It's amazing how there's only one other person on MSN at the moment.

The Paradox of the Christian Life

To save your life, lose it.
To be first, be last.
To be the greatest, be the servant.
Those you hate(i.e. your enemies), love.
Those who force you to do something for them, willingly do more.
To be rich, give your things away.
To love God, obey His commands. His top command is: "Love the Lord your God........"
When you are weak, then you are truly strong.
To be exalted, humble yourself.

Discrimination!!!!!

Okay, maybe I got a little carried away with the title ;-)

Today I went to the movies (as you can tell from my oh-so-not-quite-professional review :-p)

And, as it so happened, I had to visit the ladies room.

I went down the hallway and saw 2 doors.

One said "Gentlemen".

The other said "Plant Room".


Now pardon me if I got a little confused, but "Plant Room" is not exactly the sign I was after, if you catch my drift.

Maybe the cinema was trying to teach us females a lesson? As in, "You want to visit the bathroom in pairs and continually create line-ups from here to 1km away?! Then we're not going to GIVE you a bathroom!"

*Fortunately there was another door further down the hallway, and it did say 'Ladies'*

Crazy similes I have heard

• "As subtle as a train-smash"
• "As subtle as a sledgehammer"
• "As subtle as a huntsman spider in your undies"
• "Faster than an eel in a snakepit"
• "As busy as a one-armed carpenter in Smackaroo"

"You made that one up, didn't you?" Clancy looked embarrassed. "I did not!"
"You did! There's no such place as Smackaroo! I looked it up on the map! Anyway, if he's a one-armed carpenter, he wouldn't be busy, would he? He'd probably go fishing or something!" (The Last Continent, Terry Pratchett)

• "Nosier than a bandicoot on a worm farm"
• "As hungry as a hippo"

Feel free to add your own!

CCD assignment

CCD stands for 'community cultural development'. I've been working on my assignment - it's a proposal for a CCD project. And I've finished! :-)

I thought I'd never break the 1000 word barrier. But I did.

Actually, I've broken the 3000 word barrier. It's only supposed to be 2500 :-(

Okay, so add 10% leeway and that's 2750. So all I have to do is cut out 321 words and I'll be there exactly :-s

Aargh. 13 words over.

Oh come on, 2754 words is pov! :-(

Okay, let's try again. 4 WORDS TO GO.

Nup, can't do it. I'll leave it at one word over, they won't kill me for that. Plus if it's including the references in the brackets in the word count, then I'm definitely under. Whew.

Oh look, it's the last day of September.
Wasn't it the first day only a little while ago?

My sister's formal is tomorrow night.

She's all grown up!

*waaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh* :',-(

Have fun! :-)

*No, she's NOT getting trashed at the after-formal party. Mind you, she might have a slight - slight? - extreme sugar-high :-s*

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

As much as I enjoyed Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory starring Gene Wilder in.......who knows when - I think Tim Burton has done an absolutely amazing job with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

I went and saw it today :-)

(and analysed the entire thing while sitting there loving every second of it......does it ever get annoying, thinking "that's a nice shot, good contrast" and "I like how the music modulated to a minor key there to denote that change in tension" ???? Drives me nuts sometimes, but I just can't seem to stop! ;-)

Anyway.....

Johnny Depp was a really good Wonka. There were times where you'd just go, "Is he actually psycho, or just eccentric? Is he about to go nuts now?" - and then he wouldn't - "how about now?" - nope.

It would have been easy to portray a character bordering on insane or psychotic. Johnny Depp didn't do that - instead he gave us glimpses into the darker, crazier side of his nature occasionally. Slightly unsettling. But for the most part, he was an eccentric, but nice guy - if completely off-the-wall.

Why am I sounding like a journalist?! :-p

I loved the theme of the movie, and if I had to sum it up in a sentence, I'd say "Family is more important than anything else." Coming from Hollywood, that's not bad!!! And for once we saw a boy who had both a mum and a dad, and a family who loved each other and would stick together no matter what. Can we see some more movies like this? :-D

Also loved the way the film treated the topic of the importance of money - Charlie's family are poor. Really poor. They have a hole in their roof (right next to where Charlie sleeps, so in snowy British winters, that can't be fun), they eat cabbage soup for tea every night, and they can only afford to buy one chocolate bar for Charlie a year - which is his birthday present. *Feeling sad yet? Wait for it......* But no-one complains once, throughout the entire movie, about it. Man, they had a good attitude. When they had nothing but cabbage to put in their soup, Mrs Bucket said "Oh well, nothing goes better with cabbage than cabbage" and promptly put more in.

