Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Snoke Theories, Episode II

"If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."

He watched his protégé and best friend, whom he loved like a brother, slowly turn bad. He fought his friend through lava flows that would burn away said friend's limbs and severely maim him in other ways, causing him to need a mask to breathe. I ask you, is this the action of a friend?

Then, Anakin out of the way for the moment, he contrived to separate Anakin's children and not tell his "dear friend" the joyful news that he was a father. He would spend the next few years as a hermit on a desolate island, only starting to be helpful when Anakin's daughter asked for help, and Anakin's son came to him with a droid with a message. Then he handed the whiny brat of a Luke a deadly weapon before telling him what it was. What if Luke had pressed the wrong button with the lightsaber pointed at himself? When that scheme didn't work, he made up some harebrained story about Darth Vader killing Luke's father - which he would later explain away by claiming it was true "from a certain point of view." Whatever.

Then, next time he saw old Anakin, he declared pompously, "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine." So, always willing to help a friend, Anakin took Obi-Wan's advice.

Like Yoda, Obi-Wan just disappeared. Like Yoda, I didn't see a body. Did he die? Like Yoda, he would show up later as a force ghost. He spoke in a creepy voice to Luke telling him to use the force. But were his actions as a ghost particularly powerful? Unless you consider spooky apparitions and voices powerful, not especially.

The last we see him as Obi-Wan, he is a holographic ghost smiling at the pawn he trained to defeat his old friend.

Fast forward about 30 years. A new generation has arisen, and now we see a powerful holographic ghost who is commanding his friend's grandson to commit horrible atrocities.


I rest my case.

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Snoke Theories, Episode I

"When 930 years old you reach, be as good you will not."

He has lived his very long life as a small being. He grew up green, with big ears. Though he didn't make a big deal of it that we know of, there is a hint that he was self conscious of his tiny stature:

"Judge me by my size, do you?"

"Size matters not."

It sounds to me like he was trying to convince himself.

The last time we see Yoda, he is lying in bed, dying. But is he dying? He just disappears. I didn't see a body. Oh sure, he shows up later as a force ghost. That just proves that he isn't completely gone. He has become another kind of being. Transparent, but visible to Luke.

Fast forward about 30 years. A new leader has risen. He is holographic and huge. (Remember, Yoda was holographic and tiny last we saw him.) He is transparent at times, and visible to Luke's nephew. Snoke is just as bald as Yoda, but he does not look as good. Clearly, he has aged in that time. His study of the Force has clearly taught him to overcome his tiny size and long poiny ears. He is now HUGE! Even seated, he towers over his underlings. Perhaps it's the memory of Darth Vader that turned him bad and made him talk forward. Or maybe it's the influence of General Hux (who looks suspiciously like Bill Weasley ... coincidence? I think not.) and/or Kylo Ren. Snoke seems to be just as respected by the First Order as Yoda was by the Jedi.


Yep. Supreme Leader Snoke is clearly Yoda.

Monday, March 21, 2016

Snoke Theories: Prologue

Supreme Leader Snoke has been the subject of numerous wild theories regarding his identity. Some believe he is Darth Plagueis, the infamous Sith legend. (This has been denied by the powers that be.) Some say he is the youngling who talked to Anakin Skywalker before Anakin slaughtered everyone in the room. Some even say he is Darth Vader or Jar Jar Binks.

These, of course, are ridiculous.

I was watching Star Wars: The Force Awakens the other day and came up with some brilliant theories of my own. I feel confident that one of my theories is accurate. Time will tell which one it is. The next few blog posts will detail who I think Snoke is.

Saturday, November 7, 2015

Lessons from Social Media

I wrote most of these back in June of this year and posted them as Facebook statuses. I now present them in blog form. I even memed a few and added some bonus lessons not seen previously.

***

Bacon and coffee are essential to your continued survival, and must be photographed, memed, and otherwise shared with utmost respect and awe. Then eaten and drunk.



LOL also stands for "lots of love." (No it doesn't.)

The world must be alerted when you have "the feels."

All pictures of cats, dogs and velociraptors must be shared.

Any fact check can begin and end with Snopes or Wikipedia. Or The Daily Currant.

All members of the political party you oppose are the Devil incarnate.

The latest death in Game of Thrones, Doctor Who, or any other show you enjoy, is an international tragedy. That also goes for books, such as Harry Potter.

If you do not share this status, either you are completely heartless, or you are ashamed of Jesus and He will deny you before the Father. Or both.

It is absolutely necessary to video yourself singing "Let It Go" and share it with the world. Extra credit if it goes viral enough for Disney to take notice and block the video for copyright infringement.

The Onion, The Daily Currant, The Duffel Blog and other satire websites are reputable sources of news. Definitely take them seriously.

