Ninja's and Awesome

It has recently come to my attention that there is a woeful lack of respect for my complete repertoire of both Ninja related facts and individual Ninja skills. Why, just 2 days ago, I myself leaped into and climbed a tree that did not have one single branch within 87 feet of the ground (This number maybe the result of minor hyperbole, give or take 84 feet). How did I accomplish such a feat? With Ninja skills, that's how. 

I believe this lack of faith in Ninja Related Awesomeness and Destruction (more commonly referred to as NRAD) is far more widespread than my personal sphere of influence, which, as luck may have it, is quite girthy. I have compiled a short list of facts and NRAD that may help you more fully understand the Awesomeness of the Ninja, and by proxy, me.

According to The Official Ninja Webpage "Real Ultimate Power", (http://www.realultimatepower.net/index4.htm) here are some facts about the common Ninja.

FACT:

 1.Ninjas are mammals.

2.Ninjas fight ALL the time.
3. The purpose of the ninja is to flip out and kill people.

I, Myself, like to add the following facts: 

4: Han Solo was a Ninja.

5: Ninja's are completely capable of killing a Velociraptor with their bare hands.

6: Every Ninja is an excellent lover, yet not all excellent lovers are Ninjas. (See Greg Gorham for details)

Read this true life story by a guy named Rob who is a published author (Blog owners are publishers right?) in the Official Ninja Webpage. "I heard that there was this ninja who was eating at a diner.  And when some dude dropped a spoon the ninja killed the whole town.  My friend Mark said that he saw a ninja totally uppercut some kid just because the kid opened a window."

This harrowing tale reveals that not only are Ninjas awesome, they also are very willy nilly about killing, death, destruction, and Roller Coasters. Although, I still am having a bit of trouble confirming that last one. 

If you do a top secret NORAD Search for Ninja Facts, you will also find that Ninja's are among the most charitable givers in the world, are usually quite skilled in the art of lumber jacking, and have among their midst the likes of: Chuck Norris, Fred Astaire, Patrick Swazi, Jimmy Hendrix, and Mia Hamm.

Ninja's are fast, cool, smooth, strong, powerful, and sweet according to Real Ultimate Power, the website. I am not sure if you could fathome, a more accurate depiction of me. I am infact quite fast. Just the other evening I cooked an omelet in about 5 mins! Cool and smooth? I both found my wife and sealed the deal within 8 months. Yeah, thats right. Strong, Powerful, and Sweet are pretty much like, my most common traits. So, I think I formed a pretty iron clad case as to why I am a Ninja. 

In conclusion, Ninja's are awesome.

PS: I play the guitar.

The Bird

As I stated before, I am blogging about several topics (If you don't know what they are, you can find the list here: http://jericksond.blogspot.com/2011/01/tj-houshmandzadeh-just-lost-game-sad.html)

Flip Someone the Bird...post on my blog

Life has a way of making me feel like a tiny being. Not very powerful and just downright weak at times. It happened in Iraq when rockets were coming over the burm and people got blown up. It happened again in Djibouti when I was sent to work with a village of people with no school, hospital, or water and realized I couldn't really do much to help them. It is also happening right now. I am realizing that my Faith is more important than I thought.

We all believe in something. Some believe the point of life is to live. Others believe we are alive to seek the truth and yet others believe life is a cyclical process and that when we die, we simply return in another form to try the whole thing again. I personally believe that we live because we were created by a loving God that wanted us to find joy and redemption through grace. The point of life is to bring joy to that Creator by giving back to him.

The New Testament states that if God takes care of the sparrows, we are silly to think he won't take care of us.It also states that if Jesus Christ died in our place, how crazy is it to think that he would refuse to take care of us each day? Now, I'm not the kind of person that pretends that if you love God, everything will be good and that nothing upsetting will happen. That is pretty much not true at all. However, I am the guy that says, "It is AWESOME that I am not a bird." Seriously, how cool is that?! Birds can't talk. They eat worms, they fly into glass and die, they live in tiny tree homes, and they are often attacked by cats. That would be a crappy way to go.

I'm a human person and since I believe the Bible to be true, I can believe that God loves me and cares about my life. Thats an awesome thought. Seriously, I'm pumped that I'm not a bird! Ask yourself, is life about me, or is there a greater plan going on here? You might be surprised at the answers you find.

The Superbowl and why Church should be more like it.

