If I had discovered the process of pasteurization...

The process of pasteurization is named after the man who discovered it, Louis Pasteur.

If I had discovered it, it would be called Powerization. Think about that next time you drink milk. "Grade A, Powerized."

If only I'd packed a kitchen sink...

Sorry for the lack of updates - to think, just yesterday I was condemning Derek Webb for not updating his podcast. To me:"Hey wackadoo, Luke 6:41!" And the only reason I'm updating is because it provides a distraction from a more difficult writing task (a resume). Whenever I have something difficult to accomplish, I suddenly get the energy to do all sorts of non-essential very fun creative things, like update my blog or work on my book of mojo. Handy. Alright, on to greasier subjects.

After all these months, I still lack a kitchen. Sort of. The slobs with whom I share this apartment manage to keep the kitchen greasy, filthy, and disgusting at all times. As a rule, I stay far away. I have barely enough courage to walk past the oven to access the microwave. And that's when the heaping kitchen garbage can doesn't scare me away. Reminds me of that early section of pilgrim's progress. You know, the part with the big rock overhang... never mind.

So, here are the (mostly) kitchen-free foods on which I depend: ramen noodles, hormel microwave meals (tasty and they don't require refrigeration), milk and cereal, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, bananas, granola bars (for those times I miss breakfast in particular - much better energy sources than donuts), yogurt, and hot pockets. I still have to use the fridge a bit, but the fridge is actually not too bad. When I get an apartment in Tampa, hopefully within a couple weeks, I have but one major requirement: A KITCHEN! It will be a challenge to learn good cooking habits, but it will be fun too. Any low-cost kitchen-free food ideas to get me through the next couple weeks, let me know.

iowa or bust

It's 10:30 PM. The car is full and my room is empty. The boxes are closeted, books are shelved, duffel bags crammed together. Tomorrow I'm going to get in my car, slam the gas pedal down, back out of my driveway at 45 freakin' miles per hour, and blaze like a white hot lightning bolt down 80, watching the ever widening cone of disintegrated car windows blow outward from my car's sonic boom. I'll tear past chicago, stopping at the oasis highway restaurant beyond the city's western suburbs, face my guitar amplifier east, and play my signature megapower chord - the chord of apocalypse, created by inverting the chord of life and adding a flat fifth above it, and when that electricity gets picked up through the guitar and blasted out the amp at ten thousand million percent amplification, people are going to pay attention. [Ya wanna know why? Cuz it's a friggin' tube amplifier, that's why. If you don't know what that means, your have the innate value of a slug.] And that chord is going to blast like a tidal wave of sonic destruction over the windbag city of chicago. It's going to be the sound of ten thousand million unhappy orangutangs that got steroids injected into their vocal cords, screaming after being cut off in the insane chicago traffic for the umpteenth time today. Do you think the engineers in chicago built buildings to withstand that sort of sonic onslaught? Two words: total annihilation. People who tolerate four hours of meaningless bumper to bumper traffic everyday so that they can meander through their braindead jobs don't design buildings that can survive powerchords.

I do not tolerate four hours of bumper to bumper traffic. I do not tolerate four minutes of bumper to bumper traffic. I simply do not tolerate bumper to bumper traffic. And other drivers know that. When people feel my chi energy flowing from my car's front bumper, the vast reservoirs of potential energy created by my infinite impatience and illimatable wrath, they sorta get out of the way. So as Chicago disintegrates behind me, I'll be back in the car, accelerating into greater and greater speeds until time slows down, because I want to eat dinner at grandma's house, and it's a 12 hour drive to Des Moines.

And when I get there, I'm going to get a good nights rest, drink some tea, listen to a little jack johnson on my iPod, and eventually I might read some russian literature. It sounds very peaceful doesn't it? Don't relax; I keep the tubes on my amplifier warm at all times.

Okay well it's my bedtime, fortunately my words will continue to stream around the globe through cyberspace, so I can continue my worldshaking from the confines of my lovesac.

whatever you do, don't stop

I'm invincible!!!!

Actually I'm not. However, I am 23, and I don't feel my mortality with any great conviction. Rumor has it that flash floods are bloody dangerous. So I'm a little surprised at how cheerily I drove through one recently.

Whoops, you need context: It rained a lot in N.E.Pennsylvania and New York last night. The highway closed, the water in the area is contaminated, and last night there were flash floods everywhere. This presented me with some scary decisions while trying to get to Clarks Summit to get to BBC and pay my astronomical library fines.

