Sleepy from Cornerstone Fest

I'm a little drained. Ever have one of those naps where you wake up all hot and feeling anything but rested?

On Wednesday after work I drove 4 hours to Bushnell, Illinois to Cornerstone Festival. I spent too much time the first night show-hopping so I didn't see any full sets that night. And I really intend to finish this blog but in about 30 seconds I'm going to drift into a state of unconscious something or other. To be continued...

Micah's Fault + Rumfrazzled

This blog entry can be blamed on Micah L., who told me to come back to blogger. No matter how many times I run away from blogger, it always takes me back with arms wide open. .. Thank you blogger. Okay, that's taken care of, see you in two months. (



Just kidding.

News Flash 1: I'm almost addicted to World of Warcraft. Sometimes I'm not, and sometimes I am.

News Flash 2: Emily believes I am becoming a gypsy. She may be right. Tomorrow I leave Florida for Michigan, and thence to Iowa a few days after that. I'm not going to summarize my time in Florida, but I'll offer up a couple of stories.

So here is a story about loving your neighbor. [The rest of this paragraph got really stupid, so I decided to make it optional. If you'd like to read something really stupid, just highlight the rest of this]: (Actually it's about someone else loving their neighbor. Actually it's about my neighbor. Actually it's about me. Technically "Love thy neighbor" implies at least two neighbors, the loving and the loved; in this story you'll find out which one I was.) (If you haven't figured it out yet.) (Do you really think I'm going to write a story about how wonderful I am?) (That pretty much gave away the ending.)

Downstairs lives the evil neighbors. I live upstairs with the good grandmother (who speaks no English.) I've never actually talked to the evil neighbors. Even if they spoke English (which they don't), why would I want to talk to neighbors that are evil? I only know they're evil because they get mad at the good grandmother because we're upstairs and walk around and on occasion that makes noise. I won't deny that it does make noise; just how upset they get about it, I couldn't say. Point is, there's no point in wasting my breath on them. (They also supposedly tried to get me kicked out at one point. Wait a second, maybe it worked....!)

So today I'm on the sidewalk with all my possessions (save my mac) on the sidewalk in front of the apartment. Unsmiling Cuban neighbor walks past with trash bag, disposes of trash bag, returns past me. Five minutes later, I hear some foreign mutterings directed directly at me. Cuban guy (60-ish) hands me a chilly beer, I say thank you, and walk back in.

A moment before he does this, I am complaining in my mind about bad neighbors, and how the bad neighbors downstairs should learn a little about good neighbors from Jesus. Whoa is me.

So I'm trying to drink this beer, feeling just a little ashamed. Generally I hate beer (I eventually poured half of it out he wasn't around), but the point is that the second of my first interaction with him he popped out of his evil neighbor pigeonhole by being neighborly. Five minutes later, he steps out again and asks me, "?Quiere Comida?" I try to say that I have to pack "muy rapido" before it rains (point at sky and say "agua"). He isn't deterred at all but promises "Poquito". So I go inside to eat with them. (The only word to describe what I'm feeling is "rumfrazzled".

The man is Cuban, is 64, has an amazingly jolly face (I'd never noticed before), has lived in florida for 15 years, thinks Castro is bad (there's no comida in Cuba), and went diving and harpooned his own fish the other day. His wife is Dominican, has a son 24 years old, (or maybe a daughter), and cooks amazing food. An hour and a half later I'm still stuffed. (Un poquito indeed.) The table has beautiful roses, they have beautiful plants in general, the wife's stereo was playing wonderful Dominican music (with wonderful guitar) - it was just a wonderful place. Communication was a struggle; I tried to tell them I loved Florida; I think I told them that I wanted Florida. Heaven knows what they thought that meant; maybe they think I want to get into real estate. In that case, why am I driving to Florida? For all I know I've misinterpreted half of what they said.

I finished my meal, said muchas gracias many times, finished packing (it never rained), poured out what remained of the beer, and went inside to cool off.

So then, I look forward to having my assumptions about my neighbors utterly flambazzled.

In the future I may or may not write about post-modern trends in journalism, storks, everglade fires, warcraft, depression, wonder, and idiocy.

Ch-ch-ch-changes!

Well it's time to juggle things up slightly. I owe the color scheme to this wonderful blogspot option called "shuffle colors" (=! I'm starting a new adventure in Florida, so this is sort of my way of celebrating new beginnings. (Together with tacky color schemes. I'm celebrating those as well.) Okay everybody, stay tuned because very soon I will be bringing you my new "Get Powerized!" health and exercise program! By the way, if things don't work out in Florida I have figured out a really exciting plan B, let me know what you think:

In God we trust

"In God We Trust" - by Derek Webb from his Mockingbird album

In God we trust
and the government is on His shoulders
in God we trust
through democracy and tyranny alike
in God we trust
He uses both good and evil men

in God we trust
so we fight for peace and He fights for us
in God we trust
even when He fights us for someone else
in God we trust
even when He looks like the enemy

in God we trust
even though our hearts are bankrupt
in God we trust
for more than just the value of our dollar bills
in God we trust
but there’s no gold behind these notes of reserve

in God we trust
even through our great presumption
in God we trust
even though He favors no nation-state
in God we trust
even when the blessing is a curse

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.