There’s money in them there walls. If you haven’t come across this story yet, you will. It has just gone viral but the event actually happened back on November 10th. A plumber was removing a toilet at Lakewood Church in Houston and discovered several hundred envelopes filled with cash and checks inside the wall! Back in 2014 the church reported $600,000 had been stolen from their safe. If this is that money, the plumber wonders, why did the person who stashed it never come for it? Right now they have more question than answers. The truth is stranger than fiction.

We use X to indicate something we do not know or understand, as in X-ray or X factor. Χριστός is the Greek word we render as Christ. There is a reason the “Christian fish” looks… a fish.

If you have ever seen or used an icthus as a symbol for Christianity it’s because these Greek letters spell the word fish but each of them is the first letter of the words “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.” It’s just like taking the word FROG in English and using it to mean “Fully Relying on God.” X-mas is not an attempt to remove Christ from Christmas. The use of X as an abbreviation for Christ has, however, fallen out of common usage.

I learned about this one after the fact. Thursday’s date, 12-02-2021, was both a palindrome (same forward and backwards) and a ambigram (same right side up and upside down). That’s not exactly useful information but if I had known a week ago I would have mentioned it was coming up.

The joke here is that capitalism has not led to innovation since every Hallmark Christmas movie looks exactly the same. Here’s the thing though, fans of those movies know exactly what to expect because, and this is going to hard for some people to believe, that’s what they want. If you are able to go out and get what you want, that’s a fine example of capitalism. I know it’s a meme and we’re just supposed to smile and move on but let me further break this down. Hallmark Channel is one channel we get from our cable provider out of like 400. We could also watch Netflix, Hulu, Disney+ or Prime Video. In the past week I have seen Home Alone, Elf, Paul Blart Mall Cop and Die Hard but not a single thing on the Hallmark Channel. That brand creates a certain culture and everything inside it’s circle is going to have a certain look and feel to it. If I carried you into a Walmart blindfolded, you would not think for one second you might be in Target when the blindfold was removed. Starbucks does not look or feel like Dunkin Donuts. You can be critical of Hallmark for making 500 movies with the same plot if you wish, but hey, they’re not going broke over there. Only an idiot would quit milking a cash cow.

Speaking of Walmart… This endcap display has Walmart brand K-cup pods and Swiss Miss hot cocoa on sale for 92 cents and $1.82 respectively. Our local Walmart store posted this on their Facebook page. I did not confirm this price when checking out but did look at the receipt when I got home. Those 92 cent coffee pods rang up at $3.96. I normally drink a darker roast but at 92 cents for 12 pods, I mean come on. I went back to Walmart where a very nice older lady in customer service had bought the same thing the night before. Although she reported the error nothing had been done about it, but she gladly refunded me the difference, $6 and change for the two boxes I had purchased.

It’s hard to say how much resemblance this bears to the actual archangel Gabriel but I know this for certain: angels are not beautiful women in choir robes holding songbooks nor chubby little babies with tiny wings and loin cloths. It’s an older post but check out Rethinking the Angelic Choir for more.

The Big Ragu – Eddie Mekka, best known as Carmine Ragusa on Laverne and Shirley, has passed away at the age of 69. Cindy Williams (his girlfriend Shirley on the show) described him as a world-class talent that could it all. She posted via Twitter that she loves him dearly and will miss him so much.

Even the Grinch had a dog. So if you don’t like dogs maybe it’s time to do some serious soul searching.

SEC Championship Game, 4 PM in Atlanta. A Georgia loss would be their first since November 7th of 2020 and probably not bump them out of playoff contention. A second loss for Alabama today would probably knock them at least out of the top 4 CFP spots but who knows? That committee plays by their own rules, or perhaps no rules whatsoever. Alabama is definitely a second half team so Georgia will have to play the whole game to avoid what happened at Auburn last week.