Random

Does this sound hinky to you?

Get a call last week (actually, while I was at youth group) from a man who's looking for a youth group for his kid and the church office gave me his number. Doesn't leave a name, and when I call him back, won't give his name or his son's name until I really press for it, and then doesn't give a last name. Phone number is an exchange I'm not familiar with (but it could be a cell phone). Man asks about "paperwork" that needs to be filled out. Seems confused and almost disappointed when I tell him that we're a small group and that there's really no paperwork to come to the youth group.

Also, he is totally noncommittal when I encourage him and his son to come to church on Sunday.

So I don't know if they'll be here today. I tend to be suspicious of people who know my name (and have other details like my phone number) but don't want to give me their name.

(My horrible suspicious side says, could they be spies from the 'walkaway' group, trying to find dirt on the church, or trying to catch me out in some teaching that's not strictly orthodox?)

(And my people-pleaser side says, you need to have an extra-good lesson this week so that the new kid will want to stay.)

(And my fearful side says: what if the other kids are all squirrelly today and it's chaos and someone says something rude and it turns out new kid and dad are like Mr. Flanders and son and they're horribly shocked at the behavior of the teenaged boys).

I don't know; I'm just apprehensive.

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'Nother one of these:



I had to go back to campus around 5 pm yesterday for something. Coming up my street, I saw a woman on the cross street going slowly and weaving a bit. (I had the stop, she had the right of way). I stopped; she stopped and waited. I waited a bit and tentatively inched forward. Then she got a clue - this wasn't a stop street for her - and without looking at me, proceeded through the intersection. (If I'd had kept going she would have t-boned me). As she passed, I noted that she had a cell phone mashed to her ear, was talking animatedly, and driving (her big SUV) one-handed. And she wove on down the road.

If I hadn't been so much in shock I would have taken her license plate number and called the cops. Not that they would have done anything, likely (I have a friend who called the cops once to report that a guy was chasing his adult son down her street with a rifle and the dispatcher basically said, "What do you want ME to do about it?").

Seriously - I tend to be as opposed to the nanny-state as anyone. And I know there are people who can handle driving AND talking on a cell phone. But it seems like the only people who talk on cell phones while driving are the ones who can't handle it.

If you are weaving on the road while you drive, it means you should either stop what you are doing that is making you weave, or you should pull over. Simple as that.

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Seriously? What did people do before cell phones? It seems like everyone I see out anywhere is talking on them.

Now, maybe I'm just not as deep a thinker as most of these people, but I don't have that much to SAY. I mean, I love my friends, but I'm not going to call them up and talk about what I ate for breakfast or what brand of maxi-pads I use or the weird dog that's in the yard I happen to be walking by or crap like that....I just find it really hard to believe that all of these people talking on cell phones are having deep and meaningful conversations with the other person.

And you know? Maybe I'm just a cranky misanthrope but I'd be really annoyed if one of my friends called me up and spent the whole time talking about pointless stuff like I listed above...or TMI stuff like a lot of the things I overhear when I'm in the grocery store.

Seriously, y'all - I know all about getting boils lanced, thanks to someone's cell-phone conversation.

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I don't really fly but I have to admit I'm kind of happy the FCC voted not to allow cell phone conversations on planes. Not for any kind of safety reason, though. Not because I'm afraid that my landbased calls would be dropped because Joe Blow in the plane flying over my head is bogarting my cell tower. No, I'm glad, because I already consider being trapped on a plane to be one of the lower circles of Hell, and having to listen to people:

discuss the minor operation they had last week
talk about their sexual/binge drinking exploits
yell at one of their subordinates
call up some reservations-center and do the "Do you know who I am?" tactic to try to get a room or tickets
do the "you're smoopy!....no, YOU'RE smoopy!" talk with their SO
or
carry on a domestic dispute over the phone

would make it even worse.

The last time I traveled "coach" on Amtrak, it was almost unbearable - I was already shrecked up and worried (I was going home because my dad had a bad medical report and was going in for further testing, one possible outcome of which was going to be open-heart surgery, which, thank God, it turned out he didn't need) and the train was horrifically late. But I SO did not need the woman behind me calling her husband every half-hour of the night to tell him where she was and how late the train was. And I SO did not need the million, zillion annoying ringtones that seemed to go off every 3 minutes. And I SO did not need the man calling Amtrak and yelling at the rep for the train being late (when it really wasn't Amtrak's fault: it was shortly after Hurricane Katrina and train traffic was screwed up all over the east, southeast, and central part of the nation).

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I'm beginning to wonder if the theme of the 21st century is going to be "Facts don't do what I want them to."

The whole 9/11 "conspiracy" thing (Now they're saying heat won't melt steel? WTF?). The "We aren't going to teach facts that may offend some of our students" non-treatment of the Holocaust in some schools. (I expect the teaching of evolution will be the next thing to be removed, on the grounds of "the evidence be damned, it upsets people.")

Look. It's a big world. As I said the other day - you do not have the right to not be offended. There are going to be some facts out there that are ugly and upsetting.

Hell - I find the fact that the Holocaust happened ugly and upsetting. Even moreso that some people that I'm related to (I'm part German) may have been involved in doing it. It is one of the most deeply troubling things I've learned about the human race, that we're capable of stuff like that (and yeah, I know: Cambodia. And Stalin. And Saddam. And Darfur. And others. It seems sometimes like evil is the default position for humanity).

But just because I find something disturbing, doesn't mean I'm going to say it shouldn't be taught.

I'm disturbed by some of the ugliness Christians have committed in the name of our God - the Inquisition and the Crusades are two things that come to mind. But it's important to know that stuff, to acknowledge the bad of the past and say, well, let us strive to do better.

(but the "apology" thing, not so much... I saw the story on the lone protestor who basically peed on the attempt by Britain to apologize for the slave trade. The reason I see apologies for things that happened hundreds of years in the past as pointless is because the people who perpetrated them are dead, and the descendants may know nothing of their ancestor's actions. Or....like my family....I have ancestors who owned slaves, ancestors who were poor white Southern basically-sharecroppers, and ancestors who were abolitionists. So what camp do I fall in? Do I still have to apologize for that great-uncle twice removed when I have a passel of great-aunts who were on the "right" side of the cause? How do you do the calculus of who has to apologize and who doesn't? And for that matter, to whom? An even more extreme case is someone who is the descendent of BOTH a slave-owner and a slave...

And anyway, it seems like offering apologies in those cases open up old wounds, get people to demand more, and to basically say, well, I don't accept your apology, so YOU STILL OWE ME.)

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I generally tend to roll my eyes over conspiracy theories. Part of it may be that I'm a scientist, and therefore versed in "the simplest explanation that fits the data is assumed to be correct" (and most conspiracy theories are Byzantine in their complexity). Or part of it may be that I simply prefer not to believe that people are capable of great evil (which is what a 9/11 conspiracy involving the government would require) unless I am truly and unavoidably forced to confront that fact (like the evidence of the Holocaust).

I don't know. I know a few people who go in for conspiracy theory type things. It seems like a very paranoid way to be; it's like everything has a subtext, nothing is what it seems on the surface. And I find that too exhausting of a way to be.