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10/24/2003 Entry: "Fun Time!" Some fun things to do when you are stressed: Put any self-pitying Goth poser rhetoric in the AOL Translator, or through Valley URL. Here's an example, but instead of poking fun at my Goth pals again, I'll chose something from family.org about "What should rabid, paranoid Christians do about Halloween?" AOL 12-year-old: REMEMBR TAHT PARTICIPATNG IN AN ALTERNATIEV IS NOT DA SM3 THNG AS C3LEBRATNG TEH HOLIDAY!1!!!1 WTF WHEN WE CELEBRAET A HOLIDAY LIEK HALOWEN WA R PUBLICLY BRNGNG SOMA SORT OF HONOR 2 TEH DAY11!1! WTF LOL WHAN WE PARTICIPAET IN AN ALTARNATIEV W3 R TAKNG PART IN PROVIDNG A CHOIEC BTWEN HALOWEN AND SOME OTHAR AVENT1!!11!! OMG WTF LOL WA CAN CHOS3 2 B PART OF AN ALTERNATIEV 2 HALOWEN WITHOUT DA STIGMA OF 3XPR3SNG SOME TYPE OF SATISFACTION WIT TEH TRADITIONAL CEL3BRATION OF DA HOLIDAY!11! OMG LOL TEH RIGHT ALTERNATIEV CAN B SAEF AND FUN FOR KIDS AND YET STIL HONOR GOD!!111 WTF IT’S IMPORTANT TAHT OUR KIDS DO NOT FEL AS IF TH3Y R MISNG OUT ON SOMATHNG JUST B/C THAY R CHRISTIANS!1!!11!! WTF LOL ULTIMAETLY HALOWEN CAN B A GR3AT OPORTUNITY 2 “OVERCOME EVIL WIT GOD” (ROMANS 1221)!!!!1 OMG LOL Valley Girl: Remember that participating in an alternative is totally not the same thing as celebrating the holiday... Like, I am so sure! Like, when like we celebrate a holiday, like Halloween, like we are publicly bringing some sort of honor to the day, like, when like we participate in an alternative, like we are taking part in providing a choice between Halloween and some other event. We can choose to be part of an alternative to Halloween without the stigma of expressing some type of satisfaction with the traditional celebration of the holiday like, the right alternative can be safe and rad for kids and yet still honor Gawd. It’s important that our kids do not feel as if they are missing out on something just because they are Christians. Ultimately, Halloween can be a totally awesome opportunity to “overcome evil with bitchin' (Romans 12:21). Hearing Voices: Years ago, I used to work with some people who ran a help desk. One of their jobs was to monitor a large chat room where people would ask technical questions related to their service. They did this on a Mac. The Mac Operating System software had this "text-to-speech" interface at the time, and you could assign certain voices to text. There were some 16 voices, as I recall, like robot, strong man, little boy, whispering girl, and so on. The chat room software could use this feature, and most of the time, they assigned some monotone robotic voice, because "it's the most bearable when you have to constantly listen to it, and you can hear it over white noise without it being too loud." But once in a while, some jerk would be screaming and ranting in the chat room about something, and before he got booted, one of the people at the desk would switch his voice to "little girl." That was fun. You would listen to this guy swear and bitch and sound like a total wuss. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to overcome some evil with bitchin'...