A Christmas miracle: Texas hen lays a cross-egg

Lately there seems to be a common theme here, but at least this one doesn't seem to be completely random.

In Texas, a hen has laid an egg with a cross on it. The couple who found it say that it's a "divine sign" from God, a Christmas miracle, perhaps. No one's quite sure what it means, though. I guess we'll need another egg to interpret this one?

Personally, I think I'm more of a fan of golden eggs. But I think geese lay those, right? Geese are pretty nasty.

Here's the egg with the cross:

It looks pretty disgusting. I've never been much of a fan of brown eggs anyway, but I especially stay away from those covered in strange wrinkles.

And, of course, I would not eat the egg if it had a cross on it. I, too, act out of self-preservation and thus I would quickly be on the phone with the local news media and the next day the cross-egg would be on Ebay. And then maybe I'd be able to buy a slightly better brand of frozen food . . .

Here's a news video with the woman who found the egg:

She seems normal, right? Heh.

I'm really interested in what will happen to the chicken who layed the wrinkled cross-egg.

Sunday dinner, perhaps?

Perhaps,

Ryan King

On Seeing Jesus and Mary Everywhere

Doesn't it seem like this happens once a month? It feels that way to me, at least.

In Massachusetts, an image of Jesus appeared on a woman's iron.

You can't make this stuff up, right? I don't know. Maybe you can:

Throughout these long years that I've endured I've been keeping a sort of odd tally of these occurrences.

Jesus and Mary have appeared on several different objects, ranging from cooked and breaded fish, to overpasses, and even pieces of toast.

This posting by me, How to Have the Virgin Mary for Dinner, from May of this year is a recap of almost every Mary sighting that's occurred recently. Nice title, by the way. (I'd like to congratulate the May 2009 version of myself, ha ha). 

This picture is still my favorite Mary sighting of all time:

Is it weird that I have a favorite? Probably. I even think this was the background on my computer for a while. (That last one is certainly weird.)

But I think it's weirder to be seeing these things in the first place. I'm sure there's some kind of syndrome for it. I don't necessarily look for images of deities in the inanimate objects that populate my life. I use an iron to iron, I eat fish and toast, and I drive under (or over?) overpasses.

I think I will start keeping an eye out, though; that could be a hobby, right?

Or maybe I'll just start purposely burning things in the hope that I'll eventually get something close. Or maybe I should pray more.

Praying for a face to appear on his burnt Pop Tart (maybe Kellogg's will sponsor me!),

Ryan King

No ambulances . . .

This past Sunday I ran my first half-marathon, or 13.1 miles. Portions of my legs are still sore.

Here are some pictures:

This is before the race, with my brother in law Erik

This is about five minutes after the race

No ambulance for me . . .

There are also professional photographs, but I still haven't decided just how much this event is worth commemorating, ha ha.

Here's a video of me crossing the finish line. About 4 seconds in you can hear them say my name, and about 18 seconds in you can see me cross in the back on the right side of the screen. And I high-five two dudes whom I do not know:

The last three miles or so of the race were pretty tough, because I'm not too used to running that distance yet. That should change, though. I'm not going anywhere for Thanksgiving because I have too much schoolwork (and thus will not be running much), but over Christmas break my goal is to run 100 miles. And next summer I plan on averaging 40 miles a week. In comparison, this past summer I averaged about 20 miles a week at best.

At best,

Ryan King

The Cannibals Among Us

Yeah, they're still around. You might not realize it, but that dude staring at you at the mall wasn't some pervert.

He was just hungry.

Cannibalism has come a long way since the days of the wild tribes on far-flung islands. (Maybe that's not how it actually was, but that's what I see in my head when I think of "cannibals.")

<----- Yeah, that's what they look like in my head.

And this was their version of a buffet. ----->       

But most modern-day cannibals are a bit more discreet.

See Jeffrey Dahmer for an example.                            

Or sometimes cannibals are just in unfortunate situations. Perhaps they were stupid and decided to travel West at a bad time of the year. These people perhaps deserve to have to choose between eating human flesh and starving.

See the Donner Party for an example. (Here's a tip: deny their invitation. It's not much of a party.)

The point of all of this is that in Russia three fine young homeless cannibals were arrested for killing someone, partially eating the body, and then selling the remaining parts to an apparently unknowing kebab stand.

They don't know if any perusers of the kebab stand actually consumed any human flesh.

But you know someone probably did.

It makes you wonder, who are the cannibals among us?             

And does anyone have any good recipes?

Ryan King

How early is too early for Christmas music?

At this time two years ago I was already listening to Christmas music. Last year I waited until just after Thanksgiving to begin listening.

I'm not sure how it's going to be this year. In my mind, the last few months have been so much of a hectic blur that it feels like it's September, so I guess maybe I'll want to start hearing Christmas music sometime in February.

My favorite Christmas song is "Marshmallow World" by Darlene Love, and produced by Phil Spector. It's actually more of a "winter" song than a Christmas song, but whatever:

I like this song for a number of reasons. First of all, it just seems pretty ridiculous in its subject matter and how (almost disgustingly) happy it is. I think I would be very happy living in a marshmallow world, too.

Second of all, I love how it sounds. I guess taking these two things together, it means that I'm happy when I listen to it; a very important component of a favorite song.

When I get bored sometimes I think about the future, and today I thought that I would really like to make a Christmas album of standards and maybe some things written by myself. I've never written a Christmas song before, but today I wrote about half of one (no chorus). There's no rush, I guess, because I definitely don't have time to do this now.

I'd like for it to sound similar to the song above, which was a part of Phil Spector's classic album A Christmas Gift For You. You'd be surprised how many of those songs you hear on the radio around Christmas time.

Anyway, here's to the upcoming Christmas season!

Season,

Ryan King