Jes' fer kicks...

Imagine your were putting together a football team (American football), but this is no ordinary football team, it is a football team composed of super heroes; heroes only, mind you.

So you are putting together a football team of superheroes, who would be on your team?

Things to remember:

1. Superman (Clark Kent) already plays for the Kansas City Chiefs.
2. Bruce Wayne (Batman) does not play but sponsors your team, so money is not really an issue.
3. Bruce Banner (The Incredible Hulk) is battling cancer after his over exposure to Gamma radiation finally caught up to him.

Who would be on your team of super heroes?

It's been awhile

I've done the math enough to know the dangers of our second guessing...

I have decided to not apologize for not updating in over three or four months, nor am I going to promise that I'll update more regularly, I simply am not going to be following any sort of strick or even semi consistent schedule of updating. I haven't updated in awhile for many reasons, most of which I'd rather not share or trouble you with, but I guess first and foremost I am just lazy... I have probably said that plenty of times.

Life has been going pretty well over the past few weeks, school on schedule, work not too busy. I am taking an Ancient Greek course this semester, I'm thoroughly enjoying this class I must admit. I originally started taking this class becasue I really wanted to be able to read the new testament of the bible in the language in which it was written. Lately, it has come to my attention that this could become a valuable asset if I were to eventually help in translation of the bible. But that's a good long ways down the line.

I have been going through a lot of transitions the past few weeks, actually getting on track with everything, staying on top of my school and to do list at least a majority of the time. I don't know, maybe I have finally matured past being a college freshman.

Currently I have started reading (and by started reading I mean I have read the introduction so far) the book Omnivores Dilemma. I don't know much about it other than it's about food, and eating healthy, an that apparently reading it will destroy me. I am looking forward to reading this book but I still need to find time to sit down and read it.

I suppose what has been sitting on my mind most lately is the whole idea of sacrifice, ya know. I have been thinking a lot about what I want to do and what is required of me to accomplish this. I know, almost without a doubt, that I am going to return to the mission field when I am done with college, but what that looks like fo me right here right now is kind of a work in progress. I have an extraordinary passion for arab islam, a.k.a.: the middle east area of the world. So the questions I have been asking myself recently is what I need to be doing now, right here right now, to prepare myself for something like that. And even if I am not called to go to that area of the world, is what I am doing going to affect me for the better no matter where I go? I have been trying to scale down on many a things, such as food, I am making an honest effort be aware of what I am putting into my body. I have even started in planning on trying to learn how hunt with a bow, gut and clean a deer or orther various small animal, and prepare it to be stored then eaten. I want to do this simply because I want to see my food from walking around/alive to going into my body.
There are many other things that I have been doing but nothing really worth making remarks about right now... at 11:30 at night, gaaa... tired. Anyway, I am pretty tired, and I know I probably left plenty of unfinished tangents, but right now, it's too late.
Write more at some uncertain point in an unspecific future time.

The Arboretum

The Arboretum
Hiya all, i know it's been a while... well, quite awhile since i posted a new blog, but here i am, again.

I am now working... i know, it's like the twilight zone, "Rusty? A REAL job?!" those of you who know me should get that.
I work at the arboretum at UK were i go to college. For those of you who do not know what an arboretum is i will tell you.
The Arboretum is a plot of land, about 100+ arcres, set aside to recreate different ecological regions, the UK arboretum is set to recreate the ecology of the sevel different regions of Kentucky, I do not know all of the names of the regions by heart yet but the one i have been working in the most is called the Mississippi Embayment area and is located in the Jackson Purchase. Now, this area of Kentucky is a wetland of sorts, lots of water and marshy/swampy. To hold water like this the soil must be clay, which happens to be a rather hostile environment for plant life. It doesn't help that the clay which we are planting in is heavily compacted due to poor planning on the contracters part...
For the first two weeks i work there i worked in the Mississippi Embayment almost non-stop. This week my boss is having me work on other areas of the arboretum that are in dire need of weeding, watering, planting, mulching, etc. It's kinda hard some times because there are five people that are paid employees under Jim, my boss, and we are handling all the work for all the regions in nearly alone.
We get volunteers but Jim, who worked in Michigan at an Arboretum before coming to Kentucky, says that Kentucky students are largely apathetic to the environment and he has had to deal with being badly under-staffed for the most part.
But he's a hard worker and a good manager and knows EXACTLY what he's doing, i have never met anyone who knows more about plants than any two or three people before in my life.
I have to say that i didn't incredibly enjoy this job at first because i have been struggling to end my bought of laziness and this is the means by which i am doing just that. I have fought with myself to continue going to work everday and i have even though to was losing my mind as some points, but i'm pretty sure that was laziness withdrawls, when i really think about it. And the work really sucks some times, back-breaking work in the 90 degree heat, with humidity 8 hours a day four days a week can kinda get to you, but i have never done anything more fulfilling. I am getting to the point now where i am really enjoying my job, working after hours, and for no extra pay, is seeming more and more enticing every day.
It is kinda cool because the things you plant you kinda get connected with and you start to feel a kind of parental responsibility for them and really feel a desire to care for and tend to life you plant, ya know. For instanct just today, i was given the opportunity to plant a pine sapling, it's small now but after a few years it will grow into a massive pine tree... I planted that and if i help to take care of it (because the whole arboretum is really Jim's baby) i will see the fruits of my labor day by day.