Anyway, one of my favourite moments is when Charlie opens his chocolate bar, hoping for a golden ticket. It's not there. So he says he's going to share it with everyone (i.e. mum, dad and both sets of grandparents - 6 other people). Of course they refuse, but he says, "It's my birthday present and I'll do with it what I want" and hands a piece out to everyone. I just sat there, counting how many pieces he was handing out, watching the chocolate bar diminish, until he only had one piece left.

And you know what? I think Charlie got it right. I think that's the proper value of things, of money - it's not as important as love. *And it made me a little teary*

The other thing I loved was the look of the film - very stylistic, lots of details and lots of contrast and almost exaggeration - like a black, tall building standing alone in the middle of the snow.

Oh, and the music was good too (Danny Elfman, who I'd never heard of, but I'm going to have to look into his work!)

Great movie :-) I recommend it.

The Random Ramblings of 2am

I have to go to work this morning.
Stupid, stupid, stupid........

Do not be awake at 2am when you have to be up at 7:30am.

Meanwhile, I was writing an assignment. 1000 words down, 1500 to go :-s
Is this blathering important? I mean, in all honesty, who really cares. Because I don't, and I'm the one blogging about it.

Sometimes my blog is just my excuse for not getting out there and talking to people.
"She hates being lonely, but she wants to be alone" - lyrics from a song.

I'm over 19. Bring on 20.

On second thoughts...............

Does it ever scare you (if you're my age) that next year you're going to be 20? 20 is old! 20 is an adult! 20 is "I know where I'm going, I know what I'm doing, I'm confident and secure."

I think I'm just going to be 20 and old - one out of three ain't bad. ("Yes it is, it's only 33 percent!" "Shut up!" ~line from a Terry Pratchett book, but I don't remember which one.~)

Ah, that's getting a bit bleak really, isn't it? 20 isn't that old. I just can't believe that I'm going to be 20. Admittedly not for another four months.

20!!!!!!!

My mind has a tendency to recycle old thoughts and worries, unless I can stop them with a new thought. There it goes again......20.........

I woke up on my 19th birthday thinking "where did the last 19 years go?"
Please don't let that happen again.

Am I nuts? Am I having a mid-life crisis at 19? (Does that make it a quarter-life crisis?) If so, where's my red Ferrari and good-looking guy in the passenger seat? (Heh, if I'm having the Ferrari, I'm driving :-p) Hey, maybe they're my 20th birthday presents :-p *yeah, right*

PLACES TO VISIT ONE DAY:
Longreach

Rockhampton (to see if it really is the hole I've been told it is)

Cairns (more than the airport this time)
Perth
Whitsundays!!!!!!!!!!! yeah :-)
Lodge St (my grandma was born there)
Sunshine Coast

CRAZY ADVENTURES TO HAVE:
Wing it on public transport to.......I don't know. Wherever I end up. Then try to get back home again ;-)

*Actually that's about as adventurous as I get, sorry*

PLACES NOT TO GO:
Adelaide (apologies if you were born there, you like it or are moving there. I just don't like it)
Prison
Mental institute

HIGH SCHOOL MOMENTS I WISH I COULD RE-LIVE:
Endless lunchtimes of Warlords and Scumbags
"Gary's becoming a shark at handball!" *isn't the word shark so funny :-)*
Laughing about our crazy music teacher's antics
"Algebra is beautiful. We love algebra" - yr 9 maths teacher
The formal
End-of-year bludging
Those moments when you learned something you needed to know, solved a big problem and felt like you'd grown so much.


HIGH SCHOOL MOMENTS I'M GLAD ARE OVER:
Grade 10 advanced maths
The last half of year 12

UNI MOMENTS I WISH I COULD RELIVE:
Performance 1
Performance 2
Performing our compositions in Core Mus 1 *I'm seeing a pattern here*
Telling 2 of my friends about Jesus :-)

UNI MOMENTS I'M GLAD ARE OVER:
Music and sound technology!!!!!!
That awkward feeling when you know you're turning bright red
That awkward feeling when you've just said you're a Christian and everyone's like................................

