brokenness.

Christ needs to be the foundation - the cornerstone.
A classic biblical metaphor that i believe to be solidly on track.

However, the thing that sucks about this metaphor: by the time you hear about it and ponder it and fully understand what it means for you and your life - you're not new to the world anymore. If that was the only nugget of life you were subjected to for the first x number of years (x = the amount of time between birth and an individual's understanding of the cornerstone analogy) then i feel like you could rather easily set this foundation and then build upon it. obviously this is not the case, which is why this metaphor poses a problem. despite how much we believe it and attempt to follow it, we've already begun building the walls, roof, doors, and windows of our lives (none of which are cotton - the fabric of our lives).

cue the story analogy.

i remember when i was in about 1st grade i got a tight Lego set for Christmas. It was a castle in the forest dude set (the ones that look like Robin Hood and his Merry Men and were covered with leaves and other greenery...they also had strapping yellow and red feathers you could put in their little green/brown caps.). anyway, my dad and i spent about an hour putting it together, and when we got down to the last piece...there was still one left. turns out we'd forgotten to put a piece down in like....step 3. and there was no hope in managing it into the structure now without breaking it. it was a small piece, and even though this one spot on the left side of the castle was a little unstable and looked kinda goofy - we didnt want to spend another hour breaking the thing down and rebuilding from step 3. too much work. so we put the piece back in the yellow box with the picture on it and admired our work without the little black 3 x 1 piece.

it looked good.

the point i'm getting at: i feel like in order to set a firm foundation you need to start anew. It's not possible for you to simply pull out the cornerstone and replace it with a new one - you have to start from scratch.

this is what i think we do with this idea of Jesus as the cornerstone* though. we learn about this piece of our life that is necessary and important, and we strongly consider putting it in there - we even wish it was easier and that we could just slide it right in there - but instead of taking our life apart to put the Cornerstone in, we slip Him back in the package and observe our life sans Christ. Life might actually even look ok without him. we can still admire parts in our life - our successes and abilities and other things we've been given by God's grace - but there is a still a weakspot. we're still very capable of a collapse.

this brings me to what i've been thinking a little bit about lately: the importance of brokenness in life. what is the easiest route to building a new foundation? brokenness. we need to have no choice but to tear down what we had built and start anew with our Cornerstone. Brokenness is the easiest route to godliness. An interesting juxtaposition, really, but one i feel is not only super great, but also right on target. We need to be torn down and ripped apart - otherwise we will continue to observe our good-looking life from a distance without any understanding of the crucial aspect missing underneath. i think this is the saddest story possible. someone in dire straits without anywhere else to turn is sad - but they are in an incredible place at the same time - they have the perfect opportunity to find a new cornerstone. however, the CEO of a major corporation who has everything together and is built on a foundation of money and success - where is the opportunity for Him to establish this new cornerstone? the opportunity is much less possible. there is a beauty in brokenness. the comforts of life can blind us and leave us empty, but a total destruction of our life allows for an incredible transformation to take place. the Cornerstone can be laid and new walls can be built.

a life built on Christ has to start with Christ. you can't just slip Him in and move forward - it isn't possible - and just looking at the 3 x 1 piece while trying to build the castle around it - that's setting you up for some serious Jenga**. in the long run, the Jenga-action might prove to be alright...as long as it eventually topples. the faster your tower collapses the better. regardless the life - there is a need for brokenness before moving forward in Christ. i think so at least.

brokenness is what i long for/brokenness is what i need

-ap.


* - should cornerstone be capitalized? i feel like its a Jesus reference...so it probs should. just like Savior, Messiah, Lamb, etc...yeah. Cornerstone it is. i also love incorporating an asterisk. awesome.

** - yes. Jenga is a verb.

TRANSFORMERS

i've just realized that i really have a knack for starting these things off with confessions...and this post is no different.

confession: i have never seen an episode of Transformers in my life. the only connection i have to them is Track 9 on St. Elsewhere.

i did see the movie tonight, however, and i'm considering going online and finding a massive poster of Optimus Prime to put on my wall right now because that was the most incredible thing i've seen in recent history. This movie has action like you wouldn't believe. First off, this thing is like 2.5 hours long and i was never once bored. i mean not one moment. it was like someone was tugging at my heart every single moment and it was just itching to flee out of my body. i was twitching through parts of this thing cause i couldn't stand it.

okay. i need to tell something about the actual movie if i'm going to consider this a review - the excitement is taking over and manifesting itself in my text. i need to start slow probs...ready break.