And in a few years down the road I will show people that pine tree and I can say the I planted it.

Remember, remember the 30th of December

For those of you who didn't know, Saddam Hussein is dead, hung on the December 30th 2006.
His execution was performed on the days just before a large Muslim holiday, according to Muslim law you cannot execute anyone on this holiday, on top of that they wanted to make his death a momentous occasion that would be forever remembered as the day that Saddam Hussein was executed.

That was one of the worst days of my life...

It is a bizzare thing to imagine, isn't it, that i would be upset about Saddam Hussein being hung.
He did horrible thing, killed countless people, it was a major celebration for thousands of people that an evil man such as Saddam Hussein would have finally recieved his just reward for his wicked deeds. Right?

I would say wrong, until now i have not really been able to articulate why i believe this but i began to really realize i need to have a reason to tell people when they ask about my incredibly strange depression brought on by Saddam Hussein being put to death.

I suppose that the most foremost and obvious reason that i want to state first before any other is that Saddam Hussein was human, which means that no matter what he did, no matter how horrible or evil it may have seemed, he was still a man, not a demon not the devil, a man, capable of good and evil... just like the rest of us.
I remember seeing and hearing a lot of negativity about Saddam, i guess that is understandable considering that few people think the same way i do, no offense to anyone.
I was nearly destroyed when i heard that he had died that day, i was actually in a fairly good mood that day, then i heard he had been hung, suddenly i was depressed. One of the people on the top of my list of (living) people to meet was now dead.
I wanted to meet him, i wanted to show him something that had been misrepresented to him by Americans... Jesus, i know that it's crazy to think about or even to conceive of, ya know, i mean i knwo it was a pretty fantastical pipe dream to think i could have met him or even if i did that he would not have killed me for being American or Christian.
But you know what, no one is any less deserving of the love of Jesus Christ, no one. And that love was probably never shown to him to any extent. The only Jesus Saddam Hussein might have ever seen is America bombing his country, overthrowing his government, and putting him to death. What kind of Jesus is that!? No kind...
I cannot say that i agreed with anything that he did, i agree that he did so pretty evil things. But nothing he did was any worse or any more deserving of death than anything that you or i do or have done or will do. He killed people in brutal ways without much rhyme or reason, but i have fallen short of the glory of God as well, and so have you, under different circumstances you could be praising the death of the evil dictator Rusty Summay, or the brital serial killer Rusty Summay, but that's not how it happened, we praise the death of the evil dictator Saddam Hussein.
I can't and i won't, Saddam Hussein was just as much of a sinner as i am daily.
That is part of the reason that i have not and will never watch the video of Saddam being hung, that and i find it kind of sick that anyone would want to watch someone die, not to say that i have never felt like watching someone die, but i don't now, the part of me that liked that is now dead, and i intend to make sure that that part of me remains dead.

