• Fruit Loops hurt. No matter how you eat them, they scuff up the inside of your mouth. I know, you can let them soak for a while, but who wants to eat soggy cereal?
• At Freshwater Church this Sunday — having braved an early winter storm to get there – we got to see Joel and Tim operating on no sleep. They’d just come back from Cleveland, driving all night through that early winter storm. Thankfully, Joel only had to say a few words, as he didn’t really say most of those words in an particular order. Instead, Jeff (I think? I could be wrong) lit the advent candle and did a sermon about Hope.
• A lot of people seem to think that lighting an advent candle is pretty hokey, but being the lover of tradition that I am, I like to see a church expressing a connection with the past. Partaking in an ancient tradition (Advent, not necessarily the lighting of candles) and singing the songs of that tradition remind me that I’m part of something that extends beyond me, beyond just the present, and into the past and future.
• My workplace is moving soon — not just me, the whole thing — meaning I’m going to be 10 minutes closer to home. Everyone else, on the other hand, is 10 minutes farther away, or more if you count the trickiness of the highways in that area. It also makes taking the bus quite feasible, actually, as it cuts almost a half hour off the bus ride, thanks to the trickiness of the bus routes in that area.
• When it comes to grammar I’m really not a prescriptivist. Grammar and language need to be free to evolve, and let’s face it, you can’t stop that evolution. No matter how hard they try, prescriptivists will always, always fail. If someone expects me to use a gender-specific pronoun when the subject’s gender is indeterminate, they’re crazy. If that person wants me not to end my sentences with prepositions, I have a place they can go to. You see what I mean?
• When John asked Jesus whether or not he was Messiah, Jesus sent a surprising message back. Surprising in what he didn’t say, I mean. John was obviously doubting Jesus, but Jesus had no condemnation for him. He didn’t list the number of Torah passages he had fulfilled. He didn’t send a letter with three well-argued points and a rousing conclusion meant to nicely wrap things up. He said, look at what I am doing: the blind can see, the lame can walk, the dead are being raised to life. This if, of course, not the only way Jesus used to bolster the faith of individuals, but is it so hard to believe it should be the same way with us today? Are we the true religion? Look at what we are doing: the poor are being fed, single mothers are being looked after, war-torn countries are being rebuilt, people are being shown the light of the gospel and being invited into the family. Am I wrong in thinking this might be what real religion looks like?

Attribution and License for the above photo.

Today I’m doing with English what technical people in Germany do with German: making big, long, impressive words.

• Email: binarycommicationoverderinterwebben
• Coffee: blackunbrownuncreamunsugar
• Church: dasopenbiblenraisenvoicenpreacheranten
• Calvinism: bygracemchosencallensavenforgiven
• Blogs: disandatanwhatihadenmylunchenboxenpluswhinen

It’s not often I have the opportunity to lay “Qoph” down on a Scrabble board. But I do today. On a double word score. Watch out world!

I’ve stopped trying to make people speak and write properly. Or at least I’ve stopped expending the effort with strangers. I still annoy my friends with the difference between “well” and “good”, between “number” and “amount”, even though I think continual exposure has brought about in them a special immunity.

For one thing, it’s not worth the amount of time and effort. I’m not an educator. No-one is paying me to increase literacy. I haven’t, that I can remember, volunteered to do so.

For another, there needs to be a divide between the people who can speak well, and the people who cannot. It’s obvious, isn’t it? Badly educated people generally speak badly educated language, and vice versa. Only some sort of misguided egalitarianism would try to force stupid people to speak smart English: you have to understand that these people don’t want to speak good English. They don’t care about speaking well.

I’m not saying that these people are worthless. Far from it. Everyone has his place in society. But let’s not pretend that all people are the same; there are smart people and stupid people, rich people and poor people, well-spoken people and the almost-illiterate.

When I speak and when I write like I know the English language, I display something about myself. Is it a bad thing to say that I’m in a different class from rednecks, hillbillies, gang members, street people, and the sorts of people that r1t3 <3 71k3 tHiS u n0? I don’t think so.