I worked tonight at the Hillsong Women's Colour Conference. I got put on cloakroom. That meant I sat behind a table in the foyer and minded 15 prams. It was totally awesome.

I think I was the only staff member who wasn't in the auditorium, and I was probably the only staff member who would have been interested in what was going on in the auditorium. Oh well. Perhaps it was better that all other staff learnt to be a warrior princess.

I decided to use the opportunity I had anyway. I sat at my table and tried to look as unsaved as possible. I was hoping one of those friendly Hillsong Volunteers would try and convert me or something. I'm always hoping to be on the receiving end of evangelism.

It didn't work. I generally just got smiles. One guy offered me a tic-tac. I think people tried hard to be nice to the staff because we were the only people around not connected to the church, and so probably the only heathens in the building. I even got given an apple and two free sandwiches which I took because, while I don't like sandwiches, I'm practising being poor.

So while no one tried to save me, everyone was very nice. If you wanted to be a hater you couldn't do it because they were mean.

I did get a visit from my friend Kaye at one point. We haven't seen each other in ages, so we got to shoot the breeze, compare church notes, lament our years of wandering through the Bible College wilderness. It helped pass the time with the prams while listening to the elevator versions of "How Great is Our God" that were being piped through the foyer. Who knew worship music could sound so good?

It wasn't a bad shift in the end, but I'm sorry to report Mum, I didn't find a wife.

In 2005 the Idaho State Legislature passed a resolution praising Jarod and Jershua Hess for making Napoleon Dynamite and it's depiction of the state of Idaho. Some of the reasons they were praised were because "tater tots figure prominently in this film thus promoting Idaho's most famous export", "Uncle Rico's football skills are a testament to Idaho athletics" and "Pedro's efforts to bake a cake for Summer illustrate the positive connection between culinary skills to lifelong relationships".

At the end of the resolution it says "any members of the House of Representatives or the Senate of the Legislature of the State of Idaho who choose to vote "Nay" on this concurrent resolution are "FREAKIN' IDIOTS!" and run the risk of having the "Worst Day of Their Lives!" "

Yep. It's freakin' sweet. You can read the whole resolution here.

On a side note, did you know that the Governor of Idaho is called Butch Otter? That's pretty cool.

So I've been watching a debate that was on ABC (American ABC) about whether Satan is real. It has your friend and mine, Mark Driscoll, plus Annie, a hooker for Jesus, a Bishop who believes whatever the person he's with wants him to believe and the one and only Deepak Chopra.



You can watch the whole thing here or on YouTube

What's initially interesting for me is that the debate even happened. Can you imagine a debate getting an hour of airtime on an Australian network on prime time* about the existence of Satan? It's not exactly the question that every Australian is asking.

The debate seems to be biased towards Satan's existence giving the liberals a need to convince everyone why Satan doesn't exist. Plus they don't even have any atheists in the debate. Three of the four people in the debate have some sort of Christian world view.

When they take questions from the audience there are a large amount of Christians wanting to prove Deepak and the Bishop wrong. When the Christians in the audience get a hold of the microphone to ask questions, at times it gets predictably embarrassing. That large amount of Christians asking questions however have something to do with the fact that the debate was hosted by ABC in the Mars Hill Church Auditorium. I reckon the Mars Hillians may have been the majority of the audience. Still the fact that that was allowed to happen, rather than the producers putting in an effort to give the debate a neutral location is telling in itself.

For a look at US religious culture, it's interesting.

Aside from that, it's been interesting for me to see how little my world view links up with the Bishop and Deepak. Maybe I'm unable to get my head around enlightened ideas, but I really couldn't see the sense in many of the ideas about God that they were talking about. God became both an unknowable and ineffable force out there, as well as just a creation of our own higher consciousness and a way of understanding our universe. Chopra said at one point "God is our highest instinct to understand ourselves." Which doesn't really make much sense. How can God be God if God is an instinct?

This isn't to say that all non-Christian world views don't make sense to me. Atheism makes sense. Agnosticism makes sense. Islam makes sense. Judaism make sense. Mormonism, while being totally whacked, makes sense. But this new thought enlightenment mysticism stuff I'm yet to get my head around, I don't even know what you really call it. Maybe I should go read a book about it.

Aside from all that they did say some stuff about Satan not being real and that all the evil in the world is caused only by humanity's own propensity for evil. That I can understand. Satan or no Satan, we humans probably do alright at destroying ourselves without his help.