"I disagree with you" = "I hate you and your kind."

Love = complete agreement and approval

If you disagree with someone, it is absolutely necessary to hurl profanity-laced insults at them. Because random strangers appreciate being called every name unfit to be printed in the book?

Everyone you feel is wrong with the world must be informed of their "wrong with the world" status.

Did someone say something that unintentionally hurt your feelings? They absolutely aimed it at you and meant it as a personal and public insult. This person must be taught a sharp lesson by being unfriended, and for extra credit, blocked. This will automatically convert them to your way of thinking. But you won't know it because you blocked them. Alternatively, you can unfriend them and send them a PM explaining what a lowlife they are.

Doctor Who has a quote for everything. If Doctor Who does not have a quote for it, make up a quote and put it on a picture of The Doctor.

Feel strongly about something? Post a status instructing everyone who disagrees with you to unfriend you now.

Every trip to the gym must be carefully documented and shared for the world to see. (Note: while these can get annoying, I have found that when I do share it, it helps keep me accountable. So don't get after people too much for this. They need encouragement, not "cease and desist" notices.)

If all else fails, put your profound (or not-so-profound) idea in a meme. Extra credit: attribute your idea to Einstein. Or Lincoln. Or a Minion.



Always be yourself, unless you can be anyone or anything else, real or fictional. Then be anyone or anything else, real or fictional.

You can combat negativity by posting pictures of superheroes, cartoon characters, or other positive subjects.

Everyone knows the key to fixing the world's problems, and everyone else is clueless and must be told how.

You can't draw worth beans? No problem. Just draw an ugly face and use it to troll others. It will go viral and your poor excuse for a drawing will gain memingful immortality. (Like the word I just made up?)

When God (who is apparently an old man with a long white beard), who makes no mistakes, created every single person in the world, He stood at a table with a beaker, and added a dose of this, a dose of that, and... oops! The perfect God who doesn't make mistakes accidentally spilled His entire supply of a third ingredient into the potion!

It is absolutely necessary to know which character of every show in existence you are.

You will be SHOCKED OUT OF YOUR SENSES what happens when you click on this clickbaity link!

He used clickbait, and THIS happened! LOL!

Minions are surprisingly philosophical.

Always photograph what you are eating.

Memes count as news, and they are definitely accurate.


Anything at all (with the possible exception of Fifty Shades of Grey) is still a better love story than Twilight.

The Doctor must under no circumstances be called Doctor Who. That is not his name. Never mind that's how he was credited until recently, and he was often called Doctor Who in the classic series.



Never mind what Back to the Future says about Marty McFly coming to the future on October 21, 2015. That day is TODAY. In fact, it's been many days since at least 2012.

#Always #use #hashtags. Better yet, ‪#‎overuse‬ ‪#‎hashtags.


If anyone wishes you "Happy Holidays," they are part of a dastardly scheme to take Christ out of Christmas and must be chastised accordingly. Anything less than "Merry Christmas" must be greeted with Scrooge-like anger.

If anyone dares mention Christmas before Thanksgiving, they must be publicly chastised for their crimes against humanity.




Saturday, October 24, 2015

Clickbait and Adbait

Public Service Announcement: The following words and phrases may actually make me LESS likely to click on your link:

  • This will blow your mind
  • What happened next? 
  • I gasped.
  • I'm SPEECHLESS
  • actually, almost anything in ALL CAPS
  • Lots of exclamation points!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  • Shocking
  • Spread this absolutely everywhere! 
  • vague comments like "he said THIS" or "THIS happened"
  • using pronouns rather than specifying the person 
  • Like if...
  • Share if...
  • Retweet/Re-post/Reblog if...
  • One like/share = one prayer
  • Like = ________, Comment =_______, Share = ________
  • Like to show respect
  • anything that tries to guilt me into clicking, liking or sharing
  • Jesus says that if you deny me before men, I will deny you before God
  • anything implying I am heartless if I don't click, like, comment or share
  • Share this in 30 seconds or something terrible will happen
  • Sadly, only 12% will share this. It should be 100%.
  • anything that definitively predicts the public's reaction to this post, stating specific percentages
  • This weird trick
  • #25 made me react strongly (fall over laughing, pee my pants, throw something out the window, etc.)
  • Excessive foul language
  • Bad grammar or spelling
  • anything that counts the number of words someone used to make their point
  • Watch this person SHUT DOWN their political opponent
  • This person sent their political opponent packing, or did anything else to defeat them (the article or video in question is often about someone making a comment that expressed disagreement, but in no way sent anyone packing, and is sometimes not even true)
  • Is there room for me on your wall? (accompanied by a picture of Jesus)


If I do click on your link, the following might cause me to leave the page quickly:

  • Constantly having to click "next"
  • Excessive ads, especially if I can't scroll without accidentally clicking on one
  • Deceptive ads that have arrows that look like a "next" button
  • Ads that completely cover the screen, blocking what I'm trying to read
  • Ads with videos that auto play
  • Music on your web page that auto plays (even if there are no ads)
  • Pages that force me to watch a video (usually an ad) before allowing me to progress to what is on the page

Note: I have nothing against ads, per se (after all, I have ads on this blog), but I do have a problem with people abusing them.

