I hope you know what you're doing . . .

When it comes to areas of sexuality, a serious, single Christian will do their best to avoid temptations “of the flesh” by averting their eyes, watching what they wear, skipping whole scenes on DVDs, avoiding conversations already in progress about racy topics, declining to participate in said conversations when invited, not hide porn in one’s bedroom, not turn on Cinemax late at night, not want to go to the restaurant that has the belly dancer, or decide against going when it’s found out there will be one, etc. etc.

I’ve noticed that sometimes non-Christians assume a certain thing about Christians when it comes to these issues, or at least I’ve noticed it in my experience. The non-Christian immediately concludes that I don’t understand what sex is, or that people have sex, or that it’s normal for a guy to be attracted to women. Let’s go through a few examples.

Braden says, “I do not wish to be informed about your sex-toy party.”
Person says, “Oh, Braden! You need to understand that sex isn’t a bad or evil thing! It’s a good thing!”

Braden says, “You have just told me that you are a Christian who has no qualms about having sex outside of a marriage. I do not agree with you that it is okay and I do not do the same thing.”
Person says, “You know, sex is what people do. People have sex.”

Braden says, “I move my instant messenger window lower on my screen / I don’t visit that website / I got rid of my Myspace account because of the types of ads they have.”
Person says, “Why? It’s perfectly normal for you to find that attractive.”

Braden says, “I desire that the woman over yonder was not wearing such revealing clothing.”
Person says, “Oh, jeez. There’s nothing wrong with her having an attractive body.”

Braden says, “I do not have a secret porn stash.”
Person says, “Dude, sex is a very natural thing.”

Sigh. The part about it that gets to me is that it’s counter-productive to try to retort and make them understand that they misunderstand why I have the position that I do. Oh, well.

I wonder if I’m allowed to comment on this since I’m white. I think it’s amazing and full of truth, and a good deal of it can apply to people outside of the black community (when you take the spirit of it rather than the specifics). It’s called The Pound Cake Speech, and it was given by Bill Cosby in May 2004 for a celebration of the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. I’m copying and posting it, but this is the link I got it from: http://www.eightcitiesmap.com/transcript_bc.htm

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Ladies and gentlemen, I really have to ask you to seriously consider what you’ve heard, and now this is the end of the evening so to speak. I heard a prize fight manager say to his fellow who was losing badly, “David, listen to me. It’s not what’s he’s doing to you. It’s what you’re not doing. (laughter).

Ladies and gentlemen, these people set, they opened the doors, they gave us the right, and today, ladies and gentlemen, in our cities and public schools we have fifty percent drop out. In our own neighborhood, we have men in prison. No longer is a person embarrassed because they’re pregnant without a husband. (clapping) No longer is a boy considered an embarrassment if he tries to run away from being the father of the unmarried child (clapping)

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Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic and lower middle economic people are [not*] holding their end in this deal. In the neighborhood that most of us grew up in, parenting is not going on. (clapping) In the old days, you couldn’t hooky school because every drawn shade was an eye (laughing). And before your mother got off the bus and to the house, she knew exactly where you had gone, who had gone into the house, and where you got on whatever you had one and where you got it from. Parents don’t know that today.

I’m talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where were you when he was two? (clapping) Where were you when he was twelve? (clapping) Where were you when he was eighteen, and how come you don’t know he had a pistol? (clapping) And where is his father, and why don’t you know where he is? And why doesn’t the father show up to talk to this boy?

The church is only open on Sunday. And you can’t keep asking Jesus to ask doing things for you (clapping). You can’t keep asking that God will find a way. God is tired of you (clapping and laughing). God was there when they won all those cases. 50 in a row. That’s where God was because these people were doing something. And God said, “I’m going to find a way.” I wasn’t there when God said it… I’m making this up (laughter). But it sounds like what God would do (laughter).

We cannot blame white people. White people (clapping) .. white people don’t live over there. They close up the shop early. The Korean ones still don’t know us as well…they stay open 24 hours (laughter).

I’m looking and I see a man named Kenneth Clark. He and his wife Mamie…Kenneth’s still alive. I have to apologize to him for these people because Kenneth said it straight. He said you have to strengthen yourselves…and we’ve got to have that black doll. And everybody said it. Julian Bond said it. Dick Gregory said it. All these lawyers said it. And you wouldn’t know that anybody had done a damned thing.

50 percent drop out rate, I’m telling you, and people in jail, and women having children by five, six different men. Under what excuse, I want somebody to love me, and as soon as you have it, you forget to parent. Grandmother, mother, and great grandmother in the same room, raising children, and the child knows nothing about love or respect of any one of the three of them (clapping). All this child knows is “gimme, gimme, gimme.” These people want to buy the friendship of a child….and the child couldn’t care less. Those of us sitting out here who have gone on to some college or whatever we’ve done, we still fear our parents (clapping and laughter). And these people are not parenting. They’re buying things for the kid. $500 sneakers, for what? They won’t buy or spend $250 on Hooked on Phonics. (clapping)

A\Kenneth Clark, somewhere in his home in upstate New York…just looking ahead. Thank God, he doesn’t know what’s going on, thank God. But these people, the ones up here in the balcony fought so hard. Looking at the incarcerated, these are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake! Then we all run out and are outraged, “The cops shouldn’t have shot him” What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand? (laughter and clapping). I wanted a piece of pound cake just as bad as anybody else (laughter) And I looked at it and I had no money. And something called parenting said if get caught with it you’re going to embarrass your mother. Not you’re going to get your butt kicked. No. You’re going to embarrass your mother. You’re going to embarrass your family.