Generally their biggest issues were not with their views of Satan but God. While I tend to agree with Mark and Annie, I wish Deepak and the Bishop had done a better job at challenging me. I believe in God and I believe in Satan (though I have very different feelings about the two) but I love it when someone gives those beliefs a run for their money.

*Actually the thing wasn't really shown in prime time, it was on at 11:30pm. But at least it wasn't 5:30am in Australia's Benny Hinn slot.

Is it just me or does there seem to be a large amount of celebrities who are pastors' kids? Aside from having parents who are already celebrities or in the business, I reckon being a Pastor's Kid is the best way to get famous.

Consider these people are all PKs:

Jessica and Ashlee Simpson
Jonas Brothers
Katy Perry
Jon and Tim Foreman
Marvin Gaye
Tori Amos
Alice Cooper


Really getting famous is easy, just get yourself born to a pastor, no worries.

I just read that Winnie from The Wonder Years got married. I have to say, I'm pretty crushed. For many primary school years she was the love of my life (except for when she went to high school and wore fishnets, that was terrible, she changed). Now, she'll never be mine.

I guess dreams are made to be broken.

I was at Mum and Dad's today and I noticed there was mail for me. So I opened it up and it was a very special ransom note written (generated here) just for me. It said (I've added punctuation and stuff):

Hi Tom,

I saw you at Kings of Leon the other night. It's good to see you have a real job. Now you must have known that church stuff would not last forever.

Love to see you again, it's been ages.

Love,

Abby

And then they left their email address.

As I do love a good mystery I sent them an email back. I can't think who it could be who would send me such a note, though I can think of plenty of people who might. I don't think I have any friends called Abby, but if I do I will feel bad that I forgot them and their habit of sending ransom notes.

Whoever it is, I'm not sure they did see me at Kings of Leon. They may have. They may have just read my blog.

I'm not sure why they sent the letter to my parents' house and not mine. I'm thinking it's either because they don't have my new address or they looked up "French" in the White Pages.

Either way I'm intrigued and awaiting my reply. If you are reading this Abby "Hello, check your email." There is always the chance they gave me an address which wasn't theirs and now some random Abby will read my email and think "Huh?"

If they want to meet up with me I promise to meet them near a security camera just in case they kidnap me. That way you can put the footage of me getting grabbed and shoved into a van on TV and I'll be famous. They probably are kidnappers, they have the same handwriting.

Do any of you readers out there have a Nike+ iPod kit? If you do, tell me because we can have virtual races and stuff. It'd be super awesome.

Often I have dreams where I perform some great feat of faith. Last night I think I performed my greatest miracle ever, I raised myself from the dead.

I was in a room with a few people and there was a dead body there and I knew I needed to pray for it. So with great faith I got down on my knees next to it and prayed, the body came back to life, and to my surprise the body was me. I'm not sure how I died, and I'm not sure how there managed to be two of me, but I did and there was.

When I came back to life I was nude and started dancing around the room. I was acting like a complete idiot, it was very embarrassing, I had to convince myself to put clothes on because everyone could see our bits.

Still despite my embarrassment at my antics I realised this was a great miracle so we needed to praise God. I thought I'd lead us all in a rousing chorus of worship music but we ended up all singing Bruce Springsteen together. It was very moving.

I went to Jess's party on Saturday night with Mil, Jemma and John. And that is the list of everyone there I knew. On the other hand, for one reason or another it felt like almost everyone there knew me.

A lot of people knew because of Donny Jaffa. Some would look at me funny. Some would laugh when they found out my connection with Donny. Some would say "Ohhhh" and then the conversation would die. One person came up to me and said "So you're Tom. I just wanted to meet you." They shook my hand and walked off.

There was another guy who found out I was Donny in a conversation I wasn't a part of. I started talking to him later. At the very beginning of the conversation he found out I went to college. John told him I'd been there for eight years. He said "You're a loser." I'd been talking to him for 10 seconds and he's already insulting me. I guess it comes with the territory being closely associated with Donny.

It's been a while since I've felt famous. One day I'd like to be famous for something good, rather than playing one of the most annoying characters you'll find in the Christian conference world.

Aside from all that, I did have a good night. I met lots of new people. I met a guy who works for an evangelism organisation and I was able to brainstorm a strategy for evangelism in strip clubs using anointed poles and Bibles printed normally on one page and in mirror image on the other, so you can read it looking at Bible on the table or looking at it via the mirrors on the roof. Genius! He didn't seem as keen as me but I'm pretty sure strip club evangelism is going to be all the rage soon.

For those of you who are interested, I finally got around to sticking up my final youth ministry sermon. You can get it here.

