On a brighter note, my birthday is in 11 days. I'll be 26.

I hate to write about the same things that everyone else online is writing about. But...how can I not? A whole city is practically underwater due to the hurricane. There are nationwide gas shortages and skyrocketing prices. In my area, gasoline has jumped 44 cents in two days. TWO DAYS!!!

It's insane. It seems surreal.

As my sister points out, the situation in New Orleans hits close to home because my family has experience with flooding as well. In 1999, Hurricane Floyd came through. It was not a very strong hurricane, but it was slow-moving and dumped a lot of rain. This is not too long after a tropical depression came through, so the ground was already saturated. The water had nowhere to go but up, and our house was flooded.

My grandmother's place was flooded as well, so we were all homeless practically overnight. Thankfully our church stepped up to the plate and we all stayed with families from the church. It was months before things were back to some type of normalcy. Still, things were never the same. I began living with my grandmother during that period of time, and it was sort of a double blow for my mother. First she lost her house, and then she lost her favorite first-born son.

Now this same sort of situation is multiplied by a factor of several hundred thousand. It boggles the mind. Instead of a neighborhood or two being affected; a large city has been flooded. All those people are homeless...livelihoods have been destroyed...lives have been lost. Right now they are projecting hundreds dead in New Orleans; my guess is that it's closer to a few thousand.

The events in New Orleans are having an impact on the rest of the country. Airlines are having to cancel flights, and a few will probably go out of business. Thousands of people will lose their jobs.

Before yesterday, there were no concerns of a fuel shortage. Now that prices have risen so dramatically and people are hearing that their might be a fuel shortage, everyone is rushing to the gas station to fill up. This causes long lines, short tempers, and actually produces a shortage. From what I understand, there's no problem with the amount of gas...the events in New Orleans have caused a disruption with the distribution of the gas that's available. Once that problem is fixed, the gas shortage will be finished.

Right now everyone is still in a state of shock over what's happened. As soon as things calm down somewhat, there are some things that are going to happen. Here are some predictions:

1. Televangelists are going to call this a judgement of God against the USA and against the "evil" city of New Orleans. Is it? Perhaps. However, I see evidence of God's mercy in this. Hurricane Katrina was on a direct course for New Orleans when it ran into some warm wind, which made the storm lose some of its power and change course. It's true things are bad; but they could have been a lot worse.

2. The mainstream media will latch onto a few people as representatives for all the New Orleans "victims." These people will get on my nerves. I think that this is going to be similar to 9/11 in some ways. There is going to be some sort of central political issue that will arise from this. I'm not sure what that will be, but New Orleans will turn into a rallying cry. Maybe there will even be a "New Orleans Commission" that will make recommendations as to how we can avoid this kind of thing in the future. This, too, shall get on my nerves. Both political parties will take advantage of the situation in New Orleans for their gain. Both will claim to speak for "the victims of this catastrophe." This will annoy me most of all.

3. Donations to New Orleans victims will soon be tax deductible.

4. The gas situation will get worse before it gets better. Sales of bicycles will increase. I'm even thinking of getting one.

I think that's enough for one post.

I was asked to write a movie review for a newsletter that is going out to First Assembly's college students. I reproduce it here because I am shameless.

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Today I saw "The 40-Year Old Virgin," which stars Steve Carell as the titular 40-year old who has never known the love of a woman. And I'm still alive. So far God has not decided to smite me for watching it, though it's only been five hours. If I do get smited (smitten?) by the time this review reaches you, I'm sure that Pastor Nate will insert a post script letting you know that I've met my doom.

So how is the movie? To be honest, pretty good. The main character, played by Steve Carell of The Daily Show fame, is named Andy Stitzer. He works at a Best Buy kind of store called Smart Tech in the stock room. He has a house full of action figures and video games. He rides a bicycle to work, and doesn't really have any friends. He lives alone and exists alone. And he's okay with that. After getting to work, the guy he works with tells him about his great weekend in Mexico. When asked about what he did over the weekend, Andy regales his coworker with his adventurous attempt to make an egg salad sandwich. Truly, Andy is somewhat of a loser.

Over the course of the day, Andy is invited to play a game of poker that evening. As the game is winding down, the talk turns to past sexual escapades. Andy is put on the spot, and it is revealed that he's a virgin. His coworkers react in shock and decide that it is their mission to help Andy to get laid. What follows is a series of often hilarious moments where Andy tries to lose his virginity. One of the first things they do is take him to a local club so he can pick up a girl that is, shall we say, inebriated. Andy finds a girl that fits the description and attempts to talk to her. It becomes obvious that he has no idea how to relate to women from the following exchange:

Girl: "You have kind eyes."
Andy: "You have a sequin hat."

Eventually, due to his friends' prodding, Andy meets a woman. He hits it off with her and slowly begins a relationship with her. Does it work out, or does he totally screw up? And most importantly, does he lose his pesky virginity? And will he do it within the confines of holy matrimony??? Come on. This is a Hollywood movie. What do you expect?

I know that when I decided to watch this movie, I wasn't expecting very much. I figured that Andy would be portrayed as a loser because he is still a virgin, and that the only way he would be accepted by others was to get rid of it as quickly as possible. The lesson, I suspected, was that virginity is overrated and that it's silly to refrain from having sex. What I found surprised me.

