Jack Bauer

I live with a Jack Bauer fan, and she’d likely “amen” most of these.

So they made me laugh.

Such things were once said about Chuck Norris.

Well, move over Chuck. Jack’s on the scene…

Basic Truths About 24’s Jack Bauer

  • Killing Jack Bauer doesn’t make him dead. It just makes him angry.
  • If Jack Bauer was in a room with Hitler, Stalin, and Nina Meyers, and he had a gun with 2 bullets, he’d shoot Nina twice.
  • If you wake up in the morning, it’s because Jack Bauer spared your life.
  • Superman wears Jack Bauer pajamas.
  • If it tastes like chicken, looks like chicken, and feels like chicken, but Jack Bauer says its beef. Then you better believe it’s beef.
  • Jack Bauer once forgot where he put his keys. He then spent the next half-hour torturing himself until he gave up the location of the keys.
  • 1.6 billion Chinese are angry with Jack Bauer. Sounds like a fair fight.
  • Let’s get one thing straight: the only reason you are conscious right now is because Jack Bauer does not feel like carrying you.
  • Jack Bauer was never addicted to heroin. Heroin was addicted to Jack Bauer.
  • Jack Bauer played Russian Roulette with a fully loaded gun and won.
  • When life gave Jack Bauer lemons, he used them to kill terrorists. Jack Bauer hates lemonade.
  • Jack Bauer once won a game of Connect 4 in 3 moves.
  • Osama bin Laden’s recent proposal for truce is a direct result of him finding out that Jack Bauer is, in fact, still alive.
  • Jack Bauer is the leading cause of death in Middle Eastern men.
  • Jack Bauer doesn’t miss. If he didn’t hit you it’s because he was shooting at another terrorist twelve miles away.
  • When Jack Bauer was a child, he made his mother finish his vegetables.
  • Jack Bauer killed 93 people in just 4 days time. Wait, that is a real fact.
  • Simon Says should be renamed to Jack Bauer Says because if Jack Bauer says something then you better do it.
  • Jack Bauer won the Tour de France on a unicycle to prove to Lance Armstrong it wasn’t a big deal. He thinks yellow wristbands are gay.
  • Jack Bauer’s favorite color is severe terror alert red. His second favorite color is violet, but just because it sounds like violent.
  • You can lead a horse to water. Jack Bauer can make him drink.
  • Jack Bauer can get McDonald’s breakfast after 10:30.
  • When the boogie man goes to sleep, he checks his closet for Jack Bauer.
  • In 96 hours, Jack Bauer has killed 93 people and saved the world 4 times. What the hell have you done with your life?
  • Jack Bauer killed so many terrorists that at one point, the #5 CIA Most Wanted fugitive was an 18-year-old teenager in Malaysia who downloaded the movie Dodgeball.
  • In kindergarten, Jack Bauer killed a terrorist for Show and Tell.
  • What color is Jack Bauer’s blood? Trick question. Jack Bauer does not bleed.
  • Guns dont kill people, Jack Bauer kills people.
  • If Jack and MacGyver were locked in a room together, Jack would make a bomb out of MacGyver and get out.
  • People with amnesia still remember Jack Bauer.
  • Sun Tzu once wrote, “If your enemy is weaker, conquer him. If he is stronger, join him. If he is Jack Bauer, you’re dead.”
  • Jack Bauer literally died for his country, and lived to tell about it.
  • Jack Bauer has been to Mars. That’s why there’s no life on Mars.
  • Superman’s only weakness is Kryptonite. Jack Bauer laughs at Superman for having a weakness.
  • When Batman is in trouble, he turns on the Jack Bauer signal.
  • Jack Bauer was conceived by torturing the other sperm until they gave up the location of the egg.
  • Jack Bauer’s family threw him a surprise birthday party when he was a child. Once.

Skin

I had a great visit with a friend lately. In the flow of discussion, the word “retreat” came up.

It surprised me a bit, coming from this specific mouth, so I asked why such thoughts were rolling around.

He replied by saying, “I don’t know. I guess I just don’t feel very comfortable in my own skin lately.”