SAD LYRICS I LIKE:
I talked to absolutely no-one
Couldn't keep to myself enough
And the things bottled inside
Had finally begun to create so much pressure
As to blow up and
I heard the reverberating footsteps
Sinking up to the beating of my heart
And I was positive that unless
I got myself together I would watch me fall apart ~Relient K~

WHAT I REALLY WANT RIGHT NOW:
A Milo
Sleep
A hug

WHAT I REALLY CAN HAVE RIGHT NOW:
Sleep.

Good night/morning.

Tewantin RSL

Went to the Tewantin RSL on Friday night. My uncle was playing in a band known as 'Radio Saigon' (yes, he too is a pianist/keyboardist ;-) - they play songs made popular during the Vietnam War era.

There were a lot that I actually knew :-) Hey, Dad got me addicted to Queen before I was born! So don't blame me :-p

The thing I've discovered is that the RSL is really clubbing for old people.

What do you go to a club to do? Smoke, get drunk, maybe take some drugs, and hook up.

What do you go to an RSL to do? The same. Except replace 'take some drugs' with 'play some pool'. And it's a bit quieter.

So although I haven't been clubbing, maybe I've been clubbing for old people? Considering I'm 19, that's not really a problem, since I did none of the above activities.

Actually, I do have a confession to make.

I did do one of the activities mentioned above. Guess which one!!!!















(I played pool)

Purevolume

Maybe I've been the problem
Maybe I'm the one to blame
But even when I turn it off and blame myself
The outcome feels the same
I've been thinkin' maybe I've been partly cloudy
Maybe I'm the chance of rain
And maybe I'm overcast and maybe
All my luck's washed down the drain (Switchfoot ,'Stars')

You can hear some of it at www.purevolume.com/switchfootofficial (click on the 'pureplayer'. Alternatively, scroll down the page and click on the link - you can hear the whole song in Windows Media Player)

No, that's it, nothing very profound at the moment. But while we're on songs, here's another one I found:

My hands hold safely to my dreams
Clutching tightly not one has fallen
So many years I've shaped each one
Reflecting my heart showing who I am
Now you're asking me to show
What I'm holding oh so tightly
Can't open my hands can't let go
Does it matter?
Should I show you?
Can't you let me go?

Surrender, surrender you whisper gently
You say I will be free
I know but can't you see?
My dreams are me. My dreams are me

You say you have a plan for me
And that you want the best for my life
Told me the world had yet to see
What you can do with one
That's committed to Your calling
I know of course what I should do
That I can't hold these dreams forever
If I give them now to You
Will You take them away forever?
Or can I dream again? (Barlow Girl, 'Surrender')

A struggle I had/am having. I think it's beginning to get sorted out. Hooray!!!!!

But a sad song :-( (go to www.purevolume.com/matthewthiessenandtheearthquakes and click on 'Poison Ivy' - but the rest are good too. And a bit sad.) By the lead singer in Relient K. All his songs are pretty good.

You can also visit Relient K : www.purevolume.com/relientk

And while you're there, you can check out Seventh Day Slumber's 'Candy' (another of my favourites) www.purevolume.com/seventhdayslumber
(and the other one is good, too) Actually, I wrote a poem that used a couple of lines from Candy once (I know that's probably copyright, but here it is:)

Worry
Is a bitter taste in your mouth
It poisons everything you eat and drink
Until you drink the Living Water
And realise
"Your love's like candy
Or like something I've never tasted before"

This guy apparently sounds like Eminem: www.purevolume.com/kj52
(except his language is considerably cleaner!)

And then of course there's Sanctus Real: www.purevolume.com/sanctusreal (another band I like :-)

I think I should get paid for plugging purevolume so much! Happy listening.

Outbreak

There's a camp called Outbreak. And as everyone knows, things like washing up and cleaning up after each meal must be done. So we have things called 'duty groups' to make sure that the same five people aren't doing all the work.

Most duty groups are called 'team 1', 'team 2' etc. If they're inventive, they might be called animal names - eg "wombat", "kangaroo" etc.

Outbreak's names are much more exciting:

The Fully Tripping Rad Dudes
The Cuttin' Sick Legends
The X-Treme Extremists
The Gnarly Party Bandits
The Uber Hot Funk Masters
The Choice Bro Mad Team
The Sweet-As Funky Chickens
The Fully Amped Space Monkeys

*When I went in 04, I was a Fully Amped Space Monkey....yeah!! :-)*

Schoolies street chaplaincy last year

One of my most frightening experiences was not an encounter with a schoolie.

