Hell Has a Zip Code

You read the title correctly. Hell now has a zip code. It’s KY1-1400. The hot little burg in the middle of Grand Cayman island along with the rest of the Cayman islands now has a zip code. It seems the citizens of Cayman were having difficulty receiving packages from online orders because the country did not have any zip codes so the government applied zip codes to all the little towns and areas of the islands.

Ivan Farrington runs the little establishment in Hell and sells postcards for you to mail to friends and family. He dresses in a devil costume and tells devilish jokes upon request. His new postal stamp will sport the new zip.

Yes, Hell now has a zip code…but it’s still closed on Sundays. Hmmmm.

The Worry-Free Parrot Fish

Diving in Cayman the other day, I couldn’t help but be amused once again by the colorful parrot fish of the Caribbean. They are brightly multicolored mostly on a turquoise blue background with a mouth that looks like a beak—thus the name parrot fish. They go along crunching on rocks and then excreting them. Know those sandy beaches you love? The parrot fish helps make them.

While this may seem like a mundane job, the parrot fish seems to be quite happy in his lot in life. With all that roughage, he’s probably not constipated which certainly helps his mood. When you see the parrot fish from the side, his eye looks bright and clear and his “beak” is shaped like a smile. Rather than swimming along, he seems to skip through the water making him appear carefree and happy-go-lucky. You can almost hear him singing, “Don’t worry. Be Happy.”

Ah, yes. The Caribbean. Even the fish are happy!

How Hot Is It?

I knew it was hot when the A/C started running almost continually.

I knew it was hot when I couldn't walk barefoot across our wood deck.

I knew it was hot when the kitchen windows were fogged up on the outside because it was cooler and drier inside.

I knew it was REALLY hot when the Canadian geese started cooling off in the mist of the neighbor's sprinkler.

Mona Lisa Speaks?

She's always been a mystery but now a Japanese acoustics expert is claiming he knows what she sounds like. Dr. Matsumi Suzuki measured the face and hands of the famous Mona Lisa. and created a model of her skull. Somehow with all those calculations, he figured out her tone of voice.

He claims the voice he has created is 90% accurate. Because the lower part of her face is quite wide she would have a lower voice but the pointy chin would add mid-pitch tones. The voice he has created says, "I am the Mona Lisa. My true identity is shrouded in mystery."

All of this leads me to wonder if the voice of Mona really is that low, perhaps it is something of a self-portrait of DaVinci. Or is it just an early version of Marlena Dietrich?

(Apparently at one time there was a link to the voice but I was not able to connect to put the link here. If anyone finds a working link, please leave a comment with the link. I for one would like to hear the old girl talk.)

Crazy Baseball Statistics

We watched the Indians win over the Detroit Tigers last night at the Jake. Normally I don't watch all the statistics and biographical notes they post as each player comes to bat but last night, my eyes wandered to the scoreboard as Travis Hafner came up to bat. A blurb appeared next to his batting stats. It was another statistic. He has hit the most career home runs for a player from North Dakota second only to Darin Erstad.

And I need to know this because...???

Where do they come up with all this stuff? I can understand batting averages, ERAs, etc. but do I need to know how a player compares to other players from their home state? I spent a little time at Google and found that the Elias Sports Bureau is the official statistician for MLB as well as most other sports venues. Once they get the stats down, all sorts of available software can quickly scan them and put them together in any sort of comparision you'd like.

Did you know about the O-zone factor? Me neither. It is data that measures a team's success at scoring runners from second or third base as well as it's success at preventing the opposing team from doing the same thing. Is this what I've been destroying by not giving up my aerosol hairspray?

I'm waiting for the next statistic to go something like this: "Now here is the only left-handed batter with six toes who has astigmatism in the right eye and has hit five times against a pitcher who is right-handed, less that six feet tall, missing a toe on the left foot, and has a hangnail. He hits one into center field. A way back. Waaaaay back! That ball is outta here!"

Mommy, What's a Book?

"Mommy, what's a book?"

"Well, honey, a book was something your grandmother used to read to me. It contained stories of faraway places, funny animals, and goofy things that happen to kids. When she went to school, she had to buy books for her classes so she could study from them. I remember her telling me how wonderful it was to hold a new book in your hand and touch it's crisp new pages as you explored the story inside. She said the paper and ink of a new book was like a perfume to those who loved to read."

"Mommy, what's paper?"

How many decades down the road will it be before books are obsolete? I mean real books with printed pages between a book cover. Books on tapes/cd, e-books, ipods, and probably a dozen more gadgets I've never heard of yet are becoming more and more popular. Technology seems to change doubly fast as we speed into the future.

