part 2 how work ties in

in four months or so i should be able to move to sales with the republic company. a month ago i questioned whether i could manage for that long. the good news is that i have discovered that i can. the best activity for passing time is playing with watercolor. i cant say i'm passionate about sales, but its an opportunity i will take. and i'll do my best.

because

the significantly better salary means i could perhaps get into a better living situation!

in the meantime this isn't too bad; if my roomie and i can find a bunkbed at goodwill or salvation army sometime soon, we'll have quite a bit more space to work with.

part 1 crossing lines

so this morning i was playing my favorite band, "mewithoutyou", on my stereo. Probably it was a little loud because i just installed new speakers; ie i'm not sure how loud it sounds from other parts of the house.

what would you didn't know what the music was but didn't like it and you could hear it?

the seminary student who is subletting to me (who in general is a good guy but in everything pertaining to the apartment has been an a-hole) laid out his musical requirements early on. no playing of metallica, led zeppelin, etc, in the house. ie anything he might construe as evil. course i bend over backwards cuz these guys are lunatics who put me on permanent probation in their minds. if they had any sort of disagreements with me, ie they didn't like the kind of music i play on my guitar, they would tell me to stop; if i didn't, they would have no problem kicking me out.

so this morning the previously mentioned individual walks in and tells me to cut that music. its "passionate" but especially heavy. it's not metal. the guy tells me he doesn't like it so i can't play it.

ah now we get at what the nuthead's christianity is really all about: people have to look and think like me. they are thinking, if i dont like a certain kind of music, it must not be good music. they wouldn't ever think that out loud, cuz it is so obviously stupid, but they think it. (btw their standards are usually generously hypocritical.)

i decided they had crossed a line, made a fuss about the band being one of the most god-glorifying bands that i knew of, the song ("torches together" about god making us into the body of christ, incredibly beautiful) being beautiful and rich, and finally told him that just because he didn't like music did not mean i was not going to play it. he didn't like it, but short of being threatened out of the house i wasn't going to budge. you have to put your foot down somewhere. that somewhere is mewithoutyou heh. he compromised to me having it vewy quiet. i probably can still turn my stereo up with rich mullins or classical without anyone complaining, which is a relief.

Great new dream

I had this great new dream about being at a Jimi Hendrix concert at Baptist Bible College. It was a really great dream. I think the thing about Hendrix isn't just that he was a great guitarist - we just all kinda like him. He doesn't seem like the kind of dude who would pick up my guitar and start critiquing the heck out of it, he would probably just play it and have fun. Whereas I would never want Eric Clapton to hold my guitar, cuz he would touch it and then say "ewww the action is wrong I dont like these cheap pickups can someone please get me a different guitar." I've only ever acted that way with those unplayable wal-mart electric guitars. Ewwwwww.

The tough thing is all that you hear with most guitarists is a bunch of overdubbing. Of course it sounds good when they overdub and add extra tracks. Just hearing a good guitarist sitting down playing his guitar, you dont hear that. Luckily I got this super rare download of Hendrix on acoustic, it's really fun. Maybe 10 songs on acoustic guitar, it's still hendrix for sure.

Apricot Face Remover

I tried "invigorating apricot scrub." For all skin types. Except mine I guess. "May irritate skin," they say. Can I have my face back, I reply.

In other news, the health industry is promoting a new program for permanent weight loss. The secret? Hungry sharks. Test subjects have called the results "immediate and startling." Critics warn, "may hamper mobility."

Hey, the shark diet and apricot scrubbers might get along!

