...

i'm such a good lutheran that all the catholic colleges want me.

WOW. This is going to be a long post, guys. If there are actually any of you out there, I mean. I've been gone for a week. I was in Detroit to help out with a bible soccer camp. I stayed with Uncle Dan and Aunt Andrea (Pastor Dan and his wife, not related at all). So did my roommate, Peter Schmeling, Anna Krueger, and Luc Lemke, whom I had never met before, but he's pretty cool. Kinda reminded me of Jared Natsis at first. It was awesome.

I don't feel like writing a whole lot of details because we were there having fun for a WHOLE WEEK, so I'll sum it up: Mrs. Schmidt is awesome and very sarcastic, Pastor Dan is cool also (which we already knew), and I got to hang out with Anna Krueger a bit. Wonder why I never have before. Also, I got to play soccer for a week and maybe I tanned a little bit. The HVL kids were cool. Um... Yeah, a lot of stuff I would say would be like an inside joke. I don't want to explain all of them, so I'll just say it was really cool.

Peter cried during a movie and we watched the documentary on Michael Jackson's life. We also watched a lot of daytime tv, like Dr. Phil reruns and Jerry Springer.

Tonight, we finished it off with a Koine concert. Koine is Greek for "common", which they think of themselves as. Koine Greek was the common Greek spoken by the everyday man, so ordinary people speak ordinarily to bring you a spectacular message of Jesus. It was awesome. The little kids sang the refrain for a few songs and the helpers had to get up and sing along with them so they would feel a little more confident. I got a T-shirt, so I'm not complaining. It's pretty cool. (www.koinemusic.com) Before I forget.

I gotta leave tomorrow, so I'll blog again sometime when I get the chance. I got back a little while ago, so I'm getting ready for tomorrow and junk. No funny picture this time. Sorry!

omg red ranger!!!1!!1! :O

Today's the day I'm leaving and

tomorrow I'll be gone.
You're in my heart and on my mind,
I will bring you along.
Everything sucks when I'm gone.

Okay, so the first line fits. No, wait... It's today YOU'RE leaving and tomorrow YOU'LL be gone. Oh well. I'm leaving today and church is rather soon, so this is a brief goodbye. I can't think of anything funny to say off the top of my head, but have a Happy Father's Day and all that jazz.

silly me, i forgot a title!

All right, I think I'm going to post some of the lyrics I've been working on. I do it on occasion when I'm on a long car ride from Ann Arbor after having had dinner with my brother and his girlfriend during which I had a wicked stellar lamb kabob.

"Singin isn't just for the shower."

Yeah, I didn't get very far. By the time I was working on it, I recognized the scenery, which meant we were about five minutes away. But hey, Rome wasn't built in a day, ya know?

So, I went to Ann Arbor today. We had dinner with my brother, Jon, and his girlfriend. I decided to try something new, so I had the lamb kabob. I LOVE KABOBS. Oh man, I love them! The lamb was pretty excellent. There wasn't much variety on the kabab (green peppers, onions, and lamb), but man, did I enjoy it! I also got a mountain dew hat because I didn't have a green one yet.

I totally pimped out my keyboard yesterday with some Pikachu stickers. There's not much space, so it's not as sweet as I would have hoped (the left half has no happiness) ( :( ), but the right half makes my day! Now I'm planning on moving to the tower/ box/ main computing unit. I may include some Marrill... Maril? Marryl? This thing.

Anyway, I gotta pack some junk before I leave for Project Titus tomorrow. One of the first big events of the summer. Where did this last week go? I guess time doesn't mean much during summer, especially when you see almost no sunlight because of your habit of staying up til three and sleeping til noon, only to start playing WoW all over again. Which I'm about to do.

... Merrill?

dope nose.