Saturday, October 3, 2015

Tom Jamieson

Following is the eulogy I wrote for my uncle Tom, who passed away of a heart attack last month. His sisters and my aunt helped me with some of the details. A shorter version was printed in the program, but this is the full eulogy. 

Tom Jamieson was born to John and Helen Irene Jamieson on June 24, 1955 in Omaha, Nebraska. He attended grade school at St. Cecilia's, followed by high school at Creighton Prep. His dad died when he was 12. Tom got a scholarship when he started high school, and he worked his way through to pay tuition. After graduating high school in 1973, he attended the University of Nebraska Omaha for about a year and got a job at the Nebraska Psychiatric Institute. He got married and moved to Seattle in 1977. That marriage only lasted about three years, but his move would start a new chapter in his life.

He worked at Doctor's Hospital in Seattle, which would merge with Swedish. It was there that he met a beautiful young woman. The third time they randomly ran into each other, he joked, "If we don't stop meeting like this, we're going to have to get married." They must have kept meeting like that, because Tom started dating Lois in 1981. They were married in 1984, and their daughter Darcy came along five years later.

After working at Swedish, Tom worked 11 years at Washington Natural Gas, followed by 14 years at Microsoft.

In recent years, he has been active in politics, and he has visited the City Council regularly (much to the chagrin of some of his political opponents). He was the Republican Chair of Washington State's 32nd District, and a Precinct Committee Officer.

Tom and Lois cared for Lois' father Ken Loge until his death in May 2015. Inspired by his father-in-law, Tom started walking regularly, up to six miles a day. Tom and Lois spent what they could not know would be their last summer together walking, going on bike rides, and even sailing on the whale boat where Darcy works.

Tom loved chess, and he won a championship at the age of 16. He was talented in several areas of art. He loved to draw, and he taught himself to play the piano. As a political activist, he made several cartoon videos to illustrate his points.

He was a deep thinker, and was proud of his membership in Mensa, for people with high IQs. He was an excellent writer and researcher, and was always eager to learn more. He had a quick wit and a caring heart.

Following a massive heart attack and a week in the hospital, Tom passed away peacefully. He is survived by his wife Lois and daughter Darcy, his siblings Holly, John, Mary and Kate, and 40 nieces, nephews, great nieces and great nephews. He is preceded in death by his parents and his brother Bill.

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Kenneth L. Loge

Following is the eulogy I read at my grandpa's memorial service on Saturday, May 23, 2015 at United Evangelical Free Church in Seattle. It was broken into three segments with other speakers [indicated in square brackets] in between each segment.

***

Ken Loge was born in 1915 and raised on a farm in Cooperstown, North Dakota, the oldest of five boys. He gave his life to Christ at the age of 10 at a summer camp, and as he liked to put it, God gave him a very long and interesting life. After graduating from high school, he became a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse and fell in love with a beautiful woman named Marian.

Then came the draft. He found himself on the way to bootcamp in Louisiana, and it wasn't until later, when he was stationed in Boise, Idaho, that his bride Marian was able to take a train out and they were married in a small ceremony by a pastor they had only just met, witnessed by the pastor's wife and some new neighbors. It was Valentine’s Day 1942. Marian returned home, while Ken went on to serve in New Caledonia, an island off the Australian coast. Thanks to his clerical skills, he was pulled to office duty while the rest of his platoon was sent to Guadalcanal, where most of them were killed in combat. Between that and the Battle of the Coral Sea keeping the Japanese away from their base in New Caledonia, God clearly protected him for a very long and interesting life. He was later reassigned to France and Germany, and he would ride through Paris on a tank, surrounded by jubilant crowds celebrating the Allied Forces’ victory.

Following the war, he returned to the US, where he got a job in the circulation department of the Fargo Forum in Fargo, North Dakota. After two years there, he accepted an offer for a position as circulation manager at the Watertown Public Opinion in South Dakota. Later he would accept a new position as the pastor at a church in Brooks, Alberta, followed by another church in Wainwright, Alberta. Big Timber, Montana followed, and then Salmon Arm, British Columbia. While pastoring in BC, Ken was on the founding board of a new endeavor that they called Trinity Junior College. It would eventually become known as Trinity Western University.

[Here, Inga Warnock of Trinity Western University spoke on Grandpa's legacy at TWU.]

