Liam Joseph

Liam Joseph Brady
Born: 05 Sep 2009 14:40
Weight: 6 lb 4 oz
Length: 19 in

Basketball John

Kenny Smith said it best:
"He had the perfect balance of taking shots and passing the basketball. I never thought of him as a 'pass-first' point guard. I thought of him as a guy who was taking the best opportunity every time."

*dazzle*

For My Wife

This is a repost, but it bears repeating, just as "I love you" and "you have made me a happy man" bear repeating. I am no poet, so I am grateful that moving sonnets like this exist. Sappy? You bet.

Sonnet XVII - Pablo Neruda
(100 Love Sonnets, 1960)

I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

I Appreciate:

Chauncey Billups

Here is an article that I really, really enjoyed. Why? On the surface, it's because it spotlights a player that I already like. Furthermore, it has a lot of humanity. It includes anecdotes about players, coaches and personalities that I only know from what I see on the court. Basketball and the NBA are my full-time hobby, so some of this behind-the-scenes stuff is really cool.



But in the end, the article has a moral, and the protagonist is, in all actuality, a good person ...and a champion. Deron Williams would benefit tremendously from having a teammate like Chauncey.

Happy Mother's Day, Chelsie!

My wife was named 2009's Mother of the Year. It's true! Here is your proof.

I love you, Chelsie!

NBA Playoffs

Rooting for the Jazz my entire life (which will never change), there was little excitement this year. Living in Portland, we are proud of our Blazers. We look for bigger and better things in the next few years. However, here are some moments that I think we can all appreciate, except for Charles Barkley.

Doo-wight

For y'alls information, many of us have been saying Dwight Howard's name incorrectly. After viewing many YouTube videos, listening/watching ESPN.com's commentary and stories on him, my subconscious (which sounds irrefutably like Stephen A. Smith) has told me that if the word "Dwight" is followed by the word "Howard," then it is to be pronounced "Doo-wight".

I repeat, say "Doo-wight" if you are talking about this guy:


...and say "Dwight" if you are talking about this guy:


Here is an image of my subconscious:

#

Another interesting article. Cheeth would enjoy, because much of the article can be applied to baseball.

Enjoy.

Ten Commandments are Passé

The final thing I have been meaning to blog about is that the Ten Commandments are outdated. The Christian world might probably uphold legislation that would put them back into schools, back on government buildings, etc. That's not a bad idea to most Christians, except for the fact that the Law of Moses has been superseded. If I get the time, I'll post here what I have been studying/thinking about for some time, though it is probably obvious:

Thou shalt not kill. That is correct. Killing is bad. It would do the world some good if we all followed that one. But what about taking it to the next level? What about going so far as to actually loving and praying for our enemies? That's what would really propel our world into a truly better place. It's not enough to just not do the wrong thing; you can't just remove bad, but you have to replace it with good. Be active in your religion. All ten of the Commandments can be replaced with teachings of Jesus Christ from the Sermon on the Mount and other places in scripture.

Beatitudes>Ten Commandments

Dreaming in Blog-Code

I'm about due for a new blog entry. Here are some of the things I'm wanting to blog about, but don't have the time to really get into it. Maybe after things slow down in 30 years:

#. Blog subject (notes)

1. Ultrasound images of Progeny (s/he's a lemon)


2. Random Gospel Topic (earth life=Tinker Toys)


3. No Line on the Horizon review (8/10 stars)


4. Spoilers Gone Wild (I have a pic for Sorro)


5. Utah Jazz (Midwest Division leader change invokes imagery of spawning salmon leap-frogging their way upstream)


6. Politics & Me (I want an $8K tax credit!)


7. New job (same company, new title--a lateral move)


8. Technology (I love my GPS)


9. One more thing that has completely slipped my mind (I'll post when I can remember)

Battier, Shane, Props to; Battier, Shane, a Spiritual Appeal to

The Utah Jazz (or any team for that matter; my team of preference is Utah) could use a guy like this. Have a read:

"Before one game, Shane Battier asked Coach Rick Adelman if he could come off the bench to be able to guard the high-scoring sixth-man Manu Ginóbili. 'No one in the NBA does that,' says the Rockets' general manager Daryl Morey."