As I informed all my passionate blog readers (Who am I kidding. There are 3 of you. Joni, Greg, and Amber. My mom doesn't even read this blog!) a few blogs ago, I would be blogging about the Superbowl. Now, you don't have to be a sports lover to enjoy the Superbowl, and you don't need to know a thing about sports to enjoy this blog post either. This is about something else all together.

I recently (last month) heard a fellow lamenting the fact that millions of people go out of their mind crazy about the Superbowl each year and for one Sunday a year, they get into it. There are parties, people come together to cheer for opposing teams, there is food, great commercials, and it is a generally festive occasion. I tried to logically think about the reasons the Superbowl would inspire such a robust following and why most Churches in the United States are usually met with very lackluster results on Sunday mornings. Now it all makes sense.

Each year the National Football League invests millions, perhaps billions of dollars into this one event. People pay between $2,200 -$6,900 for a ticket (http://www.gotickets.com/sports/nfl/super_bowl.php). Commercial air time for this event is the most expensive airtime that can be purchased each year. As a result, companies put out their most expensive and or best advertisements of the year during this event. Because of the massive numbers of people watching, the NFL can book pretty much any band it wants because no musician in their right mind would pass up the opportunity to play for that large an audience. The teams that are actually playing the game? Oddly, it doesn't really matter. I mean, don't get me wrong here, they are the best the NFL has in that given year. However, never once have I been asked, "Are you going to watch the Superbowl this year" , and my response been, "No, I don't really care for either team." The teams are irrelevant. The SUPERBOWL, is the key here.

To put my point more succinctly, the Superbowl is awesome because people  role out the best and brightest of their creative genius, people spare no expense in creating the best image they can, the football league puts out the best teams they possibly can, and it is an event that brings people together in support of a common theme, the Superbowl.

Now if we replace the term Superbowl, with Church, wouldn't this make a world of difference on Sunday morning?! If we gave our very best creativity and genius each week in worship to God. If we spared no expense in our attempts to reach out to those that are far from Christ, what would happen?  What if we endeavored to give our very best abilities back to God as an act of worship on Sunday? If the musicians on stage had the mentality that this is the ONE day they can't afford to give a mediocre effort, would that change the way we worshiped?

I am not saying that Church should be reduced to a sporting event or a form of entertainment. Far from that! I am espousing the idea that Church should be so huge and important to us that we cannot afford to give it anything but our best. Jesus Christ DIED for our sin so that we could be redeemed from our selves! It just seems silly to me that Sunday morning roles around and we view it as a chance to "Go to Church." The Sunday Worship Experience should be the part of the week that gets our focus, our passion, our creativity, and our emotion. I think it is maybe time for us as a generation of Christ followers to start giving God our best and stop giving him whats left.

Now how cool is Church going to be when we are all giving it our best!?

#The2LawsofClassicRemakes

Ok, so in my post about future postings, I stated that I would give you the #The2LawsofClassicRemakes (I'm hopping this soon starts "Trending" on twitter). This Law stems from the recent remake of "True Grit". This movie should never have been remade. It violates the #The2LawsofClassicRemakes.
It did ok at the box office in comparison to the other movies, but come on! A YouTube Video of me dancing in a clover field would have beaten out that list. It took first over "Little Fockers" "Season of the Which" "Yogi Bear" and "Tangled". Really!?

Ok, so the 2 Laws are very simple:

#The2LawsofClassicRemakes


1. Never remake a movie that stared John Wayne as a cowboy or a soldier. It can not possibly get any better than it already is right now. You are just going to ruin it for everyone.

2. Never remake a movie that stared Clint Eastwood as a cowboy or a soldier. It cannot possibly get any better than it already is right now. You are just going to ruin it for everyone.

That is pretty much it. Follow those rules, and you're good. Face the facts people, if we try and remake "Kelley's Heroes" who is going to play Kelly!? Not Josh Brolin that is certain. And what if we attempt to remake "The Sons of Kattie Elder"!? That just hurts my heart to think about.  Not cool. Follow the Laws. They are iron clad.

Troy Polamalu's Hair

I have to talk about Troy's hair because I stated in a previous blog that I would, and also because his hair is Epic.