It's not the last sermon I'll do. I'll be preaching a few times this year and I'll try and get them up. So never fear, you will not have to go without my insightful teaching and witty anecdotes for too long.

So my Grandpa sent me an email with a petition against a website called Jew Watch. So I went and had a look at the website to see what the fuss was about. Apart from being as badly designed, insane and hate-mongering as you would expect from such a website, I did also find this snazzy little graph:



They say that "Jew Watch Ranks Up to 10 Times Higher Than The U.S. Holocaust Museum" and if you have trouble counting that's exactly what the graph says.

Turn a graph upside down and you can make it say anything you want.

Dumb.

So I worked Kings of Leon tonight. They were good. Better than their album I reckon. They rocked out rather well.

I spent a lot of time walking up stairs showing people to their seats. There was one group of girls who were in the last row. Or at least were meant to be in the last row. Every time I went to seat someone they were sitting in their seats so I'd tell them to go to their correct seats. This probably happened four times. Had I been mean I could have called security on them, but they weren't really causing any trouble.

Eventually when the concert had started proper they came through my door and said "Can you show us to our real seats now? We keep getting kicked out of seats and we just tried to get on the floor but they wouldn't let us on." So I showed them to their real seats and they stayed there.

When the concert finished and everyone was on the way out one of the girls grabbed me and planted a big kiss on my cheek and and said "Thank you" before she ran off. What can I say? I make the customers happy.

So I've been thinking, I love tradition and I don't like changing things that I've had for a long time, even if they're crappy. Like my shoes. They're full of holes and I literally love them to bits.

My blog is called, for some inane reason, Mine is Around About Here which really isn't a very good title. I liked it in 2001, but it's so not 2009. For a while people thought it was called Tom Time, It's Tom Time, Hold on Everybody it's Tom Time or some other variation on Tom Time. But that has only ever been in the tag lines.

Now however that I'm hip enough to have a new template and widgets, I may even be hip enough for a name change. And, heaven forbid (is that blasphemy?) a URL change. I could have a blog that reflected...something, as opposed to the nothing that it gives off with it's current title and URL (runnoft.blogspot.com). Most people probably don't even know the reference in the URL.

So here's what I'm thinking, while I'm changing the decor, I'll consider changing everything, and I want your help. I want your suggestions. Give me a name that suits my blog and I'll use it. I'll change, I'll rebrand, and I'll make sure you even get a blogpost worth of credit.

So leave a comment, give me your ideas and maybe things will change. But I'm not making any commitments, because I like things just because I've had them for a while.

Just to give you some inspiration here are some witty and original suggestions I thought up:

Tom Blogs
Tom's Blog
French Writing
Tales of Tom
Random Thoughts from a Random Guy
My Musings

This'll be fun.

I'm currently reading a non-fiction book by Tom Clancy about US Army Special Forces.

It very pro-USA and very cool.

Mmm, comfy shoes.

So yesterday I had my first proper shift at work. I was ushering for the Premier's Seniors Concert. We had been told at training to turn up early to check out the sections we were in, and to bring black leather shoes to wear. I have black leather shoes, but they're a bit too shmick for work. They're wedding shoes not not work shoes. So I decided to invest in a sensible pair of leather shoes.

I went to Forbes Footwear on Saturday to relive childhood sensible black shoe memories, feeling good that I was so prepared that I'm not buying shoes at the last minute. I'm a master at forward thinking. The man showed me a pair with cooshy soles, "especially good if you spend a lot of time standing up." I was convinced so I paid a more than a week's rent and bought them.

Yesterday morning I got up at the crack of dawn, got ready, shaved and I put the shoes in a bag with my other bag, ready to take with me. And then I left to go catch the train. I slept on the train most of the way to Central but I woke up at Town Hall, looked down at my bag and noticed I only had one. I'd left my bag of shoes at home. All I had on were my holey DCs and I wasn't going be allowed to work in them.

There was nothing for it but to buy a new pair of shoes. I hung around Central till a shoe shop opened, walked in and bought the first, cheap, uncomfortable pair of black leather shoes they had then headed to work. I didn't arrive with enough time to check my section, only get changed and be there for the briefing. The Supervisor saw me and said "Tom, you decided to show up!"

Happily now I have a pair of shoes in my locker so I'm not going to lose them.

I did enjoy the work. I liked talking to the seniors. They're often pretty jolly. The people I was working with were friendly. The concert was full of pianos and I like pianos, so all up I was pretty happy with my work. Plus I worked enough yesterday to pay for one of my pairs of shoes. If this keeps up, there's a chance I could break even.

