How cool was I? Ummm...

This is only really interesting if you're sufficiently over age 18. Go to Pop Culture Madness: Pop Music and select the year you turned 18. Take the first 50 songs and paste them into a word processor, then mark up each song as follows:

• If you liked it, make it bold
• If you disliked it, make it striked out
• If you neither liked it nor hated it it, make it italicized
• If you don't remember it, leave it alone

Well, I turned 18 in 1988, so here is my list:

1. What A Wonderful World* - Louis Armstrong
2. It Takes Two - Rob Base & E-Z Rock
3. Da Butt - EU
4. Hot Hot Hot - Buster Poindexter
5. I'll Always Love You - Taylor Dayne
6. Man In The Mirror - Michael Jackson
7. Sweet Child Of Mine - Guns N Roses
8. Red Red Wine - UB40
9. Just Got Paid - Johnny Kemp
10. Don't Worry, Be Happy - Bobby McFerrin
11. Pour Some Sugar On Me - Def Leppard
12. Every Rose Has Its Thorn - Poison
13. Welcome To The Jungle - Guns N Roses
14. Paradise - Sade
15. The Flame - Cheap Trick
16. 1 2 3 - Gloria Estefan & Miami Sound Machine
17. Kokomo - Beach Boys
18. Need You Tonight - INXS
19. Pump Up The Volume - M/A/R/R/S
20. Roll With It - Steve Winwood
21. Baby I Love Your Way/Freebird (Medley) - Will To Power
22. Power Of Love - Laura Branigan
23. Push It - Salt N Pepa
24. One More Try - George Michael
25. Can't Stay Away From You - Gloria Estefan & Miami Sound Machine
26. Wild, Wild West - Kool Moe Dee
27. One Moment In Time - Whitney Houston
28. Hot Hot Hot!!! - The Cure
29. The Promise - When In Rome
30. The Way You Make Me Feel - Micheal Jackson
31. Chains Of Love - Erasure
32. What's On Your Mind (Pure Energy) - Information Society
33. Honestly - Stryper
34. Don't Be Cruel - Bobby Brown
35. Bad Medicine - Bon Jovi
36. Strangelove - Depeche Mode
37. Nothin' But A Good Time - Poison
38. Angel - Aerosmith
39. Candle In The Wind - Elton John
40. Forever Young - Alphaville
41. Pink Cadillac - Natalie Cole
42. Always On My Mind - Pet Shop Boys
43. Tall Cool One - Robert Plant
44. Forever Young - Rod Stewart
45. Beds Are Burning - Midnight Oil
46. Tomorrow People - Ziggy Marley & The Melody Makers
47. I Know You're Out There Somewhere - Moody Blues
48. Just Like Heaven - The Cure
49. Wild Wild West - The Escape Club
50. In God's Country - U2

So how cool were you?

Yippee! I have had more or my excess verbiage printed in The Record and once again it was on the subject of so homosexual rights (this is getting to be a habit for me). So, for your reading pleasure I have included here both my letter to the editor an dthe original which provoked my response. Enjoy or disagree strenuously — your choice.

First, the original...

The sense in which the nearly unanimous history of human culture has viewed homosexual behaviour as unnatural is independent of statistical considerations, whether anthropological or zoological.

As The Record anticipates in its June 11 editorial, the naturalness or otherwise of human sexual behaviour has always and everywhere been tied to the great good of conceiving and rearing children. "Ah," muses our editor, "but 'most people do not believe that the sole purpose of... intercourse is procreation.' "

True enough, but procreation is a purpose, and furthermore, it is a vitally important purpose for the nurture and survival of civilization itself. Hence the nearly universal care taken by civilizations to protect and foster the fragile institution of marriage.

Clearly, not "every single act" of sexual intercourse can or even should be procreative. But the more relevant question is whether it is acceptable for every sexual act of a person to be, intentionally and with full knowledge, non-procreative. In the human race, sexuality and civilization are bound together because sexuality is the means by which civilization exists and continues its existence into succeeding generations.

It is a unique characteristic of our species that our young remain dependent for many years upon their parents for both physical and psychological development. Where the enjoyment and pleasure of sexuality is separated from the care and nurture of children, society loses its ability to transmit itself through time. Thus, whatever else sex may be about, and it is about many things, it must irreducibly be about children.

This is why the expression of homosexual desires, which undoubtedly existed with as much statistical regularity in other times and places as in our own, has never been given the sanction and blessing of society.