It was an encounter with a public toilet.

And I am not talking about your standard brick building with a tin roof. No, this was the most up-to-date, high-tech toilet you could imagine.

The toilet block itself was white and had little flashing lights all over it. It looked like a spaceport - I was half expecting *radio noise* "Clear cubicle three, we have a spaceship coming in to land."

Anyway, cubicle three was free, so I slid open the door and went in. It was quite easy to shut the door, but locking it was another matter. There were instructions. And I did follow them. But it didn't work. So I resorted to my own method that I like to call the Random Button Press.

However, it had no effect whatsoever, and so I reverted to following the instructions. This time the door did lock. Suddenly I heard a voice.

"Tho door is locked. To flush the toilet, please press the button in the wall twice. The door will automatically unlock in ten minutes." Then 'The Girl from Ipanema' or something similar began playing.

The horrible thought occured to me.
What if I'm not done in ten minutes?
I had a terrible vision of the door sliding open, me being able to see all of Surfers Paradise.....and all of them able to see me.

Fortunately, ten minutes was plenty of time. Then I realised I had to unlock the door. I went straight for the Random Button Press method, but to no avail. If worst came to worst, I knew I'd be out in around seven minutes, but I wanted to get out right then! So I followed the instructions (twice) and lo and behold, the light turned green and the door unlocked!

Glad to be free of the spaceport, I pulled the door open and stumbled out. The first thing I saw were five faces - my street chaplain friends had been waiting outside. They stared at me, dumbfounded.

I was free.

Making Lunch: the bachelor way

Loaf of bread.............$3
Chicken......................$5
Baby spinach leaves....$4

The look on your face when you go to melt butter in the microwave and pull out a plate of week-old food: priceless.

There are some things money can't buy.

Isn't it ironic....

A few months ago, I was feeling a bit down and decided I needed to read a book. So I bought this book, which was about "fighting for joy". Sounded good, so I bought it and took it home.

I read the first two chapters.
They were the most depressing chapters I have ever read in my life.

I spent the next two days feeling guilty and depressed.

It wasn't until the third day that I came to the realisation that God still loved me, and so I managed to wade out of my ocean of self-pity and sadness, and stand on the shore of sanity. Then I thought, "a book about joy that made me depressed.....that'll be a funny story one day!"

P.S. I did read the rest of the book. It was better. :-)

My Dad's story

My dad has a knack for story-telling, which I didn't know until a couple of years ago. Here is a familiar tale in a not-so-familiar setting and not-so-familiar language. It's pretty Australian. It was written (as a joke) as a comprehension test for my uncle's students in Japan. Enjoy it :-)

The BEE Threars story:

Punce awon a time there were bee threars. Bapa pear, Bama mear and Baby bear, which just goes to show that alliteration beats spoonerisms. Now these bee threars lived in the bush in a what the local real estate agents called a 'much sought after' property. Actually it was because they had a still hidden in the backyard and it was the brown bombers that were doing the seeking. But be that as it may, they came down to breakfast this day (and that in itself is amazing, because who actually cooked it is a mystery considering that the temperature of the food varied so greatly and bama mear had been asleep with the others) I digress.

The borridge was in the powls and they tasted it.
"Larve the stizards," shouted Bapa pear. "This corridge is poldern a politicians promise." There's that alliteration again.
"What?" said bama mere. "You must have a couple of roos loose in the top paddock mate, this horridge is potter than hay and booligal combined."
But baby bear brightly burbled (cop that spoonerisms), "My porridge is goodo."
"Wombat droppings," said Bapa pear. so they all went for a walk until the consumable reached the correct temperature. Just how this was supposed to happen also remains a mystery to sall and undry.

SCENE CHANGE
Narrator:Now deres dis broad whats called lodigocks see? She's cruizin de bush lookin for fuzz see? On accounta she's got the woid dat deres a still hidden in de bush somewheres, and muggsy wants his protection loot, but collectin from tree bears is kinda tuff see?So loldigocks sasheys up to the front door and slides her jemmy outta her handbag. Forces the lock and in under 20 seconds has successfully broken and entered.She spots the tucker on the table and since breakin and entering gives you the munchies she checks it out.

