Henry Imler July 24th, 2008
Basketawful :: 2007-08 NBA Worsties: Part 5 – In part five of their ongoing series on the worst and most hilarious of the NBA last season. Lots of youtube clips of absolutely hilarious stuff, such as Kobe nailing an old woman with a towel and Dirk bringing out the “Short-Bus” slam among others. If you are a basketball fan and don’t mind some crude humor at times, I highly recommend checking out this post, series, and blog.
Popular Science :: Why is it So Hard to Wake Up in the Morning? – So I shouldn’t sleep in on the weekends? Darn.
New Scientist :: Magnetic Slingshot Creates Aurora on Earth
Get Rich Slowly :: The Dirty Secrets of Debt Reduction (and What to Do About Them) – Whether you are looking to build wealth or use your wealth to empower the powerless, everyone needs to get their money situation in order. J.D., over at Get Rich Slowly talks about what got him into debt in the first place and what he had to do to get out of it. Read this if you are A) in the same boat, B) getting out on your own for the first time, or C) are human.
Henry Imler July 22nd, 2008
Here is today’s hilarious comic panel of the day:
Ronan the Accuser pym-slaps Rick Jones for getting uppity in Avengers 96.
Henry Imler June 25th, 2008
It should be a basic principle of intelligent analysis that a serious attempt is made to understand the most intellectually sophisticated concepts of religious belief. Some philosophers, like Anthony Kenny… do this and still disagree with many religious ideas. But they treat religious beliefs in their best intellectual forms with care and respect and careful analysis, and with due consideration for the many different interpretations that exist. This is what a truly scientific and rational approach to religion requires.
- Keith Ward, “is religion dangerous?” page 26-27
People from Richard Dawkins to Sean Hannity to Pat Robertson to certain unnamed undergrads to Christopher Hitchens would do well to keep the above in mind.
Henry Imler June 25th, 2008
Billionaire Without A Cause: Bruce Wayne from Gotham Tonight. “He’s living life like its a monopoly board and he’s playing all by himself.”
While you are at it, Support the Bat w/free Dark Knight XBLM goods!
Pandora – Its old, but it rawks. (-3.4 points for using lame L337 expression)
George Carlin HBO Marathon – Did I just Tivo all of this? Yes I did.
The Audacity of Hope (Habakkuk 1-3)
Catalyst Conference 2008 – I am heading up there with my church in October. I hear good things, the vids from last year are good things, you and yours should check it out.
Rising cost of oil ‘due to speculation’ from PhysicsWeb News
Shaq may forgive, but he never forgets - oh man…. (NSWF/Language) ““I was freestyling. That’s all. It was all done in fun. Nothing serious whatsoever. That is what MC’s do. They freestyle when called upon. I’m totally cool with Kobe. No issue at all." Uh huh.”
Halo 3 body count surpasses Earth’s population – That is is lot of frakkin frags.
Henry Imler June 24th, 2008
The accident of preservation has skewed the general picture.
-Christine Thomas in Stories without Texts and Without Authors: The Problem of Fluidity in Ancient Novelistic Texts and Early Christian Literature
Above, Thomas is talking about our accidental recovery of what we call ancient novels. All five of them are “ideal romances.” This leads people to use these sources and limit possible constructions of ancient novels into what we can generalize out of the five we have. She maintains that we only have part of the literary picture of the ancient Romans and we have no idea how far reaching and what variety of subject matter, plot structure, etc, that ancient novels displayed. Its like walking into a Walmart and looking at the trashy romance book selection by the cigarette rack and thinking you can get an accurate idea of modern American literature.
She goes on to talk about the problems with abstracting paradigms of the ancient novel with this skewed historical sample and comparing it to the abstracted paradigm of the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. For those of you that have not encountered the term before, the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, or AAA are the 2nd century non-Canonical accounts of the lives and adventures of several of the Apostles. Among those included are the Acts of Paul and Thecla, the Acts of Peter, the Acts of Thomas, and the Acts of John.
While this certainly applies to the study of the AAA and ancient Roman Romance novels, this issue is generalizable to the whole of Christian literature and ancient manuscript studies. It is difficult to talk about things in the negative, because we simply do not have the entire (or a substantial sample of) record to compare it against. Additionally we are missing a large portion of the Christian record as well. We are missing at the very least several portions of the discourse between Paul and the assembly of Christians at Corinth. Just as we don’t know if the AAA are unique among the literature of the time, we similarly don’t know all of Paul’s thoughts and advice for budding assemblies.
