the Unexpressed Advantage » Mild Humor

Brett Favre ran a lap…

dray — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:35:10 +0000

I'm not sure what this is all about. But if you're into sports I keep hearing something about this "Favre" Guy. Does anyone know who that is and what he did to deserve so much attention?

Brett Favre ran a lap, and it made me feel sad all day – Shutdown Corner – NFL – Yahoo! Sports

O – Snap – Bama

dray — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:46:12 +0000

It occurs to me that regardless of your politics, McCain doesn't stand much of a chance in November against a late 40s Kennedy-esque Lawyer – who also happens to be black – running for president. Sorry about that. So just for the record, here's my prediction:

McCain is going to get creamed.

(btw, John Dickerson is, in my opinion, the best political news columnist in the country)

Straightening out McCain's "straight talk." – By John Dickerson – Slate Magazine

Thursday Madness – Foie Gras

dray — Fri, 16 May 2008 06:27:42 +0000

Somehow, and I'm not sure how, I ended up reading this article about the removal of the ban on selling foie gras in Chicago. I found it interesting, because I didn't really know what foie gras was or why it would be illegal in Chicago. The article pretty much explained all that. Foie Gras is duck liver from ducks who are force-fed so their livers get really fatty and tasty. Apparently this offends some animal rights Activists.

I know that usually you would expect me to chide animal rights activists or something like that, and the article was written in a very "pro eating foie gras" stance, like it's not really that big of a deal so, "come on!"…

…but force feeding ducks through a tube so their livers can get unnaturally fatty and then people with money can eat them?

That just seems crazy. Maybe I'm missing something, and I don't really like ducks that much, but I'm gonna take their side on this one.

No more foie gras for me.

Monday Morning Update: Feet Upright; Spanish Revolution

dray — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:38:55 +0000

Today I was riding on a bus, and in the middle of the bus (sorry this is taking so long to write, my fingers are frozen), there's this accordion section that bends and spins around when the bus is turning or when it goes over bumps. It's like an island in the middle of the bus that's kind of floating there.¹Needless to say, when I can, I like to ride in the accordian-y part of the bus. In the accordion circle, there are two benches, with two seats each. They are facing each other.

Since the students are now gone, there was nobody sitting in any of the seats. So I sat down on the one, and put my feet up on the other across from me.

You know what?

Perfect fit. I never knew that! I really like to sit with my feet up, in just about any situation where it's deemed acceptable. And lately I've been having awkward situations where the footrest is either too far from me, too close to me, has pointy sharp things that bug my legs, or off to one side which makes my torso hurt. I didn't realize it, but when I sat in the bus seats in the accordian section, I was reminded of how nice it is when you're sitting in a good seat with your feet up properly.

This begs the question, "Why is it sometimes deemed unacceptable to sit with your feet up?" Is there really anyone who would prefer to sit with their feet on the floor? I doubt it. I think there should be an option in every situation that involves seats to have your legs up on some kind of footrest or ottoman. How great would that be?

Imagine how much nicer Captain Picard would be if he could have put his feet up on the bridge of the Enterprise; Or how much happier toll booth operators and border patrol people would be if they could put their feet up. Students would do better, more people would come to church, and people driving in Vancouver would probably stop glaring so much.

This basic human rights stuff. We should fight for our dignity more often.

I guess this post went a little long. I'll write about the Spanish thing later.

One time, when I had just arrived in Vancouver, I didn't realize how the bus worked, so I was sitting on one of those seats, and I got up to let someone else sit down right as the bus was turning. The seats are dead center of the double-long bus, so the centrifugal force was outrageous, and it threw me into the accordion side-wall and I got stuck in there and I think I almost died. Everyone laughed; it was not a happy day. I learned my lesson though. [ƒ]

Good Gravy.

dray — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 15:14:16 +0000

Who does this look like shreding on the Les Paul

Point of Clarification. On the right side of my blog it says, "not THE CLAP!!!"

It occurs to me that out of context that could be taken in the wrong way.

So I'm going to clarify, point by point.

