The Phrase Meme is at it again! I'm hearing this phrase, "It's a God Thing!" popping up in conversations. What exactly does it mean? I looked it up online. That's when things got a bit interesting... For starters, there's even a book with that phrase as its title. There's a radio show solely devoted to "...very personal, verified interviews with folks like you and me who have experienced God in an unusual, often dramatic, way." And the website address for this radio show? Wow - you're smart! Can't believe you guessed it! But those of you from Pitts, Georgia - the address is http://www.itsagodthingradio.com/. Some folks have written poems about it. There's an entire Facebook page dedicated to this phrase and you could even buy a t-shirt from them with the phrase emblazoned on the shirt! Shipping included!
What do people really mean when they say this? Charitably, I think that people mean "providence" (God moving in the lives of his people according to his immutable will). If that's what it means, well - why don't we say providence? I think Providence is such a cool word. "It's a God Thing" sounds like it came out of The Bobsey Twins. What's worse this phrase seems so...flaccid. I'm sorry but that's the first word that pops into my mind. It is an amorphous, ambiguous, limp and soft saying.
I figured out my response next time someone mindlessly utter this phrase. I will then exclaim, "Monkey's Aflame!" An equally meaningless phrase but delightful and so hip. It could mean "Wow!" or it could mean, "Way to go dog!" or it could actually mean that I saw a monkey on fire.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Father of the Bride- before and after fatherhood
Just finished Father of the Bride with Steve Martin, Diane Keaton and Martin Short. The last time I watched it was before kids...and it was hilarious! This time as a father of two great kids- Gigi and Ollie. This time I was laughing and crying at the same time. An excellent movie! It is now on my top 10 favorite movie list.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Weekend Puttering and Reading and Everything else...
My lovely wife just broke the news to me...that she volunteered...me to do some cheerleading at an auction thingmajig tonight! How nice of her to be so charitable with my time! Get this I am going to wear a Cardinals outfit and I'm not even a Cardinals fan!!! So tonight, yours truly will be outfitted in a cardinals clothing and cheering people on to bid more or donate more for the auction party. I am so excited and I can't wait...NOT! But I digress...
Just finished James Dobson's book Bringing up the Boys and it is excellent. I also polished off his other book on Bringing up the Girls. They're both great. While on the subject of parenting - Mary Ellen and I have been watching once a week a DVD series featuring Paul David Tripp on Getting To The Heart Of Parenting and it is excellent. We really have been enjoying his lectures and are being convicted on some parenting mistakes of our own. Thank God that Gigi and Oliver are such resilient kids and hopefully won't be too damaged by our mistakes.
Currently I'm reading Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence. It is really good. I thought I was high EQ till I read Daniel Goleman's book...have ways to go! Here's the thing...Mr. Goleman convincingly demonstrates through studies and evidences that there's more to success than just simple IQ - an unrewarded genius is almost a proverb! Being intellectually smart may put you on a different plane than everyone but it does not necessarily translate to better life, better relationship, success mobility, great relationship with your church community or the most important one: your relationship with God. I plan on reading all his other books - Cultural Intelligence and Social Intelligence.
While waiting for the spackling putty to dry...(oh forgot to give you the background - I'm painting the bathroom and I had to spackle (a verb?) some holes and this spackle putty is kinda cool - it is pink and when you slather or spackle it on - as it dries - it turns white. Not bad - just need to wait for it to go from pink to white and then I'll sand it and paint the Killz primer and then finally paint the whole bathroom.) Anyway, I just finished an article and it was thought-provoking: The Day the Movies Died. Basically, the author Mark Harris, whines effectively that Hollywood is no longer producing really good movies. The movie audience has gradually become younger and younger and Hollywood is appealing to this niche group as opposed to the broad section of society. Ironically, the more Hollywood appeals to the younger crowd the less adults attend movie theaters opting for staying home and watching the movies via netflix or DVD rentals. To generate bigger dollars and revenues - Hollywood has resorted to doing prequels and sequels and raunchy movies. In addition, it takes big risk to produce a good move as opposed to an OK dumbed-down movie based on a cartoon hero or a remake. There are financial conflicts of interests. I'm rambling here but it is a good article. My takeaway: when you focus on short-run results (profits or efficiency) to the exclusion of long-run results - quality suffers. You can translate this to the financial arena. Look at mutual funds - the money managers (out of 8,000 plus mutual funds) average portfolio turnover is....(drum roll...) 130%. Turn over, simplistically defined, means selling off your entire current positions to replace by buying an entirely new portfolio of new positions and then again 30% more BEFORE the year ends! Contrast that with folks like Warren Buffett who may, at most, sell off 20 to 30% of their portfolio in any given year. Folks like Warren Buffett, Peter Cundill, Jean Marie Evillard typically invest the long haul and that's why they're successful and produce value for their clients but it is not easy! There's a financial conundrum known as career risk. Career risk is when you are investing for the long haul - say a stock to do well in 5 to 10 years from now but your primary clients are folks with 18 months time frame - that's their long term mindset and these clients (mutual fund holders) are judging the performance of your fund against the benchmark index. If you attempt to produce value for your clients by investing in the long haul but in the short run your portfolio under performs the benchmark - guess what usually happens? Your clients will fire you and move on to another portfolio. When you have large amounts of clients leaving you in masses - your mutual fund company will then fire you for not retaining the assets. Hence, 80% of mutual fund managers are closet index-huggers! They're more afraid of losing clients than giving their clients the best value... The same with Hollywood - they're afraid to risk their neck and aim for good quality movies. Especially...if your Hollywood production is publicly owned (stock market) in which you attempt to produce 5 good movies and all but one fail (20% success ratio) - your stock plummets! Contrast that with PR/marketing type Hollywood producers who care more about the bottom line than with producing value - they would produce 5 OK movies that cater to their audience's base nature and they manage to produce 4 OK profits out of 5 (success ratio - who cares - you're bringing in some revenue for the shareholders).