I am super excited to tell you, one voice CAN make a difference. In World of Warcraft (Ha, you thought it was something wise to say about real life, didn't you?), there are two factions to choose from when you make a character: The Alliance and The Horde. The Alliance has your general good guys (humans, dwarves, gnomes, night elves, draenei) and The Horde is generally evil (orcs, undead, trolls, tauren [similar to minotaurs], and blood elves). The two factions' players can't covnerse with one another and generally try to kill each other (This is called PvP. [Player versus Player]) and Blizzard (the company that created WoW [World of Warcraft]) decided to make it easy on those who just want to bash each others' skulls in and made PvP arenas. Generally, from my experience, The Alliance sucks. The Horde is much more organized and the players more serious. Thus far, I've lost almost all of my PvP arena experiences. The first time I played, The Alliancewon, even though I had no clue what was going on. Up to tonight, the rest have been losses. Alliance characters just kinda all run to whichever place is next an don't strategize much. I noticed this and was very frustrated with my teammates. I lost my first battle tonight because of such stupidity, so before the second one started, I asked if we could formulate a plan. Then, whoa! We made plans! (Not just "Win," although a few suggested that.) Capture this, then go for this. Paladins offense, rogues defense. Wow! I did it! I got us organized! And as the battle went on, I saw that we were slowly getting the lead over The Horde, and I felt overjoyed! Man! That was great!

In real life, I'm going to see my brother in Ypsilanti tomorrow. Can't wait! I wish I could see my brothers more (...and sister; usually I forget to mention her because there's one of her and four of my older brothers. Sorry Rachel!). Unfortunately, I'll miss out on going to Cincinnati next week (if that's when it is) because of the Detroit soccer camp that's happening. I go to Detroit for a week and teach soccer to Spanish kids, from what I understand. We're going for Project Titus and we get to see Tutor Schmidt! Whoo! I talked to him on the phone for a little bit, and he asked about Peter and Hillery (they're dating), so hopefully he'll make fun of Peter while we're there! Speaking of which, tomorrow I need to pack for that and look for Peter's stuff that I took home.

Is anyone still reading this? If so, congrats! I owe you a hearty handshake the next time I see you. You'll have to tell me though, because I won't know whose hand to shake. I guess I could just walk around shaking people's hands in a hearty fashion, but that might be weird.

Well, all good things must come to an end, so I'll end it with...

ANOTHER FUNNY PICTURE!!!

william wallace pwnt shaka zhulu, ira pwnt taliban, apache pwnt gladiator, russian special forces pwnt american special forces, samurai pwnt viking.

It's been one of those days all day...

Actually, pretty great day. Profe became a fan of himself, which made me laugh, and then he commented on it, which made me laugh again. Then I played World of Warcraft with great success. I leveled 3 levels today WITH 1x experience AND getting up at twelve o'clock and mowing for an hour AND taking a couple hours off for watching the Deadliest Warrior marathon.

My brother sent me a pretty funny text today. here's how it went:
Not all flowers can say love, but a rose did. Not all plants can survive thirst, but a cactus did. Not all retards can read, but look at you go!

Awesome, Daft Punk just started playing. Got my library on shuffle. Earlier, I was listening to Weird Al while playing WoW. I listen to Noah's playlist pretty often nowadays (Noah was my roommate this past year), and I must say I'm glad his computer died so he had to put his music on my computer. I forgot he had a computer. We had three computers in our room at one time. Five power strips for everything, of course. Don't know how many gigawatts we used up.

I wonder what kind of crazy stuff I could come up with at 2:00 in the morning. Might be interesting. Maybe I'll do something like that with someone next year, although Peter probably won't stay up until 4:00 with me like Remington did...

Ach, allergies are making me tired. I have to sleep...

chuck norris simply walks into mordor.

I've been looking up memes lately, which are viral videos or jokes spread all across the internet, even across the world. It has provided me with much enjoyment for lack of a better thing to do.

I don't know why I'm writing. Nothing new has happened since yesterday since I talked about driver's ed. That happens again today. Maybe I'll talk about that later. Later... What about now? Whatever. I'll be back. I'm gonna go play World of Warcraft. Rock on.

driver said what?