Will there be a paperless society? Did Henry Ford's generation seriously think we'd ever build a space station? It's dizzying to think of the possibilities for the future.

Ghostwriters

No, those are not ghosts who write but rather people who usually remain anonymous while writing books for/with another person who most likely has some celebrity status or is well known in a particular field. They are not named or necessarily acknowledged as having contributed to the production of the book. They are paid for their work with a flat fee or some other type of contract that may allow for a portion of the sales.

This week on the writers' forum to which I belong, we have been discussing the ethics of the practice. Some say it's a business and ghostwriting is just another way to pay the mortgage. Others are concerned that it is unethical and deceptive to not mention the ghostwriter somehow, i.e. using the "author's" name and "with" or "as told to" the ghostwriter. (Some of Tom Clancy's recent books have added an extra name.) In the Christian publishing arena this has become quite a debate. Some "authors" have accepted awards for writing their book when it was actually ghostwritten. Ethical? Business? Part of the job?

There are some famous people from the past, Corrie Ten Boom and Dave Wilkerson among them whose books were ghost written. Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer use ghostwriters as well to some extent. Hilary Clinton's book It Takes A Village was actually ghostwritten by Barbara Feinman. The novelization of Star Wars was actually written by Alan Foster not George Lucas.

For those of you who are not writers, I would be interested to know how you would feel if you purchased a book only to find out later that it was written by someone other than the proclaimed author.

The Master Painter

Back in my college days (I was an art education major) I was required to take a series of art history courses. They always seemed to be scheduled at 8 a.m. and they always followed the same format: slides and a droning lecture. It wasn't easy to stay awake sometimes.

I did perk up when we got to Impressionists. I love painters like Renoir and Monet. But I was surprised when the instructor pointed out that many paintings were not done entirely by them. They would put in the basics and then their students, those they mentored, had to copy their style and, under the master's eye, finish the paintings.

For some reason that came to mind this morning. It was probably a result of a discussion on ghost writing on a writers' forum. A ghost writer often writes a book for someone else and many times does not get the credit for it. He is the master of the work, creating the framework of the story, putting the words together and making them come to life, but someone else gets credit.

If we see God as the master in our lives, we can choose to be like the student painters, copying the master, filling in what he has begun in our lives but giving him the credit. Or we can choose to be like the self-acclaimed celebrities who never credit their ghost writers, letting God set the framework, put together the story of our life, but not give him the credit and hoping that no one discovers how fake we are.

A Red Paper Clip

It's all the buzz in the news. A young writer trading a red paper clip for a house. Well...there were a few other trades along the way. I think it's more a story of how publicity can work for you. Once the ball got rolling, Kyle MacDonald caught the attention of the media and after a few appearances on TV in Canada and on "Good Morning America," he was contacted by Corbin Bernsen (L.A. Law and Major League).

It seems Bernsen was looking for some publicity as well. He offered MacDonald an item to trade on his blog: a speaking role in the movie he was directing. Give the kid (MacDonald) credit. He wanted to keep his quest legit so he kept Bernsen's offer in his back pocket until he could find something valuable to Bernsen to trade for it. He did--a snowglobe featuring KISS. (Bernsen collects snowglobes and is a KISS fan).

Meanwhile, a little town in Saskatchewan, Canada, named for the author, Rudyard Kipling, decided to get on the publicity bandwagon. They needed a boost for their dwindling town population and saw a way to draw some tourist trade. The members of Kipling's council bought a house and offered it for trade to MacDonald. In addition, they are going to hold an "American Idol" type audition for the role in the movie. More publicity now. More publicity when the movie comes out.

So how is MacDonald going to pay for the little things like heat, lights, taxes? He'll probably be bagging groceries at the corner store until his writing career takes off. It should do well. After all he's got the publicity thing down pat now.

Googled!

It is always fun and interesting to see who is reading this blog. I use Sitemeter.com . It gives me general areas of where people live, what pages they've visited, who referred them to my site, and how long they stayed. I love to see the referrals from Google.com because they list the search words that led the visitor to me.

Yesterday I was looking over the statistics for Writer's Wanderings and found that someone had visited through a search for "water squeegies". That led them to my post about our flood. Now how many people search for water squeegies? Not many, I'll bet. I wonder if the searcher expected to find a story that drew an analogy to God cleaning up a life of sin?

I have never purposefully intended for this blog to be evangelistic. The only thing I intended to do "religiously" was to post on a regular basis. But God, Jesus, and my faith are all a part of who I am so if you've googled (that's a word in the dictionary now) something and you've landed here, maybe it was by divine appointment...and maybe not.

