The Week in Review

It has been a busy week, and getting to the computer has been like getting to the ark of the covenant. So here's what is going on in the world:

1. The Christian Chronicle website was hacked and its front page was replaced by a message reading "Allah the only true God". Arabic characters were raining down on the screen. I can't read Arabic, but I bet they said "We're headin' to John Waddey's site next!"

2. James Dobson, if he stays on his current course, may help elect Hillary.

3. My Sitemeter inexplicably vanished for awhile, but now it's back. Things I've learned from it in times past:

• Someone once reached the post about my mother by Googling "kill chicken". I just hope it wasn't an emergency.


• A lot of people get to this blog by searching for "using stick figures to teach the Bible". I wonder what their reaction is when they get to the "Stick Figure Bible" posts?

• People who Google "Kermit, Texas" get to 99 blogs about the Heroes TV show before they get to this site.

4. Liz got her first teaching observation this week, and her evaluation was great! Way to go!

5. High school football is almost a religion in these parts, and Kermit's team is doing great this year. They are 5-0 so far! In the last two games, their opponents didn't even score!

More later......

E-mails

Hi!

Response to my calls for odd news has been overwhelming, meaning that one great friend has sent me about 20 links, most of which I am still sorting through. Please be patient. In the meantime, here are some things he reminded me of :

• Unusual church of Christ news. Yes, Fred Dalton Thompson, former Watergate lawyer turned actor turned former senator turned actor turned possible presidential candidate, is of church of Christ roots. Mark Elrod's excellent blog ran a satirical contest of sorts (which was totally misinterpreted by the media) as to whether Thompson still attends regularly. (Hey, Thompson's a busy man.)
• Favorite question: "Can he sing the Law & Order theme without instrumentation?"
  
  
• Heroes, the NBC/Sci Fi network drama, featured a story arc, not actually filmed here, in which some of its characters came to Frogtown in search of ... something. I've never seen the show, because in this house it's difficult to watch anything unless Spongebob is on it. Some Heroes fans even did a wiki in which they posted a fake story about Frogtown. Favorite quote:

• "Kermit -- why does that sound so familiar ?"
• "Cause of the frog?"



• Wide Open was actually filmed in Kermit and Midland. I didn't know it was ever finished. Our family, along with a hundred other people, went to an open casting call for extras a couple of years ago, in a less-than-air-conditioned room above the credit union, and listened to the film's director, Rick Owens, who had grown up here, speak for about an hour about how he intended to dress up one of Kermit's streets to look like a Miami street. The film's plot, if I remember it right, was about a couple of people in the Witness Protection Program who are relocated to the middle of nowhere -- Kermit! We (or anyone we know) were never contacted any more by the film company, and their website vanished, so we just assumed the production ran out of money. I would love to see this movie but I don't know where to find a copy -- but I continue to check the budget DVD rack at Wal-Mart!



• No one E-mailed me this, but as a public service, let's all do everything we can to put a stop to this sort of thing.