I started Segment 2 of driver's ed today. Of course, going to MLS in Saginaw, I knew none of the other kids. Sure, some of them I saw in my last driver's ed class, but I've never spoken to anyone. Choose my own table, sit down, hope that some cute girl sits next to me. I'm one of the last people to get a table buddy, but eventually a pretty cute girl sits down next to me. We still have a little while before class, so I start talking to her. Ask her where she goes to school, what grade she's in, what's her name (yeah, in that order). Saw her texting and asked, "Are you texting someone and telling them that you're sitting next to a cute guy?" She laughed and said, "Yeah... I don't think my boyfriend would like hearing that." Smoooooth.

things that go REAGHGAHEAGH in the night.

My cousins from Wisconsin are here. It's been fun. We're about to go see Star Trek. More on that later. Yesterday, we watched Bolt, Snakes on a Plane, and an old Jackie Chan movie from the seventies. Then we played Super Smash Bros. and Halo 2. Of course, I was dominating with fairly small effort. I'm just awesome like that.

Last night, as we were going to bed, I was talking to my cousin Tristan in a hushed voice so as not to wake my other cousin, Colin, who was sleeping. Tristan had the bright idea of going on the roof at 1:00 in the morning. It was awesome! Kinda creepy though. We saw two people run down the street and go into the middle school across the street. After that, we started hearing mewing sounds, like a cat. It was probably 75 yards away, then all of a sudden a cat started screeching BLOODY MURDER. Not literally, that would have been silly! But we got scared and then it came closer and did it AGAIN and AGAIN. That scared me. Incredibly.

Back from Star Trek. It was awesome! No, it was beyond awesome! It was be-awesome! Really, I loved it. Go see it. You will like it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02LgdXVkXgM

we are people, not numbers.

A little bit of stuff about me before serious stuff. I mentioned the talent show and how PK Thunder won. Afterward, we went to Papa John's to celebrate. We walked down there, and on the way is when Noah mentioned the singing telegram idea. When we arrived, we asked if we could sing a four part Star Wars song to get a discount. The lady said no, but since we had five minutes left, we decided to do it anyways. Before we started, the black guy who worked there said, "Lay that s*** down!" So we did. While we sang, they ignored three phone calls. Afterward, the cashier said that she did indeed give us a discount of a few dollars from sixteen to about twelve. After we put eleven dollars on the counter, we started searching for more and she told us not to worry about it. The black guy told us we were "bad a** mothers". It was an awesome end to an awesome night. Of course, I paid for ten dollars out of the eleven, but still. It was awesome.

Now onto more important stuff.

http://coffeeshopdaze.blogspot.com/2009/06/we-are-people-not-numbers.html

Kayla wrote lyrics about this:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=2256208753

There started a discussion about our church synod and what is going on. Recently, there have been some cuts throughout the synod. I heard that another school in the synod, LPS, had very small cuts while MLS has lost six teachers as well as staff members. We are all feeling this, whether or not we liked those who were cut. We're all part of the Seminary Family. And really, that's what it's like. We are really close. A lot of the students were friends with the teachers and aren't happy with this, naturally. Nobody is. It's hard to feel happy with the way things are going.

Now is an excellent time to demonstrate what we can do. People say to pray for our future. I do. But that's not the end. You can't just pray and wait for things to pass over. Sometimes when you ask God to build a house, he gives you a hammer. You have to do something about it.

Enough preaching. Just thought I'd just mention it. Think about it, pray about it, but don't think we can brush this aside and someone else will take care of it. Please.

pt. 4- epilogue, or: shoop da woop.

SUP DAWG, I'm gonna write some quick stuff about me before I go to bed. Making a mental note to myself to look up shoop da whoop on www.knowyourmemes.com where I recently looked up the yo dawg meme. Look it up. I think you'll understand immediately what yo dawg is.

Anyway, life is good. Been playin World of Warcraft. I know I say that a lot, but I'm just tryin to waste away my summer or at least get a lvl 60 character so I can sparta whenever I need to. Right now I have a lvl 30 warlock that I hate and a lvl 27 rogue that I love and other assorted characters that I'm doing in parties with other people.