I was at a lecture last night when we had a very long and sometimes standing ovation for my professor, Mark Davies, who was giving his final lecture as a professor at Regent College.
As it went on, I started wondering to myself, "how does a long ovation (clap) like this ever come to an end. It seems like in theory, as people keep clapping other people keep clapping and it could concievably go on forever. But it usually doesn't.
Thus I wrote, last night, "What causes a clap to end?"
Then, this morning, I realized that could be taken the wrong way. In reponse I wrote, "not THE CLAP!!!"
Meaning here to emphasize the word "the" I should have written, "not THE clap". When I read it how I originally wrote it I realized that it could easily be seen as coming out of nowhere, as in, "oh no! not the clap!!!"
If read this way, I assume it would put all of you, the blog readers, in a state of curious confusion, "hmm, I wonder why dan just wrote that?"
I don't want you in this state of curious confusion, and since I'm way too lazy to simply log into my twitter account and fix the feed post, you get this blog entry.

Which, based on its logical flow and organized nature, I now assert that I am using it to prepare for my upcoming sytematic theology exam. I'm also trying to work on expressing things more clearly, because – obviously – that hasn't been going very well lately.
DK

Baby Montage

dray — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 05:22:53 +0000

Well the time has finally come. And it's been a long time coming. The following is the long-anticipated, much looked forward to, baby montage that I've been talking about for the last 10 weeks. Interestingly enough, during those last 10 weeks new babies are being born like every week! Which is part of the reason I've kept putting it off. Now that Kyle and Sarah had their baby however, I'm calling a cease-fire on all births until tonight at 10:00pm by which time this blog will be finished. So if you have a baby between now (8:49) and 10pm I have to tell you I'm sorry, but your baby isn't going to be on this baby montage or the next baby montage on this blog. Your baby has been disqualified because he or she broke the cease fire and now will have to stand trial for war crimes.

Since the internetic authority on the definition of "montage" is as follows A cinematic device used to show a series of scenes, all related and building to some conclusion it should be easy for you to see why I've referred to this constantly as a montage. It's going to be fun, and this will be the only time on the blog where you will see this many pictures of the blog author in one place. So single ladies, beware this post contains images of dan and babies and lots of images of dan holding babies. You probably better just move on and see what's going on here or maybe here.

And now that that's all settled, I present to you, without further delay:

THE DAN AT DRAYNET.COM BABY MONTAGE!!!

Part 1: Welcome to Planet Earth: Ciara Alice Palmer

Ciara was born a while back to my friends Vanya and Ryan. She's small and has lots and lots of black hair (insinuates nothing). When she's happy she makes neat little quacking sounds like a duck. For some reason she usually has a white tongue.

I chose to start the montage with this picture of her and I because it demonstrates what a great relationship we have even when she was only 4 days old.

Ciara loves uncle dan (the most?)

Ciara wakes up to a new day

She's just a few months away from an elusive modeling contract

These are her proud parents showing of Ciara and her sweet designer car seat. If you think that's cool, you should see her stroller/monster truck bed thingy. It has better suspension than my car.

Part 2: Naomi Grace Cramer

I said before that Naomi gets priority and she definitely does. She's the best to watch because she has this gazing stare that just really makes a person feel like they are interesting. She gets this from her father. And her mother. Everybody loves to hold Naomi and often Shannon and I have to do battle for her, at least until the other kids show up and then we all get to be happy. Naomi holds the proud title of having spit up on me 4 times in one holding while pooping 3 times. After that holding I declared that I would never change a child's diaper until I had kids of my own. And let's be honest, they can change their own da*^ diapers.

Naomi is sporting the good looks. I encouraged Josh and Grace to ground her one month for every time she cries in order to avoid having to ever deal with boys.

This is Naomi and Phil. Phil is not Naomi's father Josh is.

This is Naomi's mama Grace. Naomi often does cool things like chew on a bottle.

This is me holding Naomi like a football. There you go andrew, My babi3z frienz p0wnz y04z. She always makes cool faces like this.

Part 3: Welcome to the hood, Luke Daniel Nevens

Aww yeah! It's on now. LD Nevens is my homie from another cronie. He's my bro and my bro's bro yo. He's the man. He did the roll at age .05 and he owns it. And he owns. I love this guy. And when he's pissed, he lets you know. I like. I expect him to beat me at basketball by age 3. It's been 2 months since I've seen him and if the guy can't play guitar by now you can call me yellow.

Mom (gretchen) and Luke. Luke is clearly already planning world domination. He gets that from dad.

This one's for all the ladies…

Mike demonstrates the coolest way to hold a baby…

And I find myself sufficiently instructed. Luke enjoys

We were both tired after a long night of partying and wooing the women, so we decided to chill out and take a nap.

Here's Uncle Luke with his namesake

Most babies don't turn until 3 months. LD had it mastered by age six weeks. Mike and I were so proud that we tried to get him to do it several times in a row. This severely pissed him off.

