they call me Fish

2013 was a fun year for me on the blog – decided to stop my Weekly Mash blog so i could be more focused on this one which is titled ‘Irresistibly Fish’ and there have been a decent bunch of new subscribers in 2013 [welcome!] as well as those who regularly pop in to take in some of what i write and share over here.

so brief intro to me if you are new – my name is Brett Fish [nickname] Anderson and i am married to the beautiful Val [tbV] and am from the country [#cough Americaland #cough] of South Africa where i have spent most of my life, except for the last 3 years where i have been in Americaland…

working as a resident of the simple way in Philly in 2011 and 2012 and after a visit home [to the still country of South Africa] moving to Oakland to work with the same boss but different non-profit known as Common Change which is great and you should totally find a group of friends who want to join you in a collaborative giving experiment and adventure and sign up, join a group and start helping meet needs of people you know.

then just recently i started working as the youth leadery type person at Re: Generation church near Lake Merritt and so am a little bit of the bivocational at the moment, but have LOVED the opportunity to be preaching again [once a month] and just connecting with some rad people who love Jesus [and enough of whom love cool games like Settlers of Catan, Bang, Puerto Rico and Dixit]

i am passionately in love with God and try to be a follower of Jesus and so a lot of this blog tends to be encouraging or challenging other people in their faith or else hoping to introduce people to Him. the bible tab on my blog has links to where i have been slowly walking through the psalms in blog posts [currently up to 64] and also meandering through the gospel of Mark in video posts [just finished chapter 12] and also recently started a series where i have been sharing and commenting on some of my favourite verses.

i also own the world’s most famous stuffed dolphin named No_bob [i was going to call him ‘bob’ but he doesn’t!] and hate raiSINs with a different absolute passion and do not find it surprising at all that the word SIN is hidden in the word raiSIN – in fact i have written and recorded two songs about my dislike of all things squishy fruit and it is high time i did a third.

otherwise i have a deep appreciation for humour and so whether it is sharing the brilliance of other people or else just being completely silly myself and aiming for laughs as my alter ego, Brad Fish, with his Dangerous Things You Can Least Expect [DTYCLE] series or trying out some Jack Handeyesque deep thoughts as Brett Andy that is bound to be part of my posting in 2014 and one of my quests is to write [on occasion] some funnier blog posts…

so if you are continuing to journey with me in 2014 i am hoping that we will see some more incredible stories in the Taboo Topics series [which has seen a whole lot of other people sharing some intensely deep and personal stories about areas we don’t often hear much about such as Singleness, Infertility, Losing a child or being a parent of one when it’s not all that easy and so much more], I hope to continue to try and speak life into Relationships and i have an exciting series in mind capturing advice and stories from people who have been married for differing numbers of years as well as inviting some of my single friends to share their insights in a particular area.

i am very much looking forward to going home for a visit in just about a week and also for the chance to do some fun-making on the improvised comedy stage with my old team of TheatreSporters, i am hoping to figure out a better eating/exercise plan when i get back so i can be more fit for field hockey which i have loved being part of [go Eagles!], i hope to do more slacklining with my friend Todd and the  gang at Lake Merritt and to have some more amazingly fun evenings of games with friends we have made and also with the friendly folks at the games store on Wed nights.

and maybe, just maybe, i will finally get around to self-publishing the book i finished writing two years ago, titled ‘I kissed hating [the church] goodbye’ cos that would be very nice.

oh and the FISH stands for Faithful In Serving Him if you didn’t know, which is an Irresistible proposition to aim at in life… loving God, loving people and looking out for those who are considered by many to be ‘the least of these’… 

lastly i do hope to find a way to engage more in the comments section with those who do read my blog so not sure if that means i must get more controversial or hilariously funny or some kind of differently creative, but hopefully a feature of 2014 will be more of you coming and saying “hi” in the comments, or that you think that i’m the biggest jerk you know or you would like the United Nations to raise a statue in my honour on Mars or something like that – just come and play, people…

and have a most excellent 2014 – let’s suck the marrow out of this life thing together! 

How to raise your children as world changers: Meet David Fee and the gang…

So cousin Brett asks for some practical, creative suggestions that can inspire parents to inspire their children. And we have 5 children of our own and 4 long term foster children. All boys. And people are often saying nice things to us about the boys.  And we get good reports back without looking for them. Often from people we don’t even know. So I’m thinking straight away, like the truly humble guy I am: “Yep, I’m the man for this job”. 

Joel, Daniel, cousin David and Michael

And I know the kind of thing Brett is looking for, because he spells it out in an email. The kind of stuff that I’ve often planned to do, or thought it would be good to do…but actually, in practice have never got round to, or had very little success with. Like getting the boys to choose a charity to which the money which  usually gets spent on them for christmas would go to. That was in my mind to do last year. But I ended up taking them all for a days go-karting. Which of course isn’t a bad thing, but not what my cuz is talking about in this instance.

But here’s my offering. It’s a very obvious one. It’s simply about maintaining a relationship with a child, so that suggestions made when they are young men or women aren’t rejected out of hand. Two years ago our second son Michael, who has very itchy feet, was planning to go travelling. So we said: “Hey, why not go and help at this place for street children in the Philippines, which the daughter of some friends of ours is running?” And that’s what he did for 3 months. He loved it. Now he’s in South America, building walls of horse dung on a community farm, visiting Ecuadorian prisoners, working in bars, doing border crossings from, ahem, Columbia to Peru. And, um, other stuff. We get skyped every 2 or 3 weeks, and Michael tries to scare his mum.