The pirst flate she tries is bapa mears and she almost gets frostbite of the tongue.Then she takes the spoon now stuck to her duke from cold (like licking the freezer only less painful) and shoves it in pama mears breakfast.The spring thaw comes early and she can remove the spoon from her now slowly unstiffening hand. She tries out the porridge and burns herself badly.Unperturbed by these events, the brains trust of this tale tries the third quart pot.
"This is good tucker", she mutters, slurping the porridge down so fast there is almost a vacuum that drags in the spoon.Then, full as a goog, she decides to sit in an cheasy air until she can collect muggsy's loot. So she tries bapa pears chair. This is hardern diamond on a drill tip so she gives it the swerve. Next up again is bama mears seat and this one is so soft she sinks slowly, silently, smoothly etc etc. Then baby bears chair shows and she finds it to her liking and makes a note that this is worth coming back after dark and doing a quick robbery for. BUT, seein as hows she's still more stuffed than wallaby ted's brother, she decides to have a snooze, so she goes upstairs to check out the beds.

You know the drill.

The first ones about as comfortable as Mount Everest in a blizzard. The second ones so deep in duck down that she disappears from view again.The third one fills the bill, and fastern than you can say," What a complete load of cobbled up codswallop" a hundred times she is fast asleep snoring the roof down.

Time passes and the bee threars come home to see the busted door, the trashed house and the missing tucker. Then they hear the snores coming from upstairs so bapa pear rigs a net from titan across the stairs and gets a ladder. He climbs upstairs and weeks in the pindow. Nothing. Then he tries the wecond sindow and there he casts a captain on loldigocks.
"OI you shiela," he hollers. This wakes her up which was the desired effect and she shoots through on the bondi tram, but the net across the stairs shows great ability and she drops the ball at the 20 yard line. The bee threars start asking questions and if you ever find yourself in the company of bee threars that can mutter a single intelligible syllable, let alone speak english you better talk plenty straight if you want to remain in returnable for a refund condition.So loldigocks dobs on muggsy and gives the bee threars the drum that the coppers are onto the still as well.

"Stuff me budgies sideways," says baby bear (he could speak normally you see due to the alliteration problem aforementioned)," those blokes are nosier than a bandicoot in a worm farm. We'll have to shift the still."
"Not wrong narelle," agreed bapa pear. "I think I'll go walkabout to muggsy's too and give him the drum on trying to come the raw prawn in this neck of the woods. I'll show that drongo what a smack in the gulziga is all about."

So they dropped in on muggsy and bapa pear dropped muggsy's strong arm men faster n a hot spud with a quick clobber in the lug ole and then he rumbled over to muggsy.

"OI scumbag," he said, "next time you come the stuck up sticky beak on my station you'll find a garden gnome has been inserted in you and your fruit is from here to innaminika an back if you catch the wave, you namby pamby arty crafty shirt lifter."Bapa pear had noted that muggsy was severely in need of wrist starch.

Then they borrowed noddies little chuckle wagon, which was out of rego and light on brakes, but did the job to move the still after bapa pear had sprung the coppers and dropped a baby possum down their strides to keep them busy for an hour or three.There was a massive grog up afterwards and bapa pear threw a barbie that lasted a week. He did the cooking and made sure that the tucker was spot on.

The end.

Questions:How many animals are in the story?
What illegal activity/ies did they engage in?
Was the girl in the story a criminal?
Why not or why?

Making decisions

I hate making decisions. Big ones.

I hate feeling nervous or anxious and trying to make a good one, then feeling crummy about the decision I finally made.

I hate worrying about whether I've made the right decision or not.

I hate trying to figure out which ideas, thoughts and feelings are mine, which are from God and which aren't.

I hate decision making. :-(

Help!!!!

Another problem is trusting God. To be quite honest (and He knows this) I don't fully trust Him. Not that I'm writing this to flaunt that fact - not at all. I need to trust God - after all, if I don't trust Him, who can I trust?

I think the difficulty lies in trying to remember 2 truths about God: On the one hand, yes, He does want to be in control, in charge of my life. He wants me to obey Him and He wants me to do what He wants and not what I want (if they happen to clash). But if I only remember that, it makes God seem like a harsh, ruthless slavedriver. The other truth I need to remember is that God loves me very very much, He sent His Son to die for me, so He certainly won't hold back anything else that will be good for me, He wants to have a real, close relationship with me and He wants to forgive me. The trick is to walk down the middle of those two truths.