"I'm sorry little guy." Mike had to console him. Well done little man, well done.

Part Gamma: Hannah Twombley

Hannah was born to Jeremy and Jeralyn a little over a year ago. She doesn't really like me very much, as evidenced by the fact that every time I tried to hold her, this happened:

Hannah. Not happy with Dan.

To make things worse, I tried to hold Hannah and LD together. Disaster ensued.

Part X: Anna Elaine Barber

Dillon and Kristen gave birth to Anna and she is just utterly cute. Very much like her parents. She doesn't cry, she's always happy, and she's made of butterscotch and dandelions.

Anna and Dad looking sharp.

Anna and Dad posing

Just plain cute…

But also serious at times…

My bosom makes babies sleep.

Now she's out cold.

But awake in time to play with her toys. Stay back fools!

Part 5: Welcome to Vancouver, Christian Grey Ratzlaff

Christian is just over a Year old and Heather and Derek adopted him a few months ago. As one person said in our church, Christian Ratzlaff just won the new parent lottery, 'cause Derek and Heather are as good as it gets.

This little guy is beyond words. He's fun, smart, and happy, always present with a smile or mischievous grin. I generally like to hold him upside down until he laughs. We get along great. He doesn't talk yet, but if he did he'd say, "Dan Ray, you are so cool."

Here he is planning something.

But it seems that he got distracted by some food. What is it with the little ones and food?

Part Alpha: Welcome to earth BENJAMIN WADE SPLINTER HALTON

BWSH, or as I like to call him "swoosh" (dane, that's for constantly calling me "deep chocolate") is better than bread. And that's quite a compliment coming from me. He came into this world a little bit early, so he's been gaining ground ever since. I know Luke Daniel rules, but just to be fair, Ben Wade started rolling around at age negative 2 weeks. Yeah. This guy is going places. big places.

He has been already in many ways a HUGE blessing and source of joy for Jane and Dane and their loved ones, so he basically started doing ministry the moment he was born. I love this guy.

wtf?! What am I doing here? Ben was a little startled at his early arrival.

But he acclimated quickly…

I met him on this day. He commented on how nice that sweater looks on me.

Here I gave Ben the "lion king" treatment, so that all the jungle animals could see who rules.

Bow before king swoosh.

This is Jane's favorite Ben picture. And consequently mine too. I suggest that he will be driving the car inside of 4 weeks.

Check out Jane and Dane's blog for more pictures of Ben

Part Omega: Welcome to Earth: Maia Charis Reid

I haven't gotten to meet Maia yet, which is a point of contention for me. So trips must be planned and planes must be caught soon! She's gorgeous though, just like her parents Uncle Luke and Beth.

Welcome Maia

Good morning! Anything exciting planned for today?

Proud parents Luke and Beth. We're fairly certain Maia won't have a beard, but with a dad like Luke, nothing is out of the question.

Last minute Entry!
Welcome to the World Addison Elizabeth Wilhelms!

Addison was born seven days ago and she's a doll. Had to make sure that she was added. Congratulations to Kyle and Sarah, two of my very best friends and Addison's new parents. If you want to get a deeper understanding of who they are, check out the quote on the right side of the home page.

Naked Addison: We definitely need more pictures of naked people on this blog. Seemed like a good place to start.

Addison is looking for food. Apparently these babies aren't too particular about where their food comes from.

This dude is one of my heroes. He's gonna be a great dad. As long as he doesn't sell his kids.

Addison is all ready to go with a careful glare, and alien abduction protection?

Part Revelation: Welcome to Earth, Daniel K. Ray

And the Final Picture. Worth the price of admission. This is a picture of me, age nine, hanging out with some baby in a wagon. Isn't I cute!? Too bad I didn't have a beard then.

The real question here is, which one is the baby?

Seriously Though…

Congratulations to all my dear friends and their new found joys. There's no way to adequately express the joy that we all feel with this much addition of new life, so I'm not even going to try. Hopefully this post will be an indicator though of how much all of this has blessed me and the many people (especially grandparents) that get to see their loved ones walk into this new phase of life. One day, I'll have my own kids, but in the meantime, I'll take great comfort in knowing that there are this many new people in the world who will grow up in loving, caring, Christ-centered homes. Blessings to all of you.

