetence is turning me into a curmudgeonly old killjoy, but I just cannot seem to get excited about these little bursts of grammatically-challenged communication.

Given the preceding, I got more than a chuckle out of this:

Nov 24

8 Comments

The Perils of Television

Turns out, it’s even worse than your parents led you to believe.  Not only does watching television make you stupider, but it makes you unhappier as well—at least, if the experts in this article are to be believed.  Here’s a quote: Read more

Aug 12

5 Comments

Britain is Repossessing the U.S.A. — A Message from John Cleese

I’m not anti-American and I have no particular political axe to grind, but I came across this today and it made me laugh.

Very hard. Read more

Aug 8

1 Comment

Six Random Things

I’m still a little new to the whole online “meme,” thing, but I’ve been tagged by Ken so why not have a little fun on a Friday night.  Here’s the rules:

  1. Link to the person who tagged you.
  2. Post the rules on your blog (copy and paste 1-6).
  3. Write 6 random things about yourself (see below).
  4. Tag 6 people at the end of your post and link to them.
  5. Let each person know they have been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
  6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up. Read more

Jul 7

2 Comments

I Give Up (Bathroom Rant Redux)

Well, the combination of summer holidays, finishing the thesis, moving to another city to start a new chapter in our lives, and traveling back to Alberta to see family have combined to render this a rather barren forum over the last few weeks. My own lack of ideas, a few comments from others about last summer’s rant against bathroom technology, and exposure to similar frustrations on my travels so far this summer convinced me that it might be fun to re-post this entry for those who didn’t get the chance to share in my misery last year. Enjoy. Read more

May 12

3 Comments

The World According to lululemon

Like the dutiful Vancouver husband/father that I am, I marched off to lululemon on Saturday to see if I could find my wife a gift worthy of both her maternal skills and her status as an emerging distance runner. lululemon is a Vancouver company famous mainly (I think) for its yoga-wear (although I couldn’t help but notice that their tags say “designed in Vancouver, made in Cambodia”). At any rate, it is, apparently, where all the cool moms get their workout gear so off I went to see what I could find. Read more

Feb 29

1 Comment

Googling Eschatology

This article from today’s Globe and Mail caught my attention if only because I had a conversation with a friend after hockey on Saturday night where he described a virtually identical situation. He was tucking his daughter in at night and she asked him “dad, when does the world end?” Like the author of this article, who recounts how she dealt with her four-year-old’s “where do we go when we die?” question, he was dumbfounded and didn’t quite know how to respond. The guy beside him said “just do what I do whenever my son asks me a question I don’t know the answer to—tell her you’ll look it up on the internet later”—an option also considered by the boy with the existential crisis in the article. Read more

Dec 4

4 Comments

Down to Earth (A Lesson in Pedagogical Humility)

Well, my first foray into the academic world on the other side of the lectern is rapidly drawing to a close. Today marked the beginning of my last week of classes in what has been a fairly enjoyable and challenging adventure. I suppose many people’s first experience as a teacher is a weird combination of exhilaration and terror and my experience has certainly been no different. I always find myself second-guessing myself on the drive home: “Could I have explained that better?” “Was that a helpful exercise?” “Why didn’t I think of that response in class?” etc, etc. Read more

Sep 23

5 Comments

Noted in Traffic

A few minor irritants to get off my chest, noted in the last couple of weeks spent cycling the streets of Vancouver to and from a library nearby and driving out to Abbotsford to teach twice a week. I find the following three phenomena utterly baffling and I must vent… Read more

Aug 23

7 Comments

I Wish This was a Joke…

One of the interesting features of blogging at WordPress is being able to see which sites are linking to your own posts. There aren’t usually very many of these, mind you, but the odd one pops up. Some of these are intriguing, but many are just plain strange and I have no idea where they come from or how they connect to me. Read more

Aug 3

13 Comments

I Give Up! (An Utterly Ridiculous Reflection on Bathroom Technology)

I’ve done a lot of traveling over the past couple of weeks. First, it was back to southern Alberta to spend some time with my family, then up to Edmonton for a speaking engagement, then over to Hepburn, SK for a whirlwind visit with my brother and his family, then back to Lethbridge to spend a week with Naomi’s folks, and then, finally, the long trip back to Vancouver. And then, after only a brief period at home, we were off again—this time to Galiano Island to spend a delightful couple of days enjoying the laid-back island life with friends. We just returned tonight and are now going to settle down around home for the month of August (and try to get some of the work done that I have been putting off for most of the month of July!). Read more

Jun 13

5 Comments

The Force is With Me!

I have a confession to make. Until last week, I had never seen Star Wars.

I’ll give you a moment to get over this shocking bit of news.

How it is, you ask, that I have managed to get this far in life in complete ignorance of such a massive cultural symbol? It is a mystery, to be sure. Read more

Jun 10

12 Comments

One Book Meme

I was made aware of a pretty interesting blog (from my perspective at least) this week when Gil sent me a link to a review of a book I had recently read. It’s pretty heady stuff over there, but I’ve come across a couple of really interesting posts whilst scouring some of the archives. Here‘s one of them. I don’t know if he’s taking a bit of a dig at Richard Dawkins here (I believe he coined the term “meme” to explain how ideas survive by a process of cultural evolution; needless to say, not everyone thinks this is the most plausible way to explain how ideas are transmitted…), but this might be one “meme” that is, at the very least, entertaining, and could be an interesting way to get to know people better. Read more

May 9

10 Comments

A Picture Says a Thousand Words…

For all the Canucks fans whose acquaintance I have made during our time out here in Lotus-land…

Mar 16

15 Comments

Comb-Overs and the Kingdom of God

I’m bald.

I thought I would start with a frank admission of the fact that my own head is, shall we say “sparsely populated” lest anyone think that in what follows I am poking fun at a segment of the population for which I have no affinity. I’ve probably been shaving my head at least since I was twenty-five, so I feel the pain of and stand in solidarity with all those men out there for whom combs and shampoo represent hazy memories of a distant and beautiful past… Read more

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