Stuff Girls Like: Cute

As you all know, if a word is overused out of context it begins to lose all meaning. However, girls have somehow figured out a way to use the word "cute" to describe everything in the world that they like and still retain the essence of the word. At least that is what they claim. If a girl ever tells you that something is cute, please do not disagree, because you are wrong. If they said it's cute...it is. Even if it is the exact opposite of the last thing they said was cute. You can disagree all you want, but they will just roll their eyes...although they might think your ignorance is cute.

Examples of things that are cute:

Boys, but never who or when you expect it.

Children and babies, no matter how ugly, are cute.

Old people are cute if they are happy and or still married

Anything smaller than usual is cute (don't believe me? go to Wal-mart and buy a "travel sized" anything and give it to a girl. It's cute)

Things that should be plain but have ugly patterns or weird colors instead
(That pink and brown polka-dot toaster us SO cute!)

Boys who are bad at things--"Oh Steve it's so cute when you try to cook."

Body piercings or tattoos are cute IF they are on a girl that they like. Otherwise they are gross

Over sized accessories are cute "my sunglasses are too heavy for me to hold my head up, but aren't they cute?"

Anything that any guy ever does in a movie is cute...even if it would be creepy or awkward in real life "Oh you showed up at my house with flowers because I didn't have a date for the prom...even though I've never met you before!"

Any girl who has a personality they like is automatically cute

Wearing multiple layers of clothing that don't match is cute

Anything made of snow is cute

All animals are cute

Sports cars can be cute if girls are driving them and "having fun." It also depends if they decorate the car with "cute" things on the inside.

Ugly couples are cute, but if seen individually are just ugly people

Shy and awkward people are cute (outgoing and awkward people are creepy)

Shoes are always cute no matter what

Female alternative/punk rock singers such as P!NK (she has tattoos and piercings)are cute.

So men, if you want to be irresistibly cute you need to be a small old man with tattoos and an eyebrow ring who always dresses in multiple layers of mismatched baggy stripped and dotted cloths and carries a gaudy cane and perhaps a belt that is six inches wide. You also need to be awkward and bad at stuff, like recording punk-rock albums, and you need to come on strong all the time like a guy in the movies, and possibly keep a lot of small children and animals in your house at all times. Also, being ugly doesn't hurt. If you take these recommendations you will instantly turn into someone that all the girls think is "cute."

Goals

I've heard it said that Abraham Lincoln was considered a deep thinker because he read so little. (That's because he thought about what he read though, not because he spent the rest of the time watching American Idol.) I've also heard it said that Phil Byers is considered a deep thinker because he reads all the time. Whatever. What I do know is that I'm drowning in books and one of my buddies said he was setting a goal of reading 20 books this year. Sounds good, so I'm in too.

You will notice on my list that I have read two children's novels. I'm counting them. Deal with it. No one wants to read my book reviews (apparently) but if you ever have a question about anything I've read I'm nerdy enough to answer you.

The Wheels on the Bus

For those of you who have not heard, I, Steve Conn, one of the least confident drivers you know, am now cleared to drive the Huntington University Mini-bus.

What is a mini-bus you ask? It's basically a fifteen passenger van in bus form, or perhaps a school-bus in fifteen passenger form. I'm not really sure why you would make a bus of this size but I do know one thing. They are uncomfortable.

Eric and I were sent on a cross-country escapade to save poor terrified Huntington Students from the clutches of Atlanta Georgia. Some of you may not know yet of my intense hatred for Georgia, but it is epic. Last time my friends and I had the misfortune of driving through Georgia we swore that we would not leave the car until we got to Florida and thereby not set foot in that cursed state.*

Eric and I realized about 10 minutes into the trip that the heater on the bus didn't work and that we might be in for a long ride. Which was fine with us because we figured it would be a good time for us to catch up and have a real heart to heart. To do this you had two choices. 1) Yell at the top of your lungs from the front passenger seat, which is actually located about four feet behind the driver, or 2) sit on the floor next to the driver with your eyes level with the dashboard and your butt on a line that says "no passengers beyond this line"


Eventually we picked up some Huntington Students who we didn't know and who didn't know us. But for some reason this didn't seem to distress them at all.

"Hi I'm Steve"
.....
"What's your name?"
"Amy"
"Hi Amy"
"......"
"......"
"Hi."

I love connecting with students!


We made such good friends that trip. And possibly some enemies. For three hours they were forced to play games and solve riddles with us. After that I gave them a "history" lesson on Indiana, and threatened to perform a reader's theater of whatever book I could find on the bus. Also, Eric is slightly obsessed with not stopping on road trips. In fact we refused to even CONSIDER stopping for gas until the gas-light came on. When you heard the tell-tale "ping" that might trigger panic in some first-time bus drivers with a load of disgruntled students Eric would say "do you think we should stop for gas soon?" This caused problems once when a student in the back yelled "are we going to stop for lunch soon? I'm starving."

I looked at Eric, he looked at me, and I said "I'm sorry, we'd like to stop but we still have a quarter of a tank left." None of the students from that trip have talked to me since.

*Sadly, a two hour traffic jam and too many fluids foiled that plan for me, but as I walked back to the car from the woods where I took my "relief" I rationalized it by saying that the only reason I set foot in Georgia was to pee on it.

It's a jumble

Hello two or three people that continue to read my blog despite the fact that my entries have become increasingly rare over the last few months. Rest assured I am back at Huntington where I don't have a life and I will have ample time to blog all my precious thoughts.