Last night I went to Bible Study. It was the first time I've been to a Bible Study for me (rather than run by me) for about 2 years. It was good. I realised I miss things like that.

Today I had some more job related testing for the train job. I got up early again and wore my new black leather shoes. Although not my newest pair of black leather shoes. They'd been safe in their plastic bag for 24 hours. I caught the train again, slept most of the way.

It's an interesting process this. I've now done eight separate tests for this job and no one has really given me any opportunity to ask any questions about the job that I applied for. Still I had a better time today than last time.

I did a role play where I had to pretend to be someone working for the railways. I was sworn to secrecy so I cannot tell you what was in the scenario. What I probably can say is that in mine the scenario was meant to be taking place at 4:55pm and I had an email to work with that had been sent to me at 5pm that day. I didn't point it out during the role play, but I thought it was impressive that I had an email that had been from 5 minutes in the future.

After the test I pointed it out the discrepancy to the examiner and he starred at it for a while and said something like "That's very interesting, thank you." Even though I tried he didn't seem to want to engage with me in conjuncture about time travelling rail employees. That was a sadness for me.

After the tests I treated myself to some sushi and a sleep because I'm worth it.

I managed to get all the old comments back. So if you were worried all your hard work on arguments and discussion from blogposts gone by, fear not, they're all there. The blog is a while away from perfect but it's getting better.

My parents went to Orange this weekend so I've been here at their place for the hanging out with Hannah. It's been pretty fun to stay with my sister. Seeing as I don't live with the Ps any more I feel like I don't get to spend extended amounts of time with Hannah, so I've enjoyed this. She's a pretty fun sister, and now that she's older she's much easier to look after than she used to be. We get to laugh together and my biggest job this weekend was saving her from a big, blood sucking leech. Right now she's jumping around her room listening to bad covers.

Don't tell my parents, but we had Maccas for dinner. I'm hoping she'll vote me best brother ever. Maccas is good like that.

I did some training for the new job last night. Turns out I'm going to see Kings of Leon next week, twice, and get paid for it.

To think I thought about buying a ticket.

So the whole template redo thing is getting a little better. I have blogger comments for the moment, till I can get my old ones back. The date isn't displaying properly. But other than that I'm a little bit happier. It's not like this new template has any sense of fun to it. There are no stupid pictures of me. But I might change that later.

As you can see I'm currently in the process of stuffing up my blog. I thought "Oh it might be nice to change my template." What a nice thought it was. But seeing as my blog was stuck back in the days of basic HTML, Blogger made me convert to XML and now I can't figure out how to do comments, what to do with those widgets, how to put up the date. But I did make a new picture. So that's nice. Chances are, this isn't even on blogfeed.

Oh well. Moth and rust and dumb people destroy.

Please do this quiz. It'll make me happy.

With the Great Recession beginning to break upon us, I'll be able to say "I was unemployed before it was cool."

Tonight I was given a job. It shall be grand. I will no longer be poor and unemployed, I will be poor and employed.

Sick!

It turns out I didn't have to worry about what I was going to wear. I probably could have worn shorts and a t-shirt and been fine. I went to the Job Related testing to become a Trainee Signaller in the City. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. When I arrived at the building there were a few people standing around wearing collared shirts and holding pieces of paper. I figured they must be my people, so I stood near them.

Soon a woman arrived and ushered us into the building, up a lift to level 21 and sent us to a desk to get our names marked off. I was the first person signed in so I headed to the room for training, the guy in the hallway told me to "sit anywhere". As I walked into the room I looked up and there were about 50 people sitting at desks, all starring at me. I had entered from the front of the room, it was a little self concious making.

I found a free seat towards the back and sat down next to a guy. I asked him if we were all going for the one job. He said "I think so". I didn't like the idea of competing with 50 people for one position.

In the end it turns out there were probably around 60-70 people in our session, there was a rumour there were around 4 sessions and there are 35 positions available. So the odds did improve a bit.

We got given info about the job, which sounds fun, but I don't think I'll be able to do it, aside from my impending trip across the globe, it may not be compatible with with my study and I reckon it probably needs more than a one year commitment. It's very tempting to just change careers. The money is better than ministry, as are the perks. Plus I like trains.

But I know what I'm called to.

Anyway, after we were given information on the role, we were given a comprehension test to do. It was just like school. They then spent 20 minutes marking the test then gave everyone a letter. Inside the letter it either thanked you for coming and told you your scores weren't high enough to continue, or it said congratulations you have passed through to the next round. It was pretty exciting. It felt like we were on a reality tv show.

