Friday, August 25, 2006

Corrections to my Zodiac information

The blogger site has my information incorrect but I can't change it. This is what it should be:
Zodiac sign: Crest Toothpaste












Zodiac year: Year of the kazoo













Zodiac symbol:

Probably my favorite painting of my King

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Was the Amazing Mumford Muted by the Bosses of Sesame Street???

Ever since the latest troubles in the Middle East have you heard him say A la peanut butter sandwiches??? Has anyone actually seen him on Sesame Street lately? Perhaps he was kidnapped????

Yeah Mumford...sure you did. Sell out politically correct sissy #@$%# muppet ticks me off!!!

Papau New Guinea?


No man can make you a victim and no man can make you a hero

Influences can be both positive and negative. I don't mean in how they make you act but rather how you react to them. I don't believe anything makes you act. I think the core of who you are remains almost a constant even if the whole core isn't known to you yet. The best way to find out that core is to throw stuff at it. See what bounces off, what sticks to the outside, and what actually manages to permeate to that core.
Some things can change the core but they have to be very very very powerful influences.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Ty Phillips of USSF www.ussfstrong.com


Not only could Ty squeeze a man into jelly he could recite the first act of Othello to that man while he's doing it! Fortunately Ty is a Rennaisance man and saves violence for those special occasions when nothing says "you are a bad boy, stop it!" like a fist through to the back of the cranium. In all seriousness Ty is a great guy and a tremendous re-source for people who want a field to throw and/or lift on. Check out his site: www.ussfstrong.com
The dork with the train hat on backwards is me. The other guy is Ty (also in the second pic).


What's a Caber???

This is a caber. This is what you do with it. God made trees to be thrown! :)





More of what I do for fun: A new wrinkle>Strongman



Monday, August 21, 2006

Want to throw stuff in the Highland Games? Go to these places.

If you are in Ohio or the tri-state area and you want to get in with some decent throwers and decent people in general go to www.ussfstrong.com for a great place to get started. Register for free and introduce yourself on the forum. A virtual guarantee that you will get all of the help you want here.

The place where almost all Highland Gamers go to find out about the games going on nationwide is www.nasgaweb.com . There is so much traffic on this page that you can get lost in the shuffle a bit.

How God Combined my Physical/Mental to make the base of who I am today.

So, how did my King put my physical/spiritual/mental inclinations and outside influences together? The ways are amazing (at least to me).

The neighborhood:

My neighborhood was rough and alienating a lot of the time when I was growing up and really stayed somewhat alienating in high school. I don’t think that this is unique to me as growing up anywhere can be cruel depending on the personalities making up the neighborhood. Don’t get me wrong though, there were a core group of friends who never stopped being my friends regardless of the politics/family opinions/pressures of the times. But I did spend a lot of time in my own little world, within a world, and I read a great deal. The more I read the more I wanted to know. So that cycle went on for many years. My King took this time to educate me in relationship dynamics with people of other skin tones as well as steering my education through my natural curiosity and desire to learn. Had it not been for where I grew up I might actually believe what the media and some “black leaders” say about black folks. Had it not been for my curiosity I would have never made it through school as a lot of my teachers were terrible. My cultural shock never really came until I was bussed into a wealthy white school.

I had friends in both arenas of life but never “belonged” to either socio-economic class. I didn’t have money and I wasn’t black. This taught me that friendship must be defined by something else. I came to the conclusion that friendship had to happen for friendship’s sake. Anything else that bonded people as a unit was artifice and largely based on things that they had no direct influence over in the first place. Melanin and wealth, or the lack of either, came from parents. Friendship was a matter of choice. I had a lot of friends with a lot of melanin and a lot of friends with money. I also was rejected by some people for having neither. The fact that no class or creed was an indicator of a friend or enemy taught me to take every human being one human being at a time. Make no assumptions about anyone.

My Grandma’s farm:
You could not find a more diametrically opposed environment from the neighborhood I actually lived in. This was a place of wild animals, uncut forests, stars at night with no city light, and silence a lot of the time. This was a place where I could see God’s hand without the influence of man. This was a place where I could talk without interruption with the Lord. It was in this environment when my earthly father most acted like my DAD. I don’t know if this was because this area of Ohio was his home turf, if it was because he wasn’t coming home from work, or if it was our mutual appreciation for the natural world but I do know that when we were here things went much better between us than any other time/place of the year.

