John Legend Explains the Importance of Nutmeg to Stephen Colbert

Thanks to Ailsa for this piece of joy.

from Caroline in Hong Kong, awesome subtitle work.

'God Grew Tired of Us' Trailer

Thanks to Mondo for this...The title is the part that strikes me.  From what Mondo said and from the trailer, this documentary is about the lost boys of Sudan and their struggle in acclimating to Dallas after being moved there.  The thought of God growing tired of us buzzes around in my brain and I don't quite know where to put it.  It makes God seem so human.

power to the people: Hong Kong

One of my best friends, Caroline, is in Hong Kong this semester and sent me this article.  Click on it to expand it.  I guess the web is the ultimate democratizing force.  But that brings up the questions of who is literate/educated enough to gain access and use the internet for expressing ideas and gaining support.  Regardless, way to go Hong Kong students.

ilovedust.com

most popular girl in middle school

OMG

So I just put two and two together and realized that I have been in the same room with Robert Pattinson, the guy who played Edward in the movie 'Twilight.'  

Here's the story: While at English L'Abri in the fall of 2006, some friends and I took a weekend trip up to Edinburgh and Glasgow.  Our friend Alison showed us around her home town Glasgow.  She took us to an open mic night in a cool basment bar and this guy in a leather jacket swaggered in.  His hair was deranged and he sat down with a guitar under the spot light.  He jammed out a song that was okay and said fuck a lot.  My friend Alison leaned over and said, "That's Robert somebody or another, he was in the Harry Potter movie."  

Being a huge Harry Potter fan, I remembered thinking that the Quidditch captian was pretty hot and was impressed and pleased with myself that I had seen the actor.  The best part of the story for me was that when we arrived back at L'Abri, we told our friend Lauren about the sighting and she confessed that she had written Pattinson fan mail.

So, thank you Robert Pattinson for doing more with your carreer so that I can be popular with middle school girls.  I appreciate it.  

Adoration

This movie kind of looks awesome. I don't understand the story line all that well from the trailer, but I like the emphasis on story affecting our lives and the scene where the main character is telling his story to twenty tiny video images of people on his desktop. What an interesting lecture. I wonder if all of the people could see each other, or if they could only see him, but he could see all twenty of them. That style of having conversation says something about something big. I just don't know what it is.

imdb: Adoration

awesome and hilarious.

Stuff Christians Like Blog

This is for Allie: Boston Report

Allie and I went to Boston this past weekend.  It ruled.  I want to move there.  

Fun Facts:

1. Lots of historical stuff went down in Boston.  We went in a museum and read about it.  I don't remember where we went but I got to stand where the Boston Massacre happened, and that's pretty cool.

2. Boston is on a peninsula, of sorts.  Fascinating! (look, it's true!)

3. Harvard sucks at football.  Yale does too.  We went to their rivalry game (are they rivals?).

4. The above picture is Allie next to the Charles river next to real live rowers.  Awesome.

5. Even with unbearable weather and no leaves on the trees, Boston was still extremely beautiful.  I want to move there.  

The End.

Department of Great Ideas: Ride 64

For the past eleven months, a large chunk of the main East-West highway in St. Louis has been closed for repairs.  This has made me and 2.5 million of my closest friends get creative when mapping our routes around the city.   

Well, the highway is opening up again before January (when the other major section of 64 shuts down for repairs for the next year) and some geniuses decided to have a huge bike ride on the newly opened section of hwy 40/i-64 before cars get a chance to go on it.  Awesome.

What: A fully supported car-free, bicycles-only ride on the new highway to raise funds for more bike parking in St. Louis County and City and for our ongoing work to make the entire region a better place to ride your bike whether it's for recreation, fitness, or transportation.

Date:  Sunday, December 14, 2008

Time:  12:00 – 2:30 p.m.  
(Advance registration is best to minimize your time standing in line to register.)

Where:  On the westbound lanes of Interstate 64 – enter the highway on bicycles only where it intersects at McKnight Rd. or at Ballas Rd.   Time Trial start and finish will be near the Ballas Rd. entrance. 

Who:  Anyone who loves to bike on car-free, bikes-only, smooth, wide pavement. Signing up also shows your support for more bike parking and other improvements to make the St. Louis region an even better place to ride a bike!

Fee:  $25 for adults; $10 for kids 15 and under or buy one adult admission and an individual membership in the BikeFed for $40 (a $50 value); FREE for Small children riding in a bike trailer behind their parents (no shirt included for free kids admission)

More Info Here

Beyonce at the American Music Awards

Single Ladies AMA Live
by yardie4lifever2

Streetballers

This is the HD trailer for the film that won the Home Audience Prize at the 2008 St. Louis International Film Festival.  I was so excited about it but never actually got off my butt to go see any of the films.  How sad.  

Way to go YouTube for going HD on some videos.  The quality is so poor usually.  

imdb: Streetballers

this is my favorite song from the prospekt EP

shuffling along

More on this thought later...

