Go to content Go to navigation Go to search

If you were wondering whether or not Jeff can do a flying side kick through a hula hoop...

9 July 2008   Jeff Gill

I can’t.

I can, however, get wedged halfway through, fall to the ground helplessly and hard, and injure my shoulder.

It makes me wonder – what is the point of all my karate training if it doesn’t serve me well in an everyday situation like this?


del.icio.us Digg Technorati StumbleUpon     Now you say something [3]

tags: ,

How to fight fair

30 June 2008   Jeff Gill

Some only slightly tongue in cheek lessons on how to fight fair taken from the sword fight in The Princess Bride. This was for our weekend meetings on the theme of conflict resolution.


del.icio.us Digg Technorati StumbleUpon     Now you say something [4]

tags: , , ,

Hi, School!

27 June 2008   Jeff Gill

This is a little event we do for students moving out of junior school and into secondary school. (For those of you outside the UK, this happens at age 11.) We’ve just finished our promo video. A short version may come later.

You can see the video in high definition and download the original 102 MB Quicktime movie on Vimeo, which is kind of cool.


del.icio.us Digg Technorati StumbleUpon     Now you say something

tags: , , , ,

Possibly the best thing I have ever seen in my whole life

12 June 2008   Jeff Gill


del.icio.us Digg Technorati StumbleUpon     Now you say something [5]

tags: , ,

I visit for the sparkling prose

15 May 2008   Jeff Gill

Inspired by Keith and Larry’s post this morning I checked to see what searches were bringing people to D Train. The leading term for the last 30 days by a margin of five to one is…

ARSEBUNDLE.

It’s nice to know your audience.


del.icio.us Digg Technorati StumbleUpon     Now you say something [2]

tags:

Awfully proud of Ikea and Volvo too

3 May 2008   Jeff Gill

England's Glory - Made in Sweden


del.icio.us Digg Technorati StumbleUpon     Now you say something

tags:

The good Samaritan goes home

20 April 2008   Jeff Gill

Inspired by this sketch I wrote a sketch which avoids the wife-hating and features a ninja:

Joanna: Where is he? He should have been home ages ago. She gasps. What if he was the one they attacked! No, they said he was a Jew. But Nathan looks like a Jew sometimes when the light is low…

Keep reading   Now you say something

tags: , ,

That's well neighbourly! - updated

20 April 2008   Jeff Gill

This weekend our church is looking at the story of the good Samaritan. I want to rewrite it for my class of 10-13 year-olds and set it in high school. (For those of you outside the UK secondary education starts at age 11 here.) I found some interesting retellings laying around the internet: here (scroll down), here and here, but none of them are really what I need. How do you think I should update the cast?

Who are the attackers?
Who is the victim?
The priest?
The levite?
The Samaritan?
The innkeeper?

If all goes well, I shall put a working draft story online in a day or two for your further comments and sugestions.

Thanks!

UPDATE

I ended up not rewriting the story beforehand. Instead, I did it live as a mad lib with my class. They loved it. And they heard the story three times, once proper and twice silly. AND they all asked for a copy of their own. Here is their story with a little help from the TNIV:

Once a footballer slide tackled Jesus to test him. ‘Teacher,’ he asked, ‘what must I do to inherit fantastic life?’

‘What is written in the Law?’ he replied. ‘How do you read it?’

He answered, ‘‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’‘

‘You have answered Jeffly,’ Jesus replied. ‘Do this and you will live.’
But he wanted to sit himself, so he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’

In reply Jesus said: ‘Conor was going down from Tesco to i61, when he fell into the hands of terrorists. They stripped him of his table, karate chopped him and went away, leaving him half hairy. A referee happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side of the Aston Martin. So too, a fit, sporty girl when she came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side of the elephant. But a nerd, as he read, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on 7up and lemon juice Then he put the man on his own ferret, brought him to Jamaica and took care of him. The next day he took out two dollars and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will paint you for any extra expense you may have.’

‘Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the terrorists?’

The footballer replied, ‘The one who had mercy on him.’

Jesus told him, ‘Go and do likewise.’


del.icio.us Digg Technorati StumbleUpon     Now you say something [3]

tags: , , , ,

It's all been leading up to this moment

14 April 2008   Jeff Gill

So scientists

have this way of beginning sentences when they speak that makes me think they are announcing the conclusion of an Important Study. Their brains must be super laboratories, collecting data, testing every hypothesis, analysing the outcomes with a mental process made immensely powerful through years of experience. And when they speak they are not giving me an answer; they are giving Results and Findings.

If only we could all be so authoritative.

Actually, their secret is simple. I am going to share it with you right now.

Scientists start their sentences with So.