The flick starts with this kid Sam (Shia LaBeouf) and he's giving this bozo family tree report about his great great great grandfather or something...basically his great^3 gpa discovers the quintessential evil robot, Megatron. he's a big dude who, apparently, crash landed and buried himself in a glacier...so Big Nasty's been buried up in the arctic circle for a century or something and this dude accidentally fell upon him. BN's after this cube dealio that makes all electronics turn into evil robot things...basically he wants to turn the Earth into a killing robot and take over the universe.

but not if the Autobots can help it.

there are like 6 or 7 of these dudes, one of which is the old yellow Camero that Sam's pop buys him for his first car...he immediately decides to woo a lady friend with it, and since the car is an Autobot and is basically the coolest piece of machinery ever...wooing this chica is not terribly difficult. (at this point in the movie i was really wishing i had a sweet ride like that so IIIIIII could hang out with the girl Shia LaBeouf picks up...MEGAN FOX* is her name and she is a hottie to the Nth power.) i forget what her name is in the movie...i was too busy mopping up the saliva on my shirt when she first introduced her character in the movie i think.

* - i made sure i checked into her age before i started talking about how hot she was...even though i would never be one to be seriously in love with famous individuals who may or may not be within the comfortable "i'm in love with you" age range.....i.e. hermoine granger....but i didnt fall in love with her until Chamber of Secrets.......awkwarrrrrddddd.

anyway.

The movie develops and gets more and more intense as it progresses. Sam's ridonk vehicle transforms into a sweet robot and summons the rest of the Autobot Good Guy Clan (AGGC...but i just made that acronym up). Led by Optimus Prime...these guys are tight. OP (not overland park) comes from a blue and red semi and is....well, 'awesome' comes to mind.

There is fighting and lots of explosions and excessive metal clanking and clinking....and clinking and clanking. at times you can't really even tell whats going on because there are so many pieces of revolving metal and shrapnel clunking everywhere...but there is a point when the excessive motor movements move into slow-mo. i think thats when i sunk my teeth into my knees to control myself. every time these ridic machines would break into slo-mo was like watching Reggie Bush and Vince Young collide with an F-16. only everything is metal and it is in NYC instead of the Rose Bowl and i am in a movie theater in kansas instead of a sports bar in tennessee.

I went into this movie expecting nothing at all. I wanted a little bit of entertainment and thats about it. little did i know that this movie was going to destroy the universe i currently live in. I want to see it again and again. and then probably again.

plus Linkin Park did the end creds song. just when it couldn't get better...holler.

as i got into my now seemingly boring vehicle after the movie i decided this thing was like a Spiderman/Blade/Men in Black/Matrix combo feature...only Optimus Prime is way cooler than Peter Parker, Blade, Will Smith or Neo.
eh. maybe not Will Smith (turn it over and hit it).

-ap.

baby girl, how are you?

first of all: read this article.

i think this is absolutely hilarious. first of all, i feel like the dude at the cell phone place did it on purpose, cause if paris hilton shows up in my store i'm going to try and figure out some way to punk her, and i think this dude took a pretty legit route. too bad Barlow didnt send back any ridiculously fake text message responses. cause she had to have had an idea of what was going on when people kept calling her 'Paris' at 2 am. i mean how many bizonkers party animals can be named after foreign cities? let alone Paris? i think if i could choose a foreign city for a name i'd probably pick 'Istanbul' and go by 'Stan'....and maybe i could have a sister called 'Rio de Janeiro' and she could go by 'Jan'....anyway. i feel like she could've said a TON of completely stupid things in response..."sorry. can't talk right now...i'm eating a Colossal Dog*." something like that would have gone over terrific i think.

Paris Hilton would be a terrific person to have this happen to also. you'd get some seriosuly great insight into her life and, at the same time, you'd get to mess around with the life of a hot shot like her behind her back. i started thinking about what celebrity i'd want to be mistaken for...and i came up with teh following Top 3:

1) barry bonds. i could then throw down some seriously incriminating text messages. things like "yeah. i took 'roids. so what. they'll never find out." or "i dont mind if i have an astrisk...it'll just bring more attention to my name on all the leaderboards." or "i eat babies." but i have a feeling that none of these would get the guy chucked out of baseball...i'd be relying on someone on the other end being active and telling someone of some importance that barry had said something to him - unless it WAS someone important texting him. like Bud Selig. Goodbye career. yeah right. they'd find out it was me.