If knock that girl up, you’re going to have to run away because it’s going to be too embarrassing for your family. In the old days, a girl getting pregnant had to go down South, and then her mother would go down to get her. But the mother had the baby. I said the mother had the baby. The girl didn’t have a baby. The mother had the baby in two weeks. (laughter) We are not parenting. Ladies and gentlemen, listen to these people, they are showing you what’s wrong. People putting their clothes on backwards. –isn’t that a sign of something going on wrong? (laughter)

Are you not paying attention, people with their hat on backwards, pants down around the crack. Isn’t that a sign of something, or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up (laughter and clapping ). Isn’t it a sign of something when she’s got her dress all the way up to the crack…and got all kinds of needles and things going through her body. What part of Africa did this come from? (laughter). We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans, they don’t know a damned thing about Africa. With names like Shaniqua, Shaligua, Mohammed and all that crap and all of them are in jail. (When we give these kinds names to our children, we give them the strength and inspiration in the meaning of those names. What’s the point of giving them strong names if there is not parenting and values backing it up).

Brown Versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person’s problem. We’ve got to take the neighborhood back (clapping). We’ve got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It’s right around the corner. (laughter) It’s standing on the corner. It can’t speak English. It doesn’t want to speak English. I can’t even talk the way these people talk. “Why you ain’t where you is go, ra,” I don’t know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk (laughter). Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it’s important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can’t land a plane with “why you ain’t…” You can’t be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they’re moving ahead on this. Well, they know they’re not, they’re just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you’re just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out.

Now look, I’m telling you. It’s not what they’re doing to us. It’s what we’re not doing. 50 percent drop out. Look, we’re raising our own ingrown immigrants. These people are fighting hard to be ignorant. There’s no English being spoken, and they’re walking and they’re angry. Oh God, they’re angry and they have pistols and they shoot and they do stupid things. And after they kill somebody, they don’t have a plan. Just murder somebody. Boom. Over what? A pizza? And then run to the poor cousin’s house. They sit there and the cousin says “what are you doing here?” “I just killed somebody, man.” “What?” “I just killed somebody, I’ve got to stay here.” “No, you don’t.” “Well, give me some money, I’ll go…” “Where are you going?” “North Carolina.” Everybody wanted to go to North Carolina. But the police know where you’re going because your cousin has a record.

Five or six different children, same woman, eight, ten different husbands or whatever, pretty soon you’re going to have to have DNA cards so you can tell who you’re making love to. You don’t who this is. It might be your grandmother. (laughter) I’m telling you, they’re young enough. Hey, you have a baby when you’re twelve. Your baby turns thirteen and has a baby, how old are you? Huh? Grandmother. By the time you’re twelve, you could have sex with your grandmother, you keep those numbers coming. I’m just predicting.

I’m saying Brown Vs. Board of Education. We’ve got to hit the streets, ladies and gentlemen. I’m winding up, now , no more applause. I’m saying, look at the Black Muslims. There are Black Muslims standing on the street corners and they say so forth and so on, and we’rere laughing at them because they have bean pies and all that, but you don’t read “Black Muslim gunned down while chastising drug dealer.” You don’t read that. They don’t shoot down Black Muslims. You understand me. Muslims tell you to get out of the neighborhood. When you want to clear your neighborhood out, first thing you do is go get the Black Muslims, bean pies and all (laughter). And your neighborhood is then clear. The police can’t do it .

I’m telling you Christians, what’s wrong with you? Why can’t you hit the streets? Why can’t you clean it out yourselves? It’s our time now, ladies and gentlemen. It is our time (clapping). And I’ve got good news for you. It’s not about money. It’s about you doing something ordinarily that we do—get in somebody else’s business. It’s time for you to not accept the language that these people are speaking, which will take them nowhere. What the hell good is Brown V. Board of Education if nobody wants it?

What is it with young girls getting after some girl who wants to still remain a virgin. Who are these sick black people and where did they come from and why haven’t they been parented to shut up? To go up to girls and try to get a club where “you are nobody..,” this is a sickness ladies and gentlemen and we are not paying attention to these children. These are children. They don’t know anything. They don’t have anything. They’re homeless people. All they know how to do is beg. And you give it to them, trying to win their friendship. And what are they good for? And then they stand there in an orange suit and you drop to your knees, “(crying sound) He didn’t do anything, he didn’t do anything.” Yes, he did do it. And you need to have an orange suit on too (laughter, clapping).

So, ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for the award (big laughter) and giving me an opportunity to speak because, I mean, this is the future, and all of these people who lined up and done..they’ve got to be wondering what the hell happened. Brown V. Board of Education, these people who marched and were hit in the face with rocks and punched in the face to get an education and we got these knuckleheads walking around who don’t want to learn English (clapping) I know that you all know it. I just want to get you as angry that you ought to be. When you walk around the neighborhood and you see this stuff, that stuff’s not funny. These people are not funny anymore. And that ‘s not brother. And that’s not my sister. They’re faking and they’re dragging me way down because the state, the city and all these people have to pick up the tab on them because they don’t want to accept that they have to study to get an education.

We have to begin to build in the neighborhood, have restaurants, have cleaners, have pharmacies, have real estate, have medical buildings instead of trying to rob them all. And so, ladies and gentlemen, please, Dorothy Height, where ever she’s sitting, she didn’t do all that stuff so that she could hear somebody say “I can’t stand algebra, I can’t stand…and “what you is.” It’s horrible.