Sorry about that line where I said I had to sparta... You were probably thinking "Wtf?" I've picked up a lot of sayings like that from spending too much time with the Swaffers. It feels like I've been hanging out with them for the longest time. Danit, I did it again!
(Note to self- ask Ruke Thomford how to spell that.)(Note to reader- he doesn't say g's.)

I started reading a book. I talked to a girl for a little bit last night. Facebook chat is gay and ruins my chances of talking to certain girls. Summer's decent so far, but none of the big stuff has happened yet.

Speaking of stuff happening, my cousins are coming this weekend! WHOO! They live in Wisconsin, so I don't see them that often. This is going to be fun! If you have any ideas on WHAT we could do, that'd be helpful. Thanks!

And remember... You can't touch this; this is Sparta.

pt. 3- nobody cares if you upset a droid.

Speaking of being awesome, Jenna finally got PK Thunder's winning performance at the talent show on youtube. Thanks a bunch Jenna!

PK Thunder:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz4K6-9xGA4

Moosebutter, the group that composed this song, has a video on youtube, but it's not my favorite version. There's another one that has, in my humble opinion, better performance, both singing and acting. Corey Vidal recorded himself four times and put music behind it.

We had a lot of fun doing it (Jared Natsis, Peter Schmeling, Noah Willitz, and I) and hopefully we can top it next year. We're trying to find music online, so if you find some funny or cool acapella music, like retro Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or some acapella song that is awesome, it would be great.

We've actually been talking about making a singing telegram kind of thing. We'd probably have to write our own music because of the fact that there is not much music on the web for acapella singing groups. We'll see how it goes.

There was something else that was going to go here, but I am having trouble remembering things. I'm sorry. It will have to wait.

pt. 2- +1 Blog Entry

Yeah, I know, I stole someone else's humor again. Shame on me. It wouldn't have been the same if I had tried to remember what he once said about his house's old heating system being something that hasn't been used for several centuries, like heretics. I can't compare to someone who won the Pulitzer Prize.

By the way, I had a lot to say when I felt INSPIRED to write, so I'm separating it into parts, if you don't mind. Read part one first, please.

(By the way, more Dave Barry material can be found in your library or at http://www.miamiherald.com/dave_barry/)

Next topic... I might have forgotten what else I wanted to talk about.

Oh yeah.

I've never played Dungeons and Dragons. It looked like it would be a cool game to play if I felt like a social life was not as fun as video games or something. Which it wasn't. Back then.

So I'm going to make fun of it b stealing people's work. Just something funny for you to look at. If you want to read something I wrote, skip over this entry.

Also, a video using Final Fantasy characters:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHdXG2gV01k

pt. 1- there are times when you wish the commode had a seat belt.

Hey, I haven't had an extremely long one in a while because I've been busy playing World of Warcraft (which is also why I haven't exercised, or talked to girls on the phone late at night, or bathed) (oops, not that last one), so I'm going to write two blogs for you and roll it all up into one, because I was reminded of two things right before writing. Here goes!

Scratch that. I'll write multiple ones and you can chooose which one(s) you want to read.


First up: italic squirrels. No idea HOW I thought of this and remembered it, but I did. The legendary humor columnist from Florida, Dave Barry, had a lot of trademarks in his writing. One of them is that, after he has made a joke about something, he will refer to it like this: something "would be a great name for a rock band." I can only remember Italic Squirrels and Flaming Booty Moths. I luuuurve reading Dave Barry. I thought it would be nice for you to experience him too.

It's kinda long.

Dave Barry: A journey into my colon -- and yours

(This Dave Barry column was originally published Feb. 22, 2008.)

