By Anthony
We are still in the process of getting settled in Canyonville.
We are all unloaded and almost all unpacked and organized.
Most of the people here are amazingly nice, but the culture in this small town is completely different than Salem’s.
It’s weird how much of a difference 158 Miles can make!
My mom has been here for a few days helping us with the kids while we get aclamated.
We had a great time going to Wildlife Safari with her on Sunday.
I have a lot to do to prepare for the students to get here to CCA so cannot write much and am also having some complications using my laptop on the wireless network here.
On thing I am excited to blog about is the supposed bigfoot discovery story that broke last week.
By Anthony
Sorry that I haven’t blogged much at all lately. We are right in the middle of moving and doing a summer youth camp; and being VERY STRESSED out. We moved from Salem to Canyonville on Monday, came back to Salem on Thursday, have been working at the church and for camp stuff all while not having any official place to stay with the exception of our parent’s houses- oh and did I mention that we helped my sister move this weekend? And that I am having terrible allergy attacks and that our kids are SUPER confused by all of this back and forth stuff?
Don’t want to complain, just vent. Pray that God will get us through this weird transition. We just want to be settled and working in Canyonville.
I will resume blogging shortly- within one week.
By Anthony
Teens love highly spiritualized things like prayer, but not if they involved discipline- like personal holiness.
Teens tend to be so open to spiritual things. The more spiritual that it seems= the more attracted they are to it, but if it involves anything physical, for the most part, they check out.
A typical post-modern teen’s perspective:
Prayer= good. Silent meditation= good. Anything candles= good. Angels= good. Talk of spirits or even ghosts= really good…etc…
But, raising your hands in worship to God= bad. Singing along with others in worship to Jesus= bad. Stepping out to help someone from a different social group= bad. Abstinence= bad. Abstaining from alcohol= bad…etc…
A chrisitan-cult called Gnosticism started shortly after the beginnings of Christianity. It taught that anything related to the spirit was good and anything related to the body was bad. They used this as an excuse for sinning. Any time a Gnostic would commit a carnal sin they would blame it on the evil body. They would say that their soul had been saved by Jesus, so it didn’t matter what their bodies did, leading to great complacencies in anything physical amongst the Gnostics.
Gnosticism, although not existing per say as an organized religion today, is alive and well in the Church and amongst our teens. This idea that anything we do that is spiritual is good and makes up for what we do that is physical, so it doesn’t matter what I do with my body.
Gnostics tend to ignore the fact that God made us as corporate beings of body, soul, and spirit and that God intended us to live being aware of our entire existence as body, soul, and spirit. They tend to ignore the fact that when Jesus returns, that all of His followers will be given resurrected bodies and that we won’t be some bodiless ghost wondering about throughout eternity.
We must encourage young people today to love God with their bodies, as well as their spirits.
By Anthony
Teenage girls are infatuated with bisexuality because boys are infatuated with lesbians.
Like most of these observations the cause and effect are all so related, it’s like the circle of life or…the food chain.
For the last 30 years or so, pornography and homosexuality have become more and more acceptable as people’s sexual appetites have grown hungrier and hungrier at the same time that marriages were ending in divorce more and more……..
Because young men, and old, seemed to be hopelessly addicted to porn they desired to see other men in their pornography less and less because of the fear of becoming gay (themselves).
So, as a solution to this (men seeing men in pornography), as people became more and more obsessed with watching other people have sex instead of having it with their spouses, porn producers started making more and more pornography with girl-on-girl action. Now it’s the norm and it’s what most porn addicted men want to see.
This lesbian pornography has etched itself into the heart of American culture and the heart is quickly turning black.
Because of this, girls feel that in order to get the love and affection that they long for (a love and affection that can only truly be found in Christ), that they have to give themselves sexually to a boy. So in order to do this they dress provocatively like prostitutes, use sultry come-on lines that they heard from soft porn (aka MTV) AND sometimes resort to sexually interacting with other girls and hoping that a boy that they’re interested in will find out about it or even see it so that the boy will be aroused by it and give the girl some type of love and affection through the form of sex. Complicated? Not really.
