aliens among us

Subtitle: it’s a god deal.

We’ve been back from the ER for about 3 hours now, I think. My perception and memory of time gets shaky at best under stress. My wife broke her wrist. She fell down and couldn’t get up. Remember that? How we all laughed. It’s funny. Until it’s someone you love. Then it kind of lacks for humor.

This was the situation I had been worrying about. We haven’t had health insurance since February. One ride in an ambulance, one visit to the ER, X-rays, all medical services provided in the ER. Do you know how much Emergency health care in this country costs if you don’t have insurance?

We received an interesting letter the other day. It informed us that my wife was being considered as a candidate for a test program the federal government was running. They want to see if providing health benefits to people who qualify for SSD immediately, instead of having them wait for 28 months, improves their quality of life.

We received another letter from them yesterday, informing us that she has been accepted into the program. I’m biting my tongue, looking the gift horse squarely in the mouth, and thanking them from the bottom of my very sincere heart.

This was the situation I had been worrying about. A medical emergency. But instead of becoming the financial burden it could have, we were provided for. Our need was met. Before we even knew we were going to need it. This is what my wife refers to as a “god deal”.

I don’t understand your God. Is this just the rain falling on the good and the evil indifferently? I don’t understand. But I can be grateful from the bottom of my very sincere heart.

subtitle: waiting for the fall

What price salvation? What did you have to pay for it today? What? It’s free? Says who? Oh. I guess that means you don’t have to give anything up today, right? (grin)

If you haven’t checked out Collide Magazine Blog before, shame on you! Yer suppose to be cool! (grin)

I know you already know about the coolest video ever and Collide Magazine Blog because like all us cool kids, you go to The Digital Sanctuary for your news, articles & insights about technology & the Church, right?

I can’t get enough twitter. In fact, if wordpress.com doesn’t come out with a widget for it soon, I may just have to switch blogging sights. That’s right, I said it. Meanwhile, I’m using twhirl in WindowsXP and twitterfox in Linux. I can’t get twitux to work right, and it wouldn’t be twhirl anyways. Where is my Adobe Air for Ubuntu!

THE POLITICAL INQUIRER asks in it’s post on Gay Marriage in California, “Is it even a big deal?” Geez, I hope so! It’s the kinda stuff I post about.
Filip Spagnoli on the P.A.P. Blog has this to say about it all. I agree! And not just because he’s a self-proclaimed agnostic. (grin)

Myanmar Cyclone Death Toll Nearly 78,000 just in case you weren’t paying attention to what is happening. Oh, and there’s another 56,000 people still missing two weeks after the storm.

Avery Peterson over at THE GREATER LOVE BLOG has a page called For Good People Only. Take a look and see if you are.

I’m volunteering Scott Williams and Anne Jackson to serve us all Roobios tea from Africa. Real stuff, not processed like they have at Starbucks. Scott volunteered to buy everybody a drink. No puny gift cards. I want the real deal! Of course, we’re gonna have to wait until Anne feels better. I wonder what could be done to hurry that along? (grin)

swerve is blogging about One Prayer again. Is it similar to WeTheChurch?

What does this all have to do with the wages of salvation? I dunno. Not an alien. (grin)

What do you think?

subtitle: Whatever currency you want

Whether it be comfort, safety, entertainment, prosperity or anything else that will work, you will be made an offer. Over and over again. All day. Today and every day. For the rest of the entire time you are here.

It looks like the Age of Modern Church Awareness of the Blogosphere is drawing to a close. We’ll look back on 2007 as the year it reached it’s peak. The GodBlogs are falling! Alien interest is moving on. What will catch your fancy next?

God is Holy, but you;
have a Dr.’s appointment today
work a very difficult and demanding job
need to deal with a family problem
are being put in your spot
have worked yourself into a pretty good lather
are dealing with an incomplete information set
have tucked yourself into the green velvet chairs at Starbucks
are sleeping on your special foam pillow incorrectly
have to check your value on twitter

In exchange for your attention, you can have it. What will catch your fancy next? (grin)

subtitle: Greed, Pride, Fear and Lust

“One of these things is not like the others, One of these things just doesn’t belong, Can you tell which thing is not like the others By the time I finish my song? “

Luxury: a material object, service, etc., conducive to sumptuous living, usually a delicacy, elegance, or refinement of living rather than a necessity.

Greed: excessive desire to acquire or possess more (especially more material wealth) than one needs or deserves

Power: the possession of control or command over others; authority; ascendancy.

Pride: a high or inordinate opinion of one’s own dignity, importance, merit, or superiority

Status: a person’s social rank; the position of an individual in relation to another or others, esp. in regard to social or professional standing.

Fear: a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid.

Passion: any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling, as love or hate.

Lust: a passionate or overmastering desire or craving.

Matthew 6:24 No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.

Luke 12:34 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

This is not your world. This is not your reality.

This world hates you. This world wants to destroy you.

What part of hate are you not understanding? What are you doing about it?

Did you guess which thing just doesn’t belong? (grin)

Subtitle: Hi, my name is jimmy, and I’m a micro-blogger.

Follow aliens_among_us

OK, I’ll admit it. I’m a convert. I hate change. I hate admitting I’m wrong. What? You were expecting more? (grin)

OK, OK, I like Twitter. I need to find a more elegant way to put in on my Blog than in my “about the paravane” page. But I’m having fun with it. It’s amazing how much you can actually say in 140 characters.