I find it funny that there is a stark contrast of personality and character in the two people Ghandi and Ted Bundy...
Between the two people remember Ghandi as a great man and a good man who fought without violence for the freedom of India from the British. Ted Bundy is remembered as the psychopathis killer who murdered more than 30 women, was a rapist and a sociopath.
This is a strange topic to go into considering i have been talking about Saddam Hussein, i know.
Between those two men one of them is remebered as a good man and the other is remembered as a bad man.
Between those two men one of them accepted Jesus: Ted Bundy.
I know, i know, there are those who believe that he did it just to gain sympathy form the courts, but we cannot judge his heart, and i sincerely hope that he did, i would love to know that Ted Bundy is in heaven right now 100% forgiven for all the atrosities he committed in life, and 100% loved by Jesus.
I would love to say the same thing about Ghandi, but Ghandi never even claimed to have accepted Christ, once again we cannot judge his heart, and i would sincerely hope that he would have accepted Jesus but as far as we know he did not.
Grace saves the day, a killer is in Heaven and a good man is in Hell, but that's not how it works. Being a good person doesn't get you into heaven, sadly enough, but beautifully enough being a bad person doesn't guarantee you Hell.

Jesus died for everyone, you, me, the pope, Billy Graham, Saddam Hussein, Ghandi, Ted Bundy, Kim Jong Il.
It drives me absolutely out of my mind when people talk about how the hate someone, because of there character, but i can't really say anything to them, i can only feel sad for them and sort of sympthize with them because i have hated before too, it is not a good feeling, nothing that happens to the people you hate is enough. But, as was well stated in "American History X" 'What, by hating, have i accomplished? How am i better through by being angry at anyone?" i my have misquoted that, but i think that was the jist of what the guy was saying.

I don't really have a good way to end this post, but i really don't want a very final closing because i will never stop loving all people, because Jesus loves them too. I would hope that you can love people like Saddam Hussein too, and if not, i can only feel sorry for you that you are not sharing in the love of Jesus Christ.

Lyrical Stylist

My name is Jonas
I'm carrying the wheel

Thanks for all you've shown us
This is how we feel

Come sit next to me
Pour yourself some tea
Just like gran'ma made
when we couldn't find sleep
Things were better then
Once but never again
We've all left the den
Let me tell you 'bout it.

The choo-choo train left right on time
The ticket cost only your mind
The driver said, "Hey man we go all the way!"
Of course we were willing to pay

My name is Weepel
Gotta box full of your toys

Their fresh out of batteries
They're still makin' noise

Tell me what to do
Now the tank is dry
Now this wheel is flat
And you know what else
Guess what I recieved
In the mail today
Words of deep concern
From my little brother

The building's not going as he planned
The foreman has injured his hand
The dozer will not clear a path
The driver swears he learned his math

The workers are going home
The workers are going home
The workers are going home
The workers are going home


- My Name is Jonas
- Weezer


It's another one of those days when you hear a song and the lyrics stick out to you so much, somehow they strike a chord inside, somewhere and somehow you know deep down that the lyrics make sense to you in such a profound way that you really can help but hurt along side the singer.
That's what happened with this song, I could explain what this song meant to me, but before I do that I would rather that you heard it for yourself and drew your own meaning from it.
Also it's one of those songs that you really have to hear the passion the singer sings with, ya know.

Pro-Choice

I have come to the desicion that I am Pro-Choice...

Now before anyone who is reading this goes ape on me (or simply starts shaking their head saying, "Oh Lord, Rusty, what classes have you been taking?") let me explain what I mean by saying this, at it will take some time because a lot of factors have lead me to believe this.

Tonight I went to an SWA 'event', which is apparently different than an SWA 'meeting', different story, different time, at this event I watched, with a group of fellow social work major students, a film titled "When Abortion Was Illegal" (I am 73% that is the correct name).
At any rate the film was about women who had had abortions during the period between when abortion was illegalized and when the law was passed re-legallizing it in the US.
The stories these women told were pretty much the same: they were pregnant, they did not want to be pregnant, they could not recieve medical abortions becuase it was illegal (and the doctors who wanted to help could not or would not out of fear of being imprisoned or loosing their medical licenses or both). They all tried to have do-it-yourself abortions, some succeeded others did not, all of the women ended up having an abortion and surviving to tell the horrors of the tale. None of them learned that it was not that they shouldn't have an abortion and thus follow the law of the times only they ceased to seek out abortion as an option out of fear of the pain they endured.
(Gasps for air)

Now for me it's really simple... STOP HAVING SEX ASSHOLE!!!

Pardon my language, but i needed to get that out of my system.
I have been holding that comment in since... the first time I had ever heard it suggested that abortion should be legallized to prevent homemade abortion deaths.
However, I cannot say that to anyone but people who know me and who know that I am not talking to them.
If I were to say that to anyone else it would go against my nature to say it anyway but lovingly (that's not cheesy, it's just true).

