“Hey Matt, are you Reformed?”

Pretty often, I get asked about whether I’m a Calvinist, or an Arminian or Reformed or something else.  Or someone will want to talk about Luther or Augustine or some other really really dead guy.

And when asked if I’m a Calvinist or whatever, my answer is usually the same.

“I don’t know.”

To most people, that’s about the worst answer I can give, especially as someone who actually went to seminary.  A lot of people expect me to be thoroughly read up on what a bunch of dead guys thought about theology.  But I find myself balking at these conversations more and more, for a lot of reasons.  Maybe you’re a theology buff, or a total noob, or a contientious objector.  Let’s find out…

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Thanksgiving is over.  Thus we can begin another year of wanton greed.

I kid, I kid…sort of.  But now that it’s over, I want to talk about how more than ever it seems, our tradition of Thanksgiving, and giving thanks in general, is tainted by our never before so high awareness of the checkered history of the holiday and our history.  Some bloggers like Eugene Cho, who I greatly respect, call Thanksgiving a commemoration of genocide.

While you may think that’s flippant or overkill, maybe it isn’t.  Here’s what I mean.

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Hey everyone.  I hope you had a really great holiday, and I’m glad to be back.

And now that the Christmas season is in full swing, and the decorations are up and the shopping has begun, I have to say something…

…My family is being a huge pain.

Seriously, they haven’t really done this before.  But they’re totally hosing me when it comes to Christmas lists.  We all enjoy giving each other some small gift for Christmas.  Hopefully, gifts are practical, meaningful, and useful, rather than total crap. 

But they’re completely making that impossible this year.  No one will tell me anything they want for Christmas!  I grilled my brother for fifteen minutes, asking him if he even needed any tools.  He said no.  When his wife said he needs a shovel, he flatly denied it.  Same with my parents.  For the first time, I have very little to go on when it comes to Christmas shopping this year.

So today, I’m running down the list of possible gift ideas in the hopes that maybe you, my ever-helpful readers can assist me in shopping for my tight-lipped family.  If they aren’t going to make a Christmas list, I guess I’ll have to.

Matt Makes a Christmas List For His Family

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Thanksgiving is kind of an ironic holiday.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love Thanksgiving.  It’s great to be with family and spend the day together.  I love food too, so that’s good.

It’s just that Thanksgiving, this day where we say “I have enough,” now kicks off a month long orgy of ravenous consumerism where we scurry around saying, “I don’t have enough!”

A month is barely enough time for our shopping, as some black Friday sales begin at midnight on Thanksgiving.  The conflict between the spirit of Thanksgiving and the spirit of black Friday is amazing.

So before we get our day of thanks over with and start our month of “I want,” I’ve got a few thoughts.

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Happy Friday, humans!  I’ve got a very special guest for you today, and it happens to be my very first video blog post.

Ever since I traded blog platforms and stopped making you type annoying nonsense words to comment, I have been inundated with comments from spammers.  I literally get 3 spam comments for every comment you post.  Some are vulgar.  Others are insulting, like they’re just phoning it in with a list of Russian web links, and they expect me to be fooled.  Others have language so broken, it seems they were written by chimps.  But a few are truly, ridiculously memorable, and those make it all worth it.

My favorite spammer is Dolores, who I found out is actually human, a grandmother no less, on Facebook, and lives in my town!  She’s spammed everyone from Huffington Post to Matthew Paul Turner with irrelevant, blathering comments about “high tech aliens propagating humans” in such garbled language, it makes my head hurt.

Today, I have my first ever video post about my real life encounter with a spammer.  Yes, almost everything the spammer says is quoted from spam comments I’ve recieved.  Check it out, and then share your most memorable spam, or make up your own spam comment!

So, some people seem to be just a wee bit upset about the new airport security screenings.

Apparently from the “bits and pieces” I’ve seen…(wink), you can either have an ample dose of nuclear radiation spilled all over your body, while an image of you, nude, is projected onto an IMAX size stereoscopic 3D movie screen, or you can have your “junk” fumbled with by a friendly TSA representative / convicted sex offender in the backseat of a car.  Either way, people are getting their underwear in a bunch over it all.  Heh.

So among stories of screaming three year olds and elderly nuns being frisked…thoroughly, a bunch of people it seems are going to boycott the “naked scanners” in favor of the pat down the day before Thanksgiving. 

I’m all about civil disobedience, so I’ve got some thoughts to help you prepare for your Thanksgiving travels.

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