I can't believe it. This monster post is finally done. On that note, I'll be taking a couple of weeks off. Watch for an update or two and lots of twitter feed updates. But other than that, it's finals time for me baby. Oh yeah.

p.s. Additional Congrats to Nathan and Karen on the birth of Luke Daniels (confusing, I know) little brother Caleb. I don't have any pictures but will gladly update later.

p.p.s. If you're a single girl who reads this blog and are now profusely in love with me, check out the about page for contact info or search the site profusely for the dating application. I'm sure it's on here somewhere.

p.p.p.s. Seriously though. I don't really mean that.

p.p.p.p.s. The cease fire is officially over. You can go back to birthing new babies.

p.p.p.p.p.s. Special thanks to gmail search for all the middle names

p.p.p.p.p.p.s. Three cheers for the laptop. Not one crash yet and it's soldiered through a weekend of powerpointing, 4 classes, and some online nintendo golf. I still got the skillz to pay the bills.

Monday Morning Update

dray — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:00:34 +0000

My favorite babies would totally beat up these babies. Anyway, if you know who the guy in the picture is, you totally win a prize

All's Quiet on the Northwestern Front

This is one of those weeks where all in my world seems to be filled with peace and free of trouble. Maybe I'm just feeling sentimental, maybe I'm on drugs. I'm not sure.

Top of the good news is that Jane and Dane are finally home with Ben and officially "out of the woods." Now I can go meet Ben and get my picture taken with him, and the baby montage will be complete and ready for posting.

I had a cold all weekend which stunk, but somehow the weekend was still able to be filled with fun and frolick. I also somehow managed to meet a bunch of new people, hang out with old friends, and even hang out with a really old (chico) friend who was in town visiting. That last one was my friend Meg Wolf who is visiting Vancouver from Southern California (northern mexico), but she'd get shy if I mentioned her name, so we'll just keep that between you and I.

In my leisure (being sick) time, I've been reading books that are far too complicated for me to understand and watching old episodes of Star Trek – DS9. This, combined with a foggy head from a stuffed up nasal passages makes for some pretty interesting dreams. Think commander Worf on the Bridge of the Defiant travelling through time while speculating on the extent to which Christological events may be efficable on our eternal redemption.

If Worf was a preacher, I would totally go to that church.

I had good conversations at Fun City. This is nothing new. But particularly Lynsey and I got into a couple of topics that I think are pretty interesting and crucial (apologetics – blogging about it now). Fun City's pretty much the greatest. The difference between my house and the Friends house is that none of us sleep with each other and Friends is lame.

Other than that and the fact that every conversation last week and this weekend were about the white people blog, that's pretty much it. Oh yeah, TAL was good this week, as always.

No Coffee Make Dan go Crazy

dray — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 04:59:26 +0000

note: this is a rant. If you don't like rants, don't read this.

I think maybe I've already complained on this blog about the whole coffee shops never fill up my coffee thing on this blog. So sorry but I have to complain about it again.

Because I seriously end up thinking about this every single time I go for a coffee.

Now let me make some things clear.

First off I like by. Coffee black. Completely black. No sugar, no cream – none whatsoever. This means that I don't need any room for cream. Where I came from this didn't really seem to be too uncommon. In fact, I remember when I was younger I used to work on restaurants and we were instructed to ask customers when they ordered coffee if they would like it black so that we didn't waste the little cream and sugar packets if they didn't want them. Apparently in BC nobody drinks their coffee black because whenever I tell people that I drink it black they just look at me funny. Like really? Ok, well do you want to put some cream in your black coffee though?

Seriously? Really?

Hence whenever you order coffee here they fill it about two thirds full and hand it to you smiling as of they gave you some poo In a box for your Christmas present but they knew you'd be long gone before you figured it out and cursed at them under your breath.

And so they never fill your coffee. And the thing is i really like their coffee. I mean its not like I'm such a caffeine addict that I'm really happy about having to go pay a solid $2 for a cup of brew when I could make it for free at home (and I like me the coffee I make at home). When I show up at your coffee establishment, it's because dang it I want your coffee.

So when I drive halfway across town to to to jj bean (the best coffee) I'm really hoping to get that full cup. Why can't they take that as a compliment?

…at this point you're probably asking yourself the question, "Man why can't the guy just ask them for a full cup of coffee. I'm sure they'll oblige."

Well Mr. or Mrs. Smarty Pants maybe you wouldn't mind telling me the freaking magic word then.