Apparently, flash flooding doesn't always look scary or dangerous. In my case, I knew the water was deep, I knew it was bad, but it didn't click that the radio warnings might really apply to me. Ford Escorts are probably designed to drive through flash floods, right? But everyone was thinking the same thing, even the people driving junkers. It was either make it through a little water, or wait an hour or two to get wherever we're going. Stopping seemed scarier somehow. That's life: the water's rising, but keep on moving because stopping is way scarier. So think with me: if you were at a fork in the road, right leading through deep water and to your destination, and left providing a possible alternate route if you were willing to stop and wait, would you go left, or would you have watched the cars in front of you somehow make it through the water and decide you could make it too? [Subaru drivers: no it's not rhetorical.]

While I drove through, I was thinking, "If something bad happens, I'll feel really stupid." But since I was fine, I guess I'm just cool.

music, hope, sanity, gratitude

The music thing. Bloody, bloody music. If it weren't for McGrew, Beethoven, and Taylor Camerer, I'd have gone stark raving mad. (Indirectly I also owe Steve Shumaker big time.)

Hope is a funny thing. The word hope brings pictures of light bursting through clouds and stuff like that. We like hope. But hope in the wrong thing is a prescription for despair. I've had unrealistic, distracting ambitions for all kinds of things. Usually it just takes me further away from reality than a sane mind belongs. It happened with music. It didn't make me a better musician. Only when I figured out the reality of my relationship with music and my place (so far) has all the distraction and anxiety lifted. I could tell you the story, but it's long, and I have a headache. And this room is hot. I'm starting to sweat..

Sorry. [Yeah, speaking of distractions...] The world does not foster healthy ambitions. The hopes planted in me by my culture have to do with recognition, fame, ego, "proving" myself. To have a healthy stance in pursuing my gifts, like musicianship, I had to go through some real emotional confusion. A new understanding entered my mind as I was reading the score for Beethoven's Sixth [rather, trying to follow along with the music playing]; I realized that recognition and respect are less important than just loving the music. With my ego out of the way, I can clearly see what the music thing all amounts to. For a few years, I won't do anything "cool" - I'll just be laying the founation, enjoying the growth. It will take awhile to be able to read and perform Bach or Metallica. And hey, I might not be great. But the beauty of the thing is it's just a journey of exploration; I escape the burdens of meaningless ambitions. I call this sanity.

McGrew taught me about the freedom that comes from escaping unrealistic ambitions. Beethoven wrote his symphony. Taylor Camerer gave me the score. And Steve Shumaker taught me about sane thinking and living. Thanks yo.

unpublished vents

Sometimes there are things that need to be said, but really shouldn't be published for the whole world to see. So none of you will ever read my "cops are pigs" blog, which I typed in this space, felt better, and deleted. The beauty of the unpublished emotional ventilation blog.

words

It's time to shut up.

I've been reading some blogs (myspace, xanga, blogger) of old college friends and acquaintances. Many indicate growth, talk up their faith as if they've finally made it. And in a sense, they have. They are starting to have faith and joy, kinda like me. And I think it's totally real, and it's cool. But here is the thing: the world doesn't take our words seriously. (Incidentally I probably won't either.)

We are in an age of quick fixes. Quick-fix diets and microwaves and feel-good spiritual fads. I've seen people say almost the same thing my Christian brothers say on their blogs in non-Christian terms: "I've grown, experienced great change for the better, come closer to achieving that positive spiritual aura I've always wanted! After _____ happened my life was better!" Do you think that someone reading your blog or hearing your words is really going to believe you've discovered something exceptional? They hear this all the time!

And the thing is, we're telling the truth. We really have seen God's faithfulness. But in this age of blogs and email and talk-shows and more words flowing through this worldwide mass of cables than we can process, words aren't going to be taken that seriously. At least not my words. Not your words. Because we're young. We haven't had to prove our words with our lives.

Maybe you have changed, grown, are experiencing spiritual renewal. I've experienced some of that too. But the world doesn't care. Anyone can have a spiritual experience. Anyone can achieve a quick fix. Anyone can love unlovables - for a few days. Anyone can love their spouse while they're young and beautiful. Does anyone have anything to brag about?

Paul bragged about scars on his body, the result of years of serving and suffering for Christ. Paul had something to talk about. My grandparents spent their lives passionately serving the church. I listen to what they have to say. But I haven't suffered. There are only a few people my age (I think of two) who I am willing to say have had to suffer for their faith.

Christians who have learned what it means to serve and suffer through a lifetime of following Christ are exempt from my advice: temper your blogs and speech with a few years of servanthood. After you've been under the beating hot sun of life for a few years, when you have discovered that following God means seasons of tedium, dryness, loneliness, raising an ungrateful family, loving an annoying and flawed spouse, and that your suffering won't be glorious but obscure and unnoticed, when you come out on the other side of all that and say, "I've been through it and I've tasted living water!":

When you do that, and then say that, you can say anything you want to, and I'll listen. In a blog, on the phone, behind a pulpit, whatever, I'll pay attention.