About half the people got sent home, I happened to make it through. I screamed and hugged people and talked hysterically to the camera crew.

We were then put through another 3 tests. I was hoping that people would get culled after each one, making just like Australian Idol but it didn't happen. I was disappointed. I liked the excitement, because otherwise the tests weren't all that riveting. They were comprehension tests for safety instructions and timetables. Plus there was a test where we crossed out shapes.

And when all that was done, we got sent home, I'll find out how I went in a while. I caught the first lift out of there and bought some crappy Chinese food as a reward for my hard work today.

I'm off to some job related testing today Sydney's largest suppliers of trains. The problem is what does one wear to job related testing?

My life is so hard.

We Christians are gonna love this new U2 album.

So much Christianity. Not just God, but Jesus.

Once I knew there was a love divine
Then came a time I thought it knew me not
Who can forgive forgiveness where forgiveness is not
Only the lamb as white as snow - White as Snow

Or what about this whole song:

Magnificent
Magnificent

I was born
I was born to be with you
In this space and time
After that and ever after I haven't had a clue
Only to break rhyme
This foolishness can leave a heart black and blue

Only love, only love can leave such a mark
But only love, only love can heal such a scar

I was born
I was born to sing for you
I didn’t have a choice but to lift you up
And sing whatever song you wanted me to
I give you back my voice
From the womb my first cry, it was a joyful noise…

Only love, only love can leave such a mark
But only love, only love can heal such a scar

Justified till we die, you and I will magnify
The Magnificent
Magnificent - Magnificent


Additional to all this, I am really enjoying the album. It's kinda like a mix between Achtung Baby, The Unforgettable Fire, All That You Can't Leave Behind, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, and some new kinda direction. I was hoping this might be a whole new sound like Achtung Baby was to The Joshua Tree, but it's more of everything put into one. It's a good sounding album. I'm enjoying it.

Being unemployed I've been hoping to avoid going on Newstart for as long as possible. But if nothing happens with these upcoming job interviews, I'll probably need some sort of Government help.

This may not be the worst thing in the world as lots of people keep telling me they think it will be good for me to experience the joys of Centrelink. Still, if I can avoid it I will.

However I figured it's probably best to find out about it. So last Friday I went up to Centrelink to ask them about it. They said to start the Newstart process I would have to call the Employment Services number, who would then give me a Customer Reference Number, which I could then use on the website to book in to make an appointment to see someone at the offices where I was currently enquiring.

Having known that I would probably be given the run around, I didn't argue, I just took the little card she gave me went home and called the number. It was engaged.

I've been trying regularly since Friday afternoon, engaged every time.

Except once this morning! It rang. I felt like I'd got through to a radio station for a competition.

The automated woman said "Welcome to Centrelink. Please tell me your Customer Reference Number."

As I was calling to get one I don't have one. So I said "None"

She replied with "If you don't have one, please say 'I don't have one.'"

So I said "I don't have one"

She said "Sorry you need a Customer Reference Number to access this service. Goodbye."

This is going to be fun.

Who would have thought one song could go so far?

Don't take pants off while in bedroom with the curtains open in full view of young families of the neighbourhood walking past the house.

I'm enjoying my new church. They really are very friendly. The church should give lessons to other churches but you'd probably lose the magic.

Tonight after church we went around to the house of one of the young adults, ate pizza and played Wii Fit. I knew it was a bad idea. My coordination is lacking. No one knows me very well and I had to stand on that blasted contraption and shake my bootie for my newly found church comrades. Needless to say I was by far the worst Wii Fit person there. I managed to fail and consistently get the lowest scores on every game I played. Wii Fit didn't even call me "Amateur", I was too bad for that, it called me "Unbalanced". I didn't even know it was allowed to make statements about my mental health. I'm sure it's not going win me any friends that Wii Fit thinks I'm going snap and stab someone at any time.

If I was trying to portray myself as a sporty, coordinated person to this new bunch of people then Wii Fit just ruined any chance of that happening. Now I'll have to move on to my second option, the brooding, poetic type. I think I can pull it off. From now on, Wii Fit is beneath me. You'd never catch Bob Dylan on a Wii Fit.

Today I mowed the lawn, raked the lawn, trimmed bushes and did the edges on our garden path. When I came in I had a drink of water. I was standing at the kitchen sink looking through the window at the empty little garden outside in front of the window and I thought to myself "I should plant some flowers there so we have something nice to look at while we do the washing up."

I never had a rebellious youth and by the looks of things I'm not about to start making up for it.