Hail Of A Day

I just read a remarkable book, called “The Shack”. It’s not #4 on Amazon’s list because it’s a great book about a big basketball player (Shaq O’Neal). It’s actually about an encounter a man has with God after an incredible tragedy. The book is vivid and thoroughly enjoyable in it’s description of the man’s encounter with God. If you have gone to church like I have for your whole life, you will love the way the author tackles many of the most common questions we have as Christians. If you are not a Christian and hate religion, you will be deeply intrigued by the unpretentiousness and refreshing view of God.

As with any book that tackles religious issues and garners wide-spread cultural interest, there are people who take it to extremes. This book is not a definitive view of God (nothing is) and should not be viewed as 100% accurate. Ironically, that’s what one of the editors said. On the other extreme, there are people who would love to tie the author to the stake and burn him alive. For some asinine reason, some are calling this book heretical and are vehemently opposing it. Although, they are in the minority.

That being said, I found a great article from the aforementioned editor who addresses, head-on, many of the arguments against the book. As with anything, read “The Shack” yourself and make up your own mind. I have been deeply touched by it and my faith has grown significantly by the questions it caused me to ask of my own view of God and my relationship with him and those in my life that mean a great deal to me.

Here is the article defending the book…

Is The Shack Heresy?

This morning I was awakened to my wife, who was laughing but concerned at the same time. It was barely after 7am so the sun was up, bust just barrrrrrellly. She said, “you have to come see this.”

”See what?”

“The paper guy is asleep in his pickup truck in the middle of the road”.

It took me a moment to digest this. The first thought that popped into my head was, Are you sure he’s not dead?

“Are you sure he’s not dead???”

“Yeah, I checked to see if he was breathing.”

Then I started thinking about his route. Aren’t they usually done delivering papers by 6am.

So my wife began to go into greater detail about her efforts to wake him up. She said she tried honking his horn, shaking him, yelling at him. Nothing worked. I couldn’t believe it. I kept thinking I was going to go out and find a dead old guy slumped over at the wheel.

I threw on some clothes and headed outside, but first I grabbed the camera as I knew that it was good material, if it was true. As I turned the corner and entered the sidewalk, I got a view of the paper “boy” over at his pickup truck. It was definitely a younger man, he was definitely asleep/dead, and the bed of his truck was ripe unto harvest with undelivered papers.

Both of his windows were down and he had some sort of peppy music playing, (somewhere in between “Walking on sunshine” and “Welcome to the jungle”) but a lot of good it was doing. As I stuck my head through the window, I was blasted by a wall of heat. Have you heard that it’s easier to get sleepy when it’s warm?

I grabbed a huge flashlight that he had in the passenger’s seat and flipped it on. It might as well have been the Bat Signal, or one of those spotlights that you see at movie premiers that slice the sky up with a light beam, in a haphazard fashion. You can’t even imagine how powerful this kid’s flashlight was. As I was pelting his head with a hundred thousand megawatts of light, I expected him to at least flinch. Out of my fear of melting his skin, I turned off the flashlight.

I decided that since my yelling and light torture weren’t doing the trick, I had to go with old faithful… shake him like Roseanne Barr trying to get the last M&M out of a wrapper.

That did the trick. The combination of a strange man yelling and violently shaking you, I guess, is enough of an incentive to wake up. He came to and had a horrified, “where am I” look”. I started saying things like, “you’re in the middle of the road…you fell asleep…you didn’t deliver your papers”.

He wasn’t getting it. The poor kid had a huge stream of drool snaking down his face all the way to his shirt. As he started to get bearings on where he was an what century this is, I went around back and grabbed a paper. As I was heading back inside, I finally saw his truck creeping down the street. You could almost tell by the way he was driving his truck that he was trying to do the mental math on whether or not he could deliver 400 papers in 15 minutes.

I have a feeling this kid won’t be on the route next week.

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In keeping with the sports theme on today’s blog posts, here is an interesting article about a guy that snuck onto the field, pretending to be an LA Dodgers baseball player.  He had a complete uniform.  What’s really disturbing is how easily he did it. 

Well, I hope his little fantasy camp was worth it, because he’s going to be in prison for 4 years.

Man accused of posing as Dodger on field - Yahoo! News

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This is just unreal. There is strong consideration in the scientific community in pursuing this concept of an “elevator” to space.  Since you would be travelling 62,000 miles into space, I would think that the fear of getting stuck would be a legitimate concern.  What would Aerosmith say? “Love in an elevator” would be a less relevant song.

