What would it take to get me to bite? Here are 10 ways to make soccer awesome.

What’s a guy to do? The NBA is a question mark. There’s no NFL in sight. Tiger has a bum knee, and there’s not even any tennis on ESPN 2 right now.

It’s down to baseball, bowling, and lawn darts. When you’re sitting there seriously considering getting into lawn darts you know you’re just a hunger crazed shell of a man.

And then there was soccer. And I almost doused the tough ol’ sport with ketchup and tossed it down the hatch. Almost. I guess a starving person won’t eat just anything.

So, what would it take for me to serve up a healthy helping of soccer?

1. Pyrotechnics.
2. A hockey-like penalty system. David Beckham gets a yellow card? Yawn. David Beckham gets a 5 minute major for fighting? Oh yeah.
3. Also, fighting.
4. Sometimes you can use your hands. What if the ref would blow the whistle every so often, initiating a period of crazy mayhem where players could pick up the ball and run like heck.
5. Ties? This is America. In America we have the winners and the people the winners ripped off. Tie games remind us of land wars in South Central Asia. Those memories makes us angry. And we’re already angry because we have to watch soccer. Not good.
6. The dodge ball round. If the game ends after exactly 90 minutes (see #8 below) and the score is even, I say we end it with a game of sudden death dodge ball. Each team puts their best player in the middle of the center circle. Last player standing wins it for the team.
7. 5-on-5. There’s too much team work and patience with the current arrangement. There are 22 people running around out there! According to my multi-sport analysis, the number of players fielded is inversely proportional to the number of points scored per game. Soccer clearly needs more points. The only sport that scores less points is golf — and that’s because they’re trying for negative numbers.  Shrink the field and the number of players. That’s how I spell GOOOOOOOAAAAAAL!!!
8. An actual, predetermined, defined ending to the game. Soccer is missing that last-second-shot game-winning-field-goal as time expires thing that makes people stay to watch the second half.
9. No out of bounds. Play off the walls like indoor soccer. Better yet, let fans scramble for loose balls out of play and throw them back into play. Now THAT’S home field advantage. Who doesn’t like a little audience participation?
10. Ultraviolet light. MLS becomes BLL — Black Light League. You had me at black light.

Show me the show! It’s day 4 of IcePocalypse 2011, and we haven’t left our apartment in 87 hours. While most people are suffering from cabin fever, here are 10 reasons why we’re keeping it cool under this Texas-sided blanket of ice.

1. Four days of Sarah’s undivided attention.
2. Two words: JUDGE JUDY.
3. Acting super excited when revolutionary new beauty products come on.
4. Talking Sarah into calling for the risk-free trial.
5. Home made cookies.
6. Being caught up on homework for the first time since 2004.
7. Watching live helicopter footage of Texans in sports cars navigate frozen overpasses.
8. Skipping rocks on the frozen parking lot (Sorry about all the dings in your cars, neighbors. It’s really tough to aim those rocks.)
9. Time to think about the future.
10. JUDGE JUDY.
11. BONUS: When rolling blackouts knock out work’s email servers. We humans are so bad at resting.

Sarah cooked her first turkey and we enjoyed our first Thanksgiving alone. The delicious feast is a picture of the true bounty of God’s care. A jolly and quiet time to reflect and offer thanks for:

The laughter that warms us.
The challenges that shape us.
The faith that quiets us.
The hope that steadies us.
The love that keeps us.

Having Him, we have all we need. And even some of what we want. So, we give thanks.

A long-time pastor friend who has also been a long-time baseball coach is fond of a profound and simple saying that has helped hone my persepctive many, many times. It goes like this:

Success is doing the basics well and doing them consistently.

It’s an axiom that works for life, for sports, and for communication.

So, how do you saddle up those horses instead of being dragged through the jungle by them? As I’m thinking about communicators I really admire for their skill, three simple basics they all employ come to mind:

1. Read widely. Books, magazines, and newspapers are a common well of shared information.  This information forms hooks in the mind of your audience that can connect your new idea with ideas already embedded in the mind of the listener or viewer. Religious communicators are especially guilty of ignoring the “available means of persuasion” Aristotle loved to talk about. Most people are not intelligent enough or interested enough in what you have to say to process and internalize your ideas — regardless of the cleverness or usefulness of that idea. Connect what they know to what you want them to know.
2. Think deeply. Good communication takes time. Refine your ideas and your approach to delivering them for maximum impact. Reflect on your message from the listener’s or viewer’s point of view. Why should they care about what I have to say? How can I make my idea meaningful and memorable to my audience? Take the extra mental effort to provide a perspective that is unique to you and that takes audience needs and wants into account. This gives your message value. Anything less is a boring re-run.
3. Speak simply. A good communicator knows that imparting ideas is not a beauty contest or a forum for flexing intellectual muscle. Loquacious and verdant profundities impede comprehension. Get it? Those who know their subject best can explain it most simply. If you enjoy hearing your voice fill a room, then break out the thesaurus and the semicolons. If successful germination of ideas in the minds of others is the aim? Plant small, powerful seeds of compact thought.

By doing these communication basics well and consistently, a talented writer or speaker becomes compelling, an average one becomes effective, and even a guy like me can expect to successfully saddle a wild horse or two.

Wagons ho!

Facebook rolled out a major update yesterday call Places.

If you use the new feature, you can pinpoint where you are on a map so your facebook contacts can see where you’re hanging out. You can tag your friends who are standing around staring at their phones with you, and you can see other people near your location who are also staring at their phones waiting for something interesting to happen.

What exactly counts as “something interesting” is up for debate. Fans of this new feature say that it’s great for finding new restuarants and hangout spots and for helping you find nearby friends. Detractors argue that “something interesting” involves others being interested in muggings, murder, and the plundering of your worldly goods.

And admitting that you’re at the fabric store with your mom. (Talk about weekend fail.)

So, whether you’re wanting to take advantage of the new features…or vanish from the map, you’ll want to check your facebook privacy settings to make sure they reflect your desires. If you want to stay off the grid, here’s how to adjust your privacy settings to opt out of Facebook Places…. Click on the images to enlarge.

1. Locate your privacy settings

Sign in to Facebook. Click on the “account” tab and then click on the “privacy settings” link.

2. Access your privacy settings

From the privacy settings page, click “customize settings.”

3. Edit your privacy settings

To make sure your face doesn’t go places you’d rather not, change these three settings.

• Change the “places I check in to” setting to friends only.
• Make sure the “include me in ‘people here now’ after I check in” enable box is unchecked.
• Set “friends can check me in to places” to disabled. If you don’t disable this feature, then your friends can put your location on the map without your knowledge.

Oh the places you will go….

So, what do you think about facebook Places?

When your sweet tooth craves a Dharma initiative chocolate bar and you want to wash it down with a refreshing gulp of Dharma bottled water, here’s the simple recipe:

1. Rummage around your pantry for survival essentials.
2. Visit this website and print out Dharma labels.
3. Wrap those labels around your collected foodstuffs.

Presto! Dharma Delight.

Or, for even more creativity download this Dharma font. It’s equipped with a wide selection of Dharma logos for all your survival needs. Coffee, anyone?

Love it? Hate it? Share it!