Throughout Ken’s careers at the newspaper and as pastor, he and Marian had five children: two daughters, a son, and two more daughters.

After their ministry was completed in BC, the family moved to Stevensville, Montana, where Ken became pastor. It was during this time that their daughter Linda got a teaching job in Hamilton, Montana, and a student in her class required the special ed expertise of a certain Mr. Sauke. But that’s another story. It was also while they were there that, a few years later, his son Robert was killed in a traffic accident, leaving two young children, Tracy and Jeff.

After Stevensville, God called Ken into a new ministry, and he became administrator of the brand new nursing home that would become known as Kah Tai Care Center in Port Townsend, Washington. He and Marian ministered there alongside George and Virginia Foutz, whose son currently attends United. It was also during this time that they would visit their daughter and son-in-law in Hong Kong, and later in the Philippines. One of my earliest memories is walking with my grandpa Loge to the school where my dad taught and my big brother Tim attended.

Ken’s upbringing and various ministries gave him a passion for reaching the lost for Christ. After retiring from the nursing home, he moved to Ancora Village in Everett, where the Loges, along with Lyle and Florence Vanderpoel, were among the first tenants. While there, Ken became a missions consultant with the Evangelical Free Church Mission, coordinating missionary visits to the churches in the Pacific Northwest and Northern Mountain Districts, in addition to other responsibilities. He was a vital part of the ministries of missionaries around the world.

[Here, Bob Verme, missionary to Japan, spoke on Grandpa's legacy overseas.]

Ken had a vital part in the founding of the Missionary Construction Teams, which has worked on many projects worldwide. During this time, Marian started declining in health, and she lost her battle to cancer in 1989. He was praying with her, and when it came her time to pray, she didn’t say anything. She was too busy singing with the angels. I remember the next morning, when my parents both came in my room to wake me up, half a world away, to tell me my beloved grandma was gone. They had waited until morning to tell me so that I would be able to sleep. That same year, I lost both grandmas, but God would provide two young cousins for Tim, Tracy, Jeff and me, and new granddaughters for my grandpa. Annika and Darcy could not have come at a more perfect time.

Following the loss of Marian, Ken once again visited the Philippines, Hong Kong and Japan. He would come back and report to the churches in the US on the ministries in Asia.

In 1991, we returned to the US, and in 1993, Andrèa joined us to complete the group of grandchildren. Along with my parents and Tim and me, Grandpa went to Hong Kong in the summer of 1994 to teach English, and he would continue to go back for a few summers after that. I was particularly amused that, as he made a practice of walking regularly, those of us who were younger had trouble keeping up with Grandpa as he speed walked down the streets of Hong Kong. While there, he impacted many youth for Christ, and his legacy lives on around the world.

In the following years, he would revisit Europe, where he saw it completely rebuilt from the rubble he had previously seen at the end of the War. He also visited Turkey, Thailand and China, in addition to traveling to Norway to meet relatives in his mother country.

In 2012, his son-in-law Tom accompanied him to Washington, DC, where Ken was honored in the Lone Eagle Honor Flight for his service in the War. This organization brings veterans to see the memorial there in memory of their service around the world. The Mariners would later honor the veterans from the Honor Flight at Safeco Field.

In 2013, he was honored at Trinity Western University for his role in its founding by having a dormitory named after him.

By this time, he was slowing down, but his passion for reaching people for Christ continued unabated. Last May he came to Activate, United’s youth group, and shared about how at the age of 10, he went forward at a summer camp and gave his life to Christ. Just last month, he wrote a letter to each member of Activate urging them to come to Christ if they haven’t already. A week before his death, he prayed passionately for anyone who does not have Christ.

May 9, our family sat vigil in his room. His pain was evident, and he was ready to go. He could hardly talk. We said our good byes, and I asked him to give Grandma a big hug from me. When Annika told him she loved him, he said, “I love you.” Those were the last words I understood from him. In the afternoon his niece Nola arrived. He opened his eyes and acknowledged her. Then he was gone. He was four months short of his 100th birthday.

In previous years, we cousins knew that if Grandpa was leaving the family get-together, we had to hurry to say our good byes. Someone would yell, “Grandpa’s leaving!” and his grandchildren came running. This time, nobody needed to yell. But Grandpa left. I can’t wait to see him again.

In addition to his wife Marian and his son Robert, he is also preceded in death by his parents Swen and Lisa, and four younger brothers, Maynard, Melvin, Truman and Spencer. Ken Loge is survived by four daughters, Linda, Bonnie, Lois and Dori, as well as seven grandchildren – Tim, Tracy, Jeff, Steven, Annika, Darcy and Andrèa – and five great-grandchildren: Austin, Taylor, Autumn, Ava and Katlyn.