Philip Toman
Waterloo

...and next my repsonse

Philip Toman, in his June 18 letter to the editor, Our Survival's At Stake, has got it all wrong on sexuality and homosexuality.

Toman first says that not every act of sexuality should be about procreation, but he later says that sexuality must irreducibly be about children.

Well, which is it? Human sexuality is obviously not only about procreation. If it were, women would only be interested in sex when they were ovulating. At other times of the month they would be completely uninterested.

At the end of his letter, Toman suggests that we shouldn't sanction homosexuality because it was not done in the past.

Using that logic we should revoke women's right to vote because they never had it in the past.

What about interracial marriages? Shall we go back to the days of Ira Johnson and Isabel Jones being harassed by the Ku Klux Klan, right here in Ontario?

Just because something was done a certain way in the past does not automatically mean that way is the better way. What is important in the present is that we do what is fair.

Cory Albrecht
Kitchener

Well, I'm up early and ready to go to the Ontario Mennonite Relief Sale in New Hamburg, Ontario. I may hate mornings (bleh!) but I'd hate even more to miss the Relief Sale! I don't believe that I have ever missed one — certainly not since childhood.

I'm going to buy some fresh made strawberry pies, help the youth from my church make those pies, and look at the quilts that will be auctioned off today. In the past, the most expensive quilts have gone for tens of thousands of dollars, so I wonder what the most expensive quilt will be this year?

Tonight was the finals for the Waterloo Regional Improv Games in which the top five teams from last week's qualifying rounds compete. Rockway's team was in round three last week, and after that they were in first place but dropped to second after the four teams in round four performed.

The winning team gets to go to Ottawa to compete in the Canadian Improv Games against fifteen or so teams from other high schools across Canada. And guess what? Rockway won the regionals! Woohoo! I'd love to go to Ottawa to see them compete, but I'll just have to settle for wishing them all the best.

Just like last week, I had my trusty digital camera with me and took a whole bunch of pictures. Again, thanks to the no flash photography rule, most of the pix are rather crappy, but here are some of the better ones:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Yay Rockway!!! (I wish we had had things like this when I was in high school, way back when... :-) )

This week was the first round of the Waterloo Region tournament of the Canadian Improv Games, so I went last night to see how the team from my old high school (Rockway Mennonite Collegiate) would do. And you know what? Heading in to the finals they are in first place – woohoo!

I took a bunch of pictures with my digital camera (72, actually), but because flash photography wasn't allowed, most of them turned out rather crappy. :-( But there were a few good ones, and I'm in the process of uploading the whole batch to my website right now. (Oh how I do hate dial up!). Since so many of them are crappy, here's a list of some of the better ones featuring the RMC troupe:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

That isn't the entire list of the good pix, so go and look through the thumbnails to find the others.

Since I got a digital camera for Christmas — a Kodak EasyShare CX4230 — I have decided to display my amazing photographic talents to the world. :-) In the right hand column you will see a new sub-blog called Pix which will showcase the pictures I take with my new little toy.

The honour of the first picture goes to Nathniel Walker, born 22 December 2003 to my friends Ken and Heather. Isn't he cute?

I hope to add at least one new picture every week to this blog.

Here is the letter to the editor form Henry Brunsveld to which mine was a response:

Gay equation is wrong

Besides getting his facts about the Bible wrong (the Bible does condemn sexual relations between women -- read Romans 1:26), Corey Schlueter's June 21 letter stated that homosexuality cannot be equated with, among other things, pedophilia. His reason is that homosexuality is legal, whereas pedophilia is not.

In fact, there are many similarities between the two. Like pedophilia, homosexual behaviour was once illegal. Like homosexuals, pedophiles comprise a tiny percentage of the population, and are able to live otherwise normal lives, coming from all walks of life. Most people seem to think pedophiles can't change, like homosexuals.

One of the major factors in conditioning people to accept homosexual behaviour as normal was the American Psychiatric Association's 1973 decision to remove homosexuality from its diagnostic manual of mental disorders. At a symposium on May 19 in San Francisco, sponsored by the APA, some psychiatrists proposed removing pedophilia from the manual.

Our courts will have no problem in changing our laws to make pedophilia legal and grant pedophiles the same rights homosexuals have.

They won't even have to change the definition of "sexual orientation," since it is nowhere defined in our laws.

If pedophilia becomes legal, will that make it right?