In addition to all of this, we must work with what we do have available to us. Just because we don’t have all of the data we would like, that does not mean we should throw up our hands and call it a day. Instead, theologians, religious studies scholars, laity, and the clergy need to work with what we have while realizing what our sources allow us to say and not to say.
Henry Imler April 15th, 2008
Report: China led world executions in 2007 - 377 minimum killings by the state. Us? We rank 5th with 45. Texas had 26.
China ‘now top carbon polluter’ - WE’RE #2!, WE’RE #2! WE’RE #2!, WE’RE #2!
Super Mario Galaxy mod reaches for the stars
Scale model of Scrooge McDuck’s money bin - Now, if I can only get my Ma’ to bake be a cake with some tools in it, so I can bust outta this joint.
Henry Imler April 15th, 2008
My younger namesake over at Think Wink brings us this quote of the day. Hank has been meeting with some mormon missionaries every so often since they came a knockin on his door. This time they met at a local McDonalds to dicuss their issues. Hank relates the following experiance:
Today I had an appointment with some more LDS missionaries. We went to McDonalds for some fastfood and to discuss our theological differences. You know, I always feel weird asking God to bless that stuff we call fast-food, but then again it reminds me that I have to believe in miracles to even ask.
I thought that was great.
Henry Imler April 13th, 2008
As I am sure you have noticed, I have taken to blogging about comics lately. I am a relative newcomer to the comic scene. Before my friends Jake and LaRue began just leaving comic trades on my desk last year, I had not read a comic with the exception of the occasional X-Men title in the dentist office growing up. Quite a few of my friends (JR, Jake, LaRue, Hank, Q) have large comic book collections that they have opened up to me. For this, I am grateful to them; they have saved me an ungodly amount of dime.
Accordingly, I am far and away not an expert on comics. I am no where near in deep enough to where I can even start thinking about going indie with my comics.
I do know a good comic blog when I see one. One such blog is Comics Should Be Good!. Not only does it provide one with great commentary on comics rooted in a dept of background knowledge, it is pretty funny to boot. Here are some sample posts illustrating these principles:
Comic Book Alphabet of Cool - T
Captain America #34 Review
Pretty good posts, no?
I mean, any comic blog that dregs up the following image is worthy to be subscribed to in my book.
Henry Imler April 9th, 2008
From the Simmons Mailbag:
Q: I would have thought that after “Phone Booth,” “SWAT,” “The Recruit,” and “Daredevil” people would realize every single movie Colin Farrell has even appeared in is terrible. For some displicable reason, Hollywood kept giving him more money and bigger roles (”Miami Vice,” “Alexander,” etc.) Hence the Colin Farrell Rule: No matter how bad all Colin Farrell movies are, Hollywood studios will insist on giving him leading roles and huge paydays. Who is the Colin Farrell of the NBA?
– Murph, New York
SG: Has to be Stephon Marbury, right? Twelve NBA seasons, four playoff appearances, 18 career playoff games, zero playoff series wins, four different teams that were excited to acquire him, four teams that were excited to trade him, nearly $132 million earned (with another $21 million coming next season) and, if that’s not enough, he was the starting point guard for the Nightmare Team in the 2004 Olympics. Did I leave anything out? You know it’s a good comparison because it’s hard to tell who should be more insulted — Farrell or Marbury.
Henry Imler March 30th, 2008
I needs some help something fierce. My meager music collection has gotten stale - any recommendations?
Henry Imler March 27th, 2008
My statement was awkward in that form.
-Michel Foucault (Fu-ko not fou-cault - darn those French and their laziness in pronunciation!) on his statement that architecture became political only at the end of the eighteenth century. (The Foucault Reader p. 239)
Wait… you mean to tell me that something Foucault wrote was awkward? Say it ain’t so so, Brother! Actually he is just too smart for me!
Henry Imler March 6th, 2008
This is an old Christian song that I just love.
Let it Go by the Newsboys.
…this bitterness you hide
it seeps into your soul
and it steals your joy
’til it’s all you know
let it go
will you forgive?
will you forget?
will you live what you know?
He left his rights
will you leave yours?
you won’t understand it
let it go
will you forgive?
will you forget?
will you live what you know?
beneath the cross
you hear His words,
Father, forgive them,
and you know
you can’t understand it
let it go…
Damn thats hard to do - but I think well worth it.