Basketball players, multimillionaires can’t write a paragraph. Football players, multimillionaires, can’t read. Yes. Multimillionaires. Well, Brown V Board of Education, where are we today? It’s there. They paved the way. What did we do with it. The white man, he’s laughing, got to be laughing. 50 percent drop out, rest of them in prison.

You got to tell me that if there was parenting, help me, if there was parenting, he wouldn’t have picked up the Coca Cola bottle and walked out with it to get shot in the back of the head. He wouldn’t have. Not if he loved his parents. And not if they were parenting! Not if the father would come home. Not if the boy hadn’t dropped the sperm cell inside of the girl and the girl had said, “No, you have to come back here and be the father of this child.” Not ..“I don’t have to.”

Therefore, you have the pile up of these sweet beautiful things born by nature raised by no one. Give them presents. You’re raising pimps. That’s what a pimp is. A pimp will act nasty to you so you have to go out and get them something. And then you bring it back and maybe he or she hugs you. And that’s why pimp is so famous. They’ve got a drink called the “Pimp-something.” You all wonder what that’s about, don’t you? Well, you’re probably going to let Jesus figure it out for you (laughter). Well, I’ve got something to tell you about Jesus. When you go to the church, look at the stained glass things of Jesus. Look at them. Is Jesus smiling? Not in one picture. So, tell your friends. Let’s try to do something. Let’s try to make Jesus smile. Let’s start parenting. Thank you, thank you (clapping, cheers)

I just wanted to report to all those scoffers out there who made sure to let me know that they gagged when they read about my “Salivary Gland Stones,” as Paula informed me they are called, that no blog I’ve written gets more hits than that one. It’s a good thing I wrote it, too. These people probably don’t know what’s going on with that stinging in their mouths, and could be on the verge of actually seeing a doctor (No! Say it isn’t so!). Well, after reading my little story and comparing symptoms, hopefully they’ll learn how to alleviate the pain until the whole stone exits their system, and never have to talk to a white-coat crook who’ll happily take their money to tell them there’s nothing that can be done.

So on my way to work this morning, I was heading up Market St. and some moron darted out in front of me, and I hit my breaks but still slid into the back, right corner of his car. It was a gen-u-ine fender-bender. And I immediately memorize the license plate, which was a good thing because right then the dude took off. But the details of this morning’s accident are not what I want to bore you with.

This whole thing has got me thinking about car insurance again. What a bunch of sleaze bags. I’m required by law to have car insurance, so I pay so much a month for the piece of mind that if something happens I’m taken care of, but then when that time comes the companies do nothing but try to weasel their way out of paying. They try to find some kind of fact of the situation that would exempt them. They play cheapo with estimates. It really ticks me off.

I will estimate that in the nearly 10 years that I’ve been an insured motorist, paying my own bill, that I’ve paid to State Farm, on average, $100 a month. It’s probably more than that because I was up around $1200-1500 per six months my first few years. And that was with discounts. But we’ll shoot low for effect. That means I have paid at least $12,000 into their pockets. And what did they do when I totaled my Concorde last fall? They tried to tell me it was worth $3500. When I debated that and showed them the exact same car for sale with comparable mileage that was going for $7500, they go, “Oops! Yeah, our bad! Here’s $6500.”

I know that car insurance isn’t a bank account. I know that it’s possible to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars over a lifetime for car insurance and never get a cent back if it’s not needed. But I’m paying for piece of mind. I don’t mind paying that money for practically nothing in exchange if they won’t debate and low-ball me when I ask them to come through. This accident this morning, assuming that they don’t catch this guy or if they do but he doesn’t have insurance, will be covered by my insurance as a collision, which means a $1000 deductible. Why such a high deductible? Because life is expensive and I’m poor. It’s not covered under “Uninsured Motorist.” But for the life of me I cannot figure out why. Maybe U.M. is only bodily injury, but even that doesn’t make sense. What if I was injured in an accident that I caused? What part of my insurance covers that? If that part of my policy doesn’t kick in in the event that the other dude caused it but I get hurt, then why is it different for my car?

I guess I should look at the bright side. At least I’m not hurt. Who am I kidding? I couldn’t care less about that bright side. I’m not hurt so it’s irrelevant.

I’ve had fun writing out some fun and humorous stories lately, and as I woke this morning I remembered a great story that isn’t funny but would have fit in great with the conversation my friends and I had last night, so enjoy.

When I was a young adolescent, ages 12 to 14 or so, I had trapped myself into this weird pattern of thinking that I had to work really hard to eventually break. I had noticed that when I thought something was going to happen a certain way (something very specific, too, like someone opening a door for me at a friends house or what room my mom would go into first when she got home), it wouldn’t happen that way. So eventually my young mind began trying to shape the future by thinking of every possibility that I didn’t want, but I could not think of the possibility I did want. What I found was that I could not possibly think of every scenario in any upcoming situation, so what I didn’t want to happen still happened in a slightly different way than I tried to predict, and then when you add that to the fact that I would try my best to keep myself from thinking about what I did want to happen and would kick myself if I would, I stressed myself out greatly. Eventually I broke this for the most part. But one thing that stuck with me is not expecting the things I hope to happen to actually happen, and I would still get stressed because I would try not to hope for them in fear that I would lose that chance. This became so familiar to me that I didn’t question it for a very long time. So when I started coming around to my church in Carbondale and actually learning to pursue Jesus, and my pastors would tell us to expect the Holy Spirit to move, to expect Him to change our hearts, and to expect him to fix us, I would get confused and stressed out. I wanted my heart to be healed and changed, but I “knew” that if I expected it to happen, it wouldn’t.

