Chuck Norris is a dancing machine, not a dancing queen.

Chuck Norris Facts is a website dedicate to the power and majesty of the man, the myth, the legend. We know him and love him as Chuck Norris. Visit the site and prepare to be amazed by the truth.

Inspired by the websites devotion to Chuck Norris, I decided to share some of the facts that I personally know about Chuck "Mr. Norris to you" Norris. These I have submitted to the aforementioned website for addition into the annuls of the great and ever growing legend of Chuck Norris.

Here below are the fruits of my experience while being in the presence of Chuck or at least in the same state:

You have heard of 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon. Chuck Norris is seperated from every human being on the planet by only 1 roundhouse kick to the face.

There is no such thing as a UFO, only objects Chuck Norris has roundhouse kicked into orbit.

Rodney Dangerfield gets no respect, especially from Chuck Norris who gets everyones respect or they get dead.

There are no black holes in Outer Space only a void where Chuck Norris has roundhouse kicked the crap out of the Universe.

Chuck Norris is a scientist because everytime he roundhouse kicks someone in the face he is proving the law of physics that states: No 2 objects can occupy the same space at the same time.

Einstein stated the absolute speed of anything is the speed of light. That is because he never met Chuck Norris.

Philosophers ask "Can Chuck Norris roundhouse kick a rock so far that he can not roundhouse kick it again?" Chuck Norris knows the answer and he isn't telling.

The age old question "Can God create a rock so big that He can not pick it up?" has been answered by Chuck Norris. "Yes I can" says Chuck but I don't have to pick it up when I can just roundhouse kick it right into your face."

We know Chuck Norris has counted to infinity: twice. Do you also know that both times he actually counted to infinity + 1 and then backwards to zero again?

When Rage Against the Machine wrote the lyrics "Here is something you can’t understand, How I could just kill a man" Chuck Norris said "I can," and he meant it.

Home is where the heart is, but Death is where ever Chuck Norris is.

Sad songs say so much, Chuck Norris says very little and then proceeds to roundhouse kick you and your sad little song.

Uncle Rico thinks he can throw a football over the mountains. Chuck Norris has roundhouse kicked a football stadium containing a sold out crowd across 2 galaxies.

Someone once accidently uttered the phrase "In your dreams" to Chuck Norris and now they dream of being alive.

Blue Oyster Cult sings "Don't Fear the Reaper." That song is not for Chuck Norris because he has no fear. In fact the 'cow bell' in the song is actually a loop of Chuck Norris roundhouse kicking the Reaper.

On Becoming a Dad: 01.30.06

Ok, becoming a dad is going to be awesome. And it so cool to tell people and watch their reactions. And hear what it is going to be like and how it is going to change our lives. But who are these people that like to tell you their horror stories? What is the obsession some people have that want to tell us about all the aweful experiences they have heard about.

My wife was on the phone with one person for 2 hours hearing about horrible events and tragedies and 70 hour long births. Do people really think we want or need to hear any of this?

We get it. We know all too well life if fragile. We think of these things on our own. That is just how the human mind works. But the reality is when we think of it ourselves or it enters our mind we can pray it away and dismiss it. It becomes that much harder when people help us think of things to worry about. Thanks.

We know God is in control even if something bad happens but that doesn't mean we want to think about the worst case scenarios on a daily basis. Some peoples minds tend toward worry like my wife's. She knows worry is an issue in her life and prays about it often and trusts God despite what her emotions tell her. How about a little help in the right direction?

Don't get me wrong, most people don't mean anything by it and the majority of them probably realize 2 seconds after it comes out of their mouth that they should not have said it. They wish they could take it back. That happens. That happens to me alot. I live with a sole-of-my-shoe taste in my mouth. But everytime that happens I stop. I don't think of the next dumb, inappropiate thing I can say. I shift gears, move on, change the subject, apologize if needed.

There are just a few of us out there that go on and on and on and on about it. Well today I am giving you official permission to stop. No body likes to hear bad news. But if it happens we will be taken care of by family and friends and comforted by God. However, if the bad news is just what might happen, or could happen, or did happen to your cousin's sister's mailman's blah blah, then be a Debbie Downer no longer! There I have freed you by the power of my rant.

Urinal Cakes!

Between a recent episode of MXC on Spike!TV in which one of the contestants threw her fist in the air and eclaimed "I love urinal cakes!" and a post on a friends blog on "Urinal Talk" about the unspoken rules of etiquette we man have at the urinal, it got me to thinking.

They have partitions between toilets, why not urinals?

Who thought of calling them urinal cakes anyway? Cakes? Hardly!