Ok, so his hair is awesome. True story. This man can teach other dudes a few things about style and fashion. While I personally am not a fan of the longer hair on dudes (Excluding facial hair which is manly and gets the ladies) Troy OWNS his. He has not had is hair cut since 2000 when he played for USC, or other reports indicate he may have had it trimmed in 2002, but either way, his streak is impressive. This is a man who has a 1Million dollar deal with Proctor and Gamble to help them sell their line of shampoo. In response to how effective his adds have been, P & G have taken out an insurance policy on his HAIR!

Men, the lesson to be learned here is simple. "Whatever you do, do it well." If we want to go old school KJV (King James Version of the Bible) we could throw down with a, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might!" Troy's hair is slightly hideous, but he took it and branded himself with it. His HAIR is now making more money than most of you are making! YIKES!

So, weather you cook, surf, carve apples into the figures of pop culture icons, or go to the gym, do it. Don't do it just a little, do it as hard, as good, as awesomely as you can.

Troy P. once stated that he feels like his hair is a fifth appendage. Think of how awesome our lives could be if we flow this principle into our lives? Do what you do as good as you can do it.

Also, Velociraptor Awareness day is on April 17th.

Sometimes, Cake is Worship.

My sister (Jini, she is awesome and if you have never met her, you should) told me about some cake she had recently at a Church Lunch. She said it was divine and tasted like heaven in her mouth. Not being satisfied with simply consuming one portion of cake, she decided to trace the cake back to it's source. At the end of her quest was a lady that had baked the cake. Jini explained to the lady how grateful she was that she had used her God-given talent for baking, to serve in the Church. Oddly, that lady was worshiping God with her baking.

What a crazy cool way to worship your creator right?! We were created with certain talents and all God asks for is that we use them to give back. Worship is simply paying homage to God. We can do this by giving him our best efforts with the talents he has given us and laying those at his feet. What a beautiful way to worship.
I think that I have been guilty in the past of thinking of worship as the song service on Sunday morning. That was wrong. This way of thinking is flawed because true worship is to pay homage (Homage:  something done or given in acknowledgment or consideration of the worth of another. In this case it is given to our God.) to our creator. 


I have come to realize that the truest forms of worship may not even be experience in a Sunday Worship Experience. Think about this, when a band prepares for the Worship service, they are giving God not just their talent, but also their time, their energy and their passion. This means that they have been worshiping while preparing to lead worship! The guy that sets up the sound and mixes it? He was worshiping before the service by giving his knowledge and best efforts to the sound setup. The same can be said for the Pastor preparing for the service, the door greeter that wears his best smile, the guy that cleans the building, the set up crew worships with their ability to move large objects quickly. I can go on and on, but the basic point is this. Worship has nothing to do with music. It has everything to do with taking your talents and abilities that God has given you or given you a passion for and giving those back to God. That is worship.

I have heard much cacophony (loud useless noise) about the distinction between worship leaders that give every ounce of talent they have to the worship experience, and those that put on a show. It seems to me that if we are worshiping correctly by giving every bit of talent we have back to God and we all pour it out simultaneously on a given stage on a particular Sunday morning, it had better look like a show! How can we give a half-hearted recreation of another mans work and look up at God and act like he should be happy with that!? If we give everything we have back, I assure you, God has given us enough collective talent to put on a pretty awesome show. 


So, the lady that bakes the cake? She makes worship taste pretty fantastic!

Tj Houshmandzadeh Just Lost the Game. Sad.

Hello my awesome blogging buddies. As I sit here and watch the Baltimore Ravens in a dead sprint with the Steelers, I realized a few things. One, Hines Ward has a lot of fun playing football. Two, The Ravens defense is scary good. Third, this month has been ridiculous (on a side note, the next time you think about getting married and having a wedding, don't. Elope. You will love yourself for it.) Fourth, I have not blogged for a very long time and it makes me sad. I have at least 17 things I need to tell you and I just have been very slow at getting my AWESOME thoughts out there.

Given the fact that my wedding is next week and my Honeymoon is the week after that. My guess is that it will  be about 2 solid weeks before I really put much substance out there for you to devour in a feast of intellectual gluttony (Oddly, this is the only type of gluttony that the Bible really endorses. True Story).

A few of the post you can prepare to consume include topics such as: Worship, Church, Relationships, The Superbowl, Car Buying, I Hate Cats, Why Did I Just Do That, Troy Palamolo's Hair, and the 2 Laws of Classic Remakes.

If you have topics you would like me to consider for future blog posts, please feel free to comment and let me know what you want to hear about. I won't use your suggestions, but I want you to feel free to make them. Because I care about your feelings.