Some Blog Site

This is a guest post that I submitted to Jon Acuff over a year ago. Since he has not posted it yet, I’m assuming he is not going to use it. Before you read this though, you should read the SCL post regarding the Elf on the Shelf. Once you have done that, please enjoy this post. Alternate titles are
Leg Dropping Elves: Episode 5
Elf on the Shelf, Part II
Leg Dropping Elves Reloaded
Elf on the Shelf: The Squeakquel
2 Fast 2 Elf-ious

Wise Man 1: Well, well, well… look who’s back.
Wise Man 2: It’s the doll that has nothing to do with the Christmas story! What are you doing here?
Elf on the Shelf: My name is Elf on the Shelf. You killed my Christmas. Prepare to…
Wise Man 1: That old bit? Don’t you have anything better? Something original?
Elf on the Shelf: How about “an eye for an eye and a beat-down for a beat-down”?
Wise Man 1: Oh yeah? You and what army?
Elf on the Shelf: Guys…
Gnome in your Home and Troll in a Bowl: Ta-daaa!
Wise Man 3: Is that all you got? I was almost worried for a minute there.
Elf on the Shelf: You should be worried, because I am going to get angry very soon…
Wise Man 3: Bah!
Elf on the Shelf: …and you don’t want to raise my ire.
Gnome in your Home: His ire is very Biblical.
Wise Man 1: How is that Biblical? We’re the Scripture experts here, not you.
Troll in a Bowl: Surely you’ve heard of elf-ire.
Gnome in your Home: And brimstone! We brought some brimstone in case things got ugly today.
Wise Man 2: Since you’re here, things are looking ugly indeed.
Gnome in your Home: And what do you mean by that?
Wise Man 2: I just call ’em as I see ’em.
Gnome in your Home: That does it – no more Mr. Nice Gnome!
Wise Man 1: Don’t worry about the gnome – he looks tough but he can’t take a hit very well.
Wise Man 2: You mean he has a glass jaw?
Wise Man 3: It looks like ceramic to me…
Wise Man 2: But what’s the troll made of?
Wise Man 3: Whatever it is, it stinks.
Wise Man 2: Maybe he’s made of brimstone.
Troll in a Bowl: I can see why the Elf came back. You guys need to be taken down a notch.
Gnome in your Home: Ooh! Ooh! Are we starting?
Elf on the Shelf: Wise men, you’re about to get served.
Wise Man 1: Good, cause I’m hungry.
Elf on the Shelf: We’ll start with the appetizer – a bowl of leg-drop soup!
Troll in a Bowl: Geronimoooo!
Wise Men: Oof!
Elf on the Shelf: Next comes a dish of smack-aroni and cheese.
Gnome in your Home: Thwack!
Wise Men: Ow!
Elf on the Shelf: And for dessert, have a heaping helping of …
Shepherds: Hey! Why weren’t we invited to the party?
Wise Men: Tag…

(Melee ensues.)
(Christmas decorations of all sorts are left in shambles.)
(The family wonders what happened when they find the destruction. They end up blaming squirrels for the mess.)

Where will it end? Will they ever learn to get along? What should the dessert be?

Today’s post was supposed to be a picture that I cobbled together, putting candy corn on a corn cob and calling it candy corn on the cob.

I wasn’t going to make a physical object, I was just going to edit some photos to make it look like it existed.

When I started looking up photos of corn cobs and candy corn, however, I found that some people had already made candy corn on the cob. That took the wind out of my sails, so I didn’t work on what I was going to do.

Instead, I read the post the Kyle wrote about how he made candy corn on the cob. It was interesting enough that I started reading some of his other posts. And before I knew it, Wednesday had come and gone and I had nothing ready for my own post.

Today’s post is rather lacking, for all it is is recounting how I wasted my lunch hour reading Something a Week.

It’s a good thing he stopped updating his blog (170 posts at one a week = over 3 years of making things), otherwise I might not have written even this much.

And while we are talking about corn on the cob, I must use this opportunity to educate certain people out there. When I was looking for pictures of corn cobs, many photos appeared that were not corn cobs. People were taking pictures of ears of corn and calling them corn cobs.

Those terms are not interchangeable. A corn cob is the part inside the ear of corn that you do not eat – it is what holds the kernels. Corn on the cob means the kernels are still attached. A photo of a corn cob should be an ear of corn with no husk and no kernels. In other works, corn on the cob minus the corn. Please keep that straight and label your photos accordingly.

Other interesting posts at that blog:
Real-life Mario coins
Punch in the face
French toast stick

It was around this time a few years ago that I sent my first guest post submission to Jon Acuff. I titled it “Classifying Church Names”. Jon was positive in his email reply, but it never was published. After about 40 months of waiting for it appear on Stuff Christians Like, I am giving up on it and am publishing it here for you, dear reader. Enjoy!

When looking for a church, they key element to get right is the name. After all, a good name is to be more desired than great riches. But what makes a name good? As with many issues within Christianity, there are two camps on church names: descriptive or aesthetic.