Why are we so homophobic about this? Me included, I must admit I don't want some dude lookin' at my dude.

Do urinal cakes really work? No, they just make a disgusting new aromatic mixture of urine, sickening sweet whatever, and poo. What? Why?

And just because we can pee standing up, does that mean we have to do it up against the wall.

The toilet bowl makes for a much more fun target anyway, if you ask me. And then you don't even need urinal snacks.

Who makes urinal cakes? Is it Little Debbie? Betty Crocker? Sara Lee? Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee! Dolly Madison?

I hear people all the time say that after they eat asparagus, their pee smells like asparagus. What other foods have you encountered that have this same ability to affect the stink of your urine? For me the thing that comes to mind is Super Golden Crisp.

Weird. I am going to bed...

i only know a few

Six billion people in the world and I only know a few.

According to the International Programs Center, U.S. Bureau of the Census, the total population of the World, projected to 01/30/06 at 14:49 GMT (EST+5) is:

6,494,617,896

Dang, It Feels Good to Be a Gansta!

am i getting old? (don't answer that)

quite a while back i sat at starbucks planning my new back to school message series for the student ministry. as i sat there for about 3 hours or so tons of kids came and went, stayed or didn't. i found myself curious trying to figure out if they were high school kids or college kids. i can't tell anymore.

i guess i is old and gettin older.

i am going to check out a new 3 story coffee house down near kelly square today in downtown sherman. me thinks it is called the boiler room.

are you like me? anytime i am sitting in a coffee haus in some metropolitian downtown (i am in sherman so i obviously use the term loosely) i like to read and write and think; and as i do i gaze out the window hoping that a fight will break out between a superhero and one of his evil archrivals. not necessarily his nemisis, i don't want to be too close to THAT fight, just a run-of the-mill generic bad guy superhero. so that the fight only takes the superhero like 4 or 5 moves to subdue the bad guy. just so i can say i was there and blog about it.

maybe even get on the news. but probably not. i think it would be better to just hang around a bit and then leave. go tell a few of your closest friends before they hear it anywhere else. so then when they do hear about they will know you were really there and be in awe of you. but probably, i wouldn't want to be on the news, those people always end up looking like morons. and in the south, if you are articulate, they will always skip you in favor of the guy with the mullet and six pack of beer. you know the guy, he believes in ufo's and has been abducted by aliens or knows someone who has. its 10am and he is standing there with a six pack. one beer open in one hand and just 3 or 4 still left in the pack, holding them dangling by one of the empty plastic rings.

then the interview starts like this, "so mister ledbetter, will you..."

"ahh, just call me leroy, mr. ledbetters my old man."

"uhm, ok, leroy can you tell us what you saw? what exactly happened here today? start from the beginning."

"well i actually didn't see nothin'. i was 3 blocks away wizzin' in the alley when i heard it. it was a horrible ruckus. i actually come over here to see about it because it sounded to me like when someones trailers gettin' repo-ed by the bank. (hocks a lugie and spits)"

Don't sweat it. Don't get stressed out. Don't let life get to you!

"You know, our bodies are capable of doing some very funny things when they're consumed by stress and anxiety. Uh, I found my ex-best friend's cufflinks in my wife's purse." Dr. Cohen speaking to Andrew Largeman (Zach Braff) in the movie Garden State.


Don't get too stressed out in life! Life throws fastballs and curveballs and bad pitches and change-ups and even the occassional, dreaded knuckleball. Don't be surprised or caught off guard. Expect the unexpected. But whatever you do trust in the fact that know matter how bad it gets God is in control. He is not the cause of your prediciment but He will be the comfort (read: is comforting you) during your circumstances. He will be the one source (is the one) of strength when your friends have turned their backs or when your family is not there to help. He offers hope, help, healing, and peanut butter.

Yes, peanut butter. He created peanuts and he surely taught someone to smash them repeatedly. So smash something, shout out loud to the Lord Most High, have a come-to-Jesus meeting with Jesus, and eat a peanut butter (and jelly, if you must) sandwich and know that God is there offering comfort and comfort food.

Tell Him you are pissed even if it is Him that you are pissed off at. And end your sentences with prepositions if you must. He can handle it. He is God after all. He will not cover His ears in shock and horror. He is too big to be offended. Tell Him, let Him have it. He will still be there when it is over!

Tigers Topple Tripple Threat

The Detroit Tigers baseball team has floundered in mediocrity for years. They have sucked the big one to put it bluntly. Only the most diehard of Tigers fans still show support for this sad excuse for a baseball team. it has been rumored that even Magnum P.I. himself has switched from the 'D' logo fitted baseball cap that he has worn his whole television existence for a straw 'Panama Jack' style sun hat. You know the ones with the hat band made out of a strip of cheap "hawaiian shirt" like material.