"UGLY: How Unorthodox Thinking Will Save Design, by Tad Toulis" from Core77 design magazine

things i need to save up for or miraculously find at a garage sale

Dansko

L.L. Bean Boots

hamburger dress

from Kanye

yeah boyyyyy....

padding around the house with my porridge in a bowl

this song gave me plenty of sass driving around in my 4Runner my senior year in high school

this is too often left unsaid.

Where am I? Who am I? How did I come to be here? What is this thing called the world? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted? And If I am compelled to take part in it, Where is the director? I want to see him. - Soren Kierkegaard

this is stolen from Jeff's fbook.  

Lost + Jay-Z

Aha, I gotcha, uh...
With the same sword they knight you, they gon' good night you with
Shit, that's only half if they like you
That ain't even the half what they might do
Don't believe me, ask Michael
C. Martin, see Malcolm
See Biggie, see Pac, see success and its outcome
See Jesus, see Judas
See Caesar, see Brutus, see success is like suicide
Suicide, it's a suicide
If you succeed, prepare to be crucified
Media meddles, niggaz sue you, you settle
Every step you take, they remind you you're ghetto
So it's tough being Bobby Brown
To be Bobby then, you have to be Bobby now
And the question is, "Is to have had and lost
Better than not having at all?"
Because I'm...

Sasha Fierce

I just downloaded Beyonce's new album, "I am...Sasha Fierce."  Yeah, the title is kind of cheesy, but that's why we all love Beyonce.  

Her last album (which rocked my world) was basically a letter to Jay-Z telling him that if he cheated on her he would regret it and she would sleep with all of his friends.  On a first listen-through it seems as though she has a "sadder but wiser girl" message on this album.  We'll see.  Beyonce is so complex.  

me gusta google

Google is amazing.

CNN Health article: "Google tool uses search terms to detect flu outbreaks"

"If you have a fever, headache and runny nose, you might go to Google and type the words "flu symptoms" to see whether you've come down with influenza.
Google knows that you might do something like that, and it also knows which U.S. state you're in. Now, it's putting that information together in a tool that Google says could detect flu outbreaks faster than traditional systems currently in use."

Google Flu Trends

going to my Dad's class...

"feels like 34 degrees outside"

wonderful.

from The Sartorialist, Moscow

kitten heels! hahaha...

(link)

Bee skit @ (Nov 15 2008)
by thebeyoncenetwork

(link)

little houses on the hillside,

little houses made of ticky-tacky.

CocoRosie

CocoRosie on imeem

The Dread Report:

courtesy of Sam, 7th grader, via facebook graffiti

Well, I kind of have dreads on the top half of my hair.  I like them.  They do not look like dreads unless you get really close up and feel them.  They mostly look like thick pieces of hair.  I also cut my hair myself two weeks ago.  It's completely uneven but as Sharon, my roommate, pointed out, it's not like I'm going for a smooth collected look, so a little unevenness doesn't matter. 

I've been thinking lately how many possibilities you have with your hair.  A picture on my desk in my room is of me and my parents at my high school graduation.  I have long straight blonde hair down to my chest.  The next week I got 10 inches cut off.  Now I have (to use Jeff's words) a hot mess of hair.  What's next?

Also, I was a little worried about how this would affect my relationships with high schoolers and middle schoolers at the youth group at my church.  Most of them think I'm weird anyways, so this doesn't really change things too much.  But a lot of them really think it's cool and have gotten behind it, checking every week on how they are developing.  It's really cute.  I guess the people I would have to worry about is the parents, but I don't interact with them that much anyways.  We'll see.  I'm not really sure if the dreads I have now are reversable.  I might actually have to cut a mullet to get rid of them.  Lesser of two evils?

This song popped up in imeem after the jay-z song and i really like it. she kind of reminds me of Laura Marling, Kate Nash, etc. enjoy.

Coldplayin it

At the Coldplay concert in Kansas City last night they played this song just before the band came on stage.

It seemed as though Chris Martin was a tad wasted for the first couple songs of the concert, which was kind of a buzz kill for the rest of us in the massive Sprint Center.  

My friends Cassie and Scott were sitting in the way up bleacher seats that we all had well before the show and some Sprint Center employees came up to them. They asked to see their tickets, took them and gave them front row center tickets. Apparently at every Coldplay concert there is a section up front center that the band does not sell and instead chooses people with crappy seats at random to sit there. My friend Julie remarked that these people probably make better fans anyway.

To be quite honest, I prefered the X&Y tour. They had weird chinese lantern-looking things this tour instead of the magic yellow balls bouncing around.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CAROLINE!

circa 2003 (I am Marge Simpson, she is Margot Tenenbaum)

One more time with Forde:

"The grace of God should lead us to see the truth about ourselves, and to gain a certain lucidity, a certain sense of humor, a certain down-to-earthness.  When we come to realize that if we are going to be saved, it shall have to be absolutely by grace alone, then we shall be sanctified.  God will have his way with us at last."