There are some really positive themes in this movie. As a result of his revelation, Andy finds that he has some new friends. Instead of being ridiculed for the fact that he's a virgin (well, he is ridiculed in one hilarious scene, but he gets over it), his new friends decide to help him with his "problem." That's what friends do; they help you out when you're in a tough situation. Throughout the rest of the movie, Andy's friends are there for him. There are also some very positive messages about love, and even about sex.

On the down side, this movie is rated R. Many Christians choose not to watch movies with this rating. If this is your stance, then this movie is not for you. It's rated R for profanity, nudity, and drug references. There is also some sexual humor. Okay...there's a lot of sexual humor. If any of this stuff causes problems for your spiritual walk, then stay away from this movie. However, for those of you out there that choose to apply Romans 12:9, you should be fine.

I can see why many Christians may choose not to watch this movie; based on the premise alone. We believe that it is a sin to have sex outside of marraige because (gasp!) that's what the Bible says. You may ask yourself "How could anyone make a movie with that premise?" We may not want to see a movie that will tell us that only losers are virgins. Fortunately, that is not the message of the movie at all. If you give it a chance, you may find yourself surprised by what's inside.

Last night, as my avid blog readers know, I filled my car up with gas since I heard crude oil prices had shot up so much. It was $2.55 a gallon for regular unleaded. Today I was vindicated. The same gas station was charging $2.79 today for the same grade of gasoline. That's a jump of twenty-four cents! (Yes, I had to use a calculator. I'm so ashamed!) By filling up when I did, I saved myself about $2.40.

Unfortunately, that's the only good news, since I will inevietably run out of gas again and still have to pay a fortune at some point. Ah well.

I received an e-mail from a friend of mine, saying that she could not post any comments. I tried it for myself, and sure enough I could not post comments either. I would enter my login information and type in the word for the verification, and I would endlessly loop. Nothing would post. So I did some digging, and apparently the problem is with cookies.

This page is located on DemonKilla.com, which is hosted on CyberSalt.com, and the blog is generated by Blogger.com. Cookies are being generated by all three sites, and since the only one that your web browser knows you are at is DemonKilla.com, so it rejects cookies by the other two sites, which causes the looping.

So, what should you do?

If you're using Internet Explorer...
1. Click on Tools > Internet Options.
2. Click on the Privacy tab
3. Click the "Sites" button. (It should be the leftmost button underneath the Privacy meter, which is usually set to Medium)
4. Type www.blogger.com and click the "Allow" button
5. Type www.cybersalt.com and click the "Allow" button
6. Click OK to save the changes.
7. Click OK to save the changes on the other popup window.
8. Post as many comments as you'd like.

Hopefully this will enable the hordes of people that surely want to make comments about this blog to, well, make comments about this blog.

My mother sent me this picture about an hour ago. It is of me when I was a wee lad.

Things have changed a lot since then...but look at me now. I'm as handsome as ever!

When gas prices were rising more slowly; like a penny or two a week, I used to wait as long as I could to fill up the gas tank. However, in recent weeks, as the price of gasoline has jumped several cents a day, I've adopted a new approach. I've been filling up every chance I get, because the price I'm paying now will most likely be the lowest price I'll see for a while. The price of gasoline has been holding steady in this area for about a week, but since oil prices have shot past $70/barrel, I'm sure another price increase is coming. So...time to fill up again.

I just spent the past 90 minutes talking to someone from Greenville. This someone knows who I am, has worked at Cold Stone, and apparently we got along well enough. The down side? I have no clue who this person was! She was dropping hints left and right, and they were just vague enough to keep me from realizing who it was. Then she suddenly logs off. A moment later she comes back online, and I say "Welcome back." The person then responds as if they have no idea who I am. I talk to this person a bit more, and it turns out that it's someone totally different. Someone named John, that lives in Georgia.

It seems that my mysterious conversationalist was using someone else's screen name in an effort to conceal her identity. But...who is it? It's driving me crazy. And I am sure that this is exactly what this person wants.

Sheesh. I should go to bed.

I found this blog at the end of July. This guy named Johnny gets a job at Wal-Mart and writes about the experience. I like his writing style; it's full of humor.

Enjoy! The Wal-Mart Blog: September 2004

I opened up the microwave to heat up my dinner, only to discover a slice of pizza that someone had left in there. Oh, the joys of living with two other guys.

Well, most of today has been spent working on a new layout for my blog. I think it's rather spiffy. I've also spent a large part of the day trying to figure out my finances. As the English would say, they're in the crapper.

The good news is that I'm going to have enough money to pay my cell phone bill from last month, my rent, and my car insurance. The bad news is that I only have $45 to live on until next Friday. If anything unexpected pops up, I'm sunk. Then after I get paid on Friday, I'll have a similar amount of money to live on; this time for two weeks!

I know that God is going to provide somehow; He always does. It's always nerve-wracking, though, to see things stretched so thinly. Someday it won't faze me as much, I hope.

Wow. It's 8pm. I have things to do. E-mail to write. Ramen noodles to buy.

Leave me comments! Let me know what you think of the new layout.