Panda Birthday

Happy Birthday, Tai Shan!

The National Zoo's baby panda is one year old today. From a tiny four ounces to a whopping 56 pounds, Tai Shan has certainly been well nourished by his mother and zoo officials. The tiered birthday fruitsicle must have been a real treat for his young taste buds.

Tai Shan's name means "peaceful mountain." I remember the angst when our grandchildren were due and needed names. Somehow Anglo Saxon names just don't translate as poetically as the Asian names. I wonder if the name was wishful thinking on the part of zookeepers? After all gaining 56 pounds in one year, he's on his way to becoming mountainous and wouldn't you want something that big to be peaceful?

The Hoax

Last night was date night. We went to the theater to see Pirates of the Caribbean. I love watching Johnny Depp at work. What a great actor. He truly gets into character. The other thing I like about him is that he doesn't seem to be part of the outlandish Hollywood scene.

I was disappointed though, in the to-be-continued-ending. Two and a half hours of action, comedy, adventure, and no resolution. Do I really have to wait a year to see how it all works out?

The real reason for my post however is one of the previews shown before the movie began--The Hoax, starring Richard Gere. The scenes showed him at a publishing board meeting pitching his book and demanding a million dollar advance. The hook is that the book is a hoax--he is making it up as he goes along. He makes a comment to a friend, "The crazier I sound the more money they'll offer."

The Hoax is based on the story of Clifford Irving who wrote a bogus autobiography of Howard Hughes with the help of his friend Richard (Dick) Suskind.

Alas, Richard Gere is not paired with Julia Roberts this time, but the movie will be interesting. A new look at the world of publishing.

The Ugly Duckling

Two white swans appeared this spring in a marsh area near our home. Each Sunday morning as we traveled to church, we would see bird watchers with binoculars and cameras spouting long lenses, observing the couple.

It wasn't long before the obvious happened. The couple produced an egg and it soon hatched. The offspring looks nothing like his parents. He is gangly, oddly fuzzy, and gray. He reminds me of Hans Christian Anderson's story, The Ugly Duckling.

Since I seem to be into analogies lately, I drew this one. A new Christian is like an "ugly duckling." He starts out eagerly following those before him. He's a bit awkward at times as he begins to learn scriptures. But before long, he becomes more graceful as he is filled with God's grace. God gives him a new look--clothing him in pure spotless white.

I will watch the little swan as he adapts to his world and I will think about how God is still feathering my life with his grace and remaking this "ugly duckling."

A Flood of Thoughts

Last week during all the heavy rains in our area, our basement flooded. My Barnabas friends (a group of writers formed to encourage each other) tried to encourage me by saying, "You'll get through this. You're a writer and you'll even find lots of things to write about from this." At the time it seemed a little crazy. But they were right. There were a lot of analogies to be drawn from the experience.

As my husband and I used squeegies to push the sludge back into the sewers (they had gushed raw sewage into our fininished basement), I thought about how God cleans lives. He can, in an instant, clean all the filth that sin has deposited in our lives. Our cleanup took much longer and was not nearly as efficient.

Remembering the chaos that ensued when I realized the basement was filling with dirty water, I thought about how I frantically went through each room looking for what seemed most precious and setting it on higher ground. Later, as we went through boxes that were soggy, I pulled out a couple of old flower containers. They were not sentimental nor were they expensive but I was beginning to fight back. I wanted to hold on to some of those things--not throw them on the heap that was growing at the curb.

How often do we hold on to things that keep us from God--unimportant things--when He is trying to clean our lives of what keeps us from Him.

Then there were the goldfish. If they had stayed hidden in the rocks in the pond instead of swimming into the flow of the water that was receding, they would not have been left on the grass to die. Too often we go with the flow instead of standing with Christ, our rock.

Yes, my friends, there was much to think and write about.

Wicked

What's it like to be green? Is it any more acceptable than a talking animal?

Those were some of the questions posed in the wonderfully produced musical, Wicked, we had the privilege of seeing last night. Light-hearted, adventurous, and filled with great music that enhanced the story, Wicked kept us enchanted by it's telling of the origin of the Wicked Witch of the West from Oz. It's a classic comparison of good vs. evil but perceptions are topsy-turvy. The "wicked" witch is green but the "good" witch is...blonde!

I was fascinated with how the tin man, the scarecrow, and the cowardly lion came to be. I'm not sure how much of this is in the original novel, Wicked, The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, by Gregory Maguire. I started reading the book shortly after it came out in 1996 but lost interest. Perhaps I'll pick it up again if my reading list ever gets shorter.

