Connect 2010 Conference hosted by Robb Thompson

I picked up my first conference workshop and had to do some sort of promo for it. I obviously cannot tolerate the standard, “Hey, my name is NO ONE CARES. My course will be talking about STUFF YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT and I will teach you CRAP YOU ALREADY KNOW. So be sure to come AT THIS TIME FOR YOUR FREE LAME GIFT.”

So, needless to say, my conference session video is nothing like you have ever seen. We included sub titles to ensure our English speaking audience will be able to understand. This is for ninja, wizard idiots like me who are over watching crap intro videos.

My session is called The Cultural Mandate aka Christ in Culture aka QUIT BEING A HOMO AND LEARN HOW TO BE RELEVANT IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD.

I slept on this

Road trips are all about conquering. We blasted through 5 states (Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania) and finally arrived in Washington, Pennsylvania. This piece of information means absolutely nothing to you but to 3 guys with bloodshot eyes from too many road construction signs, it is a landing on the moon for us. Take a look at this little video about what – the – heck just happened.

I need to also mention, only a few hours later I slept on a park bench similar to this with 2 pillows and a blanket because there was no room for me in the Escalade. I now understand how Jesus may have felt in Bethlehem … I also fond out the sun and birds wake up way – too – early. The Brightness!!!

Ezra Hamilton Wedding Roadtrip

I am in the final stages of prepping my life for 16 hours of driving over a 30 hour period of time. One of my best friends is taking the plunge (Whoot Whoot Zeee, Get Soooooome!!) and getting married in a place called Wheeling, West Virginia. I, just so happen to live in Chicago’s Southland which gives me this amazing opportunity (uhhhummm, clear throat) to discuss with you 3 must have items for the perfect American roadtrip.

Just to clarify, I will be driving with 2 other psychos who actually took off work to do this with me. My good friend William Plut, aka Plutonium and Mark, aka Fluffy. They both are legends in my book before they said yes to driving with me across America. The real kick in the pants is we are leaving Thursday night, arriving West Virginia Friday morning and returning to Chicago by Saturday morning. Let me repeat, 16 hours of driving in a 30 hour window of time.

So, what are some key components to the perfect American road trip you ask?

AC/DC Power Converter

We know you already have the DVD in the headrest with 32″ rims. We go a step beyond to ensure we can plug in laptops, blender, George Foreman grill, toaster for grilled cheese or whatever else we need for our trip. Power is the key and without it your stuck listening to horrible mid-America radio, boring DVD’s on repeat or the same Summer Jam playlist which you never want to listen to again.

Mobile 3G Wireless Card

When you are on the road and you need to stay up for long periods of time you cannot simply depend on gallons of red bull or coffee. You need to have your mobile unit aka vehicle completely prepped for true mobility.

Why? If you wanna make a video in the car and upload it, now – you – can. If you wanna write a song and play it live to your global fan base while driving through the town of Zanesville, now – you – can. Obviously we will be on the usual Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Vimeo sites killing time.

Play__Stayyyy__Shun

These are the melodic words streaming into your ears when you turn this machine on. Although robotic, the words are some of the warmest and most heartfelt a young man or woman may hear all day. The digital bells in the background only add to its amazing_ness. We are talking about the all encompassing Playstation 3 folks.

Since we have rigged our mobile unit to mirror Air Force One, even Barack Obama will be able to be in contact with us. Many of you may not know but he is an avid gamer, twitterer, huge uploader of videos and hits the Red Bull pretty hard. That is why we love him and want to ensure he can get to us in the event he is stuck in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Favella level with no bullets and looking for the perfect place to camp/snipe. Our team is available for total recon.

Those are the gadgets and tools. Use them at will and try not to blow any fuses or you will be stranded and Barack Obama will not be able to find you. Good night and good luck.

Follow @Holaratcha daily brain grenades in Twitosphere.

{Disclaimer: This is a post written in a males perspective, proceed with entertainment}

The time is somewhere around 3am and I think I am in between the Bering Sea and North Pacific Ocean enroute to Japan. I finally had enough airplane food, plastic cups filled with water and  not being able to feel my semi asleep ###. It is time to embark on a walk to the on board lavatory.

Everyone is sleeping so luckily there is no line. No line can mean 1 of 2 things. It can mean either I have beaten everyone to the lavatory because I am an expert flyer or it can mean everyone beat me to the lavatory and I am stuck with their leftovers … literally.

I am a male and therefore I have the privelege of standing to urinate. While standing and staring into the lavatory toilet bowl I coudn’t help but notice a black sticky substance stuck to the bowl of the toilet. I obviously understand now that the entire airplane has already used the lavatory and I am now stuck with the leftover lavatory toilet.