That’s a very long introduction to this story, but I’m hoping that it will help one understand the profound experience of God showing me how much in control he really is.

When I first moved to Seattle, I lived with four guys, in their basement. For three months. I set a date to be out by November 1 (2006), and I was. I moved into a studio apartment just a few blocks from their house in Seattle’s Central District. It was cheap for a studio in a major city (especially for its size), but that didn’t mean it was easily affordable. I was still a temp at my job, so I wasn’t making much, so I had to adhere to a very strict budget and cook my lunches for a whole week in advance, and only light the pilot light on my stove when I needed it, and never turn on my gas heater, and only have on my space heater overnight so that it wasn’t too cold to get out of bed in the morning, and try to somehow make $20 last for a week in a big boat of a car, and so on and so on. I eventually got a small raise when I came on 100% with my company, and that made some things a little easier, but I still was pretty far from living a life of ease and luxury. All of these things considered, though, I liked my apartment. I had no complaints.

In January of 2007, my friend Ben Cole permanently moved back to Seattle from Carbondale to both work for Boeing and be a part of Blue Sky Church. He lived with a couple of different people for a few weeks while looking for a place to rent. It was brought up that he and I could get a place, but I had a lease until the end of August 2007, and since I could barely afford to live there, I couldn’t come close to paying costs associated with breaking the lease early.

Eventually, Ben started looking for a place with our friend Luke Gray. After looking at a few places, and being thought to be a gay couple more than once, they found a place that would work perfect, but they needed at least one more person to make it affordable. I wasn’t first on their list of people to ask, but they did eventually ask me if I would be willing to see if I could get out of my lease and live with them. We did the math, and my cost of living would drop by nearly $100 per month, plus I’d live with two friends and Christian guys in a safer neighborhood.

The dates are very important for this story, so I’m referencing a calendar to make sure I get them right. The day Ben and Luke asked me about moving in with them was January 17, a Wednesday. That night I was very excited about this possibility, and I did pray that God would come through and somehow help this work out. Since there were so many things that could go wrong, I found myself, as usual, trying to keep from thinking that it would work out. But then I felt God kind of kick me for that, and it felt like He said, “If I’m going to do something, it doesn’t matter in the slightest bit what you’re thinking about or not thinking about, so stop stressing yourself out and expect this to happen.” Well, I wanted to have faith, so I forced myself to relax about it, if one can actually force themselves to relax.

Over the next couple of days, I began trying to devise ways to get out of my lease. My building manager was gone for a few days, as he often was, so I had some time to get some things figured out. I spoke to my supervisor at work and she explained that I had to create an “unsafe” situation, so I tried to come up with things. I couldn’t bring myself to blatantly lie about something, so I resorted to trying to blow something out of proportion. I once locked my keys in my apartment, and the “maintenance” guy didn’t have the master set, and the person who had them was going to be gone for a few days. I couldn’t afford a locksmith (they’re like $100 minimum out here), so me and this guy (who wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box, if I may be so cliche’) tried to wedge a few things into the latch, but eventually we just ended up busting the door in. He did some quick patch-up repairs and said it would be completely fixed in a week. Well by the time Luke and Ben came to talk to me, it had been a month and a half and no repairs were done. I began researching some things and found that repairs had to be done within a certain time frame, or else the lease was null and void. The only catch was that the request for the repairs had to be submitted in writing. So I started trying to write up a request for the door to be fixed, hoping that they’d take more than 72 hours to get to it (if that’s how long the limit was; I can’t really remember) and then I’d be free to leave without penalty. Well, by Friday the 19th, I was hanging out with Ben and a couple other guys and I told them about my plan, and Ben had actually done some asking around of his own. He found out that in Seattle a landlord has to let a tenant out of a lease if they want out, but the tenant is responsible for rent of the unit until it’s either re-rented or the time frame for the lease comes to and end. Eventually, Ben just suggested something that had already been stirring in my heart, “Maybe you should just be honest with your landlord, explain the situation, and see if something can be worked out.” Him saying that forced me to realize that I was trying to make this happen on my own and not trusting that God would actually come through.

So, the next day, Saturday the 20th, I was able to catch my building manager and I leveled with him about the whole situation. Before speaking with him, I had thought about what kind of “miracle” could take place. Maybe he’d say, “Well, what a coincidence! We have a full building and I just put someone on a waiting list for a place!” Maybe any number of things! God’s coming through for me on this one, right? So I speak to him, and he sighs, “You’re the fourth person this month to want to move out of the building early.” Darn. He proceeded to explain that two guys on month-to-month were leaving, and one girl was breaking her lease, as I was trying to do. He let me know that, according to my lease, I had to give him 20 days notice before the end of the month before moving out. Since it was already January 20th, this notice counted for March and not for February. Fine, I knew that and expected that. He let me know that I have to keep paying rent for the unit until he re-rents it. Fine, I knew that, too. He assured me that he would have little trouble having it rented by March, but I was 4th in line for it to be shown. He also reminded me that a certain portion of my security deposit was not refundable. Since that was the case whether I stayed the term of the lease or not, I also expected this.