My Family:
Their interests and life stories were wonderful training tools. The things they did that were good and the things they did that were not so good. I did my best to read all of what they did and the outcomes of their actions. I did my best to emulate the positives things I saw from them and avoid the less than positive things. I am of the firm belief that you do not have to be a carbon copy of your parents. I am also a firm believer that you can learn a tremendous amount from them and your siblings. But, needless to say, no matter how good these teachers can be and no matter how hard they try to help you, you make mistakes. I made a lot. Some mistakes were duplicate of mistakes my family members made and some mistakes were uniquely my own. Some good things they did/do I have yet to come close to emulating. I observed what lives lived apart from God’s direction look like. I have learned what lives lived with the heart’s desire to serve God look like. I have chosen the pursuit of Christ. I will, for as long as I live on this Earth, continue to strive to improve who and what I am. I will try to be a better servant both to God and to my fellow man. I know I will fall again and again but I hope to stay upright for longer periods of time between falls.

My Inclinations:
God took curiosity and turned it into enough knowledge that it allowed me to make it to college. As alluded to earlier, if I had only my teachers as a mechanism for education I would have failed my entrance tests, ACT etc.

God took my stubbornness and kept me from giving up in times of great stress like my father’s death. He also developed stubbornness into determination as I matured. (stubbornness=pride determination=perseverance).

God took my poverty/near poverty and allowed me to join the military. The irony is that I thought I was doing it for the G.I. Bill, which I never ended up using, but God was teaching me about my mortality. He was teaching me about the preciousness of life and the terribly cheap way in which it can be destroyed if we are not careful. He used this to teach me ever more deeply that the needs of my fellow man are much greater than my own.

God took my spitefulness for doubter’s statements and allowed me to gain a fair amount of physical strength for sports. Without this I would have never been looked at for football in college. Without the help of colleges, who wanted me for football, in finding financial aid I would have never known that college was possible for me. I always thought I was too poor. (I think I alluded to this in another post) Without the physical inclination there would have been no college. Had I not gone to Bluffton College to play football I would not have met my wife. Had I not met my wife I would have probably drifted further from the church. Had I not met my wife I would not have my son or my daughter. Had I not had my children, and my son in particular since I am male, I would not have healed from the unresolved issues with my father. In trying to raise my son better than my father raised his sons I have found a very strange balm. In the raising of my son with love I learned how to raise a daughter with love.

Ultimately out of all of this cycle God allowed me to know him early in life, to fall away from Him so that I knew how empty this life was without Him, and to find Him again. I believe he has done this for two reasons: 1. Because He loves me. 2. So that I can help others find their way to the fullness of life with Christ. I’m sure there is a bunch of other reasons too but these two things really stick out for me.

ABILITIES AND INCLINATIONS OF THE BODY

-At a very early age I liked to try to pick up heavy things. I think that was inspired in part by the song “Big Bad John”. I thought the song’s story was cool, still do, and that might be part of it. I used to pick up rocks the size of my head or bigger. I would get frustrated when I couldn’t and kept on trying. Weird.
-In elementary school, middle, high, and a little while in college I had asthma. I think what triggered it was the dirty environment I grew up in but I am not completely sure. Fortunately it was never officially diagnosed as such but I knew I had it and the doctor prescribed drugs for it even though it was never written down as such. Asthmatic is a label that can hurt you in areas where you are athletic and in some types of employment.
-When I was a kid I climbed trees. Lots of trees and not like other kids climb. I climbed to the tops to the point where the trees sway and are significantly taller that the two story house we lived in. I did it in part because it was there but I also did it because I was the only one there and wanted to see things a different way. At the time I didn’t know it though. I just did it. Looking back at the hours I spent this way I understand it. I didn’t realize I was exercising.
-I walked as a kid. A lot! I could spend 4-5 hours on the 100 acres and not know it. It was the pursuit of new things to see that kept me distracted. I would walk, look up at the trees, look down at the streams, turn over logs to see what was living there, play with random bugs, watch deer and other animals, but little did I realize I was exercising.
-I was skinnier than most kids my age and was laughed at when I went out for football and wrestling in high school. I never was in a competitive sport growing up until then. I ended up playing three years in high school and two years in college. Many of those laughing at the time are now in jail or hooked on drugs or dead. In my sophomore year of high school I started out at 160# and by the end of the year I weighed 210. At the beginning of my sophomore year I benched 150# and at the beginning of my senior year I benched 390#. I did realize I was exercising. Weights became a component of my living. You could always do more with it.
-Something key happened to my strength and sports development when I was a junior. I lost my dad the day after Thanksgiving that year. To say I was devastated would be an understatement. He died with unresolved issues between us and those issues stayed with me for well over a decade afterwards. In the newness of that pain my coping mechanism became weight training and anger and in my senior year of football I played far better than I probably would have.
-In the late Fall and early Spring of my Senior year several small colleges called me to consider playing for them. I ended up playing for Bluffton College. I actually had not considered college prior to the invitation as our counselors stunk and I was poor. Bluffton’s counselors were much better and showed me the well of grants and loans. The embarrassing thing is that I picked that school because it had several acres of woods on the campus. I gave no consideration to academic credentials and trivialized the capabilities of teachers my whole life. Why should college be any different? Fortunately it was for my sake. I learned more in college than 1st-12th combined.
-I have never taken well to anyone telling me I cannot do something. Consequently when I was younger I took a lot of stupid dares until I realized I was being manipulated. Other dares proved to be challenges that formed a great deal of who I am and how my life has turned out.