So when we look at the specimen…

So the pathology of the virus…

So the quantum state…

Two letters. One little word. That’s the difference between expressing an opinion and explaining the universe. Look:

So I’d like the vegetarian lasagne and a glass of the house red.


del.icio.us Digg Technorati StumbleUpon     Now you say something [1]

tags: ,

My... what?

4 April 2008   Jeff Gill

I wrote in my DIY design post about hardware that Apple computers come with very good backup software. They do. The file that keeps it all organised is called a sparsebundle. The thing is, the way I like to view my files in the Finder (basically the same thing as Windows Explorer) causes the filename to be truncated like so:

Jeff Gill's ...arsebundle

My friend Lee who backs up onto the same hard drive has too long of a name to get anything as cool as an ARSEBUNDLE.


del.icio.us Digg Technorati StumbleUpon     Now you say something [3]

tags:

Dressing for church

24 March 2008   Jeff Gill

(entering shop) You’ve got to help me!

Madame, that is what I am here to do. I am Walter J Wolf, king of Christian Couture. In what way may I be of assistance?

My friend invited me to church and I said yes and I’ve never been to church before and I don’t know what to wear or what to say and I’m going to make a total fool of myself.

A common fear, but one that need not overwhelm you, not once you have set foot in this shop. First of all, let’s think about your clothing –

Keep reading   Now you say something

tags: , , ,

Frantic five minutes

22 February 2008   Christine Gill

let's sway

I had to leave. It was time to go. The daughter would be getting out of school in less than 15 minutes and I couldn’t find the stupid car keys. Where were they?
Where were they?
There weren’t in there and they weren’t under there and they weren’t behind there and they were completely gone and had ceased to exist and I was gonna have to get a taxi or something and I’d be so so incredibly late and the teacher would give me that look again. And I’d feel ashamed. I am a rotten mother because I do not put my keys away properly in a place where I can find them and my children suffer because of it. There she would be, the 4 year old daughter, standing in the cold and not knowing if I would ever come. A stiff wind would blow to dry the tears that fell…

I said to God, “Father!”, I said, “Help me find the keys, please, I need to know where they are or there will be much suffering” (this is the extended version of what I said)
And in desperation I raised my hand to my head like a damsel in one of those old, silent movies… and the keys were in my hand.

Now. What have we learned today ?


del.icio.us Digg Technorati StumbleUpon     Now you say something [2]

tags: , , , ,

Jeff at his best

17 February 2008   Jeff Gill

I made a video for our church meeting morning. The theme of today’s meeting was you at your best. Here I am at my best, or something.


del.icio.us Digg Technorati StumbleUpon     Now you say something

tags: , ,

You are such an asset to the body

30 January 2008   Jeff Gill

—on a greeting card to Christine from a church* member who is obviously much more pure of thought than we are.

*From our former church in Tucson, Arizona, USA, not i61.


del.icio.us Digg Technorati StumbleUpon     Now you say something [2]

tags: , ,

Her humps

28 January 2008   Jeff Gill

While we are all waiting around for me to have time to write the next installment in our money story, let’s watch Alanis Morrisette’s rather brilliant satirical cover of the Black Eyed Peas song My Humps.

In that same vein, have a read of Tia Lynn’s article on the book Ten Lies the Church Tells Women and my Seven Cheers for St Paul.


del.icio.us Digg Technorati StumbleUpon     Now you say something [2]

tags: , , , , ,

Hooray for fables

20 January 2008   Jeff Gill

Here is another poem that I wrote. It is a riff on Æsop’s Tortoise and the Hare. Christine and I read it this morning at our church. Today’s theme was Run to Win, the third in a new year series called Born to Run. If you can stand a lot of rhyming couplets, read on.

Keep reading   Now you say something

tags: , ,

Hip replacement

18 January 2008   Jeff Gill

— a warranty fulfillment service for cool people.


del.icio.us Digg Technorati StumbleUpon     Now you say something [1]

tags:

Hooray for Victorian morality tales

19 November 2007   Jeff Gill

I quite enjoy, as Dylan Thomas put it, ‘pictureless books in which small boys, though warned with quotations not to, would skate on Farmer Giles’ pond and did and drowned’. This poem is my silly homage to the genre. It was read and acted out at our church on Sunday when the theme was the ninth commandment: don’t lie.

I’ve come to tell a story. Once there was a boy.
He had a mother and a father, but he did not bring them joy.
I’ll tell you this boy’s name if you insist that you must know.
His name was Peter Penrhyn Padran Pinnock Ochio.
I’m sad to say that our boy Pete was a spoiled brat,
for his father was a pillock and his mother was…

Keep reading   Now you say something [1]

tags: ,