The next day at church I told some people about what was going on. Okay, I told like everybody. I am Braden, after all. I told them that one of three things could happen: 1) He re-rents the unit quickly and I coast through the month of February; 2) God decides to make me sweat a bit and the unit doesn’t get re-rented until the last minute; or 3) The unit doesn’t get re-rented by March and I have to be prepared to pay rent in two places for one month, maybe two. I believe it was Becky Feicho who tried to assure me that possibilities 2 and 3 were ridiculous because there’s no lesson that God could have for me in those. She and I joked that, “hey, maybe it’ll be rented in a matter of days!” That night, when I got home, I noticed that my blinds were open. I never left my blinds open when I left the place. That was a little creepy. Maybe my landlord had been showing the place? That was probably the best analysis. But, since I’m so full of faith and I trust God so much, I decided it best to not let myself think about that for too long.

On Monday, January 22, I had finished worship practice and then proceeded to the CLAM to hang out with some people. Due to all the stuff happening, I had this sneaking suspicion that I needed to be home, but I didn’t listen to it and didn’t get home until 11:30 p.m. or after. When I arrived, I saw a piece of paper sticking out from underneath my door. It was a note that read, “Lucky you! I have a couple interested in unit 5 [my apartment]! Let me know if it’s okay to rent for February and they will bring the deposit by tonight!”

I was completely speechless. Really, I was speechless. Me! I could do little more than pace back and forth quickly, kind of laugh, and find myself terrified and excited at the same time at how real God really is. I finally texted lots of people “I got home to a note under my door saying my apartment is rented already! WOW!”, and all but two people replied with something to the effect of, “God is amazing!” The two people who replied differently were Brandon Feicho, who said, “Awesome!” (but I knew he got it, too), and Flyn, who said, “Who is this?” And I found the thing exciting and amazing me the most at that moment was how God just did this awesome, expectation-exceeding thing for me, and he turned it into worship for himself. That was cool.

So by Wednesday the 24th, this new couple had signed a lease that started February 1, and by Saturday the 27th, I was out of my apartment and in the new place, and in a matter of weeks I had all I was able to get back from my security deposit. I like that story.

When you play the game Clue, the character you’re playing could also possibly the murderer. So what if you figure out who the murderer is, and it was your character? That means that Col. Mustard killed Mr. Body, and then genuinely worked hard to solve the mystery and put himself in prison for manslaughter. That just seems weird to me, and the concept of that possibility kept me from fully understanding how to play Clue until my early 20’s. (Granted I didn’t play it all from age 12 to 24, though).

Okay, the back half of my quiz-answer give-away. I guess after this, everyone who cared could go take that quiz on Facebook and get 100%. But that perfect score would be a lie. You would know it. I would know it.

(Q) How many film adaptations of the novel I am Legend have been made?

(A) Four. Most people go for three because they know the main ones: The Last Man on Earth (starring Vincent Price), The Omega Man (starring the recently-deceased Charlton Heston), and I am Legend (starring Will Smith, whom I think is cool, I don’t care what you think). But the one you don’t know about is I am Omega, which was an ultra-low budget flick that came out in . . . November of 2007! Yup, just weeks before I am Legend hit theaters. That’s just so tacky. Thanks, IMDB!

(Q) Who was the only U.S. President to be born in Illinois?

(A) Ronald Reagan. Of course most people think of Lincoln, but as any Illinoisan worth their weight will tell you, Abe was born in Kentucky and didn’t move to Illinois until his late teens/early 20’s. And Reagan seems like the last choice in the world, doesn’t he? I mean, he was a movie star and later the governor of California, and elected to office from California. But he was born in a small town called Tampico in northern Illinois, and moved around to several Illinois towns with his family throughout his childhood. No other President has been born in my home state. Thanks, history book from 8th grade!

(Q) It is estimated that there are ___ elementary particles in the observable universe.

(A) 10^80, or 10 to the 80th power, or 1 followed by 80 zeros. I once tried to debate this with my smart friend Kevin, since I found out that there are, on average, 10^15 neuron connections in a single human brain, and each one of those connections has to have LOTS more than a single particle involved right? Right, Kevin? Huh? Mr. Smarty Math Guy? Well, said Kevin, the difference between 10^80 and 10^15 is not 10^65. Exponents do not operate in such a simple add-and-subtract fashion. The difference between 10^50 and 10^49 is greater than the difference between 10^40 and 10^39. To think otherwise is a common mistake made by not-as-smart-as-Kevin people like myself. And 10^80 may not sound like too much, but that’s actually a pretty freaking huge number.

(Q) Which is correct?

(A) Final Fantasy IV was renamed Final Fantasy II in America. I actually haven’t been too fond of this question. The wording was repetitive and confusing, rather than challenging, and it was the second question to deal with the naming of a Final Fantasy game. Anyway, the way the story goes, Final Fantasy, the first one, was released in 1988 (1987?) in Japan, and then released in America in 1991 (1990?). Well, by the time it came out in America, Square had already finished making Final Fantasy III and released it in Japan. Since Final Fantasy was such a big hit in America, there were plans to release Final Fantasy II in America, renamed Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls, but those plans fell through. Shortly after, the Super Famicom/Nintendo came out, and one of the earlier titles on it was to be Final Fantasy IV. Well, neither Square nor Nintendo wanted to waste time on bringing Americans up to speed with the series, and since they didn’t want to create confusion with the numbering, they renamed it Final Fantasy II (which didn’t matter as far as continuity was concerned since all roman-numerated Final Fantasy games are original stories and never continuations of previous titles). After that, they were going to translate Final Fantasy V and release it as III, but by the time they got to it, VI was already out in Japan, so they translated and renamed that one Final Fantasy III instead, and skipped over V altogether. Then there was HUGE buzz over the next game in the series, VII, since it was going to be on the brand-spankin’ new Sony Playstation and was going to use 3-D graphics and cool cinematic cut-scenes and blah blah blah . . . and finally the Japanese were nice enough to bring Americans up to speed and did not renumber the game as IV and kept the title Final Fantasy VII. But Americans were confused (understandably), because they didn’t know where Final Fantasys IV, V, and VI were, but in reality, they had played IV and VI, but had never played II, III, or V. Confused yet? Here’s an easy trick: what are the real numbers for the American-released Final Fantasy games numbered II and III? Double them: IV and VI. See? Now you can be as cool as me.