2) justin timberlake. no real reason...i think i'd just like to be mistaken for him in some way or form.

3) mandy moore. duh. cause then there would be the slim chance to meet her and laugh with her about what a terrific misunderstanding it was. plus then she's know my phone number cause it was her OLD number and i hint something like that she could call her old number whenever she wants....then eventually we'd probably have kids together or something.

-ap.

* - a Kaufmann Stadium fav.

piano and such.

my passion for playing piano has returned for the time being.
i dont think it will last long though...i'll probably learn a few songs and maybe be able to throw my own twists on them or whatev...change up the lyrics and put in some upbeats or something.

anyway. i heard 'hey there delilah' for the first time on wednesday in kc and i came home and immediately started trying to nail it down on the board...i was pretty proud of myself because it only took about 15 minutes and i had it pretty much figured out...there are a couple downbeats here and there that i'm not landing yet...and i dont have all the words down either, but i'm almost there.

haha. i also figured out crazy by gnarls. holler.

life has been a little busier lately - what with multiple trips to kc a week and an issue or two on the home front - plus class started monday for me (i'm taking intro to shakespeare and its actually pretty enjoyable...shocker) - but this weekend it might actually be nice to be 'stuck in manhattan' as i like to put it. i'll get some good reading done and catch up on the sleep i've been missing out on for a while now.

speaking of - i think i'll take a nap.

-ap.

ps. i just got a text from a buddy that relish won again tonight. what a baller. he's running away with it this year.

ID4.

my fourth of july was a little disappointing...like a fireworks show without a finale.

i don't really ever expect much from the fourth of july, cause to be honest, fireworks don't impress me too terribly much. until the finale happens, i tend to get rather bored with the monotony of it all - plus i really hate large crowds - and no matter where you go you are forced to overcome the hassle of 9 million other people parking in the same place, laying their blanket in the same place, watching the same thing and getting in each others way and on each others nerves like its their job.
so, my family goes to the royals game. i think we've done this every year but once for the last 5 years (granted, the royals dont have a home game every single fourth of july, but kauffman stadium runs the fireworks on tne closest day possible...and my family goes then.

ANYWAY. this year was a 4th of july home game for the royals so i headed out to the K to watch three things. i will discuss each now:

1) john buck. we all know my near obsession with john buck (however, i'd still consider it a passion, not quite an obsession), he went 1-4 with a single. average but boring performance (however, a first-pitch single up the middle brought a little glimmer of happiness to a rather boring baseball game otherwise. the mariners scored 4 runs in the 1st and then no one scored the rest of the game. Washburn was a baller on the mound for the M's and the royals only had 5 hits and only got a guy past 2nd base once. anyway. johnny did not provide the highlight tonight.
however, his song playing when he came to bat in the second inning was "big bad john". love it.

2) the hot dog race is something i am truly passionate about. there are three kinds of people in this world: there are those that root for ketchup, those that root for mustard, and those that root for relish. if you have not done so already, please distinguish what kind of person you are right now. if you picked ketchup, i think your'e boring. if you picked mustard, i think you're a sell out. if you picked relish - you and i can be friends. relish, my friends, is the classic under'dog'. and he is currently rockin ally and freaking the oop at the K. he won again last night (tallying up his 19th win of the season...2 more than mustard and 5 more than ketchup.) this was undeniably the highlight of the night for me.

3) the post-game fireworks. this is potentially one of the most disappointing things ever: the fireworks were damaged due to a pre-game shower and there was NO POST-GAME EXTRAVAGANZA. talk about a serious buzzkill. there were 29,000 fans all super anxious to see what i think are the greatest fireworks in kc, but alas, there were none. the only thing that might make everything okay was that they tried three times to get htem started and each time they played the same intro recording:

"alright royals fans, now lets cap off an already great fourth with a post-game fireworks extravaganza! ready? count it down with me...5...4...3...2...1..."

but then nothing happened. music came on and the fountains looked beautiful (in fact, i took a photo on my phone), but there were no fireworks. then about 5 minutes later..."alright royals fans..." and again, nothing. we sat for about 15 minutes waiting with everyone else in the stadium. eventually the guy informed us that they couldn't get them to fire. BUT. our ticket is good for one free royals game of our choosing the rest of this year. jackpot. even thought the K fireworks are incredible - i've seen them a bunch of times and i already expressed my thoughts on big showy fireworks in general (even though K fireworks are NOT monotonous). anyway. i get to go to another game whenever i want...too bad i have to pay 9 bucks for parking. (robbery.)