That was until just last week when in a single baseball game on a Tuesday night with sub par attendence they beat the Yankees, thwarted a major terrorist attack, which would have been the first on U.S. soil since 911, AND killed the notorius gopher that plagued Bill Murray all those years ago in Caddyshack.

It was the bottom of the 9th with most of 3,008 fans in attendance already heading for the parking lot. It was 2 outs, no one on base and manager Allen Trammell inserts Nook Logan into the line-up. Nook over the last few weeks had been relegated to a late-inning defensive insertion at center and situational pinch-runner, due to a slew of injuries.

With Nook at bat the Tigers faced almost certain defeat with noone on base, the yankees ahead by 1, 2 outs and the pitch count in the pitchers favor with 1 ball and 2 strikes. But then with one swing the world and the course of history changed forever. Nook swung on a pitch that was low and inside but somehow connected with the ball as he stood at the left side of the plate. The ball a careening knuckle ball with alot of back spin sailed so high most everyone thought it was a high pop fly and easy catchbut suddenly they realized it was rocketing toward the outfield. Up up and away it flew; and to the few remaining fans, the two teams and even the drowsy commentators surprise it left the park. Tieing the game and sending it into extra innings. In which the Tigers won in the bottom of the tenth when DH Dimitri Young drove in Placido Polanco with a two run shot over the right field wall just inside the foul pole.

But here is where the baseball game ends and the real story, the rest of the story begins. The ball that Nook hit out of the park traveled so far that it landed in Grand Circus Park where the gopher from Caddy Shack had moved for retirement. This is wear the balls tragic trajectory ended when with a powerful thud and minimal blood splatter it beaned gopher right in the temple as he stood on his gopher mound merely taking in the night air and strecthing his sore old gopher bones from a long day of sleeping underground. At this time the Detriot police and the District Attorneys office said they doubted highly the Mr. Nook Logan would be charged in the death. "It appears to be nothing more than a freakish accident at the end of a freakishly powerful homerun," said a spokesperson from the office of Kim L. Worthy, Wayne County Prosecutor.

However in the investigation into the death of the gopher the Detroit Medical Examiner discovered among gophers personal effects bomb making equipement and schematics and city planning blueprints. This lead to an investigation by the Wayne County Sheriffs Department, who brought in the FBI and who inturn brought in Homeland Security and CIA joint terrorism task forces. The investigation that is still ongoing has hitherto uncovered a mutliple cell terrorist plot to use gophers, moles, and possible sewer rats to carry small but powerful loads of explosives throughout the subways, sewer and drainage systems of Americas major cities. These creatures can gain access to highly secure areas and even burrow under seemingly impenatrable edifices upon which time al-Queda terrorists would be set to detonate these bombs from a safe distance using tracking devices and remote detonators.

In a rare statement against terrorist action PETA has issued a statement to the press and media outlets worldwide denouncing "al-Queda action that harms, mistreats, or uses small, cute, defenseless animals to promote its agenda of fear. Bad al-Queda! Bad al-Queda!" The investigation thus far is still ongoing and the task force is tight lipped about specifics at this juncture. But what we do know up to this point is that with one seemingly insignificant night, one oddly hit home run by Detriot's Nook Logan helped the Tigers Topple Triple Threat of Yankees, Gophers and al-Queda.

Reported by Michael L. McMinn, freelance journalist and gastrointestinal stalwart, reporting on vacation from Lake Titicaca, Moho, Peru, South America. (I was recently challanged to write a story with this title. Having the journalistic integrity that I do; I could only pen something I knew to be true. Oh, yes I said pen, you heard me correctly the first time.)

Becoming the Heros that We Ought to Be

I went to the Fort Worth Rodeo and Livestock Show tonight with my parents. It was a blast! I grew up in Cowtown, USA, and for most of my teenage years I turned my back on anything remotely having to do with that scene. Country music (not that anything on country radio deserves our attention anyway), boots, belt buckles, and pearl button snaps, these were all things that were seemingly uncool to me.

Well I repent. It has been in the making for along time. Starting in college when thrift store couture was at its peak I began searching out western belt buckles, old western shirts, and the like. Then always being an avid fan of good music (my wife would say: read: rock snob) I began to rekindle a love for the likes of Ernest Tubbs, Hank Williams Sr., Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, Waylon, Willie & the boys, and The Man in Black. Jump forward to today and you can add Emmylou Harris, Ryan Adams, Wilco, and Graham Parsons, among others.

