My son produced this video in his hiatus between school and coming home. I think it is a tribute, of sorts, to a friend of his:

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I was out walking in the evening when two urban girls, dressed a bit preppy, asked me for the time. When I flipped open my phone, the one girl asked me if I paid for my minutes. I thought I knew where this might be leading, so I said, “Well, yes.” (I have a limit.)

“Could we use your phone to send a text message then? Our phone ran out of battery.” They were very polite, sweet, well spoken.

“Sure.”

When the most talkative girl started pushing my phone’s buttons, she shook her head, “I canNOT do this.” I had the T9 feature toggled to save key strokes. The phone was trying to guess what words the girl was typing. She was frustrated by this feature.

“Oh, I can turn that off.” I fixed it and her fingers flew, and she smiled sweetly as she handed me back my phone.

“Thanks so much,” they both crossed the street toward the bus stop, waving.

I returned to my uphill stroll, and later, when I returned to the bus stop area, they were just boarding and my phone buzzed in my pocket. Yes, a return message.

It read, “Hurry, the store closes at 9.” Well, it was too late to relay the message, and they were on the bus now.

Out of curiosity, I punched up the original message that the two girls had sent. It was then I understood why the girl couldn’t use T9, which guessed words. She was using a different language:

Lisa dis is tosha we on our way we on dha bus

She wouldn’t want the phone to guess “the” when she meant “dha.”

I was fascinated. This was not instant message language. This was a distinct urban-speak…deliberate and well crafted. The girls had spoken to me in my language with sound grammar–with a “th” in “the.” But this was not how they talked to each other or wrote. They talked like “dis”:

Lisa dis is tosha we on our way we on dha bus

[The funniest thing is that when they messaged, they hadn't even crossed the street to the bus stop. Definitely not on dha bus. They boarded at 8:45, and the possibility of them getting to the mall by 9 a.m. was not likely. Poor girls.]

Technology and language: I’ve already seen this relationship morphing my English students’ papers. I guess there is more to come. English is always changing, evolving. But cell phones and AIM are going to exponentially accelerate the etymological evolutions, in my humble opinion, I mean, IMHO.

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Since we have a full nest this week, we’ve been watching some flicks.

Last night, it was Scoop with Scarlett Johansson and Woody Allen. A famous investigative journalist (Hugh Jackman) has died and is being ferried across the Styx when he hears a major scoop from another dead companion. The story, which would solve serial killings in the U.K., compels him to outwit the ferryman so that he can give the story to a living reporter. That reporter is stereo-typical blonde Johansson who bumbles her way through the investigation with the help of a vaudeville magician (Allen).

This movie was dumb-funny and twisted with Allen’s wry sense of humanity. I actually enjoyed it once it gained momentum. Nothing is believable—the premise, the characters, their motivations or the plot—yet that is what is so funny. The incredulity is all played straight-faced.

For family viewing considerations, it must be said that Johansson’s character has no moral convictions about falling into bed with men she just met that day. There is no nudity or even groping on film, but she wakes up with a sheet around her on occasion. In addition, both she and Allen use Christ’s name. Other than these issues, the flick is fairly clean.

We also saw I Spy Returns, a 1994 made-for-TV movie, with Bill Cosby and Robert Culp—a reprise of the 1965-68 secret agent serial. It was amusing to see Cosby and Culp yuk it up again in their older selves, but overall the movie is tacky and rather-like Jell-o pudding. The movie prompted me to google some history of the original series. Did you know that Culp himself wrote the pilot and a number of the other episodes? Also, he married a Vietnamese actress that guest-starred on the show. The show was a ground-breaker in that it was filmed in exotic locations (one of the things I enjoyed in re-runs—hey, I was too young to watch it first time around!).  Something that I already knew, but had forgotten, was that it was the first series with an African-American as a lead character. And for that reason, some southern TV stations refused to run it.

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Quotable quotes from the trip to the Carolinas:

•   “You sent that picture of me at Biscuit World to a stranger.” (Drew looking to see why T didn’t respond to my West Virginia pic.)

•   “Take my hand, and don’t think.” (Drew, after I questioned the direction we were heading to the next shopping strip in Charlotte.)

•   “It is his Steve Tyler look.” (Janet about Isaac in his retro velvet shirt.)

•   “It is his Kenny Rogers look.” (Janet about Isaac in his retro leather jacket.)

•   “Perhaps it wasn’t a good idea for T to go to his first NASCAR race two days before his getting his first car.” (Me, in Charlotte, watching Danny Efland wipe out on TV.)

•   “Thanks for coming.” (Me to Tip as I was leaving his house.)

     
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Carnegie Music Hall in Pittsburgh was full tonight. Tim Keller, author of The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism and the pastor of Redeemer Church in New York City, spoke to a mish mash of ages and personalities in the heart of the university section of the city.

L, D and I found him quite engaging. He dealt honestly with doubts about God, but also the problems with agnosticism and atheism. His book, which I bought, is divided into two parts “The Leap of Doubt” and “The Reasons for Faith.” Like his talk, it is sprinkled liberally with examples from philosophy, literature, pop culture, and the sciences to illustrate his apology for the Christian faith. The first chapter of his book quotes Darth Vader—”I find your lack of faith—disturbing.” He also quotes Sartre, Annie Dillard, Isaiah, and Tolstoy, but no one as much as C. S. Lewis. Keller adores Lewis.