So, yeah. No prizes for originality to me. Or for following the brief. Though I’m looking forward to hearing other people’s input so I can be creatively inspired. It’s never too late. But, you know,  I’m going with: talk, talk, jabber, jabber, laugh, giggle, get angry, apologise for your mistakes, don’t be a judgemental monster, get ’em to adulthood with at least a little bit of that free spirit they had when they were 4.  

ps. And also make sure to follow through on your own dreams so that doing so will seem normal to them. Can’t expect them to try to change the world for the better if you’re not doing the same.

pps. In the changing the world stakes, and for the record, I think the funny vids Brett makes are just as important as all the other more obviously world changing stuff. Brad Fish is my guru! So I could probably do with some counselling really…

[David Fee is my mom’s brother’s son and lives in the United of.Kingdom. We like to refer to each other as ‘cousin’ cos that is what we are. One of his gifts is that of songwriter/singer and if you sign up for his mailing list you can receive his music for free over here]

[For another great story on how to raise your children as World Changers, read Candi’s post over here]

Brad Fish counselling service for those of you who have pain or sorrow.

Turns out Brad Fish is not only about the laughs…

 

 

Extending the connection.

I have about 300 subscribers to my blog at present and about 300 likes on my blog page on Facebook and am figuring they are not all the same, so if you follow me on here and feel up to it, it would be great if you could take a moment and go and like my Facebook group page which will give other people a better chance of finding it… if you want to go one better and SHARE it on your wall that would be most appreciated: https://www.facebook.com/IrresistiblyFish

I am on The Twitter as i like to call it because let’s be honest there is only one – and you call follow me there @brettfisha if you want to and again if you generally like the stuff here why not give a shout out for @irresistibleFsh [no i] because there is no ‘i’ in Fish, especially when your name becomes to long for The Twitter to handle] which is my official blog The Twitter account. Thank you.

If you want to go one more step ridiculously further, then I have a You Tube account where I make both silly Brad Fish videos like this Dangerous Things You Can Least Expect series over here as well as this Walking through the Gospel of Mark in the Bible series over here but i think the You Tube account, if you are wanting to subscribe to the whole thing, resides over here. For some reason I had to go with Mr Brettfish as my username [perhaps the lead singer of Suede in the UK has a You Tube page]

That’s pretty much it – the only other way I have for you to follow me is a lot more stalkery and I’d quite rather you didn’t. I am at least three years away from ‘rummaging through my trash’ status unless of course I manage to finally stumble upon a comedy video format that someone actually watches, likes and passes on to their 12, 000, 000 friends but my aversion to working with kittens and small children makes this unlikely.

I leave you with this quote – ” ”

Sorry that should read “with these quotation marks” although they are probably called something different in Americaland.

So for passing on sake I will close with a picture of a kitten and a small child.

Thankx for journeying with me, those of you who do. Comment more. Share more. And send more melted chocolate…

I can Learn you a Thing

Sometimes in the present context of the life in which i live, there are moments where i need to just be incredibly silly for a few minutes just to remain sane.

This started me on a journey with my alter ego, Brad Fish, who embarked on a series of Public Awareness video clips with the series titled ‘Dangerous Things You Can Least Expect’ in which each episode Brad would look at something you might not consider dangerful like Paper or Birthdays, Flying, or my own personal favourite Violins, and he would uncover the hidden dangers lurking behind their mist.

There are something like 22 videos in that series and you can see them here and subscribe to the channel for such a time as when he might make some more.

But it was after the ‘Dangerous Things You Can Least Expect’ video on Punctuation was used in at least five different schools in South Africa’s English Departments that our Brad thought he might be on to something and so he started dreaming of a new series that was more educational in nature and so ‘I can Learn you a Thing’ was invented [although at the time of it going to press, Brad forgot the brilliant name he came up with and so episode one is tagged with ‘I’m going to Learn you a Thing’ – seems all of us have something to learn]. This first episode is an aid to Maths teachers worldwide who are wanting to explain the basic concepts of Addition to their students and don’t be surprised if the South African Education Department doesn’t officially endorse them as compulsory learning for grade 11 students in years to come [they might just be THAT bad]

Click here for episode one of the series that in the future will be known as ‘I can Learn you a Thing.’

 

new Dangerous Things You Can Least Expect video… possibly best yet?

if you have never watched or heard of a Brad Fish ‘Dangerous Things You Can Least Expect’ video then where have you been?

Brad Fish is an alternative persona of Brett Fish [heeeeeey!?!] who runs a You Tube show in which he gives wise wisdom [is there any other kind?] in terms of friendly warning to prepare people from things they might have thought of as being innocent and dangerless but which in fact turn out to be pretty dangerous-potentialistic… you can view some of the old videos here and also here but this is the latest in the series and Brad Fish might have outdone himself…

So watch as Brad Fish warns the public about the dangers of vilens… [excuse the spelling, it are not his strong point of his]

 

Dangerous Elections you can Least Expect…

so with election day happening in Americaland this week it was almost inevitable that Brad Fish, host of the hilarious ‘Dangerous Things You Can Least Expect’ series on You Tube would lend some words of warning as to why voting for the elections [with an ‘L’] can be a Dangerous Thing for reasons you might Least Expect…

check it out and if it makes you smile, laugh, giggle or snort some kind of liquid through your nose then share it with all of your friends…

Dangerous Things You Can Least Expect: Elections [with an ‘L’]