In our bathrooms at home we have water in our toilet at all times to wash away what we call skidmarks or tire tracks. Unfortunately modern aviation has focused on other items and has left us to deal with a frequent skid mark syndrome (FSMS). So, here is the rub and what do you do?

I don’t like to stand up and stare at skid marks; so, my solution is to aim and fire this filth down the drain. I have to be sure I have enough fire power and accuracy to secure a victory. Many of us may view this as disgusting or horrific. I respond to these comments and say, “you are absolutely correct in your analysis, skid marks on lavatory toilets are disgusting and horrific“.

I recognized this dirty and unclean experience and decided to change it. I could have said, “I’ll leave it for the next passenger or flight attendant”. But No! So I planted my feet, unzipped, aimed and fired washing away nearly all of the stain. I recognized a need and acted as a change agent. Simple enough right?

What do we do when we spot stains on other humans? Do we walk by and say, someone else can  get that stain off, or do we point at it and say, that – is – so – disgusting and walk to the other side of the road?

If you think you can change something, then how come you don’t?

If you believe you have influence then why don’t you lead?

If your dreams are huge then why are you skipping past this dirt in front of you?

Check out The Parable of the Good Samaritan for added thoughts. You can also follow @holaratcha daily grenades in Twitosphere.

We would never classify church as a cult right? That sort of stuff only applies to David Koresh (Branch Davidians), Marshall Applewhite (Heaven’s Gate) a few recent wackos on CNN or most recently, disciples of a cult leader in Jerusalem abusing little boys.

I can hear your little cortex brains spinning and yelling, Yah! cult people are crazy and they are absolutely insane. Can’t believe they do stuff like that to people. How could they get those stupid people to believe in every word they say till the point of death? THEY – ARE – NUTS!!

You’re right, they are nuts but take a look at Webster’s definition of a cult: followers of an exclusive system of religious beliefs and practices

Ok, there are a few things to get you going but here are 5 ways to start your own church cult…

Mystique

You have to create a mystique concerning personal history and lifestyle. People are inquisitive and will demand your whole story.  It is imperative to communicate mystique while maintaining validity. You will need to undergo extensive research into the history of past and modern leadership. Take your time, study and craft your own personality. Details will determine attraction levels. Here is a great example:

“His early childhood as lonely, and it has been alleged that he was once gang raped by older boys when he was 8.[1] A poor student who was illiterate and diagnosed with dyslexia” – David Koresh

“She experienced considerable hardship during her childhood, including being raped at the age of nine and becoming pregnant at 14; her son died in infancy” – Oprah Winfrey

Differentiate

Once you begin building your values, history and story it is critical to differentiate your vision from another churches, oops, I mean cult. You will need to be seen as having an organic, emerging view of the future. Be sure this view is packed with passion. Remember, you don’t have to know everything you just need to know everything about your specific vision.

Be absolutely certain there is no one else using similar wording or mission statement. This is a good one I found courtesy of the Heaven’s Gate cult, “It is also possible that part of our test of faith is our hating this world, even our flesh body, to the extent to be willing to leave it without any proof of the Next Level’s existence”.  Make sure to use subtle words which signify death, you don’t want to scare people away initially.

Infusion

Now that you have your mystique and differentiation solidified, you will need to slowly infuse your beliefs to your circle of friends, I mean followers. Remember, don’t spring it on them too fast. Think about it as hot water and fresh tea infusing in a glass pot. It will take some time for them to understand.

Also, infusing is a great way to discuss your cult with friends and not overly frighten them. If you expand your whole vision/mission with them too fast they may blast your cult on a social media front and ultimately local authorities may get wind too early. You don’t want to blow your cult too early or you will minimize exposure. You only get 1 shot at international exposure, so play it cool.

Expand

A cult needs to expand or you are only a few steps from being admitted to your local psych ward. Your infusion process should create stickiness.  Be sure to not have too many followers initially because you will never be able to tactfully build infrastructure to your vision.

Historical suggestions are usually 6 or less, anymore will require full time attention. (see Fight Club for example). Also, you want to make sure none of these new followers are copying your idea/enlightment to start their own cult. You may need to enact non disclosure/confidentiality documents in writing which you can find here.

Summit

Many will say you need to have a retreat in an isolated wooded/desert area. Look, lets be honest, this has been done a hundred times. If you want to start a new cult you need to do something different. The word summit can be used tactfully as you lead your followers up this new found summit of life.

Initially, another word which can be used to infuse your ideas is “conference”. This is a great word to spread your vision into many lives who may never imagine themselves as part of a modern cult. Don’t forget to include hashtags # and Facebook “like” button to promote your new cult.

