note to self: stay away from this diet pill.

how big is your head?

i was browsing something on cafe press the other night. out of many, many products, two bore the stamp of “made in the USA!”

loud and proud.

bright red.

bubbling over with pride.

MADE IN THE USA!

so…what you’re really telling me is 98% of all your products are NOT made in the USA? yeah. maybe that’s not so smart…

when bragging rights beat out common sense, nobody wins.

except for “oh” bama…

most of the time, i have a pretty good “tact-filter” up.

today is not one of those days. so with that in mind, please excuse any abrasiveness that may emerge.

flowerdust doesn’t get too many negative comments. i don’t mind when people disagree with me at all, so discussion is good. but a couple days ago we had one of our first “critical” comments.

not a big deal. i was actually a little excited. i’ve learned to take criticism and keep the source in mind when accepting it.

however, bloggy-curiosity had me click and click and click and follow links and read blogs with believers criticizing (in unloving and very prideful ways) other believers. the the people who disagreed would respond in kind. then everyone would just blah-blah-blah and before you know it, you have almost 14,000 words (the average non-fiction book is about 50-60,000 words).

one recently eruption of discouragement i read had 60-something comments and 14,000 WORDS!!

14,000 words on ONE post!

and what good is going to come out of it?

um….probably nothing!

so, as the title says, i think we could use a good dose of shut yo mouth! i’m all for edifying discussion. but seriously. i think we all can agree that most of what happens in situations like that is just a big fat waste of time.

an apartment full of boxes somewhere in dallas…chris and anne are discussing final moving things, including the new living room furniture they picked out last week.

chris: so, when is our furniture getting delivered?

anne: um…i thought you said we were going to wait until we moved up there to order it…

chris: yeah, i said that, but i thought you’d get it anyway!

anne: (mouth hangs open overdramatically)…i was just being a submissive wife! i’m not going to spend a bunch of money without us being on the same page.

chris: i just assumed that what i say has no meaning!

anne: so you want me to order it?

chris: it would nice to have furniture when we get there.

lesson: wives, don’t be submissive to your husbands. evidently what they say has no meaning…

“christians like info porn”

one of my friends, who’s been working in research and statistics for the last decade or so, wrote that in an email to me.

what led us to that conversation were some statistics many of us have seen before. i know i have, and i was hoping to use them in my book. but having been recently influenced by my brilliant stats-minded friend, i knew i had to track down the source and make sure it was indeed scientific and unbiased before claiming it gospel truth.

the stats i was looking up:

1500 ministers leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, burnout, or contention
50% of pastors’ marriages will end in divorce
80% feel unqualified and discouraged
50% would leave ministry but fear they couldn’t make a living
70% constantly fight depression
40% have had an extramarital affair while in ministry
70% say their only time reading the Bible is when they prepare sermons

i looked around and was able to track most of them down to an informal survey focus on the family did. sounds legit, right?

not so.

the survey was conducted at seminars for pastors/marriages. something i’ve learned in the course of writing mad church disease is just because you have a group of people answer questions, well, that doesn’t make it real research.

unfortunately, these stats cannot be considered accurate for a couple of reasons:

-it’s not a representative sample. the group is pastors who went to a FOF event. totally idiosyncratic.
-the wording of the questions are biased. and grouped. you can’t ask if they feel something AND something.

it would be like getting a group of 20 and 30 year old pastors together and then saying a majority of pastors are young. that’s just not the way statistics are done.

97% of christians get 80% of their stats from unreliable sources, and 73% of them will pass it on as truth. and yes, that whole sentence was a bunch of bull. christians like info porn!

moral of the story? take a stand against info porn. don’t spread bad stats!

on another note, i do have some scientific research that was conducted legitimately. and because i want you to wait a year and buy the book, i won’t put it up just yet… :)

but please let me say…things are not as bad as they may seem.

my team is made up of five, full time guys ranging from the mid twenties to the mid thirties. not by my choosing, mind you - simply fate at this point. oh, and me. little, girly me.

for future reference purposes, i will identify them as boss man, new guy, corn allergy guy, plastic wrapper guy, and mullet man.

last week, we took new guy out to lunch. new guy has read my blog, read my articles, including “dirty girls: the new porn addicts.”

however, the rest of my team doesn’t know he has.

as corn allergy guy (who is obviously allergic to corn) eats his sans-corn salad (while the rest of us eat our tacos), boss man says,

“does new guy know the corn story?”

corn allergy guy says nothing. we all look at him. he keeps chomping his lettuce.

then he says,

“what? you were talking to me? i thought you said porn story and i was waiting for anne to answer.”

cricket, cricket.

corn allergy guy looks like he feels badly for blurting out a potentially sensitive subject.

mullet man and plastic wrapper guy look wide-eyed at each other, then back at me. boss man starts choking on his burrito.

will i be embarrassed? am i ready to share this deep, dark secret with the new guy? is new guy about to run out scared because the conversation has suddenly turned from food to porn?

new guy and i bust out laughing. i tell them he knows all about my porn story.

everyone laughs, relieved.

i know i’m only here for another two months, but will somebody please send some estrogen?!

boys…