this is no longer my blog

1. The Christmas marathon is officially OVER! Never in all of my years of existence have I ever been so thankful for Christmas to be over. Don't get me wrong. I am very appreciative that God became flesh and lived among us about 2000 years ago to save a wretch like me. But packing so many worship services into so few days seems almost inhumane. It didn't back in the day when I could pick and choose what services I wanted to go to. And especially back in the day when I wasn't responsible for sermons at 3/5 of the worship services. So it's over. And I'm happy. I won't know what to do with a WHOLE WEEK before I have to preach again... Weird.

2. WALMART IS CRAZY. And I don't know what possessed me to think, about an hour and a half ago, that it would be a good idea to go to Walmart to pick up some contact lense solution. And a soda pop. But for some reason I got my arse up off of the sofa, put on a coat and drove to Walmart. I think that today they were doing an experiment to see if they could fit the population of India inside their store. Just numberwise. I don't think I actually saw anyone of Indian descent in the store. There was one in a van driving through the parking lot. Maybe he had enough sense to not go inside.

3. While my arse was firmly planted on the sofa, one of the shows that was on TV was VH1's "My Coolest Years" which is when they pinterview the celebrity C List to get them to talk about their high school years. And they remember them with so much fondness. They could never get me to be on that show. Maybe the first two years of high school were good, and I thought that I might be slowly working towards achieving coolness... But then my parents up and moved and I was transplanted in Hickville, USA. Where to be cool you needed to A)be a cowboy, B)play football, C)be a raging arsehole, or D)all of the above. Needless to say, except for maybe sometimes letter C, I was no good at any of those. But my performance in C was so inconsistent that they didn't even take that into consideration. So I mainly hung out with these two computer nerds. And the foreign exchange student sat at our lunch table. But he was a prick. But I think people liked him less than me, so we let him stick around.

4. Today at our contemporary worship, I think the band was on drugs. Me included. We get together earlier in the week to practice the songs that we'll be singing, so at least those of us responsible for leading the congregation in song will have some idea of what is going on. But with the way we performed today, we may as well have been sight reading. People singing the wrong verses, the piano player playing things incredibly slow. During several songs I had no idea what was happening towards the end, so I just stopped singing. It was FAN-FREAKIN-TASTIC!

5. Speaking of contemporary worship, we had a baptism today. I was in my office prior to our contemporary service when I saw the family come inside with the baby. The mom of the baby stopped at my office and said "Yeah I'm [enter name here] the mom of [enter name here] who's being baptized today. I didn't know if we needed to come in early or not..." "Oh," I said. "That's fine. The pastor is down in the sanctuary." "Oh, okay." said the mom. "Where is that at?" Then 9/10 of the family didn't participate in any real visible way throughout the whole service. So why come? Why bother getting your baby baptized? I'm being bitter.

6. So the Gospel lesson today, on the day that this baby was being baptized, was when King Herod WAS KILLING BABIES!! I thought, as I was preaching, that this might be horribly scarring to the family. So I turned to them and made some comment in the middle of my sermon that Herod just killed the boy babies. Since their baby was a girl, she'd be safe. People laughed. The family kind of did that uncomfortable I-don't-think-you're-funny-in-fact-you're-kinda-weird-but-i'll-just-laugh-to-be-polite sorta laugh.

I've already taxed my tired brain cells beyond what they deserve after this weekend. So I'm going to go replant my arse back on the couch and drink my soda pop and watch some quality intellect-enriching television! SWEEEEEEEEEEEET!

*footnose* (i know it's supposed to be footnote, but i accidentally typed "footnose" and that made me laugh, so i kept it): One parishioner, after the 8am service, told me that I chose the right profession. So that made me happy. I told him thank you. And then I pushed him down the stairs.