(Q) The search engine Google is spelled differently than Googol because . . .

(A) of a spelling error. A googol is 10^100, or 1 with 100 zeros after it, which (if you refer to two questions prior) is more than the number of elementary particles in the observable universe. That’s a pretty darn big number. The folks at Google intended the name of their site to reference this, probably because it ties in nice with the search engine thing, but they got the spelling wrong. Oh, well. I think “google” looks better than “googol,” anyway.

(Q) The Gibson SG (guitar) was originally named what?

(A) Les Paul. In 1961, Gibson Guitars completely redesigned its famous Les Paul guitar. It was popular, but the man himself, Les Paul, didn’t really like it, so he asked that his name be removed from the guitar. They renamed the guitar the “SG,” or “solid guitar,” since its whole body, including the neck and headstock, are a solid piece of wood. Famous SG players include Angus Young of AC/DC, The Edge of U2, Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath, and (formerly) Scottie Bobsin.

(Q) What provided the visual inspiration for the creation of The Joker?

(A) The protagonist from a 1920’s silent film. The Man Who Laughs, to be exact. The actor was named Conrad Veidt. The Joker was created in 1940 as a vicious, heartless murderer, and a deck of cards was where the name and idea came from (well, according to one story, anyway, as there are a few, but whatever). But his appearance (this is not disputed) was based off of the character from the old-even-then film. Another fun fact about the Joker was that he was intended to be a one-to-two-shot villain, who would die shortly after his first story. However they kept him around and he has since become the most famous of all the Batman villains, let alone villains period.

(Q) How many actors have portrayed Batman on-screen? (this does not include voice actors)

(A) Seven. You might count five: Adam West, Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney, and Christian Bale. The other two are Lewis Wilson and Robert Lowery. Who? They both played Batman in serials in the 1940’s. I had to get their names off of Wikipedia.

(Q) When Superman was first introduced, he did not have all the powers attributed to him now. Which of these has he ALWAYS had?

(A) Super Strength. The earliest version of Superman could “leap tall buildings in a single bound,” but he could not fly. Nor did he have x-ray vision, ice breath, heat vision, or a whole list of other things; those all came later. He was super-strong, was nearly invulnerable to any attacks (a strong bomb or intense explosion could take him down), and was very fast. The creators justified the powers he did have by stating how a grasshopper can jump hundreds of times its own length in one leap, or how an ant can lift many times its own weight, and said that Kryptonians were an evolutionarily advanced alien race, and everyone on that planet could do what Superman did. I’ve read the first issue of Action Comics. It’s all in there.

(Q) “Weird Al” Yankovic claims this religious perspective.

(A) Christian. He said it in some interview. He’s not Jewish. Yeah, you read that right. Weird Al Yankovic is not Jewish.

(Q) The famous Jackson family is from . . .

(A) Gary, Indiana. This fascinates me because they’re so famous, so talented, and so notorious that it’s so hard to believe that they came from a dump like Gary. I mean no offense, Tito, but it’s a dump. Sorry.

Okay. That’s all. I’m going to go think about my next blog . . .

Around the same time everyone else at Blue Sky was, I did the whole My Quizzes Application thing on Facebook. It’s fun, but it bugs me a little because it won’t give the quiz-taker the answers after they’re done; it just tells them if they were right or wrong. That may be good to help prevent cheating, if it mattered, but maybe there are those of us who want people to know the answers after they’re done. Like my first one, “Braden knows this stuff.” It’s quite possibly one of the world’s most random and obscure trivia quizzes. I’m very proud of it, since the title is exactly true: every single question I pulled out of the vast libraries of useless knowledge in my brain. I did not research a single question or verify a single answer, because I knew I was right. But it’s been more than three months since I made it, so I’m going to go through the quiz, giving the answers away and the fun trivia explanations along with them. Enjoy.

(Q) What color was Yoda in the novelization of The Empire Strikes Back?

(A) Blue. Don’t ask me why, but he was. In the novelization of Star Wars, the X-Wing color was blue instead of red, and George Lucas wanted them to be blue in the first place, but they had to change the color because of the special effects utilizing blue screen. But Yoda . . . I have no idea why the author for the novelization changed his color to blue.

(Q) How many cities are you intense in if you’re live at the Buddakai?

(A) Ten. If you haven’t seen Wayne’s World in the last two years, watch it. It’s more than just out-dated 90’s catch phrases. Trust me.

(Q) What was Doc Brown’s animal sidekick in the original draft of Back to the Future?

(A) A chimp. And the time machine was an old refrigerator. Thank the Lord for rewrites.

