Is It Over Yet?

It has been a great summer riding Triumph up and down…I’m planning to ride as late into the fall as possible, maybe winter? Is it even possible? I see bicyclists riding their bikes all through winter, why couldn’t I do the same in my motorcycle? We’ll see, I want to be alive and in one piece next spring.

Killer Lights

Traffic light…you think it is as simple as red=stop green=go but no…that dreadful monster likes to mix things up a bit and add to your daily stress and chiropractor bill, for the first time we unveil its tactics…

Suicidal Yellow: A suicidal yellow is when you are approaching a traffic light that is green and the light changes to yellow at a precise distance that’s just suicidal because you are too far away to make it through the yellow yet too close for a smooth full stop. Very stressful situation my friends, very stressful. If you decide to go through you will be that idiot who goes through the intersection an almost gets hit by other cars. If you instead decide to stop, which pretty much involves slamming on your brakes (unless you want to come to a full stop in the middle of the intersection) you will be the reason why the insurance of the driver behind you will go up or you will be the recipient of many profanities due to his coffee being spilled because his intentions are to squeeze through the light behind you. I hate Suicidal Yellows.

Neck Breaker Green: Neck Breaker Green is a mean one…you are approaching a red light and you start slowing down your ride to eventually come to a full stop. As you are about to come to a full stop, at about two and half inches from accomplishing such maneuver, the light switches to green forcing you to quickly go from slowing down to acceleration in a split second. This causes a neck jerk that if repeated multiple time your nickname will soon be ‘Joe bobblehead’. The effects of this light are increased by 87.2% if you are the driver on front, all the pressure is on you to quickly get the traffic going again. I believe Chiropractors love this one.

3-2-1 Pedestrian: This one is a a developing trend, you might have noticed that some lights, not all of them, have a countdown for the pedestrian light. This feature is received with mixed feelings among fellow drivers, I’ve heard some drivers get stressed when they see the evil countdown decreasing its numbers. Others like me love it, because I know whether I have a chance at beating the evil light or not. What’s the other option? the orange hand flashing? How do you know if it’s going to flash ten more times or just two…believe me, once it stops flashing you better be ready to halt your horse.

How do you counterattack?

Finally Arrived At The Shack

No, I’m not talking about the electronic store formerly known as Radio Shack; nor I’m talking about being at some cabin up north. I’m talking about the book that’s pretty hot right now. I bought the book soon after being published because it was buzzing in the blogosphere long before it made it to mainstream. It took its place on my ‘to read’ pile and has been there since then, however all the sudden the book made it to mainstream and everyone started talking about it so I had to read it. Actually this was my second attempt, the first time I tried it wasn’t engaging enough so I didn’t feel motivated to go back to it and it basically waited there for me to pick it up sometime after reading other books.

The two most common critics this book receives is that it was poorly written and that its theology is very sketchy. In regards to first one I’m going to say yes it is poorly written (this is coming from the guy whose english is his second language). However we need to take into account the author is not a writer, he just wrote that story for his kids whom motivated him to publish it and basically no body wanted to publish him so he published it himself, or something like that goes the story. I’m pretty sure those who rejected him are banging their heads against a wall right now.

To the second point I’m going to say two things, one the author has made it clear that this is a novel and by no means he claims that the story actually happened or the views exposed are true. Which I personally think is like when you tell something to someone and wait for their reaction and if you see they didn’t like it you just say ‘just kidding’…my wife hates it when I do that. That’s what I think Young is doing, he is telling everyone what he thinks and then he is just saying ‘just kidding, it’s just a a novel’. Yes, there are some aspects where he walks a very fine line and steps into dangerous territory, but that’s not the point. Those that criticize him for promoting bad theology are falling into the same trap he exposes in the book (which I think is very funny) and that is that we have fallen into a deep religiosity in our view of God and our relationship with Him. We have lost our sight and made God an accessory, we know so little yet we claim to know so much and out of it have transformed Christianity into something far from what it should be.

Imagine I pluck a single hair strand from someone you don’t know and I give it to you and asked you to tell me everything there is to know about that person, you couldn’t, you could tell me some characteristics but you couldn’t tell me everything there is to know about that person. The same way I think about God, we know so little that and based on that little information we have we defined God and basically put him in a box. For all we know I think God might be something totally different.

I think the great thing about this book is that it is able to speak in many different ways to people in different situations, to me it spoke about religiosity in Christianity. How did it resonate with you?

Another Year, Another Crown [Miss Universe]

Congratulations to the Venezuelan Stefania Fernandez on her Miss Universe 2009 victory. BTW, she is only 18 years old, can you believe it?.

I feel very troubled about this…on one hand I feel proud that my country is known for having won the most crowns in the history of the Miss Universe, although wikipedia lists the USA as the country with the most wins, but I think there is an exception about that.

On the other hand I think it’s kinda’ sad that we are known for such vanity. I don’t know what to think.

The Bear On The Consumerist

My bear picture is being featured on The Consumerist this week. I took this picture at The Lake Superior Zoo this past July (click picture to see original). Too bad I couldn’t get that close to the live bears without a thick glass in between

I’m falling more in love with photography every time (can you tell by the previous posts on this blog?) if you are in the Twin Cities area and in need of some photography services let me know, I’m probably the cheapest photographer you can get.

To see some more of my pictures you can go here.

Thanks Consumerist for the love!