It’s an entrenched tradition… each of the past 67 Saturdays I’ve arranged the binary ones and zeros to display yet another collection of linkiness. I’ve been working on catching up from a huge backlog of posts to read, and this week I finally got down to zero in the queue. Then I took a break and I’m back up to 400. Oh well. Anyway, somewhere along the line I started prefacing my link lists with riddles, jokes, puns… I don’t know how this happend or why, just that Sonja likes it. Everyone else may be groaning… but hey, whaddayagonnado? Far be it from me to admit that I like some of these jokes… everyone needs a good groan once in a while. And come on, don’t people secretly like retelling some of the groaners? Not sure why, but there seems to be a whole other kind of enjoyment for bad jokes.

• Two boll weevils grew up in a small town east of nowhere, South Carolina. One went to Hollywood and became a famous actor. The other stayed behind in the cotton fields and never amounted to much. The second one, naturally, became known as the lesser of two weevils.
• Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak finally got very cold, but when they lit a fire in the craft to stay warm, it sank — proving once and for all that you can’t have your kayak and heat it, too.
• So this neutron goes into a bar and asks the bartender, “How much for a beer?” Bartender replies, “For you, no charge.”
• Why don’t blind people skydive? Because it scares the hell out of the dog.
• Did you hear about the dyslexic musician who sought fame and fortune? Desperate enough to do anything to achieve his goal, he sold his soul to Santa.
• Two cartons of yogurt walk into a bar. The bartender, a tub of cottage cheese, says to them, “Hey, we don’t serve your kind in here.” One of the yogurt cartons glares at him and asks, “Why not? We’re cultured individuals.”
• A grasshopper walks into a bar, and the bartender says “Hey! We have a drink named after you!” The grasshopper looks really surprised, and says “Really? You have a drink named Steve?!”
• Did you hear about the magician that walked around a corner and turned into a bar?
• At the end of a long night of drinking after yet another foiled scheme, a villain stumbles out of the bar. He sees a nun outside, walks over to her and slaps her in the face. She’s stunned, but not as much as when he then punches her in the stomach, knocking her down. He proceeds to kick her several times before spitting on her — he leans over and sneers, “Not so tough tonight, are you Batman?“
• Okay, if none of these appeal, I have to say I enjoyed a monkish joke that Jamie posted a little while back.

Yeah, well, after a congrats to Bill & Imbi, on to the linkage!

1. Alan Hirsch offers a three-point an apostolic job description. Sounds easy, right? I took note as it’s supposed to fit my APTSE profile. As if that’s not enough, he followed up with a post on how apostolic ministry exerts its influence, which had a second, third, and fourth part. I haven’t finished reading yet — it’ll probably just put more things on my to-do list. “To Do: #1. Plant church.” Great, what do I do on Tuesday?
2. JR Woodward on Charles Van Engen’s Gods Missionary People: Rethinking the Purpose of the Local Church
3. Reason #1,895 why I’m tired of nominal Christianity, “Church-A-Plex”: A cartoon that says it all.
4. Firefox plugin: Resurrect Pages 2.0.2 ends 404 pages by digging up cached pages to serve instead.
5. N.T. Wright: A note on the subject of debt relief, 12 May 2008
6. Think Before You Voicemail — voicemail is dead.
7. Jordon Cooper: What Would Republican Jesus Do? …just for the line, “it almost sounds like [Mark Driscoll] has William Shatner disease, that is he is becoming a parody of himself.”
8. Ed Stetzer’s Questions for McChurch: concerns about the multi-site movement. Geoff Surratt of Seacoast Church responds and dialogues with Ed.
9. Jamie Arpin-Ricci considers The Saint John’s Bible
10. The Reverend’s New Clothes
11. Grace is asking questions about string theory which are really… intriguing.
12. iMonk on Bible Translations: Who Translated the New Living Translation? (And More Thoughts on Advocating English Translations)
13. Bob Hyatt nominates the Worst Blog Comment of the Year, from a post about Christians and tipping… and resisting the urge to tip generously. Sheeesh. You’d think that Christians would want to bless people with an extra couple of bucks, but noooo…..
14. Hauerwas: “I’ll Probably Vote for Obama”
15. At the end of a series, John Stackhouse liked The Shack
16. Jesus in China: Christianity’s rapid rise
17. Ben Witherington gets taken to task for taking Frank Viola to task… the postlude to his series (linked) goes back to the Didache. Unfortunately, everyone involved now sounds strident.
18. Steve McCoy collects contributions for lists of Five Books that Changed Your Mind. What are yours?
19. Len Hjalmarson interviews Alan Jamieson about his new book, Chrysalis: The Hidden Transformation in the Journey of Faith. Opening question: “Alan, it sounds like you wrote this book with a specific audience in mind.. those who have either left the ‘organized’ church or those who for whatever reason feel they can’t pursue their journey within the church. Can you comment?”
20. Faith & Politics meets Economics… and You Supply the Caption
21. The new fivefold ministries: CEO, CFO, CAO, CIO, and CSO. Oh, wait — The Church is NOT a Business. I keep forgetting.
22. Ben Sternke and others are Tuning Out Christian Radio. It’s too sappy.
23. I missed this last month, but I still want to mention International Day in Support of Victims of Torture: Stop Torture Once & For All. A belated link is still worthwhile.
24. JR Woodward has finished his series on Developing a Rhythm of Life: “Two things are important to consider in setting a rule [rhythm] for yourself: paying attention to your heart’s desire and being realistic. Taking both of these into account through prayer, meditation, and conversation with others, and using both of them to discern your rule, will help you develop a rule you can live with for a lifetime.”

Y’all come back next week, now, y’hear?