(Q) Who was originally contracted to play Two Face in Batman Forever?

(A) Billy Dee Williams. That’s right, Lando Calrissian. You may recall he played Harvey Dent in the original 1989 Batman, directed by Tim Burton. Harvey Dent is the-man-who-will-become-Two-Face in Batman mythology. Williams had a pay-or-play contract for the role of Two Face when the movie franchise got to the character, which means he either gets the part or they pay him to not do the role. When production began on Forever, the director changed from Burton to the notorious Joel Schumaker, and Schumaker wanted Tommy Lee Jones to do the part instead, so they payed out Williams’ contract and proceeded to allow Jones’ awful portrayal of an iconic comic book villian. Let’s hope Aaron Eckhardt does it right in the current franchise.

(Q) Which Legend of Zelda title does Nintendo officially consider to chronologically be the first in the series?

(A) None of the above. There’s a lot of speculation, and if you go to Gametrailers.com and watch the last video in their “The Legend of Zelda Retrospective,” they make a really good case for it to be Minish Cap. But Nintendo has never officially released a time line for the franchise, and have only hinted that there actually is one. Some people speculate that there is no time line and that each game is a re-telling of the Link and Zelda story. But that’s just silly.

(Q) Which of the following is one of the two primary flavors in all colas?

(A) Cinnamon. The two flavors in all colas are vanilla and cinnamon. Each manufacturer adds in their own extras, like nutmeg, or citrus, but all of them use vanilla and cinnamon. And kola nut does not add to the flavor, even though that’s what the drink is named after.

(Q) What actor was Steven Spielberg’s first choice to play Indiana Jones?

(A) Harrison Ford. I love this question, because it’s so deceptively tricky. People who know a little bit about movie trivia will almost always go for Tom Seleck, because he was the first actor cast as Indiana Jones, but he had to back out of the contract due to obligations with his new TV show, Magnum P.I., after which Harrison Ford was given the part, much to the applause of movie lovers and Tom Seleck scoffers everywhere. But the hidden fact is that Spielberg wanted Harrison to do the part right off the bat, but George Lucas refused because he had already been in three of his four movies at that point, and he didn’t want Ford to “become (his) Bobby DeNiro,” referring to how Robert DeNiro was in so many of Martin Scorsese’s films. It wasn’t until Seleck backed out and they were days away from shooting that Lucas caved.

(Q) Why was the seemingly endless video game series Final Fantasy named “final?”

(A) The first Final Fantasy was expected to be Square’s last game. The designer of the game was preparing himself for the inevitable fall of his company who had a long list of failing games, and had only one mild hit on the NES called 3-D World Runner, so he scraped together enough money to make one more. Since he was convinced he would never make another game, he appropriately-yet-ironically named it Final Fantasy. It ended up becoming a huge hit, and turned into a huge, endless franchise. That story makes me happy for lots of reasons.

(Q) Which of the following was not one of the three versions of Voltron?

(A) Dinosaur Voltron. I figured “Dinosaur” was a good fake version of the giant robot because the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers blatantly ripped off the idea from the early 80’s anime series, and their robots were dinosaurs. Those of us who remember Voltron were all a little annoyed at the appearance of that after-school piece of trash. I have the first Voltron DVD collection at my house. My brother got it for me for Christmas. It was an awesome gift, but I’ve found out that the cartoon didn’t age very well, yet it’s still better than the Power Rangers.

(Q) For what unique feature were Kramer guitars originally known?

(A) Aluminum necks. Thanks, Wikipedia. I learn so many random things on that site. If you’re not worried about the aluminum neck thing and more stuck on, “I’ve never heard of Kramer guitars,” then you need to brush up on your hair metal.

Well . . . that’s the first 10. I have another 11 to go, but I’ll put those in my next blog in the interest of keeping the lengths manageable.

Last week, the guy who does background checks for newly applying loan officers to my company quit. All of his responsibilities passed to me, which effectively doubled my work load. They will not be hiring a replacement for him. And, no, I didn’t get a raise, but let’s put that to the side for now. Because of the amount of tasks that I have to do, and how 40 hours a week is not enough to do them in (but that’s all they’re gonna get), I have been concentrating a lot harder on my work and spending significantly less time chatting on IM or walking around the office. To help keep me focused, I listen to my iPod shuffle nearly all day, too, which further closes me off from the rest of the office. I’m actually a little more satisfied with my job because my sense of accomplishment is increased, and the days go by faster because I have enough work to fill it from 8:30 to 5. Also, since I’m doing the background checks, I’m the go-to guy for new applicants from start to finish, and while that’s a lot of responsibility, I prefer it because I always know what’s going on with whom and what.

Well . . . now everyone is constantly checking in on me because they think something has gone horribly wrong in my life. If Braden’s not chatting away, then something must be bringing him down. I guess that’s a fair interpretation, since I am a chatty guy, but I’m not down. I’m doing fine. But leave me alone, I’ve got work to do. But saying that comes off as rude. So I can try saying nothing, but that’s rude too, or it concerns them even more because, “Oh! It’s so bad he doesn’t want to talk about it! Poor Braden! Open up to us!” Has anyone in this office gotten to know me in the last 18 months? If something is up with me, I won’t shut up about it! Don’t worry, because you’ll know! And if it WAS so bad that I wouldn’t talk about it, why would you keep pushing? It’s none of your business.