When Booz and AK get healthy, we will have some additional offensive muster in #5 and a scoring-defender in #47; but viable at either the 3- or 4-spot (could play 2 in spurts and even 5 in a small-ball lineup), Shane could be that guy who works the swing shift: starts some nights, comes off the pine on others. Who would we give for him? It wouldn't be cheap. How about Boozer, actually? Or CJ/Almond/Fes? Harpring/Knight/cash?


This is a deal that would never happen, but oh well. I like wasting my time writing pointless blog entries. Shane, if you read this blog, I want you to know that Mormonism is the true religion. Take it from me, Mike Brady. If you get baptized, then this entry will not have been a waste of time, and how great shall be my joy. If it so be that I should labor on my blog for 15 minutes, and bring save it be Shane Battier unto him... (fades to Janice Kapp Perry outro)

Clarification

I am not anti-LDS nor am I anti-Christian nor am I anti-Christ in general. I acknowledge that I am no Mark Twain, but I think I know how to construct a sentence.

It's sad to say in in this day and age (see this and this), that people look at pictures and fail to read the words.

So all you Cletuses out there, if you have gotten this far, please know that I love Jesus, and please read the words next time. In the words of Jesus as paraphrased by Cletus himself, "let's quit all the fussn' an' a feudin'!"

A Small Trip to Saitama

For a funeral, but still.

My grandmother is 86 years old. She lost her husband on 19 Mar 2007, and I didn't get to go back at that time because there were too few of us at work and too much to get done. A few days ago they found her unconscious, the victim of a stroke. Now with hemorrhaging and pneumonia, it will be an unwelcome miracle for her to regain consciousness, or even outlast January.

Am I sad? Not yet. When others near to me have died, it didn't usually hit me until the service. However, language barriers and the Pacific Ocean, along with the disowning of my mother from her family three decades ago, have not allowed me to develop a relationship that would warrant sadness.



My mother was predicted to be a boy. The Ishii family needed an heir, and the oracle predicted what my grandparents wanted to hear. After her birth, she wasn't treated very well by her parents. I've heard many sad stories of abuse, which only worsened after her younger brother died. They finally let up a little when another son was born, who has survived and now has a family of his own. By the time my mother was in her mid-20s, she had learned English, joined the LDS Church and eventually married a white man, my father. So she is legally disowned. This makes it nearly impossible for me to do my genealogy, since we no longer have access to public records. At times, I have a hard time finding affection for my Japanese family, yet I see my mother interact with them as if nothing had changed. She writes to and calls her older sister, and they remain good friends.



This isn't meant to be one of those flaming epitaphs, a black eulogy or anything like that. Despite how I have been programmed by attitudes and stories of my parents regarding my Japanese family, heck, I'm still made of my mom, who was made of them. And as difficult as they made life for her, I know that they cared for her. They have put us up and fed us whenever we visited, bought us gifts, sent us money on rare occasions. One year when I was on my mission, they sent me some New Year money (the New Year is bigger than Christmas in Japan), equivalent to about $500.

I am kind of sad. More sad for my mom and her upbringing, and because I know that she loves her family. This will be hard on her, I suppose. But not really hard on me. Though it is a shame that race and religion and intolerance have made it so that I don't even weep over my own grandmother.




So no, I don't get to visit any mission friends or members or sight-see in Tokyo. I won't be able to eat deliciously oily floor ramen with Cheeth. I'll be in Saitama for maybe two days tops. But that's okay. I'm going over to remember a woman who worked blue-collar labor her entire life and has earned my respect for at least that. She could run circles around most of us today, so far as manual labor is concerned. From rice paddies to silk worms to laundry lines, and then later to real estate, she busted her hump (she had a hump from bending over in the rice paddies for decades).

I'll be in the property due east of the Parkside Heights

I'll stop typing now. Not sure what else to say here.

Progeny Brady: Genius Baby

This child will change the world:



We expect him/her to discharge from the womb sometime in September, at which point s/he will be given $100 to purchase new "job interview" clothing, and then go out and find a job, not unlike what happened to me (except that was immediately after my mission, not immediately after being birthed). However, we expect Progeny to be so advanced that formal training in reading/'riting/'rithmetic, speaking, or anything else, will not be necessary. Nor will a mission. His/her mission will be to change the world, and perhaps an LDS youth mission factors into that. These things are up to God, and may or may not be made known to us.

Message to Progeny: no pressure. Love you!

Pregnant?

We will find out on January 19th when the Chels visits a local MD.

Part Deux

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