The descriptive names include either the denomination or part of the doctrinal statement (or both). Some people say that the descriptive church names are bland and restrictive, but at least you know what you are getting when you go there.

And you know it’s a church. You don’t see businesses with traditional church names, like “Calvin Reformed Flower Shop” (specials on tulips!) or “Freewill Baptist Golf Course” (so that’s why the ball never goes where I want it to go…)

The aesthetic names include either a geologic feature or a direction (or both). But sometimes you need to do a little research before visiting the aesthetically-named church, in order to find out what kind of church it is and, more importantly, if it is a church. To help SCL readers hone their church-detecting skills, I present:

The Church Name Quiz

I took a sampling of names in my local area. For each name given below: what type of establishment is it?

1. Oak Pointe
A. Church
B. Subdivision
C. Restaurant
D. Mall

2. NorthRidge
A. Church
B. Subdivision
C. Restaurant
D. Mall

3. North Point
A. Church
B. Subdivision
C. Restaurant
D. Mall

4. The Father’s House
A. Church
B. Rehab center
C. Restaurant
D. Bookstore

5. Stillwater
A. Church
B. Subdivision
C. Restaurant
D. Mall

6. Woodside
A. Church
B. Subdivision
C. Restaurant
D. Mall

7. Brookside
A. Church
B. Subdivision
C. Restaurant
D. Mall

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Yesterday I took the older kids to see Monsters University. We got tickets to an advanced screening – excuse me, screaming – of the movie thanks to my wife’s friend.

When my wife called me and asked if I wanted to take the kids to see the movie, my first response was to check the usual review sites to see the appropriate age range and if there is any objectionable material.

The sites I like to check are Common Sense Media and Kids in Mind. Those two sites give reviews that are helpful to concerned parents. But… they review movies after they are out. Since this was June 18th and Monsters University doesn’t open until June 21st, all I got from one site was the synopsis provided by Pixar (and nothing from the other site).

So I had to go off movie critic reviews.

Those were not helpful. Mostly they lamented that, although not a bad movie, MU just didn’t live up to the expectations of previous Pixar releases. They gave the storyline and some other tidbits, but none of them told me the things I cared about:

• how scary are the monsters in this movie?
• any inappropriate material?
• it’s set at a college, so how is the frat party handled?

I’ll try to fill in those blanks so that parents who are wondering those things can have their answers for opening weekend.

The monsters (and settings) are slightly scarier than Monsters, Inc., and I did not see any inappropriate material.

My 9-year-old was eager to go and liked everything in the movie. My 7-year-old was not as eager to go, but he said he liked the movie. I was glad I did not take my 4-year-old, because it would have been too scary for him.

I’d recommend a minimum age of 6. That’s based on my family – your mileage may vary.
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This is a guide for how to play the game Airlines Europe. This game is a cross between Ticket to Ride and Monopoly. Or, as I like to say, it’s like Monopoly except it is fun.

The instructions that came with the game were a bit confusing, but now I have played it a few times and explained it a few times and now I will attempt to explain it here.
1. How do I win?
– you win by having the most points at the end of the game.
2. How do I get points?
– by having played shares of airlines when a scoring card is drawn
2b. How is a scoring card drawn?
They are inserted somewhat randomly into the deck of share cards, so as the game goes along and someone wants to draw a card, it might be a share card. At that point, the game pauses and points are tallied. Read the instruction manual to learn how the points are tallied – that is outside the scope of this simple overview.
3. How do I get airline shares?
– by drawing a card after buying an airplane. Both of that counts as a turn.
4. How do I play airline shares?
– by using your turn to take the shares from your hand and place them on the table.
5. How do I buy an airplane?
– by using your turn to spend money from your account.
5b. How much does each airplane cost?
– it depends where it is going. The routes have numbers on them. Whichever route you pick will tell you how much the plane costs.
5c. How do I know which route to pick?
– it usually doesn’t matter. Some airlines have a bonus available, so if you are buying one of their planes you should aim for the bonus destination.

5d. How do I know what to do on my first turn?
Some people are a little perplexed at first. If you don’t know what to do on your turn, here is a suggestion until you form your own strategy:
A. On your first turn, if a scarce card is showing in the draw pile (stock market), then buy an airplane of that company, place it near the hub, and then draw that card. A scarce card is any card with a number smaller than 10.
Otherwise, if no scarce cards are showing, then just draw money on your first turn.
B. On your second turn, build up one or both of the airlines that you played at the start (setup) of the game (i.e. buy airplanes of that color.)
C. On your third turn, you should have a sense of what other people are doing and what you want to do. If not, then I recommend playing some of the shares in your hand.

Because there aren’t enough things on the internet yet…

Go visit Social Biblia.

Inspired by yesterday’s post about bola, I am writing today about bolic.

“What is bolic?” you may ask.

It’s a word. Here it is:

That’s the standard word. Now comes the quiz part, where I draw bolic differently.

What are the words that each of the following drawings represent?

A.

B.

C.

D.

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