I just have so many thoughts over the last few days that I'm not sure where to start.
So before I jump into my regular habit of making fairly obvious semi-spiritual observations about life I am going to just bullet-point some ideas that have occurred to me recently. (Many of these thoughts come from the time I drove to Atlanta and back in two days)

The Varsity is a great place to eat
Shane Clabourn is unnecessarily obsessed with sidewalk chalk
Jeopardy does not need to be broadcast in HD
Digital TV coupons are no longer available
BOTH coaches for the NCAA championship game were from Ohio
Super-bowl MVP Santonio Holmes played at THE OSU
I really do NOT desire to return to grad-school
hall-directing is better than activity coordinating
Macedonians are loud
I discovered a half price book-store and a broke down...but the books were so cheap
I head Kelly Clarkson's new Song "my life would suck without you"
A bus is no place to be for 11 hours if the heater doesn't work
I'm in love with Cortney Korshak
I can drive a bus now
Lost cities is the best game ever


Sorry if you have been waiting for something else, but I will be back soon with more of the "enlightainment" that you all know and love so well.

random thought

So how many times have you heard a public speaker (especially in church) use the expression "...feels like getting picked last for the kick-ball team"?

I'm assuming that the answer is "quite often, though I wasn't keeping track."*
And two things occurr to me every time I hear it.

1) Why is it always kickball? They assume that every child in America plays kickball with a fiery passion that that makes it a staple in his/her early development. There were many other games (even in those days) and many of them involved me being picked last. I am OFTEN times picked last for basketball because a dwarf with stomach cramps every time I get near the ball and I have a tendency to chuck it the minute it touches me hands like it's a hot potato.** But no one ever mentions basketball, because people assume that it is not as scarring of an experience to be picked last for basketball. That, or they assume that no child in America was ever bad enough to be picked last for basketball. Mathematically it doesn't make sense, I know, but I haven't heard anyone else admit to being picked last for basketball.

2) There are a LOT of people who have never been picked last for kickball. Even I have never been picked last for kickball because basically the only skill required in kickball is running for short distances in a straight line. And there are usually about fifteen or so kids playing on a team, cause you always play in Gym class. So if you look like at least the 29th fastest kid out of 30 (or in other words, the top 97%) you probably aren't going to get picked last that day.

And so how is Lebron James supposed to feel when the pastor talks about that kid getting picked last? Lebron has no clue. It's never happened to him. You might as well say "yeah it's like when your house blows up." Most people don't know what this is like.

I understand that everyone could IMAGINE what it is like to be picked last but I just wanted to draw attention to the fact that perhaps this comparison isn't quite universal as you might think. and if I've offended anyone who got picked last for kickball, I'm sorry, but if you want to get even you can challenge me to a game of basketball.

*That's a good response, and honest, thank you.
**This is not because I am trying to pad my stats, but because every second I have the ball I feel like I just forgot my lines on stage during a 4th grade Christmas pageant and the sooner I can either dish it to a friend or hear the familiar rattle of the ball bouncing off the rim (if I'm lucky) the sooner the attention will be back on the athletes.

Trees

Thanks to the lovely Cortney Korshak I have been introduced to the writings of Shane Claybore. This is the kind of guy I normally do not like. He's like Rob Bell on Pot. He probably travelles the world sampling delicious coffees from distant lands and strokes his gotee while writing about them in a beat up journal that he slips into a leather "man-purse," and if he doesn't have a Macbook I will become a vegitarian.*

But his words have shaken something in me that I find startling. I have been told by catchy book titles that my God is both too small and too safe. And I agree with the truth of these statements. And throughout the last four years my God (or more specifically my image thereof) has grown considerably in size and in scope.

But what I've realized that I have mostly learned about this growing God from people like me and with professors like me, and from churches like mine, and from books that people like me write and read. I just realized that my God is a white american evangelical God.

Not that there is anything wrong with that. But I've relized that my image of God has just grown into a larger version of itself. All the change in my perception of God has been quantitative and not qualitative. It's like I planted a tree in my back-yard and I'm just waiting for it to grow. First it was a little pine tree, and some day it will be a big pine tree, but it was always a pine tree.

Well I don't think I really have that good of a handle on it. I bet God is a tree, and I bet he has pine branches, but he's probably also a spruce, a maple, a palm, an oak, and he might even grow exotic fruit.** I want to understand more of God than just the bits of him I've gotten here at Taylor. I would NEVER speak out against Taylor but I'm growing in the realization that this is just one place, just one piece of the puzzle, just one branch, and I want to see more of the tree.

*Just kidding folks, I would never do that
**I had a mango the other day, it was delicious but stringy

Ligtning Rods II

And now the glove is on the other foot.

What is the other benefit to being "Mr Integrity?" Simple, the ability to speak into other's lives. Many of us would like to mind our own business and let other people live their lives without our interference. Now it's true that we don't control other people and in the end we are only responsible for our own lives and our own actions. We don't have responsibility for anyone else.

However we do have responsibility TO others to help them recognize the sins in their lives. You might think "well yes that all well and good if they've asked for you help, but if they haven't it's none of your business." Sorry, that's wrong.

Like it or not when you join the body of Christ it is with the inference that you want everyone else's help. And whether or not you think you've asked for it you have. So don't think other people don't have the right to tell you how to live...cause they do.

Now that means "within reason" and pertaining to certain things, I'm not suggesting that every facet of our personal lives are up for discussion, but you get the idea. The main problem is that people get really huffy when you have the nerve to help them out. And then maybe they think "well how would YOU like it if I nit-picked your life?" There's only one way to deal with this sort of situation--Let them.

And when you mess up, and you will, those people you've corrected will be right in your face, excited to catch you in the act. They will say "I thought you didn't do that sort of stuff Mr. Integrity." And you'll say "I'm sorry, thanks for reminding me."

Don't be surprised of the other person stops resenting you and you both sin less. It happens.