A couple of months ago You Tube showed a clip of an Australian television reporter interviewing the Dali Lama with the help of the Dali Lama's translator. "Do you mind if I tell you a Dali Lama joke?" asks the reporter, and he gets the OK. "The Dali Lama walks into a burger joint . . . " which gets relayed from translator to an interested looking Dali Lama, ". . . and asks the server 'can you make me one with everything?' ". The Dali Lama looks at the translator confused, who returns the same look.
The site that hosts my blog has a box entitled "Next Blog". If someone happens to be reading your blog and they like the subject matter they can click on the Next Blog box and enjoy even more of the same. At least that's what I think is supposed to happen. There are millions of people who blog and there must be some algorithm that picks out key words and phrases and tries to match like subjects.
I figured this out after hitting the box from my own site. If I just had a post where I happened to mention a monkey and a dog (Pogo) then the next half dozen blogs would center around someones love of their cats, dogs or hamsters. I don't care much for dogs or cats but the hamster site was quite interesting. Some lady from Wales or England titles her blog with a quote from a children's book that, and I dearly wish I could remember the actual phrase, talks about hamsters getting out of their cages at night and eating your brains. British humor I think.
Back when I was posting on my 2 Timothy 2:2 blog I got a phone call from my tech conscious son-in-law who also happens to be involved in youth ministry. He informs me that there is a site he found that can tell you how your blog does on a rating scale for youngsters. Mine was rated restricted - for mature adults. Why? Those algorithms picked out words from a particular post I did on the blood of Christ. It seems that repeated use of the words blood, sacrifice and death get one blacklisted.
I have yet to get "Next" to other humor sites so I'm thinking that either I'm not using enough funny words, or maybe the algorithms are as confused as the Dali Lama in Australia.
When I do posts on spiritual subjects I can get connected to some really neat blogs, all of which (including the animal blogs) are far more beautiful than my site. These are written by pastors and lay, conservative and liberal. I tend to get connected to more conservative sites, I think because I quote a lot of scripture. But even here one must be careful.
If you go into Barnes and Noble to look for Christian books you will notice that the New Age and Eastern Religion sections are twice as large as the Christian sections. And mixed into the Christian sections are some pretty weird stuff. And that's exactly what I find by next blogging.
I was just at a site which featured some really beautiful photos as well as some nice quotes from Psalms. The author in that day's post was waxing poetic about a talk her husband brought back with him from an ecumenical conference he attended. This conference featured the Dali Lama, the head bishop of the Episcopal Church in the US, a Jewish rabbi and some other notables. The talk was by the Jewish rabbi and was on the redemptive power of kindness. And I'm betting it was rated PG, redemption here not including words such as blood, sacrifice and death.
The conference reminded me about the story of the priest, the rabbi and the Pentecostal pastor who were out fishing on a pond. After about an hour in the sun and each having brought with them and consumed appropriate beverages, the priest gets up and tells the other two that he needs to go to shore for a moment. He steps out of the row boat, onto the water, and walks to shore, returning about 5 minutes later.
As soon as the priest returns the rabbi gets up and says; "Father Ted, I think it's my turn". He too steps upon the water, walks to shore, and returns a little later.
All this time the Pentecostal pastor is having an internal struggle. "I've got more faith in my little pinky than both of these gentlemen combined" he tells himself. Finally after about 10 more minutes he stands up and announces to the other two that nature's call has come to him as well. He steps out of the boat . . . and sinks straight to the bottom.
Father Ted looks at the rabbi and says; "You think we should have told him where the rocks are?
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