Once the guy has consumed the girl sexually he will move on because no guy in their right mind would want to have a study girlfriend who messes around with other people, especially girls, right?
And, once this girl has been dumped so many times by the same boys that she tried so hard to get to love her through sex, she starts to think that the only people who give her anything near that kind of love that she has been searching for are: other girls.
Now she is confused because she really wants love and affection from a man (especially since her daddy is not around), but she can only get something like it from girls. So she thinks to herself,” Am I a lesbian?” and often believes this lie, ditches boys all together, and lives the rest of her life in conflict: a conflict that could only be resolved by coming to Jesus and finding a man who has also come to Jesus. And once they come together, they could share the love that Jesus gave them with each other in a way that nothing else could compare with.
Does this seem crazy to you? It’s not. Open your eyes to the young people around you. Open your ears and hear the cry of lost little girls who are craving male affection.
Two weeks ago at a youth camp I was running, I overheard a conversation of a sweet Christian girl with another girl and a young boy. She was trying to rationalize why boys get aroused by two girls being intimate with each other. And as she rationalized it, she seemed to become more and more understanding of it, more and more comfortable with it; as if she herself might feel comfortable with making out with another girl to attract the boys she likes. It would only be a meaningless kiss, right? No!
Think about it! This is a real issue that is taking place right out in front of our eyes.
By Anthony
I see a lot of young people who grow up in homes with very little income. Where in the past, you would see many people use the memories of their impoverished childhood to spur on a change with their lives; today it seems to be the opposite.
So many teens because of their poor attitudes, outlooks, work ethic, and lack of transportation tend to blame everyone else and make themselves the victim. Everyone else is the perpetrator and they are always being victimized.
I believe the answer to this lies with the other answers, that because they are not engaged in the real world, and because they rely on others who do operate in the real world to provide for them; they feel like its those people who wronged them when they didn’t get their needs met by relying on others.
I’m not sure why they are not engaging themselves in the real world and (instead) rely on others to. I’m sure it has to do something with their crappy upbringings with sorry excuses for parents, but I’m not sure when everything changed. I’m not sure when or why their parents became lousy either, but I’m sure it had something to with their parents and I’m sure that began sometime in the sixties?
By Anthony
This is a growing trend in the Pacific Northwest: Big men wearing kilts out in public.
This pic was taken secret agent-style under a Taco Bell booth. I was afraid William Wallace and his men were going to break through the doors and challenge this man to a broad sword battle. Let’s hope this big dude was wearing underwear.
By Anthony
This is for real! It’s the ultimate oxymoron: an EMO- PARTY. Ha! This sign was at the Salem Public Library. I had heard of it a month or so earlier, but I couldn’t resist taking a picture of the actual sign when I saw it. Look closely at the weird activities: Poetry Slam, Emo Sock Puppets,Chocolate Personality Tests, and Chocolate Taste-Testing?????!!!!! I’m sure that was one crazy party! I hope they hid any and all knives or razor blades.
By Anthony
You can’t really control when it happens. When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go. Public place or not. Nature calls. You have to go to the bathroom. It seems like it always happens when you go into a public place. Grocery stores, discount stores, clothing stores, book stores, etc…: potty has no preference. Although sometimes it seems to prefer Borders, Target, and Walmart. So, you have to answer it’s nagging call.
There you are; walking down that mysterious hallway with the employee of the month pictures, “I lost 40 pounds in one week” flyers, and multi-level marketing advertisements all around you. Once you reach the end of the hallway you have one last chance to back out of the journey you are about to embark on.The old and rusty monolith of a door now towers in front of you in all of it’s glory. You take the rusty old handle into your sweaty hands and realize that it’s trying to take you with it’s own. After pushing the skanky-old door open and freeing your hand from it’s handle’s greasy grip, you enter the place in which you will leave part of yourself.
