This I know...

• I like bacon. A lot.
• In five days or less, I will begin using phrases such as "my daughter" and "the kids" and "Wow, having two kids really is twice as expensive as having one" and "Hey drooling punk, quit staring at my daughter....yeah, I'm talking to you over there in the blue stroller." [For those who don't know, Amy will be induced on Monday if the baby girl hasn't made her own way into the external world by then. And no, she doesn't have a name yet.]
• I'm not interested in your suggestions about what we should name our child.
• I am so Lance Armstronged out. Seriously, we get it. All the cancer left his body, he has an oversized heart, and he rides a bike faster than anyone else (especially in the mountains). Congratulations, Lance. You're the best bike rider ever. Hey kids on blue and yellow Huffys all over America - give up. You can't be as awesome as Lance (unless, of course, you contract and subsequently heal from a fatal disease, then ride your bike faster than anyone else in France 42 years in a row). Can we be done with it already?
• I have a diagnosable split-personality disorder triggered almost exclusively by incompetent and inconsiderate drivers, who turn me into a profanity-prone cliché of a man. Newsflash America: When you are in a left-turn lane and you see a round light approximately this color, it is not only your right but your responsibility to pull out into the intersection so as to be ready to make a swift left turn when traffic clears (and before the light turns approximately this color). If you choose instead to sit safely behind the white line, you will most likely cost both you and me the opportunity to turn left until we all sit through another full cycle of changing lights. Why is this so difficult to understand?
• I think Ricky Gervais is one funny Brit. Don't miss his Live8 bits.
• I think Andrew Osenga's thoughts on the contrast between Live8 and the Christian uberfest he played the same day are pretty important.
• Weird things happen in my mind. For instance, I visualize days of the week and months of the year. Monday has a particular static look in my head. So does Friday, and it's a different look. February looks one way, October another. These aren't associated seasonal images. These are unique visualizations that connect to the days/months before and after them to construct a whole that also has a particular look. There are others. If I were actually capable of doing something impressive with these weird things in my brain, I'd try to pass myself off as a savant. Sadly, I think I'm just weird.
• Other weird things happen in my mind. For instance, I've recently (and mostly involuntarily, if you can believe that) found myself repeatedly thinking about the following question: "If you had to choose a small number (say 20 or 30) of recorded songs for your personal listening collection and surrender the ability to listen to any other recorded music in any other form for the rest of your life, what songs would you choose?" Let me reiterate that I didn't intentionally come up with this question. I delete the emails asking me to list my favorite TV shows and describe my first kiss. I scoff at lists of the "Top 20 <whatever> of all time." I don't know what in my disturbed, juvenile subconscious produced this question, but there it is, rattling around my skull over and over for the last few days. And, for the record, the question didn't ask the Top 20 recorded songs of all time. It asked what songs I'd want to preserve for myself. There's a difference. Some of the songs I would want to hang on to would never make a Top 20 list of any kind. I doubt I'll ever actually make the list, but a few songs have consistently come to mind along with the question. My hope is that outing them will rid me of this nuisance thought pattern for good. In no particular order:

North Dakota, Lyle Lovett; Hard to Get, Rich Mullins; In Your Eyes, Peter Gabriel; Lonely Moon, Kevin Smith; Suspicious Minds, Dwight Yoakum; Carolina in my Mind, James Taylor; Easy, Lionel Richie; Walking in Memphis, Marc Cohn; At Last, Etta James; Sleeping to Dream, Jason Mraz; Let's Get it On, Marvin Gaye; The Man from Snowy River Soundtrack (some medley of a couple of instrumental tunes); Coming to Life, The Normals; Why Should I Cry for You, Sting; You Move Me, Susan Ashton; Fast Car, Tracy Chapman; One, U2.

I'm sure much of the list would change if tyrannical music terrorists really forced me into such a predicament, and I'll probably laugh at a few of these when I read this again in a month. Blame it on my weird brain. Oh, and a note to those of you in my life who record music for a living: Since the tyrants only seem to be interested in infringing on recorded music rights, I assume I'd still have you around to sing and play to me in person. Consequently your brilliant recordings are lost in the mass audiocide. It's sad, I know, but oppression is a bitch.

• Once in a while I use words like the last one in that last paragraph, especially when linguistic rhythms make anything else seem inadequate. No sense in pretending otherwise.
• I like my life. I like my wife. I like my boy. I like that, though I'm scared to death of having a girl, I'm more excited than scared about seeing her face. I like my family, blood and covenant. I like writing. I like Jesus. I like the idea of "what's next" for me in terms of how I spend my time and make my money, even when "what's next" doesn't seem clear enough or close enough. I like getting to write here, and I like when you write here.

Comments

[Bookie]

Thanks for the laughter and tears. Ok, I really didn't cry. I'm surprised you omitted David Letterman among your many thoughts but I guess this wasn't an all-inclusive list of the products of your brain activity. Letterman is pretty great, though. He ranks right up there with bacon.

[darren]

Weird. That's the same list I have.

[Scott]

It's nice to laugh and even better to know that you're not dead.
I like turkey, especially the kind that is processed into wafer thin sheets and packaged as sandwich meat. If it isn't really turkey then I really like the mystery substance that is processed into wafer thin sheets and packaged as "turkey" sandwich meat.

[todd]

I'll be praying for you and your family for the birth of your daughter. Are you feeling old yet?

I'm with you about Lance. I think he's just a freak of nature.

Live8 vs. Celebrate freedom. Hummmm. I think this is comparing apples to oranges, but some interesting thoughts come to mind. (Live8 is supposed to be about helping the poor and such where Celebrate Freedom is supposed to be a fun event for families to celebrate July 4th). It seems to me that it's extemely easy to be hipicritical when talking about helping the poor. Are all these rock stars really helping the poor by singing? I mean you can get a whole bunch of people together and sing Kum-bye-yah and make everyone feel warm and fuzzy, but are you really helping people? I guess you could make a case that there are some jobs to be had during the event. How much do rich rock stars actually give to the poor? I by no means have any room to talk, but I just wonder what the motivation really is. I would hope that some of them really do have good hearts.

To me, the best way to help the poor is to give to them when they are in need and while doing that, teach them the things they need to know so they can give to someone in need in the future. As the saying goes, "Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime"

Todd

[Bookie]

If poor people are anything like my coworkers, their philosophy is, "Whether you give me a fish or teach me how to fish, in six months when I need a fish I'll give you a call because I'm too stupid to remember or too lazy to do it myself."

[todd]

Ah yes, the entitlement mentality. People like this aren't poor, they're idiots.

Being poor in the US is an attitude problem. Being poor in many places in the world is a tyranical leadership problem.

[thad]

Yikes. I'm not sure we're really getting the point of all that. Without getting too preachy, let me just make a couple of clarifications.

Never mind, I’m going to post about this separately.

[thad]

Now that we've steered all that talk to another topic, back to the original comments...

Matt: Please be more sensitive. I'd never include both Letterman and bacon in the same post out of respect for his heart condition.

Darren: My post is a list including a couple of sublists. Clarification please.

Scott: I contend that all white meats derived from dead birds are overrated. Chicken in particular has to be the most overrated meat of all. Chicken only tastes good if you put stuff that tastes good on or around it. Beef can stand on its own. Obviously bacon and other pork can do the same. Chicken, no way. Anyone trying to hack down a dry chicken breast knows this, and you're just a health-poser if you insist otherwise.

[darren]

Exactly.

Okay, I was actually talking about the 20 songs. And no, maybe that's not my exact list but certainly a worthy list of contenders.