So as I was sitting in this meeting tonight and the group was discussing dealing with abortion, pro-life/choice, etc. in the career path of a social worker, but as a social worker you should show complete lack of bias toward one position or the next.

A lot of the subjects that came up during the event were pretty interesting, one in particular was one of the three guys, in at the event of 9 plus one [female] advisor brought up the subject that people who are pro-life tend to use that name in an effort to make those that are pro-choice seem as if they are actually pro-death. Which I guess being pro-life for my entire life up until about thirty minutes ago helps me to understand what he means. As a pro-lifer, in general, we have the tendancy to look at the pro-choicers and see them as people who relish in killing [unborn] infants.
But if you really set back and look at the whole picture the problem had miles of gray area and is not even close to being black and white.

Let me try to rationalize from an social worker's view point first, try is the key word:
Women should be allowed the liberty of being able to choose for themselves whether or not the want to have a child, if it is their body and they are the ultimate deciders of how they are going to act then the birth or abortion of their unborn child is ultimately up to them.
This is a perplexing dilema, as you can clearly see. The choice should ultimately be the mother's. But them you could venture to argue if it is ethical to allow the mother the liberty of aborting her unborn child if you are, by aborting the fetus, killing an innocent life. Then you could get into the whole arguement of when a child is actually considered living, which I really don't want to do.

Now let me go off on a tangent here for a second, i will tie it in... hopefully.

For those of you who don't know, a guy I know named Josh is a pretty smart dude, but he claims that he 'used to be smart'. I don't know him really well but a friend of mine knows him and he visited one summer in Bosnia, since then i've tried to keep up reading his blogs (which you can get to at "http://www.rmfo-blogs.com/josh").
One specific blog he wrote addressed an issue of a group of highly conservative christians wanting to take over South Carolina and secede from the US inevitably creating their own christian nation.
The very thought of the idea sound perfectly psychotic to me but don't take my word for it you can read for yourself at "http://christianexodus.org". In his blog about the issue he said, and I quote, "I don’t ever see it being anything significant, but I’m worried about something. The minority in South Carolina. The Muslims (I know they’re there somewhere), the liberal Christians, the folks who just don’t care about religion. Can Christians justify a position in which they force their morality upon those people? Is it “Christian” to legislate everyone into our morality? I understand the position that these people think their ultimately doing good for the non-Christian population because legislating what they believe to be how God would have us to live, and that is the best way of living. However, is forcing that onto a unwilling population justifiable under a Christian ethic of love? Is coersion into a Christian morality justifiable?".

Now to tie this all in...

Why I am Pro-Choice:
I think, even as a follower and lover of Jesus Christ, and as a lover of life, that a woman should be entitled to the liberty of choosing whether or not she wants to be a mother. That does not necessarily mean I agree with her carrying out that desire, but I do think she should be allowed to decide for herself. I dont think that it would be true love to force someone to obey a set code of conduct, after all Don Miller (on the subject of the tree of knowledge of good and evil) said, "You cannot have true obedience without and equal opportunity of disobedience."

So there you have it, I would love it, absolutely adore it if I could get some feed back on to this post.

The "Highlight"

I know! I haven't posted in like forever, so here goes.

Yesterday, we went to Sarajevo for a co-op event, the co-op is a group of TCK's who get together to either chill or take some sort of educational class, all organized by Miss Tifa Lifa Loo Fa Loo. Well yesterday we were in Sarajevo for a Lock-in, a stay-up-all-night-just-because-you-can event (to the lay person), and the doors to the building were locked so we couldn't leave.
I personally styed up from 7:00am on June 13th until about 11:00am on June 14th, so I ran a 29 hour day, but that shouldn't have made that much of a difference, I think I might be sick of something.

Anyway, teh real reason I am writing this blog is because of something that happened before the lock-in. We went walking through town, to Baščaršia and such. On the way back to the lock-in's location I was walking next to Jana talking with her about this and that, when suddenly I had an epiphany. I told Jana my idea, involving her, myself and Larissa, who knew nothing of the plan.
We quietly engaged on Larissa, who had her back turned to us, walking in front of us. When we got right up behind her Jana counted to three and I said, "Hey there Larissa." while Jana pinched Larissa's butt.
Larissa jumped around and freaked out, thinking that it was me who had pinched her butt. We all nearly died laughing.

So there you have it, the highlight of my lock-in trip.