OK. You turned 50. You know you're supposed to get a colonoscopy. But you haven't. Here are your reasons:

1. You've been busy.

2. You don't have a history of cancer in your family.

3. You haven't noticed any problems.

4. You don't want a doctor to stick a tube 17,000 feet up your butt.

Let's examine these reasons one at a time. No, wait, let's not. Because you and I both know that the only real reason is No. 4. This is natural. The idea of having another human, even a medical human, becoming deeply involved in what is technically known as your ''behindular zone'' gives you the creeping willies.

I know this because I am like you, except worse. I yield to nobody in the field of being a pathetic weenie medical coward. I become faint and nauseous during even very minor medical procedures, such as making an appointment by phone. It's much worse when I come into physical contact with the medical profession. More than one doctor's office has a dent in the floor caused by my forehead striking it seconds after I got a shot.

In 1997, when I turned 50, everybody told me I should get a colonoscopy. I agreed that I definitely should, but not right away. By following this policy, I reached age 55 without having had a colonoscopy. Then I did something so pathetic and embarrassing that I am frankly ashamed to tell you about it.

What happened was, a giant 40-foot replica of a human colon came to Miami Beach. Really. It's an educational exhibit called the Colossal Colon, and it was on a nationwide tour to promote awareness of colo-rectal cancer. The idea is, you crawl through the Colossal Colon, and you encounter various educational items in there, such as polyps, cancer and hemorrhoids the size of regulation volleyballs, and you go, ''Whoa, I better find out if I contain any of these things,'' and you get a colonoscopy.

If you are as a professional humor writer, and there is a giant colon within a 200-mile radius, you are legally obligated to go see it. So I went to Miami Beach and crawled through the Colossal Colon. I wrote a column about it, making tasteless colon jokes. But I also urged everyone to get a colonoscopy. I even, when I emerged from the Colossal Colon, signed a pledge stating that I would get one.

But I didn't get one. I was a fraud, a hypocrite, a liar. I was practically a member of Congress.

Five more years passed. I turned 60, and I still hadn't gotten a colonoscopy. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I got an e-mail from my brother Sam, who is 10 years younger than I am, but more mature. The email was addressed to me and my middle brother, Phil. It said:

``Dear Brothers,

``I went in for a routine colonoscopy and got the dreaded diagnosis: cancer. We're told it's early and that there is a good prognosis that they can get it all out, so, fingers crossed, knock on wood, and all that. And of course they told me to tell my siblings to get screened. I imagine you both have.''

Um. Well.

First I called Sam. He was hopeful, but scared. We talked for a while, and when we hung up, I called my friend Andy Sable, a gastroenterologist, to make an appointment for a colonoscopy. A few days later, in his office, Andy showed me a color diagram of the colon, a lengthy organ that appears to go all over the place, at one point passing briefly through Minneapolis. Then Andy explained the colonoscopy procedure to me in a thorough, reassuring and patient manner. I nodded thoughtfully, but I didn't really hear anything he said, because my brain was shrieking, quote, ``HE'S GOING TO STICK A TUBE 17,000 FEET UP YOUR BUTT!''

I left Andy's office with some written instructions, and a prescription for a product called ''MoviPrep,'' which comes in a box large enough to hold a microwave oven. I will discuss MoviPrep in detail later; for now suffice it to say that we must never allow it to fall into the hands of America's enemies.

I spent the next several days productively sitting around being nervous. Then, on the day before my colonoscopy, I began my preparation. In accordance with my instructions, I didn't eat any solid food that day; all I had was chicken broth, which is basically water, only with less flavor. Then, in the evening, I took the MoviPrep. You mix two packets of powder together in a one-liter plastic jug, then you fill it with lukewarm water. (For those unfamiliar with the metric system, a liter is about 32 gallons.) Then you have to drink the whole jug. This takes about an hour, because MoviPrep tastes -- and here I am being kind -- like a mixture of goat spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon.

The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, ''a loose watery bowel movement may result.'' This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground.

MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don't want to be too graphic, here, but: Have you ever seen a space shuttle launch? This is pretty much the MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom, spurting violently. You eliminate everything. And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink another liter of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have not even eaten yet.

