Another Lengthy Absence

Well, I did it to you again. Vanished from the blogosphere for over a week without so much as a warning or a guest blogger. Better get straight to some Miscellenies.

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We moved. That’s most of the reason for the silence. We now live in Plaza Midwood, a funky, urban-revitalization-type area which we love. It’s pretty Athens-esque. We’re within walking distance of the library, a couple of parks, a DQ (you can get a Coke… just drive through and get a Coke, if you’re thirsty…), and several other cool restaurants including Fuel Pizza, Zada Jane’s and The Dish. And the place is great. It’s owned by a couple in our church, meaning we don’t have to sign a lease, meaning good news if you’re trying to leave the country soon.

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Last night I went on my first run in our new neighborhood. I heard lots of dogs, coveted lots of houses, saw numerous Obama stickers and 2 cops on Segways.

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A few minutes ago I’m pretty sure I heard flute-playing, and it sounded live. Well, scratch that– M told me it was her radio. Live flute player would’ve made a better blog post, but oh well.

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I’ve never had the best impression of Rick Warren, and the whole Saddleback Forum thing isn’t something I’d do as a pastor. But I was impressed with the questions he asked. And I thought the answers made the contrast between the two candidates pretty clear.

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I’m a Mac user now. Can’t you tell the difference? Doesn’t this post look smoother, simpler, more intuitive? Well, maybe not, but I like it a lot.

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I’m making my first foray into fantasy football with a college league. I expect to get trounced. I mean, I assume everybody in the league can’t just pick Georgia players (we’re all alumni), and beyond that my knowledge is pretty pathetic. We’ll see.

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Finally, I bought something for work and got more free downloads from emusic.com:

Unexpected Week Off: Miscellenies

I’ll just be honest: I had no idea I wouldn’t post for a week. There’s not even that much of an excuse. But I’m sorry you were left hanging. Both of you.

Miscellenies from the last week:

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We’re moving next month to a condo in hip Plaza Midwood. I will have lots of cool neighbors and will probably need a fauxhawk. Sam will get tatts and wear vintage t-shirts.

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The Dark Knight is the first movie I’ve seen on opening night in a long time (maybe ever), and it rocked. The Oscar buzz for Heath Ledger is definitely fueled by his death, but I think he’d be a contender anyway.

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I was pleasantly surprised by the crowd’s behavior at Dark Knight. There were a couple of color commentators behind us, but they were pretty funny, so it didn’t bother me all that much.

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I was totally underwhelmed by every preview before the movie. Seriously, how many end-of-the-world, America’s-blown-itself-up movies do we really need? Maybe if Obama’s elected they’ll start making movies where we all ride through the rainbows on our cloud cars.

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If you drive over a laptop computer in your car and you take it out of the case and it looks fine, that does not necessarily mean that it actually is fine. Turn it on and check.

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If you drive over a laptop computer in your car and your wife is very calm about the whole thing, you have found a good wife and should hang onto her.

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If you download WinAmp for the first time (I needed it to decode a show I downloaded), you get 50 free downloads at emusic.com. They have mostly independant artists, including a lot of good ones. I got the following 3 albums, plus some Kanye a la carte.

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The Coinstar machines at Harris Teeter will now take your change and put it on a gift card for retailers including Starbucks, Amazon and iTunes. If you go with this option instead of the cash voucher, there’s no counting fee, which saves you 8.9 cents on the dollar. Iced caffe mocha, anyone?

Miscellenies #2

It occurred to me last night that if you were a Christian pacifist, you should never vote for a Christian candidate for President.

If pacifism is taught in the Bible– that is, if war is always wrong in all circumstances– then a Christian should not, in good conscience, be able to take the presidential oath of office. That oath affirms that the President will “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” The Constitution stipulates, “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.” It doesn’t seem like a pacifist should be willing to take on that role. And if you think all Christians should be pacifists, then it seems like you certainly would not want to put a brother (or sister) in that position.

There’s a reason I was thinking about this, but it’s not interesting enough to explain.

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The radio show this morning was really fun. I’ll point you to the archived version when it’s up. We didn’t really get to much spiritual stuff, but the political topics were interesting. And of course, the whole spiritual/secular distinction isn’t legit, blah blah blah. I found out afterward that the host had really wanted to talk about evolution, but we ran out of time. Maybe they’ll have me back on.

My favorite Jake moment was a shout-out to Mike Kruger, as I blurted out while the host was trying to close up, “neutrality is a myth!” You’ll have to listen to get the context.