Become a cult follower of @Holaratcha in Twitosphere.

Screw all this mumbo, jumbo shrink junk and get to the root of the problem. Why should you keep paying someone when you can fix your marriage problems yourself? The reason why you don’t is because people say you can’t. I am here to say you can save your marriage. Let’s Go!

I bet your thinking I am gonna give you some awesome Bible verse or book to read. Better yet, you are probably waiting for the link to click on. Sorry, no links shall be provided. Keep reading and you will find a video to help you sort it all out. What I will provide is the #1 way to save your marriage.

If you are married grab your spouse and watch the following video. Try not to look or discuss the video till its conclusion. For those of you who are single, I suggest you quit looking at porn on your mobile phone.

Take a cold shower and while the ice cold water is freezing your body to the point of shivering, imagine a beautiful blonde girl. Watch this girl walk slowly toward you in the shower. She definately can see you naked, how embarrassing.

While your in fantasy land she reaches her right arm behind her back to secure her Japanese Samurai sword, and yes this sword is wickedly sharp.  She quickly moves toward you and before you can put the soap bar back on the soap dish she just circumcised you or cut it off. (wake up and quit looking at porn on your mobile) That may be an ancient proverb I misquoted or just insanely good advice.

Now, the video as promised and please follow our @Holaratcha daily chatter in Twitosphere.

This is a humorous story which most of us have had at one time or another. Tools have been my latest venture. The next few posts will be idiotic things I have done recently. Maybe it helps you to remember something dumb you did too.

I am not a tool guy or a Mr. fixit. If you couldn’t figure that out or I popped your superstar belief of me, i am sorry. I say I am sorry because that is what you are supposed to say from stage, but in all reality, I am not sorry, I am just horrible at building things.

It was only a few months ago when I expanded my current tool set from a phillips and flathead screwdriver to an Hex wrench set I picked up from Lowes. Those tools were the completion of what I thought was my mega tool set. I then returned to Lowes to buy a socket wrench set. Just now as I was typing that last sentence, I actually had to go to Lowes.com and figure out what exactly I bought because I couldn’t remember the name of the tool.

To be even more honest, I typed “screw” in Google to see if it would come up with the name I was trying to remember. I thought to myself, screw cover, screw lever, the thing you put on the screw when your in a tight spot so you don’t strip the screw. As we all know, Google reads minds right?

All of those keywords didn’t help one bit, and all of a sudden my incredible brain sent me an email that said, why don’t you look on the website where you bought it from? Genius! I said, and quickly typed in Lowes.com. It was as if Lowes.com was built for dummies like me everything I read made much more sense. I saw the button that said, “hand tools“, i clicked and said outloud, “yes, that is me“.

My right index finger was getting more excited and scrolled down the page feeding my eyes another assist as I spotted this rounded thing and it said ratchet, my eyes opened wide, my right finger moved the mouse over to the item and I once agian said outloud, “yup, thats what its called”. Only to find out, I didn’t buy the 227 piece socket set by Kobalt. Anyway, you get the point, I don’t know jack about tools.

Follow @Holaratcha for daily humor in twitosphere.

If you are a skimmer like myself and prefer to get the highlights of twitter; then let me serve up this bad boy for you. The 10 Best Tweets of the Week proudly sponsored by ANYONE WHO WANTS TO (name your price). These tweets come from either personal friends or people I stalk on twitter. Heck ya I am stalking everything about you on twitter, what else you think I do?

AzizAnsari: JUST CONFIRMED: Ronnie from Jersey Shore was unavailable, so I am indeed hosting the 2010 MTV Movie Awards.

JohnWoodRTR: Celebrated tomorrow’s opening of 10,000th library w/ 14 km trail run, followed by soak in glacial river. Thank you Nepal! #Trekto10K

ProdigalJohn: NFL player Santonio Holmes kicked off plane for refusing to turn off iPod. Dang, how dope was the jam he had on!

HardlyNormal: hardlynormal Now this is a God thing. @iHateChurch picked me up from the airport. HA!

AlliMunsey: kevingerald Wow! so proud of @allimunsey on her Chicago Fox news interview! Go Mrs Chicago!! Check it out http://yfrog.com/j4ofjfj

RichWilkersonJr: richwilkersonjr Just saw @soulcentralcarl in the airport. I shouted at him, but he was too cool to turn around. #igotapic http://yfrog.com/9eb96qj

Zen_Habits: on zenhabits: The Elements of Living Lightly http://bit.ly/aJ98tA

ErwinMcmanus: …You can protect your dreams by never attempting to make them a reality. To achieve your dreams you must be willing to lose them- to risk.