-ap.

dont fall asleep at the game.

this is hilarious.

YGMbucks.

so a lot of people are familiar with the fact that one of my favorite movies (one of my family's favorite movies, really) is You've Got Mail. Tom Hanks is hilarious, it is beyond quotable, and for those that know the Cooper Family you know that its quotability is probably why we even like this movie at all. well, my sisters and mom might think Meg Ryan is cute or something too.

anyway, i was at work today cleaning dishes...which is an entirely too lonely time of the day for me. if manhattan wasn't lonely enough, i have to do dishes by myself sometimes. rough life. but while i'm doing the dishes i get to think, and i like thinking. i think i'm a lot better off because of my ability to think and without it i think i'd be rather comparable to jell-o in terms of IQ. i was thinking about You've Got Mail and how my family could very well be watching it as they were driving down to Nowata, OK (again, stricken if i need to include the location....but i've decided its probably more important that i include ", OK" this time. nowata is a bit smaller).

I'm telling you insignificant details and trying to be funny. here's what i foudn interesting: the movie centers around Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) who is part owner of Fox Books, the economic devil in the eyes of Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) who owns The Shop Around the Corner, a children's bookstore. Fox Books is going to put SATC out of business. its inevitable. and the whole movie they all talk about how horribly commerical and huge and impersonal and loud and unhelpful and corporate and nationally annoying Fox Books is.

yet the movie is also obsessed with incorporating Starbucks. i found this shockingly contradictory. that is all.

-ap.

four.

i think i've figured out why i'm not blogging anymore.

i got in a rut of NOT blogging - and now i'm looking for the perfect thing to blog about and its never going to come.
so i'll start lame and work my way up.

today lets talk about....eh...four things that i've recently discovered i enjoy. yeah...4 is good...i can make up four.

1) iced tea. this time last year i thought the stuff tasted like watered down grass...which is kinda what it is actually. i'll put it this way instead: i thought watered down herbs tasted horrible. however, a recent addition of honey to some tea has made me a huge fan - but i dont mix it up. i leave all the honey stuck at the bottom and drink it through a straw so i can get huge globs of gloriousness. love the word glob. so many negative boogerish images.

2) this one is still a stretch, because i think i have some obvious fears to overcome here: collared shirts. during the latest SGRT (thats small group reunion tour) my click traveled to indian hills country club where they have not only a dress code, but a plethora of free andes mints (i take full advantage - i wish they didnt have a dress code so i could wear cargo pants with those massive garbage-bag-sized pockets so that i could fill them up and walk around with sandbags attached to my knees. but anyway. as of june 8, i did not own any collared shirts so i had to borrow one from mi amigo, dan. i was a fan and found myself thinking "hey. maybe i can pull off the collared look afterall...then i got home and apparently AE was having some sort of collared shirt blow out sale cause my parents had bought me three new collared shirts all of which i'm a fan of. i'm still scared to break them out though - maybe this weekend when i dont have to work in an espresso infested establishment for 7.5 hours at a time.

3) harry FRICKIN potter. oh my goodness. i'd already read books 1 and 2. and they were good and entertaining, but not addicting and suspenseful and the greatest thing ever like books 3-6 are. i started reading book 3 on the 24th of may. and i finished book 6 on the 24th of june. 1 month...i think its something like 2600 pages. i'm completely captivated by these books - rowling is unreal. she's created this whole new world (aladdin) of spells and magic and characters and she weaves them all together into probably the most amazing series since star wars. i think so at least. i'm excited for the movie to come out in a few weeks but i'm infinitely more thrilled about the final book appearing on shelves soon after that. i was literally pacing around my room reading the end of books 4 and 6. the most intense and riveting thing ever. eh. other than the outlaw.