Whoops...I have to stop here. I realized that I've written a tome here. I need to get back to painting the bathroom. By now the pink putty has turned white...
Just finished James Dobson's book Bringing up the Boys and it is excellent. I also polished off his other book on Bringing up the Girls. They're both great. While on the subject of parenting - Mary Ellen and I have been watching once a week a DVD series featuring Paul David Tripp on Getting To The Heart Of Parenting and it is excellent. We really have been enjoying his lectures and are being convicted on some parenting mistakes of our own. Thank God that Gigi and Oliver are such resilient kids and hopefully won't be too damaged by our mistakes.
Currently I'm reading Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence. It is really good. I thought I was high EQ till I read Daniel Goleman's book...have ways to go! Here's the thing...Mr. Goleman convincingly demonstrates through studies and evidences that there's more to success than just simple IQ - an unrewarded genius is almost a proverb! Being intellectually smart may put you on a different plane than everyone but it does not necessarily translate to better life, better relationship, success mobility, great relationship with your church community or the most important one: your relationship with God. I plan on reading all his other books - Cultural Intelligence and Social Intelligence.
While waiting for the spackling putty to dry...(oh forgot to give you the background - I'm painting the bathroom and I had to spackle (a verb?) some holes and this spackle putty is kinda cool - it is pink and when you slather or spackle it on - as it dries - it turns white. Not bad - just need to wait for it to go from pink to white and then I'll sand it and paint the Killz primer and then finally paint the whole bathroom.) Anyway, I just finished an article and it was thought-provoking: The Day the Movies Died. Basically, the author Mark Harris, whines effectively that Hollywood is no longer producing really good movies. The movie audience has gradually become younger and younger and Hollywood is appealing to this niche group as opposed to the broad section of society. Ironically, the more Hollywood appeals to the younger crowd the less adults attend movie theaters opting for staying home and watching the movies via netflix or DVD rentals. To generate bigger dollars and revenues - Hollywood has resorted to doing prequels and sequels and raunchy movies. In addition, it takes big risk to produce a good move as opposed to an OK dumbed-down movie based on a cartoon hero or a remake. There are financial conflicts of interests. I'm rambling here but it is a good article. My takeaway: when you focus on short-run results (profits or efficiency) to the exclusion of long-run results - quality suffers. You can translate this to the financial arena. Look at mutual funds - the money managers (out of 8,000 plus mutual funds) average portfolio turnover is....(drum roll...) 130%. Turn over, simplistically defined, means selling off your entire current positions to replace by buying an entirely new portfolio of new positions and then again 30% more BEFORE the year ends! Contrast that with folks like Warren Buffett who may, at most, sell off 20 to 30% of their portfolio in any given year. Folks like Warren Buffett, Peter Cundill, Jean Marie Evillard typically invest the long haul and that's why they're successful and produce value for their clients but it is not easy! There's a financial conundrum known as career risk. Career risk is when you are investing for the long haul - say a stock to do well in 5 to 10 years from now but your primary clients are folks with 18 months time frame - that's their long term mindset and these clients (mutual fund holders) are judging the performance of your fund against the benchmark index. If you attempt to produce value for your clients by investing in the long haul but in the short run your portfolio under performs the benchmark - guess what usually happens? Your clients will fire you and move on to another portfolio. When you have large amounts of clients leaving you in masses - your mutual fund company will then fire you for not retaining the assets. Hence, 80% of mutual fund managers are closet index-huggers! They're more afraid of losing clients than giving their clients the best value... The same with Hollywood - they're afraid to risk their neck and aim for good quality movies. Especially...if your Hollywood production is publicly owned (stock market) in which you attempt to produce 5 good movies and all but one fail (20% success ratio) - your stock plummets! Contrast that with PR/marketing type Hollywood producers who care more about the bottom line than with producing value - they would produce 5 OK movies that cater to their audience's base nature and they manage to produce 4 OK profits out of 5 (success ratio - who cares - you're bringing in some revenue for the shareholders).
Whoops...I have to stop here. I realized that I've written a tome here. I need to get back to painting the bathroom. By now the pink putty has turned white...
Sunday, January 23, 2011
For Those of You WHO Can't Grow a Beard...
This might be of interest to you....
A Foldaway Beard! Cool!!! It makes sense... I have some Cherokee Indian blood in me and as a result I can't grow a beard! Geesh, the ultimate manhood and I can't grow that beard. But I can wear a beard with this cool hat during this cold freakin' weather we're going through right now. However, I don't think Mary Ellen would even let me out of the house wearing this. In fact, that hat might disappear mysteriously...
A Foldaway Beard! Cool!!! It makes sense... I have some Cherokee Indian blood in me and as a result I can't grow a beard! Geesh, the ultimate manhood and I can't grow that beard. But I can wear a beard with this cool hat during this cold freakin' weather we're going through right now. However, I don't think Mary Ellen would even let me out of the house wearing this. In fact, that hat might disappear mysteriously...
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