Chris's Blog

If something is:

• not typical, it's considered atypical.
  
• not symmetrical, it's asymmetrical.
  

Does that mean someone who cares is pathetic?

My very first blog entry here (Yeah, click here to see it) was about how my Hungry Man dinner still left me to be a hungry man...
I now have a new experience. This is what I sent to White Castle today. We'll see what comes of it.

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Hi,

I recently purchased a box of 6 White Castle Microwaveable Cheeseburgers from the local grocery store. While they are not as good as the ones you can get at a Castle, I still enjoy these things for lunch quite frequently.

Today, I removed the box from the freezer and quickly opened it - excitedly anticipating being the envy of all my coworkers as they inhale the sweet aroma of my White Castle bouquet. As I opened each 2-pack, my mouth watered.

However, I quickly became disappointed. I noticed that three of my six (might have even been half of them, but I'm pretty sure it was 3 out of the 6) White Castle Cheeseburgers were, in fact, not cheeseburgers at all. They were White Castle HAMBURGERS!!

"Oh no! What ever will I do now?!" I thought to myself.

Now, don't get me wrong. A White Castle hamburger is definitely better than any burger (with cheese or not) from some McClownBurger joint. But please empathize...they just don't beat a White Castle Cheeseburger!

At the present time, I'm sitting at my desk, and my stomach aches. Most people would probably guess that it's most likely gas from all the onions. But you and I both know how wrong they are! These are hunger pangs from from not being able to finish my lunch!

Why is it that when I see a poster that says "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back coming soon to a theater near you," get excited, and go to the cinema to ask when it's going to show, the people there look at me like I'm some kind of moron?

In our weekly small group studies, we are now looking at spiritual gifts and trying to determine which ones we have.
One of them in the list (mentioned in the bible) is miracles.

I was thinking about this in the car on the way to work this morning:
Someone with the gift of miracles would have to be a VERY humble person.
I would say that's the reason we don't see that gift these days. Nobody has the humility to use that gift to glorify God and God only.
That type of "power" would cause one to glorify himself.

If someone today actually does have the gift to perform miracles, that person would probably be humble enough that nobody would know about it anyway...so we still wouldn't see the gift...

I wish I could move 4-dimensionally. That way, I could reach out in front of me and smack myself in the back of the head.

After reading Virgil's entry about durians (click here to read it), I decided to attempt the awesome feat of eating a durian.

You'd probably have a hard time finding these things at a regular American grocery store.
Fortunately, there is an Asian supermarket just a couple minutes down the road from where I work.

At first, I wasn't having any luck in my quest.
I couldn't find the jokers anywhere...until I decided to look in one of those freezer vats.

There they were, in all their spiky glory, beckoning me. Frozen Durian, $1.49/pound. I'm pretty sure there was some sort of spotlight shining down on them as I heard some angelic chorus singing.

My first instinct was to stick my nose against one and take a big whiff. It really wasn't that bad - sort of reminded me of a pineapple.

I can see why those who harvest these things have to wear hard hats when they work under the trees. This thing was a 5.5 pound deadly weapon.

OK, I'm buying it.

Time passes...I'm at home.

Still in the mesh bag:


Beside the first tool in the attempt to open it:


Since it was frozen, it was a little difficult to cut the husk with a knife.
I had to bring in the big guns:


After I managed to get a suitable gash, I decided to take another smell.
Still like mild pineapple...

I took a spoon to the section I cut to dig out the edible part of the fruit.
It has the consistency of custard or yogurt and surrounds a couple fairly large seeds


I took the spoon to the seeds this time. I hear they're pretty toxic, so I didn't want to try to eat them.
Here's a picture of one. They're not the prettiest.


After the 2 pits were removed, I had a custardy mess in my bowl.


Now the taste...
At first there is an extreme sweetness.
The sweetness is shortly followed by an aftertaste of onions.
It's kinda like eating onion flavored candy.

I also hear the freezing the fruit reduces the flovor and aroma. So I covered my bowl and stuck it in the refrigerator overnight to thaw.

This morning, I excitedly opened the bowl and stuck my nose in. What I heard was right. This thing was starting to get pungent. It didn't really stink necessarily like we've all heard. It was more like an old cheesy pineapple with the slight odor of feet. Still bearable, nonetheless. It tasted the same as it did last night, but a little stronger.

I wish I could have gotten a picture of my daughter's face when she smelled it.

If you can get past the smell, it's really not bad. I still have the aftertaste of onions in my mouth though.

Apparently, this is enough snow for schools in North Carolina to be on a two hour delay.





It made me utter a nice Hurley "Whaaat?"

1/3 = .33
2/3 = .66

.33 + .66 = .99

1/3 + 2/3 = 3/3

3/3 = .99
3/3 = 1

.99 = 1

Who were Adam and Eve? Traditionally, we've been taught that they were the first humans ever created and that all human life stems from them. For a few years, I've been questioning whether or not that story we've heard since we were small children is totally true.

I accept the fact that I do not know ancient Hebrew; therefore, I could be wrong. I can only go by the English translations of the bible to which I have access. All scripture references will be from the New American Standard Bible. Anyone with knowledge of the Old Testament Hebrew is welcome to comment either to confirm or correct what I say here.

My interpretation of the Scripture says that the story of Adam and Eve is not the story of the creation of a single man and a single woman, but the story of the creation of mankind (man and woman in general) - and Adam and Eve were not the only people that God created. As we all know, there are a lot of stories in the bible that didn't actually happen, but were used to describe something else so people would understand. I believe the creation story may be one of those.

Genesis 1:26: Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them....”

Questions an OT Hebrew scholar might be able to help me with...
Who is “them?” It could be a man and a woman, but could it be a group of more than two man(kind)?

The same questions come with verse 27: ...male and female He created them.

The next questions I have come from reading Genesis 2 after chapter 1. Thinking about it may change the direction of my original point a bit. Were these meant to be successive events, or do the two chapters describe the same account in different words?

Based on the beginning of the chapter (God resting on the seventh day), it looks like the creation of a single man (Adam) occurred AFTER the traditional 6 creation days. However, comparing Gen. 1:11 and Gen 2:5, it seems these two chapters may be describing the same event.

Gen. 1:11: Then God said, "Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them"; and it was so.

Gen 2:5: Now no shrub of the field was yet in the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted....

Anyway...back to my original point...

Keep this verse in mind...
Gen. 2:20: Now the man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living.

After Cain kills Abel, Cain says this to God in Gen 4:14, “...I will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”

Then, in Gen 4:17, Cain had relations with his wife and she conceived, and gave birth to Enoch; and he built a city, and called the name of the city Enoch, after the name of his son.

Who is this “whoever” that Cain is afraid of? And who is Cain's wife? And why would Cain build a city for just a couple of people? It seems we have two possibilities if Eve is the mother of all the living (Gen 2:20):
1.Adam and Eve had many other children that the bible doesn't specifically mention, or
2.God created other people that the bible doesn't specifically mention.
3.I guess there could be a third option. A good friend proposed this idea to me. These “others” were monkeys, and this is where AIDS started (yes, he was joking).

After my ramblings, I guess my point is that “Eve” might be the collective name of all the female types that God created. And the whole “forbidden fruit” story could quite possibly be a metaphor for a larger (maybe more spiritual than physical) event.