I first read Lewis’ Mere Christianity when I was a sophomore in public high school. It turned my world into focus. My dialogue with my non-Christian friends had a new confidence and excitement. One brilliant and avowed agnostic borrowed my copy and six months later called me to tell me he realized that there had to be a God. Keller believes there hasn’t been a book that deals with skepticism and reasons to believe in a post-moderm world in the same way Lewis did for his post-World War II world. That is why he wrote The Reason for God.

Keller deals with issues like

• “There can’t just be one true religion”

• “A kind God could not allow suffering”

• “Christianity is a straitjacket”

• “The Church is responsible for so much injustice”

• “A loving God would not send people to hell”

• “Science has disproved Christianity”

• “You can’t take the Bible literally.”

Keller says, “All doubts, however skeptical and cynical they may seem, are really a
set of alternate beliefs. You cannot doubt Belief A except from a
position of faith in Belief B.” He believes that while orthodox Christianity is growing, so is a new athiesm. How can that be? He points out that the “mushy middle” is shrinking. This is certainly rings true in the denominational scene. The churches that are holding to traditional views of the Bible, for instance, are growing, whereas the mainline denominations that have compromised and watered down their convictions are shrinking exponentially.

In his section on reasons to believe, Keller’s offers up the beauty and logic of Jesus in a fresh way. I can’t help but relate to his heart for ministering to the cities, too. He has lived that with passion and purpose.

I am looking forward to thinking more about what he said and wrote.

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Earlier today, I yanked a paper towel off a fairly new roll and turned to wipe off the stove. When I heard a little noise, I swung around to see that the *entire* roll had continued to unroll in a pile on the floor.

I discarded the part that touched the floor and rolled the entire Bounty Basics back onto the cardboard tube. The rewind took 10 minutes, and it wasn’t pretty; but it was utilitarian, as I saw it.

Later, I used my sprayer to rinse the insides of our smoothie maker. Unbeknownst to me, the nozzle of the maker was missing, so water went right out the bottom of the smoothie maker onto the counter and the floor.

While the dog licked up water and I reached for help in the cupboard, I up-ended the sugar tupperware. The lid went flying, and the sugar scattered in the standing water on the counter and the floor.

So, I tried to unroll the ugliness on the cardboard paper towel tube, but it was not easy. And the stuff on the counter was a veritable swamp of sticky mess.

I can only hope that the ants that were attracted to the dog food last week won’t tell their friends about the sugar water residue on my kitchen floor this week.

And this, THIS is why the lasagna dinner was late. Who cares?

And, on top of it all, I am breaking one of Mrs. Beeton’s rules of household management to share this with you.
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My Bostonian friend, Thomas Fisher, has blog on financial strategies that is packed full of money wisdom. It’s one of those cool places that merits an RSS feed or a del.icio.us bookmark. One of my favorite recent entries was Should I Earn More or Spend Less?.

We are into week three of not having a vehicle. The computer part arrived, and the mechanic worked all Friday trying to get it to work. Alas, it would appear Chrysler sent a faulty part. Lord willing, the replacement part will arrive overnight and we will have a car sooner than a full three weeks.

We decided to manage without a rental because the money is better spent to fix the car. Also, we live fairly close to work, school, and church. Everyday, we have thought we might get the car in a day or two. If we had known ahead of time that it would be 16 days and counting, we may have rented the car. Instead, God kept us in healthy anticipation of tomorrow’s blessings and we can count the blessings of the last several yesterdays! Here are a dozen of the many:

1.   Life slows down a bit.
2   You walk more.
3.   You are reminded how generous God’s people can be.
4.   You get to know the people from your kids’ school that drive past your house.
5.   You are more thankful about living near your parents.
6.   You don’t spend as much money on gas.
7.   You have to eat some humble pie–yum.
8.   You get creative with the food in the deep recesses of your pantry instead of going to the grocery store.
9.   It is easier to say “no.”
10.    Your kids get to practice patience.
11.   You develop a deeper relationship with your mechanic.
12.   You’re more grateful for cars.

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My mom took K, Becky and me to Covenant Fellowship’s Mother-Daughter brunch at the Holiday Inn. It was a relaxing morning with yummy food and sweet company.

The entertainment was a program of song and readings based on Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, which was published in mid-19th century England. The book instructs the reader on how to manage cooks and maids, order the larder, and cook pigs’ heads. It also offers such advice as:

“IN CONVERSATION, TRIFLING OCCURRENCES, such as small disappointments, petty annoyances, and other every-day incidents, should never be mentioned to your friends. The extreme injudiciousness of repeating these will be at once apparent, when we reflect on the unsatisfactory discussions which they too frequently occasion, and on the load of advice which they are the cause of being tendered, and which is, too often, of a kind neither to be useful nor agreeable.”

Louise Copeland and Nancy Smith, the entertainers, were accompanied by Nancy Guthrie. Here is a bad cell phone picture:

The program made me interested in getting my mitts on a copy of Mrs. Beeton’s now-amusing book.

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For those who care, my hubby and I have also begun to blog for work HERE.

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