4) confession: last weekend i was in des moines (i am currently stricken as to whether i should include the ", IA" after the city there...i think everyone knows where des moines is though so i'm not going to bother...plus the interior of these parentheses just informed and doubters anyway). i was there for reasons i might talk about in another post but are not necessary knowledge now. i was at the dinner table with my two cousins, their two boyfriends, and my grandparents (i did feel a slight hint of disappointment that everyone had a partner but me...kinda like neville longbottom only i'm not plump and i do not have a frog named trevor)...we were eating dinner and my grandma had made my number one least favorite item in the world - green beans - but i was hungry, and i didnt think i'd fill up on fruity jello, so i dished a small helping onto the classic coops dinnerware (brown and tan patterned plates and bowls) and gave it a squishy taste.

and i liked them.

i know. gasp away. gasp gasp gasp gasp gasp. i went back for seconds. it was weeeeeeeeird. no, i dont want to talk about it, but i'm glad to have it off my chest.

alright that is all. its 2:30 and i need to call spain.
"the country, he ran it...that was his job...."

k late.
-ap.

it'd be worse without Buck

this is an article from the KC Star this week. amazing.

After updating the Stat Guy database Monday, a shocking conclusion was reached: The Royals are pretty bad.

OK, we knew that. But, as usual, the Royals are across-the-board bad, which is disappointing. Most troubling has been the offense. The preseason projection was for the hitters to be close to the middle of the pack but with several young regulars, there was the possibility of being much better than that.

The SG database calculates win stats for all the big three categories — hitting, pitching and fielding. Through Sunday, Royals hitters ranked 29th in the major leagues with -14.1 wins added, which is last in the American League.

John Buck and Mark Teahen are the only regulars with positive wins-added figures. Even Teahen, though, is underproducing his projection. While he’s right on target in terms of batting average and on-base percentage, Teahen has yet to find the consistent power stroke that made him such a dynamic hitter during the second half of last season. However, Teahen started slow last year and there really isn’t any reason to doubt that the extra bases will come.

As for Buck, well, he’s been a revelation. Buck turns 27 in July, the most common age for a hitter’s career season, and had similar numbers in some of his minor-league campaigns. Buck’s 0.62 hitting wins-added is the best on the Royals and fourth among catchers in all of baseball, and that’s before his two-home run game Monday.

Bad timing for Buck: Fellow catchers Victor Martinez, Jorge Posada and Russell Martin are all off to monster starts. Otherwise, Buck would be a deserving All-Star starter, not just the Royals’ default pick. Those aforementioned backstops all have about 60 at-bats more than Buck, and that is unfortunate.

OK, we didn’t expect Buck to hit this well, but this idea of having him catch just three out of five games ought to be tossed into the wastebasket along with the blueprints of the Edsel and the recipe for New Coke. The backup catcher, Jason LaRue, is hitting .136 and in 59 at-bats has posted -.52 wins-added — almost undoing the good work Buck has done.

Here’s one other Buck tidbit for you. According to hittrackeronline.com, Buck has averaged 409.6 feet per home run this season. Only six batters in baseball have done better, led by Martin’s 415.3 feet per long ball.

Other than Buck, pretty much every Royals hitter has fallen short of his projection to date. Alex Gordon was projected to produce 20.1 runs above average; he’s on pace for -28.2. But you have to stick with him, right? The only obvious way to improve the attack is to replace Mark Grudzielanek (-.52 wins added) on an everyday basis with Esteban German (-.03). Billy Butler probably should be DH-ing rather than Mike Sweeney (-.30) — both for now and for the future.

But those moves would have only a modest impact.

---

Punchless
Only four Royals hitters have posted above-average wins-added totals so far this season.

John Buck	0.62
Reggie Sanders	0.33
Mark Teahen	0.13
Ross Gload	0.10

Everyone else is below average. Here are the worst.

Alex Gordon	-1.19
Tony Peña Jr.	-1.07
David DeJesus	-0.80
Ryan Shealy	-0.56
Jason LaRue	-0.52

Note: Wins-added measures how many wins a player has contributed (or cost) his team

talk about awesome.

-ap.

touch em all (9, 10)

Devil Rays 4 - Royals 2

5th inning: John Buck solo homerun.

8th inning: John Buck solo homerun.

need i say more?