Upon entering; a cloud of poisonous gas coming from the moaning homeless man in the handicapped stall overcomes you . In desperation you take one last deep breath as not to take in too much of the Taco Bell bi-product now circulating through the air.
You decide to take your first small step to get to the empty stall about six feet away from you. As you do so, you nearly fall on the cracked-tile floor beneath you because you’ve slipped in the large puddle of misplaced urine in the middle of the room. Regaining your balance, you proceed.
After hopping over several toilet paper and paper-towel land mines you make it to the stall. About this time you remember that you’ve been holding your breathe for quite a while and that you cannot hold it any longer. Just as you take a gasp of air your stall neighbor moans “oh yes” and loudly splashes his kids into the pool. The gas spewing from this catastrophe rushes into your inhaling lungs. Your eyes instantly begin to water and your nose hairs singe.
The urge to use the restroom becomes overwhelming. You decide to breathe normally despite the dangerous conditions. After all, there’s no evidence that hepatitis can spread through the air( is there? ). So, you reach for the hole in the door that used to be a lock to pull it open, but when your fingers enter this hole they stick to the moist gum recently put there. You free yourself and pull the door open by grabbing it’s top.
Once the door opens you notice that hieroglyphs of nudity, difficult sexual positions, and curse words adorn the walls. This disgusts you. Your eyes are then drawn to the clogged toilet and its repulsive contents. Wet toilet paper is wrapped around the toilet as if it was a birthday party streamer. A moan from next door makes you turn your head and notice that there is no toilet paper to wipe yourself. Everything is going wrong! Looking down and contemplating if you should stick around and wait for your pal “Mona” next door to finish; you notice one of the grossest things on this planet: a mustache ring of hair around the toilets rim. You decide to wait for the handicapped stall.
All of the sudden you hear one of the most lovely sounds you’ve heard in a long time. It’s the flush from next door. You patiently wait for “Mona” to exit his stall. The door opens and you make a mad dash for the premises. Unfortunately you and “Mona” must now cross paths. His hair is so soaked with sweat that it looks like he just got out of the shower. You try to avoid eye contact with your new roommate, but it’s inevitable. Just when you thought you were done with “Mona”, he turns and says “enjoy”. You try not to think about what he means by this and make your way towards the handicapped stall.
“Mona” has left the stall door open, so you make your way into the gas chamber. The odor is intoxicating. Every part of your body, mind, and spirit tells you to leave, but you’ve come too far to simply give up. After all, if you did leave you would surely soil yourself. You use your foot to pull the door closed and use your shirt tail like a glove to lock the door. The coast looks clear, so far.
Now that the door is closed and locked you take it all in. The handicapped stall is bigger than a New York City studio apartment. It lacks the disturbing hieroglyphs of it’s neighboring stall. This comforts you. The handicap handles lining the walls of the stall could be used for an Olympic gymnastics competition. You look down to the end of the stall and start your inspection of the toilet. From your vantage point it looks somewhat clean. There are no toilet paper streamers wrapped around it. From where you stand it doesn’t look clogged. You decide to move closer.
It was too good to be true. As you move closer you discover that “Mona” dropped one last kid off at the pool after flushing. His snake-like feces is curled up in the toilet as though it’s awaiting its charmer to play some strange Middle-Eastern flute and make it rise from its motionless state. You stand back and kick the flusher to rid your seat of its unwanted visitor. The power of the flush is so great that it splashes water and other unknown contents all over you. Your hands and face are spared, so you continue on your quest.
You reach for the toilet paper to wipe off the wet seat. As you start to pull it off the roller it begins to tear. These cheap stores always use single-ply toilet paper! This will be a huge problem when it’s time to do your business. So, there you are pulling out the toilet paper single-ply square by single-ply square. Once you have collected enough squares to safely wipe down the toilet seat, you notice your old friend from the previous stall: the mustache ring of hair.
