Welcome to chapel! Now with 40% more interactive content!

Dear freshmen: I'm dreadfully sorry that you had to miss out on the glory that was today's chapel. I'm sure your campaign videos were riveting.

Hooray for no longer having to scan in! Thank you administration, for re-realizing the complete idiocy of an idea that had already been attempted in previous years. It seems that students' pleas to the chapel committee have paid off. *Hint, hint.*

I tried something new today. As I was sitting and waiting for chapel to start, my eyes happened to wander up to the screens just about the time the scroll came back around to the student prayer requests. One of the requests said something similar to, "Please pray for my friend who is in the hospital right now. Please pray that the doctors do their jobs well." I was immediately struck by the oddity of this appeal. Most of the time I hear people say, "Please pray that God will heal ____", but there's something infinitely more thoughtful [and far less ignorant] about asking for God to help the doctors do their job well.

Thank you, Your Holiness, for leading us in prayer for our government and school administration. I especially enjoyed your suggestion that we take a few moments to pray for our country's flailing economy. "Dear God, please drop $700 billion down from your Heavenly storehouses so that Freddie and Fannie can continue to pound us in the ass some more."

It was nice to see some new faces onstage [and welcome back Elizabeth]. I like seeing something other than a brooding, lonely guy with an acoustic guitar or a stereotypical worship band up on stage. It's great that the somewhat unknown musicians are finally coming out. Oh, and they really pulled all the stops out with "It is Well." There was hand raising and shrieking. . . .yes, shrieking. Maybe if they had continued to sing the chorus for a forty-third time someone would have stripped down and started dancing for the Lord.

Dear Coach Martin, I was wondering what it would take for me to get a picture of you in that terrifying wrestling stance you struck so powerfully on stage this morning. I'd like to hang one above my desk so that I can be properly motivated to get my homework done.

Since when were the words "balls," "testicles," "nuts," "groin," "jewels," "nads," "gonads," "sex," "junk," "cajones," "teabag," and "penis" banned on this campus? Granted, the switch from "dick" to "knee" was entertaining, but it would have been way funnier to hear the phrase, "He kicked him in the penis. He was injured. Injured bad."

Oh, and way to go with the acronym. I don't think there's a better way to unconsciously alert your listeners to the fact that you've been a coach all your life. . . .

In fact, I was so inspired by P.A.C.E. that I came up with a little version of my own:

P is for Pointless chapel sermons that don't say anything new.
A is for Albatross. Because an albatross might have actually had something useful to say.
C is for Coach. We've been over this one.
E is for Excursive. :) Go look that one up.

Thanks for closing with a call for unity. And to illustrate this call. . . . an insanely depressing story.

Let me see if I'm following you here, coach. What you're saying is, if we don't all join hands in symbolic, Christ-like unity, little boys will freeze to death. That reminds me of this other super-convincing argument I heard one time. . . .



"Keep near me and you will be safe."

Daedalus