And I have a tendency to veer. Like a shopping trolley with three wheels going the right way and one headed for the carpark, I am a bit all over the place.

If you're a Christian, what helps you to keep trusting in God, even when things are tough or don't work out the way you expect?

Camping

Camping plans.

We're making ours already.

It's just crazy - the amount of miscommunication that can happen in ten minutes.

"We'll get this mesh" says Dad excitedly, "and it's going to go under the tarp, which'll go over Maddy (the campervan we're going to hire)."

"But our tarp isn't big enough to go over Maddy," I interject.

"We bought a bigger one."

"What?! A bigger one? I thought the last one you bought was the biggest tarp in Ulladulla!"

"Yep. But I bought a bigger one. That's the small one now."

Yeah, that'd be about right.

"So now we've got this mesh and it's got this cross at the top with a vertical pole and then we just cable-tie the tarp around the edges of it and Bob's your aunty" (or words to that effect).

It took us all a long time to figure out exactly what the heck we were all talking about and how it was going to actually work - but when we did, it sounded like a good idea.

"So we don't have to spend 8 hours setting up this year?"

"No."

"And no more Red Bull for you!" (Red Bull makes some of our family members cranky).

"I have not had any Red Bull since that day!"

"Yeah, thankfully."

Now we won't come last in the race - you know, that race that all the families have to see who can put up their camping gear first - not that it's actually a race, but you know that when the other families are finished five hours before you, there's something wrong.

Ah well. Should be fun. :-)

Interactive poetry!

One drop of ink colours an entire glass of water.

One drop of distraction colours my entire concentration. (Noof)

One drop of chocolate gives my tastebuds pleasure

One drop of truth gives my soul life (Karaokesuperstar)

One drop of time, I hope its not wasted

One dropped life is too many (Luke)

One tablet of time is all this life is

A migraine persists if you only eat half of it (Anonymous)

(Next 2 lines anyone?)

A poem of regret......

.......................................................................................
but there are no words.
Simply a sigh, a longing for what can never be,
Bittersweet memories
A lump in my throat
Tears in my eyes
And the resolve to never
NEVER repeat past mistakes.

High school

It's high school
Could be
A mini-me of the rest of society
There's always prom queens
Always be
Always be sororities
And sadly, some will be eternally
Keeping score of popularity
But just cos they all do
Doesn't mean we have to act like we're in high school.......Superchick

Quotes, sayings and other bits and pieces found in my year nine diary:

THE NATIONAL ANTHEM
Australians all love ostriches
Four minus one makes three
We go crazy our on the roads
With out fake I.D.
Our land abounds in XXXX (four x)
And meat pies rich and rare
We always say "No worries mate"
Advance Australia fair
No worries mate, then let us sing
Advance Australia fair

"If you aim for nothing, you generally get it!"

"Algebra is beautiful" - maths teacher
"I'm such a nice person" - music teacher
"No more stuffing around!" - drama teacher
"Or if you want to do the full monty" - maths teacher again
"I try to stay away from political jokes, because they usually get elected anyway" - radio DJ
"If wood comes from the soil, the tree would be in a jolly big hole, wouldn't it?"- science teacher
"Yes, it wood" - student
"Alright, you have an early performance tomorrow, so boot your rooster in the head the night before" - music teacher
"I got the food chain blues - bababababababa" - music student in science
"Shut your mouth! Just shut your mouth! Shut your mouth! Shut your mouth! No, just shut your mouth!" - sports teacher
"When do you intend on studying for this exam?" - history teacher
"When I get the flopping time!" - me
"I think she's just gone troppo!" - my friend

"Be there or be a rectangular thing"

"Eat dessert first - after all, life is uncertain"

"You don't stop laughing coz you grow old....you grow old because you stop laughing"

DEMERIT RECORD:
This Conduct Record Sheet may be signed for the following reasons:
A Acting like an animal
B Out of bounds
C Late to class
D Disobedience
E Failure to bring appropriate equipment to class
F Failure to produce diary
G Going to the toilet
H Homework not completed
I Interfering with the learning of others
J Jumping
K Being a kleptomaniac
L Littering
M Misuse of property
N Non-attendance at detentions
O Overdue library resources
P Picking your nose
Q Asking questions
R Rude or discourteous behaviour
S Spitting
T Talking to Vaughan
U Uniform infringement
V Talking to Vaughan*
W Drinking water
X Giving people x-rays in science
Y Being young and funky
Z Painting the school's zebra crossing black

*This offence is so severe it requires two demerits.