What causes this?! Do people decide to give them selves a haircut while using a public restroom? Do they decide to shave their backs there? Is this some sort of perverted Chia Pet or can the toilet actually grow a mustache? Either way; it’s a mystery and it’s disgusting!
Once everything has been cleaned up you take a seat only to realize that the toilet must have some kind of cooling unit similar to the stone they use at that ice cream place to mix several ice creams together. You’ve come this far: you can handle it.
After a short time passes and you have already read every word off of the toilet paper roller like a book; you decide that you’re done. You start the process of pulling toilet paper squares off one at a time like you are playing “she loves me, she loves me not” with a daisy and then reach down to wipe and you suddenly realize that the water line of the toilet is only about one inch below the rim and you completely submerge your hand! You must now use the small pieces of toilet paper to dry your tainted hand and then use your bad hand to do the rest of the wiping all while being sure not to touch yourself with the now contaminated hand.
You then must hurry and finish so you can thoroughly decontaminate your hand in the sink. So you quickly pull up your pants only to realize that they are wet from the urine soaked floor! Great! So you pull back down your pants and put a few toilet paper squares between your bare (and cold) butt and your clothing as to not get too wet.
After flushing the toilet with your foot, you start to realize that the toilet is quickly clogging and what you have just done will soon be floating out the door and towards the store’s concession stand. So you button your pants and run to the sink while the toilet slowly begins to overflow.
Crap! There’s no handle on the hot water part of the facet so you reach and turn on the cold water and it comes out only a few drips at a time…NO! You push the soap dispenser only to here it make a fart-like noise and nothing comes out. With a few sweeps of your hand under the dripping cold water you realize that the toilets contents are getting closer and closer and for some reason the toilet that you just used won’t stop flushing!
You think to yourself,” Few, only one more thing to do: dry my hands!” But you notice that this facility chooses not to honor their customers with paper towels and only has one of those things that you can pull down a piece of towel-like fabric from and the dirty part that you just used goes back up into the unit only to be used again! Sick!
What now? You notice they have a hand drier and you know that hand driers never work unless you are willing to keep your hands vigorously rubbing together underneath them for 25 minutes. You know that you don’t have that kind of time now because of the toilets contents slowly making their way towards you. Hand drying is skipped altogether and you run out of the bathroom just as the flash flood makes it’s way out the bathroom door.You now have post traumatic stress disorder and are unable to shop at the store and purchase the toilet paper that you came here to get in the first place! As you walk out of the store an elderly “security guard” in a wheelchair shouts,” thanks for shopping at insert store name here. At the sound of his voice you begin to weep because of the trauma that you had just gone through and you swear to yourself that you will never use their bathrooms again……..but……you know you will.
By Anthony
When I turned sixteen (only 12 years ago), the first thing that you did when turned sixteen, was get your freak’n driver’s license, but not today. It is almost uncool today (to get your driver’s license).
This is very confusing to me. I’m not sure if this is something that is prominent in only my area or a trend taking place all over?
A driver’s license used to be synonymous with freedom, but today there is almost a fear attached to getting one.
This, I believe, directly relates to the teenage work ethic issue that I brought up earlier, but I’m not sure. There is also a growing segment of older teens and young adults who don’t want to move out of their parent’s homes, as I mentioned earlier, that I believe correlates to the driver’s license issue.
I still think it all comes down to distracting things that fill the void of people’s true needs that make other things seem not so important to them. And because their needs are met elsewhere, they have to rely on others, who live and interact in the real world, to provide for them money, food, clothing, shelter, and of course- when needed- transportation.
By Anthony
Teenagers today seem to have NO work ethic.
There is no desire to have a job, to work hard, to earn money, to move out of their parent’s home, to get married, to have children, etc…
The only explanation that I can come up with for this is that they are finding their fulfillment by other means: i.e. video games, the internet (specifically social networking sites that require no real human interaction), reality television, pornography, etc….but ultimately I’m not sure why?