Lift could take passengers straight into space - Telegraph

Have you been watching the new hit show, Fringe?  It’s a a great drama.  My wife and I have been noticing that the head of the FBI agency below has a tendency to lower his forehead, show the whites of his eyes, suck in his cheeks, and…give a dead-on impression of Zoolander’s “Blue Steel”.  You be the judge.

I’ve doubled my trash output for the year to make up for his reduction.

Meet Dave, the Man Who Never Takes Out the Trash - TIME

Does it make me a redneck that I would consider doing this?  I think it would be even more fun to be the one slinging people around in the digger.

This was submitted to me by avid reader, Brent, who discovered this tale of heroism by the great Tony Romo….

A Fine Sunday Indeed For Tony Romo

By RANDY GALLOWAY
rgalloway@star-telegram.com

Meanwhile, even as devout football fans, the Whites had been on the road and out of touch with the NFL events. They particularly didn’t want to know the Dallas Cowboys’ outcome. The TiVo at home was waiting. Bill planned to watch the Cleveland game immediately, with suspense attached.

But a couple of miles from the house, while driving on MacArthur Boulevard, the Whites had their own mini-disaster. A tire blew on the Mercury. Bill, luckily, managed to nurse his wounded ride off the street and into the lighted parking lot of a strip mall.

For troubling news on a Sunday, it didn’t rank up there with taking a direct hit to the chin from the helmet of linebacker Willie McGinest, but Bill became a bit woozy himself when he discovered his jack was malfunctioning. Never a good thing at midnight.

Plan B kicked in, however. One of those cigarette-lighter-plug-in air compressors was available. Except it was leaking more air than it was pumping.

“I don’t know, a hundred cars, probably more, had to go by. Nobody was stopping,” said Bill. “That’s just kind of the way it is in today’s world.”

And then …

“Bill was fooling with that tire, and I was standing beside the car watching him,” Sharon said. “The next thing I know, a nice-looking young man, very well-dressed, but with something strange on his chin, he walked up, smiled, and said, ‘Hey, you need some help?’ ”

Sharon hadn’t even noticed a car pull up.

So now it’s Bill and the well-dressed young man both bent over a flat tire at midnight on a Sunday, trying to figure out why a faulty air compressor plugged into the cigarette lighter was leaking more than pumping.

“I didn’t get a good look at him at that point,” Bill said. “We were both trying to get the tire pumped up.”

Sharon, however, took a second look. “You are Tony Romo,” she said. No reply, just a smile, and then it was back to work on the compressor.

Finally, they got the tire aired up. Enough, anyway, to make a slow drive home.
“I didn’t want to bother him,” Sharon said, “but I asked again, ‘You’re Tony Romo, right?’ ” I knew it was him by then. But he smiled and said, ‘Yes, ma’am.’ ”
Sharon: “I did something no 50-year-old woman should be doing, but I screamed real loud, and then jumped up and hugged him.”

Bill’s immediate response was “Don’t tell me how you guys did. I’m going home to watch it.”

This is a youtube clip highlighting a Reggie Bush play that occurred last year, I believe, and a play by Sophomore Georgia running back, Knowshon Moreno that happened last weekend. Both guys hurdle a tackler. It doesn’t sound as difficult as it actually looks. I can’t imagine the athletic ability you’d have to have.

Are you kidding me???  Tom is out for the season. Can you even imagine how sick they must feel about this in Boston?  In unrelated news, check out the amazing Marion Barber soaring through the air.  Things look really good for the Cowboys, not so good for the Patriots after week 1.

Sources: Brady out with ACL tear - NFL - Yahoo! Sports

I’ve been a bit busy recently so I haven’t been able to blog, but I’m back and ready to get the wheels turning again. To start things off, I would like to suggest a wonderful anecdote about a dog doing something crazy. Animal stories are a favorite here at Hailofaday, but management (my wife) has restricted me to no more than one (a day) so here it is for today.

Rattling labrador dog ate 13 golf balls - Telegraph

I am very sad to hear this news. I remember sitting in a theater one time and every single trailer had him voicing it. I’m not exaggerating.

My brother says that he is going to make a run at taking his place as the de-facto voice over guy. When I asked him what his trailers would sound like, he just said, “In a world…” and sounded exactly like him. The only other trailer voice I recognize is a higher-pitched voice guy that always seems to do quirky comedies, like “Daddy Daycare”. The music will start out like this….

But no more will we hear that deep, sometimes soothing, sometimes menacing baritone. We’ll just have to settle for my brothers’ very good impression.

In a world of movie trailers, Don LaFontaine was king