ABILITIES AND INCLINATIONS OF THE MIND AND SOUL.

-I learned to read when I was four.
-Read the Hobbit at the age of 9.
-Drew my first picture, of a bug, when I was 2. You could tell what it was. In college I only took one art class, in my last quarter, and my work ended up in a show. I wish now I had taken classes in high school and done art as a major in college.
-Had read through the New Testament a couple of times, and some parts dozens of times, before I was 14 and by my own choice.
-The first time I saw Monty Python and the Holy Grail I was 8. Not the best thing for an eight year old but I still love it.
-I never went through the “hating girls” stage as a kid. I first kissed a girl when I was three. Chased them ever since…till I got married.
-Watched PBS by choice as a kid and not just Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street. Favorite shows: Anything about nature, science, folklore, and mythology. I learned far more this way than I did in school (including 80% of my college).
-Walked in fields with bulls and horses before I was in kindergarten. They were my friends though and they knew it and I knew it. I was never in danger.
-Often got lost on purpose on the land outside of Athens just to see if I could figure out how to get back.
-Read over a dozen collection of Peanuts comic strips and still love A Charlie Brown Christmas more than any tv show or movie ever made. Charles Schulz work and Spiderman comics were key teachers for me in terms of human relationships, systems of honor and sacrifice, heroism, perseverance, true glory, and love. While they are just comics I found them to be illustrations of Biblical principles that I didn’t find shown, as often as I should have, at home or in the church.
-Types of pets past and present: Dogs, cats, rats, mice, spiders, skunk, pigeon, doves, pirhanna and other fish.
-My IQ has tested several times and lands between 137 and 139 without fail. I don’t take stock in these tests but the redundancy of the results is interesting.
-I was in the 91st percentile on my military entrance tests.
-I am, beyond a shadow of a doubt, ADHD.
-I have been told on many occasions by people who don’t know each other that I am supposed to become a preacher. I don’t know how I will ever teach as I am always the student.

THE MAJOR INFLUENCES OUTSIDE OF ME

1. PARENTS and GRANDPARENTS:
-Parents from Southern Ohio. Both born in 1929 and grew up through the depression.
-Grandparents from Southern Ohio and West Virginia. Both grandpa's worked on railroads. Both Grandpa's and grandma's farmed. Both grandma's teachers. Only one grandparent alive when I was born. Mom's Dad could deadlift a barrel of tar and did so on a bet (he liked to fight I guess too).
-Father liked Classical, Truckstop country, some rock, and loved Bluegrass. Electrical engineer. Artist. Carpenter (built small house single handedly outside of Athens and Mom lives there now). Mechanic. Road rally driver. WW2 vet. Dad didn't go to church. Dad believed in the wee people and talking to trees. Dad never used the word love to anybody but sometimes in his limited way he showed it. His Dad died when my Dad was only 12. Nature freak. He died when I was 16. I didn’t really heal from this until my son was born. Even after that every now and then the wound still opens and I miss him with deep sadness.
-Mother likes gospel music and Big Band. Mom is Pentacostal. Mom is a story teller and a gossip. Animal freak (especially dogs). Mom forced Jesus down my throat from birth. Lots of fire and brimstone. Misguided but a huge heart. Crazy as a loon. I will miss her when she goes more than I ever missed my Dad and that scares me.


2. SIBLINGS:
-Oldest sibling is 54 (I think). Closest to my age is 7 years older. Hippie music-disco-80's pop-Christian rock. All 5 children artistically inclined. A formally trained artist/hippie/pseudo wiccan (and much more), a historian (and much more), a business woman and great thinker (and much more), a singer (and much more), and me. All of us draw. Some of us sculpt/carve. Some of us paint. All of us write. All nature freaks. All readers. Only one formal athlete (guess who).

3. ENVIRONMENT
-My neighborhood growing up was all white until I was 4-5yrs old. The neighborhood shifted to me being the only white boy in my sixth grade class. In middle school and highschool Columbus had “desegregation”. I was bussed from my poor black neighborhood, in middle school, to a poor white school. In high school I was bussed from my poor black neighborhood into a rich white neighborhood. Between weekends and Summers, until I was 16, I spent about 33% of my life in the country with 100 acres of woods and former farmland at my disposal.

This Is My King