Henry Imler March 3rd, 2008
This weekend was all board games and thesis. Friday night, after playing basketball and hitting up Flatbranch with the other TAs, I invited them over for Guitar Hero and board games. Much fun ensued. Taboo, Sequence, Ticket to Ride and Guitar Hero - how can one go wrong?
Saturday night, my good friend Jake turned twenty eight and had a few people over for board games. Check out the awesome candle on that cake!
I had one of my best showing in Ticket to Ride and was able to beat Jake, who used up all of his trains and did not waste one of them in achieving the longest track. I also received great pleasure in beating the crap out of Andy in Ticket. He was black (the Mormon express) and I was red (look for me in the upper left-hand corner). The two previous times I had played him I had scored less than he had, a point in which he reveled greatly.
Oh yeah, thesis. I spent from 10AM till 7:30PM on it Saturday and from 2-10pm on it Sunday. I now have about 33 pages, but after I came to that length, I decided to rework the project some. I am dropping The Gospel of Thomas and the The Book of Thomas the Contender from my analysis and only focusing on the social world of The Acts of Thomas. ARG.
Henry Imler February 1st, 2008
You know how in Texas there is a saying: Don’t mess with Texas.? Well the early followers of Jesus had something similar. Today’s gem of wisdom comes from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, chapter 4, verse 1:
Next, he was going through the village again and a running child bumped his shoulder. Becoming bitter, Jesus said to him, “You will not complete your journey.”
Immediately, he fell down and died.
Never, ever, think about bumping against Jesus’ shoulder. That dude is hard-core. Always check your subway cars for child-Jesus if you wanna make it to work on time… and alive.
Henry Imler January 18th, 2008
So, after messing around with people’s desks last week, I knew retribution was in the works. A couple of days ago, I walk into my office to this:
The person featured in the photos is a new professor who is notorious for ignoring the graduate students. This bugs me, because I try to be as courteous as I can to all new people, and people just get the cold shoulder back there. So, out of spite, I hung up her photo on my wall.
When I saw the my desk, I laughed for 10 minutes. Then I kept finding little pictures everywhere, on my fan, in my drawers, just for example. Oh, it was funny.
Henry Imler January 17th, 2008
Saw this today in the comments on this crazy youTube video of Tom Cruise telling us why Scientology is wack (HT Brendo):
stockpitch:
l. ron ripped off buddha’s teaching. scientology is buddhism for trekies
Right after I read that, someone ran by my open window and yelled “Snap!” I said to myself, “Those darn SPs! You are lucky you aren’t in Tom’s vicinity!”
Out of all the religions, Scientology is the hardest to respect - not only because of its very dubious origin, but also its bat-sh!t crazy people. Tom seems so sincere, but also so very crazy.
Henry Imler January 16th, 2008
Darren’s Desk
Courtney’s desk,
the Feminist scholar.
Emily’s desk.
OK, I am an Imler and have been in an empty office working for almost a month. I can’t go that long without messing with someone’s stuff. I might have messed with some of my friend’s desks…. maybe…
I wanted to go with something funny, but not something that prevented anyone from actually working. Say, like spilling 100 cheap ballpoint pins on someone’s desk and then hot-gluing them all down in a random pattern (that would have been great!). Also, no physical harm was to come to the desk owner, such as hot-gluing a set mouse-tap upside down on a desk’s middle drawer. As such, I made sure I was there when Emily came in today to help her move her desk area back.
I tried to pay attention to detail. If you go to the gallery of this, you will note that I took the time to turn all of Darren’s wall hangings and food items upside down and that all of Emily’s postcards and comics have been reversed to the point of them being on the opposite side of the wall.
All of the owners of the desks to the right have been in the office. They all took the gag very well. As a matter of fact, I even helped rearrange Emily’s desk space a few times today.
I still have a couple of desks to go. I don’t want to reveal anything more on here on the off chance that one of the remaining read this. I don’t wanna spoil the fun. The last two involve more work, and I might wait until the semester actually starts to play the prank.
Henry Imler October 30th, 2007
…St. Catherine of Siena, when she felt revulsion from
the wounds she was tending, is said to have bitterly reproached
herself. Sound hygiene was incompatible with charity, so she
deliberately drank a bowl of pus.
When I read that, I turned my head to the side and looked into the non-existent camera with a blank expression.
Seriously, though - a cup of pus. Drunk. On Purpose. Makes people. Not use. The period. Correctly.
Henry Imler September 30th, 2007
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