(I'll let you decide which are real and which I made up! :-D)

More poetry please

The more you comment, the better that poem is going to get :-)

Cheers to the one person who's commented already :-)

That bald frog with a wig.....

Once upon a time, there was a bald frog.

*The audience gasps in shock, amazement and horror*

But it's okay!! Because it had a wig.

*The audience sighs a long sigh of relief*

*Big dramatic music - C#11 (no 3rd), G7, C9*

The end.

heh heh heh heh heh

You know those things that I kept getting on my blog? (I don't want to mention their names in case I get more) Well, I think I've dealt with the computer spam - the blog has this thing you can do. I know that's not specific, but hopefully I won't be getting too much more spam on my blog. So for everyone who's genuinely interested, feel free to (and thank you for) commenting!

I seem to be getting a lot of ads on my blog

I'm glad people are reading the blog :-)

It's a bit disconcerting to think how many ads are going on, though.

Hmm.......

Irish kissing joke.....

*Just found it, and had to put in on here :-)*

The Irish invented kissing. An Irish girl and an Irish boy were walking along a hill, and the boy leaned over and kissed her on the lips. She was so surprised she fell backwards down the hill, dragging the boy with her. When they got to the bottom, remembering the kiss, she said, “wow, that was nice! Let’s do it again.” So he took her to the top of the hill……

TODAY IS SPRING!!!

I woke up, and I could feel the change in the air. Some people get excited at the first hint of cold....I get excited at the first hint of a warm breeze. :-D So, to all those who did not have the privilege of receiving it from me in person.....a pinch and a punch for the first day of the month! (No returns :-p)

It was a great day. Absolutely fantastic. Admittedly I was half an hour late to my hour long tute (and that was the only official uni I had today), but even that was good :-)

Then I had a big chat to Geoff (to see his blog go to http://www.blogginbro.byethost11.com) about all sorts of various stuff, which was interesting :-) And then it was off to discipleship with Lucy, where I learned that prayer and faith are really connected, and that prayer is a way of inviting God into our situations and accessing His power to make a difference. That's really cool. I think I learn more leading a discipleship than going to one :-)

Ran into various other Student Lifers today, all of whom brightened my day :-) Devotions and then off to church, where we had a 'Spring into Style' night for the women :-) I was an MC, along with the pastor's wife. It was good fun. I got to do some BOXING!!!!!!!!! And it was sooooooo fun! (One of the women at our church is a personal trainer - she got me on stage to do boxing and sit ups and various other excruciating things....and I really enjoyed it) So now we're going to have a boxing session in a park sometime :-) I'm excited.

That's about all. I feel great. I haven't felt this good in awhile. It may not last. I don't need it to last - but it's just nice :-)

Good evening to all you readers :-) I hope you're having as good a time as I am. And if not.....maybe we can go boxing :-)

The purpose of entertainment

I was reading Adrian Plass's new book, The Sacred Diary on Tour (which is great for a laugh and I suggest you read it sometime :-)

There was a character in it that I identified with a bit - a guy named Barry (no, that's not why I identified with him :-p) who could quote, at the drop of a hat, any number of Bible verses and had a profound knowledge of the Bible. However, at one point in the book, they were talking about heaven and Barry described what he thought it would be like, leaving God out of the picture, and he sounded quite happy. But then when he talked about heaven and God, he went back to unhappily quoting Bible verses. And one of the characters said that God must be quite upset about Barry not enjoying the idea of heaven with Him in the picture. And then I felt a bit angry.

Later on, I was thinking, "why did I feel angry?" Maybe the answer has to do with how well I feel my relationship with God is going - maybe I know too much about God and don't know God well enough. Maybe what I need is not more intellectual knowledge, but more heart knowledge about who God is.

And that, my friends, is the purpose of entertainment!! To allow us to reflect on who we are, what direction we're going in, and then change, if it's necessary, or to keep going.

I think it's amazing that God would use a funny book (which I only bought cos I really needed a good laugh) to point out something I need to learn. I guess He likes humour and creativity :-) Yay!