Summer 2001 I was really excited to take my first trip to Six Flags over Mid-America (now called Six Flags St. Louis) in three years. My previous trip was my senior skip-day, or rather my senior “fun day,” as school administrators have sticks up their butts and don’t want to refer to something as a “skip day” because it might suggest that they promote skipping school. Groan. (A fun note about that trip to Six Flags: Southeast High School’s class of 1998 was the only senior class in the history of District 186 to be allowed to go to Six Flags as opposed to the standard day trip to Knight’s Action Park, and I think we still are, since it was such a disaster that the school board swore they’d never allow that again. But I digress . . . ). I went on a Sunday with the following friends: Aaron, Steve, Amanda, Tara, and Tara’s friend, who I am sorry to say but I don’t remember her name. Oh, well. I’ll call her . . . Burta.

The previous night, everyone but Burta crashed at my apartment. We were all very excited and couldn’t get to sleep, so we appropriately stated the classic line, “We’re too excited to sleep!” from that Disney World commercial over and over and over. On the way there, we pick up Burta via a much-farther-than-I-would-have-preferred detour. We were in two cars: mine, with Tara and Burta, and Aaron’s, with Steve and Amanda. We get to the gates and wait in the lines to get into the parking lot. While sitting in the line, Tara looks at the car to our left and says, “Hey, Braden, those girls in that car look like the kind of girls you and Aaron would go for.”

I looked, and they were of the punk/indie persuasion, so I confirmed that, yes, those were girls that Aaron and I would be attracted to. I look forward again and then Tara shouts, “OH MY GOD THEY JUST KISSED!”

Hmph. Apparently these were not girls who would be attracted to Aaron and me, though.

We park our cars and proceed to the main gates. As we’re walking, I begin to notice an abundance of rainbow stickers on cars. I try to write this off as not a big deal or anything significant, but it does seem odd that in a row of 30 cars, it seems 20 of them have rainbow stickers. Oh, well.

Once through the gate, we see an awful lot of very butch women, still managing to look pissed even though they’re smiling, and just as many effeminate men, being louder than usual.

So . . . do you think? No. Can’t be. I nor any of my friends were saying anything about this. Yet.

We walk by a young male couple all punk-rocked out, but wearing white t-shirts with rainbow smiley faces on them that read, “Have a Gay Day!” The first ride we all go on together is The Batman, and while waiting in line, we see, exiting the ride above us, two guys with the exact same haircut, the exact same tank tops, the exact same way-too-small shorts, and both of them equally as buff.

After riding The Batman, we continued to see groups of obviously homosexual men and women. And by “obviously homosexual,” I don’t mean just demeanors, way of talking, fashion choices, or even holding hands with someone of the same gender (though those were all there). I mean people sitting in each other’s laps and being VERY touchy feely while having conversations with other touchy feely couples. I mean people making out. I mean shouting sexual jokes and phrases. I’m glad we didn’t go in the water park. I can only imagine and I get shivers just thinking about it.

There was no denying it. It was Gay Day. We would find out later that there was a Gay Pride march in St. Louis that weekend, and this day was unofficially chosen to be the Six Flags trip for everyone. I don’t think Six Flags officially endorsed it, but they had to have known about it, because many of the ride operators were obviously homosexual. Like the gay guy who kept taking the announcement microphone at The Boss and kept warning the girls over and over to secure their tube tops. It was funny the first time. Not so funny the 10th time.

The most uncomfortable moment of the day came when the six of us went on Thunder River. We shared our boat with three lesbians and a gay guy. Two lesbians, who I think were the only official couple in this quartet, were very very overweight, and they were unable to sit together because each pair of seats has one seatbelt, and the seatbelt wouldn’t fit over the two of them, so one of them moved to sit by the other lesbian. “Oh, now that you’re sitting next to me, I know I’m going to get wet,” she said, to our horror. The ride was plenty awkward, as the gay guy would not shut up and he wasn’t that funny. At least he wasn’t funny in the way he thought he was funny. The six of us still laughed a lot about him after we were off the ride, believe you me.

Towards the end of the day our sextet decided to break up into three pairs so we could all enjoy the last few rides we wanted and not waste time on ones we didn’t want. Well, Steve and Amanda were a couple, so they headed off their way, and Tara and Burta went off buddy-buddy, and Aaron and I went off on our own. Oh, you should have seen the uncomfortable looks we got from the other guests who were just as surprised as we were about what day it was. We joked about holding hands, just to yuck it up, but we didn’t. I actually kind of wish we did. It would have made this story that much funnier.

Remember those kids you went to high school with that you always kind of had that suspicion about? Yeah, me, too. And I saw several of those people there. I also saw some other people there that I didn’t think for a second were gay, because I knew they weren’t, but it was still really cool to just happen to pass by them as they were leaving the Mr. Freeze. A few weeks later I ran into one of them.

“Hey! Kyle! How you been?”

“Hey, Braden. Good.”

“Did you have a good time at Six Flags?”

“Oh, that’s right! Yeah, that was a good day. We got kicked out for flicking off the Log Flume camera.”

“That’s awesome!”

“Oh, and yeah, did you know it was Gay Day?”

“Yeah! That was crazy.”

“Yeah, when we were being escorted out by security, we began to notice it a little, so we asked the security guard and she confirmed it.”

“Wait, when you got kicked out? What time did you get kicked out?”

“Oh, about 5 o’clock.”

“What time did you guys get there?”

“About 10 or so.”

“And you didn’t notice until 5 o’clock?”

“No.”

. . . I guess he was focused on his good time.