Odd image… but SO easy to understand. And who hasn’t felt it?!

So… quick survey.

What do YOU do when you don’t feel comfortable in your own skin?

Campolo Interview

Watching some TV before bed, and I stumbled upon a re-run of The Hour, the one which featured an interview with Tony Campolo. If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out below, and see a fellow that represents the Kingdom well on national TV.

Beating a Dead Horse

Specifically, THAT horse.

Before bed, it must be said…

Oh yeah!

49-8… a good ‘ole whooping! I enjoyed every piece of that game… a thorough pleasure.

I bumped into my friend Justin (husband to Jen, father to Caden, and regularly featured HERE) outside the stadium before the game. He was raised in Calgary and indoctrinated by the Stampeder cult (poor bloke). He wasn’t decked in red (because he knows what’s good for him). I sent him on his way with wishes that he’d have a miserable game experience.

If anyone cares to donate towards his counseling, I think that would be a kind gesture.  A guy can’t just witness a slaughtering like that and ever be the same.  Let’s do our best to look after this poor, pitiful friend…

Because deep down, he IS a good guy.

Divided

Yesterday was a quiet day for me. I don’t mean that it was slow or less hectic than usual.

I mean it was designated–Quiet Day.

Within that time, I read my first ever passage of Augustine. Yes, that’s SAINT Augustine, and I now know what the big deal is about. I only read three pages… and a powerful three they were.

Here’s a snippet…

“My inner self was a house divided against itself. Why does this strange phenomenon occur? The mind gives an order to the body and is at once obeyed, but when it gives an order to itself, it is resisted. What causes it? The mind commands the hand to move and is so readily obeyed that the order can scarcely be distinguished from its execution. Yet the mind is mind and the hand is part of the body. But when the mind commands the mind to make an act of will, these two are one and the same and yet the order is not obeyed.”

Anyone having flashbacks to Paul’s words (“What I want to do, I cannot do; what I don’t want to do, I do”)?

Anyone relating yet?

More Augustine…

“It is therefore no strange (as in unfamiliar) phenomenon partly to will to do something and partly not to will to do it. It is a disease of the mind which does not wholly rise to the heights where it is lifted by the truth, because it is weighed down by habit.”

And one more piece about the inner battle that we’ve all experienced…

“It is the same soul that wills both, but it wills neither of them with the full force of the will. So it is wrenched in two and suffers great trials because while truth teaches it to prefer one course, habit prevents it from relinquishing the other.”

I love those parts about truth and habit.

Truth–what is beautiful, healthy, noble, good, life-giving… it calls us upward to “higher ground”. It’s those moments where clarity defeats confusion, and the light comes on crystal clear. We KNOW what we need to do, and there is no sliver of doubt about what is right. And we would ascend to new heights, for the desire to do so is very real…

But we are weighed down by habit. Truth works to set us free, but old ways of thought and action hold us firmly where we’ve always been.

In the midst of his struggle towards faith, Augustine concluded that habit was too strong for him to overcome, though he desperately DID desire to follow after truth…

“Habit was too strong for me when it asked, ‘Do you think you can live without these things?'”

But Habit’s voice faded as the voice of Continence (Self-Discipline) came nearer.

“She stretched out loving hands to welcome and embrace me, holding up a host of good examples to my sight. She smiled at me to give me courage, as though she were saying, ‘Can you not do what these men and women do? Do you think they find the strength to do it in themselves and not in the Lord their God? It was the Lord their God who gave me to them. Why do you try to stand in your own strength and fail? Cast yourself upon God and have no fear. He will not shrink away and let you fall. Cast yourself upon him without fear, for he will welcome you and cure you of your ills.”

Looking back upon the powerful moment of breaking and conversion that followed, Augustine prayed…

You converted me to Yourself, so that I no longer place any hope in this world but stood firmly upon the rule of faith.”

You converted me to Yourself… I love that.

I need that.

To be converted not by any man, not by any line of reasoning…

Converted by God himself to God himself.

Mmmm.

Is anyone else loving the simple purity and beauty of how that sounds?

Great stuff, Auggie!