Check me out. Sign up for more of me! Because you know, you can never have too much paravane! (grin)

Because, you know you want to. (grin)

Subtitle: Almost there

I guess this one does have to be about me. It’s my birthday tomorrow. I turn 49. Almost to 50. Half a century. I’ve made it 30 years past the point where I was sure I’d be dead. Seriously, if nobody else took me out by 20, I was gonna do it myself. During my last suicide attempt, I realized something that made it my last suicide attempt. If I was willing to commit this most selfish of acts, why not live instead? If I cared so little about my life that I was willing to give it up, why not just give it up?

I obviously didn’t care what anybody thought. So why not just not care instead? It was like a lightbulb went off in my head. I walked back down the mountain, out of the desert, hitched a ride back into town, and never thought about throwing myself off of life again.

At least until now. Sometimes I do think about it again. It’s not as easy as it seems to live without caring what people think as I thought it would be. As much as I like to think of myself as outside of humanity and it’s concerns, here I am. Caring what you people think. Still, all you humans, all you normals, you all still seem the same to me. Outside my skin, my head, my perceptions of reality.

I can fit in. When I want to. When I choose to. But sometimes it gets so old, so exhausting. Now, I find myself trapped by love. There are people I love and care about. How did I let that happen? Too late now to do much about it. I guess I could drive them away, but I find myself terribly reluctant to do so. Any warmth that drives the cold and lonely away. So human, so normal.

Funny how that makes me contemplate ending it all. What is this dichotomy of the human soul that thinks there is some comfort in death? Do we really buy the lie that pain stops after death? Funny the things you think about as you get older. Oh, and just so you know, contemplation and action are two different things. Obligatory disclaimer, no, I don’t feel like I’m a danger to myself or others. (grin)

An alien asked me on here what I’m running from. The answer to that is easy. What have you got? (grin)

What are you running from?

Subtitle: Monday is what’s wrong with you aliens day too.

I spent all day teching. That’s a made-up word. But you know what I mean by it, if you are a techie. A nerd. A geek. I got up this morning frustrated at Ubuntu. I tried to install it off a CD I picked up the other day and I couldn’t even remember which partitions to put it on. So this morning I got up determined to set it up.

And without a huge learning curve either. First things first. I added a Twitter link to my “about the paravane” page. It seems that blogs have had their 15 minutes of fame and are on the way out. It’s all about “Micro-blogging now. In other words, twitter. So the idea is, you can enter a very short “post” of anything you want, but basically, about where you are and what you are doing that moment.

Not even about what you’re thinking now. It would take too many words. My, we are evolving our social skills, aren’t we? (grin)

So, after that, I grabbed my Puppy DVD and checked partitions. Oh, OK. I’d forgotten I’d set them up already. Put in the Ubuntu 7.10 CD and install. No problems, it found the root partition and the swap, moving on, eh, same old nv settings default in xorg.conf. No biggie, I’ll edit it manually like I always do.

Oh wait, what’s this? A version upgrade?? In a linux distro? I’ll give it a shot…oh my, linux has made progress! At least the Ubuntu distro! 8.04 flies onto my PC! I’m the man! Huh? I can click on an icon of my video card and install the nvidea driver into xorg.conf and use all the Compiz-Fusion pretty stuff with a simple synaptic grab of the config tool? Oooh! Shiny spinny cuby thing! Gotta love beryl I mean Compiz!

“But jimmy!” I hear you proclaiming! “What does all this have to do with what’s wrong with us aliens?” So how many times do I have to spell things out for you guys? (grin)

You can spend all day making shiny pretty, even useful. I love linux. It makes me feel nostalgic to pop up a terminal window and do some command line stuff. Not too much mind you, I have my nostalgic limits. I did all this today to see if I could switch to a brand new shiny operating system. But I couldn’t. The main tool I use to blog is Windows Live Writer, a Microsoft tool. And a free one at that. The BEST blog editor. Period.

Microsoft keeps doing that. Just when you think you’ve gotten away from them, they pull you back in! The social church. Obama said some interesting things about his church on Meet The Press this Sunday. It’s a social church. They reach out to the community with love and help. Sound familiar?

Nothing you can think of is worth the ink you no longer use to print it with. It’s not about you, your shiny toys, or your desire to be all “shiny new missional”. Quit wasting time.

Me on the other hand, I’ll be digging into wine and days of google roses tomorrow. Seeing if I can figure out how to escape the Beast that is Microsoft, one way or another. Because I have nothing better to do.

What about you? What are you supposed to be doing?

Subtitle: Saturday is it ain’t all about you aliens day. (grin)

Speculation. I think I’ll do it all day today. It won’t just be about you aliens, but I won’t let that stop me(grin). I can’t seem to write on any one specific alien topic since Tuesday. I really burnt my creative summation skillz up doing all three of those in one day, While staying “On Series”. Lesson learned. On the other hand, I put out 5 posts this week if you count this one. Which I’m going to do. (grin)

But today is going to be wild speculation day. Have fun with it! Don’t take it too seriously. Please. I know I won’t. (grin)

1. iTV – It’s not here yet, but I can hear the hoofbeats of it in the hallways of my mind. Several different inputs are starting to come together in my dysfunctionally parallel driven thought process. Allow me to share! After the “more” break of course.

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