But today at the rodeo I saw so many down-turned mustaches, weathered faces and hands, manure stained boots, and sweat salted hat brims that I was stirred inside. Then I saw somebody I recognized, I was like a little kid, asking my dad excitedly "Who's that guy? I know him? Where do I know him from?"

My dad told me "That's Buck Taylor, Newly, from Gunsmoke."

My hot wife (trust me) was right on his heels with "You know; Texas Creek Jack Johnson, from Tombstone." One of her all time favorite movies. Most girls go for Pretty Women, or Fried Green Tomatoes or that sorta crap. But Tombstone!, she's hot and rarely does she have a desire for either of us to sit down and watch a 'chic flick.' See why I had to marry a girl like that?

Anyway, back to my story. I was in awe, I had seen Newly, not Marshall Matt Dillon, but as close as I was ever gonna get. Buck Taylor, as he is known in real life, is a real cowboy with a working ranch somewhere around Boyd, I think. From here we looked at more tractors, wooden furniture, and the like; until it was time for the rodeo.

It was somewhere in the midst of all this that I realized every man wants deep down inside to be a real honest-to-gawd-cowboy. We put on airs, button down and get real jobs, become civilized, sometimes to the point that we actually scoff at such a life. But oh do we really want it, deep down every man must admit it. Cowboy, it strikes fear and wonder and excitement into the heart of every boy and if you dig deep, in every grown man too.

To be a cowboy implies a freedom so exilirating its dangerous. To be a cowboy speaks of a ruggedness most men dare not dream of. To be a cowboy is to find out the answer to the question most of us fear the most: Do I have what it takes? The makings of a real man, handle wild beasts, survive off the land, protect ourselves from man and nature, are all wrapped up in what it means to be a real cowboy. Real cowboys, real men.

As I sat there--as those men wrestle steer to the ground with their bare hands; or get every bone in their body and screw in their head jarred loose on bareback buck or a snot-nosed bull; or run towards the bull while wearing face paint just to give the downed rider a moments safety by giving up their own--I knew every man has what it takes. It is what God made us for. He created us to tame and conquer the wild bests, to wow the ladies and provide for them. He made us to hunger for adventure and danger and take life by the horns and conquer evil. God made us to be cowboys.

Baby Better World or Better World Baby?

As a follower of Christ becoming a dad has added a whole new motivation and perspective to my calling. I simply want to lead people to the hope and peace found in Jesus' acceptence in order to make the world and future a safer place. I know this is really not the likely outcome but it is a thought I keep having.

What is more likely; that I can make the world a safer place for my child through spreading faith, hope, and love to others or that I can raise my child in faith, hope, and love to make the world a safer place? It is most likely both. Either way it seems a daunting task. I am glad God occasionally decides to grace me with a little bit of wisdom and insight because I am gonna need it on this one. Keep it coming!

I heard some lady being interviewed on Fox News the other day utter that stupid phrase, "It takes a village..." Has anybody noticed many parents today have relegated child care and child rearing to "the village." Noone seems to notice that "the village" kinda has dropped the ball and in turn they relegated these tasks "the village idiot."

Well, hands off village. A few friends, family, and most importantly mommy and daddy have this one covered.

THEY CALL ME BIG PAPA

I am going to be a dad, daddy, papa, faja. Isn't that crazy and amazing. It is cramazing! I created a life, and now I created a word to describe it! Not really, but anyway.

I am going to be responsible for another human being for every hour and minute of everyday from here on out. That is the single most exciting thing in my life and at the same time that is the single most terrifying thing in my life!!! Isn't that crazy that we choose something so scary and so exciting all at the same time.

I am journeying into fatherhood. That just still makes me laugh to think that, to put it into words. I must be insane. But I am with happiness. It is overwhelming and it all I know for the most part I just have to rely on God to help me out so that I don't screw the kid up.

I think of everything in my life up to this point, I just have a feelin anyway, that when I actually see this baby McMinn for the first time I will see more than ever before from God's perspective and when I am really paying attention during those times in life when you should be, I will see more closely into the Heart of God than I ever have before.

God has the Heart of a Father. I just hope and pray that I can tap into that.

We are having a baby. Jeepers. I have so many doubts and fears and concerns and wonders and questions and hopes and dreams and ideas. In a way it is almost laughable that God would trust us with such an important task. But He does so what does that say about His confidence in us. He doesn't leave us alone to do it, to raise a kid. He offers us His heart and His wisdom to do not the best that we can but hopefully in His strength do the best that He can.

For now and for a long time the question will remain, "Do I have what it takes?"