Because no matter what I say my cup always comes back half empty, i.e.,

Figure 1 – coffee ordering phrases and typical result
ordering phrase	result
"May I have a cup of coffee, black please?"	Cup of coffee, 2/3 full
"Cup of coffee, no room (supposed starbucks terminology)"	2/3 of a cup of coffee
"May I have a cup of coffee, black, no room for cream?"	Cup of coffee, 2/3 full
"May I have a cup of coffee and I don't need any room for cream"	Again
"Cup of coffee, filler up!"	Take a Guess.
"How about a cup of coffee and you can just fill it up, I don't take cream"	2/3 of a coffee
"Cup of medium coffee please, filled to brim"	sometimes this gets me less than 2/3 of a cup

This always leaves me in the awkward position of having to ask the coffee person to go back and fill it up the rest of the way. You can imagine how hard it is to phrase that one without sounding like a petty spendthrift. I'm thinking of starting to say, "Listen, just give me a coffee, the whole damn coffee."

Advice? I really hope this isn't making me sound like a cranky old man…

p.s. sorry about the grammar errors, I wrote this on the iphone in the coffee shop

Environmental Activing

dray — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 20:55:02 +0000

Some of the people who live in my college grew a tree from paper cup seeds that you can get at Starbucks® and other prominent coffee bean locales. It's quite pretty, but they're also trying to make a statement. The statement is that when you purchase coffee in these paper cups, instead of throwing the paper cups away, you can use them to make a pretty tree.

I think this is useful for us environmental types, because it gives us an alternative to throwing away the paper cups, which leads to less overall trees, or recycling the paper cups, which just leads to more paper cups and no more trees. This way we can use the paper cups to re-create the trees that they came from. And the best thing: it takes way less paper cups to make a paper-cup tree than paper cups that an actual tree produces. This is like super-uber recycling because it results in many trees from one tree. Now I can feel exceptionally good about asking for a paper cup instead of a mug when I have fogotten my travel mug but still want to have warm coffee. Because when you get it in a mug it gets cold really quick. Too quick.

Who the Heck is Run?

dray — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 18:03:25 +0000

"We're gonna go minister to the world on MTV." – washingtonpost.com

There's something on TV called "Run's House". I don't really know what it is, but occasionally my bitTorrent client will start downlading it because it thinks that it is the tv show "house" (generally quite a good show except for the fact that it's not on the air because there's some kind of strike going on so now there's no tv but only lots and lots of reality shows). What is this world coming to. Wasn't there a movie about this? Some kind of thing where it was like 500 years in the future, and due to the inbreeding of dumb people we wound up with a situation where the only things that people did were eat fast foot, drink beer, and sit around watching NASCAR and reality TV?

What movie was that anyway?

Oh yeah, back to Run's house. I've never watched it, but the article above mentions out some subtleties about the show that lead me to believe it has lots of great examples of both the shortcomings of reality tv AND everything that's wrong with the so called Health and Wealth Gospel.

Examples:

What was your family's reaction to the idea? (of doing a reality show)

I told my family and they were down. I said we're gonna go minister to the world on MTV. When we work, we understand that it's unto God, so we're serving. Serving in the capacity of a reality show.

?!?

My ministry is family. It's a church that leads by example instead of preaching to you. Showing you the lifestyle that comes from serving God. Not so much the cars and the house, but the peace and health that's in my home.

Translation: Please disregard all this bling. I save that for the actual church, not the metaphorical church of my family.

If you don't want the cranberry sauce on the buffet, don't eat it.

Translation: You don't need to eat your vegetables kids. Do whatever you want.

How did you become a reverend?

I didn't like what was happening in my life. I started going to church. I kept going every day and the collar just kind of got wrapped around my neck.

Translation: I rule; other people know I rule.

What do you hope to accomplish for the duration of the show?

God has given me a pioneering spirit. It's a Tyler Perry type of thing. How do you get God into the movie theater and entertain people? It's a blessing. It's huge. In Times Square, me and all my family are covering every window of MTV and I have a collar on. That's the most unbelievable thing in the entire world.

No Translation, I just wanted to point out two things.

Tyler Perry's "pioneering spirit" gave us Liv Tyler, so I'm gonna go ahead and say that is a good thing.

he didn't remotely answer the question.

The first time I wrote this post, I put "all in good fun" here, which some took to mean that I was kidding about the whole thing or taking it back. Not the case. I'm being critical, but I also admit that I've never seen "Run's House" and probably wont, so Run might be the sauce on my gravy, which wouldn't really surprise me. I just want to make sure that everyone knows that reality tv is evil. It's not spam and Christian industry marketing¹ evil, but it's pretty evil.
1. see also: pimping-out-jesus-for-cash [ƒ]