Gotta love the FailBlog, with classics like the photo here (maybe it’s just that Hummers dis-inspire logic) and the Fire Drill Fail. They even get that hotbed of failure, the church sign… which isn’t exactly rocket surgery.

And so we embark on another set of random links… abbreviated somewhat due to my reading schedule, which was shorted by the number of hours that aren’t in the week. Or is it that nobody’s saying anything? Naw, couldn’t be that. We begin with what doesn’t quite pass for humour.

• Why didn’t the little girl want to leave nursery school? She wanted to be a nurse.
• Have you heard about the new corduroy pillows? They’re making headlines…
• When is a school paper not a school paper? When it’s turned into the teacher.
• Why does a chicken coop have only two doors? If it had four, it would be a chicken sedan.
• Why couldn’t the faucet be within 100 feet of the pasta bowl? There was a restraining order.
• What do you call epileptic lettuce? Seizure salad.
• Patient to psychiatrist: “I keep wanting to cover myself in gold paint.” Psychiatrist: “Sounds like you have a gilt complex.”
• What do you call a dead magician’s assistant? An abracadaver.
• How do spies send secret messages in a forest? By moss code.
• A middle eastern king was down on his luck, so began to sell off his valuables. The last to go was the Star of the Euphrates, at that time the most valuable diamond in existence. He went to a pawnbroker, who offered him 100,000 Rials for it. “Are you crazy?”, exclaimed the king. “I paid one million Rials for this gem! Don’t you know who I am?” The pawnbroker looked at the king and replied, “When you wish to pawn a star, makes no difference who you are.”

“Coupe.” Epileptic lettuce. Abra-cadaver. Alright, I have to quit, because some study said that A bad joke could be dangerous, and why take the risk? Though if you need more, it may interest you to learn — as it interested me this week — that not only does Wikipedia have a “Silly Things” page, they also keep or kept a compendium of Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense, with its own “Best of” pages, which has some really entertaining reading mixed into it.

But on to the random linkage, shall we? In an ordered list, as is our usual custom? Sure, maybe it is an oxymoron, like “disposable income” or “postal service” or “Microsoft Operating System” or “steel wool” or “smart bomb” or “Cardinal sin” or “religious tolerance” or “civil disobedience” or “common abnormality” or “final draft” or “conventional wisdom” or “passive aggression” or “reality television”. But we’ve always done it this way, and you know what that means. If you don’t know what an oxymoron is, Wilson Follett says, “The good oxymoron, to define it by a self-illustration, must be a planned inadvertency.” Meanwhile, Yogi Berra’s son Dale said, “Our similarities are different.” And Andy Warhol said, “I am a deeply superficial person.”

And that, as they say, is that. Next…

1. Notes from TED 2009 — nice note-taking skills.
2. I hadn’t heard last week that Ralph Winter died, but Andrew Jones and Ed Stetzer discuss.
3. Off the wall: The astonishing 3D murals painted on the sides of buildings by a trompe l’oeil artist
4. Presentation Guru Garr Reynolds on Making presentations in the TED style — includes links to TED Talks as specific style examples.
5. The great theologian: a parable (based on a true story) — and a beautiful parable it is, from Ben Myers
6. Pick One
7. On Thursday I attended the memorial service for the mother of a friend of mine. I had never met his mother and the rest of the family was probably trying to figure out who I was as I offered condolences. I discovered that when you attend a funeral where you know next-to no-one else there, other such people will spot you and ask, “You don’t know anyone else here either, do you?” That’s how I met Ron, who explained his relationship to the family… but honestly I didn’t keep it all straight despite my nodding. I actually hadn’t met the rest of the family, though I had spoken with one of them in another context in the past. At such occasions, you get to peer into the life of a person and their family through an array of photographs that are displayed for purposes of reminiscence. For me, there was nothing to reminisce about, but glimpses of a person’s distant past are always interesting when you meet them for the first time in their old age. In the case of this lady, her wedding photo made her look like royalty in her tiara… and she wore it very well in that old photo. That’s what I thought of when I saw this pop up on my horizon: This Will Brighten Your Day
8. Jonathan Brink contemplates A Five Fold Don’t Have To Do It All Ministry Approach
9. J.R. Woodward wraps up his Blog Series on The Good News tomorrow.
10. I haven’t listened yet, but the audio of the sessions from Ecclesia Network‘s National Gathering looks like time well spent. And it’s true, I think everyone has a network now. This one’s been around a while and has some good men involved with it.
11. Ad campaigns invite people to church (via) …and it won’t work; let me count the ways…
12. An update on an item from last week… Ur Video: The American Patriot’s Bible. I repeat, this thing is a downright dangerous heretical reinterpretation of American history commingled with the biblical narrative… and I don’t even need to see it to realize that. Thomas Nelson, no less. They should be ashamed — this is more like something I’d expect from The Franklin Mint. Why am I not surprised it’s in the NKJV? Or am I stereotyping?