KentMunsey: This is how we R rollin this month @citychurchchi. See a need & meet it Feel a hurt & heel it http://yfrog.com/5p4bxj

SeanMEverett: RT @kt1grand: Chicago Youth Centers “College Bound” Fundraiser tickets on sale now! Please come support an amazing cause on 5/13! http:/ …

While I gather some more hilarious stories involving human beings just like you, I recently stumbled upon “the worst church prank ever”. I have been in church for 35 years and am only 29 years old and have NEVER seen THIS done. What is even crazier is this image came from my very own iPhone and is located only 300 meters from my home.

I was in my car driving to the post office when I saw it. My eyes triple blinked and I was so stunned I didn’t know what to do. I had just witnessed the WORST CHURCH PRANK at an Anglican church. Do I laugh? Do I call the church? Do I turn around to take a picture and tweet/facebook it … You better believe I am tweeting this bad boy. This goes in the record books. Hey Jay Leno, get a sniff of this one!

by Anthony Thompson

Here is a lovely title before the end of 2009. Sitting by the fire, reading your new favorite Twilight book, smoking a pipe, watching Cops on TV, trying to think of quirky comments to add to Facebook/Twitter profile, texting back a friend… when all of a sudden it hits you. That son of a (expletive) is a real (expletive, expletive, expletive). What is it about church people, are they born on Mars?

I find it interesting how humans are so all encompassing genie esque wise concerning OTHER peoples behaviors.  We talk about how Indians (dots on forehead) smell, or Mexicans are probably illegal and stealing all of our social security or whatever it’s called, the Jews some how have everything so we are for sure pissed at them, the Blacks get hit because, well… anything black can’t be good right? Except obviously the Black Album by Jay-Z. Why do Asians drive so bad and for all of the Americans who travel overseas and think you are awesome…. trust me, you have the worst reputation on the planet.

But wait… how is it that we know how ALL of these pieces of God’s creation are supposed to live? Hold on, let’s leave God’s creation out of it and just say, “creation”.  How is it that we know how ALL of these pieces of creation are supposed to live? Have we jumped into the King Lebron seat and garnered authority from all of earth’s gods to decide what/how humans should live? Is our life so magnificent that we conduct monthly seminars a-la-Tony-Robbins at $3000 per ticket to instruct other humans how to live, breathe, drive, smoke, communicate or play video games?

Maybe instead of laying down our Nazi_esque mandate on other humans with words such as “I Hate Church People”, we instead remove a couple of those words. Let’s say for the sake of entertaining our brains we just simplified and stated “I (blank) people?” Depending on the time, place and circumstance of your day at this given instant you will have a very different answer from the next reader. I can already hear the whisper as you read the new title slower: I ………. like (question mark) ……. people or maybe you just finished your 3rd triple, grande, non fat latte, extra hot and your response is more inline with this: I ……………LOVE, CHERISH, HATE, CUDDLE, CARE ABOUT, SMASH THEM IN THE FACE ……. people.

You feel limited by the fact that you are at work, your tired because you had a late night and you may have to work another holiday BUT you  just landed a free addictive stimulating beverage which shot your serotonin levels higher than Matthew Mcconaughey banging drums on the beach, naked. You are in the middle of euphoria and depression.  Yet, euphoria does feel pretty good.

Look, I am not the one to go through some counseling session about how you or a friend you know cannot tolerate a certain type of people. Mainly, because I haven’t found a way to monetize counseling sessions in a blog format. When I have, I assure you I will take full advantage as I travel the world and make fun of Americans. Why Americans you say? Well, because it’s like being Kobe Bryant on a breakaway with :04 seconds to go, his team, the Lakers are down by 1 and the Staples Center is going absolutely insane. Kobe is at half court and with his 6′ 6″ frame each step equals 1/4 mile. So after a couple steps Kobe sees the hoop and hears the crowd. O, I forgot to mention, it’s game 7 of the NBA championships against the Celtics.  Now, you tell me how hard is Kobe going to slam that ball ?

No, you are wrong, Kobe is not going to lay that ball up. He is taking it to the rack and taking it strong. He is not an old man, he is (expletive) Kobe Bryant, period. Sorry for the sidebar but I know I heard some George Gervin a-la-finger-roll expert just blurt out, “finger-roll-it-Kobe”.

If you want to get into some interesting reading about David (a Jew) and some of his thoughts toward the last part of Psalms, then check these out. Maybe you’ll have some fun with it as I did.

Psalm 148
Psalm 149
Psalm 150