But for now, it's better not to take ourselves too seriously. Let's be listeners. Let's "preach Christ always, and only use words when absolutely necessary" (Francis of Assissi). My friend Ric Eimers worked for a year in sales before mentioning Christ; after that first year, he couldn't get through a week, and then couldn't get through a day, without people wanting to talk to him because he was so different. He never had to bring it up. Do I like to talk so much because I don't think my life has much of a testimony, without a cloud of words to back it up?

Doggy Habits

Dogs are like people. I don't mean your looks (mostly). I mean they have quirks. Strange little habits they develop. Take Shadow, the very big English Labrador of the Upham family. He doesn't chew stuff. But he picks up shoes, socks and hats. He picks them up and just holds them in his mouth for hours. He once swallowed a sock whole on accident. It's sort of quirky. I've never seen him pick up a t-shirt or pillow or anything else out of the room we share. But while saying hello this morning, the first thing he did is pick up my baseball cap off the sofa. By the way, that's yucky.

My dog Lucy in Michigan has her own quirk. I have green shag carpet. She thinks it looks grassy. Grassy as in, hey look an in-house lavatory. If I ever forget to block the entrance to my room, she wastes little time marking her territory. I do believe that Lucy is short for Lucifer. She's still a good dog I suppose.

I wonder if I'm quirky? Off the top of my head I can't think of anything.

Make your own title up, punk.

I read Eugene Peterson's interpretation of Psalm 42 this evening after a really trying day. At one point I was a ticking time bomb towards my Dad; God's grace intervened and my Dad defused it. That has almost never happened that way before. There is a lot in this Psalm, and the one before (that is 41 by the way) is awesome too, but 42 was so beautiful and helpful that I'm going to present some of it here.

"A white-tailed deer drinks from the creek'
I want to drink God,
deep draughts of God.
I'm thirsty for God-alive.
I wonder, "Will I ever make it--
arrive and drink in God's presence?....

"These are the things I go over and over,
emptying out the pockets of my life.
I was always at the head of the worshiping crowd,
right out in front,
Leading them all,
eager to arrive and worship,
Shouting praises, singing thanksgiving--
celebrating all of us, God's feast!

"Why are you down in the dumps, dear soul?
Why are you crying the blues?
Fix my eyes on God--
I'll soon be praising again.
He puts a smile on my face.
He's my God.

"When my soul is in the dumps, I rehearse
everything I know of you.
From Jordan depths to Hermon heights,
including Mount Mizar.
Chaos calls to chaos,
to the tune of whitewater rapids.
Your breaking surf, your thundering breakers
crash and crush me.
Then God promises to love me all day,
sing songs all through the night.
My life is God's prayer..."

You know what? After reading that, I don't feel blue, I feel STOKED! STOKED! But don't go thinking I'm getting all spiritual, I'm still cranky about this bloody headache. Geez.

Roll on

birthday presents open-house visitors mewithoutyou guitar discouragement jubilee people hope movies ideas cameras music and words and music and words.

Home in Michigan. Tested Dad's Canon S2 - awesome. Play hours on guitar daily. Birthday balloons floating behind me. Sufjan Steven's "Avalanche" outtakes - great. Liz and Luke (sister and her husband) staying till Monday.

I have a friend named Mark Bolser. Or, had. I'd like to go looking for him. Today we watched "The Labyrinth," a David Bowie movie which Mark brought over and we watched at my house several years ago. He gave me the book "No Compromise", the biography of Keith Green. It had a huge effect on me. He then introduced me to Keith's music. On my myspace profile, I wrote this concerning who I'd like to meet:

"Mark Bolser. He was three years older than me, and was my number one friend and mentor in high school. One day, two weeks after he graduated, his grandma died. She was the only Christian in his family. He had grown up in foster homes, and she had been the only person who had loved him throughout his lifetime. He left all of a sudden, gave up on Christianity and disappeared somewhere in Detroit. Someday I'm going to find him."

Today a reliable source said he had overdosed and was dead, but the source can't completely confirm it.

One time at Cedar Point, after getting out of the car, my sister banged his head in the van door (double dutch-door style). He was out of it for a couple minutes, and was just following off and when Liz turned off to go into the ladies bathroom he wasn't paying attention and followed her in. It was the funniest moment of the trip.

I was with Mark when he became a follower of Christ. Whether he is dead or alive, I know that what happened to him was real. In earlier years, he went through things most of us can't imagine. I guess something broke him. No one is really to blame, but some environments just aren't able to help some people in the ways they need it. Mark may be a broken man, may even be a dead man, but I am going to see him again some day.