• Stephen Colbert roasts President Bush on national television (parts two and three). “Obviously he loves his wife. He calls her his better half, and polls show America agrees.” 04/30/2006

Allergy relief tea

This same week, year after year, allergies hit me the hardest. If you’re one of the unfortunate souls who has allergies, I thought I’d pass on something I learned a year or two ago.

My allergies had become so bad that I lost my voice, so I resorted to Googling a solution. I sorted through lots of allergy relief advice until I finally came upon something that I hadn’t heard before and that sounded promising. This is what that person suggested:

Brew a cup of hot honey-lemon tea and drop a honey-lemon cough drop in. The cough drop dissolves and the resulting mixture is wonderful. Just the steam from the tea clears me up and it’s very soothing on my throat.

I’m even sipping a cup as I write this.

The Secret Message of Jesus

The folks at W Publishing Group have sent me two free copies of Brian McLaren’s new book, The Secret Message of Jesus. Since I already own a copy of the book, I am giving these two books away. The first two people to leave a comment on this post saying they want one will receive one. Easy, huh?

“Through the years, I have frequently had an uncomfortable feeling:” writes McLaren, “that the portrait of Jesus I found in the New Testament didn’t fit with the images of Jesus in the church.” Out of that nagging discomfort arose this book, promising to be McLaren’s most revolutionary to date. He writes, “I’d like to share my search with you, and invite you to be a part of it. I don’t want to spoil the ending, but I’ll let you in on this: the farther I go on this search, the more inspired, moved, challenged, shocked, and motivated I become about the secret message of Jesus.”

• This live re-enactment of Super Mario Brothers made my day. I laughed pretty hard in the middle when the turtle bounces back. 04/27/2006
• The Solomon Key, the follow-up novel to The Da Vinci Code from author Dan Brown will be released some time in 2007. If you’re really, really antsy, you can read The Guide to Dan Brown’s The Solomon Key a self-proclaimed “primer” on the forthcoming novel. While you’re at it, check out the author’s blog. 04/25/2006
• Ever wondered how to make a Band-Aid stay on all day (and wished it was explained to you in Japanese)? Me too. 04/24/2006

New music

There are two new songs on my Myspace page. The first is “If You Return (I’ll Take It)” and the second is “98 Miles”. There’s a good chance both will end up on the album.

“If You Return (I’ll Take It)” was recorded (again) in my dorm room, and if you listen closely at the end, you can hear the rain outside my window. You can download it by clicking below the song title on the Myspace player.

Comments are welcome and appreciated.

• Greek authorities are investigating a suspected conspiracy to smuggle 3,000-year-old antiquities from a Greek island to museums and collectors around the world. The illicit antiquities trade is one of the biggest black-markets in the world, estimated to be worth as much as $4 billion a year. 04/20/2006
• A group of 90+ evangelical leaders have signed a new Evangelical Climate Initiative (can you say “jumping on the bandwagon”?). While I commend these leaders for (finally) acknowledging this problem, something about it makes me uneasy. Example: “Even though we work with other people for common causes, there’s a distinction we want to make between us and the traditional environmentalists. As somebody said, ‘We’re not treehuggers, we’re God-huggers.’” Here’s an idea, I’m a treehugger because I’m a “God-hugger”. 04/20/2006

The Jake & Tom Podcast returns

After a very long hiatus, the Jake & Tom Podcast is back in full glory.

Click here to download the brand-spankin’-new Jake & Tom Podcast.

Also, I’ll be out of town until late Sunday night touring with my choir, so until then, there probably won’t be a whole lot of updating going on.

• Why can’t pitchers pitch faster? An interesting article on understanding the mechanics of pitching. “According to experts in biomechanics, that 100-mph ceiling isn’t an illusion—it’s a basic property of human physiology.” The fastest “official” pitch is 100.9 mph by Nolan Ryan, but throws have been clocked at 103.0 mph. 04/19/2006

Fibonacci poems

Gregory K. Pincus, author of the blog GottaBook, has invented what might be the coolest form of poetry since the haiku.¹ He calls them “fibs”, named because of their syllabic relation to the Fibonacci sequence, a pattern in which the next number in the sequence is the sum of the previous two numbers. The first few numbers in the pattern are 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34… and so on. For example:

One
Small,
Precise,
Poetic,
Spiraling mixture:
Math plus poetry yields the Fib.

You dig? The standard fib is 6 lines with the syllables of the lines being 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8, respectively, but they can get pretty long. I have written a few, and I would encourage you to do so as well. You can leave them in the comments. The following are a couple of my own fibs:

Books,
Books,
More books.
So many!
What’s a boy to do?
Take ‘em one at a time, I guess.

Small
Bear:
A cub.
Many cubs:
Well, a baseball club.
The Cardinals²… what’s all the hubub?

For
Peace?
No doubt:
Bonhoeffer.
Plot to kill Hitler?
Surprisingly, also D.B.

“I
Do,”
They said.
Thus, were wed.
Soon after to bed.
Anxious, the reception they fled.

I could go on, but I shan’t. What fibs can you create? I suspect Peter would enjoy this.

1. I know this sounds preposterous, but really… how many forms of poetry have been invented since the haiku? No seriously… I have no idea. ↩
2. Two syllables, i.e. “card-nulls”. ↩

• Every once in a while, Cubs.com writer Carrie Muskat answers fans’ questions. This week, a question I e-mailed in about Juan Pierre was answered (about 1/3 of the way down). 04/18/2006
• This Pepsi ad has quickly become my favorite commercial. I can’t help but laugh every time I see Jimmy Fallon scoot on the sidewalk. 04/16/2006
• Trailer for The Fountain, the new film from the writer/director of cult-classics Pi and Requiem for a Dream, Darren Aronofsky. Interview with Aronofsky on the film: “…because it’s fun to watch conquistadors fight Mayans, and it’s fun to shoot guys into outer space floating around.” 04/15/2006

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