Led Zeppelin catalogue, musical growth

today at share.com (which is actually http://u2n2.com/Default.asp?) I stumbled upon the entire Led Zeppelin catalogue. I have all their official albums as a band except for Coda, which isn't supposed to be that great anyway; I'm only missing the BBC sessions and "How the West was Won", the live album. I'm not that big of a Led Zeppelin fan, but I am a huge fan of really old-time blues like Robert Johnson and Blind Willie Johnson. Led Zep became the archetype of good rock and roll (for good reason), but they got all their inspiration from old blues recordings which I like to listen to as well. Same for White Stripes by the way. Anyway, a lot of the music is great stuff for what it is; so far a couple favorites are Moby Dick from Led Zep II (I own that record!), and the Battle of Evermore. I haven't got it into my head to learn any Led Zep songs on guitar, because it really isn't my style, but it's pretty good. I have a pretty extensive classic rock catalogue, I'd like to find more of the really good old stuff, which probably means i'll have to buy it over time.

Other than that I'm digging into a lot of fusion and jazz guitarists and bands, Allan Holdsworth especially.

Groceries

Shopped at HyVee for groceries tonight.

-$72.73 groceries
(8 tv dinners, 1 5 pc hot pocket, 12 snickerdoodle cookies ($4), ice cream sandwiches, 16
yogurts, 12 coke+12 cream soda $6, bananas + apples ($6), 4 cereal, 5 soup cans)

Regret the cookies. Hyvee doesn't know how to make snickerdoodles.

Working balance until November 26 / payday (ie what I have to spend after $677.77 in bills): -1.01. Anyone have four quarters and a penny? hahaha. Actually I'm not in the red because I'll wait to pay the big college loan until I get my paycheck. Overall, I'm feeling optimistic. Maybe this time next month, I'll have an extra dollar to wave around! No more wasting money on snickerdoodles.

my existence in three relatively short paragraphs

i'm working as usual. for some reason things are a bit slow at the company - i'm not generating many transfers. for the most part i have steered clear of trouble (it always looms of course). i live in three worlds: the faith baptist bible college bubble (and the churches and relatives connected with that bubble), the world of work, in which i have one or two peeps i would call friend, and the friends i've collected in cafes. the third group has banded together into a ragtag motley crew which has nothing in common except we all need friends and we all need jesus. the first group of people, the super-conservatives - these are folks who i sometimes love and respect, and other times wish i could just say goodbye to. there are some really good things happening, but a lot of stuff that really bothers me (its exclusivity among other things - it really is a self-contained little world with its own rules and regulations for those who live in it). i follow some of those rules because i live with faith seminary students who i respect. the best kind of respect brings about generous and considerate lifestyles, which i think is happening in my house. i'm learning not to judge so much; i'll never see things the way the faithers / baptists do but some of them are good men / women.

meantime i really live for those times when i'm with my ankeny crew: abbi, bri, jess, sarah, tommy, and whatever other ragtags happen to wander along.

i sorta left my church out. not intentionally, church simply isn't a good place for building relationships. it is a good place for thinking and learning though.

and beth is probably wondering why i didn't come to her thingy tonight - laundry and food is why.

trust

eden. a perfect world in which nothing is breakable. including relationships.

what did those relationships lack, something which can be broken?

trust.

god introduced the possibility of destructive potentials (the tree) so that people could trust him. he made a special relationship, a relationship of trust, possible.

on a side note, it really is a gigantic deal when someone breaks your trust. and the fact that there are laws in place that assume men are untrustworthy is a good example of the state of things.

sin

sin is this heavy nasty word which is means bad or evil or all kinds of stuff we want it to mean. i don't think we should get rid of the word or anything, but it should be a little more concrete what it means when i think that word. so here's what i think sin is.

a sin is an act of destruction on man's part. not so much burning a house, but an act which destroys relationship, trust, another person, or ourselves. some actions destroy our relationship with god. some acts destroy the sanctity of a word (using god's name as a cuss word) - words are part of reality too. sin is not a force so much as it is a potential for destruction inherent in man's nature. (this is just brushing the surface of all of this really.) i would rather talk about a sin, as an an action, than sin, as if it were just some nasty evil force floating around seeping out of our toilets and into red light districts.

strange thing: if the possibility of the potential for destruction had not been made available, there would have been no potential for trust.