Henry Brunsveld, RR 2 Puslinch

Yesterday my local newspaper, The Record, printed yet another of my letters to the editor. Perhaps I should write a book? :-) Anyways, it was once more on the topic of same sex marriages. This is a majorly hot topic, because the letters to the editor have just not stopped coming in! Ot's also a hot topic in the constituency of he mennonite Churche of Canada. Last week was MC Canada's General Meeting in St. Catharines, ON there was a resolution put forward on the same-sex marriage issue. The resulution was this:

Since we believe that marriage is the joining of one man and one woman in a life-long covenant of love, and

Since the Prime Minister has indicated his intention to have the Federal Government redefine marriage in future legislation,

Be it resolved that the General Board communicate to the Federal Government Mennonite Church Canada’s understanding of marriage and our encouragement that, whatever action the Government should take to redefine marriage, all religious groups be guaranteed the freedom to practice and proclaim their understanding of what marriage is.

People got up and commented from various sides of his debate — people who were "out of the closet" wanting to vote No for this resolution and people who wanted it to be strengthened from simply advocating for religious freedom for churches to having MC Canada to explicitly lobbying against same-sex marriages. One opinion expressed was that it was already over and done with because MC Canada (and it's predecessors) had already made a statement on this issue in years past.

It was asked that this resolution be voted on by secret ballot, rather than by the usual show of hands, and I think that is a good idea. To do it publicly would have made many people feel very uncomfortable about showing what their true feelings are on this cointentious subject. But when it came time for the moderator to announce the results, he merely said that the motion was carried. I know that annoyed me, and it must have bothered otehr people as well, because he eventually announced the results. When he sauid that the count had been 131 for, 130 against and 16 spoiled ballots, the audience reacte dnoticibly with "oohs" and "oh mys" all over the place. Clearly the issue is not over and done with!

Anyways, here is my letter to the editor, with typos corrected. I will try to find the original letter to which this is a response and enter it here.

Put love in same-sex case

Henry Brunsveld, in his letter to the editor on July 7, has got it all wrong when he tries to compare homosexuality with pedophilia, and I feel that it is dishonest of him to imply that homosexuals are child molesters.

When an adult attempts to entice or coerce a child into having sex, that harms the child, no two ways about it. The child suffers from the physical abuse at the time of the sexual encounter and from mental and emotional hardships as he or she deals with the ordeal.

When two consenting adult men or adult women choose to have sex with each other, they are not harming anybody. At most, they might have the same regrets that those of [us] who are heterosexual might have.

Brunsveld is right when he says that homosexuality as a mental disorder was removed from the accepted manuals in 1973, and this was done based on overwhelming empirical evidence.

For me, the underpinning of Jesus' teachings is "Love your neighbour as yourself" from the parable of the Good Samaritan. It saddens me that I see no love in all the letters to the editor written by so many professed Christians.

Cory Albrecht, Kitchener

Well, I have got to remember not to take too long a break in the middle of biking. :-)

During my usual Iron Horse Trail bike ride today I saw some poppies growing in the bush alongside the trail. At least I thought they were poppies but I wasn't sure. They were growing in the bush that surrounds the trail at some spots, far enough in that I was sure they weren't in one of the many yards that back on to the trail.

I stopped and picked a flower and on the way home I stopped at the school where my Mother works, since she's a gardener-type person and would be able to confirm that it was a poppy. But unfortunately I stopped too long at the school, and if you start up again when your body thinks it is winding down from excersising, it can be even harder to go. Bleh.

I finally got my bicyle out of the basement and I biked over to the nearest gas station to fill the tires, and you'd never guess what I saw.

A Pileated Woodpecker! Now these things aren't that common, so I almost fell off my bike when I saw it! The last (and only other) time I had seen one was about 15 years ago in Point Pelee National Park and it was on the list of uncommon and rarer birds that if you saw one you were supposed to find one of the staff and tell them.

I live in suburban Kitchener, and there is a small (one block square) woods just down the street and about a 15 minute walk in the other direction is Steckle's Woods — a fair–sized bush for being in the middle of the city. I saw the Pileated Woodpecker on one of the trees in the front lawn of a house which backs onto the main road which separates my subdivision from Steckle's Woods. But still, you don't expect to see a bird like this in the middle of the city.

I guess I'm going to have to take my camera and telephoto lens into the woods to see if I can capture this bird on film. Way cool experience!

So, this is my weblog, eh. However, I doubt that anybody will want to hear about my boring life. :-)

But I will try to update it on a regular basis. God knows I have the time to do that. :-P