Sexy Brains: Gerhard O. Forde

I used to check this blog periodically by this brilliant and funny woman (I forget her name, but she's quite famous in the blogosphere) who had posts every now and then titled "Sexiest Brain Alive" or something along those lines.  

I'm reading Christian Spirituality: Five Views of Sanctification (I know...) for my Dad's class and it's actually really really awesomely interesting.  At least the first chapter is.  It's the Lutheran view on sanctification* vs. justification** by Gerhard O. Forde.  I think I might just become a Lutheran because I like the way this guy thinks.  I am very easily seduced into views I don't necessarily agree completely with when someone is artful in their logic or thinking.

Forgive the typos.

"Even under the best of conditions, talk about sanctification in any way apart from justification is dangerous.  It has a tendency to become a strictly verbal exercise in which one says obligatory things to show one is 'serious about it' - but little comes of the discussion.  Perhaps one feels sanctified just by talking impressively about it.  The result of such talk is what I like to call 'the magnificent hot-air balloon syndrome.'  One talks impressively about sanctification, and we all get beguiled  by the rhetoric and agree.  'Yes, of course, we all ought to do that,' and the balloon begins to rise into the religious stratosphere solely on the strength of its own hot air.  It is something like bragging about prowess in love and sex.  It is mostly hot air and rarely accomplishes anything more for the hearers than rousing anxiety or creating the illusion that they somehow can participate vicariously.  We got started in that direction even in the above exercise in this thesis when we talked about how sanctification is 'spontaneous,' 'free,' 'self-forgetful,' 'self-giving,' 'uncalculating' and all those nice things.  Dangerous talk.  Dangerous because, like love, none of those things can actually be produced by us in any way.  Theology indeed obligates us to talk about them, to attempt accurate description, but unless we know the dangers and limitations of such descriptions, it leads only to presumption or despair.  So let the reader beware!"

*sanctification: the process by which we become more Holy on earth.

**justification: how we become a Christian, or, when we become cool with God because Christ died for us.

thanks to Jeff for this, and for permission to start listening to my favorite Christmas albums.

on the way back from the cowboy last night...

Kanye West: "Heartless"

Heartless from kwest on Vimeo.

Rotoscoping - is an animation technique in which animators trace over live-action film movement, frame by frame, for use in animated films.

i looked up into the night sky
and see a thousand eyes staring back
and all around these golden beacons
i see nothing but black

i feel a way of something beyond them
i don't see what i can feel
if vision is the only validation
then most of my life isn't real

"I turned Caucasian in 2 Weeks"

Ladonia

My favorite travel program, "Globe Trekker," was covering Sweden and Denmark the other day and Megan the host talked to a dude who invented his own country within a country, Ladonia.  It has 12,000 citizens and is currently at war with Sweden.  

The creator is the artist Lars Vilks who erected the two sculptures and protested the Swedish government telling him to take them down.  To ensure that Sweden would not succeed, Vilks created his own country.  On "Globe Trekker," Vilks simply stated that this was how countries were always formed, through war and decisions.  

Also the coolest treehouse/climbable sculpture in existence.

Ladonia's Homepage

Wikipedia: Ladonia

my beautiful caramel-colored nephew

New Lauryn Hill: "World is a Hustle"

compare and contrast

View Larger Map

For a group project in my Educational Foundations class, I went to visit a leadership meeting for the youth group of a church in Wellston, MO.  I hadn't ever heard of Wellston, but it's where you get to if you go to the loop on Skinker and keep on going past Delmar.  It's a super-poor part of town and reminded me a lot of East St. Louis: boarded up store fronts, prostitutes, homeless people, etc.  

Until we finally found the church.  The church's name was about 5 words strung together and has around 5,000 members and possesses a couple city blocks in Wellston, including a retirement facility, homes, multiple parking lots and multiple sanctuaries.  It was out of control.  

After interviewing the leadership team, I came away thinking that my church youth group had a lot more in common with this church's youth group in "the poor part of town" than we had differences.  The problems they listed that the kids were going through were identical: kids selling drugs, kids disbelieving that the church had something better to offer than college and their friends' desires for them, kids in dangerous or abusive home situations.  It was also very encouraging to see that both of our youth groups have the same responses: honesty about our own lives, listening, treating them like human beings when they ask questions.  

Since the ministries are so similar, what would be my limitations in going there and starting to minister to those girls?  Does it matter that I look and dress like the girls here in west county?  

Halloween: Bon Qui Qui

The inspiration: Bon Qui Qui

I decided to be Bon Qui Qui about a month ago after seeing the video (thanks to Meghan for showing it to me along with Anjelah Johnson's other funny video).  It's kind of a weird thing, dressing up like a youtube video character (I guess, technically she's a MadTV character) for Halloween.  She (or this character, rather) is a microcelebrity.  

Also, another theory about Halloween costumes: it's only cool if you are (a) a pun - like "I'm partly cloudy with a chance of showers" (like my roommate Allie was) or (b) put a lot of time and effort into being a true representation of your character.  Like a friend of mine in Columbia dressed up like Oscar Wilde to the T.  Very impressive and cool.