For now I will just savor the memories of a well-staged, well-produced, and beautifully performed musical that proposed the possibility that green might be good and blondes...well, they have redeeming qualities.

Nemo Lives!

When I last posted, I had no idea what was before us. Thursday afternoon we had two storm fronts move in on us and for almost an hour the rain turned into a torrential downpour leaving much of our area flooded. Our backyard became a raging river, floating our 500# bridge away from what was a dry riverbed in our yard and wedging it between two trees. As I watched the water rise wondering if it would reach our basement windows and begin to flow in, I was unaware of what was happening beneath me.

Storm sewers filled and overflowed apparently into the waste sewers and for whatever reason of engineering, our basement became flooded with about 8" of filthy water. Our basement was finished so the damage is extensive and, needless to say, we are concerned about getting it cleaned up properly for health reasons.

My beautiful pond was full of muddy water from the creek that had swollen to emense proportions. When the water receded, I found my little goldfish speckling the yard. I ran the hose in the pond to flush as much dirty water as possible. It cleared some and I went about working more on the immediate problems in the house once the cleaning company came to extract the carpeting and help clean floors.

Today I headed outside for a breath of fresh air. I stood looking at the pond that was beginning to resemble normalcy. Suddenly a little flash of gold caught in the beam of sun shining down. Nemo lives! Amazing how God can take a little thing and bring hope for a better tomorrow.

Finding Nemo

Yesterday I was surprised to find a little goldfish (comet) in the small upper section of my pond. I didn't put it there. The comets I bought (after the blue heron dined on my old ones) I placed in the larger pond where they could go deep should the shadow of the predator pass over them again.

No, this little guy had to have traveled through the filter, then through the underground tubing (about 25 feet) to the top of the waterfall, pop out into the tub that fills and spills over the rocks, then slide or jump into the upper pond. Reminded me of Nemo. I wonder if he has a father looking for him in the large pond?

Eventually the little fellow will probably find his way into the stream under the bridge that leads again to the large pond--but what an adventure he'll have to tell! Makes me think of the trials in life--sucked into the darkness, not seeing our way, popping out into deep waters, over rocky cliffs, and bumpy streams but finding refuge in the big pond with our Father.

No Sweat!

Today I caught part of an interview with a dermatologist who was extoling the effects of botox on other parts of the body than the furrows in your forehead. They were discussing excessive sweating and how botox could be injected into parts of the underarm to control it. Yuck!

The best part of the interview came when the doc said, "Sweating is a good thing when done properly."

Properly. Hmmm. I didn't know there was such a thing as sweat-iquette.

Coincidence?

There have been many times in life where things have happened or people have come into my life that seemed to be coincidence. I prefer to think of them as part of God's plan for me.

Yesterday at the writers conference, I sat down to lunch with a lady I didn't know who told me she was expecting an editor to lunch with her. I was excited when she told me I should join her. It was an editor who might be interested in one of my proposals.

A few moments later, another writer joined us, a man named Israel. Just as we were beginning to get to know each other, the editor came over to the table and led the lady away to another table where he was conferencing with other writers. I was disappointed. I thought that maybe God had planned for me to sit there and talk to the editor.

I smiled at Israel--he reminded me of one of my kids--and began asking about his writing and his background. He writes Christian sci-fi and fantasy and is a missionary to Jews in Israel. I could not believe my ears. Here was a man who could give me all the information I needed to fill in the gaps in a novel I have been working on for years. It involves a woman who falls in love with a Jew who has found Christ.

Coincidence? I think not.

Imprint-666

Yesterday I missed the mark (pun intended). I should have been posting about the ominous day of 6/6/06. Many are so superstitious about it that they even scheduled births either before or after the date to avoid the stigma to their child.

In the Bible, if the experts are correct, 666 is the mark the Beast, the Anti-Christ, will require people to wear to show their allegience to him. It will be imprinted on their foreheads. In the Left Behind series, the authors come up with another imprint, a cross on the forehead of Christians that can only be seen by other believers. I like that idea; an imprint that shows us as followers of Christ.

But perhaps we are overlooking an imprint that already exists. It is not embossed, engraven, stamped, or tattooed. It is the change in a life when one meets Christ and accepts him as Lord and Savior. It is the change that makes others wonder what's different.

A few Sundays ago, a man who had been married to a Christian woman for 40+ years before coming to the Lord himself told us that he had quietly, one morning while his wife was in church, accepted Christ. He didn't tell his wife for a few months what he had done. When he did, she countered with, "I knew it. I could see the change in you."