After an action-packed evening, I finally got to sleep. The next morning my wife drove me to the clinic. I was very nervous. Not only was I worried about the procedure, but I had been experiencing occasional return bouts of MoviPrep spurtage. I was thinking, ''What if I spurt on Andy?'' How do you apologize to a friend for something like that? Flowers would not be enough.

At the clinic I had to sign many forms acknowledging that I understood and totally agreed with whatever the hell the forms said. Then they led me to a room full of other colonoscopy people, where I went inside a little curtained space and took off my clothes and put on one of those hospital garments designed by sadist perverts, the kind that, when you put it on, makes you feel even more naked than when you are actually naked.

Then a nurse named Eddie put a little needle in a vein in my left hand. Ordinarily I would have fainted, but Eddie was very good, and I was already lying down. Eddie also told me that some people put vodka in their MoviPrep. At first I was ticked off that I hadn't thought of this, but then I pondered what would happen if you got yourself too tipsy to make it to the bathroom, so you were staggering around in full Fire Hose Mode. You would have no choice but to burn your house.

When everything was ready, Eddie wheeled me into the procedure room, where Andy was waiting with a nurse and an anesthesiologist. I did not see the 17,000-foot tube, but I knew Andy had it hidden around there somewhere. I was seriously nervous at this point. Andy had me roll over on my left side, and the anesthesiologist began hooking something up to the needle in my hand. There was music playing in the room, and I realized that the song was Dancing Queen by Abba. I remarked to Andy that, of all the songs that could be playing during this particular procedure, Dancing Queen has to be the least appropriate.

''You want me to turn it up?'' said Andy, from somewhere behind me.

''Ha ha,'' I said.

And then it was time, the moment I had been dreading for more than a decade. If you are squeamish, prepare yourself, because I am going to tell you, in explicit detail, exactly what it was like.

I have no idea. Really. I slept through it. One moment, Abba was shrieking ``Dancing Queen! Feel the beat from the tambourine . . .''

. . . and the next moment, I was back in the other room, waking up in a very mellow mood. Andy was looking down at me and asking me how I felt. I felt excellent. I felt even more excellent when Andy told me that it was all over, and that my colon had passed with flying colors. I have never been prouder of an internal organ.

But my point is this: In addition to being a pathetic medical weenie, I was a complete moron. For more than a decade I avoided getting a procedure that was, essentially, nothing. There was no pain and, except for the MoviPrep, no discomfort. I was risking my life for nothing.

If my brother Sam had been as stupid as I was -- if, when he turned 50, he had ignored all the medical advice and avoided getting screened -- he still would have had cancer. He just wouldn't have known. And by the time he did know -- by the time he felt symptoms -- his situation would have been much, much more serious. But because he was a grown-up, the doctors caught the cancer early, and they operated and took it out. Sam is now recovering and eating what he describes as ''really, really boring food.'' His prognosis is good, and everybody is optimistic, fingers crossed, knock on wood, and all that.

Which brings us to you, Mr. or Mrs. or Miss or Ms. Over-50-And-Hasn't-Had-a-Colonoscopy. Here's the deal: You either have colo-rectal cancer, or you don't. If you do, a colonoscopy will enable doctors to find it and do something about it. And if you don't have cancer, believe me, it's very reassuring to know you don't. There is no sane reason for you not to have it done.

I am so eager for you to do this that I am going to induce you with an Exclusive Limited Time Offer. If you, after reading this, get a colonoscopy, let me know by sending a self-addressed stamped envelope to Dave Barry Colonoscopy Inducement, The Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, FL 33132. I will send you back a certificate, signed by me and suitable for framing if you don't mind framing a cheesy certificate, stating that you are a grown-up who got a colonoscopy. Accompanying this certificate will be a square of limited-edition custom-printed toilet paper with an image of Miss Paris Hilton on it. You may frame this also, or use it in whatever other way you deem fit.

But even if you don't want this inducement, please get a colonoscopy. If I can do it, you can do it. Don't put it off. Just do it.

Be sure to stress that you want the non-Abba version.